Circling our Fortunate Isles of Fame, more famous still to be!
Let us praise the Giver of Life for the silver and azure band
He hath set between us and our foes on the other side of the land.
Break, it cannot! Yield, it shall not! England, home of the free,
God keep thee safe in the strength and light and conquering love of
the Sea!
THE SPLENDID SERVICE OF THE SEA
(_Written by request for the Navy League_)
In this greatest War of all history, a War which in extent, in
terrifying armaments, and in massed millions of men surpasses in
fearful slaughter and incalculable results all the battles ever
chronicled from earliest times to now, why is it that in these Isles
of Britain, the nucleus of the Empire most concerned, there is so
much indifference, apathy, and real ignorance displayed among the
general public of the “man-in-the-street” type concerning the silent
but ever vigilant work of our Navy? There is no use in denying the
fact--indifference, apathy, and ignorance exist; and all taken together
constitute an extraordinary, wellnigh alarming national phenomenon.
Carelessness arises from what is sometimes called “cock-sureness,”
and we are amazingly “cock-sure” of ourselves, especially in naval
matters. The levity of our women, apart from those who are engaged in
sick nursing and charitable works, and who are happily numerous, is
almost unbelievable; their outrageous, not to say positively crazy “new
fashions” in dress, their “dinner dances” at London restaurants, their
“bridge parties,” and their “night clubs” make one think of the warning
words of the prophet Isaiah:--
“Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye careless
daughters; give ear unto my speech. Many days and years shall ye be
troubled, ye careless women; for the vintage shall fail, the gathering
shall not come!”
For truly the “vintage” of prosperity and the “gathering” of good for
this country of ours would fail, and fail utterly, if it were not for
our resolved and invincible guardianship of the sea--a guardianship
which must never be relaxed, and which every one of us should learn to
appreciate and help to strengthen by every means that we may.
We are assured by many sagacious essayists and historians that it is
the women of the nation who make and who influence the men; and if
this be the case, at least one-half of our British women have cause
to be proud of the splendid fellows they have sent forth to take part
in the vast contest on which such mighty issues depend. But the other
half seem deaf to the roar of the guns, or to the call of the Sea. The
land forces occupy all the attention of newspaper readers, and very
little information can be gleaned about our seamen. The women prattle
pleasantly about the grim struggle at Neuve Chapelle or at Ypres; one
hardly ever hears them talk about the long, long hours of long, long
days and nights spent by our silent mariners, watching from every great
battleship and cruiser for the treacherous foe. Yet every woman should,
at the present moment, be well on the alert; eager, enthusiastic, and
ready to inspire, even to command the youth of the rising generation;
and among other duties falling to their lot is distinctly that of
teaching their own boys, and other women’s boys too, the inestimable
value of service in the Navy.
That grand protector of our islands, the Sea, is to Great Britain more
than a hundred million of men; and every boy should learn the history
of what it has been to us, what it is, and what it ever will be, held
by a Fleet which has never been conquered! Every brave lad’s heart is
bound to thrill when he is told of the magnificent deeds of daring
performed by our naval heroes whose names are household words; but it
is to be feared that of latter years boys have been encouraged both at
home and at school to think more of “sport” and games of skill than
patriotism, and the special training which would help them also to be
heroic and to “make history.” Lawn tennis is now regarded as a serious
business, but it is only a game, and a country will never be saved by
it. Cricket and football are equally “games”; neither one nor the other
will drive the foe from our shores should he invade us. Games are good
as “games,” but when they become a national obsession the hard and fast
line must be drawn before it is too late.
The Sea is our fortress, and so long as that is kept and guarded by a
perfectly trained and efficient Navy, we need not fear. Nevertheless,
to keep that training and efficiency up to the mark we must show no
slackness, no falling-off; there must be a perpetual addition of new,
youthful, and ardent blood; brave boys and young men for whom the ever
glorious lines of Shakespeare express life’s utmost truth and meaning:--
“This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessèd plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings
Fear’d by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renownèd for their deeds as far from home--
For Christian service and true chivalry--
As is the sepulchre in stubborn Jewry
Of the world’s ransom, blessèd Mary’s Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
* * * * *
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune!”
I wish that every word of this magnificent outburst of noble patriotism
were learned by every boy in Britain, and imprinted on his memory,
as ineffaceably as his daily prayer. It is the heart’s utterance of
the greatest poet and truest lover of his country England has ever
produced, and inspires the soul with the same emotion as that expressed
by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, of Shakespeare’s time and spirit:--
“Give me leave, therefore, without offence to live and die in this
mind, that he is not worthy to live at all that for fear or danger of
death, shunneth his country’s service and his own honour, seeing that
death is inevitable, and the fame of virtue immortal.”
