How many ladies consider what
the curt word "wounded" means? It conveys no idea to them, and they are
too apt to stray off into the dashing details that tell of a great
wrestle of armies. One eminent man--whom I believe to have uttered a
libel--has declared that women like war, and that they are usually the
means of urging men on. He is a very sedate and learned philosopher who
wrote that statement, and yet I cannot believe it. Ah, no! Our ladies
can give their dearest up to death when the State calls on them, but
they will never be like the odious viragoes of the Roman circus. At any
rate, if any woman acts according to the dictum of the philosopher after
reading my bitterly true words, we shall hold that our influence is
departed. Therefore with ruthless composure I follow my observer--a man
whose pure and holy spirit upheld him as he ministered to sufferers for
year after year.
"Then the camps of the wounded. Oh, heavens, what scene is this? Is this
indeed humanity--these butchers' shambles? There are several of them.
There they lie, in the largest, in an open space in the woods--from two
to three hundred poor fellows. The groans and screams, the odour of
blood mixed with the fresh scent of the night, the grass, the
trees--that slaughter-house! Oh, well is it their mothers, their
sisters, cannot see them, cannot conceive, and never conceived such
things! One man is shot by a shell both in the arm and leg; both are
amputated--there lie the rejected members.
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