We found it heart-breaking. But it has been always so. I was in Naples
during the whole period of the last great eruption of Vesuvius, and,
looking through the gloom of the heavens, piled high with the whorls of
fire and smoke that were covering the Vesuvian valleys and villages
with a grey shroud, waist deep, of volcanic dust, I thought the face of
Nature in that sweet spot could never be the same again; but when I
went back to it a year later I could see no difference. I sailed south
through the Straits of Messina a few weeks before the earthquake, and,
returning north a few months later, I looked eagerly for the change
which I imagined must have been made by the frightful upheaval of the
earth that had killed hundreds of thousands, and shaken the soul of the
entire human family, but I could see no change at all, even through
the strongest field-glasses, until I came within sight of the waste
and wreckage of the little works of men. Yes, Nature goes her own way,
winter and summer, seedtime and harvest, healing her own wounds, but
taking no thought of ours.
Yet, cruel as Nature seemed to be at the beginning of the spring, it was
not so cruel as man. With the better weather our enemies began to devise
and put into operation new and more devilish methods of warfare. Perhaps
this was a result of their fear, for there is no cruelty so cruel as
the cruelty that comes of fear, and no inhumanity so inhuman. Having
expressed themselves as shocked by our alleged use of dum-dum bullets,
they were now ransacking their laboratory for gases that would burst
the lungs of our soldiers, and for inflammable oils that would set
them afire as if they were criminals tarred and feathered and tied to a
stake. Their battleships, built to fight craft of their own kind, or at
least fortresses capable of replying to their fire, were now sent out
to bombard innocent watering-places lying breast open to the sea. Their
air-craft, constructed for reconnaissances, were ordered to drop bombs
out of the clouds on to sleeping cities in the darkness of the night.
And their submarines, tolerated by international courts only as weapons
of attack on warships, were authorized to sink harmless merchantmen,
without any word of warning, or any effort to save life. Could
scientific knowledge under the direction of moral insanity go one step
farther? Flying in the highest sky, hiding behind the densest clouds,
stealing across the heavens in the dark hours, dropping fireballs on to
the silent earth, sneaking back in the dawn; and then sailing through
the womb of the great deep, rising like a serpent to spit death at
innocent ships, diving to avoid destruction and scudding away under
cover of the empty sea--what a spectacle of divine power at the service
of devilish passion! It was difficult to believe that our enemies had
not gone mad. They were no longer fighting like men, but like demons.