Notes on Life & Letters

Transcribed from the 1921 J. M. Dent edition by David Price, email

ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

NOTES ON LIFE & LETTERS

Contents:

Author's note

PART I--Letters

BOOKS--1905.

HENRY JAMES--AN APPRECIATION--1905

ALPHONSE DAUDET--1898

GUY DE MAUPASSANT--1904

ANATOLE FRANCE--1904

TURGENEV--1917

STEPHEN CRANE--A NOTE WITHOUT DATES--1919

TALES OF THE SEA--1898

AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA--1898

A HAPPY WANDERER--1910

THE LIFE BEYOND--1910

THE ASCENDING EFFORT--1910

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS--AN APPRECIATION--1907

PART II--Life

AUTOCRACY AND WAR--1905

THE CRIME OF PARTITION--1919

A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM--1916

POLAND REVISITED--1915

FIRST NEWS--1918

WELL DONE--1918

TRADITION--1918

CONFIDENCE--1919

FLIGHT--1917

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE _TITANIC_--1912

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE

_TITANIC_--1912

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS--1914

A FRIENDLY PLACE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I don't know whether I ought to offer an apology for this collection

which has more to do with life than with letters. Its appeal is made to

orderly minds. This, to be frank about it, is a process of tidying up,

which, from the nature of things, cannot be regarded as premature. The

fact is that I wanted to do it myself because of a feeling that had

nothing to do with the considerations of worthiness or unworthiness of

the small (but unbroken) pieces collected within the covers of this

volume. Of course it may be said that I might have taken up a broom and

used it without saying anything about it. That, certainly, is one way of

tidying up.

But it would have been too much to have expected me to treat all this

matter as removable rubbish. All those things had a place in my life.

Whether any of them deserve to have been picked up and ranged on the

shelf--this shelf--I cannot say, and, frankly, I have not allowed my mind

to dwell on the question. I was afraid of thinking myself into a mood

that would hurt my feelings; for those pieces of writing, whatever may be

the comment on their display, appertain to the character of the man.

And so here they are, dusted, which was but a decent thing to do, but in

no way polished, extending from the year '98 to the year '20, a thin

array (for such a stretch of time) of really innocent attitudes: Conrad

literary, Conrad political, Conrad reminiscent, Conrad controversial.

Well, yes! A one-man show--or is it merely the show of one man?

The only thing that will not be found amongst those Figures and Things

that have passed away, will be Conrad _en pantoufles_. It is a

constitutional inability. _Schlafrock und pantoffeln_! Not that! Never!

. . . I don't know whether I dare boast like a certain South American

general who used to say that no emergency of war or peace had ever found

him "with his boots off"; but I may say that whenever the various

periodicals mentioned in this book called on me to come out and blow the

trumpet of personal opinions or strike the pensive lute that speaks of

the past, I always tried to pull on my boots first. I didn't want to do

it, God knows! Their Editors, to whom I beg to offer my thanks here,

made me perform mainly by kindness but partly by bribery. Well, yes!

Bribery? What can you expect? I never pretended to be better than the

people in the next street, or even in the same street.

This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is as near

as I shall ever come to _deshabille_ in public; and perhaps it will do

something to help towards a better vision of the man, if it gives no more

than a partial view of a piece of his back, a little dusty (after the

process of tidying up), a little bowed, and receding from the world not

because of weariness or misanthropy but for other reasons that cannot be

helped: because the leaves fall, the water flows, the clock ticks with

that horrid pitiless solemnity which you must have observed in the

ticking of the hall clock at home. For reasons like that. Yes! It

recedes. And this was the chance to afford one more view of it--even to

my own eyes.

The section within this volume called Letters explains itself, though I

do not pretend to say that it justifies its own existence. It claims

nothing in its defence except the right of speech which I believe belongs

to everybody outside a Trappist monastery. The part I have ventured, for

shortness' sake, to call Life, may perhaps justify itself by the

emotional sincerity of the feelings to which the various papers included

under that head owe their origin. And as they relate to events of which

everyone has a date, they are in the nature of sign-posts pointing out

the direction my thoughts were compelled to take at the various cross-

roads. If anybody detects any sort of consistency in the choice, this

will be only proof positive that wisdom had nothing to do with it.

Whether right or wrong, instinct alone is invariable; a fact which only

adds a deeper shade to its inherent mystery. The appearance of

intellectuality these pieces may present at first sight is merely the

result of the arrangement of words. The logic that may be found there is

only the logic of the language. But I need not labour the point. There

will be plenty of people sagacious enough to perceive the absence of all

wisdom from these pages. But I believe sufficiently in human sympathies

to imagine that very few will question their sincerity. Whatever

delusions I may have suffered from I have had no delusions as to the

nature of the facts commented on here. I may have misjudged their

import: but that is the sort of error for which one may expect a certain

amount of toleration.

The only paper of this collection which has never been published before

is the Note on the Polish Problem. It was written at the request of a

friend to be shown privately, and its "Protectorate" idea, sprung from a

strong sense of the critical nature of the situation, was shaped by the

actual circumstances of the time. The time was about a month before the

entrance of Roumania into the war, and though, honestly, I had seen

already the shadow of coming events I could not permit my misgivings to

enter into and destroy the structure of my plan. I still believe that

there was some sense in it. It may certainly be charged with the

appearance of lack of faith and it lays itself open to the throwing of

many stones; but my object was practical and I had to consider warily the

preconceived notions of the people to whom it was implicitly addressed,

and also their unjustifiable hopes. They were unjustifiable, but who was

to tell them that? I mean who was wise enough and convincing enough to

show them the inanity of their mental attitude? The whole atmosphere was

poisoned with visions that were not so much false as simply impossible.

They were also the result of vague and unconfessed fears, and that made

their strength. For myself, with a very definite dread in my heart, I

was careful not to allude to their character because I did not want the

Note to be thrown away unread. And then I had to remember that the

impossible has sometimes the trick of coming to pass to the confusion of

minds and often to the crushing of hearts.

Of the other papers I have nothing special to say. They are what they

are, and I am by now too hardened a sinner to feel ashamed of

insignificant indiscretions. And as to their appearance in this form I

claim that indulgence to which all sinners against themselves are

entitled.

J. C.

1920.

PART I--LETTERS

BOOKS--1905.

I.

"I have not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have

forgotten what they were about."

These words are reported as having been uttered in our midst not a

hundred years ago, publicly, from the seat of justice, by a civic

magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers have a solemnity and

importance far above the words of other mortals, because our municipal

rulers more than any other variety of our governors and masters represent

the average wisdom, temperament, sense and virtue of the community. This

generalisation, it ought to be promptly said in the interests of eternal

justice (and recent friendship), does not apply to the United States of

America. There, if one may believe the long and helpless indignations of

their daily and weekly Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear to

be thieves of a particularly irrepressible sort. But this by the way. My

concern is with a statement issuing from the average temperament and the

average wisdom of a great and wealthy community, and uttered by a civic

magistrate obviously without fear and without reproach.

I confess I am pleased with his temper, which is that of prudence. "I

have not read the books," he says, and immediately he adds, "and if I

have read them I have forgotten." This is excellent caution. And I like

his style: it is unartificial and bears the stamp of manly sincerity. As

a reported piece of prose this declaration is easy to read and not

difficult to believe. Many books have not been read; still more have

been forgotten. As a piece of civic oratory this declaration is

strikingly effective. Calculated to fall in with the bent of the popular

mind, so familiar with all forms of forgetfulness, it has also the power

to stir up a subtle emotion while it starts a train of thought--and what

greater force can be expected from human speech? But it is in

naturalness that this declaration is perfectly delightful, for there is

nothing more natural than for a grave City Father to forget what the

books he has read once--long ago--in his giddy youth maybe--were about.

And the books in question are novels, or, at any rate, were written as

novels. I proceed thus cautiously (following my illustrious example)

because being without fear and desiring to remain as far as possible

without reproach, I confess at once that I have not read them.

I have not; and of the million persons or more who are said to have read

them, I never met one yet with the talent of lucid exposition

sufficiently developed to give me a connected account of what they are

about. But they are books, part and parcel of humanity, and as such, in

their ever increasing, jostling multitude, they are worthy of regard,

admiration, and compassion.

Especially of compassion. It has been said a long time ago that books

have their fate. They have, and it is very much like the destiny of man.

They share with us the great incertitude of ignominy or glory--of severe

justice and senseless persecution--of calumny and misunderstanding--the

shame of undeserved success. Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's

creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very

thought, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to

truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. But most of all they

resemble us in their precarious hold on life. A bridge constructed

according to the rules of the art of bridge-building is certain of a

long, honourable and useful career. But a book as good in its way as the

bridge may perish obscurely on the very day of its birth. The art of

their creators is not sufficient to give them more than a moment of life.

Of the books born from the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity

of human minds, those that the Muses would love best lie more than all

others under the menace of an early death. Sometimes their defects will

save them. Sometimes a book fair to see may--to use a lofty

expression--have no individual soul. Obviously a book of that sort

cannot die. It can only crumble into dust. But the best of books

drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the

brink of destruction, for men's memories are short, and their sympathy

is, we must admit, a very fluctuating, unprincipled emotion.

No secret of eternal life for our books can be found amongst the formulas

of art, any more than for our bodies in a prescribed combination of

drugs. This is not because some books are not worthy of enduring life,

but because the formulas of art are dependent on things variable,

unstable and untrustworthy; on human sympathies, on prejudices, on likes

and dislikes, on the sense of virtue and the sense of propriety, on

beliefs and theories that, indestructible in themselves, always change

their form--often in the lifetime of one fleeting generation.

II.

Of all books, novels, which the Muses should love, make a serious claim

on our compassion. The art of the novelist is simple. At the same time

it is the most elusive of all creative arts, the most liable to be

obscured by the scruples of its servants and votaries, the one

pre-eminently destined to bring trouble to the mind and the heart of the

artist. After all, the creation of a world is not a small undertaking

except perhaps to the divinely gifted. In truth every novelist must

begin by creating for himself a world, great or little, in which he can

honestly believe. This world cannot be made otherwise than in his own

image: it is fated to remain individual and a little mysterious, and yet

it must resemble something already familiar to the experience, the

thoughts and the sensations of his readers. At the heart of fiction,

even the least worthy of the name, some sort of truth can be found--if

only the truth of a childish theatrical ardour in the game of life, as in

the novels of Dumas the father. But the fair truth of human delicacy can

be found in Mr. Henry James's novels; and the comical, appalling truth of

human rapacity let loose amongst the spoils of existence lives in the

monstrous world created by Balzac. The pursuit of happiness by means

lawful and unlawful, through resignation or revolt, by the clever

manipulation of conventions or by solemn hanging on to the skirts of the

latest scientific theory, is the only theme that can be legitimately

developed by the novelist who is the chronicler of the adventures of

mankind amongst the dangers of the kingdom of the earth. And the kingdom

of this earth itself, the ground upon which his individualities stand,

stumble, or die, must enter into his scheme of faithful record. To

encompass all this in one harmonious conception is a great feat; and even

to attempt it deliberately with serious intention, not from the senseless

prompting of an ignorant heart, is an honourable ambition. For it

requires some courage to step in calmly where fools may be eager to rush.

As a distinguished and successful French novelist once observed of

fiction, "C'est un art _trop_ difficile."

It is natural that the novelist should doubt his ability to cope with his

task. He imagines it more gigantic than it is. And yet literary

creation being only one of the legitimate forms of human activity has no

value but on the condition of not excluding the fullest recognition of

all the more distinct forms of action. This condition is sometimes

forgotten by the man of letters, who often, especially in his youth, is

inclined to lay a claim of exclusive superiority for his own amongst all

the other tasks of the human mind. The mass of verse and prose may

glimmer here and there with the glow of a divine spark, but in the sum of

human effort it has no special importance. There is no justificative

formula for its existence any more than for any other artistic

achievement. With the rest of them it is destined to be forgotten,

without, perhaps, leaving the faintest trace. Where a novelist has an

advantage over the workers in other fields of thought is in his privilege

of freedom--the freedom of expression and the freedom of confessing his

innermost beliefs--which should console him for the hard slavery of the

pen.

III.

Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a

novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of some

romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the free work of its own

inspiration, is a trick worthy of human perverseness which, after

inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of

distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of inferior minds when it is

not the cunning device of those who, uncertain of their talent, would

seek to add lustre to it by the authority of a school. Such, for

instance, are the high priests who have proclaimed Stendhal for a prophet

of Naturalism. But Stendhal himself would have accepted no limitation of

his freedom. Stendhal's mind was of the first order. His spirit above

must be raging with a peculiarly Stendhalesque scorn and indignation. For

the truth is that more than one kind of intellectual cowardice hides

behind the literary formulas. And Stendhal was pre-eminently courageous.

He wrote his two great novels, which so few people have read, in a spirit

of fearless liberty.

It must not be supposed that I claim for the artist in fiction the

freedom of moral Nihilism. I would require from him many acts of faith

of which the first would be the cherishing of an undying hope; and hope,

it will not be contested, implies all the piety of effort and

renunciation. It is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force and

inspiration belonging to the life of this earth. We are inclined to

forget that the way of excellence is in the intellectual, as

distinguished from emotional, humility. What one feels so hopelessly

barren in declared pessimism is just its arrogance. It seems as if the

discovery made by many men at various times that there is much evil in

the world were a source of proud and unholy joy unto some of the modern

writers. That frame of mind is not the proper one in which to approach

seriously the art of fiction. It gives an author--goodness only knows

why--an elated sense of his own superiority. And there is nothing more

dangerous than such an elation to that absolute loyalty towards his

feelings and sensations an author should keep hold of in his most exalted

moments of creation.

To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the

world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of

its being made so. If the flight of imaginative thought may be allowed

to rise superior to many moralities current amongst mankind, a novelist

who would think himself of a superior essence to other men would miss the

first condition of his calling. To have the gift of words is no such

great matter. A man furnished with a long-range weapon does not become a

hunter or a warrior by the mere possession of a fire-arm; many other

qualities of character and temperament are necessary to make him either

one or the other. Of him from whose armoury of phrases one in a hundred

thousand may perhaps hit the far-distant and elusive mark of art I would

ask that in his dealings with mankind he should be capable of giving a

tender recognition to their obscure virtues. I would not have him

impatient with their small failings and scornful of their errors. I

would not have him expect too much gratitude from that humanity whose

fate, as illustrated in individuals, it is open to him to depict as

ridiculous or terrible. I would wish him to look with a large

forgiveness at men's ideas and prejudices, which are by no means the

outcome of malevolence, but depend on their education, their social

status, even their professions. The good artist should expect no

recognition of his toil and no admiration of his genius, because his toil

can with difficulty be appraised and his genius cannot possibly mean

anything to the illiterate who, even from the dreadful wisdom of their

evoked dead, have, so far, culled nothing but inanities and platitudes. I

would wish him to enlarge his sympathies by patient and loving

observation while he grows in mental power. It is in the impartial

practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection for his art

can be found, rather than in the absurd formulas trying to prescribe this

or that particular method of technique or conception. Let him mature the

strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth, which it is

his business to cherish and know, and refrain from calling down his

inspiration ready-made from some heaven of perfections of which he knows

nothing. And I would not grudge him the proud illusion that will come

sometimes to a writer: the illusion that his achievement has almost

equalled the greatness of his dream. For what else could give him the

serenity and the force to hug to his breast as a thing delightful and

human, the virtue, the rectitude and sagacity of his own City, declaring

with simple eloquence through the mouth of a Conscript Father: "I have

not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have forgotten

. . ."

HENRY JAMES--AN APPRECIATION--1905

The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude of Mr. Henry James's

work. His books stand on my shelves in a place whose accessibility

proclaims the habit of frequent communion. But not all his books. There

is no collected edition to date, such as some of "our masters" have been

provided with; no neat rows of volumes in buckram or half calf, putting

forth a hasty claim to completeness, and conveying to my mind a hint of

finality, of a surrender to fate of that field in which all these

victories have been won. Nothing of the sort has been done for Mr. Henry

James's victories in England.

In a world such as ours, so painful with all sorts of wonders, one would

not exhaust oneself in barren marvelling over mere bindings, had not the

fact, or rather the absence of the material fact, prominent in the case

of other men whose writing counts, (for good or evil)--had it not been, I

say, expressive of a direct truth spiritual and intellectual; an accident

of--I suppose--the publishing business acquiring a symbolic meaning from

its negative nature. Because, emphatically, in the body of Mr. Henry

James's work there is no suggestion of finality, nowhere a hint of

surrender, or even of probability of surrender, to his own victorious

achievement in that field where he is a master. Happily, he will never

be able to claim completeness; and, were he to confess to it in a moment

of self-ignorance, he would not be believed by the very minds for whom

such a confession naturally would be meant. It is impossible to think of

Mr. Henry James becoming "complete" otherwise than by the brutality of

our common fate whose finality is meaningless--in the sense of its logic

being of a material order, the logic of a falling stone.

I do not know into what brand of ink Mr. Henry James dips his pen;

indeed, I heard that of late he had been dictating; but I know that his

mind is steeped in the waters flowing from the fountain of intellectual

youth. The thing--a privilege--a miracle--what you will--is not quite

hidden from the meanest of us who run as we read. To those who have the

grace to stay their feet it is manifest. After some twenty years of

attentive acquaintance with Mr. Henry James's work, it grows into

absolute conviction which, all personal feeling apart, brings a sense of

happiness into one's artistic existence. If gratitude, as someone

defined it, is a lively sense of favours to come, it becomes very easy to

be grateful to the author of The Ambassadors--to name the latest of his

works. The favours are sure to come; the spring of that benevolence will

never run dry. The stream of inspiration flows brimful in a

predetermined direction, unaffected by the periods of drought, untroubled

in its clearness by the storms of the land of letters, without languor or

violence in its force, never running back upon itself, opening new

visions at every turn of its course through that richly inhabited country

its fertility has created for our delectation, for our judgment, for our

exploring. It is, in fact, a magic spring.

With this phrase the metaphor of the perennial spring, of the

inextinguishable youth, of running waters, as applied to Mr. Henry

James's inspiration, may be dropped. In its volume and force the body of

his work may be compared rather to a majestic river. All creative art is

magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening,

familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by

the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most

insignificant tides of reality.

Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be

compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of

wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this

snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out

of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be

seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in

this world of relative values--the permanence of memory. And the

multitude feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to

the artist is, in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!" meaning

really, out of my perishable activity into the light of imperishable

consciousness. But everything is relative, and the light of

consciousness is only enduring, merely the most enduring of the things of

this earth, imperishable only as against the short-lived work of our

industrious hands.

When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to pieces, the last airship

fallen to the ground, the last blade of grass have died upon a dying

earth, man, indomitable by his training in resistance to misery and pain,

shall set this undiminished light of his eyes against the feeble glow of

the sun. The artistic faculty, of which each of us has a minute grain,

may find its voice in some individual of that last group, gifted with a

power of expression and courageous enough to interpret the ultimate

experience of mankind in terms of his temperament, in terms of art. I do

not mean to say that he would attempt to beguile the last moments of

humanity by an ingenious tale. It would be too much to expect--from

humanity. I doubt the heroism of the hearers. As to the heroism of the

artist, no doubt is necessary. There would be on his part no heroism.

The artist in his calling of interpreter creates (the clearest form of

demonstration) because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him,

silence is like death; and the postulate was, that there is a group

alive, clustered on his threshold to watch the last flicker of light on a

black sky, to hear the last word uttered in the stilled workshop of the

earth. It is safe to affirm that, if anybody, it will be the imaginative

man who would be moved to speak on the eve of that day without

to-morrow--whether in austere exhortation or in a phrase of sardonic

comment, who can guess?

For my own part, from a short and cursory acquaintance with my kind, I am

inclined to think that the last utterance will formulate, strange as it

may appear, some hope now to us utterly inconceivable. For mankind is

delightful in its pride, its assurance, and its indomitable tenacity. It

will sleep on the battlefield among its own dead, in the manner of an

army having won a barren victory. It will not know when it is beaten.

And perhaps it is right in that quality. The victories are not, perhaps,

so barren as it may appear from a purely strategical, utilitarian point

of view. Mr. Henry James seems to hold that belief. Nobody has rendered

better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or known how to drape the robe

of spiritual honour about the drooping form of a victor in a barren

strife. And the honour is always well won; for the struggles Mr. Henry

James chronicles with such subtle and direct insight are, though only

personal contests, desperate in their silence, none the less heroic (in

the modern sense) for the absence of shouted watchwords, clash of arms

and sound of trumpets. Those are adventures in which only choice souls

are ever involved. And Mr. Henry James records them with a fearless and

insistent fidelity to the _peripeties_ of the contest, and the feelings

of the combatants.

The fiercest excitements of a romance _de cape et d'epee_, the romance of

yard-arm and boarding pike so dear to youth, whose knowledge of action

(as of other things) is imperfect and limited, are matched, for the

quickening of our maturer years, by the tasks set, by the difficulties

presented, to the sense of truth, of necessity--before all, of conduct--of

Mr. Henry James's men and women. His mankind is delightful. It is

delightful in its tenacity; it refuses to own itself beaten; it will

sleep on the battlefield. These warlike images come by themselves under

the pen; since from the duality of man's nature and the competition of

individuals, the life-history of the earth must in the last instance be a

history of a really very relentless warfare. Neither his fellows, nor

his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone. In virtue of these

allies and enemies, he holds his precarious dominion, he possesses his

fleeting significance; and it is this relation in all its manifestations,

great and little, superficial or profound, and this relation alone, that

is commented upon, interpreted, demonstrated by the art of the novelist

in the only possible way in which the task can be performed: by the

independent creation of circumstance and character, achieved against all

the difficulties of expression, in an imaginative effort finding its

inspiration from the reality of forms and sensations. That a sacrifice

must be made, that something has to be given up, is the truth engraved in

the innermost recesses of the fair temple built for our edification by

the masters of fiction. There is no other secret behind the curtain. All

adventure, all love, every success is resumed in the supreme energy of an

act of renunciation. It is the uttermost limit of our power; it is the

most potent and effective force at our disposal on which rest the labours

of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been built

commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans. Like

a natural force which is obscured as much as illuminated by the

multiplicity of phenomena, the power of renunciation is obscured by the

mass of weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and false steps and

compromises which make up the sum of our activity. But no man or woman

worthy of the name can pretend to anything more, to anything greater. And

Mr. Henry James's men and women are worthy of the name, within the limits

his art, so clear, so sure of itself, has drawn round their activities.

He would be the last to claim for them Titanic proportions. The earth

itself has grown smaller in the course of ages. But in every sphere of

human perplexities and emotions, there are more greatnesses than one--not

counting here the greatness of the artist himself. Wherever he stands,

at the beginning or the end of things, a man has to sacrifice his gods to

his passions, or his passions to his gods. That is the problem, great

enough, in all truth, if approached in the spirit of sincerity and

knowledge.

In one of his critical studies, published some fifteen years ago, Mr.

Henry James claims for the novelist the standing of the historian as the

only adequate one, as for himself and before his audience. I think that

the claim cannot be contested, and that the position is unassailable.

Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing. But it is also more

than that; it stands on firmer ground, being based on the reality of

forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based

on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting--on second-hand

impression. Thus fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A

historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the

preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience. As is meet

for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian

of fine consciences.

Of course, this is a general statement; but I don't think its truth will

be, or can be questioned. Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and,

besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be put into the

nutshell of a phrase. The fact remains that he has made his choice, and

that his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success of his art. He

has taken for himself the greater part. The range of a fine conscience

covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be

called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice

discrimination of shades of conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned

with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a

worldly sense. There is, in short, more truth in its working for a

historian to detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite complication

and suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He

has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of

romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no

secrets left within his range. He has disclosed them as they should be

disclosed--that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness has but little

place in this world of his creation. Yet, it is always felt in the

truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses

close upon it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the

contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism

of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.

What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the

intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate

triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of

renunciation. Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous,

like that between substance and shadow.

Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm hold of the substance, of

what is worth having, of what is worth holding. The contrary opinion has

been, if not absolutely affirmed, then at least implied, with some

frequency. To most of us, living willingly in a sort of intellectual

moonlight, in the faintly reflected light of truth, the shadows so firmly

renounced by Mr. Henry James's men and women, stand out endowed with

extraordinary value, with a value so extraordinary that their rejection

offends, by its uncalled-for scrupulousness, those business-like

instincts which a careful Providence has implanted in our breasts. And,

apart from that just cause of discontent, it is obvious that a solution

by rejection must always present a certain lack of finality, especially

startling when contrasted with the usual methods of solution by rewards

and punishments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden

death. Why the reading public which, as a body, has never laid upon a

story-teller the command to be an artist, should demand from him this

sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so it is;

and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire

for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the

longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. Perhaps the only true

desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be

set at rest. One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James's novels. His

books end as an episode in life ends. You remain with the sense of the

life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in

that silence that comes upon the artist-creation when the last word has

been read. It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final. Mr. Henry

James, great artist and faithful historian, never attempts the

impossible.

ALPHONSE DAUDET--1898

It is sweet to talk decorously of the dead who are part of our past, our

indisputable possession. One must admit regretfully that to-day is but a

scramble, that to-morrow may never come; it is only the precious

yesterday that cannot be taken away from us. A gift from the dead, great

and little, it makes life supportable, it almost makes one believe in a

benevolent scheme of creation. And some kind of belief is very

necessary. But the real knowledge of matters infinitely more profound

than any conceivable scheme of creation is with the dead alone. That is

why our talk about them should be as decorous as their silence. Their

generosity and their discretion deserve nothing less at our hands; and

they, who belong already to the unchangeable, would probably disdain to

claim more than this from a mankind that changes its loves and its hates

about every twenty-five years--at the coming of every new and wiser

generation.

One of the most generous of the dead is Daudet, who, with a prodigality

approaching magnificence, gave himself up to us without reserve in his

work, with all his qualities and all his faults. Neither his qualities

nor his faults were great, though they were by no means imperceptible. It

is only his generosity that is out of the common. What strikes one most

in his work is the disinterestedness of the toiler. With more talent

than many bigger men, he did not preach about himself, he did not attempt

to persuade mankind into a belief of his own greatness. He never posed

as a scientist or as a seer, not even as a prophet; and he neglected his

interests to the point of never propounding a theory for the purpose of

giving a tremendous significance to his art, alone of all things, in a

world that, by some strange oversight, has not been supplied with an

obvious meaning. Neither did he affect a passive attitude before the

spectacle of life, an attitude which in gods--and in a rare mortal here

and there--may appear godlike, but assumed by some men, causes one, very

unwillingly, to think of the melancholy quietude of an ape. He was not

the wearisome expounder of this or that theory, here to-day and spurned

to-morrow. He was not a great artist, he was not an artist at all, if

you like--but he was Alphonse Daudet, a man as naively clear, honest, and

vibrating as the sunshine of his native land; that regrettably

undiscriminating sunshine which matures grapes and pumpkins alike, and

cannot, of course, obtain the commendation of the very select who look at

life from under a parasol.

Naturally, being a man from the South, he had a rather outspoken belief

in himself, but his small distinction, worth many a greater, was in not

being in bondage to some vanishing creed. He was a worker who could not

compel the admiration of the few, but who deserved the affection of the

many; and he may be spoken of with tenderness and regret, for he is not

immortal--he is only dead. During his life the simple man whose business

it ought to have been to climb, in the name of Art, some elevation or

other, was content to remain below, on the plain, amongst his creations,

and take an eager part in those disasters, weaknesses, and joys which are

tragic enough in their droll way, but are by no means so momentous and

profound as some writers--probably for the sake of Art--would like to

make us believe. There is, when one thinks of it, a considerable want of

candour in the august view of life. Without doubt a cautious reticence

on the subject, or even a delicately false suggestion thrown out in that

direction is, in a way, praiseworthy, since it helps to uphold the

dignity of man--a matter of great importance, as anyone can see; still

one cannot help feeling that a certain amount of sincerity would not be

wholly blamable. To state, then, with studied moderation a belief that

in unfortunate moments of lucidity is irresistibly borne in upon most of

us--the blind agitation caused mostly by hunger and complicated by love

and ferocity does not deserve either by its beauty, or its morality, or

its possible results, the artistic fuss made over it. It may be

consoling--for human folly is very _bizarre_--but it is scarcely honest

to shout at those who struggle drowning in an insignificant pool: You are

indeed admirable and great to be the victims of such a profound, of such

a terrible ocean!

And Daudet was honest; perhaps because he knew no better--but he was very

honest. If he saw only the surface of things it is for the reason that

most things have nothing but a surface. He did not pretend--perhaps

because he did not know how--he did not pretend to see any depths in a

life that is only a film of unsteady appearances stretched over regions

deep indeed, but which have nothing to do with the half-truths,

half-thoughts, and whole illusions of existence. The road to these

distant regions does not lie through the domain of Art or the domain of

Science where well-known voices quarrel noisily in a misty emptiness; it

is a path of toilsome silence upon which travel men simple and unknown,

with closed lips, or, maybe, whispering their pain softly--only to

themselves.

But Daudet did not whisper; he spoke loudly, with animation, with a clear

felicity of tone--as a bird sings. He saw life around him with extreme

clearness, and he felt it as it is--thinner than air and more elusive

than a flash of lightning. He hastened to offer it his compassion, his

indignation, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a moment of thought

to the momentous issues that are supposed to lurk in the logic of such

sentiments. He tolerated the little foibles, the small ruffianisms, the

grave mistakes; the only thing he distinctly would not forgive was

hardness of heart. This unpractical attitude would have been fatal to a

better man, but his readers have forgiven him. Withal he is chivalrous

to exiled queens and deformed sempstresses, he is pityingly tender to

broken-down actors, to ruined gentlemen, to stupid Academicians; he is

glad of the joys of the commonplace people in a commonplace way--and he

never makes a secret of all this. No, the man was not an artist. What

if his creations are illumined by the sunshine of his temperament so

vividly that they stand before us infinitely more real than the dingy

illusions surrounding our everyday existence? The misguided man is for

ever pottering amongst them, lifting up his voice, dotting his i's in the

wrong places. He takes Tartarin by the arm, he does not conceal his

interest in the Nabob's cheques, his sympathy for an honest Academician

_plus bete que nature_, his hate for an architect _plus mauvais que la

gale_; he is in the thick of it all. He feels with the Duc de Mora and

with Felicia Ruys--and he lets you see it. He does not sit on a pedestal

in the hieratic and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose greatness

consists in being too stupid to care. He cares immensely for his Nabobs,

his kings, his book-keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos. He vibrates

together with his universe, and with lamentable simplicity follows M. de

Montpavon on that last walk along the Boulevards.

"Monsieur de Montpavon marche a la mort," and the creator of that unlucky

_gentilhomme_ follows with stealthy footsteps, with wide eyes, with an

impressively pointing finger. And who wouldn't look? But it is hard; it

is sometimes very hard to forgive him the dotted i's, the pointing

finger, this making plain of obvious mysteries. "Monsieur de Montpavon

marche a la mort," and presently, on the crowded pavement, takes off his

hat with punctilious courtesy to the doctor's wife, who, elegant and

unhappy, is bound on the same pilgrimage. This is too much! We feel we

cannot forgive him such meetings, the constant whisper of his presence.

We feel we cannot, till suddenly the very _naivete_ of it all touches us

with the revealed suggestion of a truth. Then we see that the man is not

false; all this is done in transparent good faith. The man is not

melodramatic; he is only picturesque. He may not be an artist, but he

comes as near the truth as some of the greatest. His creations are seen;

you can look into their very eyes, and these are as thoughtless as the

eyes of any wise generation that has in its hands the fame of writers.

Yes, they are _seen_, and the man who is not an artist is seen also

commiserating, indignant, joyous, human and alive in their very midst.

Inevitably they _marchent a la mort_--and they are very near the truth of

our common destiny: their fate is poignant, it is intensely interesting,

and of not the slightest consequence.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT--1904 {1}

To introduce Maupassant to English readers with apologetic explanations

as though his art were recondite and the tendency of his work immoral

would be a gratuitous impertinence.

Maupassant's conception of his art is such as one would expect from a

practical and resolute mind; but in the consummate simplicity of his

technique it ceases to be perceptible. This is one of its greatest

qualities, and like all the great virtues it is based primarily on self-

denial.

To pronounce a judgment upon the general tendency of an author is a

difficult task. One could not depend upon reason alone, nor yet trust

solely to one's emotions. Used together, they would in many cases

traverse each other, because emotions have their own unanswerable logic.

Our capacity for emotion is limited, and the field of our intelligence is

restricted. Responsiveness to every feeling, combined with the

penetration of every intellectual subterfuge, would end, not in judgment,

but in universal absolution. _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner_. And

in this benevolent neutrality towards the warring errors of human nature

all light would go out from art and from life.

We are at liberty then to quarrel with Maupassant's attitude towards our

world in which, like the rest of us, he has that share which his senses

are able to give him. But we need not quarrel with him violently. If

our feelings (which are tender) happen to be hurt because his talent is

not exercised for the praise and consolation of mankind, our intelligence

(which is great) should let us see that he is a very splendid sinner,

like all those who in this valley of compromises err by over-devotion to

the truth that is in them. His determinism, barren of praise, blame and

consolation, has all the merit of his conscientious art. The worth of

every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is

held.

Except for his philosophy, which in the case of so consummate an artist

does not matter (unless to the solemn and naive mind), Maupassant of all

writers of fiction demands least forgiveness from his readers. He does

not require forgiveness because he is never dull.

The interest of a reader in a work of imagination is either ethical or

that of simple curiosity. Both are perfectly legitimate, since there is

both a moral and an excitement to be found in a faithful rendering of

life. And in Maupassant's work there is the interest of curiosity and

the moral of a point of view consistently preserved and never obtruded

for the end of personal gratification. The spectacle of this immense

talent served by exceptional faculties and triumphing over the most

thankless subjects by an unswerving singleness of purpose is in itself an

admirable lesson in the power of artistic honesty, one may say of

artistic virtue. The inherent greatness of the man consists in this,

that he will let none of the fascinations that beset a writer working in

loneliness turn him away from the straight path, from the vouchsafed

vision of excellence. He will not be led into perdition by the

seductions of sentiment, of eloquence, of humour, of pathos; of all that

splendid pageant of faults that pass between the writer and his probity

on the blank sheet of paper, like the glittering cortege of deadly sins

before the austere anchorite in the desert air of Thebaide. This is not

to say that Maupassant's austerity has never faltered; but the fact

remains that no tempting demon has ever succeeded in hurling him down

from his high, if narrow, pedestal.

It is the austerity of his talent, of course, that is in question. Let

the discriminating reader, who at times may well spare a moment or two to

the consideration and enjoyment of artistic excellence, be asked to

reflect a little upon the texture of two stories included in this volume:

"A Piece of String," and "A Sale." How many openings the last offers for

the gratuitous display of the author's wit or clever buffoonery, the

first for an unmeasured display of sentiment! And both sentiment and

buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the

meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where

Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from setting his cleverness

against the eloquence of the facts. There is humour and pathos in these

stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his

artistic conscience, that all his high qualities appear inherent in the

very things of which he speaks, as if they had been altogether

independent of his presentation. Facts, and again facts are his unique

concern. That is why he is not always properly understood. His facts

are so perfectly rendered that, like the actualities of life itself, they

demand from the reader the faculty of observation which is rare, the

power of appreciation which is generally wanting in most of us who are

guided mainly by empty phrases requiring no effort, demanding from us no

qualities except a vague susceptibility to emotion. Nobody has ever

gained the vast applause of a crowd by the simple and clear exposition of

vital facts. Words alone strung upon a convention have fascinated us as

worthless glass beads strung on a thread have charmed at all times our

brothers the unsophisticated savages of the islands. Now, Maupassant, of

whom it has been said that he is the master of the _mot juste_, has never

been a dealer in words. His wares have been, not glass beads, but

polished gems; not the most rare and precious, perhaps, but of the very

first water of their kind.

That he took trouble with his gems, taking them up in the rough and

polishing each facet patiently, the publication of the two posthumous

volumes of short stories proves abundantly. I think it proves also the

assertion made here that he was by no means a dealer in words. On

looking at the first feeble drafts from which so many perfect stories

have been fashioned, one discovers that what has been matured, improved,

brought to perfection by unwearied endeavour is not the diction of the

tale, but the vision of its true shape and detail. Those first attempts

are not faltering or uncertain in expression. It is the conception which

is at fault. The subjects have not yet been adequately seen. His

proceeding was not to group expressive words, that mean nothing, around

misty and mysterious shapes dear to muddled intellects and belonging

neither to earth nor to heaven. His vision by a more scrupulous,

prolonged and devoted attention to the aspects of the visible world

discovered at last the right words as if miraculously impressed for him

upon the face of things and events. This was the particular shape taken

by his inspiration; it came to him directly, honestly in the light of his

day, not on the tortuous, dark roads of meditation. His realities came

to him from a genuine source, from this universe of vain appearances

wherein we men have found everything to make us proud, sorry, exalted,

and humble.

Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted. It

is not difficult to perceive why. Maupassant is an intensely national

writer. He is so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness, in

his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has been accepted by his

countrymen without having had to pay the tribute of flattery either to

the nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division of the nation.

The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands

excused from the duty of patriotic posturing. He is a Frenchman of

Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to

be universally comprehensible. What is wanting to his universal success

is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness. He neglects to

qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew

paper roses over the tombs. The disregard of these common decencies lays

him open to the charges of cruelty, cynicism, hardness. And yet it can

be safely affirmed that this man wrote from the fulness of a

compassionate heart. He is merciless and yet gentle with his mankind; he

does not rail at their prudent fears and their small artifices; he does

not despise their labours. It seems to me that he looks with an eye of

profound pity upon their troubles, deceptions and misery. But he looks

at them all. He sees--and does not turn away his head. As a matter of

fact he is courageous.

Courage and justice are not popular virtues. The practice of strict

justice is shocking to the multitude who always (perhaps from an obscure

sense of guilt) attach to it the meaning of mercy. In the majority of

us, who want to be left alone with our illusions, courage inspires a

vague alarm. This is what is felt about Maupassant. His qualities, to

use the charming and popular phrase, are not lovable. Courage being a

force will not masquerade in the robes of affected delicacy and

restraint. But if his courage is not of a chivalrous stamp, it cannot be

denied that it is never brutal for the sake of effect. The writer of

these few reflections, inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with

the work of the man, has been struck by the appreciation of Maupassant

manifested by many women gifted with tenderness and intelligence. Their

more delicate and audacious souls are good judges of courage. Their

finer penetration has discovered his genuine masculinity without display,

his virility without a pose. They have discerned in his faithful

dealings with the world that enterprising and fearless temperament, poor

in ideas but rich in power, which appeals most to the feminine mind.

It cannot be denied that he thinks very little. In him extreme energy of

perception achieves great results, as in men of action the energy of

force and desire. His view of intellectual problems is perhaps more

simple than their nature warrants; still a man who has written _Yvette_

cannot be accused of want of subtlety. But one cannot insist enough upon

this, that his subtlety, his humour, his grimness, though no doubt they

are his own, are never presented otherwise but as belonging to our life,

as found in nature, whose beauties and cruelties alike breathe the spirit

of serene unconsciousness.

Maupassant's philosophy of life is more temperamental than rational. He

expects nothing from gods or men. He trusts his senses for information

and his instinct for deductions. It may seem that he has made but little

use of his mind. But let me be clearly understood. His sensibility is

really very great; and it is impossible to be sensible, unless one thinks

vividly, unless one thinks correctly, starting from intelligible premises

to an unsophisticated conclusion.

This is literary honesty. It may be remarked that it does not differ

very greatly from the ideal honesty of the respectable majority, from the

honesty of law-givers, of warriors, of kings, of bricklayers, of all

those who express their fundamental sentiment in the ordinary course of

their activities, by the work of their hands.

The work of Maupassant's hands is honest. He thinks sufficiently to

concrete his fearless conclusions in illuminative instances. He renders

them with that exact knowledge of the means and that absolute devotion to

the aim of creating a true effect--which is art. He is the most

accomplished of narrators.

It is evident that Maupassant looked upon his mankind in another spirit

than those writers who make haste to submerge the difficulties of our

holding-place in the universe under a flood of false and sentimental

assumptions. Maupassant was a true and dutiful lover of our earth. He

says himself in one of his descriptive passages: "Nous autres que seduit

la terre . . ." It was true. The earth had for him a compelling charm.

He looks upon her august and furrowed face with the fierce insight of

real passion. His is the power of detecting the one immutable quality

that matters in the changing aspects of nature and under the

ever-shifting surface of life. To say that he could not embrace in his

glance all its magnificence and all its misery is only to say that he was

human. He lays claim to nothing that his matchless vision has not made

his own. This creative artist has the true imagination; he never

condescends to invent anything; he sets up no empty pretences. And he

stoops to no littleness in his art--least of all to the miserable vanity

of a catching phrase.

ANATOLE FRANCE--1904

I.--"CRAINQUEBILLE"

The latest volume of M. Anatole France purports, by the declaration of

its title-page, to contain several profitable narratives. The story of

Crainquebille's encounter with human justice stands at the head of them;

a tale of a well-bestowed charity closes the book with the touch of

playful irony characteristic of the writer on whom the most distinguished

amongst his literary countrymen have conferred the rank of Prince of

Prose.

Never has a dignity been better borne. M. Anatole France is a good

prince. He knows nothing of tyranny but much of compassion. The

detachment of his mind from common errors and current superstitions

befits the exalted rank he holds in the Commonwealth of Literature. It

is just to suppose that the clamour of the tribes in the forum had little

to do with his elevation. Their elect are of another stamp. They are

such as their need of precipitate action requires. He is the Elect of

the Senate--the Senate of Letters--whose Conscript Fathers have

recognised him as _primus inter pares_; a post of pure honour and of no

privilege.

It is a good choice. First, because it is just, and next, because it is

safe. The dignity will suffer no diminution in M. Anatole France's

hands. He is worthy of a great tradition, learned in the lessons of the

past, concerned with the present, and as earnest as to the future as a

good prince should be in his public action. It is a Republican dignity.

