THE WORLD IN TEARS
(The following was written at the request of Mr. Robert Hayes, the publisher, who asked for it as a preface to a helpful little book of “Messages of Hope, Sympathy, and Consolation,” entitled The World in Tears. Those who contributed to this book included many well-known “leaders,” such as the Bishop of Birmingham, the Archdeacon of Westminster, the Dean of Manchester, etc., etc., and the publisher introduced my article in the following kindly note:—
In preparing the book for Press it was thought desirable to obtain, and include, an introduction by an author whose sympathies would commend it to the general public. Miss Marie Corelli immediately came to mind. No one could essay the task better.
To Miss Marie Corelli, then, the publisher wrote for assistance. It was generously, courteously, and promptly given. His best thanks are recorded here for this able and kindly help in producing what he hopes will bring comfort to a multitude who sorrow and some financial assistance to that benevolent and deserving institution, the British Red Cross Society.)
All over the world to-day looms the brooding shadow of Death—that strange and solemn Mystery which to most of us seems a complete Disappearance for ever into the eternal Unknown. Though truly, if our faith in God be perfect, we should not look upon it as a Shadow, but a Brightness; a glorious fulfilment for which the experiences and trials of this present life are the needful training and preparation. Nevertheless, the ties of human affection are strong, and partings are always bitter—so that whether our beloved ones go away from us for weeks, months, or years—whether to a far country or to another world—it is hard to say “good-bye!” and the sorrow of separation is the sorrow of all the lives that are left thus lonely. The strongest and bravest of us know well enough that those we have lost are not really “dead,” but living elsewhere; yet the fact that they are not actually with us—that we cannot hear their voices or hold their hands in our own—is sufficient to crush us down under such a burden of grief that we feel as if we could never lift up our eyes to heaven again or trust the great Power Invisible which has allowed us to be deprived of all we hold most dear. Nothing can be said in the way of consolation that does not, at such a time, sound poor and trivial. A great grief is of all things the most sacred: and even the gentle words of the gentlest and most compassionate friend hurt like a careless touch on an open wound.
In this unspeakably wicked War much of our best and bravest British manhood has been sacrificed, to say nothing of the terrible losses suffered by our noble and resolute Allies. Young, promising, and heroic lives have been ruthlessly slaughtered on all the fields of battle, and it would not be too much to say that the whole of Europe is in mourning. It is the hour of supreme self-sacrifice; we are called upon to give the best of everything we have to our country, so that we may keep it safe from the invasion of a remorseless foe, and hold its liberty intact. Blood and treasure and tears are the price of our freedom; we hold nothing back. But an awful responsibility rests upon all those who primarily brought about this most un-Christian world-contest; for war and the murder of the many is always the result of the evil thoughts and passions of a misguided few. If Peoples in the aggregate were governed by strong, brave, honest men who loved equity more than their own advancement, there would be no wars. But as yet we are still seeking for even One strong, brave, honest man! Our national Poet speaks truth when he tells us,—
“To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
Meanwhile, for the incalculable crimes of Dishonest Governments, the Peoples are bereaved of their children—their young manhood—and mothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives, and little ones are flung remorselessly into withering fires of agony, and drowned in a deep sea of tears. Who shall comfort these poor wounded hearts?—who shall fill these empty and desolate lives?—who shall raise them from their swooning despair amid the dust of graves and turn their hopes towards that Higher Life, which though unseen and unrealised, is as certain as what we understand to be life in this world? The Christian Faith is, or should be, the Comforter, if accepted in its true spiritual sense. We are too prone to deaden and cheapen its splendid teaching by the dullness of our own understanding: we seek to materialise into common earthiness that which is purely heavenly. If we trusted more absolutely in the Divine Intelligence, through whose will and power we have come into being, we should be entirely sure of the positive truth pronounced by St. Paul to the Corinthians:—
“There are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.... So also is the resurrection of the dead; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.”
