DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22901#0294
278
HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [chap, vl
I have the honour to offer, to make you acquainted
with the sentiments of the most reflecting portion of
the Parsi community on this subject, I trust that
you will not consider any apology necessary, but that
I shall perform an acceptable service. I am sure all
must feel that great seriousness becomes such a meet-
ing as the present. Of none of the great evils which
afflict our race do we form such inadequate concep-
tions as of the evils of war. War is exhibited to us
in the dazzling dress of poetry, fiction, and history,
where its horrors are carefully concealed beneath its
gaudy trappings; or we see, perhaps, its plumes and
epaulettes, and harlequin finery, we hear of the mag-
nificence of the apparatus, the bravery of the troops,
•the glory of the victors, but the story of the wholesale
miseries and wretchedness and wrongs which follow
in its train is untold.
"What nation is not groaning under war-debts,
the greatest of national burdens! Had the incon-
ceivable sum wasted in the work of human butchery
been applied to promote individual comfort and
national prosperity, the world would not now be so
far behind as it is in its career of progress. But if
the earth has always groaned under the pecuniary
expense of war, how much more deeply, in a different
sense, has it groaned under the expense of human
life incurred in war! It is estimated that not less
than eighteen times the present population of the
HISTORY OF THE PARSIS. [chap, vl
I have the honour to offer, to make you acquainted
with the sentiments of the most reflecting portion of
the Parsi community on this subject, I trust that
you will not consider any apology necessary, but that
I shall perform an acceptable service. I am sure all
must feel that great seriousness becomes such a meet-
ing as the present. Of none of the great evils which
afflict our race do we form such inadequate concep-
tions as of the evils of war. War is exhibited to us
in the dazzling dress of poetry, fiction, and history,
where its horrors are carefully concealed beneath its
gaudy trappings; or we see, perhaps, its plumes and
epaulettes, and harlequin finery, we hear of the mag-
nificence of the apparatus, the bravery of the troops,
•the glory of the victors, but the story of the wholesale
miseries and wretchedness and wrongs which follow
in its train is untold.
"What nation is not groaning under war-debts,
the greatest of national burdens! Had the incon-
ceivable sum wasted in the work of human butchery
been applied to promote individual comfort and
national prosperity, the world would not now be so
far behind as it is in its career of progress. But if
the earth has always groaned under the pecuniary
expense of war, how much more deeply, in a different
sense, has it groaned under the expense of human
life incurred in war! It is estimated that not less
than eighteen times the present population of the