In the elder day, before the invention of the Whitehead torpedo and the high-power gun, the wooden war vessels of the period used to ram each other, lie alongside, grapple, jam their guns into each other’s ports, and send swarms of half-naked boarders on each other’s deck, where they fought breast to breast and foot to foot like heroes. Dr. Johnson described a sea voyage as “close confinement with a chance of being drowned.” The sailor-militant has always experienced that double disadvantage with the added chance of being smashed and burned. But formerly the rigors of his lot were ameliorated by a sight of his enemy and by some small opportunity of distinction in the neighborhood of that gentleman’s throat. To-day he is denied the pleasure of meeting him—never even so much as sees him unless fortunate enough to make him take to his boats. As opportunity for personal adventure and distinction a modern sea-fight is considerably inferior to a day in the penitentiary. Like a land-fight, it has enough of danger to keep the men awake, but for variety and excitement it is inferior to a combat between an isosceles triangle and the fourth dimension. When the patriot’s heart is duly fired by his newspaper and his politician he will probably enlist henceforth, as he has done heretofore, and be as ready to assist in covering the enemy’s half of the landscape with a rain of bullets, falling where it shall please Heaven, as his bellicose ancestor was to meet the foeman in the flesh and engage him in personal combat; but it will be a stupid business, despite all that the special correspondent can do for its celebration by verbal fireworks. Tales of the “firing line” emanating from the chimney corner of the future will urge the young male afield with a weaker suasion. By the way, I do not remember to have heard the term “firing line” during our civil war. We had the thing, of course, but it did not last long enough (except in siege operations, when it was called something else) to get a name. Troops on the “firing line” either held their fire until the enemy signified a desire for it by coming to get it, or they themselves advanced and served him with it where he stood. I should not like to say that this is an age of human cowardice; I say only that the men of all civilized nations are taking a deal of pains to invent offensive weapons that will wield themselves and defenses that can take the place of the human breast. A modern battle is a quarrel of skulkers trying to have all the killing done a long way from their persons. They will attack at a distance; they will defend if inaccessible. As much of the fighting as possible is done by machinery, preferably automatic. When we shall so have perfected our arms of precision and other destructive weapons that they will need no human agency to start and keep them going, war will be foremost among the arts of peace.