And M. Anatole France, with his sceptical insight into an forms of

government, is a good Republican. He is indulgent to the weaknesses of

the people, and perceives that political institutions, whether contrived

by the wisdom of the few or the ignorance of the many, are incapable of

securing the happiness of mankind. He perceives this truth in the

serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his mind. He expresses his

convictions with measure, restraint and harmony, which are indeed

princely qualities. He is a great analyst of illusions. He searches and

probes their innermost recesses as if they were realities made of an

eternal substance. And therein consists his humanity; this is the

expression of his profound and unalterable compassion. He will flatter

no tribe no section in the forum or in the market-place. His lucid

thought is not beguiled into false pity or into the common weakness of

affection. He feels that men born in ignorance as in the house of an

enemy, and condemned to struggle with error and passions through endless

centuries, should be spared the supreme cruelty of a hope for ever

deferred. He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the

almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege,

to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat

their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can

conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their

irremediable littleness. He knows this well because he is an artist and

a master; but he knows, too, that only in the continuity of effort there

is a refuge from despair for minds less clear-seeing and philosophic than

his own. Therefore he wishes us to believe and to hope, preserving in

our activity the consoling illusion of power and intelligent purpose. He

is a good and politic prince.

"The majesty of justice is contained entire in each sentence pronounced

by the judge in the name of the sovereign people. Jerome Crainquebille,

hawker of vegetables, became aware of the august aspect of the law as he

stood indicted before the tribunal of the higher Police Court on a charge

of insulting a constable of the force." With this exposition begins the

first tale of M. Anatole France's latest volume.

The bust of the Republic and the image of the Crucified Christ appear

side by side above the bench occupied by the President Bourriche and his

two Assessors; all the laws divine and human are suspended over the head

of Crainquebille.

From the first visual impression of the accused and of the court the

author passes by a characteristic and natural turn to the historical and

moral significance of those two emblems of State and Religion whose

accord is only possible to the confused reasoning of an average man. But

the reasoning of M. Anatole France is never confused. His reasoning is

clear and informed by a profound erudition. Such is not the case of

Crainquebille, a street hawker, charged with insulting the constituted

power of society in the person of a policeman. The charge is not true,

nothing was further from his thoughts; but, amazed by the novelty of his

position, he does not reflect that the Cross on the wall perpetuates the

memory of a sentence which for nineteen hundred years all the Christian

peoples have looked upon as a grave miscarriage of justice. He might

well have challenged the President to pronounce any sort of sentence, if

it were merely to forty-eight hours of simple imprisonment, in the name

of the Crucified Redeemer.

He might have done so. But Crainquebille, who has lived pushing every

day for half a century his hand-barrow loaded with vegetables through the

streets of Paris, has not a philosophic mind. Truth to say he has

nothing. He is one of the disinherited. Properly speaking, he has no

existence at all, or, to be strictly truthful, he had no existence till

M. Anatole France's philosophic mind and human sympathy have called him

up from his nothingness for our pleasure, and, as the title-page of the

book has it, no doubt for our profit also.

Therefore we behold him in the dock, a stranger to all historical,

political or social considerations which can be brought to bear upon his

case. He remains lost in astonishment. Penetrated with respect,

overwhelmed with awe, he is ready to trust the judge upon the question of

his transgression. In his conscience he does not think himself culpable;

but M. Anatole France's philosophical mind discovers for us that he feels

all the insignificance of such a thing as the conscience of a mere street-

hawker in the face of the symbols of the law and before the ministers of

social repression. Crainquebille is innocent; but already the young

advocate, his defender, has half persuaded him of his guilt.

On this phrase practically ends the introductory chapter of the story

which, as the author's dedication states, has inspired an admirable

draughtsman and a skilful dramatist, each in his art, to a vision of

tragic grandeur. And this opening chapter without a name--consisting of

two and a half pages, some four hundred words at most--is a masterpiece

of insight and simplicity, resumed in M. Anatole France's distinction of

thought and in his princely command of words.

It is followed by six more short chapters, concise and full, delicate and

complete like the petals of a flower, presenting to us the Adventure of

Crainquebille--Crainquebille before the justice--An Apology for the

President of the Tribunal--Of the Submission of Crainquebille to the Laws

of the Republic--Of his Attitude before the Public Opinion, and so on to

the chapter of the Last Consequences. We see, created for us in his

outward form and innermost perplexity, the old man degraded from his high

estate of a law-abiding street-hawker and driven to insult, really this

time, the majesty of the social order in the person of another police-

constable. It is not an act of revolt, and still less of revenge.

Crainquebille is too old, too resigned, too weary, too guileless to raise

the black standard of insurrection. He is cold and homeless and

starving. He remembers the warmth and the food of the prison. He

perceives the means to get back there. Since he has been locked up, he

argues with himself, for uttering words which, as a matter of fact he did

not say, he will go forth now, and to the first policeman he meets will

say those very words in order to be imprisoned again. Thus reasons

Crainquebille with simplicity and confidence. He accepts facts. Nothing

surprises him. But all the phenomena of social organisation and of his

own life remain for him mysterious to the end. The description of the

policeman in his short cape and hood, who stands quite still, under the

light of a street lamp at the edge of the pavement shining with the wet

of a rainy autumn evening along the whole extent of a long and deserted

thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under

the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just

uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the

popular slang--_Mort aux vaches_! They look upon him shining in the deep

shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, vigilance, and

contempt.

He does not move. Crainquebille, in a feeble and hesitating voice,

repeats once more the insulting words. But this policeman is full of

philosophic superiority, disdain, and indulgence. He refuses to take in

charge the old and miserable vagabond who stands before him shivering and

ragged in the drizzle. And the ruined Crainquebille, victim of a

ridiculous miscarriage of justice, appalled at this magnanimity, passes

on hopelessly down the street full of shadows where the lamps gleam each

in a ruddy halo of falling mist.

M. Anatole France can speak for the people. This prince of the Senate is

invested with the tribunitian power. M. Anatole France is something of a

Socialist; and in that respect he seems to depart from his sceptical

philosophy. But as an illustrious statesman, now no more, a great prince

too, with an ironic mind and a literary gift, has sarcastically remarked

in one of his public speeches: "We are all Socialists now." And in the

sense in which it may be said that we all in Europe are Christians that

is true enough. To many of us Socialism is merely an emotion. An

emotion is much and is also less than nothing. It is the initial

impulse. The real Socialism of to-day is a religion. It has its dogmas.

The value of the dogma does not consist in its truthfulness, and M.

Anatole France, who loves truth, does not love dogma. Only, unlike

religion, the cohesive strength of Socialism lies not in its dogmas but

in its ideal. It is perhaps a too materialistic ideal, and the mind of

M. Anatole France may not find in it either comfort or consolation. It

is not to be doubted that he suspects this himself; but there is

something reposeful in the finality of popular conceptions. M. Anatole

France, a good prince and a good Republican, will succeed no doubt in

being a good Socialist. He will disregard the stupidity of the dogma and

the unlovely form of the ideal. His art will find its own beauty in the

imaginative presentation of wrongs, of errors, and miseries that call

aloud for redress. M. Anatole France is humane. He is also human. He

may be able to discard his philosophy; to forget that the evils are many

and the remedies are few, that there is no universal panacea, that

fatality is invincible, that there is an implacable menace of death in

the triumph of the humanitarian idea. He may forget all that because

love is stronger than truth.

Besides "Crainquebille" this volume contains sixteen other stories and

sketches. To define them it is enough to say that they are written in M.

Anatole France's prose. One sketch entitled "Riquet" may be found

incorporated in the volume of _Monsieur Bergeret a Paris_. "Putois" is a

remarkable little tale, significant, humorous, amusing, and symbolic. It

concerns the career of a man born in the utterance of a hasty and

untruthful excuse made by a lady at a loss how to decline without offence

a very pressing invitation to dinner from a very tyrannical aunt. This

happens in a provincial town, and the lady says in effect: "Impossible,

my dear aunt. To-morrow I am expecting the gardener." And the garden

she glances at is a poor garden; it is a wild garden; its extent is

insignificant and its neglect seems beyond remedy. "A gardener! What

for?" asks the aunt. "To work in the garden." And the poor lady is

abashed at the transparence of her evasion. But the lie is told, it is

believed, and she sticks to it. When the masterful old aunt inquires,

"What is the man's name, my dear?" she answers brazenly, "His name is

Putois." "Where does he live?" "Oh, I don't know; anywhere. He won't

give his address. One leaves a message for him here and there." "Oh! I

see," says the other; "he is a sort of ne'er do well, an idler, a

vagabond. I advise you, my dear, to be careful how you let such a

creature into your grounds; but I have a large garden, and when you do

not want his services I shall find him some work to do, and see he does

it too. Tell your Putois to come and see me." And thereupon Putois is

born; he stalks abroad, invisible, upon his career of vagabondage and

crime, stealing melons from gardens and tea-spoons from pantries,

indulging his licentious proclivities; becoming the talk of the town and

of the countryside; seen simultaneously in far-distant places; pursued by

gendarmes, whose brigadier assures the uneasy householders that he "knows

that scamp very well, and won't be long in laying his hands upon him." A

detailed description of his person collected from the information

furnished by various people appears in the columns of a local newspaper.

Putois lives in his strength and malevolence. He lives after the manner

of legendary heroes, of the gods of Olympus. He is the creation of the

popular mind. There comes a time when even the innocent originator of

that mysterious and potent evil-doer is induced to believe for a moment

that he may have a real and tangible presence. All this is told with the

wit and the art and the philosophy which is familiar to M. Anatole

France's readers and admirers. For it is difficult to read M. Anatole

France without admiring him. He has the princely gift of arousing a

spontaneous loyalty, but with this difference, that the consent of our

reason has its place by the side of our enthusiasm. He is an artist. As

an artist he awakens emotion. The quality of his art remains, as an

inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but the proceedings of his

thought compel our intellectual admiration.

In this volume the trifle called "The Military Manoeuvres at Montil,"

apart from its far-reaching irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit

of automobilism. Somehow or other, how you cannot tell, the flight over

the country in a motor-car, its sensations, its fatigue, its vast

topographical range, its incidents down to the bursting of a tyre, are

brought home to you with all the force of high imaginative perception. It

would be out of place to analyse here the means by which the true

impression is conveyed so that the absurd rushing about of General

Decuir, in a 30-horse-power car, in search of his cavalry brigade,

becomes to you a more real experience than any day-and-night run you may

ever have taken yourself. Suffice it to say that M. Anatole France had

thought the thing worth doing and that it becomes, in virtue of his art,

a distinct achievement. And there are other sketches in this book, more

or less slight, but all worthy of regard--the childhood's recollections

of Professor Bergeret and his sister Zoe; the dialogue of the two upright

judges and the conversation of their horses; the dream of M. Jean

Marteau, aimless, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams one

ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike. The vision of M. Anatole

France, the Prince of Prose, ranges over all the extent of his realm,

indulgent and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding treasures

of truth and beauty concealed from less gifted magicians. Contemplating

the exactness of his images and the justice of his judgment, the freedom

of his fancy and the fidelity of his purpose, one becomes aware of the

futility of literary watchwords and the vanity of all the schools of

fiction. Not that M. Anatole France is a wild and untrammelled genius.

He is not that. Issued legitimately from the past, he is mindful of his

high descent. He has a critical temperament joined to creative power. He

surveys his vast domain in a spirit of princely moderation that knows

nothing of excesses but much of restraint.

II.--"L'ILE DES PINGOUINS"

M. Anatole France, historian and adventurer, has given us many profitable

histories of saints and sinners, of Roman procurators and of officials of

the Third Republic, of _grandes dames_ and of dames not so very grand, of

ornate Latinists and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and

generals--in fact, the history of all humanity as it appears to his

penetrating eye, serving a mind marvellously incisive in its scepticism,

and a heart that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice,

contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony. As to M. Anatole

France's adventures, these are well-known. They lie open to this

prodigal world in the four volumes of the _Vie Litteraire_, describing

the adventures of a choice soul amongst masterpieces. For such is the

romantic view M. Anatole France takes of the life of a literary critic.

History and adventure, then, seem to be the chosen fields for the

magnificent evolutions of M. Anatole France's prose; but no material

limits can stand in the way of a genius. The latest book from his

pen--which may be called golden, as the lips of an eloquent saint once

upon a time were acclaimed golden by the faithful--this latest book is,

up to a certain point, a book of travel.

I would not mislead a public whose confidence I court. The book is not a

record of globe-trotting. I regret it. It would have been a joy to

watch M. Anatole France pouring the clear elixir compounded of his

Pyrrhonic philosophy, his Benedictine erudition, his gentle wit and most

humane irony into such an unpromising and opaque vessel. He would have

attempted it in a spirit of benevolence towards his fellow men and of

compassion for that life of the earth which is but a vain and transitory

illusion. M. Anatole France is a great magician, yet there seem to be

tasks which he dare not face. For he is also a sage.

It is a book of ocean travel--not, however, as understood by Herr Ballin

of Hamburg, the Machiavel of the Atlantic. It is a book of exploration

and discovery--not, however, as conceived by an enterprising journal and

a shrewdly philanthropic king of the nineteenth century. It is nothing

so recent as that. It dates much further back; long, long before the

dark age when Krupp of Essen wrought at his steel plates and a German

Emperor condescendingly suggested the last improvements in ships' dining-

tables. The best idea of the inconceivable antiquity of that enterprise

I can give you is by stating the nature of the explorer's ship. It was a

trough of stone, a vessel of hollowed granite.

The explorer was St. Mael, a saint of Armorica. I had never heard of him

before, but I believe now in his arduous existence with a faith which is

a tribute to M. Anatole France's pious earnestness and delicate irony.

St. Mael existed. It is distinctly stated of him that his life was a

progress in virtue. Thus it seems that there may be saints that are not

progressively virtuous. St. Mael was not of that kind. He was

industrious. He evangelised the heathen. He erected two hundred and

eighteen chapels and seventy-four abbeys. Indefatigable navigator of the

faith, he drifted casually in the miraculous trough of stone from coast

to coast and from island to island along the northern seas. At the age

of eighty-four his high stature was bowed by his long labours, but his

sinewy arms preserved their vigour and his rude eloquence had lost

nothing of its force.

A nautical devil tempting him by the worldly suggestion of fitting out

his desultory, miraculous trough with mast, sail, and rudder for swifter

progression (the idea of haste has sprung from the pride of Satan), the

simple old saint lent his ear to the subtle arguments of the progressive

enemy of mankind.

The venerable St. Mael fell away from grace by not perceiving at once

that a gift of heaven cannot be improved by the contrivances of human

ingenuity. His punishment was adequate. A terrific tempest snatched the

rigged ship of stone in its whirlwinds, and, to be brief, the dazed St.

Mael was stranded violently on the Island of Penguins.

The saint wandered away from the shore. It was a flat, round island

whence rose in the centre a conical mountain capped with clouds. The

rain was falling incessantly--a gentle, soft rain which caused the simple

saint to exclaim in great delight: "This is the island of tears, the

island of contrition!"

Meantime the inhabitants had flocked in their tens of thousands to an

amphitheatre of rocks; they were penguins; but the holy man, rendered

deaf and purblind by his years, mistook excusably the multitude of silly,

erect, and self-important birds for a human crowd. At once he began to

preach to them the doctrine of salvation. Having finished his discourse

he lost no time in administering to his interesting congregation the

sacrament of baptism.

If you are at all a theologian you will see that it was no mean adventure

to happen to a well-meaning and zealous saint. Pray reflect on the

magnitude of the issues! It is easy to believe what M. Anatole France

says, that, when the baptism of the Penguins became known in Paradise, it

caused there neither joy nor sorrow, but a profound sensation.

M. Anatole France is no mean theologian himself. He reports with great

casuistical erudition the debates in the saintly council assembled in

Heaven for the consideration of an event so disturbing to the economy of

religious mysteries. Ultimately the baptised Penguins had to be turned

into human beings; and together with the privilege of sublime hopes these

innocent birds received the curse of original sin, with the labours, the

miseries, the passions, and the weaknesses attached to the fallen

condition of humanity.

At this point M. Anatole France is again an historian. From being the

Hakluyt of a saintly adventurer he turns (but more concisely) into the

Gibbon of Imperial Penguins. Tracing the development of their

civilisation, the absurdity of their desires, the pathos of their folly

and the ridiculous littleness of their quarrels, his golden pen lightens

by relevant but unpuritanical anecdotes the austerity of a work devoted

to a subject so grave as the Polity of Penguins. It is a very admirable

treatment, and I hasten to congratulate all men of receptive mind on the

feast of wisdom which is theirs for the mere plucking of a book from a

shelf.

TURGENEV {2}--1917

Dear Edward,

I am glad to hear that you are about to publish a study of Turgenev, that

fortunate artist who has found so much in life for us and no doubt for

himself, with the exception of bare justice. Perhaps that will come to

him, too, in time. Your study may help the consummation. For his luck

persists after his death. What greater luck an artist like Turgenev

could wish for than to find in the English-speaking world a translator

who has missed none of the most delicate, most simple beauties of his

work, and a critic who has known how to analyse and point out its high

qualities with perfect sympathy and insight.

After twenty odd years of friendship (and my first literary friendship

too) I may well permit myself to make that statement, while thinking of

your wonderful Prefaces as they appeared from time to time in the volumes

of Turgenev's complete edition, the last of which came into the light of

public indifference in the ninety-ninth year of the nineteenth century.

With that year one may say, with some justice, that the age of Turgenev

had come to an end too; yet work so simple and human, so independent of

the transitory formulas and theories of art, belongs as you point out in

the Preface to _Smoke_ "to all time."

Turgenev's creative activity covers about thirty years. Since it came to

an end the social and political events in Russia have moved at an

accelerated pace, but the deep origins of them, in the moral and

intellectual unrest of the souls, are recorded in the whole body of his

work with the unerring lucidity of a great national writer. The first

stirrings, the first gleams of the great forces can be seen almost in

every page of the novels, of the short stories and of _A Sportsman's

Sketches_--those marvellous landscapes peopled by unforgettable figures.

Those will never grow old. Fashions in monsters do change, but the truth

of humanity goes on for ever, unchangeable and inexhaustible in the

variety of its disclosures. Whether Turgenev's art, which has captured

it with such mastery and such gentleness, is for "all time" it is hard to

say. Since, as you say yourself, he brings all his problems and

characters to the test of love, we may hope that it will endure at least

till the infinite emotions of love are replaced by the exact simplicity

of perfected Eugenics. But even by then, I think, women would not have

changed much; and the women of Turgenev who understood them so tenderly,

so reverently and so passionately--they, at least, are certainly for all

time.

Women are, one may say, the foundation of his art. They are Russian of

course. Never was a writer so profoundly, so whole-souledly national.

But for non-Russian readers, Turgenev's Russia is but a canvas on which

the incomparable artist of humanity lays his colours and his forms in the

great light and the free air of the world. Had he invented them all and

also every stick and stone, brook and hill and field in which they move,

his personages would have been just as true and as poignant in their

perplexed lives. They are his own and also universal. Any one can

accept them with no more question than one accepts the Italians of

Shakespeare.

In the larger, non-Russian view, what should make Turgenev sympathetic

and welcome to the English-speaking world, is his essential humanity. All

his creations, fortunate and unfortunate, oppressed and oppressors, are

human beings, not strange beasts in a menagerie or damned souls knocking

themselves to pieces in the stuffy darkness of mystical contradictions.

They are human beings, fit to live, fit to suffer, fit to struggle, fit

to win, fit to lose, in the endless and inspiring game of pursuing from

day to day the ever-receding future.

I began by calling him lucky, and he was, in a sense. But one ends by

having some doubts. To be so great without the slightest parade and so

fine without any tricks of "cleverness" must be fatal to any man's

influence with his contemporaries.

Frankly, I don't want to appear as qualified to judge of things Russian.

It wouldn't be true. I know nothing of them. But I am aware of a few

general truths, such as, for instance, that no man, whatever may be the

loftiness of his character, the purity of his motives and the peace of

his conscience--no man, I say, likes to be beaten with sticks during the

greater part of his existence. From what one knows of his history it

appears clearly that in Russia almost any stick was good enough to beat

Turgenev with in his latter years. When he died the characteristically

chicken-hearted Autocracy hastened to stuff his mortal envelope into the

tomb it refused to honour, while the sensitive Revolutionists went on for

a time flinging after his shade those jeers and curses from which that

impartial lover of _all_ his countrymen had suffered so much in his

lifetime. For he, too, was sensitive. Every page of his writing bears

its testimony to the fatal absence of callousness in the man.

And now he suffers a little from other things. In truth it is not the

convulsed terror-haunted Dostoievski but the serene Turgenev who is under

a curse. For only think! Every gift has been heaped on his cradle:

absolute sanity and the deepest sensibility, the clearest vision and the

quickest responsiveness, penetrating insight and unfailing generosity of

judgment, an exquisite perception of the visible world and an unerring

instinct for the significant, for the essential in the life of men and

women, the clearest mind, the warmest heart, the largest sympathy--and

all that in perfect measure. There's enough there to ruin the prospects

of any writer. For you know very well, my dear Edward, that if you had

Antinous himself in a booth of the world's fair, and killed yourself in

protesting that his soul was as perfect as his body, you wouldn't get one

per cent. of the crowd struggling next door for a sight of the Double-

headed Nightingale or of some weak-kneed giant grinning through a horse

collar.

J. C.

STEPHEN CRANE--A NOTE WITHOUT DATES--1919

My acquaintance with Stephen Crane was brought about by Mr. Pawling,

partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.

One day Mr. Pawling said to me: "Stephen Crane has arrived in England. I

asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned two

names. One of them was yours." I had then just been reading, like the

rest of the world, Crane's _Red Badge of Courage_. The subject of that

story was war, from the point of view of an individual soldier's

emotions. That individual (he remains nameless throughout) was

interesting enough in himself, but on turning over the pages of that

little book which had for the moment secured such a noisy recognition I

had been even more interested in the personality of the writer. The

picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his

country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an

earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative

force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether

worthy of admiration.

Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from the

reading of the _Nigger of the Narcissus_, a book of mine which had also

been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.

On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I saw a young man of medium

stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the

eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some

purpose.

He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things

of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that

seemed to reach, within life's appearances and forms, the very spirit of

life's truth. His ignorance of the world at large--he had seen very

little of it--did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts,

events, and picturesque men.

His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight interesting,

and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some people, mainly

Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect. But not on me. Whatever he

said had a personal note, and he expressed himself with a graphic

simplicity which was extremely engaging. He knew little of literature,

either of his own country or of any other, but he was himself a wonderful

artist in words whenever he took a pen into his hand. Then his gift came

out--and it was seen then to be much more than mere felicity of language.

His impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the surface. In his

writing he was very sure of his effects. I don't think he was ever in

doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to me that he was but

half aware of the exceptional quality of his achievement.

This achievement was curtailed by his early death. It was a great loss

to his friends, but perhaps not so much to literature. I think that he

had given his measure fully in the few books he had the time to write.

Let me not be misunderstood: the loss was great, but it was the loss of

the delight his art could give, not the loss of any further possible

revelation. As to himself, who can say how much he gained or lost by

quitting so early this world of the living, which he knew how to set

before us in the terms of his own artistic vision? Perhaps he did not

lose a great deal. The recognition he was accorded was rather languid

and given him grudgingly. The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales

in this country was from Mr. W. Henley in the _New Review_ and later,

towards the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his

magazine. For the rest I must say that during his sojourn in England he

had the misfortune to be, as the French say, _mal entoure_. He was beset

by people who understood not the quality of his genius and were

antagonistic to the deeper fineness of his nature. Some of them have

died since, but dead or alive they are not worth speaking about now. I

don't think he had any illusions about them himself: yet there was a

strain of good-nature and perhaps of weakness in his character which

prevented him from shaking himself free from their worthless and

patronising attentions, which in those days caused me much secret

irritation whenever I stayed with him in either of his English homes. My

wife and I like best to remember him riding to meet us at the gate of the

Park at Brede. Born master of his sincere impressions, he was also a

born horseman. He never appeared so happy or so much to advantage as on

the back of a horse. He had formed the project of teaching my eldest boy

to ride, and meantime, when the child was about two years old, presented

him with his first dog.

I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his arrival in London. I saw him

for the last time on his last day in England. It was in Dover, in a big

hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the sea. He had

been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some place in Germany, but

one glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most

forlorn of all hopes. The last words he breathed out to me were: "I am

tired. Give my love to your wife and child." When I stopped at the door

for another look I saw that he had turned his head on the pillow and was

staring wistfully out of the window at the sails of a cutter yacht that

glided slowly across the frame, like a dim shadow against the grey sky.

Those who have read his little tale, "Horses," and the story, "The Open

Boat," in the volume of that name, know with what fine understanding he

loved horses and the sea. And his passage on this earth was like that of

a horseman riding swiftly in the dawn of a day fated to be short and

without sunshine.

TALES OF THE SEA--1898

It is by his irresistible power to reach the adventurous side in the

character, not only of his own, but of all nations, that Marryat is

largely human. He is the enslaver of youth, not by the literary

artifices of presentation, but by the natural glamour of his own

temperament. To his young heroes the beginning of life is a splendid and

warlike lark, ending at last in inheritance and marriage. His novels are

not the outcome of his art, but of his character, like the deeds that

make up his record of naval service. To the artist his work is

interesting as a completely successful expression of an unartistic

nature. It is absolutely amazing to us, as the disclosure of the spirit

animating the stirring time when the nineteenth century was young. There

is an air of fable about it. Its loss would be irreparable, like the

curtailment of national story or the loss of an historical document. It

is the beginning and the embodiment of an inspiring tradition.

To this writer of the sea the sea was not an element. It was a stage,

where was displayed an exhibition of valour, and of such achievement as

the world had never seen before. The greatness of that achievement

cannot be pronounced imaginary, since its reality has affected the

destinies of nations; nevertheless, in its grandeur it has all the

remoteness of an ideal. History preserves the skeleton of facts and,

here and there, a figure or a name; but it is in Marryat's novels that we

find the mass of the nameless, that we see them in the flesh, that we

obtain a glimpse of the everyday life and an insight into the spirit

animating the crowd of obscure men who knew how to build for their

country such a shining monument of memories.

Marryat is really a writer of the Service. What sets him apart is his

fidelity. His pen serves his country as well as did his professional

skill and his renowned courage. His figures move about between water and

sky, and the water and the sky are there only to frame the deeds of the

Service. His novels, like amphibious creatures, live on the sea and

frequent the shore, where they flounder deplorably. The loves and the

hates of his boys are as primitive as their virtues and their vices. His

women, from the beautiful Agnes to the witch-like mother of Lieutenant

Vanslyperken, are, with the exception of the sailors' wives, like the

shadows of what has never been. His Silvas, his Ribieras, his Shriftens,

his Delmars remind us of people we have heard of somewhere, many times,

without ever believing in their existence. His morality is honourable

and conventional. There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent puns in

the midst of carnage. His naiveties are perpetrated in a lurid light.

There is an endless variety of types, all surface, with hard edges, with

memorable eccentricities of outline, with a childish and heroic effect in

the drawing. They do not belong to life; they belong exclusively to the

Service. And yet they live; there is a truth in them, the truth of their

time; a headlong, reckless audacity, an intimacy with violence, an

unthinking fearlessness, and an exuberance of vitality which only years

of war and victories can give. His adventures are enthralling; the

rapidity of his action fascinates; his method is crude, his

sentimentality, obviously incidental, is often factitious. His greatness

is undeniable.

It is undeniable. To a multitude of readers the navy of to-day is

Marryat's navy still. He has created a priceless legend. If he be not

immortal, yet he will last long enough for the highest ambition, because

he has dealt manfully with an inspiring phase in the history of that

Service on which the life of his country depends. The tradition of the

great past he has fixed in his pages will be cherished for ever as the

guarantee of the future. He loved his country first, the Service next,

the sea perhaps not at all. But the sea loved him without reserve. It

gave him his professional distinction and his author's fame--a fame such

as not often falls to the lot of a true artist.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, another man wrote of

the sea with true artistic instinct. He is not invincibly young and

heroic; he is mature and human, though for him also the stress of

adventure and endeavour must end fatally in inheritance and marriage. For

James Fenimore Cooper nature was not the frame-work, it was an essential

part of existence. He could hear its voice, he could understand its

silence, and he could interpret both for us in his prose with all that

felicity and sureness of effect that belong to a poetical conception

alone. His fame, as wide but less brilliant than that of his

contemporary, rests mostly on a novel which is not of the sea. But he

loved the sea and looked at it with consummate understanding. In his sea

tales the sea inter-penetrates with life; it is in a subtle way a factor

in the problem of existence, and, for all its greatness, it is always in

touch with the men, who, bound on errands of war or gain, traverse its

immense solitudes. His descriptions have the magistral ampleness of a

gesture indicating the sweep of a vast horizon. They embrace the colours

of sunset, the peace of starlight, the aspects of calm and storm, the

great loneliness of the waters, the stillness of watchful coasts, and the

alert readiness which marks men who live face to face with the promise

and the menace of the sea.

He knows the men and he knows the sea. His method may be often faulty,

but his art is genuine. The truth is within him. The road to legitimate

realism is through poetical feeling, and he possesses that--only it is

expressed in the leisurely manner of his time. He has the knowledge of

simple hearts. Long Tom Coffin is a monumental seaman with the

individuality of life and the significance of a type. It is hard to

believe that Manual and Borroughcliffe, Mr. Marble of Marble-Head,

Captain Tuck of the packet-ship _Montauk_, or Daggett, the tenacious

commander of the _Sea Lion_ of Martha's Vineyard, must pass away some day

and be utterly forgotten. His sympathy is large, and his humour is as

genuine--and as perfectly unaffected--as is his art. In certain passages

he reaches, very simply, the heights of inspired vision.

He wrote before the great American language was born, and he wrote as

well as any novelist of his time. If he pitches upon episodes redounding

to the glory of the young republic, surely England has glory enough to

forgive him, for the sake of his excellence, the patriotic bias at her

expense. The interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging; and

there runs through his work a steady vein of friendliness for the old

country which the succeeding generations of his compatriots have replaced

by a less definite sentiment.

Perhaps no two authors of fiction influenced so many lives and gave to so

many the initial impulse towards a glorious or a useful career. Through

the distances of space and time those two men of another race have shaped

also the life of the writer of this appreciation. Life is life, and art

is art--and truth is hard to find in either. Yet in testimony to the

achievement of both these authors it may be said that, in the case of the

writer at least, the youthful glamour, the headlong vitality of the one

and the profound sympathy, the artistic insight of the other--to which he

had surrendered--have withstood the brutal shock of facts and the wear of

laborious years. He has never regretted his surrender.

AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA {3}--1898

In his new volume, Mr. Hugh Clifford, at the beginning of the sketch

entitled "At the Heels of the White Man," expresses his anxiety as to the

state of England's account in the Day-Book of the Recording Angel "for

the good and the bad we have done--both with the most excellent

intentions." The intentions will, no doubt, count for something, though,

of course, every nation's conquests are paved with good intentions; or it

may be that the Recording Angel, looking compassionately at the strife of

hearts, may disdain to enter into the Eternal Book the facts of a

struggle which has the reward of its righteousness even on this earth--in

victory and lasting greatness, or in defeat and humiliation.

And, also, love will count for much. If the opinion of a looker-on from

afar is worth anything, Mr. Hugh Clifford's anxiety about his country's

record is needless. To the Malays whom he governs, instructs, and guides

he is the embodiment of the intentions, of the conscience and might of

his race. And of all the nations conquering distant territories in the

name of the most excellent intentions, England alone sends out men who,

with such a transparent sincerity of feeling, can speak, as Mr. Hugh

Clifford does, of the place of toil and exile as "the land which is very

dear to me, where the best years of my life have been spent"--and where

(I would stake my right hand on it) his name is pronounced with respect

and affection by those brown men about whom he writes.

All these studies are on a high level of interest, though not all on the

same level. The descriptive chapters, results of personal observation,

seem to me the most interesting. And, indeed, in a book of this kind it

is the author's personality which awakens the greatest interest; it

shapes itself before one in the ring of sentences, it is seen between the

lines--like the progress of a traveller in the jungle that may be traced

by the sound of the _parang_ chopping the swaying creepers, while the man

himself is glimpsed, now and then, indistinct and passing between the

trees. Thus in his very vagueness of appearance, the writer seen through

the leaves of his book becomes a fascinating companion in a land of

fascination.

It is when dealing with the aspects of nature that Mr. Hugh Clifford is

most convincing. He looks upon them lovingly, for the land is "very dear

to him," and he records his cherished impressions so that the forest, the

great flood, the jungle, the rapid river, and the menacing rock dwell in

the memory of the reader long after the book is closed. He does not say

anything, in so many words, of his affection for those who live amid the

scenes he describes so well, but his humanity is large enough to pardon

us if we suspect him of such a rare weakness. In his preface he

expresses the regret at not having the gifts (whatever they may be) of

the kailyard school, or--looking up to a very different plane--the genius

of Mr. Barrie. He has, however, gifts of his own, and his genius has

served his country and his fortunes in another direction. Yet it is when

attempting what he professes himself unable to do, in telling us the

simple story of Umat, the punkah-puller, with unaffected simplicity and

half-concealed tenderness, that he comes nearest to artistic achievement.

Each study in this volume presents some idea, illustrated by a fact told

without artifice, but with an elective sureness of knowledge. The story

of Tukang Burok's love, related in the old man's own words, conveys the

very breath of Malay thought and speech. In "His Little Bill," the

coolie, Lim Teng Wah, facing his debtor, stands very distinct before us,

an insignificant and tragic victim of fate with whom he had quarrelled to

the death over a matter of seven dollars and sixty-eight cents. The

story of "The Schooner with a Past" may be heard, from the Straits

eastward, with many variations. Out in the Pacific the schooner becomes

a cutter, and the pearl-divers are replaced by the Black-birds of the

Labour Trade. But Mr. Hugh Clifford's variation is very good. There is

a passage in it--a trifle--just the diver as seen coming up from the

depths, that in its dozen lines or so attains to distinct artistic value.

And, scattered through the book, there are many other passages of almost

equal descriptive excellence.

Nevertheless, to apply artistic standards to this book would be a

fundamental error in appreciation. Like faith, enthusiasm, or heroism,

art veils part of the truth of life to make the rest appear more

splendid, inspiring, or sinister. And this book is only truth,

interesting and futile, truth unadorned, simple and straightforward. The

Resident of Pahang has the devoted friendship of Umat, the punkah-puller,

he has an individual faculty of vision, a large sympathy, and the

scrupulous consciousness of the good and evil in his hands. He may as

well rest content with such gifts. One cannot expect to be, at the same

time, a ruler of men and an irreproachable player on the flute.

A HAPPY WANDERER--1910

Converts are interesting people. Most of us, if you will pardon me for

betraying the universal secret, have, at some time or other, discovered

in ourselves a readiness to stray far, ever so far, on the wrong road.

And what did we do in our pride and our cowardice? Casting fearful

glances and waiting for a dark moment, we buried our discovery

discreetly, and kept on in the old direction, on that old, beaten track

we have not had courage enough to leave, and which we perceive now more

clearly than before to be but the arid way of the grave.

The convert, the man capable of grace (I am speaking here in a secular

sense), is not discreet. His pride is of another kind; he jumps gladly

off the track--the touch of grace is mostly sudden--and facing about in a

new direction may even attain the illusion of having turned his back on

Death itself.

Some converts have, indeed, earned immortality by their exquisite

indiscretion. The most illustrious example of a convert, that Flower of

chivalry, Don Quixote de la Mancha, remains for all the world the only

genuine immortal hidalgo. The delectable Knight of Spain became

converted, as you know, from the ways of a small country squire to an

imperative faith in a tender and sublime mission. Forthwith he was

beaten with sticks and in due course shut up in a wooden cage by the

Barber and the Priest, the fit ministers of a justly shocked social

order. I do not know if it has occurred to anybody yet to shut up Mr.

Luffmann in a wooden cage. {4} I do not raise the point because I wish

him any harm. Quite the contrary. I am a humane person. Let him take

it as the highest praise--but I must say that he richly deserves that

sort of attention.

On the other hand I would not have him unduly puffed up with the pride of

the exalted association. The grave wisdom, the admirable amenity, the

serene grace of the secular patron-saint of all mortals converted to

noble visions are not his. Mr. Luffmann has no mission. He is no Knight

sublimely Errant. But he is an excellent Vagabond. He is full of merit.

That peripatetic guide, philosopher and friend of all nations, Mr.

Roosevelt, would promptly excommunicate him with a big stick. The truth

is that the ex-autocrat of all the States does not like rebels against

the sullen order of our universe. Make the best of it or perish--he

cries. A sane lineal successor of the Barber and the Priest, and a

sagacious political heir of the incomparable Sancho Panza (another great

Governor), that distinguished litterateur has no mercy for dreamers. And

our author happens to be a man of (you may trace them in his books) some

rather fine reveries.

Every convert begins by being a rebel, and I do not see myself how any

mercy can possibly be extended to Mr. Luffmann. He is a convert from the

creed of strenuous life. For this renegade the body is of little

account; to him work appears criminal when it suppresses the demands of

the inner life; while he was young he did grind virtuously at the sacred

handle, and now, he says, he has fallen into disgrace with some people

because he believes no longer in toil without end. Certain respectable

folk hate him--so he says--because he dares to think that "poetry,

beauty, and the broad face of the world are the best things to be in love

with." He confesses to loving Spain on the ground that she is "the land

of to-morrow, and holds the gospel of never-mind." The universal

striving to push ahead he considers mere vulgar folly. Didn't I tell you

he was a fit subject for the cage?

It is a relief (we are all humane, are we not?) to discover that this

desperate character is not altogether an outcast. Little girls seem to

like him. One of them, after listening to some of his tales, remarked to

her mother, "Wouldn't it be lovely if what he says were true!" Here you

have Woman! The charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor

swallow a gnat. Not publicly. These operations, without which the world

they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left

to us--men. And then we are chided for being coarse. This is a refined

objection but does not seem fair. Another little girl--or perhaps the

same little girl--wrote to him in Cordova, "I hope Poste-Restante is a

nice place, and that you are very comfortable." Woman again! I have in

my time told some stories which are (I hate false modesty) both true and

lovely. Yet no little girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms. And why?

Simply because I am not enough of a Vagabond. The dear despots of the

fireside have a weakness for lawless characters. This is amiable, but

does not seem rational.

Being Quixotic, Mr. Luffmann is no Impressionist. He is far too earnest

in his heart, and not half sufficiently precise in his style to be that.

But he is an excellent narrator. More than any Vagabond I have ever met,

he knows what he is about. There is not one of his quiet days which is

dull. You will find in them a love-story not made up, the

_coup-de-foudre_, the lightning-stroke of Spanish love; and you will

marvel how a spell so sudden and vehement can be at the same time so

tragically delicate. You will find there landladies devoured with

jealousy, astute housekeepers, delightful boys, wise peasants, touchy

shopkeepers, all the _cosas de Espana_--and, in addition, the pale girl

Rosario. I recommend that pathetic and silent victim of fate to your

benevolent compassion. You will find in his pages the humours of

starving workers of the soil, the vision among the mountains of an

exulting mad spirit in a mighty body, and many other visions worthy of

attention. And they are exact visions, for this idealist is no

visionary. He is in sympathy with suffering mankind, and has a grasp on

real human affairs. I mean the great and pitiful affairs concerned with

bread, love, and the obscure, unexpressed needs which drive great crowds

to prayer in the holy places of the earth.

But I like his conception of what a "quiet" life is like! His quiet days

require no fewer than forty-two of the forty-nine provinces of Spain to

take their ease in. For his unquiet days, I presume, the seven--or is it

nine?--crystal spheres of Alexandrian cosmogony would afford, but a

wretchedly straitened space. A most unconventional thing is his notion

of quietness. One would take it as a joke; only that, perchance, to the

author of _Quiet Days in Spain_ all days may seem quiet, because, a

courageous convert, he is now at peace with himself.

How better can we take leave of this interesting Vagabond than with the

road salutation of passing wayfarers: "And on you be peace! . . . You

have chosen your ideal, and it is a good choice. There's nothing like

giving up one's life to an unselfish passion. Let the rich and the

powerful of this globe preach their sound gospel of palpable progress.

The part of the ideal you embrace is the better one, if only in its

illusions. No great passion can be barren. May a world of gracious and

poignant images attend the lofty solitude of your renunciation!"

THE LIFE BEYOND--1910

You have no doubt noticed that certain books produce a sort of physical

effect on one--mostly an audible effect. I am not alluding here to Blue

books or to books of statistics. The effect of these is simply

exasperating and no more. No! the books I have in mind are just the

common books of commerce you and I read when we have five minutes to

spare, the usual hired books published by ordinary publishers, printed by

ordinary printers, and censored (when they happen to be novels) by the

usual circulating libraries, the guardians of our firesides, whose names

are household words within the four seas.

To see the fair and the brave of this free country surrendering

themselves with unbounded trust to the direction of the circulating

libraries is very touching. It is even, in a sense, a beautiful

spectacle, because, as you know, humility is a rare and fragrant virtue;

and what can be more humble than to surrender your morals and your

intellect to the judgment of one of your tradesmen? I suppose that there

are some very perfect people who allow the Army and Navy Stores to censor

their diet. So much merit, however, I imagine, is not frequently met

with here below. The flesh, alas! is weak, and--from a certain point of

view--so important!

A superficial person might be rendered miserable by the simple question:

What would become of us if the circulating libraries ceased to exist? It

is a horrid and almost indelicate supposition, but let us be brave and

face the truth. On this earth of ours nothing lasts. _Tout passe, tout

casse, tout lasse_. Imagine the utter wreck overtaking the morals of our

beautiful country-houses should the circulating libraries suddenly die!

But pray do not shudder. There is no occasion.

Their spirit shall survive. I declare this from inward conviction, and

also from scientific information received lately. For observe: the

circulating libraries are human institutions. I beg you to follow me

closely. They are human institutions, and being human, they are not

animal, and, therefore, they are spiritual. Thus, any man with enough

money to take a shop, stock his shelves, and pay for advertisements shall

be able to evoke the pure and censorious spectre of the circulating

libraries whenever his own commercial spirit moves him.

For, and this is the information alluded to above, Science, having in its

infinite wanderings run up against various wonders and mysteries, is

apparently willing now to allow a spiritual quality to man and, I

conclude, to all his works as well.

I do not know exactly what this "Science" may be; and I do not think that

anybody else knows; but that is the information stated shortly. It is

contained in a book reposing under my thoughtful eyes. {5} I know it is

not a censored book, because I can see for myself that it is not a novel.

The author, on his side, warns me that it is not philosophy, that it is

not metaphysics, that it is not natural science. After this

comprehensive warning, the definition of the book becomes, you will

admit, a pretty hard nut to crack.

But meantime let us return for a moment to my opening remark about the

physical effect of some common, hired books. A few of them (not

necessarily books of verse) are melodious; the music some others make for

you as you read has the disagreeable emphasis of a barrel-organ; the

tinkling-cymbals book (it was not written by a humorist) I only met once.

