Barbara's return to the colors may yet provide a subject for the
dramatic historian of the future. To go back to the Salvation Army with
the knowledge that even the Salvationists themselves are not saved yet;
that poverty is not blessed, but a most damnable sin; and that when
General Booth chose Blood and Fire for the emblem of Salvation instead
of the Cross, he was perhaps better inspired than he knew: such
knowledge, for the daughter of Andrew Undershaft, will clearly lead to
something hopefuller than distributing bread and treacle at the expense
of Bodger.
It is a very significant thing, this instinctive choice of the military
form of organization, this substitution of the drum for the organ, by
the Salvation Army. Does it not suggest that the Salvationists divine
that they must actually fight the devil instead of merely praying at
him? At present, it is true, they have not quite ascertained his
correct address. When they do, they may give a very rude shock to that
sense of security which he has gained from his experience of the fact
that hard words, even when uttered by eloquent essayists and lecturers,
or carried unanimously at enthusiastic public meetings on the motion of
eminent reformers, break no bones. It has been said that the French
Revolution was the work of Voltaire, Rousseau and the Encyclopedists.
It seems to me to have been the work of men who had observed that
virtuous indignation, caustic criticism, conclusive argument and
instructive pamphleteering, even when done by the most earnest and
witty literary geniuses, were as useless as praying, things going
steadily from bad to worse whilst the Social Contract and the pamphlets
of Voltaire were at the height of their vogue. Eventually, as we know,
perfectly respectable citizens and earnest philanthropists connived at
the September massacres because hard experience had convinced them that
if they contented themselves with appeals to humanity and patriotism,
the aristocracy, though it would read their appeals with the greatest
enjoyment and appreciation, flattering and admiring the writers, would
none the less continue to conspire with foreign monarchists to undo the
revolution and restore the old system with every circumstance of savage
vengeance and ruthless repression of popular liberties.
The nineteenth century saw the same lesson repeated in England. It had
its Utilitarians, its Christian Socialists, its Fabians (still extant):
it had Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Ruskin, Carlyle, Butler, Henry George,
and Morris. And the end of all their efforts is the Chicago described
by Mr Upton Sinclair, and the London in which the people who pay to be
amused by my dramatic representation of Peter Shirley turned out to
starve at forty because there are younger slaves to be had for his
wages, do not take, and have not the slightest intention of taking, any
effective step to organize society in such a way as to make that
everyday infamy impossible. I, who have preached and pamphleteered like
any Encyclopedist, have to confess that my methods are no use, and
would be no use if I were Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens,
Carlyle, Ruskin, George, Butler, and Morris all rolled into one, with
Euripides, More, Moliere, Shakespear, Beaumarchais, Swift, Goethe,
Ibsen, Tolstoy, Moses and the prophets all thrown in (as indeed in some
sort I actually am, standing as I do on all their shoulders). The
problem being to make heroes out of cowards, we paper apostles and
artist-magicians have succeeded only in giving cowards all the
sensations of heroes whilst they tolerate every abomination, accept
every plunder, and submit to every oppression. Christianity, in making
a merit of such submission, has marked only that depth in the abyss at
which the very sense of shame is lost. The Christian has been like
Dickens' doctor in the debtor's prison, who tells the newcomer of its
ineffable peace and security: no duns; no tyrannical collectors of
rates, taxes, and rent; no importunate hopes nor exacting duties;
nothing but the rest and safety of having no further to fall.
Yet in the poorest corner of this soul-destroying Christendom vitality
suddenly begins to germinate again. Joyousness, a sacred gift long
dethroned by the hellish laughter of derision and obscenity, rises like
a flood miraculously out of the fetid dust and mud of the slums;
rousing marches and impetuous dithyrambs rise to the heavens from
people among whom the depressing noise called "sacred music" is a
standing joke; a flag with Blood and Fire on it is unfurled, not in
murderous rancor, but because fire is beautiful and blood a vital and
splendid red; Fear, which we flatter by calling Self, vanishes; and
transfigured men and women carry their gospel through a transfigured
world, calling their leader General, themselves captains and
brigadiers, and their whole body an Army: praying, but praying only for
refreshment, for strength to fight, and for needful MONEY (a notable
sign, that); preaching, but not preaching submission; daring ill-usage
and abuse, but not putting up with more of it than is inevitable; and
practising what the world will let them practise, including soap and
water, color and music. There is danger in such Activity; and where
there is danger there is hope. Our present security is nothing, and can
be nothing, but evil made irresistible.