Excerpt from The Exodus From Houndsditch It is the historical conception of so-called matter, which civilisation still accepts, that is at the bottom of this war, as of all wars that have ever taken place. Nurtured on the law of supply and demand, and the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, as the recent generations of men have been, the present international upheaval is the only possible effect of such a material cause. Materialism cannot but lead to broken heads. It is the root of the tree of evil of which the series of diplomatic papers that have been published is merely the bud that eventually burst forth into flower as war - a flower of a blood-red colour, watered by the tears of humanity. Even the ecclesiasts were as children in the dark when the game of war suddenly began: and if the light within them be darkness, how great is the dark ness. The pagan Greeks of old were honest enough to close their temples of Peace when the nation went to war, and kept them closed until peace was restored. Not so the modern representatives of what is euphemistically called Christianity. Far from having any religious objections to warfare from the Christian standpoint, the preaching fraternity as usual showed a united front in favour of the international slaughter. 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.