“I understand,” said [I], “that you were blamed for depicting the most horrible things that you saw.”

“The most horrible? No. I found much dramatic material from which I absolutely recoiled, because I was utterly unable to put it on the canvas. For instance, I had the following experience: my brother,[[1]] who was an aide to General Skobelef, was killed during the third assault on Plevna. The spot where he fell was held by the enemy, so I could not rescue his body. Three months later, when Plevna was in our hands, I went to the place and found it covered with bodies,—more correctly, with skeletons; wherever I looked I found skulls grinning at me, and here and there skeletons still wearing shirts and tattered clothes. They seemed to be pointing with their hands somewhere into the distance. Which of these was my brother? I carefully examined the tatters, the configuration of the skulls, the eye sockets, and I couldn’t stand it; the tears streamed from my eyes, and for a long time I could not control my loud sobbing. Nevertheless, I sat down and made a sketch of this place, which reminded me of Dante’s pictures of hell. I wanted to produce such a picture, with my own figure searching among all those skeletons—impossible! Again, a year later, two years later, when I began on the canvas, the same tears choked me and prevented me from proceeding; and so I have never been able to finish that picture.”

I am warranted in saying that I am repeating Vereshchágin’s own words, for I urged him then and there to incorporate in an article what he had just told me, and send it to me for my monthly periodical. He granted my wish, and in the seventh and eighth issues of Die Waffen nieder for 1893 Vereshchágin published these reminiscences and many others besides.

“In order to get a clearer idea of what war is,” continued Vereshchágin, “I made up my mind to be an eyewitness of the whole thing. I participated in an infantry charge on the enemy, and, as it happened, I led the attack. I have been in a cavalry skirmish and victory, and I have been with the marines on board of a torpedo boat in an attack on great ships. On this last occasion I was punished for my curiosity by a severe wound, which almost sent me to kingdom come, to continue my observations there.”

Well, we know to-day that it was indeed his fate to be dispatched into the next world by a Japanese mine. Almost the first news that startled the world at the time of the Russo-Japanese War was that of the sinking of the ironclad Petropavlovsk, which ran on a mine. Vereshchágin, pencil in hand, was on board, sketching. A shock, a cry of anguish from eight hundred throats, and down into the depths sank ship and crew! Vereshchágin’s intention was to observe and depict the events of the most modern of wars—what would those pictures have turned out to be? Perhaps it would have been as impossible to finish them as it was to reproduce the scene at Plevna. There are horrors which incapacitate the artist’s hand or darken the observer’s mind. The Russo-Japanese War brought the general madness to a head. Vereshchágin’s vibrant artist spirit would perhaps have been the first to become mad if he had ever tried to paint the scenes which have been enacted on barbed wire and in wolf-pits (trous-de-loup).

A few years later—let me here complete my personal recollections of Vereshchágin—I met him a second time. He was giving in Vienna an exhibition of his series of Napoleon pictures. It is said that Emperor William II, on seeing one of these paintings, remarked to him: “With these, dear master, you are battling against war more effectually than all the Peace Congresses in the world.”

Nevertheless, I believe that the artist’s intention was not in the least to engage in that sort of battle. He wanted to be true. He did not hate war at all; he found in it the excitements of the chase.

“I have many times killed men in battle,”—these are his own words,—“and I can say from experience that the excitement, as well as the feeling of satisfaction and contentment, that comes after killing a man is precisely like the sensation which comes when one has brought down uncommonly large game.”

XLII
THE COMMITTEE MEETING AT BRUSSELS AND ITS RESULTS

Committee meeting of the Interparliamentary Union at Brussels · Letter from Senator Trarieux · Address to Gladstone · Address to the French and Italian deputies · Warning as to the duties of the Union · The “inevitable war” between France and Italy · The case of Aigues-Mortes · Settlement through the friends of peace in both countries