passed away. They are passing, but the full splendour of the light is
not yet. “Home, _dull_ Home,” is coming back to its own as “Home, sweet
Home” once more, because a dark and threatening destiny has torn sons
from their mothers, and has broken up dear associations which were
unvalued, because possessed. Now that death has darkened many windows
and shut many doors, the bereaved ones begin to realise what “home”
really was in the past days of peace, and what it never will be again;
while those that are absent on the battlefield, amid the roar of the
guns and the storm of shot and shell, turn back wistfully to the memory
of days spent “at home,” in a tranquillity of mind and body that seemed
“dull,” but that now shines forth in the visions of the brain as a
reflex of positive heaven.
Few, I think, have taken the trouble to consider what this Empire would
become without the saving grace of “Home”--that oasis in the desert
where love has its best chance and friendship its surest footing.
It is in very truth the foundation of national safety and the basis of
educational progress, and yet it is what a very large majority of us
have lately esteemed but lightly, moved as we have been by a spirit of
strange unrest, impelling us to wander hither and thither in search of
satisfaction which, after all our quest, awaits us at our own door.
Suppose that one and all we ran “amok” in the liberty which speedily
degenerates into license, without any restraining hand? Would it be
“well for England” then? We know it would not, yet if our young people
are brought up to disdain and to neglect their parents, and “friends”
so-called, only seek other “friends” in order to make use of them for
their own ends, the social code will be one of pure egotism without
a shred of conscience to soften its hard and fast self-seeking. This
would not be “well for England,” and from this point of view alone we
have to be thankful for the scourge of this terrific war. For here God
has taken the lead. He has indeed “put down the mighty from their seat,
and has exalted the humble and meek,” for the humblest ranks of our
British fighting men are heroes to-day, and the true spirit and mettle
of the British race, long suppressed beneath a featherbed softness of
prolonged peace, have sprung up in splendid and unbroken strength,
proving in deeds more than words that “all is well with England!”
No praise can be too high for their courage, cheerfulness, and
self-sacrifice; the sword of their unquenchable valour has long been
sheathed, but it has not grown rusty--the blade is as bright as ever it
was.
This is something to be proud of, something for us to remember when
inclined to pessimism. We have nothing to fear on the score of our
warriors who have gone forth in the flower of their manhood, to contend
with and to conquer a brutal foe; and, if the creeping suggestion that
all is _not_ well with England steals into our minds, it is on account
of _traitors at home_.
Yes, _there_ is a dire possibility of mischief, a chance of infinite
harm being wrought on England, and on the whole British Empire by the
avarice and short-sightedness of some of our leading men who have “axes
to grind.”
It may be unpleasant to face the truth, but surely it is wiser and
safer to do so than to wait till it overwhelms us. And the merest tyro
in diplomacy, the most casual looker-on at the moves on the political
chess-board, can see how many a man “in official capacity” is playing
the German game, and manœuvring towards a patched-up “peace” which
shall give Germany every possible trade advantage.
The people’s confidence is being daily betrayed by such treacherous
hypocrites, some of whom have financial interests closely bound in with
Germany, and who hesitate and shuffle and delay action indefinitely,
though the slaughter of innocent thousands may pay the price of their
ineptitude.
In such scandalous matters, all is _not_ well with England--and all
will never be well, unless the people take a hand against their own
spoliation and betrayal. And they cannot begin too soon. The house of
the nation is being “swept and garnished.” We shall need to take care
that the “unclean spirit” of Germany does not take “seven other spirits
more wicked” to “enter in and dwell there,” so that “the last state”
of that house be not “worse than the first.”
We need the resolved spirit of Queen Elizabeth, whose proclamation
against certain troublesome foreigners “which had flocked to the coast
towns of England” in 1560, commanded that they “should depart the
realm within twenty days,” whether they liked it or not, “upon pain of
imprisonment or loss of goods.” Queen Bess did not put on gloves when
dealing with treachery; she hit it fair and square in the face. We
should do wisely to imitate her example.
No great reforms are ever accomplished without opposition from
prejudiced and self-interested persons, and it needs a strong soul to
stand firm and full-fronted against malcontents, and to steadily baffle
political intrigues. With these latter, the Ministry is hemmed in and
environed, and it is a regrettable fact that in some quarters “party”
is ready to overwhelm patriotism, despite all plausible assurances to
the contrary.
On this point I would venture, as an independent writer who has no
favours to seek and no “axe to grind,” to warn our more or less
passive, silent, and patient people of dangers ahead.
The people are the nation, the people whose labour makes the wealth
of the country are the worth of the country; and for them the name of
Britain should represent all things British. But unless they themselves
take good care, their trades will be again swamped by Germany in the
future as in the past, especially if they put in less hours of work.
It stands to reason that if a British workman will only work for eight
hours, and a German will work for fourteen or sixteen, the German will
score in every kind of labour.
Even now the German is preparing for the relaxing of “restricted”
trades. The goods which the British Government declared “unnecessary”
in time of war are being “made in Germany,” and at an opportune moment
will be “dumped down” on these shores before the Englishman, returned
from battle, can so much as set his house in order.
We may think, or we may hope, that protection against such unfairness
will be guaranteed by Government--but will it? Does it look like it
even now?--when Germans are permitted to run the business of absent
Englishmen, and to make profit therefrom!
Sometimes it would almost seem as if there were a certain numbness or
apathy in the minds of the British people here at home, which robs them
of “the native hue of resolution,” so that in
“Enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.”
There is a general tendency not to take too much personal trouble
over any matter, a desire to avoid “being bothered,” and a persistent
jog-trot in the same old way, like “dumb, driven cattle,” no matter
whether the road lead to prosperity or ruin. This is like the fatal
lethargy which overcomes the traveller in heavy snow, when he yields
himself to a sleep from which he shall never wake.
Half the people in these islands do not yet realise the full meaning
or the real horror of the war in which we have been forced, by all
the rights of law and liberty, to engage. They do not think--they
cannot. Their sense of perception seems stunned as by a heavy blow.
All religion, all faith, all hope, have in a great measure failed them.
They do not see why they should suffer undeservedly.
A poor woman receiving the news that her son was killed, had no
tears--her face grew white and stiffened, as with frost--but she had
nothing to say except this: “Ah, well! I couldn’t expect anything else,
as there’s no God left to us now! Only man, the devil!” She could
but realise that the war is man’s work--the result of his miserable
ambitions, his delight in destruction, his selfish pride and cruelty.
And the church had taught her little more than that the God she was
told to worship was “a jealous God,” and out of that saying little
comfort can be drawn for the broken heart of a bereaved mother.
Perhaps one of the most terrible notes struck from the great
thunder-echoes of the war is this apparent failure of all churches to
cope with the sorrow that has swept over all lands, destroying homes
that were once happy.
Our Lord’s pitiful and pathetic words are realised to-day:--“Because
iniquity shall abound the love of many shall grow cold.” Ah, yes, love
for Him and all the tenderness He taught _has_ “grown cold,” and many
of His professed ministers are tongue-tied and spirit-frozen, and seem
all unable to raise the broken lives from the dust of despair, or dry
the weeping eyes which are too tired and heavy to lift themselves to
heaven.
There is a strong instinctive sense among us all, no matter to what
sect we belong or what religious formula we profess, that if the
churches had ever truly taught and truly followed the example of
Christ, war and its horrors would have been impossible. For He gave us
only two commandments--two instead of the Mosaic ten--thus:--
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy
soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it--thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Who is there that can deny that if these two commandments had been
obeyed by man in his social and civil life, the whole face of things
would have changed to an almost divine betterment, and the world’s
progress, assisted by a sanity of thought and a clarity of action,
would have been towards beauty and spiritual uplifting?
