The conclusion seems to be that we are to-day entering on an era in which war will not only flourish as vigorously as in the past, although not in so chronic a form, but with an altogether new ferocity and ruthlessness, with a vastly increased power of destruction, and on a scale of extent and intensity involving an injury to civilisation and humanity which no wars of the past ever perpetrated. Moreover, this state of things imposes on the nations which have hitherto, by their temper, their position, or their small size, regarded themselves as nationally neutral, a new burden of armament in order to ensure that neutrality. It has been proclaimed on both sides that this war is a war to destroy militarism. But the disappearance of a militarism that is only destroyed by a greater militarism offers no guarantee at all for any triumph of Civilisation or Humanity. What then are we to do? It seems clear that we have to recognise that our intellectual leaders of old who declared that to ensure the disappearance of war we have but to sit still and fold our hands while we watch the beneficent growth of science and intellect were grievously mistaken. War is still one of the active factors of modern life, though by no means the only factor which it is in our power to grasp and direct. By our energetic effort the world can be moulded. It is the concern of all of us, and especially of those nations which are strong enough and enlightened enough to take a leading part in human affairs, to work towards the initiation and the organisation of this immense effort. In so far as the Great War of to-day acts as a spur to such effort it will not have been an unmixed calamity. [1] In so far as it may have been so, that seems merely due to its great length, to the fact that the absence of commissariat arrangements involved a more thorough method of pillage, and to epidemics. [2] Treitschke, _History of Germany_ (English translation by E. and C. Paul), Vol. I., p. 87. [3] Von der Goltz, _The Nation in Arms_, pp. 14 _et seq._ This attitude was a final echo of the ancient Truce of God. That institution, which was first definitely formulated in the early eleventh century in Roussillon and was soon confirmed by the Pope in agreement with nobles and barons, was extended to the whole of Christendom before the end of the century. It ordained peace for several days a week and on many festivals, and it guaranteed the rights and liberties of all those following peaceful avocations, at the same time protecting crops, live-stock, and farm implements.