e is infinitely tragic.
The whole range of history affords no worse instances of cold-blooded
cruelty than those which God's thieves, the Jews, perpetrated in Canaan,
when they took forcible possession of cities they had not built and
fields they had never ploughed. "How that red rain will make the harvest
grow!" exclaims Byron of the blood shed at Waterloo; and surely the
first harvests reaped by the Jews in Canaan must have been luxuriantly
rich, for the ground had been drenched with the blood of the slain.

Before Moses died, according to the Bible, he delivered an elaborate
code of laws to his people in the name of God. The portions referring to
war are contained in the twentieth chapter of _Deuteronomy_. Here they
stand in all their naked hideous-ness:--

"When thou comest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim
peace unto it. And it shall be, if it make thee answer of peace, and
open unto thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found
therein shall be tributaries unto thee, and they shall serve thee. And
if it will make no peace with thee, but will make war against thee, then
thou shalt besiege it. And when the Lord thy God hath delivered it into
thine hands, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the edge of the
sword: But the women, and the little ones, and the cattle, and all
that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt thou take unto
thyself; and thou shalt eat the spoil of thine enemies, which the Lord
thy God hath given thee. Thus shalt thou do unto all the cities which
are very far off from thee, which are not of the cities of these
nations. But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God
doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that
breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them."

Such were the fiendish commands of Jehovah, the bloody maxims of
inspired war. Let us see how the Jews carried them out.

During the lifetime of Moses they made a good beginning; for in their
war against Midian they slew 48,000 men, 48,000 women, and 20,000 boys,
and took as spoil 32,000 virgins. But they did much better under Joshua.

After God had dispatched Moses and secretly buried him, so that nobody
should ever discover his sepulchre, Joshua was appointed leader in his
stead. He was "full of the spirit of wisdom, for Moses had laid his
hands upon him." Then, as now, religious superiors transmitted holiness
to their inferiors through the skull. God acce