"Meanwhile there are lots of straws floating about this week, which indicate that international winds are still blowing toward war. From Russian Poland there is reported an interruption in all kinds of business, owing to the war scare. Manufacturers refuse to accept orders from private persons, and financial institutions have still further weakened business by reducing their credit to a minimum. A letter from St. Petersburg tells of the tremendous enthusiasm of the troops at the review by the Czar on last Saturday, of the wild cheering for his imperial Majesty, of the loud and strident whistles audible above the roar of the cannon with which the officers command their men, and of the general blending of barbaric fierceness and courage with modern discipline and fighting improvements. "In Vienna the troops are hard at work practising with the Numannlicher repeating rifle, with which all have been provided. The Sunday observance act, usually rigorously enforced, has been suspended, that the government orders for military supplies may be completed two weeks earlier than contracted for. "The business of the Hotchkiss gun-making concern is shown to have increased one hundred per cent with the war scare, and the eagerness to secure the stock, which now stands at thirty per cent premium, shows a conviction among monied men. The capital has been subscribed fifteen times over." The persistent prediction of peace was speedily fulfilled. March 12 my statement was sent to the press, and March 22 Bismarck said to Prince Rudolph of Austria that "_peace is assured to Europe for 1887_," and newspaper correspondents announce that the war alarm is over. Mr. Frederick Harrison, who is travelling on foot in France, writes that he has found no one who desires war, and that the people are not even thinking of it. What is the popular judgment, or even the judgment of popular leaders worth upon any great question? The masses of mankind have their judgments enmeshed and inwoven in a web of mechanical habituality, compelling them to believe that what is and has been must continue to be in the future, thus limiting their conceptions to the commonplace. Their leaders do not rise to nobler conceptions, for if they did not sympathize with the popular, commonplace conceptions and prejudices they would not be leaders.