but there are certain ills that are added to the inevitable ones either
by greed of gain, indifference to progress or a determination to make
profit at the expense of the State. We have in our midst at all times
certain people who are concerned only with their own ends, and who
regard all the means to those ends as legitimate. War time reduces the
measure of restraint that the common sense of the community imposes
upon its greedier members. They find and seize their hour when normal
conditions are upset. It would be easy to multiply instances, but in
writing this paper I am concerned with one only--the employment of
children on farms.
To the average man who does not know a swede from a turnip or the
difference between sainfoin and clover this is a small matter; to those
of us who know the land and its problems, who administer estates large
or small, who are morally if not legally responsible for the happiness
and well-being of village communities, it is a tragedy.
I can remember hearing my elders talk of the bad old days when the
gang system prevailed all over England. The ganger was a contractor of
irregular labour. He would enter a district in charge of his wretched
company of men, women, and children, and would supply their labour at
fixed rates to the farmer who needed it. He charged so much a day for
each hand; he saw to it that one and all did their full day's work.
They were fed abominably, housed in barns and out-houses, and lived in
a promiscuity that would revolt a gipsy. At last even the thick-skinned
countryside could endure the abomination no longer, and the "ganger"
disappeared. It took years for the Legislature to discover that, apart
from the cruelty involved in the custom, it was creating fresh material
for gaols and asylums, that children needed education rather than field
labour, that the mothers could not combine maternity with hard work in
the fields, that if you deprive people of the means of living decently
they will revert to the state of savagery.
The agricultural labourer's struggle has not been limited to the land.
He has been fighting for years to raise his miserable wage. When I
was a girl it was about a shilling a day with "small beer" of the
farmer's brewing thrown in. It is about 3_s._ 6_d._ a day now; but
against this the price of necessities has gone up between 50 and 100
per cent. Saving is impossible, and even the old age pension that
lightens the evening of his long day hardly avails to keep him from
the workhouse--unless he has a wife of equal age or children who, out
of their tiny means, will render a little assistance. He lives in a
cottage that, if often picturesque, is nearly always overcrowded;
his food and clothing are of the roughest, and for holidays he has
Christmas Day and the wet weather, when he may sit at home--at his own
expense--for when there is no work there is no pay. But he lives in
hope; and sometimes he goes on strike, to the disgust and indignation
of his employer, and his children have been getting a better chance in
life than he had. They are supposed to be kept at school until they are
fourteen. He was rook scaring at the ripe age of ten for a penny a day.
Rural education is a poor thing enough. Children may have to walk
two miles or more, in all weathers, to the village school. Their
father cannot afford to buy them good boots or a water-proof coat; it
is beyond his means to give them nourishing food, and so help them
to fight the diseases of childhood; but he feels that something is
being done for them, and, as a rule, he does nothing to make them
wage-earners before their time. Now they are taken from school two
years before an age that the trade unions hold to be insufficient;
they are sent on the land to work for a wage of eighteen pence a
day, in any weather, on any soil, without the proper clothing and
with insufficient food. There they will undersell the rural labour
market, they will be robbed of their childhood, they will go without
supervision at a time when they need it most. And the Bumbles of our
Education Councils have nodded thick, approving heads.
It is hard to write patiently of such retrograde devices, put forward,
as all such proposals are, in the name of the country's needs. If
these needs be genuine, which I doubt, if there be no adequate supply
of female labour to be obtained for a fair price, why should the
children of our poorest, the little ones whose physique has never been
strengthened by sufficient nourishing food and by the hygiene of the
home, be called upon to bear the burden single-handed? Why should not
Eton and Harrow, Rugby, Marlborough, Winchester, and other schools
without number, serve the national need? The lads at these expensive
establishments can at least complete their education after the war,
they can carry health and strength to the fields, they can acquaint
themselves at first hand with the realities of labour, a knowledge
that, with the changing times ahead, will be valuable to many of
them who will inherit land in days to come. Will the farmers who
are sending to the fields the half-grown children of their ill-paid
labourers contribute their own to work by their side? I am sure that
the mere suggestion will rouse the wildest indignation; but all the
children, whatever their advantage or disadvantage, are British
citizens, and it is not too much to suggest that those who have a stake
in the country should at least do as much as those for whom fortune
provided no birthright. Let us be democratic in deeds as well as words.
I am quite sure that, if the doubtful privilege extended to the rural
labourer's children were conferred at the same time upon the children
of all patriots, the councils would expunge their fatuous resolutions
from their minute books; they would make all possible haste to forget
them.
But it may be urged that, in pleading for the children, I have
overlooked the crying needs of the countryside, that I am ignorant of
the real need for labour to deal with the increased area of the corn
and for the late-sown spring crops, for it is clear that, as soon as
the proposal for universal child labour is made, the scheme falls to
the ground.
I am well aware of the existing conditions--what landlord is not?--and
I have a remedy for them. It is not a popular one, but I am not
searching for popularity. In spite of the genuine sacrifices that have
been made by many classes of the community, much more remains to be
done. We have all over the country racing stables full of lads who
cannot go to the war and of men who have passed serviceable age. Hard
work in the fields from April to the time the last corn is under the
stack thatch would do them all the good in the world, and, with some
knowledge of all classes of horses, I believe that horses would survive
and the superiority of the British sires would not be lost.
Having depleted the racing stables, even at the cost of reducing the
number of race meetings, I would turn my attention to the golf clubs:
their name is legion. What an army of "ineligible" caddies might be
recruited for the fields and given the chance of earning a living
intelligently! I go so far as to hint that thousands of the elderly
gentlemen who still pursue the golf ball might find more useful
occupation in ministering to the country's genuine needs.
Let me pass from one monstrous suggestion to another. I would enroll
the gamekeepers and the gillies; for once I would leave the wild
pheasants to breed as they will and the grouse to work out their own
salvation. A desperate remedy, but then our disease is dangerous. We
need corn even more than pheasants, and other game birds can look after
themselves. There might be an epidemic of poaching, in which case I
would sentence every poacher to three months' hard labour--on the
land. We have in this country to-day hundreds, I might say thousands,
of sturdy middle-aged men who are now following occupations that, while
they are perfectly reasonable in times of peace, are superfluous, even
derogatory, to-day.
There is yet another class that can be mobilised to serve the country's
need. I would like to see the last remaining footmen and the valets of
middle age allowed to enjoy a summer of useful activity. They, too,
may be in their right place at normal times; now their country needs
them more than their masters do. A little hardship would be involved,
but I do not believe there are many employers of superfluous or
ornamental labour who would, if the matter were put before them fairly
and temperately, place their own petty comforts before the country's
need for food. We hope and believe that we may rely upon our Fleet to
feed us, but why should we run risks? No war is won until it is lost,
and if by ill-fortune we experienced a shortage, I do not think that
the owners of racing stables, the renters of shooting and fishing, the
members of golf clubs and the employers of men servants could acquit
themselves of a serious responsibility. If all these sources of supply
are tapped, and it is still found that the supply of labour in the
fields is inadequate to the nation's needs, let us proclaim a national
holiday in all the schools of the country, and let the high and the low
born, the rich and the poor, seek the fields together. But until all
sources of adult labour have been exhausted let us spare the little
ones, and in any case let us see that those whose share of the good
things of life is smallest are not called upon to endure trials and
make sacrifices that we would shrink from demanding of our own children.
VIII
COMRADES
In times when national emotion is deeply stirred it is possible for
the close observer to get a glimpse of the main trend of thought.
Just as a feather will show the direction of the wind, a word may
show the direction of a man's mind. It is on this account that I was
deeply moved and greatly stimulated of late by hearing that as the
gallant Frenchmen attack the enemy their rallying cry is "Camarades,
Camarades!" This is one of the most beautiful words in any language,
it is the one by which a nation may rise to the height of its greatest
achievement, whether in clearing its beloved land of a hated enemy or
clearing its administration of the abuses from which no administration
is free. One hardly dares to think of what the world might be like
to-day if war had not been needed to establish the wonderful unity the
word bespeaks.
