"jazzing." If I had to live the lives which millions of working men
and women lead, and amid the same surroundings, and with the same
hopeless future--I would booze with the booziest. You can't expect the
poor to respect themselves when the rich do not respect them. Without
any feeling of human responsibility in the wealthier classes, you
cannot expect to find any human responsibility in the lower orders.
And by human responsibility I do not mean some vague thing like
"Government for the People," or subscriptions to hospitals, or bazaars
for the indigent blind, or anything of that sort--though these things
are excellent in themselves. I mean something more practical than
that. Hospitals should be state-owned, and the indigent blind should
be pensioned by the state. These things should not be left to private
enterprises, since they are human responsibilities and should be borne
by humanity. I mean that all owners of wealth should be made to
realise their moral responsibilities to their own workmen--the men and
women who help to create their wealth--and that with poverty there
should not go dirt and drudgery and that total lack of beauty and
encouragement to a cleaner, finer life without which existence on earth
is Hell--Hell being preached at from above.
_The Government of the Future_
The worst of government by the people is that the moment the people put
them into power they are gracefully forgotten. The only _real_
government by the people comes through the people themselves in the
form of disturbances and strikes and revolutions. Then, alas, the tiny
craft of Progress is borne towards the ocean on a river of bad
blood--which means waste and unnecessary suffering, and leaves a whole
desert of anger and revenge behind it. The most crying need of the
times is the very last to be heard by governments. They are so
engrossed in the financial prosperity of the country that they forget
the social and moral prosperity altogether--and financial prosperity
without social and moral progress is but the beginning of bankruptcy
after all. A government, to be a real government and so to represent
authority in the eyes of the people, has not only to nurse and to
harbour, but also to _rebuild_. It does something more than govern.
It has been placed there _by the people_ in order that it may help
rebuild the lives _of the people_--so that, besides helping capital to
increase and develop, it at the same time safeguards the people against
exploitation by capital, and sees to it that, through this capital, the
people are enabled to live cleaner, better, happier lives, are given an
equal chance in the world, and encouraged and given the opportunity to
live self-respecting lives--lives full not only of responsibility to
themselves, but to humanity at large. That to my mind is the true
socialism--and it is a socialism which could come within the next ten
years, and without any sign of revolution, were the Government to
realise that it is something more than the foster-mother of
capital--that it is also a practical rebuilder of the human race--yes,
even though it has to cut through all the red-tape in the world and
throw the vested interests, owners and employers, on the scrap-heap of
things inimical to human happiness in the bulk. Sometimes I think that
the franchise of women will do a great deal towards this juster world
when it comes. Women have no "political sense," it is said. Well,
thank God they haven't, say I! They have the _human sense_--and that
will be the only political sense of any importance in the world of
to-morrow.
And this war has been the great revelation. Masses of men and women
who never thought before--or, rather, who thought but vaguely, not
troubling to put their thoughts into words--have by war become
articulate. They are now looking for a leader, and upon their faces
there is the expression of disappointment. They do not yet realise
that they have discovered within their own minds and hearts that
Splendid Vision which once came through one, or, at most, a small group
of individuals. This vision is the vision of humanity as apart from
the vision of one special nation. It sees a new world in which
science, the practical knowledge and the material advancement of the
West, combine with the greater peace and happiness of the East, to make
of this world an abiding place, an ideal nearer the ideal of Heaven.
Man, after all, possesses mind. His failure has been that, so far, he
has not learned wisdom--the wisdom to employ that mind for the
realisation of his own soul--that realisation without which life
becomes a mockery and civilisation a sham.
_The Question_
Can a man love two women at the same time? If he be married to one of
them--Yes. If he isn't--well, I cannot imagine it possible. Nor can I
imagine that every man is capable of this double passion. Some people
(in parenthesis, the lucky ones!) have characters so simple, so direct,
so steadfast, so very peaceful. Their soul is not torn asunder, first
this way, then that, perfectly sincere in all its varying moods, though
the mood changes like the passing seasons. Once having liked a thing,
they like it always, and the opposite has no attraction for them.
