sombre halo of self-sacrifice.
Then, from one end of the chain to the other, all alike will be plunged
in the same sea of pain and error. Poor crucified wretches, struggling
on your crosses on either side of the Master's! Betrayed more cruelly
than He, instead of floating, you will sink like a stone in the ocean of
your agony. Will no one save you from your two foes, slavery and hatred?
We wish to, we wish to! But you, too, must wish it. Do you wish it? For
centuries your reason has been bridled in passive obedience. Are you
still capable of achieving freedom?

Who is able to-day to stop the war in its progress? Who can recapture
the wild beast and put it back into its cage? Perhaps not even those who
first loosed it, the beast-tamers who know that soon will come their
turn to be devoured. The cup has been filled with blood and must be
drained to the last drop. Carouse, Civilisation!--But when thou art
glutted, when peace has come again across ten million corpses and thou
hast slept off thy drunken debauch, wilt thou be able to regain mastery
of thyself? Wilt thou dare to contemplate thy own wretchedness stripped
of the lies with which thou hast veiled it? Will that which can and must
go on living, have the courage to free itself from the deadly embrace of
rotten institutions?... Peoples, unite! Peoples of all races, more
blameworthy or less, all bleeding and all suffering, brothers in
misfortune, be brothers in forgiveness and in rebirth. Forget your
rancours, which are leading you to a common doom. Join in your mourning,
for the losses affect the whole great family of mankind. Through the
pain, through the deaths, of millions of your brethren, you must have
been made aware of your intimate oneness. See to it that after the war
this unity breaks down the barriers which the shamelessness of a few
selfish interests would fain rebuild more solidly than ever.

If you fail to take this course, if the war should not bring as its
first fruit a social renascence in all the nations, then farewell
Europe, queen of thought, guide of mankind. You have lost your way; you
are marking time in a cemetery. The cemetery is the right place for you.
Make your bed there. Let others lead the world!

ALL SOULS' DAY, 1916.

"demain," Geneva, November and December, 1916.

IV

TO THE UNDYING ANTIGONE

The most potent action within the competence of us all, men and women
alike, is individual action, the action of man on man, of