Lord de Jones put down the newspaper, and closed his eyes. After the
reading of a newspaper, particularly a Sunday newspaper, he generally
experienced an acute feeling of nausea, as though he had eaten a fruit
salad of the very worst kind. And indeed there was enough in it to-day
to disconcert a sensitive reader. There was the “Dog Election” in
England; the Fundamentalist-Evolutionist feud in America growing into
what looked very like a civil war; and a European embroglio likely to
develop into a new world war overnight. Yet in all three cases the
initial cause of contention had been so slight that but for the gravity
of the consequences he would have dismissed it all as unreal.
The “Dog Election” which had shaken the country in the second half of
April had its origin, he recalled, in Frank Dickin’s, on a previous
evening, as he was hurrying to keep an appointment with Lord Ottercove,
slipping on the pavement and, in his indignation, recommending to his
host the wholesale extermination of the breed of dogs. Lord Ottercove,
who had made a note of it at the time, caused it to be described in his
newspapers as a public nuisance which the government should put a speedy
end to, and when, a week later, a prominent member of Parliament slipped
and broke his leg, Lord Ottercove’s newspapers rose _en masse_ against
dogs. In a hundred years’ time, one of his papers affirmed, historians
would note with horror that in the first half of the twentieth century
dogs were allowed complete license of behaviour in the public
thoroughfares. An altogether unexpected outburst of support from
readers, thousands of whom had apparently been storing up for many years
a somewhat unmanly resentment against the dog race, emboldened Lord
Ottercove to push the matter to extremities. DOGS MUST GO--his posters
cried in unison. Now the Prime Minister, a man of inconspicuous
curiosity, and an overwhelming sense of right and wrong, read these
articles. A country squire, who had been persuaded to shoulder the
burden of government much against his inclination, he was a confirmed
dog lover. The thought of exterminating our dumb and loyal friends was
repugnant to him. But his conscience told him that pavements erected
with the taxpayers’ money were being abused by caninity; accidents were
accumulating, deaths might ensue any day. The dogs were in the wrong;
yes, the dogs must go. It was his duty to carry out the policy however
unpopular, if he thought it a matter of duty that the policy should be
carried out. And he was a man of duty. “Exterminate the dog breed!”
became the slogan and policy (though largely against the advice of the
older statesmen) of the Conservative Party. The Liberal Party, it would
seem, had only been waiting for that. Assisted and advised by Lord
Ottercove, they made “The Preservation and Protection of Our Friend the
Dog” the chief item of their party programme. “Joe,” (as he was called
by his intimates) the Liberal leader, temperamentally repelled by dogs,
had been photographed sitting in a basket chair, a grave-eyed poodle
with his front legs across the Liberal leader’s knees. “The heart of
England is sound,” they said, stealing the Tory touch, “so long as she
remains a dog-loving Nation.” And again: “Do away with the dogs: and the
country will assuredly go with them!”
“Where will it go?” from a heckler (put there by the Liberal candidate
himself).
“To the dogs, sir!” blandly and crushingly.
Loud laughter.
The Labour Party unfortunately split itself over the issue. The more
responsible section sympathised with the socialising efforts of the
Conservative Prime Minister; the other half resented the adoption on the
part of the reactionaries of what by the look and sound of it should
have been a Socialist programme, and they were helped by the lovers of
whippets and rabbit coursing and the gamblers who flocked to the dog
races. The controversy grew in passion; something not unlike a civil war
loomed behind this sinister antagonism; a St. Bartholomew Night
threatened from day to day, a pogrom with extensive dog massacres having
been organised by the more energetic Die-hard section of the Tory Party
who did not believe in half measures, distrusted the Prime Minister’s
tendency to conciliation and compromise and were anxious to check his
retreat and by forcing his hand oblige him to take a firm stand. Till
_The Nation_, commenting in a leading article upon the situation that
had arisen over the “Right of Dog” question, pointed out with
characteristic pertinence and good sense that in the heat of passion the
main issue had been overlooked, as usual, namely, whether there was not
a possibility of doing away with the indubitable nuisance caused by dogs
who are wrongly granted the freedom of the pavement, without necessarily
doing away with the dogs themselves. _The New Statesman_ and _The
Spectator_ raised the same question in their individual voice. But
nobody cared to listen to them. The Conservative Government resigned on
a vote of confidence, and in the General Election which ensued the
Liberals carried everything before them.
