Chapter II: Preface (2)

It needs no gift of prophecy and no special intuition to see that we are on the brink of some tremendous change in the destinies of the human race. Everything points to it--our tottering creeds, our fluctuating standard of manners and morals. What it is, what it may be no one tries to imagine. People instinctively feel they would rather not think too much about anything, or analyse the condition in which they find themselves. There is “no time” for it, they say. Why is there no time? Is the clock of the universe running down and are the works giving out? Materially speaking, we know that the slightest tilt of the earth on its axis would cause a complete redistribution of its continents and seas, sweeping away every vestige of civilisation as we now know it. We never consider this, imagining that such a catastrophe is not possible. Yet God has willed it so before, and may will it so again. Every physical movement is preconceived by a mental or spiritual one. The Great Unrest is at present one of Spirit which will gradually dominate Matter and move it to equal but louder disturbance. We spin on our earth in a gathering storm-cloud between two fathomless gulfs, the Past and the Future--our Present is the result of the past, and our future will equally be the work of the Present. We know that there is a God of Love to serve, and his Nature-laws to obey, and knowing this, Ourselves alone must decide whether we _will_ do as we should, or whether we shall be _forced_ to do as we would not!

THE WHIRLWIND

It has come at last--that great Storm foretold by national weather prophets--it has come with all the devastating force of a fury long suppressed; and the black cloud has gathered over our heads while yet we drowsed in a dream of sunshine. With a sudden thunderous rush, as though a god or a demon should tread the spaces of the air, heaven has let loose the whirlwind--the whirlwind of War, and far more than War--the whirlwind of Destiny. It has come because it was bound to come, by the Unwritten Law and Code Invisible. Men of the world who form governments, make civilisations, and build up empires are always forgetting this Unwritten Law--the Hand behind the scenes--the inexorable and eternal forward movement of the Cosmos, which in its pre-determined progress overrides their best laid plans and makes chaotic havoc of their most sagacious intentions. Yet it is a perfectly straight and simple Law after all--one that has existed from the beginning of things, and that will ever exist--the law of Nature, visibly expressing the Mind of God, and immutably set against the predominance of evil. It is an output of the Divine Will, resolving itself easily into common, even domestic forms, adapted to the needs of individuals and nations alike. Nature often conducts herself like a practical housewife bent on spring cleaning.

“Where there is dirt,” she says, “it shall be removed; where there is confusion there shall be order.”

And her “cleaning-up” day is invariably a frightful thing. The noise of her sweeping and scouring resounds like thunder through the world. It occurs periodically, marking epochs of history, and we read of its results in the past with placid incredulity, setting down much to exaggeration and more to deliberate lying, idly amused meanwhile at the ridiculous notion, suggested by certain fools, that any such uproar and disaster should ever be experienced by Ourselves who have, so we consider, “advanced” in civilisation and wisdom, and thereby in self-control--Ourselves whose “culture” seems to our own judgment a finer and more perfect attainment than divine justice. The tornado of the French Revolution, the pitiless ravages of the Napoleonic wars have appeared to us like a tale that is told, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”--and we have lazed the time away, getting and spending, in the peaceful high noon of national prosperity and contentment, feeling confident that we should never in our day be shaken from our centre-poise of complacent self-satisfaction by anything of larger disturbance than occasional family quarrels gotten up more for the sake of varying the monotony of peace than with any serious intent. And now, lo!--the bolt falls--the vials of wrath and judgment are opened and poured forth over land and sea--the whirlwind is upon us, and we who slept are awakened by its sweeping rage, its rattling rain, its lightning flashing against our windows of security, and we leap to our feet, startled but not alarmed--unprepared, maybe, but not unready. We realise what the storm means, and we know how to weather it; we are not afraid--we only wish we had not slept quite so long!

Nevertheless, though our sleep may have been heavy, it has refreshed our forces and has not diminished our energies. Our waking is to good purpose. The very shame we feel at the length of our slumber is an excellent tonic and invigorates us. Sleep shall no more weigh down our eyelids--we are alert, strong, and resolute, even in the midst of the whirlwind. For it is a storm in which we alone are not involved. It has swept over a smaller nation than our own, all undeservedly--a little sister nation with the heart of a thousand heroes beating in her small bosom--and her unmerited sorrow has served as the keynote to strike all that is in us of Character and Conduct. We see her defaced with blows, insulted and outraged by ravening cruelties; and the chivalry born from centuries of martial glory rises strong and full-armed in every man that claims justice for her wrongs. We of Britain have not warred for ourselves--our fight is for the better, broader freedom of the whole world. The whirlwind has caught us up in the swoop of its revolving wings solely that we may take our part in the purifying of the House of Man. And our victory will be made manifest in the open response to our inward intention.

