Chapter I: Part 1

DEMOCRACY--
FALSE OR TRUE?

A Prologue
and Dream

BY
SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND
K.C.B., R.A.

London - - - Cecil Palmer
Oakley House Bloomsbury Street WC1

Printed at
The Morland Press Ltd
190 Ebury Street
London
SW1

Dedicated to the honest working classes of
England, rich and poor, by one of
themselves

FIRST
EDITION
1920
COPY
RIGHT

DEMOCRACY

§ 1

It is a dangerous, but agreeable, game to play the prophet, perhaps unwise; but while admitting that, I am going to do so, not because I feel sure, but because I want to sift my own thoughts. I may be told “why not do so in private?” I’ve done that already. Probably it does not matter what an old man says, “He is a weather beaten block waiting for axe or fire.” Whatever Ideals are mine, there are few which are in agreement with the fashion of to-day. Still I am capable of looking forward. I’ve looked back a great deal in my life, and been a humble student of “Cause and Effect.” Young enough to believe, even though it lies distant from hence, in Utopia, and I make bold to say so. I still believe in the human race. I still believe in a capacity for repentance and change of direction from bad to a better state of things. It is likely that the desirable, according to my philosophy, would be the undesirable to many, perhaps, just now, most people! Nevertheless I mean to state it.

William Morris made a delightful story, “News from Nowhere”; he thought that Socialism would realise his Ideal, perhaps it might; anyway Socialism is a pleasanter word than Individualism, it suggests “_Thou_,” the other cries “_I_.” _Thou_ has not been in the air of late. _I_ has been so, and prominently; of this, more presently!

Some great and wise men have spent considerable energies in building Utopia. Jesus Christ, Moses, Hamurrabbi, and Mohammed, Plato, Sir Thomas More, and, when I come to think of it, all leaders of thought have played with the bricks of that entertaining place. I imagine that the folk, who think at all, form a picture of their preference, which includes the future with the present. Seemingly, the future has a habit of taking care of itself; that is possibly a fatalistic fallacy! What _will_ be done in the future is in the making of the present. The flower is forming out of sight. We have no reason for knowing what kind of being the man of the future, even of the near future, is to be. One thing, however, is pretty certain; he will be as good or evil, ignorant or learned, as he chooses. We might reason together for a year as to the meaning of _Good_ and _Evil_. To clear the way I will state now that I am a firm believer in Free Will, in as far as conduct is concerned. We have to die; that is a physical law as that we live is; but we can retard even the supreme victor, death, by effort of Will. To wish ardently is half way to obtaining.

If we wish wickedly we are on the road to wickedness. For those who thus wish I have no words but these, “It is a bad habit, reverse it.” The foundation of good is to wish _Well_ and nobly, and Will strongly by action. Belief in Free Will is an incentive to industry, courage and stability. It includes _Hope_, the sister of Faith and Charity and courage to proceed through the thorny way of Life; Industry to make life happy; and Stability to maintain effort however adverse circumstances may be to it, and Hope to make us cling to the dream and to realise it in Vision if not yet in fact, which urged us at the outset. Did “Free Will,” in the abstract, exist before we came hither and will it continue after we go hence? I suggest that Free Will is eternal, that God is All Free Will; when He breathed His spirit into man’s body He imparted it to him. Plato’s sublime allegory of the soul driving her chariot, directing her horses antagonistic Eros and Himeros, proclaims the potentiality and immortality of the Soul. If matter does not die but is converted into other matter, can the Soul, created before matter, die? What the conversion of matter and Soul is, is beyond our thinking. But what does concern us is how we use the soul during its pilgrimage within the body! Its temporary home must be split up to effect an escape for the eternal organism. Perhaps death is really Life! Is it reasonable to believe that a live thing contains a dead one? If it is not so the soul was alive before it was environed by matter, and continues to live after its temporary shell is broken up and its particles are driven by Time hither and thither in dust.

The brain is matter, it is as wax, impressionable. From the first instant of its creation to its last effort it is receiving impressions. It dies as all matter dies. But do the impressions die? Instinct and reason say Nay. As far as they have exercised authority for good or evil upon the individual they do so reflectively upon a generation and progressively to succeeding generations. Philosophy tells us there is no waste in nature. If there is none as regards matter, is there likely to be as regards the soul which has been pre-existing and will be post-existing? If that is so and Free Will accepts and acts, brain impressions are immortal! Did the soul enter the body unasked? Does it leave unasked? A child under reprimand said, pathetically “I did not ask to be born,” that child was obviously alluding to her inclination. The child inadvertently spoke as a fatalist; it was a way of saying “I could not help what I did.” Before the soul enters the body is it an individual or only an atmosphere? Had it experience or not? Where has it been before? Has the soul a memory? These questions we all know have received answers from metaphysical and philosophic minds.

