This is the average hard-headed view at the moment. If it is to remain dominant, there is no salvation in store for the world. “Why not?” replies the hard-head: “It always has been the view, and the world has gone on?” Quite true! But the last few years have brought a startling change in the conditions of existence――a change that has not yet been fully realised. _Destructive science has gone ahead out of all proportion._ It is developing so fast that each irresponsible assertion of national rights or interests brings the world appreciably nearer to ruin. Without any doubt whatever, the powers of destruction are gaining fast on the powers of creation and construction. In old days a thirty years’ war was needed to exhaust a nation; it will soon be (if it is not already) possible to exhaust a nation in a week by the destruction of its big towns from the air. The conquest of the air, so jubilantly hailed by the unthinking, may turn out the most sinister event that ever befell us, simply because _it came before we were fit for it_――fit to act reasonably under the temptation of its fearful possibilities. The use made of it in the last war showed that; and the sheep-like refusal of the startled nations to face the new situation, and unanimously ban chemical warfare and the use of flying for destructive purposes, shows it still more clearly. No one denies that the conquest of the air was a great――a wonderful――achievement; no one denies that it could be a beneficent achievement if the nations would let it be. But mankind has not yet, apparently, reached a pitch of decency sufficient to be trusted with such an inviting and terribly destructive weapon. We are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe in it. The last war disproved it utterly. Competition in armaments has already begun, among men who think, to mean competition in the air. Nothing else will count in a few years’ time. We have made by our science a monster that will devour us yet, unless by exchanging international thought, we can create a general opinion against the new powers of destruction so strong and so unanimous that no nation will care to face the force which underlies it. A well-known advocate of the League of Nations said the other day: “I do not believe it necessary that the League should have a definite force at its disposal. It could not maintain a force that would keep any first-rate power from breaking the peace. Its strength lies in the use of publicity; in its being able to voice universal disapproval with all the latent potentiality of universal action.”