among their women no shirking of duty in that regard. Very soon the
white man will realise that he cannot maintain his old position unless
he is fully prepared to accept responsibilities far greater than those
of his forebears. If the rate of his progression falls while that of
the other races rises, there can only be one solution in the end,
such a solution as "Coriolanus" speaks of in the scathing lines I have
quoted. In short, if the white man's burden is to be borne there must
be sufficient white men to bear it. Statesmen will labour in vain and
the friends of progress will strive to no end if the start that the
other races have gained is to be increased, and the white women of the
world must decide whether or no they are content that not only their
own nation but the whole standard of life for which they stand is to
be submerged, or whether by a generous interpretation of the duties of
motherhood they will enable their people to remain in the future as
they have been in the past. We cannot tell what the final harvest of
war will amount to, but with the dead, the diseased and the disabled,
it will probably run into ten figures, more than five times the measure
of human sacrifice demanded by all the great wars that shook the world
from Blenheim to Omdurman. Even these monstrous figures do not tell the
whole tale, for there will be among the dead, thousands of men whose
talent might have developed into genius, and there will be hundreds of
thousands of widows left in the full flush of womanhood, with all their
possibilities unfulfilled, and, in countless cases, beyond the reach of
fulfilment. To put it brutally, our civilisation that stands in bitter
need of its best breeding stock has deliberately slaughtered a very
large percentage of it.
This, indeed, is race suicide in its worst form, and just as woman
hopes by her emancipation to dam the tide of war, so she must step into
the breach and dam the tide of loss. Emancipation will do very little
for women if when they have obtained it they find the best elements
of the white races increasingly unable to stand the strain imposed by
war. They will not forget that the black man's women are bought to tend
his land and enable him to live in ease or that the Mohammedan in the
enforced seclusion of the harem may share his favours among four lawful
wives and as many concubines as his purse can furnish. As the standard
of civilisation declines, woman, by reason of her physical weakness,
must pay an ever increasing penalty; only when it has risen to heights
unreached before the war may she hope to come into her own and to
realise ambitions that, dormant or active, have been with her through
the centuries. The whole question of her future has been brought by the
war outside the domain of personal or even national interests, suddenly
it has become racial.
Down to a little while ago the solution was not in woman's hands,
to-day it belongs to her, she has to decide not only for herself, but
for all white mankind. It is not too much to say that civilisation, as
we know it, will soon be waiting upon her verdict. If this statement
seems too far reaching, if it seems to challenge probability, let
those who think so turn to any good history of the world and see for
themselves how each civilisation has been overwhelmed as soon as it
reached the limits of its efficiency and endurance. In the history of
this planet, changes no less sweeping than that which I have indicated
have been recorded, the Providence that has one race or colour in
its special keeping is but the offspring of our own conceit. The
real Providence that dominates the universe treats all the races on
their merits. If, and only if, the best types of women will embrace
motherhood ardently, bravely content to endure the discomforts and
discover for themselves the infinite pleasure, can the earth, as we
know it, survive the terrible shock it has received. Even then the
recovery will be slow, and the price to be paid will be bitter beyond
imagining, but we shall in the end win through, though I who write and
you who read may well have settled our account with mortality before
the season of full recovery dawns upon a wasted world. Should we fail
in our duty then we must pass as Babylon and Egypt and Rome passed
before us, to become no more than mere shadows of a name.
The least among us may dream dreams and see visions. My own dream and
my own vision are of woman as the saviour of the race. I see her
fruitful womb replenish the wasted ranks, I hear her wise counsels
making irresistibly attractive the flower-strewn ways of peace. I see
the few women who encourage war turning from the error of their ways,
and those who have spurned motherhood realising before it is too late
the glory of their neglected burden. And I believe with a faith that
nothing can shake that with these two changes and a wise recognition
that the fruits of the earth were given to us all not in accordance
with our gifts, but in the measure of our needs, a new season may come
to this distracted world. Should all the high hopes of our noblest
suffer eclipse, should all the travail of the Christian era be brought
to nothingness? I have too much faith in my sex to believe it will
let the world perish if the real meaning and significance of its duty
can be brought home to it. We have been ill educated, we have been
spoilt, we have been corrupted, but for all that there is a certain
soundness at the heart of woman. She has not shrunk from the duties she
understands, even the lapse from grace that recent years have revealed
will not outlive this understanding.