This is what all the scientific, theological, and psychical instructors that ever lived in the world have been striving to teach humanity through ages upon ages. But we still continue to cling to the natural “body”—not the spiritual—to the temporal, and not the eternal; and, despite both religion and science, we surround the episode of death with every sort of gloomy panoply and weeping protest against the Divine decree. Yet our men who have died at the front have died with extraordinary cheerfulness; it would seem that some God-given influence has surrounded them in the very midst of all the most awful ways of dying! Never a murmur—never a complaint—never a regret! Wonderful, and indeed miraculous is this, if we pause to think of it! It is as if they knew, or were being told, that there are many things in life worse than death! They face the Last Terror with a dauntless smile and unflinching eyes, and it may be that they see light where many of us, blinded by personal sorrow, are only conscious of darkness. Our Selves are the clouds which cover the sun.
And while we continue to sit in the shadow and mourn for our absent, though never lost ones, it is well we should bear in mind that no life lived on earth, however long extended, is complete. No lesson is ever thoroughly learned, no accomplishment ever entirely mastered. No poet, musician, or painter ever produced a “perfect” work. Why? Because here we are only in a preparatory school—wider instruction is to come. The fullness of existence which is ultimately destined to be ours is an ever-increasing perfection and power which are at present impossible for us to conceive. Just as when we came into this world we had no knowledge beforehand of its natural beauties and delights, so in the same way we cannot, in our present condition, realise the “Shall Be” of the Hereafter. Our bodies, to which we attach such undue importance here, are composed entirely of particles or atoms which are constantly changing, and none of us possess the same body we had seven or fourteen years ago. That body has already suffered death—not by violence, but by change. The manner in which the change has been effected is not perceived by ourselves, yet it has occurred. Identity of person does not depend on the identity of these atoms; the individual Spirit is the same, despite the shifting forces or renewal of cells in its tenement of clay. Continuity, persistency, and individuality are eternal laws, and remake the vesture of the soul according to its needs. Therefore our beloved dead are not truly dead, for, “as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”
Many of us find it difficult—even impossible—to accept this reasoning, and why? Because our minds are always more or less attuned to the lower key of Self—Self, and our own private and particular sorrow. As long as this is the case the light will never come through the gloom; we shall never “see God.” We shall never understand that the lives sacrificed with such splendid heroism, for the freedom and purification of the whole world, have not ceased to live, and that they have simply “passed on.” But—is not the parting from them cruel? Ah, yes! but partings even more cruel are common in the most ordinary daily life. When love grows cold—when fair illusions perish—when the friend we trusted is treacherous and ungrateful—when we have to “let go” those we have most dearly cherished to other loves and new surroundings—are not these things “cruel”? Crueller far than death!—for death most usually clears up many misunderstandings and sets the true soul right with itself and with that which it has loved faithfully. For there are many kinds of so-called “love” which is not love at all, but merely the passion or caprice of the moment, and which, if resolved into marriage between the two persons concerned, ends in mutual indifference and life-long unhappiness, and in such cases, death is a release which separates finally and for ever. But there is another sort of love which is so deep and unselfish, and loyal, that it needs no earthly bond to make it eternal, and which, no matter how long the parting, whether by absence or death, is so truly love in the highest sense that all the powers of earth or heaven could not hinder its complete union with the beloved.
“Shall we meet again?” sighs the bereaved mother, the lonely wife, the despairing lover! Most assuredly you will!—by all the known laws of attraction in this glorious Universe you must meet again, if your love be love indeed! Love is not limited by time or space; we know that we can obtain light from a star many millions of miles distant, and in the same way we can give and receive love from our parted dear ones, and can exert this power far beyond the confines of our bodies. But only when love is really true can this happen. For, when the veil is withdrawn from heaven and the released Spirit goes hence, it sees and knows clearly which of all its friends on earth has loved it most unselfishly and sincerely—whose sorrow is the most tender—whose faith is most entirely faithful! And only shall such an one meet it again and rejoice in everlasting union. We find our own: we discover our beloved ones in that state of clear vision and life-fulfilment to which we are all hastening. And in realising this we shall also realise that in all the truths of science and of reasoning there is No Death; and that we deceive ourselves in the confusing shadow of our personal griefs when they are strong and bitter as they are to-day, because of our own “personal” sense of loss.
“It is because my beloved is gone!” is the cry—“Because I shall see him no more!”
Patience! He has not “gone” far! Just into the next room of existence, whither you yourself will soon go; there is but the slightest partition between you! And you will see him, as it were, directly—and you will know him, as he will see and know you!—and you will wonder why you shed so many tears when all the while he is alive, and happy in the consciousness of having done something in his earthly life to prepare a cleaner, safer world for the generations coming after him.
