What is War?
Maoriland Worker, Volume 5, Issue 185, 19 August 1914, Page 8
About this newspaper
What is War?
Let Thomas Carlyle answer, in/ this immortal passage from his "Sartor Resartus"
"To my own knowledge for example, there dwell and tori, in tho British village of -Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'Natural Enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war. *say thirty nble-bodiod men.
'Duindrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nurscd'them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest- can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois.
"Nevertheless, amid much weeping â– and swearing, they aro selected; all dressed in red: and shipped away, at tho. public charges, some two thousand, miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted.
"And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French aitisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after Infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxta-position; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun> in his hand.
"Straightway the word 'Fire!' is given: and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for.
"Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest 1 They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wido a Universe, there iwas even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them.
"How tlren? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot."
