in our latter “go-as-you-please” way ever realised. All over the United
States, Canada, and Australia her people have spread; you find them
in India, in Persia, in Egypt, in Africa; as a matter of fact, there
is no country where German influence has not been actively at work
while other nations looked on. Antwerp itself was wellnigh possessed
by German commerce before its military bombardment; it was already a
centre of German trade and German shipping, and in many of its business
houses more German was spoken than either French or Flemish. Great
Britain was lagging behind in the race; and had peace been maintained
for another twenty-five years Germany might easily have mastered the
world; and we might have lost all leading hold on commerce.
For let us not delude ourselves on the subject of our own inertia!
It is owing to the magnificent stand made for justice and right by
the hero-King of Belgium that we have been awakened from long apathy;
had it not been for his resolute example, both France and England
would have suffered far more than they are suffering now! Friend and
Defender of both nations, he stands out as the noblest figure in the
struggle--the one who, when victory sits upon our helm, must be the
first to receive that which is due to him: the restoration of his
country and his throne.
LOSS AND GAIN
And now the rivers of gold that were flowing into Germany through her
trade are stopped, “damned up” as the sensational special correspondent
would say--by British, French, and German dead! The latest estimate
of German losses at Verdun is two hundred thousand! Does the Kaiser,
at safe distance, still “look on”? What blessing has this monarch
of a great and productive realm brought upon his people? Mourning,
desolation, and irremediable misery! No triumph, no victory can atone
for such a deluge of blood and tears! That capricious Personage
“somewhere in Heaven,” whom Wilhelm calls “Unser Gott,” may possibly
resent the deliberate casting away of golden opportunities on the
part of his crowned earthly “familiar,” to whom a peaceful world was
offered, only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and broken sword!
“Thrust in thy sickle and reap!” O Emperor of a brief and bitter
day! The harvest of death, not life!--the harvest of curses, not
blessings! The thousands of dead men--dead in the very strength
of manhood--sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the
wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have their own story to
tell to “Unser Gott”; so may the bereaved and wretched women whose
husbands and sons have been torn from their arms for ever. May the true
God help them all!--for in the unspeakable hell of iniquity around us
man is wellnigh powerless; though, like every evil thing, war has its
good side. It shows us with each day heroism of the finest, courage
of the strongest, self-sacrifice of the noblest, existing among us
all; and it has reawakened the higher spirit of England. For this we
have cause to be devoutly thankful! In a certain sense it has saved us
from ourselves; and from the enervating love of pleasure and personal
avarice which was slowly undermining our better qualities.
And even the Kaiser, “looking on” at the legions of his own subjects
falling like withered leaves in a whirlwind of fire, may one day shake
off his frenzied nightmare of battle, and repent--exclaiming with
Judas:--
“I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood!”
THIS AMAZING WAR
A WOMAN’S POINT OF VIEW
(_Reprinted by special request from the “Sunday Pictorial” of March 28,
1915_)
What can be said or thought of it? This wonderful massing of
nations--this appalling slaughter of men--this relentless rolling on
of a Divine Elemental Force, too vast and powerful and resolute for
humanity to resist! It is a War so terrible, yet withal so grand,
and so pregnant with infinite issues that we, who are swept by the
dust and carnage of its fighting millions--we, who are stunned by the
clash and clamour of the frightful weapons of modern science which
it uses on land, under sea, and in air, are more or less incredulous
and stupefied, and we have been only with difficulty aroused to try
and understand its fateful import. It is Destiny in labour; and the
pangs and throes of her child-birth will give us a New World! For the
Old World is fast crumbling and crushing down upon us like an ancient
ruin struck by lightning-flash and thunderbolt; the old vices, lusts,
and littlenesses are being torn away from us as a storm-wind tears
away the parasite ivies from mouldering walls--and we shall presently
see a break in the clouds and light through the darkness. This thing
of terror and confusion Was To Be; it Had To Be! It has been coming
upon us slowly, but steadily, for years--and if we are honest with
ourselves we shall admit that we have felt its approach instinctively
in a general sense of insecurity--in a feverish impulse of haste to
live lest we should suddenly die!
