Margaret looked up from the novelette she was reading.
"Are the aristocracy really like what they are in this story?" she
asked.
"I don't know," I replied; "I'm not acquainted with the aristocracy, but
I should say that they aren't like the aristocracy in that yarn. You
see, Margaret, I happen to know some of the men who write these
novelettes. Murray is a don at them; he'll turn one out between
breakfast and dinner. To the best of my knowledge Murray has never dined
in any restaurant more expensive than an A.B.C. shop ... and his
characters always dine at the Ritz."
"But have you never met anybody with a title?"
"I once collided with a man at the British Museum door," I said. "He was
a Scot.... I know that because neither of us apologised; we merely
jerked out 'Oh!' I am almost sure that the man was Sir J. M. Barrie. And
I shook hands with two dukes and three lords at a university dinner, but
they possibly have forgotten the incident."
No. I don't know the aristocracy well.
I met a titled lady last summer. I was staying at a country house near
London, and this lady had the neighbouring house. She came over on the
Sunday afternoon. My host informed me that she had lost two sons in the
war. After she had gone I was asked what I thought of the English
aristocracy, and I gave my opinion in these words:--"To the English
aristocracy property alone is sacred. That woman has given the lives of
her two sons willingly for her country, but if she were asked to give
half an acre of her estate to help pay for the war she would go mad with
rage and disgust."
When I heard that lady grumble about the wickedness of the
munition-workers.... "And, my dear, women in shawls are buying pianos
and seal-skin jackets!" ... I realised how hopeless was the cry of _The
New Age_ for the Conscription of Wealth. The powerful classes will
resist Conscription of Wealth as strenuously as they resist the Germans.
Yet the Conscription of Men was in very many cases a Conscription of
Wealth. One had only to read the Tribunal cases to discover that
thousands of men had to deliver up all their wealth when they joined the
army. There was Wrangler the actor; his property was his talent to
portray character, and from that he drew his income. His property was
conscripted along with him. It was fitting that he should give up all
when the State required him to give it up. But the State requires all
the wealth of the moneyed classes, and because economic power controls
political power the State will not conscript the wealth of its real
governors.
I see now that our education is founded on the unpleasant fact that
property is more sacred than life. Teachers are encouraged to make their
pupils patriotic; every boy must be brought up in the belief that it is
great and glorious to die for one's country. A real patriotism would
lead a boy to realise that it is a great and glorious thing to live for
one's country; the true patriot would teach his lads to make their
country a great and glorious country to die for. Somehow our schools for
the most part ignore this branch of patriotism; it does not seem so
important as the flag-waving and standing to attention that passes for
patriotism.
Macdonald is decorating the walls of the school with coloured prints of
our warships. "To make them realise how much the navy means to them," he
explained to me as I looked at them.
"Excellent!" I said. "The navy deserves all the respect we can give it.
But, Macdonald, in your position I should give a further lesson on
patriotism; I should point out to these bairns that while the glorious
navy is defending our shores from a foreign enemy the enemy within is
plundering the nation. I should tell them that under the protection of
the navy the profiteers are raising the prices of necessaries hand over
fist. All the patriotic flag-waving in the world won't help these bairns
to understand that the patriotism of the masses is being exploited by
the self-seeking of the dirty few."
Patriotism! We have popular weeklies that endeavour to make the people
patriotic. They lash themselves into a fury over momentous questions:
The Ich Dien on the crest of the Prince of Wales Must Go; The Duke of
So-and-So must have his Garter taken from him; Who was the Spy who sent
Kitchener to his doom?
The only way to encourage children to be patriotic is to tell them the
sober truth about the important things of life. The invention of the
word "shirker" managed to effect that the most timid of men should fight
for his country; public opinion will always look after the patriotism
necessary for war. But my complaint is that public opinion will not look
after the patriotism necessary for peace. If we were all true patriots
there would be no slums, no exploitation, no profiteering. And the
"patriotic" lesson in school should deal with economics instead of jingo
ballads of victories won.
