But, thank God, there is another side to the picture, both for young and
old. If we are to be poorer we shall be more free. If we are to be weak
and faint from loss of blood we shall rest at night without dread of
that shadow of the sword which has darkened the sleep of humanity for
forty years. If the countries of our enemies are to be closed to some
of us in the future, the countries of our Allies will be more than ever
open; nay, they will be almost the same to us as our own. France will be
our France, Italy our Italy, Belgium our Belgium, and the next time I,
for one, sit by the stove in the log cabin of a Russian moujik on the
Steppes, I shall feel as if I were in the thatched cottage of one of my
own people in our little island in the Irish Sea. So does blood shed
in a common cause break down the barriers of race and language and bind
together the children of one Father. The dead of our Allies become our
dead, and our dead theirs. That Frenchman died to save my son; therefore
he is my brother, and France is my country. “One’s country is the place
where they lie whom we loved.”
Thus war, brutal, barbarous war, has its spiritual compensations, and
pray heaven the present one may prove to have more than any other. If it
does not, something will break in us after all we have gone through. Our
faith in the invisible powers to bring a good end out of all this welter
of blood and destruction has become a religion. It must not fail us if
our souls are to live.