all that is said in that noble letter of Lord Townshend's published
in your columns this morning--except only in its last sentence, "It
is time to protest."[14] Alas! if protests were of any use, men with
hearts and lips would have protested enough by this time. But they
are of none, and can be of none. What true words are worth any man's
utterance, while it is possible for such debates as last Monday's to
be, and two English gentlemen can stand up before the English Commons
to quote Virgil at each other, and round sentences, and show their
fineness of wrist in their pretty little venomous carte and tierce of
personality, while, even as they speak, the everlasting silence is
wrapping the brave massacred Danes?[15] I do not know, never shall
know, how this is possible. If a cannon shot carried off their usher's
head, nay, carried off but his rod's head, at their room door, they
would not round their sentences, I fancy, in asking where the shot
came from; but because these infinite masses of advancing slaughter
are a few hundred miles distant from them, they can speak their stage
speeches out in content. Mr. Gladstone must go to places, it seems,
before he can feel! Let him go to Alsen, as he went to Naples,[16]
and quote Virgil to the Prussian army. The English mind, judging by
your leaders, seems divided between the German-cannon nuisance and the
Savoyard street-organ nuisance; but was there ever hurdy-gurdy like
this dissonance of eternal talk?[17] The Savoyard at least grinds his
handle one way, but these classical discords on the double pipe, like
Mr. Kinglake's two tunes--past and present[18]--on Savoy and Denmark,
need stricter police interference, it seems to me! The cession of
Savoy was the peaceful present of a few crags, goats, and goatherds by
one king to another; it was also fair pay for fair work, and, in the
profoundest sense, no business of ours. Whereupon Mr. Kinglake mewed
like a moonstruck cat going to be made a mummy of for Bubastis. But we
saw the noble Circassian nation murdered, and never uttered word for
them. We saw the noble Polish nation sent to pine in ice, and never
struck blow for them. Now the nation of our future Queen calls to us
for help in its last agony, and we round sentences and turn our backs.
Sir, I have no words for these things, because I have no hope. It is
not these squeaking puppets who play before us whom we have to accuse;
it is not by cutting the strings of them that we can redeem our deadly
error.
We English, as a nation, know not, and care not to know, a single broad
or basic principle of human justice. We have only our instincts to
guide us. We will hit anybody again who hits us. We will take care of
our own families and our own pockets; and we are characterized in our
present phase of enlightenment mainly by rage in speculation, lavish
expenditure on suspicion or panic, generosity whereon generosity is
useless, anxiety for the souls of savages, regardlessness of those
of civilized nations, enthusiasm for liberation of blacks, apathy
to enslavement of whites, proper horror of regicide, polite respect
for populicide, sympathy with those whom we can no longer serve, and
reverence for the dead, whom we have ourselves delivered to death.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
DENMARK HILL, _July_ 6.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] Lord Townsend's letter was upon "The Circassian Exodus," and
pointed out that a committee appointed in 1862 with the object of
aiding the tribes of the Caucasus against Russia had failed in
obtaining subscriptions, whilst that of 1864, for relieving the
sufferers when resistance had become impossible, was more successful.
"The few bestowed their sympathy upon the struggle for life; the many
reserved theirs for the agonies of death.... To which side, I would
ask, do reason and justice incline?" After commenting on the "tardy
consolation for an evil which we have neglected to avert," and after
remarking that "in the national point of view the case of Poland is an
exact counterpart to that of Circassia," the letter thus concluded:
"Against such a state of things it is surely time for all who feel as I
do to protest."
[15] The debate (July 4, 1864) was upon the Danish question and
the policy of the Government, and took place just after the end
of a temporary armistice and the resumption of hostilities by the
bombardment of Alsen, in the Dano-Prussian war. Alsen was taken two
days after the publication of this letter. The "two English gentlemen"
were Mr. D'Israeli and Mr. Gladstone (at this time Chancellor of the
Exchequer), the latter of whom had quoted the lines from the sixth
Æneid (ll. 489-491):
"At Danaum proceres Agamemnoniæque phalanges
Ut vidêre virum fulgentiaque arma per umbras
Ingenti trepidare metu."
[16] In 1850, when, being at Naples, Mr. Gladstone interested himself
deeply in the cause and miserable condition of the political prisoners,
and subsequently addressed two letters on the subject to Lord Aberdeen
(see "Letters to Lord Aberdeen on the prisoners of the Neapolitan
Government:" Murray, 1851).
