Eighteen months ago I published, in my book First it was Ordained, the sketch of an organized society on definite lines. In the course of the tale the founder of this league writes to an official in the Census Office who is alarmed at the decline of the birth-rate, and outlines the lines on which the society is to be started.
With some necessary elisions this is the letter:—
“You will see, therefore, that though there has been, and doubtless will continue to be, a great deal of windy talk on these matters, there is no organized body of men and women, no league, no union, either religious or political or both, which is devoted to dealing with the question, to rousing the national conscience and fighting the Neo-Malthusians tooth and nail.
“Wifehood—which generally means motherhood—is the predominant profession of women all over the world. The future of the world, and of course of any state in it, rests upon the quality and the quantity of its children. A prominent sociologist has just written, ‘If the conditions under which the profession of motherhood is exercised are silly and rotten, our fleets, our armies, do no more than guard a thing that dies. In Great Britain, now, I think they are more or less silly and rotten.’ Let us admit that this writer is correct. He does no more than voice conclusions at which even the most superficial student of the census returns must have arrived.
“What is to be done, then? How are we who are Christians and love our Lord, citizens who love our country, to fight the present conditions?
“That is what a band of people, including those I have mentioned, are discussing. They have arrived at a definite conclusion.
“A great league is to be formed of English men and women. Great names will be at the head of it, it is to be national. I have already pointed out to you that even the revelations of the census have not stirred the ordinary person. His patriotism has not been roused, and, you may be certain—as I am certain—that no question of national expediency on this point will stir the ordinary person, who is either indifferent or actually engaged in helping England’s decadence by the restriction of his own family. A league started on the grounds of expediency and the common good alone would be an egregious failure.
“Utilitarianism never fired a great moral movement yet. It never will; because, before a man becomes a national utilitarian, he must get over personal utilitarianism. And in this case of the restriction of family, the degradation of marriage, personal utilitarianism is directly opposed to national welfare, and the personal wins.
“We must come back to the one Power and Force over the hearts and minds of men and women. We must come back to religion.
“Here is the Church’s great opportunity. There has never, perhaps, in the whole history of the Church in England been such a chance given to her. Our crusade must be a crusade made in the light of the Incarnation, under the auspices of God the Holy Ghost—the Lord and Giver of Life.
“Do you begin to see what I mean, what we hope for? The part of the Holy Spirit’s work, which we recite in the Creed, has been largely forgotten. Lord and Giver of Life! We are about to revive the recognition and memory of the fact. We are going to use this cardinal point of Christian belief as our watchword and battle-cry.
“The gradual decline of literal belief in the Incarnation, the growth of a Protestantism which is on its way towards Unitarianism, the spread of Unitarian doctrines under other names, among the varied sects of dissent, have meant that an appalling disregard of life as the gift of God, its Author, has come among us. It is because you and I believe that Jesus was God as well as man that we insist upon the sacredness of human life.
“To-day, the loss of thousands of lives in a battle is printed as a piece of casual news. There is no particular sense of horror in the minds of any one. Murders are committed every day in momentary bursts of passion over trifles. Suicides increase, not only when some long-continued misery may seem to give a shadow of excuse, but when there has been some trivial disappointment. And so, leaving out a hundred other instances, one comes down to the truth of which every priest, every doctor, and every nurse is aware, the frustration of God’s intention of childbirth—the reason for the terrible disclosures which you and your colleagues have given to the world in your census returns.
“Our league will be, therefore, a great Church League. We shall invite every English man and woman to join it, who believes that Christ was God. This is the only way in which we can make such a society do its work and accomplish its end. Directly we begin to allow the political altruist who has no definite belief in Christianity to join us, so surely our influence and opportunity will begin to decline. Compromise is no use whatever. We shall be bitterly assailed, and for a time we shall not seem to make much headway. I say seem, and for this reason: people who belong to us will not advertise their membership. The press, which is not interested, as a whole, in religious affairs, will not understand our aims, nor will it be—so I imagine—in sympathy with them. And any movement that has for its object, as this will have, the improvement of sexual morality, will be fought by the methods of ridicule and contempt. But this will be but surface, and in time the influence of our work will not only be felt, but seen. The wizards of figures will be at work once more.”
Is this a dream and impracticable? It is for the great middle classes of England to answer during the coming years. The middle classes really rule. They do not command public opinion, but they do what is more than that—they persuade it. They represent more than the remaining classes the austerity and also the Christianity of the United Kingdom and the Dominions beyond the seas.
The question rests with them, and there are many who still hope and believe they will be faithful to their trust who are convinced—“Dabit Deus his quoque Finem.”
THE HISTORICIDES OF OXFORD