As there is as yet no World-State, with the power to enforce a World-law between the nations, the possibility of war, with all its contingent horrors, should have been before our eyes all the time.

The _occasion_ of this war was no doubt a surprise.

But that it could happen at all should not be a surprise to us, still less a disillusionment.

It does not mark a backward step in human civilisation.

It only registers the fact that civilisation is still grievously incomplete and unconsolidated.
Terrible as this war is in its effect on individual lives and happiness, it ought not to depress us--even if, in our blindness, we imagined the world to be a far better organised place than it actually is.