“What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport and upshot of the war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain ‘natural enemies’ of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them up to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans—in like manner wending their ways; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand facing thirty, each with his gun in hand. Straightway the word ‘Fire!’ is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and in the place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. “Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. “How then? “Simpleton! Their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had these poor blockheads shoot.” (=27=) In that part of biology treating of parasitic life the technical terms “host” and “guest” are used. The host is the living thing that furnishes a living not only for itself, but also for the life-filching intruder which fastens itself upon the body of the “host.” The intruder, the robber residing upon the body of the “host,” is the “guest,” that is, the parasite.