sort of melody that suits the dauntless spirit of our allies. As I watched these men, so soon to fight for their country, I was reminded of that white-faced boy pictured by Stevenson, striding over his dead comrades, the roll of his drum leading the living to victory or death. Drums are said (incorrectly I believe) to be made of donkey’s skin, and Stevenson imagines how, after death, the poor beast takes this magical revenge for the blows received in life, by leading cruel man to destruction. The old English military music seems to have been played by drums alone. King Charles I issued a warrant in the following words: [198a] “Whereas . . . the March of this our nation so famous in all honourable achievements and glorious warres of this our Kingdom in forraigne parts was through the negligence and carelessness of drummers . . . so altered and changed from the ancient gravity and majestic thereof as it was in danger utterly to have been lost and forgotten. . . .” He therefore wills and commands drummers to play only what is recorded in the curious old notation of that day. It must be remembered that drums and trumpets had something of the sacredness of Royalty in the 17th century. No one was allowed to play them in public without a license from the Sergeant Trumpeter, [198b] an officer who certainly existed a few years ago, and may, for all I know, still survive.
In the 17th century it was a post of some dignity, and gave its holder the title of Esquire.
During the great retreat in the winter of 1914 the effect of music was magnificently illustrated. Mr. Conan Doyle [199] writes, “Exhausted as the troops were, there could he no halt or rest until they had extricated themselves from the immediate danger. At the last point of human endurance they still staggered on through the evening and the night time, amid roaring thunder and flashing lightning, down the St. Quentin road. Many fell from fatigue, and having fallen continued to sleep. . . . In the case of some of the men the collapse was so complete that it was almost impossible to get them on. Major Tom Bridges, of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoons being sent to round up and hurry forward 250 stragglers at St. Quentin, found them nearly comatose with fatigue. With quick wit he bought a toy drum, and accompanied by a man with a penny whistle he fell them in and marched them, laughing in all their misery, down the high road towards Ham.” When he stopped he found that the men stopped also, so he was compelled to march and play the whole way to Roupy.
In Sir Henry Newbolt’s Song of the Great Retreat (The Times, Dec. 16, 1914), this triumphant success is described:
“Cheerly goes the dark road, cheerly goes the night,
Cheerly goes the blood to keep the beat:
Half a thousand dead men marching on to fight,
With a little penny drum to lift their feet.”
This song ought to be especially interesting to our Society, because the effect of a small drum and a penny whistle is roughly the same as that of the pipe and tabor, and these are the traditional instruments for English Folk Dances. It is perhaps worth noting that they must in old days have been used in war, for there is an illustration in an ancient manuscript of a taborer piping at the head of a body of troops marching out from a town.
Man is a social animal, and his natural strength lies in community of action with his fellows. It is this which gives music its power over masses of men, the pulsation of the drum, the blare of the answering trumpets, or the strident voice of the bagpipe cry to them in tones which cannot be misunderstood, binding them into a brotherhood of courage and obedience. But a society of Morris Dancers does not need to be reminded of the noble effect of human movement controlled by music. The word ‘caper’ has somewhat ridiculous associations, but we have learned to respect it for what it implies: the finely ordered strenuous movement of strong bodies leaping in rhythmic dance. It suggests something pagan and prehistoric, a physical religion of astonishing beauty. Some of our Morris men are now giving all the vigour of their young bodies to a great and just cause. Let us wish them a victorious home-coming.
XII
THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE [201]
It is not difficult to sympathise with what Dr. Birkbeck aimed at in founding the College which bears his name. His idea seems to have been, that whatever a man’s calling may be, he is the better for accurate knowledge of the things with which he deals. This is a sufficiently obvious statement. But if for the word ‘accurate’ we substitute ‘scientific,’ it is no longer a platitude—at least it is not so in the ears of the semi-educated. For we can still find people who believe in the “practical man” as opposed to one whom they probably call a scientist. One would like to know more of the conception of science formed by the unscientific. They are probably unaware that science is eminently practical in asserting that only to be true which rests on wide and accurate generalisation. It is also practical wisdom to hold, as science does, that truth is temporary and relative, and is in fact merely the best conclusion that can be drawn in the present state of knowledge. To many people science is wearisome and somewhat ridiculous, and these qualities appear in the naturalist of fiction. Thus when even George Eliot draws a coleopterist, he is made a feeble old man shuffling to and fro among his
ridiculous beetles. And on the French stage I have seen a botanist treated in the same spirit.