"It is true, my son, that war is a necessity of human nature and one cannot imagine nations who will not fight, that is to say, who are neither homicides, pillagers, nor incendiaries. Neither can you conceive a prince who is not in some measure a usurper. They would reproach him too much on that score, and they would despise him for it as one who was no lover of glory. For war is necessary to men; and is more natural to them than peace which is but war's interval. Thus one sees princes hurling their armies on one another on the worst of pretexts, and for the most futile of reasons. They invoke their honour, which is excessively touchy. A mere breath suffices to make a stain on it which cannot be washed save in the blood of ten, twenty, thirty, or a hundred thousand men, in proportion to the population of the contending principalities. If only one thinks of it, it is inconceivable that the honour of a prince can be cleansed by the blood of these unhappy beings, or rather one realises that it is a mere form of speech, void of meaning; but for words men go willingly to their death. What is yet more wonderful, is that a prince gains much honour from the theft of a province and the outrage that would be punished by death in the case of some daring private individual becomes praiseworthy if it is carried out with the most outrageous cruelty by a sovereign with the help of his hirelings."
My good master, having thus spoken, drew his box from his pocket and sniffed up a few remaining grains of rappee.
"Monsieur l'Abbé," I said, "are there no wars that are just, and fought for a good cause?"
"Tournebroche, my son," he answered me, "civilized nations have much overstrained the injustice of war and they have rendered it very iniquitous as well as very cruel. The first wars were undertaken for the establishment of tribes on fertile lands. Thus the Israelites conquered the land of Canaan. Hunger forced them to it. The advancement of civilization extended war to the conquest of colonies and foreign markets, as is seen in the example of Spain, Holland, England and France. Lastly, one has seen kings and emperors steal provinces of which they had no need, which they ruined, which they made waste, without profit to themselves and without other advantage than to raise pyramids and triumphal arches. And this abuse of war is the more odious as one must believe that nations are becoming more and more wicked by the advancement of the arts, or rather that war, being a necessity to human nature, is waged for its own sake when there is absolutely no reason for waging it.
"This reflection grieves me deeply, for I am disposed by my condition and inclination to the love of my fellow creatures. And what puts the finishing touch to my sadness, Tournebroche, my son, is that I find my snuff-box is empty, and want of snuff is where I feel my poverty the most."
As much to distract his thoughts from this personal trouble as to instruct myself in his teaching, I asked him if civil war did not seem to him the most detestable kind of war there was?
"It is odious enough," he replied, "but not so very inept, for members of a state when they come to blows between themselves have more chance of knowing why they fight than in the case where they go to war against a foreign people. Seditious and intestinal quarrels are usually born of the extreme wretchedness of the people. They are the result of despair, and the only issue left to the unhappy beings who may obtain thereby better conditions and sometimes even a hand in the game of ruling. But it is to be remarked, my son, that the more unhappy, and therefore excusable, are the insurgents, the less chance they have of winning the game. Starved and stupefied, armed but with their rage, they are incapable of great plans or of prudent considerations so that they are easily reduced by the prince. He has more difficulty in putting down rebellion among the great, which is to be detested, for it has not the excuse of necessity. In fine, my son, whether civil or foreign, war is execrable, and has a malignity that I detest."
XII
THE ARMY (concluded)
will show you, my son," said my good master, "in the condition of these poor soldiers who are going to serve their king, both man's shame and his glory. In fact, war sets us back and drives us to our natural savagery. It is the result of the ferocity that we have in common with the beasts; not only with lions and cocks, who bring a gallant bearing to it, but with little birds, such as jays and tits, whose ways are very quarrelsome, and even with insects, such as wasps and ants, who fight with a bloodthirstiness of the like of which the Romans themselves have left no example. The principal causes of war are the same in man and animal, who struggle with one another to gain or keep their prey, to defend their nest or their lair, or to gain a mate. There is no distinction in all this, and the rape of the Sabines perfectly recalls those duels between stags which make the woods bloody of a night. We have merely succeeded in lending a certain colouring to base and natural motives by the notions of honour with which we cover them, and without great exactitude at that. If we believe that we fight for very noble motives in these days, the nobility of them dwells entirely in the vagueness of our sentiments. The less the object of war is simple, clear, and precise, the more war itself is odious and detestable. And if it be true, my son, that we have come to killing one another for honour's sake, it is beyond all bounds. We have surpassed the cruelty of wild beasts, who do each other no injury without good reason. And it is only right to say that man is wickeder and more unnatural in his wars than are bulls or ants in theirs. But that is not all, for I detest armies less for the death they sow, than for the ignorance and stupidity that follow in their train. There is no worse enemy of the arts than a captain of mercenaries or marauders, and as a rule commanders are as unfitted for letters as are their soldiers. The habit of imposing his will by force makes your old soldier very awkward in speech, for eloquence has its source in the necessity of persuasion. Also, military men affect a disdain of speech and fine attainments. I remember having known at Séez in the days when I was librarian to the Bishop, an old captain, who had grown grey in harness and passed for a gallant man, wearing proudly a large scar across his face. He was an old ruffian, and had killed many a man and violated more than one nun quite good-humouredly. He understood his business fairly well and was very particular regarding the appearance of his regiment, which marched past better than any other. In short, a brave man and a good comrade, when it was question of draining a pot as well I saw at the inn of the Cheval Blanc, where many a time I held my own against him. Now it happened one night that I accompanied him (for we were good friends) while he was instructing his men how to find their way by the stars. He first let me have Monsieur de Louvois' ordinance on the subject, and as he had repeated it by heart for the last thirty years, he made no more mistakes than in his Pater or Ave. He started off by saying that the soldiers must begin by searching the heavens for the pole-star, which is fixed in relation to the other stars, which turn round it in the contrary direction to the hands of a watch. But he did not understand all he said. For after having repeated his sentence two or three times in a sufficiently imperious voice, he stooped and said in my ear: