A PERSONAL EXPLANATION
THE great Puritan Queen lay dead--dead, after sixty-three years of
unexampled prosperity and glory. For her, and in her name, heroes
had conquered and statesmen had annexed; laureates had hymned her in
exquisite verse; discoverers had written her name on the map of new
continents and carried it to the mysterious sources of old Nile. On her
the farthest East had showered barbaric pearl and gold, and new realms
had come forth out of the desert to hail her Queen.
The last Protestant Queen lay dead. And before the warmth of life
had ebbed away two hands were lifted to rend the veil of the world’s
reverence. One of these hands affixed a paper to her Palace walls,
proclaiming that she had been a usurper; the other boasted in the
public press that she had been interred with a Catholic emblem upon her
breast.
Both hands were guided, consciously or unconsciously, by the same
motive power. Both actions were symbolical. The mysterious process of
the rise and fall of nations is worked out by and through the change of
minds. The Victorian Age had passed away before Victoria herself. And
her end had been hastened and embittered by the opening revelations of
the anti-Puritan war.
The last man in England who was likely to read aright the signs of the
times, and perceive the true trend of contemporary history was the
man who, naturally enough, found himself occupying the post of Home
Secretary.
The Duke of Trent had been passing the last two days at Osborne, in
obedience to the archaic custom which required him to witness the
Sovereign’s demise. Not less archaic in essence seemed to his eye the
seditious manifesto which was brought to him by an agent of Scotland
Yard, torn down from St. James’s Palace within half an hour of its
being put up. Viewing it, as his character and intellectual limitations
compelled him to view it, as an offensive practical joke, nevertheless
he hastened back to town in a state of uneasiness bordering on alarm.
He did not, of course, apprehend anything in the nature of violence,
but he thought it quite possible that the authors of the Assertion
might be preparing to interrupt the formal proclamation of the new
Sovereign; and he had ordered the ceremony to be deferred till the
police had had time to act.
Privately he had another and still more serious cause of anxiety.
He had not forgotten the Legitimist bazaar, and he feared that the
investigations which had been immediately set on foot might show the
name of his brother as figuring among the authors of the disgraceful
jest.
The task of the police did not prove a difficult one. Late in the
afternoon of the day after the outrage the Chief Commissioner himself
waited upon the Secretary of State at the Home Office to make his
confidential report.
The Duke received him alone, with an air of embarrassment which the
Commissioner found it easy to understand.
“I thought it best to come to your Grace myself, as the matter is one
that seems to call for careful handling.”
“What have you found out?”
“The manifesto--they call it the Assertion--comes from the committee
of a body styling itself the Legitimist Guild. The real instigator,
I suspect, is a Frenchman, the Comte des Louvres, who is a sort of
international agent. He is in the pay of the Duke of ----, the King of
the ----, and even, I believe, of the Vatican.”
The Home Secretary frowned.
“What was his motive?”
“Simply to show that he was earning his money, I expect. There may
be some idea that if they can give trouble to our Royal Family, the
influence of the English Court will be exerted on behalf of the
Royalist cause in France--or the Pope’s temporal power.”
“Well, what have you done?”
“We had very little to do. As soon as the manifesto was found I guessed
whom it came from, and sent a couple of detectives round to the Count’s
house, where they seized the papers of the Guild. That seems to have
frightened them, and within an hour or two more than half of the
committee were round with us volunteering information, and anxious to
be accepted as King’s evidence in case of a prosecution.”
The Duke raised his eyes to the Commissioner’s face.
“The King does not want a prosecution. He prefers that the whole thing
should be hushed up. All we have to do is to give these fools a good
fright, so that they will think twice before repeating their exploit.
What are their names?”
“The first men who came to us were two brothers named Vane, who had
undertaken to post up copies of the Assertion themselves, but thought
better of it--they brought the copies with them to prove their
innocence. Afterwards there was an Irishman who calls himself St. Maur,
but whose real name is Maher, and Basil Dyke, the novelist. Dyke seems
to have protested the whole thing from the first, and resigned from the
Guild in consequence. I don’t think any of the four are likely to give
any more trouble.”
“Who else is there?”
The Commissioner of Police discreetly turned his head.
“The only others are the Comte des Louvres, the Hon. Gerald St. John,
and--Lord Alistair Stuart.”
Lord Alistair’s brother clenched the hand that rested on the desk in
front of him.
“Yes; that is what I expected.” He paused for a moment or two, frowning
and fidgeting in his chair. “Who put up this wretched thing?”
“According to the Vanes, Lord Alistair must have posted the one on the
Palace. The other two were each to put up one somewhere else, but I
believe Mr. St. John was the only one who actually did.”
“In other words, my brother is the ringleader--is that so?”
“I think his lordship is the only one of the whole crew who has any
pluck,” was the response. “He was in the chair when the thing was
decided on.”
The Duke of Trent drew his lips together.
“Do you know where to find him?”
“I have men watching them all. Lord Alistair has stayed indoors all
day.” The Chief Commissioner hesitated, and then went on. “Your Grace
will excuse me if I refer to a private matter which perhaps you would
wish to hear at once. Lady Alistair has deserted his lordship--eloped,
in fact, with Mr. Mendes, the millionaire.”
The Duke looked up, startled.
“When did that happen?”
“Yesterday, I understand. She did not come home last night. His
lordship has been alone all day.”
James Stuart fell into a brown study. The news he had just heard was
both good and bad. It was a relief to know that he would not remain
much longer the brother-in-law of Molly Finucane; but on the other
hand he saw his brother resuming the position of a rival for the hand
of Hero Vanbrugh. With the cold obstinacy of his nature, James still
clung persistently to the belief that sooner or later he would obtain
the woman on whom he had set his heart--or what he deemed to be his
heart. But now the obstacle that had stood between Hero and his brother
had been removed, and unless he could replace it by another, even his
dull mind could perceive how things were likely to go.
He fixed his eyes once more upon his official subordinate.
“What you have told me, Commissioner, alters my position. If my brother
is the person principally guilty, I cannot honourably be responsible
for advising His Majesty to let the affair be hushed up.”
The Commissioner bowed low, deeply impressed by the scrupulous delicacy
of his superior.
“What are your Grace’s instructions?”
“The law must take its course--for the present, at all events. Of
course, I shall communicate again with His Majesty, and with the Prime
Minister.”
“In that case I shall have to arrest his lordship as well as the
others.”
“It will be sufficient if you arrest Lord Alistair. You can give the
others a chance to escape abroad.”
The Chief Commissioner stood for a moment, playing awkwardly with his
hat.
“In cases of high treason,” he observed, in a low voice, “it is
customary for the warrant to be signed by the Home Secretary.”
The Home Secretary drew himself up.
“Have you a warrant with you?”
The necessary form was procured from the criminal branch of the
Department, and James wrote his own name beneath that of his only
brother, with a firm, unfaltering hand.
The next hour was taken up by the Commissioner of Police in personally
effecting the arrest of his distinguished prisoner, and by the
Secretary of State in communicating with the head of the Government.
The Duke went through the form of tendering his resignation, which was
courteously declined.
“I do not believe for a moment that His Majesty will reconsider
his decision, nor should I advise it,” the old Prime Minister said
sensibly. “You had better cancel the warrant at once. Give your brother
a good fright and send him out of the country. Let us hope that this
experience may sober him.”
When James got back to the Home Office he found a note on his desk from
the Chief Commissioner.
“I have his lordship in the next room, but he is hardly in a fit
condition to be questioned. Perhaps your Grace had better see him
to-morrow.”
The Duke rang his bell, and ordered his brother to be brought before
him alone.
Alistair came in, still wearing the evening dress in which he had dined
with Mendes overnight, with his hair unbrushed and his eyes from an
unreposeful sleep.
His brother glanced at him with carefully concealed anxiety; for though
he was scarcely aware of it himself, he was always a little afraid of
Alistair. It was a relief to see that his brother was not apparently
intoxicated: the reckless mood which James dreaded most had given place
to one of depression. At such a moment Alistair might be spoken to
seriously; he might even be reproved without the risk of unpleasant
retorts.
The prisoner, without going through any form of greeting to his
brother, dropped into one of the great spreading leather-covered chairs
which stood round the wall and waited for Trent to speak.
“Is it any use asking you why you have done this?” Trent said, after
regarding him in silence for some time.
Alistair turned on him a lack-lustre eye.
“If you are asking me as Secretary of State, perhaps not.”
The Home Secretary fidgeted with the papers on the writing-table in
front of him. It was a favourite trick of his when he was embarrassed.
Indeed, he generally kept a pile of papers in front of him on purpose.
A little consideration told him that it was not worth while to try to
bluff Alistair.
“Well, no, I’m not.”
“You have arrested me, haven’t you?” The prisoner made his point
quietly, as though moved by a quite impersonal curiosity.
“Yes.” The Duke hesitated again, and again decided that the bluffing
policy would be too risky. “Since I signed the warrant, I’ve seen the
Prime Minister. I tendered him my resignation, of course.”
Alistair began to look ever so little interested.
“I never thought you would do that,” he confessed.
“I don’t suppose you thought anything about it, one way or the other,”
Trent retorted, with some bitterness. “You never do think of me--or
your mother--do you?”
The prisoner straightened himself up for an instant.
“Oh, yes. It is difficult not to think of one’s enemies sometimes.”
Honest astonishment came into Trent’s look and mien.
“Enemies! Your mother and I! What do you mean? If I were to call you my
enemy, I should have some reason. The worst enmity I have ever shown
you has been to give you a thousand a year, and to offer to pay your
debts.”
“Yes, on conditions,” Alistair reminded him. But he did not speak with
any appearance of resentment. The elder brother’s warmth had failed to
rouse any answering warmth in the younger.
“On conditions which, as you must now admit, were for your own good.
At least, I suppose that you are not prepared to defend that wretched
woman any longer.”
“Silence!” Alistair had nearly sprung out of his chair. “Say whatever
you like about me, I shan’t resent it; but leave Molly alone, please.”
Trent looked as bewildered as he felt.
“You know, don’t you?” he began.
Alistair cut him short.
“I know she has just done the greatest thing that any woman can do
for a man. She loved me, she was married to me, she saw that I loved
another woman, and she has deliberately set me free to marry her. By
heavens! I should like to know how many of your Christian women would
do as much as that!”
Trent was staggered. Like the Duchess, he had overlooked the fact that
Molly Finucane was really an ally. Perhaps, if they had been wiser,
Lady Alistair might have been made to take a different view of the
situation in the past. But now it was too late.
He dared not risk a direct question about Hero.
“Well, you can’t marry anyone else yet,” he said, not very delicately.
“The question is, what are you going to do?”
“Isn’t it what are you going to do? I am still under arrest, I believe.”
Trent fell back on his papers again.
“I told you I had seen the Prime Minister. He is willing to let the
matter be hushed up, out of consideration for me.”
After all, he had ventured on a bluff; and, after all, it did not come
off. Alistair merely smiled.
“I am not a fool, Trent, you know. I have never seriously supposed
that I ran any danger of being hanged, drawn and quartered. So the
resignation has been withdrawn?”
“It was declined,” the Minister corrected. “But if the papers get hold
of the business, I shall have to go--for a time, at all events.”
Alistair seemed genuinely concerned.
“Really? I should be sorry if it was so bad as that.”
Trent gazed at him sullenly.
“Can’t you see that everything you do is bad for me? Somehow or
other you seem bent on wrecking my career as well as your own. First
bankruptcy, then that marriage; now, I suppose, divorce--and this
disgraceful outrage on the top of everything else.”
Alistair was surprisingly meek.
“Yes, I dare say you feel it is rather rough on you; but, after all, no
one can blame you for my misdeeds.”
“But they do--they must. You don’t suppose I could remain Home
Secretary with my own brother doing time in one of the prisons under my
control. You just called me your enemy; I should like to know what you
are to me.”
“I could tell you that, if I thought you would understand,” the other
said in low tones.
“What have I done, what has our mother done, that you should make no
effort to spare us all this disgrace?” Trent demanded warmly.
“Ah! what have you done? Have you ever considered me?” returned
Alistair.
“Considered you? We have done nothing else. We have always been trying
to save you, but you have never let us.”
“Save me!--yes, I suppose that is how you would put it to yourself. You
have been trying to save me from disgracing you, as you call it. Has it
ever occurred to either of you that the whole of our joint lives has
been one long persecution of me by you, Trent?”
“Persecution! What do you mean?”
“I am going to tell you what I mean. I dare say I shall never have
another opportunity. We are not likely to see much more of one another.
I am going abroad.”
The unexpected announcement on his brother’s part that he was preparing
to take the very step that Trent almost despaired of making him take
was so welcome that the Duke found himself listening patiently to what
followed.
“Have you ever asked yourself why I am different from you--why I lead a
different life from the one you lived? To begin with, you are the Duke
of Trent and Colonsay; I am a younger son. Do you blame me for that? Do
you blame me for not being a Duke, like you?”
“Of course not. It is nonsense to suggest it.”
“I do not think it is nonsense. On the contrary, I think a great many
people in your position blame people in mine. Not in so many words,
perhaps, but in their whole attitude towards them. You blame a man for
not being a gentleman when you call him a cad. But if he was born a
cad, what fault is it of his? Every time we who are well born boast of
our good blood, surely we are blaming the people who had the bad luck
to be born without pedigrees. And yet we cannot all belong to the Royal
Family.”
“I am not aware that I ever put on side on account of my family,”
protested Trent.
“No. But you would be very much surprised and offended if a tradesman
offered to shake hands with you over the counter. Let us pass on. You
have nearly forty thousand a year; I am a pauper. You must admit that
you have blamed me for that.”
“I? Never! I have blamed you for spending more than your allowance,
that is all.”
Alistair shook his head.
“You don’t see it, of course. But the whole life of a man like you
is a reproach to one like me. You blame me for buying things that
you would not blame a rich man for buying. It is a crime on my part
to drive a motor; it is no crime on yours. And you go much farther
than that, because you tell me, in effect, that I ought to be rich.
In England every rich man is telling that to every poor man all day
long. It is the cry of the press and the pulpit, of the home and of the
Sunday-school. Every millionaire is angry with the man who is not a
millionaire. Why? They tell us that we could become millionaires like
them if we chose; and it is a lie. We cannot all be millionaires.
There are not enough millions to go round. The millionaire himself has
gained his money at someone else’s expense. You have gained your money
at my expense. Instead of the inheritance being divided, you have it
all. If I am not angry with you on that account, why should you be
angry with me?”
“I am not angry,” Trent protested again. But he began to feel a little
shaken.
“If we all became millionaires,” Alistair continued calmly, “you who
are millionaires already would be the first to suffer. You would have
no servants to wait on you, no labourers to toil for you, no clerks to
make and keep your millions for you. Surely it is to your interest that
a large part of mankind should remain poor. Then why be angry with them
on account of their poverty? Why despise them for serving you? If you
like robbing, why abuse those who let themselves be robbed?”
“Does this mean that you are going to turn Socialist?” asked the
puzzled Duke.
Alistair smiled.
“Can’t you see that it means the very opposite? It is you who are
the Socialist--yes, you--because it is you who will not tolerate the
individual. You have never tolerated me. You have always been trying,
as you put it, to reform me. And what do you mean by reforming me? You
mean crushing me out of my natural shape and into your natural shape.
You believe that all men ought to resemble each other like buttons on
a coat--and you are the pattern button.”
Trent made no answer. In his heart he felt that he was the pattern
button, and that Alistair ought to try to resemble him. But he feared
his brother’s sarcastic tongue too much to say so.
“Why?” Alistair continued. “I am sure it has never occurred to you that
I ought to dye my hair the same shade as yours, though men stooped even
to that depth in the days of Louis Quatorze. You have just admitted
that I am not really to blame for having been born after you, or
because you have my share of the property. Then why blame me because my
tastes are different from yours--because I prefer poetry to politics,
and Bohemia to Philistia?”
“It is not a matter of taste only. The common rules of morality are the
same for all.”
