Wilhelm Lamszus

“ He is lying as if he had been nailed firmly through his stomach to the earth, and as if he could not get free again. The body itself is dead, only the arms and legs are still alive. And arms and legs are working wildly through the air.
"Up! Get up! Quick march!" a voice yells in our ears. We no longer know who it is shouting to us, and we don't know from what quarter they have called us.... We leap to our feet. We leave the captain and the wounded in their blood; we start up and run away, and are running a race with the shells, for we are running for our bare, naked life. ”

“ I must get away, to escape from myself, or in another minute I shall be in the thick of this maddened, death-doomed mob.... I stumble over the rifle-pits.... I race out into the night, and tread on quaking flesh ... step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets ... something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at its heels ... and ever more bodies—breathless—out of one field into another.... Horror is crooning over my head ... horror is crooning beneath my feet ... and nothing but dying, mangled flesh.... ”

“ Does it become a man better to look, with the full sense of his moral and ethical responsibility, the hideous fact in its face, or to continue to disguise it under a veil of romance woven round the pomp and circumstance of glorious war? In this sense "The Human Slaughter-House" of Lamszus' invention stands, as the Universal Peace Congress read it, for the revolt of the spirit of humanity, the spirit of progress and evolution, against the cumulative horror of the mechanics of modern warfare. ”

“ They're all drawn from that other world, where Life kissed us and cozened caressingly round our bodies. You have brought us up as human beings. That we have been human no longer counts. Life and love no longer count; flesh and blood no longer count; only gore and corpses count for anything now. How we used to tremble in that other world, when a naked human life was even in danger. How we rushed into the burning house to drive away the death for which some poor old paralyzed woman craved. ”

“ How the experts have, day in, day out, been inventing and constructing new marvels of mechanism. The mechanical side of war has been raised to a high standard of genius and a fine art. Two hundred and forty bullets and more to the minute! What a marvel of mechanism one of those machine-guns is. You set it buzzing, and it spurts out bullets thicker than rain can fall. And the automaton licks its lips hungrily and sweeps from right to left. It is pointed on the middle of the body, and sprays the whole firing-line with one sweep. It is as though Death had scrapped his scythe for old iron ”

“ Lying down, there is nothing to be seen of the sharpshooters. They won't do us any harm; in another minute they will have disappeared among the trees. But the machines—they have hidden them away among the foliage to good purpose.
Our subaltern, lying a bare five paces away from me in the grass, raises himself on his elbows, and gazes intently through his field-glasses. I know what is vexing his soul. He is a handsome, splendid lad, for whom even we grizzled old-timers would go through fire and water, for he meets you as man to man, without sniffing or swagger, as it becomes a youngster. ”

“ And among our feet something is lying that was not lying there before—it gleams white from the dark sand and uncurls ... a strange dismembered hand ... and there ... and there ... fragments of flesh with the uniform still adhering to them—then we realize it, and horror overwhelms us.
Outside there are lying arms, legs, heads, trunks ... they are howling into the night; the whole regiment is lying mangled on the ground there, a lump of humanity crying to Heaven....
Clouds are arising from the earth ... they are rising crying aloud in the air ... ”

“ We are mercenaries no longer—those hirelings for murder, who once sold their blood for money down to all and sundry. We are gladiators no longer—slaves who enact the drama of dying as an exciting spectacle for the entertainment of the rich, and for the lust of their eyes. It is to our native land we took our oath. And if it must be, we are resolved to die as citizens, to die in the full consciousness and full responsibility for our acts.
What will the next few days have in store for us?
Not one of us has probably ever, with his own eyes, seen a field of battle. ”

“ The musketry fire has become hotter from minute to minute, and has increased to a threatening rattle. To the right and left of us fighting is in full swing. In front of us the mined field lies silent, and the two companies too, are lying silent in their rifle-pits.
I am conscious that I am terribly tired—I can no longer keep myself on my feet—my head sinks down on my rifle—my eyes close—but the overstrained nerves are still alert.
And now——
The earth reverberates sullenly.
That's our battery! It is firing straight into the darkness. ”

