DEMOCRACY--
FALSE OR TRUE?
A Prologue
and Dream
BY
SIR WILLIAM BLAKE RICHMOND
K.C.B., R.A.
London - - - Cecil Palmer
Oakley House Bloomsbury Street WC1
Printed at
The Morland Press Ltd
190 Ebury Street
London
SW1
Dedicated to the honest working classes of
England, rich and poor, by one of
themselves
FIRST
EDITION
1920
COPY
RIGHT
DEMOCRACY
§ 1
It is a dangerous, but agreeable, game to play the prophet, perhaps
unwise; but while admitting that, I am going to do so, not because
I feel sure, but because I want to sift my own thoughts. I may be
told “why not do so in private?” I’ve done that already. Probably it
does not matter what an old man says, “He is a weather beaten block
waiting for axe or fire.” Whatever Ideals are mine, there are few
which are in agreement with the fashion of to-day. Still I am capable
of looking forward. I’ve looked back a great deal in my life, and
been a humble student of “Cause and Effect.” Young enough to believe,
even though it lies distant from hence, in Utopia, and I make bold
to say so. I still believe in the human race. I still believe in a
capacity for repentance and change of direction from bad to a better
state of things. It is likely that the desirable, according to my
philosophy, would be the undesirable to many, perhaps, just now, most
people! Nevertheless I mean to state it.
William Morris made a delightful story, “News from Nowhere”; he
thought that Socialism would realise his Ideal, perhaps it might;
anyway Socialism is a pleasanter word than Individualism, it suggests
“_Thou_,” the other cries “_I_.” _Thou_ has not been in the air of
late. _I_ has been so, and prominently; of this, more presently!
Some great and wise men have spent considerable energies in building
Utopia. Jesus Christ, Moses, Hamurrabbi, and Mohammed, Plato, Sir
Thomas More, and, when I come to think of it, all leaders of thought
have played with the bricks of that entertaining place. I imagine
that the folk, who think at all, form a picture of their preference,
which includes the future with the present. Seemingly, the future
has a habit of taking care of itself; that is possibly a fatalistic
fallacy! What _will_ be done in the future is in the making of the
present. The flower is forming out of sight. We have no reason for
knowing what kind of being the man of the future, even of the near
future, is to be. One thing, however, is pretty certain; he will be
as good or evil, ignorant or learned, as he chooses. We might reason
together for a year as to the meaning of _Good_ and _Evil_. To clear
the way I will state now that I am a firm believer in Free Will, in
as far as conduct is concerned. We have to die; that is a physical
law as that we live is; but we can retard even the supreme victor,
death, by effort of Will. To wish ardently is half way to obtaining.
If we wish wickedly we are on the road to wickedness. For those who
thus wish I have no words but these, “It is a bad habit, reverse it.”
The foundation of good is to wish _Well_ and nobly, and Will strongly
by action. Belief in Free Will is an incentive to industry, courage
and stability. It includes _Hope_, the sister of Faith and Charity
and courage to proceed through the thorny way of Life; Industry to
make life happy; and Stability to maintain effort however adverse
circumstances may be to it, and Hope to make us cling to the dream
and to realise it in Vision if not yet in fact, which urged us at the
outset. Did “Free Will,” in the abstract, exist before we came hither
and will it continue after we go hence? I suggest that Free Will
is eternal, that God is All Free Will; when He breathed His spirit
into man’s body He imparted it to him. Plato’s sublime allegory of
the soul driving her chariot, directing her horses antagonistic Eros
and Himeros, proclaims the potentiality and immortality of the Soul.
If matter does not die but is converted into other matter, can the
Soul, created before matter, die? What the conversion of matter and
Soul is, is beyond our thinking. But what does concern us is how we
use the soul during its pilgrimage within the body! Its temporary
home must be split up to effect an escape for the eternal organism.
Perhaps death is really Life! Is it reasonable to believe that a live
thing contains a dead one? If it is not so the soul was alive before
it was environed by matter, and continues to live after its temporary
shell is broken up and its particles are driven by Time hither and
thither in dust.
The brain is matter, it is as wax, impressionable. From the
first instant of its creation to its last effort it is receiving
impressions. It dies as all matter dies. But do the impressions die?
Instinct and reason say Nay. As far as they have exercised authority
for good or evil upon the individual they do so reflectively upon a
generation and progressively to succeeding generations. Philosophy
tells us there is no waste in nature. If there is none as regards
matter, is there likely to be as regards the soul which has been
pre-existing and will be post-existing? If that is so and Free
Will accepts and acts, brain impressions are immortal! Did the
soul enter the body unasked? Does it leave unasked? A child under
reprimand said, pathetically “I did not ask to be born,” that child
was obviously alluding to her inclination. The child inadvertently
spoke as a fatalist; it was a way of saying “I could not help what I
did.” Before the soul enters the body is it an individual or only an
atmosphere? Had it experience or not? Where has it been before? Has
the soul a memory? These questions we all know have received answers
from metaphysical and philosophic minds.
