Jkfnrt atttr $0to
 
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 Mtltivt aittr ^tofo 
 
 By 
 
 IP 
 
 lOntJOn: John Lane, The 
 Bodley Head. Btto&QtK: 
 John Lane Company 
 
 MCMXIX 
 
 1
 
 Printed in Great Britain 
 by Tumbull &■= Shears, Edinburgh.
 
 €antttxtQ 
 
 Foreword . 
 
 Jingoism 
 
 The Coming of Smith 
 
 "Surrey in Danger" 
 
 Peace, Perfect Peace 
 
 St George's Stirrup 
 
 The Duke's Buffalo 
 
 A "Christian" Europe and Afierwards 
 
 Our Gentlemen's Schools 
 
 Authority and Privilege 
 
 The New Sesame and Lilies 
 
 The Christian Drum 
 
 What is Ours is not Ours 
 
 The Country of the Blind 
 
 " Leave them 'orses Alone ! " 
 
 TAGE 
 
 vii 
 
 3 
 19 
 
 3° 
 43 
 60 
 
 69 
 
 84 
 
 96 
 
 123 
 
 132 
 
 J 45 
 157 
 169 
 
 184
 
 VI 
 
 before ant) JRotn 
 
 Foreign Politics 
 
 "Minny" 
 
 The Awakening 
 Musings at Fort Vaux 
 Foundations ok Reconstruction 
 
 PAGE 
 197 
 
 209 
 
 228 
 
 241 
 
 259
 
 jForeuiort) 
 
 WHEN we console ourselves with the 
 cry that war " caught us unprepared," 
 we pronounce unquestionably the 
 truth and also a judgment. And that is the 
 excuse for the gathering together of these pre- 
 war echoes ; they hang and hand on a thread. 
 At least they show that The English Review, in 
 which they appeared, took a correct estimate of 
 European affairs, held an unswerving course, did 
 what it could to dissipate the delusions of in- 
 sularity in the critical years which immediately 
 preceded the war. Pieced together to-day, they 
 connect a story. 
 
 After the Khaki election of the Boer War the 
 inevitable reaction followed, closing the era of 
 Jingoism. The Tariff Reform movement was 
 too obviously a political diversion to succeed in 
 those days, and it led to that ascendancy of 
 Liberalism which swept away the privilege of 
 the House of Lords ; which ultimately swept us 
 " unprepared " into the great European struggle, 
 in the vortex of which it in turn was swept 
 away. 
 
 If the reaction of Cecil Rhodes was Campbell 
 Bannerman, we must never forget that we owe
 
 viii Before ant) Bouj 
 
 perhaps our destiny to the provident act of the 
 statesman who, after the war, conferred self- 
 government upon the Boers, for that essentially- 
 English wisdom probably saved the Empire in 
 1914-15. The South African rebellion, which 
 the Germans had counted upon, did not take 
 place, because the cause of rebellion had been 
 removed. The fact " steadied " Europe. So 
 the man denounced in his time as " traitor has 
 been proved a creator, and with the recognition of 
 that truth our civilisation received a new spiritu- 
 ality, which has since become the fulcrum of the 
 world's crusade against monarchical militarism. 
 
 These impressions bear upon the interim stage 
 which, looking back, we can to-day see tally, 
 without even a question of poetical licence, with 
 the logic of the " absent-minded beggar " of 
 Mr Kipling. The African gamble was dis- 
 credited. Men had grown suspicious of mere 
 Jingoism which, leading to the secondary symptom 
 of European filibustery in China, was felt gener- 
 ally to be a policy of high explosives. Its place 
 had been taken by King Edward. Almost un- 
 noticed by the public, Britain had re-entered 
 the Continental system of power as the military 
 and political wing of Europe, thereby putting 
 an end to our historical attitude of " isolation." 
 Yet this position was not understood, remained 
 unformulated, was never here or continentally 
 accepted. It seemed to be a condition, though 
 in reality it changed the balance of power by its 
 creation of the two great European groups of
 
 jforetoortJ ix 
 
 Alliances or armed antagonisms which ultimately 
 clashed in 1914. Again and again the Germans 
 sought to test the reality and potentiality of our 
 adhesion to the rival continental grouping, over 
 Morocco, and on several occasions war was only 
 avoided by the sagacity of France. Yet even so 
 Europe was in doubt, and actually, as we now 
 know, we ourselves were in doubt up to the 
 decision of the most momentous Cabinet Council 
 ever held in this country in the first days of 
 August 1 914, thus determining not only the 
 issue of the war but the fate of Europe and of 
 the Anglo-Saxon civilisation. 
 
 I think history will decide that the war broke 
 out largely as the result of this uncertainty of 
 attachment. In the years 1900-10 I had many 
 conversations with German politicians, soldiers 
 and journalists, on this point, and always the 
 assumption was that England would at any rate 
 never deviate from her policy of " limited 
 liability " so far as military help was concerned ; 
 and always the corollary followed that in no case 
 would America ever interfere in a European 
 war. That was the German root and, eventually 
 determinative, axiom. War would be strictly 
 European, in which belief all German military 
 writers, from Bernhardi onward, concurred. The 
 strange thing is that we in this country were 
 also doubtful. 
 
 The Prime Minister raised the veil which 
 shrouds secret diplomacy and the military 
 relationship of nations the other day by referring
 
 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 to a " contract " with France, obliging us to go 
 to her assistance in the event of that country 
 being wantonly attacked. So we learn — too 
 late. Yet Mr Lloyd George never informed the 
 country of that obligation and certainly never 
 informed Parliament, who remained to the last 
 sublimely ignorant of such a liability ; nor clearly 
 did he inform a number of Ministers, who resigned 
 in consequence in the opening days of war. 
 More ! we now know that in the Cabinet Council 
 itself opinion was divided, and that the decision 
 was taken largely as the result of outside Party 
 pressure. 
 
 The truth is that our rulers never grasped the 
 full significance of King Edward's policy which 
 led to the Entente, or the responsibility which 
 inevitably such an association in the prevailing 
 conditions of armed peace implied. To the 
 public, it seemed to be solely a problem of ships, 
 which again became a matter of controversy. 
 Our potential military attachment was disregarded 
 whether militarily as a responsibility, or polit- 
 ically as a conjuncture. And in this blindness, 
 or refusal to face the realities of the con- 
 ditions and forces which were slowly driving 
 Europe into collision, our rulers played a directive 
 part of drift and indecision. We did not see, 
 because our political masters were either in- 
 capable of seeing, or were perhaps themselves 
 afraid to see : instead they waited — unpre- 
 pared. That in substance is the thread which 
 gives this volume continuity.
 
 jfotetDort) xi 
 
 Throughout, the appeals are to our coming 
 national responsibility, as the Ally of France. 
 Journalism then, to-day they are prophetic. 
 With all their imperfections, in part unavoidable 
 from the note-form in which they were written, 
 such is their justification, abridged and annotated 
 a bit as a picture of the emotions, movements 
 and circumstances that troubled Britain in her 
 incredible period of preoccupation. 
 
 AUSTIN HARRISON
 
 Beftfre autr $0to
 
 Mtiavt aittf 0a\u 
 
 3iingot0m 
 
 Mayday 191 1 
 
 ROUND and round the maypole the 
 children were dancing on the green, 
 and the sun shone down upon the 
 daisies and buttercups which they wore as 
 chaplets upon their heads, and away upon the 
 sloping meadows flowing in the light breeze 
 like a sea of green and gold. There was a May 
 Queen, too, a slim, laughing wench with long, 
 black hair falling about her shoulders and quite 
 astonishingly far down over her white maiden 
 frock, and all the elders and folk of the village, 
 and some of the squirearchy, were gathered 
 together — the oldest man of the parish who 
 remembered Waterloo, the parson whose little 
 daughter would join in the revels, the black- 
 smith, the sexton, and old Mrs Humpeltody, 
 who once upon a time had been Queen of the 
 May herself and now was a faded, wrinkled 
 crone, and the usual village idiot. And these 
 people danced as in the times of Merry England, 
 so that there was joy in the land. 
 
 All the morning and throughout the afternoon 
 the frolic went on to the delight of the children, 
 the scampering, yelping dogs, and the old people, 
 but towards sundown the bells of the church
 
 xefore ant) Bom 
 
 began to toll, and though the children heeded 
 them not, all the elders, the young men and the 
 young women made for the quaint little cemetery 
 cushioned against the wooded knoll where, they 
 say, the Ironsides once made fire and break- 
 fasted. 1 Quite a concourse were assembled, for 
 there is nothing like a good funeral in the country- 
 side to cap a day's pleasure ; besides, the dead 
 man was not of the parish, nor, so far as any one 
 within a radius of ten miles could tell, had he had 
 any traffic with those that were of it. There 
 was no occasion for tears then, and, in conse- 
 quence, an unusual proportion of the young met 
 at the graveyard to listen to the funeral oration 
 which, they understood, a strange man from 
 London had journeyed down that day to deliver. 
 
 There was thus a sensational element about 
 the ceremony — a mystery. The sexton's wife 
 first started the rumour. Men went to the 
 gravedigger for confirmation, but he was of a 
 wary nature, and beyond an admission that the 
 " size " of it was unusual no positive information 
 could be extracted. 
 
 At the open grave all doubt vanished. It 
 was a big grave, a huge cavity, deeper, longer, 
 wider even than that which the coffin of Jim 
 Haliday had rendered necessary, he, too, the 
 biggest man in the Army in his time, " come 
 now some two score years." Even the black- 
 smith shook his head, as he stepped boldly forward 
 in front of the others and peered into the big 
 
 1 Little Kimble.
 
 jingoism 
 
 pit. " I never see'd the like of 'e," he told his 
 wife deliberately, and the words went round in 
 a whisper. Boys gaped into it, for once in a way 
 awestruck. The young men took counsel of the 
 old men, but the wisest of the gaffers could " say 
 nought fer a cartainty." It was so big and 
 cavernous that all the girls and young women 
 caught hold of the sleeves of their young men 
 and began to giggle, and all, wise, old and young 
 felt that they stood there before the presence of 
 a mystery the like of which had never come within 
 the recollection of anyone there. 
 
 Tension was at high pitch when the little 
 procession filed out of the church, but every- 
 thing took place in the ordinary way. The 
 cofhn was certainly enormous, yet it did not 
 appear to be of an unusual weight. There were 
 no mourners. Only a short, thick-set man with 
 very broad shoulders followed with a wreath of 
 primroses in his hand, still there was nothing 
 particular about him unless for a certain 
 solemnity, and then the coffin was lowered 
 into the deep pit. 
 
 The stranger with the broad shoulders ad- 
 vanced, let the wreath fall into the grave, turned 
 round square to the people and spoke. 
 
 " Friends," he said, quietly but clearly, so as 
 to be heard by all, " before we perform the last 
 offices I should like to say a few words about an 
 epoch we are now burying. It was a great spirit, 
 let me tell you, perhaps I should say rather a 
 great idea. It was the outcome and epitome of
 
 "Before ant) Botu 
 
 the Victorian Era. Let me explain. This dear 
 land of ours, this England, our island home, had 
 fallen, if I may say so, rather behind the times, 
 as the result of long years, decades, of unrivalled 
 prosperity due, in part, to our position and the 
 sense of security afforded by our Navy, but chiefly 
 to the spirit and industry of our fathers. Towards 
 the close of the last century, we occupied in the 
 world a place unique in history — greater than the 
 Empire of Rome at her summit, wealthy as no 
 other people ever were before, powerful, appar- 
 ently all-powerful, the cynosure of all nations and 
 peoples. Then there came our first fall — the 
 Boer war. I need not dwell upon that event in 
 this place. But you all know what a surprise 
 the march of events was to us, how it revealed 
 many weaknesses we had never even guessed at, 
 how, in short, we English were at last ' found out,' 
 and how other nations — rising, eager, industrious, 
 jealous people — thought that the great fabric of 
 the British Empire was crumbling and crashing 
 to its fall, which, I need not here remind you, 
 would, in our case, inevitably imply our doom. 
 
 " The Victorian Era went down on that revela- 
 tion, a real one, I admit, of national decay. It 
 was real, because in our pride of being we had 
 grown lethargic, ignorant, opinionated, self- 
 satisfied, self-complacent, and there was no longer 
 the goodness of life among us. We despised the 
 foreigner, we refused to learn their languages, 
 we refused to learn from them. Everything 
 that was of foreign origin — education, science,
 
 3iingoi0m 7 
 
 thought, invention — we regarded from our insular 
 standpoint of intolerance. We were over-rich, 
 over-pampered with the material things of life. 
 England had become too much a playground. 
 We had grown lazy. We were on the edge of a 
 stupendous national disaster. 
 
 " England has never lacked initiative — here, 
 my friends, was such a spirit. No, it was not a 
 friend of yours. You never saw it. I dare say 
 no one here present ever heard of it directly. 
 But it came at a great crisis and served the guns, 
 like one of Nelson's sailors, with the righting 
 heart of this Island. I have come here to do it 
 reverence. What it did for you, I may say, for 
 all of us, was this. It realised the necessity of 
 action. It understood, and it is a great thing to 
 understand, the need of change, of fresh vitality 
 in the nation, of lining up, so to speak, the people, 
 of some moving and centralising idea. It saw 
 the Army and that it was not well. It saw the 
 rising Navy of Germany and the fierce combative 
 industry and ambition of the German people. 
 It looked at our trade and saw that we were 
 behind the times, backward, too insular in our 
 methods, everywhere losing ground because we 
 were no longer able to compete with the cleverer 
 and more industrious foreigner, and, seeing and 
 understanding all this, it breathed its spirit upon 
 the island and galvanised us into new life. 
 
 " Let us do it honour, here in this spot. It 
 stood for reform, which is admirable ; for pro- 
 gress ; for order, without which there can be
 
 8 before ant) Bouj 
 
 no progress and no reform. With position, 
 birth, money, industry, and the supreme power 
 of class ascendancy and co-operation, it was able 
 to fly on the wings of what is called public opinion. 
 Under its sceptre there congregated the aris- 
 tocracy of the country, the conservative forces 
 of the land, with all who serve and are dependent 
 upon the great — You, my friends, though possibly 
 you never realised it. From a spirit, an idea, 
 it became a fetish. And that was its undoing. 
 It found a heritage, noble and proud, and turned 
 it into a political inquisition. It became a 
 bubble, and then in the maelstrom of contro- 
 versy that it provoked it was caught in the 
 whirling eddies of passion and itself sank and 
 perished. It failed in one indispensable value — 
 the Zeitgeist, or spirit of the age. 
 
 " The psychology of peoples plays a larger 
 part in the making of history than most historians 
 allow, and it was there that this new force, this 
 vitalising idea, foundered helplessly. The idea 
 was lacking in idealism. Now ideals, as you well 
 know, are the fuel of all creation. Behind the 
 idea there was no humanity, to put it in another 
 way. Or to be perfectly plain, the humanity 
 that was of it belonged to another century, to 
 the habits and governance of another generation, 
 of a more ignorant and servile epoch. It became 
 the creed of a class, of capitalism, of plutocracy, 
 antagonistic to all that is inherently strong and 
 noble in this English life, to all the blood industry 
 and expenditure that have gone to found and
 
 jingoism 
 
 build up our matchless Empire. As it grew 
 and touched men's minds, reason fled from it. 
 From a philosophy of State reason, of wise 
 directing thought, it degenerated into a rich 
 man's policy of self-interest and greed. Instead 
 of a head it grew into a bonnet. It was taken 
 up as a panacea ; it became the fashion, like the 
 snatch of a vulgar song. 
 
 " New thoughts demand new methods — they 
 were not long in appearing. The new spirit 
 became the shibboleth of the Halls, of the small 
 shopkeepers, of the church and services, of the 
 landed gentry and their dependents, of ' society,' 
 because one and all imagined that there was 
 money in the idea and that it was well to flow 
 with the tide. What may be called a fenian 
 type of journalism arose, un-English and ugly. 
 It became a noisy, blatant, brass-band affair in 
 which, as usual, some poets joined and some 
 philosophers, for the big drum is always an 
 inspiring instrument and poets are inspiring 
 fellows. So the idea, like a giant, stalked the 
 country : 
 
 Fee-faw-fum 
 
 Ho, the big, big drum ! 
 
 " For a decade and more the idea ran riot. 
 Other things got swept up in the turmoil, of the 
 same category, emanating from the same prin- 
 ciple : of Feudalism, of despotism, so that the 
 very spirit which had roused the country out of 
 its Victorian coma sank into a vicious and anti-
 
 io ^Before ant) jeotu 
 
 quated design upon the spirit and life of the 
 English people. Nobody was responsible. It 
 had no single brain, no leader, no heart. It 
 spread like German measles and ended by in- 
 fecting even the Lords — those peers of the realm 
 who have so often fought shoulder to shoulder 
 with the people for the common interest of the 
 country, who have grown up with them, side 
 by side, tolerant and tolerated, respected and 
 respecting, ruling and yet ruled, out of which 
 strange amalgam of blood and sweat that English 
 phenomenon, snobbery, has been evolved, which 
 all these years has been the cognisance and the 
 bar sinister of our social life and polity. My 
 friends, I must pause for a moment, for I do 
 feel this matter sorely. I have come here not 
 to praise or disparage, but to bury an era. I 
 would have you bear with me for an instant. 
 There was much good in it all, and I would fain 
 do it justice." 
 
 The May Queen looked rather bored at this 
 unduly long oration, though merely, perhaps, 
 because for the first time that day no one paid 
 any attention to her, so rapt was the attention 
 with which all followed the discourse pronounced 
 by the strange man from London upon what he 
 persistently and strangely styled an " idea." 
 Nor did anyone venture to speak aloud while 
 the orator mopped his brow, and when, a moment 
 later, he resumed his speech there was not a 
 mouth that was not agape with expectation in 
 the little Cromwellian cemetery.
 
 3iingoi0m 
 
 1 1 
 
 " My friends," he began, and as he spoke they 
 all noted how that he appeared to grow, and 
 from a rather stuggy shape to assume majestic 
 and even beautiful proportions. " I have been 
 talking to you about an idea, whereas you, I 
 doubt not, expected me to speak about a man. 
 But ideas are greater than men, even as life is 
 sweeter than death. You will grant me that, 
 I think. First of all there was the patriarchal 
 idea of husbandry, then, as men grew, the idea 
 of conquest ruled humanity and men fought 
 chivalrously for the fittest. Then came the idea 
 of kingship, the policy of Princely warfare and 
 dominion, which forms the staple of most history 
 books, so that while at school we have to ' get 
 up ' the battles, the dates and names of most of 
 the nobles whose heads their kings cut off, we 
 are told nothing whatever about the customs, 
 the manners, the thought, social life — art, music, 
 and dress — of the great mass of the populace, 
 whose soul remains unrecorded. Well, there was 
 the Cromwellian idea ; there was the French 
 Revolution, out of which came Napoleonism ; 
 latterly we have seen the Bismarckian concep- 
 tion of history — all things which have influenced 
 continents ; and to-day we have the democratic 
 idea which, again, may be said to be the counter- 
 balance of Marx's materialistic teaching of history, 
 as an inevitable economic evolution. 
 
 " Let me go back a little into our own history 
 to explain my meaning. You all know how many 
 wives King Hal beheaded. We have a faithful
 
 12 iBefore ant) Bom 
 
 record of the hump on Richard's back. The 
 stomacher of Good Queen Bess, the hose of 
 Leicester, the wit of * Steenie,' the tang of 
 Hanover — these things are the national property 
 known to every schoolboy in the kingdom. 
 But while we learn all about these people, do 
 we know anything personal or real about the 
 greatest man born in this island, the greatest 
 mind in all history, he whose very name is one 
 for all time with that of England ? Practically 
 nothing. The very woman he loved is subject 
 to conjecture, and there are some who dispute 
 his existence. My friend, we have no record 
 of Shakespeare because in those days there was 
 no democratic idea. Think of that great man 
 dying there in England almost without a trace I 
 Yet we all know the name of the man who 
 murdered Buckingham. And witness, for it must 
 be said, what has been called the ' snobbery ' 
 of Shakespeare himself. He is concerned mostly 
 with kings and courts. In all his plays there is 
 no sign of democratic enthusiasm, for Coriolanus 
 was a portrait of history. It means that in those 
 lackey days Shakespeare was perforce a mere 
 commoner who had a pretty wit and wrote 
 plays. 
 
 " Forgive me if I have digressed, but I wanted 
 to bring home to you the nature of the new 
 idea which has laid this old one here in its grave. 
 If it arose and grew out of a decadent spirit, 
 it has now itself been ousted, as is the way of 
 all things in this wonderful life, by a newer
 
 jingoism 13 
 
 idea, which is that of democracy and scientific 
 enlightenment. 
 
 " Two decades ago there was not a trace of it 
 in the kingdom. A decade back it was but a 
 limpet dogma, furtive as a shadow in the night, 
 ridiculous even in its tenuity. But to-day it 
 is a big thing. It is the twin of the other, born 
 of the other in the natural polarity of things, 
 interest for interest. Without the other, the 
 class, capitalistic aggression of the other, it 
 might never have been. Men sow that they 
 may reap. The harvest of this one has been 
 gathered. 
 
 " In attempting a ' corner ' in ideas, the old 
 idea spent itself. It disappeared by process of 
 self-combustion, as it were. You see, there was 
 not much, after all, in it. So long as the country 
 was sick, it was well. It came at the right time. 
 It awoke, buoyed us up. To be sure, it did us 
 all good. We began to learn a little German, 
 to study German methods, to take an interest 
 in the Army, in scientific invention on the 
 Continent, to travel with our eyes open instead 
 of in the old way with a rascally cicerone. But 
 the new idea it perforce opened up reacted and 
 swamped it. Men found that instead of teaching 
 them a new thing they were asked to consent to 
 the imposition of an old thing, to a school of 
 economics fatal to the greatness of the country, 
 to a yoke of class-born policy that they had 
 shaken off in the days of Wellington. Spirits 
 invoke spirits, they say. Certainly the feudal
 
 H ^Before ant) jeoto 
 
 class idea that lies encoffined here perished on 
 its own merits, of itself. It had all the power, 
 the euchre, of the country behind it. It sank 
 finally, like the evening sun, from fading light, 
 for the redder and more glorious it seemed to 
 glow, the more the brains of the country left it, 
 until it was without lead or learning. 
 
 " In some ways this is to be regretted. Its 
 departure must mean a change in the life of the 
 country, the nature of which it is too early 
 yet to foresee. On a day like this, on Mayday, 
 men think kindly towards one another. Tradi- 
 tion, too, plays a vital part in our public life, 
 and tradition is all on the side of compromise. 
 So, too, is reason. For there is nothing now to 
 fight against. The new idea — and I would 
 impress upon you that it is quite as much scientific 
 as political, social, that is, educational and 
 economic — cannot now be supplanted, nor does 
 it necessarily clash with what is rational and 
 desirable in the other. Behind it there is an 
 ideal. More. There is science — what one may 
 call the new religion of the age. 
 
 " Do you see, up there, soaring, flitting against 
 the clouds like some strange monster bird, that is 
 an aeroplane ? Look how beautifully it behaves. 
 It is coming down. No, it is rising higher, right 
 up there, sweeping the air with the majesty of 
 an eagle in its flight. Now, yes, it is already out 
 of sight. Do you realise that that thing is one 
 of the wonders of the world, infinitely more 
 marvellous than the Pyramids, in comparison
 
 Jingoism 15 
 
 with which the old colossi of the ancients sink 
 into insignificance. 
 
 ' Yes, that is the modern ram in the bush. 
 The mind that invented, the spirit that steers 
 that flying machine, such is the altar upon which 
 men sacrifice to-day : it is the deity of science. 
 Consider what it means and you will understand. 
 It means man's conquest of the air, his triumph 
 over the winds we breathe, as he has triumphed 
 over the waters. Can men who witness that 
 go back ? Are men who fly ever again to accept 
 the principle of heredity, the value of birth 
 as against that of merit, the soul and bondage 
 of mediaeval superstition ? It is unthinkable, 
 because it would be unscientific. That is why 
 the old idea collapsed. It might have endured 
 for a while, heading against the winds of know- 
 ledge, battling like that good airship we have 
 just seen, it might have flown still with its 
 absence of idealism, but it was wanting, too, in 
 the very foundations of modern life — without 
 which it could never live — scientific design and 
 construction. 
 
 ' For the world is opening up so rapidly that 
 thought cannot keep pace with it. Scientific 
 force is humanising, civilising, enlightening, 
 vitalising mankind. It is changing utterly and 
 irrevocably the old order of things — religions, 
 beliefs, traditions, ideas, principles, and super- 
 stitions. It is the mob that reads to-day, and 
 the readers are the thinkers of the morrow. 
 A few years ago men accepted what laws Parlia-
 
 1 6 before ant) Botu 
 
 ment made for them without demur, provided 
 that they did not unduly pinch their pockets. 
 England has become literate. 
 
 " Obviously, it must be so. We can no more 
 return to feudal principles than Germany, say, 
 will go back to triremes. Given an ignorant, 
 ignorant because illiterate, country, it is plain 
 that those who are literate, and only those, 
 must be in charge of the State, as has been the 
 case from the Dark Ages onwards in England 
 and elsewhere. It answered well enough because 
 so long as a people had only a stomach to care 
 about, repletion was the standard of contentment 
 and hunger its sole barometer. The mind then 
 ruled happily over the stomach, but to-day the 
 people have both. That is the change that has 
 come into the quite modern world. That is 
 the new idea. 
 
 " It has been called revolution, but wrongly 
 so. In reality it is evolutionary. I have not 
 come here to you in this peaceful village with 
 a red necktie to preach. Propaganda is neither 
 my concern nor office. I am here, too, if I may 
 say so, as an idea, the new and the old, not in 
 any spirit of contention or partisanship, but 
 rather as a symbol, for to-day is a symbol of 
 happiness. I belong to no rigid Party belief. 
 I am not even of you, as the demagogues say, 
 nor am by any means always for you. I stand 
 here before you as the humble interpreter of a 
 spirit, the spirit of our time, come to do honour 
 to that which has departed, and can never return
 
 3lingot0m 17 
 
 to this country. It closes a whole book of history. 
 It has gone out naturally with its conditions. 
 
 ' I am glad to have found you all so happy — 
 it shows me how sound is the basis of our English 
 life. Here, on this very spot, I am told that 
 Cromwell once stood and looked out across those 
 golden fields, and he, as you know, was a full 
 Englishman. There are men like him to-day, 
 there will be others as great. This idea that I 
 am taking leave of was the one that he fought. 
 It is the idea that denies Byron a resting-place 
 in Poets' Corner, that would turn Westminster 
 into the cloak-room of St Stephen's. Lacking 
 in idealism, unscientific, anachronistic, it has gone 
 the way of all unsound ideas — it has consumed 
 itself. Nor do I feel gravely concerned as to 
 the immediate future. There are things to be 
 done — there always are. There is need of grit, 
 determination, character — well, Englishmen have 
 never yet lacked these qualities. They say there 
 is a reaction — my friends, that cannot be. Here, 
 as you see, the thing, the idea, lies — against it 
 there stand science, the life and the new force 
 of England." 
 
 A murmur resembling applause greeted these 
 last words of the stranger who stood watching 
 the earth being shovelled into the grave as if in 
 meditation. But it was obvious that something 
 was amiss. The sexton whispered to the grave- 
 digger, the gravedigger spoke to the clerk, and 
 the clerk looked over his spectacles uncomfortably 
 towards the stranger, then the blacksmith was
 
 1 8 'Before ant) jeoiu 
 
 consulted, and at last Tom, who was a cowman, 
 slouched up before the grave. " Beg pardon, 
 sir," he began, " but they do say as 'ow this 'ere 
 idea wot is buried ain't got no name or epitaph, 
 and they doesn't know as 'ow to call 'er." The 
 stranger looked at the cowman thoughtfully. 
 " Call her ! " he said. " Well, she made a big 
 noise in her time ; men called her Jingoism ! ' 
 
 Jingoism was killed with our victory over Kriiger, aided 
 by the poetry of Mr Kipling. Its reaction was the Contin- 
 ental Anglophobia which, but for the open wound left in 
 France by the war of 1870, would almost inevitably have 
 led to a coalition or crusade against our Empire as powerful 
 as the present crusade against Monarchical Militarism. 
 Only the fierce jealousies of Europe prevented an Armageddon 
 in 1900. I lived and travelled all through Europe in those 
 years, and always have thought that we owed our escape 
 from European war to the sentimental prestige enjoyed by 
 Queen Victoria. The real cause of European hostility was, 
 of course, our whole African policy, which led to the Chinese 
 Imperialist gamble, which in turn provoked the Boxer rising.
 
 C^e Coming of %m\ty 
 
 (1911) 
 
 SMITH has always been a good fellow in 
 England since his first registration in the 
 Domesday Book, content, whether his 
 Christian name be Timothy or Ahasuerus, in 
 his brawn and honesty and unimaginativeness 
 with what sufficiency of means his office in the 
 community procured him. In the old days 
 Smith was a bowman, a stout fighter, a sheep- 
 stealer, who laid down his life as carelessly for 
 a Frenchman as he did for a stolen lamb. His 
 husbandry became the joy and pride of England. 
 He was a good merchant, a good tippler, a good 
 roysterer. Born the first archer, he became the 
 first sailor, the first explorer, the first gentleman, 
 and, incidentally, or possibly derivatively — though 
 Smith had no conscious knowledge of it — some 
 Englishmen became the first writers in the 
 modern world. 
 
 So that Smith has done well both for himself 
 and his country, and there is no gainsaying the 
 fact. His martial record is as honourable and 
 brilliant as that of Rome : his Empire is even 
 larger. Not Caesar or Hannibal or Cleopatra 
 are greater names to him than Nelson or Clive 
 
 19
 
 2o before ant) Bato 
 
 or Queen Elizabeth ; not even Solomon with all 
 his glory can outshine the magnificence of India ; 
 the fact is that Smith, plain, blunt, honest Smith, 
 has become a law unto the civilised world and 
 the greatest name in history. And all this while 
 through the centuries, Smith has coveted no 
 man's " other thing " — except such as belonged 
 to the foreigner ; has lived and thrived as simple 
 liegeman, conquering and civilising mankind. 
 For Smith the law of England was evolved. It 
 was Smith who created what is known as the 
 " English gentry," and hewed and toiled for them. 
 Out of Smith there have come our insularity, our 
 Puritanism, our love of fair-play, our phlegm, 
 our individualism, our cant, our ignorance, our 
 pugnaciousness, our common sense, our hearts 
 and ships of oak. Out of Smith there has come 
 London ; there has come the silk hat ; there has 
 come the British Empire. 
 
 Yorkshire is the best place to see the type of 
 Smith, but one may see it also in the expression 
 of bull-dogs. Nor has Smith, as an individual 
 or as a class, ever complained of his lot whether 
 in the social or economic sphere. For none of 
 the internecine wars, revolutions, risings, riots 
 have been the work of Smith. Magna Carta 
 was not his affair. When the Red Roses warred 
 against the White, Smith fought Smith but for 
 duty and ale. The great revolution which gave 
 England liberty was essentially an aristocratic 
 movement led by men of order and government, 
 who fought for a Conservative principle. Smith
 
 %ty Coming of ^mttl^ 21 
 
 was quite pleased when Guy Fawkes was tortured 
 to death, and he burns the effigy of him to this 
 day. The Gordon Riots troubled him little, 
 though, as a class, Smith has always been some- 
 what sensitive about Papal authority ; nor, 
 coming down to modern times, has Smith shown 
 any iconoclastic disposition except occasionally 
 towards football referees, or in a larrikin larking 
 way at the hustings. 
 
 It is true he stood by, more or less approvingly, 
 when Cromwell cut off the head of the King, 
 but Mrs Smith generally favoured the long- 
 haired Cavalier. The Fall of the Bastille, with 
 all the stupendous events which followed in 
 France, left Smith cold. Marx, Lassalle, '48 — 
 Smith had no use for this " stupid foreign in- 
 tellectualism." " Them foreign Socis," with 
 their theories and theorems, their millenniums 
 and shibboleths, their ' : iron laws " of wages and 
 party class discipline — these were no things for 
 Smith, who was a Free Trader, a salesman, and 
 a snob. 
 
 Smith had his unions, he did not want political 
 ideas and ideals of class warfare. The drawing- 
 room Socialism of Oxford, of later-day Fabianism 
 was far too theoretic, too abstract, too " classy " (if 
 the truth must be told) for him ; and so the 
 nineteenth century came to an end, and it found 
 Smith still plain and blunt and honest, entirely 
 ignorant of the leavening movement of demo- 
 cratisation that had begun to hack into the 
 stratocracy of Germany, entirely at the beck
 
 22 iBefote ant) Bato 
 
 of that specious flunkeyism that has governed 
 England since the Battle of Waterloo with the 
 gentility of the Victorian antimacassar. And 
 those who ruled grew vainglorious. The im- 
 munisation of Smith, from all foreign and 
 (therefore) noxious tenets, economic doctrines 
 and theories, they took to be a proven fact, and 
 they took grave liberties too : constitutional, 
 political, economic, personal, and then jubilantly 
 they plunged Smith into the Boer War. 
 
 Death is a good teacher at all times, but death 
 and poverty together are a philosophy in these 
 commercial days, powerful as the religious 
 fanaticism of our ancestors. For the first time 
 in his collective state, Smith as Smith began 
 to think ; and more, he positively began to 
 question — this and that, and all kinds of matters 
 connected with the Army and the Government, 
 and the causes and meanings of things which 
 hitherto he had always taken for granted to lie 
 beyond his ken and his jurisdiction. There is 
 no doubt at all that Smith was a different man 
 after the peace of Bloemfontein from any genus 
 of Smith known during the last six decades ; 
 a Smith with a dull brooding resentment against 
 the forces that had led him into war, a Smith 
 with an aching sense of responsibility which was 
 slowly forming into a conscience. 
 
 See what he has done. Three times in suc- 
 cession he has deliberately sent back the Liberals 
 into power with a mandate of destruction : to 
 destroy that they may build up. Smith has
 
 Cbe Coming of %mit\) 23 
 
 never done so stern, so democratic a thing before. 
 In spite of the pendulum, and all the gifts 
 promised out of the Trojan horse of Protection, 
 Smith has voted " Rad." in somewhat the same 
 dogged way that he used to vote Tory. 
 
 This English Smith is the characteristic citizen 
 of the age. He is the product of the democratisa- 
 tion of Europe, which again is the bastard of 
 capitalism. It is rather a curious fact, for it is 
 being brought about in precisely the contrary 
 way to that predicted in Marx's Capital. In 
 that work, which is still the standard of 
 international Socialism, Marx laid it down as 
 axiomatic of his whole economic theory that 
 the growth of capitalism must inevitably lead to 
 such utter misery and poverty that at last the 
 workers of the world would rise and by force 
 " expropriate the expropriators." The very 
 opposite to-day is the case. Capital and Labour 
 would seem to be growing more and more 
 interdependent. It is not the masses who are 
 breaking down the barriers of class tradition, 
 of social prestige, or princely privilege, of feudal- 
 ism, of autocracy, of nationalism, who are to-day 
 leavening, democratising the world, but the 
 power of capital which is essentially democratic 
 and international. 
 
 That is to say, the equations of men are 
 equalising. Such is the prime lesson of America, 
 of the growing peoples in the New World 
 generally. The office-boy of to-day may be 
 the millionaire of to-morrow. It is no longer
 
 24 before ant) Bom 
 
 birth, privilege, nepotism, aristocratic power 
 and tradition which can make a man powerful 
 to-day, but the genius of individual success. 
 And we see it in all trades and professions, even 
 in literature. A couple of decades ago the 
 'Varsities gave the intellectual tone to England ; 
 they were the supreme tribunal of thought and 
 culture. Can they be held to be so to-day, 
 with the new power of popular education, the 
 new technical schools, the growing dissatisfac- 
 tion at the compulsory teaching of Greek, the 
 new demand for practical and scientific educa- 
 tion ? The movements of to-day are no longer 
 headed by University men. We admit that our 
 public schools are deficient as educational media, 
 apt to engender a class spirit out of touch with 
 the hard exigencies of modern life. More and 
 more we find that the leaders in literature and 
 modern thought are not men who have been to 
 either University. Instead of the intellect of 
 the privileged classes taking part and directing 
 the movements of the day, now the movements 
 direct them. Here is very notably the new 
 democracy of Smith. 
 
 Society — the old rigid, exclusive society — has 
 disappeared. South Africa blasted the last 
 strongholds remaining — to-day, as the wife of 
 the Prime Minister recently remarked in a court 
 of law, " extravagance is rather a passport to it." 
 Smith again — Smith grown rich. Between 
 America and the chorus girls of London our 
 aristocracy is being rapidly democratised. When
 
 Ctie Coming of %mit\) 25 
 
 a lord now needs money he marries an American, 
 and every time a lord marries one he socialises 
 himself with Smith. Money, the rapidity of 
 life, cheap education — these are the wings of 
 Smith. They carry him into every drawing- 
 room, into office, into power whether literary, 
 political or economic. No King can make a 
 war to-day, scarcely any Government. That is 
 a discovery the German Emperor made years 
 ago when he fraternised with Dr Ballin and 
 Krupp, and other great captains of industry. 
 He broke down the whole tradition of Prussian 
 pipeclay court etiquette. The commercialisation 
 of Germany is one of the most notable changes 
 in the Empire. 
 
 Clubland — where is it ? The old silk-hatted 
 Assembly of Westminster — what is it to-day ? 
 The old Squire of Coverley — who thinks of him 
 in these days of motors and aeroplanes ? The 
 English gentleman — what, ah, what is he achiev- 
 ing ? His panache is gone, and, as if he knows 
 and recognises it, he now strolls about London 
 in a bowler and a lounge suit. Around, in front, 
 behind him there peers the keen countenance of 
 Smith. He comes down from the 'Varsity, the 
 hero of many " colours," and finds his father's 
 prosperous business run by Brown, who only a 
 few years ago was the office-boy. And Brown 
 gives him his first lessons in book-keeping. And 
 on every side these " big " men seem to be all 
 Browns, all whilom office-boys, men who have 
 come up somehow from somewhere, by dint of
 
 26 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 character and labour and application. And by 
 and by Brown lends our 'Varsity hero a fiver. 
 
 England, Europe to-day, is being run for 
 Smith. It is Smith with his cheaper seats that 
 make the theatres pay ; it is for Smith that 
 plutocratic entertainers now cater — the mob 
 press, the admirable cheap reprints, the cheap 
 histories and encyclopedias, the evening schools, 
 the flabby literature, the electric theatres, the 
 rinks, and the advertisers, our politicians with 
 their " people's ' nostrums advertised and 
 " postered," as the quacks and the medicine 
 men boom their pills and cheap cures for all 
 the diseases of humanity. " There is money 
 in Smith," as all writers, dramatists, actors, 
 bill-posters, journalists, and capitalists have 
 found out. Even the Tory Party cannot table 
 a Bill that does not bear the hall-mark of Smith. 
 And the long run of Tory politics, which cul- 
 minated in the rout of 1906, was due almost 
 exclusively to the glamour of " Joe," with his 
 people's personality and exotic buttonholes, and 
 that quarterstaff spirit of plebeian England. 
 
 How are the mighty fallen ! Or, to put it 
 in a truer way, how mighty have the lesser 
 become. In countries like Russia, like Spain, 
 Smith is still in bondage. He is uneducated ; 
 he cannot read or write — therefore he endures. 
 But in France Alfonse is omnipotent. In Ger- 
 many, where he is still kept down by the most 
 powerful military and autocratic organisation in 
 modern history, Michael is a thinking Socialist
 
 Ctie Coming of €>mitt) 27 
 
 — three millions and a half voting solidly as one 
 man. Now in England he has begun to think 
 too. It is the modern weapon of advertisement 
 that has popularised Smith, as it were ; shown 
 him his power, flattering and beguiling him until 
 the dull inarticulate voice of Smith has grown 
 into a mighty megaphone of authority quickened 
 with a mass conscience. The socialisation of 
 England has begun. 
 
 Smith, in fine, is the central figure in modern 
 England, and he has come, as men say, to stay. 
 His advent in public life by no means presupposes 
 Socialism, revolution or anarchism, for he is 
 essentially a rational being, the product of his 
 materialistic environment, out chiefly for him- 
 self. In a sound sense therefore he is a Con- 
 servative. As every man owning a business seems 
 to be only too anxious to secure his custom, 
 Smith sees quite clearly that he will have an easy 
 time of it in a world where he can obtain a sample 
 of nearly everything he needs by posting a coupon, 
 whether it is a hair-brush or a Coronation 
 sweet-pea. Such a man would be ungrateful to 
 be a revolutionary, and, as a matter of fact, he 
 is not. The only real danger in Smith is that 
 he is an Englishman, for Englishmen are not as 
 other men, so that should the education of 
 Smith proceed so far as to open his eyes to some 
 of the evils in the social fabric, one hesitates to 
 think what rash and stupendous thing the estate 
 Smith might not accomplish. 
 
 Imagine, say in another two decades or so, the
 
 28 before ant) Bom 
 
 then enlightened Smith taking the lead in the 
 world of art and culture, and refusing to live in 
 the gloom and fog of London. Imagine Smith, 
 having got beyond the 'Varsity standard of 
 dramatic entertainment, crying out : " We won't 
 have these boy and girl plays any more. Give 
 us Shakespeare ; give us art ; give us Shaw. 
 We won't have this baby censorship ; these 
 libraries telling us what to read and what not 
 to read ; this midnight closure, whereby a man 
 cannot have a decent supper after the theatre 
 without indigestion ; this Sunday shutting up 
 of theatres and the people's pleasures ; this 
 want of joyous cafes, of places to dance in, 
 these horrible and demoralising public-houses." 
 Imagine this robustious " Kipps ' of a Smith 
 insisting upon a free stage, a national opera 
 and repertory theatre, a free literature, with a 
 great public organ of his own, run not for party 
 politics, but for honest news and business. 
 Imagine Smith solemnly telling the headmasters 
 of Eton and Harrow that it was high time they 
 taught not a " little Latin and less Greek," but 
 no Greek and some science. Imagine Miss 
 Smith as the new Mary Wollstonecraft. Picture 
 Mr Smith stopping the heavy fees charged by 
 the Lord Mayor's powdered coachman — the 
 brain whirls like " Willy, waltzing round and 
 round." 
 
 Lord St Ives may say to himself : " Egad, 
 there's only one St Ives," but Smith will retort : 
 " Aye, aye, but there are ten million Smiths."
 
 Ctie Coming of smit^ 29 
 
 As well fire a hundred-ton gun at a mediaeval 
 stained glass window. Like the power of armies, 
 the power of Smith is in numbers. That is the 
 new message he brings to us all. He is the 
 chartered piper of the age, the shorn lamb of a 
 solicitous capitalism. In his name Kings move 
 and speak, and Governments bow low in rever- 
 ence, and he has etched upon the world the name 
 of Demos. The material of all labour, he 
 threatens to become its brain. There is no longer 
 any stay to him, since we have given him the 
 written word and taught him the use of its 
 mysteries. Smith will progress. Smith will 
 endure. Smith is the expression of the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 We were very annoyed with Smith in 191 1, and the 
 Germans too thought him decadent, so decadent as hardly 
 to count in war. My diagnosis was right. Smith has been 
 proved and he has pulled us through. He will probably 
 astonish us even more on his return.
 
 u 
 
 %umy in Danger" 
 
 The Fall of the House of Lords 
 (August 10, 191 1) 
 
 I HAD tea on the terrace of the House that 
 memorable day, and the little function was 
 as pleasant as usual. The Thames flowed 
 staidly on below, calm and muddy. Mr Lloyd 
 George, spruce and cheery, was chatting volubly 
 to a constituent. There was Mr T. P. O'Connor 
 lazily being photographed against the wall of 
 St Stephen's in a group. There was Mr John 
 Burns, hale as in the days of the " tanner " strike. 
 There were one or two smart people about, 
 French frocks, some pretty faces. But of Runni- 
 mede no sign. At a table near by a celebrated 
 lady novelist sat entertaining her admirers. 
 Everything and everybody looked usual enough, 
 despite (we were told) the countenance of Lord 
 Rosebery in the stifling atmosphere of the House 
 of Lords staring dramatically at the barrelled 
 ceiling. 
 
 In the streets there was no trace of excitement. 
 The listless air of the Britisher lay upon the faces 
 of all whom I saw in the large restaurant where I 
 dined later in the evening, while I sat and dwelt 
 upon the French Revolution. August 10th. 
 
 30
 
 "autre? in Danger" 31 
 
 Yes, it was the anniversary of the burning of the 
 Tuileries in 1792, when the French Monarchy 
 came to an end. I thought of Russia in 1905 ; 
 the scenes I had witnessed there, Gapon, the 
 bombs, the Cossacks, the wild English interest 
 in the Russian workmen's emancipation war 
 that etiolated in the establishment of a dummy 
 Duma. Then, with Cromwell upmost in my 
 thoughts, I set out for the news. 
 
 " Surrey in danger." I stared at the bill in 
 astonishment. Not the great debate in the 
 Lords ; not the serious crisis in Morocco, 1 
 threatening European conflagration ; not the 
 dockers' strike, then at its height, occupied 
 the bill, but that matter of far more serious 
 interest to the community — the momentous 
 news of " Surrey's danger." Suddenly I seemed 
 to understand. 
 
 Of course, the sub-editor who billed " Surrey's 
 danger " was indisputably, superbly right ; the 
 man was a bit of a genius. No one in London, 
 out of Parliament and newspaper offices, was 
 thinking about the forlorn-hope action fought 
 by Lord Halsbury and his merry men ; of 
 the swan-songs, valedictory orations, accusatory, 
 explanatory or vindicatory speeches upon the 
 recognised anomalous and atrophied privileges 
 of the Lords ; of who on that night died hard 
 or who didn't, seeing that the case was a pre- 
 judged one, and that it was "no earthly" any 
 more. No man was thinking about Morocco, 
 
 1 The European War almost broke out over 7 Agadir.
 
 32 ^Before ant) JBotu 
 
 for is not that the exclusive business of our secret 
 Foreign Office and, eventually, of the British 
 Navy ? No man was thinking of the strike of 
 75,000 men on Tower Hill, except those directly 
 concerned in the pother, or prospectively, as it 
 affected the stomach. Those things were local, 
 personal, controversial. The central fact in 
 London that evening was the cricket news of 
 " Surrey's danger." 
 
 At last we heard. Feverishly I bought a 
 newspaper — seventeen ; the greatest and oldest 
 institution in England was dead, signed away by 
 a packed majority of seventeen ! I met a friend. 
 His composure reassured me. " A close thing," 
 he observed. " I say, they've been making it 
 hot for Surrey." 
 
 Surrey again ! At the club I met another 
 man, and together we went here and there 
 observing, testing, finally settling down to supper 
 in what he called a gay place. It was gay after 
 a fashion, very hot, very noisy, and very full. 
 The Creme de Menthe jrappee stimulated my 
 thoughts. I wanted to talk about the stupendous 
 thing done, the great questions of the hour, 
 but neither he nor any of his friends nor anyone 
 in the restaurant would hear of it. In despair 
 I turned to the intelligent head-waiter, who 
 once told me he considered Oliver Goldsmith 
 a finer writer than George Meredith. " It's 
 seventeen," I observed. For a moment he 
 looked nonplussed, but only for a moment. " It's 
 seventeen to one on Bottomley," he retorted.
 
 a €>urrep in Danger" 3 
 
 
 And so they died, as the admirable Bagehot 
 years ago prophesied that the Lords would die, 
 " not of assassination, but atrophy ; not aboli- 
 tion, but decline," and on that evening nobody 
 seemed a penny the worse. Yet August loth 
 will surely be a landmark in the nation's history. 
 Once more the spirit of the English Constitution, 
 based upon the principle of choosing a single 
 sovereign authority, was made good, putting an 
 end to the legicidal sway of the Peers, who ever 
 since their rejection of Gladstone's Home Rule 
 Bill have usurped the rights of the days of 
 Chatham and Walpole as a co-equal and dominat- 
 ing branch in the Legislature. The passing 
 of the Parliament Bill was no mere act of party 
 opportunism. It ended at once an abuse and 
 a revolution, the abuse of the veto recognised 
 ever since the Reform Bill of 1832 as hypothetical, 
 the revolution inaugurated by the Conservative 
 capitalistic movement of Tariff Reform. So 
 with all London listless and indifferent, seventeen 
 Peers of the Realm signed away the hereditary 
 principle of the Upper House, and with it the 
 tradition of seven hundred years of feudal 
 privilege and custom ; and it was done, as would 
 seem the way of modern revolution, bloodlessly, 
 almost tiresomely, without affecting the betting 
 on a single horse, or the gate-money of a single 
 cricket-match, or the tee-shot of a single golfer 
 in the country. 
 
 What a few years ago seemed, even to the 
 staunchest Radical, a thing of dreams and fan-
 
 34 'Before ana Bom 
 
 tasy, took place quietly on that night and left 
 no surface-mark on the great face of London. 
 The strange, the magnificent, thing about it all 
 was this sublime and correct indifference. Even 
 the reason was correct. Judgment had already 
 been passed. We are a sporting, a law-loving, 
 a practical people. The merits of the question 
 had been adjudicated upon finally at the last 
 General Elections. The Liberals were returned 
 with the mandate, and their constituents con- 
 fidently expected them to do their duty. Sen- 
 tence in England exacts its inexorable penalty ; 
 and though, no doubt, a mild interest existed 
 as to the mode of procedure, there was as little 
 sympathy, excitement, or expectancy about the 
 battle of the " Die-Hards " as there would 
 have been had " specials " appeared at midnight 
 in Piccadilly Circus with the catastrophic en- 
 noblement of five hundred tradesmen. The 
 ennoblement would have offended nobody except 
 perhaps the Peers x themselves and their families. 
 What difference, after all, is there between a 
 penal peer created ad hoc and, say, a wealthy 
 brewer in the ordinary run of things, created for 
 service ? To the modern board-school educated 
 Englishman — and he is the new man, the silent 
 clue, the new force in the body politic — prac- 
 tically none whatever. The candle of the House 
 of Lords that night went out, as candles do when 
 there is nothing more to burn in the socket. 
 
 1 At the time the threat to create five hundred Peers to outvote 
 the others was the " stunt " ; it dissolved families, so great was 
 the feeling.
 
 "€>urtep in Danger" 35 
 
 Looking back to-day calmly, and in no party 
 spirit, the incredible folly of those responsible 
 for the defeat stands out as the one truly 
 remarkable feature in the long and rather sorry 
 business. Warned time after time by Lord 
 Rosebery and many another, privately and 
 publicly, of the necessity of reform, the Lords 
 collectively heeded no one. A year ago the 
 thing would have been easy, and to-day the 
 Upper House might have stood on a firmer and 
 sounder basis as the arbiter between the Commons 
 and the people. Even six months back an honest 
 attempt at constitutional reconstruction would, 
 at any rate, have saved them from the over- 
 whelming and irreparable blow that has befallen 
 their estate ; but in the vanity of arrogance 
 they could see nothing. This class ignorance 
 has been the cause of their undoing. From the 
 day that the Lords, acting upon the advice of 
 more or less irresponsible hotheads in the Con- 
 servative Party, abandoned their own right of 
 independence and threw out the Budget, the 
 end was inevitable. The true friends of the 
 Lords told them so. Every Liberal, every clear- 
 thinking man in the country saw that the Peers 
 had thrown away their chief weapon, which was 
 their constitutional function as a revising and 
 suspending chamber. From that moment war 
 was declared. Now, by the very nature of its 
 composition, the House of Lords in the English 
 Constitution possessed no power to make or stop 
 revolution. In making one, they threw away
 
 36 iBefore ant) Boto 
 
 not only their real and unassailable directive 
 faculties, but the pediment of their whole 
 constitutional being and justification. 
 
 In their fight, necessarily impotent, against 
 the Constitution and the Liberals who defended 
 it, the Lords have been the puppets of the 
 Unionist Party. It was convenient, no doubt. 
 During the long reign of Conservatism, following 
 on the defeat of Gladstone, the Upper House 
 sank more and more into the position of the 
 mere formal registrar of the Conservative vote, 
 rendering all Liberal legislation nugatory, until 
 at last, with the inflation of jingoism as the result 
 of the Boer War, the Constitutional Government 
 of the country passed tacitly into the smile of 
 the Tory leader. Surfeit of power divorced 
 them further and further from the actualities 
 of modern England — and " surfeit is the father 
 of long fast." The Lords looked upon the 
 struggle between themselves and the Commons 
 through a comic-opera glass, and the piece 
 turned out to be a tragedy. Necessarily so. The 
 Lords misjudged the situation because, as a class, 
 acting for a class, seeing but a class, they judged it, 
 not by any standard of fact and reality, but with 
 the prejudice of class superstition. Instead of 
 the people, they saw only the fences that hedged 
 this and that interest together ; instead of fact, 
 they saw only the framework of tradition. 
 
 What the Tories have never understood is that 
 there has been, in the true sense of the word, a 
 conservative revolution, as was the case in 1688,
 
 "gmtrep in Danger* 37 
 
 a movement of the forces of order and govern- 
 ment, of the rooted conservative powers of the 
 country, in the cause of order and government, 
 at the head of which, as Crown and symbol, there 
 stands the King. All through, this has been a 
 bourgeois revolution, only secondarily the affair 
 of what are called the masses. Now it is perfectly 
 right to call it a revolution. But the men who 
 lead the movement against the Lords are men 
 of order and peace, fighting for the same principle 
 that Cromwell fought for and won in 1688 — 
 that Parliament should retain the sovereign 
 power it had assumed. It became revolution 
 from the moment that the Lords defied the 
 Executive, which is the supreme right of 
 Parliament. 
 
 Now, the Iron Duke knew better, and his 
 capitulation stands as the one achievement in 
 his political career. When Lord Halsbury 
 announced his intention to die in the last ditch, 
 he meant no such thing. He knew as well as 
 Mr Balfour and Lord Lansdowne knew it, that 
 if the Parliament Bill was rejected the catas- 
 trophic creation would follow automatically. 
 When his followers, shouting irrelevant military 
 phrases, as obsolete as the Tudor armour in the 
 Tower of London, got up a kind of exhibition 
 bruise at the last minute to fight a battle that 
 they knew had already been fought and lost, 
 they did it not to rescue the House of Lords — 
 which was already impossible ; not to create a 
 better House of Lords — an idea which had never
 
 38 'Before ant) Boto 
 
 entered into their philosophy ; not really to 
 defeat the Bill, but simply for the party reason 
 that they reckoned a " puppet peer ' creation 
 would go far to " dish " Liberalism. Had it 
 been possible to save anything, to redeem any- 
 thing, to create anything by this noisy display 
 of mixed metaphor and bravery, then the " Die- 
 Hards " would have earned immortality, and 
 the country might conceivably have sympathised 
 with them. But there was nothing to save, to 
 redeem, or to create. They and everybody 
 knew that. They went out to battle on an issue 
 which had already been decided in the spirit of 
 schoolboys who stone what they know to be an 
 empty hole by the river-side on the chance that 
 it may contain a badger. 
 
 If the direct and immediate cause of this Tory 
 cataclysm has been the capitalistic movement of 
 Tariff Reform, which, culminating in the collu- 
 sion between the Tory Party and the Upper 
 House, divided the country into two funda- 
 mentally antagonistic class camps, the philosophy 
 of it all lies in the unnatural and obsolete con- 
 ditions of our political institutions as against the 
 system and machinery of our modern economic 
 life. Our political system, which has survived as 
 the mean between feudalism and democracy, is a 
 whole century and a half behind the economic 
 polity of the country. On the one side we have 
 intensely progressive economic conditions and 
 ideas subjected to a system of control which is 
 in character feudal. So long as the Lords
 
 a 
 
 eurrep in Dange r " 39 
 
 preserved their independence and accepted the 
 will of the people it worked, if chiefly because it 
 was an institution and we are a congenitally 
 peaceful people. But the moment the breach 
 widened into rupture the whole fabric of the 
 feudal armoury fell into pieces. 
 
 The failure of the Conservative Party to grasp 
 that perfectly obvious fact has been the root 
 cause of their present disaster. The African 
 juggernaut, the war, jingoism, the seductive 
 vision of an all-British imperial economic empire, 
 founded a school in which political economy, 
 the conditions of labour and capitalism, in a 
 word, reform, had no part, and when it failed 
 the whole party was left demoralised and barren. 
 The charge which then fell to the lot of Liberal- 
 ism showed the enormous gulf existing between 
 the country and its rulers. Within a few years 
 the whole Liberal programme has been enlarged 
 and changed, beyond the wildest dreams of the 
 fiercest Gladstonian Whig, into one of rational 
 evolution. 
 
 The task devolving upon the Liberal Party is 
 gigantic, and may prove disastrous. Upon them 
 will lie all the odium, all the responsibility of 
 failure, for, unlike the Tories, who are in no 
 sense shattered as a party, they are not united 
 by any bond of class or land interest or even of 
 capitalism. If they fail, and the Conservatives 
 come in again, as extremes breed extremes, so 
 will the Social Democracy of the Continent 
 come into this country. That danger will always
 
 4Q 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 be their pitfall. It is unlikely, in the absence of 
 any apparent lead or statesmanship on the Tory 
 side, that any constructive policy will be possible 
 between the two parties, who will fight each other, 
 as in the old careless days, with the party rancour 
 of the game. The first question will, of course, 
 be Ireland, hitherto the snag of all statesmen. 
 There can be no doubt whatever that the 
 Unionists will pursue the same tactics in the 
 same blind and vituperative manner that they 
 did in 1886, and as they have recently done in 
 the case of the House of Lords. It will be 
 useless to ask for statesmanlike consideration of 
 the problem, which will be treated by those who 
 gilly for them in the newspapers as a splendid 
 opportunity to get back into power, in cynical 
 disregard of the national urgency of a solution 
 and the vital importance at stake. There are 
 no signs that the Unionists have learnt anything 
 from the lesson of August 10th. Ireland will be 
 fought as a national danger, as a Separatist plot, 
 as treason to dismember the Empire, and there 
 will be the bogey of an Irish rebellion. It is a 
 big cause — it will be a big fight. It will be the 
 supreme test of Liberal achievement. 1 
 
 Thus the greatest revolution since 1832 was 
 accomplished to the antics of a war-dance, amid 
 the superb apathy of London. If a moral is 
 needed, it is how relatively little the political 
 party game matters in these modern days, how 
 
 1 It has proved so. Ireland was again used as the crutch of 
 Unionism in 191 4, and Liberalism yielded, hence the situation 
 to-day and the reascendancy of Ulster authority.
 
 u €mtrep in Danger " 41 
 
 deep is the economic change that has crept into 
 England. Already the subject is almost forgotten. 
 There was no malice in the business. No tocsin 
 sounded the knell. The Lords went out— jelo 
 de se. 
 
 Of far greater significance to London, to the 
 country, to Europe, was the scene that night on 
 Tower Hill, where there was something positive 
 being accomplished. It was very late when I 
 found myself there, still talking over this apathy 
 of London to my friend, who, having shot big 
 game most of his life, thought this little matter 
 of politics an " infernal wheeze." " That's where 
 we ought to shut up all you Radical fellows," 
 he jested, pointing to the great Norman keep, 
 which stood frowning against the almost Italian 
 night sky in massive, sinister magnificence. 
 
 It was quiet enough, but men moved strangely 
 and fitfully about ; otherwise the old historical 
 ground seemed as dormant and apathetic as the 
 rest of London. Yet not quite. Up near by 
 where the gibbet used to stand we noticed a light 
 in a little room, and every now and then figures 
 flitted swiftly to and fro by the window. It 
 was the little room where the dockers' strike 
 leaders were working, writing, settling, arranging. 
 Close by us stood a huge City policeman in the 
 shadow, motionless, inscrutable as a sphinx. 
 My friend offered him a cigar. " Wish I had a 
 gun," he remarked, no doubt thinking of his 
 game in East Africa. The policeman hid the 
 cigar away in his tunic, and, jerking his head
 
 42 before ant) Bam 
 
 upward towards the light, said sententiously : 
 " Take it from me, sir, them's the blokes that 
 rules us nowadays." 
 
 It is worth recalling the fury of the battle of the Lords, 
 because after the war the problem of the Second Chamber 
 will have to be faced, the Liberals having left their work 
 a torso with what we can now see to be disastrous 
 results to themselves and the country, so that Parliament 
 itself is in worse plight than was even the destroyed Upper 
 House. That " cricket " match will be played by Labour.
 
 peace, perfect peace 
 
 (191 
 
 WHEN the Tsar, auspiciously before the 
 two greatest wars of modern times, 
 convened the Powers to a grand 
 assembly of peace, the plain man treated the 
 Imperial proposal with amused indiiference. The 
 British " dum-dum " bullet was then a European 
 affair, so to speak ; Briton and Boer stood before 
 the world as prospective foes, and the Hohen- 
 zollern telegram was still written on our hearts, 
 as, it is said, Calais was on Queen Mary's ; there 
 was a push and pugnacious doctrine of world- 
 conquest kindling in Berlin ; moreover the Tsar's 
 advisers and family were known to have decidedly 
 definite views about ports and military demarca- 
 tions in the Far East, which were as decidedly 
 resented by the Japanese. The German Emperor 
 had invented a new diplomacy — of speeches and 
 telegrams. Words were mighty things in those 
 days. There was Kaiser Wilhelm to " the 
 Admiral of the East," to " Mr Kriiger " ; there 
 was Alexis to " the little yellow people, the 
 Japanese " ; there was the rising German navy 
 and " Germany's destiny lies upon the ocean " ; 
 there were the subterranean elements of that 
 
 43
 
 44 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 European Anglophobia which, a couple of years 
 later, was to astound civilisation ; there was 
 Prince Biilow, with his granite refusal ; there 
 was the animosity of France ; there was King 
 Leopold ; there was Dr Leyds. 
 
 So that, when the Tsar's invitation came, 1 
 men smiled as when they read in the history- 
 books of the Field of the Cloth of Gold and of 
 Sir Walter Raleigh's cloak. It failed, as it was 
 foredoomed to. It failed because it was a purely 
 monarchical and military affair chased in feudal 
 magnificence — very gorgeous, very solemn, and 
 quite futile. It was overloaded with trappings 
 and ceremony. Inside it became a resplendent 
 diplomatic comedy, reminiscent of the glory of 
 the Congress of Vienna, of the days of the Holy 
 Alliance, and probably the last concourse of its 
 kind civilisation will witness ; outside it became 
 the pious concern of a few more or less well- 
 known busybodies. 
 
 The world went on with its spade and shovel 
 work and troubled little about it. We met with 
 German and German-European opposition at 
 almost every step and turn. We went to the 
 Conference with Mr Kriiger's ultimatum virtu- 
 ally in our pockets, even if the general public 
 was not aware of the fact. And Russia went to 
 the Conference with Port Arthur and Corea 
 peeping through the mirror of the Tsar's grandil- 
 
 1 According to Dr E. J. Dillon, the Tsar proposed disarma- 
 ment in order to stop or delay Austrian rearmament, and at 
 least partially succeeded in this, Russia being in financial diffi- 
 culties at that time.
 
 peace, perfect peace 45 
 
 oquent stockade of peace. And Germany went 
 to the Conference, like Luther before his judges, 
 determined to stand before the world because 
 in her conscience she could not do otherwise, 
 and threw down the mailed fist whenever and 
 wherever she could. With such hypocrisies per- 
 formance was impossible. It was very pleasant. 
 The " diplomats' walk " under the shade of the 
 trees from The Hague to the bathing-place of 
 Scheveningen determined not a few lasting 
 friendships. At one time the Americans alone 
 saved the councillors in the Huts ten Bosh from 
 absurd disaster. But beyond certain very en- 
 joyable parties and conversations, The Hague 
 left no marked impression on mankind, though 
 the vigorous waltzing of " Jacky Fisher ' will 
 ever be memorable to diplomacy. The Tsar's 
 balloon of peace deflated as cumbrously as it was 
 inflated ; the diplomatists packed up their trunks 
 and left thankfully enough, for the weather was 
 getting uncomfortably warm : and we sallied forth 
 to make for Pretoria, and the Tsar's legions for 
 Vladivostock. 
 
 It is as well to recall the failure of the Tsar's 
 irenicon, because, if humanity is slow to grasp 
 ideas, it is always eager to clutch at ideals. And 
 Mr Taft's 1 arbitration proposal is, of course, 
 an ideal. It has fallen upon Europe with the 
 music of " sweet thunder " reverberating through- 
 out the world. More than a decade has passed 
 
 1 Mr Taft's proposal, now forgotten, was the first step towards 
 the idea of a League ot Nations, which may yet be the issue of 
 the Greul Y. ax.
 
 46 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 since the grand constituency of Peace. In that 
 period many changes have taken place, many new 
 forces have arisen ; above all, Europe has become 
 opened up, democratised, enlightened, that is, 
 in a way undreamt of by the gentlemen who 
 went to The Hague. Values have changed 
 almost elementally. The meaning of diplomacy 
 has changed and has passed from the hands of 
 diplomatists. The roots of civilisation have 
 changed and have become one with the very 
 forms and reason of government. The voice of 
 the people has changed and threatens to be 
 
 sovereign. 
 
 These things want looking into if the real and 
 intelligent sensation caused by Mr Taft's call to 
 Peace is to receive the needful help and encourage- 
 ment from those whom it would most benefit. 
 A word of national thanks is due to Sir Edward 
 Grey, who, seizing the great opportunity which 
 comes but once to a statesman, passed with it 
 into the skies of fame ; and to Mr Balfour, who 
 supported him. The thing, therefore, has begun 
 rightly. Once more England has shown her 
 sanity, her power, to the world. Liberal and 
 Tory are united. The country is one. Without 
 hesitation, without reserve, the leaders of the 
 Commons accept the principle of Mr Taft's 
 proposal, which consists, not in any Utopian 
 scheme of general disarmament, but in a formal 
 common agreement that in no circumstances will 
 the two peoples go to war with one another. It 
 is not a military alliance ; it is not a treaty of
 
 peace, perfect peace 47 
 
 interest or policy ; defence is not an integral 
 part of it : it is a simple human covenant of peace 
 based on the conscience of a common civilisation. 
 
 This should be understood. Nor is it new as 
 principle or project. But for the action of the 
 Senate fourteen years ago a very similar compact 
 of peace would have been solemnised between 
 the English and American peoples — was, in fact, 
 signed on paper between the contracting repre- 
 sentatives ; which has been the groundwork of 
 Mr Taft's present and larger proposal. Only 
 Mr Taft has gone further, rightly abreast with 
 the flow of modern opinion. He asks, not for a 
 tentative treaty of adjudication, but for juris- 
 diction absolute, " no matter what it involves," 
 covering every issue between the two countries. 
 
 This is heroic enough. Consider what it 
 means. It means the cementing of the Anglo- 
 American peoples, the two greatest forces of 
 civilisation in the modern world, together into 
 one inalienable race. And when one comes to 
 consider the problem, to weigh the arguments 
 for and against, it is difficult to find any single 
 reason militating against it. Indeed, the whole 
 force of reason, historic, racial, human and logical, 
 bears overwhelmingly towards its consummation. 
 There cannot be a sane man in this country who 
 would protest. The thing is utterly sound. 
 The arrangement implies nothing aggressive to 
 any other nation ; and it entails no diplomatic 
 corollary of secret clause or treaty, military or 
 otherwise, offensive to anyone. If Mr Taft is
 
 48 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 correct in his estimate of American opinion, we, 
 for our part, can only welcome his proposal. 
 We were ready for it over a decade ago. We 
 are ready for it to-day. 
 
 So much for the idea — the ideal is not so 
 obvious. Yet even here civilisation has pro- 
 gressed enormously since the beginning of the 
 century, overreaching, one may accurately say, 
 the very formulae which compound it. The 
 stupendous advance of science has blasted not 
 only the old order of things political, social, and 
 economic, but our entire philosophy of life 
 towards them. Look at the map of Europe 
 to-day, the map that Pitt, after Austerlitz, rolled 
 up with tears in his eyes, and instead of princi- 
 palities and dependencies, crosses of battlefields 
 and military confines, we see — Cook and Baedeker 
 and the Paris Daily Mail. A few decades ago 
 only rich men travelled on the Continent — the 
 poor man knew nothing of the " grand tour." 
 To-day we are all travellers ; we have become 
 democrats, cosmopolitans, citizens rather of a 
 common humanity than of any geographical or 
 even linguistic nationality. Trains, motors, aero- 
 planes — rapidity on the one hand ; the mob 
 Press feeding the masses — cheapness on the other ; 
 these are the things that have opened up the soul 
 of Europe, so that the very word thrills us now 
 with the vision of hotels, in the place of glory 
 and deathless victories. 
 
 Already a new formula for patriotism is required 
 — its old geographical sense has gone. From an
 
 peace, perfect peace 49 
 
 ethnic mass of ignorant, servile peoples — French, 
 German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, etc. — illiterate, 
 rooted to the soil, saturated in feudal and ana- 
 chronistic religious superstitions, serfs because 
 they could not read or think, hating one another 
 with the savagery of chained dogs, Europe is 
 rapidly evolving into a continent of nations who, 
 if they talk different tongues, are beginning to 
 realise that they have common interests and a 
 common humanity. But for its Anglo-American 
 patronage, Montmartre, the home of Verlaine, 
 would have to close down its festivities. It is 
 with the " bob-sleigh," not with Tell and his 
 patriotic apple, that one associates Switzerland. 
 Go to Seville at Eastertide, and one might as well 
 be at the St Louis Exhibition. And Venice with 
 its motor-boats and German " pensions " — what 
 would the Doges or Byron have said to that ? 
 You can almost travel through Italy now without 
 being robbed. You can walk about Paris in 
 alpine boots, and the Apache will think you rather 
 a fine fellow. In every self-respecting city in 
 Europe to-day there is a bar — the criterion of a 
 Welt-Stadt ; there is a football ; there is a cinema. 
 Even Prussia, Fritz's pipeclay Prussia, has 
 succumbed. If you are anything at all in Berlin 
 now, you dine in a " smoking." Ladies now go 
 to restaurants, where from time immemorial 
 ' nobody dressed," in low-cut gowns. It is no 
 longer " good form " for men in a German cafe' 
 to sneer if they see an Englishman walk in. The 
 Press, the electric theatre, socialism, cheap books, 
 
 D
 
 50 ^Before ant> Bom 
 
 education — the mob has now a mind as greedy 
 as its stomach. The difficulty of inducing men 
 to sign on as sergeants in the German army grows 
 every year more serious. 1 The backfisch no 
 longer capitulates to every uniformed male she 
 encounters ; she reads Bebel's Frau> Artzchy- 
 bachef, Oscar Wilde ; she is the most advanced 
 maiden of the age. In Spain and Portugal the 
 same phenomena are visible. All over Europe 
 the unit, man, is emerging like a chrysalis from 
 his feudal shell, quick, as it were, with wings. 
 Rapidly, unalterably, the sanctities of mediaeval 
 and sacerdotal usage are crumbling down. Where 
 the genius of Napoleon failed, the humanity of 
 the gramophone and of the electric theatre 
 have conquered. Almost one might say there 
 is a new Christianity — the Christianity of social 
 brotherhood. 
 
 It is easy enough to exaggerate this modern 
 attitude towards the old beliefs, towards patriot- 
 ism, towards war, for men are probably every bit 
 as martial, interested, and heroic as they were in 
 the days of Wellington. If patriotism has rather 
 lost its meaning — it is a narrow and stupid sense 
 — nationalism has acquired a new force and 
 distinction. It is the driving power of modern 
 nations, and it is with that power that rulers 
 must now reckon. Yet no man who knows the 
 Continent of to-day and compares it with that 
 of yesterday will dispute the enormous change 
 taking place among all peoples and among all 
 
 1 This was perfectly true in the decade 1900-1910.
 
 peace, perfect peace 51 
 
 classes. The two recent great wars had a salutary- 
 effect. If the Boer War revealed Europe to be 
 a howling wilderness of Anglophobia, it ended 
 by showing Europe how exceedingly ungenerous 
 it had been in its estimate of English policy and 
 power. It was the same with Russia. And then 
 men learnt two other things which they had not 
 before realised. 
 
 In the first place, they have seen the negative 
 effects of modern wars — England who, after 
 fighting for a couple of years and spending a 
 sum that would have struck Chatham with 
 amazement, gaining not a penny of indemnity 
 but actually granting to the Boers the very 
 thing the war was fought about ; Japan who, 
 after thrashing Russia in the biggest war known 
 in history, likewise not gaining a penny of in- 
 demnity, and actually the poorer for her victory. 
 South Africa is for the " South Africans ' ' now 
 far more than ever Mr Kriiger anticipated. 
 Russia is in fact richer and better off for her 
 defeat than Japan is for all her glory. In the 
 old days man went out to fight, singly and 
 collectively, for booty. Yet neither we nor 
 Japan gained one shilling in return. On the 
 contrary, we both paid very dearly. 
 
 Beside the negative results of victory men have 
 wondered lugubriously at the enormous expendi- 
 ture of modern warfare. Alaric would completely 
 fail to understand the psychology of peoples who 
 conquered a nation and then gave them large 
 additional sums to prop them up again. And the
 
 52 before ant) Bava 
 
 primitive instinct of Alaric is causing us to think. 
 Of course Germany got her reward. She did 
 the primitive, predatory, instinctive thing ; yet 
 it may reasonably be doubted whether she could 
 ever knock another indemnity out of France, 
 just as it is pretty certain that if ever England 
 and Germany were to go to war it would be a 
 war to the last fighting man and never a penny 
 of indemnity would the victor obtain. And 
 that brings us to the other side of modern war- 
 fare — the question of the very possibility of a 
 European war. 
 
 Mr Norman Angell has written about this 
 matter in a highly suggestive book called The 
 Great Illusion, which is selling — it is worth 
 noting — in Germany like standard bread over 
 here. His thesis, that credit which is the great 
 power of modern civilisation, practically prohibits 
 the indulgence of war, may be overstrained — all 
 hypotheses are hypothetical — but that it contains 
 a substratum of truth can hardly be denied ; nor, 
 in fact, is it by the majority of the class of men 
 known as financiers. It is not altogether an 
 heroic consolation. If the battlefields of the 
 future are to be the counting-houses of pluto- 
 cracy, humanity is not likely to be much the 
 better off. But that is the tendency. It is the 
 tendency because money is so much more power- 
 ful than guns. 
 
 This, however, is the debatable point. All 
 the same there are two great examples of power 
 based on economic rather than military principle
 
 peace, perfect peace 53 
 
 — the great examples of England and America. 
 Compared with Germany, which, per contra, is 
 the example of a nation welded and held together 
 by military power, America has no army at all ; 
 compared with France, our ally in arms, England, 
 discounting the better part of our Army main- 
 tained in India, has little more than a modern 
 army corps, or only a very small Army. 1 Yet 
 America and England are the richest, the most 
 powerful, the socialising forces in the world. 
 We may say it is due to position — the position 
 of England as an island, of America as a continent ; 
 and no doubt that is so. But that is not all. 
 There is credit. When all the world was against 
 us at the outbreak of the Boer War, and the great 
 nations of Europe were chafing to attack us, it 
 was our credit that kept the Powers at logger- 
 heads, the fact of the British Navy, the history, 
 economic and historic, of England. 
 
 Wealth, then, is the great power of modern 
 civilisation. It was the merchants who built 
 up the British Empire. Bismarck saw that 
 clearly enough, and he was always opposed to a 
 German transmaritime expansion. The attempt 
 of modern Germany, in the flush of Pan-German 
 inebriation, to make commerce follow the flag, 
 has ended in complete disillusion and disaster. 
 The Spaniards lost their colonies because they 
 were not merchants, because with the bigotry 
 of the conquistadores they forgot that the sword 
 can only destroy, and that the rudest soil needs 
 
 1 The now historic " contemptibles."
 
 54 "Before ant) bouj 
 
 nourishment. When Spain shuffled off the soil 
 of her colonies, unquestionably a bloody book 
 in military history closed. It ended the last of 
 the old military empires, and with it the ashes 
 of Columbus came back naturally, as it were, 
 to their mother earth after four centuries of 
 exile. 
 
 If we consider the whole question of war in 
 connection with the proposed Anglo-American 
 treaty of peace, we have to remember one most 
 important point. Such a treaty between our- 
 selves and the Americans, not being a union for 
 military purposes, leaves the vital problem of 
 European armaments untouched, unsolved. Let 
 no man imagine the day of universal peace has 
 dawned. Very jar jrom it. If such a bond is 
 consummated it will be a corner-stone in history, 
 to be sure. It will be wholly admirable. It 
 will be one of the greatest events in all civilisation. 
 And it should lay the seed that will bear forth 
 good fruit. Once let the principle of arbitration 
 become an established fact between England and 
 America, and it will light a candle throughout 
 the world. It is, perhaps, wise to anticipate no 
 further. Fighting is the natural instinct of 
 mankind. To argue that because England and 
 America have agreed not to fight with one another 
 therefore all peoples will put on the toga of ever- 
 lasting peace, is mere speculation. There is 
 nothing final in life. There will be no finality 
 in peace. 
 
 Will it, then, affect the arming of civilised
 
 peace, perfect peace 55 
 
 Europe, that crushing war tax eating up the 
 revenue of the nations ? Alas ! not one whit 
 directly, though it may do subsequently indirectly. 
 Such a treaty will leave the European armament 
 question unchanged. As we have never con- 
 templated war with America, so now the assurance 
 of America's friendship cannot affect the problem 
 of the ships we have to build against Germany or 
 the ships that Germany chooses to build against 
 us. It would be madness to think otherwise, 
 strong as the temptation to dally with sweet 
 dreams mav be. What can be said is that the 
 first step will have been taken towards the ideal 
 of the principle of international arbitration. 
 
 That is much. It is so much that civilisation, 
 if there is any meaning in the term at all, can 
 scarcely afford to stand aloof and not assist 
 sooner or later in the building up of so noble a 
 temple. The educational force of Mr Taft's 
 scheme is an ethic. At The Hague the case 
 for arbitration was stated. To-day it has been 
 brought a long way forward : it has become a 
 real, a conceivable idea. 
 
 For behind it there is the reason of necessity. 
 The armed camp of Europe has already almost 
 outgrown its resources, even if it is too early to 
 claim that it has outlived its time. The burden 
 of these monstrous armies, these monstrous naval 
 Budgets is held by statesmen of all peoples to 
 be noxious and scandalously ridiculous. Still it 
 is, perhaps, more the people than the statesmen 
 who are growing rebellious. The results of
 
 56 'Before ant) iRoui 
 
 these armaments being negative and their influ- 
 ence upon the social fabric admittedly retrograde, 
 it is not surprising if those who pay the toll 
 should at last begin to inquire into the need of 
 it. It is interesting to watch the rise of this 
 feeling in Germany — the nursery of old-time 
 militarism — but for whose militant outlook upon 
 the world as the heritage of Bismarck and the 
 " thinker of battles," Europe, it might almost be 
 said, would be ready for arbitration to-morrow. 
 
 The working classes in Germany are, however, 
 the most enlightened in Europe, thanks to the 
 educational and disciplinary influence of Social 
 Democracy, which is the antipode to militarism. 
 Germans no longer think in cuirassier boots. 
 Gradually the Katifmann, or merchant, 1 is coming 
 into his own. A quieter and saner outlook is 
 noticeable. There is a new type of man in 
 politics. So powerful is the feeling about taxa- 
 tion and armaments that the Socialists are 
 expected to come into the Reichstag at the next 
 elections over a hundred strong, numerically in 
 greater strength than the Catholic centre. 
 
 As an index of feeling this is remarkable. Yet 
 too much may easily be made of it. Whatever 
 may happen, the Germans now will remain 
 Germans, one solid ethnological whole. And 
 that is really the European question oj to-day. 
 
 1 This was perfectly true in 191 1. It was in 1912-13 that 
 Germany reverted to the idea of the necessit}' of war, owing 
 to the new Balkan constellation, the growing armaments of 
 Russia, and the martial malaise of the Army under the restive 
 ambition of the Crown Prince, who was on bad terms with the 
 Emperor.
 
 peace, perfect peace 57 
 
 To attempt to force arbitration upon the German 
 people, to seek in any way to disturb the course of 
 what they regard, in Fichte's words, as their 
 " natural destiny," to exert pressure of any kind 
 upon them, would cause European cataclysm. 
 Nor is there the slightest cause why there should 
 be such interference. Germany has not had 
 much luck in the world from the racial point of 
 view. In the grand old buccaneer days, when 
 robbery was a gentleman's pastime, her heart 
 was lacerated with internecine wars and troubles. 
 If, in consequence, she feels very young and 
 robust now, it is not unnatural. The right 
 thing is to let the Germans be Germans but to 
 take good care that we remain Englishmen. 
 
 Reduced to fact, the Anglo-American Treaty 
 of Peace comes to this : that England and 
 America agree not to fight with one another, 
 and for the present that is all. Let there be no 
 more formal Peace or Arbitration Conferences 
 — they are as anachronistic as the hereditary 
 system. Let men think it out by themselves. 
 Already they have begun to. With Europe our 
 prospective agreement with America has no 
 immediate concern — no concern, in that no 
 European interests are affected thereby. In its 
 idealistic sense the agreement is the coping-stone 
 to that larger Anglo-Saxon unity of being and 
 purpose which, again, may popularly be styled 
 as Union. Looking far into the future, I seem 
 to descry the jormation of a great all- Anglo-Saxon 
 race that shall be permanently and usefully one.
 
 58 before ant) irouj 
 
 It need not be an economic union such as Mr 
 Chamberlain conceived within the artificial walls 
 of an economic Tariff — barriers which are neces- 
 sarily transitory and deceptive ; indeed it prob- 
 ably would not be so. But the two peoples, the 
 American and the English, are not only of the 
 same stock, speaking the same language, sharing 
 the same heritage, but they have the breath of 
 common usages and principles and traditions and 
 ideals. It is inconceivable, humanly viewed, that 
 these two peoples ever should be at warfare with 
 one another now that wars are no longer fought 
 for princely, border, religious or territorial issues. 
 But it is conceivable — nay, it is only logical — 
 that the Americans and the English should be 
 one : one in the sense of nationality, that is, of 
 language and interest and idea — what is generally 
 called civilisation. 
 
 That condition would seem to be the future of 
 peoples and empires — not patriotism, which is a 
 lacquey conception ; not mere economic interest, 
 which is liable always to the fluctuations of 
 circumstance ; not at all Imperialism in its 
 Napoleonic military sense. As the minds of men 
 open and the old dogmas, superstitions, creeds, 
 and fanaticisms are shaken off, so must the true 
 understanding of nations expand into what may 
 be called a workable national humanity. 1 
 
 What it may lead to is another matter, yet 
 here we may pardonably be hopeful. The con- 
 
 1 I am glad these words were written so long before the 
 League of Nations idea.
 
 peace, perfect peace 59 
 
 summation of such an agreement will be wonder 
 sufficient. We must be content with that for 
 the nonce. In the meantime we must look to 
 our Army and to our Navy exactly as if no such 
 agreement existed, even if deep down in our 
 hearts we cherish a great hope. Nor will any 
 purpose be served by undignified jubilation. It 
 is not for us to proclaim peace to the world, 
 conditional or ethical. It may come. In time 
 probably it will come. Till that moment, how- 
 ever, we must look to our interests first and to 
 the means that guard them. A great, a splendid 
 thing is attainable. But it is not yet the millen- 
 nium of universal love. It is not yet the dawn of 
 that era in which there will be Peace, perfect 
 Peace. 
 
 This was an attempt to disillusion people about the Era 
 of Peace which we seriously then believed had arrived, as 
 anyone can see who turns up the Press of that date. The 
 existing Anglo-American union is foreshadowed, though at 
 the time very few people believed it possible that English- 
 men and Americans would ever fight together under one 
 flag. The Germans who, politically, are, as Nietzsche 
 said, unintelligent, always banked on the estrangement 
 between the two English-speaking peoples ; indeed their 
 entire military calculations were based on the assumption 
 that American help would never take the form of man-power.
 
 €>t George's stirrup 
 
 (1912) 
 
 SOME years ago, when I was returning to 
 England, I travelled with a German, who 
 told me he was going back to wind up 
 his affairs, prior to settling down in Germany, 
 because he could not stand the English want 
 of order any longer. We got talking. Herr 
 Kaufmann Schultz astonished me. In his six- 
 teen years' existence in London he had done 
 well ; he had made a comfortable fortune, he had 
 nothing to complain of. But he could no longer 
 live in a systemless State. " I shall miss your 
 lawns, your hedges, your English meat," he said, 
 " and I shall always smoke a briar pipe. Yet 
 now that I am getting on in years I need order, 
 government, system ; for the only positive thing 
 in England is your Sunday, and I am tired — yes, 
 mutinously tired of an afternoon kind of existence 
 in the land of half-holidays." 
 
 For seven years I have wondered what precisely 
 this German merchant meant, and might have 
 gone on wondering had it not been for — " Joy 
 Day," and the childish Press 1 agitation about the 
 licking and sticking on of stamps. For against 
 
 1 Mr Lloyd George's Insurance revolution. 
 60
 
 %t ®eorge'0 stirrup 61 
 
 what is this public agitation directed ? Against 
 the principle of Insurance ? No, assuredly not ; 
 that cannot be. Not a single Conservative 
 member of Parliament opposed the Bill. Not 
 a single Conservative member attended the 
 Albert Hall meeting of protest. And yet in 
 every London drawing-room the controversy 
 rages. Butlers, cooks, and ladies of high social 
 standing furiously discuss the means and ways 
 of evasion and contravention. Yellow-plush is 
 in open revolt. Mayfair is in revolt. On the 
 links, great hulking caddies lisp fearful tales about 
 that 4d. a week. The Mediterranean ? — who 
 cares ? National service ? — who will listen to 
 you ? Our prestige at the Olympic Games ? — 
 we smile complacently. Yet England is in a 
 state of sofa rebellion. And simply because in a 
 general scheme of Insurance, approved by both 
 parties, Mr Lloyd George included domestics — 
 those ladies and gentlemen whom the other 
 gentlemen call " slavies." 
 
 Looking at the thing objectively, we see that 
 the diagnosis of the trouble is this importation 
 of a foreign principle alien to the rock-bed spirit 
 of British snobbery, which tacked on to the 
 Manchester school gave us our Liberalism of 
 laissez-jaire. In reality it is this Liberalism 
 which is changing, which has got to change. It 
 was Lord Rosebery who started the reaction, 
 appealing for " Charlottenburg technical schools." 
 The present King floated it, as it were, with his 
 cry of " Wake up, England." To-day the reaction
 
 62 'Before ant) jftou) 
 
 is actual. Gradually the State is coming into its 
 own. L'Etat threatens to be the State. 
 
 It is difficult to see how in this epoch, when 
 the problem of nations is population, it can well 
 be otherwise, charming, English, and adequate as 
 our system of individualism and voluntary effort 
 has hitherto been. Economic questions to-day 
 are mass problems — as modern armies and navies 
 are valued by their numbers in men and ships. 
 It is the doctrine which Moltke and the German 
 economists thrust upon Europe, coupled with 
 the idea of the State as the parent of the body 
 politic, towards the formation and efficiency of 
 which the collective energies of the nation were 
 to be systematised and co-ordinated. This, of 
 course, is the foundation of conscription, of State 
 Socialism, of the whole conception of German 
 Imperial architectonics, the joint legacy of List, 1 
 Bismarck, and Treitschke. It means simply the 
 systematisation of the whole into one organic 
 life. One may say absolutely that in four 
 decades it has made Germany what she is to-day, 
 just as the lack of it led All the Russias into the 
 straits of Fushima. In a word, it is logical and 
 scientific ; its machinery is central ; its object 
 is the concentration and application of the 
 economic, social and military powers of the 
 nation into a single dynamic efficiency. 
 
 In England — and this is what my German 
 merchant referred to — exactly the contrary view 
 
 1 Not the musician, but the economist who is really the founder 
 of Pan-Germanism.
 
 %t George's stirrup 63 
 
 has hitherto prevailed in the paradoxical fashion 
 peculiar to us. We are the country of law. 
 But the State is the parent of no one. A national 
 programme is taboo. Our constitution is a 
 growth. Our National services are voluntary. 
 Our hospitals are maintained by charity. Our 
 Governments are transitory. Our political course, 
 foreign, social, and economic, is liable at any 
 moment to be changed or reversed. Literally 
 we have no State or national system. Our 
 Socialism has lain in the hands of cliques 
 and individuals, and consequently we have no 
 Socialism. Instead of a bureaucracy we have 
 our English amateurishness, the conservatism of 
 an island people. Instead of system we have 
 common sense, which is the authority of the 
 London policeman. 
 
 It has worked admirably, marvellously, all 
 these years, and England is the playground of 
 Europe. But since the Transvaal War, things 
 have got found out. The first soldier in England 
 tells us we must have conscription, and many 
 soldiers and civilians agree with him. We dis- 
 covered that England has no up-to-date technical 
 education. Somehow our Fiscal system seemed 
 to need readjustment or repair. The alien 
 question confronted us. The unemployed and 
 unemployable problem arose. Suddenly we have 
 become aware that Germany is rapidly over- 
 hauling our Naval superiority in ships : by law, 
 deliberately, inexorably. The whole question of 
 Imperial Defence has become of vital, immediate
 
 64 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 importance. With the fall of the Lords, the 
 last stronghold of Feudalism was swept out of 
 the country, and in its place there has come a 
 combative democracy of surprising youth and 
 freshness. Once more Albion is awake. With 
 the Edwardian reign a new spirit came into the 
 country, knocking down half the conventions, 
 shibboleths, traditions, and trammels that had 
 existed since the days of the Georges, affecting 
 even the arts and the very femininity of women. 
 Modern England is a cauldron of social and 
 domestic problems. Even property, land — the 
 foundation of our English life — is threatened 
 with legislative emendation. To the outside 
 observer the face of England is a condition of 
 chronic anarchy. 
 
 Not evil anarchy, nothing destructive, un- 
 sound ; on the contrary, it is the chaos of effort 
 and energy, quick with the strivings of life. The 
 elegance of our Victorian amateur anarchy has 
 brought us to it as the result of decades of self- 
 complacent apathy, in which the dilettante and 
 the amateur were the leading figures. The 
 scholarship of Gladstone, the literature of Disraeli, 
 the military "science" of Buller, are examples. 
 Saturated with the amateur learning of our 
 schools, the English mind till quite recently 
 despised all technical and expert knowledge, 
 professionalism in any line whether of mind or 
 body. We studied at school as amateurs ; we 
 played games as amateurs — the national system 
 is anarchy.
 
 %t ®earge'0 stirrup 65 
 
 Take the one question of conscription ; not a 
 politician dare openly demand it. We prefer 
 the amateur business of the Territorials with 
 its collateral symptoms of the Boy Scout. Our 
 modern stage is full of young ladies who start 
 out in big parts, destitute of experience or talent, 
 but there is no standard of criticism to unmask 
 them. We have no literary censor in the country, 
 yet authors find this book banned from the book- 
 stalls, this novel rejected, because — because the 
 libraries don't think the mammas of an antima- 
 cassar generation would quite like its tendency. 
 The waste of our hospitals' voluntary system is 
 notorious, but nothing can be done, because it 
 is a voluntary affair. Our London Parks are 
 dormitories for the unemployable. It has been 
 estimated that the money spent annually in 
 charity in London would enable us to halve the 
 income tax, if properly employed and allocated ; 
 as it is, our hospitals are in perpetual want. 
 Our War Office plays about with airships, just 
 as years ago we sniffed at the French motor-cars. 
 Our athletes go to the Olympic Games almost 
 untrained, and then sneer at American profes- 
 sionalism. Our telephone service is amateurish 
 and, to anyone who has lived in America or 
 Scandinavia, a disgrace. Because of individual- 
 ism, we have no control, no criticism ; we set no 
 standards ; the dilettante principle runs right 
 through our public life to the belted actor- 
 manager system of our stage. The Royal 
 Academy show ; our talking lawyer-politicians
 
 66 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 of the Party system ; the trade control of English 
 literature, headed by a self-appointed Academy 
 that nobody knows, and those who do laugh at, 
 the foreign endeavour to establish a National 
 Opera House ; our painful and half-shamefaced 
 efforts to rid ourselves of the ecclesiastical tyranny 
 of the divorce laws — all these are points in 
 question. 
 
