THE RESULTS OF WAR.
Centuries ago, when Attila, known in history as the “Scourge of God,”
led his army of Huns through the fertile fields of Europe, we read that
he gazed upon the ruin which he had caused his soldiers to perpetrate on
all sides, and cried out, “I am the hammer of the world, the grass grows
no more where my horse has trod.”
Well may these same words be applied to the armed forces now dominating
the devastated plains and meadows of what was once peaceful Belgium.
When one passes through the masses of falling debris and looks upon the
remains of cities and villages which have stood for ages and in whose
monuments and public buildings a more than human strength and beauty
seemed enclosed, it appears that the Angel of Destruction has extended
his deadly sceptre over the works of man and congealed those streams of
life which once flowed through the streets now deserted and homes made
desolate by the unheard-of ferocity of civilized man.
When we try to estimate the amount of time, labor, wealth and industry
required to build up these beautiful places, now stripped of their
grandeur, devoid of life, and crumbling into dust, we become awestruck
at sight of such desolation. The nothingness of the much-prized
materialism becomes apparent in the ruins of man’s grandest
achievements, and involuntarily we are moved to cry out, “Vanity of
vanities! all is vanity,” which the evolutions of time can change into
dust and ashes.
Again the cruel hand of war is seen in the country homes, whose rustic
beauty among the groves and green meadows so often aroused the spirit of
song and fascinated the lover of Nature in his rambles. The churches
whose cross-crowned spires, wherein the “Klokken” (chimes) so often
pealed forth the call to prayer, are now abandoned, and their battered
walls and broken windows look sadly down upon the deserted homesteads
from which life has passed away.
The schools no more re-echo the gay sounds of children’s voices, while
the famishing little ones and their destitute parents are dying of
hunger and privation or begging at the stranger’s door. The colleges and
libraries have delivered their volumes to the fury of the flames, and
the withering blight has scorched the fresh verdure of those well-kept
gardens and shady lawns where kings and princes dwelt.
Castles have been made into fortresses to conceal cannon and machine
guns, while the deafening roar of exploding bombs replaces the gay music
of ball and banquet room.
The red glow of the burning city illumines the evening sky and reveals
in the darkness the ghastly spectres of partially demolished walls of
the stateliest buildings which stand out amid the ever-increasing ruins.
War has desecrated the churches where angels knelt around the Holy of
Holies, and where the daily Holocaust of Love, and the offering of
praise and prayers perpetuated communion between earth and heaven. Have
the angels left the altar at sight of the sacrilege committed in their
presence, or did they weep when the merciless bomb struck the house of
God and wounded the worshipers there?
Behold the terror-stricken congregation leaving St. Rombout’s Cathedral
and taking flight through the streets of Mechelen, amid the falling
walls and bursting pavements. Weeks later we shall meet them again as
refugees in London, Leeds and Bradford, seeking food and shelter in the
land of exile.
See that little coffin, less than two feet long! It seems so
conspicuous, exposed there among the coffins of several soldiers who
died that night in our hospital. This small casket contained the remains
of a little angel about two months old, who was struck in the arms of
her mother by a piece of exploded shell.
This woman had hurriedly left her home during the second bombardment of
the city of Mechelen and, having run for some distance, sat down by the
way to rest, when the fatal shell exploded, a piece of which mortally
wounded the little one in her arms. Both were brought to our hospital
that night and lovingly cared for until about morning, when the innocent
spirit fled to join the army of the blessed who inherit the realms of
eternal peace.
Poor mother was left alone to bemoan the loss of her little one and to
weep over her desolate home.
When one meets the ambulance wagons loaded with suffering, mutilated men
who a few weeks before were sustaining heads of happy households; when
one sees the dark red stream flowing from ghastly wounds and splashes of
blood on all sides; when one observes the pallor of death on the strong
man’s face, while a comrade with tender pity bends over to obtain a last
message for home; when one hears the despairing wail of orphan and
widow; when one has watched the endless procession of terror-stricken
refugees whose homes have become the prey of the cannon, when one hears
repeatedly the sad experience of these exiles on their journeys from
place to place, lying on hay or straw, in barns, in schools, on the bare
ground, or in the basin of the empty canal, when one meditates on those
perverse circumstances which have changed civilized men into savage
brutes—then we also agree that “The world has gone back a thousand
years,” while a presentiment as of impending disaster passes over the
earth and depresses each individual heart.
“Cast yourselves upon the knees and pray for victory,” cry out Christian
monarchs to their soldiers, and, nevertheless, the God to whom they pray
is witness to the wanton desecration of His churches and the wholesale
destruction of life, liberty and property.
From the dark abodes of despair, the cohorts of satan seem to have taken
possession of the world and filled it with vice and wretchedness, until
it resembles the “abomination of desolation” referred to in Holy Writ.
To know what war is, it would be necessary to possess eyes to behold all
the sin and vice; all the ruin and destruction; ears to hear every
despairing cry and agonizing wail; a mind to comprehend all the misery
and desolation, and a heart to feel the anguish in the heart of each
suffering fellow-creature, from the moment the first shot was fired down
through ages yet to come, until the twilight of times, brighter in
prospect, than the daylight of the present generation shall obscure the
last shadows of the unholy conflict.
To realize what war really means, we should give consideration to the
moral and physical degeneration of these sufferers and of their
descendants; to the hatred, lust, passion, wilful murder and other high
crimes against God and nature, engendered and committed, not in the
moment of strong individual anger and passion, but as the result of a
well-calculated plan, with profound forethought, called by some
“strategy.”
“War is justifiable only, if it is the necessary means for securing
peace.” (His Eminence, Cardinal Mercier.) May we humbly add, _then only
as the last resort_.
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