[17] The _Morning Post_ of July 6 contained amongst its leaders one on
Denmark and Germany, and another on London street-organs, the nuisance
of which had been recently brought before the House of Commons by Mr.
M. T. Bass (M.P. for Derby).
[18] Mr. Alexander William Kinglake, M.P. for Bridgewater. He spoke at
the above-mentioned debate, and had also taken strong interest and part
in the cession of Savoy to France by Sardinia in 1860.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 20, 1865.]
_THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION._[19]
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: Will you allow me, in this informal manner, to express what I
should have wished to express by signature of the memorial you publish
to-day from Huddersfield[20] respecting the Jamaica insurrection,
and to thank you for your excellent article of the 15th December on
the same subject. I am compelled to make this request, because I see
my friend Mr. Thomas Hughes has been abetting the Radical movement
against Governor Eyre; and as I employed what little influence I have
with the London workmen to aid the return of Mr. Hughes for Lambeth,
I may perhaps be thought to concur with him in every line of action
he may see fit subsequently to adopt. Permit me, then, once for all,
through your widely-read columns, to say that I did what I could
towards the return both of Mr. J. S. Mill and of Mr. Hughes,[21] not
because I held with them in all their opinions, or even in the main
principle of their opinions, but because I knew they had a principle
of opinions; that they were honest, thoughtful, and benevolent men;
and far worthier to be in Parliament (even though it might be in
opposition to many causes I had at heart) than any other candidates I
knew. They are my opponents in many things, though I thought better of
them both than that they would countenance this fatuous outcry against
Governor Eyre. But in most directions of thought and action they
are for Liberty, and I am for Lordship; they are Mob's men and I am
a King's man. Yes, sir, I am one of those almost forgotten creatures
who shrivel under your daily scorn; I am a "Conservative," and hope
forever to be a Conservative in the deepest sense--a Re-former, not a
De-former. Not that I like slavery, or object to the emancipation of
any kind or number of blacks in due place and time. But I understand
something more by "slavery" than either Mr. J. S. Mill or Mr. Hughes;
and believe that white emancipation not only ought to precede, but must
by law of all fate precede, black emancipation. I much dislike the
slavery, to man, of an African laborer, with a spade on his shoulder;
but I more dislike the slavery, to the devil, of a Calabrian robber
with a gun on his shoulder. I dislike the American serf-economy, which
separates, occasionally, man and wife; but I more dislike the English
serf-economy, which prevents men from being able to have wives at all.
I dislike the slavery which obliges women (if it does) to carry their
children over frozen rivers; but I more dislike the slavery which makes
them throw their children into wells. I would willingly hinder the
selling of girls on the Gold Coast; but primarily, if I might, would
hinder the selling of them in Mayfair. And, finally, while I regret
the need that may exist among savages in a distant island for their
governor to do his work sharply and suddenly on them, I far more regret
the need among men of race and capacity for the work of governors when
they have no governor to give it them. Of all dishonorable and impious
captivities of this age, the darkest was that of England to Russia, by
which she was compelled to refuse to give Greece a King when Greece
besought one from her, and to permit that there should be set on the
Acropolis throne no Governor Eyre, nor anything like him, but such
a shadow of King as the black fates cast upon a nation for a curse,
saying, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!"[22]
Let the men who would now deserve well of England reserve their
impeachments, or turn them from those among us who have saved colonies
to those who have destroyed nations.
I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. RUSKIN.[23]
DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 19.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The outcry against Governor Eyre for the course he took in
suppressing the negro insurrection at Morant Bay, Jamaica, in 1865, is
still within the memory of the general public. Mr. Ruskin attended and
spoke at the meetings of the Eyre Defence Fund, to which Mr. Carlyle
(see note at the end of this letter) gave his warm support. Amongst
those who most strongly deprecated the course taken by Governor Eyre
were, as this letter implies, Mr. John Stuart Mill (Chairman of the
Jamaica Committee) and Mr. Thomas Hughes.
[20] Signed by 273 persons resident in and near Huddersfield. (_Daily
Telegraph_, December 19, 1865.)
[21] Mr. Mill had been recently returned for Westminster, and Mr.
Hughes for Lambeth.
[22] The present king of Greece was only eighteen years of age when,
after the protocol of England, Russia, and France on the preceding day,
he accepted, June 6, 1863, the crown of Greece.