From the dawn of man’s intelligence, whenever that was, until to-day,
mankind has yearned for an answer. A great philosopher and friend
of mine, the Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott, said to me “Now-a-days
there is nothing more difficult than to say bravely I _do not_
know.” Yes, I accept that modest statement from a great man but I
cannot help casting about for an answer! The Truth is somewhere,
perhaps in Utopia, even at the bottom of a well. There is something
on a different plane than sophistry, poetical rhapsody. There is a
great deal to be said for emotion, it is our strongest instinct.
Reading Indian, Egyptian, Greek and Christian philosophy are we not
drawn into the atmosphere of Rhapsody and Fancy? Even into a land
of dreams if so we please to call Ideals. However they may urge
Reason against Emotion, none of the great philosophers succeed in
doing it themselves. If they did they would fall quite flat, because
we who read are creatures of emotional instincts. All the great
philosophers, though they wrote in prose, were poets, not by choice
but necessity. Absolutely materialistic philosophy is, happily, rare.
It may lay hold of certain minds for a time, but being contrary to
our higher instincts its grip is only partial, unsatisfying and
ephemeral. The great philosophers live in a land of Dreams or Ideals,
a land from which mankind is always as substance. We want the dreams
to come True as children do after hearing a fairy story. Plato,
Confucius, Buddha, Aristotle, Paul, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, even Comte
were idealists, builders of Utopia. They tried their minds in a
furnace of difficulties, their chief effort was to reconcile emotion
and reason.
They tried to account for _Feeling_ by Reason. However far Reason may
travel, there is a point where it is arrested; speculation starts
afresh. It is the poetry in all mythology, not its probability, which
is neither here nor there, which touches the human heart; it is that
which detains us and holds us fast. It is the poetry of Love that
underlies the exquisite verse of Apulius. The story of the Soul of
Love it is. French novels, marvellously clever, tell us the other
side. I back Apulius’ story of Cupid and Psyche to outlive most of
them. It is the abstract poetry of the wanderings of Osiris, not the
philosophy built upon it, that engrosses us. The myth of the Delphic
oracle, an inspired pastoral, clings when the Delphic oracle is no
more. Goats and sheep skipping in rhapsody, their shepherd afterwards
giving way to the _mania_ of prophecy, enchanted by the voice of
Apollo from a bubbling stream, have more to say for us than the
oracle said to the Greeks afterwards in a stately temple. There is
something instinctively true in the first emotion, something untrue
in the political use made of it by priests and politicians. It is
not the political use made of Nature myths which we admire, but the
imagination of a highly endowed temperament from which they sprang in
the golden age of emotional invention, unrestrained by reason, yet
having at the root a _True Ideal_. Psyche personated the soul! The
poets have answered our question more simply than the philosophers,
who have ploughed over the ground already sown with beautiful
flowers, and not seldom have sown weeds on it.
The Churches have added nothing to the beauty of the Christian
story. In their efforts to codify it and convert its simplicity
into dogmatic and puzzling creeds, upon acceptance of which or not
depends the salvation or damnation of the human race, they have not
improved or better interpreted the amazing mystery which threads its
way in and out among a tapestry of exquisite design. In their effort
to materialise the spiritual or Ethos of the story they have often
played havoc with it. As a wondrous story full of humanity it has
passed through the fire of sophism, politics and Churchcraft, and
remains as it was--a product of simple poetical mystical inspiration,
and as such it will always touch the world. Whoever wrote the first
chapter of Genesis was a great poet who has inspired multitudes, not
by his science, which was _nil_, but by a poetic truth incomparably
delightful and mythically _true_, It inspired M. Angelo, Raphael,
and a host of great artists. Milton expanded and retold it in his
immortal verse. It has supplied inspiration to musicians, and
scientific men have done battle among themselves and over a Poem.
Thus have they done it honour. If in details what is related breaks
down under the cold light of science, what does that matter? The soul
survives. The allegory is complete, the parable is untouched. If
the mighty scenes portrayed with simple dignity and unapproachable
reserve do not accord with the teachings of science, does that
matter? Not one whit! The story is the same, as Homer’s tale of the
Siege of Troy is the same, whoever wrote it or when it was written.
Whether the “Iliad” was put together by travelling minstrels’ stories
edited by Homer or his invention has nothing to do with its value as
a poem. The history of the Jews, as related in the Bible, is full of
strange and direct dealings with miraculous events which no science
or sense can accept. What does it matter that the historian made a
blunder in astronomy? It was not his business. We all know that the
sun did not stand still for Joshua. The historian wrote for patriots,
not for astronomers. To him the earth was stationary and flat, the
sun rising and setting each day. Even now, with all our science, we
talk of the setting and rising of the sun because it looks like that.
To the people of that time the stars were as lamps slung from the
blue vault of heaven, not at all a bad figure of the truth, they look
so to us, and to-day Arabs speak of them as “lamps.”
§ 2
A new star, the story of the birth of Christ tells, guided the kings
to the manger, where lay a girl-mother and her newborn child. She,
one “of the people,” her reverent custodian a carpenter. That was
what they went to see, and the new star was their guide. We need
not take that literally; it is far more beautiful symbolically,
figuratively, poetically: a new light was dawning upon a worn out
faith, a new symbol of the Spirit of God arose, and not out of a
palace or as a child of kings, but from a manger, from a straw bed,
from a girl of the people and a craftsman. Not only did the three
kings come thither guided by light in their hearts, but simple
mountain shepherds too from their sheepfolds came. An angel of the
heavenly host, three Oriental kings, a few shepherds, a maid, a
carpenter, and a little child were the first actors in a great drama
that has moved the world for two thousand years.