 And we are proud of it. We muddle through. 
 We sentimentalise about the " absent-minded 
 beggar " — we, the prime buccaneers, the sea- 
 dogs and fighters in history ! To the Admiralty 
 we send the man who three years ago publicly 
 stated that he did not think Germany was 
 building up to our Navy. To the War Office 
 there went an admirable lawyer. And so on. 
 Only the Law holds its own in England. The 
 Bench would never admit an eminent man, 
 such as Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, to sit at 
 Bow Street. In most other walks of life our 
 amateur anarchy obtains. Individualism, we call 
 it, and the great game is to play it. 
 
 Can we continue with the leading European 
 peoples training, so to speak, for action, to trust, 
 as we always have done, to luck ; to the happy 
 chance of coming through ? For that is the 
 crisis facing the individualist school. And both 
 in practice and theory it touches our whole 
 public and private life. It comes shortly to this : 
 Will the amateur, however brave, intrepid, deter- 
 mined, be able to hold his own indefinitely 
 against the expert and the professional, whether
 
 €>t ®eorge'0 stirrup 67 
 
 in war, in commerce, or in power generally ? 
 Can England continue without a State and a 
 State system ? Are we tapping the sources at 
 her command ? 
 
 A democratic systematised England is not a 
 place we can easily picture, but it is coming 
 now, impelled by the mass forces of modern 
 conditions. We can no longer stand up in the 
 world in the teeth of modern competition and 
 rivalry, and hope somehow to pull through. 
 We have got to have discipline, method, control, 
 and system. Our Colonies are waiting for the 
 signal. We have got to take account of the new 
 conditions of modern life and adapt ourselves 
 accordingly, to stem the waste of disorganised 
 and demoralising charity and turn it into channels 
 that will be useful and helpful. We have got to 
 look into and reform the whole spirit of national 
 education if we are to keep abreast of scientific 
 progress and efficiency. If the national contin- 
 uity is to be preserved, we must build nationally. 
 We want a single national philosophy. 
 
 For the stuff is there right enough — the material 
 and the brains. Never was England probably 
 in a more pushful, vital state. Our masses have 
 discovered theory for the first time in England's 
 history ; the next discovery will be system. It 
 will be wiser for the classes to forestall them. 
 The extraordinary thing really is that we still 
 are what in truth foreigners admit us to be — the 
 first all-round force in the world. And we can 
 be so always. But there are other great peoples
 
 68 'Before anD Botu 
 
 growing up to-day, far more numerous than we 
 are, peoples with a stern system of national 
 ambition. If we are to continue to believe in 
 ourselves, we shall have to believe in the State. 
 
 St George himself is right enough. As a unit 
 he is still probably the first man in Europe. 
 What he needs is directive, a national design, the 
 prop of a State stirrup. 
 
 Again a warning, clearly anticipating the great European 
 struggle into which I foresaw we should drift, unprepared.
 
 €t)e Dttfee'0 buffalo 
 
 T 
 
 (1912) 
 
 HOUGH of all forms of British recrea- 
 tion the Sunday intellectual tramp has 
 always seemed to me the most tiresome, 
 I was unable to refuse the invitation of Noggins, 
 for he is an old pal of mine, a man of stern, 
 indefatigable rectitude, and besides there was 
 the opportunity of a good " crack." It was a 
 wonderful May morning, all song and burgeon, 
 and we pounded for the better part of the morning 
 silently across the rolling downs, Noggins setting 
 the pace, the Midland brawn of him accentuated 
 by the strange attire that he affected, half tourist, 
 with the soft hat, collarless open shirt, and corded 
 necktie of the Continental workman. I love those 
 downs, but it was warm, and I was getting 
 just a little peevish, skirting the miles of wall 
 
 that marks off the estate of Castle, when 
 
 suddenly Noggins stopped in the middle of 
 his stride, glared, almost gloated, and pointing 
 dramatically with his arm, shouted with that 
 mass-meeting voice of his : " Great Gawd, it's 
 a buffalo ! " 
 
 Noggins is not often wrong. I followed the 
 line of his outstretched stick and there, sure 
 
 69
 
 70 before ant) Bouj 
 
 enough, not fifteen yards from the wall, browsing 
 under a tree, stood a massive buffalo, gazing at 
 us with the condescension of a butler. Had it 
 been the German Emperor in an aeroplane I 
 should not have been so surprised, but a real 
 buffalo, fat, tame and contented, did stir me 
 almost as much as it excited Noggins. We 
 craned over the wall and contemplated the 
 beast enjoying the ambience in the Ducal Park, 
 but the creature evidently was accustomed to 
 vulgar curiosity. " It's like the Lord Mayor's 
 coachman," I said at last, and the remark seemed 
 to relieve Noggins. He smiled. Presently he 
 broke out into loud peals of laughter, then, 
 sitting down by the roadside, he filled and 
 lighted his pipe. 
 
 " That buffalo " (I will not record the 
 
 adjective of my friend Noggins, though it is 
 a well-worn English qualification), " that's all 
 England, that is. He's the epitome of our 
 whole social history." I could see that Noggins 
 was working himself up to a speech, whereas 
 I was hungry, I wanted lunch. " Perhaps," I 
 ventured, " perhaps it's a bison." 
 
 The moment I had said it I was sorry, but I 
 wish I could describe the implacable fierceness 
 that came over my friend's face at the remark. 
 Our walk was over — I realised that at once. 
 Noggins was no longer a pedestrian ; he had 
 become a politician, a reformer. It would 
 be hours now before we got any lunch. I 
 loosened my waistcoat and, finding a comfort-
 
 Clje Dufte'0 buffalo 71 
 
 able bed on the green, resigned myself to 
 events. 
 
 " Bison or buffalo," he said, with the senten- 
 
 tiousness of a John Knox, " that beast 
 
 survives even the House of Lords. He's Feudal- 
 ism, he is. He stands there like a great pampered 
 flunkey, better fed, better cared for than one-half 
 of the population of these Isles ; not wanted — 
 for he is of no use, costing more in his weekly 
 upkeep than millions of entire families earn with 
 six days' sweat and labour — a relic, an omen, 
 flaunting our whole industrial life and conditions. 
 I'm not talking Socialism ; this is social sense. 
 Can you sit there and not see the mockery 
 of that animal's artificial existence ? There are 
 tens of thousands of hard-working men craving 
 the land, the right to toil and live ; there are 
 millions herded together in squalor and misery 
 in all our great cities living in a perpetual state 
 of anguish and under-nourishment, and there lie 
 those miles of Ducal Park, and in it there stands 
 that poor silly buffalo, who should be running 
 wild on the prairies, kept like the cast-off mistress 
 of a nobleman." 
 
 " But surely, Noggins," I interrupted, " a 
 man may keep a buffalo if he is so minded. It's 
 curious, I admit ; still, I do not follow your 
 indignation. If it had been a cow. . . ." " A 
 cow ! ' Noggins retorted. " A cow gives milk, 
 but a buffalo is a mere luxury, a piece of darnn- 
 my-eye Feudal insolence, like the old castles 
 the Barons put up to fight and thwart their
 
 72 'Before anU Botu 
 
 kings. We only see things clearly by revelation. 
 To me that civilised beast is a challenge to our 
 whole social fabric. Dumb — he is to me the 
 flag of warfare. Useless — he has revealed to me 
 the meaning of our social unrest, the reason of 
 our English Labour upheaval — aye, and the 
 morality of it, the hideous necessity of strife." 
 
 " Was there ever such a buffalo in the world ! " 
 I exclaimed. " Tell me, Noggins, would you 
 refuse a man the right to keep anything that 
 cost him money, forbid a woman a row of pearls ? 
 If I rode a zebra in the Park now, would you 
 class me as a Feudal Baron ? You surely are 
 not going to bring out the grey theory of equalisa- 
 tion of wealth, are you ? — the old Socialistic 
 fetish of expropriation ? You don't cry out 
 when you see an Old Master in some rich man's 
 house. Yet there is money in such a picture, 
 too — money, no doubt, that would provide a 
 dozen families with two full meals a day for a 
 decade. My dear Noggins, everything is relative 
 in this world. You now, you have a very good pair 
 of boots on ; that hat must have cost you some- 
 thing ; but not more to you than the price of 
 that buffalo to the Duke. All values are pro- 
 portional. Take jewellery, art, pictures, books, 
 statues, music, plays, poetry. A couple of nails 
 in a man's boots can be more useful to him on a 
 slippery mountain slope than a £ 10,000 rope of 
 pink pearls, yet the pearls are of more value in 
 the drawing-room. Even beauty is proportional, 
 latitudinal, travellers will tell you. You may
 
 €t)e ®uW$ buffalo 73 
 
 think that buffalo a monstrous luxury, but many- 
 people would consider the payment of ^400 a 
 year to Members of Parliament a far greater waste 
 of money, and of .£5000 to Ministers a barbarism." 
 
 " There is truth in what you say," Noggins 
 returned. " I am not abusing the Duke for 
 keeping that buffalo, or the buffalo for idling in 
 that Park. What I say is that he is a symbol — 
 a value, as you would call it — and what he has 
 revealed to me is this very disproportion in our 
 social life. And it is this disparity, this flaunting 
 of disparity, that is subverting the old order of 
 things in England, breaking down all our tradi- 
 tions and conventions, acting with such dystrophic 
 effect upon the masses of industrial workers. 
 What do you suppose the workman living on 
 twenty-five shillings a week feels when he sees 
 
 that buffalo grazing there on the grass ? 
 
 Or the country labourer living on eighteen 
 shillings a week ? Or the wife with five little 
 children to nourish and a husband who is out of 
 work ? Yet these people form the majority of 
 the population ; they can read now, thanks to 
 education and the cheap Press. In that buffalo 
 they see the reflex of their own mechanical 
 existence. 
 
 " Is that well or wise ? I ask, because in that 
 buffalo I see the trend of social warfare, the 
 inevitability of it, fleshed upon the soul of 
 England. That creature lives as an emblem of 
 a bygone age. He roams about like a ship 
 without a helm. He is there because it pleases
 
 74 before anD Botu 
 
 my Lord. And on the other side of the wall, 
 silent, agonising, growing more and more articu- 
 late, the masses stare at him, half-crushed by 
 the very arrogance of the sight, wondering more, 
 feeling more, uniting more. You think that buffalo 
 means nothing. I tell you he is symptomatic of 
 modern England." 
 
 " Come, Noggins, we don't like theories in 
 England. Life here is to the snob. Believe me, 
 the yokel round about feels no umbrage at that 
 buffalo. He cheers the Derby winner as much 
 as ever. After all, the beasts at the Zoo cost 
 money. If a man likes to keep a few queer 
 animals, why in the world shouldn't he ? ' 
 
 " Try to follow me," Noggins rejoined quietly. 
 "The most casual observer of. England cannot 
 fail to notice the central condition of our modern 
 life, which is the dreadful poverty of three- 
 quarters of the people and the enormous wealth 
 of the few. We have all recently seen how 
 alienated even the professional politicians are 
 from the real movements of Labour, how strangely 
 divorced from reality the work and spirit of 
 Westminster now is, how silently but unmistak- 
 ably the force of political life has grown to be this 
 economic problem of industry, working, as it 
 were, subterraneously apart from and very often 
 in contradiction to the programme of the 
 politicians. The question to the vast majority 
 of Englishmen to-day is not Irish Home Rule, 
 but English Home Rule. 1 What working man 
 
 1 Curiously exact. It is our question in 1918.
 
 €t)e Pu fte^ buffalo 75 
 
 cares about Welsh Disestablishment, about any- 
 secular controversy ? Almost all the old planks 
 of politics that used to convulse the country 
 have lost their interest to-day, because the great 
 question of the time is the condition of England 
 question, the wage-earning question, the relation- 
 ship of Labour to capital. The Feudal influence 
 of the aristocracy has gone because the aristocracy 
 abandoned their traditional independence and 
 power when they merged their lot with the 
 Tariff Reform fortunes of plutocracy, aligning 
 themselves with the material interests of capital- 
 ism in direct antagonism to the people who had 
 served them so loyally throughout so many 
 centuries and upon whom they counted for 
 support. That was the reason why the House 
 of Lords fell so ignominiously, without a shot 
 fired, without a tear — it fell before the demand 
 of democratic and essentially conservative Eng- 
 land because it had become the mere ancillary 
 of capitalism. 
 
 " Instead of politics, the people were given 
 economics. Before the Tariff Reform issue 
 England was probably the most ignorant of all 
 West European nations in all that concerned 
 political economy, scientific, theoretic, and prac- 
 tical — to-day she is the most interested. It has 
 transformed the whole mechanism of politics. 
 It is the driving-force of all Liberal legislation, 
 the reason of our German-imported Insurance 
 Laws. And if the Conservatives were to come 
 into power to-morrow they would find that
 
 76 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 without a sweeping Social Reform programme 
 they would be righting a vain battle, mis- 
 understanding and misunderstood. The whole 
 woman's question is economic. The revolt 
 against our hereditary ecclesiastical and now 
 obsolete Divorce Laws is economic — the freedom 
 and equality of women. The sudden realisation 
 by the people of the savage and negative employ- 
 ment of national wealth necessitated by the 
 gigantic armament competition is economic and 
 sound, and one of the main causes of the ominous 
 growth of fighting Socialism in the German 
 Empire. The old terminologies of our politics are 
 dead. Whig and Tory have little meaning to-day. 
 Last August, Feudal Conservatism was crushed by 
 the bourgeois conservatism of the country. 
 
 " And you ask what that buffalo reveals to me ? 
 I'll tell you. He seems to me a sign-post pointing 
 to the cross-roads. His presence shows me that 
 while three-quarters of England are in a chronic 
 state of insurgency, the ruling forces are still 
 dormant ; still living complacently for their own 
 ends, ignoring or ignorant of the economic 
 phenomena they have conjured up, which threaten 
 to engulf them. If those who have not are 
 acquiring the rights and privileges of direction, 
 still more should those who have fit themselves 
 to be the fittest. 
 
 " And they are not. I say that deliberately. 
 Our class system of education is obsolete, narrow- 
 ing where it should expand. Our aristocracy 
 have grown disheartened, indifferent, no longer
 
 €t)e Dubt^ buffalo 77 
 
 leading in the affairs of England, sullen, on the 
 defensive. In the scramble of modern political 
 life things are no longer duly thought out ; it 
 is still a game, whereas the problems of labour are 
 earnest. Now that buffalo shows me that the 
 classes are apathetic ; that they have no leading 
 mind marshalling them to the new facts, directing 
 and teaching them. 
 
 " I think it was Oscar Wilde," continued 
 Noggins, " who said, ' Nothing succeeds like 
 excess.' There's a lot of truth in that. In 
 England, with our principle of individualism 
 and distrust of systematised government and 
 theory, it is always difficult to take the soundings 
 of great movements and convulsions, and so at 
 the present time we still find people questioning 
 whether all the labour trouble, this strike epi- 
 demic, is not chaotic rather than co-ordinate, 
 anarchic rather than constructive on any con- 
 scious lines of political or economic endeavour. 
 It seems to me to be extremely co-ordinate and 
 conscious. I can see nothing of an anarchist 
 nature about it, nothing that is not entirely 
 in accordance with the evolution of the body 
 politic, rating men now no longer as slaves bound 
 to a feudal system which was in its way soulful, 
 but as literate individuals ranged against a 
 machine which by its very nature is humanly 
 and economically soulless." 
 
 " But that buffalo, Noggins — for I think you 
 should stick to our buffalo — he is not soulless, 
 is he ? And what has he to do with the
 
 78 'Before ant) jeoui 
 
 machine ? ' " This," returned Noggins. " He 
 is the fly on the machine, whereas the vast human 
 energy absorbed by the system is merely, so to 
 speak, the fly-wheel. Everybody will admit that 
 the two great forces of a country are those of 
 labour and capital. In the ideal Socialist State, 
 of course, they would be interrelated, co- 
 operative, sharing equally the profits of labour, 
 but in the modern civilised State they are 
 antagonistic conceptions, and the more labour 
 grows educated and enlightened the more 
 difficult will it be for capital to ensure har- 
 monious co-partnery. I don't think I'm exactly 
 a Socialist, but I do feel very strongly the economic 
 discrepancies of modern life, and when I see that 
 buffalo there the hopelessness and pity of it all 
 overwhelm me." 
 
 " And what would you do, Noggins, if you 
 were the Duke, for that is the important 
 question ? ' and for a moment Noggins was 
 silent. " A Duke," he said, " can do a great 
 deal if he chooses, by example, by organisation, 
 by individuality. He could begin with the 
 other Dukes, with his sons, with the women 
 and those around him. He could establish an 
 atmosphere, found a policy, a school of example, 
 above all, he could take a sympathetic interest 
 in the vital problems of the day. His influence 
 would be infectious, his example followed. The 
 rich might then regain part of the prestige they 
 have lost, resume an active share in the direction 
 of the country. But that is purely hypothetical.
 
 Cfte DuWz 'Buffalo 79 
 
 The thing is to see things as they are. And 
 certainly they are not so working, they are not 
 even so thinking. There is a fatalism about all 
 nobility. The deluge was foreseen in France 
 decades before it came, yet no man cared. None 
 of them here seem to care. And that is the 
 danger of the situation. 
 
 " It sounds red to you, no doubt, but personally 
 I feel no anxiety, because it appears to me the 
 normal evolution of our industrial conditions, 
 neither very surprising nor alarming. Capitalism 
 has materialised our civilisation, as is apparent 
 even in the arts. We are out for money. After 
 all, it is the cry of every intelligent shopkeeper. 
 We want as much as we can get. So does the 
 modern miner, railwayman, joiner, tinker, tailor, 
 and the northern lass who is a Suffragette. Your 
 education has taught the daughters of the working 
 classes to strum on the piano — they will soon 
 want the pianola of the classes. Your Press has 
 provided the masses with encyclopaedias of know- 
 ledge — they are beginning to write history them- 
 selves. One advantage leads to another always, 
 as a baby presupposes a mother. See in Russia 
 how what we called the revolution failed ! It 
 failed because the Moujik is still an utterly 
 illiterate man steeped in the superstitions of the 
 ikon. But here we have only the unicorns of 
 blazonry left to us ; there are no superstitions, 
 except around Bond Street, and, as we know, 
 the circulations of our halfpenny newspapers are 
 miraculous.
 
 80 QBefote ant) Bom 
 
 " The real trouble lies in the mental indolence 
 of the ruling classes. They, too, should be 
 striving, striking, seeking remedies for the new 
 exigencies, battling loyally in the common interest 
 of the economic state. But are they ? Not one 
 whit ! All they do is to complain, to talk of the 
 country going to the dogs, to repeat the old 
 crusty apophthegms of the Victorian era, and 
 then they wonder that Demos is getting out of 
 hand and that restless Welshmen rule the country. 
 There is no evil in this restless spirit, but there 
 is serious harm in apathy. It is this discrepancy 
 that matters, that constitutes what may be called 
 the crisis, the out-of-condition attitude of the 
 classes, the growing fitness of the masses. For 
 work is as hard as ever ; our life has grown 
 harder. The impelling forces of poverty are 
 growing stronger than the directing energies of 
 comfort. 
 
 " Not stronger either, more clamant and 
 insistent, I suppose, for snobbery is still the 
 rock bottom of our English life, and the owning 
 and governing classes still get all the soft jobs, 
 while the proletarian sits in the crow's-nest. 
 
 That is why that buffalo there just 
 
 makes me jib. There is a terrible lot of news- 
 paper talk about Labour revolt and Socialism, 
 but what are the real facts ? First, that in 
 spite of all the murmurings and reverberations, 
 there is no big daily Labour newspaper in the 
 country, no propagandist organ, no mouthpiece 
 that speaks for the millions of England's wage-
 
 Ctje Dufce'0 buffalo 81 
 
 earners. The finest paper in Germany is the 
 Vorwdrts. What does the English workman 
 read ? " 
 
 " Bits," I shouted. " I know, Noggins. I'm 
 in that line." Noggins smiled. " You're right. 
 He reads bits. The result is the chaos of the 
 present situation. Chaos because in a country 
 ravelled with legal intricacies, the State is natur- 
 ally hidebound by a Party system, which in turn 
 is largely wire-pulled by the lawyer. And lawyers 
 are strangely unimaginative, uncreative men. 
 It is catastrophe alone which teaches us in 
 England. The Boer war, the fall of the Lords, 
 are examples. Don't you see what that old 
 buffalo stands for ? He is the writing on the 
 wall. 
 
 " No, listen, for it is good for a London editor 
 to hear some English truth from a fellow from 
 the North. What I say to you is this : Do you 
 suppose that the workmen of this country are 
 always going to submit to the hard economic 
 conditions which enslave them without class 
 and organised attempts to obtain a share in the 
 profits of labour ; or that any so-called minimum 
 wage can ever be regarded as permanent ? Of 
 course not. And if they were so minded and 
 subdued, they would cease to be typical English- 
 men. The words prescience and provision seem 
 to have gone out of the public conscience because 
 we are all boggling with party politics, while 
 statesmanship has sunk into opportunism. We 
 are like ants in a disturbed nest, running aim-
 
 82 before ant) Bom 
 
 lessly hither and thither. There is no scientific 
 organisation, little care, little aptitude for 
 organisation. There is no definite comprehen- 
 sion of the conditions, no comprehensive scheme 
 to meet them. There is no systematised and 
 far-seeing view. And the State is the gymnasium 
 for the politicians. 
 
 " Look now at that tame buffalo. He is out 
 of place in this green Ducal Park. He is absurd, 
 like Feudalism, like those Martello towers on the 
 coast, like everything that has lost its use and 
 actuality ; and he reminds me of the class that 
 keeps him. That is why the creature so annoys 
 me. It is because he is doing nothing, seeing 
 nothing, being nothing." 
 
 " Noggins," I protested, " you talk like a 
 Welsh elder. Look here, it is nearly four o'clock. 
 I've had no lunch. Perorate, for goodness' 
 sake," and my plea had its effect. Noggins 
 rose and pulled me to my feet. " It's a great 
 question," he resumed, " whether we men will 
 not have to fall back upon the scientific organisa- 
 tion of the animals, such as the bees and the ants, 
 and socialise the whole economy of the body 
 politic. Yet the nearest thing humanity pos- 
 sesses to the organic philosophy of the bees is 
 the discipline and order of a battleship. The 
 highest state yet evolved by man is a Dread- 
 nought — the engine of destruction. And the 
 people are beginning to know this : the health, 
 the happiness, the brightness, the well-being, 
 the physical development of the race — ah, such
 
 €t)e Dufee'0 05uftalo 83 
 
 things we leave to theorists and to the German 
 professors. But man is learning to fight for 
 men, for the common cause of the whole, as 
 women are fighting for the sex. The thing is 
 to realise this movement, this higher step towards 
 emancipation. The thing is . . ." 
 
 " Look here, Noggins," I interposed, " I'm 
 going on. Are you coming ? " With a wave 
 of his stick in the direction of the buffalo, Noggins 
 swung into his stride. " Cheer-O," he said, 
 good-humouredly, " I've had my say. That 
 
 beast has done me good. Step out, and 
 
 be d d to him ! ' I felt I must get in a 
 
 last word. " Noggins," I said presently, in- 
 tending to crush him, " I believe you'd like to 
 eat that buffalo." And the stern, inde- 
 fatigable man only laughed. " Sure. So I 
 would. The rump and heart of that beast are 
 real delicacies." 
 
 We have moved forward a long way since this was written, 
 but Noggins will certainly return from France with fresh 
 ideas, and probably the post-war income-tax will prohibit 
 the luxury of keeping buffaloes, also Noggins will certainly 
 have something to say to war profiteers.
 
 a " christian " cutope anD afterumttis 
 
 (1912) 
 
 AT an epoch when the dogmas and the 
 very spiritualism of the Christianities 
 are passing through the gravest crisis 
 in their history, geographical Europe has become 
 for the first time a Christian civilisation, shriven 
 at last by the un-Christian materialism of 
 Bismarckian blood and iron. The end justifies 
 the means, we know, and there are other proverbs 
 by the dozen. None the less, such is the result 
 of the expulsion of the Turks from Europe, and 
 it is a great ethical and historical fact : also 
 it is the most sudden, complete, and con- 
 vincing victory since the defeat of the Corsican at 
 Waterloo, which as inevitably will change the 
 forces and the equilibrium of Europe. 
 
 It has happened so suddenly that, were it 
 not for the cynicism of the everyday man, the 
 Churches might well consider the expediency 
 of extolling the event as another miracle which, 
 indeed, in this sense it is, in that it has taken 
 place against the authoritative opinion, diplo- 
 matic, military and journalistic, of the little-big 
 men who sway the destinies of the taxpayers 
 of Europe. In reality, of course, the triumph 
 
 84
 
 a "christian" Europe ant) afteramrns 85 
 
 of the Allied Forces is neither miraculous nor 
 astonishing. They have whipped the Turks 
 out of Europe, because for a decade they have 
 systematically prepared themselves for the trial, 
 whereas Islam, whose gospel is Providence which 
 spells improvidence, has trusted to the grace of 
 Allah, like a small boy playing for his luck at 
 marbles. Instead of a miracle, the Serbians and 
 the Bulgars, the Montenegrins and the Greeks, have 
 given the world a lesson in military and national 
 efficiency ; have again vindicated Bismarck and 
 the eight fat volumes of Treitschke's History, 
 with all the other politico-economic German 
 professors who have always insisted that " if you 
 want to fight, you must be ready, and if you 
 want to do a thing you must do it." 
 
 These are the two moral conclusions which 
 the war has given us : first, that Europe is now 
 for the first time Christian ; and, secondly, that 
 a new Federation of Powers has arisen, knocking 
 over half the pet doctrines, theories and machina- 
 tions of diplomacy, who have come, as they say, 
 to stay : who have once more redressed the 
 whole balance of power and the international 
 comity of the nations. What will the now 
 Christian Europe make of it ? Alas ! One is 
 almost inclined to cry out " Poor Christianity ! ' 
 Welded together, like the German Empire, by 
 the sword, instead of peace and good-will, the 
 new formation teaches only one morality, which 
 not even by paradox can be called Christian — 
 the morality of force, full and effective militarism,
 
 86 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 as the supreme virtue of national security, as 
 the want of it in a Europe, whicli is now an 
 armed camp of conflicting economic, political 
 and racial conditions and ambitions, must hence- 
 forth be the logical determinant of insecurity, 
 and so of all the parts which compose the 
 structure divided, as it is, into two antagonistic 
 organisations. 
 
 The Turks are gone, as the Moors went before 
 them. Absit omen ! With the departure of the 
 Moors and the rise of Inquisitorial Catholicism, 
 which in all essentials, temporal and spiritual, 
 was non-constructive and uneconomic, the heart 
 of Spain was lacerated, and it has gone on bleeding 
 ever since : in the ignorance which has blighted 
 the Spanish endeavour, redeemed only by the 
 beauty that the Moors left behind them in stone 
 and tower and the blood-lust of the Moorish 
 bull-ring. For the Turks defeat should prove a 
 blessing and a beginning. What will be the 
 effect upon Europe ? That is the problem for 
 Christianity, viewed from whatever aspect one 
 pleases. 
 
 The Christian side of the question need not 
 be laboured, since it is through science, which 
 is the motive force of the modern world, that 
 the Bulgars defeated Turkey, and that an All- 
 Christian Europe has gone back to the primitive 
 worship of force as the sole condition of peace. 
 It is no good complaining. Individual protest 
 evaporates in the immensity of the whole. All 
 that sensible nations can do is to put their
 
 a " christian * Europe anD aftennar&B 87 
 
 Christianity in their pockets, to recognise that 
 ethics have now no longer the smallest casual 
 inter-relationship with politics, and thus shoulder 
 arms as joyously as the curd-bred peasants of 
 the Balkans : who have shown the French the 
 value of their guns, and Europe what a vain 
 thing most reputations are, as most traditions 
 and policies. Of course, it is a fearful and a 
 terrible conviction, this new ethic of scientific 
 force and materialism, this revelation that modern 
 Europe is now infinitely more warlike, war- 
 prepared and war-dependent than in the days 
 of Caesar ; but then most revelations are un- 
 pleasant, though we may admit that it is a 
 curious phenomenon at a time when peoples 
 are more cosmopolitan, democratic and cynical 
 than at any period in history, and more apathetic 
 in all that concerns recognised authority. 
 
 Europe, then, is now Christian, yet never — 
 philosophically, ethically and effectively — so 
 utterly un-Christian, in that she has never 
 previously been so war-clad and so governed 
 by the rule of force. The maps we had put 
 aside we must take out again, and schoolmasters 
 should take note that on the top there should 
 be now written : — 
 
 EUROPE : ALL CHRISTIAN 
 
 PRINCIPLE, POLICY AND MOTTO 
 
 VAE VICTIS. 
 
 Having read that, we can proceed to our study
 
 88 osefore ant) Bouj 
 
 of the map with some degree of understanding, 
 and the first thing we realise is the new Power 
 of the Balkan Federation, where before we only 
 saw chocolate soldiers and regicides. We have 
 heard of the Triple Alliance ; we also know 
 pretty well what is understood by the Triple 
 Entente composed of the three military and 
 naval forces of England, France and Russia, 
 which three Powers are agreed to defend their 
 joint and several rights against the expansive 
 tendency of the centre of Europe — Germany 
 and Austria — to which centre, more or less 
 against her will, Italy, with her useful sea-border 
 and ships, is allied, and may be accounted a 
 fighting member. Thus, as it were, the apple 
 is united against the core, and to be noted of 
 course, is the fixed strategic advantage of position 
 and concentration possessed by the centre, and 
 the great length and division of the extremities. 
 Now, the political effect of the war is the 
 collapse of the whole Pan-German policy, which 
 was to fight the German way through Southern 
 Europe to the sea, and so through Turkey and 
 the Baghdad Railway to its terminal at Koeit. 
 And though official Germany always denied the 
 inspiration, that was the meaning of the Emperor's 
 visit to Jerusalem, and the Imperial patronage of 
 fanatical Islam. The victory of Bulgaria has 
 clubbed the Pan-German vista of Berlin as 
 effectively as the victory of Serbia has frustrated 
 that of Vienna, which has always been the 
 " ethnic landslide " down to Salonica and the
 
 a "christian" ettrope anti aftet&mrtiis 89 
 
 Adriatic. 1 Hence the German friendship for 
 the Turk, the diplomacy of the late Baron 
 Marschall von Bieberstein, the provision of the 
 Turkish Army with Krupp guns ; in short, the 
 whole philo-political attitude of Germany towards 
 Turkey, kept up by the very religious Protestant 
 Emperor, William, as the means to keep the little 
 States from freeing themselves, and so securing 
 the German ambition. 
 
 Aerenthal's Bosnian coup, which was supported 
 by Germany in " shining armour," succeeded, 
 up to a point, because, though a flagrant breach 
 of the Treaty of Berlin, it was so sudden and 
 honestly piratical that it was all over before 
 Russia could quite meet the situation, still less 
 oppose it — which she was entirely unprepared 
 to do ; and probably had Austria then gone on 
 and, backed up by Germany, boldly marched 
 down and claimed Salonica, the full policy might 
 have been brought off and the Pan-German 
 aim realised. Austria, however, stopped or 
 repented, with the result that the Balkan States 
 realised they would have to fight for it or go 
 under, in which decision Russia naturally sup- 
 ported them, besides from that moment being 
 kept thoroughly on the look-out for any fresh 
 move southwards on the part of Austria. The 
 deflection of the Pan-German policy is a matter 
 of very real importance ; and it is one which 
 
 1 Serbia's subsequent victory accentuated German discom- 
 fiture, but it drove Bulgaria into her camp, as we found — to our 
 surprise ! — in 1914, though even then we did not believe it until 
 Bulgaria declared war.
 
 90 before ant) Bouj 
 
 may yet lead to a better spirit in the relations 
 between England and Germany, who, as the two 
 great rivals in Europe, are, rightly or wrongly, 
 billed by European consent as the two opponents 
 in the next war. 
 
 For one thing, the fall of European Turkey 
 will remove what may be called the Hamidian 
 policy of intrigue which has for the last century 
 made the ambassadorial post at Constantinople 
 so interesting, and has in very fact poisoned the 
 dignity and heart of European diplomacy. All 
 that Asiatic backsisch diplomacy of Abdul Hamid 
 will vanish out of Europe, because it will no 
 longer have a reason, the Turks being now rolled 
 back to their natural place in Asia, deprived of 
 all further right of say in the affairs of Europe. 
 Except in Asiatic matters, the Constantinople 
 country house on the Bosphorus will cease to 
 be the clearing-house of European intrigue, and 
 there can be little doubt that the purging of 
 the system will tend not a little to a more open 
 and honest spirit between the nations generally. 
 
 It will clear the German point of view, for the 
 whole basis of German European diplomacy has 
 been founded on the idea of Turkey in Europe 
 as an institution, an essential, and a permanency, 
 which, now that it is exploded, must necessarily 
 clarify — modify or intensify — the German attitude. 
 The creation of a powerful military Balkan 
 Federation is, indeed, to Germans of deep 
 significance. The Turkish buffer has gone with 
 the whole system of Turkish bluff, and with it
 
 a "christian" europe anti aftertoart^ 91 
 
 the reason of Turko-German friendship. In the 
 place of the great unknown quantity of Turkish 
 Europe, a strong, young, vigorous State has 
 arisen, running right down between the Adriatic 
 and the Black Sea to Constantinople, thus 
 standardising and even nationalising, so far as 
 Germany is concerned, the whole peninsula 
 from Belgrade to Constanza. A Slav Federa- 
 tion, it will inevitably be a Russian interest, an 
 ancillary tongue of Russia in Europe, who has 
 now taken the place of diplomatic Turkey. 
 
 To Germany the new Power is of the utmost 
 importance ; of the deepest importance strategic- 
 ally, so far as Russia is concerned ; of great 
 importance diplomatically, owing to the collapse 
 of Turkish authority and methods in Europe ; 
 of immediate importance so far as her whole 
 foreign policy is concerned, both in Europe and 
 Asia ; of the utmost importance to her relations 
 with England, and her whole attitude towards 
 the Triple Entente. That the shipbuilding 
 rivalry — for that is what we have allowed it 
 to come to — between England and Germany 
 is the key of the European situation is a truism 
 all sane people must admit, as also that in the 
 existing arrangement of Alliances, hostilities 
 between England and Germany would inevitably 
 plunge Europe into war which could only be 
 mutually destructive. The one nation, in fact, 
 which stands to gain any material advantage out 
 of a European Armageddon is England, who, 
 incidentally, might be able to destroy the German
 
 92 before anti Bofo 
 
 and Austrian Fleets, and thus deprive Germany 
 of her great hope of maritime ascendancy for at 
 least a century to come. Now, strange to say, 
 it is precisely there that a ray of hope seems to 
 have fallen through the war upon Europe. 
 
 With a powerful Slavonic State, in sympathy 
 allied to Russia, stretching from sea to sea 
 at her south, and with the Italian foot thus, 
 strategically, very sensibly weakened as an ally, 
 Germany will certainly have to make up her 
 mind, as the direct result of the war, upon the 
 direction of her whole future policy towards this 
 country. So long as her feverish shipbuilding 
 policy continues, so long must we look upon her 
 as a rival ; nor, in such conditions, is any ameliora- 
 tion in the relations between the two peoples 
 practical or conceivable. To-day, the case is 
 different. The Slav has again risen at her foot, 
 a Power certain to grow, to thrive, who has 
 thus obtained a foothold on the confines of 
 Hungary that otherwise she would never have 
 attained to by either war or policy. 
 
 The Slav interest is not the Teuton interest, 
 and probably never will be. Whereas up to the 
 present a war with English naval force might be 
 deemed adventurous, heroic, henceforth, with 
 the Slav forces at her feet as well as on her flank, 
 it would be little short of disastrous. Against 
 the naval forces of France and England, and the 
 land forces of France and the Slav Powers 
 from East and West and the South, Germany 
 would have no chance of victory, even if she
 
 a "christian" europe ant) aft erumrtis 93 
 
 were able to hold her own, which is the utmost 
 she could hope to do. The alternative is obvious 
 and simple. It is that Germany should now 
 come to see that all attempts to build up to our 
 naval force will be opposed resolutely by the 
 whole force of England ; that, consequently, as 
 the end is unpractical, the natural course is the 
 policy laid down by Bismarck, which was a 
 land policy and not a naval one. 
 
 The German opportunity has come, 1 though 
 not by any will of hers : it is a great opportunity, 
 none the less, one which, if taken, she is never 
 likely to regret. All that is necessary is a modi- 
 fication in her shipbuilding programme, which, 
 automatically, would modify ours. No word 
 need be spoken. There is no use in any 
 diplomatic action or contrivance. All that we 
 require to accept her as a friend is the cessation 
 of a wilfully uneconomic race in shipbuilding 
 — a policy which is the direct cause of the present 
 grouping of European power and the reason of 
 so much unwarranted antagonism. A policy of 
 honest friendship with England would at once 
 ease the whole European tension. It is a policy 
 which German politicians in their own despite 
 will immediately have to consider. It is a policy 
 which, if they do not in the near future adopt, 
 will prove to humanity that Germany is indeed 
 
 1 She decided to risk war, and her answer was the ^50,000,000 
 loan for military preparations on the East. From that day, in 
 1913, war became inevitable, though Britain alone failed to 
 realise the position. The war which broke out in 191 4 was in 
 Europe no surprise at all.
 
 94 before ant) Bovn 
 
 the spirit of unrest in the centre of Europe, 
 against which Europe will be forced to provide. 
 In a word, instead of peace, the Balkan war will 
 be the jorerunner of yet another. 
 
 Therefore the word is " arms." The question 
 for the so-called civilised peoples is now, What 
 will they do with their Christianity ? Will they 
 continue crowing at each other like tethered 
 cocks until the next war comes to liberate them, 
 or will they attempt something practical in the 
 cause of humanity ? It is a question that 
 will be a test of our vaunted Christianity. 
 Unquestionably, Germany holds the key to 
 the situation, and on her decision will rest the 
 attitude of Europe. I cannot pretend to the least 
 optimism. Only a great statesman perhaps could 
 take the initiative at this juncture, and such a 
 man is conspicuously lacking. Failing him, in the 
 absence of any rational initiative in the interests 
 of peace, it is difficult to see what other policy 
 now remains to the great nations of Europe 
 than that of full and conscious militarism ; to 
 England, perhaps, as much as to any country. 
 
 For five hundred years the Turks have held 
 their place in Europe by right of force, by force 
 they have been driven out. Thus the history 
 of all Empires repeats itself. The Turkish power 
 was atrophied. It has gone the way of Persia, 
 Rome, the Moors, Spain, Portugal, stricken down 
 by might. It is no moral of peace, to be sure. 
 It is not a hopeful reflection. But at any rate 
 it is a salutary one, presented to us with all the
 
 a "christian" Europe ant) aftermath 95 
 
 picturesqueness of historical reminiscence. It is 
 a signal that England should nail to the mast. 
 If the basis of European Christianity is to be 
 force, and war its supreme arbiter, we, too, 
 must have the strength which will be the grand 
 test of our justification. We, too, must prepare 
 ourselves, like the Serbs and the Bulgars, if 
 not to be the soldiers of Christ, then, at any 
 rate, like the rest of Europe, to be a nation in 
 arms — scientific, bloody Christians. 
 
 No comment is needed on the above prophetic diagnosis 
 of Europe in 1912, almost every statement of which has 
 proved to be accurate. Unquestionably our refusal to take 
 a strong attitude and prepare for the inevitable struggle led 
 Germany to count on our neutrality, or " limited liability " 
 support.
 
 Our ®mtlemen'0 ^cftoote 
 
 (1912) 
 
 A FEW months ago I was dining with my 
 friend Robinson, who, never having 
 reaped the benefits of a public-school 
 education himself, was anxious that his son 
 should enjoy them. 
 
 " I want to give the boy a good start," he 
 explained, " but I hardly know what to think. 
 They seem so stupid. For eight weeks now I've 
 been looking for a " prep." school ; I've been to 
 a dozen ; you know, all those bracing little places 
 on the south coast, but when I spoke to the 
 masters about work they all looked bored and 
 fidgety." 
 
 " Go on," I said. " Tell me about them." 
 
 " Well," he continued, " I went to one which 
 was highly recommended, and I was received 
 — taken in, as it were — by a tall, gaunt man, 
 who smiled at me with a patronising air of 
 ceremony. 
 
 " ' Do you teach the boys anything practical ? ' 
 I began, after a few casual remarks, ' carpentry, 
 astronomy, physical science, botany ? ' and at 
 the question the schoolmaster eyed me so gravely 
 that I almost felt like a naughty boy. 
 
 96
 
 Our gentlemen's ecljools 97 
 
 a . 
 
 Yes ; they can knock boxes together, if 
 they like,' he rejoined, in an off-hand manner ; 
 * but we find they prefer cricket.' 
 
 " ' Religion ? ' I queried. As you know I 
 am not easily abashed. 
 
 " Again the schoolmaster looked serious, and 
 again I felt suspect. 
 
 " ' We like to leave that to their mothers,' 
 he said. ' But, of course, they go to church 
 on Sundays.' 
 
 " ' But don't you teach them any applied 
 science ; nothing useful, then ? ' 
 
 " ' Well,' returned the schoolmaster languidly, 
 ' we keep a chap here who occasionally makes 
 — er — er, nasty odours in the lab.' 
 
 " ' Ah,' I said, ' stinks.' 
 
 " The schoolmaster smiled, evidently relieved 
 at my knowledge of public-school jargon. 
 
 " ' Quite so,' he returned ; ' stinks.' 
 
 " ' Do you give them any practical training 
 in life ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, no. But our usher is always present 
 when they bathe, and he bowls to them several 
 hours a day in the summer at the nets. He's 
 a capital left-arm bowler, I can assure you.' 
 
 " ' I suppose there is some individual care and 
 teaching ? ' I said. ' You don't bring them all 
 up on the same block, do you ? ' 
 
 " The schoolmaster now looked genuinely per- 
 turbed, and began to talk enthusiastically about 
 football. 
 
 " ' But I'm not concerned with their games,' 
 
 c
 
 98 'Before ant) Bou> 
 
 I threw in. ' They get enough of that, I'm 
 sure. What about the arts ? ' 
 
 " * You can't teach an English schoolboy art,' 
 retorted the schoolmaster sternly. 
 
 " ' I see ; and what about music ? You can 
 teach that. My boy is very musical, for example.' 
 
 " The headmaster looked ruffled and studied 
 the ceiling. 
 
 " ' They learn a few hymns, I believe,' he said 
 at length. 
 
 " ' Well, you don't seem to teach them much,' 
 I retorted, whereupon the important man rose 
 hastily. 
 
 " ' Perhaps you would like to see my wife,' 
 he said, and he hurriedly left the room. 
 
 " And do you know," Robinson continued, 
 " I've seen some dozen of these men and their 
 wives, and they all seem alike. They all seem to 
 resent parental inquiry and concern. They all 
 seemed amused and a little hurt at my solicitude 
 for my son's welfare. Whenever I spoke to 
 them about work or tried to get some coherent 
 idea of the curriculum, they looked ill-at-ease. 
 The one subject which appeared to rouse them 
 was sport, anything to do with a ball. One of 
 these wives summed up the situation tartly : 
 
 " ' Well, Mr Robinson,' she said. ' A school's 
 a school, and we've never had any complaints.' 
 
 " What am I to do ? " Robinson said after a 
 pause. " These people seem to me half-alive. 
 Anything like an idea or originality terrifies 
 them. And yet I suppose it's all right. Thou-
 
 Out* ®entlemm'0 ec^oote 99 
 
 sands of boys are turned out every year by this 
 machine. Do you know, I think, after all, I 
 shall send my boy into the Navy." 
 
 Robinson's predicament seems to me typical. 
 These " prep." schools are the nurseries of our 
 larger public-school education, leading up to it ; 
 an integral part of the system which we love 
 to sum up and dismiss with the old tag about 
 Eton's playing fields. Now, of course, Wellington 
 was not thinking about cricket when he made that 
 remark. In those days the playing fields were 
 also the " milling ' grounds, where two boys 
 who had a difference stood up in a ring and fought, 
 fairly and squarely, to a finish. But boys at 
 public schools don't fight now. A stand-up fight 
 is unknown to-day. Were two boys to, have it 
 out on the old Harrow " miller," for example, 
 they would probably be " sent up " for punish- 
 ment to the headmaster. Question any public- 
 school boy you will as to whether he has ever 
 seen a regular old-fashioned fight, and he will 
 smile derisively. Instead of fighting, the modern 
 boys " rag." Fisticuffs is not an accomplishment 
 of young Peter Pan. 
 
 Let me put forward my own case. When I 
 went to a public school I could write Latin 
 verses ; I was unusually interested in history ; 
 I loved reading ; and having been brought up 
 a good deal in France I spoke French fluently 
 and with scarcely any accent at all. Unfortun- 
 ately, or perhaps fortunately (I was not a strong 
 boy) for me, I was something of a bowler. My
 
 ioo before ann jeoui 
 
 first week there I twice bowled out our house 
 captain at the nets. I was taken up in that 
 line. At the end of a month I ceased to care 
 for work, and, as a fact, during the three and a 
 half years I was there I don't believe I ever 
 seriously tried to learn anything, and certainly 
 was never made to. 
 
 No master ever discovered that at twelve I 
 could write Latin hexameters and pentameters. 
 History was taught in the most perfunctory 
 fashion, being merely a table of kings, battles, 
 and a few dates. As the boys gibed at my 
 knowledge of French, I soon learnt deliberately 
 to talk badly and eventually to forget, so that 
 when I left I knew positively less French than 
 when I entered the school. I can say truthfully 
 that the only education I received during my 
 three years and a half sojourn at one of our 
 largest and most expensive public schools was 
 self-taught : I read books ; I got to know a boy 
 in the sixth, much older than myself, with whom 
 I discussed life, philosophy, history, all kinds of 
 things, and under his guidance I read Schopen- 
 hauer, Byron, and the English poets, Buckle, 
 Macaulay, Burton on Melancholy, Shakespeare, 
 and a great many novels ; moreover, the only 
 prizes I obtained were all — and I got four — the 
 result of what we called " holiday swat " — 
 reading, that is, during the vacations, and that 
 simply because at home my father took some per- 
 sonal interest in my attention to the subject and 
 saw to it that I did not entirely waste my time.
 
