THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Santa Monica Public Library
 
 KEELING LETTERS 
 AND RECOLLECTIONS
 
 KEELING LETTERS 
 6? RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 EDITED BY E. T. :: WITH AN 
 INTRODUCTION by H. G. WELLS 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
 
 (All right* unntt*)
 
 library 
 
 DA 
 
 57 
 
 TO JOAN HILLERSDON KEELING 
 AND BERNARD SIDNEY KEELING 
 /
 
 EDITOR'S FOREWORD 
 
 AN apology may seem to be needed for publishing letters 
 so intimate and personal as some of these. I can only 
 say that I longed to preserve some record of the thought 
 and effort which Keeling put into the conduct of life, 
 and I am certain that it would have been his wish that 
 his experience and even his blunders and his failures should 
 be of use to others. My daughter's courage and her con- 
 fidence in my judgment, a confidence for which I am most 
 grateful, have enabled me to relate the circumstances 
 of his life with a frankness which would have been 
 impossible for anyone else. 
 
 I wish to thank his brother and those friends of his who 
 have helped and encouraged me in the task, and especi- 
 ally Mr. J. C. Squire, by whom it was at first undertaken 
 and who was obliged by pressure of work to relinquish it. 
 To him I am indebted both for help with the letters and 
 for permission to include several articles that appeared in 
 the New Statesman. To Mrs. Green my thanks are due 
 for much kind assistance and sympathy ; to the Bishop 
 of Southwark, Mr. Fort, and Mr. Greenwood, for their 
 reminiscences, and above all to Mr. H. G. Wells, whose 
 Preface gives point to the book. 
 
 While expressing my gratitude to these friends of 
 Reeling's, I am anxious to disclaim on their behalf all 
 responsibility with regard to the selection of letters and 
 of passages from his journal. Any errors of taste or mis- 
 representations of fact to be found in the book are due 
 entirely to me. 
 
 E. T.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " BEN " KEELING was a copious, egotistical, rebellious, 
 disorderly, generous, and sympathetic young man. His 
 egotism is the prime cause of this book ; he wrote abundant 
 letters, and they were often about himself ; he talked and 
 thought a great deal about himself, he experimented con- 
 spicuously with his life, and so he can be documented as 
 most of his compeers in these late years of tragedy, though 
 just as active and gallant as he, cannot be documented. 
 It has been much more than a labour of affection and a 
 personal memorial therefore that Mrs. Townshend has 
 made for us in collecting and linking together the pieces 
 of this book. She has had at her disposal as complete 
 and expressive a specimen of the educated youth of the 
 first decade of this century, of the generation which has 
 borne the main brunt of this war, as perhaps we are likely 
 to get ; and she has not only paid to the memory of her 
 friend and quasi-adopted son and son-in-law the best 
 compliment a biographer can pay to his subject, that of 
 being simply frank about many a matter that gentility 
 would have veiled, but she has earned thereby the future 
 gratitude of every serious student of this very crucial 
 period in the history of human thought. For though 
 every age is in its way an age of transition, this age, this 
 red dawn of world unity, in particular is to be marked 
 as a period of transition and conflict between two widely 
 differing phases of human thought upon political and 
 social questions. And Keeling was as lively and sensi- 
 tive as a compass needle to every shade of conflict and 
 transition. 
 
 He was a wild, loose thing ; even bodily he was loose- 
 limbed, and the effect of many of his discussions in this
 
 at HEELING'S LETTERS 
 
 book have about them the quality of an intellectual sprawl. 
 He could climb and endure fatigue ; he died gallantly and 
 brilliantly bombing, but at Winchester he could learn to 
 swim only with great difficulty. It is just that loose 
 sprawling, with its rapid, various impacts upon ideas that 
 were vividly new ten years ago, and that are already in 
 the tumultuous rush of events fading out of men's memories, 
 and upon movements and coteries and organizations that, 
 having produced results, have vanished themselves almost 
 as completely as Lob-lie-by-the-Fire after he has tidied up 
 the house, which will give this book a permanent interest 
 far beyond the thick network of personal relationships 
 that radiate from its mentions and allusions. Ideas 
 movements English mentality in the period 1904-16 and 
 a bright-eyed, flushed, excited, gesticulating individual 
 in the midst thereof ; that is this book. 
 
 Next to the sprawl, or rather as a contributory factor 
 to the sprawl, is Ben Reeling's unusual detachment. No 
 father, no mother, no home, no background at all more 
 personal than the large, promiscuous shelter of Trinity 
 College, a young man of eighteen reputed to be of inde- 
 pendent means, with a younger brother whom he was 
 said to treat with edifying sternness ; so he made his entry 
 upon our stage. Even his names, it must be noted, fitted 
 very loosely. For years I believed him to be " Ben " ; at 
 Cambridge everybody called him " Ben," and it seemed 
 to describe him very well. Towards the end some R.F.A. 
 men decided he was " Siberian Joe," which was still more 
 like him indeed, I think, the best name you could possibly 
 imagine for him : but his proper baptismal name, " Fred- 
 eric," suited him about as well as a silk hat and white 
 linen spatterdashes would have done, and there was not 
 a trace of " Freddiness " in him from top to toe. As for 
 the " Hillersdon," it floats up in the formal opening of 
 this memoir and passes immediately out of the attention 
 of the reader, incredibly unsuitable ; it is like a nervous 
 West End wedding guest drifting into and as rapidly as 
 possible out of a strike meeting in a back street of Leeds. 
 But " Siberian Joe " gives you his voice, his effect of 
 clumsy strength and energy, his little busy head that
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 could hold so much and worked so restlessly, his round, 
 red, warmly flushed, rather astonished face, and his very 
 soft and engaging brown eyes. When first I met it as the 
 face of my host at Trinity College, this red fist of a face was 
 bare and boyish ; when I saw it last, it hailed me suddenly 
 through a big black beard, just the beard that Keeling 
 would have grown, rather an excessive, luxuriant beard. 
 That was somewhen before the war ; I think in 1914, 
 in St. James's Park. We had a long talk then about a 
 tremendous crisis in his affairs there were many crises 
 in his affairs and as far as I could I gave him such advice 
 as he seemed to want. The particulars of that crisis, 
 though I know it was a very serious one, have now quite 
 gone out of my memory. I never happened upon him 
 again. 
 
 His personality pervades this book, and it is a curious 
 and interesting personality ; but quite apart from his 
 personality this collection and memoir have a very great 
 interest indeed in the picture they give of an exceedingly 
 active and curious youth in a time of intellectual bank- 
 ruptcy. It is the autobiography of a mind eager to get 
 to the bottom of things, a personality anxious for aim and 
 coherence, in a time when there seemed to be no direction 
 for youth at all but the amateurish efforts of journalists 
 and playwrights, and the queerest of self-appointed leaders 
 and advisers ; all the official and accredited priests and 
 prophets being in effect dumb, without stimulus or grip 
 for the mind of this younger generation. It is necessary 
 that the reader should remember, in spite of a certain 
 maturity of style and spirit, the boyishness of almost all 
 these letters that follow. Keeling began by being pre- 
 cocious, but he continued to be immature, and he died 
 in an act of boyish self-forgetfulness when he was just 
 thirty. To its end therefore this book is the documenta- 
 tion of an education. Many readers will note with aston- 
 ishment and dismay the names that this young man, so 
 voracious for ideas and for direction in his life, treated 
 with respect. Still more is it to be noted what he ignored. 
 He took a First Class in both Part I and Part II of the 
 History Tripos, and most of the discussion in these pages
 
 xii REELING'S LETTERS ' 
 
 is the interpretation of contemporary history. And it is 
 impossible to find any sign that his two years of Cambridge 
 historical study had given him any view of the current 
 phase of human affairs, any vision of the process of man- 
 kind, broader or profounder than what' any shop-clerk 
 of his age might have possessed. His mind, it will be 
 perceived, was an abundant mind, but his thought was 
 journalistic. His ideas were not joined together \ they 
 were picked up. He emerged from the Cambridge machine 
 a first-class product and a potential " fellow," and his 
 mind was still untrained. For two years he must have 
 been reading and remembering about human happenings, 
 but there is no effect here traceable of any mental gym- 
 nastic whatever. These impressions are quick and vivid, 
 but to the end it is the natural gifts that tell ; he does 
 not get behind his impressions to essentials with the grim 
 steadiness one may surely demand from a highly trained 
 man. One is left wondering if university history is indeed 
 any sort of mental training at all, or whether it is still 
 a mere matter of reading and anecdotage. And another 
 thing that strikes one reader at least as extraordinary 
 is to be found in the wildly speculative methods and the 
 manifestly disordered nerves of Keeling in the matter 
 of sex. He is a specimen of the completest education 
 afforded in our time for a young man ; his was the educa- 
 tion of our social best ; and yet he knew nothing in an 
 ordered way, no ideas and experiences had been put 
 before him, he had been given no preconception of sexual 
 psychology at all ; he had had to " find out " for himself 
 about these matters as completely as if he had been a 
 slum boy flung into a blind-alley occupation at the age of 
 thirteen. Time was when education led up to initiation. 
 Has education washed its hands of sex ? Keeling fell 
 back on plays and novels and Mr. Edward Carpenter ; 
 a majority of his contemporaries tried the music-halls 
 and the streets ; the official oracles were dumb. I do not 
 know if that will strike the reader as being as remarkable 
 as it does me ; perhaps my ideas of what a complete edu- 
 cation should comprehend are too extensive, but certainly 
 it impresses me as amazing. What is a university edu-
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 cation supposed to give ? So far as the testimony of 
 this book goes, it would appear to give nothing but the 
 leisure and company needed for the reading and discussion, 
 without plan or aim, and for the most part with one's 
 equally uninstructed contemporaries, of a miscellany of 
 writers. And is there not something wonderful too in 
 the spectacle of Keeling ploughing respectfully through 
 the writings of Marx who died quite a number of years 
 ago ? One would have supposed that Cambridge had 
 long since dissected Marx, treated him with reagents, 
 separated out the dead matter, exposed, displayed, analysed, 
 and digested him. The Natural Science Tripos young 
 men, who are curious about comparative anatomy, do not 
 read Owen's " Anatomy " or the works of Erasmus Darwin. 
 There is something oddly helpless about this part of the 
 story. It is as though Keeling ranged about calling loudly 
 for information while our " higher education " stuck in 
 hiding. 
 
 Keeling's letters and articles upon the opening of the 
 war and the events of his service are a valuable picture 
 of the state of mind of the English intelligentzia of his time. 
 I wish some of this most characteristic matter could be 
 put before German readers to make the quality of our 
 spirit plainer to them. And from that point onward the 
 story is very representative indeed. It was extremely 
 significant, and it was, I know, a common experience, 
 that the new men should become at first enthusiastic 
 soldiers, keen upon discipline and with an enormous respect 
 for the Army Tradition. It is simple enough to under- 
 stand. For the first time in their lives they had met 
 direction that believed in itself. For the first time they 
 were up against something that seemed to be Order and 
 something that had an Aim. How gladly they gave them- 
 selves ! Keeling renders that effect most illuminatingly. 
 And quite in the vein of the general experience is the dis- 
 illusionment in France. All these youngsters found them- 
 selves presently, in a magnificent army, magnificently 
 equipped and everywhere in the ascendant doing nothing 
 or doing only ineffective, partial things through these 
 precious last months of 1916. while the strength of Russia
 
 xiv REELING'S LETTERS 
 
 and the possibility of complete victory wasted like sand in 
 an hour-glass. And they knew what was happening to 
 them. Keeling, turning to the nearest possibility, cries, 
 " If only we had a French Staff ! " . . . He died fighting 
 bravely over some trench or other that did not matter 
 very much, and for an advantage that belonged to no plan 
 nor joined on to any scheme in particular. And many 
 have died as he died. Because there was no definite 
 scheme. Because in our schools and universities and 
 books and newspapers and pulpits men have grown so 
 accustomed to speak and write in undertones and with 
 equivocations and subterfuges that the capacity to plan 
 greatly has gone out of the country, and youth and now 
 a fresh generation is treading the path Ben Keeling trod 
 asks in vain, " What are we all doing ? Where are 
 we all going ? What is the Aim of it all ? What is 
 my part ? What may I do ? What must I do ? " The 
 teacher, after ambiguous gestures towards Buckingham 
 Palace and Westminster and a quotation from Mr. Asquith 
 about not sheathing the sword, veils his face. . . . 
 
 Keeling's life was a full and vivid one, but it was largely 
 wasted. Or if it is not to be counted as wasted it will 
 be if one may be paradoxical because it is the most 
 full, natural, artless and complete demonstration of the 
 wastefulness of an indeterminate educational system 
 entangled with an indeterminate political system, that it 
 is possible to imagine. What a fund of vitality, what 
 a power of work, what a promise of youth, fell back into 
 darkness with this one life ! And whether they dribble 
 away ingloriously in some sort of mean peace or are snapped 
 off and crushed suddenly in a planless war, the lives of 
 young men must needs go on being wasted in futile quests 
 and vain experiments, more of them and more, until a saner 
 world learns to speak clearly to them, to prepare tolerable 
 social and political institutions for them, to help them with 
 its accumulated wisdom, and to ask them plainly for all 
 that they are so eager to give and do. 
 
 H. G. WELLS.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EDITOR'S FOREWORD , vii 
 
 PREFACE . . . . . ix 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. MEMOIR ...... I 
 
 II. CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR (1908) . . .22 
 
 III. VVALWORTH (OCTOBER 1908 TO OCTOBER 1909) . 38 
 
 iv. LEEDS (JANUARY 1910 TO JUNE 1911) . . 57 
 
 V. LEEDS AND TIROL (JULY 19! I TO JULY 1912) . 8l 
 
 VI. SWITZERLAND AND ITALY (SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 
 
 1912) ...... 128 
 
 VII. LIFE IN LONDON (NOVEMBER 1912 TO AUGUST 1914) 147 
 
 VIII. SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND (AUGUST 1914 TO APRIL 
 
 1915) 183 
 
 IX. APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 . . . 223 
 
 X. JANUARY I TO MAY 4, 1916 .... 262 
 
 XI. MAY 13 TO AUGUST l8, 1916 .... 283 
 
 APPENDIX I. LETTERS FROM OFFICERS OF THE D.C.L.I. 
 
 WITH REFERENCE TO REELING'S DEATH . 313 
 
 APPENDIX II. FREDERIC KEELING AS A STUDENT OF 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. BY ARTHUR GREENWOOD 316 
 
 INDEX . , . . 325
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 F. H. KEELING, AGED 20 . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Photographed by V. H. Mottram, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 
 
 TO FACE PACK 
 
 F. H. KEELING, AGED 22 . . . .39 
 
 Photographed by V. H. Mottrara 
 
 F. H. KEELING, SERGEANT-MAJOR D.C.L.I., AGED 30 . 283
 
 KEELING LETTERS AND 
 RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 MEMOIR 1 
 
 FREDERIC HILLERSDON KEELING was born at Colchester 
 on the 28th March, 1886. His father was a solicitor, but 
 he retired early and when his only children two sons 
 were born he was living a life of leisure. A Conservative 
 in politics and a man of refinement and literary taste, 
 he had many friends of distinction beyond the circle of 
 his fellow-townsmen. 
 
 The Reelings lived in a comfortable suburban house, 
 just outside Colchester. It was near the main road, modern 
 and commonplace, but there was a large garden at the 
 back with a bit of open woodland beyond it where the boys 
 could enjoy a good deal of freedom. Frederic had very few 
 pleasant recollections of his boyhood, which seems to have 
 been a time of constant friction and revolt, but he used 
 to talk affectionately of the garden and of the gardener, 
 whom he regarded as a lifelong friend, and of the old 
 walnut-tree which he used to climb for " the best walnuts 
 in the world." 
 
 His childhood was not a happy one. Fate made a strange 
 blunder when she placed that frank, generous, turbulent 
 creature, full of fierce energ}^, in a decorous middle-class 
 home where all the conventions of Victorian propriety were 
 rigidly observed. Sunday after Sunday he would follow 
 
 1 Part of this Memoir, from p. 14 to p. 21, is written by a 
 friend to whom F. H. K. was much attached. 
 
 2 l
 
 2 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 his mother into the family pew with a glowering counte- 
 nance, not unobserved by the neighbours, betraying a sub- 
 mission that was not only unwilling but scornful. A mind 
 so active and a temper so generous and so subversive needed 
 no outside influence to make it rebel. Socialism came to 
 him by instinct as a hatred of smug comfort, founded on 
 class distinctions, the sort of comfort that depends on a 
 well-drilled staff of servants in an underground kitchen 
 and a padded carriage with a fat coachman on the box. 
 
 He grew up strangely out of sympathy with his family, 
 and often in after life alluded to his loneliness as a boy both 
 at home and at school. 
 
 Of his father he always spoke with respect and affection, 
 but Mr. Keeling was already an old man of feeble health 
 when Frederic first remembered him. They cannot have 
 had much in common except perhaps a taste for archaeology, 
 which seems to have developed very early in the boy, for 
 there is a MS. book, dating from his eleventh year and 
 carefully preserved by his father, which contains a solemn 
 treatise " On Prehistoric Man," together with various 
 notes and a few poems on the antiquities of Colchester. 1 
 
 Frederic and Guy were the children of Mr. Reeling's 
 third wife, whom he married when he was sixty and she 
 twenty-five, his earlier marriages having been childless. 
 He died when Frederic was fourteen, and Mrs. Keeling, 
 whose health had suffered much during her husband's 
 long illness, survived him only three years. 
 
 The boys, left orphans when the elder was only seventeen, 
 were singularly free from ties of home or kin, a circumstance 
 that left its traces. At the time of their mother's death 
 they were both at Winchester, but Frederic left school 
 the same year. He had worked hard there and had taken 
 a good place in the Sixth. He was not popular and disliked 
 games, but he made his mark in the school. He thought 
 for himself, was already a Socialist and by no means timid 
 in making his views known and felt. 
 
 The following notes, kindly contributed by the late Head 
 
 1 Guy tells me that his brother wrote letters to the local papers 
 when he was eleven, but I have failed to discover what they dealt 
 with. E. T.
 
 MEMOIR 3 
 
 Master of Winchester and by Frederic's House Master, 
 are very interesting to those who knew and loved him in 
 later years. They throw light on that sense of isolation 
 at school of which he retained such a vivid and probably 
 exaggerated recollection, and at the same time they prove 
 that to the observing eye his sterling qualities of mind and 
 character were already apparent. Many of his most marked 
 characteristics in after life are to be found in the picture 
 a profound respect for what he considered rightful 
 authority and an enthusiasm for organization, combined 
 strangely with a rebellious temperament and a fierce hatred 
 of compromise and conventionality. 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF F. H. K. AT SCHOOL. 
 
 I. BY DR. BURGE, BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK, FORMERLY 
 HEAD MASTER OF WINCHESTER. 
 
 I value very greatly the opportunity of writing some few 
 impressions of Fred Keeling as I knew him and watched 
 his development at school. But it is very difficult to do 
 this without exaggerating the difficulties with which a 
 nature like his had to contend and those with which we 
 had to contend in helping and not hurting it. It is a mis- 
 take to dwell too much on words like " unpopularity," 
 " resentment against Public School conventions," " against 
 the tyranny of Winchester notions," and the like, a mistake 
 because it would give the impression of an intractable, 
 self-centred prig. There was nothing of that in Fred ; 
 with him the question of popular or unpopular was never 
 raised ; with him school conventions never seemed to 
 count. His was a perfectly natural, fearless instinct for 
 what was true and right and straightforward and just. 
 But he was also vehement and emphatic, and it is easy 
 enough to imagine that such a spirit forms very decided 
 opinions with a very insufficient supply of knowledge and 
 experience. Yet he was not intractable : he was always 
 ready to learn, to be informed ; indeed, his desire to accumu- 
 late information was insatiable and needed some careful 
 adjustment. It was, rather, a somewhat remarkable 
 instance of a mind reaching the stage of independent
 
 4 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 inquiry and impatience of authoritative opinion at an 
 unusually early age. Many more such instances would be 
 found, I expect, among boys who go out into the world 
 earlier than our Public School boys. 
 
 But there was something much more substantial than all 
 that in Fred's development and character. He was an 
 indefatigable worker. He used to come to me for a list of 
 books to read on some subject he was exploring. It would 
 have been quite fatal to reel off a list : he would have 
 set himself to devour the whole of it without delay, would 
 have suffered from violent indigestion and have proved 
 a most difficult patient to pacify. But he was perfectly 
 ready to work under some direction, and there would never 
 be a doubt of the thoroughness and strength that were 
 put into the work. 
 
 I like to recall one way in which this spirit of thoroughness 
 grew with his growth. He developed very early a keen 
 interest in social and political questions. Of course he 
 flew to extremes. That is the privilege of youth with its 
 glorious emphasis. Yet he soon began to discover that 
 to form sound opinions on political and social questions 
 there must be some considerable knowledge of facts ; so 
 he set himself to master the history of his country ; then 
 he found it impossible to do that without understanding the 
 history of other countries. For the study of history, he 
 found he must possess or train a good memory ; I do not 
 think he had naturally a retentive memory, but he deliber- 
 ately set himself to train it. This represents not unfairly 
 the stage of intellectual power he had reached when he left 
 school : no real literary instinct or interest in literature 
 as such, but a considerable, thorough knowledge of history, 
 which was much more than a mere storing of facts, 
 because of his living interest in politics and social questions 
 and his deep sense of duty to understand them. Then his 
 success in winning a scholarship at Trinity, Cambridge, 
 his visit to Germany, and his natural development brought 
 out the ambition, always present, to go deeper, to study 
 first principles and the reasons of things. So it became 
 his desire, as he often used to say to me, to get on to the 
 Moral Science Tripos.
 
 MEMOIR 5 
 
 Through all this there runs, what was most typical of 
 Fred's nature, an inflexible sense of duty. This came out 
 very strongly when I was first brought into intimate rela- 
 tions with him during his preparation for Confirmation. 
 After much talk and searchings of heart, he decided to 
 postpone the rite and he was confirmed a year later. 
 The same characteristic became, of course, more clearly 
 marked as his position in the school gave him greater 
 responsibility. 
 
 As time went on and his character took more definite 
 shape, he became more aware of his limitations and was more 
 and more generous in his judgments upon others without 
 abating one jot of his own decision. He gradually came 
 to be better understood : without any question he won 
 the respect and confidence of his fellow-prefects and worked 
 well with them. 
 
 I have turned back to the pages of the book in which the 
 prefects that I made inscribed their names. Of those who 
 signed with Fred in the autumn of 1902 one-third have 
 given themselves, as he gave himself, to the one cause 
 that claimed and united them, and all the rest save two, 
 who died earlier, are serving in the forces just as really he 
 was one with them in the spirit of loyalty and service at 
 school. 
 
 Was Fred happy at school ? I do not believe the question 
 would have conveyed much meaning to him. Life to him 
 never seemed to be a question of happiness or unhappiness, 
 unless he interpreted it in the light of St. James's definition : 
 " Happy is the man that can stand the ordeal of living, 
 for, tested and found to ring true, he shall receive the crown 
 of life, a character of true manhood." Life and duty and 
 work were to him grim and solemn things' because he was 
 unusually and deeply sensitive to the inequalities and shams 
 and shames which disfigure human society, and with such 
 enemies he could never make peace. 
 
 I was greatly attached to him : I valued his friendship 
 and his confidences : his death is a grievous loss of fine 
 ability and noble qualities to the cause of social regeneration, 
 which he had so much at heart.
 
 6 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 II. BY MR. FORT, HOUSE MASTER AT WINCHESTER 
 COLLEGE, 1899-1911. 
 
 F. H. Keeling was intellectually the most honest and 
 sincere of all boys whom I have ever known, and he was 
 one of the most persistent. Public School life did not come 
 easily to him, for he was not anything of an athlete, he was 
 a slow and laborious worker in all classical subjects, he 
 was outspoken as to all his opinions, and he did not know 
 the meaning of the word " compromise." At first he was 
 not popular in the House, chiefly because of the last two 
 characteristics, because in spite of his persistence he could 
 never "pass" in swimming, because he insisted on working 
 as many hours a day as he chose and then would not hand 
 on the translation of a passage which he had mastered by 
 his own hard work. It happened that, though it was before 
 the days of the O.T.C., the leaders in the House were 
 eager to have as many members of the House as possible 
 in the Winchester College Volunteer Corps, and Keeling 
 refused to join the Corps for two terms in which he was 
 the only boy in the House in that position. 
 
 Perhaps I was his best friend at Winchester in those 
 eaily days, though later on Dr. Burge understood his work 
 as well as I did. I remember two characteristic incidents 
 of his third year in the school : one that he refused on 
 conscientious grounds to be confirmed, though he was 
 satisfied on the point in the next year ; and the other that 
 on one occasion he formed a combination of boys, who 
 were not prefects, in order to put a stop to certain practices 
 which needed stopping. 
 
 After his first two years at Winchester his position altered 
 greatly, as his remarkable capacity for the study of history 
 told more and more, and most boys began to understand 
 him, while all respected him ; my difficulties then were rather 
 to extract him from troublesome situations with masters. 
 In one case he considered that a master had distrusted him ; 
 in another he found himself punished with a whole division, 
 when he himself was not in fault ; on that occasion he had 
 committed a flagrant act of disobedience and, when brought 
 to account for it, said, " I acted as I did, sir, because the
 
 MEMOIR 7 
 
 punishment was unjust." The master, who behaved with 
 great consideration, gave him only a small penalty in 
 writing, but, knowing Reeling's nature, locked him into the 
 room to do it. He finished the task and escaped by a most 
 difficult route through the window. At that point he brought 
 the case to me ; I urged him to apologize, and he flatly 
 refused to do so. Finally I induced him to go to the master, 
 before he was summoned, and say, " I hope there was no 
 harm, sir, in my leaving the room yesterday when I had 
 finished my imposition " ; and the situation was saved. 
 
 His physical appearance was most deceptive, for he had 
 an immense memory together with a very small head, and 
 enormous resolution in spite of a retreating chin. He was 
 a great upholder of order, though he accepted no rule 
 without an examination of its meaning and purpose, and 
 had a great sense of responsibility towards the community, 
 especially towards the weaker members of it he was 
 exceedingly wise and kind in his dealings with his younger 
 brother. He held opinions on all sorts of problems, which 
 generally present themselves only in University days, and 
 though his opinions changed or rather developed very 
 rapidly, I never knew him hold an opinion except as the 
 result of considerable thought ; while he was always prepared 
 to carry out in practice all that his opinions logically 
 demanded of him. He was a most interesting boy, though 
 many would have considered him an odd one. Thus on 
 one occasion, when I found him in bed with influenza, 
 and said something enthusiastic about what women do 
 for men, this strange head on the pillow replied, " Well, 
 they're paid for it " ; and on two occasions, though he 
 was ordinarily a pattern of respectability and orderliness, 
 he just went mad one was 5th November and the other 
 Mafeking Day. 
 
 When he became head of the House, he was invaluable 
 to me and his influence was of the very highest value to 
 Winchester ; many changes were needed in a House 
 which had, owing to special circumstances, lived a very 
 isolated life for thirty years, and Keeling carried them 
 through with great wisdom and energy, being far more 
 face to face with the difficulties and with the incon-
 
 8 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 veniences of the position than I was. I always considered 
 that the later prosperity of B House was mainly due to 
 what we planned and he executed in 1903-4. 
 
 In his last term of all he determined to attempt what he 
 knew would involve him in great unpopularity, viz. putting 
 an end to the use of " Englishes " throughout the school ; 
 he induced the other prefects to join him in collecting all 
 " Englishes " in B House and then took the matter up 
 to the Head Master. 
 
 I have never met any one who seemed to strive more 
 earnestly to find out the truth or to follow more uncom- 
 promisingly the truth as he saw it. 
 
 In October, 1904, he entered Trinity as a Major scholar. 
 He always loved Cambridge, and used to contrast his four 
 happy years there with his uncongenial life at school. The 
 change was indeed enormous ; he found himself surrounded 
 for the first time by kindred spirits and free to plunge into 
 a stream of just the kind of activity that he loved. His 
 revolutionary views, instead of being a barrier that shut 
 him out from fellowship with his neighbours, became all 
 at once a bond of union, and he was soon the centre of a 
 band of enterprising spirits whose companionship gave 
 him the first great happiness of his life. 
 
 In default of letters written at this period, I will quote 
 from an account of the rebirth of the Cambridge University 
 Fabian Society which he wrote in 1913. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FABIAN SOCIETY.' 
 
 PART I. 1904-8. 
 
 BY F. H. K. 
 
 When I went up in October, 1904, 1 was already a member 
 of the parent Society, and had been a Socialist for some 
 years. Pease gave me an introduction to the secretary of 
 the town Fabian Society of that day, which had a nominal 
 membership of six. I attended the last meeting of that 
 
 1 Cambridge University Magazine, October, 1913.
 
 MEMOIR 9 
 
 body in October, 1904, along with another freshman, 
 W. T. Layton, whom I persuaded to come with me, although 
 he protested his fidelity to sound economic truth. The 
 meeting was not enlivening. The five persons who were 
 present (including Layton and myself) sat on disused 
 grocery cases in an attic above a milk shop in Bridge Street. 
 I remember that one of the members smoked a pipe which 
 did not turn up into a bowl at the end, but opened out like 
 a sort of megaphone and exuded a steady dribble of tobacco 
 ash over its owner's trousers. I wondered if that was a 
 specifically Fabian pipe. 
 
 The only other Fabian undergraduate in the University 
 was Pearsall, whose family is of Garden City fame. I 
 called on him and found him willing to help in starting" 
 a Society if any other members could be obtained. But 
 the only piece of propaganda which I was able to achieve 
 during the year consisted of a speech in favour of the 
 Labour Party at the Union. (That was before the 1906 
 election, and was generally considered outrageous.) 
 
 The real father of the C.U.F.S. is " Dicky " Coit, who 
 came up to King's in 1905, and is eminently suited by reason 
 of his benign character for parentage of every kind. I 
 had never seen or heard of him till he came to call on me 
 in the Lent term of 1906, to ask me to help him to get up 
 a Fabian meeting to be addressed by Dr. Haden Guest. 
 Amber Reeves (now Mrs. G. R. Bianco-White) arranged 
 with Coit to bring a number of Newnhamites. I shall never 
 forget that meeting in the Chetwynd Lecture Room. There 
 was a pretty good audience. I was so obsessed with anxiety 
 about the best way of approaching the strangers present 
 for the purpose of forming a Society that I could never 
 remember subsequently a single thing that Dr. Guest said. 
 However, a small group of people stopped afterwards and 
 agreed to form a Society, of which J. C. Squire was appointed 
 secretary. 
 
 The relative novelty of the Socialist movement in 1906 
 and 1907 made the whole position in Cambridge rather 
 different from what I imagine it at the present moment. 
 I daresay in most ways it made propaganda easier. We 
 certainly did make Socialists of some people who might not
 
 10 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 otherwise have found their way in that direction. The 
 most prominent London Fabians were generous in helping 
 us. During the last two and a half years of my connection 
 with the Society Webb, and Mrs. Webb, Shaw, Wells, 
 Granville Barker, Olivier, Pease, Keir Hardie, Pete Curran, 
 and Dr. Sudekum (of the Reichstag) all addressed meetings 
 for us. Jovial feasts, attended by any number up to thirty 
 people, and subsequent " squashes," became a feature of 
 the evenings when there were meetings. The joint meetings 
 with Oxford Fabians were also good fun. 
 
 The four most important affairs in the history of the 
 Society in my day were the Feminist Question, the Con- 
 stitutional Question, the Keir Hardie meeting, and the first 
 attempt to strengthen the Labour movement in the town. 
 We were the first Society in the University with the 
 possible exception of a couple of science clubs to admit 
 women as members. We were all keen Feminists. I 
 would not go the length of allowing myself to be persuaded 
 by a lady, who shall be nameless, to obtain tickets under 
 false pretences for a Liberal meeting to be addressed by 
 Haldane, in order to enable Mrs. Drummond and her 
 friends to break it up. But I did stand on a barrow outside 
 the Guildhall and assist Mrs. Drummond to hold a meeting 
 in the rain. 
 
 After the presidency of V. H. Mottram we decided to 
 elect a woman as president, to assert the principles of 
 female equality as aggressively as possible. Two Newn- 
 hamites were nominated in order that we might have the 
 fun of an election. When they were ordered to stand 
 down by their college authorities, Edith Moggridge, of 
 Girton, was surreptitiously communicated with, put up, 
 and elected. But she was never allowed by her college 
 authorities to take the chair at a meeting. The position 
 was therefore left vacant for a term by way of protest, 
 and ever since the Society has had a woman treasurer, 
 Mrs. Bianco-White being the first. (Some of them have 
 kept accounts, which was more than one of the two male 
 treasurers did.) No doubt it was all very childish. But 
 Cambridge and life generally have been very different 
 experiences for me owing to the fact that women were
 
 MEMOIR 11 
 
 admitted to the C.U.F.S. I only hope that others feel 
 that it was a small shove worth making, and, above all, 
 that the lady who from that day to this has shepherded 
 the Newnham flock in and out of meetings, who alone 
 knows the whole history of the C.U.F.S., and who has 
 lived through the preaching of Socialism to three genera- 
 tions of undergraduates, does not always regret the job 
 she undertook. 
 
 The true history of the Keir Hardie meeting is this. 
 We took the Guildhall for the meeting in conjunction with 
 a small ad hoc committee of trade unionists and I.L.P.-ers. 
 My bed-maker, who was, and is, one of the greatest women 
 on God's earth, told me a few days before the meeting 
 that a gang of miserable rowing men had concocted a plot 
 in the rooms at the bottom of my staircase to screw up 
 Keir Hardie in my rooms while we had dinner. We there- 
 fore ordered a dinner ostentatiously for Keir Hardie at 
 the college kitchens, and talked everywhere of his coming 
 (by a wrong train), meanwhile secretly arranging that he 
 should be met and taken to King's. On the afternoon 
 of the meeting Mottram went to a theatrical costumier's 
 and was made up as Keir Hardie hat, grey beard and 
 hair (alas ! Tram's hair is naturally grey now), red tie, 
 etc. I drove up with him in a hansom to the Great Gate, 
 and was met by a number of Fabians, who shook hands 
 with the great man. We made our way across the court 
 amidst howls of a few hundred rowing men from various 
 colleges and our other normal enemies. I then bolted to 
 the Guildhall, where we had got a hundred trade unionists 
 to help us to hold the platform against the mob of under- 
 graduates. Meanwhile Mottram, Hubback, and Gomme 
 kept up the fiction of a great feast in my rooms. The doors 
 were screwed up, and a few hundred undergraduates howled 
 with joy in the court. At about eight o'clock Hubback 
 let down a mountaineering rope into Trinity Lane (the 
 rooms were on the second floor), and they all went down it, 
 leaving the lights on. It took the mob about a quarter 
 of an hour to discover what had happened. Then they 
 climbed on the roof, broke the windows, and departed. 
 Meanwhile the Guildhall was being wrecked. A few score
 
 12 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 benches and some windows were broken (the damage cost 
 us altogether 40), and there were the usual accompaniments 
 of eggs and other missiles. We kept the mob back by 
 drawing benches across the gangway, and Keir Hardie 
 was eventually smuggled into King's. The mob only 
 smashed a cab in which he was supposed to be. Three 
 weeks later all the Trinity rowing men marched round the 
 Great Court for an evening to the tune of " We'll Wash Ben 
 Keeling." We were again forewarned, and covered the 
 staircase with margarine, protected the doors and windows 
 by barbed wire, which could be electrified by pressing a 
 button, and laid in a fine stock of coal and water. But the 
 mob was not drunk enough to attack the Dean and four 
 porters who walked up and down at the bottom of the 
 staircase all the evening, though we thirsted for battle. 
 
 As to our effort on behalf of the I.L.P. with good old 
 Secretary Comrade Pindar, and the development of the 
 Keir Hardie Meeting Trade Unionist Committee into a 
 Labour Representation Committee, we did our best, but 
 have been so far outshone by later generations that there 
 is no need to talk of it. It was hard work to keep that 
 L.R.C. going. Still, I am glad we did, if only for the good 
 friends I made there. 
 
 Hugh Dalton abandoned Tariff Reform for Fabianism 
 in the second year of the Society's existence, became its 
 secretary, and succeeded me as president when I went 
 down in 1908. 
 
 W T riting this has made me feel for the first time in my life 
 a wish that I could live again through all the crudities of 
 those Cambridge undergraduate days. I will blush for 
 nothing. It was a past worth living in not merely to 
 be lived through. If a Fabian friend or enemy of those 
 days man or woman sees this, let him know that in 
 my soul I have this moment drained yet another quart 
 to him from the big blue mug. We were at least fools or 
 quarrelsome together if he will have it so. Prosit ! 
 The Cause !
 
 MEMOIR 13 
 
 The following extracts from letters to his brother, written 
 in the autumn term of 1906, carry on the story of Fabian 
 activities. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 Autumn, 1906. 
 
 We (the C.U. Fabian Society) had a public meeting in 
 sympathy with the Russian Revolution the other day. 
 About 170 persons were present. I was in the chair, 
 supported by Madame Kropotkin (the wife of the great 
 anarchist), an ex-president of the C.U. Liberal Club, the new 
 Secretary of the Union who beat me in the recent election 
 and who is a great Tory Democrat, and the girl who is 
 the most prominent Newnham member of our Society. 
 We passed a resolution which is to be sent to the leader 
 of the Labour Party in the late Duma and to several 
 democratic papers in Petersburg if there are any left 
 which have not yet been suppressed by that bloody 
 Russian Government. . . . 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 November, 1906. 
 
 Sorry I have not written for so long. I am awfully busy 
 till the end of next week. I shall probably go off to Vienna 
 about the middle of December. I will certainly come down 
 to Copthill for a day or so just before I go, and shall call at 
 home for a similar period on my return here. I go up to 
 Liverpool next Friday. 
 
 Am proposing a motion condemning the present Govern- 
 ment. I shall attack them for playing the fool with 
 education, and making asses of themselves over Trades 
 Disputes Bill, also for messing about Plural Voting when 
 they should be giving Woman Suffrage, Unemployed Act 
 and Feeding of School Children. Mrs. Philip Snowden 
 was down here yesterday speaking for the Fabian Society 
 on the Woman question. Forty-eight people were present 
 at the meeting in my rooms. I gave a Socialist dinner to 
 six men, Mrs. Snowden, and one Newnham girl afterwards, 
 not an oligarchal complicated feed, but beef, beer, rice, and 
 cheese. (Of course there was wine for the ladies, who can't
 
 14 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 be expected to take beer.) . . . The Fabian Society now 
 numbers sixty. There was an account of our last meeting 
 in to-day's Tribune. 
 
 December, 1906. 
 
 ... I had a very good time at Liverpool. Since then 
 I have been defeated by 13 votes, 157 to 144, at my 
 last shot for office at the Union. It was rather rot to come 
 so near and to lose. But of course a man who takes up an 
 attitude like mine does not expect to receive conventional 
 honours. The retiring President told me that I should 
 probably have got in had I not made a somewhat outspoken 
 attack on the " sport " of the King and aristocracy just 
 before the election. He and all the other officers were 
 strongly in favour of my candidature, though none of them 
 agreed with my views. 
 
 I have been very busy with Socialist politics lately. A 
 lot of Cambridge Socialists, including two girls, went up 
 to town last Friday to take part in a meeting of the London 
 Fabian Society, where H. G. Wells was advocating that 
 middle and upper class Socialists should throw in their 
 lot with the Labour Party. I am all for this policy. . . . 
 
 The following letter from Vienna is characteristic of 
 him in several ways : 
 
 VIENNA. December, 1906. 
 
 I said I could not think of anything I wanted for Christmas, 
 but I should like to revoke that remark and should be humbly 
 grateful if you would send me a book by Bernard Shaw 
 called " The Perfect Wagnerite." I shall be going to a 
 lot of operas during my stay here, and I want to get to know 
 something about musical criticism. I went to the opera 
 last night with an American and a Polish girl and enjoyed 
 it hugely. It is still snowing here. The streets are magni- 
 ficent at night with the lamps shining over the snow. . . . 
 
 In spite of some appearances to the contrary, " Ben " 
 Keeling had a genuine belief in Art. He hated anything 
 which he suspected of dilettantism or sentimentality, and
 
 MEMOIR 15 
 
 he sometimes humorously exaggerated this antipathy 
 for the benefit of his artistic friends. They knew to take 
 it in good part, and to accept the label " bloody aesthete " 
 as a mark of gruff appreciation. He measured art by life, 
 and disliked the purely imaginative. Once when he and 
 a well-intentioned but very uninstructed fellow-Fabian 
 were passing along the cloisters of Neville's Court on their 
 way back from a meeting, they paused to look out through 
 the screen at the wonderfully still, unearthly splendour of 
 the frosted moonlit " Backs," and Keeling burst out into 
 an exclamation of delight. " Yes," said the other man, who 
 had spent the preceding hour or so in hopeless attempts 
 to follow a discussion far beyond him, and was now much 
 relieved to get back to something that seemed common 
 ground "yes, this is what / like dreams." Keeling 
 was offended instantly. " I don't," he said, and turning 
 on his heel, made off. 
 
 He valued art for the ideas in it, and any branch of it 
 that he approached was always tackled as a study, conscien- 
 tiously and with an effort of the brain. This does not mean 
 that it was not enjoyed ; indeed, for anyone with Keeling's 
 " jovial " vein, that could hardly have been possible. On 
 his return to Cambridge in the Lent Term of 1907, he spoke 
 with great enthusiasm of the music he had heard. Wagner 
 he thought glorious, and gave a glowing description of the 
 broad, rich, flooding river-music in the overture to 
 " Rheingold." 
 
 It was characteristic of him that his favourite play of 
 Shakespeare was " The Tempest," because it was the most 
 philosophical. 
 
 With this continental tour is to be connected a story 
 which he often told against himself with full appreciation 
 of the point. One of the best things about him in his 
 undergraduate days was the spontaneous freshness and 
 camaraderie of his relations with his numerous women 
 friends, at an age when many men have not quite rid them- 
 selves of all the awkwardness of boyhood. He was not 
 merely frank but kind, would go long walks and talk with 
 them of their careers or intellectual ambitions, and that 
 not with attention only, but with help. His manner was
 
 16 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 every bit as natural with women as with men, and even his 
 vocabulary was only a very little different. The last 
 evening of this holiday he had been having supper with 
 two ladies whom he had met abroad and liked ; pressed 
 for time, but ravenous, he descended on a piece of bread 
 which happened to have been left half-eaten by his neigh- 
 bour. She said so, and began to cut another for him. 
 " Boh ! " roared Ben scornfully, " / don't mind your bite ! " 
 The ladies looked at one another, and then broke into peals 
 of delighted laughter. Keeling, however, was not aware 
 of having made a joke, and at once demanded (his mouth 
 full of bread) what the devil they were grinning at. " Oh, 
 Mr. Keeling ! " cried one of them, " that's the nearest yet 
 we've ever heard you come to paying a compliment ! " 
 Whereupon Keeling gradually began to laugh. 
 
 Laughter real high-spirited, elemental, joyous laughter 
 was seldom very far from Keeling in those days. In 
 his ideals, certainly, he was most desperately serious ; serious 
 in his aims and studies, serious in his attitude to human 
 life in general ; even liable at intervals to intense depression ; 
 but for all that, he could laugh. Often enough it would 
 begin involuntarily ; in the midst of the most earnest 
 colloquy on the nature of the universe a remark of some- 
 body's would strike his sense of humour, and he would give 
 vent to one or two reluctant hoarse guffaws, then all at 
 once would roar aloud with boisterous amusement. 
 
 There can hardly have been many other men who have 
 become equally notorious in their University so soon. Even 
 a rowing or a football Blue is not quite known by name to 
 everybody ; but in 1907 every undergraduate had heard 
 of Keeling, and even a good many Dons. By those who 
 knew no more about him than his name (which stood of 
 course for Socialism) he was naturally for the most part 
 execrated ; but there may have been some small proportion 
 even of these who did at least admire his obvious courage. 
 At any rate, one night when some half-dozen friends of his 
 were in his rooms, and beer and whisky were being circulated 
 along with such philosophizing as may best accompany 
 them, several half-drunk undergraduates in the court below 
 suddenly interrupted these proceedings with an abusive
 
 MEMOIR IT 
 
 serenade. A council of war being held, and an attack in 
 force decided on, all sallied forth with pokers, tongs, and 
 soda-syphons ; but the enemy behaved most handsomely, 
 apologized, and to the surprise of all, sang Reeling's praises. 
 " We don't want to fight with you, you're a damned fine 
 fellow even though you are a Socialist ; we know quite well 
 you've got a lot of pluck " or sounds to that effect. Ben 
 was strangely moved by this quite unexpected tribute 
 from total strangers only a little more intoxicated than 
 himself ; he stood there guffawing awkwardly, until, over- 
 come with modesty, he retreated up the staircase, and was 
 then left in peace. 
 
 The first trait in Reeling's character to strike any one 
 who had just met him was almost always his amazing 
 energy. He loved to walk and talk with other men, and 
 did both together at a tremendous pace. Like Socrates, 
 he cared mainly for the argument, with the result that, 
 unlike almost all other voluble conversers, he was a ready 
 and attentive listener. The potations of that Greek phil- 
 osopher (limited to convivial occasions) did not impair 
 his health or his intelligence, and here also the resemblance 
 holds. Though not of powerful build (the muscles of his 
 arms at least were under average, by his own account), he 
 liked physical exertion, disdained porterage of all kinds, 
 and fairly revelled in a swim. Few people ever saw him 
 tired, and certainly no one ever saw him slack. He could 
 sit up to all hours. In studying, he worked not so much 
 hard perhaps as fiercely ; one Cambridge friend's experience 
 is significant : " He gave me the use of his own room to 
 work in these two days, but I could not read a sentence ; 
 not that he interrupted much ; he worked or seemed 
 to do so a good deal ; but the presence of his restless 
 personality was a thing I simply could not once forget." 
 He believed in being " elemental," by which he generally 
 meant, living the simple life and living it uproariously. A 
 Trinity man of detached outlook once gave something like 
 the following account of a sleeping party he had come 
 across on Reeling's roof. " B - is elemental, but not 
 democratic, so he sleeps beneath the stars, but with a 
 mattress and luxurious rugs ; Reeling is democratic and 
 
 3
 
 18 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 elemental too, so he has only a rough blanket ; X is 
 
 democratic but not elemental, so he sleeps on the floor of 
 Reeling's room." 
 
 Ben's most delightful quality in those days was, perhaps, 
 his untiring hospitality. His rooms I were the great 
 meeting-place for everybody who had at the same time 
 liberal ideals and was intellectually keen. There they might 
 drink and smoke at almost any time, and discuss the universe 
 ad libitum. As but one instance of the way in which he 
 broadened other men's experiences, reference may be made 
 to the case of a certain youth of ea.ger intellectual outlook 
 who was very poor and had led the narrowest life imaginable 
 in the most drab environment. This man met at various 
 times in Reeling's rooms Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, 
 Granville Barker, Lilian Macarthy, Sidney Webb, several 
 leading members of the Fabian Society, and many of the 
 most interesting undergraduates of the day, including 
 E. S. Montagu and Rupert Brooke. All visitors who came 
 to lecture to the C.U.F.S. were entertained to dinner in 
 the delightful low-roofed sitting-room, with its fine old 
 beams, its wonderful great colour-print just visible on 
 the shadow r ed wall, and its inviting dark-stained wooden 
 settle glowing pleasantly before a copious fire. The well- 
 laid table with its artistic beer-mugs, the kindly smile of 
 Mrs. Coxall, the pervading atmosphere of intellectual 
 keenness and irrepressible high spirits, and most of all the 
 boundless heartiness of Ben himself, combined to give these 
 banquets an exhilaration all their own. 
 
 No account of Reeling's Cambridge life could be complete 
 without some mention of the wonderful relation that existed 
 between him and his bed-maker. Mrs Coxall was one of 
 his best friends. He chaffed her, shouted for her, argued 
 with her, lent her books, respected her enormously, confided 
 in her ; she in her turn was something of a mother to him. 
 
 Many undergraduates have been better off for private 
 means though Reeling had enough to give free scope to all 
 his interests and activities but few can have been more 
 generous with what they had. Among other things, he 
 
 1 In staircase " O," Great Court ; but since the reconstructions 
 of 1910 these rooms are entered from staircase " P."
 
 MEMOIR 19 
 
 offered to finance a friend of his during a whole fourth year 
 at Cambridge, the friend's father having been prevented 
 by financial losses from continuing his education, and 
 Keeling was genuinely disappointed when the offer was 
 refused. 
 
 The " Fish and Chimney " was flourishing about this time. 
 It was a club of some dozen members, mostly from St. 
 John's and Trinity, who met at varying intervals to read 
 old or modern plays ; in the Michaelmas Term of 1906 it 
 was meeting regularly once a week. Keeling enjoyed these 
 functions hugely ; he read distinctly, humorously, and 
 with spirit. In distributing the parts before a reading of 
 " Macbeth," the secretary at once assigned to him the 
 part of Duncan, for no better reason than the early occur- 
 rence in it of his favourite expletive a democratic one. 
 " What bloody man is that ? " demanded Ben with gusto ; 
 and the postman, who happened to have entered just before, 
 was astonished beyond measure. 
 
 Another member of this Club, and a very valued friend 
 of Keeling's Cambridge days, was F. W. Hubback, also of 
 Trinity, who died of wounds in France on 12 February, 
 1917. 
 
 In December, 1907, he went, on the recommendation of 
 a Scottish friend, to Arran for a holiday. He stayed at 
 Rose Villa, Cordon, near Lamlash, and among other things 
 climbed Goat Fell. He was very fond of mountaineering 
 always not, like some less truly " elemental " people, 
 only when it happened to be dangerous. 
 
 To J . C. Squire. 
 
 ARRAN. 28 December, 1907. 
 
 A glorious place, on a large bay with a mountainous island 
 in the middle. It is not very cold. I have bathed three 
 times since I have been here. It is my first visit to Scotland. 
 I spent a day in Glasgow, which is a pretty filthy place. 
 There are, however some glorious Italian and Dutch pictures 
 in the Gallery, though it would be improved if about three- 
 quarters of the things in it were burnt. 
 
 We got lost on the hills the other night and had to crawl 
 down a long glen in the darkness, feeling every step. We
 
 20 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 discovered afterwards that at one point we had been sitting 
 on the edge of a 50-feet waterfall. . . . 
 
 I am going up to Cambridge early this term. I have 
 resolutely refused all political speaking for the next year 
 and am going to grind hard till the end .of March. ... I 
 expect I shall spend next year in town taking bar exams., 
 and doing historical research. . . . Have just finished an 
 awfully interesting little book by Webb on London Educa- 
 tion. It really gives one a very good idea of the enormous 
 amount of educational machinery at work of which I at 
 least was almost entirely ignorant. The Polytechnics are 
 apparently wonderful educational forces. Do you remember 
 John Tanner and 'Enery Straker's conversation on the 
 Polytechnics in " Man and Superman " ? 
 
 I have also been reading Edward Carpenter's books a good 
 lot lately. " Love's Coming of Age " is the best book on 
 the sex question that I know of. 
 
 I wrote a review of an American book on the decline of the 
 birth-rate the other day. It should be in the next Fabian 
 News. I have been asked to draft a tract on Socialism 
 and the Universities. It was with that in my mind that I 
 read Webb's book on London Education. 
 
 It was at a meeting of the C.U.F.S. on 20 February, 
 1908, that Keeling caused a small sensation among the 
 Newnham and Girton contingent by exclaiming, " I hate to 
 see a woman with a dead cat round her neck ! " which was 
 his way of stating that he disapproved of furs. He had a 
 fierce hatred of cruelty, whether vindictive or cold-blooded ; 
 and he once said that the first passion he could remember 
 feeling was an outburst of violent indignation at the sight 
 of what he thought was unjust chastisement administered 
 to a child. 
 
 Towards the end of the following term, on June 7th, 
 Keeling delivered a farewell address to the Society. It was 
 entitled " Apologia Proletarii " i.e. the proletarian's vin- 
 dication of his cause ; but it dealt with many things. Ben 
 wanted to be very clear, and so resolved to write his lecture 
 out ; but these final days were " jovial " ones, and when the
 
 MEMOIR 21 
 
 appointed date arrived he found he could not get it finished. 
 He decided to read as much as he had written and then to 
 improvise the rest. There is at least one friend of his who 
 still remembers the strangest passage in that really remark- 
 able discourse. This passage was part read, part spoken ; 
 the transition was in the middle of a clause ; and the length, 
 the involution, the redundancy, the incoherence, and com- 
 plete obscurity of the sentence in which Keeling apologized 
 for that transition, on the ground of his bein^j^o much 
 better qualified to speak than write, were quite incredible. 
 The fact is, what he had written had been written well. 
 His speaking, then as often in his early days, was spoiled 
 by almost feverish over-emphasis. 
 
 Some days afterwards Keeling " went down." He 
 had taken a First Class in the First Part of the History 
 Tripos in 1906, and a First Class in the Second Part in 1907, 
 when he became B.A. In 1907-8 he studied Economics, 
 attending the lectures of Prof. Marshall. In the mean- 
 time, more people of an intellectual temper had passed 
 through his rooms than through those of any other under- 
 graduate of his day. Of the friends he made in those 
 four years, some often saw him afterwards and some 
 did not. But all alike remembered him ; they could not 
 help it.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 
 
 1908 (AGED 22) 
 
 IT was in June, 1907, that I first saw Frederic Keeling at one of 
 Mrs. Webb's receptions. The rooms were crowded, but this lanky 
 youth, with big brown eyes and ineffective chin, caught my atten- 
 tion more than once. He seemed oddly inappropriate in those 
 surroundings, eager and rather scornful, as if he were looking for 
 something that was not there. No one could tell me his name, 
 and I did not learn it till a month or two later, at the Fabian 
 Summer School, where I happened to be in charge when he and 
 a Cambridge friend arrived, and to receive them when they rode 
 up on their bicycles. It was the first year of the Fabian Summer 
 School, which found its home in those days in a romantic spot in 
 North Wales. The party was neither large nor formal, and " Ben," 
 as he was called at Cambridge, soon became the centre of it. He 
 lectured on Economic History, led mountain expeditions, and 
 joined vehemently in every sort of discussion. 
 
 Though at this time a blundering, headstrong creature, he was 
 nevertheless attractive, absurdly egotistical, and yet full of public 
 spirit and ready for any self-sacrifice if he could see that it was 
 for the common good. He had, too, an engaging way of treating 
 his elders as if they were equals. The deference due to age is so 
 often a dissociating barrier that elderly people are sometimes very 
 willing to forgo it, especially when, as in Ben's case, one could be 
 sure of frank, friendly sympathy instead. 
 
 During these few weeks in Wales he and I got to know one 
 another pretty well, and he began to form a habit, which lasted 
 for many years, of telling me what he was doing and thinking. 
 After we left Llanbedr, however, there was a break in our inter- 
 course. He returned to Cambridge and I heard but little of him. 
 It was not until Easter of 1908 that we met again. He had been 
 going through an emotional crisis which he took very much to 
 heart, and was badly in need of advice and consolation. He was 
 staying at a cottage in the New Forest, whither he withdrew from 
 his cheerful circle at Cambridge when he felt the need of thinking 
 things out alone. 
 
 23
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 23 
 
 He was at this time deep in the history of the South African 
 colonies, with a view to a thesis for a Trinity Fellowship, and was 
 projecting a visit to South Africa. He was also reading Marx, as 
 will appear from his letters. It was characteristic of him that the 
 work he happened to be doing filled the horizon and overflowed 
 constantly into his conversation. 
 
 He had begun to read for the Bar and was coming up from time 
 to time to eat his Bar dinners. During these visits he got into 
 touch with the London Fabian Society and saw a good deal of 
 some of its members. 
 
 To J. C. Squire. 
 
 LYNDHURST, HANTS. 
 
 22 April, 1908. 
 
 . . . Cambridge Socialism is really doing pretty well on 
 the whole. The most important thing in the Society is 
 the excellent nucleus we have got of first- and second-year 
 King's men. Dalton (second year) and Brooke I (second 
 year) are splendid men. Dalton will probably certainly 
 be president next year. Brooke is a poet and classical 
 scholar. He is just going to become a full member. Then 
 there are two first-year classical scholars, S., who will 
 probably be secretary, and Z., a mystical Jew. Then 
 of course there is Selwyn. 2 I think we shall keep him, 
 though his politics are rather erratic. He comes into contact 
 with Father Bull and other leading Christian Socialists. 
 The only danger is that King's will rather monopolize 
 the show. There is no longer a strong Trinity Socialist 
 set, I regret to say. 
 
 ... I am rather wishing I had not stood for the Fabian 
 Executive now. I am pretty sure to come out bottom. 
 Had the election come in term time I might have done better, 
 as I expect both Cambridge and Oxford friends would have 
 canvassed and given instructions in the mystical efficiency 
 of the plumping vote. (I can't be accused of canvassing 
 you now as the poll will be closed in a few hours.) . . . 
 My brother is going up to Cambridge next year. I think 
 he will be a Socialist all right. . . . 
 
 1 Rupert Brooke. 
 
 Rev. E, G. Selwyn, now Head Master of Bradfield.
 
 24 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 THE UNION SOCIETY, CAMBRIDGE. 
 ii June, 1908. 
 
 It seems a long time since I saw you last. I have been 
 doing a vast number of different things of varying degrees 
 of futility. I did not come to stay with you when I ate 
 my remaining Bar dinners for the term as I felt it my duty 
 to go and see how Guy was getting on. 
 
 Ten days ago I went to fulfil an old engagement to spend 
 a week-end with L. at his country cottage. It really was 
 an experience worth having. I am usually too obsessed 
 with problems relating either to myself or to humanity 
 at large to give myself up in sheer " abandon " to the 
 pleasure of the moment. However, I managed to catch 
 on to the atmosphere there and I don't think I have ever 
 had such a debauch of pleasurable idleness for a couple 
 of days in my life. I have a great liking for L. I 
 have little or no artistic taste myself, but I love the 
 company of artists of nearly every kind. 
 
 Well, it was all very delightful, and I feel the better for 
 it and very strongly inclined to " ask for more." 
 
 I was quite miserable for a couple of days after returning 
 to Cambridge. However, I had that agitation against 
 the Hall on my hands and many other things to help 
 diminish the force of the images of those idyllic moments. 
 
 Last Monday I delivered an address to the Fabians here. 
 The central idea was Socialism as the creator of liberty 
 but I talked at some length of the family and ideas of sexual 
 morality. My friends say I am obsessed with sex nowa- 
 days ; perhaps that is true. However, I stirred up the 
 best Fabian discussion we have ever had here. Newnham 
 was very shocked. ... I was very serious, but I felt some 
 qualms afterwards and wondered if I really had talked 
 merely to satisfy myself and might have made a more 
 profitable farewell address, but on reflection I am glad I 
 said what I did. The family is going to be the crux of the 
 whole social question, and some one has got to open the eyes 
 of these virgins. Of course the respectables predominated
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 25 
 
 and got up and talked sentiment, but there were a good 
 few men in sympathy with me. 
 
 If we ever are to break the family or which is a better 
 way of putting it secure liberty for other forms of social 
 organization, it will be, not primarily through the dissemina- 
 tion of theories, but because of the growth of personal dislike 
 for the institution, which I find a very large proportion of 
 my friends have in common with me. It is one of my 
 dreams that through my numerous and growing friendships 
 with Cambridge and Oxford and other Socialists of my own 
 generation, I may be able to do something towards creating 
 a large enough body of opinion to make a development, 
 in those other forms which are to supersede family organiza- 
 tion, possible. It does not take a vast number of individuals 
 to clear a space in the jungle of convention sufficiently 
 large for experiment provided only we keep together 
 closely. A hundred really determined individuals in 
 more or less important positions, some of them with a 
 measure of economic independence, can do a good lot to 
 influence public opinion. 
 
 I made a miserable speech against Harold Cox here the 
 other night. I am just now in an awkward stage for a 
 Socialist agitator knowing enough economics to have 
 undermined the enthusiastic cocksureness with which I 
 used to roar my half-truths, and yet not having ideas and 
 facts sufficiently at my fingers' ends to have acquired the 
 confidence that is bred of deep knowledge. However, I 
 can see what I need in order to increase my power which 
 is the most important thing at my age. 
 
 I daren't re-read this letter, or I should tear it up for its 
 pages of ceaseless egoism. However, if you are bored you 
 must say so and it will be a good lesson to me. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 30 June, 1908. 
 
 I am more or less in solitude in Cambridge now, and 
 am having an opportunity for some healthy meditation as 
 well as work.
 
 26 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I have been thinking over things in general a good bit 
 and have come to several conclusions. . . . 
 
 I am going to do nothing but work for two months till 
 I go to Wales. I have started at it pretty solidly, and I 
 shall probably go down to Lyndhurst in a day or two to 
 continue grinding without any interval. I have also come 
 to the conclusion that if I have any more of Cambridge it 
 will do me harm. I have rather shut myself off from 
 realities I mean democratic realities lately for the sake of 
 acquiring intellectual knowledge and also for the sake of 
 cultivating sides of myself in a hothouse manner. I feel 
 I have been losing some of my old fire. That was inevitable 
 for a time. You can't go on ranting quite so readily if 
 you are conscious of economic difficulties at every step. 
 But I see there is a danger of becoming a slave of economic 
 facts instead of their master, and when I have gone through 
 the economic grind which I am setting myself, there is 
 a danger that I might find my enthusiasm gone. But I 
 am determined that shan't be. ... So once I have slept 
 my forty-five nights in order to get my 20 for this quarter, 
 let there be an end of Cambridge for me. I feel I must 
 have a wider world. 
 
 6 a.m. Three miles up the river. 
 
 I have been camping out up here last night. It has been 
 a glorious night and morning. When I went to sleep soon 
 after 10 and again when I first woke at 12.45 it was light 
 enough to read, and on both occasions there was a long 
 stretch of red and yellow sky to be seen in a gap in the 
 woods. I slept in a field of newly cut grass, and the smell 
 is one for the nostrils of the gods. This morning I rose 
 soon after 4 and walked a good way up the river. It 
 was simply glorious. Fresh woods, grass with jovial-looking 
 cart-horses feeding and eyeing me in a brotherly way, the 
 steaming river, a cornfield with poppies in it, an oat-field 
 with dew on the white grains glistening in the sun, roses 
 everywhere along the bank, sometimes growing on the top 
 of the willow-tree trunks and forget-me-nots at frequent 
 intervals. I am now lying again in the field where I slept
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 27 
 
 amid the glorious smell of the cut grass and with the joy 
 of " bird song at morning " in the woods round me. 
 
 Nature will afford my chief relaxation and my only 
 passion for the next two months anyhow . . . though I 
 admit I can't get B. out of my mind. The sight of the 
 sunset as I went to sleep last night and my walk this 
 morning made me think of her. . . . 
 
 Back to economics. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 BANK, LYNDHURST. 
 
 6 July, 1908. 
 
 I have been here alone since last Thursday. I got your 
 letter a day or so after I came. Needless to say the forest 
 is simply glorious just now. Since Friday it has been quite 
 cool too. I read a lot out of doors, but the little sitting- 
 room is quite a good place to work in as the sun is only 
 on it in the afternoon. I am now under a tree on the hill 
 overlooking the hamlet where we came on the afternoon 
 when you arrived. . . . 
 
 I have read " Jude the Obscure " since I came down here. 
 I remember you talked about it when you were here. It 
 is an extraordinary book. I wish I had read it earlier. 
 But then, one can only interpret books in the light of one's 
 own experience. A few days before I left Cambridge I 
 got together about a dozen Fabians to read " Man and 
 Superman." We read the whole play, including Act III. 
 I read " John Tanner," and I believe I read it rather well ; 
 at any rate, I enjoyed it hugely. But what surprised me 
 most was the enormous number of ideas which I saw in 
 the play as compared with what I had seen when I read 
 it just a year ago. Practically the whole of that lecture 
 Shaw gave on " Marriage " at the school is contained in the 
 play and appendixes, besides a lot of other things on the 
 same subject. . . . 
 
 I suppose there really is quite a large ferment in society 
 generally at the present moment on the subject of marriage 
 and the family as institutions. And yet how small it seems 
 compared with the vast mass of unthinking acquiescence
 
 28 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 or hypocritical makeshift. One aspect of the thing as it 
 concerns myself has been in my mind on and off since I 
 came down here that is, the extent to which one has to 
 be double-faced about one's real moral attitude. I don't 
 propose to solve the question for myself, much less for any 
 one else, in a doctrinaire way. But the problem has just 
 begun to show itself in my life in a small way. I believe 
 what perhaps helps me more than anything else in my 
 dealings with people is my openness and candour. It's 
 not a virtue often it's a nuisance both to others and to 
 myself : but I simply can't help it. It is the result of 
 stupidity I'm a very poor liar, and I don't like having 
 secrets that I share with no one at all. ... If I had to 
 go about the world concealing a large part of my life, it 
 would rob me of much of my power such as it is. And 
 whatever may be the value of political or any other kind 
 of respectability I don't think I shall do it. And if I act 
 up to my ideals I don't see why I should have to, for we 
 are righting for what is really an ethical advance. I have 
 always found that if I keep that notion honestly in my 
 head I can make men who a priori hate my principles at 
 least listen to me. 
 
 I had no idea Hardy was such a thinker as well as an 
 artist. Having little or no literary feeling, I am rather a 
 sentimentalist about novels when they really get hold of 
 me, and the last sixty pages of " Jude " simply tortured 
 me. I am conscious enough of my own ignorance of the 
 psychology of women. But, good God ! How much less 
 some men know and how little they seem to learn in 
 a lifetime ! I came across a curious statement in 
 " Weininger " the other day to the effect that no woman 
 has ever given an account of her feelings during pregnancy 
 (he says generally that it is only through men that we can 
 learn about women). I doubt if the statement is true, but 
 I wondered if there were any basis for it. 
 
 I am grinding away at Marx now. It is somewhat 
 hard and there is rather a lot of unnecessary, rather 
 nonsensical wordiness mixed up with the essential stuff 
 and some jovial and blasphemous metaphors and 
 epigrams.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 29 
 
 I shan't come up to the Fabian soiree, partly because I 
 am in a semi-melancholy and rather lonely mood just now, 
 and partly because I am growing a beard and it is not 
 quite a fortnight old and looks rather awful. Look here ; 
 won't you come down for next week-end on Saturday ? 
 You can get a week-end ticket to Lyndhurst. If you can't 
 do that, you must come to Cambridge. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LYNDHURST. 8 July, 1908. 
 
 Thanks so much for your letter which came this morning. 
 I don't think I shall come up to town this week. 
 
 The beard is at an awful stage. But I don't want to 
 sacrifice it and go through all the previous development 
 again ; and it will mean that I can't start again till after 
 I have been to Mrs. Webb on the I7th. But perhaps I 
 might keep it on as it is, even if I came, though I should 
 have to summon up a lot of courage. 
 
 I have been working at Marx all day and am getting very 
 keen on it. I go very slowly but am getting more and more 
 interested. Of course there are definite fallacies glaring 
 fallacies but at times the spirit and style are full of dignity 
 and force. And the book is well worth reading after one 
 knows something of the classical school. 
 
 Wednesday evening. 
 
 I went for -a long walk this afternoon over the hill in the 
 wood which we climbed on that wet morning. It had 
 poured with rain for some time this morning and the woods 
 were glorious, with the sun shining on the wet trees and 
 grass. At first there were heavy black clouds about and 
 the undulating pine-woods looked almost like South German 
 scenery. There is a beautiful avenue of those cone-shaped 
 firs just beyond the point which we reached, and farther on 
 still a lot of open moorland on high ground above the woods. 
 
 I was in a mood for Nature, and shouted motives out of 
 " Siegfried" and the " Walkiire " from pure joy.
 
 30 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 21 July, 1908. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter. I am so glad you 
 were able to see R. 1 
 
 I turned out some sort of a report for Mrs. Webb with 
 the assistance of one or two other men and went to stay 
 with them on Thursday. Needless to say I had a most 
 interesting time in very many ways. I shan't have time 
 to tell you anything that happened now. But about the 
 most important thing was that I definitely settled on what 
 I shall turn my hand to, at any rate for the present. In 
 accordance with their suggestion, I shall select a working- 
 class borough, settle down there next October or September, 
 do everything I can in the way of local politics and 
 administration, possibly try my hand at some writing, any- 
 how finish off my Bar exams., and look out for the secre- 
 taryship of any public or semi-public committee which 
 is going. 
 
 I am quite clear now that this is right. It is what I 
 have intended to try for ultimately for some years, only 
 I came to set up as preliminary tasks trying for a Trinity 
 Fellowship and the South African expeditions The latter 
 must go by the board ; I am sorry in many ways, but it 
 seems best. I may still try for the Trinity Fellowship ; 
 it seems rather poor to stop trying for a thing. But I 
 feel that it will not be from weakness if I let it go alto- 
 gether. I know I have got the will to make myself grind 
 at research for two years if I like, but I am thoroughly 
 convinced that I am not primarily or indeed to any great 
 extent a man of books. When I tabulate the pros and cons 
 as to whether I shall make the fellowship my main object 
 for two years, the cons clearly predominate : 
 
 Pro. (i) An excellent start in life if I get it would give 
 me credit, etc. (2) ? 1,400 or so in cash. (3) A good 
 training in fact, grubbing, and a more or less useful 
 agglomeration of facts for political purposes. 
 
 Con. (i) My chances are not very great. (2) If I don't 
 
 1 My daughter, whom he married in 1909, at this time in prison 
 as a suffragist. E.T.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 31 
 
 get it I am practically two years behind in politics. (3) I 
 have not got sufficient brain to go in for politics keenly 
 and at the same time do purely academic research. I am 
 too keen and get too excited about the former. (4) I 
 shall learn far more by a combination of local administration 
 and reading economics, etc., with a view to applying it 
 to practical problems than by anything else I can do during 
 the next few years (5) The political prospects look promis- 
 ing for me. (6) Cash is not an essential to me. (7) A 
 Trinity Fellowship, as against a Trinity Scholarship, will not 
 add vastly to my reputation among Socialists, etc. Also it 
 is not reputation but present personality that really counts. 
 Anyhow I have decided; and I am going to start stirring 
 up some borough next autumn. I have already communi- 
 cated with Bray, Ensor, Sanders, and some of my Labour 
 friends in Southwark with a view to making my choice. 
 I think it will be Southwark unless I hear of any place 
 more promising. 
 
 I am probably coming to town for a day to see Ensor, 
 Sanders, etc., soon. I would stay the night with you only 
 I think I must come back here and go on with my profitable 
 slumbers it works out at nearly ten shillings a night if 
 I get the full forty-four done. 
 
 The Fabians here are very keen on my taking this line. 
 As it happens, the two leading men now both have a chance 
 of securing a measure of financial independence as soon as 
 they finish up here, and if I succeed in showing that there 
 is a useful career on the lines I suggest they will probably 
 come and join me. I hope my friend Dudley Ward will 
 come and live with me at once and give me some help. I 
 have hopes that I might secure a regular stream of Cam- 
 bridge Socialists for South London. It would really be a 
 new movement no damned ideas of religion, philanthropy, 
 or " social service," but a plain carrying out of what will 
 in the future become normal activities of citizenship. By 
 God ! if we could capture a Borough Council or a Board of 
 Guardians we would shift something. 
 
 I wish I were going to set about to earn my living in 
 some ways. Webb said I might be making 300 a year by
 
 32 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 writing, if I turn my work into articles, etc., in a few years. 
 But I don't believe I have got the readiness for that sort of 
 thing. So long as I really am doing work, and damned 
 hard work, it won't matter not making money. And I 
 think I shall manage to find plenty to do. 
 
 This decision has put new life into me. I am working at 
 " Industrial Democracy," " Progress and Poverty," and 
 dipping into the later volumes and miscellaneous works of 
 Marx. 
 
 God ! how sex seems to distort our lives so often, when it 
 ought to be the core of their fullness ! There is no dignity 
 in this continual pointless obsession with the thing. How 
 we misinterpret our own personalities over it and other 
 people's ! I felt almost a cynic the other night. E. was 
 in my rooms he is up here for the long vac. talking about 
 C. D. But he was not really talking about her. He 
 cannot know her as she is. He misses much that is bad 
 and almost as much that is good. Of course we can only 
 interpret others by what is in ourselves and when we are 
 in love by what is highest in ourselves, I suppose. But 
 while E., who is still passionately in love with her, was 
 talking away, I could do nothing but sit and think. There 
 was nothing discreditable to her in the situation. Only 
 the contemplation of E.'s utter misunderstanding and 
 ignorance and blindness makes me so mad at the universal 
 folly, though, no doubt, he gets a thousand things truths 
 one might call them out of life from his passion that I 
 miss with my (comparative) reasonableness. Why do I see 
 truth more than he ? And yet I know there is something 
 wrong in his incapacity to see facts, though it may not 
 be all loss. 
 
 Look here ; do select some day next week to come and see 
 me. I should like you to come and see me while I am still at 
 Cambridge. Is the Summer School business still pressing ? 
 
 You can spare one night away. 
 
 I am writing this by the twilight on the top of my tower. 
 It is getting dark now and I must resume my economics. 
 Good-night. Do come down.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 33 
 
 The Fabian Summer School opened again in August, and Keeling 
 returned to Llanbedr, almost as to a home, having persuaded 
 several of his best friends to join him there. He arrived first, 
 and after a week or two went off to meet them for a walk over 
 the mountains. Two of the following letters were written during 
 this expedition and the rest from a tent on the shore to which he 
 withdrew later on. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 BIRCHER KNOLL, LEOMINSTER. 
 10 o'clock Wednesday night, 28 August, 1908. 
 
