210 Monthly Review of Literature, 



our eyes hack through the long records of our history, we see wars of plunder 

 wars of conquest wars of religion wars of pride wars of succession 

 wars of idle speculation wars of unjust interference and hardly among them 

 one war of necessary self-defence in any of our essential or very important 

 interests. 



" Of late years, indeed, we have known none of the calamities of war in our 

 own country but the wasteful expense of it ; and sitting aloof from those cir- 

 cumstances of provocation, which in some measure might seem to excuse its 

 fury, we have calmly voted slaughter and merchandised destruction so much 

 blood and tears for so many rupees, or dollars, or ingots. Our wars have been 

 wars of cool calculating interests, as free from hatred as from love of mankind ; 

 the passions which stir the blood have had no share in them. We devote a 

 certain number of men to perish on land and sea, and the rest of us sleep sound 

 and protected in our usual occupations, and talk of the events of war as what 

 diversifies the flat uniformity of life. 



"We should therefore do well to translate this word, war, into language 

 more intelligible to us. When we pay our army and our navy estimates, let us 

 set down so much for killing so much for maiming so much for making 

 widows and orphans so much for bringing famine upon a district so much 

 for corrupting citizens and subjects into spies and traitors so much for ruin- 

 ing industrious tradesmen and making bankrupts (of that species of distress 

 at least we can form some idea) so much for letting loose the demons of fury, 

 rapine, and lust within the fold of cultivated society, and giving to the brutal 

 ferocity of the most ferocious its full scope and range of invention. We shall 

 by this means know what we have paid our money for, whether we have made 

 a good bargain, and whether the account is likely to pass elsewhere. 



" We must take in too all those concomitant circumstances which make 

 war, considered as battle, the least part of Itself ', pars minima sui. We must fix 

 our eyes, not on the hero returning with conquest, nor yet on the gallant offi- 

 cer dying on the bed of honour the subject of picture and of song ; but on 

 the private soldier, forced into the service exhausted by camp sickness and 

 fatigue pale, emaciated, crawling to a hospital with the prospects of life 

 perhaps a long life blasted, useless, and suffering. We must think of the 

 uncounted tears of her who weeps alone, because the only being who shared 

 her sentiments is taken from her. No martial music sounds in unison with her 

 feelings ; the long day passes, and he returns not. She does not shed her sor- 

 rows over his grave, for she has never learnt whether he had one. If he had 

 returned, his exertions would not have been remembered individually, for he 

 only made a small imperceptible part of a human machine called a regiment. 

 We must take in the long sickness which no glory soothes, occasioned by dis- 

 tress of mind, anxiety, and ruined fortunes. These are not fancy pictures ; 

 and if you please to heighten them, you can every one of you do it for your- 

 selves. We must take in the consequences, felt perhaps for ages, before a 

 country which has been completely desolated lifts its head again. Like a tor- 

 rent of lava, its worst mischief is not the first overwhelming ruin of towers 

 and palaces, but the long sterility to which it condemns the tract it has covered 

 with its stream. Add to these the danger to regular governments, which are 

 changed by war, sometimes to anarchy and sometimes to despotism ; and 

 then let us think when a general, performing these exploits, is saluted with 

 Well done, good and faithful servant/ whether the plaudit is likely to be echoed 

 n another place.'* 



