214 INDOOK STUDIES 



the net purpose and upshot of war ? To my own 

 knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil in the 

 British village of Dumdrudge usually some five 

 hundred souls. From these, by certain natural 

 enemies of the Erenoh, there are successively se- 

 lected during the Trench war, say thirty able-bodied 

 men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled 

 and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty 

 and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even 

 trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, an- 

 other build, another hammer, and the weakest can 

 stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Neverthe- 

 less, amid much weeping and swearing, they are 

 selected; all dressed in red, and shipped away on 

 the public charges some two thousand miles, or say 

 only to the south of Spain; and fed there till 

 wanted. And now to that same spot in the south 

 of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a 

 French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till 

 at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come 

 into actual juxtaposition; and thirty stands fronting 

 thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway 

 the word ' Fire ! ' is given ; and they blow the souls 

 out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk, 

 useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses 

 which it must bury and anew shed tears for. Had 

 these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not 

 the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were 

 the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, 

 there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some 

 mutual helpfulness between them. How theni 



