The growing tendencies of mankind have been quickened by the
character of the present war, and the unexampled publicity with
which it has been waged. Never before were all nations, even those
separated by great spaces, whether of land or ocean, the daily and
excited spectators of the combat. The vast amphitheatre within
which the battle is fought, with the whole heavens for its roof,
is coextensive with civilization itself. The scene in that great
Flavian Amphitheatre, the famous Colosseum, is a faint type of
what we are witnessing; but that is not without its lesson. Bloody
games, where human beings contended with lions and tigers,
imported for the purpose, or with each other, constituted an
institution of ancient Rome, only mildly rebuked by Cicero,
[Footnote: "Crudele gladiatorum spectaculum et inhumanum nonnullis
videri solet: et hand scio an ita sit, ut nunc fit."_--Tusculanae
Quaestiones_, Lib. II. Cap. XVII. 41.] and adopted even by
Titus, in that short reign so much praised as unspotted by the
blood of the citizen. [Footnote: Suetonius: _Titus_, Cap. IX.
Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, (London, 1862,)
Ch. LX., Vol. VII. p. 56.] One hundred thousand spectators looked
on, while gladiators from Germany and Gaul joined in ferocious
combat; and then, as blood began to flow, and victim after victim
sank upon the sand, the people caught the fierce contagion. A
common ferocity ruled the scene. As Christianity prevailed, the
incongruity of such an institution was widely felt; but still it
continued. At last an Eastern monk, moved only by report,
journeyed a long way to protest against the impiety. With noble
enthusiasm he leaped into the arena, where the battle raged, in
order to separate the combatants. He was unsuccessful, and paid
with life the penalty of his humanity. [Footnote: St. Telemachus,
A. D. 401. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed.
Milman, (London, 1846,) Ch. XXX., Vol. III. p. 70. Smith, Dict.
Gr. and Rom. Biog. and Myth., art. TELEMACHUS.] But the martyr
triumphed where the monk had failed. Shortly afterwards, the
Emperor Honorius, by solemn decree, put an end to this horrid
custom. "The first Christian Emperor," says Gibbon, "may claim the
honor of the first edict which condemned the art and amusement of
shedding human blood." [Footnote: Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, _ubi supra_.] Our amphitheatre is larger than that of
Rome; but it witnesses scenes not less revolting; nor need any
monk journey a long way to protest against the impiety. That
protest can be uttered by every one here at home. We are all
spectators; and since by human craft the civilized world has
become one mighty Colosseum, with place for everybody, may we not
insist that the bloody games by which it is yet polluted shall
cease, and that, instead of mutual-murdering gladiators filling
the near-brought scene with death, there shall be a harmonious
people, of different nations, but one fellowship, vying together
only in works of industry and art, inspired and exalted by a
divine beneficence?
In presenting this picture I exaggerate nothing. How feeble is
language to depict the stupendous barbarism! How small by its side
the bloody games which degraded ancient Rome! How pygmy the one,
how colossal the other! Would you know how the combat is
conducted? Here is the briefest picture of the arena by a looker-
on:--
"Let your readers fancy masses of colored rags glued together with
blood and brains, and pinned into strange shapes by fragments of
bones,--let them conceive men's bodies without heads, legs without
bodies, heaps of human entrails attached to red and blue cloth,
and disembowelled corpses in uniform, bodies lying about in all
attitudes, with skulls shattered, faces blown off, hips smashed,
bones, flesh, and gay clothing all pounded together as if brayed
in a mortar extending for miles, not very thick in any one place,
but recurring perpetually for weary hours,--and then they cannot,
with the most vivid imagination, come up to the sickening reality
of that butchery." [Footnote: Scene after the Battle of Sedan:
Herald of Peace for 1870, October 1st, p. 121] Such a sight would
have shocked the Heathen of Rome. They could not have looked on
while the brave gladiator was thus changed into a bloody hash;
least of all could they have seen the work of slaughter done by
machinery. Nor could any German gladiator have written the letter
I proceed to quote from a German soldier:--
"I do not know how it is, but one wholly forgets the danger one is
in, and thinks only of the effect of one's own bullets, rejoicing
like a child at the sight of the enemy falling like skittles, and
having scarcely a compassionate glance to spare for the comrade
falling at one's side. One ceases to be a human being, and turns
into a brute, a complete brute."
Plain confession! And yet the duel continues. Nor is there death
for the armed man only. Fire mingles with slaughter, as at
Bazeilles. Women and children are roasted alive, filling the air
with suffocating odor, while the maddened combatants rage against
each other. All this is but part of the prolonged and various
spectacle, where the scene shifts only for some other horror.
Meanwhile the sovereigns of the world sit in their boxes, and the
people everywhere occupy the benches.