BRIEF ESSAYS 211 



when faculty and insight are added, they give that 

 weight and force which have made the English race 

 what it is. There is one notahle exception in our 

 later literature to this American tendency to over- 

 refinement of form, which I am not likely to for- 

 get; and that is furnished by Walt Whitman. 

 Mass and strength, and all the primary qualities of 

 both body and mind, are fully attended to by him. 

 Probably this, more than anything else, is the rea- 

 son why his poems are so distasteful to the majority 

 of his countrymen, and why his reception abroad 

 has been more cordial than at home. It is, at any 

 rate, the ground upon which his appearance in our 

 literature has always been regarded by myself as so 

 suggestive and so welcome. 



IV 



THE ETHICS OF WAE 



Why is it that we look so much more compla- 

 cently upon war, upon a fight between two nations, 

 than we do upon a fight between two individuals 1 

 If my neighbor and I have a difiiculty or a misun- 

 derstanding and proceed to settle it with clubs, or 

 pistols, or with our fists, in the opinion of all 

 decent people we behave shamefully, wickedly, and 

 reduce ourselves to a level with the brutes. But 

 when nations settle their difficulties by an appeal to 

 arms, and thousands upon thousands of lives are 

 sacrificed, and millions upon millions of treasure 

 squandered, we take quite a diff'erent view of the 

 matter. We may say, "What a pity! "or "How 