“And why should they be the same? Who made the rules? You”--he pointed
an accusing finger--“you, and men like you. When you say morality, you
mean monogamy. Who set up monogamy as the idol that all the human race
ought to fall down and worship? It was not religion--there is not a
word in favour of monogamy in the Bible. It is an Anglo-Saxon fad.”
“Of course, if you repudiate the laws of morality, I cannot argue with
you.”
“I am not arguing. I am trying to make you understand. I want to see
if it isn’t possible to stop all this cruelty--this frantic Puritan
craze for killing everybody who isn’t a Wesleyan. I don’t want to kill
you. I don’t mind your being respectable; why should you mind my being
disreputable? What business is it of yours?”
“You forget that you are my brother, and that I suffer for your
conduct.”
Alistair shook his head.
“That isn’t true, Trent, and you know it isn’t true. Here you are,
Secretary of State, with the Garter in prospect, and a very fair chance
of the Premiership, if no man with brains comes along. If I ever were
to reform, as you are always urging me to do, and go into politics, you
would find me a rather dangerous rival, you know.” Trent thought of
Hero, and winced. There was something in what his brother was saying.
Alistair, in the House of Commons, with his fascinating manner and
sparkling wit, would be a rather dangerous rival. And he had never seen
it, never realized that their mother’s anxiety to make Alistair enter
the House might be another of those projects to save the younger son at
the expense of the elder. While these reflections were passing through
his slow mind, Alistair was still speaking.
“No, Trent, it is the other way about. I don’t suppose that you will
ever see it, but I see it now. Instead of your suffering for me, it is
I who suffer for you. You owe everything you are, and have, and may be,
to me.”
“How on earth can you say that?”
“Because I am the younger son--the younger son in more senses than
one. The law gives you the dukedom and the estates, and gives me
nothing, is a law which makes me suffer for your benefit. And it is
the same with all the other laws under which we live. They are all
laws made in your favour at my expense. The whole social system has
been created to favour you and oppress me. The laws of morality, as
you call them, they are all made by men like you, and against men like
me. You have regulated the world to suit yourself, and the man whom
your regulations do not suit is sacrificed to secure your happiness.
Yes, it is just like the old days when they buried a victim under
the foundation stone, to make the building safe. You and your world,
society, civilization, the British Empire--call it what you like--you
are the builders, and it is the building; and all we whom you hang and
exile and imprison--Jacobites in one century and anarchists in another,
Byron and Shelley above, and the pickpocket and drunkard below--all we
are the foundation victims, whom you sacrifice in order to secure your
State.”
Trent felt out of his depth. In his confusion of mind he said the most
unwise thing he could have said.
“You speak as though there were no such thing as religion. What you are
really attacking is Christianity. You are not a Christian.”
Then Alistair looked at him gravely and steadily, and the thought that
had been growing and taking shape in his mind ever since the night he
had stood on Westminster Bridge came out firm and distinct at last.
“I am a christ!”
“Alistair!” Genuine consternation showed in the listener’s face and
voice. He actually feared that his brother was out of his mind.
“I am your christ. Listen! It is not only the dukedom and the
estates that have come to us from our ancestors. We have inherited
other things--blood, instincts, passions, everything that makes the
difference between one man and another. And that inheritance has been
unfairly divided, too. Our forefathers were half Saxon and half Celtic.
You have inherited the Saxon strain, and I the Celtic; and we live in
a society in which it is well to be a Saxon, and ill to be a Celt. Our
father was a drunkard and our mother a Puritan. You take after her
and I after him, and we live in a world in which it is well with the
Puritan and ill with the drunkard. Some of our forefathers were steady,
plodding money-gatherers, others were wild, reckless adventurers.
