The age-herald., 1900-08-16
WoMAN;;; d6c,prv
When War Seems Real.

After that the war seems suddenly to be very real, and the look in one woman's eyes has been a fashlight upon the war situations that are really after all dis cussed very little. The Chinese trouble is not discussed here to any great extent, probably not as generally as was the Boer War. It all seems such a long ways off that it is only the war telegrams that will occasionally cause some one to say that the situation is very grave or that the end cannot be predicted
 A woman told me yesterday that her brother was going to China. He was in both the Cuban and Philippine wars, and is now at Manila. At the beginning of the Chinese war he wrote to his mother in America that he wanted to go 10 China. When he joined the army at the outbreak of the Cuban war he expected to see active service, but his regiment was de- tailed for garrison duty through both the Cuban and Philippine wars. Unless I can see active service in the Chinese war he wrote to his mother, q shall be a veteran of three wars without being given a chance to fight" He went on to say that he be- lieved in fate and that if it was decreed that he should die from the wound of a Chinese bullet that there was nothing to prevent it. The letter told how impatient he was to see active service and how in- tolerable life was growing in the Philip pines to the soldiers who had suffered dis appointment in not being allowed the citement of campaign. If he should be given an opportunity of going to China he would probably have started by the time his letter xuit al his wild desire to be at the front he told his mother that he entered the army be- cause it offered a man opportunity to distinguish himself, and that a soldiers career was to him the most to be desired, and that if he should be killed in battle he wanted his mother to know that he had tried to live the life of an honorable man and that he would face death fearlessy.
 The news came the past week that a colonel in the Fourteenth Cavalry has asked for this young officer, and 1t is only the quantities of official correspondence that is required for him to be released in the Philippines that he is not on his way to China.
 As the sister of this officer talked of his going with that calmness that brave wo- men possess the war in China grew in- tensely real, for as sympthetic as she is in the ambitions of her brother, the certain ty of his embarking for the Mongolian empire filled her heart with that peculiar dread that only woman knows, and that only woman recognizes.
 The atrocities that fill the papers day af- ter day, and the stories of which the in- dividual paper is so eager to say that it bod 4 its hated rival, were brought home with vividness and all the telegrams failed to convey. l instinctively knew that if anything should happen to this young of ficer that he would be like young officer of the British army of whom the soldiers told a war correspondent that when struck by a Boer shell that tore away both legs his courage was great that when his gunners raised him in their arms, he look ed down grimly and said: They've done for my cricket, haven't they?" And when he was carried to the hospital he was still cheerful and smoking a cigar and apolo- gizing for the trouble he was giving to the Jackies who carried him.
 The war news that filled the papers when the Cuban campaign first opened was discussed desultorily until that May morning the First Alabama Regiment shouldered it's guns and pulled out of the railway station, while hundreds and thous- ands of persons waved handkerchiefs, and while just many looked with a some what blurred vision along the line of re- treating cars, and without any knowledge those of Miami pictured the embarking for Cuba.
 There was woman who had to say goodbye to her two boys She would not go to the station, and after it was all over l came by to see her and to tell her that few persons believed that the regiment would see active service, since the latest news was encouraging
 l have seen women bowed with unspeak- able griefs, but this was the first time that l had seen woman who had just parted with her two boys who were going to the war. And all through the long Weeks when the regiment was at Miami, any prospect of its being called to Cuba, brought the vision Of this woman as she sat at the win dow that morning, looking with brimming eyes into future that is given only to mothers to see.
 The other day there came a kindly note from woman whose son died at Miami The soldiers who volunteer are in danger of death other than from bullet There will never be a sadder tragedy than that day this young officer gave up his life and the pathos of it all was that he had been deprived of seeing the action and excite ment of war, and had known only the hard ships of fever-stricken camp, while all the time he was restless and impa tient to be at the front.
 This note from his mother did not touch upon her sorrow that the news of war in- tensify until at the close something was said about the lovely life ways that stretched before one, while mine stretches so far back and under such shaded ways"
 With all the grim realities it is after all the thought of the mothers whose sons have given up their lives that make all veins upon either Spanish or Chinese civil ization seems tame in comparison to what the women who are left behind must feel. And the English woman knows that the Chinese suffers over the tragedies of war, for there are some things that any code of civilization never touches. But the most ghastly incident of war was told recently by Maud Andrews, who was discussing the Chinese trouble with member of the Brit ish army. She told him that there was noth- ing left in extreme cases but for the men to kill their wives and children when the worse came to the worse. The officer to whom she was speaking said to her: