LONDON,
December 31st, 2000.
This is the story of the World-Storm. Leaders in every field of thought have described the events of the year 1980, but we who have come aged and shaken out of that chaos, know well that the half was not told.
The World-Storm was a human affair, and human events are ever based on love. For the love of woman a man gives all the labour of his life, or in the loss or lack of love will cast his life away. For the love of women men have built cities, or burned them, won thrones or lost them, have staked things present and the things to come. This is the story, then, of a man's love for a woman. And if the life of a man is a love tale, so is the life of a nation, which ends when the people cease to love their country. And so is the life of mankind, which will end when the love of God dies out from the human heart. Life is a plant which has its roots in love.
Reading over many histories of the World-Storm, by divines, by students, and admirals of the air, the whole of which have failed to reach down to the truth: I think that these eminent exact thinkers were mostly dry at the roots. Only a lover can write history.
We set sweet Margaret on the Imperial Throne, we prayed for her, and all the millions of our prayers like subtle spirits wrought upon her soul creating her a queen. We looked again, and behold she was august, inspired, beautiful, terrible—England! Who but a lover could write of such a queen? To me, a plain man who has loved, it is given that I should tell of that transfiguration, and how the lovely child, translated by our prayers moved through the darkness.
Looking back upon those days when frightened and starving, we saw the old order changed, and the Millennium born, I see the persons of the drama, vague, gigantic, fighting in a region of mist and flame to one great end of Peace. Yet I knew all the time that they were human, a woman, and certain men who loved and sinned, who fought and suffered. The evil was burned out of us, the good survives; the scorched and shaken earth is purified.
The Greeks, who were very wise, invented that old myth of Phaeton who dared to drive the chariot of the Sun, but lost his head, and failed, and burned the world.
There is to be no more war, so I doubt if there will be any more progress. Take this heresy if you will, as the maunderings of an old fighter; but have not the ages of suffering been ever the ages of growth? Strength is the child of pain, and in her agony the world gave birth to saints and heroes. The millennial peace will never know the like. Never again will there be such a woman as our Lady the Queen, such men as John Brand, or Lord Sydney. Their age is memorable, their race illustrious, and for my part, I do not greatly care to live on after them. My work is done, and sitting at my window as I write these last words of my prologue, I see with dim eyes the roofs of London reaching away into the night, the moonlight faint upon her hanging gardens, her palaces and towers, her spires and soaring domes. The bells have been tolling the hours of the dying twentieth century, but now they have broken into one great peal of triumph, they are ringing in the Millennium. "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace; For mine eyes have seen Thy Salvation."
THE CHARIOT OF THE SUN