The havoc rages; the ground is soaked with commingling blood; the air is rent by commingling cries; horse and rider are stretched together on the earth.

More revolting than mangled victims, gashed limbs, lifeless trunks, spattering brains, are the lawless passions which sweep, tempest-like, through the fiendish tumult.

Not as brothers, not as friends, not as wayfarers of the common ocean, do they come together, but as enemies.

In amazement at this strange, unnatural contest, away from country and home, where there is no country or home to defend, we ask again, Wherefore this dismal scene?

Yes! the barbarous, brutal relations which once prevailed between individuals, which prevailed still longer between communities composing nations, are not yet banished from the great Christian Commonwealth.

Religion, reason, humanity, first penetrate the individual, next larger bodies, and, widening in influence, slowly leaven nations.

War is the trade of barbarians," exclaimed Napoleon, in a moment of truthful remorse, prompted by his bloodiest field.

The business of War cannot be other than the trade of barbarians, cannot be other than a damnable profession; and War itself is certainly Hell on earth.

Where the horse of Attila had been a blade of grass would not grow; but in the footprints of pestilence, famine, and earthquake the kindly charities spring into life.

Not by War, not by the hand of man, were these solid structures levelled, and all these delights changed to desolation.

Such was the desolation, and such the charity, sown by the earthquake at Lisbon,--an event which, after the lapse of nearly a century, still stands without a parallel.

But War shakes from its terrible folds all this desolation, without its attendant charity.

Its citadel, churches, houses, were shattered, and peaceful families at the fireside torn in mutilated fragments by the murderous bursting shell; but the English, the universal charities, which helped to restore Lisbon, were not offered to…

It is because men see War, in the darkness of prejudice, only as an agency of attack or defence, or as a desperate sally of wickedness, that they fail to recognize it as a form of judgment, sanctioned and legalized by Public Authority.

Surely all must unite in condemning the Arbitrament of War.

But if War be thus odious, if it be the Duel of Nations, if it be the old surviving Trial by Battle, then must its unquestionable barbarism affect all its incidents, all its machinery, all its enginery, together with all who sanction it…

Admitting the necessity of Force for such purpose, Christianity revolts at Force as the substitute for a judicial tribunal.

The example of the Great Teacher, the practice of the early disciples, the injunctions of self-denial, love, non-resistance to evil,--sometimes supposed to forbid Force in any exigency, even of self-defence,--all these must apply with…

If the sword, in the hand of an assaulted individual, may become the instrument of sincere self-defence, if, under the sanction of a judicial tribunal, it may become the instrument of Justice also, surely it can never be the Arbiter of…

The cautious sword of the magistrate is unlike--oh, how unlike!--the ruthless sword of War.

The component parts of the War System may all be resolved into PREPARATIONS FOR WAR,--as court-house, jail, judges, sheriffs, constables, and posse comitatus are preparations for the administration of municipal justice.

If justice were not to be administered, these would not exist.

If War were not sanctioned by the Commonwealth of Nations, as the means of determining international controversies, then forts, navies, armies, military display, military chaplains, and military sermons would not exist.

Only recently have men learned to question these preparations; for it is only recently that they have opened their eyes to the true character of the system, in which they are a part.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.