GIFT OF WAR AS IT IS. o J 32 "a ? ;? WAE AS IT IS WILHELM CAELSEN TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY P. H. PECKOYEE WITH FORTYSIX ILLUSTRATIONS SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. AND THE PEACE SOCIETY, 47, NEW BROAD STREET, E.G. 1892 BUTLER & TANNER, THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS, FROME, A.ND LONDON. TO MY ESTEEMED FELLOW-LABOURER, FEEDEIK BAJEK, M.R, PRESIDENT OF THE DANISH SOCIETY FOR PEACE AND NEUTRALIZATION, ' 4 TO WHOSE INDEFATIGABLE ARDOUR, KINDLY SYMPATHY AND CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP THIS TRANSLATION OWES ITS ORIGIN, I CORDIALLY DEDICATE THIS LITTLE BOOK. WAR AGAINST WAR. THE opposite page tabulates some of the antidotes and remedies for the War-plague by which the Peace Societies of the world are seeking to eliminate war, and to subdue it. 1. By applying to international relations, as in private life, the golden rule of doing to others as we would that they should do to us, 2. By submitting disputed questions to courts of justice. 3. By increasing the number and area of the localities and countries already, by mutual agreement, held intact from war, as the Straits of Magellan, the Suez Canal, Switzerland, Belgium, the Congo, etc. 4. Let every wife and mother, indeed every woman, protest against men being trained to wholesale murder. B. Let ministers, teachers, nurses, historians, poets, the press, teach the evils of it, 6. Let the people by their votes, trades unions by their resolutions, proclaim the brotherhood and solid- arity of nations. 7. Let chambers of commerce and industry declare the inviolability of honest, beneficent trade ; for trade is not honest that needs violence to support it. 8. Let European nations insist upon the reduction of the armaments that are consuming their vitals, and let every Christian say of the Prince of Peace, " The government shall be upon His shoulder." P. H. P. THE WORK OF RIGHTEOUSNESS Shall be PEACE, and the effect of Bighteousness, QUIETNESS AND ASSURANCE FOR EVER. 1 MUTUAL AGREEMENT 2 ARBITRATION 3 NEUTRALIZATION 4 WOMAN'S WORK 5 EDUCATION 6 POPULAR VOICE 7 COMMERCE 8 DISARMAMENT THE FRUIT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS Is sown in PEACE of them that make Peace. 'BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS.' UII71RSITY TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. IN authorizing me to publish his lecture, Mr. Carlsen has requested me to state that he is anxious to dis- claim any pretensions as an author. He has simply gathered into a collective form some of the best descriptions by word, pen, and pencil, of what War really is. I take this opportunity of acknowledging the uniform kindness received from Mr. Carlsen, ever since his introduction to me by M. Fredrik Bajer, M.P., President of the Danish Peace Society, and his cordial co-operation in the cause of International Peace ; as well as to express my obligation to the well-known Russian artist and soldier, M. Vassili Verestchagin, for freely granting me permission to copy some of his masterly delineations of scenes witnessed by himself. That this little book may, under the Divine bless- ing, in some small measure contribute to bring about the time when the spirit and precepts of the Prince of Peace shall be so accepted that men shall learn war no more, is my earnest desire. P. H. PECKOVER. INDEX OF PLATES. PART I. 1. Mother's Darling. From life. 2. The Sick Child. Max Eller. 3. Eve's Agony. Gelhardt. 4. Slaughter of the Ammonites. 5. Telemachus Staying the Com- bat. Stallert. 6. Thanking God for Victory. 7. The War Correspondent. 8. Napoleon I. at Eylau. Louvre. 9. Frozen to Death. Verestchagin. 10. From the Crimean War. Boutigny. 11. A Cavalry Charge. Moroet. 12. Cavalry Charge Repulsed. Neuville. 13. Storming a Fortress. Yvon. 14. Battle Bound Guns. Yvon. 15. Dead and Wounded. 16. The Last Shot. Neuville. 17. Military Incendiarism. Neuville. 18. Battle in Consecrated Ground. Neuville. 19. Christ Condemns War. Wiertz. 20. Fight in a Church. 21. Earthquake in Spain. 22. A Woman in Distress. 23. The War Prisoners' Path. 24. Springing a Mine. 25. A Sea Fight. 26. War Engines. 27. A Warrior's Death. Forsberg. 28. A Few Sufferers. 29. A Train of Wounded. Verestchagin. 30. Consecrating for Burial. Verestchagin. 31. A Battle-Field. Protain. PART II. 32. A Pyramid of Heads. Verestchagin. 33. Farewell of the Reserves. Vermehren. 34. The Last Message. 35. The Victor Wreath. 36. Corpse Plunderers. 37. Flying for Shelter. 38. A Woman Shot by Soldiers. Wiertz. 39. Napoleon in Hell. Wiertz. 40. The Compassionate Christ. 41. The Poor Begging Bread. Kroghs. 42. Coffers at Spandau. 43. Famine and Want. Geoffroj. 44. An Invalid of War. 45. Capitulation of Sedan. 46. " Thou Shalt not Kill." WAR AS IT IS THE MOTHER'S DARLING. (FKONTISPIECE. LOOK at this sweet young mother and her dar- ling babe. Can you find a prettier sight ? It is a jubilee for her when his little eyes for the first time meet hers. She feels it a glad return for all the pain and anxiety she has suf- fered on his account. She has indeed watched over him, like a kind providence, from the be- ginning of his existence. They two are united in a bond which nothing can sever. If the child suffers (and he will have like others to bear pain and sickness), he is sure, with unerring instinct to call for " mother." From her warm embrace indeed he has felt the happiness of his life to flow long before he could begin to take notice. Tell me ! Have you not known the time, when, disturbed and teased by the tormenting clatter of children, you have gone out to scold them, and have paused reverently, as before a holy thing, on seeing the look of deep resigna- tion and distress with which a true mother is gazing on her sick child. WAR AS IT IS. THE SICK CHILD. (PLATE n.) The artist who drew this picture must have seen it, otherwise he would not have portrayed the mother with a touch so true to life, taking her last penny from the box to get something for her child. We seem to hear her murmur in soft tones the lines of Agnetio's beautiful cradle-hymn : " Ay ! slumber, my baby ; I bore thee in sorrow, Be ever my joy, as this moment thou art ; Thy life from my very heart's life thou didst borrow ; Each tear-drop thou sheddest flows into my heart ! " Yes ! the mother - look is well known, not only to every father, but every good physician knows it too, and often depends more upon the great bright tears in a mother's eyes than upon his own drops, because they bespeak an un- wearied nurse. What soul-happiness and^ what deep sorrow are reflected in those wonderful tear-drops ! Amid gnawing pain, often through watchings and suffering day and night for years, they testify to the love to every child of man that dwells in the mother-heart. The very poorest of mankind is worth so much. No one knows this better than the mother THE SICK CHILD. herself; and as each child leaves her roof she will breathe for it the prayer to God and man : " Be good to my child ! " PLATE II. THE SICK CHILD. [(Max Eller.) Nothing but the inferior position which she has for centuries inherited can explain why she has not to a much greater extent united her- self to the cause which bears inscribed upon WAR AS IT IS. its banner, " Eespect for mankind." That men are compelled to live as slaves and die like slaughtered beasts should at least appeal to her, and rouse her whole soul ; for it is hers to watch over even the tenderest life. EVE'S AGONY. Otherwise this picture (PLATE in.) is false, for it shows us the anguish of the first mother, Eve, on seeing cold, numbing death creep over the limbs of her dear son, while his features grow rigid and his hands fall helpless to the ground. Would not any woman, however many years she may have passed in disappointment, suffer- ing and want, feel that to be her most ter- rible hour, in which she must bend over her slaughtered child, with agonized gaze, seeking whether there may not yet be a spark of life which she may cherish with her aged hands ? Such must be her feelings as the mother of the murdered. But how much worse as the mother of the murderer, whose footprints leave maledictions behind them ! And tell me ! What is a battle-field but murd LT upon murder such as this ? And what the eagerness for armaments EVE'S AGONY. amongst the military powers, but really the reverberation of Cain's terror-stricken cry : " Every one that findeth me shall slay me " r PLATE III. EVE S AGONY (Gellmrdt.) When thousands upon thousands are mus- tered for the purpose of murdering one another, is not the national sense of right at fault ? The guilt which would blast any single life with its WAR AS IT IS. bloodstain disappears from sight when a multi- tude is bent on committing the same offence. The curse nevertheless falls upon us through the community, and we begin to see it ; but it takes time, and not every one who has slain the hope of a mother feels it so deeply as Cain. Far from it. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE AMMONITES. Before long we find war represented as a glorious service to the God of all love. See for instance (PLATE iv.), from the Old Testament, how the pious psalmist, King David, treated the Ammonites after he had taken their city. The text reads thus : " He brought forth the people that were therein, and put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes of iron, and made them pass through the brickkiln ; and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of Ammon." That agrees with the brutality which charac- terized the people of old, and which has pro- pagated itself right up to the present time, so that at various epochs the punishment of death has been awarded for purely trivial offences ; yes ! even for vagrancy, or for leaving the country. But instead of admitting this to be THE SLAUGHTER OF THE AMMONITES. 