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diff --git a/37425-8.txt b/37425-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..238a394 --- /dev/null +++ b/37425-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1992 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Within the Rim and Other Essays, by Henry James + +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: Within the Rim and Other Essays + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: September 14, 2011 [EBook #37425] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITHIN THE RIM AND OTHER ESSAYS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Internet Archive.) + + + + + + + + +WITHIN THE RIM + + + + +WITHIN THE RIM +AND OTHER ESSAYS + +1914-15 + +HENRY JAMES + +[Illustration: colophon] + +LONDON: 48 PALL MALL +W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. +GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND + +Copyright 1918 + + _Within the Rim_--Written in Feb. 1915 for Miss E. Asquith for a + proposed album in aid of the Arts Fund. The idea of the album was + abandoned, and the article was ultimately published in the + _Fortnightly Review_, Aug. 1917. + + _Refugees in Chelsea_--Published in the _Times_ Literary + Supplement, March 23, 1916. + + _The American Volunteer Motor-Ambulance Corps in France: A Letter + to the Editor of an American Journal_--Issued as a pamphlet, 1914. + + _France_--Published in _The Book of France_, edited by Winifred + Stephens, Macmillan, 1915. + + _The Long Wards_--Published in _The Book of the Homeless_, edited + by Edith Wharton, Macmillan, 1916. + + Thanks are due in each case for the permission to reprint these + essays. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + PAGE + +WITHIN THE RIM 11 + +REFUGEES IN CHELSEA 39 + +THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER MOTOR-AMBULANCE +CORPS IN FRANCE: _A Letter to the Editor of an +American Journal_ 63 + +FRANCE 83 + +THE LONG WARDS 97 + + + + +WITHIN THE RIM + + +The first sense of it all to me after the first shock and horror was +that of a sudden leap back into life of the violence with which the +American Civil War broke upon us, at the North, fifty-four years ago, +when I had a consciousness of youth which perhaps equalled in vivacity +my present consciousness of age. The illusion was complete, in its +immediate rush; everything quite exactly matched in the two cases; the +tension of the hours after the flag of the Union had been fired upon in +South Carolina living again, with a tragic strangeness of recurrence, in +the interval during which the fate of Belgium hung in the scales and the +possibilities of that of France looked this country harder in the face, +one recognised, than any possibility, even that of the England of the +Armada, even that of the long Napoleonic menace, could be imagined to +have looked her. The analogy quickened and deepened with every elapsing +hour; the drop of the balance under the invasion of Belgium reproduced +with intensity the agitation of the New England air by Mr Lincoln's call +to arms, and I went about for a short space as with the queer secret +locked in my breast of at least already knowing how such occasions +helped and what a big war was going to mean. That this was literally a +light in the darkness, or that it materially helped the prospect to be +considered, is perhaps more than I can say; but it at least added the +strangest of savours, an inexpressible romantic thrill, to the harsh +taste of the crisis: I found myself literally knowing 'by experience' +what immensities, what monstrosities, what revelations of what +immeasurabilities, our affair would carry in its bosom--a knowledge that +flattered me by its hint of immunity from illusion. The sudden new tang +in the atmosphere, the flagrant difference, as one noted, in the look of +everything, especially in that of people's faces, the expressions, the +hushes, the clustered groups, the detached wanderers and slow-paced +public meditators, were so many impressions long before received and in +which the stretch of more than half a century had still left a +sharpness. So I took the case in and drew a vague comfort, I can scarce +say why, from recognition; so, while recognition lasted, I found it come +home to me that we, we of the ancient day, had known, had tremendously +learnt, what the awful business is when it is 'long,' when it remains +for months and months bitter and arid, void even of any great honour. In +consequence of which, under the rapid rise of presumptions of +difficulty, to whatever effect of dismay or of excitement, my possession +of something like a standard of difficulty, and, as I might perhaps feel +too, of success, became in its way a private luxury. + +My point is, however, that upon this luxury I was allowed after all but +ever so scantily to feed. I am unable to say when exactly it was that +the rich analogy, the fine and sharp identity between the faded and the +vivid case broke down, with the support obscurely derived from them; the +moment anyhow came soon enough at which experience felt the ground give +way and that one swung off into space, into history, into darkness, with +every lamp extinguished and every abyss gaping. It ceased quite to +matter for reassurance that the victory of the North had been so delayed +and yet so complete, that our struggle had worn upon the world of the +time, and quite to exasperation, as could well be remembered, by its +length; if the present complication should but begin to be as long as it +was broad no term of comparison borrowed from the past would so much as +begin to fit it. I might have found it humiliating; in fact, however, I +found it of the most commanding interest, whether at certain hours of +dire apprehension or at certain others of the finer probability, that +the biggest like convulsion our generations had known was still but too +clearly to be left far behind for exaltations and terrors, for effort +and result, as a general exhibition of the perversity of nations and of +the energy of man. Such at least was the turn the comparison took at a +given moment in a remembering mind that had been steeped, so far as its +restricted contact went, but in the Northern story; I did, I confess, +cling awhile to the fancy that what loomed perhaps for England, what +already did so much more than loom for crucified Belgium, what was let +loose in a torrent upon indestructible France, might correspond more or +less with the pressure of the old terrible time as the fighting South +had had to know it, and with the grim conditions under which she had at +last given way. For the rest of the matter, as I say, the difference of +aspect produced by the difference of intensity cut short very soon my +vision of similitude. The intensity swallowed up everything; the rate +and the scale and the speed, the unprecedented engines, the vast +incalculable connections, the immediate presence, as it were, of France +and Belgium, whom one could hear pant, through the summer air, in their +effort and their alarm, these things, with the prodigious might of the +enemy added, made me say, dropping into humility in a manner that +resembled not a little a drop into still greater depths, 'Oh, no, that +surely can't have been "a patch" on this!' Which conclusion made +accordingly for a new experience altogether, such as I gratefully +embrace here an occasion not to leave unrecorded. + +It was in the first place, after the strangest fashion, a sense of the +extraordinary way in which the most benign conditions of light and air, +of sky and sea, the most beautiful English summer conceivable, mixed +themselves with all the violence of action and passion, the other so +hideous and piteous, so heroic and tragic facts, and flouted them as +with the example of something far superior. Never were desperate doings +so blandly lighted up as by the two unforgettable months that I was to +spend so much of in looking over from the old rampart of a little +high-perched Sussex town at the bright blue streak of the Channel, +within a mile or two of us at its nearest point, the point to which it +had receded after washing our rock-base in its earlier ages, and staring +at the bright mystery beyond the rim of the farthest opaline reach. +Just on the other side of that finest of horizon-lines history was +raging at a pitch new under the sun; thinly masked by that shameless +smile the Belgian horror grew; the curve of the globe toward these +things was of the scantest, and yet the hither spaces of the purest, the +interval representing only charm and calm and ease. One grew to feel +that the nearer elements, those of land and water and sky at their +loveliest, were making thus, day after day, a particular prodigious +point, insisting in their manner on a sense and a wondrous story which +it would be the restless watcher's fault if he didn't take in. Not that +these were hints or arts against which he was in the least degree proof; +they penetrated with every hour deeper into the soul, and, the +contemplations I speak of aiding, irresistibly worked out an endless +volume of references. It was all somehow the history of the hour +addressing itself to the individual mind--or to that in any case of the +person, at once so appalled and so beguiled, of whose response to the +whole appeal I attempt this brief account. Round about him stretched +the scene of his fondest frequentation as time had determined the habit; +but it was as if every reason and every sentiment conducing to the +connection had, under the shock of events, entered into solution with +every other, so that the only thinkable approach to rest, that is to the +recovery of an inward order, would be in restoring them each, or to as +many as would serve the purpose, some individual dignity and some form. + +It came indeed largely of itself, my main help to the reparatory, the +re-identifying process; came by this very chance that in the splendour +of the season there was no mistaking the case or the plea. 'This, as you +can see better than ever before,' the elements kept conspiring to say, +'is the rare, the sole, the exquisite England whose weight now hangs in +the balance, and your appreciation of whose value, much as in the easy +years you may have taken it for granted, seems exposed to some fresh and +strange and strong determinant, something that breaks in like a +character of high colour in a play.' Nothing could have thrilled me +more, I recognise, than the threat of this irruption or than the +dramatic pitch; yet a degree of pain attached to the ploughed-up state +it implied--so that, with an elderly dread of a waste of emotion, I fear +I almost pusillanimously asked myself why a sentiment from so far back +recorded as lively should need to become any livelier, and in fact +should hesitate to beg off from the higher diapason. I felt as the quiet +dweller in a tenement so often feels when the question of 'structural +improvements' is thrust upon him; my house of the spirit, amid +everything about me, had become more and more the inhabited, adjusted, +familiar home, quite big enough and sound enough for the spirit's uses +and with any intrinsic inconvenience corrected only since by that +principle's having cultivated and formed, at whatever personal cost +(since my spirit was essentially a person), the right habits, and so +settled into the right attitude for practical, for contented occupation. +If, however, such was my vulgar apprehension, as I put it, the case was +taken out of my hands by the fate that so often deals with these +accidents, and I found myself before long building on additions and +upper storys, throwing out extensions and protrusions, indulging even, +all recklessly, in gables and pinnacles and battlements--things that had +presently transformed the unpretending place into I scarce know what to +call it, a fortress of the faith, a palace of the soul, an extravagant, +bristling, flag-flying structure which had quite as much to do with the +air as with the earth. And all this, when one came to return upon it in +a considering or curious way, because to and fro one kept going on the +old rampart, the town 'look-out,' to spend one's aching wonder again and +again on the bright sky-line that at once held and mocked it. Just over +that line were unutterable things, massacre and ravage and anguish, all +but irresistible assault and cruelty, bewilderment and heroism all but +overwhelmed; from the sense of which one had but to turn one's head to +take in something unspeakably different and that yet produced, as by +some extraordinary paradox, a pang almost as sharp. + +It was of course by the imagination that this latter was quickened to an +intensity thus akin to pain--but the imagination had doubtless at every +turn, without exception, more to say to one's state of mind, and dealt +more with the whole unfolding scene, than any other contributive force. +Never in all my