ld we go to the
almshouses and soldiers' orphans' homes and see widows and children by
the thousand suffering the doled-out charity of state or nation
because war has robbed them of their rightful protectors; could we but
realize the agony of the broken home, a thousandfold worse than the
agony of the battlefield,--then might we know more of the real cost of
war.

And still our idea would be inadequate, though we realized the full
measure of every groan and heartache. Earth's most priceless treasures
are still more intangible things, the treasures of justice and
kindliness and love. In that higher realm the cost of war is most
terrible and most deadly. The spirit of war in the soldier sets aside
the moral law, makes human life seem valueless, human suffering a
thing to be disregarded, human slaughter an honorable profession. The
war spirit blinds the eye of the statesman, till wrong seems right,
folly seems expediency, and the death of thousands seems preferable
to the life and happiness of all under terms of peace not dictated by
his own will. Justice is dethroned, and revenge takes up the iron
scepter and lets fly the thunderbolt. The war spirit perverts the mind
of the publicist, till the achievements of honorable peace sink into
insignificance, and the press clamors for the war that means money to
the publisher but death to innocent thousands who can have no possible
interest in the conflict. The war spirit takes possession of the
pulpit, and the minister called to preach the loving message of the
Prince of Peace stirs up the spirit of contention and animosity, of
hate and murder. Could we but draw aside the curtain and, back of the
tinsel and gold braid, see the crime, the hate, the moral degradation
that war always brings, never again would a friend of humanity ask for
war.

But the eyes of the world are opening to the fact that the cost of war
is far too high in money and in men, in suffering and sacrifice, and
in those higher values of justice and kindliness and love. And as the
thought once grew that personal differences might be settled without
personal combat, so men are looking toward the settlement of
international difficulties without recourse to the sword. They have
seen that every argument against the duel of men applies with still
greater force against the duel of nations. And the world has moved
farther toward world peace in the past twenty-five years than in all
the centuries of history that have p