The fundamental trouble with the whole race of war prophets is that they think the war is a new thing, and they feel called upon to tell the rest of us what to make of it. War is about the oldest human industry. This is the greatest of all wars, but that does not alter the meaning of war. Nor does it necessarily alter the results of war. While it is the greatest of all wars, it is not yet a long war, and in proportion to the population it is not certain that it is greater than other wars. It is not even certain that in proportion to the men involved, it is more bloody than other wars. We have no means of getting at the figures except in the loosest way, because the several Governments do not tell how many men they have at any given time or place, or the casualties in any individual engagements. But some approximations have been made, and they do not indicate that the great war is decidedly more bloody, in proportion to the armies, than other wars have been. Our Civil War lasted full four years; the War of Independence occupied seven. Before that was the seven years of the French and Indian war, and one war is known as the Thirty Years War. From the beginning of the French Revolution to Waterloo was more than quarter of a century, and at the end of that period another Bourbon was on the throne of France. Our Civil War made nearly, if not quite, as heavy a draft upon the population as the present war has made upon the population of England or France. The moral and religious questions involved in war are not notably different in the greatest of all wars and in wars which are not quite so great. Most of them are involved in the ordinary administration of the criminal law by which an orderly community protects itself from its predatory members. Doubtless there will be social and political results from this war, but if other wars have not created a new heaven and a new earth, why should this one? The prediction that this war will produce great changes in the direction of democracy and of applied religion are probably well founded. But the war will act only as an accelerator. These changes have been going on for a long time; the movements for fifteen or twenty years before the war opened were very evident. Woman suffrage and prohibition seem impending, but they are not the products of this war: they had made great progress between 1900 and 1914. None of the prophets betray any knowledge of history, or see things in any perspective. The great war is the first great cataclysm that they seem to be aware of, and they are rushing to and fro, like the Chaldeans, to find explanations of it, and to impress the public by their ability to forecast its consequences.