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diff --git a/1143-h/1143-h.htm b/1143-h/1143-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e69347 --- /dev/null +++ b/1143-h/1143-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7353 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Notes on Life and Letters</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Notes on Life and Letters, by Joseph Conrad</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Notes on Life and Letters, by Joseph Conrad + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Notes on Life and Letters + + +Author: Joseph Conrad + +Release Date: March 25, 2005 [eBook #1143] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1921 J. M. Dent edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>NOTES ON LIFE & LETTERS</h1> +<p>Contents:</p> +<p>Author’s note</p> +<p>PART I—Letters</p> +<p>BOOKS—1905.<br /> +HENRY JAMES—AN APPRECIATION—1905<br /> +ALPHONSE DAUDET—1898<br /> +GUY DE MAUPASSANT—1904<br /> +ANATOLE FRANCE—1904<br /> +TURGENEV—1917<br /> +STEPHEN CRANE—A NOTE WITHOUT DATES—1919<br /> +TALES OF THE SEA—1898<br /> +AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA—1898<br /> +A HAPPY WANDERER—1910<br /> +THE LIFE BEYOND—1910<br /> +THE ASCENDING EFFORT—1910<br /> +THE CENSOR OF PLAYS—AN APPRECIATION—1907</p> +<p>PART II—Life</p> +<p>AUTOCRACY AND WAR—1905<br /> +THE CRIME OF PARTITION—1919<br /> +A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM—1916<br /> +POLAND REVISITED—1915<br /> +FIRST NEWS—1918<br /> +WELL DONE—1918<br /> +TRADITION—1918<br /> +CONFIDENCE—1919<br /> +FLIGHT—1917<br /> +SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE <i>TITANIC</i>—1912<br /> +CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE <i>TITANIC</i>—1912<br /> +PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS—1914<br /> +A FRIENDLY PLACE</p> +<h2>AUTHOR’S NOTE</h2> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>The only thing that will not be found amongst those Figures and Things +that have passed away, will be Conrad <i>en pantoufles</i>. It +is a constitutional inability. <i>Schlafrock und pantoffeln</i>! +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.</p> +<p>This volume (including these embarrassed introductory remarks) is +as near as I shall ever come to <i>dêshabillé</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>J. C.<br /> +1920.</p> +<h2>PART I—LETTERS</h2> +<h3>BOOKS—1905.</h3> +<h4>I.</h4> +<p>“I have not read this author’s books, and if I have read +them I have forgotten what they were about.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p>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 <i>trop</i> difficile.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>III.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 . . .”</p> +<h3>HENRY JAMES—AN APPRECIATION—1905</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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 <i>péripéties</i> of the contest, and the feelings +of the combatants.</p> +<p>The fiercest excitements of a romance <i>de cape et d’épée</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>ALPHONSE DAUDET—1898</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>bizarre</i>—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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>plus bête que nature</i>, his hate +for an architect <i>plus mauvais que la gale</i>; 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.</p> +<p>“Monsieur de Montpavon marche à la mort,” and +the creator of that unlucky <i>gentilhomme</i> 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 à 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 <i>naïveté</i> 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 <i>seen</i>, and the man who is not an artist is seen +also commiserating, indignant, joyous, human and alive in their very +midst. Inevitably they <i>marchent à la mort</i>—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.</p> +<h3>GUY DE MAUPASSANT—1904 <a name="citation1"></a><a href="#footnote1">{1}</a></h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Tout +comprendre c’est tout pardonner</i>. And in this benevolent +neutrality towards the warring errors of human nature all light would +go out from art and from life.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 cortège of deadly sins before the austere anchorite +in the desert air of Thebaïde. 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>mot juste</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 æsthetic 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Yvette</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 séduit 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.</p> +<h3>ANATOLE FRANCE—1904</h3> +<h4>I.—“CRAINQUEBILLE”</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>primus inter pares</i>; a post of +pure honour and of no privilege.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“The majesty of justice is contained entire in each sentence +pronounced by the judge in the name of the sovereign people. Jérome +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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—<i>Mort aux vaches</i>! They look upon +him shining in the deep shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, +vigilance, and contempt.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Monsieur Bergeret à Paris</i>. “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.</p> +<p>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 +Zoé; 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.</p> +<h4>II.—“L’ÎLE DES PINGOUINS”</h4> +<p>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 <i>grandes dames</i> 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 <i>Vie +Littéraire</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The explorer was St. Maël, 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. Maël 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. Maël 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>The venerable St. Maël 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. Maël was stranded violently on the Island +of Penguins.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>TURGENEV <a name="citation2"></a><a href="#footnote2">{2}</a>—1917</h3> +<p>Dear Edward,</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Smoke</i> “to all time.”</p> +<p>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 <i>A +Sportsman’s Sketches</i>—those marvellous landscapes peopled +by unforgettable figures.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>all</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>J. C.