Whether I shall have the privilege of recounting my adventures at the court and camp of Don Carlos, and by the side of the General directing the siege of Cartagena, who admitted me as a sort of supernumerary on his staff, will depend on the reception of this, the first instalment of my experiences in Spain.
An act of unjustifiable barbarism or stupidity, or both--for barbarism is but another form of stupidity--was perpetrated by some Carlists outside Irun while I was negotiating for that indispensable horse. An ambulance-waggon, displaying the Red Cross of Geneva, had sallied from the town, and was fired upon. The Paris delegate I had met at Hendaye was in charge of it, and averred that it was wantonly and wilfully attacked. I thought it, singular that nobody was hurt, and reasoned that the man was excitable, and got into range unconsciously. The duty of the Geneva Society properly begins after, and not during a combat; and when gentlemen are busy at the game of professional manslaughter, no philanthropic outsider has any right to distract them from their occupation by indiscreet obstruction. The Parisian did not view it in that light, and downfaced me that these rustics, to whose aid he was actually going, tried to murder him of malice prepense. It was useless to represent to him that these rustics may have never heard of the modern benevolent institution for the softening of strife, and may have regarded the huge Red Cross as a defiant symbol of Red Republicanism, and perhaps a parody of what is sacred. So in the estimation of that citizen of the most enlightened capital in the universe, these Basques were ruthless boobies with an insatiable passion for lapping blood. But mistakes and exaggerations will occur in every war. The only way to obviate them is to put an end to war altogether--_which will never be done_! When Christ came into the world, peace was proclaimed; when He left it, peace was bequeathed. War has been the usual condition of mankind since, as it had been before; and Christians cut each other's throats with as much alacrity and expertness as Pagans, often in the name of the religion of peace.
I heard two eminent war-correspondents lecture recently, and I noticed that those passages where fights were described were applauded to the echo. The more ferocious the combat the more vigorous the cheers. The faces of small boys flushed, and their hands clinched at the vivid recital. The nature of the savage, which has not been extirpated by School Boards, was betraying itself in them. Yet these two war-correspondents thought it an acquittal of conscience after their kindling periods to dwell on the immorality of war. The one spoke of the beauty of Bible precepts, the other disburdened himself on the cruelty and wickedness of a battle. What artistic hypocrisy! It was as if one were to strike up the "Faerie Voices" waltz, and tell a girl to keep her feet still; as if one were to lend "Robinson Crusoe" to a boy, and warn him not to think of running away to sea. Still, I must even add my voice to the orthodox chorus, and affirm that warfare is bad, brutal, fraudful, a thing of meretricious gauds, a clay idol, fetish of humbug and havoc, whose feet are soaking in muddy gore and salt tears; yet in the privacy of my own study I might sadly admit that the Millennium is remote, that the Parliament of Nations exists but in the dreams of the poet, and that Longfellow's forecast of the days down through the dark future when the holy melodies of love shall oust the clangours of conflict is a pretty conceit--and no more.