Letters to an Old Garibaldian - Page 2

the present writer, repudiated the South African war
from its beginnings, had yet a divided heart in the matter, and felt
certain aspects of it as glorious as well as infamous. The first fact I can
offer you is the unquestionable fact that all these doubts and divisions
have ceased. Nor have they ceased by any compromise; but by a universal
flash of faith--or, if you will, of suspicion. Nor were our internal
conflicts lightly abandoned; nor our reconciliations an easy matter. I am,
as you are, a democrat and a citizen of Europe; and my friends and I had
grown to loathe the plutocracy and privilege which sat in the high places
of our country with a loathing which we thought no love could cast out. Of
these rich men I will not speak here; with your permission, I will not
think of them. War is a terrible business in any case; and to some
intellectual temperaments this is the most terrible part of it. That war
takes the young; that war sunders the lovers; that all over Europe brides
and bridegrooms are parting at the church door: all that is only a
commonplace to commonplace people. To give up one's love for one's country
is very great. But to give up one's hate for one's country, this may also
have in it something of pride and something of purification.

What is it that has made the British peoples thus defer not only their
artificial parade of party politics but their real social and moral
complaints and demands? What is it that has united all of us against the
Prussian, as against a mad dog? It is the presence of a certain spirit, as
unmistakable as a pungent smell, which we feel is capable of withering all
the good things in this world. The burglary of Belgium, the bribe to
betray France, these are not excuses; they are facts. But they are only
the facts by which we came to know of the presence of the spirit. They do
not suffice to define the whole spirit itself. A good rough summary is to
say that it is the spirit of barbarism; but indeed it is something worse.
It is the spirit of second-rate civilisation; and the distinction involves
the most important differences. Granted that it could exist, pure barbarism
could not last long; as pure babyhood cannot last long. Of his own nature
the baby is interested in the ticking of a watch; and the time will come
when you will have to tell him, if you only tell him the wrong time. And
that is exactly what the second-rate civilisation does.

But the vital point is here. The abstract barbarian would copy. The cockney
and incomplete civilisation always sets itself up to be copied. And in the
case here considered, the German thinks that it is not only his business to
spread education, but to spread compulsory education. "Science combined
with organisation," says