exhausted; to recoil with manly dread from the slaughter of our fellow-creatures; to put confidence in the justice which other nations will do to our motives; to have that consciousness of courage which will make us scorn the 5 reproach of cowardice; to feel that there is something grander than the virtue of savages; to desire peace for the world as well as for ourselves; and to shrink from kindling a flame which may involve the world, these are the principles and feelings which do honor to a people. 10 For one, I look on war with a horror which no words can express. Were the world of my mind, no man would fight for glory; for the name of a commander who has no other claim to respect seldom passes my lips, and the want of sympathy drives him from my mind. 15 The thought of man, God's immortal child, butchered by his brother; the thought of sea and land stained with human blood by human hands, of women and children buried under the ruins of besieged cities, of the resources of empires and the mighty powers of nature all turned by 20 man's malignity into engines of torture and destruction, this thought gives to earth the semblance of hell. I cannot now, as I once did, talk lightly, thoughtlessly, of fighting with this or that nation. That nation is no longer an abstraction to me. It is no longer a vague 25 mass. It spreads out before me into individuals, in a thousand interesting forms and relations. It consists of husbands and wives, parents and children, who love one another as I love my own home. . . . It consists of a vast multitude of laborers at the plow and in the workshop, whose toils I sympathize with, whose burden I should rejoice to lighten, and for whose elevation I have pleaded. It consists of men of science, taste, genius, 5 whose writings have beguiled my solitary hours and given life to my intellect and best affections. Here is the nation which I am called to fight with, into whose families I must send mourning, whose fall or humiliation I must seek through blood. I cannot do it without a 10 clear commission from God. If, indeed, my country were invaded by hostile armies, threatening without disguise its rights, liberties, and dearest interests, I should strive to repel them, just as I should repel a criminal who should enter my house to slay what 15 I hold most dear and what is intrusted to my care. But I cannot confound with such a case the common instances of war. In general, war is the work of ambitious men, whose principles have gained no strength from the experience of public life, whose policy is colored if not swayed 20 by personal views or party interests, who do not seek peace with a single heart, who, to secure doubtful rights, perplex the foreign relations of the state, spread jealousies at home and abroad, enlist popular passions on the side of strife, commit themselves too far for retreat, and 25 are then forced to leave to the arbitration of the sword. what an impartial umpire could easily have arranged. Abridged. A TRIBUTE TO GROTIUS ANDREW D. WHITE ANDREW D. WHITE (1832 ) is a distinguished American who holds high rank as a scholar and a diplomat. NOTE. - At the time of the Peace Conference held at The Hague in 1899, a monument was dedicated in the city of Delft to Hugo Grotius, a 5 great Dutch scholar (1583-1645). Grotius was the author of "The Rights of War and Peace," a book which marked the beginning of international law. This is the ancient and honored city of Delft. From its haven, not distant, sailed the "Mayflower" bearing the Pilgrim Fathers who, in a time of obstinate and bitter per10 secution, brought to the American continent the germs of that toleration which had been especially developed among them during their stay in the Netherlands, and of which Grotius was an apostle. In this town Grotius was born; in this temple he worshiped; this pavement he trod 15 when a child; often were these scenes revisited by him in his boyhood; at his death his mortal body was placed in this hallowed ground. Time and place, then, would both seem to make this tribute fitting. From this tomb of Grotius I seem to hear a voice 20 which says to us as the delegates of the nations: "Go on with your mighty work: avoid, as you would avoid the germs of pestilence, those exhalations of international hatred which take shape in monstrous fallacies and morbid fictions regarding alleged antagonistic interests. Guard you well the treasures of civilization with which each of is intrusted; but bear in mind that you hold a mandate from humanity. Go on with your work. Pseudo-philosophers will prophesy malignantly against you; pessimists will laugh you to scorn; cynics will sneer at you; 5 zealots will abuse you for what you have not done; sublimely unpractical thinkers will revile you for what you have done; ephemeral critics will ridicule you as dupes; enthusiasts, blind to the difficulties in your path and to everything outside their little circumscribed 10 fields, will denounce you as traitors to humanity. Heed them not go on with your work. Heed not the clamor of zealots, or cynics, or pessimists, or pseudo-philosophers, or enthusiasts, or fault-finders. Go on with the work of strengthening peace and humanizing war: give greater 15 scope and strength to provisions which will make war less cruel: perfect those laws of war which diminish the unmerited sufferings of populations: and, above all, give to the world at least a beginning of an effective, practicable scheme of Arbitration!" 20 THE FALL OF WOLSEY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE NOTE. Thomas Wolsey, cardinal, archbishop of York, and prime minister of Henry VIII, was at one time the most powerful man in England, but in 1529 he displeased the king and was deprived of all his dignities. To his genius England owed much of her subsequent greatness, but 5 he made bitter enemies and was undoubtedly careless in his use of the public money. Wolsey's servant, Thomas Cromwell, became Henry's secretary, and was afterwards Earl of Essex. His career was very similar to that of Wolsey, and he was finally executed by Henry's order in 1540. A hun10 dred years later, Oliver Cromwell, of the same family, left his quiet home to fight for England's liberty against England's king. The following scene is from "King Henry VIII." Wolsey has been left alone in the antechamber to the royal apartment. Wolsey. What should this mean? 15 What sudden anger's this? How have I reaped it? He parted frowning from me, as if ruin Leaped from his eyes: so looks the chafèd lion Upon the daring huntsman that has galled him; Then makes him nothing. I must read this paper; 20 I fear, the story of his anger. 'Tis so; This paper has undone me: 't is the account Of all that world of wealth I have drawn together Made me put this main secret in the packet |