MY “LITTLE BIT”

MARIE CORELLI

MY “LITTLE BIT”

BY

MARIE CORELLI

AUTHOR OF “THE YOUNG DIANA,” “THE LIFE EVERLASTING,”
“INNOCENT,” “ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS,”
“BARABBAS,” ETC.

NEW

YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATED
TO
MY FRIEND
A. R. M. L.

AND HIS FELLOW-MEMBERS
OF THE CARLTON CLUB

PREFACE

The articles in this book, with the exception of the first two, were all written during the war at the request of the various editors by whose courtesy they are now reproduced in volume form. Most of them, notably those which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, were, by my own desire, gratuitous, though payment for them was offered. But, being unable to handle sword or gun, I was glad to offer the free service of my pen whenever such service was desired, or considered useful, just as I would have been glad, had I been a man, to fight voluntarily for Great Britain, without any thought of other recompense than that of the personal pride and joy such action would have given me. The first two articles: “Savage Glory” and “The Great Unrest,” were published some considerable time before the outbreak of war, and while the editor of Nash’s Magazine was generous to a fault in his praise of “Savage Glory” he was so doubtful as to the accuracy of the indictment conveyed in “The Great Unrest” that he felt himself compelled to preface it by a note, stating that he, or rather “we,” could not be held responsible for any agreement with or endorsement of the author’s ideas. Readers can now judge for themselves whether those ideas were fairly prophetic or otherwise. Naturally, no heed was paid to them, except by a huge silent public, the press apparently making it a rule not to notice in any one paper what their rivals print in others, unless it happens to be by one of their own special clique, or the utterance of a Cabinet Minister, which they generally misquote. But, such as they are, these various contributions to English and American sections of journalism indicate the straight and loyal road my pen has travelled during the wickedest and stupidest war that ever devastated the world. The stupidity of it was even more glaring than the wickedness of it—especially in the case of Germany. Germany was an advancing and prosperous nation, chiefly through the industrial progress of her hard-working people, and her “peaceful penetration” was conquering every quarter of commerce. She has, for the time being, ruined everything by a blind faith in and following of her scoundrels of finance, for whom the Krupp and other dividends were not sufficiently high or secure; the work of years has now been destroyed and every gain has to be discounted as loss, though there is not the slightest doubt that her cleverness and cunning will enable her to mend the hole in her wall far more rapidly than our dilly-dally statesmen imagine. For the immediate time, her degradation and ruin involve more than her own position; other nations, even our own, are deeply affected, and, like ships in unsafe anchorage, sway from their moorings—all are tormented by a spirit of turbulence which will not let them rest, and men with weak brains and vacillating purpose are playing with the destinies of peoples in a wholly unforseeing and nerveless way, heedless of the fact that there are other more powerful players behind them who are about to make an end of their game and push them far away from the goal. In what I have written, however slight and inadequate, I have had but one aim in view: to hold up to the public as far as I can or may, the greatness of this beloved land of ours—its splendid ancient history and tradition, and to resent, as much as a mere pen can do, the disloyal and agitating influences which seek to disrupt unity and belittle the achievements of the noble British people. Of the wicked waste of that people’s money by the most obtuse Government methods, and the iniquitous premium on idleness foolishly given in the “Unemployment dole,” I could say much, notwithstanding that I am told it is “a sop to check Bolshevism.” One does not offer a sop to a mad bull—one kills it. And it is not credible that the sane, sound men of Great Britain, with an Empire of glorious renown at their backs, will ally themselves with Red Riot which means ruin to themselves as well as to its instigators. True it is that Stupidity is the present order of the day among our blind leaders of the blind—that very Stupidity which Voltaire affirmed to be the only crime—and there is little else for us to do in our extremity but “wait and see” whether Stupidity will prove more than a blundering guide to “where the rainbow ends.”

CONTENTS

MY “LITTLE BIT”

ENGLAND
1918

Lift up thine eyes, Queen Warrior of the world!

Stand, fearless-footed, on Time’s shifting verge

And watch thine everlasting Dawn emerge

From clouds that break and boom in thunderous War!

Lo, how thy broad East reddens to thy West,

The while thy thousand-victoried flag, unfurl’d,

Waves to thy North and South, in one royal fold

Of tent-like shelter for an Empire’s rest;

O Queen, sword-girded, helmeted in gold,

Strong Conqueror of all thy many foes,

Look from thy rocky heights, and see afar

The coming Future menacing the Past

With clamour and wild change of present things,

Kingdoms down-shaken with the fall of kings;

But fear not Thou! Thou’rt still the first and last

Imperial wearer of the deathless Rose—

Crown’d with the sunlight, girdled with the sea,

Mother of mightiest nations yet to be!

SAVAGE GLORY
AN APPEAL AGAINST WAR

(This article was written for “Nash’s Magazine” in February, 1913, without any other than instinctive premonition of the coming Great War.)

Editorial Note.—Marie Corelli’s remarkable article should be read by every man and woman at all mindful of the welfare of their fellow-sojourners on this little swinging ball of ours, which we call the earth. This contribution is far and away one of the most brilliant pieces of writing Miss Corelli has ever achieved; it is thought-compelling and in the larger sense inspirational; it is wellnigh epoch-making in its new view, its virile logic, its sane and forceful plea for the peace of the world—peace on a basis of common sense, broad humanity, and the honour of nations.

Civilisation is a great Word. It reads well—it is used everywhere—it bears itself proudly in the language. It is a big mouthful of arrogance and self-sufficiency. The very sound of it flatters our vanity and testifies to the good opinion we have of ourselves. We boast of “Civilisation” as if we were really civilised—just as we talk of “Christianity” as if we were really Christians. Yet it is all the veriest game of make-believe, for we are mere Savages still. Savages in “the lust of the eye and pride of life”—savages in our national prejudices and animosities, our jealousies, our greed and malice, and savages in our relentless efforts to over-reach or pull down each other in social and business relations. If any confirmation of such a statement be needed it is found in the fact that War is still permitted to exist. War is unquestionably the thrust and blow of untamed Savagery in the face of Civilisation. No special pleading can make it anything else. We may if we like call it “Patriotism” in our perpetual life-comedy or tragedy of feigning, but in sane moments we must surely realise that we are wilfully deceiving ourselves. Patriotism is understood to be that virtue which consists in serving one’s country; but in what way is this “Patria” or country served by slaying its able-bodied men in thousands?—the very men whose peaceful and progressive toil makes the country worth living in? Can any adequate answer be given to this question? Is “Honour” justly due to the heads of Government who, themselves safely out of the fray, send such men like sheep to the shambles—men innocent of all personal or national offence, but who in their fine obedience to duty and the preconceived idea of conquest which has its root in old barbaric periods, consent to be shot down under the murderous fire of unseen guns miles away, simply because their rulers have so ordained it? Is it “civilised” to spread ruin and devastation through the land?—to leave homes desolate?—and to create a wretched surplus population of widows and orphans for no other reason than that one nation refuses to comply with what is demanded of it by the other? Is it not possible to deal with even a difficult and refractory subject of quarrel in the way of reason and argument, brought to bear upon it by the soberly judging powers of all nations? And if reason and argument should fail, then, instead of consigning troops of blameless men to the scientific but cruelly treacherous methods of modern warfare, would it not be more normal and humane simply to—Stop Supplies?

Here we touch a vital centre of the question. No nation can go to war without Money. In most cases a very great deal of this same money is required. Who provides it? The nation itself? One may doubt whether any nation could raise sufficient funds to carry on a serious war for any length of time without borrowing. Supposing this to be the case, what financial force behind the scenes so obligingly lends the cash for the purpose of carrying out schemes of wholesale murder? Wherever such cash is obtained we know it must be weighted with an exorbitant rate of interest, so that the price of human blood fills the pockets of the lenders with a certain guaranteed overflow. To stop War, therefore, it should be made impossible to borrow the sums required for warfare; and any loan started with the object of War in view, whether suggested or avowed, should be considered by a National Agreement of United Powers illegal and even criminal, as conspiring against the peace and progress of the world. If, by what is called diplomacy or political subterfuge, this law were cheated, and vast sums were loaned ostensibly for other purposes than War, and it could afterwards be proved that War had nevertheless been, secretly and all along, the actual purpose of such loans, then the lenders should be compelled to forfeit all claims to repayment. For talk fine sentiment and pious platitudes as we will, the brutal truth is that no war can be carried on without money—money fully guaranteed—and if we would strike at the root of the evil, then these guaranteed supplies must be cut off.

A well-known journalist who, through his birth and family connections, may be presumed to have more than common knowledge of the various financial games of chess played by the “Chancelleries” of Europe, is responsible for the statement that “War is popular.” This is one of those brisk surface sayings that shine with apparent candour, like the sparkle of light in the ice on a puddle, but which have no more depth than the puddle itself. War is temporarily “popular”—so long as it is confined to its own pomp and panoply—its martial music, its flying banners, its glittering array of armed men—its marching and countermarching—its sensation and “show,” in fact—sensation and show which appeal to the multitude who are not brought face to face with the disease and death of its darker side. The elemental passions of a mob can be roused as easily by the “savage” beating of a tom-tom as by the “civilised” roll of the drum, or by the fussy cackling of an excitable Hen-Press. That Hen nowadays is always laying eggs of a curiously abnormal nature, in fact so surprising is its daily product that the maternal bird is for ever getting off the nest to look at results, with an evident expectation that mere chicks may turn out to be swans, though, as a rule, they are generally geese. To judge from the incessant cackle and scream, one would imagine them responsible for European opinion, and occupied in raising “nation against nation,” with “men’s hearts failing them for fear,” in startling confirmation of the New Testament prophecy, and some of us are disposed to ask: Why are sinister and disturbing suggestions constantly thrown out by the Press as baits to catch the always restless, dissatisfied and uneasy minds of the populace? Is Finance the fisherman behind the tree, angling with a long line and a devil’s hook at the end of it? No one with a grain of common sense would call it Patriotism! Our men of science, our pathologists and physicians have of late years been studying to some purpose the mysterious power of “Suggestion”—and if we have sufficient intelligence to understand the discovered facts which have rewarded their researches we shall acknowledge that ideas, started and persistently fostered in the minds of the million by constant reiteration, frequently develop into actions. With how much care and earnestness therefore should we see to it that the suggestions impressed on the brains of Nations are sane, pure and noble, moving all progress forward, with that firm gentleness which is the truest strength, into the ways of wisdom and of peace!

As “civilised” peoples we continue to exhibit the strangest barbaric inconsistency in our manners and methods of justice. If one man or woman is murdered in our midst our laws are set into instant operation to find the murderer, and if the crime is brought home to him he is sentenced to death. But in War thousands are murdered at the mere signal of “brave” commanders, and instead of the wrath and horror aroused by the slaying of a single life, an uproar of jubilation and triumph breaks out over the poor festering corpses that strew the field of so-called “glorious victory.” The “civilised” State protests against the murder of one individual, but looks upon the ghastly holocaust of slaughtered lives in battle as something almost noble and inspiring! Is this reasonable? Is it reconcilable with sane judgment? Is it any proof that our “Education” is of real worth?—or does it not rather testify to the amazing fact that in our greed of possession, our thirst of conquest, and our curious conceptions of religion and humanity, we have progressed scarcely a step ahead of our “barbarian” ancestors and their “savage” customs!

“Alas, for men that they should be so blind!

That they should laud the scourges of their kind—

Call each man glorious who has led a host

And him most glorious who has murdered most!”

It is said by certain special pleaders that War is a Necessity. We are referred for verification of this to the world of nature, where it would certainly seem that various tribes of animals and insects do make war upon each other. These wars, however, occur much more frequently among the low grades of nature-life than the high. One may doubt whether eagles as a tribe make war upon eagles, lions upon lions, and so forth. That every animal should fight or work individually for food is the natural law—the spirit of prey is one from which Man himself is never exempt. But has any one ever heard of several thousand lions or bears taking up a stand against each other and slaying each other wholesale for a disputed portion of territory? Ants and emmets make continual war among themselves, but “Civilisation” is supposed to have set Man a trifle higher than the ant or emmet; he is even believed to be superior in mental capacity to the eagle or the lion. He is accredited with fine faculties of reason, and is more or less conscious of high spiritual impulses—and in Christian countries he professes a humane creed, and assumes to teach the ethics of a divine moral code. During the far-off periods of his evolution from embryonic animalism towards the higher potentialities of his being, he was doubtless forced to fight his way against such opposing obstacles as threatened to stay or overwhelm him in his progress, but now—now when he stands, or thinks he stands, on a height of intellectual power and attainment which enables him to discard old barbarisms, surely it would be possible for him to control the lurking remains of his original savagery! War may be, as the before-quoted journalist declares, “popular,” but it might be as well, considering the ruin and misery which follow in its train, to inquire into the inward working of its asserted “popularity,” apart from its deceptive outward display.

First then, as already hinted, there are floaters of a War Loan. With them it is undoubtedly “popular,” for it opens several channels for the rapid making of money. Roughly speaking, most of the money advanced at interest for all important purposes comes from the Jews. All nations are more or less under the thumb of Israel, disguise it as we will, or may. No great scheme, either in peace or war, can be started without Jewish gold and Jewish support. The Jews are the cleverest commercial people on the globe; they are also charitable and benevolent to a degree that often shames Christianity. They could, as a race, do much to stop War in its very beginnings if they once unanimously and resolutely decided on such a course of action. But it is not likely that they will ever pronounce their “veto”; the idea would be too Utopian and unbusinesslike. Therefore, as things exist, it is scarcely unkind to say, that with their race all over the world War is “popular.” Its commencement, progress, and continuance are in their hands. And they will, from a purely commercial point of view, continue to lend cash for the furtherance and encouragement of National Savagery, so long as National Savagery exists, and is willing to borrow money at a high rate of interest. For with them the God of Israel is still a God of Battles.

Secondly, War is “popular” with the Press. Unctuous newspaper articles lamenting the “horror” of War, and disclaiming all responsibility for fermenting and agitating the motives of quarrel, are only so much meaningless “copy.” Useful “copy,” too, because it conveys to the ingenuous and child-like mind of the man in the street that the intelligent editors and journalists who “manage” his news for him are really peace-loving, unselfish folk, and pious withal. Whereas the very suggestion of War is a paying “sensation” for press-men; it gives plenty of opening for big “headlines” and attractive “posters,” which help to sell their penny or halfpenny sheets to the best advantage. Whatever rumour is abroad, whatever whisper of a “conference of the Powers” flies on the wind, the Press makes more than the most of both rumour and whisper—and if it can only work up a national “Scare” it is as happy as a monkey with a banana. Such a Press as that of America and Great Britain could not exist without “sensation.” Even in “piping times of peace” it resorts to the most ludicrous methods of producing mild excitements, such as “Sweet Pea” or “Giant Carnation” or “Photographic” competitions, or a “Symposium” as to whether milk or fish diet is best for the brain. A murder is life to it!—while the useful, brilliant, beautiful or noble work done in Art or Literature gets scarcely a helpful mention. How often we see great space given to the description of a public dancer!—her jewels, her dresses, her opinions!—while a fine poem or picture is dismissed in a flippant paragraph. The reason of this is obvious: it is that many of the persons who assist in the work of daily journalism are only educated up to the public dancer standard—the poem or the picture is lost on the limited area of their abilities. And it may really be said again without either prejudice or unkindness that so far as the press is concerned War is “popular,” because it provides just that particular “sensation” which in its turn commands sales. Therefore if press-men, directly or indirectly, do foster national bitterness or help to stir up strife, we must remember that they are only serving their own interests, and that blame is chiefly due to ourselves if we give credence to their often exaggerated statements. Bismarck is reported to have said on one occasion, “The windows which our Press breaks we shall have to pay for!” This is true enough. Indeed, it is just possible that if there were no Press at all for a few years many dissensions would die out, and many unfortunate happenings would never happen!

But setting aside the two chief forces behind the scenes, Usury and the Press, with all other commercially concerned parties in the quarrels of nations, who can or who dare say that War is “popular”? Let wives and children answer! Let us try to understand what we ourselves mean by our conflicting theories and arguments—we who make such ado about a “declining birth-rate,” and fall into hysterical raptures over a family of “soldier sons”! Let us realise clearly that the slaughter of able-bodied men materially assists towards the “declining birth-rate,” and that where there are “soldier sons” they have been brought into the world apparently for no other reason than to be mangled out of it! This is War! Glorious War! Is it sane? Is it truly “glorious” to shoot down thousands of human beings who have committed no fault of their own, but are simply commanded by their Governments to serve as marks for the bullets of an enemy who might never have been an enemy at all but for mischief arising out of idle and often erroneous report, based on what is perhaps only a temporary and trivial misunderstanding? The best of friends are sometimes parted by the stupid gossip of stupid persons who, envious of happiness and grudging it to those who possess it, never rest till something has been done to undermine and destroy it. In the same way nations are set against each other by some persistently irritating and ill-founded rumour—some difference of opinion, which, if taken in hand reasonably and at once, could be satisfactorily settled, provided there be not too much talk, “red tape,” and officialism employed for the purpose of creating general vacillation and muddle. The conventional “ifs” and “buts” exchanged among the Powers may be looked upon with considerable doubt and foreboding under certain circumstances—an overflow of fine words not unfrequently means an outbreak of treacherous deeds.

Unhappily, and in flat contradiction to that “humane” spirit, which we so frequently profess, treachery strikes the dominant note in modern warfare, and this is one of the chief reasons why War should no longer be permitted. The new long-range quick-firing gun is as dastardly as it is powerful, for surely to shoot down men miles away who cannot see their enemies is as reprehensible and cowardly as to stab a man in the back unawares. Another instrument of treachery is the submarine—a truly devilish invention devised for the avowed object of destroying war-vessels by murderous action from the hidden depths of the sea. No one ever seems to pause and consider what an amount of fiendish cunning in the mind of man has evolved the construction of this deadly engine of warfare—still less does the question ever appear to suggest itself as to whether such a perfidious way of compassing slaughter is humane (we will not shame the word “Christian”) or truly “civilised.” If we refer back to what we are pleased to call the “dark ages” or ages of barbarism, we read much concerning “instruments of torture,” such as the rack, the thumb-screw, and other inventions brutally designed by man to injure his fellow-man, but these things for the most part avowed their murderous intention in open daylight—the doomed creatures knew what they had to expect and prepared to die accordingly. But modern science has sharpened our wits to a more merciless edge—we are cunning enough to hide ourselves and our instruments of death from our intended victims after the fashion of assassins lurking in ambush—therefore by the very law of compensation it is scarcely to be wondered at that we are sometimes “hoist with our own petard,” of which the many appalling submarine fatalities are proof and warning. And now, not satisfied with attack from the secret depths of the ocean, Zeppelins and aeroplanes shower bombs upon open towns and innocent civilians, so that even the hitherto neutral skies will be made spaces of vantage for pitiless assault. All these “civilised” inventions for the practice of barbarity ought to give so-called “Christian” empires food for serious thought—yet, strange to say, it would seem that every new and more murderous weapon for warfare is hailed with columns of praise in the press, and such general acclamation as may truly be called “savage”—as no “civilised” community educated according to all that we boast of in our advanced state of progress, could or would rejoice over the construction of mere killing-machines for the slaughter of their fellow-creatures! Therefore, it may be asked: Are we truly “civilised” or is it all a Sham? Are we really humane?—or as bloodthirsty as when, in our aboriginal savagery, we cracked the skulls of our enemies open with flint axes?

The continued existence of War is, in the face of all faith and feeling, a shame to the world! So long as nations are slaves to the barbarous idea that Blood and Carnage alone can keep them in their places as authoritative forces for the higher progress and welfare of Humanity, so long will Civilisation be more or less a farce. No one denies the self-sacrifice, the endurance, the patience, and the courage which makes men military heroes—the pity of it all is that such splendid qualities of character should be wasted on the mere consummation of slaughter and conquest. What good to the world has ever come out of Napoleon’s many massacres? Looking down upon the sarcophagus containing that Imperial Murderer’s ashes in the gorgeous tomb consecrated to his memory in Paris, one wonders sadly why he was ever permitted to live. We may with the great poet Byron say:—

“To think that God’s fair earth hath been

The footstool of a thing so mean!”

If War is still to confirm us and other nations as Savages, we must behave accordingly. We must train our men and youths to kill, and to use the newest and surest weapons for killing. When we are offered Dreadnoughts, we accept them with salvos of rejoicing and thanksgiving. Yet without War these Dreadnoughts will, in ten years’ time from the date of their completion, be useless, and the millions they cost will be sunk into waste material. Must we have continuous War, then?—just for the sake of employing Dreadnoughts—and proving to our own satisfaction that we can slaughter as many innocent thousands as other Savages if we like? Why should any cause arise for the visitation of such a scourge upon us or any nation! If we have foes who show a threatening front we are naturally bound to be on the defensive—and we should be prepared to guard our kingdom and coast from Savages more savage than ourselves. But when we can get rid of our Savagery we shall lay down our arms. We shall realise that Civilisation means Unity; Unity in all high purpose and progress towards the betterment of mankind.

“Sheathed be the sword for ever—let the drum

Be schoolboy’s pastime—let your battles cease!

And be the cannon’s voice for ever dumb

Except to celebrate the joys of Peace!

Are ye not brothers?—God, whom we revere,

Is he not Father of all climes and lands?

Form an Alliance holy and sincere

And join your hands!”

Surely it is not too much to hope for this—to pray for this!—if our Faith means anything more than mere lip-service and false show!

FOR BELGIUM!
THE PRAYER OF THE ALLIES
(Written for “King Albert’s Book”)

“What shall we do for our Sister in the day when she shall be spoken of?

If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver.”

Song of Solomon.

Maker of Heaven and Earth,

Thou, who hast given birth

To moving millions of pre-destined spheres,

Thou, whose resistless might

Resolves the Wrong to Right

Missing no moment of the measured years—

Behold, we come to Thee!

We lift our swords, unsheath’d, towards Thy throne—

Look down on us, and see

Our Sister-Nation, ruined and undone!

Martyred for nobleness, for truth and trust;

Help us, O God, to raise her from the dust!

Be Thou our witness, Lord!

We swear with one accord

Swift retribution on her treacherous foe!

Her bitter wrong is ours

And heaven’s full-armèd powers

Shall hurl her murderer to his overthrow!

Upon her broken wall

A silver palace of sweet peace shall rise

At that high Festival

When Victory’s signal flashes through the skies—

But—until then!—welcome the fiercest fray!

We fight for Freedom! God, give us “The Day”!

THE GREAT UNREST

(This article was written for “Nash’s Magazine” two years before the War, and was on its appearance prefaced by the following Editor’s Note.)

Editor’s Note.—While “Nash’s Magazine” cheerfully presents the following very radical and profoundly interesting article from the brilliant pen of Miss Marie Corelli, this Magazine should not in any sense be held accountable for either the Author’s views or her expression of them.

“Ye hypocrites! Ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not discern this time?”

Such was the question put to the people by the Founder of the Christian Faith two thousand years ago—a question not yet answered. Lack of discernment is still as much as ever one of humanity’s chief attributes, or is it perhaps less a lack of discernment than an unwillingness to discern? “Ye hypocrites!” said the Christ. Is it not, after all, sheer hypocrisy which, in the form of social convention, does so obsess Man that, though conscious of approaching storm, he prefers to bury his head, ostrich-like, in a sand-heap of his own delusions in order that he may be as blind and as deaf as possible to the lurid glare and wild uproar of coming disaster? He instinctively knows disaster is imminent—even at his very doors—and that it will presently swoop relentlessly down upon him, perhaps tossing him with other fragments of creation into a chaos from which he shall scarcely emerge with a sound skin; yet knowing, he pretends not to know, and plays the fool with himself and destiny!

To-day, now, at this very moment, all over the civilised world, this terrible game of “playing the fool” is going on with reckless speed and continuity. I use the word “terrible” advisedly, for nothing more pregnant with all the elements of positive terror was ever seen than the present-time spectacle of Human Humbug set face to face with that Eternal Equity which has existed always, and which ever will exist without any change in its Divine Source, Cause and Intention. Man, endowed with splendid gifts of reason, imagination and psychic power, is everywhere gambling away his highest birthright for gold; Man, whom the celestial forces have led step by step through carefully measured gradations of intellectual evolution till he has arrived at the open gateways of Science, there to behold the infinitely marvellous benefits he may possess and enjoy, still insults the Giver of all his good by his fumbling forms of faith and worship suited only to barbaric minds in a state of embryo—Man, semi-apathetic and in many cases wholly indifferent to the higher roads of progress and to the steady unfolding of that endless perspective of order and beauty intended for the individual happiness of every individual soul, still makes wilful havoc of his own carefully organised civilisations, like a child who builds a house of cards and blows it down with a breath—and this because his civilisations are mostly of a flimsy structure, having no foundation on any fundamental Law which Nature can or will tolerate for more than a very brief time. All history teaches this with stern and pitiless repetition; and the signs and portents which gave warning of the downfall of the Roman Empire were of precisely the same character as the signs and portents which warn us of similar downfalls impending for great nations to-day. The scheme of Creation is plainly meant to be a perpetual movement towards perpetual advancement—this truth is clearly demonstrated in all natural evolution, and Man is perforce compelled, despite himself, to move with the onward and upward process—but he invariably “hangs back” and tries to put a stop on the wheel, with the result that he is himself crushed and ground to powder in the wheel’s relentless revolving. He makes religions, laws and morals for himself which have no prototype in the order of Nature, and he thereby stands rebelliously opposed to the Supreme Intelligence, whose design of life being exact mathematics, swerves not by so much as the shadow of a hair.

Hence arises, and always will arise, trouble. Trouble and unrest! The sum of things never comes right, add it up, subtract, or multiply as we will. We persist in our childish efforts to fit in figures which have no place or part in the Divine quantities. Now and then in some sudden flash of higher consciousness, we see the folly of our actions—but seeing, we pretend to be blind. Some of us devote ourselves to a study of the sciences, and we peep through a hundred loop-holes into a vista of shining truths, any one of which would help us to draw closer to God—yet presently we turn away and talk of predestination and original sin, and feign to believe in a Deity whose rage against His own Creation is so insensate and barbaric as only to be pacified by Blood! Blood—blood! The cry of the vengeful, the murderous, the cruel, the tyrannous in all ages of the world!—yet we do not hesitate to insult the Creator of the whole Cosmos by endowing Him with this animal and un-God-like craving! He, who holds the starry heavens in the hollow of His Hand—from whose expressed Thought solar systems are born like blossoms in the fields of ether—He, whose vast love broods tenderly over all that He hath made, even to the nesting bird hidden under a bunch of green leaves—“not one shall fall to the ground without your Father”—even He it is whom daily we wrong and blaspheme by our social methods of life and forms of worship, by our deliberate opposition to His Laws, and by the amazingly insolent indifference we exhibit to His inviolate Will as shown through the reflection of His Mind in visible Nature.

And so it happens that, after a certain space of time in which we are offered fresh chances of amendment or betterment which we seldom take, things begin to go wrong. We know not how or where the mischief first started, because it has stolen upon us by gradual and insidious degrees, and we never dream of looking for the root of the evil in ourselves or in our ancestry. But we do become slowly and reluctantly aware that we are not on the right track—that “something” is about to happen which will upset all our most cherished plans and push us off our present road of what we are pleased to call “progress” in a sufficiently disastrous manner. We have no time to retrace our steps and look for the way we have missed, for we find that we are running down hill with a singular self-imposed velocity which would make any sort of a stop almost impossible—while to go back would mean to climb a very steep and difficult ascent, an exercise for which we are neither prepared nor willing. We have no idea how we managed the muddle in which we find ourselves, but muddle it is and muddle it remains.

And then we enter upon the doubtful period—the kind of period in which the whole world is living to-day—a period of vague uneasiness, restlessness, and feverish suspense, looking for we know not what, dissatisfied with things as they are, yet unable to decide how they ought to be. Then is the hour of the brazen-mouthed religious ranter and the political demagogue. The nations of the earth are disquieted mentally and spiritually—the pulpit braggart assumes to teach them, and the upstart in politics offers to reform them. And like the waves of the sea before a storm breaks, the people surge to and fro in billowy masses, with here and there a gleam of hope among them like light on spraying foam, but for the most part moving in darkness and deep unrest. For the time is past when the balm of old tradition can be applied as a soothing salve to the spiritual wounds of humanity. Men do not want to be soothed, but roused—fired to noblest energy, greatest aims and splendid achievement—and they need to feel that their efforts to reach the Highest are worth the making, and that the fight which they enter upon means victory in the end.

This, most unfortunately, is not made plain to them by either the faiths or followings of modern society. The Churches have in a great measure lost their hold upon the people, and the consolidation of family life is a thing of the past. When England was truly great, the love of home and country was the chief foundation of her greatness, as it should be with all nations seeking to hold high place and power—but in our present modes of living, both in England and America, “home” is voted hum-drum and a bore—sons and daughters openly profess the gad-about principle of what they term “pleasure,” and are more or less indifferent to the interests or convenience of their parents, showing no more reverence or consideration for them than is necessary to obtain financial “supplies.” They snap the chain that should bind them to filial tenderness and duty, and follow their own particular forms of enjoyment with a cool selfishness which can but astonish any thoughtful beholder—yet even this reprehensible attitude of the rising generation is but a phase of the general “Unrest” pervading all classes and all ages—the vague sense that nothing is going to last very long—that some dire mischief threatens the world—and that one must try to enjoy oneself while one can, because there is no time left to do anything else. And well-meaning fathers and mothers, especially those of the upper classes, adapt themselves more or less compassionately and with regret to the new and often exceedingly bad manners of their children, who, in nine cases out of ten, resemble the Biblical “daughters of the horse-leech,” crying “Give! Give!” and regard their progenitors merely as human banks on which they expect to draw ad libitum till the coin gives out. All this is wrong, hopelessly wrong. Fathers should be supported by their sons, if support is needed—not sons supported by their fathers. And in such strange times as these, when women are so ready to throw off their womanliness and become mere roughs in the general fray, they too must be expected to put themselves in harness and earn the right to live. They have wilfully destroyed the ideal of woman, so long and lovingly cherished by man in the days of sentiment and chivalry—and now they can hardly wonder if husbands prove difficult to secure. Men will think a hundred times before entering into marriage with possible window-smashers.

