The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-03-02 00:00:00

"THE FRUITS OF WAR AND THE
WORK OF PEACE."
(From Wednesday's Times.)

There are certain truths with regard to peace and to war
which used to be trite enough, but which have been lately
forgotten. Peace and war are now commonly treated as the
positive and the negative of the same quality, whereas thcV
are afferent elements altogether. The element of peace is
that by which order is established and perpetuated, people
are brought to cordial agreement and willing submission,
unity is made a living and growing fact, and all the
arts of domestic life and of civilized communities
are promoted. Peace is the most comprehensive of
all studies and designs. It comprises the recognition of
races, of national characters and traditions, of religious and
political theories, and many other matters which may either
cement or impair the edifice of the State. It must take into
account all the laws of our moral nature, especially the
laws of imitation, jealousy, and revenge, that play so large
a part in public as well as in private life. This earth
has seen many conquerors, and not a few co.n-
quering races, but many as they are, they can be easily
divided into two classes. The one class has destroyed
populations, annexed territories or laid them waste,
subjugated by terror, and always pushed to extreme the
rights of victory. After the sword and the brand have
come the iron heel, the helpless but unforgiven and unfor-
giving victim, the enormous ransom, the indignity never to
be forgotten. It is not easy in these days to convert popu-
lous regions into absolute wildernesses, but there ensues the
moral desert of incurable antipathies. The work of,these con-
querors in never permanent. It has has no roots In human
nature or in history. It makes terrible episodes, but not
foundations and institutions. The nation that do these things
are without a history. They have only a succession of
wars, rpassacres, devastations, ruins, revenges, outrages,
one like another, like the misdeeds of a professional law-
breaker, that can be numbered, but not arranged in a plan
or formed into a career. There is no epic in the long and
tedious annals of savagery. Our own historians pass at a
bound over the battles of kites and crows that filled up
centuries and left no trace behind. This is war; war pure
and simple; war acting on its own instincts, and fulfilling its
own destiny, as if men were made to be warriors and earth
only a battle-field. On the other side, there is the class of men
and of States, that have fought for peace—peace in this
large sense of union or accord. These have waged war not in-
gloriously, or unsuccessfully, er without reward, but it is
almost invariable that they have seldom or never exercised
all the rights of victory or reaped all its fruits. They have
always remembered mercy in what they deemed to be
justice, and remembered, too, that to win the affections of
a people was quite as important as any territorial or
material gain. They have generally remembered, ia the
hour of victory, that they too were mortA and also that
war is a universal challenge, and success the stimulant that
most rouses the natural covetousness of mankind.

Here, then, are two questions, very distinct questions,
now before our colossal neighbour at the gates of Con-
stantinople—the fruits of war and the work of peace. The
former is an affair of the present time, and for how
brief a time none can say; the latter is for all time.
Russia does not conceal her own consciousness that she
is not a popular Power, and that she may be feared,
but is not loved. She knows by our own case how one
ambition fires another, and how whatever one does others
will try, if they think they have a chance. She knows that
the lords of the earth cannot carry their heads higher with-
out provoking a rivalry which only waits the opportunity to
break out. She is aware that the English people have asingu-
lar, and perhaps not very consistent, weakness for distressed
nationalities wherever they are, and without inquiring too
curiously into their character and history. She is aware that
while the more sentimental class here has a thousand grudges
against Russia, there is also a very unsentimental class
which is always watching the advances of Russia in the
direction of India and the approaches to it. No doubt there
Is much exaggeration and folly both in the sentimentalists
and in the other more business-like people; but it is just
the foolish and exaggerating whom it is dangerous to irri-
tate, for nobody can reckon upon them, and they may
drive the country into any extreme. We have great
masses who have no pleasure, or principle either,
except in the indulgence of a sentiment; and we
have also no inconsiderable number who are inte-
rested in war. When twenty-five years ago we had
to take better account of our position and resources than we
had done for a long time, it was publicly confessed that,
though a warlike people, we were not a military nation, and
that, therefore, we were apt to rush into war without prepa-
ration. That we have gone into many wars without suffi-
cient reason is a matter too familiar to all students of
history. In scores of cases the people have dragged
the Government into wars against its own wiser
convictions ; and the Government, on the other hand,
has only had to announce a war with somebody
or other, no matter whom, and it has had every-
body with it. Is it nothing at all, in the opinion
of Russia, that the Power which only the other day was pre-
sented to the British, population as the heaven-sent deliverer
should present itself now as the merciless and avaricious
conqueror It was on the war tack and on the reasonings
and calculations of war that Lord Beaconsfield unfortunately
reminded Russia that while she would find a single cam-
paign enough for her, with England it would not be a ques
tion of a campaign or two. With much more propriety he
might have warned Russia of the inflammable state
of the world, the passions that are only slumbering, the envy
and jealousy that a word may provoke, the hatreds thinly
disguised, the cupidity that loves a scramble, and all the
other explosive elements that make earth a magazine of
destruction as well as of sustenance. He might justly have
claimed to love Russia more than eurmasses do, and on that
very account might have asked her to think well before she
came to the pass of defying the susceptibilities which no
man can explain or control.

