Chapter X: Section TWO: The Silent Destroyer—disease

The barking rifle, the snarling Gatling gun, and the booming cannon—these have also on the battlefield a foul and powerful confederate, Disease. Disease joins in to poison the blood the guns do not spill. On this important matter the reader will appreciate the expert testimony here offered.

“In every great campaign,” says L. L. Seaman,[94] “an army faces two
enemies: First, the armed force of the opposing foe with his various
machines for human destruction, met at intervals in open battles;
and, second, the hidden foe, always lurking in every camp, the
spectre that gathers its victims while the soldier slumbers in the
barracks or bivouacs, the greater silent foe—disease. Of these
enemies, the history of warfare for centuries shows that in extended
campaigns, the first or open enemy kills twenty per cent. of the
total mortality; while the second, or silent, enemy kills eighty per
cent. In other words, out of every hundred men who fall in war,
twenty die from casualties of battle, while eighty perish from
disease.... It is in these conditions that we find the true hell of
war.... Health alone, however, is no guarantee against the insidious
attacks of the silent foe that lingers in every camp and bivouac. It
is this foe, as the records of war for the past two hundred years
have proved, that is responsible for four times as many deaths as
the guns of the enemy, to say nothing of the vast number temporarily
invalided or discharged as unfit for duty.... In the Russo-Turkish
war, the deaths from the battle casualties were 20,000, while those
from disease were 80,000. In our great Civil conflict ... 400,000
were sacrificed to disease to 100,000 from battle casualties. In a
recent campaign of the French in Madagascar 14,000 were sent to the
front, of whom 29 were killed in action, and over 7,000 perished
from preventable diseases. In the Boer War in South Africa the
English losses were ten times greater from disease than from the
bullets of the enemy. In our recent war with Spain fourteen lives
were needlessly sacrificed to ignorance and incompetency for every
man who died on the firing line or from results of wounds.

“In our Spanish Army we had:

170,000 men,
156,000 hospital admissions in three months,
3,976 dead.

“The remainder were mustered out, most of them, in shrunken and
shriveled condition which the reader probably remembers. Our Army of
Invasion numbered 20,000; in 1908 there were 24,000 pensioners; of
these 24,000, over 19,000 are invalids and survivors of the war; and
there are over 18,000 claims pending.”

Here is Theodore Roosevelt’s testimony:[95]

“Our army [in Cuba] included the great majority of the regulars, and
was, therefore, the flower of the American force.... Every officer
other than myself except one was down with sickness at one time or
another.... Very few of the men indeed retained their strength and
energy ... there were less than fifty per cent. who were fit for any
kind of work.”

Disease as a destroyer appears in the data furnished by C. Goltz, a few lines of which interesting facts run thus:[96]

“It is horrible to see trains packed full with sick soldiers sent
away from the army.... The loss from sickness is almost incredible,
and one example is sufficient to prove that these losses may put all
success at stake. The sanitary conditions of the German army in
France in 1870 was very favorable; there were no dangerous
infectious diseases. Nevertheless, 400,000 men were entered at the
hospitals during the campaign, in addition to those dangerously
wounded.”

Anitchkow thus testifies:[97]

“In such a rich country as France, and in such a splendid climate,
the army lost four times more from disease than from battles.
[Franco-Prussian War, 1870–71.] It is evident that the force of
modern arms ... presents less danger than infectious diseases and
other sicknesses inseparable from the rough life of large
camps.”[98]

An anonymous author, quoted on a preceding page, calls attention[99] to a matter of great importance in this connection, namely, the decreasing opportunity to carry the wounded off the battlefield and the consequent increasing terrors for the men who lie torn, feverish and unattended on the field lighted at night with searchlights and raked with machine guns, not only during the day, but also at night, making prompt rescue and surgical attention impossible. He writes:

“One of the most cruel features in future battles will be the
contrast between the great improvement in medical service, and the
increasing difficulty, despite the Red Cross, of giving aid to the
wounded.... His conclusion [the conclusions of Dr. Bardeleben, who
was Surgeon-General of the Prussian Army during the Franco-Prussian
War] was that the whole system of carrying away the wounded on
litters during the battle must be abandoned as altogether
impracticable. This I believe has proved to be generally true. And
now battles last a week or ten days! Something, of course, can be
done under cover of the night—though the custom of fighting at night
prevails more and more.... It is probable that, in spite of all
improvements in medicine and ambulance, the sufferings of the
wounded in the great battles in Manchuria and at the siege of Port
Arthur have been as great as, if not greater than, those of any war
of recent times.”

