Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/842

760 express this deep and inalienable ferocity, look out at intervals from below these gorgeous draperies; and sad it is to think that at intervals the acts and the temper suitable to those glaring eyes must come forward." That differences of national temperament, differences of institutions, and commercial rivalries do breed animosities is, unfortunately, true; but still the question presents itself: How long will the civilized nations of the world persist in a willingness to slaughter one another for these causes? It is acknowledged on all hands that the character of war has changed greatly for the better in modern times. It still is a matter of killing and of maiming in the endeavor to kill; but, decade by decade, it has to reckon more and more with the spirit of humanity. In this age, when civilized nations fight, they fight because they must or think they must, because overmastering circumstances have driven them to it; but the spirit to do the dreadful deeds which they set out to do is not what it was in past times: they neither hate nor contemn their enemies sufficiently to make war quite a satisfactory pastime. Our essayist talks of the "glaring eyes." Doubtless there is always danger when the eyes glare, for the next thing may be a spring; but the eyes may glare under momentary provocation, when there is no permanent rancor in the heart; and then what woe it would be if a moment's madness should mean the wrapping of a kingdom or a continent in the flames of war!

These are the thoughts which, we believe, are pressing themselves more and more upon the minds and hearts of men in the present day. Our essayist himself tells us that war is "ever amending its modes," and that, though it is a necessary final resort, it is even in that character "constantly retiring farther into the rear." This was written fifty years ago, when as yet arbitration between nations was scarcely known. The question which we may reasonably ask is, how much further war will have to retire into the background without falling into practical desuetude. War, moreover, tends continually to its own extinction, inasmuch as it is continually bringing the principles of international justice into clearer relief, and operating as "a bounty upon the investigation and adjudication of disputed cases." In this way "a comprehensive law of nations will finally be accumulated"; so that "it will become possible to erect a real Areopagus or central congress for all Christendom; not" (the essayist is careful to add, keeping in mind his thesis) "with any commission to suppress wars, but with the purpose and effect of oftentimes healing local or momentary animosities, and of taking away the shadow of dishonor from the act of retiring from war." It is encouraging to think that these words have more point to-day than ever they had before; that the progress of events and the