But there is infinite variety in the noises books do make. I have now on

my shelves a book apparently of the most valuable kind which, before I

have read half-a-dozen lines, begins to make a noise like a buzz-saw. I

am inconsolable; I shall never, I fear, discover what it is all about,

for the buzzing covers the words, and at every try I am absolutely forced

to give it up ere the end of the page is reached.

The book, however, which I have found so difficult to define, is by no

means noisy. As a mere piece of writing it may be described as being

breathless itself and taking the reader's breath away, not by the

magnitude of its message but by a sort of anxious volubility in the

delivery. The constantly elusive argument and the illustrative

quotations go on without a single reflective pause. For this reason

alone the reading of that work is a fatiguing process.

The author himself (I use his own words) "suspects" that what he has

written "may be theology after all." It may be. It is not my place

either to allay or to confirm the author's suspicion of his own work. But

I will state its main thesis: "That science regarded in the gross

dictates the spirituality of man and strongly implies a spiritual destiny

for individual human beings." This means: Existence after Death--that

is, Immortality.

To find out its value you must go to the book. But I will observe here

that an Immortality liable at any moment to betray itself fatuously by

the forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor Crookes is scarcely

worth having. Can you imagine anything more squalid than an Immortality

at the beck and call of Eusapia Palladino? That woman lives on the top

floor of a Neapolitan house, and gets our poor, pitiful, august dead,

flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, who have

loved, suffered and died, as we must love, suffer, and die--she gets them

to beat tambourines in a corner and protrude shadowy limbs through a

curtain. This is particularly horrible, because, if one had to put one's

faith in these things one could not even die safely from disgust, as one

would long to do.

And to believe that these manifestations, which the author evidently

takes for modern miracles, will stay our tottering faith; to believe that

the new psychology has, only the other day, discovered man to be a

"spiritual mystery," is really carrying humility towards that universal

provider, Science, too far.

* * * * *

We moderns have complicated our old perplexities to the point of

absurdity; our perplexities older than religion itself. It is not for

nothing that for so many centuries the priest, mounting the steps of the

altar, murmurs, "Why art thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou trouble

me?" Since the day of Creation two veiled figures, Doubt and Melancholy,

are pacing endlessly in the sunshine of the world. What humanity needs

is not the promise of scientific immortality, but compassionate pity in

this life and infinite mercy on the Day of Judgment.

And, for the rest, during this transient hour of our pilgrimage, we may

well be content to repeat the Invocation of Sar Peladan. Sar Peladan was

an occultist, a seer, a modern magician. He believed in astrology, in

the spirits of the air, in elves; he was marvellously and deliciously

absurd. Incidentally he wrote some incomprehensible poems and a few

pages of harmonious prose, for, you must know, "a magician is nothing

else but a great harmonist." Here are some eight lines of the

magnificent Invocation. Let me, however, warn you, strictly between

ourselves, that my translation is execrable. I am sorry to say I am no

magician.

"O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive! Open your arms to the son,

prodigal and weary.

"I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from

us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery. . . .

OEdipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust,

regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to

you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!"

THE ASCENDING EFFORT--1910

Much good paper has been lamentably wasted to prove that science has

destroyed, that it is destroying, or, some day, may destroy poetry.

Meantime, unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the guileless poets have

gone on singing in a sweet strain. How they dare do the impossible and

virtually forbidden thing is a cause for wonder but not for legislation.

Not yet. We are at present too busy reforming the silent burglar and

planning concerts to soothe the savage breast of the yelling hooligan. As

somebody--perhaps a publisher--said lately: "Poetry is of no account now-

a-days."

But it is not totally neglected. Those persons with gold-rimmed

spectacles whose usual occupation is to spy upon the obvious have

remarked audibly (on several occasions) that poetry has so far not given

to science any acknowledgment worthy of its distinguished position in the

popular mind. Except that Tennyson looked down the throat of a foxglove,

that Erasmus Darwin wrote _The Loves of the Plants_ and a scoffer _The

Loves of the Triangles_, poets have been supposed to be indecorously

blind to the progress of science. What tribute, for instance, has poetry

paid to electricity? All I can remember on the spur of the moment is Mr.

Arthur Symons' line about arc lamps: "Hung with the globes of some

unnatural fruit."

Commerce and Manufacture praise on every hand in their not mute but

inarticulate way the glories of science. Poetry does not play its part.

Behold John Keats, skilful with the surgeon's knife; but when he writes

poetry his inspiration is not from the operating table. Here I am

reminded, though, of a modern instance to the contrary in prose. Mr. H.

G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has never written a line of verse, was

inspired a few years ago to write a short story, _Under the Knife_. Out

of a clock-dial, a brass rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured

for us a sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of the

Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment

Day; a great voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the

words: "There shall be no more pain!" I advise you to look up that

story, so human and so intimate, because Mr. Wells, the writer of prose

whose amazing inventiveness we all know, remains a poet even in his most

perverse moments of scorn for things as they are. His poetic imagination

is sometimes even greater than his inventiveness, I am not afraid to say.

But, indeed, imaginative faculty would make any man a poet--were he born

without tongue for speech and without hands to seize his fancy and fasten

her down to a wretched piece of paper.

* * * * *

The book {6} which in the course of the last few days I have opened and

shut several times is not imaginative. But, on the other hand, it is not

a dumb book, as some are. It has even a sort of sober and serious

eloquence, reminding us that not poetry alone is at fault in this matter.

Mr. Bourne begins his _Ascending Effort_ with a remark by Sir Francis

Galton upon Eugenics that "if the principles he was advocating were to

become effective they must be introduced into the national conscience,

like a new religion." "Introduced" suggests compulsory vaccination. Mr.

Bourne, who is not a theologian, wishes to league together not science

and religion, but science and the arts. "The intoxicating power of art,"

he thinks, is the very thing needed to give the desired effect to the

doctrines of science. In uninspired phrase he points to the arts playing

once upon a time a part in "popularising the Christian tenets." With

painstaking fervour as great as the fervour of prophets, but not so

persuasive, he foresees the arts some day popularising science. Until

that day dawns, science will continue to be lame and poetry blind. He

himself cannot smooth or even point out the way, though he thinks that "a

really prudent people would be greedy of beauty," and their public

authorities "as careful of the sense of comfort as of sanitation."

As the writer of those remarkable rustic note-books, _The Bettesworth

Book_ and _Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer_, the author has a claim upon our

attention. But his seriousness, his patience, his almost touching

sincerity, can only command the respect of his readers and nothing more.

He is obsessed by science, haunted and shadowed by it, until he has been

bewildered into awe. He knows, indeed, that art owes its triumphs and

its subtle influence to the fact that it issues straight from our organic

vitality, and is a movement of life-cells with their matchless

unintellectual knowledge. But the fact that poetry does not seem

obviously in love with science has never made him doubt whether it may

not be an argument against his haste to see the marriage ceremony

performed amid public rejoicings.

Many a man has heard or read and believes that the earth goes round the

sun; one small blob of mud among several others, spinning ridiculously

with a waggling motion like a top about to fall. This is the Copernican

system, and the man believes in the system without often knowing as much

about it as its name. But while watching a sunset he sheds his belief;

he sees the sun as a small and useful object, the servant of his needs

and the witness of his ascending effort, sinking slowly behind a range of

mountains, and then he holds the system of Ptolemy. He holds it without

knowing it. In the same way a poet hears, reads, and believes a thousand

undeniable truths which have not yet got into his blood, nor will do

after reading Mr. Bourne's book; he writes, therefore, as if neither

truths nor book existed. Life and the arts follow dark courses, and will

not turn aside to the brilliant arc-lights of science. Some day, without

a doubt,--and it may be a consolation to Mr. Bourne to know it--fully

informed critics will point out that Mr. Davies's poem on a dark woman

combing her hair must have been written after the invasion of

appendicitis, and that Mr. Yeats's "Had I the heaven's embroidered

cloths" came before radium was quite unnecessarily dragged out of its

respectable obscurity in pitchblende to upset the venerable (and

comparatively naive) chemistry of our young days.

There are times when the tyranny of science and the cant of science are

alarming, but there are other times when they are entertaining--and this

is one of them. "Many a man prides himself" says Mr. Bourne, "on his

piety or his views of art, whose whole range of ideas, could they be

investigated, would be found ordinary, if not base, because they have

been adopted in compliance with some external persuasion or to serve some

timid purpose instead of proceeding authoritatively from the living

selection of his hereditary taste." This extract is a fair sample of the

book's thought and of its style. But Mr. Bourne seems to forget that

"persuasion" is a vain thing. The appreciation of great art comes from

within.

It is but the merest justice to say that the transparent honesty of Mr.

Bourne's purpose is undeniable. But the whole book is simply an earnest

expression of a pious wish; and, like the generality of pious wishes,

this one seems of little dynamic value--besides being impracticable.

Yes, indeed. Art has served Religion; artists have found the most

exalted inspiration in Christianity; but the light of Transfiguration

which has illuminated the profoundest mysteries of our sinful souls is

not the light of the generating stations, which exposes the depths of our

infatuation where our mere cleverness is permitted for a while to grope

for the unessential among invincible shadows.

THE CENSOR OF PLAYS--AN APPRECIATION--1907

A couple of years ago I was moved to write a one-act play--and I lived

long enough to accomplish the task. We live and learn. When the play

was finished I was informed that it had to be licensed for performance.

Thus I learned of the existence of the Censor of Plays. I may say

without vanity that I am intelligent enough to have been astonished by

that piece of information: for facts must stand in some relation to time

and space, and I was aware of being in England--in the twentieth-century

England. The fact did not fit the date and the place. That was my first

thought. It was, in short, an improper fact. I beg you to believe that

I am writing in all seriousness and am weighing my words scrupulously.

Therefore I don't say inappropriate. I say improper--that is: something

to be ashamed of. And at first this impression was confirmed by the

obscurity in which the figure embodying this after all considerable fact

had its being. The Censor of Plays! His name was not in the mouths of

all men. Far from it. He seemed stealthy and remote. There was about

that figure the scent of the far East, like the peculiar atmosphere of a

Mandarin's back yard, and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, that epoch

when mankind tried to stand still in a monstrous illusion of final

certitude attained in morals, intellect and conscience.

It was a disagreeable impression. But I reflected that probably the

censorship of plays was an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a survival,

since it seemed obviously at variance with the genius of the people, but

an heirloom of past ages, a bizarre and imported curiosity preserved

because of that weakness one has for one's old possessions apart from any

intrinsic value; one more object of exotic _virtu_, an Oriental

_potiche_, a _magot chinois_ conceived by a childish and extravagant

imagination, but allowed to stand in stolid impotence in the twilight of

the upper shelf.

Thus I quieted my uneasy mind. Its uneasiness had nothing to do with the

fate of my one-act play. The play was duly produced, and an

exceptionally intelligent audience stared it coldly off the boards. It

ceased to exist. It was a fair and open execution. But having survived

the freezing atmosphere of that auditorium I continued to exist,

labouring under no sense of wrong. I was not pleased, but I was content.

I was content to accept the verdict of a free and independent public,

judging after its conscience the work of its free, independent and

conscientious servant--the artist.

Only thus can the dignity of artistic servitude be preserved--not to

speak of the bare existence of the artist and the self-respect of the

man. I shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public. To the self-

respect of the public the present appeal against the censorship is being

made and I join in it with all my heart.

For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish

figure, the _magot chinois_ whom I believed to be but a memorial of our

forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque _potiche_, works! The

absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be alive with a sort of

(surely) unconscious life worthy of its traditions. It heaves its

stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous arm: and with the

censorship, like a Bravo of old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs

its victim from behind in the twilight of its upper shelf. Less

picturesque than the Venetian in cloak and mask, less estimable, too, in

this, that the assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk deriving no

countenance from the powers of the Republic, it stands more malevolent,

inasmuch that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but the body, whereas

the grotesque thing nodding its mandarin head may in its absurd

unconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of an honest, of an

artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.

This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western

Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's plug

hat and umbrella, is with us. It is an office. An office of trust. And

from time to time there is found an official to fill it. He is a public

man. The least prominent of public men, the most unobtrusive, the most

obscure if not the most modest.

But however obscure, a public man may be told the truth if only once in

his life. His office flourishes in the shade; not in the rustic shade

beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of mind, where tyranny

of every sort flourishes. Its holder need not have either brain or

heart, no sight, no taste, no imagination, not even bowels of compassion.

He needs not these things. He has power. He can kill thought, and

incidentally truth, and incidentally beauty, providing they seek to live

in a dramatic form. He can do it, without seeing, without understanding,

without feeling anything; out of mere stupid suspicion, as an

irresponsible Roman Caesar could kill a senator. He can do that and

there is no one to say him nay. He may call his cook (Moliere used to do

that) from below and give her five acts to judge every morning as a

matter of constant practice and still remain the unquestioned destroyer

of men's honest work. He may have a glass too much. This accident has

happened to persons of unimpeachable morality--to gentlemen. He may

suffer from spells of imbecility like Clodius. He may . . . what might

he not do! I tell you he is the Caesar of the dramatic world. There has

been since the Roman Principate nothing in the way of irresponsible power

to compare with the office of the Censor of Plays.

Looked at in this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in the

odious and the absurd. This figure in whose power it is to suppress an

intellectual conception--to kill thought (a dream for a mad brain, my

masters!)--seems designed in a spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the

greatness of a Philistine's conceit and his moral cowardice.

But this is England in the twentieth century, and one wonders that there

can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post. It is a matter

for meditation. Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion

in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must

be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.

He must be unconscious. It is one of the qualifications for his

magistracy. Other qualifications are equally easy. He must have done

nothing, expressed nothing, imagined nothing. He must be obscure,

insignificant and mediocre--in thought, act, speech and sympathy. He

must know nothing of art, of life--and of himself. For if he did he

would not dare to be what he is. Like that much questioned and

mysterious bird, the phoenix, he sits amongst the cold ashes of his

predecessor upon the altar of morality, alone of his kind in the sight of

wondering generations.

And I will end with a quotation reproducing not perhaps the exact words

but the true spirit of a lofty conscience.

"Often when sitting down to write the notice of a play, especially when I

felt it antagonistic to my canons of art, to my tastes or my convictions,

I hesitated in the fear lest my conscientious blame might check the

development of a great talent, my sincere judgment condemn a worthy mind.

With the pen poised in my hand I hesitated, whispering to myself 'What if

I were perchance doing my part in killing a masterpiece.'"

Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaitre--dramatist and dramatic

critic, a great citizen and a high magistrate in the Republic of Letters;

a Censor of Plays exercising his august office openly in the light of

day, with the authority of a European reputation. But then M. Jules

Lemaitre is a man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine

conscience--not an obscure hollow Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr.

Stiggins's plug hat and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother--the

State.

Frankly, is it not time to knock the improper object off its shelf? It

has stood too long there. Hatched in Pekin (I should say) by some Board

of Respectable Rites, the little caravan monster has come to us by way of

Moscow--I suppose. It is outlandish. It is not venerable. It does not

belong here. Is it not time to knock it off its dark shelf with some

implement appropriate to its worth and status? With an old broom handle

for instance.

PART II--LIFE

AUTOCRACY AND WAR--1905

From the firing of the first shot on the banks of the Sha-ho, the fate of

the great battle of the Russo-Japanese war hung in the balance for more

than a fortnight. The famous three-day battles, for which history has

reserved the recognition of special pages, sink into insignificance

before the struggles in Manchuria engaging half a million men on fronts

of sixty miles, struggles lasting for weeks, flaming up fiercely and

dying away from sheer exhaustion, to flame up again in desperate

persistence, and end--as we have seen them end more than once--not from

the victor obtaining a crushing advantage, but through the mortal

weariness of the combatants.

We have seen these things, though we have seen them only in the cold,

silent, colourless print of books and newspapers. In stigmatising the

printed word as cold, silent and colourless, I have no intention of

putting a slight upon the fidelity and the talents of men who have

provided us with words to read about the battles in Manchuria. I only

wished to suggest that in the nature of things, the war in the Far East

has been made known to us, so far, in a grey reflection of its terrible

and monotonous phases of pain, death, sickness; a reflection seen in the

perspective of thousands of miles, in the dim atmosphere of official

reticence, through the veil of inadequate words. Inadequate, I say,

because what had to be reproduced is beyond the common experience of war,

and our imagination, luckily for our peace of mind, has remained a

slumbering faculty, notwithstanding the din of humanitarian talk and the

real progress of humanitarian ideas. Direct vision of the fact, or the

stimulus of a great art, can alone make it turn and open its eyes heavy

with blessed sleep; and even there, as against the testimony of the

senses and the stirring up of emotion, that saving callousness which

reconciles us to the conditions of our existence, will assert itself

under the guise of assent to fatal necessity, or in the enthusiasm of a

purely aesthetic admiration of the rendering. In this age of knowledge

our sympathetic imagination, to which alone we can look for the ultimate

triumph of concord and justice, remains strangely impervious to

information, however correctly and even picturesquely conveyed. As to

the vaunted eloquence of a serried array of figures, it has all the

futility of precision without force. It is the exploded superstition of

enthusiastic statisticians. An over-worked horse falling in front of our

windows, a man writhing under a cart-wheel in the streets awaken more

genuine emotion, more horror, pity, and indignation than the stream of

reports, appalling in their monotony, of tens of thousands of decaying

bodies tainting the air of the Manchurian plains, of other tens of

thousands of maimed bodies groaning in ditches, crawling on the frozen

ground, filling the field hospitals; of the hundreds of thousands of

survivors no less pathetic and even more tragic in being left alive by

fate to the wretched exhaustion of their pitiful toil.

An early Victorian, or perhaps a pre-Victorian, sentimentalist, looking

out of an upstairs window, I believe, at a street--perhaps Fleet Street

itself--full of people, is reported, by an admiring friend, to have wept

for joy at seeing so much life. These arcadian tears, this facile

emotion worthy of the golden age, comes to us from the past, with solemn

approval, after the close of the Napoleonic wars and before the series of

sanguinary surprises held in reserve by the nineteenth century for our

hopeful grandfathers. We may well envy them their optimism of which this

anecdote of an amiable wit and sentimentalist presents an extreme

instance, but still, a true instance, and worthy of regard in the

spontaneous testimony to that trust in the life of the earth, triumphant

at last in the felicity of her children. Moreover, the psychology of

individuals, even in the most extreme instances, reflects the general

effect of the fears and hopes of its time. Wept for joy! I should think

that now, after eighty years, the emotion would be of a sterner sort. One

could not imagine anybody shedding tears of joy at the sight of much life

in a street, unless, perhaps, he were an enthusiastic officer of a

general staff or a popular politician, with a career yet to make. And

hardly even that. In the case of the first tears would be

unprofessional, and a stern repression of all signs of joy at the

provision of so much food for powder more in accord with the rules of

prudence; the joy of the second would be checked before it found issue in

weeping by anxious doubts as to the soundness of these electors' views

upon the question of the hour, and the fear of missing the consensus of

their votes.

No! It seems that such a tender joy would be misplaced now as much as

ever during the last hundred years, to go no further back. The end of

the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal

mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell. In

its lurid blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of

military and administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless

vividness. And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the

day that the glorified French Revolution itself, except for its

destructive force, was in essentials a mediocre phenomenon. The

parentage of that great social and political upheaval was intellectual,

the idea was elevated; but it is the bitter fate of any idea to lose its

royal form and power, to lose its "virtue" the moment it descends from

its solitary throne to work its will among the people. It is a king

whose destiny is never to know the obedience of his subjects except at

the cost of degradation. The degradation of the ideas of freedom and

justice at the root of the French Revolution is made manifest in the

person of its heir; a personality without law or faith, whom it has been

the fashion to represent as an eagle, but who was, in truth, more like a

sort of vulture preying upon the body of a Europe which did, indeed, for

some dozen of years, very much resemble a corpse. The subtle and

manifold influence for evil of the Napoleonic episode as a school of

violence, as a sower of national hatreds, as the direct provocator of

obscurantism and reaction, of political tyranny and injustice, cannot

well be exaggerated.

The nineteenth century began with wars which were the issue of a

corrupted revolution. It may be said that the twentieth begins with a

war which is like the explosive ferment of a moral grave, whence may yet

emerge a new political organism to take the place of a gigantic and

dreaded phantom. For a hundred years the ghost of Russian might,

overshadowing with its fantastic bulk the councils of Central and Western

Europe, sat upon the gravestone of autocracy, cutting off from air, from

light, from all knowledge of themselves and of the world, the buried

millions of Russian people. Not the most determined cockney

sentimentalist could have had the heart to weep for joy at the thought of

its teeming numbers! And yet they were living, they are alive yet,

since, through the mist of print, we have seen their blood freezing

crimson upon the snow of the squares and streets of St. Petersburg; since

their generations born in the grave are yet alive enough to fill the

ditches and cover the fields of Manchuria with their torn limbs; to send

up from the frozen ground of battlefields a chorus of groans calling for

vengeance from Heaven; to kill and retreat, or kill and advance, without

intermission or rest for twenty hours, for fifty hours, for whole weeks

of fatigue, hunger, cold, and murder--till their ghastly labour, worthy

of a place amongst the punishments of Dante's Inferno, passing through

the stages of courage, of fury, of hopelessness, sinks into the night of

crazy despair.

It seems that in both armies many men are driven beyond the bounds of

sanity by the stress of moral and physical misery. Great numbers of

soldiers and regimental officers go mad as if by way of protest against

the peculiar sanity of a state of war: mostly among the Russians, of

course. The Japanese have in their favour the tonic effect of success;

and the innate gentleness of their character stands them in good stead.

But the Japanese grand army has yet another advantage in this

nerve-destroying contest, which for endless, arduous toil of killing

surpasses all the wars of history. It has a base for its operations; a

base of a nature beyond the concern of the many books written upon the so-

called art of war, which, considered by itself, purely as an exercise of

human ingenuity, is at best only a thing of well-worn, simple artifices.

The Japanese army has for its base a reasoned conviction; it has behind

it the profound belief in the right of a logical necessity to be appeased

at the cost of so much blood and treasure. And in that belief, whether

well or ill founded, that army stands on the high ground of conscious

assent, shouldering deliberately the burden of a long-tried faithfulness.

The other people (since each people is an army nowadays), torn out from a

miserable quietude resembling death itself, hurled across space, amazed,

without starting-point of its own or knowledge of the aim, can feel

nothing but a horror-stricken consciousness of having mysteriously become

the plaything of a black and merciless fate.

The profound, the instructive nature of this war is resumed by the

memorable difference in the spiritual state of the two armies; the one

forlorn and dazed on being driven out from an abyss of mental darkness

into the red light of a conflagration, the other with a full knowledge of

its past and its future, "finding itself" as it were at every step of the

trying war before the eyes of an astonished world. The greatness of the

lesson has been dwarfed for most of us by an often half-conscious

prejudice of race-difference. The West having managed to lodge its hasty

foot on the neck of the East, is prone to forget that it is from the East

that the wonders of patience and wisdom have come to a world of men who

set the value of life in the power to act rather than in the faculty of

meditation. It has been dwarfed by this, and it has been obscured by a

cloud of considerations with whose shaping wisdom and meditation had

little or nothing to do; by the weary platitudes on the military

situation which (apart from geographical conditions) is the same

everlasting situation that has prevailed since the times of Hannibal and

Scipio, and further back yet, since the beginning of historical

record--since prehistoric times, for that matter; by the conventional

expressions of horror at the tale of maiming and killing; by the rumours

of peace with guesses more or less plausible as to its conditions. All

this is made legitimate by the consecrated custom of writers in such time

as this--the time of a great war. More legitimate in view of the

situation created in Europe are the speculations as to the course of

events after the war. More legitimate, but hardly more wise than the

irresponsible talk of strategy that never changes, and of terms of peace

that do not matter.

And above it all--unaccountably persistent--the decrepit, old, hundred

years old, spectre of Russia's might still faces Europe from across the

teeming graves of Russian people. This dreaded and strange apparition,

bristling with bayonets, armed with chains, hung over with holy images;

that something not of this world, partaking of a ravenous ghoul, of a

blind Djinn grown up from a cloud, and of the Old Man of the Sea, still

faces us with its old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance,

stamping its shadowy feet upon the gravestone of autocracy already

cracked beyond repair by the torpedoes of Togo and the guns of Oyama,

already heaving in the blood-soaked ground with the first stirrings of a

resurrection.

Never before had the Western world the opportunity to look so deep into

the black abyss which separates a soulless autocracy posing as, and even

believing itself to be, the arbiter of Europe, from the benighted,

starved souls of its people. This is the real object-lesson of this war,

its unforgettable information. And this war's true mission, disengaged

from the economic origins of that contest, from doors open or shut, from

the fields of Korea for Russian wheat or Japanese rice, from the

ownership of ice-free ports and the command of the waters of the East--its

true mission was to lay a ghost. It has accomplished it. Whether

Kuropatkin was incapable or unlucky, whether or not Russia issuing next

year, or the year after next, from behind a rampart of piled-up corpses

will win or lose a fresh campaign, are minor considerations. The task of

Japan is done, the mission accomplished; the ghost of Russia's might is

laid. Only Europe, accustomed so long to the presence of that portent,

seems unable to comprehend that, as in the fables of our childhood, the

twelve strokes of the hour have rung, the cock has crowed, the apparition

has vanished--never to haunt again this world which has been used to gaze

at it with vague dread and many misgivings.

It was a fascination. And the hallucination still lasts as inexplicable

in its persistence as in its duration. It seems so unaccountable, that

the doubt arises as to the sincerity of all that talk as to what Russia

will or will not do, whether it will raise or not another army, whether

it will bury the Japanese in Manchuria under seventy millions of

sacrificed peasants' caps (as her Press boasted a little more than a year

ago) or give up to Japan that jewel of her crown, Saghalien, together

with some other things; whether, perchance, as an interesting

alternative, it will make peace on the Amur in order to make war beyond

the Oxus.

All these speculations (with many others) have appeared gravely in print;

and if they have been gravely considered by only one reader out of each

hundred, there must be something subtly noxious to the human brain in the

composition of newspaper ink; or else it is that the large page, the

columns of words, the leaded headings, exalt the mind into a state of

feverish credulity. The printed page of the Press makes a sort of still

uproar, taking from men both the power to reflect and the faculty of

genuine feeling; leaving them only the artificially created need of

having something exciting to talk about.

The truth is that the Russia of our fathers, of our childhood, of our

middle-age; the testamentary Russia of Peter the Great--who imagined that

all the nations were delivered into the hand of Tsardom--can do nothing.

It can do nothing because it does not exist. It has vanished for ever at

last, and as yet there is no new Russia to take the place of that ill-

omened creation, which, being a fantasy of a madman's brain, could in

reality be nothing else than a figure out of a nightmare seated upon a

monument of fear and oppression.

The true greatness of a State does not spring from such a contemptible

source. It is a matter of logical growth, of faith and courage. Its

inspiration springs from the constructive instinct of the people,

governed by the strong hand of a collective conscience and voiced in the

wisdom and counsel of men who seldom reap the reward of gratitude. Many

States have been powerful, but, perhaps, none have been truly great--as

yet. That the position of a State in reference to the moral methods of

its development can be seen only historically, is true. Perhaps mankind

has not lived long enough for a comprehensive view of any particular

case. Perhaps no one will ever live long enough; and perhaps this earth

shared out amongst our clashing ambitions by the anxious arrangements of

statesmen will come to an end before we attain the felicity of greeting

with unanimous applause the perfect fruition of a great State. It is

even possible that we are destined for another sort of bliss altogether:

that sort which consists in being perpetually duped by false appearances.

But whatever political illusion the future may hold out to our fear or

our admiration, there will be none, it is safe to say, which in the

magnitude of anti-humanitarian effect will equal that phantom now driven

out of the world by the thunder of thousands of guns; none that in its

retreat will cling with an equally shameless sincerity to more unworthy

supports: to the moral corruption and mental darkness of slavery, to the

mere brute force of numbers.

This very ignominy of infatuation should make clear to men's feelings and

reason that the downfall of Russia's might is unavoidable. Spectral it

lived and spectral it disappears without leaving a memory of a single

generous deed, of a single service rendered--even involuntarily--to the

polity of nations. Other despotisms there have been, but none whose

origin was so grimly fantastic in its baseness, and the beginning of

whose end was so gruesomely ignoble. What is amazing is the myth of its

irresistible strength which is dying so hard.

* * * * *

Considered historically, Russia's influence in Europe seems the most

baseless thing in the world; a sort of convention invented by

diplomatists for some dark purpose of their own, one would suspect, if

the lack of grasp upon the realities of any given situation were not the

main characteristic of the management of international relations. A

glance back at the last hundred years shows the invariable, one may say

the logical, powerlessness of Russia. As a military power it has never

achieved by itself a single great thing. It has been indeed able to

repel an ill-considered invasion, but only by having recourse to the

extreme methods of desperation. In its attacks upon its specially

selected victim this giant always struck as if with a withered right

hand. All the campaigns against Turkey prove this, from Potemkin's time

to the last Eastern war in 1878, entered upon with every advantage of a

well-nursed prestige and a carefully fostered fanaticism. Even the half-

armed were always too much for the might of Russia, or, rather, of the

Tsardom. It was victorious only against the practically disarmed, as, in

regard to its ideal of territorial expansion, a glance at a map will

prove sufficiently. As an ally, Russia has been always unprofitable,

taking her share in the defeats rather than in the victories of her

friends, but always pushing her own claims with the arrogance of an

arbiter of military success. She has been unable to help to any purpose

a single principle to hold its own, not even the principle of authority

and legitimism which Nicholas the First had declared so haughtily to rest

under his special protection; just as Nicholas the Second has tried to

make the maintenance of peace on earth his own exclusive affair. And the

first Nicholas was a good Russian; he held the belief in the sacredness

of his realm with such an intensity of faith that he could not survive

the first shock of doubt. Rightly envisaged, the Crimean war was the end

of what remained of absolutism and legitimism in Europe. It threw the

way open for the liberation of Italy. The war in Manchuria makes an end

of absolutism in Russia, whoever has got to perish from the shock behind

a rampart of dead ukases, manifestoes, and rescripts. In the space of

fifty years the self-appointed Apostle of Absolutism and the

self-appointed Apostle of Peace, the Augustus and the Augustulus of the

_regime_ that was wont to speak contemptuously to European Foreign

Offices in the beautiful French phrases of Prince Gorchakov, have fallen

victims, each after his kind, to their shadowy and dreadful familiar, to

the phantom, part ghoul, part Djinn, part Old Man of the Sea, with beak

and claws and a double head, looking greedily both east and west on the

confines of two continents.

That nobody through all that time penetrated the true nature of the

monster it is impossible to believe. But of the many who must have seen,

all were either too modest, too cautious, perhaps too discreet, to speak;

or else were too insignificant to be heard or believed. Yet not all.

In the very early sixties, Prince Bismarck, then about to leave his post

of Prussian Minister in St. Petersburg, called--so the story goes--upon

another distinguished diplomatist. After some talk upon the general

situation, the future Chancellor of the German Empire remarked that it

was his practice to resume the impressions he had carried out of every

country where he had made a long stay, in a short sentence, which he

caused to be engraved upon some trinket. "I am leaving this country now,

and this is what I bring away from it," he continued, taking off his

finger a new ring to show to his colleague the inscription inside: "La

Russie, c'est le neant."

Prince Bismarck had the truth of the matter and was neither too modest

nor too discreet to speak out. Certainly he was not afraid of not being

believed. Yet he did not shout his knowledge from the house-tops. He

meant to have the phantom as his accomplice in an enterprise which has

set the clock of peace back for many a year.

He had his way. The German Empire has been an accomplished fact for more

than a third of a century--a great and dreadful legacy left to the world

by the ill-omened phantom of Russia's might.

It is that phantom which is disappearing now--unexpectedly,

astonishingly, as if by a touch of that wonderful magic for which the

East has always been famous. The pretence of belief in its existence

will no longer answer anybody's purposes (now Prince Bismarck is dead)

unless the purposes of the writers of sensational paragraphs as to this

_Neant_ making an armed descent upon the plains of India. That sort of

folly would be beneath notice if it did not distract attention from the

real problem created for Europe by a war in the Far East.

For good or evil in the working out of her destiny, Russia is bound to

remain a _Neant_ for many long years, in a more even than a Bismarckian

sense. The very fear of this spectre being gone, it behoves us to

consider its legacy--the fact (no phantom that) accomplished in Central

Europe by its help and connivance.

The German Empire may feel at bottom the loss of an old accomplice always

amenable to the confidential whispers of a bargain; but in the first

instance it cannot but rejoice at the fundamental weakening of a possible

obstacle to its instincts of territorial expansion. There is a removal

of that latent feeling of restraint which the presence of a powerful

neighbour, however implicated with you in a sense of common guilt, is

bound to inspire. The common guilt of the two Empires is defined

precisely by their frontier line running through the Polish provinces.

Without indulging in excessive feelings of indignation at that country's

partition, or going so far as to believe--with a late French

politician--in the "immanente justice des choses," it is clear that a

material situation, based upon an essentially immoral transaction,

contains the germ of fatal differences in the temperament of the two

partners in iniquity--whatever the iniquity is. Germany has been the

evil counsellor of Russia on all the questions of her Polish problem.

Always urging the adoption of the most repressive measures with a

perfectly logical duplicity, Prince Bismarck's Empire has taken care to

couple the neighbourly offers of military assistance with merciless

advice. The thought of the Polish provinces accepting a frank

reconciliation with a humanised Russia and bringing the weight of

homogeneous loyalty within a few miles of Berlin, has been always

intensely distasteful to the arrogant Germanising tendencies of the other

partner in iniquity. And, besides, the way to the Baltic provinces leads

over the Niemen and over the Vistula.

And now, when there is a possibility of serious internal disturbances

destroying the sort of order autocracy has kept in Russia, the road over

these rivers is seen wearing a more inviting aspect. At any moment the

pretext of armed intervention may be found in a revolutionary outbreak

provoked by Socialists, perhaps--but at any rate by the political

immaturity of the enlightened classes and by the political barbarism of

the Russian people. The throes of Russian resurrection will be long and

painful. This is not the place to speculate upon the nature of these

convulsions, but there must be some violent break-up of the lamentable

tradition, a shattering of the social, of the administrative--certainly

of the territorial--unity.

Voices have been heard saying that the time for reforms in Russia is

already past. This is the superficial view of the more profound truth

that for Russia there has never been such a time within the memory of

mankind. It is impossible to initiate a rational scheme of reform upon a

phase of blind absolutism; and in Russia there has never been anything

else to which the faintest tradition could, after ages of error, go back

as to a parting of ways.

In Europe the old monarchical principle stands justified in its

historical struggle with the growth of political liberty by the evolution

of the idea of nationality as we see it concreted at the present time; by

the inception of that wider solidarity grouping together around the

standard of monarchical power these larger, agglomerations of mankind.

This service of unification, creating close-knit communities possessing

the ability, the will, and the power to pursue a common ideal, has

prepared the ground for the advent of a still larger understanding: for

the solidarity of Europeanism, which must be the next step towards the

advent of Concord and Justice; an advent that, however delayed by the

fatal worship of force and the errors of national selfishness, has been,

and remains, the only possible goal of our progress.

The conceptions of legality, of larger patriotism, of national duties and

aspirations have grown under the shadow of the old monarchies of Europe,

which were the creations of historical necessity. There were seeds of

wisdom in their very mistakes and abuses. They had a past and a future;

they were human. But under the shadow of Russian autocracy nothing could

grow. Russian autocracy succeeded to nothing; it had no historical past,

and it cannot hope for a historical future. It can only end. By no

industry of investigation, by no fantastic stretch of benevolence, can it

be presented as a phase of development through which a Society, a State,

must pass on the way to the full consciousness of its destiny. It lies

outside the stream of progress. This despotism has been utterly

un-European. Neither has it been Asiatic in its nature. Oriental

despotisms belong to the history of mankind; they have left their trace

on our minds and our imagination by their splendour, by their culture, by

their art, by the exploits of great conquerors. The record of their rise

and decay has an intellectual value; they are in their origins and their

course the manifestations of human needs, the instruments of racial

temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith and fanaticism. The Russian

autocracy as we see it now is a thing apart. It is impossible to assign

to it any rational origin in the vices, the misfortunes, the necessities,

or the aspirations of mankind. That despotism has neither an European

nor an Oriental parentage; more, it seems to have no root either in the

institutions or the follies of this earth. What strikes one with a sort

of awe is just this something inhuman in its character. It is like a

visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon

the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of

two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East or

of the West.

This pitiful fate of a country held by an evil spell, suffering from an

awful visitation for which the responsibility cannot be traced either to

her sins or her follies, has made Russia as a nation so difficult to

understand by Europe. From the very first ghastly dawn of her existence

as a State she had to breathe the atmosphere of despotism; she found

nothing but the arbitrary will of an obscure autocrat at the beginning

and end of her organisation. Hence arises her impenetrability to

whatever is true in Western thought. Western thought, when it crosses

her frontier, falls under the spell of her autocracy and becomes a

noxious parody of itself. Hence the contradictions, the riddles of her

national life, which are looked upon with such curiosity by the rest of

the world. The curse had entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing

else in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of

slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless

fatalism. It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental

activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating

assertion of purity and holiness. The Government of Holy Russia,

arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the

bodies of its subjects like a God-sent scourge, has been most cruel to

those whom it allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensation. The

worst crime against humanity of that system we behold now crouching at

bay behind vast heaps of mangled corpses is the ruthless destruction of

innumerable minds. The greatest horror of the world--madness--walked

faithfully in its train. Some of the best intellects of Russia, after

struggling in vain against the spell, ended by throwing themselves at the

feet of that hopeless despotism as a giddy man leaps into an abyss. An

attentive survey of Russia's literature, of her Church, of her

administration and the cross-currents of her thought, must end in the

verdict that the Russia of to-day has not the right to give her voice on

a single question touching the future of humanity, because from the very

inception of her being the brutal destruction of dignity, of truth, of

rectitude, of all that is faithful in human nature has been made the

imperative condition of her existence. The great governmental secret of

that imperium which Prince Bismarck had the insight and the courage to

call _Le Neant_, has been the extirpation of every intellectual hope. To

pronounce in the face of such a past the word Evolution, which is

precisely the expression of the highest intellectual hope, is a gruesome

pleasantry. There can be no evolution out of a grave. Another word of

less scientific sound has been very much pronounced of late in connection

with Russia's future, a word of more vague import, a word of dread as

much as of hope--Revolution.

In the face of the events of the last four months, this word has sprung

instinctively, as it were, on grave lips, and has been heard with solemn

forebodings. More or less consciously, Europe is preparing herself for a

spectacle of much violence and perhaps of an inspiring nobility of

greatness. And there will be nothing of what she expects. She will see

neither the anticipated character of the violence, nor yet any signs of

generous greatness. Her expectations, more or less vaguely expressed,

give the measure of her ignorance of that _Neant_ which for so many years

had remained hidden behind this phantom of invincible armies.

_Neant_! In a way, yes! And yet perhaps Prince Bismarck has let himself

be led away by the seduction of a good phrase into the use of an inexact

form. The form of his judgment had to be pithy, striking, engraved

within a ring. If he erred, then, no doubt, he erred deliberately. The

saying was near enough the truth to serve, and perhaps he did not want to

destroy utterly by a more severe definition the prestige of the sham that

could not deceive his genius. Prince Bismarck has been really

complimentary to the useful phantom of the autocratic might. There is an

awe-inspiring idea of infinity conveyed in the word _Neant_--and in

Russia there is no idea. She is not a _Neant_, she is and has been

simply the negation of everything worth living for. She is not an empty

void, she is a yawning chasm open between East and West; a bottomless

abyss that has swallowed up every hope of mercy, every aspiration towards

personal dignity, towards freedom, towards knowledge, every ennobling

desire of the heart, every redeeming whisper of conscience. Those that

have peered into that abyss, where the dreams of Panslavism, of universal

conquest, mingled with the hate and contempt for Western ideas, drift

impotently like shapes of mist, know well that it is bottomless; that

there is in it no ground for anything that could in the remotest degree

serve even the lowest interests of mankind--and certainly no ground ready

for a revolution. The sin of the old European monarchies was not the

absolutism inherent in every form of government; it was the inability to

alter the forms of their legality, grown narrow and oppressive with the

march of time. Every form of legality is bound to degenerate into

oppression, and the legality in the forms of monarchical institutions

sooner, perhaps, than any other. It has not been the business of

monarchies to be adaptive from within. With the mission of uniting and

consolidating the particular ambitions and interests of feudalism in

favour of a larger conception of a State, of giving self-consciousness,

force and nationality to the scattered energies of thought and action,

they were fated to lag behind the march of ideas they had themselves set

in motion in a direction they could neither understand nor approve. Yet,

for all that, the thrones still remain, and what is more significant,

perhaps, some of the dynasties, too, have survived. The revolutions of

European States have never been in the nature of absolute protests _en

masse_ against the monarchical principle; they were the uprising of the

people against the oppressive degeneration of legality. But there never

has been any legality in Russia; she is a negation of that as of

everything else that has its root in reason or conscience. The ground of

every revolution had to be intellectually prepared. A revolution is a

short cut in the rational development of national needs in response to

the growth of world-wide ideals. It is conceivably possible for a

monarch of genius to put himself at the head of a revolution without

ceasing to be the king of his people. For the autocracy of Holy Russia

the only conceivable self-reform is--suicide.

The same relentless fate holds in its grip the all-powerful ruler and his

helpless people. Wielders of a power purchased by an unspeakable

baseness of subjection to the Khans of the Tartar horde, the Princes of

Russia who, in their heart of hearts had come in time to regard

themselves as superior to every monarch of Europe, have never risen to be

the chiefs of a nation. Their authority has never been sanctioned by

popular tradition, by ideas of intelligent loyalty, of devotion, of

political necessity, of simple expediency, or even by the power of the

sword. In whatever form of upheaval autocratic Russia is to find her

end, it can never be a revolution fruitful of moral consequences to

mankind. It cannot be anything else but a rising of slaves. It is a

tragic circumstance that the only thing one can wish to that people who

had never seen face to face either law, order, justice, right, truth

about itself or the rest of the world; who had known nothing outside the

capricious will of its irresponsible masters, is that it should find in

the approaching hour of need, not an organiser or a law-giver, with the

wisdom of a Lycurgus or a Solon for their service, but at least the force

of energy and desperation in some as yet unknown Spartacus.

