Essays in war-time / by Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1916
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Essays in war-time / by Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2б ESSAYS IN WAR-TIME during forty years of peace, which have enabled her to estabhsh a prosperity and a good name in the world which are now both in peril. Germany must be built up again, and the interests of civilisation itself, which Germany has trampled under foot, demand that Germany shall be built up again, under conditions, let us hope, which will render her old ideals useless and out of date. We shall then be able to assert as the mere truisms they are, and not as a defiance flung in the face of one of the world's greatest nations, the elementary propositions I have here set forth. War is not a permanent factor of national evolution, but for the most part has no place in Nature at all ; it has played a part in the early development of primitive human society, but, as savagery passes into civilisation, its beneficial efíects are lost, and, on the high¬ est stages of human progress, mankind once more tends to be enfolded, this time consciously and deliberately, in the general harmony of Nature.