s side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about,
An' then comes up the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out.
All along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess,
All along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less.
Etc.'

"What is wrong with this? Why, simply that it leaves Justice altogether
out of account. The system has no room for it; even as it has no room for
clemency, mansuetude; forbearance towards the weak. My next-door
neighbour may keep his children in rags and his house in dirt, may be a
loose liver with a frantically foolish religious creed; but all this does
not justify me in taking possession of his house, and either poking him
out or making him a serf on his own hearthstone. If there be such a thing
as universal justice, then all men have their rights under it--even
verminous persons. We are obliged to put constraint upon them when their
habits afflict us beyond a certain point. And civilised nations are
obliged to put constraint upon uncivilised ones which shock their moral
sense beyond a certain point--as by cannibalism or human sacrifice. But
such interference should stand upon a nice sense of the offender's rights,
and in practice does so stand. The custom of polygamy, for instance (as
practised abroad), horribly offends quite a large majority of His
Majesty's lieges; yet Great Britain tolerates polygamy even in her own
subject races. Neither polygamy nor uncleanliness can be held any just
excuse for turning a nation out of its possessions.

"And another reason for insisting upon the strictest reading of justice in
these dealings between nations is the temptation which the least laxity
offers to the stronger--a temptation which Press and Pulpit made no
pretence of resisting during the late war. 'We are better than they,' was
the cry; 'we are cleanlier, less ignorant; we have arts and a literature,
whereas they have none; we make for progress and enlightenment, while they
are absurdly conservative, if not retrogressive. Therefore the world will
be the better by our annexing their land, and substituting our government
for theirs. Therefore our cause, too, is the juster.' But therefore it
is nothing of the sort. A dirty man may be in the right, and a clean man
in the wrong; an ungodly man in the right, and a godly man in the wrong;
and the most specious and well-intentioned system which allows justice to
be confused with something else will allow it