A shepherd, a flock of goats, a bubbling fountain form the _dramatis
personæ_ of the myth of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi. From that sprang
the Pithea and the thousands of votive statues for which Delphi
became famous. Its temples and universities, its priests and
politicians degraded the myth to a level of lies and deceit. “God set
a bow in the sky for a sign.” How does it affect the promise that we
know how the bow came there? We remember the promise in the poem. We
are not concerned with the structure of the bow. Even now in these
materialist days wherever we see the rainbow we recall God’s promise
which, made or not made to mankind _in fact_, is so told in the poem.
Plato’s allegory in the “Phædrus” of the chariot of the soul, the
antagonistic steeds Love and Desire, Eros and Himeros, struggling for
supremacy, taken literally or judged from a scientific aspect, is
nonsense; as a parable it is one of the truest, as a poem one of the
most beautiful in Greek literature.
Apollo came over the mountains. The singer, minstrel, and healer
came, bringing music from Olympus. We picture the Sun God lighting up
the dense forests as he journeyed through them on the crests and edge
of a mountain range. We can hear in our spiritual ears sweet music
from his golden lyre, see the rivers as the Sun God passes over them,
sparkling with amethyst diamond and silver as the light from him,
the giver of light, kisses their surface. This is the figure of the
Dorian invasion that the poets, not the scientists, present!
We still think of Apollo as the primitive author and forerunner of
all that Greece became. When the Persians were on their way to invade
Greece, Datis, the admiral of the great fleet, steered clear of the
island of Delos, the birthplace of Apollo, for fear of vengeance
from the God of Light, whom they worshipped. Even to-day Delos is a
_sacred island_ where once a year Christian Mass is said by Roman
and Greek priests upon an ancient altar to Apollo that I myself have
seen. The myth of Apollo is still alive in poetry if it is dead in
prose! The imagination still responds to it if reason does not accept
it as a literal truth.
It surely was not the reverberation of the trumpets’ blasts from the
hosts of Joshua which overthrew the walls of Jericho. Taken literally
it is a ridiculous statement; figuratively, a very impressive one.
The power of martial music is great; it stimulates courage, quickens
the pulse, and inspires mad valour, which it urges until every
obstacle in the way of a triumphant army is overthrown: an impressive
metaphor so taken, but taken as a literal fact it is silly.
The power of music as an influence to calm a people maddened by lust
of war is told by the poet. It is related by a Greek historian that
one hundred harpists were sent to Sparta from Ionia to make gentle,
seductive, sedative music to a wild people who knew it not, knowing
only war. It prevailed! Their war instincts slept under the calming
influence of Apollo’s art.
Strictly speaking, the event related may never have happened. As
a poetical presentation of the power of music it is true! Was not
the madness of Saul temporarily abated by the harpist David? The
foregoing illustrations illustrate the range of art as a direct
influence upon men in diametrically opposite directions.
That the Divine Spirit is very near, is even in our midst, is related
in Genesis. “God walked in the garden in the cool of the day,”
so sang the poet. The idea of God as subject to heat or cold is
almost comical. The poet has anthropomorphised a mystery. To God he
gives the feelings of the thing he has created, that is the way he
presents God--God as very near to man and sharing his comforts and
discomforts. The primitive poet made nonsense poetic sense.
The nearness of the spiritual world has been well said by a
spiritual poet, “Heaven is only a foot above our heads.” How near,
after all, is the Ideal to the Real, if we could only see; and yet we
can feel it in our subconscious state to be so.
Now let us see for a moment how closely in touch Divinity is with
agricultural life, how much it was in favour of it, how the gods were
close to it, becoming even a part of it, not only by the benediction
of it, but unison with it. Obviously, the gods thought well of labour
and the labourer both loved and feared the gods.
As, to the Hebrew poet, God walked in the garden in the cool of the
day, so to the Greek, “Speak low in the noontide, for then the gods
sleep.” The mythical instances presented are only a few of many which
occur in classical mythology. And be it remembered that we inherit
Greek mythology. It is far nearer than we are apt to think to what
are still primitive instincts, and specially so to those who till
and sow the land, follow the plough, who guard our flocks, and being
an out-of-door-living people are (may be mysteriously) in touch with
mother Nature and the gods who watch over her.
Æneas, the father of the Latin races (and as such not so distantly
related to the British) was the son of the _herdsman_ Anchises,
whom Venus chose to be the father of her son. The goddess chose her
lover from the fields; not from a palace. Goat-footed Pan, the god
of all, is the shepherds’ god, who initiated beautiful Paris, the
chosen judge of beauty. Paris, a shepherd in the Italian upland,
was the lover of beautiful Ænone, whom he deserted for licentious
Venus. He did himself no good by casting off Ænone, his companion.
