Let me not content myself, in response to these critics, with the easy answer, that, if our aims are visionary, impracticable, Utopian, then the unfulfilled promises of the Scriptures are vain,--then the Lord's Prayer, in which we ask that God's kingdom may come on earth, is a mockery,--then Christianity is no better than the statutes of Utopia. Let me not content myself with reminding you that all the great reforms by which mankind have been advanced encountered similar objections,--that the abolition of the punishment of death for theft, so long delayed, was first suggested in the "Utopia" of Sir Thomas More,--that the efforts to abolish the slave-trade were opposed, almost in our day, as visionary,--in short, that all endeavors for human improvement, for knowledge, for freedom, for virtue, all the great causes which dignify human history, and save it from being a mere protracted War Bulletin, a common sewer, a _Cloaca Maxima_, flooded with perpetual uncleanness, have been pronounced Utopian,--while, in spite of distrust, prejudice, and enmity, all these causes gradually found acceptance, as they gradually came to be understood, and the aspirations of one age became the acquisitions of the next. Satisfactory to some as this answer might be, I cannot content myself with leaving our cause in this way. I shall meet all assaults, and show, by careful exposition, that our objects are in no respect visionary,--that the cause of Peace does not depend upon any reconstruction of the human character, or upon holding in check the general laws of man's being,--but that it deals with man as he is, according to the experience of history,--and, above all, that our immediate and particular aim, the abolition of the Institution of War, and of the whole War System, as _established_ Arbiter of Right in the Commonwealth of Nations, is as practicable as it would be beneficent. I begin by putting aside questions, often pushed forward, which an accurate analysis shows to be independent of the true issue. Their introduction has perplexed the discussion, by transferring to the great cause of International Peace doubts which do not belong to it. * * * * *