As “civilised” peoples we continue to exhibit the strangest barbaric inconsistency in our manners and methods of justice. If one man or woman is murdered in our midst our laws are set into instant operation to find the murderer, and if the crime is brought home to him he is sentenced to death. But in War thousands are murdered at the mere signal of “brave” commanders, and instead of the wrath and horror aroused by the slaying of a single life, an uproar of jubilation and triumph breaks out over the poor festering corpses that strew the field of so-called “glorious victory.” The “civilised” State protests against the murder of one individual, but looks upon the ghastly holocaust of slaughtered lives in battle as something almost noble and inspiring! Is this reasonable? Is it reconcilable with sane judgment? Is it any proof that our “Education” is of real worth?--or does it not rather testify to the amazing fact that in our greed of possession, our thirst of conquest, and our curious conceptions of religion and humanity, we have progressed scarcely a step ahead of our “barbarian” ancestors and their “savage” customs! “Alas, for men that they should be so blind! That they should laud the scourges of their kind-- Call each man glorious who has led a host And him most glorious who has murdered most!” It is said by certain special pleaders that War is a Necessity. We are referred for verification of this to the world of nature, where it would certainly seem that various tribes of animals and insects do make war upon each other. These wars, however, occur much more frequently among the low grades of nature-life than the high. One may doubt whether eagles as a tribe make war upon eagles, lions upon lions, and so forth. That every animal should fight or work individually for food is the natural law--the spirit of prey is one from which Man himself is never exempt. But has any one ever heard of several thousand lions or bears taking up a stand against each other and slaying each other wholesale for a disputed portion of territory? Ants and emmets make continual war among themselves, but “Civilisation” is supposed to have set Man a trifle higher than the ant or emmet; he is even believed to be superior in mental capacity to the eagle or the lion. He is accredited with fine faculties of reason, and is more or less conscious of high spiritual impulses--and in Christian countries he professes a humane creed, and assumes to teach the ethics of a divine moral code. During the far-off periods of his evolution from embryonic animalism towards the higher potentialities of his being, he was doubtless forced to fight his way against such opposing obstacles as threatened to stay or overwhelm him in his progress, but now--now when he stands, or thinks he stands, on a height of intellectual power and attainment which enables him to discard old barbarisms, surely it would be possible for him to control the lurking remains of his original