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NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.
The first edition of this pamphlet was published less than two years
ago. It consisted of three thousand copies, most of which were sold
in the first two or three months. For some time the pamphlet has
been out of print, and the present moment seems opportune for
issuing a second edition.
I have retained the major portion of the first edition, only excluding
a few paragraphs of temporary value. For these I have substituted
remarks on the current aspects of the question; and by broadening
the printed page I have found room for other additions which are
chiefly statistical, and I hope always practical.
Europe is at this moment in a feverish condition. Rumors of im
pending war startle us day by day, and those who are supposed to
know (whether they do or not) foretell a terrific struggle in the
immediate future between all the leading powers. This much, at least,
is certain; the prodigal preparations that are being made everywhere
for war must sooner or later precipitate a terrible crisis. “ How oft,”
as Shakespeare says, “the means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done.”
Bismarck and Moltke demand an increase of forty thousand men in
the effective German army, and General Boulanger demands a fresh
vote of an indeterminate number of millions to strengthen the French
military machine. Already the armies of these two countries amount
to nearly a million and a half each, with further available forces of
nearly another million in case of necessity. It is. in fact, stated on
good authority that France has cavalry and artillery ready for two
million infantry, all of whom would be armed with new repeating
rifles. The tension is too great to last. Without mutual disarmament,
France and Germany will certainly come into collision. Yet their
dread of fighting each other singly is so great, that they will strive to
embroil the whole continent before they take the field. Such an enter
prise is unfortunately too easy, for there is no love lost between Italy
and France, the Turkish empire only awaits its final dismemberment,
Austria cannot well stand alone, and England and Russia are almost
hereditary enemies.
Turning our attention homewards, we find a growing clamor for
further expenditure on our Army and Navy, and a constant pressure
.on Ministers by the Court party in the interest of anything but peace.
Lord Salisbury has been offering our alliance to Austria, which is an
implied menace to Russia; and his diplomacy has been carried on with
the same sublime contempt of Parliament and the People which is
evinced by all our Governments alike. We have been threatened
with a Salisbury-Victoria war of inconceivable dimensions, for the sake
of replacing the brother of the Queen’s latest son-in-law on the
Bulgarian throne.
In these circumstances I feel that the time is indeed opportune for a
new edition of my pamphlet, whose influence, however slight, will I
am confident be in favor of peace and progress.
�( 2 )
THE SHADOW OF THE SWOBD.
■------ *------The man-eating monster of fiction is terrible enough to romantic
young minds under the spell of the story-teller, but he is almost genial
and harmless in comparison with the real Ogre of war. Generation
after generation this frightful monster gorges himself on human flesh
and blood, solacing his intervals of satiety with the wine of human
tears. And every tune he prepares for a fresh repast, he demands a
larger provision for his ravenous appetite. What struggles in previous
history equalled in slaughter the contest between North and South in
America, or the later death-wrestle between France and Germany?
Or how could the fiercest combats between ancient empires, even that
of Rome and Carthage, rival the fight between England and Russia
which so many of our journalists have encouraged us to begin with
a liofit heart ? Such a struggle would have kindled the flames of war
from India to the Baltic, and probably set all Europe in an unparalled blaze. Surely the Devil’s cauldron was never heated and
stirred with such levity as now. A crowd of grinning apes playing
with fire in a powder factory were not more grotesquely terrible.
Awful as the Ogre’s blood-tax is, his impositions between meals are
even worse. In the palmy days of the Roman Empire, less than four
hundred thousand troops sufficed to preserve the peace of the world ;
and, if we except petty frontier tussels with barbarians, they often did
so for thirty or forty years together. But Europe has now its.standing
armies, whose total is reckoned in millions, and the peace is broken
three or four times in a generation. Let it also be remembered that
the Roman soldier was a worker as well as a fighter, helping to carry the
practical civilisation of Rome wherever her eagles floated. Our high
roads, the arteries of pedestrian and vehicular circulation through
England, were first made by the imperial legions, who used the pick
and the spade more frequently than the sword. But the armies of
modern Europe are all idlers. Their sole business is destruction. In
peace they consume without producing, and in war they devour like
the locust and the caterpillar. They are not the lame, the blind, the
maimed, and the imbecile, but the young flower of the male population,
withdrawn from productive industry, and supported by the labor of
others while they “ learn the art of killing men.” We shall consider
this economical aspect of the subject more fully presently; meanwhile
let us deal with the causes of war.
_
“ A background of wrath,” says Carlyle, “ which can be stirred up to
the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man, in every creature.
