Those who are oppressed by the superincumbent weight of society, and labor for mere existence, with no hope of freedom from poverty, are slaves as much as were those made bondsmen in old-time wars. It matters little whether the wolf at the door be a creature of sociological conditions, or a creature of war. The evil is no less real. James Russell Lowell, in his admirable poem on France and the French Revolution, said about the most expressive, the most potential, and altogether the best thing that has ever been said illustrative of the uncontrollable massiveness of the popular will, which, under the stimulus of patriotism or the smart or burden of accumulated wrongs, can stampede a nation into war: "_As, flake by flake, the beetling avalanches Build up their imminent crags of noiseless snow, Till some chance thrill the loosened ruin launches And the blind havoc leaps unwarned below, So grew and gathered through the silent years The madness of a People, wrong by wrong. There seemed no strength in the dumb toiler's tears, No strength in suffering;--but the Past was strong: The brute despair of trampled centuries Leapt up with one hoarse yell and snapt its bands, Groped for its rights with horny, callous hands, And stared around for God with bloodshot eyes._" The justification of war depends entirely upon the conditions which produce it. In short, war is justifiable only when it is a remedy for evils greater than the evils of the war. War is sometimes a very bitter remedy; nevertheless, there are diseases much worse than the remedy. The horrors of the French Revolution, bad as they were, remedied a condition still more horrible, for the condition of the French common people, "bowed by the weight of centuries," had become so abject that life was intolerable; no change could be for the worse. Under such circumstances there is no fear of death; the fear of death is only fear of the loss of life through love of life. When existence is intolerable, and there is no hope in the heart for better things, life, having no value, is not much loved, and death has no terrors. In spite of all the bloodshed of the reign of terror, in spite of all who fell under the leadership of Napoleon, the French people were benefited by the Revolution a thousand-fold more than they were injured by it. If arbitration could prevent such wars, which are man's God-given privilege that a people may secure its inalienable rights, then arbitration, in that respect, would be an iniquitous thing.