of proletariats. There was a set-back in wages over the whole world.
At the same time the strike-weapon tended to fail. May Day, 1921, was
one of the quietest of May Days. In Paris it was a joyous holiday; in
Berlin, though the jewellers ordered new steel screens for their goods,
not a window was broken; in London the gloomy coal strike pursued its
lonely road towards defeat, unsupported by even its own allies of
transport and railroad, far less by an ideal from Moscow. And
bourgeois Western Europe--and Italy not least--breathed afresh.
Rome is a spacious city. One feels that the great houses were built
originally, not on streets, but on chosen spots, and the streets came
to them. The house came to the man, and the street to the house, and
that makes a nobler city than street-controlled lines and blocks. In
Rome there is no bondage of the street. And the many fountains with
water-spouting nymphs and Neptunes kill the drabness of business, and
freshen modern civilization so that it ceases to know itself as such.
When one compares Rome with Paris or Berlin or London or New York, the
newer capitals suffer. The mighty ruins have such authority over all
that is new. It is one of the greatest standing-grounds and points of
vantage in the world. It has been interpreted as the mountain of
temptation from which Satan showed the kingdom of _this_ world. It is
the birthplace of Caesardom and the modern idea of world-imperialism.
It was once the seat of world-empire, and remains even now the rock of
the Church. For many all roads still lead to the Cathedral of St.
Peter's as to the most representative temple in Christendom.
Spiritually, Rome abhors all sects and other centres of religious
persuasion. Spiritually, she claims to be the coincident centre of two
worlds, this and the world to come.
How fine is the interior of St. Peter's, built to defy time, with its
massive marbles and gigantic figures as fresh and new as if, indeed, a
few hundred years were but as yesterday in God's sight. The exterior
of the cathedral is transitory-looking, like an aspect of "this world."
But inside is part of the eternal silence such as one might experience
in a profound subterranean chamber. There is no aspiration, no
adoration--but there is a sense of eternal law. The Church is imposed
on earth. About the dome is written, "Thou art Peter, and upon this
Rock I will build my Church," in letters of gold--Rome's ultimate
authority. All is square and solid and heavy. There are no seats, but
the extensive floor is of varying granites and marbles, on which those
who believe kneel, and look so small, smaller than life-size in the
presence of the thrice-magnified statues of the Popes. So much for one
Mother-Church of the world. It is well cared for in 1921. The other
Mother-Church of Sancta Sophia in Constantinople still languishes under
the Pagan.
Rome swarms with all peoples. Its base is Italian, but it attracts the
people of all nations--Englishmen, Americans, Frenchmen, Russians, are
very common. The Anglo-Saxon party, guide-book in hand, is still
staring at the ruins of ancient Rome. The war has intervened, but it
looks as if the tourist, engrossed in his "Baedeker" had been doing the
same every day all these years. The post card vendors and would-be
guides still fret round the old monuments like crows. They alone
disturb the equanimity of the old men and middle-aged ladies who love
Rome most. For the lovers of Rome look at those wonderful columns of
Marcus Aurelius and Trajan with whole histories in spiral processionals
climbing upwards to the pinnacle of fame--and their thoughts are not on
these times.
Mightiest of the ruins of Rome is certainly that of the Colosseum,
symbol of the decay of a great people debauched by their lusts and
their rulers. The Colosseum is sometimes included in the list of the
wonders of the world, and it is certainly one of the most remarkable
ruins of antiquity. If all modern Rome were swept away by pestilence
and earthquake, the Colosseum would no doubt still stand, and be as
provocative of thought as the Pyramids themselves. It has already
survived many earthquake shocks and nineteen noisy centuries. It
stands to-day in grey serenity--a mighty stone structure of great
height and massivity, with tier upon tier of galleries where could be
accommodated surely all the Rome of its day. There is no other place
like it--with its two hundred and forty arched entrances, and its cages
and prisons. It is vast and cruel and vain even now. All the circles
glare down into the empty arena.
