knoweth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen! Suppose kings
should ever arise, who heard and believed this word, and at last
gathered and brought forth treasures of--Wisdom--for their people?

Think what an amazing business THAT would be! How inconceivable, in
the state of our present national wisdom! That we should bring up
our peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet exercise!--
organise, drill, maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of
thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers!--find national amusement in
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a fair shot
at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. What an
absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the wealth of the
capitalists of civilised nations should ever come to support
literature instead of war!

Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single sentence out of
the only book, properly to be called a book, that I have yet written
myself, the one that will stand (if anything stand), surest and
longest of all work of mine.


"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,