He was very dark, red-faced, and thin, with deep lines in his face, a
tight shut, receding mouth, and black, burning eyes. He reminded Somers
of the portraits of Abraham Lincoln, the same sunken cheeks and deep,
cadaverous lines and big black eyes. But this man, Willie Struthers,
lacked that look of humour and almost of sweetness that one can find in
Abraham Lincoln’s portraits. Instead, he was suspicious, and seemed as
if he were brooding an inner wrong.
He was a born Australian, had knocked about the continent, and spent
many years on the goldfields. According to report, he was just
comfortably well-off--not rich. He looked rather shabby, seedy; his
clothes had that look as if he had just thrown them on his back, after
picking them off the floor. Also one of his thin shoulders was
noticeably higher than the other. But he was a distinct Australian type,
thin, hollow-cheeked, with a brightish, brittle, red skin on his face,
and big, dark, incensed-looking eyes. He nodded to the two men as they
entered, but did not speak nor rise from the desk.
“This is Mr Somers,” said Jaz. “You’ve read his book on democracy.”
“Yes, I’ve read it,” said Struthers. “Take a seat.”
He spoke with a pronounced Australian accent--a bad cockney. He stared
at Somers for a few seconds, then looked away.
He asked the usual questions, how Richard liked Australia, how long he
had been there, how long he thought of staying. The two didn’t get into
any easy harmony.
Then he began to put a few shrewd questions concerning the Fascisti and
Socialisti in Italy, the appropriation of the land by the peasants, and
so on; then about Germany, the actual temper of the working people, the
quality of their patriotism since the war, and so on.
“You understand,” said Somers, “I don’t pretend to give anything but
personal impressions. I have no claim to knowledge, whatever.”
“That’s all right, Mr Somers. I want your impressions. What they call
knowledge is like any other currency, it’s liable to depreciate. Sound
valuable knowledge to-day may not be worth the paper it’s printed on
to-morrow--like the Austrian krone. We’re no slaves to facts. Give us
your impressions.”
He spoke with a peculiar kind of bitterness, that showed passion too.
They talked about Europe for some time. The man could listen: listen
with his black eyes too. Watchful, always watchful, as if he expected
some bird to fly suddenly out of the speaker’s face. He was
well-informed, and seemed to weigh and judge everything he heard as he
heard it.
“Why, when I left Europe it seemed to me socialism was losing ground
everywhere--in Italy especially. In 1920 it was quite a living, exciting
thing, in Italy. It made people insolent, usually, but it lifted them up
as well. Then it sort of fizzled down, and last year there was only the
smoke of it: and a nasty sort of disappointment and disillusion, a
grating sort of irritation. Florence, Siena--hateful! The Fascisti risen
up and taking on airs, all just out of a sort of spite. The Dante
festival at Florence, and the King there, for example. Just set your
teeth on edge, ugh!--with their ‘Savoia!’ All false and out of spite.”
“And what do you attribute that to, Mr Somers?”
“Why, I think the Socialists didn’t _quite_ believe in their own
socialism, so everybody felt let down. In Italy, particularly, it seemed
to me they were on the brink of a revolution. And the King was ready to
abdicate, and the Church was ready to make away with its possessions: I
know that. Everything ready for a flight. And then the Socialists
funked. They just funked. They daren’t make a revolution, because then
they’d be responsible for the country. And they _daren’t_. And so the
Fascisti, seeing the Socialists in a funk, got up and began to try to
kick their behinds.”
Mr Struthers nodded his head slowly.
“I suppose that is so,” he said. “I suppose that’s what it amounts to,
they didn’t believe in what they were doing. But then they’re a
childish, excitable people, with no stability.”
“But it seems to me socialism hasn’t got the spark in it to make a
revolution. Not in any country. It hasn’t got the spunk, either. There’s
no spunk in it.”
“What is there any spunk in?” asked the other man, a sort of bitter fire
corroding in his eyes. “Where do you find any spunk?”
“Oh, nowhere,” said Richard.
There was a silence. Struthers looked out of the window as if he didn’t
know what to say next, and he played irritably with a blotter on the
desk, with his right hand. Richard also sat uncomfortably silent.
“Nowhere any spunk?” said Struthers, in his flat, metallic voice.
“No,” said Richard.
And again the uncomfortable silence.
“There was plenty of spunk in the war,” said Struthers.
“Of a sort. And because they felt they _had_ to, not from choice.”
“And mayn’t they feel they _have_ to again?” said Struthers, smiling
rather grimly.
The two men eyed one another.
“What’ll make them?” asked Richard.
“Oh--circumstances.”
“Ah well--if circumstances.” Richard was almost rude. “I know if it was
a question of _war_ the majority of returned soldiers would join up in a
month--in a week. You hear it over and over again from the Diggers here.
The war was the only time they ever felt properly alive. But then they
moved because they hated the Germans--self-righteously hated them. And
they can’t quite bring it off, to hate the capitalist with a
self-righteous hate. They don’t hate him. They know that if they
themselves got a chance to make a pile of money and be capitalists,
they’d _jump_ at it. You can’t work up a hate, except on fear. And they
_don’t_ fear the capitalist, and you can’t make them. The most they’ll
do is sneer about him.”
Struthers still fidgetted with the blotter, with his thin, very-red,
hairy hand, and abstractedly stared at the desk in front of him.
“And what does all that mean, in your estimation, Mr Somers?” he asked
dryly, looking nervously up.
“That you’ll never get them to act. You’ll never get Labour, or any of
the Socialists, to make a revolution. They just won’t act. Only the
Anarchists might--and they’re too few.”
“I’m afraid they are growing more.”
“Are they? Of that I know nothing. I should have thought they were
growing fewer.”
Mr Struthers did not seem to hear this. At least he did not answer. He
sat with his head dropped, fingering the blotter, rather like a boy who
is being told things he hates to hear, but which he doesn’t deny.
At last he looked up, and the fighting look was in the front of his
eyes.
“It may be as you say, Mr Somers,” he replied. “Men may not be ready yet
for any great change. That does not make the change less inevitable.
It’s coming, and it’s got to come. If it isn’t here to-day, it will be
here next century, at least. Whatever you may say, the socialistic and
communal ideal is a great ideal, which will be fulfilled when men are
ready. We aren’t impatient. If revolution seems a premature jump--and
perhaps it does--then we can go on, step by step, towards where we
intend to arrive at last. And that is, State Ownership, and
International Labour Control. The General Confederation of Labour, as
perhaps you know, does not aim at immediate revolutions. It wants to
make the great revolution by degrees. Step by step, by winning political
victories in each country, by having new laws passed by our insistence,
we intend to advance more slowly, but more surely towards the goal we
have in sight.
“Now, Mr Somers, you are no believer in capitalism, and in this
industrial system as we have it. If I judge you correctly from your
writings, you are no lover of the great Washed Middle Classes. They are
more than washed, they are washed out. And I think in your writings you
say as much. You want a new spirit in society, a new bond between men.
You want a new bond between men. Well, so do I, so do we. We realise
that if we are going to go ahead we need first and foremost
_solidarity_. Where we fail in our present position is in our lack of
solidarity.
“And how are we to get it. You suggest us the answer in your writings.
We must have a new bond between men, the bond of real brotherhood. And
why don’t we find that bond sufficiently among us? Because we have been
brought up from childhood to mistrust ourselves and to mistrust each
other. We have been brought up in a kind of fetish worship. We are like
tribes of savages with their witch-doctors. And who are our
witch-doctors, our medicine men? Why, they are professors of science and
professors of medicine and professors of law and professors of religion,
all of whom thump on their tom-tom drums and overawe us and take us in.
And they take us in with the clever cry, ‘Listen to us, and you will get
on, get on, get on, you will rise up into the middle classes and become
one of the great washed.’
“The trick of this only educated men like yourself see through. The
working man can’t see through it. _He_ can’t see that, for every one
that _gets on_, you must have five hundred fresh slavers and toilers to
produce the graft. Tempt all men to get on, and it’s like holding a
carrot in front of five thousand asses all harnessed to your machine.
One ass gets the carrot, and all the others have done your pulling for
you.
“Now what we want is a new bond between fellow-men. We’ve got to knock
down the middle-class fetish and the middle-class medicine-men. But
you’ve got to build up as you knock down. You’ve got to build up the
real fellow-feeling between fellow-men. You’ve got to teach us working
men to trust one another, absolutely trust one another, and to take all
our trust away from the Great Washed and their medicine men who bleed us
like leeches. Let us mistrust them--but let us trust one another. First
and foremost, let us trust one another, we working men.
“Now Mr Somers, you are a working man’s son. You know what I’m talking
about. Isn’t it right, what I say? And isn’t it feasible?”
A strange glow had come into his large black eyes, something glistening
and half-sweet, fixing itself on you. You felt drawn towards a strange
sweetness--perhaps poisonous. Yet it touched Richard on one of his
quivering strings--the latent power that is in man to-day, to love his
near mate with a passionate, absolutely trusting love. Whitman says the
love of comrades. We say, the mate love. “He is my mate.” A depth of
unfathomed, unrealised love can go into that phrase! “My mate is waiting
for me,” a man says, and turns away from wife, children, mother and all.
The love of a man for his mate.
Now Richard knew what Struthers wanted. He wanted this love, this
mate-trust called into consciousness and highest honour. He wanted to
set it where Whitman tried to set his Love of Comrades. It was to be the
new tie between men, in the new democracy. It was to be the new
passional bond in the new society. The trusting love of a man for his
mate.
Our society is based on the family, the love of a man for his wife and
his children, or for his mother and brothers. The family is our social
bedrock and limit. Whitman said the next, broader, more unselfish rock
should be the Love of Comrades. The sacred relation of a man to his
mate, his fellow man.
If our society is going to develop a new great phase, developing from
where we stand now, it must accept this new relationship as the new
sacred social bond, beyond the family. You can’t make bricks without
straw. That is, you can’t hold together the friable mixture of modern
mankind without a new cohesive principle, a new unifying passion. And
this will be the new passion of a man’s absolute trust in his mate, his
love for his mate.
Richard knew this. But he had learned something else as well. He had
learned the great danger of the new passion, which as yet lay only half
realised and half recognised, half effective.
Human love, human trust, are always perilous, because they break down.
The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril,
the greater the disaster. Because to place absolute trust on another
human being is in itself a disaster, both ways, since each human being
is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it go in company with
another ship. Two ships may sail together to the world’s end. But lock
them together in mid-ocean and try to steer both with one rudder, and
they will smash one another to bits. So it is when one individual seeks
absolutely to love, or trust, another. Absolute lovers always smash one
another, absolute trusters the same. Since man has been trying
absolutely to love women, and women to love man, the human species has
almost wrecked itself. If now we start a still further campaign of men
loving and absolutely trusting each other, comrades or mates, heaven
knows the horror we are laying up.
And yet, love is the greatest thing between human beings, men and women,
men and men, women and women, when it is love, when it happens. But when
human love starts out to lock individuals together, it is just courting
disaster.
Man-and-woman love is a disaster nowadays. What a holy horror
man-and-man love would be: mates or comrades!
What is it then that is wrong? Why, human beings _can’t_ absolutely love
one another. Each man _does_ kill the thing he loves, by sheer dint of
loving it. Is love then just a horror in life?
Ah no. This individuality which each of us has got and which makes him a
wayward, wilful, dangerous, untrustworthy quantity to every other
individual, because every individuality is bound to react at some time
against every other individuality, without exception--or else lose its
own integrity; because of the inevitable necessity of each individual to
react away from any other individual, at certain times, human love is
truly a relative thing, not an absolute. It _cannot_ be absolute.
Yet the human heart must have an absolute. It is one of the conditions
of being human. The only thing is the God who is the source of all
passion. Once go down before the God-passion and human passions take
their right rhythm. But human love without the God-passion always kills
the thing it loves. Man and woman virtually are killing each other with
the love-will now. What would it be when mates, or comrades, broke down
in their absolute love and trust? Because, without the polarised
God-passion to hold them stable at the centre, break down they would.
With no deep God who is source of all passion and life to hold them
separate and yet sustained in accord, the loving comrades would smash
one another, and smash all love, all feeling as well. It would be a rare
gruesome sight.
Any more love is a hopeless thing, till we have found again, each of us
for himself, the great dark God who alone will sustain us in our loving
one another. Till then, best not play with more fire.
Richard knew this, and it came to him again powerfully, under the dark
eyes of Mr Struthers.
“Yes,” he answered slowly. “I know what you mean, and you know I know.
