But war has good in it too, they say. Yes, and amid its hideous wrong no
doubt there was good in slavery, as there is in cancer or blindness.
Almost any evil or agony may be the root of noble qualities, and war is
no exception.
These men died in the hope that it might be impossible for a civilised
nation again to thrust this evil on the human race. They died trusting
us to see that Europe would not again have to choose the alternative of
entering upon such an agony or of forgetting its honour towards God.
Force, it would seem, must long remain the last remedy, but might it not
be force resting on a pivot and striking with effect wherever
international crime seeks to disturb the peace of the nations? The mere
knowledge of such a united determination would at least be a powerful
persuasive. That may be only a dream. The immediate fact is that the
doctrine of Will to Power must first be crushed, represented as it is
to-day by Germany and her dupes. But men who have been through the
furnace will not rest content with less than the solemn attempt, in the
name of the dead, to put the nations of the world in a worthier
relationship to one another than has so far prevailed.
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