_Soldiers of All Nations_
It is difficult to realize that while this note is being written, men
are dying, every moment: not in the fulness of time, for the glory of
God and their own rest; but unduly and by wanton violence, in the
prime of manhood, with the whole making and purpose of their lives
incomplete and unrenewable. They lie in strange places, and must
sleep, not uncompanioned, but uncoffined and without memorial: mere
broken bits of life-stuff, shattered from the resemblance of humanity
by machines that must be fed with the food that women travail for, and
pray for, and, losing, break their hearts. Well, may they sleep
soundly, these soldiers of all nations who will march no more to
music, nor answer the reveille at dawn! God be gracious to them,
gallant men all, if graciousness be needed where they have gone now!
_Paying the Cost_
If the death of warriors were war’s only penalty, men perhaps might be
forgiven for their battles, since heroes are made known by them. But
the world has gone to school again, to learn the lesson that is
enforced with cannons; and it knows the whole cost of war, and is
paying it, and will continue to pay it for many a year. In this
country, we have not contributed much, so far: only a hundred millions
officially, and who shall say how many millions unofficially, in
disorganized industry? But they have paid a large sum in Belgium,
where the prices are plainly marked; they have paid in France (it is
an ill winter that follows unreaped and rotting harvests); they have
paid in Austria; and the bill for the other countries is being added
up.
_Christianity and Civilization_
But it is not true that Christianity has broken down, or that
civilization has broken down, as some have said in the first flush of
their indignation and sorrow. Civilization and Christianity have
never yet been tried in the world, so they cannot very well have
broken down. What we have had, so far, has been a pseudo-Christianity
and a pseudo-civilization. It is not so much that we have been
deliberately insincere, perhaps; but we have not faced life and the
problems of life as they should be faced; we have accepted the
imitation instead of insisting upon the genuine thing; we have given
lip-worship, but not heart-worship.
_Rebuilding_
We are living, and some of us are dying, in strange, wonderful,
terrible days. There is no room for pessimism or for bravado.
Barbarism is showing us what deeds it can produce. We must answer with
deeds.
Let no man who has held high rank in the Government of any country
think now that he has done well or deserves acclamations. So far as
his vision led him, he may have tried to do his duty, with foresight,
devotion, faithfulness. Yet he has failed. The Government which cannot
save its country from war has failed, whatever its other achievements.
The new ideas, the new hopes, have not been fully comprehended. And so
suspicion and enmity have been allowed to grow steadily, and the
thought of war has been constantly in men’s minds, as the inevitable
end to which the world was drifting.
The thought of war should have been as impossible as the thought of
murder. The press of all nations, instead of pandering to
misunderstanding and animosities, should have educated the people, day
by day and year by year, until the curse of nationalism was lifted
from the world.
For nationalism _has_ been a curse, and will remain a curse, so
long as devotion to one country can involve enmity to any other. We
are brothers in one boat, as we pass from the unknown to the unknown.
Let us learn to understand each other.
_Benedict XV_
The election of Cardinal della Chiesa was certainly unexpected, and it
may be hoped that this element of surprise will be extended to his
general policies. But if his Holiness continues, as Pontiff, to carry
out the principles of the Archbishop of Bologna, the Church will lose
far more than she can gain. What is needed now is not a saint or a
scholar or a skilful administrator, though saintliness and scholarship
and executive talent are admirable qualifications. If the Church is to
do anything more than merely mark time, or actually lose ground, she
requires as her head now a man of profound imagination and unswerving
courage. The tendency of the Papacy has been too much toward
mechanical routine, the neglect of new opportunities, the
discountenancing of new ideas, the refusal of new life. The creative
genius of the great artist, the incommunicable imaginative insights of
the great novelist or poet or painter, could give the Vatican a new
leadership in the spiritual affairs of mankind. We have seen the Pope
who condemned Modernism dying of a broken heart because Europe was
turned into a field of desolation and slaughter. The impotence of the
Pontiff to secure some regard for Christian teachings amongst
supposedly Christian nations, is at once the measure of the Church’s
weakness and the condemnation of her methods. In the spirit of the
Modernists, if not in the spirit of Modernism itself, Benedict XV could
remove many of the mountains that stand in the way of the direct line
for the Twentieth Century, Limited. Mountains may be picturesque: but,
in the wrong place, they are merely a nuisance.
_Uncensored_
The press has not had an easy task in attempting to gratify the
natural desire of the public for dramatic details of the war
operations. But even after making the fullest allowances for all
difficulties, whether due to the censorship, to broken communications,
or to the indiscretions of partisans, one can scarcely congratulate
the newspaper world as a whole upon its achievements. In New York, for
instance, there have been two or three papers which have maintained
reasonable standards; but most of the papers have published and
republished so-called news of a kind that should never have found
public record. Why should any journal waste time in announcing, in
large type, that “the Servians swear that the enemy will never enter
the capital so long as one house stands and one Servian lives”? This
is mere bombastic rubbish, and has nothing to do with the patriotism
and fortitude of the Servians. The appearance of perpetual “war
extras,” with no additional information, but with immense scareheads,
is another unpleasant sign of the shallowness and insincerity that we
permit in these busy days. Frothy journalism may flourish for the
moment: but the public has a better memory than it is sometimes
supposed to possess.
