fore her; red fields and pastures, still reeking with blood; burnt homes and churches; violated women, tortured children; mounds and mountains of corpses under which moan the dying; groans, curses, blasphemy that breaks through the death-rattle and the cries; mutilated bodies, withered breasts, fields of battle black with ravens. . . .

...

Oppressive silence, as before a thunderstorm, overhangs the world. The air is perfectly motionless. But the flowers tremble and sway in fright as in a tempest, bending to the very ground and extending their heads to the Virgin with boundless entreaty.

Closed are her lips, and sad is her face. Again and again before her rises the image of Him whom human malice, envy, intolerance, cupidity, and ambition sentenced to unbearable tortures and a shameful death. She sees Him-beaten, bleeding, carrying upon His shoulders His heavy cross, and stumbling under its weight. Upon the dusty road she sees dark sprays, the drops of His divine blood. She sees His beautiful body, mutilated by torture, hanging by out-turned arms upon the cross, with protruding chest, and bloody sweat upon His deathly pale face. And again she hears His dreadful whisper: "I am thirsty!" And again, as then, a sword is plunged into the mother's heart.

The sun rises, hidden beyond dark, heavy clouds. It burns in heaven like an enormous red blot, the bloody conflagration of the world. And lifting up her saddened eyes, the Holy Virgin asks timidly, her voice trembling: "O Lord! Where are the bounds of Thy great wrath?"

But relentless is the wrath of God, and none knows its bounds! And when, in grief and sorrow, the Holy Virgin lowers her eyes again, she sees that the innocent cups of gentle flowers are filled with bloody dew.

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary, When the death-angel touches those swift keys! What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.

On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's song, And loud, amid the universal clamor,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace
Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,

And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;
The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;
The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,
The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursed instruments as these,
Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?

Were half the power, that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and

courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals or forts:

The warrior's name would be a name abhorrèd!
And every nation, that should lift again.
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear forevermore the curse of Cain!

Down the dark future, through long generations, The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease; And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise.

And yet how sweet

The sound along the marching street
Of drum and fife! And I forget

Wet eyes of widows, and forget
Broken old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul.

Without a soul— save this bright drink
Of heady music, sweet as hell;
And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching with the marching street;
For yonder, yonder, goes the fife,
And what care I for human life!
The tears fill my astonished eyes,

And my full heart is like to break;

And yet 'tis all embannered lies,

A dream those little drummers make.

Oh, it is wickedness to clothe

Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks

Hidden in music, like a queen

That in a garden of glory walks,

Till good men love the thing they loathe.
Art, thou hast many infamies,

But not an infamy like this;

Oh! snap the fife and still the drum,

And show the monster as she is!

THE CAUSES OF WAR

Extract from Gulliver's Travels

JONATHAN SWIFT

[My master] asked me what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another? I answered they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war in order to stifle or divert the clamor of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives. . . .

Sometimes the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretend to any right. Sometimes one prince quarrelleth with another, for fear the other should quarrel with him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong, and sometimes because he is too weak.