Christianity and Patriotism
to wound, and imagining that in this they arc doing a very Christian deed.
And drowning the despair in their hearts with singing, debauchery, and vodka, torn away from peaceful labour, from their wives, their mothers and their children, hundreds of thousands of simple good-natured men, with weapons of murder in their hands, will trudge off where they are sent. They will march; will be frozen, will be hungry, will be sick, some dying of disease; till at last they reach the place where they will be murdered by thousands, and will themselves, not knowing why, murder by thousands men whom they have never seen, who have done them no wrong, and can have done them no wrong. And when the mass of the sick, wounded, and killed is so great that no one can gather them up, and when the air is so contaminated by the rotting cannon-flesh that it becomes unpleasant even for the commanding officers, then they will stop for a time, will pick up the wounded after a fashion, and carry them off, will throw the sick together in heaps, anywhere that comes first, and will bury the slain in the earth, sprinkling them with lime, and will lead the crowd of their dupes further, and will go on leading them forward till those who have contrived all the mischief are weary of it, or till those who have something to gain have gained all they want.
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