Venus made game of him! Demeter, one of the most ancient of the
circle of deities of Olympus, saved a child’s life from the fire;
he was Triptolemus, afterwards the inventor of the plough. Demeter
was the goddess of corn, the protectress of agriculture. Her child
Persephone, carried away to the shades, where she was protected
in winter, rose from thither as the almond blossoms heralded the
approach of spring. Persephone was goddess of springtime, of its
blossoms and flowers. The soul of the Greeks is read in their
mythology. It is read also in her history. Athena was the protectress
of Attica, and specially of Athens. It was she that brought the olive
there, the origin of much wealth to the people, and it still is.
When Paul preached from the “Areopagus” he faced the Acropolis of
Athens, half a mile away. Over the top of the wall which contained
the sacred buildings Paul saw the head of the golden spear of Athena
gleaming from the bronze statue by Phidias of the virgin goddess,
a beacon for ships as they passed the dangerous coast of Sunium to
make for the harbour of Phaleron. Within that bronze effigy was a
soul of the Athenian people as the statue was a symbol of it. Paul
was not preaching anything new; he was concentrating a worship whose
expansion, having left much of original simplicity behind, was giving
way. Another primitive form of belief was taking root in monotheism,
in which both shepherds and kings had taken a leading part. Apollo
the Healer was to give way before the child of a Nazarene peasant and
a humble carpenter. The _Cross_ was to be the future beacon for a
while until a new faith shall grow out of the old again.
§ 3
Wisdom was symbolised by the owl, which crowned the helmet of the
goddess Wisdom worshipped by the Greeks in the effigy of their
protectress. The little Athenian owl still haunts the Acropolis. I
have seen and heard it often there, and never without a thrill. Its
plaintive cry proclaims the eternity of things and the never-changing
voice of nature. As the owl hoots there so sings our nightingale in
England’s woods. We too are reminded of the immortality of the soul
of nature, perhaps also of the soul within us, and of its importance
as the only part we can call immortal. Nearer to God are the songs of
birds, the voices of the winds, even the wild utterances of beasts
of the forest than the shrieks of machinery of which industrialism
is so proud. Yes! All human makings are subject to destruction.
The bronze Athena has gone. The golden and ivory statue of Athena
is gone with the effigy of the owl. The shell has been broken, its
parts are scattered, but the primitive faith within them lives
although it has undergone change. Athens is not dead, saved from
the brutal Turk she may become regenerate, she may again shine as
a light to Europe, but if not that exactly, the light she shed may
fix upon another city and shine there, so strange and mysterious are
the comings and goings of nations! Recent discovery in Crete goes
far to prove some fountain-head of truth in every ancient myth. Old
Minos speaks! The myth of Theseus and the Minotaur is explained. The
labyrinth he made is there now, and a Cretan civilization of 4,000
years ago has been revealed, and what a Civilisation! a very noble
art going hand in hand with “modern” economies and created in a
primitive age, as we call it. Knossos was well drained by drainpipes
almost the same as would be turned out by a “company” to-day. Alas,
the multitudes of inscriptions discovered in Crete have not yet been
read. A key to the script has not yet been found. It may appear at
any moment, and then who shall say what marvels it may tell us! Our
much-praised civilisation may be found to be but a feeble echo of
a past one. We are mighty clever, we moderns, not seldom in making
unpleasant discoveries and using useful ones to the annoyance of
many and destruction of better things. We have electric light, great
scientists have given it us, but the keenest witted have not yet
discovered how the tombs of the kings in Egypt were lit. We know
that neither oil or tallow provided light in those dark miles of
caves and chamber walls covered with pictures in delicate relief and
exquisitely coloured.
Fresh as the day they were finished, these monuments to the skill,
industry and genius of Egyptian craftsmen 4,000 years ago stand as
an example to us moderns, who at present show no signs of handing
their genius down even to a dozen generations. Had they electric
light? It is quite possible. It is evident whatever artificial light
they used _was smokeless_, because the ceiling and walls are not
discoloured. What was the meaning of all this superb beauty of labour
and craftsmanship? It was not to gain applause, because after years
of labour each tomb was hermetically sealed and a stone was placed at
the entrance. Their labour was an expression of their noble religion.
Their respect for the great dead who must find silence in their tombs
while their souls reached higher and higher levels in their spiritual
kingdom till such time as, purified, they were to be one in the soul
of Osiris. These people worked for a great Ideal, for the Utopia they
ever held in view, _without advertisement_, probably with little
reward. To them the soul grew always in dignity and beauty, visiting
the body from time to time in silence.
_Silence_ is the note struck by the Great Pyramids of Geza. A
national religion, profoundly spiritual, which in the service it
demanded from Art and Craftsmanship must BE PERFECT. Their art and
craftsmanship tell us this. They were content to give the best only.
They worshipped the Great Spirit by matter. They made their arts to
sing of the noble elevation of the soul from sphere to sphere till
it became perfected. Therein is the _soul_ of the ancient Egyptians,
which they imparted to the Greeks, and which Moses learned and tried
to hand on to the Hebrews. We modern workmen will do well to ponder
on these things awhile, and to take many a lesson from “the poor
pagans.” Poor pagans? Rather were they a most enlightened people,
with whom, by comparison, we moderns are barbarians. They may have
had all, or at least the greater part of what science has given to
us. It is an ignorant cry that calls them Poor Pagans. There was more
soul in ancient Egypt than in Europe to-day! We worship matter, very
often very nasty matter, so long as it provides wealth which we
are not yet civilised enough to know how to use. What England needs
is a little _more_ soul, not less! A great deal more faith, a great
deal more belief in the dignity of labour, a great deal more will to
choose the best and discard the worst, a higher Ideal of honour, and
a deeper sense of responsibility to after-coming generations. Much
more widespread and intensified determination to leave behind us
things so noble that they may bear some comparison with the labour
of the poor Pagan! The spirit of which I write was _here_ once. We
need not cross the Channel to find it. Wiltshire contains it. The
soul of our ancestors is in the very stones of the great monoliths
of Stonehenge, the primitive British temple to the sun, which,
alas, we do not worship but wipe out in material progress of crude
industrialism.
§ 4
Our primitive ancestors were driven by an ardent worship of the Power
within the Sun. Like the Greeks they must set up a great temple to
the Giver of Life, who made their crops ripen, who was to them an
ocular vision of an unravelled mystery, the Prime Author of All! of
Him who holds our destinies, our life and death in the palm of His
hand! That is what urged them. No commercial spirit came between them
and a great Ideal for which to labour and make manifest.
They fetched huge monoliths from Normandy. Frail crafts bore them
over the rough sea to the shore of England, whence they were
dragged to their destination. Do we think that such a tremendous,
so dangerous an enterprise as this, was carried out under no higher
motive than an industrial company?
There probably was some Oriental blood in this ancient folk of
England. All Art, indeed all Science, had its birth place in the
land of the “Rising Sun.” Like the Chaldeans, the race that made
Stonehenge were astronomers. Upon a certain morning and at a certain
hour of the year they knew the rising sun would hit a certain spot.
They knew the exact direction of the ray that would do so. There they
placed their altar to the God of Light, the All Beneficent One! We
know now that some centuries before the Roman conquest of England
the south of the island was highly civilised, but who by is not
clear. They must have been a highly artistic people, possibly Kelts,
possibly a race which had been or was in touch with Mykene, because
the metal work that has survived time partakes of the character of
both Keltic and Mycenian craftsmanship. Whoever they were, they
brought art to savage islanders; hence they sowed the seeds of their
ideals and of perfect craftsmanship, to fructify in those days of
England’s greatness before the weed of Industrialism and the darkness
it shed over the country had become a poisonous fetish. Of that grim
subject more presently. The Mithra myth came here from the East
and nearly won as a religion of blood sacrifice. But a stronger
prevailed--the first created thing, Love. The Jews and Romans
crucified Jesus Christ. They thought thus to obliterate His teaching,
to wipe out the Ideal He taught, the Utopia He would erect--a kingdom
of the soul that He would revive in the materialistic Roman decay.
They did kill His body, but His immortal soul survives. They killed
Him as King of the Jews, but left Him living as Monarch of the human
race. The eggshell may be broken without killing the embryo within
it. Love, pure love, so sought for in religions, so nobly conceived
by the “poor pagan” Socrates, took hold of the hearts of primitive
Christians, as the Delphic myth of Apollo of the primitive Greeks,
and God’s forgiveness of man’s rashness and brutality when He set
the bow in the sky as a sign of mercy, not only to Hebrews but the
whole world. Salvation by blood sacrifice is a crude idea; Salvation
through Love is a noble one.
§ 5
The Germans in the late war thought to destroy the soul of France by
battering down the precious casket whose every stone was a living
symbol of her chivalrous, kingly history. Brute force, employing
every engine of industrialism, every energy of materialistic science,
was to prevail. The noblest craftsmanship employed in the flowering
time of French history and for generations, being the expression of
a sensitive people deeply attached to Beauty, was shivered to atoms
recklessly and triumphantly by the cannon of a hypocrite nation which
claimed the first place in the history of the modern world. If Matter
could ever overcome Soul, Germany would have succeeded; Germany would
have broken the pride of Flemish commerce and her traditions as an
organiser of it by the destruction of Ypres. The priceless books
in Louvain, written and illuminated by pious scholars and patient
craftsmen, the brutes burnt or stole with as ignorant a rapacity as a
herd of monkeys. Again, they sought to destroy the soul of France by
turning thousands of acres of productive country and fruit gardens so
essentially a vital part of the commerce of France, making a fruitful
land a desert. They tried (but in vain) to kill the soul of France by
subjecting villagers, men, women and children to torture; like wild
beasts to smash the modesty of pure women, even those dedicated to
spiritual lives; then, the lust satisfied, they slaughtered them.
