Here, in bringing to my present consciousness the conception of war that I then had, I myself find occasion for an interesting observation, an instruction worth taking to heart. Human society as a whole passes through just such stages of shifting ideas, knowledges, conceptions, and judgments, as does an individual man. Should not I to-day fully understand, and fully pardon, the fact that the generality of men in their preponderating mass take as cold and unconcerned an attitude toward war (when it does not lay hold directly of their own lives) as did I myself a few decades ago? Should I be amazed that this same generality regards the occasional breaking out of wars as a matter of course, a thing involved in natural law, which one may possibly sigh over, but which one cannot condemn and cannot antagonize? Against the inevitable one raises no voice of blame, strikes no blow. And as the individual (in the case in hand, I myself) may under the influence of experiences and considerations come to have quite altered views, so may and will the generality obtain new insights and act accordingly. When to-day in certain circles I meet with case-hardened misconception of the peace movement, when they try to show me the obvious naturalness and historical necessity of the scourge of war by arguments at which wrath and discouragement threaten to take possession of me, all I need to do, that my wrath may subside and my courage rise, is to think back to my own past. Moreover, in the matters of war and peace the generality is not even in such a state of stupidity any longer, for by this time almost every one has at least heard something of the movement, and the number of those who sympathize with it or even take an active part in it is growing every day. A greater and greater number of people are taking sides on the issue, either for it or against it; but at the time of which I am now talking the fact was that no one knew anything about the peace movement, because there was none; for the sporadic emergence of individual minds who took a stand for the abolition of war cannot be called “a movement.” We spent the summer of 1886 once more in Homburg vor der Höhe, and although the war penetrated into our very near neighborhood there were no indications of it to be detected in the life of the bathers and gamblers at that cosmopolitan watering-place. The official band played; Patti sang; the Spaniard Garcia, who had become famous for his luck at gambling, continued to make his harvest of a hundred thousand francs a day at the trente-et-quarante table—until one fine morning he did begin to lose, and gradually put in all the millions he had won, and something of his own besides.