7 a thing of the past, those who ought to know better advocate " defence," and talk of the " Wars of the Lord/' which include such bar- barities as this, as though they were examples for us to follow. WAR AS IT IS. 66 But unto us a Child is born . . . and the government shall be upon His shoulder." Christ has come, the Prince of Peace that majestic figure which fills history and has sent forth His heart-stirring words down the ages, so that nearly nineteen centuries after His crucifixion we still see them far beyond us in the misty future ; so far, that but few even yet dare to acknowledge that they can be carried out in practical life. His condemnation of all homicide is so clear, so unqualified, that He, with even superhuman self-sacrifice, says to him who drew the sword in His defence, " Put up thy sword into the sheath." Consequently we see His disciples ready to sacrifice their lives in contending for Peace. TELEMACHUS STAYING THE COMBAT. For example (PLATE v.), we see the monk Telemachus, once a combatant, so deeply imbued with the Gospel of Peace that he threw himself into the fight. He recks not of the Roman Emperor, whose nod means life or death ; without a shudder he treads the crunch- ing sand of the arena, which has drunk streams of Christian blood, and there seizes the hand of the victorious gladiator, and pointing to TELEMACHUS STAYING THE COMBAT. ; PLATE V. TELEMACHUS STAYING THE COMBAT. (Stallert.) to WAR AS rr is. heaven, reminds him that another than the Emperor passes sentence of life or death. The fallen negro, expecting nothing but the death- stroke, looks up, not comprehending the depth of love that urged on the heroic man, though he perceives that in it is deliverance. Though Telemachus was stoned by the mob, enraged at the interruption of their sport (?), his witness for Christ caused an end to be put to the gladiatorial combats. Who will dare now, in God's name, to seize the hands of the combatants and cause them to cease ? Alas ! none. Bach side now appears with its army chaplain. THANKING GOD FOR VICTORY. When so many mothers' sons are slain that what they call a victory is won, the victors kneel (PLATE vi.) and chant over the corpse- strewn battlefield, accompanied by the moans of the wounded and dying, the psalm : li Now thank we all our God " ; and the hands which recently were indiscrim- inately slaying, are lifted to the Creator of all life. One cannot altogether shake oneself free from the thought that some of this praying THANKING GOD FOR VICTORY. company are casting a searching look towards the fallen, to see whether any of them may not 12 WAR AS IT IS. possess some little article of value which they could take away with them as a memento of this solemn hour. Why should not they, too, be seized with the conqueror's greed ? THE WAR CORRESPONDENT. This picture (PLATE vn.) shows a war corres- pondent outside the line of battle. The blood- thirsty curiosity which drew so wide a circle of spectators in the days of ancient Rome is not dead. We meet with a great deal of it in the avidity with which people follow wars those loathsome massacres of the inhabitants of any country. While this is almost a matter of course, we may notice that it has very distinct moods. The papers, a true index of public sentiment, swell rightly with indignation when a hawker draws a packthread through a living flounder ; and say in deep moralizing tones, that pigs ought to be killed in a more humane manner. But when it is living men who are run through and mutilated when it is men who lie groan- ing in pain, and shriek as they feel life depart- ing with their streaming blood, that is a sort of trifle you may accustom yourself to overlook, while you follow the course of the battle in its THE WAR CORRESPONDENT. entirety. And when you bring the exciting news to all who frequent the barber's shop, the PLATE VII. THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.' bar-room, or the home circle, all agree in be- stowing their admiration upon that side which has slain the most, and has risked most in doing 14 WAR AS IT IS. so. But you who grieve so much over floun- ders, pigs and wretched nags will be thought dreadful radicals, almost " dangers to society," if you venture a protest against stretching 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 men dead and wounded upon the field. On the other hand, intoxicated by scenes of blood at the seat of war, one may become as demoralized as a war correspondent who wrote home to a Danish paper, saying : " I write this on the stomach of a dead Kroat, with ink made of gunpowder and blood." Instead of deeming it a terrible charge against war, that it should make a man talk like a madman, people naturally found it " awfully interesting." Yet it is evident that a correspondent can free himself from administering to this curio- sity and speculation, and even from headquar- ters ; and if he has so great a desire to keep an eye on the battle-field a firm loving eye, capable of seeing through the false glare he may expose the way in which art and poetry and newsvendors veil the infamous reality of war; their romantic phrases inducing even wives and mothers and daughters to sacrifice at its altar, without so much as admitting the thought that it is something that ought to be protested against. NAPOLEON I. AT EYLAU. NAPOLEON I. AT EYLAU. We will illustrate a little of this falseness. Here is an instance (PLATE vm.) which deserves PLVTE VIII. NAPOLEON I. AT EKLAU. to Joe placed beside the sort of war history that is prepared for the use of courts. It is the battle-field of Eylau. Do you believe that a field on which 60,000 men are stretched bleeding on the ground looks like that? Never! Soldiers in gay even ranks, a burning town like an artistic decoration in the background; all 16 WAR AS IT IS. the wounded so lively that they think of nothing but kissing the hands or feet of the great Emperor, who has eyes like those of a ministering angel. He, who swept over Europe like a fearful plague, generated in that dismal island of blood- feuds. He, who impressed courageous soldiers with the idea of a beast of prey. He, whose game of war strewed upon battle- fields as many men as there are inhabitants in Denmark and Norway together. He, the utterer of false money, the moral transgressor, of whose degradation one can hardly speak. He, who purposely appealed to man's lower nature, counting upon its love of plunder ; who in one year levied for his butcheries about a million and a half of men, at last boys and men so weak that they seemed already dying. This official lie could paint him as a demi- god ! But this is an indispensable accompani- ment of war; it makes the most graceless attack into "defence of your Fatherland;" the meanest cunning into " caution ; " the grossest heartlessness into " manly firmness," and its own misrepresentations into " sparing your feelings." FROZEN TO DEATH. FROZEN TO DEATH. But here and there an artist who loves the truth has portrayed war scenes which approach PLATE IX. FROZEN TO DEATH. (After VerestcJiagin.) so closely to the awful reality, that they deserve to be known by all w^ho have sons or other C WAR As IT is. dear ones liable to be led out to slaughter in the field. When in the bitter winter weather (PLATE ix.) during the last war the Russians began to in- quire anxiously how the troops were faring, there came from General Radetsky the com- forting reply: "All is quiet at Schipka;" a telegram which the Russian artist has illus- trated with this picture. Though almost daily a number of Russians fell under the Turkish fire, the telegram may have been literally true at that moment; for even more succumbed to the frost. Almost the whole of the 24th division was frozen to death ; and none are quieter than the dead. While the heart-beat of the weary, suffering man is being gradually stilled by the presence of the hand of death; while he slowly sinks under the snowy winding-sheet ; even in death he dreams of the home he will never see again so all is quiet ! not the slightest complaint is heard ; for the dead are silent. But official falsehoods have one excuse ; it is this : the truth cannot be told by human lips, nor depicted by the hands of any human artist. It is too terrible ! FROM THE CRIMEAN WAR. FROM THE CRIMEAN WAR. (PLATE x.) Here is a scene from the Crimean War, which claimed about a million human lives (half the population of Denmark). PLATE X. FROM THE CBIMEAN WAR. (Boutigny,) See how they seize one another by the throat, shoot each other in the face at short range, crush in each other's skulls ! It is only the outside we can see ; the deep soul pangs 20 WAR AS IT is. that oppress all no painter can give expression to. Tolstoi, from whose descriptions I have frequently borrowed form and colour, tells of the fearful impression the first wounded make : "A soldier is hit in the throat, and, sup- ported by two men, pours with gurgling sound a stream of blood from his mouth. Another, with distorted face, is swinging his mutilated hand in the air in unbearable agony, the blood streaming down his coat as he still moves forward." He tells, too, how a brave officer never could forget the look a Frenchman gave him as he rode him down. It was a young, fair, friendly face, whose kind blue eyes sought his "enemy's," whilst a dimple in the chin quivered beneath his whistling weapon. The Russian turned sick at having gashed this youth with the blessed look, created to smile in the bosom of his family. A CAVALEY CHARGE, (PLATE xi.) This is 'a cavalry charge at Eeichshafen. On they come, with waving plumes and glittering cuirasses, amid a storm of projectiles and the crack of musketry. That must have been a proud sight ! A CAVALRY CHARGE. But this is a wild host of men doomed to death. Do you not know and hate that story of the Russian mother who, in terror for her own life. 22 WAR AS IT IS. threw out her little screaming children, one after another, to a howling pack of wolves ? But do you hate war in the same way ? This is a feature of its first law ; only with this dif- ference, that it casts out thousands of men to devouring death. Those horsemen have McMahon's orders to let themselves be cut to pieces in order to save the rest; they have no choice. Only 150 men of the whole regiment survived after that death ride into the ranks of the enemy. CAVALRY CHAEGE REPULSED. (PLATE xn.) Repulsed ! See ! how Death is reaping his harvest among them. The wounded in front will next moment be under the hoofs of the horses. The fight goes on; the wounded, trampled and dead can be counted afterwards. There is one falling from his horse ; and here a man with gashed face leaves a track to the place where he sinks backward deadly pale, and stiffens amid the surrounding excitement. His hands are already clenched in death, and the whitened lips, which perhaps only recently kissed his wife and children, promising to come back soon. Without this hope of meeting CAVALRY CHARGE REPULSED. 