pugnacity. But the New War, against Nature and against human greed and sloth and cruelty, will only then be fairly initiated. In this new war unjust nations, like unjust individuals, will be resisted but not destroyed. And the people for whom this new war is fought will be no longer the tribe, or state, or nation, but the great world-self, the universal community of sentient beings. For this great war which shall liberate men from the blight of nature, and from the neglect and injustice of their fellows, the time is over-ripe. From the one side, the heroic bodily risks of physician, explorer, and engineer make their claim on men’s courage and devotion. And on all sides are walls of privilege to be demolished, strongholds of public inefficiency and graft to be stormed, attacks on democracy to be repelled, insidious influences of sloth and luxury to be checked; and human rights to be defended against relentless industrial competition and selfish social content. This Greatest War will never be brought to victory until it enlists us all. And those who arm for this conflict must have eyes open to descry injustice and misery, minds trained to judge fairly, hearts pulsing with sympathy, and loyal spirits strong to fight to the finish.
Like Socrates, we have followed whither the argument has led us; and now, with this last turn of the path, light fully illumines the problems which we set for ourselves, in the beginning. We asked whether war is an inevitable expression of human instinct and whether anything less than war can move a man to supreme self-sacrifice. And we have found that the instincts lying at the heart of war can be converted to the uses of a strenuous and militant peace and that the instrument of their conversion is loyalty to the Great Society, a loyalty rooted in the deep-lying social instincts. Sed sine dolore non vivitur in amore. The law of this loyalty, also, is sacrifice.
Wellesley College.
