peace, she knew how to get it. Such things afford us lessons that
are useful all our lives. This woman had learned by sad
experience that healthy men will quarrel and thump each other;
that these fights put men in the hospital, after breaking her
dishes and splattering her tablecloths with blood. Hating
bloodshed, she prevented it by being ever ready to shed blood
herself. She stood for the moral law, but she stood armed and
ready.

Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of
itself; it needs no fighters to support it. The man who believes
that is ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous. Right is
always trampled down when no fighter upholds it. But men will
fight for right who will not fight for wrong. And so right
conquers wrong because right has the most defenders. Let no man
shirk the battle because he thinks he isn't needed.

The reason a woman with a carving knife was strong enough to
put a stop to fighting in the Greasy Spoon was this: she had
behind her every man except the two who were fighting. Had
either of those men struck down the woman, then twenty other men,
outraged by such a deed, would then and there have swarmed upon
the two and crushed them. The woman stood for right and she
always triumphed because she had (and these two knew she had) the
biggest bunch of fighters on her side.

This is what peace means, an equilibrium between forces. It is
the natural law,--God's way of keeping peace. And any plan for
World Peace that is builded not upon this law is nothing. Justice
must stand with an upraised sword. When two states quarrel she