War cry

“ Even if nothing else were to come of inquiries into the horrors of war, surely they would cry aloud for some better provision against their extremity after battle,—for some regulated and certain assistance to the wounded and agonized,—so that we might hear no longer of men left in cold and misery all night, writhing with torture,—of bodies stripped by prowlers, perhaps murderers,—and of frenzied men, the other day the darlings of their friends, dying, two and even several days after the battle, of famine! ”

“ The destruction even of an army momentarily shocks; but in the one breath the people will cry, 'war is hell; let us have war, for peace sake.' And when war comes it never affects the cowards, the usurers, the rogues; they stay at a safe distance from the scenes of action, and, with the instinct of the hyena, they profit on the nation's calamity. ”

“ Back to the struggle, baffled in the strife, War, war is still the cry, 'War even to the knife!'
LXXXVII.
Ye, who would more of Spain and Spaniards know, Go, read whate'er is writ of bloodiest strife: Whate'er keen Vengeance urged on foreign foe Can act, is acting there against man's life: From flashing scimitar to secret knife, War mouldeth there each weapon to his need— So may he guard the sister and the wife, So may he make each curst oppressor bleed, So may such foes deserve the most remorseless deed! ”

“ Buried was the bloody hatchet,
Buried was the dreadful war-club,
Buried were all warlike weapons, [Pg 154]
10And the war-cry was forgotten. ”

“ Tears stood in eyes, faces were twisted with emotion; each of these men had seen what the thing was—war; each knew what a price humanity had paid for freedom. Out of the stirring of emotion, out of the visions of trenches and charges and blood and agony and heroism and unselfishness and steadfastness, the fighting parson, he who had bent, under fire, many a day over dying men who waited his voice to help them across the border—the parson led the little company from the intense moment to commonplace. ”

“ Not even the shell-riven soldier with white face upturned questioningly to the stars. Not even the fear-racked mother or wife to whom one day the dreaded message comes. Then when he had reduced every one to abysmal depression and many to silent pitiful tears, he cried, "Soyez des optimistes," and seemed to think that the crying would suffice. Why? Ah, don't ask me that! Perhaps the war is too big a thing for the preachers to handle. The platitudes of years have been drowned by the mutter of the guns and the long sad wail of broken, shattered humanity. ”

“ Have you ever seriously considered the evil and sorrow of war? how it destroys the lives of multitudes, and makes bitter mourning in families and nations? You are sorry when you see a friend suffering pain, or a lame man with a broken bone, or even a child with a cut finger. But after a battle, what gashes and gaping wounds are seen, while the ground is red with the flowing blood, and the dying in their agony are trampled under the feet of horses, or covered with heaps of dead bodies. ”

“ How mad, how hopelessly mad, it all seems I With fifteen to twenty million soldiers already mobilized, and more than half that number in the fighting lines; with engines of appalling destruction by land and sea, and over the land and under the sea; with Northern France, Belgium, and parts of Germany, Poland, Russia, Servia, and Austria drenched in blood; the nations exhausting their human and material resources in savage conflict—this war, marking the climax, and (let us hope) the finale of our commercial civilization, is the most monstrous the old Earth has ever seen. ”

“ The chafing billows round her close; But ere her burning planks are riven, Shoots up one ruddy spout of fire,— Her last farewell to earth and heaven. Down, down to endless night she goes! So may the traitor's hope expire, So perish all our country's foes! Destruction's blazing star Has vanish'd from our sight; The thunderbolt of war Is quench'd in endless night; Nor sight, nor sound of fear Startles the listening ear; Naught but the torrent's roar, The dull, deep, heavy sound, From out the dark profound, Echoes from shore to shore. ”

“ What must be the sufferings of [Pg 51] our own unfortunate men, above all, of those who were not only wounded but prisoners, and at the mercy of the merciless French? Never—never till this moment, had I any conception of the horrors of war! and they have left an impression on my mind which no time can efface. Dreadful, indeed, is the sight of pain and misery we have no power to relieve, but far more dreadful are the horrors imagination pictures of the scene of carnage ”

“ They have seen and heard the red wrath of war, not in the pictures of the illustrated papers, not in the cinema shows, not even by the word-of-mouth tales of chance men who have been in it; but at first-hand, with their own eyes and ears, in the leaping flames of burning homes, in the puffing white clouds of the shrapnel, the black spouting smoke of the high-explosive, in the deafening thunder of the guns, the yelling shells, the crash of falling walls, the groans of wounded men, the screams of frightened children. ”

“ Here is the premeditation, the thrill, the strain of accumulating victory or disaster--and no smashed nor sanguinary bodies, no shattered fine buildings nor devastated country sides, no petty cruelties, none of that awful universal boredom and embitterment, that tiresome delay or stoppage or embarrassment of every gracious, bold, sweet, and charming thing, that we who are old enough to remember a real modern war know to be the reality of belligerence. ”

“ I know of no sadder scene than a field of battle presents soon after the conflict, even though the glorious result may have filled our hearts with joy. When the roll is called, and name after name uttered without response, it cannot but awaken the deepest sensibility in the heart of the survivors. And then the hasty burial of the dead, and the hurried sending off the wounded, the surgeon’s necessary operations, and the groans of the sufferers, all make us feel that these are the horrors of war. ”

“ Out of the gloom and blood and slaughter of this world war—the most wicked war that ever devastated the earth—she has radiated upon him like an angel, clothed in a glory of love and pity; and, moving by his side through the poisonous smoke of battle and the thunder of the guns, she has cheered him on his way. When wounded and fallen she has been swift to rescue him, and first to soothe. ”

