Out of the serene stillness, and with the swiftness of the hurricane,
the storm came up. It was in June that there appeared the little cloud,
no bigger than a man's hand, when the heir to the Austrian throne was
murdered at Serajevo. There it hung on the horizon, and none heeded,
though in the womb of it lurked the seed of the most terrific tempest
of blood and fire that the world has ever known. Suddenly in the last
week of July that seed fructified, shooting out monstrous tendrils to
East and West. A Note was sent from Vienna to Servia making demands,
and insisting on terms that no State could possibly entertain, if it
was henceforth to consider itself a free country. Servia appealed
to Russia for protection, and Russia remonstrated with those who
had framed or (more accurately) those who had sent that Note. The
remonstrance fell on ears that had determined not to hear, and the
throttling pressure of the inflexible hands was not abated. London and
Paris appealed for a conference, for arbitration that might find a
peaceful solution, for already all Europe saw that here was a firebrand
that might set the world aflame. And then we began to see who it was
that had caused it to be lit and flung, and who it was that stood over
it now, forbidding any to quench it.
Out of the gathering darkness there arose, like some overtopping
genius, the figure of Germany, with face inexorable and flint-like,
ready at last for _Der Tag,_ for the dawning of which during the last
forty years she had been making ready, with patient, unremitting toil,
and hell in her heart. She was clad in the shining armour well known
in the flamboyant utterances of her megalomaniac Nero, and her hand
grasped the sword that she had already half-drawn from its scabbard.
She but waited, as a watcher through the night waits for the morn
that is imminent, for the event that her schemes had already made
inevitable, and on the first sign of the mobilization of the Russian
armies, demanded that that mobilization should cease. Long years she
had waited, weaving her dream of world-wide conquest; now she was
ready, and her edict went forth for the dawning of The Day, and, like
Satan creating the world afresh, she thundered out: "Let there be
night." Then she shut down her visor and unsheathed her sword.
She had chosen her moment well, and, ready for the hazard that should
make her mistress of the world, or cause her to cease from among
the nations, she paid no heed to Russia's invitation to a friendly
conference. She wished to confer with none, and she would be friendly
with none whom she had not first battered into submission, and ground
into serfdom with her iron heel. On both her frontiers she was
prepared; on the East her mobilization would be complete long before
the Russian troops could be brought up, and gathering certain of her
legions on that front, she pulled France into the conflict. For on
the Western front she was ready, too; on the word she could discharge
her troops in one bull-like rush through Belgium, and, holding the
shattered and dispersed armies of France in check, turn to Russia
again. Given that she had but those two foes to deal with, it seemed to
her that in a few weeks she must be mistress of Europe, and prepared
at high noon of _Der Tag_ to attack the only country that really stood
between her and world-wide dominion. She was not seeking a quarrel with
England just yet, and she had strong hopes that, distracted by the
imminence of civil war in Ireland, we should be unable to come to the
help of our Allies until our Allies were past all help. Here she was
staking on an uncertainty, for though she had copious information from
her army of spies, who in embassy and consulate and city office had
eaten the bread of England, and grasped every day the hands of English
citizens, it could not be regarded as an absolute certainty that
England would stand aside. But she had strong reasons to hope that she
would.
It was on the first day of this month that Germany shut her visor down
and declared war on Russia. Automatically, this would spread the flame
of war over France, and next day it was known that Germany had asked
leave to march her armies through Belgium, making it quite clear that
whatever answer was given her, she would not hesitate to do it. Belgium
refused permission, and appealed to England. On Monday, August 3rd,
Germany was at war with France, and began to move her armies up to and
across the Belgian frontier, violating the territory she had sworn to
respect, and strewing the fragments of her torn-up honour behind her.
Necessity, she averred, knew no law, and since it was vital for the
success of her dream of world-conquest that her battalions should pass
through Belgium, every other consideration ceased to exist for her.
National honour, the claim, the certificate of a country's right to be
reckoned among the civilizing powers of the world, must be sacrificed.
She burned in the flame of the war she had kindled the patent of her
rights to rank among civilized states.
It was exactly this, which meant nothing to her, that meant everything
to us, and it upset the calculation on which Germany had based her
action, namely, that England was too much distracted by internal
conflict to interfere. There was a large party, represented in the
Government, which held that the quarrel of Germany with France and
Russia was none of our business, and that we were within our rights
to stand aside. All that Monday the country waited to know what the
decision of the Cabinet and of the House would be.
The suspense of those hours can never be pictured. It belongs to the
nightmare side of life, where the very essence of the threatening
horror lies in the fact that it is indefinite. But this I know, that
to thousands of others, even as to myself, England, from being a vague
idea in the background which we took for granted and did not trouble
about, leaped into being as a mother, or a beloved personage, of whose
flesh and bone we were, out of whose womb we had sprung. All my life,
I am willing to confess I had not given her a thought, I had not even
consciously conceived of her as a reality; she had been to me but like
the heroine of some unreal sentimental tale, a thing to blush at if she
was publicly spoken of. But on those days she, who had hitherto meant
nothing to me, sprang to life, deep-bosomed, with patient hands and
tender eyes, in which was no shadow of reproach for all those years of
careless contempt. And by the curious irony of things, on the day that
she was revealed to me, she stood in a place, from which, if she chose,
she could withdraw herself into isolation, and from which, if she
chose, she could step forth to meet the deadliest peril that had ever
assailed her. But even in the moment of the first knowledge and love
of her that had ever entered my soul, I prayed in a silent agony of
anxiety that she should leave her sheltered isle for the unimaginable
danger of the tempest that raged beyond the sea that was hers. For,
indeed, if she did not, she was but a phantom of the pit; no mother of
mine, but some unspeakable puppet, a thing to be hidden away in her
shame and nakedness.
It was known that night that England would not tolerate the violation
of Belgian soil, and had sent an ultimatum to Germany which would
expire in twenty-four hours. And from the whole country there went up
one intense sigh of relief that we were resolved to embark on what
must be the most prodigious war that the world had ever seen. "Give War
in our time, O Lord!" was the prayer of all who most truly knew that
the only peace possible to us was a peace which would stamp the name
of England with indelible infamy. And God heard their prayer, and on
Wednesday we woke to a world where all was changed. The light-hearted,
luxurious, unreflective days were gone, never probably in our time to
return. Already the tempest of fire and blood was loosened in Europe; a
line was drawn across the lives of everyone, and for the future there
were but two periods in one's consciousness, the time before the war,
and war-time.
It was during this week that I had a long letter from Francis written
before the English ultimatum was known, but delayed in posts that
were already scrutinized and censored. Though I had no friend in the
world so intimate as he, his letter revealed him now as a person
strangely remote, speaking an unintelligible language. So little a
while ago I had spoken the same tongue as he; now all he said seemed
to be gibberish, though his sentiments were just such as I might have
expressed myself, if, since then, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday
had not been among the days of my life.
"Things look black," he said, "and the papers, for once
reflecting the mind of the people, are asking what Italy
will do, if Germany and Austria go to war with France
and Russia. I believe (and, remember, I speak entirely
from the Italian point of view, for verily I have long
ceased to be English) that it is frankly impossible that
we should range ourselves side by side with Austria, our
hereditary foe. It seems one of the things that can't
happen; no ministry could remain in office that proposed
that. And yet we are the ally of Austria and Germany,
unless it is true, as the _Corriere_ tells us, that the
terms of our alliance only bind us to them in the event
of aggression on the part of two nations of the Triple
Entente. Be that as it may, I don't believe we can come
in with Austria.
"I am extremely glad of it, for I am one of those
queer creatures who do not believe that a quarrel
between two countries can be justly settled by making
a quantity of harmless young men on both sides shoot
each other. I don't see that such a method of settling
a dispute proves anything beyond showing which side
has the better rifles, and has been better trained,
unless you deliberately adopt the rule of life that
'Might is Right.' If you do let us be consistent, and
I will waylay Caterina as she goes home with the money
Seraphina has given her for the washing, rob, and, if
necessary, murder her. If she proves to be stronger than
me, she will scratch my face and bring her money safely
home. And her father will try to shoot me next day, and
I will try to shoot him. That's the logical outcome of
Might is Right.