The responsibility for spreading the truth rests upon all who recognise
it. There are countless women throughout the world who by sheer force
of character can influence their women friends and have learned that
the vital problem of sex is not rightly to be treated as though it
were not fit for discussion. They are scattered over all the cities of
the world; the cumulative effect of their labours would be immense,
irresistible. I am sure that the perils I have outlined are known
and feared in the Old World and the New, that they are mentioned in
the highest quarters of London, Paris, and Washington, and that the
transitional period separating words from deeds must needs be brief
because the problem does not brook delay. Many women will respond
without questioning to the call of duty. Some, whose life struggle can
be understood only by those who share it, may ask first that their
offspring shall be treated as what they are, State assets, and not
abandoned to all the evils of poverty. Others will want to know that
they are not raising sons to become the "cannon fodder" of kings and
statesmen. In the light of the needs of the white man's world, and the
weight of the white man's burden, are even these assurances too much to
ask?
XVI
THE LESSONS OF THE PICTURE THEATRE
It came upon me with a sudden sense of revelation, for when I went into
the theatre my thoughts were heavy with the weight of war. The friend
with whom I had dined had insisted, and though at first I had refused,
she had compromised with my objections. "Come and see some pictures,
if you cannot face a three-act play," she had said. "I can promise you
something quite remarkable, and when you have had enough, just rise and
I will follow." But in the end it was my friend who suggested leaving,
because she had a long day's work before her and knew that I too had
an engagement nearly two hundred miles from town. And when I told her
that she had shown me more than she herself had seen, and that I would
not have missed that couple of hours' illumination on any account, she
merely said she would not attempt to understand, but was very glad.
I have been greatly concerned with problems of peace and war from
the woman's view-point. So many women have written to me about the
question, some from far-away corners of the States, others from
remote English country-sides. I feel the ferment in the blood of every
thinking woman; I know how surely and inevitably the time is coming
when men and women must face the problem of world control side by side.
It has seemed to me that only one force can avail to end war, and that
is the force of education supplementing the efforts and strengthening
the bands of brotherhood. But how should one make the dry bones of
education live for those to whom education is now no more than dry
bones? We can reach the children whose imagination is yet immature, how
reach the grown up, immersed in the struggle for life and bringing even
to their leisure the harassed mind and tired brain? How make the path
clear, how stir to the depths their slumbering sense of the world that
lies beyond their working day? When I went into the Scala Theatre in
London the problem was a baffling one, when I had seen "The Birth of
a Nation" I realised the truth that such pictures in the hands of men
with insight and vision may yet move the world.
We of England may well forget the follies of our forebears, and the
American with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins may well forgive them,
while both tingle with pride at the accomplishment of those "Mayflower"
Pilgrims who paved the way for the coming of a nation destined I think
in the near future to become the wealthiest, most powerful, and, one
hopes, the most progressive on the face of the earth. But who realised,
save in a vague and uncertain fashion, the true glory of America's
brief history? Who could visualise the scenes to which statesmen and
orators recur from time to time? Of the general public few indeed if
any, to the rank and file the experience of seeing the past flower into
life before them must have been such a one as Keats describes--
"Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken,
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
A few deep thinkers, men with vivid minds, must of course have seen
beyond the limited vision of the multitude, or nothing so sweepingly
comprehensive, so splendidly realistic, so artistically complete as
"The Birth of a Nation" could have been devised. It is poetry almost
in the sense that Hardy's "Dynasts" is poetry, while its educational
value, appealing as it can to young and old, learned and illiterate
alike, is very real. Whatever the commercial value, and this I am glad
to think must be great, the value of the spectacle as a force for the
promotion of the highest order of patriotism is greater still. I can
only feel delighted to think that such a task could be so carefully
undertaken and so satisfactorily achieved.
A picture play may not seem at first sight a very great medium for
presenting the truth about history or even a single facet of the great
diamond of life; at least if I am honest with myself this would have
been my own opinion down to the date of my visit to "The Birth of a
Nation." I had misjudged the scope of the picture play in the light
of the hoardings, vulgar, fantastic, or silly, that make the streets
of even the small provincial towns more than necessarily offensive.
I did not understand that in the hands of capable and imaginative
artists, not only the present can be put before us, but the past can
be reconstructed, and the future suggested. How it would help us to
understand not only ourselves, but others of the great group of nations
if we could see the history of all countries presented with something
of the skill and sincerity that have gone to these graphic outlines of
America's past! Often in Warwick Castle, as I have pondered some of the
records of bygone time and half-forgotten history, I have marvelled at
the pageant that is suggested, but never realised by the pages before
me. If we could bring our history before ourselves would it not teach
us more of our triumphs and mistakes than any book? And if the history
of the struggles and endeavours of other nations could be faithfully
presented, would there not be in the vision something to make us more
sympathetic, more ready to realise that we are all passing along the
same road, a narrow bridge of consciousness spanning the river of life
that flows through eternity, with dreamless sleep or life beyond our
ken on either hand? Would it not help to teach us that for the people
of every race that brief spell of consciousness is associated with so
many self-made troubles that the hell of the obsolete theologians is
rendered quite superfluous? We cannot in normal times hate the men,
women, and children of another race merely because they are not of our
own. The same virtues, the same strivings, the same uprising towards
the elusive light are shared in common. So, too, are the prejudices and
errors with which we strive. Presented with sympathy, and, above all,
with humility, the history of the birth and subsequent struggle of all
the nations would be a potent force for peace, because it would be the
first aid to understanding.