There is not on all the earth a more democratic army than that of
France, and to-day it is a perfect union, a veritable brotherhood. From
the highest General to the humblest "piou-piou" there is but one aim,
one ideal, prince and peasant pursue it to the end. One and all know
that if success is to be achieved against heavy odds, it is by the
help of the real brotherhood, the feeling that the accidents of birth
and fortune do not count any longer, that "a man's a man for a' that."
Other countries have caught a glimpse of the truth, our own among the
number, but it needed French clarity of vision to recognise the truth
and crystallise it in a word--a simple word with the mystic number of
letters and so powerful that, when it becomes the rallying cry in times
of peace for all civilised nations, the evils under which men and women
labour will be swept away like chaff before wind.
For many years past I have been convinced that the enemies of mankind
are not men. Ignorance, poverty, greed, vice, disease, these are the
foes that prey upon all communities, and while those who foster them
are of no brotherhood, those who would combat them need no more than
brotherhood in order to overcome. War, in which a man makes the supreme
surrender, in which he discounts the terror of death and makes purposes
splendid by his devotion, reveals the truth even to those who have
never thought before. Will brotherhood survive war, or does it need the
exaltation born of the greatest of world tragedies to open a nation's
eyes--and keep them open?
The history of our civilisation depends upon the answer to this
question. Nothing less than brotherhood will enable the nation to face
the widespread poverty that already exists, but will not be recognised
until peace is restored. There will be very little money left in the
countries of combatant nations, and there will be very many needs. The
care of the wounded, the maimed and the helpless, provision for the
widows and the children of war will come first. Then there are the
schools; nothing is more vital to the future generation than education,
and few great claims are more in danger of a grudging treatment.
There are two ways of handling a nation's affairs, one is to make the
rich richer at the expense of the poor, the other is to make the poor
less poor at the expense of the rich. The peaceful solution of the
whole problem is found in the battle call of our gallant Allies. If we
are "camarades, bons camarades!" we can endure our national privations
and scarcely feel them, for we shall all be in the same boat, and it
is not poverty that galls but the contrast between poverty and wealth.
Down to the time when war began this contrast was ever present, it was
becoming one of the great dangers of our time; it has not disappeared
to-day, but it is far less noticeable, and as we continue to spend
between thirty and forty million pounds a week on war, the cases of
contrast will tend to grow less and less. I look for the time when men
and women will find it as distressing to flaunt riches as the poor find
it to display the outward and indisputable signs of poverty. One does
not envy even now the state of mind that enables a man to say that he
is "doing very well out of this war."
Among "comrades" such a thing would be impossible, the only excuse for
making money out of national misfortune is to be found in its wise
distribution to alleviate the suffering that war renders inevitable. To
amass wealth from the country's needs, to spend it on purely personal
ends, to allow an orgie more terrible than the Black Death to fill
private coffers, this surely is the negation of brotherhood, and those
who do it are the outcasts of civilisation, even though they purchase
palaces and peerages and every honour that unscrupulous Governments
vend in semi-privacy. How will the men who have thrown their lives into
the scale tolerate the men who trafficked in the necessities of life,
or the implements of death, and demand the high places as a reward for
successful huckstering? They will not lightly reckon them in the ranks
of the "comrades"; in a world founded on brotherhood there will be no
place for them. If there be a place in the near future perhaps it will
be the nearest lamp-post. Stranger things have happened.
