WAR, AN ESSAY. {Continued from our last.]

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XVI, Issue 1243, 12 August 1859, Page 2 (Supplement)

WAR, AN ESSAY. {Continued from our last.]

HOW GREAT CHANGES IN OPINION TAKE PLACE. How like we are to our fathers ! — in the main characteristics of thought, I mean. It is true that much is changed about»us physically, but it is not such a change as effects the habits of thinking. Take the rapidity of locomotion for instance. These days of steam and electricity seem certainly rery different from the time when, as boys, we used to be taken, on the first of May, to see the- mail coaches turn out. from the Post Office in all their new gear, and with all their fine array. And what jja pretty sight, by the way it was j one, lam sure, which the boy who has once seen it would never forget. But observe, the ideas of men are not the least changed upon the main subject. They saw the advantages of swift locomotion ; they exceedingly desired that swiftness ; and though there may have been some surprise as to the new means adopteJ for attaining that desired end, there was not the slightest radical chanf.* of thought engendered in the matter. The same cours of argument might be applied to many other instances. Painless operations in surgery, which seem to me the greatest invention of modern times, are but a following out of the skilful appliances which had long been brought to bear upon the same end. If we take literature, which is no doubt an admirable reflex of the current thought of men, we shall se how little change there is in the nature of that current. The conversational wic of our day, the best kind of that wit, differs very little from that of Selwyn of of Jeykll ; the best kind of writing, from that of Swift, Addison, Bolinbroke, and Temple. Nay, to go further back, how closely we are related in habits of thought and the ways of lookiDg at anything to the great writer's of Elizabeth's time Bacon's words have occasionally an antique show about them, but the current of thought is for the most part such as we think now, or a3 we incline to think the moment we have heard it. Further back even, and also in different countries, there is the same simi arity to modern thought. Charles the Fifth and his ministers are very like modern statesmen in the essential elements of their ways of thinking. But, as you go back, there doe 9 come a time in history when this similarity is considerably broken up and diven-ifiod ; and I contend that the change does not take place gradually, i»ut as it were, per saltum. If, for example, you take the beginning of the fifteeuth century, this suddenness of change will be visible -I could not illustrate my position better than by bringing such a work as Monstrelet's "Chronicle" before you. That work commences in the j'ear 1400. Now, as you probably will not read Monstrelet, and certainly cannot read him now, I will give you an instance of what I mean. Very early in the "Chronicle" there is an account, amongst others which resemble it, of a general challenge given by theSenschal of Hainault To all knights and esquires, gentlemen of name and arms, without reproach, I, Jean de Verchin, Seneschal of Hainault, make known j that which the aid of God, of our Lady, of my ! Lord St. George, and of the lady of affections, ! I intend being at Coucy the first Sunday of August next ensuing, unless prevented by lawful and urgent business, ready on the morrow to make a trial of the arms hereafter men- \ tioned, in the presence of my most redoubted ! lord, the Duke of Orleans, who has granted |me peimission to hold the meetings at the above place. From respect to the gentleman (he alludes to the person who may accept the challenge) and to afford him more pleasure for having had the goodness to accept my invitation, I proj mise to engage him promptly on foot unless | bodily prevented, without either of us taking off any part of the armour which we had worn in our assault on horseback : we may, however, change oar visors, and lengthen the plates of our armour according to the number of strokes with the sword and dagger, as may be thought proper, when my companion shall have deterir.ined to accomplish my deliverance by all deeds of arms, provided, however, that' the number of strokes may be gone through during the day, at such intermissions as I shall point •ut. " Should it happen, after having agreed with t gentleman to perform these deeds of arms, as we are proceeding toward the judge he had fixed upon, that I should meet another gentleman willing to deliver me, who should name i a judge nearer my direct road than the first, I would in that case perform my trial in arms with him whose judge was the nearest; and when I had acquitted myself to him, I would then return to accomplish my engagement with the first, unless prevented by any bodily infirmity. * * * That all gentlemen who may incline to deliver me from my vow may know the road I propose to follow, I inform them, that under the will of God, I mean to travel through France to Bordeaux, — thence to the country of Foxi, to the kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, to the shrine of Lord St. James at Compostella. On my return, if it please God/ 1 will pass through the kingdom of Portugal, — thence to Valencia, Arragon, Catalonia, and Avignon, and recross the kingdom of France, having it understood if I may be permitted to travel through all these countries in security, to perform my vow, except the kingdon of France, and the, country of Hainault." Here is a total change of thought. Nobody now-a-days has the slightest idea of gathering renown in the way which the Seneschal of Hainault proposed for himself. And to this love of duelling for duelling's sake what a contrast is afforded by modern notions on the subject, when duelling, even for a good cause, is universally stigmatised, at least amongst us as something foolish as well as wrong. But perhaps a still more striking instance i of the change in the ways of thinking, which I fancy I recognise, is to be found in reading the celebrated defence (also chronicled in Monstrelet) made by Master Jean Petit on behalf of the Duke of Burgundy for the acknowledged murder of tl\e Duke of Orleans. The transparent sophistry, the wonderful pedantry, tbe astonishing audacity with which the orator brings in St. Paul's exhortation to charity, im order to countenance one. of the foulest assassinations that 7 ever was committed, make you feel, when you are reading "this defence, that

you have entered into a different period of thought from that which characterises s ypur own times Also, when you consider the immense barbarities which were committed in those times during the long and bloody wari between the French factions of Burgundy and Arraagnac, and during the coutests ,of ihe French and English in the same period, you must admit that there has been since then a great change of thought and feeling in tlu mode of warfare. But alas ! if you come to that which presses most deeplj upon the resources, the comfort*, and the well-being of a people— namely, the maintenance of numerous armies in the time of peace, you will find very little change of thought or practice. All that change has yet to be introduced. It is no doubt a much more difficult thing to persuade potentates to reduce the number of their armies than to cause them to become more and more humane in the actual proceadings and practices of warfare. It is easy to perceive the mischief of indiscriminate slaughter : it is not at first sight easy to perceive the full mischief of maintaining larger armies than a country's^need demand, or than its resources will bear. But we may fairly hope that such knowledge wi.l come — perhaps come suddenly rather than gradually, and an amelioration take place in this respect which would astonish those persons who in these days maintain the necessity for upholding large armies, as much as it would astonish the seneschals, dukes, counts and ridaraes of Monstrlet's time to find the small amount of intentional barbarity with which war is conduoted in our times. In such a great subject as we are considering, where the roots of evil lie so deeply both in human nature and in the present tangled circumstances of Europe, we must have recource to history to gain admonition and comfort, and to see that in the long course of years changes of thought arise, if not gradually, at least, as I have s-aid, per salium, which would seem to any one generation absolutely Utopian, if not impoi•ible.