THE BLESSINGS OF WAR.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11644, 10 August 1916, Page 7

THE BLESSINGS OF WAR.

By Jerome S. Jerome,

One of Mr .Siia-ea’Vt inimitable' cartoons represents two elderly gentlemen, scantily clad—if clad at nil: my memory is doubtful on the' point—walking through' scenery of a singularly unattractive chatabter. One .’of the gentlemen, evidently a' newcomer to the neighbourhood, wears a disappointed look. We feel certain—snch is Mr Simes’s art—that he has been grumbling all the way. Nothing Satisfies him. He ie thoroughly annoyed. Suddenly the cause of bis discontent to his" companion. The gentleman—or, rather, the immortal spirit of thegentleman, his bodily remains being at the moment gazed upon, one takes it, by more or less sorrowing relatives—thinks he is in Heaven, thinks that bp has Just arrived there. His friend explains to him his error, That isn’t Heaven. It is Hell. The gentleman never thought he was going to Hell. Had made up his mind for happy days, in quite another sort of place. l am afraid that many of ns when with a sigh of content we laid down our peaceful existence in that far-off August, ot 1914, were firmly convinced that we were going straight to Heaven. There were going to be bands: church bells announcing victories, pleasant reading of the morning papers. All the troubles of oui| past fretful life were to be forgotten. Political animosities were to be left behind. The idea of every Conservative that ' every Liberjllgwas bis country’s enemy: that you could not as a gentleman even play golf with him) 'I take up my “Morning Posh” ’I find the idea istill prevails, somewhat strengthened. Our working classes were to discover that their real friends always had been the uppermiddle classes. My Labour Leader suggests to me that in the working class mind there still remain doubts on this point The Irish bogey would be automatically laid to rest. The Tariff Reformer and Free Trader would lie dcwn together. The Land Question would emerge ready solved. Poverty and drink would flee the land. It would all be doue by the repetition of those magic words —The War. WAR DOES NOT ALTER HUMAN NATURE. There is no magic in war any more than there is in peacs. War the Unifier, the Purifier! It is the favourite tableau vivant of the military stage manager. Your cat and your dog, fighting in the garden and suddenly faced by a lively young adder, will forget their differences of opinion—will even unite against the adder. Both stung impartially by the purifying unifying adder, you can lay them side by side in the same basket: they will not even snarl at one another. “Look,” you say, “wbat a blessing .in disguise the adder was Lifelong enemies curled up side by side, feeding out, of the same saucer. Isn’t it pretty ! God bless all, adders. ” Wait till your cat and your dog are_ feeling a bit better.

One could, if one liked, the whole range of history. Take a few recent examples. The § American Givi! War. Lincoln assassinated immediately it was over. The North and the South still embittered against one another. There are still States in America where to whistle “Marching through Georgia” would get a Northerner six months’ imprisonment—that is, if he were lucky enough to escape lynching. Did the Napoleonic victories bring unity to B'rance? The war of 1870 united Girmany geographically. Maps don’t alter human nature. It gave impetus to the growing cleavage between the Junkers and the socialists. Does the present war show any signs of that gulf being bridged after peace is declared? If I may be permitted a colloquialism. “I don’t think,” The war of 1913 was going to sweep away the century-old antagonism of tlie Balkan States! THE DEMORALISING INFLUENCE OF WAR.

War is a disease. The result of insanitary moral conditions: greed, passion, evil thinking, hatred that collective selfishness that Lord Hugh Cecil denounces’as ‘ ‘patriotism gone bad.” Until these things are cleared out of our nature, until the tiger and the ape is worked out of our system, war is inevitable—may even be a necessary outlet for these poisons; Jest, turning inward, they corrupt the whole body politic. From time to time we have to suffer wgr. We emerge enfeebled, fretful, degenerated. “I cannot tell you,” writes a great French thinker, “with what grief I watch this sinister education of the war. How many a fine lad would not have hurt a sparrow now takes a pasitive Joy in striking down his tellow human beings.” “What would you?” said one to me. “At first I could not ..listen to wounded comrades piercing t-ne heavens with their cries, the older ones calling on their wives and children, the younger ones crying. And now, shutting onr ears, we sing and sleep.” A woman writes: “Death crushes our spirits. We no longer look towards the future. A senseless desire for vengeance is within us. Lavishly’we send forth more Jives. And they in their turn are kil’ed and have to be avenged.” How war has demoralised the whole German race we know. To talk of them as if they were a nation of brutes, of sots, utterly apart from humanity, is only silly. 1 have lived among them. In peace time they are a kindly people, if anything a little oversentimental. It is war that has turned so many of them into fiends. I quote from an interesting book written by an English nurse, She is talking to a wounded German officer, a prisoner under her care. He appears surprised that the English nurses, though doiug thenduty, seem to dislike their German patients. By way of explanation she reminds him of what his own (Bavarian) regiment had done to the Belgian women.and children and old men. “And he* said he couldn’t forget how the Belgian women had put out the eyes of the German wounded and thrown boiling water on them. I said ‘They were driven to it. ’ ” She does not deny it. She has been face to face, this woman,” with war, “the purifier.” She knows the creature. I quote from another book worth reading by all those who would gain their knowledge of war not from poetical prose written from easy chairs: a book bearing the stamp of grim truth on every page: “An Englishman in the Russian ranks,” by one John Mirse. “Thqjieople flew before us terrorsneken. I am afraid were