_Here it is to be emphasized by the young man who is thinking of joining the army that in spite of the loud outcry against the poor fellows of our army in the Cuban war in the way of criminally inefficient medical service, our great and extremely patriotic statesmen who love the common soldiers so dearly have in the twelve years since the war made no adequate preparation to prevent another such outrage._ Let the following stand as evidence of this statement:[100]

“_Under the existing organization it would be impossible to prevent
a breakdown of the Medical Department_ in case of a war involving
the mobilization of the volunteer forces, nor would it be possible
to spare the necessary Regular medical officers to apply in those
voluntary forces the modern sanitary measures so vital to the health
and efficiency of the troops, without which unnecessary suffering is
produced and disaster is invited.”

Thus also the New York _Times_:[101]

“The admission rate into the hospitals for the American Army is [now
in the time of peace] 1,250 per 1,000 each year. The _British
Annual_ notes that this enormous rate is well above that for the
French, German and Austrian armies, while the hospital lists for the
British Army show a rate of but 324 per thousand.”

However, all this, so far as personal danger is concerned, is of _small importance to the leading citizens_, because _they_—these leaders—will never lead or be led to war. They have nothing to fear from hissing bullet, burning fever, and the death-grip of devouring diseases in war. The plain, cheap wage-slave, the industrial draft-horses, the common men forced to keep books for a poor little salary, the fifteen-dollar-a-week clerks, the blistered miners, the tanned railroad men, the grease-stained machinists, the soil-stained farm toilers, these, all these and many others must learn one thing distinctly, and that thing is this: Modern human butchering machinery has been so highly developed, and disease in war is so hideous, that “our best citizens,” “our very _best_ people,” “our most successful men,” politely (and intelligently) decline all “glorious opportunities” to have their smooth fat bodies exposed to the steel-belching machines, or have their health ruined on the battlefield and in the “dead-house” called a military hospital. The common earth must not drink up their rich aristocratic blood; no rough army surgeon shall carve and slice and saw the “leading citizens” and carelessly toss their severed arms and legs into a bloody heap of flesh as a butcher tosses scraps and trimmings from steaks and chops from his cutting block. Why, _certainly_ not. It should be remembered that such people as bankers, big manufacturers, mine-owners, Senators, Congressmen, great editors and the like, do not have much physical exercise and at the same time they eat daintier food. They are not strong in muscle, except for golf, horseback riding, swimming, hunting trips, mountain climbing. They are softer in flesh than the wage-earner. They belong to the “very _best_ families,” and hence their flesh is finer, their “blue” blood is richer and more sacred than the wage-earner’s cheap red ooze. They are the social thoroughbreds, and the thoroughbreds believe that the thoroughbreds should be kept well out of danger, while just the common social draft-horses are rushed to the front where the modern butchering machinery is ready to mow down men by the thousands and befouling disease is ready to rot the unspilt blood.

My working class brothers, mark it well: In the gilded, palatial homes of the industrial masters, in their club houses, in their elegant business offices, in the legislative halls where “statesmen” meet,—there the so-called best people, the still-fed, stall-fed snobs and Caesars of society never for one moment consider the matter of going themselves to the front, never for an instant plan to go themselves into the cyclones of lead and steel or into the death-grasp of disease in war.

Never!

To them the idea is so—well, so _unkind_—also ridiculous.

Their minds are made up.

They will not go.

But you, you brothers of the working class, you who toil on and on for cheap clothing, cheap shelter and cheap food—you whose very lives are bought and sold on the installment plan, for wages day by day—you who are forced to become the socially despised human oxen—you—you will be forced to the front, blinded with flattery and confused with gay-colored flags and booming drums—you will virtually be forced to cut your own throats—forced to blow out your own brains and blood with these modern steel destroyers, and forced to expose your lives to the grim curse, Disease. You will groan and scream and slowly rot and die in a dingy hospital tent or shed far from those you love—laughed at (secretly) by the _prominent_ people who have _already_ made up _their_ minds not to go to war.

How long, O brothers of the working class, how long can you be seduced to slay yourselves?

Leading citizens will bring about and brag about the wars.

But you, my brothers, will fight the wars.

Grim Disease waits ready to give you her slimy embrace.

The cold steel machines are ready—ready for heated men.

Keep cool.

Beware of the “war fever.”

NOTICE CAREFULLY:—Your wealthy employers are not enlisting for the firing line. _They are immune from the fool’s fever._

Wait a little before you enlist. Think it over—till week after next.

YOU ARE SAFE—(JUST THINK OF IT)—ABSOLUTELY SAFE FROM DEATH IN THE NEXT WAR—IF YOU CAN KEEP OFF THE FIRING LINE TILL THE “PROMINENT GENTLEMEN” OF YOUR COMMUNITY HAVE BEEN ON THE FIRING-LINE FOR THIRTY DAYS.

Once again, brother, admit this thought to your brain:—The working class must be the protectors of their own class—always.[102]