Excerpt from The Spirit of EnglandA few years ago we believed the world had become too civilized for war, and the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park was to be the inauguration of a new era. Battles, bloody as Napoleon's, are now the familiar tale of every day, and the arts which have made greatest progress are the arts of destruction. - J. A. Froude.To find myself writing about war is an immense surprise. I entered public life at twenty-seven, and ever since I have laboured incessantly for peace. I have taught that war is the greatest of calamities, and an unjust war the most heinous of crimes. I spoke and wrote with all my energy against the causeless carnage of South Africa.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.