The abomination of frightfulness in Belgium recalls the sufferings and degradations which English women and children endured nearly sixty years ago when a section of the Indian army rebelled, and the mutineers, being joined by certain disaffected Indian princes and landowners, overcame small and isolated British communities and perpetrated identically the same barbarities as have been deliberately practised by the German troops during the present war. It was then that Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the distinguished American essayist, gave utterance to the following opinion in the _Atlantic Monthly_; it is now embodied in his well-known work “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” Although the official voice of the United States has uttered no such protest, there is reason to believe that these words written by an American pen nine-and-fifty years ago do still represent the reasoned opinion of the bulk of American men and women: Who was that person that was so abused some time since for saying that in the conflict of two races our sympathies naturally go with the higher? No matter who he was. Now look at what is going on in India--a white, superior “Caucasian” race, against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still “Caucasian” race--and where are English and American sympathies? We can’t stop to settle all the doubtful questions; all we know is, that the brute nature is sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and it is the general law that the human side of humanity should treat the brutal side as it does the same nature in the inferior animals--tame it, or crush it. The Indian mail brings stories of women and children outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down the Map of the World, which she has girdled with empire, and makes a correction thus: Delhi, _Dele!_ The civilised world says, Amen. * * * * *