"I am glad, too, of this, that I myself am a
denationalized individual, and if I have a motherland
at all, it is this beloved stepmother-land, who for so
long has treated me as one of her children. Damnable as
I think war is, I think I could fight for her, if anyone
slapped her beautiful face. And yet how could I fight
against the country to whom we owe not only so much of
the art and science, but of Thought itself? Germany
taught mankind how to think.
"Let me know how things go in England. It looks as if
you could keep out of this hurly-burly. So if Italy
does too, I hope to see you here again in September.
Seraphina suggests that Italy should make pretence of
being friends with the '_bestia fedente,_' by which she
means the Austrians, and that when they are fighting the
Russians, she should run swiftly from them and seize the
Trentino again. There seems much good sense in this, for
'the Trentino is ours, and it is right and proper to
take what belongs to us.'
"England must be peculiarly beastly with all these
disturbances going on. Why don't you pack up your
tooth-brush and your comb and come back again at once?
The _Palazzo a mare_ is better than Piccadilly, and the
purple figs are ripe, and the cones are dropping from
the stone-pine, and never were there such fat kernels
for Seraphina to fry in oil. Perhaps if you come back
the _strega_ would continue walking; she seems to have
had no exercise since you were here. Your room is empty,
and the door makes sorrowful faces at me as I go along
the passage. It frowns at me, and says it isn't I it
wants. And I share the silent verdict of your door.
"I don't see what quarrel England can have with Germany,
and it is unthinkable that Italy should go in with the
Central Powers against the Triple Entente. Besides,
how is England to fight Germany? It is the elephant
and the whale. England hasn't got an army, has it? I
can't remember anything connected with soldiers in
England, except some sort of barracks with a small
temple or chapel in front of it somewhere in St. James's
Park. And I suppose the German fleet is only a sort of
herring-boat compared to a liner, if it comes to ships.
So really I don't see how the two countries could fight
each other even if they wanted to.
"Even if you don't come now, you'll be certain to be
back in September, won't you? Otherwise I shall think
that there is some validity in presentiments, for you
went away with a notion that it was not only for a
month or two that you went. Better put an end to vain
superstition by coming back before.
"Ever yours,
"Francis."
"P.S.--Send a wire if you are coming. They say the posts
are disorganized.
"Donna Margherita has had words with Miss Machonochie's
cook. I'm sure I don't want any harm to come to Miss
Machonochie or her household, but I think there must
already be a leak in her cistern. That would be a good
day's work for Donna Margherita, wouldn't it? Otherwise,
when we all have plenty of water, why should Miss M.
alone be wanting it?"
Reading this, I felt for a moment here and there that the events of
this last week must have been a dream, so vividly did the island and
the island life etch themselves on a page. For a half second I could
smell the frying of the pine-kernels, could hear Pasqualino's quick
step across the passage, as he entered from his Brangäene duty on the
balcony to tell us that Miss Machonochie's foot was coming firmly up
the steps. But the next moment the huge background of war was set up
again, and all these things were strangely remote and dim. They had
happened, perhaps, at least I seemed to remember them, but they no
longer had any touch of reality about them, were of the quality of
dreams.... The same unreality possessed Francis's suave surmises about
the improbability of England's going to war with Germany, for the only
thing that was actual was that she had done so. And not less unreal
was the fact of Francis himself living the life that he and I also had
lived before this cataclysm came. All that belonged to some prehistoric
period which ceased something less than a week ago. Less than a week
ago, too, I had been baptized and become a member of England, and
already, so swiftly does the soul no less than the body adjust itself
to changed conditions, the sense of having ever been otherwise, had
vanished as completely as the aching of a tooth after the offender has
been dealt with, and you can no longer imagine the pain it gave you.
