But this country which I have been in part describing is now the scene
of one of the greatest calamities that can afflict mankind. After
seventy years of almost uninterrupted peace, it has become the scene of
a civil war, more gigantic, perhaps, than any that we have any record of
with regard to any other nation or any other people; for the scene of
this warfare is so extended as to embrace a region almost equal in size
to the whole of Europe. At this very moment military operations are
being undertaken at points as distant from each other as Madrid is
distant from Moscow. But this great strife cannot have arisen amongst an
educated and intelligent people without some great and overruling cause.
Let us for a moment examine that cause, and let us ask ourselves whether
it is possible at such a time to stand neutral in regard to the
contending parties, and to refuse our sympathy to one or the other of
them. I find men sometimes who profess a strict neutrality; they wish
neither the one thing nor the other. This arises either from the fact
that they are profoundly ignorant with regard to this matter, or else
that they sympathise with the South, but are rather ashamed to admit it.
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