But, if this is so, some of us ask, why are we not given the proofs of it? Why does not God make us sure? You might as well demand why, in the former ages of the world, the learning and science of the present day were not revealed. “Sound-waves,” “light-rays,” “radium,” “electric force,”—all these existed from the very beginning of creation—why were we not told? Simply because, by universal law, all advancement is, and must be the result of gradual evolvement, suited to the slowly expanding capacity of the human brain and its attendant mental spirituality, and because it is decreed that we shall “work out our own salvation.” One thing is certain, and that is, that—if we knew—if we were told the smallest part of the wondrous hidden future awaiting us, hardly any of us would have the resolution to live this preparatory life through! We should all hurry ourselves out of the world, for we would not have the patience to endure its schooling. We could not wait. We would rush to grasp our glory; we would not work to win it, and so we might lose what we must ourselves deserve to gain. Hence arose the saying, “Those whom the gods love die young.” For their schooling has been brief and easy—“Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours.”
A striking illustration of faith in God and the future life has been given to us in these days of darkness by the heroic martyrdom and death of Edith Cavell, murdered by human brutes for whom Christianity has become a dead letter. Her resignation, and her thanks to God for her “ten weeks’ quiet before the end”—her unaffected devotion to the Christian Faith—her simple “Good-bye” to her spiritual adviser with a happy smile and her confident assurance, “We shall meet again!” make a brilliant and inspiring contrast to the doubt and distrust of God’s mercy openly manifested by many of those who are bereaved and mourning in the “Valley of the Shadow.” Prayerfully one wonders when the inhabitants of this small planet of ours will come to realise the fixed law of its being?—a Law which knows no changing! Namely, that Progression towards Good—Good, not only for one’s Self, but for Humanity—brings peace and prosperity; while Retrogression towards Evil results in war and ruin! God Himself cannot undo this Law, which is part of His own Eternal Existence—it is as fixed as the poles. We dare not blame His Almighty justice for the evil we have deliberately brought upon ourselves. No one can deny that all the nations now warring together have for many years past sought to put God altogether out of their countings, while societies and individuals, rejoicing in prolonged good fortune and taking as their right the blessings bestowed upon them through the mercy of a beneficent and kindly Providence, have forgotten to Whom they should give thanks, and have become “puffed up,” as the Psalmist says, with pride, and enervated by luxury. We have had innumerable warnings, but we would not listen. We have made a jest and a mockery of all those who sought to rouse us from our lethargy. We have permitted such inroads of vice and atheism into our lives and morals, our art and letters, as might make pagans blush. The Press of the world has not occupied itself with the uplifting of the brotherhood of the peoples,—on the contrary, it has taken pleasure in sowing the seeds of discontent and rebellion, and has given prominence to the unworthy, praising the stage-mime more than the statesman—the materialist more than the idealist. Moreover, so far as our foe is concerned, it has left no stone unturned that could rouse the Teuton wolf from its lair. Bitter mockery, stinging gibe, misplaced sneers—these have all been flung at Germany for the past ten years or more, and, though they have been written chiefly by half-educated young men and boys who in the might of an ineffable conceit “rush in where angels fear to tread,” they have had harmful effect. A great statesman said to me recently, “Had there been no Press there would have been no war.”
This may or may not be true,—but whether true or false the eternal verities make no mistake in their summing-up of evil things to a fatal figure. Thoughts give place to words, and words to actions. The War-thought is the embryo of the War-deed. Let us not, therefore, in the bitterness of our own personal sorrows blame God, or demand “Where was He?” when our dear ones have been slain. The nations have brought this chastisement of terror upon themselves; and that the innocent must suffer with the guilty is the worst part of the punishment. The world was becoming sordid, covetous, and materialistic; and now the young and strong and brave of our best manhood are called upon to cleanse it of its foul humours and to leave it clean. Some thousands of lives must be sacrificed in this great struggle for Freedom and for Right, but better to die honoured than live shamed! Life, as generally lived, is not worth the pains we take to preserve it; we do our loved ones an infinite wrong when we assume that their best chance of happiness is to eat and sleep and play, and make the wherewithal to eat and sleep and play. A brave death is more valuable than an ignoble life; death itself being the admission to a more vital and splendid experience.
