“No blood-stained victory, in story bright,
Can give the philosophical mind delight;
No triumph please, while rage and death destroy:
Reflection sickens at the monstrous joy.”[[209]]
“Cursed is the man, and void of law and right;
Unworthy property, unworthy light,
Unfit for public rule, or private care,—
That wretch, that monster, who delights in war.”[[210]]
Imagine a Sioux Indian chief, pagan Alexander, pagan Caesar, Christian Napoleon, also the Christian bullies Emperor William and Theodore Roosevelt, also the quiet Christ—imagine these seven “not only willing, but anxious to fight,” mounted on foam-stained horses galloping across a bloody battlefield strewn with wounded and slaughtered men and boys, imagine these seven galloping, bravely and boisterously galloping, waving red-stained swords, yelling, squawking, yawping, hurrahing for war, “glorious” war—the iron-shod hoofs of their rushing horses crushing into the breasts and faces of dead and dying young men and boys.
The savage Sioux, the immortal pagan brutes Alexander and Caesar, the renowned Christian bullies Napoleon, William and Theodore—these six “geniuses,” these coarse-grained, blood-stained egotists fit that picture perfectly, as a shark fits the ocean, as a wolf fits the forest, as a tiger fits the jungle, as a savage fits a cannibal feast,—as the Devil fits Hell.