of cheap foreign labour.  If an armed struggle ever takes place between the nations of Europe (or their colonists) and the yellow races, it will be a working-man’s war.  But on the whole, the best hope of getting rid of militarism may lie in the growing power of the working class.  The poor, being intensely gregarious and very susceptible to all collective emotions, are still liable to fits of warlike excitement.  But their real minds are at present set against an aggressive foreign policy, without being shut against the appeals of a higher patriotism.

And yet the irritation which is felt against preachers of the brotherhood of man is not without justification.  Some persons who condemn patriotism are simply lacking in public spirit, or their loyalty is monopolised by some fad or ‘cause,’ which is a poor substitute for love of country.  The man who has no prejudices in favour of his own family and his own country is generally an unamiable creature.  So we need not condemn Moliere for saying, ’L’ami du genre humain n’est pas du tout mon fait,’ nor Brunetiere for declaring that ’Ni la nature ni l’histoire n’ont en effet voulu que les hommes fussent tous freres.’  But French Neo-catholicism, a bourgeois movement directed against all the ‘ideas of 1789,’ seems to have adopted the most ferocious kind of chauvinism.  M. Paul Bourget wrote the other day in the Echo de Paris, ’This war must be the first of many, since we cannot exterminate sixty-five million Germans in a single campaign!’ The women and children too!  This is not the way to revive the religion of Christ in France.

The practical question for the future is whether there is any prospect of returning, under more favourable auspices, to the unrealised ideal of the Middle Ages—­an agreement among the nations of Europe to live amicably under one system of international law and right, binding upon all, and with the consciousness of an intellectual and spiritual unity deeper than political divisions.  ’The nations are the citizens of humanity,’ said Mazzini; and so they ought to be.  Some of the omens are favourable.  Militarism has dug its own grave.  The great powers increased their armaments till the burden became insupportable, and have now rushed into bankruptcy in the hope of shaking it off.  In prehistoric times the lords of creation were certain gigantic lizards, protected by massive armour-plates which could only be carried by a creature thirty to sixty feet long.  Then they died, when neither earth, air, nor water could support them any longer.  Such must be the end of the European nations, unless they learn wisdom.  The lesson will be brought home to them by Transatlantic competition.  The United States of America had already, before this war, an initial advantage over the disunited states of Europe, amounting to at least 10 per cent. on every contract; after the war this advantage will be doubled.  It remains to be seen whether the next generation will honour the debts which we are piling up.