From the dawn of man’s intelligence, whenever that was, until to-day, mankind has yearned for an answer. A great philosopher and friend of mine, the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, said to me “Now-a-days there is nothing more difficult than to say bravely I _do not_ know.” Yes, I accept that modest statement from a great man but I cannot help casting about for an answer! The Truth is somewhere, perhaps in Utopia, even at the bottom of a well. There is something on a different plane than sophistry, poetical rhapsody. There is a great deal to be said for emotion, it is our strongest instinct. Reading Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Christian philosophy are we not drawn into the atmosphere of Rhapsody and Fancy? Even into a land of dreams if so we please to call Ideals. However they may urge Reason against Emotion, none of the great philosophers succeed in doing it themselves. If they did they would fall quite flat, because we who read are creatures of emotional instincts. All the great philosophers, though they wrote in prose, were poets, not by choice but necessity. Absolutely materialistic philosophy is, happily, rare. It may lay hold of certain minds for a time, but being contrary to our higher instincts its grip is only partial, unsatisfying and ephemeral. The great philosophers live in a land of Dreams or Ideals, a land from which mankind is always as substance. We want the dreams to come True as children do after hearing a fairy story. Plato, Confucius, Buddha, Aristotle, Paul, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, even Comte were idealists, builders of Utopia. They tried their minds in a furnace of difficulties, their chief effort was to reconcile emotion and reason.

They tried to account for _Feeling_ by Reason. However far Reason may travel, there is a point where it is arrested; speculation starts afresh. It is the poetry in all mythology, not its probability, which is neither here nor there, which touches the human heart; it is that which detains us and holds us fast. It is the poetry of Love that underlies the exquisite verse of Apulius. The story of the Soul of Love it is. French novels, marvellously clever, tell us the other side. I back Apulius’ story of Cupid and Psyche to outlive most of them. It is the abstract poetry of the wanderings of Osiris, not the philosophy built upon it, that engrosses us. The myth of the Delphic oracle, an inspired pastoral, clings when the Delphic oracle is no more. Goats and sheep skipping in rhapsody, their shepherd afterwards giving way to the _mania_ of prophecy, enchanted by the voice of Apollo from a bubbling stream, have more to say for us than the oracle said to the Greeks afterwards in a stately temple. There is something instinctively true in the first emotion, something untrue in the political use made of it by priests and politicians. It is not the political use made of Nature myths which we admire, but the imagination of a highly endowed temperament from which they sprang in the golden age of emotional invention, unrestrained by reason, yet having at the root a _True Ideal_. Psyche personated the soul! The poets have answered our question more simply than the philosophers, who have ploughed over the ground already sown with beautiful flowers, and not seldom have sown weeds on it.

The Churches have added nothing to the beauty of the Christian story. In their efforts to codify it and convert its simplicity into dogmatic and puzzling creeds, upon acceptance of which or not depends the salvation or damnation of the human race, they have not improved or better interpreted the amazing mystery which threads its way in and out among a tapestry of exquisite design. In their effort to materialise the spiritual or Ethos of the story they have often played havoc with it. As a wondrous story full of humanity it has passed through the fire of sophism, politics and Churchcraft, and remains as it was--a product of simple poetical mystical inspiration, and as such it will always touch the world. Whoever wrote the first chapter of Genesis was a great poet who has inspired multitudes, not by his science, which was _nil_, but by a poetic truth incomparably delightful and mythically _true_, It inspired M. Angelo, Raphael, and a host of great artists. Milton expanded and retold it in his immortal verse. It has supplied inspiration to musicians, and scientific men have done battle among themselves and over a Poem. Thus have they done it honour. If in details what is related breaks down under the cold light of science, what does that matter? The soul survives. The allegory is complete, the parable is untouched. If the mighty scenes portrayed with simple dignity and unapproachable reserve do not accord with the teachings of science, does that matter? Not one whit! The story is the same, as Homer’s tale of the Siege of Troy is the same, whoever wrote it or when it was written. Whether the “Iliad” was put together by travelling minstrels’ stories edited by Homer or his invention has nothing to do with its value as a poem. The history of the Jews, as related in the Bible, is full of strange and direct dealings with miraculous events which no science or sense can accept. What does it matter that the historian made a blunder in astronomy? It was not his business. We all know that the sun did not stand still for Joshua. The historian wrote for patriots, not for astronomers. To him the earth was stationary and flat, the sun rising and setting each day. Even now, with all our science, we talk of the setting and rising of the sun because it looks like that. To the people of that time the stars were as lamps slung from the blue vault of heaven, not at all a bad figure of the truth, they look so to us, and to-day Arabs speak of them as “lamps.”

§ 2

A new star, the story of the birth of Christ tells, guided the kings to the manger, where lay a girl-mother and her newborn child. She, one “of the people,” her reverent custodian a carpenter. That was what they went to see, and the new star was their guide. We need not take that literally; it is far more beautiful symbolically, figuratively, poetically: a new light was dawning upon a worn out faith, a new symbol of the Spirit of God arose, and not out of a palace or as a child of kings, but from a manger, from a straw bed, from a girl of the people and a craftsman. Not only did the three kings come thither guided by light in their hearts, but simple mountain shepherds too from their sheepfolds came. An angel of the heavenly host, three Oriental kings, a few shepherds, a maid, a carpenter, and a little child were the first actors in a great drama that has moved the world for two thousand years.