</p> +<h3>STEPHEN CRANE—A NOTE WITHOUT DATES—1919</h3> +<p>My acquaintance with Stephen Crane was brought about by Mr. Pawling, +partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Red Badge of Courage</i>. 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.</p> +<p>Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from +the reading of the <i>Nigger of the Narcissus</i>, a book of mine which +had also been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>New Review</i> 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, <i>mal entouré</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>TALES OF THE SEA—1898</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 naïveties 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Montauk</i>, or Daggett, +the tenacious commander of the <i>Sea Lion</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA <a name="citation3"></a><a href="#footnote3">{3}</a>—1898</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>parang</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 Ûmat, the punkah-puller, with unaffected simplicity and half-concealed +tenderness, that he comes nearest to artistic achievement.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 Ûmat, 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.</p> +<h3>A HAPPY WANDERER—1910</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation4"></a><a href="#footnote4">{4}</a> +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.</p> +<p>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 +littérateur 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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>coup-de-foudre</i>, 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 <i>cosas de España</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Quiet Days in +Spain</i> all days may seem quiet, because, a courageous convert, he +is now at peace with himself.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<h3>THE LIFE BEYOND—1910</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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. +<i>Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation5"></a><a href="#footnote5">{5}</a> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive! Open your arms +to the son, prodigal and weary.</p> +<p>“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. +. . . Œdipus, 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!”</p> +<h3>THE ASCENDING EFFORT—1910</h3> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>The Loves of the Plants</i> and a scoffer +<i>The Loves of the Triangles</i>, 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.”</p> +<p>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, <i>Under the Knife</i>. 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.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The book <a name="citation6"></a><a href="#footnote6">{6}</a> 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 <i>Ascending Effort</i> 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.”</p> +<p>As the writer of those remarkable rustic note-books, <i>The Bettesworth +Book</i> and <i>Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>THE CENSOR OF PLAYS—AN APPRECIATION—1907</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>virtù</i>, +an Oriental <i>potiche</i>, a <i>magot chinois</i> conceived by a childish +and extravagant imagination, but allowed to stand in stolid impotence +in the twilight of the upper shelf.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish +figure, the <i>magot chinois</i> whom I believed to be but a memorial +of our forefathers’ mental aberration, that grotesque <i>potiche</i>, +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 Cæsar could +kill a senator. He can do that and there is no one to say him +nay. He may call his cook (Molière 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 Cæsar 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>And I will end with a quotation reproducing not perhaps the exact +words but the true spirit of a lofty conscience.</p> +<p>“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.’”</p> +<p>Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaître—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 Lemaître 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>PART II—LIFE</h2> +<h3>AUTOCRACY AND WAR—1905</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 æsthetic 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>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 <i>régime</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 néant.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Néant</i> 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.</p> +<p>For good or evil in the working out of her destiny, Russia is bound +to remain a <i>Néant</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Le Néant</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Néant</i> +which for so many years had remained hidden behind this phantom of invincible +armies.</p> +<p><i>Néant</i>! 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 <i>Néant</i>—and +in Russia there is no idea. She is not a <i>Néant</i>, +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 <i>en +masse</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Pan-Germanism is by no means a shape of mists, and Germany is anything +but a <i>Néant</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>Industrialism and commercialism—wearing high-sounding names +in many languages (<i>Welt-politik</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>not</i> be a distant war waged by Russia either beyond the Amur or +beyond the Oxus.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <i>Il n’y a plus d’Europe</i>—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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Welt-politik</i> which desires to live.</p> +<p>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 <i>Welt-politik</i>. According to the national +tendency this assumption of Imperial impulses would run into the grotesque +were it not for the spikes of the <i>pickelhaubes</i> 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—voilà l’ennemi!”</p> +<h3>THE CRIME OF PARTITION—1919</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>partage</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 +<i>sérénissime</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>must</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 . . . .</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM—1916</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>But in any case it could have had no effect. The very nature +of things would have brought to nought its professed intentions.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>POLAND REVISITED—1915</h3> +<h4>I.