Yet it is all part and parcel of the one thing—the Great Unrest which, like a storm atmosphere, envelops all our modern civilisation. There is no country that does not feel it—no nation that is not uneasily conscious of being on the verge of change. The disruption of family life—the revolt of Woman against her own nature, and the frenzied ultra-stupidity she exhibits in the efforts she makes to reverse her own God-ordained position in the scheme of creation—the pathetic bewilderment and weariness of Man himself, left without any of his old ideals of faith or love, and clinging to gold as the only seemingly tangible good which may procure him some bodily comfort and ease, though feeling in his own soul that even this is little worth—all these things are forerunners of coming trouble to which we are as yet unable to give a name. Most notable and most tremendous of all portents, however, is the earthquake tremor that is shaking the Churches to their foundations, and the growth and extension of what is called the “New Thought.” The New Thought is really the Old Thought—the Thought which was the underlying germ of the mystic religions of the East, and the foundation of the Platonic philosophy. The “Thought” has become overlaid by a multiplicity of differing human opinions, forming, as is their habit, into useless and mischievous systems—but in its pure beginning it is the Christ in embryo—the God-in-Man. In simplest truth it is an eternal Thought which by Divine inspiration teaches us that the Soul or spirit of every human being is an individual portion of the Spirit of God—and that as such it is an immortal creature, whose destiny is glorious, whose splendid faculties are for the purpose of evolving itself through phases of wide advancement to wider attainment, and for whom there is and can be no such thing as death. This Earth is its present school and playground—Nature is its teacher, as well as its subject and servant. It is to learn what it can and will by patient study and grateful experience—it is to use what it finds in all things pleasant, helpful, joyous, noble, and gracious—it is to breathe in an atmosphere of love; and with the Supreme Intelligence of which it is a part, it may feed as it will among the lilies of life, and may say, “My Beloved is mine and I am His.”

This spiritual tie between man and his Maker has never been sufficiently emphasised by the Churches. Their religious forms of worship impress upon us that we are miserable sinners whatever we do, that we must try to save our souls, and that we must put as much as we can into the collection-plate. In great sorrow or difficulty these instructions are not very helpful. Sometimes indeed we doubt whether God meant us to consider ourselves such “miserable sinners” after all. Our perpetual whinings and lamentations cannot make sweet music on the Divine records. God gave us our bodies, not to chastise and mortify, but to care for and make healthy and beautiful; and the laws He has framed for our guidance and maintenance are such that if one be broken, punishment is bound to follow. There is no forgiveness, because there simply cannot be any deviation in the mathematical precision of the universal plan. And the punishment is measured exactly to the fault. If we refuse to go forward, we must go back—we are not allowed to stand still. If a man elects to throw himself headlong from a steeple, not all the prayers of the saints could alter the law of gravitation which causes him to fall and break his neck. What is true of physical law is equally true of spiritual law, since Matter is simply Spirit substantiated and made temporarily visible in endless temporary forms. And all God-ordained laws, whether physical or spiritual, are framed for the guidance, benefit, and advancement of creation—whereas we, by devising other laws which pull contrary to Divine ways and means, find ourselves “in darkness and the shadow of death” instead of in light and the splendour of life. In our day Science has come to our rescue, and like a great Angel stands at the open door of the Kingdom of Heaven; she shows us the “many mansions” of worlds upon worlds in the Father’s House—she points out the loving care with which even the tiniest organism of life is protected—she instructs us how we may press the lightning into our service and use the waves of the air to convey our messages from one land to the other—and she impresses upon us, even as a loving mother impresses a beautiful truth upon her child, the fact that we—even we—are permitted to be the rulers of this wonderful planet, so full of exquisite beauty and joy—and that we are expected to use the endless gifts bestowed upon us with love, wisdom and courage, developing ourselves into a noble race of creatures worthy of ever nobler and higher issues.

Thus it has come to pass that with Science leading us ever onward and upward, we cannot any longer in reason look upon “Our Father” as a capricious tyrant, needing a sacrifice of blood to pacify His wrath against us. Instead of this barbarous conception, we realise that Perfect Justice cannot possibly be angry with what it has Itself ordained—and we are overpowered and brought to our knees in devout adoration before the Great Spirit of Love which is the Generator of the universe, and which out of smallest beginnings works to greatest ends—work in which we are permitted, nay, expected and commanded, to take an active part, our disobedience always resulting in disaster to ourselves.

It is the contemplation of these truths which Science hourly and daily demonstrates to the glory of the Creator that the “New” or “Old” Thought has arisen in all its strength, like Christ from the grave, “walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Hence the earthquake tottering of the Churches, and the ever-spreading great wave of religious unrest. There is, among many deeply thinking people, an uneasy sense that we have insulted the real and ever present God by our narrow and more or less selfish systems of faith, and that we must hasten to make amends. Therefore, putting the question of the mentally unfit aside in the general sorting of the sheep from the goats, it seems evident that the time is ripening towards a New Revelation of the Divine in Man—a “sign from heaven” for the better guidance of the human soul towards ultimate perfection, and a surer means of obtaining peace and happiness in this life as well as in the life to come. But before the sign be given there must and will be heavy tribulation; “nation rising against nation, kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes and divers troubles”—and the very beginning of these “divers troubles” is upon us now.

Hence the Great Unrest. People scurry to and fro all over the earth, like ants disturbed on their hill by a burning match thrown in among them. They do not know what is the matter, but they feel that they must keep moving. The sensation of inexplicable haste is upon them. There is no time for anything. Pleasure easily palls, and the most agreeable society develops into boredom. The days of reposeful leisure, in which the greatest works of art were created, are ended. Everything must be got through quickly nowadays—“scamped” as a matter of fact. Sweetness and harmony in music are no longer admired—it must be discordant and odd to suit the spirit of the age. Fine painting is a drug in the market unless it be the work of an “old master”—a picture must be “sensational” in colour and in execution to suit the perverted taste of the day. Literature and the drama must present “problems” of a questionable nature before their productions can be pronounced “great” by the very few critics who are more than ordinary paragraphists—while Poetry, the highest of all the arts, is practically dead. The abnormal condition of the human mind displays itself in costume, manners, and social observances and over all things hangs the deepening mist of a universal dissatisfaction for which there seems to be no cause, and for which we can find no name.

Do we mean to go on blindly, pretending we do not see? “Ye hypocrites! Ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not discern this time?”

How is it indeed! For “this time” is one of the most fated and historic times in the history of the world—a time when we may perhaps be called upon to witness the commencement of the downfall of the greatest of Empires—the British;—when we may have to watch its magnificent fabric, once the envy of all other nations, crumbling before our very eyes—its pillars of state pulled down by riotous demagogues—its splendid traditions put to shame by both parties in its Parliament—by the one in sheer outlawry, by the other in no less disgraceful inaction. We can look on at this and wonder what new power will arise from its ruins, but we may not dare to prophesy till after the event! For this is but “the beginning of sorrows.” It little matters that the fools and jesters of the hour make mockery of all those who seek to warn off the misguided people from the quicksands whither they are rushing—fools and jesters there have always been and always will be, ready to toss ribaldry in the face of Deity itself without compunction. But the evil which darkly threatens modern civilisation is too near and too evident to be lightly “laughed down.” Every student of history knows that when the foundations of religious faith are shaken—when it becomes “a house divided against itself,” then national disaster is close at hand. Man, deprived of any high spiritual ideal of life, quickly reverts to mere selfish savagery. The Dean of St. Paul’s, called “the gloomy Dean” by a halfpenny daily, because he dares to speak truths which are not altogether pleasant hearing, must have thought long and deeply, and fully made up his mind as to what he meant when he said: “It is the duty of the clergy to maintain that it is ‘other worldliness’ which alone had transformed and could transform this world”—which means that it is only spiritual progress which can make material progress valuable and lasting. The inward enlightenment and uplifting of the soul or spirit of each individual man and woman towards the highest and bravest ideals of life and love, and conformity to the laws of creation as made plainly visible in Nature, is the only true civilisation. This lesson is taught by every scientific truth we are permitted to investigate. It is not preaching or platitudinism—it is an incontestable eternal Fact. Our lives on this planet were intended to be lives of joy, health, beauty, love, and mutual helpfulness—and where we depart from this intention we insult and disobey the Creator, whose design is one of gradual development towards ultimate perfection. We wrong Him when we call this beautiful world “a vale of tears”—for our misfortunes and diseases are chiefly our own fault, and certainly are not His doing. It is time we stood up with a glad courage, giving thanks for all the benefits He has showered upon us without asking for more. Any creed that is selfish and whining is no creed for the soul that aspires to the highest progress. If we invite evils upon ourselves we must expect them to come—nothing will hold them back if we are trespassers against natural and spiritual laws. The Reverend H. Mayne Young, preaching in Westminster Abbey itself, pronounced the following words with a noble daring:—

“The day is not far distant when, unless the Church of England freely re-states and re-models her creeds so as to meet the requirements of the age, she will be left stranded on the shores of time, while the tide of this modern life will leave her for ever farther and farther behind—a sad warning of the inevitable results of an iron-bound system of worn-out dogmas and lifeless traditions.”

“Worn-out dogmas and lifeless traditions!” A bold utterance, but true! And what is true of the Church of England is equally true of all the Churches in the world to-day, notably that of Rome. Man, walking in a darkness of destroyed illusions, is at that point when he may well exclaim with the Apostle—“Who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

It needs no gift of prophecy and no special intuition to see that we are on the brink of some tremendous change in the destinies of the human race. Everything points to it—our tottering creeds, our fluctuating standard of manners and morals. What it is, what it may be no one tries to imagine. People instinctively feel they would rather not think too much about anything, or analyse the condition in which they find themselves. There is “no time” for it, they say. Why is there no time? Is the clock of the universe running down and are the works giving out? Materially speaking, we know that the slightest tilt of the earth on its axis would cause a complete redistribution of its continents and seas, sweeping away every vestige of civilisation as we now know it. We never consider this, imagining that such a catastrophe is not possible. Yet God has willed it so before, and may will it so again. Every physical movement is preconceived by a mental or spiritual one. The Great Unrest is at present one of Spirit which will gradually dominate Matter and move it to equal but louder disturbance. We spin on our earth in a gathering storm-cloud between two fathomless gulfs, the Past and the Future—our Present is the result of the past, and our future will equally be the work of the Present. We know that there is a God of Love to serve, and his Nature-laws to obey, and knowing this, Ourselves alone must decide whether we will do as we should, or whether we shall be forced to do as we would not!

THE WHIRLWIND

It has come at last—that great Storm foretold by national weather prophets—it has come with all the devastating force of a fury long suppressed; and the black cloud has gathered over our heads while yet we drowsed in a dream of sunshine. With a sudden thunderous rush, as though a god or a demon should tread the spaces of the air, heaven has let loose the whirlwind—the whirlwind of War, and far more than War—the whirlwind of Destiny. It has come because it was bound to come, by the Unwritten Law and Code Invisible. Men of the world who form governments, make civilisations, and build up empires are always forgetting this Unwritten Law—the Hand behind the scenes—the inexorable and eternal forward movement of the Cosmos, which in its pre-determined progress overrides their best laid plans and makes chaotic havoc of their most sagacious intentions. Yet it is a perfectly straight and simple Law after all—one that has existed from the beginning of things, and that will ever exist—the law of Nature, visibly expressing the Mind of God, and immutably set against the predominance of evil. It is an output of the Divine Will, resolving itself easily into common, even domestic forms, adapted to the needs of individuals and nations alike. Nature often conducts herself like a practical housewife bent on spring cleaning.

“Where there is dirt,” she says, “it shall be removed; where there is confusion there shall be order.”

And her “cleaning-up” day is invariably a frightful thing. The noise of her sweeping and scouring resounds like thunder through the world. It occurs periodically, marking epochs of history, and we read of its results in the past with placid incredulity, setting down much to exaggeration and more to deliberate lying, idly amused meanwhile at the ridiculous notion, suggested by certain fools, that any such uproar and disaster should ever be experienced by Ourselves who have, so we consider, “advanced” in civilisation and wisdom, and thereby in self-control—Ourselves whose “culture” seems to our own judgment a finer and more perfect attainment than divine justice. The tornado of the French Revolution, the pitiless ravages of the Napoleonic wars have appeared to us like a tale that is told, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”—and we have lazed the time away, getting and spending, in the peaceful high noon of national prosperity and contentment, feeling confident that we should never in our day be shaken from our centre-poise of complacent self-satisfaction by anything of larger disturbance than occasional family quarrels gotten up more for the sake of varying the monotony of peace than with any serious intent. And now, lo!—the bolt falls—the vials of wrath and judgment are opened and poured forth over land and sea—the whirlwind is upon us, and we who slept are awakened by its sweeping rage, its rattling rain, its lightning flashing against our windows of security, and we leap to our feet, startled but not alarmed—unprepared, maybe, but not unready. We realise what the storm means, and we know how to weather it; we are not afraid—we only wish we had not slept quite so long!

Nevertheless, though our sleep may have been heavy, it has refreshed our forces and has not diminished our energies. Our waking is to good purpose. The very shame we feel at the length of our slumber is an excellent tonic and invigorates us. Sleep shall no more weigh down our eyelids—we are alert, strong, and resolute, even in the midst of the whirlwind. For it is a storm in which we alone are not involved. It has swept over a smaller nation than our own, all undeservedly—a little sister nation with the heart of a thousand heroes beating in her small bosom—and her unmerited sorrow has served as the keynote to strike all that is in us of Character and Conduct. We see her defaced with blows, insulted and outraged by ravening cruelties; and the chivalry born from centuries of martial glory rises strong and full-armed in every man that claims justice for her wrongs. We of Britain have not warred for ourselves—our fight is for the better, broader freedom of the whole world. The whirlwind has caught us up in the swoop of its revolving wings solely that we may take our part in the purifying of the House of Man. And our victory will be made manifest in the open response to our inward intention.

* * * * *

The militarism of Prussia is a crime, springing from old roots of human savagery and barbarism which should have died long ago. The brutal War, made treacherous and bloody by new devices of destruction, the inventions of fine science misapplied, was an outbreak of stupidity on the part of an obtuse and stupid set of men, sodden with selfishness and delirious with a drunken dream of World-Power. The teachings of Treitschke and Nietzsche are the teachings of egotists with unsound and ill-balanced brains. Nietzsche went mad, and howled his philosophies to the walls of the padded room. Treitschke was covertly insane; like the “secret drinker” who in public pretends he cannot touch strong liquor, he assumed to be proud and sagacious when he was no more than crazily self-obsessed. He preached the doctrine of Hate, and no sane man ever did that. The German nation, accepting this sort of “Kultur” as gospel, accepted the ravings of the mentally deficient, and, plunging breast-high into a sea of brothers’ blood, proved itself infected by the same madness as that which poisoned the veins of its mad instructors. To any thoughtful student, looking on at such a frightful, wicked, and overwhelmingly stupid slaughter of men by machinery there can be nothing more terrible, more lonely or more accursed in all the realm of fact or fiction than the figure of the Kaiser—the miserable epileptic who is responsible for shrouding his “Fatherland” in the black veil of mourning, and for drowning its peace and progress in a flood of widows’ and orphans’ tears. Mentally unbalanced, physically inefficient, and morally lacking—living as one pursued by the Furies in an armoured cage, and surrounded by guards on earth and in air, lest by chance his “Gott” should kill him, he moves one to amazement and pity—for the whirlwind has him in its centre, twirling him round and round like a veritable mannikin of sport for the dread gods of destiny—a mannikin who hardly knows how he came to be where he is, or where he will find himself when the storm is past. Meanwhile his voice is heard above the storm shouting “To England! England! The one foe! My Mother’s land, which I hate! Would that every drop of British blood in my veins might be drained out of me!”

Well, why not? A calf has been bled before now, and not a drop of its mother’s blood has been left in its carcase—there is nothing to prevent this desirable consummation for the Kaiser since he so devoutly wishes it. The whirlwind may strip him yet, and perform this required kindness! But in the interval the arrogant and half-crazed “War Lord” has sacrificed the best flower and strength of Germany’s manhood to his criminal and insatiable lust of power. The German people have not yet realised the mercilessness of this military despot—but when they do—when they count the desolate homes, the ruined trades, the lost commerce, the ravaged lives and broken hearts which mark the “triumph” of the stagey and spectacular “hero” they have worshipped, there will be an end of the blind credulity with which they have followed a vain ideal.

* * * * *

For us British, the Whirlwind is a grand thing. It is blowing us fiercely clean of Self—it is tearing away from us the silly sophistries of fashion and frivolity and showing us things in their true light. Our ape-like jesters of the press, of the Bernard Shaw type, who have mocked at all things holy, serious, and earnest, are finding their proper level, and shrinking into corners where they are scarcely seen—where it is to be hoped they may be peaceably forgotten. Our “sex-problems,” our “advanced” women, our screaming Doll Tear-sheets of militant suffrage—these trouble the air no more with the hysterics which are engendered by having nothing useful to do. We have no time for trifling. We are face to face with the long-despised Obvious—“Life is real, life is earnest”—and we are casting off the slough of political humbug and social sham, and are as one in the splendid bond of patriotism and love of country. We may trust the Storm; we may welcome the Whirlwind. It has come to clear the sky of miasma and vapour—it is making light to show us where we truly stand. If we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that in latter years we have given ourselves over-much to the pursuit of material gain and personal pleasure, we have neglected our faith in divine and high ideals, and Self has been more or less our god; it was time that we received a wholesome check and a warning before we lost all that has made us great. We have responded swiftly to the goading spur—our crust of selfishness was but thin after all, and has broken and melted away in a flood of magnificent generosity and practical sympathy—for never had nation a nobler Cause than ours, when, as brothers in arms with our brave allies, we fought to right the unspeakable wrongs of unoffending Belgium, and to aid in defending France from the invader and usurper. Should the enemy conquer in this mighty struggle the whole world will be the impoverished loser; should we and our allies win, the whole world will gain by our victory and share with us a wider, nobler freedom than before. It is for this cause that the Whirlwind has come upon us—to cleanse a cancer from our midst, and to put away from ourselves and our neighbours the dread contamination of a disease involving the whole trend of civilisation. We may thank God for it, despite all its terrors, its rain of blood, its thunders of the air and sea, its swift death dealt to thousands of innocent souls—it is a storm that was needed to clear the air. And when it is past, and the sun shines once more, we shall realise that its causes were to be found not in one nation only, but in many—in ourselves as well as in our foes—and that some great and forceful movement of destiny was urgently called for to sweep away from humanity the accumulating mass of its own self-wrought evil. And if victory should be ours, it will behove us to take it with all humility, giving thanks to God—“lest we forget!”

THE KAISER’S HARVEST OF DEATH
A CRIME OF STUPIDITY
(First published in the “Sunday Times”)

In every great national crisis, when war or revolution brings havoc on existing civilisation and works sudden and violent change in all social, political, and diplomatic relations, we are invariably able to discover One Man—or at the most, perhaps, two or three men—primarily responsible for the general upheaval.

History is impressively explicit concerning these personages. She never fails to show us how, by some strange lack of the most ordinary foresight and common sense, they stumble when apparently on the height of success, and commit irreparable blunders which hasten their careers to a disastrous close. Such was the case with Napoleon and many other would-be Alexanders of ambition; but of all the tragic blunderers of time surely none can equal or surpass the “War Lord” of Germany. Here is a man who had the splendid chance of securing for his country and people the largest share of the commerce of Europe; it lay easily within his grasp. Yet he has let it go, like a handful of sand and shells dropped by a child at play on the seashore. To satisfy the personal cravings of a vaunting, blustering Egoism for blood-and-thunder “effects” he has lost the peaceful conquest of a world!

Amazing, deplorable, and incredible folly!—when such conquest could have been gained without a blow, without the boom of a single gun, without the explosion of a single shell! It could have been attained in the only way by which any truly “civilised” nation should ever seek supremacy—through the development of industry and commerce, and the quiet assumption of the power that industry and commerce give. All that we call “progress” should fortify the stand of human resolution on this basis. It is not necessary, it is not even sane or decent that any peoples should tolerate what Carlyle describes as “the spectacle of men with clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another’s flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip manure”—which is a rough but accurate picture of war deprived of all its devilish excitement and glamour.

WASTED OPPORTUNITY

To Kaiser William more than to any other monarch of his time was given the glorious chance of becoming the greatest benefactor of Germany which that realm had ever known. He could have created for his people such conditions of peace, happiness, and prosperity as were almost incalculable. He stood in the broad sunshine of ripening trade—the markets of the world were open to him—fields of wealth were spreading around him on all sides, and his cheerfully working millions had but to reap the grain their industries had sown and gather in a rich and plenteous harvest. Why, then, in the name of all that is great, noble, and pitiful, did he choose to make a harvest of death instead of life?

A TRAGIC WITNESS

During the grim and ghastly struggle at Verdun we are told the Kaiser, standing “at safe distance,” watched through his field-glasses the fiery mowing down of his countrymen to the number of forty-five thousand! Does any one, reading this, take the trouble to pause and consider what it means? Forty-five thousand strong, brave men in the flower of manhood (for let us hope we are none of us so unjust as to deny our enemies their strength or their courage); forty-five thousand capable human beings fit for every sort of industrial labour—the blood and bone of future generations—slaughtered like vermin; and their Emperor, their sworn Defender and Protector, within sight-range, looking on!

What a “Harvest Home”! Are we able to conceive the nature and temperament of a monarch who could so look on at this massacre of his subjects and not rush among them to stop the advance of their serried ranks and “massed formations,” resulting in such a wanton and wicked waste of life? The crazy antics of Nero were mere child’s play compared with this callous attitude of William of Hohenzollern; an attitude which even his French foes cannot maintain. For, fired with vengeance for old wrongs as they are, and bent on victorious justice, they have declared themselves “sick with slaughter.”

“Such hecatombs,” writes Colonel Rousset, “cannot last. Our adversary, while carrying his disregard of human life to the point of madness, cannot go on throwing his soldiers into the charnel-house without thinking of to-morrow.”

The losses of the Germans at Verdun have been estimated at 10,000 per day! “I dream at night,” writes one French artillery officer, “of those ghastly crumpled heaps of shattered gray-green bodies! Germany’s wives and mothers must curse the Kaiser in their prayers!”

THE CRIME OF STUPIDITY

Voltaire is accredited with the saying that “the only crime is stupidity.” According to this dictum one must come to consider the “All-Highest War Lord” the greatest criminal of an epoch, his stupidity being almost without parallel in history. What man, not entirely mad, seeing a world of prosperity within reach of his hand would clench his fist and knock the whole splendid sphere away from him at one blow! The proposition seems absurd and untenable, yet it has been and continues to be the Kaiser’s policy, or the policy of his ministers and advisers; clear to all save those who remain perversely and wilfully blind.

For it is not too much to say that before the war Germany was pushing quietly but surely through every branch of commerce. From triumph to triumph she moved easily onward; everywhere her ramifications were spreading like the vigorous roots of a fast-growing tree. In Great Britain she had possessed herself of many of our trades; her goods were everywhere; her cutlery, her glass, her woollens, her linens, her dyes, her silver and copper ware, her chemicals—why, even our very window-frames were “Made in Germany”! She was at work in our mines and coal-fields; she was ahead of us in science, in invention, in industry and general “thoroughness.”

And let us not forget that we were, or appeared to be, supinely indifferent to her inroads on all that we used to claim as our “special line” and particular property. We were, like Hamlet, “growing fat and scant of breath.” We were disposed to indolence and self-indulgence, and, when we saw Germans working for us, and by us, and through us, taking the very tools out of our listless hands, we were agreeably convinced that they saved us a deal of trouble. They worked so cheaply, too!—and cheapness in necessary goods appealed to us, because it gave us more to spend on racing and football. The “Space for Special News” in our Press was not reserved (as intelligent foreigners conceive it ought to be) for serious information on world’s business; but for “Football Results” or cricket, in the respective seasons of these gamesome athletics—and the very word “patriotism” was laughed out of court as “Jingoism.” We gave the honours of heroes to our tennis champions, and played about while the Germans worked. They worked—as many of the British refuse to work; they saved—as many of the British decline to save; they gained their ends, because by our very inertia we gave them every opportunity to do so.

BRITISH APATHY

Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, said in a recent speech that Germany “had abused our foolishly generous hospitality.” This is not quite accurate, since we were neither so generous nor hospitable as careless and lazy. We allowed our trades to slip through our fingers—the State did nothing for native work, science, or invention—and ambitious men of hope and endeavour left the country in shoals to make fortunes in other lands, many firms establishing themselves in Germany in order to win the rewards denied them in their native home!

Germany held a more tenacious grip on every corner of the earth than we in our latter “go-as-you-please” way ever realised. All over the United States, Canada, and Australia her people have spread; you find them in India, in Persia, in Egypt, in Africa; as a matter of fact, there is no country where German influence has not been actively at work while other nations looked on. Antwerp itself was wellnigh possessed by German commerce before its military bombardment; it was already a centre of German trade and German shipping, and in many of its business houses more German was spoken than either French or Flemish. Great Britain was lagging behind in the race; and had peace been maintained for another twenty-five years Germany might easily have mastered the world; and we might have lost all leading hold on commerce.

For let us not delude ourselves on the subject of our own inertia! It is owing to the magnificent stand made for justice and right by the hero-King of Belgium that we have been awakened from long apathy; had it not been for his resolute example, both France and England would have suffered far more than they are suffering now! Friend and Defender of both nations, he stands out as the noblest figure in the struggle—the one who, when victory sits upon our helm, must be the first to receive that which is due to him: the restoration of his country and his throne.

LOSS AND GAIN

And now the rivers of gold that were flowing into Germany through her trade are stopped, “damned up” as the sensational special correspondent would say—by British, French, and German dead! The latest estimate of German losses at Verdun is two hundred thousand! Does the Kaiser, at safe distance, still “look on”? What blessing has this monarch of a great and productive realm brought upon his people? Mourning, desolation, and irremediable misery! No triumph, no victory can atone for such a deluge of blood and tears! That capricious Personage “somewhere in Heaven,” whom Wilhelm calls “Unser Gott,” may possibly resent the deliberate casting away of golden opportunities on the part of his crowned earthly “familiar,” to whom a peaceful world was offered, only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and broken sword!

“Thrust in thy sickle and reap!” O Emperor of a brief and bitter day! The harvest of death, not life!—the harvest of curses, not blessings! The thousands of dead men—dead in the very strength of manhood—sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have their own story to tell to “Unser Gott”; so may the bereaved and wretched women whose husbands and sons have been torn from their arms for ever. May the true God help them all!—for in the unspeakable hell of iniquity around us man is wellnigh powerless; though, like every evil thing, war has its good side. It shows us with each day heroism of the finest, courage of the strongest, self-sacrifice of the noblest, existing among us all; and it has reawakened the higher spirit of England. For this we have cause to be devoutly thankful! In a certain sense it has saved us from ourselves; and from the enervating love of pleasure and personal avarice which was slowly undermining our better qualities.

And even the Kaiser, “looking on” at the legions of his own subjects falling like withered leaves in a whirlwind of fire, may one day shake off his frenzied nightmare of battle, and repent—exclaiming with Judas:—

“I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent blood!”

THIS AMAZING WAR
A WOMAN’S POINT OF VIEW (Reprinted by special request from the “Sunday Pictorial” of March 28, 1915)

What can be said or thought of it? This wonderful massing of nations—this appalling slaughter of men—this relentless rolling on of a Divine Elemental Force, too vast and powerful and resolute for humanity to resist! It is a War so terrible, yet withal so grand, and so pregnant with infinite issues that we, who are swept by the dust and carnage of its fighting millions—we, who are stunned by the clash and clamour of the frightful weapons of modern science which it uses on land, under sea, and in air, are more or less incredulous and stupefied, and we have been only with difficulty aroused to try and understand its fateful import. It is Destiny in labour; and the pangs and throes of her child-birth will give us a New World! For the Old World is fast crumbling and crushing down upon us like an ancient ruin struck by lightning-flash and thunderbolt; the old vices, lusts, and littlenesses are being torn away from us as a storm-wind tears away the parasite ivies from mouldering walls—and we shall presently see a break in the clouds and light through the darkness. This thing of terror and confusion Was To Be; it Had To Be! It has been coming upon us slowly, but steadily, for years—and if we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that we have felt its approach instinctively in a general sense of insecurity—in a feverish impulse of haste to live lest we should suddenly die!

Something—we know not what—a cloud or a blight—has visibly lowered over the face of European civilisation, and in order to set aside certain strange and perplexing inconsistencies of such conduct among us as might induce us seriously to Think—we have flung ourselves eagerly into a vortex of “sensations” new and old, bad and good, virtuous and vicious, with a kind of furious recklessness, bordering on insanity. Any lapse of morals, any bizarre or weird “craze” in art, any indecency in literature, has been acclaimed and encouraged as “new” and “strong” instead of being condemned for being old and weak as such things truly are—and in many vital matters the nation has been moved by a petulant spirit of selfish, restless irritability, like that of a querulous old man who has neither the grace nor the courage to accept his age with wisdom, sweetness, and dignity. And among various mad things we have done, one stands out pre-eminently as the maddest—and that is the tacit encouragement given by a section of society and the press to a brood of Atheists, who have trailed their poisonous slime along the pathways of peace where the youth of this

“Happy breed of men, this little world.

This precious stone set in the silver sea,”

have wandered unsuspectingly, gathering the ugly stain on the innocent white of their souls’ garments. Never did a sin of this nature occur in the history of nations without Divine punishment inflicted, not so much to destroy as to purify. The chronicles of every civilisation ever known or heard of bear unswerving testimony to the truth that whenever a nation or a people assumes to itself Divine right, dismissing from its mind and conscience the idea of any higher Supreme Power before Whom it should humiliate itself daily with thanksgiving and prayer, that nation or people has been allowed to follow the lure of its own intellectual pride and self-sufficiency to inevitable disaster.

IDEAL WORTH FIGHTING FOR

This is, and this will be, the case with Germany. For years her people have willingly listened to the teachings of egoists and madmen such as Treitschke and Nietzsche—for years they have scoffed at Christianity, its Founder and its ethics; and they have tempted the Divine Spirit in Man with the devil’s whisper, “All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me!” But that Divine Spirit is stronger than all Germany and its rulers; and “Get thee behind me, Satan!” is the keynote of this great War. The Satan of ambition, greed, and cruelty embodied in the creed of Prussian militarism must be driven “hence”; and it is for this holy Cause that we and our Allies are fighting. We must have a free world!—free in the sense of highest, purest freedom—a world of ideas, thoughts, and deeds built up on the golden law of Christ, “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” As a statesman has so nobly expressed it: “We wish the nations of Europe to be free to live their independent lives, working out their own form of government for themselves, and their own national development, whether they he great nations or small States, in full liberty. This is our ideal.”

