PART II

THE AWAKENING

Exoriare aliquis de nostris ex ossibus ultor.--VIRGIL.

I

THE FIRST DAYS

The river glideth at his own sweet will.

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

And all that mighty heart is lying still!

. . . . .

Without Thee, what is all the morning's wealth?

Come, blessed barrier between day and day,

Dear Mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

WORDSWORTH.

It is safe to say that England's exhausted sleep on the night of Black

Saturday marked the end of an era in British history. It was followed by

a curious, quiescent half-consciousness during Sunday. For the greater

part of that day I should suppose that more than half London's populace

continued its sleep.

One of the first things I realized after Monday morning's awakening in

my Bloomsbury lodging was that I must find wages and work speedily,

since I possessed no more than a very few pounds. As a fact, upon that

and several subsequent days I found plenty of work, if nothing

noticeable in the way of wages. I was second in command of one of the

food and labour bureaux which Constance Grey helped to organize, and all

the workers in these bureaux were volunteers.

Another of my first impressions after the crisis was a sense of my

actual remoteness, in normal circumstances, from Constance. Her father

had left Constance a quite sufficient income. Mrs. Van Homrey was in her

own right comfortably well-to-do. But, despite the exiguous nature of my

own resources, it was not the money question which impressed me most in

this connection, but rather the fact that, while my only acquaintances

in London were of a more or less discreditable sort, Constance seemed to

have friends everywhere, and these in almost every case people of

standing and importance. Her army friends were apt to be generals, her

political friends ex-Ministers, her journalistic friends editors, and so

forth. And I---- But you have seen my record up to this point.

Nobody could possibly want Constance so much as I did, I thought. But an

astonishing number of persons of infinitely more consequence than myself

seemed to delight to honour her, to obtain her cooeperation. And I loved

her. There was no possibility of my mistaking the fact. I had been used

to debate with myself regarding Sylvia Wheeler. There was no room for

debate where my feeling for Constance was concerned. The hour of her

breakdown in Fleet Street on Black Saturday had taught me so much.

In the face of my circumstances just then, the idea of making any

definite disclosure of my feelings to Constance seemed impracticable.

Yet there was one intimate passage between us during that week, the

nature of which I cannot precisely define. I know I conveyed some hint

to Constance of my feeling toward her, and I was made vaguely conscious

that anything like a declaration of love would have seemed shocking to

her at that time. She held that, at such a juncture, no merely personal

interests ought to be allowed to weigh greatly with any one. The

country's call upon its subjects was all-absorbing in the eyes of this

"one little bit of a girl from South Africa," as Crondall had called

her. It made me feel ashamed to realize how far short I fell (even after

the shared experiences culminating in Black Saturday) of her personal

standard of patriotism. Even now, my standing in her eyes, my immediate

personal needs, loomed nearer, larger in my mind than England's fate. I

admitted as much with some shamefacedness, and Constance said:

"Ah, well, Dick, I suspect that is a natural part of life lived entirely

in England, the England of the past. There was so little to arouse the

other part in one. All the surrounding influences were against it. My

life has been different. Once one has lived, in one's own home, through

a native rising, for instance, purely personal interests never again

seem quite so absorbing. The elemental things had been so long shut out

of English life. Why, do you know----?" And she began to tell me of one

of the schemes in which she was interested; in connection with which I

learned of a cable message she had received that day telling that John

Crondall was then on his way to England.

The least forgiving critics of "The Destroyers" have admitted that they

did their best and worked well during those strange weeks which came

immediately after the invasion. One reason of this was that party

feeling in politics had been scotched. The House of Commons met as one

party. There was no longer any real Opposition, unless one counted a

small section of rabid anti-Britishers, who were incapable of learning a

lesson; and even they carped but feebly, while the rest of the House

devoted its united energies to the conduct of the country's shattered

business with the single aim of restoring normal conditions. Throughout

the country two things were tacitly admitted. That the Government in

power must presently answer for its doings to the public before ceasing

to be a Government; and that the present was no time for such business

as that of a general election.

And so we had the spectacle of a Government which had entirely lost the

confidence of the electors, a Government anathematized from the Orkneys

to Land's End, carrying on its work with a unison and a complete freedom

from opposition such as had not been known before, even by the biggest

majority or the most popular Administration which had ever sat at

Westminster. For the first time, and by no effort of our own, we

obtained the rule of an Imperial Parliament devoted to no other end than

the nation's welfare. The House of Commons witnessed many novel

spectacles at that time--such as consultations between the leading

members of the Government and the Opposition. Most of its members

learned many valuable lessons in those first weeks of the new regime. It

is to be supposed that the Surrender Riot had taught them something.

It must also be admitted that General, or, as he now was, General Baron

von Fuechter, accomplished some fine work during this same period. It has

been said that he was but consulting the safety of his Imperial master's

armed forces; but credit may safely be given the General for the

discretion and despatch he used in distributing the huge body of troops

at his command, without hitch or friction, to the various centres which

it was his plan to occupy. His was a hand of iron, but he used it to

good purpose; and the few errors of his own men were punished with an

even more crushing severity than he showed where British offences were

concerned.

The task of garrisoning those English ports with German soldiers was no

light or easy one; no task for a light or gentle hand. In carrying out

this undertaking a very little weakness, a very small display of

indecision, might easily have meant an appalling amount of bloodshed. As

it was, the whole business was completed in a wonderfully short while,

and with remarkable smoothness. The judicial and municipal

administration of these centres was to remain English; but supreme

authority was vested in the officer commanding the German forces in each

place, and the heads of such departments as the postal and the police,

were German. No kind of public gathering or demonstration was

permissible in these towns, unless under the auspices of the German

officer in command, who in each case was given the rank of Governor of

the town.

We had learned by this time that the Channel Fleet had not been entirely

swept away. But a portion of it was destroyed, and the remaining ships

had been entrapped. It was strategy which had kept British ships from

our coasts during the fatal week of the invasion. "The Destroyers" were

responsible for our weak-kneed concessions to Berlin some years earlier,

in the matter of wireless telegraphy. In the face of urgent

recommendations to the contrary from experts, the Government had yielded

to German pressure in the matter of making our own system

interchangeable, and had even boasted of their diplomacy in thus

ingratiating themselves with Germany. As a consequence, the enemy had

been able to convey messages purporting to come from the British

Admiralty and ordering British commanders to keep out of home waters.

That these messages should have been conveyed in secret code form was a

mystery which subsequent investigations failed to solve. Some one had

played traitor. But the history of the invasion has shown us that we had

very many traitors among us in those days; and there came a time when

the British public showed clearly that it was weary of Commissions of

Inquiry. Where so many, if not indeed all of us, were at fault, where

the penalty was so crushing, it was felt that there were other and more

appropriate openings for official energy and public interest than the

mere apportioning of blame and punishment, however well deserved.

The issue of what was called the "Invasion Budget" was Parliament's

first important act, after the dispersal of the German forces in

England, and the termination of the Government distribution of food

supplies. The alterations of customs tariff were not particularly

notable. The House had agreed that revenue was the objective to be

considered, and fiscal adjustments with reference to commerce were

postponed for the time. The great change was in the income-tax. The

minimum income to be taxed was L100 instead of, as formerly, L160. The

scale ran like this: sixpence in the pound upon incomes of between L100

and L150, ninepence from that to L200, one shilling from that to L250,

one and threepence from that to L500, one and sixpence from that to

L1,000, two shillings upon all incomes of between L1,000 and L5,000, and

four shillings in the pound upon all incomes of over L5,000.

It was on the day following that of the Invasion Budget issue that I

received a letter from my sister Lucy, in Davenham Minster, telling me

of my mother's serious illness, and asking me to come to her at once.

And so, after a hurried visit to the South Kensington flat to explain my

absence to Constance, I turned my back upon London, for the first time

in a year, and journeyed down into Dorset.

II

ANCIENT LIGHTS

Then the progeny that springs

From the forests of our land,

Armed with thunder, clad with wings,

Shall a wider world command.

Regions Caesar never knew

Thy posterity shall sway.

. . . . .

COWPER.

In the afternoon of a glorious summer's day, exactly three weeks after

leaving London, I stood beside the newly filled grave of my mother in

the moss-grown old churchyard of Davenham Minster.

My dear mother was not one of those whose end was hastened by the shock

of England's disaster. Doctor Wardle gave us little hope of her recovery

from the first. The immediate cause of death was pneumonia; but I

gathered that my mother had come to the end of her store of vitality,

and, it may be, of desire for life. I have sometimes thought that her

complete freedom from those domestic cares of housekeeping, which had

seemed to be the very source and fountainhead of continuous worry for

her, may actually have robbed my mother of much of her hold upon life.

In these last days I had been almost continuously beside her, and I

know that she relinquished her life without one sigh that spelt regret.

Standing there at the edge of her grave in the hoary churchyard of the

Minster, I was conscious of the loss of the last tie that bound me to

the shelter of youth: the cared-for, irresponsible division of a man's

life. The England of my youth was no more. Now, in the death of my

mother, it seemed as if I had stepped out of one generation into

another. I had entered a new generation, and was alone in it.

I was to sleep at my sister's house that night, but I had no wish to go

there now. Doctor Wardle's forced gravity, his cheerful condolences,

rather worried me. So it happened that I set out to walk from the

churchyard, and presently found myself upon the winding upland road that

led out of the rich Davenham valley, over the Ridgeway, and into the

hilly Tarn Regis country, where I was born.

I drank a mug of cider in the quaint little beerhouse kept by Gammer Joy

in Tarn Regis, and read again the doggerel her grandfather had painted

on its sign-board, in which the traveller was advised of the various

uses of liquor, taken in moderation, and the evil effects of its abuse.

Taken wisely, I remember, it was suggested that liquor proved the best

of lubricants for the wheels of life. Mrs. Joy looked just as old and

just as active and rosy as she had always looked for so long as I could

remember; and she hospitably insisted upon my eating a large slab of her

dough cake with my cider--a very excellent comestible it was.

The old dame's mood was cheerfully pessimistic--that is to say, she was

garrulous, and spoke cheerily of generally downward tendencies. Thus,

the new rector, by her way of it, was of a decadent modern type, full of

newfangled "Papish" notions as to church vestments and early services,

and neglectful of traditional responsibilities connected with soup and

coal and medical comforts. Cider was no longer what it used to be, I

gathered, since the big brewers took it in hand, and spoiled the trade

of those who had hand-presses. As for farming, Gammer Joy held that it

was not near so good a trade for master or man with land at fifteen

shillings the acre, as much of it was thereabouts, as it had been with

rents up to two or three pounds, and food twice as dear as now.

"But there, Master Dick," said the old lady; "I suppose we be all

Germans now--so they do tell me, however; an' if we be no better nor

furriners here in Darset, why I doan't know as't matters gertly wha'

cwomes to us at all. But I will say things wor different in your

feyther's time, Master Dick--that they was. Ah doan't believe he'd ha'

put up wi' this German business for a minute, that ah doan't."

I gathered that the new rector was an earnest young man and a hard

worker; but, evidently, those of Gammer Joy's generation preferred my

father's aloofness in conjunction with his regular material

dispensations, and his habit of leaving folk severely to themselves, so

far as their thoughts and feelings were concerned.

The cottagers with whom I talked that summer's evening cherished a

monumental ignorance regarding the real significance of the events

which had shaken England to its very roots since I had last seen Tarn

Regis. Gammer Joy's view seemed to be fairly typical. We had become

German; England belonged to Germany; the Radicals had sold us to the

Kaiser--and so forth. But no German soldiers had been seen in Dorset.

The whole thing was shadowy, academic, a political business; suitable

enough for the discussion of Londoners, no doubt, but, after all, of

small bearing upon questions of real and intimate interest, such as the

harvest, the weather, and the rate of wages.

"Sims queer, too, that us should be born again like, and become

Germans," said one man to me; "but ah doan't know as it meakes much odds

to the loike o' we; though ah hev heerd as how Farmer Jupp be thinkin'

o' gettin' shut o' his shartharn bull that won the prize to Davenham,

an' doin' wi' fower men an' a b'y, in place o' sevin. Well, o' course,

us has to keep movin' wi' the times, as sayin' is; an' 'tis trew them

uplan' pastures o' Farmer Jupp's they do be mos' onusual poor an' leery,

as you med say."

Twilight already held the land in its grave embrace when I made my way

along Abbott's Lane (my father had devoted months to the task of tracing

the origin of that name) and began the ascent of Barebarrow, by crossing

which diagonally one reaches the Davenham turnpike from Tarn Regis, a

shorter route by nearly a mile than that of the road past the mill and

over the bridge. And so, presently, my feet were treading turf which had

probably been turf before the Christian era. Smooth and vast against the

sky-line, Barebarrow lay above me, like a mammoth at rest.

On its far side was our Tarn Regis giant, a famous figure cut in the

turf, and clearly visible from the tower of Davenham Minster. Long ago,

in my earliest childhood, village worthies had given me the story of

this figure--how once upon a time a giant came and slew all the Tarn

Regis flocks for his breakfast. Then he lay down to sleep behind

Barebarrow, and while he slept the enraged shepherds and work-folk bound

him with a thousand cart-ropes, and slew him with a thousand scythes and

forks and other homely implements. And then, that posterity might know

his fearsome bulk, they cut out the turf all round his form, and eke the

outline of the club beside him, and left the figure there to commemorate

their valour and the loss of their flocks. Some three hundred feet long

it was, I think, with a club the length of a tall pine-tree. In any

case, the Tarn Regis lad who would excel in feats of strength had but to

spend the night of Midsummer's Eve in the crook of the giant's arm (as

some one or two did every year), and other youths of the countryside

could never stand a chance with him.

I paused on the ledge below the barrow beside a ruined shepherd's hut,

and recalled the fact that here my father had unearthed sundry fragments

of stone and pieces of implements which the Dorchester Museum curator

had welcomed as very early British relics. They went back, I remembered,

to long before the Roman period; to days possibly more remote than those

of ancient Barebarrow himself. If you refer to a good map you will find

this spot surrounded by such indications of immemorial antiquity as

"Tumuli," "British Village," and the like. The Roman encampment on the

other side of Davenham Minster was modernity itself, I thought, compared

with this ancient haunt of the neolithic forerunners of the early

Briton; this resting-place of men whose doings were a half-forgotten

story many centuries before the birth of Julius Caesar.

I sat down on the grassy ledge and looked out across the lichen-covered

roofs and squat, rugged church tower of Tarn Regis; and pictures rose in

my mind, pictures to some extent inspired, perhaps, by scraps I had read

of learned essays written by my father. He had loved this ancient

ground; he had been used to finger the earth hereabouts as a man might

finger his mistress's hair. I do not know what period my twilit fancy

happened upon, but it was assuredly a later one than that of Barebarrow,

for I saw shaggy warriors with huge pointless swords, their hilts

decorated with the teeth of wild beasts--a Bronze Age vision, no doubt.

I saw rude chariots of war, with murderous scythe-blades on their

wheels--and, in a flash then, the figure of Boadicea: that valiant

mother of our race, erect and fearless in her chariot--

Regions Caesar never knew,

Thy posterity shall sway!

"Thy posterity shall sway!" If you repeat the lines to yourself you may

see the outline of my vision. There at the foot of Barebarrow I saw that

Queen of ancient Britons at the head of her wild, shaggy legions. "The

Roman Army can never withstand the shouts and clamour of so many

thousands, far less their shock and fury," said the Queen. I saw her

lead her valiant horde upon Colchester, and for me the ancient rudeness

of it all was shot through and through with glimpses of the scientific

sacking of Colchester, as I had read of it but a few weeks ago. I saw

the advance of the Roman Governor; the awful slaughter of the British;

the end of the brave Queen who could not brook defeat: the most

heart-stirring episode in English history.

"Thy posterity shall sway!" I recalled the solemn splendour of another

great Queen's passing--that which I had seen with my own eyes while

still a lad at Rugby: the stately gathering of the great ships at

Spithead; the end of Victoria the Good. No more than a step it seemed

from my vision of the unconquerable Boadicea. But to that other

onslaught upon Colchester--to General von Fuechter's slaughter of women

and children and unarmed men in streets of houses whose ashes must be

warm yet--O Lord, how far! I thought. Could it really be that a thousand

years of inviolability had been broken, ended, in those few wild days;

ended for ever?

Lights twinkled now among the nestling houses of the little place where

I was born. They made me think of torches, the clash of arms, the

spacious mediaeval days when Davenham Minster supported a great

monastery, whose lordly abbot owned the land Tarn Regis stood upon.

And then the little lights grew misty and dim in my eyes as glimpses

came of my own early days; of play on that very ridge-side where I sat

now, where I had then romantically sworn friendship with George Stairs

on the eve of my departure for Elstree School, and his leaving with his

father for Canada. How had I kept my vow? Where was George Stairs now?

There was not a foot of that countryside we had not roamed together. My

eyes pricked as I looked and listened. Exactly so, I thought, the

sheep-bells had sounded below Barebarrow when I had lain listening to

them in that low-pitched back bedroom of the Rectory which I had been

proud to hear called "Dick's Room," after my first experience of

sleeping alone.

Then for a space my mind was blank as the dark valley beyond the

village--until thoughts and pictures of recent happenings began to oust

the gentler memories, and I lived over again the mad, wild, tragic week

which culminated in the massacre of the North London trenches. But in

the light of my previous musings I saw these happenings differently,

more personally, than in the actual experience of them. It seemed now

that not my country only, but myself, had been struck down and humbled

to the dust by the soldiers of the Kaiser. I saw the broad fair faces of

the German cavalry as they had sat their horse in Whitehall on the

evening of Black Saturday. I heard again the clank of their arms, the

barking of guttural orders. Could it be that they had mastered England?

that for nine long years we were to be encircled by their garrisons?

Nine years of helotry!

A sudden coolness in the air reminded me of the lateness of the hour,

and I rose and began to cross Barebarrow.

But this ancient land was British in every blade of its grass, I

thought--root and crop, hill and dale, above and beneath, no single sod

of it but was British. Surely nothing could alter that. Nine years of

helotry! I heard again the confused din of the Westminster Riot; the

frantic crowd's insistent demand for surrender, for unconditional

surrender. And now the nation's word was pledged. Our heads were bowed

for nine years long.

Suddenly, then, as I descended upon the turnpike, a quite new thought

came to me. The invasion had overridden all law, all custom, all

understandings. The invasion was an act of sheer lawless brutality. No

surrender could bind a people to submission in the face of such an

outrage as that. The Germans must be driven out; the British people must

rise and cast them out, and overthrow for ever their insolent dominion.

But too many of the English people were--like myself! Well, they must

learn; we must all learn; every able-bodied man must learn; for a blow

had to be struck that should free England for ever. The country must be

awakened to realization of that need. We owed so much to the brave ones

who gave us England; so much could be demanded of us by those that came

after. The thing had got to be.

I walked fast, I remember, and singing through my head as I entered

Davenham Minster, long after my sister's supper hour, were the lines to

which I had never till then paid any sort of heed:

Regions Caesar never knew,

Thy posterity shall sway!

III

THE RETURN TO LONDON

Oh! 'tis easy

To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them--

The threading in cold blood each mean detail,

And furze brake of half-pertinent circumstance--

There lies the self-denial.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

I spent but one other day in Dorset after my walk out to Tarn Regis, and

then took train in the morning for London.

I believe I have said before that Doctor Wardle, my sister's husband,

was prosperous and popular. The fact made it natural for me to accept my

mother's disposition of her tiny property, which, in a couple of

sentences, she had bequeathed solely to me. My sister had no need of the

hundred and fifty pounds a year that was derived from my mother's little

capital, which had been invested in Canadian securities and was

unaffected by England's losses. Thus I was now possessed of means

sufficient to provide me with the actual necessities of life; and,

though I had not thought of it before, realization of this came to me

while I attended to the winding up of my mother's small affairs,

bringing with it a certain sense of comfort and security.

It was with a strongly hopeful feeling, a sense almost of elation, that

I stepped from the train at Waterloo. My quiet days and nights in Dorset

had taught me something; and, particularly, I had gained much, in

conviction and in hope, from the evening spent by Barebarrow. I cannot

say that I had any definite plans, but I was awake to a genuine sense of

duty to my native land, and that was as strange a thing for me as for a

great majority of my fellow countrymen. I was convinced that a great

task awaited us all, and I determined upon the performance of my part in

it. I suppose I trusted that London would show me the particular form

that my effort should take. Meanwhile, as a convert, the missionary

feeling was strong in me.

I might have made shift to afford better quarters, perhaps, but it was

to my original lodging in Bloomsbury that I drove from Waterloo. Some

few belongings of mine were there, and I entertained a friendly sort of

feeling for my good-hearted but slatternly landlady, and for poor,

overworked Bessie, with her broad, generally smutty face, and lingering

remains of a Dorset accent. The part of London with which I was familiar

had resumed its normal aspect now, and people were going about their

ordinary avocations very much as though England never had been invaded.

But in the north and east of the capital were streets of burned and

blackened houses, and the Epping and Romford districts were one

wilderness of ruins, and of graves; while across East Anglia, from the

coast to the Thames, the trail of the invaders was as the track of a

locust plague, but more terrible by reason of its blood-soaked

trenches, its innumerable shallow graves, and its charred remains of

once prosperous towns. Hundreds of ruined farmers and small landholders

were working as navvies at bridge and road and railway repairs.

A great many people had been ruined during those few nightmare days of

the invasion, and every man in England was burdened now with a scale of

taxation never before known in the country. But business had resumed its

sway, and London looked very much as ever. The need there was for a

general making good, from London to the Wash, provided a great deal of

employment, and the Government had taken such steps as it could to make

credit easy. But Consols were still as low as sixty-eight; prices had

not yet fallen to the normal level, and money was everywhere scarce.

In the middle afternoon I set out for South Kensington to see Constance

Grey, to whom I had written only once during my absence, and then only

to tell her of my mother's death. She had replied by telegraph, a

message of warm and friendly sympathy. I knew well that she was always

busy, and, like most moderns who have written professionally, I suppose

we were both bad correspondents. Now there was much of which I wanted to

talk with Constance, and it was with a feeling of sharp disappointment

that I learned from the servant at the flat that she was not at home.

Mrs. Van Homrey was in, however, and in a few moments I was with her in

the little drawing-room where I had passed the night of London's

exhausted sleep on Black Saturday.

"Yes, you have just missed my niece," said Mrs. Van Homrey, after a

kindly reference to the strip of crepe on my arm. "She has gone in to

Victoria Street to a 'conference of the powers' of John Crondall's

convening. Oh, didn't you know he was here again? Yes, he arrived last

week, and, as usual, is up to his neck in affairs already, and Constance

with him. I verily believe that child has discovered the secret of

perpetual motion."

At first mention of John Crondall's name my heart had warmed to its

recollection of the man, and a pleasurable thought of meeting him again.

And immediately then the warm feeling had been penetrated by a vague

sense of disquiet, when Mrs. Van Homrey spoke of his affairs--"and

Constance with him." But I was not then conscious of the meaning of my

momentary discomfort, though, both then and afterwards, I read emphasis

and meaning into Mrs. Van Homrey's coupling of the two names. I asked

what the "conference" was about, but gathered that Mrs. Van Homrey was

not very fully informed.

"I know they are to meet these young Canadian preachers who are so

tremendously praised by the _Standard_---- What are their names, again?

Tcha! How treacherous my memory grows! You know the men I mean. John

Crondall met them the day after their arrival last week, and is

enthusiastic about them."

I felt very much out of the movement. During the few days immediately

preceding my mother's death, and since then, I had not even seen a

newspaper, and, being unusually preoccupied, not only over the events

of my stay at Davenham Minster, but by developments in my own thoughts,

I seemed to have lost touch with current affairs.

"And what does John Crondall think of the outlook?" I asked.

"Well, I think his fear is that people in the country--outside East

Anglia, of course--may fail to realize all that the invasion has meant

and will mean; and that Londoners and townsfolk generally may slip back

into absorption in business and in pleasure as soon as they can afford

that again, and forget the fact that England is practically under

Germany's heel still."

"The taxes will hardly allow them to do that, surely," I said.

"Well, I don't know. The English are a wonderful people. The invasion

was so swift and sudden; the opposition to it was so comparatively

trifling; surrender and peace came so soon, that really I don't know but

what John is right. He generally is. You must remember that millions of

the people have not seen a German soldier. They have had no discipline

yet. Even here in London, as soon as the people spoke decidedly, peace

followed. They did not have to strike a blow. They did not feel a blow.

They were not with you and Conny, remember, at those awful trenches.

Anyhow, John thinks the danger is lest they forget again, and regard the

whole tragic business as a new proof of England's ability to 'muddle

through' anything, without any assistance from them. Of course,

England's wealth is still great, and her recuperative powers are

wonderful; but John Crondall holds that, in spite of that, submission

to nine years of German occupation and German tribute-paying will mean

the end of the British Empire."

"And he feels that the people must be stirred into seeing that and

acting on it?" I said, recalling my own thoughts during the night walk

from Barebarrow.

"Yes, I suppose that is his view. But, now I come to think of it, why

should you waste your time in talking to an old woman who can only give

you echoes? It is only half an hour since Conny started. Why not hurry

on to John Crondall's place, and join them there? He has often spoken of

you, Conny tells me."

This seemed to me too good a suggestion to neglect, and ten minutes

later I was on my way to St. James's Park by underground railway. I

bought an evening paper on my way, and read an announcement to the

effect that General Baron von Fuechter, after returning to Portsmouth

from his visit to Berlin, had definitely decided that Portsmouth and

Devonport could no longer remain British naval bases, and that no

British sailors or soldiers in uniform could in future be admitted into

any of the towns in England now occupied by Germany.

IV

THE CONFERENCE

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or

blight,

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right;

And the choice goes by for ever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

A few seconds after his servant had shown me into the dining-room of

John Crondall's flat, the man himself entered to me with a rush, as his

manner was, both hands outstretched to welcome me.

"Good man!" he said. "I've had fine news of you from Constance Grey, and

now you're here to confirm it. Splendid!"

And then, with sudden gravity, and a glance at my coat sleeve: "I heard

of your loss. I know what it means. I lost my mother when I was in Port

Arthur, and I know London looked different because of it when I got

back. It's a big wrench; one we've all got to face."

"Yes. I think my mother died without regret; she was very tired."

There was a pause, and then I said:

"But I may have chosen my time badly, to-day. Mrs. Van Homrey said you

had a conference. If you----"

"Tut, tut, man! Don't talk nonsense. I was just going to say how well

you'd timed things. I don't know about a conference, but Constance is

here, and Varley, and Sir Herbert Tate--he took on the secretaryship of

the Army League, you know, after Gilbert chucked it--and Winchester. You

know Winchester, the Australian rough-rider, who did such fine work with

his bushman corps in the South African war--and--let me see! And Forbes

Thompson, the great rifle clubman, you know; _and_ the Canadian

preachers--splendid fellows, by Jove! Simply splendid they are, I can

tell you. I look for great things from those two. Stairs is English, of

course, but he's been nearly all his life in British Columbia and the

Northwest, and he's got all the eternal youth, the fire and grit and

enthusiasm of the Canadian, with--somehow, something else as well--good.

His chum, Reynolds, is an out-and-out Canadian, born in Toronto of

Canadian parents. Gad, there's solid timber in that chap, I can tell

you. But, look here! Come right in, and take a hand. I'm awfully glad

you came. I heard all about _The Mass_ and that; but, bless me, I can

see in your eye that that's all past and done with for ever. By the way,

I heard last night that your Mr. Clement Blaine had got a job after his

own heart, in the pay of the Germans at Chatham--interpreter in the

passport office, or some such a thing. What a man! Well, come along in,

my dear chap, and give us the benefit of your wisdom."

We were leaving the room now.

"I knew you'd like Constance," he said. "She's the real thing, isn't

she?"

I despised myself for the hint of chill his words brought me. What right

had I to suspect or resent? And in any case John Crondall spoke in his

customary frank way, with never a hint of afterthought.

"Yes," I said; "she's splendid."

"And such a head-piece, my boy. By Jove, she has a better head for

business than---- Here we are, then."

Constance Grey was naturally the first to greet me in the big room where

John Crondall did his work and met his friends. There was welcome in her

beautiful eyes, but, obviously, Constance was very much preoccupied.

Then I was presented to Sir Morell Strachey, Sir Herbert Tate, and

Forbes Thompson, and then to the Canadian parson, the Rev. George

Stairs. I had paid no attention to the name when Crondall had mentioned

it in the other room. Now, as he named the parson again, I looked into

the man's face, and----

"Mordan? Why, not Dick Mordan, of Tarn Regis?" said the parson.

"By gad! George Stairs! I was thinking of you on the side of Barebarrow

the night before last."

"And I was thinking of you, Dicky Mordan, yesterday afternoon, when I

met the present rector of Tarn Regis at a friend's house."

It was a long strong handshake that we exchanged. Sixteen years on the

young side of thirty is a considerable stretch of time, and all that

had passed since I had last seen my old Tarn Regis playmate.

Stairs introduced me to his friend, Reynolds, and I learned the curious

fact that this comrade and chum of my old friend's was also a parson,

but not of Stairs's church. Reynolds had qualified at a theological

training college in Ontario, and had been Congregational minister in the

parish of which Stairs had been vicar for the last three years.

There was a big table in the middle of the room, littered over with

papers and writing materials. About this table we presently all found

seats.

"Now look here, my friends," said John Crondall, "this is no time for

ceremoniousness, apologies, and the rest of it, and I'm not going to

indulge in any. No doubt we've all of us got special interests of our

own, but there's one we all share; and it comes first with all of us, I

think. We all want the same thing for England and the Empire, and we all

want to do what we can to help. It's because of that I dismiss the

ceremonies, and don't say anything about the fear of boring you, and all

that. I don't even make exceptions of you, Stairs, or you, Reynolds. I

tell you quite frankly I want to poke and pry into your plans. I want to

know all about 'em. I've sense enough to see that you wield a big

influence. I am certain I have your sympathy in my aims. And I want to

find out how far I can make your aims help my aims. All I know is that

you have addressed three meetings, each bigger than the last; and that

your preaching is the real right thing. Now I want you to tell us as

much as you will about your plans. You know we are all friends here."

Stairs looked at Reynolds, and Reynolds nodded at Stairs.

"Well," said the latter, smiling, first at Crondall, and then at me,

"our plans are simplicity itself. In Canada we have not risen yet to the

cultivation of much diplomacy. We don't understand anything of your high

politics, and we don't believe in roundabout methods. For instance, I

suppose here in England you don't find parsons of one denomination

working in partnership much with parsons of another denomination. Well,

now, when I took over from my predecessor at Kootenay, I found my friend

Reynolds doing a fine work there, among the farmers and miners, as

Congregational minister. He was doing precisely the work I wanted to do;

but there was only one of him. Was I to fight shy of him, or set to

work, as it were, in opposition to him? Well, anyhow, that didn't seem

to me the way. We had our own places of worship; but, for the rest, both

desiring the one thing--the Christian living of the folk in our

district--we worked absolutely shoulder to shoulder. There were a few

worthy folk who objected; but when Reynolds and I came to talk it over,

we decided that these had as much religion as was good for them already,

and that we could afford rather to ignore them, if by joint working we

could rope in the folk who had next to none at all---- You must forgive

my slang, Miss Grey."

Constance smiled across at the parson.

"You forget, Mr. Stairs, I grew up on the veld," she said.

"Ah, to be sure; I suppose one is as close to the earth and the

realities there as in Canada."

"Quite," said Crondall. "And, anyhow, we are not doing any apologies

to-day; so please go ahead."

"Well," continued George Stairs, "we often talked over Old Country

affairs, Reynolds and I. Reynolds had only spent three months over here

in his life, but I fancy I learned more from him than he from me."

"That's a mistake, of course," said Reynolds. "He had the facts and the

knowledge. I merely supplied a fresh point of view--home-grown

Canadian."

"Ah, well, we found ourselves very much in agreement, anyhow, about Home

affairs and about the position of the Anglican Church in Canada; the

need there is for less exclusiveness and more direct methods. The idea

of coming Home and preaching through England, a kind of pilgrimage--that

was entirely Reynolds's own. I would have come with him gladly, when we

had our district in good going order out there. But, you see, I had no

money. My friend had a little. Then my father died. He had been ailing

for a long time, and I verily think the news of the invasion broke his

heart. He died in the same week that it reached him, and left his two

farms, with some small house property, to me.

"My father's death meant for me a considerable break. The news from

England shocked me inexpressibly. It was such a terrible realization of

the very fears that Reynolds and myself had so often discussed--the

climax and penalty of England's mad disregard of duty; of every other

consideration except pleasure, easy living, comfort, and money-making."

"This is the pivot of the whole business, that duty question,"

interposed Crondall. "It was your handling of that on Tuesday that

burdened you with my acquaintance. I listened to that, and I said, 'Mr.

George Stairs and you have got to meet, John Crondall!' But I didn't

mean to interrupt."

"Well, as I say, I found myself rather at a parting of the ways, and

then came my good friend here, and he said, 'What about these farms and

houses of yours, Stairs? They represent an income. What are you going to

do about it?' And--well, you see, that settled it. We just packed our

bags and came over."

"And now that you are here?" said John Crondall.

"Well, you heard what we had to say the other afternoon?"

"I did--every word of it."

"Well, that's what we are here for. Our aim is to take that message to

every man and woman in this country; and we believe God will give us

zest and strength enough to bring it home to them--to make them _feel_

the truth of it. Your aim, naturally, is political and patriotic. I

don't think you can have any warmer sympathizers than Reynolds and

myself. But our part, as you see, is another one, and outside politics.

We believe the folk at Home have lost their bearings; their compasses

want adjusting. I say here what I should not venture to admit to a less

sympathetic and indulgent audience: Reynolds and myself aim at arousing,

by God's will, the sleeping sense of duty in our kinsmen here at Home.

We have no elaborate system, no finesse, no complicated issues to

consider. Our message is simply: 'You have forgotten Duty; and the

Christian life is not possible while Duty remains forgotten or ignored.'

Our purpose is just to give the message; to prove it; make it real; make

it felt."

Crondall had been looking straight at the speaker while he listened, his

face resting between his two hands, his elbows planted squarely on the

table. Now he seemed to pounce down upon Stairs's last words.

"And yet you say your part is another one than ours. But why not the

same? Why not the very essence and soul of our part, Stairs?"

"Gad--he's right!" said Sir Herbert Tate, in an undertone. Reynolds

leaned forward in his chair, his lean, keen face alight.

"Why not the very soul of our part, Stairs--the essential first step

toward our end? Our part is to urge a certain specific duty on them--a

duty we reckon urgent and vital to the nation. But we can't do that

unless we, or you, can first do your part--rousing them to the sense of

duty--Duty itself. Man, but your part is the foundation of our

part--foundation, walls, roof, corner-stone, complete! We only give the

structure a name. Why, I give you my word, Stairs, that that address of

yours on Tuesday was the finest piece of patriotic exhortation I ever

listened to."

"But--it's very kind of you to say so; but I never mentioned King or

country."

"Exactly! You gave them the root of the whole matter. You cleared a way

into their hearts and heads which is open now for news of King and

country. It's as though I had to collect some money for an orphanage

from a people who'd never heard of charity. Before I see the people you

teach 'em the meaning and beauty of charity--wake the charitable sense

in them. You needn't bother mentioning orphanages; but if I come along

in your rear, my chances of collecting the money are a deal rosier than

if you hadn't been there first--what?"

"I see--I see," said Stairs, slowly.

"Mr. Crondall, you ought to have been a Canadian," said Reynolds, in his

dry way. His use of the "Mr.," even to a man who had no hesitation in

calling him plain "Reynolds," was just one of the tiny points of

distinction between himself and Stairs.

"Oh, Canada has taught me something; and so have South Africa and India;

and so have you and Stairs, with your mission, or pilgrimage, or

whatever it is--your Message."

"Well," said Stairs, "it seems to me your view of our pilgrimage is a

very kindly, and perhaps flattering one; and as I have said, your aims

as a citizen of the Empire and a lover of the Old Country could not have

warmer sympathizers than Reynolds and myself; but----"

"Mind, I'm not trying to turn your religious teaching to any ignoble

purpose," said Crondall, quickly. "I am not asking you to introduce a

single new word or thought into it for my sake."

"That's so," said Reynolds, his eye upon Stairs.

"Quite so, quite so," said Stairs. "And, of course, I am with you in all

you hope for; but you know, Crondall, religion is perhaps a rather

different matter to a parson from what it is to you. Forgive me if I put

it clumsily, but----"

And now, greatly daring, I ventured upon an interruption, speaking upon

impulse, without consideration, and hearing my voice as though it were

something outside myself.

"George Stairs," I said--and I fancy the thoughts of both of us went

back sixteen years--"what was it you thought about the Congregational

minister when you took over your post at Kootenay? How did you decide to

treat him? Did you ever regret the partnership?"

"Now if that isn't straight out Western fashion!" murmured Reynolds.

Constance beamed at me from her place beside John Crondall.

"I leave it at that," said our host.

"A palpable bull's-eye," said Forbes Thompson.

I hardly needed George Stairs's friendly clap on the shoulder, nor the

assurance of his:

"You are right, Dick. You have shown me my way in three words."

"Good," said Reynolds. "Well, now I don't mind saying what I wouldn't

have said before, that among the notes we drew up nearly three years

ago----"

"You drew up, my friend," said Stairs.

"Among the notes we drew up, I say, on this question of neglected duty,

were details as to the citizen's obligations regarding the defence of

his home and native land, with special reference to the callous neglect

of Lord Roberts's campaign of warning and exhortation. Now, Stairs, you

know as well as I do, you wrote with your own hand the passage about the

Englishman's sphere of duty being as much wider than his country as

Greater Britain was wider than Great Britain. You know you did."

"Oh, you can count me in, all right, Reynolds; you know I'm not one for

half-measures."

"Well, now, my friends, I believe I see daylight. By joining hands I

really believe we are going to accomplish something for England."

Crondall looked round the table at the faces of his friends. "We are all

agreed, I know, that the present danger is the danger Kipling tried to

warn us about years and years ago."

"'Lest we forget!'" quoted Sir Herbert quietly.

"Exactly. There are so many in England who have neither seen nor felt

anything of the blow we have had."

And here I told them something of what I had seen and heard in Dorset;

how remote and unreal the whole thing was to folk there.

"That's it, exactly," continued Crondall. "That's one difficulty which

has just got to be overcome. Another is the danger that, among those who

did see and feel something of it, here in London, and even in East

Anglia, the habit of apathy in national matters, and the calls of

business and pleasure may mean forgetting, indifference--the old fatal

neglect. You see, we must remember that, crushing as the blow was, it

did not actually reach so very many people. It did not force them to get

up and fight for their lives. It was all over so soon. Directly they

cried out, 'The Destroyers' answered with surrender, and so helped to

strengthen the fatal delusion they had cherished so long, that

everything is a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence."

"'They'll never go for England, because England's got the dibs,'" quoted

Forbes Thompson, with a nod of assent.

"Yes, yes. 'Make alliances, and leave me to my business!' One knows it

all so well. But, mind you, even to the blindest of them, the invasion

has meant something."

"And the income-tax will mean something to 'em, too," said Sir Morell

Strachey.

"Yes. But the English purse is deep, and the Englishman has long years

of money-spinning freedom from discipline behind him. Still, here is

this brutal fact of the invasion. Here we are actually condemned to nine

years of life inside a circle of German encampments on English soil,

with a hundred millions a year of tribute to pay for the right to live

in our own England. Now my notion is that the lesson must not be lost.

The teaching of the thing must be forced home. It must be burnt into

these happy-go-lucky countrymen of ours--if Stairs and Reynolds are to

achieve their end, or we ours."

"Our aim is to awake the sense of duty which seems to us to have become

atrophied, even among the professedly religious," said Stairs.

"And ours," said Crondall, sharp as steel, "is to ram home your

teaching, and to show them that the nearest duty to their hand is their

duty to the State, to the Race, to their children--the duty of freeing

England and throwing over German dominion."

"To render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's," said Reynolds. And

Stairs nodded agreement.

"Now, by my way of it, Stairs and Reynolds must succeed before we can

succeed," said Crondall. "That is my view, and because that is so, you

can both look to me, up till the last breath in me, for any kind of

support I can give you--for any kind of support at all. But that's not

all. Where you sow, I mean to reap. We both want substantially the same

harvest--mine is part of yours. I know I can count on you all. You,

Stairs, and you, Reynolds, are going to carry your Message through

England. I propose to follow in your wake with mine. You rouse them to

the sense of duty; I show them their duty. You make them ready to do

their duty; I show it them. I'll have a lecturer. I'll get pictures.

They shall _feel_ the invasion, and know what the German occupation

means. You shall convert them, and I'll enlist them."

"Enlist them! By Jove! that's an idea," said Forbes Thompson. "A

patriotic league, a league of defenders, a nation in arms."

"The Liberators!"

"Ah! Yes, the Liberators."

"Or the Patriots, simply?"

"I would enrol them just as citizens," said Crondall. "By that time

they should have learned the meaning of the word."

"Yes, by Jove! it is good enough--just 'The Citizens,'" said Sir Morell

Strachey.

And then a servant came in with a message for Forbes Thompson, and we

realized that dinner-time had come and almost gone. But we were in no

mood for separating just then, and so every one welcomed John Crondall's

invitation to dine with him at a neighbouring hotel.

V

MY OWN PART

Free men freely work;

Whoever fears God, fears to sit at ease.

E. B. BROWNING.

Constance Grey and myself were the last of John Crondall's guests to

leave him on that evening of the conference. As soon as we three were

alone, Constance turned to Crondall, and said:

"You must expect to have me among your camp followers if I find Aunt

Mary can stand the travelling. I dare say there will be little things I

can do."

"Things you can do! By George, I should think so!" said Crondall. "I

shall look to you to capture the women; and if we get the women, it will

surprise me if we don't get the men as well. Besides, don't you fancy I

have forgotten your prowess as a speaker in Cape Town and Pretoria. You

remember that meeting of your father's, when you saved him from the

wrath of Vrow Bischoff? Why, of course, I reckon on you. We'll have

special women's meetings."

"And where do I come in?" I asked, with an assumed lightness of tone

which was far from expressing my feeling.

"Yes," said Crondall, eying me thoughtfully; "I've been thinking of

that."

As he said that, I had a swift vision of myself and my record, as both

must have appeared to a man like Crondall, whose whole life had been

spent in patriotic effort. The vision was a good corrective for the

unworthy shafts of jealousy--for that no doubt they were--which had come

to me with John Crondall's references to Constance. I was admitted

cordially into the confidences of these people from whom, on my record,

I scarcely deserved common courtesy. It was with a distinctly chastened

mind that I gave them both some outline of the thoughts and resolutions

which had come to me during my evening beside Barebarrow, overlooking

sleepy little Tarn Regis.

"It's a kind of national telepathy," said Crondall. "God send it's at

work in other counties besides Dorset."

"It had need be," I told them; "for all those that I spoke to in Dorset

accepted the German occupation like a thing as absolutely outside their

purview as the movements of the planets."

"Yes, they want a lot of stirring, I know; but I believe we shall stir

'em all right. But about your part in the campaign. Of course, I

recognize that every one has to earn his living, just as much now as

before. But yet I know you'd like to be in this thing, Dick Mordan, and

I believe you can help it a lot. What I thought of was this: I shall

want a secretary, and want him very badly. He will be the man who will

do half my work. On the other hand, I can't pay him much, for every cent

of my income will be wanted in the campaign, and a good deal more

besides. The thing is, would you tackle it, for the sake of the cause,

for a couple of hundred a year? Of course, I should stand all running

expenses. What do you think? It's not much of an offer, but it would

keep us all together?"

Constance looked expectantly at me, and I realized with a sudden thrill

the uses of even such small means as I now possessed.

"Well, no," I said; "I couldn't agree to that." The pupils of John

Crondall's eyes contracted sharply, and a pained, wondering look crept

into the face I loved, the vivid, expressive face of Constance Grey.

"But what I would put my whole heart and soul into, would be working as

your secretary for the sake of the cause, as long as you could stand the

running expense, and--and longer."

I think the next minute was the happiest I had ever known. I dare say it

seems a small enough matter, but it was the only thing of the kind I had

ever been able to do. These friends of mine had always given so much to

our country's cause. I had felt myself so far beneath them in this. Now,

as John Crondall's strong hand came down on my shoulder, and Constance's

bright eyes shone upon me in affectionate approval, my heart swelled

within me, with something of the glad pride which should be the

possession of every man, as it indubitably is of every true citizen and

patriot.

"You see," I explained deprecatingly, as Crondall swayed my shoulder

affectionately to and fro in his firm grip; "I have become a sort of a

minor capitalist. I have about a hundred and fifty a year coming in,

and so I'm as free as I am glad to work with you, and--there'll be two

hundred more for the campaign, you see."

"God bless you, old chap! You and Constance and I, we'll move

mountains--even the great mountain of apathy--between us. Sir Herbert

offers a thousand pounds toward expenses, and Forbes Thompson and Varley

are ready to speak for us anywhere we like, and Winchester has a pal who

he says will work wonders as a kind of advance agent. I'm pretty sure of

Government help, too--or Opposition help; they'll be governing before

Christmas, you'll find. Now, we all meet here again the day after

to-morrow. We three will see each other to-morrow, I expect. I must

write a stack of letters before the midnight post."

"Well, can I lend a hand?" I asked.

"No, not to-night, Mr. Secretary Dick, thank you! But it's late. Will

you take Constance home? I'll get my fellow to whistle up a cab."

Ten minutes earlier I should have been chilled by his implied

guardianship of Constance; but now I had that within which warmed me

through and through: the most effectual kind of protection against

chill. So all was settled, and we left John Crondall to his letters.

And, driving out to South Kensington, we talked over our hopes,

Constance and I, as partners in one cause.

"This is the beginning of everything for me, Constance," I said, when we

parted in the hall below her flat.

"It is going to be the beginning of very much for a good many," she

said, as she gave me her hand.

"I wonder if you know how much--for me!"

"I think so. I am tremendously glad about it all."

But she did not know, could not know, just how much it meant to me.

"Good night, my patriotic Muse!" I said.

"Good night, Mr. Secretary Dick!"

And so we parted on the night of my return to London.

VI

PREPARATIONS

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power, with the Need,

Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead.

. . . . .

Follow after--follow after--for the harvest is sown:

By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!

RUDYARD KIPLING.

Never before had I known days so full, so compact of effort and

achievement, as were those of the week following the conference in John

Crondall's rooms. I could well appreciate Winchester's statement when he

said that: "John Crondall is known through three Continents as a glutton

for work."

Our little circle represented Canada, South Africa, Australia, and the

Mother Country; and, while I admit that my old friend, George Stairs,

and his Canadian-born partner, Reynolds, could give points to most

people in the matter of unwearying energy, yet I am proud to report that

the member of our circle who, so to say, worked us all to a standstill

was John Crondall, an Englishman born and bred. I said as much in the

presence of them all, and when my verdict was generally endorsed, John

Crondall qualified it with the remark:

"Well, I can only say that pretty nearly all I know about work I learned

in the Colonies."

And I learned later on to realize the justice of this qualification.

Colonial life does teach directness and concentration. Action of any

sort in England was at that time hedged about by innumerable

complications and cross issues and formalities, many of which we have

won clear from since then. Perhaps it was the strength of our Colonial

support which set the pace of our procedure. Whatever the cause, I know

I never worked harder, or accomplished more; and I had never been so

happy.

