very thick of battle, all bearing ample testimony to the same truth, I
cannot believe that the foe is so utterly a monster as to wish to see
six million innocent people slowly starved to death; for such a dire
business would serve his purpose little, while strongly intensifying
his immediate unpopularity. War is war; and if, after all, civilisation
is so poorly advanced that war must still play its barbarous part in
the world’s policy, then of course there must be exigencies of war
which can neither be ameliorated nor minimised. But the deliberate
starvation of six million innocent human beings, more or less useful
to their kind, does not and cannot come under the head of “military
necessity.” Therefore, it should be the proud privilege and duty of
“neutrals” to do all that is possible to soften and mitigate the
fearful conditions of life as at present lived in unhappy but undaunted
Belgium. The Commission for Relief, acting in London, and comprising
representatives of the Spanish, Dutch, and Italian Embassies as well
as the American, has undertaken a task which is almost herculean.
Work as they will--and there is no pause and no shirking--it is like
coping with the waves of an engulfing sea. The needs of the people
become more urgent every day that the fierce tug-of-war grows closer
and more insistent: Great Britain has found it imperative to stop the
importation of grain into Belgium, and all this is coupled with the
fact that under the Hague convention the German army has the right to
requisition food supplies, and is not bound (save morally) to feed the
enemy’s population. Nevertheless, common sense and diplomacy, as well
as mercy and justice, may here step in and show that starvation and
sickness may breed evil among the Germans themselves as well as among
the Belgians, by sheer force of contagion--evil of a kind which might
just as conveniently be avoided. Any starving nation claims instant
help and compassion--the sufferings it is compelled to undergo are too
awful to contemplate with any degree of calmness, and may make even
the sternest “Teuton” shudder. Therefore, if any of us can, or dare,
call ourselves Christians in the face of this un-Christian warfare,
which neither religion, science, nor “New Thought,” spiritual or
intellectual, has been deep or sincere enough to hinder, let us gather
up the fragile fragments of our faith and try to piece them together
in one heart-whole, soul-strong effort to save from impending misery
the brave little nation, rich in historical splendour of renown,
artistic beauty, and industrial progress, whose hard-working people
have desired nothing but peace and freedom to attend to their own
business unmolested. If Christianity is worth anything in the world we
would not let _one_ starving creature go unfed from our doors--shall we
leave six million to such an undeserved fate? If we do, then well may
the great Powers Invisible chastise us to our own doom, and vengeful
Furies whip us to a hell of shame and oblivion! Let us hold out rescue
at once with no uncertain hands, and let our practical aid be swift,
and “of good measure, pressed down and running over.” In all such deeds
of love and sympathy and charity Great Britain and America have led the
world by their splendid example. There has been no grudging, no paltry
personal discussion as to ways and means. For every good and worthy
cause gold pours out as from a magical horn of plenty; the more the
demand, the greater the supply. And now? Now--when a nation starves!
Shall not a veritable argosy of gold make its way across the miles
of ocean which divide the Fortunate from the Unhappy, and bridge the
gulf of tears and sorrow, striking light from darkness, and hope from
despair? This can be so if America wills it! Shall not a radiant Angel
of Consolation appear within the deepest gloom of battle, stretching
out hands of blessings and sustenance, lifting the fallen, cheering
the desolate, soothing the dying, and shedding heavenly sunshine on a
sorrow-clouded land? This can be so if America wills it! Shall not the
true brotherhood of humanity be re-affirmed and strengthened in the
rescue of one nation by another?--in the succour of the smaller by the
greater?--in the full acknowledgment of a brave fight for freedom by a
power that is more than free? This can be so if America wills it!
“O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!” were the last
words of Madame Roland, heroic victim of the French Revolution--but
we would say: “O Liberty! what love is perfected in thy name!” when
starving Belgium is fed!--because America wills it! Hear my appeal, O
Star-crowned States of Freedom!--hear me!--hear all!--Let no pleading
voice pass you by _un_-heard! For the brave Nation that is dying must
live!--_shall_ live!--if America wills it!