This being so, we should not mourn as “those having no hope.” We, who have loved and lost for a time, will go on loving till we find our lost again, as we shall surely do. We shall meet and know each other on that higher plane where life is life indeed and love is love indeed; and we shall make amends for all our weeping and complaint. We shall see how slight and brief, after all, were the troubles of this present, compared with the perfect joy of the attained future. And we shall read the Book of the Wisdom of God without mistaking one word or letter of its meaning, and we shall learn that Love alone is the conqueror of all kingdoms. So lift up your weeping eyes, ye million mourners!—lift them to the Light and Life Eternal, which shall not fail you even in this dark Battle-Dream of Death!
GOD AND THE WAR
(Written for “Some 1918 Reflections.” A collection arranged by Guy Glendower Croft)
Among the many “reflections” flashed upon the mirror of the time there is one which to my mind is not so much a “reflection” as a blur—a blot which is almost a dark and deepening shadow. I, who venture to write of it, own myself to be but a mere romancist, whose ostensible business is to weave night and day, like the “Lady of Shalott,”—“A magic web with colours gay,” a web of thought-tapestry into scenes and episodes which may or may not please my readers and distract them from the continuous harassment and grief brought upon them by the war. It might even be said of me that—
“So she weaveth steadily
And little other care hath she,”
but for the further fact that—
“Moving through a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year
Shadows of the world appear,”
and the Shadow which darkens my outlook most is what I may call the Shadow of Negation, or what the Roman Church classifies among the sins against the Holy Ghost, namely, “Presumption of God’s mercy.”
There are any number of apparently worthy, respectable and well-intentioned persons who regard the Great War as a singular piece of Divine injustice and undeserved annoyance to themselves—and their attitude towards it is so amazing as to be almost incredible.
They are incapable of taking a broad outlook; and, to them, the whole terrible business is a monstrously impertinent interference with the peaceful working of the Parish Pump—no more.
This curious mental standpoint was forced upon my notice recently by the remarks of a seemingly intelligent man of commerce, who, having made a pleasant little “pile” which enables him to live comfortably for the rest of his days, and being much too old for any form of “active” or “national” service, has, literally, nothing to complain of, and nothing to do but offer his valueless opinions on the terrific happenings of the hour. And he it was, who, with an air of judicially settling the business of the Universe, once and for all, said firmly,—
“I’ve given up God! I don’t believe in a God! If there was one He would not have permitted this war!”
This crushing observation from one of the least of human microbes would not merit notice but for the fact that many more intelligent and thoughtful microbes than he have committed themselves to the same unwise and, I may venture to say, blasphemous utterance. For, if any doubter has need of assurance as to the existence of God, this great and terrible war is the most profound, significant, and emphatic declaration of Almighty Power and Justice that the world has ever known.
It is the strong, resolved assertion of a vast spiritual and intellectual Force, which, for many years, all the nations now warring together have elected to ignore, or else to acknowledge in such half-hearted fashion that sheer ignoring might betoken greater reverence. It is the Force, which by natural and immutable law acts upon unclean and poisonous things and exterminates them without mercy or appeal. We may call it Fate or God as it suits us—but whatever be the accepted name of this eternally working system of Mathematics, it admits of no false quantities and has to be reckoned with as the only positive FACT in the universe. All else may change, “Heaven and earth may pass away but My Word shall not pass away.” That is to say—“My Word” is the eternal Law; and however craftily and cleverly we may arrange our little “civilisations” and schemes of “giving” in order to “get,” we cannot carry forward a single act of injustice or falsity without punishment following the offence. If not soon, then late. Our judgments, our opinions on the scroll of everlasting equity, are as the scrawls of babes who are incapable of mastering the fact that two and two make four. We are always trying to make them five, the one over being a clumsy attempt to gain some advantage to ourselves.
It is our “camouflage”—that vulgar expression of French police “argot” which truly is not in the French language at all, but which, nevertheless, has lately become the stupid parrot-cry of the irremediably illiterate British press, whose paragraphists seize with rabid joy on any foreign word they do not entirely understand and run it to death.
Yet, try as we may, two and two will not make five. Hence our small political quarrels and big greedy wars.
