War! who after this can ever again insult patriotism by relating it to the beat of drums and the roar of cannon? Every rational being who has witnessed its dire and degrading effects, even in so small a scene as the prison-capital of its vast tragic stage, must curse those philosophic minds of Germany who exerted their intellects to exalt intellect’s most horrible opponent, and sold their souls to the devil for a vain Emperor’s praise! On them, as much as on him they flattered, must be laid the crime of a catastrophe that has menaced the very foundations of civilization. Where now can be seen the benefits of that “drastic medicine for the human race” which Treitschke informs us must always recur by the Almighty’s will? He pretends that war is elevating because the individual disappears before the great conception of the State, and that to check war would be “a perversion of morality,” in that it would abolish heroism! Is heroism more beautiful or advantageous when _forced_ from a man on the battlefield, than when, of his own will, he proves it in a peaceful struggle to live righteously and let others live? How many criminals, for selfish objects, have evinced personal courage like that of a soldier in action?—far greater, because not in obedience, but in opposition to power! Paid or commanded heroism is not heroism in the true sense. Thousands upon thousands in the peaceful walks of life have more worthily deserved glory by labour and sacrifice for the common good than they who are driven, under command, to slay their kind—who obey for no clearly-comprehended object, but first and foremost to preserve themselves. There are perhaps fifty men in five hundred, apart from the officers, whose dominant incentive in battle is other than self-preservation; whereas in peace one-half, if not more, of a like body of men utilize their physical and intellectual powers for the improvement of general conditions—and often without aiming at other recompense. The hour for lauding the soldier above the scientist and artisan is long since past, and vast military power, or military power of any sort, is a mockery of the present glorious age. Can there be any more absurd sophistry than that of pretending that war corrects egoism? War is bred of egoism, bred of the cruellest of all egoisms—imperial ambition! In peace the basest selfishness is less harmful than the selfishness of international conflict. Even those men who have amassed enormous fortunes by robbing the poor have been of greater benefit to the world in general than if their intelligence and force had been utilized in planning how to crush another nation. Egoism, after all, is necessary to progress, and war is but its most barbaric expression.