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." [Footnote: Scene after the Battle of Sedan: Herald of Peace for 1870, October 1st, p. 121] 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."
Plain confession! And yet the duel continues. Nor is there death for the armed man only. Fire mingles with slaughter, as at Bazeilles. Women and children are roasted alive, filling the air with suffocating odor, while the maddened combatants rage against each other. All this is but part of the prolonged and various spectacle, where the scene shifts only for some other horror. Meanwhile the sovereigns of the world sit in their boxes, and the people everywhere occupy the benches.
PERIL FROM THE WAR SYSTEM.
The duel now pending teaches the peril from continuance of the present system. If France and Germany can be brought so suddenly into collision on a mere pretext, what two nations are entirely safe? Where is the talisman for their protection? None, surely, except Disarmament, which, therefore, for the interest of all nations, should be commenced. Prussia is now an acknowledged military power, armed "in complete steel,"—but at what cost to her people, if not to mankind! Military citizenship, according to Prussian rule, is military serfdom, and on this is elevated a military despotism of singular grasp and power, operating throughout the whole nation, like martial law or a state of siege. In Prussia the law tyrannically seizes every youth of twenty, and, no matter what his calling or profession, compels him to military service for seven years. Three years he spends in active service in the regular army, where his life is surrendered to the trade of blood; then for four years he passes to the reserve, where he is subject to periodic military drills; then for five years longer to the Landwehr, or militia, with liability to service in the Landsturm, in case of war, until sixty. Wherever he may be in foreign lands, his military duty is paramount.
But if this system be good for Prussia, then must it be equally good for other nations. If this economical government, with education for all, subordinates the business of life to the military drill, other nations will find too much reason for doing the same. Unless the War System is abandoned, all must follow the successful example, while the civilized world becomes a busy camp, with every citizen a soldier, and with all sounds swallowed up in the tocsin of war. Where, then, are the people? Where are popular rights? Montesquieu has not hesitated to declare that the peril to free governments proceeds from armies, and that this peril is not corrected even by making them depend directly on the legislative power. This is not enough. The armies must be reduced in number and force. [Footnote: De l'Esprit des Lois, Liv. XI. Ch. 6.] Among his papers, found since his death, is the prediction, "France will be ruined by the military." [Footnote: "La France se perdra par les gens de guerre."—Pensees Diverses,—Varietes: (Oeuvres Melees et Posthumes, (Paris, 1807, Didot,) Tom. II. p. 138.)] It is the privilege of genius like that of Montesquieu to lift the curtain of the future; but even he did not see the vastness of suffering in store for his country through those armies against which he warned. For years the engine of despotism at home, they became the sudden instrument of war abroad. Without them Louis Napoleon could not have made himself Emperor, nor could he have hurried France into the present duel. If needed in other days, they are not needed now. The War System, always barbarous, is an anachronism, full of peril both to peace and liberal institutions.
PEACE.
An army is a despotism; military service is a bondage; nor can the passion for arms be reconciled with a true civilization. The present failure to acknowledge this incompatibility is only another illustration how the clear light of truth is discolored and refracted by an atmosphere where the cloud of war still lingers. Soon must this cloud be dispersed. From war to peace is a change indeed; but Nature herself testifies to change. Sirius, brightest of all the fixed stars, was noted by Ptolemy as of reddish hue, [Footnote: Almagest, ed. et tr. Halma, (Paris, 1816- 20,) Tom. II. pp. 72, 73.] and by Seneca as redder than Mars; [Footnote: Naturales Quaestiones, Lib. I. Cap. 1.] but since then it has changed to white. To the morose remark, whether in the philosophy of Hobbes or the apology of the soldier, that man is a fighting animal and that war is natural, I reply,—Natural for savages rejoicing in the tattoo, natural for barbarians rejoicing in violence, but not natural for man in a true civilization, which I insist is the natural state to which he tends by a sure progression. The true state of Nature is not war, but peace. Not only every war, but every recognition of war as the mode of determining international differences, is evidence that we are yet barbarians,—and so also is every ambition for empire founded on force, and not on the consent of the people. A ghastly, bleeding, human head was discovered by the early Romans, as they dug the foundations of that Capitol which finally swayed the world. [Footnote: Dionysius Halicarnassensis, Antiquitates Romanae, Lib. IV. Capp. 59-61.] That ghastly, bleeding, human head is the fit symbol of military power.
Let the War System be abolished, and, in the glory of this consummation, how vulgar all that comes from battle! By the side of this serene, beneficent civilization, how petty in its pretensions is military power! how vain its triumphs! At this moment the great general who has organized victory for Germany is veiled, and his name does not appear even in the military bulletins. Time is the glory of arms passing from sight, and battle losing its ancient renown. Peace does not arrest the mind like war. It does not glare like battle. Its operations, like those of Nature, are gentle, yet sure. It is not the tumbling, sounding cataract, but the tranquil, fruitful river. Even the majestic Niagara, with thunder like war, cannot compare with the peaceful plains of water which it divides. How easy to see that the repose of nations, like the repose of Nature, is the great parent of the most precious bounties vouchsafed by Providence! Add Peace to Liberty,—