Towards the Great Peace | Page 2

to end war," the war "to make the world safe for democracy" came to a formal ending, and for a few hours the world gazed spellbound on golden hopes. Greater than the disillusionment of war was that of the making of the peace. There had never been a war, not even the "Thirty Years' War" in Germany, the "Hundred Years' War" in France or the wars of Napoleon, that was fraught with more horror, devastation and dishonour; there had never been a Peace, not even those of Berlin, Vienna and Westphalia, more cynical or more deeply infected with the poison of ultimate disaster. And here it was not things that failed, but _men._
What of the world since the Peace of Versailles? Hatred, suspicion, selfishness are the dominant notes. The nations of Europe are bankrupt financially, and the governments of the world are bankrupt politically. Society is dissolving into classes and factions, either at open war or manoeuvering for position, awaiting the favourable moment. Law and order are mocked at, philosophy and religion disregarded, and of all the varied objects of human veneration so loudly acclaimed and loftily exalted by the generation that preceded the war, not one remains to command a wide allegiance. One might put it in a sentence and say that everyone is dissatisfied with everything, and is showing his feelings after varied but disquieting fashion. It is a condition of unstable equilibrium constantly tending by its very nature to a point where dissolution is apparently inevitable.
It is no part of my task to elaborate this thesis, and still less to magnify its perils. Enough has been said and written on this subject during the last two years; more than enough, perhaps, and in any case no thinking person is unaware of the conditions that exist, whatever may be his estimate of their significance, his interpenetration of their tendency. I have set myself the task of trying to suggest some constructive measures that we may employ in laying the foundations for the immediate future; they may be wrong in whole or in part, but at least my object and motive are not recrimination or invective, but regeneration. Nevertheless, as a foundation the case must be stated, and as a necessary preparation to any work that looks forward we must have at least a working hypothesis as to how the conditions that need redemption were brought about. I state the case thus, therefore: That human society, even humanity itself, is now in a state of flux that at any moment may change into a chaos comparable only with that which came with the fall of classical civilization and from which five centuries were necessary for the process of recovery. Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. How has this been possible, what has been the sequence of events that has brought us to this pass?
It is of course the result of the interaction of certain physical, material facts and certain spiritual forces. Out of these spiritual energies come events, phenomena that manifest themselves in political, social, ecclesiastical transactions and institutions; in wars, migrations and the reshaping of states; in codes of law, the organization of society, the development of art, literature and science. In their turn all these concrete products work on the minds and souls of men, modifying old spiritual impulses either by exaltation or degradation, bringing new ones into play; and again these react on the material fabric of human life, causing new combinations, unloosing new forces, that in their turn play their part in the eternal process of building, unbuilding and rebuilding our unstable and fluctuant world.
Underlying all the varied material forms of ancient society, as this developed around the shores of the Mediterranean, was the great fact of slavery: Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all were small, sometimes very small, minorities of highly developed, highly privileged individuals existing on a great sub-stratum of slaves. All the vast contributions of antiquity in government and law, in science, letters, art and philosophy, all the building of the culture and civilization that still remain the foundation stones of human society, was the work of the few free subsisting on the many un-free. But freedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even when the body is in bondage. The slaves of antiquity were free neither in body nor in soul, but with the coming of Christianity all this was changed, for it is one of the great glories of the Christian religion that it gave freedom to the soul even before the Church could give freedom to the body of the slave. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and with the infiltration of the free races