But setting aside the two chief forces behind the scenes, Usury and the Press, with all other commercially concerned parties in the quarrels of nations, who _can_ or who _dare_ say that War is “popular”? Let wives and children answer! Let us try to understand what we ourselves mean by our conflicting theories and arguments--we who make such ado about a “declining birth-rate,” and fall into hysterical raptures over a family of “soldier sons”! Let us realise clearly that the slaughter of able-bodied men materially assists towards the “declining birth-rate,” and that where there are “soldier sons” they have been brought into the world apparently for no other reason than to be mangled out of it! This is War! Glorious War! Is it sane? Is it truly “glorious” to shoot down thousands of human beings who have committed no fault of their own, but are simply commanded by their Governments to serve as marks for the bullets of an enemy who might never have been an enemy at all but for mischief arising out of idle and often erroneous report, based on what is perhaps only a temporary and trivial misunderstanding? The best of friends are sometimes parted by the stupid gossip of stupid persons who, envious of happiness and grudging it to those who possess it, never rest till something has been done to undermine and destroy it. In the same way nations are set against each other by some persistently irritating and ill-founded rumour--some difference of opinion, which, if taken in hand reasonably and at once, could be satisfactorily settled, provided there be not too much talk, “red tape,” and officialism employed for the purpose of creating general vacillation and muddle. The conventional “ifs” and “buts” exchanged among the Powers may be looked upon with considerable doubt and foreboding under certain circumstances--an overflow of fine words not unfrequently means an outbreak of treacherous deeds.