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NOTES OF THE WEEK WHERE Do WE STAND? By S. Verdad
.
THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH. By Ramiro de Maeztu . INTERVIEWS. XVII. - Mr. G. K. Chesterton. By C. E. Bechhofer THE CULT OF ADVOCACY.By W. Durran . STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY MENTALITY. By Ezra Pound. W.-“The Spectator” . READERS AND WRITERS. By R. H. C.
M. SEGUIN’S GOAT.By Alphonse Daudet (Translated . .L by Katherine Mansfield)
PREJUDICED. By H. M. T. PATCHOULI Town By Leopold Spero
. .
REVIEWS PASTICHE. ‘By Ruth Pitter, L. S. . LETTERS THEEDITOR J. A. M.A.,A.C. TO from Allman MEMORANDAlastweek’s (from NEW AGE) . PRESS CUTTINGS
NOTES
OF
THE
WEEK.
A COMPARISON of Mr. Wilson’s Reply with the Pope’s Note is all in favour of the secular authority. Whether we consider them from the moral or the practical point of view, the conclusion is the same, namely, that Mr. Wilson is more entitled than the Pope to speak on behalf of mankind. This itself is something of an historic paradox ; but the significance of Mr. Wilson’s Note does-not end there. As well as correcting the representative of S. Peter on earth, Mr. Wilson’s Note is a correction of the diplomacy of St. James and St. Germains. The “knock-out” peace which he fears is harboured in their hearts is once more denounced in impressive tones. It is neither just nor expedient, he says, that there should be economic reprisals after the war. But the conditions of a just peace, he goes on to say, is that it shall be a people’s peace, a peace explicitly ratified in each of the countries by their peoples. With the ruling caste in Germany in particular he is emphatic that America under no circumstances will make a peace behind the backs of the German people themselves. Their signature to a treaty he will not accept, since they have proved themselves to be faithless liars; but either they must be eliminated entirely from the negotiations (the better way), or the German people in the most clear and unmistakable manner must countersign their undertakings on the responsibility of the German nation. In America, where they have presumably other sources of information than the text itself, Mr. Wilson’s Note has been universally regarded as a declaration in favour of No peace with the Hohenzollerns. And it is to be observed that in every quarter this interpretation has immediately become popular. Not only the Middle and Far Wests have found in it a motive for the war which at last appeals to them as sufficient to justify their sacrifices, but the German-American population, almost as one man, has welcomed and endorsed it. We can say, indeed, that whatever may be the case elsewhere, the formula of No peace with the Hohenzollerns and a Just Peace with the German people has alone proved capable
of uniting the American nation in a single enthusiastic league of war. We will go further and say that only the same formula will be found capable of uniting the peoples of Europe. +** Though the “Times,” as we know, has occasionally written to the same effect, and in its “Literary Supplement" has been what in another journal would almost be regarded as pro-German (we mean nothing offensive we mean only that the “Literary Supplement has been remarkably fair-minded, while the “Times” itself has been partisan), its comments upon Mlr. Wilson's declaration were of the more usual kind. It cannot altogether accept Mr. Wilson’s reiterated distinction between, the Prussian Government and the German people, on the ground that, if the German people did not choose the war (because they could not) they nevertheless enthusiastically welcomed it and have countenanced its Prussian conduct. So they did, and there is no doubt about it. We do not deny, in fact, that the war for Germany was what may, from one point of view, be called a popular war. Bur there is a considerable difference in our opinion between a war made popular from above and a war initiated (as in the case of Italy, let us say) by popular feeling itself. It must always be remembered in speaking of Germany that we! are speaking of a “survival” among modern nations, of a nation, that is to say, which, in the matter of constitution and sovereignty (and in nothing else is feudal; it is a Tudor among Victorians. So long therefore, as its Prussian monarchical system was a success, the popularity of its acts was assured. On the other hand, that considerable and even, perhaps, overwhelming numbers of the German people themselves have been aware of the anomaly, and have wished to get rid of it, there is plenty of evidence. It is practically true to say that every young and intelligent German has always been a democrat and even a republican. Bismarck and Treitschke both started life as republicans, and the latter we believe, was publicly feted in Paris for his Republican principles. Moltke was a Kantian pacifist, who believed in the republicanisation of the world as a condition of the world’s peace.
Sybel, Arnold Ruge, D. F. Strauss and scores of other Germans who became in later life supporters of the monarchy were, as young men, republican democrats. Why, then, did they all change? What is the reason of the conversion that befell them all as they approached responsible manhood ? The answer is that Prussia was a “success,” and that by virtue of her success she was always able to present to every talented German the alternative between democracy and exile, and autocracy and honour. Under these circumstances, men being what we know them to be, what else was to be expected of a people thus shepherded but the appearance of connivance with their Prussian rulers ? Have we not seen even in our own country the marvellously seductive effects of a successful leadership? Multiply these by the superior efficiency of Prussian propaganda, carried out; be. it remembered, to the smallest detail of education; and add, if you like the inferiority of spirit of the German people--the result deplored by the “Times” and ourselves was-inevitable. In other words, it was inevitable that so long as Prussia promised success the German people would appear to be enthusiastic in following Prussia’s lead. This, however, is not to say that there is no distinction between. the German people and the Prussian Government. On the one hand, while we in no way condone the offence of the German people, we can explain it as due to causes that anybody may understand ; and, on the other hand, we can deduce from the analysis precisely the conclusion that at the moment of the failure of the Prussian system the German people willl be the first to distinguish themselves from it. The tie, we repeat, between them is the success ofPrussia and when once that tie has been riven they will fail apart to be never re-united if the wise world counsel of Mr. Wilson is taken. But now look at what is the “Times’ ” alternative to Mr. Wilson’s proposal to make no peace with the Prussian dynasty. We should expect, after its pecking at the American Note, that the “Times” would have something at once more sensible and more practical tosuggest-something to make the suggestions of Mr. Wilson appear unpractical and utopian Do we find it in the “Times,” however? Listen. In place of the very precise formula of Mr. Wilson in which the Allies are counselled to eradicate the Prussian dynasty, the “Times” proposes “to stub up Prussian militarism” to its very roots. But where is the difference except in the greater vagueness of the latter, between Mr. Wilson’s and the “Times’ ” proposals? Mr. Wilson tells the world that we are to stub up the Hohenzollern dynasty, which is the root of Prussian militarism; while the “Times” only tells us to stub up Prussian militarism without defining the means. Once again, we say, the comparison of the two texts is all in favour of Mr. Wilson. The “Times” ” it is evident means the same thing as Mr. Wilson, but it has not the intention of stating it plainly and practically, We are to stub up Prussian militarism ” ; but under no circumstances are we to say with Mr. Wilson that Prussian militarism has its root in the Prussian dynasty, for that would be to distinguish between the Prussian Government and the German people! Time, however, if not the “Times,” will prove that Mr. Wilson is correct. The only means of stubbing up Prussian militarism is to stub up the Prussian dynasty; and the preliminary means to this is to demonstrate that it is no longer a success Other further than Review written journals in this country, however, in their suspicion of the democracy of the “ Times.” In both the ” and the “ Morning Post ” such of democracy and the war as most go much democracy “Saturday things are Englishmen
expect to hear only on the lips of racing-touts. The ‘‘ Saturday Review,” in particular, is incredible upon what it calls the “cant of liberty and democracy." Though, strangely enough, Mr. Wilson’s counsel is, in the opinion of the “ Saturday Review,” ‘‘ noble and wise,” everything of substance contained in it is unmitigated cant. This, if you please, is the sort of clear thinking that we are commended to set above mere intellectualism ! But what would these Stalky & Co’s have? What do they think the war is about Apparently they are of the opinion that the greatest war the world has ever seen is a dogfight for precedence--a dog-fight, moreover, in which only England counts upon the side of the Allies, and for a precedence measurable exclusively in terms of privileges for the sporting and wealthy classes. This may, of course, be the motive for the writers (and some of the readers) of the “ Saturday Review ” and the “ Morning Post,” but it is scarcely the motive of the statesmen of the countries allied with us; nor is ir the motive of ninety-nine in every hundred of our own population. When we are once more upon allfours or climbing trees like our ancestors, it will be time again to regard wars between nations as no better than animal contests for superiority; but for the present, with the permission of our surviving anthropoids, we prefer to regard wars between man and man as involving ideas as well as the comfort of the barbarian classes. .*+ Of a more reasonable if still of a mistaken character is the objection raised by the “ Cologne. Gazette ” to ‘the Allied demand for the democratisation of Germany The “ Cologne Gazette ” writes that ‘‘ all the duties of the State are performed better in Germany than elsewhere,” and that “the German power of resistance as a State is the highest that any State has ever displayed.” There is a double fallacy in this which it may be of some interest to point out. And the first is that a12 the duties of the State have been better performed in Germany than elsewhere Allowing some, and even most, of the duties of a State that have been performed excellently in Germany, it surely cannot be claimed, even in Germany, that the State’s duty of preserving friendly relations with the world has been ,well performed. Domestically, let us say, in much that relates to the internal and social organisation of Germany, the State has indeed done very well. But in respect of foreign policy, the relation of Germany as a single entity to the rest of the world, the present Armageddon is evidence that the German State has failed as lamentably as it has succeeded elsewhere. The cause is, moreover, clear. While the German State’s internal and domestic policy has been more or less under the responsible control of the German people, its foreign policy, together with the forces at its disposal, has been rigidly and constitutionally withdrawn from popular control. Popular attention, in other words, has secured the State’s excellence in Germany in matters over which it exercised control; but in matters wherein the State has been left to itself the consequences have been disastrous A revision, therefore, of the “ Cologne Gazette’s ” dictum is necessary. Those duties, it should say, which the State has performed in conjunction with democratic opinion have been excellently performed, but those in which the State bas acted autocratically have been a tragic failure. The second fallacy in the extract we have quoted is something of a boomerang. If it is now a matter of pride in Germany that the State’s resistance has been the highest ever displayed, what becomes of the German excuse for the war that Germany went in fear of her neighbours? Germany cannot at one and the same time boast her unparalleled strength and bewail her unparalleled fear. The consciousness of power and
the consciousness of weakness do not usually go together. One or other must therefore be abandoned, either the pride or the Sear. The Cologne Gazette,” in short, has proved too much or too little. l * Support for the proposal to recognise the democratisation of Germany as a condition of peace has begun to come in from somewhat surprising quarters. The “Spectator” now writes that “We have always felt that perhaps the simplest and safest plan would be to inform the German people that we would not make peace under any conditions with their present rulers. ” The “Spectator” has only now to add what would be consistent with its free-trade traditions, that we are prepared to make peace with the German people-a just peace, a peace without economic revenge-in order to be ranged in opinion completely with Mr. Wilson. The more surprising announcement of adherence to Mr. Wilson’s policy is, however, that of the “Round Table. ” From extracts taken from its current issue, and reprinted elsewhere in the present number of the NEW AGE, our readers will see that the “Round Table” is wholly in favour of the formula of No peace with the Hohenzollerns, or, at least, of‘ No peace with the Prussian dynasty. There is only one solution, it says, of the present conflict: it is that the Reichstag must definitely claim and secure full right to criticise, controland direct, the foreign policy, and its instrument, the army, of the German State. Nothing could be more explicit than this or more gratifying to us, who have insisted upon this policy for a good many months. The notion that a peace that is a real peace can be made between parliamentary peoples and an autocratic State is one that will not bear a moment’s serious examination. Either, as a consequence of such an attempted peace, the parliamentary peoples must maintain themselves in a military alliance, involving the complete subordination of social to foreign policy -in which case we may say farewell to social progress ; or the democratisation of Germany would need to be brought about by other means than war. Unfortunately, however, there are no other mean than war of democratising Germany. Professor Delbruck was not far wrong when he said that only a Prussian Sedan would parliamentarise foreign policy in Germany The “Nation,” for reasons we can divine, is, on the other hand, suddenly smitten with a plague of suspicions of the value and utility of democracy After all, a parliamentary regime that places an embargo on the “Nation”. . . . In its current issue it writes that “We have never been willing [the ‘never’ should only refer to the last few weeks?] to add to our war-aims the forcible achievement of democracy in Germany. ” And its grounds are as follows. In the first place, to demand the democratisation of Germany as the condition of peace might result in the indefinite prolongation of the war. In the second place, the democratisation of Germany is “in any case the probable upshot of the first German general election after peace.” And in the third place an agreement on the part of the present German rulers to “disarmament” would be as good a guarantee of peace as democratisation. “If Germany will consent to disarmament her adhesion to a League of Nations will be manifestly sincere.” We have only, however, to consider these reasonings one by one for a moment to howdiscover shallow they are. To begin with, the “Nation” contends that to demand the democratisation of Germany would result in the indefinite prolongation of the war. Is our object to end the war or to secure the objects for which the Allies entered the war? The mere cessation of the war, as we very well know, could be brought about to-morrow by the simple act of surrendering all the objects with which the Allies began it. But this is not the conclusion to
which, after three years, the Allies are likely to come, The proper objects of the war, on the other hand, are now seen to be all of them conditional upon this one circumstance, namely, the democratisation of Germany. All, in fact, are included in that, and assume it as their precedent and indispensable condition. The democratisation tisation of Germany is not, therefore, as the “Nation” asserts, an aim added to our other war-aims, it is the summary of all of them. Next, we have to observe that the “ Nation ” alleges that the democratisation which is unattainable except at the cost of an indefinite prolongation of the war is in any case probable after the war itself by the spontaneous act of the German people. The phrase “in any case” is significant in this connection. Are we to take it that the ‘‘Nation’’ is confident that Germany will democratise herself in the case that Prussia emerges unbroken from the war as well as in the case that Prussia emerges broken? But upon what historical grounds the “Nation” supports the former hypothesis we confess we do not know. An undefeated Prussia would assuredly, in our opinion, find means of maintaining itself against Germany after having maintained itself against the whole world of democracies. Finally, we are left with the proposition that disarmament would be easier to extract from Prussia than democratisation. But to this we can only reply that Prussia and armament are one and the same thing : and that the separation of Prussia and arms is as difficult to imagine as the separation of the “Nation” and political Liberalism. The “Nation’s’’ grounds, in short, for declining to fall in with the growing demand of the world for the immediate democratisation of Germany are as flimsy as they appear to us to be petulant. And we appeal to the authorities to take off their embargo upon the “Nation” if only as a means of restoring it to its common senses. *** The Inter-Allied Conference of Socialists that met in London last week took good care to arrive at no conclusion. By agreeing beforehand to publish no resolution that was not unanimously supported they committed the fate of the Conference to the veto of any the most stupid, delegate, who had only to register his negative to nullify a conclusion to which the rest of the Conference might have come. The curse of the liberum veto is to issue in nothing. The virtual conclusions of the Conference-that is to say, the real conclusions-were, however, distinctly encouraging to those who, agreeing that the democratisation of Germany is the sole condition of peace, believe that a share in the work can be entrusted to the Labour and Socialist movements in the Allied countries In the first place, Mr. Hyndman’s resolution in opposition to the holding of the Stockholm Conference (at which, by the way, as ,things are; Mr. Hyndman himself could not be present .as a delegate) was defeated, we are told, by an overwhelming majority. And, in the second place, there was a unanimity of opinion, carefully left unexpressed in formal writing, against the decision of the Allied Governments to refuse passports to Socialist delegates More than these two decisions, the one negative and the other positive, could scarcely be expected under the ancient Polish circumstances carefully brought about under French supervision, They are enough, however, to show the way of the wind which is now blowing more strongly towards Stockholm. +*+ It is too late far us to influence, even -if we could, the discussions that are due to take place at the Trade Union Congress this week; but a word or two upon the advisability of the Labour movement clearing its mind is never out of place. Its confusion, in regard to the whole present circumstances of the war, is due, we believe, to two causes mainly
first, a multiplicity of objects more or less incompatible with each other; and, second, a perverse multiplicity of counsel. To take the second first, there exists in the Labour and Socialist movement a tendency on the part of its members to think not only for themselves but by themselves. They are never so much horrified, it appears, as when they find themselves in agreement with their colleagues; and to avoid this they invent imaginary differences and rake up meticulous variations such as would provide mediaeval casuists with food for disputation for a century. Now we have nothing to say against this amusing little habit when the times are fitted for it. The greatest variety of opinion and the most surprising turns of originality are perhaps even useful when the matter under discussion is an idea. But when it is an act and in an epoch of action, originality is, in our judgment less commendable than unanimity, difference less desirable than agreement. In these days, above all, agreement is indispensable to action, and action, above all, is indispensable to effectiveness. While, therefore, the Labour and Socialist movement continues to breed disputations, it must needs render its own action nugatory. In the multitude of counsellors, when they refuse to agree, is-nothing! But this consideration bears equally upon our other point, which is that the Labour movement is at present pursuing contradictory aims. It has many schools, but each, in the name of the whole, undoes the work of another. There is, for example, a school that hopes to substitute the Labour movement for the State and to impose upon the world its particular and detailed programme of settlement. The works of this school we have seen in the marvellous compounds of bad geography, bad history, bad ethnology, and bad politics offered by the I.L.P., the B.S.P., the Fabian Society, and the Labour Party as plans of settlement. Another school is all in favour of a knock-out blow and the devil look after the future; and this has as its great names men like Mr. Victor Fisher, Captain Tupper, and Mr. Havelock Wilson. Still another is pacifist, and would stop the war by any means. Others, again, are indefinable, save in negative terms with which it is certain they would not agree. To make a single effect with such a variety of sightings is manifestly impossible. We say, in fact, that the present influence of the Labour movement cancels out In order to produce, therefore, any effect to-nothing. whatever, it is necessary that the parts should combine, and after agreeing upon something suppress the rest. Upon what can they combine? In our view, the differences are of little account in comparison (if the leaders will only think so) with their common platform-which is, we believe, as follows : Germany is responsible to the world for the war. Prussia therefore is responsible to German democracy. We require as a condition of peace and as a condition of future international Socialist fraternity that Prussia shall be punished, and that, in conjunction with the Allies, German democracy shall abolish Prussia. This is simple; but, alas ! Socialists seek out many inventions. *** It has become almost a habit in this country to represent the growing pains of Russia as symptoms of dissolution; and in particular the failure of the recent Moscow Conference to arrive at decisions it was never invited to reach has been the occasion of waggingof heads. What is more apparent to us, however than the failure is the success of the Conference. To begin with, it is anastonishing fact that freely . elected delegates from every Class and province in Russia could meet and discuss the present practical situation without breaking up in disorder. The Revolution is manifestly secure when a Revolutionary Government can face a free and naitonal assembly
and survive. Then, too, it must be remembered what an astonishing revolution, not only in constitution, but-in mentality, the transition from Tsardom to Social Democracy implies. Before millions of men who have been brought up to think of the Holy Tsar can transfer their allegiance to the concept of Holy Russia, such conversion and illumination are necessary as few nations could be trusted to experience in the brief space of a few months. Yet it is plain that this process is rapidly taking place in Russia. Again, it is not by any means an uncommon event to meet, even in England, men who have never learned to distinguish between their private and their public duties. Not to conceal our opinion we even believe that the vast majority of our citizens (rich and poor alike) are doubtful where to draw the line between their private interests and their patriotism. It would therefore be to expect more than a miracle of Russia to demand that, at a single fetch, her citizens, suddenly withdrawn from the discipline of Tsardom, should become publicminded and‘ capable of sacrificing not only their lives and goods to the nation but, what are often dearer their private theories and prepossessions. Some approach to this, however, must have been made at the Moscow Conference to permit it to be held at all. We undertake to say, in fact, that scores of the delegates tore up, before or after the Conference, their private recipes for Utopia. FinaIly, there is no doubt that government if not this particular government, has been strengthened in Russia by the Conference. In face of a practical problem there is nothing like public meetings for eliminating foolish counsels. The Russian Governments therefore emerges from the ordeal freer than ever before from the nostrums and whims of the Extreme Left and the Extreme Right. In a word, the Conference was a great success. ++. We sincerely hope that the proposal to associate in a common task the Trade Union and Co-operative organisations of Great Britain, which is to be discussed this week at the Blackpool conference, will be carried and then carried into effect. For the union of the economic power of the Trade Unions with the economic pourer of the Co-operative movement is bound to result in a mass of Labour power, which, from whatever point of vim, will be both respectable and formidable, The -extraordinary thing about power is that it “acts” by virtue of its mere existence. Certainly, it must be able from time to time and as a reminder. of itself to be exercised actively; but even in the intervals of its manifest exercise, its effects are positive. Thus we need not anticipate, and if out governing classes are wise they will not provoke, the exercise by Labour of the economic power which is now, against all opposition, secret and avowed, being fast accumulated. It should be enough for the controllers of Capital to realise that, if challenged, the Labour movement may be able in future to rally the forces of both the Trade Union and the Co-operative worlds, numbering between them five or six million men. Under these circumstances (and again, we say, if society is wise] we shall see in a most striking fashion that economic power not only precedes political power, but that it entails political power as an inevitable consequence. Henceforward, the most powerful single constituency in politics, whether it is organised politically- or not, whether it has leaders or not, whether it takes our advice or continues to ignore it, is Labour; and we may be certain that it is a constituency that must be wooed by fair deeds as well as by fair words. If only, now, we can persuade the united movement to drop its myriad patois of reforms and speak in the language of real reconstructive statesmanship--we mean in terms of National Guilds National Guilds are as secure as the future of England when freed from the menace of militarism.
Where
Do We Stand? By S. Verdad.
IT is very easy, I know, to assure people that what they wish to hear is true; and people like Mr. Bottomley trade upon it by promising victory periodically for next week. I have no intention of doing that; but I should, nevertheless, like to assure my readers that the chances of victory-and ,I mean by victory a decisive military victory--are greater than ever-so great, indeed, that I should not quarrel if anyone were to call victory certain. The date of it, however, is another matter. I am not a prophet, but only a political arithmetician. Let us examine first the circumstances in which we now find ourselves from the military point of view. To begin with, we ought to compare our present state with the state we were in a year, two years, and three years ago; and this for the purpose of measuring both the rate and the direction of our progress. Three years ago we were without a Continental army. Two years ago we were only beginning to learn the tricks of modern warfare. A year ago we were becoming masters of them; and to-day we know very nearly all there is to know and that is extant.. So much for the technique of the art of war--but what of our men, what of the men of our Allies, and what of the enemy, you ask? A frank answer demands that we should look the facts as fairly in the face as official caution permits; and I propose to do so. In men our Continental Allies with one or two exceptions, have some time ago reached the maximum of their possibles; and with us also, save for several grades and types of occupation we have enlisted as many as can be called up under the present Military Service Acts. There remains, then, little addition to be made during this fourth year of war to the men our Continental Allies and ourselves have already put into the field. But how do you think it fares with the enemy? Without subscribing too exactly to the careful calculations of men-like Mr. Belloc we may, nevertheless, be assured that the enemy’s forces have not been increasing id numbers while ours have been stationary. The casualties to the enemy have been enormous; and since he, no more than ourselves, has not a Fortunatus’ purse of men to draw upon, the calculation is certain that he has long ago reached his maximum of effectives, and is now rapidly declining. Before considering another factor in the same problem a factor immensely in our favour, I may premise --we may consider the factor of munitions. In respect of munitions, which, next to men, are the chief determinants of modern warfare-our position is undoubtedly improving relatively to that of our enemies with every day that passes. Whether we have regard to military or civil supplies, to munitions of the field or to munitions of the factory, the conclusion is the same that, whereas our supplies are increasing and our capacities for producing them on the increase also, the total output of supplies by the enemy is decreasing both absolutely and relatively. This alone, I may say, is a consideration of some comfort to ourselves; for it means that in economic or avoirdupois power alone we are progressively superior to our enemy. The factor to which I referred as immensely favourable to us is, of course, America. But of that more anon People have not, I find, got it out of their heads that in me way or another the Revolution in Russia has been a calamity for the Allies. They are under the impression that if only Russia had postponed her Revolution, and had continued during the present year her military campaigns of the two previous years (with, of course, the assumed additions both in regard to strength and of strategy), the war would by the present winter have Been over. Very likely it might have been if these “ifs” had ever been converted into
facts. But were they, in fact, ever likely to have been? Were we not counting our chickens in addled eggs? Certain it is, at any rate, that the chances that the Tsardom would go out of the war altogether, or, at best, go lame, were considerable. And practically certain it is also-and upon this the greatest stress ought to be laid-that but for the Russian Revolution the American people would have been a thousand times harder to bring into the war than they have now proved. To people therefore, who say that we owe to Russia the prolongation of the war over another year, I reply that they must take‘ their choice between a doubtful Tsardom and an enthusiastic American democracy I must pause once more before discussing the American factor to make a comment upon the German U-boat campaign. As to this, I say at once that it is serious-serious, but neither calamitous nor likely to be. The calculations in Germany, as you may read in the German Press, are all to the effect that the U-boat campaign, though slow in its deadly effects upon England in particular, is nevertheless sure. All Germany, in fact, is now aboard a submarine; and as its periscope shows above the surface of opinion in Germany, a great shout goes up that Germany is safe. Now I am not in the least disposed to assume that the German authorities are wilfully deceiving the German people; but my firm conviction is that, as upon other occasions, the German authorities are deceiving themselves. They count with their ready reckoners and not with their imagination-with the consequence that they reckon only upon static circumstances. By this I mean that they do not allow for the dynamic of the Allies, which can make good the losses caused by the U-boats almost as fast as the losses are made. Let me repeat, however, that the losses are serious, and let me urge upon as wide a circle as possible the need of economy in consumption;with every week of the U-boat campaign we ought all of us to run a tuck in our expenditure. But let me repeat, also, that the U-boats will not prove fatal to our chances of an ultimate military victory. I come ,at last to the factor of America. How or why it is, I have not yet gathered, but the impression I have derived from a variety of sources is that our people in general have not yet, by a long chalk, calculated the importance of America considered as a factor in the military victory of the Allies. The adhesion of America to the crusade against Prussian militarism is, however, colossal in its practical as well .as in its ideal significance. Any man who can believe that the war is likely to end inconclusively, or, still more, with a victory for Prussia, now that America is on the side of the Allies, is better acquainted with the parish pump than with the politics and psychology of nations. For my part, given the absence of any other miracle, the victory of the Allies with America among them is not preponderantly probable merely; it is as certain as God’s own sunrise to-morrow morning. Let us examine the situation. First we may note that America to-day is just where the British Empire was about three years ago. Three years ago the Continent was at war up to its neck when this country was as yet in the war only up to its knees. Today the British Empire is a Continental Power, and in the war as deep as any of its Continental Allies. America, on the other hand, occupies the position we formerly occupied, and is only as yet up to her knees in the war, though, like us three years ago, she is progressively wading deeper. Then consider the resources of America. The Continent in its time of need, and when the British Empire was marching to the rescue, could count upon us for several million men, for munitions food, transport, the Navy, and money up to the limit of our resources. And they were not, as we know, by any means inconsiderable!
But as our resources were to the Continent when we engaged ourselves fully in the war, America’s resources are at this moment to us. In men America is practically inexhaustible ; in money. and munitions she is the same; and we may be quite sure that if the war continues and America is brought into it as deeply as the rest of us, her resources in the other respects are no less endless. Finally, consider the question of American prestige-the prestige of a democracy with its Continental spurs to win. If it be true that the British Empire might not engage as a principal in a European war and come out of it an uncertain victor (I say nothing of coming out of it as a loser, for in my considered judgment, even without America, we should never have done that), it is equally true that America cannot engage as a principal in her first and, we may hope, the last European war, and leave the issue uncertain. Pride, if you like, a noble ambition for the future, even the calculation of material interests (if you insist upon it), make it imperative upon America, as it was and is upon ourselves to leave the war victors over Prussian militarism Two questions remain to be briefly considered even in this brief survey of our present position, The first is how long the war is likely to last. And the second is, the question whether by any other means we can hasten the end. To the first question my reply is that it is impossible to say, for nobody knows. As certainly as Prussia must become more and more clearly aware that her challenge of Empire or Downfall is going to be answered with the second alternative so certainly must we be prepared for a desperate resistance up to the very limits of German endurance. There is no mistake that the Prussian Old Man of the Sea has got his legs firmly about the neck of the German people; and there is equally no doubt that; while the German people can stand and see, Prussia will employ them to stave off her own downfall to the last ounce of their energy. All I will say, therefore regarding the conclusion of the war is that, unless some fresh diversion of Germany’s efforts on behalf of Prussia takes place, the war will not end until an American army of at least a million men has actually taken the field. This will not be until next summer at the earliest. To the second question my answer is this, that neither the Allies collectively nor England individually appear to me yet to have employed all their weapons of diplomatic potency against Germany and her Allies directly. There-is much to be said, I am as well aware as anybody, against the diplomacy of the Allies inter se. Heart-breaking mistakes have been made, brain-shattering blunders have been committed. But the fact remains that, in spite of all, the Alliance has not lost a single member, and has gained America and Italy, not to mention the rest. ’This is something our authorities may fairly pride themselves upon, though, truth to say, German diplomacy has been a scarcely respectable rival, its ignorance and folly having been disgraceful. But of our direct diplomacy upon Germany, of diplomacy designed to detach the German people from their Prussian rulers at the same time that militarily we are pulling the Prussians off, the German people’s backs, hardly the first chapter has yet been written. There are two means of communicating with the German people over the heads and yet under the noses of their Prussian keepers. One is by Allied proclamations; the other is by communication between the Socialists and Labour representatives of the respective countries. The former means has for the most part been left to Mr. Wilson alone, who alone has in view in his public utterances the mind of the German people. The latter has so far been tabooed, in fear, I suppose, that the German Socialists might convert ours. I would like to see them try!
