Gibraltar.--Spanish right versus British might.--Relics of Barbary
Rovers, and of German militarists.--Ichabod! Senegal Infantry.--No
peace for the world.--Religion on a liner.--Differences of
vibration.--The Bishop of Kwang-Si.--Religion in China.--Whisky in
excelsis.--France's masterpiece.--British errors.--A procession of
giants.--The invasion of Egypt.--Tropical weather.--The Russian
Horror.--An Indian experiment.--Aden.--Bombay.--The Lambeth
encyclical.--A great novelist.--The Mango trick.--Snakes.--The
Catamarans.--The Robber Castles of Ceylon.--Doctrine of
Reincarnation.--Whales and Whalers.--Perth.--The Bight.
We had a favourable journey across the Bay and came without adventure to
Gibraltar, that strange crag, Arabic by name, African in type, Spanish
by right, and British by might. I trust that my whole record has shown
me to be a loyal son of the Empire, and I recognise that we must have a
secure line of communications with the East, but if any change could
give us Ceuta, on the opposite African coast, instead of this outlying
corner of proud old Spain, it would be good policy as well as good
morality to make the change. I wonder how we should like it if the
French held a garrison at Mount St. Michael in Cornwall, which would be
a very similar situation. Is it worth having a latent enemy who at any
time might become an active one, or is it wiser to hold them to us by
the memory of a great voluntary act of justice? They would pay, of
course, for all quays, breakwaters and improvements, which would give us
the money to turn Ceuta into a worthy substitute, which could be held
without offending the pride of a great nation, as old and proud as
ourselves. The whole lesson of this great war is that no nation can do
what is unjust with impunity, and that sooner or later one's sin will
find one out. How successful seemed all the scheming of Frederick of
Prussia! But what of Silesia and of Poland now? Only on justice can you
build with a permanent foundation, and there is no justice in our tenure
of Gibraltar. We had only an hour ashore, a great joy to the children,
and carried away a vague impression of grey-shirted Tommies, swarthy
loungers, one long, cobblestoned street, scarlet blossoms, and a fine
Governor's house, in which I picture that brave old warrior,
Smith-Dorrien, writing a book which will set all the critics talking,
and the military clubs buzzing a year or two from now. I do not know if
he was really forced to fight at Le Cateau, though our sympathies must
always go to the man who fights, but I do feel that if he had had his
way and straightened the salient of Ypres, there would have been a
mighty saving of blood and tears. There were sentimental reasons against
it, but I can think of no material ones--certainly none which were worth
all the casualties of the Salient. I had only one look at the place, and
that by night, but never shall I forget the murderous loop, outlined by
star shells, nor the horrible noises which rose up from that place of
wrath and misery.
On August 19th we were running up the eastern Spanish coast, a most
desolate country of high bare cliffs and barren uplands, studded with
aged towers which told of pirate raids of old. These Mediterranean shore
dwellers must have had a hellish life, when the Barbary Rover was
afloat, and they might be wakened any night by the Moslem yell. Truly,
if the object of human life was chastening by suffering, then we have
given it to each other in full measure. If this were the only life I do
not know how the hypothesis of the goodness of God could be sustained,
since our history has been one hardly broken record of recurring
miseries, war, famine, and disease, from the ice to the equator. I
should still be a materialist, as I was of yore, if it were not for the
comfort and teaching from beyond, which tells me that this is the
worst--far the worst--and that by its standard everything else becomes
most gloriously better, so long as we help to make it so. "If the boys
knew what it was like over here," said a dead soldier, "they would just
jump for it." He added however, "If they did that they would surely miss
it." We cannot bluff Providence, or short-circuit things to our liking.
We got ashore once more at Marseilles. I saw converted German merchant
ships, with names like "Burgomeister Mueller," in the harbour, and
railway trucks with "Mainz-Coeln" still marked upon their flanks--part
of the captured loot. Germany, that name of terror, how short is the
time since we watched you well-nigh all-powerful, mighty on land,
dangerous on the sea, conquering the world with your commerce and
threatening it with your arms! You had everything, numbers, discipline,
knowledge, industry, bravery, organisation, all in the highest--such an
engine as the world has never seen. And now--Ichabod! Ichabod! Your
warships lie under the waves, your liners fly the flags of your enemies,
your mother Rhine on either bank hears the bugles of your invaders. What
was wanting in you to bring you to such a pass? Was it not spirituality?
Had not your churches become as much a department of State as the Post
Office, where every priest and pastor was in State pay, and said that
which the State ordained? All other life was at its highest, but
spiritual life was dead, and because it was dead all the rest had taken
on evil activities which could only lead to dissolution and corruption.
Had Germany obeyed the moral law would she not now be great and
flourishing, instead of the ruin which we see? Was ever such an object
lesson in sin and its consequence placed before the world? But let us
look to it, for we also have our lesson to learn, and our punishment is
surely waiting if we do not learn it. If now after such years we sink
back into old ruts and do not make an earnest effort for real religion
and real active morality, then we cumber the ground, and it is time that
we were swept away, for no greater chance of reform can ever come to
us.
