NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE

12. IT is due to my readers to state my reasons for raising the price, and withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors.1

The cessation of the latter has nothing to do with the price. At least, for the raised price I could easily afford the plates, and they would help the sale; but I cannot spare my good assistant's time in their preparation, and find that, in the existing state of trade, I cannot trust other people, without perpetual looking after them; for which I have no time. myself. Even last year the printing of my Fors frontispieces prevented the publication of my Oxford lectures on engraving;2 and it is absolutely necessary that my Oxford work should be done rightly, whatever else I leave undone. Secondly, for the rise in price. I hold it my duty to give my advice for nothing; but not to write it in careful English, and correct press, for nothing. I like the feeling of being paid for my true work as much as any other labourer; and though I write Fors, not for money, but because I know it to be wanted, as I would build a wall against the advancing sea for nothing, if I couldn't be paid for doing it; yet I will have proper pay from the harbour-master, if I can get it. As soon as the book gives me and the publisher what is right, the surplus shall go to the St. George's fund.3 The price will not signify ultimately;-sevenpence, or tenpence, or a shilling, will be all the same to the public if the book is found useful;—but I fix, and mean to keep to, tenpence, because I intend striking for use on my farms the pure silver coin called in Florence the "soldo," of which the golden florin was worth twenty (the soldo itself being misnamed from the Roman "solidus"); and this soldo will represent the Roman denarius, and be worth ten silver pence; and this is to be the price of Fors.

Then one further petty reason I have for raising the price. In all my dealings with the public, I wish them to understand that my first price is my lowest. They may have to pay more; but never a farthing less.

And

I am a little provoked at not having been helped in the least by the Working Men's College, after I taught there for five years, or by any of my old pupils there, whom I have lost sight of:-(three remain who would always help me in anything 6), and I think they will soon begin to want Fors, now, and they shall not have it for sevenpence.

1 [See the Bibliographical Note, above, p. xxiii.]

Ariadne Florentina; for the delay in its publication, see Vol. XXII. p. 463.] [On the cost of Fors, see Letter 6, § 3 (Vol. XXVII. p. 99).]

On the proposed, but never actually struck, coinage for St. George's farms, see Letter 58, §§ 14-16 (pp. 430-432); and on the "soldo," Vol. XV. p. 376.] [Namely, 1854-1859: see Vol. V. pp. xxxvii. seq.]

6 [Ruskin refers no doubt to Mr. George Allen and Mr. William Ward (both pupils at the Working Men's College); while the third is probably Arthur Burgess, who, though he did not belong to the College, was an old pupil and general assistant of Ruskin (see Vol. XIV. pp. 349 seq.).]

13. The following three stray newspaper cuttings may as well be printed now; they have lain some time by me. The first two relate to economy. The last is, I hope, an exaggerated report; and I give it as an example of the kind of news which my own journal will not give on hearsay. But I know that things did take place in India which were not capable of exaggeration in horror, and such are the results, remember, of our past missionary work, as a whole, in India and China.

I point to them to-day, in order that I may express my entire concurrence in all that I have seen reported of Professor Max Müller's lecture in Westminster Abbey,2 though there are one or two things I should like to say in addition, if I can find time.

14. "Those who find fault with the present Government on account of its rigid economy, and accuse it of shabbiness, have little idea of the straits it is put to for money and the sacrifices it is obliged to make in order to make both ends meet. The following melancholy facts will serve to show how hardly pushed this great nation is to find sixpence even for a good purpose. The Hakluyt Society was, as some of our readers may know, formed in the year 1846 for the purpose of printing in English for distribution among its members rare and valuable voyages, travels, and geographical records, including the more important early narratives of British enterprise. For many years the Home Office, the Board of Trade, and the Admiralty have been in the habit of subscribing for the publications of this society; and considering that an annual subscription of one guinea entitles each subscriber to receive without further charge a copy of every work produced by the society within the year subscribed for, it can hardly be said that the outlay was ruinous to the Exchequer. But we live in an exceptional period; and accordingly last year the society received a communication from the Board of Trade to the effect that its publications were no longer required. Then the Home Office wrote to say that its subscription must be discontinued, and followed up the communication by another, asking whether it might have a copy of the society's publications, supplied to it gratuitously. Lastly, the Admiralty felt itself constrained by the urgency of the times to reduce its subscription, and asked to have only one instead of two copies annually. It seems rather hard on the Hakluyt Society that the Home Office should beg to have its publications for nothing, and for the sake of appearance it seems advisable that the Admiralty should continue its subscription for two copies, and lend one set to its impoverished brother in Whitehall until the advent of better times."-Pall Mall Gazette.