The pros and cons of the present terrific clash of nations can be totalled up as easily as a sum on a slate—each effect has had its causes. Belgium is devastated, and her people have been and are robbed, tortured, and murdered. True! But what of Belgium’s own tacitly approved cruelties on the Congo? The present is the result of the past. Consider Russia! She is like a great creature fallen in the dust—the seeming corpse of herself, helpless to move, while birds of prey gather round her seeking to tear her to bits and divide the spoil. But does not Russia deserve her fate?—has she not invited it? May we not think of her cruelties, tyrannies, and enslavements practised on her own people for hundreds of years? The gods have been patient with her arrogance, but there is a limit even to divine patience. Italy and France—prosperous, and growing more and more fond of money-getting, eager to destroy all their noble, ancient ideals—these have, as it were, administered a kick to the very thought of Deity.
Twenty years ago in France the Catechisme du Libre Pensuer was taught in schools, and the name of God excluded from the general curriculum. Italy has long been openly pagan, notwithstanding the “Holy Prisoner” of the Vatican. And Germany, our brutal foe, has flung every ideal to the winds save Self and Greed, so that not even the “untutored savage” principles of honour have any hold on her.
And what may we, what dare we say of Great Britain? Is it a true 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.
You Canadians have strongly helped to bring this downfall and humiliation to pass; like a fine family of stalwart sons, you have formed a guard of honour round your Motherland, and defended her from the hands of the spoilers. All honour to you! We want you to know and to believe that we are grateful, and that we shall never forget your dauntless daring and heroism! Ingratitude is the commonest and yet the deadliest of sins—ingratitude to God in the first place, and, in the second, ingratitude to the men whom God has given us to be our saviours. The first part of the indictment is a matter for each private and individual conscience; it is for every man and woman to try and visualise the devastation and misery which have been mercifully spared to the uninvaded British Isles, and to decide whether his or her thanksgiving is real, and deeply felt. The second part concerns the whole people of Great Britain and her Overseas Dominions—whether they, in very truth and earnest, sufficiently realise what they owe to the sorely-tried military and naval leaders upon whose shoulders has fallen the gigantic responsibility of conducting the war to a victorious issue. Not to realise it is to be guilty of a mental crime so monstrous as to be almost unimaginable. And yet, the moment political pawns are set on the chess-broad, every claim to integrity and patriotism is questioned and argued from the base point of view of “personal interest.” Personal interest is a powerful motive force with most men, but it does not count with heroes like Sir Douglas Haig, Admiral Beatty, or Marshal Foch. Think of these men! for it is they who won the war—they, who through God, have given us the victory! Not the talkers, but the doers; not the politicians, but the fighters, among whom you, brave Canadians, held your part like the heroes of an epic. You are rough, perchance, but you are ready! Some there are who say you have not received half your rightful share of honour in this country; if this is so, then your Motherland is indeed unworthy of your prowess! But I hardly think this is, or can be so. You do not get the true voice of the British People in the British Press—always remember that! The People know their best men, and honour them accordingly. And if, by chance, they are misled occasionally, and those leaders whom they have believed their “best” prove false to the trust placed in them, none so swift, sure, and deadly as the British People to rend them for their broken word. They know you, Canadians, as their blood-brothers; and as such will resent any wrong inflicted on your liberties and commerce. They applaud your patriotism and rejoice in your courage; you are the younger sons of the Empire, and in the name of one Throne, one Flag, we salute you and give you our heart’s gratitude!
SHELLS; AND OTHER SHELLS
(Written by request for the Magazine published on behalf of the Munition Workers of Georgetown, Paisley) A THOUGHT
In one of the finest and tenderest poems ever written by our last great Laureate, Alfred Tennyson, whose departure from this world closed, for the time, the reign of true English lyrical melody, there occur these delicately beautiful lines:—
“See what a lovely shell
Small and pure as a pearl
Lying close at my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairly well
With delicate spire and whorl
How exquisitely minute!
A miracle of design.
The tiny cell is forlorn,—
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house, in a rainbow frill?
Did he push, when he was uncurl’d,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Through his dim water-world?”
