adequate substitute for the sword as an arbiter between nations,
or, in other words, to harden the popular heart on the subject of
military slaughter. It is certain that, during the last fifty
years, the period in which peace societies have been at work,
armies have been growing steadily larger, the means of destruction
have been multiplying, and wars have been as frequent and as
bloody as ever before; and, what is worse, the popular heart goes
into war as it has never done in past ages.

The great reason why the more earnest enemies of war have not
made more progress toward doing away with it, has been that, from
the very outset of their labors down to the present moment, they
have devoted themselves mainly to depicting its horrors and to
denouncing its cruelty. In other words, they almost invariably
approach it from a side with which nations actually engaged in it
are just as familiar as anybody, but which has for the moment
assumed in their eyes a secondary importance. The peace advocates
are constantly talking of the guilt of killing, while the
combatants only think, and will only think, of the nobleness of
dying. To the peace advocates the soldier is always a man going
to slaughter his neighbors; to his countrymen he is a man going
to lose his life for their sake--that is, to perform the loftiest
act of devotion of which a human being is capable. It is not
wonderful, then, that the usual effect of appeals for peace made
by neutrals is to produce mingled exasperation and amusement
among the belligerents. To the great majority of Europeans our
civil war was a shocking spectacle, and the persistence of the
North in carrying it on a sad proof of ferocity and lust of
dominion. To the great majority of those engaged in carrying it
on the struggle was a holy one, in which it was a blessing to