Imagine a festival at the Albert Hall when that little fragile building
is packed from the expensive fringe of the stalls and the boxes to the
mysterious height of the gallery, then magnify many times, and change
wood into hewn rock, and take off the roof, and give Roman air and
sunlight, and change the character and dress of the people, and make
them lust for blood and for strange sights, and give voices to their
bellies and violent animation and excitability to their limbs and their
features, and you have the Roman amphitheatre, built to be a
butchering-place for Christians and captives of war, an arena for
gladiators and a place of circuses.
It is the symbol of the decay of Rome. Bede is said to have
prophesied: "Whilst the Colosseum stands Rome will stand; when the
Colosseum falls the world itself will fall," but that was merely
testimony to its mighty structure. Five or six palaces have been built
of the marbles and other materials which have been taken away, and
still the Colosseum stands in all its architectural impressiveness.
But the thing this amphitheatre was built for ruined Rome. The taste
for brutal pleasure which the emperors encouraged debauched the spirit
of the Romans, and deprived them of that traditional virtue of which
they had been so proud. _Panem et circenses_, the giving of bread
unworked for, and the making of grand gladiatorial shows for the plebs.
Standing-room for twenty thousand plebians was actually given free, and
the other eighty thousand people who could be accommodated paid little
enough. The shows which gave pleasure also gave glory, and emperors
and magistrates sunned themselves in the people's favour by the
entertainment they could procure for the masses. Wild beasts were let
out upon little crowds of kneeling Christian victims and tore them to
pieces amid the guffaws and delighted yells of that vast concourse of
people. Or men fought with infuriated beasts--the foundation of the
bull-fight. Bears and lions and rhinoceroses and elephants and many
other animals were opposed to men for the popular delight. Or men
fought men with swords, and champions arose and championships in
plenty. We read of one gladiator worsting hundreds of other gladiators
in the arena of the Colosseum to the joy of the people, who got
extremely excited as to whether the fight had been a sporting one, and
whether they should have the defeated gladiator killed or let him go:
thumbs up or thumbs down!
Rome fell: its era was supplanted by another greater era. The
barbarian whom the Romans had enslaved and tormented at last threw down
the mighty empire.
I see before me the gladiator lie
Butchered to make a Roman holiday
. . . Shall he expire
And unavenged? Arise! Ye Goths
and glut your ire
as Byron wrote.
Now little children are playing where wild beasts were held, and
tourists peep into the empty dens where the Christian prisoners were
kept.
A great war has lately been raging when all manner of anachronistic
tendencies of mankind were displayed, but the popular lust for cruelty
and blood, which once raged from all those burning Roman eyes about the
great arena, has not returned. Few people now can bear to look on at
cruelty. Even executions are hidden from men's eyes, and if, upon
occasion, we will cruelty, we demand that it shall be accomplished away
from our eyes, and that we shall not be confronted with the details.
Here, where such gory things were done, if one of us saw an
organ-grinder threatening a monkey with a knife we should leap to save
the monkey--and ourselves.
It may be the leaven of Christianity, or the development of man, or the
racial predominance of the sympathetic Northern European, but it is
none the less a remarkable fact that cruelty which was once public meat
and drink for every one is now a hidden thing, lurking only in the
secrets of prison-life or in places like those parts of the New World
where the mob still burns its negroes alive and takes pleasure in the
sight.
Joy in sheer cruelty has, however, been supplanted by brutal sport.
The bull-fights of Spain are true Colosseum spectacles, and whilst the
danger-thrills which throb through a human concourse at the assaults of
an infuriated bull may not be as degrading as mere gloating over pain,
what can we say of the disembowelling of the horses which is such a
feature of that sport. And the modern prize fight and boxing
championship has something of the gladiatorial spirit. The enormous
interest in the Dempsey-Carpentier contest is evidence of the
increasingly debauched taste of the world's democracies. The Olympic
Games have much more to be said in their favour. But whilst they
encourage professional athleticism it can hardly be said that they
encourage Europe to be more athletic. The Sokol movement in
Czecho-slovakia and the Boy Scout movement are much more promising.
The more you look on at games the less you play them, and the more you
play them the less are you content to look on. The scene of our modern
Olympic Games goes from capital to capital in Europe, and thanks to
public spirit and the subscriptions of industrial magnates, great
stadiums such as that which we have now at Athens, have come into
being. Perhaps when our old world has become the ancient world, and
living civilization has fled across the oceans, the most remarkable of
our ruins and remains of the past may be our Stadiums and Colosseums
and arenas designed for international games and prize fights. Ancient
Rome and its fate is our great unheeded warning.
