Читать книгу The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe - Louis Paul Bénézet - Страница 8

It was a summer evening,

Old Kaspar's work was done,

And he before his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun,

And by him sported on the green

His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

She saw her brother Peterkin

Roll something large and round,

Which he beside the rivulet

In playing there had found,

He came to ask what he had found

That was so large and smooth and round.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy,

Who stood expectant by;

And then the old man shook his head,

And, with a natural sigh—

"'Tis some poor fellow's skull," said he,

"Who fell in the great victory.

"I find them in the garden,

For there's many hereabout;

And often when I go to plow,

The plowshare turns them out!

For many a thousand men," said he,

"Were slain in the great victory."

"Now tell us what 'twas all about,"

Young Peterkin he cries;

And little Wilhelmine looks up

With wonder-waiting eyes—

"Now tell us all about the war,

And what they fought each other for."

"It was the English," Kaspar cried,

"Who put the French to rout;

But what they fought each other for

I could not well make out;

But everybody said," quoth he,

"That 'twas a famous victory.

"My father lived at Blenheim then,

Yon little stream hard by;

They burnt his dwelling to the ground,

And he was forced to fly;

So with his wife and child he fled,

Nor had he where to rest his head.

"They say it was a shocking sight

After the field was won—

For many thousand bodies here

Lay rotting in the sun;

But things like that, you know, must be

After a famous victory.

"Great praise the Duke of Marlborough won,

And our good Prince Eugene."

"Why,'twas a very wicked thing!"

Said little Wilhelmine.

"Nay, nay, my little girl," quoth he,

"It was a famous victory.

"And everybody praised the duke

Who this great fight did win."

"But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;

"But 'twas a famous victory."

—Robert Southey.

Old Kaspar, who has been used to such things all his life, cannot feel the wickedness and horror Of the battle. The children, on the other hand, have a different idea of war. They are not satisfied until they know what it was all about and what good came of it, and they feel that "it was a very wicked thing." If the men in the armies had stopped to ask the reason why they were killing each other and had refused to fight until they knew the truth, the history of the world would have been very different.

One reason why we still have wars is that men refuse to think for themselves, because it is so much easier to let their dead ancestors think for them and to keep up customs which should have been changed ages ago. People in Europe have lived in the midst of wars or preparation for wars all their lives. There never has been a time when Europe was not either a battlefield or a great drill-ground for armies.

There was a time, long ago, when any man might kill another in Europe and not be punished for his deed. It was not thought wrong to take human life. Today it is not considered wrong to kill, provided a man is ordered to do so by his general or his king. When two kings go to war, each claiming his quarrel to be a just one, wholesale murder is done, and each side is made by its government to think itself very virtuous and wholly justified in its killing. It should be the great aim of everyone today to help to bring about lasting peace among all the nations.

In order to know how to do this, we must study the causes of the wars of the past. We shall find, as we do so, that almost all wars can be traced to one of four causes: (1) the instinct among barbarous tribes to fight with and plunder their neighbors; (2) the ambition of kings to enlarge their kingdoms; (3) the desire of the traders of one nation to increase their commerce at the expense of some other nation; (4) a people's wish to be free from the control of some other country and to become a nation by itself. Of the four reasons, only the last furnishes a just cause for war, and this cause has been brought about only when kings have sent their armies out, and forced into their kingdoms other peoples who wished to govern themselves.