Speech at Stationers’ Hall, London, June 6, 1910. ↩
I have in mind here the ridiculous furore that was made by the British Jingo Press over some French cartoons that appeared at the outbreak of the Boer War. It will be remembered that at that time France was the “enemy,” and Germany was, on the strength of a speech by Mr. Chamberlain, a quasi-ally. Britain was at that time as warlike towards France as she is now towards Germany. And this is only ten years ago! ↩
In his History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, Lecky says: “It was no political anxiety about the balance of power, but an intense religious enthusiasm that impelled the inhabitants of Christendom towards the site which was at once the cradle and the symbol of their faith. All interests were then absorbed, all classes were governed, all passions subdued or colored, by religious fervor. National animosities that had raged for centuries were pacified by its power. The intrigues of statesmen and the jealousies of kings disappeared beneath its influence. Nearly two million lives are said to have been sacrificed in the cause. Neglected governments, exhausted finances, depopulated countries, were cheerfully accepted as the price of success. No wars the world had ever before seen were so popular as these, which were at the same time the most disastrous and the most unselfish.” ↩
“Be assured,” writes St. Augustine, “and doubt not that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but also little children who have begun to live in their mother’s womb and there died, or who, having been just born, have passed away from the world without the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire.” To make the doctrine clearer, he illustrates it by the case of a mother who has two children. Each of these is but a lump of perdition. Neither has ever performed a moral or immoral act. The mother overlies one, and it perishes unbaptized. It goes to eternal torment. The other is baptized and saved. ↩
This appears sufficiently from the seasons in which, for instance, autos da fé in Spain took place. In the Gallery of Madrid there is a painting by Francisco Rizzi representing the execution, or rather the procession to the stake, of a number of heretics during the fêtes that followed the marriage of Charles II, and before the King, his bride, and the Court and clergy of Madrid. The great square was arranged like a theatre, and thronged with ladies in Court dress. The King sat on an elevated platform, surrounded by the chief members of the aristocracy.
Limborch, in his History of the Inquisition, relates that among the victims of one auto da fé was a girl of sixteen, whose singular beauty struck all who saw her with admiration. As she passed to the stake she cried to the Queen: “Great Queen, is not your presence able to bring me some comfort under my misery? Consider my youth, and that I am condemned for a religion which I have sucked in with my mother’s milk.” ↩
Spectator, December 31, 1910. ↩
See quotations from Homer Lea’s book, The Valor of Ignorance. ↩
Thus Captain d’Arbeux (L’Officier Contemporaine, Grasset, Paris, 1911) laments “la disparition progressive de l’idéal de revanche,” a military deterioration which is, he declares, working the country’s ruin. The general truth of all this is not affected by the fact that 1911, owing to the Moroccan conflict and other matters, saw a revival of Chauvinism, which is already spending itself. The Matin, December, 1911, remarks: “The number of candidates at St. Cyr and St. Maixent is decreasing to a terrifying degree. It is hardly a fourth of what it was a few years ago. … The profession of arms has no longer the attraction that it had.” ↩
Germany and England, p. 19. ↩
See the first chapter of Mr. Harbutt Dawson’s admirable work, The Evolution of Modern Germany. T. Fisher Unwin, London. ↩
I have excluded the “operations” with the Allies in China. But they only lasted a few weeks. And were they war? This illustration appears in M. Novikow’s Le Darwinisme Social. ↩
The most recent opinion on evolution would go to show that environment plays an even larger role in the formation of character than selection (see Prince Kropotkin’s article, Nineteenth Century, July, 1910, in which he shows that experiment reveals the direct action of surroundings as the main factor of evolution). How immensely, therefore, must our industrial environment modify the pugnacious impulse of our nature! ↩
See citations, notably Mr. Roosevelt’s dictum: “In this world the nation that is trained to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound to go down in the end before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities.” This view is even emphasized in the speech which Mr. Roosevelt recently delivered at the University of Berlin (see London Times, May 13, 1910). “The Roman civilization,” declared Mr. Roosevelt—perhaps, as the Times remarks, to the surprise of those who have been taught to believe that latifundia perditere Romam—“went down primarily because the Roman citizen would not fight, because Rome had lost the fighting edge.” (See footnote, p. 237.) ↩
The Valor of Ignorance. Harpers. ↩
See M. Messimy’s Report on the War Budget for 1908 (annex 3, p. 474). The importance of these figures is not generally
