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CHAPTER THE THIRD. THE ENDING OF WAR
Section 5
The establishment of the new order that was thus so humanly begun, was, if one measures it by the standard ofany preceding age, a rapid progress. The fighting spirit of the world was exhausted. Only here or there didfierceness linger. For long decades the combative side in human affairs had been monstrously exaggerated by theaccidents of political separation. This now became luminously plain. An enormous proportion of the force thatsustained armaments had been nothing more aggressive than the fear of war and warlike neighbours. It is doubtfulif any large section of the men actually enlisted for fighting ever at any time really hungered and thirsted forbloodshed and danger. That kind of appetite was probably never very strong in the species after the savage stagewas past. The army was a profession, in which killing had become a disagreeable possibility rather than aneventful certainty. If one reads the old newspapers and periodicals of that time, which did so much to keepmilitarism alive, one finds very little about glory and adventure and a constant harping on the disagreeableness ofinvasion and subjugation. In one word, militarism was funk. The belligerent resolution of the armed Europe of thetwentieth century was the resolution of a fiercely frightened sheep to plunge. And now that its weapons wereexploding in its hands, Europe was only too eager to drop them, and abandon this fancied refuge of violence. For a time the whole world had been shocked into frankness; nearly all the clever people who had hithertosustained the ancient belligerent separations had now been brought to realise the need for simplicity of attitudeand openness of mind; and in this atmosphere of moral renascence, there was little attempt to get negotiableadvantages out of resistance to the new order. Human beings are foolish enough no doubt, but few have stoppedto haggle in a fire−escape. The council had its way with them. The band of 'patriots' who seized the laboratoriesand arsenal just outside Osaka and tried to rouse Japan to revolt against inclusion in the Republic of Mankind,found they had miscalculated the national pride and met the swift vengeance of their own countrymen. That fightin the arsenal was a vivid incident in this closing chapter of the history of war. To the last the 'patriots' wereundecided whether, in the event of a defeat, they would explode their supply of atomic bombs or not. They werefighting with swords outside the iridium doors, and the moderates of their number were at bay and on the verge ofdestruction, only ten, indeed, remained unwounded, when the republicans burst in to the rescue....