The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1891-11-18
Women and War.

Women anu War.
For a sober estimate of the real ma
ture of war, apart from the romance
of the drum and bugle, the words Of
Guy de Maupassant, the greatest liv
ing French writer, seem TO me the
best ] have ever read:
"When I but think of this word
war, there comes upon me a feeling o.
astonishment, as if n were speaking
of witchcraft or the Inquisition, some
thing long ago ended, %abomniable,
monstrous, against nature. When We
speak of cannibals. we smile with
pride to think of our superiority tc
these savages? Who r the saw
ages,-the real savages? Those who
fight in order to eat the conquered, OF
those who fight in order to kill, merely
10 kill? Those little conscripts who
are marching by yonder ale destined
to death as certainly as the troops OF
sheep the shepherd drives along the
same road. They are going to fall in
some meadow, with a head split open
by a sabre-stroke, or a chest pierced
by a bullet; and they are young men
who might be working, producing,
being useful. Their fathers are old
and poor; their mothers, who for
twenty years have loved them, adored
them as mothers adore, will learn in
six months or a year, perhaps, that the
SOD, the big boy brought up with such
care, so much money, so much love,
has been thrown into a ditch, like a
dead dog, after having been ripped
open by a cannon-ball, and trampled
on, crushed, pounded into pulp. by
charges of cavalry. Why did they
kill her boy, her handsome boy, her
only hope, her pride, her life? She
does not know. Yes-why? War?
TO fight, to murder, to massacre men
And we have to-day. in Il epoch, un-
der our civilization, beneath the acme
of science and Of philosophy to which
we flatter ourselves humankind has
attained, schools where they teach
how to kill, to kill from great dis
tauces, with accuracy quantities of
men at once,-to kill without judicial
sentence poor innocent men with fam
lilies dependent on them. A
genius at massacre, Won Moltke, re-
piled recently to some peace delegates
in these incredible words:
"'War is holy, of Divine origin it
is one of the worlds sacred laws it
arouses among men all the noble senti-
ments, honor, disinterestedness, vir-
tue, and courage, and, in n word,
binders them from sinking into the
most hideous materialism.'
$50, then to gather in armies of four
hundred thousand men, to march
without rest, night and day. thinking
of nothing, studying nothing, reading
nothing, useful to nobody, covered
with filth, sleeping in mud, living like
brutes in continued mental vacancy,
pillaging towns, burning villages,
running people !; then to meet another
agglomeration of human flesh, to
charge upon it, to make lakes of blood,
fields of battered flesh trampled into
the mud and muddy earth !; to have
your arms or legs carted off, your skull
smashed, without profiting anybody,
and then to die in some fence-corner,
while your wife and children perish OF
hunger-that is what is called mot
sinking into the most hideOus mate
rialismn Soldiers the scourge of the
world. We struggle against nature,
against ignorance, against obstacles OF
every kind, to make this wretched
life of ours less wretched. Men, phil
a%nthropists, scientists, use up their
days in working, searching for some,
thing to save or soothe their brothers.
They go enthusiastically about their
useful labors, piling discovery on dis
covery, charging human wisdom,
broadening science, giving their coun-
try every day some new piece of learn
ing-prosperity, gladness and vitality.
Then comes war: in six months the
generals have destroyed twenty years
of effort, of patience, of genius. This
is what is called not sinking into the
most hideous materiailsmp . .
TO enter q country, to murder q man
who is defending his house, because
he wears o blouse, and hasn't a he'll
met upon his head, to burn down the
dwelling of wretches who have nc
bread to give, to smash furniture OF
steal it, to drink the wine you find in
the cellars, violate the women you
find in the streets, burn up millions Of
francs into ashes, and then march off,
leaving behind you desolation and the
cholera-that is what is called mot
sinking into the most hideous mate.
rialism "'-Wm. Lloyd Garrison.