“In such a rich country as France, and in such a splendid climate, the army lost four times more from disease than from battles. [Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71.] It is evident that the force of modern arms ... presents less danger than infectious diseases and other sicknesses inseparable from the rough life of large camps.”[[98]]

An anonymous author, quoted on a preceding page, calls attention[[99]] to a matter of great importance in this connection, namely, the decreasing opportunity to carry the wounded off the battlefield and the consequent increasing terrors for the men who lie torn, feverish and unattended on the field lighted at night with searchlights and raked with machine guns, not only during the day, but also at night, making prompt rescue and surgical attention impossible. He writes:

“One of the most cruel features in future battles will be the contrast between the great improvement in medical service, and the increasing difficulty, despite the Red Cross, of giving aid to the wounded.... His conclusion [the conclusions of Dr. Bardeleben, who was Surgeon-General of the Prussian Army during the Franco-Prussian War] was that the whole system of carrying away the wounded on litters during the battle must be abandoned as altogether impracticable. This I believe has proved to be generally true. And now battles last a week or ten days! Something, of course, can be done under cover of the night—though the custom of fighting at night prevails more and more.... It is probable that, in spite of all improvements in medicine and ambulance, the sufferings of the wounded in the great battles in Manchuria and at the siege of Port Arthur have been as great as, if not greater than, those of any war of recent times.”

Here it is to be emphasized by the young man who is thinking of joining the army that in spite of the loud outcry against the poor fellows of our army in the Cuban war in the way of criminally inefficient medical service, our great and extremely patriotic statesmen who love the common soldiers so dearly have in the twelve years since the war made no adequate preparation to prevent another such outrage. Let the following stand as evidence of this statement:[[100]]

“Under the existing organization it would be impossible to prevent a breakdown of the Medical Department in case of a war involving the mobilization of the volunteer forces, nor would it be possible to spare the necessary Regular medical officers to apply in those voluntary forces the modern sanitary measures so vital to the health and efficiency of the troops, without which unnecessary suffering is produced and disaster is invited.”

Thus also the New York Times:[[101]]

“The admission rate into the hospitals for the American Army is [now in the time of peace] 1,250 per 1,000 each year. The British Annual notes that this enormous rate is well above that for the French, German and Austrian armies, while the hospital lists for the British Army show a rate of but 324 per thousand.”

However, all this, so far as personal danger is concerned, is of small importance to the leading citizens, because they—these leaders—will never lead or be led to war. They have nothing to fear from hissing bullet, burning fever, and the death-grip of devouring diseases in war. The plain, cheap wage-slave, the industrial draft-horses, the common men forced to keep books for a poor little salary, the fifteen-dollar-a-week clerks, the blistered miners, the tanned railroad men, the grease-stained machinists, the soil-stained farm toilers, these, all these and many others must learn one thing distinctly, and that thing is this: Modern human butchering machinery has been so highly developed, and disease in war is so hideous, that “our best citizens,” “our very best people,” “our most successful men,” politely (and intelligently) decline all “glorious opportunities” to have their smooth fat bodies exposed to the steel-belching machines, or have their health ruined on the battlefield and in the “dead-house” called a military hospital. The common earth must not drink up their rich aristocratic blood; no rough army surgeon shall carve and slice and saw the “leading citizens” and carelessly toss their severed arms and legs into a bloody heap of flesh as a butcher tosses scraps and trimmings from steaks and chops from his cutting block. Why, certainly not. It should be remembered that such people as bankers, big manufacturers, mine-owners, Senators, Congressmen, great editors and the like, do not have much physical exercise and at the same time they eat daintier food. They are not strong in muscle, except for golf, horseback riding, swimming, hunting trips, mountain climbing. They are softer in flesh than the wage-earner. They belong to the “very best families,” and hence their flesh is finer, their “blue” blood is richer and more sacred than the wage-earner’s cheap red ooze. They are the social thoroughbreds, and the thoroughbreds believe that the thoroughbreds should be kept well out of danger, while just the common social draft-horses are rushed to the front where the modern butchering machinery is ready to mow down men by the thousands and befouling disease is ready to rot the unspilt blood.

My working class brothers, mark it well: In the gilded, palatial homes of the industrial masters, in their club houses, in their elegant business offices, in the legislative halls where “statesmen” meet,—there the so-called best people, the still-fed, stall-fed snobs and Caesars of society never for one moment consider the matter of going themselves to the front, never for an instant plan to go themselves into the cyclones of lead and steel or into the death-grasp of disease in war.

Never!