That Eurasian

by Aleph Bey

To become an officer in the army the same difficulties arose. I could not become a soldier as I learned that Eurasians were not accepted. In fact I had no liking whatever for the army, even had there been an opening for me. I always had a repugnance to taking life. I could not see a chicken killed without a sense of pain and to see a gasping fish just taken from the water gave me a shock. In my life I have gone out shooting and the more birds I killed, the greater the burden of sorrow I carried home, thinking of the number of lives I had destroyed when God had created them as well as me and that they had as much right as I to live. I never could realize any pleasure in what is called sport when life is involved. For a number of men, not to mention women, to chase a fox until he is worried to death and then let him be torn to pieces by hounds was always a cruel, fiendish business to me. Suppose some bigger brutes than these ladies and gentlemen, as they style themselves, should run them down with horses and hounds as in former times slaves were hunted, and tear them to pieces, what would they think of the sport?

Anent this subject one of the best English novelists makes one of his characters say: “The most blood-thirsty nation on the earth, you shed blood for mere amusement; we only shed it for some deep purpose, such as revenge, ambition and the like. You English are not happy unless you are killing something, if it is only a pigeon out of a trap; there is too much of the Saxon and the Dane about you. Again your chief outdoor amusement consists of galloping on horseback with a number of dogs, over hedges and ditches after a poor animal called a fox, and when you see the wretched, fagged-out creature torn to pieces by your dogs, you ride home satisfied to your dinner.”

It is bad enough to kill birds and beasts for our food, but to kill men, who, we are taught, have immortal souls, was and always has been, horrible to me. Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations,” says, “The trade of a butcher is a brutal one and an odious business.” If that can be said of a business which supplies necessary food for the people, what can be said of a trade for the destruction of human beings, to gratify the vanity or rapacity of a tyrant or people? To kill his fellowmen is the soldier’s business, for that he is trained, for that the church prays for him. The more men killed the greater the glory and the number of medals. Beautiful trophies for the judgment day—the souls of murdered men! The uncivilized, unchristian tribes show their valor by the number of human scalps hanging to their belts, and a “heap big Injun” is the one who has the greatest number of these tokens of death. Christian “big Injuns” use honors and medals instead of scalps.

Would not this be better? Say for all who are killed by a regiment let each soldier wear a blood-red stripe for each man slain. If very successful in their bloody warfare the stripes would be increased until their whole garments would be of one uniform, ruddy hue, and they would be “heap big Injuns” for all the world to look at. Their praises would be read and known instantly by all observers. Then, instead of worshiping one whom they style a God of Love, and one whom they call the “Prince of Peace,” why not be consistent and adopt a god of war, such as is Kali, the goddess of the murderers of India, and offer unto him the blood of their victims, as these people do to their goddess? Does it speak well for civilization, after thousands of years, and after nineteen hundred years of Christianity, that twenty millions of armed soldiers, belonging to the most enlightened and so-called Christian nations of the earth, should be waiting and expecting every morning an order to attack and destroy each other? And all anxious to flesh their weapons in the bodies of their fellowmen? If, after all these centuries, Christianity has culminated in such a condition of murderous intention, how long will it be before their “Prince of Peace” will come to reign?

Having such feelings about war and soldiering in my later years, I must have had something of them when I left school, and they prevented me from thinking seriously of a soldier’s life. I concluded that I would rather be a hermit in a forest all my life, living on herbs and wild fruits, and die thus, and go to my Maker without a spot of the blood of my fellowmen on my soul, than to be the greatest warrior that ever lived, though he could boast of having slain his thousands.

What of the responsibility of those who instigate war? The great poet says, “The king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all these legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle shall join together in the latter day and cry, all, “We died at such a place;” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afraid that there are few that die well, that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.”

Well might the king say, in his remorse, “The lights burn blue, it is now dead midnight, cold, fearful drops stand trembling on my flesh. Methought the souls of all that I had caused to be murdered came.”

Another thing influenced me. A surgeon of the army remarked to me that the best soldier was one with a vigorous, healthy body, and only sense enough to obey an order and fire a musket.

I was not willing to suppose myself such a thing as that, an idiot, strong enough to stand up and be shot at, and with only brains enough to pull a trigger when told to do so to kill somebody. If I was to be such a soldier, then God, who created me with a mind capable of thinking and reasoning; Mr. Percy, in giving me an education; and I, in acquiring it, we all three had sadly muddled the business and made a damnable mistake somehow. So my warfare ended.

I then thought of the police service, but this was so like a twin brother to soldiering that I dropped it quickly. I was in no great hurry to choose a profession, as I was not obliged to work for a living, but considered it my duty, as well as pleasure, to seek to do what was best, so I went to the station where my property was situated, and found a home in one of the houses with an excellent family, one of my tenants.