The clumsy minded Teuton misjudged its prey. They judge according
to their own low standard of honour; force, brute force, as against
strength of character, chivalry and patriotism: a standard fit only
to be carried in the ranks of savages, but this time carried under
the disguise of “Kultur,” a word which now is a stigma, one which
includes all that is most vile and reprehensible in a people who
employed fine natural faculties to invent every possible device for
the destruction of life. Not a stone did Germany’s scientific men
leave unturned to discover the earth’s hidden sources of destructive
elements. They abused their fine faculties, they perverted their
invention, Industrialism ran riot. Scientific force was used in full
measure by the Germans for annihilation. The Emperor--the worst of
the horde of savages--gave his encouragement to every bestial act
committed by his depraved people. If such depravity was to succeed
or could succeed, Germany would have done so. First in science,
first in organisation, she seemed invincible. Her Industrialism was
perfected, her system organised with the precision of clockwork.
If _materialism_ at the expense of every other consideration can
succeed, Germany would have done so. But no! A nation may kill
its own soul, but God will not permit it to kill another. It is
indeed a lesson. Germany had killed its soul. It had set up Moloch
where God had been. Iron, steel, explosives, every poison upon
the Pharmacy List, every evil pulsation of the heart were German
weapons. The countries she laid waste will revive, their soul has
been strengthened by tribulation, and the would-be conqueror will
lick the dust for a century. France will grow strong again, she will
recultivate her fields and orchards, and rebuild her villages, towns
and churches.
§ 6
In their vulgar vanity the Germans said: “What would matter the
destruction of Rheims Cathedral, of Ypres Town Hall, of Laon, indeed,
of all that the world esteems as Art in France? We, the only nation
of Kultur, can build better. What does the destruction of the library
of Louvain matter? We can create a fresh one; anyhow, we can steal
all the best books therefrom.” Poor deluded people! A people without
taste, possessed of no artistic genius, devoid of the sense of
beauty! All the cathedrals in Germany put together are not worth one
bay of Chartres, one tower of Rheims, or one arcade of Ypres Town
Hall. German architecture is as hard as steel, as unemotional as
iron, and, like her people, dull and soulless. Art is the mirror of
a nation. German Art at its best is brutal as her people have been.
The nineteenth century Minotaurs are in a direct line from the hordes
of barbarians who laid Italy waste, who burned Rome, and spread
horrors wherever their footsteps trod. William II. hates England more
than France. As long as England holds the sea Germany cannot master
the world. After France, England’s turn would have come had German
materialism succeeded.
§ 7
Think of it, craftsmen and builders, and all of us who value the soul
of England! Think of it, farmers, agricultural labourers, and all who
live on and by the land! Your cities would be desolate wastes, your
land poisoned, your women ravished, your children spiked by bayonet
thrusts, your old men and women shot or tortured. That is what would
have happened had Germany’s materialism prevailed! Having done this,
would the soul of England been slain. No!! No conqueror ever killed
the soul of a country conquered. A country commits suicide, that’s
the way its soul is killed, and that is the way Germany destroyed
herself.
A country may poison itself, degrade itself by self-indulgence and
greed to the lowest level; it may kill in itself every good for which
it has been favoured, and so kill its soul; but slain by a foreign
power--never! The thought of what might have happened to us, and
which was nearer happening than many of us will allow, should set
us thinking of England’s mighty past. Setting the success of her
commerce aside, do we quite value at their true value the legacy
of riches which our ancestors have bequeathed? Do we esteem as we
should the builders of our cathedrals, the _unrivalled_ beauty of the
English parish and village church? Do we esteem at their due English
craftsmen (the first in the world) and what noble work they left us?
Do we value the great creative minds of our predecessors? I sometimes
wonder if we are forgetting the very things which illustrate the
beauty of the English soul in a rush after materialism, which seems
to pay a momentary interest. Are we travelling, or have we been
travelling along a road which has proved the road to ruin of Germany?
I think sometimes we have been. Are we permitting Industrialism
to kill our souls? I am not sure we are not! But more of that
presently. What saved England in the four years of her great danger
and trial? Her Government did not. It was not officialdom that
prevented our ruin, it was that the heart of England was still sound,
notwithstanding grievous temptations to break it. Notwithstanding
false doctrines of Equality taught by ignorant extremists, our
workmen still saw straight according to their ancient traditions as
yet unbroken, as yet deaf to “catch words” from noisy rhetoric out of
the mouths of ignorant and mischievous leaders inflated by vanity and
rendered blind by egotism and desire for power over a more ignorant
but clear-thinking workman.
§ 8
The English workman is still “_au cœur_” _honest_; he cannot help it;
tradition of honesty flows in his veins still. If he _is_ ignorant,
the direction of his instincts is honest. He was the best and most
highly respected workman in Europe; other nations envied him. An
English cabinet, an English knife, English cloth, English needlework
were the envy of every foreigner. Why was the praise of English
workmanship so highly praised and prized by other nations? Because
her workmen were the most honest and skilled in Europe. I say “were.”
Are they so still? No! But they may again become so if they are true
to their noble tradition and to themselves, and no longer permit evil
counsel to draw them away by specious and plausible promises.
The noble instincts of the English craftsman I am old enough to
remember. Once, and not so long ago, his work was his conscience,
he believed in it and did it with all his might. It was a habit of
mind which ruled him and made him _free_. Why do I write “free”?
