Points of Friction
were at stake. We could not in either case evade the duty we owed to reason. The Vatican Library would not hold the books that have been written about the war; but the famous five-foot shelf would be too roomy for the evidence in the case, the documents which are the foundation of knowledge. They, at least, are neither too profuse for our patience, nor too complex for our understanding. "The inquiry into the truth or falsehood of a matter of history," said Huxley, "is just as much an affair of pure science as is the inquiry into the truth or falsehood of a matter of geology; and the value of the evidence in the two cases must be tested in the same way."
The resentment of American pacifists, who, being more human than they thought themselves, were no better able than the rest of us to forget the state of Europe, found expression in petulant complaints. They kept reminding us at inopportune moments that war is not
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