I saw some of the Senegal troops in the streets of Marseilles--a whole
battalion of them marching down for re-embarkation. They are fierce,
hard soldiers, by the look of them, for the negro is a natural fighter,
as the prize ring shows, and these have long service training upon the
top of this racial pugnacity. They look pure savages, with the tribal
cuts still upon their faces, and I do not wonder that the Germans
objected to them, though we cannot doubt that the Germans would
themselves have used their Askaris in Europe as well as in Africa if
they could have done so. The men who had as allies the murderers of the
Armenians would not stick at trifles. I said during the war, and I can
clearly see now, that the way in which the war was fought will prove
hardly second to the war itself as a misfortune to the human race. A
clean war could end in a clean peace. But how can we ever forget the
poison gas, the Zeppelin bombardments of helpless cities, the submarine
murders, the scattering of disease germs, and all the other atrocities
of Germany? No water of oblivion can ever wash her clean. She had one
chance, and only one. It was to at once admit it all herself and to set
to work purging her national guilt by punishing guilty individuals.
Perhaps she may even now save herself and clear the moral atmosphere of
the world by doing this. But time passes and the signs are against it.
There can be no real peace in the world until voluntary reparation has
been made. Forced reparation can only make things worse, for it cannot
satisfy us, and it must embitter them. I long for real peace, and
should love to see our Spiritualist bodies lead the van. But the time is
not yet and it is realities we need, not phrases.
Old travellers say that they never remember the Mediterranean so hot. We
went down it with a following breeze which just neutralised our own head
wind, the result being a quivering tropical heat. With the Red Sea
before us it was no joke to start our trials so soon, and already the
children began to wilt. However, Major Wood kept them at work for the
forenoons and discipline still flourished. On the third day out we were
south of Crete, and saw an island lying there which is surely the same
in the lee of which Paul's galley took refuge when Euroclydon was
behaving so badly. I had been asked to address the first-class
passengers upon psychic religion that evening, and it was strange indeed
to speak in those waters, for I knew well that however ill my little
pip-squeak might compare with that mighty voice, yet it was still the
same battle of the unseen against the material, raging now as it did
2,000 years ago. Some 200 of the passengers, with the Bishop of
Kwang-Si, turned up, and a better audience one could not wish, though
the acoustic properties of the saloon were abominable. However, I got it
across, though I was as wet as if I had fallen overboard when I had
finished. I was pleased to learn afterwards that among the most keen of
my audience were every colored man and woman on the ship, Parsees,
Hindoos, Japanese and Mohammedans.
"Do you believe it is true?" they were asked next day.
"We _know_ that it is true," was the answer, and it came from a lady
with a red caste-mark like a wafer upon her forehead. So far as I could
learn she spoke for all the Eastern folk.
And the others? At least I set them talking and thinking. I heard next
morning of a queue of six waiting at the barber's all deep in
theological discussion, with the barber himself, razor in hand, joining
warmly in. "There has never been so much religion talked on a P. & O.
ship since the line was started," said one old traveller. It was all
good-humoured and could do no harm. Before we had reached Port Said all
my books on the subject were lent out to eager readers, and I was being
led aside into remote corners and cross-questioned all day. I have a
number of good psychic photographs with me, some of them of my own
taking, and all of them guaranteed, and I find these valuable as making
folk realise that my words do in truth represent realities. I have the
famous fairy photos also, which will appear in England in the Christmas
number of the _Strand_. I feel as if it were a delay-action mine which I
had left behind me. I can imagine the cry of "Fake!" which will arise.
But they will stand investigation. It has of course nothing to do with
Spiritualism proper, but everything which can shake the mind out of
narrow, material grooves, and make it realise that endless worlds
surround us, separated only by difference of vibration, must work in the
general direction of truth.
"Difference of Vibration"--I have been trying lately to get behind mere
words and to realise more clearly what this may mean. It is a
fascinating and fruitful line of thought. It begins with my electric fan
whizzing over my head. As it starts with slow vibration I see the little
propellers. Soon they become a dim mist, and finally I can see them no
more. But they are there. At any moment, by slowing the movement, I can
bring them back to my vision. Why do I not see it all the time? Because
the impression is so fast that my retina has not time to register it.
Can we not imagine then that some objects may emit the usual light
waves, long enough and slow enough to leave a picture, but that other
objects may send waves which are short and steep, and therefore make so
swift an impression that it is not recorded? That, so far as I can
follow it, is what we mean by an object with a higher rate of vibration.
It is but a feeling out into the dark, but it is a hypothesis which may
serve us to carry on with, though the clairvoyant seems to be not a
person with a better developed physical retina, but rather one who has
the power to use that which corresponds with the retina in their own
etheric bodies which are in harmony with etheric waves from outside.
When a man can walk round a room and examine the pictures with the back
of his head, as Tom Tyrrell has done, it is clear that it is not his
physical retina which is working. In countless cases inquirers into
magnetic phenomena have caused their subjects to read with various parts
of their bodies. It is the other body, the etheric body, the
"spiritual" body of Paul, which lies behind all such phenomena--that
body which is loose with all of us in sleep, but only exceptionally in
waking hours. Once we fully understand the existence of that deathless
etheric body, merged in our own but occasionally detachable, we have
mastered many a problem and solved many a ghost story.
However, I must get back to my Cretan lecture. The bishop was
interested, and I lent him one of the Rev. Charles Tweedale's pamphlets
next day, which shows how sadly Christianity has wandered away from its
early faith of spiritual gifts and Communion of Saints. Both have now
become words instead of things, save among our ranks. The bishop is a
good fellow, red and rough like a Boer farmer, but healthy, breezy, and
Apostolic. "Do mention his kind grey eyes," says my wife. He may die a
martyr yet in that inland diocese of China--and he would not shrink from
it. Meanwhile, apart from his dogma, which must be desperately difficult
to explain to an educated Chinaman, he must always be a centre of
civilisation and social effort. A splendid fellow--but he suffers from
what all bishops and all cardinals and all Popes suffer from, and that
is superannuation. A physiologist has said that few men can ever
entertain a new idea after fifty. How then can any church progress when
all its leaders are over that age? This is why Christianity has
stagnated and degenerated. If here and there one had a new idea, how
could it survive the pressure of the others? It is hopeless. In this
particular question of psychic religion the whole order is an
inversion, for the people are ahead of the clergy and the clergy of the
bishops. But when the laymen lead strongly enough the others will follow
unless they wish to see the whole Church organisation dissolve.
