With wise pains and thoughtful labor, I clear my little spot of this stubborn soil. I hedge and plant my small vineyard. It begins, after much care, to yield me some fruit. I get a little corn and a little wine, to comfort me and mine. I have good hope that, as the years go by, I shall gather more. I trust, at last, my purple vintages may gladden many hearts of men, my rich olives make many faces shine. But some day, from the yet untamed forest, bursts the wild boar, and rushes on my hedge, and will break through to trample down my vineyard before mine eyes. And I am only to _argue_ with him! I am to cast the pearls of human reason and persuasion at his feet to stop him! Nay, rather, am I not to seize the first sufficient weapon that comes to hand, unloose the dogs upon him, and drive him to his lair again, or, better, bring his head in triumph home? It is true, there are wars where this parable will not apply. There are capricious wars, wars undertaken for no fit cause, wars with scarce a principle on either side. Such have often been _king's wars_, begun in folly, conducted in vanity, ended in shame, wars for the ambition of some crowned scoundrel, who rides a patient people till he drives them mad. And even such wars have their uses. They are not wholly evil. Alexander's, the maddest wars of all, and those of his successors, the most stupid and brutal ever fought, even they had their uses. Our war with poor Mexico, even Louis Bonaparte's, was not wholly evil. But there are wars, again, that are not capricious, that are simply necessary, unavoidable, as life, death, or judgment, wars where the choice is to see right trampled out of sight or to fight for it, where truth and justice are crushed unless the sword be grasped and used, where law and civilization and Christianity are assailed by savagery, brutality, and devilishness, and only the true bullet and the cold steel are received in the discussion. These are the Peoples' wars. In them nations arm. Generations swarm to their battle fields. They are landmarks in the world's advancement. For victories in them men sing _Te Deums_ throughout the ages. The heroes, who fell in them, loom through the haze of time like demigods. On the plains of Tours, when the Moslem tide, that swept on to overwhelm in ruin Christian Europe, was met, and stemmed, and turned by Charles Martel, and, breaking into foam against the iron breasts of his stalwart Franks, was whirled away into the darkness like spray before the tempest, the _Hammer-man_ did a work that day that, till the end of time, a world will thank Heaven for, as _he_ thanked it in the hour of victory.