War is assuredly a very great evil; not the greatest, but among the greatest which afflict humanity. Yet let it be recognized at this moment, when the word “Arbitration” has hold of popular imagination, more perhaps by the melody of its associations,—like the “Mesopotamia” of the preacher,—than by virtue of a reasonable consideration of both sides of the question, of which it represents only one, that within two years two wars have arisen, the righteous object of either of which has been unattainable by milder methods. When the United States went to war with Spain, four hundred thousand of the latter’s colonial subjects had lost their lives by the slow misery of starvation, inflicted by a measure—Reconcentration—which was intended, but had proved inadequate, to suppress an insurrection incited by centuries of oppression and by repeated broken pledges. The justification of that war rests upon our right to interfere on grounds of simple humanity, and upon the demonstrated inability of Spain to rule her distant colonies by methods unharmful to the governed. It was impossible to accept renewed promises, not necessarily through distrust of their honesty, but because political incapacity to give just and good administration had been proved by repeated failures. The justification of Great Britain’s war with the Transvaal rests upon a like right of interference—to relieve oppression—and upon the broad general principle for which our colonial ancestors fought the mother-country over a century ago, that “taxation without representation is tyranny.” Great Britain, indeed, did not demand the franchise for her misgoverned subjects, domiciled abroad; she only suggested it as a means whereby they might, in return for producing nine tenths of the revenue, obtain fair treatment from the state which was denying it to them. But be it remembered, not only that a cardinal principle upon which English and American liberty rests was being violated, but that at the time when the foreigners were encouraged to enter the Transvaal franchise was attainable by law in five years, while before the five years had expired the law was changed, and the privilege withdrawn by _ex post facto_ act. In each of these wars one of the two nations which speak the English tongue has taken a part, and in each the one engaged has had outspoken sympathy from the other, and from the other alone. The fact has been less evident in the Transvaal war, partly because the issue has been less clear, or less clearly put, chiefly because many foreign-born citizens of the United States still carry with them the prepossessions of their birthplace, rather than those which should arise from perception of their country’s interest.