life, probably, had I been so glad to have opened +betimes an account with this faculty and to be able to feel for the most +part something to my credit there; so vivid I mean had to be one's +prevision of the rate at which drafts on that source would require +cashing. All of which is a manner of saying that in face of what during +those horrible days seemed exactly over the way the old inviolate +England, as to whom the fact that she _was_ inviolate, in every valid +sense of the term, had become, with long acquaintance, so common and +dull, suddenly shone in a light never caught before and which was for +the next weeks, all the magnificence of August and September, to reduce +a thousand things to a sort of merciless distinctness. It was not so +much that they leaped forth, these things, under the particular +recognition, as that they multiplied without end and abounded, always in +some association at least that caught the eye, all together overscoring +the image as a whole or causing the old accepted synthesis to bristle +with accents. The image as a whole, thus richly made up of them--or of +the numberless testifying touches to the effect that we were not there +on our sea defence as the other, the harried, countries were behind such +bulwarks as they could throw up--was the central fact of consciousness +and the one to which every impression and every apprehension more or +less promptly related themselves; it made of itself the company in which +for the time the mind most naturally and yet most importunately lived. +One walked of course in the shade of the ambiguous contrast--ambiguous +because of the dark question of whether it was the liabilities of +Belgium and France, to say nothing of their awful actualities, that made +England's state so rare, or England's state that showed her tragic +sisters for doubly outraged; the action of the matter was at least that +of one's feeling in one's hand and weighing it there with the last +tenderness, for fullest value, the golden key that unlocked every +compartment of the English character. + +Clearly this general mystery or mixture was to be laid open under stress +of fortune as never yet--the unprecedentedness was above all what came +over us again and again, armaments unknown to human experience looming +all the while larger and larger; but whatever face or succession of +faces the genius of the race should most turn up the main mark of them +all would be in the difference that, taken together, couldn't fail to +keep them more unlike the peoples off there beyond than any pair even of +the most approved of these peoples are unlike each other. +'Insularity!'--one had spent no small part of one's past time in mocking +or in otherwise fingering the sense out of that word; yet here it was in +the air wherever one looked and as stuffed with meaning as if nothing +had ever worn away from it, as if its full force on the contrary +amounted to inward congestion. What the term essentially signified was +in the oddest way a question at once enormous and irrelevant; what it +might _show_ as signifying, what it was in the circumstances actively +and most probably going to, seemed rather the true consideration, +indicated with all the weight of the evidence scattered about. Just the +fixed _look_ of England under the August sky, what was this but the most +vivid exhibition of character conceivable and the face turned up, to +repeat my expression, with a frankness that really left no further +inquiry to be made? That appearance was of the exempt state, the record +of the long safe centuries, in its happiest form, and even if any shade +of happiness at such an hour might well seem a sign of profanity or +perversity. To _that_ there were all sorts of things to say, I could at +once reflect, however; wouldn't it be the thing supremely in character +that England should look most complacently herself, irradiating all her +reasons for it, at the very crisis of the question of the true +toughness, in other words the further duration, of her identity? I +might observe, as for that matter I repeatedly and unspeakably did while +the two months lasted, that she was pouring forth this identity, as +atmosphere and aspect and picture, in the very measure and to the very +top of her consciousness of how it hung in the balance. Thus one +arrived, through the succession of shining days, at the finest sense of +the case--the interesting truth that her consciously not being as her +tragic sisters were in the great particular was virtually just her +genius, and that the very straightest thing she could do would naturally +be not to flinch at the dark hour from any profession of her genius. +Looking myself more askance at the dark hour (politically speaking I +mean) than I after my fashion figured her as doing in her mass, I found +it of an extreme, of quite an endless fascination to trace as many as +possible of her felt idiosyncrasies back to her settled sea-confidence, +and to see this now in turn account for so many other things, the +smallest as well as the biggest, that, to give the fewest hints of +illustration, the mere spread of the great trees, the mere gathers in +the little bluey-white curtains of the cottage windows, the mere curl of +the tinted smoke from the old chimneys matching that note, became a sort +of exquisite evidence. + +Exquisite evidence of a like general class, it was true, didn't on the +other side of the Channel prevent the awful liability to the reach of +attack--its having borne fruit and been corrected or averted again was +in fact what half the foreign picture meant; but the foreign genius was +the other, other at almost every point; it had always in the past and on +the spot, one remembered, expressed things, confessed things, with a +difference, and part of that difference was of course the difference of +history: the fact of exemption, as I have called it, the fact that a +blest inviolacy was almost exactly what had least flourished. France and +Belgium, to refer only to them, became dear accordingly, in the light I +speak of, because, having suffered and suffered, they were suffering yet +again, while precisely the opposite process worked for the scene +directly beneath my eyes. England was interesting, to put it +mildly--which is but a shy evasion of putting it passionately--because +she hadn't suffered, because there were passages of that sort she had +publicly declined and defied; at the same time that one wouldn't have +the case so simple as to set it down wholly to her luck. France and +Belgium, for the past, confessed, to repeat my term; while England, so +consistently harmonised, with all her long unbrokenness thick and rich +upon her, seemed never to do that, nor to need it, in order to practise +on a certain fine critical, not to mention a certain fine prejudiced, +sensibility. It was the season of sensibility now, at any rate for just +those days and just that poor place of yearning, of merely yearning, +vigil; and I may add with all emphasis that never had I had occasion so +to learn how far sensibility may go when once well wound up. It was +saying little to say I did justice easiest at once and promptest to the +most advertised proposal of the enemy, his rank intention of clapping +down the spiked helmet, than which no form of headgear, by the way, had +ever struck one as of a more graceless, a more tell-tale platitude, upon +the priceless genius of France; far from new, after all, was that +measure of the final death in him of the saving sense of proportion +which only gross dementia can abolish. Those of my generation who could +remember the detected and frustrated purpose of a renewed Germanic +pounce upon the country which, all but bled to death in 1871, had become +capable within five years of the most penetrating irony of revival ever +recorded, were well aware of how in that at once sinister and grotesque +connection they had felt notified in time. It was the extension of the +programme and its still more prodigious publication during the quarter +of a century of interval, it was the announced application of the +extinguisher to the quite other, the really so contrasted genius the +expression of which surrounded me in the manner I have glanced at, it +was the extraordinary fact of a declared non-sufferance any longer, on +Germany's part, of either of the obnoxious national forms disfiguring +her westward horizon, and even though by her own allowance they had +nothing intellectually or socially in common save that they were +objectionable and, as an incident, crushable--it was this, I say, that +gave one furiously to think, or rather, while one thanked one's stars +for the luxury, furiously and all but unutterably to feel. + +The beauty and the interest, the now more than ever copious and welcome +expression, of the aspects nearest me found their value in their being +so resistingly, just to that very degree of eccentricity, with that very +density of home-grownness, what they were; in the same way as the +character of the sister-land lately joined in sisterhood showed for +exquisite because so ingrained and incorrigible, so beautifully all her +own and inimitable on other ground. If it would have been hard really to +give the measure of one's dismay at the awful proposition of a world +squeezed together in the huge Prussian fist and with the variety and +spontaneity of its parts oozing in a steady trickle, like the sacred +blood of sacrifice, between those hideous knuckly fingers, so, none the +less, every reason with which our preference for a better condition and +a nobler fate could possibly bristle kept battering at my heart, kept, +in fact, pushing into it, after the fashion of a crowd of the alarmed +faithful at the door of a church. The effect was literally, yes, as of +the occasion of some great religious service, with prostrations and +exaltations, the light of a thousand candles and the sound of soaring +choirs--all of which figured one's individual inward state as determined +by the menace. One could still note at the same time, however, that this +high pitch of private emotion was by itself far from meeting the case as +the enemy presented it; what I wanted, of course, to do was to meet it +with the last lucidity, the fullest support for particular defensive +pleas or claims--and this even if what most underlay all such without +exception came back to my actual vision, that and no more, of the +general sense of the land. The vision was fed, and fed to such a tune +that in the quest for reasons--that is, for the particulars of one's +affection, the more detailed the better--the blades of grass, the +outlines of leaves, the drift of clouds, the streaks of mortar between +old bricks, not to speak of the call of child-voices muffled in the +comforting air, became, as I have noted, with a hundred other like +touches, casually felt, extraordinary admonitions and symbols, close +links of a tangible chain. When once the question fairly hung there of +the possibility, more showily set forth than it had up to then presumed +to be, of a world without use for the tradition so embodied, an order +substituting for this, by an unmannerly thrust, quite another and +really, it would seem, quite a ridiculous, a crudely and clumsily +improvised story, we might all have resembled together a group of +children at their nurse's knee disconcerted by some tale that it isn't +their habit to hear. We loved the old tale, or at least I did, exactly +because I knew it; which leaves me keen to make the point, none the +less, that my appreciation of the case for world-variety found the +deeply and blessedly familiar perfectly consistent with it. This came +of what I 'read into' the familiar; and of what I did so read, of what I +kept reading through that uplifted time, these remarks were to have +attempted a record that has reached its limit sooner than I had hoped. + +I was not then to the manner born, but my apprehension of what it was on +the part of others to be so had been confirmed and enriched by the long +years, and I gave myself up to the general, the native image I thus +circled around as to the dearest and most precious of all native images. +That verily became at the crisis an occupation sublime; which was not, +after all, so much an earnest study or fond arrangement of the mixed +aspects as a positive, a fairly sensual bask in their light, too kindled +and too rich not to pour out by its own force. The strength and the +copious play of the appearances acting in this collective fashion +carried everything before them; no dark discrimination, no stiff little +reserve that one might ever have made, stood up in the diffused day for +a moment. It was in the opposite way, the most opposite possible, that +one's intelligence worked, all along the line; so that with the warmth +of the mere sensation that 'they' were about as good, above all when it +came to the stress, as could well be expected of people, there was the +acute interest of the successive points at which one recognised why. +This last, the satisfaction of the deepened intelligence, turned, I may +frankly say, to a prolonged revel--'they' being the people about me and +every comfort I had ever had of them smiling its individual smile +straight at me and conducing to an effect of candour that is beyond any +close notation. They didn't know how good they were, and their candour +had a peculiar lovability of unconsciousness; one had more imagination +at their service in this cause than they had in almost any cause of +their own; it was wonderful, it was beautiful, it was inscrutable, that +they could make one feel this and yet not feel with it that it at all +practically diminished them. Of course, if a shade should come on +occasion to fall across the picture, that shade would perhaps be the +question whether the most restless of the faculties mightn't on the +whole too much fail them. It beautified life, I duly remembered, it +promoted art, it inspired faith, it crowned conversation, but hadn't +it--always again under stress--still finer applications than these, and +mightn't it in a word, taking the right direction, peculiarly conduce to +virtue? Wouldn't it, indeed, be indispensable to virtue of the highest +strain? Never mind, at any rate--so my emotion replied; with it or +without it we seemed to _be_ taking the right direction; moreover, the +next best thing to the imagination people may have, if they can, is the +quantity of it they may set going in others, and which, imperfectly +aware, they are just exposed to from such others, and must make the best +of: their advantage becoming simply that it works, for the connection, +all in their favour. That of the associated outsider, the order of whose +feelings, for the occasion, I have doubtless not given a wholly lucid +sketch of, cultivated its opportunity week after week at such a rate +that, technical alien as he was, the privilege of the great partaking, +of shared instincts and ideals, of a communion of race and tongue, +temper and tradition, put on before all the blest appearances a +splendour to which I hoped that so long as I might yet live my eyes +would never grow dim. And the great intensity, the melting together of +the spiritual sources so loosed in a really intoxicating draught, was +when I shifted my watch from near east to far west and caught the enemy, +who seemed ubiquitous, in the long-observed effort that most fastened on +him the insolence of his dream and the depth of his delusion. There in +the west were those of my own fond fellowship, the other, the ready and +rallying partakers, and it was on the treasure of our whole unquenchable +association that in the riot of his ignorance--this at least apparently +armour-proof--he had laid his unholy hands. + + + + +REFUGEES IN CHELSEA + + +This is not a Report on our so interesting and inspiring Chelsea work, +since November last, in aid of the Belgians driven thither from their +country by a violence of unprovoked invasion and ravage more appalling +than has ever before overtaken a peaceful and industrious people; it is +the simple statement of a neighbour and an observer deeply affected by +the most tragic exhibition of national and civil prosperity and felicity +suddenly subjected to bewildering outrage that it would have been +possible to conceive. The case, as the generous American communities +have shown they well understand, has had no analogue in the experience +of our modern generations, no matter how far back we go; it has been +recognised, in surpassing practical ways, as virtually the greatest +public horror of our age, or of all the preceding; and one gratefully +feels, in presence of so much done in direct mitigation of it, that its +appeal to the pity and the indignation of the civilised world +anticipated and transcended from the first all superfluity of argument. +We live into--that is, we learn to cultivate--possibilities of sympathy +and reaches of beneficence very much as the stricken and suffering +themselves live into their dreadful history and explore and reveal its +extent; and this admirable truth it is that unceasingly pleads with the +intelligent, the fortunate, and the exempt, not to consent in advance to +any dull limitation of the helpful idea. The American people have surely +a genius, of the most eminent kind, for withholding any such consent and +despising all such limits; and there is doubtless no remarked connection +in which they have so shown the sympathetic imagination in free and +fearless activity--that is, in high originality--as under the suggestion +of the tragedy of Belgium. + +I have small warrant perhaps to say that atmospheres are communicable; +but I can testify at least that they are breathable on the spot, to +whatever effect of depression or of cheer; and I should go far, I feel, +were I to attempt to register the full bitter-sweet taste, by our +Chelsea waterside, all these months, of the refugee element in our vital +medium. (The sweet, as I strain a point perhaps to call it, inheres, to +whatever distinguishability, in our hope of having really done +something, verily done much; the bitter ineradicably seasons the +consciousness, hopes and demonstrations and fond presumptions and all.) +I need go no further, none the less, than the makeshift provisional +gates of Crosby Hall, marvellous monument transplanted a few years since +from the Bishopsgate quarter of the City to a part of the ancient +suburban site of the garden of Sir Thomas More, and now serving with +extraordinary beneficence as the most splendid of shelters for the +homeless. This great private structure, though of the grandest civic +character, dating from the fifteenth century, and one of the noblest +relics of the past that London could show, was held a few years back so +to cumber the precious acre or more on which it stood that it was taken +to pieces in the candid commercial interest and in order that the site +it had so long sanctified should be converted to such uses as would +stuff out still further the ideal number of private pockets. Dismay and +disgust were unable to save it; the most that could be done was to +gather in with tenderness of care its innumerable constituent parts and +convey them into safer conditions, where a sad defeated piety has been +able to re-edify them into some semblance of the original majesty. +Strange withal some of the turns of the whirligig of time; the priceless +structure came down to the sound of lamentation, not to say of +execration, and of the gnashing of teeth, and went up again before cold +and disbelieving, quite despairing, eyes; in spite of which history +appears to have decided once more to cherish it and give a new +consecration. It is, in truth, still magnificent; it lives again for our +gratitude in its noblest particulars; and the almost incomparable roof +has arched all this winter and spring over a scene probably more +interesting and certainly more pathetic than any that have ever drawn +down its ancient far-off blessing. + +The place has formed, then, the headquarters of the Chelsea circle of +hospitality to the exiled, the broken, and the bewildered; and if I may +speak of having taken home the lesson of their state and the sense of +their story, it is by meeting them in the finest club conditions +conceivable that I have been able to do so. Hither, month after month +and day after day, the unfortunates have flocked, each afternoon; and +here the comparatively exempt, almost ashamed of their exemption in +presence of so much woe, have made them welcome to every form of succour +and reassurance. Certain afternoons each week have worn the character of +the huge comprehensive tea-party, a fresh well-wisher discharging the +social and financial cost of the fresh occasion--which has always +festally profited, in addition, by the extraordinary command of musical +accomplishment, the high standard of execution, that is the mark of the +Belgian people. This exhibition of our splendid local resource has +rested, of course, on a multitude of other resources, still local, but +of a more intimate hospitality, little by little worked out and applied, +and into the details of which I may not here pretend to go beyond noting +that they have been accountable for the large housed and fed and clothed +and generally protected and administered numbers, all provided for in +Chelsea and its outer fringe, on which our scheme of sociability at +Crosby Hall itself has up to now been able to draw. To have seen this +scheme so long in operation has been to find it suggest many +reflections, all of the most poignant and moving order; the foremost of +which has, perhaps, had for its subject that never before can the wanton +hand of history have descended upon a group of communities less +expectant of public violence from without or less prepared for it and +attuned to it. + +The bewildered and amazed passivity of the Flemish civil population, the +state as of people surprised by sudden ruffians, murderers, and thieves +in the dead of night and hurled out, terrified and half clad, snatching +at the few scant household gods nearest at hand, into a darkness +mitigated but by flaring incendiary torches--this has been the +experience stamped on our scores and scores of thousands, whose +testimony to suffering, dismay, and despoilment silence alone, the +silence of vain uncontributive wonderment, has for the most part been +able to express. Never was such a revelation of a deeply domestic, a +rootedly domiciled and instinctively and separately clustered people, a +mass of communities for which the sight of the home violated, the +objects helping to form it profaned, and the cohesive family, the +Belgian ideal of the constituted life, dismembered, disembowelled, and +shattered, had so supremely to represent the crack of doom and the end +of everything. There have been days and days when under this particular +impression the mere aspect and manner of our serried recipients of +relief, something vague and inarticulate as in persons who have given +up everything but patience and are living, from hour to hour, but in the +immediate and the unexplained, has put on such a pathos as to make the +heart sick. One has had just to translate any seated row of figures, +thankful for warmth and light and covering, for sustenance and human +words and human looks, into terms that would exemplify some like exiled +and huddled and charity-fed predicament for our superior selves, to feel +our exposure to such a fate, our submission to it, our holding in the +least together under it, darkly unthinkable. Dim imaginations would at +such moments interpose, a confused theory that even at the worst our +adventurous habits, our imperial traditions, our general defiance of the +superstition of domesticity, would dash from our lips the cup of +bitterness; from these it was at all events impossible not to come back +to the consciousness that almost every creature there collected was +indebted to our good offices for the means to come at all. I thought of +our parents and children, our brothers and sisters, aligned in borrowed +garments and settled to an as yet undetermined future of eleemosynary +tea and buns, and I ask myself, doubtless to little purpose, either what +grace of resignation or what clamour of protest we should, beneath the +same star, be noted as substituting for the inveterate Belgian decency. + +I can only profess at once that the sense of this last round about one +was, at certain hours when the music and the chant of consolation rose +in the stillness from our improvised stage at the end of the great hall, +a thing to cloud with tears any pair of eyes lifted to our sublime saved +roof in thanks for its vast comprehension. Questions of exhibited type, +questions as to a range of form and tradition, a measure of sensibility +and activity, not our own, dwindled and died before the gross fact of +our having here an example of such a world-tragedy as we supposed Europe +had outlived, and that nothing at all therefore mattered but that we +should bravely and handsomely hold up our quite heavy enough end of it. +It is because we have responded in this degree to the call +unprecedented that we are, in common with a vast number of +organisations scattered through these islands, qualified to claim that +no small part of the inspiration to our enormous act of welcome resides +in the moral interest it yields. One can indeed be certain of such a +source of profit but in the degree in which one has found oneself +personally drawing upon it; yet it is obvious that we are not treated +every day to the disclosure of a national character, a national +temperament and type, confined for the time to their plainest and +stoutest features and set, on a prodigious scale, in all the relief that +the strongest alien air and alien conditions can give them. Great +salience, in such a case, do all collective idiosyncrasies acquire--upon +the fullest enumeration of which, however, as the Belgian instance and +the British atmosphere combine to represent them, I may not now embark, +prepossessed wholly as I am with the more generally significant social +stamp and human aspect so revealed, and with the quality derived from +these things by the multiplied examples that help us to take them in. +This feeling that our visitors illustrate above all the close and +comfortable household life, with every implication of a seated and +saturated practice of it, practice of the intimate and private and +personal, the securely sensual and genial arts that flow from it, has +been by itself the key to a plenitude of observation and in particular +to as much friendly searching insight as one could desire to enjoy. + +The moving, the lacerating thing is the fashion after which such a +reading of the native elements, once adopted, has been as a light +flaring into every obscurest retreat, as well as upon any puzzling +ambiguity, of the state of shock of the national character under the +infamy of the outrage put upon it. That _they_, of all people the most +given over to local and patriarchal beatitude among the admirable and +the cherished objects handed down to them by their so interesting +history on every spot where its action has been thickest--that is, on +every inch, so to speak, of their teeming territory--should find +themselves identified with the most shamelessly cynical public act of +which the civilised world at this hour retains the memory, is a fact +truly representing the exquisite in the horrible; so peculiarly +addressed has been their fate to the desecration of ideals that had +fairly become breath of their lungs and flesh of their flesh. Oh, the +installed and ensconced, the immemorially edified and arranged, the +thoroughly furnished and provided and nourished people!