after all, what would life be without fighting, i should like to know? from the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is the business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of man. every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual wickednesses in high places, or russians, or border-ruffians.

it is no good for quakers, or any other body of men to uplift their voices against fighting. human nature is too strong for them, and they don’t follow their own precepts. every soul of them is doing his own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. the world might be a better world without fighting, for anything i know,[23] but it wouldn’t be our world; and therefore i am dead against crying peace, when there is no peace, and isn’t meant to be. i am as sorry as any man to see folks fighting the wrong people and the wrong things, but i’d a deal sooner see them doing that, than that they should have no fight in them.