often in the simplest, the least sophisticated. Those who live nearest
the truth of their own hearts are nearest to the hearts of others. Those
who have known the realities of the world, and what Life is close to the
earth--they are the same in all lands--they have at least the key to the
understanding of each other. The old needs of life, its destinies and
fatalities, its sorrows and joys, its exaltations and depressions
--these are the same everywhere; and to the manual workers
--the peasant, the labourer, the sailor, the mechanic--the
world-old trades, pursuits, crafts, and callings with which they are so
familiar supply a kind of freemasonry which ensures them even among
strangers a kindly welcome and an easy admittance. If you want to travel
in foreign lands, you will find that to be skilled in one or two manual
trades is better than a high official passport.
Among such people there is no natural hatred of each other. Despite all
the foam and fury of the Press over the present war, I doubt whether
there is any really violent feeling of the working masses on either side
between England and Germany. There certainly is no great amount in
England, either among the country-folk or the town artisans and
mechanics; and if there be much in Germany (which is quite doubtful) it
is fairly obviously due to the _animus_ which has been aroused and the
_virus_ which has been propagated by political and social schemers.
We have had enough of Hatred and Jealousy. For a century now commercial
rivalry and competition, the perfectionment of the engines of war, and
the science of destruction have sufficiently occupied the nations--with
results only of disaster and distress and ruin to all concerned. To-day
surely another epoch opens before us--an epoch of intelligent
helpfulness and fraternity, an epoch even of the simplest common sense.
We have rejoiced to tread and trample the other peoples underfoot, to
malign and traduce them, to single out and magnify their defects, to
boast ourselves over them. And acting thus we have but made the more
enemies. Now surely comes an era of recognition and understanding, and
with it the glad assurance that we have friends in all the ends of the
earth.
We--and I speak of the European nations generally--have talked loudly of
our own glory; but have we welcomed and acclaimed the glory and beauty
of the other peoples and races around us--among whom it is our privilege
to dwell? We have boasted to love each our own country, but have we
cared at all for the other countries too? Verily I suspect that it is
because we have _not_ truly loved our own countries, but have betrayed
them for private profit, that we have thought fit to hate our neighbours
and ill-use them for our profit too.
What a wonderful old globe this is, with its jewelled constellations of
humanity! Alfred Russel Wallace, in his _Travels on the Amazon_ (1853,
ch. xvii), says: "I do not remember a single circumstance in my travels
so striking and so new, or that so well fulfilled all previous
expectation, as my first view of the real uncivilized inhabitants of the
river Uaupés.... I felt that I was as much in the midst of something new
and startling, as if I had been instantaneously transported to a distant
and unknown country." He then speaks of the "quiet, good-natured,
inoffensive" character of these copper-coloured natives, and of their
quickness of hand and skill, and continues: "Their figures are generally
superb; and I have never felt so much pleasure in gazing at the finest
statue as at these living illustrations of the beauty of the human
form." Elsewhere he says[31]: "Their whole aspect and manner were
different [from the semi-civilized Indians]; they walked with the free
step of the independent forest-dweller ... original and self-sustaining
as the wild animals of the forest ... living their own lives in their
own way, as they had done for countless generations before America was
discovered. The true denizen of the Amazonian forests, like the forest
itself, is unique and not to be forgotten."
Not long ago I was talking to a shrewd, vigorous old English lady who
had spent some forty years of her life among the Kafirs in South Africa
and knew them intimately. She said (not knowing anything about _my_
feelings): "Ah! you British think a great deal about yourselves. You
think you are the finest race on earth; but I tell you the Kafirs are
finer. They are splendid. Whether for their physical attributes, or
their mental, or for their qualities of soul, I sometimes think _they_
are the finest people in the world." Whether the old lady was right (and
one has heard others say much the same), or whether she was carried away
by her enthusiasm, the fact remains that here is a people _capable_ of
exciting such enthusiasm, and certainly capable of exciting much
admiration among all who know them well.
