hence people will be--dusting their imaginations in order to discover the
most fitting tribute their and other people's money can erect to the
memory of the sailors and soldiers who died so that they and their
children might live. And yet it seems to me that in most of these
tributes the wishes of the "Glorious Dead," or what might easily be
regarded as their wishes, have rarely been consulted. The wishes of the
living have prevailed almost every time. Thus the "Glorious Dead" have,
as it were, paid off church debts, erected stained-glass windows in
places of worship which are beautified considerably thereby, paid for
statues of fallen warriors which have been placed in the middle of open
market-places to attract the passing attention of pedestrians and the
very active attention of small birds. A thousand awkward debts have been
wiped out by the money collected for the memory of deeds which for ever
will be glorious, and yet, it seems to me, in most of the cases the
wishes of the wealthy living--and of a very narrow circle of the
living--were at all times the primary, albeit the unconscious, object
which lay behind the tribute. And the worst of it is that so many of
these memorials to "Our Glorious Dead" are as "dead" as the heroes whom
they wish to commemorate. In ten years' time they will, for all
practical purposes be ignored. Maybe some little corner of the world is
more lovely for their being, but the world, the new and better world, for
which the "Glorious Dead" died, is just as barren as ever it was.
Rarely, only rarely, have these memorials been at all worthy of the
memory which they desire to keep alive. And these rare instances have
not been popular among the wealthy and the Churchmen, whose one cry was
that "something must be done"--something beautiful, but useless, for
preference. Mostly, they constitute some wing added to a hospital;
hostels for disabled soldiers; alms-houses, and other purely practical
benefits which afford nothing to gape at and not very much to talk about.
People infinitely prefer some huge ungainly statue or some indifferently
stained glass window, any seven-days' wonder in the way of marble,
granite, or glass. They would like the Cenotaph to fill St. James's
Park, and fondly believe that the "Glorious Dead" would find pride and
pleasure in such a monstrosity. But it seems to me that any memorial to
the dead heroes falls short of its ideal which does not, at the same
time, help the living in some real practical and unsectarian way. Heroes
didn't die so that the parish church should have a new window or the
market place a pump; they died so that the less fortunate of this world
should have a better chance, find a greater health, a greater happiness,
a wider space in the new world which the sacrifice of their fathers,
brothers, and chums helped to found.
_Always the Personal Note_
The longer I live the more clearly I perceive the extreme difficulty
reformers have to interest people in philanthropic schemes which do not
place their religion, their brand of politics, or they themselves in
prominent positions on the propaganda. It seems to be very much the
fashion among those who desire to help others that they do so in the
belief that they will thereby be themselves saved. So few, so very few,
help the less fortunate on their way without cramming their own religion,
or their own politics, or their own munificence down their throats at the
same time. They cannot be kind for the sake of being kind; they cannot
help others up without seeking to brand them at the same time with their
own pet views and beliefs. And then they wonder why the poor will not be
helped; why they are suspicious, or ungrateful, or allow themselves to be
helped only that they may help themselves at the same time--and to
something more than their individual share. Humility and tolerance--and
tolerance is, after all, but one aspect of humility--are the rarest of
all the human virtues. So much philanthropy merely means the giving of a
"bun" on the condition that he who takes the bun will also stop to pray,
to become Conservative, and to give thanks. Good is so often done for
the sake of doing good, not to right a social wrong--which should be the
end of all goodness. Even then, so many people are content to do good
from a distance; or if, perhaps, they do come among the objects of their
unselfishness, they do so with, as it were, the dividing-line well
marked--with them, but not _of them_, and with the air of regarding
themselves as being extremely kind-hearted to be there at all. It is
their "bit"--not to help on the peace, of course, but to help themselves
into Heaven. The poor are but the means to this end.
