e of their people the Sioux hunting-grounds.
Nevertheless, it is the men actually on the borders of the longed-for
ground, the men actually in contact with the savages, who in the end
shape their own destinies.

Righteousness of the War.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though
it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce
settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind
under a debt to him. American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and
Tartar, New Zealander and Maori,--in each case the victor, horrible
though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the
future greatness of a mighty people. The consequences of struggles for
territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison. Looked at
from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine
is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities
pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; but it is of incalculable
importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the
hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the
heritage of the dominant world races.

Horrors of the War.

Yet the very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the
rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its
consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in
certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous. It is primeval warfare,
and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron. All
the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two
thousand years is lost. It is a warfare where no pity is shown to
non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the
vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity. A sad and evil feature of
such warfare is that the whites, the representatives of civilization,
speedily sink almost to the level of their barbarous foes, in point of
hideous brutality. The armies are neither led by trained officers nor
made up of regular troops--they are composed of armed settlers, fierce
and wayward men, whose ungovernable passions are unrestrained by
discipline, who have many grievous wrongs to redress, and who look on
their enemies with a mixture of contempt and loathing, of dread and
intense hatred. When the clash comes between these men and their sombre
foes, too often there follow deeds of enormous, of incredibl