But the letter was a difficult one to answer; I could not convey to
him what had happened to me, any more than in this letter he could,
except for a transient second, convey to me a realization of what
had not happened to him. I began a dozen times: "I have just been to
Trafalgar Square, and cannot picture to you the thrill that 'Rule,
Britannia'"----Clearly that would not do. I tried again with a jest
to hide the seriousness of it: "What do they know of England who
only Italy know?" I tried yet again: "Since seeing you something has
happened that makes----"
And at that moment the cry of a newsvendor in the street made me
rush out for the sixth time that afternoon to see what the latest
information was. Liège still held out, it seemed, though it was
rumoured that certain of its forts had fallen. But still the most
gallant of the little States held up the Titanic invasion that was
pouring down upon it, maintaining in the face of terrific pressure its
protest and its resistance to the onrush of that infamous sea, in the
depths of which German honour already lay drowned. How could any man
fail to know what the sense of the native land, of patriotism meant,
when he saw what a supreme meaning it actually did have? It is the
fashion of cynics to say that mankind will suffer and deny themselves
for the sake of some definite concrete thing, like money or a jewel
or a picture, but never for an idea. Here was an instance that blew
such cynicism to atoms. Already the soil of Belgium, its cities and its
plains were lost, and its people knew it But they fought, beaten and
indomitable, just because it was an idea that inspired them--namely,
the freedom of those who were already conquered (for none could doubt
the outcome), the independence of the country which must soon for
certain lay beneath the heel of Prussian murderers, who slew their
children and violated their women, and could no more touch the spirit
of the people than they could quench the light of the moon. Normally,
perhaps, we more often feel the pull and the press of material things;
but when there is heard in a man's soul the still small voice, which
is greater than fire or earthquake, his true being wakes, and at the
spiritual call, whether of religion or love or patriotism, he answers
to an idea that far transcends all the beckonings of material sense.
It is then that those we thought smug and comfort-smothered, bound in
the bonds of peaceful prosperity, break from their earth-bound fetters
and their sleep at the voice of the God which is immanent in them.
There is no material profit to gain, but all to lose, and eagerly, like
ballast that keeps them down, they cast everything else overboard, and
sweep soaring into the untarnishable sunlight of their real being. For
it is not only the stocks and stones of his native land that a man
loves, any more than it is just the eyebrows and the throat of his
mistress that he worships. He loves them because they are symbols and
expression of her who inhabits them. They are the bodily tokens of the
beloved spirit that dwells there. Under that inspiration the dumb lips
prophecy, as the coal from the altar is laid on them, and their land
becomes a temple filled, even in the darkness of their affliction, with
the glory of the Lord. The terror by night and the arrow that flieth by
day have no power to daunt them, for high above earthly things is set
their house of defence.
There rose then from this quiet little land, sure and untroubled as
the rising of the moon, a race of heroes. From further east, across
the Rhine, there was another rising, the monstrous birth of a presence
and a portent undreamed of. It towered into the sky, and soon at its
breath the forts of Liège and of Namur crumbled and fell, and it
passed on phallic and murderous over the corpses of slain children and
violated mothers. Those who thought they knew Germany could not at
first believe that this was the spirit and these the infamies of the
land they loved. She who had stood for so much to them, she the mother
of music, the cradle of sciences, the lover of all that was lovely, was
changed as by the waving of a magician's rod into a monster of hell,
oozing with the slime of the nethermost pit. Many could not credit the
tales that flooded the press, and put them down to mere sensational
news-mongering. But they were true, though they were not the whole
truth; the half of it had not been told us. The race of musicians,
scientists, artists, of chivalrous knights, still took as their motto:
"The women and children first." But they played upon the words, and
smiled to each other at the pun. Pleading the necessity that knows no
law, they had torn up their treaty, avowing that it was but a scrap of
paper, and dishonouring for ever the value of their word, now, like
some maniac, they mutilated the law they had murdered. It may be that
Germany was but the first victim of Prussian militarism, and Belgium
the second; but Germany had sold its soul, and it kept its bargain with
the power that had bought it.
While still Francis's letter remained unanswered on my desk, I received
another from him, written several days later, which had made a quicker
transit.
"This is all damnable," he said. "Of course we had to
come in when Belgium was invaded. I skulked all day
in the house while it was yet uncertain, for I simply
dared not show an English face in the streets for shame.
Thank God that's all right. I never thought I could
have cared so much. They sang 'Rule, Britannia,' in the
Piazza to-day, wonderfully vague and sketchy. You know
what my singing is, but I tell you I joined. It was a
strange thing to hear that tune in a country which was
supposed to be allied with the nation on whom England
has declared war, but there it was. They say that Italy
has declared neutrality. You'll know by the time you get
this whether that is so. By the way, if it is true that
we are sending an Expeditionary Force to France, just
send me a wire, will you? The papers are full of news
one day which is contradicted the next, and one doesn't
know what to believe about England's attitude and doings.
