his
carving knife and with a scream like a panther she lit into them.

"Stop yer fightin' before I hack your hands off!"

The men were in deadly fear of her because they knew she meant business.
The sight of that swinging knife quelled every riot before it got
started. We fellows were like children in that we only thought of one
thing at a time. And when we saw the landlady's carving knife we forgot
whatever else was on our minds. This woman was a real peacemaker. She
not only wanted peace, she knew how to get it. Such things afford us
lessons that are useful all our lives. This woman had learned by sad
experience that healthy men will quarrel and thump each other; that
these fights put men in the hospital, after breaking her dishes and
splattering her tablecloths with blood. Hating bloodshed, she prevented
it by being ever ready to shed blood herself. She stood for the moral
law, but she stood armed and ready.

Impractical men have told me that right will always triumph of itself;
it needs no fighters to support it. The man who believes that is
ignorant, and such ignorance is dangerous. Right is always trampled down
when no fighter upholds it. But men will fight for right who will not
fight for wrong. And so right conquers wrong because right has the
most defenders. Let no man shirk the battle because he thinks he isn't
needed.

The reason a woman with a carving knife was strong enough to put a stop
to fighting in the Greasy Spoon was this: she had behind her every man
except the two who were fighting. Had either of those men struck down
the woman, then twenty other men, outraged by such a deed, would then
and there have swarmed upon the two and crushed them. The woman stood
for right and she always triumphed because she had (and these two knew
she had) the biggest bunch of fighters on her side.

This is what peace means, an equilibrium between forces. It is the
natural law,--God's way of keeping peace. And any plan for World Peace
that is builded not upon this law is nothing. Justice must stand with an
upraised sword. When two states quarrel she must admonish them, and let
them know that should they overthrow her, all good nations would rush in
and crush them. The same law that keeps peace in a rowdy boarding-house
will keep the peace of the world. For what is this world but a big wide
boarding-house, and all the nations rough and greedy grabbers at the
table?

I left the Greasy Spoon and went to the "Pie Board