I
The dream of a time when the nations shall war no more is a pleasant
dream, and an ancient. Countless generations have indulged it, and to
countless others, doubtless, it will prove a solace and a benefaction.
Yet one may be permitted to doubt if its ultimate realization is to
be accomplished by diligent and general application to the task of
learning war, as so many worthy folk believe. That every notable
advance in the art of destroying human life should be “hailed” by these
good people as a step in the direction of universal peace must be
accounted a phenomenon entirely creditable to the hearts, if not to the
heads, of those in whom it is manifest. It shows in them a constitution
of mind opposed to bloodshed, for their belief having nothing to do
with the facts—being, indeed, inconsistent with them—is obviously an
inspiration of the will.
“War,” these excellent persons reason, “will at last become so dreadful
that men will no longer engage in it”—happily unconscious of the fact
that men’s sense of their power to make it dreadful is precisely the
thing which most encourages them to wage it. Another popular promise
of peace is seen in the enormous cost of modern armaments and military
methods. The shot and cartridge of a heavy gun of to-day cost hundreds
of dollars, the gun itself tens of thousands. It is at an expense of
thousands that a torpedo is discharged, which may or may not wreck a
ship worth millions. To secure its safety from the machinations of its
wicked neighbors while itself engaged in the arts of peace, a nation
of to-day must have an immense sum of money invested in military
plant alone. It is not of the nature of man to impoverish himself
by investments from which he hopes for no return except security in
the condition entailed by the outlay. Men do not construct expensive
machinery, taxing themselves poor to keep it in working order, without
ultimately setting it going. The more of its income a nation has to
spend in preparation for war, the more certainly it will go to war.
Its means of defense are means of aggression, and the stronger it
feels itself to strike for its altars and its fires, the more spirited
becomes its desire to go across the border to upset the altars and
extinguish the fires of its neighbors.
But the notion that improved weapons give modern armies and navies an
increased killing ability—that the warfare of the future will be a
bloodier business than that which we have the happiness to know—is an
error which the observant lover of peace is denied the satisfaction
of entertaining. Compare, for example, a naval engagement of to-day
with Salamis, Lepanto or Trafalgar. Compare the famous duel between
the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_ with almost any encounter
between the old wooden line-of-battle ships, continued, as was the
reprehensible custom, until one or both, with hundreds of dead and
wounded, incarnadined the seas by going to the bottom.
As long ago as 1861 a terrific engagement occurred in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina. It lasted forty hours, and was fought with
hundreds of the biggest and best guns of the period. Not a man was
killed nor wounded.
In the spring of 1862, below New Orleans, Porter’s mortar boats
bombarded Fort Jackson for nearly five days and nights, throwing
about 16,800 shells, mostly thirteen inches in diameter. “Nearly
every shell,” says the commandant of the fort, “lodged inside the
works.” Even in those days, it will be observed, there were “arms of
precision”; and an exploding 13-inch shell is still highly esteemed and
respected. As nearly as I can learn, the slaughter amounted to two men.
A year later Admiral Dupont attacked Fort Sumter, then in the hands
of the Confederates, with the _New Ironsides_, the double-turret
monitor _Keokuk_, and seven single-turret monitors. The big guns
of the fort were too much for him. One of his vessels was struck 90
times, and afterward sank. Another was struck 53 times; another, 35
times; another, 14; another, 47; another, 20; another, 47; another,
95; another, 36, and disabled. But they threw 151 shots from their own
“destructive” weapons, and these, being “arms of precision,” killed a
whole man by cutting down a flag-staff, which fell upon him. The total
number of shots fired by the enemy was 2,209, and more than two men
were killed by them I am unable to find any account of it. But it was a
splendid battle, as every Quaker will allow!
In the stubbornest land engagements of our great rebellion, and of
the later and more scientific Franco-German and Turko-Russian wars,
the proportionate mortality was not nearly so great as in those where
“Greek met Greek” hand to hand, or where the Roman with his short
sword, the most destructive weapon ever invented, played at give and
take with the naked barbarian or the Roman of another political faith.
True, we must make some allowance for exaggeration in the accounts of
these ancient affairs, not forgetting Niebuhr’s assurance that Roman
history is nine parts lying. But as European and American history run
it pretty hard in respect of that, something, too, may be allowed in
accounts of modern battles—particularly where the historian foots up
the losses of the side which had not the military advantage of his
sympathies.
Improvements in guns, armor, fortification and shipbuilding have been
pushed so near to perfection that naval and semi-naval engagements may
justly be counted amongst the arts of peace, and must eventually obtain
the medical recognition which is their due as means of sanitation.
The most notable improvements are those in small arms. Our young
scapegrace grandfathers fought the Revolutionary War with so miserable
firearms that they could not make themselves decently objectionable
to the minions of monarchy at a greater distance than forty yards.
They had to go up so close that many of them lost their tempers. With
the modern rifle, incivilities can be carried on at a distance of
a mile-and-a-half, with thin lines and a cheerful disposition. The
dynamite shell has, unfortunately, done much to gloom this sunniness by
suggesting a scattered formation, which makes conversation difficult
and begets loneliness. Isolation leads to suicide, and suicide is
“mortality.” So the dynamite shell is really not the life-saving device
that it looks. But on the whole we seem to be making reasonably good
progress toward that happy time, not when “war shall be no more,” but
when, being healthful, it will be universal and perpetual. The soldier
of the future will die of age; and may God have mercy on his cowardly
soul!
It has been said that to kill a man in battle a man’s weight in lead
is required. But if the battle happens to be fought by modern warships
or forts, or both, about a hundred tons of iron would seem to be a
reasonable allowance for the making of a military corpse. In fighting
in the open the figures are more cheering. What it cost in our civil
war to kill a Confederate soldier is not accurately computable; we
don’t know exactly how many we had the good luck to kill. But the “best
estimates” are easily accessible.