How often we have seen such shells as these!—and how little have we associated the familiar name of “shell” with any thought of war or “shock” or bloodshed! Holding a sea-shell close against our ears we listen in fancy to the solemn music of the ocean surging through its hollow cavity,—the ocean with its sweeping thunderous harmony,—though all the time we know it is but the sound of our own life-blood pouring through our veins and pulsing upon our senses. And now, when we talk of “shells,” we mean something vastly different to the “small and pure as a pearl” object which moved a great Poet to song—for the “pure” thing was the work of God, and “a miracle of design” wrought to suit the needs of the “little living will that made it stir on the shore”; but the “shells” we have to do with are man’s work, made to destroy all living wills that come in contact with them! In their terrific way they too are “miracles of design,” for their cavities hold death and scatter it broadcast. Still more wonderful it is to realise the fact that women’s hands have been taught and trained to prepare this flying death—women’s hands, surely formed by nature for tenderness and caressing, for soothing and consoling! How, then, has it chanced that they should adapt themselves to such dire uses? Why do they labour so strenuously and eagerly to make weapons for the armoury of the King of Terrors? Women’s hands! What charming and poetic things have been said and written about them! Think of the hands in Fra Angelico’s picture of the “Angel of the Annunciation” where the dainty tapering fingers are as exquisitely delicate as the buds of the lilies they hold! Or, recall the subtle beauty of Heine’s description of the hand of an unknown lady, resting white and beautiful on the carved edge of a confessional in a dark cathedral aisle, the owner of the hand being too enshrouded in shadows to be visible.
“So still and pure was that lovely hand,” wrote the poet, “that whatever sins its mistress might be admitting to her confessor, it was evident that of itself it had nothing to do with sin or folly. It was a stainless sweetness alone and apart, and shone in the gloom of the vast cathedral like a sculptured ivory emblem of innocence.”
Nevertheless!—women’s hands that are, or that might be, as delicate and caressable as those of Fra Angelico’s model, or Heine’s unseen lady, are now at work in the strangest kind of “annunciation”!—the most amazing form of “confession”! Why do they toil in such a contrary fashion to their natural bent and inclination? The answer is swift and conclusive. Because Evil is let loose on the earth, and because Good must use all force to overcome it. And, out of sternest necessity, Good must arm itself with weapons that shall not only match but surpass those employed by Evil. In a fight against devils, angels must join battle. In some of the most magnificent scenes of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” when war rages between the warriors of God and the followers of Satan, the good are described as fighting against the bad with terrific weapons of attack, and the outbursts of fire hurled against the devilish foe were none the less potent because wrought by the angelic hosts. Our women workers who prepare the munitions of war are one and all inspired by the same fixed motive and desire—namely, to end the sorrows and suspense of the suffering nations who are involved in the disastrous upheaval which is the result of a people’s pitiful belief in the “divine right,” of a crowned madman. And as they turn out “shells” and yet more “shells,” we know that they hope and believe that for every one completed, at least one of the fiendish murderers of the innocent may be dismissed from a world which his presence has darkened. Perchance they may, as they press on with their work, hear more mystic sounds than are conveyed in the cavity of an empty shell “void of a living will” on the sea-shore—for their filled shell speaks of their own blood, burning with grief and indignation at the slaughter of their kindred—and of the roar and thunder of the guns instead of the crashing billows of the sea. Who shall count the throbbing thoughts of the women who fill these “shells”?—women who look calm enough and resolute enough, and who work on tirelessly and almost wordlessly, as though moved by a single heart, beating through each one’s separate labour! A visitor to a shell factory in the Midlands said to me,—“They work quite mechanically; I think they hardly know what they are about.” Don’t they know what they are about? Indeed they do! They know they are making weapons of destruction that shall bring reprisals for the deaths of brave men—they know that they are helping to save the lives of their own kinsmen, and with all their strength they “speed up,” because they feel that by so doing they are pushing on the end of the war. We shall never be able to realise how much they have done for us, and alas!—the ingratitude of nations to its workers is proverbial. It takes a woman to understand woman’s enforced labour, and to enter with sympathy into all she loses by taking the place of man in hard and difficult times—what sacrifices in health and vitality she makes by long hours of steady application to monotonous factory work—what temptations she has to resist—what bribes—yes!—bribes of cash and comfort she has to forgo. For the enemy is busy elsewhere than on the field—insidious and indefatigable in stirring up strife in this country and sowing the seeds of disloyalty and discontent, and it says much for our women that they are awake and alert to the fact. Of the contemptible few who “make love” to “Fritz” in his prison camp, one can only be sorry that they are so “weak in the upper story!” The real women of the Empire—the women who, in the after-war days that are coming, will have so much of the country’s destiny in their guidance, are in the majority sound, sane, and loyal—we can trust them with work even more momentous than the making of shells! Meanwhile, we can try to be grateful to them for their steadiness and perserverance, their pluck and patience, and let us not forget at any time what we owe to them. It should be graven deep on the records of the nation that—Without Women’s Work the War Could Not Be Won! And in the hour of victory let us not fail to pay them our debt of Honour!
