WAR AND PEACE
SONNET
“We have not conducted the war unrighteously and cruelly. War,
at its best, is an awful curse, and brings with it untold loss of blood and
treasure, and the inevitable suffering of the innocent. The exigencies
of the war will always require the burning of farms, and even of villages,
which are used by the enemy to harass the opposing army and harbour
combatants and ammunition; terrible as the farm-burning has been, it
was only ordered when absolutely necessary by a British General whose
character for humanity and Godliness is beyond dispute.”—The Bishop of
Liverpool.
“Never before has anything approaching to such wholesale and
reckless destruction or abduction of families been enacted by a British
army. . . . So ignorant of facts, or so blunted have become the minds of
our people on the subject of the women and children that they have
come to believe that the Press is justified in extolling the great kindness
and liberality which have been shown to these poor prisoners.”
—Sir Neville Chamberlain.
So speaks the man of God, and so replies
The man of war.—How strange a thing is here!
The man of God o'er blood-red lists can peer:
The soldier longs for peace, and sunnier skies.
Confused by folly, and misled by lies,
The Churchman lends the mob too ready an ear;
The warrior-soul, whose record knows no fear,
Knows War's nude horror, sees with prescient eyes.
Remember, all, that when the Bishop pleaded
And found our war on women Christianlike,
“Righteous,” expedient, godly, and the rest,
The Soldier rose when one stern word was needed,
Alert in honour's name and truth's to strike
Aside the swords the hasty Bishop blest.
Aug. 31, 1901.
