If well-meaning counsellors could be persuaded that there are phenomena upon which they are not all qualified to give advice, they might perhaps forbear to send delegations of children to the White House. This is a popular diversion, and one which is much to be deplored. In the hour of our utmost depression, when our rights as a free nation were denied us, and the lives of our citizens were imperilled on land and sea, a number of children were sent to Mr. Wilson, to ask him not to go to war. It was as though they had asked him not to play games on Sunday, or not to put Christmas candles in his windows. Three years later, another deputation of innocents marched past the White House, bearing banners with severely worded directions from their mothers as to how the President (then a very ill man) should conduct himself. The language used was of reprehensible rudeness. The exhortations themselves appeared to be irrelevant. “American women demand that anarchy in the White House be stopped!” puzzled the onlookers, who wondered what was happening in that sad abode of pain, what women these were who knew so much about it, and why a children’s crusade had been organized for the control of our foreign and domestic policies.
The last query is the easiest answered. Picketing is a survival of the childish instinct in the human heart. It represents the play-spirit about which modern educators talk so glibly, and which we are bidden to cherish and preserve. A society of “American Women Pickets” (delightful phrase!) is out to enjoy itself, and its pleasures are as simple as they are satisfying. To parade the streets, to proffer impertinent instructions, to be stared at by passers-by, and to elude the law which seeks to abate public nuisances—what better sport could be asked either for little boys and girls, or for Peter Pans valiantly refusing to mature? Mr. Harding was pursued in his day by picketing children, and Mr. Coolidge has probably the same pleasure awaiting him. Even the tomb at Mount Vernon has been surrounded by malcontents, bearing banners with the inscription, “Washington, Thou Art Truly Dead!” To which the mighty shade, who in his day had heard too often the sound and fury of importunate counsels, and who, because he would not hearken, had been abused, like “a Nero, a defaulter and a pickpocket,” might well have answered from the safety and dignity of the tomb, “Deo gratias!”
When a private citizen calls at the White House, to “frankly advise” a modification of the peace treaty; when a private citizen writes to the American Bar Association, to “frankly advise” this distinguished body of men to forbear from any discussion of public affairs at their annual meeting; when a private citizeness writes to the Secretary of War to “frankly advise” that he should treat the slacker of to-day as he would treat the hero of to-morrow, we begin to realize how far the individual American is prepared to dry-nurse the Nation. Every land has its torch-bearers, but nowhere else do they all profess to carry the sacred fire. It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of mind is unfavourable to preachment. We can hardly conceive a delegation of little French girls sent to tell M. Millerand what their mothers think of him. Even England shows herself at times impatient of her monitors. “Mr. Norman Angell is very cross,” observed a British reviewer dryly. “Europe is behaving in her old mad way without having previously consulted him.”
“Causes are the proper subject of history,” says Mr. Brownell, “and characteristics are the proper subject of criticism.” It may be that much of our criticism is beside the mark, because we disregard the weight of history. Our fresh enthusiasm for small nations is dependent upon their docility, and upon their respect for boundary lines which the big nations have painstakingly defined. That a boundary which has been fought over for centuries should be more provocative of dispute than a claim staked off in Montana does not occur to an American who has little interest in events that antedate the Declaration of Independence. Countries, small, weak and incredibly old, whose sons are untaught and unfed, appear to be eager for supplies and insensible to moral leadership. We recognize these characteristics, and resent or deplore them according to our dispositions; but for an explanation of the causes—which might prove enlightening—we must go further back than Americans care to travel.
“I seldom consult others, and am seldom attended to; and I know no concern, either public or private, that has been mended or bettered by my advice.” So wrote Montaigne placidly in the great days of disputation, when men counselled the doubtful with sword and gun, reasoning in platoons, and correcting theological errors with the all-powerful argument of arms. Few men were then guilty of intolerance, and fewer still understood with Montaigne and Burton the irreclaimable obstinacy of convictions. There reigned a profound confidence in intellectual and physical coercion. It was the opinion of John Donne, poet and pietist, that Satan was deeply indebted to the counsels of Saint Ignatius Loyola, which is a higher claim for the intelligence of that great churchman than Catholics have ever advanced. Milton, whose ardent and compelling mind could not conceive of tolerance, failed to comprehend that Puritanism was out of accord with the main currents of English thought and temper. He not only assumed that his enemies were in the wrong, says Sir Leslie Stephen, “but he often seemed to expect that they would grant so obvious an assertion.”
This sounds modern. It even sounds American. We are so confident that we are showing the way, we have been told so repeatedly that what we show is the way, that we cannot understand the reluctance of our neighbours to follow it. There is a curious game played by educators, which consists in sending questionnaires to some hundreds, or some thousands, of school-children, and tabulating their replies for the enlightenment of the adult public. The precise purport of this game has never been defined; but its popularity impels us to envy the leisure that educators seem to enjoy. A few years ago twelve hundred and fourteen little Californians were asked if they made collections of any kind, and if so, what did they collect? The answers were such as might have been expected, with one exception. A small and innocently ironic boy wrote that he collected “bits of advice.” His hoard was the only one that piqued curiosity; but, as in the case of Isacke Bucke and the quarrelsome couple of Plymouth, we were left to our own conjectures.
The fourth “Spiritual Work of Mercy” is “To comfort the sorrowful.” How gentle and persuasive it sounds after its somewhat contentious predecessors; how sure its appeal; how gracious and reanimating its principle! The sorrowful are, after all, far in excess of the doubtful; they do not have to be assailed; their sad faces are turned toward us, their sad hearts beat responsively to ours. The eddying drifts of counsel are loud with disputation; but the great tides of human emotion ebb and flow in obedience to forces that work in silence.
“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”