Something--we know not what--a cloud or a blight--has visibly lowered
over the face of European civilisation, and in order to set aside
certain strange and perplexing inconsistencies of such conduct among us
as might induce us seriously to Think--we have flung ourselves eagerly
into a vortex of “sensations” new and old, bad and good, virtuous and
vicious, with a kind of furious recklessness, bordering on insanity.
Any lapse of morals, any bizarre or weird “craze” in art, any indecency
in literature, has been acclaimed and encouraged as “new” and “strong”
instead of being condemned for being old and weak as such things truly
are--and in many vital matters the nation has been moved by a petulant
spirit of selfish, restless irritability, like that of a querulous old
man who has neither the grace nor the courage to accept his age with
wisdom, sweetness, and dignity. And among various mad things we have
done, one stands out pre-eminently as the maddest--and that is the
tacit encouragement given by a section of society and the press to a
brood of Atheists, who have trailed their poisonous slime along the
pathways of peace where the youth of this
“Happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea,”
have wandered unsuspectingly, gathering the ugly stain on the innocent
white of their souls’ garments. Never did a sin of this nature occur
in the history of nations without Divine punishment inflicted, not so
much to destroy as to purify. The chronicles of every civilisation ever
known or heard of bear unswerving testimony to the truth that whenever
a nation or a people assumes to itself Divine right, dismissing from
its mind and conscience the idea of any higher Supreme Power before
Whom it should humiliate itself daily with thanksgiving and prayer,
that nation or people has been allowed to follow the lure of its own
intellectual pride and self-sufficiency to inevitable disaster.
IDEAL WORTH FIGHTING FOR
This is, and this will be, the case with Germany. For years her people
have willingly listened to the teachings of egoists and madmen such as
Treitschke and Nietzsche--for years they have scoffed at Christianity,
its Founder and its ethics; and they have tempted the Divine Spirit in
Man with the devil’s whisper, “All these things will I give thee if
thou wilt fall down and worship me!” But that Divine Spirit is stronger
than all Germany and its rulers; and “Get thee behind me, Satan!”
is the keynote of this great War. The Satan of ambition, greed, and
cruelty embodied in the creed of Prussian militarism must be driven
“hence”; and it is for this holy Cause that we and our Allies are
fighting. We must have a free world!--free in the sense of highest,
purest freedom--a world of ideas, thoughts, and deeds built up on the
golden law of Christ, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” As a statesman
has so nobly expressed it: “We wish the nations of Europe to be free to
live their independent lives, working out their own form of government
for themselves, and their own national development, whether they he
great nations or small States, in full liberty. This is our ideal.”
An ideal worth fighting for--worth dying for!--this “glorious liberty
of the free!” None of us would grudge life or fortune to attain the
splendid goal in sight--a radiant vision of the true “Holy City,” where
as we are told--“the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the
light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour
within it.”
POISONOUS TEACHING
Glory and honour never accompany the creed of selfish Materialism,
which is the “Kultur” of Germany. What a miserable man was he who wrote
down in cold blood these words: “I condemn Christianity. To me it is
the greatest of all possible corruptions. I call Christianity the one
great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one immortal shame
and blemish in the human race!” This was Nietzsche--poor, sickly,
egoist, Nietzsche! He died mad--yet he was the “guide, philosopher,
and friend” of modern Germany! How has his teaching worked? Let the
slaughtered thousands of his countrymen on the battlefields reply. And
let us take heed that we in our turn be not infected by the poisonous
breathings of such insanity! Our nation--our Imperial Britain--has
been dangerously far along the road to similar madness--let us hope
devoutly that we have been pulled up in time! But--“we have done those
things which we ought not to have done”--as, for example, we have
thrown the sneer of “Jingoism!” contemptuously in the face of many an
honest patriot--and now we are loud in our expressions of wrath and
astonishment at the “want of patriotism” displayed by certain tribes
of working men who “strike” for more pay, indifferent to the country’s
needs! What have these working men been taught for the last twenty
years? Why, that Money is the only god, and Self the only master! When
we reproach them for unpatriotic conduct, we should reproach ourselves
still more for the encouragement and applause we have systematically
given to every new or revived doctrine of selfishness and materialism
that ever infected the world with its sickly symptoms of decay.