I think John Crondall must have interviewed from two to three hundred

prominent politicians and members of the official world during that

week. I have heard it said by men who should know, that the money

Crondall spent in cable messages to the Colonies that week was the price

of the first Imperial Parliament ever assembled in Westminster Hall. I

use these words in their true sense, their modern sense, of course.

Nominally, the House of Commons had long been the "Imperial" Parliament.

I know that week's work established _The Citizens_ as an already

powerful organization, with a long list of names famous in history among

its members, with a substantial banking account, and with volunteer

agents in every great centre in the kingdom. The motto and watchword of

_The Citizens_, as engraved upon a little bronze medal of membership,

was: "For God; our Race; and Duty." The oath of enrolment said:

"I ---- do hereby undertake and promise to do my duty to God, to our

Race, and to the British Empire to the utmost limit of my ability,

without fear and without compromise, so help me God!"

John Crondall interviewed the editors of most of the leading London

newspapers during that week, and thereby earned a discreet measure of

journalistic support for his campaign. There was a great need of

discretion here, for our papers were carefully studied in Berlin, as

well as by the German Generals commanding the various English towns now

occupied by the Kaiser's troops. It was, of course, most important that

no friction should be caused at this stage.

But it was with regard to the preaching pilgrimage of the two Canadian

parsons that Crondall's friends of the Press rendered us the greatest

possible service. Here no particular reticence was called for, and the

Press could be, and was, unreservedly helpful and generous. In

estimating the marvellous achievements of the two preachers, I do not

think enough weight has been attached to the great services rendered to

their mission by such journals as the great London daily which published

each morning a column headed, "The New Evangel," and, indeed, by all the

newspapers both in London and the provinces.

We were not directly aiming, during that first week, at enrolling

members. No recruiting had been done. Yet when, at the end of the week,

a meeting of the executive committee was held at the Westminster Palace

Hotel, the founder, John Crondall, was able to submit a list of close

upon six hundred sworn members of _The Citizens_; and, of these, I

suppose fully five hundred were men of high standing in the world of

politics, the Services, commerce, and the professions. Among them were

three dukes, twenty-three peers, a Field Marshal, six newspaper

proprietors, eleven editors, seven of the wealthiest men in England, and

ninety-eight prominent Members of Parliament. And, as I say, no

systematic recruiting had been done.

At that meeting of the executive a great deal of important business was

transacted. John Crondall was able to announce a credit balance of ten

thousand pounds, with powers to overdraw under guarantee at the Bank of

England. A simple code of membership rules and objects was drawn up for

publication, and a short code of secret rules was formed, by which every

sworn member was to be bound. These rules stipulated for implicit

obedience to the decision and orders of the executive, and by these

every member was bound to take a certain course of rifle drill, and to

respond immediately to any call that should be made for military service

within the British Isles during a period of twelve months from the date

of enrolment. John Crondall announced that there was every hope of _The

Citizens_ obtaining from the Government a grant of one service rifle and

one hundred rounds of ammunition for every member who could pass a

simple medical examination.

"We may not actually secure this grant until after the general

election," Crondall explained; "but it can be regarded as a certain

asset."

It was decided that, officially, there should be no connection between

the Canadian preachers, as every one called them, and the propaganda of

_The Citizens_. But it was also privately agreed that steps should be

taken to follow the Canadians throughout their pilgrimage with lectures

and addresses, and meetings at which members could be enrolled upon the

roster of _The Citizens_, including volunteer instructors in rifle

drill. My friend Stairs attended this meeting with Reynolds, and, after

discussion, it was agreed that, for the present, they should not visit

the towns occupied by the Germans.

"The people there have their lesson before them every day and all day

long," said John Crondall. "The folk we want to reach are those who have

not yet learned their lesson. My advice is to attack London first.

Enlist London on your side, and on that go to the provinces."

There was a good deal of discussion over this, and finally an offer John

Crondall made was accepted by Stairs and Reynolds, and our meeting was

brought to a close. What Crondall said was this:

"To-day is Monday. There is still a great deal of detail to be attended

to. Officially, there must be no connection between Stairs and Reynolds

and _The Citizens_. Actually, we know the connection is vital. Give me

the rest of this week for arrangements, and I promise that we shall all

gain by it. I will not appear in the matter, and I will see you each

evening for consultation. Your pilgrimage shall begin on Sunday, and

ours within a day or so of that."

Then followed another week of tense effort. Stairs and Reynolds both

addressed minor gatherings during the week, and met John Crondall every

evening for consultation. On Wednesday the principal Imperialistic

newspaper in London appeared with a long leading article and three

columns of descriptive exposition of "The New Evangel." On the same day

the papers published despatches telling of the departure from their

various homes of the Premiers, and two specially elected representatives

of all the British Colonies, who were coming to England for an Imperial

Conference at Westminster. The Government's resignation was expected

within the month, and writs for the election were to be issued

immediately afterwards.

On Wednesday evening and Thursday morning the newspapers of London alone

published one hundred and thirteen columns of matter regarding the

message and the pilgrimage of the Rev. George Stairs and the Rev. Arthur

J. Reynolds. During the latter part of the week all London was agog over

the Canadian preachers. As yet, very little had appeared in print

regarding _The Citizens_.

On Sunday morning at three o'clock John Crondall went into his bedroom

to sleep, and I slept in the room he had set aside for me in his

flat--too tired out to undress. Even Crondall's iron frame was weary

that night, and he admitted to me before retiring from a table at which

we had kept three typewriters busy till long after midnight, that he

had reached his limit and must rest.

"I couldn't stand another hour of it--unless it were necessary, you

know," was his way of putting it.

By my persuasion he kept his bed during a good slice of Sunday morning,

and lunched with me at Constance Grey's flat. He always said that Mrs.

Van Homrey was the most restful tonic London could supply to any man. I

went to the morning service at Westminster Abbey that day with

Constance, and listened to a magnificent sermon from the Bishop of

London, whose text was drawn from the sixth chapter of Exodus: "And I

will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God."

The Bishop struck a strong note of hopefulness, but there was also

warning and exhortation in his discourse. He spoke of sons of our race

who had gone into far countries, and, carrying our Faith and traditions

with them, had preserved these and wrought them into a finer fabric than

the original from which they were drawn. And now, when a great

affliction had come upon the people of England, their sons of the

Greater Britain oversea were holding out kindly hands of friendship and

support. But it was not alone in the material sense that we should do

well to avail ourselves of the support offered us from the outside

places. These wandering children of the Old Land had cherished among

them a strong and simple godliness, a devout habit of Christian

morality, from which we might well draw spiritual sustenance.

"You have all heard of the Canadian preachers, and I hope you will all

learn a good deal more of their Message this very afternoon at the

Albert Hall, where I am to have the honour of presiding over a meeting

which will be addressed by these Christian workers from across the sea."

We found John Crondall a giant refreshed after his long sleep.

"I definitely promise you a seat this afternoon, Mrs. Van Homrey," he

said, as we all sat down to lunch in the South Kensington flat, "but

that's as much as I can promise. You and I will have to keep our feet,

Dick, and you will have to share Lady Tate's seat, Constance. If every

ticket-holder turns up this afternoon, there won't be a single vacant

seat in the whole of that great hall."

"You earned your Sunday morning in, John," said Mrs. Van Homrey. "Is the

Prime Minister coming?"

"No, he has failed me at the last, but half the members of the last

Government will be there, and I have promises from prominent

representatives of every religious denomination in England. There will

be sixty military officers above captain's rank, in uniform, and

forty-eight naval officers in uniform. There will be many scores of

bluejackets and private soldiers, a hundred training-ship lads, fifty of

the Legion of Frontiersmen, and a number of volunteers all in full

uniform. There will be a tremendous number of society people, but the

mass will be leavened, and I should say one-half the people will be

middle-class folk. For to-night, no tickets have been issued. The

attendance will depend to some extent on the success of this afternoon,

but, to judge from the newspapers and the talk one hears, I should say

it would be enormous."

Just before we left the flat Crondall told us a secret.