Read the accounts of the Polynesian peoples at an early period--before
commerce and the missionaries had come among them--as given in the pages
of Captain Cook, of Herman Melville, or even as adumbrated in their past
life in the writings of R.L. Stevenson--what a picture of health and
gaiety and beauty! Surely never was there a more charming and happy
folk--even if long-pig did occasionally in their feasts alternate with
wild-pig.
And yet how strange that the white man, with all his science and all his
so-called Christianity, has only come among these three peoples
mentioned (and how many more?) to destroy and defile them--to flog the
mild and innocent native of the Amazons to death for greed of his
rubber; to rob the Kafir of his free wild lands and blast his life with
drink and slavery in the diamond mines; to degrade and exterminate the
Pacific islanders with all the vices and diseases of "civilization"!
Think of the Chinese--that extraordinary people coming down from the
remotest ages of history, with their habits and institutions apparently
but little changed--so kindly, so "all there," so bent on making the
best of this world. "At the first sight of these ugly, cheery, vigorous
people I loved them. Their gaiety, as of children, their friendliness,
their profound humanity, struck me from the first and remained with me
to the last."[32] And the verdict of all who know the people well--in
the interior of the country of course--is the same. Think of the
Japanese with their slight and simple, but exceedingly artistic and
exceedingly heroic type of civilization.
Or, again, of the East Indian peoples, so unfitted as a rule for making
the best of this world, so passive, dreamy, subtle, unpractical, and yet
with their marvellous spiritual gift, their intuition (also since the
dawn of history) and conviction of another plane of being than that in
which we mostly move, and their occasional power of distinctly sensing
that plane and acting on its indications. Think of their ancient
religious philosophy--their doctrine of world-unity--absolutely
foundational and inexpugnable, the corner-stone of all metaphysics,
science, and politics, and of the latest most modern democracy; and
still realized and believed in in India as nowhere else in the world.
Think of the gentle Buddhistic Burmese, the active, social Malays, the
hard-featured, hard-lived Thibetans and Mongolians. Think of the Arabian
and Moorish and Berber races, who, once the masters of the science and
comforts of civilization, of their own accord (but in accordance also
with their religion) abandoned the worship of all these idols and
returned to the Biblical simplicity of four thousand years ago--having
realized that they already possessed something better, namely, the glory
of the sky and the earth, the sun and the desert sands, and the freedom
of love and adventure. How strange, and yet how natural, that sundered
only by a narrow strip of sea they even now should look back upon all
the laborious, feverish, and overcrowded wealth of Europe and _seeing
the cost thereof_ should feel for it only contempt! For that, indeed,
is actually for the most part the case--though not of course without
exceptions among certain sections of the population.
Or again, the millions and millions of Great and Little Russian
peasants. Big-framed, big-hearted, patient, friendly, with a great
natural gift for association and co-operation, peacefully minded and
profoundly religious; yet superstitious, and capable of rising at any
moment _en masse_ to the call of a great crusade or "holy war"; it might
seem that they hold all Western Europe in the hollow of their hands.
Indeed they constitute not only a hope and promise of deliverance to our
modern world, but also a considerable danger. All depends on how we
dispose ourselves towards them. Should the nations of Western Europe
rouse their hatred by chicanery and mean treatment the result might be
fatal. If their flood once began to move, no battle array of armaments
would be of any use--any more than a revolver against a rising tide--the
flood would flow round and over us. But if on the other hand we could
really reach the heart of this great people, if we could treat them
really generously and with understanding, we should create a response
there, and a recognition, which would remove all risk to ourselves, and
possibly help to free Russia from the great burden of political
servitude and ignorance which has so long oppressed her peasantry.
Or think of the Servians--that hospitable people, good lovers and good
haters, with their ancient, almost prehistoric, system of family
communities surviving down to modern days, and blossoming out in a
perfect genius for co-operative agriculture and Raffeisen banks!
