ABOLITION OF THE WAR SYSTEM.
Such is the statement, with its many proofs, by which war is exhibited as the Duel of Nations, being the Trial by Battle of the Dark Ages. You have seen how nations, under existing International Law, to which all are parties, refer their differences to this insensate arbitrament,—and then how, in our day and before our own eyes, two nations eminent in civilization have furnished an instance of this incredible folly, waging together a world-convulsing, soul-harrowing, and most barbarous contest. All ask how long the direful duel will be continued. Better ask, How long will be continued that War System by which such a duel is authorized and regulated among nations? When will this legalized, organized crime be abolished? When at last will it be confessed that the Law of Right is the same for nations as for individuals, so that, if Trial by Battle be impious for individuals, it is so for nations likewise? Against it are Reason and Humanity, pleading as never before,—Economy, asking for mighty help,—Peace, with softest voice praying for safeguard,—and then the authority of Philosophy, speaking by some of its greatest masters,—all reinforced by the irrepressible, irresistible protest of working-men in different nations.
Precedents exist for the abolition of this duel, so completely in point, that, according to the lawyer’s phrase, they “go on all fours” with the new case. Two of these have been already mentioned: first, when, at the Diet of Worms, in 1495, the Emperor Maximilian proclaimed a permanent peace throughout Germany, and abolished the “liberty” of Private War; and, secondly, when, in 1815, the German Principalities stipulated “under no pretext to make war upon one another, or to pursue their differences by force of arms.”[242] But first in time, and perhaps in importance, was the great Ordinance of St. Louis, King of France, promulgated at a Parliament in 1260, where he says: “We forbid battles [i. e. Trials by Battle] to all persons throughout our dominions, … and in place of battles we put proofs by witnesses.… And these Battles we abolish in our Dominions forever.”[243] These at the time were great words, and they continue great as an example. Their acceptance by any two nations would begin the work of abolition, which would be completed on their adoption by a Congress of Nations, taking from war its existing sanction.
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,[244] and adopted even by Titus, in that short reign so much praised as unspotted by the blood of the citizen.[245] 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.[246] 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.”[247] 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.”[248]
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.”