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NOTES
OF
THE
WEEK S. Verdad .
THE SITUATIONIN FRANCE. By
MR. MACDONALD AFTER THE WAR. By National Guildsmen . THE PAYMENTOF HOSPITAL STAFFS. By X.Y.Z. THE VOGUE OF THEFALSE PROPHET. By Allen Upward . STUDIES CONTEMPORARY IN MENTALITY. By Ezra Pound. VI-"The Sphere" . READERS AND WRITERS. By R. H. C. .
LATE UNCLE ANTHONYFARLEY. By his Nephew . AN ALBUM LEAF. By Katherine Mansfield . VIEWS AND REVIEWS: The Malcolm Case. By A. E. R. . REVIEWS : Under Fire. A Soldier's Pilgrimage. The Real Adventure. Letters of' a Soldier PASTICHE. By H. H., Ruth Pitter, R. Francis Clark, M. I. P. LETTER TO THE EDITOR from T. C. . MEMORANDA (From last week's NEW AGE) . PRESS CUTTINGS
My
NOTES
OF
THE
WEEK.
FOR the general feeling that the war is dragging when we least expected, we might blame the prevalence of rumour if the prevalence of rumour were not itself the consequence of the absence of official news and views. Certainly rumour has been busy enough during the past week or two to cause uneasiness in the general mind; and when these rumours have or appear to have a straw of evidence to cling to, they naturally survive a good deal of mere argument. The ulterior causes, however, are to be found in the extraordinary secrecy of the Government, which now affects to regard both the conduct of the war and the conduct of the diplomacy connected with it as matters of no public concern. We are to continue in our present attitude of faith and patience though exposed, as the Government knows, to every kind of evil rumour, without questioning either the competence or the goodwill of the Executive. Parliament is in recess and the newspapers are full of lies. Yet the public is to remain as faithful as when we were receiving news daily. It cannot be so. Sooner rather than later -public opinion will demand to know what is taking place, what is hoped, what is expected, and what is intended; and the penalty of denying it this information will be the discredit of the present Government and the strengthening, in all probability, of the inconclusive peace party. *** The most obvious defect at the present moment is the absence of military news. We are accustomed, of course, to the " silence " of the Navy, though we might have expected that we should have heard more about it during war than during peace. But the Army is traditionally in a different situation. For the first two and a half years of the war we have, indeed, been fairly well supplied with news of the Army, but from the moment when Mr. Lloyd George became Premier the public has been denied even the publication of the routine dispatches of the commanders in the field. There are, as we know, five main fronts upon which our troops are fighting-and when we say our troops we do not mean the professional Army which the War Office regards as its personal property, but our fellow-
citizens-and from each of these fronts it is our right to hear at frequent intervals the report of what our soldier-citizens are doing there. Will it be believed, however, that from not a single one of them has the public received any detailed official information since March; and that from at least two of the fronts our public information carries us no further than to the beginning of this year? In the single case of the Salonika expedition the defect of news is even worse; for the last dispatch to be published was dated October of a whole year ago. What is the reason of ail this delay? If no news were certain to be good news, the suspense might be borne with equanimity. But both the Dardanelles and the Mesopotamian Reports are there as evidence that the absence of hews cannot'be regarded as a good sign. Are we in the end to have Salonikan, Palestinian, Bagdad, and East African Reports al in the same tenour of exculpation when it is too late? The only remedy, we fear, against reports of this character is the publication of Dispatches; and when, as now, the dispatches are not published, we may apprehend the necessity of Reports. *** The absence of military news, though disquieting to those who have no romantic estimate of the ability of our governing classes, is, however, of less serious. moment in its depressing effect upon public opinion than the absence of diplomatic views. The signs of a clear and common understanding among the Allies are all too few for the situation which three years of war have created. It is true, of course, that in the main the objects of the Allies have been fairly well defined; but what we need, and what we have a right to expect, is a progressive classification, simplification, and unificationof those objects as the war approaches its goal. That, however, is precisely what we do not get. And what is worse, from every meeting of the Allies in council there appears to emerge either 'nothing whatever only evidence of continuing mutual differences. or Everybody knows, for example, that the Allies were to meet at the end of August: and everybody was given to understand that the subjects of conversation were to be the formula of common agreement as regards the future of Germany and the means of bring-
ing the proposed change about. Has the meeting been held? Did it come to any agreement? And what was the agreement it came to3 The public simply does not know. On the other hand, arguing from the defect of news, we may certainly conclude that if the meeting was held, it issued in no agreement, for what better evidence can we want of this than the careful emptiness of Mr. Lloyd George’s recent speeches, the manifest disharmony of Mr. Wilson’s Notes with our own and the French official statements, and the Babel of sentiment and opinions expressed by our Cabinet Ministers? Surely if the Allies had reached an agreement upon even the most elementary terms of the settlement, some sign of it would have appeared in the synoptics of their leading spokesmen. They continue, however, to talk at cross purposes or to no purpose at all, exactly as if they were still without a common formula. *** In this confusion the best thing that occurs to us to do is to set out the situation as it stands and to indicate what in our judgment are the various opinions at work. They fall mainly, we believe, into two schools, common to all the Allies in varying proportionsthe Imperialist and the Democratic ; and these again may be sub-divided into the extreme and moderate Imperialist and the Liberal and the Democratic. Of both the Imperialistic schools it goes without saying that the first plank in their programme is a military victory over Prussia ; their differentiation arises only when victory is assumed and the question is raised: What is to be clone with Germany when Prussia has been defeated? To the extreme school the reply to this question is, in the phrase of Mr. Shaw, to skin the Germans alive. They would have not only no mercy upon a defeated Germany, but no consideration for the reactions likely to be caused by a policy of this kind. They are represented in this country by the politicians who control the “Morning Post,” the “Saturday Review,” and, to a certain extent, the Northcliffe Press. Fortunately, however, for both this country and the world, their power is less than their pretensions; for, setting aside for the moment the fact that England will not in any case be the sole determinant of the future fate of Germany, the Imperialists we have called moderate are in opposition to them and have, at least, an equal power. This school is disposed to insist upon only so much control of Germany as appears necessary to prevent ,Germany from having a great military power again within a reasonable period. In other words, its poky is not conquest, as in the case of the extreme Imperialists, but security, though it is to be noted that in their opinion security is improbable without a certain degree of “ conquest.” *** Of more interest because of more practical importance are, however, the two schools that remain to be considered : the Liberal and the Democratic. These, it is plain, have one thing in common, namely, their anti-Imperialism, for they are in common opposed to any permanent penalisation of the German people. But it is no less plain that they are divided upon the matter of the desirability and possibility of a military victory. To take the Liberal opinion first, In as represented in this country by the “Nation.” its current issue the “Nation” assumes that a military victory is impossible, and hence that a peace by negotiation and without victory is the only kind of peace that can be looked for. The “Nation” goes on, it is true, to require of a negotiated peace such conditions as appear to us fantastic; but for the moment we will overlook the terms and confine ourselves to its simple assumption that a military victory is impossible. It is just upon this point, however, that not only, as we have seen, do the two Imperialist schools differ from the Liberal school, but the Democratic school differs from it as well. The Democratic
school in every country of the Allies, in America no less than in England, in Russia no less than in France, though no less hostile than Liberal opinion to any form of Imperialism, differs from Liberal opinion in both believing in and in being prepared to work, for a military victory over Prussia. The negotiation, therefore, which the Liberal considers must precede a victory, and must lake place in lieu of victory, the democratic school believes must follow victory. The formulae of the various schools may, in fact, be summed up in these terms. The Imperialists hold that we must have victory without negotiation; the Liberals hold that negotiation must precede victory ; the Democrats hold that negotiation must follow victory. *** In the passage to which reference has already been made, the “Nation” defines the “three substantial foundations” of a negotiated peace as (a) general disarmament, (b) economic world-settlement, and (c) a League of Nations. These, if you please, are all to be brought about by negotiation before Prussian militarism is defeated; and the security for each of them is to be compatible with the continuance of the Prussian regime in Germany. Certainly if one or all of them were conceivably practical in the absence of victory and the continued presence of the Prussian autocracy, the war would not be worth continuing for any other of its objects. We should, in fact, have “won the war.” But the “Nation” appears to us to be asking for the fruits of victory while at the same time denying us the means. The world is to enjoy disarmament, economic justice and security for democracies without the trouble of destroying the avowed and powerful enemy of all these things-the Prussian military caste. To this we may reply that if the “Nation” suggests- that a military victory is impossible, is not, by many degrees, as “impossible” as it the satisfaction of the “Nation’s” demands without it. Of the two, indeed, the military victory (which, moreover,we regard as certain) is easier to bring about than a Liberal victory such as the “Nation” dreams of; the one may therefore be difficult, if you like, but the other is starkly impossible. Can the “Nation” imagine, we ask, an undefeated Prussia consenting to disarmament, to economic justice, to a League of Nations? And even if it did as a means of putting an end to the present war would its consent last a moment longer than the present Alliance? Being what by nature the Prussian autocracy is-a caste convinced that war is the proper means of expansion-its assent to the “Nation’s” programme could in any case be no more than policy, for at bottom it would be a contradiction of its own nature. Its assent would thereforebe conditional and given in reserve; to be withdrawn, we repeat, at the first favourable opportunity. The blindness of the “Nation” proceeds from the democratic doctrine misapplied to a military caste. Like the “Nation,” we believe that democracies mean well and would, if they had the power, on the whole do well. Unlike the “Nation” we cannot believe that in any conceivable circumstances the Prussian system means well or would do well if the chance offered of doing ill. The conclusion from this, and the conclusion to which democracy is being brought all over the world, is that the Prussian system must be democratised. There is no other way; and in setting up its Liberal notions against the plain drift of democratic opinion, the “Nation” to our mind is jeopardising the victory of democracy which is the victory over Prussia. *** It is not the moment for a lengthy review of the situation in Russia; but we may repeat the assurances with which we welcomed the Revolution that in due time all is going to be well with democracy in Russia. The hostility of the Allied Imperialists to democracy (and, most of all, to an economic democracy, such
as there arc evidences of in Russia) has obscured for them the forces at work in Russia. They have consistently backed the wrong horse upon every occasion. From the outset it was evident that a body like the Soviet that was capable of wresting the Revolution from the hands of the Duma was capable, if it remained united, of keeping it there; and all that has occurred since the moment when the first coalition Provisional Government was set up has confirmed our estimate that the Soviet, in office or out, is the real master of the situation. Every reactionary movement, whether arising from the extreme or even the moderate Right, has hitherto been overcome by the force of the Soviet, whose greatest triumph was witnessed last week when Korniloff was arrested and brought to Petrograd to be tried. There can surely no longer be any doubt, even in the office of the “Times” and the "New Witness,” that the Soviet is the sovereign power in Russia. The Duma is dead! Long live the Soviet ! With the growing and undeniable stability of the Soviet, however, it becomes more than ever urgently necessary for this country to re-orient its policy, and particularly as regards the war. While our War-Cabinet (consisting mainly, to our confusion, of anti-democratic bureaucrats) was in hope or in doubt that the Russian Revolution would stand or fall, a suspense of the revision of the Allied war-terms was perhaps advisable. After all, they could not be certain that the Tsar would not return to power, and therewith annul the agreements entered into with the Revolutionary Government. But with fresh evidence that theRevolution is here to stay, the suspense must cease if we are not permanently to alienate the new governing forces in Russia. What is the formula upon which the Revolution is likely to agree with the rest of the Allies in the matter of the conduct of the war and its settlement? The Imperialist formula, it is plain, is useless. The Soviet will not consider it for a moment; and America will be in agreement with the Soviet. Equally, we are certain, the Liberal formula will be useless; for a Soviet that has deposed a Tsar will not consent to the continuance of a neighbouring Kaiser ten times more powerful than a Tsar. The reconciling formula, once more, is the defeat of Prussia for the purpose of democratising Germany. No other will meet the case. *** The situation in France which the “Nation” and other journals allege is “ mysterious ” has been sufficiently illuminated by our colleague Mr. S. Verdad in We should like to an article in the present issue. emphasise here the anti-imperialistic character of the crisis and to draw from it the reassuring conclusion that the leaven of democracy and of a democratic peace is harder at work in France than in England. Everybody this country is aware of the fact that M. Ribot, in the late French Prime Minister, is a moderate Imperialist, such as many of our own statesmen are. Waitingupon the result of the military war he was prepared to enlarge or contract his demands upon Germany with the varying circumstances and calculations of the war-map. He was willing to blow hot and cold as the war-map allowed him, declaring on this occasion(when the prospect seemed unfavourable) that France would be satisfied with the retrocession of Alsace, and on the next occasion (when the prospects were brighter) that a buffer State must be created on the left of the Rhine. Against this vacillating policy which, of necessity, made any common Allied declaration of aims impossible, the French Socialists, Majority and Minority alike, have at last rebelled. They will have nothing to do, they say, with Imperialism any shape or form, whether contracted to in moderation by pessimism or enlarged to the extreme by triumph. What they demand is, in the first place, the vigorous military continuation of the war until Prussia is defeated; and, in the second place, concurrently with the pursuit of the war, the declaration
and pursuit of a common Allied policy which shall be independent of the vicissitudes of the war itself. In other words, like us and democrats everywhere, they demand a fixed political as well as a fixed military object. *** The objection has been raised in the “ Times ” that in making the control of its parliamentarians by the French Socialist party a condition of supporting the Government, the French Socialist party was attempting to usurp the functions of Parliament, to play the Soviet, and to endanger constitutional government. The pretensions of the French Socialist party to control its own parliamentary Ministers, says the “Times, “ “ isincompatible with the first principles of constitutional government,” which require that “the nation as a whole, and not any sectional organisation, shall direct the entire policy of the Government, and direct it solely through their elected representatives as chosen under the laws for the time being in force.” We can be on occasion as purist as the “Times” in our views of the principles of constitutional government; and we confess, indeed, that in other circumstances we should be of its present counsel of perfection. But the case is one for practical consideration in which the first item to be taken into account is the contradiction of the “Times” practice and its principle. No great familiarity is necessary with the intimacies of politics in this country-to say no more of France-to realise that. however it may be in theory, in fact every Minister is pulled by one string or another operated by one or another sectional interest. Does not Lord Northcliffe claim to have put into the War Cabinet at least four out of five of its members? And does he not virtually dictate to them what they may or may not do? Lord Northcliffe is .a Soviet in himself-unfortunately, however, both a secret and an anti-democratic Soviet. It therefore as little becomes him to complain of the external control of politics-and least of all when it is, as in the case of Labour control, open and democratic-as to denounce the sale of titles of which his family has already three or four. Socialist and Labour organisations everywhere would in our judgment be wise to take a leaf out of Lord Northcliffe’s book and, before making Ministers of their members, to take precautions for controlling them after they are made. *** A lamentable instance of neglected counsel, tardily atoned for by an open confession, is to be found in a little work by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, published last week under the title of “Socialism after the War” (National Labour Press, IS.). “ The experiences of a war,” says Mr. MacDonald, “ lead to revisions of opinion ”; and though we must regret that it took a war of these dimensions to lead Mr. MacDonald to revise his opinions, we must allow that he has done it completely, if not very handsomely. “ British Socialism,” he tells us, “ never imagined that the political State . . . could control the factories and workshops ” ; and it was never therefore precluded from accepting the Guild idea. Not, in fact, to make any bones about it-“it is necessary that no doubt should be left regarding the fact that National Guilds must play a characteristic part in the Socialist industrial State.’’ We must thank Mr. MacDonald for having come to this conclusion; and we must thank the war for having led him to it. But we cannot, being human, refrain from a gentle reproach. During the ten years that we have been advocating a reconstruction Socialist theory, Mr. MacDonald has been of a silent but hostile spectator of our exertions. So far as we know, during all the ten, years, Mr. MacDonald has never once communicated his interest in the Guild idea to any public body, to any public journal, and, least of all, to ourselves. The penalty he now has to pay for his neglect is to confess that he has been mistaken and to receive our forgiveness.
