advancing Germans. The book comes down only to 1880, so most of the men
he writes about are dead, and most of them, like Victor Hugo, for
example, come off very sadly.

Well, I am reconciled to living a long time now,--much longer than I
wanted to before this awful thing came to pass,--just to see all the
mighty good that will result from the struggle. I am convinced, no
matter what happens, of the final result. I am sure even now, when the
Germans have actually crossed the frontier, that France will not be
crushed this time, even if she be beaten down to Bordeaux, with her back
against the Bay of Biscay. Besides, did you ever know the English
bulldog to let go? But it is the horror of such a war in our times that
bears so heavily on my soul. After all, "civilization" is a word we
have invented, and its meaning is hardly more than relative, just as is
the word "religion."

There are problems in the events that the logical spirit finds it hard
to face. In every Protestant church the laws of Moses are printed on
tablets on either side of the pulpit. On those laws our civil code is
founded. "Thou shalt not kill," says the law. For thousands of years
the law has punished the individual who settled his private quarrels
with his fists or any more effective weapon, and reserved to itself the
right to exact "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." And here we
are today, in the twentieth century, when intelligent people have long
been striving after a spiritual explanation of the meaning of life,
trying to prove its upward trend, trying to beat out of it materialism,
endeavoring to find in altruism a road to happiness, and governments can
still find no better way to settle their disputes than wholesale
slaughter, and that with weapons no so-called civilized man should ever
have invented nor any so-called civilized government ever permitted to