 Just a line to post to-morrow. I have had a most 
 enjoyable day with Dalton, Shove, Brooke, Schloss, and 
 Strachey. You may know some of the names. This 
 evening Dudley Ward turned up unexpectedly, which was 
 very jovial. I look forward to the society of some of my 
 dearest Cambridge friends with that of the Pen-yr-alt 
 people very much. We are off to Llanferfechan at eight 
 o'clock to-morrow. 
 
 Last week was a strain for me in many ways. I came 
 utterly tired mentally. I was dissatisfied with and worried 
 over my last two lectures, and of course sex came in again 
 as the last straw. What a damned fool I am, or rather 
 how unbridled my emotions are ! 
 
 The fact of the matter is that by the time I left Pen-yr-alt 
 I was being eaten up by a kind of wild attraction I have 
 never felt before and did not want for X. By God ! 
 you will laugh at me for a fool some day, only don't just 
 now. I was fighting that thing more and more every 
 day. I was alternately seeking out and avoiding that 
 woman. I have never felt myself lose my self-possession 
 in any one's presence so much before. I always knew what 
 I was immediately about before with any woman. She 
 knew something was up. I tramped all day Monday 
 with Baynes, R , and C - in order to get the atmo- 
 sphere of the mountains and of straightforward comradeship 
 with the three people there who could give it me best. 
 Then I was all right and hugely happy. But till I was 
 well off, and when I got back, this curious, absolutely in- 
 voluntary, driving, haunting desire which was quite new 
 
 4
 
 34 
 
 came over me. There is no choice or the minimum of 
 choice in it. ... 
 
 Oh, it is so stupid and I feel tired and maimed about it. 
 It was an effort to drag myself away yesterday. I know 
 she is leaving on Saturday. I knew it was best and I knew 
 I must go, but I could not pull myself together. So I 
 muttered something about seeing her in town and simply 
 turned and jumped on to my bicycle and bolted. ... I 
 must go to bed. I don't know whether I shall post this. 
 I hate this instability on the sexual side of myself. I am 
 trying to make myself more stable in every way. But 
 if you were dissatisfied with me very much in the last 
 few days, please remember this thing was growing in me. 
 I suppose I shall get rid of it. That will make it still more 
 silly. But at any rate it is real, and I feel a wildness about 
 the whole thing I have never known before. Well, perhaps 
 this letter will never go. If it does go, here is a study 
 in human caprice for you and a flashlight on the vitals 
 of an honest fool. 
 
 NEAR LLYN OGWEN 
 
 (At Supper in a Farmhouse with Bayncs, Dukes, Hubback). 
 10 o'clock Thursday night, 29 August, 1908. 
 
 " Pedestrian exorcism." 
 
 Rather a good Meredithian phrase. Exactly what I 
 have been doing to-day. I have been walking the devil 
 out of me. But there was a ghost by my side at intervals. 
 I am in glorious physical condition and couldn't stand 
 the slow pace of the majority when we left Llanferfechan. 
 So Godwin and I got ahead. We had all made this place 
 our objective. Godwin and I lost our way, got off the main 
 ridge, and came around through a long valley and marsh 
 and by Lord Penrhyn's quarries. We found Hubback 
 and Dukes here. The others (four in number) had all 
 crocked up, and gone down to Aber. The opening climb 
 up from Llanferfechan was very stiff and they were in bad 
 training. I am going along a hefty traverse on Tryfan 
 with Bill to-morrow. The others are going up a milder way. 
 Glorious country and views. But 1 can't get back my 
 untroubled exuberance. She will probably have gone 
 when you get this. I don't know how stupid the letter 
 I scribbled last night is, but I will send it after all.
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 35 
 
 The others demand bed and I must stop soon. We shall 
 meet the four weaklings at Llanberis to-morrow night. I 
 am going to sleep out with Dukes. 
 
 I shall be glad to see you again ; this walk is glorious, 
 but I am haunted and I can't exorcise the devil completely, 
 and it gives me a kind of mental tiredness which conflicts 
 with the physical joy of the mountains. Good-night. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ON THE SHORE AT LLANBEDR. 
 
 I September, 1908, 10.30 p.m. 
 
 I have been lying listening to the river for a long time. 
 As Bill has probably told you, we put the tent up tem- 
 porarily only a short distance from the bridge, right on the 
 river bank. The sound of the water is wonderful. There 
 is the gentle ripple of the surface water on the rocks, the 
 steady drumming of the main stream, and a sort of sucking 
 swirl every few seconds like a great, jovial, overfed beast 
 grunting. I wish I knew a piece of music that expressed 
 the spirit of a stream of this size as the overture of 
 " Rheingold " expresses the might of a giant river. 
 
 It was really impracticable to get the tent over the sand- 
 hills to-night. Amongst other things, I couldn't get a 
 lantern, also there is no fresh water by the sandhills ; so I 
 stopped here to-night and asked Bill to send two sturdy 
 men to help me take the tent and other things two or three 
 miles early to-morrow. 
 
 I must resist the temptation to make psychical corpora 
 vilia of people generally (silly insects insist on outraging 
 my humanitarian sentiments by immolating themselves 
 in my candle). What a lot of people I seem destined to 
 bring trouble upon, either by crashing about and experi- 
 menting in relationships with them or else by demanding 
 their sjmipathy. I am appalled by the thought often. 
 Yet I don't will to do it. Perhaps I shall learn to be less 
 of a nuisance some day, or to pay back some of the debt 
 vicariously. 
 
 2 September. 
 
 I have just come up to the inn for dinner ; somewhat 
 tired after transporting the tent and my goods to the shore
 
 86 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 with the aid of D. and S. We had rather a business getting 
 the tent up in the wind. I trust I shall not find it blown 
 down when I return. I believe it is in the exact spot where 
 you and R. and I spent several hours one very hot day a 
 year ago. Do come down to-morrow. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 5 September. 
 
 It is I a.m., but the situation is so delightful that I must 
 write you a few lines before I sleep. I got a kettle in the 
 village after leaving you and came back via the station 
 and Mochras Farm. They are willing to give me meals 
 there, and, if I like, a room, or to let me pitch my tent there 
 in a field overlooking the sea. The evening and night have 
 been glorious, a moon for several hours over the sea, clear 
 starlight, and scarcely any wind. I dragged up an enormous 
 log and have got a splendid fire by which I am lying now, 
 wrapped in your rug. The tide is pretty high, so the waves 
 are roaring steadily and every now and then a bird whistles. 
 I am going to sleep outside the tent by the fire. It has 
 been so glorious. I wish you had been here. 
 
 But I must sleep now if I am to catch the 7.19. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 10 September. 
 
 I felt rather bored with K. on our walk this morning, 
 but we had at his suggestion a glorious bathe in a pool we 
 passed in the woods. It was raining at intervals, so no one 
 was likely to come. The sun came out suddenly and the 
 pinewoods to the left above the rocks stood out against a 
 glorious piece of blue sky. I shouted and splashed about 
 for joy. Now I am going back to my island. 
 
 I am learning a lot from Morley's " Gladstone." I 
 have really only just begun to learn about men's motives 
 and methods from history. One requires experience of 
 one's own to go on first, before one gets much from books ; 
 at least, I do. 
 
 Do meet me soon. 
 
 (Written in showers of rain on the Artro bank near where 
 we walked the other day.)
 
 CAMBRIDGE AND LLANBEDR 37 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 IN THE WOODS BEHIND PEN-YR-ALT. 
 
 Sunday, 13 September, 1908. 
 
 ... I am conscious of an almost restless energy in me. 
 (That is no boast, for energy in itself is not good or bad.) 
 It finds expression in numberless actions, every one of them 
 small or great, the result ultimately of an inexplicable im- 
 pulse generally having some definite sudden origin at some 
 moment of time. How far other men act in this way I 
 don't know. I only know that my whole life consists of a 
 constantly overflowing stream of energies partially guided 
 by reason, experience rather than logic being the most 
 important instrument of the guiding power. This is the 
 most accurate account I can give of my own life processes. 
 The obvious result of them is that there is a constant process 
 of selection going on between numberless experiments 
 a regular struggle for existence. Of course my progress 
 depends largely on very many experiments being made 
 which are detrimental to other people as well as myself. 
 God knows that I suffer enough from the contemplation 
 of the fact. Yet I do not shrink from it. My faith in 
 myself, my will to live, call it what you will, accepts it as 
 inevitable and marches on. I feel somehow that, whether 
 for good or for evil, that marching on is the advance of an 
 entity which is always greater than the mere ego which is 
 writing this crude piece of psychology to you. 
 
 I caused years of suffering to the mother who bore me 
 and now I have caused indefinite suffering to F., yet I 
 would willingly atone for either of these courses of action 
 by any work of expiation. I would consciously select a 
 life of narrower interests, less effective work, less dear 
 friendships and loves if by so doing I could increase the well- 
 being of my fellow-men. But the point is one does not 
 consciously select one's life : and the ego that would alone 
 be capable of conscious selection is only a part of the driving 
 force that makes up the larger whole. ... I believe if 
 there is anything in the feelings of humility and unworthi- 
 ness which the greatest Christian teachers have spoken of, I 
 am experiencing these sentiments at this juncture of my life.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WALWORTH 
 
 OCTOBER, 1908, TO OCTOBER, 1909 (AGED 22-3) 
 
 AT the end of the Welsh holiday Ben went back to Cambridge 
 for a few weeks, and then finally gave up his much-loved rooms 
 under the tower in Trinity Great Court, and came to live in London. 
 
 He and a friend took part of a grimy house in the Walworth 
 Road, where he plunged at once into local politics and social work. 
 Care Committees were being formed all over London, and the work 
 of helping to organize them was a congenial task, and one that 
 brought him into contact with several new people. 
 
 Few letters are available for this period, from October, 1908, to 
 October, 1909. He wrote but little to me as he was frequently 
 coming to see me at Hurlingham. The year was, however, so 
 eventful for him and marked so rapid a change in character and 
 outlook, that some record of it seems essential. The following 
 entries from his diary may serve to fill the gap. 
 
 FROM HIS JOURNAL. 
 
 187 WALWORTH ROAD. 
 
 30 September, 1908. 
 
 Tidied papers. Worked at Hobson's " Economy of 
 Distribution." Called on J. R. MacDonald with D. Saw 
 first Mrs. MacDonald. Then J. R. M. came in. A born 
 politician, strong will, fine head, good brain. Arranged 
 to tramp with them some day in Bucks. Dined with M. 1 
 Returned. Listened S.D.F. meeting on unemployment. 
 Crude. But one man knew something about details of 
 administration and the whole thing inspired me. Some- 
 thing dramatic about street-corner meetings voice of 
 Demos. Worked at Hobson. D. returned and told me 
 both elected on committee of Fabian Nursery. Good to 
 
 1 " M." in the journal stands for " Mother." He was in the 
 habit of calling me so at this time. E.T. 
 
 38
 
 WALWORTH 89 
 
 get in touch with all sorts of political work, though not 
 very keen on this. Getting to like the feel of London. 
 
 14 November, 1908. Read Adam Smith. 4.30. Walked 
 to Tower Bridge and back, looking in at Old Kent 
 Road reading-room. I.L.P. social. Very few turned 
 up, read extract from Shaw to them. Others came later. 
 Explained theory of monopoly rent till 12.45. 
 
 15 November. Slept till nearly eleven by mistake. 
 Rushed to Hurlingham and got half a game of hockey. 
 Ran round field for exercise. Lunched at M.'s with C. B., 
 Mrs. S., and T. Discussed economics. I felt a little 
 irritated. I am sure they were talking bosh often, and 
 yet my knowledge was not enough to prove to them 
 where they were wrong. Talked to M. and Brian about 
 Socialist State Church and M.'s lax ideas of truth ! 
 Returned home, prepared lecture nominally on ' The 
 Spirit of Democracy," really on my conception of State 
 Church. This religious phase really seems to be getting 
 hold of me. Lecture went pretty well. Four old 
 Browning Hall men, who had known me there two years 
 ago, came to hear me good solid men ; I liked T. P. 
 especially. Must try to get them into I.L.P. 
 
 16 November. Read Adam Smith till four, meant to 
 go to Abbey service but found it is at three. Read " Way 
 of all Flesh." Felt very lonely. A letter came from M. 
 beginning " Dear Keeling." Why am I so sensitive ? I 
 can't help it. I wish I had some one with me whom 
 I could love and sympathize with completely. I fear 
 I may never find such a person. Most of us never do, I 
 suppose. Went out to walk streets in order to get com- 
 radeship of many faces. Dined in a French restaurant 
 in Soho. Thought of B. Had a half-bottle of wine and 
 cigarettes for once, felt more cheerful. 
 
 18 November. Wrote letters. Read Adam Smith. Went 
 to afternoon service at Westminster Abbey at 3 p.m. 
 Enjoyed it very much. Went to House of Commons to 
 see J. R. M., who had written about the possibility of my 
 translating a book by Bernstein. While waiting for him, 
 had a few words with Keir Hardie, who was with Pease.
 
 40 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I love Hardie, and still think he is the most hated and 
 most loved man in England to-day. He looks older and 
 his hair is whiter, but he is as upright as ever, and his eyes 
 still have their wonderful, clear-sighted look. Talked to 
 J. R. M. about translation work and South wark politics, 
 including possibility of S. as Candidate, J. R. M. approved. 
 He is a first-rate politician, but what a contrast to Keir ! 
 I don't like his expression of reticence, but he has probably 
 done a great deal for the cause in providing organizing 
 ability and tact. Went to School of Economics and con- 
 tinued reading Smith. Much struck with the section in 
 the last book on the provision of Justice. I feel the in- 
 adequacy of economics to take one to the root of social 
 problems. They are all ultimately problems of the control 
 and use of power psychological and physical mostly the 
 former. Could not one work out a sociological theory on 
 these lines ? I must read some sociology. 
 
 I feel more and more the need of controlling my tongue. 
 I am always speaking on the impulse of the moment- 
 saying things in conversation which I feel a little ashamed 
 of a few hours later, and speaking partly for effect with 
 particular people, rather than with a spirit of true self- 
 realization. To attain common truth and honesty a 
 conscious effort or at least a conscious training is neces- 
 sary. In the individual, as in society, simplicity is the 
 goal and not the starting-point of development. How 
 little is this realized ! 
 
 BOURNE COTTAGE. 
 
 9 December, 1908. 
 
 I have thought much of my action in the Southwark 
 I.L.P. during my stay here. I see that I have, to some 
 extent, made the same mistake as I did when I became 
 a prefect at Winchester insisted too much on forcing an 
 intellectual conception of what was in my own mind on 
 simple-minded people leading to inevitable misunder- 
 standings. And yet that is what the Southwark I.L.P. 
 would call more " democratic." But it is no use putting 
 your own terminology to people who think in an utterly
 
 WALWORTH 41 
 
 different way, and no use putting all the considerations 
 which weigh with you to people who can't appreciate 
 them all. I am not going to be obsessed with the I.L.P. 
 so much. It is not advisable even from the practical 
 point of view. And more fundamentally I need to act 
 more in consideration of the factors of my own per- 
 sonality more on the Stoic principle of self-sufficiency 
 (which conflicts in no way with my social theories of 
 morality at least, I don't think it does ; must work it out 
 some time). 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. 
 
