74 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



essary conflict. Fortunately the government lias proved more 

 moderate than the people and the danger so far has been avoided. 



Nations have the rights of individuals and the same duties rest 

 upon them — among others the duty of moderation. 



"It not infrequently happens, " says General Halleck,* "that 

 what is, at first, looked upon as an injury or an insult is found, upon 

 more deliberate examination, to be a mistake rather than an act of 

 malice or one designed to give offense. Moreover the injury may 

 result from the acts of inferior persons, which may not receive 

 the approbation of their own governments. A little moderation 

 and delay, in such cases, may bring to the offended party a just 

 satisfaction whereas rash and precipitate measures may often lead 

 to the shedding of innocent blood." 



I woidd not abate one jot or tittle of our just rights but I would 

 counsel moderation, a postponement of judgment until all the 

 circumstances are known, an avoidance of irritating and insulting 

 charges, a resort to peaceful measures of redress and above all no 

 talk of war until it shall appear that war is necessary to save 

 national honor. "He that is slow to anger is better than the 

 mighty and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city." 



The last and most important cause of the war spirit is to be 

 found in the fact that the new generation have never known the 

 horrors of war and are ignorant of its true character. 



"Art and literature," says a recent writer on international law,f 

 "combine to help on the work of slaughter. Poets and painters 

 celebrate the 'pomp and circumstance of glorious war' till people 

 come seriously to regard it as a thing of bands and banners, of 

 glittering uniforms and burnished steel, of deeds of heroic daring 

 and examples of lofty self-sacrifice. They forget tlie stern realities 

 of cold and hunger, wounds and death, the shattered limbs, the 

 fever thirst, the fiendish passions of cruelt}' and lust. They forget 

 the demoralization it causes among both victors and vanquished 

 and the widespread ruin that follows in its train. In the twenty- 

 five 3'ears betvven 1855 and 1880 over two million men died in wars 

 between civilized powers." 



In our own civil war, upon the Union side alone, out of three 

 hundred and fifty thousand dead, only sixty-seven thousand were 

 killed in battle. Two hundred thousand died of disease, forty- 

 three thousand died of wounds and forty thousand from accident, 

 murder, execution, starvation or abuse. Thirty thousand one hun- 



*" International Law," 3d ed.. Vol. 1, p. 403. 



+T. J. Lawrence. "Essays on Modern International Law.'" id ed.. pp. :il2-4. 



