CHAPTER XII.

THE RESULTS OF WAR.

Centuries ago, when Attila, known in history as the “Scourge of God,” led his army of Huns through the fertile fields of Europe, we read that he gazed upon the ruin which he had caused his soldiers to perpetrate on all sides, and cried out, “I am the hammer of the world, the grass grows no more where my horse has trod.”

Well may these same words be applied to the armed forces now dominating the devastated plains and meadows of what was once peaceful Belgium.

When one passes through the masses of falling debris and looks upon the remains of cities and villages which have stood for ages and in whose monuments and public buildings a more than human strength and beauty seemed enclosed, it appears that the Angel of Destruction has extended his deadly sceptre over the works of man and congealed those streams of life which once flowed through the streets now deserted and homes made desolate by the unheard-of ferocity of civilized man.

When we try to estimate the amount of time, labor, wealth and industry required to build up these beautiful places, now stripped of their grandeur, devoid of life, and crumbling into dust, we become awestruck at sight of such desolation. The nothingness of the much-prized materialism becomes apparent in the ruins of man’s grandest achievements, and involuntarily we are moved to cry out, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity,” which the evolutions of time can change into dust and ashes.

Again the cruel hand of war is seen in the country homes, whose rustic beauty among the groves and green meadows so often aroused the spirit of song and fascinated the lover of Nature in his rambles. The churches whose cross-crowned spires, wherein the “Klokken” (chimes) so often pealed forth the call to prayer, are now abandoned, and their battered walls and broken windows look sadly down upon the deserted homesteads from which life has passed away.

The schools no more re-echo the gay sounds of children’s voices, while the famishing little ones and their destitute parents are dying of hunger and privation or begging at the stranger’s door. The colleges and libraries have delivered their volumes to the fury of the flames, and the withering blight has scorched the fresh verdure of those well-kept gardens and shady lawns where kings and princes dwelt.

Castles have been made into fortresses to conceal cannon and machine guns, while the deafening roar of exploding bombs replaces the gay music of ball and banquet room.

The red glow of the burning city illumines the evening sky and reveals in the darkness the ghastly spectres of partially demolished walls of the stateliest buildings which stand out amid the ever-increasing ruins.

War has desecrated the churches where angels knelt around the Holy of Holies, and where the daily Holocaust of Love, and the offering of praise and prayers perpetuated communion between earth and heaven. Have the angels left the altar at sight of the sacrilege committed in their presence, or did they weep when the merciless bomb struck the house of God and wounded the worshipers there?

Behold the terror-stricken congregation leaving St. Rombout’s Cathedral and taking flight through the streets of Mechelen, amid the falling walls and bursting pavements. Weeks later we shall meet them again as refugees in London, Leeds and Bradford, seeking food and shelter in the land of exile.

See that little coffin, less than two feet long! It seems so conspicuous, exposed there among the coffins of several soldiers who died that night in our hospital. This small casket contained the remains of a little angel about two months old, who was struck in the arms of her mother by a piece of exploded shell.

This woman had hurriedly left her home during the second bombardment of the city of Mechelen and, having run for some distance, sat down by the way to rest, when the fatal shell exploded, a piece of which mortally wounded the little one in her arms. Both were brought to our hospital that night and lovingly cared for until about morning, when the innocent spirit fled to join the army of the blessed who inherit the realms of eternal peace.

Poor mother was left alone to bemoan the loss of her little one and to weep over her desolate home.

When one meets the ambulance wagons loaded with suffering, mutilated men who a few weeks before were sustaining heads of happy households; when one sees the dark red stream flowing from ghastly wounds and splashes of blood on all sides; when one observes the pallor of death on the strong man’s face, while a comrade with tender pity bends over to obtain a last message for home; when one hears the despairing wail of orphan and widow; when one has watched the endless procession of terror-stricken refugees whose homes have become the prey of the cannon, when one hears repeatedly the sad experience of these exiles on their journeys from place to place, lying on hay or straw, in barns, in schools, on the bare ground, or in the basin of the empty canal, when one meditates on those perverse circumstances which have changed civilized men into savage brutes—then we also agree that “The world has gone back a thousand years,” while a presentiment as of impending disaster passes over the earth and depresses each individual heart.

“Cast yourselves upon the knees and pray for victory,” cry out Christian monarchs to their soldiers, and, nevertheless, the God to whom they pray is witness to the wanton desecration of His churches and the wholesale destruction of life, liberty and property.

From the dark abodes of despair, the cohorts of satan seem to have taken possession of the world and filled it with vice and wretchedness, until it resembles the “abomination of desolation” referred to in Holy Writ.

To know what war is, it would be necessary to possess eyes to behold all the sin and vice; all the ruin and destruction; ears to hear every despairing cry and agonizing wail; a mind to comprehend all the misery and desolation, and a heart to feel the anguish in the heart of each suffering fellow-creature, from the moment the first shot was fired down through ages yet to come, until the twilight of times, brighter in prospect, than the daylight of the present generation shall obscure the last shadows of the unholy conflict.

To realize what war really means, we should give consideration to the moral and physical degeneration of these sufferers and of their descendants; to the hatred, lust, passion, wilful murder and other high crimes against God and nature, engendered and committed, not in the moment of strong individual anger and passion, but as the result of a well-calculated plan, with profound forethought, called by some “strategy.”

“War is justifiable only, if it is the necessary means for securing peace.” (His Eminence, Cardinal Mercier.) May we humbly add, _then only as the last resort_.