"There's no news on this dead-alive island. I feel
frightfully cut off, and it's odd to feel cut off in the
place where you've lived for so long. I began an article
on the early French mystics last week, but I can't get
on with it. Mind you send me a telegram.
"Francis."
I sent the telegram saying that an Expeditionary Force to help the
French to hold their frontier had already landed in France, and more
men were being sent. Next morning I received a brief telegram in answer:
"Am starting for England to-day."
Liège fell, Namur fell, and like a torrent that has gathered strength
and volume from being momentarily damned up, the stream of the invaders
roared through France, and on her as well as on England descended
the perils of their darkest and most hazardous hour. Sheer weight
of metal drove the line of the Allies back and back, wavering and
dinted but never broken. In England, but for the hysterical screams
of a few journalists who spoke of the "scattered units" of a routed
army making their way back singly or in small companies, the temper
of the nation remained steadfast and unshaken, and in France, though
daily the thunder of the invaders boomed ever nearer to Paris, nothing
had power to shake the inflexible will of our ally. It mattered not
that the seat of the Government must be transferred to Bordeaux, and
thither they went; but the heart of France beat on without a tremor,
waiting for the day which none doubted would come, when they turned
and faced the advancing tide, breasted it, and set up the breakwater
that stretched from the North Sea to the borders of Switzerland.
Right across France was it established, through ruined homesteads and
devastated valleys, and against it in vain did the steel billows beat.
Here I have a little anticipated events, for it was in the days while
still the Germans swept unchecked across north-eastern France that
Francis arrived, after a devious and difficult journey, that brought
him on shipboard at Havre. He had no psychological account to give of
the change that had occurred between his first letter and his telegram;
he had simply been unable to do anything else than come.
"I know you like analysis," he said, "but really there is no analysis
to give you. I was, so I found myself, suddenly sick with anxiety that
England should come into the war (I think I wrote you that), and when
your telegram came, saying we were sending a force abroad, I merely had
to come home and see if there was anything for me to do. One has got
to do something, you know, got to do something! Fancy my having been
English all these years, and it's only coming out now, like getting
measles when you're grown up."
There was no need then to explain, and Francis, in his philosophical
manner, tried to define what it was that had so moved him, and found,
as so often happens when we attempt to fit words to a force that is
completely unmaterial, that he could at first only mention a quantity
of things that it was not. It was not that he felt the smallest
affection for London, or Lincoln, or Leeds; he did not like Piccadilly
any more than he had done before, or the mud, or the veiled atmosphere.
Nor did he regard any of the inhabitants of our island with a greater
warmth than previously. Besides myself, he had after his long absence
abroad no one whom he could call a friend, and of the rest, the porter
who had carried his luggage to the train at Southampton had not thanked
him for a reasonable tip; the guard had been uncivil; the motor driver
who brought him to my house was merely a fool. Indeed, whatever
component part of the entity that made up England he considered, he
found he disliked it, and yet the thought of all those disagreeable
things as a whole had been enough to make him leave the siren isle,
and come post-haste across the continent to get to that surly northern
town, in which he had not set foot for a dozen years. And, being here,
he did not regret, as an impulsive and ill-considered step, his exile
from Alatri. There was no fault to be found with that; it had been
as imperative as the physical needs of thirst and hunger. He got up,
gesticulating, in Italian fashion.
"Where does it come from?" he said. "What is it that called me? Is it
something from without? Is it a mixture, a chemical soul-mixture of the
grumpy porter and the grey sea, and this dismal, half-lit afternoon
that is considered a lovely day in London? Or is it from within, some
instinct bred from fifty generations of English blood, that just sat
quiet in me and only waited till it was wanted? I hate doing things
without knowing the reason why I do them. I always said 'Why?' when I
was a child, and I only don't say 'Why?' now, because if I want to know
something, I sit and think about it instead of asking other people. But
all the way here I've been considering it, and I can't see why I had to
come back. I don't think it's only something internal. There's a magnet
outside that suddenly turned its poles to us, and instantly we jumped
to it like iron filings and stuck there. There's no shirking it. There
I was in Italy, saying to myself that I wasn't an iron filing, and
should stop exactly where I was. But the magnet didn't care. It just
turned towards me, and I jumped. It will keep me attached, I suppose,
as long as there's any use for me."
