Mere fools of nature, puppets of strong lusts,
Taking the sword, to perish by the sword
Upon the universal battle-field,
Even as the things upon the moor outside?

The heath eats up green grass and delicate herbs;
The pines eat up the heath; the grub the pine;
The finch the grub; the hawk the silly finch;
And man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey,
Eats what he lists. The strong eat up the weak;
The many eat the few; great nations, small;
And he who cometh in the name of all
Shall, greediest, triumph by the greed of all,
And, armed by his own victims, eat up all.
While ever out of the eternal heavens
Looks patient down the great magnanimous God,
Who, Master of all worlds, did sacrifice
All to Himself? Nay: but Himself to all;
Who taught mankind, on that first Christmas Day,
What 'tis to be a man--to give, not take;
To serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour;
To lift, not crush; if need, to die, not live.

"He that cometh in the name of all"--the popular military despot--the
"saviour of his country"--he is our internecine enemy on both sides of
the Atlantic, whenever he rises--the inaugurator of that Imperialism,
that Caesarism into which Rome sank, when not her liberties merely, but
her virtues, were decaying out of her--the sink into which all wicked
States, whether republics or monarchies, are sure to fall, simply because
men must eat and drink for to-morrow they die. The Military and