To many this optimistic forecast, in the face of the prevailing war spirit and the ever-growing armaments of the nations, may seem oversanguine and incredible. But to think despairingly of the future argues a failure to discern what is really most significant in the international situation to-day. The most significant thing in the ongoings of life at Rome on that memorable day of the year 404 of our era which saw the last gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum was not that, four hundred years after the incoming of Christianity with its teachings of the sanctity of human life, gladiators fought on the arena to make a holiday for Rome; the significant thing was the protest made by the Christian monk Telemachus and sealed by his martyr death,[787] for that announced the birth into the Roman world of a new conscience, and that, through an ethical necessity, meant the speedy abolition of “the human sacrifices of the amphitheater.” And so to-day the significant thing is not that nineteen hundred years after the advent of a religion of peace and good will among men, gladiator nations still wet the earth with fratricidal blood; the significant thing is the constantly growing protest against it all, for that announces the birth into the modern world of a new international conscience, and that, through an ethical necessity like that which abolished forever the bloody sacrifices of the Colosseum, means the certain and speedy abolition of war as a crass negation of human solidarity and brotherhood, and a venturous denial of a moral order of the world and the sovereignty of conscience. FOOTNOTES [1] Henry T. Buckle, _History of Civilization in England_ (1891), vol. i, chap. iv. For a trenchant criticism of Buckle’s contention that there has been no progress in morals during historic times, see article entitled “The Natural History of Morals,” _North British Review_ for December, 1867. [2] For a discussion of the economic theory, see Edwin R. A. Seligman, _The Economic Interpretation of History_, 2d ed. [3] _Social Evolution_ (1894), p. 307. [4] Ralph Barton Perry, _The Moral Economy_ (1909), p. 254. [5] Immanuel Kant, _Critique of the Practical Reason_; cited by Fisher, _History of the Christian Church_ (1888), p. 623. [6] “It is probable indeed that every movement of religious reform has originated in some clearer conception of the ideal of human conduct, arrived at by some person or persons.”--T. H. GREEN, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, 5th ed., p. 361. [7] _Prolegomena to the History of Israel_, tr. Black and Menzies (1885), p. 472; summing up the moral teachings of the prophet Amos. [8] Wake, _The Evolution of Morality_ (1878), vol. ii, p. 4; Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. ii, p. 743; T. H. Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, 5th ed., p. 237; George Harris, _Moral Evolution_ (1896), p. 79. [9] T. H. Green, _Prolegomena to Ethics_, 5th ed., p. 240.