“That Galicia will witness the first fighting is generally admitted, as also that the possession of the strategic railroad, running as it does just at the rear of the Austrian positions, would be the most vital question. It may be interesting to say that military men of whatever nationality look upon an early war as a certain thing. They are not content to say they believe war is coming; they are absolutely positive of it, and each little officer has his own personal way of conclusively proving that this sort of peace cannot go on any longer.
“Meanwhile there are lots of straws floating about this week, which indicate that international winds are still blowing toward war. From Russian Poland there is reported an interruption in all kinds of business, owing to the war scare. Manufacturers refuse to accept orders from private persons, and financial institutions have still further weakened business by reducing their credit to a minimum. A letter from St. Petersburg tells of the tremendous enthusiasm of the troops at the review by the Czar on last Saturday, of the wild cheering for his imperial Majesty, of the loud and strident whistles audible above the roar of the cannon with which the officers command their men, and of the general blending of barbaric fierceness and courage with modern discipline and fighting improvements.
“In Vienna the troops are hard at work practising with the Numannlicher repeating rifle, with which all have been provided. The Sunday observance act, usually rigorously enforced, has been suspended, that the government orders for military supplies may be completed two weeks earlier than contracted for.
“The business of the Hotchkiss gun-making concern is shown to have increased one hundred per cent with the war scare, and the eagerness to secure the stock, which now stands at thirty per cent premium, shows a conviction among monied men. The capital has been subscribed fifteen times over.”
The persistent prediction of peace was speedily fulfilled. March 12 my statement was sent to the press, and March 22 Bismarck said to Prince Rudolph of Austria that “peace is assured to Europe for 1887,” and newspaper correspondents announce that the war alarm is over. Mr. Frederick Harrison, who is travelling on foot in France, writes that he has found no one who desires war, and that the people are not even thinking of it.
What is the popular judgment, or even the judgment of popular leaders worth upon any great question? The masses of mankind have their judgments enmeshed and inwoven in a web of mechanical habituality, compelling them to believe that what is and has been must continue to be in the future, thus limiting their conceptions to the commonplace. Their leaders do not rise to nobler conceptions, for if they did not sympathize with the popular, commonplace conceptions and prejudices they would not be leaders.
“We deem it safe to assert,” says Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten in her most valuable and interesting “History of Modern Spiritualism,” “from opinions formed upon an extensive and intimate knowledge of both North and South, and a general understanding of the politics and parties in both sections, that any settlement of the questions between them by the sword was never deliberately contemplated, and that the outbreak, no less than the magnitude and length of the mighty struggle, was all, humanly speaking, forced on by the logic of events, rather than through the preconcerted action of either section of the country. We say this much to demonstrate the truly prophetic character of many of the visions and communications which circulated amongst the Spiritualists prior to the opening of the war.”
Not only was it prophesied by the Quaker Joseph Hoag thirty years in advance, but more fully prophesied from the spirit world by the spirit of Gen. Washington, and again most eloquently predicted through the lips of Mrs. E. Hardinge Britten in 1860. Yet who among all the leaders of the people knew anything of these warnings, or was sufficiently enlightened to have paid them any respect? The petition of 15,000 Spiritualists was treated with contemptuous ridicule by the American Senate, and even the demonstrable invention of Morse was subjected to ridicule in Congress. Congressmen stand on no higher moral plane than the people who elect them, and it is the moral faculties that elevate men into the atmosphere of pure truth.
But ah! could we have had a Congress and State Legislatures in 1860, composed of men sufficiently elevated in sentiment to realize the state of the nation and the terrible necessity of preserving the peace by conciliatory statesmanship, that four years of bloody horror and devastation might have been spared.
Will the time ever come when nations shall be guided by wisdom sufficient to avoid convulsions and calamities? Not until there is sufficient intelligence and wisdom to appreciate the science of man, to understand the wondrous faculties of the human soul, to follow their guidance, and to listen to the wisdom of our ancestors as they speak to us from a higher world.