Scanned by Edward.W.Badger
e-mail psittacus@bigfoot.com ORe-mail ted@worksop.worldonline.co.uk
NEVER AGAIN!
(A protest and a warning addressed to the peoples of Europe)
by Edward Carpenter
Never again must this Thing happen. The time has come — if the humanrace does not wish to destroy itself in its own madness — for mento make up their minds as to what they will do in the future; fornow indeed is it true that we are come to the cross-roads, we standat the Parting of the Ways.
The rapid and enormous growth of scientific invention makes it obviousthat Violence ten times more potent and sinister than that whichwe are witnessing to-day may very shortly be available for our use — orabuse — in War. On the other hand who can doubt that the rapid growthof interchange and understanding among the peoples of the world isdaily making Warfare itself, and the barbarities inevitably connectedwith it, more abhorrent to our common humanity?
Which of these lines are we to follow? Along which path are we to go?This is a question which the mass — peoples of Europe in the future — andnot merely the Governments —- will have seriously to ponder and decide.
That bodies of men — as has happened a hundred times in the trenchesin Northern France and even on the Eastern Front — should exchangemorning salutations and songs in humorous amity, and then at a wordof command should fall to shooting each other;
That peasants and artisans, and shopkeepers and students andschoolmasters, who have no quarrel whatever, who on the whole ratherrespect and honour each other, should with explosive bombs deliberatelyblow one another to bits so that even their own mothers could notrecognize them;That human beings should use every devilish invention of sciencewith the one purpose of maiming, blinding, destroying those againstwhom they have no personal grudge or grievance;All this is sheer madness.
Only a short time ago a private soldier said to me: "Yes, we hadgot to be such friends with those Bavarians in the trenches overagainst us that if we had returned there again I believe nothingcould have made us fight with each other; but of course that pointwas perceived and we were moved to another part of the Line."What a criticism in a few words on the whole War!A hundred times this or something similar has happened, and a hundredand a thousand times these 'enemies' who have madly mutilated eachother have — a few minutes later — been only too glad to dress eachother's wounds and share the last contents of their water-bottles.
By all the heart-rending experiences which have now become so commonand familiar to us;
By the fact that to-day there is hardly a family over the greaterpart of Europe that is not grieving bitterly over the loss of somedearest member of its circle;
By the white faces of the women clad in black, whom one sees everywherein the streets of Berlin and Brussels and Paris and Vienna, of Londonand Milan and Belgrade and Petrograd;
By the sufferings of famine-stricken Poland, ravaged already threeor four times in the last two years by opposing and alternate armies;
By the awful sufferings of the six or seven million Jews of the
Russian Pale, hounded homeless in winter to and, fro over the frozen
earth the old men and women and children perishing of exposure,
fatigue, and starvation;
By the agony of Serbia, and the despair of Belgium;
This must not be again!
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