ABSTRACT
Of all sneers none is so carelessly thrown as the charge of cowardice. To call a man a coward is almost to obliterate him from discussion. The man who uses the term always implies that he himself, of course, is a brave man. He acquires at once a kind of moral superiority, and puts his opponent on the defensive. The courage of the battlefield and the courage of the editorial sanctum are not identical. Courage is not so simple a virtue. At a dinner table, in a drawing-room, on the stump, in the Senate, the easy attitude is to follow the loudest declamation, to go with, not against, the violence of the tribe. It involves usually no risk, and it is almost always a cheap way to approval. It would be a great gain if our military agitators would use words like coward and poltroon with more discrimination.
