BEIEF ESSAYS 213 



ties in this country have repudiated their honest 

 debts in a way that would have ruined the standing 

 of any business man in them had he resorted to the 

 same trick to defraud his creditors. The American 

 Congress had for more than fifty years behaved in 

 the most shameful and dishonest manner in refusing 

 to authorize the payment of the French spoliation 

 claims. The precepts of religion have had little or 

 no influence upon the policy of nations. Love your 

 neighbor as yourself; do unto others as you would 

 that others should do unto you; think no evil, 

 etc., — what should we think if governments acted 

 upon these principles ? Is the nation, then, a rem- 

 nant of barbarism that the moral law should not 

 apply to it 1 that religion should not affect it ? 



It is because nations are not as civilized as indi- 

 viduals, and, probably, never will be, that war is 

 still possible. The nation is still the tribe, and 

 the tribal instincts for self-preservation are still 

 active; tribal jealousies and animosities are still 

 easily kindled. Our admiration for war is the same 

 as our admiration for the virtues of the stern heroic 

 ages, — courage, self-sacrifice, contempt of death, 

 personal prowess, great leadership. The nation, as 

 such, still rests upon these qualities. Genius and 

 power always take us, and war is a great field for 

 the display of genius and power. 



All readers of " Sartor Eesartus " will remember 

 the striking, though not quite just, light in which 

 Carlyle sets war : — 



"What, speaking in quite unoificial language, is 



