that of the wild beasts with whom they held joint ownership.  It is as idle to apply to savages the rules of international morality which obtain between stable and cultured communities, as it would be to judge the fifth-century English conquest of Britain by the standards of today.  Most fortunately, the hard, energetic, practical men who do the rough pioneer work of civilization in barbarous lands, are not prone to false sentimentality.  The people who are, are the people who stay at home.  Often these stay-at-homes are too selfish and indolent, too lacking in imagination, to understand the race-importance of the work which is done by their pioneer brethren in wild and distant lands; and they judge them by standards which would only be applicable to quarrels in their own townships and parishes.  Moreover, as each new land grows old, it misjudges the yet newer lands, as once it was itself misjudged.  The home-staying Englishman of Britain grudges to the Africander his conquest of Matabeleland; and so the home-staying American of the Atlantic States dislikes to see the western miners and cattlemen win for the use of their people the Sioux hunting-grounds.  Nevertheless, it is the men actually on the borders of the longed-for ground, the men actually in contact with the savages, who in the end shape their own destinies.

    Righteousness of the War.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman.  The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him.  American and Indian, Boer and Zulu, Cossack and Tartar, New Zealander and Maori,—­in each case the victor, horrible though many of his deeds are, has laid deep the foundations for the future greatness of a mighty people.  The consequences of struggles for territory between civilized nations seem small by comparison.  Looked at from the standpoint of the ages, it is of little moment whether Lorraine is part of Germany or of France, whether the northern Adriatic cities pay homage to Austrian Kaiser or Italian King; but it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.

    Horrors of the War.

Yet the very causes which render this struggle between savagery and the rough front rank of civilization so vast and elemental in its consequence to the future of the world, also tend to render it in certain ways peculiarly revolting and barbarous.  It is primeval warfare, and it is waged as war was waged in the ages of bronze and of iron.  All the merciful humanity that even war has gained during the last two thousand years is lost.  It is a warfare where no pity is shown to non-combatants, where the weak are harried without ruth, and the vanquished maltreated with merciless ferocity.  A sad and evil feature of such warfare