"You know they have a volunteer choir of fifty voices?" he said. "It was

Stairs's idea, and he has carried it out alone. The choir consists

entirely of bluejackets, soldiers, volunteers, Red Cross nurses, and

boys from the Army bands."

VII

THE SWORD OF THE LORD

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!

O Duty! if that name thou love

Who art a light to guide, a rod

To check the erring, and reprove;

Thou who art victory and law

When empty terrors overawe;

From vain temptations dost set free,

And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity!

WORDSWORTH'S _Ode to Duty_.

I have always been glad that I was able to attend that first great

service of the Canadian preachers; and so, I think, has every one else

who was there. Other services of theirs may have been more notable in

certain respects--indeed, I know they were; but this one was the

beginning, the first wave in a great tide. And I am glad that I was

there to see that first grand wave rise upon the rock of British apathy.

I have said something of the audience, but a book might well be devoted

to its description, and, again, a sentence may serve. It was a

representative English gathering, in that it embraced a member of the

Royal Family, a little group of old men and women from an asylum for the

indigent, and members of every grade of society that comes between.

Also, it was a very large gathering--even for the Albert Hall.

It should be remembered that not many weeks prior to this Sunday

afternoon, the people of London, maddened by hunger, fear, and

bewildered panic, had stormed Westminster to enforce their demand for

surrender, and had seen Von Fuechter with his bloodstained legions take

possession of the capital of the British Empire. Fifty Londoners had

been cut down, almost in as many seconds, within two miles of the

Mansion House. In one terrible week London had passed through an age of

terror and humiliation, the end of which had been purchased in panic and

disorder by means of a greater humiliation than any. Now England had to

pay the bill. Some, in the pursuit of business and pleasure, were

already forgetting; but the majority among the great concourse of

Londoners who sat waiting in the Albert Hall that afternoon, clothed in

their Sunday best, were still shrewdly conscious of the terrible

severity of the blow which had fallen upon England.

Having found Constance her half-seat with Lady Tate, I stood beside one

of the gangways below the platform, which lead to the dressing-rooms and

other offices. Beside me was a table for Press representatives. There,

with their pencils, I noted Campbell, of the _Daily Gazette_, and other

men I knew, including Carew, for the _Standard_, who had an assistant

with him. He told me that somewhere in the hall his paper had a special

descriptive writer as well.

Looking up and down that vast building, from dome to amphitheatre, I

experienced, as it were vicariously, something of the nervousness of

stage fright. Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How

should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from

Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could

they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the

most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers

speak in public, but--I looked out over that assemblage, and I was

horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a

Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had

so much as an elocution lesson between them!

And then the Bishop of London appeared on the crowded platform, followed

by George Stairs and Arthur Reynolds; and a dead silence descended upon

the hall. In the forefront of the platform was a plain table with a

chair at either end of it, and a larger one in the middle. Here the

Bishop and the two preachers placed themselves. Then the Bishop rose

with right hand uplifted, and said solemnly:

"May God bless to us all the Message which His two servants have brought

us from oversea; for Christ's sake, Amen."

George Stairs remained kneeling at his end of the table. But as the

Bishop resumed his seat Arthur Reynolds stepped forward, and, pitching

his voice well, said:

"My friends, let us sing the British Anthem."

And at that the great organ spoke, and the choir of sailors, soldiers,

and nurses led the singing of the National Anthem. The first bar was

sung by the choir alone, but by the time the third bar was reached

thousands among the standing congregation were singing with them, and

the volume of sound was most impressive. I think that a good many people

besides myself found this solemn singing of the Anthem, from its first

line to its last, something of a revelation. It made "God Save the King"

a real prayer instead of a musical intimation that hats might be felt

for and carriages ordered. It struck a note which the Canadian preachers

desired to strike. They began with a National Hymn which was a prayer

for King and Country. The people were at first startled, and then

pleased, and then stirred by a departure from all customs known to them.

And that this should be so was, I apprehend, the deliberate intention of

the Canadian preachers.

Still George Stairs knelt at his end of the bare table.

As the last note of the organ accompaniment died away, Arthur Reynolds

stepped to the front.

"Will you all pray, please?" he said. He closed his eyes and extended

one hand.

I cannot tell you what simple magic the man used. I know those were his

words. But the compelling appeal in them was most remarkable. There was

something childlike about his simple request. I do not think any one

could have scoffed at the man. After a minute's silence, he prayed

aloud, and this is what he said:

"Father in Heaven, give us strength to understand our duty and to do it.

Thou knowest that two of the least among Thy servants have crossed the

sea to give a Message to their kinsmen in England. Our kinsmen are a

great and proud people, and we, as Thou knowest, are but very simple

men. But our Message is from Thee, and with Thee all things are

possible. Father, have pity upon our weakness to-day. Open to us the

hearts of even the proudest and the greatest of our kinsmen. Do not let

them scorn us. And, O Father of all men, gentle and simple, breathe Thou

upon us that we may have a strength not of ourselves; a power worthy of

the Message we bring, which shall make its truth to shine so that none

may mistake it. For Christ's sake. Amen."

Arthur Reynolds resumed his seat, and a great Australian singer, a

_prima donna_ of world-wide repute, stepped forward very simply and sang

as a solo the hymn beginning:

Church of the Living God,

Pillar and ground of truth,

Keep the old paths the fathers trod

In thy illumined youth.

The prayer had softened all hearts by its simplicity, its humility. The

exquisitely rendered hymn attuned all minds to thoughts of ancient,

simple piety, and the traditions which guided and inspired our race in

the past. When it was ended, and not till then, George Stairs rose from

his knees, and stepped forward to where a little temporary extension

jutted out beyond the rest of the platform. He stood there with both

hands by his side, and a Bible held in one of them. His head inclined a

little forward. It was an attitude suggestive rather of submission to

that great assembly, or to some Power above it, than of exhortation.

Watching him as he stood there, I realized what a fine figure of a man

George was, how well and surely Canadian life had developed him. His

head was massive, his hair thick and very fair; his form lithe, tall,

full of muscular elasticity.

He stood so, silent, for a full minute, till I began to catch my breath

from nervousness. Then he opened the Bible, and:

"May I just read you a few verses from the Bible?" he said.

There was the same directness, the same simple, almost childlike appeal

that had touched the people in Reynolds's prayer. He read some verses

from the First Book of Samuel. I remember:

"'And did I choose him out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest,

to offer upon mine altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod before me?

And did I give unto the house of thy father all the offerings made by

fire of the children of Israel? Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at

mine offering, which I have commanded in my habitation; and honouredst

thy sons above me to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the

offerings of Israel, my people? Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith,

I said indeed that thy house and the house of thy father should walk

before me for ever; but now the Lord saith, be it far from me; for them

that honour me I will honour, and them that despise me shall be lightly

esteemed. Behold the day is come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the

arm of thy father's house, and there shall not be an old man in my

house. And thou shalt see an enemy in my habitation, in all the wealth

which God shall give Israel.... And I will raise me up a faithful

priest, that shall do according to that which is in mine heart and in my

mind....'"

There was a pause, and then the preacher read a passage from Judges,

ending with the famous war-cry: "The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon."

He looked up then, and, without reference to the Bible in his hand,

repeated several verses:

"'And by thy sword thou shalt live, and shalt serve thy brother: and it

shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion, that thou shalt

break his yoke from off thy neck.'

"'He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.'

"'For he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a

revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.'

"'And take the helmet of salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which

is the Word of God.'

"'Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send

peace but a sword.' Not the peace of indolence and dishonour; not the

fatted peace of mercenary well-being; but a Sword; the Sword of the

Lord, the Sword of Duty, which creates, establishes, and safeguards the

only true peace--the peace of honourable peoples."

I remember his slow turning of leaves in his Bible, and I remember:

"'Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His

commandments, for this is the whole duty of man--' the whole duty----

Yes, 'but isn't Duty rather an early Victorian sort of business, and a

bit out of date, anyhow?' That was what a young countryman of mine--from

Dorset, he came--said to me in Calgary, last year. I told him that,

according to my reading of history, it had come down a little farther

than early Victorian days. I remember I mentioned Rorke's Drift; and he

rather liked that. But, of course, I knew what he meant."