hand-to-hand—­the many conflicts in the dark—­those shadowy, tangled, flashing, moon-beamed woods—­the writhing groups and squads—­the cries, the din, the cracking guns and pistols, the distant cannon—­the cheers and calls and threats and awful music of the oaths, the indescribable mix, the officers’ orders, persuasions, encouragements—­the devils fully roused in human hearts—­the strong shout, ’Charge, men—­charge!’—­the flash of the naked swords, and rolling flame and smoke?  And still the broken, clear, and clouded heaven; and still again the moonlight pouring silvery soft its radiant patches over all.”

There is a description vivid as lightning, though there is not a properly-constructed sentence in it.  Gruesome, cruel, horrible!  Is it not enough to make the women of our sober sensible race declare for ever against the flaunting stay-at-homes who would egg us on to war?  By all means let us hold to the old-fashioned dogged ways, but let us beware of rushing into the squalid vortex of war.  And now let us see what follows the brilliant charge and bayonet fight.  How many ladies consider what the curt word “wounded” means?  It conveys no idea to them, and they are too apt to stray off into the dashing details that tell of a great wrestle of armies.  One eminent man—­whom I believe to have uttered a libel—­has declared that women like war, and that they are usually the means of urging men on.  He is a very sedate and learned philosopher who wrote that statement, and yet I cannot believe it.  Ah, no!  Our ladies can give their dearest up to death when the State calls on them, but they will never be like the odious viragoes of the Roman circus.  At any rate, if any woman acts according to the dictum of the philosopher after reading my bitterly true words, we shall hold that our influence is departed.  Therefore with ruthless composure I follow my observer—­a man whose pure and holy spirit upheld him as he ministered to sufferers for year after year.

“Then the camps of the wounded.  Oh, heavens, what scene is this?  Is this indeed humanity—­these butchers’ shambles?  There are several of them.  There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods—­from two to three hundred poor fellows.  The groans and screams, the odour of blood mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the trees—­that slaughter-house!  Oh, well is it their mothers, their sisters, cannot see them, cannot conceive, and never conceived such things!  One man is shot by a shell both in the arm and leg; both are amputated—­there lie the rejected members.  Some have their legs blown off, some bullets through the breast, some indescribably horrid wounds in the head—­all mutilated, sickening, torn, gouged out, some in the abdomen, some mere boys.”  Alas, I have quoted enough—­and may never such a task come before me again!  The picture is sharp as an etching; it is drawn with a shudder of the soul.  Is that grim sedate man right when he says that women are the moving influence that drives men to such carnage?  Would you wantonly advocate war?  Never!  I reject the solemn philosopher’s saying, in spite of his logic and his sententiousness.