Or the Finns, the Swedes, the Norwegians, and the Danes (if I may class
these together); what a clear, clean-minded, healthy people are these,
so direct in their touch on Nature and the human instincts, so
democratic, bold, and progressive in their social organizations--what a
privilege to have them as our near neighbours and relatives! Or the
Germans, in many ways resembling the last mentioned group, only richer
and more varied in their culture and racial characteristics! Or the
Dutch, so well-based and broad-seated both in body and mind, with their
ample bowels of compassion and their well-equipped brains, so full of
tenderness and of sturdy commonsense, what a gift has been theirs to
Europe, what a legacy of artistic treasure and of heroic record! Or the
Spanish with their beautiful and dignified women, or the French with
their fine logical and artistic sense, or the Hungarians, Greeks, and
Italians!
Have we nothing to do but to prepare engines of death and of slaughter
against all these peoples? Is our main idea of relation to them one of
domination and profit? Have we no use for them but to gain their riches,
and in exchange to lose our own souls? Or shall we, like the Prussians,
seek to "impose" our own standards of so-called culture on them, and
trim their infinite variety and grace to one sorry pattern? These are
all in their diverse glory and beauty as leaves of the one great Tree
whose branches spread over the earth. Whoever understands this, and
penetrating to the great heart beneath, recognizes the same original
life in them all, will possess the secret of salvation; whatever nation
first casts aside the filthy rags of its own self-righteousness and the
defiling and sordid garment of mercenary gain, and accepts the others
frankly as its brother and sister nations, all of one family--that
nation will become the Healer and Redeemer of the World.
It is interesting to find that, according to the Book of Revelation, the
tree of which we have been speaking grows with its roots "in the pure
river of the water of Life, which proceeds from the throne of God and
the Lamb." What exactly the author of the book meant by this passage has
been much debated. It is clear that there is here a veiled allusion to
the Zodiac--that mysterious belt of constellations which runs like a
river round the whole starry heavens, and rises in the constellation of
the Ram or He-lamb--but to debate _that_ question now would be
unprofitable, even were one fully competent to do so. More to the point
is it to see that this remarkable simile has an inner sense applicable
to mankind, and so far independent of any allusion to the Zodiac. This
Tree that is for the healing of the nations has its roots in the pure
water of Life which flows from the great Throne. We have seen in an
early chapter where the roots of Strife between the nations are to be
sought for, and whence they draw their nourishment. They are to be found
in the very muddy waters of domination and selfishness and greed. But
the roots of the Tree of Healing are in the pure waters of Life. Right
down below all the folly and meanness which clouds men's souls flows the
universal Life pure from its original source. The longer you live, the
more clearly and certainly you will perceive it. In the eyes of the men
and women around you you will perceive it, and in the eyes of the
children--aye, and even of the animals. Unclean, no doubt, will the
surface be--muddied with meannesses and self-motives; and among those
classes and currents of people who chiefly delight to dwell in the midst
of such things (who dwell in the floating mire of malice and envy and
self-assertion and avarice and conceit and deceit and domination and
other such refuse), the waters will be foul indeed; but below these
classes, among the simple, comparatively unselfconscious types of
humanity who everywhere represent the universal life (without, in a
sense, being aware of it), and again, above them, among those whose
spirits have passed "in compassion and determination around the whole
earth and found only equals and lovers," the water flows pure and free.
These two groups--between them forming far the largest and most
important mass of human kind--are those whose influence and tendency is
toward peace and amity. It is only the scurrying, avaricious,
fever-stricken, and, for all their wealth, poverty-stricken classes and
cliques of the civilization-period who are the sources of discord and
strife--and they only for a time. In the end it will be found that by
every river and stream and tiny brook over the whole earth grows the
invincible Tree of Life, whose roots are deep in the human heart, and
whose leaves are for the healing of the Nations.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] _My Life_, vol ii, p. 288.