And it’s probably your only chance of carrying Socialism through. I
don’t really know how much it is feasible. But--”
“Wait a minute, Mr Somers. You are the man I have been waiting for: all
except the but. Listen to me a moment further. You know our situation
here in Australia. You know that Labour is stronger here, perhaps, more
unopposed than in any country in the world. We might do anything. Then
why do we do nothing? You know as well as I do. Because there is no real
unifying principle among us. We’re not together, we aren’t one. And
probably you never _will_ be able to unite Australians on the wage
question and the State Ownership question alone. They don’t care enough.
It doesn’t really touch them emotionally. And they need to be touched
emotionally, brought together that way. Once that was done, we’d be a
grand, solid working-class people; grand, unselfish: a real _People_.
‘When wilt thou save the People, oh God of Israel, when?’ It looks as if
the God of Israel would never save them. We’ve got to save ourselves.
“Now you know quite well, Mr Somers, we’re an unstable, unreliable body
to-day, the Labour Party here in Australia. And why? Because in the
first place we haven’t got any voice. We want a voice. Think of it,
we’ve got no real Labour newspaper in Sydney--or in Australia. How _can_
we be united? We’ve no voice to call us together. And why don’t we have
a paper of our own? Well, why? Nobody has the initiative. What would be
the good, over here, of a grievance-airing rag like your London _Daily
Herald_? It wouldn’t be taken any more seriously than any other rag. It
would have no real effect. Australians are a good bit subtler and more
disillusioned than the English working classes. You can throw
Australians chaff, and they’ll laugh at it. They may even pretend to
peck it up. But all the time they _know_, and they’re not taken in. The
_Bulletin_ would soon help them out, if they were. They’ve got a natural
sarcastic turn, have the Australians. They’ll do imbecile things:
because one thing is pretty well as good as another, to them. They don’t
care.
“Then what’s the good starting another Red rag, if the bull won’t run at
it. And this Australian bull may play about with a red rag, but it won’t
get his real dander up.
“No, you’ve got to give them something to appeal to the deeper man in
them. That deeper man is waiting to be appealed to. And we’re waiting
for the right individual to come along to put the appeal to them.
“Now, Mr Somers, here’s your chance. I’m in a position to ask you, won’t
you help us to bring out a sincere, _constructive_ Socialist paper, not
a grievance airer, but a paper that calls to the constructive spirit in
men? Deep calleth to deep. And the trouble with us here is, no one calls
to our deeps, they lie there stagnant. I can’t do it, I’m too grimy. It
wants a deep, fresh nature, and I’m too stale.
“Now, Mr Somers, you’re the son of a working man. You were born of the
People. You haven’t turned your back on them, have you, now that you’re
a well-known gentleman?”
“No, no,” said Richard, laughing at the irony.
“Then here is your work before you. Come and breathe the breath of life
into us, through the printed word. Come and take charge of a true
People’s paper for us. We needn’t make it a daily. Make it a
twice-weekly. And let it appeal to the Australian, to his heart, for his
heart is the right place to appeal to. Let it breathe the new air of
trust and comradeship into us. We are ready for it: dying for it. Show
us how to _believe_ in one another, with all our hearts. Show us that
the issue isn’t just the wage issue, or who holds the money. It’s
brother-love at last, on which Christ’s Democracy is bound to rest. It’s
the living People. It is man to man at last.”
The red face of Willie Struthers seemed to glow with fire, and his
black eyes had a strange glisten as he watched Richard’s face. Richard’s
pale, sombre face showed that he was moved. There was a strange
excitement, a deep, exciting vibration in the air, as if something
secret were taking place. Jaz in his corner sat silent as a mouse, his
knees wide apart, his elbows on his knees, his head dropped. Richard’s
eyes at length met the black, excited, glistening eyes of the other man,
and he felt that something in the glisten was bearing him down, as a
snake bears down a bird. Himself the bird.
But his heart was big within him, swollen in his breast. Because in
truth he did love the working people, he did know them capable of a
great, generous love for one another. And he did also believe, in a way,
that they were capable of building up this great Church of Christ, the
great beauty of a People, upon the generous passion of mate-love. All
this theoretical socialism started by Jews like Marx, and appealing only
to the will-to-power in the masses, making money the whole crux, this
has cruelly injured the working people of Europe. For the working people
of Europe were generous by nature, and money was not their prime
passion. All this political socialism--all politics, in fact--have
conspired to make money the only god. It has been a great treacherous
conspiracy against the generous heart of the people. And that heart is
betrayed: and knows it.
