Irrepressible Conflict

“ The parties of the old regime see the day of this inevitable conflict approaching, and strive to prepare for it by half-hearted plots and counterplots, jesuitical, monarchical and military, but without energy, without hope and without combination in which alone there is strength. ”

“ Surely nature had done her part in making men happy.
A spirit of unrest and uncertainty, however, brooded in the air. The long conflict between opposing ideas, which had waged so long and bitterly in politics and churches, and through the columns of the press, had come to a focus, and dread murmurs were abroad, of an impending war, and its attendant horrors. Men looked in each other's faces, and asked, with sad forebodings—“What is coming next?” ”

“ Like and yet unlike so many wars before it, this conflict, neither large nor glorious, was fought on a myriad of battlefields, where reasons were often lost, and morals obscured. The constraints of civilization had been removed, freeing men, both good and evil, to commune once more with their darker nature. ”

“ For the present generation has been reserved the vision of the very Armageddon of this Conflict, in which the world is divided against itself. The Powers precipitating it inaugurated it and have in its whole course attended it with every conceivable form of atrocity and outrage against noncombatants—innocent men, women, and children. ”

“ In such moments, while the seal of humble submission is stamped on the sorrow-stricken heart of suffering humanity, the haughty arrogance of creatures recedes before that resistless Power which shapes the destinies of men and nations, despite the best-laid plans and precautions. ”

“ Again there were menaces of war, insane and demoniac, to fill the world with tears and woe. As we read the record of these horrid outrages which through all the centuries have desolated this globe, it would seem that there must be a vein of insanity as well as of depravity, in the heart of fallen man. England and France were again marshaling their [Pg 155] armies, and accumulating their fleets, for the terrible conflict. ”

“ All these enormities of a savage character against the very existence of civilized society, and so revolting to the natural sentiments of mankind, when not thoroughly infuriated by the worst of passions, and in open violation of modern usages of war—were perpetrated by the Federal armies in many places throughout the conflict, as legitimate means in putting down the rebellion, so-called!—War Between the States, vol. ”

“ It is a conflict of great interests which is settled by bloodshed, and only in that is it different from others. ”

“ We cannot afford weakly to blind ourselves to the actual conflict which faces us to-day. The issue is joined, and we must fight or fail. ”

“ Every revolutionary outburst since the war has been marked by ferocious cruelties and followed by still more ferocious reprisals. Revolution leads not to peace, but to reciprocal reigns of terror, first Red and then White, till the exhaustion of suffering produces some sort of equilibrium. ”

“ To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. ”

“ Cities and crowds, poverty, illness, pain and all the various terror of Civilization, robbed of the power to afflict, yet still hung hovering about the surface of his consciousness, though powerless to break his peace. ”

“ Consider then, I said, when that which we have acknowledged to be discord occurs, and a city is divided, if both parties destroy the lands and burn the houses of one another, how wicked does the strife appear! No true lover of his country would bring himself to tear in pieces his own nurse and mother: There might be reason in the conqueror depriving the conquered of their harvest, but still they would have the idea of peace in their hearts, and would not mean to go on fighting forever. ”

“ You have ravaged one another in a war which has terrified the non-Christian world with its unimaginable crimes, its cruelty and its blind madness. The fabric of your states has been rent asunder, families and societies have been broken up, and you cannot rise up to indulge again in the madness of strife. ”

“ Surely, my lords, this nation is no longer what it was! Shall a people that, fifteen years ago, were the terror of the world, now stoop so low as to tell their ancient, inveterate enemy, 'Take all we have, only give us peace?' It is impossible! ”

“ Coming so swiftly, sweeping from anarchy to anarchy, from one excess to another, passing from bloodshed to bloodshed, from civil war to international strife, from democracy to tyranny, it stunned Europe into a stricken silence. ”

“ Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. ”

“ Injustice and oppression crush out the hearts of millions. War, intemperance, and lust, destroy the hearts of nations, sweep millions into untimely graves, carry desolation and sorrows into innumerable families. And passion, hate, and jealousy, poison the well-springs of life at their highest sources. ”

“ The craving for this Peace which has not come is, I believe, still the unspoken and often unconscious motive of millions who seem, at first glance, to be only brawling for revenges or revolutions; it lies, like a mysterious torment, at the heart of this storm-tossed and embittered world, crying for it knows not what. ”

“ Let your majesty deign to think a moment upon the lamentable situation in which this wretched country is at present, where thousands of your innocent subjects, who formerly all lived together in peace and brotherhood on all sides, notwithstanding difference of races, now find themselves plunged into the most frightful misery by their civil wars. ”

“ The hidden clash of a silent conflict like this is far harder to bear than an open quarrel. ”

“ Nations, though exhausted and disillusioned, have seemingly begun to cherish anew the spirit of revenge, of domination, and strife. Peoples, convulsed by economic upheavals, are slowly drifting into two great opposing camps with all their menace of social chaos, class hatreds, and worldwide ruin. ”

“ Men may use all just, all peaceful means of redressing their grievances, but should they fail, then, I say, 'twere better to endure those grievances, aye, even injustice, in silence, than bring the curse of civil war upon their country. ”

“ Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same,—hardihood. Give them raw truth. ”

“ What a strange anachronism it is that while we abhor the arbitrary resort to brute force in private life as a crime against human society, the same arbitrary resort to brute force in deciding differences between nation and nation, although infinitely more horrible in its effects, has still remained the custom of the civilized world, and is surrounded with a halo of heroic romance! ”

