Further philosophizing on the “Wickedness of War,” in a masterful public address, she says: “There is not a geographical boundary line on the face of the earth that was not put there by the sword, and is not practically held there by this same dread power. War actually settles no disputes, it brings no real peace; it but closes an open strife;—the peace is simply buried embers. The war side of the war could never have called me to the field—_through and through_, thought and act, body and soul, _I hate it_. We can only wait and trust for the day to come when the wickedness of war shall be a thing unknown in this beautiful world.” Again philosophizing she says: “As I reflect upon the mighty and endless changes which must grow out of war’s issues, the subject rises up before me like some far-away mountain summit, towering peak upon peak, rock upon rock, that human foot has not trod and enveloped in a hazy mist the eye has never penetrated.” XV In the same year, and about the same time in the year, that Clara Barton first started for the battlefield her warm personal friend, Julia Ward Howe, wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” THE AUTHOR. You remember the time was Sunday, September 14th, 1862. CLARA BARTON. Society forbade women at the front. CLARA BARTON. Tradition absolutely forbade a good woman to go unprotected among rough soldiers. CLARA BARTON. And what does woman know about war, and because she doesn’t know anything about it she mustn’t say, or do, anything about it. CLARA BARTON. It has long been said, as to amount to an adage, that women don’t know anything about war. I wish men didn’t either. They have always known a great deal too much about it for the good of their kind. CLARA BARTON. I struggled long and hard with my sense of propriety—with the appalling fact that “I was only a woman” whispering in one ear; and thundering in the other the groans of suffering men dying like dogs—unfed and unclothed, for the life of every institution which had protected and educated me. CLARA BARTON. When war broke over us, with an empty treasury and its distressed Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, personally trying in New York to borrow money to pay our first seventy-five thousand soldiers, I offered to do the work of any two disloyal clerks whom the office would discharge and allow the double salary to fall back into the treasury. When no legal way could be found to have my salary revert to the national treasury, I resigned and went to the field. CLARA BARTON.