He was very interesting upon the state of Christianity in China.
Protestantism, thanks to the joint British and American Missions, is
gaining upon Roman Catholicism, and has now far outstripped it, but the
Roman Catholic organisations are very wealthy on account of ancient
valuable concessions and well-invested funds. In case of a Bolshevist
movement that may be a source of danger, as it gives a reason for
attack. The Bishop made the very striking remark that if the whites
cleared right out of China all the Christian Churches of divers creeds
would within a generation merge into one creed. "What have we to do,"
they say, "with these old historical quarrels which are hardly
intelligible to us? We are all followers of Christ, and that is enough."
Truly, the converted seem far ahead of those who converted them. It is
the priesthoods, the organisations, the funds and the vested interests
which prevent the Churches from being united. In the meanwhile ninety
per cent. of our population shows what it thinks by never entering into
a church at all. Personally, I can never remember since I reached
manhood feeling myself the better for having gone into one. And yet I
have been an earnest seeker for truth. Verily, there is something deep
down which is rotten. It is want of fact, want of reality, words
instead of things. Only last Sunday I shuddered as I listened to the
hymns, and it amazed me to look around and see the composed faces of
those who were singing them. Do they think what they are saying, or does
Faith atrophy some part of the brain? We are "born through water and
blood into the true church." We drink precious blood. "He hath broken
the teeth in their jaw." Can such phrases really mean anything to any
thoughtful man? If not, why continue them? You will have your churches
empty while you do. People will not argue about it--they will, and do,
simply stay away. And the clergy go on stating and restating incredible
unproved things, while neglecting and railing at those which could be
proved and believed. On our lines those nine out of ten could be forced
back to a reconsideration of their position, even though that position
would not square with all the doctrines of present-day Christianity,
which would, I think, have offended the early Christians as much as it
does the earnest thinkers of to-day.
Port Said came at last, and we entered the Suez Canal. It is a shocking
thing that the entrance to this, one of the most magnificent of the
works of man, are flanked by great sky advertisements of various brands
of whisky. The sale of whisky may or may not be a tolerable thing, but
its flaunting advertisements, Dewar, Johnny Walker, and the rest, have
surely long been intolerable. If anything would make me a total
prohibitionist those would. They are shameless. I do not know if some
middle way could be found by which light alcoholic drinks could
remain--so light that drunkenness would be hardly possible--but if this
cannot be done, then let us follow the noble example of America. It is
indeed shameful to see at the very point of the world where some noble
sentiment might best be expressed these huge reminders of that which has
led to so much misery and crime. To a Frenchman it must seem even worse
than to us, while what the abstemious Mohammedan can think is beyond my
imagination. In that direction at least the religion of Mohammed has
done better than that of Christ. If all those Esquimaux, South Sea
Islanders and others who have been converted to Christianity and then
debauched by drink, had followed the prophet instead, it cannot be
denied that their development would have been a happier and a higher
one, though the cast-iron doctrines and dogmas of the Moslem have
dangers of their own.
Has France ever had the credit she deserves for the splendid faith with
which she followed that great beneficent genius Lesseps in his wonderful
work? It is beautiful from end to end, French in its neatness, its
order, its exquisite finish. Truly the opposition of our people, both
experts and public, was a disgrace to us, though it sinks into
insignificance when compared with our colossal national stupidity over
the Channel tunnel. When our descendants compute the sums spent in
shipping and transhipping in the great war, the waste of merchant ships
and convoys, the sufferings of the wounded, the delay in
reinforcements, the dependence upon the weather, they will agree that
our sin had found us out and that we have paid a fitting price for our
stupidity. Unhappily, it was not our blind guides who paid it, but it
was the soldier and sailor and taxpayer, for the nation always pays
collectively for the individual blunder. Would a hundred million pounds
cover the cost of that one? Well can I remember how a year before war
was declared, seeing clearly what was coming, I sent three memoranda to
the Naval and Military authorities and to the Imperial Council of
Defence pointing out exactly what the situation would be, and especially
the danger to our transports. It is admitted now that it was only the
strange inaction of the German light forces, and especially their want
of comprehension of the possibilities of the submarine, which enabled
our Expeditionary Force to get across at all, so that we might have lost
the war within the first month. But as to my poor memoranda, which
proved so terribly correct, I might as well have dropped them into my
own wastepaper basket instead of theirs, and so saved the postage. My
only convert was Captain, now General, Swinton, part inventor of the
tanks, who acted as Secretary to the Imperial Defence Committee, and who
told me at the time that my paper had set him thinking furiously.