23 again, cherished by each, war would be im- possible. It comes to this : shrinking as we do from talking about war and mutilation, and from PLATE XII. CAVALRY CHARGE REPULSED. (NewriU*.) thinking about military duties in neighbouring states, or of our own hardly-used comrades, we ought to leave off employing wholesale slaughter as an expedient fitted for men of honour, 24 WAR AS IT IS. STORMING A FOETEESS. (PLATE xm.) This is a scene from the storm- ing of the Malakof, Russia's strongest fortress in the Crimea. It is well for those who place such confidence in fortifications to remember that even this stronghold fell, though defended by the greatest power in Europe and Asia, at the sacrifice of numerous battles. Although the assailants had to get over seas and through earthworks, and to " eat " their way forward against the Russians, yet that mighty empire had to give in when its people were weakened by cold, hunger, and want, and the bombard- ment, during which 700 bellowing cannon turned the fortress into a hell. Now comes the shock in all its fury ; the murderers stare one another in the eyes as they kill. See here! one unlucky wounded man, with blood pouring down his face, cannot con- trol his fear of death, so they are driving him on with the butt-ends of their muskets and blows of sabre blades, giving him the infernal choice, " Thou shalt kill, or be killed." This cry tears away the mask from war, and reveal^ how brutal and shameless it is. STORMING A FORTRESS. PLATE XIII. STORMING A FORTRESS. 26 WAR AS IT IS. BATTLE ABOUND GUNS. (PLATE xiv.) See the infuriated contest which rages in every trench around the guns. Many of them are now useless ; but it is a dis- honour to leave them, therefore it is a glory that around them should lie heaps of slain fathers and breadwinners of families. So they hew one another down ; and so there rises amid the battle-cry an ever-deepening chorus of agonizing wail; and he who kills most, wins most glory. His is the kingdom, and his is the glory, for his is the power. Amen. This is war's version of the Lord's Prayer. BATTLE AROUND GUNS. 27 PLATE XIV. BATTLE AROUND GUNS, (Tvon.) 28 WAR AS IT IS. DEAD AND WOUNDED. (PLATE xv.) In a fight in the open field, the space between himself and the enemy is to the soldier a space full of dread and uncertainty. This broad belt of dead and wounded shows how it is filled up in an attack upon a fort- ress. They tell us with their silent tongues that the battle round a fortress is the bloodiest, the most terrible of all. What an amount of pain and misery lies hidden in this gasping heap ! Not one of them can get a moment's ease while the battle lasts. He may wake from his swoon ; he may lie and cry, weak and pitiable as a child. He can, while he has a moment left, gaze on the beau- tiful deep blue sky, with its peace and rest. He does not realize why they are fighting so madly around him ; but the racking pain brings him again into notice, with his shriek for the ambulance, often relapsing into silence as Death writes his passport, releasing him from the necessity of bearing arms, and being driven forth to murder in the name of God and the king. DEAD AND WOUNDED. 29 PLATtfi XV. DEAD AND WOUNDED. 30 WAR AS IT IS. THE LAST SHOT. (PLATE xvi.) Here we have a special feature of the Franco-German war. The picture is called "The Last Shot." It is one of the hideous house-to-house fights. They are shoot- ing from every window of the town. This is the end. The wounded, with convulsed limbs, moan about the streets. The officers hold out in spite of everything, till the last shot has been fired, and then no one surrenders, but they slash at one another like maniacs until all is over. The man leaning by the press, nearly done for, is not thinking about heaven or hell, nor yet about his wife whom he loves. One thought alone possesses him : how to kill another Prussian. It was found the day after the contest, of which this is one scene, that out of 8,000 inhabitants over 2,500 were killed or made prisoners. When exasperation reaches such lengths as this, we may be permitted to take a furtive glance at the laws by which civilized men, in various ways, destroy one another. THE LAST SHOT. PLATE XVI. THE LAST SHOT. (Neuville.) [uiriTiasiTTi %ffo*1^ 32 WAR AS IT IS. MILITARY INCENDIARISM. (PLATE xvn.) This is military incendiarism, which the French are perpetrating against the Prussians. See, how they skulk along like wild beasts prowling to do mischief, all the while in mortal fear of being shot themselves. It is odious ! Yes, certainly. But do you know any nice way of killing your fellow-men ? The French excuse themselves under the plea that the Germans killed their wounded on the battle-field. A German, who was there, ad- mitted to me the truth of this with respect to the Turcos. " We hated them," he said, " be- cause those demons in the dark crawled about the battle - field and horribly mutilated our wounded." Let us pity these poor savage wretches who did not know how to behave towards your fellow-men, when you are killing them in a Christian fashion. At Gravelotte the cannon-balls did not fly in the air like birds, they struck, thud after thud, into bleeding flesh ; every stroke hit its mark. It was a busy day. In twenty hours, 33,000 men were murdered or mutilated. Only the other day nineteen years after skeletons of two French soldiers were found : probably they MILITARY INCENDIARISM. 33 were buried alive. Onr soldiers from the wars have told us that this may happen ; that masses of men, rushing forward, trample the earth PLATE XVII. MILITARY INCENDIARISM. over the wounded lying in the ditches, unable to cry out; and so these missing ones were found while the peasants were engaged in their field work. 34 WAR AS IT IS. BATTLE IN CONSECRATED GROUND. (PLATE xvm.) What a place for a battle ! St. Privat's churchyard, bought with rivers of blood, for neither side would yield an inch during the battle. Now there lie as many dead above as beneath the soil. They are killing the last away there at the churchyard gate. The graves are torn open and violated by the shells. Do you believe that any honourable civilian would take possession of that place if he must be answerable for all the evil deeds done during the fight ? No ! But does it not teach a wholesome moral lesson to the people, and one which concerns every good citizen ? The other day a tipsy jail-bird broke into a churchyard and destroyed some of the tomb- stones. People saw in this a proof of how low human nature can sink. Consider ! the peace of the dead ! consecrated ground ! But no one arrested the armies of the two Christian states who, some years ago, set to work murdering each other in consecrated ground, BATTLE IN CONSECRATED GROUND. 35 PLATE XVIII. BATTLE IN COKSECKATED GROUND. (Neuville.) 36 WAR AS IT IS. CHBIST CONDEMNS WAR. (PLATE xix.) Christians believe in a God of Love, whose Son showed us the way to true human happiness in three simple words : "Love one another." States patronize His teaching, and build churches to His honour, at whose birth the angels sang, " Peace on earth." The artist here depicts Christ condemning war, as well as him who would use the cross to hallow it, as our Christian princes do, who, whenever they make wars, conclude the peace in the name of the Triune God. But if you talk about popular efforts to secure peace between the nations, you will hear our great politicians, from cabinet ministers down- ward, say, " That is not the question." That is what they say about every cause which is above what they choose to take part in. We have a clergyman in every parish ; more in every city. How many of them dare, as faithful servants of Christ, to say that the cause of truth and righteousness stamps war as a sin against God and man ? CHRIST CONDEMNS WAR. 37 PLATE XIX. CHRIST CONDEMNS WAR. 38 WAR AS IT IS. FIGHT IN A CHURCH. (PLATE xx.) See, where two princes, " Dei gratia," recently met in the house of God, re- presented by their subjects, whose death-cries filled its domes with horror, while blood and masses of brains bespattered its ruined walls. Princes, I may say, do go through some un- pleasantness in order to preserve peace. The cry for it pursues even them. One cannot turn over an illustrated paper without meeting with scores of pictures which show how daintily they visit one another, take each other by the hand, lift their hats, bow and scrape to one another. Every time they embrace and kiss, the people rejoice in serried crowds ; each time the papers feel confident that peace is secured for a long time to come. Honestly now, do you not think that peace- work, carried on steadily by the people, will be of more practical value than shouting hurrah ! with various degrees of warmth, when courts are receiving visits? Is it not, at any rate, worth trying ? But war is a natural phenomenon. Pshaw ! Now, do our little potentates meet in cabinet council and enact natural phenomena ? No ! Let them make arrangements by which people cannot grasp for themselves honours of war FIGHT IN A CHURCH. PLATE XX, FIGHT IN A CHURCH. 