Arrows of the Chace, vol. 2/2 / being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

[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.