--not in the +least besotted or relaxed in their security and density, like the +self-smothered society of the ancient world upon which the earlier Huns +and Vandals poured down, but candidly complacent and admirably +intelligent in their care for their living tradition, and only so off +their guard as to have consciously set the example of this care to all +such as had once smoked with them their wondrous pipe of peace. Almost +any posture of stupefaction would have been conceivable in the shaken +victims of this delusion: I can speak best, however, but of what I have +already glanced at, that temperamental weight of their fall which has +again and again, at sight of many of them gathered together, made the +considering heart as heavy for them as if it, too, had for the time been +worsted. + +However, it would take me far to tell of half the penetrating +admonitions, whether of the dazed or of the roused appearance, that have +for so long almost in like degree made our attention ache. I think of +particular faces, in the whole connection, when I want most to +remember--since to remember always, and never, never to forget, is a +prescription shining before us like a possible light of dawn--faces +saying such things in their silence, or in their speech of quite +different matters, as to make the only thinkable comment or response +some word or some gesture of reprieve to dumb or to dissimulated +anguish. Blest be the power that has given to civilised men the +appreciation of the face--such an immeasurable sphere of exercise for it +has this monstrous trial of the peoples come to supply. Such histories, +such a record of moral experience, of emotion convulsively suppressed, +as one meets in some of them: and this even if, on the whole, one has +been able to think of these special allies, all sustainingly, much +rather as the sturdiest than as the most demonstrative of sufferers. I +have in these rapid remarks to reduce my many impressions to the fewest, +but must even thus spare one of them for commemoration of the admirable +cast of working countenance we are rewarded by the sight of, wherever we +turn amid the quantity of helpful service and all the fruitful +industries that we have been able to start and that keep themselves +going. These are the lights in the picture; and who indeed would wish +that the lights themselves should be anything less than tragic? The +strong young man (no young men are familiarly stronger,) mutilated, +amputated, dismembered in penalty for their defence of their soil +against the horde, and now engaged at Crosby Hall in the making of +handloom socks, to whom I pay an occasional visit--much more for my own +cheer, I apprehend, than for theirs--express so in their honest +concentration under difficulties the actual and general value of their +people that just to be in their presence is a blest renewal of faith. +Excellent, exemplary, is this manly, homely, handy type, grave in its +somewhat strained attention, but at once lighted to the briefest, +sincerest humour of protest by any direct reference to the general +cruelty of its misfortune. Anything but unsuggestive, the range of the +'quiet' physiognomy, when one feels the consciousness behind it not to +have run thin. Thick and strong is the good Flemish sense of life and +all its functions--which fact is responsible for no empty and really +unmodelled 'mug.' + +I am afraid at the same time that, if the various ways of being bad are +beyond our reckoning, the condition and the action of exemplary goodness +tend rather to reduce to a certain rich unity of appearance those marked +by them, however dissociated from each other such persons may have been +by race and education. Otherwise what tribute shouldn't I be moved to +pay to the gentleman of Flanders to whom the specially improvised +craftsmen I have just mentioned owe their training and their +inspiration? through _his_ having, in his proscribed and denuded state, +mastered the craft in order to recruit them to it, and, in fine, so far +as my observation has been concerned, exhibit clear human virtue, +courage and patience and the humility of sought fellowship in privation, +with an unconscious beauty that I should be ashamed in this connection +not to have noted publicly. I scarce know what such a 'personality' as +his suggests to me if not that we had all, on our good Chelsea ground, +best take up and cherish as directly and ultimately as possible every +scrap of our community with our gentleman of Flanders. I make such a +point as this, at the same time, only to remember how, almost wherever I +have tried sustainingly to turn, my imagination and my intelligence have +been quickened, and to recognise in particular, for that matter, that +this couldn't possibly be more the case for them than in visiting a +certain hostel in one of our comparatively contracted but amply decent +local squares--riverside Chelsea having, of course, its own urban +identity in the multitudinous County of London: which, in itself as +happy an example, doubtless, of the hostel smoothly working as one need +cite, placed me in grateful relation with a lady, one of the victims of +her country's convulsion and in charge of the establishment I allude to, +whom simply to 'meet,' as we say, is to learn how singular a dignity, +how clear a distinction, may shine in active fortitude and economic +self-effacement under an all but crushing catastrophe. 'Talk about +faces----!' I could but privately ejaculate as I gathered the sense of +all that this one represented in the way of natural nobleness and +sweetness, a whole past acquaintance with letters and art and taste, +insisting on their present restrictedness to bare sisterly service. + +The proud rigour of association with pressing service alone, with +absolutely nothing else, the bare commodious house, so otherwise known +to me of old and now--like most of our hostels, if I am not mistaken, +the most unconditioned of loans from its relinquishing owner--the +lingering look of ancient peace in the precincts, an element I had +already, as I passed and repassed at the afternoon hour, found somehow +not at all dispelled by the presence in the central green garden itself +of sundry maimed and hobbling and smiling convalescents from an +extemporised small hospital close at hand, their battered khaki replaced +by a like uniformity of the loose light blue, and friendly talk with +them through the rails of their enclosure as blest to one participant at +least as friendly talk with them always and everywhere is: such were the +hovering elements of an impression in which the mind had yet mainly to +yield to that haunting force on the part of our waiting proscripts which +never consents to be long denied. The proof of which universally +recognised power of their spell amid us is indeed that they have led me +so far with a whole side of my plea for them still unspoken. This, +however, I hope on another occasion to come back to; and I am caught +meanwhile by my memory of how the note of this conviction was struck for +me, with extraordinary force, many months ago and in the first flush of +recognition of what the fate that had overtaken our earliest tides of +arrival and appeal really meant--meant so that all fuller acquaintance, +since pursued, has but piled one congruous reality after another upon +the horror. + +It was in September, in a tiny Sussex town which I had not quitted since +the outbreak of the war, and where the advent of our first handful of +fugitives before the warning of Louvain and Aerschoot and Termonde and +Dinant had just been announced. Our small hill-top city, covering the +steep sides of the compact pedestal crowned by its great church, had +reserved a refuge at its highest point; and we had waited all day, from +occasional train to train, for the moment at which we should attest our +hospitality. It came at last, but late in the evening, when a vague +outside rumour called me to my doorstep, where the unforgettable +impression at once assaulted me. Up the precipitous little street that +led from the station, over the old grass-grown cobbles where vehicles +rarely pass, came the panting procession of the homeless and their +comforting, their almost clinging entertainers, who seemed to hurry them +on as in a sort of overflow of expression of the fever of charity. It +was swift and eager, in the autumn darkness and under the flare of a +single lamp--with no vociferation and, but for a woman's voice, scarce a +sound save the shuffle of mounting feet and the thick-drawn breath of +emotion. The note I except, however, was that of a young mother carrying +her small child and surrounded by those who bore her on and on, almost +lifting her as they went together. The resonance through our immemorial +old street of her sobbing and sobbing cry was the voice itself of +history; it brought home to me more things than I could then quite take +the measure of, and these just because it expressed for her not direct +anguish, but the incredibility, as who should say, of honest assured +protection. Months have elapsed, and from having been then one of a few +hundred she is now one of scores and scores of thousands: yet her cry +is still in my ears, whether to speak most of what she had lately or of +what she actually felt; and it plays, to my own sense, as a great +fitful, tragic light over the dark exposure of her people. + + + + +THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEER MOTOR-AMBULANCE CORPS IN FRANCE + +_A Letter to the Editor of an American Journal_ + + +SIR,--Several of us Americans in London are so interested in the +excellent work of this body, lately organised by Mr Richard Norton and +now in active operation at the rear of a considerable part of the +longest line of battle known to history, that I have undertaken to +express to you our common conviction that our countrymen at home will +share our interest and respond to such particulars as we are by this +time able to give. The idea of the admirable enterprise was suggested to +Mr Norton when, early in the course of the War, he saw at the American +Hospital at Neuilly scores of cases of French and British wounded whose +lives were lost, or who must incur life--long disability and suffering, +through the long delay of their removal from the field of battle. To +help energetically to remedy this dire fact struck him at once as +possible, and his application of energy was so immediate and effective +that in just three weeks after his return to London to take the work in +hand he had been joined by a number of his countrymen and of others +possessed of cars, who had offered them as ambulances already fitted or +easily convertible, and had not less promptly offered themselves as +capable chauffeurs. To this promptly gathered equipment, the recruiting +of which no red tape had hampered and no postponement to +committee-meetings had delayed, were at once added certain other cars of +purchase--these made possible by funds rapidly received from many known +and unknown friends in America. The fleet so