The word “spiritual” is sadly wronged and degraded nowadays by
misguided or semi-crazed persons who “blaspheme the Holy Ghost” by
their pretensions to psychic power, and play with the names of scared
things in order to further their own sinister designs. Our Lord
prophesied this evil when He spoke of “false prophets” who should “show
signs and wonders,” insomuch “that if it were possible they shall
deceive the very elect.”
Is it not a fact that we have come upon such days? Days when the
pure, simple, and helpful ethics of Christ are set aside in exchange
for an insane credence in the vulgar trickery of “mediumship,”
“crystal-gazing,” and other base forms of superstition pertaining
to the eras of ignorant barbarism? Does it seem believable that
there should be so-called “intellectual” men in this country, even
statesmen of admitted ability, who are actually partially under the
sway of illiterate “mediums,” generally women, who pretend to hold
communication with the dead, and even presume to offer advice from
the “spirits” on the affairs of the nation and the prosecution of
the war? One could hardly imagine a wilder improbability, yet it is
an absolute fact! The names of persons in high and trusted positions
are on the books of the unscrupulous jugglers and tricksters who earn
their wicked living by mischievous tampering with the brains of their
dupes and victims, and the wonder is that these notabilities should so
feebly allow themselves to be duped and victimized. But one has only
to think of the entire submission of the Romanoffs to the villainous
machinations of that unspeakable “monk,” Rasputin, to realize that
there is no depth of abasement to which the human mind may not fall if
it loses its hold on God.
It has to be confessed there are very few indications of real religion
among us at present. A large portion of the clergy seem stricken with
ineptitude, and one longs for a strong man who would not only preach
the truth, but _live_ it. A narrow egotism disfigures the ministering
spirit of the Church, and I could name more than one cleric whose
absorption in self entirely blinds him to the real duties he is called
upon to do.
The service of Christ should be broad and all-embracing, generous,
cheerful, ungrudging, and untiring in the aid of all humanity, rich and
poor, old and young, sinful and sorry, and only men who are prepared to
work on these lines should be admitted to such a high and holy calling.
But things are moving, and will move in the right direction presently;
when the roar of the guns has died away and the memory of our slain
heroes weighs on our stricken souls with sorrow and shame, and we have
time to reflect that it is for us and the saving of our honour that
they have died.
We shall then lift our eyes to Him from Whom cometh our strength, we
shall unite in a grand revolt against hypocrisy and shams; we shall
hold our homes more preciously, seeing and knowing what blood has been
shed to keep them inviolate, and we shall value simplicity and purity
of life for ourselves and our children far more than wealth and the
fleeting, feverish pleasures which wealth can attain.
In this new dawn of our day it will be well for England!
One of the happiest and most hopeful auguries for the future is the
stimulus given to agriculture and the “life of the land” by the
necessity of providing food supplies for our own people on our own soil.
The menace of the submarine has done this for us, and devastating as
its brutal work has been, we may regard it as a blessing in disguise.
For we should not need to depend on foreign imports of food if we
utilised our own acreage as fully and diligently as we might.
Life in the country, work in the country, means health and a light
heart; and many there are who would like to see the olden days of
purely native production come back again--the days of home spinning,
home weaving, home manufacture of every kind carried on in all the
towns and villages of rural England.
Here and there of late years there have been some efforts in this
direction--there is a spinning and weaving school at Haslemere, at
Stratford-on-Avon, and elsewhere--but the support given to these
praiseworthy industries is not sufficiently certain and prolonged
to push them with sufficient prominence into the public notice.
Nevertheless, many a woman helps the movement by electing to wear
only home-woven goods; they are beautiful and artistic enough to
deserve patronage, and can be purchased direct from the weavers and
spinners without the intervention of the middle-man whose business is
“profiteering.”
What an England it might be--what an England it _will_ be--when
every acre of suitable soil bears its weight of golden grain!--when
every orchard’s value can be appraised by its measure of luscious
fruit!--when farmyards are full of cattle, and good wives are so clever
at poultry and dairy work that the country can do without “millions of
foreign eggs”--having such “millions” of its own--and when prosperous
farms in the country are esteemed more valuable possessions than houses
in town, where money is often uselessly wasted on so-called “pleasures”
which have their end in damaged health and “vexation of spirit”!
