I am not, it will be observed, relying on disputed speculations like those of Mr. Norman Angell. I do not accept his characteristic theory; but it need not now be discussed, as our experience rather suggests that a modern war will prove so exhausting, economically, that there will be no question of substantial indemnity for the victor. But we must in any case add to this cost of war, for victor and vanquished alike, that incalculable damage which is expressed in ruined homes, ruined fortunes, and the pain of loss. This also is too vividly present in our minds to need comment. These sacrifices have been borne heroically. Those of us who have lost nothing can most sincerely salute both the men who exposed their lives in a just cause and the women who endured as women do. The soldier's trade is an honourable trade while the need for it lasts, and at such a time it calls for respect and gratitude. But how stupid and brutal in the last degree is the system that imposes these sacrifices, when we reflect that the honour or the rights of any nation could have been vindicated without the darkening of a single home or the loss of a single citizen. There, of course, we have the centre of gravity of the whole discussion. _If_ we can abolish and dispense with the military system, our retention of it in the twentieth century is the most appalling sham and anachronism of which we are guilty. I do not enlarge on the cost of war. No one to-day can be insensible of it or suggest that any but the most imperious needs would justify us in retaining it. I assume also that, after the lamentable behaviour of Germany, none will question that there will be wars as long as militarism lasts, and that the cost and carnage will increase prodigiously. The supreme point for us to realise is the comparative ease with which this greatest of reforms can be accomplished. We have no rival schools of economists or moralists or philosophers darkening counsel here. We do not await a genius to discover the path for us. A plain and seriously indisputable ideal is put before us: arbitration. A court for exercising it has already been established: the Hague Tribunal. Let the majority of people in the more powerful nations of the earth agree to submit every international difference to that or some other tribunal, and we have made an end of militarism and war.