A brand of hopeless mental and moral inferiority is set upon Russian

achievements; and the coming events of her internal changes, however

appalling they may be in their magnitude, will be nothing more impressive

than the convulsions of a colossal body. As her boasted military force

that, corrupt in its origin, has ever struck no other but faltering

blows, so her soul, kept benumbed by her temporal and spiritual master

with the poison of tyranny and superstition, will find itself on

awakening possessed of no language, a monstrous full-grown child having

first to learn the ways of living thought and articulate speech. It is

safe to say tyranny, assuming a thousand protean shapes, will remain

clinging to her struggles for a long time before her blind multitudes

succeed at last in trampling her out of existence under their millions of

bare feet.

That would be the beginning. What is to come after? The conquest of

freedom to call your soul your own is only the first step on the road to

excellence. We, in Europe, have gone a step or two further, have had the

time to forget how little that freedom means. To Russia it must seem

everything. A prisoner shut up in a noisome dungeon concentrates all his

hope and desire on the moment of stepping out beyond the gates. It

appears to him pregnant with an immense and final importance; whereas

what is important is the spirit in which he will draw the first breath of

freedom, the counsels he will hear, the hands he may find extended, the

endless days of toil that must follow, wherein he will have to build his

future with no other material but what he can find within himself.

It would be vain for Russia to hope for the support and counsel of

collective wisdom. Since 1870 (as a distinguished statesman of the old

tradition disconsolately exclaimed) "il n'y a plus d'Europe!" There is,

indeed, no Europe. The idea of a Europe united in the solidarity of her

dynasties, which for a moment seemed to dawn on the horizon of the Vienna

Congress through the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and excursions,

has been extinguished by the larger glamour of less restraining ideals.

Instead of the doctrines of solidarity it was the doctrine of

nationalities much more favourable to spoliations that came to the front,

and since its greatest triumphs at Sadowa and Sedan there is no Europe.

Meanwhile till the time comes when there will be no frontiers, there are

alliances so shamelessly based upon the exigencies of suspicion and

mistrust that their cohesive force waxes and wanes with every year,

almost with the event of every passing month. This is the atmosphere

Russia will find when the last rampart of tyranny has been beaten down.

But what hands, what voices will she find on coming out into the light of

day? An ally she has yet who more than any other of Russia's allies has

found that it had parted with lots of solid substance in exchange for a

shadow. It is true that the shadow was indeed the mightiest, the darkest

that the modern world had ever known--and the most overbearing. But it

is fading now, and the tone of truest anxiety as to what is to take its

place will come, no doubt, from that and no other direction, and no

doubt, also, it will have that note of generosity which even in the

moments of greatest aberration is seldom wanting in the voice of the

French people.

Two neighbours Russia will find at her door. Austria, traditionally

unaggressive whenever her hand is not forced, ruled by a dynasty of

uncertain future, weakened by her duality, can only speak to her in an

uncertain, bilingual phrase. Prussia, grown in something like forty

years from an almost pitiful dependant into a bullying friend and evil

counsellor of Russia's masters, may, indeed, hasten to extend a strong

hand to the weakness of her exhausted body, but if so it will be only

with the intention of tearing away the long-coveted part of her

substance.

Pan-Germanism is by no means a shape of mists, and Germany is anything

but a _Neant_ where thought and effort are likely to lose themselves

without sound or trace. It is a powerful and voracious organisation,

full of unscrupulous self-confidence, whose appetite for aggrandisement

will only be limited by the power of helping itself to the severed

members of its friends and neighbours. The era of wars so eloquently

denounced by the old Republicans as the peculiar blood guilt of dynastic

ambitions is by no means over yet. They will be fought out differently,

with lesser frequency, with an increased bitterness and the savage tooth-

and-claw obstinacy of a struggle for existence. They will make us regret

the time of dynastic ambitions, with their human absurdity moderated by

prudence and even by shame, by the fear of personal responsibility and

the regard paid to certain forms of conventional decency. For, if the

monarchs of Europe have been derided for addressing each other as

"brother" in autograph communications, that relationship was at least as

effective as any form of brotherhood likely to be established between the

rival nations of this continent, which, we are assured on all hands, is

the heritage of democracy. In the ceremonial brotherhood of monarchs the

reality of blood-ties, for what little it is worth, acted often as a drag

on unscrupulous desires of glory or greed. Besides, there was always the

common danger of exasperated peoples, and some respect for each other's

divine right. No leader of a democracy, without other ancestry but the

sudden shout of a multitude, and debarred by the very condition of his

power from even thinking of a direct heir, will have any interest in

calling brother the leader of another democracy--a chief as fatherless

and heirless as himself.

The war of 1870, brought about by the third Napoleon's half-generous,

half-selfish adoption of the principle of nationalities, was the first

war characterised by a special intensity of hate, by a new note in the

tune of an old song for which we may thank the Teutonic thoroughness. Was

it not that excellent bourgeoise, Princess Bismarck (to keep only to

great examples), who was so righteously anxious to see men, women and

children--emphatically the children, too--of the abominable French nation

massacred off the face of the earth? This illustration of the new war-

temper is artlessly revealed in the prattle of the amiable Busch, the

Chancellor's pet "reptile" of the Press. And this was supposed to be a

war for an idea! Too much, however, should not be made of that good

wife's and mother's sentiments any more than of the good First Emperor

William's tears, shed so abundantly after every battle, by letter,

telegram, and otherwise, during the course of the same war, before a dumb

and shamefaced continent. These were merely the expressions of the

simplicity of a nation which more than any other has a tendency to run

into the grotesque. There is worse to come.

To-day, in the fierce grapple of two nations of different race, the short

era of national wars seems about to close. No war will be waged for an

idea. The "noxious idle aristocracies" of yesterday fought without

malice for an occupation, for the honour, for the fun of the thing. The

virtuous, industrious democratic States of to-morrow may yet be reduced

to fighting for a crust of dry bread, with all the hate, ferocity, and

fury that must attach to the vital importance of such an issue. The

dreams sanguine humanitarians raised almost to ecstasy about the year

fifty of the last century by the moving sight of the Crystal

Palace--crammed full with that variegated rubbish which it seems to be

the bizarre fate of humanity to produce for the benefit of a few

employers of labour--have vanished as quickly as they had arisen. The

golden hopes of peace have in a single night turned to dead leaves in

every drawer of every benevolent theorist's writing table. A swift

disenchantment overtook the incredible infatuation which could put its

trust in the peaceful nature of industrial and commercial competition.

Industrialism and commercialism--wearing high-sounding names in many

languages (_Welt-politik_ may serve for one instance) picking up coins

behind the severe and disdainful figure of science whose giant strides

have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches--stand

ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the

earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so. And

democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of

material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end,

on a mere pittance--unless, indeed, some statesman of exceptional ability

and overwhelming prestige succeeds in carrying through an international

understanding for the delimitation of spheres of trade all over the

earth, on the model of the territorial spheres of influence marked in

Africa to keep the competitors for the privilege of improving the nigger

(as a buying machine) from flying prematurely at each other's throats.

This seems the only expedient at hand for the temporary maintenance of

European peace, with its alliances based on mutual distrust, preparedness

for war as its ideal, and the fear of wounds, luckily stronger, so far,

than the pinch of hunger, its only guarantee. The true peace of the

world will be a place of refuge much less like a beleaguered fortress and

more, let us hope, in the nature of an Inviolable Temple. It will be

built on less perishable foundations than those of material interests.

But it must be confessed that the architectural aspect of the universal

city remains as yet inconceivable--that the very ground for its erection

has not been cleared of the jungle.

Never before in history has the right of war been more fully admitted in

the rounded periods of public speeches, in books, in public prints, in

all the public works of peace, culminating in the establishment of the

Hague Tribunal--that solemnly official recognition of the Earth as a

House of Strife. To him whose indignation is qualified by a measure of

hope and affection, the efforts of mankind to work its own salvation

present a sight of alarming comicality. After clinging for ages to the

steps of the heavenly throne, they are now, without much modifying their

attitude, trying with touching ingenuity to steal one by one the

thunderbolts of their Jupiter. They have removed war from the list of

Heaven-sent visitations that could only be prayed against; they have

erased its name from the supplication against the wrath of war,

pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman

Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and

have made it into a calm and regulated institution. At first sight the

change does not seem for the better. Jove's thunderbolt looks a most

dangerous plaything in the hands of the people. But a solemnly

established institution begins to grow old at once in the discussion,

abuse, worship, and execration of men. It grows obsolete, odious, and

intolerable; it stands fatally condemned to an unhonoured old age.

Therein lies the best hope of advanced thought, and the best way to help

its prospects is to provide in the fullest, frankest way for the

conditions of the present day. War is one of its conditions; it is its

principal condition. It lies at the heart of every question agitating

the fears and hopes of a humanity divided against itself. The succeeding

ages have changed nothing except the watchwords of the armies. The

intellectual stage of mankind being as yet in its infancy, and States,

like most individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of

the worth and force of the inner life, the need of making their existence

manifest to themselves is determined in the direction of physical

activity. The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in

wealth, in influence--in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge--is

odious to them as the omen of the end. Action, in which is to be found

the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity

and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future--a sentiment concealed,

indeed, but proving its existence by the force it has, when invoked, to

stir the passions of a nation. It will be long before we have learned

that in the great darkness before us there is nothing that we need fear.

Let us act lest we perish--is the cry. And the only form of action open

to a State can be of no other than aggressive nature.

There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one

and the same--the magazine rifle of the latest pattern. In preparation

for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now

such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of

factory and counting-house.

Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and

reigned with less disputed sway in their minds. It has harnessed science

to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers,

scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled

workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its

harvest of countless corpses. It has perverted the intelligence of men,

women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings,

Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of

fidelity to peace. Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has

modelled it on its own image: a martial, overbearing, war-lord sort of

peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din

of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to glorious feats of arms;

it has made peace so magnificent as to be almost as expensive to keep up

as itself. It has sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went

about (mostly in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity

of its sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor

in mind--whose name is legion.

It has been observed that in the course of earthly greatness a day of

culminating triumph is often paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction.

Let us hope it is so. Yet the dawn of that day of retribution may be a

long time breaking above a dark horizon. War is with us now; and,

whether this one ends soon or late, war will be with us again. And it is

the way of true wisdom for men and States to take account of things as

they are.

Civilisation has done its little best by our sensibilities for whose

growth it is responsible. It has managed to remove the sights and sounds

of battlefields away from our doorsteps. But it cannot be expected to

achieve the feat always and under every variety of circumstance. Some

day it must fail, and we shall have then a wealth of appallingly

unpleasant sensations brought home to us with painful intimacy. It is

not absurd to suppose that whatever war comes to us next it will _not_ be

a distant war waged by Russia either beyond the Amur or beyond the Oxus.

The Japanese armies have laid that ghost for ever, because the Russia of

the future will not, for the reasons explained above, be the Russia of to-

day. It will not have the same thoughts, resentments and aims. It is

even a question whether it will preserve its gigantic frame unaltered and

unbroken. All speculation loses itself in the magnitude of the events

made possible by the defeat of an autocracy whose only shadow of a title

to existence was the invincible power of military conquest. That

autocratic Russia will have a miserable end in harmony with its base

origin and inglorious life does not seem open to doubt. The problem of

the immediate future is posed not by the eventual manner but by the

approaching fact of its disappearance.

The Japanese armies, in laying the oppressive ghost, have not only

accomplished what will be recognised historically as an important mission

in the world's struggle against all forms of evil, but have also created

a situation. They have created a situation in the East which they are

competent to manage by themselves; and in doing this they have brought

about a change in the condition of the West with which Europe is not well

prepared to deal. The common ground of concord, good faith and justice

is not sufficient to establish an action upon; since the conscience of

but very few men amongst us, and of no single Western nation as yet, will

brook the restraint of abstract ideas as against the fascination of a

material advantage. And eagle-eyed wisdom alone cannot take the lead of

human action, which in its nature must for ever remain short-sighted. The

trouble of the civilised world is the want of a common conservative

principle abstract enough to give the impulse, practical enough to form

the rallying point of international action tending towards the restraint

of particular ambitions. Peace tribunals instituted for the greater

glory of war will not replace it. Whether such a principle exists--who

can say? If it does not, then it ought to be invented. A sage with a

sense of humour and a heart of compassion should set about it without

loss of time, and a solemn prophet full of words and fire ought to be

given the task of preparing the minds. So far there is no trace of such

a principle anywhere in sight; even its plausible imitations (never very

effective) have disappeared long ago before the doctrine of national

aspirations. _Il n'y a plus d'Europe_--there is only an armed and

trading continent, the home of slowly maturing economical contests for

life and death and of loudly proclaimed world-wide ambitions. There are

also other ambitions not so loud, but deeply rooted in the envious

acquisitive temperament of the last corner amongst the great Powers of

the Continent, whose feet are not exactly in the ocean--not yet--and

whose head is very high up--in Pomerania, the breeding place of such

precious Grenadiers that Prince Bismarck (whom it is a pleasure to quote)

would not have given the bones of one of them for the settlement of the

old Eastern Question. But times have changed, since, by way of keeping

up, I suppose, some old barbaric German rite, the faithful servant of the

Hohenzollerns was buried alive to celebrate the accession of a new

Emperor.

Already the voice of surmises has been heard hinting tentatively at a

possible re-grouping of European Powers. The alliance of the three

Empires is supposed possible. And it may be possible. The myth of

Russia's power is dying very hard--hard enough for that combination to

take place--such is the fascination that a discredited show of numbers

will still exercise upon the imagination of a people trained to the

worship of force. Germany may be willing to lend its support to a

tottering autocracy for the sake of an undisputed first place, and of a

preponderating voice in the settlement of every question in that south-

east of Europe which merges into Asia. No principle being involved in

such an alliance of mere expediency, it would never be allowed to stand

in the way of Germany's other ambitions. The fall of autocracy would

bring its restraint automatically to an end. Thus it may be believed

that the support Russian despotism may get from its once humble friend

and client will not be stamped by that thoroughness which is supposed to

be the mark of German superiority. Russia weakened down to the second

place, or Russia eclipsed altogether during the throes of her

regeneration, will answer equally well the plans of German policy--which

are many and various and often incredible, though the aim of them all is

the same: aggrandisement of territory and influence, with no regard to

right and justice, either in the East or in the West. For that and no

other is the true note of your _Welt-politik_ which desires to live.

The German eagle with a Prussian head looks all round the horizon, not so

much for something to do that would count for good in the records of the

earth, as simply for something good to get. He gazes upon the land and

upon the sea with the same covetous steadiness, for he has become of late

a maritime eagle, and has learned to box the compass. He gazes north and

south, and east and west, and is inclined to look intemperately upon the

waters of the Mediterranean when they are blue. The disappearance of the

Russian phantom has given a foreboding of unwonted freedom to the _Welt-

politik_. According to the national tendency this assumption of Imperial

impulses would run into the grotesque were it not for the spikes of the

_pickelhaubes_ peeping out grimly from behind. Germany's attitude proves

that no peace for the earth can be found in the expansion of material

interests which she seems to have adopted exclusively as her only aim,

ideal, and watchword. For the use of those who gaze half-unbelieving at

the passing away of the Russian phantom, part Ghoul, part Djinn, part Old

Man of the Sea, and wait half-doubting for the birth of a nation's soul

in this age which knows no miracles, the once-famous saying of poor

Gambetta, tribune of the people (who was simple and believed in the

"immanent justice of things"), may be adapted in the shape of a warning

that, so far as a future of liberty, concord, and justice is concerned:

"Le Prussianisme--voila l'ennemi!"

THE CRIME OF PARTITION--1919

At the end of the eighteenth century, when the partition of Poland had

become an accomplished fact, the world qualified it at once as a crime.

This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe;

the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit

that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible

and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt. As to Russia, the third

party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national

conscience at the time. The will of its rulers was always accepted by

the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived directly from God.

As an act of mere conquest the best excuse for the partition lay simply

in the fact that it happened to be possible; there was the plunder and

there was the opportunity to get hold of it. Catherine the Great looked

upon this extension of her dominions with a cynical satisfaction. Her

political argument that the destruction of Poland meant the repression of

revolutionary ideas and the checking of the spread of Jacobinism in

Europe was a characteristically impudent pretence. There may have been

minds here and there amongst the Russians that perceived, or perhaps only

felt, that by the annexation of the greater part of the Polish Republic,

Russia approached nearer to the comity of civilised nations and ceased,

at least territorially, to be an Asiatic Power.

It was only after the partition of Poland that Russia began to play a

great part in Europe. To such statesmen as she had then that act of

brigandage must have appeared inspired by great political wisdom. The

King of Prussia, faithful to the ruling principle of his life, wished

simply to aggrandise his dominions at a much smaller cost and at much

less risk than he could have done in any other direction; for at that

time Poland was perfectly defenceless from a material point of view, and

more than ever, perhaps, inclined to put its faith in humanitarian

illusions. Morally, the Republic was in a state of ferment and

consequent weakness, which so often accompanies the period of social

reform. The strength arrayed against her was just then overwhelming; I

mean the comparatively honest (because open) strength of armed forces.

But, probably from innate inclination towards treachery, Frederick of

Prussia selected for himself the part of falsehood and deception.

Appearing on the scene in the character of a friend he entered

deliberately into a treaty of alliance with the Republic, and then,

before the ink was dry, tore it up in brazen defiance of the commonest

decency, which must have been extremely gratifying to his natural tastes.

As to Austria, it shed diplomatic tears over the transaction. They

cannot be called crocodile tears, insomuch that they were in a measure

sincere. They arose from a vivid perception that Austria's allotted

share of the spoil could never compensate her for the accession of

strength and territory to the other two Powers. Austria did not really

want an extension of territory at the cost of Poland. She could not hope

to improve her frontier in that way, and economically she had no need of

Galicia, a province whose natural resources were undeveloped and whose

salt mines did not arouse her cupidity because she had salt mines of her

own. No doubt the democratic complexion of Polish institutions was very

distasteful to the conservative monarchy; Austrian statesmen did see at

the time that the real danger to the principle of autocracy was in the

West, in France, and that all the forces of Central Europe would be

needed for its suppression. But the movement towards a _partage_ on the

part of Russia and Prussia was too definite to be resisted, and Austria

had to follow their lead in the destruction of a State which she would

have preferred to preserve as a possible ally against Prussian and

Russian ambitions. It may be truly said that the destruction of Poland

secured the safety of the French Revolution. For when in 1795 the crime

was consummated, the Revolution had turned the corner and was in a state

to defend itself against the forces of reaction.

In the second half of the eighteenth century there were two centres of

liberal ideas on the continent of Europe: France and Poland. On an

impartial survey one may say without exaggeration that then France was

relatively every bit as weak as Poland; even, perhaps, more so. But

France's geographical position made her much less vulnerable. She had no

powerful neighbours on her frontier; a decayed Spain in the south and a

conglomeration of small German Principalities on the east were her happy

lot. The only States which dreaded the contamination of the new

principles and had enough power to combat it were Prussia, Austria, and

Russia, and they had another centre of forbidden ideas to deal with in

defenceless Poland, unprotected by nature, and offering an immediate

satisfaction to their cupidity. They made their choice, and the untold

sufferings of a nation which would not die was the price exacted by fate

for the triumph of revolutionary ideals.

Thus even a crime may become a moral agent by the lapse of time and the

course of history. Progress leaves its dead by the way, for progress is

only a great adventure as its leaders and chiefs know very well in their

hearts. It is a march into an undiscovered country; and in such an

enterprise the victims do not count. As an emotional outlet for the

oratory of freedom it was convenient enough to remember the Crime now and

then: the Crime being the murder of a State and the carving of its body

into three pieces. There was really nothing to do but to drop a few

tears and a few flowers of rhetoric upon the grave. But the spirit of

the nation refused to rest therein. It haunted the territories of the

Old Republic in the manner of a ghost haunting its ancestral mansion

where strangers are making themselves at home; a calumniated, ridiculed,

and pooh-pooh'd ghost, and yet never ceasing to inspire a sort of awe, a

strange uneasiness, in the hearts of the unlawful possessors. Poland

deprived of its independence, of its historical continuity, with its

religion and language persecuted and repressed, became a mere

geographical expression. And even that, itself, seemed strangely vague,

had lost its definite character, was rendered doubtful by the theories

and the claims of the spoliators who, by a strange effect of uneasy

conscience, while strenuously denying the moral guilt of the transaction,

were always trying to throw a veil of high rectitude over the Crime. What

was most annoying to their righteousness was the fact that the nation,

stabbed to the heart, refused to grow insensible and cold. That

persistent and almost uncanny vitality was sometimes very inconvenient to

the rest of Europe also. It would intrude its irresistible claim into

every problem of European politics, into the theory of European

equilibrium, into the question of the Near East, the Italian question,

the question of Schleswig-Holstein, and into the doctrine of

nationalities. That ghost, not content with making its ancestral halls

uncomfortable for the thieves, haunted also the Cabinets of Europe, waved

indecently its bloodstained robes in the solemn atmosphere of Council-

rooms, where congresses and conferences sit with closed windows. It

would not be exorcised by the brutal jeers of Bismarck and the fine

railleries of Gorchakov.

As a Polish friend observed to me some years ago: "Till the year '48 the

Polish problem has been to a certain extent a convenient rallying-point

for all manifestations of liberalism. Since that time we have come to be

regarded simply as a nuisance. It's very disagreeable."

I agreed that it was, and he continued: "What are we to do? We did not

create the situation by any outside action of ours. Through all the

centuries of its existence Poland has never been a menace to anybody, not

even to the Turks, to whom it has been merely an obstacle."

Nothing could be more true. The spirit of aggressiveness was absolutely

foreign to the Polish temperament, to which the preservation of its

institutions and its liberties was much more precious than any ideas of

conquest. Polish wars were defensive, and they were mostly fought within

Poland's own borders. And that those territories were often invaded was

but a misfortune arising from its geographical position. Territorial

expansion was never the master-thought of Polish statesmen. The

consolidation of the territories of the _serenissime_ Republic, which

made of it a Power of the first rank for a time, was not accomplished by

force. It was not the consequence of successful aggression, but of a

long and successful defence against the raiding neighbours from the East.

The lands of Lithuanian and Ruthenian speech were never conquered by

Poland. These peoples were not compelled by a series of exhausting wars

to seek safety in annexation. It was not the will of a prince or a

political intrigue that brought about the union. Neither was it fear.

The slowly-matured view of the economical and social necessities and,

before all, the ripening moral sense of the masses were the motives that

induced the forty three representatives of Lithuanian and Ruthenian

provinces, led by their paramount prince, to enter into a political

combination unique in the history of the world, a spontaneous and

complete union of sovereign States choosing deliberately the way of

peace. Never was strict truth better expressed in a political instrument

than in the preamble of the first Union Treaty (1413). It begins with

the words: "This Union, being the outcome not of hatred, but of

love"--words that Poles have not heard addressed to them politically by

any nation for the last hundred and fifty years.

This union being an organic, living thing capable of growth and

development was, later, modified and confirmed by two other treaties,

which guaranteed to all the parties in a just and eternal union all their

rights, liberties, and respective institutions. The Polish State offers

a singular instance of an extremely liberal administrative federalism

which, in its Parliamentary life as well as its international politics,

presented a complete unity of feeling and purpose. As an eminent French

diplomatist remarked many years ago: "It is a very remarkable fact in the

history of the Polish State, this invariable and unanimous consent of the

populations; the more so that, the King being looked upon simply as the

chief of the Republic, there was no monarchical bond, no dynastic

fidelity to control and guide the sentiment of the nations, and their

union remained as a pure affirmation of the national will." The Grand

Duchy of Lithuania and its Ruthenian Provinces retained their statutes,

their own administration, and their own political institutions. That

those institutions in the course of time tended to assimilation with the

Polish form was not the result of any pressure, but simply of the

superior character of Polish civilisation.

Even after Poland lost its independence this alliance and this union

remained firm in spirit and fidelity. All the national movements towards

liberation were initiated in the name of the whole mass of people

inhabiting the limits of the old Republic, and all the Provinces took

part in them with complete devotion. It is only in the last generation

that efforts have been made to create a tendency towards separation,

which would indeed serve no one but Poland's common enemies. And,

strangely enough, it is the internationalists, men who professedly care

nothing for race or country, who have set themselves this task of

disruption, one can easily see for what sinister purpose. The ways of

the internationalists may be dark, but they are not inscrutable.

From the same source no doubt there will flow in the future a poisoned

stream of hints of a reconstituted Poland being a danger to the races

once so closely associated within the territories of the Old Republic.

The old partners in "the Crime" are not likely to forgive their victim

its inconvenient and almost shocking obstinacy in keeping alive. They

had tried moral assassination before and with some small measure of

success, for, indeed, the Polish question, like all living reproaches,

had become a nuisance. Given the wrong, and the apparent impossibility

of righting it without running risks of a serious nature, some moral

alleviation may be found in the belief that the victim had brought its

misfortunes on its own head by its own sins. That theory, too, had been

advanced about Poland (as if other nations had known nothing of sin and

folly), and it made some way in the world at different times, simply

because good care was taken by the interested parties to stop the mouth

of the accused. But it has never carried much conviction to honest

minds. Somehow, in defiance of the cynical point of view as to the Force

of Lies and against all the power of falsified evidence, truth often

turns out to be stronger than calumny. With the course of years,

however, another danger sprang up, a danger arising naturally from the

new political alliances dividing Europe into two armed camps. It was the

danger of silence. Almost without exception the Press of Western Europe

in the twentieth century refused to touch the Polish question in any

shape or form whatever. Never was the fact of Polish vitality more

embarrassing to European diplomacy than on the eve of Poland's

resurrection.

When the war broke out there was something gruesomely comic in the

proclamations of emperors and archdukes appealing to that invincible soul

of a nation whose existence or moral worth they had been so arrogantly

denying for more than a century. Perhaps in the whole record of human

transactions there have never been performances so brazen and so vile as

the manifestoes of the German Emperor and the Grand Duke Nicholas of

Russia; and, I imagine, no more bitter insult has been offered to human

heart and intelligence than the way in which those proclamations were

flung into the face of historical truth. It was like a scene in a

cynical and sinister farce, the absurdity of which became in some sort

unfathomable by the reflection that nobody in the world could possibly be

so abjectly stupid as to be deceived for a single moment. At that time,

and for the first two months of the war, I happened to be in Poland, and

I remember perfectly well that, when those precious documents came out,

the confidence in the moral turpitude of mankind they implied did not

even raise a scornful smile on the lips of men whose most sacred feelings

and dignity they outraged. They did not deign to waste their contempt on

them. In fact, the situation was too poignant and too involved for

either hot scorn or a coldly rational discussion. For the Poles it was

like being in a burning house of which all the issues were locked. There

was nothing but sheer anguish under the strange, as if stony, calmness

which in the utter absence of all hope falls on minds that are not

constitutionally prone to despair. Yet in this time of dismay the

irrepressible vitality of the nation would not accept a neutral attitude.

I was told that even if there were no issue it was absolutely necessary

for the Poles to affirm their national existence. Passivity, which could

be regarded as a craven acceptance of all the material and moral horrors

ready to fall upon the nation, was not to be thought of for a moment.

Therefore, it was explained to me, the Poles _must_ act. Whether this

was a counsel of wisdom or not it is very difficult to say, but there are

crises of the soul which are beyond the reach of wisdom. When there is

apparently no issue visible to the eyes of reason, sentiment may yet find

a way out, either towards salvation or to utter perdition, no one can

tell--and the sentiment does not even ask the question. Being there as a

stranger in that tense atmosphere, which was yet not unfamiliar to me, I

was not very anxious to parade my wisdom, especially after it had been

pointed out in answer to my cautious arguments that, if life has its

values worth fighting for, death, too, has that in it which can make it

worthy or unworthy.

Out of the mental and moral trouble into which the grouping of the Powers

at the beginning of war had thrown the counsels of Poland there emerged

at last the decision that the Polish Legions, a peace organisation in

Galicia directed by Pilsudski (afterwards given the rank of General, and

now apparently the Chief of the Government in Warsaw), should take the

field against the Russians. In reality it did not matter against which

partner in the "Crime" Polish resentment should be directed. There was

little to choose between the methods of Russian barbarism, which were

both crude and rotten, and the cultivated brutality tinged with contempt

of Germany's superficial, grinding civilisation. There was nothing to

choose between them. Both were hateful, and the direction of the Polish

effort was naturally governed by Austria's tolerant attitude, which had

connived for years at the semi-secret organisation of the Polish Legions.

Besides, the material possibility pointed out the way. That Poland

should have turned at first against the ally of Western Powers, to whose

moral support she had been looking for so many years, is not a greater

monstrosity than that alliance with Russia which had been entered into by

England and France with rather less excuse and with a view to

eventualities which could perhaps have been avoided by a firmer policy

and by a greater resolution in the face of what plainly appeared

unavoidable.

For let the truth be spoken. The action of Germany, however cruel,

sanguinary, and faithless, was nothing in the nature of a stab in the

dark. The Germanic Tribes had told the whole world in all possible tones

carrying conviction, the gently persuasive, the coldly logical; in tones

Hegelian, Nietzschean, warlike, pious, cynical, inspired, what they were

going to do to the inferior races of the earth, so full of sin and all

unworthiness. But with a strange similarity to the prophets of old (who

were also great moralists and invokers of might) they seemed to be crying

in a desert. Whatever might have been the secret searching of hearts,

the Worthless Ones would not take heed. It must also be admitted that

the conduct of the menaced Governments carried with it no suggestion of

resistance. It was no doubt, the effect of neither courage nor fear, but

of that prudence which causes the average man to stand very still in the

presence of a savage dog. It was not a very politic attitude, and the

more reprehensible in so far that it seemed to arise from the mistrust of

their own people's fortitude. On simple matters of life and death a

people is always better than its leaders, because a people cannot argue

itself as a whole into a sophisticated state of mind out of deference for

a mere doctrine or from an exaggerated sense of its own cleverness. I am

speaking now of democracies whose chiefs resemble the tyrant of Syracuse

in this, that their power is unlimited (for who can limit the will of a

voting people?) and who always see the domestic sword hanging by a hair

above their heads.

Perhaps a different attitude would have checked German self-confidence,

and her overgrown militarism would have died from the excess of its own

strength. What would have been then the moral state of Europe it is

difficult to say. Some other excess would probably have taken its place,

excess of theory, or excess of sentiment, or an excess of the sense of

security leading to some other form of catastrophe; but it is certain

that in that case the Polish question would not have taken a concrete

form for ages. Perhaps it would never have taken form! In this world,

where everything is transient, even the most reproachful ghosts end by

vanishing out of old mansions, out of men's consciences. Progress of

enlightenment, or decay of faith? In the years before the war the Polish

ghost was becoming so thin that it was impossible to get for it the

slightest mention in the papers. A young Pole coming to me from Paris

was extremely indignant, but I, indulging in that detachment which is the

product of greater age, longer experience, and a habit of meditation,

refused to share that sentiment. He had gone begging for a word on

Poland to many influential people, and they had one and all told him that

they were going to do no such thing. They were all men of ideas and

therefore might have been called idealists, but the notion most strongly

anchored in their minds was the folly of touching a question which

certainly had no merit of actuality and would have had the appalling

effect of provoking the wrath of their old enemies and at the same time

offending the sensibilities of their new friends. It was an unanswerable

argument. I couldn't share my young friend's surprise and indignation.

My practice of reflection had also convinced me that there is nothing on

earth that turns quicker on its pivot than political idealism when

touched by the breath of practical politics.

It would be good to remember that Polish independence as embodied in a

Polish State is not the gift of any kind of journalism, neither is it the

outcome even of some particularly benevolent idea or of any clearly

apprehended sense of guilt. I am speaking of what I know when I say that

the original and only formative idea in Europe was the idea of delivering

the fate of Poland into the hands of Russian Tsarism. And, let us

remember, it was assumed then to be a victorious Tsarism at that. It was

an idea talked of openly, entertained seriously, presented as a

benevolence, with a curious blindness to its grotesque and ghastly

character. It was the idea of delivering the victim with a kindly smile

and the confident assurance that "it would be all right" to a perfectly

unrepentant assassin, who, after sawing furiously at its throat for a

hundred years or so, was expected to make friends suddenly and kiss it on

both cheeks in the mystic Russian fashion. It was a singularly

nightmarish combination of international polity, and no whisper of any

other would have been officially tolerated. Indeed, I do not think in

the whole extent of Western Europe there was anybody who had the

slightest mind to whisper on that subject. Those were the days of the

dark future, when Benckendorf put down his name on the Committee for the

Relief of Polish Populations driven by the Russian armies into the heart

of Russia, when the Grand Duke Nicholas (the gentleman who advocated a

St. Bartholomew's Night for the suppression of Russian liberalism) was

displaying his "divine" (I have read the very word in an English

newspaper of standing) strategy in the great retreat, where Mr. Iswolsky

carried himself haughtily on the banks of the Seine; and it was beginning

to dawn upon certain people there that he was a greater nuisance even

than the Polish question.

But there is no use in talking about all that. Some clever person has

said that it is always the unexpected that happens, and on a calm and

dispassionate survey the world does appear mainly to one as a scene of

miracles. Out of Germany's strength, in whose purpose so many people

refused to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which nobody could have

been expected to believe. Out of Russia's collapse emerged that

forbidden thing, the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure, the

retributive shadow of the crime, but as something much more solid and

more difficult to get rid of--a political necessity and a moral solution.

Directly it appeared its practical usefulness became undeniable, and also

the fact that, for better or worse, it was impossible to get rid of it

again except by the unthinkable way of another carving, of another

partition, of another crime.

Therein lie the strength and the future of the thing so strictly

forbidden no farther back than two years or so, of the Polish

independence expressed in a Polish State. It comes into the world

morally free, not in virtue of its sufferings, but in virtue of its

miraculous rebirth and of its ancient claim for services rendered to

Europe. Not a single one of the combatants of all the fronts of the

world has died consciously for Poland's freedom. That supreme

opportunity was denied even to Poland's own children. And it is just as

well! Providence in its inscrutable way had been merciful, for had it

been otherwise the load of gratitude would have been too great, the sense

of obligation too crushing, the joy of deliverance too fearful for

mortals, common sinners with the rest of mankind before the eye of the

Most High. Those who died East and West, leaving so much anguish and so

much pride behind them, died neither for the creation of States, nor for

empty words, nor yet for the salvation of general ideas. They died

neither for democracy, nor leagues, nor systems, nor yet for abstract

justice, which is an unfathomable mystery. They died for something too

deep for words, too mighty for the common standards by which reason

measures the advantages of life and death, too sacred for the vain

discourses that come and go on the lips of dreamers, fanatics,

humanitarians, and statesmen. They died . . . .

Poland's independence springs up from that great immolation, but Poland's

loyalty to Europe will not be rooted in anything so trenchant and

burdensome as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness, of that

gratitude which in a worldly sense is sometimes called eternal, but which

lies always at the mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by the

instability of human sentiments to end in negation. Polish loyalty will

be rooted in something much more solid and enduring, in something that

could never be called eternal, but which is, in fact, life-enduring. It

will be rooted in the national temperament, which is about the only thing

on earth that can be trusted. Men may deteriorate, they may improve too,

but they don't change. Misfortune is a hard school which may either

mature or spoil a national character, but it may be reasonably advanced

that the long course of adversity of the most cruel kind has not injured

the fundamental characteristics of the Polish nation which has proved its

vitality against the most demoralising odds. The various phases of the

Polish sense of self-preservation struggling amongst the menacing forces

and the no less threatening chaos of the neighbouring Powers should be

judged impartially. I suggest impartiality and not indulgence simply

because, when appraising the Polish question, it is not necessary to

invoke the softer emotions. A little calm reflection on the past and the

present is all that is necessary on the part of the Western world to

judge the movements of a community whose ideals are the same, but whose

situation is unique. This situation was brought vividly home to me in

the course of an argument more than eighteen months ago. "Don't forget,"

I was told, "that Poland has got to live in contact with Germany and

Russia to the end of time. Do you understand the force of that

expression: 'To the end of time'? Facts must be taken into account, and

especially appalling facts, such as this, to which there is no possible

remedy on earth. For reasons which are, properly speaking,

physiological, a prospect of friendship with Germans or Russians even in

the most distant future is unthinkable. Any alliance of heart and mind

would be a monstrous thing, and monsters, as we all know, cannot live.

You can't base your conduct on a monstrous conception. We are either

worth or not worth preserving, but the horrible psychology of the

situation is enough to drive the national mind to distraction. Yet under

a destructive pressure, of which Western Europe can have no notion,

applied by forces that were not only crushing but corrupting, we have

preserved our sanity. Therefore there can be no fear of our losing our

minds simply because the pressure is removed. We have neither lost our

heads nor yet our moral sense. Oppression, not merely political, but

affecting social relations, family life, the deepest affections of human

nature, and the very fount of natural emotions, has never made us

vengeful. It is worthy of notice that with every incentive present in

our emotional reactions we had no recourse to political assassination.

Arms in hand, hopeless or hopefully, and always against immeasurable

odds, we did affirm ourselves and the justice of our cause; but wild

justice has never been a part of our conception of national manliness. In

all the history of Polish oppression there was only one shot fired which

was not in battle. Only one! And the man who fired it in Paris at the

Emperor Alexander II. was but an individual connected with no

organisation, representing no shade of Polish opinion. The only effect

in Poland was that of profound regret, not at the failure, but at the

mere fact of the attempt. The history of our captivity is free from that

stain; and whatever follies in the eyes of the world we may have

perpetrated, we have neither murdered our enemies nor acted treacherously

against them, nor yet have been reduced to the point of cursing each

other."

I could not gainsay the truth of that discourse, I saw as clearly as my

interlocutor the impossibility of the faintest sympathetic bond between

Poland and her neighbours ever being formed in the future. The only

course that remains to a reconstituted Poland is the elaboration,

establishment, and preservation of the most correct method of political

relations with neighbours to whom Poland's existence is bound to be a

humiliation and an offence. Calmly considered it is an appalling task,

yet one may put one's trust in that national temperament which is so

completely free from aggressiveness and revenge. Therein lie the

foundations of all hope. The success of renewed life for that nation

whose fate is to remain in exile, ever isolated from the West, amongst

hostile surroundings, depends on the sympathetic understanding of its

problems by its distant friends, the Western Powers, which in their

democratic development must recognise the moral and intellectual kinship

of that distant outpost of their own type of civilisation, which was the

only basis of Polish culture.

Whatever may be the future of Russia and the final organisation of

Germany, the old hostility must remain unappeased, the fundamental

antagonism must endure for years to come. The Crime of the Partition was

committed by autocratic Governments which were the Governments of their

time; but those Governments were characterised in the past, as they will

be in the future, by their people's national traits, which remain utterly

incompatible with the Polish mentality and Polish sentiment. Both the

German submissiveness (idealistic as it may be) and the Russian

lawlessness (fed on the corruption of all the virtues) are utterly

foreign to the Polish nation, whose qualities and defects are altogether

of another kind, tending to a certain exaggeration of individualism and,

perhaps, to an extreme belief in the Governing Power of Free Assent: the

one invariably vital principle in the internal government of the Old

Republic. There was never a history more free from political bloodshed

than the history of the Polish State, which never knew either feudal

institutions or feudal quarrels. At the time when heads were falling on

the scaffolds all over Europe there was only one political execution in

Poland--only one; and as to that there still exists a tradition that the

great Chancellor who democratised Polish institutions, and had to order

it in pursuance of his political purpose, could not settle that matter

with his conscience till the day of his death. Poland, too, had her

civil wars, but this can hardly be made a matter of reproach to her by

the rest of the world. Conducted with humanity, they left behind them no

animosities and no sense of repression, and certainly no legacy of

hatred. They were but a recognised argument in political discussion and

tended always towards conciliation.

I cannot imagine, whatever form of democratic government Poland

elaborates for itself, that either the nation or its leaders would do

anything but welcome the closest scrutiny of their renewed political

existence. The difficulty of the problem of that existence will be so

great that some errors will be unavoidable, and one may be sure that they

will be taken advantage of by its neighbours to discredit that living

witness to a great historical crime. If not the actual frontiers, then

the moral integrity of the new State is sure to be assailed before the

eyes of Europe. Economical enmity will also come into play when the

world's work is resumed again and competition asserts its power. Charges

of aggression are certain to be made, especially as related to the small

States formed of the territories of the Old Republic. And everybody

knows the power of lies which go about clothed in coats of many colours,

whereas, as is well known, Truth has no such advantage, and for that

reason is often suppressed as not altogether proper for everyday

purposes. It is not often recognised, because it is not always fit to be

seen.

Already there are innuendoes, threats, hints thrown out, and even awful

instances fabricated out of inadequate materials, but it is historically

unthinkable that the Poland of the future, with its sacred tradition of

freedom and its hereditary sense of respect for the rights of individuals

and States, should seek its prosperity in aggressive action or in moral

violence against that part of its once fellow-citizens who are Ruthenians

or Lithuanians. The only influence that cannot be restrained is simply

the influence of time, which disengages truth from all facts with a

merciless logic and prevails over the passing opinions, the changing

impulses of men. There can be no doubt that the moral impulses and the

material interests of the new nationalities, which seem to play now the

game of disintegration for the benefit of the world's enemies, will in

the end bring them nearer to the Poland of this war's creation, will

unite them sooner or later by a spontaneous movement towards the State

which had adopted and brought them up in the development of its own

humane culture--the offspring of the West.

A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM--1916

We must start from the assumption that promises made by proclamation at

the beginning of this war may be binding on the individuals who made them

under the stress of coming events, but cannot be regarded as binding the

Governments after the end of the war.

Poland has been presented with three proclamations. Two of them were in

such contrast with the avowed principles and the historic action for the

last hundred years (since the Congress of Vienna) of the Powers

concerned, that they were more like cynical insults to the nation's

deepest feelings, its memory and its intelligence, than state papers of a

conciliatory nature.

The German promises awoke nothing but indignant contempt; the Russian a

bitter incredulity of the most complete kind. The Austrian proclamation,

which made no promises and contented itself with pointing out the Austro-

Polish relations for the last forty-five years, was received in silence.

For it is a fact that in Austrian Poland alone Polish nationality was

recognised as an element of the Empire, and individuals could breathe the

air of freedom, of civil life, if not of political independence.

But for Poles to be Germanophile is unthinkable. To be Russophile or

Austrophile is at best a counsel of despair in view of a European

situation which, because of the grouping of the powers, seems to shut

from them every hope, expressed or unexpressed, of a national future

nursed through more than a hundred years of suffering and oppression.

Through most of these years, and especially since 1830, Poland (I use

this expression since Poland exists as a spiritual entity to-day as

definitely as it ever existed in her past) has put her faith in the

Western Powers. Politically it may have been nothing more than a

consoling illusion, and the nation had a half-consciousness of this. But

what Poland was looking for from the Western Powers without

discouragement and with unbroken confidence was moral support.

This is a fact of the sentimental order. But such facts have their

positive value, for their idealism derives from perhaps the highest kind

of reality. A sentiment asserts its claim by its force, persistence and

universality. In Poland that sentimental attitude towards the Western

Powers is universal. It extends to all classes. The very children are

affected by it as soon as they begin to think.

The political value of such a sentiment consists in this, that it is

based on profound resemblances. Therefore one can build on it as if it

were a material fact. For the same reason it would be unsafe to

disregard it if one proposed to build solidly. The Poles, whom

superficial or ill-informed theorists are trying to force into the social

and psychological formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at all.

In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are

Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought,

even of those which are remote from their historical experience.

That element of racial unity which may be called Polonism, remained

compressed between Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian

Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels nothing but hatred. But

between Polonism and Slavonism there is not so much hatred as a complete

and ineradicable incompatibility.

No political work of reconstructing Poland either as a matter of justice

or expediency could be sound which would leave the new creation in

dependence to Germanism or to Slavonism.

The first need not be considered. The second must be--unless the Powers

elect to drop the Polish question either under the cover of vague

assurances or without any disguise whatever.

But if it is considered it will be seen at once that the Slavonic

solution of the Polish Question can offer no guarantees of duration or

hold the promise of security for the peace of Europe.

The only basis for it would be the Grand Duke's Manifesto. But that

Manifesto, signed by a personage now removed from Europe to Asia, and by

a man, moreover, who if true to himself, to his conception of patriotism

and to his family tradition could not have put his hand to it with any

sincerity of purpose, is now divested of all authority. The forcible

vagueness of its promises, its startling inconsistency with the hundred

years of ruthlessly denationalising oppression permit one to doubt

whether it was ever meant to have any authority.

But in any case it could have had no effect. The very nature of things

would have brought to nought its professed intentions.

It is impossible to suppose that a State of Russia's power and

antecedents would tolerate a privileged community (of, to Russia,

unnational complexion) within the body of the Empire. All history shows

that such an arrangement, however hedged in by the most solemn treaties

and declarations, cannot last. In this case it would lead to a tragic

issue. The absorption of Polonism is unthinkable. The last hundred

years of European History proves it undeniably. There remains then

extirpation, a process of blood and iron; and the last act of the Polish

drama would be played then before a Europe too weary to interfere, and to

the applause of Germany.

It would not be just to say that the disappearance of Polonism would add

any strength to the Slavonic power of expansion. It would add no

strength, but it would remove a possibly effective barrier against the

surprises the future of Europe may hold in store for the Western Powers.

Thus the question whether Polonism is worth saving presents itself as a

problem of politics with a practical bearing on the stability of European

peace--as a barrier or perhaps better (in view of its detached position)

as an outpost of the Western Powers placed between the great might of

Slavonism which has not yet made up its mind to anything, and the

organised Germanism which has spoken its mind with no uncertain voice,

before the world.

Looked at in that light alone Polonism seems worth saving. That it has

lived so long on its trust in the moral support of the Western Powers may

give it another and even stronger claim, based on a truth of a more

profound kind. Polonism had resisted the utmost efforts of Germanism and

Slavonism for more than a hundred years. Why? Because of the strength

of its ideals conscious of their kinship with the West. Such a power of

resistance creates a moral obligation which it would be unsafe to

neglect. There is always a risk in throwing away a tool of proved

temper.

In this profound conviction of the practical and ideal worth of Polonism

one approaches the problem of its preservation with a very vivid sense of

the practical difficulties derived from the grouping of the Powers. The

uncertainty of the extent and of the actual form of victory for the

Allies will increase the difficulty of formulating a plan of Polish

regeneration at the present moment.

Poland, to strike its roots again into the soil of political Europe, will

require a guarantee of security for the healthy development and for the

untrammelled play of such institutions as she may be enabled to give to

herself.

Those institutions will be animated by the spirit of Polonism, which,

having been a factor in the history of Europe and having proved its

vitality under oppression, has established its right to live. That

spirit, despised and hated by Germany and incompatible with Slavonism

because of moral differences, cannot avoid being (in its renewed

assertion) an object of dislike and mistrust.

As an unavoidable consequence of the past Poland will have to begin its

existence in an atmosphere of enmities and suspicions. That advanced

outpost of Western civilisation will have to hold its ground in the midst

of hostile camps: always its historical fate.

Against the menace of such a specially dangerous situation the paper and

ink of public Treaties cannot be an effective defence. Nothing but the

actual, living, active participation of the two Western Powers in the

establishment of the new Polish commonwealth, and in the first twenty

years of its existence, will give the Poles a sufficient guarantee of

security in the work of restoring their national life.

An Anglo-French protectorate would be the ideal form of moral and

material support. But Russia, as an ally, must take her place in it on

such a footing as will allay to the fullest extent her possible

apprehensions and satisfy her national sentiment. That necessity will

have to be formally recognised.

In reality Russia has ceased to care much for her Polish possessions.

Public recognition of a mistake in political morality and a voluntary

surrender of territory in the cause of European concord, cannot damage

the prestige of a powerful State. The new spheres of expansion in

regions more easily assimilable, will more than compensate Russia for the

loss of territory on the Western frontier of the Empire.

The experience of Dual Controls and similar combinations has been so

unfortunate in the past that the suggestion of a Triple Protectorate may

well appear at first sight monstrous even to unprejudiced minds. But it

must be remembered that this is a unique case and a problem altogether

exceptional, justifying the employment of exceptional means for its

solution. To those who would doubt the possibility of even bringing such

a scheme into existence the answer may be made that there are

psychological moments when any measure tending towards the ends of

concord and justice may be brought into being. And it seems that the end

of the war would be the moment for bringing into being the political

scheme advocated in this note.

Its success must depend on the singleness of purpose in the contracting

Powers, and on the wisdom, the tact, the abilities, the good-will of men

entrusted with its initiation and its further control. Finally it may be

pointed out that this plan is the only one offering serious guarantees to

all the parties occupying their respective positions within the scheme.

If her existence as a state is admitted as just, expedient and necessary,

Poland has the moral right to receive her constitution not from the hand

of an old enemy, but from the Western Powers alone, though of course with

the fullest concurrence of Russia.

This constitution, elaborated by a committee of Poles nominated by the

three Governments, will (after due discussion and amendment by the High

Commissioners of the Protecting Powers) be presented to Poland as the

initial document, the charter of her new life, freely offered and

unreservedly accepted.

It should be as simple and short as a written constitution can

be--establishing the Polish Commonwealth, settling the lines of

representative institutions, the form of judicature, and leaving the

greatest measure possible of self-government to the provinces forming

part of the re-created Poland.

This constitution will be promulgated immediately after the three Powers

had settled the frontiers of the new State, including the town of Danzic

(free port) and a proportion of seaboard. The legislature will then be

called together and a general treaty will regulate Poland's international

portion as a protected state, the status of the High Commissioners and

such-like matters. The legislature will ratify, thus making Poland, as

it were, a party in the establishment of the protectorate. A point of

importance.

Other general treaties will define Poland's position in the Anglo-Franco-

Russian alliance, fix the numbers of the army, and settle the

participation of the Powers in its organisation and training.

POLAND REVISITED--1915

I.

I have never believed in political assassination as a means to an end,

and least of all in assassination of the dynastic order. I don't know

how far murder can ever approach the perfection of a fine art, but looked

upon with the cold eye of reason it seems but a crude expedient of

impatient hope or hurried despair. There are few men whose premature

death could influence human affairs more than on the surface. The deeper

stream of causes depends not on individuals who, like the mass of

mankind, are carried on by a destiny which no murder has ever been able

to placate, divert, or arrest.

In July of last year I was a stranger in a strange city in the Midlands

and particularly out of touch with the world's politics. Never a very

diligent reader of newspapers, there were at that time reasons of a

private order which caused me to be even less informed than usual on

public affairs as presented from day to day in that necessarily

atmosphereless, perspectiveless manner of the daily papers, which

somehow, for a man possessed of some historic sense, robs them of all

real interest. I don't think I had looked at a daily for a month past.

But though a stranger in a strange city I was not lonely, thanks to a

friend who had travelled there out of pure kindness to bear me company in

a conjuncture which, in a most private sense, was somewhat trying.

It was this friend who, one morning at breakfast, informed me of the

murder of the Archduke Ferdinand.

The impression was mediocre. I was barely aware that such a man existed.

I remembered only that not long before he had visited London. The

recollection was rather of a cloud of insignificant printed words his

presence in this country provoked.

Various opinions had been expressed of him, but his importance was

Archducal, dynastic, purely accidental. Can there be in the world of

real men anything more shadowy than an Archduke? And now he was no more;

removed with an atrocity of circumstances which made one more sensible of

his humanity than when he was in life. I connected that crime with

Balkanic plots and aspirations so little that I had actually to ask where

it had happened. My friend told me it was in Serajevo, and wondered what

would be the consequences of that grave event. He asked me what I

thought would happen next.

It was with perfect sincerity that I answered "Nothing," and having a

great repugnance to consider murder as a factor of politics, I dismissed

the subject. It fitted with my ethical sense that an act cruel and

absurd should be also useless. I had also the vision of a crowd of

shadowy Archdukes in the background, out of which one would step forward

to take the place of that dead man in the light of the European stage.

And then, to speak the whole truth, there was no man capable of forming a

judgment who attended so little to the march of events as I did at that

time. What for want of a more definite term I must call my mind was

fixed upon my own affairs, not because they were in a bad posture, but

because of their fascinating holiday-promising aspect. I had been

obtaining my information as to Europe at second hand, from friends good

enough to come down now and then to see us. They arrived with their

pockets full of crumpled newspapers, and answered my queries casually,

with gentle smiles of scepticism as to the reality of my interest. And

yet I was not indifferent; but the tension in the Balkans had become

chronic after the acute crisis, and one could not help being less

conscious of it. It had wearied out one's attention. Who could have

guessed that on that wild stage we had just been looking at a miniature

rehearsal of the great world-drama, the reduced model of the very

passions and violences of what the future held in store for the Powers of

the Old World? Here and there, perhaps, rare minds had a suspicion of

that possibility, while they watched Old Europe stage-managing fussily by

means of notes and conferences, the prophetic reproduction of its

awaiting fate. It was wonderfully exact in the spirit; same roar of

guns, same protestations of superiority, same words in the air; race,

liberation, justice--and the same mood of trivial demonstrations. One

could not take to-day a ticket for Petersburg. "You mean Petrograd,"

would say the booking clerk. Shortly after the fall of Adrianople a

friend of mine passing through Sophia asked for some _cafe turc_ at the

end of his lunch.

"Monsieur veut dire Cafe balkanique," the patriotic waiter corrected him

austerely.

I will not say that I had not observed something of that instructive

aspect of the war of the Balkans both in its first and in its second

phase. But those with whom I touched upon that vision were pleased to

see in it the evidence of my alarmist cynicism. As to alarm, I pointed

out that fear is natural to man, and even salutary. It has done as much

as courage for the preservation of races and institutions. But from a

charge of cynicism I have always shrunk instinctively. It is like a

charge of being blind in one eye, a moral disablement, a sort of

disgraceful calamity that must he carried off with a jaunty bearing--a

sort of thing I am not capable of. Rather than be thought a mere jaunty

cripple I allowed myself to be blinded by the gross obviousness of the

usual arguments. It was pointed out to me that these Eastern nations

were not far removed from a savage state. Their economics were yet at

the stage of scratching the earth and feeding the pigs. The

highly-developed material civilisation of Europe could not allow itself

to be disturbed by a war. The industry and the finance could not allow

themselves to be disorganised by the ambitions of an idle class, or even

the aspirations, whatever they might be, of the masses.

Very plausible all this sounded. War does not pay. There had been a

book written on that theme--an attempt to put pacificism on a material

basis. Nothing more solid in the way of argument could have been

advanced on this trading and manufacturing globe. War was "bad

business!" This was final.

But, truth to say, on this July day I reflected but little on the

condition of the civilised world. Whatever sinister passions were

heaving under its splendid and complex surface, I was too agitated by a

simple and innocent desire of my own, to notice the signs or interpret

them correctly. The most innocent of passions will take the edge off

one's judgment. The desire which possessed me was simply the desire to

travel. And that being so it would have taken something very plain in

the way of symptoms to shake my simple trust in the stability of things

on the Continent. My sentiment and not my reason was engaged there. My

eyes were turned to the past, not to the future; the past that one cannot

suspect and mistrust, the shadowy and unquestionable moral possession the

darkest struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace.

In the preceding month of May we had received an invitation to spend some

weeks in Poland in a country house in the neighbourhood of Cracow, but

within the Russian frontier. The enterprise at first seemed to me

considerable. Since leaving the sea, to which I have been faithful for

so many years, I have discovered that there is in my composition very

little stuff from which travellers are made. I confess that my first

impulse about a projected journey is to leave it alone. But the

invitation received at first with a sort of dismay ended by rousing the

dormant energy of my feelings. Cracow is the town where I spent with my

father the last eighteen months of his life. It was in that old royal

and academical city that I ceased to be a child, became a boy, had known

the friendships, the admirations, the thoughts and the indignations of

that age. It was within those historical walls that I began to

understand things, form affections, lay up a store of memories and a fund

of sensations with which I was to break violently by throwing myself into

an unrelated existence. It was like the experience of another world. The

wings of time made a great dusk over all this, and I feared at first that

if I ventured bodily in there I would discover that I who have had to do

with a good many imaginary lives have been embracing mere shadows in my

youth. I feared. But fear in itself may become a fascination. Men have

gone, alone and trembling, into graveyards at midnight--just to see what

would happen. And this adventure was to be pursued in sunshine. Neither

would it be pursued alone. The invitation was extended to us all. This

journey would have something of a migratory character, the invasion of a

tribe. My present, all that gave solidity and value to it, at any rate,

would stand by me in this test of the reality of my past. I was pleased

with the idea of showing my companions what Polish country life was like;

to visit the town where I was at school before the boys by my side should

grow too old, and gaining an individual past of their own, should lose

their unsophisticated interest in mine. It is only in the short instants

of early youth that we have the faculty of coming out of ourselves to see

dimly the visions and share the emotions of another soul. For youth all

is reality in this world, and with justice, since it apprehends so

vividly its images behind which a longer life makes one doubt whether

there is any substance. I trusted to the fresh receptivity of these

young beings in whom, unless Heredity is an empty word, there should have

been a fibre which would answer to the sight, to the atmosphere, to the

memories of that corner of the earth where my own boyhood had received

its earliest independent impressions.

The first days of the third week in July, while the telegraph wires

hummed with the words of enormous import which were to fill blue books,

yellow books, white books, and to arouse the wonder of mankind, passed

for us in light-hearted preparations for the journey. What was it but

just a rush through Germany, to get across as quickly as possible?

Germany is the part of the earth's solid surface of which I know the

least. In all my life I had been across it only twice. I may well say

of it _vidi tantum_; and the very little I saw was through the window of

a railway carriage at express speed. Those journeys of mine had been

more like pilgrimages when one hurries on towards the goal for the

satisfaction of a deeper need than curiosity. In this last instance,

too, I was so incurious that I would have liked to have fallen asleep on

the shores of England and opened my eyes, if it were possible, only on

the other side of the Silesian frontier. Yet, in truth, as many others

have done, I had "sensed it"--that promised land of steel, of chemical

dyes, of method, of efficiency; that race planted in the middle of

Europe, assuming in grotesque vanity the attitude of Europeans amongst

effete Asiatics or barbarous niggers; and, with a consciousness of

superiority freeing their hands from all moral bonds, anxious to take up,

if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's burden." Meantime, in a

clearing of the Teutonic forest, their sages were rearing a Tree of

Cynical Wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be seen now lying

over the prostrate body of Belgium. It must be said that they laboured

openly enough, watering it with the most authentic sources of all

madness, and watching with their be-spectacled eyes the slow ripening of

the glorious blood-red fruit. The sincerest words of peace, words of

menace, and I verily believe words of abasement, even if there had been a

voice vile enough to utter them, would have been wasted on their ecstasy.

For when the fruit ripens on a branch it must fall. There is nothing on

earth that can prevent it.

II.

For reasons which at first seemed to me somewhat obscure, that one of my

companions whose wishes are law decided that our travels should begin in

an unusual way by the crossing of the North Sea. We should proceed from

Harwich to Hamburg. Besides being thirty-six times longer than the Dover-

Calais passage this rather unusual route had an air of adventure in

better keeping with the romantic feeling of this Polish journey which for

so many years had been before us in a state of a project full of colour

and promise, but always retreating, elusive like an enticing mirage.

And, after all, it had turned out to be no mirage. No wonder they were

excited. It's no mean experience to lay your hands on a mirage. The day

of departure had come, the very hour had struck. The luggage was coming

downstairs. It was most convincing. Poland then, if erased from the

map, yet existed in reality; it was not a mere _pays du reve_, where you

can travel only in imagination. For no man, they argued, not even

father, an habitual pursuer of dreams, would push the love of the

novelist's art of make-believe to the point of burdening himself with

real trunks for a voyage _au pays du reve_.

As we left the door of our house, nestling in, perhaps, the most peaceful

nook in Kent, the sky, after weeks of perfectly brazen serenity, veiled

its blue depths and started to weep fine tears for the refreshment of the

parched fields. A pearly blur settled over them, and a light sifted of

all glare, of everything unkindly and searching that dwells in the

splendour of unveiled skies. All unconscious of going towards the very

scenes of war, I carried off in my eye, this tiny fragment of Great

Britain; a few fields, a wooded rise; a clump of trees or two, with a

short stretch of road, and here and there a gleam of red wall and tiled

roof above the darkening hedges wrapped up in soft mist and peace. And I

felt that all this had a very strong hold on me as the embodiment of a

beneficent and gentle spirit; that it was dear to me not as an

inheritance, but as an acquisition, as a conquest in the sense in which a

woman is conquered--by love, which is a sort of surrender.

These were strange, as if disproportionate thoughts to the matter in

hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I am

certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble

but the suppressed excitement of pleasurable anticipation. The forms and

the spirit of the land before their eyes were their inheritance, not

their conquest--which is a thing precarious, and, therefore, the most

precious, possessing you if only by the fear of unworthiness rather than

possessed by you. Moreover, as we sat together in the same railway

carriage, they were looking forward to a voyage in space, whereas I felt

more and more plainly, that what I had started on was a journey in time,

into the past; a fearful enough prospect for the most consistent, but to

him who had not known how to preserve against his impulses the order and

continuity of his life--so that at times it presented itself to his

conscience as a series of betrayals--still more dreadful.

I down here these thoughts so exclusively personal, to explain why there

was no room in my consciousness for the apprehension of a European war. I

don't mean to say that I ignored the possibility; I simply did not think

of it. And it made no difference; for if I had thought of it, it could

only have been in the lame and inconclusive way of the common uninitiated

mortals; and I am sure that nothing short of intellectual

certitude--obviously unattainable by the man in the street--could have

stayed me on that journey which now that I had started on it seemed an

irrevocable thing, a necessity of my self-respect.

London, the London before the war, flaunting its enormous glare, as of a

monstrous conflagration up into the black sky--with its best Venice-like

aspect of rainy evenings, the wet asphalted streets lying with the sheen

of sleeping water in winding canals, and the great houses of the city

towering all dark, like empty palaces, above the reflected lights of the

glistening roadway.

Everything in the subdued incomplete night-life around the Mansion House

went on normally with its fascinating air of a dead commercial city of

sombre walls through which the inextinguishable activity of its millions

streamed East and West in a brilliant flow of lighted vehicles.

In Liverpool Street, as usual too, through the double gates, a continuous

line of taxi-cabs glided down the inclined approach and up again, like an

endless chain of dredger-buckets, pouring in the passengers, and dipping

them out of the great railway station under the inexorable pallid face of

the clock telling off the diminishing minutes of peace. It was the hour

of the boat-trains to Holland, to Hamburg, and there seemed to be no lack

of people, fearless, reckless, or ignorant, who wanted to go to these

places. The station was normally crowded, and if there was a great

flutter of evening papers in the multitude of hands there were no signs

of extraordinary emotion on that multitude of faces. There was nothing

in them to distract me from the thought that it was singularly

appropriate that I should start from this station on the retraced way of

my existence. For this was the station at which, thirty-seven years

before, I arrived on my first visit to London. Not the same building,

but the same spot. At nineteen years of age, after a period of probation

and training I had imposed upon myself as ordinary seaman on board a

North Sea coaster, I had come up from Lowestoft--my first long railway

journey in England--to "sign on" for an Antipodean voyage in a deep-water

ship. Straight from a railway carriage I had walked into the great city

with something of the feeling of a traveller penetrating into a vast and

unexplored wilderness. No explorer could have been more lonely. I did

not know a single soul of all these millions that all around me peopled

the mysterious distances of the streets. I cannot say I was free from a

little youthful awe, but at that age one's feelings are simple. I was

elated. I was pursuing a clear aim, I was carrying out a deliberate plan

of making out of myself, in the first place, a seaman worthy of the

service, good enough to work by the side of the men with whom I was to

live; and in the second place, I had to justify my existence to myself,

to redeem a tacit moral pledge. Both these aims were to be attained by

the same effort. How simple seemed the problem of life then, on that

hazy day of early September in the year 1878, when I entered London for

the first time.

From that point of view--Youth and a straightforward scheme of conduct--it

was certainly a year of grace. All the help I had to get in touch with

the world I was invading was a piece of paper not much bigger than the

palm of my hand--in which I held it--torn out of a larger plan of London

for the greater facility of reference. It had been the object of careful

study for some days past. The fact that I could take a conveyance at the

station never occurred to my mind, no, not even when I got out into the

street, and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak,

of twenty thousand hansoms. A strange absence of mind or unconscious

conviction that one cannot approach an important moment of one's life by

means of a hired carriage? Yes, it would have been a preposterous

proceeding. And indeed I was to make an Australian voyage and encircle

the globe before ever entering a London hansom.

Another document, a cutting from a newspaper, containing the address of

an obscure shipping agent, was in my pocket. And I needed not to take it

out. That address was as if graven deep in my brain. I muttered its

words to myself as I walked on, navigating the sea of London by the chart

concealed in the palm of my hand; for I had vowed to myself not to

inquire my way from anyone. Youth is the time of rash pledges. Had I

taken a wrong turning I would have been lost; and if faithful to my

pledge I might have remained lost for days, for weeks, have left perhaps

my bones to be discovered bleaching in some blind alley of the

Whitechapel district, as it had happened to lonely travellers lost in the

bush. But I walked on to my destination without hesitation or mistake,

showing there, for the first time, some of that faculty to absorb and

make my own the imaged topography of a chart, which in later years was to

help me in regions of intricate navigation to keep the ships entrusted to

me off the ground. The place I was bound to was not easy to find. It

was one of those courts hidden away from the charted and navigable

streets, lost among the thick growth of houses like a dark pool in the

depths of a forest, approached by an inconspicuous archway as if by

secret path; a Dickensian nook of London, that wonder city, the growth of

which bears no sign of intelligent design, but many traces of freakishly

sombre phantasy the Great Master knew so well how to bring out by the

magic of his understanding love. And the office I entered was Dickensian

too. The dust of the Waterloo year lay on the panes and frames of its

windows; early Georgian grime clung to its sombre wainscoting.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, but the day was gloomy. By the

light of a single gas-jet depending from the smoked ceiling I saw an

elderly man, in a long coat of black broadcloth. He had a grey beard, a

big nose, thick lips, and heavy shoulders. His curly white hair and the

general character of his head recalled vaguely a burly apostle in the

_barocco_ style of Italian art. Standing up at a tall, shabby, slanting

desk, his silver-rimmed spectacles pushed up high on his forehead, he was

eating a mutton-chop, which had been just brought to him from some

Dickensian eating-house round the corner.

Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his florid, _barocco_ apostle's

face with an expression of inquiry.

I produced elaborately a series of vocal sounds which must have borne

sufficient resemblance to the phonetics of English speech, for his face

broke into a smile of comprehension almost at once.--"Oh, it's you who

wrote a letter to me the other day from Lowestoft about getting a ship."

I had written to him from Lowestoft. I can't remember a single word of

that letter now. It was my very first composition in the English

language. And he had understood it, evidently, for he spoke to the point

at once, explaining that his business, mainly, was to find good ships for

young gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a

view of being trained for officers. But he gathered that this was not my

object. I did not desire to be apprenticed. Was that the case?

It was. He was good enough to say then, "Of course I see that you are a

gentleman. But your wish is to get a berth before the mast as an Able

Seaman if possible. Is that it?"

It was certainly my wish; but he stated doubtfully that he feared he

could not help me much in this. There was an Act of Parliament which

made it penal to procure ships for sailors. "An Act-of-Parliament. A

law," he took pains to impress it again and again on my foreign

understanding, while I looked at him in consternation.

I had not been half an hour in London before I had run my head against an

Act of Parliament! What a hopeless adventure! However, the _barocco_

apostle was a resourceful person in his way, and we managed to get round

the hard letter of it without damage to its fine spirit. Yet, strictly

speaking, it was not the conduct of a good citizen; and in retrospect

there is an unfilial flavour about that early sin of mine. For this Act

of Parliament, the Merchant Shipping Act of the Victorian era, had been

in a manner of speaking a father and mother to me. For many years it had

regulated and disciplined my life, prescribed my food and the amount of

my breathing space, had looked after my health and tried as much as

possible to secure my personal safety in a risky calling. It isn't such

a bad thing to lead a life of hard toil and plain duty within the four

corners of an honest Act of Parliament. And I am glad to say that its

seventies have never been applied to me.

In the year 1878, the year of "Peace with Honour," I had walked as lone

as any human being in the streets of London, out of Liverpool Street

Station, to surrender myself to its care. And now, in the year of the

war waged for honour and conscience more than for any other cause, I was

there again, no longer alone, but a man of infinitely dear and close ties

grown since that time, of work done, of words written, of friendships

secured. It was like the closing of a thirty-six-year cycle.

All unaware of the War Angel already awaiting, with the trumpet at his

lips, the stroke of the fatal hour, I sat there, thinking that this life

of ours is neither long nor short, but that it can appear very wonderful,

entertaining, and pathetic, with symbolic images and bizarre associations

crowded into one half-hour of retrospective musing.

I felt, too, that this journey, so suddenly entered upon, was bound to

take me away from daily life's actualities at every step. I felt it more

than ever when presently we steamed out into the North Sea, on a dark

night fitful with gusts of wind, and I lingered on deck, alone of all the

tale of the ship's passengers. That sea was to me something

unforgettable, something much more than a name. It had been for some

time the schoolroom of my trade. On it, I may safely say, I had learned,

too, my first words of English. A wild and stormy abode, sometimes, was

that confined, shallow-water academy of seamanship from which I launched

myself on the wide oceans. My teachers had been the sailors of the

Norfolk shore; coast men, with steady eyes, mighty limbs, and gentle

voice; men of very few words, which at least were never bare of meaning.

Honest, strong, steady men, sobered by domestic ties, one and all, as far

as I can remember.

That is what years ago the North Sea I could hear growling in the dark

all round the ship had been for me. And I fancied that I must have been

carrying its voice in my ear ever since, for nothing could be more

familiar than those short, angry sounds I was listening to with a smile

of affectionate recognition.

I could not guess that before many days my old schoolroom would be

desecrated by violence, littered with wrecks, with death walking its

waves, hiding under its waters. Perhaps while I am writing these words

the children, or maybe the grandchildren, of my pacific teachers are out

in trawlers, under the Naval flag, dredging for German submarine mines.

III.

I have said that the North Sea was my finishing school of seamanship

before I launched myself on the wider oceans. Confined as it is in

comparison with the vast stage of this water-girt globe, I did not know

it in all its parts. My class-room was the region of the English East

Coast which, in the year of Peace with Honour, had long forgotten the war

episodes belonging to its maritime history. It was a peaceful coast,

agricultural, industrial, the home of fishermen. At night the lights of

its many towns played on the clouds, or in clear weather lay still, here

and there, in brilliant pools above the ink-black outline of the land. On

many a night I have hauled at the braces under the shadow of that coast,

envying, as sailors will, the people on shore sleeping quietly in their

beds within sound of the sea. I imagine that not one head on those

envied pillows was made uneasy by the slightest premonition of the

realities of naval war the short lifetime of one generation was to bring

so close to their homes.

Though far away from that region of kindly memories and traversing a part

of the North Sea much less known to me, I was deeply conscious of the

familiarity of my surroundings. It was a cloudy, nasty day: and the

aspects of Nature don't change, unless in the course of thousands of

years--or, perhaps, centuries. The Phoenicians, its first discoverers,

the Romans, the first imperial rulers of that sea, had experienced days

like this, so different in the wintry quality of the light, even on a

July afternoon, from anything they had ever known in their native

Mediterranean. For myself, a very late comer into that sea, and its

former pupil, I accorded amused recognition to the characteristic aspect

so well remembered from my days of training. The same old thing. A grey-

green expanse of smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-

ridges, and over all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of

wet blotting-paper. From time to time a flurry of fine rain blew along

like a puff of smoke across the dots of distant fishing boats, very few,

very scattered, and tossing restlessly on an ever dissolving, ever re-

forming sky-line.

Those flurries, and the steady rolling of the ship, accounted for the

emptiness of the decks, favouring my reminiscent mood. It might have

been a day of five and thirty years ago, when there were on this and

every other sea more sails and less smoke-stacks to be seen. Yet, thanks

to the unchangeable sea I could have given myself up to the illusion of a

revised past, had it not been for the periodical transit across my gaze

of a German passenger. He was marching round and round the boat deck

with characteristic determination. Two sturdy boys gambolled round him

in his progress like two disorderly satellites round their parent planet.

He was bringing them home, from their school in England, for their

holiday. What could have induced such a sound Teuton to entrust his

offspring to the unhealthy influences of that effete, corrupt, rotten and

criminal country I cannot imagine. It could hardly have been from

motives of economy. I did not speak to him. He trod the deck of that

decadent British ship with a scornful foot while his breast (and to a

large extent his stomach, too) appeared expanded by the consciousness of

a superior destiny. Later I could observe the same truculent bearing,

touched with the racial grotesqueness, in the men of the _Landwehr_

corps, that passed through Cracow to reinforce the Austrian army in

Eastern Galicia. Indeed, the haughty passenger might very well have

been, most probably was, an officer of the _Landwehr_; and perhaps those

two fine active boys are orphans by now. Thus things acquire

significance by the lapse of time. A citizen, a father, a warrior, a

mote in the dust-cloud of six million fighting particles, an unconsidered

trifle for the jaws of war, his humanity was not consciously impressed on

my mind at the time. Mainly, for me, he was a sharp tapping of heels

round the corner of the deck-house, a white yachting cap and a green

overcoat getting periodically between my eyes and the shifting

cloud-horizon of the ashy-grey North Sea. He was but a shadowy intrusion

and a disregarded one, for, far away there to the West, in the direction

of the Dogger Bank, where fishermen go seeking their daily bread and

sometimes find their graves, I could behold an experience of my own in

the winter of '81, not of war, truly, but of a fairly lively contest with

the elements which were very angry indeed.

There had been a troublesome week of it, including one hateful night--or

a night of hate (it isn't for nothing that the North Sea is also called

the German Ocean)--when all the fury stored in its heart seemed

concentrated on one ship which could do no better than float on her side

in an unnatural, disagreeable, precarious, and altogether intolerable

manner. There were on board, besides myself, seventeen men all good and

true, including a round enormous Dutchman who, in those hours between

sunset and sunrise, managed to lose his blown-out appearance somehow,

became as it were deflated, and thereafter for a good long time moved in

our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a half-collapsed balloon. The

whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow out

of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his

nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too much (before

the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky young ruffian),

his desolate whimpering, I say, heard between the gusts of that black,

savage night, was much more present to my mind and indeed to my senses

than the green overcoat and the white cap of the German passenger

circling the deck indefatigably, attended by his two gyrating children.

"That's a very nice gentleman." This information, together with the fact

that he was a widower and a regular passenger twice a year by the ship,

was communicated to me suddenly by our captain. At intervals through the

day he would pop out of the chart-room and offer me short snatches of

conversation. He owned a simple soul and a not very entertaining mind,

and he was without malice and, I believe, quite unconsciously, a warm

Germanophil. And no wonder! As he told me himself, he had been fifteen

years on that run, and spent almost as much of his life in Hamburg as in

Harwich.

"Wonderful people they are," he repeated from time to time, without

entering into particulars, but with many nods of sagacious obstinacy.

What he knew of them, I suppose, were a few commercial travellers and

small merchants, most likely. But I had observed long before that German

genius has a hypnotising power over half-baked souls and half-lighted

minds. There is an immense force of suggestion in highly organised

mediocrity. Had it not hypnotised half Europe? My man was very much

under the spell of German excellence. On the other hand, his contempt

for France was equally general and unbounded. I tried to advance some

arguments against this position, but I only succeeded in making him

hostile. "I believe you are a Frenchman yourself," he snarled at last,

giving me an intensely suspicious look; and forthwith broke off

communications with a man of such unsound sympathies.

Hour by hour the blotting-paper sky and the great flat greenish smudge of

the sea had been taking on a darker tone, without any change in their

colouring and texture. Evening was coming on over the North Sea. Black

uninteresting hummocks of land appeared, dotting the duskiness of water

and clouds in the Eastern board: tops of islands fringing the German

shore. While I was looking at their antics amongst the waves--and for

all their solidity they were very elusive things in the failing

light--another passenger came out on deck. This one wore a dark overcoat

and a grey cap. The yellow leather strap of his binocular case crossed

his chest. His elderly red cheeks nourished but a very thin crop of

short white hairs, and the end of his nose was so perfectly round that it

determined the whole character of his physiognomy. Indeed nothing else

in it had the slightest chance to assert itself. His disposition, unlike

the widower's, appeared to be mild and humane. He offered me the loan of

his glasses. He had a wife and some small children concealed in the

depths of the ship, and he thought they were very well where they were.

His eldest son was about the decks somewhere.

"We are Americans," he remarked weightily, but in a rather peculiar tone.

He spoke English with the accent of our captain's "wonderful people," and

proceeded to give me the history of the family's crossing the Atlantic in

a White Star liner. They remained in England just the time necessary for

a railway journey from Liverpool to Harwich. His people (those in the

depths of the ship) were naturally a little tired.

At that moment a young man of about twenty, his son, rushed up to us from

the fore-deck in a state of intense elation. "Hurrah," he cried under

his breath. "The first German light! Hurrah!"

And those two American citizens shook hands on it with the greatest

fervour, while I turned away and received full in the eyes the brilliant

wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low down in the darkness. The

shade of the night had settled on the North Sea.

I do not think I have ever seen before a night so full of lights. The

great change of sea life since my time was brought home to me. I had

been conscious all day of an interminable procession of steamers. They

went on and on as if in chase of each other, the Baltic trade, the trade

of Scandinavia, of Denmark, of Germany, pitching heavily into a head sea

and bound for the gateway of Dover Straits. Singly, and in small

companies of two and three, they emerged from the dull, colourless,

sunless distances ahead as if the supply of rather roughly finished

mechanical toys were inexhaustible in some mysterious cheap store away

there, below the grey curve of the earth. Cargo steam vessels have

reached by this time a height of utilitarian ugliness which, when one

reflects that it is the product of human ingenuity, strikes hopeless awe

into one. These dismal creations look still uglier at sea than in port,

and with an added touch of the ridiculous. Their rolling waddle when

seen at a certain angle, their abrupt clockwork nodding in a sea-way, so

unlike the soaring lift and swing of a craft under sail, have in them

something caricatural, a suggestion of a low parody directed at noble

predecessors by an improved generation of dull, mechanical toilers,

conceited and without grace.

When they switched on (each of these unlovely cargo tanks carried tame

lightning within its slab-sided body), when they switched on their lamps

they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-glitter, here,

there, and everywhere, as of some High Street, broken up and washed out

to sea. Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead darkness with its

powerful beam, infinitely prolonged out of unfathomable night under the

clouds.

I remained on deck until we stopped and a steam pilot-boat, so

overlighted amidships that one could not make out her complete shape,

glided across our bows and sent a pilot on board. I fear that the oar,

as a working implement, will become presently as obsolete as the sail.

The pilot boarded us in a motor-dinghy. More and more is mankind

reducing its physical activities to pulling levers and twirling little

wheels. Progress! Yet the older methods of meeting natural forces

demanded intelligence too; an equally fine readiness of wits. And

readiness of wits working in combination with the strength of muscles

made a more complete man.

It was really a surprisingly small dinghy and it ran to and fro like a

water-insect fussing noisily down there with immense self-importance.

Within hail of us the hull of the Elbe lightship floated all dark and

silent under its enormous round, service lantern; a faithful black shadow

watching the broad estuary full of lights.

Such was my first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of peace

ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe. Our visual

impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it extremely

difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything is dark

over there, that the Elbe lightship has been towed away from its post of

duty, the triumphant beam of Heligoland extinguished, and the pilot-boat

laid up, or turned to warlike uses for lack of its proper work to do. And

obviously it must be so.

Any trickle of oversea trade that passes yet that way must be creeping

along cautiously with the unlighted, war-blighted black coast close on

one hand, and sudden death on the other. For all the space we steamed

through that Sunday evening must now be one great minefield, sown thickly

with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal out to sea, over the very

spot perhaps where the insect-dinghy put a pilot on board of us with so

much fussy importance. Mines; Submarines. The last word in sea-warfare!

Progress--impressively disclosed by this war.

There have been other wars! Wars not inferior in the greatness of the

stake and in the fierce animosity of feelings. During that one which was

finished a hundred years ago it happened that while the English Fleet was

keeping watch on Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself, offered to

the Maritime Prefect of the port and to the French Admiral, an invention

which would sink all the unsuspecting English ships one after another--or,

at any rate most of them. The offer was not even taken into

consideration; and the Prefect ends his report to the Minister in Paris

with a fine phrase of indignation: "It is not the sort of death one would

deal to brave men."

And behold, before history had time to hatch another war of the like

proportions in the intensity of aroused passions and the greatness of

issues, the dead flavour of archaism descended on the manly sentiment of

those self-denying words. Mankind has been demoralised since by its own

mastery of mechanical appliances. Its spirit is apparently so weak now,

and its flesh has grown so strong, that it will face any deadly horror of

destruction and cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy,

murderous contrivance. It has become the intoxicated slave of its own

detestable ingenuity. It is true, too, that since the Napoleonic time

another sort of war-doctrine has been inculcated in a nation, and held

out to the world.

IV.

On this journey of ours, which for me was essentially not a progress, but

a retracing of footsteps on the road of life, I had no beacons to look

for in Germany. I had never lingered in that land which, on the whole,

is so singularly barren of memorable manifestations of generous

sympathies and magnanimous impulses. An ineradicable, invincible,

provincialism of envy and vanity clings to the forms of its thought like

a frowsy garment. Even while yet very young I turned my eyes away from

it instinctively as from a threatening phantom. I believe that children

and dogs have, in their innocence, a special power of perception as far

as spectral apparitions and coming misfortunes are concerned.

I let myself be carried through Germany as if it were pure space, without

sights, without sounds. No whispers of the war reached my voluntary

abstraction. And perhaps not so very voluntary after all! Each of us is

a fascinating spectacle to himself, and I had to watch my own personality

returning from another world, as it were, to revisit the glimpses of old

moons. Considering the condition of humanity, I am, perhaps, not so much

to blame for giving myself up to that occupation. We prize the sensation

of our continuity, and we can only capture it in that way. By watching.

We arrived in Cracow late at night. After a scrambly supper, I said to

my eldest boy, "I can't go to bed. I am going out for a look round.

Coming?"

He was ready enough. For him, all this was part of the interesting

adventure of the whole journey. We stepped out of the portal of the

hotel into an empty street, very silent and bright with moonlight. I

was, indeed, revisiting the glimpses of the moon. I felt so much like a

ghost that the discovery that I could remember such material things as

the right turn to take and the general direction of the street gave me a

moment of wistful surprise.

The street, straight and narrow, ran into the great Market Square of the

town, the centre of its affairs and of the lighter side of its life. We

could see at the far end of the street a promising widening of space. At

the corner an unassuming (but armed) policeman, wearing ceremoniously at

midnight a pair of white gloves which made his big hands extremely

noticeable, turned his head to look at the grizzled foreigner holding

forth in a strange tongue to a youth on whose arm he leaned.

The Square, immense in its solitude, was full to the brim of moonlight.

The garland of lights at the foot of the houses seemed to burn at the

bottom of a bluish pool. I noticed with infinite satisfaction that the

unnecessary trees the Municipality insisted upon sticking between the

stones had been steadily refusing to grow. They were not a bit bigger

than the poor victims I could remember. Also, the paving operations

seemed to be exactly at the same point at which I left them forty years

before. There were the dull, torn-up patches on that bright expanse, the

piles of paving material looking ominously black, like heads of rocks on

a silvery sea. Who was it that said that Time works wonders? What an

exploded superstition! As far as these trees and these paving stones

were concerned, it had worked nothing. The suspicion of the

unchangeableness of things already vaguely suggested to my senses by our

rapid drive from the railway station was agreeably strengthened within

me.

"We are now on the line A.B.," I said to my companion, importantly.

It was the name bestowed in my time on one of the sides of the Square by

the senior students of that town of classical learning and historical

relics. The common citizens knew nothing of it, and, even if they had,

would not have dreamed of taking it seriously. He who used it was of the

initiated, belonged to the Schools. We youngsters regarded that name as

a fine jest, the invention of a most excellent fancy. Even as I uttered

it to my boy I experienced again that sense of my privileged initiation.

And then, happening to look up at the wall, I saw in the light of the

corner lamp, a white, cast-iron tablet fixed thereon, bearing an

inscription in raised black letters, thus: "Line A.B." Heavens! The

name had been adopted officially! Any town urchin, any guttersnipe, any

herb-selling woman of the market-place, any wandering Boeotian, was free

to talk of the line A.B., to walk on the line A.B., to appoint to meet

his friends on the line A.B. It had become a mere name in a directory. I

was stunned by the extreme mutability of things. Time could work

wonders, and no mistake. A Municipality had stolen an invention of

excellent fancy, and a fine jest had turned into a horrid piece of cast-

iron.

I proposed that we should walk to the other end of the line, using the

profaned name, not only without gusto, but with positive distaste. And

this, too, was one of the wonders of Time, for a bare minute had worked

that change. There was at the end of the line a certain street I wanted

to look at, I explained to my companion.

To our right the unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared aloft

into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides,

glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others. In the distance

the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the

street with the square shoulders of the old city wall. In the narrow,

brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses,

its black archway stood out small and very distinct.

