পাতা:অনাথবন্ধু.pdf/৬৪৩

sNumberg, Hr ugus-Aug the time there was this dark scheme which had broken out in this great conflict The war had shown that there was very great danger in merely believing in papers and institutions. We must have not merely agreements but that change in the hearts of men which would be a good basis for them; otherwise they would be "scraps of paper' again. There must be created a strong, sound, healthy public opinion that would see that Governments were kept in order, that diplomatists were kept in order, and it was only in proportion as that result was achieved that we could have any reasonable confidence that there would be peace in the world. At the end of the war we must conclude a good peace. He did not see how a perpetual peace was to be secured if this war was going to be ended like so many other warsas a mere patchwork compromise between so many conflicting interests. The war had carried us to the depths and let us build from the depths. It was only when we had established the principle that nations should decide their own fate that it would be possible to tak of peace in the future. Another condition of peace was a league or union of nations with some common organ of co-operation and decision of vital issues.' Iord Buckmaster was more sanguinely certain as to the outcome of the war, but he along with the other speakers, spoke of the lasting trembling earthquake which is shaking the world's moral fabric. Lord Hugh Cecil sug gested that the entire Christian Church should co-operate to assert that not only war but also nationalism is contrary to Christianity. These views all suggest that at least in the case of some leaders of thought in Europe. their minds are completely overawed by the fearful events of the last three years. Lord Bryce, the once sanguine historian-philo sopher, sees no sign of the hoped-for change of hearts in the people and suggests an agentially material remedy for the world's ills, [III] AT THE CROSSING. 44 صحصحسیسحصحس th General Smuts, in the very breath in which he warns the audience against paper guarantees that can be easily broken, advocates the combination of all civilized powers to prevent the destruction of civilization. It may be pertinently asked, what will prevent such an international pact from degenerating as did the Holy Alliance concluded after the Napoleonic wars?- wherein the princes who composed the Alliance pledged themselves to regard each other as lurothers and their peoples as their children and to found all their acts' on the sacred principles of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST.’ While devising means for a lasting peace, there are not wanting people who even from now are thinking about arms and supplies. Mr. E. S. Montagu speaking at West Cambridgeshire on the 23rd July last said:-" has not the war taught us, revivified and made more acute as a motive power, the sense of Nationality ? Our country and Empire must be made secure not only in area, but in supplies.' Though every one is crying for peacc-lasting peace-though the best minds of the west are bent upon solving the problem of how to prevent similar catastrophes for all time to come, yet it is curious that nowhere any attempt is made to get at the root cause of the war-every one is trying to diagnose the evil by its symptoms : no one appears to care for its real cause. Perhaps the existing state of affairs is not propitious for that detatched condition of the mind which is necessary for the purpose. It is generally admitted that the tragedy of Servia was a mere pretext and that the real cause of the war lay elsewhere. But in vain one tries to find in the analysis on the side of the Allies anything beyond this that the war has broken out on account of German barbarism and German megalomania. Just before the war and in spite of the knowledge of the huge preparations for a life-and-death struggle that were being made by her, the people of Germany " were looked upon as the most cultured and