A LEAGUE OF PEACE 419 



recruits are obtained chiefly from a certain class. We hear of a like 

 trouble in another profession, a scarcity of young, educated, consci- 

 entious men desirous of entering the ministry, thought to be owing to 

 the theological tenets to which they are required to subscribe. Both 

 branches of the church in Scotland have accordingly endeavored to 

 meet this problem by substituting less objectionable terms. 



Perhaps from the public library young men have taken Carlyle 

 and read how he describes the artisans of Britain and France : " Thirty 

 stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the 

 word ' fire ' is given, and they blow the souls out of one another ; and in 

 place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead car- 

 cases, which it must bury and anew shed tears for. Had these men any 

 quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest! They lived far 

 enough apart, were the entirest strangers; nay in so wide a universe 

 there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness 

 between them. How then? Simpleton! Their governors had fallen 

 out, and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make 

 these poor blockheads shoot." 



Those who decline the advances of the decorated recruiting officer 

 may have stumbled upon Professor MacMichael's address to the Peace 

 Congress at Edinburgh, 1853, when he said : " The military profession 

 is inconsistent with Christianity. The higher the rank and the greater 

 the intellect, the more desperate the criminality. Here is a person upon 

 whom God has conferred the rare gift of mathematical genius. If 

 properly directed, what an abundant source of benefit to mankind ! It 

 might be employed in the construction of railways, by which the most 

 distant parts of the world are brought into communication with each 

 other. It might be employed in flashing the trembling lightning across 

 the wires, making them the medium of intercourse between loving 

 hearts thousands of miles apart ; in increasing the wonderful powers of 

 the steam-engine, relieving man from his exhausting toils; in applica- 

 tion to the printing-press, sending light and knowledge to the farthest 

 extremities of the earth. It might be employed in draining marshes, 

 in supplying our towns and cities with water, and in adding to the health 

 and happiness of men. It might lay down rules derived from the 

 starry heavens, by which the mariner is guided through the wild wastes 

 of waters in the darkest night. How noble is science when thus 

 directed, but in the same proportion how debasing does it become when 

 directed to human destruction ! It is as if a chemist were to make use 

 of his knowledge not to cure the diseases of which humanity is suffer- 

 ing, but to poison the springs of existence. The scientific soldier 

 cultivates his endowments for what purpose ? That he may determine 

 the precise direction at which these batteries may vomit forth their 

 fire so as to destroy most property and most lives ; that he may calculate 