4o WAR AS IT IS. or commercial profit by letting others be killed for them, and you will see how few " natural phenomena" of this sort will take place; and how we shall all be on our guard against them, as against coming storms, of which we are now warned at the smallest station. If war were a natural phenomenon, where were the need for all the false concealment under which people, and artists too, veil it ? I have collected pictures in eight countries, but, with few exceptions, all labour to hide some- thing from us. Men who are murdering are painted like actors in a play; the dead and wounded as in a stage scene. Artists do not do so in other cases. EARTHQUAKE IN SPAIN. (PLATE xxi.) Look at these pictures of the earthquakes in Spain. Here the painter has not been afraid to show us the scene in its full horror the desolated churchyard where sub- terranean fire broke the repose for which the hands had been folded in death ; the voracious pigs and birds of prey approaching ; all that is there. EARTHQUAKE IN SPAIN. PLATE XXI. EARTHQUAKE IN SPAIN. 42 WAR AS IT IS. A WOMAN IN DISTRESS. (PLATE xxn.) Here is another picture of the same catastrophe, which calls still louder upon public charity, by throwing into strong relief the terrible calamity which has happened. It represents a woman, jammed among the ruins of her house, who sees the man-eating pigs coming, while she is unable to move a limb to save her life. But no artist has dared to depict as truth- fully such a scene as took place at the stone quarries of Juamont, where, while Bazaine was fighting with the Prussians, Gen. Canrobert smashed with cannon the pillars left to support the excavation over which the unconscious Prussian army had taken up its position ; and 20,000 men, mingled with horses, cannon and weapons, with one fearful yell collapsed into the yawning gulf. There was no time to take out the bodies singly and bury them ; so the Prussians hired certain Belgians to cover with sand and earth the human pile, whence for four days sobs and moans were heard to .issue. Ah ! if people would only show us the horrors of war as plainly, not so many of our grandilo- quent talkers and chimney-corner heroes of the quill would presume to glorify war. " WAR AS IT IS." Note on Page 42. The truthfulness of the narrative of the " Battle of the Quarries" having been questioned by some English readers, inquiries were made from the most authentic sources both in Denmark and England, the result showing that whatever facts lay at the source of it have been grossly exaggerated, although the story was commonly and repeatedly published at the time, with slight variations, in Belgium, France and other countries, and widely believed. It is indeed a striking instance of the falseness nurtured by war; and yet similar horrors which are authentic are but too plenti- ful ; therefore Mr. Carlsen has substituted in his Danish edition (Christmas, 1892) the " Battle of the Crater " from the American Civil War, where the incidents strongly resemble the story of the " Quarries," and prove that though fiction may multiply figures it cannot possibly exaggerate the hideousness of war. The confederates lost over 4000 in the " Battle of the Crater." P. H. P. 44 WAR AS IT Js. THE WAR PRISONERS' PATH. (PLATE xxm.) This is from the Russo- Turkish war, and is called the " War Prisoners' Path." Like a dark, hideous stream, amid murmuring sounds, vanishes into the back- ground the sorrowful procession, while no^v and again a wounded prisoner raises a cry of distress, and the fever-smell from the sicken- ing annoys the guards, and renders them brutal and bitter. What do you think will become of the poor wretches who wearily sink to the earth, unable to follow? fainting men, lying like the dead, until they are seized by the wild beasts which follow the prisoners, as sharks follow a ship with a corpse on board. But death by cold alone is frightful enough ! Verestchagin tells how the roads leading to the theatre of war were strewn with men frozen to death or dying. Some fell suddenly; others froze slowly, struggling with death for days. Can blind Nature rage worse against man than he himself against his own race ? Even the terror which seizes men when the earth shakes under their feet, and flames leap out from the abyss, is imitated not as against culprits for a State which should cast those sentenced to death into a seething volcano, could not be THE WAR PRISONERS' PATH. 45 imagined ; but against a neighbour nation with whom there is a political dispute, or whose land is coveted, this is a good mode of war- fare. 46 WAR AS IT IS. SPRINGING A MINE. (PLATE xxiv.) This picture from " Vort Porsvar" (Our Defence), notwithstanding its simplicity, gives a very clear idea of the springing of a mine, which at one blow explodes and hurls into the air as many men as possible. This paper, which has certainly more contri- butors amongst our verse and prose-writing clergy than any of our school or mission papers, writes the following about this diabolical arm. Let it speak for itself : " As a direct arm against the enemy's troops, mining has a brilliant effect ; partly because it has a terrifying effect upon him ; he cannot see it, nor guard against it; he never knows when the ground may open beneath him." Then, for the delectation of fond hearts in parsonage or boudoir, it gives a neat description of suoh an infernal machine. For in no small degree the agitation appeals to woman. She is to sing the war-spirit into her children ! As if women who have loving husbands could find real satisfaction in fancying other mothers, wives, or daughters weeping over the misery it can work. And yet, if people could kindle in- fernal fire around their dear fellow Christians, it almost seems as if it would be done. SPRINGING A MINE. 47 48 WAR AS IT IS. A SEA FIGHT. (PLATE xxv.) If war on land is full of horrors, the case at sea is still more desperate. Lurid, as if the last day in its hideous gloom were come, while shot upon shot, broadside upon broadside is fired to destroy the shivering planks which alone separate the foe from a watery grave. Folks were delighted when a gallant sea- captain saved 700 lives from the emigrant ship Denmark; but in how much louder tones would they have greeted him, how much more praise would have been bestowed upon him and his family, if he had been "heroic" enough in a battle to send a ship with as many on board to the bottom ! And how his men would have been rewarded with medals and feted with banquets and colours annually, if, instead of reaching a helping hand to those poor creatures, they had given a thundering cheer while the waves were drowning in their throats the cries of the sinking enemy ! Had that captain been so fortunate, children at school would in future have to learn his name; and men would blush if , when discours- ing upon history, they could not remember it. But who remembers it now ? With such a moral standard, one can easily A SEA FIGHT. 49 understand why inventors and owners of works bind themselves over to militarism. If you invent a machine for ameliorating the lives of thousands, you will be a long time getting it floated; but invent a killing apparatus to 50 WAR AS IT IS. destroy thousands of lives at a time, bless you ! your fortune is made. The State immediately buys it, and preserves it as a Grod-send. Ask Krupp, whose staff of workmen has in fifty years grown from nine to 21,000 hands. WAR ENGINES. (PLATE xxvi.) So we can, as this picture shows, fire a torpedo right over a town with a frightful shower of explosive matter and a thick hail of deadly shot, till all property is destroyed, and the gutters run with blood. We have fearful explosives which will raise the sea like a submarine volcano, blow up rock- built fortresses, and smash everything in the neighbourhood, so that a single battery can make short work of a populous town. We have smokeless powder, so that our boys liable to bear arms may be killed as by an unseen murderer, who with bated breath steals upon and stabs his victim. And we have quick- shooting engines which can prick a monogram into a target, hole by hole ; and with equal facility trace a line of slaughter through an advancing foe, so that every soul shall be blotted out of existence or fall shrieking to the earth. But where are the men who are to suffer in WAR ENGINES. these coining wars ? Lying as children in your PLATE XXVI. WAR ENGINES. chamber, perhaps, in their little white cots, smiling in their dreams, or thinking of the WAR AS IT good-night kiss you gave them. Therefore, I say, that everybody should work for peace, for their own sakes and their children's. We, in Denmark, cannot compete in the money race for buying up the deadliest engines, for we are far too few and small : but one family can influence hundreds, and a little nation embracing so noble a cause can win many to it. If the small nations would in the first place understand that their very existence ultimately depends upon the triumph of the principles of peace, respect for human life, and the right of man, as man, to live, they might by association so influence the great peoples that they would not imperil their sons by the infamy of aggressive wars. This is a kind of "defence of the fatherland " fully worthy to be placed beside the other. Again, we do not see the value of making sacrifices so overwhelming that you almost destroy the individual and civil liberty you profess to defend ; and agree still less with spending the public money in this way, against the desire of the people upon whom lies the burden of defence. A WARRIOR'S DEATH. 53 A WAERIOR'S DEATH. Our cause must indeed be advocated with intelligence ; but if it is, there is not a home in PLATE xxvu. A WABEIOE'S DEATH. (Forsberg.) which we may not win one ally. What mother or wife does not shudder at the thought of sharing the fate of the poor creature kneeling by that dying couch ? (FLATU XXVTT.) 