"But I say to you, that you should see these messengers of dread--should see them and never forget it. For surely it was not without some purpose that they have been cast up on our shores. All the thoughts of sorrow and pity which that sight could wake in you, those thoughts you should not thrust aside; no, nor the bodily horror and disgust of things left to perish. "Let the horror and hatred of it fix itself in every fibre of your bodies, and give birth to an abhorrence of war that nothing ever can overcome. "For remember, that though we here are not responsible for the war, yet we have read of it every day in the papers. We may perhaps have found it interesting that such great events should happen in our time. We have stood aghast, perhaps, in admiration of the great deeds. We have had our sympathies with one side or the other, and rejoiced at their success. "But now these dead are come to us, that we may see how abominable a thing is war. "And some of you have profited by the war, and some have believed that it would lead to great and beneficial changes, and some think that nations are strengthened and exalted by war. And none can hold their own or their children's thoughts away from the war. "But now these dead are come, to show us what we could not see and realize so inwardly before; that war is an abominable thing, a ghastly thing. "These bodies floating in our waters, they are no ghostly vision, no story of imagination, but reality and truth. And the same may come again after a time, in reality and truth as now. "And therefore I ask you in thought at least to follow me out to sea, and learn to know these dreadful things, and fix them in your minds and never forget. "And you shall bring the knowledge of these things to others, so that they, too, may feel unconquerable abhorrence at the very mention of war; so that the word 'war' shall never more be uttered, but become a sound so intolerable to human ears that none dare speak it. "There are others, perhaps, who have seen even more dreadful things than this. And they, too, shall speak and write of war, until there is woven about it a ghostly fear and shuddering, a dread that nothing can overcome. "For how can we know what else may come? "In a few years the memory of this war's sorrow and agony and destruction may be forgotten, and a new generation may once more set out to war with the joy of battle in their hearts. It lies with us now to fix in the minds of all humanity so great a horror of war that no talk of glory and brave deeds can ever take its place. "For though great words have been spoken against war, and great examples have been set by men of peace, and the wisest calculations proved its madness, still the war is yet alive. "But out of the very horror and gruesomeness of war itself we can make ourselves weapons and armour and cure, and leave these as a legacy to our children, that they may overcome the greatest enemy of all mankind.