ruinous? Shakespeare may have seen a Stratford cottage struck
by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted
thatch and clear away the bits of the broken chimney. What would he have
said if he had seen Ypres as it is now, or returned to Stratford, as
French peasants are returning to their homes to-day, to find the old
familiar signpost inscribed "To Stratford, 1 mile," and at the end of
the mile nothing but some holes in the ground and a fragment of a broken
churn here and there? Would not the spectacle of the angry ape endowed
with powers of destruction that Jove never pretended to, have beggared
even his command of words?

And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain on human
nature that breaks down the better half of it, and makes the worse half
a diabolical virtue? Better, for us if it broke it down altogether, for
then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to us, and
we should take greater care not to get into them. In truth, it is, as
Byron said, "not difficult to die," and enormously difficult to live:
that explains why, at bottom, peace is not only better than war, but
infinitely more arduous. Did any hero of the war face the glorious
risk of death more bravely than the traitor Bolo faced the ignominious
certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how to die: can we say that he
taught us all how to live? Hardly a week passes now without some soldier
who braved death in the field so recklessly that he was decorated or
specially commended for it, being haled before our magistrates for
having failed to resist the paltriest temptations of peace, with no
better excuse than the old one that "a man must live." Strange that one
who, sooner than do honest work, will sell his honor for a bottle of
wine, a visit to the theatre, and an hour with a strange woman, all
obtained by passing a worthless cheque, could yet stake his life on
the most desperate chances of the battle-field! Does it not seem as if,
after all, the glory of death were cheaper than the glory of life? If
it is not easier to attain, why do so many more men attain it? At all
events it is clear that the kingdom of the Prince of Peace has not yet
become the kingdom of this world. His attempts at invasion have been
resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser's. Successful as that
resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt that is not
the less oppressive because we have no figures for it and do n