human
Our rulers are fools, or worse, said he, with indignation;
gpt
Ah! young man, you have not yet seen enough of life to understand it. A man is a machine which regulates itself, more or less, for its own interests. A household does the same; a town does likewise; so does a state. No doubt a man sometimes fights with himself--so, too, households are addicted to disagreement, and towns are often afflicted with difference of opinion, while a state is not unacquainted with internal commotions, but, in each and all of these cases, reason and common sense prevent the people from degenerating into pure savages. It is reserved for governments alone, when they come into collision with each other, to do that. _Peoples_ don't desire war, my good sir, it is government--in other words, the non-combatant gentlemen at the head of the world's affairs--who thirst for blood, backed up, of course, by such of the people as are more or less interested in the breaking out of war. In all ordinary matters humanity is satisfied to submit its cases to courts of law, to umpires, to individual or collective arbitrators. If things don't go right, it is usually understood among Christian men and women that a little touch of forbearance here, of self-sacrifice there, of pocketing of slight affronts elsewhere, will bring things into the best possible condition, and, where these plans won't do,--as in the case of drunkards, maniacs, and villains,--they understand and quietly practise the power of _overwhelming constraint_. If the Turks had been overwhelmingly constrained by Europe during the late Conference at Constantinople, we should have had no war.