Which leads my thoughts to the question of the torpedoing of merchant
vessels by submarines. So sure was I that the Germans would do this,
that after knocking at official doors in vain, I published a sketch
called "Danger," which was written a year before the war, and depicted
all that afterwards occurred, even down to such small details as the
ships zig-zagging up Channel to escape, and the submarines using their
guns to save torpedoes. I felt as if, like Solomon Eagle, I could have
marched down Fleet Street with a brazier on my head if I could only call
people's attention to the coming danger. I saw naval officers on the
point, but they were strangely blind, as is shown by the comments
printed at the end of "Danger," which give the opinions of several
admirals pooh-poohing my fears. Among others I saw Captain Beatty, as he
then was, and found him alive to the possible danger, though he did not
suggest a remedy. His quiet, brisk personality impressed me, and I felt
that our national brain-errors might perhaps be made good in the end by
the grit that is in us. But how hard were our tasks from our want of
foresight. Admiral Von Capelle did me the honour to say during the war,
in the German Reichstag, that I was the only man who had prophesied the
conditions of the great naval war. As a matter of fact, both Fisher and
Scott had done so, though they had not given it to the public in the
same detail--but nothing had been done. We know now that there was not a
single harbour proof against submarines on our whole East Coast. Truly
the hand of the Lord was over England. Nothing less could have saved
her.
We tied up to the bank soon after entering the Canal, and lay there most
of the night while a procession of great ships moving northwards swept
silently past us in the ring of vivid light cast by their searchlights
and our own. I stayed on deck most of the night to watch them. The
silence was impressive--those huge structures sweeping past with only
the slow beat of their propellers and the wash of their bow wave on
either side. No sooner had one of these great shapes slid past than,
looking down the Canal, one saw the brilliant head light of another in
the distance. They are only allowed to go at the slowest pace, so that
their wash may not wear away the banks. Finally, the last had passed,
and we were ourselves able to cast off our warps and push southwards. I
remained on deck seeing the sun rise over the Eastern desert, and then a
wonderful slow-moving panorama of Egypt as the bank slid slowly past us.
First desert, then green oases, then the long line of rude
fortifications from Kantara downwards, with the camp fires smoking,
groups of early busy Tommies and endless dumps of stores. Here and to
the south was the point where the Turks with their German leaders
attempted the invasion of Egypt, carrying flat-bottomed boats to ford
the Canal. How they were ever allowed to get so far is barely
comprehensible, but how they were ever permitted to get back again
across one hundred miles of desert in the face of our cavalry and
camelry is altogether beyond me. Even their guns got back untaken. They
dropped a number of mines in the Canal, but with true Turkish
slovenliness they left on the banks at each point the long bamboos on
which they had carried them across the desert, which considerably
lessened the work of those who had to sweep them up. The sympathies of
the Egyptians seems to have been against us, and yet they have no desire
to pass again under the rule of the Turk. Our dominion has had the
effect of turning a very poor country into a very rich one, and of
securing some sort of justice for the fellah or peasant, but since we
get no gratitude and have no trade preference it is a little difficult
to see how we are the better for all our labours. So long as the Canal
is secure--and it is no one's interest to injure it--we should be better
if the country governed itself. We have too many commitments, and if we
have to take new ones, such as Mesopotamia, it would be well to get rid
of some of the others where our task is reasonably complete. "We never
let the youngsters grow up," said a friendly critic. There is, however,
I admit, another side to the question, and the idea of permitting a
healthy moral place like Port Said to relapse into the hotbed of
gambling and syphilis which it used to be, is repugnant to the mind.
Which is better--that a race be free, immoral and incompetent, or that
it be forced into morality and prosperity? That question meets us at
every turn.
The children have been delighted by the fish on the surface of the
Canal. Their idea seems to be that the one aim and object of our
excursion is to see sharks in the sea and snakes in Australia. We did
actually see a shark half ashore upon a sandbank in one of the lower
lakes near Suez. It was lashing about with a frantic tail, and so got
itself off into deep water. To the west all day we see the very wild and
barren country through which our ancestors used to drive upon the
overland route when they travelled by land from Cairo to Suez. The smoke
of a tiny mail-train marks the general line of that most desolate road.
In the evening we were through the Canal and marked the rugged shore
upon our left down which the Israelites pursued their way in the
direction of Sinai. One wonders how much truth there is in the
narrative. On the one hand it is impossible to doubt that something of
the sort did occur. On the other, the impossibility of so huge a crowd
living on the rare wells of the desert is manifest. But numbers are not
the strong point of an Oriental historian. Perhaps a thousand or two may
have followed their great leader upon that perilous journey. I have
heard that Moses either on his own or through his wife was in touch with
Babylonian habits. This would explain those tablets of stone, or of
inscribed clay burned into brick, which we receive as the Ten
Commandments, and which only differ from the moral precepts of other
races in the strange limitations and omissions. At least ten new ones
have long been needed to include drunkenness, gluttony, pride, envy,
bigotry, lying and the rest.
The weather grows hotter and hotter, so that one aged steward who has
done 100 voyages declares it to be unique. One passenger has died.
Several stewards have collapsed. The wind still keeps behind us. In the
midst of all this I had an extensively signed petition from the second
class passengers that I should address them. I did so, and spoke on deck
for forty minutes to a very attentive audience which included many of
the officers of the ship. I hope I got my points across to them. I was a
sad example of sweated labour when I had finished. My wife tells me that
the people were impressed. As I am never aware of the presence of any
individual when I am speaking on this subject I rely upon my wife's very
quick and accurate feminine impressions. She sits always beside me,
notes everything, gives me her sympathetic atmosphere which is of such
psychic importance, and finally reports the result. If any point of mine
seems to her to miss its mark I unhesitatingly take it out. It interests
me to hear her tell of the half-concealed sneer with which men listen to
me, and how it turns into interest, bewilderment and finally something
like reverence and awe as the brain gradually realises the proved truth
of what I am saying, which upsets the whole philosophy on which their
lives are built.
