Chapter IV: Preface (4)

This is the true and only religion--to bring one’s soul into unison with the infinite beauty and reason which prevail everywhere in Nature. And the Christian Faith, could it but be relieved from ecclesiastical dogma, is the truest symbol we have of our spiritual and immortal destiny, for it teaches the possible god-in-man which should be born through the purity of woman. Carry the symbol further, and we find the Crucifixion of Love through selfishness and hypocrisy--yet another step, and we are shown the Resurrection from the grave--“the Light of the World” released from the stone and seal of priestcraft, breaking free from the cerements of prejudice, and ascending to the Father of us all! Search as we may through all the religions of the world, we shall never find a grander, simpler “Symbol” of eternal truth than this--the faith preached by Christ. But it must be divested of its clerical encumbrances. Like a glorious ship that has lain too long in harbour, it must be cleansed of weed and barnacle and launched unhindered into the open sea. And those who man the ship must be free from self-interest, from “cranks” and meddlesome theories and formulas--briefly, they must be _sane_, with the great sanity of nature and nature’s immutable laws. Without this neither Religion nor Civilisation can endure. They can only be crazed attempts to build that “house upon sand,” of which we have been told that “the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; AND GREAT WAS THE FALL OF IT!”

HAS CHRISTIANITY FAILED?

Has Christianity failed? No! Men and women have “failed,” but _not_ Christianity. The very question is to my mind terrible and blasphemous--one of the many terrible and blasphemous utterances common to the Press and current literature during recent years.

It is a shame to a professingly Christian nation that such a question should be asked at all. The greatest, purest religion in the world can have no weight with mere apes of humanity, who practise the most appalling hypocrisy in front of the sacred altars, and assume to believe in and to obey Christian precepts, while indulging to excess in their own private and particular selfish vices and passions, without restraint and without regret.

The nations have mocked at God and disobeyed His laws. It is the old story over again. “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Christ said, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”

Christianity is based on two great laws--love to God and love to one’s neighbour; can any one say that modern civilisation fulfils these demands?

We have only to note the fearful corruption in Church and State, in every phase of politics and business, and the unspeakable vices which pollute so-called “society,” and poison our literature and art, to realise that the “cities of the plain” were no whit worse than our own, and merit no less than they a rain of fire.

But Christianity itself, as taught by Christ, towers above all “failure,” despite the apathy and hypocrisy of thousands of its professing priests, who in many instances are as selfish and flagrant blasphemers as the worst atheist and iconoclast in _un_christianised and brutalised Germany.

Without that heavenly faith which helps us towards the attainment and reverence of the Divine in all things, what has Germany become? More cruel and callous, more lost to every sense of decency and honour than the savages of prehistoric times, she is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

But let us take care that we do not join her in her rush towards annihilation. Political shams and treacherous intrigues would drag us thither--“Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.” If a weak section of men and women fail to find their souls, Christianity itself has not “failed,” nor will it fail; because it is the divine expression of the unconquerable Spirit of Truth.

The most brilliant House of Lies ever built by man’s careful stupidity falls into dust at the lightest breath of a truth based on eternal equities. The microbes in a rotting cheese may deny the existence of the sun because they do not see it, and may ask, “Has the daylight failed?” But the sun pursues its glorious course, lightening the visible universe.

So it is with Christianity. And those who presume to ask “Has it failed?” are but the microbes in the rotting cheese.

SNOOKS’S OPINION

Snooks is one of those entertaining persons who makes a point of giving an “opinion” on everything. From the Almighty downwards he has what he calls a “calm common-sense view” on all subjects in heaven or on earth, and his chief object in life is to get that “calm, common-sense view” on all to the front, so that the poor, purblind, uneducated public who seldom have any time to indulge in “views,” and still less chance to express them, may understand that there yet exists one truly great man of sane and sober judgment--namely, SNOOKS.

Before the War he used to write letters to the _Times_ on the urgent necessity there was for complete disarmament. In fervent language he pressed the reduction of naval expenses. He was, and is still, under the impression that the _Times_ is still as it was in ages past--a British Thunderer; an Oracle which manifested itself as “I am Sir Oracle; and when I open my mouth let no dog bark.” He forgets that journalism is now only a monstrous Syndicate, not expressive of thoughts, but of Shares and Dividends, and that if the _Times_ were what it once was, it would not publish any letter from Snooks. But Snooks is “fixed” in his opinions. He admits no change in the course of things--an old-established institution must, without argument, remain always as such, and must not totter to decay. When decay sets in, despite Snooks, he firmly denies its possibility.

“Nonsense!” he says--“D’ye think I’ve come to my time of life without knowing better than that? Teach your grandmother!”

Just at the time when he wrote letters about naval expenses and disarmament, one or two other “Snooks’s” popped up and replied. He was not pleased with their replies, as they opposed him. So he took up that Scheme of Idiots, the “Channel Tunnel,” and wasted a deal of ink in seeking to point out what a fine thing it would be to spend needless millions on a tunnel which the Richborough Ferry makes superfluous. His arguments fell a little flat, and he was for a short period reduced to writing about “the first primrose in my back garden”--and “I hope some of your readers have noticed the very early arrival of the wasp this year,” to the indulgent _Daily Mail_. But he never has found quite enough to do in the way of letter-writing to satisfy his ambition. There are not enough wrongs for a Snooks to set right--people of place and position do not make enough mistakes for a “Snooks” to correct. Daily and nightly he is consumed by the desire to see his name in print, and his craving sometimes leads him to look up familiar Latin quotations, more or less applicable to the political situation, and to send them (with the usual signed letter) to certain small newspapers whose position and reputation make the chance of their editor’s classical scholarship doubtful. To see himself in print, no matter how or when, is Snooks’s joy. And now that the war is blowing the dust of human affairs in all directions, Snooks has, as some press reviewers say: “come into his own.” He finds, so he states with engaging modesty, that if HE had been consulted, there would have been no war.

“There was that Algeciras business,” he says vaguely, not knowing in the least what he is talking about. “It should all have been settled then.”

He knows Viscount Grey personally, so he says, but--“he never would take my advice”--and as for Kitchener--ah!--“That’s a man who had immense possibilities!--immense!--but he was obstinate--he wouldn’t listen to a word I told him!”

Here, impressed with the reflections awakened by this melancholy fact, he writes a letter to the _Times_--a letter which happens to be just the proper quantity of “stuff” to fill up the end of a column: so it goes in. No one pays any attention to it. Snooks shows it to his friends at the club--they smile, half read it, don’t understand it and don’t want to understand it. After some difficulty he gets an old deaf gentleman to look at it.

“What’s this, what’s this!” says the old deaf gentleman nervously--“Something happened to our Allies!”

“No, no!” roars Snooks--“It’s a letter!--a letter I’ve written; I, myself--to the _Times_ about Kitchener!”

“Ah, I wouldn’t do it if I were you!” mildly replies the old gentleman, with one hand up to his ear--“We don’t know anything about his work----”

“_I_ know!” shouts Snooks--“If he had taken _my_ advice----”

“Ah, ah! Did you know him?” inquires the old gentleman, evidently surprised and unconvinced.

“_Know_ him!” Snooks snorts defiance, as much as to imply that if he knows the inside of his own pocket he knew Kitchener still better! In irritable impatience he watches the old gentleman’s leisurely perusal of his epistolary effusion.

“Ah! Yes--er--yes! I don’t agree with you,” says the old gentleman at last, putting aside the paper. “I’m not quite sure that I understand it, but it’s not the way I’d put it.”

“Oh, all right!” and Snooks turns on his heel with a superior air of disdain. “I suppose you’re for the wasting of millions! Everybody is, that doesn’t study the subject. Now _I_----”

Here a stray man comes to the rescue of the deaf old gentleman, the conversation changes, and the famous _Times_ letter is forgotten.

Often Snooks seems to be ubiquitous. His letters appear in numerous papers, especially the provincial ones. Sometimes a Snooks’s “opinion” is squeezed just under the “Space for Special News,” which in many halfpenny rags is not “Special News” at all, but merely the results of--Football!

When all the intelligent world was waiting for war news, a Birmingham paper had a “Space for Special News” in which football results were printed first and the war news second! The absurd folly and incongruity of this sort of thing never seems to strike the syndicated Press. The effect of it on the minds of our French and other Allies is too humiliating to be written. It might draw forth a letter from Snooks, if only Snooks’s opinion carried weight. But it doesn’t. The greatest “opinion” that could be imagined, even that of Plato or Shakespeare, doesn’t much matter to any one. It is not a time for individual criticism; it is only time for inspiration and action. A strong thought is always silent; it resolves itself into deeds rather than words. There has been altogether too much talk during the progress of the war; too many “Snookses” in too many newspapers. Snooks has even cropped up in the House of Lords, to say nothing of the House of Commons. And it should be borne in mind that Snooks _does_ nothing; he is not in the smallest degree useful to his country; he merely stands, like an old washerwoman leaning over her tub, and talks. He talks to any one who is idle and stupid enough to listen. He finds out all sorts of “queer things” about General this or Colonel that, and for women he has scarcely a good word to say.

“_They’re_ no use!” he declares contemptuously. “All their sick nursing and sewing was done just for sheer man-trapping! Show them some new hats and they’d forget all about their patients!”

When this heresy is indignantly refuted, he snaps his mouth in a firm, hard line, as though it were a steel box.

“I’d bet you a hundred pounds,” he says, “that if it were women who were wounded in the war instead of men, you’d hardly find one of their own sex to wait upon them! They love fussing round a man! It’s a perfect godsend to them, especially the old maids! There’s an excitement about it; a sort of morbid interest! They delight in washing a Tommy’s face and brushing his hair. If it were one of themselves they’d scrub the face till the skin was ruined and brush the hair the wrong way! _I_ know ’em, I tell you! You give a pretty woman who is ill to an ugly woman who is well, to be nursed, and she’ll ‘nurse’ her! You’ll see what she’ll make of her in twenty-four hours! I tell you I take a calm, common-sense view of all this sort of bunkum!”

Unfortunately for Snooks, his “calm, common-sense view” does not appeal to the world in general. It does not even impress the Premier, who, up to the present, has failed to consult Snooks respecting the “conduct of the war,” or to offer him a “portfolio.” He longs to be consulted. He yearns to be displayed on the headlines of the halfpenny dailies or Sunday pictorials in flamboyant beauty, or as,--

“MR. SNOOKS SPEAKS OUT”; or “THE GREAT MESSAGE OF MR. SNOOKS.”

But these things don’t happen. He has still to content himself with letters to the Press, which sometimes get read, but more often are passed over and forgotten altogether. Nevertheless, his “opinion” is in all the newspapers, whether read or unread, and though the King has not sent for him yet, and he has no “portfolio,” he is admittedly and visibly “SNOOKS.” So that when any particularly mischievous comment on affairs in general appears in print, or any “calm and common-sense view,” which gives useful “points” to the enemy, and irritates the patience of the public, we know who it is, and we don’t much mind! We merely say “SNOOKS again!” or “Another powerful letter from Mr. Snooks will appear next week!”

SEA POWER, 1805–1918