The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1916-11-24

of you in accommodating on the head of
every wretched antagonist the indig-
nation felt for the wickedness of a
government of a social system. or (if
you wild Of a nation?
Would Spoil the Picture
For the rest, we are depicted as
merry assassins, rejoicing in the op-
portunity of a scrap in which we
know that more than three-quarters
of our friends will be manned or kill
ed, careless of our own lives, exulting
in the duty of turning human beings
into Jumps of disfigured clay, light
hearted as children in q garden who
. shoot at sparrows with a new air-gun
and clap their hands when they fall,
charmed from the transient melan-
cho1y Of childhood by game of foot
ball or packet of cigarettes.
OF the first material reality Of war.
from which everything else takes it's
color, the endless and loathsome ply
sicial exhaustion, you say little, for it
| would spoil the piquancy of the pic
ture.
OF your soldiers internal life, the
constant collision Of contradictory
! moral standards, the liability of the
soul to be crushed by mechanical mo-
notony, the difficulty of keeping hold
of sources of refreshment, the sensa-
ton of taking a profitless part in a
game played by monkeys and organ
lied by lunatics, you realize, I think,
nothing.
Are you. SO superficial as to imag-
inc that men do not feel emotions Of
which they rarely speak? Or do you
suppose that as a cultured civilian
once, explained to me, these feelings
are confined to gentlemen" and are
not shared by common soldiers?
StEnnobling' War.
And behind the picture of war Civ
en- in your papers there sometimes
seems to Turk something worse than,
yet allied to-, it's untruthfulness, hor-
rib1e suggestion that war is somehow,
after all, ennobling; that, if not the
proper occupation Of man, it is at least
one in which he finds a fu11ness of
self-expression impossible in peace,
that when clothed in khaki and car
rying rifles these lads are more tru-
ly men than they were when work
ing in offices or factories.
Perhaps I do you an injustice. But
peep through some Of your respect
able paragraphs.
AS I read them I reflect upon the
friends, who, after suffering various
degrees of torture, died in the illusion
that war was not the last word of
Christian wisdom. And have a SEN
sation as Of pointed ears and hairy
paws and a hideous apeface grinning
into mine sin upon sin, misery upon
misery, to the end of the world.
Oh! gentle public-for you were
gentle. once and may be SO again
put all these delusions from your
mind. The reality is horrible, but it
is not so horrible as the grimacing
phantom which you have imagined.
Your soldiers are neither SO foolish.
nor SO brave, nor so wicked, as the
mechanical dolls who grin and kill
and grin in the columns of your news
papers.
Garry Burden With Little Help.
No doubt, here and there, are boys
to whom the holiday from parents
or school masters or employers is an
exhi1aration, and whose first impress
sions- how soon worn out!-are
printed by credulous editors as rep
resenting 1.-THE spirit of the Army
Delightful children! To whose
very souls are bleared with mud, they
are as refreshing as Spring sunshine
after endless cold and rain.
But in the letters of the rank and
file who have spent Winter in the
trenches you will not find war describ-
ed as sport 1t is load that they
a., ,v.xr oohino bonnS hofiYr or1
not unconscious Of it's monstrosity,
hoping dim1y that by shouldering it
now they will save others from it in
the future, looking back with even an
exaggerated affection to the blessings
Of peace.
They carry their burden with little
help from you. For an Army does
not live by munitions alone, but also
by fellowship in a moral idea or pur-
pose. And that you cannot give us.
You cannot give it to u.s.. because you
do not possess it.
Not Forgetting Own Sins
You are, see, more divided in soul
than you were when I became SOL
der, denouncing the apostles Of war,
yet not altogether disinclined, to be-
lieve that war is an exalting thing,
half implying that our cause is the
cause of humanity in general and
| democracy In particular, yet not da-
ring boldly to say so, lest later you
should be compelled to fulfill your
vows, more comp1acent and se1f-suf-
ficient in proportion as you are more
| confident Of victory and have less need
| Of other Nations, trusting more in the
| great machine which you have Great
| ed and less in the unseen forces which
| if you will let them, will work on
/ your side.
| And you are more prone than you
were to give way to hatred. Hatred
Of the enemy is not common, think,
among soldiers who have fought with.
| them. It is incompatible with the
proper discharge of our duty For
to kill in hatred is murder, and we are
not murderers. but executioners.
I know, indeed, how much harder it
| is for you not to hate than It is for
| us. You cannot appease the anguish
| Of your losses by feeling, as we feel,
that any day your own turn may
come.
| And it is right that there should be