power. Greece, as a whole, was impoverished and ruined by war. Sparta itself, one of the most strenuous military powers that ever lived, is a classical proof that war invigorates only to destroy.
To whatever nation we turn, we learn the same lesson of history. Egypt survived the strain, owing to the constant infusion of foreign blood, for eight thousand years, but sank at last so exhausted that it seems almost beyond the hope of reanimation. Assyria and Babylonia were prepared for destruction by the same steady drain of their healthiest blood. The Hittites, the Lydians, the Phœnicians, the Medes, the Persians followed the same course. From the first founding of civilisation in the valley of the Nile, ten thousand years ago, war has brooded over its cities and cornfields, and has time after time blighted its achievements and its hopes. It is as though some god were jealous of the advance of man, and maintained on the earth this corroding pest to eat into the life of each successive empire, and, by destroying it, to interrupt the progress of the race.
In the history of Europe since the fall of Rome we witness the same human tragedy. I do not overlook the other evil influences, such as fiscal disorder and industrial parasitism, which have contributed to the fall of empires, but the share of war in these tragedies was incalculable. The fate of early England, battling against invaders and rent by internal quarrels for centuries, is typical. The greater England of modern times, or the real
