ambitions, but when the attainment is _just in sight_. Every man and
woman must have something to live for, otherwise they become discontented
or dull. People wonder at the present unrest among the working classes.
But to me this unrest is inevitable to the conditions in which they live.
They have no ideal to light up their drudgery with glory. They cannot
express themselves in the dull labour which is their daily task. They
just have to go on and on doing the same monotonous jobs, not in order to
enjoy life, but just in order to live at all. Their "rut" is well-nigh
unendurable. Of what good, for example, is education, an appreciation of
art and beauty, any of those things, in fact, which are the only things
which make life splendid and worth living, if all one is asked to do, day
in, day out, is to clean some lift in the morning and pull it up and down
all the rest of the day! To me the wonder of the working classes is, not
that they are restless, but that they are not all _mad_! Were they doing
their tasks for themselves, I can imagine even the dullest work might
become interesting, because it would lead, if well done, to development
and self-expression. But to do these mechanical labours solely and
entirely for other people, and to know that you must keep on doing them
or starve, well, it seems to me a man needs for his own sanity everything
_outside_ his work to make life worth living. The man who is working for
himself, no matter how dreary his occupation may be, is rarely restless.
He has ambition; there is competition to keep his enthusiasms alive, he
feels that, however lowly his labour may be, it belongs to him, and its
success is his success, too. But can anyone imagine what a life must be,
we will say, cleaning other people's windows for a wage which just
enables him to live? I can imagine it, and, in putting myself in that
position, I cast envious eyes on the freedom of tramps! It seems to me
that, until the world wakes up to the necessity of enabling work-people
to fill their leisure hours with those amusements and pleasures, of the
intellect as well as of the body, which are the reward of wealth, there
will always be a growing spirit or revolution in the world. I could
endure almost any drudgery for eight hours provided during the rest of
the day I could enjoy those things for which my spirit craved. But to do
that same drudgery, day in, day out, with nothing but a Mean Street to
come home to, nothing but a "pub" to give me social joy, while people who
appear to live entirely for enjoying themselves bespatter me with mud
from their magnificent motor-cars as they drive past me with,
metaphorically speaking, their noses in the air, I think I, too, should
turn Bolshevik, not because I would approve of Bolshevism, or even
understand what it meant, but because it would seem to give me something
to live for. Except for the appalling suffering, the death, the disease,
the sad "Good-byes" of those who loved one another, I am beginning to
realise that the world was a finer place in war time. It mingled the
classes as they have never been mingled before, for the untold benefit of
every class, it brought out that spirit of kindness and self-sacrifice
which was the most really Christian thing that the world has seen on such
a large scale since the beginning of Christianity; it seemed to give a
meaning to life, and to make even the meanest drudgery done for the Great
Cause a drudgery which lost all its soul-numbing attributes--that
horrible sense of the drudgery of drudgery which is sometimes more
terrible to contemplate than death. Religion ought to give to life some,
if not all this noble meaning. But, alas! it doesn't. I sometimes think
that only those who are persecuted for their beliefs know what real
religion is. The Established Church doesn't, anyway. The world of
workers is _demanding_ a faith, but the Church only gives it admonition,
or a charming address by a bishop on the absolute necessity of going to
church. The clergy never seem to ask themselves what the people are
going to receive in the way of rendering their daily toil more worth
while when they do go to church. But the people have answered it with
tragic definiteness. They _stay away_! Or perhaps they go to see a
football match. Well, who shall blame them, after the kind of work which
they have been forced to do during the week? I always think that if only
the Church followed the crowd, instead of, metaphorically speaking,
banging the big drum outside their churches and begging them to come
inside, they would "get hold" of their flock far more effectively. After
all, why should religion be so divorced from the joy of life? Death is
important, but life is far more so. If the clergy entered into the _real
life_ of the people they would benefit themselves through a greater
understanding, and the people would benefit by this living example of
Christianity in their midst. But so many of the clergy seem to forget
the fact that the leisured classes possess, by their wealth alone, the
opportunity to create their own happiness. The poor have not this
advantage. Their work is, for the most part, deadening. The
surroundings in which they live offer them so little joy. They have only
the amusements which they can snatch from their hours of freedom to make
life worth living at all. And these amusements are the all-important
things, it seems to me. If you can enter into the hours of happiness of
men and women, they will be willing to follow you along those pathways
which lead to a greater appreciation of the Christ ideal. I always think
that if the Church devoted itself to the happiness of its "flock" it
would do far more real good than merely devoting itself to their
reformation. Reformation can only come when a certain amount or inner
happiness has been attained.