collected amounted to some +fifteen cars. To the service of the British Red Cross and that of the St +John Ambulance it then addressed itself, gratefully welcomed, and +enjoying from that moment the valuable association of Colonel A. J. +Barry of the British Army, who was already employed in part on behalf of +the Red Cross. I have within a few days had the opportunity to learn +from this zealous and accomplished coadjutor, as well as from Mr Norton +himself, some of the particulars of their comprehensive activity, they +each having been able to dash over to London for a visit of the briefest +duration. It has thus been brought home to me how much the success of +the good work depends on American generosity both in the personal and +the pecuniary way--exercised, that is, by the contribution of cars, to +which personal service, that of their contributors, attaches itself, and +of course by such gifts of money as shall make the Corps more and more +worthy of its function and of the American name. + +Its function is primarily that of gathering in the wounded, and those +disabled by illness (though the question is almost always of the +former,) from the _postes de secours_ and the field hospitals, the +various nearest points to the Front, bestrewn with patient victims, to +which a motor-car can workably penetrate, and conveying them to the base +hospitals, and when necessary the railway stations, from which they may +be further directed upon places of care, centres of those possibilities +of recovery which the splendid recent extension of surgical and medical +science causes more and more to preponderate. The great and blessed fact +is that conditions of recovery are largely secured by the promptitude +and celerity that motor-transport offers, as compared with railway +services at the mercy of constant interruption and arrest, in the case +of bad and already neglected wounds, those aggravated by exposure and +delay, the long lying on the poisonous field before the blest regimental +_brancardiers_ or stretcher-bearers, waiting for the shelter of night, +but full also of their own strain of pluck, can come and remove them. +Carried mostly by rude arts, a mercy much hindered at the best, to the +shelter, often hastily improvised, at which first aid becomes possible +for them, they are there, as immediately and tenderly as possible, +stowed in our waiting or arriving cars, each of which receives as large +a number as may be consistent with the particular suffering state of the +stricken individual. Some of these are able to sit, at whatever cost +from the inevitable shake over rough country roads; for others the lying +posture only is thinkable, and the ideal car is the one which may +humanely accommodate three men outstretched and four or five seated. +Three outstretched is sometimes a tight fit, but when this is impossible +the gain in poor _blessés assis_ is the greater--wedged together though +broken shoulder or smashed arm may have to be with a like shrinking and +shuddering neighbour. The moral of these rigours is of course that the +more numerous the rescuing vehicles the less inevitable the sore +crowding. I find it difficult to express to you the sense of practical +human pity, as well as the image of general helpful energy, applied in +innumerable chance ways, that we get from the report of what the Corps +has done, and holds itself in readiness to do, thanks to the admirable +spirit of devotion without stint, of really passionate work, animating +its individual members. These have been found beneficently and +inexhaustibly active, it is interesting to be able to note, in +proportion as they possess the general _educated_ intelligence, the +cultivated tradition of tact, and I may perhaps be allowed to confess +that, for myself, I find a positive added beauty in the fact that the +unpaid chauffeur, the wise amateur driver and ready lifter, helper, +healer, and, so far as may be, consoler, is apt to be a University man +and acquainted with other pursuits. One gets the sense that the labour, +with its multiplied incidents and opportunities, is just unlimitedly +inspiring to the keen spirit or the sympathetic soul, the recruit with +energies and resources on hand that plead with him for the beauty of the +vivid and palpable social result. + +Not the least of the good offices open to our helpers are the odds and +ends of aid determined by wayside encounters in a ravaged country, where +distracted women and children flee from threatened or invaded villages, +to be taken up, to be given the invaluable lift, if possible, in all +the incoherence of their alarm and misery; sometimes with the elder men +mixed in the tragic procession, tragi-comic even, very nearly, when the +domestic or household objects they have snatched up in their headlong +exodus, and are solemnly encumbered with, bear the oddest misproportion +to the gravity of the case. They are hurried in, if the car be happily +free, and carried on to comparative safety, but with the admirable +cleverness and courage of the Frenchwoman of whatever class essentially +in evidence in whatever contact; never more so, for instance, than when +a rude field hospital has had of a sudden to be knocked together in the +poor schoolhouse of a village, and the mangled and lacerated, brought +into it on stretchers or on any rough handcart or trundled barrow that +has been impressed into the service, have found the _villageoises_, +bereft of their men, full of the bravest instinctive alertness, not +wincing at sights of horror fit to try even trained sensibilities, +handling shattered remnants of humanity with an art as extemporised as +the refuge itself, and having each precarious charge ready for the +expert transfer by the time the car has hurried up. Emphasised enough by +the ceaseless thunder of the Front the quality of the French and the +British resistance and the pitch of their spirit; but one feels what is +meant none the less when one hears the variety of heroism and the +brightness of devotion in the women over all the region of battle +described from observation as unsurpassable. Do we take too much for +granted in imagining that this offered intimacy of appreciation of such +finest aspects of the admirable immortal France, and of a relation with +them almost as illuminating to ourselves as beneficent to them, may +itself rank as something of an appeal where the seeds of response to her +magnificent struggle in the eye of our free longings and liberal +impulses already exist? + +I should mention that a particular great Army Corps, on the arrival of +our first cars on the scene, appealed to them for all the service they +could render, and that to this Corps they have been as yet +uninterruptedly attached, on the condition of a reserve of freedom to +respond at once to any British invitation to a transfer of activity. +Such an assurance had already been given the Commissioner for the +British Red Cross, on the part of Mr Norton and Colonel Barry, with +their arrival at Boulogne, where that body cordially welcomed them, and +whence in fact, on its request, a four-stretcher-car, with its American +owner and another of our Volunteers in charge, proceeded to work for a +fortnight, night and day, along the firing line on the Belgian frontier. +Otherwise we have continuously enjoyed, in large, defined limits, up to +the present writing, an association with one of the most tremendously +engaged French Armies. The length of its line alone, were I to state it +here in kilometres, would give some measure of the prodigious fighting +stretch across what is practically the whole breadth of France, and it +is in relation to a fraction of the former Front that we have worked. +Very quickly, I may mention, we found one of our liveliest +opportunities, Mr Norton and Colonel Barry proceeding together to +ascertain what had become of one of the field hospitals known to have +served in a small assaulted town a few days before, when, during a +bombardment, Colonel Barry had saved many lives. Just as our Volunteers +arrived a fresh bombardment began, and though assured by the fleeing +inhabitants, including the mayor of the place, who was perhaps a trifle +over-responsibly in advance of them, that there were no wounded left +behind--as in fact proved to be the case--we nevertheless pushed on for +full assurance. There were then no wounded to bring out, but it was our +first happy chance of bearing away all the hopeless and helpless women +and children we could carry. This was a less complicated matter, +however, than that of one of Colonel Barry's particular reminiscences, +an occasion when the Germans were advancing on a small place that it was +clear they would take, and when pressing news came to him of 400 wounded +in it, who were to be got out if humanly possible. They were got out and +motored away--though it took the rescuing party thus three days, in the +face of their difficulties and dangers, to effect the blest clearance. +It may be imagined how precious in such conditions the power of the +chauffeur-driven vehicle becomes, though indeed I believe the more +special moral of this transaction, as given, was in the happy fact that +the squad had blessedly been able to bring and keep with it four +doctors, whose immediate service on the spot and during transport was +the means of saving very many lives. The moral of that in turn would +seem to be that the very ideal for the general case is the not so +inconceivable volunteer who should be an ardent and gallant and not +otherwise too much preoccupied young doctor with the possession of a car +and the ability to drive it, above all the ability to offer it, as his +crowning attribute. Perhaps I sketch in such terms a slightly fantastic +figure, but there is so much of strenuous suggestion, which withal +manages at the same time to be romantic, in the information before me, +that it simply multiplies, for the hopeful mind, the possibilities and +felicities of equipped good-will. An association of the grimmest reality +clings at the same time, I am obliged to add, to the record of success I +have just cited--the very last word of which seems to have been that in +one of the houses of the little distracted town were two French Sisters +of Mercy who were in charge of an old bedridden lady and whom, with the +object of their care, every effort was made in vain to remove. They +absolutely declined all such interference with the fate God had +appointed them to meet as nuns--if it was His will to make them martyrs. +The curtain drops upon what became of them, but they too illustrate in +their way the range of the Frenchwoman's power to face the situation. + +Still another form of high usefulness comes to our Corps, I should +finally mention, in its opportunities for tracing the whereabouts and +recovering the identity of the dead, the English dead, named in those +grim lists, supplied to them by the military authorities, which their +intercourse with the people in a given area where fighting has occurred +enables them often blessedly to clear up. Their pervasiveness, their +ubiquity, keeps them in touch with the people, witnesses of what happens +on the battle-swept area when, after the storm has moved on, certain of +the lifeless sweepings are gathered up. Old villagers, searched out and +questioned, testify and give a clue through which the whereabouts of the +committal to thin earth of the last mortality of this, that, or the +other of the obscurely fallen comes as a kind of irony of relief to +those waiting in suspense. This uncertainty had attached itself for +weeks to the fate in particular of many of the men concerned in the +already so historic retreat of the Allies from Mons--ground still +considerably in the hands of the Germans, but also gradually accessible +and where, as quickly as it becomes so, Colonel Barry pushes out into it +in search of information. Sternly touching are such notes of general +indication, information from the Curé, the village carpenter, the +grave-digger of the place, a man called so-and-so and a gentleman called +something else, as to the burial of forty-five dead English in the +public cemetery of such and such a small locality, as to the interment +somewhere else of 'an Englishman believed to be an officer,' as to a +hundred English surprised in a certain church and killed all but forty, +and buried, as is not always their fortune for their kindred, without +removal of their discs of identification. Among such like data we move +when not among those of a more immediate violence, and all to be in +their way scarce less considerately handled. Mixed with such gleanings +one comes upon other matters of testimony of which one hopes equal note +is made--testimony as to ferocities perpetrated upon the civil +population which I may not here specify. Every form of assistance and +inquiry takes place of course in conditions of some danger, thanks to +the risk of stray bullets and