ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Sir Arthur Helps and John Ruskin through two representative and related texts – 'War: A Conversation with the Friends in Council' and The Crown of Wild Olive – will hint at some of the facets of their complicated relationship, and more important, will make it clear that while much set these men apart, their significant differences reveal some common assumptions. Helps regarded the subject of war as the opportunity to make a plea for detachment and balance; in contrast, Ruskin saw the subject as the occasion to make an argument about the possibility of massive social transformation. Ruskin, then, used the issue of war to challenge social inequalities. Ruskin understood that modern wars might pose new challenges for both civilian and military authorities. Ruskin was at once influenced by the more restrained figures such as Helps, and yet was also shaped by some of the powerful historical forces which flourished before and after the age of equipoise.
