Suppose it be necessary to "harrow up the soul," in order that the soul be no longer harrowed? Moralists and preachers do not deal after this tender fashion with moral, or even physical consequences, resulting from other evils. Why should they spare these? Why refuse to look their own effeminacy in the face,--their own gaudy and overweening encouragement of what they dare not contemplate in its results? Is a murder in the streets worth attending to,--a single wounded man worth carrying to the hospital,--and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of wounded, and the madness, the conflagrations, the famines, the miseries of families, and the rickety frames and melancholy bloods of posterity, only fit to have an embroidered handkerchief thrown over them? Must "ladies and gentlemen" be called off, that they may not "look that way," the "sight is so shocking"? Does it become us to let others endure, what we cannot bear even to think of? Even if nothing else were to come of inquiries into the horrors of war, surely they would cry aloud for some better provision against their extremity _after_ battle,--for some regulated and certain assistance to the wounded and agonized,--so that we might hear no longer of men left in cold and misery all night, writhing with torture,--of bodies stripped by prowlers, perhaps murderers,--and of frenzied men, the other day the darlings of their friends, dying, two and even several days after the battle, of famine! The field of Waterloo was not completely cleared of its dead and dying till nearly a week! Surely large companies of men should be organized for the sole purpose of assisting and clearing away the field after battle. They should be steady men, not lightly admitted, nor unpossessed of some knowledge of surgery, and they should be attached to the surgeon's staff. Both sides would respect them for their office, and keep them sacred from violence. Their duties would be too painful and useful to get them disrespected for not joining in the fight--and possibly, before long, they would help to do away their own necessity, by detailing what they beheld. Is that the reason why there is no such establishment? The question is asked, not in bitterness, but to suggest a self-interrogation to the instincts of war.