ABSTRACT
War is a deadly intermittent plague which grows in horror and destructiveness with every growth of scientific knowledge and human ingenuity. The personal question of “war guilt” is fast becoming merely historical. The old criminals, whoever they were, are dead or ageing, and no responsibility for what happened in 1914 or earlier can be brought, by any stretching of the evidence, against the millions who have only grown to manhood and womanhood since that fatal year. There are many cross-currents of hope and fear running to-day in Europe and the outer continents, cross-currents which confuse and may unbalance judgment. The League of Nations is a new factor. At the lowest it is an important new piece of international machinery, and it may prove to be much more. Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy are new factors, each profoundly disturbing to some observers and wildly exhilarating to others.