A shepherd, a flock of goats, a bubbling fountain form the _dramatis personæ_ of the myth of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. From that sprang the Pithea and the thousands of votive statues for which Delphi became famous. Its temples and universities, its priests and politicians degraded the myth to a level of lies and deceit. “God set a bow in the sky for a sign.” How does it affect the promise that we know how the bow came there? We remember the promise in the poem. We are not concerned with the structure of the bow. Even now in these materialist days wherever we see the rainbow we recall God’s promise which, made or not made to mankind _in fact_, is so told in the poem.

Plato’s allegory in the “Phædrus” of the chariot of the soul, the antagonistic steeds Love and Desire, Eros and Himeros, struggling for supremacy, taken literally or judged from a scientific aspect, is nonsense; as a parable it is one of the truest, as a poem one of the most beautiful in Greek literature.

Apollo came over the mountains. The singer, minstrel, and healer came, bringing music from Olympus. We picture the Sun God lighting up the dense forests as he journeyed through them on the crests and edge of a mountain range. We can hear in our spiritual ears sweet music from his golden lyre, see the rivers as the Sun God passes over them, sparkling with amethyst diamond and silver as the light from him, the giver of light, kisses their surface. This is the figure of the Dorian invasion that the poets, not the scientists, present!

We still think of Apollo as the primitive author and forerunner of all that Greece became. When the Persians were on their way to invade Greece, Datis, the admiral of the great fleet, steered clear of the island of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo, for fear of vengeance from the God of Light, whom they worshipped. Even to-day Delos is a _sacred island_ where once a year Christian Mass is said by Roman and Greek priests upon an ancient altar to Apollo that I myself have seen. The myth of Apollo is still alive in poetry if it is dead in prose! The imagination still responds to it if reason does not accept it as a literal truth.

It surely was not the reverberation of the trumpets’ blasts from the hosts of Joshua which overthrew the walls of Jericho. Taken literally it is a ridiculous statement; figuratively, a very impressive one. The power of martial music is great; it stimulates courage, quickens the pulse, and inspires mad valour, which it urges until every obstacle in the way of a triumphant army is overthrown: an impressive metaphor so taken, but taken as a literal fact it is silly.

The power of music as an influence to calm a people maddened by lust of war is told by the poet. It is related by a Greek historian that one hundred harpists were sent to Sparta from Ionia to make gentle, seductive, sedative music to a wild people who knew it not, knowing only war. It prevailed! Their war instincts slept under the calming influence of Apollo’s art.

Strictly speaking, the event related may never have happened. As a poetical presentation of the power of music it is true! Was not the madness of Saul temporarily abated by the harpist David? The foregoing illustrations illustrate the range of art as a direct influence upon men in diametrically opposite directions.

That the Divine Spirit is very near, is even in our midst, is related in Genesis. “God walked in the garden in the cool of the day,” so sang the poet. The idea of God as subject to heat or cold is almost comical. The poet has anthropomorphised a mystery. To God he gives the feelings of the thing he has created, that is the way he presents God--God as very near to man and sharing his comforts and discomforts. The primitive poet made nonsense poetic sense.

The nearness of the spiritual world has been well said by a spiritual poet, “Heaven is only a foot above our heads.” How near, after all, is the Ideal to the Real, if we could only see; and yet we can feel it in our subconscious state to be so.

Now let us see for a moment how closely in touch Divinity is with agricultural life, how much it was in favour of it, how the gods were close to it, becoming even a part of it, not only by the benediction of it, but unison with it. Obviously, the gods thought well of labour and the labourer both loved and feared the gods.

As, to the Hebrew poet, God walked in the garden in the cool of the day, so to the Greek, “Speak low in the noontide, for then the gods sleep.” The mythical instances presented are only a few of many which occur in classical mythology. And be it remembered that we inherit Greek mythology. It is far nearer than we are apt to think to what are still primitive instincts, and specially so to those who till and sow the land, follow the plough, who guard our flocks, and being an out-of-door-living people are (may be mysteriously) in touch with mother Nature and the gods who watch over her.

Æneas, the father of the Latin races (and as such not so distantly related to the British) was the son of the _herdsman_ Anchises, whom Venus chose to be the father of her son. The goddess chose her lover from the fields; not from a palace. Goat-footed Pan, the god of all, is the shepherds’ god, who initiated beautiful Paris, the chosen judge of beauty. Paris, a shepherd in the Italian upland, was the lover of beautiful Ænone, whom he deserted for licentious Venus. He did himself no good by casting off Ænone, his companion. Venus made game of him! Demeter, one of the most ancient of the circle of deities of Olympus, saved a child’s life from the fire; he was Triptolemus, afterwards the inventor of the plough. Demeter was the goddess of corn, the protectress of agriculture. Her child Persephone, carried away to the shades, where she was protected in winter, rose from thither as the almond blossoms heralded the approach of spring. Persephone was goddess of springtime, of its blossoms and flowers. The soul of the Greeks is read in their mythology. It is read also in her history. Athena was the protectress of Attica, and specially of Athens. It was she that brought the olive there, the origin of much wealth to the people, and it still is. When Paul preached from the “Areopagus” he faced the Acropolis of Athens, half a mile away. Over the top of the wall which contained the sacred buildings Paul saw the head of the golden spear of Athena gleaming from the bronze statue by Phidias of the virgin goddess, a beacon for ships as they passed the dangerous coast of Sunium to make for the harbour of Phaleron. Within that bronze effigy was a soul of the Athenian people as the statue was a symbol of it. Paul was not preaching anything new; he was concentrating a worship whose expansion, having left much of original simplicity behind, was giving way. Another primitive form of belief was taking root in monotheism, in which both shepherds and kings had taken a leading part. Apollo the Healer was to give way before the child of a Nazarene peasant and a humble carpenter. The _Cross_ was to be the future beacon for a while until a new faith shall grow out of the old again.

