d prating of Liberty and
Freedom while the necks of three races of men were bending under the yoke
of an oligarchy more imperious, more pitiless, more covetous, besotted,
brutal, and ignorant than any other that the spotted records of History
can show--look here, look here!

Nations that rush to dreadful War, loosing the direful threefold plague of
Iron, Fire, and Disease to scourge and brand and desolate the once smiling
face of your Mother Earth, pause as you roll onwards in desolating
cataclysms of armed and desperate men, and forgetting the bloodstained
she-devil you misname Glory, look here, in the Name of One who loved and
suffered little children, rating their innocent bodies and spotless souls
at such high value that Little Dierck and his countless
brother-and-sister-babes that have perished of Iron, Fire, and Disease, as
of Terror and Famine, Death's twin henchmen, shall weigh in the balance
against Crowned Heads and Lords and Commons and Presidents and
Representatives and Deputies, until they kick the beam!

Should there be War? Of course there should be War! you say.

Have you seen War? Perhaps, even as I have. And, having seen it, dare you
justify the shedding, by men who hold the Christian Faith, of these
spilled-out oceans of Christian blood?

That question will be settled when the Trumpet of the Great Angel sounds,
and the Sea and the Earth shall give up their dead, and everyone shall
answer for his deeds before the Throne of God. And until then, look to it
that if you war in any cause, the cause be a just one.

"My Dierck! My little Dierck! O God! God!----"

Standing with that tragic purple mask turned upwards to the silent sky,
and the wild eyes blazing, and the great fist at the end of the uplifted
arm brandished in the Face of Heaven itself, the Boer mother demanded of
her Maker why this thing had been done?

"He was so good. Never a fib since last I gave him the ox-reim end to
taste. Never a lump of sugar or a cookie or a plum pilfered--he would take
them as bold as brass before your face if you didn't give. He said the
night-prayer regularly. For the morning, Lord, Thou knowest boys want to
be up and at mischief as soon as they have rubbed the sleep out of their
eyes--'tis only natural. And the father a God-fearing man, and me a woman
of piety. For when have I backslidden before Thee? If any of mine have
hung back when I told them to loop and do a thing, or sneaked off and hid
when we w