True, and this fierce instinct may be held to account directly for the
combats of animals, for primitive human fighting, for duels among
“ civilised ” peoples, and for street fights and all personal brawls. But
it accounts only indirectly for modern warfare. “ Civilised wager of
�( 3 )
battle ” is the game, not of peoples, but, to use Earl Beaconsfield’s
phrase, of “sovereigns and statesmen.” Cowper long ago remarked
that war is a game which kings would not play at were their peoples
wise. The fact is, our brute instincts, racial prejudices and national
vanities are systematically traded on by our rulers. Nothing is so
cheap and easy as a “foreign policy,” as nothing is so hard as a
domestic one ; and nothing so diverts attention from difficult home
affairs as the simple expedient of a foreign broil. If declaring war
lay with Parliament, the juggle would be more arduous. But it does
not. The Government hurries us into war before we can discuss its
policy, and when the matter comes up for debate, not only have things
gone too far for interference, but the question resolves itself into one
of confidence in the ministry, instead of approval of the particular
measure. By that time also the beast in us has tasted blood. The savage
thirst for more is upon us. Illustrated papers and daily war corres
pondence familiarise us with slaughter, and the sane voice of the
keepers of reason is drowned in the clamor of the wild beasts of passion,
scenting carnage and carrion.
Society is now too complex for the simple rules of interpretation
which apply to primitive quarrels. The Crimean war, for instance,
was not fought because Englishmen and Russians were animated by
mutual hatred. Dynastic and political reasons, as usual, played the
chief part in the prelude to that bloody drama. Had Louis Napoleon,
after usurping the French throne, not required an alliance with some
old European monarchy to rehabilitate his name and veil the fact of
his being & parvenu emperor, the struggle of thirty years ago might
never have commenced. As for Italy’s share in the war, it is notorious
that Cavour urged the King of Sardinia into action simply to gain a
military reputation for the kingdom, as a first step to the unification of
the peninsula under a native sovereign; and the Austro-Italian war
naturally followed the success of these tactics. Even before the
Franco-German war, notwithstanding the cry of a Berlin raised by
hired mouchards in the streets of Paris, it is not true that every French
man was yearning to grasp a German throat. The mass of the peasantry
were criminally hoodwinked. They voted “Yes” for the Empire,
thinking it meant Peace, and fancying, as they were told, that the
Republican opposition wished to drive the country into costly and
perilous foreign adventures.
Let us go back still further, and we shall see evidences of the same
truth. Eighty years ago Nelson told his seamen that they had but
one duty—to love old England and hate every Frenchman like the
Devil. Such a sentiment was of course loudly acclaimed, but it was
after all a cultivated sentiment. When Pitt began operations against
France, he found it necessary to tune the pulpit, and bribe and intimi
date the press in England. In due time his policy was successful.
The people were grossly abused, and after a few years’ fighting, when
their blood was up, they were ready for anything in the shape of war.
France merely stood to them as a synonym for enemy. They cursed
and hated Frenchmen with the spirit of a bull rushing at a red cloak ;
�( 4 )
the cunning matador who flourished the scarlet having his own ends to
serve through the creature’s madness.
We may consider it a fact that war is the game of “ sovereigns and
statesmen.” Grimly and strongly, as is his wont, Carlyle has expounded
the modern meaning of war in a famous passage in Sartor Resartus.
Let us hear him :—
“ What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and up
shot of war ? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in
the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From
these, by certain ‘ Natural Enemies ’ of the French there are successively
selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge,
at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them ; she has, not without
difficulty aud sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to
crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the
weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much
weeping and swearing, they are selected: all dressed in red; and shipped
away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the
South of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in
the south of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum
drudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort,
the two parties come into actual juxtaposition ; and Thirty stands fronting
Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word ‘Fire!'is
given; and they blow the souls out of one another; and in place of sixty
brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty d®ad carcases, which it must
bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the
Devil is, not the smallest; .nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, uncon
sciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then?
Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one
another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.”
Carlyle is right. That is the truth about modern war. Democracy
has appeared on the scene of politics, but it has not fully assumed its
role. The drama is still played by the old actors of the upper classes,
and will be so, until the new company is properly formed and cast for
the various parts. Even in France, although the empire is gone, the
old ruling classes are still in power. They defer somewhat to the
Democracy in home affairs, but in foreign matters they treat it
with contemptuous disregard. They carry France into all sorts of
adventures for their own benefit. The Empire went to Algeria, and
the Republic goes to Tunis. Louis Napoleon sent armies to Mexico,
and Jules Ferry sends them to China. The motive is the same in both
cases; the French deputies are cajoled and manoeuvred in the same
way; and the French people are fooled and plundered with the same
easy impudence. It requires a Hercules to clean out an Augean stable.
When a leader of Gambetta’s greatness and force arises again, there
may be some hope, if he turns his back on the selfish exploiters of
society, sets his face resolutely to the people, and stretches out his
hands to them for salvation.
The world’s peace will never be secure until the Democracy takes
the reins of power into its own hands. Parliaments will be less ready
to declare war than Governments. Men will vote against war when
�the decision lies with them, who would not vote against their party
when hostilities have begun, and it is too late to undo the mischief
without overturning the ministry. The formalities of public debate
would also allow a pause for reason to assert itself. The first passionate
impulse of revenge would have time to subside, and wisdom,
justice and humanity would gain a hearing.