Because being an honest workman, he did not fear competition. He had
an ideal, which was to give the best labour for a good wage. He was
simple, he took pride in his work. He had his Utopia, which was to
labour to the enth of his power to do honour to himself, his family
and country. Good work was encouraged then and commanded the market
of the world! Economically, irrespective of honour, the workman was
right. The best work will always command the best market in the long
run. Honesty was the motto on the standard of the Englishman. He
had an image in his mind and up to it he strove to arrive. He liked
perfection and strove to reach it. In that sense he was an artist
plus craftsman, an imaginative worker distinct from a machine. To
have told a bricklayer he must only lay a given number of bricks a
day, or that doing bad work was good for all-round trade, would have
been to insult him. So his work had a soul in it; the pleasure he
took in its doing was reflected. It was a pleasure to regard it. I
remember hundreds of workmen like that when I was a boy, men with
whom one could make friends, in whom there was good fellowship and no
mistrust. There was a bond of union. We were workmen; he and I were
only differentiated by the nature of Trade; he of the plough, the
shovel, the saw or what not, I of the pencil, brush or scalpel, that
was all.
We had the same soul and sense of honour, he to drive a straight
furrow, dig a good trench, I to do a good drawing or picture. My
fellow-workmen, if they think for themselves, and they are quite
capable to do that, will recognise that to preach “equality” is
one thing; it sounds attractive; it is, in fact, a mare’s nest, a
will-o’-the-wisp; it is unreachable, in the first place; in the
second, if it were reached, to-morrow would provide _inequality_.
Were the scales of Fate adjusted every morning, in the evening they
would be unbalanced. If it were possible to attain equality it would
ruin the world; it would paralyse effort; it would reduce mankind to
a system of self-indulgence, lassitude, and, finally, to imbecility.
Giving up that word as hopeless, we will retain one of the popular
triad--“Liberty,” as including “Fraternity.” Yet while we urge
“liberty” we must beware of its caricature, “licence,” the arch-enemy
of Fraternity and Liberty. Licence is, in fact, the grossest form of
tyranny. We might, indeed, exclude the term “liberty,” which includes
Fraternity, which excludes Licence.
§ 9
And now we come to an important point of our argument. Labour has
permitted itself to become a slave. Individual workers are not FREE.
They have given their souls, or shall we say their freedom, to men
of their own class, who, having a smattering of education, assume
power as their leaders. Anyway, so they began, but time has shown
them more _drivers_ than leaders. Trade union leaders make a show of
fraternity. One asks, for information: Is coercion a sign of it any
more than a sign of liberty? Obedience to national law is one thing,
to class law is another. Having gone far, class leaders assume the
right to absorb capital, _i.e._, to hand it over to Labour. Were that
to arrive would the nation as a whole be in a better way? Surely the
same difficulty would occur which distresses advanced democrats.
Capital would be still a bugbear to extremists, but in the hands of a
class that has had no experience of its use, that has no traditions
of expenditure. In the period of exercise to gain some experience
capital would be wasted; it might be gambled away or spent in hours
of idle self-indulgence. Where, then, would Labour be? Doubtless
starving. Ignorant but ambitious leaders, to please their followers
whom they have coerced, would advocate a purely class and selfish
policy which might lead to civil war, of all wars the one which is
certainly soul-killing. When brothers fall out and set to kill each
other, where is Fraternity, where is the human family, private as
well as public, concentrated or extended? It is lost! A nation is but
a family on an enlarged scale.
In the concluding years of the 18th century France groaned under
civil war, and came very near ruin. What followed upon the French
Revolution? Autocratic government under Napoleon! It was the only
way out of a grievous mess of anarchy, rapine and chaos. Most of
the authors of the Revolution sooner or later suffered as they
had made others suffer, under the guillotine. The most prominent
agitators fell as victims to their cruelties and misdeeds. The people
sacrificed those who were once their adored leaders. They suffered
the death penalty from the very people that had inflamed the party of
disorder. Anarchy never succeeds. Its leaders always suffer in the
end, and by the hands of their dupes whom they pretended to benefit;
justice invariably follows injustice; that is a law as certain as
that to-morrow succeeds to-day.
§ 10
If the French Revolution does not teach us the inevitable punishment
for anarchy, Russia’s _débâcle_ surely should. Militarism has only
changed places there. Having been in the hands of one party, it is
now in another. Tyranny has changed places, that is all! Educated
men, that is to say, men who have studied cause and effect through
the teaching of past history, know that certain results follow
action. That is to say, situations change places. The student of
history, like a chess player, is aware that the move of a pawn may
be the turning-point in a game. Anarchy is a monster that breeds
quickly; her whelps carry the poison of rabies which, after
infecting a small circle, increases by leaps and bounds. When it
has become unmanageable, when men’s passions have led them out of
the bounds of reason, militarism must be resorted to. When reason
and peaceful persuasion cease to avail, powder and shot have to be
used, and sometimes unmercifully! Uneducated men are led by passion,
educated by reason. Are we sure that anarchy is not being bred here?
If so, has it shown itself? Trades unions were useful in times past,
they sought for justice, they achieved something, and up to a point
it was good. Like many movements beginning well and founded upon
justice, it has overstepped the mark. That which began justly is
ending unjustly. Peaceful order has grown to tyranny. Is it consonant
with the English character to be told how much or how little our
workman may labour? The workmen of England who have given themselves
over to the tyranny of trades unions are rendered slaves to them.