I think that the men and women who have paid their vows to peace,
those who, while realising that the present war must go on to the end,
will make any sacrifice to deprive it of a successor, may find in
the picture play, carefully conditioned to the needs of our fateful
times, the fulcrum that will enable them to move the world. I can
see it passing from the domain of the theatre to the lecture hall. I
can see the best features of the enterprise enlarged and developed
until at last the benefits of travel and a knowledge of history are
put before those who under normal conditions--or rather the conditions
that the Moloch of commercialism has made normal--would never be able
to enjoy either. I hold and shall always hold, that the ultimate
power of directing their lives is in the hands of the people, it is
not rightly in the gift of Kings or Kaisers, diplomats, statesmen, or
soldiers. The sunrise of peace waits upon the dawn of knowledge, of
knowledge that can be acquired by men, women and grown-up children of
the working classes, the classes that accomplish all that is worth
accomplishing, and pay the fullest penalty of the greed and vanity of
those who live upon their labours. But, as I have so often insisted,
the workers are inarticulate, particularly in the southern counties
and round the metropolis of England; they do not breathe the fresh air
of the north, and it is notorious that London ruins the breed of the
workers. The greater the city, the greater the unemployment, the keener
the competition, the readier the acceptance of conditions that make
men the slaves instead of the masters of their task, the smaller the
leisure to think or to study the curious and manifold complexities of
existing conditions. Only by making that study easy and by giving it
the form of relaxation, by stimulating the tired brain, can the worker
be roused. It is a matter of fact rather than of conjecture, that the
picture "palace" is beginning to claim his scanty leisure, and his tiny
surplus over the paramount demands of a minimum of food and clothing.
Democratic in its essence and secure in its appeal, it seems to me
that the picture theatre can be developed to the most instructive and
useful ends. It can teach the working man the history of his own career
and long struggle towards fairer conditions of life and labour, it
can show the world's workers all aiming to reach the same legitimate
goal and it can enforce the lesson that a unity of ideals, and a stern
rejection of the counsels of those who would make mankind his enemies
rather than his friends will make war impossible. It may be that in
America, that great melting-pot, as Mr. Zangwill calls it, of all
jarring nationalities, the lesson is more obvious and more quickly
mastered, but there is a work well-nigh as great to be done in England,
where if the mixing of the nationalities is less noticeable, the need
for knowledge is still greater. The States, wealthy beyond the dreams
of avarice, entirely self-supporting, and utterly unchallenged by any
Power within striking distance, may well laugh in the face of those
who would impose upon them the extravagant horrors of militarism.
We shall have to face militarism over here; it has had its advocates
for many years, and--why deny it?--their position will be immensely
strengthened by the war. We know by now that our rulers cannot save us,
that if we would be saved it must be by ourselves, and we know too that
salvation will be born of knowledge and of knowledge alone. I regard
the picture theatre as the finest medium for the spread of knowledge
now before the public, and I am confident that if the great engineers
of enterprise will devote their energies to the sane peace propaganda
that consists in showing not only the history but the aims of the great
majority of civilised people, the lesson will travel far and sink
deep. "The Birth of a Nation" reveals the infinite capacity of the
master film makers, their resource and resources, the measure of skill
they can command. It also shows by reason of its success the immense
public interest, the desire to learn, and to make use of knowledge.
It is not often that a venture avowedly commercial in its aims can
perform a world-wide service, and I am optimistic enough to believe
that those in charge of such a work as that which is responsible for
my own conversion and enthusiasm will be quick to see that in serving
themselves they can serve humanity.