Then can’t the injury be remedied? Can’t the working men be called back,
man to man, to a generous opening of the heart to one another, money
forgotten? Can’t a new great inspiration of belief in the love of mates
be breathed into the white Peoples of the world, and a new day be built
on this belief?
It can be done. It could be done. Only, the terrible stress, the strain
on the hearts of men, if as human beings the whole weight of the living
world is to rest on them. Each man with the poles of the world resting
on his heart. Men would go mad.
“You see,” stammered Richard, “it needs more than a belief of men in
each other.”
“But what else is there to believe in? Quacks? Medicine-men? Scientists
and politicians?”
“It _does_ need some sort of religion.”
“Well then--well then--the religious question is ticklish, especially
here in Australia. But all the churches are established on Christ. And
Christ says Love one another.”
Richard laughed suddenly.
“That makes Christ into another political agent,” he said.
“Well then--I’m not deep enough for these matters. But surely you know
how to square it with religion. Seems to me it _is_ religion--love one
another.”
“Without a God.”
“Well--as I say--it’s Christ’s teaching, and that ought to be God
enough.”
Richard was silent, his heart heavy. It all seemed so far from the dark
God he wished to serve, the God from whom the dark, sensual passion of
love emanates, not only the spiritual love of Christ. He wanted men once
more to refer the sensual passion of love sacredly to the great dark
God, the ithyphallic, of the first dark religions. And how could that be
done, when each dry little individual ego was just mechanically set
against any such dark flow, such ancient submission. As for instance
Willie Struthers at this minute, Struthers didn’t mind Christ. Christ
could easily be made to subserve his egoistic purpose. But the first,
dark, ithyphallic God whom men had once known so tremendous--Struthers
had no use for Him.
“I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I’ve the right touch,” said
Richard slowly.
“Nay, Mr Somers, don’t you be a funker, now. This is the work you were
born for. Don’t leave us in the lurch.”
“I shouldn’t be doing what you want me to do.”
“Do what seems best to yourself. We’ll risk it. Make your own
conditions. I know as far as money goes you won’t be hard. But take the
job on, now. It’s been waiting for you, waiting for you to come out
here. Don’t funk at the last minute.”
“I won’t promise at this minute,” said Richard, rising to escape. “I
want to go now. I will tell you within a week. You might send me details
of your scheme for the paper. Will you? And I’ll think about it hard.”
Mr Struthers watched him as if he would read his soul. But Richard
wasn’t going to have his soul read by force.
“Very well. I’ll see you have the whole scheme of the proposal
to-morrow. I don’t think you’ll be able to run away from it.”
Richard was thankful to get out of Canberra Hall. It was like escaping
from one of the medical-examination rooms in the war. He and Jaz went in
silence down the crowded, narrow pavement of George Street, towards the
Circular Quay. Richard called at the General Post-office in Martin
Place. As he came out again, and stood on the steps folding the stamps
he had bought, seeing the sun down Pitt Street, the people hurrying, the
flowers at the corner, the pink spread of _Bulletins_ for sale at the
corner of George Street, the hansom-cabs and taxis standing peacefully
in the morning shadow of the post-office, suddenly the whole thing
switched right away from him. He hailed a hansom.
“Jaz,” he said, “I want to drive round the Botanical Gardens and round
the spit there--and I want to look at the peacocks and cockatoos.”
Jaz climbed in with him. “Right O!” said the cabby, hearing the order,
and they clock-clocked away up the hill to Macquarie Street.
“You know, Jaz,” said Richard, looking with joy at the blue harbour
inlet, where the Australian “fleet” lay rusting to bits, with a few gay
flags; “you know, Jaz, I shan’t do it. I shan’t do anything. I just
don’t care about it.”
“You don’t?” said Jaz, with a sudden winsome smile.
“I try to kid myself that I care about mankind and its destiny. And I
have fits of wistful love for the working men. But at the bottom I’m as
hard as a mango nut. I don’t care about them all. I don’t really care
about anything, no I don’t. I just don’t care, so what’s the good of
fussing.”
“Why no,” said Jaz, again with a quick smile.