n be found in other countries. Scotland was also a pioneer in
forbidding on the Sabbath all work, "gaming, playing, passing to
taverns and ale-houses and wilful remaining away from the parish kirk
in time of sermon."

[Sidenote: Mail]

Government has other functions than the enforcement of the civil and
criminal law. Almost contemporary with the opening of the century was
the establishment of post offices for the forwarding of letters. After
Maximilian had made a start in the Netherlands other countries were not
slow to follow his example. Though under special government
supervision at first these letter-carriers were private men.

[Sidenote: Sanitation]

In the Middle Ages there had been efforts to safeguard public
sanitation. The sixteenth century did not greatly improve on them.
Thus, Geneva passed a law that garbage and other refuse should not be
allowed to lie in the streets for more than three days in summer or
eight days in winter. In extreme cases quarantine was adopted as a
precaution against epidemics.

{487} [Sidenote: War]

It is the most heart-breaking or the most absurd fact in human history,
according as the elements involved are focused in a humane or in a
cynical light, that the chief energies of government as well as the
most zealous forces of peoples, have been dedicated since civilization
began to the practice of wholesale homicide. As we look back from the
experience of the Great War to the conflicts of other times, they seem
to our jaded imaginations almost as childish as they were vicious. In
the sixteenth century, far more than in the nineteenth, the nations
boiled and bubbled with spleen and jealousy, hurled Thrasonical threats
and hyperbolic boasts in each other's teeth, breathing out mutual
extermination with no compunctious visitings of nature to stay their
hungry swords--but when they came to blows they had not the power of
boys. The great nations were always fighting but never fought to a
finish. In the whole century no national capital west of Hungary, save
Rome and Edinburgh, was captured by an enemy. The real harm was not
done on the battlefield, where the carnage was incredibly small, but in
the raids and looting of town and country by the professional assassins
who filled the ranks of the hireling troops. Then, indeed, cities were
burned, wealth was plundered and destroyed, men were subjected to
nameless tortures and women to indescribable outrages, and children
wer