"We're learning life as never before—plucking the deeper fruits and mysteries of pain. But one must go apart from the crowd to see. One must cease to be a partisan. The real seer sees the whole, not the part. All the war-lands are in pain. One sees only the part, when one is in pain. Not one man out of a million sees it all. A few Russians see it all—a few in China—a few in India. Romain Rolland sees it all. This fellow, Conrad, sees it all.... It's a pity if America doesn't soon get the full picture. It's worth seeing——"
Ocean and sunlight and mountains. The world was a brimming cup. If a man could take all the beauty there was for him, he could never die.... We went over to the post-office of the little town. The business men of the place were coming in. The first mail had just been distributed.... Grocers, butchers, the hardware man, the real estate men, the man who ran the newspaper, fishermen, barbers, lawyers—mainly fat and pleasant—children on the way to school.
They were short-breathed and short-armed. They dressed in wool and wore heavy dark hats. I had never noticed before how short-armed the race of tradespeople are. Labourers and peasants are not so; painters and musicians have a tendency to be long-armed. I mentioned this to Steve.
"The middlemen," said he. "They are tightened throughout—ligaments contracted—contraction taking place in the deeper weaves of mind, a drying up of the deeper sources of life. Contraction, self-centering—that's what madness is. A man must sing, or weave, or build or make bricks. The ways of competitive life are paltry ways. They hide their ways from one another, and afterward from themselves. They pluck no fruits; they contrive no short cuts; they do not become intimate even with the commodities of the earth—the very things they worship and pare margins from. They eat infamously, filch from each other.... It's all here—all that Conrad pictured in the heart of darkness. These are the sick, the maimed, the blind of the earth. They live in the realm of fear, pain, anger, desire. These are the war-makers.... Their arms are twisting and shortening in to their navels——"
Sunlight streamed in through the open doors of the post-office. Motors going by drowned the soft rustling from the sea. The hell of the outer world trickled in through bits of conversation. Everybody had read the morning paper at the same time. No one thought of telling anything that his neighbour did not know.... Europe was starving—the President was ill—railroads in strike, coal famine, prohibitive cost of staples—France cracking with the dry-rot of exhaustion—England ... a voice—Germany choking in her own blood.
The tradespeople of the little town by the sea gathered in their bills and orders and advertisements and hurried back to their shops. Nothing astonished any more. There were no words for the world's woe—no ears for lamentations—no mind but to buy cheap at the right time and sell dear all the time. We walked back to the shore.
"I once saw a little town on a hill-side," Steve said. "A grand boot-maker was there, and a man who made clocks with such tools as he had—big noble clocks that ran unvaryingly eight full days. Another man made furniture—perfect woods from the forest drying in his kilns and sheds. There was a sweet smell about his shop. There was a weaver and a potter there. The days were long and singing, full of labour and peace. No one multiplied by mechanical means. Every artisan had his apprentices. The age of the apprentices will come back—with a new dimension added——"
"Switzerland or dream?" said I.