THREE:"It wants some time of two o'clock yet," he said. "My friend, Dr. Bruce, does not go to bed early, so I shall go round and look him up. We'll go into the other letters carefully when we have time, Prout, but for the present I should like to borrow this one if you have no objection. What do you say?""Begone!" she cried. "Go, before I do you mischief. See, I help you on with your coat. Now go, and don't let me see that ugly yellow face of yours for a fortnight."
FORE:Amongst some Frenchmen, three British soldiers, seriously wounded, were lying on some straw. They looked distressed, and I thought that their condition was critical. I was told that these men had not had any food for five days, and now there stood in front of the open wagon doors two to three hundred German soldiers, partly slightly wounded, who were well able to walk, partly German soldiers of the220 Landen garrison, who had been told off for distributing the soup. These two to three hundred men raged and jeered at those three unfortunate, heavily wounded British soldiers, who had not eaten for five days, and lay groaning helplessly on some dirty straw in a cattle-truck. The steaming tubs with hot soup were shown them, and these Germans shouted at them: "You want to eat, swine, swine; you ought to be killed! Beat them to death!beat them to death! Here, that's what you ought to get!"This code Plato set himself to construct in his last and longest work, the Laws. Less than half of that Dialogue, however, is occupied with the details of legislation. The remaining portions deal with the familiar topics of morality, religion, science, and education. The first book propounds a very curious theory of asceticism, which has not, we believe, been taken up by any subsequent moralist. On the principle of in vino veritas Plato proposes that drunkenness should be systematically employed for the purpose of testing self-control. True temperance is not abstinence, but the power of resisting temptation; and we can best discover to what extent any man possesses that power by surprising him when off his guard. If he should be proof against seductive influences even when in his cups, we shall be doubly sure of his constancy at other times. Prof. Jowett rather maliciously suggests that a personal proclivity may have suggested this extraordinary apology for hard drinking. Were it so, we should be reminded of the successive revelations by which indulgences of another kind were permitted to Mohammed, and of the one case in which divorce was sanctioned by Auguste Comte. We should also remember that the Christian Puritanism to which Plato approached so near has always been singularly lenient to this disgraceful vice. But perhaps a somewhat higher order of considerations will help us to a better under270standing of the paradox. Plato was averse from rejecting any tendency of his age that could possibly be turned to account in his philosophy. Hence, as we have seen, the use which he makes of love, even under its most unlawful forms, in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. Now, it would appear, from our scanty sources of information, that social festivities, always very popular at Athens, had become the chief interest in life about the time when Plato was composing his Laws. According to one graceful legend, the philosopher himself breathed his last at a marriage-feast. It may, therefore, have occurred to him that the prevalent tendency could, like the amorous passions of a former generation, be utilised for moral training and made subservient to the very cause with which, at first sight, it seemed to conflict.
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THREE:I noticed the smell of fire already several miles from Louvain. On both sides of the road small mounds indicated the graves of soldiers who fell115 during the brave resistance of the Belgians before Louvain. A small wooden cross and some pieces of accoutrement were the only decorations. Carcases of horses were lying in the fields, from which came a disagreeable smell.
THREE:
