_Peace-Work_
To become the spiritual voice of a nation is a rare experience, and
in the history of the race it has come to the individual but seldom.
But when it happens, he is a greater power than military leader, or
politician, or popular preacher, unless in one man all three functions
find themselves combined; then, without much justification in fact,
a people may mistake the combination for the more rare and genuine
article.
It could not exactly be said of Mr. Trimblerigg at this time that
he was a military leader; but the idea had been industriously
disseminated, by his admirers and by himself during the war, that
had he been he would have been a brilliant one. Nor was he exactly a
politician; but he had been very busy and energetic in putting the
politicians right, so that, as they went out of favour in public
estimation, he came in. For the rest, a popular preacher he was, and a
very wonderful one; though it is a curious fact that his sermons and
speeches do not read well in print. Mr. Trimblerigg’s orations were
gymnastic exercises and histrionic performances combined; and these
things lose their effect when reduced to print. Nevertheless he had
now become a Voice, and the sound of him travelled wherever his native
tongue was spoken, war-conditions having given it an atmosphere that it
could fill.
His military instinct he had mainly shown by running about in moments
of crisis and pinning his faith to commanders who up till then had
escaped defeat. When he found he had made a mistake, he dropped them so
quickly that nobody remembered he had ever believed in them; and having
thus discovered three or four and lost them again, he finally hit upon
the right one. Having done that, he did not allow it to be forgotten,
so that the reputation which survived the final and triumphant
catastrophe remained partly his.
His political instinct produced more definite and more solid results;
he persuaded the politicians to do a lot of things which at other
times they would not have dared. Some of these things were not very
scrupulous, and others were not very successful; but they were all
military necessities, and as only the relative truth was told about
them, they took their place in the general scheme of things; and if
they did not exactly do good, they were good for the morale of the
nation for the time being.
And while he thus persuaded the politicians to do things hitherto
impossible for the benefit of the whole nation, he persuaded the Free
Evangelicals also; and in his own time and his own way he secured for
Isabel Sparling and others the desire of their souls which had been
so long denied them. But in that matter, though the thing was done
well and quickly when it was done, he missed something of his intended
effect from the fact that the whole world was then so busy about war
that nothing else seemed much to matter. The sudden admission of women
to the ministry appeared then a mere side-issue, an emergency measure
devised to meet the shortage of men theologically qualified for the
vacant pastorates of congregations abruptly depleted of their young
male element. Thus Mr. Trimblerigg’s very real achievement in the
pulpiteering of women was regarded, even among the Free Evangelicals,
far more as a war-product than as his own.
Also for Isabel Sparling herself, whom he wished to impress, it had
ceased much to matter. She had become a Second Adventist; and among
the Second Adventists it was admitted that women could prophesy as well
as men. Miss Sparling had gone prophesying to America; and had caused
a great sensation in New York by prophesying that Brooklyn Bridge had
become unsafe, and would fall if America did not enter the war. She
gave a date: and America saved Brooklyn Bridge to posterity only just
in time. After that the success of Miss Sparling’s American mission was
assured; and whenever the States seemed momentarily to slacken in their
purpose or diminish in their zeal for the rescue of a civilization they
did not understand, Miss Sparling selected some cherished institution
or monument, and began threatening its life; and when, after due
warning a bomb was discovered inside the statue of Liberty just
preparing to go off, she got headlines for Second Adventism which had
never been equalled since Barnum’s landing of Jumbo (representative of
a still older civilization than that which was now imperilled) some
forty years before.
All this is told here merely to indicate what a match to himself Mr.
Trimblerigg had missed by not marrying Isabel Sparling in the days of
his youth. Had they only put their heads together earlier, kingdoms
might have come of which the world has now missed its chance--not
knowing what it has missed; for there can be no doubt that its
spiritual adhesions are not now what they were ten years ago; the
pulpit has sagged a little on its foundations and congregations have
become critical, sceptical even, though they still attend. The doctrine
of Relative Truth has undone more than it intended; and though Mr.
Trimblerigg was not a disappointed man at the moment when war declared
itself over, disappointment was waiting him.
Not at first, as I say. At first, no doubt, as he pulled the wires,
he thought he was plucking from harpstrings of gold, harmonies which
could be heard in Heaven. But his atmosphere affected him; and just
when victory brought him spiritual opportunities such as had never
been his before, he had a sharp attack of the Old Testament, and his
self-righteousness became as the self-righteousness of Moses and the
prophets all rolled into one.
It was then, perceiving that a huge and expectant public was waiting
for him to give the word, that he sent forth the fiery cross bearing
upon it as the battle-cry of peace the double motto ‘Skin the
Scapegoat,’--‘Hew Agag.’
Both sounded well, and both caught on, and for a brief while served
the occasion: but neither made a success of it. The skinning of the
scapegoat lasted for years; but in the process, it became so denuded
by mange that when the skin was finally obtained it proved worthless.
As for Agag he did not come to be hewn at all, walking delicately; on
the contrary he ran and hid himself in a safe place, where, though the
hewers pretended that they meant to get at him, they knew they could
not. And as a consequence Agag remains unhewn to this day.
And, as a matter of fact, almost from the first, Mr. Trimblerigg,
having given his public what it wanted, knew that it would be so.
He also knew that in high places it was willed that it should not be
otherwise. And here may be recorded the bit of unwritten history which
brought that home to him.
Everybody to whom mediumistic spiritualism makes any appeal has, in
these last days, heard of Sir Roland Skoyle, the great protagonist
of that artful science, by which in equal proportion the sceptics
are confounded, and the credulous are comforted. And that being,
up-to-date, its chief apparent use in the world, it is no wonder
that a certain diplomatist turned to it when he launched his great
peace-making offensive, after the War was over. For diplomacy having to
make its account equally with those who are sceptical of its benefits,
and those who are credulous, it seemed to his alert and adaptable
intelligence that a little spiritualism behind the scenes might give
him the aid and insight that he required.
The direct incentive came from Sir Roland Skoyle himself. He had
secured a wonderful new medium, whose magnetic finger had a specialized
faculty for resting upon certain people of importance--people who had
been of importance, that is to say--in high circles of diplomacy; and
amongst them some who had been largely instrumental in bringing the
world into the condition in which it now found itself. Among these--the
war-makers and peace-makers of the immediate past--it was natural, war
being over, that the latter should be in special request, where the
problem of diplomacy was to construct a peace satisfactory to that
vast body of public opinion which had ceased to be blood-thirsty on a
large scale, but whose instinct for retributive justice to be dealt out
to the wicked by a court of their accusers had become correspondingly
active.
Sir Roland Skoyle, anxious to impress the Prime Minister with the value
of his discovery, had the happy thought of employing Mr. Trimblerigg as
his go-between. And Mr. Trimblerigg having heard a certain name, august
and revered, breathed into his ear, together with the gist of a recent
communication that had come direct, was not averse from attending a
séance in such select and exalted company. He had an open mind and
plenty of curiosity, and the idea of sharing with the Prime Minister
a secret so compromising that no one else must know of it, strongly
attracted him.
And so the sitting was arranged. And there in a darkened room the four
of them sat,--Sir Roland, the medium, Mr. Trimblerigg, and the Prime
Minister.
The medium was small and dark, and middle-aged; she had bright eyes
under a straight fringe and she spoke with a twang. There was no doubt
which side of the water she had come from. Until the previous year,
except for a few days after her birth, her home had been the United
States. The actual place of her birth was important; it helped to
account for her powers; Sir Roland having recently discovered that
the best mediums were people of mixed origin, born on the high seas.
This particular medium, having been born in the mid-Atlantic, was
Irish-American.
The theory of sea-born commerce with the world of spirits I leave to
Sir Roland Skoyle and his fellow experts. My own reason for referring
back to birth and parentage is merely that when the medium had entered
into her trance she no longer spoke that rich broth of a language
formed from two which was natural to her; but acquired an accent and a
mode of delivery entirely different; the accent having in it a faint
touch of the Teutonic, the delivery formal, well-bred, and courtly;
even when the speech was colloquial there was about it a touch of
dignity. And while she so spoke, in a manly voice, the little woman sat
with an air like one enthroned.
The Prime Minister sat jauntily, thumbs in waistcoat, and listened as
one interested and amused, but not as yet convinced. To Mr. Trimblerigg
he said chirpily, ‘If the other side got wind of this, and used it
properly, they could drive me out of office.’
‘That makes it all the more of an adventure,’ replied Mr. Trimblerigg.
‘I should be in trouble too. The Free Evangelical Church has pronounced
against--well, this sort of thing altogether: “Comes of evil”.’
Sir Roland said, ‘In a year’s time we shall have the whole world
converted.’ But Sir Roland was always saying that. Still, table-turning
and its accompaniments had certainly received a great impetus since the
War; for which reason Mr. Trimblerigg took a friendly view of it.
The medium’s first remark in her changed manner was sufficiently
startling and to the point:
‘Where is my crown?... Put it on.’
Sir Roland resourcefully picked up a small paper-weight, on which a
brass lion sat regardant, and deposited it precariously on the medium’s
hair.
‘Who’ve you got here? Not Eliza, I hope?’ said the Voice.