The Situation
in France.
By S. Verdad. CRISIS means, in the Greek, the power of distinguishing something ; a separating ; hence a decision, a judgment; and the verb from which the noun comes means to part asunder, to pick out, to choose, our journalists to form a judgment. When, therefore, devised headlines in the last week or so relating to the “French crisis” they devised better than they knew. For the last political upheaval in Paris was really a crisis in the primary sense of the word. The Socialist Group in the Chamber-the Unified Socialists, onesixth of the parliamentary bodies-have definitely separated from the Government; they have upset M. Ribot, and they upset M. Painleve’s first Cabinet. How long M. Painleve’s second Cabinet is to last depends more upon the Unified Socialists than on any other body in the Chamber, not even excepting the strong Radical-Socialist Group led by the mysterious M. Caillaux. Let us note in passing that M. Caillaux, whose name is associated with pacifist financial transactions, was unable to force his nominee into the Ministry of the Interior in the Cabinet just constituted though two or three members of his party are Let it be remembered, among the Under-Secretaries. further, that hyphenated Socialist ‘‘fractions” in the French Chamber are in effect Liberals and Whigs, from our point of view. The so-called RadicalSocialists and Progressists have not an atom of Socialism or progressiveness about them. The Unified Socialists are definitely and clearly a Socialist and thoroughly democratic political group, their party organ being the “ Humanite.” *** What was the origin of this crisis? Why did the Unified Socialists show themselves so determined to upset Cabinet after Cabinet, without, to all appearances, caring whether they sacrificed the “ national unity” or no? We in England must be particularly careful in answering these questions ; for we are closely associated with France, and we are likely to remain so. And endeavours, unfortunately, are being made to misrepresent the attitude of the French Socialists. The reactionary papers in Paris are criticising them bitterly, and the reactionary papers here, as need hardly be added, are only too glad to follow this example. The “Times,” for instance, says in its leading article of Sept. 14 that the Socialists, through their delegates, proposed ,to exercise “ a new and unheard-of control” over the Government .“and its Socialist members. ” This had reference to M. Painleve’s first-chosen Cabinet. M. Painleve received the delegates of the Socialist party, explained his policy to them, and secured their approval after a prolonged discussion. But when, an hour or so later on the night of Wednesday, Sept. 12, or rather on the early morning of Thursday, the delegates heard the names of M, Painleve’s associates, they flatly refused to have anything to do with them-and all because, as the “Matin” admitted on Thursday, M. Ribot had been selected as Foreign Minister. Hence subtle attempts have been made to indicate that the French Socialists are becoming, or have in fact become, pacifist. The English anti-Semites, on the other hand, are, wittingly or not, seeking to divert attention from the realities of the new situation by hinting that the Almereyda question, with its Jewish flavour, was alone responsible last week’s for the overthrow of M. Ribot-let “New Witness” testify. Now let us see what has actually happened. *** M. Ribot’s Minister of the Interior, M. Malvy, having become implicated in what was essentially a form of pacifist propaganda, had to go. But previous Cabinets-that of M. Briand, for example-faced more awkward events than that, and overcame their
difficulties a re-shuffle. In this case it was largely the by Socialist influence which forced M. Ribot out; and if he had not resigned on the Malvy question he would have had to resign on some other very shortIy. The main point is quite clear. They refused to have anythingto do with M. Ribot, or a Cabinet with which he was connected, because, in the first place, he had refused the Stockholm passports; because, in the second place, he was believed to be a sympathiser of the small but powerful school of politicians and moneyed men who want to annex German territory up to the left bank of the Rhine; and because, in the third place, the whole Ribot Ministry stood in the way of certain internal reforms which the Socialist Group desire to see carried into effect. It is important to note that the Socialists in France are not pacifists; to be in favour of the Stockholm Conference, or a Conference on similar lines elsewhere, is not necessarily be a pacifist. The case in favour of such a to Conference has been expounded in the recent Editorial Notes of THE NEW AGE; and with the arguments there expressed the French Socialists entirely agree. And, as French Socialism, on this question and on most others, represents French Labour, it will be seen that there is no logical objection to the attitude of the. Socialist Group towards M. Ribot, and also that there is no difference of opinion regarding an international Conference between French Labour and British Labour. As for the left bank of the Rhine, we are accustomed to associate this imperialistic policy of annexation with an injudicious speech uttered by Sir Edward Carson at Belfast several weeks ago; and London critics were inclined to assume that he spoke in entire ignorance of the geography of this part of Europe. It was not geography, however, of which Sir Edward Carson was ignorant, but rather of the grammar-the alphabet, if you like-of politics. In France there is, as I have said, a group of men who hold that peace cannot be ensured unless the Germans are driven to the right bank of the Rhine, and kept there. In the course of the last two years a whole literature has grown up round this proposal; and even M. Yves Guyot is lending his support to the movement. The Socialists in France believe, rightly or wrongly, that M. Ribot has not disclaimed the aggressive suggestion with adequate emphasis. And now let us observe how they made their views clear just before M. Ribot began to reorganise his Ministry. After a discussion lasting two days, the Group adopted the following order of the day put. forward by M. Pierre Renaudel, editor of the “ Humanite.” I quote the ‘‘ Times ” translation (Sept. 10) :The Socialist Group declares that, in conformity with previous decisions of the party, it remains ready to collaborate with the Government in national government and national defence. But it is of opinion that such participation and responsibility cannot again he assumed without the party’s being assured that the Government which would be joined by one or more of its members shall act vigorously, by taking the most energetic measures and creating the most favourable conditions for victory, both of a military and of an economic nature, and safeguarding both public and labour freedom, which must not be threatened by misunderstanding the- necessities of national defence ; by declaring also its faith in international policy to bring about a just and lasting peace, and its determination to do away with methods of secret diplomacy, and keep the war aims of the Allies within the limits of the claims of justice. The Group declares that in these conditions it is with delegates properly accredited that its co-operation and the guarantees which it intends to find for strengthening the national defence must be discussed. *** Unlike the apathetic Labour leaders in countries that might be named, the Socialists in France regard a resolution of this sort as a principle of action; and because their demands were not met they overturned
two proposed Cabinets after they had been definitely formed, and refused their support to a third. The delegates-see the French papers of Sept. 9 to 12, and compare the long telegram in the‘ London “Times” of the 13th-explained their proposals in detail to M. Painleve ; demanded Assurances regarding a frank and open foreign policy, discussed questions relating to Parliamentary control over the Army, asked for better conditions for the soldiers during the coming winter campaign-not much pacifism about that !-and (again I quote the “ Times ”) : They further expressed the view that the right of Syndicalist organisations to discuss and to settle conditions of labour and wages through workmen’s delegatesmust be recognised, whether State or private. labour is involved. This is letting the cat out of the bag with a vengeance; and the extract I have just quoted explains the horror of the reactionary newspapers. This is the point of internal reform which has deprived M. Painleve (as it deprived M. Ribot before him) of Socialist support. By the way, when the “Times” speaks of Syndicalist organisations, it means simply the French equivalent of our Trade Unions ; for that is, in general, what a “Syndicat” is. The point thus raised is as old as the Clyde agitation of 1915, culminating in a more or less cordial reception to Mr. Lloyd George nearly two years ago; and it is as old in France as it is here. Only, in the French case, M. Albert Thomas supported the workmen’s demands, as summarised above, and, as far back as March 17 last, issued a circular drawing attention to the usefulness of arranging for the formation of bodies of workmen’s delegates who should “regularise the relations existing between the management of a workshop and the men employed.” The Paris “Temps” holds, as did our such “interference” own papers two years ago, that by the equivalent of the Clyde shop stewards would inevitably lead to “industrial disorganisation” (Sept. 8). It advances arguments to which we are well accustomed-that French employers have always taken the greatest interest in the welfare of their men, that the existing workmen’s organisations are adequate for presenting any new demands, that confusion would be caused by the Socialist proposals outlined, and that better relations would be brought about, where necessary, by an extension of the profitsharing principle. But the men insisted on obtaining, through their own delegates, actual control. Let me repeat it-actual control. The “Humanite,” of the last ten days of August, bears particular witness to this demand, for it appears to have been reiterated at meeting after meeting. Further, the anger of the reactionaries was aroused by a Ministerial circular issued on July 24, which emphasised the suggestion made in March, and added :There would be no need to force the execution of this plan on small establishments, where the employer is in regular daily touch” with his men. Such delegates could render valuable service only in factories where the staff employed numbered not less than fifty. What, asks the “Temps,” are we to understand that in factories employing more that fifty workmen this form of control is actually to be “ imposed ” upon the management? Answering this question in anticipation, the.‘“Humanite” said, on August 28 : “The great French employing classes, who have profited so much from the war, ought to put no obstacle in the way of this new institution demanded by the working classes. . . . In some places, nevertheless, obstacles are being put in the way of the nomination of delegates.law could be quickly passed to settle the A question in the general interest. Will the Government introduce it?’’ The Government, instead, was turned out. Yet, let it be understood control of workshop conditions and discipline by the workmen themselves has actually been instituted in France, and
pressure, if applied at all, is to be applied only to those firms, State or private, which have hesitated to countenance new conditions. the It is worth noting, too, that the “Humanite” of August 24, which emphasises national defence as firmly as ever, contains a long article describing a factory in which workmen’s controlhad been in practice for very nearly a year. This is one of the great State Railway workshops at Rouen; the staff numbered 2,000. At the end of nearly a twelvemonth the chief engineer congratulated his col leagues because the output had increased by one-third. Need I say more? No pacifism but no imperialism; no secret diplomacy but open conferences; no industrial autocracy but democratic control-there you have the programme of the French Socialists. What is more, it is already being carried out. The crisis is all but settled, and the solution is in accordance with the democratic traditions of 1789.
Mr. MacDonald After
the War.
IN his new book, “ Socialism after the War ” (National Labour Press. IS.) Mr. J. R. MacDonald remarks upon the change wrought by war ‘in other men’s opinions. As to his own, however, he implicitly denies that the war has changed them; on the contrary, he many times asserts that the war has done nothing but confirm them. The utmost he is prepared to allow is that things have taken on a new significance rendering not a change of his former opinions necessary, but merely their progressive development. But it will not do. The Mr. MacDonald of the present work is in many respects a changed man from the Mr. MacDonald whom we have known in days gone by. In the days before the war it was Mr. MacDonald“the brain of the Labour movement,” he liked to as hear himself called-who was the State capitalist, the advocate! of co-operation between the Liberal and Labour parties, the conservative opponent of those he called “ mere rebels,” and the enemy of the new ideas in Trade Unionism and Socialism. Upon how many score of occasions has not THE NEW-AGE had to comment adversely upon Mr. MacDonald’s activities in repressing the new movements of economic thought and in bolstering up the schemes of such enemies of Labour as Mr. Lloyd George-‘’one of his most intimate friends? ” To-day, as this book shows, there is scarcely anything which he was ready to denounce before the war that he is not anxious to claim as a mere development of his own ideas. A list of the reforms he now demands, for the most part in terms suggesting that they are his invention, would comprehend most of the ideas put forward in this journal during the last ten years in the teeth of Mr. MacDonald’s most unchristian opposition. Again, therefore, we say that it will not do for Mr. MacDonald to claim that only things have moved, but not his own opinions. Things are for the economist to-day exactly what they were five or ten years ago. It did not need the war to convince the readers of THE NEW AGE that the reforms herein advocated were significant. Their significance was apparent to everybody who could examine them with an open mind. Rather, however, than admit that his marvellous mind was ever at fault and that he failed from prejudice and conceit to realise the importance of what we Guildsmen were saying before the war, he makes the war an excuse for a revision of his opinions, and the developments of the war the sole cause for developing with them. Ungenerous as he was before the war, he is ungenerous still. Vain and pusillanimous as he was, he is the same to-day. Though adopting almost every one of the “ Guild ,ideas ” he has not even the courtesy to acknowledge their original source or to direct his readers to it. He quotes Gladstone, Bluntschli, Kant, Kidd and Proudhon-all
safely dead; but never by a glance does he refer to the group upon whose ten years’ work he has written his new book. *** A review of Mr. MacDonald’s book may appear elsewhere in THE NEW AGE, but written by other hands than ours. We cannot pretend to have the patience to write it. Our purpose will be served by making an extract or two from the book and adding a comment to them. Beyond that we have no more concern with Mr. MacDonald to-day than Mr. MacDonald yesterday had with us. As a Guildsman he of is not only a new recruit, unable as yet to perform more than the goose-step, but his intellectual dishonesty disqualifies him from making much advance. We shall, therefore, treat him as his ideas deserve, while leaving him at liberty as of old to take what measures of reprisal he chooses to adopt. *** P. 5 : “ A change of political opinion to be effective must show itself in parties and organisations of citizens specialised to alter the organic relations of the various functions of society.” Under this lush verbiage is concealed the simple truth that political power is dependent upon economic power. It is characteristic, however, of the political Mr. MacDonald, who still nurses a parliamentary career and talks of forming a new party, that he puts the cart before the horse. It is not the case that a political party in order to become effective must find an economic backing; but it is the case that an economic group, in order to become politically effective, creates a political party. Economic power precedes political opinion and power. Mr. MacDonald, like Mr. Barnes (whom probably he taught by shading his cage and whistling to him), was never an advocate of “ the class-war” as he understood it. We urged that ,the class-war was a war of economic and not social classes, and that in its abstraction it did not mean what he feared, namely, that he might not dine with a peer without soiling his Socialism, but only that Wages were at war with Rent, Interest and Profit-it was all in vain. We were fomenters of the class-war and of class-discord. On p. 5 he now writes, however, of “ classes whose characteristics are fixed by economic law ”; and he preaches in this sense the renewal of “the class-war.” P. 6: Such consideration for Labour as has been paid by the State during the war “ is not due to Labour’s war-attitude, but to its independent political organisation before the war.” Mr. MacDonald’s obsession with politics is again apparent. The leadingpolitical Labour organisation before the war was the I.L.P. whose power during the war has been negligible. The Labour representatives who have commanded the State’s consideration have been those who were in control of Labour’s economic power. It was not in the least the votes of the Labour movement of which the Government was afraid, but its strikes. It was precisely not the political, but the economic organisation of Labour that the Government hastened to conciliate, P. 7 : The International was powerless to prevent the outbreak of war because “the International was like a heap of stones, not like a web of cloth.” The images form a parallel for the distinction between politicaland economic power. Politically, the International was a fairly complete organisation with a common programme, policy, and all the other paraphernalia. Economically it had na common ground. P. 8 : “ The war has increased the power of the I.L.P. . . Its membership has increased, the circulation of the ‘Labour Leader’ has more than doubled,” etc., etc. Elsewhere Mr. MacDonald denies that democracy is a matter of arithmetic : it is a matter of weight, of ideas, we presume. Examined from this point of view, the I.L.P. is the most discredited political
body in existence. Were its membership increased tenfold, its power would not be increased on its present lack of ideas. P. 9: “Socialism retains its proud position in the van of progress.” In other words, we are to understand that Mr. MacDonald does. The context makes it plain that he is thinking of Socialism = I.L.P.= J . R. M . P. 10: “The war has taught us to distinguish between State Socialism and Social Democracy. ’’ Hitherto, it appears, this discussion of the distinction between State Capitalism and Guild Socialism was confined to the Continent (Mr. MacDonald reads French); we did not trouble ourselves with the matter in this country. But the war has taught us, etc. Our readers are passive witnesses, however, that we did not need the war to teach us what has only recently been discussed upon the Continent. We bored them stiff with the discussion. But Mr. MacDonald is always grateful to France-and the war. P. 11 : “ Socialist doctrine must be rid completely of the idea of the servile State . . . a State . . . whose general structure is Socialist, but its life slavery.” O ! Belloc, thou hast conquered ! Formerly, we believe, Mr. MacDonald dismissed the talk of the Servile State as the twitterings of disgruntled politicians and impossibilists. To-day . . . On p. 9 Mr. MacDonald claims that “ nothing that has happened has given reason for changing his standpoint.” On p. 17 he writes : “ Before the war I felt that what was called ‘ the spirit of the rebel ’ (by whom, Mr. MacDonald?) was, to a great extent, a stagey pose. It is now required to save us, but it must be serious.” The compIacent insolence of the words we have italicised is characteristic. The ‘‘ rebels ” (meaning the former critics of Mr. MacDonald)have proved right; they must henceforth be serious. Mr. MacDonald’s jokes are no laughing matt er. P. : “ The war has given a new significance . . . to the movement known as the Guild movement.” Mr. MacDonald is here misinformed to two places of decimals. The movement is nowhere known as the Guild movement, but everywhere as the National Guilds movement. And it is not the war that has given the movement any new significance, but, if we may say so, it is the movement that has given a new and special significance to the war. Mr. MacDonald has confused his belated discovery of the “ Guild movement” with the growth of the movement itself. It must have taken on a new significance by reason of his discovery of it! P. 20; “ British Socialism [to wit, Mr. MacDonald] having never imagined that the political State . . . could control the factories and workshops . . . is not precluded from considering . . . the Guild plan.” We doubt whether Mr. MacDonald or “British Socialism ” can point to any expression of suspicion that the political State could not control the factories, etc. Why do these people profess to have kept their minds open and to have precluded nothing all these years? Their strength .lay in their dogmatism on the very point they now allege they never imagined. The “ Guild plan” arose in opposition to them and in the teeth of their opposition. However, we cannot prevent Mr. MacDonald from “ considering the Guild plan ”; only he must not claim that he never precludedhimself from it. P. 22 : “ I admit that it is easier to retain the spirit of progressive adaptation in a professional organisation than in a labouring one.” Mr. MacDonald is not entitled, after a reluctant and brief consideration of the Guild plan, to make any admissions on behalf of Guildsmen. With better authority, we absolutely deny the statement made by our novice. It is simply not true. We refer our readers to our previous discussions of the subject.
P. 24 : “ So long as the industrial combination of Labour forms one of the corner-stones of the political Labour movement, Socialism must take an interest in Trade Union organisation, and must express views upon it.” To paraphrase : so long as Socialists owe their political seats to the Trade Unionists of their constituencies, Socialist careerists must take an interest in Trade Union affairs and express their views on Trade Union problems. P. 30 : “ I lay down the following propositions, so that discussion of this subject may be directed to definite points. . . . Trade Unionism organisation in the future should depend much more upon the workshop and the workshop steward. . . .” Guildsmen would be obliged to Mr. MacDonald for laying down such a proposition if it had not already been laid down. As it is, his directions are another impertinence. It is the duty of a man who has been wrong for ten years to admit it, and to walk humbly for the next ten. Mr. MacDonald has lost his right to “ lay down ” any proposition for common Socialist discussion. P. 43 : “ The Labour Party had [on the outbreak of war] the opportunity of a generation to become a national opposition. ” The party could scarcely have become a national opposition to a national war, but it might have become, when Mr. MacDonald was Lord High Everything in it, a national opposition to the National Insurance Act. But it did not, and Mr. MacDonald alone knows why, though we can guess. In the concluding chapters Mr. MacDonald denounces the party funds and advocates the conscription of wealth. But his book is dedicated to the I.L.P., all of whose members are not yet in Parliament, where such views, if uttered, might have some effect. As it is, they are spoken in a hole and corner, but on thehouse-tops Mr. MacDonald dumb. is
National
Guildsmen
The Payment of Hospital Staffs,
A HIGHLY important issue has been raised by the British Medical Association in connection with the treatment of disabled soldiers in civil hospitals. The Ministry of Pensions has arranged that men who have been discharged from the Army or Navy while needing further medical and surgical treatment shall, when no military hospital is available, be referred to the nearest voluntary hospital for such treatment. The local pensions committee have been instructed to arrange for a payment to be made in such cases to the hospitals concerned. The suggested Payments (which are for maintenance only! range from 21s. to 28s per week for in-patients, and from 6d. to 2s. 6d. per attendance‘ for out-patients. Before the local committees have had time to make any definite arrangements in this direction, the British Medical Association has circularised the hospitals with the definite object of securing an increase in the foregoing payments, in order to allow sums to be paid to the medical staffs. In its letter to the governing bodies of the hospitals, the Association says : “ In taking into consideration the question of the adequacy of the above suggested payments, the British Medical Association trusts that your Board will agree with the opinion of the Association that not only maintenance. but also professional attendance should be paid for by the State.” This circular letter is accompanied by another, addressed to the medical committeesof the hospitals, which goes into the question in greater detail. (It may be explained that the medical committee of a voluntary hospital consists of all the visiting physicians and surgeons of the hospital. The high -professional standing of these officers, and the fact that their services are honorary, combine to give great weight to their recommendations in the
eyes of the Board of Management upon which, indeed, the leading members of the staff usually sit ex-officio.) The British Medical Association therefore impresses upon each medical committee the importance of considering the question at once, in order that the committeemay “ inform the governing body of the hospital that these cases cannot be treated as a matter of charity . ’ ’ The Ministry of Pensions has not acted in this matter without consulting the medical profession, for Mr. Barnes appointed in May last an advisory committee,consisting of Sir Frederick Taylor, Bt., Dr. Sidney Martin, Sir W. Watson Cheyne, Bt., Sir J. Rickman Godlee, Bt., Dr. H. B. Brackenbury, Dr. Alfred Cox, and Mr. Bishop Harman (the last three nominated by the British Medical Association). This committee was itself divided in opinion as to whether payment should be made for medical services in the! cases at issue. In face of such a difference of opinion, Mr. Barnes rightly refused to disturb the status quo, regarding himself as unable to’ decide the general principle “ without raising the whole question of the responsibility of the hospitals to public authority in the matter of their staffs. ” He was, however, prepared to leave the matter to be raised at any individual hospital by the staff concerned. Subsequently, the advisory committee seem to have reconciled their differences, and to have come to the unanimous conclusion that payment should be asked for, and that it should be arranged by a central authority rather than left to be “ a bone of contention between local pension committees and hospitals. ” The Ministry, however, refused to suspend the circulation of their instructions to the local bodies, so that the British Medical Association was reduced to the plan of advising the medical committees to bring pressure to bear upon the governing bodies of hospitals in order to enforce the Association’s views. It is much to be regretted that the Association should have raised this contentious question over the cases of disabled soldiers and sailors, whose care should surely be dealt with both generously and with unanimity. These cases do not present any new principle, for they are essentially the same as those of the sick and wounded men who for the past three years have been treated in the voluntary hospitals without any payment being made by the State in respect of medical attention. Apart, however, from the inopportune character of the claim now made by the Association one may reasonably question the validity (or at least the application) of the principle which the Association advances to support its claim-the argument that “ the services of the medical profession should not be given gratuitously to patients who are maintained by public funds.” The ‘whale gist of this contention lies in the word “ gratuitously.” The services of the visiting staffs of hospitals are gratuitous only in the sense that they are not paid for in money (except in a few cases, such as St. Bartholomew’s and Guy’s, where nominal honoraria of or per annum are paid); but in the sense that those services are “ all give and no take,” they are not gratuitous at all. One wonders how long the fiction of the pure altruism of specialists in attending hospitals will persist as an argument in deciding social policies. One has only to bear in mind the ardour with which hospital appointments are sought, the patience with which they are waited for, and the celerity with which posts in small hospitals are given up when appointments in larger ones are obtained realise how little of altruism there is in the to matter. Quite recently, in the columns of the “Daily Telegraph,” the Secretary of the London Hospital bore frank testimony to the competition for hospital appointments, although the tenor of his argument and was that the system of filling vacancies is all wrong, he gave convincing ,evidence that the balance of obliga-
tion lies on the side of the specialists rather than on the side of the hospitals. Yet the profession, assuming to themselves a degree of unselfishness which is, at the best, a matter for dispute, stigmatise their treatment of disabled soldiers as “ charity.” They demand that their attendance on these men shall be paid for. They do not name any specific sum for such service, but they suggest that certain amounts, to be agreed upon, shall be paid into a separate fund, which shall be at the sole discretion of the medical staff and shall be used for the purpose (inter alia) of “ remunerating those who do the work.” The phraseology here is important, for it implies that those who “ do the work” may not be members of the honorary staff. Therefore, the practice which in many hospitals has been adopted in the case of the treatment of school children, of tuberculosis clinics, and of venereal diseases, may be repeated in this case : namely, that the salaries of or per annum provided by the State or municipal authority, not being large enough to attract the real ‘‘ Harley Street men.” may be given to the rising generation of consultants-the registrars, the clinical assistants, those who stay around a hospital for years in the expectation (usually well founded) that their patience will be at last rewarded with a place on the junior staff. These men fill up their time with odd jobs, and they are very glad to eke, out their incomes with the salaries attaching to work done for public authorities. Thus the disabled soldiers and sailors, through the well-intentioned action of the Ministry of Pensions in paying the hospitals for maintenance, may actually fail to get the attention of the front rank physicians and surgeons, which they would get as ordinary patients in hospital, and this merely to safeguard some illdefined principles of the British Medical Association. It should be noted that while asking for grants from public funds, the Association makes no offer of any correlative public control. The medical profession are thus to have all the advantages of equipment and experience offered by the hospitals, they are to enjoy the status which comes from connection with those institutions,they are to be paid for their services, but they are not to be subject to any public control ; they ,are to continue to elect themselves by their own methods, and they are to continue to exist in a self-made atmosphere of charity and altruism which effectively bars any attempt tocontrol them. One may suggest that the voluntary hospitals are not the sole property or the peculiar province of physicians and surgeons, and that the voice of the public should be heard when important principles of this kind are about to be decided. x. Y. Z.
The Vogue of the False Prophet.
