It is perhaps as difficult as it is useless to ascertain whether “mazzacrium,” a word of the low Latin, is the root of “massacre,” or whether “massacre” is the root of “mazzacrium.”

A massacre signifies a number of men killed. There was yesterday a great massacre near Warsaw — near Cracow. We never say: “There has been a massacre of a man”; yet we do say: “A man has been massacred”: in that case it is understood that he has been killed barbarously by many blows.

Poetry ma............