for the armed man only. Fire mingles with slaughter, as at
Bazeilles. Women and children are roasted alive, filling the air
with suffocating odor, while the maddened combatants rage against
each other. All this is but part of the prolonged and various
spectacle, where the scene shifts only for some other horror.
Meanwhile the sovereigns of the world sit in their boxes, and the
people everywhere occupy the benches.

PERIL FROM THE WAR SYSTEM.

The duel now pending teaches the peril from continuance of the
present system. If France and Germany can be brought so suddenly
into collision on a mere pretext, what two nations are entirely
safe? Where is the talisman for their protection? None, surely,
except Disarmament, which, therefore, for the interest of all
nations, should be commenced. Prussia is now an acknowledged
military power, armed "in complete steel,"--but at what cost to
her people, if not to mankind! Military citizenship, according to
Prussian rule, is military serfdom, and on this is elevated a
military despotism of singular grasp and power, operating
throughout the whole nation, like martial law or a state of siege.
In Prussia the law tyrannically seizes every youth of twenty, and,
no matter what his calling or profession, compels him to military
service for seven years. Three years he spends in active service
in the regular army, where his life is surrendered to the trade of
blood; then for four years he passes to the reserve, where he is
subject to periodic military drills; then for five years longer to
the _Landwehr_, or militia, with liability to service in the
_Landsturm_, in case of war, until sixty. Wherever he may be
in foreign lands, his military duty is paramount.