Great as were the responsibilities and labours of the Navy in the past,
they were nothing compared to those of the present. In the days of
the brilliant and sagacious Queen Elizabeth, there were no submarines,
mines, or torpedoes, and the historian Camden tells us:--
“This great Armada which had been three complete years in rigging and
preparing with infinite expense, was within one month’s space many
times fought with, and at the last overthrown, with the slaughter of
many men, not an hundred of the English being missing, nor any large
ship lost.... Whereupon several monies were coined in memory of the
victory, some with a fleet flying with full sail; others in honour of
the Queen, with fireships and a fleet all in confusion, inscribed _Dux
Fœmina facti_, that is, A Woman was conductor in the Fight.”
At that time the enemy Spanish Fleet came forth and showed battle,
but up to the present the German Fleet, which took much longer than
“three years” to prepare, has not been much in evidence till its
humble surrender, and its only exhibited warfare was the treacherous
method of torpedoing unsuspecting and mostly neutral vessels, some
of which had no means of defence. My own heart thrills when I think
of our splendid naval men, whose spirits still respond to Nelson’s
undying signal--“England expects that every man will do his duty!” The
Germans are not a seafaring race. The British are born and bred “of the
sea”; the salt and savour of it are mixed with their blood, and for a
thousand years they have been accustomed to it in all its wildest moods.
Herein our Navy has an immense advantage, but because we are thus
fortunately bred, there is no need that we should forget that breeding,
or neglect the long education we have had, and allow the youth of
the country to imagine there is no need of their service. On the
contrary, there is more need of their service than ever, and for the
furtherance of this purpose we are all anxious that as many of our
hopeful lads, who have a turn for seafaring and adventure, should join
the Navy League at once, and “train” to be defenders of their country
as young and smart “sea-dogs” of the old, dauntless, unconquerable
mettle. Every help should be given to this end, especially through the
women, the mothers of strong and gallant boys, who can influence their
sons and imbue them with the true spirit of patriotism, and while we
work to strengthen and replenish this vital and necessary force on
which we depend so much for our defence and our means of existence,
we should think--we who “sit at home at ease,” of the long periods
of watchfulness endured by the men of our Fleet at sea in waiting at
every turn for each fresh move of an insidious and unscrupulous foe. We
should manage to let them know that their work is not all in vain; that
there are plenty of young fellows ready to follow them when the time
comes, and join in their splendid service of the guardianship of the
sea.
In this effort, the Navy League is a fine and necessary institution.
It keeps the youthful spirit of the Navy alive and enthusiastic, and
it reminds us of what might otherwise be forgotten, that far more than
all other defences we rely on the Sea and our Fleet to preserve our
existence and protect us from invasion.
We can help them at home by spreading the Spirit of the Navy--the
spirit of Drake, Frobisher, and Nelson among all our growing lads
who are, in their hearts, eager to be “up and doing.” I should like
to see an active branch of the Navy League established in every
town and village all over Britain--a centre where ambitious boys can
be sure of receiving sympathetic attention and assistance for their
training; and I think it would be good and serviceable if women would
help more than they at present do in this work, by teaching their
boys to honour and love the Service, and encouraging them to read the
stories of naval heroism and naval conquest, so that their minds may
be turned constantly towards ideas of their country’s defence, their
country’s safety, their country’s glory. None of these things will,
or can, be assisted by football, cricket, or lawn tennis, except as
games for physical development; but by discipline, study of the art
of navigation, and the wonderful ways of Nature in wind and wave, and
by that sincere devotion to duty which brings a man’s life into safe
port as surely as a well-piloted, well-guarded vessel. A sea-girt land
should breed seamen; we cannot have too many of them. And by early
training such powers may be attained as may build a bright British lad
into his land’s history as an unforgettable hero. For, as the famous
song tells us:--
“Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o’er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep!”
THE LILIES OF FRANCE
(_Written by request for “The Golden Book of France”_)
Glorious Lilies! Stainless and sweet, they spring from a sacred soil,
wet with the life-blood of brave men and the tears of noble women! They
are the Children of France and of the Future!--the gracious youth of
a happier day, when tyranny and fear are past, and when Peace of the
highest and purest is the canopy of safety and honour, under which the
nation may rest after long and bitter strife! The Lilies of girlhood
and boyhood; the Children, some of them deprived of fathers and
mothers, but never entirely orphaned because France is their closest
parentage! Oh, beautiful human blossoms, growing up like buds of snow
from the black smoke and ashes of battle fires!--we thank God for
you, and we pray that you may expand in happy fragrance, nourished by
the fresh air of freedom, so that the sufferings your heroic fathers
have endured for France may be transformed into joys for you! You are
the hope and glory of your land, you fair flowers which even now are
beginning to bloom innocently in the dust of many graves; you will be
the radiant and triumphant France of coming years, when your wealth of
splendid youth and victory shall flame a white aurora against skies
of heavenly blue, undarkened by any cloud of treachery! Children of
France!--Lilies that grow around the standard of Liberty!--we commend
you to the Future in faith and in hope! Not without some natural
sorrow, for, alas! your garden is the graveyard of many loves!--but
though we weep, our tears are tears of pride that those whom we have
lost are fallen in honour, and that the blood from which you draw your
sustenance is unpolluted by so much as one drop of traitor’s gall! So
shall you rise nobly, on stately stems of heroic ancestry and memory to
make France once more an earthly paradise, and in the very fairness of
your youth we shall see reflected the light of the dauntless spirits
that have fought and passed away, leaving you with us as their most
precious legacy, which we accept with gratitude--which we keep with all
tenderness--holding you reverently to our hearts as the “Annunciation”
Lilies of a New Gospel!
