by.

"But I always loved justice, and if a king gits mad and kills or causes
to be killed hundreds of thousands of men I can't see why he if
successful should be admired for it, have a monument riz up to show
forth his nobility and school boys be taught to emulate his greatness."

Josiah said, "That wuz different, a war between nations wuz planned
ahead, it wuzn't murder."

"But," sez I, "if John Jones had planned killin' his man he would git
hung the sooner."

"Well," sez Josiah, "great national quarrels has to be settled some way.
Nations wouldn't go to war unless they wuz aggravated."

Sez I, "John Jones wuz aggravated. Murders hain't generally planned or
committed in class meetin's, and love feasts."

"Well," sez Josiah, scratchin' his head, "it is different."

But I sez, "How different, Josiah, they are both murders."

Sez Josiah, "I guess I'll go down to Grandpa Huff's room and borry the
World." But I kep' thinkin' on't after he left about war and what it
wuz. Rivers of human blood flowin' through ruined countries, follered by
the horrible specters of pestilence, disease and famine, moral and
financial ruin. Acres and acres of graves filled with forms once full of
throbbing life and hope and dreams of future happiness, cut down like
grass before the mower. Wives, mothers, sisters, sweethearts see the sun
of their life's joy go down in blackness, their heaven of love and
happiness changed into a hell of misery by somebody's quarrel,
somebody's greed and ambition. How many of the common soldiers who make
up the great body of the army know or care about the right or wrong of
their cause. They go into the fight like dumb-driven cattle, suffer and
die and make their loved ones die a hundred deaths jest because they are
hired to do it, hired to murder their fellow men, jest as you would hire
a man to cut down a grove of underbrush. They go out to this wholesale
slaughter to kill or be killed, to meet all the black awful influences
that foller the armies, go gayly to the sound of bugle and drum.

It is the common people who bleed and die, it is the hearts of the
common people that are wrung; it is their wives and orphan children who
have to struggle along and strive and die, or live and suffer by this
cause.

And who can tell the moral, physical and financial ruin, the sickenin'
and terrible effects of evil habits formed there, the sin and woe that
like a black cloud follers the army? The recordin' angel himse