The
Principle of Growth. By Ramiro de Maeztu.
ONE of the most important objections against the theories which I am propounding is that my scheme of a society entirely devoted, in its basis at last, to the maintenance and ’increase of goods completely overlooks the human element. The “New Statesman,” in its review of my book expressed this objection in the following words : “Where he goes wrong, we suggest --and it is a rather fundamental error-is in not seeing that if we should aim at the production of things which are ‘objectively’ good men and women and their states of mind are, in fact, things in this sense, and infinitely the most important things.” Were this objection true, all my theories would fall to the ground. For what would it avail for a thing--let us say, the British Museum Library-to be as perfect as God in heaven if there were no men capable of using it? The objection becomes graver if one realises that not even the thing, the institution, the Library will be good if the men, the librarians, are not good. And the librarians will not be good if they are not stimulated and criticised by the interest of the reading public. The problem is how to make better men, at least in its first and rough formulation. It is the problem of education. I do not like the word. To educate means to draw out. That presupposes that the thing to be drawn out is already within. I prefer to call it pedagogy-pedantry notwithstanding-because it means leading the child. We are again at the crux of the problem. We are trying to increase the valve of man. We are all pursuing the same end Granted The romantics of the eighteenth century asserted that the value of natural man is infinite, and that social institutions spoil him. Remember Rousseau “La nature les fit; les institutions Ies gatent But is it possible to improve men by telling them that they are already good? Mr. Bertrand Russell says that : “Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.” And what is said of any selection of men ought not to be less true when said of mankind Flattery tends to corrupt everybody. I have quoted Mr. Bertrand Russell precisely because I find in the pages of his last book “Principles of Social Reconstruction,” a good part of the enthusiasm and a great deal of the excellent style in which Rousseau anathematised social institutions to sing the praises of the natural man. Mr. Russell starts from what he calls “the principle of growth,” although he might also call it the principle of self-respect for in one passage he formulates it in these words: “But in the main, the impulses which are injurious to others tend to result from thwarted growth, and to be least in those who have been unimpeded in their instinctive development.” But on another page he defines it thus : “When a man’s growth is unimpeded, his self-respect remains intact, and he is not inclined to regard others as his enemies. But when, for whatever reason, his growth is impeded, or he is compelled to grow into some twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct presents the environment as his enemy, and he becomes filled with hatred.’’ “The impulses and desires of men and women, in so far as they are of real importance in their lives, are not detached one: from anothr, but proceed from a central principle of growth, an instinctive urgency leading them in a certain direction, as trees seek the light.” It is preferable to compare man to a tree than to a river, a ship, or a road.“ The image of a tree has a nobility, a resignation, and a stability, which the ship, the river and the road lack. But it is an image, not a principle Men are not trees. Trees may seek God in the light, but a man, a great man, Ernest Renan,
said that there is no other God but the Abyss. And we cannot include within the sphere of things that grow, by growth a the morality of man. We understand natural, a continuous increase. Morality increases in some men with years, in others it decreases. Even in those in whom it increases, it does not do so by natural hereditary law, but by efforts that often work against the natural tendencies. And moral increase is never continuous but discontinuous. Most of our acts are neither moral nor immoral but utilitarian or economic. Only from time to time does an occasion arise for choice between the moral and the economic action, and sometimes we choose the moral and sometimes the utilitarian. While we are asleep our body grows, but our morality only increases while we are awake. Mr. Russell ,asserts that our bad impulses develop only when our growth is impeded. Three pages later Mr. Russell says that: “If men have power, they are likely to abuse it.” One of the two : either men become bad because their growth is impeded, or they become bad because they are given power--which are in contradiction! Common sense has solved many centuries ago this contradiction into which Mr. Russell is led by his, principle of growth. Some men becomeembittered filled with resentment and perverted, because they do not find the necessary means to carry out the work of which they feel themselves capable. Others, on the contrary, are spoiled because they have been provided so excessively with means of action that they do not learn how to appreciate them, and they waste them. Excess is as bad as defect. Justice consists in distributing the means of action in such a way that no man either lacks or has in excess the means necessary to fulfilling the functions suited to his ability. And it is not enough to suit the function of every man to his talents. There are some men who have only a talent for thieving. Carolina Otero, the most famous courtesan of the last half-century, would have been, if compelled a very mediocre mother. It is also necessary that the function of every individual be good. This is acknowledged by Mr. Russell when he says . that : “Other impulses, though they may grow out of the central principle in the individual, may be injurious to the growth of others, and they need to be checked in the interest of others.” Here we find ourselves .again confronted by the old liberal principle of the hindrances upon hindrances, or of intolerance of intolerance : the only personality which has not the right to be respected is that which does not respect the personality of others. As a rule it is not a bad maxim for, as a rule oppression is bad. But why is it bad? “Personalists” say that oppression is bad, because it checks the personality of the oppressed. So it does. But it allows free development to the oppressor, and there is no reason whatever for Mr. Russell, who is not oppressed, to prefer the personality of the appressed to that of the oppressor. My family suffered considerable loss when slavery was abolished in Cuba. If slavery is unjust in itself, or, at least, if it was- unjust when it was abolished, because there aIready existed better methods than slavery of assuring social discipline, I should be justified in resigning myseIf to a measure that deprived my family of-means. But if justice or injustice merely depends upon their positive or negative relation with the growth of man, I cannot see any reason why the growth of others should interest me more than that of my own peopIe. You have the right to take my slave from me if you say that this man does not belong to me, but that he belongs to God or to the City, because we all acknowledge in God or-in the City a right superior to one’s own. In the name of the national or of the religious principle, slavery was abolished. In the name of principles superior to individual interests will also he abolished, when it is abolished, the exploitation of man by man. But Mr. Russell cannot interest. me in the
liberty of my slave if he says that the slave does not belong to me, but that he belongs to himself. It is better that a man be my property if I give myself to God or to the City, than that he should enclose himself in the hard walls of his own selfishness. It is not a principle of social reconstruction to assert that every man belongs to himself, and only to himself. If both the master and the slave are capable of citizenship, it is just that both be citizens. If only one of them is capable, it is just that he should be the master, although actually he may be the slave. And if neither of them is capable we should be interested neither in the master, nor in the slave, nor in their relation. We are interested in children, because they are capable of doing some of the things that we ourselves should like to see fulfilled, but that most probably we shall leave undone. That is why we send children to school. But there are some children who do not want to go to school. And neither their fathers nor their mothers want them to go. Nevertheless, we make them go. As a rule, the very men who insist most loudly on the rights of human personality are the strongest partisans of compulsory education. This compulsion is obviously an assault upon the personality of the child. Why is it made? Please do not reply that the purpose of compulsory education is the development of the child’s personality; the object of school is to instil into the varying minds of children a common content such as the alphabet and the multiplication table And if compulsory education has partisans, it must be because they implicitly believe that the value of common things, such as the alphabet, is greater than that of isolated and incommunicable personalities All laws, all institutions, and even all social relations set themselves the task expressed in Mr. Russell’s phrase : “‘To break down the hard walls of the ego,” in order to incite the individual to take his share in maintaining and increasing superior values. They do not always accomplish it. There are countries-not Mr. Russell’s-where even scholars only express their ideas in an emphatic and obscure way in order to impress other people with a sense of their own importance, but taking good care that nobody should understand them, because they are afraid of losing their soul if their ideas are stolen. They would not run much risk, because unlearned people in their turn close their ears, for they are also afraid of losing their personality if they open them. It is impossible to conceive anything more hateful or sterile than a world in which every individual should fortify himself within the hard walls of his own ego, and reject every influence not springing from his own sap. Mr. Russell often complains of this callosity. “The hardening and separation of the individual in the course of the fight for freedom has been inevitable, and is not likely ever to be wholly undone. What is necessary, if an organic. society is to grow up, is that our institutions should be so fundamentally changed as to embody that new respect for the individual and his rights which modern feeling demands.” The ego has hardened itself. How shall we soften it? Let it go on hardening itself, and in virtue of its own growth, it will become softer ! This is the simple faith that inspires Mr. Bertrand Russell. This is the faith that makes him say that we should feel reverence €or the child. Strange and illuminating word ! For men have never felt reverence for the child. They have felt love, tenderness and hope. Reverence is a feeling that men ‘reserve for those other men who have brought into the world the good things that the world possesses; and which they kindly extend ‘to old men because they assume that people who have lived long have also done many good things. So there are societies whose only religion is reverence
for the dead; but there are none that possess reverence for children. And no less strange is the reason that Mr. Russell adduces in justification of this reverence: “the man who has reverence feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings, and most of all in children, something sacred, indefinable, unlimited, something individual and strangely precious, the growing principle of life, an embodied fragment of the dumb striving of the world.” Reverence for the child is based on reverence for the growing principle of life. But is there anything worthy of reverence in the growing principle of life? If life, as life, were worthy of reverence, we should revere it in all its forms, in microbes as in men. If we respect life in men more than in microbes it cannot be merely because man is a living being, for so is a microbe; but because man is capable of doing things of a superior value to those that can be done by the microbe. Things are, certain things are, worthy of reverence-; and from them man receives his dignity. There is no need to belabour Mr. Russell. There is a page in his book in which he bitterly complains of the fundamental loneliness of modern men. “It is an outcome,” he says, “of the increasing sense of individuality.” “I doubt if there is any radical cure except in some form of religion, so firmly and sincerely believed as to dominate even the life of instinct. The individual is not the end and aim of its own being : outside the individual there‘ is the community, the future of mankind. . . .” All this is very well. Mr. Russell sees clearly that our ego has hardened itself, and that our self bas become callous. He is too learned a man to deny that this hardening of the ego must be the result of a philosophy, which from the Renaissance onwards has devoted itself almost entirely to persuading Man that his personality, placed in the centre of the Universe, is the sanctuary where eternal reason is eternally alight. The ego of man has been hardened because it has been flattered. This work must be undone. The humanist, individualist and liberal philosophy, by which the rest of Mr. Russell’s book is inspired, must be discredited. We have to find outside of man the principle of his possible Growth is too big a word. We shall be satisfied growth. if we find a principle of his possible orientation. Interviews. By C. E. Bechhofer. . XVI1.-MR. G. K. CHESTERTON. THE State, under any form of Socialism, Mr, Chesterton said, tends to become more and more centralised and more and more powerful. But, while a powerful centralised body seems excellent in theory, in practice it is otherwise. Composed as it is of individuals, the central body cannot command any more than human intelligence, and, being human, it is enormously liable to error. Again, if the centralised State gains little in intelligence by its central isolation, it loses enormously in comparison with the individual by reason of it‘s remoteness from actual practical facts. “Take this house of mine and its garden,” said Mr. Chesterton. “On a map of Beaconsfield it would he quite correctly described. But what would become of it in a map of Buckinghamshire or a map of England made by a central administrative body? They might make it out a mountain-peak, or a coal-mine and want me to mine it.” Or, if the State did agree that a garden was a real garden and not a coal-mine, it might suddenly want the owner to do away with his seedlings on the ground that it is cruel to eat vegetables and we ought to live only on salt. I suggested that National Guilds, perhaps, offer the only hopeful barrier to the tyranny and caprice of the
State. Mr. Chesterton said, ‘‘I am all in favour of the medieavel guilds, within which the guildsmen held property, including of course common property. ” After all, what is absolutely necessary is that the individual should be able, as it were, to stand a siege against any centralised power attacking his liberty and self-respect. And for this private personal property is essential. This, Mr. Chesterton said, is the line he would take up if he wanted to oppose National Guilds. National Guildsmen, I remarked, could have no objection to the private possession of such property as does not involve wage-labour ; Mr. Chesterton’s house and garden remain to stand a siege in, Mr. Chesterton said that a garden-except perhaps a market gardenis not sufficient to stand a siege. “If the inhabitants of Beaconsfield were to refuse to send me milk butter, eggs, and meat, I should waste away.” I suggested that Mr. Chesterton would probably exercise his personal economic power in such an event, and take a train to London. To apply this reverie to the general argument, I asked Mr. Chesteron if personal power, i.e., labour, is not after all the chief private possession of the individual. With an apology for digressing, Mr. Chesterton quoted from “Marmion. ” Douglas, believing Marmion to be a forger, refuses to shake hands with him. Marmion says : ‘ And, noble Earl, receive my hand.’ But Douglas round him drew his cloak, Folded his arms, and thus he spoke: ‘ My manors, halls; and bowers shall still Be open, at my Sovereign’s will, To each one whom he lists, howe’er Unmeet to be the owner’s peer. My castles are the King’s alone, From turret to foundation--stone The hand of Douglas is his own; And never shall in friendly- grasp The hand of such as Marmion clasp.’” But this is not quite enough; the individual still needs his own external private property with which to stand the hypothetical siege of the State. Not, Mr. Chesterton said, that he supposes any individual could finally and victoriously withstand the will of the whole forces of the State. But the point is this. Interfering people like Mr. Sidney Webb find it easy to get their plans past elected bodies supposed to be representative but when the individual is well entrenched behind his personal property and privileges, he can put up a fairly firm and prolonged resistance to the execution of these plans and so become what is, in Mr. Sidney Webb’s eyes, a beastly nuisance; and this is quite sufficient for the purpose. The restoration of private property remains the basis of liberty. I suggested that the larger industries, at least, are not susceptible to such a form of small holdings. Mr. Chesterton agreed, but pointed out that a member of a nation based on a firmly established and owning peasant class would approach such work with a very different psychology from that of to-day. He would feel, “I am not iron to be smelted.” To my question whether Mr. Chesterton thought any other alternative form to capitalism, except National Guilds, possible, he replied that there is always the possibility of “bloody revolution. ” “Our present-day plutocracy,” Mr. Chesterton explained, “has so instilled capitalist ideas, capitalist ethics and capitalist morals into people’s heads, that any denial to-day of the capitalist is in effect a of the divine rights revolution. ” To return to National Guilds, Mr. Chesterton said he is quite sure that the French and Irish peasants will never give up their land to the State or the Guilds if they can possibly help it. “At the same time,” he said, “I think National Guilds are the natural development of the Trade Unions. But, at present, we are faced with the Trusts !”
