Ten Years Ago Today, item 9

• December 9, 2016 20:16:29 Sue Bryant

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  of dauntless courage. The rescue of a wounded comrade

  under fire may show us the Lights of heroism.

  a man’s self abnegation in support of his country

  even to the last great sacrifice may be pointed out

  as the glories of warfare. But these actions although

  part and parcel of war are yet not War.

                  The reasons which plunge nations into the maelstrom

  may be sound and true. The object of the war may

  be righteous. It was right that England should

  take up the challenge in 1914 against the violation

  of Belgium. But the method of executing the

  challenge must always be horrible whether it is

  conducted by flashing swords and red-coats or whether

  by khaki-clad mud-begrimed men in gas masks.

                  The killing of one’s fellow man is an act

  that requires man to descent to the mentality of a

  beast, and yet it is not this killing that is the main

  horror of war. Death is always lurking at one’s elbow.

  we become accustomed to seeing men die. No, it

  is the fearful conditions under which men are forced

  to live, the maimed, the blinded, the gas stricken.

  the raving shell-shock cases that are so horrible.

                  Then think of the conditions of the women-folk

  at home. The ceaseless anxiety, the waiting, the uncertainty.

  the conditions at the front are bad, the mental agony

  of the women is worse. I cannot tell you all of

  the horrors of those days. Fortunately the historians,

  the novelists and writers of the period following the

  war were not obsessed by any of the “glory” of war,

  and they wrote of things as they were.

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