Excerpt from The Conscience of Europe: The War and the Future My aim in this book has been to consider certain aspects of the war in their relation to the Conscience of the peoples of Europe. To do so it is necessary to regard them from a relatively independent standpoint. This is no easy task in such times as these, for it is difficult to shake off the influence of our prepossessions and assumptions whilst engaged in the heat of conflict for what seems to us a righteous cause, and to see and consider facts and events dispassionately. The difficulty is increased by the fact that Humanity is under the stress of an unprecedented disaster, which, though the extent of its desolating misery is largely hidden beneath the mantle of military and political phrases, and by the impossibility of grasping all its endless ramifications, is by its very nature and the passions it arouses almost paralysing to the critical faculties. And yet, surely we ought from time to time to endeavour to clear our vision and balance our judgment for the sake of both the present and the future. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.