§ 3

Wisdom was symbolised by the owl, which crowned the helmet of the goddess Wisdom worshipped by the Greeks in the effigy of their protectress. The little Athenian owl still haunts the Acropolis. I have seen and heard it often there, and never without a thrill. Its plaintive cry proclaims the eternity of things and the never-changing voice of nature. As the owl hoots there so sings our nightingale in England’s woods. We too are reminded of the immortality of the soul of nature, perhaps also of the soul within us, and of its importance as the only part we can call immortal. Nearer to God are the songs of birds, the voices of the winds, even the wild utterances of beasts of the forest than the shrieks of machinery of which industrialism is so proud. Yes! All human makings are subject to destruction. The bronze Athena has gone. The golden and ivory statue of Athena is gone with the effigy of the owl. The shell has been broken, its parts are scattered, but the primitive faith within them lives although it has undergone change. Athens is not dead, saved from the brutal Turk she may become regenerate, she may again shine as a light to Europe, but if not that exactly, the light she shed may fix upon another city and shine there, so strange and mysterious are the comings and goings of nations! Recent discovery in Crete goes far to prove some fountain-head of truth in every ancient myth. Old Minos speaks! The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is explained. The labyrinth he made is there now, and a Cretan civilization of 4,000 years ago has been revealed, and what a Civilisation! a very noble art going hand in hand with “modern” economies and created in a primitive age, as we call it. Knossos was well drained by drainpipes almost the same as would be turned out by a “company” to-day. Alas, the multitudes of inscriptions discovered in Crete have not yet been read. A key to the script has not yet been found. It may appear at any moment, and then who shall say what marvels it may tell us! Our much-praised civilisation may be found to be but a feeble echo of a past one. We are mighty clever, we moderns, not seldom in making unpleasant discoveries and using useful ones to the annoyance of many and destruction of better things. We have electric light, great scientists have given it us, but the keenest witted have not yet discovered how the tombs of the kings in Egypt were lit. We know that neither oil or tallow provided light in those dark miles of caves and chamber walls covered with pictures in delicate relief and exquisitely coloured.

Fresh as the day they were finished, these monuments to the skill, industry and genius of Egyptian craftsmen 4,000 years ago stand as an example to us moderns, who at present show no signs of handing their genius down even to a dozen generations. Had they electric light? It is quite possible. It is evident whatever artificial light they used _was smokeless_, because the ceiling and walls are not discoloured. What was the meaning of all this superb beauty of labour and craftsmanship? It was not to gain applause, because after years of labour each tomb was hermetically sealed and a stone was placed at the entrance. Their labour was an expression of their noble religion. Their respect for the great dead who must find silence in their tombs while their souls reached higher and higher levels in their spiritual kingdom till such time as, purified, they were to be one in the soul of Osiris. These people worked for a great Ideal, for the Utopia they ever held in view, _without advertisement_, probably with little reward. To them the soul grew always in dignity and beauty, visiting the body from time to time in silence.

_Silence_ is the note struck by the Great Pyramids of Geza. A national religion, profoundly spiritual, which in the service it demanded from Art and Craftsmanship must BE PERFECT. Their art and craftsmanship tell us this. They were content to give the best only. They worshipped the Great Spirit by matter. They made their arts to sing of the noble elevation of the soul from sphere to sphere till it became perfected. Therein is the _soul_ of the ancient Egyptians, which they imparted to the Greeks, and which Moses learned and tried to hand on to the Hebrews. We modern workmen will do well to ponder on these things awhile, and to take many a lesson from “the poor pagans.” Poor pagans? Rather were they a most enlightened people, with whom, by comparison, we moderns are barbarians. They may have had all, or at least the greater part of what science has given to us. It is an ignorant cry that calls them Poor Pagans. There was more soul in ancient Egypt than in Europe to-day! We worship matter, very often very nasty matter, so long as it provides wealth which we are not yet civilised enough to know how to use. What England needs is a little _more_ soul, not less! A great deal more faith, a great deal more belief in the dignity of labour, a great deal more will to choose the best and discard the worst, a higher Ideal of honour, and a deeper sense of responsibility to after-coming generations. Much more widespread and intensified determination to leave behind us things so noble that they may bear some comparison with the labour of the poor Pagan! The spirit of which I write was _here_ once. We need not cross the Channel to find it. Wiltshire contains it. The soul of our ancestors is in the very stones of the great monoliths of Stonehenge, the primitive British temple to the sun, which, alas, we do not worship but wipe out in material progress of crude industrialism.

§ 4

Our primitive ancestors were driven by an ardent worship of the Power within the Sun. Like the Greeks they must set up a great temple to the Giver of Life, who made their crops ripen, who was to them an ocular vision of an unravelled mystery, the Prime Author of All! of Him who holds our destinies, our life and death in the palm of His hand! That is what urged them. No commercial spirit came between them and a great Ideal for which to labour and make manifest.

They fetched huge monoliths from Normandy. Frail crafts bore them over the rough sea to the shore of England, whence they were dragged to their destination. Do we think that such a tremendous, so dangerous an enterprise as this, was carried out under no higher motive than an industrial company?

There probably was some Oriental blood in this ancient folk of England. All Art, indeed all Science, had its birth place in the land of the “Rising Sun.” Like the Chaldeans, the race that made Stonehenge were astronomers. Upon a certain morning and at a certain hour of the year they knew the rising sun would hit a certain spot. They knew the exact direction of the ray that would do so. There they placed their altar to the God of Light, the All Beneficent One! We know now that some centuries before the Roman conquest of England the south of the island was highly civilised, but who by is not clear. They must have been a highly artistic people, possibly Kelts, possibly a race which had been or was in touch with Mykene, because the metal work that has survived time partakes of the character of both Keltic and Mycenian craftsmanship. Whoever they were, they brought art to savage islanders; hence they sowed the seeds of their ideals and of perfect craftsmanship, to fructify in those days of England’s greatness before the weed of Industrialism and the darkness it shed over the country had become a poisonous fetish. Of that grim subject more presently. The Mithra myth came here from the East and nearly won as a religion of blood sacrifice. But a stronger prevailed--the first created thing, Love. The Jews and Romans crucified Jesus Christ. They thought thus to obliterate His teaching, to wipe out the Ideal He taught, the Utopia He would erect--a kingdom of the soul that He would revive in the materialistic Roman decay. They did kill His body, but His immortal soul survives. They killed Him as King of the Jews, but left Him living as Monarch of the human race. The eggshell may be broken without killing the embryo within it. Love, pure love, so sought for in religions, so nobly conceived by the “poor pagan” Socrates, took hold of the hearts of primitive Christians, as the Delphic myth of Apollo of the primitive Greeks, and God’s forgiveness of man’s rashness and brutality when He set the bow in the sky as a sign of mercy, not only to Hebrews but the whole world. Salvation by blood sacrifice is a crude idea; Salvation through Love is a noble one.

§ 5

The Germans in the late war thought to destroy the soul of France by battering down the precious casket whose every stone was a living symbol of her chivalrous, kingly history. Brute force, employing every engine of industrialism, every energy of materialistic science, was to prevail. The noblest craftsmanship employed in the flowering time of French history and for generations, being the expression of a sensitive people deeply attached to Beauty, was shivered to atoms recklessly and triumphantly by the cannon of a hypocrite nation which claimed the first place in the history of the modern world. If Matter could ever overcome Soul, Germany would have succeeded; Germany would have broken the pride of Flemish commerce and her traditions as an organiser of it by the destruction of Ypres. The priceless books in Louvain, written and illuminated by pious scholars and patient craftsmen, the brutes burnt or stole with as ignorant a rapacity as a herd of monkeys. Again, they sought to destroy the soul of France by turning thousands of acres of productive country and fruit gardens so essentially a vital part of the commerce of France, making a fruitful land a desert. They tried (but in vain) to kill the soul of France by subjecting villagers, men, women and children to torture; like wild beasts to smash the modesty of pure women, even those dedicated to spiritual lives; then, the lust satisfied, they slaughtered them.

The clumsy minded Teuton misjudged its prey. They judge according to their own low standard of honour; force, brute force, as against strength of character, chivalry and patriotism: a standard fit only to be carried in the ranks of savages, but this time carried under the disguise of “Kultur,” a word which now is a stigma, one which includes all that is most vile and reprehensible in a people who employed fine natural faculties to invent every possible device for the destruction of life. Not a stone did Germany’s scientific men leave unturned to discover the earth’s hidden sources of destructive elements. They abused their fine faculties, they perverted their invention, Industrialism ran riot. Scientific force was used in full measure by the Germans for annihilation. The Emperor--the worst of the horde of savages--gave his encouragement to every bestial act committed by his depraved people. If such depravity was to succeed or could succeed, Germany would have done so. First in science, first in organisation, she seemed invincible. Her Industrialism was perfected, her system organised with the precision of clockwork. If _materialism_ at the expense of every other consideration can succeed, Germany would have done so. But no! A nation may kill its own soul, but God will not permit it to kill another. It is indeed a lesson. Germany had killed its soul. It had set up Moloch where God had been. Iron, steel, explosives, every poison upon the Pharmacy List, every evil pulsation of the heart were German weapons. The countries she laid waste will revive, their soul has been strengthened by tribulation, and the would-be conqueror will lick the dust for a century. France will grow strong again, she will recultivate her fields and orchards, and rebuild her villages, towns and churches.