These people are, as it were, born husbands and born wives. They are
faithful, though their fidelity may not be exciting. This type could
hardly love two people, though they are quite capable of loving twice.
As individuals they are to be envied, because for them the inner life
is one of simplicity and peace. But there are other people who, as it
were, seem to be born _two people_. They are capable of infinite
goodness; also they are capable of the most profound baseness. And
never, never, never are they happy. For the good that is in them
suffers for the bad, and the bad also suffers, since it knows that it
is unworthy. So their inner life is one long struggle to attain that
ideal of perfection which they prize more than anything else in the
world, but are incapable of reaching--or, rather, they are incapable of
_sustaining_--because, within their natures, there is a "kink" which
always thwarts their good endeavour. Thus for ever do they suffer,
since within their souls there is a perpetual warfare between the good
which is within them and the bad. These people, I say, can love two
people at the same time, since two different people seem to inhabit the
same body, and both yearn to be satisfied; both _must_ be satisfied at
some time or another. The Good within them will always triumph
eventually, even though the Bad must have its day. But do not blame
these people. They suffer far more than anyone can suspect. They
suffer, and only with old age or death does peace come to them. If
there are people born to be unhappy in this world, they are surely in
the forefront of that tragic army!
_The Two Passions_
Yet these people, as I said before, _must be married_ to one of the two
Adored, if their sentiment for each can be called Love. Love, in which
passion plays the larger part, is so all-absorbing while it lasts, that
only the deep affection and respect which may come through the intimacy
of matrimony can exist within the self-same heart great enough to be
called Love. A man may adore and worship the woman who has proved
herself a perfect mate, who is the mother of his children, and yet be
unfaithful to her--not with any woman who crosses his path and beckons,
but with the _One_ who appeals to the wild, romantic adventurer which is
also part of his nature, though neither the best part, nor the strongest.
But I cannot imagine a man adoring and respecting a woman who is not his
wife the while he loves with a burning passion another woman who promises
rapture, passion, and delight. Passion is so intense while it lasts that
there is in the heart of man no equal place for another woman who holds
him by no legal and moral tie. But a man, having a double nature, can
worship his wife, yet love with passion another woman--even though he
hates and despises himself for so doing. But it is rare, if not
impossible, for one woman to completely satisfy the man whose nature is
made up of good and bad, of high ideals and low cravings, of steadfast
fidelity, yet with a yearning for the wild, untrammelled existence of the
mountain tops. With such a man--and how many there are, if we but
knew!--the woman he respects will always win in the end, even though the
woman who entices has also her day of victory. The Good Woman will
suffer--God knows she will! But the man will suffer too. A man has to
be wholly bad to thoroughly enjoy evil. The man who is only half a
saint--secretly goes through hell. That is his punishment, and it is far
more difficult for him to bear than the finger pointed in contempt.
Therefore, I believe that the happiest men and women are the men and
women who are born good and steadfast, simple and true, or those who
cultivate with delight scarcely one unselfish thought. That is why the
vast majority of people live so really lonely, so secretly sad at heart
and soul. Only the born-good or the born-bad know the blessedness of
inner peace.