“_Civilized Warfare_”
Some one, somewhere, appears to be laboring under a rather serious
mistake, or we should not have been exposed so frequently during the
last few weeks to the phrase “civilized warfare.” There is no such
thing, of course, as civilized warfare. All war is necessarily
barbaric in its methods, and ludicrous in its assumption of
semi-decency. When nations go out, in the name of God, to mangle and
destroy their fellow-creatures, they are reverting to the primitive
profession of murder. The glory of war is the glory of murder, however
it may be embellished by infantile brains.
We have heard much of atrocities and “uncivilized” outrages. Probably
most of the stories are utterly false: but even if they were true,
they would only be in full accord with the whole purpose, methods, and
disgrace of war.
Let us realize, very clearly, that war is necessarily and always
murderous and barbaric, and let us abandon the pretence that we are
shocked at the annihilation of towns, the rape of women, the slaughter
of children, the desolation of once-prosperous communities. These are
the trimmings of war. If we order the feast, let us pay for it; but
let us, in the name of all decency, give up the pretence that we are
either civilized or Christianized.
_Saintless Petrograd_
The official change from St. Petersburg to Petrograd removes the
intrusive saint from the Russian capital. The city was named after
Peter the Great, of somewhat uncouth memory, and the subsequent
sanctification by the rest of Europe was perhaps a tribute to the
religious reputation of Holy Russia.
Now that the Ice has been broken, such cities as Florence, for
example, may begin to assert their right to be known, even in the
Anglo-Saxon world, by their real and native names.
_Thumbs Down_
In his clever, whimsical and symbolistic play, _Androcles and the Lion_,
Mr. George Bernard Shaw has fallen—or a zealous proof-reader has made
it appear that he has fallen—into the usual error of “thumbs down,”
as the death signal.
It is strange that this mistake should be so widely prevalent, and
should even be repeated by the _Encyclopædia Britannica_. But the
error, like ’round for round and laid for lay, will no doubt pass
steadily through the years.
However, anyone who has not yet read Mr. Shaw’s little play should do
so at once, paying special attention to Ferrovius.
_The Earl of Whisky_
The oddities of childhood are rarely understood completely, even in
these days of ingenious educational devices. The child lives and moves
and has his being in his own world. He may emerge at moments, he may
seem to understand or be understood by the great confederation of
blundering adults: but he must go back as soon as possible to the
realm of his real allegiance, where fact and fancy, dreams, doubts and
discoveries are so cunningly intermingled.
Why do we forget our own childhood, and turn deaf ears and unseeing
eyes to the sounds and sights that once we should have comprehended so
easily? The world of flame, the glory of color, the music in the winds
and the darkness, the actuality of romance, the strange limits and
restrictions of knowledge! Can you remember when the earth stretched
twelve miles out, beyond doubt, and perhaps a little further? Or the
immense significance of double figures when the tenth birthday painted
a huge 10 across the entire sky, but nobody else particularly
noticed the phenomenon? Or the fantastic associations of certain
names from time to time, so that to live in Champagne would have
seemed a comic-opera infliction, and a Duke of Burgundy was as
Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque as a Marquess of Claret, or an Earl of
Whisky, or Baron Beer?
Yet we have long had Sir Loin, and scarcely remember the cause of that
famous knighting; and now we have our copper kings, beef barons, pork
princes, and what not. Perhaps we are not so remote from the
whimsicalities of childhood as we have imagined, after all.
_Jaded Appetites_
A recent advertisement of a well-known New York restaurant announced:
“Whether it is in luncheon, dinner or supper, you will find in our
menu of delicious cold specialties, ready for your selection at our
buffet in the main dining room, creations to tempt the most jaded of
appetites.”
It is comforting to know that the grossly overfed man or woman need
not starve. When the appetite fails through constant indulgence, it
can be tempted to new excesses by these “delicious cold specialties,”
and so enough nourishment may be secured to preserve life.
It is indeed a pitiable spectacle to see the forlorn victim of
piggishness sadly regarding a menu that can no longer entice him to
abuse his stomach. Let him now take heart and visit the restaurant
that has learnt how to “tempt the most jaded of appetites.”
It is a noble work that this restaurant is doing; one well worthy of
our civilization.
But who will tempt the unjaded appetites of the slum-dwellers?
Transcriber’s Note:
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left
unchanged.
Spelling changes:
‘conciousness’ to ‘consciousness’ …class-consciousness…
‘prmitive’ to ‘primitive’ …primitive profession of murder…
The two lines omitted from the quoted poem by Giovannitti read:
And from its bloody pedestal
The last god, Terror, shall be hurled.