Let us defend ourselves—AS A CLASS.
CHAPTER FIVE.
Hell.
Section one: Modern murdering machinery.
Ah, so you are on your way to the recruiting station, are you? Well, there will be plenty of time to enlist tomorrow, and there are also seven days of next week that have not been touched yet. Do not be in a hurry to sign your name. Wait a little—wait at least till you have read the first two sections of this chapter.
Perhaps you are feverish.
Cool off before you enlist.[[67]]
Go back to the 60’s and read three or four lines of American Civil War history before you enlist. Here they are in the words of a distinguished authority, A. S. Bolles:[[68]]
“With the swift cooling of the war fever bounties became necessary to stimulate enlistment.... In 1861 the highways were filled with volunteers eagerly rushing to the front; but in 1865 they went with much slower pace and with a much better conception of the hazardous game of war.”
The hateful method called drafting had to be vigorously applied by the Federal Government after the young men found out what war really meant—for them.
And Professor John B. McMaster (University of Pennsylvania) makes it clear that even the hot blood of the young men of the South also cooled down to an extremely rational temperature as the slaughter proceeded. He says:[[69]]