To my own mind there is nothing more lovely or more satisfying than the
life of the country, where one may see the real breadth of the sky, and
feel the real freshness of the air.
In great cities, where humanity is a mere hive, the houses of brick and
stone block out the sky and impede the air, and somehow one imagines
that God is a long way off, while in the country He seems “nearer
than hands and feet.” Everything speaks of His infinite care and
providence--the birds, the flowers, the trees, the murmur of the leaves
that clap together like little fairy hands in the wind, and the low,
sweet, sigh that sways through the long grass at sunset.
The nearer man approaches to Nature, the more he becomes conscious of
a Divine, mysterious Presence to which his whole being instinctively,
though almost unconsciously, responds as “Our Father.”
In the rush and roar of great cities he loses this delicate intimacy
with his own origin, and all that is or might be divine in himself
becomes lowered to the level of gross material needs and ideas which
are the reflex of the coarser atmosphere around him.
The dweller among country sights and scenes is an idealist--sometimes
even a poet, though he may never express himself in words--and many an
ordinary labourer turning the rich clods of soil with the plough can be
found who will at times say things both trenchant and eloquent which
will give food for thought to the most cultivated stylist.
Some people imagine that cities educate, and that the country does not;
but one may question whether it is not quite the other way about. In
any case, the life of the country makes for health and strength, and
these are two potent factors for happiness. No man can be happy or
contented if he is ailing and weakly, and in our many “new” systems of
education, which are now being so much talked of, it is to be hoped
that health for the children will be the first thing to be considered
and maintained.
Here I may perhaps touch upon a point where one may trust that “all
is well with England,” in the immense change the war has wrought as
regards the position of women in the State.
Some years ago I was one of the many who were strongly opposed to the
“Votes for Women” movement, judging it to be wholly unnecessary.
I had been brought up on the chivalric view of man as taken by Sir
Walter Scott in his immortal romances, and my idea, gathered from
these exalted specimens of the race, was that as man was always ready
to worship woman it seemed invidious on her part to contend with him
in his own particular sphere. But when it was forced on me that, more
often than not, man was more ready to deride rather than worship
woman, that the special “strain” of Walter Scott’s heroes was in
Walter Scott’s delightful imagination only, and that as a matter of
fact men denied to women such lawful honours as they might win through
intellectual attainment, and that in certain forms of their legal
procedure women were classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,”
I began to change my opinion.
I thought that if the mothers of the race were to be assorted with
“criminals and lunatics,” the men they had given birth to might be, in
their toleration of such a stigma, criminals and lunatics themselves.
And when the war broke out and all the world raised itself, as it
were, on tiptoe to see what was going to happen, and beheld among many
marvels perhaps the greatest marvel of all--the women going forth
to work in the places of men, going in thousands, without demur or
hesitation, and taking their full share of the hardest and most menial
labour with a cheerfulness and spirit no less remarkable than the
intelligence with which they handled difficulties hitherto unknown,
it was no longer possible to deny them equal rights with men in every
relation of life and every phase of work. By every law of justice
they deserved the vote--and I who, as a woman, was once against it,
am bound to support the cause. All the same I shall be sorry to see
them in Parliament; deeply sorry to find them straying so far out of
their higher and far more influential sphere. The vanishing of modest
and refined womanhood will prove a greater loss to the nation than
any other asset of its power and renown. No woman can mingle with the
mess of political intrigue without losing something of the charm and
reticence originally in her nature, which has inspired men to their
noblest aims and ends. I imagine that a true woman would rather be the
Madonna of a Faith than the Premier of an Empire!
Nevertheless I grant freely and fully that it will be “well for
England” when women have a voice in the education of children, and when
they can refuse to “temporise” on questions of the national morality
and well-being.
