II
MIST
"Mistiness is the Mother of Wisdom." If this sarcastic dogma be true, we are living in a generation pre-eminently wise. A "season of mists" it unquestionably is; whether it is equally marked by "mellow fruitfulness" is perhaps more disputable.
My path in life is metaphorically very much what Wordsworth's was literally. "I wander, lonely as a cloud that floats on high, o'er vales and hills." I find hills and vales alike shrouded in mist. Everyone is befogged, and the guesses as to where exactly we are and whither we are tending are various and perplexing. While all are, in truth, equally bewildered, people take their bewilderment in different ways. Some honestly confess that they cannot see a yard in front of them; others profess a more penetrating vision, and affect to be quite sure of what lies ahead. It is a matter of temperament; but the professors of clear sight are certainly less numerous than they were three years ago.
We are like men standing on a mountain when the mist rolls up from the valley. At first we all are very cheerful, and assure one another that it will pass away in half an hour, leaving our path quite clear. Then by degrees we begin to say that it promises to be a more tedious business than we expected, and we must just wait in patience till the clouds roll by. At length we frankly confess to one another that we have completely lost our bearings, and that we dare not move a foot for fear we should tumble into the abyss. In this awkward plight our "strength is to sit still"; but, even while we so sit, we try to keep ourselves warm by remembering that the most persistent mists do not last for ever.
In one section of society I hear voices of melancholy vaticination. "I don't believe," said one lady in my hearing—"I don't believe that we shall ever again see six-feet footmen with powdered hair," and a silent gloom settled on the company, only deepened by another lady, also attached to the old order, who murmured: "Ah! and powdered footmen are not the only things that we shall never see again." Within twenty-four hours of this depressing dialogue I encounter my democratic friend, the Editor of the Red Flag. He glories in the fact that Labour has "come into its own," and is quite sure that, unless it can get more to eat, it will cease to make munitions, and so will secure an early, if not a satisfactory, peace. In vain I suggest to my friend that his vision is obscured by the mist, and that the apparition which thus strangely exhilarates him is the creation of his own brain.
Then I turn to the politicians, and of these it is to be remarked that, however much befogged they may be, they always are certain that they see much more clearly than the world at large. This circumstance would invest their opinions with a peculiar authority, if only they did not contradict one another flat. We are doubling the electorate: what result will the General Election produce? Politicians who belong to the family of Mr. Despondency and his daughter, Muchafraid, reply that Monarchy will be abolished, Capital "conscripted" (delightful verb), debt repudiated, and Anarchy enthroned. Strangely dissimilar results are predicted by the Party-hacks, who, being by lifelong habit trained to applaud whatever Government does, announce with smug satisfaction that the British workman loves property, and will use his new powers to conserve it; adores the Crown, and feels that the House of Lords is the true protector of his liberties.
Again, there are publicists who (like myself) have all their lives proclaimed their belief in universal suffrage as the one guarantee of freedom. If we are consistent, we ought to rejoice in the prospect now unfolding itself before us; but perhaps the mist has got into our eyes. Our forefathers abolished the tyranny of the Crown. Successive Reform Acts have abolished the tyranny of class. But what about the tyranny of capital? Is Democracy safe from it?
I do not pretend to be clearer-sighted than my neighbours; but in the mist each of us sees the form of some evil which he specially dislikes; and to my thinking Bureaucracy is just as grave a menace to Freedom as Militarism, and in some ways graver, as being more plausible. We used to call ourselves Collectivists, and we rejoiced in the prospect of the State doing for us what we ought to do for ourselves. We voted Political Economy a dismal science (which it is), and felt sure that, if only the Government would take in hand the regulation of supply and demand, the inequalities of life would be adjusted, everyone would be well fed, and everyone would be happy. As far as we can see through the blinding mist which now surrounds us, it looks as if the State were about as competent to control trade as to control the weather. Bureaucracy is having its fling, and when the mist clears off it will stand revealed as a well-meant (and well-paid) imposture.
Closely related to all these problems is the problem of the women's vote. Here the mist is very thick indeed. Those who have always favoured it are naturally sanguine of good results. Women will vote for peace; women will vote for temperance; women will vote for everything that guards the sanctity of the home. Those who have opposed the change see very different consequences. Women will vote for war; women will vote as the clergyman bids them; women will vote for Socialism. All this is sheer guess-work, and very misty guess-work too.
And yet once more. There are (though this may to some seem strange) people who consider the Church at least as important as the State, and even more so, inasmuch as its concernments relate to an eternal instead of a transitory order. What are the prospects of the Church? Here the mists are thicker than ever. Is the ideal of the Free Church in the Free State any nearer realization than it was three years ago? All sorts of discordant voices reach me through the layers of cloud. Some cry, "Our one hope for national religion is to rivet tighter than ever the chains which bind the Church to the chariot-wheels of the State." Others reply, "Break those chains, and let us go free—even without a roof over our heads or a pound in our pockets." And there is a third section—the party which, as Newman said, attempts to steer between the Scylla of Aye and the Charybdis of No through the channel of no meaning, and this section cries for some reform which shall abolish the cynical mockery of the Congé d'Élire, and secure to the Church, while still established and endowed, the self-governing rights of a Free Church. In ecclesiastical quarters the mist is always particularly thick.
Certainly at this moment, if ever in our national life, we must be content to "walk by faith and not by sight." This chapter began with imagery, and with imagery it shall end. "I have often stood on some mountain peak, some Cumbrian or Alpine hill, over which the dim mists rolled; and suddenly, through one mighty rent in that cloudy curtain, I have seen the blue heaven in all its beauty, and, far below my feet, the rivers and cities and cornfields of the plain sparkled in the heavenly sunlight."
That is, in a figure, the vision for which we must hope and pray.