Like a mountain in eruption the war has thrown up the sordid passions, the hidden reserves of destructive hate and cruelty in our common human soul. In war all things are permissible. To murder, to maim, to
destroy, to deceive, to make hideous waste of fertile land, to cause weeping and wailing amongst the innocent—these are the necessities of warfare. They are the commonplace incidents of war. There are others. It brings to the surface strata of human nature to which culture has never descended. It explodes our humanitarian theories by a series of well-directed mines. The ancient horrors of devices for the punishment of the enemy are feeble competitors with our modern inventions. Our poison gas, our burning oil, our metallic monsters that spit death on the enemy and crush his fine defences, our flying bomb-throwers, all show that we have not as yet succumbed to humanitarian or Christian ethics. There have been some startling illustrations of the folly of assuming that we have safely and irrevocably traversed certain stages of human indifference. We shuddered at the revelations which called Florence Nightingale to the Crimea; we now shudder at the heartless carelessness revealed by Commissions and Reports. The triumph of Red Cross organization, the mass of charitable and voluntary effort to relieve suffering, the heroism and splendour of individual sacrifice, soften, but do not reverse,
the impression of a general humanitarian débâcle.
We may, of course, take shelter behind the jejune explanation that there are two worlds with two moralities. One is war and the other is peace. We may affectionately survey the hospitals and orphanages, the institutions for the blind and the mute, the asylums and the charities with which each belligerent country pays tribute to the virtues of the merciful life. Whatever we do, we cannot dispel the darkness by a frenzied denunciation of war. The monster is not outside ourselves; it is created and sustained by the hardness of our hearts and the obtuseness of our brains. The responsibility is ours in war as well as in peace. Reformers of all ages have battled with the wickedness of the world, they have stormed stronghold after stronghold of social iniquity. Their failures are no less conspicuous than their successes. Human nature is infinitely pliable and infinitely resistant.
Is it, then, all a matter of change and recurrence? Do culture and morality grow like flowers in a garden, obedient to the will and taste of the gardener, but destined to fade and die with the turn of the season? Do not
the civilizations of the past with their perfection of knowledge and art mock our faith in the permanency of human achievement? Babylon and Egypt, Athens and Rome carried the seed of corruption within their husk of glory. They had elaborate systems of social organization, of laws, of elucidation of the mysteries of life. They saw beauty and pursued it, in colour and sound, by word and chisel. The gods were kind to them, and now and then dispensed with altar and temple. Divine presences revealed themselves in brook and cornfield, on mountain-tops and in the faces of animals. Reformers of all kinds were amongst them: men of the sword with dreams of Empire and conquest for the good of the nation, priests who demanded sacrifice in the name of a god, orators who by skilful laying of words taught the art of philosophic calm. Problems faced them, social iniquities troubled them; they grappled with morals and strove to build up a better and happier future.
I was sinking into a reverie over the fall of Babylon and the problems of recurrence when Marie-Joseph arrived. Marie-Joseph is my oldest and dearest peasant friend. She
is over seventy and devoted to hard work. Her face is rosy and wrinkled, and when she laughs it becomes a mass of merry furrows. Her body gives one the impression of an animated board. It is strikingly flat and stiff, and proudly erect. She works in the fields and tends the cows, and when she bends down to hoe the potatoes or cut the grass, she just folds herself in two. The stiff straight back in the neat black dress is different from all the other toiling backs on the slopes. When I look down from the mountain-tops to the pastures and plots below, I can always distinguish the back of Marie-Joseph from the others. To-day she brought me a present of milk and potatoes, and we sat down to chat over a cup of coffee—nay, four cups of coffee, for Marie-Joseph has no cranky ideas about abstinence from food and drink, and I must, perforce, pretend I have none. I love her and her ways, though she always manages to disturb me when I wish to work or think. Writing and thinking are not work to Marie-Joseph. She is wholly innocent of the former dissipation and carries out the latter function without any trouble or fuss. She is, therefore, justified in disposing of my painful
efforts with a contemptuous shrug of her wooden shoulders.
“Marie-Joseph,” I said cautiously, when I had watched the third cup of coffee disappear, and duly discussed butter and cheese, wine and cows, “do you think the world is getting better?” She was slicing a chunk of bread with her capacious pocket-knife, and stopped short. Her small bright blue eyes peered at me curiously. “I mean, do you believe there is real progress—that we are better than we used to be?”