Again you have inherited the good strain, and I the bad. You have had
everything, Trent. Everything which the world requires a man to be or
to do, you are, or it is your nature to do. All that the world forbids
a man to be and do, I am, or it is my nature to do. It is as though
a breeder had deliberately bred you with all the good points and me
with all the bad. You know what Sir Bernard Vanbrugh thinks about
these things. What did he tell you?--that you had inherited an evil
strain? The man was blind. I have inherited the evil strain, and by so
doing I have saved you from it; I have carried it off from you, like a
drainpipe. That is how it is. I am your saviour. Vanbrugh doesn’t see
it, but Darwinism and Christianity are saying the same thing. Evolution
is the sacrifice of the unfit on behalf of the fit. The scapegoat
bears away the sins of the righteous. They were quite right to put up
a crucifix in the old Courts of Justice, but it ought to have been
over the dock, and not over the Judge’s head, because the criminal
is the christ; he is the redeemer in whom the old vices and savage
instincts in the blood of mankind are drained off and got rid of, for
the salvation of the world. You may substitute the lethal chamber for
the cross, but you will be still doing what those old Jews were doing,
putting one man to death for the good of the people. Surely that is how
it stands between you and me, Jim. Surely I have borne your sicknesses,
and carried your pains, whereas you did esteem me stricken, smitten of
God, and afflicted. But I was pierced for your transgressions, I was
bruised for your iniquities: the chastisement on behalf of your peace
was upon me; and with my stripes you are healed.”
AFTERWARDS
“ISLE DE ST. PIERRE,
“LAC DE BIENNE,
“SWITZERLAND.
“MY DEAR ONE:
“I am writing to you from an island in the least known of the Swiss
lakes, lying beneath the Jura. The island is the size of a small farm.
It is crossed by a thickly-wooded ridge, and there are reed-grown
marshes on one side, and on the other meadows and gardens and a homely
inn. The inn has grown out of an older cottage or farmhouse, and
certain rooms in the more ancient part of the building have become a
place of local pilgrimage. On Sundays and holidays the workmen of the
small neighbouring towns come here to drink and dance. But the foreign
tourist is more rarely seen here, and the English tourist would most
likely shun the spot if he had heard of it. For these rude quarters
were the refuge, more than a hundred years ago, of a man who, more or
less against his will, lit the great bonfire of the feudal system.
“It was during one of those breaks in his life when, like Jonah of old,
he seemed to be trying to flee from his allotted task, that Rousseau
came and hid himself for this little isle. But the feudal society
craved for destruction, and, like all societies in that condition, it
first bred its destroyer and then steadily goaded him to the work. The
young Marat, from his home a few miles away, must have looked on while
the prophet of the Revolution was being hunted out of this retreat by
the Prussian police, and, as it were, ordered to resume his terrible
apostolate.
“If imagination were possible for public bodies, if gratitude were
conceivable on the part of the Socialist democracy, this isle would not
be turned into a restaurant for bank-holiday workmen. It would be made
a fit memorial of Rousseau by being set apart for the benefit of his
heirs. Every man of genius, driven like him into exile by poverty and
love of freedom, would find here a retreat in which he could rest from
the storms of the world. Or if stupidity were not the curse of gold,
the millionaires themselves would raise a voluntary tax to build an
alms-house for Rousseau and Marat, instead of flogging them on to the
work of anarchy with the sharp goads of hunger and contempt.
“I find that my brother’s unexpected death has made no difference
in my feelings towards England, although I find it has made a great
difference in the feeling of England towards me. My godfather, the
Archbishop, has written to me in the most cordial spirit about my
Church patronage, thanking me in advance for my gracious patronage of
Christianity. He hints that I may play an important part in bringing
the Roman and Anglican communions closer together as the sole means of
preserving society. But I do not want to preserve society. The Prime
Minister’s letter of condolence also contains a hint that in a year or
two, if I behave, I may succeed to the Home Secretaryship--I think he
means all the Cabinet offices to become hereditary in course of time.
But I am not going to behave. England expects every man to be a humbug,
but she will be disappointed as far as I am concerned.
“I recollect your father saying to me once that in many persons
the infliction of pain on others--in extreme cases, even on
themselves--gives rise to sensations of enjoyment which are actually
akin to, and have their seat in the same region as, the sensations of
physical lust. Thus the nuns who ill-use children in their orphanages,
and the Puritans who gloat over the sufferings of profligate men and
women, are really indulging in an unnatural form of profligacy. It
is difficult to account on any other principle for what Anglo-Saxon
races call their civilizing mission. It clearly has nothing to do with
Christianity, because the only sins seriously denounced in the Gospel
are love of money and hypocrisy, and those are the supreme Anglo-Saxon
virtues. When we find a nation of swindlers bent on putting down
polygamy in Utah, and a nation of pirates objecting to child-marriages
in Hindustan, we are clearly face to face with some form of insanity.
