religion that to suit convention prints a prayer to God in a rag
newspaper, when for years that same newspaper has ignored every sign,
symbol, or suggestion of religious faith? Rightly or wrongly, British
folk are credited with more “camouflage” than all the French police put
together; “camouflage” in this instance standing for hypocrisy, and if
they do believe in a God it is difficult to realise their sincerity.
Meanwhile the old thunder rolls from Heaven--“God is not mocked!”
and, so far from seeing His “injustice” in this terrible war which is
ruining so much that can never be replaced, let us realise that we, the
offending Nations, have brought it upon Ourselves.
Ourselves have been ungrateful for His mercies and blessings; Ourselves
have made Self our god, and Wealth our chief aim--and so now by the
Divine Law shall Our Selves be slain and our wealth taken from us. Thus
the Shadow darkens the mirror of my “reflections”--for I feel with
Admiral Beatty that (as he expressed it) “until religious revival takes
place at home just so long will the war continue. When England can look
out on the future with humbler eyes and a prayer on her lips, then we
can begin to count the days towards the end!”
Then--and only then! Then the Shadow will lift and the mirror will
reflect the glorious figure of Victory....
“Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy!”
But not till then! And meanwhile the Great War must be seen in its true
light--as a Punishment of Nations for their unrepented wrongs to one
another!
TRIUMPH OF WOMANHOOD
(_Written for the Scottish Women’s Hospital_)
As a light in deep darkness she has arisen--woman, pure womanly, with
all the God-given attributes of her highest nature at last acknowledged
by her self-styled “lord and master,” Man! She has shaken off the
trammels which for many centuries he had fastened about her--as heroic
maid and mother she has roused the better spirit in him. Out of the
gloom and blood and slaughter of this world war--the most wicked war
that ever devastated the earth--she has radiated upon him like an
angel, clothed in a glory of love and pity; and, moving by his side
through the poisonous smoke of battle and the thunder of the guns,
she has cheered him on his way. When wounded and fallen she has been
swift to rescue him, and first to soothe. Who will, who _can_, ever
justly estimate the saving work of women in this terrific holocaust
of nations!--this mad hurtling of man against brother--man without
thought for the consequences of such wholesale murder! To Woman, in her
mother-love and mercy, friend and foe are alike indifferent; all that
her pitying eyes see are the gaping wounds, the flowing blood, the torn
and disfigured limbs--her province is to save, heal, and comfort if she
can. She knows that with God there are no nations, but that all men
are human beings, subject to the same sufferings, the same deaths; she
knows by the teaching of Christ that not a sparrow shall fall to the
ground without Our Father, and that men are of “more value than many
sparrows.” So, placing herself in tenderest unison with that “quality
of mercy” which
“Is not strained,
But droppeth, like the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath,”
she gives her care and service to all. She has no fears for herself;
she would as soon die as live, provided only she is doing her duty.
Perhaps, away down in the very core of her heart, her natural maternal
instinct teaches her that these struggling, contesting masses of men
are more or less enraged children, tormented and driven by bigger boys
than themselves to fall upon each other and slay without thought--she
may sometimes think wistfully that had they sought her counsel they
might have found some better way out of their quarrel than the killing
of their brothers--but, until lately, her rôle through all the
centuries has been the mistaken one of submission to man’s caprice
or ordainment, and any attempt at individuality on her part has been
decried as a perversion of sex. Now the question of sex, reduced
to first principles, appears to be that woman should find her sole
content as the “vessel” of man’s pleasure--the breeder and nurse of his
offspring and no more. This great war has somewhat altered the lines of
the masculine perspective, for men have been forced to admit that women
can do all their work as well as themselves, and sometimes better. They
can even build ships and aeroplanes, and all this without losing the
spirit of womanliness. Strange as it may seem, the woman who might
lately have been seen hammering at the keel of a “Dreadnought” can
prove herself soft-handed in tending the wounded, and most reverently
loving in her last cares for the dying and the dead. She has mastered
her nerves--those “Early Victorian” nerves which shuddered fastidiously
at the sight of blood, and sent their hysterical owners into a swoon
when dangers or difficulties arose, in order to create fresh confusion;
she knows the great secret of self-control, and the wonderful vigour
and courage which are born of that fine quality. There are very few
women nowadays who scream at the sight of a mouse! But this was
considered quite “the proper thing” to do in Jane Austen days, just
as in some of the queer old novels written before the grand romances
of Sir Walter Scott, the heroines invariably “fainted away” when the
lover of the piece declared his passion. Women know that “lover of the
piece” fairly well by this time, and all his limitations--sufficiently,
at any rate, to be convinced that there is nothing in him worth even a
pretended “swoon,” though there may be much that _is_ worth cherishing,
guiding, and inspiring to the best purposes. Not every man is like a
certain one I wot of, who, after being nursed for three months in a
friend’s house, said to that friend and hostess on the day he left in
