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Show SCIENCE OF MURDER OUTGROWTH OF WAR Medieval Cruelty Lives Again in Europe, English En-glish Writer Says. SLAUGHTER HORRIBLE Civilization's Clock Set Back Centuries by Combat Com-bat of Nations. LONDON, March 24. Frightful medieval me-dieval cruelty, such as would have been 'considered a thing only of the distant dis-tant past four years ago, now lives again, says Sidney Dark, writing in a London newspaper. Human life has become be-come a thing of slight moment and human hu-man suffering of even less account. "I have always doubted whether the mechanical progress of what was once described as the 'so-called nineteenth century' made mankind one whit happier hap-pier or kinder or better," says Mr. Dark. "It is certainly true that during the hundred years before the war regard for human life was intensified, but this probably had an entirely commercial and unworthy foundation. "Under the commercial system a. man 's life has a certain money value. Only the foolish fool-ish slave driver whips his slaves to deatn. "With this greater disinclination to take the lives of others came a much more tender solicitude for oneself. Men hung on to life as they had never hung on to it before, but, while they grew afraid to die, most of them grew afraid really to live. "Since the outbreak of the war there has been among the mass of people in the belligerent countries a concentration concen-tration on national rather than personal interests, and this has been accompanied by a cheerful readiness to die which is a little appalling to those of us who are still swaddled in nineteenth century cen-tury cotton-wool. Is Scientific Massacre. "We had supposed that the 'progress 'prog-ress of civilization' had made barbarous barbar-ous and calculated cruelty impossible. We have seen during the past two and a half years the most scientifically educated edu-cated people in Europe adopting methods meth-ods of massacre and torture employed by medieval mercenaries and by the Huns of Attila. "All of us have shivered at stones of the peoples of beleaguered cities pouring molten lead on the heads of their assailants! The Germans have sprayed their enemies with liquid fire, and have puffed poisonous gases in their faces. This sort of thing being done on one side is immediately and necessarily copied by the other, so that a modern battlefield becomes a scene of calculated torture that might well fill the heart of an ancient Italian swashbuckler swash-buckler with envy. "Try to compare the battlefield of Crecy with the battlefield of the Somine! In the one case you had men killed by clean wounds inflicted by arrows a'nd men bashing each other over the heads with clubs and battle-axes. battle-axes. There must have been elation and excitement in the combat, and it was conducted according to" chivalrous and accepted rules. Wounded Die in Agony. "On the modern battlefield the soldier sol-dier seldom sees the enemy. He fires horrible devastating infernal machines at him from guns miles away. He riddles rid-dles him with machine gun bullets. He poisons him and burns him. "The wounded are perforce left in hundreds of cases to die in agony where they fall. What a monstrous joke it is in face of all this that we should talk of progress and vaunt ourselves our-selves the moral superiors of our forefathers! fore-fathers! "Think again of the stories of pirates on the Spanish main that thrilled our nurseries! How we writhed with indignation indig-nation at the horrors of walking the plank! ., What a small thing this was after all to the prowess of the German submarine, that, safely entrenched under the water, sends destruction by torpedo into the very vitals of an unsuspecting shin! Captain Kidd was at least ready to fl?ht before he murdered. "The sinking of the Lusitania, as a sheer horror, has no equal in the history his-tory of the seas. Children Put to Sword. " 'The city was taken and the women and children were put to the sword.' This is a commonplace of ' the history of the past, but all the massacres that the world has ever seen have been outshone by the calm methodical killing kill-ing of the Armenians by the Turks. "'Try to imagine what it means to assassinate as-sassinate 700,000 people! These unfortunates un-fortunates were butchered to make a Turkish holiday. "The whole thing is not only horrible, hor-rible, but it is utterly and hopelessly bewildering. On the one hand we are astounded by the extraordinary heroism of common average men. On the other hand we are stunned by discovering that bestial cruelty can still be perpetrated per-petrated as part of a definite political policy, just as it was perpetrated by the worst of the Roman emperors and by the most evil decadents who ever ruled in Byzantium." |