“THE TIME OF OUR LIVES”
OUR WOMEN IN WAR
(_An answer to an American misjudgment_)
“You women over here seem to be having the time of your lives!” said
an American friend to me the other day. “You lunch and dine at all the
restaurants with whatever men ‘on leave’ you can pick up; you go with
them to music-halls and theatres and supper dances, and ‘peacock’ about
in extravagant clothes as if there were no such thing as a war on!”
My American friend, being a man, took, as is often the case with men,
rather a one-sided view of things; but what he said is true, and
I fully endorse his statement. I am proud and eager to assure our
American sisters “on the other side,” that most surely we _are_ having
“the time of our lives”! No doubt about it! But, do you understand, you
women of New York, Boston, Chicago, and every other great and growing
city in the United States, what that “time” exactly is? Are you able
to measure it and give it your true understanding? I think not! It is
easy to sit as spectators in your vast amphitheatre of across ocean
and watch from comfortably-cushioned points of view the struggle in
the world’s arena between Men and Beasts; the contest is terrific,
revolting, yet sensational--and provides “thrills” for those who are
not actively engaged in combat. But for women whose husbands, lovers,
and sons are being mauled and crushed and torn by the teeth and
claws of ravening and unreasoning brutes, it is a spectacle demanding
“nerve,” to say the least of it. This “nerve”--this power of valiant
endurance is what Great Britain’s women are displaying in “the time of
their lives”--the time of loss and sorrow, danger and difficulty; and I
doubt whether the true history of this indomitable pluck, cheerfulness,
patience, and resignation will ever be rightly known! They have been,
and still are--magnificent!--a glory and an honour to their sex!
“The time of their lives” will be recorded in the country’s annals
as among the most sublime things witnessed and proved in a century.
They have grudged no sacrifice, no pain; they have sent their best and
dearest to the great slaughterhouse of Flanders with smiles on their
lips, restraining the sobs of agony in their hearts--they have not
shrunk in one single instance from any clear duty, however difficult
or apart from their own ways of life. Where men’s places have needed
to be filled, they have filled them most ably, conscientiously, and
loyally, without grumbling or complaint; and though some of their
male employers, too old to fight, but never too old to “bully,” have
occasionally made things uncomfortable for them by coarse words and
coarser actions, they have held their peace for the sake of their
men at the front, and are content to bear with insolence and insult
in silence rather than interrupt the routine of the work they have
undertaken in order to “release” the men, such “release” often meaning
for themselves sheer heart-break and desolation. Oh, yes!--we are
having “the time of our lives”!--a time such as this world never saw,
and which we all pray it may never see again!--a time when wives
toil in munition works to “release” their husbands, knowing that such
“release” may mean their own widowhood--when mothers part bravely
from their sons, conscious that they are going into such a hell of
barbarous slaughter as never was known even in the days of the Roman
butcher, Nero--when girls “release” their lovers, and bend their own
slight bodies to the heavy toil usually undertaken by the physically
stronger sex, and say nothing of their own fatigue, suspense, and
sorrow! There are thousands of such splendid women to set against
the few hundreds who “dine at restaurants” and “peacock about,” and
even these latter are not so abandoned to self and vainglory as they
seem. True, there are women who push their own ends under cover of
professing charity, and are never so happy as when they see their own
portraits in the lower grade press--this class has always existed
in every country and will no doubt continue to exist. And there are
plenty of female “decoys” for men “on leave”--who dine and dance at
public restaurants in _un_-dress that would disgrace a savage; but,
again, these have always existed, and will probably continue to exist.
The good Bishop of London seems to have only just discovered them,
which is a great testimony to his guilelessness. Then there is a
particularly unfortunate section of the pictorial press which seeks
to attract the public eye by indecent pictures of half-nude “women of
the town”--dancers, actresses, and titled dames who are equally at one
in a voluntary outrage of morals and modesty, and though the public
Censor might very well put a stop to these offensive illustrations,
he is apparently one of those “blind who will not see.” But you, our
sisters in America, do see, and rashly pass judgment accordingly! Then
there are the ridiculous fashion-plates used as advertisements in
newspapers and in the catalogues of leading drapers, which represent
women as the merest caricaturess of womanhood, looking more like
cockatoos and chimpanzees than feminine humanity, in costumes presented
as “the fashion,” but which no decent woman ever dreams of wearing.
