I need not follow the devastation of war through the later history of Europe. The Thirty Years War laid Germany desolate, and postponed its cultural development for more than a century. Spain, Portugal, and Holland, which had won empire by the sword, lost it to the sword. The Ottoman Empire sank into weakness and shame. All this was due, in the first place, to what Count von Moltke calls "the institution of God": the institution without which "the world would fall into decay and lose itself in materialism." Even while he spoke Germany was prospering by peace as few nations had ever prospered before. Could there possibly be a more perverse reading of the lesson of history? Could there be a greater mockery conceived than to imagine God smiling on this blood-reeking Europe, or to call this a spiritual triumph over materialism? Is any man, with the present desolation of Europe before him, tempted to place the soldier above the artist, the scientist, or the engineer as an instrument of progress? Let us grant militarism all that it has really achieved. It remains, in the mind of the historian, the greatest curse that mankind has endured since the primitive humans were first gathered into tribes and disputed each other's "spheres of influence."
Blind to this ghastly tragedy of history, we have maintained and cherished militarism until it has brought on us in turn the greatest catastrophe that a single year ever embraced. Probably our grandchildren, probably many a child that gazes now with wide eyes on our troops and banners, will look back on our civilisation with amazement. They may smile at a drill-sergeant like Count von Moltke telling illiterate rustics of the glorious moral qualities which war develops in--the men who traversed Belgium! But we civilians will honestly puzzle them. We had the history of the world unfolded before us, and we saw this institution plainly emerging from barbarism and leaving its bloody and defacing splashes on every page of the chronicle. We traced the evolution of justice, and we saw that, as it was a mighty gain to men when tribunals were set up to adjudicate on the quarrels of individuals or clans, it would be a far mightier gain to erect a tribunal for settling the quarrels of nations. Yet we took this stupid burden from the shoulders of our fathers, and we made it incalculably heavier for ourselves and our children.