There was not a soul in sight, and not even the echo of a footstep for

our ears. Into this coldly illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued

out of my aroused memory, a small boy of eleven, wending his way, not

very fast, to a preparatory school for day-pupils on the second floor of

the third house down from the Florian Gate. It was in the winter months

of 1868. At eight o'clock of every morning that God made, sleet or

shine, I walked up Florian Street. But of that, my first school, I

remember very little. I believe that one of my co-sufferers there has

become a much appreciated editor of historical documents. But I didn't

suffer much from the various imperfections of my first school. I was

rather indifferent to school troubles. I had a private gnawing worm of

my own. This was the time of my father's last illness. Every evening at

seven, turning my back on the Florian Gate, I walked all the way to a big

old house in a quiet narrow street a good distance beyond the Great

Square. There, in a large drawing-room, panelled and bare, with heavy

cornices and a lofty ceiling, in a little oasis of light made by two

candles in a desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and ink

myself all over till the task of my preparation was done. The table of

my toil faced a tall white door, which was kept closed; now and then it

would come ajar and a nun in a white coif would squeeze herself through

the crack, glide across the room, and disappear. There were two of these

noiseless nursing nuns. Their voices were seldom heard. For, indeed,

what could they have had to say? When they did speak to me it was with

their lips hardly moving, in a claustral, clear whisper. Our domestic

matters were ordered by the elderly housekeeper of our neighbour on the

second floor, a Canon of the Cathedral, lent for the emergency. She,

too, spoke but seldom. She wore a black dress with a cross hanging by a

chain on her ample bosom. And though when she spoke she moved her lips

more than the nuns, she never let her voice rise above a peacefully

murmuring note. The air around me was all piety, resignation, and

silence.

I don't know what would have become of me if I had not been a reading

boy. My prep. finished I would have had nothing to do but sit and watch

the awful stillness of the sick room flow out through the closed door and

coldly enfold my scared heart. I suppose that in a futile childish way I

would have gone crazy. But I was a reading boy. There were many books

about, lying on consoles, on tables, and even on the floor, for we had

not had time to settle down. I read! What did I not read! Sometimes

the elder nun, gliding up and casting a mistrustful look on the open

pages, would lay her hand lightly on my head and suggest in a doubtful

whisper, "Perhaps it is not very good for you to read these books." I

would raise my eyes to her face mutely, and with a vague gesture of

giving it up she would glide away.

Later in the evening, but not always, I would be permitted to tip-toe

into the sick room to say good-night to the figure prone on the bed,

which often could not acknowledge my presence but by a slow movement of

the eyes, put my lips dutifully to the nerveless hand lying on the

coverlet, and tip-toe out again. Then I would go to bed, in a room at

the end of the corridor, and often, not always, cry myself into a good

sound sleep.

I looked forward to what was coming with an incredulous terror. I turned

my eyes from it sometimes with success, and yet all the time I had an

awful sensation of the inevitable. I had also moments of revolt which

stripped off me some of my simple trust in the government of the

universe. But when the inevitable entered the sick room and the white

door was thrown wide open, I don't think I found a single tear to shed. I

have a suspicion that the Canon's housekeeper looked on me as the most

callous little wretch on earth.

The day of the funeral came in due course and all the generous "Youth of

the Schools," the grave Senate of the University, the delegations of the

Trade-guilds, might have obtained (if they cared) _de visu_ evidence of

the callousness of the little wretch. There was nothing in my aching

head but a few words, some such stupid sentences as, "It's done," or,

"It's accomplished" (in Polish it is much shorter), or something of the

sort, repeating itself endlessly. The long procession moved out of the

narrow street, down a long street, past the Gothic front of St. Mary's

under its unequal towers, towards the Florian Gate.

In the moonlight-flooded silence of the old town of glorious tombs and

tragic memories, I could see again the small boy of that day following a

hearse; a space kept clear in which I walked alone, conscious of an

enormous following, the clumsy swaying of the tall black machine, the

chanting of the surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers

passing under the low archway of the gate, the rows of bared heads on the

pavements with fixed, serious eyes. Half the population had turned out

on that fine May afternoon. They had not come to honour a great

achievement, or even some splendid failure. The dead and they were

victims alike of an unrelenting destiny which cut them off from every

path of merit and glory. They had come only to render homage to the

ardent fidelity of the man whose life had been a fearless confession in

word and deed of a creed which the simplest heart in that crowd could

feel and understand.

It seemed to me that if I remained longer there in that narrow street I

should become the helpless prey of the Shadows I had called up. They

were crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent in their clinging air of

the grave that tasted of dust and of the bitter vanity of old hopes.

"Let's go back to the hotel, my boy," I said. "It's getting late."

It will be easily understood that I neither thought nor dreamt that night

of a possible war. For the next two days I went about amongst my fellow

men, who welcomed me with the utmost consideration and friendliness, but

unanimously derided my fears of a war. They would not believe in it. It

was impossible. On the evening of the second day I was in the hotel's

smoking room, an irrationally private apartment, a sanctuary for a few

choice minds of the town, always pervaded by a dim religious light, and

more hushed than any club reading-room I have ever been in. Gathered

into a small knot, we were discussing the situation in subdued tones

suitable to the genius of the place.

A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impatient

finger in my direction and apostrophised me.

"What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England would come

in."

The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without

faltering.

"Most assuredly. I should think all Europe knows that by this time."

He took hold of the lapel of my coat, and, giving it a slight jerk for

greater emphasis, said forcibly:

"Then, if England will, as you say, and all the world knows it, there can

be no war. Germany won't be so mad as that."

On the morrow by noon we read of the German ultimatum. The day after

came the declaration of war, and the Austrian mobilisation order. We

were fairly caught. All that remained for me to do was to get my party

out of the way of eventual shells. The best move which occurred to me

was to snatch them up instantly into the mountains to a Polish health

resort of great repute--which I did (at the rate of one hundred miles in

eleven hours) by the last civilian train permitted to leave Cracow for

the next three weeks.

And there we remained amongst the Poles from all parts of Poland, not

officially interned, but simply unable to obtain the permission to travel

by train, or road. It was a wonderful, a poignant two months. This is

not the time, and, perhaps, not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic

character of the situation; a whole people seeing the culmination of its

misfortunes in a final catastrophe, unable to trust anyone, to appeal to

anyone, to look for help from any quarter; deprived of all hope and even

of its last illusions, and unable, in the trouble of minds and the unrest

of consciences, to take refuge in stoical acceptance. I have seen all

this. And I am glad I have not so many years left me to remember that

appalling feeling of inexorable fate, tangible, palpable, come after so

many cruel years, a figure of dread, murmuring with iron lips the final

words: Ruin--and Extinction.

But enough of this. For our little band there was the awful anguish of

incertitude as to the real nature of events in the West. It is difficult

to give an idea how ugly and dangerous things looked to us over there.

Belgium knocked down and trampled out of existence, France giving in

under repeated blows, a military collapse like that of 1870, and England

involved in that disastrous alliance, her army sacrificed, her people in

a panic! Polish papers, of course, had no other but German sources of

information. Naturally, we did not believe all we read, but it was

sometimes excessively difficult to react with sufficient firmness.

We used to shut our door, and there, away from everybody, we sat weighing

the news, hunting up discrepancies, scenting lies, finding reasons for

hopefulness, and generally cheering each other up. But it was a beastly

time. People used to come to me with very serious news and ask, "What do

you think of it?" And my invariable answer was: "Whatever has happened,

or is going to happen, whoever wants to make peace, you may be certain

that England will not make it, not for ten years, if necessary."'

But enough of this, too. Through the unremitting efforts of Polish

friends we obtained at last the permission to travel to Vienna. Once

there, the wing of the American Eagle was extended over our uneasy heads.

We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the American Ambassador (who, all

along, interested himself in our fate) for his exertions on our behalf,

his invaluable assistance and the real friendliness of his reception in

Vienna. Owing to Mr. Penfield's action we obtained the permission to

leave Austria. And it was a near thing, for his Excellency has informed

my American publishers since that a week later orders were issued to have

us detained till the end of the war. However, we effected our hair's-

breadth escape into Italy; and, reaching Genoa, took passage in a Dutch

mail steamer, homeward-bound from Java with London as a port of call.

On that sea-route I might have picked up a memory at every mile if the

past had not been eclipsed by the tremendous actuality. We saw the signs

of it in the emptiness of the Mediterranean, the aspect of Gibraltar, the

misty glimpse in the Bay of Biscay of an outward-bound convoy of

transports, in the presence of British submarines in the Channel.

Innumerable drifters flying the Naval flag dotted the narrow waters, and

two Naval officers coming on board off the South Foreland, piloted the

ship through the Downs.

The Downs! There they were, thick with the memories of my sea-life. But

what were to me now the futilities of an individual past? As our ship's

head swung into the estuary of the Thames, a deep, yet faint, concussion

passed through the air, a shock rather than a sound, which missing my ear

found its way straight into my heart. Turning instinctively to look at

my boys, I happened to meet my wife's eyes. She also had felt

profoundly, coming from far away across the grey distances of the sea,

the faint boom of the big guns at work on the coast of Flanders--shaping

the future.

FIRST NEWS--1918

Four years ago, on the first day of August, in the town of Cracow,

Austrian Poland, nobody would believe that the war was coming. My

apprehensions were met by the words: "We have had these scares before."

This incredulity was so universal amongst people of intelligence and

information, that even I, who had accustomed myself to look at the

inevitable for years past, felt my conviction shaken. At that time, it

must be noted, the Austrian army was already partly mobilised, and as we

came through Austrian Silesia we had noticed all the bridges being

guarded by soldiers.

"Austria will back down," was the opinion of all the well-informed men

with whom I talked on the first of August. The session of the University

was ended and the students were either all gone or going home to

different parts of Poland, but the professors had not all departed yet on

their respective holidays, and amongst them the tone of scepticism

prevailed generally. Upon the whole there was very little inclination to

talk about the possibility of a war. Nationally, the Poles felt that

from their point of view there was nothing to hope from it. "Whatever

happens," said a very distinguished man to me, "we may be certain that

it's our skins which will pay for it as usual." A well-known literary

critic and writer on economical subjects said to me: "War seems a

material impossibility, precisely because it would mean the complete ruin

of all material interests."

He was wrong, as we know; but those who said that Austria as usual would

back down were, as a matter of fact perfectly right. Austria did back

down. What these men did not foresee was the interference of Germany.

And one cannot blame them very well; for who could guess that, when the

balance stood even, the German sword would be thrown into the scale with

nothing in the open political situation to justify that act, or rather

that crime--if crime can ever be justified? For, as the same intelligent

man said to me: "As it is, those people" (meaning Germans) "have very

nearly the whole world in their economic grip. Their prestige is even

greater than their actual strength. It can get for them practically

everything they want. Then why risk it?" And there was no apparent

answer to the question put in that way. I must also say that the Poles

had no illusions about the strength of Russia. Those illusions were the

monopoly of the Western world.

Next day the librarian of the University invited me to come and have a

look at the library which I had not seen since I was fourteen years old.

It was from him that I learned that the greater part of my father's MSS.

was preserved there. He confessed that he had not looked them through

thoroughly yet, but he told me that there was a lot of very important

letters bearing on the epoch from '60 to '63, to and from many prominent

Poles of that time: and he added: "There is a bundle of correspondence

that will appeal to you personally. Those are letters written by your

father to an intimate friend in whose papers they were found. They

contain many references to yourself, though you couldn't have been more

than four years old at the time. Your father seems to have been

extremely interested in his son." That afternoon I went to the

University, taking with me _my_ eldest son. The attention of that young

Englishman was mainly attracted by some relics of Copernicus in a glass

case. I saw the bundle of letters and accepted the kind proposal of the

librarian that he should have them copied for me during the holidays. In

the range of the deserted vaulted rooms lined with books, full of august

memories, and in the passionless silence of all this enshrined wisdom, we

walked here and there talking of the past, the great historical past in

which lived the inextinguishable spark of national life; and all around

us the centuries-old buildings lay still and empty, composing themselves

to rest after a year of work on the minds of another generation.

No echo of the German ultimatum to Russia penetrated that academical

peace. But the news had come. When we stepped into the street out of

the deserted main quadrangle, we three, I imagine, were the only people

in the town who did not know of it. My boy and I parted from the

librarian (who hurried home to pack up for his holiday) and walked on to

the hotel, where we found my wife actually in the car waiting for us to

take a run of some ten miles to the country house of an old school-friend

of mine. He had been my greatest chum. In my wanderings about the world

I had heard that his later career both at school and at the University

had been of extraordinary brilliance--in classics, I believe. But in

this, the iron-grey moustache period of his life, he informed me with

badly concealed pride that he had gained world fame as the Inventor--no,

Inventor is not the word--Producer, I believe would be the right term--of

a wonderful kind of beetroot seed. The beet grown from this seed

contained more sugar to the square inch--or was it to the square

root?--than any other kind of beet. He exported this seed, not only with

profit (and even to the United States), but with a certain amount of

glory which seemed to have gone slightly to his head. There is a

fundamental strain of agriculturalist in a Pole which no amount of

brilliance, even classical, can destroy. While we were having tea

outside, looking down the lovely slope of the gardens at the view of the

city in the distance, the possibilities of the war faded from our minds.

Suddenly my friend's wife came to us with a telegram in her hand and said

calmly: "General mobilisation, do you know?" We looked at her like men

aroused from a dream. "Yes," she insisted, "they are already taking the

horses out of the ploughs and carts." I said: "We had better go back to

town as quick as we can," and my friend assented with a troubled look:

"Yes, you had better." As we passed through villages on our way back we

saw mobs of horses assembled on the commons with soldiers guarding them,

and groups of villagers looking on silently at the officers with their

note-books checking deliveries and writing out receipts. Some old

peasant women were already weeping aloud.

When our car drew up at the door of the hotel, the manager himself came

to help my wife out. In the first moment I did not quite recognise him.

His luxuriant black locks were gone, his head was closely cropped, and as

I glanced at it he smiled and said: "I shall sleep at the barracks to-

night."

I cannot reproduce the atmosphere of that night, the first night after

mobilisation. The shops and the gateways of the houses were of course

closed, but all through the dark hours the town hummed with voices; the

echoes of distant shouts entered the open windows of our bedroom. Groups

of men talking noisily walked in the middle of the roadway escorted by

distressed women: men of all callings and of all classes going to report

themselves at the fortress. Now and then a military car tooting

furiously would whisk through the streets empty of wheeled traffic, like

an intensely black shadow under the great flood of electric lights on the

grey pavement.

But what produced the greatest impression on my mind was a gathering at

night in the coffee-room of my hotel of a few men of mark whom I was

asked to join. It was about one o'clock in the morning. The shutters

were up. For some reason or other the electric light was not switched

on, and the big room was lit up only by a few tall candles, just enough

for us to see each other's faces by. I saw in those faces the awful

desolation of men whose country, torn in three, found itself engaged in

the contest with no will of its own, and not even the power to assert

itself at the cost of life. All the past was gone, and there was no

future, whatever happened; no road which did not seem to lead to moral

annihilation. I remember one of those men addressing me after a period

of mournful silence compounded of mental exhaustion and unexpressed

forebodings.

"What do you think England will do? If there is a ray of hope anywhere

it is only there."

I said: "I believe I know what England will do" (this was before the news

of the violation of Belgian neutrality arrived), "though I won't tell

you, for I am not absolutely certain. But I can tell you what I am

absolutely certain of. It is this: If England comes into the war, then,

no matter who may want to make peace at the end of six months at the cost

of right and justice, England will keep on fighting for years if

necessary. You may reckon on that."

"What, even alone?" asked somebody across the room.

I said: "Yes, even alone. But if things go so far as that England will

not be alone."

I think that at that moment I must have been inspired.

WELL DONE--1918

I.

It can be safely said that for the last four years the seamen of Great

Britain have done well. I mean that every kind and sort of human being

classified as seaman, steward, foremast hand, fireman, lamp-trimmer,

mate, master, engineer, and also all through the innumerable ratings of

the Navy up to that of Admiral, has done well. I don't say marvellously

well or miraculously well or wonderfully well or even very well, because

these are simply over-statements of undisciplined minds. I don't deny

that a man may be a marvellous being, but this is not likely to be

discovered in his lifetime, and not always even after he is dead. Man's

marvellousness is a hidden thing, because the secrets of his heart are

not to be read by his fellows. As to a man's work, if it is done well it

is the very utmost that can be said. You can do well, and you can do no

more for people to see. In the Navy, where human values are thoroughly

understood, the highest signal of commendation complimenting a ship (that

is, a ship's company) on some achievements consists exactly of those two

simple words "Well done," followed by the name of the ship. Not

marvellously done, astonishingly done, wonderfully done--no, only just:

"Well done, so-and-so."

And to the men it is a matter of infinite pride that somebody should

judge it proper to mention aloud, as it were, that they have done well.

It is a memorable occurrence, for in the sea services you are expected

professionally and as a matter of course to do well, because nothing less

will do. And in sober speech no man can be expected to do more than

well. The superlatives are mere signs of uninformed wonder. Thus the

official signal which can express nothing but a delicate share of

appreciation becomes a great honour.

Speaking now as a purely civil seaman (or, perhaps, I ought to say

civilian, because politeness is not what I have in my mind) I may say

that I have never expected the Merchant Service to do otherwise than well

during the war. There were people who obviously did not feel the same

confidence, nay, who even confidently expected to see the collapse of

merchant seamen's courage. I must admit that such pronouncements did

arrest my attention. In my time I have never been able to detect any

faint hearts in the ships' companies with whom I have served in various

capacities. But I reflected that I had left the sea in '94, twenty years

before the outbreak of the war that was to apply its severe test to the

quality of modern seamen. Perhaps they had deteriorated, I said

unwillingly to myself. I remembered also the alarmist articles I had

read about the great number of foreigners in the British Merchant

Service, and I didn't know how far these lamentations were justified.

In my time the proportion of non-Britishers in the crews of the ships

flying the red ensign was rather under one-third, which, as a matter of

fact, was less than the proportion allowed under the very strict French

navigation laws for the crews of the ships of that nation. For the

strictest laws aiming at the preservation of national seamen had to

recognise the difficulties of manning merchant ships all over the world.

The one-third of the French law seemed to be the irreducible minimum. But

the British proportion was even less. Thus it may be said that up to the

date I have mentioned the crews of British merchant ships engaged in deep

water voyages to Australia, to the East Indies and round the Horn were

essentially British. The small proportion of foreigners which I remember

were mostly Scandinavians, and my general impression remains that those

men were good stuff. They appeared always able and ready to do their

duty by the flag under which they served. The majority were Norwegians,

whose courage and straightness of character are matters beyond doubt. I

remember also a couple of Finns, both carpenters, of course, and very

good craftsmen; a Swede, the most scientific sailmaker I ever met;

another Swede, a steward, who really might have been called a British

seaman since he had sailed out of London for over thirty years, a rather

superior person; one Italian, an everlastingly smiling but a pugnacious

character; one Frenchman, a most excellent sailor, tireless and

indomitable under very difficult circumstances; one Hollander, whose

placid manner of looking at the ship going to pieces under our feet I

shall never forget, and one young, colourless, muscularly very strong

German, of no particular character. Of non-European crews, lascars and

Kalashes, I have had very little experience, and that was only in one

steamship and for something less than a year. It was on the same

occasion that I had my only sight of Chinese firemen. Sight is the exact

word. One didn't speak to them. One saw them going along the decks, to

and fro, characteristic figures with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty when

coming off duty and very clean-faced when going on duty. They never

looked at anybody, and one never had occasion to address them directly.

Their appearances in the light of day were very regular, and yet somewhat

ghostlike in their detachment and silence.

But of the white crews of British ships and almost exclusively British in

blood and descent, the immediate predecessors of the men whose worth the

nation has discovered for itself to-day, I have had a thorough

experience. At first amongst them, then with them, I have shared all the

conditions of their very special life. For it was very special. In my

early days, starting out on a voyage was like being launched into

Eternity. I say advisedly Eternity instead of Space, because of the

boundless silence which swallowed up one for eighty days--for one hundred

days--for even yet more days of an existence without echoes and whispers.

Like Eternity itself! For one can't conceive a vocal Eternity. An

enormous silence, in which there was nothing to connect one with the

Universe but the incessant wheeling about of the sun and other celestial

bodies, the alternation of light and shadow, eternally chasing each other

over the sky. The time of the earth, though most carefully recorded by

the half-hourly bells, did not count in reality.

It was a special life, and the men were a very special kind of men. By

this I don't mean to say they were more complex than the generality of

mankind. Neither were they very much simpler. I have already admitted

that man is a marvellous creature, and no doubt those particular men were

marvellous enough in their way. But in their collective capacity they

can be best defined as men who lived under the command to do well, or

perish utterly. I have written of them with all the truth that was in

me, and with an the impartiality of which I was capable. Let me not be

misunderstood in this statement. Affection can be very exacting, and can

easily miss fairness on the critical side. I have looked upon them with

a jealous eye, expecting perhaps even more than it was strictly fair to

expect. And no wonder--since I had elected to be one of them very

deliberately, very completely, without any looking back or looking

elsewhere. The circumstances were such as to give me the feeling of

complete identification, a very vivid comprehension that if I wasn't one

of them I was nothing at all. But what was most difficult to detect was

the nature of the deep impulses which these men obeyed. What spirit was

it that inspired the unfailing manifestations of their simple fidelity?

No outward cohesive force of compulsion or discipline was holding them

together or had ever shaped their unexpressed standards. It was very

mysterious. At last I came to the conclusion that it must be something

in the nature of the life itself; the sea-life chosen blindly, embraced

for the most part accidentally by those men who appeared but a loose

agglomeration of individuals toiling for their living away from the eyes

of mankind. Who can tell how a tradition comes into the world? We are

children of the earth. It may be that the noblest tradition is but the

offspring of material conditions, of the hard necessities besetting men's

precarious lives. But once it has been born it becomes a spirit. Nothing

can extinguish its force then. Clouds of greedy selfishness, the subtle

dialectics of revolt or fear, may obscure it for a time, but in very

truth it remains an immortal ruler invested with the power of honour and

shame.

II.

The mysteriously born tradition of sea-craft commands unity in a body of

workers engaged in an occupation in which men have to depend upon each

other. It raises them, so to speak, above the frailties of their dead

selves. I don't wish to be suspected of lack of judgment and of blind

enthusiasm. I don't claim special morality or even special manliness for

the men who in my time really lived at sea, and at the present time live

at any rate mostly at sea. But in their qualities as well as in their

defects, in their weaknesses as well as in their "virtue," there was

indubitably something apart. They were never exactly of the earth

earthly. They couldn't be that. Chance or desire (mostly desire) had

set them apart, often in their very childhood; and what is to be remarked

is that from the very nature of things this early appeal, this early

desire, had to be of an imaginative kind. Thus their simple minds had a

sort of sweetness. They were in a way preserved. I am not alluding here

to the preserving qualities of the salt in the sea. The salt of the sea

is a very good thing in its way; it preserves for instance one from

catching a beastly cold while one remains wet for weeks together in the

"roaring forties." But in sober unpoetical truth the sea-salt never gets

much further than the seaman's skin, which in certain latitudes it takes

the opportunity to encrust very thoroughly. That and nothing more. And

then, what is this sea, the subject of so many apostrophes in verse and

prose addressed to its greatness and its mystery by men who had never

penetrated either the one or the other? The sea is uncertain, arbitrary,

featureless, and violent. Except when helped by the varied majesty of

the sky, there is something inane in its serenity and something stupid in

its wrath, which is endless, boundless, persistent, and futile--a grey,

hoary thing raging like an old ogre uncertain of its prey. Its very

immensity is wearisome. At any time within the navigating centuries

mankind might have addressed it with the words: "What are you, after all?

Oh, yes, we know. The greatest scene of potential terror, a devouring

enigma of space. Yes. But our lives have been nothing if not a

continuous defiance of what you can do and what you may hold; a spiritual

and material defiance carried on in our plucky cockleshells on and on

beyond the successive provocations of your unreadable horizons."

Ah, but the charm of the sea! Oh, yes, charm enough. Or rather a sort

of unholy fascination as of an elusive nymph whose embrace is death, and

a Medusa's head whose stare is terror. That sort of charm is calculated

to keep men morally in order. But as to sea-salt, with its particular

bitterness like nothing else on earth, that, I am safe to say, penetrates

no further than the seamen's lips. With them the inner soundness is

caused by another kind of preservative of which (nobody will be surprised

to hear) the main ingredient is a certain kind of love that has nothing

to do with the futile smiles and the futile passions of the sea.

Being love this feeling is naturally naive and imaginative. It has also

in it that strain of fantasy that is so often, nay almost invariably, to

be found in the temperament of a true seaman. But I repeat that I claim

no particular morality for seamen. I will admit without difficulty that

I have found amongst them the usual defects of mankind, characters not

quite straight, uncertain tempers, vacillating wills, capriciousness,

small meannesses; all this coming out mostly on the contact with the

shore; and all rather naive, peculiar, a little fantastic. I have even

had a downright thief in my experience. One.

This is indeed a minute proportion, but it might have been my luck; and

since I am writing in eulogy of seamen I feel irresistibly tempted to

talk about this unique specimen; not indeed to offer him as an example of

morality, but to bring out certain characteristics and set out a certain

point of view. He was a large, strong man with a guileless countenance,

not very communicative with his shipmates, but when drawn into any sort

of conversation displaying a very painstaking earnestness. He was fair

and candid-eyed, of a very satisfactory smartness, and, from the officer-

of-the-watch point of view,--altogether dependable. Then, suddenly, he

went and stole. And he didn't go away from his honourable kind to do

that thing to somebody on shore; he stole right there on the spot, in

proximity to his shipmates, on board his own ship, with complete

disregard for old Brown, our night watchman (whose fame for

trustworthiness was utterly blasted for the rest of the voyage) and in

such a way as to bring the profoundest possible trouble to all the

blameless souls animating that ship. He stole eleven golden sovereigns,

and a gold pocket chronometer and chain. I am really in doubt whether

the crime should not be entered under the category of sacrilege rather

than theft. Those things belonged to the captain! There was certainly

something in the nature of the violation of a sanctuary, and of a

particularly impudent kind, too, because he got his plunder out of the

captain's state-room while the captain was asleep there. But look, now,

at the fantasy of the man! After going through the pockets of the

clothes, he did not hasten to retreat. No. He went deliberately into

the saloon and removed from the sideboard two big heavy, silver-plated

lamps, which he carried to the fore-end of the ship and stood

symmetrically on the knight-heads. This, I must explain, means that he

took them away as far as possible from the place where they belonged.

These were the deeds of darkness. In the morning the bo'sun came along

dragging after him a hose to wash the foc'sle head, and, beholding the

shiny cabin lamps, resplendent in the morning light, one on each side of

the bowsprit, he was paralysed with awe. He dropped the nozzle from his

nerveless hands--and such hands, too! I happened along, and he said to

me in a distracted whisper: "Look at that, sir, look." "Take them back

aft at once yourself," I said, very amazed, too. As we approached the

quarterdeck we perceived the steward, a prey to a sort of sacred horror,

holding up before us the captain's trousers.

Bronzed men with brooms and buckets in their hands stood about with open

mouths. "I have found them lying in the passage outside the captain's

door," the steward declared faintly. The additional statement that the

captain's watch was gone from its hook by the bedside raised the painful

sensation to the highest pitch. We knew then we had a thief amongst us.

Our thief! Behold the solidarity of a ship's company. He couldn't be to

us like any other thief. We all had to live under the shadow of his

crime for days; but the police kept on investigating, and one morning a

young woman appeared on board swinging a parasol, attended by two

policemen, and identified the culprit. She was a barmaid of some bar

near the Circular Quay, and knew really nothing of our man except that he

looked like a respectable sailor. She had seen him only twice in her

life. On the second occasion he begged her nicely as a great favour to

take care for him of a small solidly tied-up paper parcel for a day or

two. But he never came near her again. At the end of three weeks she

opened it, and, of course, seeing the contents, was much alarmed, and

went to the nearest police-station for advice. The police took her at

once on board our ship, where all hands were mustered on the quarterdeck.

She stared wildly at all our faces, pointed suddenly a finger with a

shriek, "That's the man," and incontinently went off into a fit of

hysterics in front of thirty-six seamen. I must say that never in my

life did I see a ship's company look so frightened. Yes, in this tale of

guilt, there was a curious absence of mere criminality, and a touch of

that fantasy which is often a part of a seaman's character. It wasn't

greed that moved him, I think. It was something much less simple:

boredom, perhaps, or a bet, or the pleasure of defiance.

And now for the point of view. It was given to me by a short,

black-bearded A.B. of the crew, who on sea passages washed my flannel

shirts, mended my clothes and, generally, looked after my room. He was

an excellent needleman and washerman, and a very good sailor. Standing

in this peculiar relation to me, he considered himself privileged to open

his mind on the matter one evening when he brought back to my cabin three

clean and neatly folded shirts. He was profoundly pained. He said:

"What a ship's company! Never seen such a crowd! Liars, cheats,

thieves. . . "

It was a needlessly jaundiced view. There were in that ship's company

three or four fellows who dealt in tall yarns, and I knew that on the

passage out there had been a dispute over a game in the foc'sle once or

twice of a rather acute kind, so that all card-playing had to be

abandoned. In regard to thieves, as we know, there was only one, and he,

I am convinced, came out of his reserve to perform an exploit rather than

to commit a crime. But my black-bearded friend's indignation had its

special morality, for he added, with a burst of passion: "And on board

our ship, too--a ship like this. . ."

Therein lies the secret of the seamen's special character as a body. The

ship, this ship, our ship, the ship we serve, is the moral symbol of our

life. A ship has to be respected, actually and ideally; her merit, her

innocence, are sacred things. Of all the creations of man she is the

closest partner of his toil and courage. From every point of view it is

imperative that you should do well by her. And, as always in the case of

true love, all you can do for her adds only to the tale of her merits in

your heart. Mute and compelling, she claims not only your fidelity, but

your respect. And the supreme "Well done!" which you may earn is made

over to her.

III.

It is my deep conviction, or, perhaps, I ought to say my deep feeling

born from personal experience, that it is not the sea but the ships of

the sea that guide and command that spirit of adventure which some say is

the second nature of British men. I don't want to provoke a controversy

(for intellectually I am rather a Quietist) but I venture to affirm that

the main characteristic of the British men spread all over the world, is

not the spirit of adventure so much as the spirit of service. I think

that this could be demonstrated from the history of great voyages and the

general activity of the race. That the British man has always liked his

service to be adventurous rather than otherwise cannot be denied, for

each British man began by being young in his time when all risk has a

glamour. Afterwards, with the course of years, risk became a part of his

daily work; he would have missed it from his side as one misses a loved

companion.

The mere love of adventure is no saving grace. It is no grace at all. It

lays a man under no obligation of faithfulness to an idea and even to his

own self. Roughly speaking, an adventurer may be expected to have

courage, or at any rate may be said to need it. But courage in itself is

not an ideal. A successful highwayman showed courage of a sort, and

pirate crews have been known to fight with courage or perhaps only with

reckless desperation in the manner of cornered rats. There is nothing in

the world to prevent a mere lover or pursuer of adventure from running at

any moment. There is his own self, his mere taste for excitement, the

prospect of some sort of gain, but there is no sort of loyalty to bind

him in honour to consistent conduct. I have noticed that the majority of

mere lovers of adventure are mightily careful of their skins; and the

proof of it is that so many of them manage to keep it whole to an

advanced age. You find them in mysterious nooks of islands and

continents, mostly red-nosed and watery-eyed, and not even amusingly

boastful. There is nothing more futile under the sun than a mere

adventurer. He might have loved at one time--which would have been a

saving grace. I mean loved adventure for itself. But if so, he was

bound to lose this grace very soon. Adventure by itself is but a

phantom, a dubious shape without a heart. Yes, there is nothing more

futile than an adventurer; but nobody can say that the adventurous

activities of the British race are stamped with the futility of a chase

after mere emotions.

The successive generations that went out to sea from these Isles went out

to toil desperately in adventurous conditions. A man is a worker. If he

is not that he is nothing. Just nothing--like a mere adventurer. Those

men understood the nature of their work, but more or less dimly, in

various degrees of imperfection. The best and greatest of their leaders

even had never seen it clearly, because of its magnitude and the

remoteness of its end. This is the common fate of mankind, whose most

positive achievements are born from dreams and visions followed loyally

to an unknown destination. And it doesn't matter. For the great mass of

mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what

is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort. In

other and in greater words, what is needed is a sense of immediate duty,

and a feeling of impalpable constraint. Indeed, seamen and duty are all

the time inseparable companions. It has been suggested to me that this

sense of duty is not a patriotic sense or a religious sense, or even a

social sense in a seaman. I don't know. It seems to me that a seaman's

duty may be an unconscious compound of these three, something perhaps

smaller than either, but something much more definite for the simple mind

and more adapted to the humbleness of the seaman's task. It has been

suggested also to me that the impalpable constraint is put upon the

nature of a seaman by the Spirit of the Sea, which he serves with a dumb

and dogged devotion.

Those are fine words conveying a fine idea. But this I do know, that it

is very difficult to display a dogged devotion to a mere spirit, however

great. In everyday life ordinary men require something much more

material, effective, definite and symbolic on which to concentrate their

love and their devotion. And then, what is it, this Spirit of the Sea?

It is too great and too elusive to be embraced and taken to a human

breast. All that a guileless or guileful seaman knows of it is its

hostility, its exaction of toil as endless as its ever-renewed horizons.

No. What awakens the seaman's sense of duty, what lays that impalpable

constraint upon the strength of his manliness, what commands his not

always dumb if always dogged devotion, is not the spirit of the sea but

something that in his eyes has a body, a character, a fascination, and

almost a soul--it is his ship.

There is not a day that has passed for many centuries now without the sun

seeing scattered over all the seas groups of British men whose material

and moral existence is conditioned by their loyalty to each other and

their faithful devotion to a ship.

Each age has sent its contingent, not of sons (for the great mass of

seamen have always been a childless lot) but of loyal and obscure

successors taking up the modest but spiritual inheritance of a hard life

and simple duties; of duties so simple that nothing ever could shake the

traditional attitude born from the physical conditions of the service. It

was always the ship, bound on any possible errand in the service of the

nation, that has been the stage for the exercise of seamen's primitive

virtues. The dimness of great distances and the obscurity of lives

protected them from the nation's admiring gaze. Those scattered distant

ships' companies seemed to the eyes of the earth only one degree removed

(on the right side, I suppose) from the other strange monsters of the

deep. If spoken of at all they were spoken of in tones of

half-contemptuous indulgence. A good many years ago it was my lot to

write about one of those ships' companies on a certain sea, under certain

circumstances, in a book of no particular length.

That small group of men whom I tried to limn with loving care, but

sparing none of their weaknesses, was characterised by a friendly

reviewer as a lot of engaging ruffians. This gave me some food for

thought. Was it, then, in that guise that they appeared through the

mists of the sea, distant, perplexed, and simple-minded? And what on

earth is an "engaging ruffian"? He must be a creature of literary

imagination, I thought, for the two words don't match in my personal

experience. It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians here and there,

but I never found one of them "engaging." I consoled myself, however, by

the reflection that the friendly reviewer must have been talking like a

parrot, which so often seems to understand what it says.

Yes, in the mists of the sea, and in their remoteness from the rest of

the race, the shapes of those men appeared distorted, uncouth and

faint--so faint as to be almost invisible. It needed the lurid light of

the engines of war to bring them out into full view, very simple, without

worldly graces, organised now into a body of workers by the genius of one

of themselves, who gave them a place and a voice in the social scheme;

but in the main still apart in their homeless, childless generations,

scattered in loyal groups over all the seas, giving faithful care to

their ships and serving the nation, which, since they are seamen, can

give them no reward but the supreme "Well Done."

TRADITION--1918

"Work is the law. Like iron that lying idle degenerates into a mass of

useless rust, like water that in an unruffled pool sickens into a

stagnant and corrupt state, so without action the spirit of men turns to

a dead thing, loses its force, ceases prompting us to leave some trace of

ourselves on this earth." The sense of the above lines does not belong

to me. It may be found in the note-books of one of the greatest artists

that ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci. It has a simplicity and a truth

which no amount of subtle comment can destroy.

The Master who had meditated so deeply on the rebirth of arts and

sciences, on the inward beauty of all things,--ships' lines, women's

faces--and on the visible aspects of nature was profoundly right in his

pronouncement on the work that is done on the earth. From the hard work

of men are born the sympathetic consciousness of a common destiny, the

fidelity to right practice which makes great craftsmen, the sense of

right conduct which we may call honour, the devotion to our calling and

the idealism which is not a misty, winged angel without eyes, but a

divine figure of terrestrial aspect with a clear glance and with its feet

resting firmly on the earth on which it was born.

And work will overcome all evil, except ignorance, which is the condition

of humanity and, like the ambient air, fills the space between the

various sorts and conditions of men, which breeds hatred, fear, and

contempt between the masses of mankind, and puts on men's lips, on their

innocent lips, words that are thoughtless and vain.

Thoughtless, for instance, were the words that (in all innocence, I

believe) came on the lips of a prominent statesman making in the House of

Commons an eulogistic reference to the British Merchant Service. In this

name I include men of diverse status and origin, who live on and by the

sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional pretensions and social

formulas, men for whom not only their daily bread but their collective

character, their personal achievement and their individual merit come

from the sea. Those words of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after

all, this is not a complete excuse. Rightly or wrongly, we expect from a

man of national importance a larger and at the same time a more

scrupulous precision of speech, for it is possible that it may go echoing

down the ages. His words were:

"It is right when thinking of the Navy not to forget the men of the

Merchant Service, who have shown--and it is more surprising because they

have had no traditions towards it--courage as great," etc., etc.

And then he went on talking of the execution of Captain Fryatt, an event

of undying memory, but less connected with the permanent, unchangeable

conditions of sea service than with the wrong view German minds delight

in taking of Englishmen's psychology. The enemy, he said, meant by this

atrocity to frighten our sailors away from the sea.

"What has happened?" he goes on to ask. "Never at any time in peace have

sailors stayed so short a time ashore or shown such a readiness to step

again into a ship."

Which means, in other words, that they answered to the call. I should

like to know at what time of history the English Merchant Service, the

great body of merchant seamen, had failed to answer the call. Noticed or

unnoticed, ignored or commanded, they have answered invariably the call

to do their work, the very conditions of which made them what they are.

They have always served the nation's needs through their own invariable

fidelity to the demands of their special life; but with the development

and complexity of material civilisation they grew less prominent to the

nation's eye among all the vast schemes of national industry. Never was

the need greater and the call to the services more urgent than to-day.

And those inconspicuous workers on whose qualities depends so much of the

national welfare have answered it without dismay, facing risk without

glory, in the perfect faithfulness to that tradition which the speech of

the statesman denies to them at the very moment when he thinks fit to

praise their courage . . . and mention his surprise!

The hour of opportunity has struck--not for the first time--for the

Merchant Service; and if I associate myself with all my heart in the

admiration and the praise which is the greatest reward of brave men I

must be excused from joining in any sentiment of surprise. It is perhaps

because I have not been born to the inheritance of that tradition, which

has yet fashioned the fundamental part of my character in my young days,

that I am so consciously aware of it and venture to vindicate its

existence in this outspoken manner.

Merchant seamen have always been what they are now, from their earliest

days, before the Royal Navy had been fashioned out of the material they

furnished for the hands of kings and statesmen. Their work has made

them, as work undertaken with single-minded devotion makes men, giving to

their achievements that vitality and continuity in which their souls are

expressed, tempered and matured through the succeeding generations. In

its simplest definition the work of merchant seamen has been to take

ships entrusted to their care from port to port across the seas; and,

from the highest to the lowest, to watch and labour with devotion for the

safety of the property and the lives committed to their skill and

fortitude through the hazards of innumerable voyages.

That was always the clear task, the single aim, the simple ideal, the

only problem for an unselfish solution. The terms of it have changed

with the years, its risks have worn different aspects from time to time.

There are no longer any unexplored seas. Human ingenuity has devised

better means to meet the dangers of natural forces. But it is always the

same problem. The youngsters who were growing up at sea at the end of my

service are commanding ships now. At least I have heard of some of them

who do. And whatever the shape and power of their ships the character of

the duty remains the same. A mine or a torpedo that strikes your ship is

not so very different from a sharp, uncharted rock tearing her life out

of her in another way. At a greater cost of vital energy, under the well-

nigh intolerable stress of vigilance and resolution, they are doing

steadily the work of their professional forefathers in the midst of

multiplied dangers. They go to and fro across the oceans on their

everlasting task: the same men, the same stout hearts, the same fidelity

to an exacting tradition created by simple toilers who in their time knew

how to live and die at sea.

Allowed to share in this work and in this tradition for something like

twenty years, I am bold enough to think that perhaps I am not altogether

unworthy to speak of it. It was the sphere not only of my activity but,

I may safely say, also of my affections; but after such a close

connection it is very difficult to avoid bringing in one's own

personality. Without looking at all at the aspects of the Labour

problem, I can safely affirm that I have never, never seen British seamen

refuse any risk, any exertion, any effort of spirit or body up to the

extremest demands of their calling. Years ago--it seems ages ago--I have

seen the crew of a British ship fight the fire in the cargo for a whole

sleepless week and then, with her decks blown up, I have seen them still

continue the fight to save the floating shell. And at last I have seen

them refuse to be taken off by a vessel standing by, and this only in

order "to see the last of our ship," at the word, at the simple word, of

a man who commanded them, a worthy soul indeed, but of no heroic aspect.

I have seen that. I have shared their days in small boats. Hard days.

Ages ago. And now let me mention a story of to-day.

I will try to relate it here mainly in the words of the chief engineer of

a certain steamship which, after bunkering, left Lerwick, bound for

Iceland. The weather was cold, the sea pretty rough, with a stiff head

wind. All went well till next day, about 1.30 p.m., then the captain

sighted a suspicious object far away to starboard. Speed was increased

at once to close in with the Faroes and good lookouts were set fore and

aft. Nothing further was seen of the suspicious object, but about half-

past three without any warning the ship was struck amidships by a torpedo

which exploded in the bunkers. None of the crew was injured by the

explosion, and all hands, without exception, behaved admirably.

The chief officer with his watch managed to lower the No. 3 boat. Two

other boats had been shattered by the explosion, and though another

lifeboat was cleared and ready, there was no time to lower it, and "some

of us jumped while others were washed overboard. Meantime the captain

had been busy handing lifebelts to the men and cheering them up with

words and smiles, with no thought of his own safety." The ship went down

in less than four minutes. The captain was the last man on board, going

down with her, and was sucked under. On coming up he was caught under an

upturned boat to which five hands were clinging. "One lifeboat," says

the chief engineer, "which was floating empty in the distance was

cleverly manoeuvred to our assistance by the steward, who swam off to her

pluckily. Our next endeavour was to release the captain, who was

entangled under the boat. As it was impossible to right her, we set-to

to split her side open with the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the

head of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was lost. The

rescue took thirty minutes, and the extricated captain was in a pitiable

condition, being badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt water.