restored health,--“If you want a man to like you, never do anything for
him!” This was not said in jest, but in grim and churlish earnest. It
was a curious recompense for three months’ watchful anxiety and care,
but I dare say she realised then, if never before, that “one cannot
make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Fortunately there are few such
“sow’s ears” about; most men, especially our heroic fighters, are
touchingly grateful for women’s kindness and devoted nursing, while
fairly astonished at their endurance, cheerfulness, patience, and
devotion. Truly, the supposed “incapacities” of woman never existed
except in the hopelessly unintelligent of her sex which have their
counterpart in man; she has supported her share of the burden of life
under a stupid system of repression and tyranny which has frequently
resulted in discouragement, weariness, and indifference. But give her
the chance to be her true, free self, and she will be the most powerful
factor in the world for the betterment of humanity. We shall not deny
that there are worthless women--fool-women, toy-women,--fit for nothing
but posturing in various attitudes and sets of clothing; but these
will find their level and grow fewer as time goes on. The grander,
purer natures will, like waves of a clean, bright sea, roll over the
mud-banks and eventually wash worthless things away. For now, after
centuries of oppression and servitude, in which her incalculable love
has been more than half wasted, and her splendid qualities misprized,
now at last Woman has her chance! And those who see her day dawning
must and will pray earnestly that she will use her powers always
for the highest and the best, to the end that Man may find in her
not a “drag on the wheel,” but a great lifting strength to bear him
upward and onward to that completeness of noble living which from the
beginning God has ordained.
IN PRAISE OF ENEMIES
(_Published in the “Sunday Times”_)
We are not always thankful for our blessings; often, indeed, we do not
recognise them as such. They come to us disguised in the fashion of
curses, or so we are apt to consider them till we know better. Many
of us are absurdly proud of the number of our friends; with equal
absurdity we deplore our evil destiny if we have but one enemy. Yet if
all the truth were known, we should find that we have more reason to
thank God for our foes than for our friends!
In the actual storm and stress of life’s battle our “friends,”
so-called, are of little use to us; they are more prone to be a drag on
the wheel. They are, generally speaking, kind, conventional folk, who,
when a soul is girding on its armour for action, will give “advice,”
such as “Oh, I wouldn’t run any risks, if I were you!” or “Do be
careful not to offend any one!” or “You’ll get yourself disliked!”
as if risk, offence, dislike, and trouble were not full of stimulus,
inspiring the fighting spirit which alone can beat down difficulties
and carry us on from triumph to triumph till the great victory over
ourselves be assured! But enemies! Praise God for them! They are the
useful and necessary Force which hurls itself against all progress,
all power and originality of thought or action--the murderous obstacle
laid across the line in an attempt to wreck the express train--the
great contrary wind that seeks to drive the sailing boat against the
rocks--the “thing in the way” that must be thrust aside and trampled
underfoot. What worker or warrior would willingly forego “each rebuff
that makes earth’s smoothness rough”? The man or woman without an enemy
must be of all persons the most insignificant; one who _does_ nothing
and _is_ nothing; of whom no one is envious, and who can never have
said a brave, original thing, or a word of upright, downright truth in
any circumstances.
You never know how high you are climbing till you feel some one behind
you trying to pull you down. Perhaps the greatest compliment that can
be paid by ignorance and malice to a man or woman of genius and virtue,
is the verdict passed on the Divine Master in Galilee, that he (or she)
“hath a devil”!
At the present time more than at any other period of history we of the
British Empire should bless God for our enemies! What they have done
and what they are doing for us, albeit unconsciously and unwillingly,
can hardly be accurately estimated--not while they are still attacking
us. We must wait some years before we can measure up the advantages
they are bestowing upon us--advantages which we might not in a century
have obtained for ourselves.
We were too satisfied with our apparent “friends”; we were, and still
are, much too sure of them! We were comfortable, contented, lazy. We
had everything we wanted and more. We spent money freely, and being
eminently good-natured and trustful, we allowed every one to come in
at our open doors and partake of our hospitality. Out of our full bags
of gold we poured rivers of charity in every direction; we helped
everybody that asked for help; and we allowed all sorts of folk to
exploit us and make money out of us. We could not believe that the
“friends” we entertained and whose hands we had filled with good gifts
could ever turn upon us. We seemed to have no foes; and we trusted
these “friends” of ours implicitly. Too casual and easy-going to heed
the teachings of philosophy we forgot that it takes a far nobler nature
to receive benefits than to bestow them.
Mean minds resent generosity while taking advantage of it, and nothing
goads and envenoms some dispositions so much as the near consciousness
of a superior force and ungrudging hand. This was, and is, the trouble
with the Kaiser and his particular following--we will not say Germany,
for German without the Hohenzollern autocracy would be a very different
and far greater Germany than it has been since the days of Goethe and
Schiller.
