lievieic of lierien-s, l/lS/13. 



LEADING ARTICLES. 



993 



THE GOSPEL OF WAR. 



■■''The Sevenfold Flame of War," by 

 Kenelm D. Cotes, is a whole-hearted ap- 

 preciation of the virtues of fighting. 



Mr. Cotes insists that the scheme of 

 Nature does not admit of a race of lotus- 

 eaters, and goes on to say : — 



Truth to tell, those that believe that war 

 depends upon illusion know nothing' of the 

 historj' of social life. The world is not, and 

 is not intended to be, a place of effortless 

 peace or unclouded happiness. Such a world 

 would produce a race of monsters. Life is 

 a sphere of hard, unceasing- toil, w'here hard- 

 ships have to be faced daily, and dangers 

 often. Could war be abolished to-morrow 

 the industrial death-roll would still go on, 

 taking a far greater toll in human life. It 

 is not the voice of this man or of that ; it 

 is not a question of reasoned argument as 

 to what mig-ht be ; the matter is settled by 

 an appeal to Nature, and to the history of 

 life upon this planet since history began. 

 Those who wish to know the truth have but 

 to turn to the unquestioned origin of what 

 is noblest as distinguished from what is 

 most profitable and pleasant, and they will 

 learn these certain truths which are seven 

 if broadly numbered, but which have in- 

 finite subdivisions. There can be no mitiga- 



Simplicissimus.^ [Munich. 



LEIPZIG. 

 " Oh ! God, Thou hast helped ua against Napo- 

 leon, help us now against our peoples !" 



i/^j:'£ 



I'asquino.'] [Ttirin. 



MARS TAKES A STROLL OUTSIDE THE PALACE 



OF PEACE. 



tion of the evils of war except by the 

 methods that war teaches ; the tribes and 

 petty kingdoms must unite, then mightier 

 kingdoms, and lastly Europe itself upon the 

 basis, not of legal decisions, but of the 

 mutual respect that one brave people has 

 for another. War is a means of livelihood, 

 and this is the one truth that the Peace 

 Party have discovered, that the less re- 

 munerative it is the less it will be resorted to. 



The writer traces the transfer of power 



from the warrior king to Parliament, 



and continues to give war the credit of 



all advance : — 



Freedom is the birthright of the race be- 

 cause the laws of war determine so; the 

 despot who urg-es his honest slave battalions 

 under the lash finds a handful of freemen 

 who fear the law more than his subjects fear 

 him, and that law forbids retreat ; the aris- 

 tocracy that rely upon armour and castles 

 learn that when they come out to battle the 

 plebeian arrows pierce the helmets, and that 

 God Omnipotent gives victory solely to the 

 holdier of the bow as in the g"reat democratic 

 song, " Deposuit potentes." . . . 



_ The sevenfold flame of war burns oppres- 

 sion ; it puts down the plunderer and the 

 oppressor, and in his place there rises the 

 artisan and the trader, and in their midst 

 the artist and the poet. It teaches that there 

 is no evil so great as injustice and oppres- 

 sion, and sweeps away the empires where 

 luxury is debased by battening on the poor. 



