iduals how beautifully it shows between two
dwellers in the same street or townland. They rejoice together in
prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round
work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond
of unity in their mutual interests. Consider, then, the sundering of
their friendship by some act of evil on either side. The old friendship
is turned to hate. Now the proximity that gave intimate pleasure to
their comradeship gives as keen an edge to their enmity; they meet one
another, cross one another, harass one another at every point. The
bitterness that is such a poison to life must be revolting to their best
instincts; deep in their hearts must be a yearning for the casting out
of hate and the return of old comradeship. Still the estranged brothers
are at daggers drawn. Sometimes the evil done is so great and the
bitterness so keen that the old spirit can apparently never be restored;
but while there is any hope whatever the true heart will keep it alive
deep down, for it must be cherished and kept in mind if the whole beauty
of life is to be renewed and preserved for ever. It is so with nations
as with individuals. Once this is recognised we must be on guard against
a new error, which is an old error in new form, the taking of means for
end. The end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in
essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and
beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a
certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. No, its
message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into
evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable;
it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. It may be further
urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men
the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a
certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. Whatever
it removes it will not be their strength. In a war admittedly between
brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men
asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they
are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying
harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of
bitterness and hate. When, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a
deep sense his brother, you d