cribed "Brotherhood" on its
very banners. All round the arena wherein the two great peoples defy
each other the nations wait anxiously for the delivery of the first
stroke that shall give the signal for wrath and woe; and, strangely, no
one can tell which of the onlookers is the more fervent professor of our
Master's faith. "Let brotherly love continue!"--that was the behest laid
on us all; and we manifest our brotherly love by invoking the spirit of
murder.

We know what exquisite visions floated around the twelve who first
founded the Church on the principle of fraternity. No brother was to be
left poor; all were to hold goods in common; every man should work for
what he could, and receive what he needed; but evil crept in, and
dissension and heart-burning, and ever since then the best of our poor
besotted human race have been groping blindly after fraternity and
finding it never. I always deprecate bitter or despondent views, or
exaggerating the importance of our feeble race--for, after all, the
whole time during which man has existed on earth is but as a brief
swallow-flight compared with the abysmal stretches of eternity; but I
confess that, when I see the flower of our race trained to become
killers of men and awaiting the opportunity to exercise their murderous
arts I feel a little sick at heart. Even they are compelled to hear the
commands of the lovely gospel of fraternity, and, unless they die
quickly in the fury of combat, their last moments are spent in listening
to the same blessed words. It seems so mad and dreamlike that I have
found myself thinking that, despite all our confidence, the world may be
but a phantasmagoria, and ourselves, with our flesh that seems so solid,
may be no more than fleeting wraiths. There is no one to rush between
the scowling nations, as the poor hermit did between the gladiators in
wicked Rome; there is no one to say, "Poor, silly peasant from pleasant
France, why should you care to stab and torment that other poor
flaxen-haired simpleton from Silesia? Your fields await you; if you were
left to yourselves, then you and the Silesian would be brothers,
worshipping like trusting children before the common Father of us all.
And now you can find nothing better to do than to do each other to
death!" Like the sanguine creatures who carried out the revolutionary
movements of 1789, 1830, 1848, and 1860, the weak among us are apt to
cry out--"Surely the time of fraternity has come at las