An ideal worth fighting for—worth dying for!—this “glorious liberty of the free!” None of us would grudge life or fortune to attain the splendid goal in sight—a radiant vision of the true “Holy City,” where as we are told—“the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour within it.”

POISONOUS TEACHING

Glory and honour never accompany the creed of selfish Materialism, which is the “Kultur” of Germany. What a miserable man was he who wrote down in cold blood these words: “I condemn Christianity. To me it is the greatest of all possible corruptions. I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one immortal shame and blemish in the human race!” This was Nietzsche—poor, sickly, egoist, Nietzsche! He died mad—yet he was the “guide, philosopher, and friend” of modern Germany! How has his teaching worked? Let the slaughtered thousands of his countrymen on the battlefields reply. And let us take heed that we in our turn be not infected by the poisonous breathings of such insanity! Our nation—our Imperial Britain—has been dangerously far along the road to similar madness—let us hope devoutly that we have been pulled up in time! But—“we have done those things which we ought not to have done”—as, for example, we have thrown the sneer of “Jingoism!” contemptuously in the face of many an honest patriot—and now we are loud in our expressions of wrath and astonishment at the “want of patriotism” displayed by certain tribes of working men who “strike” for more pay, indifferent to the country’s needs! What have these working men been taught for the last twenty years? Why, that Money is the only god, and Self the only master! When we reproach them for unpatriotic conduct, we should reproach ourselves still more for the encouragement and applause we have systematically given to every new or revived doctrine of selfishness and materialism that ever infected the world with its sickly symptoms of decay. Patriotism is a mental and spiritual attitude—as heroism is—as love and faith are. Such things cannot be taught; they are the result of ennobling influences brought to bear on life and its environment. Considering how little our educational system holds of such subtle and delicate training, we have reason to be proud of the splendid response of our men throughout the Empire to the call of “King and Country,” and of the real national “grit” which in every Briton underlies his surface show of levity and indifference.

But have I, as a woman, nothing to say of the war, save in its ethical aspect? Oh, yes! I, as a woman, could say much, in a woman’s way. Of the agony of parting from men dearer to us than life, and seeing them disappear behind a veil of impenetrable silence for weeks or months, their fate or fortune all unknown! I could weep all day and night for the cruel loss of young and gallant lives crushed out and left bleeding and festering on the awful fields of contest—and I long to speak words of consolation and hope to the dear women who wait in strained suspense for news of their husbands, fathers, lovers, and sons! I know all they feel; and the aching throb of their unuttered misery strikes on my own heart with keenest pain! But with all the sorrow and all the suffering, I would not, if I could, hold back one man from taking his share in the noble struggle for the betterment and future peace of the world! One can die but once; and “Greater love hath no man than this—that a man lay down his life for his friends!”

“ALL WE LIKE SHEEP”
A PEOPLE’S PATIENCE (First published in the “Sunday Times”)

The words “people” and “popular,” viewed by academic dark-lanterns of literature, are opprobious epithets. Any person designated as “popular,” or favoured by “the People,” falls at once outside the pale of mutual-admiration societies—ergo, is not an academic dark-lantern for the blind to lead the blind, so that both fall into the ditch. Yet it is well understood that those who affect to despise the People and “popular” opinion are the very ones most influenced by both, inasmuch as not one among them but knows that in the long run the People alone are the arbiters of national destiny. Sometimes it hardly appears as if it were so—yet so it is. Though at this present fateful moment of time it would seem that the People of the British Empire are stricken dumb. They are a voiceless multitude, rendered inert by the knowledge that if they speak every effort will be made to silence them, and that though they have much to ask they will not be truthfully answered. For they are only “the People”!—the ruck of taxpayers—the grist that goes to the mill!

But what a People! Consider them as they are to-day, straining every nerve and sinew in the work necessary for the carrying on of a wicked and barbarous world-war, wherein they truly, as a People, sought and desired no part, but into which they were plunged unsuspectingly, without fair warning or honest preparation; and now, being involved in the struggle for justice and right, do most nobly acquit themselves—a People who are giving up their sons, their life-blood, their All for which they have worked through years of anxious toil—a People who, when their little harmless children are torn to shreds by enemy bombs falling from hitherto beneficent skies, are told by a fatherly Government that “no material damage was done by the raid”—a People who are cozened with lies and flattered by false news—a People who in the gallant thousands of their slaughtered men are dying that Britain may live!—or, shall we venture to say, that Cabinet Ministers may “take their salary and continue to take it!”—an historic utterance which will ring through the vault of posterity like Nelson’s “England expects”—only with something of a difference! How long will this splendid People endure in sheep-like patience what the Press justly calls “Waste and Muddle” in high places, without giving vent to their forcible but natural outburst known as “popular” feeling?

We read in one of the columns of a sane and non-party daily journal the following:—“No one can say that the nation is satisfied with the way it is governed.” This expresses in one clear phrase the apparent situation. The word “apparent” is used advisedly, for in many spectral things of recent statesmanship some of us feel with Macbeth that “Life’s but a walking shadow.” The present Government, being of a sometimes severe, sometimes indulgent parental character, seems to look upon the public, or “the People,” as a sort of promising Child, that sits quietly waiting to be told things, no matter whether the things are false or true. Wedged in a nursery chair with a bar across its bulgy waist to prevent it tumbling out on the floor, this Child is supposed to smile and suck its finger all day long in a state of blissful belief in nonsense rhymes and fairy tales. It is a wonderfully good Child, and Papa Government is pleased to find how easily it can be played with. Its simplicity is delightful! Things printed in large type catch its eye and tickle its fancy, because occasionally (though more in the past than in the present) it fancies that large type means something of national importance. But with all its guilelessness it has a vast amount of natural intelligence, and it begins to understand that it is not, and never will be, allowed to learn the drift of Governmental tactics, or the true state of parties in politics. It is hazily becoming aware that it is kept in its nursery chair to be gulled, not to be enlightened. In happier moments it has shown that it likes to be amused, thrilled, startled, horrified, or moved to indignation, and, so far as the “Censor” permits, the gagged and bound Press tries to do its best on these lines, and dances for its entertainment as well as a poor bear in chains can dance, though growling sotto voce all the while! But, considered as a Child, the public is not thought fit to be told the truth. Its opinion on national affairs is neither sought nor wanted; all that is required of it are Silence and Obedience. These it gives, with what result? Why, as Mr. Asquith said, “Wait and see!”

Yet surely the waiting is long? “All we like sheep are gone astray;” but possibly we have been led astray more than we have gone of our own accord. All peoples have a certain sheep-like tendency; they follow a lead. Where the leader goes the flock goes likewise. This is sometimes set down as evidence of weakness, but with the British people it marks both duty and discipline, obedience to law and order, love and maintenance of home and country. Yet—let us suppose NO leader! That is—NO leader capable of leading anywhere save into quagmires and pitfalls of “Waste and Muddle”!

“The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,

But swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw,

Rot inwardly.”

Rumour has it that on our East Coast the inhabitants have been “prepared” for a “German landing,” and have been told where to go inland as “refugees.” Whether true or false, such a report should never have gained currency; the word “refugees” should never be even whispered as likely to be applicable to British subjects. Similarly on the East Coast it is openly said that during the last enemy air-raid two Zeppelins were “within easy gun-shot” and could have been brought down, but that our anti-aircraft men were “forbidden to fire.” By whom? Ah! There we touch upon secrets not to be disclosed by Papa Government to any inquiring Child! Though when half a secret comes to light the other half is not far behind! Let us not forget the warning given by the greatest of all Teachers:—

“A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

It is idle to deny that there are traitors in our own camp; men of position and influence who are more pro-German than British—who would not scruple to pave the way to any dishonour provided they could serve their own personal ends. Is any one so intellectually blind and bereft of common sense as to suppose that even with certain of our statesmen financial interests do not outweigh their patriotism? Time is a merciless revealer of facts, and in its record of this war some strange things will be written!

To those who have eyes to watch and brains to understand, the advent of Mr. Hughes, Premier of Australia, is a wonderful, almost touching, circumstance. Here is a Man at last!—a man who loves his country and is not afraid to say so—a man who appeals to the right spirit of the nation straightly and truly, with courage and conviction. “The People” answer to his voice: that “People” whom snobs abhor! Snobbery is apt to speak of the fine Younger Race of Imperial Britain as “Colonials,” with a touch of contempt, as though they represented something small and negligible, instead of embodying as they do the future power and stability of the Empire. This “Colonial” Prime Minister shows strength, boldness, and sincerity; he is a leader, and “All we like sheep” are disposed to follow him, if he can show us a way out of the thickets where we wander, torn and bleeding. Pray Heaven he be not wearied by specious talk, or repelled by still more specious hypocrisy! or hampered and discouraged by the working of the “wheels within wheels” which move with such secret and perplexing intricacy, crushing honest effort and smothering honest speech! Surely the British people can be trusted to know what their foes know, what their Allies know, what America knows? Are they alone to be deceived?—even into purchasing goods “from America” which are German? Mr. Hughes needs to speak yet more forcibly; he must rouse the slothful and the unthinking, and tell them that if they would conquer their skilful and insidious Teuton foe, they must equally conquer themselves; and that when the markets are open for British labour, British labour must not fall back in energy or stint its output. Business must go hand-in-hand with industry and quickness, for “the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong!”

“All we like sheep” are waiting, not for compromise, but for conquest; conquest full, splendid and lasting! The “People” are patient and submissive enough, but they seek to put their confidence in a Government that shows confidence in itself. If they feel that they cannot do this, what then? Should not the following words of Carlyle be remembered?:—

“Urge not this noble, silent People. Rouse not the Berseker rage that lies in them! Do you know their Cromwells, Hampdens, their Pyms and Bradshaws? Men very peaceable, but men that can be made very terrible! Men, who like their old Fathers in Agrippa’s days, have a soul that despises death; to whom death, compared with falsehoods and injustices, is light! Yes, just so godlike as this People’s patience was, even so godlike must its impatience be!”

WANTED—MORE WOMEN!
AN APPEAL (Written for the London “Daily Chronicle”)

Women! You are wanted by the Nation! In the words of the recruiting posters “Your Country calls!” It calls even You—you, who for centuries have been the “weak vessels” of man’s passion and humour, are now needed to strengthen man’s hands in the terrific business of a world’s battle. You have helped them already; but you must help them still more. Now is the day and hour to prove your “undaunted mettle,” and not only your mettle but your generosity, your magnanimity, your forgiveness! For in peace times man has denied you the very possession of ordinary common sense; he has thrust you out of intellectual and academic honours; he has grudged you any place in art, literature or science, and he has made you the butt of every cynic, comedian, and caricaturist ever since he arrogated to himself the “everything” of life. You have been and are the grist to the mill of the comic press; your fathers have often been glad to sell you in the marriage market to the highest bidders; your lovers have played with you and deserted you as bees the flowers whose honey they have stolen; your husbands have often been faithless and perjured; and in certain of man’s legal forms, you have been classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,” but now!—now, you are wanted!

You, so often despised, are prayed not to return scorn with scorn; you, with your patience, doggedness, and strongly determined zeal for attainment, are asked to come forward in your willing thousands, and let the men go! For the cry is “havoc!—and let slip the dogs of war!”—war, bitter, merciless, bloody and more savage than the crudest wars of ancient days; war in the air, on the earth and under seas—war that is as stupid, as blind, as criminal and as selfish as are all the acts which men commit when they have so far brutalised woman as to check and restrain her highest impulses, kill her idealism, obstruct her intellectual aspirations, and treat her as the slave and tool of a degrading animalism. Had they from the first dawn of civilisation made her their mental and spiritual equal, by this time there would have been no wars. Her love would have constrained and educated them, her instincts guided them, her inborn maternity shielded them from the wrongs their ambitions and jealousies persuade them to wreak upon each other. Now, in the very midst of the combat which they have brought upon themselves, they are caught within a black cloud of almost superhuman disaster, where but one ray of the veiled sun shines through—that Divine sense of Justice for which all true peoples are bound to fight if indeed they be not wholly given over to the devil of Materialism.

In this, women are, and must be, with them; they, who from the legended days of Eve have laboured under the sense of utter injustice, will be eager to help in any struggle for the Right against Might, because it is their own cause—the very essence of their own existence.

Right against Might, women! Be with the men now in their manliest, most pressing time of action! Forget their petty carping and cavilling at “the female element” in workmanship and endeavour; laugh at the rough and childish hands that beat and batter the woman’s breast with all the petulance of spoilt children; fling every other thought aside but the will and intent to help them on to victory! Make, and buckle on their armour—let your hands prepare them for both attack and defence. Nothing nobler will you ever find to do than this!

In old Arthurian legends, many were the fair women eager to buckle on the armour of the peerless Knight Lancelot; but to-day there are a million and more Lancelots in the field—young, brave, dauntless—heroes all! Arm them, women!—and by arming them, defend them! Thousands of you, strong and willing, are already at work—but we want thousands more! Even you “toy-women” who dance half-nude o’ nights at restaurants and in basement saloons of “fashionable” hotels, wreaking a sly vengeance on men by poisonous lure and seduction, even you can be brave and helpful if you will! Give up your foolish sensualities, and take to sturdy, sensible Work; wash the paint from your cheeks, the dye from your hair, and clothe yourselves as fit women who mean to help, and not to destroy men.

And you, too—you who turn your private homes into “Bridge Clubs” where “officers on leave” may become members “without the payment of a fee”—rookeries, where silly young subalterns are “rooked” indeed, of every penny, losing not only cash but honour—can you not give up this unprincipled and unwomanly “way of doing business” and come out of your dens? You have hands deft enough for something better than “Bridge”—and eyes that can see how to make shells for killing the enemy, which is better than studying how to change a card that shall cheat a friend! Put these ephemeral nothings of an ephemeral “society” aside, and WORK! Work is the saviour of both body and soul!

I admit that as Women, we have long and old scores to settle with the men who have denied us any place in their counsels, and who elect of themselves to treat us merely as “toys” and fools. We shall have our revenge upon them, but not now. Now is the time when we have the chance to show our ability, our powers of organisation, our reasonableness, our courage, our industry, and patience. Let us not fail! The curse of the Jew who wrote Genesis and swore to Eve “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow” has been upon woman ever since the days when courteous old Abraham yoked her with his cattle and drove her with his sheep; but there are evidences nowadays that the modern Abraham will not always triumph, even though every true son of Israel who attends religious service in his synagogue still says with Pecksniffian fervour:—

“Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who hast not made me a woman!” (See Authorised Jewish Daily Prayer Book.)