By Allen Upward. “WHERE there is no vision the people perish,” is a text from which I formerly preached in The NEW AGE, as Carlyle had done long before me in his “Latter-day Pamphlets. ” But although it is now being illuminated in characters of fire over our heads, there are few signs of any willingness on the part of humanity to learn the lesson. On the contrary, the faith given to the prophet continues to be in inverse ratio to the truth of his prophecies. It is significant that the name of Jeremiah should be a taunt in the mouth of the vulgar. Of all the Hebrew prophets he was the one whose warnings were most promptly and literally fulfilled. In fact, his story shows him not as an inspired dervish uttering vague maledictions, but as a practical statesman givingcommonsense advice which the King would have been glad to accept but for fear of those about him. Yet this is the man whose name is a term of reproach
to-day. His chief rival and opponent in his own day was the prophet Hananiah, or Ananias as it is spelt in another place of Scripture. The name of Ananias has not yet become a term of laudation, but his school enjoys all the credit that is denied to the school of Jeremiah. And yet it is notorious that these prophets of smooth things not only tempted and precipitatedthe present war, but are responsible for a great part of the suffering it has brought. For many years beforehand every one who was willing to know the truth‘ knew that the German people had convinced themselves that they had a Divine mandate to subjugate the other races of mankind. Their temper had come to resemble that of the Jews in the Christian era, and they had passed quite beyond the stage at which any appeal to reason or to sentimentcould turn them from their course. It was equally certain that they considered England as the one serious obstacle in the way, and had made up their minds to crush her accordingly. I satisfied myself of this in the year 1902 by a correspondence with the historian Mommsen, who was perfectly candid in telling me that Germany and England ‘‘must come to grips. ” To do them justice the Germans generally were candid on the point. Their Emperor informed a British journalist that he was England’s only friend in Germany, and the statement contained only one mental reservation. The Germans could afford to be candid. They could trust to Ananias to shut his ears to their plain-speaking, and to shut the ears of his fellow-countrymen. It was in reliance on the influence of the false prophets that Germany prepared to pave the way for her attack on this country by striking down France and Russia, and acquiring a base on the Channel coast, while we looked on. The false prophets did their best to make this programme feasible. For years before the war they prophesied steadily of the millennium.They demonstrated that there could be no more wars. War, they proclaimed, had been due to ignorance, and humanity was now become too wise to be misled. War was the crime of despots and democracies were too pure to fight. As soon as a French Army came face to face with a German one, the soldiers on both sides would throw down their weapons, and refuse to slaughter one another. Again, science had made war impossible by making it too deadly. The masses could never be induced to face the horrors of machine-guns and modern explosives ; submarines and airships and airplanes had made war unthinkable. As soon as war was proclaimed by the Governments, the workers would throw down their tools. The Socialists of all nations had met in conference,and bound themselves to international Brotherhood. And even if the men were mad enough to engage in war, the women would never permit them. And so forth, and so on. The final achievement of Ananias on the very eve of the catastrophe was the triumphant discovery that war did not pay. There was no money in annexation. Neither Alsace-Lorraine nor Poland nor Constantinople was worth its cost in labour and ammunition. Here was an argument well calculated to impress the age. The prophet was hailed as a true man of God. His book sold like hot cakes. Inspired millionaires ordered whole editions of it. The humanitarians might well rub their hands. If Mammon was on their side, who could be against them? The direct result of all these prophesyings, and of the confidence placed in them by a great part of the nation, has been that Germany believed that she might strike, and struck; that England was taken unprepared;and that, in consequence, Belgium and many provinces of France had to be yielded to the invader, and gave him advantages, of which he is making ruthlessuse in aerial and submarine warfare at this hour. Sot only so, but he urges his possession, of these
advantages as something which must be put down to his ‘credit in any peace negotiation, so that the evil wrought by the false prophets now confronts them in their own .pacifist path. When this war broke out the successors of Ananias ought to have repented in dust and ashes, but, above all, in silence. If they had been honest, if they had been self-deceived, they must have realised that the only atonement in their power for having misled mankindso fatally was never to attempt to lead it again. Their spirit had proved himself a lying spirit; the one thing they could do was to refuse to be his mouthpiece any more. Nothing could be further than this from their actual course. The nations were scarcely plunged in their blood bath before the voices of these blind guides were heard shouting out new directions with the same confidence as of old. Some of them treated themselves to public recantations, which proved to be deft panegyrics of themselves. They had been too noble to think evil of others, too high-souled to distrust. Not one said“I have been a well-meaning but most mischievous fool, who mistook his hopes and wishes for accomplished facts, and who ought never to be believed again.” That is the sort of candour which we find in the mouths of the characters in their books, but never in themselves. They expect it from the German Emperor still, but do not set him the example. The ‘note of their apology was quite otherwise. “If I was not right, I ought to have been right; what has happenedought to have been impossible; it is a case of sudden madness ; the Devil has unexpectedly broken loose, but he will presently be chained up again, and my prophecies will prove true.” For a moment, they so far forgot themselves as to curse their German brother. This may have been the only way to keep up their sales. But there was a ring of sincerity in these invectives. No one likes to be proved a charlatan. They were really angry with the Germans for wrecking their prophetic reputations.. Unhappily, the damage did not prove serious. Ananias soon found there was no need for him to blush. He had not forfeited the public confidence. The columns of the Press remained open to him as before. His war-books soon sold as largely as his peace-books. Even if his new prophecies were true, truth would be suspect on such lips. But Ananias no more desires to tell the truth now, nor his dupes to hear it, than they did before the war. What makes it needful to keep track of the false prophets is their power for future mischief. A peace made under their influence may well prove worse than any war. In all the reams that they have written on the subject there is no sign that any one of them has ever tried to see the factors of the world problem in a true light, or any light at all but that of their own prejudice. They plan a Parliament of Man in which the White races will be in a hopeless minority, and a federation of the Empire which will place all power in the hands of the eloquent. Babu, and reduce Britain to the rank of a province ruled by a Viceroy sent from Delhi. The federation of Italy has shown how an industrious northern race may suffer from being yoked on equal terms politically with an intriguing southern one. There are too many nations for which Parliamentary institutions have meant nothing but corruption and anarchy. The history of most conquering races has shown them dissolving away in the mass of their own subjects. The chemical formula for the British Empire is H5E. But the false prophets see none of these things, and are determined not to see them. They are the slaves of abstract terms. Their language commits them to the rule of South Africa by the Kaffirs, to the restoration of Australia to the Blackfellows, and of America to their the Redskins. Even their charity towards
German brother has not taught them that this dissolution civilisation in the name of humanity is one of of the things against which Germany is unconsciousIy fighting, and that this is her one real excuse, did she only know it. They would pardon her thousand crimes, but not her solitary virtue. The vogue of the false prophet in all ages has been obtained at the expense of the true, and hence the righteous wrath of the one may be mistaken for mere jealousy of the other. And yet it is not the prophet himself who suffers most by his rejection ; it is they who reject him. It may be better for Jeremiah to go down into his dungeon than to ascend the rostrum with Hananiah. But it is not better for his nation, and it is not better for the world. The mind of the perfect prophet may be compared to a compass, sensitive to a force which is quite as real as the wind, though it is less perceptible to the True prophecy is not clever prediction, but vulgar. the expression of a sane judgment arrived at by insight into the realities beneath the passing appearances that deceive shallow minds. Like the compass, the propheticfaculty works all the better when it is protected from distraction. The more the prophet mingles in the market-place the more liable his mind is to be deflected from the truth. To require of the compass the driving power of the piston is sheer absurdity. I am tired of all this hysterical superstition. I resent being asked to become a howling dervish because I happen to see a little further than my neighbour. It is time to reconstruct the popular conception of the prophet. In a civilised community good sense would be valued as a useful asset, without reference ,to the strength of its possessor’s lungs, and the fanatic would be suppressed as a public nuisance. lit is pitiful to see men treating the sage as the savage treats a barometer, with a mixture of fear and dislike, angry with it when it foretells bad weather, and worshipping it when the mercury goes up. The prophet would do better not to spoil humanity by submitting to its ignorant caprice. He would do better to go on strike for reasonable treatment. The right advertisement for the true prophet is the fulfilment of his prophesies. I am fortunate enough to be known to the vulgar only as the writer of certain stories in a magazine; and it is curious that even those stories, written, so to speak, in falsetto, and not in my natural voice, should have steadily portrayed the German Emperor as ever restlesslyplotting the downfall of Britain. But I could tell a strange tale of my real life in the Sybilline cave strown with the leaves of my rejected oracles. In the columns of THE NEW AGE I have sometimes been permitted to emerge from my incognito, and on this occasion I will reproduce the words of one prophecy which appeared just twelve months before the outbreak of the European war, in a volume which was reviewed in these columns. “When civilisation sets Jesus the Nazarene on a gibbet, and Caligula on a throne, it is time for it to be laid waste. Our era is too like the Christian one, our society is too like that of Antioch, our empires are too like that of Rome, for the thoughtful man not to apprehend, and for the prophet not to denounce, and even to demand, a parallel catastrophe. The apotheosis of Humanity is a denial of the Creator. And while lip service is done to this false god, the effectual worship of mankind goes forth to Mammon in the shape of the successful gambler, to Ashtaroth in the triumphant whore, and to Moloch in every spiritual bastard who inherits power without ability. The Divine Man is only tolerated in the tomb; and while the prophets are invoked with stately sepulchres, the prudent Annas and the well-meaning Caiaphas preside over their stagnant ritual to the satisfaction of the money-changers. “--”The Divine Mystery,” p. 183,
Studies
in Contemporary Mentality.
By Ezra Pound.
VI. SPHERE,” AND REFLECTIONS ON LETTER-PRESS. THIS study like any other branch of natural science demands great endurance. The individual specimens must, or at least should, be examined with microscopic attention ; otherwise one’s generalities will descend into mere jeux-d’esprit, and the patient student of contemporary misfortune will derive from them nothing more than a transient amusement. Not as a theologian interpreting the Divine Will in infallible dogma, but as a simple-hearted anthropologist putting specimens into different large boxes -merely for present convenience -tumbling things apparently similar into the same large box until a more scientific and accurate and mature arrangement is feasible, let me attempt a very general classification of such periodicals as have yet obtruded themselves There are, or seem to be: in my research: First : “B. & S.” periodicals, i.e., those designed to keep thought in safe channels; to prevent acrimonious discussion in old gentlemen’s clubs. e.g., respectable quarterlies, “The Spectator, ” e.h.g.o. Second : Periodicals designed to inculcate useful and mercantile virtues in the middle and lower middle classes or strata, e.g., “The Strand,’, and “Cocoa” in general. Third : Trade journals, such as “The Bookman,” ’‘The Tailor and Cutter,” “Colour,” etc. Fourth: Crank papers. Possibly one should include here as a sub-heading “religious periodicals, ’’ but I do not wish to press this classification; I do not feel the need of two categories, and my general term will cover a number of crank papers which are not definitely religious, though often based on "superstition,” i.e., left-overs of religions and taboos. Fifth: Papers and parts of papers designed to stop thought altogether. This last group is obviously quite distinct from the four groups that precede it. I do not mean to say that one can tell at a glance which papers belong to it, but its aim is radically different. The first group desires only to “stop down” thought, to prevent its leading any man into any unusual or “untoward” action. The second group aims to make its reader a self-helping and undisturbing member of the commercialcommunity, law-abiding, with enough virtue to be self-content. The third group is a specialisation of the second. it aims to do in particular trades and groups what the second does for the salaried and wage-earning order in general, i.e., to tell it or show it what sort of work is demanded; where one can get the best price, etc., e.g., (free “Colour” presents monthly sample iIlustrations of cost to its editors) by people who more or less obviously desire to be transferred from the “main text” to the advertising section of the paper. It also tells you about Mrs. Gumps’ “Place in Art” or Mr. R. Roe’s “Place in Art,” patiently explaining each is the month just which follower of Mr. Brangwyn true successor to Botticelli, Monticelli, Mantegna, Boucher, Watteau, Conder, Manet, Albrecht Durer, Velasquez, or whoever it may be who most needs an (By the kindness of such inheritor at the moment. and such “Galleries.”) This is essentially the scheme of “ The Bookman,” although Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton and Dr. Robertson Nicoll both need careful scrutiny on their own account. “The Lives of Publishers, a careful and comparative study by one not in their employ,” is a book we have long been in need of. The fourth group expresses those of the community “ THE
who desire all people to “ do something-” Regardless of the individual temperaments with which nature has endowed us, these people desire us to behave in a particular way. For example, some of them earnestly desire us all to procreate in abundance, others desire that we cease wholly from procreation; others demand that people uninstructed in Confucianism go at great expense into far parts of the earth to preventOrientals from remaining Confucians. Still others demand that we desist from alcohol in all forms, substituting food, coffee, tobacco ; others demand that we substitute one form of alcohol for another. Others demand that laws be arranged in a book with an intelligible system, still others demand that laws must essentially be without any system whatever. Some demand the “suppression of all brothels in Rangoon and other stations in Burmah” (“The Shield,” July’ 1916, a very interesting periodical). Others desire that we believe in ‘‘God.” Others desire that we should not “believe in God.” These periodicals must be distinguished from other propaganda for shifting the taxes, for a shifting of the taxes must almost of necessity bring, at least temporary, advantage to certain interested groups of individuals; but in many cases the “crank’’ periodical is more or less without “interest,” for it can make no possible difference to Mrs. Crabbee of Hocking whether Lo Hi Li of Canton believes or disbelieves in Confucius, or whether the young men in Burmah cleave to, or eschew, the customs of their fathers. Now in the face of these papers and on the grave of the Victorian era, it is by no means surprising that many people should have desired to stop thought altogether, or that there should have sprung up many papers like “The Sketch,” whose obvious aim is to console the inane for inanity. It is perfectly natural that people overwearied with being asked to decide at what age the female shop assistant of Hammersmith shall be judged fit to mislead the butcher-boy; overwearied with being asked to support missionaries to keep the Fijians sufficiently friendly to trade with the vendors of spirits, and to decide which sect shall morally uplift which islanders ; overwearied with being asked to decide the necessary ratio between bath-tubs, work hours, salvations of various‘ brands; overwearied, etc. . . . it is perfectly natural that these people should desire “surcease-” from thinking at all; just as after a period of frumpery and too many petticoats worn at once, it is perfectly natural that people should take delight in “Eire” with no petticoats whatsoever, and in similar mental ricochets. It seems unlikely that anyone else has ever read the letter-press of illustrated weeklies, i.e., more than enough to learn who it is who is “chatting” . . . for someone always is “chatting.” It is being done in the current numbers of three of them. I take “The Sphere” because it appears to be about “middlesize.’’ It eschews the simple aphrodisiacs of the “brighter” papers ; it has fewer cross-sections of dissected ships showing littIe compartments marked : coal, whale-oil, ballast, engines, crew, etc., than are published in the “Ill. London News. ” This last, “The Sketch,” and “The Sphere” are familiar to me because I used to dine occasionally in a restaurant where veal “Milanese” was 1,/3, the same being now 1/9. I judge these papers are aimed at people who paid 1/3 for veal cutlet before the War, and who are still able to afford the same dish, slightly smaller at an advance of 40 per cent. That is, I should say, about the average economic range of the 6d. (now 7d.) weekly. And “The Sphere” is about the average weekly, having fewer salients than the others. Current number by 16. inches. Cover : Soldiers in waterproof blankets, looking at camera, but labelled “Fighting” ; Fry, Shoolbred’s, “Army Club. ” Full page illustration. Books received : “Harry Lauder’s
Logic,” etc. “Plays Worth Seeing,’’ are described as follows :I. Most attractive musical comedy, with some pleasant songs and picturesque scenes. Irresponsible company provide an excellent night’s entertainment. Play continues very popular, and the Song . . . is spreading far and wide over the Kingdom. 5. looks very chic as the heroine. First text page, Editorial. “It is curious that certain people should allow themselvesto formulate such an ignorant and careless question as ‘What are we Fighting For?’ ” “Mr. Wells has perhaps forgotten . . . famous pledge . . . Asquith . . . never sheathe the sword . . . ultimatum, . . . Serbia . . . Belloc. . . . “ Usual picture of “ chatting.” Fourteen pages of war pictures and maps. These things are of interest, are to be found in various weeklies. One wishes the editors would stick to photographs and not employ “artists. ” Usual “ science ” page or half-page : “ 164,000,000 miles,” etc. Mr. Lucas: “But apart from money, which has nothing to do with the pleasures of craftsmanship,it must be great fun to write aphorisms.” Sketch of “Tommy in Italy, like Tommy in France, ,is on the best of terms with his Allies.” A LITERARY LETTER. “Personally, I care nothing. . . I do not mind whether Shakespeare wrote the plays assigned. ... I do not care a single jot about the authorship of Elizabethan drama. . . . A playwright never hesitated to borrow. . . . “ “Anyone who can write a book on the Elizabethan drama, one feels to be a friend with whom one would like to discuss various problems. . . . I would fain have gone through, in this or another Letter, the eight volumes of Middleton (every line of which I have read). ” Mehercule!!! “And have endeavoured to demonstrate the essential greatness. . . .” “I paid for my edition of the works of Webster in four volumes, published by Pickering in 1830, edited by Alexander Dyce, not less than and a friend paid or for a copy rendered additionally valuable by a wider margin. I paid a guinea for the plays of Tourneur. edited by Churton Collins. ” “Dyce’s one volume edition-an uncomfortable book to read. . . . “ “The Elizabethan dramatists are not reallyavailable to-day to any but those who, like myself, spend more money than prudence justifies upon books.” “One of my favourites among the Elizabethans. . .” “Further, it may interest those who remember the discussion about the German word, Kadaver. . . “ “NOW, I have great admiration for Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch as a novelist, and I count him one of the most attractive men I know.” “If I were giving advice to a young student of literature (and my correspondence indicates that this Letter fulfils some such purpose in countless cases).” SISTE VIATOR. Gentle friend, let us pause, let us drop a modest and not too prominent tear for the adolescent and countless correspondent. There is more of this, there is even a part page headed “Literature.” Blind worship of Shakespeare is deplored, but “The Tempest” is said to be better than Dekker’s “Shoemaker’s Holiday. ” Then follows a full page of the Pope, as damning a piece of evidence as even the most rabid atheist could desire. In “Literature” we learn that, “Here Dion Cosway found his cousin Myola.” “In the Petrol World,,” sono profano, I am unfit to discuss things, but the foot-pump seems an admirable, pain-saving invention.
