_PAGEANTRY AND PATRIOTISM_
Long years ago, when religious people excited themselves almost
to frenzy about Ritualism, Mr. Gladstone surveyed the tumult with
philosophic calm. He recommended his countrymen to look below the
surface of controversy, and to regard the underlying principle.
"In all the more solemn and stated public acts of man," he wrote,
"we find employed that investiture of the acts themselves with
an appropriate exterior, which is the essential idea of Ritual.
The subject-matter is different, but the principle is the same:
it is the use and adaptation of the outward for the expression
of the inward." The word "ritual" is by common usage restricted
to the ecclesiastical sphere, but in reality it has a far wider
significance. It gives us the august rite of the Convocation, the
ceremonial of Courts, the splendour of regiments, the formal usages
of battleships, the silent but expressive language of heraldry and
symbol; and, in its humbler developments, the paraphernalia of
Masonry and Benefit Societies, and the pretty pageantry of Flag-days
and Rose-days. Why should these things be? "Human nature itself,
with a thousand tongues, utters the reply. The marriage of the
outward and the inward pervades the universe."
The power of the outward reaches the inward chiefly through the eye
and the ear. Colour, as Ruskin taught us, is not only delightful,
but sacred. "Of all God's gifts to the sight of man, colour is
the holiest, the most divine, the most solemn.... Consider what
sort of a world it would be if all flowers were grey, all leaves
black, and the sky _brown_." The perfection of form--the grace of
outline, the harmony of flowing curves--appeals, perhaps, less
generally than colour, because to appreciate it the eye requires
some training, whereas to love colour one only needs feeling. Yet
form has its own use and message, and so, again, has the solemnity of
ordered movement; and when all these three elements of charm--colour
and form and motion--are combined in a public ceremony, the effect
is irresistible.
But the appeal of the inward reaches us not solely through the
eye. The ear has an even higher function. Perhaps the composer of
great music speaks, in the course of the ages, to a larger number of
human hearts than are touched by any other form of genius. Thousands,
listening enraptured to his strain, hear "the outpourings of eternal
harmony in the medium of created sound." And yet again there are
those, and they are not a few, to whom even music never speaks
so convincingly as when it is wedded to suitable words; for then
two emotions are combined in one appeal, and human speech helps
to interpret the unspoken.
It is one of the deplorable effects of war that it so cruelly diminishes
the beauty of our public and communal life. Khaki instead of scarlet,
potatoes where geraniums should be, common and cheap and ugly things
usurping the places aforetime assigned to beauty and splendour--these
are our daily and hourly reminders of the "great tribulation" through
which the nation is passing. Of course, one ought not to wish it
otherwise. Not, indeed, "sweet," but eminently salutary, are these
"uses of adversity," for they prevent us from forgetting, even if
we were inclined to such base obliviousness, the grim realities
of the strife in which we are engaged. And yet, and in spite of
all this, beauty retains its sway over "the common heart of man."
Even war cannot destroy, though it may temporarily obscure, the
beauty of Nature; and the beauty of Art is only waiting for the
opportunity of Peace to reassert itself.
To the prevailing uncomeliness of this war-stricken time a welcome
exception has been made by the patriotic pageantry which, during
the week now closed, has been enacted at Queen's Hall.[*] There
were critics, neither malicious nor ill-informed, who contended
that such pageantry was ill-timed. They advanced against it all
sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the
public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque;
some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime
of fairy-lore. What was really intended, and was performed, at a
great cost of toil and organizing skill, was the opposite of all
this. All the best elements of a great and glorious ceremonial
were displayed--colour and form and ordered motion; noble music
set to stirring words; and human voices lifted even above their
ordinary beauty by the emotion of a high occasion. The climax,
wisely ordered, was our tribute of gratitude to the United States,
and never did the "Battle-hymn of the Republic" sound its trumpets
more exultingly. For once, the word "Ritual" might with perfect
propriety be separated from its controversial associations, and
bestowed on this great act of patriotic pageantry. It was, in the
truest sense, a religious service, fitly commemorating the entry
of all the world's best powers into the crowning conflict of light
with darkness.
[Footnote *: Under the direction of Madame Clara Butt (May, 1918).]