_Clergymen_
I always feel so sorry for clergymen--the clergymen who are inspired to
their calling, not, of course the "professional" variety who are
clergymen because they preferred the Church to the Stock Exchange. They
carry with them wherever they go the mark of the professional servant of
God, and it creates a prejudice, between them and those who really need
their succour, which is almost unsurmountable. Many clergymen, I know,
adore the trimmings of their profession--the pomps and vestments, the
admiration of spinster ladies, and opportunity to shake the friendly
finger at Mrs. Gubbins and regret that she hasn't been seen in church
lately--this same Mrs. Gubbins who works sixteen hours a day to bring up
a large family in the greatest goodness and comfort her mother's heart
can supply, and, so it seems to me, _lives_ her prayers--which is a far
finer thing than merely uttering them in public and respectability. But
the clergyman whose heart is in his work, who lives for the poor and
needy, and finds no greater joy than in bringing joy into the lives of
others, has to make those he wishes to _forget_ first of all that he is a
clergyman and not merely a man ready, as it were, to barter a bun for an
attendance at church. Until he does this he cannot surmount that
prejudice, that suspicion, and that atmosphere of unnaturalness without
which no lasting comfort and good is ever done. For how can he live
among the poor as one of the poor when at the same time he has to keep in
the "good books" of the wealthy, who pay the pew rents, and the
evil-minded "do-nothings," who are ever ready to declare that he is
demeaning himself and their Church when he breaks down the barrier of
caste and position in his efforts to live and suffer and work as do the
men and women he wishes to make happier and better? He can do it, if he
possesses the right personality, but it is a fight which, for the most
part, seems so hopeless as not to be worth while. You have only to watch
the restrained jollity of his flock the moment a clergyman enters the
room to realise the crust which he will have to break through in order to
bring to light the jewel of human nature which really shines so brightly
in the hearts of the very poor.
_Their Failure_
It is so difficult for men and women, as it were, to really help the
East-end while living in West-end comfort. It is so difficult for
religious people to realise that the finest prayer of all is to "play the
game." But the poor understand the wonder of that prayer full well; it
is, indeed, I rather fancy, the only prayer that they really do
understand, the only one which really and truly touches them and helps
them on their way. And, when I see among the very poor the simply
magnificent human material which is allowed to run to waste,
misunderstood, unheeded, I sometimes feel that the only hope of real
lasting good will be found by those who work _outside_ the Church, not
among those who work within it. For those who have worked within it have
let so many generations of fine youth run to seed, that the time has come
for practical lay-workers to take on the job. The poor need more
practical schemes for their guidance and their good, and fewer
prayer-meetings and sing-songs from the hymnals. For, to my mind, the
very basis of all real religion is a practical basis. It is useless to
live with, as it were, your head in Heaven if you stand knee-deep in
filth. Of what good is your own personal salvation if you have not done
your best to make the world better and happier for others? To worry
about their salvation is less than useless--if that be possible.
Providing they have something to live for, something to make life worth
living, surroundings which bring out all that is best and bravest and
finest in their natures, their heavenly salvation will take care of
itself. The pity is that there is so much magnificent youthful promise
which prejudice and tradition and social wrongs never allow to be
fulfilled. There is only one real religion, and that is the religion of
making life happier and more profitable to others. You may not make them
pray in the process, you may not make them sing hymns--prayers and
hymn-singing are merely beautiful accompaniments--in a practical
uplifting of the human state, the human "soul." "Love"--that is the only
thing which really matters, Love--with Charity, and Self-sacrifice, and
Unselfishness, and Justice--which are, after all, the attributes of this
Love.
Work in the East-end
It seems to me that the poor need a friend more urgently than they need a
pastor, or, if they must have a pastor--then the pastor must be
completely disguised as a friend. I always wonder why it is the popular
fallacy that the poor need religion more than the wealthy. My own
experience is that you will find more real Christianity in Shoreditch
than you will ever find in Mayfair--even though the "revealers" of it may
drink and swear and otherwise lead outwardly debased lives. Well, the
surroundings, the "atmosphere" in which they have been forced to live,
encourage them in their blasphemy. I never marvel that they are often
profane; I wonder more greatly that they are not infinitely more so. But
it seems to me that you will "uplift" them far more by pulling down their
filthy habitations than by preaching the "Word of God" at them at every
available opportunity. They are the landlords, the profiteers, the
members of Society who do so little to cleanse and purify the human life
among the tenements, who require the "Word" more urgently than the
enforced dwellers therein. Only the other evening I paid a visit to one
of the general committee of the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission in the
little flat which he occupies at the top of a huge building called
"flats." These flats consist of only two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen.