DARKNESS AND LIGHT
(Written at the request of Sir Arthur Pearson as the Prologue to an Entertainment on behalf of St. Dunstan’s Hostel for Soldiers and Sailors Blinded in the War)
“Oh, dark, dark, dark amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark! Total eclipse
Without all hope of day!”
Samson Agonistes.
You, whose eyes are able to read these tragic lines of blind John Milton, can you realise what they mean? Do you feel to the innermost core of your heart the blackness of that “eclipse without all hope of day,” which like a never-lifting cloud envelopes those from whom the blessing of sight has been taken for ever! Can you, even by the utmost exertion of your imagination, truly grasp what it would mean to you if all light and colour were blotted out from your consciousness, and you had to rely on a merciful guiding hand to lead you to and fro, to hold you lest you stumbled, and conduct you from places of business or pleasure safely back to your home? If you could not see beloved faces?—if the sunlight could never again reach those poor closed channels of the vision you once enjoyed?—if the skies, the lovely country, the woods and the ocean were all glories that should never again gladden your sight?—if this were so, would you not pray to God that being thus handicapped He would at least give you friends? Friends who would be eyes to you, hands to you—who would cheer you in dreadful moments of depression blacker than blindness, and who would help you to find occupation and train you to do useful work, although sightless, so that the days and years should not be so fraught with monotony and dull regret; and that life, after all, should not seem a barren and empty thing?
You have heard of St. Dunstan’s Hostel for soldiers and sailors blinded in the war? It is now one of earth’s “Holy Places”—holy because the benediction of heaven has made it a sanctuary—a sanctuary of love, patience, self-sacrifice and untiring devotion—holy, because the patiently endured martyrdom of a brave man has been and is its spiritual foundation. Sir Arthur Pearson—(some of you do not know it or think of it)—is himself blind. And what makes his sorrow darker for him, is that he has known all the blessings of perfect sight—he has enjoyed all the activities of an eager and vigorous life, and is still in the prime of manhood. “How sad for him!” murmurs the conventional Society voice—“Such a drawback!” Yes, how sad!—but what gladness for others he gathers from his own handicap!—what splendid results have sprung from his “drawback!”—what sunshine pours from the cloud of his night! The American essayist, Emerson, in advising one stricken with adversity, writes, “Be like the wounded oyster, mend your shell with a pearl!” With what a pearl of great price has Arthur Pearson mended his life’s wound! Knowing the bitterness of blindness, he has devoted all his energies to the care of the blind and to the lightening of their darkness, especially to those heroes who, in the very hey-day of their youth and manliness have gone unhesitatingly forth to face the foe in this wickedest of wars, and have been blinded by shot and shell explosions, losing all sense of vision in one cruel moment—a moment that rings down the curtain on all scenes and faces for ever! Shall we not, with all our hearts, help the sublime cause of “love to our neighbours,” and consolation to our self-sacrificing soldiers and sailors, taught to us by the example of this Englishman who does not protest, but lives his Christian faith in a manner that Christ must surely approve? It would be trespassing on sacred ground to presume to guess how much heavenly light has been mystically shed on his own darkness by this noble dedication of his sorrow to noblest ends. But it may be reverently said that he has followed as far as is humanly possible the Divine Teacher who, in healing a blind man, “put His hands upon his eyes and made him look up.” In this we can all help. We can make our brave, blind friends, the soldiers and sailors, rendered sightless for our sakes, “look up!” We can make them feel they are not alone and helpless in a dark world; we can convince them that their welfare is dear to us, and that we are fully conscious of the immense sacrifices they have made for us and for the country. Let us all then do our utmost and best for St. Dunstan’s and strengthen the hands of its Founder, and let it never be said that we were guilty of the meanest vice known to humanity—Ingratitude!