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Ultimately the best, the only hope for peace lies in the determination of the peoples not to do anything so silly as to settle the quarrels of their rulers by killing each other. But then come the deeper questions: Do people love peace? Do they hate war? Would the total abolition of war be a good thing for the world? After a lengthy period of peace there usually arises a craving for battle. Nearly fifty years of peace followed the defeat of the Persians in Greece, and at the end of that time, just before the Peloponnesian War, which was to bring ruin on the country, Thucydides tells us that all Greece, being ignorant of the realities of war, stood a-tiptoe with excitement. It was the same in England just before our disastrous South African War, when readers of Kipling glutted themselves with imaginary slaughter, and Henley cried to our country that her whelps wanted blooding. In England this martial spirit was more violent than in Greece, because, when war actually came, the Greeks were themselves exposed to all its horrors and sufferings, but in England the bloodthirsty mind could enjoy the conflict in a suburban train with a half-penny paper. As in bull-fights or gladiatorial shows, the spectators watched the expensive but entertaining scene of blood and death from a safe and comfortable distance. They gave the cash and let the credit go; they thoroughly appreciated the rumble of a distant drum. “Blood! blood!” they cried. “Give us more blood to make our own blood circulate more agreeably under our unbroken skins!” Christianity joined in the cry through the mouths of its best accredited representatives. As at the Crucifixion it is written, “On that day Herod and Pilate were friends,” so on the outbreak of a singularly unjust, avaricious, and cruel war, the Christian Churches of England displayed for the first and last time some signs of unity. Canterbury and Armagh kissed each other, and the City Temple applauded the embraces of unrighteousness and war. Dean Farrar of Canterbury, concluding his glorification of the hell which I then saw enacted in South Africa, quoted with heartfelt approval the Archbishop of Armagh’s poem:–

“And, as I note how nobly natures form
Under the war’s red rain, I deem it true
That He who made the earthquake and the storm
Perhaps makes battles too.

Thus as the heaven’s many-coloured flames
At sunset are but dust in rich disguise,
The ascending earthquake-dust of battle frames
God’s picture in the skies.”[19]

We are no longer compelled to regard the dogmas of Christianity or the opinions of eminent Christians as authoritative. The appeal to Christianity, which used to be regarded as decisive in favour of peace, is no longer decisive one way or other. Christ’s own teaching is submitted to critical examination like any other teacher’s, and I should be the last to decry the representatives of the Prince of Peace for acclaiming the virtues of war, if they think their Master was mistaken. When bishops and deans and leading Nonconformists thirst for war’s red rain, we must take account of their craving as part of man’s nature. We must remember also that war has popular elements sometimes overlooked in its general horror. It is believed that in the American Civil War nearly a million men lost their lives; but against this loss we must set the peculiar longevity with which the survivors have been endowed, and the increasing number of heroes who enjoyed the State’s reward for their services of fifty years before. Even during the South African War certain compensations were found. A charitable lady went on a visit of condolence to a poor woman whose husband’s name had just appeared in the list of the killed at Spion Kop. “Ah, Mum,” exclaimed the widow with feeling, “you don’t know how many happy homes this war has made!”