There are no "conveniences"--except some of an indescribably filthy
nature which are mutually shared by the inhabitants of several flats, to
their own necessary loss of self-respect and decency. And in these
two-roomed flats families ranging from three to twelve members are forced
to live, and for this benefit they must pay six shillings a week. How
can youth reach its full perfection amid such surroundings--surroundings
which can be multiplied hundreds of times in every part of London and our
big cities? And when I _know_ the magnificent "promise" of which this
same youth is capable--the war showed it in one side of its
greatness--and see the surroundings in which it must grow and expand,
physically as well as spiritually, I marvel at its moral achievements and
I hate the society which permits this splendid human material only by a
stroke of luck ever to have its chance. For what has this youth of the
slums got to live for? He can have no home-life amid the pigsties which
are called his "home", his strength is mostly thrust into blind alley
occupations which he is forced to take, since his education has fitted
him for nothing better, and he must accept them in order to live at all;
and for his recreation, he is given the life of the streets and the
public-house--nothing else. It is only such groups of unselfish men as
are represented by the Oxford and Bermondsey Mission and by the men who
run the London Working Boys' Clubs in the poorest parts of London,
together with those other men and women, clergymen and laymen, who are
struggling to bring a little happiness and light into the lives of the
men and boys of the East-end by providing them with comfort and warmth in
the club houses and with healthy recreation for their hours of freedom,
who are helping to kill Bolshevism at its roots. For it seems to me that
youth is the supreme charge of those who have grown old. The salvation
of the world will come through the young; the glory of the old is that
age and experience have taught them to perceive this fact. Give the
majority of men something noble to live for, and the vast majority will
live up to their "star."
_Mysticism and the Practical Man_
I wish the Mystics and the Practical Men could meet, fraternise, and
still not yearn to murder one another. It would be of immense benefit to
you and me and the rest of us who make up the "hum-drum" world. For the
Practical Man who is not something of a mystic is at best a commonplace
nuisance, and at his worst a clog on the wheels of progress. And the
mystic who is only mystical is even less good to anyone, since his Ideals
and his Theories, and often his personal example, fade away in the smoke
of factory chimneys belching out the sweat of men and women's labour into
the pure air of heaven. No, the Mystic who is to do any good to his
brother men must be at the same time a practical man, just as the
practical man must possess some Big Idea behind his commerce and his
success in order to escape the ignominy of being a mere money-maker, the
inglorious driver of sweated labourers. If only these two could
meet--_and agree_--there might possibly be some hope for the Dawn of that
New World which the War surely came to found and the washy kind of Peace
which followed seems to have thrust back again into darkness. True,
there are some business men who perceive behind their business a goal, an
ideal, in which there is something more than their own personal wealth
and glory, the be-diamonding of a fat wife, and the expensive upbringing
of a spoilt family. They make their wealth, but they seek to make it
justly, to make it cleanly, and, having amassed their fortune, strive to
benefit the lot of those by whose labour they amassed it, and whose
future, and the future of whose children, are at once their charge and
their most profound interest. But these men are so few--they are so few
that almost everybody knows their names. The great masses of practical
business men possess the "soul" of a lump of lead, the ideals of little
money-grubbing attorneys, the "vision" of a chimpanzee in a jungle. They
are "cute," and, for the end towards which they strive, they are clever.
But they are nothing more. And, because of them, there is this "eternal
unrest" for which the ignorant blame "labour" and the still more ignorant
blame "modern education." (Ye gods--what is it?)
_Abraham Lincoln_
Success and fame which are purely personal are always abortive in the
long run. Unless a Big Achievement has some splendid Vision behind it,
it is soon almost as completely forgotten as if it had never been. Or it
may remain in the memory of posterity as a name only, without influencing
that mind in the very slightest degree. A mystic must be a practical man
as well, if his "vision" is not to be lost in the smoke of mere words and
theories; just as a practical man must at the same time be something of a
mystic if his labour is to live and bear fruit a hundredfold. Abraham
Lincoln was a mystic as well as a practical man. That is why the ideal
of statesmanship for which he lived has influenced the world since his
time far more than men equally famous in their day. It was this
"invisible power" behind his ideal which triumphed over all opposition at
last, and which continues to triumph in spite of the pigmy-souled crowd
of party politicians who still wrangle in the political arena. Nothing
lasting is ever accomplished without "vision," and the spiritual, though
long in coming, will yet triumph over ignorance and prejudice and
selfishness, even though it comes through war and the overthrow of
capitalists and autocrats. The life and the ideals of Abraham Lincoln
are yet one more piece of evidence of this.
