is it not possible that as the past belongs to the one, so the future may belong to the other?
When we started upon this war we declared that it was a war to end war; and it was quite a popular thing to say that if it did not result in the ending of war, then the cause of the Allies would stand defeated. But that was only another way of saying that we should suffer defeat if in the near future the whole world were not converted to the point of view of the conscientious objector. But that would have been a very unpopular way of putting it, so it was not said.
Surely this sort of contradiction in which war lands us is only another proof that we are in an age of transition. Transition makes consistency difficult.
But the inconsistency, which conditions of war bring into prominent reality, lies embedded in our social system (which is itself a compromise between two incompatible principles)—the Will to Love and the Will to Power; and there will always be that inconsistency till the world has definitely decided whether Love or Power is to form the basis of our moral order. It has not decided it yet. In our own country (leaving out all question of foreign relations) we have not decided it yet.
It is the condition of impurity resulting from that indecision—and permeating more or less the whole of our social organisation—which I ask you now to consider.
