Civilisation is a great Word. It reads well--it is used everywhere--it bears itself proudly in the language. It is a big mouthful of arrogance and self-sufficiency. The very sound of it flatters our vanity and testifies to the good opinion we have of ourselves. We boast of “Civilisation” as if we were really civilised--just as we talk of “Christianity” as if we were really Christians. Yet it is all the veriest game of make-believe, for we are mere Savages still. Savages in “the lust of the eye and pride of life”--savages in our national prejudices and animosities, our jealousies, our greed and malice, and savages in our relentless efforts to over-reach or pull down each other in social and business relations. If any confirmation of such a statement be needed it is found in the fact that War is still permitted to exist. War is unquestionably the thrust and blow of untamed Savagery in the face of Civilisation. No special pleading can make it anything else. We may if we like call it “Patriotism” in our perpetual life-comedy or tragedy of feigning, but in sane moments we must surely realise that we are wilfully deceiving ourselves. Patriotism is understood to be that virtue which consists in serving one’s country; but in what way is this “Patria” or country served by slaying its able-bodied men in thousands?--the very men whose peaceful and progressive toil makes the country worth living in? Can any adequate answer be given to this question? Is “Honour” justly due to the heads of Government who, themselves safely out of the fray, send such men like sheep to the shambles--men innocent of all personal or national offence, but who in their fine obedience to duty and the preconceived idea of conquest which has its root in old barbaric periods, consent to be shot down under the murderous fire of unseen guns miles away, simply because their rulers have so ordained it? Is it “civilised” to spread ruin and devastation through the land?--to leave homes desolate?--and to create a wretched surplus population of widows and orphans for no other reason than that one nation refuses to comply with what is demanded of it by the other? Is it not possible to deal with even a difficult and refractory subject of quarrel in the way of reason and argument, brought to bear upon it by the soberly judging powers of all nations? And if reason and argument should fail, then, instead of consigning troops of blameless men to the scientific but cruelly treacherous methods of modern warfare, would it not be more normal and humane simply to--Stop Supplies?