[1] W A popular hieroglyphic for Viva.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XV. FROM MONTE CARLO
The voice of a man in the Riviera express: "I am absolutely broke. I'm
up against it, up against the great It, and it's neck or nothing for
me, my boy--so I'm off for Monte Carlo. I'm going to leave it to
Chance, and Chance is the best counsellor after all. What's human
wisdom by the side of Chance? Just a turn of the wheel, and all my
troubles are solved."
"God d---n it, it's more sporting than fretting my brains out in a
dirty city like London or Paris, and trying to find a way out of my
tangle. Heads I win, tails----well, devil take it, tails doesn't
matter. I've lost, anyway."
It reminded me somehow of the title of a famous story: "Never Bet the
Devil your Head." But there's no need to feel righteous. We all do
it. We yield to despair. A wise man said, "Gambling is the real sin
against the Holy Ghost because no man should be so unfaithful to his
God-given reason as to resort to chance, and all things are possible
for the man who believes."
All things are possible for a man, for a nation, for a Europe, no
matter in what plight they find themselves, if only they will yield to
the Spirit.
However, it is not of much use talking in this wise to a scoffer. He
that maun to Cupar maun to Cupar. We're all in the same express train,
plunging towards the Riviera.
The wild shore of North-western Italy and Southern France, tamed with
villas and white halls, and luxurious with palms and vineyards hinting
of North Africa. You roll along a magnificent coast to the
Principality of Monaco, and Europe's formal garden of sin. It makes
much difference whether you arrive there in despair, or just in a
spirit of curiosity, or for a change, or "to make a little money," or
for your health, or whether you just land up there through weariness of
travel. But you always find Monte Carlo has been arranged for your
arrival. It is serious; it is smart and clean. Everything seems first
class. There is something of the smartness of execution morning when a
court-martial sentence is being carried out.
Yes, there are no poor at Monte Carlo; a poor person is thought to be
ugly in himself, and is not allowed to dwell there. Even an
ill-dressed person might be conducted to the frontier. No beggars are
allowed. No bits of dirty paper or refuse are lying in the streets,
and certainly there are no weeds in the gardens. The profits of the
gambling-tables provide the most efficient municipality in the world,
and no one who lives in Monaco is charged any taxes; the revenue
derived from roulette covers all that and more besides. At the same
time, no actual resident is allowed to stake his money at the tables.
Everything here is perfect. It has been produced like the scenery of a
piece, and when you arrive the curtain goes slowly up, and it is your
first night. The beauty which you see is strangely artificial, and all
partakes of the grotesque. Here flourishes that monstrous cactus-like
growth called prickly-pear, with flat flap-like leaves resembling
fingerless green hands; warped and brutal-looking stems looking like
palsied arms. The cactus is abloom in red-hot poker ends. Orange
trees and lemon trees and olive trees abound. Burlesquely-shaped
palms, swathed in their overcoats, stand on the green lawns like
waxwork figures. There is a strange field of palms, and above and
behind them the great rocks of the mountain coast, and then the
sea-serpents of green water and white foam.
You walk along the parade-ground of the Terrace where wealth and style
show themselves to themselves, and then enter the gloomy portals of the
gaming-halls, and you step at once into a new and very serious
atmosphere. You feel something of the seriousness of an animal's mind
when it has become conscious of the existence somewhere of a trap.
The Casino is like a great club. You leave your hat and stick and
coat. You go upstairs, not as a visitor, but as one at home. The
place is moving with well-dressed people, some passing one way, some
another. You show your pass-ticket, and come not without trepidation
to the actual tables. I have all my travelling expenses in my
pocket--what if I get infected and put all on to a number?
