Talk of war, and one gets involved in such utopian musings!

VII.

I have been reading one of those prognostic articles on international politics which every now and then appear in the reviews.  Why I should so waste my time it would be hard to say; I suppose the fascination of disgust and fear gets the better of me in a moment’s idleness.  This writer, who is horribly perspicacious and vigorous, demonstrates the certainty of a great European war, and regards it with the peculiar satisfaction excited by such things in a certain order of mind.  His phrases about “dire calamity” and so on mean nothing; the whole tenor of his writing proves that he represents, and consciously, one of the forces which go to bring war about; his part in the business is a fluent irresponsibility, which casts scorn on all who reluct at the “inevitable.”  Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.

But I will read no more such writing.  This resolution I make and will keep.  Why set my nerves quivering with rage, and spoil the calm of a whole day, when no good of any sort can come of it?  What is it to me if nations fall a-slaughtering each other?  Let the fools go to it!  Why should they not please themselves?  Peace, after all, is the aspiration of the few; so it always; was, and ever will be.  But have done with the nauseous cant about “dire calamity.”  The leaders and the multitude hold no such view; either they see in war a direct and tangible profit, or they are driven to it, with heads down, by the brute that is in them.  Let them rend and be rent; let them paddle in blood and viscera till—­if that would ever happen—­their stomachs turn.  Let them blast the cornfield and the orchard, fire the home.  For all that, there will yet be found some silent few, who go their way amid the still meadows, who bend to the flower and watch the sunset; and these alone are worth a thought.

VIII.

In this hot weather I like to walk at times amid the full glow of the sun.  Our island sun is never hot beyond endurance, and there is a magnificence in the triumph of high summer which exalts one’s mind.  Among streets it is hard to bear, yet even there, for those who have eyes to see it, the splendour of the sky lends beauty to things in themselves mean or hideous.  I remember an August bank-holiday, when, having for some reason to walk all across London, I unexpectedly found myself enjoying the strange desertion of great streets, and from that passed to surprise in the sense of something beautiful, a charm in the vulgar vista, in the dull architecture, which I had never known.  Deep and clear-marked shadows, such as one only sees on a few days of summer, are in themselves very impressive, and become more so when they fall upon highways devoid of folk.  I remember observing, as something new, the shape of familiar edifices, of spires, monuments.  And when at length I sat down, somewhere on the Embankment, it was rather to gaze at leisure than to rest, for I felt no weariness, and the sun, still pouring upon me its noontide radiance, seemed to fill my veins with life.