testify to the ascendancy of an activity whose record flings a challenge to any mere profession, secular or sacred. More than this : the cult of advocacy’s irrefragable claim to be classed among great religions is its undeniable power of developing the sentiment of selfsacrifice in its devotees. That is the supreme criterion. The invaluable discipline of self-denial is in direct ratio to the exiguity of rewards and the severity of punishments The Cult of Advocacy. . In both respects the cult of advocacy deserves By W. Durran. a foremost position. If it is objected that as such This is the chief religion of England. There is a rewards and punishments are exclusively concerned with the present world, the appellation of “religion” popular impression that all great religions came is out of place, we answer that the only alternative originally from the East. The statement requires is to describe the cult of advocacy as an ethical system, qualification. There is one exception. The cradle and that is more than its hottest gospeller has ever and home of the cult of advocacy is in this island. Elsewhere advocacy never attained to the dignity of ventured to claim. He is content to expatiate upon a cult. It was unknown in Babylon. It is forbidden it as a vital necessity in a legal system. The distinction in China. It was despised by the sages of Greece. is fundamental. While, as regards demands The sophists were typical advocates. Nor was professional upon our self-denial: it is true that our cult of advocacy advocacy recognised-it was only tolerateddoes not require an man of blood occasionally like during Rome’s best days. Ju-juism or Kaiserism, yet its many exigencies insist Let us suppose that ex-Senator Cincius is still upon the sacrifice of what our nation holds dear-that accessible to Latin-to shame the doctrine of the is fair play or justice. We sacrifice justice to advocacy Sadducee. Suppose Sir Oliver Lodge informs him we render justice inaccessible to those who that his Bill, the “Lex Cincia,” which prohibited cannot afford advocacy’s fees with the subserviency the despised class of advocates from suing for fees, of the dusky devotees of Mumbo-Jumbo. is still in force, but has now undergone a process of It is a matter of common observation that forensic inversion, and serves to enable the same class, now art finds its closest resemblance in the art of the our lords and masters, to levy preposterous honoraria theatre. Noteworthy here is the fact that, in their in advance; that this mighty Empire of nearly four callow youth, great advocates have frequently hesitated hundred and fifty million inhabitants, comprising between Stage and Bar in choosing a profession. regions Caesar never knew, is governed chiefly by We have no means of knowing whether Melpomene advocates, and has promoted advocates for judges ; the was a loser by their preference for the Bar; but in a Roman would be astonished beyond measure. notorious instance Sir Edward Clarke assures us that If he were told that, in this happy hunting-ground Themis had occasion to regret the fateful decision of advocacy, there is a great gulf fixed between the and a whole series that followed. Thus the cult of Justice which the people desire and the Law which the advocacy secures the sacrifice of justice ; one of its advocates purvey ; that, whereas advocacy has not commonest devices being the employment of the art contributed one per cent. of our empire-builders, the of the theatre (superimposed on its own repertory of whole fabric was placed in imminent peril and nearly artifices) in conjuring with evidence. Other communities fell a prey to its self-appointed and impatient heirs, subsidise the histrionic art in their proper owing to the pernicious influence of advocates by profession domain. We subsidise them a hundredfold more and advocates by temperament: far from expressing heavily, but not in the theatre, in the administration of surprise, Cincius would say, “I could have justice ! told you so. We were wrong in even tolerating paid ’Take another example of our pathetic self-surrender advocacy; the legislators of Babylon were right. It to the cult of advocacy. An unfailing feature of our is a danger to the State.” great civic feasts is a source of merriment to certain If he were told, finally, that notwithstanding the continental jurists who gloat over the shortcomings of peril into which advocates led us like lambs to the our legal system with schadenfreude. I hey read a slaughter ; notwithstanding the fact that in neighbouring panegyric punctured by applause on the unapproachable States where advocates are not in the ascendant perfections of English Justice ! Geographical in politics, and not in the seat of judgment, Law is boundaries have never been set to Science, or to incomparably less confused, less dilatory, less uncertain Truth : and what is Justice but Truth in action? But and less expensive than with us, yet the people our special brand of Justice suffers from the worst kind fail to perceive the direct interest of the advocate in of geographical boundary which is the Chinese wall prolonging conditions of confusion and uncertainty erected by our advocates. When the transparent fiction which provide scope for his arts and artifices: the of our superiority in law is received with applause Roman would observe that, “ Such open defiance of from the laity, it is convincing proof of decadence to reason proves that you others have ceased to regard the minds of hostile observers. And so it comes that our advocacy from the point of view of public utility; you blind and self-sacrificing devotion to the cult of advocacy have taken it to your hearts as a religion. ‘Tantum was an important factor in precipitating the great religio potuit suadere malorum.’ ” war. It seemed that during a whole decade the tolerance The prominent characteristics of all great and successful extended to a group of master-sophists betokened religions are unquestionably exhibited by the a paralysis of vision and sanity. This conviction was cult of advocacy. It is something that binds (religio) unquestionably deepened and confirmed in the reception all advocates in a firm bond against the laity. Moreover extended to a group of German jurists during one advocacy is great in the area of its ascendancy. of the fateful years when Armageddon was in rehearsal. Its chief shrines are io London, Washington, and Had our visitors been physicians or scientists, a congress Calcutta ; there are subordinate temples innumerable would have been productive of some definite and throughout Anglo-Saxondom. The Ievy of the advocate helpful results from friendly interchange of views on practising and promoted, in fees, emoluments, subjects of common interest. But our outlook on law and pensions throughout the Empire and the Republic being exclusively that of the advocate : and, as such, amounts approximately to 5,000,ooo a year. Some unscientific and unprogressive, only ‘ junketings and fourscore peerages in England, not to mention many banquets were possible for the entertainment of our positions of honour and emolument, reserved exclusively visitors. What has been suggested as the possible -like judgeships-for members of the Bar, At tea, a small niece asked Mr. Chesterton if he knew what the big dog that lived next door had done. “What did he do?” “Why, he came into our garden, and killed six of our little baby chickens.” “The Herod !” cried Mr. Chesterton.
impression of the ancient Roman was assuredly the conviction of the modern German on being congratulated at the farewell feast on considerable progress in legal matters; but that his innovations would not suit this country !. And the countrymen of Newton and Darwin had accepted this mediaevalism and chosen its sophists to govern them ! The German jurists have had occasion to correct their interpretation of our psychology but we cannot be surprised if they were misled into mistaking the self-denial of the devotee for the imbecility of the degenerate. Their own opinion of professional advocacy may be inferred from the fact that its exponents are debarred by statute from the exercise of judicial functions. If these examples of surrender of vital interests at the bidding of our chief religion seem to possess a merely historical interest, let us turn to the outcome of the Mesoptamia Commission and the outcry that has centred round the name of Lord Hardinge. A better instance could not be found nor is a brief reference to his career in India irrelevant. At the commencement of his term of office as Viceroy an interminable trial was dragging its slow length along. A notorious gang of dacoits known as the Khulna gang, 17 in number charged with organised robberies, were released without punishment. The explanation was astounding. It was alleged in the Press that a bargain had been struck between the Government, the Bench and counsel for the accused who were to plead guilty and get off scot-free. Heckled in the House of Lords about this grave scandal, Lord Morley sought to excuse it on the plea “that the trial would have lasted a long lime, and would have created a bad impression throughout the country. ” Conscious of the lameness of this excuse, Lord Morley added, “On their return to their villages the discharged persons were sent for by an eminent Hindu gentleman who gave them a severe lecture on loyalty” ! Are we to suppose that the Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, was a stranger to those sinister expedients which had become necessary to cover the paralysis of justice due to the apotheosis of the Bar-and its inevitable concomitant -the decadence of the Bench? We must not forget that the cult of advocacy in India assumes the grandiose, verbose and flamboyant character appropriate to the gorgeous East. Barrister-judges flounder hopelessly in mazes of subtlety conjured up by the super-astute oriental. Under the broad aegis of the Inns of Court he easily surpasses his Western congener in demanding the most extravagant latitude for the privileges and prerogatives of the Bar. It ill becomes the promoted advocate to have even the appearance of curtailing them. By direct intervention, or through an emissary, Lord Hardinge rendered the Inns a service about which he was probably sounded before starting for the East in 1910. Observe that it was an extraordinary service, and could not have been exacted as a matter of course. Its discharge is strong evidence on two points :-the importance attached to Calcutta -the present Viceroy is a member of the Bar--as one of the principal shrines of our religion in partibus; and the pliancy of Lord Hardinge. Noteworthy, too, is the fact that in his speech in the House of Lords on July 3 he regrets that “there. was no eminent lawyer on the Mesopotamia Commission, one accustomed to weigh evidence with technical knowledge and experience ’ ’ This expression of regret has a significance all its own. It marks a point of view diametrically opposed to that of the average layman who noted the absence of eminent lawyers from the Commission as a welcome departure from the domination of juridical niceties. Not so Lord Hardinge, although he, of all laymen, had been closely confronted with the outrageous failures of justice due to eminent lawyers in Calcutta. The desired assistance was provided Lord Hardinge when he
presided over the Dublin Commission : and he is a bold man who asserts that the eminent lawyer, Mr. Augustine Birrell, was treated with unjustifiable harshness. Shall it be said that after such signal services no eminent practitioner flung himself into the breach to save Lord Hardinge in his hour of need? Perish the thought! Ingratitude to champions has never been charged against the Inns. The Attorney-General, greatly daring, appeared in the House of Commons “for the defence. ” Not unmindful of the instruction ‘‘NO case. Abuse the plaintiff’s attorney,” our eminent lawyer was, in duty bound compelled to abuse the Commission in default of an attorney. Them are signs that the unblushing effrontery of the Bar is outstaying its welcome. Possibly that superstitious awe which tolerated it so long is wearing a trifle thin. At all events, the attempt to put the Commission on its trial failed; and recourse was had to the services of an advocate by temperament to save the face of the advocate by profession and that of his client. Mr. Balfour is above and beyond all things a critic and an able conjurer with metaphysical subtleties. He shines in the literary presentation of figments which sober reason rejects. His final appeal in a famous controversy was to AUTHORITY. That desperate move drew from Herbert Spencer the retort that, ”Mr. Balfour makes authority and the needs of man the measures of ‘truth. ” It is unquestionably an easy transition to make the needs of our ruling families the measure of justice. Blackstone will supply the necessary authority. He is the tutelary deity of the cult of advocacy. Mr. Balfour has rendered it a service; but his intervention in such a doescause him little credit, it is filling the cup of the people’s weariness, and proving the hollowness of our chief religion
Studies
By Ezra Pound. IV--The HE “SPECTATOR. ” THE “ Spectator ” is something peculiar. I must put this thing dans sun cadre Approaching the centre of English Kultur, one enters gradually a state of awareness to certain forces or properties of that centre, and among them the “Spectator. ” This publication greeted me courteously. I cannot quite remember how I learned that the “Spectator” was a sort of parochial joke, a “paper printed in London for circulation in the provinces.” All I know is that the (‘Spectator” is an unfailing butt. You can raise a smile, a pale and disdainful smile anywhere, veritably anywhere: as far as my experience goes, by the mere mention of the “Spectator.” At the present moment (for I am writing this prologue before making my usual inspection of the ‘‘mentality” to be analysed) I do not know why the “Spectator” is so greatly and unfailingly a fountain of merriment. In a way, even vaguer, I know that .it emanates from some people called “Stracheys,’ ’* called generically and comprehensively “Stracheys.” I know by hearsay that they differ among themselves; that they exist in generational strata ; that they are “militarist” and “conscientious,” etc. ; that they speak with peculiar voices; that they are “beings apart,” despite the * A returning traveller recounts the following dialogue :Scene: A .distant part of the English seaboard. Precocious little girl, aged nine : ‘‘ Mother, what is a Strachey Mother : ‘‘ Oh, it will take too long! It’s too boring to explain it all to you.” Child (having been ‘‘ told,” and possibly labouring under a misapprehension) : ‘‘ But, mummy, I’ll have to know some clay.” I offer this with no comment. I am assured of its actuality.
in Contemporary Mentality.
