Much nonsense has been talked and written about universal brotherhood, as about most of the other ideals of mankind. Universal brotherhood is not universal acquiescence in evil; it is universal acceptance of the ideal of good. And you will never have a brotherhood worthy of the name until you raise, not lower, the standard of justice. Justice is balance, justice is equilibrium between forces, justice is poise. It is because I hope to see a more poised humanity that I am urging men to concentrate upon love instead of upon hate. Since I have been stationed in Europe and in the immediate neighborhood of the western battlefields, I have helped hundreds of souls to help themselves through the terrible astral conditions into which a sudden and premature dropping of their physical bodies has precipitated them; but in no case have I tried to upset the balance between cause and effect by helping a soul to a freedom for which it was not prepared. I have let men suffer when I _could_ have shortened their suffering; I have let many souls work out in the astral world the slow battle with their lower desires, because I knew that if they were plucked from the tree of pain before they were ripe, they would have to go through it all anyway and battle harder in another life with those very forces which now by their suffering they were severing in the region where--from the very limitation of satisfactions--elementary desires are more easily starved out than on the earth. There was in one of the armies a very cruel officer who was hated by his men. He came out here and many of the men came out here, and I made no attempt to protect him from their reproaches, because he _needed to learn_ that injustice deserves reproach. On earth their mouths had been stopped by army discipline, but out here he had to realize how much he had wronged them. He could never have realized it in any other way. Had I preached to him he would have told me to mind my own business. The law of justice does not preach. It demonstrates. He had to endure the demonstration of his own injustice through the dark and reproachful shadows by which he was long surrounded. And I may say in passing that he is still surrounded by them. I have made no effort to help him. Perhaps I could have done so; but such determined opposition on my part to the law of justice might have let him go forward into his own selfish heaven with such a load of injustice on his soul that in his next earthly life he would have been crushed by it. The resentment of these men was very deep, and while I might have softened it for their sake--not his--I let it work itself out. Had there been no one else needing my help and deserving it more, I might have spent a long time with these men and yet made little impression. I did exactly as I should have done on earth had such a case come before me, and I believe that I did right.