 £>ur gentlemen's srtoote 101 
 
 I left school, the superannuated cricketer type, 
 a feckless, ignorant, swaggering youth, and I 
 was put into a relation's office in the city. There 
 was a career there, but I could not work ; my 
 one idea was to loaf around in a top-hat and 
 patent-leather boots. Figures bored me un- 
 utterably. In the office men said " another 
 gentleman rotter " — I thought them old " putrid 
 asses " ; and the result was that at the end of 
 two years I was " retired." Luckily, I got into 
 a scrape. My parents sent me abroad to a 
 Swiss university, and there I fell almost at 
 once into a congenial atmosphere. I found men 
 who worked, who talked, who thought, who 
 sought originality. I recovered my own self 
 which had been crushed at the public school. 
 When I returned I had a Kaiser moustache, it 
 is true, and the suspicion of a paunch, but I 
 knew I could face the world. Whatever success 
 I have achieved since then I owe to my life on 
 the Continent, where I acquired the zest for know- 
 ledge and work, that sense of joy and confidence 
 in the ego that characterises the man who comes 
 down to our offices in London from the North. 
 
 I remember some years ago meeting one of 
 our greatest heroes, captain of the " phil.," a 
 double colour, a very god of gods in my day at 
 school, and finding him merely a bank clerk at 
 £400 a year. " It's hell," he told me, one evening 
 as we walked home ; " but unless I marry a rich 
 girl I suppose I shall have to stick to it." 
 
 Poor chap ! He was a king at school. Now
 
 io2 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 he is a hack, doing work that any accountant's 
 clerk could do just as well with no Latin educa- 
 tion at all. 
 
 Now these disappointed lives may be found 
 all over London, with the derelicts and pure 
 wasters who have a sufficiency of their own, 
 and the remittance men that go to the Colonics. 
 All over Africa and South America they are, 
 fine fellows too, but for some strange reason 
 unable to work or to come to grips with life. 
 A friend of mine joined the Canadian Police. 
 Quite half a dozen men I knew at school are 
 ranchers. I know whole families all of whose 
 sons have been through the mill of " prep.," 
 public school, and 'varsity, who are doing literally 
 nothing ; living on their fathers, well-dressed, 
 gentlemanly wasters, all walking, talking, and 
 thinking in the same way and spirit. Some of 
 them have tried for a year or so to get a job : 
 gone out to the Colonies, drifted into journalism, 
 tried their luck in the city, and — come out again ; 
 fine, strapping fellows too, yet it is no good, 
 something seems to have gone snap : they cannot 
 settle down to anything. 
 
 We have all heard the sensible sister say to 
 " Jack " or " Charles," " You really must get 
 some job, you know. Father says he has lost 
 another three thousand in oil." But for all 
 answer Jack or Charles throws up his handsome 
 head and fumbles with his sock-suspenders. In 
 almost every country house you may overhear 
 the anxious mother entreating her son or sons
 
 Our gentlemen's €>cl)oote 103 
 
 to " really do something." Almost every family 
 seems to harbour one apparently incapable son 
 who has enjoyed the benefits of public-school 
 and 'varsity education. Fleet Street sees them 
 by the score, and they disappear as rapidly as 
 they come. And these men are mostly charming 
 fellows, who could and should be earning well 
 of the State. Yet they are useless and feel 
 themselves to be useless, they who a few years 
 back were a credit to their respective schools 
 and hobnobbed with the footer " beaks." 
 
 Life is, of course, harder to-day. Competition 
 is growing increasingly severe. The " snaps ' 
 of former times are getting fewer and fewer. 
 Yet that cannot be put forward as the explana- 
 tion. The characteristic of our day is the 
 presence of the self-made man, the achievements 
 of those who are not the issue of our schools and 
 'varsities. In the world of letters and journalism 
 this is notably so. A generation or so ago the 
 leaders of thought and literature were men of 
 the schools — Ruskin, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, 
 Pater, Oscar Wilde, Matthew Arnold, Jowett, 
 Leslie Stephen, Morley, Manning, Frederic 
 Harrison, Newman ; to-day they are Bernard 
 Shaw, Wells, Arnold Bennett, Masefield, Conrad, 
 the Press, etc. In all the professions the pro- 
 minence of non-public-school men is noticeable. 
 With the coming of democracy our gentlemen 
 seem to fail. Even in politics, which has hitherto 
 been the reserve ground for our families, they 
 are falling rapidly into the shade.
 
 104 'Before anti Bom 
 
 Why is it ? Is our public-school system in 
 any way to blame ? I think it is. 
 
 As a system it is antiquated in its class method 
 of education and training. It is the fact that 
 preference is always given to masters who were 
 blues, who are athletic, not therefore men who, 
 it might be presumed, are by nature or training 
 good teachers or educationists. Many of these 
 men go into the public schools with the best 
 intentions — they find the system altogether too 
 strong for them. The classes are too big, so 
 large that individual teaching is an impossibility. 
 It is obviously impossible to give any individual 
 care to a class of from thirty to forty boys. 
 The rules are traditional, inexorable. All these 
 schools are run on mass principles : large houses, 
 largely controlled by the boys ; large classes ; a 
 curriculum which never changes ; hours fixed, 
 games fixed, method fixed, the ground plan 
 being to get through the daily work, to encourage 
 the school esprit de corps and etiquette, and to 
 leave the boys to manage themselves on the old 
 conventional lines. 
 
 And this school esprit de corps permeates 
 and controls the whole structure. Masters fall 
 victims to it in their first term. If they rebel, 
 they are politely told they are not wanted. As 
 a fag, the boy is soaked with the school traditions. 
 It becomes his philosophy of life. As he grows 
 and rises himself, he, too, becomes its jealous 
 and admiring conservator. So the system en- 
 dures, and it is the most conservative, wooden,
 
 Our <$entlemen'0 ^cljaote 105 
 
 and antiquated business concern in the country. 
 Woe betide the small artistic boy who enters 
 into this system ! Blessed is he who is a bit of 
 an athlete ! It being the rule to let the houses 
 run themselves, the masters know extraordinarily 
 little about what goes on inside them ; whether 
 the prefects or head boys are bullies or grossly 
 immoral, whether this boy is bullied or not, or 
 this little son of an artist is learning anything ; 
 in short, what tone exists in the house, until 
 some grave scandal — and these scandals happen 
 all the time — breaks out and one or half a dozen 
 boys are summarily expelled. 
 
 How wooden the system is may be seen by 
 one example which I can vouch for. At our 
 house we had plum pudding every Sunday for 
 lunch, but because some hero ten years before 
 I came had said it was " filthy," not a single boy 
 ever ate or dared eat it. Regularly every Sunday 
 the sixty boys in our house said " No thanks ' 
 to the butler, one slice only being solemnly 
 consumed by the house master amid general 
 silence and giggles. This comedy had gone on 
 for ten years, and continued during all the years 
 I was there ; but the master never inquired why, 
 never changed it, never even spoke about it. 
 The great joke was when an old boy came down 
 to lunch. He invariably had two helpings. 
 You see, he was relieved of the house etiquette. 
 Some of them said it was " bally good pudding, 
 too." And this is the sort of thing that vitiates 
 the whole public-school life.
 
 106 "Before ann Bom 
 
 As a fact, the master rather enjoyed the joke. 
 He thought it characteristic. Years later, when 
 I spoke to him about it, he said, " No, I never 
 minded. You see, it showed a sense of discipline 
 among the boys. It formed them." 
 
 In folly, yes ; in nothing else. Yet this same 
 master took away a copy he found me reading of 
 The Three Musketeers, in French, too, and gave 
 me twenty-five lines of Virgil as punishment. 
 And it is just this fostering of a silly conservatism 
 in the schools that renders the system so easy to 
 the master, so harmful to the boys. It crushes 
 originality. It encourages the boys to frame 
 and maintain their own laws and conventions. 
 It throws them on themselves. It enables any 
 master, however little qualified to teach or bring 
 up boys, to run a class or a house with a minimum 
 of trouble and effort : to continue in the old 
 wooden ways, stupidly and correctly, sapping 
 whatever intelligence or initiative he may have 
 possessed, and finally, blunting him into a mere 
 disciplinarian tool of the system. 
 
 It has its merits, admittedly. There is a 
 delightful spontaneity about English boys, a 
 manliness that must stand them in good stead 
 in the rough and tumble of life. But the evils 
 of the system far outweigh the virtues. To 
 begin with, the system is strictly a class con- 
 ception, which in these democratic days is 
 obviously wrong. Only too often the public- 
 school boy is a lump of class priggishness and 
 class arrogance. He learns there to look on
 
 Our ®entlcmm'0 €>cl}oote 107 
 
 the world with a dullard's carelessness that 
 literally unfits him to take off his coat in after- 
 life. It is not an exaggeration to say that fully 
 half of the boys who go to our public schools 
 come away mental derelicts, incapable of con- 
 centration, their whole outlook focussed on their 
 own personal pleasure and gratifications, looking 
 at all serious things and at all men who work 
 seriously with contempt. The parents, too, are 
 largely to blame. With the advent of luxury, 
 the modern public-school boy is a spoilt and 
 pampered little fellow. Spoiled at home, he 
 introduces his school ragging there. He goes to 
 the 'varsity and rags. He goes into the Army 
 and rags there too, with what disastrous results 
 we all saw in the Boer War. 
 
 To the public-school boy life is a rag. That 
 is the chief thing he learns at these places. 
 And it is not that his conversation or point of 
 view is brilliant, witty, original, or in the least 
 interesting. Just the contrary. His ragging is of 
 the most conventional, stereotyped kind, as dull 
 and unintelligent as musical comedy. The evil 
 of it is that it makes the boy narrow, class-bound, 
 and lazy, and the moment he enters the hard 
 road of life he discovers how little his attitude 
 and equipment serve him. All the way, all the 
 time, the Scot who has enjoyed a sensible education 
 beats him ; the chap from the Midlands climbs 
 up over him ; the Welshman dances all round 
 him. The gentleman alone is stuck fast, with his 
 bowler well over his ears, and remains a gentleman.
 
 108 before artn Bo® 
 
 I could name at this moment some half-dozen 
 men, scholars, capable fellows, who, literally, 
 seem unable to work. They have little spasms 
 of concentration, and then away they go — to 
 stay for weeks at country houses, to shoot, to 
 hunt, to loaf, and yet they are all poor and 
 always complaining of their lot, and are beaten 
 all the time by inferior men who are in- 
 dustrious. They treat their life's work as if 
 it were a " con." at school. " We'll get through 
 somehow," is their constant thought. Method, 
 system, attention to detail — such minor matters 
 they despise. Get them a job, and they won't 
 stick to it. " Can't," they will tell you. Yet 
 to see these men at golf, or ragging at house 
 parties, one would think they had the concen- 
 trative power of genius. 
 
 It will be agreed generally that it is not so 
 much what boys learn at school that matters, 
 but rather what kind of men their school educa- 
 tion trains and fits them to be. I am not 
 speaking at all about the actual book knowledge 
 taught in our gentlemen's schools. Some boys 
 unquestionably do very well, yet the fact is 
 indisputable that the average Swiss and German, 
 French or Scandinavian, is infinitely better 
 educated than the average Englishman who has 
 been through " prep.," Eton, and Cambridge. 
 What I contend is that our system is old and 
 rusty, and consequently evil. If the average 
 boy leaves Eton or Harrow unable to work, 
 there must be something seriously wrong with
 
 SDur gentlemen's @>cl)ool0 109 
 
 the system, which must reflect deleteriously 
 upon the class that send their sons there. That 
 is the real point. To be able to say, " I was at 
 Eton or Harrow " is no longer an asset : in the 
 Colonies, in many business houses, in Fleet Street, 
 it is positively a disadvantage. It is a curious 
 reflection that a boy who has had many hundreds 
 of pounds spent on his education is actually less 
 well received and started in life than the youngster 
 who has been to a polytechnic or grammar school 
 and attended extension lectures. Yet it is so, 
 and it is so simply because experience has shown 
 that these public-school boys are morally unfitted 
 for life. 
 
 I know a lady who took her son away from 
 Eton because at the age of sixteen he wrote 
 home such ungrammatical letters that she rightly 
 considered he was not getting the value of her 
 money. He thought punctuation " blooming 
 rot," but since he has been sent to Germany 
 he has done remarkably well. Such cases are 
 constant ; they are everybody's knowledge. Yet 
 tell this to one of our classical headmasters, 
 discuss it with the under-masters, and you will 
 find what my friend Robinson found — boredom 
 and indifference. The system leads to the con- 
 spiracy, the conspiracy is commercial : it is 
 commercial because there is no standard. 
 
 We all know about this conspiracy which 
 unites all public-school men, from the little boy 
 whose life is made a hell to the oldest club colonel 
 who was once captain of his school. It is the
 
 no 'Before ant) jeom 
 
 conspiracy of silence, based, no doubt, on the 
 public-school code of honour of " not telling 
 tales." Every mother finds this out the first 
 term her little son goes to a school. Most 
 fathers carefully refrain from asking questions. 
 Masters never ask. The system is the thing. 
 The thing is to bear it. 
 
 That is why it is so difficult to get anything 
 altered. It is part of our English hypocrisy 
 undoubtedly, but so far as our schools are con- 
 cerned it is an absolute class taboo. It is 
 unpopular to say anything against our schools. 
 If a man writes to The Times, say, about Eton 
 or some wrong at one of the schools, the old 
 school men and boys in the clubs are up in arms. 
 Take the one question of what one may call 
 here morality, which is a serious matter, as any 
 doctor will admit. Nothing is done, nothing 
 is ever attempted, because of the conspiracy 
 which enjoins silence. Yet every public-school 
 man is aware of this great evil among boys, 
 which has ruined many a lad's life. Mothers, 
 women generally, appear to know nothing about 
 it. Men purposely do not discuss the subject. 
 Nor arn I going to say more about it except this, 
 that it is obviously a highly dangerous thing to 
 herd together boys of from twelve to eighteen 
 years of age, studiously kept from all feminine 
 influence or atmosphere, and that it is often a 
 serious temptation to the masters themselves. 
 It has been said that a headmaster recently 
 ordered all shops in the town to get rid of
 
 £>ur gentlemen's g>cljaols m 
 
 shop-girls. If so, it is only another proof of 
 the stupidity of the pedagogic mind. Sex is 
 extremely potent in youth. It is mere cant 
 to pretend it does not exist. The truth about 
 this matter would astound the public. 
 
 It is easy to denigrate and find fault ; the 
 question is what reforms are necessary and even 
 imperative. And the first thing I would reform 
 is the quality of the teachers. Here is a story, 
 illustrative of the point, which happened the 
 other day. 
 
 A curate scholar from Oxford came down to 
 examine a well-known girls' school in London, 
 and " floored ' them utterly. One of the 
 questions he put on the paper was : " Describe 
 the actual position of the English troops at the 
 battle of Blenheim " ! Imagine asking girls such 
 a question ! How many men in our War Office 
 could answer it ? And what conceivable value 
 has such an examination piece of pedantry to 
 girls ? At the end the curate shook his head. 
 " Don't know much," he remarked to a colleague. 
 " It's a good thing, perhaps, some of the girls 
 are good-looking." 
 
 One of the first reforms is this matter of the 
 masters. It is time that more should be expected 
 from the masters than a healthy aptitude for 
 games. And the reform, beginning with the 
 " preps.," should cut right through the public 
 schools. It is time to end the preferential 
 treatment of the cloth, with its wooden, feudal 
 outlook. In these democratic days, what is
 
 n2 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 wanted is initiative, adaptability, courage, world 
 common sense, not the tutorial pedantry of 
 sacerdotalism. 
 
 All classes should be cut in half. No class 
 should contain more than a dozen boys. That 
 would ensure at once proper supervision and 
 interest. The boys would not be able to go up 
 to school day after day never having prepared 
 a lesson. The master would get to know some- 
 thing personal about the boys in his charge. 
 He might in such conditions even take an indi- 
 vidual interest in those who were unusual or 
 showed promise — which in present conditions 
 he cannot do. Almost at once a new spirit 
 would come into the classes. With the abolition 
 of the mass principle, teaching would become 
 intelligent, personal, and real. 
 
 Then the masters, no longer being chosen for 
 their football, cricket, racquet, skating, or other 
 athletic powers, should have more liberties, 
 instead of being cabined in the school area as 
 they are. A collection of " beaks," who taught 
 that work was a higher thing in life than games, 
 would exercise a revolutionary influence upon 
 a school. If, instead of a master bowling at a 
 difficult boy religiously for an hour at the nets, 
 he would study the lad and try to discover what 
 aptitudes the boy has got, some definite and 
 wholesome influence might be obtained. Instead 
 of a dull, journalier class existence, the masters 
 would find teaching a rational if not interesting 
 vocation. Things would be " bucked up ' all
 
 Out gentlemen's ^cboote 113 
 
 round. Class life would not be the routine 
 drudgery it is to-day. 
 
 But the main and most urgent reform is the 
 democratisation of these nurseries of class arro- 
 gance and futility — democratisation, first, of the 
 spirit animating the conduct of the school ; 
 secondly, of the spirit of class " swank " so 
 demoralising to the boys. This, of course, can 
 only be effected by a radical purging of the 
 entire system. It should begin with the fee 
 current at these places, which in these times of 
 the plutocracy and the self-made man has lost 
 its original point, which was to guarantee the ex- 
 clusiveness of the aristocratic and primogeniture 
 set. The fact must be faced that these schools 
 are no longer the preserve of the aristocracy 
 and the families. Any man who has the money 
 can send his son to a public school now. What, 
 in reality, has crept into them is the ease and 
 vulgarity of the plutocratic spirit, and it is 
 destroying their j ustification. 
 
 In the old sense of the word, there are 
 no gentlemen to-day. That being so, and the 
 modern world being now open to talent and 
 industry, it is plainly anachronistic to keep up 
 the atmosphere of old-time family conservatism. 
 The truth is that the public school spirit has had 
 its day. In bygone times they were hard training 
 places of character and mind ; they fashioned 
 men. In their modern conditions of ease, pluto- 
 cratic luxury, and emasculate laxity, they no 
 longer turn out the men that England requires ; 
 
 H
 
 n4 'Before ant) jeofo 
 
 they no longer educate the boys adequately or 
 sensibly ; rather they mould them into vapid, 
 useless creatures who are afraid of their own 
 attitude, for no one will pretend that the 
 modern school boy is very Elizabethan. 
 
 Some years ago I was staying with a French 
 pasteur, who took in English " gentlemen's sons," 
 and there were five of them, two from Eton, 
 one from Harrow, a Clifton boy, and one, I 
 think, from Rugby. They were all over eighteen, 
 had left school, and had been sent there to " cram 
 up ' for exams, and " learn a little French." 
 Three of these fellows were still studying Latin. 
 One day, I remember, a young Swiss traveller 
 happened to put up there for a week, and, to 
 my surprise, he became a great favourite. " He 
 does all our ' cons ' at sight," they told me. 
 He taught the Harrow boy more about Tacitus 
 in a month than that youth had ever learnt in 
 a year at school — yet he had long since given up 
 Latin, and had only been to one of the higher 
 grade gymnasia. 
 
 But then he had been properly taught under 
 a democratic system of education : it makes all 
 the difference in the world. 
 
 Democratisation of our public schools would 
 completely change their whole tone. I admit 
 that the vexed question of the classics would 
 call for solution ; but as a fact, the old rigid 
 method is being more and more ousted by the 
 cry for technical instruction, Army classes, what 
 is called the " modern side," which, in my day,
 
 Our gentlemen's €>rt)ool0 115 
 
 was looked upon by boys and masters alike with 
 scorn. The change, I venture to say, has got 
 to come. Few boys leave school with sufficient 
 knowledge of the classics to enable them to pick 
 up a Greek or Latin book in after years and read 
 a single page for pleasure. The whole thing is 
 looked upon by boys as a drudge, by masters as 
 a sort of necessary evil, the failure of a boy 
 to learn anything at all in the dead languages 
 casting no sort of stigma on either boy or teacher. 
 Now a democratic system would modify this 
 laissez-aller view. Masters would get to learn 
 that they held their appointments subject to 
 their capacity to teach. They would be en- 
 couraged to take an interest in things outside the 
 school. And the boys would catch the inspira- 
 tion. With what Robinson called " applied 
 science," practical education would come into 
 the schools. Boys would be taught individually, 
 for what they were severally worth, with some 
 intelligent relation to their subsequent traffic 
 with life. Sapere aude would become the watch- 
 word, instead of the existing boys' conspiracy 
 to know nothing. Eton, of course, might still 
 continue to be the educational ground of the 
 idle rich. The idle rich do not matter anyhow. 
 But all other schools should be treated with the 
 democratic knife. It is the only way to rid these 
 schools of the blight at present stifling them ; 
 and the first thing is to standardise education 
 under State supervision. 
 
 The whole question is naturally inseparably
 
 n6 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 affiliated with the Oxford and Cambridge system ; 
 nor is it very likely that any sensible reform can 
 be carried out with the schools if not similarly 
 effected at the 'varsities, where the same spirit, 
 atmosphere, and clerical classic influence pre- 
 dominate. A great many boys, however, never 
 go up to the 'varsities. And these, at any rate, 
 should be provided for. 
 
 A public school has just about half as few 
 masters as it should have. Double their number 
 and within a year all boys would feel the 
 benefit. The " modern side r should be 
 greatly widened, strengthened, and thrown open 
 generally to all boys who show no aptitude for 
 Horace and Homer. If masters took a little 
 care to train the upper boys, the upper boys 
 would soon train the lower ones. The way 
 foreign languages are taught at these schools is 
 a farce and a scandal. The method is purely 
 formal, and wooden, French, for example, being 
 taught like Greek, as if it were a dead language. 
 The consequence is that the teaching is dead, 
 the interest of the boys is dead : the whole busi- 
 ness is commonly looked upon with derision. 
 
 The trouble is that there is no expert super- 
 vision or control of these schools. A headmaster 
 is appointed, as like as not a scholar and church- 
 man, a man who has grown up in the system, 
 with the mould of it sunk into his very bones, 
 who goes to his office with the arbitrary authority 
 of a Plantagenet king, determined, before all 
 things, to uphold and strengthen the institution.
 
 £>ur gentlemen's ^cljaote 117 
 
 He is like a Parliamentary Secretary of State — 
 the permanent officials run the show. And so 
 with the masters. Yet a headmaster could be 
 an enormous influence for good if he had the 
 courage and the initiative. As long, however, 
 as we appoint clerics distinguished for their 
 scholarship as headmasters, the system is not 
 likely to change. Reform can only really come 
 from democratic reform. 
 
 The Jesuits are celebrated as teachers, chiefly 
 because as a body they are inspired, one may 
 say, with the sense of a mission. This sense is 
 wholly lacking in our athletic and clerical masters. 
 They have no inspiration to teach, no feeling 
 of a mission. They become masters because 
 they are good scholars, because they are athletic, 
 because it is a pleasant, gentlemanly career. 
 What we need in England to-day is a highly 
 paid teacher. 
 
 Give the masters more scope and powers 
 — the boys will learn soon enough ; but the 
 principal thing is to blast the public school 
 atmosphere of snobbery, swank, devil-may-care- 
 dom, and arrogance, which turns out our gentle- 
 men wasters. To do this, the masters must 
 be given their chance too, which at present 
 they don't have. And to ensure this opportunity 
 there must be expert direction and supervision. 
 And all this should be in the care of an expert 
 Education Department. Any man can start a 
 school to-day, provided he has a little capital, 
 is an M.A., and, if he was a 'varsity oar or blue,
 
 n8 iBefote ant) iftouj 
 
 his prospects are admirable. Yet the real money 
 is coined by the crammers. The late Mr Wren, 
 for example, Mr Scoones, and others, these are 
 the real teachers of our gentlemen ; these are 
 the men who make men of the boys who were 
 at public schools, and if any man cares to hear 
 what they think of the system, he can learn 
 things from them that may astonish him. 
 
 Essentially it is our voluntary system that is 
 to blame. Secondly, it is the clerical pedagogic 
 tradition. Thirdly, it is the institution itself, 
 which has deteriorated into a boys' polity, 
 uncontrollable because of its mass dimensions, 
 methods, and conditions, which have made of 
 these places a little State divorced from the 
 realities, the exigencies, and needs of the times, 
 the atmosphere of which is recreation, and 
 the outlook a routine tradition. The code of 
 athletics is the public school panache ; the rest 
 is system and — silence. The original or weak 
 boy goes to the wall ; the idle remain idle. 
 The " big ' boys we knew there we meet in 
 later life, and we find them small men. Those 
 we despised and kicked at school we often en- 
 counter later on, doing the things of life, men 
 who, in spite of the system, have found their 
 true expression. 
 
 This state of things cannot be right. To the 
 classes it is a fatal sapping and waste of power. 
 And the pity of it is that it is so unnecessary. 
 
 Fortunately there are signs that parents are 
 getting " fed up " with the system. The expense
 
 Our ®mtlemm'0 ^c^oote 119 
 
 of " crammers," of tutors during the holidays, 
 of the subsequent problem, " What to do with 
 our boys ? " is gradually breaking down the long 
 conspiracy of silence which has screened both 
 boys and masters from outside criticism. The 
 general public, too, has awakened to the futility 
 of a system which sends forth so many specimens 
 of failure. And I rejoice to see that at last the 
 women are concerning themselves with the 
 question. 
 
 What it is essential to grasp is that these 
 institutions are still the product of old Tory 
 England before the Boer War — before, that is, 
 we woke up to the need of reform. The purpose 
 they stand for is already obsolete ; their ex- 
 clusiveness is out of date. They no longer fulfil 
 the requirements of life or education. The 
 spirit and atmosphere of them stand in about 
 the same relation to life as the growler to the 
 motor cab. In short, their class sanction has 
 gone. 
 
 Think of all the thousands of boys who grow 
 up to maturity playing games, and how com- 
 paratively few of them play even those in any- 
 thing more than a mediocre amateur way ! 
 And this amateurishness is the spirit of public 
 school etiquette. We go to the Olympic games 
 untrained. Of course, it is our way — the 
 gentlemanly, public school way. It is not good 
 form to train, to " swat," to take anything seriously. 
 And good form, as any little duffer from the 
 schools will tell you, is the whole essence of his
 
 120 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 philosophy. I know a master who, not so long 
 ago, was refused at one of our big schools 
 because, though a double-first and an Oxford 
 blue, he was not allowed to play football. That 
 is the sort of thing it is time to stop, if the 
 parents are to get the value of their money. 
 As things are, these schools exercise such a 
 demoralising influence upon a boy that it usually 
 takes him five years to recover his senses and 
 himself ; and so much is this the case that 
 parents who are not rich are growing more 
 and more doubtful as to the advisability of 
 sending their sons to them. 
 
 It cannot be a good thing for the country, 
 this army of non-industrious public schoolmen. 
 Yet I sincerely believe that a large proportion 
 of these gentlemen " out of work ' could have 
 been saved if less amateurishly trained, if taught 
 primarily that industry is not a disability. Fully 
 half of the lads who leave our public schools 
 are equipped with an amateur smattering of 
 the dead languages, and almost none of the 
 living ; practically no knowledge of history or 
 geography, and a temperamental dislike of work. 
 Their sympathies are class-bound and warped. 
 They look on life and its social problems with 
 the empty-headedness of little savages. They 
 are selfish, wasteful, feckless, and ignorant. Their 
 mental furniture is practically nil. Mens vilis in 
 cor pore sano. 
 
 It is not the fault of the lads. The English 
 boy is right enough. He is the victim of an
 
 Our ®entlemm'0 gdjoote 121 
 
 utterly uneconomic, amateurish, old-fashioned 
 system which, capturing him in the impression- 
 able years of his life, sends him out practically 
 unfitted for the world. His six years or so of 
 school environment has made him the complete 
 snob, as likely as not a social waster. Is it fair 
 upon him ? Is it, economically, fair upon the 
 parents ? Is it, finally, good for the country ? 
 
 Personally, on moral grounds, I would allow 
 no lad over seventeen and a half to be at a public 
 school, not even to win the match next year at 
 cricket. But no reform is possible so long as 
 parents continue to regard school and 'varsity 
 as mere places where their sons may have a good 
 time and make friends. The needful thing is 
 obviously to place these schools under the juris- 
 diction of the State, which, I fear, is contrary 
 to all our notions of individualism and pleasant 
 doctrine of " muddling through." 
 
 Much, none the less, can be done if public 
 pressure is brought to bear upon headmasters. 
 The Press would be an invaluable help. What 
 is wanted as a start is ventilation. Masters, 
 many of them splendid fellows, would gladly 
 co-operate : in many cases are itching to change 
 the system, if the public will allow them. It 
 is imperative to get the fear of scrutiny into the 
 institution which conducts its office with the 
 dark inviolability of the Vatican. The boy 
 scout movement started on right principles — 
 principles of morality having some causal nexus 
 with the subsequent requirements of life. But
 
 122 before ant) Beta 
 
 no public school boy was ever taught to " do 
 some good act " every day. Literally, he receives 
 no moral education of that kind whatsoever, the 
 theory, I suppose, being that a gentleman's son 
 does not need it. That is, of course, absurd. 
 The introduction of such a spirit into the public 
 schools would be a corner-stone to build upon. 
 And it is precisely in what one may call this 
 moral training that our schools fail dismally ; 
 fail because the positive things that a boy learns 
 there, in the absence of precept and guidance, 
 are class arrogance and littleness and the lack 
 of all motive for work or responsibility. 
 
 Quite a stir was caused in 19 14 by this encroachment 
 upon the Public Schools' preserve, and it provoked a con- 
 troversy which did (I think) some good. Now we have a 
 boom in schooldays' novels, thus The Loom of Youth, etc. 
 Unfortunately the new Education Bill does not touch the 
 Gentlemen's Schools which, as they set the example, should 
 be the first to be reformed. Our problem therefore remains 
 — commercialism ; schools without standards, a primary 
 education which is ridiculously expensive and is still left in 
 the hands of a profession which is itself uncontrolled and 
 uncontrollable.
 
 authority ant) privilege 
 
 (1912) 
 
 AUTHORITY, which is the expression of 
 force sanctioned by law or custom, has 
 always been at variance with privilege, 
 which in a general way might be described as 
 the natural right of the individual. They are 
 subtle things, both in scope and definition, 
 authority being often little more than a well- 
 established privilege, as we saw recently with 
 the fall of the House of Lords ; privilege, on 
 the other hand, having a very real authority, as 
 in the right of man to work, to make his own bed 
 and lie on it, or of woman to choose her own 
 frocks. But, as a rule, they are antagonistic 
 conceptions, for authority, as often as not, steps 
 in and takes away the privilege of the individual, 
 as when a white woman wants to marry a coloured 
 gentleman, and the voice of authority forbids it ; 
 or when kings in the days of princely warfare 
 put out the lamp of what reason man was capable 
 of with the sacrocsanctity of the Majesty. Thus, 
 though Goliath had the power, David had a 
 sling. And there has been war between them 
 ever since, it being the right of authority to 
 chastise and the privilege of humanity to rebel. 
 
 123
 
 124 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 It is the difference, roughly speaking, between 
 man and woman ; between brain and home- 
 spun ; between the Conservative and Liberal 
 idea, and, as authority has always been the mate 
 of reaction, so has privilege been the mistress of 
 progress. What is called Civilisation, which is 
 largely the measure and instrument of authority, 
 has been evolved by this fertilising progress of 
 rebellion, put together by the industry and creation 
 of the individual, like the cells that are formed in 
 a hive. From the earliest beginnings authority 
 has fought progress, initiation, invention, genius, 
 the individual, as the usurper and pretender 
 to its estate, and every time the new thing has 
 survived, it has won to the dignity of the other. 
 So through the whole morphology of state and 
 society the war has gone on, in the religions and 
 schisms of Christianity no less than in the darkest 
 annals of the Robber Barons, even to this very 
 hour when it is a safer thing to be a miner toiling 
 on a minimum wage than a poet with a live 
 message. 
 
 For the poet is the purest of all rebels, as much 
 an outlaw as Robin Hood. The privilege that 
 he has, of creation, may be superb, yet he has no 
 authority, either to make men read or support 
 him. In the old days, when authority was 
 absolute, so long, of course, as the power behind 
 it was controlling, the poet often had a better 
 time of it than he has to-day, being patronised 
 in much the same fashion as a clown or a dwarf, 
 and for much the same reasons. There is a grace
 
 autljoritp ant) privilege 125 
 
 that is born of authority. But for authority, 
 too, it was easier. Till quite recently, the in- 
 vention of gunpowder was held to be a far more 
 potent weapon than that of the printing-press. 
 Now we know better. Education has become 
 the wand of the ancient magician, and doors 
 open, as easily and rapidly as truths ; men think 
 and things are apt to happen. Idols, beliefs, 
 superstitions, tradition, convention, authority 
 itself, all are being cast into the alembic of the 
 modern spirit where there is no longer any faith 
 but only the privilege of undying hope. 
 
 Now that men are flying, what else can we 
 expect ? The very laws of gravitation are being 
 compassed. Our imagination reels before the 
 sheer romance of the wonders man with his 
 science is achieving. Instead of the negative 
 laws of the commandments we have the brave 
 " thou shalt ' of individuals and discoverers. 
 It is the ego of Nietzsche, the triumph of the 
 privilege of man. It is the inconquerable 
 " possibility " of Napoleon. 
 
 This condition of personal conquest and 
 general opening up naturally does not make for 
 law and order, and so it is no matter of surprise 
 if authority just now is having rather a bad time 
 of it. The fact is, speed is the religion of the 
 age. We are all in the air, so to speak, hanging 
 on in the spirit to Vedrine's 1 flying machine, 
 crying out all the while for more, and wondering 
 
 1 The French airman who was second in the " round " Britain 
 race.
 
 126 'Before ant) Bava 
 
 how we are going to obtain it. Everything is in 
 doubt. We have lost our respect, our repose. 
 Demos has grown restive, like fidgety Phil. 
 There would seem no reason why he should sit 
 still. Marx versus Mr Bumble — obviously it is 
 not a fair fight. He forgets, of course, that 
 capital is the mother of labour, but then young 
 Demos is not an economist any more than is 
 Lady Mary when she orders seven new exclusive 
 creations from Worths in Paris. Moreover, the 
 Lady Mary is just as restive herself. The fever 
 of entity has entered into her, too. She like- 
 wise, wants to work, to be a man. The home, 
 obedience, maternity — these are to her as fabul- 
 istic as the three Graces. 
 
 This anarchy, or self-assertion of the individual, 
 has affected even the arts. The latest thing in 
 music is Strauss' abolition of the orchestra in 
 place of twenty-one soloists, each playing for his 
 own reputation as hard as he can go. In painting 
 we find a section who seek to portray " ambience," 
 sensation, emotion, and physical condition ; and 
 there are poets of the same school. The revolt 
 of the Futurists and sound artists generally is a 
 revolt against authority ; it is that they, too, are 
 seeking the wings of the airmen, as the women 
 are looking to Westminster. Whether it is the 
 right policy to clip a wing in order to obtain a 
 better is another question. But authority has 
 " come off the tree " in the arts. Sagging at 
 the authority of the arts is the same force 
 pulling at convention everywhere, a suckling
 
 authority anD privilege 127 
 
 spirit of nourishment, as wonderful as it is 
 alarming. 
 
 Is it alarming ? Many causes go to an effect, 
 as we realise when we take to pieces a Chinese 
 medicine flask, or listen to Casals playing the 
 'cello, and wonder what exact proportion of 
 labour, skill and genius go to produce such 
 exquisite technical execution. Every prophet 
 in every age has gathered round him an audience 
 with the parrot cry, " Woe unto ye Scribes and 
 Pharisees," but to-day the only prophets are the 
 people who take a guinea for it round about 
 Bond Street, and it has quite gone out of states- 
 manship. To-day, the seer is the scientist. 
 The departure of the " great figure ' : in our 
 public life has been widely noted. He has gone 
 because no man believes in him any more. 
 
 We are getting to believe in ourselves. It is 
 a tremendous thing this credo of the individual. 
 When, bristling with the dignity of authority, 
 we are apt to denounce this Labour unrest, 
 these women window-smashers, these Futurist 
 artists, this coxcomb spirit of revolt, it may be as 
 well to remember that every child is born of 
 labour. Jesus, Luther, Shakespeare, Ibsen, 
 Wagner, think how they all had to wrestle 
 with the ignorance and arrogance of convention ; 
 how in our own time Shaw fought London in 
 knickerbockers ! Germany could never expel 
 another Heine should he arise in this century. 
 Mahommedanism, amputated limb by limb, is 
 still waiting for the Prophet ; meanwhile it
 
 128 before anti Bm 
 
 has lost the Sultan, Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, 
 and Egypt, where Lord Kitchener has become 
 the Mountain. 
 
 Humanly, there is nothing in this to cause 
 alarm. The weakness lies in the waning force 
 of authority and especially in that of Govern- 
 ment. As privilege has grown in the country, 
 so has the authority of Westminster lessened. 
 One notices that even in the growing meagreness 
 of newspaper reports. The driving force of 
 the House is now outside, and vast Labour 
 upheavals take place to the surprise even of their 
 Parliamentary representation, and it is wholly 
 impossible to ascertain who is the authority in 
 the Cabinet, whether there is any single authority, 
 what Minister, in short, is responsible for what 
 policy or initiative, whether it be Home Rule, 
 the Suffrage Bill, Lord Haldane's visit to Ger- 
 many, Mr Lloyd George's Insurance bureaucracy 
 or anything else, so multifarious is its mechanism, 
 so Protean the incidence of its activity. Now the 
 Chancellor is on top, " shaking the country to 
 its foundations," as the evening Tory papers say ; 
 now it is Mr Churchill, bidding Germany take 
 a year's shipbuilding holiday ; now Lord Hal- 
 dane ; now the women seem to have it ; now 
 the miners ; now the taxi-drivers ; now the 
 great football match ; and presently it will be 
 the boat race or a new Miracle play ; but nobody 
 cares long what it is, provided that we have 
 laughter, which Bergson calls the social gesture 
 of defence.
 
 authority ant) privilege 129 
 
 In a short time the Liberal Government of 
 " all the talents ' will probably go out. That 
 will not settle Labour in the very least. On the 
 contrary, it will " precise ' the issue, which in 
 reality is not political but economic, the question 
 being the privilege of the working classes to 
 secure the best payment they can. After all, 
 these men are only making a career, as we all 
 try to do, and very notably the politicians. 
 Wages have not gone up concomitantly with 
 the cost of living. We should remember that. 
 The struggle between Labour and Capital is 
 certain to grow wider and intenser, and if ever 
 the working women of England get the vote, 
 the problem will be far more critical. 
 
 In all this, nowhere is the spirit of Christianity 
 to be found. A man has either to work or play 
 to-day, he can no longer do both, as in the 
 good old times when the parson hunted three 
 days a week and the House was a top-hatted 
 club ; moreover, the standard of both has risen. 
 Inadvertence to push oneself to-day means 
 failure, for this whole modern life of ours is 
 push, application and self-assertion — which may 
 well be one of the reasons why public school- 
 boys seem so often to flounder about in the 
 after-work of life, whereas Alf from Manchester 
 gets the job. It is no doubt the reason, too, 
 why all millionaires started life without a penny, 
 and nearly all inherited wealth gets so frivolously 
 and misplacedly dissipated. Yet the world is 
 not necessarily a worse place because of that.
 
 130 oaefore ant) Botu 
 
 This England of ours is probably a far healthier 
 one than the conservative, self-complacent, un- 
 tried Utopia before the Boer War, which led us 
 with splendid rejuvenation into this era of quest 
 and wrestle. We are to-day the most alive and 
 go-ahead nation in Europe, with the exception 
 of France, who, with her new-born patriotism, 
 has swung herself back into the position of a 
 first-class power. 
 
 But it is this ceaseless straining, scientific and 
 economic, of the French that has restored the 
 tricolor to its authority. Since the decline of 
 Papal and feudal authority in Italy and Spain 
 a similar advance has taken place, because privi- 
 lege has at last had its opportunity. The new 
 spirit is abroad, powerful as religious fervour in 
 the old days, and it has opened up vistas almost 
 of magic possibility. From the year 1900, history 
 will have to be written in a new way. In the 
 place of kings, their wars and happenings, the 
 achievements, discoveries, and victories of the 
 individual will have to be recorded, the move- 
 ments of labour, of economic upheavals and con- 
 ditions, not the speeches of the Burke and Pitt 
 of the day, but the flights of airmen, the inven- 
 tions of scientists, the evolution of mankind 
 towards a higher civilisation. Dynasties, the 
 Church, Parliament, princely feuds and marriages 
 will play but a secondary part in the chronicle. 
 The schoolboy of the year 2000 will have to get 
 up the data of the Egyptian pacification, Miss 
 Pankhurst's Liberation War, the history of how
 
 autliorifp ant) privilege 131 
 
 men learnt to fly, the great Labour strifes, the 
 long chain of discoveries, all the wonderful 
 changes that are coming into the world, including, 
 very possibly, civilisation's agreement in the 
 matter of disarmament, or the transformation 
 of the State into a gigantic office of employment. 
 
 All the same, authority has to be maintained, 
 for the alternative is chaos. And that is the 
 problem of statesmen. In disputes about the 
 private laws of contract, involving national 
 interests, the State will very soon have to make 
 up its mind either to a neutrality which is 
 dangerous, or to control which is the expression 
 of Socialism. That is of course axiomatic of all 
 government. The thing to realise in these 
 splendid times is that there must be government. 
 
 Still we should not forget that the naughty 
 boy generally turns out the better man. If so 
 many of us are naughty boys and girls to-day, 
 it is a good sign for the future. In all directions 
 there palpitates the throb of effort, in its modern 
 garb of democracy. The fossils and troglodites 
 of the past generation are rubbing their eyes 
 with dismay, no doubt. We have got beyond 
 the Victorian pale to-day. We are real and very 
 potent in the modern world. We are again 
 combatively young. 
 
 It is perhaps difficult to realise to-day how disturbed we 
 were about this time ; how deep was the unrest, how revolu- 
 tionary the outlook. In 1912 we were all making discoveries. 
 The picture of Government given in the above will to-day be 
 recognised as only too true.
 
 €t)e mm sesame ant) lilies 
 
 (1912) 
 
 WHEN I was a small boy it was my good 
 fortune to sit at the feet of a beautiful 
 lady, gowned, festooned one ought 
 perhaps to say, in a sumptuous Walter Crane 
 design, the exact colour of the cushions and the 
 wall-paper. She sat, like the pictures of Circe 
 I always thought, and spun miracles ; at any 
 rate, for an hour every third day in the week 
 after luncheon she read to me " Sesame and 
 Lilies," and descanted upon its teaching. We 
 were Pre-Raphaelites then. I was — my hair cut 
 long like the Cavaliers, clad in a gaberdine which 
 the boys in Kensington Gardens would throw 
 mud at ; and though a good deal of " Sesame " 
 seemed to me rather peculiar, it was an aesthetic 
 speculation. 
 
 Alas, for vogues and fashions ! The glory of 
 Ruskin has departed, vain now as the vapours 
 of our grandmothers. The Kate Greenaway 
 youth is to-day a Boy Scout. Gilbert's " Howell 
 and James young man ' is scratch — or there- 
 abouts. The Boudoir Lily, more enterprising 
 than Pantomime Aladdin, is herself the sesame 
 of all men. 
 
 132
 
 Cfre mm eegame ant) Lilies 133 
 
 Prophetic Ruskin ! And it is all quite true, 
 as magicians say, and now a young and sane 
 woman has married a man whom, at the altar, 
 she publicly refused to obey. 
 
 She will love and honour, but she will not 
 " obey." What would my Circe of five-and- 
 twenty years ago have said to her ? What are 
 we to say to her now ? For it is hard on us poor 
 Pre-Raphaelite survivals, hard on man who is 
 naturally a misologist in all that concerns the 
 brain power and development of woman. We 
 pigmies, we do not understand why women, 
 who in China have broken their toes for so many 
 thousands of years for us, should not go on doing 
 so as mechanically as some men break stones by 
 the wayside ; why all who have worn rings 
 through their ears and noses, and on their fingers, 
 should discontinue a practice which has suited 
 mankind so long. 
 
 It isn't so much the fact of woman having 
 the power to help this rich Tory or that good 
 Liberal into the House that man, qua man, 
 objects to, but rather the subversion of estab- 
 lished ideas about the relations between woman 
 and man. Women, who are by nature con- 
 servative and so extremists, have frightened men 
 with their revolutionary aspirations and pro- 
 grammes, which demand not only full political 
 and economic equality but freedom of both 
 mind and body. This, obviously, is no political 
 question. Certainly the possession of the paper 
 vote will not solve it. It is a biological, socio-
 
 134 iBefore ant) JRotn 
 
 logical, physiological, eugenic movement, ex- 
 cellent stuff for the new propaganda. 
 
 Naturally the whole idea of woman entering 
 public life (though she may enter the public- 
 house) is disturbing, as are her methods profoundly 
 distressing. But it is no use for man to play 
 Hamlet any longer. It is woman who now 
 dares the ghost. She has dared damnation — 
 she dares man. Somehow the gyves that were 
 once her graces have fallen from her. Com- 
 mercialism, the brutal laws of wage-earning 
 necessity which are the driving-power of modern 
 life, have taught her to cast off the corset of 
 inactivity in which, since primeval sin, the sex 
 has been laced so tightly in subjection. It is 
 this iron Moloch of industry that has blasted 
 the isolation of her sex, forcing her into the 
 modern arena of competition, freeing her, teach- 
 ing her to fend for herself. The whole move- 
 ment is essentially a sign of the times, of the unrest 
 eating into what are called " established con- 
 ditions," the inevitable product of an age, whose 
 divinity is money. 
 
