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RACE HATRED AND MORALS
The terrible scenes which the war correspondents
describe from day to day,
the plains strewn with dead and dying,
the square "like a fly paper, covered
with corpses and writhing bodies, the
mournful never-ending lines of stretch
shearers. the fight for water, the
ghastly dew" that stains the ground,
the pitiful heaps of torn and mangled
humanity, and the disease, typhoid or
cholera, or what not-all these are, unfortunately,
but the ordinary trappings
and units of War. But there has been
Ions feature of the present sanguinary.
struggle, which is worse than ordinary,
! and, which, we may well hope is the
spluttering' out of a dying haTbarism
even in warfare. It is the fiendishness
with which not only combatants but
inoffensive civilians and women and
children have been treated. The Turks
have undoubtedly been the worst offenders
in this respect, for the leopard
does not change his spots, and the ex-
cesses of Bnshi-Uajsouks or the atrocities
of Turkish savagery are no new things
in history. But it is only too probable
that the Servians also have been
similarly guilty. A correspondent of
The Times," who was at Constantinople
when the Turkish troops were
leaving for the front, predicted that
the war would be one specially marked
by racial animosity. As he watched H
regiment marching down the Pera gradient
an acid cab-driver beside him
volunteered the remark, in Turkish,
"There will he a great cutting off of
ears. The correspondent add:s In
this, to the European mind, disgust-
ing prophecy lies the whole gamut of
the feeling that the Balkan Confederates
have roused in Turkey. The old
cab-driver had been a young man in
'78. He knew, as none of the young
man stopping out beneath the load of
their full marching kit knew, what the
congenital animosity between Slav and
Ottoman would lead to if ever the shin-
ing bayonets were allowed to cross.
No war that has been fought within
the memory of the present generation
has been a entrance as will this. The
cutting off of years' is but a mild simile
of what these pent-up passions pro-
mise." Writing as long. ago as October
12,- this correspondent shared the
general view as to the Turks' superiority,
and even warned the Turks
against despising their enemy, quoting
by way of exemplifying this the Turkish
Commander-in-Chief's exhortation to
the departing officers, "Do not forget
to take your grands write. you will
have need of it." the officers have
had little use for their parade uniforms
up to the present ; the " grand venue
has been all on the other side.
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