In the same way many savage tribes take the greatest pains to impress the terms of treaties as vividly as possible on the memory of the contracting parties by striking and intelligible ceremonies. In the Sandwich Islands a wreath woven conjointly by the leaders of either side and placed in a temple was the chief symbol of peace. On the Fiji Islands, the combatant forces would meet and throw down their weapons at one another’s feet. The Tahitians wove a wreath of green boughs, furnished by each side; exchanged two young dogs; and having also made a band of cloth together, deposited the wreath and the band in the temple, with imprecations on the side which should first violate so solemn a treaty of peace.[212] On the Hervey Islands, the token of the cessation of war was the breaking of a number of spears against a large chestnut tree; the almost imperishable coral tree was planted in the valleys to signify the hope that the peace might last as long as the tree; and after the drum of peace had been solemnly beaten round the island, it was unlawful for any man to carry a weapon, or to cut down any iron-wood, which he might turn into an implement of destruction. Even our custom of proclaiming that a war is not undertaken against a people but against its rulers is not unknown in savage life. The Ashantee army used to strew leaves on their march, to signify that their hostility was not with the country they passed through but only with the instigators of the war; they told the Fantees that they had no war with them collectively, but only with some of them.[213] How common a military custom this appeal to the treason of an enemy is, notwithstanding the rarity of its success, everybody knows. When, for instance, the Anglo-Zulu war began, it was solemnly proclaimed that the British Government had no quarrel with the Zulu people; it was a war against the Zulu king, not against the Zulu nation. (Jan. 11, 1879.) So were the Ashantees told by the English invading force; so were the Afghans; so were the Egyptians; and so were the French by the Emperor William before his merciless hordes laid waste and desolate some of the fairest provinces of France; so, no doubt, will be told the Soudan Arabs. And yet this appeal to treason, this premium on a people’s disloyalty, is the regular precursor of wars, wherein destruction for its own sake, the burning of grain and villages for the mere pleasure of the flames, forms almost invariably the most prominent feature. The military view always prevails over the civil, of the meaning of hostilities that have no reference to a population but only to its government. In the Zulu war, for instance, in spite of the above proclamation, the lieutenant-general ordered raids to be made into Zululand for the express purpose of burning empty kraals or villages; defending such procedure by the usual military logic, that the more the natives at large felt the strain of the war, the more