In America, Lord de Jones read, there was a growing feud between
Fundamentalists and Evolutionists. An Evolutionist had declared that he
was ready to appear at a Fundamentalist meeting and “dare” God to smite
him dead. An ardent Fundamentalist disciple, believing that he was
serving his cause, connected the steel platform on which the
Evolutionist was speaking by a wire with the main electric current of
the premises, thereby electrocuting the Evolutionist in the very act of
his challenge. Details, however, leaked out by and by, resulting in what
threatened to become a religious war between the two faiths hardly to be
paralleled since the Wars of the Crusades, if then. The Fundamentalist
declared at his trial that in so far as God Himself had put the idea
into his head, it was the hand of God that had struck down the
blasphemer; and in his summing-up the judge directed the jury to
determine just how far it was God and how far devilry. The jury were
reluctant to pass a verdict of “guilty” against so almighty a being, and
Counsel at a subsequent trial conceded so much to the scientific bias of
the day as to declare that the electrocution of the Evolutionist was in
the nature of a miracle intended to create and sustain faith, elevating
an otherwise unimportant mechanical trick into the realms of the
supernatural. The Fundamentalist was acquitted; and in the ensuing riots
directed by outraged Free Thinkers and Revolutionaries against the
headquarters of the Fundamentalists in Massachusetts, the responsible
leaders of the faith, though admitting the uncalled-for action and
excessive zeal of their feather-brained disciple who, while wishing to
assist their cause, had unwittingly damaged it, yet claimed that a
little trick like that could not implicate the essential wisdom of their
faith nor undermine the foundations of Fundamentalism.
All over the world, Lord de Jones knew, and particularly in England, the
struggle between capital and labour grew more bitter and, as time went
on, threatened to develop into a general revolution; to side-track which
the respective Governments agreed to have a war. A _casus belli_ was
looked for; and was found. A Russian Tsarist “Government” living in
exile in Paris had published its claims on Eastern Prussia which once
upon a time was Slav; inasmuch as Petrograd (though this they were
reluctant to admit) had once been Finnish soil, and was now being
claimed by a Fascist Government in Helsingfors whose motto was “A
Greater Finland!” Germany, while admitting the justice of the Finnish
claims, disputed those of Russia; and Russia, while disputing the
Finnish claim to Petrograd, insisted on its own to Eastern Prussia. The
new war was broadly (and amicably) conceived on these lines, and the
British Government, declaring that it could not countenance another war
in Europe, plunged into it--so as to stop it.
Lord Ottercove hailed the prospect of war (in lieu of revolution) with
mixed feelings of journalistic felicity and human discomfiture. As the
probability--and later the unavoidability--of war became more certain,
the humane resistance in him yielded to the _force majeure_ of patriotic
excitement, and he wrote himself the leading article, heading it: “The
Nation Demands--.” And the nation, reading it at breakfast next morning,
felt that, yes, it was in them to demand, and they demanded and would
not sheathe the sword until they had fought to utter exhaustion. And
young men from the public schools were already training in bayonet drill
on the lawns of Kensington Gardens under sergeants whose dictum, oft
repeated, was that the war was to be won by saluting by numbers. Grey
haired City men were forming fours everywhere, and, as a relaxation from
it, forming two deep. Once again there was “A Cause.”
When, to forget the war, Lord de Jones turned in to a music hall
matinée, a comedian was singing:
“_I joined the Army yesterday,_
_So the Army of to-day_
_’S all right;_
and a stoutish prima donna replied in mezzo soprano:
“_I didn’t like you, John,_
_Before you joined the Army, John;_
_I like you now_
_You’ve got your khaki on!_”
and displayed her fat legs in a whirl.