_Our "Secret Escapes"_
I suppose that we all of us have our own little secret
"dream-sanctuary"--our way-of-escape which nobody knows anything about,
and by which we go when we are weary of the trivialities of the domestic
hearth and sick unto death of the "cackle-cackle" of the crowds. When we
are very young we long to share this secret little dream-sanctuary with
someone else. When we are older and wiser, we realise that if we don't
keep it to ourselves we are spiritually lost; for, with the best
intentions in the world, the best-beloved, to whom in rapture we give the
key, either, metaphorically speaking, leaves the front gate open or goes
therein and turns on a gramophone. We come into this world alone, and we
leave it by ourselves; and the older we grow the more we realise that, in
spite of our own heart's longing to share, we are most really at peace
when we are quite alone in our own company. When we are young we hope
and expect our "dreams" to become one day a glorious reality. When we
are older we realise that our "dreams" will always remain "dreams", and,
strange as it may sound, they become more real to us, even as "dreams,"
than do any realities--except bores and toothache. For the "dreams" of
youth become the "let's pretend" of age. And the person who has
forgotten the game of "let's pretend" is in soul-colour of the dulness of
ditch-water. And "let's pretend" is a game which we can best play by
ourselves. Even the proximity of a living being, content to do and say
nothing, robs it of its keenest enjoyment. No, we must be by ourselves
for the world around us to seem really inhabited by people we love the
most amid surroundings nearest our ideal. There are no bores in our
dream-world. Nothing disagreeable happens there. And, thank Heaven, we
can enter it almost anywhere--sometimes if we merely close our eyes! And
we can be our real selves in this dream-world of ours too, there is
nobody to say us nay; there are no laws and no false morals; we are fairy
kings and queens in a fairy kingdom. I always pity the man or woman who
is no monarch in this very real kingdom of shadows which lies all around
us, and which we can enter to reign therein whenever the human "jar" is
safely out of the way. There we can be our true selves and live our true
life, in what seems a very real world--a world, moreover, which we hope
one day will be the reality of Heaven.
_My Escape and Some Others_
Everybody, as I said before, has his or her own receipt for "getting
away." Some find it in long "chats" over the fireside with old friends;
some in reading and music and art; some in travel, some in "good works"
and just a few in "bad" ones. A new hat will often lift a woman several
floors nearer to the seventh heaven. A good dinner in prospect will
sometimes elevate the spirit of man out of the dreary "rut" and give that
_soupçon_ of something-to-live-for which can take the ordinary everyday
and turn it into a day which belongs to the _extraordinary_. For myself,
I like to get out into the country alone; or, if I can't do that, or the
weather sees to it that I shan't, I like to get by myself--anywhere to
dream, or, preferably, to explore some unknown district or street or
place in my own company. Sometimes I find that to open a new book or a
favourite old one, soon takes the edge off "edgyness," and makes me see
that the pin-pricks of life are merely pin-pricks, from which, unless
there are too many of them, I shan't die, however much I may suffer. But
even when reading--I like best to read alone--I am never really at ease
when at any moment a companion may suddenly break the silence and bring
me back to reality by asking the unseen listening gods "if they've locked
the cat out?" You condemn me? Well, perhaps I am wrong. And if you can
find happiness perpetually surrounded by people, then I envy you. It is
so much easier to go through life requiring nothing but food, friends,
and a bank balance, than always to hide misanthropic tendencies behind a
social smile. I envy you, because I realise that the fight to be alone,
the fight to be yourself, is the longest fight of all--and it lays you
open to suspicion, unfriendliness, even dislike, everywhere you go. But,
if I must be honest, I will confess that I _hate_ social pastimes. To
work and to dream, to travel, to listen to music, to be in England in the
springtime, to read, to give of myself to those who most specially need
me--if any there be?--that is what I now call happiness, the rest is
merely boredom in varying degree. My only regret is that one has
generally to live so long to discover what the constituents of happiness
are, or what is worth while and what worthless; what makes you feel that
the everyday is a day well spent, and not a day merely got through
somehow or other. You lose so much of your youth, and the best years of
your life, trying to find happiness along those paths where other people
informed you that it lay. It takes so many years of experience to
realise that most of the things which men call "pleasure" are but, as it
were, tough dulness covered with piquant sauce--a tough mess of which,
when you tire of the piquant sauce the toughness remains just so long as
you go on trying to eat it.
