I
THE WILL TO PEACE
(From the _Daily Mail_, 1909.)
I was walking in the district known as Notting Dale looking for signs of
the Millennium, when I saw on a poster these words: “Why England and
Germany must go to war.”
I stood gazing at them in the company of a woman the worse for drink, a
brutal-looking man, a consumptive boy, and a half-starved horse
harnessed to a cart. With the exception of the horse, these persons were
soon replaced by a little labourer with a very sad face, and a
sick-looking woman, in a ragged shawl. When they, in turn, passed on, I
was joined in front of the poster by three girls going home from
work—the sound of whose laughter was like the snapping of dried
sticks—and by a whisky-perfumed man with that peculiar, brazen look in
the eye which is liable to sudden eclipse. These, too, stayed but a
short time, and their places before the poster were filled by two youths
in ragged clothes, with dun-coloured faces, and the stumps of cigarettes
between pale lips. Their foot-steps and obscenity having died away, I
was left alone with the poster and the horse. This horse’s ribs were
conspicuous, and from the size of eggcup-shaped hollows above eyes
covered with a bluish film, he had evidently laboured to the limit of
his capacity. He was resting one thin leg—too hairless at the knee, too
hairy at the heel. Two very young children came now, and, holding each
other’s hands, flattened their noses against the poster in the shop
window. One of them moved her feet continually as if her boots hurt her,
while on the feet of the other were the wrecks of boots.
And I said to myself: In hundreds of towns all over the country, people
like this are standing before that poster, or passing by it. One third
of the population are below the line of reasonable subsistence, another
third are able by the constant employment of every energy to keep their
heads just on that line. We are the richest country in the world, so
that even in organised Germany conditions little better may very well be
prevalent. This poster declares that England and Germany must go to war.
And this poster is no joke, but the indication of a frame of mind.
Moreover, I mused, credit for sincerity being due to all men until the
opposite is proved against them, this frame of mind must be honest and
founded on genuine fear—must be, in fact, the conviction of many, not
only in this country, but in Germany. They contemplate a war between two
nations, two thirds of whose respective populations are as yet barely
able to make a living; a war that means wasting many hundred million
pounds and the earning power of many hundred thousand lives; a war that
will in six months cast on to the dust heap twenty years of social
progress; a war that may well have no semblance of nobility, no great
motto, no inspiring cause, but be a mere sordid struggle between two
business communities, for so-called commercial ends; a war that may be
unparalleled for cold-blooded horror and myopic puerility. And the
poster speaks of this war as if it were inevitable!
Where, I asked myself, can the people who thus think and speak have
lived? Where have they kept their hearts, and brains, and eyes, and
noses? Can they not see these millions of ghosts in their midst? Or do
they think to fatten them by war? Do they think by war to cheapen the
price of bread and coals, to spread education, to foster the growth of
science and of the arts? Will they by war preserve the strongest males
for the improvement of the human stock? Will they by war advance in any
single way the slow process of humanizing a civilization which still
produces in millions the beings who have been standing with me here
before that poster? No—I thought—they will certainly reply: “War is an
evil, but it is necessary; for the human race is divided into breeds,
distinct from one another, and plunged into struggle from their births
up. Only in each country’s jealous preservation of itself can we look
for the welfare of the whole. There is no avail in dreams of peace; no
use in preparation for it; men have always killed each other for their
own advantage and always will; if they did not so kill their neighbours
they could not themselves survive. Life is so conditioned; there is not
enough for all. We know, therefore, that this war must come. We see it
coming. We have fastened our eyes on it. We cannot get out of its way.
We must offer ourselves up in holy sacrifice before this bloody,
predestined monster.”
Well!—I thought—if it is sacrifice you want, look at that horse! Look
at all the people who have stood before this poster! They will take all
your powers of sacrifice before you have done with them! And I, myself,
looked at the horse; with his bleared eyes and the curves at the corners
of his mouth, I thought I had never seen such a cynical-looking
creature. “What are you, after all,” he seemed to be saying to me, “but
a set of sanguinary tailless animals?”
But suddenly the eyes of my mind travelled beyond sight of that poster,
and as in a vision I seemed to see all the great lives men have lived,
all the high thoughts they have conceived, all their wonderful ingenuity
and perseverance and strength of will; how they have always found a way
to fulfil that on which they have set their hearts. And as background to
that vision there seemed disclosed to me the untold, unexploited wealth
of the fields, woods, and waters under the sun. And I thought: “What
that poster says is only true of such as _will_ it to be true. _Where
there is a will to peace there is a way._[7] War between two such
countries, two trustees of civilization need not be inevitable. To
believe that is to blaspheme; to belittle human nature, to deny the
Earth.”
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[7] I recollect that the journal which this poster served to sell
contained an article proposing to prove that war between England and
Germany was inevitable, because of the rivalry between their trades. I
thought then, and think now, that such a reason was revolting. In spite
of all the bitter cry for commercial war that has now arisen, we did not
begin, we never should have begun a war with Germany for such a reason
alone. The war that—alas!—has come, has for us a better cause. None
the less, I freely admit not gauging rightly the state of mind of
Germany’s ruling classes. I always thought the question of war or no war
was a great “toss-up” between the craze for armament and the growth of
international feeling through social democracy. I thought the latter
would win if people would set their wills on peace, and we could tide
over the next few years. I was wrong.—J. G.