fact that one of them, perhaps more than one, looks like a banker. The only one I ever saw did not look like a banker. I cannot conceive him on the Exchange. The “Spectator” is by hearsay “‘conservative. ’’ It has “dictated the conservative policy,” whatever that phrase may mean. Save that it has given me one, or perhaps it is two, favourable reviews, I know absolutely nothing about it. For prejudging this paper or these people I have no more reason than the Athenian citizen who said,. “I am tired of hearing him called Aristides the Just”; save perhaps this, that I did hear of a rural vicar of eighty who refused to write any more for the “Spectator” “Because it really was too arriere Thus we shall at least learn what the vicar of eighty or sixty or fifty or whatever his age was, thought “too arriere ” Commencons ! “Spectator,” No. 4,650, first page : “We do not know on what authority the ‘Daily Mail’ bases its figures, but they seem to us inherently improbable. . .” “This is a situation which demands the whole determination and all the skill and resource of the Navy. . .’” When American vessels are built in large numbers they will be needed to transport the great American Army, etc. . -’’ “We want Labour to be solid in support of the Government policy in the future as it has been in-the past; if, therefore the Government, who have, etc. . . come t.t.c. that etc. Br. delegates g.t. Stockholm, we should not protest t. w.s. h.s. misgivings. . . . “Another reason . . . Government must accept the responsibility. . . ” “No demand is really ‘popular’ unfess all the constituent parts of the people are behind it. We all belong to the people. . . We are all the people. The Government represents us all . .” “The Government must act with a proper sense, etc. . . . Page 2.-The P.M. made a v.g. speech 0.t.w. at Queen’s Hall last Sat., the 3d aniv. of G.B. entry i.t.c. : “Sir W.R.’s rugged optimism shines out . . .” (italics mine.) “The Germans have not turned 0. and Z. into such rn. fortresses without g.r.” “Those who talk lightly of the military advantages of autocracy . . ” “But as we all know only too well, incomes are not equal in this or in any other country, and the case, etc. ” (Watch this carefully.) “Indeed, by imposing adequate taxation the State assists the operations of war, because the taxes themselves etc. . . ” “Frankly, we believe it would be difficult to the point of impossibility to say whether a man had or had not used his money dishonestly to procure his own social distinction . . .” “The ‘Gillie Dhu,’ for instance, who inhabits Rossshire is a merry little fellow . . .” “The Control of Uric Acid . . . Hints to the MiddleAged.” (Advt.) Aged,Y.M.C.A. Headquarters. ” “Spectator,” No. 4,649 : “Our aeroplanes played a.g.p. i.t.v.” “Throughout the week the French have had m.h.f. on the C.d.D.” “The Allied Governments were strongly represented at a Conference on Balkan affairs held in Paris last week. ” No. 4,648 : “A military disaster has befallen 0.R.a.” “The Government doubtless have been further shaken in their position and authority by their handling of the Mesopotamian affair. ”
“Bismarck’s tradition holds 4. . . “The Fellows of the Royal Societies have had a dining club since 1743.” No. 4,646. “The ‘Times’ military correspondent suggests, we do not know with what authority . . .” “There is generally some drawback to the pleasure to be got out of a garden. . . .” “We have spoken of the large numbers of letters written; their name is legion. The daily outgoing mail of the British Armies in France needs a considerable force to cope with it. It may, at first sight, seem strange that the unlettered portion of the community should put on record such an enormous amount of literature. ” (This is what might be termed in Arizona, “a fair chunk of it.”) It continues :“Their ideas are few, their vocabulary limited, but their letters as the sands of the sea-shore for number, it is not as if there were anything of more than usual interest to say.” (Apparently not). And there, my dear Watson, we have it. I knew that if I searched long enough I The should come upon some clue to this mystery. magnetism of this stupendous vacuity! The sweet reasonableness, the measured tone, the: redly utter undeniability of so much that one might read in this paper ! Prestigious, astounding ! There are no disconcerting jets and out-rushes of thought. The reader is not unpleasantly and suddenly hustled with novelties. No idea is hurled at him with unmannerly impetus. Observe in the last quoted passage the gradual development of the idea of multitude. How tenderly the writer circles about it, from “large” to “legion,” with its scriptural and familiar allusiveness; from “considerable” to “enormous,” and then this stately climax, this old but never outworn or outcast comparison with the number of the sands of the sea-shoremeasuredly refraining from exaggeration from the exaggeration of including such sand as might be uppposed to rest at the bottom or middle of the Neptunian couch, rather than being dumped and disposed round its border. That is really all there is to it. One might learn to do it oneself: ’There is “nothing of more than usual interest.” The problem is to present this at length,, and without startling the reader Others have done it. The “New Statesman” is what might be called a shining (if not rugged) example, in action, incipient, under weigh. Aimed at the generation which read Bennett, Wells, Shaw, Galsworthy, rather than Lord Macaulay this weekly has done, is doing, the “same stunt,” if we by so gutter-snipish and saltimbanquic a phrase may describe anything so deliberate as the on-glide of the successful and lasting “Spectator.” The “New Statesman” is a prime exemplar of the species, leading the sheltered life behind a phalanx of immobile ideas ; leading the sheltered thought behind a phalanx of immobile phrases. This sort of thing cannot fail. Such a mass of printed statements in every issue to which no “normal, right-minded” man can possibly take exception ! Familiar, but all the dearer for that. Ce sont les vieilles chansons. The “ New Statesman ” gives the same sense of security, of static unchanging existence, of a mental reaIm without any volcanoes, of a population in almost strenuous agreement with a norm. It is, perhaps, not the Spectatorial Of this I have no means of judging. It is norm. indubitably a norm of similar or identical species. The gap between Macaulay and Galsworthy is merely a temporal gap. “It is not” let‘ me return once again to the keynote “It is not as if there were anything of more than usual interest to say.”
Readers
and
Writers.
THERE is one excellent rule for all who wish to write excellently about the war : it is to write with restraint. The reason is not at all that the war is not a subject for intense writing. Too much feeling is impossible concerning one of the greatest tragedies that has ever befallen the human race. The reason, however, why feeling must not carry the day in writing about the war is that thousands of men are fighting and dying in it. But what has that to do with it, you ask-unless it be to give an additional reason for writing immoderately about the war? Are we to write pianissimo when our brothers are dying fortissimo ? It is to have no feelings! But wait a golden instant. War is a matter for action; but debate is a matter for words. The occurrence of war. is, therefore, an evidence that the war of words has failed-we need not consider for the moment why our debate with Germany failed-and having failed, it is the business of words, when actions come upon the scene, to don civilian attire, and to leave forcible action to the army. I should like to see our literary polemics become more and more polite, scrupulous, restrained, and icy as the field of action becomes more violent. We writers cannot at the best of times compete with the force of deeds; and when deeds are at their most powerful, the only means of making words effective is to put them in contrast and not in comparison with acts. +** A good many of our writers, however-I say writers in compliment-imagine to demonstrate their patriotism and the intensity of their feelings by the use of Mr. Vivian, what they regard as forcible language. for example, as we saw last week, is under the impression that to refer consistently to the Huns when he means to indicate Germans is to display his patriotism in a forcible fashion. He is satisfied that every time he uses the word Hun he is delivering the Germans a thoughtlessness vigorous blow. And to the same school of and as a senior scholar if not as a master in it, belongs Mr. J. L. Masse, the editor of the “ National Review.” This gentleman, who has been much praised for his “redoubtableness,” has recently written an introduction to a work upon Free Trade; and in the course of it he comments as follows : “When the war reaches its appointed end we may be sure that the Right Hon. Faintheart will join with the Right Hon. Feebleguts” in no matter what. Is it indeed, a matter of any humane concern to what end these names are joined? The point to observe is that Mr. Maxse, in writing in this fashion, is like Mr. Vivian in writing of the Huns, that is, under the impression that he is really writing forcibly and striking a blow for England. May I, however, gently remark upon it that it is rather a blow against England than a blow for England? And may I remark again that such language is in these days bombastic on the pen of a civilian? A writer who should really feel as intensely as the use of these words indicates is plainly a man of action, and not of words at all; and when actions are afoot, he should throw down his pen and take up the sword. . But if he cannot? Then I have to remark that his case is unfortunate, for if he can neither write nor fight, he is reduced to impotence. So, indeed, he is. I venture to say, in short, that neither Mr. Masse, Mr. Vivian, nor any writer of their school actually does or says anything more material about the war than would result from the paroxysms of idiots. In future we should read such words as theirs as indications of apoplectic seizure. *++ Mr. R. B. Kerr objects to my phrase that Mr. Arnold Bennett is unfortunately “limited by a nineteenth century rationalism. ” I assume, he says, that rationalism died with the nineteenth century, whereas, he assures
us, the twentieth century is even more rationalistic than the nineteenth. To be rational and to be rationalistic are, however, two different things. The one is a fact, the other is a theory. Rationalism as a theory implies the sole validity of reasoning as a means to truth. To be rational on the other hand, implies only the use of reason without setting up any theory of its. exclusive validity. I may illustrate the difference by another example There are, we know (and I am glad of it), vegetarians in this country; there are also meat-eaters. Meat-eaters, however, eat vegetables as readily as vegetarians do. What, then, distinguishes vegetarians from meat-eaters? Only the fact that while the latter, like the former, eat vegetables the vegetarians eat nothing else. Now our rational men and rationalists are similarly related, and they can be similarly distinguished A rational man uses his reason or employs reason, together with his other mental faculties, while a rationalist uses or employs reason and nothing else. (At least, he believes he does.) His rationalism is thus not an added and positive quality; it is not the bringing into use or perfection of a faculty hitherto unused or uncultivated it is only, in fact, an exclusive attention to reason at the expense of, and by way of the negation and denial of, the other faculties of the mind. This ought to be as clear as the history of the thought and thinkers of the schools of rationalism. Have they, for instance, been distinguished above merely rational men by their superior reasoning powers? Not at all. Mr. R. B. Kerr himself deplores the fact that so many great reasoners have been otherwise, in his opinion, superstitious and it is no less a fact that I have never met the professed rationalist whose reasoning I could not tear to logical pieces by rational means alone. What, indeed has alone distinguished the great rationalists has not been their reason, but their hostility to every other faculty than reason. In a word, what distinguishes rationalists from rational men is their intellectual monomania mania exhibited in their refusal to employ countenance or recognise any other instrument of knowledge save formal reason. In this sense of the word (the sense in which I used it in my phrase about Mr. Arnold Bennett), I can confidently challenge Mr. Kerr to deny that rationalism went out with the nineteenth century. The twentieth century is, I affirm, more rational, that is to say, more reasonable than the nineteenth century; but it is infinitely less rationalistic. We can say, in fact, that we are too rational nowadays to be rationalistic, and too reasonable to believe in reason done.. The evidence is around us; it is on our bookshelves; it is before our eyes in the present plight of the professed rationalists. What strikes the reasonable observer to-day when he comes across the works of the R.P.A.-of which, by the way, Mr. Arnold Bennett is a Vice-President together with Mr. Eden Philllpotts-is their intellectual old-fashionedness. There they are, still harping upon the single string of reason, while all the rest of the intelligent world is playing upon a harp of many strings A pathos hangs about them, as about the poor little agnostics who still cross-examine Christians concerning the mistakes of Moses. They are passe and it will be a long age, I hope, before their craze comes into unhappy fashion again. The fate of rationalists is always they end in sterility o: in hypocrisy. If they are loyal to their idee fixe of employing nothing but reason in the end they have nothing but their reason to employ; and they become empty of charm, of insight of imagination, of depth; as writers they lose “atmosphere,” as Mr. Bennett has lost atmosphere. If, on the other hand, they secretly indulge in other faculties while professing to remain “rationalists,” they become furtive, casuistic, whimsical, inconsistent ; as writers they lose “form,” as Mr. H. G. Wells has lost form. R. H. c,
Prejudiced.
I CONFESS that I was prejudiced against her at sight. In the circumstances who would not have been? Her mere presence there seemed a clear breach of a mutual promise; for I had told myself quite definitely that 1 would not work with women again after my last experience of them, and my new chief had given me his (signed) word that I was being engaged for the otherwise men’s department, and that I should not be so much as within earshot of an employee You can imagine then how amazed I was when, on my very first morning, I found a girl corning out of the room that was to be mine just as I was going into it. And, not to lessen my annoyance, she was actually looking for me. I was to work with her, she said, if you’ll believe it. This was tragic; but it could‘ only have been a mistake. The directors could not have designed deliberately to let me down in this way. “ Isn’t there some misunderstanding?” I asked, looking round me for help. But the girl must have suspected my scruples, for there was a distinct twinkle in her voice as she replied that there was no need to be upset, she was only staying on to teach me the ropes, and I should be alone in a day or two. I flushed a little, as one whose secret has been discovered by just the person he would have kept it from. But as I could not very well complain of an offer of assistance, there was nothing for it but to follow my guide into the room where a number of men were already at work. Only one of them raised his head as we entered. This I found most disappointing, and I blamed the girl for spoiling my debut Nor was I in the least mollified by the reflection that, of course, it- was no fault of. hers ; fur to be cheated out of the satisfaction of a genuine grievance against her was only to make another grievance of it. In addition, it was humiliating to find that I was not the first woman in the field. I had imagined that my coming to work there would create something of a stir; that for a week, at any rate, it would be the talk of the office. I had almost heard the men discussing me, and coming to the conclusion that By Jove she must be rather different from other girls (And what greater praise could a girl ask for than that?) As it was, I had been forestalled. I was only a habit. In the midst of my tumbling castles one pillar of comfort stood firm. If I was taking her place, the girl must have had notice; she must be leaving. I flattered myself that a man’s work and with men was too much for her. The thought was wonderfully healing, and I even managed to become pitiful on it. Poor girl ! Shc would, no doubt, have to go back to working with women, in which prospect it was certainly very decent of her to be so agreeable with me. I wondered she did not bite my head off, as other girls in her place might have done. Her pleasantness, however, continued throughout the morning, by the end of which I had scarcely realised that it had even begun. I cannot tell you exactly what the work was, for of course-don’t jump-there may be a German looking over your shoulder ; but either it was exceptionally interesting, or doing it in the company of men made it appear so. Of course, it would be still nicer when my companion had gone, and I occupied the prodigious position of sole woman among men; but it was precisely in anticipation of this that I could afford to be generous, and more particularly as I was not sure that the men liked her. I was rather sure, indeed, that they didn’t. She was, I thought, scarcely tactful with them ; she declined to acknowledge the existence of their little jokes, and replied very much to the point when spoken to On the whole in fact, if she cared to come out to lunch with me, I should not greatly object. It was fortunate for it turned out that this was exactly what she wanted to do. Her words were “Just as you like,” and she added, “but most of the places round here are
death-traps, and I thought I might show you the least dangerous.” That was her excuse; but in other words, of course, it was anything for a gossip however as I said, I was prepared to be indulgent Besides I might as well learn something about the office and the men, and so on. To my surprise, my companion was strangely silent, and I believe there would have been no conversation at all if I hadn’t started it myself. I put it down to her depression at leaving, and perhaps to a little jealousy of myself. I feared she might be going to sulk after all. I must try to ,cheer her up. “Have you ever worked with women ?” I began, rather thoughtlessly ; but in the security of happiness it is not unpleasant to remind oneself of less fortunate days. “Oh, yes,” was the reply. “I had three years of them, and-well, I thought I’d try men for a charge.” “How extraordinary I said; “that’s exactly my position. I had three years of them, then I thought I’d try men.’’ We both laughed ; my companion even more heartily than I. ‘‘Women are awful, aren’t they?” I said, settling well down to the subject over bovril and biscuits, and still forgetting that my unfortunate predecessor was probably doomed to return to them. “Men may have their fautls and, of course, men at work are very different from men at play. I’ve come prepared for that.’’ “Oh,” began my companion, protestingly, but I saved her the trouble of continuing; for I divined what she was about to say. “ No,” I broke in,. “ I’m not being unfair. I haven’t a bad opinion of men, far from it. But I know that in a man’s office you cannot expect the door always to be opened for you, and, of course, you must pretend not to hear some of the words used, and I don’t doubt that I shall be shouted at to hurry up. I should not be surprised if they usually forget to say thank you.'' “What a dreadful picture !” the girl laughed. “But I think you will find they say thank you; I should certainly insist on it if they didn’t.” No wonder, I thought to myself, they were getting rid of her if she was so easily censorious. Aloud, I said : “Oh, I don’t mind those little faults. The main thing is, men are not petty. They’re reasonable: they’re fair : they play the game. It’s public-school spirit, that’s what I mean-cricket, you know-esprit de corps. Men don’t hit below the belt. They don’t revel in malicious little personalities. You couldn’t imagine a man being jealous of another, could you? Men are not pleasant to your face and spiteful behind your back. You do know where you are with them.” I paused for the approval which hesitated in coming. “Surely,” said the girl, “your list is not complete. You expected more of men than just that? For example you haven’t given them the credit of not chattering by the yard. Then don’t you know that a man never lets you down? Don’t you expect men to be absolutely straight? And haven’t you learned that men don”t sulk?” I began to beashamed of my parsimonious praise of them. “Oh, yes,” I said, “of course.” “And you surely don’t expect them to be vain like women?” “Of course I don’t,’’ I said. “But there are some things one takes for granted.’’ I felt I had scored there, but my cornpanion went on. And you never mentioned men’s loyalty to their chief But perhaps that was one of the things you took for granted.” “It certainly was,” I replied, with some heat. “I know no man who could behave as the girls I worked with did. Our head used to be at her wits’ end with one worry and another. But the girls thought she daren’t get rid of them, and they treated her shamefully Servile one moment, insolent the next. And the things they insinuated on a hatpin about her were even worse than the things they openly said.” “And, of course,” said my companion, “you knew men wouldn’t join in if they heard anyone outside the office running down their chief. You knew they were incapable of
boosting up theinselves at his expense, hinting that they could do his work better themselves, and so on.” “Oh, rather,” I said. “Of course, I did.” “That’s as well,” said the girl. “I really began to feel you didn’t appreciate men. I thought you were prejudiced “Indeed not,” I interrupted. “No such thing. Why, I’ve spent hours imagining how jolly if would be working all alone with men. I love the office already. I could stay till midnight.” “Oh,” laughed the girl, “I shouldn’t begin working overtime till you have to; you won’t be overpaid, I can tell you.” “I don’t mind about the money,” I said. “Why, I’m so happy, I feel I ought to pay them for having me.” My companion laughed again, and began putting on her gloves. “I suppose we ought to get back,” she said. “And I’m sure you’re longing to.” I was all eagerness. As we walked along, it struck me that after all I had been rather selfish. Here was I enthusing over the joys of working with men, when she, poor girl, was about to go back to the horrors of working with women. Better never to have come, than to have come and have to go. I ought to show her some sympathy “Are you really leaving?” I asked. “Yes, at the end of the week.” “I’m most awfully sorry,’,’ I said. “Really, I am. It is hard luck. Will you have to go back to women?” “I suppose so,’’ said the girl. I groaned “How awful! And after working with men, you’ll hate it all the more.” “Oh, well,’’ said the girl, “after working with men, I’m ready for anything !” H. M. T. Patchouli Town By Leopold Spero. (Gijon).
