s premises are sound and will carry as far as
the desired conclusion. Therefore a more detailed attention to the
premises on which it runs will be in place, before any project of the
kind is allowed to pass inspection.

As to homogeneity of race and endowment among the several nations in
question, the ethnologists, who are competent to speak of that matter,
are ready to assert that this homogeneity goes much farther among the
nations of Europe than any considerable number of peace advocates would
be ready to claim. In point of race, and broadly speaking, there is
substantially no difference between these warring nations, along any
east-and-west line; while the progressive difference in racial
complexion that is always met with along any north-and-south line,
nowhere coincides with a national or linguistic frontier. In no case
does a political division between these nations mark or depend on a
difference of race or of hereditary endowment. And, to give full
measure, it may be added that also in no case does a division of classes
within any one of these nations, into noble and base, patrician and
plebeian, lay and learned, innocent and vicious, mark or rest on any
slightest traceable degree of difference in race or in heritable
endowment. On the point of racial homogeneity there is no fault to find
with the position taken.

If the second postulate in this groundwork of premises on which the
advocates of negotiable peace base their hopes were as well taken there
need be no serious misgiving as to the practicability of such a plan.
The plan counts on information, persuasion and reflection to subdue
national animosities and jealousies, at least in such measure as would
make them amenable to reason. The question of immediate interest on this
head, therefore, would be as to how far this populace may be accessible
to the contemplated line of persuasion. At present they are,
notoriously, in a state of obsequious loyalty to the dynasty,
single-minded devotion to the fortunes of the Fatherland, and
uncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this frame of mind there is
nothing that is new, except the degree of excitement. The animus, it
will be recalled, was all there and on the alert when the call came, so
that the excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on the
first touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people at large was
evidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so that an unexampled
enthusiasm of patriotic se