TWO CONFERENCES.
An International Conference was held in Brussels in 1899, for the
purpose of considering and promoting international action for the
preventive treatment of venereal diseases. As the programme of the
Conference was expressly limited to the administrative and medical
aspects of the question, and took no account of matters of moral
and social order, the Abolitionist Federation declined to take any
part officially in the proceedings, although individual members of
the Federation accepted invitations to attend. The results of the
Conference were a surprise to everyone, being in the nature of a
triumph for Abolitionist principles. The prophets, who had been called
together to bless the Regulation system, found themselves almost with
one accord led by the spirit of truth to curse it. This Conference,
and the Conference of the Federation which took place the same year at
Geneva, were dealt with in _The Storm-Bell_ in three articles, which
are here given with some omissions.
It was very impressive to me and others to hear at our Geneva
Conference an account of the Brussels Conference from Dr. Fiaux of
Paris, who had attended it, and who with others had nobly fought the
battle of the Abolitionists. His report was of such a nature as to
fill our hearts with thanksgiving, wonder and praise. The Conference
of Brussels, as my readers know, was convened with the confessed
purpose of proposing an appeal to the European Governments to establish
a uniform system of Regulation—of in fact patching up, if possible
perfecting and making universal the unlawful and degrading system
which we oppose. The conveners of the Conference were however, it
seems, sincere and open-minded men; and the numerous medical and other
disputants, who came delegated from different countries of Europe, and
who were attached to the evil system, regarding only the material and
medical side of the great question, appear to have been shaken in their
views, and to have been compelled, even by the confessions of some
leading Regulationists, to see that their theories are untenable, and
that the system they have so many years upheld is as it were hanging in
rags, a miserable failure, an old worn out and infected garment, into
which it is worse than useless to introduce patches of new cloth.
Almost all the delegates, of whom the immense majority were
Regulationists, acknowledged during the Conference that they had come
there to learn, implying that they had need of knowledge. There seemed
to prevail an open-mindedness, which had not been anticipated. Some of
the English medical delegates, full of the old prejudices in favour of
the system of combined slavery and license, must have gone home knowing
more than they did before. Finally two resolutions were passed. One
of the resolutions was in favour of an appeal to all the Governments
to take measures for the better protection of minor girls, in order
to prevent their being drafted into the service of organised vice;
and another was to the effect that it is desirable that doctors should
be better educated in the matter of the maladies in question. These
harmless resolutions were voted unanimously.
An observant delegate wrote: “We all have the impression that the
Regulationists now fully recognise us (of the Federation) as a
force which they must in future reckon with.” A clearer idea of the
influence, which was at work in winning for us this victory, was
granted to me while listening to Dr. Fiaux’s report at Geneva. He spoke
of an influence which hovered over the Conference from the first day
to the last; an influence which restrained, which prevented rash or
erroneous propositions, an influence which he believed to proceed from
the gradually increasing tide of awakened and changed public opinion,
and to which he attributed a kind of spiritual force, a restraining
and guiding force. He asserted that it was felt by all, that it tended
to check all violence of opposition, and disposed the minds of the
delegates to accept a position of enquiry, and to begin again afresh
the study of the question, rather than to hold to the conservation
of the system, in which they could not any longer place absolute
confidence. More than once Dr. Fiaux endeavoured to describe this
influence, raising his hands above his head to illustrate something
which hovered over the assembly, resting above it and making itself
felt. Those of us, who have asked that an influence above and beyond
all, that we ourselves by our utmost effort can exercise, might come
to our aid when the opposing principles should thus meet in conflict,
will understand what all this means, and will give thanks.
* * * * *
We have often watched the light thistledown, the winged seed, mount in
the air and disappear, carried by the breeze who knows where? We only
know it will settle somewhere, drop, die, live again, and spring up to
bear in its turn “fruit after its kind.” The career of that special
seed is denounced by cultivators as mischievous. But there are good
seeds also with wings, which silently travel about the world, plant
themselves and bear fruit for which all men bless them. It is of the
latter kind that I want to say a word.
