Shenandoah herald. [volume] (Woodstock, Va.) 1865-1974, 1911-04-07
THE OTHER SIDE OF WAR.

| 80 ugh Tic CITY street Wnlie ffe and
drum end military band stir the hearJ
With patriotic fervor. the prancing
| morse, his rider respondent WI h gilded
trappings, the cheering crowds thai
throng the line of march, fair women
radiant with admiration for the brave
boys who have enlisted fer the war
This is The side, the only side that
most men see. How brilliant the
pageant! How thrilling the hour.
| But this is not war. Let no man or
BOY deceive himself. This is not
what 1t is to be a soldier. War is
yonder on the field blood-soaked and
death-strewn. There, where bullets
Mss and cannon roar, where gatling
| guns hurl out their three thous
deadly bullets every minute, where
screaming shells charged with peroxi-
lene lily into more than thousand
pieces destroying all life within a
range OF two hundred yards; there.
where men are being rent limb from
limb by bursting shrapnel, where
mangled, plulti.ated beyond recogni-
ton they writhe and groan and. dv-
ing, clutch the very earth with the r
stlifening fingers. there, where pain
maddened horses expire in lingering
torture, there is war, barbarous.
brutal, savage, pitlless war, that ra-
lions bearing the Christian name have
waged against each other.
The story of the awful wreckage of
human life on modern battlefelds
where the latest scientific implements
of war are set in motion to pour their
deadly missiles into rank after rank
OF living men, is enough to wiring a |
cry OF anguish from the heart of a |
Borgia. There are descriptions by
eye-witnesses of scenes of slaughter
during the recent Russian-Japanesel
war that are too appalling to be read |
by any but the few who are willing to !
look into the very face of hell to see
the horror that is there.
Think Ct a gum" one writes, "fiftv |
feet long, weighing 26S, 600 pounds, |
consuming 612 pounds of smokeless
powder at every charge, firing a pro-
jectile weighing almost a ton and four
hundred pounds, that will pierce two
feet of Krupp steel armor and having
range of nearly nine mies-a mon
strous butchering machine"
And then the waste of the nations |
money! Each time modern DREAD |
oought" flames out broadside near |
ly $50, 600 is taken from the peoples
pockets.
Whether yon shell hits the target
or not,
Your cost is six hundred dollars |
You thing of noise and flame and |
power,
We feed you hundred barrels OF
Each time you roar. Your flame
With twenty thousand .loaves OF
bread.
Silence! A million hungry men
Seek bread to filltheir mouths again |
From official. reports it has been
gathered by recent author that the |
cost of militarism in the United States
for the fifteen months Guiding June 30,
1909. was greater than the total value |
of all the books. libraries, lands, |
grounds, buildings, furniture, scien-
tific apparatus, machinery and all tht |
endownments, all the Investments and
all productive funds of all kinds be
longing to all our universities ano
higher institutions of learning, Abou
seventy per cent. of the nations aggre
gate income is being spent for past
wars, and the preparations of war.
And then the awful cost of human
life Mars, the God of War, "Mars
the mock of mothers" we are told |
hour after hour, day and night
through whole hundred recent years,
has devoured on the average one hu |
man being, has drunk more THAI twoI
gallons of human blood every twenty |
minutes
If fathers and mothers whose sons
may some day be summoned iato 0 |
war brought on by men who will |
never go themselves to be shot tol
pieces where the leaden rain descends. |
if fathers and mothers woUld but re; d |
the story of Ii twentieth century field |
of battle and see for but a single mo-
m emit in Imagination their boys the
victims of that merciless onslaught of
bullets, dynamite, lyd1ite-see their
scorched, dis.nembered bodies, hear
their dying groans, there would be NO
more war from henceforth, forever,
This is the other side of war Of
which the pic.u,e drawn few mo-
M ,nts ego is but as the shining mask
on the face of grim, relentless, de-
youring death. It's time tn side be
presented to the youth of the world
who see only the brilliant pageant ere
the feet OF the marching hos go down
INTO the valley of steel AMI fire d
blood. FRANCIS ii. 10 Wick.