There is no pessimism here, for Thomas à Kempis gives the remedies, the only remedies offered to the world since light was created before the sun. He offers no maudlin consolation; to him the sins of the intellect are worse than the sins of the flesh. He believed in hell, which he never defined, as devoutly as Dante, who did describe it. They both knew their hearts and the world; and the world has never invented any remedy so effective as that which À Kempis offers. It is the divine remedy of love; but love cannot exist without the fear of hurting or offending the Beloved. The best book yet written on the causes that made for the World War and on their remedy is "The Rebuilding of Europe," by David Jayne Hill. There we find this quotation from Villari illuminated: but it would be more exact to say that Machiavelli's work written in 1513 and published in 1532 was the perfect expression of an emancipation from moral restraints far advanced. The Christ-idealism of the Middle Ages had already largely disappeared. The old grounds of obligation had been swept away. Men looked for their safety to the nation-state rather than to the solidarity of Christendom; and the state, as Machiavelli's gospel proclaimed it, consisted in absolute and irresponsible control exercised by one man who should embody its unity, strength, and authority. Montaigne felt rather than understood the cruelty and brutality of the state traditions of his time; and these traditions were seriously combatted when the United States made brave efforts both at Versailles and Washington. Doctor Hill sums up the essential principles which guided the world from the Renascence to the year 1918: (1) The essence of a State is "sovereignty," defined as "supreme power." (2) A sovereign State has the right to declare war upon any other sovereign State for any reason that seems to it sufficient. (3) An act of conquest by the exercise of superior military force entitles the conqueror to the possession of the conquered territory. (4) The population goes with the land and becomes subject to the will of the conqueror. What member of the memorable conference, which began at Washington on November 12, 1921, would have dared to assert these unmoral principles, accepted alike by the Congress of Vienna and the Congress of Berlin, in principle? King John of England looked on their negation as an unholy novelty, though that negation was the leaven of the best of the life of the Middle Ages.