Patriotism is a mental and spiritual attitude--as heroism is--as love
and faith are. Such things cannot be taught; they are the result of
ennobling influences brought to bear on life and its environment.
Considering how little our educational system holds of such subtle and
delicate training, we have reason to be proud of the splendid response
of our men throughout the Empire to the call of “King and Country,” and
of the real national “grit” which in every Briton underlies his surface
show of levity and indifference.
But have I, as a woman, nothing to say of the war, save in its ethical
aspect? Oh, yes! I, as a woman, could say much, in a woman’s way. Of
the agony of parting from men dearer to us than life, and seeing them
disappear behind a veil of impenetrable silence for weeks or months,
their fate or fortune all unknown! I could weep all day and night for
the cruel loss of young and gallant lives crushed out and left bleeding
and festering on the awful fields of contest--and I long to speak
words of consolation and hope to the dear women who wait in strained
suspense for news of their husbands, fathers, lovers, and sons! I know
all they feel; and the aching throb of their unuttered misery strikes
on my own heart with keenest pain! But with all the sorrow and all the
suffering, I would not, if I could, hold back one man from taking his
share in the noble struggle for the betterment and future peace of
the world! One can die but once; and “Greater love hath no man than
this--that a man lay down his life for his friends!”
“ALL WE LIKE SHEEP”
A PEOPLE’S PATIENCE
(_First published in the “Sunday Times”_)
The words “people” and “popular,” viewed by academic dark-lanterns
of literature, are opprobious epithets. Any person designated as
“popular,” or favoured by “the People,” falls at once outside the pale
of mutual-admiration societies--_ergo_, is not an academic dark-lantern
for the blind to lead the blind, so that both fall into the ditch. Yet
it is well understood that those who affect to despise the People and
“popular” opinion are the very ones most influenced by both, inasmuch
as not one among them but knows that in the long run the People alone
are the arbiters of national destiny. Sometimes it hardly appears as if
it were so--yet so it is. Though at this present fateful moment of time
it would seem that the People of the British Empire are stricken dumb.
They are a voiceless multitude, rendered inert by the knowledge that if
they speak every effort will be made to silence them, and that though
they have much to ask they will not be truthfully answered. For they
are only “the People”!--the ruck of taxpayers--the grist that goes to
the mill!
But what a People! Consider them as they are to-day, straining every
nerve and sinew in the work necessary for the carrying on of a wicked
and barbarous world-war, wherein they truly, _as_ a People, sought
and desired no part, but into which they were plunged unsuspectingly,
without fair warning or honest preparation; and now, being involved in
the struggle for justice and right, do most nobly acquit themselves--a
People who are giving up their sons, their life-blood, their All
for which they have worked through years of anxious toil--a People
who, when their little harmless children are torn to shreds by enemy
bombs falling from hitherto beneficent skies, are told by a fatherly
Government that “no material damage was done by the raid”--a People
who are cozened with lies and flattered by false news--a People who in
the gallant thousands of their slaughtered men are dying that Britain
may live!--or, shall we venture to say, that Cabinet Ministers may
“take their salary and continue to take it!”--an historic utterance
which will ring through the vault of posterity like Nelson’s “England
expects”--only with something of a difference! How long will this
splendid People endure in sheep-like patience what the Press justly
calls “Waste and Muddle” in high places, without giving vent to their
forcible but natural outburst known as “popular” feeling?
