interruptions for two and three centuries, was an act of insolent pride and doubtful wisdom which has perpetuated jealousies and ill feeling, and has sown the seeds of a more disastrous war in the future than we have witnessed in our generation.
What disastrous wars these frontier provinces of Alsace and Lorraine have seen! Wave after wave of European war have swept over these unfortunate regions, and scarcely a generation has passed when they have known peace. Previous wars.Why these interminable feuds? Wherefore should civilized men eternally wage deadly wars against each other?
Historians and moralists attribute these wars to the ambition of kings or to the restlessness of nations, but a careful student can detect the operation of deeper causes even in the uncertain and changeable phenomena of war. Contending principles, which do not always appear on the surface, bring about wars, and the termination of a long war often determines the triumph of a principle, and the downfall of another. It is a matter for regret that these great principles cannot be decided except by disastrous wars and the shedding of human blood. But since humanity has not yet discovered a milder method for the solution of these questions, it is better that great principles should be spread amidst the throes of wars, than that such principles should remain unrecognized, and that healthy progress should be unknown.
The great Martin Luther lived to see the commence-
