EPILOGUE
If it be the lot of the dead to pass, unviewed, along the streets of cities, or by the country hedgerows, conscious of the life about them, there is, surely, a prospective triumph for the beaten and the broken folk whose blood and agony have made easy, if indirectly, the passage of later pilgrims. Could the countless unselfish ones, the sufferers, “the great despisers,” who bore so many miseries, that we, their descendants, might pass gaudy and comfortable days—could they but know how golden a thing their misery purchased, the memory of the old torture and the old injustice would be soothing and gentle like a charity. In the years of which I have tried to write there were thousands upon thousands of sailors, wandering over many seas, in countless ships, standing their watches, doing the day’s work, breaking their hearts, and dying young, not because they liked it, not because they hoped for glory, but because much suffering had to be endured before man could learn to inflict less suffering on his fellows. We sit here quietly to-day in London—in that London which, as Nelson said, “exists by victories at sea.” Our great ships go thrashing hither and yon, turbulent and terrible, like islands of living iron. Here, in London, are the world’s merchants, richer than the merchants of Tyre, whose purple clothed the kings of the world. Aboard those ships are the English sailors, the finest men afloat, living cheerfully the lives they have chosen, under humane and just captains.
There is no London merchant telling over gold in his counting-house, no man-of-war’s man standing his watch at sea, who does not owe his gold or his rights to the men who lived wretched days long ago aboard old wooden battleships, under martinets. In order that they might live as they live, what misery, what blood and tears, fell to the portions of those who went before making straight the paths! For every quiet hour here in London, for every merry day at sea, what hecatombs were necessary!
In order that our days might be pleasant, those thousands of long-dead sailors had to live and suffer. They passed rough days—living hard, working hard, and dying hard. In order that we might live in peace at home they were dragged, with blows and curses, from their homes. In order that we might walk erect among men they cringed before tyrants, and lost their manhood at the gangway. In order that we might live on the luxuries of the world, brought from the East and the West, things of great cost, wines, and spices, they were content, those great despisers, to eat salt junk and drink stinking water. They passed, those mighty ones, in the blackness of the cockpit, in the roaring hell of the gun-deck, that we might hear no noise of battle. They were well pleased to live among thieves and infamous folk, that our conversation might be virtuous and our ways right ways.
That suffering of theirs has, perhaps, been rewarded by the vision of the ease they won for us. Their spirits may be moving about us, touching us, rejoicing that evil days should have purchased happy days, and well content that misery should have brought such treasure. Let us hope so, at anyrate. Let us think, too, that patriotism, in its true form, is of the kind they gave. It is not a song in the street, and a wreath on a column, and a flag flying from a window, and a pro-Boer under a pump. It is a thing very holy, and very terrible, like life itself. It is a burden to be borne; a thing to labour for and to suffer for and to die for; a thing which gives no happiness and no pleasantness—but a hard life, an unknown grave, and the respect and bared heads of those who follow.