Courage, devotion, endurance, contempt of death! These are glories that the unmartial may not deride. Even the humblest of brave soldiers is a hero, for all that his heroism coins the misery of others; but what does the soldier know, see, feel, of the real “glories of war”? That knowledge is confined to the readers of newspapers and books! The Pressman, the romancer, the historian can with glowing pen call up in the reader a feeling that war is glorious; that there is something in itself desirable and to be admired in that licensed murder, arson, robbery that we call war. Glorious war! Every penny thrill of each reader of the newspaper, every spasm of each one who sees armed men passing, or hears the fifes and drums, is manufactured out of blood and groans, wrung out of the torments of the human heart and the torture of human flesh.
When I read in the paper of some glorious charge and the great slaughter of the enemy, I feel a thrill through every fibre. It is grand, it is splendid! I take a deep breath of joy, almost of rapture. Grand, splendid! That there should be lying, with their faces haggard to the stars, hundreds, thousands of men like myself, better men than myself! Hundreds, thousands, who loved life as much as I; whose women loved them as much as mine love me! Grand, splendid! That the blood should be oozing from them into grass that once smelled as sweet to them as it does to me! That their eyes which delighted in sunlight and beauty as much as mine, should be glazing fast with death; that their mouths, which mothers and wives and children are aching to kiss again, should be twisted into gaps of horror! Grand, splendid! That other men, no more savage than myself, should have strown them, there! Grand, splendid! That in thousands of far-off houses women, children, and old men will soon lie quivering with anguished memories of those lying there dead. . .
Pressmen, romancers, historians—you have given me a noble thrill in recounting these glories of war!
§ 9.
This is the grand defeat of all Utopians, dreamers, poets, philosophers, idealists, humanitarians, lovers of peace and the arts; bag and baggage they are thrown out of a world that has for a time no use for them. To the despot, the bureaucrat, the militarist, the man of affairs, they have always been hateful. They are soft, yet dangerous, because they venture to hold up another flag in the face of the big flag of force; venture to distract men’s attention from dwelling on the beauty of its size. I believe solemnly that we English have had to join this carnival of force to guard democracy, honour, and the sanctity of treaty rights. It was a sacred necessity; let us keep it sacred, without the loathsome reek of a satisfaction that peace, humanism, and the arts are down, and the country once more showing the stuff of which it is made, a tusky lover of a fight, as jealous and afraid of a rival as ever.
The idealist said in his heart: The god of force is dead, or dying. He has been proven the fool that the man of affairs and the militarist always said he was. But the fools of this world—generally after they are gone—have a way of moving men which the wise and practical believers in force have not. If they had not this power man would still be, year in year out, the savage that the believers in force have for the moment once more made him. The battle between the god of love and the god of force endures for ever. Fools of the former camp, drummed out and beaten to their knees, in due time will get up again and plant their poor flag a little farther on. “All men shall be brothers,” said the German fool, Schiller; so shall the fools say again when the time comes; and again, and again, after every beating!
§ 10.
Last night, when the half-moon was golden and the white stars very high, I saw the souls of the killed passing. They came riding through the dark—some on grey horses, some on black; they came marching, white-faced—hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.
The night smelled sweet, the breeze rustled, the stream murmured; and past me on the air the souls of the killed came marching. They seemed of one great company, no longer enemies. All had the same fixed stare, braving something strange that they were trying terribly to push away. All had their eyes narrowed yet fixed open in their grey-white, smoke-grimed faces. They made no sound as they passed. Whence were they coming, where going, trailing the ghosts of guns, riding the ghosts of horses; into what river of oblivion—far from horror, and the savagery of man!
They passed. The golden half-moon shone, and the high white stars. The fields smelled sweet; the wind gently stirred the trees. The moon and stars would be shining over the battlefields, the wind rustling the trees there, the earth sleeping in dark beauty. So would it be all over the Western world. The peace of God doth indeed pass our understanding!