54 WAR AS IT IS. There lies the hope of her life, perhaps the only support of her old age, with glazing eye and labouring breast. They have laid the colours upon his bed of death, and there will be those who will press her hand, and say that she may find comfort in this : He did his duty to his country. Well ! But may not the question have forced itself upon her : Has the country or the government done its duty towards him, in making every effort to avoid war ? It is not certain that an honest " Yes " can be answered in respect to any war. On the contrary, as regards the majority of wars, it were better to cast down the eyes and be silent. According to the national economist, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, it would be necessary first to deduct, at any rate, since the fifteenth century, 44 wars for acquisition of territory ; 8 wars for points of honour ; 41 disputes about crowns ; 23 for maintaining the " balance of power " ; not to mention 30 wars carried on under the excuse of giving assistance. Again, there are nations who have been led to war, because one or another mistress considered it wise to separate Majesty from his wife for a time. So the people must bleed because an immoral A FEW SUFFERERS. 55 woman wished to strengthen her influence over the prince. And what diplomatist was that, who recently declared it to be a " casus belli," if the sister of the young Emperor William should marry prince Alexander? Had that marriage taken place, according to well-founded calculations many hundreds of thousands of men would have received orders to slay one another ; and what is yet more remarkable, would have done it. Naturally none of them, as far as that goes, would take up arms for that reason ; it would be too ridiculous and absurd; but yet the peoples must kill one another over it ! The fact is, people have no idea what a fearful amount of suffering war brings down upon a nation. A FEW SUFFERERS. (See page 57.) (PLATE xxvm.) Here are only a few of the sufferers from a battle-field. One is being carried off unconscious ; another, whose arm is shot off, mingles his groan with the wail of thousands. Have you considered what a battle-field must be like ? or a military hospital ? I am not referring to what transpires 56 WAR AS IT IS. amongst a half -barbarous nation like the Turks, who in the last war forgot their sick and wounded in the excitement of the battle of Plevna, so that the carcases of the men who perished filled the houses in the principal streets with such -a stench that it was impossible to enter. No; but what do you think of the hospital of one division, which had accommoda- tion for 500 men, but had to receive from twelve to sixteen times as many, who were swimming in water and filth for days before they could be bandaged or fed ? This is what Verestchagin describes during the Russian war. Tolstoi relates what a Russian doctor said to a noble : " To-morrow there will be a battle. Out of a hundred thousand soldiers we may reckon twenty thousand wounded ; is it not so ? But we have neither litters, nor beds, nor nurses, nor even doctors to attend upon six thousand ! " So the other looked over the imperilled sol- diery, and thought, " Are 20,000 of these men inexorably doomed to suffering and death?" How awful it must be to lead all these men forth to such a fate ! Yes, only to see their misery. And yet Do you recollect the anecdote Bismarck's own friends attribute to the great ^nd, admired chancellor ? A FEW SUFFERERS. 57 He was anxious about the issue of the battle PLATE XXVIII. A FEW SUFFERERS. of Koniggratz, which he witnessed, of course, at a prudent distance. Looking searchingly at 58 WAR AS IT IS. Moltke, he felt himself tolerably satisfied, for the general was with great repose smoking the remains of a cigar ; and when Bismarck offered him another from his own case, with the air of a confident commander, he deliberately chose the best, ^o Prince Bismarck felt quite reas- sured. When I fancy to myself these two gentlemen with the cigar-case, so peaceful over the heart- churning battle before them (as perhaps one would hardly be, if one had a good dog down there in the fray), I imagine at the same time my son amid the butchery, no matter on which side, and my wrath boils up within me, and I want to appeal to my fellow-countrymen, yes, and if I could, to all the thoughtful people in the world, with the question : Have we nothing else to do but to smoke tobacco and look on ? Fancy, if at this moment a conveyance with five or six people were overturned here outside, and the horses were trampling upon the bleed- ing, shrieking heap ; who would or could busy himself choosing the best tobacco to smoke the more comfortably ? But at Sadowa (Konig- gratz) 30,000 men lay spread over the neigh- bourhood, killed or piteously mutilated. A man who was present at that fight thus describes it : " In my ears sounded continually A FEW SUFFERERS. 59 the thundering roar of thousands of guns, mingling with cries from innumerable human throats. I heard the groans of the wounded, the rattle of the dying ; desperate shrieks of thousands of victims, sunk to the last depths of undeserved misery. I saw in all directions staring eyes, wide open, livid, convulsed, twisted mouths, chests pierced through, smashed skulls, quivering limbs, heaps of corpses, streams of blood. ... I wept with despair, and cursed the man who could commit such an unpardon- able crime as to foment a war between two nations." It was in the face of all this that Moltke chose the daintiest cigar from Bismarck's case. A book has been recently published entitled, " A Recruit of '64." Its author has, with ac- knowledged fidelity, described, the inhumanity which is witnessed on a field of battle. The organ of the military agitation in our country, Vort Forsvar, grumbles about it, and ques- tions whether in such matters it is desirable to tell the truth. It means that with regard to preparations for the next war, it becomes doubtful. But I say : Let the people know distinctly what war is, and we shall never have the next war ! 60 WAR AS IT IS. A TRAIN OP WOUNDED. Let us then not hesitate, since it may come, to look at the harvest which is carried home from the fields where war has raged. (PLATE xxix.) Long trains like this roll out from every battlefield. The dust follows them like a scorching sand- cloud, through which the sun looks like a blood- red ball of fire. It is fearful on the field, where some are screaming aloud for help, whilst others implore rest in cries like this : " Oh ! let me alone ; for Christ's sake, let me alone." But it is worse to be left. Frequently the wounded are tossed on to the back of a nervous ambulance soldier, who perhaps uses the shrieking, mutilated man as a protection against the enemy's balls. Whoever is living is carried away as here shown. In each wagon are three or four wounded, miserably jolted over the uneven road. Wan, with bloody rags wrapped about their limbs, they hold on to the sides of the wagon with contracted lips and knitted brows. Every jolt reminds them of or prepares them for, the miseries they have gone through, or will go through in the hospital tent. Of that, Tolstoi gives a description that can never be forgotten, A TRAIN OF WOUNDED. 61 " Ravens collect in its vicinity, for they scent blood. Men of all uniforms stand or lie around 4 the tent, and gaze sorrowfully at them. They listen with nervous foreboding to the passionate 62 WAR AS IT shrieks, groans and pitiable moans within. They see the surgeons running for water, and shudder at the bloody aprons of the doctors. They cast looks so full of meaning upon a surgeon who comes out, that he is compelled to lower his eyes. 66 A man wounded in the abdomen is carried in. In spite of his appalling suffering, he sees them wipe the blood off the table on which he must lie. He starts at the sight of all the gory human flesh, and shudders as a private with a penetrating ' Oh dear ! ' tries to slip from four men who hold him fast, while the doctors cut into his powerful back. On another table lies a great strong man with his head leaning backwards. Doctors' assistants lie on him with all their weight to prevent him from making a single movement ; while his white leg twitches incessantly in spasmodic convulsions, and his whole body shakes with the heavy sobs which almost choke him. Two doctors are occupied with the other leg, one of whom is pale and trembling. " Whilst the man wounded in the abdomen is being stripped, all the remembrances of his childhood float before him like a vision ; but a fearful pang pierces through him ; he swoons, and as he awakes a piece of rib still surrounded A TRAIN OF WOUNDED. 