268 A Forgotten Maxim 



an individual, is the unpardonable sin, and a wilful 

 failure to prepare for danger may in its effects be 

 as bad as cowardice. The timid man who can not 

 fight, and the selfish, short-sighted, or foolish man 

 who will not take the steps that will enable him to 

 fight, stand on almost the same plane. 



It is not only true that a peace may be so ignoble 

 and degrading as to be worse than any war; it is 

 also true that it may be fraught with more blood- 

 shed than most wars. Of this there has been melan- 

 choly proof during the last two years. Thanks 

 largely to the very unhealthy influence of the men 

 whose business it is to speculate in the money 

 market, and who approach every subject from the 

 financial standpoint, purely; and thanks quite as 

 much to the cold-blooded brutality and calculating 

 timidity of many European rulers and statesmen, the 

 peace of Europe has been preserved, while the Turk 

 has been allowed to butcher the Armenians with 

 hideous and unmentionable barbarity, and has actu- 

 ally been helped to keep Crete in slavery. War has 

 been averted at the cost of more bloodshed and in- 

 finitely more suffering and degradation to wretched 

 women and children than have occurred in any 

 European struggle since the days of Waterloo. No 

 war of recent years, no matter how wanton, has 

 been so productive of horrible misery as the peace 

 which the powers have maintained during the con- 

 tinuance of the Armenian butcheries. The men who 

 would preach this peace, and indeed the men who 

 have preached universal peace in terms that have 