§ 6

In their vulgar vanity the Germans said: “What would matter the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, of Ypres Town Hall, of Laon, indeed, of all that the world esteems as Art in France? We, the only nation of Kultur, can build better. What does the destruction of the library of Louvain matter? We can create a fresh one; anyhow, we can steal all the best books therefrom.” Poor deluded people! A people without taste, possessed of no artistic genius, devoid of the sense of beauty! All the cathedrals in Germany put together are not worth one bay of Chartres, one tower of Rheims, or one arcade of Ypres Town Hall. German architecture is as hard as steel, as unemotional as iron, and, like her people, dull and soulless. Art is the mirror of a nation. German Art at its best is brutal as her people have been. The nineteenth century Minotaurs are in a direct line from the hordes of barbarians who laid Italy waste, who burned Rome, and spread horrors wherever their footsteps trod. William II. hates England more than France. As long as England holds the sea Germany cannot master the world. After France, England’s turn would have come had German materialism succeeded.

§ 7

Think of it, craftsmen and builders, and all of us who value the soul of England! Think of it, farmers, agricultural labourers, and all who live on and by the land! Your cities would be desolate wastes, your land poisoned, your women ravished, your children spiked by bayonet thrusts, your old men and women shot or tortured. That is what would have happened had Germany’s materialism prevailed! Having done this, would the soul of England been slain. No!! No conqueror ever killed the soul of a country conquered. A country commits suicide, that’s the way its soul is killed, and that is the way Germany destroyed herself.

A country may poison itself, degrade itself by self-indulgence and greed to the lowest level; it may kill in itself every good for which it has been favoured, and so kill its soul; but slain by a foreign power--never! The thought of what might have happened to us, and which was nearer happening than many of us will allow, should set us thinking of England’s mighty past. Setting the success of her commerce aside, do we quite value at their true value the legacy of riches which our ancestors have bequeathed? Do we esteem as we should the builders of our cathedrals, the _unrivalled_ beauty of the English parish and village church? Do we esteem at their due English craftsmen (the first in the world) and what noble work they left us? Do we value the great creative minds of our predecessors? I sometimes wonder if we are forgetting the very things which illustrate the beauty of the English soul in a rush after materialism, which seems to pay a momentary interest. Are we travelling, or have we been travelling along a road which has proved the road to ruin of Germany? I think sometimes we have been. Are we permitting Industrialism to kill our souls? I am not sure we are not! But more of that presently. What saved England in the four years of her great danger and trial? Her Government did not. It was not officialdom that prevented our ruin, it was that the heart of England was still sound, notwithstanding grievous temptations to break it. Notwithstanding false doctrines of Equality taught by ignorant extremists, our workmen still saw straight according to their ancient traditions as yet unbroken, as yet deaf to “catch words” from noisy rhetoric out of the mouths of ignorant and mischievous leaders inflated by vanity and rendered blind by egotism and desire for power over a more ignorant but clear-thinking workman.

§ 8

The English workman is still “_au cœur_” _honest_; he cannot help it; tradition of honesty flows in his veins still. If he _is_ ignorant, the direction of his instincts is honest. He was the best and most highly respected workman in Europe; other nations envied him. An English cabinet, an English knife, English cloth, English needlework were the envy of every foreigner. Why was the praise of English workmanship so highly praised and prized by other nations? Because her workmen were the most honest and skilled in Europe. I say “were.” Are they so still? No! But they may again become so if they are true to their noble tradition and to themselves, and no longer permit evil counsel to draw them away by specious and plausible promises.

The noble instincts of the English craftsman I am old enough to remember. Once, and not so long ago, his work was his conscience, he believed in it and did it with all his might. It was a habit of mind which ruled him and made him _free_. Why do I write “free”? Because being an honest workman, he did not fear competition. He had an ideal, which was to give the best labour for a good wage. He was simple, he took pride in his work. He had his Utopia, which was to labour to the enth of his power to do honour to himself, his family and country. Good work was encouraged then and commanded the market of the world! Economically, irrespective of honour, the workman was right. The best work will always command the best market in the long run. Honesty was the motto on the standard of the Englishman. He had an image in his mind and up to it he strove to arrive. He liked perfection and strove to reach it. In that sense he was an artist plus craftsman, an imaginative worker distinct from a machine. To have told a bricklayer he must only lay a given number of bricks a day, or that doing bad work was good for all-round trade, would have been to insult him. So his work had a soul in it; the pleasure he took in its doing was reflected. It was a pleasure to regard it. I remember hundreds of workmen like that when I was a boy, men with whom one could make friends, in whom there was good fellowship and no mistrust. There was a bond of union. We were workmen; he and I were only differentiated by the nature of Trade; he of the plough, the shovel, the saw or what not, I of the pencil, brush or scalpel, that was all.

