"You think, then, that a man who passes his life in trying to make the world's thought nobler, and the world's character thereby finer, must necessarily be selfish?"
"Yes; I do," she said firmly. "There are all you writers trying, as you put it, to make the world's thought noble, and not one of you—I beg your pardon, only three of you—lift a finger to help us get the vote. You don't really care a rush about the world's thought. You care only for your own thought."
"And your own thought isn't thought at all," said Major Luscombe from over the table. "I don't mean yours, personally, of course. I like your play very much. But taking writers generally throughout the world, what does the literary mind contribute to the world's thought now? Can you point to any one writer, anywhere in the world, whose thoughts about the world are really worth reading?"
"Yes. To a good many. In a good many countries," said Roger.
"I have no quarrel with art," said Heseltine, taking up the cudgels. "It is moral occupation. But I feel this about modern artists, that, with a few exceptions, they throw down no roots, either into national or private life. They care no more for the State, in its religious sense, than they care (as, say, an Elizabethan would have cared) for conduct. They seem to me to be a company of men without any common principle or joint enthusiasm, working, rather blindly and narrowly, at the bidding of personal idiosyncrasy, or of some aberration of taste. A few of you, some of the most determined, are interested in social reform. The rest of you are merely photographing what goes on for the amusement of those who cannot photograph."
"Yes," said Roger. "At present you are condemning modern society. When you were a boy, Dr. Heseltine, you lived in an ordered world, which was governed by supernatural religion, excited by many material discoveries, and kept from outward anxiety by prosperity and peace. All that world has been turned topsy-turvy in one generation. We are no longer an ordered world. I believe there is a kind of bacillus, isn't there, which, when exposed to the open air, away from its home in the blood, flies about wildly in all directions? That is what we are doing. A large proportion of English people, having lost faith in their old ruler, supernatural religion, fly about wildly in motor-cars. And, unfortunately, material prosperity has increased enormously while moral discipline has been declining; so that now, while we are, perhaps, at the height of our national prosperity, there is practically no common enthusiasm binding man to man, spirit to spirit. It is difficult for an artist to do much more than to reflect the moral conduct of his time, and to cleanse, as it were, what is eternal in conduct from its temporary setting. If the world maintains, as I hold that it does, that there is nothing eternal, and that moral conduct consists in going a great deal, very swiftly, in many very expensive motor-cars, with as many idle companions as possible, then I maintain that you must respect the artist for standing alone and working, as you put it, 'rather blindly and narrowly,' at whatever protest his personal idiosyncrasy urges him to make."
"That's just what I was saying," said Major Luscombe. "I was dining with Sir Herbert Chard last night, down at Aldershot. We were talking military shop rather. About conscription. I said that I thought it was a great pity that universal discipline of some kind had not been substituted for the old moral discipline, which of course we all remember, and I dare say were the last to get. You can't get on without discipline."
"Ah, but that is preaching militarism," said Mrs. Heseltine; "and preaching it insidiously."
"The military virtues are the bed-rock of character," said the Major.
"I cannot believe that character is taught by drill-sergeants and subalterns," said Mrs. Heseltine. "If it is taught at all, it is taught (perhaps unconsciously) by fine men and women; and to some extent by the images of noble character in works of art. I see no chance of moral regeneration in conscription, only another excuse for vapouring, and for that kind of casting off of judgment and responsibility which goes under the name of patriotism."