And no mock Christianity, no lip homage to Christianity,
will answer.
But is war, then, to go on for ever? Are we never to improve? Are
nations to conduct their intercourse eternally under the secret
understanding that an unchristian solution of all irreconcileable feuds
stands in the rear as the ultimate appeal? I answer that war, going on
even for ever, may still be for ever amending its modes and its results
upon human happiness; secondly, that we not only are under no fatal
arrest in our process of improvement, but that, as regards war, history
shows how steadily we _have_ been improving; and, thirdly, that
although war may be irreversible as the last resource, this last
resource may constantly be retiring further into the rear. Let us speak
to this last point. War is the last resource only, because other and
more intellectual resources for solving disputes are not available. And
_why_ are they not? Simply, because the knowledge, and the logic,
which ultimately will govern the case, and the very circumstances of
the case itself in its details, as the basis on which this knowledge
and logic are to operate, happen not to have been sufficiently
developed. A code of law is not a spasmodic effort of gigantic talent
in any one man or any one generation; it is a slow growth of accidents
and occasions expanding with civilization; dependent upon time as a
multiform element in its development; and presupposing often a
concurrent growth of _analogous_ cases towards the completion of
its system.
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