ON a harbour’s arm at the edge of the Cantabrian foothills you will find Patchouli Town. Across the bay rises a frowning brow Of red cliff and here will be Musel Jetty-this year, nest year, “Manana. ” They have been dropping concrete blocks into the water there for fifteen years, and will be perhaps another fifteen before they are done. And sometimes in a rough winter season the big steam crane that. has borne the chief share in the work tumbles sulkily over on its side. And that sort of thing is not adjusted in a hurry. lt is, indeed, little use being in a hurry in Patchouli Town But when the work is finished, “ay, senor !” what a work it will be ! There is always deep water at Musel, though the tide is your master over across the bay. So you may land now and pick your way through a maze of broken concrete and stray tags to where the little tram runs citywards along the shore past bare-legged lads arid graceful Goya lasses who bring the paternal lunch-tin to Musel. In the tram is a young shipping clerk and two old market dames. On his handkerchief, as he takes it out and waves it before you is the faint, sickly odour of Patchouli. And when the car lurches forward over uneven metals, jerking you atop of the two old ladies, you smell Patchouli again. Now the tram comes into a suburb of muddy roads and houses flaunting their neglect before you. And here is a team of oxen, drawing a pre-historic cart, with splendid, dirty sheepskins piled over their meek foreheads to keep the flies away. And then the town itself ; sunny, neglected houses, with cracked walls and broken windows and mouldering paint coquettishly pink and blue. “Why,” think you, “this is a shabby genteel place : and therefore wears Patchouli. ” But Gijon is wealthy and substantial, scored with factory chimneys. Many ships unload on its untidy, quay,, English, French and Danes and lumbering old Spanish barques. And in the High Street, the Calle Corrida, you shall see in the afternoon not only the cafes full with prosperously idle business men, but in the midst of them all taking the most notable and
distinguished stretch of the pavement, the young sparks outside their yacht club. There they sit, the flash young men, their peaked caps fixed at jaunty nautical angles, inscrutably Alfonso-like, and to a man Patchouli-scented. It is an obsession, this scent of theirs. Probably his Bourbon Self, when he was here a week or two since, with his loose jaw and ‘that splendid grin of his, exhaled the odour of Patchouli as he smiled through the long regatta. And here it is ‘‘snob” to be an Alfonso, to dash about in a shiny limousine and have your clothes cut in London. Such are the gods of Patchouli Town. But leave the Calle Corrida for a while, and spend an hour or two among the ships unloading, or make the best of the bad elegiacs on the statue of King Pelayo, who drove the Arabs back to Mauretania so ’long ago that it seems ill to have kept him waiting till 1891 for his well-earned memorial. Or in the crowded fish market, if you will, while late afternoon brings the day’s catch in from the sea to the little stone pier, watch the sturdy, barefoot women swing great porpoise-like creatures into the willing scales, and cry out their merits, arguing shrilly with the buyers who stand around. You would not think Patchouli could le smelt in a fish market. Yet so it is. The aged, slovenly carabinero wears it, and it drives you back at last to the Corrida. And what a change ! It is as though since you Save been away an army of pixies had invaded the street and lined up the best half mile of it with garden chairs under the lime trees. The place is packed. All the garden seats are taken at ten centavos a time, the cafes are filled, and on pavement and in the roadway pours such a press of promenaders that the jolting tram is held up, and rings its bell again and yet again before it may proceed. Here are London and Paris toilettes you may be sure. A few of the women wear fashionable hats, but the most of them keep to the graceful folds of the black mantilla. The young yachtsmen are still lounging at their ease, which nothing disturbs but the advent of the waiter with fresh drinks. The fisher folk have no part in this parade. They are sitting outside their cottages, taking the pleasant evening air and complaining of the cost of living. These promenaders are the commercial community, full family parties, scampering children with their nurses, and youths, smartened up and very gallant, twirling their hats to the pretty, blackeyed girls who walk in pairs till nine o’clock, which is dinner-time. Then they leave the street and go home, leaving a trail of Patchouli behind them. You shall see them all again after dinner, at their second parade in Begonia Avenue, where the bandstand is. Even those who are at the music-hall or picture palace must not forget the Begonia, where appointments are made and little tete-a-tetes proceed under careful chaperonage The performance, says the programme, will stop for fifteen minutes at Begonia time : for this is a high social function. But it ends, and bed-time comes at length for the many Not for those late revellers who still linger in the half-empty cafes whose songs you will hear among the shadowy squares and the deep empurpled streets, where they walk unsteady ways to haunts whither we shall not follow them. Nor for this foolish lover, who leans against the wall of his sweetheart’s home while she looks out from the conservatory window on the floor above, encouraging him in the progress of a perfectIy well-conducted Spanish romance. We may not enter her house even in the daytime, until they are formally betrothed But he may talk to her from the street at any of the small hours, so long as the height of a floor separates them. The yellow moon is smiling at his sprawling figure no and as you pass him you catch the inane odour of Patchouli,
M. Seguin’s Coat. To M. Pierre Gringoire, Lyrio Poet in Paris. (Translated by KATHERINE MANSFIELDfrom the French Of ALPHONSE DAUDET.) YOU will always be the same, my poor Gringoire. What! you have been offered a post on a good Paris newspaper and you have the nerve to refuse. . . . But look at yourself, you unhappy boy. Look at this torn tunic, this ruined cloak, this thin face that cries hunger. It’s to this, then, that your passim for pretty rhyming has led you. And that is what has come of your ten years loyal service as page to King Apollo. . . . Aren’t you ashamed at the end? Accept the post, idiot ! Take it ! Lovely silver money Will be yours, you will have your place laid for you at Brebant’s, and you will be able to show yourself on first nights with a new feather in your cap. . . . No? You don’t want to? You pretend that you will live your free life, in your own way for ever . . . Very well, listen a moment to the story of M. Seguin’s goat. You will see what is to be gained by the longing for freedom. M. Seguin had never had any luck with his goats. He lost them all in the same way : one fine morning they broke their cord, went off to the mountain, and up there the wolf ate them. Not the caresses of their master, not the fear of the wolf, nothing could keep them back. They were, it seemed, independent goats, who longed at all costs for the open air and for liberty . Good M. Seguin, who understood nothing of the character of his animals, was in despair. He said : “It is the end; goats feel bored when they are with me, I shall never be able to keep one.” Nevertheless he did not lose heart, and, after having lost six goats in the same way, he bought a seventh; but this time he took care to buy quite a young one who would grow up more assustomed to living with him. Ah‘! Gringoire how pretty that little goat of‘ M. Seguin’s was! How graceful she was with her soft eyes, her little tuft of beard, her black gleaming sabots her striped horns and her long white hair which served her for a mantle. She was almost as charming as Esmeralda’s kid, you remember, Gringoire? and docile, affectionate, letting herself be milked without moving, without putting her foot in the pail. A love of a little goat. . . . Behind M. Seguin’s house there was a paddock surrounded by bushes of may. It was there that he put his new pupil. He tied her to a stake in the most charming part of the field, leaving her plenty of cord, and from time to time he came to see if all was well. The goat felt very happy and munched the grass with such good heart that M. Seguin was ravished. “At last,” thought the poor man, “I have found one who is not going to feel bored.” But M. Seguin deceived himself, the goat did become bored. One day she said, looking at the mountain : “HOW happy one might be up there. What joy to gambol in the heath without this hateful cord scraping one’s neck. . . . Munching in a paddock is quite good enough for an ass or cow . . . But goats-they must have space. ” From that moment the grass seemed to her to have lost its taste. She grew thin, she seldom gave any milk. It was sad to see: her dragging at her cord all day long, her head turned to the mountain side, her nostrils open, crying “ Me . . .” piteously. , M. Seguin saw very well that there was something wrong with his goat, but he could not think what it
was . . . One morning, as he tried to milk her, the goat turned round and said to him in her own language: “Listen, M. Seguin, I am tired of being here; let me go up on to the mountain. “Ah, good God . . . She, too,” cried M. Seguin, stupified, and down fell the milk pail; then, sitting on the grass by the side of his goat : “Really, Blanquette, you wish to leave me?” And Blanquette replied : “Yes, M. Seguin.” “Is it because you have not enough to eat here?” “Oh, no ! Monsieur Seguin.” “Perhaps your cord is too short; would you like me to lengthen it?” “It is not worth while, Monsieur Seguin.” “Then what is the matter? What do you want?” “I want to go up on to the mountain, Monsieur Seguin. ” “Rut, unhappy one, you do not know- that there is a wolf on the mountain. What would you do when he came along?” “I should give him some blows with my horns, Monsieur Seguin. ” “Little the wolf cares for your horns. He has eaten goats of mine that had far better ones . . You remember Renaude, poor old Renaude who was here last year? . A queen of a goat, strong and fierce as a he-goat. She fought with the wolf all through one night . . l and then, in the morning he ate her Alas Poor Renaude. . But that is nothing, Mom sieur Seguin, let me go up on to the mountain.” “Gracious heaven . . .” said M. Seguin; “but what is it then that happens to all my goats? Here is another that the wolf will eat for me . . But. no . . I shall save you from yourself, wicked one; and in case you should break from your cord, I am going to shut you up in the stable and there you shall stay.” Thereupon M. Seguin pushed his goat into the pitchy dark stable, and double locked the door. Unfortunately he forgot about the window, and he had hardly turned his back’ before the. little one was gone. . . . You laugh, Gringoire? Well ! I can believe it ; you are on the side of the goats, aren’t you, and against that good M. Seguin? . . We shall see if you laugh in a moment. When the white goat arrived on the mountain everyone was enchanted. The old pine trees had never seen anything as pretty. She was received like a little queen. The chestnut trees bowed themselves down to the ground to caress her with the tips of their branches. The yellow gorse opened upon her way and smelled as fine as it could, She was feted by all the mountain. You can imagine, Gringoire, that our goat was happy. No more cord, no more stake . . . nothing to stop her from gambolling, from nibbling as she pleased . . . And there was grass if you like ! Up to the horns, my dear . . . And what grass! Tasty, fine, delicate, made of a thousand plants . . . It was a very different thing to the paddock. And the flowers, too. . . Big blue campanulas, orange lady flowers with long cups, a whole forest of wild flowers oozing with delicious honey. . . . The white goat, half drunk, rolled about with her legs in the air, rolled over and over down the slopes, pell-mell with the fallen leaves and the chestnuts. Then, all of a sudden, she sprang up again. Hop! Off she went, her head forward, through the brushwood and the box, presently on top of a little peak, then at the bottom of a ravine, now up, now down, everywhere. . . . One would have said that there were ten of M. Seguin’s goats on the mountain. And she wasn’t frightened of anything, La Blanquette. Those huge torrents that fling spray and foam into the air as they pass, she cleared at one bound. Then, all hung with drops she lay ‘down on some flat rock
and let the sun dry her . . . Once, going to the edge of a terrace, a sprig of broom between her teeth, she saw below, far below in the plain, M. Seguin’s house, with the paddock behind it. And that made her laugh till the tears came. “How tiny it is,” said she. “How did I ever put up with it.” Poor little creature! Perched up so high, she thought herself at least as big as the world. . . . Altogether that was a wonderful day for M. Seguin’s goat. In the middle of it, running from right to left, she fell in with a troop of chamois, who were just about to scrunch up a wild grape-vine. Our little She runaway in her white frock made a sensation. was given the best place on the grape-vine, and all the gentlemen were very gallant. . . It is even said this between ourselves, Gringoire-that one young chamois with a black coat had the good fortune to please Blanquette. The two lovers lost themselves for an hour or two in the woods, and if you want to know what they talked about, go and ask the babbling streams that run unseen through the mosses. All of a sudden the wind freshened. The mountain became violent; it was evening. “Already!:’ said the little goat; and she stopped, very surprised. Down below, the fields were drowned in the heavy mist. M. Seguin’s paddock disappeared under it, and of the tiny house there was nothing to be She heard seen but the roof and a feather of smoke the bells of the returning; flocks, and she felt sad to her heart. A hawk, on his way home, brushed her with his wings as he passed. She shivered . . . then there came a howling from the mountain :“HOU ! Hou !” She thought of the wolf; all day the foolish little creature had forgotten him. . . . At the same moment a horn sounded far away in the valley. It was that good M. Seguin making a last effort. “Hou ! Hou !” went the wolf “Return ? return !” cried the horn. Blanquette longed to return; but then she recalled the stake, the rope, the hedge round the field, and she felt that now she would not be able to bear that life, and that it was better to stay as she was . . . The horn sounded no longer . . . Behind her she heard the leaves rustle. She turned round and she saw in the shadow two short ears, alert, and two glistening eyes. It-was the wolf. Enormous, motionless, sitting on his tail he was there staring at the little white goat and licking his chops. As he was quite certain he was going to eat her, the wolf didn’t hurry; only, when she turned round, he began to laugh wickedly. “Ha ! Ha ! it’s M. Seguin’s little goat” ; and he passed his huge red tongue over his slobbering lip. Blanquette knew that she was lost. . . . Just for one instant, recalling the story of old Renaude, who had fought all night long and been eaten next morning, she said to herself that perhaps it was better to let the wolf eat her straightway; then, changing her mind, she put herself on guard, her head low, her horns forward like the brave goat of M. Seguin that she was. . . Not that she hoped to kill the wolf--goats do not kill wolves-but only to see if she could keep up as long as Renaude had done. . . . Then the monster advanced and the little horns began to dance. Ah, the brave little goat, what a good heart she put into it. More than ten times-it is the truth I’m telling, Gringoire-she forced the wolf to fall back to recover his breath. And during those moments of truce the greedy one snatched once more a blade of her darling grass; then she returned to the fight, her mouth full. . . . That went on all night. From time to time M. Seguin’s goat looked up at the stars dancing in the clear sky, and said to herself :-“Oh, if only I can keep it up until dawn. . .
