remorseless fighting till victory is ours--these surely should be
guiding principles in peace and war; and to hold them is no proof
that one has suffered the process of induration.

Here I am not ashamed to make common cause with the stout old Puritan
in _Peveril of the Peak:_ "To forgive our human wrongs is Christian-like
and commendable; but we have no commission to forgive those which
have been done to the cause of religion and of liberty; we have
no right to grant immunity or to shake hands with those who have
poured forth the blood of our brethren."

But let us keep our vengeance for those who by their own actions
have justly incurred it. The very intensity of our desire to punish
the wrong-doer should be the measure of our unwillingness to inflict
torture on the helpless and the innocent. "Lest we grow hard"--it
should be our daily dread. "A black character, a womanish character,
a stubborn character: bestial, childish, stupid, scurrilous,
tyrannical." A pagan, who had observed such a character in its
working, prayed to be preserved from it. Christians of the twentieth
century must not sink below the moral level of Marcus Aurelius.




IV

_FLACCIDITY_

My discourse on "Induration" was intended to convey a warning which,
as individuals, we all need. But Governments are beset by an even