shells, not infrequently met when cars +operate, as they neither avoid doing nor wastefully seek to do, in +proximity to the lines. The Germans, moreover, are noted as taking the +view that the insignia of the Red Cross, with the implication of the +precarious freight it covers, are in all circumstances a good mark for +their shots; a view characteristic of their belligerent system at large, +but not more deterrent for the ministers of the adversary in this +connection than in any other, when the admirable end is in question. + +I have doubtless said enough, however, in illustration of the interest +attaching to all this service, a service in which not one of the forces +of social energy and devotion, not one of the true social qualities, +sympathy, ingenuity, tact, and taste, fail to come into play. Such an +exercise of them, as all the incidental possibilities are taken +advantage of, represents for us all, who are happily not engaged in the +huge destructive work, the play not simply of a reparatory or +consolatory, but a positively productive and creative virtue in which +there is a peculiar honour. We Americans are as little neutrals as +possible where any aptitude for any action, of whatever kind, that +affirms life and freshly and inventively exemplifies it, instead of +overwhelming and undermining it, is concerned. Great is the chance, in +fact, for exhibiting this as our entirely elastic, our supremely +characteristic, social aptitude. We cannot do so cheaply, indeed, any +more than the opposite course is found, under whatever fatuity of +presumption, inexpensive and ready-made. What I therefore invite all +those whom this notice may reach to understand, as for that matter they +easily will, is that the expenses of our enlightened enterprise have to +be continuously met, and that if it has confidence in such support it +may go on in all the alert pride and pity that need be desired. I am +assured that the only criticism the members of the Corps make of it is +that they wish more of their friends would come and support it either +personally or financially--or, best of all, of course, both. At the +moment I write I learn this invocation to have been met to the extent of +Mr Norton's having within two or three days annexed five fresh cars, +with their owners to work them--and all, as I hear it put with elation, +'excellent University men.' As an extremely helpful factor on the part +of Volunteers is some facility in French and the goodwill to stay on for +whatever reasonable length of time, I assume the excellence of these +gentlemen to include those signal merits. Most members of the Staff of +thirty-four in all (as the number till lately at least has stood) have +been glad to pay their own living expenses; but it is taken for granted +that in cases where individuals are unable to meet that outlay +indefinitely the subscribers to the Fund will not grudge its undertaking +to find any valuable man in food and lodging. Such charges amount at the +outside to 1 dollar 75 per day. The expenses of petrol and tyres are +paid by the French Government or the British Red Cross, so that the +contributor of the car is at costs only for the maintenance of his +chauffeur, if he brings one, or for necessary repairs. Mr Eliot Norton, +of 2 Rector Street, New York, is our recipient of donations on your side +of the sea, Mr George F. Read, Hon. Treas., care of Messrs Brown, +Shipley & Co., 123 Pall Mall, S.W., kindly performs this office in +London, and I am faithfully yours, + +HENRY JAMES. + +LONDON, _November 25, 1914_. + + + + +FRANCE + + +I think that if there is a general ground in the world, on which an +appeal might be made, in a civilised circle, with a sense of its being +uttered only to meet at once and beyond the need of insistence a certain +supreme recognition and response, the idea of what France and the French +mean to the educated spirit of man would be the nameable thing. It would +be the cause uniting us most quickly in an act of glad intelligence, +uniting us with the least need of any wondering why. We should +understand and answer together just by the magic of the mention, the +touch of the two or three words, and this in proportion to our feeling +ourselves social and communicating creatures--to the point, in fact, of +a sort of shame at any imputation of our not liberally understanding, of +our waiting in any degree to be nudged or hustled. The case of France, +as one may hold it, where the perceptive social mind is concerned and +set in motion, is thus only to be called exquisite--so far as we don't +seem so to qualify things _down_. We certainly all feel, in the +beautiful connection, in two general ways; one of these being that the +spring pressed with such happy effect lifts the sense by its mere +vibration into the lightest and brightest air in which, taking our world +all round, it is given to our finer interest about things to breathe and +move; and the other being that just having our intelligence, our +experience at its freest and bravest, taken for granted, is a compliment +to us, as not purely instinctive persons, which we should miss, if it +were not paid, rather to the degree of finding the omission an insult. + +Such, as I say, is our easy relation to the sound of a voice raised, +even however allusively and casually, on behalf of that great national +and social presence which has always most oppositely, most sensibly, +most obsessively, as I surely may put it, and above all most dazzlingly, +neighboured and admonished us here: after such a fashion as really to +have made the felt breath of its life, across an interval constantly +narrowing, a part of our education as distinguished from our luck. Our +luck in all our past has been enormous, the greatest luck on the whole, +assuredly, that any race has ever had; but it has never been a conscious +reaction or a gathered fruition, as one may say; it has just been a +singular felicity of position and of temperament, and this felicity has +made us observe and perceive and reflect much less than it has made us +directly act and profit and enjoy: enjoy of course by attending +tremendously to all the business involved in our position. So far as we +have had reactions, therefore, they have not sprung, when they have been +at all intensified, from the extraordinary good fortune of our state. +Unless indeed I may put it that what they _have_ very considerably +sprung from has been exactly a part of our general prodigy--the good +fortune itself of our being neighboured by a native genius so different +from our own, so suggestive of wondrous and attaching comparisons, as +to keep us chronically aware of the difference and the contrast and yet +all the while help us to see into them and through them. + +We were not, to all appearance, appointed by fate for the most +perceptive and penetrative offices conceivable; so that to have over +against us and within range a proposition, as we nowadays say, that +could only grow more and more vivid, more and more engaging and +inspiring, in the measure of our growth of criticism and curiosity, or, +in other words, of the capacity just to pay attention, pay attention +otherwise than by either sticking very fast at home or inquiring of the +Antipodes, the Antipodes almost exclusively--what has that practically +been for us but one of the very choicest phases of our luck aforesaid, +one of the most appraisable of our felicities? the very one, doubtless, +that our dissimilarity of temperament and taste would have most +contradictiously and most correctively prescribed from the moment we +were not to be left simply to stew in our juice! If the advantage I so +characterise was to be in its own way thoroughly affirmative, there was +yet nothing about it to do real or injurious violence to that abysmal +good nature which sometimes strikes me as our most effective +contribution to human history. The vision of France, at any rate, so +close and so clear at propitious hours, was to grow happily +illustrational for us as nothing else in any like relation to us could +possibly have become. Other families have a way, on good opportunity, of +interesting us more than our own, and here was this immense acquaintance +extraordinarily mattering for us and at the same time not irritating us +by a single claim of cousinship or a single liberty taken on any such +score. Any liberties taken were much rather liberties, I think, of +ours--always abounding as we did in quite free, and perhaps slightly +rough, and on the whole rather superficial, movement beyond our island +circle and toward whatever lay in our path. France lay very much in our +path, our path to almost everything that could beckon us forth from our +base--and there were very few things in the world or places on the +globe that didn't so beckon us; according to which she helped us along +on our expansive course a good deal more, doubtless, than either she or +we always knew. + +All of which, you see, is but a manner of making my point that her name +means more than anything in the world to us but just our own. Only at +present it means ever so much more, almost unspeakably more, than it has +ever done in the past, and I can't help inviting you to feel with me, +for a very few moments, what the real force of this association to which +we now throb consists of, and why it so moves us. We enjoy generous +emotions _because_ they are generous, because generosity is a noble +passion and a glow, because we spring with it for the time above our +common pedestrian pace--and this just in proportion as all questions and +doubts about it drop to the ground. But great reasons never spoil a +great sympathy, and to see an inspiring object in a strong light never +made any such a shade less inspiring. So, therefore, in these days when +our great neighbour and Ally is before us in a beauty that is tragic, +tragic because menaced and overdarkened, the closest possible +appreciation of what it is that is thereby in peril for ourselves and +for the world makes the image shine with its highest brightness at the +same time that the cloud upon it is made more black. When I sound the +depth of my own affection so fondly excited, I take the like measure for +all of us and feel the glad recognition I meet in thus putting it to +you, for our full illumination, that what happens to France happens to +all that part of ourselves which we are most proud, and most finely +advised, to enlarge and cultivate and consecrate. + +Our heroic friend sums up for us, in other words, and has always summed +up, the life of the mind and the life of the senses alike, taken +together, in the most irrepressible freedom of either--and, after that +fashion, positively lives _for_ us, carries on experience for us; does +it under our tacit and our at present utterly ungrudging view of her +being formed and endowed and constantly prompted, toward such doing, on +all sorts of sides that are simply so many reasons for our standing +off, standing off in a sort of awed intellectual hush or social +suspense, and watching and admiring and thanking her. She is sole and +single in this, that she takes charge of those of the interests of man +which most dispose him to fraternise with himself, to pervade all his +possibilities and to taste all his faculties, and in consequence to find +and to make the earth a friendlier, an easier, and especially a more +various sojourn; and the great thing is the amiability and the +authority, intimately combined, with which she has induced us all to +trust her on this ground. There are matters as to which every set of +people has of course most to trust itself, most to feel its own genius +and its own stoutness--as we are here and all round about us knowing and +abiding by that now as we have never done. But I verily think there has +never been anything in the world--since the most golden aspect of +antiquity at least--like the way in which France has been trusted to +gather the rarest and fairest and sweetest fruits of our so tremendously +and so mercilessly turned-up garden of life. She has gardened where the +soil of humanity has been most grateful and the aspect, so to call it, +most toward the sun, and there, at the high and yet mild and fortunate +centre, she has grown the precious, intimate, the nourishing, finishing +things that she has inexhaustibly scattered abroad. And if we have all +so taken them from her, so expected them from her as our right, to the +point that she would have seemed positively to fail of a passed pledge +to help us to happiness if she had disappointed us, this has been +because of her treating us to the impression of genius as no nation +since the Greeks has treated the watching world, and because of our +feeling that genius at that intensity is infallible. + +What it has all amounted to, as I say, is that we have never known +otherwise an agent so beautifully organised, organised from within, for +a mission, and that such an