no means the worst—out of the thirty-three thousand—the loss of the Allies had been about six thousand—which were spread that night, either dead or in various stages of suffering, about the dreadful field; and even that list excludes the fallen on board the ships. It is a very, very old story, the horrors of a battle-field after the fight. It has been witnessed thousands of times, and who shall say that it may not have to recur many times yet? And still we boast of our civilisation; we are thankful that we are not as our fathers were, that the public mind is more sympathetic, and that philanthropic associations are doing much to alleviate the sufferings which in past times were simply neglected. There is something in this contention, no doubt; but nevertheless we have as yet failed to eradicate the passions which provoke, and those which find their vent in, war. Nations do not trust one another; and so long as the existing social basis lasts, it is not likely that they ever will. Make believe as much as you please that the masculine half of society is the working and the ruling portion, this respectable fiction will not succeed in the future, any more than it has in the past, in neutralising the influence exerted by the other half. For better or worse, the moral character of men will continue to be moulded by the ideals which are set before them by women. The question then arises—what is the quality of those ideal? Is it of a kind tending to promote the common welfare, to merge international jealousies in community of properly human aims and interests, and to foster the love of peace? Is it not rather that of an artificial system of superstition and meanness; the falsification of spiritual truth, and the consequent perversion of the religious instinct, ramifying, like a poison in the blood, through every department of life, even the most secular, and discolouring the thoughts and emotions of all sorts of persons, even the most worldly? No man can be so absorbed in the cares of business that the