* * *
I cycled twelve miles to-night, and I raised a comfortable thirst. When
I came to the village I dropped into the Glamis Arms and had a bottle of
lager. As I came out I ran into Macdonald.
"Lucky fellow!" he laughed, "you have no position to maintain now and
you can afford to quench a thirst!"
"Position be blowed!" I said, "I drink when I'm dry, and I always did.
When I was dominie here I dropped in here more than once in the hot
weather."
"And they sacked you!"
"Not because of that," I said, "but in spite of it. Believe me it was
the one thing that made one or two villagers more amiable to me."
The Scot's attitude to the public-house is entertaining. If you have any
position to keep up you must not enter a public-house ... you must get
it in by the dozen. When I first went to London and entered a saloon bar
in the Strand I was amazed to find women sitting with their husbands; I
was also amazed to find no drunks about. In a Scots bar the most
apparent phenomenon is wrangling. I never heard an argument in a London
bar, and I have been in many: I never saw a drunk man in London, and I
was there for two years.
The public-house in Scotland is not respectable: in England it is. Why
this should be I can only guess. The Scot may be a bigger hypocrite than
the Englishman; what is more probable is that he may be a harder
drinker. In Scotland entering a public-house is synonymous with getting
drunk. Yet there are what you might call alcoholic gradations. A
respectable farmer may enter a bar without comment, but a teacher must
not enter it. He is the guide of the young, and he must be an example.
Teachers seldom enter village bars ... and yet Scotland is notorious for
drinking. If the teachers determined to become regular bar customers I
conclude that Scotland would drink herself off the face of the map.
I have a theory that the Calvinistic attitude to the public-house is the
chief cause of Scots drunkenness. When a Scot enters a bar he knows that
he won't have the courage to be seen coming out again ... and he very
naturally says to himself: "Ach, to hell! Aw'll hae another just to
fortify mysel' for gaein' oot!" The public-house isn't a public-house at
all; it is the most private of houses. Peter Soutar the leading elder in
the kirk here always carries a bundle of church magazines in his hand
when he enters the Glamis Arms; when the date is past magazine time he
enters by the back door. Jeemes Walker the leading Free Kirk elder goes
in to read the gospel to old Mrs. Melville the invalid mother of the
landlord, and the village is uncharitable enough to remark in his
hearing that he really goes to interview his brother "Johnny." I think
that it was the doctor who originated that joke.
A public-house is no place for a public man in Scotland.
* * *
The opening of the coal mines has brought to the neighbourhood a new
type of person. He is usually an engineer who has spent a good few years
abroad, and he is usually married ... very much married. His wife is
always a grade above the wife of the engineer next door, and the men
appear to spend most of their leisure time in mending quarrels that
their wives began. Most of the men are amiable fellows with the minimum
of ideas and the maximum of knowledge of fishing and card-playing. They
have a certain dignity, and they instantly freeze if you casually ask
where such-and-such a light railway is to run.
The wives seem to have no interest other than in servants and their
manifold wickedness and cussedness. They hold their noses high when they
pass through the village, and they bully the local shopkeepers.
When I was a dominie these women patronised me delightfully, but now
that I am a cattleman they are quite frank with me. I puzzled over this
for some time, and the solution came to me suddenly. They are all
English women, and in the English village the dominie is on very much
the same social level as the vicar's gardener.
Mrs. Martinlake likes to chat to me now. She is a middle-aged lady who
loves to reminisce about duchesses she has known. She once complained to
me because the boys did not touch their caps to her, and on my
suggesting that they hadn't been introduced she became very indignant.
She called to me this morning as she passed the field I was working in.
"Ah! Good morning! I've been looking for you for a long time. I wanted
to tell you how much the children have improved; every village boy
touches his cap to me now!" and she laughed gaily.
"Good!" I cried. "If this sort of thing goes on they will be touching
their caps to their mothers next."
"And why not?" she demanded with a slight touch of aggression.