* * * * *

The militarism of Prussia is a crime, springing from old roots of human savagery and barbarism which should have died long ago. The brutal War, made treacherous and bloody by new devices of destruction, the inventions of fine science misapplied, was an outbreak of stupidity on the part of an obtuse and stupid set of men, sodden with selfishness and delirious with a drunken dream of World-Power. The teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche are the teachings of egotists with unsound and ill-balanced brains. Nietzsche went mad, and howled his philosophies to the walls of the padded room. Treitschke was covertly insane; like the “secret drinker” who in public pretends he cannot touch strong liquor, he assumed to be proud and sagacious when he was no more than crazily self-obsessed. He preached the doctrine of Hate, and no sane man ever did that. The German nation, accepting this sort of “Kultur” as gospel, accepted the ravings of the mentally deficient, and, plunging breast-high into a sea of brothers’ blood, proved itself infected by the same madness as that which poisoned the veins of its mad instructors. To any thoughtful student, looking on at such a frightful, wicked, and overwhelmingly stupid slaughter of men by machinery there can be nothing more terrible, more lonely or more accursed in all the realm of fact or fiction than the figure of the Kaiser--the miserable epileptic who is responsible for shrouding his “Fatherland” in the black veil of mourning, and for drowning its peace and progress in a flood of widows’ and orphans’ tears. Mentally unbalanced, physically inefficient, and morally lacking--living as one pursued by the Furies in an armoured cage, and surrounded by guards on earth and in air, lest by chance his “Gott” should kill him, he moves one to amazement and pity--for the whirlwind has him in its centre, twirling him round and round like a veritable mannikin of sport for the dread gods of destiny--a mannikin who hardly knows how he came to be where he is, or where he will find himself when the storm is past. Meanwhile his voice is heard above the storm shouting “To England! England! The one foe! My Mother’s land, which I hate! Would that every drop of British blood in my veins might be drained out of me!”

Well, why not? A calf has been bled before now, and not a drop of its mother’s blood has been left in its carcase--there is nothing to prevent this desirable consummation for the Kaiser since he so devoutly wishes it. The whirlwind may strip him yet, and perform this required kindness! But in the interval the arrogant and half-crazed “War Lord” has sacrificed the best flower and strength of Germany’s manhood to his criminal and insatiable lust of power. The German people have not yet realised the mercilessness of this military despot--but when they do--when they count the desolate homes, the ruined trades, the lost commerce, the ravaged lives and broken hearts which mark the “triumph” of the stagey and spectacular “hero” they have worshipped, there will be an end of the blind credulity with which they have followed a vain ideal.

* * * * *

For us British, the Whirlwind is a grand thing. It is blowing us fiercely clean of Self--it is tearing away from us the silly sophistries of fashion and frivolity and showing us things in their true light. Our ape-like jesters of the press, of the Bernard Shaw type, who have mocked at all things holy, serious, and earnest, are finding their proper level, and shrinking into corners where they are scarcely seen--where it is to be hoped they may be peaceably forgotten. Our “sex-problems,” our “advanced” women, our screaming Doll Tear-sheets of militant suffrage--these trouble the air no more with the hysterics which are engendered by having nothing useful to do. We have no time for trifling. We are face to face with the long-despised Obvious--“Life is real, life is earnest”--and we are casting off the slough of political humbug and social sham, and are as one in the splendid bond of patriotism and love of country. We may trust the Storm; we may welcome the Whirlwind. It has come to clear the sky of miasma and vapour--it is making light to show us where we truly stand. If we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that in latter years we have given ourselves over-much to the pursuit of material gain and personal pleasure, we have neglected our faith in divine and high ideals, and Self has been more or less our god; it was time that we received a wholesome check and a warning before we lost all that has made us great. We have responded swiftly to the goading spur--our crust of selfishness was but thin after all, and has broken and melted away in a flood of magnificent generosity and practical sympathy--for never had nation a nobler Cause than ours, when, as brothers in arms with our brave allies, we fought to right the unspeakable wrongs of unoffending Belgium, and to aid in defending France from the invader and usurper. Should the enemy conquer in this mighty struggle the whole world will be the impoverished loser; should we and our allies win, the whole world will gain by our victory and share with us a wider, nobler freedom than before. It is for this cause that the Whirlwind has come upon us--to cleanse a cancer from our midst, and to put away from ourselves and our neighbours the dread contamination of a disease involving the whole trend of civilisation. We may thank God for it, despite all its terrors, its rain of blood, its thunders of the air and sea, its swift death dealt to thousands of innocent souls--it is a storm that was needed to clear the air. And when it is past, and the sun shines once more, we shall realise that its causes were to be found not in one nation only, but in many--in ourselves as well as in our foes--and that some great and forceful movement of destiny was urgently called for to sweep away from humanity the accumulating mass of its own self-wrought evil. And if victory should be ours, it will behove us to take it with all humility, giving thanks to God--“_lest we forget_!”

THE KAISER’S HARVEST OF DEATH

A CRIME OF STUPIDITY

(_First published in the “Sunday Times”_)

In every great national crisis, when war or revolution brings havoc on existing civilisation and works sudden and violent change in all social, political, and diplomatic relations, we are invariably able to discover One Man--or at the most, perhaps, two or three men--primarily responsible for the general upheaval.