We had the same soul and sense of honour, he to drive a straight furrow, dig a good trench, I to do a good drawing or picture. My fellow-workmen, if they think for themselves, and they are quite capable to do that, will recognise that to preach “equality” is one thing; it sounds attractive; it is, in fact, a mare’s nest, a will-o’-the-wisp; it is unreachable, in the first place; in the second, if it were reached, to-morrow would provide _inequality_. Were the scales of Fate adjusted every morning, in the evening they would be unbalanced. If it were possible to attain equality it would ruin the world; it would paralyse effort; it would reduce mankind to a system of self-indulgence, lassitude, and, finally, to imbecility. Giving up that word as hopeless, we will retain one of the popular triad--“Liberty,” as including “Fraternity.” Yet while we urge “liberty” we must beware of its caricature, “licence,” the arch-enemy of Fraternity and Liberty. Licence is, in fact, the grossest form of tyranny. We might, indeed, exclude the term “liberty,” which includes Fraternity, which excludes Licence.

§ 9

And now we come to an important point of our argument. Labour has permitted itself to become a slave. Individual workers are not FREE. They have given their souls, or shall we say their freedom, to men of their own class, who, having a smattering of education, assume power as their leaders. Anyway, so they began, but time has shown them more _drivers_ than leaders. Trade union leaders make a show of fraternity. One asks, for information: Is coercion a sign of it any more than a sign of liberty? Obedience to national law is one thing, to class law is another. Having gone far, class leaders assume the right to absorb capital, _i.e._, to hand it over to Labour. Were that to arrive would the nation as a whole be in a better way? Surely the same difficulty would occur which distresses advanced democrats. Capital would be still a bugbear to extremists, but in the hands of a class that has had no experience of its use, that has no traditions of expenditure. In the period of exercise to gain some experience capital would be wasted; it might be gambled away or spent in hours of idle self-indulgence. Where, then, would Labour be? Doubtless starving. Ignorant but ambitious leaders, to please their followers whom they have coerced, would advocate a purely class and selfish policy which might lead to civil war, of all wars the one which is certainly soul-killing. When brothers fall out and set to kill each other, where is Fraternity, where is the human family, private as well as public, concentrated or extended? It is lost! A nation is but a family on an enlarged scale.

In the concluding years of the 18th century France groaned under civil war, and came very near ruin. What followed upon the French Revolution? Autocratic government under Napoleon! It was the only way out of a grievous mess of anarchy, rapine and chaos. Most of the authors of the Revolution sooner or later suffered as they had made others suffer, under the guillotine. The most prominent agitators fell as victims to their cruelties and misdeeds. The people sacrificed those who were once their adored leaders. They suffered the death penalty from the very people that had inflamed the party of disorder. Anarchy never succeeds. Its leaders always suffer in the end, and by the hands of their dupes whom they pretended to benefit; justice invariably follows injustice; that is a law as certain as that to-morrow succeeds to-day.

§ 10

If the French Revolution does not teach us the inevitable punishment for anarchy, Russia’s _débâcle_ surely should. Militarism has only changed places there. Having been in the hands of one party, it is now in another. Tyranny has changed places, that is all! Educated men, that is to say, men who have studied cause and effect through the teaching of past history, know that certain results follow action. That is to say, situations change places. The student of history, like a chess player, is aware that the move of a pawn may be the turning-point in a game. Anarchy is a monster that breeds quickly; her whelps carry the poison of rabies which, after infecting a small circle, increases by leaps and bounds. When it has become unmanageable, when men’s passions have led them out of the bounds of reason, militarism must be resorted to. When reason and peaceful persuasion cease to avail, powder and shot have to be used, and sometimes unmercifully! Uneducated men are led by passion, educated by reason. Are we sure that anarchy is not being bred here? If so, has it shown itself? Trades unions were useful in times past, they sought for justice, they achieved something, and up to a point it was good. Like many movements beginning well and founded upon justice, it has overstepped the mark. That which began justly is ending unjustly. Peaceful order has grown to tyranny. Is it consonant with the English character to be told how much or how little our workman may labour? The workmen of England who have given themselves over to the tyranny of trades unions are rendered slaves to them.

Leaders of trade unions encourage dishonesty, but that is not all, they encourage a small output when a large one is an absolute necessity if England is to retain her place as a leading country in Europe. An “output” scrapped will mean treasure to Germany. If English labour declines, German labour will gain ascendancy here; that is certain. After the financial strain to which England has been subjected by the war, increased production is imperative. Strikes arrest production, and thus are harmful to the whole community. If they are permitted _ad lib._, what will be the result? Each strike costs millions to trade. What must the end be? Bankruptcy of the nation! Who will suffer? Labour will suffer first, because if capital is unobtainable labour cannot be paid for.