[32] G. Lowes Dickinson, _Civilizations of India, China, and Japan_,
p.43. See also Eugene Simon, _La Cité Chinoise,_ passim.
* * * * *
APPENDIX
[The following extracts, mostly from contemporaneous sources, are
gathered together in an Appendix with the object of throwing
side-lights, _often from opposing points of view_, on the questions
raised in the text.]
* * * * *
APPENDIX
A NEW AND BETTER PEACE.
"If we now destroy the German national idol, it must not be to set up an
idol of our own in its place. There will be ruin enough after the war to
repair, and a heavy task for all the nations in repairing it; but if
they have learned then that peace is not a disguised war but a state of
being in which men and nations alike pursue their own ideas of
excellence without rivalry, then we shall know that the irrevocable dead
have not died in vain."--_"Times" Literary Supplement_, _September_ 17,
1914.
* * * * *
THE CHANGE FROM THE GERMANY OF KANT AND GOETHE AND SCHUBERT TO THE
GERMANY OF TO-DAY--AND THE DELUSION OF IMPERIALISM.
"What, then, has wrought this wonderful change in a people so closely
allied to ourselves, whose race is so similar that their children in the
hotels of France and Italy are mistaken for British children? The human
raw material is the same, and until half a century ago gave results
which won our respect and admiration. What is this change of the last
half-century which from the same material gives results so different?
There can be only one answer. The old Germany was a Germany of small,
self-governing States, of small political power; the new Germany is a
'great' Germany, with a new ideal and spirit which comes of victory and
military and political power, of the reshaping of political and social
institutions which the retention of conquered territory demands, its
militarization, regimentation, centralization, and unchallenged
authority; the cultivation of the spirit of domination, the desire to
justify and to frame a philosophy to buttress it. Some one has spoken of
the war which made 'Germany great and Germans small.'..."
"...So in our day, it is not the German national faith, the
_Deutschtum_, the belief that the German national ideal is best for the
German--it is not that belief that is a danger to Europe. It is a belief
that that German national ideal is the best for all other people, and
that the Germans have a right to impose it by the force of their armies.
It is that belief alone which can be destroyed by armies. We must show
that we do not intend to be brought under German rule, or have German
ideals imposed upon us, and having demonstrated that, the Allies must
show that they in their turn have no intention of imposing their ideals
or their rule or their dominance upon German peoples. The Allies must
show after this war that they do not desire to be the masters of the
German peoples or States, but their partners and associates in a Europe
which none shall dominate, but which all shall share."--_From "Shall
this War End German Militarism?" by Norman Angell_.
* * * * *
GERMAN PUBLIC OPINION IN 1913 WITH REGARD TO THE IMPENDING WAR.
The Report on this subject given in the French Yellow Book (Section 5)
throws much light on the attitude of the various classes in Germany. In
favour of peace (it says) are "the large mass of workmen, artisans, and
peasants, who are peaceful by instinct"; a considerable number of
non-military nobility, and of "manufacturers, merchants, and financiers
of minor importance, to whom even a victorious war would bring
bankruptcy"; also a vast number of those who are continually in a state
of "suppressed revolt against Prussian policy," like the "Government and
ruling classes of the great southern States, Saxony, Bavaria,
Wurtemburg," and so forth.
On the other hand, in favour of war are the great, mainly Prussian, war
party, consisting of the military aristocracy and nobility "who see with
terror the democratization of Germany and the growing force of the
Socialist party"; "others who consider war as necessary for economic
reasons found in over-population and over-production, the need of
markets and outlets"; the great _bourgeoisie_, "which also has its
reasons of a social nature--the upper middle class being no less
affected than the nobility by the democratization of Germany ... and,
finally, the gun and armour-plate manufacturers, the great merchants who
clamour for greater markets, and the bankers who speculate on the Golden
Age and the indemnity of war. These, too, think that war would be good
business."
The whole paper is too long for extensive citation here, but is well
worth reading.
* * * * *
POLITICAL IGNORANCE IN GERMANY.