At present we are “ rushed ” into war. The Sovereign has the power
of declaring war, and in many cases it is beyond doubt that royalty is
largely responsible for the inception and development of international
quarrels. Was it not Lord Palmerston who had to threaten the late
Prince Consort for intermeddling with the négociations between
England and Russia ? And was it not the Court party, as well as the
bondholders, that incited Mr. Gladstone to begin military operations
in Egypt, in order that the Duke of Connaught, safely sheltered under
Lord Wolseley’s wing, might earn a little cheap glory and win a few
bastard laurels ? This is the kind of backstairs influence which our
effete monarchy now wields, to our perpetual loss and disgrace. The
constitutional power of the Soverign to declare war is, of course, never
exercised without the advice and consent of her responsible ministers ;
in other words, the Queen no more actually declares war than she
actually appoints bishops. The Cabinet is really supreme, and these
officials take advantage of a constitutional fiction to carry matters with
a high hand. In domestic business they are obliged to consult Parlia
ment before they can move a step ; in foreign affairs they act first and
consult it afterwards. Even then it is only because they need its
endorsement for their acceptances. A vote of censure may be moved
and «my be passed upon them, as we all know ; but what Ministry fears
such a contingency ? Earl Beaconsfield did as he pleased until the
country flung him from office, and he smiled at Parliamentary votes of
censure. Mr. Gladstone was just as little terrified by them. He knew
that “ the party ” would stick to him through thick and thin. They do
not like the expense of an election ; they trust to the chapter of acci
dents to pull the Government through its troubles before the fateful
day of reckoning ; and meanwhile they pacify their consciences by a
few timid, ambiguous speeches, and a trimming side-vote of entirely
harmless protest.
All that remains to Parliament is the “ power of the purse-strings,”
which is a ghastly sham, for what Government that can defy votes of
censure need fear a stoppage of supplies? A few Radicals might
challenge a division, and their action might produce a considerable
moral effect on the country, but there it would end. They could no
more check the Government than a road-stone checks the cart-wheel.
There is a jolt, but down comes the wheel again, and steadily revolves
its course. The fact is, the “ power of the purse-strings ” is one of
the worst of the many shams of our boasted constitution. It meant
something when the Sovereign really did declare war, and solicited
money from the people’s representatives to carry it on ; but it is
absolutely meaningless now that the leaders of those very repre
sentatives perform that function under a thin disguise.
�( 6 )
Before long this question will emerge into the field of practical poli
tics, and become a burning one indeed. It may be true, as Burke
said, that “ Statesmen are placed on an eminence that they may have
a larger horizon than we can possibly command.” But the extraordin
ary growth of the modern press, and the spread of education and
intelligence, since Burke’s time, have greatly diminished that advantage.
The time has gone by for the “ confidence trick ” in politics. Secret
service money and diplomacy will soon have to go together. Demo
cracy will demand that all its business be transacted in public. It will
not permit a handful of politicians at discretion
“To open
The pui’ple testament of bleeding war.”
It will insist on that power being vested in the whole nation, through
its elected representatives. And such a wise and just change will be
one of the best guarantees of peace.
Following Carlyle, Mr. Ruskin has impeached the governing classes
in respect to war. In the second letter of Fors Clavigera, he styled
the upper classes the great Picnic Party, and inquired what they had
done for the “ lower orders ” they lord it over with such serene
audacity. “They have,” he said, “spent four hundred millions of
pounds here in England within the last twenty years—how much in
France and Germany I will take some pains to ascertain—and with
this initial outlay of capital they have taught the peasants of Europe —
to pull each other’s hair.”
No doubt the upper classes furnish good fighting men, just like the
lower classes, for brute courage is common enough, and, as John Bright
says, any quantity of it can be gotfora shilling a day. YetTommy Atkins
dies as well as his officer, only he has nothing to do with the war
except risking his life, all the direction and all the glory and profit
resting with his superiors.
Go through the Peerage and see what an enormous number of
military and naval posts are held by its scions. They command our
forces, they get the lion’s share of pay, they shine in the Gazettes, and
they receive all the honors and rewards worth having. Poor Tommy
Atkins dies unannaled and unknown, or if he survives, has to content
himself with the reflection that virtue is its own reward. His wife and
children (if the celibate rule of the army for privates allows him those
luxuries) are left to semi-starvation or vice or crime, unless they gravi
tate to the workhouse. Tommy had much better be at home earning
an honest living, as he himself generally knows ; but he goes abroad
to fight the battles of the upper classes because their villainous laws
have starved him into the able-bodied citizen’s last resource.
Those upper classes, from the Queen to the humblest member of
Society (with a capital SQ, being divorced from honest industry, are
naturally predatory and nomadic in character, and they are ever seek
ing to gratify their tastes in person or by proxy. They inherit from
Feudal times the prejudice in favor of fighting men. They love Mili
�( 7 )
tarism and hate Industrialism, which has been supplanting it for cen
turies and will finally extinguish it. A salient, and in some respects a
superior type of them, was the late Colonel Burnaby. This “ dashing
fellow slipped off to the Soudan without leave and fought there with
out a commission. He had no more business with our troops than he
most perfect stranger. He was driven there solely by his love of
fighting. His motives were no more respectable than a tiger s, and he
died at last appropriately stuck like a pig. One of his ambitions was
to enter Parliament, where the Fighting Interest is already represented
by a hundred and sixty-eight members. Add to this that two hundred
and seventy-two members are connected with the Peerage by birth or
marriage, and you will easily understand how England is so frequently
pushed into war. Remember too that Her Majesty has a passion for
soldiers, and that when she breaks the monotony of her seclusion, it is
usually to review her troops or decorate a few “ heroes ” who have
distinguished themselves on the battle-field.
