There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one
and the same--the magazine rifle of the latest pattern. In preparation
for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now
such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of
factory and counting-house.

Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and
reigned with less disputed sway in their minds. It has harnessed science
to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers,
scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled
workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its
harvest of countless corpses. It has perverted the intelligence of men,
women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings,
Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of
fidelity to peace. Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has
modelled it on its own image: a martial, overbearing, war-lord sort of
peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din
of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to glorious feats of arms;
it has made peace so magnificent as to be almost as expensive to keep up
as itself. It has sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went
about (mostly in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity
of its sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor
in mind--whose name is legion.

It has been observed that in the course of earthly greatness a day of
culminating triumph is often paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction.
Let us hope it is so. Yet the dawn of that day of retribution may be a
long time breaking above a dark horizon. War is with us now; and,
whether this one ends soon or late, war will be with us again. And it is
the way of true wisdom for men and States to take account of things as