"On Tuesday last at the Union Society Mr. Dudley Ward, late Berlin
correspondent of the _Daily Chronicle_ and other English papers, and
Fellow of St. John's College, dealt with 'The War from the German Point
of View.' Mr. Ward's profound knowledge of Germany, especially since
1911, and his obvious attempt to review recent events with impartiality,
was a revelation to Cambridge, and a very large audience showed its
enthusiastic appreciation of his ability and his frankness.
"Mr. Ward emphasized particularly the _astonishing political ignorance_
of the German people as a whole, an ignorance quite unintelligible to
any one unacquainted with their Press and their political institutions.
Public opinion, as he said, counts for little in Germany, and the
Government can generally guide it into any direction it may please, and
this fact is essential to the understanding of the events--diplomatic
events--which led to the declaration of war."--_From the "Cambridge
Magazine," December 5, 1914._
* * * * *
"One of the political phenomena of America has always been the
indifference of the German to active participation in politics. Efforts
to persuade him to organize with any political party have never
succeeded except in isolated cases. The German-American has been
regarded as an independent politically. Until Europe's conflict raised
concealed characteristics to the surface the German-American's
indifference to politics had not been looked upon as a serious
matter."--_From article by Alt. John Herbert in the London "Daily News,"
December,_ 1914.
* * * * *
GERMANY'S PURPOSE.
_According to Herr Maximilien Harden's article in "Die Zukunft," as
reproduced in the "New York Times," December, 1914_.
"Not as weak-willed blunderers have we under-taken the fearful risk of
this war. We wanted it. Because we had to wish it and could wish it. May
the Teuton devil throttle those whiners whose pleas for excuses make us
ludicrous in these hours of lofty experience. We do not stand, and shall
not place ourselves, before the Court of Europe. Our power shall create
new law in Europe. Germany strikes. If it conquers new realms for its
genius, the priesthood of all the gods will sing songs of praise to the
good war.
"We are at the beginning of a war the development and duration of which
are incalculable, and in which up to date no foe has been brought to his
knees. We wage the war in order to free enslaved peoples, and thereafter
to comfort ourselves with the unselfish and useless consciousness of our
own righteousness. We wage it from the lofty point of view and with the
conviction that Germany, as a result of her achievements and in
proportion to them, is justified in asking, and must obtain, wider room
on earth for development and for working out the possibilities that are
in her."
* * * * *
ENGLAND'S PERFIDY.
_From the Manifesto of Professors Haeckel and Eucken, September, 1914._
"What is happening to-day surpasses every instance from the past; this
last example will be permanently characterized in the annals of the
world as the _indelible shame of England_. Great Britain is fighting for
a Slavic, semi-Asiatic Power _against Teutonism_; she is fighting, not
only in the ranks of barbarism but also on the side of _wrong and
injustice_, for let it not be forgotten that Russia began the war,
because she refused to permit adequate expiation for a miserable
assassination; but the blame for extending the limits of the present
conflict to the proportions of a world-war, through which the sum of
human culture is threatened, rests upon England.
"And the reason for all this? Because England was _envious_ of Germany's
greatness, because she was bound to hinder further expansion of the
German sphere at any cost! There cannot be the least doubt that England
was determined from the start to break in upon Germany's great conflict
for _national existence_, to cast as many stones as possible in
Germany's path, and to block her every effort toward adequate expansion.
England lay in wait until the favourable opportunity for inflicting a
lasting injury upon Germany should come, and promptly seized upon _the
unavoidable German invasion of Belgian territory_ as a pretext for
draping her own brutal national egotism in a mantle of decency.
"_Or is there in the whole world a person so simple as to believe that
England would have declared war upon France, had the latter Power
invaded Belgium?_ In that event, England would have shed hypocritical
tears over the necessary violation of international law, while
concealing a laughing face behind the mask. The most repulsive thing in
the whole business is this hypocritical Pharisaism; it merits only
contempt.