“ The battles of life are fought, and there is no strife in this court of peace. The struggles, cares, anxieties, rivalries, jealousies, fears, all that disquiet, harass, fret, and annoy, all, all are buried here. ”

“ For a weary instant I felt again the pressure of all those currents which bewilder, crush, and smother the struggling individual—movements of peoples, marching of armies, alliances of nations, the tides of poverty and disease, the tremendous impersonal economic conflicts. ”

“ Even now we have not actually progressed beyond the feasibility of a system of accommodation between conflicting interests which may minimise the recurrence of the worst forms of strife. And towards this consummation the method, the approach which humanity has been forced by its own nature to adopt, is a monstrous mutual massacre unparallelled in history ; a universal war, full of bitterness and irreconcilable hatred, is the straight way and the triumphant means modern man has found for the establishment of universal peace! ”

“ One man—alone, dismounted, inadequately armed—in the vast heart of an unknown country, tracked down by fleet-footed pitiless destroyers, stung to a frenzy of massacre by a twofold incentive—blood feud for a comrade slain, and the fanatical dictates—or supposed dictates—of the most merciless religion in the world. ”

“ The struggle, which, when some great principle of politics or morals is the subject of the strife, ennobles in our eyes the unflinching combatants, only degrades when the violence and the rancour result from the soreness of wounded vanity, or the malice of blighted anticipation. ”

“ When two civilized nations go to war, each strains every nerve to mow the other down, to cut his throat, to mutilate and kill him,—by fair means or foul,—and when the battle is lost and won, they commiserate and sympathize with them, and grieve to see so many hundreds of their fellowmen writhing in agony on the battlefield. ”

“ Ambition, cruelty, and callous hardness, trampled under foot all the finer feelings of the heart and mind,—hypocrisy and treachery invaded the most sacred ties of home and blood-relationship, the desire of worldly power, and holding their neighbours in the yoke of bondage, was the prevalent feeling, to which all others were sacrificed, and the opposing factions met each other on the field of battle, and fought for the governing power at the sword's point, with the sacrifice of myriads of human lives. ”

“ They do not foresee the gradual drawing closer to their outward defences—the struggle to get within their guarded lines—the fight that is surely coming between a sated, dull, degraded civilization on the one side, and a hungry, bold, ambitious savagery on the other. ”

“ Let rebels feel that we are terribly in earnest. Let heavy blows be struck, and struck without delay, and let there be no exhibition of concession or conciliation, till the enemy sue for peace upon the terms the country proclaims. ”

“ Not many years have passed, since the cruelties of war were filling the world with terrour and with sorrow; rage was at last appeased, or strength exhausted, and, to the harassed nations peace was restored with its pleasures and its benefits. ”

“ The facts which have come to my knowledge respecting this war have convinced me that it originated in honorable purposes, and, setting aside the selfish intrigues of individuals, inevitably connected with such movements, is carried on with disinterestedness. It deserves the sympathy of the civilized world, for it strikes at a tyrannical organization, half clerical, half military, which, calling itself a republic, disgraces the name it assumes. ”

“ And thus agitation at this time was calmness, perfect halcyon peace, in comparison with the confusion, the chaos, the tremendous storm of indignation, opposition, and persecution, that afterwards arose and hurtled around him. There are no wars so bloody as civil wars; there are no feuds so deadly as family feuds; there are no enemies so bitter, so cruel, so unrelenting, as those of our own blood, when they are enemies! Others may spare, but they will never spare! Others may in time become sated with vengeance, but they never! ”

“ When to-day in certain circles I meet with case-hardened misconception of the peace movement, when they try to show me the obvious naturalness and historical necessity of the scourge of war by arguments at which wrath and discouragement threaten to take possession of me, all I need to do, that my wrath may subside and my courage rise, is to think back to my own past. ”

“ After a few seconds, he resumed.
“We are dismembered, sir—ruined by faction. Society is disintegrated by political animosities; thousands have retreated from the scene of violence and excitement, to find peace and repose in a foreign land.” ”

“ Like a slow-consuming fire, civilized nations have nursed the demon of destruction which, loosened, rocks the temple of international justice, outrages the peaceful in utter disregard of solemn obligations. ”

“ In all countries the war has pointed out the leaders to the vengeance of the people; that unworthy middle class, political, financial, intellectual, that in a single century of power has heaped on the world more exactions, crimes, ruins and follies, than kings and churches had inflicted in ten centuries. ”

“ But whatever may be the fate of the present crisis, whether it be doomed to the horrors of prolonged strife, or shall soon brighten into the radiance of enduring concord, I cannot doubt that the Nations are gravitating, with resistless might, even through fire and blood, into peaceful forms of social order, where the War System will cease to be known. ”

“ The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction. Class wars, racial wars, wars between the nations of yesterday, wars between the nations which have just been formed, blind social convulsions, with no further aim than the gratification of the hatreds, the envies, the crazy dreams of an hour of life looking forward to no morrow.... ”

“ That country, after a disheartening and desperately protracted struggle, had at last begun to triumph over all its enemies, including that most intolerable of all political evils, foreign armed intervention, and to have reached a crisis when, if left alone, it might be expected to restore tranquillity and reorganize itself upon permanent foundations. ”

“ Whatever be the disparity of strength, wealth and numbers, and whatever may be the result of encounters upon the battle-field, such a terrible war as both sides are capable of waging can never build up or sustain a fabric whose cement must be brotherhood and kindly feeling. ”