"After long, fruitless negotiations our emissary to the government of X
left to-day. From the window of his parlor car he raised his silk hat to
the gentlemen who had escorted him to the station, and he will not meet
them with a friendly smile again until _you_ have made corpses of
many hundreds of thousands of men in the country of X. Up then! Squeeze
yourself into box-cars meant for six horses or twenty-eight men! Ride to
meet them, those other men. Knock them dead, hack off their heads, live
like wild beasts in damp excavations, in neglect, in filth, overrun with
lice, until we shall deem the time has come again for our emissary to
take a seat in a parlor car and lift his silk hat, and in ornate rooms
politely and aristocratically dispute over the advantages which our big
merchants and manufacturers are to derive from the slaughter. Then as
many of you as are not rotting under the ground or hobbling on crutches
and begging from door to door may return to your half-starved families,
and may--nay must!--take up your work again with redoubled energy, more
indefatigably and yet with fewer demands than before, so as to be able
to pay in sweat and privation for the shoes that you wore out in
hundreds of marches and the clothes that decayed on your bodies."

A fool he who would sue for a following in such terms! But _no_
fools they who are the victims, who freeze, starve, kill, and let
themselves be killed, just because they have learned to believe that
this must be so, once the mad dog War has burst his chains and bitten
the world.

Is this what the wars were like from which the word "war" has come down
to us? Did not war use to guarantee booty? Were not the mercenaries led
on by hopes of a gay, lawless life--women and ducats and gold-
caparisoned steeds? Is this cowering under iron discipline, this holding
out of your head to be chopped off, this passive play with monsters that