Mr. Bright once said that without declaring all wars unjustifiable,
he would like to see a single war justified. It was a request very diffi
cult to comply with. Every war we enter upon is perfectly righteous,
but somehow the historian afterwards writes them all down as crimes
or mistakes. Self-defence is a natural instinct; it never can be eradi
cated, and it never should. But it implies an aggressor; and conse
quently all justification of war on the one side only serves to heighten
its guiltiness on the other. A great conqueror is only another name
for a great criminal. Nature quietly buries and conceals every trace
of his ravages. Would that the world could as soon forget him, or
remember him only to condemn.
Priests may consecrate our banners, without regard to the merits of
the side on which they are ranged, or the awful scenes over which
they float; every regiment may carry its chaplain for ghostly succor ;
and the Church may solicit God’s blessing on every bloody enterprise
we engage in. But the teachers of religion cannot decree right and
wrong, nor have they any magic to transform crime into virtue. “ The
primal duties shine aloft like stars ” beyond the reach of chance and
change, however momentarily obscured by clouds of incense from a
thousand altars. And if the ministers of the Prince of Peace cannot
see the monstrous wickedness of war, there happily remains enough
instinctive justice and mercy in the breasts of heretics to brand it as a
capital crime against humanity.
Alas! how few realise the horror of war. The Romance of War is
more easily imagined—the glowing uniforms, the shining arms, the
prancing steeds, the martial music, and heroes contending for glory!
And pulses thrill on reading feats of arms, and blood glows at the
record of a “ splendid charge.” But, as Dickens wrote—
‘ 1 When the ‘splendid charge’ has done its work, and passed by, there
will be found a sight very much like the scene of a frightful railway accident.
There will be the full complement of backs broken in two ; of arms twisted
wholly off ; of men impaled upon their own bayonets ; of legs smashed up
�( 8 )
like bits of firewood; of heads sliced open like apples; of other heads
crunched into soft jelly by the iron hoofs of horses ; of faces trampled out
of all likeness to anything human. That is what skulks behind a ‘ splendid
charge.’ ”
Now let us turn from the graphic novelist to the experienced
journalist. This is what Dr. Russell, the famous Times war correspon
dent, wrote from the battlefield of Sedan : —
“ Let your readers fancy masses of colored rags glued together with blood
and brains, and pinned into strange shapes by fragments of bones. Let them
conceive men's bodies without heads, legs without bodies, heaps of human
entrails attached to red and blue cloth, and disembowelled corpses in
uniform,' bodies lying about in all attitudes with skulls shattered, faces
blown off, hips smashed, bones, flesh and gay clothing all pounded together
as if brayed in a mortar, extending for miles . . . and then they cannot, with
the most vivid imagination, come up to the sickening reality of that butchery.”
O the glorious Romance of War! Listen. Thirty thousand skeletons
of Russian and Turkish soldiers were shipped to England in 1881
as ma mire!
Well does Byron sing of war:
“ Lo! where the giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;
Restless it rolls, now fixed, and now anon
Flashing afar,—and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done.”
The poet’s image is daring, yet how true ! Let our own brutalities in
the Soudan witness. The adult male population of whole tribes slaugh
tered ; women amongst the dead, and boys grasping a spear; wives
and maidens ravished by our Turkish auxiliaries ; peaceful villages
burnt to the ground because the inhabitants did not wait to welcome
us ; miles of desert sand cemented with blood and strewn with corpses,
and thousands of desert vultures screaming joyously at their unwonted
feast.
War is just in self-defence, or in defence of a neighbor unjustly
attacked. We are not of those who believe in the refusal of aid
between nations in all circumstances. The sword may be, for some
time yet, as necessary as the lancet, but it should never be drawn
except against the enemies of mankind. “ The blood of man,” said
Burke, “ should never be shed but to redeem the blood of man. It is
well shed for our friends, for our country, for our kind. The rest is
vanity ; the rest is crime.”
When any of these great duties call us we should be ready to defend
them ; and if ever England were menaced by a brutal invader, the most
peaceful citizen might well wish her to be animated by the same brave
spirit that whipped the pride of the Armada and drove the hectoring
Dutch fleets from the English seas. Nay, to defend the nation’s liberties
�( 9 )
in the dark hour of extreme peril, one might hope that her sons would
make ramparts of their bodies, and if they could not make a pact with
victory, make a pact with death; that her daughters would gladly
resign their dearest in the spirit of the Spartan mothers of old ; and
that the very children might, like Hannibal, be dedicated to a righteous
revenge.
We are then far from loving peace at any price. But there is little
need to denounce such an impossible doctrine. It is not that way our
danger lies. Our fighting instincts, inherited from savage ancestors,
are too strong for us to submit tamely to aggression, even if the law
of self-preservation did not prompt us to defend our own.