But, despite this most manly thanksgiving, it is paramount that now, whether Jew or Gentile, men want the women!—not for pleasure, not for fooling, not for seduction, not for betrayal, but for work! Man’s work must be done in the absence of men. For men must be set free, like uncaged wolves and lions, to fly at the throat of the foe and strangle him for good and all! Therefore, man’s work must be accomplished by women. O women, be glad and proud of this! Lady Frances Balfour, who has a brain sufficing for three of our modern statesmen, has recently written on “The Discovery of Women,” describing it wittily as similar to “the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.” She reminds us of Lord Lansdowne’s “early Victorian” pronouncement that “the place for women is the home.” But the worthy peer forgot to mention that it is not given to every woman to have a home, or to run the cooking, the child-bearing, and general washing-up business for any special one of the male sex. On the other hand, there are thousands of women who not only earn the money to make a home and keep it, but who also have the affectionate unwisdom to keep a lazy loafer of a man also; some drone who finds as many plausible excuses for idleness as he does for living on the woman’s work. He, by the way, is generally the sort of fellow who speaks of woman with sniggering contempt, and while taking her earnings with the left hand stabs her in the back with the right. But even such rogues as these have to go forth to the battle to-day; so let us not grudge the buckling on of their armour if we can inspire courage in cowards! Just now, when omens and portents are thick in the air, and unnatural threatenings hover above us like shapeless spectres of evil, our Ministers and statesmen are chattering for all the world like the feeblest “patriarchs of the village” that ever waggled grey pates over pipes of tobacco. They who complain of women’s “talk” are talking the heads of the nation off into impatience and fury; let women not talk, therefore, but act! Come to work, women of all classes!—the more the better!—the more silently, the more swiftly! There is a great climax at hand; the “push” is about to begin. Every Able-Bodied Man Is Needed to Ensure Victory. Let us make no mistake about that! Every woman is likewise needed, to put her hand to the plough, and NOT look back. Munitions must not fail us. Show your resolve, brave women of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and nerve your slender hands to the task of turning out the weapons of attack and defence that shall flame our conquest of the foe on land and sea and in the air! And—when the war is over—when “Peace with Honour” shines once more above us like a glorious rainbow after storm—shall we—we Women who have worked, sink to our old footing of debasement and exclusion from the counsels of men? No! To paraphrase a famous Asquith utterance: “We have taken our place, and we shall continue to take it, and to keep it!”

THE QUALITY OF MERCY
AN APPEAL TO AMERICA FOR SUFFERERS IN THE GREAT WAR (Written by special request for the American “Committee of Mercy”)

There is no greater virtue in the human character than mercy; it is the nearest attribute and approach to the Divine Perfection towards Whom all creation instinctively moves. We, the offspring of that infinite Thought and Will, are still far away from such sweet and strong attainment of power as can find infinitude of joy in the infinitude of Giving—but we can in some measure bless and purify our brief poor lives with somewhat of that everlasting plenitude and beauty by an effort, no matter how feeble, towards a God-like perpetuity of grace and pity. The golden opportunity for that effort is Now and Here; we may never have so great a chance again. For Now and Here, in the fair days of spring and summer, when singing, blossoming Nature breaks out in its Te Deum of thankfulness for yet another space of time wherein to express the gladness and glory of life, we are confronted with the hideous, ravaging spectacle of War; War, in its most cruel, pitiless, and appalling shape—War, to the grimmest death! The groans and shrieks of wounded, tortured, and dying men are forced upon our ears; a monstrous Devil of Self, black with the crimes of treachery, lust, and murder, stalks abroad seeking what it may devour of faith, freedom, and civilisation—a demon possibly born of mankind’s own neglect of the highest ideals, and indifference to countless blessings long bestowed.

And the most evil part of this evil visitation is that the terrific whirlwind of disaster sweeps over the innocent as well as the guilty, and men of valour and worth in all the nations now at war with one another are driven by the force of a barbarous necessity into the agony of wounds and death for no fault of their own, but for the mistakes and aggressions of their governmental rulers. They are as falling leaves blown before a storm—as smoke before fire—drifting into darkness! Yet every one of them is moved by the inspiration and love of liberty—by the sense of right and justice—and by the desire to help in doing what is good and true for the larger benefit of the whole world. And in this sense every one of them is noble; each life is worth our grateful care. We, who appeal for them, take no part in the contest. To us they are all our brothers in humanity; their mothers, wives, sisters, children, and lovers are ours also! We wish to lift them in our helping arms out of the blood and mire of battle, and by our impartial love and tenderness, to comfort them as much as we may, and relieve their bitter need.

We want every American citizen to help us in this great, this divine, work; for so best shall we prove the largeness of our thought, and the wideness and scope of the civilisation of the Republic and it ideals; so shall we best display the spirit of the young New World, uprising on the waters of this deluge like another ark of the covenant, sending forth the dove of hope and promise to those who are struggling for life in the overwhelming waves. We would like to write the noble words of Man’s universal Poet, Shakespeare, across the doors of all our fellow-countrymen upon whom we now call for aid, convinced of their generous response:—

“The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blessed;

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes;

’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The thronèd monarch better than his crown—

... We do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.”

In this mind and mood we appeal for help: for ungrudging, tenderest, quickest help!—the help that brave persons would instantly give if they saw children drowning. For every man disabled, sick, or deprived of his strength is as a struggling child in the flood of adversity, and indeed more pitiful than a child, for the child’s day may be yet to come, while his is past. Moreover, he has been snatched from all that made life pleasant and useful to himself, to fight his country’s battle, for which he, personally, is not responsible, but which he enters upon for the sake of a duty which is purely heroic self-sacrifice. Let us therefore accept this free gift of his manhood in the cause of Right and Justice and Freedom, with no less cheerful and willing gifts and self-sacrifices of our own; let us give and still give, in the all-beneficent spirit of the daily sunlight which pours itself out unasked over the fields and pastures to bless and fructify them! And let us never weary of giving! From every man and woman of the teeming population of the United States we ask a donation for our Holy Cause—our new Crusade of the Lord’s Sepulchre—for such it is, inasmuch as we seek to raise from the grave of silence and despair those who have been giving the best of their lives in suffering the horrors of this terrific War. Be the gift small or great it will add to the sum of what we hope to make the most wonderful and munificent gift and act of homage to martyred heroes that has ever been known in the world! We are a Committee of Mercy, and we make this Appeal to all the merciful, in God’s Name, and for the sweet uplifting of a Star of Hope in the darkness!

STARVING BELGIUM
AN APPEAL (Written by request for Mr. Hoover’s “Belgium Relief Fund,” and circulated through the United States Press)

“Six million of people are on the verge of starvation in Belgium!”

Such news as this writes itself across the brain in letters of fire! Great Goddess of Liberty, think of it! You, America!—you, who represent that goddess, with the light of an ever-widening glory on her brow, think of this shame to the very name of Freedom!—this blot on civilisation—this degrading result, as it were, of our long-boasted intellectual supremacy and scientific advancement! Six million people on the verge of starvation!—through no fault of their own, an industrious, peaceful, marvellously heroic little nation, deprived of its honestly-earned right to live, and dragged from its altars of prayer to weep in the dust of beggary and famine! You, America!—you, Star-crowned States of Freedom that have already done so much and are doing so much for this broken and bleeding victim of bitter circumstance—you cannot stay your hand now!—you cannot—you will not! You will do more!—and still more! You cannot see a brave nation die of sheer hunger!—it is not in your heart to look on at such a frightful thing unmoved; therefore you will listen to all unprejudiced appeal—even to mine, though I have little claim to your hearing save that of the affection freely given to me by thousands of my readers in your country—an affection gratefully accepted and as warmly reciprocated! I have naught to do with the quarrels and murderous onslaughts of men filled with blind fury and lust of world-power; all that I can see or hear is the sorrow and suffering befalling those who are innocent of any quarrel—the wives, the mothers, the young girls and boys, the little children—the helpless and bewildered old people! Cruel famine is already torturing these piteous and patiently enduring souls, on whom such a black cloud of unmerited disaster has fallen that it seems as if it would never lift! All who have power to visualise their unparalleled distress must and surely will take every possible means to soften and mitigate the horrors of their situation. Generous America!—you have done and are doing much!—you have worked and are working strenuously to relieve the burden of Belgium’s heavy affliction, but work to you is the very pulse of your large life, and bigness of conception in noble deeds is your breathing power! Therefore, no hesitation need be felt in asking you to go on Working and Doing all you can for the tortured, half dying people of a devastated country—a people whose magnificent heroism has blazoned itself in a chronicle of glory for the wonder of the future years—a nation that has faced her foes unflinchingly in the simple defence of her freedom, and whose noble King, a hero to the manner born, has not uttered one undignified word of complaint against the sudden and harsh calamities meted out to him by the cruel caprices of a cruel destiny. To America all grand things are possible—America, as yet aloof from combat, can accomplish what other nations, involved in difficulties at this juncture, can barely attempt: America can approach Germany with the ease of one at peace in the midst of strife, and can with humane forethought and certainty secure such distribution of food supplies to the Belgian civil population as may save them from the sufferings which now confront them every day. This is what America can do and with all our hearts and souls we pray that it may be quickly done! We, in Great Britain, are never weary of helping, to the best of our ability, those exiles who have lost their homes and means of livelihood—we strive to make their hard lot less bitter—and to one and all we accord a welcome as to those of our own blood and kindred. But we are at war, and though our Government is using all the means available to prevent the threatening disaster of millions of non-combatants, women, children, and the aged, being sacrificed to what is called “military necessity,” such means are not enough, being perforce obstructed by the difficulties of the situation. The grim idol of Militarism must have its burnt offerings—that pitiless god of Battle so aptly and magnificently described in Lord Byron’s Childe Harold:—

“Lo! where the Giant on the mountain stands,

His blood-red tresses deep’ning in the sun,

With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,

And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon;

Restless, it rolls, now fix’d, and now anon

Plashing afar—and at his iron feet

Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done;

* * * * *

All join the chase, but few the triumph share,

The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away,

And Havoc scarce for joy can number their array!”

Time presses! The wolf of famine is at the very doors! Our hearts grow cold with terror and with pity as we see once prosperous and happy Belgium, a land of prosperous and happy people, shadowed by the fearful spectres of Hunger and Disease. And while we do all we can and all we may to keep back these menacing destroyers of the innocent, we clasp hands across the sea with America, and look to her reasonableness, her boundless compassion and benevolence, for wider, more continuous help, feeling that she can, and will, most assuredly move the German administration in Belgium to see to the free distribution of food, and to guarantee that such distribution shall be made for the benefit of the Belgian civil population. I believe the Germans would willingly consent to this, if they have not already consented, for it cannot be even to their own advantage that disease should be sown broadcast in Belgium, and the entire industrial population decimated by famine. Indeed, as a matter of fact, Mr. Whitlock, the American Minister at Brussels, has made definite and official statement to the effect that he is satisfied by close investigation on the spot that not an ounce of food sent in by the Commission for Relief is being appropriated by the Germans. It should, perhaps, be considered that Germany has a heart somewhere! There are natural emotions in the mortal composition of a German as well as in a Frenchman or a Briton—differently strung, no doubt, and differently placed—but no man of any nationality whatsoever is made solely of “blood and iron,” according to that hackneyed catch-penny phrase which seems to have been coined by some tall-talking journalist. I am not one of the many who “thrill” over the various and sensational reports gotten up by the world’s press, whether such reports emanate from Great Britain or the “Wolff Bureau.” I am as doubtful of statements circulated by British journalism as of those which are unblushingly “made in Germany.” Each newspaper proprietor has his own axe to grind, and not always does honesty or unsullied patriotism have much to do with the grinding. More mischief than can be easily calculated is caused by irresponsible journalists who are allowed to print their wholly useless and unnecessary personal opinions on some great world-crisis in leading newspapers. When Edward the Seventh ascended the British Throne he had something to say on one occasion to “the gentlemen of the Press,” and he expressed the hope that they would “do their best to foster amity and good-will between the British Empire and other nations.” That the “gentlemen” have not so acquitted themselves is a sad and sober fact; and in these very days of the most terrific contest the world has ever seen, many of them show an unworthy eagerness to “work up” suspicion and ill-feeling between the combating parties, rather than to hold the balance equably and with dignity. Insult, cheap sneers, and vulgar jesting are all out of place in the present tremendous clash of conflicting powers; when the gods grasp their thunderbolts it is no time to listen to the chattering of apes. And when we are told by the Irresponsible Journalist of more battle horrors and outrages than seem humanly possible of occurrence, it does us good to learn through plain, unvarnished fact conveyed in simply-written, straightforward letters from brave men at the front and in the “firing line,” that, left to themselves, the Germans and their Allied foes would be glad enough to play football together, if allowed, like healthy schoolboys, and that even as it is they give each other cigarettes across the trenches, proof positive that when not acting “under orders,” they are human, normal, and friendly, and have no thirst for each other’s blood. I quote the following from the letter of a brave young Englishman serving in the Third Battalion of the Rifle Brigade:—

“On Christmas morning some of us went out in front of the German trenches and shook hands with them, and they gave us cigars, cigarettes, and money as souvenirs. We helped them to bury their dead, who had been lying in the fields for two months. It was a strange sight to see English and German soldiers as well as officers shaking hands and chatting together. We asked them to play us at football, but they had no time. I got into conversation with one who worked at Selfridge’s in London, and he said he was very sorry to have to fight against us.”

Reading this and various other letters of similar tone from men in the very thick of battle, all bearing ample testimony to the same truth, I cannot believe that the foe is so utterly a monster as to wish to see six million innocent people slowly starved to death; for such a dire business would serve his purpose little, while strongly intensifying his immediate unpopularity. War is war; and if, after all, civilisation is so poorly advanced that war must still play its barbarous part in the world’s policy, then of course there must be exigencies of war which can neither be ameliorated nor minimised. But the deliberate starvation of six million innocent human beings, more or less useful to their kind, does not and cannot come under the head of “military necessity.” Therefore, it should be the proud privilege and duty of “neutrals” to do all that is possible to soften and mitigate the fearful conditions of life as at present lived in unhappy but undaunted Belgium. The Commission for Relief, acting in London, and comprising representatives of the Spanish, Dutch, and Italian Embassies as well as the American, has undertaken a task which is almost herculean. Work as they will—and there is no pause and no shirking—it is like coping with the waves of an engulfing sea. The needs of the people become more urgent every day that the fierce tug-of-war grows closer and more insistent: Great Britain has found it imperative to stop the importation of grain into Belgium, and all this is coupled with the fact that under the Hague convention the German army has the right to requisition food supplies, and is not bound (save morally) to feed the enemy’s population. Nevertheless, common sense and diplomacy, as well as mercy and justice, may here step in and show that starvation and sickness may breed evil among the Germans themselves as well as among the Belgians, by sheer force of contagion—evil of a kind which might just as conveniently be avoided. Any starving nation claims instant help and compassion—the sufferings it is compelled to undergo are too awful to contemplate with any degree of calmness, and may make even the sternest “Teuton” shudder. Therefore, if any of us can, or dare, call ourselves Christians in the face of this un-Christian warfare, which neither religion, science, nor “New Thought,” spiritual or intellectual, has been deep or sincere enough to hinder, let us gather up the fragile fragments of our faith and try to piece them together in one heart-whole, soul-strong effort to save from impending misery the brave little nation, rich in historical splendour of renown, artistic beauty, and industrial progress, whose hard-working people have desired nothing but peace and freedom to attend to their own business unmolested. If Christianity is worth anything in the world we would not let one starving creature go unfed from our doors—shall we leave six million to such an undeserved fate? If we do, then well may the great Powers Invisible chastise us to our own doom, and vengeful Furies whip us to a hell of shame and oblivion! Let us hold out rescue at once with no uncertain hands, and let our practical aid be swift, and “of good measure, pressed down and running over.” In all such deeds of love and sympathy and charity Great Britain and America have led the world by their splendid example. There has been no grudging, no paltry personal discussion as to ways and means. For every good and worthy cause gold pours out as from a magical horn of plenty; the more the demand, the greater the supply. And now? Now—when a nation starves! Shall not a veritable argosy of gold make its way across the miles of ocean which divide the Fortunate from the Unhappy, and bridge the gulf of tears and sorrow, striking light from darkness, and hope from despair? This can be so if America wills it! Shall not a radiant Angel of Consolation appear within the deepest gloom of battle, stretching out hands of blessings and sustenance, lifting the fallen, cheering the desolate, soothing the dying, and shedding heavenly sunshine on a sorrow-clouded land? This can be so if America wills it! Shall not the true brotherhood of humanity be re-affirmed and strengthened in the rescue of one nation by another?—in the succour of the smaller by the greater?—in the full acknowledgment of a brave fight for freedom by a power that is more than free? This can be so if America wills it!

