| OCR Text |
Show 10.2 103 Napoleon so exhausted France that his army during the SaXon campaign was largely made up of boys. and the French soldiers today are said to be :horter by two inches than those of fttrntct' ages. If it were possible in any way to portray the sutl‘erings of a single battlefield to an audience like this, it would cause \our has been told in the story of battles and wars. As the race grew strongr in numbers the conflicts were proportionately more fierce. As the nations became enriched more wealth was lavished upon armies and squandered upon navics, As they came to be more and more civilized and Christian- ized their weapons of warfare were made to be more destructive of life and property. Their men of genius were called upon to devote their powers of invention to instruments and vessels of death. The modern battleship and the modern equipment make battles brief because so many men can so quickly be made to bite the dust. The fighting instinct in man has prevailed in his development through clan, tribe, community, state and nation. llis right.a and privileges have been won and maintained through force rather than reason. At first the physical combat between individuals set- tled their personal rights and fixed their relations with each other. Personal liberty, personal rights and especially property rights stand for those principles for which men feel justified in making their fiercest contests. and hence not infrequently arc the strongholds for which most vicious customs retreat for protection. iecause of the respect which public opinion had for the man who claimed the right personally to protect the good name of himself or his family the duel was for centuries unmolested. From the duel it is only a step to that other degradingr contest hearts to break and your reason to be almost shaken on its throne. so horrible would its scenes appear. All who have looked upon the strife of battle declare with tieneral Sherman that war indeed is hell. WWilmauw tin. mum Pierre lirittel in his famous painting; "The Conquerors" sought not to paint a battlefield but a picture representing war and its products. The Conquerors are the great war generals of the ages. They appear with magnificent forms and attractive features. mounted on splendid steeds or driving their chariots of war. Their resplendent equipments. with swords and shields and armor and all the paraphernalia of war, make them appear attractive indeed. . "Lie '. the type of the conquering' hero, occupies the imme- diate center of the picture; Napoleon rides close in his shadow; while on either side are Sesostris and Alexander." Then there are Charlemagne and 'l'anierlane and so many others that their figiiand standards stretch away in longr perspective into the black . And now the observer, who has permitted his eve to follow tilts longr line of irresistible masters of nations bark'till it fades puav inI the shadows. is startled at the appearance of that which ietore tad escaped his vision. It is the iieture's l: ""‘t consistingr on the right and on the left of it‘ll" 5. tinCtltli)ll:\:(:\::n(:1f dead men. The t onquerors have marched up through this avenue wt uneounted myriads of lifeless forms llankinq them on either side and stretching; back and out into limitless perspective throuirh the "valley of the shadow of death." 5 lhe whole presentation possesses a subtle power. causing :KHII to see at a glance the cruel history of war's triumphal pro": ress down the centuries. h And though we may regret the record for which this picture stands. we cannot deny that it fairly portravs what the painter intended, For from the beginning of time the storv of mankind known as wager of battle. Wager of battle with its legal formalities was an outgrowth of a more brutal form of combat, when, without any regulation whatever, the strong overpowered the weak and took from him whatever the whim of the victor dictated. Crude and barbaric as was this custom of former ages, it was yet more retined and less objectionable than that which went before. The demands of enlightened civilization in the course. of centuries placed a ban upon the wager of battle and substituted therefor more peaceful methods of determining the rights of corn tending claimants. yet this law remained upon the statute books of England until the beginningr of the last century. It had loner been a d 'ad letter, and at that time few even of the legal pro- fession in that country knew that it was still part oi their juris- prudence. |