The recent “food muddle” under the management of men is a proof, if one
were needed, of the superiority of women in all matters of domestic
management, for any capable housekeeper would have organised the scheme
with better knowledge and finer tact. That there will be jealousy and
injustice displayed by the stronger sex towards the weaker on this
matter of the vote, goes without saying. But jealousy and injustice
exist anyhow, and a proof of man’s inconsistency towards women in
matters of art alone is furnished by the purchase of Lucy Kemp-Welsh’s
fine picture “Forward the guns!” in the Royal Academy, which has been
bought “_for the nation_.” Yet, mark you, though this woman’s work is
considered worthy of national keeping, she herself may not be admitted
as an R. A.! Comment is superfluous. But it is possible that the
granting of votes to women will alter all this, and that the barriers
which the men have carefully erected against the sex of their mothers
will be broken down for good.
The Jewish dispensation has to be credited for the rule of “keeping
women in their place,” along with flocks and herds. But the Christian
dispensation teaches a lovelier lesson--for a woman was the first to
hold the God-Man in her arms, and a woman was the first to greet Him on
His resurrection from the dead.
Does this teach nothing? Is there no symbol of the future of womanhood
thus gloriously foreshadowed? I venture to think there is.
I believe and hope that a wider freedom to woman will mean a nobler
heritage to man, and that through her intelligence and influence he
may find and prove the “god” in him, and rise from the grave of old
prejudice to the light of more brilliant possibilities. And this will
be “well for England.”
Many changes are bound to come, many sorrowful and tragic happenings
are yet in store for this dear country, but “it is well” that so these
things should be, to the end that we realise where we have missed the
way, and take heed that we stumble not again.
The secret of our regeneration is not in this or that government; it is
with the _people_.
Yet on the whole, despite clouds in our sky, it is well for England so
far. We shall come out of the darkness if--if the _people_ will it. Up
to the present they have grudged nothing--neither time, nor labour, nor
money, nor sacrifice. They have been in every sense worthy of British
tradition--a people splendid. Now it is that they must see they do not
fall a prey to “party” traps, designed for the safeguarding of Germany
in those quarters where British financial interests are concerned.
I repeat, “All is well with England!”--all _will_ be well--if the
_people_ are awake and alert, if they will unite to remove the German
foe from their midst, and if they will in time remember the old proverb
which says, “It’s no use shutting the stable door when the horse is
stolen.” The German has the fixed intention of re-monopolising trade
when the war is over, and already our Indian Empire is in advance of us
by the ban announced against German trade in India, and the barring of
German ships from Indian ports.
Decisive action must be taken in these matters before it is too late.
British trade interests, British artisans, British workers of all
classes must be defended and protected and encouraged.
The agricultural arts and sciences must be made a primary matter of
education for the people, and our productive soil must be given a fair
chance. Landowners who have held thousands of acres for the pleasure
of sport alone must yield to the necessity of feeding men instead of
preserving game, and a prosperous, smiling England, “a land flowing
with milk and honey,” will be the reward of all those who steadily set
their energies to work in the right direction, that right direction
being always for the good of the many and not for self or the few. It
should surely be the aim of every true patriot to leave his country
better than he found it, and all personal interest should and must go
to the wall where the welfare of the people is at all concerned. The
trend of thought is all in this one way, for which we may thank God. A
renewed faith in the highest, a return to the devotional spirit of true
religion, and a resolve to root out from every educational system,
from every art, from every form of literature all that makes for evil
and degradation; this will ensure all being “well for England,” so
well, that neither the hatred, envy, nor malice of rivals can move her
from her sure foundations of peace.
She should be, and she _must_ be great and pure, with the greatness and
pureness for which our heroes have fought in the past, and for which
they fight to-day, and for this high cause, though we mourn our slain
manhood, we must grudge no sacrifice, however hard. We have not grudged
anything as yet--we shall never begin to do so. And so both now and in
the days to come, through God’s mercy, may we ever be able to say--
“All is well with England!”