 As a fact, the emancipation of woman is far 
 more advanced abroad, though not politically, 
 because foreign women are not particularly 
 interested in a game which we in England un- 
 fortunately consider essential. In France, for 
 instance, the rule of woman is an admitted fact, 
 and anyone who knows Paris is aware how far 
 more cultured and interested in interesting 
 things the Parisian woman is than the average
 
 Cfte I3eto sesame ann lilies 135 
 
 society woman over here. Half the work of 
 France is actually performed by women who 
 are far more thrifty than ours and quite as good 
 mothers. In Scandinavia and Finland the 
 emancipation of women is a fact. I should 
 not like to have to answer an examination paper 
 set me by a girl matriculate of Helsinfors Uni- 
 versity, or try a swing with a Swedish girl on the 
 trapeze. Gretchen, too, is a very advanced 
 young woman. The German Backfisch no longer 
 sits with Heine in her lap, and as ideal — mous- 
 taches, the uniform, matrimony and maternity. 
 She reads everything, is given a six months' 
 hospital course of first aid and anatomy, talks 
 Wedekind, Huxley, Bergson in three languages, 
 has spent six months in a cookery school, and 
 can argue about vaccination, torpedoes, Brahms, 
 race culture and what not, even with the pro- 
 fessors. In Russia she is even more advanced 
 and would horrify the Lord Chamberlain. Even 
 in Turkey women have begun to criticise the 
 harem. As for manual labour, go to Poland, 
 Russia, Central Europe, Austria, Germany, if 
 any man wants to see how women can work. 
 In these places they are the very hewers and 
 drawers of toil ; they plough the earth, they 
 work like any navvy in this island. They don't 
 want the vote because they have no time to 
 think about such an abstract proposition — what 
 with their work and motherhood and the inevit- 
 able cares of the home. 
 
 We hear of the palingenesis of women, as we
 
 136 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 used to hear of the millennium of Socialism, a 
 theory that has long since been abandoned. 
 On the other hand we have visions of Platonism ; 
 nightmares of an estate of an implacable femin- 
 inity in which there will be no sentiment or 
 sentimentality, no poetry or romance, love or 
 mystery, not even folly, in short, an England 
 blighted of sex ; leading to agamy, and even 
 to sterility. And, of course, it is aggravating for 
 men who have lived their lives to be lectured 
 by young women who have not yet been 
 mothers about sex education and race culture, 
 and to be told that man knows nothing 
 about mankind. It is the new Sesame and 
 Lilies. 
 
 Are English women so tired of being women 
 that they must needs covet what nature pur- 
 posely denied to them : the physical force of the 
 hunting sex ? Break down the mystery of sex 
 and women will destroy the illusion of man, 
 which is their cataphract. And so on, and I 
 pick up " Sesame " for its lilies. 
 
 Platitudes, the new Dora answers me. " Poor 
 boy, are you still sentimentalising over these 
 muffin solecisms about woman and her sub- 
 jection to man, her duty of motherhood, obedi- 
 ence, frailty, her powder-puff domesticity and 
 inefficiency. Know, then, that all this has 
 changed with the coming of the new, capable 
 girl. Know, then, that she is no longer 
 content to be the slave of man's whims and 
 eccentricities. A Vardon cleek for your ' illusion ! '
 
 Ctie mm ^>e0ame ant) Lite 137 
 
 We have done with the mystery of ' ribbons 
 and laces and sweet pretty faces.' We want 
 freedom, equality, the right to control what 
 the State makes us pay for. We have to earn 
 wages, to run about in the slush and rain, to 
 teach, work, struggle and economise, and we 
 demand liberty. The house-key, of course, we 
 have. We want the key of Government and 
 Westminster." 
 
 Now when Dora talks to me like that, even 
 when she is really nicely dressed, I always say 
 to her this : " My dear, I would much rather 
 meet Ruth walking with a straight back and a 
 pitcher balanced upon her head than see her 
 to-day, muscular and rubicund, ' haying ' a 
 man's room in some smart country house week- 
 end rag. Apparelled like the spring, woman is 
 god-like ; and a man, if he is a man, will follow 
 her to the death ; but not so this vociferous, 
 self-assertive, combative, neuter woman, who 
 would be a drone rather than a mother." And 
 when this is said, I invariably get the same rap 
 back, be it from new Ruth or Rosalind. " There 
 you are," the reply comes to me. " Motherhood 
 again. As if women were born into the world 
 solely for the office of mothers." 
 
 This retort always makes me unhappy. It is 
 foolish, no doubt, but I cannot help it. We men 
 always say we would like to be mothers. Now 
 women won't believe us any more. I stand up 
 to Dora bravely on this question of Ruskin's 
 platitudes. I tell her about the Circe of my
 
 138 OBefore anti iftott) 
 
 childhood, about my gaberdine, about the great 
 Victorian age, and she answers — " Whiskers ! " ; 
 and I am silenced, remembering the portraits of 
 my family. What is an ordinary fellow to do ? 
 If I talk to her of my athletic triumphs, she bores 
 me with an exact account of the number of girls 
 in England sweated on a starvation wage. If I 
 fall back upon the Madonna she frivolously 
 informs me that there are other miracles in the 
 world besides the one in Addison Road ; and 
 the greatest of all, the emancipation of women, 
 has yet to be. And such talk sets me thinking 
 about the old Italians and their Madonnas, 
 and how far more beautiful their works look on 
 the walls of churches, for which they were 
 painted, than they do in museums against the 
 coloured wall-papers of, say, our own National 
 Gallery. 
 
 I take Dora there sometimes and I show her 
 the Greuzes, the Spanish faces, the Madonnas, 
 the fine English types, the Lady Hamiltons, and 
 I used to say : " Well, will you produce such 
 beauty when the sex is free ? " but now I know 
 better, because my remark invariably leads to a 
 disquisition on eugenics and the improvement 
 of the race, and usually ends with my practically 
 agreeing that if men and women did study the 
 laws of nature and beauty scientifically, possibly 
 a quite superb race might be evolved, surpassing 
 all imagination. Pointing to the Botticellis, 
 the babies and cherubim of the old Madonnas, 
 I say now : " Jolly kids, aren't they, Dora,"
 
 Ctje Btm sesame ant) lilies 139 
 
 and sometimes it seems to me the shaft goes 
 home. But coming out there is always that 
 confounded policeman, and he seems to remember 
 Dora and smiles a little reminiscently at her, it 
 seems to me, and after that it is no use talking 
 about " schools " and Veroneses any more. 
 
 " I hit him on the nose once," says Dora, and 
 at such words I tremble. What are we coming 
 to ? What does this sex war mean ? 
 
 Obviously the wisest thing for men to realise 
 is that Ruskin's " Sesame and Lilies " stands in 
 much the same ratio to the modern woman as 
 Donizetti to Strauss. It is significant that the 
 women's movement is essentially an English 
 thing, that it flourishes here as in no other country, 
 though so far as labour and economic conditions 
 are concerned the position of women on the 
 Continent is infinitely more " emancipated." 
 To be quite plain, it is the fact that a French 
 woman has more influence over her man than 
 an English woman has, and that her sex performs 
 half the mental and manual work of the country. 
 The cause of this feminine upheaval in our 
 British life is due to the tremendous interest 
 taken by us in what are called politics. We see 
 in politics the panacea of all evils, no doubt 
 because we are a people of action, while theory, 
 abstract thought and the culture of the arts is 
 foreign to our commerical nature. To be a 
 politician in England is a far bigger thing than 
 to be a good painter for instance, a good musician 
 or sculptor. And though there is less oratory,
 
 ho before ant) Botn 
 
 less good speaking in England than in any country 
 in Europe (except Germany), the tub-thumper, 
 the street-corner quack, the after-dinner speaker, 
 the lawyer-wind-bag it is who holds the ear and 
 eye of the public, so that the politician who can 
 let off a few squibs and epigrams is almost as big 
 a hero as the fashionable musical-comedy actress 
 of the day, and very much for the same reasons. 
 
 What women want is hardly politics at all. 
 It is opportunity. But they have been wise 
 enough to see that as politics is the chief topic 
 of conversation in England, petticoat pleading is 
 no good at all unless there is a party faction 
 behind it to do the push and scramble. From 
 this point of view, they are, no doubt, perfectly 
 right. Magna Carta was politics ; Cromwell 
 was politics ; Jack Cade, Guy Fawkes, the Peers 
 — these men were politics ; Higgs, Stiggins, 
 Briggs — they are all in politics. The fount 
 of Toryism is the drawing-room ; of Liberalism, 
 the religious conscience ; of Socialism, hunger. 
 Now women have decided to go with that rising 
 young barrister and the Lady Persephone into 
 the fighting line of politics. 
 
 To claim that women would vote more 
 callously, unintelligently, or " boozily ' than 
 men do is foolish, because the experiment has 
 not yet been tried. To argue that Mis Arabella 
 of Mayfair, who runs three separate establish- 
 ments, drives a car and shoots pheasants, would 
 vote less sensibly than Thomas, her gardener, is 
 obviously unserious. If fear of on what side
 
 €t>e m® sesame ann Lilies h 
 
 women would vote is the main deterrent, then 
 plainly it is the worst of arguments for man to 
 cherish. To say that women would vote solid 
 this way or that is unfair — men don't, and nor 
 would women. Putting politics aside, looking 
 at the thing humanly, it is difficult to believe 
 that female suffrage would cause social revolu- 
 tion ; that Westminster would be duller, less 
 representative, less business-like than it is to-day, 
 or that there would be more or less danger of 
 war, trusts, disarmament, taxes, bad speeches, 
 bad acting, bad books, bad taste or bad manners 
 than exist to-day with the tacit approval of 
 man ; that women would be either much better 
 or much worse ; that either prince, peer, priest, 
 publican, profligate or Republican would find 
 life less interesting or beautiful than in the 
 cosmos of man's monopoly. 
 
 Chanticleer need not be downhearted because 
 the modern Lily wants a vote. There is always 
 the superb, the astounding common-sense of 
 Englishmen to reckon with ; that mysterious 
 fund of strength that has made our Empire. 
 
 It may be that civilisation is trending towards 
 a third sex, a sex of workers who will be lone 
 and motherless. There is unquestionably a type 
 of woman to-day who, physically and mentally, 
 seems to have a neuter soul or outlook ; dis- 
 contented with the conditions of her sex yet 
 eager and able to work. Such women will not 
 be for men. But we must remember that it is 
 the economic conditions of the age that are
 
 142 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 forcing this type into the world, and that in 
 France, where the number of children in a family 
 is regulated, such an anomaly hardly exists. 
 Economically the English revolt of women is 
 a quasi-vindication of Malthus. Our national dis- 
 like of order, system, control, administration leads 
 to individualism, but it also le.ads to multiplicity. 
 Were there a numerical preponderance of men 
 in England the women's movement would be 
 almost unthinkable. It exists because the natural 
 proportion of man to woman has got disturbed ; 
 because the modern conditions of labour have 
 driven women out of the sanctuary of the home 
 as bread-winners, as combatants in the struggle 
 for life ; because everywhere the purdah is 
 doomed. 
 
 I cannot find it in my heart to take alarm. 
 One of the gentlest creatures I ever knew was 
 a Russian girl of nineteen, who sat for the greater 
 part of the day in a cellar, manufacturing bombs. 
 Politicians will, of course, get excited, and talk 
 to us a great deal about the subject, but somehow 
 I can get up little enthusiasm for the cause, 
 which, when all is said and done, is the concern 
 of women alone. Indeed if it were not for 
 all this nauseous political business, this physical 
 force parade, the woman's movement would be 
 a rational affair enough, which a good many 
 men would support. On education, the human 
 and moral teaching of children, on matters of 
 eugenics, hygienics, hospitals, on the laws bearing 
 on taxation, the poor, the nation, and Empire,
 
 C^e mm %tmmt ant) lilies 143 
 
 women might certainly have an articulate voice. 
 That they do so in France is the genius of the 
 French woman. In the absence of that genius 
 here, perhaps the solution will be found in 
 suffrage. 
 
 It sounds, of course, terrible enough, this 
 co-sex administration idea, but if women want 
 to " take off their coats," so to speak, to up and 
 scurry with the world's hustlers instead of 
 minding what we have hitherto considered to 
 be their particular business, we men finally will 
 not be able to hinder them. If women come 
 to the conclusion that they will no longer obey 
 the men they marry, good, I am not sure that 
 any serious harm has been done. The son 
 obeys his parents for love of them, not as a 
 duty. The sacrificial faculty of woman will not 
 thereby be impaired. Obedience — what is it worth 
 where women are concerned ? Such a word 
 has no part with love or passion, or friendship 
 or companionship. 
 
 That women want to loosen the divorce laws 
 is, after all, natural enough. Per contra, we 
 shall demand the abolition of the laws relating 
 to breach of promise. If women grow too 
 exorbitant, why, men will refuse to marry. 
 There is always a way. This is the age for the 
 cynic. Mothers were horrified when the two- 
 step dance first came in ; now all dancing London 
 is learning the still more exotic " one-step." 
 These things are matters of fashion, as morality 
 is a question of latitude. A Japanese gentleman
 
 144 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 is shocked beyond words in a London ball-room. 
 When we see the sexes bathing openly together 
 in Japan we are shocked too. 
 
 Trying very seriously to take the established 
 masculine view of the matter, I yet find it hard 
 to feel apprehension at the mutinous pronounce- 
 ments of my friend Dora. She jibes at my 
 Ruskin and annoys me intensely, it is true, 
 but then who of us in this world has the 
 exact knowledge ? Had Ruskin when he pricked 
 Ricardo ? Has Dora when she pricks Ruskin ? 
 Despite all these centuries of enlightened milliners 
 I do not see that they have ever improved on the 
 Greek woman's headgear, and when I tell Dora 
 this she sometimes puts on braids also. And then 
 I tell her that the light of man is woman, the 
 life of woman man, whereat she gets very angry 
 and threatens to put on " rats " and an enormous 
 coal-scuttle hat, and I remind her of Ruskin's 
 story of the Dusky Queen who pointed to her 
 nine sons as the " brightest jewels ' in her 
 possession. 
 
 No explanation seems needed here.
 
 Ci^e el}ri0tiatt Drum 
 
 (i9 J 3) 
 
 IN one of Tolstoi's stories, the King who 
 has taken away the beautiful wife of a 
 peasant, tells the man he will give her 
 back if he can find the way to " there, where 
 nobody knows," and return to him with " that, 
 don't know what " ; and in despair the man 
 goes to the soldiers. They laugh. " From the 
 day we are soldiers," they say, " we go we don't 
 know where, and never yet have we got there," 
 and " we, too, seek we don't know what, and 
 never yet have we found it," whereat the peasant 
 turns away and, picking up a big drum, presents 
 himself before the King. " Go away," says the 
 King, so the man marches out of the palace, 
 beating the drum like a madman. And lo, all 
 the soldiers turn to attention, form up and 
 march behind him, till the King, realising that 
 his army is forsaking him, cries out to the man 
 to stop, and restores to him his wife. 
 
 The " Empty Drum " ! In the year of our 
 Lord 191 3 it is a story to be read. Never 
 before has the drum been beaten so fiercely, and 
 never has its inherent emptiness been more con- 
 spicuous. Whither it would lead, no Government, 
 
 K 145
 
 146 'Before ant) jeoui 
 
 no nation, no man, not even the kings who beat 
 it, have any idea. It is making a great and 
 persistent noise, that is all the best of us can say. 
 And all over civilised Europe its shindy is drawing 
 men and peoples behind it, just like the drum 
 in the story, and there is no reason of State, of 
 Church, or of humanity which has any power 
 to stop it or, for that matter, any apparent 
 or serious desire. A big pow-wow — that is 
 all. Ra-ta-plan, ra-ta-plan ! " Onward, Christian 
 Soldiers," making of this wonderful age an era 
 of bloody, bloated armaments, without precedent 
 in the history of the world. 
 
 But Tolstoi's tale is incomplete. It is not 
 a question of any man's wife, or any man's goods 
 to-day, it is the Christian Drum that is beating, 
 beating, as Bismarck described it, " with God 
 and Kaiser," and now, in the words of the 
 Emperor William, justifying the fifty-million 
 German War Loan, " in the name of God " and 
 his mercy. 
 
 In " self-defence ' Germany is resorting to 
 a War Loan of fifty millions, has built ships 
 with feverish rapidity, in the hope of catching 
 up to us, and because she is arming — all in the 
 name of God — Russia keeps close on a million 
 men on her frontier " to supervise Germany," 
 and France has to fall back on compulsory three- 
 years' service as the sole means of keeping abreast. 
 What, if there is a soul in Christianity, does all 
 this talk of war in the name of God mean ? 
 Does the Kaiser imagine that Germany is the
 
 etie ci)ti0tiatt Drum 147 
 
 favourite of the Deity who sent his Son down to 
 earth to deliver mankind from sin ? What, in 
 the name of their own sanity, are the ministers 
 of the churches doing that they do not pro- 
 claim from every pulpit in Europe the blasphemy 
 of this bloodthirsty doctrine so completely at 
 variance with the teachings of " Our Saviour," 
 and so disastrous to the progress of humanity ? 
 What are Governments, peoples, individuals 
 doing that they do not rise up and protest 
 against this hideous immorality ? Let those 
 who ask but listen. 
 
 The drum is beating in the centre of Europe, 
 there is no other answer. What use are creeds, 
 philosophies, books, beliefs, against the rattle of 
 the drum ? How far less use when it is a Christian 
 drum ! The Kaiser knows that, for above all 
 things he is a diplomatist. Though the Germans 
 are the most free-thinking and irreligious nation 
 in Europe, though in Germany there is a notorious 
 dearth of churches and cynicism is as popular 
 as beer, it is from Germany that the Christian 
 drum chivies all Europe into armaments, because 
 there alone is an absolute personal Government 
 which is obeyed. That is the supreme strength 
 of Germany, as it is the supreme danger to 
 Europe. The Emperor will get his fifty millions, 
 his additional annual expenditure, his re-arming 
 of the artillery, his men and his new ships too, 
 while we, who are reputed a practical nation, 
 are wrestling with a handful of discontented 
 women, hearkening to the drum, it is true, yet
 
 148 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 alone not heeding it, characteristically awaiting 
 developments. 
 
 From the English point of view, the German 
 war drum has been trommelled to one good effect, 
 which is that with the prodigious expenditure on 
 the army, it is clear that no very great increase 
 in German shipbuilding will be possible either 
 this year or the next. For the moment the 
 naval rivalry between England and Germany 
 ceases. Another danger has sprung up before 
 the Fatherland — Russia and the Slav Balkan 
 League : barring the way to German Eastern 
 expansion, frustrating the whole design of the 
 Emperor's Near Eastern policy, which as little 
 contemplated the expulsion of Turkey from 
 Europe as German diplomacy foresaw the possi- 
 bility of an Anglo-French entente — which was 
 the unforgivable failure of Prince Bulow. Once 
 more Bismarck has been vindicated. Germany 
 in the centre of Europe, he laid down as axiomatic 
 of German statesmanship, must always remember 
 her frontiers ; she must be a land Power, she 
 can never have a great oversea empire. The 
 collapse of European Turkey has driven in his 
 warning with blood and iron. Germany is 
 cooped in. Drunk with naval ambition, the 
 Emperor for the last ten years had quite forgotten 
 the geography of his country. The Creusot 
 guns of the Allies, the rout of his old friend the 
 Turk, the rise of a new Slav Federation in the 
 South, have once more turned his attention 
 from the quarterdeck to the destiny of Germany
 
 ety christian Drum 149 
 
 on shore. He is Emperor by " divine right." 
 There is no opposition, no possibility of opposi- 
 tion. Unlike our greatest soldier, who ends his 
 old age stumping the country for a hearing, the 
 Emperor bangs the big drum and in a morning 
 Europe is plunged into panic and there would 
 seem no outlet but in war. 
 
 Of that no thinking man can doubt. Some- 
 where, some day, even the empty drum must 
 lead. That it can be beaten indefinitely to no 
 purpose is contrary to all the teaching of history. 
 That it is being beaten now out of mere 
 bravado and goodwill is untenable, even as a 
 proposition. In reality it is the Emperor's answer 
 to the new European situation. It means 
 that Germany, contrary to all English idealist 
 opinion, is determined to uphold the principle 
 of militarism as the ultima ratio of diplomatic 
 argument, and will hear nothing either of dis- 
 armament or humanitarianism. 
 
 Thus suddenly, unexpectedly, the entire 
 European political position has changed. The 
 tension between England and Germany will 
 cease, pending the German respite in the ship- 
 building race — a respite which, if we have any 
 political sanity left in us, we will promptly 
 use to place the dwindling margin of naval 
 superiority beyond all possible doubt of challenge. 
 On the other hand, Europe groans once more 
 in the crisis of Kriegsspiel. Russia is again the 
 enemy, as Bismarck always prophesied she would 
 be. But the issue is now between France and
 
 i5° 'Before ant) jRott) 
 
 Germany. That France will show a craven 
 spirit is not to be contemplated. That Russia 
 will allow Germany to reinsure herself at the 
 expense of France is no longer even an argument. 
 The new Military Federation has come to stay, 
 and no one knows that better now than Germany. 
 Belgium is arming to the teeth. Austria awaits 
 the demise of the venerable Emperor " of peace ' 
 with no little anxiety. Thus Europe is braced 
 and loaded for war, " with God and Fatherland ' 
 as the emblem of each separate country, armed 
 only in the cause of self-defence, the pugilistic 
 euphemism for the " knock-out." It is no use 
 to philosophise, to talk humanity or sentiment, 
 or pretend that the war panic does not exist. 
 At this moment all Europe is deliberately pre- 
 paring for war, though nobody knows why, or 
 what good war would do to either victor or 
 vanquished ; it is so, in the name of God. 
 
 Most happily for us, we live on an island ; at 
 this hour we are the tertius gaudens Power in 
 Europe, feeling that the Naval Estimates are 
 sufficient and that we have only the border 
 warfare of Belfast and the sexes to confront. 
 We need not be anxious at the slowness of the 
 Government with regard to aircraft, which, as 
 a military weapon, is still in its infancy, and the 
 more so as we have an undoubted genius for 
 awaiting the development of a new engine of 
 destruction and then ourselves turning it to 
 account, as we did in the cases of torpedoes, 
 motors, submarines, and wireless telegraphy, all
 
 %\\t christian Drum 151 
 
 of which were discovered and developed by 
 foreigners. The question for England, then, is 
 not the morality of the Hohenzollern drum, not 
 the outrage to Christianity caused by this crass 
 display of force, but this : Are we to fall back 
 in the race of military expansion and so for ever 
 to give up our claim to be a recognised land 
 Power in Europe, or are we, mindful of our own 
 history, to follow the cue of Berlin, when the 
 only alternative is conscription ? 
 
 Germany, we may be perfectly sure, will 
 neither listen to sense nor remonstrance. As 
 there is no justification for her war fever, so 
 there will be no justification for her actions. 
 She will arm and attack if, and when, she pleases. 
 Nothing will restrain her attitude short of a 
 European coalition against her, such as was 
 formed to cut short the rapacity of Napoleon, 
 and this, unless the women of England obtain 
 the upper hand, seems hardly within the range 
 of practical politics. The grand mischief-maker 
 of Europe, the Emperor with his military mad- 
 ness, has several policies open to him. One is 
 frankly to abandon all idea of outbuilding us in 
 ships, when we might come to a deal ; the other 
 is to try to force France into fighting without 
 our land help, and so bully her into partnership ; l 
 
 1 This proposal was actually made to us in August 191 4 by 
 Von Kuehlmann, and was the issue at the historic Cabinet 
 Council which ultimately decided, largely, I believe, as the 
 result of Lord Lansdowne's Party influence, upon war. At this 
 meeting, Mr Lloyd George stood (according to trustworthy 
 report) for non-intervention, Lord Haldane and Sir E. Grey 
 were for,' war.
 
 152 'Before ant) iftou) 
 
 and the third is to make a complete friend of 
 Russia and detach her from France, in which 
 event the Western aggrandisement of Germany 
 to the mouth of the Rhine would be the goal of 
 Teutonic ambition. But this latter alternative 
 is so remote a possibility that it is not worth 
 immediate consideration. 
 
 The question to us is the stability of France, 
 a stability which we are not only pledged to 
 uphold by all the canons of good faith and the 
 entente, but which carries with it the independ- 
 ence of the sea borders of Holland and of France, 
 as, failing such stability, they must necessarily 
 fall into German conquering hands. If it is 
 certain that we are unwilling or unable to co- 
 operate militarily in the defence of France, then, 
 sooner or later, the pressure will come and 
 France will have to decide between the friend- 
 ship of England or Germany, with the alternative 
 in either case of fighting for her very existence. 
 So much is obvious. And it is here that English 
 opinion will have to take a decision, and it will be 
 the turning-point in European history. 
 
 With conscription, able and determined, in 
 the event of a wanton German invasion of 
 France, to throw an expeditionary force of at 
 least 300,000 trained soldiers on the Continent, 
 we hold the ring, and the advance of Germany 
 to the western coasts of Europe could be frus- 
 trated. Without conscription we can do little. 
 The military value of our friendship is negligible. 
 We are merely well-wishers. We cease to count
 
 C^e christian Drum 153 
 
 in diplomacy or war. In the rigid insularity of 
 defence, our offensive has no pike. 
 
 In a word, we now have to follow the Christian 
 drum or to be content, marooned upon our 
 " right -little, tight-little island," trusting to our 
 good men and ships to preserve the national 
 continuity. Our aversion to conscription is 
 largely our aversion to system, our dislike of 
 facing reality. Yet we love nothing better than 
 playing at soldiering. To see our mounted 
 Territorials practising wheeling evolutions on 
 the sands at some of our seaside resorts would 
 make even a Pomeranian recruit smile. See the 
 enthusiasm about the Boy Scouts. Listen to 
 Vesta Tilley with her song about the soldier — 
 unquestionably the military spirit is with us. 
 And, oddly enough — we are always paradoxical 
 in this country — the Socialists, headed by 
 Hyndman and Bernard Shaw, are in favour of 
 conscription, though the entire Social Democracy 
 of Europe is against it. 
 
 In the case of conscription, 1 the panic of Tory 
 and Liberal is Pickwickian, only soldiers and 
 Socialists having the moral courage to pronounce 
 the word, though why modern Liberalism should 
 take fright at the notion of compulsion shows 
 curious ignorance of foreign conditions, seeing 
 that it is quite certain that, with the introduc- 
 tion of national service, class Socialism would 
 
 1 Before the war, under the balance of power system, con- 
 scription was essential, but then we would not hear of it. Now, 
 when there is no danger, and Britain's example is the determinant 
 of the New Order, we maintain it.
 
 154 ^Before ant) Boto 
 
 arise for the first time as its inevitable result, 
 spreading the democratic ideas of the day 
 far and wide through the country — which 
 is, perhaps, the reason why Bernard Shaw 
 supports it. 
 
 All the same, the Army is the leg of England, 
 and it walked well enough on the Continent 
 from the days when " Cceur de Lion " and the 
 Black Prince led it to the last English European 
 charge at Balaclava, and had Gladstone been 
 given his way, our Bearskins would have been 
 sent against the Turk at the time of the Armenian 
 atrocities. Historically, there is no disgrace in 
 possessing an army. England has always fought 
 in Europe, and, strange as it may appear, has 
 generally won. Cromwell, founder of the Navy, 
 perhaps the greatest statesman England ever 
 had, beat the drum all the time. Unless we 
 are prepared to study the map, as he did, 
 sooner or later apathy will be pitted against 
 preparedness, and when it does the Potsdam 
 battle-drum may be heard in Piccadilly. 
 
 Anyhow, we shall have to make up our minds, 
 and quickly, or it will be too late. The whole 
 European situation is curiously similar to the 
 terrorism of Buonaparte, except that the driving 
 force of the present war craze is fear, whereas 
 in the times of the Corsican it was action. There 
 are possibilities, of course. The Kaiser may die 
 — his son may turn out a humanitarian, like his 
 grandfather ; again, the Emperor Joseph may 
 die, and his heir may turn out to be a veritable
 
 Ctje christian Drum 155 
 
 firebrand. The chances are even. A few ethnic 
 and geographical landslides are conceivable — in 
 the final adjustment of the Balkan States, and 
 even in Austria ; but in no case will the military 
 madness of the Kaiser be affected, in no case will 
 the burden of armaments be alleviated or the 
 constant panics and friction, or the anomaly of this 
 mock-religious Barbarossa savagery be removed 
 from Europe until the drum forces an issue. 
 Such is the prospect, for that Social Democracy 
 in Germany or elsewhere will be strong enough 
 to rise up and put an end to this barbarism is 
 not to be contemplated, and there is no other agency 
 available. 
 
 The Church will follow the drum, as it always 
 has done through the ages. War ! It has lived 
 on war. Every battle since the Crusades has 
 been fought in its name. Assuredly there is no 
 hope there, though in England alone last year 
 eight thousand books on theology were published. 
 The empty drum ! At its beat civilisation 
 throws off its mask. Ra-ta-plan ! Ra-ta-plan ! 
 The call of blood and death ! Well, it is beating 
 now in Europe loud enough, coming across the 
 waters even into the hamlets and gardens of 
 England. Shall we, too, follow it, goose-step, 
 eyes front, " for God and King " ? Shall we 
 follow our Socialists with their appeal for military 
 preparedness, or shall we pass on to the thirteenth 
 tee, and risk pot-luck — at the call ? 
 
 The above was written just after the close of the Balkan 
 War, which led, through its dislocation of power, directly to
 
 156 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 the war situation culminating in the Sarajevo murder. 
 But at that time we failed utterly to understand the danger, 
 and the article was denounced in various newspapers as 
 " nonsense." Had we, as suggested here, made a public 
 announcement of our intention to support France, if attacked, 
 and seriously enlarged the Army, there would in great pro- 
 bability have been no war. But we not only did nothing : 
 we did not even think. When, therefore, we say that war 
 took us " unprepared," that is a mere evasion of the truth, 
 which is that our rulers were blind to the real condition of 
 Europe and misled the country. It is interesting that Mr 
 Lloyd George stated in August of this year that we had a 
 " contract " to support France. If so, the policy of our 
 Government in 1913-14 will stand in history as a classic of 
 weakness and unintelligence.
 
 mW i0 Ours i0 not cmtjs 
 
 D 
 
 (i9 J 3) 
 
 you mind running ? ' ' she cried out 
 excitedly, and, without waiting for 
 an answer, my pretty hostess pulled 
 up her skirts and began to sprint across the 
 muddy field. 
 
 " We'll catch him at that corner over there," 
 she panted, as I ploughed along at her side. 
 " He's my boy, and I'm not allowed to see him 
 yet." 
 
 " Allowed ! But if he's your boy ? " I gasped. 
 
 " He's only just gone to school," she shouted 
 back at me, " and the master doesn't want me 
 to see him for the first three weeks. So I'm 
 — O, damn ! " — the puddles were in truth 
 alarming. On we went and reached the corner 
 just in time to see the junior master leading 
 some twenty small boys through the gate, to 
 one of whom the young mother frantically waved 
 her hand, blew kisses, and smiled with her eyes 
 all moist, while a little cherub head turned round 
 with a cautious grin — and they were gone ; and 
 I turned aside to examine the horizon, for she 
 was holding a tiny handkerchief to her face. 
 
 " Do forgive me," she explained presently. 
 
 157
 
 158 iBefotc ant) Bom 
 
 " But he's quite a babe. He has to go to school, 
 I know. And now he's gone from me, my only 
 boy. You saw, already he's almost ashamed to 
 recognise his mother." 
 
 An hour later, after tea, the other children 
 came down, but just as I was getting on with 
 the little girl, and the mother lay on the sofa 
 entirely absorbed in the baby, the nurse appeared, 
 ample and peremptory. 
 
 " I must have baby a little longer, Nanny," 
 the mother exclaimed appealingly, " just ten 
 
 minu -s." 
 
 I think you had better not," the nurse 
 replied. " She was rather restless to-day," and 
 without more ado, she walked up to the sofa, 
 picked the child up, and in another minute the 
 children were gone. 
 
 I was glad Sir Henry walked in at that moment, 
 though plainly he was in no mood for conviviality. 
 
 " I say, Iris," he began, after shaking hands 
 with me, " look here, both cars are out. One 
 hasn't come down, and the other you lent old 
 Mrs Travers, and I've promised to send over 
 and fetch Jack and his wife to dinner. It's too 
 bad. What's the good of having things if we 
 never have them ? " 
 
 I smiled, and Iris smiled too. She folded her 
 arms round her husband's neck and said in a 
 mock tone of despair, " I know, dear. Haven't 
 you yet made the discovery of life : What is 
 ours is not ours ? " 
 
 The remark produced quite a silence.
 
 mW i0 Out0 i0 not £>ut0 159 
 
 " By Jove ! " said Sir Henry at last. 
 
 " What we haven't got we want," Iris went 
 on. " What we have we don't have. Look at 
 me ! I can't even have my own children. I 
 run across fields to have a look at my little Oliver, 
 whom I shall only now see far, far away in the 
 holidays. When I want Baby, she is being 
 bathed, or she is asleep, or feeding, or ought to 
 be asleep. I can only see her at fixed moments. 
 I can't even have her in bed in the mornings 
 because, because . . ." 
 
 " My fault, I suppose," chuckled Sir Henry, 
 " quite true. And when I want to have a quiet 
 evening with you, you're out dancing, or must 
 go to a party or some rotten function. . . ." 
 
 " And when I want you," Iris interposed 
 plaintively, " you've got a shoot on, or it's 
 business or a City dinner. And when in the 
 summer I say, let's go abroad, you say you've 
 arranged to go a motor-golf tour with Johnny 
 and Frank. And when you run over on busi- 
 ness to Paris . . ." 
 
 " German measles break out in the house ! ' 
 and Sir Henry laughed. " Never mind, cheer 
 up. Have a cigar, old chap ? ' 
 
 " No, I won't take your last one, Sir Henry," 
 I said. 
 
 " What ? Has that fool James forgotten to 
 fill my case ? Now we shan't have any smokes 
 this week-end. Of course. You must. What 
 is mine is not mine, you know." 
 
 We were all laughing heartily now.
 
 160 before ant) Boui 
 
 " What is the good of having babies if a mother 
 can't enjoy them ? " said Iris. 
 
 " Or cars for other people to sit in," protested 
 Sir Henry. 
 
 " Or cigars ? " I had lighted my host's 
 Manilla. 
 
 "Or a wife if she is always out ? " 
 " Or a husband who is always busy ? ' 
 " Possession," I said, " is a great thing." 
 " But there is no such thing," Iris retorted. 
 " Possession is power." 
 
 " But power alone is useless. All life is use- 
 less alone. The greatest book in the world is 
 worthless if no men read books. The life and 
 soul of all Art is art, other art, more art. Power 
 is dependent upon power, as there could be no 
 life without death, and no light without dark- 
 ness. Without men, the ambitions and strength 
 of men, Napoleon would only have been a small, 
 sour little man with a pot-belly, and even as it 
 was the conqueror of Europe could not even 
 retain the fidelity of his ' little Josephine.' Look 
 at you, Henry. You own a newspaper which 
 you tell me publishes day after day leading 
 articles contrary to your own views. Old Sir 
 John, who is one of the richest men in the country, 
 told us the other night at dinner he would give 
 all his wealth and his very soul to have a son, 
 and now my sister has just had her second batch 
 of twins, and her husband is a poor journalist 
 on five hundred a year. The dearest things 
 that a woman can have, that I have, are children,
 
 mW t0 Out0 t0 not our0 161 
 
 and there is my Oliver gone to school. His 
 golden locks are cut. He is stuck into a ridicu- 
 lous Eton jacket, and I have lost him. The 
 child is taken from me. The little intimacies 
 are gone for ever. And when I want to have 
 my Baby, the nurse comes, and I am reminded of 
 those odious things duty, discipline, order, which 
 seem to be the three principles that matter 
 in what you men call civilisation. Possession 
 — there is no such thing. We spend our lives 
 talking about what we have, about what we 
 hope to have, about what we intend to have, 
 while in reality we have nothing, not even our 
 own souls — certainly not you business men and 
 politicians, certainly not we women, who are the 
 slaves of vanity and fashion." 
 
 " That's quite true," Sir Henry interposed. 
 " I run a paper over which I've no control 
 whatever. I vote to order, mechanically, 
 stupidly. I buy a hunter and my brother 
 breaks its back the first day out. I take a wife 
 with the intention of living a sensible, domestic 
 life, and I find she's out every night of the week 
 philandering with other men. I'm dragged to 
 a dance, and she dances all the time with ' dear 
 Jack who is so good-looking.' I try to have a 
 quiet evening and read a book I've been minded 
 to read for months, and I'm told we've promised 
 to bridge somewhere in Kensington. I buy an 
 Italian old master, and Sir Hugh Lane walks 
 in one afternoon and tells me it's a pupil of some 
 Dutchman ! I always thought the Boer War
 
 1 62 'Before anti Botn 
 
 monstrous, and yet I went out as a C.I.V. I 
 don't believe a bit in Tariff Reform, and yet 
 I vote with Mr Bonar Law. I know the chief 
 thing that newspapers care about is advertise- 
 ment, and yet I believe what they say. I never 
 see my real friends — I'm always booked to meet 
 people I'm quite indifferent about. I go away 
 because I'm run down and mean to have a real 
 holiday, but I come back almost neurasthenic 
 because I found I was off my drive and couldn't 
 get the club through properly. I can't even lie 
 in bed in the mornings. As for the children — 
 there's Nanny, and that's about all I know of 
 them. You're quite right, Iris. There is no 
 possession. Why, I believe at this moment 
 the wealth of England is dependent upon the 
 German market, and the wealth of Europe 
 upon the Jews. And yet we all go on fighting 
 for money and possessions, which the more we 
 obtain the more they benefit other people." 
 
 " It sounds terrible," I said, seeing that Sir 
 Henry had exhausted himself. " Perhaps it's 
 the life you well-to-do people lead." 
 
 " Oh," said Iris, " and what possessions have 
 you, then ? " 
 
 " Well, I've myself." 
 
 " And do you do what you want ? " She 
 said this so meaningly that I smiled. 
 
 " Not often, I admit." 
 
 " Do you ever ? " 
 
 " I think so." 
 
 " When ? Define ! "
 
 mW 10 ou rg 10 not cmtg 16 3 
 
 " When you ask me to dine with you," I 
 replied. 
 
 " Ah, then you're not in love with me," Iris 
 rejoined, " for when in love we are always un- 
 happy. But be serious. Tell me. You write. 
 Now do you dare write the truth — about men, 
 politics, art, books, life, love, anything ? " Iris 
 has beautiful eyes, and they and the question 
 perturbed me. 
 
 " The truth ! Well, hardly. No one does, 
 you know." 
 
 " But art is truth. Isn't that one of your 
 canons ? " 
 
 " Idealistically, yes." 
 
 " But actually, no. You see, you are false to 
 your very art. You simply dare not write a 
 wholly truthful thing." 
 
 " Truth, after all, is relative," I said. " No 
 wisdom is exact. What we call truth is only 
 opinion, attitude." 
 
 " Quite so," said Sir Henry, " but the question 
 was, do you dare write your deliberate, honest 
 opinion ? " 
 
 " What about ? " 
 
 " Ah, don't hedge. About politics, say. Or 
 the most natural thing in the world, Love. 
 Why, I can't go to a London theatre, the plays 
 are so silly and artificial." 
 
 " Not about love, to be sure. It's the for- 
 bidden fruit since Puritanism, you must remem- 
 ber. As for politics, there are only two parties 
 in this country. . . ."
 
 1 64 'Before ann Bom 
 
 " I know, and if your bread is dependent upon 
 writing politics, you have to belong to one camp 
 or the other." 
 
 " Most noble fellow," said Iris mockingly. 
 " False even in his work. And if your ideals 
 are false, how do you suppose the man can be 
 true ? " 
 
 « I don't." 
 
 " Then you admit you are false ? " 
 
 " Sometimes, yes. I have to be. We all 
 have to be. Otherwise — well, you know, no 
 man can do, or say, absolutely what he likes." 
 
 " Better write novels then," said Sir Henry. 
 
 " No. They are mostly even less true to life. 
 We have a Censor in England. Art is governed 
 by Law in this island, and control is the negation 
 of creative effort. You spoke of possession just 
 now. But in England people won't allow an 
 artist to have a soul. A man who wrote a true 
 biography, a true play or book on life would be 
 labelled a blackguard by Society, which itself 
 moves and lives in a permanent atmosphere 
 of overt and covert blackguardism. Only music 
 is free as artistic expression. But soon Strauss 
 will get found out, and when he does, no 
 doubt the Lord Chamberlain will have the horns 
 and the oboes eliminated from the orchestra. 
 Strindberg, now, wrote truthfully, so far as he 
 could know the truth, and most men think he 
 was mad." 
 
 " Or an ass," said Sir Henry. " I've read A 
 Fool's ConjessionP
 
 __ an^at i0 ours 10 not ours 165 
 
 " Or a weakling," said Iris, " to be so upset 
 by women." 
 
 " Or a giant," I returned, " because he was 
 strong enough to face things." 
 
 " But you haven't answered us, you know," 
 said Iris. " You admit you are false to your 
 work. What, then, are you true in ? " 
 
 Sir Henry chortled, " In love, of course." 
 
 " I wouldn't even dare say that," I replied 
 meekly. 
 
 " I should think you wouldn't," said Iris. 
 " Do you even know what love is ? " 
 
 " It's a madness, I believe." 
 
 " Or an illusion. You see, you haven't even 
 the courage to be a lover, so that in work and 
 love, the two great occupations of mankind, 
 you admit you are not true to yourself." 
 
 " I'm as true as I dare be." 
 
 " A Napoleonic speech ! Qualified truth, the 
 old story, the old compromise. Do you know, 
 I think we civilised folk are growing more and 
 more degenerate ! No man to-day dares to be 
 himself, and women are ceasing to be women. 
 Our public life is becoming more and more 
 hypocritical, as men grow more and more self- 
 seeking. And . . ." 
 
 " But individualism, you must not forget 
 that. Individualism is the life-blood of art, 
 of creators. England has still that." 
 
 " I know. It is our greatness, our hope. 
 But in the growing conditions of Society and 
 the State, only rich men can afford to be
 
 1 66 'Before ant) bouj 
 
 individuals, and they, generally, can't be. The 
 more we get on, the harder it becomes to be 
 anything, to risk anything. Why don't I keep 
 my babes by me at home ; educate my little 
 son, nurse my own baby, live with it, be a real 
 mother to it ? Why ? I'll tell you truthfully. 
 Because I'm such a poor woman, I can't breast- 
 feed my child. Because I've no time. Because 
 it isn't the thing. Because I'm not strong 
 enough to renounce, not true enough to under- 
 stand. And yet I do understand. I spend my 
 life frivolling, reading nothing, doing nothing ; 
 moving from one boring society rattle to another, 
 snatching glimpses of my children, passing a 
 vain existence, as all my other friends do, as 
 most of us do except you artist people who seem 
 afraid too." 
 
 " Afraid ? " 
 
 " Yes, afraid. There is no cohesion among 
 you, because you are jealous, unorganised, 
 systemless, vain, as women are. But even the 
 women are organising now. No fight is won 
 without generalship, discipline, esprit de corps. 
 You writers, for instance, could break down 
 the Censorship in a month if you united, if you 
 formed a Trade Union to raise the public taste, 
 to insist on the rights of artistic expression ; if 
 every Jack and Jill writer of you formed a 
 publishing society to print your own books, 
 and a theatre society to produce your own plays. 
 Yes, leave the commercial stage alone. Boycott 
 it — it and all the other trade agents and middle-
 
 (KBftat ig Out0 i0 not outs 167 
 
 men who direct and exploit you. Do what the 
 railwaymen have done for Knox. Strike ! ' 
 
 " My dear ! Really, my dear ! " said Sir Henry, 
 glancing at me. 
 
 " Oh, we're talking now," Iris retorted. " Isn't 
 it quite true, much truer, for example, than 
 what we read in the books from the libraries ? 
 You all talk about art, but what do any of you 
 do to make us understand art, to knock down 
 the restrictions of your trade that you know can 
 only prosper in freedom ? " 
 
 " My dear lady, what you say is true enough, 
 but you admit that you are equally false." 
 
 " Of course. Look at me ! Money, I have 
 it in plenty, also a successful husband, only I 
 rarely see him. And what do I get out of 
 my wealth ? Happiness ? Affection ? Sympathy ? 
 Enough for ordinary decency, oh, yes. Yet 
 not a particle of the happiness the humblest 
 artist derives from his own work. We are too 
 busy for affection, and sympathy is not a modern 
 virtue. I live, to be sure. I gad about. I 
 know lots of people. But I haven't even the 
 nous to choose my own frocks. If Paquin or 
 some tradesman with a reputation tells me I 
 am suited, I buy, I pay, I wear, and then some 
 quite unknown artist frankly tells me one day 
 at a party that green is not my colour at all, and 
 I get angry and buy another. 
 
 " Partly, that is why we women are revolting. 
 The sham is beginning to sicken us. Some of 
 us do want some truth, some self-respect, though,
 
 1 68 iBefore ant) jeoui 
 
 personally, I doubt whether woman is constitu- 
 tionally capable of grasping the truth. But 
 men are becoming less and less capable of grasping 
 it. And yet it is the only thing we have, men 
 or women. Our souls, ourselves — that is all. 
 The rest is not ours any more than our children 
 are, or my silk stockings which my maid wears, 
 as I know, on her days out. Why, at this 
 moment James is probably smoking Henry's cigars. 
 Believe me, the only people who possess any- 
 thing are those who have something to create. 
 The richest man in the world would go mad 
 in a year if he had no one to share his pleasures 
 with." 
 
 " Gad ! ' interposed Sir Henry. " You're 
 right, Iris. But do you know you've only 
 twelve minutes to get dressed. Hadn't ... ? " 
 
 "We'll be late then. Never mind. Have 
 I convinced you ? " and Iris turned gracefully 
 towards me. 
 
 " Almost. What is mine is yours. You ought 
 to be in the House." 
 
 " I ought to be with my babies," Iris answered 
 gravely. "You see, while nurse powders them, 
 Antoinette powders me." 
 
 I suppose I had been to a Tango Tea when this was written.
 