There are several Australian officers on board who are coming from the
Russian front full of dreadful stories of Bolshevist atrocities, seen
with their own eyes. The executioners were Letts and Chinese, and the
instigators renegade Jews, so that the Russians proper seem to have been
the more or less innocent dupes. They had dreadful photographs of
tortured and mutilated men as corroboration. Surely hell, the place of
punishment and purgatorial expiation, is actually upon this earth in
such cases. One leader seems to have been a Sadic madman, for after
torturing his victims till even the Chinese executioners struck, he
would sit playing a violin very exquisitely while he gloated over their
agonies. All these Australian boys agree that the matter will burn
itself out, and that it will end in an immense massacre of Jews which
may involve the whole seven millions now in Russia. God forbid, but the
outlook is ominous! I remember a prophecy which I read early in the war
that a great figure would arise in the north and have power for six
years. If Lenin was the great figure then he has, according to the
prophet, about two years more to run. But prophecy is fitful, dangerous
work. The way in which the founders of the Christian faith all foretold
the imminent end of the world is an example. What they dimly saw was no
doubt the destruction of Jerusalem, which seems to have been equally
clear to Ezekiel 600 years before, for his picture of cannibalism and
dispersion is very exact.
It is wonderful what chances of gaining direct information one has
aboard a ship of this sort, with its mixed crowd of passengers, many of
them famous in their own lines. I have already alluded to the officers
returning from Russia with their prophecies of evil. But there are many
other folk with tales of deep interest. There is a Mr. Covell, a solid
practical Briton, who may prove to be a great pioneer, for he has made
farming pay handsomely in the very heart of the Indian plains. Within a
hundred miles of Lucknow he has founded the townlet of Covellpore,
where he handles 3,000 acres of wheat and cotton with the aid of about
the same number of natives. This is the most practical step I have ever
heard of for forming a real indigenous white population in India. His
son was with him, going out to carry on the work. Mr. Covell holds that
the irrigation of the North West of India is one of the greatest wonders
of the world, and Jacob the engineer responsible. I had never heard of
him, nor, I am ashamed to say, had I heard of Sir Leonard Rogers, who is
one of those great men like Sir Ronald Ross, whom the Indian Medical
Service throws up. Rogers has reduced the mortality of cholera by
intravenous injections of hypertonic saline until it is only 15 per
cent. General Maude, I am informed, would almost certainly have been
saved, had it not been that some false departmental economy had withheld
the necessary apparatus. Leprosy also seems in a fair way to yielding to
Rogers' genius for investigation.
It is sad to hear that this same Indian Medical Service which has
produced such giants as Fayrer, Ross, and Rogers is in a fair way to
absolute ruin, because the conditions are such that good white
candidates will no longer enter it. White doctors do not mind working
with, or even under, natives who have passed the same British
examinations as themselves, but they bar the native doctor who has got
through a native college in India, and is on a far lower educational
level than themselves. To serve under such a man is an impossible
inversion. This is appreciated by the medical authorities at home, the
word is given to the students, and the best men avoid the service. So
unless a change is made, the end is in sight of the grand old service
which has given so much to humanity.
Aden is remarkable only for the huge water tanks cut to catch rain, and
carved out of solid rock. A whole captive people must have been set to
work on so colossal a task, and one wonders where the poor wretches got
water themselves the while. Their work is as fresh and efficient as when
they left it. No doubt it was for the watering, not of the population,
but of the Egyptian and other galleys on their way to Punt and King
Solomon's mines. It must be a weary life for our garrison in such a
place. There is strange fishing, sea snakes, parrot fish and the like.
It is their only relaxation, for it is desert all round.
Monsoon and swell and drifting rain in the Indian Ocean. We heard that
"thresh of the deep sea rain," of which Kipling sings. Then at last in
the early morning the long quay of Bombay, and the wonderful crowd of
men of every race who await an incoming steamer. Here at least half our
passengers were disgorged, young subalterns, grey colonels, grave
administrators, yellow-faced planters, all the fuel which is grown in
Britain and consumed in the roaring furnace of India. So devoted to
their work, so unthanked and uncomprehended by those for whom they work!
They are indeed a splendid set of men, and if they withdrew I wonder how
long it would be before the wild men of the frontier would be in
Calcutta and Bombay, as the Picts and Scots flowed over Britain when the
Roman legions were withdrawn. What view will the coming Labour
governments of Britain take of our Imperial commitments? Upon that will
depend the future history of great tracts of the globe which might very
easily relapse into barbarism.
The ship seemed lonely when our Indian friends were gone, for indeed,
the pick of the company went with them. Several pleased me by assuring
me as they left that their views of life had been changed since they
came on board the "Naldera." To many I gave reading lists that they
might look further into the matter for themselves. A little leaven in
the great lump, but how can we help leavening it all when we know that,
unlike other creeds, no true Spiritualist can ever revert, so that while
we continually gain, we never lose. One hears of the converts to various
sects, but one does not hear of those who are driven out by their
narrow, intolerant doctrines. You can change your mind about faiths, but
not about facts, and hence our certain conquest.
One cannot spend even a single long day in India without carrying away a
wonderful impression of the gentle dignity of the Indian people. Our
motor drivers were extraordinarily intelligent and polite, and all we
met gave the same impression.
India may be held by the sword, but it is certainly kept very carefully
in the scabbard, for we hardly saw a soldier in the streets of this,
its greatest city. I observed some splendid types of manhood, however,
among the native police. We lunched at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and got back
tired and full of mixed impressions.