_Book-borrowing Nearly Always Means Book-stealing_
Whenever I lend a book--and, in parenthesis, I never lend a book of which
I am particularly fond--I always say "good-bye" to it under my breath. I
have found that, whereas the majority of people are perfectly honest when
dealing with thousands, their sense of uprightness suddenly leaves them
when it is only a question of a thr'penny-bit. As for books and
umbrellas, people seem to possess literally no conscience in regard to
them. Umbrellas you _may_, perhaps, get back--if you were born under the
"lucky star" with a "golden spoon" in your mouth, and had an octogenarian
millionaire, with no children, standing--or peradventure _propped up_--as
god-parent at your christening. Few people have qualms about asking for
the return of an umbrella, whereas a book always gets either
"Not-quite-finished-been-so-busy" for an answer, or else the borrower has
been so entranced by it that he has "taken the liberty" to lend it to a
friend because he knew you wouldn't _mind_! (Of course you don't--you
only feel like murder!) Nor do you really mind, providing that you are
indifferent as to the ultimate fate of the volume. If you are not
indifferent . . . well, you won't have lent it, that's all; it will
recline on the bookshelf of the literary "safe"--which is in your own
bedroom, because your own bedroom is the only place where a book ever is
really safe. (Have you noticed how reluctant people always are to ask
for the loan of a book which lies beside your bed? It is as if this
traditional lodgment of the family Bible restrained them. Usually they
never even examine bedside books. They are always so embarrassed when
they happen to pick up a volume of the type of "Holy Thoughts for Every
Day of the Year." They never know what to say to that!) But a book which
lies about downstairs is the legitimate prey of every book "pincher" who
strays across your threshold. Moreover, no one has yet invented a decent
excuse for refusing to lend a book. I wish they had; I would use it
until it was threadbare. You can't very well say what you really think,
since no one likes to be refused the loan of anything because the owner
feels convinced that he will never get it back. So, unless you have a
particular gift for the Lie-Immediate, which embraces either the
assertion that the book in question does not belong to you or else that
you have promised it to somebody else, you meekly utter the prayer that
you will be delighted if the borrower thereof will only be kind enough to
let you have it back soon, which, all the time, you know he won't, and he
knows he won't, and you know that he knows he won't, and he knows that
you know that he won't--all of which passes through your respective minds
as he pockets the book, and you in your heart of hearts bid it a fond
farewell!
_Other People's Books_
I have come to the conclusion that the only books which people are really
fond of are those which rightly belong to other people. To them they are
always faithful. They are faithful to them not _in spite of themselves_,
which is the way with those "classics" which everybody is supposed to
have read while they were young, and which most people only know by name,
because they belong to that dim and distant future in which are included
all those things which can be done when they are old--they are faithful
to them for the reason that nobody wants to borrow them; they belong to
the literature which people seek in _free_ libraries, if they seek it at
all. The books they really adore are those which somebody else has
purchased. Nor are they ever old books. On the contrary, they are "the
very latest." You see it gives a room a certain _cachet_ if it includes
the very recent literary "sensation," the "novel of the season," which
everybody is reading because everybody is talking about it. So they
stick to the books which you yourself have purchased, under the fond
delusion that what you buy is necessarily yours to do what you like with.
Alas! you have forgotten the borrowing fiend. The borrowing fiend is out
for borrowed glory--and few things on earth will ever stop the progress
of those who are out for self-glorification. True, I once knew a
book-lover who was not afraid of telling the would-be borrower that he
_never lent books_. Needless to say, he had very few literary friends.
But his bookshelves were filled with almost everything worth reading that
had been published.
_The Road to Calvary_
She was sitting half dreaming, half listening to the old preacher, when
suddenly one sentence in a sermon, otherwise prosy and conventional,
arrested her attention. For the moment she could not remember it, and
then it came to her. "All roads lead to Calvary." Perhaps he was
going to be worth listening to at last. "To all of us sooner or
later," he was saying, "comes the choosing of the ways: either the road
leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and
approval of our fellow men--or the path to Calvary." And yet it seems
to me that the utterance is only a half-truth after all. It is the
half-truth which clergymen like to utter. They always picture worldly
success as happiness, the gratification of desires happiness also, but
gained at the price of one's own "soul." But there they are wrong. It
seems to me that all roads do lead to Calvary--yes, even the road of
the worldly success, the limelit path of gratification. Whichever path
you take, it leads to Calvary--though there is the Calvary which, as it
were, has peace behind its pain, and the Calvary which has merely
loneliness and regret. But life, it seems to me, leads to Calvary
whichever way you follow--the best one can do is merely to bring a
little ray of happiness, ease a little the pain, share the sorrow and
the solitude of those who walk with us along the rough-hewn pathway.
If you live only for yourself you are lonely; if you live only for
others you are also left lonely at last. For it seems to me that the
"soul" of every man and woman is a lonely "soul," no matter if their
life be one long round of pleasure-seeking and success, or merely
renunciation. Only occasionally, very, very occasionally--maybe only
once in a lifetime!--do we ever really feel that our own "soul" and the
"soul" of another has met for an all-too-brief moment, shared for a
flash its "secret," mutually sympathised and understood. For the
rest--well, we live for the most part holding out, as it were, shadowy
arms towards shadows which only _seem_ to be substance. The road to
Calvary is a lonely road, and each man and woman is forced to follow
it. There remains then only God--God who knows us for what we are;
God--and the faith that in a life beyond we shall by our loved ones be
also recognised and known. For the rest, we but look at each other
yearningly through iron bars--and from a long, long distance. The
least lonely road which leads to Calvary is the road which leads to
God; the least lonely pilgrims are those who walk with Him. But not
everybody can believe in God, no matter how they yearn. They seek
"soul" realisation in success, in self-gratification, in the applause
and passion of the crowd. The "religious" men condemn and despise
them. But they are wrong. They are more to be pitied. For they do
not find consolation in the things by which they have sought to drug
the loneliness of their inner life. Their Calvary is often the most
terrible of all. So it seems to me that Calvary is at the end of
whichever road we take. We are wise when we realise that it is in our
own power to make that road brighter and happier for others, and that
there are always halts of interest and delight, entertainment and joy,
dotted along it for ourselves as well--if we look for them. But we do
not escape Calvary even though we struggle for success, gratify our own
desires, seek the honour and approval of our fellow-men. It is just
the Road of Life, and, provided that we harm no other man in so doing,
let us realise ourselves in worldly ambition and in love and in
enjoyment as often as we may. That is my philosophy, but it is no less
lonely in reality than other people's. Old age is each man's Calvary.
_Mountain Paths_
And the worst of that road to Calvary which we all of us must follow,
whether it be a long or short way, is that it is always, as it were, a
lonely journey into the Unknown. It is a mystery--a terrific
mystery--and sometimes it frightens us so terribly that men and women
have been known to kill themselves rather than take it. But there is
always this to be said of sorrow--like happiness, it looms so very much
larger when seen from a long way off. As we approach it it becomes
smaller. When we reach it, sometimes it does not seem so very terrible
after all; either it is small or else Nature or God gives to all of us
some added courage which helps us to bear even the greatest affliction.
