The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎579v] (49/239)

18
AUTOCRACY AND WAR.
the watchwords of the armies. I he intellectual stage of mankind
being as yet in its infancy, and States, like most individuals, having
but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of the worth and force
of the inner life, the need of making their existence manifest to
themselves is determined in the direction of physical activity. The
idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in wealth, in in
fluence—in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge—is odious to
them as an omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found the
illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity
and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future—a sentiment con
cealed, indeed, but proving its existence by the force it has, when
invoked, to stir the passions of a nation. It will be long before we
have learned that in the great darkness before us there is nothing
that we need fear. Let us act lest we perish—is the cry. And
the only form of action open to a State can be of no other than
aggressive nature.
There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them
all is one and the same—the magazine rifle of the latest pattern.
In preparation for or against such a form of action the States of
Europe are spending now such moments of uneasy leisure as they
can snatch from the labours of factory An East India Company trading post. and counting-house.
Never before had war received so much homage at the lips of
men, never has it reigned with less undisputed sway in their
minds. It has harnessed science to its gun-carriages ; it has en
riched a few respectable manufacturers, scattered doles of food and
raiment amongst a few thousand skilled workmen, devoured the
first youth of whole generations, and reaped its harvest of count
less corpses. It has perverted the intelligence of men, women,
and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings,
Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of
fidelity to peace. Indeed, it has made peace altogether its own—it
has modelled it on its own image : a martial, overbearing, war
lord sort of peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches,
ringing with the din of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions
to glorious feats of arms; it has made it so magnificent as to be
almost as expensive to keep up as itself. And it has taken even
more upon itself. As if it were the prophet of a new faith it has
sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went about (mostly
in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity of its
sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor in
mind—whose name is legion.
It has been obseived that in the course of earthly greatness such
a day of culminating triumph is often paid by a morrow of sudden
extinction. Let us hope so. Yet the dawn of that day of retri
bution may be a long time breaking above a dark horizon. War