The commonwealth., 1898-03-17
WISE OBSERVATIONS.
WAR IS NEVER DESIRABLE.
LET PRATERS HOLD UP THEIR
PRATINGS.
Some Rambling Thoughts.
BY "NEMO."
Copyrighted by Dave & Tabor.)

Copyrighted by Dave & Tabor.)
As to War r:-Tender-hearted women
who face death to give life, I call O,
you by the memory of your own pang
to sit down and think of war as it is
See yonder regiment behind fence
crouching out of the range of bullet
that already begin their deadly work
Now at the word of command the mel
are on their feet moment later the,
are out beyond all protection, and away
they go across the cruel zone of death
some pallid with the prescience of the
end, some laughing from hysteria
Stumbling, shouting, curslng, they
sweep forward. thinning as they go
With groans that are unheeded in the
noise, many of them drop in theil
tracks, their bones shattered, their Vi
tails pierced. A few are blessedly re.
lleved from pain at once, others linger
for the cruel kindness of the surgeon
and the long death in the crowded hos
pital. Imagine that out there on that
bloody field Is your son. a mangled
mass of flesh and blood. What can
you utter of rejoicing when his regi-
ment marches home again lacking the
one man in it that made it something
In very deed more than a mere numeral
to you?
Look out again with dry, horrlfed
eyes at the reaping place of Death. It
is trodden back and forth by friend and
foe; and at every maneuver that son
Is being ground more and more out OF
all recognition as the bright-eyed, bonny
babe that kneaded your breasts with his
chubby fists. He cannot move to-
wards you; you cannot fly to him.
There is great hollow aching within
Night now falls and there he still lies
sight gone, comeliness gone, life gone,
with none to cover his horrors from the
cold glitter of the stars and none to
drive from him the ghouls who make
sport of lite by robbing the dead.
With a shudder you think OF the chill,
enshrouding mist and the gloom of
that dreadful night. With deeper
shudder you think of the heat and
fostering OF the pitiless sun as it rises
to summon to their vile duty the buz-
zard and the vulture. What of thrill
is left tor you when the triumph comes
and the blind populace who have not
suffered, think only of the living but
have no feeling for your dead? In
every corpse lying there is tragedy
deep as yours. This is the sane view
to take OF this harvest, whose gleanings
are sorrows and whose stubble pierces
to the quick. Loving and long-suffer-
ing mothers of men, it is you who
most suffer when red war makes It's de-
mands. 1t is you who have the dread
waiting to do; the Lying death of anx-
lous uncertainty to face. Your sigh
ing should be louder in the public ear
than all the clamor and boastful mouth
ings of hot-headed men. Let your
plant be this: eff war must be, let it
be one of Justice, or our great sacrifice
will be hard indeed y
And this is one futher dread feature
Of war; feature that makes it more
dreadful and more heinous On op-
posing sides the men-children of the
yearning bowels of bereft mothers fight
not because they have any feeling of
individual enmity. They have In fact
no knowledge of one another /; they have
no words of anger to rouse tha. has.q qh1'oa1 70
boiling point; they never >nAo.4 sor,nc =,
until the sharp call of the officers
brought them face to lace. Yet there
they are aiming, firing, manning, kill
ing in perfect frenzy Of subordinated
will. Beyond all this, they grow SO
wild with the horrible g1pating and glut
of bloodshed that death alone is not
enough for the dead enemy, but he
needs must be outraged, insulted, mock
ed when he is dead. Yet all this is |
spoken of as glory; it Is made so by
drawing cloak over its horror and by |
being needless of the dead and heedful |
only of the survivors. It Is the theme
of the descriptive writer, a source Of
profit to the contractors, and sum-
mons to insensate rejoicing on the part
of all those human PARASITES who will |
How TO GET THE SYSTEM READY FOR
THE SPRING.
II always dread the Spring" he said
u,t makes ma feel SO bad. / wake up