forbid them to look ahead. And the impecunious papers show blanks
in the places where the truth was too clearly written. At the end of a
war, the last things to be known by the children of the slain and by
the mutilated and worn-out survivors will be all the war-aims of its
directors.

Suddenly they reveal to the people an accomplished fact which has been
worked out in the _terra incognita_ of courts, and they say, "Now that
it is too late, only one resource is left you--Kill that you be not
killed."

They brandish the superficial incident which in the last hour has
caused the armaments and the heaped-up resentment and intrigues to
overflow in war; and they say, "That is the only cause of the war." It
is not true; the only cause of war is the slavery of those whose flesh
wages it.

They say to the people, "When once victory is gained, agreeably to your
masters, all tyranny will have disappeared as if by magic, and there
will be peace on earth." It is not true. There will be no peace on
earth until the reign of men is come.

But will it ever come? Will it have time to come, while hollow-eyed
humanity makes such haste to die? For all this advertisement of war,
radiant in the sunshine, all these temporary and mendacious reasons,
stupidly or skillfully curtailed, of which not one reaches the lofty
elevation of the common welfare--all these insufficient pretexts
suffice in sum to make the artless man bow in bestial ignorance, to
adorn him with iron and forge him at will.

"It is not on Reason," cried the specter of the battlefield, whose
torturing spirit was breaking away from his still gilded body; "it is
not on Reason that the Bible of History stands. Else are the law of
majesties and the ancient quarrel of the flags essentially supernatural
and intangible, or the old world is built on principles of insanity."

He touches me with his strong hand and I try to shake myself, and I
stumble curiously, although lying down. A clamor booms in my temples
and then thunders like the guns in my ears; it overflows me,--I drown
in that cry----

"It must be! It has to be! You shall _not_ know!" That is the
war-cry, that is the cry of war.

* * * * * *

War will come again after this one. It will come again as long as it
can be determined by people other than those who fight. The same
causes will produce the same effects, and the living will have to give
up all hope.

We canno