“Quite as desperate were the shifts to which the South was put for soldiers. At first every young man was eager to rush to the front. But as time passed ... it became necessary to force men into the ranks, to ‘conscript’ them....”
In this connection read the words of a great Union soldier, General Sherman:
“I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentations of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands and fathers. It is only those who have not heard a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.”[[70]]
It is especially important that before you enlist you should get a distinct idea of the horrible deadliness of modern butchering machinery. Since General Sherman made the comment just quoted on the American Civil War the killing machinery has been improved astonishingly.
In the recent Russian-Japanese war individual soldiers, as shown by actual count and official report, received as many as seventy bullet wounds,—they were riddled—torn to pieces—with lead and steel fired from MODERN slaughtering machines. If you will read all of the present and the following sections you will no longer wonder why the “very BEST people” do not enlist for actual service—at the front.
I would suggest and even urge, brothers, that, before you enlist, you visit your dear pastor and read with him all of the present section on “Hell,” and then ask him whether he and his sons will probably enlist for actual firing-line-sword-rifle-and-bayonet service. Also have a heart-to-heart talk with your loving friend, your banker, who takes care of your money for you. Read these paragraphs to him and ask him whether he is eager to rush to the front and whether he is urging his sons and sons-in-law to be ready to rush with him to the front for real fighting into “the grasp of death,” into “the hurricane’s fiery breath,” where sabres flash, bullets hiss, and cannon roar.
By the way, do you deposit much money in the bank? Do you often visit socially at the banker’s home? Did you ever see a cheap, fifteen-dollar-a-month soldier courting the banker’s or the big manufacturer’s daughter?
Well, hardly.
Wake up, my working class brother.
These leading citizens strut before you and fill you full of fierce and splendid talk about becoming “brave boys behind the gun”; but at the same time they despise you socially. Don’t foolishly get behind the gun or in front of the gun—not at least till you have studied the gun.