Sometimes I think we could afford to lose this war, or, at least, not
to win it, if the Frenchman's battle call could become the rallying
cry of all parties and all grades in this country. Much as I loathe
war and all it stands for, I feel that an instant victory would have
been very bad for us, while a success won by waiting must at least
purge our national life of the grosser elements. The mingling of high
and low, of rich and poor, the price of strife demanded of each and
all, the community wrought by suffering and by heavy loss, all these
things are salutary for a nation grown plethoric by prosperity. It will
not greatly matter if we lose half the world and gain our own souls,
for the simple reason that an England wide-eyed, clean-limbed, and
efficient could yet achieve and retrieve, while an England besotted
by sloth and bemused by riches can only endure until the advent of a
stronger and more determined race.
Whatever our destiny, whatever the future holds in store, we shall
be happy indeed if we can face difficulties, dangers, privation, or
supreme victory with the cry of "Comrades!" When war came, this country
was fast sinking towards civil strife, drifting for lack of the spirit
of good fellowship. A few masters, innumerable men, industry organised
into limited liability companies that the human touch, the community
between employer and employed, might cease, the wealth of the country
divided on lines that gave 90 per cent. to a tenth of the population
and divided the remaining one-tenth of the wealth between 90 per cent.
of the people who create it,--these conditions were making for a social
upheaval of bloodiest kind. Education starved, an infant mortality
greater than the present waste of war, discontent, ill-feeling, class
hatred, all these things were, all these things may be again, but not
if the cry of "Comrades!" is taken up.
Whether we win or lose, I see civil unrest inevitable, for this war has
sounded the death-knell of the old industrial, social, and political
conditions. Nothing within the range of possibility can leave us just
where we are, and worse than the struggle with an enemy is the struggle
with a friend. Though I hold all war to be fratricidal, yet civil war
must ever remain the worst form of it. As soon as the old problems
force their way again to the fore the danger of civil strife becomes
imminent, and let us remember that the working classes that come back
from war will have forgotten what fear means. It seems to me that
salvation lies in the Frenchman's fighting cry, that in giving his
brothers a lead he has offered a lead to civilisation. He has shown us
how to make the inevitable changes peacefully.
Idealism is out of fashion to-day because--let us not burke the
truth--our idealists were deceived about Germany's intentions, and
those in high places unconsciously misled the people. Yet let us cling
to our ideals, for they may prove our best possession, and let us
realise that the cry of "Comrades!" may, as years pass and the old
bitterness dies away, extend across frontiers and bind in a common
brotherhood the sons of the men who sought to destroy one another. Such
is the potency of a word that revivifies life, laughs at wounds and
disarms death. It sums up the aspirations of the greatest reformers
and social workers of old time, of the men, from John Ball to William
Morris, who strove for England. Only the French people, with their
innate sense of selection, could have picked upon a word that can sum
up the best of the ideals of the human race. We are their debtors for
it, and there is no nobler way of paying the debt than by developing
the cry until it resounds from one end to the other of our Empire. It
will renew our youth, it will destroy many of the old evils that were
even worse than war, it will realise the ambitions of men who lived and
died for England in times of peace, when there is no reward for social
heroism other than the consciousness of a supreme effort made on behalf
of people one may never see, people who will never understand.
If the future of the world is with sane, wide-eyed democracies; if man
is to be free to do the world's work and develop human destiny without
turning aside at the bidding of kings and rulers; if humanity, with its
common lot and destiny, is to develop the spirit of brotherhood that
makes life beautiful,--we could have no finer rallying cry than France
has offered. I do not believe that the country capable of originating
and responding to it can be beaten by sheer weight of numbers; I
feel that it is one of the world's assets, and that somewhere in the
background the Great Force we strive to comprehend, and, comprehending,
to worship, will guard it against ultimate defeat. To doubt this
were to believe that the race is to the swift and the battle to the
strong, and that the man who can invent the most efficient machinery
can dominate God's world. Such a belief is to me the most unpardonable
form of atheism. This world was not made, was not populated, was not
instructed, that soulless machinery might hold it in thrall at last.
The French know this, hence the battle cry that thrills me as I write.
IX
THE CURSE OF AUTOCRACY
In the great gale that sweeps over Europe the few rags that hide the
nakedness of monarchy flutter like scarecrows; I find myself watching
for the gust that will reveal to the gaze of the least discerning what
a dangerous and ridiculous thing the bare bones of kingship have become.
