In such a state of things as this, the recurrence of which at frequent intervals is one of the most harrowing phenomena of modern times, it is far more the severities of War than the mitigations of it, which are its recommendation to the popular mind. If the people have themselves suffered in previous Wars, they wish now to make others suffer equally, and in the same way. The strength and blindness of passion make them callous to the possible sufferings of themselves and their countrymen; the familiar experience of the murderer who, with the certainty of conviction and of bringing on himself a shameful death, takes no count of the future in the presence of the enemy who for the moment is before him, is repeated and multiplied over half a continent.

If this be a true explanation of the deep-lying causes which, in the teeth of all the civilizing influences operating directly the other way, continue to make War possible and popular, the remedies for it must be in the exactly opposite direction from that to which the advocates of reckless severity are looking. The main and only hope for maintaining throughout large populations a balance of mind and moral self-restraint in the presence of irritating instruments and diplomatic controversies, is to be found in

Moral control
over national
passion the
only means
of attaining
lasting Peace.

such a popular training as shall bring the brutal passions of an associated crowd under exactly the same chronic discipline as the civilized individual man, not to say the Christian, has long learned to exercise in the culture of his own spirit. Human society in a single country could never have existed, or its artificial maintenance would be an intolerable burden, if every occasion of discord, every act, or suspicion of an act, of wrong-doing, every question of disputed rights, were instantly to call into action, offensive or defensive, the strongest passions of the human breast.

The progress of civilization has been marked, not by the annihilation, nor even the weakening, of these passions, but by

the effective subordination and use of them to the loftiest ends. Progress in the The disuse of private Wars, of trial by battle, and of duelling, has marked the gradual and

past a ground

for hope in

the future.

more overt steps of this great moral achievement. It is only in the relations between nation and nation that it is still believed that brutality, passionateness, cruelty, and selfishness may not only riot to the uttermost, but may legitimately begin to riot on the very slightest provocation. It is impossible for any believer in the progress of the human race, and in the redemption which, day by day, and century by century, is searching out all the dark places of the earth, and bringing them under a truly Divine dominion, to admit that War represents more than one transient spasm, be it of hard necessity or of still untamed passion, which the world will in no long time have outgrown and, except for purposes of wholesome reminder, have forgotten. So far as Laws of War exist and operate, their action has been shown to help forward the arrival of this kingdom which cannot be moved, and which alone can hold its own in those moments when "the heathen rage, and the peo ple imagine a vain thing."

.31, 32, note. Balance of Power.. . . . . . . . . . . 58, 67