A considerable part of the activities of professed pacificists is also open to grave suspicion. Many of the existing pacificist organisations or their immediate predecessors were intimately associated during the war with movements which aimed at concluding peace at moments when peace would have been exclusively favourable to Germany. Not a few of their members were notoriously acting in the German interest. In the post-war period pacificism has been connected with Bolshevism in Russia and elsewhere, and with those parties in Germany who are determined to upset the whole Versailles settlement and restore the Prussian Junker Imperialist faction, i.e. with the two chief bellicose forces existing in the world to-day. As Mr Bridgeman declared in the British House of Commons while speaking on the Navy estimates on March 21, 1927,* the Socialist fad for slandering their country was responsible for that suspicion which was the chief bar to disarmament.'

.

It should further be borne in mind that armaments are not the only means of waging war, nor the only manner in which one country may commit aggression against and dominate another people against the latter's will. Transatlantic pacificists are apt to hold up their hands in horror at the wicked bellicosity of Europe,' thereby placing Bolshevik Russia on the same footing with the most civilised Western Powers; but we must remember that the great financial power of the United States is often exercised to bring pressure to bear on weaker States and to establish as real a domination over them as that which can be exercised by means of heavy armaments. This form of Imperialism differs but little from that of Imperial Germany or Tzarist or Bolshevik Russia, it has as little moral justification, is just as likely in the end to provoke war, and is equally unfair, as in many cases the economically weaker country has no means of defence against the stronger.

During the post-war period, war-weary as most of the peoples of Europe were, causes of bitter and even exasperated hostility were certainly not lacking. France was deeply alarmed at the possibility of a German resurrection and at the rapid and constant increase of

The Times,' March 22, 1927.

the German population as compared with that of France, which could only be kept from actually declining by an influx of foreign immigrants. Believing that she could not again count on British, Italian, or American assistance in the event of a new German attack, while she was determined not to reduce her own armaments, she insisted on the disarmament of Germany, and she attempted to create a cordon of vassal states round Germany with large armies organised and staffed by French officers and plentifully supplied with arms and munitions from her own arsenals and from local ones financed by France and managed by Frenchmen. Some of these States, such as Poland and Roumania, had further and more real reasons for maintaining large armaments, inasmuch as they were seriously menaced by Bolshevik Russia; others aspired to sundry additions to their territories a the expense of Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey, while Yugoslavia thought that she could also count on French assistance to wrest from Italy certain territories which she regarded as pertaining to herself. France, for reasons of her own, does not appear to have always discouraged this conviction with as much vigour as might have appeared desirable. The result was that while the discussions on disarmament were going on, most countries refused to reduce their armaments, and many, especially France and some of the States in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, continued to maintain armies far in excess of their apparent necessities. Great Britain and Italy were perhaps the only countries which did effect a serious reduction of armaments during the post-war years, except of course the countries defeated in the war on whom disarmament had been imposed and was to some extent effective.

As the years passed the sense of insecurity, however, has become attenuated; the heavy burden of taxation due to the vast expenditure of the war years, appeared ever more intolerable as the war gradually receded into the distance; and the edifice of international comity, shattered by the great struggle, was gradually being built up once more, an effort to which the League of Nations has undoubtedly contributed. To-day almost every country is in effect reducing its armaments, and during the next few years, if no untoward events occur,

it is likely to reduce them further. But no State is prepared to undertake international obligations binding it to make such further reduction or even to maintain its armaments at their present level; for every Power, great or small, wishes to retain its own freedom of action, untrammelled by international obligations and uncontrolled by League committees, in case necessities for self-defence should suddenly arise.