Leaders of trade unions encourage dishonesty, but that is not all,
they encourage a small output when a large one is an absolute
necessity if England is to retain her place as a leading country
in Europe. An “output” scrapped will mean treasure to Germany. If
English labour declines, German labour will gain ascendancy here;
that is certain. After the financial strain to which England has been
subjected by the war, increased production is imperative. Strikes
arrest production, and thus are harmful to the whole community. If
they are permitted _ad lib._, what will be the result? Each strike
costs millions to trade. What must the end be? Bankruptcy of the
nation! Who will suffer? Labour will suffer first, because if capital
is unobtainable labour cannot be paid for.
§ 11
If wages reach an extravagant sum, capital will not find the money
to pay them. Again, who then will suffer? Labour, of course. These
are truisms, but, being so, have they reached the ears and minds
of Labour? Trades union leaders keep from the sheep they drive the
knowledge of the butcher’s knife; they only tell their dupes what
they (ignorant of the first laws of political economy) wish to hear.
They flatter them with the hope that capital will finally be in their
hands, that they are to govern the country, which is only to move
while it drags the chariot of Labour. Our workmen are not prepared
to rule, they are not mentally equipped to do so; their outlook, at
present, is far too narrow. They see in government good only when it
legislates for the advantage of their class, forgetting that there
are other and equally important classes to be considered. And when
speaking of Labour there is only one which appears to dominate in
their minds, Industrialism as separate from Agriculture. The spread
of Industrialism has pushed Agriculture aside; it has done even more,
it has destroyed it in many parts of England. Agriculture must take
precedence of Industrialism if we are to live on our own produce.
The war ought to have taught us that, but has it? I have lived long
enough to have seen the agriculture of our dear country productive
and the people, relatively to now, content; when squalor was a far
rarer spectacle than now. In great cities, alas, it must always be,
for cities are artificial monstrosities where both wealth and poverty
thrive in extremes, where idlers congregate and vice expands. But in
country towns of reasonable dimensions and villages squalor had no
abiding place when agriculture was the employment of the majority
before the Juggernaut of Industrialism had begun its disastrous
progress. There was work for all on the land.
§ 12
I remember the arrival of a threshing machine into “the street” of
one of the most attractive villages in Kent, Otford. It was greeted
with stones; the people did not want the noisy, smoking monster
which was to take pleasant and healthy labour from so many. And
they were right! The flail no longer threshes, reapers no longer
reap, the sickle and scythe are rarely seen in the fields now, the
plough is rarely drawn by oxen and horses. Machinery does it all now,
and hundreds of thousands of agricultural labourers have had their
work grabbed from them. Who can wonder, then, that Agriculture is
understocked while Industrialism is overstocked? Hundreds of miles
of corn-growing land are in disuse, waste land, once glowing with
golden corn; a land of ashes and unproductive has taken its place.
Where orchards stretched for miles once, flowering and fruiting
abundantly, hideous factories have risen, belching out foul smoke
destructive to man, beasts and vegetation. Where once copses, even
small forests were, now a few skeletons, black and blasted, remind us
of the beauty that _was_ and the devastation that _is_. Rivers and
lakes which once sparkled with clean water under a bright sun, whose
pools were filled with salmon and trout, have become little better
than sewers. A greasy scum thickens the once glittering surface, and
not a fish can live in its natural element, and, moreover, the water
is poisoned, so we may not drink it. The spread of Industrialism
means the spread of poison--poisoned land, water, and air, which, if
not checked now, will cause serious deterioration of the health of
England. When England was mainly agricultural, rosy-cheeked maidens
and well-bronzed youths attested a healthy, vigorous life. Now,
under Industrialism, the girls and youths are pale, sad-looking, and
unhealthy. Why? Agricultural life is _natural_, industrial life is
_artificial_! Of what use is money to a nation deprived of vigour and
health? Rather is it an incubus than an incentive to real progress.
Ill-health means idleness, slackness and inefficiency. Nothing can
compensate for its departure.
But it is not the body only that suffers; it is the soul of the
nation that is in danger. Discontent is caused by mental distress,
unsatisfied and perfectly justified longings which are inherited
or spontaneous are blunted. Be the purse full of gold, be every
physical sense gratified thereby, the hunger of the soul for more
enlightenment, for more joy, for higher enterprise will continue, and
the whole being, even that part which is physical, will suffer. The
atmosphere of factory life is bleaching bodies and souls wherever it
is in the ascendant; the people become hollow-cheeked, their manners
surly, their wits atrophied. They are not _free_, they are slaves
to Plutus. So sensitive to environment is the mind of man, even at
the simplest and least initiated, that it grows in harmony with its
employment. In constant touch with machinery a man becomes like his
machine! Iron enters in his soul. He becomes a kind of bolt or screw,
a wedge or wheel. No wages, however high, can compensate for what
industrial life has robbed. The greater cities and towns hardly know
of the fields of Enna or the paradise that God made. They think, if
they think at all, that the filthy air they breathe, the hideous
smoke under whose canopy they exist but don’t live, is “alright,” and
that there is nothing else.