organisation at free play has made us really +want never to lift a finger to break the charm. We catch at every turn +of our present long-drawn crisis indeed that portentous name: it's +displayed to us on a measureless scale that our Enemy is organised, +organised possibly to the effect of binding us with a spell if anything +_could_ keep us passive. The term has been in a manner, by that +association, compromised and vulgarised: I say vulgarised because any +history of organisation from without and for intended aggression and +self-imposition, however elaborate the thing may be, shows for merely +mechanical and bristling compared with the condition of being naturally +and functionally endowed and appointed. This last is the only fair +account of the complete and perfect case that France has shown us and +that civilisation has depended on for half its assurances. Well, now, we +have before us this boundless extension of the case, that, as we have +always known what it was to see the wonderful character I speak of range +through its variety and keep shining with another and still another +light, so in these days we assist at what we may verily call the supreme +evidence of its incomparable gift for vivid exhibition. It takes our +great Ally, and her only, to be as vivid for concentration, for +reflection, for intelligent, inspired contraction of life toward an end +all but smothered in sacrifice, as she has ever been for the most +splendidly wasteful diffusion and communication; and to give us a view +of her nature and her mind in which, laying down almost every advantage, +every art and every appeal that we have generally known her by, she +takes on energies, forms of collective sincerity, silent eloquence and +selected example that are fresh revelations--and so, bleeding at every +pore, while at no time in all her history so completely erect, makes us +feel her perhaps as never before our incalculable, immortal France. + + + + +THE LONG WARDS + + +There comes back to me out of the distant past an impression of the +citizen soldier at once in his collective grouping and in his impaired, +his more or less war-worn state, which was to serve me for long years as +the most intimate vision of him that my span of life was likely to +disclose. This was a limited affair indeed, I recognise as I try to +recover it, but I mention it because I was to find at the end of time +that I had kept it in reserve, left it lurking deep down in my sense of +things, however shyly and dimly, however confusedly even, as a term of +comparison, a glimpse of something by the loss of which I should have +been the poorer; such a residuary possession of the spirit, in fine, as +only needed darkness to close round it a little from without in order to +give forth a vague phosphorescent light. It was early, it must have +been very early, in our Civil War; yet not so early but that a large +number of those who had answered President Lincoln's first call for an +army had had time to put in their short period (the first term was so +short then, as was likewise the first number,) and reappear again in +camp, one of those of their small New England state, under what seemed +to me at the hour, that of a splendid autumn afternoon, the thickest +mantle of heroic history. If I speak of the impression as confused I +certainly justify that mark of it by my failure to be clear at this +moment as to how much they were in general the worse for wear--since +they can't have been exhibited to me, through their waterside settlement +of tents and improvised shanties, in anything like hospital conditions. +However, I cherish the rich ambiguity, and have always cherished it, for +the sake alone of the general note exhaled, the thing that has most kept +remembrance unbroken. I carried away from the place the impression, the +one that not only was never to fade, but was to show itself susceptible +of extraordinary eventual enrichment. I may not pretend now to refer it +to the more particular sources it drew upon at that summer's end of +1861, or to say why my repatriated warriors were, if not somehow +definitely stricken, so largely either lying in apparent helplessness or +moving about in confessed languor: it suffices me that I have always +thought of them as expressing themselves at almost every point in the +minor key, and that this has been the reason of their interest. What I +call the note therefore is the characteristic the most of the essence +and the most inspiring--inspiring I mean for consideration of the +admirable sincerity that we thus catch in the act: the note of the quite +abysmal softness, the exemplary genius for accommodation, that forms the +alternative aspect, the passive as distinguished from the active, of the +fighting man whose business is in the first instance formidably to +bristle. This aspect has been produced, I of course recognise, amid the +horrors that the German powers had, up to a twelvemonth ago, been for +years conspiring to let loose upon the world by such appalling engines +and agencies as mankind had never before dreamed of; but just that is +the lively interest of the fact unfolded to us now on a scale beside +which, and though save indeed for a single restriction, the whole +previous illustration of history turns pale. Even if I catch but in a +generalising blur that exhibition of the first American levies as a +measure of experience had stamped and harrowed them, the signally +attaching mark that I refer to is what I most recall; so that if I +didn't fear, for the connection, to appear to compare the slighter +things with the so much greater, the diminished shadow with the +far-spread substance, I should speak of my small old scrap of truth, +miserably small in contrast with the immense evidence even then to have +been gathered, but in respect to which latter occasion didn't come to +me, as having contained possibilities of development that I must have +languished well-nigh during a lifetime to crown it with. + +One had during the long interval not lacked opportunity for a vision of +the soldier at peace, moving to and fro with a professional eye on the +horizon, but not fished out of the bloody welter and laid down to pant, +as we actually see him among the Allies, almost on the very bank and +within sound and sight of his deepest element. The effect of many of the +elapsing years, the time in England and France and Italy, had indeed +been to work his collective presence so closely and familiarly into any +human scene pretending to a full illustration of our most generally +approved conditions that I confess to having missed him rather +distressfully from the picture of things offered me during a series of +months spent not long ago in a few American cities after years of +disconnection. I can scarce say why I missed him sadly rather than +gladly--I might so easily have prefigured one's delight in his absence; +but certain it is that my almost outraged consciousness of our +practically doing without him amid American conditions was a revelation +of the degree in which his great imaging, his great reminding and +enhancing function is rooted in the European basis. I felt his +non-existence on the American positively produce a void which nothing +else, as a vivifying substitute, hurried forward to fill; this being +indeed the case with many of the other voids, the most aching, which +left the habituated eye to cast about as for something to nibble in a +state of dearth. We never know, I think, how much these wanting elements +have to suggest to the pampered mind till we feel it living in view of +the community from which they have been simplified away. On these +occasions they conspire with the effect of certain other, certain +similar expressions, examples of social life proceeding as by the +serene, the possibly too serene, process of mere ignorance, to bring to +a head for the fond observer the wonder of what is supposed to strike, +for the projection of a finished world, the note that they are not there +to strike. However, as I quite grant the hypothesis of an observer still +fond and yet remarking the lapse of the purple patch of militarism but +with a joy unclouded, I limit myself to the merely personal point that +the fancy of a particular brooding analyst _could_ so sharply suffer +from a vagueness of privation, something like an unseasoned +observational diet, and then, rather to his relief, find the mystery +cleared up. And the strict relevancy of the bewilderment I glance at, +moreover, becomes questionable, further, by reason of my having, with +the outbreak of the horrors in which we are actually steeped, caught +myself staring at the exhibited militarism of the general British scene +not much less ruefully than I could remember to have stared, a little +before, at the utter American deficit. Which proves after all that the +rigour of the case had begun at a bound to defy the largest luxury of +thought; so that the presence of the military in the picture on the mere +moderate insular scale struck one as 'furnishing' a menaced order but in +a pitiful and pathetic degree. + +The degree was to alter, however, by swift shades, just as one's +comprehension of the change grew and grew with it; and thus it was that, +to cut short the record of our steps and stages, we have left +immeasurably behind us here the question of what might or what should +have been. That belonged, with whatever beguiled or amused ways of +looking at it, to the abyss of our past delusion, a collective state of +mind in which it had literally been possible to certain sophists to +argue that, so far from not having soldiers enough, we had more than we +were likely to know any respectable public call for. It was in the very +fewest weeks that we replaced a pettifogging consciousness by the most +splendidly liberal, and, having swept through all the first phases of +anxiety and suspense, found no small part of our measure of the matter +settle down to an almost luxurious study of our multiplied defenders +after the fact, as I may call it, or in the light of that acquaintance +with them as products supremely tried and tested which I began by +speaking of. We were up to our necks in this relation before we could +turn round, and what upwards of a year's experience of it has done in +the contributive and enriching way may now well be imagined. I might +feel that my marked generalisation, the main hospital impression, +steeps the case in too strong or too stupid a synthesis, were it not +that to consult my memory, a recollection of countless associative +contacts, is to see the emphasis almost absurdly thrown on my +quasi-paradox. Just so it is of singular interest for the witnessing +mind itself to feel the happy truth stoutly resist any qualifying +hint--since I am so struck with the charm, as I can only call it, of the +tone and temper of the man of action, the creature appointed to advance +and explode and destroy, and elaborately instructed as to how to do +these things, reduced to helplessness in the innumerable instances now +surrounding us. It doesn't in the least take the edge from my impression +that his sweet reasonableness, representing the opposite end of his +wondrous scale, is probably the very oldest story of the touching kind +in the world; so far indeed from my claiming the least originality for +the appealing appearance as it has lately reached me from so many sides, +I find its suggestion of vast communities, communities of patience and +placidity, acceptance and submission pushed to the last point, to be +just what makes the whole show most illumination. + +'Wonderful that, from east to west, they must _all_ be like this,' one +says to oneself in presence of certain consistencies, certain positive +monotonies of aspect; 'wonderful that if joy of battle (for the classic +term, in spite of new horrors, seems clearly still to keep its old +sense,) has, to so attested a pitch, animated these forms, the +disconnection of spirit should be so prompt and complete, should hand +the creature over as by the easiest turn to the last refinements of +accommodation. The disconnection of the flesh, of physical function in +whatever ravaged area, _that_ may well be measureless; but how +interesting, if the futility of such praise doesn't too much dishonour +the subject, the exquisite anomaly of the intimate readjustment of the +really more inflamed and exasperated part, or in other words of the +imagination, the captured, the haunted vision, to life at its most +innocent and most ordered!' To that point one's unvarying thought of +the matter, which yet, though but a meditation without a conclusion, +becomes the very air in which fond attention spends itself. So far as +commerce of the acceptable, the tentatively helpful kind goes, one looks +for the key to success then, among the victims, exactly on that ground +of the apprehension pacified and almost, so to call it, trivialised. The +attaching thing becomes thus