_WORTHY OF A GREAT PAST_
These are times when it means much to know where some things are
whose roots run far back and deep down. Before me as I write is a
cathedral-shaped block of age-bevelled and worm-eaten English heart
of oak. Its miniature spires rise not at all unlike those of a Gothic
cathedral. It came from one of the original roof-beams of Holy Trinity
in Hull, the largest parish church in England. As the warden placed
it in my hands, his arm swept the high and vaulted nave and he said,
"Six hundred and thirty-four years ago it was placed here." Six hundred
and thirty-four years ago! Two hundred and eight years before Columbus
started on his journey! Six centuries, and nearly a half more, before
I stood there that fragment was part of a mighty support lifted by the
hands of men and fitted above an altar that even then stood upon the
ruins of another altar.
America is very young, but in a new and very vital way she now enters
into the brave and worthy things of the past.
Six weeks in England and Scotland during a campaign for wartime
prohibition gave me a vivid picture of the motherland and her
unrelenting traditions, her customs anchored in the ages, her
unyielding might. It was early in the year; but even so the fields had
begun to smile, the grass was green, and presently the hedges began to
bud. The khaki-colored lanes--for soldiers were on every path--were
bursting into song; there were birds everywhere.
I walked by the Humber, down which some of the Pilgrim Fathers sailed;
and in Southampton far to the south I stood before the new Pilgrim
monument just in front of the ruins of King John's water-palace. Here
John Alden, "a youth of the city," joined the immortal company; and
from the dock hard by the Mayflower sailed.
I wandered down the streets Dickens has immortalized, and I climbed
the "keep" of Conisboro, and stood in the window where Sir Walter
Scott placed Rebecca and the wounded Ivanhoe. I heard my footsteps
echo through the cathedrals of London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. That
supremely exquisite creation at York, a spectacle of worship, burst
upon my enraptured gaze like a palace from heaven.
At dusk I followed Canon Braithwaite through the cathedral at
Winchester, England's ancient capital. It was at the close of a vesper
service of song and prayer. Here twenty-three of England's kings are
buried, and here until Henry VIII. all were crowned. Here the Crusaders
came for their parting consecration; across these Norman tiles they
tramped ere they turned their faces toward the distant sepulchre; here
is "Bloody Mary's" wedding-chair, the gift of a pope; and the great
Canute, whose kingly dust reposes somewhere beneath the nave, after he
had learned his lesson from the tide that refused to obey his will,
left his crown upon the figure of the Christ just above this old altar.
In one portion of the cathedral space is an ancient well that was in
the temple of Diana erected nineteen hundred years ago upon the spot
now covered by the cathedral itself.
While the gray-haired canon talked of the priceless treasures for which
he has long been responsible, the choir-boys began their practice.
The music filled the mighty building, and rang in a hundred echoes
from column to column and from the tiles of the floor to the perfectly
joined stones of the vaulted roof. The flare of our torch so lighted
the sculptured figures that they seemed alive and moving through the
air; the singing became the voices of these men and women, some of whom
were good, all of whom were human, and who spoke so long ago.
I found particular satisfaction in treading the stones of Rochdale,
the city of John Bright. Here during our Civil War, in spite of
"soup-kitchens" and pestilence, the cotton-workers stood against
any petition to the English government to demand the lifting of the
blockade of the Southern ports. John Bright's influence for freedom
was quite as effective at home as it was in Parliament.
Scotland gave me the continuation of the story British men and women
are writing in blood around the world, a story of sacrifice and
devotion unsurpassed in history. The pages of the story blend with the
pages that recite the glory of Wallace at Bannockburn and of Robert
the Bruce. From Castle Stirling I looked out across the windings of
the firth; from that Gibraltar of Scottish kings my eye followed
the massive wanderings of the Grampians. I caught just a glimpse of
the Burns country at Dunoon, the home of Highland Mary, where her
wonderful bronze memorial looks out across the estuary of the Clyde.
Here is the home of another Scottish bard, Harry Lauder. He is a singer
of a different sort, but he plays upon the same harp of which his
illustrious fellow countryman was such a master. From the depths of a
supreme sorrow he has lifted up a new song that has comforted a weeping
world. Some day his fellow townsmen will rear another monument where
the little city looks out toward the sea. On it will be the name of the
gallant "Captain John," Harry Lauder's heroic and only son.
But my wartime journey was not one of aimless wanderings. It brought me
to many shrines; it brought me face to face with those who fight the
battles of Britain and those who lead them, into the homes of a people
whose hospitality, even as their courage and devotion, is unsurpassed
throughout the world. But it was a trip seriously intended and with
stern business involved.
A representative group of men and women, compelled by what they
regarded as immediate necessity, organized a prohibition educational
campaign for the purpose of bringing to the British people testimony as
to the actual results accomplished by the prohibition of the beverage
liquor in Russia, Canada, and the United States. Witnesses were
introduced from abroad, and a great series of meetings was arranged.
Both prohibitionist and anti-prohibitionist supported the unique
effort, which was a gigantic educational clinic. The addresses of the
speakers were educational rather than agitational, and an open forum in
which questions were freely asked and answered was a prominent part of
each programme.
Wide publicity was secured and a vast attendance. Some of the most
prominent political leaders, members of the clergy, ministers,
professional men, manufacturers, labor executives, and writers, as well
as all of the officials of the reform, gave the movement their support.
Dr. Sir George Hunter, the distinguished publicist and shipbuilder, was
chairman of the central committee.
The executive genius of the campaign was a brilliant young Canadian
who led the amazing drive that made the Province of Ontario dry, Mr.
Newton Wylie of Toronto. Wylie is a wonder! A broken back keeps him
out of the army, but in spite of virtually constant suffering, he is a
human dynamo, virile and indefatigable, with the double personality of
an inspirational leader and an executive. The campaign he generalled
in Great Britain was a great success. It addressed one million people
from the platform and millions more through the daily and religious
press, arrested the attention of political leaders, destroyed the
sophistries of the trade, answered the questions of honest doubters,
and overwhelmed the arguments of the opposition. As to the supporters
of prohibition and the leaders of the many temperance groups, it
brought them close together, and gave them unity for final action. As
the result of the campaign war prohibition was brought perceptibly
nearer. When it is brought about, Great Britain will have taken one
more step in her age-long history of progress, a mighty step toward the
victory which means peace and freedom for mankind.