CHAPTER VIII.
PEACE AND THE CONSTITUTION _The question for the British nation is--Can we work our course pacifically on firm land into the New Era, or must it be for us as for others, through the black abysses of Anarchy, hardly escaping, if we do with all our struggles escape, the jaws of eternal death ?_--THOMAS CARLYLE.
It is not only international peace that must be assured.

As a necessary condition for reconstruction comes the need for Peace, peace real and lasting, and peace all round.

There may be times when the nation or the individual needs the bracing stimulus, if not of war, at least of competition and of conflict in the realm of thought and in the realm of action; times when old institutions, old creeds, old systems, old customs, are fiercely attacked and vigorously defended.

The storm clears the air, and the struggle ends in the survival of the fittest.

After the War the nations, and our own not least, wearied of strife, exhausted by losses, will need all their energies to repair those losses, to rebuild, often in quite new form, what the havoc of war has destroyed, and to adapt themselves to the changed conditions of an altered world.