In international affairs every treaty of peace, unless its terms are dictated by a strong power to a weak one, is a compromise between the opposing views of right and wrong held by the parties. Logically, the non-compromiser should be generally opposed to treaties, as involving necessarily some sacrifice of his principles of right to the demands of the other party. In the period from 1844 to 1846, we narrowly escaped war with England in the dispute over the boundary between ourselves and Canada, because a strong Jingo, non-compromising party started the popular cry of "Fifty-Four Forty or Fight." This class of thinkers would undoubtedly have opposed the celebrated compromises of Henry Clay, which, whatever might have been said against them at the time, have, in the light of history, the incalculable merit of having postponed the inevitable conflict between the North and the South, until the former had so grown in population and resources that it could preserve the unity of the nation. Considering the hard, and sometimes doubtful struggle, which the North went through in winning victory in the sixties, there can be little doubt that the result would have been two divided nations if the issues between the two sections had been submitted to the arbitrament of arms in 1820, in 1832, or even in 1850. As the intolerance of the non-compromisers will lead some of them to oppose treaties of peace, so the same quality in others will lead them to make nuisances of themselves in war. During the Great War, the nations, especially England and the United States, had considerable trouble with the "conscientious objector," who is really a non-compromiser under a different name. Supposing him to be honest in his opinions (as some of them were), the logic of his position was unanswerable from the view-point of the non-compromiser. War is unquestionably a great evil, and most obnoxious to the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount. If there is to be no compromise with evil, then a Christian magistrate has no warrant to compel the conscientious objector to go out and slaughter, or give his help, directly or indirectly, towards the slaughter of his fellow Christians. The true answer to this argument is, of course, obvious, although the magistrates, themselves infected with this pernicious, non-compromise doctrine, did not always make it.