“O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!” were the last words of Madame Roland, heroic victim of the French Revolution—but we would say: “O Liberty! what love is perfected in thy name!” when starving Belgium is fed!—because America wills it! Hear my appeal, O Star-crowned States of Freedom!—hear me!—hear all!—Let no pleading voice pass you by un-heard! For the brave Nation that is dying must live!—shall live!—if America wills it!

“THE TIME OF OUR LIVES”
OUR WOMEN IN WAR (An answer to an American misjudgment)

“You women over here seem to be having the time of your lives!” said an American friend to me the other day. “You lunch and dine at all the restaurants with whatever men ‘on leave’ you can pick up; you go with them to music-halls and theatres and supper dances, and ‘peacock’ about in extravagant clothes as if there were no such thing as a war on!”

My American friend, being a man, took, as is often the case with men, rather a one-sided view of things; but what he said is true, and I fully endorse his statement. I am proud and eager to assure our American sisters “on the other side,” that most surely we are having “the time of our lives”! No doubt about it! But, do you understand, you women of New York, Boston, Chicago, and every other great and growing city in the United States, what that “time” exactly is? Are you able to measure it and give it your true understanding? I think not! It is easy to sit as spectators in your vast amphitheatre of across ocean and watch from comfortably-cushioned points of view the struggle in the world’s arena between Men and Beasts; the contest is terrific, revolting, yet sensational—and provides “thrills” for those who are not actively engaged in combat. But for women whose husbands, lovers, and sons are being mauled and crushed and torn by the teeth and claws of ravening and unreasoning brutes, it is a spectacle demanding “nerve,” to say the least of it. This “nerve”—this power of valiant endurance is what Great Britain’s women are displaying in “the time of their lives”—the time of loss and sorrow, danger and difficulty; and I doubt whether the true history of this indomitable pluck, cheerfulness, patience, and resignation will ever be rightly known! They have been, and still are—magnificent!—a glory and an honour to their sex! “The time of their lives” will be recorded in the country’s annals as among the most sublime things witnessed and proved in a century. They have grudged no sacrifice, no pain; they have sent their best and dearest to the great slaughterhouse of Flanders with smiles on their lips, restraining the sobs of agony in their hearts—they have not shrunk in one single instance from any clear duty, however difficult or apart from their own ways of life. Where men’s places have needed to be filled, they have filled them most ably, conscientiously, and loyally, without grumbling or complaint; and though some of their male employers, too old to fight, but never too old to “bully,” have occasionally made things uncomfortable for them by coarse words and coarser actions, they have held their peace for the sake of their men at the front, and are content to bear with insolence and insult in silence rather than interrupt the routine of the work they have undertaken in order to “release” the men, such “release” often meaning for themselves sheer heart-break and desolation. Oh, yes!—we are having “the time of our lives”!—a time such as this world never saw, and which we all pray it may never see again!—a time when wives toil in munition works to “release” their husbands, knowing that such “release” may mean their own widowhood—when mothers part bravely from their sons, conscious that they are going into such a hell of barbarous slaughter as never was known even in the days of the Roman butcher, Nero—when girls “release” their lovers, and bend their own slight bodies to the heavy toil usually undertaken by the physically stronger sex, and say nothing of their own fatigue, suspense, and sorrow! There are thousands of such splendid women to set against the few hundreds who “dine at restaurants” and “peacock about,” and even these latter are not so abandoned to self and vainglory as they seem. True, there are women who push their own ends under cover of professing charity, and are never so happy as when they see their own portraits in the lower grade press—this class has always existed in every country and will no doubt continue to exist. And there are plenty of female “decoys” for men “on leave”—who dine and dance at public restaurants in un-dress that would disgrace a savage; but, again, these have always existed, and will probably continue to exist. The good Bishop of London seems to have only just discovered them, which is a great testimony to his guilelessness. Then there is a particularly unfortunate section of the pictorial press which seeks to attract the public eye by indecent pictures of half-nude “women of the town”—dancers, actresses, and titled dames who are equally at one in a voluntary outrage of morals and modesty, and though the public Censor might very well put a stop to these offensive illustrations, he is apparently one of those “blind who will not see.” But you, our sisters in America, do see, and rashly pass judgment accordingly! Then there are the ridiculous fashion-plates used as advertisements in newspapers and in the catalogues of leading drapers, which represent women as the merest caricaturess of womanhood, looking more like cockatoos and chimpanzees than feminine humanity, in costumes presented as “the fashion,” but which no decent woman ever dreams of wearing. All this is “the scum of the pot” which rises to the top, thereby becoming noticeable—but it does not represent the actual Womanhood of Britain—the great, Silent Force of patient, brave, unwearying workers. These are scarcely heard of, for they give no chance to the tongues of Rumour, and the press cannot get at them either for portraits or personalities. As noble and exclusive as that noble and exclusive lady, the Duchess of Portland, whose good works are legion, they make no clamour—they are too busy to contend with the already opposing masculine spirit which is beginning to demand of them, “Are you going to dare do our work after the war?” The main fact with them is not the Afterwards but the Now—the resolve to hold together the working necessities of Commerce and Agriculture in Britain—Now!—in time of need—thinking nothing of themselves or of the pleasant little vanities and frivolities dear to them in days of peace, but bracing up all their energies to oppose trouble with valour, patience, and faith. No women in all the world’s history have ever risen to confront a world’s crisis so splendidly and cheerfully as the British—except the French! French women are superb in their magnificent patriotism!—superb in their steadfast hate of the foe. We are often told that the British do not “hate” enough—and that if we were better haters we should be better lovers. It may be so, but the general tendency among us is more to despise than to hate. A “Tommy,” for example, would hardly think it worth while to “hate” anybody. Good-nature is the Briton’s strong point; good-nature and a cool, easy, “happy-go-lucky” disposition. These virtues or failings led him into the German traps whereby he was losing his hold on the commerce of the world. He could not be brought to believe that his progressing friend “Fritz” could stab him in the back while he stood unarmed and unready for attack; and, even now, when he is up and full face to the combat, his good-nature still moves him to sing and whistle along the fire-swept path to death or glory, and to stop, regardless of self, among a hail of bullets to give first or last aid to a dying foeman. Is such conduct foolish or sublime? A higher verdict than ours must give answer! In any case we know and may take it for certain that the “Silent Force” of women who are “having the time of their lives” is a great lever to lift the men up to the utmost pitch of their native-born courage and resolution, and to help them meet Death as a fellow-soldier, taking the hand of the grisly skeleton as fearlessly as children might run to look at some attractive novelty. For, back of us all, men and women alike, there is a strong Faith which our enemies have lost. They talk of “Unser Gott” as glibly as though the Almighty were solely exercised in serving their whims and passions—but though our deepest religion be not of the Churches, we cannot so trifle with the Holy Name! We are too conscious of “The Truth that makes us free,” and in the Cause for which we and our Allies are fighting, we can best pray with Shakespeare’s Harry the Fifth:

“O God of Battles! Steel my soldiers’ hearts!

Possess them not with fear; take from them now

The sense of numbers!”

For our Cause is the Cause of Right and Justice, Freedom and Civilisation. We are not out for personal gain, either in gold or territory. We have enough of both and to spare. We endure “the time of our lives,” and its wanton and wicked slaughter of the innocent, because we are fighting for all Humanity that it may never be so savagely tortured again. We are fighting for a surer, more impregnable Civilisation—one that cannot be pushed back a thousand years by the ferocious and blind stupidity of any temporary autocrat. Is it possible that there can be people of even average intelligence in the States and elsewhere that do not entirely understand this? The British intervention in the dastardly attack of Germany on Belgium and France was to protect and defend unoffending and peaceable peoples, and in this defence of others we have found Ourselves. We were beginning to lose ourselves among the dreary verbosities of theorists and agnostics and atheists and all the swarm of destructive insects which accompany a setting-in of decadence; we have discovered once again our true spirit, our old and valiant mettle, our pride and love of country, and all the mighty heart of resolution which has made the British Empire what it is. And we cannot but feel that the young and strong heart of America beats in tune with our own—that, despite financial interests and pro-German intrigues, Right and Justice prevail with the men and women of the United States as with the men and women of this “little isle set in a silver sea”—and that they very well know that they, too, must benefit by the clearance from the world of a monstrous Militarism whose ethics are opposed to every principle of Christian truth and human equity. A great, strong Faith is at the back of us all—a Faith which believes in the utmost triumph of Good over Evil—and this it is which inspires the women of Great Britain and gives them strength to part with their nearest and dearest, so that they endure “the time of their lives” without flinching, knowing that they who endure to the end shall be saved!

THE WORLD’S GREATEST NEED
AN APPEAL TO THE SANITY OF GOVERNMENTS ’Tis a mad world, my masters.—J. Taylor

What is the most urgent need of the world? What would stop war and ensure peace? What would push forward all that is highest and best in our civilisation, and cause men and women to realise that they are not created to brutalise, degrade, and destroy each other in sordid struggles for place and power, but that their purpose in living at all is to educate and uplift each other to noble aims and ends? The great Need stares us in the face at every point of social law and political government; it clamours in our ears and pushes its problem to the front of every question. What is it the world demands in every form of policy, legislation, and statesmanship? A simple thing—one would imagine it to be a natural thing—yet almost undiscoverable in any period of history—Sanity! Sanity, which means health of both brain and body; Sanity which recognises self only as a portion of the greater Whole; Sanity which knows instinctively that mankind must obey the laws of God or else suffer extinction; Sanity, which combines with reason and judgment a comprehensive sympathy for every unit of the human race in its struggle upward from the brute period to the highest realisation of intellectual and spiritual worth.

Judged from this point of view one may doubt, when reading history from its known or traditional beginnings, whether Man, taken in bulk, has ever been entirely sane. Something of the freak, the monster, or the only half human, seems to taint his blood, displaying itself in follies and excesses of the most violent or pitiful nature, which, when dispassionately narrated in the chronicles of centuries, show him to be a crank or a fool at the very time when wisdom might most be expected of him. Some few individuals, notable examples to the race, have stood out in splendid isolation as sane and self-sacrificing teachers and helpers of humanity; but, in the aggregate, from the very beginnings of what we are pleased to call “progress” down to the present day, the desire to trample upon each other and wallow in blood and slaughter seems to prevail with more force over the minds of men than the clearest arguments of reason. Nevertheless this desire is an insane impulse, and if we had any true perception of the laws of right and wrong, we should check it in its very first beginnings. Any man, any body of men, seeking to violate the peace and progress of the world should be dealt with by combined international forces of the Law and Medicine, not by armies—and should either be shot like mad dogs as incurable and dangerous, or imprisoned for life in asylums for the criminally insane. No one man or group of men can be considered in sound mental condition if their actions imperil the existence of their fellow-creatures.

Certain natural laws have been discovered, and proved by physiologists who make the subject their study, as to persons who may marry, and those for whom, through consanguinity or inherited disease, marriage is nothing less than a crime. In the “arranged” unions of royal houses these laws have been deliberately set aside with deplorable results. The mad dog of Europe, William of Hohenzollern, is the diseased product of several royal intermarriages, where human convenience and popular complaisance ignored the divine natural law; and as this law is one which prevails “unto the third and fourth generation” we have now a Monster-Abortion of conscienceless cruelty raging loose in the world, who ought to have been smothered in his cradle. There are plain rules of health and sanity which are for ever being disobeyed by civil and social convention; but because they are so disobeyed, we must not flatter ourselves that they do not recoil in vengeance upon the rebels. The Designer of this wonderful and complex universe is proved to be a vastly Mathematical Intelligence; everything great or small, down to a grain of dust, is balanced to the nicety of a hair’s breadth, and do what we will or may, we cannot alter the balance. Our futile efforts in such directions merely display insanity, of the type of an uncontrolled temper in a child which screams itself hoarse because it cannot reach fruit on a tree too high for it to climb. If, therefore, we would have sane peoples, with sane rulers to govern them, we should see to it that they are born and bred sanely, according to the laws of health and mentality which have existed among the “lower” animal creation since the foundation of the world. Every crime is an insane impulse. No healthily organised brain could contemplate the murder of a single individual, much less the wholesale slaughter of millions.

The Almighty has for ever had one gate of Heaven set ajar for humanity to peer within and push open a little wider with each succeeding generation—a gate opening to that fair pleasaunce of wisdom and beauty which we call Science. A great logician has written “The basis of all science is the immutability of the laws of nature.” Would that we remembered that “immutability” more often! Yet, while sane pioneers in medicine and surgery are patiently and devoutly following as best they can these complex but beneficent “laws of nature” for the saving of human life and the healing of human injuries, the insane section of the community have been and are still employing all their distorted energies of brain and hand in fiendish ingenuities of invention for weapons of war that shall destroy human life more quickly than it can be saved. And while thus engaged, other insane persons shout in the press and the market place wild warnings about “declining birth-rate,” reproaching unhappy women for their lack of duty in not producing sons for some future slaughter! The Car of Juggernaut was scarcely worse than this! To appeal for a multitude of births during the making of a multitude of guns, which mow down the flower of young manhood like corn, is an insult to bereaved mothers, making their vocation appear less valuable than that of the beasts of the field. For why should they bring forth and rear sons, only that they may go to their deaths at the bidding of this or that Government? The very proposition is an exhibition of stark staring lunacy, combined with a brutish lust of degradation and reckless destructiveness which could only emanate from deficient mental organisms.

SANITY IN RELIGION

Here we touch the vital centre of the whole. On no subject does man ever show himself so violently crazed as on religion. The gods of the past, created by his fanatical imagination, were more or less the deified types of his own vices, or symbols of such virtues as he feebly strove to attain, but he had no real faith in their power to aid or to circumvent his designs. Yet, in lunatic fashion, he behaved as if he thought them omnipotent, though conscious all the while of the silly comedy he was playing with himself. Now, after two thousand years of the pure and beautiful Gospel of Christ which teaches how “god-in-man” might be realised, a lesson to which has been added the strong affirmation of Science, emphasising the fact that “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth,” Man still plays the crazed crank with dogma, and refuses to realise the Actual Alive Intelligence behind creation, which, from the delicate fluff of a small bird’s feather or moth’s wing, up to the height of solar systems, works in perfection and balance to the exactitude of a pin’s point. This living, loving Presence the dogmatists wellnigh ignore, preferring to move in their own small orbit of creed rather than risk the broader spaces of assured glory. The narrow spirit of self-absorption not only limits their outlook, but holds them bound in a condition of deplorable egotism, like that of an “unco guid” Scotch body who, after accepting many useful kindnesses from a friend to whom she “gushed” affection, changed her sentiments as soon as a slight difference arose between them, and with much unctuous piety let it be known that she was obliged to leave that once “precious” friend’s name “out of her prayers”! The monstrous conceit that could imagine God capable of noticing a name left out of a Scotchwoman’s prayers, or out of any prayers whatsoever, would be ludicrous if it were not so pitifully expressive of barbaric ignorance—and who shall count the thousands of similar narrow mind and heart who have a lurking hope that heaven is for them alone, and that their “dear friends” will all be left out in the cold!