Russia has before her a great example and a great warning.
She illustrates the power of the example and also the force
of the warning. Eight years ago Germany stood on the
neck of France and exercised all the rights of conquest
with a rigour that astonished Europe and with a success
not less astonishing. Even now we seem hardly to realise
the enormous penalties extorted from the prostrate foe,
and securely realized. Upon the war account and on
the supposition of war being everything, and of there being
no margin outside it, or circumstances to disturb its reckon-
ings, there the success was unqualified and magnificent.
But the instant we include the reckonings of peace all is
altered. Soon or late— we all naturally hope and pray-it may
not be in our time—France will seize some oppo-tunity
of returning the injury and disgrace, and of recovering
what she had lost. How the results may then be passes
all conjecture, but of the will there can be no doubt.
Russia follows the example. She has seen what one nation
can do to another less wise, less judiciously or ably ad-
ministered, less advanced in the arts of war. She has seen
how the conqueror can hold the victim in his grasp; what
humiliation he can impose, what booty he can extort. So
she does the like. She does not see, what she herself de-
monstrates, that example propagates and retaliation
never ceases. She does what France did, and what
she does others will do, and so on for ages. She
seems to do it safely enough. Geinia.t4 did it safely
enough; others, may be, will do it safely enough; but
tiler° cannot be universal safety in mutual destruction.
Others, too, will improve on the example, or, what is more.
they will claim to follow example when they are far.exceed.
ing it. The example of Germany does not justify Russia in the
demand of either territory or money. It was France that in-
vaded Germany, avowedly to push her frontier to the Rhine,
with the necessary consequence of inflicting great pecu-
niary expenses on Germany. It was thus a legitimate
settlement of that cause, when it went against France,
that the transfer of land and money should be not
to France, but to Germany. The only question was
one of discretion—how much to demand. It is not
Turkey that has made war on Russia ; nor has she
ever demanded land or money. So her crime is not
that of France. Russia is resolved that it shall be, and
follows the German precedent. The inevitable consequence
is that it is vain to talk of disarmament. The state of
Europe is now that of ever-impending war. The fruits of
nature and of civilization will be lavished for many years to
come on vast armies of men drawn from industry, and on
engines of war of ever-increasing costliness. For aught we
know the century may end even more terribly than it began.
Europe has enjoyed one generation of peace in this century,
with some not very serious interruptions. From 1815 to 1818
it might be said that there was peace on earth. The
foundation of that unusual reign of peace was not an
unparalleled triumph, or the overwhelming power of the
conquerors, or even their perfect union. It was the very
moderate use they made of victory and this is the great
art, whether of peace or of war, that seems to be forgotten
in these days.