morning light of a summer day--signposts pointing to the front.

"The Front!"

Am _I_ really the sick person because I cannot utter that word or
write it down without my tongue growing coated from the intense hatred I
feel? Axe not the others mad who look upon this wholesale cripple-and-
corpse-factory with a mixture of religious devotion, romantic longing
and shy sympathy? Would it not be wiser once for a change to examine
those others for the state of their mind? Must _I_ disclose it to
my wise physicians, who watch over me so compassionately, that all this
mischief is the work of a few words that have been let loose upon
humanity like a pack of mad dogs?

Front--Enemy--Hero's death--Victory--the curs rage through the world
with frothing mouth and rolling eyes. Millions who have been carefully
inoculated against smallpox, cholera and typhoid fever are chased into
madness. Millions, on either side, are packed into cars--ride, singing,
to meet each other at the front--hack, stab, shoot at each other, blow
each other into bits, give their flesh and their bones for the bloody
hash out of which the dish of peace is to be cooked for those fortunate
ones who give the flesh of their calves and oxen to their fatherland for
a hundred per cent profit, instead of carrying their own flesh to market
for fifty cents a day.

Suppose the word "war" had never been invented and had never been
hallowed through the ages and decked with gay trappings. Who would dare
to supplement the deficient phrase, "declaration of war," by the
following speech?