war has eaten its way backward through
all the technicalities of lawyers learned in the infinitesimals of
ordinances and statutes; through all the casuistries of divines, experts
in the differential calculus of conscience and duty; until it stands
revealed to all men as the natural and inevitable conflict of two
incompatible forms of civilization, one or the other of which must
dominate the central zone of the continent, and eventually claim the
hemisphere for its development.

We have reached the region of those broad principles and large axioms
which the wise Romans, the world's lawgivers, always recognized as
above all special enactments. We have come to that solid substratum
acknowledged by Grotius in his great Treatise: "Necessity itself which
reduces things to the mere right of Nature." The old rules which were
enough for our guidance in quiet times, have become as meaningless "as
moonlight on the dial of the day." We have followed precedents as long
as they could guide us; now we must make precedents for the ages which
are to succeed us.

If we are frightened from our object by the money we have spent,
the current prices of United States stocks show that we value our
nationality at only a small fraction of our wealth. If we feel that we
are paying too dearly for it in the blood of our people, let us recall
those grand words of Samuel Adams:

"I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were
revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish,
and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty!"

What we want now is a strong purpose; the purpose of Luther, when he
said, in repeating his Pater Noster, fiat voluntas MEA,--let my will
be done; though he considerately added, quia Tua,--because my will is
Thine. We want the virile energy of determination which made the oath
of Andrew Jackson sound so like the devotion of an ardent saint that the
recording angel might have entered it unquestioned among the prayers of
the faithful.

War is a grim business. Two years ago our women's fingers were busy
making "Havelocks." It seemed to us then as if the Havelock made half
the soldier; and now we smile to think of those days of inexperience and
illusion. We know now what War means, and we cannot look its dull, dead
ghastliness in the face unless we feel that there is some great and
noble principle behind it. It makes little difference what we thought
we were fightin