not shown earnestly, and for the purpose,--would
prove, at all events, that the time has come for putting an end to those
phrases in the narratives of warfare, by which a suspicious delicacy is
palmed upon the reader, who is told, after everything has been done to
excite his admiration of war, that his feelings are "spared" a recital
of its miseries--that "a veil" is drawn over them--a "truce" given to
descriptions which only "harrow up the soul," &c.

Suppose it be necessary to "harrow up the soul," in order that the soul
be no longer harrowed? Moralists and preachers do not deal after this
tender fashion with moral, or even physical consequences, resulting from
other evils. Why should they spare these? Why refuse to look their own
effeminacy in the face,--their own gaudy and overweening encouragement
of what they dare not contemplate in its results? Is a murder in the
streets worth attending to,--a single wounded man worth carrying to the
hospital,--and are all the murders, and massacres, and fields of
wounded, and the madness, the conflagrations, the famines, the miseries
of families, and the rickety frames and melancholy bloods of posterity,
only fit to have an embroidered handkerchief thrown over them? Must
"ladies and gentlemen" be called off, that they may not "look that way,"
the "sight is so shocking"? Does it become us to let others endure,
what we cannot bear even to think of?

Even if nothing else were to come of inquiries into the horrors of war,
surely they would cry aloud for some better provision against their
extremity _after_ battle,--for some regulated and certain assistance to
the wounded and agonized,--so that we might hear no longer of men left
in cold and misery all night, writhing with torture,--of bodies stripped
by prowlers, perhaps murderers,--and of frenzied men, the other day the
darlings of their friends, dying, two and even several days after the
battle, of famine! The field of Waterloo was not completely cleared of
its dead and dying till nearly a week! Surely large companies of men
should be organized for the sole purpose of assisting and clearing away
the field after battle. They should be steady men, not lightly
admitted, nor unpossessed of some knowledge of surgery, and they should
be attached to the surgeon's staff. Both sides would respect them for
their office, and keep them sacred from violence. Their duties would be
too painful and useful to get them disrespected for not joining