Essays And Addresses in War Time

gerent powers, but of all nations, are involved as such interests were never involved before. It concerns the world as a whole in both ways. The principles involved affect all mankind, but whichever way the issue of the war settles them, the settlement will be decisive for a long time to come. The good or evil fortune, materially and morally, of every nation, even of half-civilized tribes in Asia and Africa, will depend on the hands to whom power may fall when the war is over. These are facts which many persons in neutral countries have not yet understood. In particular, they have not realized what are the doctrines and the ideals of the contending nations as these have appeared in the conduct of the war. Each side has proclaimed its doctrines and its ideals to some extent even in official documents, but far more fully through books and newspapers. Never before did belligerents make such efforts to put their respective cases before the world; never was the behaviour of the fighting forces the subject of so much comment. Nevertheless, in many neutral countries men seem to think that, as has usually happened in previous wars, there is no great distinctionbetween the combatants. They perceive that charges and countercharges are bandied to and fro, and they have not the patience to inquire which are true and which false. Being perhaps too lazy or indifferent to examine the motives and the conduct of the parties, they lapse into the easy assumption that both are equ...