In one of Shaw's plays—I think it is "Superman"—one of the characters hints, toward the end of the last act, that the hero is a gentleman somewhat prone to talking. The hero admits it, but excuses himself on the ground that it is the only way he knows of explaining his opinions.
Times of stress and struggle, whether individual or national, afford men and women other methods of expressing their views, and a large number of our citizens are, very creditably, taking the present opportunity to act instead of shout. There are the young fellows who in their thousands are pressing around the door of the recruiting offices. They are throwing up, many of them, good jobs for the privilege of drilling for the next six months for eight hours a day. Their reward will be certain hardship, their share of sickness and wounds, the probability of lying ten deep in a forgotten grave, their chance of glory a name printed in small type among a thousand others on a War Office report.
There are the mothers and wives and children who are encouraging them to go; to whom their going means semi-starvation. The old, bent crones whose feeble hands will have to grasp again the hoe and the scrubbing brush. The young women who know only too well what is before them—the selling of the home just got together; first the easy chair and the mirror, and then the bed and the mattress; the weary tramping of the streets, looking for work. The children awestruck and wondering.
There are the men who are quietly going on with their work, doing their best with straitened means to keep their business going; giving employment; getting ready to meet the income tax collector, who next year one is inclined to expect will be demanding anything from half a crown to five shillings in the pound. There are others. But there is a certain noisy and, to me, particularly offensive man (and with him, I am sorry to say, one or two women) very much to the fore just now with whose services the country could very well dispense. He is the man who does his fighting with his mouth. Unable for reasons of his own to get at the foe in the field, he thirsts for the blood of the unfortunate unarmed and helpless Germans that the fortunes of war have left stranded in England. He writes to the paper thoughtfully suggesting plans that have occurred to him for making their existence more miserable than it must be. He generally concludes his letter with a short homily directed against the Prussian Military Staff for their lack of the higher Christian principles.
He has spies on the brain. Two quite harmless English citizens have already been shot in consequence of the funk this spy mania has created among us. The vast majority of Germans in England have come to live in England because they dislike Germany. That a certain number of spies are among us I take to be highly probable. I take it that if the Allies know their business a certain number of English spies are doing what they can for us at great personal risk to themselves in Germany. Until the German Army has landed on our shores German spies can do little or no harm to us. The police can be trusted to know something about them, and if any are caught red-handed the rules of war are not likely to be strained for their benefit.
A Story from the South.
From a small town in the South of England comes a story I can vouch for. A couple of Boy Scouts had been set to guard the local reservoir. About noon one sunny day they remarked the approach, somewhat ostentatious, of a desperate-looking character. Undoubtedly a German spy! What can he be up to! The boys approached him and he fled, leaving behind him the damning evidence—a tin suggestive of sardines and labeled "Poison!" That the gentleman should have chosen broad daylight for his nefarious design, should have been careful to label his tin, seemed to the good townsfolk under present scare conditions proof that they had at last discovered the real German spy, full of his devilish cunning. The tin was taken possession of by the police. And then the Sergeant's little daughter, who happened to have had a few lessons in French, suggested that the word on the tin was "Poisson," and the town now breathes again.
So long as the war continues the spy will be among us. I suggest that we face the problem of his activities without blue funk and hysteria. The men and women who are shrieking for vicarious vengeance upon all the Germans remaining in our midst must remember that there are thousands of English families at the present moment residing in Germany and Austria. The majority of them, comparatively poor people, with all their belongings around them, were unable to get away. I shall, until I receive convincing proof to the contrary, continue to believe that they are living among their German neighbors unmolested. Even were it not so, I would suggest our setting the example of humanity rather than our slavishly following an example of barbarity.
We are fighting for an idea—an idea of some importance to the generations that will come after us. We are fighting to teach the Prussian Military Staff that other laws have come to stay—laws superseding those of Attila the Hun. We are fighting to teach the German people that, free men with brains to think with, they have no right to hand themselves over body and soul to their rulers to be used as mere devil's instruments; that if they do so they shall pay the penalty, and the punishment shall go hard. We are fighting to teach the German Nation respect for God! Our weapons have got to be hard blows, not hard words. We are tearing at each other's throats; it has got to be done. It is not a time for yelping.
Jack Johnson as a boxer I respect. The thing I do not like about him is his habit of gibing and jeering at his opponent while he is fighting him. It isn't gentlemanly, and it isn't sporting. The soldiers are fighting in grim silence. When one of them does talk, it is generally to express admiration of German bravery. It is our valiant stay-at-homes, our valiant clamorers for everybody else to enlist but themselves, who would have us fight like some drunken fish hag, shrieking and spitting while she claws.