And it is becoming more difficult every day to escape out of the power
of the maniacs.
“Rousseau rendered greater services to the democracy of Europe and
America than any one man who has ever lived. He is the author of the
Declaration of Independence, and the author of universal suffrage. And
yet if any follower of Rousseau attempted to set up a community to lead
the life which Rousseau lived and advocated, anywhere within reach of
that democracy, it would be put down by force. This isle is now the
property of a hospital--of course, a hospital for the benefit of the
democracy. I have written proposing to acquire the island and build on
it a hospital for men of letters, and even that is more than democracy
can tolerate; my letter has not been acknowledged. Switzerland is
covered with sanatoriums for every kind of disease, but there is no
sanatorium for genius. The Swiss are making millions a year out of
Byron’s praises of their scenery; they grudge the smallest corner of
their soil to be a home for other Byrons.
“As far as I can see, there are only three or four countries which have
still been spared a measure of freedom, and they will not retain it
very long. The Puritans have been howling for the blood of the Turks
for generations, and I doubt if their mutual jealousy will hold them
back much longer from civilizing the whole of Islam. China has been
spared for the moment, but it cannot be saved except on condition that
it follows the Japanese example and becomes as greedy and bloodthirsty
as the Christian Powers.
“However, I shall now visit the countries that have not been annexed up
to the present, and try to find some spot where it may be possible to
set up a city of refuge. I will found a spiritual order like the old
Knights of the Temple. Who knows that we may not be able to preserve
one spot of the planet alike from the millionaire and the Socialist,
the slave-driver and the slave?
“In my monastery, dear Hero, there will be neither marrying nor giving
in marriage, and none need declare himself man or woman unless he
pleases. In all matters we shall strive to obtain freedom without
disorder, and happiness without selfishness. We shall have many guests
who will be refreshed and comforted, and sent upon their way, but only
after long trial and approval will any be admitted to our Order. We
shall have servants, whom we shall treat as brethren without calling
them lay-brothers, and they will do their work, as we shall do ours.
“Such are the thoughts and plans I wished to lay before you, but I dare
not wish that you should make them yours. Doubtless you will consider
them with kindness and with wisdom, and will tell me your decision.
“I shall wait here another week for your answer before setting out for
the East.”
THE NEW WORD
by ALLEN UPWARD
_$1.50 net_
“In this book a man, who in the broader sense of both words is at once
a scientist and a seer, has undertaken an inquiry into the sources of
knowledge and the foundations of faith, a review of the jurisdiction
of materialism and the credentials of the idealists, that has worked
out into what he himself has admirably defined as a ‘circumnavigation
of hope.’ Mr. Upward’s equipment as a navigator of these reef-strewn
and mirage-haunted seas is unequalled in our day. A man of scientific
training and legal aptitude, a philologist of amazing insight, a
debater with a wide knowledge of men, a broad culture, and a trenchant
mind, no English writer of the post-Darwinian period has approached
him in the gift of putting into living folk-speech the tangled
technicalities of the schoolmen; no controversial critic has had at his
command so vitriolic a wit and used it so magnanimously; no ruthless
iconoclast of intellectual idols has shown himself so conservative and
yet so able an architect of intellectual optimism. Mr. Upward’s inquiry
is developed as an interpretation of a cryptic phrase in the will of
Alfred Nobel, ‘a work of an idealistic tendency.’ Its professed object
is ‘to forge upon the anvil of sense a definition of hope that will
ring true in the ear of the materialist as well as of the idealist.’
And its prosecution is Socratic in its argumentative shrewdness,
its unity of purpose, its unswerving directness and its triumphant
simplicity.”
--_Mr. J. B. Kerfoot in LIFE_
_At all booksellers or sent postpaid by the publisher on receipt of
price._
MITCHELL KENNERLEY. Publisher, New York
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.