_Over the Fireside_
Most especially do I feel sorry for those people who cannot find a
certain illusion of happiness in reading. I thank whatever gods there be
that I can generally find the means of "getting-away" between the covers
of a book. A book has to be very puerile indeed if I cannot enjoy it to
a certain extent--even though that extent be merely a mild ridicule and
amusement. I can even enjoy books about books--if they are very well
done, which is rare. I am not particularly interested in
authors--especially the photographs of authors, which usually come upon
their admirers with something approaching shock--because I always think
that the most interesting part of an author is what he writes, not what
he looks like. What he writes is generally what he _is_. You can't keep
everything of yourself out of anything you may write--and thank Heaven
for it! Apart from the story--often indeed, before the story itself--the
most delightful parts of any book are the little gleams of the writer's
point of view, of his philosophy, of his own life-experiences, which
glint through the matter in hand, and sometimes raise a commonplace
narrative into a volume of sheer entrancing joy. And perhaps one of the
most difficult things to write is to write about books--I don't mean
"reviews." (Almost anybody can give their opinion on books they have
read, and tell you something about them--which is nine hundred and ninety
per cent. of literary reviews.) But to write about books in a way which
amuses you, or interests you, and makes you want immediately to read the
book in question--that is a more difficult feat. And sometimes what the
writer about books says about books is more entertaining than the books
themselves. But then that is because of those little gleams of the
personal which are always so delightful to find anywhere.
_Faith Reached Through Bitterness and Loss_
Looking back on one's life, I always think it is so strange that just
those blows of fate which logic would consider as certain to destroy such
things as Faith and Belief, optimism and steadfastness of soul-vision, so
many times provide their very foundations. How often those whose Belief
in a Life Hereafter is the firmest have little reason to encourage that
belief. We often find through sorrow, a happiness--no, not happiness,
but a peace--which is enduring. When the waves of agnosticism and
atheism have broken over our souls, the ebb tide is so often Faith and
Hope. And, as we approach nearer and nearer to the time when, in the
ordinary course of events, we so soon _shall know_, there creeps into our
hearts a certainty that all is not ended with life, a belief which defies
reason, and logic, and common sense, and which, to outsiders, often
appears to be merely a clutching at straws. But these straws save us,
and, through their means, we eventually reach the shore where doubts
cannot flourish and agnosticism gives way to a Faith which we _feel_ more
than we can actually define.
_Aristocracy and Democracy_
I believe in the _heart_ of democracy, but I am extremely suspicious of
its _head_. Popular education among the masses is the most derelict
thing in all our much-vaunted civilisation. To talk to the masses
concerning anything outside the radius of their own homes and stomachs
is, for the most part, like talking to children. It is not their fault.
They have never had a real chance to be otherwise. When I contemplate
the kind of education which the average child of the slums and country
villages is given--and the type of man and woman who is popularly
supposed to be competent to give it--I do not wonder that they are the
victims of any firebrand, crank, or plutocrat who comes to them and sails
into the Mother-of-All-Parliaments upon their votes. For the last six
years I have been placed in circumstances which have enabled me to
observe the results of what education has done for the average poor man.
The result has made me angry and appalled. The figure is low when I
declare that ninety per cent. of the poor not only cannot write the
King's English, but can neither read it nor understand it--beyond the
everyday common words which a child of twelve uses in his daily
vocabulary. Of history, of geography, of the art and literature of his
country, of politics or law, of domestic economy--he knows absolutely
nothing. Nothing of any real value is taught him. Even what he knows he
knows so imperfectly that absolute ignorance were perhaps a healthier
mental state. Until education is regarded with the same seriousness as
the law, it is hopeless to expect a new and better world. For education
is the very foundation of this finer existence. You can't expect an A1
nation among B3 intellects. Ornamental education is not wanted--it is
worse than useless until a _useful education_ has been inculcated. And
what is a useful education? It is an education which teaches a man and
woman to be of some immediate use in the world; to know something of the
world in which they live, and how best to fulfil their duty as useful
members of a community and in the world at large. At present the average
boy and girl are, as it were, educationally dragged up anyhow and
launched upon the world at the first possible moment to earn the few
shillings which two hands and an undeveloped intelligence are worth in
the labour market. No wonder there is Bolshevism and class war and
anarchy and revolution. Where the ruled are ignorant and the ruling
selfish--you can never expect to found a new and happier world.