We read in one of the columns of a sane and non-party daily journal
the following:--“No one can say that the nation is satisfied with the
way it is governed.” This expresses in one clear phrase the apparent
situation. The word “apparent” is used advisedly, for in many spectral
things of recent statesmanship some of us feel with Macbeth that
“Life’s but a walking shadow.” The present Government, being of a
sometimes severe, sometimes indulgent parental character, seems to
look upon the public, or “the People,” as a sort of promising Child,
that sits quietly waiting to be told things, no matter whether the
things are false or true. Wedged in a nursery chair with a bar across
its bulgy waist to prevent it tumbling out on the floor, this Child
is supposed to smile and suck its finger all day long in a state of
blissful belief in nonsense rhymes and fairy tales. It is a wonderfully
good Child, and Papa Government is pleased to find how easily it can
be played with. Its simplicity is delightful! Things printed in large
type catch its eye and tickle its fancy, because occasionally (though
more in the past than in the present) it fancies that large type means
something of national importance. But with all its guilelessness it
has a vast amount of natural intelligence, and it begins to understand
that it is not, and never will be, allowed to learn the drift of
Governmental tactics, or the true state of parties in politics. It
is hazily becoming aware that it is kept in its nursery chair to be
gulled, not to be enlightened. In happier moments it has shown that
it likes to be amused, thrilled, startled, horrified, or moved to
indignation, and, so far as the “Censor” permits, the gagged and
bound Press tries to do its best on these lines, and dances for its
entertainment as well as a poor bear in chains _can_ dance, though
growling _sotto voce_ all the while! But, considered as a Child, the
public is not thought fit to be told the truth. Its opinion on national
affairs is neither sought nor wanted; all that is required of it are
Silence and Obedience. These it gives, with what result? Why, as Mr.
Asquith said, “Wait and see!”
Yet surely the waiting is long? “All we like sheep are gone astray;”
but possibly we have been led astray more than we have gone of our
own accord. All peoples have a certain sheep-like tendency; they
follow a lead. Where the leader goes the flock goes likewise. This is
sometimes set down as evidence of weakness, but with the British people
it marks both duty and discipline, obedience to law and order, love
and maintenance of home and country. Yet--let us suppose NO leader!
That is--NO leader capable of leading anywhere save into quagmires and
pitfalls of “Waste and Muddle”!
“The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly.”
Rumour has it that on our East Coast the inhabitants have been
“prepared” for a “German landing,” and have been told where to go
inland as “refugees.” Whether true or false, such a report should
never have gained currency; the word “refugees” should never be even
whispered as likely to be applicable to British subjects. Similarly on
the East Coast it is openly said that during the last enemy air-raid
two Zeppelins were “within easy gun-shot” and could have been brought
down, but that our anti-aircraft men were “_forbidden to fire_.” By
whom? Ah! There we touch upon secrets not to be disclosed by Papa
Government to any inquiring Child! Though when half a secret comes to
light the other half is not far behind! Let us not forget the warning
given by the greatest of all Teachers:--
“A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
It is idle to deny that there are traitors in our own camp; men of
position and influence who are more pro-German than British--who would
not scruple to pave the way to any dishonour provided they could serve
their own personal ends. Is any one so intellectually blind and bereft
of common sense as to suppose that even with certain of our statesmen
financial interests do not outweigh their patriotism? Time is a
merciless revealer of facts, and in its record of this war some strange
things will be written!
