THE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES
The deadliest foe of humanity is the deadening power of custom. What
we have seen from our earliest days has no power to stir our conscience
or kindle the fire of indignation. It may be the case that when Lot
went down to Sodom he was at first 'vexed with the filthy conversation
of the wicked.' But he did not continue vexed very long. He got to
like it. At last he sat at the gates of that city with great
enjoyment. As he sank into the mire he became unconscious of the
slough. Otherwise he would never have returned to it. When the great
war of the five kings against four reached its consummation, and Lot
was a prisoner going north with a halter round his neck, he often
groaned, 'If I ever get out of this I'll never look near that filthy
Sodom again.' Like a bolt from the blue came deliverance and victory
and spoils--and back he went to Sodom and its filthy conversations as
before. It is such a wonderfully modern story. In every age men get
so accustomed to the filth that it no longer seems filth. The mud of
their daily habit becomes their gold.
I
When we look back on the long road by which humanity has travelled and
read of the things men once did in cold blood, we wonder how they could
ever have had the heart to do them. The answer is--custom. To us it
is incredible that men should once have trafficked in human flesh and
blood. And yet to our forefathers of even recent years it seemed the
most natural thing. Were there not slaves from the beginning, and
naturally there would be unto the end! The captains of the slave ships
would assemble their crews in their cabins for prayer meetings while
the holds of their ships were filled with men and women dying in these
gehennas! So far from experiencing any twinges of conscience, these
slave captains regarded themselves as benefactors of humanity. Sir
John Hawkins was not alone in priding himself on the fact that he
brought so many of the heathen of Africa into Christian lands, where
they might hear the Gospel. It is not so long ago when children of six
years worked in factories from five in the morning to nine at night.
We who play with our babes and build our brick castles in Spain while
they shout for joy--think of it! What hearts they must have had--these
fathers of ours--who took the babes by their thousands and harnessed
them to the car of their juggernaut! And yet they were not any
different from us. They were only blinded by custom.... Whoever has
wandered over the hills of his native land will remember the leap of
the heart when he has suddenly seen some fair valley open up before his
amazed eyes. He can hear the song of the river that waters it, he sees
the clouds playing on the slopes, his awestruck lips murmur with the
great artist as he looked on Glen Feshie, 'Lord God Almighty!' But no
human dwelling is there, only heaps of stones where the homesteads once
stood; only the bleating of sheep where children once shouted at play.
What became of the people? They were driven out. The will of one man
or one woman drove the population of a parish into the Cowcaddens of
Glasgow or exiled them beyond the seas. And the Church of Christ
looked on silent. And the men who made the countryside waste prided
themselves on the fact that they set the people, whom they drove forth,
on the way of fortune! How could men do deeds like these? How could
the Church be silent in the face of them? Again it was just custom.
The ears had got so accustomed to phrases such as the 'sacredness of
property,' the 'right of a man to do what he liked with his own,' that
the heart forgot the sacredness of the Gospel and the rights of the
people in the land of their birth. It is time we stopped mouthing
about the cannon-fodder of war, and began to speak about the
cannon-fodder of custom.
II
If poor, blundering, pitiful humanity had not been blinded by custom to
the folly of war, it would have made an end of war long ago. But all
the days of youth humanity has shut into dreary barracks, learning all
sorts of foolish things. And the history it learns is just the history
of war after war! At fourteen the centuries seem to a boy but a river
of blood. He deems it an inevitable weapon in the progress of the
world--this ceaseless killing! It is custom alone that prevents
humanity from making an end of that horror. And strikes are only war
in another form--the bludgeon of force! Kaiserism is not dead. World
dominion for me or destruction for you has its counterpart in two
shillings for me or ruin for you. The spirit is the same. If custom
had not deadened us to the meaning of war and strike, we would shrink
back in horror at the very sound of the words. But, instead of that,
ere humanity has recovered from the woe of the one, we are plunged into
the woes of the other.... It sounds a respectable sort of word! And
the right of a man to stop working seems elementary--for we are not
slaves. But humanity has learned there is a higher word than
rights--and that is duty. We owe service to our brethren. We can pay
too high a price for two shillings more a day if they mean starving
women and perishing children. Life is more than livelihood; and if the
endeavour to better livelihood means the destruction of life, then it
is condemned. And that is what it means. Europe is perishing. Vienna
is dying. All over the world Rachel is weeping for her children. What
Europe needs is coal and raw materials, that it may have wherewith to
buy food. And we go on strike. And ships can no longer carry food or
cotton; and Europe will starve ... starving is a good discipline and I
shouldn't mind ... but, God! the little children ... the babies....