National defence was not the origin of our modern standing armies.
They are legacies from Feudalism. The retainers of feudal nobles
became the king’s soldiers as the power of the crown strengthened over
its vassals. Disguise it how you will, the institution of standing armies
still savors of its origin. The military forces of Europe are the instru
ments of tyranny and the support of privilege. During the last fifty
years they have been as often employed in suppressing liberty at home
as in fighting the foreigner abroad. Perhaps England and Switzerland
are the only exceptions to this rule. The notion that armies are the
servants of the people is extremely recent. Fighting for his king was
the soldier’s recognised vocation. That spirit still half animates our
British troops, as it wholly animates the troops of Russia. In Germany
the idea of the fatherland may have overshadowed that of the emperor;
but little more than a century ago Frederick the Great’s armies fought
at his absolute command ; and Prussia, like every other German state,
was ruled on the same patriarchal principle. Democracy is very recent,
and has had no time to mould its own institutions. Those who are not
conversant with history do not understand that the institutions which
exist are relics of monarchy. And of these the worst is a standing army.
This fact has some bearing on the morality of a soldier's profession.
A French Radical said the other day, in the epigrammatic way of his
nation, that the business of an army is to defend the frontier. An ad
mirable sentiment! But that is not the soldier’s view. He goes with
cheerful alacrity wherever he is sent, and if he is ordered to the other
side of the globe he feels that brisk stirring of the blood which accom
panies novel adventures. French soldiers, drafted from the citizen
army of a Republic where the conscription is universal, set sail without
misgivings for Algeria, Tunis, Madagascar or China. “ Theirs not to
reason why,” as our Poet Laureate sings ; “theirs but to do or die.”
Does not all this show that Democracy has had but little if any effect
upon the army ? When men enter it they become possessed by its
spirit. And that spirit is military, authoritative, monarchical.
The English army is composed of volunteers, and is in a sense mer
cenary. And what are the motives that impel men to join it?
“ Generally,” says Bacon, “ all warlike people are a little idle, and love
danger better than travail.” The description applies admirably to our
upper classes who supply the army with officers, and no doubt it fits some
of the lower classes who supply it with privates. For the rest, men enter
�(. 10 )
the army as they engage in other professions, for a living ; and after a cer
tain allowance for ties of blood, they care as little on which side they fight
as a lawyer cares on which side he pleads. It is hardly fair to define
a soldier as a man who engages to kill anybody for a shilling a day, for
this loses sight of the fact that he undertakes to be killed as
well as to kill for that sum. But the definition, although not
accurate, contains a dreadful element of truth. It would be
unfair to visit on the individual soldier the whole odium of the
institution to which he belongs. True, and the hangman. is
scarcely responsible for capital punishment; yet we should shrink
from his company at our tables. Perhaps the wisest plan is to hate
the institution and pity its members.
Mr. Ruskin many years ago justified the soldier’s trade, or at least
exalted it:—
“ Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable (many
writers have endeavored to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and
rational person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in less
honor than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose traders slaying.
Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers,
given precedence to the soldier. And this is right. For the soldier’s trade
verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain. This without well
knowing its own meaning, the world honors it for. A bravo’s trade is
slaying; but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants:
the reason it honors the soldier is, because he holds his life at the service of
the State. Reckless he may be—fond of pleasure or of adventure—all kinds
of bye-motives and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his
profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct
in it; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact—of which we
are well assured—that put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures
of the world behind him, and only death and his duty in front of him,
he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that . this choice
may be put to him at any moment, and has beforehand taken his pait vir
tually takes such part continually—does, in reality die daily.”
The element of truth in Ruskin’s eloquent defence of the soldier we
have already acknowledged ; the rest we deem fanciful and mistaken.
Miners and colliers risk their lives daily, but who calls them heroes ?
Policemen often carry their fives in their hands, but who worships
them ? Sailors incur on the average greater danger than soldiers, but
who chants their praises ? The fact is, they have no share in the pride,
pomp and circumstance of glorious war. It is our fighting instincts
that throw a glamor round the soldier. Our intellects approve indus
try, but our inherited feelings consecrate militarism. . In the same
wav, long after the Jews had settled down to agriculture, they
instinctively adored the nomadic character, and all their legendary
heroes came from the pastoral state.
_
.
A soldier holds not only his life, but his conscience, at the. service
of the State. Ruskin does not notice that. But, as civilisation
advances and morality refines, the fact will become more obvious.
Hosea Biglow is not so eloquent as the author of “ Unto this Last, yet
he utters many a sound truth in quaint language.
�(11)
“ Ef you take a sword and dror it,
An’ go stick a feller thru,
Guv’ment ain’t to answer for it,
God’ll send the bill to you.”
What does Ruskin say to that ? We fancy it would grate harsh truth
through his most melodious eloquence.