All this is “the scum of the pot” which rises to the top, thereby
becoming noticeable--but it does not represent the actual Womanhood of
Britain--the great, Silent Force of patient, brave, unwearying workers.
These are scarcely heard of, for they give no chance to the tongues
of Rumour, and the press cannot get at them either for portraits or
personalities. As noble and exclusive as that noble and exclusive
lady, the Duchess of Portland, whose good works are legion, they make
no clamour--they are too busy to contend with the already opposing
masculine spirit which is beginning to demand of them, “Are you going
to _dare_ do our work after the war?” The main fact with them is not
the Afterwards but the _Now_--the resolve to hold together the working
necessities of Commerce and Agriculture in Britain--Now!--in time of
need--thinking nothing of themselves or of the pleasant little vanities
and frivolities dear to them in days of peace, but bracing up all
their energies to oppose trouble with valour, patience, and faith. No
women in all the world’s history have ever risen to confront a world’s
crisis so splendidly and cheerfully as the British--except the French!
French women are superb in their magnificent patriotism!--superb in
their steadfast hate of the foe. We are often told that the British
do not “hate” enough--and that if we were better haters we should be
better lovers. It may be so, but the general tendency among us is more
to despise than to hate. A “Tommy,” for example, would hardly think
it worth while to “hate” anybody. Good-nature is the Briton’s strong
point; good-nature and a cool, easy, “happy-go-lucky” disposition.
These virtues or failings led him into the German traps whereby he was
losing his hold on the commerce of the world. He could not be brought
to believe that his progressing friend “Fritz” could stab him in the
back while he stood unarmed and unready for attack; and, even now, when
he is up and full face to the combat, his good-nature still moves him
to sing and whistle along the fire-swept path to death or glory, and to
stop, regardless of self, among a hail of bullets to give first or last
aid to a dying foeman. Is such conduct foolish or sublime? A higher
verdict than ours must give answer! In any case we know and may take
it for certain that the “Silent Force” of women who are “having the
time of their lives” is a great lever to lift the men up to the utmost
pitch of their native-born courage and resolution, and to help them
meet Death as a fellow-soldier, taking the hand of the grisly skeleton
as fearlessly as children might run to look at some attractive novelty.
For, back of us all, men and women alike, there is a strong Faith
which our enemies have lost. _They_ talk of “Unser Gott” as glibly as
though the Almighty were solely exercised in serving their whims and
passions--but though _our_ deepest religion be not of the Churches, we
cannot so trifle with the Holy Name! We are too conscious of “The Truth
that makes us free,” and in the Cause for which we and our Allies are
fighting, we can best pray with Shakespeare’s Harry the Fifth:
“O God of Battles! Steel my soldiers’ hearts!
Possess them not with fear; take from them now
The sense of numbers!”
For our Cause is the Cause of Right and Justice, Freedom and
Civilisation. We are not out for personal gain, either in gold or
territory. We have enough of both and to spare. We endure “the time
of our lives,” and its wanton and wicked slaughter of the innocent,
because we are fighting for all Humanity that it may never be so
savagely tortured again. We are fighting for a surer, more impregnable
Civilisation--one that cannot be pushed back a thousand years by
the ferocious and blind stupidity of any temporary autocrat. Is it
possible that there can be people of even average intelligence in the
States and elsewhere that do not entirely understand this? The British
intervention in the dastardly attack of Germany on Belgium and France
was to protect and defend unoffending and peaceable peoples, and in
this defence of others we have found Ourselves. We were beginning to
lose ourselves among the dreary verbosities of theorists and agnostics
and atheists and all the swarm of destructive insects which accompany a
setting-in of decadence; we have discovered once again our true spirit,
our old and valiant mettle, our pride and love of country, and all the
mighty heart of resolution which has made the British Empire what it
is. And we cannot but feel that the young and strong heart of America
beats in tune with our own--that, despite financial interests and
pro-German intrigues, Right and Justice prevail with the men and women
of the United States as with the men and women of this “little isle set
in a silver sea”--and that they very well know that they, too, must
benefit by the clearance from the world of a monstrous Militarism whose
ethics are opposed to every principle of Christian truth and human
equity. A great, strong Faith is at the back of us all--a Faith which
believes in the utmost triumph of Good over Evil--and this it is which
inspires the women of Great Britain and gives them strength to part
with their nearest and dearest, so that they endure “the time of their
lives” without flinching, knowing that they who endure to the end shall
be saved!
THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEED
AN APPEAL TO THE SANITY OF GOVERNMENTS
’Tis a mad world, my masters.--J. TAYLOR
What is the most urgent need of the world? What would stop war and
ensure peace? What would push forward all that is highest and best in
our civilisation, and cause men and women to realise that they are
not created to brutalise, degrade, and destroy each other in sordid
struggles for place and power, but that their purpose in living at all
is to educate and uplift each other to noble aims and ends? The great
Need stares us in the face at every point of social law and political
government; it clamours in our ears and pushes its problem to the
front of every question. What is it the world demands in every form
of policy, legislation, and statesmanship? A simple thing--one would
imagine it to be a natural thing--yet almost undiscoverable in any
period of history--Sanity! Sanity, which means health of both brain and
body; Sanity which recognises self only as a portion of the greater
Whole; Sanity which knows instinctively that mankind must obey the laws
of God or else suffer extinction; Sanity, which combines with reason
and judgment a comprehensive sympathy for every unit of the human race
in its struggle upward from the brute period to the highest realisation
of intellectual and spiritual worth.
Judged from this point of view one may doubt, when reading history
from its known or traditional beginnings, whether Man, taken in bulk,
has ever been entirely sane. Something of the freak, the monster, or
the only half human, seems to taint his blood, displaying itself in
follies and excesses of the most violent or pitiful nature, which,
when dispassionately narrated in the chronicles of centuries, show him
to be a crank or a fool at the very time when wisdom might most be
expected of him. Some few individuals, notable examples to the race,
have stood out in splendid isolation as sane and self-sacrificing
teachers and helpers of humanity; but, in the aggregate, from the
very beginnings of what we are pleased to call “progress” down to the
present day, the desire to trample upon each other and wallow in blood
and slaughter seems to prevail with more force over the minds of men
than the clearest arguments of reason. Nevertheless this desire is
an insane impulse, and if we had any true perception of the laws of
right and wrong, we should check it in its very first beginnings. Any
man, any body of men, seeking to violate the peace and progress of the
world should be dealt with by combined international forces of the Law
and Medicine, not by armies--and should either be shot like mad dogs
as incurable and dangerous, or imprisoned for life in asylums for the
criminally insane. No one man or group of men can be considered in
sound mental condition if their actions imperil the existence of their
fellow-creatures.
Certain natural laws have been discovered, and proved by physiologists
who make the subject their study, as to persons who may marry, and
those for whom, through consanguinity or inherited disease, marriage
is nothing less than a crime. In the “arranged” unions of royal houses
these laws have been deliberately set aside with deplorable results.
The mad dog of Europe, William of Hohenzollern, is the diseased product
of several royal intermarriages, where human convenience and popular
complaisance ignored the divine natural law; and as this law is one
which prevails “unto the third and fourth generation” we have now a
Monster-Abortion of conscienceless cruelty raging loose in the world,
who ought to have been smothered in his cradle. There are plain rules
of health and sanity which are for ever being disobeyed by civil and
social convention; but because they are so disobeyed, we must not
flatter ourselves that they do not recoil in vengeance upon the rebels.
The Designer of this wonderful and complex universe is proved to be a
vastly Mathematical Intelligence; everything great or small, down to a
grain of dust, is balanced to the nicety of a hair’s breadth, and do
what we will or may, we cannot alter the balance. Our futile efforts in
such directions merely display insanity, of the type of an uncontrolled
temper in a child which screams itself hoarse because it cannot reach
fruit on a tree too high for it to climb. If, therefore, we would have
sane peoples, with sane rulers to govern them, we should see to it
that they are born and bred sanely, according to the laws of health
and mentality which have existed among the “lower” animal creation
since the foundation of the world. Every crime is an insane impulse.
No healthily organised brain could contemplate the murder of a single
individual, much less the wholesale slaughter of millions.
The Almighty has for ever had one gate of Heaven set ajar for humanity
to peer within and push open a little wider with each succeeding
generation--a gate opening to that fair pleasaunce of wisdom and beauty
which we call Science. A great logician has written “The basis of all
science is the immutability of the laws of nature.” Would that we
remembered that “immutability” more often! Yet, while sane pioneers
in medicine and surgery are patiently and devoutly following as best
they can these complex but beneficent “laws of nature” for the saving
of human life and the healing of human injuries, the _in_sane section
of the community have been and are still employing all their distorted
energies of brain and hand in fiendish ingenuities of invention for
weapons of war that shall destroy human life more quickly than it can
be saved. And while thus engaged, other insane persons shout in the
press and the market place wild warnings about “declining birth-rate,”
reproaching unhappy women for their lack of duty in not producing sons
for some future slaughter! The Car of Juggernaut was scarcely worse
than this! To appeal for a multitude of births during the making of
a multitude of guns, which mow down the flower of young manhood like
corn, is an insult to bereaved mothers, making their vocation appear
less valuable than that of the beasts of the field. For why should
they bring forth and rear sons, only that they may go to their deaths
at the bidding of this or that Government? The very proposition is an
exhibition of stark staring lunacy, combined with a brutish lust of
degradation and reckless destructiveness which could only emanate from
deficient mental organisms.
SANITY IN RELIGION
Here we touch the vital centre of the whole. On no subject does man
ever show himself so violently crazed as on religion. The gods of the
past, created by his fanatical imagination, were more or less the
deified types of his own vices, or symbols of such virtues as he feebly
strove to attain, but he had no real faith in their power to aid or to
circumvent his designs. Yet, in lunatic fashion, he behaved as if he
thought them omnipotent, though conscious all the while of the silly
comedy he was playing with himself. Now, after two thousand years of
the pure and beautiful Gospel of Christ which teaches how “god-in-man”
might be realised, a lesson to which has been added the strong
affirmation of Science, emphasising the fact that “God is a Spirit, and
they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” Man
still plays the crazed crank with dogma, and refuses to realise the
Actual Alive Intelligence behind creation, which, from the delicate
fluff of a small bird’s feather or moth’s wing, up to the height of
solar systems, works in perfection and balance to the exactitude of
a pin’s point. This living, loving Presence the dogmatists wellnigh
ignore, preferring to move in their own small orbit of creed rather
than risk the broader spaces of assured glory. The narrow spirit of
self-absorption not only limits their outlook, but holds them bound in
a condition of deplorable egotism, like that of an “unco guid” Scotch
body who, after accepting many useful kindnesses from a friend to whom
she “gushed” affection, changed her sentiments as soon as a slight
difference arose between them, and with much unctuous piety let it
be known that she was obliged to leave that once “precious” friend’s
name “out of her prayers”! The monstrous conceit that could imagine
God capable of noticing a name left out of a Scotchwoman’s prayers, or
out of any prayers whatsoever, would be ludicrous if it were not so
pitifully expressive of barbaric ignorance--and who shall count the
thousands of similar narrow mind and heart who have a lurking hope that
heaven is for them alone, and that their “dear friends” will all be
left out in the cold!
Sanity in religion would mean sanity in everything. A sane acceptance
of the actual Motive Force of things,--a Force, tenderly embodied to us
by Christ’s teaching as the “Our Father” of us all, would do more for
our souls and bodies than all the Churches; an intelligent study and
comprehension of the minute and careful work of creation, showing us
that nothing is wasted, nothing lost--but that all tends in an onward
direction to “some far-off divine event,” would help us to find and
keep the balance of our brains. We must be brought to realise that
Evil, persisted in, works its own recoil on the evil doers, whether
they be nations or individuals--the movement of things being always
towards Good. “I and my Father are one”--said Our Lord, for which He
was stoned. The failure of the Churches is the insanity of dogma, which
has supplanted the sanity of Christ.
BRAIN BALANCE