The efforts of the League of Nations have, as we have seen, not succeeded in getting any nearer to a solution of the problem in 1927 than in 1919. The reason for this failure is that all the efforts have been directed to the elimination of the symptoms rather than to curing the disease. To attempt to ensure the maintenance of peace by reducing armaments is an action similar to that of a doctor who limited his ministrations to reducing the patient's fever, instead of diagnosing and dealing with the causes of the illness. The problem must be handled otherwise than by direct action. What is wanted is not so much material disarmament as a disarmament of the spirit, and this is progressing independently of international commissions and conferences. The League, which has accomplished such useful work in other fields, has in this connexion wasted time and effort on a hopeless task. Where it can help is in increasing and improving the organs for the peaceful composition of international disputes, and all its activities should be concentrated on that object. The attempt to fix a limit to armaments in general and to those of each country are bound to fail, and only result in producing unnecessary irritation and indeed in provoking an increase of armaments, or at all events in retarding their reduction. The only really equitable scheme for disarmament should be based on the principle of fixing a maximum limit of armaments, beyond which no Power should be allowed to go, although all would of course be free to keep as far below that limit as they deemed compatible with their own safety. But the Powers with the largest armies and fleets do not appear willing to accept such a plan.

LUIGI VILLARI.

Art. 7-GREEK SCIENCE.

THERE is a question-it soon raises other questionswhich every thinker who views history from the vantage point of a Philo, or a Spengler, finds endlessly engaging. Why have science and thought bloomed in one age and place; in another, withered; and in yet another, taken no root at all? Why indeed? Has religion as much to do with it as Gibbon said, and sincerely thought? Or was Plato right in holding that mechanical aids to thought were pernicious since, if used, they would atrophy and destroy thought itself? Is superstition or materialism the logical and exact opposite of genius? Or is there any more complex, and more satisfactory explanation? Is the question beyond answering? Does the wind blow where it listeth, and is there no more to be said? Will the torch fall again between hand and eager hand, and lie in the dust? Will any one tell us precisely why Archimedes should have taken a step which no one followed for 1800 years?

Questions of this kind, and they abound among us today, apart altogether from the 'Spenglerkampf,' might profitably lead us at least to a more exact study of history, and to a criticism of those easy and sciolistic comparisons between periods, races, civilisations. For example, when historians compare Greeks with Modern men, which Greeks do they mean; and Greeks of what century? Perhaps the most serious blunder made about the Greeks in so-called histories of science is the mistaken idea that the Greek scientific period was a short one. The truth is that the modern scientific period is short in comparison with the Greek.

We have mentioned Archimedes. About him and his native city, Syracuse, we know many things, and the order of their occurrence, as well as we know anything in European history. He lost his life when Syracuse was captured by the Romans in 212 B.C. Backwards from that date, we have a pretty continuous history, much of it written, to the foundation of the city in 734 B.C. The first settlers were a civilised people, for they came from Corinth, which was the earliest of the Greek cities of historic times to attain to eminence in trade and the arts. The younger city had therefore

522 years of continuous civilisation and culture. Long before Athens withstood the Persians, Syracuse was a bulwark against the merely commercial power of Carthage and the still darker power of the Etruscans. 522 years! Count back in our history and we are almost precisely at the death of Chaucer, the first Englishman to leave a classic behind him. I carries us back two and a quarter centuries before the death of Francis Bacon; it takes us within a century almost of Roger Bacon. In France if we count back five hundred and twenty-two years we find ourselves more than a century before the accession of Louis XI, who is generally credited with the establishment of the modern monarchy upon which French civilisation has rested. We are back at a period two and a half centuries before the death of Descartes, the first French thinker of any eminence. In Italian history the same lapse of time carries us almost to the death of Petrarch; it takes.us. back a full half-century before the fall of Constantinople and the beginnings of the 'New Learning.'

Let it not be thought for a moment that Syracuse was the home of scientific activity during all this period. But it is worth remembering that the city in which Archimedes was born had for over half a thousand years a continuous civilisation, which began, moreover, on a very high level indeed; and that during that long period it was never invaded by a foreigner or overflowed by alien thought. Danger threatened it, during long periods, on all sides, and its mental contacts were many, but its culture was never wounded, or made impure. It is worth while to pause at this point. It gives us of the modern day a necessary perspective. It might give us a truer conception of what European science is.

Other mistakes are commonly made in dealing with Greek science. Not only is it frequently said that Greek science flourished during a very short period, but also that it was one-sided, deductive and not experimental, that it was handicapped very largely by its lack of instruments and its lack of the decimal notation, and that the one great advantage it enjoyed was the fact that religion rested lightly on the Greek people. I do not mean to suggest that all these fallacies-for they are, all of them, fallacies -are to be found within the covers of any one book.