sufficed to preserve the peace of the world; and, if we except petty frontier tussles with barbarians, they often did so for thirty or forty years together. But Europe has now its standing armies whose total is reckoned in millions, and the peace is broken three or four times in half-a-century. Let it also be remembered that the Roman soldier was a worker as well as a fighter, helping to carry the practical civilisation of Rome wherever her eagles floated. Our high roads, the arteries of pedestrian and vehicular circulation through England, were first made by the imperial legions who used the pick and the spade more frequently than the sword. But the armies of modern Europe are all idlers. Their sole business is destruction. In peace they consume without producing, and in war they devour like the locust and the caterpillar. They are not the lame, the blind, the maimed, and the imbecile, but the young flower of the male population, withdrawn from productive industry and the refining influence of domestic discipline, and supported by the labour of others while they "learn the art of killing men." We shall consider this economical aspect of the subject more fully presently; meanwhile let us deal with the causes of war.

"A background of wrath," says Carlyle, "which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man, in every creature." True, and this fierce instinct may be held to account directly for the combats of animals, for primitive human fighting, for duels among "civilised" peoples, and for street fights and all personal brawls. But it accounts only indirectly for modern warfare. "Civilised wager of battle" is the game, not of peoples, but, to use Earl Beaconsfield's phrase, of "sovereigns and statesmen;" though sometimes, it must

be confessed, the people are egged on by what are perhaps the vilest specimens of the human race-truculent journalists, who gain fame and profit by pandering to the most disgusting hatreds. Cowper long ago remarked that war is a game which kings would not play at were their peoples wise. The fact is, our brute instincts, racial prejudices and national vanities are systematically traded on by our rulers. Nothing is so cheap and easy as a "foreign policy," as nothing is so hard as a domestic one; and nothing so diverts attention from difficult home affairs as the simple expedient of a foreign broil. If declaring war lay with Parliament, the juggle would be more arduous. But it does not. The Government hurries us into war before we can discuss its policy, and when the matter comes up for debate, not only have things gone too far for interference, but the question resolves into one of confidence in the ministry, instead of approval of the particular measure. By that time also the beast in us has tasted blood. The savage thirst for more is upon us. Illustrated papers and daily war correspondence familiarise us with slaughter, and the sane voice of the keepers of reason is drowned in the clamour of the wild beasts of passion, scenting carnage and carrion.

Society is now too complex for the simple rules of interpretation which apply to primitive quarrels. The Crimean war, for instance, was not fought because Englishmen and Russians were animated by mutual hatred. Dynastic and political reasons, as usual, played the chief part in the prelude to that bloody drama. Had Louis Napoleon, after usurping the French throne, not required an alliance with some old European monarchy to rehabilitate his name and veil the fact of his being a parvenu emperor, the struggle of thirty years ago might

never have commenced.

As for Italy's share in the war, it is notorious that Cavour urged the King of Sardinia into action simply to gain a military reputation for the kingdom, as a first step to the unification of the peninsula under a native sovereign; and the Austro-Italian war naturally followed the success of these tactics. Even before the Franco-German war, notwithstanding the cry of à Berlin raised by hired mouchards in the streets of Paris, it is not true that every Frenchman was yearning to grasp a German throat. The mass of the peasantry were criminally hoodwinked. They voted "Yes" for the Empire, thinking it meant Peace, and fancying, as they were told, that the Republican opposition wished to drive the country into costly and perilous foreign adventures.

Let us go back still further, and we shall see evidences of the same truth. Eighty years ago Nelson told his seamen that they had but one duty-to love old England and hate every Frenchman like the devil. Such a sentiment was of course loudly acclaimed, but it was after all a cultivated sentiment. When Pitt began operations against France he found it necessary to tune the pulpit, and bribe and intimidate the press in England. In due time his policy was successful. The people were grossly abused, and after a few years' fighting, when their blood was up, they were ready for anything in the shape of France merely stood to them as a synonym for enemy. They cursed and hated Frenchmen with the spirit of a bull rushing at a red cloak, the cunning matador who flourished the scarlet having his own ends to serve through the creature's madness.

war.

We may consider it a fact that war is the game of "sovereigns and statesmen." Grimly and strongly, as is his wont, Carlyle has expounded the modern meaning of

war in a famous passage in Sartor Resartus. Let us hear him:

"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the netpurport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, 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. Dumdrudge, 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 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, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'Fire!' is given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftesmen, 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; 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 the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."

Carlyle is right. That is the truth about modern war. Democracy has appeared on the scene of politics, but it has not fully assumed its role. The drama is still played by the old actors of the upper classes, and will be so, until the new company is properly formed and cast for the various parts. Even in France, although the empire

is gone, the old ruling classes are still in power. They defer somewhat to the Democracy in home affairs, but in foreign matters they treat it with contemptuous disregard. They carry France into all sorts of adventures for their own benefit. The Empire went to Algeria, and the Republic goes to Tunis. Louis Napoleon sent armies to Mexico, Jules Ferry sends them to China, and someone else to Madagascar. The motive is the same in all cases; the French deputies are cajoled and manoeuvred in the same way; and the French people are fooled and plundered with the same easy impudence. It requires a Hercules to clean out an Augean stable. When a leader of Gambetta's greatness and force arises again, there may be some hope, if he turns his back on the selfish exploiters of society, sets his face resolutely to the people, and stretches out his hands to them for salvation.

The world's peace will never be secure until the Democracy takes the reins of power into its own hands. Parliaments will be less ready to declare war than Governments. Men will vote against war when the decision lies with them, who would not vote against their party when hostilities have begun, and it is too late to undo the mischief without overturning the Ministry. The formalities of public debate would also allow a pause for reason to assert itself. The first passionate impulse of revenge would have time to subside, and wisdom, justice, and humanity would gain a hearing.

At present we are "rushed" into war. The Sovereign has the power of declaring war, and in many cases it is beyond doubt that royalty is largely responsible for the inception and development of international quarrels. Was it not Lord Palmerston who had to threaten the late Prince Consort for intermeddling with the negotiations