History is impressively explicit concerning these personages. She never fails to show us how, by some strange lack of the most ordinary foresight and common sense, they stumble when apparently on the height of success, and commit irreparable blunders which hasten their careers to a disastrous close. Such was the case with Napoleon and many other would-be Alexanders of ambition; but of all the tragic blunderers of time surely none can equal or surpass the “War Lord” of Germany. Here is a man who had the splendid chance of securing for his country and people the largest share of the commerce of Europe; it lay easily within his grasp. Yet he has let it go, like a handful of sand and shells dropped by a child at play on the seashore. To satisfy the personal cravings of a vaunting, blustering Egoism for blood-and-thunder “effects” he has lost the peaceful conquest of a world!

Amazing, deplorable, and incredible folly!--when such conquest could have been gained without a blow, without the boom of a single gun, without the explosion of a single shell! It could have been attained in the only way by which any truly “civilised” nation should ever seek supremacy--through the development of industry and commerce, and the quiet assumption of the power that industry and commerce give. All that we call “progress” should fortify the stand of human resolution on this basis. It is not necessary, it is not even sane or decent that any peoples should tolerate what Carlyle describes as “the spectacle of men with clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another’s flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure”--which is a rough but accurate picture of war deprived of all its devilish excitement and glamour.

WASTED OPPORTUNITY

To Kaiser William more than to any other monarch of his time was given the glorious chance of becoming the greatest benefactor of Germany which that realm had ever known. He could have created for his people such conditions of peace, happiness, and prosperity as were almost incalculable. He stood in the broad sunshine of ripening trade--the markets of the world were open to him--fields of wealth were spreading around him on all sides, and his cheerfully working millions had but to reap the grain their industries had sown and gather in a rich and plenteous harvest. Why, then, in the name of all that is great, noble, and pitiful, did he choose to make a harvest of death instead of life?

A TRAGIC WITNESS

During the grim and ghastly struggle at Verdun we are told the Kaiser, standing “at safe distance,” watched through his field-glasses the fiery mowing down of his countrymen to the number of forty-five thousand! Does any one, reading this, take the trouble to pause and consider what it means? Forty-five thousand strong, brave men in the flower of manhood (for let us hope we are none of us so unjust as to deny our enemies their strength or their courage); forty-five thousand capable human beings fit for every sort of industrial labour--the blood and bone of future generations--slaughtered like vermin; and their Emperor, their sworn Defender and Protector, within sight-range, looking on!

What a “Harvest Home”! Are we able to conceive the nature and temperament of a monarch who _could_ so look on at this massacre of his subjects and not rush among them to stop the advance of their serried ranks and “massed formations,” resulting in such a wanton and wicked waste of life? The crazy antics of Nero were mere child’s play compared with this callous attitude of William of Hohenzollern; an attitude which even his French foes cannot maintain. For, fired with vengeance for old wrongs as they are, and bent on victorious justice, they have declared themselves “sick with slaughter.”

“Such hecatombs,” writes Colonel Rousset, “cannot last. Our adversary, while carrying his disregard of human life to the point of madness, cannot go on throwing his soldiers into the charnel-house without thinking of to-morrow.”

The losses of the Germans at Verdun have been estimated at 10,000 per day! “I dream at night,” writes one French artillery officer, “of those ghastly crumpled heaps of shattered gray-green bodies! Germany’s wives and mothers must curse the Kaiser in their prayers!”

THE CRIME OF STUPIDITY

Voltaire is accredited with the saying that “the only crime is stupidity.” According to this dictum one must come to consider the “All-Highest War Lord” the greatest criminal of an epoch, his stupidity being almost without parallel in history. What man, not entirely mad, seeing a world of prosperity within reach of his hand would clench his fist and knock the whole splendid sphere away from him at one blow! The proposition seems absurd and untenable, yet it has been and continues to be the Kaiser’s policy, or the policy of his ministers and advisers; clear to all save those who remain perversely and wilfully blind.

For it is not too much to say that before the war Germany was pushing quietly but surely through every branch of commerce. From triumph to triumph she moved easily onward; everywhere her ramifications were spreading like the vigorous roots of a fast-growing tree. In Great Britain she had possessed herself of many of our trades; her goods were everywhere; her cutlery, her glass, her woollens, her linens, her dyes, her silver and copper ware, her chemicals--why, even our very window-frames were “Made in Germany”! She was at work in our mines and coal-fields; she was ahead of us in science, in invention, in industry and general “thoroughness.”

And let us not forget that we were, or appeared to be, supinely indifferent to her inroads on all that we used to claim as our “special line” and particular property. We were, like Hamlet, “growing fat and scant of breath.” We were disposed to indolence and self-indulgence, and, when we saw Germans working _for_ us, and _by_ us, and _through_ us, taking the very tools out of our listless hands, we were agreeably convinced that they saved us a deal of trouble. They worked so cheaply, too!--and cheapness in necessary goods appealed to us, because it gave us more to spend on racing and football. The “Space for Special News” in our Press was not reserved (as intelligent foreigners conceive it ought to be) for serious information on world’s business; but for “Football Results” or cricket, in the respective seasons of these gamesome athletics--and the very word “patriotism” was laughed out of court as “Jingoism.” We gave the honours of heroes to our tennis champions, and played about while the Germans worked. They worked--as many of the British refuse to work; they saved--as many of the British decline to save; they gained their ends, because by our very inertia we gave them every opportunity to do so.

BRITISH APATHY

Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, said in a recent speech that Germany “had abused our foolishly generous hospitality.” This is not quite accurate, since we were neither so generous nor hospitable as careless and lazy. We allowed our trades to slip through our fingers--the State did nothing for native work, science, or invention--and ambitious men of hope and endeavour left the country in shoals to make fortunes in other lands, _many firms establishing themselves in Germany in order to win the rewards denied them in their native home_!

Germany held a more tenacious grip on every corner of the earth than we in our latter “go-as-you-please” way ever realised. All over the United States, Canada, and Australia her people have spread; you find them in India, in Persia, in Egypt, in Africa; as a matter of fact, there is no country where German influence has not been actively at work while other nations looked on. Antwerp itself was wellnigh possessed by German commerce before its military bombardment; it was already a centre of German trade and German shipping, and in many of its business houses more German was spoken than either French or Flemish. Great Britain was lagging behind in the race; and had peace been maintained for another twenty-five years Germany might easily have mastered the world; and we might have lost all leading hold on commerce.

For let us not delude ourselves on the subject of our own inertia! It is owing to the magnificent stand made for justice and right by the hero-King of Belgium that we have been awakened from long apathy; had it not been for his resolute example, both France and England would have suffered far more than they are suffering now! Friend and Defender of both nations, he stands out as the noblest figure in the struggle--the one who, when victory sits upon our helm, must be the first to receive that which is due to him: the restoration of his country and his throne.

LOSS AND GAIN

And now the rivers of gold that were flowing into Germany through her trade are stopped, “damned up” as the sensational special correspondent would say--by British, French, and German dead! The latest estimate of German losses at Verdun is two hundred thousand! Does the Kaiser, at safe distance, still “look on”? What blessing has this monarch of a great and productive realm brought upon his people? Mourning, desolation, and irremediable misery! No triumph, no victory can atone for such a deluge of blood and tears! That capricious Personage “somewhere in Heaven,” whom Wilhelm calls “Unser Gott,” may possibly resent the deliberate casting away of golden opportunities on the part of his crowned earthly “familiar,” to whom a peaceful world was offered, only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and broken sword!

“Thrust in thy sickle and reap!” O Emperor of a brief and bitter day! The harvest of death, not life!--the harvest of curses, not blessings! The thousands of dead men--dead in the very strength of manhood--sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have their own story to tell to “Unser Gott”; so may the bereaved and wretched women whose husbands and sons have been torn from their arms for ever. May the true God help them all!--for in the unspeakable hell of iniquity around us man is wellnigh powerless; though, like every evil thing, war has its good side. It shows us with each day heroism of the finest, courage of the strongest, self-sacrifice of the noblest, existing among us all; and it has reawakened the higher spirit of England. For this we have cause to be devoutly thankful! In a certain sense it has saved us from ourselves; and from the enervating love of pleasure and personal avarice which was slowly undermining our better qualities.

And even the Kaiser, “looking on” at the legions of his own subjects falling like withered leaves in a whirlwind of fire, may one day shake off his frenzied nightmare of battle, and repent--exclaiming with Judas:--

“I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood!”

THIS AMAZING WAR

A WOMAN’S POINT OF VIEW

(_Reprinted by special request from the “Sunday Pictorial” of March 28, 1915_)

What can be said or thought of it? This wonderful massing of nations--this appalling slaughter of men--this relentless rolling on of a Divine Elemental Force, too vast and powerful and resolute for humanity to resist! It is a War so terrible, yet withal so grand, and so pregnant with infinite issues that we, who are swept by the dust and carnage of its fighting millions--we, who are stunned by the clash and clamour of the frightful weapons of modern science which it uses on land, under sea, and in air, are more or less incredulous and stupefied, and we have been only with difficulty aroused to try and understand its fateful import. It is Destiny in labour; and the pangs and throes of her child-birth will give us a New World! For the Old World is fast crumbling and crushing down upon us like an ancient ruin struck by lightning-flash and thunderbolt; the old vices, lusts, and littlenesses are being torn away from us as a storm-wind tears away the parasite ivies from mouldering walls--and we shall presently see a break in the clouds and light through the darkness. This thing of terror and confusion Was To Be; it Had To Be! It has been coming upon us slowly, but steadily, for years--and if we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that we have felt its approach instinctively in a general sense of insecurity--in a feverish impulse of haste to live lest we should suddenly die!

Something--we know not what--a cloud or a blight--has visibly lowered over the face of European civilisation, and in order to set aside certain strange and perplexing inconsistencies of such conduct among us as might induce us seriously to Think--we have flung ourselves eagerly into a vortex of “sensations” new and old, bad and good, virtuous and vicious, with a kind of furious recklessness, bordering on insanity. Any lapse of morals, any bizarre or weird “craze” in art, any indecency in literature, has been acclaimed and encouraged as “new” and “strong” instead of being condemned for being old and weak as such things truly are--and in many vital matters the nation has been moved by a petulant spirit of selfish, restless irritability, like that of a querulous old man who has neither the grace nor the courage to accept his age with wisdom, sweetness, and dignity. And among various mad things we have done, one stands out pre-eminently as the maddest--and that is the tacit encouragement given by a section of society and the press to a brood of Atheists, who have trailed their poisonous slime along the pathways of peace where the youth of this

“Happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea,”

have wandered unsuspectingly, gathering the ugly stain on the innocent white of their souls’ garments. Never did a sin of this nature occur in the history of nations without Divine punishment inflicted, not so much to destroy as to purify. The chronicles of every civilisation ever known or heard of bear unswerving testimony to the truth that whenever a nation or a people assumes to itself Divine right, dismissing from its mind and conscience the idea of any higher Supreme Power before Whom it should humiliate itself daily with thanksgiving and prayer, that nation or people has been allowed to follow the lure of its own intellectual pride and self-sufficiency to inevitable disaster.

IDEAL WORTH FIGHTING FOR

This is, and this will be, the case with Germany. For years her people have willingly listened to the teachings of egoists and madmen such as Treitschke and Nietzsche--for years they have scoffed at Christianity, its Founder and its ethics; and they have tempted the Divine Spirit in Man with the devil’s whisper, “All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me!” But that Divine Spirit is stronger than all Germany and its rulers; and “Get thee behind me, Satan!” is the keynote of this great War. The Satan of ambition, greed, and cruelty embodied in the creed of Prussian militarism must be driven “hence”; and it is for this holy Cause that we and our Allies are fighting. We must have a free world!--free in the sense of highest, purest freedom--a world of ideas, thoughts, and deeds built up on the golden law of Christ, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” As a statesman has so nobly expressed it: “We wish the nations of Europe to be free to live their independent lives, working out their own form of government for themselves, and their own national development, whether they he great nations or small States, in full liberty. This is our ideal.”

An ideal worth fighting for--worth dying for!--this “glorious liberty of the free!” None of us would grudge life or fortune to attain the splendid goal in sight--a radiant vision of the true “Holy City,” where as we are told--“the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour within it.”

POISONOUS TEACHING

Glory and honour never accompany the creed of selfish Materialism, which is the “Kultur” of Germany. What a miserable man was he who wrote down in cold blood these words: “I condemn Christianity. To me it is the greatest of all possible corruptions. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one immortal shame and blemish in the human race!” This was Nietzsche--poor, sickly, egoist, Nietzsche! He died mad--yet he was the “guide, philosopher, and friend” of modern Germany! How has his teaching worked? Let the slaughtered thousands of his countrymen on the battlefields reply. And let us take heed that we in our turn be not infected by the poisonous breathings of such insanity! Our nation--our Imperial Britain--has been dangerously far along the road to similar madness--let us hope devoutly that we have been pulled up in time! But--“we have done those things which we ought not to have done”--as, for example, we have thrown the sneer of “Jingoism!” contemptuously in the face of many an honest patriot--and now we are loud in our expressions of wrath and astonishment at the “want of patriotism” displayed by certain tribes of working men who “strike” for more pay, indifferent to the country’s needs! What have these working men been taught for the last twenty years? Why, that Money is the only god, and Self the only master! When we reproach them for unpatriotic conduct, we should reproach ourselves still more for the encouragement and applause we have systematically given to every new or revived doctrine of selfishness and materialism that ever infected the world with its sickly symptoms of decay. Patriotism is a mental and spiritual attitude--as heroism is--as love and faith are. Such things cannot be taught; they are the result of ennobling influences brought to bear on life and its environment. Considering how little our educational system holds of such subtle and delicate training, we have reason to be proud of the splendid response of our men throughout the Empire to the call of “King and Country,” and of the real national “grit” which in every Briton underlies his surface show of levity and indifference.

But have I, as a woman, nothing to say of the war, save in its ethical aspect? Oh, yes! I, as a woman, could say much, in a woman’s way. Of the agony of parting from men dearer to us than life, and seeing them disappear behind a veil of impenetrable silence for weeks or months, their fate or fortune all unknown! I could weep all day and night for the cruel loss of young and gallant lives crushed out and left bleeding and festering on the awful fields of contest--and I long to speak words of consolation and hope to the dear women who wait in strained suspense for news of their husbands, fathers, lovers, and sons! I know all they feel; and the aching throb of their unuttered misery strikes on my own heart with keenest pain! But with all the sorrow and all the suffering, I would not, if I could, hold back one man from taking his share in the noble struggle for the betterment and future peace of the world! One can die but once; and “Greater love hath no man than this--that a man lay down his life for his friends!”

“ALL WE LIKE SHEEP”

A PEOPLE’S PATIENCE

(_First published in the “Sunday Times”_)

The words “people” and “popular,” viewed by academic dark-lanterns of literature, are opprobious epithets. Any person designated as “popular,” or favoured by “the People,” falls at once outside the pale of mutual-admiration societies--_ergo_, is not an academic dark-lantern for the blind to lead the blind, so that both fall into the ditch. Yet it is well understood that those who affect to despise the People and “popular” opinion are the very ones most influenced by both, inasmuch as not one among them but knows that in the long run the People alone are the arbiters of national destiny. Sometimes it hardly appears as if it were so--yet so it is. Though at this present fateful moment of time it would seem that the People of the British Empire are stricken dumb. They are a voiceless multitude, rendered inert by the knowledge that if they speak every effort will be made to silence them, and that though they have much to ask they will not be truthfully answered. For they are only “the People”!--the ruck of taxpayers--the grist that goes to the mill!

But what a People! Consider them as they are to-day, straining every nerve and sinew in the work necessary for the carrying on of a wicked and barbarous world-war, wherein they truly, _as_ a People, sought and desired no part, but into which they were plunged unsuspectingly, without fair warning or honest preparation; and now, being involved in the struggle for justice and right, do most nobly acquit themselves--a People who are giving up their sons, their life-blood, their All for which they have worked through years of anxious toil--a People who, when their little harmless children are torn to shreds by enemy bombs falling from hitherto beneficent skies, are told by a fatherly Government that “no material damage was done by the raid”--a People who are cozened with lies and flattered by false news--a People who in the gallant thousands of their slaughtered men are dying that Britain may live!--or, shall we venture to say, that Cabinet Ministers may “take their salary and continue to take it!”--an historic utterance which will ring through the vault of posterity like Nelson’s “England expects”--only with something of a difference! How long will this splendid People endure in sheep-like patience what the Press justly calls “Waste and Muddle” in high places, without giving vent to their forcible but natural outburst known as “popular” feeling?

We read in one of the columns of a sane and non-party daily journal the following:--“No one can say that the nation is satisfied with the way it is governed.” This expresses in one clear phrase the apparent situation. The word “apparent” is used advisedly, for in many spectral things of recent statesmanship some of us feel with Macbeth that “Life’s but a walking shadow.” The present Government, being of a sometimes severe, sometimes indulgent parental character, seems to look upon the public, or “the People,” as a sort of promising Child, that sits quietly waiting to be told things, no matter whether the things are false or true. Wedged in a nursery chair with a bar across its bulgy waist to prevent it tumbling out on the floor, this Child is supposed to smile and suck its finger all day long in a state of blissful belief in nonsense rhymes and fairy tales. It is a wonderfully good Child, and Papa Government is pleased to find how easily it can be played with. Its simplicity is delightful! Things printed in large type catch its eye and tickle its fancy, because occasionally (though more in the past than in the present) it fancies that large type means something of national importance. But with all its guilelessness it has a vast amount of natural intelligence, and it begins to understand that it is not, and never will be, allowed to learn the drift of Governmental tactics, or the true state of parties in politics. It is hazily becoming aware that it is kept in its nursery chair to be gulled, not to be enlightened. In happier moments it has shown that it likes to be amused, thrilled, startled, horrified, or moved to indignation, and, so far as the “Censor” permits, the gagged and bound Press tries to do its best on these lines, and dances for its entertainment as well as a poor bear in chains _can_ dance, though growling _sotto voce_ all the while! But, considered as a Child, the public is not thought fit to be told the truth. Its opinion on national affairs is neither sought nor wanted; all that is required of it are Silence and Obedience. These it gives, with what result? Why, as Mr. Asquith said, “Wait and see!”

Yet surely the waiting is long? “All we like sheep are gone astray;” but possibly we have been led astray more than we have gone of our own accord. All peoples have a certain sheep-like tendency; they follow a lead. Where the leader goes the flock goes likewise. This is sometimes set down as evidence of weakness, but with the British people it marks both duty and discipline, obedience to law and order, love and maintenance of home and country. Yet--let us suppose NO leader! That is--NO leader capable of leading anywhere save into quagmires and pitfalls of “Waste and Muddle”!

“The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly.”

Rumour has it that on our East Coast the inhabitants have been “prepared” for a “German landing,” and have been told where to go inland as “refugees.” Whether true or false, such a report should never have gained currency; the word “refugees” should never be even whispered as likely to be applicable to British subjects. Similarly on the East Coast it is openly said that during the last enemy air-raid two Zeppelins were “within easy gun-shot” and could have been brought down, but that our anti-aircraft men were “_forbidden to fire_.” By whom? Ah! There we touch upon secrets not to be disclosed by Papa Government to any inquiring Child! Though when half a secret comes to light the other half is not far behind! Let us not forget the warning given by the greatest of all Teachers:--

“A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

It is idle to deny that there are traitors in our own camp; men of position and influence who are more pro-German than British--who would not scruple to pave the way to any dishonour provided they could serve their own personal ends. Is any one so intellectually blind and bereft of common sense as to suppose that even with certain of our statesmen financial interests do not outweigh their patriotism? Time is a merciless revealer of facts, and in its record of this war some strange things will be written!

To those who have eyes to watch and brains to understand, the advent of Mr. Hughes, Premier of Australia, is a wonderful, almost touching, circumstance. Here is a Man at last!--a man who loves his country and is not afraid to say so--a man who appeals to the right spirit of the nation straightly and truly, with courage and conviction. “The People” answer to his voice: that “People” whom snobs abhor! Snobbery is apt to speak of the fine Younger Race of Imperial Britain as “Colonials,” with a touch of contempt, as though they represented something small and negligible, instead of embodying as they do the future power and stability of the Empire. This “Colonial” Prime Minister shows strength, boldness, and sincerity; he is a leader, and “All we like sheep” are disposed to follow him, if he can show us a way out of the thickets where we wander, torn and bleeding. Pray Heaven he be not wearied by specious talk, or repelled by still more specious hypocrisy! or hampered and discouraged by the working of the “wheels within wheels” which move with such secret and perplexing intricacy, crushing honest effort and smothering honest speech! Surely the British people can be trusted to know what their foes know, what their Allies know, what America knows? Are they alone to be deceived?--even into purchasing goods “from America” which are German? Mr. Hughes needs to speak yet more forcibly; he must rouse the slothful and the unthinking, and tell them that if they would conquer their skilful and insidious Teuton foe, they must equally conquer themselves; and that when the markets are open for British labour, British labour must not fall back in energy or stint its output. Business must go hand-in-hand with industry and quickness, for “the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong!”

“All we like sheep” are waiting, not for compromise, but for conquest; conquest full, splendid and lasting! The “People” are patient and submissive enough, but they seek to put their confidence in a Government that shows confidence in itself. If they feel that they cannot do this, what then? Should not the following words of Carlyle be remembered?:--

“Urge not this noble, silent People. Rouse not the Berseker rage that lies in them! Do you know their Cromwells, Hampdens, their Pyms and Bradshaws? Men very peaceable, but men that can be made very terrible! Men, who like their old Fathers in Agrippa’s days, have a soul that despises death; to whom death, compared with falsehoods and injustices, is light! Yes, just so godlike as this People’s patience was, even so godlike must its impatience be!”

WANTED--MORE WOMEN!

AN APPEAL

(_Written for the London “Daily Chronicle”_)

Women! You are wanted by the Nation! In the words of the recruiting posters “Your Country calls!” It calls even YOU--you, who for centuries have been the “weak vessels” of man’s passion and humour, are now needed to strengthen man’s hands in the terrific business of a world’s battle. You have helped them already; but you must help them still more. Now is the day and hour to prove your “undaunted mettle,” and not only your mettle but your generosity, your magnanimity, your forgiveness! For in peace times man has denied you the very possession of ordinary common sense; he has thrust you out of intellectual and academic honours; he has grudged you any place in art, literature or science, and he has made you the butt of every cynic, comedian, and caricaturist ever since he arrogated to himself the “everything” of life. You have been and are the grist to the mill of the comic press; your fathers have often been glad to sell you in the marriage market to the highest bidders; your lovers have played with you and deserted you as bees the flowers whose honey they have stolen; your husbands have often been faithless and perjured; and in certain of man’s legal forms, you have been classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,” but now!--now, you are wanted!

You, so often despised, are prayed not to return scorn with scorn; you, with your patience, doggedness, and strongly determined zeal for attainment, are asked to come forward in your willing thousands, and let the men go! For the cry is “havoc!--and let slip the dogs of war!”--war, bitter, merciless, bloody and more savage than the crudest wars of ancient days; war in the air, on the earth and under seas--war that is as stupid, as blind, as criminal and as selfish as are all the acts which men commit when they have so far brutalised woman as to check and restrain her highest impulses, kill her idealism, obstruct her intellectual aspirations, and treat her as the slave and tool of a degrading animalism. Had they from the first dawn of civilisation made her their mental and spiritual equal, by this time there would have been no wars. Her love would have constrained and educated them, her instincts guided them, her inborn maternity shielded them from the wrongs their ambitions and jealousies persuade them to wreak upon each other. Now, in the very midst of the combat which they have brought upon themselves, they are caught within a black cloud of almost superhuman disaster, where but one ray of the veiled sun shines through--that Divine sense of Justice for which all true peoples are bound to fight if indeed they be not wholly given over to the devil of Materialism.

In this, women are, and must be, with them; they, who from the legended days of Eve have laboured under the sense of utter injustice, will be eager to help in any struggle for the Right against Might, because it is their own cause--the very essence of their own existence.

Right against Might, women! Be with the men now in their manliest, most pressing time of action! Forget their petty carping and cavilling at “the female element” in workmanship and endeavour; laugh at the rough and childish hands that beat and batter the woman’s breast with all the petulance of spoilt children; fling every other thought aside but the will and intent to help them on to victory! Make, and buckle on their armour--let your hands prepare them for both attack and defence. Nothing nobler will you ever find to do than this!

In old Arthurian legends, many were the fair women eager to buckle on the armour of the peerless Knight Lancelot; but to-day there are a million and more Lancelots in the field--young, brave, dauntless--heroes all! Arm them, women!--and by arming them, defend them! Thousands of you, strong and willing, are already at work--but we want thousands more! Even you “toy-women” who dance half-nude o’ nights at restaurants and in basement saloons of “fashionable” hotels, wreaking a sly vengeance on men by poisonous lure and seduction, even you can be brave and helpful if you will! Give up your foolish sensualities, and take to sturdy, sensible Work; wash the paint from your cheeks, the dye from your hair, and clothe yourselves as fit women who mean to help, and not to destroy men.

