BLOOD THIRST.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9594, 8 December 1896, Page 2

BLOOD THIRST.

■» Spectator. , * The passion of which the word "bloodIhirst" is truly descriptive seems to be a kind of temporary mania excited in liuman beings by killing human beinge, and in them only by that act. Animals are free of it. Even the great felidse, with their ferocity developed by generations of hunger, never display it—neyer, for. example, attack whole herds, for the pleasure of killing beasts which they cannot eat. There is a faint approach to it in the dog who " worries" a flock of sheep, but he does not kill on the spot, and seems at all events to be aotuated not by lust of blood or even by the spirit of tyranny, but by an insane desire for a special dainty—the fat of the sheep's liver. The human being with the bloodthiret on him wants most to lull after he has been killing. Soldiers, otherwise most respectable, have acknowledged the feeling as rising in them after a hard-fought day when many friends have fallen round them, and there are moments in battle when, as the soldiers Bay, they " see red," and in many armies, perhaps in all, it is difficult for their officers to induce them to give quarter. Kllliog relieves their burning thirst for vengeance. There are moments in almost every campaign, as all military historians know, when even highly disciplined soldiers seem to lose their reason, when their officers are powerless, and perfectly useless carnage cannot be stopped. The existence of this passion, which no experienced soldier doubte, is the the true explanation of the awful slaughter which occurred in

some ancient and some Asiatic battles, &od 'of that ghastly incident of warfare among savages, their almost constant habit of Idu! ing out the wounded. It explains also Uw, , devilish excitement and thirst for Bled' slaughter whioh, as tho record of eoeneslifo' the bl. Bartholomew murders or the murdeti * recently committed ia Constantinople prove*, fulls upon a crowd which has shed ranch" blood. Many, perhaps a majority, do notice! feelit, but theferocious remainderappeartogo I literally and medically mad, with an impul<« , which has in it that of the murderer and el the hunter combined, and unless conlroMel by some form of terror they will go on kut« % , ing while victims remain to be discovered.' JA separate passion of bloodshedding arises in them, and tigers would be loss cruel, tit cruelty—it is one of thestrangestof '' of human nature—increasing with the absent of resistance. It might, indeed, be possible to hold them partly irresponsible, but fft ■- the fact that they can instantly be reduoed i ' Ito order and sanity by appealing to that | fears. A few soldiers, a volley, and thi" ! wildest mob, mad, literally mad to $11 appearance with the blood-chirst, will be- ' come on the instant reasonable, will t*kt orders, will abandon, and in some inetanatt even regret, its frightful excesses. A wMff '. of grape-shot would have calmed the Fr«wijf Terrorists at any moment, and a thousand of the Irish Constabulary with rifles wbuilt' restore the worst mob of Constantinople to comparative sanity in ten minutes. UM because the English as a rule are so tat of the blood-thirst that we dare be Iβ lenient with our mobs, and fa«caiut the rulers of foreign States know and dread the impulse that they are, as we all r ljblnki bo much too ready , to resort to violeat!, repression. A Southern mob, an Amaße' mob, or an African mob which has 'ofatt begun to kill oannot be stopped ej«ej>t b/ an appeal to terror, a grim fact wbi<*h thrift* who believe in human nature, as we do *jfis will do well to ponder over. The wM: ! beast latent in man becomes, as we are'txnf I seeing every week or so in Turkey, wildsrjnot tamer with release from exte'QillV {restraints. If the optimist philosophMJ } were right all men would be hiunane,,fii£ ! : I nothing can be so convenient as humahitf;l I but as a fact there is nothing on earUl-M' j cruel as man if once he has broken looiej [ from his fetters of custom, conscience, social pressure, and has tasted blood. Tip ' the firet enemy falls a mob can be moved }q\ reason or by pity; after that it listens, «8 rule, only "to terror for its own life.// ■' • '-