Wyzewa accepts this insatiable mania for destruction as a characteristic, which of course it undoubtedly is, of the general disease of modernity; but he does not seem to trace it to what is surely its source, the greed of gain. All these engineers, builders, contractors, town councillors, bankers, usurers, speculators, chairmen, shareholders, and directors of companies, can make nothing out of the ancient glory and grace of beautiful cities; the mayors can get no savoury morsel to compensate them for all their servility and time-serving; the deputies can find no useful plunder to enrich the crew who have voted for them; in respecting the beauty of the past, syndicates and tradesmen and gamblers on 'Change would reap no harvest of gold whatever.
What else but greed has been the motive of that shameless desecration of Rome against which Geoffroy has raised his voice from the tomb to protest?
What else but greed the motive of that infamous destruction of the entire centre of Florence, its historic towers and churches and palaces, torn down with blind rage to be replaced by hideous hotels, and monster shops, and grotesque monuments? the most piteous, and the most inexcusable, injury ever done to the rights of history and of art.
What else the motive of that wanton disfigurement of Venice which has disgraced the last fifteen years of the municipal rule, and is about to continue the work of ruin merely to enrich the men of greed, the English and American tradesmen, the Hebrew speculators, the German hucksters, the cosmopolitan inflators of bubble companies?
The motive of all these destructions is always the same, and always of the lowest kind: gain. Everyone concerned in them gains, or hopes to gain. There is no other instinct or idea than this. It is, like the present diplomacy of Europe, an all-round game of grab; and a large percentage of the gains goes to the doctors who label the gambling 'Hygiene.'
The plea of health is a falsehood usually advanced in excuse of such destructions as those of the Florentine centre and the Venetian Calli and Campielli. Those who allege it know, as well as I do, that the unhealthiness lies not in the habitations but in the habits of the people. Water never touches their bodies; tight-lacing is a female rule in even the peasant class; the field-worker is as tightly cased in her leather stays as the duchess in her satin corset. The favourite foods of the populace are such as give worms, dysentery, and skin diseases; their drinks are adulterated and poisonous;[15] their general habits are unwholesome and injurious beyond all description; they are saved only by the purity of the air which the municipalities, who chatter of hygiene, do their best to pollute with acid and chemical fumes, and the stench of noxious trades.