General Sherman has spoken on the refining influences of war:
“Long after the Civil War, General Sherman, defending the conduct of his troops in South Carolina, said to Carl Schurz: ‘Before we got out of that state the men had so accustomed themselves to destroying everything along the line of march that sometimes, when I had my headquarters in a house, that house began to burn before I was fairly out of it. The truth is—human nature is human nature. You take the best lot of young men—all church members if you please—and put them into an army and let them invade an enemy’s country and let them live upon it for any length, and they will gradually lose all principle[[262]] and self-restraint to a degree beyond the control of discipline. It has always been so and always will be so.’”[[263]]
(12) An anonymous author writes thus:[[264]]
“Real war is a very different thing from the painted image that you see at a parade or review. But it is the painted image that makes it popular. The waving plumes, the gay uniforms, the flashing swords, the disciplined march of innumerable feet, the clear-voiced trumpet, the intoxicating strains of martial music, the pomp, the sound, and the spectacle—these are the incitements to war and to the profession of the soldier. They are not what they are. But they still form a popular prelude to a woeful pandemonium. And when war bursts out it is at first, as a rule, but a small minority even of the peoples engaged that really sees and feels its horrors. The populace is fed by excitements; the defeats are covered up; in most countries the lists of killed and wounded are suppressed or postponed; victories are magnified; successful generals are acclaimed, and the military hero becomes the idol of the people. The over-fed, seedy malingerers of a small society join with the starving loiterers about the gin palace in applauding the execution of ruin. If their heroes are successful, what are their trophies?—prisons crowded with captives, hospitals filled with sick and wounded, towns sacked, farms burnt, fields laid waste, taxes raised, plenty converted to scarcity or famine, and vast debts accumulated for posterity. Then when these [military] heroes have done their work, the heroes of peace ... appear, and by long and patient labor amid scenes of universal lamentation seek to mitigate the suffering of their repentant fellow-countrymen.”
The poet Byron was in a war and described war thus:
“All the mind would shrink from of excesses;
All the body perpetrates of bad;
All that we read, hear, dream, of man’s distresses;
All that the devil would do if run stark mad;
All that defies the worst which pen expresses;