The Emperor William, as an eminently theatrical monarch, loving
grease-paint and the limelight, and obsessed by various crazes, such
as hate for his English mother and intensified hate for his mother’s
country, filled even with a morbid revulsion against the English
blood in his own veins, cannot abide the thought of the greatness
and far-reaching protective influence of the British Imperial Power.
To bend, break, and destroy THAT has been his dream from boyhood--a
dream never to be fulfilled! His visits to our shores were the visits
of a seeming “friend,” and we treated him as an honest people treat
an honest man. He took our kindness for stupidity, our trust for
ignorance, our faith for credulity, and his complete misconception of
the British character has led him into a trap which he set for us, but
by which he himself is snared--the usual Nature-law enacted surely and
remorselessly on every treacherous soul.
What would be said or thought of a man invited to the house of a
kindly hostess and permitted to enjoy the full freedom of the place,
its hospitality, its food, its comfort and shelter, who, on having
used it as a convenience and gained personal pleasure and advantage
therein, even to the making of money, suddenly turned roughly upon his
entertainer, abused her manners, her voice, her speech, her friends,
her servants and mode of living, and having got all he wanted out of
her personally insulted her? Probably not one man in ten thousand
would conduct himself so vilely, but if that one man did so forgo all
manliness, there would be not a few of his own sex ready and more than
willing to put him in his place at the point of the boot.
Yet such has been the “honorable code of chivalry” of the Emperor
William--the “Kultur” which boasts of treachery to his own kindred, of
injury to his mother’s native land, of wantonly murderous attacks on
innocent civilians who are not in any way concerned with the diseased
obsessions of his brain--a “Kultur” which is more than anything else
the “cult of stupidity”--the stupidity of a blinded bull charging into
everything with unreasoning fury. But for us the bull-onslaught is a
saving grace, for through the blindness of the beast we see!
Yes, we see, and see clearly! We have discovered our foe behind the
disguise of our “friend,” and instead of opening our doors to him we
shut them. Instead of holding out the hand of welcome and confidence we
put up the curtain of our artillery fire!--and the valour of Britain,
wrongfully supposed to be asleep or dead, is up in all its pristine
might and mettle, full-armed with a strength and magnificent courage
unmatched in all our history.
This is what our enemies have done for us: they have brought
us to realise the truth Ourselves! Had it not been for their
“stab-i’-the-back” we might still have played away our time, and with
it our commerce. Our enemies have roused our grip and grit; they have
taught us that we can turn out as many fighting men and munitions in
twelve months as they could do in forty years. Even we, accustomed for
a century to a peace unbroken save by small foreign skirmishes, are now
with our Allies winning the greatest war of the world.
Assaulted in new and brutal ways from the air, from the underseas,
as well as on land, Imperial Britain holds her own, for which she
may thank, not her friends, but her foes. True it is that, as Christ
taught, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household,” and this
saying is markedly fulfilled in the Kaiser’s hatred of his mother’s
country and people. But whether of one’s own household or not, nothing
is so salutary, so rousing, so inspiring and vivifying to the mind as
the consciousness of enemies, the knowledge that some one envies you,
grudges you success, and would be glad to hear of your failure in some
great effort. It rouses all your latent forces and makes you stronger,
bolder, more irresistible than ever you were before.
A fair woman never looks fairer than when she is being “picked to
pieces” by a yellow-skinned scandal-monger, and to any individual
possessing gifts above the ordinary the spite and malice of the
envious and jealous are as light on the path and music in the air,
invigorating the heart, bracing the energies, and emphasising the fact
that any one so envied is _worth_ envying, any one so hated is _worth_
hating, because so far above the reach of either envy or hatred!
So let us praise God for our enemies! They are adding to our triumphs
and renewing our glories. When we chant the “Te Deum” let us mentally
include an extra strophe which shall say, “We bless Thee, O Lord,
for our foes, that Thou dost suffer them to teach us the sure way to
victory! We thank Thee for their broken faith, their cruelties, and
their falsehoods, as from these we renew our own resolve to keep our
promised word to all nations, and even in the bitterness of battle to
be honest and humane!
“From their unjust cause we draw fresh justice: from their defeats
we derive our conquest. Without them we might have forgotten what we
_were_ and what we _are_! We thank and praise Thee, O God, that through
these our enemies we have found our best friends--OURSELVES!”
