"I levelled the city and its houses...I consumed them with fire ...after I had destroyed Babylon ...and massacred its population; I tore up its soil and threw it into the Euphrates." --Assyrian report Soldiers are recruited. Soldiers go to war. Soldiers kill in war. But is such killing cruel? If killing in war is cruel, then how does it affect the morale of the soldiers involved? If it is not wrong to kill an enemy, is it acceptable to burn the enemies home? Rape his women? Enslave his children? Tear up the soil of the Earth and throw it into the sea? If it is wrong to hurt non-combatants, then how does one stop soldiers from doing so? War opens the door to state sanctioned killing. Once the genie is out of the bottle what damage can it do? War could well be a Pandora's Box. Once opened it can not be closed before all manner of evil has come out. CRUELTY Perhaps the best place to start the investigation is a study of cruelty itself. Philip Hallie's 1969 book "Cruelty" is a good place to start. Hallie explores four examples of cruelty in western history: William Hogarth's various pictures on cruelty, the Marquis de Sade's books of "fun", the gothic horror novel's view of cruel, and the effect of slavery on cruelty in the US. The book itself is somewhat long and repetitive but its insights are useful. William Hogarth etched many picture series in the middle 18th century. Most of his works were meant to teach morale lessons. They are somewhat heavy handed in approach but that only makes their messages more clear. Hogarth was a religious moralist. He believed that harming others was a sin and that the eventual reward of sin was ruin. What is interesting in his work is how he saw cruelty progress. It started off small. In time it grew up to consume its parents. In 1751 Hogarth makes his four "Cruelty" prints. In the first picture, Tom Nero is ramming a walking stick up a bound dog's rectum. The "hero" is surrounded by other examples of cruelty to animals. The victim is in all cases made helpless. In the second picture, Tom Nero is beating a horse to death. The victim is again helpless but this time larger. In the background a child is being crushed by a barrel. No one raises a hand to stop Nero, so he progresses to the next stage. In the third picture, Tom has just killed his mistress when she refused to help him rob her master's house. Nero has a look of horror on his face to indicate that he realizes he has stepped over the bounds. The watch is being summoned and justice had. His mistress, Ann Gill, is helpless (dead), as is Nero himself (held waiting for the watch). In the last picture, Nero is dead. The rope around his neck indicates hanging as the cause of death. He lays of a table surrounded by medical students studying anatomy by cutting him up. Tom is himself helpless, like his mistress, in this picture. He is dead, and he suffers the wrath of vengeance for all his previous cruelties. The message then is obvious. Cruelty builds on itself. If cruelty is not stopped early, it escalates. The victim is always helpless, but eventually even the smallest of victims will unite to bring down someone who goes "too far." "Natures voice ...incites us to murderous acts ...The freest people are those who are most friendly to murder." So wrote the Marquis de Sade in 1795, at the height of the Reign of Terror. Interestingly though, when de Sade sat on a revolutionary tribunal he voted to not execute Aristos. For this vote, he was placed in prison himself. So what did he mean by what he wrote? De Sade comes out of a philosophy that viewed "nature" as all good. Politically, this meant that the government should stay out of natures way and let peoples individual drives take them where they will. De Sade simply carries the line of logic out further than other people are willing to go. He notices that death and killing happen naturally, thus they must be good. He savors the hunt, and the kill. Government should stay out of the way and let the "vigorous spirits" have their fun. Since the purpose of killing has no other reason for existence than excitement. The state sponcered killing of the Reign of Terror, is at odds with de Sade's views. The guillotine is too cold blooded and mechanical. He wants "powerful beings" to collide with helpless (but strangely willing) victims, in an orgasmic episode. Clearly, de Sade wants people to go "too far" in Hogarth's sense. He views the "collision" between people as vital for hot blooded nature to be fulfilled. In other words, M. de Sade is a very dangerous man. Sade wrote widely on the subject of cruelty, always in favor of it! Such works as "Philosophy in the Bedroom", "Juliette", "Justine", and "The 120 Days of Sodom" tell exactly what he would like to do. No need to go into details here. Suffice it to say it was unhealthy to be weak or helpless in an isolated castle with the Marquis. The theme remains from Hogarth. Victims are helpless. Victimizers are powerful people who use their power to hurt others. Cruelty builds on itself. And one must do it in an isolated castle since society at large will slam one in a prison for doing it in Paris (as the Marquis found out!) What de Sade adds is the notion that the victim in someway participates willingly in the cruelty. The victim becomes "enthralled" by the abuser. Much like a bird can become entranced by a snake. This may well be only in de Sade's fevered imagination (since most rape victims fight back - as is known by the characteristic wounds they get on their fore arms) but it is also possible that one could become fascinated by horror. Such fascination is better described in gothic