_Reconstruction_
And just so far as modern Socialism possesses this "mystical power" just
so far will it go--inevitably. But, personally, I always think that
Socialism (so-called) is far too busy attacking the elderly and decaying,
both in men and traditions. It should attack youth; or, rather, it
should fight for youth, and for youth principally and almost alone. You
cannot found the New World in a day, but if the youthful citizen is taken
in hand, educated, inspired, and given all possible advantages both for
intellectual improvement and bodily health, this New World will come
without resistance, inevitably, and of its own accord and free will. To
a certain extent the ideals of the British Empire succeed only for the
socialistic "vision" which inspires it. But the chief fault of this
"vision" is that it is so busy making black men clean and "Christian"
that it has no vigour left to clean up and "Christianise" the dirt and
heathenism at home. It would rather, metaphorically speaking (I had
vowed never to use that expression again in the New Year, but--well,
there it is!), bring the ideals of Western civilisation into the jungles
of Darkest Africa than tackle the problems of the slums of Manchester.
And this, not so much because a "civilised" Darkest Africa will have
money in it, as because in tackling the problem of the slums it will have
to fight drastically the rich and poor heathens at home--with all the
tradition and prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness with which they are
bolstered up and deluded with the cry of "Freedom" and "Liberty," and
that still greater illusion--Legal "Justice."
_Education_
Education of the mind, education of the body--to stop at the very
beginning that tragic waste of human material, both physical, mental, and
spiritual, which forces youth into blind-alley occupations or into
occupations unworthy of physically fit men and women--that is the first
stone in the foundation of the New World--a step far more important than
the confiscation of capital, which seems to be the loudest cry of those
who, in their ignorance, claim to be Socialists. Socialism is
_constructive_ not _destructive_--but the construction must have the
vision of the future always before its eyes, and that future must be
prepared for--drastically, if need be.
_The Inane and Unimaginative_
In every mixed crowd there always seems such a large percentage of the
unimaginative and the inane that I am never surprised that the silliest
superstitions still flourish, "the Thing" is rampant, and that, in
every progress towards real civilisation, the very longest way round is
taken with the very feeblest results. It is not that this percentage
is wicked, nor is it strikingly good, neither is it necessarily
feeble-minded, but it shows itself so entirely unimaginative and inane
that it is no wonder that the charlatan in religion, politics, and
education rampages over the world through a perfect maelstrom of
bouquets. Nothing impersonal ever seems to stir the sluggishness of
their "souls." They feel nothing that does not hit them straight
between the eyes. They never perceive the tragedy behind the smile,
the wrong behind the justice of the law, the piteousness and
helplessness of men and women. The price of currants stirs them to
revolt far more rapidly than that disgrace to civilisation which are
the slums. Air raids were the greatest injustice of the war--air
raids, when they never knew from one moonlight night to another if they
might not join unwillingly the army of the heroic dead in heaven. That
is why so many of them secretly believe that they endured far more at
home than the ordinary common soldier did in the front-line trenches.
They cannot realise _his_ tragedy; they can, however, fully realise
their own. That is why they talk of it with so much greater eloquence;
that is why, when they listen to his recitals of dirt and hunger and
indescribable pain, they do so with a suppressed yawn and a secret
conviction that they have heard quite enough about the war. As for
tragedy--their apotheosis of the tragic is reached in a street accident
at which they can stand gaping, nursing the details for the moment when
they can retail them with gusto at home; but I verily believe that, if
the dying man cut rather a ridiculous figure, _some of them would have
to laugh_. But then, this inane and unimaginative percentage among the
crowd is always ready _to laugh_. Their special genius is that they
will always guffaw in the wrong place. Or, if they do not laugh, they
will let fall some utterly stupid remark--so stupid that one wonders
occasionally if nature by mistake has given them a bird's brain without
giving them at the same time a bird's beautiful plumage. And the worst
of it is one is up against this inane percentage in every walk of
life--this unimaginative army of men and women who can perceive
_nothing_ which does not absolutely concern themselves and their own
soul's comfort.
