Olympic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look
upon, and be with you in; but they will not be with you, if you sit on
the sides of the amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth,
whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant millions into gladiatorial
war. You also, you tender and delicate women, for whom, and by whose
command, all true battle has been, and must ever be; you would perhaps
shrink now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as queens
above set lists where the jousting game might be mortal. How much more,
then, ought you to shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre
pit in which even a few condemned slaves were slaying each other only
for your delight! And do you _not_ shrink from the _fact_ of sitting
above a theatre pit, where,--not condemned slaves,--but the best and
bravest of the poor sons of your people, slay each other,--not man to
man,--as the coupled gladiators; but race to race, in duel of
generations? You would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit to see
this; and it is indeed true, that the women of Europe--those who have no
heart-interests of their own at peril in the contest--draw the curtains
of their boxes, and muffle the openings; so that from the pit of the
circus of slaughter there may reach them only at intervals a half-heard
cry and a murmur as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of souls expire.
They shut out the death-cries; and are happy, and talk wittily among
themselves. That is the utter literal fact of what our ladies do in
their pleasant lives.

Nay, you might answer, speaking for them--'We do not let these wars come
to pass for our play, nor by our carelessness; we cannot help them. How
can any final quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than by war?' I
cannot now delay, to tell you how political quarrels might be otherwise
settled. But grant that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason can be
understood by nations; no law of justice submitted to by them: and that,
while questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be determined by
truth and equity, the questions which are to issue in the perishing or
saving of kingdoms can be determined only by the truth of the sword, and
the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge if it will
always be necessary for you to put your quarrel into the hearts of your
poor, and sign your treaties with peasants' blood. You would be ashamed
to do this in your own private position