XVII
TRUTH WILL OUT
It seems only a few years since Truth, if not precisely popular,
enjoyed a certain reputation, a little definite vogue. To tell the
truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was not only a nominal
obligation in the courts of law, but a tradition among a certain
class, small but not negligible, of English men and women. Truth was
found in all sorts of places, you met it sometimes in Parliament,
generally on the back benches, now and again it was seen or suspected
in the Press; it frequented the Pulpit, and was not unknown upon
the public platform if the gathering was not one of the political
rallies that it resolutely ignored. To be sure when intended for the
appreciation or admiration of sensitive folk, it was always dressed up
in garments that hid a part of its native ugliness, and over the hard,
unrelenting features a certain veil, enforcing a decent obscurity, was
scrupulously drawn. The higher Truth climbed in the social scale, the
more the trappings, the thicker the veil, while on the lowest rungs
of the social ladder there were none to supply dress or wrappings,
and Truth stood revealed in such an ugly guise that only the strong
minded dared to look. When they told what they had seen, all those
who lived on any of the rungs above them deplored at the top of their
voices the indecency of the revelation and devised thicker veils and
heavier drapery. And yet for all men and all women, according to their
capacity for looking courageously before them, Truth existed. Among
most of those who live in comfort there was a tradition that Truth had
borrowed the head of Medusa the Gorgon lady who incontinently turned
to stone all those who looked upon her, and was ultimately tricked
out of life and activity by Perseus; on the other hand, the people of
the underworld, the world that does the rough work, had looked upon
Truth and found the cold implacable eyes had in them more of stimulus
than death. They even went so far as to hope that in times yet to come
the robing and veiling of Truth would be regarded as an offence and
the duty of looking Truth straight in the face, would be obligatory
upon kings, statesmen, clergymen, county and district councillors,
journalists and lawyers alike. Against the gross indelicacy of this
democratic suggestion there was not unnaturally a revolt, as many
of those people just mentioned had every reason to fear that such
a decision would rob them of occupations that, if not actually
profitable to their fellow-men, were at least sometimes dignified and
very often lucrative.
Then came War, and the people of all combatant countries formed
amid and despite their bitter antagonisms an unwritten, unsigned
compact to the effect that whatever the divergence of their aims and
policies, they would at least conduct one part of their campaign in
common, against a common foe. Agreements having lost their validity,
it was impossible to reduce this one to writing, and they knew, too,
that actions speak louder than words. So with unanimity that forgot
all causes of dispute, the fighting powers found time and means and
occasion in the midst of their awful traffic to wage war against Truth.
In this country the naked Truth may no longer find a resting place,
if the well in which Truth is said to dwell could be located it would
incontinently be filled up and no material would be regarded as too
poisonous for the purpose. As the well cannot be located, the Defence
of the Realm Act has, in these islands instituted sumptuary laws so
strict that Truth is now robed, veiled, and manacled past recognition.
The delight of those who have suffered from the constant fear of
the apparition, who have found their enjoyment of the feast of life
constantly menaced by the report that Truth was in the neighbourhood,
is unbounded. It is admitted by every government that Truth is one of
the greatest obstacles to the proper progress of universal destruction
and all Governments have substituted in the interests of public
digestion Fiction, a far more popular creation and more palatable too.
They call it by the title of Official Report. If one Report contradicts
and is contradicted by all the others, you can at least pay your money
and take your choice and the task of selection is eased by the certain
knowledge that Truth is not admitted to any.
In the Parliaments of the world responsible speakers have but to
declare that the irresponsible ones are endeavouring to bring back
Truth to the high assembly, and every one of Fiction's countless
adherents will rise in his place to protest. In the pulpit, to which
Truth still seeks admittance, the veil has become a mask, and the
garments have a double thickness, but in the Courts of whatever kind
and in Fleet Street it has been found that the precautions in vogue
before the war are sufficiently adequate.
To any mortal such persecution had been fatal, but Truth is immortal
and persists. Not even the Jews whose sufferings are eternal, or the
Belgians, Poles, Armenians, Servians, and others whose persecution
though intolerable is temporary, strive to recover their vanished
freedom as resolutely as Truth. The harder you use it, the greater
its persistence. Drive it out at the door it returns by the window, an
indefatigable, untiring immortal, seemingly unconscious of the loss
of popularity, convinced that it has a place in the great scheme of
things. It whispers to kings on their thrones, and to chancellors in
their studies, to statesmen on Government and opposition benches, to
clergymen in their pulpits, lawyers in their consulting rooms; passing
by janitor, secretary, and a sub-editorial array, it even invades the
editor's desk, persistent though ignored. Trampled upon, cast aside,
ignored, eviscerated, turned inside out, confuted, obscured, denied,
perverted, misunderstood and damned, it still labours, powerful as in
the days when old Thomas Carlyle watched its progress through the world
and hailed it alone immortal. With a striking disregard of the laws of
emergency and confusion, it declines to be regarded as an enemy alien.
With an utter contempt for a Fiction entrenched behind all the barbed
wires of popularity, it whispers the most disconcerting statements to
those who hoped or believed that it was dead. None can say what form
the instructions, warnings, and admonitions take, but all may guess
them, and the temptation so to do is ever present.