that the mobilisation arrangements had been made so hastily and

carelessly that for nearly thirty-six hours at the improvised

depot at Epsom he got nothing either to eat or to drink but a cup

of cold water. The depot was absolutely unprovisioned, and no one

was free to leave it.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

THE LAST WAR

Section I

Viewed from the standpoint of a sane and ambitious social order,

it is difficult tounderstand, and it would be tedious to follow,

the motives that plunged mankind into the war that fills the

histories of the middle decades of the twentieth century.

It must always beremembered that the political structure of the

world at that time was everywhere extraordinarily behind the

collective intelligence. That is the central fact of that

history. For two hundred years there had been no great changes in

political or legal methods and pretensions, the utmost change had

been a certain shifting of boundaries and slight readjustment of

procedure, while in nearly every other aspect of life there had

been fundamental revolutions, gigantic releases, and an enormous

enlargement of scope and outlook. The absurdities of courts and

the indignities of representative parliamentary government,

coupled with the opening of vast fields of opportunity in other

directions, had withdrawn the best intelligences more and more

from public affairs. The ostensible governments of the world in

the twentieth century were following in thewake of the

ostensible religions. They wereceasing to command the services

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