“ But it is equally untrue to tell of modern warfare waged with picric acid and electric wires in the same spirit. The romance and glamour of warfare in the past are grinning lies when transferred to latter-day warfare, where long-drawn fronts of flesh and blood are opposed to machines of precision and the triumphs of the chemical laboratory. The anachronism becomes nothing less than the deliberate falsification of history. Dynamite and machine-guns, not the writer, have turned the "Field of Honor" into a "Human Slaughter-House," where regiments are wiped out by pressing an electric button. ”

“ Explosions and screams, and the hissing of lead, and the shrieks of men, and blood and water foam up, till no one knows whether he has been hit or is still alive; for in front of me—so close that I could clutch it—I see a jugular vein, ripped through, spurting in an arch like a fountain—and in his blood the fellow hit staggers back, and blood and howls surfeit the black flood, until it is at length reddened with human blood—Get on! ”

“ We incline our heads. He is pronouncing the Benediction over us in a voice that echoes from the tomb. He is blessing us in the name of God, the Merciful. He is blessing our rifles that they may not fail us; he is blessing the wire-drawn guns on their patent recoilless carriages; he is blessing every precious cartridge, lest a single bullet be wasted, lest any pass idly through the air; that each one may account for a hundred human beings, may shatter a hundred human beings simultaneously. ”

“ We are running blindly straight into the swamp. Only another twenty paces now—already the foremost have reached it, and, senseless in their terror, jump into it—the water spurts up high—and now—what has happened now? Their feet are stuck fast—they tilt over forwards—they claw for something to hold on to—the rifle flies out of their hand—and face forward they plunge into the water—and close on our heels they come stamping up—the tight-packed, maddened mob.... ”

“ We gaze at him horror-stricken and are paralyzed ... then at length the yokel—and our eyes thank him for it—raises the butt of his rifle and places the muzzle against the sound temple ... bang!... and the maimed wreckage falls over backward and lies still in his blood....
And again the darkness casts up shapes ... they run up and reel about like drunken men ... they fall over and pick themselves up anew ... they race forward through the night in zigzags, until they at last collapse exhausted, and lie still under our very eyes and make an end of it.... ”

“ A lad, a mere boy, is sprawling over and clutching his abandoned gun ... with an oath some one dashes at him—it is my yokel bareheaded, his face distorted by rage ... the boy stretches out his mangled hand to ward him off, his lower jaw is waggling, but his mouth remains voiceless.... The next moment the fixed bayonet plunges into his chest ... first his right, then his shattered left hand seizes the blade as if in his death throes he were trying to pluck it out of his heart; so he clings tightly to the bayonet ... a thrust! a recovery!... a bright, leaping jet follows the steel ... ”

“ The Earth has opened her mouth ... lightnings, crashes and thunderings, and the Heaven splits in twain and falls down in flame—the earth whirls upwards in shreds ... men and the earth blaze and hurtle through the air like Catharine wheels ... and then ... a crash, a maddening uproar, strikes us full in the chest, so that we reel backward to the ground, and half-consciously struggle for breath in the sand ... and now ... the storm is over ... the pressure of the atmosphere relaxes off our chest ... we breathe deep ... ”

“ The laugh is full of horror, and mingles with the dying whine beyond.... The laugh grows ever louder, and ever wilder, and laughs in triumph at the naked, pitiful dying, littering the ground.
"Drummers! Strike up!" shouts the voice.
"Uncover for prayer!"
We recognize him; he is a reservist belonging to some pious sect. A sergeant has seized him, and tries to hold him ... the captain has run up, but the madman tears himself away and runs ahead of them to a rifle-pit ... he stands aloft, a black, wild silhouette against the pale sky, and spreads out his arms in blessing over the sick night ... ”

