The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh.

  • Correa Moylan Walsh
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The climax of civilisation / by Correa Moylan Walsh. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    women of men by disarming them. Our soldiers are paid, and highly paid, and they demand all sorts of dainties, and the same are demanded for them. In our late tiny war with Spain it was thought by some a great hardship if they did not have hot coffee every day for breakfast; while the English officers, in their war with the Boers, at least at the beginning, considered indispensable their morning tub; from which, however, it is to be hoped, the present war has weaned them. Weapons are made lighter and lighter, and with calibre diminishing till their projectiles pierce almost without hurting; and more at- tention is paid to healing than to killing, upon which by inter- national agreement all sorts of restrictions have been put, of course never to be observed. Reliance is placed chiefly on ar- tillery, which is tremendously expensive. There is a wide- spread agitation for the perpetuation of peace, partly humani- tarian, partly calculated, since war is now more injurious than beneficial, at least between the great nations, and if these did not till recently invade the small ones as much as they used to do, it was mostly because their rivalry kept one another out. Moreover, waging war by machinery is not so exciting as the old hand-to-hand fighting. It is one-sided: soldiers are ex- posed to being killed, without the personal exultation of slash- ing and slaying in return. And as there is much less contact with slaughter, except that of one’s friends, undoubtedly there is much greater shrinking from taking life than of yore. Yet this does not lessen the death-rate; for men who send shells into the unknown, five or ten miles away, where they may or may not be effective, do not feel personally responsible when many years afterward they learn that so and so many of the enemy were blown to atoms. Already our Bryans and other pacifists, like Salvianus and the other old Christians, who wished in- dividuals to be weak that they might escape the temptations that come with strength, would have our country remain un- prepared and defenceless in order that it should not be able to fight. Our morality is sentimental, having to do with present feelings, cherishing sympathy, but caring little for conse- quences or for justice. Everywhere is relaxation of discipline, of punishment, even of permission that the natural bad conse- quences of wrong commission and careless omission should fall 1 Above, p. 115.