15. "We make a present of a suggestion to Professor Beesly, Mr. Frederic Harrison, and the artizans who are calling upon the country to strike a blow for France. They must appoint a Select Committee to see what war really means.

1 [See above, § 7, p. 20.]

2 [See On Missions: a Lecture delivered in Westminster Abbey on December 3, 1873, by F. Max Müller, with an Introductory Sermon by A. P. Stanley, Dean of Westminster: 1873. For another reference to foreign missions, see Letter 60, § 8 (below, p. 468).]

3

[For Ruskin's interest in the Society's publications, see Letter 13, § 12 (Vol. XXVII. p. 236).]

4 [The reference here is to the agitation conducted in 1870-1871 by the Positivist leaders in this country (Professor Beesly, Mr. Harrison, Mr. R. Congreve and others, in conjunction with Mr. George Odger and other representatives of the working classes), with a view to inducing the Government of the day to take up arms on the side of France against Prussia. A "Remonstrance" to this effect was addressed to Mr. Gladstone; Professor Beesly published a pamphlet (A Word for

Special commissioners will find out for them how many pounds, on an average, have been lost by the families whose breadwinners have gone to Paris with the King, or to Le Mans with Chanzy. Those hunters of facts will also let the working men know how many fields are unsown round Metz and on the Loire. Next, the Select Committee will get an exact return of the killed and wounded from Count Bismarck and M. Gambetta. Some novelist or poet-a George Eliot or a Browning-will then be asked to lavish all the knowledge of human emotion in the painting of one family group out of the half-million which the returns of the stricken will show. That picture will be distributed broadcast among the working men and their wives. Then the Select Committee will call to its aid the statisticians and the political economists-the Leone Levis, and the John Stuart Mills. Those authorities will calculate what sum the war has taken from the wages fund of France and Germany; what number of working men it will cast out of employment, or force to accept lower wages, or compel to emigrate." (I do not often indulge myself in the study of the works of Mr. Levi or Mr. Mill ;but have they really never done anything of this kind hitherto?) "Thus the facts will be brought before the toiling people, solidly, simply, truthfully. Finally, Professor Beesly and Mr. Harrison will call another meeting, will state the results of the investigation, will say, 'This is the meaning of war,' and will ask the workmen whether they are prepared to pay the inevitable price of helping Republican France. The answer, we imagine, would at once shock and surprise the scholarly gentlemen to whom the Democrats are indebted for their logic and their rhetoric. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin and the Council of the Workmen's National Peace Society have been doing some small measure of the task which we have mapped out. The Council asks the bellicose section of the operative classes a number of questions about the cost and the effect of battles.2 Some, it is true, are not very cogent, and some are absurd; but, taken together, they press the inquiry whether war pays anybody, and in particular whether it pays the working man. Mr. Ruskin sets forth the truth much more vividly in the letter which appeared in our impression of Thursday. Half the money lost by the inundation of the Tiber,' etc. (the Telegraph quotes the letter to the end).

3

"Before stating what might have been done with the force which has been spent in the work of mutual slaughter, Mr. Ruskin might have explained what good it has undone, and how. Take, first, the destruction of capital. Millions of pounds have been spent on gunpowder, bombs, round shot, cannon, needle-guns, chassepots, and mitrailleuses. But for the war, a great part of the sum would have been expended in the growing of wheat, the spinning of cloth, the building of railway bridges, and the construction of ships. As the political economists say, the amount would have been spent productively, or, to use the plain words of common speech, would have been so used that, directly or indirectly, it would have added to the wealth of the country, and increased the fund to be distributed among the working people. But the wealth has been blown away from the muzzle of the cannon, or scattered among the woods and forts of Paris in the shape of broken shells and dismounted guns. Now, every shot which is fired is a direct loss to the labouring classes of France and Germany. King William on the one side,

France); Dr. J. H. Bridges another (Why we should Stand by France); and Mr. Congreve, a third (Positivist Considerations on the War). A public meeting of “the Committee of Sympathizers with France" was held at the Cannon Street Hotel on Tuesday, January 3. As a counterblast to this, the "Council of the Workmen's National Peace Society" issued a series of "Questions for the Working Men of Great Britain to ask themselves before they vote at public meetings in favour of a war policy to assist France."]

1 [Leone Levi (1821-1888), Professor of Commerce in King's College, London; author of numerous books on economics and mercantile law.]