For several years past I have been intimately associated with a tragedy
which most people regard as well-nigh unsurmountable even by the
bravest heart. I have thought so myself--and there are moments when I
think so still, in spite of my long familiarity with it, and the
miracles of bravery I have seen displayed in hearts so young and so
tender that one would have thought they must of necessity fall helpless
beneath the burden laid upon them by Fate. I speak, of course, of the
Blinded Soldier--than whom no better example of courage on the road to
Calvary could possibly be given. Personally, I feel that I would
sooner be dead than blind; but I realise now that I only feel this way
because I still, thank Heaven, have remarkably good sight. Were I to
lose my eyes, I hope--perhaps I _know_--that I should still strive to
fight cheerfully onward. And this, not because I am naturally brave--I
am not--but because I have lived long enough to see that when,
metaphorically speaking, the axe falls, some added strength is given to
the spirit which, granted bodily health, can fight and go on fighting
an apparently overwhelming foe. This is one of the most wonderful
miracles of Human Life, and I have myself seen so many instances of it
that I know it to be no mere fiction of an optimistic desire, but an
acknowledged fact. And this miracle applies to nations as well as to
individuals. In Maurice Maeterlinck's new volume of essays there is
one on "The Power of the Dead." "Our memories are to-day," he writes,
"peopled by a multitude of heroes struck down in the flower of their
youth and very different from the pale and languid cohort of the past,
composed almost wholly of the sick and the old, who had already ceased
to exist before leaving the earth. We must tell ourselves that now, in
every one of our homes, both in our cities and in the country-side,
both in the palace and in the meanest hovel, there lives and reigns a
dead young man in the glory of his strength. He fills the poorest,
darkest dwelling with a splendour of which it had never ventured to
dream. His constant presence, imperious and inevitable, diffuses and
maintains a religion and ideas which it had never known before, hallows
everything around it, makes the eyes look higher, prevents the spirit
from descending, purifies the air that is breathed and the speech that
is held and the thoughts that are mustered there, and, little by
little, ennobles and uplifts the whole people on a scale of unexampled
vastness." Surely, in beautiful words such as these, Maeterlinck but
echoes the consolation of many a very lonely heart since the tragedy of
August, 1914. Without "my boy"--many a desolate heart imagined that it
could never face the road of Calvary which is life now that he is gone.
And yet, when the blow came, something they thought would have vanished
for ever still remained with them. They could not tell if it were a
"presence," felt but unseen, but this they _knew_--though they could
not argue their convictions--that everything which made life happy,
which lent it meaning, was not lost, had not faded away before the
life-long loneliness which faced them; it still lived on--lived on as
an Inspiration and as a Hope that one day the road to Calvary would
come to an end, that they would reach their journey's end--and find
their loved one _waiting_.
_The Unholy Fear_
She didn't object to the celebrations for the anniversary of the
signing of Armistice--in fact, she quite enjoyed them--but she did
object to the few minutes' silent remembrance of the Glorious Dead. It
depressed her. She brought out the old "tag" so beloved of people who
dread sadness, even reverential sadness, that "the world is full enough
of sorrow without adding to it unnecessarily!" Not much sorrow had
come her way, except the sorrow of not always getting her own way; and
the anniversary of the Armistice meant for her the Victory Ball at the
Albert Hall, a new dress of silver and paste diamonds, a fat supper,
and that jolly feeling of believing that a real "beano" is justified
because, after all, _we_ won the war, didn't we? Therefore, she
disliked this bringing back to the world of the tragic fact--the fact
of what war really means beyond the patriotic talk of politicians, the
Victory celebrations, the rush to pick up the threads which had to be
dropped in 1914, and the excitement of getting, or missing, or
declining the O.B.E. The war is over, she keeps saying to herself,
thus inferring to everybody that they ought to forget all about it now.
So she ignores the maimed and the wrecked, the war poor, the sailors
and the soldiers, war books, war songs, all reference to the war, in
fact, and most especially the dead. "Why should we be depressed?" she
keeps crying, "the world is sad enough. . . ." Well, you know the old
"tag" of those who are not so much frightened of sorrow as frightened
by the fact that they can neither sympathise with it nor understand it.
She is an exceptional case, you declare. But alas! she isn't. There
are thousands of men and women who, behind a plea of war-weariness,
really mean a desire to forget all those memories, all those
obligations, all that work and faith in a New and Better World which
alone make justified--this war, or any other war. She has not
forgotten, so much as never realised what men suffered and endured in
order that she, and all the rest of her "clan" who remained at home,
might live on and rebuild the happiness and fortunes of their lives.
So she dislikes to be reminded of her obligations to the Present and
the Future; she dislikes to remember in reverence and sorrow the men
and boys who, without this war, would now be continuing happily, safe
and sound, the even tenor of their lives. "The world is sad enough,"
she again reiterates, and . . . oh, well, just BOSH!
