als
in the quarrel sit snugly at home on throne chairs.

A private letter, I think it was, written during the Crimean war by a
sailor to his wife, describing his sensations after having killed a man
for the first time, is a unique demonstration of the psychology of the
soldier's fate.

The letter said:--

"We were ordered to fire, and I took steady aim and fired on my man at a
distance of sixty yards. He dropped like a stone, at the same instant a
broadside from the ship scattered among the trees, and the enemy
vanished, we could scarcely tell how. I felt as though I must go up to
the man I had fired upon to see if he were dead or alive. I found him
quite still, and I was more afraid of him when I saw him lying so than
when he stood facing me a few minutes before. It is a strange feeling
that comes over you all at once when you have killed a man. He had
unfastened his jacket, and was pressing his hand against his chest where
the wound was. He breathed hard, and the blood poured from the wound and
his mouth at every breath. His face was white as death, and his eyes
looked big and bright as he turned them staring up at me. I shall never
forget it. He was a fine young fellow, not over five and twenty. I knelt
beside him and I felt as though my heart would burst. He had an English
face and did not look like my enemy. If my life could have saved his I
would have given it. I held his head on my knee and he tried to speak,
but his voice was gone. I could not understand a word that he said. I am
not ashamed to say that I was worse than he, for he never shed a tear
and I did. I was wondering how I could bear to leave him to die alone,
when he had some sort of convulsions, then his head rolled over and with
a sigh he was gone. I laid his head gently on the grass and left him. It
seemed so strange when I looked at him for the last time. I somehow
thought of everything I had ever read about the Turks and the Russians,
and the rest of them, but all that seemed so far off, and the dead man
so near."

This was the secret tragedy of the common fraternity of manhood driven
by custom into a sham battle of death. The European war of 1886 was a
conflict of Slav and Teuton. France will never forgive Germany for
taking Alsace and Lorraine. It was a surrender to Germany of what in the
United States would be equal to the surrender of Philadelphia and
Boston, with vast harvest fields in addition. France wanted to blot out
Sedan. England de