'Alas! alas! I know not, sister; friend and foe together fall;
O'er the dying rush the living; pray, my sister, for them all!'"
Horror-struck, we ask, wherefore this hateful contest? The melancholy, but truthful, answer comes, that this is the established method of determining justice between nations!
The scene changes. Far away on some distant pathway of the ocean, two ships approach each other, with white canvas broadly spread to receive the flying gale. They are proudly built. All of human art has been lavished in their graceful proportions and compacted sides, while in dimensions they look like floating happy islands of the sea. A numerous crew, with costly appliances of comfort, hives in their secure shelter. Surely these two travellers must meet in joy and friendship; the flag at mast-head will give the signal of fellowship; the delighted sailors will cluster in rigging and on yard-arms to look each other in the face, while exhilarating voices mingle in accents of gladness uncontrollable. Alas! alas! it is not so. Not as brothers, not as friends, not as wayfarers of the common ocean, do they come together, but as enemies. The closing vessels now bristle fiercely with death-dealing implements. On their spacious decks, aloft on all their masts, flashes the deadly musketry. From their sides spout cataracts of flame, amidst the pealing thunders of a fatal artillery. They who had escaped "the dreadful touch of merchant-marring rocks," who on their long and solitary way had sped unharmed by wind or wave, whom the hurricane had spared, in whose favor storms and seas had intermitted their immitigable war, now at last fall by the hand of each other. From both ships the same spectacle of horror greets us. On decks reddened with blood, the murders of the Sicilian Vespers and of St. Bartholomew, with the fires of Smithfield, break forth anew, and concentrate their rage. Each is a swimming Golgotha. At length these vessels—such pageants of the sea, such marvels of art, once so stately, but now rudely shattered by cannon-ball, with shivered masts and ragged sails—exist only as unmanageable wrecks, weltering on the uncertain wave, whose transient lull of peace is their sole safety. In amazement at this strange, unnatural contest, away from country and home, where there is no country or home to defend, we ask again, Wherefore this dismal scene? Again the melancholy, but truthful, answer promptly comes, that this is the established method of determining justice between nations.
Yes! the barbarous, brutal relations which once prevailed between individuals, which prevailed still longer between communities composing nations, are not yet banished from the great Christian Commonwealth. Religion, reason, humanity, first penetrate the individual, next larger bodies, and, widening in influence, slowly leaven nations. Thus, while condemning the bloody contests of individuals, also of towns, counties, principalities, provinces, and denying to all these the right of waging war, or of appeal to Trial by Battle, we continue to uphold an atrocious System of folly and crime, which is to nations what the System of Petty Wars was to towns, counties, principalities, provinces, also what the Duel was to individuals: for War is the Duel of Nations.[303] As from Pluto's throne flowed those terrible rivers, Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon, with lamenting waters and currents of flame, so from this established System flow the direful tides of War. "Give them Hell," was the language written on a slate by an American officer, speechless from approaching death. "Ours is a damnable profession," was the confession of a veteran British general. "War is the trade of barbarians," exclaimed Napoleon, in a moment of truthful remorse, prompted by his bloodiest field. Alas! these words are not too strong. The business of War cannot be other than the trade of barbarians, cannot be other than a damnable profession; and War itself is certainly Hell on earth. But forget not, bear always in mind, and let the idea sink deep into your souls, animating you to constant endeavor, that this trade of barbarians, this damnable profession, is part of the War System, sanctioned by International Law,—and that War itself is Hell, recognized, legalized, established, organized, by the Commonwealth of Nations, for the determination of international questions!
"Put together," says Voltaire, "all the vices of all ages and places, and they will not come up to the mischiefs of one campaign."[304] This strong speech is supported by the story of ancient mythology, that Juno confided the infant Mars to Priapus. Another of nearer truth might be made. Put together all the ills and calamities from the visitations of God, whether in convulsions of Nature, or in pestilence and famine, and they will not equal the ills and calamities inflicted by man upon his brother-man, through the visitation of War,—while, alas! the sufferings of War are too often without the alleviation of those gentle virtues which ever attend the involuntary misfortunes of the race. Where the horse of Attila had been a blade of grass would not grow; but in the footprints of pestilence, famine, and earthquake the kindly charities spring into life.
The last hundred years have witnessed three peculiar visitations of God: first, the earthquake at Lisbon; next, the Asiatic cholera, as it moved slow and ghastly, with scythe of death, from the Delta of the Ganges over Bengal, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Russia, till Europe and America shuddered before the spectral reaper; and, lastly, the recent famine in Ireland, consuming with remorseless rage the population of that ill-starred land. It is impossible to estimate precisely the deadly work of cholera or famine, nor can we picture the miseries which they entailed; but the single brief event of the earthquake may be portrayed in authentic colors.
Lisbon, whose ancient origin is referred by fable to the wanderings of Ulysses, was one of the fairest cities of Europe. From the summit of seven hills it looked down upon the sea, and the bay bordered with cheerful villages,—upon the broad Tagus, expanding into a harbor ample for all the navies of Europe,—and upon a country of rare beauty, smiling with the olive and the orange, amidst grateful shadows of the cypress and the elm. A climate offering flowers in winter enhanced the peculiar advantages of position; and a numerous population thronged its narrow and irregular streets. Its forty churches, its palaces, its public edifices, its warehouses, its convents, its fortresses, its citadel, had become a boast. Not by War, not by the hand of man, were these solid structures levelled, and all these delights changed to desolation.