Verily the ingenuity of children is wonderful. They have turned their
active minds upon the problem of paper currency with fearsome results.
Baby writes cheques in quaint ways upon odd bits of paper and brings
them to me to be cashed. Malcolm, once known as Dimples, has made a
series of pound and five pound notes of his own. The bank they call the
money shop. I can trace every sort of atavism, the arboreal, the cave
dweller, the adventurous raider, and the tribal instinct in the child,
but this development seems a little premature.
Sunday once more, and the good Bishop preaching. I wonder more and more
what an educated Chinaman would make of such doctrines. To take an
example, he has quoted to-day with great approval, the action of Peter
in discarding the rite of circumcision as a proof of election. That
marked, according to the Bishop, the broad comprehensive mind which
could not confine the mercies of God to any limited class. And yet when
I take up the oecumenical pronouncement from the congress of Anglican
bishops which he has just attended, I find that baptism is made the
test, even as the Jews made circumcision. Have the bishops not learned
that there are millions who revere the memory of Christ, whether they
look upon him as God or man, but who think that baptism is a senseless
survival of heathendom, like so many of our religious observances? The
idea that the Being who made the milky way can be either placated or
incensed by pouring a splash of water over child or adult is an offence
to reason, and a slur upon the Divinity.
Two weary days upon the sea with drifting rain showers and wonderful
scarlet and green sunsets. Have beguiled the time with W. B. Maxwell's
"Lamp and the Mirror." I have long thought that Maxwell was the greatest
of British novelists, and this book confirms me in my opinion. Who else
could have drawn such fine detail and yet so broad and philosophic a
picture? There may have been single books which were better than
Maxwell's best--the "Garden of Allah," with its gorgeous oriental colour
would, for example, make a bid for first place, but which of us has so
splendid a list of first class serious works as "Mrs. Thompson," "The
Rest Cure," "Vivian," "In Cotton Wool," above all, "The Guarded
Flame"--classics, every one. Our order of merit will come out very
differently in a generation or so to what it stands now, and I shall
expect to find my nominee at the top. But after all, what's the odds?
You do your work as well as you can. You pass. You find other work to
do. How the old work compares with the other fellow's work can be a
matter of small concern.
In Colombo harbour lay H.M.S. "Highflyer," which we looked upon with the
reverence which everybody and everything which did well in the war
deserve from us--a saucy, rakish, speedy craft. Several other steamers
were flying the yellow quarantine flag, but our captain confided to me
that it was a recognised way of saying "no visitors," and did not
necessarily bear any pathological meaning. As we had nearly two days
before we resumed our voyage I was able to give all our party a long
stretch on shore, finally staying with my wife for the night at the
Galle Face Hotel, a place where the preposterous charges are partly
compensated for by the glorious rollers which break upon the beach
outside. I was interested in the afternoon by a native conjurer giving
us what was practically a private performance of the mango-tree trick.
He did it so admirably that I can well understand those who think that
it is an occult process. I watched the man narrowly, and believe that I
solved the little mystery, though even now I cannot be sure. In doing it
he began by laying several objects out in a casual way while hunting in
his bag for his mango seed. These were small odds and ends including a
little rag doll, very rudely fashioned, about six or eight inches long.
One got accustomed to the presence of these things and ceased to remark
them. He showed the seed and passed it for examination, a sort of large
Brazil nut. He then laid it among some loose earth, poured some water on
it, covered it with a handkerchief, and crooned over it. In about a
minute he exhibited the same, or another seed, the capsule burst, and a
light green leaf protruding. I took it in my hands, and it was certainly
a real bursting mango seed, but clearly it had been palmed and
substituted for the other. He then buried it again and kept raising the
handkerchief upon his own side, and scrabbling about with his long brown
fingers underneath its cover. Then he suddenly whisked off the
handkerchief and there was the plant, a foot or so high, with thick
foliage and blossoms, its root well planted in the earth. It was
certainly very startling.
My explanation is that by a miracle of packing the whole of the plant
had been compressed into the rag doll, or little cloth cylinder already
mentioned. The scrabbling of the hands under the cloth was to smooth out
the leaves after it was freed from this covering. I observed that the
leaves were still rather crumpled, and that there were dark specks of
fungi which would not be there if the plant were straight from nature's
manufactory. But it was wonderfully done when you consider that the man
was squatting in our midst, we standing in a semi-circle around him,
with no adventitious aid whatever. I do not believe that the famous Mr.
Maskeleyne or any of those other wise conjurers who are good enough
occasionally to put Lodge, Crookes and Lombroso in their places, could
have wrought a better illusion.
The fellow had a cobra with him which he challenged me to pick up. I did
so and gazed into its strange eyes, which some devilry of man's had
turned to a lapis lazuli blue. The juggler said it was the result of its
skin-sloughing, but I have my doubts. The poison bag had, I suppose,
been extracted, but the man seemed nervous and slipped his brown hand
between my own and the swaying venomous head with its peculiar
flattened hood. It is a fearsome beast, and I can realise what was told
me by a lover of animals that the snake was the one creature from which
he could get no return of affection. I remember that I once had three in
my employ when the "Speckled Band" was produced in London, fine, lively
rock pythons, and yet in spite of this profusion of realism I had the
experience of reading a review which, after duly slating the play, wound
up with the scathing sentence, "The performance ended with the
production of a palpably artificial serpent." Such is the reward of
virtue. Afterwards when the necessities of several travelling companies
compelled us to use dummy snakes we produced a much more realistic
effect. The real article either hung down like a pudgy yellow bell rope,
or else when his tail was pinched, endeavoured to squirm back and get
level with the stage carpenter, who pinched him, which was not in the
plot. The latter individual had no doubts at all as to the dummy being
an improvement upon the real.
