generated world shall
not lift up sword against sword; neither shall they he exercised any
more in war.

"Peace is the normal flow of humanity's life, the healthy pulsation of
humanity's social organism, the vital condition of humanity's growth
and happiness.

"'O first of human blessings and supreme,
Fair Peace! how lovely, how delightful thou.

Oh peace! thou soul and source of social life,
Beneath whose calm inspiring influence
Science his views enlarges, art refines,
And swelling commerce opens all her ports.
Blessed be the man divine who gave us thee.'

"The praise of peace is proclaimed beyond need of other words,
when men confess that the only possible justification of war is the
establishment of peace. Peace, we prize thee.

"'But the better thou,
The richer of delight, sometime the more
Inevitable war.'

"'Pasis imponero morem'--to enforce the law of peace: this, the
sole moral argument which God and humanity allow for war. O peace,
welcome again to America.

"War--how dreadful thou art! I shall not, indeed, declare thee to be
immoral, ever unnecessary, ever accursed. No; I shall not so arraign
thee as to mete plenary condemnation to the whole past history of
nations, to the whole past history of my own America. But that thou
art ever dreadful, ever barbarous, I shall not deny. War! Is it
by cunning design--in order to hide from men thy true nature--that
pomp and circumstance attend thy march; that poetry and music set
in brightest colors, the rays of light struggling through thy heavy
darkness, that history weaves into threads of richest glory the woes
and virtues of thy victims? Stripped of thy show and tinsel, what art
thou but the slaying of men?--the slaying of men by the thousands,
aye, often by the tens, by the hundreds of thousands.

"With the steady aim and relentless energy tasking science to its
utmost ingenuity, the multitudes of men to their utmost endurance,
whole nations work day and night, fitting ourselves for the quick
and extensive killing of men. This preparation for war. Armies
meet on the field of battle; shot and shell rend the air; men fall
to the ground like leaves in autumnal storms, bleeding, agonizing,
dying; the earth is reddened by human blood; the more gory the earth
beneath the tread of one army the louder the revel of victory in the
ranks of the other. This, the actual conflict of war. From north to
south, from east to west, throu