The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-10-14
(Continued.l

We will not follow Barnet however, in the description of his strange over land voyage among trees and houses and churches by Zaandam and between Haarlem and Amsterdam to Leiden. It was voyage in red lit mist, in a world of steamy silhouette, full of strange voices and perplexity and with every other Sensation dominated by a feverish thirst. We sat-" he says, ssfn little huddled group, saying very lit tie, and the men forward were mere knots of silent endurance, Our only continuing sound was the persistent. moving of cat one of the men had rescued from floating hayrick near Haandam. We kept a, southward course by a watch chain compass. Mylius had produced
 sI do not think any of us felt we be- longed to defeated army, nor had we any strong sense of the war as the dominating fact about uS Our mental setting had far more of the effect of huge natural catastrophe. The atomic bomb had dwarfed the international is- sues to complete insignifeance. When our mind wandered from the preoccu- pations of our immediate needs we speculated upon the possibility of stop ping the use of these frightful explo-
  stroyed, for to us it seemed quite plain that these bombs and the still greater power of destruction of which they were the precursors might quite easily shatter every relationship and instittl- ton of mankind
 's What will they be dofngF asked Mylius. What will they be doing? It's plain we've got to put an end to war It's plain things have to be run some other way. This-an this-ts impossi- ble.'
 'tI made no immediate answer Some thingI cannot think what-had brought back to me the figure of that man I had seen wounded on the very first day of actual fighting. I saw again his angry, fearful eyes and that poor, dripping. bloody mess that had been a skil1ful human hand five min utes before, thrust out in indignant protest. sDd fooIery!' he had storm ed and sobbed sDd foO1ery! My right hand, sir; my right handr
 ssMy faith had for time gone alto- gether out of me. T think we are too too silly said to Mylius, ever to stop war. If we'd had the sense to do it we should have done it before this. I think this'-and I pointed to the gaunt outline of a smashed wind mill that stuck up, ridiculous and ugly, above the blood lit waves-this is the end.' g
 But now our history must part com pany with Frederick Barnet and his barge load of hungry and starving men.
 For a time in western Europe at least it was indeed as if civilization had come to a final collapse. These crowning buds upon the tradition that Napoleon planted and Bismarck water ed opened and aared like water lilies of fame over nations destroyed, over churches smashed or submerged, towns ruined, fields lost to mankind forever ssnd a million weltering bodies. Was this lesson enough for mankind or would the flames of war still burn amidst the ruins7
 Neither Barnet nor his companions, it is clear, had any assurance in their answers to that question. Already once in the history of mankind in America. before it's discovery by the whites, an organized civilization had given way to mere cult of warfare, specialized and cruel, and it seemed for a time to many thoughtful man as if the whole world was but to rel peat on larger scale this ascendancy of the warrior, this triumph of the destructive instincts of the race.
 The subsequent chapters of Barnetss narrative do but supply body to this tragic possibility. He gives a series of vfgnettes of civilization shattered, it seemed, almost frreparabIy. He found the Belgian hills swarming with refugees and desolated by cholera, the vestiges of the contending armies keeping order under a Hree-wtthout actual battles. but with the cautious hostility of habit and a great absence of plan everywhere
 Overhead aeroplanes went on myste- rious errands, and there were rumors of cannibalism and hystericaI fanati- cisms in the valleys of the Semoy and the forest region of the eastern Ar dennes. There was the report of an attack upon Russia by the Chinese and Japanese and of some huge revolution ary outbreak in America. The weath- CT was stormier than men had ever known it in those regions, with much thunder and lightning and wild cloud bursts of rain.