us-"Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children," and dare one of you raise a finger to stay the propagation of the unfit-and lose a vote? Unmentionable! And look at that same young man with us-we educate him, we train him to bear arms, he learns obedience, he becomes well set up, strong, vigorous, a patriot and supporter of his country. And what have your material interests done for you? Made you ravenous of wealth. More, and still more, your cry; and when possessed of it what do you do with it? Matchless ideal-rival one another in the follies and inanities of display, and the greatest hero is he who can waste most on vanities. Our interests the same? It is these very interests that forbid mankind-that is the German -from entering into his kingdom."

And taking up its parable, well does this militant philosophy play upon the eternal conflict between the man who does and the man who talks. It is akin to the feud between labour and the black coat. And it would have us look at our talkers. At our men in high places, at our men sleek with the prizes of life. At those who act so big a part in piping times of peace. We are a bit staggered. We do look, and we do wonder how our empire has played so great a part in history. We think of them in a tight corner, and we ask are these the stuff that empire is made of? And we look on the Scott Expedition. We scan their faces and the riddle is read. Look at them. Fiends would not fright them. Here are the men who do. Here are the men who fill our trenches. Here are the men who fight frost and cold with a shrug, and shot and death with a pipe. Here are the men who do, and only asking to do, and to leave to the grabbers the sinecures of life. Here are the men beloved of Treitschke, Bernhardi, and all their school, but whose not least error is in preaching that the virtue they laud is only to be found in war. And so they have yet to learn that courage thus nurtured with all tenderness, kindness, pity, softness, and gentleness as its handmaiden can, if called to the field of battle, blaze into a self-devotion of self-sacrifice

that sweeps before it like the wind the mere devotees of a militant gospel. War is not the only school for courage. Peace has its heroes as well, and its heroism -to save, and not destroy-is never smirched with horrors too awful to be told.

So thus the militant would preach his gospel, and to-day he proclaims far and near a fiery cross crusade in the name of culture, progress, and of love. And the heart of his empire pulsates violently with the message. For us it has not exactly the same attraction. This will be easily understood. In the gospel of PanGermanism our part is but trifling. We are of those who stand in the way.

And now in his propagation of his cult he has come into conflict with the decadent, the inferior, and the democrat. The democrat-a simple fellow-knows little about philosophy and thinks less about ideals, but he grasps the central thought that another wishes to tell him how he is to live. On the instant he is no militant in theory, but a very militant in fact. His fists are doubled, his eye flashes, and squalls are ahead. Unless you also have a stout heart and cool head better out of his way. He knows what he wants, and he is going to have it. It is no part of his creed to interfere with you. Go your own way, he wishes it; but make him go yours, and you are up against the finest fighting unit the world has ever known. In ages past men have fought well; to-day every ally is a hero, for the cause for which he fights is his own.

And now we would more precisely ask-what is this militancy? from when does it date? what is its history? since when has it given place to democracy as the ruling spirit of the age?

Truly a vast field of inquiry, but to-night let us be content with a few pictures taken by the way. Let us adopt the methods of the impressionist. He will tell you, and tell you truly, that art is not to copy, nor to imitate, nor to depict, but to suggest. Hence his methods. He gives a few splashes, you do the rest. It is your mind that fills the picture with detail,

and it is your mind that gives it beauty of form and colouring. More, its very charm is that your mind has to do so much. It has stimulated effort, pleasing effort, hence its success. Now in our brief survey may the same charm be ours as we touch on the past.

As we look on militancy we find it is very old-old as civilization itself. The strong man armed keepeth his house, was the law of the old world, and the only law. Self-preservation was the be all and end all of existence in early days. Life was one long peril-peril from nature; peril from wild beasts; peril from still wilder man-Ishmaels all, their hand was against every man, and every man's hand was against them. To be weak was to be wretched. At best it meant to be enslaved he was fortunate who escaped extermination. Life has been defined by many a philosophy as the power of adaptation to existing conditions by voluntary change. Whilst debateable as a general premiss, this view is certainly correct as regards social life as a whole. It must adapt itself or give place. Thus the immense part played by militancy in all ancient institutions. In the movements of mankind we see three great masses the Patriarchal, The Theocratic, and the Democratic, of which the first was the direct outcome of the then conditions, the pressing need for actual safety. Probably the most authoritative account that we have of this life in a somewhat advanced stage is to be found in the early chapters of the book of Genesis, and a most interesting and instructive episode is the quarrel between the herdsmen of Lot and those of Abraham, which resulted in their going their several ways. Then we see how prepared for fighting these wandering tribes were. On the instant they could act, and did act. And in such life, when very existence depended on unity and military efficiency, we always find absolute power vested in the head or chief. His word was final. He sat in the door of his tent dispensing justice; life and death were at his nod, and from his judgment there was no appeal. Man and woman, wife and child, stranger and captive, all alike were

under his uncontrolled authority. It was the necessary consequence where military effectiveness was all essential, and where the consequences of defeat were so terrible. At best it meant slavery; it usually meant fire and slaughter. The vanquished were at the absolute disposition of the conquerors, their property and their women, and they ceased to have any right, even the right to live. The part that slavery played in olden times was enormous. It was a fate that might overtake any man, however rich, if his people were overcome and it has had a marked effect on all their institutions. We thus see how manners and customs grew up, how class distinctions became general, and how society approximated to the military camp itself. From the slave with no rights, to the head absolute in power, there was every grade of rank; and deference to one's superior was enforced with all the precision of martial law. And by the people themselves such conditions were cheerfully accepted. Give us a king that he may lead us into battle was no mere cry of an Israelitish nation weary of priestly rule, but was the demand of a people seeking the safety such kingly rule

meant.

And when tribes consolidated and kingdoms were formed, these manners and customs became more marked, and the patriarchal authority found correspondence in the absolute power and majesty of the king. And these history and religion united to make sure. The early annals or legends of a tribe always tell of some terrible danger from which it has been saved by some mighty deliverer, who thenceforth figures first as hero, then as father and monarch, and finally as demi-god of his people. And from such demi-god the reigning monarch always traced his descent. So much so was this that, for dynasties together, the ruling princes of Egypt would marry their own sisters rather than go outside the sacred house.

Nor was religion wanting to cast over them its protecting mantle. It had grown up with the kingly

power, and their interests were mostly the same. With a substratum of fact in one generation, it was a myth. or legend in the next, and a belief of the tribe for ages to come. So priest and king united in making it treason to both orders to so much as doubt. Thus the origin of "divine right," with all its panoply of nobles, warriors, and chiefs, and of an order of society whose first purpose was war, and whose chief end was selfpreservation.

And this seems to have been the order of society from earliest ages. It was so in ancient Babylonancient Babylon, ever fascinating to us as cradle of our thought—and ancient Babylon was hoary with age and civilization when Abraham was born. So it was in the sister kingdom of Egypt during its long history, and so it is to be for thousands of years to come and go. It is little change we are to mark in the manners and customs of those periods, or in their ethical conception of life, and militancy with its ideals remains the bulwark and necessity of society.

So it is in the days of Cyrus. He was one of the most enlightened conquerors of the world, but hear even him, as he addresses his great officers just after they had taken Babylon, as so vividly described in the Book of Daniel :

My friends and allies, the greatest thanks are due to the gods for having granted to us to attain those things of which we thought ourselves worthy, for we are now masters of a large and valuable country, and of people who will maintain us by its cultivation. We have houses and furniture in them, and let none of you imagine that in possessing these things he possesses what belongs to another, for it is a perpetual law amongst all men that when a city is taken from an enemy, both the persons and the property of the inhabitants belong to the captors. You will not therefore possess what you have unjustly, but whatever you suffer the people to retain it will be from benevolence that you do not take it away.

One almost hears the Kaiser himself" the greatest thanks are due to the gods for having granted to us to

* Xenophon's Cyropaedia, B vii., C 5.