Swords and Plowshares/Bloody Men

​Bloody Men

THERE are bloody men who think the world can be served by bloodshed:The man who stabbed the kindly king, while his victim smiled at him with outstretched hand(Then another worse king reigned in his stead, and the people for the deed loved kingship more than ever);The man who fought the duel, and invited the man who had insulted him to kill him and was duly killed;The man who lay all night in the mud with his company, and, because other men who came unsuspecting down the road wore another uniform, shot them down with a hunter's joy;The hangman, swinging his man off the scaffold and ashamed to look at him, while his accomplice, the judge, has forgotten all about it;The butcher, twisting the tail of the calf and gouging its eye to make it take kindlier to his knife; ​The doctor, torturing the guinea-pig in the name of the devil's science—All these men think, alas! that the world can be served by bloodshed.

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