Imperial Valley press., 1917-02-21
THERE ARE WORSE THINGS
IN WAR THAN SLAUGHTER
By William G. Shepherd.


New York, Feb. 2O.-Those of yo,
: who have followed the things wrot.
for the United Press have been i'm
Ipressed with the horror of slaughter
, among the fighting people in Europe
But there are worse things in wal
than slaughter. In the current issue
of Every Week have told what those
things are and summarized quotation
from that story may interest you.
isn't the slaughter terrible?"
! Everybody who returns to the Unit
ed States from the war in Europe is
asked this question, trite as it seems,
My answer must always be:
dying or killing are not the most
terrible things that war brings to a
man, woman or child. In Europe you
see worse things than dying or killing,
Worse things happen to European folk
than being killed or crippled"
The first dead men saw in the war,
back in those early and old time days
in Belgium, struck me as having been
uselessly murdered, and the sight left
a baleful impression on my mind, for
time. To my surprise, however, I
soon beheld such sights without emo
ton. But there was one sight-one
manifestation of the horrors Of war
that could not accustorn myself to
view without a mental shudder. This
was the sight of vast bodies Of men
marching or camping.
There they were, men Of family, Of
business, of ideals, or religion, all
brought down to the same level-all
alike. Like barrels whose hoops have
been removed, these men, Individual
~, in their lives and in their charac-
tiers, have fallen apart since the bind
ing support of their home environment
has been taken away from round about
them. The impression that they were
like animals, like herded, unthinking
beasts, was so strong upon me that at
eight in my sleep, instead of seeing
dead and mangled bodies, saw in my
dreams vast bodies of soldiers passing
before me, each man wearing the
head of some beast instead Of his own.
They were not brutal, leonine men
enimals l saw ;only patient, dumb,
obedient, long suffering, kindly ones,
such as cattle, deer, horses, dogs.
To be turned into such man is
worse than death, and among thinking
men in the six armies that / saw at
close range I often found soldiers and
officers who realized what sort of be-
ings they had become. There are
penalties just short of death for men
in the various armies who sicken of
being unthinking men-animals and try
tc find way out of their plight by
suicide stick their heads above
the trenches or who wound themselves
with their own rifles.
The moral and mental disintegration
that is caused by the surroundings of
military service in individual cases is
shocking. This applies to all armies
that l have seen.
"That fellow would be better dead"
said friend of mine, as an English
man we had known in peace times
walked away from US after chance
meeting in the Strand. Everything
that was good in him is dead already"
Only year before. this man had
been a star of Fleet street. He wrote
with sympathy and an understand
ing of human nature that made his
work stand out. But as we saw him,
after year in the army as an uncom-
missioned officer, the CRIME of war
was on his soul as well as on his
body.
I've quit writing" he said, with a
weak grin that displayed the absence
Of two front teeth. Something's hap
pened to me. l can't ever write again.
/ don't even try to do it. Anyhow,
what's the use? It's all war;"
The man that he had been a year
before would have killed himself with
his own gun rather than become the
man we saw and talked with that aft
ernoon in the Strand.
"No more books or music and no
more women. Pm simply rotting men
tally"
have had officers make this con-
fession to me in five different Ian
euages in five different armies. "1'm
rotting, and l can't help it,"
Not all the bad things of war hap
pen to human bodies.