First, that the whole horrible
process of war has _not_ brutalised the British soldier--you remember
the Army Commander whom I quoted in an earlier letter!--that he still
remains human and warm-hearted through it all, protected morally by the
ideal he willingly serves. Secondly, in the conviction that this
relentless struggle is the only means that remains to us of so chaining
up the wild beast of war, as the Germans have let it loose upon the
world, that our children and grandchildren at least shall live in peace,
and have time given them to work out a more reasonable scheme of things.
But, at any rate; we have gone a long way from the time when Matthew
Arnold, talking with "the manager of the Claycross works in Derbyshire"
during the Crimean War, "when our want of soldiers was much felt and
some people were talking of conscription," was told by his companion
that "sooner than submit to conscription the population of that district
would flee to the mines, and lead a sort of Robin Hood life
underground." An illuminating passage, in more ways than one, by the
way, as contrasted with the present state of things!--since it both
shows the stubbornness of the British temper in defence of "doing as it
likes," when no spark of an ideal motive fires it; and also brings out
its equal stubbornness to-day in support of a cause which it feels to be
supreme over the individual interest and will.
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