He was unconscious. While at that work the submarine came to the surface

quite close and made a complete circle round us, the seven men that we

counted on the conning tower laughing at our efforts.

"There were eighteen of us saved. I deeply regret the loss of the chief

officer, a fine fellow and a kind shipmate showing splendid promise. The

other men lost--one A.B., one greaser, and two firemen--were quiet,

conscientious, good fellows."

With no restoratives in the boat, they endeavoured to bring the captain

round by means of massage. Meantime the oars were got out in order to

reach the Faroes, which were about thirty miles dead to windward, but

after about nine hours' hard work they had to desist, and, putting out a

sea-anchor, they took shelter under the canvas boat-cover from the cold

wind and torrential rain. Says the narrator: "We were all very wet and

miserable, and decided to have two biscuits all round. The effects of

this and being under the shelter of the canvas warmed us up and made us

feel pretty well contented. At about sunrise the captain showed signs of

recovery, and by the time the sun was up he was looking a lot better,

much to our relief."

After being informed of what had been done the revived captain "dropped a

bombshell in our midst," by proposing to make for the Shetlands, which

were _only_ one hundred and fifty miles off. "The wind is in our

favour," he said. "I promise to take you there. Are you all willing?"

This--comments the chief engineer--"from a man who but a few hours

previously had been hauled back from the grave!" The captain's confident

manner inspired the men, and they all agreed. Under the best possible

conditions a boat-run of one hundred and fifty miles in the North

Atlantic and in winter weather would have been a feat of no mean merit,

but in the circumstances it required uncommon nerve and skill to carry

out such a promise. With an oar for a mast and the boat-cover cut down

for a sail they started on their dangerous journey, with the boat compass

and the stars for their guide. The captain's undaunted serenity buoyed

them all up against despondency. He told them what point he was making

for. It was Ronas Hill, "and we struck it as straight as a die."

The chief engineer commends also the ship steward for the manner in which

he made the little food they had last, the cheery spirit he manifested,

and the great help he was to the captain by keeping the men in good

humour. That trusty man had "his hands cruelly chafed with the rowing,

but it never damped his spirits."

They made Ronas Hill (as straight as a die), and the chief engineer

cannot express their feelings of gratitude and relief when they set their

feet on the shore. He praises the unbounded kindness of the people in

Hillswick. "It seemed to us all like Paradise regained," he says,

concluding his letter with the words:

"And there was our captain, just his usual self, as if nothing had

happened, as if bringing the boat that hazardous journey and being the

means of saving eighteen souls was to him an everyday occurrence."

Such is the chief engineer's testimony to the continuity of the old

tradition of the sea, which made by the work of men has in its turn

created for them their simple ideal of conduct.

CONFIDENCE--1919

I.

The seamen hold up the Edifice. They have been holding it up in the past

and they will hold it up in the future, whatever this future may contain

of logical development, of unforeseen new shapes, of great promises and

of dangers still unknown.

It is not an unpardonable stretching of the truth to say that the British

Empire rests on transportation. I am speaking now naturally of the sea,

as a man who has lived on it for many years, at a time, too, when on

sighting a vessel on the horizon of any of the great oceans it was

perfectly safe to bet any reasonable odds on her being a British

ship--with the certitude of making a pretty good thing of it at the end

of the voyage.

I have tried to convey here in popular terms the strong impression

remembered from my young days. The Red Ensign prevailed on the high seas

to such an extent that one always experienced a slight shock on seeing

some other combination of colours blow out at the peak or flag-pole of

any chance encounter in deep water. In the long run the persistence of

the visual fact forced upon the mind a half-unconscious sense of its

inner significance. We have all heard of the well-known view that trade

follows the flag. And that is not always true. There is also this truth

that the flag, in normal conditions, represents commerce to the eye and

understanding of the average man. This is a truth, but it is not the

whole truth. In its numbers and in its unfailing ubiquity, the British

Red Ensign, under which naval actions too have been fought, adventures

entered upon and sacrifices offered, represented in fact something more

than the prestige of a great trade.

The flutter of that piece of red bunting showered sentiment on the

nations of the earth. I will not venture to say that in every case that

sentiment was of a friendly nature. Of hatred, half concealed or

concealed not at all, this is not the place to speak; and indeed the

little I have seen of it about the world was tainted with stupidity and

seemed to confess in its very violence the extreme poorness of its case.

But generally it was more in the nature of envious wonder qualified by a

half-concealed admiration.

That flag, which but for the Union Jack in the corner might have been

adopted by the most radical of revolutions, affirmed in its numbers the

stability of purpose, the continuity of effort and the greatness of

Britain's opportunity pursued steadily in the order and peace of the

world: that world which for twenty-five years or so after 1870 may be

said to have been living in holy calm and hushed silence with only now

and then a slight clink of metal, as if in some distant part of mankind's

habitation some restless body had stumbled over a heap of old armour.

II.

We who have learned by now what a world-war is like may be excused for

considering the disturbances of that period as insignificant brawls, mere

hole-and-corner scuffles. In the world, which memory depicts as so

wonderfully tranquil all over, it was the sea yet that was the safest

place. And the Red Ensign, commercial, industrial, historic, pervaded

the sea! Assertive only by its numbers, highly significant, and, under

its character of a trade--emblem, nationally expressive, it was symbolic

of old and new ideas, of conservatism and progress, of routine and

enterprise, of drudgery and adventure--and of a certain easy-going

optimism that would have appeared the Father of Sloth itself if it had

not been so stubbornly, so everlastingly active.

The unimaginative, hard-working men, great and small, who served this

flag afloat and ashore, nursed dumbly a mysterious sense of its

greatness. It sheltered magnificently their vagabond labours under the

sleepless eye of the sun. It held up the Edifice. But it crowned it

too. This is not the extravagance of a mixed metaphor. It is the sober

expression of a not very complex truth. Within that double function the

national life that flag represented so well went on in safety, assured of

its daily crust of bread for which we all pray and without which we would

have to give up faith, hope and charity, the intellectual conquests of

our minds and the sanctified strength of our labouring arms. I may

permit myself to speak of it in these terms because as a matter of fact

it was on that very symbol that I had founded my life and (as I have said

elsewhere in a moment of outspoken gratitude) had known for many years no

other roof above my head.

In those days that symbol was not particularly regarded. Superficially

and definitely it represented but one of the forms of national activity

rather remote from the close-knit organisations of other industries, a

kind of toil not immediately under the public eye. It was of its Navy

that the nation, looking out of the windows of its world-wide Edifice,

was proudly aware. And that was but fair. The Navy is the armed man at

the gate. An existence depending upon the sea must be guarded with a

jealous, sleepless vigilance, for the sea is but a fickle friend.

It had provoked conflicts, encouraged ambitions, and had lured some

nations to destruction--as we know. He--man or people--who, boasting of

long years of familiarity with the sea, neglects the strength and cunning

of his right hand is a fool. The pride and trust of the nation in its

Navy so strangely mingled with moments of neglect, caused by a

particularly thick-headed idealism, is perfectly justified. It is also

very proper: for it is good for a body of men conscious of a great

responsibility to feel themselves recognised, if only in that fallible,

imperfect and often irritating way in which recognition is sometimes

offered to the deserving.

But the Merchant Service had never to suffer from that sort of

irritation. No recognition was thrust on it offensively, and, truth to

say, it did not seem to concern itself unduly with the claims of its own

obscure merit. It had no consciousness. It had no words. It had no

time. To these busy men their work was but the ordinary labour of

earning a living; their duties in their ever-recurring round had, like

the sun itself, the commonness of daily things; their individual fidelity

was not so much united as merely co-ordinated by an aim that shone with

no spiritual lustre. They were everyday men. They were that, eminently.

When the great opportunity came to them to link arms in response to a

supreme call they received it with characteristic simplicity,

incorporating self-sacrifice into the texture of their common task, and,

as far as emotion went, framing the horror of mankind's catastrophic time

within the rigid rules of their professional conscience. And who can say

that they could have done better than this?

Such was their past both remote and near. It has been stubbornly

consistent, and as this consistency was based upon the character of men

fashioned by a very old tradition, there is no doubt that it will endure.

Such changes as came into the sea life have been for the main part

mechanical and affecting only the material conditions of that inbred

consistency. That men don't change is a profound truth. They don't

change because it is not necessary for them to change even if they could

accomplish that miracle. It is enough for them to be infinitely

adaptable--as the last four years have abundantly proved.

III.

Thus one may await the future without undue excitement and with unshaken

confidence. Whether the hues of sunrise are angry or benign, gorgeous or

sinister, we shall always have the same sky over our heads. Yet by a

kindly dispensation of Providence the human faculty of astonishment will

never lack food. What could be more surprising for instance, than the

calm invitation to Great Britain to discard the force and protection of

its Navy? It has been suggested, it has been proposed--I don't know

whether it has been pressed. Probably not much. For if the excursions

of audacious folly have no bounds that human eye can see, reason has the

habit of never straying very far away from its throne.

It is not the first time in history that excited voices have been heard

urging the warrior still panting from the fray to fling his tried weapons

on the altar of peace, for they would be needed no more! And such voices

have been, in undying hope or extreme weariness, listened to sometimes.

But not for long. After all every sort of shouting is a transitory

thing. It is the grim silence of facts that remains.

The British Merchant Service has been challenged in its supremacy before.

It will be challenged again. It may be even asked menacingly in the name

of some humanitarian doctrine or some empty ideal to step down

voluntarily from that place which it has managed to keep for so many

years. But I imagine that it will take more than words of brotherly love

or brotherly anger (which, as is well known, is the worst kind of anger)

to drive British seamen, armed or unarmed, from the seas. Firm in this

indestructible if not easily explained conviction, I can allow myself to

think placidly of that long, long future which I shall not see.

My confidence rests on the hearts of men who do not change, though they

may forget many things for a time and even forget to be themselves in a

moment of false enthusiasm. But of that I am not afraid. It will not be

for long. I know the men. Through the kindness of the Admiralty (which,

let me confess here in a white sheet, I repaid by the basest ingratitude)

I was permitted during the war to renew my contact with the British

seamen of the merchant service. It is to their generosity in recognising

me under the shore rust of twenty-five years as one of themselves that I

owe one of the deepest emotions of my life. Never for a moment did I

feel among them like an idle, wandering ghost from a distant past. They

talked to me seriously, openly, and with professional precision, of

facts, of events, of implements, I had never heard of in my time; but the

hands I grasped were like the hands of the generation which had trained

my youth and is now no more. I recognised the character of their

glances, the accent of their voices. Their moving tales of modern

instances were presented to me with that peculiar turn of mind flavoured

by the inherited humour and sagacity of the sea. I don't know what the

seaman of the future will be like. He may have to live all his days with

a telephone tied up to his head and bristle all over with scientific

antennae like a figure in a fantastic tale. But he will always be the

man revealed to us lately, immutable in his slight variations like the

closed path of this planet of ours on which he must find his exact

position once, at the very least, in every twenty-four hours.

The greatest desideratum of a sailor's life is to be "certain of his

position." It is a source of great worry at times, but I don't think

that it need be so at this time. Yet even the best position has its

dangers on account of the fickleness of the elements. But I think that,

left untrammelled to the individual effort of its creators and to the

collective spirit of its servants, the British Merchant Service will

manage to maintain its position on this restless and watery globe.

FLIGHT--1917

To begin at the end, I will say that the "landing" surprised me by a

slight and very characteristically "dead" sort of shock.

I may fairly call myself an amphibious creature. A good half of my

active existence has been passed in familiar contact with salt water, and

I was aware, theoretically, that water is not an elastic body: but it was

only then that I acquired the absolute conviction of the fact. I

remember distinctly the thought flashing through my head: "By Jove! it

isn't elastic!" Such is the illuminating force of a particular

experience.

This landing (on the water of the North Sea) was effected in a Short

biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air. I reckon every

minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I've got is mine, I

am not likely now to increase the tale. That feeling is the effect of

age. It strikes me as I write that, when next time I leave the surface

of this globe, it won't be to soar bodily above it in the air. Quite the

contrary. And I am not thinking of a submarine either. . . .

But let us drop this dismal strain and go back logically to the

beginning. I must confess that I started on that flight in a state--I

won't say of fury, but of a most intense irritation. I don't remember

ever feeling so annoyed in my life.

It came about in this way. Two or three days before, I had been invited

to lunch at an R.N.A.S. station, and was made to feel very much at home

by the nicest lot of quietly interesting young men it had ever been my

good fortune to meet. Then I was taken into the sheds. I walked

respectfully round and round a lot of machines of all kinds, and the more

I looked at them the more I felt somehow that for all the effect they

produced on me they might have been so many land-vehicles of an eccentric

design. So I said to Commander O., who very kindly was conducting me:

"This is all very fine, but to realise what one is looking at, one must

have been up."

He said at once: "I'll give you a flight to-morrow if you like."

I postulated that it should be none of those "ten minutes in the air"

affairs. I wanted a real business flight. Commander O. assured me that

I would get "awfully bored," but I declared that I was willing to take

that risk. "Very well," he said. "Eleven o'clock to-morrow. Don't be

late."

I am sorry to say I was about two minutes late, which was enough,

however, for Commander O. to greet me with a shout from a great distance:

"Oh! You are coming, then!"

"Of course I am coming," I yelled indignantly.

He hurried up to me. "All right. There's your machine, and here's your

pilot. Come along."

A lot of officers closed round me, rushed me into a hut: two of them

began to button me into the coat, two more were ramming a cap on my head,

others stood around with goggles, with binoculars. . . I couldn't

understand the necessity of such haste. We weren't going to chase Fritz.

There was no sign of Fritz anywhere in the blue. Those dear boys did not

seem to notice my age--fifty-eight, if a day--nor my infirmities--a gouty

subject for years. This disregard was very flattering, and I tried to

live up to it, but the pace seemed to me terrific. They galloped me

across a vast expanse of open ground to the water's edge.

The machine on its carriage seemed as big as a cottage, and much more

imposing. My young pilot went up like a bird. There was an idle, able-

bodied ladder loafing against a shed within fifteen feet of me, but as

nobody seemed to notice it, I recommended myself mentally to Heaven and

started climbing after the pilot. The close view of the real fragility

of that rigid structure startled me considerably, while Commander O.

discomposed me still more by shouting repeatedly: "Don't put your foot

there!" I didn't know where to put my foot. There was a slight crack; I

heard some swear-words below me, and then with a supreme effort I rolled

in and dropped into a basket-chair, absolutely winded. A small crowd of

mechanics and officers were looking up at me from the ground, and while I

gasped visibly I thought to myself that they would be sure to put it down

to sheer nervousness. But I hadn't breath enough in my body to stick my

head out and shout down to them:

"You know, it isn't that at all!"

Generally I try not to think of my age and infirmities. They are not a

cheerful subject. But I was never so angry and disgusted with them as

during that minute or so before the machine took the water. As to my

feelings in the air, those who will read these lines will know their own,

which are so much nearer the mind and the heart than any writings of an

unprofessional can be. At first all my faculties were absorbed and as if

neutralised by the sheer novelty of the situation. The first to emerge

was the sense of security so much more perfect than in any small boat

I've ever been in; the, as it were, material, stillness, and immobility

(though it was a bumpy day). I very soon ceased to hear the roar of the

wind and engines--unless, indeed, some cylinders missed, when I became

acutely aware of that. Within the rigid spread of the powerful planes,

so strangely motionless I had sometimes the illusion of sitting as if by

enchantment in a block of suspended marble. Even while looking over at

the aeroplane's shadow running prettily over land and sea, I had the

impression of extreme slowness. I imagine that had she suddenly nose-

dived out of control, I would have gone to the final smash without a

single additional heartbeat. I am sure I would not have known. It is

doubtless otherwise with the man in control.

But there was no dive, and I returned to earth (after an hour and twenty

minutes) without having felt "bored" for a single second. I descended

(by the ladder) thinking that I would never go flying again. No, never

any more--lest its mysterious fascination, whose invisible wing had

brushed my heart up there, should change to unavailing regret in a man

too old for its glory.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC--1912

It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that the

late _S.S. Titanic_ had a "good press." It is perhaps because I have no

great practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen so many of them

together lying about my room) that the white spaces and the big lettering

of the headlines have an incongruously festive air to my eyes, a

disagreeable effect of a feverish exploitation of a sensational God-send.

And if ever a loss at sea fell under the definition, in the terms of a

bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its magnitude,

suddenness and severity; and in the chastening influence it should have

on the self-confidence of mankind.

I say this with all the seriousness the occasion demands, though I have

neither the competence nor the wish to take a theological view of this

great misfortune, sending so many souls to their last account. It is but

a natural _reflection_. Another one flowing also from the phraseology of

bills of lading (a bill of lading is a shipping document limiting in

certain of its clauses the liability of the carrier) is that the "King's

Enemies" of a more or less overt sort are not altogether sorry that this

fatal mishap should strike the prestige of the greatest Merchant Service

of the world. I believe that not a thousand miles from these shores

certain public prints have betrayed in gothic letters their

satisfaction--to speak plainly--by rather ill-natured comments.

In what light one is to look at the action of the American Senate is more

difficult to say. From a certain point of view the sight of the august

senators of a great Power rushing to New York and beginning to bully and

badger the luckless "Yamsi"--on the very quay-side so to speak--seems to

furnish the Shakespearian touch of the comic to the real tragedy of the

fatuous drowning of all these people who to the last moment put their

trust in mere bigness, in the reckless affirmations of commercial men and

mere technicians and in the irresponsible paragraphs of the newspapers

booming these ships! Yes, a grim touch of comedy. One asks oneself what

these men are after, with this very provincial display of authority. I

beg my friends in the United States pardon for calling these zealous

senators men. I don't wish to be disrespectful. They may be of the

stature of demi-gods for all I know, but at that great distance from the

shores of effete Europe and in the presence of so many guileless dead,

their size seems diminished from this side. What are they after? What

is there for them to find out? We know what had happened. The ship

scraped her side against a piece of ice, and sank after floating for two

hours and a half, taking a lot of people down with her. What more can

they find out from the unfair badgering of the unhappy "Yamsi," or the

ruffianly abuse of the same.

"Yamsi," I should explain, is a mere code address, and I use it here

symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is

worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one

must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at

the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American

railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then

why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own

railroads, of which one can't say whether they are mere means of

transportation or a sort of gambling game for the use of American

plutocrats. Is it only an ardent and, upon the whole, praiseworthy

desire for information? But the reports of the inquiry tell us that the

august senators, though raising a lot of questions testifying to the

complete innocence and even blankness of their minds, are unable to

understand what the second officer is saying to them. We are so informed

by the press from the other side. Even such a simple expression as that

one of the look-out men was stationed in the "eyes of the ship" was too

much for the senators of the land of graphic expression. What it must

have been in the more recondite matters I won't even try to think,

because I have no mind for smiles just now. They were greatly exercised

about the sound of explosions heard when half the ship was under water

already. Was there one? Were there two? They seemed to be smelling a

rat there! Has not some charitable soul told them (what even schoolboys

who read sea stories know) that when a ship sinks from a leak like this,

a deck or two is always blown up; and that when a steamship goes down by

the head, the boilers may, and often do break adrift with a sound which

resembles the sound of an explosion? And they may, indeed, explode, for

all I know. In the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there

was such a sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate. She

was not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was

impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled, mysterious

detonation, the sudden agitation of the sea round the slowly raised

stern, and to this day I have in my eye the propeller, seen perfectly

still in its frame against a clear evening sky.

But perhaps the second officer has explained to them by this time this

and a few other little facts. Though why an officer of the British

merchant service should answer the questions of any king, emperor,

autocrat, or senator of any foreign power (as to an event in which a

British ship alone was concerned, and which did not even take place in

the territorial waters of that power) passes my understanding. The only

authority he is bound to answer is the Board of Trade. But with what

face the Board of Trade, which, having made the regulations for 10,000

ton ships, put its dear old bald head under its wing for ten years, took

it out only to shelve an important report, and with a dreary murmur,

"Unsinkable," put it back again, in the hope of not being disturbed for

another ten years, with what face it will be putting questions to that

man who has done his duty, as to the facts of this disaster and as to his

professional conduct in it--well, I don't know! I have the greatest

respect for our established authorities. I am a disciplined man, and I

have a natural indulgence for the weaknesses of human institutions; but I

will own that at times I have regretted their--how shall I say it?--their

imponderability. A Board of Trade--what is it? A Board of . . . I

believe the Speaker of the Irish Parliament is one of the members of it.

A ghost. Less than that; as yet a mere memory. An office with adequate

and no doubt comfortable furniture and a lot of perfectly irresponsible

gentlemen who exist packed in its equable atmosphere softly, as if in a

lot of cotton-wool, and with no care in the world; for there can be no

care without personal responsibility--such, for instance, as the seamen

have--those seamen from whose mouths this irresponsible institution can

take away the bread--as a disciplinary measure. Yes--it's all that. And

what more? The name of a politician--a party man! Less than nothing; a

mere void without as much as a shadow of responsibility cast into it from

that light in which move the masses of men who work, who deal in things

and face the realities--not the words--of this life.

Years ago I remember overhearing two genuine shellbacks of the old type

commenting on a ship's officer, who, if not exactly incompetent, did not

commend himself to their severe judgment of accomplished sailor-men. Said

one, resuming and concluding the discussion in a funnily judicial tone:

"The Board of Trade must have been drunk when they gave him his

certificate."

I confess that this notion of the Board of Trade as an entity having a

brain which could be overcome by the fumes of strong liquor charmed me

exceedingly. For then it would have been unlike the limited companies of

which some exasperated wit has once said that they had no souls to be

saved and no bodies to be kicked, and thus were free in this world and

the next from all the effective sanctions of conscientious conduct. But,

unfortunately, the picturesque pronouncement overheard by me was only a

characteristic sally of an annoyed sailor. The Board of Trade is

composed of bloodless departments. It has no limbs and no physiognomy,

or else at the forthcoming inquiry it might have paid to the victims of

the _Titanic_ disaster the small tribute of a blush. I ask myself

whether the Marine Department of the Board of Trade did really believe,

when they decided to shelve the report on equipment for a time, that a

ship of 45,000 tons, that _any_ ship, could be made practically

indestructible by means of water-tight bulkheads? It seems incredible to

anybody who had ever reflected upon the properties of material, such as

wood or steel. You can't, let builders say what they like, make a ship

of such dimensions as strong proportionately as a much smaller one. The

shocks our old whalers had to stand amongst the heavy floes in Baffin's

Bay were perfectly staggering, notwithstanding the most skilful handling,

and yet they lasted for years. The _Titanic_, if one may believe the

last reports, has only scraped against a piece of ice which, I suspect,

was not an enormously bulky and comparatively easily seen berg, but the

low edge of a floe--and sank. Leisurely enough, God knows--and here the

advantage of bulkheads comes in--for time is a great friend, a good

helper--though in this lamentable case these bulkheads served only to

prolong the agony of the passengers who could not be saved. But she

sank, causing, apart from the sorrow and the pity of the loss of so many

lives, a sort of surprised consternation that such a thing should have

happened at all. Why? You build a 45,000 tons hotel of thin steel

plates to secure the patronage of, say, a couple of thousand rich people

(for if it had been for the emigrant trade alone, there would have been

no such exaggeration of mere size), you decorate it in the style of the

Pharaohs or in the Louis Quinze style--I don't know which--and to please

the aforesaid fatuous handful of individuals, who have more money than

they know what to do with, and to the applause of two continents, you

launch that mass with two thousand people on board at twenty-one knots

across the sea--a perfect exhibition of the modern blind trust in mere

material and appliances. And then this happens. General uproar. The

blind trust in material and appliances has received a terrible shock. I

will say nothing of the credulity which accepts any statement which

specialists, technicians and office-people are pleased to make, whether

for purposes of gain or glory. You stand there astonished and hurt in

your profoundest sensibilities. But what else under the circumstances

could you expect?

For my part I could much sooner believe in an unsinkable ship of 3,000

tons than in one of 40,000 tons. It is one of those things that stand to

reason. You can't increase the thickness of scantling and plates

indefinitely. And the mere weight of this bigness is an added

disadvantage. In reading the reports, the first reflection which occurs

to one is that, if that luckless ship had been a couple of hundred feet

shorter, she would have probably gone clear of the danger. But then,

perhaps, she could not have had a swimming bath and a French cafe. That,

of course, is a serious consideration. I am well aware that those

responsible for her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents

to believe that if she had hit end on she would have survived. Which, by

a sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of the

officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the obstacle.

We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and industrial

interests, a new kind of seamanship. A very new and "progressive" kind.

If you see anything in the way, by no means try to avoid it; smash at it

full tilt. And then--and then only you shall see the triumph of

material, of clever contrivances, of the whole box of engineering tricks

in fact, and cover with glory a commercial concern of the most

unmitigated sort, a great Trust, and a great ship-building yard, justly

famed for the super-excellence of its material and workmanship.

Unsinkable! See? I told you she was unsinkable, if only handled in

accordance with the new seamanship. Everything's in that. And,

doubtless, the Board of Trade, if properly approached, would consent to

give the needed instructions to its examiners of Masters and Mates.

Behold the examination-room of the future. Enter to the grizzled

examiner a young man of modest aspect: "Are you well up in modern

seamanship?" "I hope so, sir." "H'm, let's see. You are at night on

the bridge in charge of a 150,000 tons ship, with a motor track, organ-

loft, etc., etc., with a full cargo of passengers, a full crew of 1,500

cafe waiters, two sailors and a boy, three collapsible boats as per Board

of Trade regulations, and going at your three-quarter speed of, say,

about forty knots. You perceive suddenly right ahead, and close to,

something that looks like a large ice-floe. What would you do?" "Put

the helm amidships." "Very well. Why?" "In order to hit end on." "On

what grounds should you endeavour to hit end on?" "Because we are taught

by our builders and masters that the heavier the smash, the smaller the

damage, and because the requirements of material should be attended to."

And so on and so on. The new seamanship: when in doubt try to ram

fairly--whatever's before you. Very simple. If only the _Titanic_ had

rammed that piece of ice (which was not a monstrous berg) fairly, every

puffing paragraph would have been vindicated in the eyes of the credulous

public which pays. But would it have been? Well, I doubt it. I am well

aware that in the eighties the steamship Arizona, one of the "greyhounds

of the ocean" in the jargon of that day, did run bows on against a very

unmistakable iceberg, and managed to get into port on her collision

bulkhead. But the _Arizona_ was not, if I remember rightly, 5,000 tons

register, let alone 45,000, and she was not going at twenty knots per

hour. I can't be perfectly certain at this distance of time, but her sea-

speed could not have been more than fourteen at the outside. Both these

facts made for safety. And, even if she had been engined to go twenty

knots, there would not have been behind that speed the enormous mass, so

difficult to check in its impetus, the terrific weight of which is bound

to do damage to itself or others at the slightest contact.

I assure you it is not for the vain pleasure of talking about my own poor

experiences, but only to illustrate my point, that I will relate here a

very unsensational little incident I witnessed now rather more than

twenty years ago in Sydney, N.S.W. Ships were beginning then to grow

bigger year after year, though, of course, the present dimensions were

not even dreamt of. I was standing on the Circular Quay with a Sydney

pilot watching a big mail steamship of one of our best-known companies

being brought alongside. We admired her lines, her noble appearance, and

were impressed by her size as well, though her length, I imagine, was

hardly half that of the _Titanic_.

She came into the Cove (as that part of the harbour is called), of course

very slowly, and at some hundred feet or so short of the quay she lost

her way. That quay was then a wooden one, a fine structure of mighty

piles and stringers bearing a roadway--a thing of great strength. The

ship, as I have said before, stopped moving when some hundred feet from

it. Then her engines were rung on slow ahead, and immediately rung off

again. The propeller made just about five turns, I should say. She

began to move, stealing on, so to speak, without a ripple; coming

alongside with the utmost gentleness. I went on looking her over, very

much interested, but the man with me, the pilot, muttered under his

breath: "Too much, too much." His exercised judgment had warned him of

what I did not even suspect. But I believe that neither of us was

exactly prepared for what happened. There was a faint concussion of the

ground under our feet, a groaning of piles, a snapping of great iron

bolts, and with a sound of ripping and splintering, as when a tree is

blown down by the wind, a great strong piece of wood, a baulk of squared

timber, was displaced several feet as if by enchantment. I looked at my

companion in amazement. "I could not have believed it," I declared.

"No," he said. "You would not have thought she would have cracked an

egg--eh?"

I certainly wouldn't have thought that. He shook his head, and added:

"Ah! These great, big things, they want some handling."

Some months afterwards I was back in Sydney. The same pilot brought me

in from sea. And I found the same steamship, or else another as like her

as two peas, lying at anchor not far from us. The pilot told me she had

arrived the day before, and that he was to take her alongside to-morrow.

I reminded him jocularly of the damage to the quay. "Oh!" he said, "we

are not allowed now to bring them in under their own steam. We are using

tugs."

A very wise regulation. And this is my point--that size is to a certain

extent an element of weakness. The bigger the ship, the more delicately

she must be handled. Here is a contact which, in the pilot's own words,

you wouldn't think could have cracked an egg; with the astonishing result

of something like eighty feet of good strong wooden quay shaken loose,

iron bolts snapped, a baulk of stout timber splintered. Now, suppose

that quay had been of granite (as surely it is now)--or, instead of the

quay, if there had been, say, a North Atlantic fog there, with a full-

grown iceberg in it awaiting the gentle contact of a ship groping its way

along blindfold? Something would have been hurt, but it would not have

been the iceberg.

Apparently, there is a point in development when it ceases to be a true

progress--in trade, in games, in the marvellous handiwork of men, and

even in their demands and desires and aspirations of the moral and mental

kind. There is a point when progress, to remain a real advance, must

change slightly the direction of its line. But this is a wide question.

What I wanted to point out here is--that the old _Arizona_, the marvel of

her day, was proportionately stronger, handier, better equipped, than

this triumph of modern naval architecture, the loss of which, in common

parlance, will remain the sensation of this year. The clatter of the

presses has been worthy of the tonnage, of the preliminary paeans of

triumph round that vanished hull, of the reckless statements, and

elaborate descriptions of its ornate splendour. A great babble of news

(and what sort of news too, good heavens!) and eager comment has arisen

around this catastrophe, though it seems to me that a less strident note

would have been more becoming in the presence of so many victims left

struggling on the sea, of lives miserably thrown away for nothing, or

worse than nothing: for false standards of achievement, to satisfy a

vulgar demand of a few moneyed people for a banal hotel luxury--the only

one they can understand--and because the big ship pays, in one way or

another: in money or in advertising value.

It is in more ways than one a very ugly business, and a mere scrape along

the ship's side, so slight that, if reports are to be believed, it did

not interrupt a card party in the gorgeously fitted (but in chaste style)

smoking-room--or was it in the delightful French cafe?--is enough to

bring on the exposure. All the people on board existed under a sense of

false security. How false, it has been sufficiently demonstrated. And

the fact which seems undoubted, that some of them actually were reluctant

to enter the boats when told to do so, shows the strength of that

falsehood. Incidentally, it shows also the sort of discipline on board

these ships, the sort of hold kept on the passengers in the face of the

unforgiving sea. These people seemed to imagine it an optional matter:

whereas the order to leave the ship should be an order of the sternest

character, to be obeyed unquestioningly and promptly by every one on

board, with men to enforce it at once, and to carry it out methodically

and swiftly. And it is no use to say it cannot be done, for it can. It

has been done. The only requisite is manageableness of the ship herself

and of the numbers she carries on board. That is the great thing which

makes for safety. A commander should be able to hold his ship and

everything on board of her in the hollow of his hand, as it were. But

with the modern foolish trust in material, and with those floating

hotels, this has become impossible. A man may do his best, but he cannot

succeed in a task which from greed, or more likely from sheer stupidity,

has been made too great for anybody's strength.

The readers of _The English Review_, who cast a friendly eye nearly six

years ago on my Reminiscences, and know how much the merchant service,

ships and men, has been to me, will understand my indignation that those

men of whom (speaking in no sentimental phrase, but in the very truth of

feeling) I can't even now think otherwise than as brothers, have been put

by their commercial employers in the impossibility to perform efficiently

their plain duty; and this from motives which I shall not enumerate here,

but whose intrinsic unworthiness is plainly revealed by the greatness,

the miserable greatness, of that disaster. Some of them have perished.

To die for commerce is hard enough, but to go under that sea we have been

trained to combat, with a sense of failure in the supreme duty of one's

calling is indeed a bitter fate. Thus they are gone, and the

responsibility remains with the living who will have no difficulty in

replacing them by others, just as good, at the same wages. It was their

bitter fate. But I, who can look at some arduous years when their duty

was my duty too, and their feelings were my feelings, can remember some

of us who once upon a time were more fortunate.

It is of them that I would talk a little, for my own comfort partly, and

also because I am sticking all the time to my subject to illustrate my

point, the point of manageableness which I have raised just now. Since

the memory of the lucky _Arizona_ has been evoked by others than myself,

and made use of by me for my own purpose, let me call up the ghost of

another ship of that distant day whose less lucky destiny inculcates

another lesson making for my argument. The _Douro_, a ship belonging to

the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, was rather less than one-tenth the

measurement of the _Titanic_. Yet, strange as it may appear to the

ineffable hotel exquisites who form the bulk of the first-class Cross-

Atlantic Passengers, people of position and wealth and refinement did not

consider it an intolerable hardship to travel in her, even all the way

from South America; this being the service she was engaged upon. Of her

speed I know nothing, but it must have been the average of the period,

and the decorations of her saloons were, I dare say, quite up to the

mark; but I doubt if her birth had been boastfully paragraphed all round

the Press, because that was not the fashion of the time. She was not a

mass of material gorgeously furnished and upholstered. She was a ship.

And she was not, in the apt words of an article by Commander C.

Crutchley, R.N.R., which I have just read, "run by a sort of hotel

syndicate composed of the Chief Engineer, the Purser, and the Captain,"

as these monstrous Atlantic ferries are. She was really commanded,

manned, and equipped as a ship meant to keep the sea: a ship first and

last in the fullest meaning of the term, as the fact I am going to relate

will show.

She was off the Spanish coast, homeward bound, and fairly full, just like

the _Titanic_; and further, the proportion of her crew to her passengers,

I remember quite well, was very much the same. The exact number of souls

on board I have forgotten. It might have been nearly three hundred,

certainly not more. The night was moonlit, but hazy, the weather fine

with a heavy swell running from the westward, which means that she must

have been rolling a great deal, and in that respect the conditions for

her were worse than in the case of the _Titanic_. Some time either just

before or just after midnight, to the best of my recollection, she was

run into amidships and at right angles by a large steamer which after the

blow backed out, and, herself apparently damaged, remained motionless at

some distance.

My recollection is that the _Douro_ remained afloat after the collision

for fifteen minutes or thereabouts. It might have been twenty, but

certainly something under the half-hour. In that time the boats were

lowered, all the passengers put into them, and the lot shoved off. There

was no time to do anything more. All the crew of the _Douro_ went down

with her, literally without a murmur. When she went she plunged bodily

down like a stone. The only members of the ship's company who survived

were the third officer, who was from the first ordered to take charge of

the boats, and the seamen told off to man them, two in each. Nobody else

was picked up. A quartermaster, one of the saved in the way of duty,

with whom I talked a month or so afterwards, told me that they pulled up

to the spot, but could neither see a head nor hear the faintest cry.

But I have forgotten. A passenger was drowned. She was a lady's maid

who, frenzied with terror, refused to leave the ship. One of the boats

waited near by till the chief officer, finding himself absolutely unable

to tear the girl away from the rail to which she dung with a frantic

grasp, ordered the boat away out of danger. My quartermaster told me

that he spoke over to them in his ordinary voice, and this was the last

sound heard before the ship sank.

The rest is silence. I daresay there was the usual official inquiry, but

who cared for it? That sort of thing speaks for itself with no uncertain

voice; though the papers, I remember, gave the event no space to speak

of: no large headlines--no headlines at all. You see it was not the

fashion at the time. A seaman-like piece of work, of which one cherishes

the old memory at this juncture more than ever before. She was a ship

commanded, manned, equipped--not a sort of marine Ritz, proclaimed

unsinkable and sent adrift with its casual population upon the sea,

without enough boats, without enough seamen (but with a Parisian cafe and

four hundred of poor devils of waiters) to meet dangers which, let the

engineers say what they like, lurk always amongst the waves; sent with a

blind trust in mere material, light-heartedly, to a most miserable, most

fatuous disaster.

And there are, too, many ugly developments about this tragedy. The rush

of the senatorial inquiry before the poor wretches escaped from the jaws

of death had time to draw breath, the vituperative abuse of a man no more

guilty than others in this matter, and the suspicion of this aimless fuss

being a political move to get home on the M.T. Company, into which, in

common parlance, the United States Government has got its knife, I don't

pretend to understand why, though with the rest of the world I am aware

of the fact. Perhaps there may be an excellent and worthy reason for it;

but I venture to suggest that to take advantage of so many pitiful

corpses, is not pretty. And the exploiting of the mere sensation on the

other side is not pretty in its wealth of heartless inventions. Neither

is the welter of Marconi lies which has not been sent vibrating without

some reason, for which it would be nauseous to inquire too closely. And

the calumnious, baseless, gratuitous, circumstantial lie charging poor

Captain Smith with desertion of his post by means of suicide is the

vilest and most ugly thing of all in this outburst of journalistic

enterprise, without feeling, without honour, without decency.

But all this has its moral. And that other sinking which I have related

here and to the memory of which a seaman turns with relief and

thankfulness has its moral too. Yes, material may fail, and men, too,

may fail sometimes; but more often men, when they are given the chance,

will prove themselves truer than steel, that wonderful thin steel from

which the sides and the bulkheads of our modern sea-leviathans are made.

CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE

TITANIC--1912

I have been taken to task by a friend of mine on the "other side" for my

strictures on Senator Smith's investigation into the loss of the

_Titanic_, in the number of _The English Review_ for May, 1912. I will

admit that the motives of the investigation may have been excellent, and

probably were; my criticism bore mainly on matters of form and also on

the point of efficiency. In that respect I have nothing to retract. The

Senators of the Commission had absolutely no knowledge and no practice to

guide them in the conduct of such an investigation; and this fact gave an

air of unreality to their zealous exertions. I think that even in the

United States there is some regret that this zeal of theirs was not

tempered by a large dose of wisdom. It is fitting that people who rush

with such ardour to the work of putting questions to men yet gasping from

a narrow escape should have, I wouldn't say a tincture of technical

information, but enough knowledge of the subject to direct the trend of

their inquiry. The newspapers of two continents have noted the remarks

of the President of the Senatorial Commission with comments which I will

not reproduce here, having a scant respect for the "organs of public

opinion," as they fondly believe themselves to be. The absolute value of

their remarks was about as great as the value of the investigation they

either mocked at or extolled. To the United States Senate I did not

intend to be disrespectful. I have for that body, of which one hears

mostly in connection with tariffs, as much reverence as the best of

Americans. To manifest more or less would be an impertinence in a

stranger. I have expressed myself with less reserve on our Board of

Trade. That was done under the influence of warm feelings. We were all

feeling warmly on the matter at that time. But, at any rate, our Board

of Trade Inquiry, conducted by an experienced President, discovered a

very interesting fact on the very second day of its sitting: the fact

that the water-tight doors in the bulkheads of that wonder of naval

architecture could be opened down below by any irresponsible person. Thus

the famous closing apparatus on the bridge, paraded as a device of

greater safety, with its attachments of warning bells, coloured lights,

and all these pretty-pretties, was, in the case of this ship, little

better than a technical farce.

It is amusing, if anything connected with this stupid catastrophe can be

amusing, to see the secretly crestfallen attitude of technicians. They

are the high priests of the modern cult of perfected material and of

mechanical appliances, and would fain forbid the profane from inquiring

into its mysteries. We are the masters of progress, they say, and you

should remain respectfully silent. And they take refuge behind their

mathematics. I have the greatest regard for mathematics as an exercise

of mind. It is the only manner of thinking which approaches the Divine.

But mere calculations, of which these men make so much, when unassisted

by imagination and when they have gained mastery over common sense, are

the most deceptive exercises of intellect. Two and two are four, and two

are six. That is immutable; you may trust your soul to that; but you

must be certain first of your quantities. I know how the strength of

materials can be calculated away, and also the evidence of one's senses.

For it is by some sort of calculation involving weights and levels that

the technicians responsible for the _Titanic_ persuaded themselves that a

ship _not divided_ by water-tight compartments could be "unsinkable."

Because, you know, she was not divided. You and I, and our little boys,

when we want to divide, say, a box, take care to procure a piece of wood

which will reach from the bottom to the lid. We know that if it does not

reach all the way up, the box will not be divided into two compartments.

It will be only partly divided. The _Titanic_ was only partly divided.

She was just sufficiently divided to drown some poor devils like rats in

a trap. It is probable that they would have perished in any case, but it

is a particularly horrible fate to die boxed up like this. Yes, she was

sufficiently divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to prevent

the water flowing over.

Therefore to a plain man who knows something of mathematics but is not

bemused by calculations, she was, from the point of view of

"unsinkability," not divided at all. What would you say of people who

would boast of a fireproof building, an hotel, for instance, saying, "Oh,

we have it divided by fireproof bulkheads which would localise any

outbreak," and if you were to discover on closer inspection that these

bulkheads closed no more than two-thirds of the openings they were meant

to close, leaving above an open space through which draught, smoke, and

fire could rush from one end of the building to the other? And,

furthermore, that those partitions, being too high to climb over, the

people confined in each menaced compartment had to stay there and become

asphyxiated or roasted, because no exits to the outside, say to the roof,

had been provided! What would you think of the intelligence or candour

of these advertising people? What would you think of them? And yet,

apart from the obvious difference in the action of fire and water, the

cases are essentially the same.

It would strike you and me and our little boys (who are not engineers

yet) that to approach--I won't say attain--somewhere near absolute

safety, the divisions to keep out water should extend from the bottom

right up to the uppermost deck of _the hull_. I repeat, the _hull_,

because there are above the hull the decks of the superstructures of

which we need not take account. And further, as a provision of the

commonest humanity, that each of these compartments should have a

perfectly independent and free access to that uppermost deck: that is,

into the open. Nothing less will do. Division by bulkheads that really

divide, and free access to the deck from every water-tight compartment.

