From Homeric warfare to subterranean conflict of modern trenches is a
far cry, and Ares, God of Battles, may well yawn at the entertainment
with which the Demon of War is providing him. But the spectator of this
grim "revue" lacks something of the patience of its creator, and our
Mephistopheles, marking the god's protest, will doubtless hurry the
scene and diversify it with new devilries to restore his interest.
Indeed, that has happened since Raemaekers made his picture.
The etiquette of butchery has become more complicated since Troy fell,
yet it has been so far preserved till now that the fiend measures Ares
with his eyes and speculates as to how far the martial god may be
expected to tolerate his novel engines. Will asphyxiating gas, and
destruction of non-combatants and neutrals on land and sea, trouble him?
Or will he demand the rules of the game, and decline to applaud this
satire on civilization, although mounted and produced regardless of cost
and reckoning?
As the devil's own entertainment consists in watching the effects of his
masterpiece on this warlike spectator, so it may be that those who
"staged" the greatest war in mankind's history derive some bitter
instruction from its reception by mankind. They know now that it is
condemned by every civilized nation on earth; and before these lines are
published their uncivilized catspaws will have ample reason to condemn
it also. Neutrals there must be, but impartials none.
The sense and spirit of the thinking world now go so far with human
reason that they demand a condition of freedom for all men and nations,
be they weak or powerful. That ideal inspires the majority of human
kind, and it follows that the evolution of morals sets strongly on the
side of the Allies.
"War," says Bernhardi, "gives a biologically just decision, since its
decisions rest on the very nature of things." So be it.