LONDON,
December 31st, 2000.
This is the story of the World-Storm. Leaders in every field of
thought have described the events of the year 1980, but we who have
come aged and shaken out of that chaos, know well that the half was
not told.
The World-Storm was a human affair, and human events are ever based
on love. For the love of woman a man gives all the labour of his
life, or in the loss or lack of love will cast his life away. For
the love of women men have built cities, or burned them, won thrones
or lost them, have staked things present and the things to come.
This is the story, then, of a man's love for a woman. And if the
life of a man is a love tale, so is the life of a nation, which ends
when the people cease to love their country. And so is the life of
mankind, which will end when the love of God dies out from the human
heart. Life is a plant which has its roots in love.
Reading over many histories of the World-Storm, by divines, by
students, and admirals of the air, the whole of which have failed to
reach down to the truth: I think that these eminent exact thinkers
were mostly dry at the roots. Only a lover can write history.
We set sweet Margaret on the Imperial Throne, we prayed for her, and
all the millions of our prayers like subtle spirits wrought upon her
soul creating her a queen. We looked again, and behold she was
august, inspired, beautiful, terrible--England! Who but a lover
could write of such a queen? To me, a plain man who has loved, it is
given that I should tell of that transfiguration, and how the lovely
child, translated by our prayers moved through the darkness.
Looking back upon those days when frightened and starving, we saw the
old order changed, and the Millennium born, I see the persons of the
drama, vague, gigantic, fighting in a region of mist and flame to one
great end of Peace. Yet I knew all the time that they were human, a
woman, and certain men who loved and sinned, who fought and suffered.
The evil was burned out of us, the good survives; the scorched and
shaken earth is purified.
The Greeks, who were very wise, invented that old myth of Phaeton who
dared to drive the chariot of the Sun, but lost his head, and failed,
and burned the world.
There is to be no more war, so I doubt if there will be any more
progress. Take this heresy if you will, as the maunderings of an old
fighter; but have not the ages of suffering been ever the ages of
growth? Strength is the child of pain, and in her agony the world
gave birth to saints and heroes. The millennial peace will never
know the like. Never again will there be such a woman as our Lady
the Queen, such men as John Brand, or Lord Sydney. Their age is
memorable, their race illustrious, and for my part, I do not greatly
care to live on after them. My work is done, and sitting at my
window as I write these last words of my prologue, I see with dim
eyes the roofs of London reaching away into the night, the moonlight
faint upon her hanging gardens, her palaces and towers, her spires
and soaring domes. The bells have been tolling the hours of the
dying twentieth century, but now they have broken into one great peal
of triumph, they are ringing in the Millennium. "Lord, now lettest
thou thy servant depart in peace; For mine eyes have seen Thy
Salvation."