The Duel Between France and Germany

by Charles Sumner

THE WORLD A GLADIATORIAL AMPHITHEATRE.

The growing tendencies of mankind have been quickened by the character of the present war, and the unexampled publicity with which it has been waged. Never before were all nations, even those separated by great spaces, whether of land or ocean, the daily and excited spectators of the combat. The vast amphitheatre within which the battle is fought, with the whole heavens for its roof, is coextensive with civilization itself. The scene in that great Flavian Amphitheatre, the famous Colosseum, is a faint type of what we are witnessing; but that is not without its lesson. Bloody games, where human beings contended with lions and tigers, imported for the purpose, or with each other, constituted an institution of ancient Rome, only mildly rebuked by Cicero, [Footnote: "Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis videri solet: et hand scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit."—Tusculanae Quaestiones, Lib. II. Cap. XVII. 41.] and adopted even by Titus, in that short reign so much praised as unspotted by the blood of the citizen. [Footnote: Suetonius: Titus, Cap. IX. Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, (London, 1862,) Ch. LX., Vol. VII. p. 56.] One hundred thousand spectators looked on, while gladiators from Germany and Gaul joined in ferocious combat; and then, as blood began to flow, and victim after victim sank upon the sand, the people caught the fierce contagion. A common ferocity ruled the scene. As Christianity prevailed, the incongruity of such an institution was widely felt; but still it continued. At last an Eastern monk, moved only by report, journeyed a long way to protest against the impiety. With noble enthusiasm he leaped into the arena, where the battle raged, in order to separate the combatants. He was unsuccessful, and paid with life the penalty of his humanity. [Footnote: St. Telemachus, A. D. 401. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Milman, (London, 1846,) Ch. XXX., Vol. III. p. 70. Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog. and Myth., art. TELEMACHUS.] But the martyr triumphed where the monk had failed. Shortly afterwards, the Emperor Honorius, by solemn decree, put an end to this horrid custom. "The first Christian Emperor," says Gibbon, "may claim the honor of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of shedding human blood." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ubi supra.] Our amphitheatre is larger than that of Rome; but it witnesses scenes not less revolting; nor need any monk journey a long way to protest against the impiety. That protest can be uttered by every one here at home. We are all spectators; and since by human craft the civilized world has become one mighty Colosseum, with place for everybody, may we not insist that the bloody games by which it is yet polluted shall cease, and that, instead of mutual-murdering gladiators filling the near-brought scene with death, there shall be a harmonious people, of different nations, but one fellowship, vying together only in works of industry and art, inspired and exalted by a divine beneficence?

In presenting this picture I exaggerate nothing. How feeble is language to depict the stupendous barbarism! How small by its side the bloody games which degraded ancient Rome! How pygmy the one, how colossal the other! Would you know how the combat is conducted? Here is the briefest picture of the arena by a looker- on:—

"Let your readers fancy masses of colored rags glued together with blood and brains, and pinned into strange shapes by fragments of bones,—let them conceive men's bodies without heads, legs without bodies, heaps of human entrails attached to red and blue cloth, and disembowelled corpses in uniform, bodies lying about in all attitudes, with skulls shattered, faces blown off, hips smashed, bones, flesh, and gay clothing all pounded together as if brayed in a mortar extending for miles, not very thick in any one place, but recurring perpetually for weary hours,—and then they cannot, with the most vivid imagination, come up to the sickening reality of that butchery." [Footnote: Scene after the Battle of Sedan: Herald of Peace for 1870, October 1st, p. 121] Such a sight would have shocked the Heathen of Rome. They could not have looked on while the brave gladiator was thus changed into a bloody hash; least of all could they have seen the work of slaughter done by machinery. Nor could any German gladiator have written the letter I proceed to quote from a German soldier:—

"I do not know how it is, but one wholly forgets the danger one is in, and thinks only of the effect of one's own bullets, rejoicing like a child at the sight of the enemy falling like skittles, and having scarcely a compassionate glance to spare for the comrade falling at one's side. One ceases to be a human being, and turns into a brute, a complete brute."

Plain confession! And yet the duel continues. Nor is there death for the armed man only. Fire mingles with slaughter, as at Bazeilles. Women and children are roasted alive, filling the air with suffocating odor, while the maddened combatants rage against each other. All this is but part of the prolonged and various spectacle, where the scene shifts only for some other horror. Meanwhile the sovereigns of the world sit in their boxes, and the people everywhere occupy the benches.

PERIL FROM THE WAR SYSTEM.

The duel now pending teaches the peril from continuance of the present system. If France and Germany can be brought so suddenly into collision on a mere pretext, what two nations are entirely safe? Where is the talisman for their protection? None, surely, except Disarmament, which, therefore, for the interest of all nations, should be commenced. Prussia is now an acknowledged military power, armed "in complete steel,"—but at what cost to her people, if not to mankind! Military citizenship, according to Prussian rule, is military serfdom, and on this is elevated a military despotism of singular grasp and power, operating throughout the whole nation, like martial law or a state of siege. In Prussia the law tyrannically seizes every youth of twenty, and, no matter what his calling or profession, compels him to military service for seven years. Three years he spends in active service in the regular army, where his life is surrendered to the trade of blood; then for four years he passes to the reserve, where he is subject to periodic military drills; then for five years longer to the Landwehr, or militia, with liability to service in the Landsturm, in case of war, until sixty. Wherever he may be in foreign lands, his military duty is paramount.

But if this system be good for Prussia, then must it be equally good for other nations. If this economical government, with education for all, subordinates the business of life to the military drill, other nations will find too much reason for doing the same. Unless the War System is abandoned, all must follow the successful example, while the civilized world becomes a busy camp, with every citizen a soldier, and with all sounds swallowed up in the tocsin of war. Where, then, are the people? Where are popular rights? Montesquieu has not hesitated to declare that the peril to free governments proceeds from armies, and that this peril is not corrected even by making them depend directly on the legislative power. This is not enough. The armies must be reduced in number and force. [Footnote: De l'Esprit des Lois, Liv. XI. Ch. 6.] Among his papers, found since his death, is the prediction, "France will be ruined by the military." [Footnote: "La France se perdra par les gens de guerre."—Pensees Diverses,—Varietes: (Oeuvres Melees et Posthumes, (Paris, 1807, Didot,) Tom. II. p. 138.)] It is the privilege of genius like that of Montesquieu to lift the curtain of the future; but even he did not see the vastness of suffering in store for his country through those armies against which he warned. For years the engine of despotism at home, they became the sudden instrument of war abroad. Without them Louis Napoleon could not have made himself Emperor, nor could he have hurried France into the present duel. If needed in other days, they are not needed now. The War System, always barbarous, is an anachronism, full of peril both to peace and liberal institutions.