and above both usque ad cœlum et infernum. Millions of men have been marched to this Assize of Blood to be torn with shells and bullets, gutted with bayonets, tortured with vermin, to dig themselves into holes and grovel there in mud and fragments of the flesh of their comrades, to rot with disease, to go mad, and in the most merciful case to die.
Worse, if possible, is the malign transformation of the mind of mankind. Dr. Jekyll has been wholly submerged in Mr. Hyde. Killing has become an hourly commonplace—for the aggressor as the mere practice of his trade, for the assailed as a necessity of defence and victory. The material apparatus of butchery and destruction has proven to be far more tremendous in its effects than even its planners had imagined. The fabric of settled life has disappeared not by single houses, but by whole towns. Cathedrals are mere dust and shards of stained glass. Strong forts have all but vanished under the Thor's hammer of a single bombardment. The very earth, that a few months ago gave us food and iron and coal, is wealed, pitted, scarred, mounded, entrenched into the semblance of some devil's nightmare.
All this came upon a world which was more favourable to the hopes of honest, Christian men than any save the Golden Ages of fable. Being myself a plain, Christian man, I am not going to suggest that in 1914 the Earthly Paradise had ar-