horror stories of the 18th century. Gothic horror involves a simple formula. The victimizer is on the top of the power higherarchy. The victim is on the bottom, and thus "helpless." The abuser uses their power to entrap the victim. The victim is bedazzelled by their power, as is the abuser himself. It looks as though the victim can not win, and in fact participates by not running off. In the end of course the victims wins "by sheer percerverance." But before the moralistic, good beats evil, ending, one gets to witness Sadean cruelties. Why does one read such drivel? Are we really sadist after all? Or is it the fascination of power that holds our attention. In the book "Melmoth the Wanderer" the villain watches a ship smashed on the rocks. The sailors are drowning. He could easily save them but instead he utters a fascinating statement "Let them perish." Such cruelty attracts readers like moths to a flame. Today, vampire stories and games are all the rage, for the same reasons. People are enthralled by the power of the villain. Military historians are equally enthralled by such groups as the Nazis and other despots. They look so powerful. One wants to wear the same uniform, have the same style, talk the same talk as the anti-hero. While still being happy that they lost! So then cruelty is fascinating for people. Bystanders do slow down to look at car wrecks. The Rodney King beating tape get so much air time due to how well it holds people's attention. It is like the moth attracted to a flame. We love that which destroys us! The last example Hallie cited of cruelty is the institution of slavery in the US. Not many slaves were brought to North America (in perportion to the one who went to the Caribbean and Brazil). But enough came that society had to come up with ways to control large groups of men. They had to be kept powerless. To keep the slaves down (African American, Native American, and the few European American's in indentures) they were isolated from the rest of society. They were told to work or face certain punishment or death. They were told that they were better that the "White Trash" that lived on the independent farms nearby. They were treated sometimes better than their poor white neighbors and then put down again. The men were taught to never look a white man in the eye and never look at a white woman at all. The male slaves were given leave to be cruel to their women so long as it did not interrupt production. They were allowed to have a separate cultural life to a degree but not independence. On the flip side, white southern society trained its members to enforce slavery. Poor whites were told that slaves were lazy and shiftless. They were inferior to the pure European heritages of the free holders. The slaves were seen as evil, sex crazed monkeys. If they ran off, the poor whites were to help hunt them down. On the whole, the poor whites and blacks did not interact. Thus they grew to hate and distrust on another. The rich whites (land owners in the south, and shipping magnates of the north) who materially benefitted from slavery also altered their world views. Slavery was viewed as benign. It was a business, that generated profits. In fact, recent economic history has confirmed that slavery was a very profitable and viable economic system. The rich then had a lot to lose should the system change. Their wealth came from cheap labor. Whither the labor was white or black was of less consequence than the price. Thus whites and blacks were both kept down. Indians were kept down even more and thus are all but forgotten in the south. The elements of cruelty are all present. The victim is helpless/isolated. The victimizer is higher up in the higherarchy than the victim. Everyone involved becomes enthralled by the institution. Eventually, in the shape of the Civil War, the "evil" institution was destroyed. Or was it? I grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. My family never owned slaves and were thus ranked in amongst the "white trash" category. Some of my friends did come from former plantation or shipping families. Louisville has a large African American population (ie former slaves, save the odd Ethiopian here and there). Yet even 100 years after the emancipation proclamation the attitudes described above were still taught to me by society. Louisville has a distinct color line, between where European Americans and African Americans. The whites who live on the "wrong side of the tracks" are considered worse than the blacks. They are today's "white trash". When desegregation (school bussing) came to the city in the mid 70s. Hundreds of families moved over to where I lived in Southern Indiana to go to white schools. The hall mark of slavery, cheap labor, remains the main selling point of the south. Black labor is still cheaper than white labor. So can one say it is really gone. Slavery, as an example of cruelty, makes it clear how long lasting its effects are. The US is still not a good place to be black in. Or poor for that matter! So cruelty has several distinguishing features. It involves a strong person using that power to control another person. The violence of the system escalates over time, unless it is stopped by some outside force. The very power of cruelty fascinates us all and draws us further in. And finally, the effects of cruelty are very long lasting. Could this have an effect on morale? I think so. Back to Experimental Games Group # 28 Table of Contents Back to Experimental Games Group List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by Chris Engle This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com