ldier,
but not every man, or nearly every man makes a good citizen: the tests
of war are not so searching as the tests of peace, but still the
soldier is the hero.

Very early in the lives of our children we begin to inculcate the love
of battle and sieges and invasions, for we put the miniature weapons of
warfare into their little hands. We buy them boxes of tin soldiers at
Christmas, and help them to build forts and blow them up. We have
military training in our schools; and little fellows are taught to
shoot at targets, seeing in each an imaginary foe, who must be
destroyed because he is "not on our side." There is a song which runs
like this:

If a lad a maid would marry
He must learn a gun to carry.

thereby putting love and love-making on a military basis--but it goes!
Military music is in our ears, and even in our churches. "Onward
Christian soldiers, marching as to war" is a Sunday-school favorite.
We pray to the God of Battles, never by any chance to the God of
Workshops!

Once a year, of course, we hold a Peace Sunday and on that day we pray
mightily that God will give us peace in our time and that war shall be
no more, and the spear shall be beaten into the pruning hook. But the
next day we show God that he need not take us too literally, for we go
on with the military training, and the building of the battleships, and
our orators say that in time of peace we must prepare for war.

War is the antithesis of all our teaching. It breaks all the
commandments; it makes rich men poor, and strong men weak. It makes
well men sick, and by it living men are changed to dead men. Why,
then, does war continue? Why do men go so easily to war--for we may as
well admit that they do go easily? There is one explanation. They
like it!

When the first contingent of soldiers went to the war from Manitoba,
there stood on the station platform a woman crying bitterly. (She was
not the only one.) She had in her arms an infant, and three small
children stood beside her wondering.

"'E would go!" she sobbed in reply to the sympathy expressed by the
people who stood near her, "'E loves a fight--'e went through the South
African War, and 'e's never been 'appy since--when 'e 'ears war is on
he says I'll go--'e loves it--'e does!"

'"E loves it!"

That explains many things.

"Father sent me out," said a little Irish girl, "to see if there's a
fight going on any place, because if there is, please, father woul