“WHOSO SHALL RECEIVE ONE SUCH LITTLE CHILD!”
(_Written on behalf of St. Nicholas Home for “Raid-shock” Children at
Chailry, Sussex_)
Nothing is lovelier than the sight of a perfectly happy child--a
little, laughing, dancing, restless, sparkling bit of humanity just
beginning to expand into life like a plant putting forth leaves
and tendrils and buds that promise fairest flowering--a creature
of unspoilt confidence and innocence whose whole consciousness is
absorbed in wonder and delight at the strange newness of the world
around it, and all the beautiful, amazing things the world offers
for its attraction and pleasure. The flight of a bird--the delicate
caperings of a butterfly--the flicker of sunshine on the wall--the
ripple of water--the sound of joyous laughter and dainty music--all
these pleasures and many more captivate and move a child to smiling
and pleased gesture--the little voice, the little hands, express
wordless ecstasy--the young eyes glisten with unutterable meanings.
Fresh from the unseen Power that declared “Let us make man in Our
image,” it displays a pathetic faith in good--it trusts all the big,
grown-up people around it in an exquisite confidence that none of them
will allow it to suffer harm--it accepts life as it finds it, with the
beautiful assurance of a flower which opens to the sun, instinctively
certain that all is, or shall be, well. Let us remember that a child
might never know evil if its elders did not instruct it therein! It
is as innocent as any other young animal--innocent as a kitten or St.
Bernard puppy, than which nothing is more blunderingly simple and
touchingly confident. If we watch the unspoilt, natural gaiety and
playfulness of all young things we cannot but realise the truth of the
Divine pronouncement on creation, “Behold, it was very good!” and that
we were meant to be happy on this planet--moreover, that we _should_
be happy, if it were not that we cannot leave each other alone--we
must always be backbiting and hurting each other, interfering in our
neighbour’s business and grudging our neighbour his or her special
form of happiness. No child can be honestly said to know evil till
we assure it that evil exists--till we frown and say “Naughty! That
is wrong!” heedless of the bewildered eyes that mutely ask “Why?” As
the Italian proverb says: “The ‘Why’ of a child is the key of the
Universe.” Generally speaking, a child’s attitude towards life is
one of complete reliance on unknown but trusted destiny, and in very
early years, if that reliance should be broken, the little spirit
so startled by some cruel blow is seldom or never the same again.
But a few years ago, when we who plead for the children now were all
children ourselves, the phrase “a bolt from the blue” was a phrase
merely, expressing a possible calamity, too sudden almost to ever take
place--and little did any of us dream that we should be forced to
realise its literal achievement. The ingenuity of man, warped to devise
schemes of wickedness rather than beneficence, has brought about a
state of things in which the once secure loveliness of the heavens has
become accursed by his vindictive presence, bearing with him through
the offended air the means of destruction and death to the innocent
and non-combatant populations of peaceful earth places below--and
without a generous human thought for the lives of others, he speeds his
selfish and devilish flight, insanely convinced that he is a brave man
in his efforts to kill his fellow-creatures from the air, as well as
on the land and under the sea. Nothing more heroic is left to him by
his governments, teachers, propagandists and the like but to kill--to
kill! Were he--apart from the red crime of War--to murder man, woman,
or child in cold blood, with circumstances of mutilation and burning,
he would be condemned to the gallows--but the wind-blown scarecrow of a
false “patriotism” speaks, nay, shouts, “Herein killing is no murder!”
