Of All Countries In
The World One Would Say That The States Of America Should Have Been
The Last To Curse Themselves With A War; But Now The Curse Has
Fallen Upon Them With A Double Vengeance, It Would Seem That They
Could Never Be Great In War:
Their very institutions forbid it;
their enormous distances forbid it; the price of labor forbids it;
and it is forbidden also by the career of industry and expansion
which has been given to them.
But the curse of fighting has come
upon them, and they are showing themselves to be as eager in the
works of war as they have shown themselves capable in the works of
peace. Men and angels must weep as they behold the things that are
being done, as they watch the ruin that has come and is still
coming, as they look on commerce killed and agriculture suspended.
No sight so sad has come upon the earth in our days. They were a
great people; feeding the world, adding daily to the mechanical
appliances of mankind, increasing in population beyond all measures
of such increase hitherto known, and extending education as fast as
they extended their numbers. Poverty had as yet found no place
among them, and hunger was an evil of which they had read but were
themselves ignorant. Each man among their crowds had a right to be
proud of his manhood. To read and write - I am speaking here of the
North - was as common as to eat and drink. To work was no disgrace,
and the wages of work were plentiful. To live without work was the
lot of none. What blessing above these blessings was needed to make
a people great and happy? And now a stranger visiting them would
declare that they are wallowing in a very slough of despond. The
only trade open is the trade of war. The axe of the woodsman is at
rest; the plow is idle; the artificer has closed his shop. The roar
of the foundery is still heard because cannon are needed, and the
river of molten iron comes out as an implement of death. The stone-
cutter's hammer and the mason's trowel are never heard. The gold of
the country is hiding itself as though it had returned to its mother
earth, and the infancy of a paper currency has been commenced. Sick
soldiers, who have never seen a battle-field, are dying by hundreds
in the squalid dirt of their unaccustomed camps. Men and women talk
of war, and of war only. Newspapers full of the war are alone read.
A contract for war stores - too often a dishonest contract - is the
one path open for commercial enterprise. The young man must go to
the war or he is disgraced. The war swallows everything, and as yet
has failed to produce even such bitter fruits as victory or glory.
Must it not be said that a curse has fallen upon the land?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 76 of 275
Words from 38744 to 39243
of 142339