‘*n'.the part of the sota&atrocibek ». defending them, Gossaeks. the P s rasgiaD ’ I musf remark tm had exam p le , had set 3hem-a very > n imitate it. and, they were notislfiWk , nd some Villages were buraw v, . e o fcher civilians slain. Thera’ lamentable occurrences. f> ' -, ac Lamentable things hare' a 1 &. oLoccurnng daring war tfrab.*- So. of us who’have read history flbe? L difficult to he surprised. Somebody y sets “bad examples.” Human nature is rather apt to follow barf ex- ! anaples; human nature not being ! confined by.geograpbical boundaries. ; ‘I have no doubt the peasantry avenged themselves,” agUn writes i our anther. He has travelled far ! and wide through these lands, still undergoing the process- of being “purified” by war, and has noticed things for himself. “We rode some distance into Germany, giving the people a cruel lesson in war in retaliation for ” “I do not think any of these boys were more than twenty years ofd; half ot them certainly were not more than sixteen or , seventeen; and they made a terrible fuss over their fate, screaming and crying.” “The women used their pitchforks”—on the wounded, Who can blame them, considering what had been done to womanhood. ? German brutality had earned it. “Many German officers,” writes our author-, “made efforts to maintain order. But the licence of war is notorious.” Eumenidea with her pitchfork squares the account impartially upon the dying. And the injury done is upon womanhood in all lands, BRINGS ONLY EVIL.

War, like its twin sister Disease, brings us with both hands only evil. Job’s sore boils were of no benefit whatever to Job. The question for Job was how should he bear these unpleasant and harmful afflictions. Job won through by making up his mind to bear them with courage and patience. Job was getting much too fat and prosperous. Those days when he washed his steps with butter and the rock poured out for him rivers of oil, when the princes refrained from talking in his presence and laid their hand upon their months—all that sort of thing is bad tor a gentleman. Job must have bad an idea that he was a superman. It was high time that he should be cured of thp delusion, for his soul’s sake. That is, if be was a man whose soul was worth saving. And it turned out that it was worth saving—that Job, underneath all the nonsense that ease and prosperity hud allowed to grow encrusted round about him, was a man. That was the benefit that bis sore boils brougb to Job. The sores themselves must have been a. damnable nuisance. Their only use was to enable Job to take stock of himself. “What sort of man under God’s heaven am I, Job? Surrounded by my wealth of flocks and herds I was a very worthy person. I was Just and merciful. 1 was good to the poor. Not very difficult for a gentleman who can wash his steps with butter, to earn popularity and cheap applause by being good to the poor. Wbat am I without my herds and flocks? A man of sorrows among other men of sorrows. A man of sores like the poor mendicants who used to wait without my gate. What am I stripped of my prosperity? Just Job, naked as I came into the world.” And Joh naked before the Lord, found that he was greater clad iu sores and tribulation than in the days when be dwelt as a king; found he possessed patience and courage: these things making a man richer than the owning of many flocks. So that tbe Lord sakl to Job: “Gird up thy lions now like a man,” Job® bad conquered. The victory in this war is not going to be iu territories and indemnities. It is going to be in Character. War will not purify us, Tbe war, if we listen to tbe evil counsels round about us, to our own evil passions, will degrade us. But bearing onr sores and tribulations with patience and courage we may purify ourselves of our sloth, of our love of ease, of oui vainboasting. Steadfast to the end, facing our tribulations with patience and 5 courage, so shall we conquer not only our enemy, but a mightier still —Ourselves. War shall be our test. How did England bear herself? . ... ~«■%w«ww<n*n»ai^wr»riwfiirth— i—twiiß—g—Pß