Yours truly
B. F. Dunelm.[[40]]
I had kept up a correspondence with the chairman of the Congress at Rome, Minister Ruggero Bonghi. Here is one of his letters (the original in Italian):
Anagni, July 9, 1892
Dear Friend:
Since you permit me to call you “friend,” I will no longer give you any other name, for there is none tenderer. And the consciousness that I am speaking to a friend sweetens writing for me, makes it almost seem pleasanter to me than wandering about the fields to breathe in the fresh breezes which blow here on the heights of the Apennines in these early morning hours—here where I now, as Petrarch says, “dwell serious and sad” (doglioso e grave or seggio), and where in days gone by so much martial rage was let loose, while to-day such deep peace and quiet reign. Here in this ancient Anagni whose origin is lost in gray antiquity, which took the highest place in a people that had been subjected by Rome, and which was once the home of haughty popes who from their dwelling-place there ruled the world—here, I say, I indulge in considerations about the fortunes of my country, about the difficult remedies for its ailments; and withal, in my orphanage I watch the little girls grow up. And I instruct them so that when they have grown big, and return to their families, they may have an influence upon them to make them better and may turn the future into a more friendly channel....
It almost seems to me, dear friend, that I am thus doing a work perhaps more useful—though it may be insignificant—than the work of very many who carry their chatter into the assemblies, and their passions and infatuations into the privy council. And when I think of you I rise to that ideal of unity and peace which lives in your spirit and your heart, and which bears witness to nobility of soul in those who can grasp it and love it,—while despising it, deriding it, and denying it, attests the opposite.
What has war accomplished here? It has laid waste these landscapes, and often in the course of the centuries scattered the inhabitants so that even the traces of their habitations have disappeared. Often, also, in the course of the centuries, Anagni and the Secco valley above which it lies have risen; and as often it has been again reduced by the power of arms and the ambition of the great. And now the valley is unhealthy; one can scarcely get safety from its miasmas up here, about five hundred meters above the level of the sea.
I have an idea, and I am almost afraid to express it, my dear lady. It is this: I believe that Rome, by which the first conquest of these territories was effected, also brought the first misfortune upon them. Either the whole history of the first centuries of Rome is false, or else the peoples which first fell under the Roman yoke were previously happier and more numerous and lived on healthier and more fruitful lands and in more widely spread residences than after that. What benefit has war realized here or anywhere else?
If in the deeds to which it constrains men not all is evil, and if many a virtue shines out in connection with them, this is because man, savage and—I feel like saying—bestial as he may become, still never wholly ceases to be human, and in some way mitigates the harm which his own work inflicts. If war has done anything good in any respect, this has been done, one may say, in its own despite and contrary to its intent. Even if many instincts impel man to war, how much nobler are those that repel him from it! How august sounds the voice that would restrain him from it, in comparison to the angry shout that eggs it on! To-day I read the maxim of old Lao-Tse: “If two armies of equal strength are pitted against each other, the victory belongs to that one whose leader was the more merciful.”