The Flaming Sword in Serbia and ElsewhereStobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
History
The Flaming Sword in Serbia and Elsewhere
Stobart, M. A. (Mabel Annie)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives
In the eyes of woman, war also means the negation of civilisation and
of progress. Of what use the care and labour spent in science, art,
culture, education, if, at the command of militarism, these and their
votaries are to be periodically blotted out.
Civilisation, as we were taught, meant the progress of the human race
in ideals, spiritual and moral. Civilisation, as our children are being
taught, means progress in the invention of machines for destroying
life--the one thing on earth which can't be made by machines. (The word
"artillery," with its present murderous meaning, derived from Latin
"ars," "artis," art!)
War means that all the finest intellects, of the finest of God's
creatures, are set to vie one with the other--on what false track of
evolution are we rushing?--to vie, one with the other, how best to
destroy life and to precipitate death! Death is sacred, but not life.
War means blood, slaughter, brutality, deformities, and always death,
death, death. Is man jealous of God, that he destroys God's handiwork,
and spares his own, when he runs amok? When the Germans destroyed, at
Louvain, the works of man, a howl of horror rose from every voice and
newspaper throughout the civilised world. But during this European war,
thousands of unique specimens of the works of God, Europe's finest
manhood, are every day being destroyed, and we are still waiting for
the howl of horror.
The other day I was told by one who witnessed it, that, from one
trench, 800 men were killed within three minutes. Now it takes women
years and years of infinite love, and patience, of sacrifice, and
devotion, to mould their sons--their creations--after the image of
God, in body, soul and mind. They fashion, with infinite pains, these
precious lives for God, and the end is--to be blown to pieces, 800 in
three minutes. To this end has the wisdom of Man brought Man. Could the
wisdom of Woman bring us to a worse abyss than this? However desperate
the remedy, must not the help of woman be hailed, to save life from the
abyss?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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