We saw that in our Great War. The ancient appeal of the patriots rushed us away from reason with "last stands," and the shot-riddled banners wavering in the engulfing waves of barbarians, till an irresistible cavalry charge scattered the hordes. All this replaced the plumes, the shining armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin, however, was a subtle improvement even on the last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He anticipated those who have been most popular because they made our War entrancing and endurable. He went to the heart of the matter. He knew that the audience which would the more readily agree with him when he made an emotional case for the ennobling nature of war would be mainly of reclused women. He addressed them. So did, of late, some of our most successful writers on war. They, like Ruskin, made their appeal to that type of mind which obtains a real satisfaction, a sensuous pleasure, from contemplating the unseen sufferings of the young and vicarious victim sobbing, and feeling noble and enduring. XXIV. The Reward of Virtue MAY 9, 1919. The Treaty of Peace is published. Compared with what the innocent in 1915 called the "objects of the War," this treaty is as the aims of Captain Morgan's ruffians to those of the Twelve Apostles. The truth is, some time ago the Versailles drama fell to the level of an overworked newspaper story which shrewd editors saw was past its day. Those headlines, Humiliate the Hun, Hang the Kaiser, and Make Germany Pay, had become no more interesting than a copy of last week's _Morning Mischief_ in a horse-pond. The subject was old and wet. Because five months ago we thoughtfully elected men of the counting-house to the work of governing the State, of late we have been too indignant over the cost and difficulty of living to spare a thought for the beauty of Peace; that is why we are now examining the clauses of the famous Treaty with about as much care for what they may mean to us as if they concerned the movements of the Asteroids. A year ago the German attacks seemed near to making guns the deciding voice in the affairs of unhappy humanity. On the chill and overcast spring morning when the Treaty was published, it was significant that those very few men to whom we could go for courage a year ago were the only people dismayed by the terms of the Peace Treaty. And the timid, who once went to those stout hearts for assurance--to have, as the soldiers used to say, their cold feet massaged--were the bright and cheerful souls. It was ominous. Yet those careless and happy hearts are not so trying to me as the amiable but otherwise sensible men who were sure our statesmen would not betray the dead, and who are incredulous over the Treaty now they see what it clearly intends to convey. They cannot believe that the War, which they thought began as a war of liberation, a struggle of Europe to free itself from the intolerable bonds of its past, continues in the Peace Treaty as a force