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1919THE YEAR 1919 comes to us with the appearance of oneof the most pregnant and historic dates of the modernworld. It has ended the greatest war in history, begotten anew thing in the history of mankind, a League of Nations whichclaims to be the foundation-stone for the future united life ofthe human race, and cleared the stage for fresh and momentousother constructions or destructions, which will bring us intoanother structure of society and of the framework of human lifethan has yet been known in the recorded memory of the earth’speoples. This is record enough for a single year and it looks asif there were already sufficient to give this date an undisputedpre-eminence in the twentieth century. But it is possible thatthings are not quite what they look to the contemporary eyeand that posterity may see them in a very different focus. 1815must have seemed the date of dates to the men of the day whoseminds were filled with the view of the long struggle betweenthe ancient regimes and revolutionary France and then betweenEurope and Napoleon. But when we look back at present, wesee that it was only a stage, the end of the acutest phase ofstruggle, the commencement of a breathing-time, the date ofa makeshift which could not endure. We look back from it to1789 which began the destruction of an old order and the birthof a new ideal and beyond it to later dates which mark theprogress of that ideal towards its broadening realisation. So tooposterity may look back beyond this year 1919 to the beginningof the catastrophe which marks the first collapse of the formerEuropean order and forward beyond it to dates yet in the wombof the future which will mark the progress towards realisationof whatever order and ideal is destined to replace it. This yeartoo may be only the end of an acute phase of a first struggle, thecommencement of a breathing-time, the year of a makeshift, the