 €i}e eounttp of the I5linn l 
 
 T 
 
 (i9 J 3) 
 
 "TWENTY miles or so from Calais, a 
 day's airship flight from Moscow, in 
 mist and rain, or squall and dampness, 
 there lies the prettiest little island in all Europe, 
 cut off from intercourse with the Continental 
 world by the seas that surround it. The char- 
 acteristics of this island and its people are dis- 
 tinctive ; but perhaps the most peculiar of the 
 native idiosyncrasies is that, though many of 
 the greatest men of action and thought, of 
 science, poetry, philosophy, and the creative 
 idea have arisen from its shores, its inhabitants 
 are noted for a form of blindness which, if it 
 often leads to a remarkably clear and blue colour 
 in the eye itself, betrays its weakness by a con- 
 genital, or, as some think, an insular non-sighted- 
 ness, as if there were a little curtain drawn 
 behind the retina, thus obfuscating or deflecting 
 its vision. Many scientific names have been 
 given to this peculiarity, and whether one accepts 
 such designations as Conservatism, Puritanism, 
 Insularism, damn-your-eye, cussedness, dogged- 
 
 1 With apologies to Mr H. G. Wells. 
 
 169
 
 170 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 ness, myopia Britannica, or what not, as the right 
 diagnosis, travellers generally prefer the story 
 of one Nelson cocking the spyglass to his blind 
 eye when he did not wish to see a particular 
 signal, as the more rational explanation of the 
 disease which finds expression in a national in- 
 ability to recognise the truth of anything that it 
 is not held desirable to recognise, or even to see 
 what all the time stands up and hits it bang in 
 the face." 
 
 The notebook of the man who fell into this 
 country — he had missed his way in the clouds 
 hanging over the North of the Island, and striking 
 against a local airship, had boarded it and been 
 taken to land — is not without interest, for he is 
 reputed a wise man in his own country, and having 
 long since freed himself of all trammels of dogma, 
 theory or convention, his stray reflections seem 
 worthy of chronicle. 
 
 He knew (his notebook narrative begins) at 
 once that he was in the Country of the Blind, 
 because the first and only thing the airman said 
 to him after his rescue and subsequent descent 
 to earth was the startling remark, " It's a fine 
 morning, ain't it ? " whereas it was drizzling 
 at the time, and, flying across the grey slag 
 peaks, quorns, rocks and walls, it was evidently 
 all his saviour could do to sight a safe breaking- 
 place and break land. The next remark seemed 
 to him even more typical : 
 
 Said the blind rescuer, in answer to his inquiry 
 about telegraphing his whereabouts to his wife :
 
 Cfte Country of tyt OBlto 171 
 
 " Lloyd George ! 1 Ha ! ha ! He's got the 
 goods all right. Have a cigar ! " the irrelevance 
 of which struck the wise man from the clouds 
 as a notable phenomenon. In his notebook he 
 makes the following shorthand commentary : 
 
 " Man spoke once in a hundred miles' flight, 
 and then to say it was fine when it was 
 raining. Curious example of national blindness. 
 The telegraph wires made him think of the 
 Chancellor. Following this hint, I found it 
 answered admirably, for, walking into a telegraph 
 office an hour later and telling the girl I wanted 
 ' to Lloyd George,' she smiled graciously and im- 
 mediately said, ' Marconi ' — who, it so happened, 
 was the very man I wanted to see in connection 
 with our new Governmental service. Obviously, 
 one always has to say what one doesn't mean. 
 For example, people don't understand you if 
 you say ' conscription ' for national service, 
 * passion ' as applied to love, so in the same way 
 it is rude to call a lie a lie, it is equally discon- 
 certing to a man to say that he is a truth-teller. 
 To be remembered : if you want to lie, tell the 
 truth ; nobody will believe you. 
 
 " On the use of the word ' bloody.' In this 
 country it is purely emphatic, except in cases of 
 poetic licence. See the pretty story of the 
 child found wandering without parents. ' 'E's 
 friends call him little bloody, your worship,' 
 
 1 In 1 91 3 Mr Lloyd George was regarded as the " Joe 
 Chamberlain " of the poor, and probably no politician was ever 
 more hated by the rich. When this appeared we were in the 
 throes of Marconi politics.
 
 172 'Before ant) jeofo 
 
 i.e., little ' thing-a-mi-gig ' or ' master indepen- 
 dent ' — not to be confounded with sanguinary, 
 which is reserved for epic occasions, such as the 
 destruction of the Mahdi and his Dervishes. 
 ' Bloody ' — probably derivative from the national 
 symbol, ' Keep your pecker up,' or, ' your powder 
 dry,' gunpowder playing a prominent part in the 
 annals of these people ; on the other hand, you 
 may say ' damn,' if not angry — the women say 
 it quite prettily — but when thoroughly annoyed 
 one says ' bother ' : it is more forcible." 
 
 Again we find the philosopher interested, and 
 this time it is on the subject of Truth. 
 
 " Truth," he writes, " in this country means 
 habit or desirability. A curious example : The 
 Press are very indignant because a black man x 
 — said to be the champion pugilist — wanted to 
 appear in some theatre. The reason adduced 
 is that he is implicated in a by-law in one of the 
 American States connected with the transference 
 of a ' gay ' woman (gay is the word in vogue for 
 immoral, presumably because to be ' merry and 
 bright ' is the national fetich) from one State 
 to another — which may or may not be a crime. 
 I don't know. At any rate, some of these 
 Islanders take a special interest in abetting 
 the escape of Russian ' revolutionaries ' {i.e., 
 men who are struggling for freedom, constitu- 
 tional and individual). Anyhow, a terrible 
 rumpus was made. The Press had ' leaders ' on 
 
 1 Jack Johnson, then the national hero. The big shells were 
 christened after him.
 
 %\)t country of tyt 'Blinn 173 
 
 the matter, which became of national importance. 
 To be noted, however, is the paradox that the 
 same Press is full of telegraphic accounts of a 
 white man, called Thaw, who is a murderer 
 and has been adjudicated insane. I couldn't 
 quite understand this, at first. They make a 
 hero of a lunatic and a murderer, and damn a 
 black man for helping an unfortunate woman 
 to change her abode ! Explanation — Crippen. 
 These people idolise notoriety, reports of murders, 
 crime, robbery, bloodshed, war, disaster, evil. It 
 was explained to me thus by a gentleman I met 
 in a public house (i.e., a smelly place covered with 
 sand, where handles squeeze out drinks) ; had 
 the nigger shot a sheriff, escaped, and then tried 
 to go on the stage, the Islanders would have 
 applauded, as they applaud Thaw, who, besides, 
 is a millionaire. The pugilist has only done 
 something. He is only first in the world in his 
 trade. It is a higher moral achievement to have 
 inherited a lot of money. People think more of 
 a man, so do the women. The nigger, therefore, 
 made a mistake in not killing a man first. 
 
 " Thaw, now, . . . 
 
 " Not at all. Wrong train of argument. 
 They are ' whole-hoggers ' these people, but 
 quite devilishly clever. It is not really the 
 question of a by-law at all. It is a question of 
 colour. The nigger is a nigger — dash him, 
 damn him. Any rope is good enough to hang 
 a nigger with. In addition to being the champion 
 fighter, the black man is said to be the Falstaff
 
 i74 before ant) Boto 
 
 of negroes. What boots it ? Black is his crime, 
 whereas Thaw's crime was only a sensation. 
 If you shoot a fox you are a ' dirty cad.' If 
 you shoot a man you may become a hero. After 
 Drake — Crippen, so the man in the ' pub.' 
 explained it to me. The public wants these 
 heroes. Otherwise they would only have 
 marmalade for breakfast. After all, the Romans 
 took emetics with their meals. Again, a question 
 of degree. At the same time, nobody in the 
 country admits that the nigger is black. Here 
 we have myopia Britannica succinctly illustrated." 
 
 " I would refer the literary-historian to my 
 work on The Aberrations of Civilisation, vol. xvii., 
 ch. iv., where they will find a pathological 
 study of the moral and mental stability of a 
 people who, proudly styling themselves champion 
 ' Bible-bangers ' of the world, yet reviled and 
 fought ' Uncle Kruger ' because of a difference 
 of opinion about economic morality which led 
 him to quote Holy Writ. Students should care- 
 fully observe this manifestation of the disease, 
 which is apt to give rise to a false political 
 diagnosis. 
 
 " In my last lecture I dwelt on the woman's 
 movement in this Island, pointing out how 
 noble and splendid it was that the women there 
 were striving for the perfection of femininity 
 in contradistinction to the perfection of virility. 
 I drew a picture of the world ruled by the Anglo- 
 Saxon peoples, supreme because their women 
 were such superb mothers, wives, lovers, helpers,
 
 Clje country of ttje ^lint) 175 
 
 and because the men per contra were such 
 magnificent creators, fighters, thinkers, phil- 
 osophers, and administrators — how, in short, 
 any movement tending to refine and ennoble 
 the one sex must affect retroactively the other, 
 to the common advantage of both. 
 
 " On my return, must start course of lectures 
 dealing with clinical aspects of movement. First 
 stage : splendid processional marches of matrons, 
 mothers, and virgins, through streets — Madonna- 
 like expressions on faces. Historical example of 
 feminine humility, love and service in the cause 
 of humanity. Compare vestal virgins, also noble 
 self-sacrificial attitude of these women, even 
 ladies of quality, who exhibit themselves for the 
 cause in various attitudes, poses, states of semi- 
 and more or less complete nudity — to advertise 
 the great emancipating movement of the sex 
 towards the goal of ideal purity and femininity. 
 Compare also Nautch girls of India, Geishas of 
 Japan — dwell especially on the spirit inspiring 
 these women, their complete detachment from 
 all worldly vanities, evidenced by their economies 
 in dress on arms, shoulders, back, bosom, etc., 
 and markedly so on the stage, where, no doubt, 
 they are stirred to rival feats of martyrdom and 
 self-immolation. 
 
 " Second stage : the battles in the streets 
 against large and incomplete policemen. Storm- 
 ing of Parliament Yard under the frown of 
 Cromwell. Hell for leather in Trafalgar Square. 
 Revival of Elizabethan buccaneer spirit. The
 
 176 'Before ant) aotn 
 
 ' No-trousers Brigade,' led by the Generals 
 Pankhursts. Discomfiture of the effete male 
 generally. Reprisals. Heroic hunger-strikes. 
 No vote, no food. The old stomach fable 
 again. Belly ' on top,' as they say. Demoralisa- 
 tion of authority, and constabulary arm. The 
 ' white slave ' movement. Utter rout of man. 
 Its origin — the colour question in the Rand 
 mines, or ' Chinese Labour.' Its meaning — 
 claim of women to love and to be loved without 
 domestic cares and responsibilities, whether 
 infantile, economic, or social. Result — the nigger 
 boxer's collapse. Vindication of solar plexus 
 ethics in polite life. Woman henceforward mater 
 dolorosa of Empire and the stay of public affairs. 
 Inner meaning of forcible-feeding martyrdom 
 — to show mankind physiological inefficiency of 
 bottle-food for infants. Triumph of mother- 
 hood. All babies in the future to be fed at the 
 breast. Epigram — milk of human kindness 
 sweeter than condensed. Continuity of race 
 assured. 
 
 " Third stage — incidental phenomena. 
 
 " Physical (hardening-the-constitution) drill of 
 young generation ; heroic discarding of petti- 
 coats and all superfluous underwear and raiment 
 generally. Exposure of human form divine on 
 all occasions. League of immodesty and trans- 
 parent dress — to shame the male authorities 
 who defile statues in museums. Conspiracy with 
 fashion merchants and newspapers to run up 
 prices of feminine attire and cause them to be
 
 C^e country of tyt 'Blinti 177 
 
 changed as often as possible with a view to 
 impoverish their male janitors. Economic skir- 
 mishing in furs, aigrettes, jewellery. Frocks to 
 be worn front backwards to add to public con- 
 fusion, and accentuate spirit of slavery existing. 
 Rouge and cosmetics to be used freely, as the 
 Indians put on their war paint. General scheme 
 of campaign — to return to Paradisial conditions in 
 order to shame and humiliate man. No vote 
 — no snake. All young girls to be brought up 
 and trained as men, i.e., to shoot, smoke, and 
 be toughened with all kinds of athletics and 
 games ; thus the grizzly-bear wrestling per- 
 formances in the ball-room, the burning of 
 private houses, and the revival of coarse manners 
 in imitation of the men. Hair to be dyed 
 according to fashion. Motherhood not the 
 supreme office of women. Revolt at sex bondage. 
 Man to learn his place in the home. No hearth- 
 rugs. No crickets (Cicadce, not the game of 
 stumps and a ball). No mutton for the Army, 
 no virginity, no chivalry, and no sonnets. 
 
 " Fourth stage : review of movement, and 
 its immediate effects on the male. These self- 
 evident. Entire male population absorbed in 
 purblind pursuit of solid disc. Epidemic of 
 golf, revival of cricket, tennis, punch-an-kick- 
 ball direct results of woman's movement. 
 Touching public subscription to London's Great 
 Landowner's Fund for purposes of professional 
 athleticism. All boys educated as scouts. 
 Decline in book-learning generally. Abolition 
 
 M
 
 178 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 of controversy. National attack on the con- 
 templative life. Outlines of general scheme. 
 In order to make real men, men must be rejuven- 
 ated. The knicker-bocker craze — see golfers and 
 the " literary gent." Censorship of stage and 
 libraries. All plays and books dealing truthfully 
 with real life to be put in Class B — i.e., withheld 
 from public gaze. Stage managerial directions 
 — to display as many women in public as nakedly 
 as possible, to stimulate the senses by all means 
 admissible and contrivable, while studiously 
 doctoring or cutting out any passages in any 
 ' book ' relating to sense or wisdom. Plays to 
 be run on the Eton-collar standard only, the 
 object being to promote merriment not thought, 
 on the lines of the Public Schools' educational 
 system. And the same with the libraries. Any 
 book referring to a woman as a ' mistress,' to a 
 kiss as a kiss, to love as love, to be kept in the 
 suspect class. The test of all literature to be 
 the standard of the parlour-table — what Charlie 
 may read on his holidays. Shakespeare to be 
 reserved for Sunday evenings. Most ' dirty ' 
 foreign works to be boycotted. Poets may be 
 accorded considerable licence because they never 
 grow up. Otherwise all novels to be ' papped,' 
 except those by women, who may write what 
 they please. See, by the way, the Early Closing 
 Hours Bill, to facilitate juvenile recreation ; the 
 Welsh Disestablishment Bill, to break down the 
 knowledge of the Bible ; the Home Rule Bill, to 
 break up the Happy British Home ; also the
 
 Cfre e ounttp of tty 1511111) 179 
 
 revolutionary land reform legislation with the 
 object of returning to nature. As subsidiary 
 measures, to be noted, the rise in the prices of 
 man's indulgences — tobacco, beer, wines, spirits, 
 bacon, the stagnation of wages, and the great 
 demand for flexible and inflammable material 
 such as oil and rubber (for purposes of muscular 
 development and condition). 
 
 " In short, man and woman are at war, and 
 there is something beautiful in this liberation of 
 women from the chaos of civilisation. To me, 
 the sight of these noble creatures exhibiting their 
 bodies in ball-rooms and public places for educa- 
 tional and ethical purposes is one never to be 
 forgotten. Their total absence of self-conscious- 
 ness, their self-imposed sacrifice on the altar of 
 progress and reform, mark these women out as 
 the ideal mothers of the great race which is to 
 be when the process of levelling up the men to 
 women's mental, moral, and physiological stand- 
 ard shall have restored the pristine equation and 
 harmony between the two sexes. Such, indeed, 
 was Eve, naked and unashamed, before the 
 serpent tempted her. Oh, woman ; alma mater 
 of the universe ! " 
 
 Here several leaves fail, but later we find the 
 professor indulging in another train of thought : 
 
 " It is odd," he reasons, " to find these con- 
 querors and merchants plunged into a kind of 
 social warfare concerning the merits and demerits 
 of sex. With us, we have long ago recognised
 
 180 before ant) Bofo 
 
 Love as the supreme arbiter on all sex problems 
 and disputes, as (of course) we have long since 
 recognised the only decent unity of the sexes 
 to be the natural affinity of reciprocal affection. 
 In the Country of the Blind this is not so. They 
 think unhappily married people should continue 
 to live together, no matter how repugnant such 
 a union may be either to the woman or to the 
 man, and the few who break away from this 
 convention are victimised in the public Press 
 as felons and cut-throats. This is obviously 
 largely a matter of sight. Henry VIII. now is 
 a national hero, an M.P. who divorces is a 
 ' rabbit ' — Crippen was a hero because he 
 killed his wife ; the plain man who divorces 
 is a ' blackguard.' It must make marriage a 
 highly dangerous experiment, as of Love a wind- 
 ing-sheet. That, no doubt, is the reason why 
 books on love and sex are virtually taboo. It 
 is not easy to love. Few men are good lovers. 
 But these peoples' marriage is more in the 
 nature of an institution. It may not be broken ; 
 therefore love, as we understand it in our country, 
 is irrelevant. Here again, I find colour blind- 
 ness to be the cause, vide ' blackguard,' the 
 phrase a * white man,' dirty nigger, etc. It is 
 not convenient to try and alter things. Then 
 the wise men who sit in Parliament are nearly 
 all happily-married men, people of impeccable 
 social decorum and infallible righteousness, whose 
 business it is to sit on other men's hats and when 
 in doubt on their own. The social conditions
 
 C^e Country of tbe islitib 18: 
 
 of this country are, indeed, exceeding strange. 
 Even at the races a man never knows what hat 
 to wear. Hats seem very like lovers. A grand 
 lady can wear any hat or have any amount of 
 lovers ; in short, hats and lovers are the badge 
 of aristocracy. The others are citizens, the mob 
 — they are fed on the " back-chat " of snobbery. 
 
 " ' In the Country of the Blind the One-eyed 
 Man is King.' " 
 
 " By no means. Far more attention is paid 
 to extrinsic than to intrinsic worth. They 
 regard wealth as happiness, and the titles of 
 rewards are heaped upon the rich. I found no 
 philosopher at Court. Lap-dogs are more 
 cherished than genius. Sometimes a poet, an 
 artist, a wandering creative spirit falls on the 
 road, but the sparrows in the Great City are 
 always fat and chirpy, and the ducks are fed 
 regularly by the children. I was told the reason 
 of this was because these animals say Quack ! 
 Quack ! of a morning so nicely. I can well 
 believe it. Art is not so simple. The children 
 can hardly be expected to understand that. 
 
 " I find human cruelty to be characteristic of 
 this race, whereas animals are held sacred. I 
 was introduced to a sailor the other day who had 
 jumped overboard into a rough sea and saved a 
 dog, and he told me in conversation quite cheer- 
 fully he had had two illegitimate children, but 
 did not for the life of him know where they 
 were. A typical case. A child born out of 
 wedlock cannot by law be legitimatised. At
 
 1 82 ^Before ant) Bouj 
 
 the same time, a man may not kill himself. 
 Thus, my sailor friend was a hero for saving a 
 dog. Curiously, too, the women use the word 
 prostitute as a term of reproach. Most of these 
 ladies keep dogs, cats, horses, marmosets, or 
 some animal, but it never occurs to them to do 
 anything to help vast numbers of their own sex 
 who have fallen in the battle of life. Oblique 
 sight, of course. Pathologically, a curious fact, 
 and my students will be interested to hear 
 about it. 
 
 " The wisest men I met are certainly the 
 sailors : they are kinder than the others and 
 know best about the weather, which is the 
 ultimate test of the national intelligence. 
 Government is entirely in the hands of the 
 Daily Press, as the Press is in the hands of the 
 advertisers, and the advertisers are in the hands 
 of the women. Superficial observation might 
 easily lead the enquirer astray on this point. 
 The woman's movement is not really for the 
 vote ; it is to restore the equilibrium of sex and 
 government. Thus, the anti-vivisection cam- 
 paign, to prevent science from learning too much. 
 For the women fully recognise the law of the 
 fittest. In a country run entirely on women's 
 dress and ornaments (through advertisers, Press, 
 and so Parliament), it is essential to preserve the 
 balance of power. Ships are called she, to 
 remind men of their maritime fidelity. Thus, 
 the Salic law is only a corruption of saline. 
 Able, sensible, and determined men they put
 
 €t)e Country of tt)t 'Blinfc 183 
 
 in ships of some sort. The others they train, 
 like their dogs, to sit up and ' trust.' 
 
 " That is why they hate originality, genius, 
 creative talent generally — the dogs won't trust." 
 
 Here there is again a break in the professor's 
 discursive narrative. Further on in the note- 
 book I find this saw, which clearly " beat " him : 
 " Two old maids went out for a tramp in the 
 woods — the tramp died." 
 
 And underneath, underlined, the words : — 
 " Title for my lecture to the Metaphysical 
 Society next year." 
 
 There is little else in the notebook, except 
 this : — 
 
 " Off-side, i.e., Tariff Reform." 
 " Snickersnee, i.e., Lloyd George." 
 " Little Boy Blue, i.e., Mr Balfour." 
 " Metabolism, i.e., Party Politics." x 
 And at the very end of the notebook, which 
 was discovered in a suburban railway carriage, 
 there are two quotations : — 
 
 " The rain, it raineth every day." — Shakespeare. 
 
 " We've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the 
 money too." 
 
 1 We must recall the Marconi business to understand some of 
 these allusions ; the women's war, the England which Teutonic 
 penetration was " hegemonising " so successfully in the years 
 preceding Armageddon.
 
 "Leafce rtem 'otse? alone! wl 
 
 (i9H) 
 
 THE Irish question may at last be said 
 to have reached a practical stage. With 
 a hundred thousand men marshalled 
 under Sir Edward Carson — staunch, sturdy 
 fellows, some of whom are, no doubt, versed in 
 the use of the modern rifle — the political problem 
 of Home Rule assumes an intelligible aspect. 
 Rebellion being High Treason to the King and 
 to the State, and this array of civic soldiery 
 being obviously rebellion, it follows logically 
 enough that the Government has every right 
 to summon them to disband and, in the event 
 of their refusal, to shoot. Cromwell would 
 probably have done it while the Ulstermen's 
 leader was away holiday-making at the baths. 
 Napoleon, of course, would have delighted in 
 doing it. And so would Peter the Great, 
 Frederick, or any of our own Tudor family. 
 There is a great deal to be said in favour of 
 such an attitude from the point of view of 
 authority and discipline ; moreover, for the 
 
 1 When this appeared various Irishmen wrote, explaining 
 that the Irish never dropped their " h's." Perhaps this is only 
 another proof of my Irish ostler's astuteness ; he knew his 
 "other" Island. 
 
 184
 
 "leabe ttiem 'orges alone !" 185 
 
 time being we should have solved that other 
 imperial problem — what to do with Lord 
 Kitchener. 
 
 We could try the new military airship service ; 
 try the new uniforms, sashes, buttons, " paper ' 
 boots, and weevil biscuits incidental to cam- 
 paigns ; use the big guns of the newest ships ; 
 turn on the Solent's motor fleet boats ; emulate, 
 in short, the stirring Christianity of the Balkan 
 States, kill, maim, and keelhaul enough rebels 
 to satisfy even the bloodiest of Boy Scouts and 
 the " cold steel " brigade generally. 
 
 We don't like the Irish. We don't really like 
 anybody. They are a perpetual intrusion and 
 nuisance here, with their little Irish players 
 teaching us how to act, their literary whimsi- 
 cality, nebulosity and verbosity, their infernal 
 talk, humour, political intrigue, plot and paradox, 
 nor have any of them done much for England 
 except lead the British Army to victory on 
 various occasions ; as for the " moonlighters," 
 the whiskey, the wakes, the kissing-stones, and 
 all the other tweedle-dum of Erin mystification 
 — the sooner all this gets gathered up into the 
 sane and exhilarating crucible of our Five Towns, 
 the better it will be for the Germans — when they 
 come. Not a doubt of it. It's a damp climate. 
 Bog, peat, talk and sacerdotalism — all the best 
 of them go to America or come over here to 
 speed up English politics or write pseudo-Pagan 
 books. A truant, moody, brooding, vindictive 
 folk ! They are fond of fighting — let them
 
 1 86 'Before ant) jeoto 
 
 fight. It is no concern of ours. Some good is 
 sure to come out of it, as we recently saw in the 
 Balkan imbroglio, perhaps the truth about the 
 Crown Jewels. We have done our best, anyhow. 
 If the Irish won't swallow their shamrock, let 
 them have hemlock. 
 
 Sir Edward Carson could be immediately 
 arraigned for High Treason, and sent to be dealt 
 with by Mr Justice Darling. That is how the 
 Russians, who have vast experience in these little 
 risings and revolutions, invariably begin opera- 
 tions. Next, a strong man would be sent to 
 Dublin, 1 and in his wake there would follow 
 an army of detectives, secret and provocative 
 agents, and all such who would play informer. 
 Then come the guns, the ammunition, the 
 Horse-guards, and the men. The rebel leaders 
 are sorted out, segregated, shadowed, and finally 
 arrested and thrown into the many wishing- 
 wells so conveniently abundant in the country. 
 All weapons are seized on a methodical system 
 of domiciliary visits, searches and inquisitions. 
 Here and there, a truculent Irishman is shot, 
 knocked on the head, or removed — quietly. 
 When the men no longer have any weapons, 
 resistance ceases. Besides, it is dangerous. After 
 one or two street disturbances, things in such 
 circumstances have a wonderful way of settling 
 down. 
 
 1 This is the exact position in Ireland, 191 8, the difference 
 being that Ulster is the policeman and Sinn Fein is the rebel. 
 Men thought these words amusing in 191 3, to-day they are poor 
 reflexions of reality.
 
 "leatoe tytm 'orees alone!" 187 
 
 I was thinking of the gravity of this the other 
 day on my way to Southampton, when a little 
 Irishman, very drunk, was thrust into the carriage 
 by the guard and upbraided for not having a 
 ticket. " Where's your money, then ? " No 
 answer. " Now then, none of your Irish games 
 here, ticket or money, or out you go." But the 
 little Irishman only grunted : " Ain't got no 
 money, nor no ticket," which said, he collapsed 
 in the corner of the seat. At three stations in 
 succession this performance was repeated, the 
 guards and ticket-collectors evidently knowing 
 their man, who was travelling back with some 
 horses, and each time the questioning and cross- 
 questioning was resumed, and always without 
 success, for as the train went off the little fellow 
 still sat in his corner opposite to me, blinking 
 and muttering to himself. 
 
 At last I intervened. " It's no good bullying 
 him," I said. " No doubt, he's a good Home 
 Ruler." But at this the little ostler chap winked 
 and brightened up remarkably. " I'm not a 
 
 b Home Ruler," he said, " ain't got no 
 
 money, nor no ticket." " You see," said the ticket- 
 collector, " that's what he always does, always 
 drunk, in charge of them 'orses too, and never 
 takes no ticket nor has a penny on him. We're 
 about fed up with him, we are." 
 
 " You're a Protestant, then," I said, trying 
 to ease the tension, and again my fellow-traveller 
 
 brightened up. " I ain't no b Protestant," 
 
 he said, " ain't got no money, nor no ticket."
 
 1 88 before ant) Jflou) 
 
 " What are you then, a Catholic ? " shouted 
 the guard. 
 
 " I ain't a b Catholic," growled back the 
 
 Irishman, " ain't got no money, nor no ticket, 
 and you leave them 'orses alone." 
 
 We were getting on. 
 
 " Look here," I said, " you must be a Pro- 
 testant or a Home Ruler. Which are you ? " 
 
 This time the drunken man looked at me 
 
 attentively. " I ain't no b nothing," he 
 
 retorted. " I don't want to be nothing. You 
 let them 'orses alone. I ain't got no money, 
 nor no ticket. And I'm goin' 'ome." 
 
 " Told you so," said the guard, as if proud of 
 his protege. " This little devil travels all over 
 the place like that, never pays for anything. 
 We knows him well, and his boss. Always 
 drunk. Not a Home Ruler either ! ' Ain't got 
 no money,' that's all he says. ' Leave them 
 'orses alone.' I'd like to punch his little iaw 
 off ! " 
 
 Again we were off, and once more we 
 stopped, when a fresh body of ticket-collectors, 
 evidently apprised of their trophy, appeared at 
 the door. 
 
 " Where's our little friend, eh ? Ah, out 
 you come. This is your change here. Out of 
 it," one of them shouted, while another stepped 
 into the carriage, worried and shoved the little 
 Irishman out on to the platform. 
 
 " Show me your ticket." 
 
 The little fellow backed himself up against
 
 "leabe fytm 'orges alone!" 189 
 
 the wall, and made a queer figure, lolling up 
 and down, like a dancer. 
 
 " Now then. Where's your money ? You 
 can't travel free, you know." 
 
 No use. The Irishman put his hands in his 
 trouser pockets, stuck up his little chin, and 
 stared ruminatively. 
 
 The ticket-collectors shouted, shook him, cursed 
 him, but he took not the slightest notice. Just 
 before the train started I leant out of the window 
 and called to him : 
 
 " Good whiskey, Pat, eh ? " and at the words 
 a great change came over his features, which 
 spread out into a pleasing grin. As the train 
 moved on, he put two fingers deftly into his 
 waistcoat pocket, and pulled out a gold coin, 
 holding it up to me all of a twinkle under the 
 gas-light in the palm of the left hand, and . . . 
 they were on him — No, " ain't got no money," 
 I heard him saying, " nor no ticket. You leave 
 them 'orses . . ." 
 
 He got back home all right, I feel sure, with 
 his horses and his gold, despite the guards and 
 ticket-collectors, and no doubt enjoyed himself 
 immensely in the old country. " You leave 
 them 'orses alone." That was very clever of 
 him. It identified his calling, invested him 
 with the immunity which is the privilege of 
 drunkenness, and so got him through. Neither 
 a Protestant, nor a Home Ruler ! Just a human 
 being, an Irishman, a jolly ostler who did not 
 want to be anything political, social, ethical,
 
 190 Before ant) Botn 
 
 philosophic or mental. And all the time in the 
 intervals of the bully-ragging by the officials at 
 the various stoppages, he would place one foot 
 after another on the seat, take out a button- 
 hook, and deliberately fasten the top button on 
 each of his gaiters, and then immediately after- 
 wards solemnly undo them, after a few minutes' 
 contemplation beginning the operation over 
 again. He must have done that seventy times 
 between the stations, and, watching the per- 
 formance with breathless interest, I began to 
 feel more and more that it was symbolic, like a 
 statue by Rodin. 
 
 What is the good of anything ? You offer 
 the Irish Home Rule, the North proceeds to 
 arm. You refuse Ireland self-government, and 
 you are threatened with a Catholic rising in the 
 South. The little Irishman grew upon me. 
 Here were the fussy guards and ticket-collectors 
 bothering the poor little fellow for his ticket 
 when they knew all the time that he had not 
 got one, and never did have one, such being his 
 way of travel through the world. I tried to 
 make him out a Catholic or a Home Ruler, 
 actually taking part in the plaguing of him for 
 no better reason than that I felt he ought to 
 be something, as in this part of the world we 
 feel we do like to be something or other mock- 
 heroic and important, but the little chap got 
 the better of all of us. At heart, perhaps, he 
 was a ferocious Ulsterman, or a Parnellite, 
 possibly even a priest. It was no business of 

 
 "Leabe ttiem 'otm alone I'* 191 
 
 mine to question him because he was drunk. 
 A man may still get drunk in capitalistic England. 
 Even " blind,"' he was a match for us. We got 
 nothing out of him whatever. Why try to ? 
 His horses were safely looked after by Englishmen 
 in the van. Perhaps he was sea-sick ! Perhaps 
 he wasn't. It doesn't matter. What does seem 
 to matter is the lesson he offered in what one 
 may call statesmanship. 
 
 How are we going to deal with Sir Edward 
 Carson and his hundred thousand Ulstermen ? 
 The historical and customary way is, as before 
 said, to meet force with force and lay about the 
 rebels with stock-ends and bludgeons — a course 
 which would be perfectly justified and exemplary. 
 Belfast, 1 for example, is the town which deliber- 
 ately turned out all of Nietzsche's works from 
 the public library on the ground that they were 
 immoral. Such a city could well be fumigated 
 or purged in the interests of progress. Destruc- 
 tion, however, is rarely the best remedy. And 
 the moment it comes to destruction, the more 
 ridiculous, impolitic, and criminal does any such 
 procedure appear. 
 
 Nobody at this time of day could seriously 
 desire to stir up a religious war ; yet such would 
 inevitably be the case in the event of bloodshed 
 in Ulster, and for a democrat country to connive 
 at such a work would positively be an act of 
 lunacy. For an English political party, again, 
 to force Home Rule upon a country in opposi- 
 
 1 It was glad to have the German rifles though.
 
 192 before ant) Bato 
 
 tion to its most important section is obviously 
 an arbitrary act which, lacking reason, necessity 
 or military exigency, seems to be as uncalled for 
 as it is unjustifiable. At the same time, some- 
 thing must be done. That is admitted. If the 
 English have to look after the " 'orses ' ' which 
 the Irishman is in charge of, it is at least due to 
 the Englishman that these services should be 
 respected, and, to some extent at any rate, that 
 their counsels in the interests of law and order 
 should be tolerated and attended to. If, on 
 the other hand, enforcement of a measure is 
 destined to plunge a part of our own people in 
 religious internecine warfare, why surely there 
 can be no reason cogent enough to justify such 
 coercion which would be a remedy infinitely 
 more harmful than the disease. 
 
 The Prussians have tried it, and failed dismally 
 and admittedly. So far as the Germanisation of 
 Poland is concerned, no progress can be reported 
 whatever. It fails because of language and the 
 women — the two great powers in the nationality 
 of a people. To attempt to coerce Ulster against 
 the will of the people would be to set up another 
 Irish problem in place of the old one. Short of 
 letting the Irish fight it out for themselves, such 
 a policy must inevitably fail. Neither nationally, 
 nor internationally is there a Home Rule question 
 for us, such as, for instance, existed in Scan- 
 dinavia. It is merely a matter of domestic 
 politics, which is not now an English question, 
 or even one which troubles the individual
 
 3 
 
 "ieabe tljtm 'or0e0 alone !" 19 
 
 Englishman in the slightest. 1 On principle, it 
 would seem sound enough that the Irish should 
 have complete autonomy, as Bavaria has, or 
 Wiirtemberg — an arrangement which, in the 
 case of the German Empire, answers admirably. 
 It is not the duty of Englishmen, however, to 
 insist upon such a policy at the point of the 
 bayonet if an important part of Ireland is pas- 
 sionately opposed to it. To allow Irish to fight 
 Irish for such a cause would be the negation of 
 statesmanship. 
 
 What is needed now is clearly a round table 
 gathering of the wise men for and against. The 
 Irish question is not a matter of pride or oppor- 
 tunism, but of political sense. For Liberalism 
 to attempt to treat the matter as a Party principle 
 would be a political mistake of the gravest kind. 
 The object of Home Rule is not to " dish " 
 Ulster or to reward Mr Redmond, but to estab- 
 lish the permanent foundations of civic order 
 and prosperity in Ireland, and for such an ideal 
 all Party political considerations should be 
 bravely sacrificed. No matter what the Welsh 
 may say, the Irish question must be treated 
 exclusively on its Irish merits and demerits, 
 not as a Party question. As a fact, in this 
 country it has virtually ceased to have any 
 such significance. 
 
 Plainly, it is the duty of politicians to see this 
 question on the high plane of constructive 
 
 1 This was true then. England had quite made up her mind to 
 go through with the Bill. All the trouble that has since origin- 
 ated dates from Liberalism's breach of faith in 1914. 
 N
 
 194 'Before ant) Boto 
 
 statecraft. As a political force question it is, of 
 course, infantile. The civilian army of Sir 
 Edward Carson could be destroyed easily and 
 swiftly if necessary, but the point is that it is 
 not necessary. The Ulstermen all know that. 
 A pitched battle between the nondescript Carson 
 Army and regulars would be as ludicrous as Don 
 Quixote's charge upon the windmill. It is 
 whispered abroad that though Sir Edward talks 
 big like a Suffragette, his judicial soul is bent 
 on compromise, and probably the whisper is 
 correct. The whole arming of Ulster is a 
 gigantic political bluff which need not be taken 
 too seriously. At the same time, the Irish are 
 natural fighters ; the pantomime could easily 
 become a drama ; the drama might easily 
 become a tragedy ? Cui bono P Would General- 
 issimo Carson lead the last charge ? Would 
 Captain F. E. Smith 1 die in the trenches ? 
 Would the Irish Peers put forth in airships to 
 drop bombs upon the War Lords at Downing 
 Street ? " Ain't got no money. Leave them 
 'orses alone." But my drunken little fellow- 
 passenger might fall with a dum-dum in his 
 windpipe. A lot of fine honest fellows might 
 lose their lives in a senseless fray. It isn't worth 
 the glycerine, even as a political plank. 
 
 We are face to face here with a question 
 which, as a test of English political sanity, is 
 of world-wide interest. If Unionism, fighting in 
 
 1 "Galloper" Smith to-day occupies the highest legal position 
 in the land. Perhaps Valera will in five years' time.
 
 "Leafce ftem 'orees alone!" 195 
 
 reality for its own interests, Party economic 
 and social, deliberately forces this question of 
 Irish government into a fighting issue, it must 
 be made to accept full responsibility. 
 
 Very much the same position arose over the 
 House of Lords. Bloodshed in Ireland would 
 directly implicate the authority of the King. 
 It would open the floodgates of violence, disorder, 
 and anarchy in all spheres of political, economic, 
 and social life ; for obviously what is permitted 
 to Ulster is equally permissible in Middlesex. 
 We stand indeed before another constitutional 
 crisis. If the Unionists are ill-advised enough 
 to refuse to compromise or enter into honest 
 negotiations, resolved at all costs to make Ireland 
 the cockpit for turning the Liberals out, they 
 will make an even greater mistake than in their 
 futile opposition to the reform of the Upper 
 Chamber. Let there be real fighting in Ireland, 
 and the Unionists will discover forces in political 
 life few men among them ever dreamt of 
 — forces which will prove destructive to the 
 Party life of this country. 
 
 Every step in the decline of Conservative 
 power and privilege is a step in the decline of 
 the Throne, which rules by the consent of both 
 Parties. The King cannot take sides. The 
 further the powers of Conservatism and Liberal- 
 ism fall asunder, the weaker the position of the 
 Crown grows. In the present case, to refuse 
 to enter loyally into a Conference on the Irish 
 question would sound the knell of old-time
 
 196 'Before ant) Bofo 
 
 Conservative power in this country. It is for 
 Conservatism to choose. The Government will 
 welcome without a doubt any loyal form of 
 co-operation in a problem which has been the 
 bane of our political life for centuries. In the 
 judgment of most men, there is no case for 
 bloodshed. Liberalism has its mandate and 
 cannot now retract. The question is poised. 1 
 The time has come for the splendid sanity of 
 England to assert itself. And it says now to 
 the politicians on both sides — " Chuck it ! Meet 
 together and settle this question like business 
 men." As for the cavalry and all that silliness, 
 Begorra ! Our lawyer politicians had better 
 " leave them 'orses alone." 
 
 1 As we now know, the result of Ulster's folly grew in Ireland 
 into Sinn Fein and the rising in 191 6, and so into the farcical 
 extremism of the present day. But for the Carson threat of 
 rebellion, Sinn Fein could not have arisen, and had we not 
 insulted the Catholics by a deliberate policy of keeping them out 
 of the Army, Ireland would probably have contributed as full 
 a share of men as Scotland. When the above article was written 
 the war-cloud was hanging over Europe, as Sir E. Carson well 
 knew. Without a doubt, the likelihood of Ulster rebellion 
 caused Prince Henry in 191 4 to report favourably on the pros- 
 pects of British armed support on the continent.
 
 jfordgn politics 
 
 (i9H) 
 
 IT used to be a big thing, this business of 
 Foreign Affairs, in the good old days when 
 Eton stood out in the public life as lustrous 
 as the marble of the Acropolis, and England — 
 the England of Queen Victoria and The Times — 
 radiated, as it were, from the scholasticism of a 
 headmaster. There was a fine historical con- 
 tinuity about it all, insular, bracing, national. 
 It seemed of a piece with the traditions deriving 
 from the schools, and so from birth and the 
 aristocracy ; whether we review it as far back as 
 the Elizabethan period of Bacon and " The 
 Catholic Dictionary," to the last of the great 
 Feudal Foreign Secretaries, 1 himself significantly 
 a Cecil, who could not be bothered to find out 
 on the map what territory it was the Russians 
 were being so nasty to us about. 
 
 All the same, the office was there, and every 
 Englishman knew what it meant, and every 
 foreigner too. Bag and baggage, the " Service," 
 was a tremendous instrument. And though it 
 is recorded that Lord Rosebery wrote to a 
 colleague congratulating him on his refusal of 
 
 1 Lord Salisbury. 
 
 197
 
 198 ^Before ant) Bom 
 
 the " tiresome ' job of the Foreign Office, to 
 the world generally the man who spoke from 
 Downing Street, and was rarely to be seen in 
 its premises, was unquestionably the central 
 figure in world-politics, with a signature more 
 powerful than any mace or mitre, based on the 
 long roll of British victories from Agincourt 
 to the " Mad Mullah." Never was any power 
 or tradition greater in history. The F.O. was 
 just England, the tool-box, as it were, of the 
 Sovereign ; as " Boney " found it, too strong 
 even for him, so snug and firm it stood, protected 
 by the tides and gales ; and so it stands to-day, 
 only that other Foreign Offices have come into 
 the world of late, and nobody appears to care 
 about any of them any longer. 
 
 Not that its examinations have been lowered, 
 that its maps are worse than they were before 
 the Boer war, that a diplomatic nomination is 
 not as good a social asset as it was in the age 
 of the victoria and the " spotted dog," but 
 because its whole sense, atmosphere and 
 machinery have perforce gone the way of the 
 other traditions and associations of privilege 
 so rudely knocked down by democracy and 
 what is called the European scientific spirit. 
 We are only now beginning to feel the effects 
 of the fall of the House of Lords, which in reality 
 was the greatest revolutionary act perpetrated in 
 this country since John Hampden refused to 
 pay " ship money." 
 
 With the House of Lords there went irrevo-
 
 jForetgn politics 199 
 
 cably and automatically Eton, the " soft job," 
 the social value of the 'Varsity education, the 
 Bishops and The Athenceum, selection, and so 
 society, all the old values of Roger de Coverley, 
 and with them the entire solemnity and mystery 
 of the Foreign Office. These changes had been 
 coming about gradually, of course, for they date 
 more accurately from the crisis of 1900, when 
 at last we were presented with our Hanoverian 
 bill. With the advent of democracy, privilege 
 and the Foreign Office lost its Press. Most of 
 us can remember the days when a leading article 
 in The Times, a long telegram from M. de 
 Blowitz, shook the Chanceries of Europe. 
 To-day we are interested rather in its economics 
 of wood-pulp. The telegraph, the telephone, 
 have deprived diplomacy at once of its dignity 
 and its dispatch. In a world that reads, the 
 vanity of the service has departed. Talleyrand 
 is as unthinkable to-day as Bismarck's " little 
 Archer " ; nor shall we ever tolerate their 
 counterparts again. 
 
 We sit at home and learn about events, treaties, 
 battles, conspiracies, conjunctures and conjec- 
 tures as soon as do the diplomats, and not in- 
 frequently far sooner. The attache — the curled 
 darling of yesterday — is merely another foreign 
 gentleman who may be useful to grace our 
 parties. His place, aupres des dames, has been 
 taken by the airman. It is the journalist that 
 the Foreign Minister or the man in power 
 buttonholes to-day, not at all his Excellency
 
 200 'Before anD Botu 
 
 who in all probability has only called round to 
 ask him to make up a foursome at bridge. In a 
 word, the age of dignity and shibboleth is no 
 more. Like some old noser of mischief, science 
 has come in upon us, upsetting all our doctrines 
 and the household plant. The mob has become 
 articulate. It is a world of light, not of leading. 
 Its shades and shadows are no more, hence there 
 are no longer any grand old figures, or grand old 
 newspapers, or indeed any old people, so young 
 we have grown, so fierce is the desiccating sun 
 shining upon our mediocrity. 
 
 Thirty thousand people journeyed down to 
 Twickenham the other day to stand about in 
 the cold and see a game of football : and that 
 game for a week before, and a week after, the 
 event was the chief subject of interest to the 
 Anglo-Saxon world, as was the Wells-Carpentier 
 fight before it, and except to smile at the pipe- 
 clay militarism of the Zabern affair in Alsace, 
 hardly one of those thirty thousand able-bodied 
 Britons saw anything connected with our Foreign 
 Office in it, or with our Navy, which is its final 
 instrument. It is a change in the subject of 
 interest, that is all. But it is a change of immense 
 significance. 
 
 It means simply this, that another super- 
 stition is dying ; that, as the age of personal 
 warfare has passed, so now the traditions of 
 the Napoleonic-Bismarckian statecraft are, in 
 the highest forms of civilisation, giving way 
 to the simpler and more cosmopolitan exigencies
 
 jforeign polittc0 201 
 
 of democratic comfort. And it is worthy of 
 notice that at this moment, when the women 
 of the higher civilisations are striving for a new 
 definition, a new philosophy, and a new govern- 
 ment of Love, war concomitantly is falling from 
 its estate in the eyes of men. If marriage is on 
 its trial, so, too, is war. Even kings are afraid 
 of war to-day, because the bankers and financiers 
 think it over-expensive. We may say that the 
 conscience of war has been widened. No king 
 could go to war to-day for a personal insult. 
 And as the area of wanton warfare is becoming 
 more and more prescribed — by interest, by treaty, 
 by sympathy, and alliance — so, for these and 
 other reasons, military, social, and economic, 
 victory is shedding its wings and its very glory 
 has become negational. 
 
 We have but to ask ourselves who were the 
 " winners " in the wars of the last decade : 
 whether we, or the Boers, drew the greater 
 substantial advantage from the struggle ; whether 
 Russia defeated Japan or Japan defeated Russia ; 
 or who has been the victor — the profiteer in the 
 old sense of booty or gain — in the Balkan cam- 
 paign ? It is true that Italy seized Tripoli, 
 and France Morocco, but as these were mere 
 predatory absorptions of what we style " savage ' 
 territories, they have little to do with the point, 
 which is that wars in modern conditions prove 
 curiously devoid of positive results. And per- 
 haps the last great result of war — and it was also 
 the last great Feudal achievement — was Sedan,
 
 202 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 which, if it failed to injure France seriously, in 
 the sense of breaking her national resources or 
 moral power, yet certainly made the German 
 Empire : made a great military State modelled 
 on the old Bourbon lines of the soldier-cardinals 
 who in the days of miracles ruled and devastated 
 Europe. 
 
