trampled out of all likeness to anything human. That is what skulks behind a 'splendid charge.'

Now let us turn from the graphic novelist to the experienced journalist. This is what Dr. Russell, the famous Times war correspondent, wrote from the battlefield of Sedan:

"Let your readers fancy masses of coloured rags glued together with blood and brains, and pinned into strange shapes by fragments of bones. Let them conceive men's bodies without heads, legs without bodies, heaps of human entrails attached to red and blue cloth, and disembowelled corpses in uniform, bodies lying about in all attitudes with skulls shattered, faces blown off, hips smashed, bones, flesh and gay clothing all pounded together as if brayed in mortar, extending for miles. and then they cannot, with the most vivid imagination, come up to the sickening reality of that butchery."

O the glorious Romance of War! Listen! Thirty thousand skeletons of Russian and Turkish soldiers were shipped to England in 1881 as manure!

Well does Byron sing of war:

"Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon

Flashing afar-and at his iron feet

Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done."

The poet's image is daring, yet how true! Destruction might cower indeed at the atrocities of a battle-field. For they are more than slaughters-they are unspeakable agonies. Happy, thrice happy, are the dead in comparison with the wounded. Imagine the fate of these after a "glorious victory." The fallen, not slain, of both sides are mingled in a common hell. They were enemies a few

hours ago, but now how fearfully akin! A young husband-as his life-blood ebbs away, and cold steals upon the citadel of his heart-sees a vision of eyes and lips that he will never kiss again. A son thinks of the old mother, whose dwindling life is wrapped in his, who will never more lean upon his strong arm, but falter downward to the grave. A father wonders what will happen to his brood at home - how the mother will support them—what future is now in store for the bright boy who was his pride, and ah! what future for the baby girl, whose delicate soft flesh he seems to feel as when he took her from her mother's arms in that last embrace. These are the real tragedies of a battle-field soultragedies, as Browning would call them. And if we multiply them a thousand fold, and add every conceivable circumstance of physical suffering, we shall be able to estimate the true value of that fatal "glory."

War is just in self-defence, or in defence of a neighbour unjustly attacked. We are not of those who believe in the refusal of aid between nations in all circumstances. The sword may be, for some time yet, as necessary as the lancet, but it should never be drawn except against the enemies of mankind. "The blood of man," said Burke, “should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our friends, for our country, for our kind. The rest is vanity; the rest is crime."

When any of these great duties call us we should be ready to defend them; and if ever England were menaced by a brutal invader, the most peaceful citizen might well wish her to be animated by the same brave spirit that whipped the pride of the Armada and drove the hectoring Dutch fleets from the English seas. Nay, to defend the nation's liberties in the dark hour of extreme peril, one

might hope that her sons would make ramparts of their bodies, and if they could not make a pact with victory, make a pact with death; that her daughters would gladly resign their dearest in the spirit of the Spartan mothers of old; and that the very children might, like Hannibal, be dedicated to a righteous revenge.

We are then far from loving peace at any price. But there is little need to denounce such an impossible doctrine. It is not that way our danger lies. Our fighting instincts, inherited from savage ancestors, are too strong for us to submit tamely to aggression, even if the law of selfpreservation did not prompt us to defend our own.

National defence was not the origin of our modern standing armies. They are legacies from Feudalism. The retainers of feudal nobles became the king's soldiers as the power of the Crown strengthened over its vassals. Disguise it how you will, the institution of standing armies still savours of its origin. The military forces of Europe are the instruments of tyranny and the support of privilege. During the last fifty years they have been as often employed in suppressing liberty at home as in fighting the foreigner abroad. Perhaps England and Switzerland are the only exceptions to this rule. The notion that armies are the servants of the people is extremely recent. Fighting for his king was the soldier's recognised vocation. That spirit still half animates our British troops, as it wholly animates the troops of Russia. In Germany the idea of the Fatherland may have overshadowed that of the Emperor, though he still talks consumedly about "my army"; but little more than a century ago Frederick the Great's army fought at his absolute command; and Prussia, like every other German State, was ruled on the same patriarchal principle.

Democracy is very recent, and has not had time to mould its own institutions. Those who are not conversant with history do not understand that the institutions which exist are relics of monarchy. And of these the worst is a standing army.

This fact has some bearing on the morality of a soldier's profession. A French Radical said the other day, in the epigrammatic way of his nation, that the business of an army is to defend the frontier. An admirable sentiment! But that is not the soldier's view. He goes with cheerful alacrity wherever he is sent, and if he is ordered to the other side of the globe he feels that brisk stirring of the blood which accompanies novel adventures. French soldiers, drafted from the citizen army of a Republic where the conscription is universal, set sail without misgivings for Algeria, Tunis, Madagascar, or China. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die." Does not all this show that Democracy has had but little if any effect upon the army ? When men enter it they become possessed by its spirit. And that spirit is military, authoritative, monarchical.

The English army is composed of volunteers, and is in a sense mercenary. And what are the motives that impel men to join it? "Generally," says Bacon, "all warlike people are a little idle, and love danger better than travail." The description applies admirably to our upper classes who supply the army with officers, and no doubt it fits some of the lower classes who supply it with privates. For the rest, men enter the army as they engage in other professions, for a living; and, after a certain allowance for ties of blood, they care as little on which side they fight as a lawyer cares on which side he pleads. It is hardly fair to define a soldier as a man who

engages to kill anybody for a shilling a day, for this loses sight of the fact that he undertakes to be killed as well as to kill for that figure. But the definition, although not accurate, contains a dreadful element of truth. It would be unfair to visit on the individual soldier the whole odium of the institution to which he belongs. True, and the hangman is scarcely responsible for capital punishment; yet we should shrink from his company at our tables. Perhaps the wisest plan is to hate the institution and pity its members.

Mr. Ruskin, many years ago, justified the soldier's trade, or at least exalted it :—

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Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endeavoured to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the soldier. And this is right. For the soldier's trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain. This, without well knowing its own meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo's trade is slaying; but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants; the reason it honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he may be - fond of pleasure or of adventure-all kinds of bye-motives and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct in it; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact-of which we are well assured-that put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that this choice may be put to him at any moment, and has beforehand taken his part-virtually takes such part continually-does, in reality, die daily."

The element of truth in Ruskin's eloquent defence of the