WOMAN’S Sphere IN WAR-TIME. Here we note the repetition of the paper’s own title, ‘‘ Sphere,” and :--. “Three years of the tangled web of war have passed away, with all our preconceived notion,.; knocked to bits . . . timely Zepp . . . flattened purses and forced simplicity . . . infuse dashes of decorativeness into our attire . . . inexpensive devices . . . clever fingers . . . ordinary frock. . . absurdly simple . . decorative withal.” (Surely this last must be the editor ipse.) “Jersey of powder-blue tricot, . . . autumn toilette, dainty decoration . . . out of the commonplace . . .” There is more of this both here and in other weeklies; but I am more concerned about the “countless” correspondent than with the problem of introducing literary archaism into the female dress paragraph. EZRA POUND.
Readers and Writers,
FORTNIGHTLY, since last October until last week-when the series concluded-Mr. Edward Moore has been publishing a note-book in these columns under the title of “ We Moderns.” In the knowledge that they were about to come to an end I have just been re-reading the series with a view to passing an opinion upon an extraordinary piece of work. For extraordinary it is, however you may choose to read it, If you regard it as an imitation of Nietzsche, you must admit that it is as a tour de force-parody of the very highest order, parody amounting to originality almost equal to Nietzsche’s own; as good as Burke on Bolingbroke. If you regard it as the note-book of a man hitherto unknown as a writer, you must marvel at the finish of so much of the style-a finish without any superior in its contemporary school. Or if you take it merely as theoccasional reflections of a modern mind, you must ‘be moved to admiration by the variety, the profundity and the passion of the thoughts so apparently easily poured out. Only in one respect do I myself find the work wanting in the qualities that go to make a masterpiece : it is without common sense. The others it has, but this it has not-the obviousness of the perfectly true, the simplicity of the revealed commonplace, the touch of nature that keeps all minds kin. *** I am sure that Mr. Moore will not attribute to my remarks a want of respect for himself and his work, more especially when I go on to explain it. Commonsense in my personal vocabulary is something as far removed from. the common as the centre of the world of thought from the circumference. What I imply by it is a grip upon reality which never weakens even when the substance under one’s hand is of the very thinnest. In the simplest form I should say that commonsense is the successful resolution of the mind to hold nothing as true that is not implicit in the common mind. John Smith is in my conception of commonsense the criterion of truth. By what ever road thought travels, and however gorgeous may be the intellectual scenery on the way (and I like as much as any one to be intellectually entertained en route), I require that when it reaches home it shall really find itself at home. Its golden wings when they are at rest shall show the marvellous bird that has sailed the empyrean to be after all, a bird of the earth, a home-bird; and all the truths which shone as it flew and which in its flight it sang should reveal themselves as truisms. The brilliant commonsense to which I have often referred as the ambition of THE NEW AGE is not, in my interpretation, the discovery of anything new : it is the rediscovery of what everybody knows but needs to be reminded that he knows. Its method may he difficult; the processes of rediscovery may be complex; but, in the
end, its results are, as it were, foregone conclusions, conclusions to which, implicitly if not explicitly, the common mind had already come. *** Before considering in what respects Mr. Moore’s conclusions appear to me to be lacking in commonsense (commonsense, by the way, is the mind of democracy-a remark to be remembered in reading Mr. Moore’s allusions to democracy), I propose to extend the present introductory digressions by a note or two. To prove that I mean nothing uncomplimentary to Mr. Moore I shall say that to my mind no writer and thinker that ever lived is so lacking in commonsense as Nietzsche, and it cannot be unflattering to Mr. Moore to be put into the same boat with his master ! Other writers, scarcely more commonsense in my judgment than Nietzsche, are Carlyle, Emerson , Heraclitus (whom Mr. Moore mentions after Nietzsche with profound obeisance), Hegel-in fact, a large proportion of the great Germans-Shaw, Wilde, and many another : all of them considerable if not great minds, and all of them, in my opinion, lacking in the quality of commonsense. The absence of commonsense is not, therefore, by any means incompatible with power of mind; power of mind is, indeed. very often the cause of the lack of commonsense; for it is easy enough for a mind to arrive at commonsense conclusions when it has not the power to arrive at conclusions of its own. But it is much more difficult for an extraordinary mind to be ordinary. My own rule in the matter is simple. It consists in requiring of every ‘conclusion to which I am brought that it shall be susceptible of being expressed in what is called, plain lauguage, that is, in idiom. I do not care, mind you, in what form the thinker leaves the impression of his thought; it may be in the form of a play by Shakespeare, dialogue by Plato, a poem by Milton, an a essay by Swift, an epic by Homer or Vyasa, or a system of philosophy by Thomas Aquinas. The richer the expression, in fact, the more dignity is lent to the conclusions. But when the conclusions are examined that are contained within the expression, they should be, as I have said, susceptible of being expressed in idiomatic terms. At bottom, it is obvious that all expressed thought is addressed to the jury of mankind and is (if Mr. Durran will permit me to say it) a species of advocacy. The intention of convincing the jury of mankind that such and such a conclusion is correct or such another conclusion incorrect may not be openly affirmed by the advocate; it may not even be deliberate and explicit in his own mind; but nevertheless, it is present and operative, and I have no kind of doubt that every published work of thought is propagandist consciously or unconsciously. But this bears again upon what I have been saying, namely, that every piece of work should reduce to a simple truth capable of being understood by the jury of mankind. For what is the use when addressing a jury whose verdict in your favour you desire, of arriving at a conclusion to which, if even they understood it, they could not assent? The greatest writers and thinkers, I affirm, have always the jury of mankind in their minds as not merely the auditors but as the assessors of the case being put before them. To be sure, the greatest thinkers have also thoughts upon which it is impossible for commonsense to pass judgment ‘to-day ; thoughts which it is perhaps not yet possible to reduce to truisms. But these, in my experience, the greatest thinkers carefully refrain from putting forward as conclusions; they leave them as myths, as guesses, as poetry or what not. Such, however, of their conclusions as can be expressed in plain terms always turn out to be the conclusions of commonsense; and by that test they stand.
I see that I shall exceed my space before discussing Mr. Moore in even his outlines. Let me hurry on. To put it very summarily, Mr. Moore is a romantic to whom it is fatal to apply the criterion of commonsense. The world in which his discoveries are made is not the world in which the jury of mankind sits; it is a world shared mainly by himself and Nietzsche, a world of his intellectual imagination, a world constructed with some of the material of our world, but of a good deal more of the material of his own fancy. In that world of his, neither the problems nor the values are those which are known to us’; they are either new in themselves or they exist under novel conditions. It is, for example, a condition of his world that there shall be no fixed values in it, but that the value of everything shall be arbitrarily imposed by what he calls the creative will of man. Obviously this is not our world in which, willy-nilly, man finds himself subject to a scale of values (or, if you like, needs), the fixed degrees of which he is unable to change by a hair’s Nor, again, is the world in which man is a breadth. creator the same world as our own in which man is only a pro-creator. It is here that the romanticism of Mr. Moore is most plainly revealed; for it is of the very essence of romanticism to wish for another kind of world than this which is. To the romantic not only is this world as it appears not interesting enough, not good enough, but he has the adventurous courage to “ will” it to be otherwise. Why should I not, he asks? The world is plastic to the imagination; it is what it is because imagination has wished it to be so; what if a new imagination should make a new world of it? Everything for the romantic turns, you see, upon the plasticity of “reality,” and upon its responsiveness to the “creative” will and imagination of man. Acceptance of the doctrine of Becoming is as inevitable to the romantic as rejection of the doctrine of Being. Being-the fixity of what is, and implying unalterability by man’s imagination -is the very devil for the romantics who see in fixed “truths” nothing more than “stagnant values,” that is to say, old imaginations become conventions. Away with them, they say; “stagnant values,” to quote Mr. Moore, “are incompatible with the creative impulse”; they put a bound to the imagination of man, beyond which he cannot “create. ” Anything “given” in the nature of the world and therefore unalterable by man shares the same fate at their hands. “Original Sin,” for example, implying a fact (that is, a thing done once and for all) is anathema to them. Why should we accept this fact, they say, as a fined principle, when plainly it is a theory, an interpretation, a valuation only? Examine its origin-did it not arise in a misunderstanding? Was it more than a guess at truth? Had not circumstances to do with its enunciation? And Mr. Moore replies triumphantly that the doctrine of Original Sin “was itself man’s Original Sin.” In other words, it is not a fixed fact, but an old theory. It is the same with Christianity, and with all the doctrines of Christianity. The defect of Christianity,fur Mr. Moore, is that it enunciates fixed “ truths,” truths that were in the beginning, are now and ever shall be. Thus it limits the possible, since only those things are possible that are within the compass of the fined truths. Away therefore with Christianity, says Mr. Moore ! Christianity is reaction: it is the clinging of the mind to old formula?. Our problem is “the enlargement of the field of choice”-and how is this field to be enlarged if we admit the existence of fixed truths? Thus Mr. Moore continues in his iconoclastic career, hammering away at anything that claims to be fixedly true, and urging the transience OF every theory. What we need, he says, is a perpetual re-valuation of values. Nothing is true for all time; the truth-making faculty must be in perpetual motion, continually making true new valuations and thus continually creating the
future. For the future is only fixed if we allow it to be fixed. ,Our will can create it in our own imagination. *** I call all this romantic because, as I have said, it assumes the absence from the world of reality of anything inherent and outside of man’s power. It is an affirmation of the infinite alterability of the world. It is in contrast, therefore, with commonsense, which, while not denying that the world is alterable, affirms that it is alterable only within fixed limits. There is a perfection possible for commonsense, but it is the perfection of things which now, are into what they may become. Beyond their own ripeness they cannot pass, for other than what is possible to them they cannot become. The Doctrine of Becoming in the Platonic sense of the word is not that of Nietzsche or of his. disciple Mr. Moore; it is not the Becoming of Things subject to the creative power of man, but the Becoming of Things subject to the pro-creative power of man. For, once again, man is not the creator of the world or of the future of the world, but only, at best, their pro-creator. From this point of viewthe classic as opposed to the romantic-there are not only fixed truths, there are no other kinds of truth. Intellect is our organ for the discovery of them; and morality is our method of making use of them. Morality is thus not the will to power or the will to create new values; it is simply working within fixed limits, for the perfection of what is. Morality is a universal law. A rose-tree that brings its roses to perfection is a moral bush. A man who does his duty is a moral man and brings forth fruit meet for perfection. Is it not significant that Mr. Moore never once discusses the nature of Duty? Without fixed truths there can be no Duty. *** These are hasty notes written after a re-reading of the series. They are marginal queries. I promise myself the pleasure of reading Mr. Moore again and many times. If the series were in a little book I should carry it about with me until one of us was exhausted. R. H. C.
My
late Uncle Anthony.
By his Nephew.
IT may seem ungrateful of his nephew to undertake an appreciation which is certain to contain depreciation of the Letters of his Uncle Anthony.* But I have several excuses. The Letters were written to me, and I am, therefore, surely the best judge of them. My Uncle is dead, or, at least, he has as good as told the world so. And, finally, since it was withoutmy knowledge that he kept a copy of his Letters, to me, and caused them to be published after his death without requiring my consent, I feel free to write of him without requiring his. However, I do not intend to give the old boy away. He was almost as good an uncle to me as he imagined he was; and this is eulogy indeed. He diddled the brokers for me; you will see that I borrow his vocabulary; for me he remained unmarried while he was engaged in travelling ; and for me, in the first instance at any rate, he sat up o’ nights in the blazing Tropics splitting bottles with divers Rafaels and Don Rodriguez, and writing the Letters that have made me famous. What could an Uncle do more? Peace to his cigar-ashes, and may he never read this with less affection than it is about to be written. ’But, having promised not to give him away, I must restrict my account of him to the material of his Letters. Therein you have, I frankly avow, all of my Uncle that he cared to print, and all, therefore, * “ Letters to My (Harrap. 5s. net.) Nephew.” By Anthony Farley.