Our inherited fighting instincts account also for the applause with
which we greet the upper classes when they reward successful generals
at our expense. Sir Beauchamp Seymour was made a lord for bom
barding Alexandria, and received a present of £25,000. Lord Wol
seley had a grant of £25,000 for the Ashantee war, the only remaining
trophy of which is King Coffee’s umbrella; and another £30,000
for his Egyptian victories. Oh for another Swift to satirise this mon
strous absurdity! In the sixteenth number of his Examiner, that
splendid wit compared the rewards, amounting to over half a million,
heaped on Marlborough, with the reward given to “ a victorious
general of Rome, in the height of that Empire.” Nearly a thousand
pounds might have been spent on a triumphal arch, a sacrificial bull,
and other features of public celebration in honor of the general; but
the only thing he actually received was a crown of laurel worth two
pence, and perhaps an embroidered robe. The laurels of a modern
general are more costly. He fights for solid pudding, not for empty
praise.
Before we leave the morality of war let us print the last century’s
butcher’s bill. It is an edifying document:
LOSS OE MEN.
YEARS
1793 to 1815 ... England and France...........
Russia and Turkey ...........
■ 1828
1830 to 1840 ... Spain and Portugal...........
1830 to 1847 ... France and Algeria . .........
Civil Strife in Europe
1848
1854 to 1856 ... Crimean War ..................
Franco-Austrian War
1859
1863 to 1865 ... American Civil War...........
Austro-Prussian War
1866
France and Mexico ..........
1864 to 1870 ... Brazil and Paraguay...........
1870 to 1871 ... Franco-German War...........
1876 to 1877 ... Russo-Turkish War...........
Total
...
1,900,000
120,000
160,000
110,000
60,000
784,000
63,000
800.0G0
51,000
65,000
330,000
290,000
180,000
...
4,913,000
This prodigious slaughter-bill does not include those killed in the
various English and French expeditions. M. Beaulieu estimates the
French losses alone in these at 65,000. Overfire millions of men sacri
ficed to the,Moloch of War in less than a century ! Imagination shrinks
appalled. What a hecatomb of victims to “low ambition and the
pride of kings.”
�( 12 )
The wickedness of war is only exceeded by its folly. Of the Crimean
War, Mr. Kinglake says that “ it brought to the grave a million of
workmen and soldiers, and consumed a pitiless share of the wealth
which man’s labor had stored up as the means of life.” Yet what
advantage did it bring anyone ? The treaty of peace which closed
it has been torn to shreds; every provision in it is a dead letter.
What a glorious result after sacrificing a million lives and wasting
three hundred and forty millions of money! The myriad graves in
the Crimea are tenanted by murdered victims of la haute politique, and
the churchyard of Sebastopol is as great a monument of criminal folly
as the pyramid of skulls erected by a Tamerlane or an Attila.
What should we think of a man in private life who whipped out a
sword every time he quarreled, and tried to cut his opponent’s throat?
He would soon be relegated to the prison or the asylum. What, also,
do we think of a man who sticks to his opinion, however rash it may
be, and refuses to abandon it because he has once taken it up—as
though his infallibility were the chief thing in the universe, to which
all else must be subordinated; and who would sooner be ruined than
confess to a mistake? We consider him a dolt, a mule, a vain idiot.
And if he refuses to submit his differences with others to friendly or
legal adjudication, we regard him as still worse ; for we naturally think
with Grotius that “ the party who refuses to accept arbitration may
justly be suspected of bad faith.”
Now, what peculiar logic is there that can render the folly of an
individual wisdom in a nation, or transform private wickedness into a
national virtue ? We have not the slightest doubt that quarrels
between nations will eventually be settled as quarrels between indi
viduals are settled now, by appeal to an acknowledged tribunal. That
is the certain tendency of our age. Even Prince Bismarck, the man
of blood and iron, assists it by playing the part of “the honest broker.”
The Geneva Arbitration of 1872 on the “ Alabama ” dispute was the
inauguration of a new era. The arbitrators’ award mulcted England
in £3,000,000, but that sum is trivial to what the dispute might have
cost us had it rankled into a war. Since then no less than sixteen
international disputes have been settled in the same way.
Napoleon himself, in the solitude of St. Helena, dreamed of “ the
application to the great European family of an institution like the
American Congress, or that of the Amphictyon in Greece ”; and he
asserted that “this agglomeration of European peoples must arrive,
sooner or later, by the mere force of events.” How many eminent men
have since expressed the same view. Victor Hugo has uttered the right
great word “ The United States of Europe.” A recognised international
tribunal, a high court of nations, would allow of a great reduction in
the armies of Europe. Public opinion would restrain the fractious ; or as
Tennyson says, “then the common sense of most would hold a fretful
realm in awe.” Even the most selfish State, in its moment of intensest
excitement, would shrink from violating international law if the out
rage brought upon it swift punishment by the armed comity of Europe.
Gradually, with the cessation of war and the growth of peaceful senti
�( 13 )
ments, Europe would become ashamed of its barbarous past; and we
might reasonably hope that the benign process would continue,
“ Till the war-drums throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled
Tn the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.”
We promised to say more on the economical aspects of war. Take
the following (1885) list of European States, with the cost of their
armies and navies, and the interest on their national debts:—
Country.
Austria..........
