stead of awaking pity, flushes them with delirious joy, illuminates the city, and dissolves the whole country in revelry and riot. 15. Thus the heart of a man is hardened. His worst passions are nourished. He renounces the bonds and sympathies of humanity. 16. A base selfishness is the principle on which the affairs of nations are commonly conducted. A statesman is expected to take advantage of the weaknesses and wants of other countries. INTERNATIONAL' MORALITY 17. How loose a morality governs the intercourse of states! What falsehoods and intrigues are licensed by diplomacy! What nation regards another with true friendship? What nation makes sacrifices to another's good? 18. What nation is as anxious to perform its duties as to assert its rights? What nation lays down the everlasting law of right, casts itself fearlessly on its principles, and chooses to be poor, or to perish rather than to do wrong? 19. The human mind refuses to believe in the catastrophe which even now looms up before us. Science has devoted her energy these twenty years to the invention of destructive weapons. THE IMPENDING CATAS TROPHE 20. Gentle, kind-hearted men allow themselves to be deluded, and it will not be long before they attack each other with all the ferocity of wild beasts, no one knows on what pretext-some stupid frontier quarrel, perhaps, or it may be some colonial mercantile interest. 21. They will go like a flock of sheep to the slaughter, yet knowing where they go, conscious that they are leaving their wives and their children to suffer; anxious, but unable to resist the enticement of those plausible and treacherous words that have been trumpeted into their ears. 22. Unresistingly they go. Although they form a mass and a force, they fail to realise the extent of their power, and that if they were all agreed they might establish the reign of reason and fraternity, instead of lending themselves to the barbarous trickeries of diplomacy. 23. The fate of a whole generation hangs on the hour when some saturnine politician shall make the sign, and the nations will rush upon each other. 24. O cease! Cease! Cease! Must hate and death return? Drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. 25. The world is weary of the past, O might it die or rest at last! MEN OF ALL RACES ARE BROTHERS 1. The Family and the Fatherland are like two circles drawn within a larger circle which contains them both. 2. They who pretend to teach you morality while limiting your duties to those you owe DUTY RADI- MANKIND to your family and to your country, do but teach you a more or less enlarged egotism. 3. Not though all men call, Tribes of men and lands. 4. You are one in origin, one in the law that governs you, and one in the goal you are destined to attain. 5. Your faith must be one, your actions one, and one the banner under which you combat. 6. For no sect elect Is the soul's wine poured From man's common board? 7. Say not: the language we speak is different. Acts, tears, and martyrdom, are a language common to all men, and which all understand. WE ARE ONE IN NATURE AND BY SUFFERING 8. "I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes ? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? 9. "If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that." 10. For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along, Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or wrong; 11. Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast frame Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or shame ; In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 12. Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone; SWEET REASONABLENESS IS A SECRET OF INFLUENCE AT HOME AND IN AFFAIRS PATIENCE 1. What a senseless mistake it is for men to think it strength and greatness of spirit to bear nothing, to be sensible of every touch, and to stand upon their punctilios! IN LITTLE THINGS 2. Is it not evident weakness to be able to suffer nothing? We see the weakest persons most subject to anger. 3. Endurance is the crowning quality, And patience all the passion of great hearts. 4. A sense of one's own integrity will make one pass by injuries more easily. 5. Correction given in anger, however tempered by reason, never has so much effect as that which is given altogether without anger. REBUKE MILDLY 6. If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. 7. Be on thy guard, not only in the matter of steady judgment and action, but also in the matter of gentleness towards those who try to hinder or otherwise trouble thee. |