Books and reading -- Great Britain; Conduct of life; Social problems; Women
“It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that
it is entirely capitalists’ wealth which supports unjust wars. Just
wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men
who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men’s bodies
and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them
besides, which make such war costly to the maximum; not to speak of
the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which
have not grace nor honesty enough in all their multitudes to buy an
hour’s peace of mind with; as, at present, France and England,
purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of
consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and
half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and granaried by the ‘science’ of
the modern political economist, teaching covetousness instead of
truth). And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of
the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by
subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the
matter, the capitalists’ will being the primary root of the war; but
its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, rendering it
incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about,
therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each
person.”
France and England literally, observe, buy _panic_ of each other; they
pay, each of them, for ten thousand-thousand-pounds’-worth of terror, a
year. Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions’ worth of panic
annually, they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, and
buy ten millions’ worth of knowledge annually; and that each nation spent
its ten thousand thousand pounds a year in founding royal libraries,
royal art galleries, royal museums, royal gardens, and places of rest.
Might it not be better somewhat for both French and English?
It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. Nevertheless, I hope it
will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in
every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them; the same
series in every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind,
prepared for that national series in the most perfect way possible; their
text printed all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and divided
into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beautiful, and strong, and
thorough as examples of binders’ work; and that these great libraries
will be accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of the
day and evening; strict law being enforced for this cleanliness and
quietness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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