But the war-propagandist never wholly submerged the pacifist. His last war article was written on Armistice Day, 1918, and it was intended to show that while the price paid for the victory of the Allied cause had been a terribly bitter one it had been justified, inasmuch as it had killed warfare, and so banished from the earth for ever the greatest scourge of mankind.
Hall Caine has lived long enough since to see the falseness of that judgment. No one can have suffered more from the disappointments and disillusionment of the war, its political uselessness, its immeasurable cruelty, its limitless waste, its widespread wretchedness, and above all its inhuman demoralization. That the Great War has been in vain, that so much sacrifice, so much heroism, so many brave young lives have been thrown away, he would not for one moment say, being sure that in the long review of a mysterious Providence all these must have their place. But he is none the less sure that the late war has left the world worse than it found it; that the after-war, which we call The Peace, has been more productive of evil passions than the war itself was; that violence has never been more rampant or faith in the sanctity of life so low; that the poor have never been poorer, or the struggle to live so severe; and that Christian Europe has never before been such a chaos of separate and selfish interests or so full of threats of renewed and still deadlier warfare in the future—in a word that the Great War has not only failed to kill war but has frightfully strengthened and inflamed the spirit of it.
And now he publishes his Parable, the little story called “The Woman of Knockaloe,” in the hope of showing that there can be “no peace under the soldier’s sword,” that the salvation of the world from the moral and material destruction which threatens to overwhelm it is not to be found in governments or parliaments or peace conferences, but only in a purging of the heart of individual man of the hatreds and jealousies and other corruptions which the war created—in a personal return of all men, regardless of nation or race, or politics or creed, or (as in the case of the American people) remoteness from the central scene of strife, to the spiritual and natural laws which alone can bring the human family back to true peace and real security—the laws of love and mutual sacrifice, above all the law of human brotherhood, which was at once the law and the first commandment of Christ.
That this is a great Evangel none can doubt, and that it will go far in the beautiful human form in which it is presented, that of a deeply moving story, few will question. But is the world prepared for it? Is this the hour for such a plea? Is the Great War too recent to permit any of the nations who engaged in it to forgive their enemies? In this new book Hall Caine touches upon wounds that are not yet healed and sometimes the touch hurts. If it is an all-healing touch the pain may be endured. But is it? What will the British people think? What will the Belgians, the French and the Americans, who are still suffering from their bereavements, say to a writer who asks them, in effect, to shake hands with the Germans who caused them? Will not the nations which have suffered most from the war say that, having beaten the Germans, it is their first duty to themselves and to humanity to keep them beaten? Will not a residue of bitterness against an author who calls upon the peoples of the world to make an effort that is impossible to the human heart at such a time obscure the sublimity of his message?
On the other hand will it not be agreed that the Christian ideal of the forgiveness of injuries and the brotherhood of man is the only remaining hope of the redemption of the world from the lamentable condition into which the war, and the passions provoked by the war, have plunged it; that without this ideal, politics are a meaningless mockery, religion is an organized hypocrisy, and the churches are a snare, and that, however hard it may be to learn the lesson, and however cruel the pain of it, there never was a time when it was more needed than now?
Here lies the theme for many a sermon, and judging of “The Woman of Knockaloe” by its effect upon those who, besides myself, have read it, it is hardly possible to question its missionary value, apart from its human beauty and charm. At least it is certain that readers in many lands will think and continue to think of some of the greatest of human problems long after they have closed the book.
The Publishers.
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray