Now, war is not something imperfect only: it is a summing up of all human depravity--a condition which we might expect all enlightened men and women would turn against with combined energies. That this does not take place is an evidence that the enlightenment is not so great among so-called cultivated people. The dazzling external show of war conceals from many its inner reality. This applies not only to the horrors of the battle-field and their ghastly accompaniments. Fancy's wildest pictures of the infernal abyss are nothing to the descriptions eye-witnesses give of this veritable hell. Tolstoï's pen and Veretschagin's pencil give us an idea of it.[40] From this misery spring untold sufferings for thousands upon thousands of innocent victims; and, besides, it remains to be a flowing source of fresh calamities. The ARMED PEACE is a similar calamity, which threatens European civilization with complete overthrow. We have got so far in the general race in the science of armaments that the yearly outlay in Europe for military purposes, including the interest of national debts, is reckoned as about twelve milliards of kroner,[41] 650 millions sterling, which of course must imply a corresponding limitation of productive labour. In time of peace the European armies are reckoned at four millions of men. In time of war this can grow to nineteen millions; and in a few years when, as intended, the new conscription law comes into full effect, to something like thirty millions.[42] War, the personification of all human depravity, desolates the progressive work of culture, and the armed peace which ruins the nations prepares new wars and augments the misery. Ignorance, war, and poverty follow one another in an unvarying circle. By the side of this wild race for armaments goes on a terrible struggle for existence, and discontent reigns in all lands. This condition of things, which fills the world with unrest and fear, must in the near future have an end. It will either come in the form of a social revolution, which will embrace the whole of our continent, or it may come by the introduction of an established condition of international law. It is the last named outcome that active friends of peace labour for. They strive to enlighten the nations as to the means of removing and preventing these calamities; and they hope that the so-called educated classes will cease to be inactive spectators of these efforts. While they do not feel called upon to oppose the nonsense of folly, they listen respectfully to objections dictated by a sincere patriotism. In that feeling we ought all to be able to join. It depends upon the way in which this is expressed whether we can work together or must go on separate lines. Commonly, we commend an action as virtuous when it does not oppose our interests, but brand it as blameworthy when it in some way threatens our position.