A GREAT SPANISH BRIDGE, THE ALCÁNTARA AT TOLEDO. MAINLY THE WORK OF ARCHBISHOP TENORIO, A.D. 1380; FORTIFIED BY ANDRES MANRIQUE, A.D. 1484. ON THIS SITE A ROMAN BRIDGE WAS DESTROYED IN A.D. 871
Again, is there a glint of hope in the hysterical words that came to Charles Dickens when he wrote as follows, after a visit to Chillon?—“Good God, the greatest mystery in all the earth, to me, is how or why the world was tolerated by its Creator through the good old times, and wasn’t dashed to fragments.” You see, Dickens understood the terror of strife, but he made no effort to be calm with Darwin, who knew that the evolution of man could not have happened if nascent humanity had been unfit to endure the sufferings of its daily contests both against Nature’s violence and against a terrible fauna. Thus a pitiless character was thrust upon primitive man by the environment in which unlimited strife worked his development; and what the ages have evolved only a long future can amend in another evolution. What Dickens called unpardonable cruelty was to the distant past what strikes are to our own time, a weapon, a phase of war, approved by public opinion; and let us remember also that the cruelties which a hard life has bred, and turned into customs, have not shown an egotism fiercer than that primal necessity which has compelled life among the species to feed on lives. Dickens himself, while writing his condemnation of the past, was nourished by the death of many living things; was in himself a mysterious alembic that transmuted food, slain life, into benign health and action. Had he been logical in his feelings toward strife he would have had mercy on those forms of life that feed mankind; in other words, he would have died of hunger rather than be cruel; but, naturally, the manifestations of strife hateful to him were those that happened to be far off from his needs and sympathies. Yet he ought to have seen in the national efforts of his time that strife, though easy to rebel against, is woefully difficult to improve, since even kindness of heart when shown in promiscuous charities may unseat from their thrones in the public mind many good racial qualities, doing as much harm as ever was done by mediæval brutality.
“Let me think” should be everybody’s motto; nothing less than arduous thinking can save us from the cant and the sentimentalism which at the present time enfeebles England.[11] Let me give you an example. Yesterday I was talking to a friend about the mediæval battle-bridge. Putting before him Frank Brangwyn’s excellent sketch in water-colour of Parthenay Bridge, I said: “This fortified gateway belongs to the thirteenth century, and through its machicolations red-hot stones and boiling oil were poured down many times upon the head and shoulders of an attack. The gateway was built between 1202 and 1226, not without help from English money, for the Josselin-Larchêveques of Parthenay were allies of the Anjou Plantagenets, who gave us English kings; but a few years later our English troops were driven from Parthenay by Louis IX, called St. Louis. Can’t you imagine the assault? Would you care to rush that gateway in a thirteenth-century manner?”
My friend, a Quaker, was scandalised. “Rush the gateway?” he cried. “Red-hot stones and boiling oil! What imbecile savagery! Thank goodness, we are not savages now; life has improved wonderfully. To-day most men of sense fear war, and those who don’t fear it scorn it for moral reasons.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “Do you really believe that the history of this old war-bridge is more strifeful than the industrialism of to-day? Is it an act of peace when a trust ‘corners’ some article of food, or when a limited liability concern kills all competition from little neighbours, whose wives and families can’t get rid of hunger because business has failed? Those who attacked the bridge at Parthenay were armour-clad, while those who suffer in trade wars from the greed of co-operative egotisms have usually no self-defence, as their capital is small. Don’t you see, then, that from machicolated towers to millionaire tradesmen is but an evolution in social strife? Chivalry did try to put some generous feeling into mediæval warfare; and how much feeling of chivalry do you expect to find in the battles of industry? Are the strategic victories of finance more humane than were the politics of the Black Prince? Do they harm the defeated less, or more? And can you explain, old chap, why it is that Quakers, Jews, Hindus, though they fight for money with an astuteness that never flinches, prattle about peace after office hours? Their ideal of peace includes all warfare except that which employs battleships and big battalions. Myself, I would sooner lead an attack against the Porte St. Jacques on Parthenay Bridge than be opposed in trade by a wealthy firm of shrewd Quakers, whose great skill in the combats of trade would soon ruin me. I shouldn’t have a chance of doing credit to myself in a dangerous adventure.”
A WAR-BRIDGE OF THE MIDDLE AGES AT PARTHENAY IN FRANCE