Sir Roland, in a tone of marked deference, gave the names of the
company. Two of them were graciously recognized. ‘Mr. Trimblerigg? We
have not had the pleasure of meeting him before. How do you do, Mr.
Trimblerigg?’
Mr. Trimblerigg, at a gesture from Sir Roland, bowed over the hand the
medium had graciously extended.
‘Do I kiss it?’ he inquired, doubtful of the etiquette.
Sir Roland discreetly shook his head. The ceremony was over.
There was a pause. Then: ‘Faites vos jeux, Messieurs!’ said the Voice.
This was unexpected to all; and to one cryptic.
‘What does that mean?’ inquired Mr. Trimblerigg, in whose Free Church
training French had not been included.
The Prime Minister rose lightly to the occasion. ‘It means, or it
practically means, ‘Make your Peace, Gentlemen.’ Then, to the unseen
Presence: ‘The game is over sir,--well over. Now we have only to
collect the winnings.’
This statement of the facts was apparently not accepted: the game was
to go on. ‘Couleur gagne!’ went the Voice; and then again, ‘Faites vos
jeux, Messieurs.’
‘Our present game,’ respectfully insisted the Prime Minister, ‘is to
make peace. To you, therefore, Sir, we come, as an authority--in this
matter of peace-making a very special authority. We as victors are
responsible; and we have to find a solution. The peace will not be
negotiated, it will be dictated. The question is on what terms; under
what sanctions; with what penalties? Under a Democracy such as ours--’
‘Don’t talk nonsense,’ came the Voice, ‘Democracy does not exist.
Invite public opinion; say you agree; then ignore it, and do as you
think best. Sanctions? You will not get good work from a man while the
rope is round his neck; he wastes time and brain thinking how soon he
will die. Penalties? Yes: if you think you can get hold of the really
responsible ones.’
‘We think we can,’ purred the Prime Minister.
‘Dig up the dead, eh? That was the mediæval notion. You tar and feather
their corpses, and you hang them in chains: most indecent, and no good
to anybody. One of them is here now,--“The Man in the Iron Mask” as we
call him,--a much improved character, his world-politics a failure,
they no longer interest him; he plays on the French horn,--badly, but
it amuses him; when he strikes a false note he calls it the Double
Entente. He means that for a joke. He says they may dig him up and
hang him in chains of iron, or brass, or glass-lustre, or daisies, or
anything else if it amuses them. But you are not proposing to hang
anybody, are you?’
Mr. Trimblerigg, voicing his notion in the scriptural phraseology which
had prompted it, explained that skinning for the one, and hewing, not
hanging, for the other was the process proposed.
‘Who is your man?’ the Voice inquired sharply.
Agag was indicated.
Came a dead pause; then, very emphatically, ‘I won’t have him here!’
said the Voice.
_Here?_ His auditors looked at each other in consternation.
What on earth, or above earth, or under earth, did ‘here’ mean?
The Prime Minister and Mr. Trimblerigg had both by now become convinced
that they were in the actual Presence that had been promised them. But
they could not admit to the world, or even to themselves, that there
was a possibility of Agag going to the place where the Presence was
supposed to be; or of the Presence being in the place where Agag was
supposed to be going. They sat like cornered conspirators.
‘I won’t have it!’ said the Voice, almost violently. ‘We are not on
speaking terms. He and I do not get on together. Send him to Eliza:
she’ll manage him!’
This was more awful still. The Presence and ‘Eliza’, it seemed, were
not in that happy reunion which for Christian families is the expected
thing. Yet as to where Eliza had gone no reasonable doubt was possible.
‘On ne va plus!’ cried the Voice, and the séance fell into sudden
confusion. ‘I won’t have it! I won’t have it!’ shrieked the medium
coming to, and casting off her crown at the feet of Mr. Trimblerigg.
And the words, beginning in a deep German guttural, ended in
Irish-American.
And that, if the world really wants to know, is why no real attempt
was made to hew or hang Agag, or do anything to him except on paper
in diplomatic notes which meant nothing, and at a General Election
which meant very little more--only that the Prime Minister and Mr.
Trimblerigg were saving their faces and winning temporary, quite
temporary, popularity, which eventually did them as little good as it
did harm to Agag.
The skinning of the scapegoat was not so expeditiously disposed of. In
that case the goat suffered considerably; but the skin was never really
worth the pains it took to remove from his dried and broken bones.
When will modern civilization really understand that its predilection
for the Old Testament, once a habit, has now become a disease; and that
if it is not very careful the world will die of it.
‘Faites vos jeux, Messieurs!’ Play your game! Sometimes you may win,
and sometimes you may lose; but a day comes when you win too big a
stake for payment to be possible. Then the bank breaks, and where are
you?