_The Need to Remember_
For myself, I consider that it would do the world good if it had one
whole _day_ of silent remembrance each year. And if it be
depressing--well, that will be all to the good. The world will come to
no harm if it be depressed once a year--depressed for such a noble
cause. After all, we give up one day per year to the solemn
remembrance of the One who died for us--it would not, therefore, do
anything but good if we were to give up one day a year to the memory of
those millions who died for us no less. Sunday, too, is kept as a
quiet day, in order that the world may be encouraged to contemplate
those ideals for which it has erected churches in which it bows the
knee. Well, one whole day in the year given up to the memory of those
who died that the civilised world might live--who also died for an
ideal--will help us to remember that they died at all. Without some
such enforced remembrance, the world will, alas! only too quickly
forget. And in forgetting _how_ they died, will also forget _what they
died for_. Some people--the vast majority perhaps--will never remember
unless remembrance is forced upon them. And if the world ever forgets
the Glorious Dead, and the "heritage" which these Glorious Dead left to
those who still live on--well, don't talk to me of Christianity and
civilisation and the clap-trap of those high ideals which everyone
prates of, few understand, and still fewer strive to live up to. If
the war has not yet taught the political and social and Christian world
wisdom, nothing ever will; and, moreover, it does not deserve to learn.
Yet, only the other day, I heard some elderly gentlemen discussing the
next war--as if the last one were but a slight skirmish far away amid
the hills of Afghanistan. Well, better an era of the most
revolutionary socialism than that the world should once again be
plunged into such another tragedy as it has passed through during the
last five years.
_Humanity_
"Humanity is one, and an injury to one member is an injury to the
whole." I cull this line from Mr. Gilbert Cannan's book, "The Anatomy
of Society." And I quote it because I believe that it sums up in a few
words, not only the world-politics of the future, but the religion--the
real, practical religion, and therefore the only religion which counts
in so far as this life is concerned--of the future as well. The
snowball--if I may thus describe it symbolically--has just begun to
roll, but it will gather weight and impetus with every succeeding year,
until, at last, there will be no nations--as we understand nations
to-day--but only _one_ nation, and that nation the whole of the human
race. The times are dead, or rather they are dying, which saw
civilisation most clearly in such things as the luxury of the Ritz
Hotels, the parks and palaces of Europe, the number of tube trains and
omnibuses running per hour along the rail and roadways of London, and
the imitation silk stockings in which cooks and kitchenmaids disport
themselves on Sundays. A New Knowledge is abroad--and that New
Knowledge is a fuller realisation that the new world is for all men and
all women who work and do their duty, for all humanity, and not merely
for the few who get rich upon the exploitation of poverty and
helplessness of the masses. And this realisation carries with it the
realisation that the governments of the future will be more really
governments of the people for the people--and by people I do not mean
merely those of Britain or France, or whichever nation men happen to
belong to, but humanity all over the world. The things which nowadays
only money can buy must be brought within the grasp of the poorest, and
civilisation must be recognised as coming _from the bottom upwards_,
and not only from the _top_--a kind of golden froth which strives to
hide the dirt and misery and suffering beneath. So long as slums
exist, so long as poverty is exploited, so long as the great masses of
men and women are forced to lead sordid, unbeautiful, cramped,
hopeless, and helpless lives, as they are forced to live now--call no
nation civilised. So long as these things exist--call no nation
religious. The one is a mockery of human life; the other is a mockery
of God.
It always strikes me that the greatest lack in all education--and this
applies to the education of princes as well as paupers--is the spirit
of splendid vision. Most things are taught, except the "vision" of
self-respect and responsibility. The poor are not taught to respect
themselves at all, and certainly their lives do not give them what
their education has forgotten. They are never encouraged to learn that
each individual man and woman is not only responsible to him and
herself, but to all men and all women. Certainly the rich never teach
it them. For the last thing which rich people ever realise is that
their wealth carries with it human obligations, human responsibilities,
as well as the gratifications of their own appetites and pleasures.
The only objects of education seem to be to teach men to make money,
nothing is ever done to teach them how best to make life full of
interest, full of human worth, full of those "visions" which will help
to make the future or the human race proud in its achievements. The
failure of education as an intellectual, social, and moral force is
best shown the moment men and women are given the opportunity to do
exactly as they please. Metaphorically speaking, the poor with money
in their pockets immediately go on the "booze," and the rich "jazz."
And men of the poor work merely for the sake of being able to booze,
and the rich merely for the sake of being able to jazz. And the rich
condemn the poor for boozing, and the poor condemn the rich for
jazzing--but this, of course, is one of life's little ironies.
_Responsibility_