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THE CALL.
"England is in one of those passions so creditable to her moral sense, so illustrative of her unregulated virtues.

We are living in the first excitement and horror of the news of the massacre of Christians at Damascus.

We are full of righteous and passionate indignation.
'Punish--restore the honour of the Christian nations' is the proud appeal of prelate, prig, and philanthropist, because some hundreds of Christians who knew their danger, yet chose to take up their abode in a fanatical Muslim city of the East, have suffered death." The meeting had been called in answer to an appeal from Exeter Hall.
Lord Eglington had been asked to speak, and these were among his closing words.
He had seen, as he thought, an opportunity for sensation.

Politicians of both sides, the press on all hands, were thundering denunciations upon the city of Damascus, sitting insolent and satiated in its exquisite bloom of pear and nectarine, and the deed itself was fading into that blank past of Eastern life where there "are no birds in last year's nest." If he voyaged with the crowd, his pennant would be lost in the clustering sails! So he would move against the tide, and would startle, even if he did not convince.
"Let us not translate an inflamed religious emotion into a war," he continued.