[Compare Vol. XXVII. p. 41 n.]

[Printed in Vol. XVII. p. 547 : see also Letter 33, § 19 (Vol. XXVII. p. 262).]

and General Trochu on the other, really load their guns with gold. They put the wages of the working people into every shell. The splinters of iron that strew the fields represent the pay which would have gone to the farm labourers of Alsace, the mechanics of Paris and Berlin, and the silk-weavers of Lyons. If the political economist were some magician, he would command the supernatural agent to transform the broken gun-carriages, the fragments of bombs, and the round shot into loaves of bread, bottles of wine, fields of corn, clothes, houses, cattle, furniture, books, the virtue of women, the health of children, the years of the aged. The whole field would become alive with the forms, the wealth, the beauty, the bustle of great cities. If working men ever saw such a transformation, they would rise up from end to end of Europe, and execrate the King or Emperor who should let loose the dogs of war. And yet such a scene would represent only a small part of the real havoc. For every man whom Germany takes away from the field or the workshop to place in the barrack or the camp, she must sustain as certain a loss as if she were to cast money into the sea. The loss may be necessary as an insurance against still greater injury; but nevertheless the waste does take place, and on the working people does it mainly fall. The young recruit may have been earning thirty shillings a week or a day, and that sum is lost to himself or his friends. Hitherto he has supported himself; now he must be maintained by the State—that is, by his fellow-subjects. Hitherto he has added to the national wealth by ploughing the fields, building houses, constructing railways. A skilful statistician could state, with some approach to accuracy, the number of pounds by which the amount of his yearly productive contribution could be estimated. It might be thirty, or a hundred, or a thousand. Well, he ceases to produce the moment that he becomes a soldier. He is then a drone. He is as unproductive as a pauper. The millions of pounds spent in feeding and drilling the army as clearly represent a dead loss as the millions spent on workhouses. Nor are these the only ways in which war destroys wealth. Hundreds of railway bridges have been broken down; the communications between different parts of the country have been cut off; hundreds of thousands have lost their means of livelihood; and great tracts of country are wasted like a desert. Thus the total destruction of wealth has been appalling. A considerable time ago Professor Leone Levi calculated that Germany alone had lost more than £300,000,000; France must have lost much more; and, even if we make a liberal discount from so tremendous a computation, we may safely say that the war has cost both nations at least half as much as the National Debt of England.

"A large part of that amount, it is true, would have been spent unproductively, even if the war had not taken place. A vast sum would have been lavished on the luxuries of dress and the table, on the beauties of art, and on the appliances of war. But it is safe to calculate that at least half of the amount would have been so expended as to bring a productive return. Two or three hundred millions would have been at the service of peace; and Mr. Ruskin's letter points the question, What could have been done with that enormous total? If it were at the disposal of an English statesman as far-seeing in peace as Bismarck is in war, what might not be done for the England of the present and the future? The prospect is almost millennial. Harbours of refuge might be built all round the coast; the fever dens of London, Manchester, and Liverpool might give place to abodes of health; the poor children of the United Kingdom might be taught to read and write; great universities might be endowed; the waste lands might be cultivated, and the Bog of Allen drained; the National Debt could be swiftly reduced; and a hundred other great national enterprises would sooner or later be fulfilled. But all this store of human good has been blown away from the muzzles of the Krupps and the chassepôts. It has literally been transformed into smoke. We do not deny that such a waste may be necessary in order to guard against still further destruction. Wars have often been imperative. It would frequently be the height of national wickedness to choose an ignoble peace. Nevertheless war is the most costly and most wasteful of human pursuits. When the

working class followers of Professor Beesly ask themselves what is the price of battle, what it represents, and by whom the chief part is paid, they will be better able to respond to the appeal for armed intervention than they were on Tuesday night.”—Daily Telegraph, January 14th, 1871.

16. "The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st June last, is told in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in Thursday's Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently stories of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close investigation,-though but too many were true, we may hope that the writer, who does not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has heard somewhat exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for this, there was evidently horror enough. The first attack was on the French Consul, who was murdered, the Chinese mandarins refusing aid. Then the Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests murdered, as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attaché to the Legation at Pekin and his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob, acting with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their officers did not attempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the French Sisters of Charity, stripped them, exposed them to the mob, plucked out their eyes, mutilated them in other ways, and divided portions of their flesh among the infuriated people, and then set fire to the hospital, in which a hundred orphan children, who were the objects of the sisters' care, were burnt to death."-The Spectator, September 3rd, 1870.