It is not
wonderful, then, that the usual effect of appeals for peace made
by neutrals is to produce mingled exasperation and amusement
among the belligerents. To the great majority of Europeans our
civil war was a shocking spectacle, and the persistence of the
North in carrying it on a sad proof of ferocity and lust of
dominion. To the great majority of those engaged in carrying it
on the struggle was a holy one, in which it was a blessing to
perish. Probably nothing ever fell more cruelly on human ears
than the taunts and execrations which American wives and mothers
heard from the other side of the ocean, heaped on the husbands
and sons whom they had sent to the battle-field, never thinking
at all of their slaying, but thinking solely of their being
slain; and very glad indeed that, if death had to come, it should
come in such a cause. If we go either to France or Germany
to-day, we shall find a precisely similar state of feeling. If
the accounts we hear be true--and we know of no reason to doubt
them--there is no more question in the German and French mind
that French and German soldiers are doing their highest duty in
fighting, than there was in the most patriotic Northern or
Southern home during our war; and we may guess, therefore, how a
German or French mother, the light of whose life had gone out at
Gravelotte or Orleans, and who hugs her sorrow as a great gift of
God, would receive an address from New York on the general
wickedness and folly of her sacrifice.
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