ABSTRACT
LESS than twenty years after the greatest war in history Europe is getting ready for a bigger and better war. This is no cynicism: it is statement of fact. The problem of world unemployment is being solved largely in war munition factories. There is scarcely a steelworks or naval dockyard or aeroplane factory on the Continent which is not working at full pressure. And this is true largely of Great Britain. The race for rearmament is already making fun of accepted principles of political economics. On all sides politicians are searching for new shibboleths which they hope will be heaven-sent formulæ. In the blind fatuity of their own past shortcomings and incompetence, they are declaring that the only way to avoid another war is to be prepared to fight in that same war. For them history has no lessons to teach and the next generation, or even that which is now growing to manhood, may have to pay a bitter bloody price for the follies of their rulers. In the varying names of democracy, autocracy and oligarchy the world is gradually drifting to a similar bankruptcy of statesmanship that precipitated the catastrophe of 1914. It is as if the world has learned nothing and forgotten everything.