He was feeling his way gropingly but unerringly down into himself,
and I listened as this, the simplest of men, but that deft surgeon of
minds, cut and dissected down into his own.
"The magnet, the magnet!" he said. "I think that the magnet is
something that lies behind mere patriotism. Patriotism perhaps is the
steel of which it is made; it is the material through which the force
is sent, the channel of its outpouring, but ... but it isn't only to
put myself at the disposal of England in my infinitesimal manner that I
have come back. England is the steel of the magnet--yes, just that; but
England isn't the force that magnetizes it."
He dropped down on the hearth-rug, and lay there with the back of his
hands over his eyes, as he so often lay on the beach at the _Palazzo a
mare._
"I haven't wasted all those years at Alatri," he said, "when I was
gardening and mooning about and looking at the sea. I have come to
realize what I remember saying to you once, when I picked up a bit
of green stone on the beach, that it was you or me and God. To do
that I had got to get out of myself.... We collect a hard shell round
ourselves like mussels or oysters, and we speak of it as 'ours.' It's
just that which we are bound to get rid of, if we are to see things
in any way truly. We talk of 'having' things; that's the illusion we
suffer from. We can't enter into our real kingdom till we quite get rid
of the sense that anything is ours, thus abdicating from the kingdom we
falsely believed to be our own. That's the glorious and perfect paradox
of mysticism. We have everything the moment we get rid of ourselves,
and the sense that we have anything. You can express it in a hundred
ways: the lover expresses it when he says: 'Oh, my beloved, I am you!'
Christ expresses it when He says: 'What shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?' As long as you cling to
anything, you can't get at your soul, in which is God.
"Patriotism, standing by the honour of your country when your country
is staking itself on a principle, seems to me a materialization of this
force, the steel through which it can act. Well, when you believe in
a principle, as I do, you've got to live up to your belief in it, and
suffer any amount of personal inconvenience. You mustn't heed that, or
else you are not getting outside yourself. So if England wants a limb
or an eye, or anything else, why, it's hers, not mine."
He was silent a moment.
"And perhaps there's another thing, another drama, another war going
on," he said. "Do you remember some fable in Plato, where Socrates
says that all that happens here upon earth is but a reflection, an
adumbration of the Real? Is it possible, do you think, that in the
sphere of the eternal some great conflict is waging, and Michael and
his angels are fighting against the dragon? Plato is so often right,
you know. He says that is why beauty affects the soul, because the soul
is reminded of the true beauty, which it saw once, and will see again.
Why else should we love beauty, you know?"
He got up with a laugh.
"But it's puzzling work is talking, as Mr. Tulliver said. However,
there's my guess at the answer of the riddle, as to why I came home.
And it really is such a relief to me to find that I didn't cling to
what I had. I was always afraid that I might, when it came to the
point. But it wasn't the slightest effort to give it up, all that
secure quiet life; the effort would have been not to give it up. I
don't in the least want to be shot, or taken prisoner, or brutally
maimed, but if any of those things are going to happen to me, I shan't
quarrel with them."
"And when the war is over?" I asked.
"Why, naturally, I shall go back to Alatri by the earliest possible
train and continue thinking. That's what I'm alive for, except when
it's necessary to act my creed, instead of spelling out more of it. I
say, may we have dinner before long? This beastly bracing English air
makes me very hungry."
Francis refused all thought of getting a commission, since it seemed
to him that this was not doing the thing properly, and enlisted next
day as a private. For myself, since circumstances over which I had no
control prevented my doing anything of the sort, I found work connected
with the war which to some extent was a palliative of the sense of
uselessness. It was quite dull, very regular, and entailed writing an
immense quantity of letters.
* * * * *
And at this point I propose to pass over a whole year in which the grim
relentless business went on. Like wrestlers, the opposing armies on the
Western Front were locked in a deadly grip, each unable to advance,
each refusing to give ground. On the east Russia advanced and was
swept back again; in the Balkans, owing to our inept diplomacy Turkey
and Bulgaria joined the enemy. During the spring Italy abandoned
her neutrality and joined the Allies. Expeditions were sent out to
Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles. For a year the war flamed, and the
smoke of its burning overshadowed the earth.