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>It was this friend who, one morning at breakfast, informed me of +the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>café turc</i> at the end of his lunch.</p> +<p>“Monsieur veut dire Café balkanique,” the patriotic +waiter corrected him austerely.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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 <i>vidi tantum</i>; 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.</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>pays du rêve</i>, 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 <i>au pays +du rêve</i>.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>barocco</i> 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.</p> +<p>Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his florid, <i>barocco</i> +apostle’s face with an expression of inquiry.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>barocco</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>III.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Landwehr</i> 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 <i>Landwehr</i>; 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>IV.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“We are now on the line A.B.,” I said to my companion, +importantly.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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) <i>de visu</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“Let’s go back to the hotel, my boy,” I said. +“It’s getting late.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impatient +finger in my direction and apostrophised me.</p> +<p>“What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England +would come in.”</p> +<p>The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without +faltering.</p> +<p>“Most assuredly. I should think all Europe knows that +by this time.”</p> +<p>He took hold of the lapel of my coat, and, giving it a slight jerk +for greater emphasis, said forcibly:</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”’</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>FIRST NEWS—1918</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>my</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“What do you think England will do? If there is a ray +of hope anywhere it is only there.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>“What, even alone?” asked somebody across the room.</p> +<p>I said: “Yes, even alone. But if things go so far as +that England will not be alone.”</p> +<p>I think that at that moment I must have been inspired.</p> +<h3>WELL DONE—1918</h3> +<h4>I.</h4> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“Well done, so-and-so.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. . . ”</p> +<p>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. . +.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>III.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<h3>TRADITION—1918</h3> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>only</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>CONFIDENCE—1919</h3> +<h4>I.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>II.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h4>III.</h4> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 antennæ 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>FLIGHT—1917</h3> +<p>To begin at the end, I will say that the “landing” surprised +me by a slight and very characteristically “dead” sort of +shock.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. . . .</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>He said at once: “I’ll give you a flight to-morrow if +you like.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>“Of course I am coming,” I yelled indignantly.</p> +<p>He hurried up to me. “All right. There’s +your machine, and here’s your pilot. Come along.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“You know, it isn’t that at all!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC—1912</h3> +<p>It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that +the late <i>S.S. Titanic</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>reflection</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>“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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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:</p> +<p>“The Board of Trade must have been drunk when they gave him +his certificate.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i> 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 <i>any</i> +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 <i>Titanic</i>, 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?</p> +<p>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 café. 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 café +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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i> 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 <i>Arizona</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i>.</p> +<p>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?”</p> +<p>I certainly wouldn’t have thought that. He shook his +head, and added: “Ah! These great, big things, they want +some handling.”</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Arizona</i>, 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 pæans 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.</p> +<p>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 café?—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.</p> +<p>The readers of <i>The English Review</i>, 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Arizona</i> 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 <i>Douro</i>, +a ship belonging to the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, was rather +less than one-tenth the measurement of the <i>Titanic</i>. 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.</p> +<p>She was off the Spanish coast, homeward bound, and fairly full, just +like the <i>Titanic</i>; 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 <i>Titanic</i>. 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.</p> +<p>My recollection is that the <i>Douro</i> 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 <i>Douro</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 café 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h3>CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC—1912</h3> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i>, in the number of <i>The English +Review</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i> persuaded themselves that a ship <i>not divided</i> +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 <i>Titanic</i> +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>the hull</i>. +I repeat, the <i>hull</i>, 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 <i>Titanic</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 +<i>Titanic</i> 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 <i>Titanic</i> or any other +“triumph of modern naval architecture” like brown paper—I +am willing to bet.