_Duty_
As for a sense of duty, to talk to the average man and woman, no matter
what may be their class in life, of a sense of duty, is rather like
reading Shakespeare to a man who is stone deaf. And yet, an education
which does not at the same time seek to teach duty--duty to oneself, to
the state, to humanity at large--is no real education at all. But in the
world in which we live at present, a sense of duty is regarded as
nonsense. Labour does not realise its duties, neither does wealth;
neither does the Church, except to churchmen; nor Parliament, except to
the party which provides its funds. And yet, as I said before, a sense
of duty is the very foundation of all real education.
Even if the children of the poor were taught the rudiments of some trade
while they were at school, the years they spend there would not be so
utterly and entirely wasted. Even though they did not follow up that
trade as their occupation in life, it would at any rate give them some
useful interest in their hours of recreation. As it is they know
nothing, so they are interested in nothing. And this, of course, applies
to the so-called educated people as well. It always amuses me to listen
to the well-to-do discussing the working classes. To hear them one would
think that the working classes were the only people who wasted their
time, their money, and their store of health. It never seems to strike
them that the working classes for the most part live in surroundings
which contain no interest whatsoever--apart from their work. They are
given education--and _such_ education! They are given homes--and _such_
homes! They are plentifully supplied with public houses--and ye gods,
such public houses! The Government hardly realises yet that it is there,
not to listen to its own voice and keep its own little tin-pot throne
intact, but as a means by which the masses may arrive at a healthier,
better, more worthy state of existence. The working-classes are not
Bolshevik, nor do I think they ever will be; but deep down in their
hearts there is a determination that they and their children shall
receive the same educational advantages, the same right to air and light
and decent amusement, as the children of the wealthy. Because I am poor,
they say to themselves, why should I therefore have to inhabit a home
unfit for decent habitation, receive education utterly useless from every
practical point of view--be forced to live in surroundings which
absolutely invite degradation of both mind and body? There will always
be poverty, but there ought never to be indecent poverty. Better
education; better housing; better chances for healthy recreation--these
are the things for which the masses are clamouring. Why is it wrong for
a workman who has made money during the war to buy a piano--and to hear
people talk that seems to be one of their most dastardly crimes--when it
is quite all right for his employer, who has made more money out of the
war, to pay five pounds for one good dinner, or a night's "jazzing"?
_Sweeping Assertions from Particular Instances_
And this mention of the piano-crime among the munition-makers brings me
to another fact--how utterly impossible it is for the majority of people
to judge any big scheme without having regard to the particular instances
which threaten its success. Because some working people are so utterly
bestial that they are unfit to live in decent homes--so the majority of
poor people are unworthy of better surroundings. You might just as well
judge the ruling classes by the few units who advertise their own
extravagant tom-fooleries! In all questions of reform you have to work,
as it were, up to the vision of an ideal. The real, however
disappointing at the outset, will eventually reach the higher plane--of
that I am certain. And in no question am I more certain of this than in
the question of the working classes. The heart of democracy, as I said
before, is absolutely in the right place; only its "head" is as yet
undeveloped. Its mental "view" is restricted--and no wonder! Everything
that has so far been done has helped to restrict that view. This war has
let more "light" into the "soul" of democracy than all the national
so-called education which has ever been devised and made compulsory.
Confiscation of property and all those other tom-fool cries are but the
screams of a handful of silly Bolsheviks. There is no echo in the heart
of the real labouring men and women. If they applaud it, it is only that
these cranks, at least, seem to be fighting for that human right to an
equal share of the common good things of this life which ought to be the
possession of all labour, however lowly. Take the education of the
masses out of the hands of the for the most part ignorant men and women
who nowadays make it their profession to teach it; raise the standard of
payment so that this all-important branch of citizenship will encourage
educated and refined men and women to take up that duty--and give the
working classes decent homes, plenty of air, and the chance of healthful
recreation close at hand, and you have solved the most vital labour
problems of this old world of ours and laid the foundation stones of the
new.
_How I came to make "History"!_