[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR, — In your last issue
Dr. Jacks asks for a list of examples from history of unselfishness in the dealing of State with State. He imagines (I fear correctly) that " the list would not be very imposing " ; but there is at least one example of a State " giving its life " for loyalty's sake.
In 427 B.C. the little State of Plataea surrendered to the Lacedaemonians after sustaining a two years' siege in heroic endurance rather than be false to their alliance with Athens. Pleading (unsuccessfully) for their lives, they used the follow- ing words (Thucydides III, 55 seq.: Jowett's translation):
" If we refused to revolt from the Athenians at your bidding, we were quite right ; for they assisted us . . . and after this it would have been dishonourable to betray them. They had been our benefactors. . . . How could we refuse to respond loyally to their call? . . . and yet the consistency of men's conduct should be consistently acknowledged."
Has the verdict of mankind poured contempt upon the Quixotic loyalty even unto death of the Plataeans? The history (nearly three centuries earlier) with a very different ending of the refusal of Jerusalem, inspired by Isaiah, the Prophet, to submit to Sennacherib, King of Assyria, gives us the only and all-sufficient justification for deciding that " because right is right, to follow right were wisdom in the scorn of consequence." When the alliance with Egypt proved (as Isaiah had foretold) a " bruised reed " the people of Jerusalem gave themselves up to the madness of despair. " Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." But at the eleventh hour Isaiah's constant courage produced a moral revolution—a return to trust in God. It must have been a support to the little faith of millions of us to remember that that return to God was followed by the destruction of the army of Sennacherib, which delivered Jerusalem. But a larger faith would demand no miracle. If it be right for States to stand firm and trust in God, it must be right " in scorn of consequence." Who are we to judge whether defeat with honour be not the better way?—Yours, &c., CECIL GRANT.
Wheathampstead.
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