Belgium..........
Denmark
France ..........
Germany
Great Britain
Greece ..........
Holland..........
Italy
..........
Norway...........
Portugal
Roumania
Russia ..........
Servia ...........
Spain ..........
Sweden..........
Switzerland ...
Turkey..........
Army and Navy.
... £13,400,000 ...
...
1.900,000 ...
...
1.000.000 ...
... 35.500,000
... 18.200,000 . .
... 28.900.000 ...
...
1.000,000 ...
... 2,700.000
...
... 19.000,000 ...
450.000 ...
...
1,400.000 ...
...
1,100.000 ...
... 33,000,000 ...
350,000
7.500,000 ...
...
1.200,000 ...
700.000 ...
...
4,500,000 ...
£171,800,000
Interest on National Debt.
............ £21,400,000
...........
4,100,000
...........
500,000
........... 47,000.000
........... 13,400,000
........... 30,000,000
...........
875,000
...........
2,700,000
........... 20,000.000
...........
270.000
...........
2,900,000
.........
2,000,000
........... 28.500.000
...........
310.000
........... 10,750,000
...........
600.000
...........
78.000
........... 12,330,000
£197,713,000
Here is a grand total of three hundred and seventy millions spent every
year on war preparations and on account of past wars.
Let it also be noted that the annual war-bill of nearly every country
goes on increasing. England is no exception. Mr. Gladstone started
well when he took the reins from Earl Beaconsfield, but his military
and naval expenditure went up year by year, until his twenty-six
millions grew to thirty, to say nothing of the £9,451,000 vote of credit
he obtained to put him in a position to play the game of brag with his
old friend the Czar of Russia.
Now take the cost of a few great wars during the last thirty years :
Crimean War ...
Italian War (1859)
American Civil War
*
Austro-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
Russo-Turkish War
Zulu and Afghan Wars
£340,000,000
60,000,000
1,400,000,000
66,000,000
500,000,000
210,000,000
30,000,000
£2,606,000,000
* This was the cost to the Northern States alone. The cost to the Southern States
would probably bring the total bill up to £2,000,000,000.
�( 14 )
This would allow £2 for every man, woman and child on the globe. It
would make two railways round the earth at the rate of £50,000 a
mile. It would provide every adult male in Europe with a freehold
farm of 100 acres in the United States.
During the present century England alone has spent on her army
and. navy, and. the interest of her national debt, nearly six thousand
millions. A third of that sum would b uy up her whole soil from the
landlords, restore it to the people, an d settle the Land Question for
ever. Out of every pound of taxes we now pay, 16s. l|d. goes for
War, War Debt, or preparation for War, and only 3s. lOjd. for all
other purposes. And as the chief part of our national income is raised
by indirect taxation, it follows that the main burden of war falls upon
the shoulders of the People.
Compare with the colossal sum we spend on War the paltry amount
we spend on Education, and then ask whether we are not afflicted with
insanity. Ruskin once inquired what was the proper view of a rich
householder who expended ten pounds a year on his library and five
hundred on policemen to guard his shutters. Such a householder is
Christian Europe.
England’s National Debt is over seven hundred millions, and nearly
every penny of it has been contracted by our class-government since
the “ glorious revolution ” of 1688, solely for the purpose of main
taining “ the balance of power ” in Europe, which simply meant inter
fering with other people’s business, or sharing in their quarrels. We
began, at the accession of William III., with a paltry debt of £664,264;
but small as the sum was, it acted like a vital germ, from which was
developed a huge system of financial corruption. When the taxes
of the country were once pledged, it was easy to draw further
drafts on posterity for the conduct of enterprises that would
never have been undertaken if their expenses had to be borne
at the time. Accordingly, we find that, at the accession of
Queen Anne, the Debt amounted to £12,767,225. Marlborough’s
campaigns nearly trebled it, for at the accession of George I.
it had increased to £36,175,460. Under that imported monarch it
rose to £52,523,023 ; and under his successor to £102,014,018. Then
came George III., who was for a long while mad and always blind;
and under his perverse and foolish rule, the Tory government involved
us in a wanton war with our brethren in America, and afterwards in
a^ mad war with the French Republic. The result was that when
George III. departed to whatever place is reserved for his like, the
Debt amounted to the prodigious sum of £834,900,960.
if- At this moment the male population of England, that is, every actual or
potential head of a family, is indebted £85 4s. 8d. to the national bond
holders, because preceding governments, without obtaining or soliciting
the people’s consent, went fighting at large in Europe and America,
wherever an opportunity for a scrimmage presented itself.
This National Debt handicaps us with an initial burden of over
twenty-two millions a year in the shape of interest. Our fathers danced
to a sorry tune, and we have to pay the exorbitant piper. And as
�()
most of our taxation is raised indirectly, it follows that this yearly
interest is a perennial burden on our national industry. During the
present century, to go back no farther, we have paid in interest alone
the terrific sum of £2,310,735,582. Surely a visitor from a distant
planet (say Voltaire’s Saturnian) on learning these facts, would suppose
that he had lighted on a race of madmen.
