which the sight of numberless men produces, grim, deadly determination
on their faces, the thought of glory, the hope of renown, the dash of a
few minutes, the stroke perhaps of a few seconds, the wild burst of
untamed, savage human nature temporarily released from the restraint of
reason! What cannot, what shall not man under such circumstances
accomplish? Yes, we are not insensible to deeds of immortal daring, of
courage, that must live for ever; nor to the memory of Leonidas and his
Spartans, of the deathless glories of Thermopylae, of the unbroken
chain of chivalric deeds from the days of ancient Greece to "the thin
red line" that broke the fiercest charge, and the handful of Englishmen
that shot away their last cartridge and then stood to die with their
country's anthem on their lips--we are not insensible to all this, but
we say the day for it is past and gone, and the heroism of the
battle-field must be consecrated anew to the service of peace and the
poor. The millions on millions we are spending on those majestic
engines of destruction, those ships of ours that bastion the brine for
England, what could they not do for the moralisation of the poor and
outcast at our very doors in this city! Why, in three years that
inferno of the East End, that foul, reeking, pestilential nest of
tenements, unfit for even animal habitation, could be swept clean away
and human homes erected which, to put it on the lowest grounds, would
positively pay a dividend on the capital outlay, as has been
convincingly proved over and over again.

"How long, O Lord, how long," we exclaim with the prophet of old, shall
men be consumed with this ignoble fever, this war-madness which
degrades the combatants far more than it exalts them, which senselessly
destroys valuable property, scatters ruin broadcast, paralyses
industry, robs the poor of all the bread of life, fills the land with
mourning and desolation, with widows and orphans?--war, which we learnt
from wild beasts, our ancestors, which cannot therefore determine a
question of justice, which makes the wrong triumph as often as the
right, which degrades all that touch it by isolating them for months,
for years perhaps, from civilised life, which demoralises the victors,
embitters the vanquished, and, by creating strife, perpetuates the
possibilities of renewed strife--war, which at this moment keeps Europe
in the condition of an armed camp, millions of men leading
comparatively idle