one's intercourse with the imagination of +the particular patient subject, the individual himself, in the measure +in which this interest bears us up and carries us along; which name for +the life of his spirit has to cover, by a considerable stretch, all the +ground. By the stretch of the name, moreover, I am far from meaning any +stretch of the faculty itself--which remains for the most part a +considerably contracted or inert force, a force in fact often so +undeveloped as to be insusceptible of measurement at all, so that one +has to resort, in face of the happy fact that communion still does hold +good, to some other descriptive sign for it. That sign, however, +fortunately presents itself with inordinate promptitude and fits to its +innocent head with the last perfection the cap, in fact the very crown, +of an office that we can only appraise as predetermined good nature. We +after this fashion score our very highest on behalf of a conclusion, I +think, in feeling that whether or no the British warrior's good nature +has much range of fancy, his imagination, whatever there may be of it, +is at least so good-natured as to show absolutely everything it touches, +everything without exception, even the worst machinations of the enemy, +in that colour. Variety and diversity of exhibition, in a world +virtually divided as now into hospitals and the preparation of subjects +for them, are, I accordingly conceive, to be looked for quite away from +the question of physical patience, of the general consent to suffering +and mutilation, and, instead of that, in this connection of the sort of +mind and thought, the sort of moral attitude, that are born of the +sufferer's other relations; which I like to think of as being different +from country to country, from class to class, and as having their +fullest national and circumstantial play. + +It would be of the essence of these remarks, could I give them within my +space all the particular applications naturally awaiting them, that they +pretend to refer here to the British private soldier only--generalisation +about his officers would take us so considerably further and so much +enlarge our view. The high average of the beauty and modesty of these, +in the stricken state, causes them to affect me, I frankly confess, as +probably the very flower of the human race. One's apprehension of +'Tommy'--and I scarce know whether more to dislike the liberty this mode +of reference takes with him, or to incline to retain it for the +tenderness really latent in it--is in itself a theme for fine notation, +but it has brought me thus only to the door of the boundless hospital +ward in which, these many months, I have seen the successive and the so +strangely quiet tides of his presence ebb and flow, and it stays me +there before the incalculable vista. The perspective stretches away, in +its mild order, after the fashion of a tunnel boring into the very +character of the people, and so going on for ever--never arriving or +coming out, that is, at anything in the nature of a station, a junction +or a terminus. So it draws off through the infinite of the common +personal life, but planted and bordered, all along its passage, with the +thick-growing flower of the individual illustration, this sometimes +vivid enough and sometimes pathetically pale. The great fact, to my now +so informed vision, is that it undiscourageably continues and that an +unceasing repetition of its testifying particulars seems never either to +exhaust its sense or to satisfy that of the beholder. Its sense, indeed, +if I may so far simplify, is pretty well always the same, that of the +jolly fatalism above-mentioned, a state of moral hospitality to the +practices of fortune, however outrageous, that may at times fairly be +felt as providing amusement, providing a new and thereby a refreshing +turn of the personal situation, for the most interested party. It is +true that one may be sometimes moved to wonder which is the most +interested party, the stricken subject in his numbered bed or the +friendly, the unsated inquirer who has tried to forearm himself against +such a measure of the 'criticism of life' as might well be expected to +break upon him from the couch in question, and who yet, a thousand +occasions for it having been, all round him, inevitably neglected, finds +this ingenious provision quite left on his hands. He may well ask +himself what he is to do with people who so consistently and so +comfortably content themselves with _being_--being for the most part +incuriously and instinctively admirable--that nothing whatever is left +of them for reflection as distinguished from their own practice; but the +only answer that comes is the reproduction of the note. He may, in the +interest of appreciation, try the experiment of lending them some scrap +of a complaint or a curse in order that they shall meet him on congruous +ground, the ground of encouragement to his own participating impulse. +They are imaged, under that possibility, after the manner of those +unfortunates, the very poor, the victims of a fire or shipwreck, to whom +you have to lend something to wear before they can come to thank you for +helping them. The inmates of the long wards, however, have no use for +any imputed or derivative sentiments or reasons; they feel in their own +way, they feel a great deal, they don't at all conceal from you that to +have seen what they have seen is to have seen things horrible and +monstrous--but there is no estimate of them for which they seek to be +indebted to you, and nothing they less invite from you than to show them +that such visions must have poisoned their world. Their world isn't in +the least poisoned; they have assimilated their experience by a process +scarce at all to be distinguished from their having healthily got rid of +it. + +The case thus becomes for you that they consist wholly of their applied +virtue, which is accompanied with no waste of consciousness whatever. +The virtue may strike you as having been, and as still being, greater in +some examples than in others, but it has throughout the same sign of +differing at almost no point from a supreme amiability. How can +creatures so amiable, you allow yourself vaguely to wonder, have +welcomed even for five minutes the stress of carnage? and how can the +stress of carnage, the murderous impulse at the highest pitch, have left +so little distortion of the moral nature? It has left none at all that +one has at the end of many months been able to discover; so that perhaps +the most steadying and refreshing effect of intercourse with these +hospital friends is through the almost complete rest from the facing of +generalisations to which it treats you. One would even like, perhaps, as +a stimulus to talk, more generalisation; but one gets enough of that out +in the world, and one doesn't get there nearly so much of what one gets +in this perspective, the particular perfect sufficiency of the +extraordinary principle, whatever it is, which makes the practical +answer so supersede any question or any argument that it seems fairly to +have acted by chronic instinctive anticipation, the habit of freely +throwing the personal weight into any obvious opening. The personal +weight, in its various forms and degrees, is what lies there with a head +on the pillow and whatever wise bandages thereabout or elsewhere, and it +becomes interesting in itself, and just in proportion, I think, to its +having had all its history after the fact. All its history is that of +the particular application which has brought it to the pass at which you +find it, and is a stream round about which you have to press a little +hard to make it flow clear. Then, in many a case, it does flow, +certainly, as clear as one could wish, and with the strain that it is +always somehow English history and illustrates afresh the English way of +doing things and regarding them, of feeling and naming them. The sketch +extracted is apt to be least coloured when the prostrate historian, as I +may call him, is an Englishman of the English; it has more point, though +not perhaps more essential tone, when he is a Scot of the Scots, and has +most when he is an Irishman of the Irish; but there is absolutely no +difference, in the light of race and save as by inevitable variation +from individual to individual, about the really constant and precious +matter, the attested possession on the part of the contributor of a free +loose undisciplined quantity of being to contribute. + +This is the palpable and ponderable, the admirably appreciable, +residuum--as to which if I be asked just how it is that I pluck the +flower of amiability from the bramble of an individualism so bristling +with accents, I am afraid I can only say that the accents would seem by +the mercy of chance to fall together in the very sense that permits us +to detach the rose with the fewest scratches. The rose of active good +nature, irreducible, incurable, or in other words all irreflective, +_that_ is the variety which the individualistic tradition happens, up +and down these islands, to wear upon its ample breast--even it may be +with considerable effect of monotony. There it is, for what it is, and +the very simplest summary of one's poor bedside practice is perhaps to +confess that one has most of all kept one's nose buried in it. There +hangs about the poor practitioner by that fact, I profess, an aroma not +doubtless at all mixed or in the least mystical, but so unpervertedly +wholesome that what can I pronounce it with any sort of conscience but +sweet? That is the rough, unless I rather say the smooth, report of it; +which covers of course, I hasten to add, a constant shift of impression +within the happy limits. Did I not, by way of introduction to these +awaiters of acknowledgment, find myself first of all, early in the +autumn, in presence of the first aligned rows of lacerated +Belgians?--the eloquence of whose mere mute expression of their state, +and thereby of their cause, remains to me a vision unforgettable for +ever, and this even though I may not here stretch my scale to make them, +Flemings of Flanders though they were, fit into my remarks with the +English of the English and the Scotch of the Scotch. If other witnesses +might indeed here fit in they would decidedly come nearest, for there +were aspects under which one might almost have taken them simply for +Britons comparatively starved of sport and, to make up for that, on +straighter and homelier terms with their other senses and appetites. But +their effect, thanks to their being so seated in everything that their +ripe and rounded temperament had done for them, was to make their +English entertainers, and their successors in the long wards especially, +seem ever so much more complicated--besides making of what had happened +to themselves, for that matter, an enormity of outrage beyond all +thought and pity. Their fate had cut into their spirit to a peculiar +degree through their flesh, as if they had had an unusual thickness of +this, so to speak--which up to that time had protected while it now but +the more exposed and, collectively, entrapped them; so that the ravaged +and plundered domesticity that one felt in them, which was mainly what +they had to oppose, made the terms of their exile and their suffering an +extension of the possible and the dreadful. But all that vision is a +chapter by itself--the essence of which is perhaps that it has been the +privilege of this placid and sturdy people to show the world a new +shade and measure of the tragic and the horrific. The first wash of the +great Flemish tide ebbed at any rate from the hospitals--creating +moreover the vast needs that were to be so unprecedentedly met, and the +native procession which has prompted these remarks set steadily in. I +have played too uncertain a light, I am well aware, not arresting it at +half the possible points, yet with one aspect of the case staring out so +straight as to form the vivid moral that asks to be drawn. The deepest +impression from the sore human stuff with which such observation deals +is that of its being strong and sound in an extraordinary degree for the +conditions producing it. These conditions represent, one feels at the +best, the crude and the waste, the ignored and neglected state; and +under the sense of the small care and scant provision that have attended +such hearty and happy growths, struggling into life and air with no +furtherance to speak of, the question comes pressingly home of what a +better economy might, or verily mightn't, result in. If this abundance +all slighted and unencouraged can still comfort us, what wouldn't it do +for us tended and fostered and cultivated? That is my moral, for I +believe in Culture--speaking strictly now of the honest and of our own +congruous kind. + + +GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. 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