Hardy's great epic-drama, The Dynasts, and in the sombre War Poems he wrote during the struggle of Briton and Boer. He is oppressed with the needless tragedy of it all—that 'this late age of thought' can only argue in the old bloody mode, and marvels—
When shall the saner, softer polities,
Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?
a question to which thinking men of all nations that have outgrown the crudities of their childhood are striving now to find an answer. The one hope that beacons us through these dark days is that the shameful savageries of the Great War, its indescribable horrors, its devastating insanities may shock mankind into so much of practical wisdom that the peoples of every race and creed shall, in self-defence, draw together at last into some league of free nations, some bond of common fellowship that shall end the reign of the brute for ever and realise Tennyson's prevision of a time when disputes between