I do not think that as yet any adequate appreciation of the character
of our last September Conference in Geneva, and its results, has
appeared in our English Abolitionist Press. I should like, if
possible, in some degree to supply that omission. That Conference
has been spoken of in several English reports as “a Conference of
members of the Federation.” It was not exactly so. It would be quite
correct to say it was a Conference organised by the Federation (and
splendidly organised it was by the brave little group of members of
the Federation in Geneva). But we have never yet had such a crowded
Conference organised by us, at which were present so few members of
the Federation. We were a mere handful from England. Several of our
allies whom we generally see from other countries did not appear, while
many of our prominent members on the Continent and in England were
prevented from coming by illness or other circumstances. Yet we had
crowded sessions every day and all day. The striking feature of that
Conference was the influx to it of new adherents to our principles,
many of whom we had never seen, or never even heard of. Adherents to
our principles they were, but not members of the Federation; nor did
they, with very few exceptions, become there and then members of the
Federation. And herein lies the encouragement of which I wish to speak.
It is in connection with this fact that I wish my English friends
to take courage and thank God with me. They flocked to us—these new
adherents to our principles from France, from Belgium, from Germany,
from Italy, etc. There were among them persons of many different creeds
and opinions, and an extraordinary number of leaders of the Press from
different countries, more especially of that enlightened Press minority
in France who fought so hard and so noble a battle (in the Dreyfus
case) in favour of justice. There were with us also many distinguished
ladies—distinguished morally and intellectually—who for the first time
greeted us as allies. Those who were at the public evening meeting in
the Great Hall of the Reformation must have been struck by the immense
variety of nationality, character, creed, and opinion of those who
took part in it; and at the same time by the perfect unity, heart, and
downrightness of that vast assembly in regard to the great question
of Justice for which the Federation labours. Many were asking, “How
has this come about? What energising and purifying wind has been
blowing through Europe to bear towards us this new unexpected ‘cloud
of witnesses’ to testify that truth gains ground in its own mysterious
way?”
It seems to me that we—the Federation—are like persons who, wishing
to propagate some beautiful flower, should have carefully laid out a
garden, hedged it round, dug it well, and then sown in it abundantly
the seed which was to produce the beautiful flower. We took great pains
with our garden. We sowed our seeds in rows, neatly and measuredly,
perhaps a little formally. We arranged with our under-gardeners,
training them, and turning them off if they did not suit. Perhaps we
pottered a little sometimes, but always with the one desire at heart
of seeing some day a great harvest of this beautiful flower—a flower
of such pure colour, and wholesome hygienic qualities. Sometimes we
sighed, in times of drought or of failure of “hands” for the work. But
lo! a day came when the assembled gardeners, coming together to reckon
up the results of their work, happened to look over the hedge, and with
astonishment noted that the country all round, fields and hillsides, on
which they had not bestowed any personal labour, were ablaze with the
azure of the beautiful flower which they had cultivated so carefully
in their garden. They had forgotten that seeds have wings, and that
they could silently distance the garden fence and fly afar. So with the
principles which we have cultivated.
There were at Geneva young men, pastors from the French provinces,
whose prayers at our morning devotional meetings were an echo of the
depths of my own heart; and there were young women, some very young,
looking in whose faces I asked myself, “How and where have these
young people learned that zeal for justice, that pity for oppressed
womanhood, and that grave view of life which we of the Federation could
however never, and less now than ever, imagine to be the monopoly of
experienced workers?”
The Conference of Brussels pre-eminently brought to us the lesson of
the “Winged Seed.” The speech of Dr. Fiaux, of Paris, who came from
that Conference to Geneva to tell us its results, was to me full
of teaching of which possibly the speaker himself was not wholly
conscious. It told of the power and silent progress of a truth carried
abroad by the Spirit which “bloweth where it listeth.” The lesson of
the “Winged Seed” goes far beyond our own special crusade. We may apply
it in the darkest times. For Truth (like Love) cannot die. Therefore we
will take heart and labour on, though the End is not yet.
* * * * *
A very friendly critic, in giving a report of the Geneva Conference
in September last, asked the question, “Where was Mrs. Butler?” when
some sentiment or proposition was announced which seemed not quite in
harmony with the principles of the Federation. He added, “But doubtless
her silence was to be attributed to her desire to hold the Federation
together. She is naturally concerned about the Organisation.” I wish
to answer the question, and to rectify the mistaken impression. I
was absent from the discussion in question. I am not able to listen
to discussions from morning to night, owing to diminished strength
of body, and I must leave matters in the hands of younger and abler
combatants. But on the other matter, my supposed attachment to our
organisation, I want to say a word. I have no faith whatever in
organisations except so far as they are a useful means for making known
a truth or dispensing help to those who need it, and when they are
completely subordinated to those ends. They are apt to become a snare
to those who invent them and work them, unless great care is taken
to revive continually within them the life by which alone they can
usefully exist.