and he rushes on his way through the air as though to perform an errand
of mercy instead of slaughter, dropping bombs of destruction anywhere
that seems to him feasible, and when he can have, as he reports, “good
results!” “Good” results! “O Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do!” Let us look with the eyes of the mind and the heart on
such a scene as has been enacted many times recently--a group of little
children in a school, singing their little play-songs, or repeating
their earliest lessons--happy, innocent, confiding--when, suddenly and
without warning, a murderous crash and thunderburst of explosives is
launched from the air through the roof above them, and where the young
lithe bodies a moment ago disported themselves, there lie mutilated
corpses drenched in blood. Our foes call that “war”--but I would fain
believe that in their own hearts they know it is butchery, and that
they deplore the merciless militarism that compels them to perform such
deeds. And even worse than death for these little ones is the stunning
blow on their mentality--the horrible knock, as it were, on the
delicate membrane of the nervous system, which bruises it in a subtle,
creeping way that is almost unimaginable. Contrast a healthy, happy
child, playing fearlessly in the fields among the flowers, with one who
is suffering from “raid shock”--and who sometimes sits lost in a vague
stupor, unwilling to move--afraid to look up at the sky lest something
fiendish should fall from it! I know one such child who refuses now to
raise his eyes from a morose study of the ground. Hour after hour he
sits frowningly absorbed. Pressed recently to look at the flight of a
butterfly through the air, he gave a terrified glance at it sideways,
and then resumed his downward staring. A kindly nurse, trying to rouse
him, said, “You mustn’t be frightened of the sky--God is up there!”
but he uttered a little pained cry and covered his face, sobbing,
“No--no--no! Wicked man up there--not God!”
There is no need to comment on the effect of such impressions on a
child’s vivid imagination; it is altogether dreadful and disastrous,
for who can tell what damaging results to the brain may be in store for
the innocent little victim! Time and care, with healthful surroundings
and healing influences, may do much to eliminate the evil and disperse
the horror and cruelty of such experiences--and this is why the “St.
Nicholas Home” exists to-day, thanks to the loving heart and patience
of its founder, Mrs. Kimmins, whose tenderness for children makes one
feel that Her guardian angel, as well as the angels who watch over
Christ’s little ones, must always “behold the Face of the Father.”
No one with even a small amount to spare from the multitudinous
claims made on the pocket of the unfortunate British taxpayer, whose
Governments have dragged him into the incredible wickedness of a war
for which he had neither the taste nor the inclination, will refuse
that mite to assist the work of the “good Saint Nicholas” in the home
over which his childhood-loving spirit presides, while those who are
making much of the “filthy lucre” out of the exigencies and demands
of the nations’ slaughter-houses will perchance salve conscience by
munificence. Some of the donors may call to mind the story of the
father who murdered his three sons, and whose crime St. Nicholas
discovered in a vision. Going to the inn where the murderer was, the
saint forced him to confess his wickedness, and forthwith raised
the three boys to life again. In this legend we may find a happy
symbol for the “Home” on whose behalf we plead. For the “raid-shock”
children are, in a sense, murdered, though alive--murdered in their
natural confidence, hope, and gaiety, and crushed by the oppressive
consciousness of an ever-looming evil. We wish, as St. Nicholas did
with the three boys, to raise them to life again--to re-establish
their youthful trust, to make them forget that there are men who are
devils--but perhaps to persuade them that there are women who are
angels! Women, with mothers’ hearts, ready to put mothers’ arms round
them--to play with them and talk “fairy bits”--as a sweet little
girl asked me to do the other day--women who will care for them and
see that nothing scares them from their healthful sleep at night, or
their innocent games by day. This is the object of our appeal for “St.
Nicholas Home”--a worthy cause--a noble, humane, and sacred cause, for
we must “take heed” that we “offend not one of these little ones.”
And most earnestly do I join with all who have put their shoulders to
the wheel of this great Car of good effort steadily going a stiff way
uphill--a strong push, a big push, and a push all together, and we
shall stand on the shining summit of success with our saved children
gathered round us in the light of happier days!
APPEAL FOR THE FRENCH RED CROSS
(_Written for the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, July, 1918_)
DEAR FRIENDS!--We are here to-day in the name of France; France, the
beautiful, the beloved country, now ravaged and desolated by the
crudest enemy that ever dishonoured the name of War. I am asked to make
an appeal to you,--to you, the people of the land of Shakespeare, on
behalf of the people of the land of Victor Hugo,--and I esteem it an
honour, a privilege, and a duty to plead this great Cause. I ask you
to look away from yourselves, your own interests, your own comforts
in this peaceful town, which has never known the horrors of invasion
and destruction by brutal foes,--I ask you to think of other towns and
villages, once as happy, but now ruined and desolate, where thousands
of harmless people have been driven out of their homes and forced to
endure miseries such as you have never known! Remember, too, with
what heroism they have borne their sufferings!--with what courage and
fortitude! Never complaining, they have put their own sorrows and
losses in the background for the sake of their country, and when all
the tale is told, the splendid and unflinching patriotism of France
will shine on the page of history as a deathless example to all the
nations of the world!