[23] It is of interest to remark that Mr. Carlyle, in a letter to Mr.
Hamilton Hume, Hon. Sec. of the "Eyre Defence Fund" (published in
the _Daily Telegraph_ of September 12, 1866), expressed himself as
follows: "The clamor raised against Governor Eyre appears to me to
be disgraceful to the good sense of England; ... penalty and clamor
are not the things this Governor merits from any of us, but honor and
thanks, and wise imitation.... The whole weight of my conviction and
good wishes is with you." Mr. Carlyle was, with Sir Roderick Murchison,
one of the two vice-presidents of the Defence Committee. (See "The
History of the Jamaica Case," by G. W. Finlason: London, 1869, p. 369.)
[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 7, 1870.]
_THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] M. Edouard Frère and Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur were allowed to leave
Paris and pass the lines of the Prussian army after the blockade of
the French capital had been begun. For Mr. Ruskin's early recognition
of M. Frère's power, see the "Academy Notes," No. II. (1856), p. 47,
where some "cottage studies" are spoken of as "quite unequalled in
sincerity and truth of conception, though somewhat dimly painted;"--No.
III. (1857), p. 58, where his pictures are said to "unite the depth of
Wordsworth, the grace of Reynolds, and the holiness of Angelico;"--and
No. IV. (1858), p. 33, where this last expression of praise is
emphasized and at some length explained.
[25] See for the first two paragraphs of extracts following pp. 170,
171 of the original, and §§ 102-3 of the 1873 edition of the "Crown of
Wild Olive;" for the third paragraph, pp. 116-118, and § 74; and for
the last two paragraphs, pp. 186, 187, and §§ 113, 114, respectively,
of those two editions.
[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 8, 1870.]
_THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR._
_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_
SIR: As I am always blamed if I approach my subject on any but its
picturesque side, it is well for me that in to-day's _Times_ I find
it announced that at Strasburg the Picture Gallery--with the pictures
in it?--the Library--with the books in it?--and the Theatre, with
certainly two hundred persons in it, have been burnt to the ground
under an auxiliary cannonade, the flames at night being "a tempting
target." It is true that in your columns I find the consolatory news
that the Parisians are repairing those losses by casting a bronze
Strasburg;[26] but if, as a poor art professor, I may venture an
opinion, I would fain suggest to them that if their own picture
gallery, with the pictures and bits of marble in it--Venus of Melos
and the like--and their own Library--Royal, Impériale, Nationale, or
whatever they now call it--should presently become tempting targets
also by the light of their own flames, the casting of a bronze Paris,
in even the most imposing of attitudes, will scarcely redeem their
loss, were it but to the admiring eyes of Paris herself.
There is yet another letter in the _Times_[27] of more importance than
the one from Strasburg. It is headed, "The Difficulties of Neutrality,"
dated Bonn, and anticipates part of what I was going to say; for the
rest, the lessons of the war, as I read them, are briefly these.
As to its cause, neither the French nation nor their Emperor brought on
war by any present will of their own. Neither of them were capable of a
will at all--far less of executing it. The nation has since declared,
by submission, with acclaim, to a change of Government which for the
time renders all political treaty with it practically impossible,
that during the last twenty years it has been deceived or subdued
into obedience to a man for whom it had no respect, and who had no
hereditary claim to the throne. What "will" or responsibility of action
can be expected from a nation which confesses this of itself? On the
other hand, the Emperor, be his motives never so selfish, could only
have hoped to save his dynasty by compliance with the passions of a
populace which he knew would overthrow it in the first hour of their
mortification. It is in these vain passions and the falsehoods on
which they have fed that we must look for the deep roots of all this
misery. Since the days of the First Empire, no cottage in France has
been without its Napoleonic picture and legend, fostering one and the
same faith in the heart of every peasant boy, that there is no glory
but in battle; and since the founding of the Second Empire no street
of any city has risen into its foolish magnificence without collateral
proclamation that there was no pleasure but in vice.