Then the responsible man in the moment of danger and in the exercise of

his judgment could close all the doors of these water-tight bulkheads by

whatever clever contrivance has been invented for the purpose, without a

qualm at the awful thought that he may be shutting up some of his fellow

creatures in a death-trap; that he may be sacrificing the lives of men

who, down there, are sticking to the posts of duty as the engine-room

staffs of the Merchant Service have never failed to do. I know very well

that the engineers of a ship in a moment of emergency are not quaking for

their lives, but, as far as I have known them, attend calmly to their

duty. We all must die; but, hang it all, a man ought to be given a

chance, if not for his life, then at least to die decently. It's bad

enough to have to stick down there when something disastrous is going on

and any moment may be your last; but to be drowned shut up under deck is

too bad. Some men of the _Titanic_ died like that, it is to be feared.

Compartmented, so to speak. Just think what it means! Nothing can

approach the horror of that fate except being buried alive in a cave, or

in a mine, or in your family vault.

So, once more: continuous bulkheads--a clear way of escape to the deck

out of each water-tight compartment. Nothing less. And if specialists,

the precious specialists of the sort that builds "unsinkable ships," tell

you that it cannot be done, don't you believe them. It can be done, and

they are quite clever enough to do it too. The objections they will

raise, however disguised in the solemn mystery of technical phrases, will

not be technical, but commercial. I assure you that there is not much

mystery about a ship of that sort. She is a tank. She is a tank ribbed,

joisted, stayed, but she is no greater mystery than a tank. The

_Titanic_ was a tank eight hundred feet long, fitted as an hotel, with

corridors, bed-rooms, halls, and so on (not a very mysterious arrangement

truly), and for the hazards of her existence I should think about as

strong as a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin. I make this comparison

because Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tins, being almost a national

institution, are probably known to all my readers. Well, about that

strong, and perhaps not quite so strong. Just look at the side of such a

tin, and then think of a 50,000 ton ship, and try to imagine what the

thickness of her plates should be to approach anywhere the relative

solidity of that biscuit-tin. In my varied and adventurous career I have

been thrilled by the sight of a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin kicked by

a mule sky-high, as the saying is. It came back to earth smiling, with

only a sort of dimple on one of its cheeks. A proportionately severe

blow would have burst the side of the _Titanic_ or any other "triumph of

modern naval architecture" like brown paper--I am willing to bet.

I am not saying this by way of disparagement. There is reason in things.

You can't make a 50,000 ton ship as strong as a Huntley and Palmer

biscuit-tin. But there is also reason in the way one accepts facts, and

I refuse to be awed by the size of a tank bigger than any other tank that

ever went afloat to its doom. The people responsible for her, though

disconcerted in their hearts by the exposure of that disaster, are giving

themselves airs of superiority--priests of an Oracle which has failed,

but still must remain the Oracle. The assumption is that they are

ministers of progress. But the mere increase of size is not progress. If

it were, elephantiasis, which causes a man's legs to become as large as

tree-trunks, would be a sort of progress, whereas it is nothing but a

very ugly disease. Yet directly this very disconcerting catastrophe

happened, the servants of the silly Oracle began to cry: "It's no use!

You can't resist progress. The big ship has come to stay." Well, let

her stay on, then, in God's name! But she isn't a servant of progress in

any sense. She is the servant of commercialism. For progress, if

dealing with the problems of a material world, has some sort of moral

aspect--if only, say, that of conquest, which has its distinct value

since man is a conquering animal. But bigness is mere exaggeration. The

men responsible for these big ships have been moved by considerations of

profit to be made by the questionable means of pandering to an absurd and

vulgar demand for banal luxury--the seaside hotel luxury. One even asks

oneself whether there was such a demand? It is inconceivable to think

that there are people who can't spend five days of their life without a

suite of apartments, cafes, bands, and such-like refined delights. I

suspect that the public is not so very guilty in this matter. These

things were pushed on to it in the usual course of trade competition. If

to-morrow you were to take all these luxuries away, the public would

still travel. I don't despair of mankind. I believe that if, by some

catastrophic miracle all ships of every kind were to disappear off the

face of the waters, together with the means of replacing them, there

would be found, before the end of the week, men (millionaires, perhaps)

cheerfully putting out to sea in bath-tubs for a fresh start. We are all

like that. This sort of spirit lives in mankind still uncorrupted by the

so-called refinements, the ingenuity of tradesmen, who look always for

something new to sell, offers to the public.

Let her stay,--I mean the big ship--since she has come to stay. I only

object to the attitude of the people, who, having called her into being

and having romanced (to speak politely) about her, assume a detached sort

of superiority, goodness only knows why, and raise difficulties in the

way of every suggestion--difficulties about boats, about bulkheads, about

discipline, about davits, all sorts of difficulties. To most of them the

only answer would be: "Where there's a will there's a way"--the most wise

of proverbs. But some of these objections are really too stupid for

anything. I shall try to give an instance of what I mean.

This Inquiry is admirably conducted. I am not alluding to the lawyers

representing "various interests," who are trying to earn their fees by

casting all sorts of mean aspersions on the characters of all sorts of

people not a bit worse than themselves. It is honest to give value for

your wages; and the "bravos" of ancient Venice who kept their stilettos

in good order and never failed to deliver the stab bargained for with

their employers, considered themselves an honest body of professional

men, no doubt. But they don't compel my admiration, whereas the conduct

of this Inquiry does. And as it is pretty certain to be attacked, I take

this opportunity to deposit here my nickel of appreciation. Well,

lately, there came before it witnesses responsible for the designing of

the ship. One of them was asked whether it would not be advisable to

make each coal-bunker of the ship a water-tight compartment by means of a

suitable door.

The answer to such a question should have been, "Certainly," for it is

obvious to the simplest intelligence that the more water-tight spaces you

provide in a ship (consistently with having her workable) the nearer you

approach safety. But instead of admitting the expediency of the

suggestion, this witness at once raised an objection as to the

possibility of closing tightly the door of a bunker on account of the

slope of coal. This with the true expert's attitude of "My dear man, you

don't know what you are talking about."

Now would you believe that the objection put forward was absolutely

futile? I don't know whether the distinguished President of the Court

perceived this. Very likely he did, though I don't suppose he was ever

on terms of familiarity with a ship's bunker. But I have. I have been

inside; and you may take it that what I say of them is correct. I don't

wish to be wearisome to the benevolent reader, but I want to put his

finger, so to speak, on the inanity of the objection raised by the

expert. A bunker is an enclosed space for holding coals, generally

located against the ship's side, and having an opening, a doorway in

fact, into the stokehold. Men called trimmers go in there, and by means

of implements called slices make the coal run through that opening on to

the floor of the stokehold, where it is within reach of the stokers'

(firemen's) shovels. This being so, you will easily understand that

there is constantly a more or less thick layer of coal generally shaped

in a slope lying in that doorway. And the objection of the expert was:

that because of this obstruction it would be impossible to close the

water-tight door, and therefore that the thing could not be done. And

that objection was inane. A water-tight door in a bulkhead may be

defined as a metal plate which is made to close a given opening by some

mechanical means. And if there were a law of Medes and Persians that a

water-tight door should always slide downwards and never otherwise, the

objection would be to a great extent valid. But what is there to prevent

those doors to be fitted so as to move upwards, or horizontally, or

slantwise? In which case they would go through the obstructing layer of

coal as easily as a knife goes through butter. Anyone may convince

himself of it by experimenting with a light piece of board and a heap of

stones anywhere along our roads. Probably the joint of such a door would

weep a little--and there is no necessity for its being hermetically

tight--but the object of converting bunkers into spaces of safety would

be attained. You may take my word for it that this could be done without

any great effort of ingenuity. And that is why I have qualified the

expert's objection as inane.

Of course, these doors must not be operated from the bridge because of

the risk of trapping the coal-trimmers inside the bunker; but on the

signal of all other water-tight doors in the ship being closed (as would

be done in case of a collision) they too could be closed on the order of

the engineer of the watch, who would see to the safety of the trimmers.

If the rent in the ship's side were within the bunker itself, that would

become manifest enough without any signal, and the rush of water into the

stokehold could be cut off directly the doorplate came into its place.

Say a minute at the very outside. Naturally, if the blow of a

right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy enough to smash through

the inner bulkhead of the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to do

but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody in there to clear out of

the stoke-room. But that does not mean that the precaution of having

water-tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous, or impossible.

{7}

And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trimmers, men whose heavy labour

has not a single redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, uninspiring,

arduous, without the reward of personal pride in it; sheer, hard,

brutalising toil, belonging neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy

the advent for marine purposes of the internal combustion engine. The

disappearance of the marine boiler will be a real progress, which anybody

in sympathy with his kind must welcome. Instead of the unthrifty,

unruly, nondescript crowd the boilers require, a crowd of men _in_ the

ship but not _of_ her, we shall have comparatively small crews of

disciplined, intelligent workers, able to steer the ship, handle anchors,

man boats, and at the same time competent to take their place at a bench

as fitters and repairers; the resourceful and skilled seamen--mechanics

of the future, the legitimate successors of these seamen--sailors of the

past, who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and tradition, and

whose last days it has been my lot to share.

One lives and learns and hears very surprising things--things that one

hardly knows how to take, whether seriously or jocularly, how to

meet--with indignation or with contempt? Things said by solemn experts,

by exalted directors, by glorified ticket-sellers, by officials of all

sorts. I suppose that one of the uses of such an inquiry is to give such

people enough rope to hang themselves with. And I hope that some of them

won't neglect to do so. One of them declared two days ago that there was

"nothing to learn from the catastrophe of the _Titanic_." That he had

been "giving his best consideration" to certain rules for ten years, and

had come to the conclusion that nothing ever happened at sea, and that

rules and regulations, boats and sailors, were unnecessary; that what was

really wrong with the _Titanic_ was that she carried too many boats.

No; I am not joking. If you don't believe me, pray look back through the

reports and you will find it all there. I don't recollect the official's

name, but it ought to have been Pooh-Bah. Well, Pooh-Bah said all these

things, and when asked whether he really meant it, intimated his

readiness to give the subject more of "his best consideration"--for

another ten years or so apparently--but he believed, oh yes! he was

certain, that had there been fewer boats there would have been more

people saved. Really, when reading the report of this admirably

conducted inquiry one isn't certain at times whether it is an Admirable

Inquiry or a felicitous _opera-bouffe_ of the Gilbertian type--with a

rather grim subject, to be sure.

Yes, rather grim--but the comic treatment never fails. My readers will

remember that in the number of _The English Review_ for May, 1912, I

quoted the old case of the _Arizona_, and went on from that to prophesy

the coming of a new seamanship (in a spirit of irony far removed from

fun) at the call of the sublime builders of unsinkable ships. I thought

that, as a small boy of my acquaintance says, I was "doing a sarcasm,"

and regarded it as a rather wild sort of sarcasm at that. Well, I am

blessed (excuse the vulgarism) if a witness has not turned up who seems

to have been inspired by the same thought, and evidently longs in his

heart for the advent of the new seamanship. He is an expert, of course,

and I rather believe he's the same gentleman who did not see his way to

fit water-tight doors to bunkers. With ludicrous earnestness he assured

the Commission of his intense belief that had only the _Titanic_ struck

end-on she would have come into port all right. And in the whole tone of

his insistent statement there was suggested the regret that the officer

in charge (who is dead now, and mercifully outside the comic scope of

this inquiry) was so ill-advised as to try to pass clear of the ice. Thus

my sarcastic prophecy, that such a suggestion was sure to turn up,

receives an unexpected fulfilment. You will see yet that in deference to

the demands of "progress" the theory of the new seamanship will become

established: "Whatever you see in front of you--ram it fair. . ." The

new seamanship! Looks simple, doesn't it? But it will be a very exact

art indeed. The proper handling of an unsinkable ship, you see, will

demand that she should be made to hit the iceberg very accurately with

her nose, because should you perchance scrape the bluff of the bow

instead, she may, without ceasing to be as unsinkable as before, find her

way to the bottom. I congratulate the future Transatlantic passengers on

the new and vigorous sensations in store for them. They shall go

bounding across from iceberg to iceberg at twenty-five knots with

precision and safety, and a "cheerful bumpy sound"--as the immortal poem

has it. It will be a teeth-loosening, exhilarating experience. The

decorations will be Louis-Quinze, of course, and the cafe shall remain

open all night. But what about the priceless Sevres porcelain and the

Venetian glass provided for the service of Transatlantic passengers?

Well, I am afraid all that will have to be replaced by silver goblets and

plates. Nasty, common, cheap silver. But those who _will_ go to sea

must be prepared to put up with a certain amount of hardship.

And there shall be no boats. Why should there be no boats? Because Pooh-

Bah has said that the fewer the boats, the more people can be saved; and

therefore with no boats at all, no one need be lost. But even if there

was a flaw in this argument, pray look at the other advantages the

absence of boats gives you. There can't be the annoyance of having to go

into them in the middle of the night, and the unpleasantness, after

saving your life by the skin of your teeth, of being hauled over the

coals by irreproachable members of the Bar with hints that you are no

better than a cowardly scoundrel and your wife a heartless monster. Less

Boats. No boats! Great should be the gratitude of passage-selling

Combines to Pooh-Bah; and they ought to cherish his memory when he dies.

But no fear of that. His kind never dies. All you have to do, O

Combine, is to knock at the door of the Marine Department, look in, and

beckon to the first man you see. That will be he, very much at your

service--prepared to affirm after "ten years of my best consideration"

and a bundle of statistics in hand, that: "There's no lesson to be

learned, and that there is nothing to be done!"

On an earlier day there was another witness before the Court of Inquiry.

A mighty official of the White Star Line. The impression of his

testimony which the Report gave is of an almost scornful impatience with

all this fuss and pother. Boats! Of course we have crowded our decks

with them in answer to this ignorant clamour. Mere lumber! How can we

handle so many boats with our davits? Your people don't know the

conditions of the problem. We have given these matters our best

consideration, and we have done what we thought reasonable. We have done

more than our duty. We are wise, and good, and impeccable. And whoever

says otherwise is either ignorant or wicked.

This is the gist of these scornful answers which disclose the psychology

of commercial undertakings. It is the same psychology which fifty or so

years ago, before Samuel Plimsoll uplifted his voice, sent overloaded

ships to sea. "Why shouldn't we cram in as much cargo as our ships will

hold? Look how few, how very few of them get lost, after all."

Men don't change. Not very much. And the only answer to be given to

this manager who came out, impatient and indignant, from behind the plate-

glass windows of his shop to be discovered by this inquiry, and to tell

us that he, they, the whole three million (or thirty million, for all I

know) capital Organisation for selling passages has considered the

problem of boats--the only answer to give him is: that this is not a

problem of boats at all. It is the problem of decent behaviour. If you

can't carry or handle so many boats, then don't cram quite so many people

on board. It is as simple as that--this problem of right feeling and

right conduct, the real nature of which seems beyond the comprehension of

ticket-providers. Don't sell so many tickets, my virtuous dignitary.

After all, men and women (unless considered from a purely commercial

point of view) are not exactly the cattle of the Western-ocean trade,

that used some twenty years ago to be thrown overboard on an emergency

and left to swim round and round before they sank. If you can't get more

boats, then sell less tickets. Don't drown so many people on the finest,

calmest night that was ever known in the North Atlantic--even if you have

provided them with a little music to get drowned by. Sell less tickets!

That's the solution of the problem, your Mercantile Highness.

But there would be a cry, "Oh! This requires consideration!" (Ten years

of it--eh?) Well, no! This does not require consideration. This is the

very first thing to do. At once. Limit the number of people by the

boats you can handle. That's honesty. And then you may go on fumbling

for years about these precious davits which are such a stumbling-block to

your humanity. These fascinating patent davits. These davits that

refuse to do three times as much work as they were meant to do. Oh! The

wickedness of these davits!

One of the great discoveries of this admirable Inquiry is the fascination

of the davits. All these people positively can't get away from them.

They shuffle about and groan around their davits. Whereas the obvious

thing to do is to eliminate the man-handled davits altogether. Don't you

think that with all the mechanical contrivances, with all the generated

power on board these ships, it is about time to get rid of the hundred-

years-old, man-power appliances? Cranes are what is wanted; low, compact

cranes with adjustable heads, one to each set of six or nine boats. And

if people tell you of insuperable difficulties, if they tell you of the

swing and spin of spanned boats, don't you believe them. The heads of

the cranes need not be any higher than the heads of the davits. The lift

required would be only a couple of inches. As to the spin, there is a

way to prevent that if you have in each boat two men who know what they

are about. I have taken up on board a heavy ship's boat, in the open sea

(the ship rolling heavily), with a common cargo derrick. And a cargo

derrick is very much like a crane; but a crane devised _ad hoc_ would be

infinitely easier to work. We must remember that the loss of this ship

has altered the moral atmosphere. As long as the _Titanic_ is

remembered, an ugly rush for the boats may be feared in case of some

accident. You can't hope to drill into perfect discipline a casual mob

of six hundred firemen and waiters, but in a ship like the _Titanic_ you

can keep on a permanent trustworthy crew of one hundred intelligent

seamen and mechanics who would know their stations for abandoning ship

and would do the work efficiently. The boats could be lowered with

sufficient dispatch. One does not want to let rip one's boats by the run

all at the same time. With six boat-cranes, six boats would be

simultaneously swung, filled, and got away from the side; and if any sort

of order is kept, the ship could be cleared of the passengers in a quite

short time. For there must be boats enough for the passengers and crew,

whether you increase the number of boats or limit the number of

passengers, irrespective of the size of the ship. That is the only

honest course. Any other would be rather worse than putting sand in the

sugar, for which a tradesman gets fined or imprisoned. Do not let us

take a romantic view of the so-called progress. A company selling

passages is a tradesman; though from the way these people talk and behave

you would think they are benefactors of mankind in some mysterious way,

engaged in some lofty and amazing enterprise.

All these boats should have a motor-engine in them. And, of course, the

glorified tradesman, the mummified official, the technicians, and all

these secretly disconcerted hangers-on to the enormous ticket-selling

enterprise, will raise objections to it with every air of superiority.

But don't believe them. Doesn't it strike you as absurd that in this age

of mechanical propulsion, of generated power, the boats of such ultra-

modern ships are fitted with oars and sails, implements more than three

thousand years old? Old as the siege of Troy. Older! . . . And I know

what I am talking about. Only six weeks ago I was on the river in an

ancient, rough, ship's boat, fitted with a two-cylinder motor-engine of

7.5 h.p. Just a common ship's boat, which the man who owns her uses for

taking the workmen and stevedores to and from the ships loading at the

buoys off Greenhithe. She would have carried some thirty people. No

doubt has carried as many daily for many months. And she can tow a

twenty-five ton water barge--which is also part of that man's business.

It was a boisterous day, half a gale of wind against the flood tide. Two

fellows managed her. A youngster of seventeen was cox (and a first-rate

cox he was too); a fellow in a torn blue jersey, not much older, of the

usual riverside type, looked after the engine. I spent an hour and a

half in her, running up and down and across that reach. She handled

perfectly. With eight or twelve oars out she could not have done

anything like as well. These two youngsters at my request kept her

stationary for ten minutes, with a touch of engine and helm now and then,

within three feet of a big, ugly mooring buoy over which the water broke

and the spray flew in sheets, and which would have holed her if she had

bumped against it. But she kept her position, it seemed to me, to an

inch, without apparently any trouble to these boys. You could not have

done it with oars. And her engine did not take up the space of three

men, even on the assumption that you would pack people as tight as

sardines in a box.

Not the room of three people, I tell you! But no one would want to pack

a boat like a sardine-box. There must be room enough to handle the oars.

But in that old ship's boat, even if she had been desperately

overcrowded, there was power (manageable by two riverside youngsters) to

get away quickly from a ship's side (very important for your safety and

to make room for other boats), the power to keep her easily head to sea,

the power to move at five to seven knots towards a rescuing ship, the

power to come safely alongside. And all that in an engine which did not

take up the room of three people.

A poor boatman who had to scrape together painfully the few sovereigns of

the price had the idea of putting that engine into his boat. But all

these designers, directors, managers, constructors, and others whom we

may include in the generic name of Yamsi, never thought of it for the

boats of the biggest tank on earth, or rather on sea. And therefore they

assume an air of impatient superiority and make objections--however sick

at heart they may be. And I hope they are; at least, as much as a grocer

who has sold a tin of imperfect salmon which destroyed only half a dozen

people. And you know, the tinning of salmon was "progress" as much at

least as the building of the _Titanic_. More, in fact. I am not

attacking shipowners. I care neither more nor less for Lines, Companies,

Combines, and generally for Trade arrayed in purple and fine linen than

the Trade cares for me. But I am attacking foolish arrogance, which is

fair game; the offensive posture of superiority by which they hide the

sense of their guilt, while the echoes of the miserably hypocritical

cries along the alley-ways of that ship: "Any more women? Any more

women?" linger yet in our ears.

I have been expecting from one or the other of them all bearing the

generic name of Yamsi, something, a sign of some sort, some sincere

utterance, in the course of this Admirable Inquiry, of manly, of genuine

compunction. In vain. All trade talk. Not a whisper--except for the

conventional expression of regret at the beginning of the yearly

report--which otherwise is a cheerful document. Dividends, you know. The

shop is doing well.

And the Admirable Inquiry goes on, punctuated by idiotic laughter, by

paid-for cries of indignation from under legal wigs, bringing to light

the psychology of various commercial characters too stupid to know that

they are giving themselves away--an admirably laborious inquiry into

facts that speak, nay shout, for themselves.

I am not a soft-headed, humanitarian faddist. I have been ordered in my

time to do dangerous work; I have ordered, others to do dangerous work; I

have never ordered a man to do any work I was not prepared to do myself.

I attach no exaggerated value to human life. But I know it has a value

for which the most generous contributions to the Mansion House and

"Heroes" funds cannot pay. And they cannot pay for it, because people,

even of the third class (excuse my plain speaking), are not cattle. Death

has its sting. If Yamsi's manager's head were forcibly held under the

water of his bath for some little time, he would soon discover that it

has. Some people can only learn from that sort of experience which comes

home to their own dear selves.

I am not a sentimentalist; therefore it is not a great consolation to me

to see all these people breveted as "Heroes" by the penny and halfpenny

Press. It is no consolation at all. In extremity, in the worst

extremity, the majority of people, even of common people, will behave

decently. It's a fact of which only the journalists don't seem aware.

Hence their enthusiasm, I suppose. But I, who am not a sentimentalist,

think it would have been finer if the band of the _Titanic_ had been

quietly saved, instead of being drowned while playing--whatever tune they

were playing, the poor devils. I would rather they had been saved to

support their families than to see their families supported by the

magnificent generosity of the subscribers. I am not consoled by the

false, written-up, Drury Lane aspects of that event, which is neither

drama, nor melodrama, nor tragedy, but the exposure of arrogant folly.

There is nothing more heroic in being drowned very much against your

will, off a holed, helpless, big tank in which you bought your passage,

than in dying of colic caused by the imperfect salmon in the tin you

bought from your grocer.

And that's the truth. The unsentimental truth stripped of the romantic

garment the Press has wrapped around this most unnecessary disaster.

PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS {8}--1914

The loss of the _Empress of Ireland_ awakens feelings somewhat different

from those the sinking of the _Titanic_ had called up on two continents.

The grief for the lost and the sympathy for the survivors and the

bereaved are the same; but there is not, and there cannot be, the same

undercurrent of indignation. The good ship that is gone (I remember

reading of her launch something like eight years ago) had not been

ushered in with beat of drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters.

The company who owned her had no agents, authorised or unauthorised,

giving boastful interviews about her unsinkability to newspaper reporters

ready to swallow any sort of trade statement if only sensational enough

for their readers--readers as ignorant as themselves of the nature of all

things outside the commonest experience of the man in the street.

No; there was nothing of that in her case. The company was content to

have as fine, staunch, seaworthy a ship as the technical knowledge of

that time could make her. In fact, she was as safe a ship as nine

hundred and ninety-nine ships out of any thousand now afloat upon the

sea. No; whatever sorrow one can feel, one does not feel indignation.

This was not an accident of a very boastful marine transportation; this

was a real casualty of the sea. The indignation of the New South Wales

Premier flashed telegraphically to Canada is perfectly uncalled-for. That

statesman, whose sympathy for poor mates and seamen is so suspect to me

that I wouldn't take it at fifty per cent. discount, does not seem to

know that a British Court of Marine Inquiry, ordinary or extraordinary,

is not a contrivance for catching scapegoats. I, who have been seaman,

mate and master for twenty years, holding my certificate under the Board

of Trade, may safely say that none of us ever felt in danger of unfair

treatment from a Court of Inquiry. It is a perfectly impartial tribunal

which has never punished seamen for the faults of shipowners--as, indeed,

it could not do even if it wanted to. And there is another thing the

angry Premier of New South Wales does not know. It is this: that for a

ship to float for fifteen minutes after receiving such a blow by a bare

stem on her bare side is not so bad.

She took a tremendous list which made the minutes of grace vouchsafed her

of not much use for the saving of lives. But for that neither her owners

nor her officers are responsible. It would have been wonderful if she

had not listed with such a hole in her side. Even the _Aquitania_ with

such an opening in her outer hull would be bound to take a list. I don't

say this with the intention of disparaging this latest "triumph of marine

architecture"--to use the consecrated phrase. The _Aquitania_ is a

magnificent ship. I believe she would bear her people unscathed through

ninety-nine per cent. of all possible accidents of the sea. But suppose

a collision out on the ocean involving damage as extensive as this one

was, and suppose then a gale of wind coming on. Even the _Aquitania_

would not be quite seaworthy, for she would not be manageable.

We have been accustoming ourselves to put our trust in material,

technical skill, invention, and scientific contrivances to such an extent

that we have come at last to believe that with these things we can

overcome the immortal gods themselves. Hence when a disaster like this

happens, there arises, besides the shock to our humane sentiments, a

feeling of irritation, such as the hon. gentleman at the head of the New

South Wales Government has discharged in a telegraphic flash upon the

world.

But it is no use being angry and trying to hang a threat of penal

servitude over the heads of the directors of shipping companies. You

can't get the better of the immortal gods by the mere power of material

contrivances. There will be neither scapegoats in this matter nor yet

penal servitude for anyone. The Directors of the Canadian Pacific

Railway Company did not sell "safety at sea" to the people on board the

_Empress of Ireland_. They never in the slightest degree pretended to do

so. What they did was to sell them a sea-passage, giving very good value

for the money. Nothing more. As long as men will travel on the water,

the sea-gods will take their toll. They will catch good seamen napping,

or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or

overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces. It seems to me

that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein

the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to unending vigilance are no

match for them.

And yet it is right that the responsibility should be fixed. It is the

fate of men that even in their contests with the immortal gods they must

render an account of their conduct. Life at sea is the life in which,

simple as it is, you can't afford to make mistakes.

With whom the mistake lies here, is not for me to say. I see that Sir

Thomas Shaughnessy has expressed his opinion of Captain Kendall's

absolute innocence. This statement, premature as it is, does him honour,

for I don't suppose for a moment that the thought of the material issue

involved in the verdict of the Court of Inquiry influenced him in the

least. I don't suppose that he is more impressed by the writ of two

million dollars nailed (or more likely pasted) to the foremast of the

Norwegian than I am, who don't believe that the _Storstad_ is worth two

million shillings. This is merely a move of commercial law, and even the

whole majesty of the British Empire (so finely invoked by the Sheriff)

cannot squeeze more than a very moderate quantity of blood out of a

stone. Sir Thomas, in his confident pronouncement, stands loyally by a

loyal and distinguished servant of his company.

This thing has to be investigated yet, and it is not proper for me to

express my opinion, though I have one, in this place and at this time.

But I need not conceal my sympathy with the vehement protestations of

Captain Andersen. A charge of neglect and indifference in the matter of

saving lives is the cruellest blow that can be aimed at the character of

a seaman worthy of the name. On the face of the facts as known up to now

the charge does not seem to be true. If upwards of three hundred people

have been, as stated in the last reports, saved by the _Storstad_, then

that ship must have been at hand and rendering all the assistance in her

power.

As to the point which must come up for the decision of the Court of

Inquiry, it is as fine as a hair. The two ships saw each other plainly

enough before the fog closed on them. No one can question Captain

Kendall's prudence. He has been as prudent as ever he could be. There

is not a shadow of doubt as to that.

But there is this question: Accepting the position of the two ships when

they saw each other as correctly described in the very latest newspaper

reports, it seems clear that it was the _Empress of Ireland's_ duty to

keep clear of the collier, and what the Court will have to decide is

whether the stopping of the liner was, under the circumstances, the best

way of keeping her clear of the other ship, which had the right to

proceed cautiously on an unchanged course.

This, reduced to its simplest expression, is the question which the Court

will have to decide.

And now, apart from all problems of manoeuvring, of rules of the road, of

the judgment of the men in command, away from their possible errors and

from the points the Court will have to decide, if we ask ourselves what

it was that was needed to avert this disaster costing so many lives,

spreading so much sorrow, and to a certain point shocking the public

conscience--if we ask that question, what is the answer to be?

I hardly dare set it down. Yes; what was it that was needed, what

ingenious combinations of ship-building, what transverse bulkheads, what

skill, what genius--how much expense in money and trained thinking, what

learned contriving, to avert that disaster?

To save that ship, all these lives, so much anguish for the dying, and so

much grief for the bereaved, all that was needed in this particular case

in the way of science, money, ingenuity, and seamanship was a man, and a

cork-fender.

Yes; a man, a quartermaster, an able seaman that would know how to jump

to an order and was not an excitable fool. In my time at sea there was

no lack of men in British ships who could jump to an order and were not

excitable fools. As to the so-called cork-fender, it is a sort of soft

balloon made from a net of thick rope rather more than a foot in

diameter. It is such a long time since I have indented for cork-fenders

that I don't remember how much these things cost apiece. One of them,

hung judiciously over the side at the end of its lanyard by a man who

knew what he was about, might perhaps have saved from destruction the

ship and upwards of a thousand lives.

Two men with a heavy rope-fender would have been better, but even the

other one might have made all the difference between a very damaging

accident and downright disaster. By the time the cork-fender had been

squeezed between the liner's side and the bluff of the _Storstad's_ bow,

the effect of the latter's reversed propeller would have been produced,

and the ships would have come apart with no more damage than bulged and

started plates. Wasn't there lying about on that liner's bridge, fitted

with all sorts of scientific contrivances, a couple of simple and

effective cork-fenders--or on board of that Norwegian either? There must

have been, since one ship was just out of a dock or harbour and the other

just arriving. That is the time, if ever, when cork-fenders are lying

about a ship's decks. And there was plenty of time to use them, and

exactly in the conditions in which such fenders are effectively used. The

water was as smooth as in any dock; one ship was motionless, the other

just moving at what may be called dock-speed when entering, leaving, or

shifting berths; and from the moment the collision was seen to be

unavoidable till the actual contact a whole minute elapsed. A minute,--an

age under the circumstances. And no one thought of the homely expedient

of dropping a simple, unpretending rope-fender between the destructive

stern and the defenceless side!

I appeal confidently to all the seamen in the still United Kingdom, from

his Majesty the King (who has been really at sea) to the youngest

intelligent A.B. in any ship that will dock next tide in the ports of

this realm, whether there was not a chance there. I have followed the

sea for more than twenty years; I have seen collisions; I have been

involved in a collision myself; and I do believe that in the case under

consideration this little thing would have made all that enormous

difference--the difference between considerable damage and an appalling

disaster.

Many letters have been written to the Press on the subject of collisions.

I have seen some. They contain many suggestions, valuable and otherwise;

but there is only one which hits the nail on the head. It is a letter to

the _Times_ from a retired Captain of the Royal Navy. It is printed in

small type, but it deserved to be printed in letters of gold and crimson.

The writer suggests that all steamers should be obliged by law to carry

hung over their stern what we at sea call a "pudding."

This solution of the problem is as wonderful in its simplicity as the

celebrated trick of Columbus's egg, and infinitely more useful to

mankind. A "pudding" is a thing something like a bolster of stout rope-

net stuffed with old junk, but thicker in the middle than at the ends. It

can be seen on almost every tug working in our docks. It is, in fact, a

fixed rope-fender always in a position where presumably it would do most

good. Had the _Storstad_ carried such a "pudding" proportionate to her

size (say, two feet diameter in the thickest part) across her stern, and

hung above the level of her hawse-pipes, there would have been an

accident certainly, and some repair-work for the nearest ship-yard, but

there would have been no loss of life to deplore.

It seems almost too simple to be true, but I assure you that the

statement is as true as anything can be. We shall see whether the lesson

will be taken to heart. We shall see. There is a Commission of learned

men sitting to consider the subject of saving life at sea. They are

discussing bulkheads, boats, davits, manning, navigation, but I am

willing to bet that not one of them has thought of the humble "pudding."

They can make what rules they like. We shall see if, with that disaster

calling aloud to them, they will make the rule that every steamship

should carry a permanent fender across her stern, from two to four feet

in diameter in its thickest part in proportion to the size of the ship.

But perhaps they may think the thing too rough and unsightly for this

scientific and aesthetic age. It certainly won't look very pretty but I

make bold to say it will save more lives at sea than any amount of the

Marconi installations which are being forced on the shipowners on that

very ground--the safety of lives at sea.

We shall see!

* * * * *

To the Editor of the _Daily Express_.

SIR,

As I fully expected, this morning's post brought me not a few letters on

the subject of that article of mine in the _Illustrated London News_. And

they are very much what I expected them to be.

I shall address my reply to Captain Littlehales, since obviously he can

speak with authority, and speaks in his own name, not under a pseudonym.

And also for the reason that it is no use talking to men who tell you to

shut your head for a confounded fool. They are not likely to listen to

you.

But if there be in Liverpool anybody not too angry to listen, I want to

assure him or them that my exclamatory line, "Was there no one on board

either of these ships to think of dropping a fender--etc.," was not

uttered in the spirit of blame for anyone. I would not dream of blaming

a seaman for doing or omitting to do anything a person sitting in a

perfectly safe and unsinkable study may think of. All my sympathy goes

to the two captains; much the greater share of it to Captain Kendall, who

has lost his ship and whose load of responsibility was so much heavier! I

may not know a great deal, but I know how anxious and perplexing are

those nearly end-on approaches, so infinitely more trying to the men in

charge than a frank right-angle crossing.

I may begin by reminding Captain Littlehales that I, as well as himself,

have had to form my opinion, or rather my vision, of the accident, from

printed statements, of which many must have been loose and inexact and

none could have been minutely circumstantial. I have read the reports of

the _Times_ and the _Daily Telegraph_, and no others. What stands in the

columns of these papers is responsible for my conclusion--or perhaps for

the state of my feelings when I wrote the _Illustrated London News_

article.

From these sober and unsensational reports, I derived the impression that

this collision was a collision of the slowest sort. I take it, of

course, that both the men in charge speak the strictest truth as to

preliminary facts. We know that the _Empress of Ireland_ was for a time

lying motionless. And if the captain of the _Storstad_ stopped his

engines directly the fog came on (as he says he did), then taking into

account the adverse current of the river, the _Storstad_, by the time the

two ships sighted each other again, must have been barely moving _over

the ground_. The "over the ground" speed is the only one that matters in

this discussion. In fact, I represented her to myself as just creeping

on ahead--no more. This, I contend, is an imaginative view (and we can

form no other) not utterly absurd for a seaman to adopt.

So much for the imaginative view of the sad occurrence which caused me to

speak of the fender, and be chided for it in unmeasured terms. Not by

Captain Littlehales, however, and I wish to reply to what he says with

all possible deference. His illustration borrowed from boxing is very

apt, and in a certain sense makes for my contention. Yes. A blow

delivered with a boxing-glove will draw blood or knock a man out; but it

would not crush in his nose flat or break his jaw for him--at least, not

always. And this is exactly my point.

Twice in my sea life I have had occasion to be impressed by the

preserving effect of a fender. Once I was myself the man who dropped it

over. Not because I was so very clever or smart, but simply because I

happened to be at hand. And I agree with Captain Littlehales that to see

a steamer's stern coming at you at the rate of only two knots is a

staggering experience. The thing seems to have power enough behind it to

cut half through the terrestrial globe.

And perhaps Captain Littlehales is right? It may be that I am mistaken

in my appreciation of circumstances and possibilities in this case--or in

any such case. Perhaps what was really wanted there was an extraordinary

man and an extraordinary fender. I care nothing if possibly my deep

feeling has betrayed me into something which some people call absurdity.

Absurd was the word applied to the proposal for carrying "enough boats

for all" on board the big liners. And my absurdity can affect no lives,

break no bones--need make no one angry. Why should I care, then, as long

as out of the discussion of my absurdity there will emerge the acceptance

of the suggestion of Captain F. Papillon, R.N., for the universal and

compulsory fitting of very heavy collision fenders on the stems of all

mechanically propelled ships?

An extraordinary man we cannot always get from heaven on order, but an

extraordinary fender that will do its work is well within the power of a

committee of old boatswains to plan out, make, and place in position. I

beg to ask, not in a provocative spirit, but simply as to a matter of

fact which he is better qualified to judge than I am--Will Captain

Littlehales affirm that if the _Storstad_ had carried, slung securely

across the stem, even nothing thicker than a single bale of wool (an

ordinary, hand-pressed, Australian wool-bale), it would have made no

difference?

If scientific men can invent an air cushion, a gas cushion, or even an

electricity cushion (with wires or without), to fit neatly round the

stems and bows of ships, then let them go to work, in God's name and

produce another "marvel of science" without loss of time. For something

like this has long been due--too long for the credit of that part of

mankind which is not absurd, and in which I include, among others, such

people as marine underwriters, for instance.

Meanwhile, turning to materials I am familiar with, I would put my trust

in canvas, lots of big rope, and in large, very large quantities of old

junk.

It sounds awfully primitive, but if it will mitigate the mischief in only

fifty per cent. of cases, is it not well worth trying? Most collisions

occur at slow speeds, and it ought to be remembered that in case of a big

liner's loss, involving many lives, she is generally sunk by a ship much

smaller than herself.

JOSEPH CONRAD.

A FRIENDLY PLACE

Eighteen years have passed since I last set foot in the London Sailors'

Home. I was not staying there then; I had gone in to try to find a man I

wanted to see. He was one of those able seamen who, in a watch, are a

perfect blessing to a young officer. I could perhaps remember here and

there among the shadows of my sea-life a more daring man, or a more agile

man, or a man more expert in some special branch of his calling--such as

wire splicing, for instance; but for all-round competence, he was

unequalled. As character he was sterling stuff. His name was Anderson.

He had a fine, quiet face, kindly eyes, and a voice which matched that

something attractive in the whole man. Though he looked yet in the prime

of life, shoulders, chest, limbs untouched by decay, and though his hair

and moustache were only iron-grey, he was on board ship generally called

Old Andy by his fellows. He accepted the name with some complacency.

I made my enquiry at the highly-glazed entry office. The clerk on duty

opened an enormous ledger, and after running his finger down a page,

informed me that Anderson had gone to sea a week before, in a ship bound

round the Horn. Then, smiling at me, he added: "Old Andy. We know him

well, here. What a nice fellow!"

I, who knew what a "good man," in a sailor sense, he was, assented

without reserve. Heaven only knows when, if ever, he came back from that

voyage, to the Sailors' Home of which he was a faithful client.

I went out glad to know he was safely at sea, but sorry not to have seen

him; though, indeed, if I had, we would not have exchanged more than a

score of words, perhaps. He was not a talkative man, Old Andy, whose

affectionate ship-name clung to him even in that Sailors' Home, where the

staff understood and liked the sailors (those men without a home) and did

its duty by them with an unobtrusive tact, with a patient and humorous

sense of their idiosyncrasies, to which I hasten to testify now, when the

very existence of that institution is menaced after so many years of most

useful work.

Walking away from it on that day eighteen years ago, I was far from

thinking it was for the last time. Great changes have come since, over

land and sea; and if I were to seek somebody who knew Old Andy it would

be (of all people in the world) Mr. John Galsworthy. For Mr. John

Galsworthy, Andy, and myself have been shipmates together in our

different stations, for some forty days in the Indian Ocean in the early

nineties. And, but for us two, Old Andy's very memory would be gone from

this changing earth.

Yes, things have changed--the very sky, the atmosphere, the light of

judgment which falls on the labours of men, either splendid or obscure.

Having been asked to say a word to the public on behalf of the Sailors'

Home, I felt immensely flattered--and troubled. Flattered to have been

thought of in that connection; troubled to find myself in touch again

with that past so deeply rooted in my heart. And the illusion of

nearness is so great while I trace these lines that I feel as if I were

speaking in the name of that worthy Sailor-Shade of Old Andy, whose

faithfully hard life seems to my vision a thing of yesterday.

* * * * *

But though the past keeps firm hold on one, yet one feels with the same

warmth that the men and the institutions of to-day have their merit and

their claims. Others will know how to set forth before the public the

merit of the Sailors' Home in the eloquent terms of hard facts and some

few figures. For myself, I can only bring a personal note, give a

glimpse of the human side of the good work for sailors ashore, carried on

through so many decades with a perfect understanding of the end in view.

I have been in touch with the Sailors' Home for sixteen years of my life,

off and on; I have seen the changes in the staff and I have observed the

subtle alterations in the physiognomy of that stream of sailors passing

through it, in from the sea and out again to sea, between the years 1878

and 1894. I have listened to the talk on the decks of ships in all

latitudes, when its name would turn up frequently, and if I had to

characterise its good work in one sentence, I would say that, for seamen,

the Well Street Home was a friendly place.

It was essentially just that; quietly, unobtrusively, with a regard for

the independence of the men who sought its shelter ashore, and with no

ulterior aims behind that effective friendliness. No small merit this.

And its claim on the generosity of the public is derived from a long

record of valuable public service. Since we are all agreed that the men

of the merchant service are a national asset worthy of care and sympathy,

the public could express this sympathy no better than by enabling the

Sailors' Home, so useful in the past, to continue its friendly offices to

the seamen of future generations.

Footnotes

{1} Yvette and Other Stories. Translated by Ada Galsworthy.

{2} _Turgenev_: A Study. By Edward Garnett.

{3} _Studies in Brown Humanity_. By Hugh Clifford.

{4} _Quiet Days in Spain_. By C. Bogue Luffmann.

{5} Existence after Death Implied by Science. By Jasper B. Hunt, M.A.

{6} _The Ascending Effort_. By George Bourne.

{7} Since writing the above, I am told that such doors are fitted in the

bunkers of more than one ship in the Atlantic trade.

{8} The loss of the _Empress of Ireland_.