Ah, the intemperate shapes and unities that float in morsels above the peopled precipices! When two overlords, jewel-set with glittering General Staffs, proclaim at the same time on either side of their throbbing mobilized frontiers, "We will save our country!" there is one immensity deceived and two victimized. There are two deceived immensities! There is nothing else. That these cries can be uttered together in the face of heaven, in the face of truth, proves at a stroke the monstrosity of the laws which rule us, and the madness of the gods. I turn on a bed of pain to escape from the horrible vision of masquerade, from the fantastic absurdity into which all these things are brought back; and my fever seeks again. Those bright spells which blind, and the darkness which also blinds. Falsehood rules with those who rule, effacing Resemblance everywhere, and everywhere creating Difference. Nowhere can one turn aside from falsehood. Where indeed is there none? The linked-up lies, the invisible chain, the Chain! Murmurs and shouts alike cross in confusion. Here and yonder, to right and to left, they make pretense. Truth never reaches as far as men. News filters through, false or atrophied. On _this_ side--all is beautiful and disinterested; yonder--the same things are infamous. "French militarism is not the same thing as Prussian militarism, since one's French and the other's Prussian." The newspapers, the somber host of the great prevailing newspapers, fall upon the minds of men and wrap them up. The daily siftings link them together and chain them up, and forbid them to look ahead. And the impecunious papers show blanks in the places where the truth was too clearly written. At the end of a war, the last things to be known by the children of the slain and by the mutilated and worn-out survivors will be all the war-aims of its directors. Suddenly they reveal to the people an accomplished fact which has been worked out in the _terra incognita_ of courts, and they say, "Now that it is too late, only one resource is left you--Kill that you be not killed." They brandish the superficial incident which in the last hour has caused the armaments and the heaped-up resentment and intrigues to overflow in war; and they say, "That is the only cause of the war." It is not true; the only cause of war is the slavery of those whose flesh wages it. They say to the people, "When once victory is gained, agreeably to your masters, all tyranny will have disappeared as if by magic, and there will be peace on earth." It is not true. There will be no peace on earth until the reign of men is come.