'TOPICS OF 'PH DAY.
W INOmmir sees =a 'batfle. 'The common soldier fires away amidst a smoke-mist, or hurries on to the charge in a crowd whieh hides everything from him. The officer is too anxious about the per-
• Ibrmance of what the 'is specially charged with, to mind what tethers are doing. The -comniander cannot be present every. "where, and see 'every wood, water-course or ravine, in -which his 'orders -are .carried into execution : he learns from reports how the -work goes on. It is well'; for a battle is one of those jobs which men doWithout daring to look upon. Over miles of country, itctlevery field-fence, in every gorgeof a valley or entry into a wood, there -is murder committing—wholesale, 'continuous, reciprocal -aturder. The human 'form — God's image—is mutilated, de- Wormed, lacerated, in every possible way, and with every variety of torture. The wounded are jolted off in carts to the rear, their beret' nerves crushed into maddening pain•at every stone or rut ; or the tight and pursuit trarnpleover them,leavingthem to writhe and 'roar without assistance—and fever, and thirst, the most enduring of painful sensations, possess them entirely. Thirst too has seized tupon the yet able-bodied soldier, who with bloodshot eyes and tongue lolling out plies his trade—blaspheming, killing with savage delight, callous When the brains of his best-loved comrade are %pattered over him. The battle-field-is, if possible,-a more painful object of contempla- tion than the-combatants. They are-in their vocation, earning their tread—what-will not men &Tor a shilling a day ? But their work is tarried on amid the fields, gardens, and homesteads of men unused to war. They who are able have fled before the coming storm, and left-their homes;with all that habit and happyassociations have made 'precious, to bear its brunt. Thepoor, the aged, the sick, are left in the hurry, to beltilled by stmy shots, orbeaten down as the charge and-counter-charge go over them. The ripening grain is trampled down; 'the garden is trodden into a black mud; the fruit-trees, bending-beneath their luscious load, are shattered by the cannon- shot. Churches and private dwellings are used as fortresses, and ruined in the conflict. Barns and stack-yards catch fire, and the conflagration spreads on all sides. At 'night the steed is stabled beside the 'altar; and the weary homicides of the day complete the Wrecking of houses to make their lairs for slumber. The fires of the bivouac complete what-the fires kindled by the battle have left =consumed. 'The surviving soldiers march on to act the same scenes over again elsewhere; and the remnant of the scattered in- habitants 'return to find the mangled bodies of those they had loved, amid the blackened ruins of their homes—to mourn with more agonizing grief over the missing, of whose fate they are uncertain— to 'feel themselves bankrupts of the world's stores, and look from their children to the desolate fields and garners, and think of famine, and 'pestilence engendered -by the rotting bodies of the half-bnriedanyriads of slain.
The soldier marches on and on, inflicting and suffering as before. War is a-continuance of battles—an epidemic striding from place to place, more horrible than the typhus, pestilence, or cholera, which not unfrequently follow in its train. The siege is an aggravation of the 'battle. The peaceful inhabitants of the beleaguered town are cooped up, and cannot fly the place of conflict. The mutual injuries Inflicted by assailant and assailed are aggravated—their wrath is more frenzied : then ,come the storm and the capture, and the riotand lustful excesses of-the victor soldiery, striving to quench the drunkenness of blood in the drunkenness of wine. The eccentric Movements of war—the marching and countermarching—often re- Peat the blow on districts slowly recovering from the first. Be- tween destruction and the wasteful consumption of the soldiery, poverty pervades :the land. Hopeless of the future, hardened by the scenes of -which he is a daily witness, perhaps goaded by re- venge, the peasant becomes a plunderer and assassin. The horrible cruelties perpetrated 'by Spanish peasants on the French soldiers mho fell into their power, were the necessary consequences of war. The families of the upper classes are dispersed ; the discipline of the 'family-circle is removed ; a habit of living in the day for the say—of drowning the thoughts of the morrow in transient and Mich pleasure—is engendered. The waste and desolation which a battle spreads over the battle-field, is as nothing when compared with the moral blight which war diffuses through all ranks of society, in the country which is the scene of war.
The exhaustion caused by war is not confined to the people among whom the fighting takes place. The invaders must have their ranks, thinned by every battle, incessantly recruited. The military-chest is a constant drain on the treasures of the nation which sends the invading army. It is in preserving its homes un- &strived and the remnants of its family-circles uncontaminated, and in avoiding the actual view of the agonies of the dying, that the belligerent country which is not the scene of war has any ad- vantage over that which is: but this advantage is almost counter- balanced by the chronic panic—the incessant apprehension which haunts its inhabitants that the chances of war may bring all its horrors to their gates. The madness is catching : two nations may begin a war, but it never ends with two. Some infringement of the rights of neutrals involves a third and a fourth in the contest. The exhaustion of the country which was at first the scene of war tempts to a renewal of hostilities with renewed vigour on a virgin field. The ocean be- comes 118 unsafe as the land. The battle-field end the siege find 'their counterparts in naval 'actions ; and 'the seas are swept by privateers, the licensed 'pirates—the "salt-water thieves,' vibet serve a state for winking at their pillage. The natural channels of industry are dammed .up, and artificial ones are created. An un- healthy and 'temporary stimulus is given to the industry of one country by the paralyzed industry of others. New forms and methods of business are introduced by the necessities of convoys; the -merchant's speculations mutt rest upon totally new combina- tions. Classes are called into existence who have an interest in perpetuating war : all the agents of belligerent diplomacy, from the ambassador-extraordinary to the spy—the lenders of money to governments and purveyors—the speculators in the plundering expeditions of privateers—soldiers of fortune, who have no longer a country.
Nor is the war-interest the only obstacle to the return of peace. With every new nation sucked into the vortex of hostilities the ulterior aim of the war has been changed. The object for which it was begun, from a principal, sinks into a secondary, or is alto- gether forgotten. As interest, temper, or intrigue breaks up old alliances and forms new combinations, new objects keep still emerging. Men forget what they are fighting for, and fight on merely to conquer a peace. Civilians, overburdened with taxes, become seditious clamourers for peace. Soldiers, sick of unceas- ing butchery, long at last for peace, and play into the hands of foreign diplomatists—as NAPOLEON'S Generals sold him to the Allied Sovereigns, and their country with him. Armies, recruited from any quarter, have lost all sense of national honour. The oh- jeetless war is huddled up by an ignominious peace, wished for be- cause men are tired and sickened of fighting, and brought about by treachery and falsehood.
Peace brings with it a momentary gleam of gladness, which quickly subsides in the sense of exhaustion that pervades all na- tions. The demand for the industry artificially created by war ceases with war. Other branches of industry revive slowly. The cost of the war is less than halfdefrayed; the debts incurred to carry it on press heavily on impoverished nations. The war-interest is beggared and discontented. Men's habits have been unsettled— they cannot at once settle down into the new order of things. The first years 'of a general peace succeeding a general war are years of 'bankruptcy and privation—of starving and rioting among the poorer classes, of fraud and political profligacy among the higher. Such is war, with its sufferings and consequential sorrows. Such is war in Christian and civilized Europe—war in an age and countries in which most has been done to subject it to regular laws, and to alleviate its horrors by the moral self-control and refinement of its agents. Whitewash it as we will, it still remains full of dead men's bones and rottenness within. And they who trust most to it will be sure to feel most severely that it is an engine the direction and efficacy of which defy calculation—which is as apt to recoil upon these who explode it as to carry destruction into the ranks of their adversaries.
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