Reading that it behoves a respectful nephew to repeat. between the lines with my personal knowledge of him, and writing with sustained discretion, I can, however, show a light here and there which never was upon his own sea or land. For instance, my Uncle Anthony is a little fond in his Letters of assuming an experience which only in later years I was expected to attain-experience derived, you understand me well, from the tropical passion. Well, well, it is an indulgence of middle-age to compare itself with youth to youth’s disadvantage; but I may as well say, what you can guess, that Nuncle a little overdid it. Between you and me, his nephew also knew a thing or two. Again, you will observe him balancing the advantages of the various professions I was to choose between and dismissing them all save his own profession of It was natural in Uncle Anthony to believe business. that he could not have chosen anything but the best, for had he not arrived at himself? But, once more between ourselves, I can assure the reader that he had no choice in the matter. I had; and I can give you my word that I did not choose business by one of his long chalks ! But these are hints only. While he is so hardly deceased, it is decent only to whisper his faults by his grave-side. To more trifling matters. My approach to him was by way of Letters. As I finger the pile I received from him, dropping a hot tear every now and then, there come into my mind certain of their traits with a vividness like that of hot cakes-if Uncle will pass me the expression. Some of these traits are amusing in their naivete; others are beyond the reach of any small talent such as mine. Both shall be yours faithfully dealt with, however, in a spirit of extenuation wanting naught of malice and mounting to admiration in the closing parts of this absolutely final and only authoritative notice. Here beginneth . . . the faults of the Letters of Anthony Farley. My Uncle, I grieve to say, mixed his styles in a manner that was not altogether his own. I have seen it elsewhere, in Wells, to be precise. My referenceis not to the variety of styles in which the old boy could write-his Carlylese as like as life, his Meredithese as good as the original. At these literary tricks he was ripping, topping, and absolutely it. No, that diversity of styles marks the writer, and blessed was my Uncle who had his quiver full of them. My allusion is to the mixture as before I began this digression-to the clandestine, and, so to say, internecine mixture of styles within a single style. For example, he would give to his Rafael, say, or to himself,some purple patch to deliver by mail to me, and open the envelope to add a phrase of cynicism, the effect of which was to drab his purple to a beastly brown. I remark it particularly in his conclusion to the excellent oratorical effort of Rafael in Parliamentas good a speech as was never delivered, but ought to be. It was while I was clapping applause to this speech that Uncle Anthony remarked to Rafael: “Let’s dress for dinner to-night and split a bottle of fizz.” What a let-down for his enthusiastic nephew! To mix drinks is bad, but to mix drink with oratory is worse. I cannot conceal from you that my Uncle was also a chunk of a sentimentalist. He certainly had an eye for a situation, but the situations for which he had the nicest eye were situations of melodrama. In ideas, of which he had any quantity, he would rise to drama, and even, on occasion, to tragedy. I do believe that when he wrote of the curse of the wage-system, for instance, he was at his top-note. But in visibIe situations his setting was the stage, and not even the legitimate stage. In a precious word which I owe to the cinema he had in these matters a screen temperament. Let me illustrate. That death-sentence scene in which Dr. Micky told him that he was no better than a dead man. “It’s thumbs down, Tony,” said
“ No sick palaver beforehand?” asked my Micky. Uncle. It was meant to be grim, I think, and a lump indeed began to rise in my throat, but, on second thoughts, I could not swallow it. No, old cockolorum, you were playing to the screen, and I am old in cinema. Uncle was a romancer as well as a sentimentalist. He saw people and incidents as they ought to have been to suit the picture instead of as they were to jigger it. He used to assure me, personally, that Rafael was as he dcscribed him, and that he had even failed to do justice to the perfection of Richard Tudor. But never could he get me to believe it after my discovery that Richard Tudor and Rafael wrote and spoke in the very character and language of the old rip himself. Observe that Tudor says that “politics bores him stiff.” So, too, in his very first letter does my Uncle ! And Rafael’s speech-my Uncle to the Biblical quotation ? Enough of faults, I will now remark upon some The most prodigious of these is the gusto of virtues. life in his Letters. Things do move under his hands. Essentially, my Uncle was not a man of action, but an actor-manager with a gift for speeding-up. His Letters, you will see, were long, but they were never too long for the reading. You might be jolted en route, raised to a pinnacle of eloquence one moment to splosh into bathos the next, but all the time you were in rapid motion. Had Kipling graduated through he would have written some of my Uncle’s Socialism yarns. Then, undoubtedly, he had travelled a good deal both geographically and intellectually ; and he kept his eyes peeled: Most men, sharing his opinions, stay at home, even when they travel abroad. They see only the books they have left behind them. Not so my Uncle. His focus shifted with the landscape; and among business men he was a business man, among literary gents he was a literary gent, among all sorts he was all sorts. At the same time, one prick at him, and always the Irish Farley was there. That is your Irishman all over. He reflects the world and remains Irish at heart. I do not think, however, that my old Murphy saw everything on which his eyes rested by any means. His observation failed him on many occasions. For instance, his scenery is always well described, but it is always the familiar scenery of the photograph. He only saw post-card views. An example of a different order is the following passage, which begins excellently and fades away into commonplace. “No vulgar workman with stubbed fingers plying at the bench, no shortened square-toed miner picking his tonnage in the gloom and grime [very good], no hectic clerk with hideous tie [weak], no homeless, wretched A. B. in the fo’c’sle [poor], has aught to do with ‘this strange process. ” You observe the decline in that. The old fellow was too lazy to keep‘ up his observation. After two phrases, he probably went to split a bottle of fizz. But the two phrases are always virtuous. Uncle Anthony had also a wonderful gift of the dialect. His Rafaels and Tudors and Rodriguez and Hermandos speak, it is true, a la Anthony himself; but his real persons have a tongue of their own. His Irish is excellent; his Yorkshire is about as good; and I have heard him speak in Welsh and negro to the patter. I wish he had taken it into his head to write more dialect sketches. I abbreviated his faults, and I must pare down his virtues. The last I shall mention is his facility with ideas. Ought I, however, to call them ideas, or opinions? Well, let’s split a fizz, and say that some were ideas, but that many were only intelligent opinions. Amongst his ideas I rank as the chief his sociological views. The old gentleman had had from early youth a passion for social reform, and it never left him. What is more wonderful still, he successively
outgrew all the systems made for him until, as I believe, with the genuine conviction of a pioneer, he stood upright on the peaks of National Guilds. That’s some achievement, my boy! Take them, by and large, his Letters are a pilgrim’s progress in sociology and economics which nobody has equalled ; and if the illustrations are a little romantic, the text is solid grit. I have done, done my durndest. There was to be no sick palaver before his demise; and there shall be none after it. The moonrays light his grave and the Papers he has left behind are, I hope, endless. Dammit, this kid is not complaining of his Uncle Anthony Farley-not on your life!
An Album
Leaf.
By Katherine Mansfield. HE really was an impossible person. Too shy altogether. With absolutely nothing to say for himself. And such a weight. Once he was in your studio he never knew when to go, but would sit on and on until you nearly screamed, and burned to throw something enormous after him when he did finally blush his way out-something like the tortoise stove. The strange thing was that at first sight he looked most interesting. Everybody agreed about that. You would drift into the cafe one evening and there you would see, sitting in a corner, with a glass of coffee in front of him, a thin, dark boy, wearing a blue jersey with a little grey flannel jacket buttoned over it. And somehow that blue jersey and the grey jacket with the sleeves that were too short gave him the air of a boy who has made up his mind to run away to sea. Who has run away, in fact, and will get up in a moment and sling a knotted handkerchief containing his nightshirt and his mother’s picture on the end of a stick, and walk out into the night and be. drowned. . . StumbIe over the wharf edge on his way to the ship, even. . . He had black, closecropped hair, grey eyes with long lashes, white cheeks, and a mouth pouting as though he were determined not to cry. . . How could one resist him? Oh, one’s heart was wrung at sight. And, as if that was not enough, there was this trick of blushing. . . Whenever the waiter came near him he turned crimson--he might have been just out of prison and the waiter in the know. . . . “ Who is he, my dear? DO you know?” “ Yes. His name is Ian French. Painter. Awfully clever, they say.” Someone started by giving him a mother’s tender care. She asked him how often he heard’ from home, whether he had enough blankets on his bed, how much milk he drank a day. But when she went round to his studio to give an eye to his socks, she rang and rang, and though she could have sworn she heard someone breathing inside, the door was not answered. . . . Hopeless. Someone else decided that he ought to fall in love. She summoned him to her side, called him “boy,” leaned over him so that he might smell the enchanting perfume of her hair, took his arm, told him how marvellouslife could be if only one had the courage, and went round to his studio one evening and rang, and rang. . . Hopeless. “ What the poor boy really wants is thoroughly rousing,” said a third. So off they went to cafes and cabarets, little dances, places where you drank something that tasted like tinned apricot juice, but cost twenty-seven shillings a bottle, and was called champagne, other places, too thrilling for words, where you sat in the most awful gloom, and where someone had always been shot the night before. But he did not turn a hair. Only once he got very drunk, but instead of blossoming forth, there he sat, stony, with two spots of red on his cheeks, like, my dear, yes, the dead
image of the rag-time thing they were playing, like a “Broken Doll.” But when she took him back to his studio, he had quite recovered, and said good-night to her in the street below, as though they had walked home from church together. . . Hopeless. After heaven knows how many more attempts-for the spirit of kindness dies very hard in women-they gave him up. Of course they were still perfectly charming, and asked him to their shows, and spoke to him in the cafe, but that was all. When one is an artist, one simply hasn’t time for people who won’t respond. Has one? “ And, besides, I really think there must be something rather fishy somewhere. . . don’t you? It can’t all be as innocent as it looks. Why come to Paris if you want to he a daisy in the field? No, I’m not suspicious, but-” He lived at the top of a tall, mournful building overlooking river. the One of those buildings that look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight nights, when the shutters are shut, and the heavy door, and the sign advertising “ a little apartment to let immediately" gleams, forlorn beyond words. One of those buildings which smell so unromantic all the year round, and where the concierge lives in a glass case on the ground floor, wrapped up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan, and ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old dog lolling on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air his studio had a wonderful view. The two big windows faced the water ; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet. The side window looked across to another house, shabbier still and smaller, and down below there was a flower market. You could see the tops of huge umbrellas, with frills of bright flowers escaping from them, booths covered with striped awnings where they sold plants in boxes and clumps of wet gleaming palms in terra-cotta jars. Among the flowers the old women scuffled from side to side, like crabs. Really there was no need for him to go aut. If he sat at the window until his white beard fell over the sill he still would have found something to draw. . . How surprised those tender women would have been if they had managed to force the door. For he kept his studio as neat as a pin. Everything was arranged to form a pattern, a little “ still life ” as it were-the saucepans with their lids on the wall behind the gasstove, the bowl of eggs, milk jug and teapot on the shelf, the books and the lamp with the crinkly paper shade on the table. An Indian curtain that had a fringe of red leopards marching round it covered his bed by day, and on the wall beside the bed on a level with your eyes when you were lying down there was a small, neatly printed notice: GET UP AT ONCE. which must have been very depressing on a winter morning. Every day was much the same. While the light was good he slaved at his painting, then cooked his meals and tidied up the place. And in the evenings he went off to the cafe, or sat at home reading or making out the most complicated list of expenses headed : “ What I ought to be able to do it on,” and ending with a sworn statement . . . “I swear not to exceed this amount fer next month. Signed : Ian French.” Nothing very fishy about this; but those far-seeing women were quite right. It wasn’t all. One evening he was sitting at the side window eating some prunes and throwing the stones on to the tops of the huge, umbrellas in the deserted flower market It had been raining -the first real spring rain of the year had fallena bright spangle hung on everything, and the air smelled of buds and moist earth. Many voices sounding languid and content rang out in the dusky air, and the peopIe who had came to close their windows and
fasten the shutters leaned out instead. Down below in the market the trees were peppered with new green. What kind of trees were they, he wondered. And now came the lamplighter. He stared at the house across the way, the small, shabby house, and suddenly, as if in answer to his gaze, two wings of window opened and a girl came out on to the tiny balcony carrying a pot of daffodils. She was a strangely thin girl in a dark pinafore, with a pink handkerchief tied over her hair. Her sleeves were rolled up almost to her shoulders, and her slender arm:; shone against the dark pinafore. “ Yes, it is quite warm enough. It will do them good,” she said, putting down the pot and turning to someone inside the room. As she turned she put her hands up to the handkerchief and tucked away some wisps of hair. She looked down at the deserted flower market and up at the sky, but where he sat there might have been a hollow in the air. She simply did not see the house opposite. And then she disappeared. His heart fell out of the side window of his studio, and down to the balcony of the house opposite-buried itself in the pot of daffodils under the half-opened buds and the spears of green. That room with the balcony was the sitting-room, and the one next door to it was the kitchen. He heard the clatter of the dishes as she washed up after supper, and then she came to the window, knocked a little mop against the ledge, and hung it on a nail to dry. She never sang or unbraided her hair, or held out her arms to the moon as young girls are supposed‘ to do. And she always wore the same dark pinafore and the pink handkerchief over her hair. . . Whom did she live with? Nobody else came to those two windows, and yet she was always talking to someone in the room. Her mother, he decided, was an invalid. They took in sewing. The father was dead. . . He had been a journalist,-very pale, with long moustaches, and a piece of black hair falling over his forehead. By working hard all day they just made enough money to live on, but they never went out and they had no friends. Now when he sat at his table he had to make an entirely new set of sworn statements. . . . Not to go to the side window before a certain hour: signed, Ian French. Not to think about her until he had put away his painting things for the day: signed, Ian French. It was quite simple. She was the only person he really wanted to know, because she was, he decided, the only other person alive who was just his age. He couldn’t stand giggling girls, and he had no use for grown-up women. . . she was just like him. He sat in his age, she was-well, his dusky studio, tired, with one arm hanging over the back of his chair, staring in at her windows, and seeing himself in there with her. She had a violent temper; they quarrelled terribly at times, he and she. She had a way of stamping her foot and twisting her hands in her pinafore . . . furious. And she very rarely laughed. Only when she told him about an absurd little kitten she had once who used to roar and pretend to be a lion when it was given meat to eat. Things like that made her laugh. . . But as a rule they sat together very quietly; he, just as he was sitting now, and she with her hands folded in her lap and her feet tucked under, talking in low tones, or silent and tired after the day’s work. Of course she never asked him about his pictures, and of course he made the most wonderful drawings of her which she hated, because he made her so thin and so dark. . . But how could he get to know her? This might go on for years. . . Then he discovered that once a week, in the evenings, she went out shopping. On two successive Thursdays she came to the window with a basket on her arm, and wearing an old-fashioned cape over the pinafore. . . From where he sat he could not see the door of her house, but on the next Thursday evening
at the same time he snatched up his cap and ran down the stairs. There was a lovely pink light over everything. He saw it glowing in the river, and the people walking towards him had pink faces and pink hands. He leaned against the side of his house waiting for her, and he had no idea of what he was going to do or say. “Here she comes,” said a voice in his head. She walked very quickly, with small, light steps; with one hand she carried the basket, with the other she held the cape together. . . . What could he do? He could only follow. . . First she went into the grocer’s, and spent a long time in there, and then she went into the butcher’s, where she had to wait her turn. Then she was an age at the draper’s matching something, and then she went to the fruit shop and bought a lemon. As he watched her he knew more surely than ever he must get to know her, now. Her composure, her seriousness, and her loneliness, the very way she walked as though she was eager to be done with this foreign world of grown-ups-all was natural to him and so inevitable. “ Yes, she is always like that,” he thought proudly. “We have nothing to do with these people.” But now she was on her way home and he was as far off as ever. . . She suddenly turned into the dairy, and he saw her through the window buying an egg. She picked it out of the basket with such care-a brown one, a beautifully shaped one, the one he would have chosen. And when she came out of the dairy he went in after her. In a moment he was out again, and following her past his house across the flower market, dodging among the huge umbrellas and treading on the fallen flowers and the round marks where the pots had stood. . . . ’Through her door he crept, and up the stairs after her, taking care to tread in time to her so that she should not notice. Finally she stopped on the landing, and took the key out of her purse. As she put it into the door, he ran up and faced her. Blushing more crimson than ever, hut looking at her severely he said, almost angrily : “Excuse me, Mademoiselle, you dropped this. ” And he handed her an egg.