England has filed the teeth of the serpent, it can bite no more--the
phrase is Swinburne's not mine. We keep our kings as we keep the
Regalia in the Tower, well housed and well looked after, and
between the ruler and the ruled there is a pleasant, but indefinite
relationship. Kingship for us is the focus of patriotism and loyalty,
but we should not go to war because the house of Guelph were jealous of
the house of Hapsburg, or on bad terms with the house of Hohenzollern.
Those German pundits who believe that King Edward made the Anglo-German
war have never grasped our national attitude toward monarchy, or King
Edward's ungrudging recognition of the merits of the German people.
With us monarchy is an abstraction, very little more.
There was a time when it was supposed to be the fountain of honour, but
politicians have fouled the waters so much and have bought and sold
honours so unblushingly that modern royalty would be a little ashamed
to father so large an illegitimate progeny. A business nation, we have
a fixed price for everything. We pay our kings so much a year, and if
they exceeded their allowance the State would hesitate to make up the
deficit. Baronies, baronetcies, knighthoods and the rest have their
fixed price, generally, though not invariably, payable to the party
whips who consider themselves morally bound to deliver the goods.
When we were on the brink of war in 1914, M. Poincaré wrote a touching
letter to King George, such as an old-time king might have sent
to a brother sovereign. King George signed a reply that has been
published--one would wager that nothing save the signature involved his
heart or his pen. It was no more than the letter of a greatly harassed
minister who was trying to think while he balanced himself on a high
and unstable fence. Here was ample evidence that all who run might read
of the final surrender of the monarchy, and incidentally, of the desire
of England to maintain peace.
Nobody wants more than the shadow of kingship in this country.
Everybody with more than the most perfunctory knowledge of history
has realised that half the wars of the world have been fought for
the gratification of kings, and most of the others have been waged
in the name of religion, i.e. to demonstrate the superiority of one
orthodoxy over another. Slowly, and at such a sacrifice as the world
may well shudder to contemplate, we have come within sight of the end
of religious strife. There remain wars of kingship, the present one is
little more than that.
Down to a few years ago the old gates were still standing at Temple Bar
to divide the City from Westminster. At Warwick Castle the drawbridge
is still raised every night. In some of the cities of Southern Spain
watchmen, armed with spears and oil lamps, still proclaim the time of
night and the state of the weather. The "Miracle" of the Sacred Fire
remains an annual spectacle at Eastertide in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre that is in Jerusalem.
The world, as though conscious of the ugliness of so much that is
modern, still clings to old customs and institutions even when they are
absurd. That is why autocratic kingship survives.
The house of Hapsburg has been ruling in Europe since the thirteenth
century; in Germany as well as Austria for part of the time; the
rule of the Hohenzollerns dates from 1871. A German, Count Berthold,
is said to have originated in the eleventh century the house of Savoy
that governs Italy. In Spain we find the ubiquitous Hapsburgs and the
Bourbons sharing rule. A Hohenzollern is in Rumania, and on the distaff
side in Greece. A Princess of the Hohenzollern house was the mother of
King Albert of Belgium; Ferdinand of Bulgaria has Coburg and Bourbon
blood.
A system of inter-marriage has retained power in the hands of a few
houses, but nature is ill-disposed toward inbreeding and has scourged
the cunning of kings with insanity and disease. While democracy has
grown in stature and in vision, while it has been claiming its own
place in the sun, the small privileged class has diminished physically,
mentally, morally, but still clings desperately to place. There are a
few brilliant exceptions, Albert of Belgium for example, but Hapsburgs,
Hohenzollerns, Coburgs, and Bourbons are, generally speaking, no longer
qualified from any standpoint to rule the destinies of free peoples.
They are a little better than well-connected anachronisms, avid of the
power that is passing from them and ready to offer any sacrifice that
their subjects are capable of making in order that their time-tarnished
prestige may shine again.