es, the ghastly price of glory. The trenches at Port Arthur were
filled level-full with the bodies of self-sacrificed martyrs, and upon
this gruesome slope the final charges were made. Stripped of all
sentiment, war is organized and wholesale murder, a savage and awful
paradox which proclaims the shallowness of civilization. Said General
Sherman: "Only those who have never heard a shot, only those who have
never heard the shrieks of the wounded nor the groans of the dying,
can cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation." God
grant the world may soon heed the Voice, sounding down from the
solemnity of Sinai, laying the divine command upon each man and each
nation: "Thou shalt not kill!"
There yet remains the ethical argument for peace. Will any one say
that the supreme duty of altruism is binding upon men as individuals,
and not binding upon the same men acting conjointly as a nation? When
the people and the statesmen of one nation are able to put themselves
in the places of the statesmen and of the people of another nation;
when there is a common will to do international justice rather than to
despise the weaker country; when not selfish interest alone, but the
greatest good of the greatest number, becomes the driving impulse of
humanity; when the thrill of fraternity crosses geographical lines and
pauses not on the shores of the seas--then war will be impossible,
the energies of the world will turn to the constructive arts, and from
the midst of contentment unshadowed by hunger, from prosperity
unmenaced by want, in the peaceful spirit of the Christ, the world
will sing:
"The crest and crowning of all good, life's final star is
brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face, a kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves, and travel downward to dust
of graves.
Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: blind creeds and kings
have had their day.
Break the dead branches from the path: our hope is in the aftermath.
Our hope is in heroic men, star-led to build the world again.
To this Event the ages ran: Make way for Brotherhood--make way for
man."
All great reforms have begun with "star-led" men and have moved from
individuals to groups and from groups to the nation. In every distinct
advance of the race prophetic persons have anticipated the trend of
the ages an
|