The first time Clara Barton visited in New Haven, she wore a gray dress that had bullet holes in it—received in caring for the wounded at Fredericksburg. In describing the battle scene Clara Barton said: “Over into that City of Death; its roofs riddled by shells, its very Church a crowded hospital, every street a battle line, every hill a rampart, every rock a fortress, and every stone wall a blazing line of forts!”
At Fredericksburg They rated blood as water, And all the slope shone red, Past Valor’s call By bristling wall; Defeat linked arms with slaughter Astride the blue-robed dead.
As Miss Barton was being assisted off the bridge by an officer, an exploding shell hissed between them, passing below their arms as they were upraised, carrying away both the skirts of his coat and her dress. A moment later, on his horse, the gallant officer was struck by a solid shot from the enemy; the horse bounded in the air and the officer fell to the ground dead, not thirty feet in the rear.
In her usual modest manner, in relating _war incidents_, she described the experience to a lady friend and said: “I never mended that dress. I wonder whether or not a soldier ever mends a bullet hole in his clothes.”
Military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy.
The friends of humanity will deprecate war, whenever it may appear. GEORGE WASHINGTON.
There is no need of bloodshed and war. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Wars are largely the result of unbridled passions.
War is only splendid murder. JAMES THOMSON.
War is the mad game that the world so loves to play. SWIFT.
Every battleship is a menace to the peace of the world. With each new battleship every nation carries a chip on its shoulder.
The Red Cross took its rise in, and derived its existence from, war. Without war it had no existence. CLARA BARTON.
Deplore it as we may, war is the _great act_ of all history.
War has been the rule, if not largely the occupation, of the peoples of the earth from their earliest history. CLARA BARTON.
Scarcely a quarter of the earth is yet civilized, and that quarter not beyond the probabilities of war. CLARA BARTON.
General Sherman was right when, addressing an assemblage of cadets, he told them “war was hell!” Take it as you will, it is this;—whoever has looked active war full in the face has caught some glimpse of regions as infernal as he may ever fear to see.