but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice.

I am in earnest. I will not equivocate; I will not excuse. I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead."

There is indeed a remarkably close parallel between the position of the Abolitionists in the United States, who disapproved of slavery during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and the present position in England, to-day, of those who disapprove of war. Just as it was, and is, impossible to prevent men from exploiting one another's labour, so it was, and is, impossible to prevent men from killing one another, and from using violence to one another. Then men openly bought other men to be their chattel-slaves. Now men openly and unblushingly go to war without offering arbitration, and continue it after a defeated foe has asked for peace. Then, as now, a small number of scattered individuals, of little weight with the political parties or the religious sects, began to draw together, to make what stand they could against an evil which, if it could not be cured, might be mitigated. Then, as now, they were opposed, ignored, or at best halfheartedly supported, by the newspapers and the pulpits. To the politicians they were a nuisance, and to the religious bodies a stumbling-block. The Bible ("slaves obey your masters") was quoted against them; patriotism and loyalty to

the Constitution employed to thwart them. Their meetings were broken up, and their speakers suffered from mob violence. They had nothing but the goodness of their cause to rely upon, and their battle, like ours, had to be fought with clearness of thought, fearlessness of utterance, and firm reliance that there is a Power, not ourselves, "which lasting through the ages makes for righteousness."

Not the least remarkable part of the resemblance, is that just as we have among us members of "Peace Societies" and "Friends" opposed to all war in the abstract, who will not say a word against war in the concrete-so they had their philanthropic "Colonisation Society" to transport the negro population of America, and to evangelise and civilise Africa. It formed, in reality, a bulwark of slavery. By absorbing a number of respectable people who without some such safety valve would have felt uncomfortable, it rendered to the cause of slavery the same sort of service that is rendered to the cause of war by such advocates of peace as yourself. Their motto seemed to be:

"I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong

Agin wrong in the abstract, fer that kind o' wrong

Is ollers unpop'lar an' never gets pitied,

Because it's a crime no one never committed;

But he mus'n't be hard on partikler sins,

Coz then he'll be kickin' the people's own shins."

There was nothing in the abominations of slavery that evoked their wrath so much as it was evoked

by the strenuous utterances of Garrison and the Emancipationists, just as there seems to be no horror in this war to move you to the same warmth of condemnation as you can express concerning those who wish to stop this war.

There is yet much in your pamphlet that calls for reply; but I will only make a brief comment on two points.

The first is with reference to your characterisation of the Boer population. It is natural enough that in ordinary speech we should try to characterise a whole nation collectively, and should say that the French are gay, the Dutch phlegmatic, the Germans pedantic, the Turks fatalistic, etc., etc.; but surely every reasonable man should know that there is nothing definite or tangible in such generalisations. To speak of "a strong dislike on account of the antagonism between the two people in respect of their treatment of the blacks," is, surely, only possible to a patriot. Not all Englishmen are kind, and not all Boers are cruel. If strife and slaughter could be justified by loose phrases of this kind, it would not be the slaughter of one race by another, but the slaughter of the cruel people of both races by the kind ones. Then perhaps some people, kinder still, shocked at such barbarity, would step in and slaughter them in turn!

Lastly, I would join issue with you as to the necessity for any man to master the intricacies of a diplomatic dispute before he may disapprove of the action of his Government. Children when

scolded for quarrelling and fighting try to shift the question from the broad plain issue on which they are both obviously in the wrong, and to involve it by discussing which began, who took the marble, who first threatened, who first pushed, and who first struck.

But with children and with nations it should never be a question of comparative, but always one of positive guilt. The older the child and the more Christian and civilised the nation, the greater the shame if it is always drifting into quarrels and strife.

A plain man has a perfect right to say: I refuse to support the Government because they are again fighting-fighting in two or three places at once. They have not made it clear to me and to everybody else, either what they are fighting about, or that they exhausted every possible effort to settle the matter peacefully: by arbitration, or by liberal concessions to the other party. Furthermore, they seem to cherish the childish absurdity that two blacks make one white, and they are as anxious to prove their enemy in the wrong as if that would put them in the right. They have not shown me that they are eager to avoid war, and people who cause men to be killed and women to be left homeless, must not expect that, because I am too busy to read all about their quarrels, I shall, therefore, support them in conduct that my very soul abhors.

First published in The New Age during August 1900, and reprinted in pamphlet form by A. Bonner, Took's Court, E.C.

THE DOUKHOBÓRS: A RUSSIAN

EXODUS

He

IN a short story by Anatole France, entitled Le Procurateur de Judée, Pontius Pilate explains the principles which guided him in public life. was an Imperialist, and a patriotic politician, intent on maintaining the supremacy of Rome, on extending the blessing of the Roman peace, and on giving the benefit of Roman law and order to subject races whether they wanted it or not. Acts which seem harsh or even wrong, if judged by themselves, were expedient and necessary to further the great purpose which, in his opinion, overrode questions of mere morality, or, rather, set a standard of morality different to that which reason and conscience would demand of a man whose first duty was not to a state, but to a good God.

Pilate is represented as feeling towards the Jews much as some Governor-General or High Commissioner sent out from England might feel towards the Hindoos or the Boers. They were a troublesome lot: too stupid to see the advantages that would accrue from the prevalence of his ideas over theirs. To endanger Rome's supremacy out of regard for the life and liberty of one, or many, of them, seemed to him ridiculous; and it could not enter his head that any religious