Never, save on the west coast of Africa, have I seen "the league-long
roller thundering on the shore," as here, where the Indian Ocean with
its thousand leagues of momentum hits the western coast of Ceylon. It
looks smooth out at sea, and then you are surprised to observe that a
good-sized boat has suddenly vanished. Then it scoops upwards once more
on the smooth arch of the billow, disappearing on the further slope. The
native catamarans are almost invisible, so that you see a row of
standing figures from time to time on the crest of the waves. I cannot
think that any craft in the world would come through rough water as
these catamarans with their long outriggers can do. Man has made few
more simple and more effective inventions, and if I were a younger man I
would endeavour to introduce them to Brighton beach, as once I
introduced ski to Switzerland, or auto-wheels to the British roads. I
have other work to do now, but why does not some sportsman take the
model, have it made in England, and then give an exhibition in a gale of
wind on the south coast. It would teach our fishermen some possibilities
of which they are ignorant.
As I stood in a sandy cove one of them came flying in, a group of
natives rushing out and pulling it up on the beach. The craft consists
only of two planks edgewise and lengthwise. In the nine-inch slit
between them lay a number of great twelve-pound fish, like cod, and tied
to the side of the boat was a ten-foot sword fish. To catch that
creature while standing on a couple of floating planks must have been
sport indeed, and yet the craft is so ingenious that to a man who can at
a pinch swim for it, there is very small element of danger. The really
great men of our race, the inventor of the wheel, the inventor of the
lever, the inventor of the catamaran are all lost in the mists of the
past, but ethnologists have found that the cubic capacity of the
neolithic brain is as great as our own.
There are two robbers' castles, as the unhappy visitor calls them,
facing the glorious sea, the one the Galle Face, the other the Mount
Lavinia Hotel. They are connected by an eight-mile road, which has all
the colour and life and variety of the East for every inch of the way.
In that glorious sun, under the blue arch of such a sky, and with the
tropical trees and flowers around, the poverty of these people is very
different from the poverty of a London slum. Is there in all God's world
such a life as that, and can it really be God's world while we suffer it
to exist! Surely, it is a palpable truth that no one has a right to
luxuries until every one has been provided with necessities, and among
such necessities a decent environment is the first. If we had spent
money to fight slumland as we spent it to fight Germany, what a
different England it would be. The world moves all the same, and we have
eternity before us. But some folk need it.
A doctor came up to me in the hotel and told me that he was practising
there, and had come recently from England. He had lost his son in the
war, and had himself become unsettled. Being a Spiritualist he went to
Mrs. Brittain, the medium, who told him that his boy had a message for
him which was that he would do very well in Colombo. He had himself
thought of Ceylon, but Mrs. B. had no means of knowing that. He had
obeyed the advice thus given, and was glad that he had done so. How much
people may miss by cutting themselves away from these ministers of
grace! In all this opposition to Spiritualism the punishment continually
fits the crime.
Once again we shed passengers and proceeded in chastened mood with
empty decks where once it was hard to move. Among others, good Bishop
Banister of Kwang-si had gone. I care little for his sacramental and
vicarious doctrines, but I am very sure that wherever his robust,
kindly, sincere personality may dwell is bound to be a centre of the
true missionary effort--the effort which makes for the real original
teaching of his Master, submission to God and goodwill to our fellow
men.
Now we are on the last lap with nothing but a clear stretch of salt
water between our prow and West Australia. Our mission from being a sort
of dream takes concrete form and involves definite plans. Meanwhile we
plough our way through a deep blue sea with the wind continually against
us. I have not seen really calm water since we left the Canal. We carry
on with the usual routine of ship sports, which include an England and
Australia cricket match, in which I have the honour of captaining
England, a proper ending for a long if mediocre career as a cricketer.
We lost by one run, which was not bad considering our limited numbers.
Posers of all sorts are brought to me by thoughtful inquirers, which I
answer when I can. Often I can't. One which is a most reasonable
objection has given me a day's thought. If, as is certain, we can
remember in our next life the more important incidents of this one, why
is it that in this one we can remember nothing of that previous
spiritual career, which must have existed since nothing can be born in
time for eternity? Our friends on the other side cannot help us there,
nor can even such extended spiritual visions as those of Vale Owen clear
it up. On the whole we must admit that our Theosophical friends, with
whom we quarrel for their absence of evidence, have the best attempt at
an explanation. I imagine that man's soul has a cycle which is complete
in itself, and all of which is continuous and self conscious. This
begins with earth life. Then at last a point is reached, it may be a
reincarnation, and a new cycle is commenced, the old one being closed to
our memory until we have reached some lofty height in our further
journey. Pure speculation, I admit, but it would cover what we know and
give us a working hypothesis. I can never excite myself much about the
reincarnation idea, for if it be so, it occurs seldom, and at long
intervals, with ten years spent in the other spheres for one spent here,
so that even admitting all that is said by its supporters it is not of
such great importance. At the present rate of change this world will be
as strange as another sphere by the time we are due to tread the old
stage once more. It is only fair to say that though many spiritualists
oppose it, there is a strong body, including the whole French Allan
Kardec school, who support it. Those who have passed over may well be
divided upon the subject since it concerns their far future and is a
matter of speculation to them as to us.
Thrasher whales and sperm whales were seen which aroused the old whaling
thrill in my heart. It was the more valuable Greenland whale which I
helped to catch, while these creatures are those which dear old Frank
Bullen, a childlike sailor to the last, described in his "Cruise of the
Cachelot." How is it that sailors write such perfect English. There are
Bullen and Conrad, both of whom served before the mast--the two purest
stylists of their generation. So was Loti in France. There are some
essays of Bullen's, especially a description of a calm in the tropics,
and again of "Sunrise seen from the Crow's Nest," which have not been
matched in our time for perfection of imagery and diction. They are both
in his "Idyls of the Sea." If there is compensation in the beyond--and I
know that there is--then Frank Bullen is in great peace, for his whole
earthly life was one succession of troubles. When I think of his cruel
stepmother, his dreadful childhood, his life on a Yankee blood ship, his
struggles as a tradesman, his bankruptcy, his sordid worries, and
finally, his prolonged ill-health, I marvel at the unequal distribution
of such burdens. He was the best singer of a chanty that I have ever
heard, and I can hear him now with his rich baritone voice trolling out
"Sally Brown" or "Stormalong." May I hear him once again! Our dear ones
tell us that there is no great gap between what pleases us here and that
which will please us in the beyond. Our own brains, had we ever used
them in the matter, should have instructed us that all evolution,
spiritual as well as material, must be gradual. Indeed, once one knows
psychic truth, one can, reasoning backwards, perceive that we should
unaided have come to the same conclusions, but since we have all been
deliberately trained not to use our reason in religious matters, it is
no wonder that we have made rather a hash of it. Surely it is clear
enough that in the case of an artist the artistic nature is part of the
man himself. Therefore, if he survives it must survive. But if it
survives it must have means of expression, or it is a senseless thing.
But means of expression implies appreciation from others and a life on
the general lines of this one. So also of the drama, music, science and
literature, if we carry on they carry on, and they cannot carry on
without actual expression and a public to be served.
To the east of us and just beyond the horizon lie the Cocos Islands,
where Ross established his strange little kingdom, and where the _Emden_
met its end--a glorious one, as every fair minded man must admit. I have
seen her stern post since then in the hall of the Federal Parliament at
Melbourne, like some fossil monster, once a terror and now for children
to gaze at. As to the Cocos Islands, the highest point is, I understand,
about twenty feet, and tidal waves are not unknown upon the Pacific, so
that the community holds its tenure at very short and sudden notice to
quit.
On the morning of September 17th a low coast line appeared upon the port
bow--Australia at last. It was the edge of the West Australian State.
The evening before a wireless had reached me from the spiritualists of
Perth saying that they welcomed us and our message. It was a kind
thought and a helpful one. We were hardly moored in the port of
Fremantle, which is about ten miles from the capital, when a deputation
of these good, kind people was aboard, bearing great bunches of wild
flowers, most of which were new to us. Their faces fell when they
learned that I must go on in the ship and that there was very little
chance of my being able to address them. They are only connected with
the other States by one long thin railway line, 1,200 miles long, with
scanty trains which were already engaged, so that unless we stuck to the
ship we should have to pass ten days or so before we could resume our
journey. This argument was unanswerable, and so the idea of a meeting
was given up.
These kind people had two motors in attendance, which must, I fear, have
been a strain upon their resources, for as in the old days the true
believers and practical workers are drawn from the poor and humble.
However, they certainly treated us royally, and even the children were
packed into the motors. We skirted the Swan River, passed through the
very beautiful public park, and, finally, lunched at the busy town,
where Bone's store would cut a respectable figure in London, with its
many departments and its roof restaurant. It was surprising after our
memories of England to note how good and abundant was the food. It is a
charming little town, and it was strange, after viewing its settled
order, to see the mill where the early settlers not so very long ago had
to fight for their lives with the black fellows. Those poor black
fellows! Their fate is a dark stain upon Australia. And yet it must in
justice to our settlers be admitted that the question was a very
difficult one. Was colonisation to be abandoned, or were these brave
savages to be overcome? That was really the issue. When they speared the
cattle of the settlers what were the settlers to do? Of course, if a
reservation could have been opened up, as in the case of the Maoris,
that would have been ideal. But the noble Maori is a man with whom one
could treat on equal terms and he belonged to a solid race. The
Aborigines of Australia were broken wandering tribes, each at war with
its neighbours. In a single reservation they would have exterminated
each other. It was a piteous tragedy, and yet, even now in retrospect,
how difficult it is to point out what could have been done.
The Spiritualists of Perth seem to be a small body, but as earnest as
their fellows elsewhere. A masterful looking lady, Mrs. McIlwraith,
rules them, and seems fit for the part. They have several mediums
developing, but I had no chance of testing their powers. Altogether our
encounter with them cheered us on our way. We had the first taste of
Australian labour conditions at Fremantle, for the men knocked off at
the given hour, refusing to work overtime, with the result that we
carried a consignment of tea, meant for their own tea-pots, another
thousand miles to Adelaide, and so back by train which must have been
paid for out of their own pockets and those of their fellow citizens.
Verily, you cannot get past the golden rule, and any breach of it brings
its own punishment somehow, somewhere, be the sinner a master or a man.
And now we had to cross the dreaded Bight, where the great waves from
the southern ice come rolling up, but our luck was still in, and we went
through it without a qualm. Up to Albany one sees the barren irregular
coast, and then there were two days of blue water, which brought us at
last to Adelaide, our port of debarkation. The hour and the place at
last!