Desiderius Erasmus 
The Complaint of Peace 

Desiderius Erasmus was a very human man. A humanist, who was no more humane than the rest of the wits and cynics of his time, there was in him a plenty of human weaknesses and uglinesses. Nevertheless he does strike occasionally a note that is genuinely human, universally true, accordant with all the race of men. And this is eminently so of the ‘Complaint of Peace.’ The complaints which he puts in the mouth of Peace might have come from the lips of Divae Paris with as much verisimilitude as they did when Erasmus echoed them many centuries ago.