at the door of the Relieving Officer as applicants for casual help. They might have received a dole and eked out their lives as wanderers a while longer, but that the ruined man could not forbear putting the rebellious question, "Is it bad enough now?" The Relieving Officer at once ordered them into the workhouse, and there they are now, and have been for some months. John Thomas and his wife are ablebodied paupers; the children are in the schools, and already initiated in the rudiments of idleness. and vice. It is astonishing how rapidly human accommodates itself to circumstances. Thomas has already complained with pauper irony against the allotment of his food, and is down in the master's black book. The wife has been denounced by the matron as a good-for-nothing woman, and the schoolmistress has prophesied "no good" of the girl. The eldest boy alone seems to feel his position as a "a pauper brat," and at the visiting hour, when for a moment the members of this shattered family are tenderly permitted to mingle their curses, he implores his father to take him away. But before

nature

long his little companions will doubtless succeed in their resolve to "take the bounce out of

him."

If this is an imaginary picture, it is sketched from life, and shows how we make paupers. We refuse relief at the moment it is wanted, and when we help we pauperise. It may be said that if John Thomas had applied to the clergyman of the parish or some kind friend for help, he would have got it. Granted, but men in such a plight are neither in the mood, nor do they always know how, or where, to seek assistance. They need to be sought out and helped, in spite of themselves. Those who render this service to the sinking poor are not only their friends, but the friends of the State, and should be recognised and aided as such. They save bodies and souls which the clumsy and tardy machinery of the Poor-law reaches too late or only to destroy.

XXXI.

IS WAR AN ANACHRONISM?

IT is worth while to re-examine occasionally the ground of seemingly strong persuasions. When the foundation of a popular or deeply cherished belief is sound, such a scrutiny confirms confidence; if it is insecure, or rests upon an unstable base, the discovery cannot be regarded as a misfortune. It is always well to know the truth. Probably no proposition has been more warmly discussed than the reasonableness of war among civilised nations. The question has been considered from many standpoints and under almost every guise. Is war rational?

Is it expedient?

Does it really decide any dispute? Or is not the arbitrament of the sword a practical postponement of the issue with the highest probability of its being revived? In these and a multitude of divers

Q

forms the question has been repeatedly and exhaustively discussed. We have no intention of reproducing the stock arguments on either side. The effort would not be pleasing; nor would the result prove edifying. Nevertheless there is a shape in which the subject may with advantage once more engage attention and perhaps excite new interest. Is war an anachronism?

The principle of war has not changed since the earliest instance of reasoning by force on record— which is not, as commonly asserted, the strife in which Cain killed Abel, but the exclusion of Adam from Paradise by an angel armed with a flaming sword. The garden of Eden was protected from any attempt on the part of man to recover his lost privilege by force, with force, or, what is the same thing, a demonstration of force. A demonstration is, of course, effective only in so far as it signifies the power, and the will under certain circumstances, to employ the force paraded. The incident in which Cain slew Abel may be taken as the arch-type of jealousy, of treachery, of fratricide, of murder; but it has nothing in common with war, which was a divinely permitted, if not a divinely

instituted, mode of enforcing the decrees of the superior, of maintaining assumed rights and resisting supposed wrongs. No one can read the Jewish history without perceiving this truth underlying the principles of nationality, appropriation, and defence; and nothing will be gained by pursuing the peace arguments or the protest of reason against war on the lines of a false presumption. The principle that right, real or imaginary, may and must be enforced by might is one against which no valid reasoning will lie. Whatever may be the case with individuals, nations have no alternative but to maintain their interest and prestige by force. If a display of the power to act will suffice to compel submission, it may, happily, be needless to proceed farther; but practically the influence exerted by any nation in general politics will be commensurate with its ability, if occasion should arise, to make good its words by deeds. It is idle to disguise, and impossible to deny, that the power to enforce obedience is the source of authority all the world over. Upon this fundamental principle international influence and municipal government both rest. The principle of war is