y and the soul,
therefore he cannot refuse to go; yet while leaving his own family he
promises beforehand that through him not one Japanese family shall be
orphaned; he believes in the chief law of God, the law of all
religions--to act toward others as one wishes others to act toward
oneself. Of such men more or less consciously recognizing this law, there
are in our time, not in the Christian world alone, but in the Buddhistic,
Mahomedan, Confucian, and Brahminic world, not only thousands but
millions.

There exist true heroes, not those who are now being feted because,
having wished to kill others, they were not killed themselves, but true
heroes, who are now confined in prisons and in the province of Yakoutsk
for having categorically refused to enter the ranks of murderers, and who
have preferred martyrdom to this departure from the law of Jesus. There
are also such as he who writes to me, who go, but who will not kill. But
also that majority which goes without thinking, and endeavors not to
think of what it is doing, still in the depth of its soul does now
already feel that it is doing an evil deed by obeying authorities who
tear men from labor and from their families and send them to needless
slaughter of men, repugnant to their soul and their faith; and they go
only because they are so entangled on all sides that--"Where can one
escape?"

Meanwhile those who remain at home not only feel this, but know and
express it. Yesterday in the high road I met some peasants returning from
Toula. One of them was reading a leaflet as he walked by the side of his
cart.

I asked, "What is that--a telegram?"

"This is yesterday's,--but here is one of to-day." He took another out of
his pocket. We stopped. I read it.

"You should have seen what took place yesterday at the station," he said;
"it was dreadful. Wives, children, more than a thousand of them, weeping.
They surrounded the train, but were allowed no further. Strangers wept,
looking on. One woman from Toula gasped and fell down dead. Five
children. They have since been placed in various institutions; but the
father was driven away all the same.... What do we want with this
Manchuria, or whatever it is called? There is sufficient land here. And
what a lot of people and of property has been destroyed."

Yes, the relation of men to war is now quite different from that which
formerly existed, even so lately as the year '77. That which is now
taking place never took pl