is spirit-man framed in the window, he was genuine and
different. Yesterday we should have passed him in the street
unnoticed; to-day the mantle of prophecy clothed him. Within two
months he might be dead--horribly dead with a bayonet through him.
That thought was in the minds of all who watched him; it gave him an
added authority. Yet he was not thinking of himself, of wounds,
of death; he was not even thinking of France. He was thinking of
humanity: "I am setting out to fight the last war--the war of humanity
which will bring universal peace and friendship to the world."

Since the war started, how often have we heard that phrase--_the last
war!_ It became the battle-cry of all recruiting-men, who would have
fought under no other circumstances, joined up now so that this might
be the final carnage. Nations left their desks and went into battle
voluntarily, long before self-interest forced them, simply because
organised murder so disgusted them that they were determined by weight
of numbers to make this exhibition of brutality the last.

Before Europe burst into flames in 1914, we believed that the last
war had been already fought. The most vivid endorsement of this belief
came out of Germany in a book which, to my mind, up to that time was
the strongest peace-argument in modern literature. It was so strong
that the Kaiser's Government had the author arrested and every copy
that could be found destroyed. Nevertheless, over a million were
secretly printed and circulated in Germany, and it was translated into
every major European language. The book I refer to was known under its
American title as, _The Human Slaughter-House_. It told very simply
how men who had played the army game of sticking dummies, found
themselves called upon to stick their brother-men; how they obeyed at
first, then sickened at sight of their own handiwork, until finally
the rank and file on both sides flung down their arms, banded
themselves together and refused to carry out the orders of their
generals. There was no declaration of peace; in that moment national
boundaries were abolished.

In 1912 this sounded probable. I remember the American press-comments.
They all agreed that national prejudices had been broken down to such
an extent by socialism and friendly intercourse, that never again
would statesmen be able to launch attacks of nations against nations.
Governments might declare war; the peoples whom they governed would
merely overthrow