 In Bismarck's case it was a deliberate revival — 
 the divinity of kings, the rights of class and might 
 and government. And as subsidiary arm, the 
 Chancellor, anticipating the modern journalist- 
 Peer, engaged the rising force of the Press. 
 The revival turned out a success, though the 
 spirits he conjured up overwhelmed him. Now 
 they, too, are crumbling. The German Emperor, 
 with his matrial divinity, his Hohenzollern mail, 
 his State purpose of power and Feudalism, 
 stands in the centre of Europe, the object of 
 menace and semi-ridicule, which has become an 
 obsession to civilisation. Bismarck's Press has 
 gone. Even the English Press has dropped its 
 " foreign politics." A great silence has come 
 into it ; it spits and trades in the nugae of the 
 day : it is the slate of the chronicler. The 
 diplomatist having lost his mystery, the writer 
 on foreign affairs has lost his cue. It has become 
 almost an impossibility in London to follow the 
 trend of European politics. The one thing that 
 remains, the one thing we still concern ourselves 
 with, is the relative paper strength of Dread- 
 noughts, and that, characteristically enough, has 
 become largely a question of Party politics.
 
 jforeigrt politic0 203 
 
 Now though wars are becoming unpopular, 
 not useful even journalistically, though the 
 responsibility of Foreign Affairs is becoming 
 more and more the business of the people, and 
 the Press apparently has grown tired of it ; 
 though, as we are now aware, it is the capitalists 
 who make wars, who finance wars, who can 
 control wars, the anomaly remains that not only 
 is the present condition of Europe one of per- 
 petual crisis and panic, but that, armed like 
 pirates in the old picture-books, Europe in the 
 last ten years has witnessed one war after another. 
 Instead of a guarantee of peace, interlocked 
 international interest has proved as dangerous 
 an arm to the community as interlocked capital- 
 ism. If we no longer care what fresh " re- 
 insurance " the Wilhelmstrasse is effecting, and 
 the Press no longer tells us about the Ambassador's 
 liaison, or that Chancellor's " entrefilet," and 
 we have come to look upon the map of Europe 
 rather as a question of the tonnage of guns and 
 ships than of the human mind which deals with 
 aims and ambitions and ventures and perpetra- 
 tions, we yet have to recognise that war is as 
 common to-day as it was when men forced 
 damnation or salvation into humanity by fire 
 and rack, and that, perhaps strangest of all, 
 with our modern Press that knows everything, 
 nobody in modern times ever rightly under- 
 stands what any war is about. 
 
 The Crimean war, as we know, was fought on 
 a matter of " Holy Places." But what about
 
 204 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 the Transvaal war ? Why did the Russian and 
 Japanese war break out ? How many people 
 know the truth about M. Caillaux and the 
 Mannesmann brothers in relation to the triangular 
 crisis which led to Algeciras ; or could answer 
 the most elementary examination paper about 
 recent events in the Balkans or what has been 
 their result ? Not only is the sciolist ignorant ; 
 the truth is that the expert is ignorant, and has 
 failed conspicuously on every one of the occasions 
 referred to. We have but to recall our " Christ- 
 mas plum-pudding " fiasco in Pretoria. All 
 diplomatic and military Europe proved wrong 
 about the Japanese war, and the very day the 
 Russian battleships were " holed " the German 
 Foreign Office was circulating implicit assurances 
 that peace was assured. Out of the Balkans not 
 a soldier, a journalist, or a diplomatist in all 
 Europe has emerged with any reputation at all. 
 And that to-day is what happens. It was simpler 
 when kings were expected to lose their tempers, 
 and " grand ' ' figureheads dictated benevolently 
 to illiterate peoples ; it was comparatively easy, 
 too, in the times of the Ems telegram. 
 
 But now, as nobody cares, nobody knows. 
 Even such a vital question to this country as 
 military provision is left in England to the blasts 
 of hugger-mugger ; and we see one set of news- 
 papers fiercely attacking the other set on such a 
 matter as the strength of the Navy, as if there 
 were no War Lords, no council of experts, no 
 authority and no war brains, to speak and look
 
 foreign politics 205 
 
 after the concern. It is one of the conditions 
 of democracy. 
 
 The condition of all voices, and not of any 
 one voice. The problem of naval strength has 
 become as debatable as the vicissitudes of the 
 barometer, the vane of general and Party argu- 
 mentation. Even after the hideous revelations 
 which attended our last military trial, we still 
 leave the Navy to the economic squabbles of the 
 politicians, content if the Opposition newspapers 
 don't bother us with too many adjectives and 
 headlines. We talk about the " scuttlers " and 
 the " hystericals," but we do not believe in either. 
 We trust in the magic formula of our tradition. 
 We hope the War Lords do attend to their job. 
 And there we leave it, because we have always 
 been accustomed so to leave it — to those who sail 
 the ships we pay for. 
 
 Looking at the whole question of Foreign 
 Affairs analytically, we find certain distinct 
 features, not a few of which are new and, from 
 the nature of things, indeterminable. First of 
 all, we see that wars in modern conditions break 
 out when least expected, for no conclusive 
 reasons, and end as inconclusively, without par- 
 ticular gain, that is, to the litigious parties. 
 We find, too, that they are as common as ever, 
 and, without all proportional return, ruinously 
 costly. The profession of war being now highly 
 and increasingly scientific, also the issues of 
 campaigns depending largely on the financial 
 resources of the combatants, we have to face the
 
 206 'Before ant) Botn 
 
 unpleasant but indisputable fact that as 
 diplomacy fails in its business, so do the military 
 experts x fail in theirs, both as regards provision 
 and execution. To-day an airman's reconnais- 
 sance, a particular gun, or powder, or invention, 
 may be the equation of any Bazaine, or even of 
 a Moltke. More than ever war has become a 
 game of uncertainty, in addition to which it has 
 become barren. 
 
 And as the danger of war lies at the fringe of 
 different grades of civilisations, where white 
 meets black, or a more purposeful reason of State 
 clashes with one less highly organised and directed, 
 so the object of war, as its moral and material 
 attributes decline, tends to become the more 
 problematical. It is at once a source of strength 
 and of danger — of strength prospectively to the 
 whole, yet of weakness to the individual. 
 Obviously, the greater the responsibility of 
 war, the fuller the security of peace, which 
 as a theory should be good enough. It might 
 be considered, too, an additional safeguard that 
 as the " game " has ceased to interest the public, 
 therefore the people will see to it that it is not 
 led by the nose for this or that dynastic, personal, 
 capitalistic, or base interest into wars which cannot 
 be of service to anyone. But those who think 
 so can hardly have studied the teachings of our 
 times. All, indeed, that the wise man can say 
 is this. 
 
 The responsibility of war has been shifted. 
 
 1 They have become ominously celebrated since.
 
 iTaretgn politics 207 
 
 In a complex age, responsibility also has become 
 complex. A couple of financiers and a journalist 
 could bring about a conflagration to-day as once 
 any pope could, though a king couldn't ; nor, 
 without an immense amount of preparatory 
 work, could even a Government. At the same 
 time, a people cannot wage war in opposition 
 to their rulers, nor could they prevent it : not 
 yet, at any rate. In short, all that can be said 
 is that civilisation has come to realise that war 
 is a vain thing, or, in other words, a luxury ; 
 and because it is a luxury, diplomacy too has 
 become a luxury ; and because it is so expensive 
 war has become a source of fear ; and because 
 it has become so scientific, war has lost its 
 romance ; and because the people have learnt 
 to read, war is no longer an aristocratic 
 profession. 
 
 Thus the mystery, the romance, the virtue, 
 the vanity, and the very objects of war have 
 come to be questioned, even as the nations 
 stagger under the increasing weights of arma- 
 ments and the Press itself, as if conscious of the 
 discovery, pretends to resolve the problem into 
 paper battles of tables and statistics. But if 
 the nobility of war has gone, the frequency 
 and the cost of it have increased, yet in reality 
 it is only the atmosphere of it that has changed. 
 War, the wise preparation for war, remains 
 more than ever the care of government, as it 
 was from the beginning. When men have learnt 
 to think — as well as read — a new attitude towards
 
 208 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 the whole question may arise, but that time 
 assuredly is not yet. Nor so long as any one 
 Power in Europe continues in mediaeval harness 
 can any progress be reported. As Esquimaux 
 dogs will run in traces together, yet tear one 
 another to pieces when taken severally from the 
 collar, so the Great Powers, each one taxing 
 itself to straining-point, may from a common 
 fear avoid the cataclysm. But let one of them 
 free itself from its chains, and what sane man 
 would answer for its security ? And such is 
 the touchstone of our foreign politics. 
 
 The danger lies to-day not in the passions, 
 but in the polarities of civilisation. Ideas are 
 of no use until they are accepted ; now the 
 one accepted idea is — war. It never had any 
 controlling reason, and it never will have, unless 
 we are visited with another deluge and man 
 starts afresh from the Ark. 1 
 
 1 In 1 914 we were getting to regard war as an anachronism, 
 partly owing to the acceptance of Norman Angell's idea of the 
 financial impossibility of war, partly owing to the deterioration 
 of the Press as the result of sensationalism and commercial 
 direction. Perhaps, now that the deluge has come, we shall start 
 afresh in a family of Nations.
 
 " ^innp " 
 
 (i9H) 
 
 WHY, whatever is that ? " she ex- 
 claimed, and, placing her ungloved 
 finger-tips upon the dirty pan thrust 
 into the railway carriage, my American friend, 
 whom I had met at the boat, broke into gay 
 laughter. 
 
 " My goodness, it's about as warm as a baby's 
 bottle," she said ; " and you gave the porter 
 sixpence for that old thing ! Tell me, aren't 
 your trains warmed anyway ? " 
 
 I thought of explaining — the English volun- 
 tary system, dividends, directorships, younger 
 sons ; but the pan caught on, so to speak, and 
 before I could frame my reply a deep voice 
 came from a tall, haggard-looking man who sat 
 in the opposite corner, enveloped in an enormous 
 coat and a couple of rugs : " They warm the 
 sprouts, madam, for luncheon all right ; other- 
 wise you'll find things in this country pretty 
 generally prehistoric." 
 
 " Oh, but shall we have sprouts too ? ' said 
 my companion with the eagerness of a child 
 awaiting the entry of a Christmas pudding ; 
 
 n 209
 
 210 before ant) Bduj 
 
 " with stout, bottled stout " — and she clapped 
 her hands with delight. 
 
 And, to be sure, we did have sprouts and stout 
 for luncheon. We did get fearfully cold on the 
 journey. And when we arrived in London we 
 did have the " rough and tumble ' she antici- 
 pated : shouting to secure a porter, discovering 
 the luggage, getting it on to cabs — " Just the 
 sort of ' mix-up,' I expect, makes Englishmen 
 so dandy," my fair traveller reflected ; and I 
 confess it reminded me vividly of my first arrival 
 at Constantinople. 
 
 Avoiding the Piccadilly hotels — for my friend 
 with her little girl was going on early the next 
 morning — we drove to a large hotel conveniently 
 near the station, a vast, solid place which I had 
 known as eminently respectable from my child- 
 hood. Let me set down exactly our experiences. 
 
 After the luggage had been brought into the 
 hall by a number of foreign porters, we managed 
 to find the lift-boy, who at length condescended 
 to take us up to the room which I had ordered 
 to be held ready overnight. 
 
 We must have annoyed the lift-boy, for, 
 planting us suddenly on the second floor, he 
 shouted, " Down the passage to the left," and, 
 slamming the gate, as suddenly sank down the 
 shaft. We found No. 31, however, without 
 much difficulty — a large room, dark and dreary, 
 with two beds, a table, a chest of drawers and 
 a washstand — but, to my annoyance, no prepara- 
 tion whatever had been made : there was no
 
 u 
 
 ^innp" 211 
 
 fire, no hot water ; the jug stood upside-down 
 in the basin, the water-bottle was empty, and 
 there were no towels. 
 
 Needless to say, there was no speaking-tube, 
 or house telephone. I turned to the frayed 
 and dirty bell-rope hanging over the big bed, 
 and, climbing on the mattress, I pulled it 
 judiciously. For five minutes I tugged and 
 strained ; then, as nothing happened, I clambered 
 down to the floor. 
 
 " I'll go and find the maid," I said, and went 
 out ; tramped down the long, dark, Turkey- 
 carpeted corridor, and finally hearing giggling 
 voices behind a half-opened door I entered, 
 politely enquiring of the two maids I saw making 
 a bed there how I could get someone to serve 
 No. 31, as the bell did not ring, and the lady 
 who had just arrived was in need of hot water. 
 
 My request appeared to amuse them. 
 
 " Oh, Minny serves there," they exclaimed. 
 ' No, we can't serve that side of the house. 
 She'll be round in a minute ; " and so back I 
 strolled down the dark corridor. 
 
 But no Minny came. My American friend 
 had now become fidgety. 
 
 " Look here, that prehistoric bell must ring 
 somewhere," she said ; whereat she pulled at it 
 so firmly that down the dusty old bit of wool- 
 rope fell, breaking " in her hands," as Minny 
 might have said had she been present to see it. 
 We were now defenceless. Something obviously 
 had to be done.
 
 212 'Before ann I5ouj 
 
 I went out again, and presently I found a 
 servants' pantry, where a young German sat 
 asleep on a chair in his shirt-sleeves. It was a 
 chance not to be missed. 
 
 " Donnerzvetter / Potstausend. AuJ, you fat- 
 head ! " I shouted, and so loudly that the youth 
 sprang up as if he were back again in the guard- 
 room of his Fatherland's barracks ; indeed, he 
 nearly saluted me, such was his astonishment at 
 my German pronunciation. 
 
 " Minny," I went on in German. " Where 
 the deuce is Minny ? " 
 
 The Alsatian youth now began to mumble 
 incoherently. He was asleep. Couldn't I see 
 that ? He did not know where Minny was. 
 How should he ? It was not his business. 
 
 " Then whose business is it ? " I yelled. 
 
 " I'll go and see," he retorted, as if I had 
 insulted him ; and with that he made for the 
 door and disappeared. 
 
 Again I found myself in the corridor, but I 
 was now a desperate man. 
 
 For I could hear bells ringing everywhere, 
 now here, now there : a diatonic chord of bells, 
 curt, protracted, above, below, to the right, to 
 the left, and they seemed like the bells of a 
 haunted castle. Not a soul to be seen in that 
 long, dark corridor, and those fearful bells pealing 
 there mysteriously and chaotically behind the 
 doors. 
 
 I dared not return to No. 31 without a Minny. 
 Gathering up all my courage, I shouted :
 
 u 
 
 ^innp" 213 
 
 " Minny ! Minny ! Minny ! " 
 
 I hustled on past another half-dozen doors. 
 
 " Minny ! Minny ! Mi . . . ! " At that 
 moment a door at my side opened with a crack. 
 
 " Anything wrong, sir ? ' said a bald gentle- 
 man in a heliotrope dressing-gown, stepping 
 briskly out ; and, as I turned round ferociously 
 upon him, he waved his right arm towards me 
 with the soothing gesture of a preacher. 
 
 " Perhaps I can assist you. I'm a minister 
 of the Church of England." 
 
 The colour of his dressing-gown infuriated me. 
 
 " Does your bell ring ? " I growled back. 
 
 " Yes, I think so," he replied amiably. " Come 
 in, sir, and let me see." 
 
 His manner was so urbane I could not but 
 consent, and together we awaited the experiment 
 on the bell-rope. The bland gentleman fingered 
 carefully the faded, tattered cord, and then pulled 
 gently — firmly — fiercely. 
 
 " Odd, isn't it ? " he murmured. " Perhaps 
 it's out of order." 
 
 " Everything is out of order in this d d 
 
 hotel ! ' I returned ; and, so saying, I pushed 
 past him out into the corridor to resume my 
 cries, this time at the top of my voice : 
 
 " Minny ! Minny ! " 
 
 Suddenly, at the far end of the corridor, I 
 saw a female figure tripping along with sleeves 
 rolled up, carrying in one hand a large can and 
 in the other a couple of bath towels. I dashed 
 up and caught hold of her by the shoulder.
 
 2i4 iBefore ant) Bam 
 
 >? 
 
 " Hold on," I said. " Are you Minny ? 
 
 To my great surprise, a laughing face looked 
 up into mine. 
 
 " I couldn't wait all day for your Minny, so I 
 just got out and opened every door until I came 
 to a bathroom. See — and yes, you might carry 
 that can ; it's heavy, but it's full of hot water, 
 anyway." 
 
 It was my friend, and that is how she got her 
 towels and hot water in one of London's leading 
 hotels. 
 
 But our troubles were not over yet. The 
 luggage had not come up, and my friend wanted 
 to get out a new " shirt-waist " ; and again she 
 turned to me for assistance. This time I decided 
 to go at once to the root of the trouble. Sure 
 enough, there was the luggage all piled up down- 
 stairs by the lift. 
 
 " Can't you send the luggage up to 31 ? ' I 
 said pleasantly. " The lady wants it." 
 
 " We will when the lift's free," answered the 
 hall-porter. " They're very big trunks to handle, 
 and two of our men are out." 
 
 " But isn't there a luggage lift ? " 
 No, sir." 
 
 Do you mean to say you can only get the 
 luggage up in that small passenger lift when it 
 happens to be disengaged. 
 
 " That's it," returned the porter, and it seemed 
 to give him great satisfaction to tell me so. 
 
 In truth, the lift was small. It was on the 
 move all the time, descending, ascending ; and 
 
 a 
 it
 
 "spinnp" 215 
 
 whenever the lift-boy stepped out for a momen- 
 tary stretch and relief, a little bell rang, and up 
 the thing went again, and then down it came, 
 and I wondered whether we ever should get the 
 luggage up that day until all the people in the 
 hotel had retired to bed. 
 
 While I was expostulating with the several 
 porters, I noticed that my friend's luggage was 
 being thrown hastily into the lift. 
 
 " So you are taking it up at last ? " I ventured. 
 
 " Yes, sir. The lady rang me up a moment 
 ago and gave me 2s. 6d. to bring her things 
 up. 
 
 And that is how my friend got hold of her 
 luggage. 
 
 I shall never forget the dreariness, the gloom, 
 of that place ; the bad and expensive five-course 
 dinner, the utter lack of every modern conveni- 
 ence, organisation, or authority, the uncivility 
 of the personnel, the portentous discomfort of 
 that great London hotel with over two hundred 
 bedrooms. 
 
 When I came round in the morning to take 
 my friend to the station, I found her in dire 
 distress. She had had no breakfast, for no one 
 had called her, and Minny — phantom Minny ! 
 — having fallen down with the tray some fifty 
 yards down the corridor with the breakfast — 
 had not been heard of again. 
 
 " Do you think there ever was a Minny ? ' 
 my friend remarked, just before the train started. 
 " Do you know, I enjoyed my stay in that hotel
 
 216 'Before ant) jeom 
 
 just ever so much. It was like nothing on earth ; 
 and if it hadn't been for the candies, I guess I 
 should have starved. I'm so grateful to you for 
 taking me there. It was one life's experience 
 after another. 
 
 " No, really, I think your hotels are too beauti- 
 ful — and, say, don't forget to get my little girl's 
 coat, will you ? Size, eight-year-old ; just a 
 plain winter coat ; warm, and not too expensive. 
 Good-bye. Thanks so much. . . ." 
 
 I looked forward to the little purchase with 
 genuine pleasure. 
 
 I felt I had not distinguished myself in the 
 hotel line. In the shops it would be different. 
 Besides, it was a novelty to go shopping in the 
 big emporia where the ladies go ; it would amuse 
 me ; I would acquit myself well ; and, so thinking, 
 I strolled down towards the restaurant area, had 
 a good steak 1 and some port, and then I took a 
 cab to the best shop I knew. 
 
 Before entering, I glanced at the window, saw 
 a number of coats and nice things displayed, and, 
 slipping in between two ladies who were cheer- 
 fully holding up the entrance, I walked up to a 
 shopwalker and asked my direction. 
 
 On the second floor at last I paused, looked 
 about, selecting a pretty girl who appeared to be 
 in deep thought, and to whom I briefly stated 
 my demand. It seemed to astonish her, for she 
 started out of her reverie, and extracting a needle 
 
 1 I ought perhaps to mention here that, being particular about 
 tender steaks, I carefully selected an Italian restaurant to procure 
 that staple English dish.
 
 " spinnp " 217 
 
 mysteriously from her bodice she began to prick 
 at her finger. 
 
 " Coats ! Oh, downstairs, please. Second to 
 the right." 
 
 " Thank you." But somehow I felt suspicious. 
 The second to the right was furs, and I had not 
 come to buy furs. 
 
 " Children's coats ? " 
 
 " You've passed it, sir, just back there on your 
 left." 
 
 And so back I sauntered with what unconcern 
 I could muster. 
 
 " Children's coats." I repeated the phrase as 
 often as I could, addressing any shop-assistant 
 who seemed willing to listen to me for a moment, 
 with the result that I found myself in the big 
 room again upstairs where there were sofas 
 and tall mirrors, and tall girls ambulating about 
 in low-cut French frocks, prinking, preening, 
 posturing, and, gazing at them, fat and plain, 
 dowdy and overdressed women poked, pinched, 
 plucked, and made faces ; and shopwalkers fussed, 
 and cast critical glances at themselves in the 
 glasses ; and there a red-faced dowager prodded 
 the ferrule of her umbrella into a heap of twenty- 
 five guinea silk dresses flung on the carpet ; and, 
 hard by, three shapes swathed in acutely tight- 
 fitting chocolate robes stood in classic grouping, 
 as if there was nothing doing at all, and all the 
 time people came and went, stared and giggled, 
 grinned and gesticulated ; and against the rail 
 overlooking the big spiral staircase the mousy
 
 218 'Before ant) Botn 
 
 pretty girl I had spoken to leant in reverie and 
 stuck needles into her ringers. 
 
 The scene was interesting, anyhow ; it was 
 life, theatrical. I made my way up to the comely 
 group who seemed to have nothing to do, and 
 asked where I could see " some children's coats." 
 
 At first I thought they were not going to take 
 any notice, but suddenly the tallest one of the 
 three swung round upon me, and — pouting in 
 rather a mischievous way, I thought — she declared 
 that she " must go." It was not her department. 
 She had only come over there to talk business 
 with Miss Harrington. She must " go back." 
 I had been talking to a mannequin, a Maudie, 
 and — yes, it was getting on for four o'clock, 
 and I hadn't even seen a coat in an hour and a 
 quarter. 
 
 I next advanced to a mature shopwalker who 
 wore the fashionable cut of side-whisker. 
 
 " I want a child's coat," I said. 
 
 " Certainly, sir ; downstairs and four to the 
 left, please." 
 
 " But I have been told twice to come here." 
 
 " Oh, that was a mistake, unless you want little 
 girls' coats." 
 
 " But I do want little girls' coats. That's just 
 what I do want," I said. 
 
 " Minny ! "—I jumped. " No, look here ! " 
 But it was too late ; the man was already by the 
 railing, by the pretty, mousy girl ; and before 
 I could further remonstrate, up they both came, 
 and Minny stood before me in the flesh.
 
 "s&innv" 2I 9 
 
 " Little girls' coats." The order was decisive. 
 The mature shopwalker strolled away. This 
 other Minny flung back a big cupboard door, 
 and returned to me with her arms full. I liked 
 some of the coats, but before choosing I asked 
 her to take the length. They were a foot too 
 long all of them, and at this discovery Minny 
 looked vexed. 
 
 " I don't think we've got any shorter ones," 
 she put out at me. 
 
 " Please go and see," I returned ; and again 
 Minny flung open a big door. 
 
 But the next lot were horrid coats, thin, 
 common, no warmth, no value. 
 
 " You must have some others ? " I queried. 
 
 " Well, we've furs, of course, on the first floor, 
 but . . ." 
 
 " Look here, what's that coat over there, on 
 the model ? " 
 
 We went across to see it, quite a pretty design, 
 but too thin for the winter ; no use for my 
 friend's child. 
 
 " Are there no others ? " I said. 
 
 " I'm afraid not," Minny retorted. " We're 
 out of stock of your size. We can order it for 
 you, of course." 
 
 " But I want a coat at once. You advertise 
 them all over the place. It's cold, and the child 
 hasn't got a jacket. Do you mean to say you 
 have nothing between these two things ? ' 
 
 Minny pulled out a needle and pricked at her 
 finger.
 
 22o 'Before an& Batu 
 
 " I'll inquire," she said ; and for the next 
 ten minutes I was left to my opportunities. 
 
 She returned with a fierce-looking woman, 
 both she and the fierce one littered with coats. 
 
 " That's all we can do, sir," said the fierce 
 face. " Next week we shall be having a fresh 
 assortment, if you care to look in." 
 
 I rose. It was after five. I would try else- 
 where, but on the top of the staircase I saw such 
 a handsome shopwalker that I thought I must 
 throw myself upon his mercy. I was particularly 
 pleasant to him, told him all about my quest and 
 its failure, and begged him to procure me a child's 
 coat not over four pounds, as I had only five 
 sovereigns in my pocket. 
 
 He was polite, sympathetic, and finally, sotto 
 voce, advised me to try old Thompson's on the 
 other side of the Park, who sometimes had a good 
 thing. There was time. I thanked him pro- 
 fusely, and set off with renewed confidence. 
 But Thomson's had nothing. There was not 
 a coat approximating the size I wanted to be 
 had, and after twenty minutes' search there I 
 took another cab to another emporium, and 
 finally just got into a fourth store before the 
 closing hour, where I stayed till I was turned 
 out. 
 
 There seemed to be no simple, warm children's 
 coats in London in November. However, the 
 next day I was out early, and spent the morning 
 in diligent and business-like pursuit. Over the 
 coffee at luncheon I began to reflect seriously
 
 a 
 
 S0innp" 221 
 
 on the whole position. I had got no further. 
 There apparently were no plain, warm children's 
 coats. And not only that, no man or woman in 
 any of the dozen shops I had been into seemed 
 to want to sell me one, or to care in the least 
 whether I bought one or not. I had started out 
 with the idea of buying a coat. My mission had 
 become now a matter of social inquiry and study, 
 a case of national psychology and investigation. 
 The general attitude of the sales-people in these 
 places I found to be one of ill-disguised hostility 
 to their customers, a sort of " don't-care-if-you- 
 don't-buy " manner which struck me particularly 
 after my acquaintance with the trade abroad, 
 where, if a man goes into a shop to buy, say, a 
 two-shilling pair of gloves, the youth or maid 
 behind the counter will try pairs on by the round 
 dozen until the practised eye pronounces a fit. 
 I could get no personal, no intelligent, attention. 
 Shopping, to my surprise, proved anything but 
 an agreeable affair. And all the time I heard 
 tired girls saying to anxious customers, " Not 
 in stock, madam," or " Well get it for you," 
 or " We find we're just out " ; and nowhere 
 could I discern any training of these people, or 
 the smallest graciousness of manner 1 — women's 
 shopping seemed to be a business run to catch 
 the suburban wife, mother, daughter, or spinster 
 who only has a few hours in town and must buy 
 
 1 This " unwillingness " may be due to the curious fact that 
 every article seems to be wrapped up in paper or cardboard and 
 tied with a string, so that the physical process of tying and 
 untying causes nervous exhaustion and irritability.
 
 222 'Before ant) Boui 
 
 the article somehow to catch the 6.20 back for 
 supper. 
 
 Admitted, I didn't try the Bond Street shops, 
 but wherever I did try I found the same queer 
 conditions — poor stock, a disobliging personnel, 
 the " take-it-or-leave-it " attitude, and a general 
 hurry-scurry of rage and despair, even in places 
 where the lift was not out of order. 
 
 But after luncheon I felt virile enough for any 
 shopwalker. I tried the smaller shops, other big 
 ones up and down, and at last, noticing that the 
 taximeter clock marked 17s. 6d., I gave the man 
 a sovereign and got out. 
 
 I reckoned up the cost of the search so far. 
 The first day had cost me 7s. 6d. in cabs ; on 
 the second I had spent 4s. 6d. before lunch in 
 cabs, and £1 after lunch, and the luncheon had 
 cost me 4s. 8d., and I was now paying another 
 shilling on tea, and still I had not bought a coat. 
 What would my friend think of me ? I could 
 not wire her " Impossible find winter coat for 
 child." She might think me incapable or 
 ridiculous ; but there it was ; and while I was 
 so cogitating I saw a lady friend of mine strolling 
 through the tea-room, whom I knew to be a 
 woman of some individuality. 
 
 " My dear Lady Sarah," I cried to her. " Look 
 here, do help me. I've been trying for two days 
 to buy a child's coat, and I can't find one. There 
 don't seem to be any coats. Do . . ." But 
 here my friend gently interrupted me. 
 
 " I know," she said coaxingly. " I know what
 
 "spinnp" 223 
 
 shopping is. Now sit down and let us have 
 some tea. Dismiss the coat from your mind. 
 Tell me about your dear babies," and on she 
 prattled for half an hour, until I really felt my 
 nerves had got soothed a bit, and then we paid 
 the bill — I paid the bill rather (which added 
 another shilling to my general expenses) — and 
 we set out to find a coat. 
 
 ' I don't suppose you know how to talk to 
 these girls," she said on the way. " Now don't 
 you speak or smile at them. Look stern. Oh, 
 and don't be surprised at my shop manner. It's 
 the only way, you see, and I've had four children 
 to dress, as you know, and considerable experi- 
 ence." All of which strategically I thought 
 admirable. 
 
 We skirmished through the mob, she talking 
 volubly all the while about what she styled 
 ' shop neurasthenia," the insular, wooden 
 methods of the shops generally, their absence of 
 taste, their uniformity and conservatism, the 
 difficulty of buying, the shortage principle of the 
 stock, the want of personal initiative ; in fine, the 
 sheer terror of the whole purchasing business. 
 And just before we reached the place where the 
 ' Maudies ' walked, she turned round almost 
 fiercely upon me, saying, " Shopping in London 
 is prehistoric." 
 
 " Great heavens," I said, " that is what the 
 far-travelled Englishman said in the train ! " 
 And I thought. . . . 
 
 " Now I want to see some coats for a child
 
 224 'Before ant) Bo® 
 
 of eight ; warm, useful coats, do you hear ? 
 And please be quick, as I'm in a hurry." 
 
 I'm sure Minny would have bitten me if she 
 had dared ; all the same, I noticed she was 
 impressed by my friend's furs and decisiveness ; 
 and presently she returned with a bundle of 
 coats — to my secret joy, the very same coats 
 she had shown to me. 
 
 Lady Sarah measured them, flung down her 
 muff, and holding the girl with that curious 
 green light that comes into her eyes when she 
 is angry, she rapped out : 
 
 " Now what's the good of bringing me coats 
 that won't fit ? If you don't want to serve me, 
 say so, and I'll ask for the manager. Other- 
 wise " But Minny had taken the hint, and 
 
 shortly returned with more coats in her arms, 
 and with her came an elderly woman — who did 
 not affect so tight-fitting a skirt as Minny, and 
 was evidently a lady of some importance. 
 
 " No, I don't like these," Lady Sarah said 
 disdainfully. " I shall really have to complain 
 about you people. It's always the same. 
 ' Nothing in stock.' Absurd, I call it. Just 
 send for someone in charge." 
 
 I began to feel elated, especially when a shop- 
 walker came up and joined in the conversation, 
 and presently, as if by magic, another shopwalker 
 appeared in support, and to them there came 
 another shop-girl, a couple more, and yet a third 
 — an awfully pretty girl this — and finally a grey- 
 haired lady, who seemed to have some real
 
 u 
 
 99innp " 225 
 
 authority, for they all made way for her to talk 
 to my friend ; and then I observed that gradually 
 Lady Sarah was getting out-pointed, out-talked, 
 out-argufied, and that across the mousy, pretty 
 features of Minny a sardonic smile seemed to 
 be spreading, which made her look at once 
 peculiarly irritating and attractive. 
 
 And then into the melee the handsome shop- 
 walker came, and the moment he appeared Lady 
 Sarah turned a green eye upon him. 
 
 : You look a sensible sort of man," she began. 
 " Can't you find me a plain, warm coat for a 
 child of eight ? " And I could see the young 
 man was flattered. 
 
 At once the search, of going and coming, the 
 measuring, the argufying, and the cross give-and- 
 take began all over again. The good-looking 
 young man took hold of the specially good-looking 
 young woman, and pushed her ostentatiously 
 aside. He wanted the field to himself. He 
 began to talk about quality, the season, the 
 lining, the durability of his goods. He bent 
 over and peered into Lady Sarah's eyes, now 
 growing greener and greener. He shrugged his 
 shoulders, and the elderly woman shrugged hers. 
 He listened deferentially, he responded like a 
 Park orator. More coats came up, and yet 
 other coats, and Lady Sarah pinched and poked 
 them all, viciously and then caressingly ; she 
 had them each measured, and every time the 
 measurement proved wrong she picked up the 
 coat and flung it across at Minny or at the best-
 
 226 ^Before ant) Boui 
 
 looking girl, saying, naively and composedly, 
 " Now what's the good of showing me that ? " 
 I was lost in admiration. More coats appeared, 
 more shopwalkers, more girls, but still Lady 
 Sarah went on ordering, measuring, poking, 
 thrusting, pinching, and rejecting, until quite 
 suddenly she stood up and saying, " I see it's 
 no use ; you haven't got any coats," she moved 
 abruptly away towards the big cupboards which 
 flanged the wall. 
 
 She strolled along, I following her, and then 
 quickly she began to open drawers, so rapidly 
 and dexterously that the little group she had 
 just quitted, who were engaged in discussing 
 the scene, neither followed nor interrupted her. 
 Suddenly I saw her dart down, plunge a hand 
 into a drawer, and, picking out a number of 
 small coats, she waved her muff and affixed her 
 pince-nez. 
 
 She was at once surrounded. The best- 
 looking young man hastened up and put on his 
 most engaging smile. 
 
 " Measure those coats, will you ? " said Lady 
 Sarah icily, and a moment later the answer came. 
 She pulled out another, a nice, warm, claret- 
 coloured coat with a black velvet collar — the 
 size suited exactly. 
 
 " And what do you call these coats, pray ? " 
 said Lady Sarah, pinching the material to see 
 if it was too woolly ; and without waiting for 
 an answer she said in staccato tones, " I see it's 
 marked three pounds, but it's slightly soiled in
 
 cc 
 
 ^innp" 227 
 
 the lining, so I'll take it for two ten. Be quick, 
 please. Yes, I'll take it now, please, and put 
 it down to my account — Lady Sarah Ovington- 
 Ripley, 42 Eaton " 
 
 I have included " Minny " as illustrative of conditions 
 just before the war. Probably she is to-day a W.A.A.C.
 
 C^e awakening 
 
 (i9 x 7) 
 
 IF the great merit of an aristocracy is example 
 or leadership, the great danger of democracy 
 is the want of example. These words, or 
 words to that effect, were written by that wise 
 man, Matthew Arnold, who even before the 
 Franco-Prussian War warned us in his stately 
 essays of the peril confronting Britain through 
 her neglect of education, her contempt for the 
 critical or intellectual attitude, her failure to 
 give ideas to the middle classes, already as he 
 foresaw, appropriating the power of the old 
 privileged aristocracy, itself developing on an 
 inferior plane. The old aristocracy had fine 
 and governing qualities ; it had an objective, 
 it had great moral courage, it had the supreme 
 virtue of example. And this, as Frederick the 
 Great insisted, was the reason for filling the 
 Army with officers of noble birth, because the 
 nobility were brought up on the standard of 
 honour, so that a nobleman who flinched in a 
 crisis could never again find a refuge in his own 
 class, whereas men of a class not so trained could 
 always find a refuge. 
 
 And what Matthew Arnold predicted with 
 
 228
 
 Cfte aumkening 229 
 
 such vision is precisely our trouble in war to-day. 
 The aristocratic class has lost its authority, the 
 great middle or business class, which has assumed 
 the governing position, finds itself in the hour 
 of need without governing qualities, because it 
 has been brought up without the idea oj science, 
 without the attitude of systematic knowledge, 
 without a standard of class or national philosophy, 
 without example or imagination. 
 
 In Germany, too, the aristocracy has long 
 since lost its feudal power, except in the Army ; 
 but in Germany the middle classes are the best 
 educated in the world. That is Germany's 
 supreme strength. Though essentially an auto- 
 cratically governed nation, the genius of Germany 
 lies in the middle classes, in her educated and 
 organised middle-class attitude, in the correla- 
 tion thus of the entire brains of the country 
 concentrated in the single national service. Here 
 what singleness there exists is the integer of 
 opinion. Opinion based largely on the com- 
 mercial attitude which despises ideas, science, 
 the critical spirit. Thus the State, which is the 
 representative action of the nation, has grown 
 up in the exact ratio of want of concert, reason, 
 and organisation, as is the want of concert, 
 reason, and organisation in the community 
 according to the Manchester shibboleth of laissez 
 /aire which found its popular expression in 
 voluntarism. 
 
 Instead of order, individualism became our 
 watchword. In lieu of a governing class which
 
 230 before ant) Botn 
 
 was known to have a standard, a tradition, an 
 impersonal however class-selfish a national atti- 
 tude, our middle classes attained to power 
 without a standard, with no governing tradition, 
 with no class attitude save that of commercialism, 
 and consequently with no objective. The in- 
 decision, conflict, and discordance which neces- 
 sarily characterises the executive proceedings of 
 a nation ruled by the majority or popularity, is 
 thus inevitably reflected in the indecision, weak- 
 ness, and opportunism of its Government, which 
 with the emancipation of middle-class authority 
 naturally has become more and more the victim 
 of its expression vested in the fortuities of the 
 vote. The force of popularity, possessing as it 
 did all the machinery of political power and 
 prejudice, inevitably proved irresistible. Out of 
 Manchester there came the popular or actor type 
 of politician. Our national values and standards 
 became the variable jetsam of circumstance, and 
 through circumstance of fashion. As the old 
 English gentleman lost his place, as the aris- 
 tocracy lost its privilege, advertisement, the 
 business man's panacea, secured the platform of 
 democratic reason. Opinion, or conflict, took 
 the place of example. The State, drifting ever 
 further away from the idea of authority founded 
 on the principle of responsibility, became the 
 tool, no longer the master, of the whole, thus 
 paralysing constructive effort in executive govern- 
 ment and all sense of responsibility. 
 
 All this Matthew Arnold predicted with un-
 
 ctje amafcming 231 
 
 erring vision. The system, he wrote, would 
 make the members of Government " either 
 merely solicitous for the gross advantage, the 
 emolument, and self-importance which they 
 derive from their offices, or else timid, apologetic, 
 and self-mistrustful in filling them ; in either case 
 jormal and inefficient" 
 
 These words might have been written yester- 
 day of the late Coalition. The middle-class 
 democracy gave us its inevitable democratic 
 action, which may be described as the subordina- 
 tion of responsibility in proportion with the 
 increased importance and authority of the multi- 
 tude and the diminishing preponderance of all 
 fixed ideas of national policy not supported by 
 the majority or naturally unthinking section of 
 the body politic. In France this completeness 
 of democratic power is her main strength, but 
 the source of that strength is her civic organisation 
 derived from the local genius of the Gallic mind. 
 With us it has been exactly the contrary. The 
 principles of the French Revolution never found 
 root in these islands. We are essentially a self- 
 reliant people, temperamentally indisposed to 
 think or work in concert, as individualists seeking 
 primarily the individual prize, thus thinking not 
 democratically, but individualistically. That is 
 the key of our development. As admiring defer- 
 ence to the governing class decayed the vigour 
 and self-reliance of the individual expanded, 
 not on the lines of organisation, as in France, 
 but on the principle of independence or opinion,
 
 232 iBeforc ant) Bom _ 
 
 in this sense weakening the State, however 
 beneficial to the development of the entity. 
 In a word, democracy in England has developed 
 on opposite lines to those of Republican 
 France. 
 
 If in France the goal was equality the policy 
 was one quintessentially of civic organisation. 
 Not the liberty of the individual, but the liberty 
 of France was the objective, and to this end 
 order, education, system, discipline were the 
 motive forces. Here individualism would have 
 none of these things. Contrary to the French, 
 we are temperamentally unlogical. Self-effort, 
 individual success, which is the chief thing prized 
 in Britain, had no use for such apparently 
 antagonistic doctrines of liberty as order, educa- 
 tion, system, discipline. As England is the home 
 of religions, so man here is his own religion, 
 hence his spiritual immobility, his castle home, 
 his lack of integration. He refuses " to be told." 
 He loathes discipline, system, authority. He has 
 no sense for order save by consent, as in the case 
 of the authority of the policeman. Hating 
 theory as a good individualist, he sees in govern- 
 ment the virtue of his own equation. In all his 
 ideas he is a voluntarist, and being first and 
 foremost a business man he fears ideas or intel- 
 lectual creation second only to death. 
 
 Thus democracy has progressed in England 
 as a business proposition rather than as a principle 
 of national utility, without, that is, any thought 
 for the efficiency of the whole, which in France,
 
 C^e awakening 233 
 
 per contra, was the meaning and legacy of the 
 Revolution. In its progress no man thought of 
 the State, of the manner of government such 
 a system, or want of system, would produce, or 
 of the consequences of a happy-go-lucky polity, 
 which in reality laid the foundations of anarchic 
 thought or independence, united only when such 
 a consensus of opinion could be found as would 
 promote single or national effort. And this is 
 what Ministers of the late Coalition meant when 
 they told us a Government could only act by 
 compulsion. They implied that the State was 
 merely a popular institution unable to take 
 action except at the goad of public opinion, 
 popular in deed as well as in name. Lord 
 Haldane, for example, has admitted his know- 
 ledge of German preparedness, but avowed he 
 could do nothing because the people at home 
 were ignorant of the fact, and therefore he could 
 not instruct them, as otherwise he would have 
 forfeited his popularity. It was the plea of a 
 democratic politician, the servant of democratic 
 servility. In popular language we may say that 
 we get the Government we deserve, that 
 politicians expect to be treated as the prizelings 
 shuffled into their places by lucky accident, who 
 therefore are not to be blamed if they fail ; 
 which is to say, that as the public do not enforce 
 responsibility from their rulers, so they must not 
 expect responsibility : which again is the nega- 
 tion of government. 
 
 Probably no more cynical statement of govern-
 
 234 before ant) Bom 
 
 ment has ever been made. Yet it is a true 
 statement. Englishmen did not want to hear 
 of war, of a German peril, of international 
 complications ; they wanted to make money, 
 to go on playing their games, to enjoy their 
 week-ends, to indulge in their own insular 
 politics, and in this complacent insulation the 
 commercial spirit of Manchesterdom saw only 
 the international values of the market. We 
 heard Lord Roberts, we preferred to regard 
 him as a fool. Countless voices informed us of 
 the grave danger ahead, of our national responsi- 
 bility by virtue of the agreement with France 
 — we called such men cranks or panic-stricken 
 journalists. Democracy without a standard had 
 no vision, that is all. In the land of opinion 
 one opinion was reckoned as good as another : 
 Germany was regarded as such a matter of 
 opinion. In the wilderness of a self-reliant, 
 self-seeking individualism our values had come 
 to be the values principally of success — wealth. 
 It never occurred to men to think that money 
 value is the most unspiritual or unimaginative in 
 the world ; that other peoples might not have 
 the same values ; that this was the age of science 
 and so of equipment, of change and so of purpose, 
 of ideas and so of application. Living on an 
 island remote from the quickening of Continental 
 thought and movement, risen to unexampled 
 grandeur of wealth and Empire, drunk with the 
 imagined security granted by a Navy that had 
 never been defeated, we grew up, as it were, in
 
 Cfte a&mfeemng 235 
 
 a world of our own ; in a world of insular 
 prejudice, ignorance, isolation and European 
 unreceptiveness, based on the illusion of a static 
 inviolacy. We had even come to think that war 
 was an impossibility, chiefly because the com- 
 mercial spirit hoped that it was so. When war 
 came upon us the whole structure of happy-go- 
 lucky England crashed like a house of cards to 
 the ground. 
 
 Not that we recognised this. Unfortunately, 
 we did not. Men fought like madmen for the 
 voluntary or casual principle, and though with 
 elementary force the spirit of the people rose 
 to the emergency, triumphing over all pre- 
 conceived notions and prejudices, the middle- 
 class attitude refused to be shaken out of its 
 long lethargy, and we thought that the Govern- 
 ment that was good enough in peace was also 
 good enough for war. Only very slowly has 
 this delusion vanished. 
 
 Mr Asquith himself admitted this unimagina- 
 tiveness. " For over two years," he said, he 
 had done everything in his power to " preserve 
 .the substantial unity of the nation " ; he failed 
 to see, and has failed to see during all that time, 
 that the unity, which means the spirit, of England 
 would look after itself in war, provided the 
 direction of the war was efficient and men knew 
 that the spirit was not ahead of the direction. 
 And what fell short was not the spirit but the 
 leadership, not the will but the statesmanship, 
 not the sacrifice, the endeavour, the resolve, but
 
 236 TBefore ant) Bom 
 
 the management which has always been too late 
 and the policy which never had a result. Alone 
 the spirit of Britain has demonstrated its truth 
 and vitality, and in the Imperial sphere this has 
 indeed been the discovery of our civilisation to 
 the astonishment of the world. Demos has 
 played its part with noble impersonality. It 
 is the governing element which has had no 
 initiative, no directive utility, swamped in 
 its own environment, enmeshed in the coils 
 of a non-constructive philosophy of State which 
 in war is its own negation. In blaming these 
 men we have first and foremost to blame 
 ourselves. 
 
 For such is the lesson. Democracy has found 
 out through the rude blows of war that direction 
 is essential, that opinion is not the master but 
 the slave of its genius. It is discovering that 
 equality is a mere catchword, that a nerveless, 
 hesitating, unintelligent, inefficacious rule in war 
 leads to disaster, however much in time of peace 
 it may be the determinant of contentment. It 
 has realised that the inchoate State is not the 
 machine to wage successful war with, that habits 
 and attachments may be a weakness instead of a 
 strength, that if the values are wrong, so also will 
 be the achievements. 
 
