Chapter LXVIII: The Use of War

Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? We have made
them a curse,
Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own;
And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse
Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own
hearthstone?

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by,
When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex,
like swine,
When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie;
Peace in her vineyard--yes!--but a company forges the wine.

And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian’s head,
And the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife,
And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,
And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life,
When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee,
And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children’s bones,
Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and sea,
War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones.

For I trust if an enemy’s fleet came yonder round by the hill
And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out
of the foam,
That the smooth-faced snub-nosed rogue would leap from his
counter and till,
And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yard-wand,
home!

_Lord Tennyson._

DOYLE