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.”
That is—unfortunately—not correct. But it is one of those human
illusions that are more valuable than a truth, because they prove that
man feels ruth at the use of arms, that his conscience is not easy
even when he is compelled to use them, and that he seeks the basis for
victory in some virtue, in some feeling that might absolve him. We
promoters of peace, who work for it with glowing zeal, have in the
last analysis no other object than this,—that man shall become _wholly
human_.
And, as I am in the habit of ultimately ending my letters to my
friends, I make an end of this one. Have a little affection for your