fevered Europe everything vibrates
and reverberates without end. Every word, every action, arouses
reprisals. Him who fans hatred, hatred flares up to consume. Heroes of
officialdom! bullies of the press! the blows which you deal very often
reach your own people, little though you think it--your soldiers, your
prisoners, delivered into the hands of the enemy. They answer for the
harm which you have done, and you escape the danger.

We cannot stop the war, but we can make it less bitter. There are
medicines for the body. We need medicines for the soul, to dress the
wounds of hatred and vengeance by which the world is being poisoned. We
who write--let that be our task. And as the Red Cross pursues its work
of mercy in the midst of the combat, like the bees of Holy Writ that
made their honey in the jaws of the lion, let us try to support its
efforts. Let our thoughts follow the ambulances that gather up the
wounded on the field of battle. May _Notre-Dame la Misere_ lay on the
brow of raging Europe her stern but succoring hand. May she open the
eyes of these peoples, blinded by pride, and show them that they are
but poor human flocks, equal in the face of suffering; suffering at all
times so great that there is no reason to add to the burden.

_Journal de Geneve_, October 30, 1914.

VI. TO THE PEOPLE THAT IS SUFFERING FOR JUSTICE

(For _King Albert's Book_.[20])

Belgium has just written an Epic, whose echoes will resound throughout
the ages. Like the three hundred Spartans, the little Belgian army
confronts for three months the German Colossus; Leman-Leonides; the
Thermopylae of Liege; Louvain, like Troy, burnt; the deeds of King Albert
surrounded by his valiant men: with what legendary grandeur are these
figures already invested, and history has not yet completed their story!
The heroism of this people, who, without a murmur, sacrificed everything
for honor, has burst like a thunderclap upon us at a time when the
spirit of victorious Germany was enthroning in the world a conception of
political realism, resting stolidly on force and self-interest. It was
a liberation of the oppressed idealism of the West. And that the signal
should have been given by this little nation seemed a miracle.

Men call the sudden appearance of a hidden reality a miracle. It is the
shock of danger which makes us best understand the character of
individuals and of nations. What discoveries this war has caused us to
make in those ar