It isn't merely the question of a few forts changing hands or a few miles of blood-soaked ground lost and won." "I wonder," said Gertrude dreamily, "if some great blessing, great enough for the price, will be the meed of all our pain?
Is the agony in which the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era?
Or is it merely a futile struggle of ants In the gleam of a million million of suns?
We think very lightly, Mr.Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an ant-hill and half its inhabitants.

Does the Power that runs the universe think us of more importance than we think ants ?" "You forget," said Mr.Meredith, with a flash of his dark eyes, "that an infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely great.

We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as too great for us to apprehend.

To the infinitely little an ant is of as much importance as a mastodon.

We are witnessing the birth-pangs of a new era--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything else.