</p> +<p>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, +cafés, 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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. <a name="citation7"></a><a href="#footnote7">{7}</a></p> +<p>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 <i>in</i> the +ship but not <i>of</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i>.” 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 <i>Titanic</i> was that she carried +too many boats.</p> +<p>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 <i>opéra-bouffe</i> +of the Gilbertian type—with a rather grim subject, to be sure.</p> +<p>Yes, rather grim—but the comic treatment never fails. +My readers will remember that in the number of <i>The English Review</i> +for May, 1912, I quoted the old case of the <i>Arizona</i>, 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 <i>Titanic</i> 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 café shall remain open all night. But what about the +priceless Sèvres 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 <i>will</i> go to sea must +be prepared to put up with a certain amount of hardship.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!</p> +<p>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 <i>ad hoc</i> would be infinitely easier to work. +We must remember that the loss of this ship has altered the moral atmosphere. +As long as the <i>Titanic</i> 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 <i>Titanic</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Titanic</i> 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.</p> +<p>And that’s the truth. The unsentimental truth stripped +of the romantic garment the Press has wrapped around this most unnecessary +disaster.</p> +<h3>PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS <a name="citation8"></a><a href="#footnote8">{8}</a>—1914</h3> +<p>The loss of the <i>Empress of Ireland</i> awakens feelings somewhat +different from those the sinking of the <i>Titanic</i> 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Aquitania</i> 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 <i>Aquitania</i> 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 <i>Aquitania</i> +would not be quite seaworthy, for she would not be manageable.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Empress of Ireland</i>. +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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Storstad</i> 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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Storstad</i>, then that ship must have been at hand and rendering +all the assistance in her power.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Empress of Ireland’s</i> +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.</p> +<p>This, reduced to its simplest expression, is the question which the +Court will have to decide.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Storstad’s</i> +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!</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Times</i> 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.”</p> +<p>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 <i>Storstad</i> +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.</p> +<p>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 æsthetic +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.</p> +<p>We shall see!</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>To the Editor of the <i>Daily Express</i>.</p> +<p>SIR,</p> +<p>As I fully expected, this morning’s post brought me not a few +letters on the subject of that article of mine in the <i>Illustrated +London News</i>. And they are very much what I expected them to +be.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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 <i>Times</i> and the <i>Daily Telegraph</i>, 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 <i>Illustrated +London News</i> article.</p> +<p>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 <i>Empress of Ireland</i> +was for a time lying motionless. And if the captain of the <i>Storstad</i> +stopped his engines directly the fog came on (as he says he did), then +taking into account the adverse current of the river, the <i>Storstad</i>, +by the time the two ships sighted each other again, must have been barely +moving <i>over the ground</i>. 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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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?</p> +<p>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 <i>Storstad</i> 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?</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>JOSEPH CONRAD.</p> +<h3>A FRIENDLY PLACE</h3> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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!”</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>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.</p> +<p>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.</p> +<h2>Footnotes</h2> +<p><a name="footnote1"></a><a href="#citation1">{1}</a> Yvette +and Other Stories. Translated by Ada Galsworthy.</p> +<p><a name="footnote2"></a><a href="#citation2">{2}</a> <i>Turgenev</i>: +A Study. By Edward Garnett.</p> +<p><a name="footnote3"></a><a href="#citation3">{3}</a> <i>Studies +in Brown Humanity</i>. By Hugh Clifford.</p> +<p><a name="footnote4"></a><a href="#citation4">{4}</a> <i>Quiet +Days in Spain</i>. By C. Bogue Luffmann.</p> +<p><a name="footnote5"></a><a href="#citation5">{5}</a> Existence +after Death Implied by Science. By Jasper B. Hunt, M.A.</p> +<p><a name="footnote6"></a><a href="#citation6">{6}</a> <i>The +Ascending Effort</i>. By George Bourne.</p> +<p><a name="footnote7"></a><a href="#citation7">{7}</a> Since +writing the above, I am told that such doors are fitted in the bunkers +of more than one ship in the Atlantic trade.</p> +<p><a name="footnote8"></a><a href="#citation8">{8}</a> The loss +of the <i>Empress of Ireland</i>.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NOTES ON LIFE AND LETTERS***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1143-h.htm or 1143-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/1/4/1143 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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