W E have never been able to join with much heart
in the speculations of those who believe, as thousands of excellent and thoughtful men undoubtedly do believe, that war will by and by be extinguished. We doubt, to begin with, whether Christ forbade it, though the whole drift of His teaching points to peaceableness as a necessary constituent of Christian conduct, while the whole course of history seems to prove that the reliance on war as an ultimate argument remains always unaffected by any change of creed. " Quaker " opinions succeed only in orderly communities, and order in the civilised sense rests ultimately on force. Without it the wealth of the world would belong to the burglars of the world, which is an impossible conclusion. We have, however, been greatly struck by a certain new feature in the trend of general comment upon the Russo-Japanese War. No war has ever produced such a mixture of admiration and horror. The orators and penmen alike can scarcely find words to eulogise sufficiently the courage both of Russians and Japanese, yet most of them end their paeans with a sort of prayer that in some way—usually an impossible way—these " horrors " shall be stopped. The thumbs of the spectators in the arena all turn down. The feeling indicated in that fact is not confined to any classes. Officers governed by their military pride will not acknowledge it, but all Russia is shaken by the cry bidding the Emperor " stop the war," and by the resistance of the Reservists to an order which they, with much justice, regard as " a sentence of death." The electors of France, surely among the bravest of the brave, are, It is stated, manifesting a new determination not to be drawn into so awful a struggle; and though the feeling is less pronouncpd both in this country and in Germany, it exists, and is operative. Many will deny this angrily ; but we would just ask any impartial Englishman what the effect on British opinion would be if telegrams were pouring in daily reporting the loss, not of a few hundred men in an Indian frontier battle, but of entire brigades of our countrymen, swept away in circumstances which suggested that, as Russian soldiers said in the last week of the siege of Port Arthur, "wounds were welcome as affording a refuge from the tension, but the dead were happiest of all." The war, in fact, deny it if you please, has alarmed as well as startled not merely the fighting classes, but all who depend on them, and whose opinion, though they do not fight, still tells heavily. The truth is, we believe—every experienced officer recognises it whenever a panic has set in on the field—that while a certain proportion of mankind are absolutely im- pervious to fear-10 per cent., Sir Henry Havelock said— and while a majority of healthy men are ready, or can at all events be trained, to face any danger, a certainty of death or mutilation appals at least as many. Convince a regiment that it is standing on mined ground, and disci- pline will scarcely hold men who will cheerfully charge at almost any risk. And the whole tendency of the modern improvement in armaments is to increase this certainty. A ship, built like a castle, is no longer slowly pounded into submission after hours of combat, but is blown up or sunk suddenly with all on board, even those wretched stokers who have no chance either of defending themselves or of inflicting vengeance. The rifles carry so far that in the Boer War assailing regiments seemed to be mown down by invisible hands. Men in front of a Maxim fall in swathes, till no troops can abide unshaken in face of the streaming death. Every day artillery is improved, and the new high explosives, till the defenders of Port Arthur—men of iron nerves if ever such men existed—confessed to their captors that it was the 11 in. guns throwing shells which blew whole companies to pieces that extinguished the capacity of Port Arthur to resist. The accounts of the effect of the hand grenades, loaded with high explosives and thrown at close quarters, sicken the most experienced or callous generals. The fate of the wounded, often three to one of the killed, is attended with new horrors. It was always hard enough if bones were shattered, but now the wounded are so numerous, and the artillery fire so continuous, that the arrangements which modern humanity, at once merciful and wise, has made for their relief all break down simul- taneously. The ambulances are insufficient, the supply of doctors is insufficient, the medicines and medical comforts —one of them being bedding—are insufficient. "Surgeons," said a skilled operator who had been at Sadowa to the writer, "we had surgeons, though not enough, but with that multitude of the shattered conservative surgery was simply impossible. We kept on cutting." Since Sadowa all the conditions, where large numbers are concerned, have steadily become worse. The lot of those taken prisoners is better as regards suffering, especially since Governments have discovered that orders of no quarter and ill-treatment of prisoners equally defeat their own object, which is to ensure the enemy's submission on the field; but prisoners, unless officers, are often treated just like convicts sentenced to hard labour in a humanel3f managed prison.
These new additions to the horrors of war have occurred just when the masses of Europe have become more con- scious, when all the working classes are demanding more humane treatment, and when throughout the West a new thirst for physical comfort, for healthier life, and for security is becoming one of the most marked of the social forces. We do not say, and do not believe, that courage is diminish- ing—all the facts are against that theory—but a kind of selfishness which cannot be stigmatised, for it is the first condition of civilised progress, is increasing, and it is diffi- cult to believe that it will exercise no influence upon the readiness of the nations to declare war. We do not suggest that it will 'prevent war, or produce any kind of social millennium. The jealousies of the nations, exasperated as they are by the new and sordid craving for more money, the appetite for glory, the just pride of patriotism, are all too deeply rooted for that, as is also the hatred, the wise and just hatred, of the idea of invasion as a period when all that is usual is overthrown, and the terrible maxim Yae victis takes the place of all law. But we think a new caution in going to war, a new sense of its inevitable con- sequences, a decline of the feeling that it is a, stirring drama, will spread slowly but perceptibly among the more cultivated nations, and will, as it spreads, affect their rulers. The latter do not want to quarrel with the masses. Ruling Russians talk glibly of sending another two hundred thousand men to Manchuria, and it is im- possible, if their real motive is patriotism, not to respect their persistence and their pride ; but if the conscripts dis- played before reaching the barracks the feeling betrayed by the Reservists who have lived in barracks, even ruling Russians would hesitate. They would. fear the hatred of the classes by whose toil they live, and who are saying already that the conscript gains nothing in war but shattered limbs, while the officer, even if defeated, returns home to comfort. In three great countries even now the Socialists protest against the conscription, and ask whether the alternative, the Swiss system of defence, has in any way enfeebled the character or impaired the courage of the Switzers. The usual response, that that system is fatal to empire, is clearly not a complete one, for the British Empire is as wide as any, and it has been built without conscription. The impatience of the masses at the sacri- fices asked of them will not prevent war, but it will, we conceive, greatly increase the reluctance already felt by ruling men, for economic reasons, to undertake it.
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