otism,
courage, spurs, pennants, and tearful but resolute ladies who wave their
handkerchiefs in the intervals of sobbing over their "loved ones."

He calls war "noble play." He scorns cricket. As for his "style" and his
"thought": "I use," says Ruskin, "in such a question, the test which I
have adopted, of the connexion of war with other arts, and I reflect how,
as a sculptor, I should feel if I were asked to design a monument for
Westminster Abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end and a ball at the
other. It may be there remains in me only a savage Gothic prejudice; but
I had rather carve it with a shield at one end and a sword at the
other."

I cannot tell whether Ruskin reflected so because of a savage Gothic
prejudice, but I am certain he wrote like that moved by what we feel--the
feeling goes deeper into time even than the Goths--about the victim for
sacrifice. We must justify that sacrifice, and so we give it a ceremonial
ritual and dignity. Otherwise, I think, Ruskin would not have suggested
the shield and sword as the symbolic decorations. He felt instinctively
and because of a long-accepted tradition that those antique symbols were
the only way to hide the ugly look of the truth. For certainly he could
have used a ball at one end--a cannon-ball--and a mortar at the other.
Just as we might use an aerial torpedo at one end, and the image of a
mutilated child at the other; or a gas cylinder at one end, and a
gas-mask at the other. But the artist is not going to be deprived of his
romance through a touch of the actual, any more than the lady with the
handkerchief can be expected to forego her anguished sob over her hero as
he goes forth to battle.

We saw that in our Great War. The ancient appeal of the patriots rushed
us away from reason with "last stands," and the shot-riddled banners
wavering in the engulfing waves of barbarians, till an irresistible
cavalry charge scattered the hordes. All this replaced the plumes, the
shining armour, and the chivalrous knights. Ruskin, however, was a subtle
improvement even on the last stand with the shot-riddled banner. He
anticipated those who have been most popular because they made our War
entrancing and endurable. He went to the heart of the matter. He knew
that the audience which would the more readily agree with him when he
made an emotional case for the ennobling nature of war would be mainly of
reclused women. He addressed them. So did, of late, some of our most