The history of the Jesuits and that of some other great organised
societies are monuments of the idolatrous tendency in human beings,
of their habit of degenerating to the worship of some gigantic and
intricate earthly creation from that of the Unseen, the Living God.
Such organisations may become in time the instruments of a propagandism
the very opposite of that proposed by their founders; and they may end
by following in the stately march of a cruel and murderous Juggernaut,
crushing the life out of men and women, and all bespattered with the
“blood of the poor innocents.” Short of such a ghastly development
as this, vast organisations (the leaders of which may come to be
themselves misled by pride or vanity, or the praise of man, to imagine
that the life is still in their wheels when it is fast passing out
from them) become effete, lifeless and unfruitful. The more they are
in evidence before the world, the more showy they become, the more do
they lose real power. Their hold on God is insensibly loosened, their
members forget the command to “call no man master.” There creeps
in upon them frequently a tyrannising spirit. Their leaders become
a prey to the great delusion of the Russian ecclesiastical tyrant,
that uniformity is a beautiful thing, and that it represents power.
Uniformity is _not_ a beautiful thing. There is no uniformity in God’s
creation, either in the natural or the spiritual world. The insistence
on uniformity crushes out individuality and hinders initiative. It
clips the wings of the best human gifts and capacities. It introduces
the opposite of that “glorious liberty of the children of God,” which
sets each soul free to develop into that good thing which He created
it to become. “You shall all speak alike, all work in the same way,
all adopt the same manner, and obey implicitly the same rule.” This
command is itself paralysing to freedom and to individual development
and power. But when it comes to, “You shall all _think_ alike, all
_believe_ the same things, all receive what your leaders teach, and
act in accordance with a uniform creed,” then there comes down a
spiritual blight, which ultimately leaves a body without a soul. It is
best then that such an organisation should break up and disappear. If
its existence is prolonged it may become the tenement of a spiritual
influence which is directly evil, while still wearing the outward garb
of what was originally good.
But our humble Abolitionist Federation! Is it likely to incur such a
fate? No, I do not believe it ever will, for up to now it has continued
humble; moreover it has never been strongly centralised, and never in
any sense has it been tyrannised over by those who may be called its
leaders. It is a union of free workers, who are at liberty to work
along their own lines and in their own methods, in each country and
each group. I hope it will not surprise any of my readers if I say that
I should not grieve or be greatly disturbed if our Federation were to
break up and fall to pieces to-morrow. Observe that I do not here speak
of the people who form it, of the friends and fellow-workers of years
past, as well as of welcome new-comers whom I trust and love. These are
the life of the work. They are the living beings in whose souls reside
the deep conviction, the strength of principle, and the unselfish
purpose which have carried on our propagandist work till now, and which
will continue to carry it on, with or without any special organisation.
These persons will always have a warm place in my heart, for they have
been and are my revered “yoke-fellows” in a just and holy cause; and
when their own life-work is over they will bequeath to those who come
after them the _spirit_ which alone has made our labours fruitful. All
my care is for the principle which we have been called to proclaim,
not for the machinery through which the drudgery of the work has been
facilitated. God does not need our poor machinery. He can create other
methods of spreading a truth, if those now existing had better come to
an end.
There is a deep meaning in that mysterious vision of Ezekiel, of the
living creatures and the wheels. They were together lifted up from the
earth, and guided through space wherever God willed; the wheels, wheel
within wheel, an intricate mechanism, moved upwards and onwards, with
the ease and power of a soaring eagle, because the Spirit was in the
wheels, the Spirit which was as lamps of fire and as lightning. I have
sometimes thought if the Spirit had left those creatures and that mass
of wheels, with what a crash they would have come down to the ground!
So long as we have that Spirit, even our wheels will have life, and our
humble organisation will continue, as it has done till now, to glide
past all dangers, and to win true hearts to our cause.