Some crash must come, tragic and shocking to our social structure. I see no escape from that, and only the hope that in that crisis the very shock of it will restore the mental balance of the nation and that all classes will combine under leaders of unselfish purpose, and fine vision, eager for evolution and not revolution, for peace and not for blood, for Christian charity and not for hatred, for civilization and not for anarchy, to reshape the conditions of our social life and give us a new working order, with more equality of labor and reward, duty and sacrifice, liberty and discipline of the soul, combining the virtue of patriotism with a generous spirit to other peoples across the old frontiers of hate. That is the hope but not the certainty.
It is only by that hope that one may look back upon the war with anything but despair. All the lives of those boys whom I saw go marching up the roads of France and Flanders to the fields of death, so splendid, so lovely in their youth, will have been laid down in vain if by their sacrifice the world is not uplifted to some plane a little higher than the barbarity which was let loose in Europe. They will have been betrayed if the agony they suffered is forgotten and “the war to end war” leads to preparations for new, more monstrous conflict.
Or is war the law of human life? Is there something more powerful than kaisers and castes which drives masses of men against other masses in death-struggles which they do not understand? Are we really poor beasts in the jungle, striving by tooth and claw, high velocity and poison-gas, for the survival of the fittest in an endless conflict? If that is so, then God mocks at us. Or, rather, if that is so, there is no God such as we men may love, with love for men.
The world will not accept that message of despair; and millions of men today who went through the agony of the war are inspired by the humble belief that humanity may be cured of its cruelty and stupidity, and that a brotherhood of peoples more powerful than a League of Nations may be founded in the world after its present sickness and out of the conflict of its anarchy.
That is the new vision which leads men on, and if we can make one step that way it will be better than that backward fall which civilization took when Germany played the devil and led us all into the jungle. The devil in Germany had to be killed. There was no other way, except by helping the Germans to kill it before it mastered them. Now let us exorcise our own devils and get back to kindness toward all men of good will. That also is the only way to heal the heart of the world and our own state. Let us seek the beauty of life and God’s truth somehow, remembering the boys who died too soon, and all the falsity and hatred of these past five years. By blood and passion there will be no healing. We have seen too much blood. We want to wipe it out of our eyes and souls. Let us have Peace.
Colophon
Now It Can Be Told
was published in by
Philip Gibbs.
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The cover page is adapted from
The Doctor,
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