SWORDS INTO PLOUGHSHARES
Illustration★★★★In all the war in South Africa there was nothing which made so deep an impression upon me as one little incident. Our men were in loose skirmishing order, scattered over a kopje, firing at the enemy on the other hill at a distance from them. And while one of our men was firing from behind a rock, a Boer had somehow or other contrived to creep under the scrub, and to come quite near him. And suddenly the enemy, the Boer, sprang up from a rock twenty paces off, and the two men, practically there alone on the kopje, Boer and Briton, did not shoot each other, because they looked into each other’s faces, and they could not forget that they were men.
And neither fired; both came forward and shook hands. Humanity was too strong for them (Isa. ii. 4).
The point
During the South African War, a Boer and Briton, facing each other at close range, looked into each other's eyes and could not forget they were men; neither fired, both shook hands instead.