RECRUITING SPEECH
(_Delivered in the De Montfort Hall, Leicester_)
In the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, at the conclusion of Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle’s Lecture on the Great War, Miss Marie Corelli, who
presided as Chairman, made an appeal for recruits in the following
terms:--
“There is very little for me or for any one to say, after what we
have heard to-night. The moving and magnificent panorama which Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle has brought before our eyes by the force of his
eloquence should inspire us more to deeds than words. He has told us
what our men have already done; he has hinted at what they have yet
to do. This fearful war is not a game at football; we cannot play
at it, or put it aside as something to be thought of casually after
we have consulted our own humour and convenience. It is a time of
self-sacrifice; we owe the best of all we have to our country. We must
give, not only ourselves, but those we love to the country’s service.
In these fortunate islands, mercifully protected by the sea, we have
not as yet experienced the horrors of invasion; but invasion _may_
come, and _will_ come if we are not prepared, alert, and watchful!
We must grudge nothing to prevent such disaster. We must put aside
our own concerns entirely, and think of what this Great War means.
It means wider freedom for the whole world! It means an end to the
tyranny and savagery of Prussian militarism; it means greater progress
and broader civilisation. And being such a war, every man should be
proud and eager to bear his part in it. Any man, physically “fit” who
hesitates or hangs back at such a crucial moment in his country’s
hour of trial is a coward! And any woman who holds him back is also a
coward, and a selfish one! We love our men--yes!--but love is not true
love if it hinders a man from doing his duty. There is danger--there
is chance of death on the field of battle; but death comes to all
of us sooner or later; and we may question whether it is not better
to pass away gloriously with honour, than to creep languidly out of
existence in bed, surrounded by physic bottles. A soldier must face all
possibilities, and a brave man must be willing to risk the worst for
the chance of winning the best. As Shakespeare tells us,--
“‘Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant only taste of death but once.’
“There is urgent necessity for every able man (who is not employed in
turning out munitions of war) to join the colours--and if he is a man
at all, he should have no hesitation. After such a moving history as
that told us by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is there a ‘fit’ man here who
is not willing and eager to join his brothers-in-arms, and do his best
to make their task easier? Is there a man whose work lies, not abroad,
but at home in the making of shells and ammunition, that would grudge
a single hour of labour for his country in such urgent need? If there
is, he must be of bad blood and not a true-born Briton!
“If I had the right, the eloquence or the power to plead with you, I
would ask every man here present who can join the colours, but who has
not done so, to do it now! And I would also ask every man whose skill
and strength are needed for the manufacture of war material, to work
steadily, cheerfully, and ungrudgingly, in the full consciousness that
by urging on the necessary output he is helping to save hundreds of the
lives of his countrymen. He, the worker, is as necessary to the Empire
as the soldier; he also is fighting the King’s enemies.
“And, if I had any force to persuade, I would pray every woman in
this audience to prove her love for the men belonging to her by
inspiring them to do their duty to ‘King and country’; either by
sending them away to join the Army, with all good blessing and trust
in God for their safety--or by ‘heartening’ them up to their work in
war munitions, and putting no difficulties in their path of honour.
For every man that hangs back from military service, or ‘shirks’ his
work refuses to help his brothers; and every woman that keeps a man
away from the great fight, or encourages him to grudge and shorten his
hours of labour is wronging other women’s husband and sons. In this
great test of national character none of us must fail. In the war, as
in work, we must all pull together, shoulder to shoulder to win the
victory which must and shall be ours--
“‘If England to herself do rest but true!’”
The speaker concluded by asking her hearers to join in a hearty vote
of thanks to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for his “fine, instructive, and
impressive lecture.” This proposal was seconded by the Mayor of
Leicester (Alderman J. North) and Sir Samuel Faire, and carried with
acclamation, the vast audience being evidently moved to exceptional
enthusiasm.
SPLENDID CANADA
A TRIBUTE
To you, brave Canadians, to you who have fought so magnificently for
the old Mother-Country, and of whose valour and dash and spirit never
too much can be said or sung, I would address Tennyson’s noble lines:--
“A People’s voice, we are a people yet
Though all men else their nobler dreams forget,
_Confused by brainless mobs and lawless powers_;
Thank Him who isled us here and roughly set
His Briton in blown seas and storming showers,
We have a voice with which to pay the debt
Of boundless love and reverence and regret,
_To those great men who fought and kept it ours_
And keep it ours, O God, from _brute control_:
O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of Freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne.”
The one true seed of Freedom! This is deeply implanted in our Empire,
and you Canadian boys are fostering it and helping it to grow. Your
help is needed in peace as much as in war; we want your strength,
youth, and resolution as a firm bulwark against internal discords and
mischievous disloyalty. It is as brave a thing to face and overcome the
Evil Spirit at home as it is to face him in the field, and showers of
fiery shrapnel are less disintegrating than the showers of personal
malice and intrigue directed only too often against the men to whom we
owe the amazing and almost miraculously sudden downfall and humiliation
of our enemies in the greatest war of history.