To see their triumphs near.
No widow’s groans shall load our cause,
Nor blood of brethren slain;
We’ve won without such aid before,
And so we shall again.
This poem expresses the sentiment and policy of the Journal of Man. But, ah, how utterly antagonistic to these noble sentiments is the way of the world at present, and the policy of the world’s strong governments, upheld as they are by the so-called church of Christ, which is not the church of Christ but the church of Athanasius.
Everywhere men are trained with skill and perseverance for the work of homicide, as if murder were the most glorious work in which man could be employed.
Every Frenchman in his twenty-first year is held by the government (with very few exceptions) to five years service in the active army, four years in the reserve of the active army, five years in the territorial army, and four in the reserve of the territorial army—eighteen years altogether! Could his Satanic Majesty have devised any better plan for destroying the moral distinction between men and carnivorous beasts? The only mitigation of this horror is that college students are allowed to pass by one year’s service, and a lottery of long and short terms allows a large number to escape with terms of abridged length.
Germany, like France, forces everybody through the army, and it is but five months since the continental governments were buying in England millions of cartridges for the expected war which psychometry pronounced a terrible delusion.
All governments are busy in preparing the deadliest possible weapons. European nations have generally adopted magazine guns for their soldiers. France has adopted the Kropatochek magazine rifle, Germany the Manser rifle, Austria the Mannlicher magazine rifle, Italy the Bertoldo magazine rifle, Russia the Berdan breechloader, Turkey the American rifle. The magazine guns seem to have almost unlimited capacities—firing 30 to 50 shots per minute which are fatal at a mile distance. The only mitigation of these horrors is that of a German chemist’s invention—an anæsthetic bullet which is claimed to produce complete insensibility, lasting for hours.