Who can point to a single particle of good which our lavish expen
diture on war and warlike preparations has conferred on any human
being, except generals, army contractors, and bondholders? When
the little boy, in Southey’s poem, wants to know what the battle of
Blenheim was all about, and what benefit resulted from the rival
armies leaving their empty skulls as memorials to future ages, old
Kaspar is nonplussed.
“ I really cannot tell,” said he,
“ But ’twas a glorious victory.”
A glorious victory ! Yes, the adjective is thrown over it to hide the
misery and folly. “ Glory ” is the bait on the despot’s hook; the gilded
fetter on a strutting slave ; the plume in the helm of a mailed free
booter. True and lasting glory is only won by the victories of peace.
“ These are matters so arduous,” as Milton told Cromwell, “ that in
comparison of them the perils of war are but the sports of children.”
People still talk of “ glory,” but wherein consists the true greatness
of England ? In the noble language of Landor—
“ The strength of England lies not in armaments and invasions ; it lies in
the omnipresence of her industry, and in the vivifying energies of her high
civilisation. There are provinces she cannot grasp; there are islands she
cannot hold fast; but there is neither island nor province, there is neither
kingdom nor continent, which she could not draw to her side and fix there
everlastingly, by saying the magic words Be Free. Every land wherein she
favors the sentiments of freedom, every land wherein she forbids them to be
stifled, is her own; a true ally, a willing tributary, an inseparable friend.
Principles hold those together whom power would only alienate.”
Would that the Jingoes, the halting Liberals, and the half-hearted
Radicals meditated this profound scripture. We should then be
spared such irredeemable crimes as our invasion of the Soudan by a
professedly Liberal government, and the wholesale butchery of men
who, in the Premier’s own language, were “ rightly struggling to be
free.” There are at present only two countries in Europe that cherish
a constant friendship for England. One is Greece, whom we aided in
her gallant struggle for emancipation; the other is Italy, who remem
bers our sympathy when she revolted against the Austrian yoke.
Meanwhile, let it be noticed that our governing classes always keep
a bogey to frighten us with. Long ago it was France ; now it is Russia.
Earl Beaconsfield traded on that bogey, and Mr. Gladstone followed
suit; in fact, he nearly involved us in a war with Russia through a
squabble over an Afghan outpost. England is perpetually warned
against the stealthy advances of “ Russian aggrandisement.” But are
not our shocked feelings a little amusing? Russian conquests during
�( 16 )
the last hundred and thirty years amount to 1,642,000 square miles
with a meagre population of 17,135,000 ; while England’s conquests in
the same period amount to 2,650,000 square miles, with 250 000 000
people. Our Jingoes appear to think that England may steal sheep,
but .Russia must not catch a rabbit.
All oyer Europe the same game is played. Peoples are filled by
tneir rulers with a blind and passionate hatred of each other. Austria
glares at Russia, and Russia at Austria. France and Germany vie
with each other in military organisation, waiting with feverish blood
and panting breath for the next death-wrestle. Italy prepares herself
to strike in the combat as it suits her interest. And the smaller States,
like Switzerland and Belgium, tremble lest their neutrality should
be violated in the bloody strife. Christendom is armed to the
teeth; and as Sir Henry Maine too truthfully observes, “During
the last quarter of a century, a great part, perhaps the greatest
part, of the inventive faculties of mankind has been given to the
arts of destruction.” The workman in the factory and the peasant
in the field know that they may at any moment be summoned from
their peaceful avocations by the trumpet of battle. They know also
that war has become more and more scientific, that horrid explosives
have made it more ghastly, and that they would be marshalled for
hideous slaughter, where each man sees the comrade fall at his side
but not the enemy who strikes him dead. Some of them who sicken
at the prospect, not with coward fears but with manly disgust, mio-ht
almost cry with Shakespeare’s Northumberland:
°
Let heaven kiss earth! Now let not Nature’s hand
Keep the wild flood confined! Let order die!
And let this world no longer be a stage
To feed Contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-born Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that, each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end,
And darkness be the bui-ier of the dead !
Europe is the modern Damocles. The ancient bearer of that name
envied the wealth of Dionysius of Sicily, who jestingly gave him a taste
of royal pleasures. Damocles ascended the throne and gazed admi
ringly on the wealth and splendor around him. But looking up, he
perceived a sword hanging over his head by a single hair. The sight
so terrified him that he begged to be removed from his position.
Europe likewise sits at its feast of life, but the fatal weapon suspended
overhead mars its felicity. Serpents twine in the dance, arms clash in
the song, the meats have a strange savor, there is a demoniac sparkle in
the wine, and a poisonous bitterness in the dregs of the cup. All is
darkened by the Shadow of the Sword.
Printed and Published by G. W. Foote at 28 Stonecutter Street, London.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The shadow of the sword
Description
An account of the resource
Edition: 2nd ed.
Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Date of publication from KVK. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Creator
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Foote, G. W. (George William) [1850-1915]
Publisher
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G.W. Foote
Date
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[1887]
Identifier
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N264
Subject
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Pacifism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The shadow of the sword), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
NSS
Peace
War
World Politics-19th Century