63 with great pieces of lacerated flesh is being taken out of the wound. A feeling of inde- scribable relief comes over him, as when as a child they laid him in the cradle and sang him to sleep. " But he is awakened by a shriek. The man whose leg had been amputated sits up and asks to see it. They hold up the leg before him, with the bloody riding boot still on ; and he, the gallant officer, the favourite at the ball, cries like a child. They reach him a glass of water, but his trembling, swollen lips cannot drink from it." This description is not overdrawn. I have seen some of its features in " Our War," pub- lished by Captain Grodlieb of the Royal Navy. After telling how the deck flowed with blood mingled with flesh and parts of limbs, and how he slipped about in the blood, he relates what he saw when he went into the hospital cabin. " There, in one corner, were the amputated limbs; there, the newly operated upon displayed their bleeding wounds ; here, again, were sur- geons busy cutting and slashing in living flesh." It becomes a question whether it is not better to be quite finished off, lying among thousands of stripped corpses, ready to be 64 WAR AS IT IS. buried in one common grave. There is no murmuring in the ranks. So long as the heart beats, and one dare not lend a hand to a smitten comrade, discipline is in danger ; but one is impelled forward by the loud : " Close the ranks ! halt ! right ! left ! right ! left ! "but it blunts the mind. CONSECRATING FOR BURIAL. (PLATE xxx.) Here are a priest and a sub- altern temporarily united as chief mourners. A short prayer will do to consecrate them for burial. They are laid in heaps. Does he pray too, I wonder, for those through whom the offence came? Amongst these are the brag- garts, light of heart and brain, who are found everywhere. Under the name of patriotism they give out their war spirit in all directions like a fizzing bottle of ginger pop. Old soldiers who have really been in the war let such chatter, for those are more glib of tongue ; but themselves are mostly silent. Many of them are haunted by one or another memory which they do not willingly talk about. The memory of a hand which in agony had seized hold of their sharp weapon, with all its sinews cut open as they drew the weapon back ; the remembrance of the whistling sound which CONSECRATING FOR BURIAL. followed a deadly bayonet thrust ; the implor- o ing look of a wounded man; the memory of F 66 WAR AS IT JS. the yell of the mutilated for help, where all help was bootless. They know, too, how the eager, youthful desire to get into action is worked up ; the secret thoughts which haunt the soul of every father, son or husband before the battle breaks loose, and which inwardly wails amid the fury of the fight. And they know, finally, the long silent rows of men who lie sacrificed to all the lie under which war has been painted as a glorious and manly deed, instead of as a base crime. A BATTLE-FIELD. (PLATE xxxi.) This is how the land lies after a battle* Spots previously beautiful and radiant are covered with a fog of smoke and saltpetre. A fine rain may be falling over the dead and the severely wounded, as if it would say: " Enough, enough; what have you brought yourselves to ? " Twilight comes and it grows dark. They lie like sheaves upon the plain. The few who return to consciousness and can move, creep together in twos or threes. Now and again is heard a shriek of horror. It is the wounded who are in torture, or seized with uncontrollable fear at being surrounded by so many silent corpses. So ends the tragedy of war. A BATTLE-FIELD. It begins by stealthily getting possession of papers and plans from one another, after the manner of convicts who take note of weak places in a house which they intend to break PLATE XXXI. A BATTLE-FIELD. (Pro tain.) into ; it is carried on with falsehoods by which each casts the blame on the other ; it is com- pleted by a desolation like this. And then one day the princes will in a friendly way offer each other their arms ; and 68 WAR AS IT IS. some simple-hearted man cries out : " But why were all those men killed ? " A deep earnestness demanding an answer underlies this question. For is it not a shame ? An eager excitement is rightly aroused when a maniac shoots a hole in a statesman's coat ; but when the same statesman puts him- self at the head of an attack upon a nation, which will make hundreds of thousands of homes miserable, people break out into admira- tion of the culprit ! PART II. A PYRAMID OF HEADS. PLATE XXXII. WHEN the war is over, what monument shall be erected to its memory ? Verestchagin tells of a part of Asia where they do it in this way. A disgusting barbarity! Well, yes. Almost as disgusting as the crime of which it is a worthy reminder. But those grinning dead men's heads, hovered over by carrion birds and marked by deadly blows, are in any case an honest memorial of war; a crime which since the Crimean War A PYRAMID OF HEADS. 69 ' i;r - : (1854-5) lias cost Europe alone about two and a half million human lives. 70 WAR AS IT IS. In the common graves of the last Franco- Grerman war the fallen were laid in five to six layers, only just below the surface. They formed a mile-wide stinking mass of human carcases, filthy viscous putrefaction, pieces of uniforms, and mess which had to be burnt to prevent its breeding a pestilence. Not exactly an evidence of noble-minded or refined respect for the memory of fallen heroes ! Ah ! those memorials which the Russian artist gives in his narrative are truer than the many heroic monuments of princes who have never been in war that is, in the range of gun-shot. Behind those grin, in fact, much loftier stacks of dead men's heads than this little heap raised by semi-barbarians. FAEEWELL OF THE RESERVE. (PLATE xxxm.) But war leaves other memorials behind it. There is the deep trench ploughed into society, high and low, when the soldier must leave the home which contains all the happiness that is his portion. Vermehren has portrayed the crushing reality of the parting which tells so much upon private individuals. The man has torn himself from the last frugal meal in the comfort of home ; the knap- sack is packed, the staff is ready. He has FAREWELL OF THE RESERVE. 71 said farewell, perhaps for the last time. His wife tries hard to be calm. The boy, flag in H a H a? n hand, begins to hesitate; father is really going! And the aged grandmother within ? Is it not 72 WAR AS IT IS. characteristic that she has caught up her work just now ? Through the cares of a long life she has learnt by experience its soothing power, and she seizes this household remedy now that the pain of parting tortures her aged soul. Should a tear fall upon the work, she can blame her aged eyes ; " there is nothing to whimper about ; he will surely come back again ; there is not a shadow of doubt about it." Every evening both women will pray for him, and the little ones will learn to fold their hands and pray Grod to preserve their father so that the wicked enemy may not do him any harm. Thus they pray, small and great, in all lands. If the night wind howls dismally now and again round the corners of the house, they will wake and pray again ; and the next days will look out more feverishly than usual to learn if " anything has happened." Keep this definitely in mind, that you may comprehend what it means, when you read : " In such a battle were killed 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 men." Besides the miseries inflicted on those who took part in it, think of the anxiety and strain in all those homes, on both sides ; and later on, of the affliction in all the bereaved families under the terrible certainty, over which they will weep for long years. THE LAST MESSAGE. 73 THE LAST MESSAGE. (PLATE xxxiv.) Here a foreign artist pictures how the wife of a poor fellow, after protracted 74 WAR AS IT IS. fear and suspense, receives the last greeting from the scene of action, as sobbing she lays her head upon the table and gives way to her grief. Maybe the soldier who brings the message finds this a harder time than many in which danger threatened him. But this side of war conceals itself behind the walls of the home. We cannot expect those who deliberate on war or peace to take account of weeping women and children. Woman's eyes red with tears are nothing a practical man need notice. And yet, is not happiness in all the thousands of homes, the highest aim of every good govern- ment ? Does not even a victory cost more in blood and tears than it is worth ? THE VICTOE WEEATH. (PLATE xxxv.) If you could ask this woman she would give no doubtful answer ! The artist hits it off with painful assurance. There is exultation everywhere ! Wreaths are thrown by fair young girls ; flowers are twined round glittering weapons, but lately dyed with the enemy's blood. She, too, stood with her wreath ; she, like the whole town, was carried along by the con- fident flow of victorious emotions. If she THE VICTOR WREATH. 75 PLATE XXXV. THE VICTOB WREATH, [UIiyiHSJTy] y* . **w 76 WAR AS IT IS. thought for a moment of the other side, it was with the old habitual thought that the enemy has got what he deserved. Her brightly beaming face is seeking her husband, who has perhaps had the luck to dis- tinguish himself in the war (by boldly killing many enemies). And lo ! one of the returning host steps up to her, downcast and sad, and brings her the last adieu of her dying husband. A shriek of agony! The victor-wreath is nothing to her now ; she falls swooning to the earth, and feels herself just as poor and wretched a widow as they who yonder beyond the frontier are weeping in the enemy's land. Perhaps she has no means of maintaining that bold little fellow who looks so menacingly at the strange man who has thus distressed his mother. When he gets big when she begins to be proud of her fine stalwart boy, to whom she will devote all her efforts, all her heart's love- perhaps one day the war-drum will call him ; she will hear some day that he is lying away on some battlefield, a filthy corpse, or a groan- ing " wounded," who breathed his mother's name before he swooned in the agony of death. Tolstoi tells how an old seasoned officer THE VICTOR WREATH. 77 found the body of a youth whose family was dear to him. He lifted the gory, muddy face, and the soldiers looked on confounded as they heard strange hollow sounds most like the bay- ing of a dog, issue from the tortured bosom of the gallant officer, who turned and held on convulsively to some palisades to conceal his emotion. When the tidings came home to the mother of the poor young fellow, people heard shriek after shriek issuing from her house. She was known afterwards as the poor idiotic old crone who took no notice of anything. Therefore, ye women ! let alone singing the war-spirit into the boys. It brings a chorus of tears ! Let them hear the truth as it is. 78 WAR AS IT IS. CORPSE PLUNDERERS. (PLATE xxxvi.) I have here one of a pair of English pictures which show how the spirit of Truth cured a youth inspired with the love of war, by showing him war's true features. This shows the danger from plunderers of the dead when night has settled down over the battle- field. Yes ! it is ghastly. But honestly now, is not the corpse plunderer who steals the boots from some dead body quite a fine fellow in com- parison with the conqueror who caused this man together with thousands more to be slain, in order to get possession of their country; to steal their language out of the mouths of their race, and to set their sons, under compulsory service, in the forefront of new wars ; perhaps against their own people ? CORPSE PLUNDERERS. 79 WAR AS IT IS. FLYING FOE SHELTEE. (PLATE xxxvu.) Here Truth shows the same youth, how masses of the inhabitants in order to save their women and children have to fly from house and home into a beleaguered town; perhaps after having suffered want to the verge of insanity. Tolsto'i gives a de- scription of the murderous horrors in such an unhappy town. " The roar of cannon and the rattling of the windows is hushed as night draws on, only to give place to wild scenes of wailing ; through which the hideous crackle of conflagration is heard, drowned at times by the yells of women imploring some one to rescue their children, who are being burned inside the houses." Our highly esteemed writer, Herman Bang, has given in a recent work a fragment from our late war. It is a masterpiece, which in short telling strokes paints the portrait of war with the profound impression of truth. Listen to his narrative of one of the nights during the bombardment of Als. " The hurricane drove the smoke like mighty waterspouts out over the country. The farms were on fire ; but their glare was dimmed by it, as though they had been but rushlights. In FLYING FOR SHELTER. 81 the air were seen arches of bomb-smoke, and the earth shook under one's feet like a panting beast. G 82 WAR AS IT IS. " Round about on all the heights in the pour- ing rain stood men and women like statues ; while the stream of incoming fugitives spread over the roads and pathways like an inevitable calamity. Women and lost children were screaming for one another, while through the roar of the guns and of the storm, pierces like a knife the shriek of some wounded man whom an overtaxed ambulance officer pitilessly drops.'* Bang tells further of a poor old schoolmaster, who had faithfully shared the superstitious con- fidence of the National Liberals in the strength of the fortress of Dannewirke. He was taken with a fit of apoplexy on the night that he heard the tidings : " Our army has retreated from Dannewirke " ; and his mind lost its balance under the overwhelming brutality he witnessed at Dybboel. " One night, as the thunder of the cannonade grew louder, he broke out in a hurried whisper: ' They have set the earth on fire ! Come, let us see the earth burning ! ' So he ran, followed by the trembling women, up into the bell-tower, where the owls flitted past with a short cry, and the tongues of the bells were striking against the metal as for a fire. They saw through the rain and the darkness only one great line of red like the shore of a sea ; while FLYING FOR SHELTER. 83 behind it, on the heights, houses were burning to the ground with a lurid glow ; it looked as if the fire was about to stream down the flanks of the heights. The thick air, the air over a whole region on fire was filled with bombshells and glowing whistling shot ; while the sound of the baggage brigade in flight, the creaking of wagons and the approaching footsteps of the w r andering thousands, reached their ears, resembling the crackling from an enormous conflagration. Out of the smoke, and into the red edge, black shadows issued, like malignant imps. One of the women sinks down uttering a low wail : c It is Als, our beautiful island, that is burning.' ' The author then describes how under con- ditions where all restraints w r hich held human depravity in check are withdrawn, every vice and villainy reaches out its grasping arms to seize distracted men, who were before gay and gallant, but now give themselves over to the power of Evil. 84 WAR AS IT IS. A WOMAN SHOT BY SOLDIERS. (PLATE xxxvm.) This picture is hung in the Wiertz Museum as a charge against the civilization of the present century. It repre- sents a mother shot by plundering soldiers from whom she is trying to escape. People have complained that it was exaggerated ; that it is not an ordinary thing for soldiers to conduct themselves so now. Well! 1 need not refer to the way women were treated in the Russo-Turkish war. It suffices to ask : " Is it not known that when explosive projectiles are shot into a town, women and children will be struck ; and is it a miti- gating circumstance that artillery is now used, whose projectiles, if they fall on a school, church, or hospital, will kill the whole crowd of defenceless people ? Or shall the glorious (?) distinction be made, that a man may not covet an ornament, but you may levy forced contributions of thousands of pounds, so as to be felt in every home ? No ! leave off talking about humane war ; humane massacre ! Say the truth as Napoleon did, when he exclaimed : " I don't care a fig for a million of men." A WOMAN SHOT BY SOLDIERS. 85 PLATE XXXVIII A WOMAN SHOT BY SOLDIEUS. 86 W 'A R AS IT IS. NAPOLEON IN HELL. (PLATE xxxix.) In this half-burlesque pic- ture Wiertz gives expression to the hatred which this wholesale murderer drew upon him- self. In this " Scene from Hell " he shows widows and childless mothers who see Bona- parte parched in hell-flames, offering him human flesh to eat and human blood to drink. I only show this picture as an evidence of the raging hatred he excited towards himself by his love of war. It is not for me to condemn any one in my thoughts to eternal flames. A great part of the evil of Napoleon's wars may be charged upon the fact that the social condition of Europe tempted him. Suppose, however, that condition had been different; suppose incentives to war did not impend over Europe, as avalanches hang over an Alpine valley, so that any war-cry may bring them down headlong and drag everything with them in their fall would Napoleon have been able to cause all this misery ? It is superfluous to answer : No ! NAPOLEON IN HELL. WAR AS IT IS. THE COMPASSIONATE CHRIST. (PLATE XL.) Let us not forget that the woful condition just alluded to is kept up by States which patronise a religion which has its deepest expression in that gentle Love, Who could not pass a distressed mother with a suffer- ing child without laying health-giving hands upon its head. Love which says : " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least. of these, ye have done it unto Me." How do warlike Christian powers act towards these little ones whom their God has appointed to receive what the pious would render to Him? In Denmark, in order to furnish what the demon of war requires, the poor man is taxed so unfairly that he must pay more taxes the more mouths he has to feed. Through the customs a tax is levied upon articles of con- sumption equal to 16s. 3d. a head per annum. Should one of these humble persons come to the Christian State, and say : " I and my chil- dren are hungry : Help me through the hour of need to preserve the life whose service you claim;" certainly they give him food, but de- prive him of his rights as a citizen. People hardly dare to say openly that there is a man in Skagen who possesses the Danish order of knighthood, a badge of honour, a Danish and THE COMPASSIONATE CHRIST. 89 a Russian medal for saving life, and two testi- monials ; but who has been deprived of his PLATE XL. THE COMPASSIONATE CHEIST. right as a freeman because he was once helped in the hour of need. And under this system deep poverty is every- where spreading. 90 WAR AS IT IS. THE POOR BEGGING BBEAD. (PLATE XLI.) There are many such groups as this daily to be found in the world. Krogh calls it " The Battle for Existence." See how the hungry, ragged creatures stretch out their frostbitten fingers for food which is being dis- tributed among them. With this piteous sight before her eyes, Europe cannot afford to spend thirteen million kroner 1 every day upon her killing armies and on armaments which are to " preserve peace " ; armaments respecting which Lord Salisbury says that "they are the greatest, often the only menace to the peace of Europe." And the wars ! Yes, the Crimean War cost one power (England) alone as much as the whole state economy of Denmark costs in a whole genera- tion; and this is only an inconsiderable sum compared to what France had to pay the Prussians after the last war. 1 A krone equals about Is. Id. THE POOR BEGGING BREAD. PLATE XLI. THE POOR BEGGING BREAD. 92 WAR AS IT IS. COFFERS AT SPANDAU. (PLATE XLII.) The remains of this money lie in the dark vaults of the fortress at Spandau. Do you think it looks as if blessing and increase were in it ? No ! the dragon of war broods invisibly over it. Money, money, always money is the first necessity for " the next war." What multitudes in neighbour nations may be slain for that wealth ? But in the meantime man's bitterest foes, cold, hunger, disease and vice are ravaging the centres of our capital cities, driving crowds of the portionless under the pavements, into criminal quarters, on to emi- grant ships, towards which we contribute also a large contingent. Yet only by constraint and sluggishly is any action taken against these enemies. Moltke has said that war promotes culture. Oh ! indeed ! The Franco-German War cost according to estimates I have seen forty milliards ; but the greatest marvels of industry The Suez Canal, The Mont Cenis Tunnel, The Pacific Railway, The Panama Railway, The Panama Canal, The Andes Railway, works which have brought continents and kingdoms a thousand miles nearer one another, COFFERS AT SPANDAU. 