With the Serbs in Macedonia

BOMBS 165
false. Our copybooks tell us that two wrongs
don't make a right. And the old Adam in us
out-Herods the crude and stupid Mosaic Law—
murder for murder— and demands compound
interest. Doesn't it show, doesn't everything
show, little and big, that never,
must we allow the pestilence to
never, never
stalk abroad
again ? And yet — shall we not forget ? Will
not some future generations, hypnotized by the
heroisms of this Great War and inflamed by
some National slight go mad again just like
the world did in 1914 ? Can human nature
ever real ? Will civiliza-
change ? Is progress
tion ever overcome its greatest curse— the
crowd ? The crowd, with the mind of the cave-
dweller and the instinct of the savage, the
crowd that is a prey to the politician, who in
his turn is only the voice and the victim of his
victims ? That vicious circle, that lunatic
gregariousness, that accursed nationalism with
its craving for the — top-rung is it possible that
the world is going to grow out of that as a
result of the Great War ? One can only hope.
The price of the lesson will have been terrible
and appalling. All this murder and misery just
for that, which everybody knew ! Oh, it's a
mad, bad world, my masters, so let's get back
to our muttons !
The burning of the dump was rather a fine