THE MODERN TREATMENT OF THE SOLDIER.
Decoration Day has many happy outlooks upon the humanities. Philanthropy may use it as a finger-board indicating the direction of our modern progress. The soldier’s grave is its special theme; it as clearly suggests the happier fate of the modern soldier as compared with his ancient brother. Great nations have always honored their dead soldiers; it is only in modern times that nations have given their whole hearts to the living soldiers. In the long wars between France and England from the twelfth century onward, the armies had no surgeons, and medical supplies were unknown. The medical equipment of a modern army is costly and ample; and that no man may die unnecessarily, woman hangs on the verge of battle to nurse the wounded, sheltered and safe under a red cross or a red crescent. In the old navies of England and France, the men were slaves who had been captured in their own lands and sent to suffer in crowded bulkheads of ships, or in the galleys, steaming with the most abominable odors. A French duchess in the sixteenth century wrote of that “living hell,” the many-oared galley war ship of the Mediterranean. One can not recall the horrors of any battle on sea or land with composure, but the whole life of soldier and sailor in public service was in the old days full of the horrors of battle fields.
It is often said that war will eventually be stopped by the increased and perfected effectiveness of engines of war. It may well be doubted on general grounds; but it is specially true that humanity has robbed war of many of its terrible aspects; it may well be that those who open again the gates of mercy are competing successfully against those who “shut the gates of mercy” on mankind.
The modern treatment of the soldier is conspicuous in providing for his comfort. Why should England buy canned meats for her soldiers? Some crusts would have sufficed the providing spirit of an ancient general. The British army in the field must be well fed or there will be a great noise about the ears of the government. Let it be written home that the biscuits were stale, or the army went without its supper, and the newspapers will roar out the indignation of the nation. It is an immense task; but it must be accomplished; the modern soldier must have his regular meals with certainty, and the food must be good. The Mahdi has no such cares or duties. His soldiers must forage and browse as best they can. The superior power of the civilized soldier lies as much in his regular feeding as in his discipline—the feeding is an element of his discipline. The soldiers must also be comfortably clothed and sheltered. Woe to the commander who exposes his men to needless hardships. The country will not allow its loyal and brave defenders to suffer a needless deprivation or hardship. If commissaries are careless or venal, the nation will pillory them in eternal infamy. The soldier must have, even in the far off desert, many of the comforts of home or the country will know the reason why. And when the battered veterans come home, how the air rings with huzzas, how tender the pity for the wounded, how liberal the pensions for the widows and orphans of those who did not come home! Neither Cyrus nor Alexander had any such pension rolls. Rome idolized her armies, but she let them starve abroad, and forgot their families at home. This whole line of treatment means more than we can express in words. It is a very real and royal worship of the nobility which we see in the soldier. Often he is a sorry human creature, but it is almost a profanation to say so. We idolize him and his office. He is our defender, our chivalric knight, our personation of the flag over us, and of the civilization in us. But—but—what chance does this treatment of the soldier afford for the Day of Universal Peace? Will a sword ever become a pruning hook so long as it is glorified by such a symbolism and illumined by these soft lights of pity and reverence? Let us not take too gloomy a view of the effects of our philanthropy toward the soldier. The causes of war probably lie out of the range of these influences. Wars would still be, if they were still as diabolically merciless as they were in the mediæval days when a war galley was “a living hell.” Peace is a question of universal civilization; and the pity we yield to the soldier is one of the undying agencies of universal civilization.