Sir: My friends ask me why I speak no word about this war, supposing—like vain friends as they are—that I might have some poor influence of intercession for filigree-work, French clocks, and other tender articles of vertu, felt at this moment to be in grave danger.
But, in the first place, I know that the just Fates will reward no intercession, either for human life or chinaware, until their will has been accomplished upon all of us. In the second, I know also that the German armies will spare what they can, and think they ought, without taking advice of me. In the third, I have said long ago—no one listening—the best I had to say on these matters.
But, after your notice to-day of the escape of M. Edouard Frère,[24] whose gentle power I was, I believe, the first to recognize publicly in England, it is possible that some of your readers may care to look back at what I wrote of modern war four years ago, and to know the aspect it takes to me, now that it has come to pass.
If you will reprint these few following sentences for me from the "Crown of Wild Olive,"[25] I shall be able to-morrow to put what I would add to them briefly enough to claim little space in your columns:
If you have to take away masses of men from all industrial employment—to feed them by the labor of others—to move them, and provide them with destructive machines, varied daily in national rivalship of inventive cost; if you have to ravage the country which you attack—to destroy, for a score of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbors; and if, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave fragments of living creatures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into clots of clay—what book of accounts shall record the cost of your work—what book of judgment sentence the guilt of it?
That, I say, is modern war—scientific war—chemical and mechanical war—worse even than the savage's poisoned arrow. And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than this is impossible now. It may be so; the progress of science cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities of destruction; and the brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder.
But the wonder has always been great to me that heroism has never been supposed consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes, but only with that of quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, old or new, has never taken any color of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the hungry and clothing the naked should ever become base businesses even when engaged in on a large scale. If one could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them anyhow? so that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race, who refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving them compulsory comfort, and, as it were, "occupying a country" with one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as much a victory to get a barren field sown as to get an eared field stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should "carry" them? Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained by push of spade as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are witty things to be thought of in planning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless.
And, then, observe farther, this true power, the power of saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent of territory. We are continually assuming that nations become strong according to their numbers. They indeed become so, if those numbers can be made of one mind. But how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep them from having north and south minds? Grant them unanimous, how know you they will be unanimous in right? If they are unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essentially the weaker they are. Or, suppose that they can neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, but can only be of no mind? Suppose they are a mere helpless mob, tottering into precipitant catastrophe, like a wagon-load of stones when the wheel comes off? Dangerous enough for their neighbors certainly, but not "powerful."
Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any more than upon number of population. Take up your masses, put the cluster of the British Isles beside the mass of South America, and then consider whether any race of men need consider how much ground they stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their standing-room. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools; and only that nation gains true territory which gains itself.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.
Denmark Hill, S.E., Oct. 6.