Views
and Reviews.
THE RULE OF LAW. THE result of the trial for murder of Lieut. Malcolm was not unexpected, but in view of that melodramatic tendency which our criminal trials have manifested of late years, it was none the less disquieting. In its disregard both of the facts and of the law of the case, the verdict was another instance of that growing disregard of the rule of law which is one of the most perplexingphenomena of our time. Let us grant that no one, myself included, wished the death penalty to be inflicted on Lieut. Malcolm; the fact remains that the prerogative of mercy inheres in the Crown, and the jury has no right toexercise it. The jury is specifically judge of fact; it has to decide whether the the alleged act was committed by the accused person, and thereby to enable the law to take its course. That the alleged act was committed by the accused person, there is no dispute; that it was homicide was also admitted, the only question to be determined was the degree of homicide, and whether that degree were culpable. The verdict of “Not Guilty” of any crime at all shows us that the jury was composed, in Dicey’s words, of ‘‘citizens-who, partly because of the fairness and regularity with which the law has been enforced for generations in Great Britain, hardly perceive the risk and ruin involved in a departure from the rule of law.” The natural consequences will follow; already a person has written to an evening paper declaring that the jury’s verdict means that homicide is justifiable when the murdered man is a white slave trafficker. It is only a step from that
argument to saying that homicide is justifiable if a man is a profiteer, or a labour agitator, or any other person who happens to receive, or even to merit, public opprobrium. Once depart from the rule of law, and we are plunged into anarchy. But the most disturbing feature of the case is not the jury’s verdict, or its approval by the public, but the fact that responsible lawyers should lend their support in any farm to the doctrine that “it is not only dowable, but highly praiseworthy, to break the law of the land if the law-breaker is pursuing some end which to him or her seems to be just or desirable.” The magistrate who committed Lieut. Malcolm for trial did so with regret, publicly deplored the duty he had to perform of administering the law; the counsel for the prosecution deplored the painful duty that devolved upon him of demanding from the jury a verdict in accordance with law,’ and openly sympathised with the difficulty the jury would have in deciding the case on the evidence submitted. He also omitted to state, as the judge did not fail to remark, a most important point against the plea of self-defence. Counsel for the defence put forward a plea which, because it was unsupported by evidence and had no basis in Jaw. really had no other purpose than that‘ of developing a new legal procedure; in effect, he asked the jury to usurp the prerogative of the Crown, and to constitute themselves the dispensers of mercy. He certainly did not, because he could not, plead “the unwritten law,” but that he appealed to it, and obtained a verdict in accordance with it, there is no doubt whatever. So far as the right of self-defence, culminating in homicide, is recognised by the law, it does not, says Stephen in his “Commentaries,” “imply a right of attacking, for instead of attackingone another for injuries past or impending, men need only have recourse to the proper tribunals justice.” of Sir John Simon”s plea of self-defence should have been ruled ultra vires from the very beginning, for Lieut. Malcolm was undoubtedly the attacker. He sought out this man, armed. himself with a whip and a revolver, and declared in the letter that he wrote to his wife that he was going “to thrash [this man] until he is unrecognisable.” That, in itself, was a criminal intention, but the letter declared a further criminal intention in certain circumstances, viz., “I may shoot him if he has got a gun.” Now, the right of self-defence (and this point should have been made by counsel for the prosecution) does not pertain to the aggressor; doubtful as it is, it pertains only to the person attacked. It was the man now dead who went in such fear of violence that he bought a revolver to protect himself; yet if he had used it directly Lieut. Malcolm entered his room, it is doubtful whether he would have been justified. The gist of the rules laid down by the Criminal Code Bill Commissioners is that “no man must slay or severely injure another until he has done: everything he possibly can to avoid the use of extreme force. A is struck by a ruffian, X; A has a revolver in his pocket. He must not then and there fire upon X, but, to avoid crime, he must retreat as far as he can. X pursues; A is driven up against a wall. Then, and not till then, A, if he has no other means of repelling attack, may justifiably fire at X.” That is Dicey’s summary of the law. Baumberg himself would only have been entitled to the plea of self-defence if he had first attempted to retreat, or to use some other means of defence than his pistol. The plea had no relation at all to the case of Lieut. Malcolm and that it should have been urged by “the most skilful advocate of the day” does not reflect much credit on the profession of advocacy, “In the case of justifiable self-defence,” says Foster, in his “Discourses,” “the injured party may repel force with force in defence of his person, habitation, or property, against one who manifestly in-
tendeth and endeavoureth with violence or surprise to commit a known felony upon either.” Plainly,’ Lieut. Malcolm was not the “injured party”; neither his person, habitation, or property was attacked by the dead man. The judge declared in his summing-up: “A husband has no property in the body of his wife. He cannot imprison her; he cannot chastise her. If she refuses to live with him, he cannot, nor can the Court, compel her ’to do so. She is mistress of her own physical destiny. If she sins, and the husband can prove it, he may obtain a divorce, but if she decides to give her body to another, then the husband is not entitled to murder the lover either to punish the sin or to secure its correction.” It would hardly be too extreme a statement of the law to say that the wife, not the husband, is the legal custodian of marital honour; certainly, there is an utter absence of legal right on the part of a husband either to avenge or to defend his marital honour by force. For him to do so would be to restrict unwarrantably the liberty of his wife to do as she likes with herself; he has his legal remedy, divorce, if she does not maintain the sanctity of the marriage contract, but he has no other right at ail. But in this case, the defence asserted, and the prosecution also argued, that no breach of the marriage contract bad occurred; the homicide was, therefore, committed. to prevent, the wife from exercising her liberty of choice. It is certainly not the written law, and it must, therefore, be the unwritten law, that justifies a jealous husband in proceeding to extremities to prevent his marital honour, of which he is not the custodian, being violated. It is impossible to apply the standards of the harem to conditions that are not those of the harem; by English law, women are free to go where they like, and do what they like with themselves, and if a husband can with impunity prevent by homicide a breach of the marriage contract, social life will become impossible. The jury, by its verdict, has approved a conception of life that is not only out of date, but is contrary to law; stupidly, for the law remains the same. To nothing but the revival of militarism in this country can we attribute the general approval of the challenge to a duel sent by Lieut. Malcolm; duelling is as much a crime as murder, and I may remark that if popular approval permits its revival, the history of the practice does not justify us in supposing that it will secure the sanctity of the home. Husbands have been known to lose their fives in such contests; and there is at least one recorded case in which the wife acted as page to her lover at the, duel. There is this resemblance between the Restoration period and our own, that the equality of the sexes was debated and denounced as much then as now; and it is remarkable, from this point of view, that the Restoration dramatists usually depict the jealous. husband not only as an absurd person,but as an unsuccessful defender of what one of the most famous of them called “ his own freehold.” If it comes to duelling, two can play at that game; and the husbands who were so eager to send the “single men first” to the war might conceivably not always be successful in defending “their honour.” The rule of law is the only sure safeguard of domesticity, and Sir John Simon would have been better employed in developing that thesis than in cultivating a dramatic method of advocacy. I have said nothing about the character of the dead man, because it is irrelevant. If he were a white slave trafficker, it was the duty of Scotland Yard not to inform the husband but to arrest him; and, a fortiori, if he were a German spy. “If he was a criminal,” said the judge, “let him be judged and ‘punished according to law. The fact that he was a blackmailer, a white slave trafficker, or a spy would not justify a murder by the hands of an irresponsible man.’’ A. E. R.
Reviews.
Under Fire: The Story of a Squad. By Henri Barbusse. (Dent. 5s. net.) If it be possible to convey to civilians any idea of what the war really is like, as it affects the man in the ranks, this book should succeed. Mr. Patrick Macgill has done his best for us, but in such a matterof-fact way that he conveys an impression of the soldier’s insensitiveness to the conditions of his life ; M. Barbusse, with his greater command of language and his more vivid imagination, conveys an impression of the soldier’s sensitiveness. Almost throughout the book, the soldiers are wondering whether the civilians know, whether they understand, and, if so, what object they have in keeping men at war. “More than attacks that are like ceremonial reviews, more than visible battles unfurled like banners, more even than the hand-to-hand encounters of shouting strife, War is frightful and unnatural weariness, water up to the belly, mud and dung and infamous filth. It is befouled faces and tattered flesh, it is the corpses that are no longer corpses even, floating on the ravenous earth. It is that, that endless monotony of ’misery, broken by poignant tragedies; it is that, and not the bayonet glittering like silver, nor the bugle’s chanticleer call to the Bun !” Such passages abound, and not only in summary as this one is; descriptions not only of battle, but of the dreary vigil of the trenches, of the unending labour, of the everlasting mud that seems to soak through to the bones, M. Barbusse spares nothing, not even the soldier’s language, not even the, apparent lack of meaning of the whole misery. These soldiers argue and argue to try to settle all sorts of matters, the existence of God, the reality of politics, the responsibility for the War, even the possibility of their remembering enough of the horror to keep them anti-militarist in another emergency; To them, the thing that they have known so intimately and suffered so acutely seems frankly incredible; no one who has not suffered it, they argue, can believe it, and those, who have will not he able to retain. their memory of it. The realist comes near to believing in Maya, that the world of action is an incredible illusion, and that men are only moved to activity by illusion. This book is not a mere record, it is an apocalypse. Soldier’s Pilgrimage. By Ernest Psichari. (Melrose. net.) 5s. The chief interest of this translation of “Le Voyage Du Centurion” derives from the fact that its author was the grandson of Renan. The book describes his conversion to Catholicism while on Colonial service in the Sahara. As described by the author, the conversion owed little to the intellectual processes; he certainly describes himself as a materialist, but the materialism that he renounces is not a system of philosophy, but a number of sensual gratifications. There, in the desert, he suffered unshielded contact with some of the most powerful and dangerous of natural forces; and the assurance of the existence of God, and, to put it at its lowest, the military necessity of living a pure life, insensibly developed within him and operated upon him. It was a conversion from the circumference to the centre; and when he remembered that the centurions of the Gospels had borne witness to the Divinity power of Christ, he was willing to and accept a religion that harmonised with his profession. Indeed, he asserted that “out of all men He has chosen the soldier, in order that the greatness and the servitude of the soldier might be the figure upon earth of the greatness and the servitude of the Christian.” At the end, when his travail is accomplished, he exclaims in surprise. “ Why, Lord! is it, then, so simple to love You?” The book contains many vivid descriptions of natural events, but the mystical interA
pretation of the military life is obviously the most important contribution of this book. A religion that does not barely justify the activity of the warrior, but accepts it as a type for all men, a religion that finds salvation in Sparta, is a religion that cannot be ignored. Once again, the mystic has justified Machiavelli, who argued that innovators who have to use prayers “always succeed badly, and never compass anything”; but innovators who “can rely on themselves and use force are rarely endangered. ” Unfortunately, we do not know how M. Psichari’s conversion would have resulted, for he died a gallant death in Belgium in August, 1914; but that it would have led him back to Monarchy, to the Divine Right of Kings, is probable. It is not ,easy to discern in the desert what is most suitable for civilisation; and meditation on the City of God is not always instructive concerning the real cities of men. Real Adventure. By H. K. Webster. (Constable. net.) 5s. This is an American “Doll’s House. ” Rose Aldrich certainly did not forge her husband’s signature; but she discovered that she was her husband’s mistress, and when he would neither talk to her about his legal practice, nor allow her to nurse her own children, she left him to find herself and to become worthy of his friendship. Of her experiences as a chorus girl, and her development into a designer of stage costumes, Mr. Webster writes at great length; and the husband makes two or three scenes of emotional interest to enable the author to’ elaborate his theory of a successful marriage. We forget on what terms she went back to her husband; but it seems that the couple have accepted the author’s philosophy of marriage as a continual adventure in search of the right relation. Successful marriage, it seems, is based riot on any certitudes but on provisional agreements ; the treaty-making power is the prerogative of both parties, and their treaties seem to be in a constant state of revision or interpretation. After‘ five hundred and fifty pages of it, Rose handles her twins with ‘‘a dazzling virtuosity” that even the trained nurse cannotemulate, Letters of a Soldier. With an Introduction by A. Clutton-Brock and a Preface by Andre Chevrillon. (Constable. 4s. 6d. net.) The introductions are rather more interesting than the letters ; both sponsors exercise their gift of divination, and discover far more profundity of spiritual affection and knowledge than the author reveals. The distinction of these letters is that they were written by a young painter to his mother; and as they deal chiefly with landscapes and aesthetic emotions, they are somewhat misleadingly described as letters of a soldier. The claim made for the author’s spiritual perception rests upon his discovery of adaptation as the life of the spirit, and of the necessity of acceptance. “ Let us continue to arm ourselves with courage, do not let us even speak of patience. Nothing but to accept the present moment with all the treasures which it brings us. That is all there is to do, and it is precisely in this that all the beauty of the world is concentrated.” He returns to the theme again and again, and always in the same hortatory fashion; indeed, he seems to be the spiritual director of his mother, tells her, for example, that he, is happy to know that she has “been able to see what Spinoza understood by human liberty,” offers her his definition of religion. ‘‘You know what I call, religion : that which unites in man all his ideas of the universal and the eternal, those two forms of God. Religion, in the ordinary sense, is but the binding together of certain moral and disciplinary formulas with the fine poetic imagery of the great biblical and Christian philosophies." However, he rejoices in the Spring, in the The
sunshine, in the whole beauty of Nature and the benediction of God; and if his courage is, as he says, more “literary’.’ than that of his companions, it is not less apparent or effective. If his chief purpose was to console his mother, his chief struggle was to keep his soul alive amid circumstances that were not particularly favourable; and if he did succeed in preserving his sensibility, it was due to the fact that he found that “Spinoza was a most valuable aid in the trenches. ”
Pastiche.