“ The battle raged keenly—swords were broken in the grasp of their owners—the strong war-horse kicked upon the ground, in the agony of death, indenting the earth with its hoofs as it died, leaving the impression of its agony—their wounded men grappled with, and reviled each other, as though they had been foreigners or aliens—spears were broken, and shields clanked against each other—while the war-shout and the dying groan mingled together. ”

“ The image of the British troops retreating before a conquering, an insulting, a merciless enemy—defeated, perhaps cut to pieces: the idea of their misfortunes and their sufferings—of the wounded abandoned to perish on the fatal field; the misery of thousands; the distress in which it would plunge my country; the years of war and bloodshed, and all the dreadful consequences it would bring upon the world, incessantly haunted my mind during this long night of misery. Overpowered by three days and nights of extreme fatigue, anxiety, and agitation, I fell at times into a sort of unquiet slumber ”

“ And now, in the midnight, the veil is torn aside, and I see a human heart in extremis, writhing with agony, groaning as the wounded never groan, stricken, bleeding, prostrate, overwhelmed with the enormity of its sorrow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The carnage of battle is merciful compared with it. Shrieking women and children, half-clothed, fleeing from knives already dripping with human blood; frantic mothers shielding the bodies of their children, and wives pleading for the lives of husbands; the living hiding beneath the bodies of the dead.
The cry that ascended to Heaven from Paris that night was the most awful and despairing in the world's history. It was centuries of cruelty crowded into a few hours. ”

“ Are men wounded and broken by the thousands, do they lie in burning thirst, pleading for water, pleading for the bandaging of bleeding arteries, pleading for merciful death? The conquerors think of none of these things. Is night coming, are long marches coming? Still the conquerors shout like mad. Is war ended by this mammoth victory? For months and months it will drag on. Is this conquered foe a stranger, will he now withdraw to a distant country? He is our brother, his ills are ours, these wounds which we have given, we shall feel ourselves for fifty years. ”

“ By the torchlight unsteady, The dead and the dying seem one. What! paling and trembling already, Before your dear mission’s begun? These wounds are more precious than ghastly; Fame presses her lips to each scar, As she chants of a glory which vastly Transcends all the horrors of war. ”

“ We think not, we feel not, what horrors are thine.
But oh! when the victors and vanquish'd have parted,
When lonely we stand on the war-ground deserted,
And think on the dead, and on those broken-hearted,
Thy blood-sprinkled laurel-wreath ceases to shine. ”

“ For the darkness with which we are afflicted lay heavily around me, and seemed greater even than the blindness of the eyes. The war has brought the mystery of death to our hearts with pitiless insistence. Every bullet that finds its mark kills more than the soldier who falls. Ties of love and friendship are shattered hour by hour and day by day, as the guns of war roar out their message of destruction. ”

“ War never had a bolder moment. Human nature, roused to the wildest height of enthusiasm, was lavishing life like dust. The ramparts spread a horrid light upon the havoc; every spot of the battle, every group of the furious living, and the trampled and deformed dead, was keenly visible. The ear was deafened by the incessant roar of flame, the falling of the huge heaps of the rampart, and the agonies and exultations of men, reveling in mutual slaughter. ”

“ The thick shadows obscure our vision. The groans we hear, and the tears we see, hinder our exulting. Oh, the tears of this war—what a river of them, enough, with the added tears of the suffering slaves for lo! these many years, to float the cruel ship that first brought bondmen to our shores! The graves already filled, and others filling every day, and every where, almost crush our very hopes. In the midst of this darkness and storm, this carnage and blood, we would fear for the [Pg 263] result, were it not for the assurance that we feel to nerve us right from the God of nations. ”

“ Sitting round after the battle these men out of the slime, these muddy, bloody men, spoke quietly and soberly about things they had seen and suffered, and the tales they told would freeze the blood of gentle souls who do not know even now, after three years of war, what war means to the fighting men. ”

“ Feeble men, leaning on forks and rakes, shook their old heads sagely, as if they understood it all. And when the speaker alluded to the horrors of war—a subject which then came so bitterly home to every heart in Britain—many women melted into sobs and tears. ”

“ This is war; here are we approaching the place of horror. We have left behind the French villages where peace was still sleeping. Now there is nothing but tumult. And here are direct victims of the war.
The soldiers: blood, mud and dirt. The wounded. Those whom we pass at first are the least suffering—wounds in arms, in hands. In most of them can clearly be seen, in the midst of their fatigue and distress, great relief at having been let off comparatively easily. ”

“ And stay the tears in which her eyes will swim?
Ah! History has nought to say of her,
Nor speaks it of the sorrow she must bear.
XXXV.
The full extent of war's resulting curse
Is never known: the country's gain or loss
Is reckoned by its victory or reverse,
The dead are numbered—but the heavy cross
Of suffering, which womankind must bear,
Is reckoned not among the deeds of war.
XXXVI.
Nor can it be: while war is arbiter
Between the nations, private suffering
Must count for nought; affection must defer
To duty, whatso'er the pain it bring. ”

“ It all seems to me now like a jigsaw puzzle of suffering and fear and courage and death—a litter of odd, disconnected scraps of human agony and of some big, grim scheme which, if one could only get the clue, would give a meaning, I suppose, to all these tears of women and children, to all these hurried movements of soldiers and people, to the death carts trailing back from unknown places, and to the great dark fear that has enveloped all the tract of country in Northwest France through which I have been traveling, driven like one of its victims from place to place. ”

“ This individual source of misery and suffering in war times is accompanied by a more direct one, that of the main purpose of war—destruction of human life and of property that might be utilized by an enemy, frequently of merciless brigandage and devastation. It is horrible to think of the frightful suffering caused by every great battle. ”