The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1898-03-17
SOME RAMBLING THOUGHTS.
By MEMO
copyrighted by lave & Tabor

BY MEMO.
copyrighted by lave & Tabor
AS to War:-Tender-h hearted women,
who face death to give, call on you
by the memory of your own pangs to
sit down and think of war as it is. See
yonder regiment behind a fence,
crouching out of the range of bullets
that already begin their deadly work.
Now at the word of command the
men are on their feet; a moment later
they are out beyond all protection,
and away they go across the cruel
zone of death, some pallid with the
presence of the end, some laughing
from hysteria. Stumbling, shouting,
cursing, they sweep forward, thinning
as they go. With groans that are I'M
needed in the noise, many of then
drop in their tracks, their bones shat
tered, their vitals pierced. A few are
blessedly relieved from pain at once,
others linger for the cruel kindness
of a surgeon and the long death in the
crowded hospital. Imagine that out
there on the bloody field is your son,
a mangled mass OF. flesh and blood.
What can you utter of rejoicing when
his regiment marches home again lack
ing the one man in it that made it
something in very deed more than a
mere numeral to you?
~
Look out again with dry, Mortified
eyes at the reaping place of death. 1t
is trodden back and forth by friend
and foe; and at every vancouver 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 towards you; you cannot
fly to him. There is a great hollow
aching within. Night now falls and
there he still lies; sight gone, comeli-
ness 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
life by robbing the dead. With a
shudder we think of the chill, en-
shrouding mist and the gloom of that
dreadful night. With a deeper shud-
der we think of the heat and fostering
of the pitiless sun as it rises to sum-
mon to their vile duty the buzzard
and the vulture. What thrill is left
for you when the triumph comes and
the blind populace who have not suf-
fered, think only of the living but
have no feeling for your dead? In
every corpse lying there is a tragedy
deep as yours. This is the sane view
to take of this harvest, whose CLEAN
ings are sorrows and whose stubble
pierces to the quick. Loving and
long-suffering mothers of men, it is
you who suffer when red war makes
its demands. 1t is you who have the
dread waiting to do; the living of
death anxious uncertainty to face.
Your signing should be louder in the
public ear than all the clamOr and
boastful mouthings of hot-headed
men. Let your plant be this: IF
war must be, let it be one of Justice,
or our great sacrifice will will be hard
indeed!''
And this is one further dread fea-
ture of war; feature that makes it
more dreadful and more heinous: On
opposing sides the men-children of
the yearning bowels of bereft mothers
fighting not because they have any
feeling of individual enmity. They
have in fact no knowledge of one
another; they have no words of an
ger to rouse the blood to boiling
point; they never met before I'M
til the sharp call of the officers
brought them face to face. Yet there
they are aiming, firing, manning, kill
ing III a perfect frenzy of subordinat-
ed will. Beyond all this, they grow
so wild with the horrible gloating and
glut of bloodshed that death alone is
not enough for the dead enemy, but
he needs must be outraged, insulted,
Knocked when he is dead. Yet all
this is spoken OF as glory; is made sc
by drawing cloak over its horror;
and by being needless of the dead and
XXY-GG