Sweet love were slain: his dearest bond is this, 18. Yet in the long years liker must they grow; He gain in sweetness and in moral height, She mental breadth, nor fail in child ward care, 19. And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time, Distinct in individualities, But like each other, even as those who love. THE NATION IS A LINK BETWEEN THE 1. Love thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the present, but transfused Through future time by power of thought. THE MORAL 2. Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true Country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the thought of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory. 3. Without the nation there can be no humanity, even as without organisation and division there can be no expeditious and fruitful labour. 4. Nations are the citizens of humanity, as individuals are the citizens of the nation. And as every individual lives a two-fold life, inward and of relation, so do the nations. 5. As every individual should strive to promote the power and prosperity of his nation through the exercise of his special function, so should every nation in performing its special mission, according to its special capacity, perform its part in the general work, and promote the progressive advance and prosperity of humanity. 6. Nationality and humanity are therefore equally sacred. To forget humanity is to suppress the aim of our labours; to cancel the nation is to suppress the instrument by which to achieve the aim. 7. No greater calamity can befall a people than to prosper by crime. No success can be a com NATIONAL MORALITY pensation for the wound inflicted on a nation's mind by renouncing right as its supreme Law. 8. Statesmen work in the dark, until the Idea of Right towers above expediency or wealth. Woe to that people which would found its prosperity in wrong! 9. It is time that the low maxims of policy, which have ruled for ages, should fall. It is time that public interest should no longer hallow injustice, and fortify government in making the weak their prey. 10. There is a beautiful harmony between the good of the state and the moral freedom and dignity of the individual. 11. Were these interests in any case discordant, were an individual ever called to serve his country by acts debasing his own mind, he ought not to waver a moment as to the good which he should prefer. His soul he must never stain or enslave. 12. From poverty, pain, the rack, the gibbet, he should not recoil; but for no good of others ought he to part with self-control, or violate the inward law. STRIFE BETWEEN NATIONS IS BARBARIC 1. And yet to-day, with all our civilisation, we have schools where the art of murder, of aiming with deadly accuracy and killing large numbers of men at a distance, is actually taught. WAR PRO- ITSELF 2. The common doctrine has been that prejudice and enmity towards foreign states are means of fostering a national spirit, and of confirming union at home. 3. But bad passions, once instilled into a people, will never exhaust themselves abroad. Vice never yields the fruits of virtue. Injustice to strangers does not breed justice to our friends. 4. War organises a body of men who lose the feelings of the citizen in the soldier; whose habits detach them from the community; whose ruling passion is devotion to a chief; who are inured in the camp to despotic sway; 5. Who are accustomed to accomplish their ends by force, and to sport with the rights and happiness of their fellow-beings; who delight in tumult, adventure and peril, and turn with disgust and scorn from the quiet labours of peace. 6. War tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. The successful nation, flushed by victory, pants for new laurels; while the humbled nation, irri tated by defeat, is impatient to redeem its honour and repair its losses. 7. 66 But what good came of it at last?" Why, that I cannot tell," said he, "But 'twas a famous victory." 8. Peace becomes a truce, a feverish repose, a respite to sharpen anew the sword, and to prepare for future struggles. 9. What, shall our feasts be kept with slaughtered men? Shall braying trumpets and loud churlish drums, 10. We have seen war. We have seen men maddened; returned to the condition of the brutes; HORRORS OF we have seen them kill in wanton sport, out WAR of terror, or for mere bravado and show. THE MORAL 11. Where right exists no longer, and law is dead, where all sense of justice has been lost, we have seen innocent men shot down on the highway, because they were timid, and thus excited suspicion. 12. We have seen dogs, chained to their masters' doors, killed by way of target practice; we have seen cows lying in a field fired at by the machine-guns, just for the fun of shooting at something. 13. Nations, exasperated by mutual injuries, burn for each other's humiliation and ruin. They delight to hear that famine, pestilence, want, defeat, are desolating a hostile community. 14. The slaughter of thousands of fellow-beings, in |