like ride divide the clouds like the
painted fierceness of a theatrical scene.

And far above the fevered gaze of them who are upon the ground, whose
bodies are layered with the dregs of the earth and the wasted fields,
the phantom cohort flows from the four corners of the horizon, drives
back the sky's infinity and hides its blue deeps.

And they are legion. They are not only the warrior caste who shout as
they fight and have joy of it, not only those whom universal slavery
has clothed in magic power, the mighty by birth, who tower here and
there above the prostration of the human race and will take their
sudden stand by the scales of justice when they think they see great
profit to gain; not only these, but whole multitudes who minister
consciously or unconsciously to their fearful privilege.

"There are those who say," now cries one of the somber and compelling
talkers, extending his hand as though he could see the pageant, "there
are those who say, 'How fine they are!'"

"And those who say, 'The nations hate each other!'"

"And those who say, 'I get fat on war, and my belly matures on it!'"

"And those who say, 'There has always been war, so there always will
be!'"

"There are those who say, 'I can't see farther than the end of my nose,
and I forbid others to see farther!'"

"There are those who say, 'Babies come into the world with either red
or blue breeches on!'"

"There are those," growled a hoarse voice, "who say, 'Bow your head and
trust in God!'"

* * * * *

Ah, you are right, poor countless workmen of the battles, you who have
made with your bands all of the Great War, you whose omnipotence is not
yet used for well-doing, you human host whose every face is a world of
sorrows, you who dream bowed under the yoke of a thought beneath that
sky where long black clouds rend themselves and expand in disheveled
lengths like evil angels--yes, you are right. There are all those
things against you. Against you and your great common interests which
as you dimly saw are the same thing in effect as justice, there are not
only the sword-wavers, the profiteers, and the intriguers.

There is not only the prodigious opposition of interested
parties--financiers, speculators great and small, armorplated in their
banks and houses, who live on war and live in peace during war, with
their brows stubbornly set upon a secret doctrine and their faces shut
up like safes.

There are those who