Man-and-woman love is a disaster nowadays. What a holy horror man-and-man love would be: mates or comrades!
What is it then that is wrong? Why, human beings can’t absolutely love one another. Each man does kill the thing he loves, by sheer dint of loving it. Is love then just a horror in life?
Ah no. This individuality which each of us has got and which makes him a wayward, wilful, dangerous, untrustworthy quantity to every other individual, because every individuality is bound to react at some time against every other individuality, without exception—or else lose its own integrity; because of the inevitable necessity of each individual to react away from any other individual, at certain times, human love is truly a relative thing, not an absolute. It cannot be absolute.
Yet the human heart must have an absolute. It is one of the conditions of being human. The only thing is the God who is the source of all passion. Once go down before the God-passion and human passions take their right rhythm. But human love without the God-passion always kills the thing it loves. Man and woman virtually are killing each other with the love-will now. What would it be when mates, or comrades, broke down in their absolute love and trust? Because, without the polarised God-passion to hold them stable at the centre, break down they would. With no deep God who is source of all passion and life to hold them separate and yet sustained in accord, the loving comrades would smash one another, and smash all love, all feeling as well. It would be a rare gruesome sight.
Any more love is a hopeless thing, till we have found again, each of us for himself, the great dark God who alone will sustain us in our loving one another. Till then, best not play with more fire.
Richard knew this, and it came to him again powerfully, under the dark eyes of Mr Struthers.
“Yes,” he answered slowly. “I know what you mean, and you know I know. And it’s probably your only chance of carrying Socialism through. I don’t really know how much it is feasible. But—”
“Wait a minute, Mr Somers. You are the man I have been waiting for: all except the but. Listen to me a moment further. You know our situation here in Australia. You know that Labour is stronger here, perhaps, more unopposed than in any country in the world. We might do anything. Then why do we do nothing? You know as well as I do. Because there is no real unifying principle among us. We’re not together, we aren’t one. And probably you never will be able to unite Australians on the wage question and the State Ownership question alone. They don’t care enough. It doesn’t really touch them emotionally. And they need to be touched emotionally, brought together that way. Once that was done, we’d be a grand, solid working-class people; grand, unselfish: a real People. ‘When wilt thou save the People, oh God of Israel, when?’ It looks as if the God of Israel would never save them. We’ve got to save ourselves.
“Now you know quite well, Mr Somers, we’re an unstable, unreliable body to-day, the Labour Party here in Australia. And why? Because in the first place we haven’t got any voice. We want a voice. Think of it, we’ve got no real Labour newspaper in Sydney—or in Australia. How can we be united? We’ve no voice to call us together. And why don’t we have a paper of our own? Well, why? Nobody has the initiative. What would be the good, over here, of a grievance-airing rag like your London Daily Herald? It wouldn’t be taken any more seriously than any other rag. It would have no real effect. Australians are a good bit subtler and more disillusioned than the English working classes. You can throw Australians chaff, and they’ll laugh at it. They may even pretend to peck it up. But all the time they know, and they’re not taken in. The Bulletin would soon help them out, if they were. They’ve got a natural sarcastic turn, have the Australians. They’ll do imbecile things: because one thing is pretty well as good as another, to them. They don’t care.
“Then what’s the good starting another Red rag, if the bull won’t run at it. And this Australian bull may play about with a red rag, but it won’t get his real dander up.