93 which have brought blessings and prosperity with them have cost together only two and half PLATE XLII. COFFEES AT SPANDAU. milliards. One miserable war cost sixteen times as much. Yet with this before their eyes they 94 WAR AS IT IS. keep on spending money with both hands, whilst they hesitate to build a bit of railway for hardworking agriculturists or a harbour for fishermen, or even a life-boat to save them when the sea threatens to engulf them. But what are the results of this evil ? So long as the portionless can find shelter, though his eyes grow dim and his body wear out, he will be silent, though the best resources of the State are spent on military purposes, whilst he is in want of everything. FAMINE AND WANT. (PLATE XLIII.) But let it go beyond this ; let the bony hand of want stifle every other hope than that of the wild beast, once in twenty -four hours to get something to still its hunger with ; let him hear that in a single shot is wasted as much as he could have lived on for a year without famine scorching his entrails, and you light the dismal flame in the eyes of the victim of pauper misery. It burns even now in the vicinity of our homes. It is time to offer him, not police and gens- d'armes, but justice. Here, in Denmark, they now demand forty million kroner yearly for military expenses. Do you think any one would dare to ask only FAMINE AND WANT. 95 half as much for the help of those who, physic- ally and morally crippled, crawl out to do their duty as heads of families, bearing at the same time the ever-growing burdens of the poor- rate? But how would the chamber of poverty be 96 WAR AS IT IS. lighted up, if people only understood that here defence of the country needs carrying out under far more pressing need than in naval or military expenditure. Amongst the poverty for which war is re- sponsible, must be placed, first and foremost, the invalids. AN INVALID OF WAR. (PLATE XLIV.) From the hour when a long, sorrowful look after the operation told him he was a cripple, that frightful word meets him at every turn as an insurmountable barrier to every path of success or prosperity. He must see many a hope for his future perish because the bomb that made a hero of his next comrade by smashing his head, made a neglected beggar of him by only carrying off his leg or arm. Is it strange that the poor fellow gets bitter over his fate of beggary? Then he reads in the paper long lists of the names of his comrades who die within a few years of the last cam- paign. Unfit food and over exertion wreak themselves in insidious disease ; that is War's debt turned over to the account of Peace. He reads that it is dangerous to write or talk much about suicide, for it is infectious ; is it strange if he thinks : But how, in all con- AN INVALID OF WAR. 97 science, dare you ingraft the infection of murder into boys from their first day at the school PLATE XLIV. AN INVALID OF WAR. bench, by means of war-enthusiasm, and hero- worship? Does it not infect, when through 98 WAR AS IT IS. his whole education his fancy is so filled with it that he imagines that the only way to attain anything good or great, or to attract attention, lies amid mortal peril, amongst blood and slaughter ? Such warlike education princes es- pecially must have ; only it begins in the cradle and is continued till it becomes a mania. They learn that if they would not be stigmatised as peaceable sticklers, busied only with home affairs, they must partake in one or more wars ; and when they have learnt this, they are given full power to declare war, or conclude peace. They need not go personally. They must never, according to rule, risk their valuable lives, only gallop about doughtily beyond the reach of shot. The court artist can put in the needful military background afterwards. When they come back after it, everybody cheers and congratulates them, and imperishable mon- uments are raised in their honour at the feet of which the unfortunates who lost limbs and health over it may find a fairly profitable beg- ging station. It is a temptation from beneath to covet such " glory," to let others purchase your honour and profit with their blood. We must keep this point clear both for ourselves and for the princes, AN INVALID OF WAR. 99 Do you recollect the story about a late Emperor, who, the evening after a battle, was about to pluck a favourite flower, but turned pale and drew back, because he saw human blood upon its delicate chalice ? He evidently had not seen, during the day, the bleeding heaps, nor heard the shrieks of distress from the battlefield, or he would shudder still more at the palms handed to him as a warrior-king ; for in his three last wars only, were killed 260,000 men. No prince who has preserved his humanity would sign his name to a declaration of war if he rightly understood what it meant ; for there are not many like that Bulgarian prince, who refused the challenge of the Greek Emperor to settle a dispute by duel in order to spare the lives of their subjects, saying, " A smith who has tongs does not take red hot iron out of the fire with his hands." That is just the part the people play in war; instruments used by others for their own bene- fit ; an instrument which must obey, but which feels, and suffers, and wails in the furnace. Take this to heart ! Hast thou a son, thy hope from the first day his little hands were stretched out towards thee? Hast thou a husband in- tensely dear, around whom thy children cluster WAR AS IT is. in joyous chorus ? One day they will be used as tongs, to take glowing iron out of the fire for some prince or politician who does not choose to burn his own fingers in the flames he has kindled. Therefore thou shalt lose thy boy, thy husband, thy father, thy brother. The eyes that were thy happiness shall glaze, the hands that were thy support shall stiffen. Is there any reason in it ? What we want is to root out the desire for robbery, murder and revenge between nations, just as civilization has succeeded in stigmatiz- ing murder and blood-feuds between individuals and social interests. This is so far from hope- less that it is in the direct line along which all national development proceeds. In the beginning of this century even, there were in some parts of Europe (Corsica, for instance) both BLOOD-FEUDS wars between man and man ; ARMED PEACE in many country towns people could only go about in armed companies ; and FORTIFICATIONS that is, private houses with loopholes. People look down upon that sort of thing now ! It is the turn for international relations now ; for we have still many who consider with re- spect to these " plunder with murder "to be a highly honourable proceeding ; blood revenge, CAPITULATION OF SEDAN. 101 a sacred duty ; just as the semi-barbarous races did. CAPITULATION OF SEDAN. (PLATE XLV.) This represents the capitulation of Sedan, by a German artist. Can you see 102 WAR AS IT IS. the evil-looking ray of light falling upon a picture on the wall ? That picture represents Napoleon victorious at Jena ; that mischievous gleam says to a Frenchman's eye just this : " You beat us at Jena. Now we, while sacri- ficing only 9,000, have killed and mutilated 17,000 Frenchmen; slain your men and lads until we were nauseated with killing these jump- ing human game. See now ! Your great man looks small before our Iron Chancellor, and our Icy Field Marshal." And Frenchmen have sworn with a wild oath : " Our children shall dash down your sons," and under this sanguinary threat the two nations run a race in war preparations and armaments. So every shoot upon the upas tree of war con- tains the germ of the next war. Therefore its leaves quiver in ceaseless apprehension, and through the most delicate intricacies of diplo- macy sounds ever the cry of Cain : Arm ! forge weapons ! make defences ! " Every one that findeth me will slay me." "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." (PLATE XLVI.) Finally, we have seen that war desolates the life of the individual and the life of the community ; therefore we declare war against war and blood revenge and plunder "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." 103 between nations. These are as little natural phenomena as was the plague in its day ; they PLATE XLVI. "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." do not lie beyond human control. Both can be driven back to the limits of civilization by eliminating the small inciting causes in and around our homes, 104 WAR AS -IT IS. Begin with the children. Let no one "offend" them by giving them the false idea that there is either pleasure or glory in killing our bro- thers ; or that there is honour or happiness in lording it over the thoughts, languages, or property of others. Teach them that for na- tions, as for individuals, it is a calamity, sub- versive of all repose, to have a neighbour scowling under a sense of wrong, and ever meditating revenge. Let us endeavour to bring parents in other countries to see things in the same light, so that all may help in forming an international system of justice, under which verdicts shall not be written in the heart's blood of our chil- dren ; under ivhich the people in disputed terri- tories shall have free permission to decide their own future ; under which military service shall so far cease practically with the boundary of the land, that no one can be compelled in the name of duty to enter a foreign land as a robber and murderer ; under which a prince, crazy or idiotic, perhaps, cannot write his people's doom by declaring war ; under which states cannot take from their subjects more money in the form of taxes than they give them value for ; so that they be not made into a kind of milch cows or cattle for the butcher, " THOU SHALT NOT KILL." 105 persecuted because they increase the value of property. When we come to this, both the profit and the false glory of being a warlike power will disappear ; and the frontier will lose its terror, because it will no longer speak of restraint, thraldom, hatred, fear, deceit and violence ; but a new era will dawn, because the peoples have found the way out from under the curse which broods over those who break the great command : "THOU SHALT NOT KILL." ^ : ;- THE END. Butler & Tanner. The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London. UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA LIBRARY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW WftH 31 30m-l,'15 YB 03981 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY