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WEEK . FOREIGN AFFAIRS. By S . Verdad. . TOWARDS NATIONALGUILDS. By “National Guildsmen” .
NOTES OF THE
ASPECTSOF THE GUILDIDEA-VII. By Ivor Brown TRADE UNIONS FOR AND AGAINST . : IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS. By Alice Morning . LETTERS FROM RUSSIA. By C. E. Bechhofer . THE CRITIC’S CHESTERFIELD. By Harold Massingham
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DRAMA. By John Francis Hope .
READERSAND WRITERS. R. H . c. By . LETTERS FROM ITALY. By Terese da Maiano . MORE LETTERS M Y NEPHEW. Anthony Farley TO By VIEWS A N D REVIEWS: THELONELY QUEST. By A. E. R. . REVIEWS . PASTICHE. By John McCallum, P. Selver, J. A. M. A. . CURRENT C A N T . LETTERS TO THE EDITORfrom Herbert Read, James Fennimore, H. P. Adams, Horace Simmons, Henry Savage, Philip T. Kenway
affairs, in fact, it is probable that the Government would have fallen within a day or two of its formation, so disappointing- were its first acts. Whether it will improve as its members shake down into their offices remains to be seen; but we ought t o b e prepared for the worst. T h e very origin of its being- is entitled to our suspicion; for we not only have never been told the reason of it, but the most sinister rumours have been flying about concerning the real motives of the Coalition, all of which appear to have at least some foundation in fact. W h a t public confidence can be placed in a Ministry that has emerged from secrecy into being and is constituted of a personnel which can only be regarded as bewildering? A comparison of the old and the new Ministries leaves the best minds of the public completely in the dark as to the principles that have governed the changes. F o r all the design manifested in the selection, the names of the parties might have been put into a hat and shaken out to the number of the offices. Fancy Mr. Henderson as the Minister of Education or Mr. Austen Chamberlain (at such a time as this) as the Secretary for India! And these are samples merely of the many obvious misfits of the Cabinet. Either it is to be concluded that most of the offices are sinecures, given away to keep the various parties quiet while the real work is done by the permanent officials, or they a r e likely to be wretchedly discharged by their present holders to our national disaster. In either case the situation is not stable.
NOTES OF THE, WEEK.
IN our issue of May 2 7 we promised to discuss the advisability of a n early General Election. Since then several journals-the “Economist,” the ‘‘British Weekly,” and the “Daily Chronicle”-have raised the same interrogation but without provoking much more than the usual reply, namely, that they had better keep their mouths shut. If it were for n o other purpose than to make a stir, certainly we should never have suggested the subject ourselves. In a period of ten or eleven months, during which sensational stuff h a s been plentiful, we have not once raised a scare or reported nimaginary wolf. But there is at least one very a good reason why, even if nothing comes of it, the possibility of a n early General Election should be discussed. present the nation is left to feel that it has At no other string to its bow- than the existing Ministry. Should anything happen t o make the Coalition Ministry more unpopular than it is, or to cause it to lose the respectable fraction of public confidence it now inspires, no alternative government is at present either in preparation or under discussion. W h a t is more, even the very a means of creating a new Government-namely, General Election-is made t o appear a worseexpedient than to put up with any Government, however bad, so long a s it only continues t o exist : a n attitude of mind that may lead us either to acquiesce in a Government going from bad to worse, or to consent to a kind of dictatorship. Under these circumstances it is our duty, we think, to look the bugbear of a General Election in the face, so as to be able, if the choice should have t o be made, to decide between its evils and the evils of its alternatives.
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Nobody can pretend that the existing Coalition Government possesses anything like the full confidence of the nation, or that its actions up to date have been calculated t o win it. But for the critical state of our
Though the new Ministry h a s been in existence for a fortnight, n o sign of re-invigoration has been shown. Apart from Mr. Lloyd George, who once more appears to be the only politician with reserves of strength to draw upon, the members of the new Cabinet seem to have settled themselves to the comfortable enjoyment of their salaries as if, with the attainment of office, they had done all the nation could expect. Worse even, they have begun t o hint, both in the House of Commons out of it, that criticisms of the Ministry ought and now to cease. Pro-German, Sir Arthur Markham called the few members of the Commons who dared t o say what thousands of the public arc thinking; and ProGerman, n o doubt, the Press organs of the various
parties will style any independent criticism from outside. The risk, however, of being both called and treated as pro-German must be taken if we are not to fall under a silent dictatorship. After all, there is no treason in wishing that our Government were a little better than it is. Nor does criticism at this moment argue any fickleness on the part of the public. The Ministry, we cannot too often repeat, is self-selected on principles which we neither understand nor appreciate. We therefore owe it neither unquestioning allegiance nor full confidence. On the contrary, we owe it our suspicion and our best criticism, since its spurs are yet to win. *** The fault is not entirely with the House of Commons either. If, therefore, the nation should finally come to the conclusion that another Government should be elected, no serious aspersions need necessarily be cast upon this. The present House of Commons was, as everybody knows, elected upon issues of a very different order from those of the war. In theory, no doubt, any House of Commons, upon whatever accidental question its composition may have turned, is competent for any crisis, however great, that may arise; and usually, to our credit be it said, most Houses of Commons have risen with the occasion. But the Armageddon which fell upon the world last August was an event not merely out of the ordinary, but out of the extraordinary. And a parliament that might have been blamed for not rising nut of its party origins to a merely national crisis would incur no blame for failing to rise to a crisis as large as the world. We are preparing, it will be noted, a defence both for the existing House of Commons and for the electorate. The latter could not have foreseen that its choice of representatives was to entail on them responsibilities second tu none ever put upon men ; and the former are rather to be congratulated that they have not been overwhelmed, than blamed that they are ineffective. The problem, however, still remains. Because both the present Parliament and the last electorate can be absolved from severe censure, it does not follow that we must accept the situation as if it were fated and unchangeable. Allowing that with the knowledge the public then possessed and with the material of which the House of Commons has found itself composed, both public and Parliament can be acquitted of more than human weakness, the question is still open whether, with better knowledge, the electorate could not now make a better choice. *** It is not as if the worst were over. Even if we admit that we have done as well as could be expected, the problems still before the nation are such as to tax, much more than they have already been taxed, the abilities of the present House of Commons. Some people no doubt will be disposed to say that having muddled through so far under a Government elected for other purposes five years ago, we can hope to muddle through the rest of the way without change. This would be reasonable if either one or both of two conditions were implied-that the situation were likely to become easier as time goes on, or that the existing Government were likely to grow more competent with duration. But neither of these conditions is within even the possible, let alone the probable. Both the national and the internationalsituations appear likely to become more and more complicated and difficult as the weeks pass by, and there is every chance, before peace introduces still fresh trouble into our affairs, of the situation being further extended to include Imperial troubles as well. We beg our readers who doubt it to take a map of the world and to mark on it the places where unrest of one degree or another exists, and to maintain then that the bubbles of the universal ferment promise an early cooling. And that the Government cannot mount in strength with the increasing demands is obvious, we think, from one or two simple reflections. With few
exceptions they are all old men, and men, what is more, exhausted by years of strenuous party strife. The outbreakof the war found them fitter to retire for a rest than to make efforts to which their former were pleasurable exercises ; and a year of war has whitened the grey hairs of almost every one of them. What, we ask, will be their condition after another year of it, after another two years of it, after another three--and with each year growing more rather than less exigent in its demands upon their diminishing energies ? Certainly it is not right, even if it be expedient, to impose such a task upon men. But we are also certain that neither is it expedient. *** The chief objection that will occur to the proposal of a General Election is the distraction of interest it must entail from the momentous business of the war. Against this, however, a number of considerations may be urged whose total effect is to make the choice of an election or no election a nice calculation of evils, if nothing decisive. To begin with, for reasons already given it does not appear to us that a General Election, or, at any rate, a change of Ministry, can be avoided for the whole of the duration of the war. If we could look forward to an early peace or to a peace which, if not early, would at least be immediately less onerous than war, the present Ministry after the exertions of muddling through the war might be allowed to dodder through peace. But both the war and its subsidence, we fear, will be longer than most people yet imagine, involving us at one stage or another in a General Election unless we are to constitute the present a second Long Parliament. The question is, therefore, whether now or later is the more convenient time for renewing the Government of the nation; now, when we are at one of the natural stages of the whole stupendous event and on the eve of plunging into the next; or later, when, perhaps, accident in the midst of disaster may choose the worst possible moment for us. An Election in, say, the coming autumn can be prepared for, entered into and carried through with full deliberation. There need be nothing of panic or makeshift in it. But an Election forced on the nation in consequence of the inferiority of the present Cabinet at a moment when perhapsthe war will be at its worst is certain to reflect not the deliberation but the desperation of the nation. *** It will doubtless be said that to hold a General Election while an Election is still not absolutely imperative is to court trouble. But apart from the fact that, as we say, a General Election will be imperative sooner or later in the period of crisis, and the further fact that it is surely better to hold an election while we can still think about it than to postpone it until we cannot, the trouble of a General Election has been greatly exaggerated. So long, no doubt, as the Executive is not disposed to consult the people, so long we shall be told that a General Election is unthinkable and its suggestion an impertinence. But all these difficulties we have seen are instantly cleared away when the Executive itself is inclined to the same course. How much more unthinkable is a General Election than the game of General Post in which the two front Benches have lately indulged? For three weeks and in pursuance of nothing discoverably national or popular, the two cliques of party politicians practically left the nation without a Government. What they could do for personal ends for three weeks the nation might surely do fur its own for a week. Nor was an actual General Election duringthat period of three weeks so unthinkable as not to have been risked by both parties. The Unionists, we understand, threatened the defeat of Mr. Asquith’s Government if he should refuse to admit their party to a share of office, and Mr. Asquith in turn, according to the “Star,” threatened his own party with resignation if they should not swallow the Coalition with shut eyes. Are we to suppose that both parties were ready
to risk a General Election while still believing a General Election to be unthinkably calamitous? Must it not appear that it is the ignorant public and not the instructed politicians that take the exaggerations of the evils of an Election at their face value? We conclude, in short, that if on good grounds an Election should be thought to be desirable, its attendant evils are not as black as they have been painted. The nation can risk it as easily as Mr. Asquith or Mr. Bonar Law. *** There are, we know, other objections, and they could be multiplied ad infinitum. The effect upon our Allies, upon neutral opinion, upon our enemies; the difficulties connected with the absence of many electors on service abroad ; the possibility of the propaganda of pacifism ; the awakening of the sleeping dogs of party issuesbut they may, all told, be less in the end than the difficulties arising out of the present situation. We do not pretend that the course is free from objections; it is full of them. All we say is that, as far as we can see, we are likely to be driven to it and may therefore as well take the hope of realising that the objections are at least surmountable. We may go further and say that they are not only surmountable, but they ought not to outweigh much more of the evils of the present Government. To hear certain journals at this moment you would conclude that, so awful must be the consequences a General Election, that of the Government now in being must be tolerated in any fancy that enters its head in order to avoid them. We must, we suppose, permit it to lose the war, involve us in a disastrous peace and reduce the nation to chaos, rather than risk the trouble of turning it out and putting a better one in. But, thank heaven, the nation is not quite so resourceless or cowardly as this submission to the will of the political cliques would imply. If need be, and in all the House of Commons no better Government can be found than the present what-not, the nation will certainly call for a fresh Election and insist upon it. The Empire is not going to be ruined as if Mr. Henderson and Sir F. E. Smith were our last hope. *** Without anticipating events that cannot clearly be foreseen we venture nevertheless to warn our readers to be prepared for a General Election this autumn. It may not, we admit, be necessary. On the other hand, it need not, we submit, be disastrous. Now let us look at some of the conditions implied in it. In the first place, the fact must be faced that the next Ministry, whenever it should come into existence, cannot have Mr. Asquith as its chief. Mr. Asquith, as our readers know, has been in our opinion a great Prime Ministerone of the greatest England has ever had ; but the period of his greatness, we fear, is over. To the heights of the party disputes preceding the war Mr. Asquith rose with ease; but nobody can maintain that he has been, since the war began, anywhere near the level of the events now surging upon us From an indulgence of differences in his Cabinet, Mr Asquith, to judge by effects alone, proceeded to neglect, until, at last, his Ministers were rather a Babel than a Government. And, with it all, his own grip upon events appeared to slacken with his grip upon his colleagues. The Coalition, it is obvious, was the first indication of the failure of Mr. Asquith. It cannot be superseded without superseding its cause. But who is to take his place? An Election without a prospective Prime Minister would be a movement without a head. There can, we fear, be only one answer-Mr. Lloyd George. We little expected to see the day when we should in these pages recommend Mr. Lloyd George to the premiership of the nation; but in politics, as Lord Morley long ago said, it is always a choice between the bad and the worse. Between Mr. Asquith, worn out and exhausted in ambition as well as in strength, and Mr. Lloyd George, ambitious, opportunist, and still full of energy, there
is for a realist nation in a moment like this no choiceit must needs be Mr. Lloyd George. *** But Mr. Lloyd George with such a Parliament as now exists would, we admit, be worse in our view than the present Coalition. Most of its members are by this time all in the swim with him. The mere substitution of Mr. Lloyd George for Mr. Asquith with no other change, with no radical change, in the personnel of the House of Commons, would be a jump from the frying-pan into the fire. This, however, can be avoided by the device of a non-party and national election. If it has been possible to abrogate party distinctions in the House of Commons and to form an open Coalition of the front Benches, why is it not possible to abrogate the same distinctions in the constituencies and to return, not coalition, but non-party representatives ? We should say that an appeal to the constituencies to return the best men available, irrespective of class and party, in the name of national safety, would be responded to with all the zeal and intelligence of which our electorate are capable. On your choice, we would say to them, depends to your own certain and immediate knowledge the fate of England; as careful as you would be in selecting a General for the Army should you now be in selecting a man to represent you in Parliament; for once it is no empty form to assure you that your decision is momentous. Provided that the damned Press could be persuaded to acquiesce in the beneficent revolution, there is no reason why such an Election should not be held to the infinite advantage of our political life as well as to the immediate safety of the nation. And the men so returned, owing allegiance to no party, but enlisted in the national service as formally as our admirals and generals, might safely be trusted to keep Mr. Lloyd George as Prime Minister strictly in his place. After all, there is some advantage in having a Premier whose imagination needs to be curbed rather than spurred, if his colleagues are men of character and ability. Beaconsfield was the better for being a Jew suspected of Englishmen. Mr. Lloyd George as a Welshman would be useful checked by our English solidity. Either without the other is bad; but together they are exactly what we need. *** It is unnecessary to speculate much further upon the matter at this moment. Everything here written is ex hypothesi and is designed, as we said, to look the bugbear of an Election in the face. At the same time, it cannot be denied that the prospect of making an end, if only for the period of the war and the early years of peace, of the corrupt party system, is enticing. What might a House of Commons, elected for national purposes by national means, not effect in the way of reform both in Parliament and in the nation? The re-organisation of the House of Commons has long been one of the necessities of English politics. In view of the new alignment of forces in the Empire after the war the necessity will not remain to be dealt with at leisure: it will be met or our failure to meet it will be fatal. What better means could be devised than a national Parliament commissioned to adapt itself to the changed circumstances world? Now is the time, in fact, to ofthe reconstruct our foundations for the future. The war has turned the world upside down and a revolution will be needed to set it right again. The problem of Labour, likewise, demands for its solution a Parliament uncommitted the old party prejudices; it cannot be solved to either by Liberal or by Tory principles, or by a mechanical coalition of both. As a problem the war has magnifiedbeyond dispute, Labour ranks as an immediate issue of the utmost gravity for the future peace of society. We need not say that the prosecution of the war to the acknowledged defeat of Prussia would be the first work of the new Parliament. That is understood; and would not be misunderstood either in Flanders inGermany. or
Foreign
Affairs
By S. Verdad.
IT would be ridiculous to pretend that the situation in India is in all respects satisfactory-that internal strife is at an end, or is at any rate suspended; that all ranks and classes of Indians are anxiously looking forward to the downfall of Germany and her Allies; that the Indian people as a body, conscious of their imperial destiny, are eagerly and confidently awaiting the ultimate triumph of the British arms. I am aware that, in the preceding sentence, I have correctly paraphrased the average “Times’” leader; but I know perfectly well that I have not by any means represented by it the thoughts of leaders of opinion in India. With the aid of information which has reached me from various sources I shall endeavour to indicate what the feelings of the Indian people actually are-speaking, of course, very broadly, and neglecting points of detail for essential truths. *** The fact that there is considerable unrest in India cannot denied. We have had, within a comparatively be short time, serious rioting in Ceylon, a mutiny at Singapore, a treasonable conspiracy in the Meerut district (in connection with which four Indian soldiers were court-martialled and shot for failing to give information to the police), another conspiracy in the Punjab, and dacoites everywhere, especially, perhaps, in Bengal. Government prosecutions are proceeding at Multan and Lahore before special tribunals under the Defence of India Act. So serious is the situation in and around Lahore, indeed, that European women there (as I am privately informed) have been warned by the authorities to be prepared, at a moment’s notice, to fly for shelter to specified points on hearing certain signals. Remember, too, the riots which broke out when the ss. “Komagata Maru,” with rejected Indian emigrants on board, returned to India from Vancouver. Surely the spirit of unrest underlying all these things is something which we should try to understand. *** Years ago it was common enough to hear even embittered Indian agitators saying that the Englishman, if a beast, was at any rate a just beast-the old tag was very frequently quoted. Of late we have been hearing that the Englishman in India is just a beast. If we extend our investigations far enough we shall find out that the new conditions in our Dependency are not favourable to the upbringing of loyal Indians; we are, instead, engendering a race which regards us with suspicion, resentfulness, bitterness, and not a little contempt. is we, however, and not the Indians, who It have created these new conditions; it is we with our unchecked power and authority who have called modern India into being; and it is we, therefore, who must be held responsible. For the conditions prevailing in modern Poland we have never had much hesitation in blaming the Germans, the Russians, and the Austrians. For the conditions in Alsace-Lorraine we have blamed the Germans; and in both instances we have not been very far wrong. But, if we are just and logical, we must in the same way blame our good selves for the unrest in modern India. We must expect trouble to arise if we are inconsistent; if we preach one thing and practise another ; if we lay down theoretical principles of government and administration and deliberately act in a contrary sense. *** An Englishman may think it strange enough when a n Indian accuses him of not playing fair; and yet that is an accusation which is often made, and made with complete consistency and justice. All our public men for the last three or four centuries have emphasised over and over again the importance of parliamentary government, of interpreting the feelings and desires of the
people, and of governing accordingly. Powerful sovereigns have been put to death in England, or deposed, for neglecting this principle or trying to override it; and even in time of war the people of England find an autocracy intolerable. No matter how many definitions of democracy there may be, the whole political development of England since the ’Tudors has had some form of democracy in view; and the public will have nothing to do with a statesman who advocates anything else. This form of rule, upon which our own political life has been built for untold generations, has been promised to India in specific words. Even the old Proclamation of Queen Victoria (1858) was sympathetic, and the Proclamation of 1908 was quite definite. In 1909 the Morley-Minto reforms were thought to have inaugurated a new political era in India, and their speedy extension (which had been promised) was looked for. It was looked for in vain, since the English bureaucracy in India--a bureaucracy which forms one of the strongest autocracies ever seen on this earth--set itself to minimise the effect of the 1909 reforms. It was not that the minor administrative posts which Indians reasonably expected to obtain were not given to them, that facilities for education were not increased, that the system of elections, no matter for what body, was so greatly hedged round with restrictions as to place the ruling bureaucratic minority ultimately in the strongest position. These were all important matters; but not so important as the neglect by the English administrators of the spirit of the Morley-Minto Acts. Those Acts, if they meant anything at all, were meant to show that, in the opinion of the Imperial authorities, the Indians had grown up and were now capable of assuming a preliminary share of political responsibility. That, if not the fetter, was certainly the spirit of the reforms of 1909 ; and, if the bureaucracy had accepted them in that spirit we should have heard less about Indian unrest in the course of the last two or three months. *** The bureaucracy showed no such good sense. It felt that it had governed India wisely for more than a century, that interference with its power was the beginning of the end of British rule, that the admitted unrest was largely the work of crack-brained agitators, that the “natives” had to be managed and administered, efficiently if nut perhaps humanely, from above. Almost precisely similar ideals actuated the Prussian aristocracy, and were carried out in the German Empire with equal efficiency. In both cases the human element was left out-a highly important omission. In both cases the governing castes, unfortunately, confined I hemselves to themselves and neglected the new discoveries, the new thoughts and beliefs, the new problems of the outside world. Our large employers at home have acted in the same way; and the position of our own working classes is not unlike that o the Indian population. Our English f bureaucrats confine their activities to administration, exactly as the English employers confine themselves to the accumulation of profits. An Indian administrator, during his residence in his particular district for a period of years, entirely loses touch, if he ever had it, with events at home. What is his fate when he returns to this country? He would cease to be dangerous if he retired to dignified obscurity; but in most cases, unfortunately, he does not. YOU will find him haunting the places where Englishmen and Indians meet in London, thoughtfully introducing into contemporary discussions the ideas of 1870, 1860, or 1850. I say seriously that there are some retired Indian civil servants who know nothing that happened after the first Boer war ; there are others who will have a great shock one of these days when they discover Ibsen and Shaw. *** If our bureaucrats are unfamiliar with what has been happening in Western Europe, however, assuredly the Indians themselves are not. For many years young Indians have been encouraged to come to this country to complete their education, though since Mr.
Mallet and his Students’ Department were created even the best students have received the coldest of cold shoulders. Student after student has come over here to study medicine, engineering, chemistry, law, commerce,only to find, on his return, that he will not be allowed to apply his knowledge, even in districts where Englishmen are hardly ever seen, without embarrassing and exasperating restrictions. In such circumstances misunderstandings inevitably arise. Young Indians, if they are fairly fortunate, are received into liberal enough society in England, though if they mix too freely with Fabians and similar folk Mr. Mallet is like to have his eye on them, and to warn the authorities in India that So-and-so and So-and-so are bad characters. f Imagine, then, a young Indian o promise (we have had thousands such among us), who leaves an intellectually liberal country and returns home with a university degree. In four cases out of five, probably, a report from the Students’ Department will have preceded him, recording his doings to the minutest detail; and if the unfortunate youth has compromised himself in the slightest degree-by attending a Socialist lecture, for instance-he will find himself, on his return, an object of grave suspicion. He will discover that the democratic ideals of Englishmen are quite compatible with packed and juries, corrupt magistrates, servile judges, autocratic administration. Perjury by the police, too, is even more common in India than in England. As for the principle of equality, our home-comer will find that he is to be treated as one would treat a rather backwardand petulant schoolboy--and this no matter what his qualifications may be. The bureaucrats never deal terms; even with Indian not with the Indians on equal nobles. (I speak, as I have said, generally.) *** Lord Hardinge has been an outstanding success in Iridian administration, not because he knew India, but because he was a good diplomatist. In his diplomatic career he had occasion to compromise, to treat, to nations; disCUSS, show politeness to men of different to even to people so different as the Persians and the Roumanians. The qualities required by a diplomatist are precisely those which arc required by an Indian administrator. What man of average ability could not govern India by displaying the qualities so necessary in a diplomatist ?-tact, good humour, delicacy, capacity for negotiation and compromise, knowledge of the world. The narrowness, irascibility, and bad manners of English bureaucrats in India are notorious; they but are as efficient as Prussian professors with a bad case to maintain. A distinguished woman who knows her subject has suggested to me that there would be no unrest in India if the country were administered by the diplomatic service for six months; and I only wish the experiment were practicable. A diplomatist brings with him an atmosphere of give and take, an atmosphere of sympathy and consideration. We cannot say this of the Indian Civil Servants, though there is, nevertheless, no body of men in the world who could administer India with greater efficiency and incorruptibility. *** What is chiefly wanted, then, is the formation of a new spirit between rulers and ruled by the removal of irksome restrictions such as the Press Act, and of disabilities which keep even the best class of educated Indians tied down to the lowest posts in the administration, and prevent even Indians with fir st-class qualificationsfrom entering or succeeding in professions to which we have encouraged them to aspire. Of what use is it to talk to the Indians about “Empire” after their experiences in Canada and Natal ? Yet who encouraged the Indians to believe that they were citizens of the Empireand might mingle freely with other citizens? We did: look at Queen Victoria’s Froclamation, King Edward’s Proclamation, King George’s Proclamation. Ours is the responsibility; and we cannot escape the consequences of it merely by suppressing the truth and trying to sit on the safety-valve.
Towards
National
Guilds.
In reply to several correspondents we may say that we accept an economic interpretation of history, but not the economic interpretation, as if there were none other. Reality being infinite in its aspects, and history being the record of reality, it follows that there are as many interpretations or readings of history as of reality ; and the attempt to reduce them all to the economic is equivalent to the old fallacy of the economists who conceived an “economic man.” Is it a fact, we ask, that the underlying master-motive of all men equally is economic? and It is obviously not, for self-interest may express itself in other ways than economic--in love of approbation, for example, or of health, or of leisure. But if the economic motive is not predominant equally in all individuals, it cannot be exclusive in history, which is the story of masses of individuals. And indeed it is not, as even the entry of Italy into the war may show : for assuming that the diplomats of Italy are “economic men” with their eyes fixed upon economic gain, the fact must be explained that it was precisely they who were the last to enter the war at the tail of the Italian people whose motive was certainly not economic. Are we to think that the Italian crowds clamoured for war in order ultimately to share in the trade of the Bagdad Railway ? Sentiment so-called (that is, other than economic motive) pIays at least as great a part in history as economics. *** The popularity of the Marxian dogma is due to the facts that, in the first place, it is an interpretation of history, just as the theory of Evolution was an interpretation of progressive variation in nature ; and, in I tie second place, it appears under certain circumstances to be primary. Without some economic foundation obviously no history whatever is possible. Food is the first condition of life. But because food is the first conditionof life, and, under certain circumstances, becomes the only condition that matters, it does not follow that food is the only motive of life. On the contrary, food as motive is predominant only where food is precarious; as soon as food is comparatively secure, other motives begin to play; and in advanced societies these other motives overlay the economic as a building stands upon its foundations. Threaten the security of food and, of course, all the motives made possible by secure food are shaken and become relatively insignificant. The economic motive, in fact, can be found at the bottom of all other motives; but this is not to say that all other motives arc economic, or even that economics enters into them. Because at the bottom of every structure you will find, a foundation which is naturally the first condition of the structure itself, it does not follow that the structure is all foundation ! *** We have to congratulate Mr. Wardle on his recent speech at Oswestry as reported in the “Railway Review” May 21. The National Union of Railwaymen of is not, as he said, merely the largest union of labour in this country (having over members), it is the largest homogeneous union in the world. Its duty to pioneer is therefore plain; and we arc glad to find Mr. Wardle at last beginning to realise it. “It was their object,” he said, “to get every railway man inside the union so that they might secure a monopoly of labour on the I-ailways.” “He wanted the workers to get power. Underneath all the problems of working-class life came the question of the problem of power. They wanted to live; they wanted to live as men, and not as serfs; they wanter an improved status. It was power they wanted, and it was power they meant to have. And why? Not lor selfish or individual purposes only; but because there were rights that were withheld, and because there had got to come a time when great and inevitable changes must take place, when they were not going to be content to work for wages at the price fixed by other people. They wanted to have more to say as to the conditions under which
they worked and lived.” All this is excellent as far as it goes; but the “applause” that followed it showed, we think, that his audience was prepared for something even more definite. The accumulation of power should have been shown as having for its object the specific ends of the abolition of the wage-system and the partnership of the union in the management of their industry. We call the men to be sons, and not serfs, of industry ; and, if sons, then heirs. “A. E. R.” in his letter of May 27 is pernicketty on the subject of one of our colleagues’ epistles. We quoted from a personal letter, not written for publication; we expressly reserved our own opinion; and we deferred the discussion of “A. E. R.’s” recent articles on democracy until we had come to a common conclusion. It is, moreover, a little pedantic to object that there were no “helots” at Athens, because the name was peculiar to Sparta. The thing, at any rate, was common to all Greece. And it is no less pedantic to misunderstand the sense in which our absent colleague spoke of the democratic, “tone” adopted by Mr. Balfour. “A. E. R.” writes as if “tone” were intended here to signify bad manners, and he replies that Mr. Balfour’s tone is exquisite courtesy--as if this were necessarily in contrast with democratic tone. Our correspondent plainly meant vocabulary by tone; and in this sense Mr. Balfour has always claimed to be a democrat. Finally, we object to the importation of the “aristocratic principle of esprit de corps” into the discussion of and propaganda of t h e economics and politics National Guilds; and we have no desire for “A. E. R.” or anybody else to “accept our correction,” “whether he agrees or disagrees with us.’’ Such subordination is proper where the organisation is actually for the purpose of government-aristocratic or otherwise-but it is improper in the debate of principles, that is, in the of government. On the contrary, if discussion “A. E. R.” disagrees with our conclusions it is his business to say so, and not to accept our correction as if the demonstration of an error in us would cause a State to topple. We only profess to be reasonable, not infallible. A correspondent, Mr. Thomas Fleming, asks whether a union that makes itself blackleg-proof by the admission of all and sundry is not in danger of having its craft-consciousness (in other words. its standards of good workmanship) submerged in the class-consciousness of the lowest of the rank and file. We reply that the danger is obvious, and, on that very account, can be guarded against. It is the little foxes that spoil the vine! Undoubtedly as the unions become. more inclusive of all labour they must beware of having their ideals of good workmanship swamped. The remedy, however, is to keep this object as clear as the other object of creating a monopoly. It is both ends that must be pursued concurrently; but the one (a blacklegproof union) as a means to the other (the firm establishment of good craftsmanship). The number of trade unions in this country is a disgrace to the working classes. They are still considerably over a thousand, and of these at least nine out of ten are at this moment not only superfluous, but wasteful and ridiculous excess. The expenditure of the funds of the unions is, likewise, badly directed. Much, much more should be spent in providing education for the members, and much, much less in providing subsidies for employers. The maintenance of the reserve of labour is properly a charge upon employers, not upon the workmen themselves. What would be said if horses were expected to keep themselves in grass when their owners had no immediate use for them? Yet by providing their unemployed and sick members w i t h an income, the unions are undertaking to keep themselves in efficiency for their employers to call upon when they choose. During the ten years 1904-13, the 100 principal unions spent four times as much of their income of twenty-six million pounds upon “benefits” as upon all the other functions of trade unionism. NATIONAL GUILDSMEN.
Aspects
of
By
the Guild
Ivor Brown. VII.
Idea.
THE nineteenth century marked the accumulation of Capitalism, the ever-more terrifying onrush of the Industrial Avalanche. Against it were raised protests indeed, but nothing more than trivial barriers against so potent a force. Moreover, defence against invasion lies not in a fort but in a line of forts, and the obstacles raised against the advance of the entrepreneur were illcorrelated and showed no signs of directing genius or inspiring prescience. First Socialism and then Syndicalism raised their particular banners and held their particular positions in the line, poorly equipped, jealous, often frankly incompetent. It cannot be insisted on too strongly or too often that the weakness of all those who were opposed to any of the main forces of the nineteenth century lay in their lack of unity of cohesion. What was wanted was neither a philosophy of consumption nor a philosophy of production but a philosophy of both, a philosophy which would account for and consider all the aspects and manifestations of human instinct and human desire. It might be as well now to consider how another reaction against a form of nineteenth century tyranny suffered from its incapacity for a broad outlook and a synthetic philosophy. I refer to the Woman’s Movement. In dealing with a subject on which National Guildsmen may hold divergent views, I must of necessity become personal, and I make no apology for the frequent use of the word I. With all the first articulation and expressions of this movement I, for my part, was in agreement. In so far as it was a genuine revolt against the Doll’s House it was a sound objection to a revolting and undemocratic method of life. In so far as the Woman’s Movement demanded the right of every one, male or Female, to live his or her own life it was asking for something extremely right and extremely vague. After all, no supporter of National Guilds is in a positionto carp at those who wish to live their own lives, and I, for my part, am one of these supporters because I believe that only through such a system can the conceptof freedom attain reality. It is the desire to rescue the ordinary man from the clutches both of the private exploiter and of the Government official, so that he may as far as possible be master and controller of his own work and thus of the most vital part of his life, that is the driving force behind the Guild propaganda. Consequently felt a natural sympathy with the general claims I made by the originators of the Woman’s Movement. In a sphere of vague activities, Ibsenite propaganda, and drawing-room dialectic, so long, that is to say, as definite measures could be neglected, there seemed to be every reason for associating the ideas of this movement with the general struggle for freedom. But it was when the woman's idea of living her own life and of elaborating in detail the measures likely to promote freedom began to be formulated that her philosophy was laid bare in all its scrappiness and shortsightedness. First of all it ceased to be a philosophy of woman and became a fight for the suffrage. At the very moment when political action was failing more obviously and more hopelessly than ever, a t the very moment when the angels of this world were deciding that Westminster was no place for them, in stepped the proverbial fools. Votes were to heal everything from sweating to syphilis. Votes would raise wages and rescue the white slave. At the very moment when man, after seventy years of political freedom, had laboriously discovered it to be barren, woman found fruit and virtue in the vote. It was a triumph of obstinacy, a superNelsonic blinding of the eye to the clear signals of history. But nothing could stop the hysterical raving of Christabel, the Great White Bore, whom not even a vote would have ended.
But foolish as was the refusal to profit by man’s experience and to turn to the uncharted fields of direct action, sadder still was the inability of the leaders to make their philosophy synthetic. In a world OF profiteering they knew nothing of the world : in the foul pit of capitalism they wanted only more victims for the pit. They would not or could not see that the one great inevitable fact of life to-day is Capitalism, the buying and selling of labour as a commodity. Nor would they realise that any social philosophy, much more any philosophy which aimed at freedom, was absolutely barren and futile so long as it refused to consider Capitalism. As well might one cry for reflection in Carmelite House as for freedom under Capitalism : as well might the caged bird be labelled free as the woman in industry talk about living her own life. No man or woman can live his or her own life while he is compelled sell his labour absolutely and irrevocably at the to market price and to lose all interest in and control over the commodity once sold. That was the staring, fundamental fact to which the Suffragists remained blind. I am no sentimental champion of the Happy English Home which may or may not be a hell on earth; still less am I a champion of the Filthy English Factory, which is bound to be a hell by the very conditions of its existence. Irrespective of these facts, the Feminists in their very righteous and natura1 anger with certain men and certain homes, found the remedy in filling the labour market with an increasing stream of cheap wares. Away from the frying-pan and into the fires of hell. Miss Cicely Hamilton objected that woman should be taught to regard marriage as her only profession. So far I agree with her. But I do not agree that the remedy is to extend the sphere of woman in industry now. What could be more fatal to our hopes than the sudden influx into the market of copious labour, unorganised and almost unorganisable? No wonder Lady Cowdray believes in “emancipation for women!” One thing alone could bring us salvation-the setting up of a labour-monopoly by the labourers. A start had been made. And now, what with the Suffragettes and what with the war, the position is as desperate as ever. Everywhere the witless blacklegs press on. Will no one inoculate for scabies? And yet, while the women were crowding into the market, the Suffragettes made a hundred speeches on the vote for every word they spoke about Trade Unions. They had a philosophy of feminism, with which I happen to agree; but they refused to see that such a philosophy is perilous and futile unless linked on to a philosophy of industrialism. I am opposed to the extension of woman’s sphere in industry to-day because woman, like man, is too good for industry and because I am opposed to every move that will make labour cheaper and easier to obtain. In fundamental issues I believe in the ideal of “living one’s own life”; but I recognise the ugly necessity for patience, because at present none but the economically independent can live their own lives. In other words I cling to my view that any theory or philosophy relating to the common life of humanity to-day must Fe brought into connection with the great dominant force of Capitalism. If political theory must consider the economical relations brought about by industry, so, too, must feminist theory, which aims at freedom, consider the necessity of abolishing a servile economic system before it can achieve its ideal. Of all the theories raised as barriers against the evils and the tyrannies of the last century, none has been found to contain a comprehensive philosophy that at once answers every human need and considers every possible danger. Socialism, Syndicalism, Feminismeverywhere is narrowness and limitation. I do not claim the universe for the Guild idea. Being but the product of mere mortality, it cannot either know all or do all. But it is a broad idea and regards every facet of mankind. Its ambition at least must be to view all.
Trade Unions:
For and Against.
IN the preliminary report of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, criticisms by employers of the trade unions, together with replies by organised workers, are summarised by the commission as follows :(I) Lack of responsibility on the part of unions; not only is there no penalty for the breaking of agreements, but the employer has no redress even for material damage done by the union, except through legal action against individual members. The reply of the union representatives is: That experience has shown the best guarantees of the observance and regard of contracts to be moral responsibility for the reputation of the union. That the instances of contracts broken by unions are few in number, and inconsiderable in comparison with the number of contracts broken in the business world, where money damages are commonly imposed. That putting up a forfeitable bond would lower the entire plane upon which the observance of contracts now stands, and would simply mean a financial calculation on the part of the union to see whether a breach of contract would leave a balance in favour of its members after the bond was forfeited. That the assumption of financial responsibility by the unions would simply be taken advantage of by the employers to harass the unions. (2) The “closed shop’’ policy of the unions not only means a monopoly of labour as far as the employer is concerned, but also prevents competent mechanics, who are unable or unwilling to accept the terms imposed by the union, from obtaining employment at their trade. The reply from labour is that there is no “closed shop,’’ but that the maintenance of the “union shop” imposes no burden on the employer, who is free to employ any workman he pleases provided that the workman will become a member of the union and bear his share of the responsibility in return for the benefits which the union offers to all who work where union conditions have been established. That the conditions are merely imposed upon applicants for membership those which every competent mechanic can meet and that they are reasonable from every standpoint and necessary for the protection of the trade. (3) The unions stand for restricting the output to the level of mediocrity, and insist, nevertheless, on the paymentof the standard wage for an output which is below the standard. The reply is that the unions have never attempted to establish a restriction on output save as a protection for the health of their workers, and to prevent the overspeeding of all by the use of pacemakers. That the union is applying merely the rule of ordinary business where the amount of a given commodity sold is regulated entirely by the price that is paid. (4) The unions establish a uniform rate for all members, results in rewarding the incompetent with which higher wages than they earn and destroys the ambition of the skilled worker. The labour representatives reply that the standardisation of the rate to a dead level is the work of the employers and not of the unions. That the union merely establishes a minimum rate and leaves the employers free to pay the individual workmen as much more as they please. Some of the employers have admitted that this is true in theory, but insist that as soon as a skilled individual is paid higher than the minimum rate the other members immediately demand the same rate of pay. (5) The unions establish unreasonable and arbitrary restrictions on apprentices, which not only prevent a sufficient supply of skilled workmen, but also prohibit the American boy from learning the trade in which he is interested. The union’s reply is that where restrictions of apprentices exist they are not arbitrary, but are, on the contrary, fixed after careful consideration, with the idea of preventing an over-supply of labour in the trades and consequent “cut-throat” competition for employ-
ment. That the employers usually do not make use of the full number of apprentices to which they are entitled under the union rules, and, furthermore, that the employers do not sincerely wish to train apprentices, but, on the contrary, wish merely to make use of a cheap labour supply. (6) The power of the unions is based, not on reason or on advantages offered employers, but on a policy of coercion. This statement is denied by the union representatives, who assert that the charge falls flat as soon as the history and organic structure of trade unions are intelligently studied. (7) The unions use violent methods, and do not hesitate to violate the law or to destroy property or life, if necessary, to gain their ends. The unions reply that violence is never sanctioned by any legitimate labour organisation and is never resorted to by individuals except under severe provocation and in self-defence. They recognise their duties to defend their lives, their homes, and families, but even under attack exercise much greater self-control than the civilised nations of the world. On the other hand, they insist that most of the violence which occurs in connection with industrial disputes is deliberately provoked by the agents of the employers in order to discredit the unions or to secure employment or reward for themselves. (8) The business agents and other officials of the unions have too much power and abuse it by becoming blackmailers and grafters. The reply of the union representatives is t h a t the officials in trade unions possess only the power necessary to transact the business of the union, and in fact have very much less power than the officials of corporations. That this power is seldom abused, and that when it is clear that the charge against a union official is true and not simply a trumped-up charge to weaken the union there is always rapid and decisive action by the union to punish such an official. That any abuse of power by officials for blackmail or graft is necessarily detrimental to the interests of the union and consequently can never be regarded with favour by trade unionists themselves. (9) The actions and policies of trade unions are frequently not the result either of reason or of a purely economic interest, but, on the contrary, are determined largely by union politics. This charge is generally met by an admission on the part of the union officials that unions are subject to the same defects as other democratic institutions, but it is pointed out that the unions have always adopted at the earliest possible moment all the measures which have proved of value in the political field to ensure actual democracy. They point out that the initiative, referendum, and recall were adopted by the unions before they found general support in the field of political government in this country. (IO) The unions create antagonism between the employer and his individual employees, and undermine the disciplinetheshop. of This is denied by the union. It is insisted that the employer regards any instructions of the individual employee with regard to his rights as an attempt to create antagonism and to destroy discipline. That the employer who makes this point is not interested in the orderly and harmonious conduct of his shop, but in having the individual employees subjugated so they will be entirely subservient to his wishes. (11) The unions as soon as they acquire strength of numbers and a compact organisation, make unreasonable demands upon employers and imperil the very life of the industry. The union representatives insist that, while their organisations are subject to the frailties of human nature, a careful examination of the facts will show that unreasonable demands seldom arise from strong
organisations, but, on the contrary, are made by weak unions which have little to lose by reason of erratic action. (12) Some unions are alleged to be disloyal to the State, in that they prohibit their members from joining the militia. and discriminate against men who have served in the regular amy. The unions in reply demand the production of specific cases where such action has been taken, but admit that a strong suspicion and aversion tu the militia has grown up in the minds of many individual unionists, not toward the militia as a State institution, but as a tool which is used by the employers for their own advantage arid for the destruction of the union. (13) The unions are not sincere in their demands Cor collective bargaining, but, as soon as they have obtained power in a n y trade or locality, proceed to make their demands in the form of ultimatums to the employers. The union representatives state, while in many cases terms are defined by the union because of the lack of adequate organisations of employers with whom to take up such terms of employment, nevertheless the unions are at all times ready to discuss their demands, either with individual employers or any association directly interested. That wherever the employers accept such conditions it is due to their own apathy in failing to form a proper organisation with which the unions can deal. (14) The union rules are designed for selfish purposes, and make for waste and social inefficiency. As instances, witnesses have cited the rules in the printing industry amount and character of work which icn are allowed to perform, and which specify that all plate must be reset by members of the union, even when it is furnished in usable form. The unions reply that each of these rules, if carefullyconsidered, will be found to be reasonable and to be necessarily for the protection of the rights of the employees. T h a t the rules which are most frequently cited as being of an unreasonable character are those which were originally suggested by the employers for their own interest. (15) The acceptance of union conditions yields the controlof many elements of a business to union officials who are not connected with the industry and who have no direct interest in its progress and life. The union representatives state that, on the contrary, the control of these elements of a business in which the union interests itself is in the hands of the employer and of the organisation as a whole which has the most direct interest in the welfare and prosperity of the industry. (16) The unions, while asserting their rights to control certain elements of the employers' business, are unable to prevent jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and as a result cause enormous toss to the industry and to the public. The reply of the labour representatives is that jurisdictional disputes arise inevitably from the rapidly changing character of American industry ; that they are more genuinely deplored by the unions than by anyone else, and that every effort is being made either to prevent their occurrence or to settle them as soon as possible. (17) The unions use the "sympathetic strike'' ruthlessly, illegally, and to the certain injury of innocent parties who have no interest in the dispute. The unions reply that the sympathetic strike is used only after mature consideration for the protection of their fellow-employees. That :he sympathetic strike is entirely legal, and the so-called-innocent parties are subject to injury not by the will of the union, but because of the pecuIiar economic position which they happen to occupy. (18) The unions by using the so-called "secondary boycott" are guilty of an illegal act of conspiracy to injure innocent parties who are neither responsible for nor have any interest in the dispute at issue. The unions reply that it is certainly legal for an individual or indeed for a corporation to withhold its patronage for any reason whatsoever, and that it must therefore be equally legal for an association of workers acting as an entity to do the same thing.
Impressions
of Paris.
IF Lord Northcliffe were cold-shouldered out of England he would find certain spots here where he is regarded as a noble patriot only anxious for every man to be doing his duty. Since his attack on Lord Kitchener, at least one of the lesser papers here has begun to be audacious. The editor of the “Intransigeant,” Leon Bailly, writes about “the mistakes M. of England at the beginning of the war, the slowness of her industrial organisation and also of her recruitments. The ministerial crisis, which places in power qualified members of the Opposition, shows that our ally has the will to hurry forward the supply of ammunition, without which victory is impossible. Conscription, also, is under consideration. . . As for France, we know how she has understood the necessities of modern war, how all our factories work for national defence and give out their fullest production.” This is the sort of writing which confuses people. The tone of flattery gives the writer a false appearance of being not merely just, but tolerant. Several things which Northcliffe would like to have said against us are here said as I have not seen them said before. The French do not entirely understand us, and there is no reason why they ever should; but a working understanding will come about if enemies of and in the two houses are shut up. A certain type of Frenchman will be certain to have his head turned before this war is over. It is an unhumorous animal, mostly Catholic and Royalist, and it may go far to damage France with the world. M. Leon Bloy is a very perfect example of it. One can hardly believe he is not jesting in a n article he publishes in the May ‘‘Mercure de France.” The article is on “Jeanne d’Arc and Germany.” M. Bloy hints that the identical heart of Jeanne may shortly be producedsomebody knows where it is safely hidden, and all ready, presumably, to work miracles when Jeanne’s canonisation shall need something of the sort. M. Bloy is ready to dispute for France Germany’s claim to be over all. France is to be over all-because Jeanne d’Arc was French. I’m not parodying ! “Il n’y a pas, dans toute l’histoire, une predestination aussi evidente, aussi manifeste que celle de Jeanne d’Arc, et, par la, se trouve indiscutablement corroboree la miraculeuse vocation de la France.’’ You see that one could not parody this ! Further: “France is so decidedly the first of peoples that all the others, no matter whom, ought to consider themselves honourably treated when they are admitted to share the bread of her dogs. There is the fact; and therein lay, in the fifteenth century, the sole reason for the existence and appearance of the Maid. Jesus Christ, sole legitimate monarch and suzerain of all monarchs of mud and ashes, could not have any other terrestrial kingdom than that of France. One could not imagine him King of Spain or of England. . ..” M. Bloy arrives at baptising Jesus the “King of France crucified,”and announces that fire will not lack to purify the elect terrestrial kingdom. “The piIe of Rouen is not extinguished, and a few sparks will suffice to make it burn up.” One of the first to be “purified” apparentlyshall be the archevique of Rheims, “persecutor of the Mother of God.” Wouldn’t you think it was a satire? It is not! It is French Catholicism preparing to set France in a blaze after the “unjust and cruel” Germans are exterminatedwith the help of “Protestant England which burned Jeanne d’Arc and assassinated Napoleon, and of schismatic Russia.” I almost begin to wonder once more if it is not an over-done satire. But everyone assures me-no ! So, well-a-day ! My forefathers cried “No Popery!” and ‘‘No Popery!” cry I. "ThePrussian sian among religions will see its priests solemnly put into hats and trousers if it doesn’t look out, and then nobody will know them from other people ! Mr. Arthur Hood does not, I am sure, mean to inveigle me into discussing the whole French Revolution. This would be too revengeful even against a
personwho has annoyed him with her ants and influenzas. What can it matter what such a scribbler says about the French Revolution? Yet Mr. Hood attacks me in person as though my words were of importance. Very well. I’ll say them again for twopence. It is he who drags in the French nation, including the starved and utterly untaught. I merely referred to the actual butchers, the Paris mob and those who set the mob on, among them some of the most diabolical journalistsand pamphleteers ever let loose on a nation; this reference of mine was made in connection with the incendiary Press now in London which is not precisely in the hands of angels, and for which no horror might prove too horrible. About Danton and about the charges made against the King and Queen, Mr. Hood knows that no historical judgment is yet accepted as final. I side with those who believed that the King and Queen were innocent, that is, with men like Delille and a hundred others, and women like Mesdames de Tarente and de Tourzil, the intimates of the Queen, and whom not even the sight of “a mountain” of the mangled bodies of their friends could induce to say a word against her. The letters of Louis are in no style of a traitor, but of a good man and a heart-broken King. As for Danton’s phrase, it was pronounced in the Assembly within a few hour:, of the first massacres of the prisoners. Immediately. after making it he went to the Committee of Surveillance, keeping his ministerial colleagues waiting. I side with those who believe that he went there to repeat his “Audace!” in connection with the massacres. Mr. Hood, in his excitement, almost accuses me of pro-Germanism. He is as mad as a hatter, in fact. The leaders of the mob in “that grim time” were men as “well-fed, well-educated” as the Kaiser himself. As for o f atrocities, I know of nothing the comparisons Germanscould possibly do to a mortal worse than . . . . But, there, nothing is served by comparisons of atrocities. The mob in any country in any age is capable of everything-and I was talking about keeping mobs in hand. It is stifling hot, and I’m afraid I may sometimes have another touch of influenza, and the ants are as bad a s ever, and I want to think about quite other things than the French Revolution or King Charles’ Hood. Our own, Cor instance. I felt the national breath respire in my lungs when someone remarked that conscription was settled for England for the 31st of June“Never !” said the blood of my fathers; on o n e side a long, long line of the most pig-headed Yorkshire yeomen who ever ploughed, sang the Hallelujah Chorus, begot families, paid on the nail, and fought because they thought the fight was a good one-and on the other, a host of all sorts of brigands, pioneers, soldiers, sailors, sky-pilots and artists who married for gaiety to. They and fought because it was their nature all said “Never!” And a round twenty descendants of these are now voluntarily on the field. There must be a lot of English saying, “Never!” or a woman would not be able to prove such a living reflection of a grand idea. The Germans will be pleased. The persons I suspect here are very pleased. “Your England wakes up-eh?” They see already England at civil war, and the Germans marching OR Calais. If conscription were any good for England Northcliffe would not be asking for it. It must be going to serve the private interest and the private hate of him and his likes. Except for the ‘“Daily Mail,” there would have been no talk of conscription; and the “Daily Mail’’ is the most deadly enemy of England, a secret poison to men, as the “Mirror” is a secret poison to women and children. It destroys their phlegm, a n d rushes them past their luck. The first evil days of this war were ‘‘Daily Mail” days. What did conscription do for France, or for Russia? Who doubts that without the voluntary English Army the Germans would now be at Paris as they are at
Przemysl? The French fight now like volunteers, because the fight against Prussianism has got into their But the phlegm and the luck of the English hearts. were at the barrier of the Marne. Conscription is not going to serve Germany or Austria. Where is any case for conscription? One is badly impressed here by the fact that persons of suspect neutral States applaud the idea of English conscription. Why? These people do not want us to min. Clearly they count on our enfeeblement as ally against the Prussians. Like Northcliffe, they comprehend through hate what would be bad for us. To try compulsion on Bill o’ Jack’s because he is slower to fight than Jack o’ Bill’s is to show respect for neither the one nor the other. And a thing to be remembered is that Bill and Jack have long since tried each other’s weight and have a mutual respect. The magnificent courage of Lieutenant Warneford in destroying the Zeppelin would thrill me into saying something nice about aeroplanes if there were anything nice to he said. But, indeed, they are a horror and a calamity and a curse, and even the destruction of the great sneak cost some of the most innocent lives of nuns and children. It is enough to make one superstitious. courage one can display against an The airship is only a sort of desperate bravado, and rotten for one’s real nerve. Ah ! A French writer in the “New York Herald” declares that the architects have done more to destoy Paris than the Germans to any city they have occupied. ALICE MORNING.
Letters
from
Russia.
By C. E. Bechhoffer. Is Mr. Stephen Graham a Manx? I must really be excused for so frequently mentioning this Times-server, but he is one of the few people the Censors allow me to write about. Is he a Manx? He has si) many legs to he pulled. Beside the people who have convinced him that he understands Russian and knows Russia (how many weeks has he spent in actual Russia?) somebody has been giving him information. This somebody must have been cruel enough to tell him that a considerable part of the cultivated land of Russia was again falling back into forest. Mr. Kelly-Graham believed him and, this strange, to the joy of the Russian press, stated false fact in his “Russia and the World.” He having said it, the bee in his Scotch bonnet buzzed out and he was not ashamed to attribute the supposed relapse to, in the first place, the abolition of serfdom ! There are some things above discussion. Secondly, says Sir Oracle, landowners are taking less interest in their estates. But it was one of them who said that, when there were serfs, he drank champagne and kept no accounts, but, when they were freed, kepi books and drank beer. As it seems to be I and my doings with which our lords and masters are most severe I will not speak of self but confine this letter to such greater moderns. I have just read a pamphlet of Andreev’s, “To the Belgians”-sometime the day is approaching, and Berlin is entered by the soldiers of the Allied Powers. First (of course) the Russian Army, enormous, grey and laborious, calm and without haste, and gloomily gloomy Berlin watches it. Unpleasing for Berlin ! Then comes the French Army, glad, gay, lightly stepping, contrasting the ugly streets of Berlin with beautiful Paris. Bitter and unpleasing for Berlin ! Then the English, yawning at the dullness of Berlin, looking at the little Spree and asking quietly, Is this a river? Offensive and bitter for gloomy Berlin. But who are these who follow, few, pale and weary, before whom a hero, modest, simple, valorous, benign, young, sorrowful, with open brow and sad eyes, rides? Ah, yes-they are the Belgians and he is their king. And Berlin becomes ashamed. And Berlin weeps little tears. "And then---this is hard to believe, but it is true--and
then someone cried out in German to King Albert, ‘Hoch!’ Me was stared at-yes, this German shouted : looked at King Albert, wept openly and shouted, ‘Hoch!’ ‘This is treason,’ said some. ‘No, it is conscience,’ said others. And then all shouted and wept ; and soon other voices joined in and also shouted, ‘Hoch!’ And the louder the welcoming cries grew, the less vanquished seemed Berlin, lost its gloom, grew golden in the sun, like any other God’s city.” And that is how Germany regained its good name. This, says the author, is only my fantasy, but who knows, who knows? As a Brahmin said when I told him that life was not a reality but only a fixed ideait is an easy way out of a difficult problem. The nearest thing to humour in Russia is the “Satirikon.” For the benefit of connoisseurs, I would class it with the “Meggendorfer Blatter.” It is no more witty than, say, ‘‘London Opinion,” rather wider, rather bitterer, and much vulgarer. It is edited by one Averchenko, the most prolific of all journalists. He edits this paper and writes for it ; never a week passes but he has tales in others and hardly a month but a new book of his appears, reprinting his sketches;. His latest I have just read. The first tale is not unamusing. In t h e editor’s office of an evening paper Our Special Correspondent at Copenhagen and Our Athens Correspondentare writing their telegrams. The editor is rebuking Our Military Correspondent. What on earth, he says, do “blindages” mean. Every paragraph has something about “blindages” in it. They are not fortifications, they are not soldiers, munitions of war or provisions-what on earth are they? The military correspondent replies that if the editor is not satisfied with them, he need not read about them, and resigns his post. His successor commences his duties with a n article upon Italy, which, he says, resembles a boot in shape, with so-and-so as the toe, so-and-so as the heel, and so on. The second day he writes of the position and condition of the Austrian forces, with particular emphasis on the state of their boots. The third day he writes about the Russian Defence of Warsaw, remarking in particular how well the soldiers are booted. When, on the fourth day, he hands in an article upon “Boots in the Balkan Campaigns” the editor makes inquiries and discovers that his trade in peace times is It is only now that he is a military expert. bootmaking. The rest of the book is much sillier. It is all about the Kaiser and Franz-Josef and Turkey. For instance, the Kaiser insists upon delivering a congratulatory speech to one of his armies. The generals deliberate how to avoid this awful ordeal, decide it is inevitable and put the Chekhs and Poles in the front rows. All the listeners are killed by the Kaiser’s eloquence. Isn’t it childish? But it is typical of modern Russian humour. “Why didn’t you give me a warm bath, Jane?” “Well, Ma’am, the bath’s only got ‘Hot’ and ‘Cold,’ so where was I to get warm water from?” That is from this week’s “Satirikon.” I wish Russian humour would stop at the bathroom. But it is much more domestic, often. As for the Kaiser and the Germans, I know a nation that for a century has been imitating Germany in everything and bas become willingly, as near as it could, a passable imitation of Germany. The imitation was unnatural, I know, but if I were an I-knowwho I would make fun of the Prussianism at home before I worried about the Kaiser. Last year a clever play called “The Revisor” was written by a man named Gogol--let me see, was it last year or a long time ago? My memory is getting so bad and my eyes so keen that realIy I cannot think when it should have been. But I thank Heaven that I write for a country that rewards the truth with no worse than contemptuous silence. How inconvenient if one had to pay a naughty article and to keep a prison editor. In Graham-land the latter gentleman, even for the most reactionary journals, spends the greater part of his One energetic governor the other year in fortresses. day suppressed a paper with the simple intimation that
“for people who worshipped God, honoured the Emperor and loved their country, the reading of this journal was a thing impossible.” Russian literature and (be it whispered!) culture are things so recent that a chaos holds their history. Every day one may expect to find a new and interesting anecdote of some classic author. I did think Pushkin was exhausted as a mine of sensations, but the question has suddenly arisen as to where he was born. I prefer to relate a new anecdote of Dostoievsky and his first meeting with Belinsky, the critic. A professor has deciphered the pseudonyms of a part of Nekrasov’s diary, and this is what he found. Nekrasov awaited Dostoievsky to fake him to Belinsky, hut he did not arrive a t the appointed time. Nekrasov called upon the novelist, who was then at the beginning of his career, and found him not yet even dressed. “ l ’ m not going to Belinsky. I’ve been thinking about it all night. You tell me he asked about me and about my person, and I’m afraid-. No, better not to go. What role should I play before him? What is there in common between us? He’s a learned man, a known man of letters, an approved critic, and I-what am I?” “Fyodor Michaelich, Fyodor Michaelich!” Nekrasov cried, “but Belinsky knows your book, your ‘ Poor People’?” “Yes. ” replied Dostoievsky, he praised it; but now, perhaps, he’s “yesterday got quite another opinion.” Nekrasov argued in vain and left the house alone. He had gone hardly ten paces when Dostoievsky’s servant, Terence, called him back. Dostoievsky was dressing, and said, “I’ve been chinking; it won’t do any great harm i f we do go.” They started out, but once again, on Belinsky’s very doorstep, Dostoievsky grew shy. Nekrasov only succeeded in persuading him by saying that Belinsky was expecting them and would be angry. “Angry?” cried Dostoievsky, alarmed, and rang the bell himself. When Belinsky received them and congratulated the author upon “Poor People” Dostoievsky went to the other extreme, became extremely gay, hummed bits of songs, and told tales about his Terence who had eaten a plaster sent him for external use. “Well, let him be, your Terence,” said Belinsky at last, “and tell me, were you long writing- your ‘Poor People’?” “Not long,” replied the other, slowly ; “I began it in May and finished it-finished it in the same year.” Nekrasov remembered that Dostoievsky had often told him that he had been four years writing his novel and had rewritten it sixteen times. “Is he really not ashamed,” he thought, “hot to tell the truth before Belinsky?” And so let me end this letter, this dove, this soundinglead. If this reaches its destination safe and sound, unmauled, unblackened and complete, I may even dare to disclose my own doings. I laughed at the “Three Sisters” of Chehov who cried “To Moscow! To Moscow!” and never got there. My plans were laid, said I ; but, truth to tell, all my plans are new-laid, and I am farther from Moscow than ever I was.
The
Critic’s
Chesterfield.
AND so you are anxious, my dear Horatio, to enter the profession of letters. On mature consideration, you have decided that a term of critical apprenticeship on the dewy slopes of Helicon is a reputable inn for a progressive approach towards diplomatic, political, legal and financial responsibility. And you call upon me, whose qualifications, you are kind enough to observe, as business manager to a syndicate of literary journals are a sufficient guarantee, to teach, if I may be permitted a small jocularity, the young pen how to shoot. For literature nowadays has happily become a gentlemanly vocation. The stigmas of eccentricity, nonconformity and impecuniousness no longer attach to it. There are, of course, still a few outlandish and ramshackle scribblers, who wear flannel trousers and eke
out a precarious living by refusing to become one of us. They are agitators, but, mark you, my dear Horatio, not paid agitators. And on the whole, Fleet Street has worthily superseded Grub Street. Literature has at last become solvent. With efficient directors, and regulated by an organised system, it has already become a paying concern, a sure investment, capable of bearing compound interest. It has taken its place, in fact, with the other professions, as a rivet in the vertebrae of national prosperity. Now the first principle of the candidate for critical honours, the primum mobile of his career, is to cultivate a disinterestedly fresh and open mind. The critic, that is to say, must not enter the lists, cumbered with the impedimenta of a pedantic training, an unprofitable knowledge of an obsolete apparatus of critical prepossessions and preoccupations. He must not, for instance, say of that illustrious romance “Sally and the Succubus ” that it is at once commonplace, vulgar, ludicrous and shoddy. That were simply an irrelevant reference to antiquated principles. Such methods smell more of the lamp than of God’s sunshine. Away with such kill-joys. Let them adjust their horn spectacles and study the geometrical diagrams of cobwebs in the appropriate obscurity of their cellars. Nay, my boy, come to literature naked and unashamed, as Pan to a Dryad aslumber in a bosky dell. Exult in its beauties: ejaculate its message; clamour the good tiding from the house-tops-“A notable book, a book to call stockbrokers from play and old men from the chimney corner.” Nor is the possession of an open mind any the less of an important credential. In reviewing a book, you must remember that the point is, not what you think, but what the hook thinks. You are, as it were, the receptacle of the spirit of the book-as an eminent Patagonian professor has put it--“‘ductile wax to the impress of its effigies.” Your office is to suck the breath of the book into your body and soul and then blow it out again to the expectant public like a great wind from the mountains. You are the lightning conductor through which the book may cleave its way into the heart of the people. And to fulfil that duty, you must, above all things, have faith, faith that helps you, not only to interpret every particle of the book, as its author would have it interpreted, but by a process of spiritual alchemy, to transfigure the good you have absorbed to something astonishingly, indefinably, superlatively good. Be, sure that the wisdom of publication has ensured the quality of that good. Ecstasy, expressed in sharp, stabbing. staccato syncopations, an it were the book had wrought you into a Lycurgan frenzy ; languorous content, expressed in soft, sibilant cadences, like milk trickling from the table on to the carpet, an it were the book had overcome you like a heady perfume; a desperate whisper, expressed by confidential appeals, expostulations and innuendoes, an it were the book had delivered into your hands sealed dispatches for its potential readers-these and similar methods are the stock-in-trade of, if I may employ a not inapplicable simile, the critical traveller in books. Now, at first blush, this may appear a portentous task, involving a demonic inspiration beyond the scope of but the gifted few who have gilded the annals of our rough island story. Be at ease; a wise providence, of which I am the humble instrument, has, in its prescience, provided ample pinions by which our fledgling critics may take their flight. A store of phrases, tabulatedin a schedule covering every species of publication that has marketable value, has been accumulated to serve every occasion which will confront the candidate. I will take measures to have these forwarded to you in my next letter. They will, I am sure, contain a practical illustration of the argument on which I next propose to dwell. What, my dear Horatio, is the purpose abook? What is the end and justification of of its existence? Obviously, a book should represent a sum of money, whose circulation or investment is the strongest demonstration of our national solidity. Well
and good; that is admitted. How then can this desirable consummation of our literary efforts be attained? Need I say, by inducing the public to buy our commodities. And what is that state of being, which is the indispensable principle of every living organism? Need I add-physical consciousness. There you have it, my dear Horatio. That is the be-all and end-all of literature, the creative sap of life. It is the business of a book to preserve, to suggest and to intensify the physical sense. The population of these islands can, from the reading point of view and allowing for some few exceptions, whose productivity in the matter of revenue does not call for our consideration, be divided into two port ions-the average and the intelligentsia. For the former, a book is designed to produce the simpler and keener physical sensations ; for the latter the more subtle and complex oms-suggestions of physical sensations, rather than actual sensations themselves. And it is the business of the critic to realise the particular sensation which a book aims to evoke and to communicate the quintessence in appropriate language, to its predestined reader. I cannot, by way of example, enclose all the pasturelands of contemporary literary fertility within the compass a letter. of I can only briefly indicate the more profitable and so representative fields of achievement, such as poetry, novels, memoirs and biography, mysticism (a paying line and satire. Let us take them one by one. From the province of poetry, for instance, I will select eight types, which can be relied upon--as our American cousins dub it-to “make good.” They are the intellectual, the realistic, the domestico-natural, the crepuscular, the plenilunatical, the succulent, the transpontine thebassoon. The last three are for popular and consumption. Of the first of them therefore, which is designed to create the sensation of sucking barley-sugar in a warm bath of Soap-suds, the critic will say : Mr. St. Leau Sucrey’s slim volume does not indeed remind us of a rough-hewn limber-log swirling down from the sources of the Bandusian fount. His poetry is rather the odorous flag-flower floating in some sequestered Arabian pool of aromatic spices. Pluck it, O gentle reader, and inhale its fragrance. Surely ’twill make your heart beat just a little faster.” Or take the bassoon type: “Tum ti ti tum. We cannot read Mr. Bray’s stirring lyrics without feeling our blood go acoursing through our veins, our arms a-tangoing and our feet beating a tattoo upon the fender.” Now glance for a moment at those types dedicated to the intelligentsia. Take the plenilunatical : “Mr. Hottentot, as he fingers his lyre, all made of chrysoprase, creases our epidermis with the sense of the strange, the exotic and the forbidden. We stretch out our hands to grasp the glittering fruit and it is as ashes in our mouth. Our Faces all a-twitch, we spit the horror out. We shudder and the night presses upon us, hideous with talons.” Or the realistic : “The verses of the eminent IndianMr. Spade-&-Spade, now first presented in an English dress-give us a sense of those homely familiar things, those bald little things that we can touch and see, from which the complexities of modern civilisation are too apt to distract us. We turn the door-handle and our poet shows us the way; we eat spring-onions and our poet invests those little fingers of the great EarthMother with a tender sanctity. Our home is all about us where to choose, Our hat, and walking-stick or pair of shoes.’’ I fear, that while we are in the poetical terrain, I have no space to deal with more than the intellectual type. The object of this school is, in the first place, to offer its poetry as a substitute for violent physical exercise and, secondly, to generate that sense of awe and mystery, which causes the mouth to gape and the eyes to start out of the head. For instance: “Mr. Calculus Graffs carries us over great precipices and canyons and deserts of thought. The mind wellnigh falters before the towering peaks of his Paracelsuslike imagery. A delicious sense of treading upon holy ground inveigles our hearts. We reel before his
symbolism. But we are of good cheer. The poet is with us; he is there leading us by the hand. We do not understand, it were profanation to confess it.” but And so with the rest. Have no apprehension, my dear Horatio, about novels. YOU will soon attain a well-oiled mechanical. proficiency. With the precedent of a distinguished ancestor’s sublime condescension to the lesser celandine, I may perhaps compare you with the dock labourer, who, familiar with certain cargoes of merchandise, can unlade them, label them and shunt them on to the attendant van in (to use a vulgarism! a trice. For your purposes, indeed, you will be able io sort your novels into two categories-the realistic and the popular. The object of the realistic novel is to make an exact and comprehensive invoice of the author’s experience from birth to the date of typing his manuscript. The sensations derived from it are therefore those of the matronly housewife contemplating her well-stocked larder-the mathematico-domestic, if I may so put it : “Mr. Ludo Pantechnicon totals for us those little unremembered acts of which a great arid good melodist has said : ‘They are the salt of the earth.’ Two swallows, said the prophet, do not make a summer; neither do eleven coppers make a shilling. That shilling is art. Which will you have, reader? The bad sixpence of Smollett and San Graal or the eleven coppers of our author-a widow’s mite-but, inasmuch as they are at once the coin of the kingdom and the microcosm of King Society, touching the skirts of art, ‘Zinc,’ we assert, is a solid pabulum for a good digestion.” For popular novels, I can only suggest a synthetic review, a vade mecum if you will excuse the figurative turn, for allcoiners : “Miss Lobelia Stunt’s fiftieth novel runs through the gamut of the emotions. And, with it all, ‘ The Passions of Henry ’ pulsates with the throb of action. Throughout the pages of this variegated romance you catch your throat in a convulsive sob ; you press your hands to a surcharged heart. As Henry leans over to his beloved caught by a twig over the cliff. your muscles are clenched, your larynx is dry, your veins stand out and your diaphragm contracts. But in the sweet reunion, you subside into the armchair of relief. There is a stretching forth of tremulous hands. . . . Truly Miss Stunt’s work is meet for commendation." I can only touch upon the even simpler problem of memoirs and biography. Lady Tarragon’s reminiscences (a backdoor to intimacy with the great) will stimulate her readers to modulate the tones of their voices more circumspectly, to hold their heads a little higher, to swell their pupils with the possession of drawing-room secrets and to turn out their toes more firmly. Write accordingly, my dear Horatio. I need hardly dilate upon your course of action with regard to the ‘‘Amours, of the Orfeggios.” The aim of mysticism is to send a warm sluice of feeling throughout the frame : “The rapt simplicity of ‘ The Speirings of Brother Lugubrious perforates us to the very marrow. The vague moisture of the Infinite opens the pores of our panelled materialism. Like all the Possessed, the Little Brother speaks simply, softly and yet in riddles. Look not at his words too closely. They will flow over you like balsam and clothe you with the Incomprehensible.” Lastly there is satire. It is necessary to literature, because it puts the reader on good terms with himself and the world. It possesses that quality of archness, implicit in the admonition of an indulgent parent to his son for a venturesome error of which he secretly approves : Thus, ‘‘There is no vice in Mr. Motley’s genial thrusts. He points his rapier at our little foibles, but it is innate in the man to find them very lovable. Come, let us not be sour-mouthed. With this hearty Pantagruel, let us, too, sound the loud guffaw. For, he is always laughing . . . laughing. Faun-like laughing, with mayhap a tear or two in his laughter.” Fight the good fight, Horatio, attend this discourse, cherish these counsels, follow these precepts and all will be well with you. HAROLD MASSINGHAM.
Drama.
By John Francis Hope. IT has been commonly observed that poets seldom succeed in writing for the stage. Byron could sneer at Shakespeare’s “plays so doting,” but not one of his dramas manifests even an inkling of what drama means. The lyric Shelley, precisely because he was a lyricist, failed equally on the stage ; and, to come to more recent times and to a poet who, in his diversity, more resembled Shakespeare than another, Robert Browning, who was a dramatist in his monologues, really wrote monologues for the stage. The fundamental difference between Browning and Shakespeare seems to me to be this, that Shakespeare could be everyone at once, but Browning could be everybody only in turns. I grant that the antithesis is over-wrought, but I have to make clear in little space a distinction that is fundamental. Notice, for example, how Browning’s monologues fall into groups of painters, musicians, clerics, saints, and development what not. The fact indicates that Browning’s was stratified, if I may borrow an analogy from geology; ; and the strata were not fused by the spiritual heat that gives birth to drama. It is possible to find in almost any play of Shakespeare the elements of all is Shakespeare wherever of them ; Shakespeare he is found, but Browning is only partially Browning. The explanation of this fact will lead me on to Verhaeren.* Browning’s failure as a dramatist is due to the fact that he did not conceive his works dramatically, but intellectually. Even in his monologues he did not present a character; he analysed it with amazing skill, but his dramatic gift, though it was imperfectly developed, enabled him to avoid inviting the judgment of his readers. One would no more think of condemning Browning’s Caliban as a savage than one would think of denouncing Falstaff as a thief, whoremonger, drunkard, and glutton. What Carlyle said of Cromwell might be adopted as a motto for dramatists : “It was not to men’s judgment that he appealed, nor have men judged him very well.” But the appeal must be of the nature of drama if the judgment is to be avoided; present u s with a problem, and we are forced to find a solution; let us listen to a discussion, and insensibly we take sides. There you have the condemnation as drama of problem plays and of discussion plays. Shakespeare never presented us with a problem (the problem of “Hamlet” is a critical, not a dramatic, one). Why? He is concerned with the play of event on character; be conceives in the concrete, not in the abstract ; he understands and shows forth, but he neither argues nor explains. There is a logic in Shakespeare, but it is the logic of events, not of thoughts; the “play’s the thing,” not the plot of it, with the consequence that Shakespeare eternally escapes definition except by the categorical term “dramatist,” and his plays are not more susceptible of summary. But Verhaeren, like most lyric poets, is concerned with his own emotions towards the outside world, not, as the dramatic artist is, with the interplay of other people’s emotions. So, when he forsakes lyric and narrative, and attempts drama, he has a quite definite scheme to put before us, from which everything apparently irrelevant, or characteristic, must be excluded. Therefore he does not create characters, but types ; he sets them in circumstances that afford no opportunity of unsuspected re-action, he makes them represent aspects of his problem, he makes them symbols of his meaning, in short, he makes the plot the thing, and is more intelligible than dramatic. The statement of his thesis compasses the whole range of the play, his characters do no more than declaim their fragments of his discourse, they exist not in their own right as characters of his creation, but as creatures of his will. They are only divided expressions of the egoistic conception a lyric poet. of * “The net.) Cloister.” By Emile Verhaeren. (Constable.
The main passion of the play is remorse, the main problem of the play is, in Aristotelian language, how to purge this passion. Ten years before, Dom Balthazar had murdered his father in circumstances of revolting brutality, lor which crime someone else had suffered the penalty; he had become a monk, and had adopted the most brutal discipline and the most austere creed, counting himself, like St. Paul, among the chief of sinners. This negative egotism, as the psychologists call it, this self-enhancement by degradation, forces Balthazar to seek yet more striking ways of publishing his distinction of infamy; he had been absolved by the Prior, absolved by Rome, but he needs the absolution of the community, and he takes advantage o an f old custom of the monastery to confess his sin to his brothers. The Prior imposes a penance, but still the rage for publicity is unappeased; and in the chapel, in the presence of the crowd of worshippers, Balthazar shrieks the message of his crime and bids them publish it abroad. The counter-plot concerns the succession to the Priory. It is believed that Balthazar will be appointed, and there is a movement among the monks to frustrate this. Balthazar, in this aspect, represents the faith that spurns knowledge; God is most God when comprehended least, is his statement, and he objects to the chief of those who speculate on the nature of God that Science v. Faith is thus he is “too fond of argument.” posed at the beginning of the play; and also the Community v. the Individual, for even the Church must of the move with the times, and the reputation community can only be enhanced, in the opinion of the chief antagonist, by learning, by Science. There is a plot to ruin Balthazar with the Prior, and his confession to the community is the signal for what would have been a rebellion had not the Prior strongly exerted his authority. But when Balthazar, prompted by Dom Mark to seek the judgment of the Law, howls his infamy to the worshippers and begs them to make it known, the Prior himself thrusts Balthazar forth, as one who has brought scandal on the community ; and the crozier falls to Father Thomas, the believer in Science, the plotter against Balthazar, the one whose self-interest is the interest of the community. The remorse can only be purged by expiation on the scaffold, the community can only be held together by the extrusion o the f egotist, the faith must he maintained by knowledge, not by ignorance, all these conclusions are expressed or implied by the termination of the play. There is nothing else in this play than these problems and these solutions. The monks are divided into types; Balthazar the fanatic, Thomas the scientist or theologian,Mark the spirit of love, the Prior the spirit of authority, and so on, who say nothing, do nothing, of their own volition. They are, if I may put it in this way, professional experts contributing their quota to the solution of a problem proposed by the author; they live a life subordinate to that of Verhaeren, on the plane of intellect, and their passion is only the heat of argument. The language never expresses character, it conveysinformation ; it is relevant, not characteristic, implying no more than it says. Think of Macbeth’s remark, looking on his hands : “‘This is a sorry sight’’ : and compare it with Balthazar’s fulmination : Oh! these are murderous hands o bloody hate, f More. ravenous than any maw ; Behold them ! See, what hands are there! The sovereigns of the law In their tribunal did not dare To scent the blood indelible, Which, obstinately washen, steeped my hand. This is not balthazar repenting of his crime, or even expressing any feeling concerning it; it is Verhaeren describing rhetorically the instrument of the crime. The voice will choke naturally on Macbeth’s words ; but all that can be done with Balthazar’s is to recite them in a frenzy, and convey no more than a hideous picture which is unnecessary to our comprehension o the plot. f
Readers
and Writers.
THANKS to more than one of my readers, I have now been enabled to read “The Spiritual Quixote” so highly commended recently by Mr. Havelock Ellis in the “Nineteenth Century.” It is a delightful work, and well worth republication in a cheap modern edition -the “Everymany’ series, for instance. Named after and modelled upon the immortal work of Cervantes, the “Spiritual Quixote” is, of course, on a smaller scale. The “Don” was a figure for the world; he represents the victory in defeat of the spirit of man; and must be read while the race remains upon the earth. But the Wildgoose of the Rev. C. Graves’ romance is not only national, but he typifies a passing sect of the nation. This, no doubt, is why, with all its merit, the book has failed to maintain its early popularity. The splendid excesses of utopian chivalry are, thank God, always with us to he gently satirised; but the excesses of early Methodist fervour, which the author of the “Spiritual Quixote” set out to satirise, are now beyond the need of satire. Satire has exhausted itself upon them, and they are no longer worth even an epigram. But for this ephemerality of subject, the “Spiritual Quixote” would, I agree with Mr. ElIis, take its place with the contemporary works of Fielding and Smollett ; tor in respect of literary power, knowledge of the world, learning and good humour, it is equal to their best. The form o f the novel of the eighteenth century pleases me, I must say, more than the modern form. The eighteenth century author never forgot that he was a man of the polite world telling a tale to amuse or instruct readers as polite as himself. He therefore exerted himself to please and to interest, and would accompany his narrative with personal asides, digressions, comments and even explanatory essays which added an aura of vivacious intelligence to the stupidest of episodes. Look, for instance, at the introductory chapters prefixed by Fielding to the various sections of “Tom Jones.” The opening chapter is better than a Shavian preface, and a n excellent example of the English essay. So, too, is the prefatory- chapter of Rook IX, entitled “Of those who lawfully may, and of those who may not, write such histories as this.” The case implied with his readers is magnificent, yet never does it degenerate into familiarity or carelessness. I confess I am flattered by it. Your modern novelist, on the other hand, takes to himself the advice Matthew Arnold gave to the critic-that of getting himself out of the way. As well as the critic, the dramatist may be recommended to keep off his own stage; for both are presenting something not themselves ; but the novelist, the story-teller-how can he fail properly to display His story is not a show of action in which himself? comment ought to be superfluous; nor is it a revelation of a writer in which presentation without distortion is the chief excellence of the critic. It is essentially a story told by such and such a writer for the purpose of instruction. or amusement or both; and his own appearance, in addition to his characters, is as legitimate as the comments of a lecturer upon his own lantern slides. Such, at any rate, was the practice of the fathers of the English novel; and such I prefer it to be. I suspect, indeed, that the method fell into disuse as novelist s fell in the scale of intelligence. What illuminating comments upon the significance of their puppets could be expected of most modern novelists? Having nothing to say, they let their characters say it for them. Graves’ “Spiritual Quixote” is full of digressions, most of them witty, and all of them designed to assist the general purpose of the book. For it must be also remarked that it was not merely a slice of life slapped into our faces that the fathers of the novel thought good to give us, hut life presented with moral intent. Oh, d o not run an-ay with the notion that Fielding was, in my judgment, a Sunday School teacher or that Graves, despite the fact that he was a parson, was no more than a homiletic bore. Anybody can make meaningless vice
interesting; the worst writers in the world can write books having no object but simple interest. But it takes great intelligence to amuse (that is, to hold the attention of) and to instruct the wandering mind of man ai one and the same time. The instructive moralist must be as wily as a serpent. The difference of results in the two cases is no less apparent than the difference in method. After all, the eighteenth century writers succeeded in extending the domain of “polite” society; they made ladies and gentlemen of their readers. Our modern novelists, with few exceptions, make prigs or profligates of theirs. *** In the excellent penny edition of French classics, the “Bibliotheque Populaire,’’ recommended recently by Miss Alice Morning, I have just been reading “L’Amour” by Stendhal. No complete English translation this admirable work exists; indeed, as far as of the British Museum Library is decisive, only some extracts have been translated under the title of “Maxims of Love” (Humphreys). Yet of all countries in the world, England surely needs most to have her lovers made more intelligent. The raw material here, as I am proud to discover Stendhal confirms, is the best in the world. “The gentle Imogen, the tender Ophelia can find many living models in England still, though they do not enjoy the high regard paid to the so-called accomplished English woman.” In other words, love here lacks culture. Stendhal’s work would, I think, be of great use to English manners in this respect; and I am trying to get it translated, possibly to run as a serial in THE NEW AGE-with the editor’s permission ! *** The common assumption that love is a sort of wildflower, like, say, lady’s smock, that best grows without culture and withers the hour it is plucked, is responsible for a good deal of the mawkishness of English love on the one hand, a n d of its hypocrisy on the other. Stendhal noted that the English fear to cultivate love lest they should display vulgarity, and in the attempt to avoid vulgarity they often fall into “abominable affectation.” Its alternately wild and withered characters amongst us are also, I feel convinced, responsible for much more than t he professed contempt of love in general. It makes for unintelligence in other areas of life as well. After all, we can only think as deeply as we feel; and if we deliberately shallow our feelings for fear of making fools of ourselves, we shall equally shallow our thoughts. The greatest intelligences--men,that is, who have thought and Felt most deeply-have always, it may be observed, been as much concerned about Love as about Truth. Plato rises to the mind. There is the marvellous Journal to Stella. Vyasa, the author of the “Mahabharata” has some wonderful chapters on it. Stendhal himself, though not of the highest order, kept himself wellbalanced by an equal attention to criticism and romance. I hasten to say that the “love” in question differs as much from the love of the street as the Platos differ from the men in the street. My need to way this is the measure of our need to read Stendhal! *** An apologia may seem due from the author of “Tales for Men Only” for the apparent contradiction between their moral and t h e purport of the foregoing notes. Unlike Socrates, I have nothing to recant, though I would willingly do so in his lovely words : “And now. dear Eros, forgive the past and accept the present, and be gracious and merciful to me, and do not in thine anger deprive me of sight, or take from me the art of love which thou hast given me, but grant that I may be yet more esteemed in the eyes of the fair.” (Phaedrus.) In my “Tales” (which you have never read-but no matter) my purpose, now I come to think of it, was to satirise, the little people who feel lightly as ROW E criticise the little writers who think lightly. But am I therefore hostile to love any more than to thought? Acquitted by the judgment of the Court without a stain
on my character ! As a testimonial to my penetration and to assure you that in acquitting me you have not been deceived, let me now remind you of what said of the French in love. “The French,” I said (May 13), “have, after all, only a talent for love.” On my honour as a writer in THE NEW AGE, that was written before I had read Stendhal. Now listen to Stendhal. “To the Frenchman every woman is useful, noneis necessary." “There is always one thing a Frenchman respects more than his mistress, it is his vanity.” “To find love in France one must descend to the poorer classes from whom vanity has been driven out in the struggle with real needs.” Finally he quotes with approval Meilhan, a better judge even than himself : “In France great passions are as rare as great men.” Thus R. H. c. am I justified.
that makes her swallow hastily as she looks at the soldier beside her. The stern face of the officer relaxes for a moment. He speaks to the soldier. “ROSSO, you will go ahead with--what is your name, my dear?” “Bettina.” “With Bettina. You will be ready in half an hour.” Then, turning to his staff, he adds, “Let us drink to a noble daughter of Italy ! Our Lady bless you, child!” The glasses clatter‘ on the table and men press round her, shaking her by the hand. And Bettina smiles at them. But Rosso, looking at her, is amazed at the hard expression of her face. It is no longer childish; there are hard, almost ugly, lines drawn upon it. I can see the ascent. Slowly, with infinite precaution, the regiment begins to climb. The guns, dragged and pushed and pulled, the wheels climbing the rocks until the gun-carriages arc turned nearly upside down, mount, inch by inch, the narrow path of Monte Baldo. Above them the fort grins threateningly, and i n the moonlight the sleeping countryside gives the lie to death and pain. At the head of this long line of black ants climbs the straight, silhouetted figure of the young girl. It is hard work . . . how long will it he before the tongues away of flame leap out of that grey stone, sweeping this straggling- line as a cow sweeps away the flies with her tail? Nearer and nearer creeps the black line . . . at last it reaches the walls o the fort . . . a red streak f flashes from the Austrian lines. It is morning. One of the highest points along the frontier is in the hands of the Italians, thanks to Bettina’s guidance. And Bettina? Is she killed? I do not know. The papers, in their joy at the occupation, forgot t o say. And they were right. In that omission is set forth the new temper of civilised Europe. In the great wave of idealism, of individual unselfishness which has overtaken even, to some extent, the commercial classes, Bettina’s action is considered admirable, hut not extraordinary. Maria expressed the spirit of these coolheaded northern people when she said, thoughtfully, “Yes, Signora, it was very brave . . . hut she was a fortunate girl!” This week hat; passed calmly. The apparent successful advance of the troops is taken without undue jubilation-even with a little uneasiness. The country was ready for a severe struggle, perhaps a defeat, at the outset, and after a week of war the hospitals have still no inmates. There are a million Austrians somewhere thefrontier-but where? What is Germany on Why is there no big battle? Is it a trap? doing? These are the questions we are asking ourselves. the Italian army has been allowed to straighten out the line of the frontier practically unmolested, and upon the generals has devolved the difficult task of keeping the troops occupied without malting too great an advance. It seems likely that the nature of the war will remain for some time that of the nature of a duel between mountain forts. Monte Baldo itself faces three strong Austrian forts, and both Austrian and Italian forts overlookthe principal passes through which the boasted German invasion must come. Under the direct fire o f the forts which the Italians now possess, a body of men could only enter Italy at the cost of stupendous loss. The King, perhaps as an act of diplomacy towards the neutralist section of the Socialist Party, has pardoned the men who were arrested in the railway strike last year. He and many of the Deputies are at the front. The Government, owing to the immense number of
Letters
from
Italy.
BETWEEN me and the nespoli trees is a vertical street of grey water. Silvano’s suggestion that “God has had a bath and forgotten to turn off the tap” seems feasible. For two days it has rained as if the sky were one immense drainpipe, and the noise is so great it is difficult to write with the window open. The contadini stand at their doors disconsolately. “But what weather!” says Maria, the girl who brings the vegetable from the “podere. ” “Grandfather says it’s the cannons. Perhaps there is a very great battle ! Does the Signora think o u r soldiers are being I rapped into advancing?” She has curious eyes, Maria; they remind me in colour of grey-green corn under a Tuscan sky. I think Francesco, from the nest farm, would agree with me that they are eyes difficult to forget. He, I suppose, is responsible for the metamorphosis of the bare-footed tom-boy of last year into this discreetly stockinged young woman ; for Francesco has gone to the war. As I watch Maria chastising greedy fowls or catching fire-flies in the dusk for her little brothers and sisters, singing as she darts after them the Tuscan incantation, Lucelle, lucelle viene da me E tu sara il la mia regina, I can see in imagination a picture. It is a picture of a little northern village on the Italian-Austrian frontier. A crowd of peasants are cheering the arrival of a regiment of dusty soldiers. I can hear the order to bivouac, and then the request for a guide up the mountain path to the impregnable Austrian fort, towering scornfully above the village. The peasants look at each other; there is scarce one of them mho has not climbed the mountain from his childhood, but this will be a very different errand to that of minding the goats or gathering wood. supplemented The men begin to cook their evening meal, by the hospitality of the village. It is growing dark, and the full moon, an added danger to the expedition, is watching over the battlefields of Europe. I have come to hate the moon. She wasthe Great Cynic. Night after night she watches, curiously, the pain arid terror that have come upon the earth, and like a cold, calm woman no flush of shame, no glow of pity, is ever mirrored in that white, emotionless disc. A young girl, slim, active, grey-eyed perhaps as ‘Maria there, is walking towards the “albergo” where the officers are at supper. She is accompanied by a soldier. They enter the inn. The soldier who has brought her smiles encouragement. She is more nervous of the Capitano than of the Austrian guns. “YOU know the path well?” “Si, Signore.” “And you are not afraid? Remember, if we are discovered there will be no escape.” The girl shakes her head. Her eyes are strangely bright in the glow of the candles. Yet it is not fear
recruits w h o have already enlisted, has refused to enroll any more volunteers for the present. Pepino Garibaldi has offered to raise and command personally 50,000 men. In the meantime, preparation is being made in and out of the Camera for the wives and children of the “reserve” men. The office of the “Italian Herald,” the Philosophical Library, and many other private and public buildings in Florence have already been turned into schools and creches for the children. Here, as in other countries, war-dullness has descended upon the journalistic world. In Rome there is much lamentation a i the suspension of the telephone. The reporters are reduced to telegrams and the methods of fifty years ago-a more serious drawback than one would imagine, for the employees in an Italian post office never forget that they are paid by “time,” not by piece-work. Except, however, for this and a few postal inconveniences-there is no parcel post, and we have to write all post-cards and telegrams in French or Italian (English is to be allowed for inland and foreign letters)-it is extremely difficult for the people to realise that we are really and truly at war. Food, owing to intensive cultivation and the rarity of large landowners, has scarcely begun to increase in price. Meat is a little dearer, but this does not affect the poor people much “War as they exist largely on vegetables and pasta. bread” (which, by the way, need not deter Miss Morning from coming to Italy; it is delicious; it is the ordinary wholemeal bread one eats always in Sicily and the country parts of Italy) is a fraction more expensive, hut there is nothing to howl about yet. There has been a strong feeling in Italy and many quarters of the Continent against the constant attack on Lord Kitchener and the English Government made by the Northcliffe Press. The Italians openly accuse Lord Northcliffe of being an ally of Germany, an English Giolitti. Another theory is that the attack on Kitchener was a long-meditated revenge for his frankly expressed disapproval of the “Times” attitude with regard to the censorship at the beginning of the war. However that may be, Northcliffe and Giolitti have both tripped over the same doormat. An The new game of spy-hunting still goes on. Italian priest was found in Undine, on the top of the church tower, telegraphing the movements of the Italian artillery to the enemy’s lines. He was shot at once. One day last week a crowd gathered round a man in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele and the cry went round, “Una spia, una spia!” The man protested loudly and firmly; his protestations only added to the conviction of the crowd, which marched him off triumphantly to the “We’ve got a German spy!” the officer in Questura. charge was told. The man was conducted to the inner room. A quarter of a n hour later the officer reappeared. He complimented the crowd upon their patriotic intentions, but, he added, in this case they had unfortunately been a little misplaced. The German spy was only a harmless citizen of Rome ! Another instance of misplaced enthusiasm occurred in a tram. A woman got in with a pile of books. On the top of the pile, and exposed to the view of an Italian sitting next to her, was a copy of a magazine with the words “German culture” printed over a caricature of the Kaiser. The Italian, after looking very hard at her and the book, said suddenly,“Throw that book away!” “She’s a German!” he added for the benefit of the tram. Luckily the woman spoke enough Italian to make herself understood. “I’m not,” she protested, getting very red; “I’m English ! Look, the book is in English, too!” ‘‘It’s true,” said an elderly man sitting in the far corner, after examining the type, “I know English well.” The woman, still looking extremely uncomfortable, tore off the offending cover and threw it out of the window, whereupon everyone in the tram apologised most profoundly and insisted on shaking her by the hand. . . . The book was an American monthly, called “The Forum,” and the woman was . . . me! TERESE DA MAIANO. Florence, May 26.
More
Letters
to
My Nephew.
III. My DEAR GEORGE,--In my last letter I broke away into one of those divagations which will surely be your death. I had just got to a point I wished to emphasise: that, apart from the economic, there is a psychological quality in the agricultural life essential to our national health. If you ask me to define it I frankly admit I’m stumped. Two points impress me. Boeotia has a certain calm, stolid outlook that gives a steadying weight to the hectic activities of town life. It is reasonably conservative. I can fancy an educated farmer living on the distichThings that are old need not be true; No, foolish man, nor yet the new. The townsman rushes hither and thither, full of fads and foibles, ready to rush into any mad adventure so long as the idea “takes.” Tariff Reform, singIe tax, back to the land, garden cities, and I know not what else. Our farming folk decline to be rushed. ‘‘Let’s think about it for a year or two,” they say. Luckily, most of these fads won’t stand thinking about, and so Hodge (God bless him!) saves us from many a morass. The second point is closely allied to the first. In your younger days did you read “Eyes and No Eyes”? I did. It succeeded “Sandford and Merton.” Well, then, have you considered the value of the agricultural eye? It sees sap. Let the world deck you out never so speciously, the agricultural eye pierces through all your glittering trimmings and pronounces judgment. Is there sap in you? The agricultural eye sees it. Are you sapless? Urban artificialities do not deceive it. When the agricultural eye grows dim the country is in a bad way. Just now I am amusing myself by guessing how the agricultural eye regards Henry Abbott. Until recently Henry has been engaged in various mercantile pursuits in London. Henry is diabolically clever. He can keep books, single or double entry; he knows the mysteries of ledger, cash-book, and journal. He knows that if you cable to Calcutta at six o’clock to-night you can have a reply by midday to-morrow. He knows all about import and export duties. Tare and tret he takes in his stride. He can write shorthand and work the typewriter. Henry believes in method. There is nothing slipshod about Henry. Henry is married to an ex-schooI mistress and, I doubt not, his two children are models of propriety. I have seen a photograph of Mrs. Henry, Henry, and their two children. It proves that Henry has lived in an atmosphere of domestic bliss-and discipline. Before the war broke out Henry was living on salary and commission. Alas! The war played the deuce with Henry’s income and broke up his domesticities, turning his little suburban garden into a wilderness. Henry felt no call to military service, even though he was a Scout-master. So Henry decided to cut his old connections and start a new career. My colleagues in London (being firmly convincedthat I need somebody of method at my elbow) most considerately shipped Henry to me. Accordingly, in due course, I met Henry on the boat and proceeded to make Henry’s acquaintance. More quickly than I can tell it, I discover Henry to be a vivacious and voluble Cockney. His eyes are wide open, he seems to walk on springs, his tongue moves featly. He has noticed things as he travelled. “You know, sir, on the Atlantic, they put the clocks on half an hour at midday. You see, we are travelling towards the sun. Funny, isn’t it, sir? If ever you cross, why, sir, you’ll put your watch back half an hour. That’s because your back will be towards the sun. But perhaps you have already crossed?” I humbly tell him that I am not quite sure whether it is thirty-five or thirty-seven times. “You don’t say, sir ! After a day or two Henry has summed up our little They close capital town. “Can’t make it out, sir. Just the shops between nine and ten o’clock. Funny.
when we are getting busy in London. And they close for the day at four o’clock, just when they ought to be rolling in the shekels.” I gently remind him that says Henry, they open at six in the morning. “Well,” philosophically, “I suppose there must be some reason for it. But in London, you know, we don’t keep business-hoursthat way.” I observe that we are a long way from London. “Yes sir; but it’s part of the British Empire, ain’t it?” Henry goes on : “The people seem to me io be lazy. Haven’t as yet seen anybody in a hurry.” I remark that in the tropics we are always leisurely in our movements; that the sun is very hot; that our blood gets thinned out. “Yes, sir, I’ve read something about that, phagocytes or something; but I don’t feel it. And I’ve roughed it quite a lot. Camped out with the Scouts and that sort of thing.” “You’ll come to it,” I tell him. I soon perceive that Henry has diligently read the papers as he rode twice daily in the train. He has all our pastors and masters safely docketed away in his orderly brain. Bernhardi ? ‘‘He is the great exponent of Prussianism.” Henry proceeds to tell me that Prussia runs the German Empire. “ Another Johnny is Nietzsche. Don’t suppose you’ve heard of him in these parts. Me is the great exponent of the superman. Man above man. Super means above, you know. See?” I tell him I think so, but ani not quite sure. It seems a little complicated io my simple way of thinking. “Oh ! It’s not really difficult, you know, sir. You must first grasp Darwin. He was the great exponent of the survival o f t h e fittest. A very big man, sir.” I tell him that I remember my teacher saying something about Darwin, but that was a long time ago. “Yes, sir, unless you keep, so to speak, in Now, there was the swim, you lose track of things. Alfred Russel Wallace. He was the great exponent of natural selection. Finding your true mate [it sounded like “mite”], you know. Very great man, sir. Died a year or two ago. Got very old and dotty. Took up with Spiritualism and Socialism, things that no sane man holds with.” I ask him if Darwin is still alive. “Gawd bless you, died when I was a kid.” I tell him how glad I am to have somebody to tell me all that’s going on in the old world. For example, who is this fellow Marx they sometimes mention in the papers? “Why, sir, Marx is the great exponent of scientific Socialism. He wrote a book condemning capitalism. Might as well condemn the atmosphere. Lots of Germans swear by him.” I ask how old is Marx. This time Henry is stumped. “Don’t know, sir ; never heard of him till lately. You’ll hear more about him. He’s, so to speak, the brainy leader of the German Social Democrats.” And n o w I begin to see that in Henry’s brain he has a special docket neatly superscribed “Great Exponents.” Carlyle’s name is dragged into our conversation. I politely inquire after Carlyle, since it is clear that Henry has something to say about him. “Why, sir, Carlyle was the great exponent of-I don’t quite know how to put it-great manhood, heroes, and that sort of thing. If you’ll excuse the expression, of ‘guts.’ A university extension lecturer said it to me privately. He had supper with us after giving a lecture at the Calvin Street Congregational Chapel. I took it down i n shorthand for our monthly magazine. It was splendid. Its title was ‘Great Thinkers.’ It’s fine to belong to the British Empire. Take it from me, sir, there’s always solid thinking behind our great thinkers. The German philosophers are dreamy or brutal. No happy mien, I didn’t mean a pun.” And if you take my meaning. Henry crackles merrily. J. S. Mill was the “great exponent” of modern political economy. Ruskin was the “great exponent” of beauty-“arts and crafts, and that sort of thing, you know. A bit dreamy, Didn’t know anything about real life. Then there is Mendel. Take it from me, sir, a coming man. He is the great exponent of scientific breeding. A disciple of Alfred Russel Wallace. Knows a lot, too, about digestion. Says we ought to eat a particular kind of
cheese and we’ll live a century Look out for Mendel, sir.” If Henry digs deep into science and philosophy, he does not neglect the practical affairs of life. When he knew he was corning out here he promptly invested in a book on tropical agriculture. Henry didn’t intend to be caught napping. He tells me about this book. It cost seven-and-sixpence. “It’s worth the money, take it from me. If you haven’t read it I’ll be glad to lend Now, for example, there’s beans. Have it to you. you begun on beans?” I answer mildly that we are planting a fen-. “I’m glad to hear it, sir. Very excellent for the soil. Leguminous, you know. Then there’s ground nuts. They contain oil. I wonder if you know, sir, that there’s a great demand for vegetable oils--very great. Butter and margarine, and that sort of thing.” I tell Henry that we have some of them already planted. ‘‘that’s most encouraging sir. It seems to me that, even if you give science and literature a bit o f a miss, you‘re all there when it comes to agriculture. But I’ve got a few tips out of this book, sir, and I dare say you won’t mind my experimenting. Then, again, there’s flowers. They would add to the beauty of the estate. I’m strong on begonias and fuchsias. Fine splash of colour. We’ll make the estate look like Kew.” Henry is too enraptured notice my shudder of apprehension at such a to prospect. “Yes, sir, we can decorate the cottages with beautiful flowers.” I try to cool his enthusiasm by telling- him that where there is rich colouring in flowers there is generally sugar ; that where there is sugar there will be at Ieast a million ants; that ants in a house are a pest. ‘‘Ah, yes, ants,” chirps Henry; “ now, speaking of ants, have you read Sir John Lubbock? . ” .. Next morning duty calls me to the estate. I arrange that Henry, who is still in quarantine (small-pox stalks ::broad), shall come down on the schooner three days later. He dutifully sees me off. “So-long, sir; see you on Saturday night. I’ll look round the estate on Sunday and get to business on Monday morning.” The engine thug-thugs, the boat moves quickly from the wharf. I am quit of Henry for a space. Now for a quiet time ! The schooner drops anchor alongside the pier on Sunday morning-. Negroes, half-breeds, women and children of every shade of colour crowd the decks. I discern Henry and bid him welcome. Henry is full of discoveries The niggers are a jolly lot. You can make ’em laugh as easily as tickling a child. I grimly remind him that our problem is to make ’em work. He tells me that the “piccaninnies” are delightful. I tell him that we do not call them piccaninnies out here. He’s sorry; he’d read somewhere that they were so known. Henry is loquacious and vigorous. He’ll just take a wash and brush up and look around a bit. I show him to his quarters and hope he’ll be comfortable. He reminds me that he knows how to rough it. I introduce him to his fellow--clerks and make a beeline for the Estate House. It’s loo hot to-day for Henry’s discourses. After dinner I light a cigar and stroll down past the commissariat and the labourers’ cottages. It is dark, for there is n o moon. I hear a lively conversation in the boat captain’s cottage. “He’s a quaint bird,” rumbles a voice, “thinks we’re very ‘interesting and amusing’ ”-the last words in good Cockney imitation. They all laugh goodnaturedly. ‘‘Yes,” says somebody else, “he wants us to go in for what he calls intensive cultivation. Read about it in some damned book. ” “What’s intensive cultivation?” is asked. “Don’t know; some tripe he’s picked up. Says they do it in Belgium.” “Asked him to play poker. Said it wasn’t an English game and had no scientific basis. ” Then they laughed again. Next morning I ask the timekeeper to show Henry around and not to let him get out of sight. So Henry is put upon a trolley and a mule pulls them down the tramline. It is cut through virgin forest where are
tigers and wild deer and all manner of living things that crawl or run or fly. As they pass over a swamp they take Henry to a pool and show him an old alligator with its back barnacled like a ship’s bottom. A young alligator drops from an overhanging branch, splash into the water. The old fellow just turns slowly round and leers at Henry through wicked eyes. Henry springs back in terror. They take him on to cultivated fields, where he sees beans and ground nuts and hundreds upon hundreds of acres of pale green banana-trees that rise up twelve or fourteen feet, then gracefully bow down and rustle in the breeze. He sees orange-trees and majestic mahogany trees. The rich and seemingly unconquerable luxuriance and fertility of tropical land leave Henry speechless. Gone are his dreams of begonias and fuchsias (look at those orchids!), his theories of intensive cultivation are blown upon with deadly effect. And the next day they mount Henry upon a mildmannered mule and tote him through twelve miles of cocoa-nut trees that bend defiantly towards the sea, thriving upon the fierce north-easters it sends to subdue them. And the morning and the evening are the second day. Henry returns in a piano mood. I nest asked Henry to come to the Estate House to take some letters in shorthand. He sits down and fidgets. “Beg pardon, sir,” he says, “but I’ve been talking to you like a bally fool. Of course, you were pulling my leg a bit. But I never dreamt that it was so rich out here. It leaves me without words.” And (believe me or not, as you like) Henry is suddenly surcharged with emotion, for a new vision has come to him. “That’s all right,” I reply soothingly, “we must all learn the lesson of humility out here. I feel just as you do. Take this : ‘Dear Sir,-I am duly in receipt spacing do of your letter of the 30th ult.’” ”What you like on the typewriter, sir?” “Double spacing and a wide margin,” I answer. The agricultural eye looks with favour upon Henry, who is now one of us. This divagation into Henry’s pilgrimage means, I fear, that once again I must postpone my threatened dissertation upon industry as an occupation. The night grows late. The breeze has swung round from the sea to the land (do I bore you with constant references the winds and breezes? Remember they are to veritably life to us), and marvellous multiform moths, driven hither from the trees, flutter in through open doors and windows. They strike against the punkah lamps and cluster on walls and ceiling. On the paper, as I write, drops a large ladybird, harbinger of good luck. Against the wire netting an ugly and ominous bat rattles and scrapes. It is the vampire of story and legend. Out in the paddock it settles upon the necks and haunches of the horses, sucking their blood. It drinks to repletion. Then, like the ancient Roman feasters, it deliberately sickens itself that it may drink blood again. It reminds me of the modern profiteers. Surfeited with one profit on production, they unload and take a second on consumption. One more pipe. I walk up and down on the verandah. Two miles out at sea a tramp steamer glides northward. Five thousand tons at fourteen knots. In two days it will be crossing the Gulf of Mexico, bound for Galveston, where it will load cotton for Liverpool. Having faced the Atlantic, is it destined to be sent to the bottom by some torpedo? The captain is a kindly fellow. The last time he was here we dined at the same table. I pray Neptune to strike with his trident any submarine that would do my friend an injury. The thought that this boat is bound for England fills me with a yearning to go back. I am oppressed with loneliness. Over there you are writing a new history in blood and in the cauldron of a million fermenting brains. I reflect, however, that out here, in this lonely outpost, we fly the flag, we feed our people, we send what men and succour we can command. As Henry puts it, ‘‘we are doing our bit.”-Your affectionate uncle, ANTHONY FARLEY.
Views
and
Reviews.
The Lonely Quest, THERE is always an appeal to an Englishman in such a title as “The Quest for Truth.”* When we are most national, truth is the quality that we demand most emphatically from each other. It is still our pride that we once had a king (I grant that it was a long time ago) who was known not only .as England’s Darling but as Rex Veridicus. A constitutional monarchy, not being true monarchy, does not provide opportunities for the exercise of truth-speaking by kings; but the tradition survives among the people, Yet there is subtle criticism in the fact that when Lord Chesterfield tried to define a gentleman, he could only declare that truth made his distinction. Bacon, we all know, wrote of truth, but said far more of the pleasure and utility of lying, with which, perhaps, his occupation of the office of Lord Chancellor had made him better acquainted. But we like to think still that Truth has her natural home in England, just as Beauty has her home in Killarney; the old phrase, “the English of this is,” etc., still comes to our lips when we correct error or downright untruth, and to give the lie is still the extreme insult. Yet there is a general agreement among those who make truth their first care that there is no such general love of truth €or its own sake as these incidents might suggest. In what is, I think, the most appealing of all the writings of Olive Schreiner, the hunter of Truth set out on his lonely quest with the contumely of his fellows ringing in his ears. Mr. Thomson, in his more matter-of-fact way, comes to much the same conclusion. “It seems deplorable, but after many years I have come to the conclusion that the majority of men do not want to know the truth about things. They will admit that truth is many-sided ; but they want to hear one side only.” Yet it is not, I think, a natural love of lying €or its own sake that is to be regarded as the reason for this unwillingness ; it rather indicates the limitation of the purely practical mind. In all practical matters, truth is and must be regarded; you cannot even lay brick on brick successfully without being true to the force of gravity, nor obtain or grant credit without assuming or asserting your faith in the true dealing of other men. But the English love of building imposes its own limitations on the mind; we do, as Emerson said, try to have things “made fast, mortared up and ended, like London Monument, or the Tower, so that we may know where to find them, and keep them fixed, as the English do with their things, for evermore,” although, with more immaterial things, like truth and religion, the fable of the wise men of Gotham remains to admonish us. That English habit of trying to fix things as a finality, and never to hear of them again, explains, I think, the reluctance to re-consider anything established. A new truth of religion might make St. Paul’s Cathedral or Westminster Abbey obsolete, just as the comparatively new phenomenon of a Coalition Government has demonstrated the defects of the seating of the House of Commons. A new truth in physics or mechanics might revolutionise the whole industry of England, and Englishmen do not lightly relinquish what they have made for themselves. Everything new waits for the obsolescence or the destruction of what already exists; and calamity forces the pace of Englishmen more powerfully than competition or cooperation. Even this war, with its stress of instant necessity, has, in many practical matters, advanced us .at least a quarter of a century. I think, too, that Mr. Thomson estimates too low the moral effect of the discipline of the scientific method. The physical sciences, with their insistence on the corre* “The Quest for Truth.” By Silvanus P. Thomson, F.R.S. (Headley. IS. net.) “ T h e Magic of Experience.” By H. Stanley Redgrove, B.Sc. (Dent. 2s. 6d. net.)
spondence between fact and word, have made a marked impress on the mind of England; so much so, that pure literature has not yet recovered from the blow. The dearth of essayists, for example, may well be attributed to the fact that few men feel free to write of their personal thoughts or feelings. They can deal with nothing that science has not dealt with, impersonally collecting and collating the facts and no less impersonally demonstrating the relations between them. The agnosticism of the nineteenth century was directly due to the theory of evolution, which not merely overthrew the previous conceptions of the order, perhaps of the origin, of things, hut left men overwhelmed for the time by the mass of accumulated and newly discovered facts which had to be related to the great generalisation. Philosophy seemed not only vain, but impossible ; Huxley was inspired by the spirit of his age when he declared : “Materialism and Idealism ; Theism and Atheism; the doctrine of the soul and its mortality or immortality -appear in the history of philosophy like the shades of Scandinavian heroes, eternally slaying one another and eternally coming to life again in a metaIt is getting on for twenty-five physical ‘Nifelheim.’ centuries, at least, since mankind began seriously to give their minds to these topics. Generation after generation, philosophy has been doomed to roll the stone uphill; and, just as all the world swore it was at the All this top, down it has rolled to the bottom again. is written in innumerable books; and he who will toil through them will discox-er that the stone is just where it was when the work began. Hume saw this; Kant saw this; since their time, more and more eyes have been cleansed of the films which prevented them from seeing it; until now the weight and numbers of those who refuse to be the prey of verbal mystifications has begun to tell in practical life.” But the soul of man could not rest for ever in this equilibrium. The doctrine of evolution was seen to be only an explanation of the relation between things; philosophically, it belonged to epistemology and not to ontology. Once again, the lonely hunter left the plain of knowledge and climbed the mount of vision; and Nietzsche postulated the soul of man in its activity, the Will, as the efficient cause of his progress. What Nietzsche did for the soul of man in its activity, Bergson did €or the soul of man in its passivity; he demonstrated that truth is revealed to man by intuition, just as Nietzsche demonstrated that truth is discovered by man in his activity. We no longer confront Revelation with Discovery, as though they were necessarily at war with each other; we accept mysticism and science, and “try the spirits whether they are of God.” We recognise the value of the inscription written over the door of Plato’s academy : “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here”; but we no longer banish the poets from our Utopia. For philosophy, in spite of its failures, has had its successes; and Mr. Redgrove, in his essay on what he calls “Idealistic or Rational Empiricism,” takes the measure of the scientific method, and reveals its insufficiency for the solution of the ultimate problems with which philosophy is concerned. “All natural laws,’’ he says, “which express the quantitative relations between phenomena are approximate only, ” and he draws the logical deduction that every fact involves something of the infinite, and is not completely explicable. Yet although he denies the possibility of knowledge of absolute truth, he proves the possibility of knowledge of truths relating to the absolute; and demonstrates by analogy what he call., the asymptotic approach to absolute truth. We may thus progress ever nearer to truth, as the hyperbola eternally moves towards the asymptote, but never quite meets it; and the quest is neither so lonely nor so apparently fruitless as it seemed to the young mind of Olive Schreiner. On the one side, we have the revelations of the mystics; on the other, the trial of those revelations by reason; and truth is established the union of discovery and revelation. on A. E. R.
REVIEWS
Millstone. By Harold Begbie. (Constable. 6s.) Mr. Harold Begbie ought to be ashamed of himself. Admitting in the text of this novel that the stories of the white slave traffic were exaggerated, he yet asserts, and constructs his story to no other purpose than the illustration of the assertion, that they are true of children from two years upwards. We are asked to believe, on the authority of evidence known to Mr. Begbie,but not disclosed to us, that adopted children and kidnapped children fall into the hands of the usual international organisation of brothel-keepers, arc kept for purposes of vice, and die in lock hospitals. It is of this traffic that we are asked to believe that the allegations made about prostitution are true. We deny the assertion in the name of human nature; it is an infamous lie about man, and the very conclusion of this story, that the facts are known to the authorities and are ignored, that other people know these facts and are to only waiting until women share in government suppress traffic, is a proof of the libellous nature of the the assertion. That it should be mixed up with a lot of hypocritical preaching about the forgiveness of sins only measures the iniquity thought necessary by Christian for the redeeming power of Christ. evangelists But Christ came to forgive sinners, not monsters; and Mr. Begbie’s imagination, “foul as Vulcan’s stithy,” has wrought to no purpose in the service of Christ. Rosemary’s Letter-Book. By W. I,. Courtney. (Wayfarers’ Library. Dent. IS. net.) Mr. Courtney has spoiled a set of placid literary essays by the introduction of verse of no poetic value, and the development of a thread of sentimental affection into a love affair. One feels annoyed to be dropped from Swinburne on Shakespeare to “I dreamt that you were married, Rosemary, and that though you did not bid me to come, I was there far off, remote in a corner of the organ loft, watching the final severance of lifelong ties.” It is not as though there were hints in the essays of anything appropriate to the sentimental of situation; one reads of the Parisian “vogue” RudyardKipling, and is suddenly flung into a personal explanation intended to appease the anger o the imaginary f correspondent. For the rest, the essays, although neither brilliant in style nor profound in thought, have the attraction of all sympathetic understanding of men, expressing what we may call the philosophy of the enlightened clubman, and bearing not at all hardly on everything literary from Edgar Allan Poe to “Pinkie and the Fairies.’’ Mr. Courtney has the desire to explain which is necessary to a correspondent, and is not averse from quotation ; and, although he does paraphrase too much of Thucydides in his letters from Sicily, it is possible always to spend a quiet half-hour with him, and feel as though one had lunched with a librarian. The Valley of Fear. By A. Conan Doyle. (Smith, Elder. 6s.) Sir A. Conan Doyle has returned again to the struggle between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty in a story that is more crudely handled than most of this series. It begins in the usual way; breakfast in Baker Street, Holmes puzzling out a cipher message, which is immediately confirmed by a visit from a C.I.D. man. The mystery is apparently inscrutable, and should have required a whole volume for its elucidation; but either Sir Arthur’s invention flags, or Holmes’ deductions are more quickly made and his results more speedily obtained than used to be the case. Half way through the book the case is ended; and the other half is filled with the story of events that happened twenty years before, and provide the motive for the crime. Actually, this is the better part of the book, but it leaves Holmes at a loose end, and Professor Moriarty not even implicated. Having solved the mystery, Holmes ought to have got on the track of the Napoleon of crime; but he sits tamely down after having proved that the murdered man was really the
one who intended to murder, while the originally doomed man meets his death in another way than that first prescribed. What may be the reason of this comparativefailure of his detective skill, we do not pretend to know; but we notice that there is no mention of the hypodermic injections of cocaine which used to supply him with intellectual nutriment when at leisure.
Pastiche.
MR. ASQUITH ON CABINENT-MAKING The world was going round and round, Warming itself beneath the sun : The French had gained a yard of ground, And Winnie learned to fire a gun, When that disturbing “Answers” man-Who made the ‘‘Times” a penny whistleBegan his advertising plan And set his headlines all a-bristle With noisy shrieks about the shells, And stuffed his ‘‘leaders” full of shivers, While ‘‘Bathurst” shouted “Dardanelles!” and jolted various torpid livers. Then Winnie told a little whacker, And said his Board had quite agreed, And things looked ominously blacker when Jackie Fisher said that he’d Be damned if he would stand the rumpus. So unto those that I should lead I said, “Let’s go, before they bump us,” But their we had a second thought That we might still divide the spoil Instead of giving Law the lot, and losing all the precious oil Of Palm, and chucking all the jobs. So we arranged that at this hour Our country could not spare such nobs Or leave unsalaried and sour The men grown old in pay and power. Lord Lansdowne had to get a seat, Though there was no portfolio, And George is known in every streetHe’s famous as Sapolio. Then Austen still is Joseph’s son, As solemn as a sidesman stout : Curzon is God’s own Number One, We could not leave his genius out. Then Harcourt knows so many people, And could not be an ‘‘also ran"; He’s tall enough to be a steepleHis father was an able man. And Crewe can mumble to the Peers, They love his pleasant, sleepy voice : While Selborne knows a pig has cars, And farmers like a lord for choice. Then Runciman and British Trade Could not be broken in their pact, His money was discreetly macle, And money is a cogent fact. There was some trouble with the Jews, For Isaacs saw Marconi ghosts, And he who runs the “Evening News” Refused to Israel Cabinet posts; So Samuel had to stay outside With ‘‘Monty” of the silver touch, While Winnie ate his family pride Ere he became a humble “Duch.” The boodle on the lower decks Went to the gents whose votes were true, Or to the man of ample cheques Whom Jackie Gulland brought to view. O Tempora! O Mores! I know some funny stories, O Bonar Law! JOHN MCCALLUM. NOTES ON CERTAIN PHENOMENA ASSOCIATED WITH TUBE-LIFTS, MOTOR-’BUSES AND TELEPHONE BOXES. No man shall accuse me of being a grumbler. But I will confess that I am somewhat inquisitive, and perhaps it is this failing which urges me to step in where others pass by unmoved; to step in, I repeat, and seek the causes of strange and wonderful phenomena. Or, if that be beyond the scope of mortal power, merely to record the phenomena themselves. I venture to communicate some of my more recent researches.
I happen to be one of those fortunate people who travel frequently by Tube ; fortunate, I say with deliberation, for surely that man may account himself favoured to whom it is vouchsafed to perform the same impressive ritual clay by day. The assembly in the lift, the sepulchral accents of the liveried guardian thereof, the coloured charts, the breezy corridors of glazed brick filled with elusive murmurings; to say nothing of the journey itself in illuminated chariots protected from unauthorised entry by that grim fang of latticed ironwork. All this I follow, not indeed, with complete and thorough comprehension, but dimly groping after the great plan which covers the interaction of each cog in this delicately adjusted contrivance. One thing only baffles me utterly. I have failed to discover the ratio between the descent of the lift, and the arrival of the chariot. True, there is an ordinance which declares these two events to be simultaneous. But, in practice, the latter is always in advance of the former; and the interval of time which elapses between the two is sufficient to enable the chariot, just as the lift is discharging its cargo, to depart with closed gates and flashing tail-lights towards its next stopping-place, where, no doubt, the process is repeated to the gratification of all concerned. I do not cavil at this arrangement, be it understood. It would be sheer arrogance on my part to suggest any change in what is obviously some mystic rite, symbolic perhaps, of analogous phenomena in the ampler world of constellations and meteors. No, I merely record the matter as being of interest io those who, like myself, are attracted by the bizarre, the paradoxical and the seemingly In inexplicable. the meanwhile I am of them who, in the words of Milton’s sonnet, “only stand and wait.” Let us talk now of motor-’buses. Another theme worthy of finer rhetoric than I have at my command. The type of strength in control, the embodiment of swiftness; but not always--and t h a t is the point which I propose to illuminate. Recently, during a journey- on one of these excellent devices for defying the drawbacks of space, I became aware of a considerable slakening of speed. The least agile of passengers mounted and alighted with case while the vehicle was in motion. At first, I surmised some temporary defect in the machinery. A crank perhaps, which needed oiling, a screw anxious to he tightened, a piston out of sorts. But no, the thing continued ; the burnished vehicle coughed and spluttered, bumped and lurched, but its pace remained leisurely. Then my curiosity, I am afraid, got the better of me, and I inquired of the uniformed toll-gatherer, who darted up and down the staircase with a strange, monosyllabic watchword on his lips, why it was thus. To my relief he declared that the machinery was flawless, hut that if the pace was increased he and the driver would arrive at their destination too early. They had conquered time ! I should have liked to ask him what calamity would have ensued as a result of such an arrival, but already his voice was echoing from below, whither he had descended in search of prey. So I could only hazard at secrets Chat he had long since fathomed. Evidently. there is in existence some Codes, some sort of Gregorian Calendar, in accordance with whose statutes and rubrics the movement of every motor-’bus are guided. What f the penalties may be for infringing the limits o these sacrosanct postulates I know not. Clearly, they must be heavy, or the convenience of the individual would never be sacrificed to their inexorable demands. Again, I merely record the matter. Finally, I seek for words of wonder and admiration at the public telephone-box Marvellous, indeed, is the ingenuity which enables it to triumph over acoustics and hygiene by letting all external sound in and keeping all the air out. And as I stifle in one of these crystal nooks, which an incredible foresight has located near to the source of stirring and overwhelming cadences, my voice rises on billows of noise, out-dinning the stamping of hoofs, the clarion signal-call of automobiles, the myriad-fold buzzing in this hive of industry. At least. I hope my voice does do so; and I wish the voice at the other end of the wire could do so. Hail to the artificer whose nimble brain contrived this rare structure, this magic edifice. Of him I would say with the poet :“Fair science frowned not on his humble birth.” P. SELVER. ARNOLD BENNETT. The truth about this author is, that he, Like Selfridge, drives a business lustily ; Not too much profit, lest the world grimace, Nor yet too little, lest he fall from grace. J. A. M. A.
Current Cant.
“Gaby “Why “The wants periscopes.”-“ London Mail.” Superman." News.” MARSDEN. Church German mothers breed beasts.”-“The victory of the ‘Times.’”-“Evening
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
COMPETITION AND THE GUILDS. Sir,---One is not often disappointed with “A. E. R.” But I think his reply to Mr. Burns’s criticism of National Guilds is distinctly slipshod. I admit the cynical brevity of Mr. Burns’s attack does not invite a detailed reply. But, once again, the most vital objection to Guild Socialism that I have ever met with is slurred over as if of no importance. I mean the statement that the Guilds are impracticable because they would exclude competition. This objection seems to many a serious flaw in the constructive utility of the Guild ideal. One cannot underestimate part played by competition in Industry. As the motive will be to the internal economy of the Guild, so competition is to the external economy of the industrial state. But competition, as we understand it, is the creationof the profiteers, and with them it will disappear. How then? I think the difficulty arises from the vague connotation of the word “competition.” Really, there are two distinct kinds of competition-a fact altogether ignored by economists. There is, in the first place, qualitative or inter-unit competition-the competition of one article against another article of the same kind; resulting, when the margin of luxury is nil, and when all purchasable commodities are necessities to the greater part of the population, in the triumph of the cheapest. But there is also another kind of competition, secondary if you like, which might be called inter-commodity competition-thecompetition of one article of one kind against another article of another kind. Both these types of competition are, I submit, equally effective as industrial stimuli. And it is only the former kind, qualitative competition, which will disappear with the profiteers. On the other hand, by reason of the increased margin of luxury consequent on the new economic basis of society, inter-commodity competition will be accentuated. All acute necessities being provided for as a matter of course, other purchasable articles will be relative luxuries. The competition among these relative luxuries tends to be, not between different qualities of the same luxury, but between two distinct luxuries. The decisive factor of purchase will be no longer monetary, but rather aesthetic. And it is the factor of purchase which determines the motive of production. The need of satisfying the consumer’staste will be as strong a stimulus of production as the need of keeping within the range of a modern consumer’s purse. The ethical superiority of the motive is obvious. And, incidentally, the craft ideal which was the golden dream of William Morris will have become realisable. Work, at any rate, to all who have within them a spark of the divine, will approach to something like artistic joy. Another charge made by Mr. Burns against National Guilds is the presence within the programme of “artificial simplification.” The charge is vague and singularly inappropriate when applied to the Guild System. One of the most striking features of this social ideal is its consistent continuation of societal evolution. Alone, of all the schemes for social reconstruction familiar to us in England, it takes account of the significant development of Trade Unionism and desires to lead that development to a splendid fruition. But then Mr. Burns does not seem to have much faith in the evolutionary process as applied to Society. The hoary prophet of his political creed seems to be Sidgwick, with Graham Wallas in the role of High Priest. So God help Mr. Burns. Nevertheless, for what is presumably the essay of an academician, his book is extremely lucid and even fascinating. But at times one’s conception of Mr. Burns as a hypothetical pedagogue is severely shaken-nowhere more so than in his estimate of the humanitarian influence of Christianity. It is distinctly refreshing to come across the following passage in a publicationof the Oxford University Press :-“It is a custom among, apologists to say that the Christian Church introduced or, at least, made popular the idea of the equality of man. Nothing could be more glaringly untrue. Official Christianity made no attempt to correct the narrowness of class prejudice. It accepted first the ranks of the Roman Empire, and afterwards the f caste o the feudal system ; and it employed itself rather in finding justification for a political situation which already existed than in correcting the deficiencies of the system.” But faith in one’s hypothesis returns when one reads the cheap gibes at Nietzsche and the Nietzscheans (pp. 230 and 231). Here Mr. Burns shows a shallow- ignorance worthy the House of Carmel. HERBERT READ.
“Christian democracy is very popular.”-DORA “The Times.” crisis in Prayer Book revision.”--“
“Among the little things that count in the war let us not forget the lady bank clerks.”--“ Globe.” “Since the outbreak of the war there have been neither Liberals nor Conservatives.”-LEWIS MELVILLE. “We are a free people. "Evening News.” We are a free people. . . .”--
“It is a remarkable fact that insanity has decreased since the war began.”-Dr. MURRAY LESLIE. “Every man in the trenches, every Jack Tar at sea, every Tommy at the front shall have in his possession a copy of the Bible.”--“ The Outlook.” ‘‘The oneness of war and religion.”--“Evening News.”
“The ‘Evening News’ is a likable paper. It vibrates the spirit of goodwill, of knowledge and appreciation of one’s inner thoughts.”-CHARLES F. HIGHAM. “Look at the thick neck and lower hack head of the average German; there you have the explanation of the predisposition to sexual licence and sexual depravity.”AMY B. BARLARD,L.L.A., F.B.P.S. Glasgow undergraduates remember, if their “The mentor does not, the remarks of Mr. Lloyd George on the duty of trade unions in the present crisis. Just now every patriotic man recognises his union. It is the union of the Kingdom and the Empire.”---“ Pall Mall Gazette.’’ “Many illusions have been shattered by the war. It is said that one old woman this week, just after the Zeppelins had dropped their bombs, shouted from her window, ‘What did Lord Roberts tell you? ’ That old woman was a symbol.”-“Academy.” “During the last few weeks the ‘Times’ has been the object of much honest misunderstanding.”--“Times.” “Grave warning Mail.” by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll.”--“Daily
“The site of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is now occupied Barclay Perkins’ famous brewery, and it is by by permission of this firm that the Shakespearean Reading Society has been enabled to place in position the mural commemoration tablet.”-BARCLAY AND PERKINS(Advert.). “From a thousand sources we have been learning of what can only be called the rediscovery of God by the men at the front.”-REV. E. A. BURROUGHS, Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford. “Far too many people go about with long “ Spectator. ” faces.”--
“When one of the No-Conscription Fellowship explains to you that retaliation is sinful, tell him to read his Bible. It is all in the Bible.”-AUSTIN HARRISON.
BRYAN, UNFIT. Sir,--“ People” will insist on regarding the United States of America as if they, “The States,” were an ethnic unity dominated by an homogeneous consciousness, and they are therefore puzzled by the resignation of Mr. W. J . Bryan, by Mr. Wilson’s ‘‘pride,” and by the tears which strew the White House steps at the takings of leave. My Scotch butcher says to me, “Now, would it be religious scruples that would make a man . . . ?” and the chancelleries of Europe are about as likely to understand as is the gracious and amiable butcher. Recollect that Mr. Bryan has played in this administration a rather more important role than the President. In the first place, he got the President nominated by the Democratic Party. Note that as soon as he, Bryan, heard that the New York Democrats were to vote for Champ Clark, he swung over all the votes he controlled and cast them solid for Wilson, through any number of stubborn ballotings. That was a very fine act and a very astute one. Clark backed by the New York Democrats meant the Democratic Party sold out to capital (in about its worst form). It also meant two candidates of capital, Taft and Clark, against one candidate for honest government, Roosevelt. Which might hare meant Roosevelt elected (at least, one hopes so). In preventing this, Mr. Bryan compassed the election of Wilson, and he showed himself both a keen politician and a man very honest and faithful to the group of electors on whom he depends for his power. Mr. Bryan, as everyone knows, has been the unsuccessful canclidate for the presidency for about as long as one can remember. His career is, I think, unique in the annals of American politics. And he resigns in a fit of sentimentality, with letters showing- that he is in a hopeless muddle and incapable of distinguishing between a national crime and a personal indiscretion on the part of individual citizens. That a man should be Secretary of State to a large nation in the twentieth century, and have no perception of the difference between “sin” (which is subjective wrong between a man and his conscience) and “crime” (which is objective or active wrong against others, against the State), is curious-to the civilised mind it is, let us say, amazing. And without some knowledge America it must be well nigh inexplicable. of Mr. W. J. Bryan is our fact; let us try to account for Mr. W. J. Bryan. Let us consider that there is in America, back of beyond, a vast semi-desert area inhabited by people who have neither given nor receivecl gifts, to or from civilisation --people, as Bryce says, in writing of the mediaeval denizens of the broken-up Roman Empire, ‘‘made barbarousby isolation. ” ’fake it that ‘‘the east” of America, for good or evil, is more or less tinctured with European civilisation, that the west coast is more or less so tinctured, that Chicago has a certain pride in activity, and that in one or two States there still lingers (barely lingers) some trace of the pioneering- spirit. And beside these yon have great areas of geographical and spiritual nitid-flats, inhabited by the stock that could not stand the increased pressure of civilised life in the east and who had not guts enough to “go on pioneering,” and the slack agriculturists mho squatted down in the wake of the pioneer and the adventurer. These people do not know that there is an east side of the Atlantic Ocean. They are almost the worst element in the. country. Viewed with the dispassionate eye of a man in love with civilisation, they are hopeless, and one welcomes the Russian Jew and the Hungarian ironworker who may take the land from them. One might in half-earnest desire to see them struggling with an invasion from Japan or from any civilised country. Of course, i f you prefer nationality to civilisation, they are “all-fired American,” and one has to put up with them. They are not the West that made Roosevelt’s rough-riders. They are the flat, stale, and unprofitable parochialists that are a Virus in every extended nation. On the other hand, you have Col. Roosevelt’s West and the active and emotional Col. Roosevelt. Mr. Bryan’s heat is the “Middle West,” or the south-west Middle West, a very poor layout. Mr. Taft may at present be regarded as about as important as a very large overstuffed sofa cushion. So that the land lies between Bryan, Wilson and Roosevelt. And Col. Roosevelt, despite his adventures in Brazil, in Africa, and on the Italian cinematograph, is the only one of the three who has shown himself with any sense of the national destiny. The modern world is so entangled, national interests are so little a matter of national boundaries, that no nation has any right to make war.
In the sixteenth century (vide Burkhardt) some few people in Italy had grown so civilised that Milan refused to make war on Venice, on the grounds that a war between buyer and seller could be profitable to neither. This temporary civilisation passed away in the barbarities of “reform” and of counter reformation, etc. Col. Roosevelt has seen, or felt (a distinction to which I return in a moment), that the nation which “starts something” commits a breach of the world’s peace, not the king’s peace, but the world’s peace, and that the spirit of enlightened law is against this. Roosevelt is an emotional, unintellectual man, he has the man-of-action’s talent for “weighing up” or getting a “balance.” That is to say, despite his constant faux pas, he has in him rectitudo, a direction of the will toward the right. And out of an imbroglio of technicalities he saw perfectly clearly at the beginning of the war that America’s place was with the Allies. They are doing America’s job and the world’s job. An outrage more or less makes no difference. No difference to the main common sense of the matter, that is. It, of course, makes a difference to local emotion. However, Mr. Bryan is a technical prohibitionist Christian. The worst wrong Christianity has done is the substituting of the “conscience” for “honour.” This substitution is all very well for great men, for heroes; it may lead to infinite aspirations and infinite refinements of character when it is given a good enough start, but try it on people naturally “yellow” ! ! ! Honour gone, the conscience perceives the easy way and the inventive faculty finds reasons for any dastardly action that offers immediate profit. And then confused thinking, and then, for a present instance, this last rhetorical babble about the ‘‘Prince of Peace’’ from Mr. Bryan. It is very hard not to express one’s momentary disgust in excited and inexact phrases. Let us make the counterclaim that every American who cares for civilisation is now either for American intervention, or moving in that direction, with rage or with regret according to his temperament. However, I am not writing a war manifesto or explaining my view of the Kaiser. I am trying to put before your readers some idea of the “backwaters” of America, of the isolated mud-flats inhabited by people out of all touch and contact with the world, in “barbarous isolation.” It is by such communities that Mr. Bryan has been supported. They have no rounded experience to guard them against his large phrases. And for their intellectual isolation they are only in part tu blame, for until America removes her “protective tariff” on printed books, the National Government must heregarded as particeps criminis, an active conspirator as against the enlightenment of the nation. This restriction of the free circulation of thought is one of the anomalies of our time, and until America is awakened to the evil neither she nor her neighbours need be surprised at the upcropping of Mr. Bryans and such like phenomena. That a nation founded by “practical idealists,” a nation professing freedom, should put up with such a restriction ! That they will not awaken themselves to the damage they do themselves by restricting their intellectual contact with the outer world! One has nothing but exclamation marks . . . let it pass. Yet this state of mind, this casual, lackadaisical indifference may in part explain Mr. Bryan, the victim of circumstance and of himself. the unfit man at the fore. That America does nothing, that her magazines, her papers, her Government have for years clone nothing to develop a system of “sensory nerves,” that they have with one accord worked in the opposite direction toward the fostering of parochial pride, toward the propagation of local ignorance, conceit and isolation . . . very often under the banner of “reform,” “civic improvement,” “state spirit,” “college spirit,” “class spirit” (i.e., spirit supposed to arise between members of the same classes in universities and colleges), “fraternity spirit,” “clique spirit” ; that they have given no heed to centralisation or organisation save in matters of finance; that they have constantly encouraged men whose predilection was to he the “large frog in the small puddle,” or to be “of the first family in Peoria,” all these and the other disagreeable phenomena which we Americans have to see included in the meaning of the term “Americanism” are now havinga prime chance to show their effect in the person of Mr. Bryan. Cacao! Chatauqua ! ! His defect is not so much a defect of character, of sincerity (though you will never make a European understand this) as it is a defect of education. Like his class
in America, like ten million other Americans, he ‘‘simply doesn’t know.” You have a deceptive appearance of vigour and NO perspective. In every matter of art or of intellect, of writing, of teaching in America, I have seen this appalling danger, the danger of the inexperienced man, of the man who has received no accumulation of knowledge from his forbears, and who has not had the sense to see his defect, his handicap, and strive against it. JAMES FENNIMORE. *** THE ORIGINS OF THE WAR. Sir,-M. Georges Bourdon and his reviewer in your issue of the 10th inst. ask why, seeing that the Moroccan question was already settled, Germany increased her armaments in 1912 and 1913. The answer is clearly stated in a pamphlet by Mr. H. N. Brailsford, “The Origins of the Great War.” He says, “The original Serbo-Bulgarian Alliance of 1912, afterwards expanded into the Balkan League, was directed against Austria as well as Turkey. The treaty, as more than one Balkan diplomatist has told me, required Bulgaria tu put all her forces at Servia’s disposal in the event of a war against Austria. . . . Panslavism was busy in Galicia as well as in the Serbian lands.” It is further explained that the Serbian irredentists had begun to smuggle arms for an invasion of Bosnia, whilst, as Mr. G. M. Trevelyan, the historian, has explained, Serbia was flooded with a literature in favour of emulating the part played by Piedmont the unification of Italy; these books even lay in on the table at the Serbian Foreign Office. The connection of Russia with all this Balkan activity was scarcely concealed. The late M. Hartwig’s views were well known, his schemes and his backers more than suspected. Russia presided over the formation of the Balkan League, and the scheme of military preparations commenced by Russia in 1912, to be complete in 1916, could be formidable only to the central empires, and to them was formidable indeed. The German armaments of 1912 and 1913 can therefore be an enigma to those only who, like M. Bourdon and his reviewer, look to Germany’s relations with the Western Powers for the cause of the war. But if we take into account the facts I have related, it is hardly surprisingthat those who would opinion in Germany should, in face of so prolonged and so terrible a menace, stimulate the martial spirit of the population. During the last ten or fifteen years a similar militaristic propaganda has been proceeding both in England and France. My reason for emphasising this train of events is to give warning against a serious danger. Those who desire to continue this war until Germany is removed from the list of the Great Powers base their arguments upon the f premiss that the mentality o Germans is such as to make them a danger to the world under all circumstances. Anything that explains how ordinary people, in the position the Germans, would do much as they have done of in submitting to and trusting a military government, is calculated to save England from a fanatical and impracticable policy to which millions of lives might be sacrificed before its impracticability was clearly seen, H. P. ADAMS. *** HEGEL. Sir,-When your distinguished contributor, “R. H. C.,” recommended us to skip Hegel “for a while” and to return to Rant, though he did not say why we should skip, I did not understand him to put any slight upon Hegel. That a paper so devoted to the interests of working men should be read by at least one who signs himself one of them is a matter forcongratulation-and the skipping of Hegel is supplemented by the repetition of some of Schopenhauer’s abuse-by “A Working Man,” in your issue of June 10---a somewhat unexpected development ? That Schopenhauer entertained a very ill opinion of Hegel and his philosophy, and that he expressed his dislikefor them both freely and often, is very well known. It has been proved, I believe, that his opinion on the philosophy was not based upon a study or a knowledge of it. Can anyone (“R. H. C., e.g.) tell me whether and where Hegel has given his views (if he had any) on Schopenhauer ? The art of reading is the art of skipping. . . Since we are interested in the Germans, war and culture, may I quote (from H. W. C. Davis’ “Political Thought of H. von Treitschke,” p. 90) Treitschke’s views on the working man ? . . . “The disposition of the working classes has been characterisedby Aristotle in a classic expression, which, in
these more emancipated modern days, may be qualified, but can never become entirely false. f For these classes o society, private life and the toil and burden of domestic cares are the very core of their existence; brit while, for that reason, they are fully justified in trying to gain some control of the conduct of the State, they are not in a position to perform any continuous arid regular service for the State. They arc seldom enthusiastic €or that lively intellectual war of mind with mind which to the cultured man is the bread of life ; and they are prone to sacrifice freedom of thought for a benevolent administration which will exert itself to promote the well-being of the people at large.” HORACE SIMMONS. C. *** “THE GYPSY.’’ Sir,-Permit me to thank you sincerely for your page review of “The Gypsy,” and to congratulate the reviewer on a forcible and well written piece of English. To flourish long on THE NEW AGE he need only continue to avoid imagination and a sense of humour as he would the devil, or, say, those sensations he deprecates. If ever, by “the labyrinthine ways of his own mind,” he gets to heaven, I hope he will write some poetry for us. He may be assured of a hearty welcome from the artists there. These last, by the way, you will be interested to hear, at a meeting held recently decided to burn all Plato’s works but “The Banquet,” and to exclude all politicians from the Republic. I did my best for you. I said they had to make their living by that sort of thing and that I believed in the law of self-preservation even more Look at perhaps than your reviewer did in evolution. this wonderful miraculous universe of ours, I said ; there’s room here for all of us, surely ; the pure, like-who shall we say?--and the impure like me. I urged that they were not enjoying themselves; that they wasted time on the ephemeralities which might be spent in wonder and contemplation; that God knew a thing or two; and that we really might be attaching too much importance to our own silly little views and opinions. But they are human in heaven, Sir. They mould not listen to me. And now, what am I to do? The sedge is withered by the lake and no bird sings. I will hare to make a heaven of my own, it seems. THE NEW AGE will not be excluded. We will not even exclude “venereal disease,” ‘‘prostitutes” (your reviewer will pardon my using the quaint terminology beloved of him) ; we will not even exclude-“The Gypsy.” HENRY SAVAGE. [The last time one of our reviewers discussed a literary matter with Mr. Savage, the latter transferred the decision from the literary to the legal guild at a cost to us, in expenses, of nearly a hundred pounds. Before accepting his present challenge (if it can be so called) we should like to be assured that Mr. Savage will not again run to the law courts.--ED. “N.A.”] *** ART AND UTILITY. Sir,--“ We should not try to infuse the slightest beauty into articles of use.” This is a hard saying of Mr. de Maeztu’s. The earliest samples of art we have are of two kinds, carved or scratched ornamentation, sometimes quite constructional, on the handles of implements and weapons; and sketches of animals on the walls of caves. And it is a not untenable hypothesis that the latter were only studies for the former. And all through the ages the instinct of man has been to decorate his weapons, his armour, and in a lesser degree perhaps his implements. Now, I am prepared perhaps to agree with Mr. de Maeztu that the labour spent on, say, a beautiful suit of damascened armour might have been better employed in adorning the inside of a church, but I do not quite see where he is going to draw the line between the woodcarvingon the stalls of that church (say, Amiens Cathedral) and the ornament of a wooden chair for his room. There may be, should be, an extreme difference in degree, but beauty should be there. A true craftsman cannot make a chair happily without infusing into it the “slightest beauty,” some emphasising of its constructional lines perhaps, or the rounding off in a harmonious way of a little superfluous wood. But Mr. de Maeztu in another place says, “Do what we will, we shall not be happy”-so possibly my own belief that some happiness in labour is possible in, and indeed essential to, a proper social state will not appeal to h i m . He may, indeed--it is a horrible thought-actually prefer his chairs machine-made! PHILIP T. KENWAY.
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