XXVII
Much time passed. The Government stagnated, but the national life went on, like a river piling its waters against the tottering dam.
Then came the Great Crisis in which the Prime Minister went down. The nation was no longer on the brink of ruin, as the ravens had so long croaked, but in the very midst of it.
There is an all-powerful Guardian of Truth, who avenges every lie. Master, not of the world, which runs by rule, but of the Inward Meaning of it, which is beyond the range of law; Master, not of enterprises and institutions, but of the living souls of things which they rudely symbolise; as the Poet is Master, not of words and verses, but of the thing obscurely hidden in them; as the Musician is Master, not of notes and harmonies, but of the soul made audible in them, like an invisible gossamer thread revealed in dew: He teaches by destroying. The history of Man is the history of the Master’s contempt for lies. The seer of the Inward Truth sings its glory to a world of fools, who mistake his symbols for the Truth itself and the seer for the Master of it, building states and religions of the symbols; whereat the True Master laughs, and the building tumbles, crushing men in its ruins.
Ruins of lies fell upon England, crushing those that dwelt there as they fell. England had reverenced forms and insulted realities. With antiquarian fervour run riotously mad, we had thrust full-blooded, growing realities into the shrunken and tattered livery of old forms, stifling the life out of them; realities of Pure Ethic and Awe of the Insoluble Secret into old liveries of Christian dogma; realities of Anglo-Saxon gospel of universal Freedom into liveries of insolent insular Imperialism; realities of Democracy into old liveries of Feudalism, raising Tailors to high places due to sages and centaurs—summoning Lords of the Shears and Thread to put patches over the rents burst in the garments by the swelling life within, when we should have torn the old fripperies away and let the Titan loose from his bondage.
England was rich in men and minds and money; but the different owners of them stood face to face clutching their wealth, hissing defiance, petrified with jealousy, while the worms crept in and devoured it, and England starved. Good Government costs but little; but these men, rich in hands and brains and the plunder of the centuries, wrangled who should pay for Government, each preferring Anarchy to Government at his own cost; and the foreigners coursed over the seas and took everything but the bare land from us; the foreigners had no need to take that from us for our ruin, for life is not the thing that stands still in its place, but the thing that comes and goes, and while we boasted of our fleet—as the paunchy brewer boasts of his cellar full of vats—and while we boasted that no one dared to invade our country, the pride and the boast turned bitter on our lips, and we found ourselves the starving masters of a sun-sucked ash-heap.
So came the great Famine, punishing the lies; men, women, and children died in their thousands; the poor birds died also, and the dogs and the horses—losing their long faith in the wisdom of imperial man. The Titan’s livery hung loose about him; and the Lord High Tailors shook their heads over their steak and onion, and said that the waist needed taking in.
Men had not died without a struggle; there had been riots and fighting and theft; empty bellies had gone of their own accord through broken windows to fill themselves with guinea loaves, and thence to the crowded gaols to pick oakum into ropes to hang their leaders with; women died patiently, like overloaded horses that fall on the climbing hill, with a last look of the white bewildered eye entreating pardon of their masters for having failed to drag the burden to the top. Children died believing in their mothers; women died believing in some God or Fate; men died believing in nothing but the Police.
At last the Famine abated; the ships of corn came hurrying in. Men are men after all; and what is the function of the Colonies if not to forgive the senile sins of England—to overlook the insults of the Old Dotard’s vanity, and help him in his hour of need?