In the Fourth Year
Description:... In the latter half of 1914 a few of us were writing that this war was a"War of Ideas." A phrase, "The War to end War," got into circulation,amidst much sceptical comment. It was a phrase powerful enough to swaymany men, essentially pacifists, towards taking an active part in thewar against German imperialism, but it was a phrase whose chief contentwas its aspiration. People were already writing in those early days ofdisarmament and of the abolition of the armament industry throughout theworld; they realized fully the element of industrial belligerency behindthe shining armour of imperialism, and they denounced the "Krupp-Kaiser"alliance. But against such writing and such thought we had to count, inthose days, great and powerful realities. Even to those who expressedthese ideas there lay visibly upon them the shadow of impracticability;they were very "advanced" ideas in 1914, very Utopian. Against them wasan unbroken mass of mental habit and public tradition. While we talkedof this "war to end war," the diplomatists of the Powers allied againstGermany were busily spinning a disastrous web of greedy secret treaties,were answering aggression by schemes of aggression, were seeing in thetreacherous violence of Germany only the justification forcountervailing evil acts. To them it was only another war for"ascendancy." That was three years and a half ago, and since then this"war of ideas" has gone on to a phase few of us had dared hope for inthose opening days. The Russian revolution put a match to that pile ofsecret treaties and indeed to all the imperialist plans of the Allies;in the end it will burn them all. The greatest of the Western Allies is
Show description