life rises with the embellishments and alleviations afforded by daily advancing progress; and lastly, as regards the advantages of the final victory, a strip of land or a heap of fortress stones, or the absolutely illusory “Fame”—these things, powerless to enrich or to make happy, sink in an ever greater disparity to those sacrifices, increasing to the uttermost, which they render necessary. So much for the approaching (or, it is to be hoped, not approaching) war. As regards universal peace, which may now not be so remote—for at the present time a conference is assembled in this name, called together by the most powerful military ruler in the world—people are by no means clear as to its foundations and aims. Most persons believe that members of Peace Societies imagine under the name of universal peace a condition of general harmony, a world without fighting or divisions, with undisputed frontiers settled for all time, and inhabited by angelic beings, overflowing with gentleness and love. It is an old custom of the enemies of any movement to represent it in a false light, to attribute absurdities to it which it has never asserted, and then to attack them with cheap sarcasm and obvious refutations. So also here. The friends of peace do not desire to found their kingdom on impossibilities, nor on conditions that might perhaps prevail thousands of years hence, but on the living present and living humanity. The avoidance of all disputes is not demanded—for that is impossible—but that the disputes should be settled henceforward by arbitration instead of by force, as was hitherto the case. This level of culture has already been attained by the individuals of organized states: that it should be attained also by the states themselves in their relations to each other, is the aim and object of the whole peace movement. Thereby one right would certainly be lost—a right which, although it bears the proud name of sovereignty, is in truth a great wrong; the right of one state to attack another. But if ten persons agree among themselves to desist from mutual attack, each exchanges one-tenth of his lost chance of plunder for nine-tenths of assured safety. Immutability of existing frontiers and social arrangements is demanded as little as the avoidance of disputes. For this, too, would be contrary to nature. Obstinacy, bearing the proud title of Conservatism, which opposes all natural alterations and displacements, is itself the cause of all forcible revolt. Just as in private life, the individual’s possessions are protected from robbery by a civilized commonwealth, but the possessor is not guaranteed for all time, and the poor are not prevented from gaining possessions. Rich and poor families grow or die out, increase or decrease in fortune; new groups are formed, drawn together by natural selection; a growing population must overflow the frontiers; forms of state belonging to a lower level of culture must be supplanted by the civilization of those