The first impression is pleasant. In a mellow, golden light, a whole
series of happy afternoon-parties have been arranged. Groups of
interesting strangers have found a common interest and are sitting side
by side in perfect good manners around tables. There is only one row
of seats round each table, no tiers of seats. It is like a party at
home. At the back of those who sit others are standing looking on--not
indifferently. Tokens--chips, as they are called--are being placed on
various numbers, on the chance of a red number, or the chance of a
black number, on the chance of an even or on the chance of uneven, pair
or Impair, _passé_ or _manqué_. It is so elementary that even the
dullest of Europeans can grasp the game at a few glances.
The croupiers, with their rakes, also sit at table (among the guests),
and help see that all is in order. The ball spins round. It rattles.
It loses its clear course and will come to rest in a slot. It does.
Some have won, many have lost.
The many parties, each with its separate table and distinct stories of
chance and luck going on, are intense and preoccupied. The sitters
have notebooks in which they record the numbers which win and on which
they base their future "play." Some play exclusively on colour, others
on odds and evens, others on the dozens, others on _voisinage_, others
on numbers, some on zero. It is very serious. In the secret hearts of
the sitters some liken themselves to Napoleon, who, they are persuaded,
was at once one of the greatest of gamblers and the greatest of men.
Some are would-be Cagliostros and Michael Scotts. You see the stupid,
brainy European, devoid of superstition as he thinks, and yet eaten up
with natural superstition. You see also the emotional turbulent soul
developing abnormality and mania on absurd stakes for money, the mad,
unpractical Russian staking on zero or on the slenderest chance for the
greatest of gains. The Russians and the Jews and the Americans are the
greatest of gamblers.
No, it is not quite such a pleasant atmosphere as you thought when you
first came in. It is an atmosphere in which vigilance tries to still
the pulse. You pass restlessly from one hypnotized table of gamblers
to another. The grandeur of gold and heavy glass make you feel as if
you were swimming under water in some great untroubled lake. And as
you tread softly and silently over the thick carpets it is something
like swimming. There is an intense stillness about each roulette
table. Even the winners are impassive. And the groups are gloomier
still at the stables where they are playing "Trente et Quarante."
"Every one came in to win, but nearly every one is losing--isn't it
like life?" said a friend.
"Worse even than life."
Pompous and watchful lackeys dressed as for the stage are walking
about, keeping their eyes open for sharps, for possible
scandal-raisers, or would-be suicides. The greatest care is taken to
preserve decorum. If you lose your whole fortune there you must not
shout it out and strike a heroic posture or blow your brains out.
These strong lackeys will whisk you dexterously from the scene before
the other gamblers realize what you were about to do. There is a sense
of being watched all the while.
"_Faites le jeu, messieurs!_"
"_Le jeu est fait._"
"_Rien ne va plus._"
The winners get their winnings. The bank rakes in tremendous
quantities of money-tokens. Its success is very impressive.
You see very clearly demonstrated how poor is the mental apparatus of
the average man. No wonder it is difficult to get Europe on to a basis
of common sense when _homo sapiens_ has such a limited brain-box.
"I'm staking on the number 13 now," says one. "The number 13 has not
come up for thirty-four times. It's almost bound to come soon."
"Why's that?"
"So as to correspond to the theory of chances."
"I don't suppose the number 13 is much excited about it."
The number 13 comes up. The exultant gambler pockets thirty-six times
his stake, and then engrosses himself in his exercise-book of figures
to find another number which hasn't come up for a long while.
He stakes on 7.
Thirteen comes up again.
"What a fool I was," he whispers in mortification. "I ought to have
known there was a chance of its coming up a second time."
To the theory of chances most minds are susceptible and this delightful
theory lies at the bottom of most systems.
Not in the case, however, of a certain lady who claimed to have
considerable success. She played by astrology. She kept the record of
the winning numbers. "See," said she, "how many of them are even
numbers."
"Why is that?" I murmured.
"Hercules is in the ascendant this month. That always means more even
numbers."
You do not see the humour of such a remark whilst you are in the
Casino. The strain on the minds of the gamblers tells on your mind,
too. It is terribly tiring for every one taking part, and this is
noticeable in the drawn and fatigued-looking faces. Even the croupiers
have to be changed every hour. The strain is utterly exhausting.
