Page:Clarence S. Darrow - Realism in Literature and Art (1899).djvu/26

 26 but always in their comrades' arms, and listening to the shouts of victory that filled the air, and thinking of the righteous cause for which they fought and died. In the last moments they dreamed of pleasant burial yards at home, and of graves kept green by loving, grateful friends; and a smile of joy shone on their wasted faces that was so sweet it seemed a hardship not to die in war. They painted peace as a white winged dove settling down upon a cold and fading earth. Between the two it was plain which choice a boy would make, and thus art served the state and king.

But Verestchagin painted war; he painted war so true to life that as we look upon the scene we long for peace. He painted war as war has ever been, and as war will ever be—a horrible and ghastly scene, where men, drunk with blind frenzy, which rulers say is patriotic pride, and made mad by drums and fifes and smoke and shot and shell and flowing blood, seek to maim and wound and kill, because a ruler gives the word. He paints a battlefield, a field of life and death, a field of carnage and of blood; and who are these that fight like fiends and devils driven to despair? What cause is this that makes these men forget that they are men, and vie with beasts to show their cruel thirst for blood? They shout of home and native land,