just where it would give their own particular country the biggest share of the land and the best right to the lakes and rivers. If they had been two naughty boys, they would have said, "I tell you the rights to those lakes and rivers are mine," and "They're not; they're mine." Then they would have begun to pound each other, which would not have decided at all which one really owned the lakes and rivers, but only which one had the strongest fists. Although not naughty boys, they behaved much like them; for they squabbled in long Spanish words, and then began to get ready to fight it out.
Each one tried to build the biggest warships, make the most guns and drill the greatest number of soldiers; and the poor people of both countries, who did not care at all where the boundary was, had to pay for it all, although they might not have enough money left to buy shoes for their children.
This was the way things were going when the women and clergymen of the country made up their minds to try to put a stop to it. The good Bishop Benavente, of Argentina, went around the country pleading for peace and trying to make the people think what a very foolish thing war is.
After they were done fighting, he said, they would not know any better than before to whom the land and the rights to the waterways really