§ 11

If wages reach an extravagant sum, capital will not find the money to pay them. Again, who then will suffer? Labour, of course. These are truisms, but, being so, have they reached the ears and minds of Labour? Trades union leaders keep from the sheep they drive the knowledge of the butcher’s knife; they only tell their dupes what they (ignorant of the first laws of political economy) wish to hear. They flatter them with the hope that capital will finally be in their hands, that they are to govern the country, which is only to move while it drags the chariot of Labour. Our workmen are not prepared to rule, they are not mentally equipped to do so; their outlook, at present, is far too narrow. They see in government good only when it legislates for the advantage of their class, forgetting that there are other and equally important classes to be considered. And when speaking of Labour there is only one which appears to dominate in their minds, Industrialism as separate from Agriculture. The spread of Industrialism has pushed Agriculture aside; it has done even more, it has destroyed it in many parts of England. Agriculture must take precedence of Industrialism if we are to live on our own produce. The war ought to have taught us that, but has it? I have lived long enough to have seen the agriculture of our dear country productive and the people, relatively to now, content; when squalor was a far rarer spectacle than now. In great cities, alas, it must always be, for cities are artificial monstrosities where both wealth and poverty thrive in extremes, where idlers congregate and vice expands. But in country towns of reasonable dimensions and villages squalor had no abiding place when agriculture was the employment of the majority before the Juggernaut of Industrialism had begun its disastrous progress. There was work for all on the land.

§ 12

I remember the arrival of a threshing machine into “the street” of one of the most attractive villages in Kent, Otford. It was greeted with stones; the people did not want the noisy, smoking monster which was to take pleasant and healthy labour from so many. And they were right! The flail no longer threshes, reapers no longer reap, the sickle and scythe are rarely seen in the fields now, the plough is rarely drawn by oxen and horses. Machinery does it all now, and hundreds of thousands of agricultural labourers have had their work grabbed from them. Who can wonder, then, that Agriculture is understocked while Industrialism is overstocked? Hundreds of miles of corn-growing land are in disuse, waste land, once glowing with golden corn; a land of ashes and unproductive has taken its place. Where orchards stretched for miles once, flowering and fruiting abundantly, hideous factories have risen, belching out foul smoke destructive to man, beasts and vegetation. Where once copses, even small forests were, now a few skeletons, black and blasted, remind us of the beauty that _was_ and the devastation that _is_. Rivers and lakes which once sparkled with clean water under a bright sun, whose pools were filled with salmon and trout, have become little better than sewers. A greasy scum thickens the once glittering surface, and not a fish can live in its natural element, and, moreover, the water is poisoned, so we may not drink it. The spread of Industrialism means the spread of poison--poisoned land, water, and air, which, if not checked now, will cause serious deterioration of the health of England. When England was mainly agricultural, rosy-cheeked maidens and well-bronzed youths attested a healthy, vigorous life. Now, under Industrialism, the girls and youths are pale, sad-looking, and unhealthy. Why? Agricultural life is _natural_, industrial life is _artificial_! Of what use is money to a nation deprived of vigour and health? Rather is it an incubus than an incentive to real progress. Ill-health means idleness, slackness and inefficiency. Nothing can compensate for its departure.

But it is not the body only that suffers; it is the soul of the nation that is in danger. Discontent is caused by mental distress, unsatisfied and perfectly justified longings which are inherited or spontaneous are blunted. Be the purse full of gold, be every physical sense gratified thereby, the hunger of the soul for more enlightenment, for more joy, for higher enterprise will continue, and the whole being, even that part which is physical, will suffer. The atmosphere of factory life is bleaching bodies and souls wherever it is in the ascendant; the people become hollow-cheeked, their manners surly, their wits atrophied. They are not _free_, they are slaves to Plutus. So sensitive to environment is the mind of man, even at the simplest and least initiated, that it grows in harmony with its employment. In constant touch with machinery a man becomes like his machine! Iron enters in his soul. He becomes a kind of bolt or screw, a wedge or wheel. No wages, however high, can compensate for what industrial life has robbed. The greater cities and towns hardly know of the fields of Enna or the paradise that God made. They think, if they think at all, that the filthy air they breathe, the hideous smoke under whose canopy they exist but don’t live, is “alright,” and that there is nothing else.

And yet somehow, although perhaps they cannot define it, _they feel a want_, a yearning for something better, and it is that which makes their souls discontented, hard, and unsympathetic. Their souls are caged as the soaring eagle is caged in a menagerie. Cinders, refuse, evil smells, foul air; instead of flowers, the life-giving sun, pure air, and sweet scents of spring. God made these, the descendants of Tubal Cain made the others. Their birthright has been seized by jerry builders, exploiting companies, who care just about as much for the people as a butcher cares for the animal whose throat he is about to cut. To keep the industrial slave in a good humour he is treated to unhealthy excitement of cinema shows, which to “catch on” must partake of the Newgate Calendar, or if any Art is presented to him it must be “_of his level_.” Of his level?

Is that the attitude to be assumed by those who should know better? It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to kill a soul, but it can be wounded and degraded till it is seemingly dead, has lost all power of progression, and, like a wingless bird, can only creep on the earth. And that is what an artificial life does, first to an individual, then, in time, to a whole nation.

§ 13

It is dangerous to gamble with instinct. It is impossible to wholly destroy man’s instinct, which is essentially as well as hereditarily opposed to the artificial life of Industrialism. He _is_ an outdoor animal, he scratches the earth instinctively. It may be through ignorance, but so it is; he will stick a dead shrub in the ground, thinking it will grow. Kill Agriculture and in its place erect Industrialism, and you have killed all that is best, indeed all that really matters in the human race!