One after another the stars went out. Blanquette redoubled the blows with her horns, and the wolf the cuts with his teeth. . . . A faint light showed on the horizon. From a farm there sounded the crowing of a cock. “At last said the poor creature, who was only waiting for the daylight that she might die, and she lay down on the ground in her lovely white fur, an spotted with blood. . . . And the wolf jumped on to the little goat and ate heir up. , Farewell, Gringoire. The story that you have heard is not one of my own. If ever you come to Provence, our people will talk to you often of M. Seguin’s goat, who fought the wolf all night long and was eaten up in the morning. You understand me well, Gringoire. In the morning the wolf ate her up.
Reviews.
Lasting Peace through the Federation of Europe, and the State of War. By Jean Jacques Rousseau. Translated by C. E. Vaughan. (Constable. 2s. net.) Rousseau’s contribution to the peace of the world is an acquisition to the literature of pacifism. It is brief, and it is brilliantly written; the whoIe case, pro and con, is convincing, and we are sure as Rousseau intended that we should be, that the federation of Europe is the only solution of the difficulties of Europe, and that the solution is an impossible one. Rousseau’s free transcription of the scheme of the Marquis de Saint-Pierre owed very little to history : he tells us, for example, that “the Greeks had their Amphictyons and the Etruscans their Lucumonies; the Latins had their feriae and the Gauls their city-leagues; the Achaean League gave lustre to the death-struggles of Greece. ” But he does not tell us; as Hamilton and Madison tell us in “The Federalist,” that “the more powerful members [of the Amphictyonic Council], instead of being kept in awe and subordination, tyrannised successively over the rest. Athens, as we learn from Demosthenes, was the arbiter of Greece seventy-three years. The Lacedaemonians next governed it twentynine years; at a subsequent period after the battle of Leuctra, the Thebans had their turn of domination.” Rousseau certainly tells us that “not one of these ancient Federations was built up with half the wisdom which has gone to the making of the Germanic Body, of the Helvetic League, or of the States-General” ; but the Seven Years’ War began a few months after he wrote, ’and the Germanic Body was rent asunder. Wisdom should be justified of all her children. But Rousseau himself was frankly sceptical of the Federation of Europe; the scheme was undeniably beneficent, he said-a dubious proposition when we think of the possibilities of tyranny in the League. The scheme was also, in his opinion, perfectly practicable; an equally dubious proposition when we reflect that there was no scheme, but only a set of propositions. Hamilton, Jay and Madison recommended to the suffrage of citizens of New York a perfectly detailed system of Government, wilth powers defined, and methods of election determined. But-for the far more complex Federation of Europe, Rousseau offered nothing but five proposals, whose beneficence is nullified by their inherent impossibility. The first is that “the contracting sovereigns shall enter into a perpetual . and irrevocable alliance. ” These ‘perpetual and irrevocable alliances” belong only to the world of dreams; they are mere obiter dicta, they bind no one, not even those who utter them. For no man has the right to sign away his successor’s right of association; and if he does so his successor is not morally bound to respect a treaty that he is not called upon to ratify. ’ How many English people, for example, feel themselves A
bound by the language of the Declaration of Right? Does Mr. Wells, for example, bother about the fact that his right to Republican government was signed away in 1688? Why, then, should the successor of any of the sovereigns of Europe feel himself bound by a treaty that he did not sign, and will not be called upon to ratify? Who but a democrat would ever think of giving the sovereigns of Europe the power of putting ’The first condition is an impossible Europe in mortmain? one; the second, by which the presidency of the Diet passes, at equal intervals, from one to another of the contracting parties, will fail because it will not correspond to political fact. We have heard of guinea-pig directors” and ‘‘political bed-warmers” (the fatter phrase is Disraeli’s), of tame Popes and puppet Presidents ; and the realities of politics would only be disguised by the automatic succession of Presidents The third clause stereotypes, not only the existing boundaries of the contracting Powers, but also their forms of government and method of succession under such a scheme it would be the duty of the “coalised kings” to attack the Russian revolutionaries, and to prevent the probable insurrections in Austria “conditions and Germany. The fourth article prescribes the under which any Confederate who may break this Treaty shall be put to the ban of Europe, and proscribed as a public enemy”‘; within a few months of this being written, Frederick the Great was put to the Ban of the Reich, total anathema and cutting-off from fire and water, as Carlyle phrases it; “but in none of these, in Ban as little as any, did it come to practical result at all, or acquire the least title to be remembered at this day.” The fifth clause agrees that all the Confederates shall arm and take the offensive against any State put to the Ban of Europe; “Reich’sDiet,” says Carlyle, “perfected its Vote; had it quite thorough ; and sanctioned by the Kaiser’s Majesty, January 29: arming to be a triplum (triple contingent required of you this time), with Romish--months (Roman monata) of cash contributions from all and sundry (rigorously gathered, I should imagine, where Austria has power), so many as will cover the expense. Army to be got on actual foot hastily, instantly if possible : an ‘eilende Reich-Executions-Armee,’ so it ran, but the word ‘eilende’ (speedy) had a mischance in printing, and was struck off into ‘elende’ (contemptibly wretched) so that on all Market. Squares and Public Places of poor Deutschland you read flaming placards summoning out, not a speedy or immediate, but ‘a miserable Reich’s Execution Army!” a word which, we need not say, was laughed at by the unfeeling part of the public. ” History has recorded what it thinks of Rousseau’s idea; but Rousseau himself admits as much. The real interest of the nations, he says, will always be for peace, and for Federation as the sole means of securing peace. But their apparent interest will always lie the other way. Indeed, as the original scheme for the Federation of Europe was prepared by Henry IV (Henri of Navarre), it is easy to understand Rousseau’s conclusion. That war to end war was never begun, an assassin struck down the leader; and Rousseau concludes : “No Federation could ever be established except by a revolution. That being so, which of us would dare to sap whether the League of Europe is a thing more to be desired or feared? It would perhaps do more harm in a moment than it would guard against for ages.’’ The scheme for the Federation of Europe, then, is only an exercise in the science of hypothetics, and there we may leave it. Recalled to Life. Edited by Lord Charnwood (Bale Sons & Danielsson. 2s. net.) We have all heard casually of the wonderful things that have been done for our wounded soldiers and of the still more wonderful things that are projected; but the difficulty has been to sustain an interest in the
absence of any more accessible source of knowledge than an occasional article in the papers. That difficulty has now been removed by the publication of this, the first, number of a periodical publication issued under the auspices of the War Office, the Pensions Ministry, and the Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem Joint War Committee. We may remark that, with true official reticence, we are only told that the journal will be issued periodically, and are left to guess whether it will be monthly, quarterly, or annually. The journal itself is an interesting production beautifully illustrated, which seems to aim at giving the maximum amount of information in the clearest manner. Sir Alfred Keogh contributes an article on “Treatment of the Disabled,” which,. as a general introduction to the whole subject, could not be bettered. Its six sections are : “General Organisation ” “Pension Arrangements, ” “A Modern Curative Workshop,” “After-care of the Blind,” “Problem of the Deaf,” and “Provision of Artificial Limbs. ” Sir Robert ‘Jones’ essay on “Orthopaedic Surgery” is naturally of more value to surgeons in its technical advice, but it well sustains the spirit of hope that inspires this volume; he makes it seem almost impossible that any man can be hopelessly disabled. Captain Basil Williams’ essay on “Pensions” has an interesting historical introduction, and deals in detail with the new Royal Warrant. There are “Miscellanea” dealing with Roehampton, Golders Green, the Star and Garter, Erskine House, and Canadian Suggestions, and a most compendious article dealing with “Work in France and Germany,’? which is a report prepared by the Intelligence Department of the Local Government Board. The whole volume is a most valuable summary of information, and should make it easy for the public to assist the disabled to find their way back to civil life with their disability mitigated and their efficiency increased. If the scheme works half as well as it reads, the most skilled workmen in the country will be the disabled soldiers and sailors who have accepted the offer of re-education Survival of Jesus: A Priest’s Study in Divine Telepathy. By John Huntly Skrine, D.D. (Constable 5s. net.) The difficulty that has always beset Christians, that of reconciling their experience with their dogma, is well on the way to solution in this book, “Quicunque vult” must either be understood or discarded; and if it is most often discarded, the reason is that few people know of. any mode of operation by which the Divine Mystery could be continuously revealed. Christian mysticism is still largely in what we may call the “catastrophic stage” ; its varieties of religious experience are still limited to, miraculous apparitions, sudden conversions, ecstatic trance states. But the other side of Christ’s teaching, the promises of constancy of the Comforter which should abide with us for ever, the “Lo, I am with you always the “I am in my Father, and He in me, and I in you,” all this range of Christian experience tends to be ignored, or to be accepted not as experience but as dogma, for lack of knowledge of a comparable (perhaps even the actual) mode of continuous operation. The phenomenon of telepathy, in the opinion of Dr. Skrine, supplies just that mode; and the accumulating evidence of the survival of human personality of which Dr. Skrine gives us no examples and is far less critical than is the Society for Psychical Research enables him to argue that Christian experience is not of the risen Christ so much as of the surviving Jesus; that is to say, that the Christ inherent in the personality of Jesus is still inherent in that personality. “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” The thought of the man Jesus embodying the Holy Spirit is still operative in the world; that thought may be transferred to us directly in personal experience, or indirectly through The
the communal experience of the Church, but it abides for ever awaiting only our recognition of it to fill us with new life. Dr. Skrine is severe on the language of the Athanasian Creed; denies that the Manhood of Christ is a real thing; asserts that we can only know, and onIy want or need to know, the man Jesus. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Dr. Skrine argues that it is possible to see the man Jesus even as St. Paul saw him; indeed, he comes nigh to asserting that all seeing is extra-physical, that all reality is mental, that matter itself is no more than a series of states of consciousness ; in short, that the philosophy of Idealism, supported as it’ is by modern physics, and reinforced by psychical research, may give birth to a new theology which will make dogma intelligible and experience credible. of Discovery. By Bertram Smith. (Constable. 4s. 6d. net.) Mr, Bertram Smith’s reminiscences of his boyhood . are a very welcome diversion. The literature of childhood is usually too introspective or too outrageously barbarous or farcical; but Mr. Smith has preserved the right feeling that it is the discovery, and not the thing discovered, that really matters to healthy children. His family seem to have been a glorious collection of “limbs of Satan,” with only one smallsister to preserve the general sanity; they made what is probably the finest discovery for healthy boys, that the old gentleman who lived next door had a fiery temper. Whenever more illegitimate diversion failed them, they could always fall back upon their inquiries into the psychology of choler, illustrated by actual experiments. But their interests ranged widely, from weapons of offence, such as pea-shooters and squirts, to secret habitations above or below ground, from playing about with pulleys and string telephones to inventing secret languages. Their most sustained effort seems to have been in correspondence for weeks they answered every advertisement they could find that offered a “sample sent on application,” and lumbered themselves with quite useless but nevertheless admirable commodities. Their delight in abnormal weather was only equalled by their skill in inventing abnormal means of amusing themselves; one can imagine their becoming so enamoured of the sport of fishing up with a hook old lumber from a piece of waste ground that they flung their own possessions there for the pleasure of fishing them up again. Nor was this their onIy angling sport ; failing anything else, they fished for the hens belonging to the old gentleman next door with pieces of bread tied to a string. They had their spells of literary enthusiasm when all of them were authors and none of them were readers; they .had their “secrets,” too, and their ingenious exercises of bad temper. But on the whole it must have been better to have been a child with them than an adult in the same house or neighbourhood their ingenuity must have been trying to those who had at fast discovered the necessity of order in the household. What can you do with children who collect all the mirrors in the house, and so place them up the staircases that the one on the third floor can ‘ see his brother making faces at him in the pantry; what can you do with such children but laugh, and declare that never, never, never did you do such things when you were a boy? Poland a Geographical Entity. By W. Nalkowski With a Preface by James Fairgrieve, M.A., F.R.G.S. (Published for the Polish Information Committee by Allen & Unwin. 6d. net.) This is the first of a series of pamphlets which will be published to give reliable and authoritative information concerning Polish National life. As its title implies, it is mainly a geographical study, brilliantly confusing in its conclusions. For the author not only proves that the character of the people is determined by their geographical situation, that just as their as Days
countryis a passage land between West and East, so are the people transitional in culture, but he also proves that Poland is an Independent Geographical Unit. East is East, and West is West, and because the twain meet in Poland, the fact apparently distinguishes her from both East and West, and determines her right to be a self-governing State. But if the State of Poland is practically indefensible because it has no natural boundaries (as the author alleges), it follows on the same reasoning that the people cannot be self-governing; if they do everything by enthusiasm, and nothing by system as Napoleon said, and the author quotes with approval, the most careful demarcation of frontiers will not convert the people into a political unit.
