As Mediaevalism gave place to the Renaissance this Christian idea was abandoned, and increasingly the obligation was severed from the right, which so became that odious thing, privilege. Intolerable in its injustice and oppression, this privilege, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had become the attribute of the aristocracy, was completely overthrown, in France first of all, and a new doctrine of rights was enunciated and put in operation. Unfortunately the result was in essence simply a transforming of privilege from one body to another, for the old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitant of acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the Middle Ages; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusively individualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists who formulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgation synchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion of industrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead of England in accepting the new system, they hardened into an iron-clad scheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holders and manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy of Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham and the Manchester School, generally, and the evolutionary theories of the exponents of Darwinism, and abetted by an endless series of statutes, the idea of the exemption of property holders from any responsibility to society for the use of their property, became a fixed part of the mental equipment of modernism. Precisely the same thing happened politically and socially. Rights were personal and implied no necessary obligation to society as a whole; they were personal attributes and as such to be defended at all costs. Now the result of this profound error as to the existence, nature and limitation of these personal rights has meant simply the destruction of a righteous and unified society which works by coöperation and fellowship, and the substitution of individuals and corporate bodies who work by competition, strife and mutual aggression towards the attainment of all they can get under the impulse of what was once praised as "enlightened self interest." In other words--war. The conflict that began in 1914 was not a war hurled into the midst of a white peace, it was only a military war arising in the centre of a far greater social war, for there is no other word that is descriptive. Rights that are not contingent on the due discharge of duties and obligations are but hateful privilege; privilege has issue in selfishness and egotism, which in turn work themselves out in warfare and in the hatred that both precedes and follows conflict.