Sanity in religion would mean sanity in everything. A sane acceptance of the actual Motive Force of things,—a Force, tenderly embodied to us by Christ’s teaching as the “Our Father” of us all, would do more for our souls and bodies than all the Churches; an intelligent study and comprehension of the minute and careful work of creation, showing us that nothing is wasted, nothing lost—but that all tends in an onward direction to “some far-off divine event,” would help us to find and keep the balance of our brains. We must be brought to realise that Evil, persisted in, works its own recoil on the evil doers, whether they be nations or individuals—the movement of things being always towards Good. “I and my Father are one”—said Our Lord, for which He was stoned. The failure of the Churches is the insanity of dogma, which has supplanted the sanity of Christ.

BRAIN BALANCE

The brain, as all physiologists know, is a complex and marvellous mechanism—so amazing in its movements, so miraculous in the result of these movements, that no scientist has yet been able entirely to probe its powers or foresee its progressive possibilities. Some there are who declare that all impulses, good and evil, are primarily started by the brain—others, more subtly accurate, aver that the brain itself is impelled or “pushed” to action by an influence stronger than itself, mysterious, unnameable, but nevertheless all-potent, which we call “free-will,” but which may more justly be termed “free-spirit”; that is to say the “free” and deathless force which the Creator gives to each human being to use according to the laws He has ordained, but which, turned aside from these, can be debased as surely as exalted. This untrammelled power is bestowed on every man and woman born into the world, and its mode of action is frequently swayed by impressions, sometimes pre-natal, and sometimes by the “afterwards” of early surroundings. If the material brain of a child is sound and healthy, the impulses which move that brain should be sane and pure—but, unhappily, through the physical mentality of irresponsible persons who recklessly take the divine responsibility of parenthood upon themselves, it often chances that a brain, perfectly organised in the matter and placement of its cells, conceives ideas and actions which are little short of devilish in their ingenuity of evil and mastership of cunning. How is this? It is not the forty pairs of nerves which convey sense and feeling to the brain that are guilty of criminal suggestion—they are merely the telegraph wires on which messages are sent. But Who is the sender? Who or what is responsible for the messages which prompt wicked deeds? We feel that we do not have to inquire as to the source of Good, inasmuch as that Divine Manifestation is everywhere about us. One thing, however, is certain—that evil propensities corrupt and obstruct the blood-vessels of the brain and distort its images and impressions, so that its powers become perverted—and instead of creating helpful work for the welfare of humanity it dwells on what shall harm and terrorise and destroy. But we must and should realise the fact that an obstructed brain is a more or less insane brain. Its channels do not run clear. From these blocked passages inhuman thoughts are generated as weeds from slime; and fiendish or vicious ideas take shape and action like noxious vermin bred from a stagnant pool. Therefore, if we would have regard to sanity in the race, it should be our business to see to the “Brain-Balance” of our social, ethical, political, and religious conditions, and eliminate from our lives such things as tend towards incipient lunacy. “Crazes” for this or that particular person or fashion are painfully common, and always ludicrous, accompanied as they frequently are by a didactic obstinacy resembling the pompous assertiveness of poor madmen who conceive themselves to be exiled kings. Men and women run about jabbering and gesticulating on the “preciousness” of this or that form of art, when it is utterly opposed to truth and nature, and in this sort of spirit they have held up the “Futurists” and “Cubists” as something worthy to be looked at, much as a child might hold up for admiration a dirty rag doll. Insane themselves, they seek to lead others into the chaos of their own insanity, and this trend towards a warped mentality has of late displayed itself in all the arts, such as the sculpture of Epstein, the crotchets and quavers of De Bussy, and the large output of revoltingly sexual fiction and coarse verse. The “pose” of a supreme and scornful egotism marks these devotees of sham and ineptitude, and though they may, in mere numbers, be a negligible quantity, they spread infection, just as one fever-stricken person may infect a whole neighbourhood. From an unsanitary mental outlook no good can come, and the moral filth in which Germany has wallowed for years has so poisoned the German brain that it can devise nothing but treachery and evil. It is a brain that is choked with miasma—and it may be centuries before it is cleansed and restored to sanity.

Meanwhile let us pull the beam out of our own eye before we try to cure other nations’ blindnesses. We have been mad enough in our disregard of honest warnings—we are pretty mad still. We have vied with the old-time “cities of the plain” in reckless orgies of vice and intemperance; but the great War has pulled us back on the road to ruin, and it seems we may be given another chance. Let us begin then by a good try for Sanity. In the first place let us make such laws for those who marry as shall compel them to submit to a searching health examination, so that union may be forbidden to the unfit. A diseased man or woman should no more be allowed to mate than any other diseased animal. The animals arrange this themselves, in a much more common-sense way than humans. They only rear healthy progeny. It is for us to do the same, and to see to it that the mentality of children is safeguarded and set on a sound basis. This cannot be done by forcing education at too early an age, or perplexing young brains with difficulties of learning almost too much for their elders to grasp. The brain in childhood records impressions as a disc prepared for the phonograph records sound, and the circles marked on it in early days are seldom or never effaced. Therefore care must and should be taken that such impressions are of the best. Corporal punishment should never be resorted to as a means of training. A blow to a sensitive child frequently means a lasting contempt for the parent or teacher who inflicts it, and excites a rebellious spirit towards life in general. A vicious impulse or an act of crass stupidity does not necessarily mean inherent wickedness or obstinacy—it only shows that there is some “clog on the wheel” in the brain, which a day’s fasting and cooling medicine may remove. At any rate, such a method of cure is better worth trying than the rod and angry threats which have no real effect on “insane impulse.” Sometimes—indeed often—a physical defect in the brain is the cause of evil thoughts and evil deeds, as in the recent case of a man whose warped mind always tended towards murder and mutilation, and who was found to have a thickening of a portion of the cranium which pressed heavily upon certain of the cells within. The operation of “trepanning” was performed by a surgeon who was scientifically interested in the case, with the result that the previously insane criminal is now a person of perfectly normal type and harmless disposition. Who that knows the history of the German Kaiser’s ancestry can doubt that his brain has been more or less diseased from his birth, and that with his approach towards the “grand climacteric” the incipient lunacy bred within him has become more active and less capable of control! No sane man would have acted as he has done, for, prior to the war, the trade of Europe was practically in Germany’s hands, and in the interests of his country a sane man would have realised the fulness and value of such a conquest, peacefully obtained without the sacrifice of millions of useful lives.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER

The brain is affected by “insane impulse” in the same way as the digestion is affected by improper food. An error in diet will cause pain and general malaise—so will an evil influence or suggestion disorganise the brain cells and create obstacle and confusion within their marvellous formation and movement. A child, from earliest years, needs watching—and those who have that duty to perform should be carefully selected persons who are particular as to general surroundings. A child’s mother or nurse should be a refined woman of soft voice and gracious manners, able to control her own moods as well as the moods of her young charge, so that distinct “character” may be formed and insisted upon. A “no” should be absolute—a “yes” equally so. Character “tells” from the very beginning. The youngest child understands a discipline of firmness conjoined with sweetness and affection—the smallest boy has an ineffable contempt for weakness and vacillation. From the “character” displayed by their elders, children draw their own conclusions. An impatient, hot-tempered father makes callous, indifferent, more or less contemptuous sons and daughters. Children invariably despise and laugh at “temper” in their fathers and “fuss” in their mothers. And the mocking, jeering spirit of scorn is a spirit that grows with years, and makes of the person it dominates an often spiteful and vicious influence in society, creating mischief and rejoicing in the unhappiness of others. One sweet, strong, independent character unconsciously forms the nucleus of many others, while one soured malcontent infects a whole community. We have only to consider the “character” of Prussian militarism—how from two or three blatant and braggart egotists it has spread its infection through an entire people, till the brain of the whole German nation has become clogged with thick and poisonous thought and has been driven by “insane impulse” to the committal of the greatest crime in history. If we would avoid such crimes for the future we must see to it first that the race is healthily and sanely born, and secondly that “character” is the only basis on which all education must be founded, or it will be merely a house of cards, toppling at a breath. And the corner-stone on which “character” itself must be reared is a high and reasonable faith in the Supreme Cause of all creation, coupled with an earnest and devout following of the divine order in which that great Force at the back of all things has ordained this Universe to move.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Religion is not what the Churches would have us accept as such. It is not man-made dogma. So far as Christianity is concerned, the saying is true that “There never was but one Christian and He was crucified.” No more uplifting faith was ever taught than that of Christ; but it has never been spiritually realised or fully practised. Read Christ’s own words in the New Testament, and then ask where shall we find His commands obeyed? In some exceptional cases there have been saintly lives and saintly deeds resulting from the sincere and devout application of the Gospel—but in dealing with this question we have to think of mankind in general, not in an individual sense. This horrible war with its riot of blood and carnage is a damnatory answer to professing Christianity. Man has made of himself his own god—and in the God as revealed or explained in all the conflicting religious “formulas” he has ceased to believe. Faith of any kind must be supported by reason. And Science is the door to the highest heaven of faith. Every new discovery, every new aid to man’s well-being on the planet, is a fresh proof of God. It has taken twenty centuries and more for us to begin learning the wonders of electricity, though the miraculous force, with all its component and divergent radiations, was with us always. It may take us twenty times twenty million centuries to discover God—nevertheless He is with us, notwithstanding our intellectual blindness and lack of Spiritual perception. Science is our peep-hole, through which we may, even now, glimpse Him, but which in time to come will not only be our window, but our open door, through which we may approach Him, full-eyed, without fear. But, to arrive at this, we should remember that Science, like every other power bestowed upon us, must be used sanely; and through “Free-Will”; that is to say, we may bend its force to either good or evil. It is good when we use it for the advantage of humanity—it is evil when we make of it an agent to injure or destroy humanity. The scientist who employs his abilities to discover means whereby he may remedy disease, eliminate pain, and assist his fellow-men to the betterment of life, is that “good and faithful servant” who, when God comes, He finds watching—but the scientist, equally brilliant, who devotes himself to the invention of fiendish instruments of destruction and death, whereby he may make the wholesome earth a terror, the sea a snare, and the sky a scourge, is a warped intellectuality, moved by “insane impulse,” which, combined with creative activity, makes of him a devil rather than a human being. Let any thoughtful person try to realise himself engaged day and night on the work of evolving some instrument of death more cruel than any old-time torture, will he maintain that such persistent concentration on the means of killing can mould him into a worthier or nobler individual? But reverse the position and let him imagine himself absorbed in finding out remedies for pain and suffering, aids to happier and more useful living for mankind in general, will he not admit that however difficult his work may be of accomplishment, he knows within himself that he is striving for constructive good, not destructive evil, and that his science is an output of clear sanity which must bring, not only deep contentment to his mind, but also the consciousness that his energies are moving in harmony with the Divine Spirit of law and order.

This is the true and only religion—to bring one’s soul into unison with the infinite beauty and reason which prevail everywhere in Nature. And the Christian Faith, could it but be relieved from ecclesiastical dogma, is the truest symbol we have of our spiritual and immortal destiny, for it teaches the possible god-in-man which should be born through the purity of woman. Carry the symbol further, and we find the Crucifixion of Love through selfishness and hypocrisy—yet another step, and we are shown the Resurrection from the grave—“the Light of the World” released from the stone and seal of priestcraft, breaking free from the cerements of prejudice, and ascending to the Father of us all! Search as we may through all the religions of the world, we shall never find a grander, simpler “Symbol” of eternal truth than this—the faith preached by Christ. But it must be divested of its clerical encumbrances. Like a glorious ship that has lain too long in harbour, it must be cleansed of weed and barnacle and launched unhindered into the open sea. And those who man the ship must be free from self-interest, from “cranks” and meddlesome theories and formulas—briefly, they must be sane, with the great sanity of nature and nature’s immutable laws. Without this neither Religion nor Civilisation can endure. They can only be crazed attempts to build that “house upon sand,” of which we have been told that “the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; AND GREAT WAS THE FALL OF IT!”

HAS CHRISTIANITY FAILED?

Has Christianity failed? No! Men and women have “failed,” but not Christianity. The very question is to my mind terrible and blasphemous—one of the many terrible and blasphemous utterances common to the Press and current literature during recent years.

It is a shame to a professingly Christian nation that such a question should be asked at all. The greatest, purest religion in the world can have no weight with mere apes of humanity, who practise the most appalling hypocrisy in front of the sacred altars, and assume to believe in and to obey Christian precepts, while indulging to excess in their own private and particular selfish vices and passions, without restraint and without regret.

The nations have mocked at God and disobeyed His laws. It is the old story over again. “The earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” Christ said, “Why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”

Christianity is based on two great laws—love to God and love to one’s neighbour; can any one say that modern civilisation fulfils these demands?

We have only to note the fearful corruption in Church and State, in every phase of politics and business, and the unspeakable vices which pollute so-called “society,” and poison our literature and art, to realise that the “cities of the plain” were no whit worse than our own, and merit no less than they a rain of fire.

But Christianity itself, as taught by Christ, towers above all “failure,” despite the apathy and hypocrisy of thousands of its professing priests, who in many instances are as selfish and flagrant blasphemers as the worst atheist and iconoclast in unchristianised and brutalised Germany.

Without that heavenly faith which helps us towards the attainment and reverence of the Divine in all things, what has Germany become? More cruel and callous, more lost to every sense of decency and honour than the savages of prehistoric times, she is sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

But let us take care that we do not join her in her rush towards annihilation. Political shams and treacherous intrigues would drag us thither—“Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all.” If a weak section of men and women fail to find their souls, Christianity itself has not “failed,” nor will it fail; because it is the divine expression of the unconquerable Spirit of Truth.

The most brilliant House of Lies ever built by man’s careful stupidity falls into dust at the lightest breath of a truth based on eternal equities. The microbes in a rotting cheese may deny the existence of the sun because they do not see it, and may ask, “Has the daylight failed?” But the sun pursues its glorious course, lightening the visible universe.

So it is with Christianity. And those who presume to ask “Has it failed?” are but the microbes in the rotting cheese.

SNOOKS’S OPINION

Snooks is one of those entertaining persons who makes a point of giving an “opinion” on everything. From the Almighty downwards he has what he calls a “calm common-sense view” on all subjects in heaven or on earth, and his chief object in life is to get that “calm, common-sense view” on all to the front, so that the poor, purblind, uneducated public who seldom have any time to indulge in “views,” and still less chance to express them, may understand that there yet exists one truly great man of sane and sober judgment—namely, SNOOKS.

Before the War he used to write letters to the Times on the urgent necessity there was for complete disarmament. In fervent language he pressed the reduction of naval expenses. He was, and is still, under the impression that the Times is still as it was in ages past—a British Thunderer; an Oracle which manifested itself as “I am Sir Oracle; and when I open my mouth let no dog bark.” He forgets that journalism is now only a monstrous Syndicate, not expressive of thoughts, but of Shares and Dividends, and that if the Times were what it once was, it would not publish any letter from Snooks. But Snooks is “fixed” in his opinions. He admits no change in the course of things—an old-established institution must, without argument, remain always as such, and must not totter to decay. When decay sets in, despite Snooks, he firmly denies its possibility.