And you, too--you who turn your private homes into “Bridge Clubs” where “officers on leave” may become members “without the payment of a fee”--rookeries, where silly young subalterns are “rooked” indeed, of every penny, losing not only cash but honour--can you not give up this unprincipled and unwomanly “way of doing business” and come out of your dens? You have hands deft enough for something better than “Bridge”--and eyes that can see how to make shells for killing the enemy, which is better than studying how to change a card that shall cheat a friend! Put these ephemeral nothings of an ephemeral “society” aside, and WORK! Work is the saviour of both body and soul!

I admit that as Women, we have long and old scores to settle with the men who have denied us any place in their counsels, and who elect of themselves to treat us merely as “toys” and fools. We shall have our revenge upon them, but not now. Now is the time when we have the chance to show our ability, our powers of organisation, our reasonableness, our courage, our industry, and patience. Let us not fail! The curse of the Jew who wrote Genesis and swore to Eve “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow” has been upon woman ever since the days when courteous old Abraham yoked her with his cattle and drove her with his sheep; but there are evidences nowadays that the modern Abraham will not always triumph, even though every true son of Israel who attends religious service in his synagogue still says with Pecksniffian fervour:--

“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” (See Authorised Jewish Daily Prayer Book.)

But, despite this most manly thanksgiving, it is paramount that now, whether Jew or Gentile, men want the women!--not for pleasure, not for fooling, not for seduction, not for betrayal, but for work! Man’s work must be done in the absence of men. For men must be set free, like uncaged wolves and lions, to fly at the throat of the foe and strangle him for good and all! Therefore, man’s work must be accomplished by women. O women, be glad and proud of this! Lady Frances Balfour, who has a brain sufficing for three of our modern statesmen, has recently written on “The Discovery of Women,” describing it wittily as similar to “the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.” She reminds us of Lord Lansdowne’s “early Victorian” pronouncement that “the place for women is the home.” But the worthy peer forgot to mention that it is not given to every woman to have a home, or to run the cooking, the child-bearing, and general washing-up business for any special one of the male sex. On the other hand, there are thousands of women who not only earn the money to make a home and keep it, but who also have the affectionate unwisdom to keep a lazy loafer of a man also; some drone who finds as many plausible excuses for idleness as he does for living on the woman’s work. He, by the way, is generally the sort of fellow who speaks of woman with sniggering contempt, and while taking her earnings with the left hand stabs her in the back with the right. But even such rogues as these have to go forth to the battle to-day; so let us not grudge the buckling on of their armour if we can inspire courage in cowards! Just now, when omens and portents are thick in the air, and unnatural threatenings hover above us like shapeless spectres of evil, our Ministers and statesmen are chattering for all the world like the feeblest “patriarchs of the village” that ever waggled grey pates over pipes of tobacco. They who complain of women’s “talk” are talking the heads of the nation off into impatience and fury; let women not talk, therefore, but act! Come to work, women of all classes!--the more the better!--the more silently, the more swiftly! There is a great climax at hand; the “push” is about to begin. EVERY ABLE-BODIED MAN IS NEEDED TO ENSURE VICTORY. Let us make no mistake about that! Every woman is likewise needed, to put her hand to the plough, and NOT look back. Munitions must not fail us. Show your resolve, brave women of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and nerve your slender hands to the task of turning out the weapons of attack and defence that shall flame our conquest of the foe on land and sea and in the air! And--when the war is over--when “Peace with Honour” shines once more above us like a glorious rainbow after storm--shall we--we Women who have worked, sink to our old footing of debasement and exclusion from the counsels of men? No! To paraphrase a famous Asquith utterance: “We have taken our place, and we shall continue to take it, and to keep it!”

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

AN APPEAL TO AMERICA FOR SUFFERERS IN THE GREAT WAR

(_Written by special request for the American “Committee of Mercy”_)

There is no greater virtue in the human character than mercy; it is the nearest attribute and approach to the Divine Perfection towards Whom all creation instinctively moves. We, the offspring of that infinite Thought and Will, are still far away from such sweet and strong attainment of power as can find infinitude of joy in the infinitude of Giving--but we can in some measure bless and purify our brief poor lives with somewhat of that everlasting plenitude and beauty by an effort, no matter how feeble, towards a God-like perpetuity of grace and pity. The golden opportunity for that effort is Now and Here; we may never have so great a chance again. For Now and Here, in the fair days of spring and summer, when singing, blossoming Nature breaks out in its Te Deum of thankfulness for yet another space of time wherein to express the gladness and glory of life, we are confronted with the hideous, ravaging spectacle of War; War, in its most cruel, pitiless, and appalling shape--War, to the grimmest death! The groans and shrieks of wounded, tortured, and dying men are forced upon our ears; a monstrous Devil of Self, black with the crimes of treachery, lust, and murder, stalks abroad seeking what it may devour of faith, freedom, and civilisation--a demon possibly born of mankind’s own neglect of the highest ideals, and indifference to countless blessings long bestowed.