The authors, themselves, however, are not quite
in sympathy with their own conclusion. "There is only," Dr. Woods
declares, "a moderate amount of probability in favour of declining
war." He insists on the fact that the period under investigation
represents but a very small fraction of the life of man. He finds that
if we take England several centuries further back, and compare its
number of war-years during the last four centuries with those during
the preceding four centuries, the first period shows 212 years of war,
the second shows 207 years, a negligible difference, while for France
the corresponding number of war-years are 181 and 192, an actual and
rather considerable increase. There is the further consideration that
if we regard not frequency but intensity of war--if we could, for
instance, measure a war by its total number of casualties--we should
doubtless find that wars are showing a tendency to ever-increasing
gravity. On the whole, Dr. Woods is clearly rather discontented with
the tendency of his own and his collaborator's work to show a
diminution of war, and modestly casts doubt on all those who believe
that the tendency of the world's history is in the direction of such a
diminution.
An honest and careful record of facts, however, is always valuable. Dr.
Woods' investigation will be found useful even by those who are by no
means anxious to throw cold water over the too facile optimism of some
pacifists, and this little book suggests lines of thought which may
prove fruitful in various directions, not always foreseen by the
authors.
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