busy in calculating the
chances of a huge fight--indeed they spend a good part of each year in
that pleasing employment. Smug diplomatists talk glibly about "war
clearing the air;" and the crowd--the rank and file--chatter as though
war were a pageant quite divorced from wounds and death, or a mere
harmless hurly-burly where certain battalions receive thrashings of a
trifling nature. It is saddening to notice the levity with which the
most awful of topics is treated, and especially is it sad to see how
completely the women and children are thrust out of mind by belligerent
persons. We who have gazed on the monster of War, we who have looked in
the whites--or rather the reds--of his loathsome eyes, cannot let this
burst of frivolity work mischief without one temperate word of warning
and protest.

Pleasant it is to watch the soldiers as they march along the streets, or
form in their superb lines on parade. No man or woman of any sensibility
can help feeling proudly stirred when a Cavalry regiment goes by. The
clean, alert, upright men, with their sure seat; the massive war-horses
champing their bits and shaking their accoutrements: the rhythmic thud
of hoofs, the keen glitter of steel, and the general air of power, all
combine to form a spectacle that sets the pulses beating faster. Then,
again, observe the strange elastic rhythm of the march as a battalion of
tall Highlanders moves past. The fifes and drums cease, there is a
silence broken only by that sinuous beautiful onward movement of lines
of splendid men, until the thrilling scream of the pipes shatters the
air, and the mad tumult of warlike sound makes even a Southron's nerves
quiver. Then, once more, watch the deadly, steady march of a regiment of
Guards. The stalwart men step together, and, as the red ranks sway on,
it seems as though no earthly power could stand against them. The gloomy
bearskins are like a brooding dark cloud, and the glitter of the
rifle-barrels carries with it certain sinister terrible suggestions. The
gaiety and splendour of Cavalry and Infantry all gain increased power
over the imagination since we know that each of those gaily clad fellows
would march to his doom without a tremor or a murmur if he received the
word. Poor Tommy Atkins is surrounded by a sort of halo in the popular
imagination, simply because it is known that he may one day have to deal
forth death to an enemy, or take his own doom, according to the chances
of combat. I ne