1649-1793-???? The British, alas, are an uncouth nation, Deficient in tact and consideration. Ring Charles, awaiting the fatal call, Passed his last night within Whitehall. He heard the mob’s wild clamouring, The gruesome scaffold-hammering. Nor showed the French much loyal zest, In fact they proved themselves most shabby; Poor Louis, to his final rest, Was driven by a common cabby! His royal spouse-it breaks one’s heartWas placed upon a dingy cart; More to insult her and deride, A “ sansculotte ” sat by her side. The Germans, however, they treat their royalty With real show of devotion and loyalty. A carriage drawn by six prancing steeds, Harnessed and draped in the blackest of weds, The coachman tear-shedding all the way. Thus will the German monarch, some day On his last drive be devoutly saluted, And most “ reverentially ” executed ! Heine (translated by H. H.). THE AND THE HEAVEN, IN THE EVENING. The Earth draws off her robe of broidered flowers, And in green kirtle standeth for a space Ere she doth wrap her for the slumberous hours In her white shift of mist, and veils her face : She standeth in her kirtle green, and saith Her evening prayer, whose incense is her breath. EARTH
Here are no unquiet sounds and no alarms; Hence all that is not gentle doth depart. She takes her weary children in her arms That she may warm‘ them at her kindly heart : Are any poor, knowing that they do lie Lapped in her light embraces silently? The Heaven doth wear upon her holy ,breast The argent moon, her badge: her livery, That is a royal, rich, and azure vest, Shows she doth serve a mighty majesty: And a fair weed, purple and cinnamon, She nom above that silken vest doth on. How might man image her in his own guise? As a crowned spirit quiet as forest lawns, Void of all woes and of all sad surprise, Facing eternal sunsets and bright dawns, And brooding o’er him that he may not mark The outer tempests and, the empty dark. RUTH PITTER. LOVE PASSED MY WAY
Last night I lay a-thinking; My past and future dreary lay. This, the burden of my thoughts, Love passed my way. Would hence my life be wasted, spent And every hour a useless fray? The Gates have opened but to close, Love passed my way.
No; wasted, spent my life had been, And resting but on common clay. With fierce exultance now I cry, Love passed my way, The tragic note, how foolish it! Wealth untold has come to stay. The Easy ,Goal, how vain it is! Love passed my way. On our dead selves we reach the clouds, If reach the clouds we may. The grosser needs, how futile they ! Love passed my way. Naught is lost: Enriched by pain, Regrets and sorrows, avaunt ! away ! Transcendent gleam ; ’tis past, ’tis here. Love passed my way. R. FRANCIS CLARK. MAGNIFICAT ARTIFEX. My soul doth magnify the State: and my spirit hath rejoiced in Webb my saviour. For he hath regarded : the Trade Unions of his handmen and maidens. For behold from henceforth : all the middle classes shall call me Socialist. For he that is mighty hath nationalised me : and Efficient is his name. And his Minimum Wage is for them that fear him : until their Old Age Pension. He hath bought out the ruling classes from their lands : and hath exalted a new statesman. He hath employed the hungry at the Standard Rate: and the rich he hath sent supertaxed away. He remembering to pay time-and-a-third hath quadrupled output of his servants : as he promised in the his Supplements to Beveridge and his seed for ever. Glory be to the Time-Boss, and to the Fabian : and to the Bureaucrat. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall M. I. P. be : Wages without End.
Supposethe tribunal had decided to insist upon that or nothing, what would “A. E. R.” have done in my place in the interests of political liberty ? Personally, if I had been required to work for a private employer, I should have begun the work by “striking,” which “A. E. R.” would have defined as my having deliberately chosen to go to prison. T. C.
Memoranda,
(From last week’s NEW AGE.) The Whitley Memorandum is as far from National Guilds as it is near in spirit and structure to National Capitalist Trusts. To invite Labour to co-operate with Capital in industry while reserving to capitalists the ownership and direction of Capital itself is to invite Labour to a joint responsibility in the secondary but not in the primary element. The hostility of Labour to what it calls the intellectualsaugurs no good from Labour’s accession to power.-“ Notes of the Week.” The only alternative European inferno.-S. to a democratic Germany VERDAD. is a
LETTER TO THE EDITOR.
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. Sir,-There is one fallacy which “ A. E. R.” holds in common with all conventional Englishmen-namely, that law and its administration are one and the same thing. The framing of a law is one thing, but its carrying out is another. And it is our failure to realise that difference which has earned for us the opinion of. ‘‘ Humbug “ in the eyes of other nations. No one, except, perhaps, “A. E. R.,” will pretend that the Military Service Acts were anything but maladministered. may, however, have heard of widows’ He sons having been conscripted-a simpler matter and more within his powers of comprehension-since he admits that “ there are certainly cases in which substantial injustice has been done because the tribunals believed they had no power to grant absolute exemption.” In other words, because the tribunals did not understand their jobs. Yet he persists in thinking the victims should quietly accept the consequences of the tribunals’ incompetence without protest. I wonder if “ A. E. R.” is aware that some of the conscientious objectors in prison to-day are there as a penalty for having struck work given them by the tribunals which they did not consider of sufficient national importance or consistent with their capabilities? These men did not deliberately choose tu go to prison as “A. E. R.” in his innocence suggests. They are there as a surprising result of having chosen to do work of real importance instead of well-nigh useless work imposed upon ‘them by the tribunals in a time of national crisis. I had the experience of appearing before a tribunal as a conscientious objector myself, and during my hearing I was asked whether I would consent to do work of national importance on a farm. I asked if they could first guarantee that I should not be required to work for a private employer, which I did not consider compatible with national service. The tribunal vouchsafed no reply. Consequently, I declined.
The European profusion of social thinkers is English Labour’s shame and condemnation. Great stretches of Europe show to-day a reverence for ideas unknown in England. To contemn the thinkers is to aggrandise Northcliffe, who learnt, while Labour slept, that the narcotic of fiction is the sure way to buttress the interests. What shall it profit Labour if it become blacklegproof and remain proletarian in spirit?, When the Labour leader shouts at the intellectual to begone, it is not courage, but a cowardly truculence sprung from class-servitude. It would be passing strange if the sheer weight of Labour organisation should constitute a menace to intellectual freedom; if Labour should rely upon its brute strength and forget the spiritual implications of the freedom it would compass. New ideas are the one unconquerable thing that life has to give.-S. G. H. The first condition of a satisfactory theory of political liberty is the‘ abandonment of the dogmas of the sovereignty of the State. The discovery of errors in other people’s views is not so much in the hope of persuading them as of comforting oneself. Argument is happily dissociated from belief or unbelief.-O. LATHAM. Sir A. Conan Doyle has never stooped to literature.EZRAPOUND. In order to despise enjoyment one need only be supremely happy or supremely wretched. To the Christian Life is a pathetic tale with a happy ending. The discovery of a new faculty in Man will not make him more happy, but simply more powerful. The Happiness that is essential to the best life is a state of the soul. Life is made more powerful by the destruction of the Corrupt.-EDWARD MOORE. The worst possible use you can make of a man is to put him in prison. To show respect for the rule of law is our only guarantee of liberty.-A. E. R. If we drop the emphasis on man, we drop from civilisation to barbarism. History can inspire change as well as repetition. ‘We are getting tired of after-war problems, and should welcome a volume stating the solution of those problems. Collaborators should collaborate.--“ Reviews.” Jews, the working class, self-sacrifice, and Socialism are all particularly abhorrent to the average Christian.KENELMFoss.
PRESS Cuttings.
The whole outlook of labour has been changed by the War. Men want not only a higher standard of living but more freedom and equality; they feel entitled to them and strong enough to get them, and they mean to do so. Mr. Lloyd George exhorted a deputation from the Labour Party to be audacious in the after-war settlement. The advice is unnecessary. There will be plenty of audacity, more probably than he will like. The Triple Alliance of Miners, Railwaymen, and Transport Workers can bring all the industrial and commercial activity of the country to a standstill, and they will do it if they are challenged. . . . I expect “ direct action ” on a tremendous scale, with the result of paralysed industry, unemployment, distress, food riots, violence, and a general turmoil amounting to a sort of civil war. The Government might stop it, but only by changes which would be revolutionary in character. Possibly they may attempt to forestall it and make the revolution peaceful by daring legislative proposals. . . . But in any case labour will sooner or later supplement direct by political action, and very likely secure a majority in the House of Commons. There may be a Labour Government if anyone can form a Ministry; if not, the Party will still control the House of Commons and, dictate legislation. . . . I am certain that we shall have revolutionary changes, not effected without much tribulation a period of adversity. There will be demolition and before there is reconstruction.-DR. A. SHADWELL, in the ‘‘ Nineteenth Century.” To the Editor of the “ Northern Echo.” Your comment on the failure of Parliamentary action in industrial matters is illuminating. Such action can only be effective if it is originated by a well-organised industrial unit, backed up by economic power, and where this exists State action is often unnecessary. If the agricultural labourers had been organised in a strong trade union they could easily have obtained decent wages and conditions. On the other hand, there is a possibility of danger to the community as a whole in the cry for "cooperation between employers and employed ’’ which we hear on all sides now. Were such co-operation to become complete in a single industry, there would undoubtedly be an attempt on the part of the commercial element to exploit the community and divide the spoils. Profiteering would then be intensified a thousandfold, and who could control so powerful a combination? It would seem that the only adequate answer to this question is that given by the advocates of the policy of “ National Guilds,” a proposal for “ the establishment of self-government in industry through a system of National Guilds working in conjunction with the State.” It is impossible to describe this system fully in a short letter, but briefly it means that workers (both “hand and brain”) in each industry should combine (on industrial trade union lines) to form guilds responsible as producers for the conduct of that industry, while the State, as representing the consumers should own the means of production and lease them to the guilds. Newcastle. J. A. F. W. Jassy, May 6. (By Mail.) During a visit to the front, King Ferdinand, addressing his troops, promised them reforms, the necessity of which has been felt in this country for over 20 years. Land and, the right to rule their own country were required by the five million peasants, and were repeatedly promised to them by the political parties, but the promises were never fulfilled. When things became really bad, and the peasants were starving while the landowners and fanners were rolling in money, spending their income in the south of France or the clubs at Bukarest, the‘ peasants lost their temper, and the docile animal who had worked the whole year for his master became furious and uncontrollable. This happened twice : in 1888 and in March, 1907.
The two outbursts were crushed, and the peasants paid with their lives for their attempt to get the land which they had worked for centuries. Each time after such an outburst the Cabinet was changed, a new Government came into power, promised large reforms, and held new elections. There were scientific discussions in Parliament ; beautiful social and economic theories were developed by members who had studied in the big universities of Western Europe, laws were passed, but the situation of the wretched peasants remained the same. The reason for this is not difficult to understand. The peasants were represented by 11 or members of Parliament, while the landowners had representatives. It was quite obvious that unless an extraordinary situation occurred to force the upper class, they would never agree to part with their properties, which gave them a huge income without any effort on their part. ‘The opening of the war found Rumania in the midst of a new discussion on reforms, which would have had the same result as the previous talk. When the King called his Army to the colours to fight the old enemy, the Austro-Hungarians and their allies, not a single peasant failed. They all rushed to their regiments. When misfortunes came, when the disastrous retreat took place, most of the peasants followed the Army; boys of 15 and upwards flocked to the part of Rumania preserved from invasion, and put themselves at the disposal of the military authorities, enabling the latter to reorganise a new Army which should get back what was lust. Unfortunately it was not the same with some of the great landowners. Under the pretext of disagreement with the foreign policy of the Government, many of them, although officers of the reserve, remained behind with the enemy. The proportion of desertions was much higher among officers than among men. Those who had suffered every hardship in peace and war did not fail to do their duty, while many of those who had everything-honours, wealth, privileges, rightscommitted the most contemptible of crimes, and became traitors and deserters.--“ Times. ” A writer in THE NEW AGEdiscusses with skill a knowledge clearly born of inside information the hamperingeffects of class control of the Civil Service on national democratic progress. The article will be very instructive to the general public, and will be read with interest in the Civil Service by reason of its trenchant and fearless comment‘ on the existing state of affairs. Absolute control and unlimited power wielded by the Higher Division and by the Treasury have developed a Civil Service machine which is anti-democratic in operation. Of course, the public, and even Members of Parliament, do nut see through the veil that is drawn to obscure the view. The Higher Division of the Service is as clever at the game of diplomacy as the Foreign Office. Probably few Civil Servants realise, for instance, that the inquiry into the Higher Division a few years back was merely a device to forestall a democratic onslaught, just as the House of Lords conferenceto-day is designed to save as much as possible of the hereditary. chamber, which, if not materially reformed, will probably be swept away, entirely soon after the war. The writer in THE NEW AGE notes the declining power of the House of Commons, which he says has never properly represented the community as a whole.--“The Civilian.”
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