“The Last Shot.” And these forecasts of the military critics might stand now as histories of the great war.
So it is possible to speak with some authority concerning the character of that “next war,” especially since so many able Europeans have already recorded and analyzed the experiences and lessons of “the first world war.” Though we cannot do more than guess at the participants, we can foresee the methods of that struggle and its direct and indirect results on the lives and property, the souls and bodies, of the nations who find themselves involved.
It is difficult, however, rightly to see the future without at least a glance at the past. it is doubly difficult in this discussion, because during the war of 1914–18 certain forces hitherto smouldering burst into blaze. Not only did the character of warfare change, but its whole relation to peoples and to human life. From now on, we must consider war in an entirely new light. An understanding of the difference between old wars and “the next war” is essential to an understanding of the present struggle between militarism and reasonable pacifism, between the aristocratic ideal of society and the democratic, between those who believe in that next war and those who are groping toward a state of society which will abolish war.
