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Show The Conquerors WHEN, in 1892, Pierre Fritel hung in the Paris Salon his picture "The Conquerors," Conquer-ors," people stood before it startled and astonished. Between long rows of naked dead, the great conquerors of the world on horseback advance. In the center is the great Julius, "the foremost man of all this world." At his left is first the great Corsican, then Alexander- of Macedon, then Nebuchadnezzar, "the head of gold," and Charlemagne, who restored the Roman Ro-man empire. On his right is Rameses old Serorlus Attlla, the dreadful Hun, Hannibal, the Carthagenian, and Tamerlane the Tartar. With steady eyes these figures ride, looking out as though seeking new worlds to conquer, with faces pitiless and severe the terrible ones who soaked the earth with blood. Even the copy makes a fascinating picture. But there is a moral in it. Above tbe fierce riders, below the lines of the innumerable dead, the riders and the fallen alike are but dust. And the thought comes, ought not all that to be stopped? In thought before them all shines out the calm face of Washington, and in the distance the cross. The picture should be hung in the new hall of The Hague Congress; beneath it should be inscribed: in-scribed: "This was tried for thousands of years and availed nothing; let there be no more of it." It ought to draw the civilized world into a pact of peace; into a covenant to make no more wars themselves; to no longer permit semi-civilized peoples to go to war. That would stop the building of war navies; it ought to , disband most of .the world's armies and stop most of war's hor rors. And it is full time. The world's poor have suffered enough. In England a century back, when gentlemen1 had quarrels they resorted to dueling. Now tf man who would fight a duel there would be ostracised, because the duel decides nothing. In the samo way nations should choose another court in which to have their differences decided. The most difficult feature to decide would be the questions that lead up to civil wars, but they could be arranged so soon as the moral sentiment senti-ment of mankind demanded it. The tyranny of kings is about spent; the land-hunger of crowded nations ought to be appeased by emigration; the wise men and the press of the world, if united, could change the world's sentiment and in a few years impress upon the world the utter wickedness wicked-ness of war. |