Like wolves they had their teeth in
one another's throats, and would not let go, though all bloody and
exhausted, until one should fall at the last gasp, to be mangled by
the others. Yet in each nation, even in Germany, there were men and
women who saw the folly of the war and the crime of it, and desired to
end it by some act of renunciation and repentance, and by some
uplifting of the people's spirit to vault the frontiers of hatred and
the barbed wire which hedged in patriotism. Some of them were put in
prison. Most of them saw the impossibility of counteracting the forces
of insanity which had made the world mad, and kept silent, hiding
their thoughts and brooding over them. The leaders of the nations
continued to use mob-passion as their argument and justification,
excited it anew when its fires burned low, focused it upon definite
objectives, and gave it a sense of righteousness by the high-sounding
watchwords of liberty, justice, honor, and retribution. Each side
proclaimed Christ as its captain and invoked the blessing and aid of
the God of Christendom, though Germans were allied with Turks and
France was full of black and yellow men.
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