It would doubtless be different in these fine high halls if there were
currents of air, but there are not. It is thousand-times-breathed
gamblers' breath that you are breathing, suffused with the heavy odour
of the expensive perfumes on the women. What a change when you step
outside into the fresh air once more. You realize what it feels like
when the Casino closes, and the maniacs with their hot heads are
actually forced to leave the tables and come out.
To think that at ten in the morning there are queues waiting to get in
and get seats at the tables, and that men and women are ready to remain
at the tables all day, and can live on it and die at it!
Up on the heights above, at Rocco Bruna, is a Saracen-built little town
with strange dark people who seldom come down from the heights. You go
by shady steps between high white walls to a little chapel, and there
on Sunday a beloved _curé_ beguiles an innocent little flock with a
murmuring, heavenly, sing-song voice, whilst the children with
untroubled voices are like larks in a heaven above Monte Carlo,
singing, "_Sancta, sancta, nostra Dama priez pour nous!_"
I'd rather live at Rocca Bruna than in the main seat of the
Principality of Monaco. So would we all. But the devil has got such a
terrible pull.
LETTERS OF TRAVEL
XVI. FROM LONDON
You would hardly think that the greatest drama in world history is
being played out in Europe, and that England was taking a part. You
would hardly think that England herself was in mortal danger. London
astonishes the traveller. It seems entirely given over to trivial and
alien interest. Betting on horses has never reached such dimensions.
Whilst the street-criers of Belgrade keep calling "_Politika,
Politika!_" and the attention of Berlin is ruefully pinned down to
Reparations, and Paris is dignified and serious and national in both
newspapers and conversation, you hear nothing in the streets of London
but, "What's the latest, Bill?" and "I can tell you of a 'orse."
In the vestry of a fashionable church the admirers of a certain earnest
preacher come to see him after the sermon. Says a lady, "Well, padre,
can you tell us the great secret?"
The priest pauses and reflects.
"I suppose by the great secret you mean the love of God? I could not
tell you that at once."
"Oh, no," says the lady, "I don't mean that. I mean who will be winner
on June the first."
Derby Day is given in the Press the prominence of a grand European
event. Descriptions of what the ladies wear at Ascot occupy as many
columns in the newspaper as the condition of four million unemployed
occupy lines. The attention of the public is engulfed in second-rate
sport. It is not as if there were a real boom in sport. The war has
effected men's physique and their nerves so that most sporting
exhibitions are of the second class. Strictly speaking, it is not an
interesting cricket year. But the interest in the county competitions
has been whipped up by the Press till people buy special editions of
papers, not for the latest news from Silesia or Turkey, or of the great
strikes, but to know how Middlesex or Lancashire is getting on.
England versus Australia is greatly starred. England loses matches,
and the nation seems as much plunged in gloom as she was at the
failures of the old South African War. In the golf and tennis and polo
competitions there is a similar neurotic interest in the supposed
sporting rivalry of England and America. It seems even fortunate for
the _mens sana_ of old Britain that she has failed in boxing, and that
the Dempsey-Carpentier match in America did not affect our national
status in our own esteem.
But even our secondary public interests are not in vital matters. The
traveller returning to London in the summer of 1921 plunges into a
whole series of unsavoury divorce cases being threshed out in public.
Divorce is applied for, considered, granted, in every capital in
Europe, but nowhere does it receive the publicity in the Press that it
does in England. Its unseemly details are left in the obscurity of
private life elsewhere, and not brought forward for public
consideration as in England. One arrives in London just in time to
hear the Lord Chief Justice make a grand summing-up of a nullity suit,
and to hear two other judges court the public eye with detailed remarks
in levity of moral conduct and the immodesty of women. We sometimes in
England refer to the poisonous daily Press of Paris, but Paris, with
all its men-and-women troubles, has no salacious columns in its papers
comparable to those of England. It would not at present pay in Paris;
the people are not so much interested.
Sport is the first interest; divorce second; and only third comes the
great coal strike which threatens a revolution in industrial life.
Fourth in interest come anti-waste crusades directed against an
unpopular Government. Then the Irish trouble, and after that probably
European affairs.
"They're writing so much about sport just to keep people's minds off
the coal strike and more serious matters," says a comfortably-minded
citizen. "The Government gives the papers a hint every day as to the
line to take."