 9 December, 1908. 
 
 I have started on my Care Committee work. We have 
 also launched our Central Association of Care Committees 
 for the whole district. 
 
 How splendid the teachers are ! I have found two 
 or three I am tremendously enthusiastic about. I love 
 to get in direct contact with the really vital forces of the 
 constructive collectivism of our time, especially in men 
 and women whose characters embody the positive attitude 
 towards the State. 
 
 I have practically been beaten on my I.L.P., pro tern, 
 at any rate, and yet I don't regret all the energy I have 
 put into these petty squabbles of a seemingly ignoble 
 type. I have learned much ; and I have formed a few 
 friendships with working-men which I value as much as 
 any I have ever made. Of course I shall stick to the I.L.P. 
 
 ... A word. You don't know how much I feel being 
 looked on as a kind of backslider from the true line of pro- 
 gress by you. Do please think once again whether I could 
 have taken any other line. I have never wavered from 
 the fundamental position which I gradually came to con- 
 ceive as my Socialism became more and more deeply rooted 
 the combination of the revolutionary spirit and the prac- 
 tical or evolutionary method. If ever a man has had an 
 experience which might turn him back to the normal line 
 of political action (i.e. in my case the Progressive Party ; 
 national politics don't matter so much for me at present),
 
 42 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I have had that experience in the last three months. 
 I could get all the practical work I long for more than any- 
 thing by working with the Progressives with a quarter 
 the trouble which I shall have in getting it along with 
 the Labour and Socialist people. But I am going to stick 
 to the latter, why I don't exactly know. There is little 
 to be said for it from a practical point of view, and I have 
 seen enough of " democratic " politics to sicken me of 
 them for life. Yet faith in the ideal seems important 
 still, and I will risk much loss of power for it. If you 
 think it ignoble of me to be tempted, well, I can't help 
 it. Only talking " independence " and acting it (when 
 your deepest passion is to feel yourself doing things) are 
 two very different matters. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 BOURNE COTTAGE. 
 
 23 December, 1908. 8.30 p.m. 
 
 I came down here this afternoon and am revelling in 
 peace and solitude. I have not seen B. since she resented 
 my last letter. It is a curious thing that she and A. after 
 coming to know me well both complained of what they 
 call my brutality. It came out again when I was talking 
 to B. about my children's homes. I said it was " grand 
 sport " rushing about to secure medical treatment for 
 a baby with fits. She was simply shocked, just as A. 
 used to be when I explained how obvious it is that one 
 must always sacrifice individuals, whatever their general 
 position or relation to oneself, to the general good. 
 
 I am beginning to think that women, unless they have 
 a strong dash of the masculine, are incapable of overpower- 
 ing impersonal motives (but so are many men ; so prob- 
 ably it is not a matter of sex). I have noticed several 
 times that my entire disregard of any individual feelings 
 when I am aiming at what I conceive to be a social end 
 stiikes many people as simply horrible. Perhaps I have 
 got something missing in the gamut of my emotions. At 
 any rate, I know when I am tramping about Walworth, 
 visiting the homes of necessitous children, etc., although 
 I find I get on with both the women and the men extra-
 
 WALWORTH 43 
 
 ordinarily well, yet the emotion I feel aroused again and 
 again by the sights I see is one of a passionate love for the 
 life of men in general, as it might be and as it is, not pri- 
 marily a sympathy for the particular individuals I am 
 in touch with. 
 
 The story of the baby with fits is this. I went to see 
 the home of two children we are feeding. Both the man 
 and the wife are delightful people and I learned a lot from 
 them. The children, too, are very well looked after extern- 
 ally. But the mother is evidently as ignorant about the 
 hygiene of child life well, I was going to say as I am. 
 Her two little girls, about eight and ten, are charming, 
 their hair well brushed and their clothes tidy and clean, 
 and I felt much less afraid of them than I am of most 
 children. They were delightfully approachable. I had 
 a jovial talk with all of the family and then asked about 
 the baby. The mother said, in a resigned way, " Oh, I'm 
 afraid I am going to lose him, he keeps on having fits." 
 So I at once explained to her the danger of casual dosing 
 with medicines she really knew nothing about. I then 
 made inquiries where the baby could be treated, found out 
 where there were hospitals in the north of Southwark, and 
 as the woman is enceinte gave her the price of a tram fare 
 there. I called to see her yesterday but found her out. 
 
 Now, what I think about primarily in connection with 
 this business is the ghastly fact that hundreds of thousands 
 of mothers are as ignorant and as well-meaning as this 
 poor woman. Whether this particular baby lives or dies 
 seems to me very unimportant compared with the devising 
 of practical measures to meet the general situation. (As 
 far as I can discover I have been inquiring from various 
 people about babies' fits there is no reason why this baby 
 should die.) And I feel it is a great and glorious thing 
 to be getting to grips with a huge social problem first-hand, 
 and I call letting off my energy in this or any other way 
 grand sport, and if the feminine temperament demands 
 that I should be continually gravely sympathetic with 
 individuals instead of enthusiastic for collectivist hopes, 
 then either it has a damned rotten point of view or I am 
 fundamentally vicious. I do care for man in the mass
 
 44 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 above anything, and I would sacrifice my dearest friends 
 as readily as I would myself for any social ends. It seems 
 to me that the idea that family relationships or even friend- 
 ships are necessarily or should be the bases of stronger 
 passions than the passion for humanity is simply wrong. 
 Christians are not called brutal or unfeeling for putting 
 the love of God above all things, and why I should be 
 called cruel because (without any virtuous effort, but 
 simply naturally) I count the welfare of men for nothing 
 as against the welfare of man, I can't see. 
 
 I wish you were here. I have lots of things to talk to 
 you about. But I want to go to bed now, though it is 
 only just past nine, in order to be fresh to read and com- 
 mune with my soul to-morrow. I shall write you again 
 soon. I wish Christmas were really a jovial communal 
 festival and that I were going to spend it with you. But 
 we of this generation are destined to be rather stage car- 
 penters than actors in the drama of life and jovial com- 
 munal festivals, like many other things, must be enjoyed 
 mentally in anticipation. 
 
 The above letter was written during a week (23 to 29 December) 
 which he spent at the cottage that had been lent to him, quite 
 alone, except that A. Y. Campbell joined him there for the last 
 two days. He records in his journal : " 27 December, 1908. C. 
 arrived. Talked a lot to him. On the 28th had an especially 
 long discussion on the essence of tragedy, which he illustrated 
 excellently from Sophocles' ' Antigone.' This was mostly on a long 
 walk on a delightful frosty morning during which we visited the 
 Greek theatre at Bradfield school, C. declaiming magnificently to 
 me from the stage. I still have hopes that I may become more 
 civilized in time." 
 
 On soth December Ben turned up quite unexpectedly at Bath, 
 where I and my son were staying. He wanted to consult me as 
 to various schemes that had been taking shape in his mind. " I 
 had been thinking a good deal," he writes in his journal, " at the 
 cottage about the possibility of starting out to earn my living in 
 the ' wild places of the earth ' (as dear Hugh says) with 20 in my 
 pocket, trying to work my way round the world in two years or 
 so, starting in the spring. Had decided, at any rate, to let the idea 
 simmer. I had discussed the idea with M. on the preceding even- 
 ing. She insisted very wisely on the need for me to mature myself 
 now ; was not hostile to the idea, but felt more strongly the need
 
 WALWORTH 45 
 
 for me to put more direct purpose into my life ; urged me again 
 to try for a Trinity Fellowship." 
 
 From Bath he went to Cumberland to join Dr. McCleary and 
 some friends of his in rock-climbing, an exercise that Ben loved 
 but in which he was only a beginner and a clumsy one. 
 
 FROM HIS JOURNAL. 
 
 4 January, 1909. 
 
 I went up Moss Ghill with H. and G. Did pretty well, 
 only had to be helped with the rope slightly in two places. 
 Walked to summit of Scawfell. Had glorious views, 
 especially coming down. The reflections in Wast water 
 particularly beautiful. Mist only on top of Scawfell. 
 
 Have been talking to McCleary and thinking a good 
 deal about political science, particularly in the way of 
 social psychology, here. I think I may yet write some- 
 thing for a Trinity Fellowship, or at any rate for a D.Sc. 
 at the School of Economics, to which my South African 
 work, the Webbs' and M.'s influence in making my political 
 thought more constructive, my experience in politics and 
 social work, my general historical and economic reading, 
 and a future study of psychology and political theory will 
 all contribute. I have been making a good many notes 
 lately, starting with a vague " theory of social power." 
 
 I feel very keen in plunging back to work. I feel more 
 definite about it now. I have three things to occupy 
 myself with (i) reading with a view to writing something, 
 (2) school-feeding, (3) " Facts for Southwark " tract. They 
 all fit in together rather well. Besides this I shall have 
 a little Socialist lecturing, the Labour Party and possibly 
 I.L.P. Congress, and a more or less passive membership 
 of the I.L.P. in Southwark. This will mean a good deal 
 more concentrated effort than in the last three months. 
 
 WALWORTH. n January, 1909. 
 
 I have been mainly occupied to-day with school- 
 feeding. I ladled gravy for 170 children, and en- 
 deavoured to persuade a few not to suck their knives, 
 between twelve and three o'clock. 
 
 My baby with fits has not yet visited the hospital, and 
 its mother is now apparently in no condition to take it.
 
 46 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I am almost in despair, but I visited the hospital this 
 afternoon and have written to E. M. to help me take 
 it there to-morrow. 
 
 Only twenty children from my own school are being fed. 
 I am taking charge of them personally to-morrow. I 
 believe I shall not have the face to say grace when it comes 
 to the point. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshcnd. 
 
 THE NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. 
 
 2 February, 1909. 10.30. 
 
 I am devoting all my energies to this Care Committee 
 organization work. It is a splendid experience in ele- 
 mentary administration, though perhaps a little too much 
 trying to make bricks without straw ; it is so hard to get 
 any helpers at all, and still harder to get people of insight 
 and intelligence and energy. 
 
 I am a little afraid of seeing you just now. I am moving 
 rapidly farther and farther away from your political prin- 
 ciples. I am having so many experiences of different 
 kinds just now which compel me to regard the doings 
 and still more the sayings of party politics more and more 
 as the merest surface foam. And though I believe I 
 am becoming more and more tolerant at bottom, I find 
 it hardest of all to be tolerant of the particular brand of 
 political talkers with whom I am brought most in contact. 
 But the Portsmouth Conference strengthened my faith 
 in the big trade unionist leaders. They represent the 
 force which has driven the biggest wedge into the area 
 of competitive industry, although there is a danger that 
 they may fail to see (even more than the Socialists fail to 
 see) the crying need for a strong State, as against a multi- 
 farious State. 
 
 I have been quite informally approached about two 
 L.C.C. seats. I shall see a little closer what I think of 
 prospects in that direction. But I rather fancy that in 
 a few months I shall be some thousands of miles away, 
 finding out what it really is to be a proletarian. The 
 impulse recurs again and again, and I have learnt so much 
 in these few months that I feel I must go much deeper.
 
 WALWORTH 47 
 
 But I have little time or energy left to sift things out now. 
 I am satisfied with things for the present. I feel that I 
 have got plenty of purpose in life and could not be finding 
 things out, or indeed doing much more than I am at 
 present. 
 
 I have stopped going to the opera, as I found it made 
 me too tired to do this work properly. 
 
 I got a glorious draught of air and splendid scenery and 
 sunshine on Sunday in Surrey. I hope to tramp with 
 R - next Sunday. 
 
 The good resolutions as to work and mental discipline with 
 which, as we have seen, this new year (1909) had begun were over- 
 thrown by an insurgence of those emotional forces that he was so 
 apt to leave out of account. This sort of interruption occurs in 
 the life of most men, but Ben's volcanic energy and self-centred 
 habit of mind served to turn it into a tragedy. He was far too 
 immature for marriage (only twenty-two, and in some respects 
 young for his age) and quite unfitted by his crude theories of life 
 for the give and take of domestic companionship. Things might 
 have righted themselves in time, but, unfortunately, in his revolt 
 against the entanglements and perplexities of his new relationship, 
 he grasped the first opportunity that offered of an entire change 
 of scene and work a change that deprived him for a time of the 
 society of his equals and tended to emphasize his worst faults. 
 
 FROM HIS JOURNAL. 
 
 28 May, 1909. 
 
 My resolutions as to diary-keeping have been typical. 
 However, I have not lost the desire to write down my im- 
 pressions from time to time, and this period, from 29 
 January to 28 May, has not been uneventful. At least 
 it has included one of the crises of my life. 
 
 I am now sitting on the upper deck of D.'s steam yacht 
 enjoying a delightful passage from Salcombe to Exmouth. 
 I feel in a sane mood for recording things. 
 
 I have fallen in love and married. ... I regret nothing. 
 
 I look across a smooth, dark green sea to the red, rocky 
 cliffs, showing here and there through vegetation ; above 
 them rich rolling green fields and above them again a 
 bank of clouds, white and grey, and strong sunshine
 
 48 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 overhead. And I feel a rich, satisfied joy in all that I 
 rarely if ever knew before. 
 
 A single glance at R. when we were sitting side by side 
 in the back row of the gallery at Covent Garden at a per- 
 formance of the " Ring " began it all. It is good to have 
 Wagner as one link in the chain. 
 
 For five or six Sundays in succession we tramped in 
 the country, in Kent along the Pilgrims' Road and then 
 to Gravesend ; from Wokingham to Ascot, resting for 
 an hour in a pinewood near the hut in February sunshine, 
 anticipatory of spring. We missed our train at Ascot, 
 and I ran eight miles to Windsor to catch another for 
 an I.L.P. lecture in Hammersmith. Then another Sunday 
 we walked in snow to Tunbridge Wells, where I was lectur- 
 ing in the evening. I nearly spoke then. The next 
 night, or the next but one, I was up at her rooms at Thorn- 
 hill Houses to spend the evening with her. A momentary 
 glimpse of her from the side, sitting in a dark blue pinafore 
 over the kitchen fire, overcame me. We went out together 
 into the streets and I told her I loved her. 
 
 We decided to marry but not to set up house together. 
 We were married on the 1.5th May at 1.15 at the 
 Southwark Town Hall. M. and Dudley, who was staying 
 with me, were witnesses. 
 
 1 believe the next day was the happiest I have ever 
 spent in my life. R. was looking glorious in a light green 
 dress with white silk embroidery. We slacked all day. In 
 the early afternoon we walked up the river a little way, taking 
 a ferry across and back again from the Bishop's park. 
 
