All these are instances which we unhesitatingly condemn. To our idea they are crimes and misdeeds which among us would make their perpetrators liable either to contempt and expulsion from decent society or to the extremest penalties of the law; yet at their time and in their place they were considered meritorious and virtuous, and were approved by public opinion and the conscience of their authors. But we can go farther and subject our own moral law to a similar independent consideration. We shall find that to us also deeds appear permissible, virtuous and even splendid, which do not differ essentially from the thefts of the Spartans or the head-hunting of the Dyaks. A company promoter who sells on the Stock Exchange shares that he must know to be worthless, can with Spartan cunning rob thousands of trustful victims of the fruits of their labour and economy, and reduce them to beggary; and not only does he go unpunished, but if by his knavery he becomes a millionaire and uses his wealth cleverly, he can attain the highest political and social honours and distinctions. We may admit that financial roguery of this sort can now no longer be classed among strictly moral actions, that public opinion is on the verge of placing it in the category of vice and crime, and that legislators are beginning to make attempts to inflict severe and humiliating penalties on its perpetrators. But another series of deeds is still generally considered so undoubtedly virtuous and laudable, that it evokes the highest homage from the best intellects of the age, poets, musicians, scientists, teachers, sculptors and painters, and the leaders of the people--the deeds of war. The most horrible butchery of men, the theft of property and liberty, ill-treatment, destruction are not only permissible but obligatory and laudable, if they occur in war, and if their authors can point to the fact that they are acting in the service of their country at the order of a legitimate authority. Neither the soldiers nor their leaders are bound to inquire whether the authority, whether their mother country is waging war for a purpose that moral law can approve. "Right or wrong, my country." In the eyes of her sons the country is always in the right, even if it be objectively in the wrong, and by its orders every soldier murders, robs, burns and ravages, plays the executioner to harmless, unarmed, innocent strangers, compels prisoners to forced labour, steals letters that fall into his hands and prevents families who are cruelly separated from communicating with one another; and his conscience does not reproach him in the least, nor is he conscious of being a criminal deserving of all the penalties of the law. Every single one of these actions, if perpetrated by an individual on his own account and for his own purposes, would result in the death penalty, and it would be richly deserved, too. But in war, carried out collectively at the bidding of a