Life's Great Adventure
I hope when I am old that Fate will give me a garden and a view of the
sea. I should hate to decay in a suburban row and be carried away at
the end of all my mostly fruitless longings in a hearse; the seven
minutes' wonder of the small children of the street, who will cry,
"Oo-er" when my coffin is borne out by poor men whose names I can't
ever know! Not that it really matters, I suppose; and yet, we all of
us hope to satisfy our artistic sense, especially when we're helpless
to help ourselves. Yes, I should like to pass the twilight of my life
in a garden from which there would be a view of the sea. A garden is
nearly always beautiful, and the sea always, always promises adventure,
even when we have reached that time of life when to "pass over" is the
only chance of adventure left to us. It seems to beckon us to leave
the monotonous in habits, people and things in general, and seek
renewed youthfulness, the thrill of novelty, the promise of romance
amid lands and people far, far away. And we all of us hope that we may
not die before we have had one _real_ adventure. Adventure, I suppose,
always comes to the really adventurous, but so many people are only
half-adventurous; they have all the yearning and the longing, but
Nature has bereft them of the power to act. So they wait for adventure
to come to them, the while they grow older and staler all the time.
And sometimes it never does come to them; or, perhaps, it only comes to
them too late. There are some, of course, who never feel this wild
longing to escape. They are the human turnips; and, so long as they
have a plot of ground on which to expand and grow, they look for
nothing else other than to be "mashed" from time to time by someone of
the opposite sex. These people are quite content to live and die in a
row, and to have an impressive funeral is to them a sufficient argument
for having lived at all. But their propinquity is one of the reasons
why I should not like to grow old in a crowd. I know there are
turnips--human turnips, I mean--living amid the Alps. But these don't
depress you, for the simple reason that, besides them, you have the
Alps anyway. And the Alps have something of that spirit of eternity
which the sea possesses.
_Travel_
Do you know those men and women who, to paraphrase Omar Khayyám, "come
like treacle and like gall they go"? Well, it seems to me that life is
rather like such as they. You may live for something, you may live for
someone, but some time, sooner or later, you will be thrown back upon
your own garden, the "inner plot" of land which you have cultivated in
your own heart, to find what flowers thereon you may. Live for others,
yes! but don't live entirely for them. No. For if you live altogether
for someone, it stands to reason that they cannot well live for
you--or, if they can, then they don't trouble, since you are such a
certain asset in their lives. So they will begin to live for someone
else. For this living for people is part of the nature of all hearts
which are not the hearts of "turnips." And then, what becomes of you?
No, the wise man and woman keep a little for themselves, and that
"little" is barred to permanent visitors. You may allow certain people
to live therein for a while, but, as you value your own joy and
happiness, your own independence and peace, do not deliver up to them
the key. Keep that for yourself, so that, when the loneliness of life
comes to you, as come it will--that is part of the tragedy of human
life--you may not be utterly desolate, but possess some little ray of
hope and delight and joy to illumine the shadows of loneliness when
they fall across your path. And, for what they are worth to me for
consolation, I thank Heaven now for the long years which I spent
practically alone in the world, so far as congenial companionship went.
Solitude drove me back upon myself, and since all of us must have some
joy, natural or merely manufactured, in order to go on living, it
forced me to cultivate other interests, which, perhaps, had I been
happy, I should have neglected for brighter but more ephemeral joys.
So I am not frightened of my own society, and that, though a rather
dreary achievement, is by no means to be despised. It enables me to
wander about alone and yet be happy; it permits me to travel with no
one but my own company and the chance acquaintances I pick up _en
route_, and yet not be entirely depressed. It helped me to achieve
that philosophy which says: "If I may not have the ideal companion,
then let me walk with no one but myself"--and that is the philosophy of
a man who can never really feel lonely for a long time, even though he
may be quite alone.
_The Enthralling Out-of-reach_