The war state stands before us to-day proud and unafraid. It is however self-conscious. To use the figures and similes of Carlisle in his “Characteristics” like Doctor Kitchener, it has a good system. It is not like the Indian war state that knew no other kind of state and therefore didn’t realize that it had a system nor was it like Countryman and “had no system.” The war state to-day has a system and it glories in it. Its rules are God’s laws and man’s vices and crimes are its virtues. It knows its purposes which it says are divine. Those purposes are first to secure order within, second to make war without. It might almost say that its purpose is to make war without. In no sense of the word does it make war without so that it can keep order within. Its purpose therefore is to make war for it keeps order within so it can better make war without. It might almost say, in fact, it does say that if it did not make war it would have no right to exist. If it doesn’t make war better than another it has no right to exist. It makes war that it may grow, that it may develop, that it may progress, that it may enlarge itself. It ceases from war for the time being only that it may prepare to make war again. War is its health, its vocation. Its provisional peace is its novitiate, its apprenticeship, its years of training. Should it cease to grow and enlarge itself, it would thereby cease to be healthy and true to its main purpose. An axiom with many people is that the truth or falsity of many if not all contentions can be found by magnifying them or trying to make them universal. If the contention of the world state is valid this axiom would seem to have found its Waterloo, for it is obvious that if the perfect war state is ever achieved it must constantly grow, it must extend its boundaries continuously. When the war state shall have reached its zenith it will fall into the inevitable decay and degeneration that comes with peace, unless it should divide the World state up into tiny and imperfect war states and begin over again the centuries which were spent in warfare, to see from which centre of the globe the new war state shall spread itself. For it is apparent that since war is necessary, a world of peace would almost be worse than no world at all. If wars cannot come with the inevitableness with which astute ministers try to clothe them they must be consciously and openly caused merely for the sake of having war. It may be said and it indeed often is that such a conclusion is impossible, that no constantly growing war state can evolve. War’s spokesmen say that power too widespread places the beneficent uses of conflict beyond the reach of the majority of such a state and malign peace causes inner decay. Eternal bloodshed it would appear is the price of national health. And several hostile war states must forever rock progress in its crimson cradle.