Pastiche.
THY SONG IS Like A LEMON Tree Thy song is like a lemon tree, Lyon ly ! the golden air ! Art thou not of Gascony? It burgeoneth so merrily, And of blossom is not bare : And it chaunteth, lyon ly, Lyon ly, et lou lou laire. Thy lay is like the flying swan: Ly, lon lou, l’estrangere Thou art fair to look upon! Where might man thy singing con, So to kill his every care? Lyon ly, et lou lou lou, Lyon ly, et lou lou laire. Thy song soundeth right hardily: Lyon ly! the lovely fair! And thou lookest scornfully. Art thou not of Gascony? Certes not of other-where! Well, farewell-et lyon ly Lyon ly, et lou lou laire. RUTH PITTER STORIES AND SONGS. ‘He came unsteadily through the evening haze across the unmown lawn, like a ship adrift from its mooring, and berthed up beside the orderly officer and the O.C. detachment. He was very drunk. ‘‘ Good-evenin’, lootenant,” said he. ‘( Good-evening,” said the orderly officer. I‘ I want you gentlemen,’’ said the wanderer, “to try my cigarettes-the best cigarettes you ever seen. ” He fished with a shaky hand in his side pocket, and produced two limp rags of rolled tobacco. “Wait while I light ’em for ye,” he said. But that would have meant waiting a long time, so the cigarettes were lit by sober fingers. , ‘‘ Lend me a pencil, lootenant,” said the wanderer, ‘( ’cos I guess’ I’m in charge here and I gotter put names down.” He waved a board pasted over with a sheet of paper. I‘ You’ll gimme this pencil?” he asked, making frantic dabs with it at the board, but never striking home. “You may keep it,” said the orderly officer. “Now, I’m going to tell you about this yer Veemy scrap,” said the stranger. He wobbled for a moment in the half-light like some comic shape of a postprandial nightmare. “ Songs and stories,” said he, “ that’s my motto. Stories and songs. You’ll let me tell you ’bout the Veemy scrap?” “ Certainly,” said the orderly officer. “ It was like this,” said the stranger from overseas. But it could not have been like that, because the stranger collapsed limply into a chair, with none of the swing of victory in his movements. After a while however, he raise? his head and took up his gesticulating talk where he had left it. “ It was over the top,” he said, “and the best of luck. I was there, keepin’ the line straight. There was an officer with me. He knew me. I gotter bad character, so he knew me all right. What I mean is I gotter bad character, and I gotter good character.” The stranger paused to leave the paradox time to soak in ‘‘ ‘ I’m here,’ I says to the officer. Finney, I am.
...
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You know me.’ You see, I had to tell him I was there, because he needed me. He was a good officer. He had grit, right enough. But he hadn’t no brains. I says to him, ‘You’re all right,’ I says, ‘but you wanter leave this to me.’ You see, I gotter good character, and I gotter bud character. ” The stranger puffed furiously at his cigarette, which had gone out. When he discovered this treachery on the part of an inanimate object, he threw it aside in disgust. “ It was a cinch,” he continued, (‘ was that Veemy scrap. Over the top, and me wavin’ them into line. ’Cos the officer was gone. Sure, he didn’t last long. And when I saw him go, ‘ You’re all right,’ I says, ‘ but you ain’t got the brains.’ And I dives into his toonic and fishes out his papers. You see, I gotter bad character. They’re afraid of me. Anyways the little ones are. Biff ! Bang! ! That’s the way they go when they sass me. Of course, there’s the big ones. Sometimes a feller can’t do nothing to the big ones, ’less he sinks a monkey wrench into their nuts. That’s one way. Sinkin’ a monkey wrench into their nuts. “ Where was I at, gents? Sure, I was tellin’ about this yer Veemy Ridge scrap. But first I wanter tell you that I gotter bad character here, but in France I gotter good character. It was this way. We had to be at a place by twelve at night. Half-past eleven, the sergeant gives the order and the platoon lays down. Tired as dogs, they was. So I goes up to the officer, and I says, ‘ Looky here,’ I says. Mind, I says it respectful. An officer’s an officer. He’s got the uniform and he’s got the aut’ority. ‘’Looky here,’ says I, ‘we getter be at that place by twelve. Half-past twelve, the Germans’ll begin shelling, and then it’s the long trail for us if we ain’t dug in. See? Now, them sons of mules is lying down along the road.’ So he says how the sergeant told them to lay down, ‘cos they couldn’t go no more. ‘ Sergeant ?’ said I. ‘ Let me talk to the sergeant. You gotter be there at that place by twelve,’ said I, ‘and your platoon can’t do no lying down at half-past eleven. You got the aut’ority,’ I says to him, ‘ but you ain’t got the brains.’ So I goes up to the sergeant, and I tells him that platoon has gotter git up. ‘They’re tired as dogs,’ says he. ‘ And who’re you, any way?’ So out comes my revolver, and I shoots one right past his ear. And that platoon gits up at the double.” Did all this happen at the Veemy Ridge scrap?’’ asked the orderly officer. Aw shucks!” said the stranger from overseas. “ Wait till I. tell you.” He rose from the seat, and waved his arms to and fro as one inspired. ‘‘ Songs and stories,” he moaned-“ stories and songs I ” And with that he collapsed gently all over the lawn, the piece of board still clutched in his hand. “I’m going to turn in,” said the orderly officer. I’d like to have heard what really did happen at the Veemy Ridge scrap,” said the O.C. detachment. ‘‘ Well, you can do that at any time within the next fortnight,” said the orderly officer; “All‘ you’ve got to do is to pay a visit to the clink.” L. S. LETTERS TU THE EDITOR.
poetic beauty? ‘I Filled with perishing dreams and with wrecks of forgotten delirium.” Is not this rather poetical prose than pure prose such as Matthew Arnold styled “ prose of the centre,” and of which he took Dryden as the exemplar? J. A. M. A. *+* THE STOCKHOLM CONFERENCE Sir,-In “Notes of the Week for August 23 you argue: “And we have only to imagine what our attitude towards it would be if, instead of finding it in our laps and needing no effort to seize it, the chance had been dangled before us and then withdrawn by the Kaiser’s refusal of passports to German Socialists.” As, I see it, the essence of the argument against our Socialists participating in the Stockholm Conference is the very fact you have stated-i.e., that the Kaiser (or his Government) are permitting and perhaps encouraging the German Socialists to attend the Conference. It is this fact that has raised the suspicion of so many people to the belief that it is a trap engineered by the German Government. Naturally, if the German Government refused passports to their Socialists, opinion would swing round in favour of the Conference on the ground that what was bad for the German Government should prove good for world democracy. A. C. ALLMAN. [Our correspondent assumes that the Kaiser (or his Government) would be right in their calculations-for the first time!--Ed. N.A.] Memoranda, (From last week’s New AGE.) The purpose of the Stockholm Conference is to declare a new kind of war upon the Prussian Government. How cunningly the Press is diverting the Labour movement from its proper to its improper sphere, and from its strength to its weakness. The conversion of a passive people into an active democracy is at all times slow. To the very moment of its collapse the Prussian State will appear to be strong and solid; for any sign of weakness mould be the end itself. . The issue is between the democratisation of Germany and the militarisation of the whole world. We may strip Germany territorially, we may bind her with green withies of tariffs, but unless we cut off her Prussian hair Samson will be up and at the world again. , Either Germany becomes democratised, or the world has lost the war. Be intolerant of dependence upon the goodwill of others, and there is only one practical conclusion : they must subject you or you must subject them. The victory of the Allies is indispensable to the continuance of democracy, and the continuance of democarcy is the condition of the fulfilment of the Labour programme. We invite Mr. Lloyd George to assure us that the victory of the Allies is not only the defeat of Labour’s militarist enemies but the victory of Labour’s friends.“Notes of the Week.” There are in England perhaps other country, a great number of thinking, without any constructive process of their own, manage to to be thought upon any given EZRA POUND. * more than in any people who, without or divinitive mental find out what ought subject or subjects.-
POETICAL PERIODS, Sir,-Perhaps ‘‘ R. H, C.” will allow’ me to invite him to another examination of the following matters :If it be allowed that a poet needs ideas with which to play, why should we not say that in those ages in which ideas circulate freely and with vitality, poetry, and indeed other arts also, flourishes best? In the Elizabethan age men’s minds were expanding, and it must be admitted that poetry was at that time prominent. So, also, Goethe, and Heine after him, found material in plenty in the Germany of their days. Contrariwise, the English poets who worked at the end of the eighteenth century were in an age sterile of ideas, and suffered accordingly. And nowadays, though there is a vast amount of verse published, how excessively poor and devitalised it is! And is not this because there are not as yet any recognised central ideas? The individual does what he will, and most often embodies his own weaknesses. Now, to consider “R. H. C’s’’ quotation from De Quincey. Is not the beauty of this passage in truth a
The gardeners have been hard at work upon literary culture in France throughout several generations, while we have been asleep under our spreading chestnut trees.-R. H.- C. The anthologist, poor man, can do nothing right. I live in as big a glass house as anyone in Great Britain. D. SELVER. Men will die for Life. Happiness is an accident. Does Man desire Happiness? Edward Moore
Tragedy.
denies
it.-
PRESS
CUTTINGS.
It is a sound instinct which had led not only our own nation, but impartial observers in neutral countries, to put in the forefront of our controversy with Germany the nature of the internal constitution of that country, and to insist that, if we are to enquire for the ultimate, cause of the present war, it is to be found in the character of the German Government. As an evident corollary to this there follow the recognition that there is no security against a similar catastrophe in the future except in a change of the German Constitution, and the demand that in one way or another such a change must . be brought about either before the war is concluded or , as an integral part of the final settlement. It is not necessary perhaps that this should be actually embodied in the terms of peace, but it is necessary that Europe should be assured that the form of Government which has made the war possible should not continue. The origin of all the There is only one solution. difficulties, external and internal, is the same; everything is sacrificed in order to maintain the principle of autocracy in military and foreign affairs. This fact will have to be fairly and clearly met. The Reichstag must definitely claim and secure full right to criticise, control, and direct the external policy of the State, and also to assert its supremacy over the army. The conception of the army as a monarchical and not as a national institution is one that in modern times-and especially with universal service-cannot be maintained in any civilised country. If the full control over the army were secured by Parliament, then there would inevitably result the gradual disappearance of the whole doctrine of militarism which has for the last thirty years been such a poisonous element in German intellectual life.--" The Round Table. The second method proposed-namely, to pay off the war debt at once by a levy on capital-is at first sight somewhat startling. The advantage in it as compared with the first method is that it cleans the slate and leaves the public finances in an unembarrassed condition. The main objections to it are, first, the difficulty of applying it; second, the fact that the burden would fall exclusively on the present owners of property. The latter objection is the more serious. Nevertheless, it may be argued that the sacrifice is necessary, and that even if the war debt be funded the bulk of the taxation necessary to provide the interest and sinking fund would have to be laid on the propertied classes. Assuming that to be so, it may be indifferent to the capitalist whether he gives up at once, say, a sixth of his capital or is compelled to give up annually a sixth of his income in the form of extra taxation. There is this difference, however, that in the latter case future accumulations of capital also would pay, while they would be exempt if the war debt were wiped out at once. It is arguable that this would be to the advantage of the community, since it would put a greater premium on future exertions. The difficulty of applying the method of a levy on capital is probably not so great as appears at first sight. Take, for instance, the case of the United Kingdom. The total capital wealth of the community may be estimated at about 24,000 millions sterling. To pay off a war debt of 3,000 millions sterling would therefore require a levy of one-eighth. Evidently this could not be raised in money, nor would it be necessary. Holders of war loans would pay their proportion in a simple way, by surrendering one-eighth of their scrip. Holders of other forms of property would be assessed for one-eighth of its value and ,be called on toacquire and to surrender to the State the same amount of war loan scrip. To do this they would be obliged to realise a part of their property or to mortgage it. But there is no insuperable difficulty about that. In the case of property already mortgaged, the holder of the property might be responsible for the whole levy and might be allowed to raise a prior mortgage to cover it, and thereafter to deduct the proper proportion from the capital amount
due to the previous mortgagee. Thus, a man having a property assessed at 80,ooo, encumbered with a mortgage for 40,000, would raise a prior mortgage of ;IO,OOO and pay the levy on the whole property. But the capital amount of the old mortgage would be reduced from ;40,000 to 735,0oo. In this connection a suggestion may be mentioned for combining a levy on capital with a reform of the currency which has some elements of ingenuity. A considerable part of the accumulated capital of the United Kingdom is represented by the share capital and debenture debts of limited liability companies. It has 'been suggested that a, decimal system of currency might be introduced by making the shilling worth tenpence and reducing the weight of gold in the sovereign by one-sixth, leaving the sovereign worth twenty shillings. The nominal- capital and debenture debts of all limited liability companies would be left as at present in pounds. At the same time they would be required to pay to the State in the shape of war loan scrip an amount equivalent to one-sixth of the assessed value of their assets As their real liability to debenture holders and shareholders would also have been reduced by one-sixth through the change in value of the pound, there would be no real change in the financial position of the companies and in effect the levy would fall on debenture holders and on shareholders pro rata to their interest in the company. Such a levy would only cover the particular form of property which is represented by shares and debentures. Other forms of property would have to leave the levy in a different way.-" The Round Table. " There may well come to be a functional delegation of ,powers as well as a geographical. The integration of the great national industries during the war has already been described. This integration has been effected mainly through the action of the Government Controllers. But it has been successfulonly as the result of constant consultation with and active cooperation from the employers and the trade unions concerned. For reasons already given, it is certain that this work of co-ordination in production and distribution will not disappear after the war, though the most despotic control now exercised by the State during the war will have to be greatly abated. Is it too much to expect that a means will be found whereby the supervision of the multitudinous firms and trade unions now co-ordinated into the staple national industries will be placed in the hands of a body which will be able to combine in itself the directing experience of the employer the point of view of the employees and the authority of the community as a whole? Is it not possible that the higher direction and control of these great co-ordinated industries, now conducted by Ministers responsible to Parliament, will be devolved on to bodies representative of the principal partners in those industries, as' well. as of the State which will wield statutory powers, without interference from the Government save in the event of scandalous mismanagement. It is, at any rate, worth while to suggest that consideration should be given to the possibility of devolving some of the new functions now concentrated in the hands of the existing Parliament and Cabinet at Westminster along these lines.-" The Round Table."
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