there will the eagles be gathered together." Here around us on every side are the eagles: the eagles of Germany, of France, of Austria, of America, of Russia; when they attack the lion of Britain, shall they find sentimentality and sweetness where they should have found strength? If Britain as a Nation surrenders vitality in a fatuous love of peace as such, even though that be a dishonourable and disgraceful peace, it is Britain that will be the cause, the wanton cause of War. We may prate of the negative virtue of the British people and of our love of not fighting, we may condemn the impiety of the Nations that attack us; but those Nations will only be putting into effect what is obviously the divine will, namely, that there is to be no decay upon the Earth.

There are those who will allow us to resort to armed force provided it is for purely defensive purposes, but who declare all other warfare to be immoral. If that is so, then the English have no moral right to be in England or in Africa, or the Americans in America, or Teutons in Germany or Scandinavia—and this list of immoral trespasses could be extensively added to. But that the world has benefited by the rise and expansion of the Nations, and the corresponding subduing and reduction of the decayed or backward and stationary races previously in possession, there can be no doubt whatever. In the Old Testament the moral purpose of war is set before us with some clearness. Israel is there depicted as being conscious of an actual divine commission to go forth and conquer and take possession. And who shall say the world has not benefited by the rise of that most remarkable Nation, a rise effected at the cost of the overthrow of what

were apparently morally degenerate and more or less effete civilisations ? About this warfare at any rate there was nothing defensive.

The advantage to the world, to take another instance, of the conquests by the Romans, has never been seriously questioned; while to come to modern times, who but a few professional politicians would pretend seriously to believe that the conquest by Britain of the numerous feeble and mutally hostile nations and races which people India has not made for their peace and their progress, both moral and material? As it is with India, so it is also with Egypt. But surely it is not necessary to labour the point. It is clearly impossible to limit war to defensive war. Strong, healthy, and vigorous Nations must expand, and those which are the opposite must tend to be absorbed or exterminated; though it may be observed parenthetically that war or the menace thereof tends to the conversion of weakness into strength-as instance the case of the Japanese. Indeed this effect of war as a moral tonic to a Nation has been dwelt upon by John Ruskin, that greatest lover of true peace.

("Crown of Wild Olive,” III. 4 and 9. Compare also "Time and Tide," page 206.) "For it is an assured truth that, whenever the faculties of men are at their fulness, they must express themselves by art; and to say that a State is without such expression, is to say that it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. So that when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men.

"It was very strange to me to discover this; and very dreadful -but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life

only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, of peace and civilization; but I found that these were not the words which the Muse of History coupled together that on her lips the words were-peace, and sensuality -peace, and selfishness-peace, and death. I found, in brief, that all great Nations learned their truth of word, and strength of thought, in war; that they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace; taught by war, and deceived by peace; trained by war, and betrayed by peace ;-in a word, that they were born in war, and expired in peace."

Far be it from any one to say that war must be for all time a condition of earthly human progress. But that it is so now under the existing conditions of human frailty and general tendency to degeneration and relapse is as evident as it is possible for any sociological proposition to be. If we ever get rid of war, it will not be because the Nations are too weak to fight, or too ease-loving and pleasure-loving, or because patriotism is dead; or because having ceased to believe in the immortality or even the existence of the soul, we are too timid to look at death or too selfish or too material to care for the highest or death-bought glory; -it will be because all nations are keeping themselves at their best physically, intellectually, and morally, so that the Angel of Justice, who must then be reigning among men, will find no cause to sever himself from the Angel of Peace. Strength and Love, Justice and Mercy will then be walking hand in hand; Righteousness and Peace will have kissed one another.

That it is possible to wage a disgraceful war is undoubtedly true; just as it is true that it is possible to encourage and enjoy a shameful peace. But war taken at its best is an expression of the affection and mutual reverence that prevails and should prevail

among fellow-citizens. War is a battling for Nationality, that is for character and for mission. Each patriot, whether he fights, or pays, or only prays, is fighting for the character, the personality of his fellow-countrymen. Warfare thus viewed, we perceive that there are not two kinds of warfare, one a spiritual conflict which is waged within the soul and which is laudable, and one a battle of the warrior which "is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood," which is contemptible; but that both taken at their best,1 these warfares are in the end the same; both being conflicts for character, battles for the integrity of the soul.

The soldier then, the warrior, stands for National character, that large element in the Personality of each one of us which is due to our Nationality, and without which our individual Personalities would be almost meaningless.

Consider for a moment how it happens that all simple, healthy-minded men, and practically all women and children, venerate the warrior, be he soldier or sailor. Is there no reader of these lines who, when witnessing a "gallop past" at a review, has not felt then-even if it were for the first time-that he is more than an individual man, that he is, as it were, a Nation? Has he not felt in the presence of this awe-inspiring force, representing the might, the determination, the courage, the brotherhood-unto-death of the Nationthat he could grip every neighbouring man by the hand and own him friend and brother; and that the fount of tears so long dry-seemed welling up near to over

1 I say "both taken at their best," for as there may be an evil and base war, so there may be an evil spiritual battle, as when a man fights against his better self in a deliberate determination to do evil.

flowing? Here is no partisan affair which one-half of the people hate and the other half affect to believe in. Here at least is something which is not the result of party "squabbles" and hatreds; something which is not the outcome of the triumph of a political majority, composed of bickering sects who detest each other ;no, here is something which represents the Nation as a whole-not this or that party, this or that group of half-knavish conspirators, but the whole undivided Nation, the Brotherhood of the Fatherland. A friend

of mine, a most prominent Christian Socialist, spoke before many people (more in sorrow than in anger) against the display of military force which accompanied the "Diamond Jubilee" of her late lamented Majesty. He was unable to perceive that the occasion being a National one, it was reasonable that those forces which represent and secure National character, as opposed to those civil bodies which tend to National convenience and comfort, should be especially in evidence, and should like the Sovereign himself be put forward as representing the continuity and the unity of the Nation.

To continue this latter train of thought-why is it that no civil bodies, be they civic or private, can in any of their doings bestir the popular minds, produce public enthusiasm, and inspire the souls of poets and artists, in the same manner and in the same degree as do our National watch-dogs, whether by land or sea? "Discipline," says some one;-this discipline, this regimentation, so adored of us Socialists, is the cause of this popular admiration. But examination will reveal that this is not really so. Take for instance the discipline of a gaol. Here the discipline, as discipline,