'Strike,' we shout, finding it easy through long custom. But our
striking is only completing the work that Kaiserism began. And the
little graves are dug faster and faster; and you can hear the falling
of tears like soft rain.... What savages we are, unable through any
disciple to learn that the world can only be saved by submitting to law
and by ceasing to wield the bludgeon of force.... When one thinks of
the poor suffering, quarrelling, dying slaves of custom; when one sees
the world in one blinding flash convulsed in the death throes--Oh, God!
if only there came a gale from Heaven--a sudden, rushing wind. Only
that could save a world blinded like this.
III
You may imagine that I am exaggerating the power of this tyrant of
whose despotism you are unconscious. But you have only to think and
you will at once recognise that my words are but the words of
soberness. Use your eyes as if for the first time--and what a world
this is that surrounds us! I read the other day a paragraph in the
morning paper that made my blood cold. A discharged soldier got his
gratuity and spent his day in jollity. He came home at night and, in
the presence of his children, trampled his wife to death, and not his
wife only, but the unborn child--and in the presence of his children.
That, in the most cultured city in Bible-loving and Christian Scotland.
And every day the tale is much the same. Little children are
perishing, mothers are broken-hearted, and the streets are strewn with
human wreckage. The casualties of war pale in significance before the
casualties of peace! But this does not move us: we are accustomed to
it. These crowded, reeking public-houses, thirty to the half-mile,
battening on the misery of the poor--we have seen them from our youth
and they move us not. How many in our Circuses and Terraces and Places
will even trouble themselves to so much as vote for the deliverance of
their fellow-citizens? Very few in these particular places, if I
mistake not. For they cannot shake themselves loose from the yoke of
custom.
IV
And this same tyrant blinds us to the goal to which we are hastening.
The last great proof of the power of custom is that when nations and
empires were perishing they never knew they were perishing. Men were
so accustomed to the riches and greatness and security of the Roman
empire, that even when it was tottering to its fall they never realised
that it was doomed. All nations have gone the one road. They have
abolished God or the gods! They have cast duty to the winds; they have
given themselves to Mammon and to pleasure; and they perished--but they
never knew that the world that seemed to them so secure was passing
away. And unless there comes a change--a mighty gale from Heaven--then
this world we know must perish. Custom alone blinds us to the fact,
plain to the open eye. Scotland cannot feed her people but for a few
weeks in the year. For the rest they must be fed by the food brought
from overseas by the fruits of our industries. If these industries
fail ... we perish. The Clyde will no longer hum with the throbbing
engines or great ships come with food.... And every strike, every
stoppage of labour, is but a step towards the abyss.... But probably
that is what God means. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him--He
will use hunger as the instrument wherewith to scatter the great
Scottish race broadcast over the world, to people the mighty plains of
Canada and the wastes of Australasia. A great silence will fall over
the plain of central Scotland. The most hideous of all the workings of
man will be beautified when the lichen grows over the crumbling ruins.
The mavis will sing in the thorn-tree, dewy with fragrance, where
Motherwell now stands ... or Anderston. That may be the hidden purpose
of our follies and our crimes. This, at least, is sure, that if we
cannot shake ourselves loose from the grip of custom--custom will be
our destruction.