 When I say wrong values, what do I mean ? 
 I mean chiefly that spirit which fears thought, 
 which has made our education the laughing- 
 stock of Europe, which drove Byron to curse 
 his country and under the blight of Puritan-
 
 €t)e aumkemng 237 
 
 ism has formalised the national attitude into 
 an unreverential mediocrity. No doubt this 
 spirit of hypocrisy is largely the deposit of 
 Puritanism or gospel of pain, which, grafted 
 on an insular soil, severed us from the 
 European mind and found specific vent in the 
 abomination of all foreigners. Yet this in 
 itself would not account for our unreceptivity. 
 The reason lies in our low educational system 
 acting on the assurance of an assumed Imperial 
 supremacy. 
 
 The result is notorious in the decay of all 
 standards. We have no national opera or theatre 
 or academy of poetry or literature. We have no 
 Ministrv of Education or of the Arts. The 
 whole province of art is left to fend for itself on 
 the casual principle of commercial competition. 
 In the schools the artist is despised, only physical 
 performance counts ; the creative faculty is not 
 only neglected, but deprecated alike by masters 
 and scholars. The expression of this neglect is 
 only too visible in our great but essentially 
 commercial Press, which, dependent solely upon 
 advertisements, tends to become more and 
 more controlled by business considerations in 
 the guise of a syndicated Party interest. Thus 
 the values of literary art to-day being com- 
 mercial, the thought too is commercial, and 
 in its wake criticism also has become commercial. 
 Democracy has learnt to read — there is money 
 in her half understanding. Thus the multi- 
 tude in the absence of guidance has set and
 
 238 nstfm ann jeotn 
 
 lowered creative values in art and in public 
 life. Criticism disappeared. Judgment no longer 
 signified. England became the El Dorado for 
 the amateur, the charlatan, the facile speaker, 
 the hypocrite, the advertiser, and — the German 
 
 J ew " 
 
 Thought in this country being regarded as a 
 
 form of wickedness, the creative artist thus had to 
 stand on his head or wear knickerbockers to 
 obtain an audience. It became " good form ' 
 to stand on our heads. In the year 1914 I 
 suppose England was as like Alice's Wonderland 
 as even Peter Pan could desire. And so we find 
 a Tribich Lincoln sitting in Parliament, and 
 almost in the whole range of our life unreality, 
 amateurishness, the posture and impostures of 
 the " giddy ass," from " society " aping Musical 
 Comedy to the game of musical chairs as played 
 by Government. 
 
 Our contempt for ideas, science, knowledge, 
 art ; our wealth and ease, our individualistic 
 disintegration, our shams and conventions, our 
 vanity, our illusionism — these are the things 
 that have demoralised and degraded our public 
 life so that titular honours were bought for 
 cash ; and though an Englishman invented the 
 machine - gun, we had to learn at untold 
 sacrifice its utility from the hands of the 
 Germans. 
 
 And so when war struck us " unawares " — it is 
 part of our system to be caught unawares — we 
 found we had to advertise for an Army, and that
 
 €l)e aumketting 239 
 
 everywhere the wrong men were in the respon- 
 sible places. We hauled out of the Barebones 
 cupboard the rusty Midshipman Easy crotchet 
 of one Englishman being the equal of four 
 foreigners ; our Press was flooded with torrents 
 of swagger and drivel ; we polished up the school- 
 boy notions of war such as " Never swop horses," 
 " Don't speak to the man at the helm," and so 
 singing of " Tipperary," while in real Tipperary 
 the Irish were planning revolution, we idolised 
 the apostle of " Wait and see " while he delegated 
 responsibility to as many Committees as he could 
 appoint. And so the muddle, the screeching, 
 the incompetence, the labour of democracy 
 struggling against all its pet privileges, prejudices, 
 traditions, and ideaisms continued until the 
 innate common sense of Britons awoke from 
 their slumber and men knew the awakening had 
 come. 
 
 The dawn of a new era has opened. At last 
 we know. Once more we are beginning to see 
 things as they are, to return to true values — to 
 understand. England is astir. It is our hope 
 and the first great victory we have won, for self- 
 victory is the hardest of all victories. In our 
 case it was the absolute precondition of success. 
 Now that we have won that battle, it is for us 
 all to open the sluice-gates of our minds and 
 strike on, young and undaunted, to safeguard 
 our great heritage. 
 
 Written after the fall of the Asquith administration. 
 To-day the safeguarding of our heritage has passed into the
 
 240 before ant) Bo® 
 
 hands of America : who is now not only the absolute con- 
 troller of the war, but the arbiter of European civilisation. 
 What changes this stupendous innovation will lead to it is 
 loo early to attempt to predict, but that it will compel 
 something in the nature of an English-speaking Federation 
 may reasonably be regarded as one of the certain issues of 
 the world-struggle.
 
 ^usinss at jfort ^aur 
 
 {March 191 7) 
 
 " ^"ln^HERE you are," the voice at my side 
 said in exquisite French, " the whole 
 A thing. Now you can see for yourself 
 the immense futility of war." 
 
 Strange, incongruous as I felt the words to be 
 from the lips of this braided officer with a medal 
 on his chest, on whose countenance the stern- 
 ness of war had imprinted a spiritualism of look 
 quite common in the Armies, I was not sur- 
 prised ; indeed, the remark seemed almost a 
 commonplace, so insensibly had the same thought 
 overwhelmed me. We were standing in a trench 
 on the scene of the fierce French battles in 
 Champagne 1 of 1915 — a trench won back from 
 the Germans who to-day lie ensconced on a 
 hillock directly opposite. The view was panor- 
 amic. We could see across the German lines 
 for miles, and in the distance the Meuse hills 
 fusing into the low clouds, and the outline of 
 Hill 304, everything a glistening white reminis- 
 cent of winter in Russia, and all was silent with 
 that atmospheric sense of tranquillity or heavi- 
 ness that snow imparts. Of the enemy not a 
 
 1 The Main de Massiges, since lost and re-won. 
 n Ml
 
 242 ^Before ant) Bouj 
 
 trace. Occasionally a shell wailed through the 
 air, and one listened carelessly for its explosion, 
 otherwise not a sound was to be heard, not a 
 semblance of activity could be seen, nor man 
 nor gun ; only an utter loneliness, the restfulness 
 of snow. 
 
 A year and a half ago the German second lines 
 were on the spot we gazed from, now they were 
 — " there," as my guide explained ; " you see 
 that little mound, well, that is one of their 
 observation posts." Behind us, as we had come 
 up, the villages lay in ruins, the result of the 
 German retreat in 1914 ; but at the front, a 
 couple of weeks ago, I could see no sign of war. 
 In the deep silence, the invisibility of modern 
 war, its meaninglessness and futility struck one 
 with almost startling precision, like a sudden 
 pain. The reality of its unreality appeared 
 ludicrous, phantasmagoric, for I knew that in 
 the snow some hundred yards in front of us 
 thousands of men lay hidden facing one another 
 across No Man's Land awaiting hourly none of 
 them knew what. And yet it was dangerous to 
 peer over the parapet. The Germans had a 
 machine gun trained on that spot, it seemed, 
 for a connecting trench joined up thereabouts, 
 and there was a dug-out from which thin trails 
 of bluish smoke curled and melted into the air. 
 
 And if this silence, this warren invisibility, 
 was war, so, in harmony, all around seemed 
 happiness. It is the only word I can find, 
 though it is not the right word. The mental
 
 busings at jfort 13auj: 243 
 
 tortures of the Back have no place in the Front. 
 I never saw a French soldier who did not appear 
 to be entirely reconciled to his lot, singularly 
 calm, attending simply to his work. I think 
 that is the great difference between us. The 
 soldiers are at work, whereas we behind talk. 
 And yet this paradox also is striking. If we 
 talk, they think. They are the true thinkers in 
 this war. We at the Back are the unreal people, 
 the speculators, the materialists. In the French 
 trenches I found philosophy ; I found spirituality ; 
 I saw the greatness of what a civilisation may some 
 day win to. 
 
 " For two and a half years," my comrade 
 continued, " we have sat thus, now here, now 
 there. I was at Verdun, now I am here. To- 
 morrow — one does not know. It is a long time 
 for a man to be cut off from his home, his life, 
 his love, his civilisation. But don't imagine we 
 have not thought. We have time to think here. 
 We are in the presence of thought all day and 
 night. The one thing we never do is to worry. 
 It is a new thing for mankind. There are no 
 women, hence no little jealousies, no bickerings, 
 no vanities and illusions. We are just men, all 
 equals, members of a large family — France. We 
 have only one idea — country ; only one inspira- 
 tion — victory. And yet we think as we never 
 did before. Afterwards the world will see." 
 
 A day or so later I was at Fort Vaux, standing 
 on the top of what still remains of its structure, 
 and again the scene was of aching silence and
 
 244 before ant) jftoto 
 
 desolation. The dawn was pointing ; the whole 
 compass of the Verdun battles unfolded in the 
 light pinking the white hills, and again the 
 futility of this magnificent madness was the sole 
 and paramount impression. 
 
 For over four months the Germans fought with 
 their full available strength to capture Verdun. 
 In the first rush they seized Fort Douaumont — 
 a hill ; after three more months of ferocious 
 fighting, every inch of the ground being con- 
 tested, they managed to cross the four hundred 
 yards which separated them from Fort Vaux 
 and entered it — to-day they lie in or behind the 
 marshland to the north-east again, and the fort 
 is cheerily occupied by a few French soldiers. 
 Such is war. The Germans gained ground, the 
 French gained imperishable honour. The lessons 
 of war have changed. Ground means little. 
 But for the name of the place and the glory 
 attaching to it, it would have mattered little 
 militarily had Verdun fallen — from the strict 
 point of view of results, that is — for the enemy 
 would merely have taken a position or a few hills. 
 The German gains there, captured with in- 
 credible effort and loss of life, were recaptured 
 in a four hours' attack. They might again be 
 lost. It would not signify. Probably the Ger- 
 mans also realise that to-day. War in modern 
 conditions has no textbook. As its incidence is 
 truly national, so are its results. You either 
 destroy or you don't. You cannot destroy a 
 people who will fight, short of obliteration.
 
 ^U0tng0 at jTort laur 245 
 
 The old copy-book glory of military operations 
 has ceased to have any meaning. It is as obsolete 
 as the forts themselves. War has thus become a 
 supreme futility alike in reason and execution, 
 and there cannot be many soldiers on the whole 
 field of battle who are not clearly cognisant of 
 the discovery. 
 
 For it is a discovery. The Germans with 
 their philosophy of force would assuredly never 
 have set out on the way to Paris had their leaders 
 and soldiers understood the conditions of modern 
 war, and when, as seems now to be generally 
 admitted, they were held up for want of muni- 
 tions in the early days, they must indeed have 
 wondered at the astonishing ignorance of the 
 men whose sole business and justification it was 
 to see that the means were adequate to the end. 
 Evidently they knew little about war as fought 
 to-day. They went into it on the copy-book. 
 To-day their madness lies at the article of death, 
 and if war teaches anything at all, such assuredly 
 is the judgment that men will pass on this 
 appalling tragedy, whatever the result and, I 
 firmly believe, whatever the consequences. 
 
 Not, I fear, that war will end as the result of 
 its fatuity. Man is not likely to change. One 
 realises that at Verdun. From every French 
 soldier there irradiates the sense of a national 
 glory. Even that tattered, magnificent, and 
 rather ridiculous relic of human courage makes 
 the blood rush quicker through the veins ; for 
 that, men fought as perhaps never before in
 
 246 before ant) Bouj 
 
 history, for that crumbled piece of masonry and 
 concrete which represented, and to-day is, the 
 heart of France. It lives. To-day it is the 
 emblem of France, her pride, they will tell you, 
 her justification. Why ? On ne sait pas. The 
 soldiers laugh, but they adore every stone of it. 
 They touch it with the fingers of a caress. Close 
 by, the Germans watch it, shell it, and no doubt 
 daily curse it. All around it the dead in their 
 thousands sleep. At times the enemy fire 
 furiously upon the ruin. You approach it by 
 night, for the crest is exposed to fire by day. 
 " Voila," the guide explains, " that is Vaux 
 which we took back from the Germans." 
 
 Voila. For some time I had noticed what 
 in the half-light looked like a big cone, and then 
 suddenly it loomed up at the far end of the crest. 
 I stood still in the grip of an intense emotion. 
 A brownish line standing very true and solid, a 
 small gateway, a poilu washing out a pan, a square 
 resolute block astonishingly beautiful against the 
 white snow silhouetting sharply in the glim mist 
 of the rising day, the relic of a fort and yet almost 
 pathetically compact in its defiant solidity. In 
 the moat huge blocks of broken and twisted 
 boulders and what not lay in grotesque form ; 
 for miles the forests had been shot to powder, 
 not a tree, only an arid expanse sheltered, as it 
 were, by this stump. I would like to say this 
 human stump, so withered and seared with the 
 fire of battle it looked in the good company of 
 its defenders. To the French, Vaux is the
 
 busings at jfort Sauj; 247 
 
 historic ground of the war. Its occupants are 
 glad to see us. Every inch of it is a reminiscence. 
 You stare at the thing, a fort. A fort is nothing 
 to-day but an observation post, a haven. Its 
 defensive significance has gone, and yet it served ; 
 it stands four-square, and within its now shapeless 
 exterior men eat and sleep, and you crouch down 
 along its labyrinthine vaults and galleries through 
 the slime and water and you know that this 
 dark fetid keep was the soul and saviour of 
 France. 
 
 To-day it is a temple of pilgrimage. Here 
 France bled, and would have bled to death but 
 for the great battle of the Somme, which ended, 
 as the soldiers say, " that chapter." Such was, 
 of course, the purpose of the Verdun fighting 
 — to destroy the French army. It is no secret 
 to-day that but for our victorious intervention 
 a month earlier than we were ready to make 
 it, that object would in another few weeks or 
 so have been consummated, for the Germans 
 were far beyond Vaux, just, in fact, under Fort 
 Souville, which crowns the eastern line of defence, 
 and had that position fallen, the whole system 
 must have yielded. 
 
 It was a question of honour, and honour won. 
 That does not look like any radical change in 
 man's attitude towards war, rather the contrary. 
 At Verdun France was reborn, they say there. 
 And as you grope your way along the subterranean 
 tunnel down the steps defended with matchless 
 heroism and the commander receives you with
 
 248 ^Before ant) Baft 
 
 a smile and a salute, you are torn with the con- 
 flicting emotions of man's dauntless spirit and 
 futility. At this outpost of country you feel only 
 the demon and spiritualism of battle, which, 
 analysed, comes down to the expression of 
 military geography. You are nonplussed. You 
 think of the hideous magnificence of the thing, 
 yet you can only see the reason of its unreason, 
 the fatalism of that spirit which seems to cry to 
 you from those reeking shattered walls : " To 
 be or not to be." And Vaux stands. It is life. 
 Vaux is the living symbol of France. There you 
 feel at once the futility and the glory of war. 
 When you see the light in the eyes of the men 
 about you, it is this spiritualism of war or man 
 that seizes upon the mind. In the face of it 
 cold reason seems the height of insanity. You 
 become yourself of the spirit of the place. Your 
 thought is Vaux — man ; the wonder of war- 
 savagery, its senselessness, disappear on the line 
 where probably the Germans are taking their 
 breakfast. 
 
 I ask where the Germans are. The sergeant 
 does not know exactly. " Not far off," he 
 chuckles. " Suppose," I say, " the French had 
 not defended Vaux with such tenacity, but 
 retired, would it have mattered if the Germans 
 had taken the eastern side ? ' He answers 
 bluntly : " Not a scrap, sauj Vhonneur" " We 
 have plenty of lines the other side," he explains. 
 The Germans would never have broken through. 
 After a pause he divines my thoughts. " But
 
 ffiu6ing 6 at fort laujt 249 
 
 we had to fight here ; it was a question of 
 honour." 
 
 Once more I feel the hopelessness of it all. 
 Tens of thousands of men died on this periphery, 
 not essentially for strategic reasons, but for the 
 halo of what mankind knows as glory, and prizes 
 as the supreme forfeit. Instinctively as I see 
 before me the cruelty, the blasting negativeness 
 of war, I think of our so-called civilisation. 
 I trv to find its pattern, to knit it into some 
 coherence of hope or reason. I cannot. Squat- 
 ting on a huge broken block of concrete, I can 
 only feel. And what I feel is life, force, power, 
 will, energy, not reason. Almost in despair I 
 turn to the soldier at my side : " Will they 
 build forts after the war ? '' I say stupidly. He 
 smiles. " We shall know when the war is over," 
 he says, " but the old fort is as dead as the 
 battleship." 
 
 I see he is a bit of a philosopher. " Go on," 
 I cry to him, " and afterwards, when will that 
 be ? ' He answers quietly : " In two, possibly 
 three, years." 
 
 The answer did not astonish me. I found 
 an engaging frankness among all French soldiers ; 
 indeed, at the Front men talk, as they think, 
 fearlessly. " Well, we have got to finish this," 
 he went on. " We soldiers only judge militarily, 
 the other things do not concern us, and looking 
 upon the war from what we now know we think 
 it will take many years to complete our task ; 1 
 
 1 America had not yet declared war.
 
 250 before ant) Boto 
 
 now perhaps you civilian gentlemen know of 
 other ways of ending it, but that is not our 
 affair." 
 
 " Look," he continues, " at those hills, and 
 then see the higher hills beyond. The other 
 day the Germans were all over here. This crest 
 becomes the chief seat of war. We take Douau- 
 mont, from which height we can outflank the 
 enemy at Vaux : who therefore cannot get up 
 food : they retire. Now they are there, quiet, 
 baffled, beaten. The epic battles of Verdun are 
 over. To-day they are an episode. The theatre 
 of war changes ; it is on the Somme. It is the 
 Germans who are on the defensive. Again the 
 battles cease. To-morrow it will be somewhere 
 else, but always there are positions, and men and 
 guns. In years to come there will be other 
 engines more terrible still. War, monsieur, is 
 energy." 
 
 I like this man tremendously. " Then you 
 don't think this will be the last war ? ' He 
 shrugs his shoulders. " Who knows ? They 
 give us little things like this ' (and he throws 
 an arm out embracing the Fort) " to defend. 
 We defend it. Will man not always have things 
 to defend ? Will others not always want what 
 we or some of us have ? If you have a child 
 you will work for it. If you have a flag you will 
 die for it. If you have a country you will love 
 and be ready to fight for it. And, after all, a 
 man can but die for what he has. We think 
 that Verdun will remake France. We are very
 
 busings at jFort Mux 251 
 
 proud of Verdun. Instead of death, it is life 
 these battles have given us. We think we have 
 rediscovered our own purpose and unanimity." 
 
 And what this man says I feel to be true. It 
 is impossible not so to feel. Horrible, grotesque, 
 unfathomably senseless as one sees war in modern 
 conditions to be, the voice at my side rings true ; 
 I cannot find an argument. I see his healthy 
 calm face, his massive frame seated on a piece of 
 iron, and all around the desolation of battle 
 vomits, as it were, its answer in harmony with 
 this soldier's spirit, and it seems to cry, " What 
 answer is there in the face of this destruction, 
 what is the temper of man for if not to defend 
 his soil ? " 
 
 Far away, just observable from our vantage 
 post, I see some companies of soldiers marching 
 down to the front trenches in the direction of 
 Pepper Hill, their packs high on the shoulder — 
 it is one of the only active signs of war I have seen 
 at Verdun. Not an eye can detect otherwise a 
 man, friend or foe, and yet there are thousands 
 of them standing guard in those miles of hidden 
 trenches. Douaumont stands out impressively 
 white, sloping down into the ravine christened 
 the " Valley of Death," and some stones still 
 mark the little village of Vaux, and hard by is 
 the pond. It is difficult to think of this spot as 
 in the fiercest zone of war — war which has sat 
 still for two and a half years awaiting its solution. 
 The futility of it, seen on the spot, is absolutely 
 comic. It is a gun war, they tell you, yet you
 
 252 TBefore ant) Jftofo 
 
 never see a gun. Why in the world don't the 
 Germans walk away, abandon this ghastly folly, 
 and retire to their own soil ? They know now 
 the futility of war as a business, why do they not 
 recognise the futility of it as a philosophy ? 
 There is no glory in squatting in a trench on 
 another man's hillside. I can only find one 
 answer — energy. War, as my friend said, is 
 human energy. Yet the only thing we have 
 learnt so far in the war is the complete futility 
 of man's energy directed solely for military 
 purposes. What then ? 
 
 The soldier bids me descend. " This is the 
 hour they fire," he explains, " it is day." One is 
 inclined to laugh. " Come along," he suggests, 
 " I will show you a machine-gun post," and I 
 follow and look at the creature as one stares at 
 some ferocious animal exhibited behind the 
 cages at the Zoo. Again I feel the intoxication 
 of the business, the joy of youth, the delirium of 
 war ; for war is a young man's affair. How, then, 
 are we to end it ? Youth does not think, it 
 would not be youth if it did. And is not youth 
 the significance of life ? Can there be any 
 fiercer sense in life than that of defending this 
 old place with that murderous weapon ? I 
 experience the full rapture of its death-rattle. 
 " It has done good work," the soldiers round it 
 exclaim. Evidently they love it. It is energy, 
 the secret of defence. In a few years it may be 
 quite obsolete as a gun, but to-day it is the piece 
 de resistance ; those hills are French because of
 
 ffiusingg at jfott lattE 253 
 
 it, and because of the men who worked it. It is 
 like the blade of old time. Vaux is the mistress 
 of France. 
 
 Truly splendid this proven fort. As I stand 
 inside I am as proud of it as its defenders, and as 
 elated. Bombarded by both sides it has sur- 
 vived the ordeal, if in its monstrous clumsiness 
 its shapeless husk has no scientific or serviceable 
 design. But the thing is there, more compact 
 than Fort Souville, which is battered almost to 
 ribbons. And the little icicles that cling to it 
 seem to be part of the affection with which all 
 regard it. One wants to stand before it bare- 
 headed. In Russia I have seen innumerable 
 shrines before which men kneel and cross them- 
 selves, but I confess I never felt any emotion 
 in face of those effigies, not a particle of that 
 quickening of mind and body that overcame me 
 in the presence of Fort Vaux. Its spirituality 
 is of man, the spirit of man ; and no doubt that 
 is the reason why the Germans continually shell 
 it — to destroy what perhaps alone in man is 
 indestructible. 
 
 It is the paradox of war that the only happiness 
 is at the Front. Among the soldiers one finds 
 an intellectual honesty concerning all questions 
 of the war, the reason, of course, being the 
 almost complete absence of fear, which is per- 
 haps the moving force in our modern civilisation. 
 As an officer remarked : " You might be afraid 
 to hear what the soldiers think," and I put down 
 my fork and gazed at the monkey pie on my
 
 254 before ant) Bom 
 
 plate, for I hardly knew what to answer. It 
 was so true. Behind, we live on rumours, con- 
 jectures, speculation ; there, as men have learnt 
 not to fear death, they are free men. Now it is 
 German starvation. Or we imagine they have 
 no more men. Or, again, we assume that their 
 moral has gone ; but in the Army these specula- 
 tive considerations are scarcely discussed. This 
 greatness of humanity in the Army is not only 
 striking, it must affect the various civilisations 
 concerned when these men, free so long from 
 all the petty cares and foibles of life in a world 
 of commercial meanness, return to build in turn. 
 That they will rebuild is a certainty. That they 
 will infuse a new fearless spirit into our com- 
 mercialism is perhaps the most hopeful phen- 
 nomenon as yet in the war, and it will be like a 
 blast of fresh air, affecting the sexes, influencing 
 the whole shape and development of the next 
 generations. 
 
 To me it seems impossible that these men 
 should return to the old ways and the old sordid- 
 ness. At first, no doubt, they will be bemused, 
 overjoyed with the freedom from arms, but soon 
 they will note the evil manifestations in our life, 
 the struggle for paltry gain, the rank commercial- 
 ism which kneads men into so much machinery 
 at the mercy of a system which knows no mercy. 
 It is a wonderful thing to be with men who are 
 without fear, without envy, without malice, 
 without jealousy, who are one simply in a cause. 
 You never see the craven look, the greed of eye,
 
 busings at jrott mux 255 
 
 the gait of servility of the towns. The men 
 have done a big thing and they know it ; they 
 mean to improve upon it on their return. They 
 do not know how. But the army of the trenches 
 has become a huge guild, and never at any time 
 have so many men been gathered and lived 
 together who have learnt to think and feel alike 
 and to fear no man. It is a tremendous school, 
 this war, from which new values will arise and 
 new foundations of belief. I like to think of 
 these men casting themselves upon our soulless 
 civilisation and purging it with their simple 
 flame. 
 
 We have said this is the last war — we at the 
 back, that is. I tell this to the soldier. " And 
 Vaux," he exclaims ; " will there be no more 
 Vaux's ? ' Evidently he does not believe in 
 Utopianism. " Look here," he continues, " in 
 a few years someone will discover a silent gun, 
 it will not be locatable, it will destroy the other 
 man's batteries and itself be invisible. Will the 
 people who first have that gun refrain from using 
 it ? Why should they ? Why ? " " Then you 
 don't believe in peace ? " I urge. For a second 
 he looks doubtful. " Oh, yes," he answers, 
 ' but to-day I believe in this little fort." 
 
 I cannot help thinking that perhaps war has 
 got beyond its directors, who up till now have 
 not realised the scientific problems of their 
 business, and still try to solve them by rules 
 which no longer have a meaning, for war is no 
 longer the affair of strategy. It is not a military
 
 256 'Before ant) Boto 
 
 matter in the old sense. The whole social 
 community is concerned, and I cannot help 
 wondering what would have happened if in 
 1914 the German General Staff had been com- 
 posed of engineers and imaginative men instead 
 of the Klucks and Moltkes who paraded through 
 Belgium. None the less, in spite of the fort, 
 I see the mad futility of war from any intellectual 
 point of view. I feel that afterwards men will, 
 and must, combine together to establish the 
 basis of an organised peace, which, in sum, is 
 what we Allies are fighting for. It is almost 
 inconceivable that this stupendous folly should 
 be allowed to break out again, that the next 
 generation should sit for years in trenches, 
 destroying one another by the tens of thousands 
 for the possession of a hill-top or the correction 
 of military geography. It is possible, if the 
 war lasts long enough, that even the Germans 
 will come to see the futility of their philosophy 
 of violence. Already they must see the futility 
 of its execution. Perhaps that is the meaning 
 of this war. It had to be. Men had to learn 
 through despair. Our civilisation needed new 
 roots, new values, and so men had to fight, to 
 offer their bodies to the screaming furnace of 
 fire, that in exhaustion and attrition they might 
 acquire a saner humanity. 
 
 And yet war cannot be so bad if the men 
 engaged in it are so great. That, too, I see. 
 In the face of the man at my side there is not a 
 mean expression. You notice that everywhere.
 
 ffitt0ingg at jfott m m 257 
 
 How is it ? It is not so at home. Why is it 
 that war brings out what is noblest in man, and 
 the crueller the nature of war the finer the 
 nobility ? I look at the terrible Thiaumont 
 line and across the silent hills, but I can dis- 
 cover no answer. Only the snow lies there 
 covering up even the trenches. Of war I descry 
 nothing. I understand less. What does it all 
 mean ? Can this nightmare be for our good ? 
 Can it make us better men ? Shall we learn 
 anything when it is over and we can again think ? 
 I think of our English admiration for Napoleon 
 I touch the ice-cold walls of the fort. Its brutal 
 solidity is mute. And yet I know we must try. 
 Now and hereafter men must work for a higher 
 humanity, a truer proportion of things, a wider 
 love. The German attitude must be over- 
 thrown. First we must conquer that before 
 we aspire to conquer ourselves. The futility 
 of war must be thrown in his face until he also 
 recognises its futility. When that is accomplished 
 our task will have been done. It may be this is 
 the last of the feudal wars, the wars for boundaries 
 and dominion. Most fervently I hope so. There 
 is no longer any gain to be got out of war which 
 has become a sheer matter of national destruction, 
 insane, idiotic. . . . 
 
 The soldier touches me on the arm. " You 
 must go," he says, pointing to the sky, " it is 
 day, and on the crest you can be seen." I turn 
 back for a moment to look at the fort. The 
 sergeant and a few men idly stand at the portal
 
 258 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 and wave their hands. In a few steps I am on 
 the other side of a hillock and can only see the 
 riven top of the fort scrannelled against the 
 sky. I am returning to the talk and anguish of 
 the Back. On the way a few German shells 
 burst near by. . . . The happiness is behind me. 
 
 February 191 7. In the fearful cold France was suffering 
 much. This was the supreme crisis of the European War,, 
 everything in French opinion then depending upon Nivelle's 
 spring offensive. America's entry, February 8, turned the 
 balance irrevocably in our favour.
 
 jfountJationg of i&econstructton 
 
 WHEREVER men meet to-day discussion 
 turns upon that vista loosely termed 
 reconstruction which somehow is ex- 
 pected to arise from the ruins of war. Already 
 it is easy to discern two categories, the one 
 positive, the other negative, and behind them 
 that positional class which, naturally insular and 
 conservative, would prefer that things should not 
 change appreciably, and hopes, with as little 
 disturbance as possible, to get back to the old 
 order and to football. This latter group is 
 probably pretty considerable, comprising in no 
 small part official Party Liberalism and official 
 Party Toryism, supported by the Church and 
 all posts and pillars of individualist, institutional 
 England ; and all these people may be expected 
 to wait and see rather than take any active 
 steps to see that things shall happen this way or 
 that. 
 
 Absolutely the most hopeful sign in this re- 
 awakening of national and spiritual curiosity — 
 for that is the incentive to the unrest — is the 
 multifarious nature of this growing class of men 
 and women freed from existing conventions, 
 
 250
 
 260 OBefote ana Bofo 
 
 whether of Party or of policy. And this is a 
 new thing among us. These people belong to 
 no Party to-day, to no one class, to no one Church, 
 to no one rank. They have come together, 
 attracted spiritually and constructively as if in 
 exhilaration of this intellectual freedom won for 
 Britain on the battlefield, uniting for the first 
 time even creeds, passions, theories, and antagon- 
 isms in the impersonal cause, not so much of 
 country — for that is a narrow conception — but 
 of a civilisation which, governed by the vastness 
 of our imperial reality, we have the legitimate 
 right to focus as integral of a cosmic responsi- 
 bility. Thus we may speak of an Imperial idea, 
 which in itself is an ideal. 
 
 But even the idea is unformulated, as yet 
 unscientific and unregistered, and only the ideal 
 seems to light the way like a revelation through 
 the mist of war and uncertainties. It is a seedling 
 around which are grouped and are grouping here 
 and there, in a bewildering complexity of 
 apparently incommunicable associations, a body 
 of men and women seeking a new analysis and 
 a new valuation. All that we can say positively 
 about them is that belief has been cast upon the 
 waters. They are making discoveries. Accept- 
 ance has given way to receptivity. We seem 
 suddenly to have broken with the superstitions 
 of the past, to have acquired a gathering liberty 
 of thought and purpose, and attained more fully 
 to our conscious selves. True, many know not 
 what they want, but that also is a spiritual
 
 jfauntjations of Eecongttuctton 261 
 
 recognition, and by no means a weakness. The 
 factor is this consciousness of revolt or intellectual 
 freedom. Its characteristic is an equality of 
 what may even be called a fellowship, for it is 
 free from all class, social, or political bias. Its 
 spirit is the sanction of freedom. 
 
 These are the ^constructionists, the spirits of 
 revolt. They form almost a new citizenship. 
 They are to be met in all places, and they know 
 one another, as it were, intuitively, as members 
 of a masonry. At this moment it would be hard, 
 if not futile, to attempt to define any common 
 aim or even any common affinity of aspiration, 
 for they are one only in recognition : what has 
 brought them together and what will keep them 
 together is the completeness of negation rather 
 than any assertion that as yet they can lay claim 
 to. Probably in this sense only are they as yet 
 positive re-creators. Certainly they have no 
 policy and no foundations of policy. Yet this 
 fellowship of Young Britain is real because alertly 
 sensible of its necessity. Even the purely com- 
 mercial-minded in its grouping admit that. 
 Men of this kind meet and talk to-day simply 
 because they feel they must meet and talk. 
 They cast for a diagnosis — of what they scarcely 
 know how to explain, but still of some tangible 
 mal-condition which all feel to be present in 
 our midst. It is the effects which puzzle them, 
 causes they are not accustomed to inquire into. 
 And so, even as every man is his own physician, 
 the physicians in turn have become laymen.
 
 262 'Before ant) Botu 
 
 There would seem no specific. The assenters 
 are growing into seekers, that is all. 
 
 The staidest opinions have modified or seek 
 correction, even our deepest prejudices seem to 
 require open-air treatment. Values demand re- 
 valuation. We find commercialism inspiring in- 
 tellectualism, a cry for education, and even a 
 tentative sympathy for ideas which commercial 
 England had long ago affected to ignore. This 
 flux and rudiment undoubtedly denote a move- 
 ment, a process of recreation. All kinds of men 
 are learning all kinds of things. We have been 
 pushed into the European mind, so to speak, 
 as the price of our physical defence of it, with 
 the net result of discovery — the discovery, first 
 of all, of ourselves, so true it is that men and 
 nations grow great through adversity or what is 
 humanly creative in them. 
 
 Among the reformers there are two easily 
 defined activities, the one spiritual, the other 
 commercial, which latter is engaged purely with 
 the commercial prospects of Britain after the war, 
 or rather the conditions of Labour and Capital 
 when the fighting is over and the problems of 
 adjustment demand a solution. This is the 
 shopkeepers' view. They see a great chance, 
 they smell gold. They still think merely com- 
 mercially. Their attitude, as always, is the line 
 of least resistance. In reality these men have 
 learnt curiously little, and so their endeavour 
 is concentrated upon some formula of com- 
 promise calculated to tide over the awkward
 
 jfounDatiottjs of Eeconstruction 263 
 
 period immediately succeeding peace when the 
 inevitable deflation sets in as the result of the 
 policy of orgy on which the war has been fought 
 and of the new plutocratic conditions of war, 
 which, instead of producing misery among the 
 people, leads to an inflation of wage and comfort 
 as unreal as it is demoralising. The commercial 
 reformers are as yet hardly cognisant of the 
 new conditions that have arisen or of the new 
 psychology that will arise from them. To 
 them reconstruction is an economic problem ; 
 it is only commercialism a little more alertly 
 commercial. 
 
 Such men neither buy nor sell thought. It 
 was precisely this commercialism which blinded 
 us before the war, which gave us our false values, 
 which chased ideas from the land. As the 
 merchant spirit failed then through want of 
 knowledge and imagination, so it will not save 
 us after the war. For decades Britain has been 
 losing her position and significance in the world 
 because of this commercial attitude. Our low 
 plane of education, our inability to face facts, 
 to think scientifically, our insular unintellectualism 
 — all this we owe to the materialism of the shop- 
 keeper standard blinking into the world through 
 the glass of Puritanism which made it hypocritical, 
 and of insularity which made it unthoughtful. 
 These men for the most part fail to see that what 
 they complain of is literally their own fault ; 
 that if our industries are inefficient it is simply 
 because of the general lack of education, the
 
 264 before ant) Botu 
 
 lack of scientific training and attitude ; in short, 
 the low plane of bourgeois standards themselves 
 setting a low example. And if Capitalism in 
 this country has been unimaginative, so has 
 organised Labour. The trade unions have also 
 set up low standards. The capitalist has never 
 considered whether his schools teach his class 
 to work, to think, to construct. He never 
 questioned the validity of his own class example. 
 He still does not understand that before the 
 masses can raise their standards the classes must 
 raise theirs, nor until he does grasp the significance 
 of intellect is there much use seeking to advise 
 him, still less in encouraging him to find an 
 artificial, and so illusionary, economic truce. 
 
 The question of reconstruction is spiritual, 
 not material ; and by spiritual I mean simply 
 the impersonalism of idea together with the 
 means and methods of its application. As a 
 generalisation this idea may be called the Empire, 
 not in a territorial-Imperialist sense, but in its 
 conception as an integrated civilisation. Call it 
 the motive of survival. Yet there is something 
 finer in its instinct which, already emerging as 
 the truth of the war, we may descry as a re- 
 affirmation of democratic law by which our race 
 and our purpose will be judged. The test of 
 this was the principle for which we took up arms 
 contrary to German expectations, which had 
 planned to restrict the war to the Continent 
 and hoped to bring about the desired end before 
 we could intervene successfully and so inter-
 
 jfaunt)ation0 of &econ0truction 265 
 
 nationalise the cause. With our entry into the 
 war the principle thus became cosmic — the 
 principle of New Europe as against the Old 
 Feudal Europe which the Kaiser hoped to 
 restore in mediaeval magnificence as the satrapy of 
 a military-monarchical estate. To-day the world 
 recognises this, and has turned against the 
 monarchical principle. The whole character of 
 the war is changing rapidly, assimilating more and 
 more a coherent purpose guided by a common 
 principle — freedom from the old associations. 
 All over Europe, like some magic fountain, the 
 jets and sprays of liberty rise up in ever wider 
 scope surging from a common energy at war 
 with the old Europe of kings and mediaeval 
 survivals. Thus we find the paradox of scientific 
 Germany fighting to set back the clock of history, 
 to restore the subject spirit. Without our inter- 
 vention the Kaiser would have succeeded, but 
 in fulfilling her own truth England assumed the 
 truth of Europe, and nobly justified her com- 
 pleteness. It was long ago said that Old Europe 
 would go down through Armageddon. This is 
 what we are witnessing to-day. And rightly, 
 therefore, this is called the People's war ; it will 
 be the People's victory — the victory of educa- 
 tion ; and that no matter how the war may end 
 or what may be the manner of the terms affecting 
 boundaries, dynasties, or Empires, or what the 
 covenants and impositions of peace. 
 
 In this war Old Europe will bleed to death. 
 Out of it men will issue spiritually refreshed.
 
 266 'Before ant) Bouj 
 
 And it will be a new beginning. And the 
 civilisation which shows itself to be the quickest 
 and surest to grasp the new values and principles 
 will be the moral victors of the fight and the 
 torchbearers of the new progress. 
 
 In this reconstruction our English purpose will 
 be tested intrinsically and extrinsically. Our 
 opportunity will be as great as our temptation. 
 If our inspiration fails within, we shall fail with- 
 out. For us there can no longer be an attitude 
 of isolation or insularity. Reconstruction thus 
 with us is a European interest because we must 
 either lead or lag behind, and if there is to be 
 any question of a European League aiming at an 
 organised peace founded on common unities 
 and intercommunity of confidence, it is, above 
 all, our fitness and aptitude that will govern or 
 be the first to be adjudged in the democratic 
 Europe of the future. 
 
 The task will be in our case peculiarly difficult 
 owing to our now admitted low plane of educa- 
 tion and the equally admitted bankruptcy of a 
 political system which, leaving Parliament with- 
 out check or control, maintained the negational 
 rigidity of Two-Party power, thereby itself in- 
 evitably losing both efficiency and responsibility. 
 This, of course, is the result of the half-work 
 which destroyed the privilege of the Lords. It 
 left us with Single House rule, conditioned by 
 its own majority ipso jacto deprived of the will 
 or reason of criticism — that is, of independence 
 or intellectual honesty.
 
 jFotmt)ation0 of Etcon0tructton 267 
 
 The results of One House rule are to-day seen 
 to be notoriously defective. Parliament has 
 forfeited its dignity and example, and Govern- 
 ment is more secret and more irresponsible than 
 ever. Standard has gone. The values of public 
 life hardly bear examination. The whole busi- 
 ness of politics has degenerated into a game of 
 machine-made servility and sterility, enlivened 
 chiefly by the sale of honours and the rodomon- 
 tade of windy and aspiring placemen. Over this 
 growth the knife must pass. A Parliament 
 elected, as in present conditions it needs must 
 be, to keep the Government in, as otherwise it 
 must itself go out, reduces that institution to a 
 mere debating society, and gives the Government 
 an immunity from control and supervision not 
 only theoretically undemocratic, but essentially 
 at variance with the principles which are sup- 
 posed to justify it and the liberties which it is 
 supposed to represent. 
 
 This was the lawyers' handiwork acting on the 
 negative policy of popularity. And until this 
 vitally important matter of Second House reform 
 is settled so that Parliament may be restored to 
 its right place of honour and responsibility in 
 the country, we shall find all way of real recon- 
 struction blocked and all chance of attaining to 
 a scientific progressive policy obscured and 
 obstructed in the machinery which, as things 
 are, only admits of a Government sanctioned 
 by a representation that has no alternative. 
 
 In such circumstances the Party becomes
 
 268 'Before ant) Bom 
 
 simply an echo, and in all cases of doubt or 
 opposition an affirmation. There can be only 
 weak Government under such a system. If the 
 Executive has to wait for and on the initiative 
 of the mob, then obviously the standard of 
 progress is the standard of the lowest ; yet that 
 was the position of our Government, and that 
 is why, under the rude exposure of war, it 
 failed until it no longer had any bottom to it. 
 All this must go if we are to step into line and 
 keep on the level with the European regenera- 
 tion that will succeed war, and if we are not 
 ready for the fray of peace, assuredly once more 
 we shall lag behind. 
 
 Flanking this political machinery of inefficiency 
 and social corruption we have our low plane of 
 education sapping the wisdom and hope of 
 Britain. It operates in every sphere of our life 
 and endeavour. At the present moment we find 
 in industrial centres a serious unrest. Above, 
 we see an almost wholesale breakdown of tradi- 
 tions. The Church has lost its soul. Our Party 
 system has become meaningless. All around, our 
 politicians, our shibboleths, our idols, our celes- 
 tials are seen to be fly-blown adhesions of small 
 capital value to the country. There is no 
 example outside the physical sphere. Only the 
 Press stands, docile, commercial. All our roots 
 seem to have been torn up. In their place we 
 see only tendencies, energy, conscience, instinct. 
 
 After the war, our captains of industry tell us, 
 we are to capture many prizes. How ? What
 
 jfotmtjatioitg of Eeconstruction 269 
 
 example do they set ? Do these men not under- 
 stand that the low state of our industrial efficiency 
 is the result of inferior education, and that if we 
 are to capture prizes we must first educate 
 ourselves to deserve them ? Our Public Schools' 
 attitude teaches the classes to despise thought ; to 
 think, therefore, unscientifically. This is England's 
 weakness. Here it is that reconstruction must 
 start from. In a word, the diagnosis is — educa- 
 tion, which alone can fit us to grapple with the 
 immense problems that will face us after the war 
 and alone assure our Imperial continuity. 
 
 To those who doubt I say : Read the 
 Dardanelles Report. If after studying that 
 stupefying document we still adhere to the 
 Eton playground idea, then we shall find the 
 after-war battle as expensive and as critical as 
 the physical side of war, perhaps even more so 
 now that America is the mainspring of our cause. 
 Reconstruction will depend on attitude. In 
 existing political conditions only half-work is 
 possible. All will depend upon the fundamentals 
 we build upon. To-day we lack these funda- 
 mentals because we lack the education * which 
 alone can provide them. In the new Europe 
 these are the things that will decide and define 
 the march of evolution. And this is our charge 
 and responsibility, as it will be our proof in the 
 European architectonics of the New Order. 
 
 1 The shout of super-production is typical : no one thought. 
 And so with Mr Lloyd-George's £23,000,000,000 (election) in- 
 demnity pledge.
 
 TOWARDS NEW HORIZONS 
 
 BY 
 
 M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 Author of 
 " The Wingless Victory," "The Man of Genius," etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net 
 
 In " Towards New Horizons," a volume of essays, mainly politi- 
 cal, Miss Willcocks endeavours to gather up into one focus the 
 forces of the new time. The book might suitably be called "An 
 Englishwoman Looks at the World " and tries to leave her in- 
 sularity behind her. Everything in this book is discussed with 
 reference to the League of Nations and turns especially on the 
 place likely to be taken by Labour in the new World. Very 
 up-to-date and provocative, many will dispute its conclusions, but 
 no one who cares to read the signs of the times will find the book 
 dull. 
 
 Times. — "There is nothing that does not provoke us to thought." 
 
 English Review. — "This is a remarkable book. The author shows an 
 astonishing discernment and a regard for truth very rare in the commercial 
 days. . . . An immense knowledge is stored in this comparatively small book, 
 and much constructive thought. ... A book of beauty, of truth, of living 
 spiritual creation." 
 
 ILLUSIONS & REALITIES 
 OF THE WAR 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANCIS GRIERSON 
 
 Author of 
 "The Invincible Alliance," "The Celtic Temperament," etc. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net 
 
 A new volume, in which the famous essayist discusses a variety 
 of questions bearing on the war with his unfailing freshness of 
 thought and charm of style. 
 
 Daily Express. — "Francis Grierson is the most fascinating and the most 
 wonderful of the essayists. He is a thinker of splendid sanity and wide view." 
 
 JOHN LANE, THE BOULEY HEAD, VIGO ST., W.i
 
 ANYMOON 
 
 BY 
 
 HORACE BLEACKLEY 
 
 Author of " His Job," etc. 
 
 7s. net 
 
 In " Anymoon" Mr Bleackley has produced a most entertaining 
 novel, which is also a satire on extreme Socialism. Boldly con- 
 ceived, and carried out with great ingenuity and dramatic force, 
 the book is one which will make a wide appeal, particularly at the 
 present time. 
 
 Evening Standard.— "Brilliantly ; described. ... A remarkable book, over- 
 flowing with humour, irony, and satire, all pointing a most wholesome moral." 
 
 Morning Post.— "The book of-the day . . . worthy in its mingled humour 
 and horror of that master of logical fantasy, Mr H. G. Wells." 
 
 Westminster Gazette.—" Mr Bleackley has made a far more human and 
 exciting story out of social upheaval than have any of the novelists who have 
 experimented with it hitherto." 
 
 THE WAR 
 AND MEN'S MINDS 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS DE BUNSEN 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5s. net 
 
 In this little volume Mrs de Bunsen attempts a discussion of the 
 old creeds in their juxtaposition with the shifting mental and 
 moral landmarks of the present day. She deals with the popular 
 attitude to religion in the early twentieth century and contrasts that 
 attitude with that of the nineteenth, emphasizing the largely in- 
 creased interest now shown in the reasons for belief. She 
 recognizes to how great an extent the war has stimulated thought 
 and inquiry concerning a truer valuation of religion as a necessity 
 in human life, and discusses the position of that religion in modern 
 thought. 
 
 JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., W.i
 
 
 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Santa Barbara 
 
 THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY 'FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 284 498 3