“ They catch us up from behind in our backs, and wherever the invisible sheaf plunges hissing down, men are falling with it and rolling, helter-skelter in their blood. But we speed away over twitching and dismembered bodies, and over bodies turning somersaults, and look neither to the right nor to the left. We are on the run, and shrink into ourselves as we run. We draw our necks deep between our shoulders, for every man feels that the next moment his head will be leaping out from between his shoulder-blades from behind.
And eyes of iron are glaring at us from behind. The swamp! The swamp! ”

“ A shout of command.
The subaltern points to the moving target with his right hand. He shouts out the range. The gunners take aim, and:
"Ready! No. I gun. Fire!"
The missile is already a-wing, and for the space of a moment we feel the iron messenger flitting past. The air is a-hum. Boom—and a thousand yards in front of us the shell has exploded above the cavalry riding to the attack, and has spattered its rain of lead over the blue targets. ”

“ Let us heap up mountains of human heads, and pile up heaps of human entrails. Great Djengis Khan! Thou, our patron saint! Do thou bless us! Pray to thy blood-drenched father seated above the skies of Asia, that he may sweep with us through the clouds; that he may strike down that accursed nation till it writhes in its blood, till it never can rise again. ”

“ We would not even suffer a man to creep away out of Life by stealth while we looked on. We cut down suicides at their last sob, and hustled them back into life. Of our mercy we set up half-rotted wastrels with new bodies; with pills, elixirs and medicines, with herbalists, professors and surgeons, with cauteries, amputations and electrotherapy, we fanned the flickering life and fed the sunken flame with oxygen and radium and all the elements. There was nothing greater, nothing more sacred than Life. Life was everything to us, was for us the most precious possession on earth. ”

“ The body rages on in the whirl of the tempest—the wood, the wood!... the last muscle is still straining for the wood ... as if the soul had leaped free of the body, so the body chases after it—toward the wood ... lungs perforated by shot are running still; entrails riddled by bullets are still pressing on toward it ... and if you are not hit in the head, you are still jumping up once more; and if you fall, you are crawling on all fours—toward the wood.... ”

“ With the answer before us, the question rises whether it is more patriotic to blink it, to go on pretending that war is what it used to be—a soldier's death on the field of honor, or senseless automatic slaughter by machinery. It is against this latter mechanical aspect of war that the instinct of humanity, to which Lamszus has given voice in vivid words, revolts. ”

“ We are being hustled from life to death by experts—by mechanicians. And just as they turn out buttons and pins by wholesale methods of production, so they are now turning out the crippled and the dead by machinery. ”

“ They have masked machine-guns in the wood over there; they are opening fire on us. I feel how my heart is thumping against my ribs. A machine-gun is equivalent to a company, the Old Man once explained to us, after we had been shot down in heaps to the last man by the machine-guns in the autumn manoeuvres.
What's the next thing?
Cautiously, without raising it, I turn my head. Behind us, too, the lines of skirmishers, close up to us, have disappeared from the face of the earth; they too, have gone to cover in the grass. Only outside the firing zone are they still being pushed forward. ”

“ At all times and at all places, Lamszus points out, patriotism has been of two kinds. The one sort takes its stand on the public market-place, with its hand on its manly chest, to advertise the public spirit that inflates it. In season and out of season, it never fails to invite the public gaze to dwell on the integrity of its patriotic sentiments. ”

“ Your rifle at the ready! The enemy is facing you! Has that ceased to be a case of man to man? What does it matter even if the bullet finds its billet more surely? Aim steadily—straight for the chest.... Who is it really facing me? The man I am now going to shoot dead! An enemy? What is an enemy? ”

“ Even the firing has died down, and has become more distant than before. It seemed as if we had come into another, remoter world, and—so we have; for soon we notice how soft the ground has become under our feet, how water is oozing up at every step. We shall, if we go on, be right in the middle of a swamp. ”