The developments of the Great War, up to date, do not hold out any
hope that Idealism will be respected until the war is finished and the
passions of the belligerents are cooled. It is evident that the practical
and material problems must first be solved, leaving the ethical ones
for later adjustment. It is to be feared, indeed, that the war will
settle down not only into a ghastly conflict of blood and destruction,
but also into one of retaliation and cruelty, in which all the laws of
war hitherto recognized will be ignored and all international law will
become a dead letter. The old Latin motto, _Inter arma silent leges_, is
already construed more literally in practice than it was by the pagans
of the pre-Christian era. Modern inventions of death-dealing machinery,
poisonous gases and explosives, deadly air craft and submarines, have
furnished an excuse to declare the former international rules for the
conduct of war obsolete, and it is a question if this avowal will not
become more pronounced as the war progresses. The world is confronted
with the horrible possibility that war will come to mean actually, as
it always has in theory, the denial of all humanity, all justice, all
fairness, all chivalry, all mercy, and become a struggle to the death not
a bit less brutal than that of the wild beasts of the jungle.