To those who have eyes to watch and brains to understand, the advent
of Mr. Hughes, Premier of Australia, is a wonderful, almost touching,
circumstance. Here is a Man at last!--a man who loves his country and
is not afraid to say so--a man who appeals to the right spirit of the
nation straightly and truly, with courage and conviction. “The People”
answer to his voice: that “People” whom snobs abhor! Snobbery is apt
to speak of the fine Younger Race of Imperial Britain as “Colonials,”
with a touch of contempt, as though they represented something small
and negligible, instead of embodying as they do the future power and
stability of the Empire. This “Colonial” Prime Minister shows strength,
boldness, and sincerity; he is a leader, and “All we like sheep” are
disposed to follow him, if he can show us a way out of the thickets
where we wander, torn and bleeding. Pray Heaven he be not wearied
by specious talk, or repelled by still more specious hypocrisy! or
hampered and discouraged by the working of the “wheels within wheels”
which move with such secret and perplexing intricacy, crushing honest
effort and smothering honest speech! Surely the British people can be
trusted to know what their foes know, what their Allies know, what
America knows? Are they alone to be deceived?--even into purchasing
goods “from America” which are German? Mr. Hughes needs to speak yet
more forcibly; he must rouse the slothful and the unthinking, and tell
them that if they would conquer their skilful and insidious Teuton foe,
they must equally conquer themselves; and that when the markets are
open for British labour, British labour must not fall back in energy
or stint its output. Business must go hand-in-hand with industry and
quickness, for “the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong!”
“All we like sheep” are waiting, not for compromise, but for conquest;
conquest full, splendid and lasting! The “People” are patient and
submissive enough, but they seek to put their confidence in a
Government that shows confidence in itself. If they feel that they
cannot do this, what then? Should not the following words of Carlyle be
remembered?:--
“Urge not this noble, silent People. Rouse not the Berseker rage that
lies in them! Do you know their Cromwells, Hampdens, their Pyms and
Bradshaws? Men very peaceable, but men that can be made very terrible!
Men, who like their old Fathers in Agrippa’s days, have a soul that
despises death; to whom death, compared with falsehoods and injustices,
is light! Yes, just so godlike as this People’s patience was, even so
godlike must its impatience be!”
WANTED--MORE WOMEN!
AN APPEAL
(_Written for the London “Daily Chronicle”_)
Women! You are wanted by the Nation! In the words of the recruiting
posters “Your Country calls!” It calls even YOU--you, who for centuries
have been the “weak vessels” of man’s passion and humour, are now
needed to strengthen man’s hands in the terrific business of a world’s
battle. You have helped them already; but you must help them still
more. Now is the day and hour to prove your “undaunted mettle,” and
not only your mettle but your generosity, your magnanimity, your
forgiveness! For in peace times man has denied you the very possession
of ordinary common sense; he has thrust you out of intellectual and
academic honours; he has grudged you any place in art, literature or
science, and he has made you the butt of every cynic, comedian, and
caricaturist ever since he arrogated to himself the “everything” of
life. You have been and are the grist to the mill of the comic press;
your fathers have often been glad to sell you in the marriage market to
the highest bidders; your lovers have played with you and deserted you
as bees the flowers whose honey they have stolen; your husbands have
often been faithless and perjured; and in certain of man’s legal forms,
you have been classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,” but
now!--now, you are wanted!
You, so often despised, are prayed not to return scorn with scorn;
you, with your patience, doggedness, and strongly determined zeal
for attainment, are asked to come forward in your willing thousands,
and let the men go! For the cry is “havoc!--and let slip the dogs of
war!”--war, bitter, merciless, bloody and more savage than the crudest
wars of ancient days; war in the air, on the earth and under seas--war
that is as stupid, as blind, as criminal and as selfish as are all the
acts which men commit when they have so far brutalised woman as to
check and restrain her highest impulses, kill her idealism, obstruct
her intellectual aspirations, and treat her as the slave and tool of
a degrading animalism. Had they from the first dawn of civilisation
made her their mental and spiritual equal, by this time there would
have been no wars. Her love would have constrained and educated them,
her instincts guided them, her inborn maternity shielded them from
the wrongs their ambitions and jealousies persuade them to wreak upon
each other. Now, in the very midst of the combat which they have
brought upon themselves, they are caught within a black cloud of
almost superhuman disaster, where but one ray of the veiled sun shines
through--that Divine sense of Justice for which all true peoples are
bound to fight if indeed they be not wholly given over to the devil of
Materialism.
In this, women are, and must be, with them; they, who from the legended
days of Eve have laboured under the sense of utter injustice, will be
eager to help in any struggle for the Right against Might, because it
is their own cause--the very essence of their own existence.