Then, secondly, for the actual question of the war: it is a simple
and testing struggle between pure Republicanism on the one side,
expressed in the most exquisite, finished, and exemplary anarchy, yet
achieved under--earth--and one of the truest Monarchies and schools of
honor and obedience yet organized under heaven. And the secret of its
strength, we have to note, is essentially pacific; for all the wars
of the Great Friedrich would have passed away resultless--as great
wars usually do--had it not been for this pregnant fact at the end
of them: "All his artillery horses are parted into plough-teams, and
given to those who otherwise can get none" (Carlyle, vol. vi., first
edition, p. 350)--that 21st book on the repair of Prussia being of
extant literature the most important piece for us to read and digest
in these days of "raising the poor without gifts"--never asking who
first let them fall--and of turning workmen out of dockyards, without
any consciousness that, of all the stores in the yard, the men were
exactly the most precious. You expressed, Sir, in your article on the
loss of the Captain,[28] a feeling common, I suppose, for once, to
all of us, that the principal loss was not the iron of the ship, but
the five hundred men in her. Perhaps, had she been of gold instead of
iron plate, public mourning might have inclined itself to the side
of the metal. But how if the whole British public should be itself
at this instant afloat in a captain-less Captain, built of somewhat
dirty yet substantial gold, and in extremest peril of turning bottom
upwards? Which will be the end, indeed, unless the said public quickly
perceive that their hope must be, not in docks nor ships, but in men.
They, and they only, are our guarantee for territory. Prussia herself
seems as simple as the rest of us in her talk of "guarantees." Alsace
and Lorraine, if dishonestly come by, may be honestly retaken; but if
for "guarantee," why these only? Why not Burgundy and Anjou--Auvergne
and the Limousin? Let France lose what she may, if she can but find a
Charles and Roland among her children, she will recover her empire,
though she had been beaten back to the Brêche; and if she find them
not, Germany has all the guarantee she needs in her own name, and in
her own right hand.
Let her look to it, now, that her fame be not sullied. She is pressing
her victory too far--dangerously far, as uselessly. The Nemesis
of battle may indeed be near her; greater glory she cannot win by
the taking of Paris, nor the overrunning of provinces--she only
prolongs suffering, redoubles death, extends loss, incalculable and
irremediable. But let her now give unconditional armistice, and offer
terms that France can accept with honor, and she will bear such rank
among the nations as never yet shone on Christian history.
For us, we ought to help France now, if we ever did anything, but
of course there remains for us only neutrality--selling of coke,
and silence (if we have grace enough left to keep it). I have only
broken mine to say that I am ashamed to speak as being one of a nation
regardless of its honor alike in trade and policy; poor, yet not
careful to keep even the treasure of probity--and rich, without being
able to afford itself the luxury of courage.
I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.
_Oct._ 7.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The _Daily Telegraph_ of Oct. 7 contained amongst its Paris news
that of the decision of the Government of National Defence to cast a
statue of the city of Strasburg in bronze, in memory of its "heroic
resistance to the enemy during a murderous siege of fifty days."
[27] This letter was signed "W. C. P.," who, after stating himself to
be an English resident in Germany, proceeded to lament the changed
position of England in the opinion of foreign nations, and especially
in that of the Germans, who no longer spoke of her, as formerly, "with
affectionate admiration or even envious respect." "And I must confess,"
concluded the letter, "that I find it difficult to answer them; for it
seems to me that we have already good reason to say, in reference to
the present struggle, 'All is lost save money.'"--_Times_, October 7,
1870.
[28] The turret ship "Captain" foundered off Cape Finisterre on
September 7, 1870. For the articles alluded to, see the _Daily
Telegraph_ of September 12 and following days.
[From "Fraser's Magazine," July, 1876, pp. 121-123.]
_MODERN WARFARE._
_To the Editor of "Fraser's Magazine."_
SIR: The article on modern warfare in your last June number[29]
contains statements of so great importance to public interest, that
I do not hesitate to ask you to spare me space for a question or two
respecting it, which by answering, your contributor may make the facts
he has brought forward more valuable for practical issues.
The statistics[30] given in the second column of page 695, on which
P. S. C. rests his "incontestable" conclusion that "battles are less
sanguinary than they were," are incomplete in this vital respect,
that they furnish us only with the proportion, and not with the total
number, of combatants slain. A barricade fight between a mob of rioters
a thousand strong, and a battery of artillery, in which fifty reformers
get shot, is not "less sanguinary" than a street quarrel between three
topers, of whom one gets knocked on the head with a pewter pot: though
no more than the twentieth part of the forces on one side fall in the
first case, and a third of the total forces engaged, in the second. Nor
could it be proved by the exhibition of these proportions of loss, that
the substitution of explosive shells, as offensive weapons, for pewter
pots, rendered wounds less painful, or war more humane.