After his splendid victory of Austerlitz was won and the iron
crown of empire securely fixt on his brow, Napoleon, standing
on the high ground, saw a portion of the defeated Russian army
making a slow, painful retreat over a frozen lake. They were
at his mercy. He rode up to a battery and said, “Men, you are
losing time! fire on those masses; they must be swallowed
up! fire on that ice!” Shells were thrown, the bridge of ice
was broken, and amid awful shrieks hundreds upon hundreds of
miserable wretches were buried in the frozen waters.
The crime of war is its wanton waste of human life. And so are the
social wrongs that decimate our world. And so is evil in every form.
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