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Show 314 315 . .ouknuhyMNina I hearts of that enthusiastic order known as "The Daughters of the Confederacy." These dear sisters, valiant as they are, do not exceed their brothers and their fathers in courage and loyalty to an ideal, but there are some things that their fathers and brothers learned that they can never know. The men have learned the debauching side of war, the futility of trying:r to solve ethical questions by physical force. They have learned what the sisters and daughters cannot learn-that valor on the field of battle is easy and cheap compared with the higher demands of peace. Once perhaps in farvoff medizeval days chivalry and knighthood, as interpreted in terms of intelligence and morality, needed the sword and did carry the bayonet, but that time has gone by. Brother Burdette notwithstanding. it does not take much of a fellow to make a good soldier nowadays. The private in the British army cannot hope to find a more sympathetic or intelligent champion than Rudyard Kipling, and his "Tommy Atkins" is a degenerate. President Roosevelt's administration found it hard to find "Jackies" enough to man their new battleships; and desertion, both on land and sea, is a real problem which baffles the departments at Washington. A thousand "Jackies" were reported to have deserted the navy on the Pacific slope during the humiliat- ing junketings at those ports. For no wonder-drunkenness and liccntiousness represented the entertainment extended to the enlisted men, and more than one commissioned officer had to be shielded from his indiseretions for the honor of the buttons. The savage has in the past proven and may again prove an equal to the civilized man on the low levels of the battlefield, as our strug- gles with the Indians and England's sad experience in heathen lands indicate. army and the final argument against militarism, the horrible logic of selfishness involved in war, the subordination of jurisprudence, science and religion to the clamor of the barbarian. I have some right to speak for the soldier, for three precious years of my life were spent under orders as a private in the noblest army that ever was gathered, doingr service for the highest cause for which ever an army was marshaledvthe cause of the slave, the rights of a despised race, and still, under such exalted circumstances, I must bear witness to the degradation, the spiritual contamination, the intellectual indolence, the vulgarity of speech, the filthiness of imagination, the fell harpies of sensualism, profanity, gambling and inebriety that in one way or another brought forth their kind here as always in the camps of war. The student of history knows that every great war has been followed by some form of moral pestilence, spiritual degradation, the malignity of which is beyond computation No one knows this better than the soldier himself. Napoleon, the greatest captain of modern times, said, "War is the trade of barbarians." Said the Duke of \Vcllington, "There is nothing more horrible than victory except defeat." Said our own Sherman, "Gentlemen, you think that war is all glory; I tell you it is all hell!" Severe as was the strain upon our national life from 1861 to 1865, it was not so severe as the strain of corrupt politics, rampant greed and low commercialism that followed that war as the direct result of that recklessness and lawlessness that belong to war. It is useless, then, to hope that war will put an end to itself; that guns can be silenced by the manufacture of more guns. Lecky has said that all the wars of the last thousand years have either been in the interest of the gods, trade, or something called "So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen, but a first-class fightin' rnan; An' 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Vt'uzzy, with your 'ayrick 'ead of 'air- You big black boundin' beggar-but you broke a British square!" Others will speak at this Congress of the waste of money and the atrocrties of battle, but not dollars nor yet quiverin g nerves and rivers of blood represent the ultimate burden of the "honor." In other words, modern wars have been inspired either by religious, economic or patriotic ends. More religion and a better appreciation of economic laws, and a truer patriotism alone will end war. Emerson quotes the good Christian Cavendish, who wrote in 1588: "It hath pleased Almighty God to suffer me to circumpass the whole globe of the earth. I have discovered rich places of the world which were never discovered by Christians. I navi- WHINI MIIW |