 Such is a general summary of my history for the last 
 four months. I would go through it all again if I had 
 the choice. I do not regret my marriage in any way. 
 What is in the future I have not the faintest idea. But 
 the present is well worth living. I am looking forward 
 with an anticipation of joy that I have rarely known to 
 life in Buckinghamshire with R.
 
 WALWORTH 49 
 
 I have felt George Meredith's death more than I have 
 ever felt the death of any literary man. I have just started 
 reading his poems and revel in " Love in a Valley." R. 
 has stirred up the Meredithian spirit in me. Since I 
 came down to D.'s yacht (yesterday) I have read " Love 
 and Mr. Lewisham." It is Wells at his best ; in some 
 respects it is better than " Kipps " or " Tono Bungay." 
 
 A great deal that I have written in this book looks crude 
 and stupid and boyish even now. But I shall destroy 
 nothing. It was what I felt as I could best express it 
 at the time. 
 
 2 August, 1909. 
 
 Writing in cabin of a steamer on Lago Maggiore, in 
 a thunder-storm. Have been staying a couple of days 
 at Stresa with R. M. and C. Glorious weather till the 
 last half-hour. Both yesterday and to-day we spent 
 many hours on the lake in a boat bathing and sunning 
 ourselves. We rowed over from Stresa to the opposite 
 bank, near a tiny village called Santa Caterina. Yesterday 
 afternoon, as it was very hot, we found a deliciously cool 
 cleft in the rocks and tied the boat up in it. From it 
 we could see the snow mountains in the distance and 
 across the lake to Pallanza. The whole situation was 
 splendid. R. was like a regular mermaid on the rocks. 
 
 I have now been married two and a half months and 
 have, unfortunately, not carried out the resolution I made 
 while yachting with D. to resume writing my journal 
 regularly. . . . The month of June I spent partly in Mis- 
 senden and partly in London, where I was mainly occupied 
 with working for Mrs. Webb's National Committee to 
 Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law. 
 
 At Missenden I endeavoured to concentrate on Roman 
 Law, but the joys of living there with R. did not promote 
 work. 
 
 I shall always look back on that month as one of the most 
 valuable of my life. R. made the cottage a delightful 
 place in appearance. She produced that clean, simple 
 atmosphere which always surrounds her and her mother. . . . 
 She harmonizes with an English rural environment better 
 than any one I know. I think of sweet-smelling grass 
 
 5
 
 50 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 lanes and beechwoods and the clean, whitewashed kitchen 
 and bedroom and the scullery where I slush about in the 
 morning and shout Wagner. 
 
 At the beginning of July, M., R., C., and I went to stay 
 with a friend of M.'s at a chalet at St. Beatenberg on the 
 Lake of Thun. 
 
 Miss Paget (a great friend of our hostess) was there, too, 
 part of the time. She and I did not like one another. 
 She was repelled by my crude, impulsive self-assertiveness. 
 I do not think she was altogether just to me, nor I to her. 
 But I had some interesting talks with her. 
 
 After the fortnight at Beatenberg, where I read some 
 Roman Law and walked, mostly alone, C. and I set out 
 on a four days' tour. R. was not able to do much walking 
 owing to the coming infant, so she went on with M. to 
 Aqua Rossa, where M. was going to do a cure. 
 
 C. and I walked the first day (mostly in rain or mist) 
 via Interlaken to the Grosse Scheidegg. The other three 
 days were very fine. On the second we got up at 5 a.m. 
 and saw the sun rise over the mountains. We then 
 walked via Rosenlaui to the Grimsel hospice. We had 
 meant to get over the mountains to the Rhone Vallej/ on 
 the same evening, but there was snow on the path, mist 
 came on, and the hour was getting late, so we gave up 
 the attempt and slept at the crowded hotel. The follow- 
 ing day we walked in glorious sunshine to Obergestellen 
 and then over the Gries glacier to the Tosa Falls. The 
 reaches of valley between the glacier and the Falls were 
 full of the most glorious flowers I have seen in Switzer- 
 land. They were not very much wooded, and the little 
 hamlets were not occupied as the cattle do not go up 
 there till a little later in the year. 
 
 From the Tosa Falls on the following day we took a 
 guide and went over the Antobbia glacier to San Carlo. 
 We enjoyed tobogganing down the snow slopes on the 
 Swiss side of the mountains tremendously. There was, 
 however, a long, stony path down the cliffs above San 
 Carlo which we found rather trying. We arrived there 
 rather tired and rested for a couple of hours at the tiny 
 inn In the evening we walked down the valley, I think
 
 WALWORTH 51 
 
 the deepest I have ever seen, to Bignano. I felt rather 
 unwell and collapsed temporarily at one point on the way. 
 The moment we got to the inn I went to bed. I got 
 into rather a fever and talked about all sorts of things 
 half consciously. C. nursed me splendidly. I felt very 
 grateful and rather small, as I had been somewhat impatient 
 with her rate of progress on the glacier. R. came next 
 day and C. left on the Friday for Aqua Rossa. 
 
 R. and I then went up, on the doctor's advice, to Fusio, 
 a cool place at the top of the valley, and stayed there for 
 a week. I read some Law and walked, partly with R., 
 more often alone. The valley above Fusio was, I think, 
 the most beautiful I have ever seen. The shades of colour, 
 green and grey, were softer than on the north side of the 
 Alps, but the poverty of the peasants about Fusio and 
 the squalor of the village, in spite of its beauty on the 
 hillside, were rather repugnant to me. The inn, too, was 
 not very attractive, so we left at the end of a week's stay, 
 met M. and C. at Locarno, and took the steamer to Stresa. 
 (I walked down to Bignano early in the morning, while 
 R. took the diligence. The walk in the early morning air, 
 between 5.30 and 8.15, was delightful and cool, as the 
 sun did not come over the mountain till 7.30.) 
 
 I had been growing a little concerned about my future 
 relations with R. during the week at Fusio. I think it 
 was largely unnecessary, and due mainly to the fact that 
 I have had nothing but female society for the last month 
 and have rather craved for a hearty male oath (not 
 but what C. and R. can swear quite naturally on occasion). 
 I felt as I have felt all along, except perhaps for a short 
 time when very much exhilarated at Missenden, that I did 
 not want to set up house regularly with R. I can see 
 that I should begin to long for the cut and slash of political 
 and other discussions if I were boxed up with her alone 
 to such an extent that I should become dissatisfied with her, 
 and blind to her fine sides. Also I began to think about 
 my future relations to my child, and came (I think, after 
 talking to M.) to an unnecessarily clear-cut and dog- 
 matic idea that if I were not to live in more or less the 
 ordinary way with R. I should have no right to share
 
 52 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 in the decisions to be made with regard to its education, 
 about which I might possibly not always agree with R. 
 At the same time, I began to feel that in leaving and coming 
 to R. just as I feel inclined, though I do her no injury, 
 even from a moral point of view, as far as I can see, and 
 certainly do not make her unhappy, I appear again rather 
 too much in the guise of the egoist for my liking ; using 
 my relations with another person rather as stepping-stones 
 to experience for my own development than as ends in 
 themselves, a soul-union. 
 
 I am going to Cambridge after a few hours in Walworth, 
 mainly to settle up I.L.P. affairs. At Cambridge I shall 
 read Law and jaw to old friends for a day or two. On 
 the 27th I go to Wales, where Hugh has taken a farm- 
 house near the F.S.S. Before I go there I hope to have 
 a week or ten days at Missenden with R. 
 
 To A. Y. Campbell. 
 
 57 LIVERPOOL ST., WALWORTH, S.E. 
 
 19 August, 1909. 
 
 I sent you this afternoon a copy of Murray's " Greek 
 Epic " which I think you said you would be using in the 
 next few weeks. Our friend D. would deride my inscrip- 
 tion x with heavy chortlings. Nevertheless ... I am 
 full of joie de vivre to-day. I believe I have a very good 
 chance of getting a Labour Exchange appointment in a 
 few weeks. I may be going to Germany in ten days to 
 see Exchanges there and inquire about some points which 
 I am investigating with a view to an article, pamphlet, 
 or memorandum. On 28th inst. I am to meet Winston 
 Churchill who will have a great deal to do with Labour 
 Exchange appointments at dinner at the Webbs'. So 
 I shall be back from Germany by then anyhow. Do 
 let me see you for a day anyhow before you go to Reading 
 either in town or at Missenden. 
 
 To-night , myself, and and are going to see 
 
 the " Meistersinger." 
 
 1 " To A. Y. C. from his friend F. K. in memory of Sunday 
 interchanges of wisdom."
 
 WALWORTH 53 
 
 I am still revelling in Murray's translation of the 
 "Bacchae." The page lies open before me. 
 
 What else is wisdom ? What of man's endeavour 
 Or God's high grace so lovely and so great ? 
 To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait ; 
 To hold a hand uplifted over Hate ; 
 
 And shall not loveliness be lord for ever ? 
 
 And they win their will, or they miss their will, 
 And the hopes are dead or are pined for still ; 
 
 But whoe'er can know, 
 
 As the long days go, 
 That to live is happy hath found his heaven ! 
 
 And I dream of that other chorus 
 
 Where is the home for me ? 
 O Cyprus, set in the sea, 
 Aphrodite's home in the soft sea-foam. 
 
 But a better land is there 
 
 Where Olympus cleaves the air, 
 The high, still dell where the Muses dwell, 
 
 Fairest of all things fair ! 
 
 Oh there is Grace, and there is the Heart's Desire, 
 And peace to adore thee, thou Spirit of Guiding Fire ! 
 
 Religion in its individual aspect is the power that binds 
 a man's moods together. I would that I had that mighty 
 force which enables the mood of inspiration to cast its 
 glow across all the "hours of gloom" in which most of 
 our tasks are fulfilled making loveliness a thing that is 
 really " loved for ever " and not merely snapped at in 
 ecstasies and groped after or tolerated in the shadows 
 of common night. Thus soliloquizeth Ben the Blas- 
 phemous while passing Westminster Abbey this afternoon. 
 
 Have you seen Rupert's poems in the English Review ? 
 You chafe at their " obscurity." But the flanks of the 
 beasts and their steaming lusts gleam plainly if naught 
 else does. 
 
 I believe the welfare of the country is more entirely 
 at stake over this Budget than it has ever been over a single
 
 54 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 issue for many a long year. I would sacrifice anything 
 if its passing depended on that. I believe we are going 
 to win whether the Lords attempt to fight or no. It will 
 be a mighty chisel stroke in the fashioning of our Res 
 publica out of this shapeless rock that we worship in faith 
 for what it shall be. 
 
 And shall not loveliness be loved for ever ? 
 
 But whoe'er can know, 
 As the long days go, . . . 
 
 To Mrs. Townshcnd. 
 
 MlSSENDEN. 
 
 6 September, 1909. Sunday night. 
 
 I returned from Wales on Saturday and have been here 
 for the week-end. I am coming to town early to-morrow 
 and shall stay there continuously till I go to Germany, 
 except for next week-end. I will come to see you one 
 night in the course of the week. 
 
 I am very glad I went to Wales for a week. The society 
 of my friends and one or two tramps on the mountains 
 were blessed. I feel more at peace with myself and the 
 universe. 
 
 I almost hope for a job in a remote provincial town, 
 where I shall have no antecedents and can spend my spare 
 time reading in solitude and turning this undigested mass 
 of experience which has made up my life into some shape. 
 I am puzzled how I am to work things with R. if I 
 am sent a couple of hundred miles away. But 1 will 
 find a definite solution and then Peace ! and I will pray 
 for a respite from personal incidents in my life till I am, 
 say, thirty. 
 
 Bureaucracy and reading shall absorb me entirely if I 
 can so contrive it bar my old friendships. I feel my 
 interest in literature growing a great deal stronger. I 
 intend definitely to try to make it replace personal attrac- 
 tions in my life as much as I can. I am sick of having 
 my power of dominating the course of events made less 
 than it might be by distractions and uncontrollable moods.
 
 WALWORTH 55 
 
 FROM HIS JOURNAL. 
 
 WALWORTH. 
 
 24 October, 1909. 
 
 I have been living here with Ashley Dukes for nearly 
 two months. I have seen very little indeed of R. I 
 have been fairly happy, but have been haunted from time 
 to time by evil spirits. To-day I have been feeling par- 
 ticularly gloomy. Ever since that time in Switzerland 
 I have been puzzling again and again about the nature 
 of right conduct. The week I spent at Cambridge was 
 not a particularly cheerful one. I enjoyed meeting old 
 friends, but I was troubled by the thought of my relations 
 with R. continually. From Cambridge I went to Missenden, 
 where I stopped a week with R. I next spent about five 
 days with Brian and Miss G. at Hindhead, and then went 
 to Llanbedr for a week, staying in a farmhouse with Hugh 
 and two other Cambridge Fabians. Early in September 
 I came here. 
 
 I never realized so clearly what an infernally difficult 
 business life is, once you abandon some sort of tradition as 
 a guide. It seems clear that there must be some sort 
 of tradition for the mass of men, if only to avoid the 
 enormous expenditure of energy which anarchists like 
 myself are let in for. 
 
 I can't get away from the fact that I am not by any 
 means satisfied about my relations with other people 
 generally. In point of fact, I feel damned lonely. I have 
 hardly seen anything of M. or of R. I like and admire 
 Ashley tremendously. But I feel I want to love and be 
 loved and to be able to express my affections. I feel a 
 curious resemblance between my relations to M. and R. 
 now and my relations to my mother when I was a boy. 
 Not in detail. But I feel that I want ever so much to 
 have that happiness that comes from living in affection 
 with some one. I have got a sort of craving for it. 
 And I feel that something, I don't know what, prevents 
 me from securing the relation which I want. I wonder 
 if there is something fundamentally wrong in my 
 character or my outlook. Perhaps I am destined all 
 my life to this. I don't know. It makes me miserable.
 
 56 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I have been reading one or two of Murray's translations 
 of Euripides lately, also his wonderful Introduction to the 
 volume that contains the " Bacchae " and " Hippolytus." 
 This has set me thinking. It seems to me that if public 
 affairs are the main interest of one's life there is a great 
 danger that one's affections will come to be dominated by 
 one's intellectual ideas. I wonder whether that is what is 
 wrong with me. I have often wrangled with M. over some 
 political question and then been angry with myself after- 
 wards. And it is because R. does not share my intellectual 
 interests that I allow myself to be separated from her now. 
 
 Oh, if only I could love, love plainly, undisturbed by 
 the clash of opinion, love my friends, love all men, and 
 have some one very close lover ! I seem to be made lonely 
 by some isolating force. 
 
 On the other hand, I can't get away from the fact that, 
 as things are, I find the intellectual interchange of opinions 
 with friends such as Archie one of the very greatest 
 pleasures I know, an almost indispensable thing in life. 
 
 I suppose things will be a bit clearer when my son I 
 feel it is more likely to be a son arrives. I have dreamed 
 for a long time to-day about a little baby's hands and arms 
 about my face, and about kissing a little baby's lips. There 
 must be a simple way of life if only I could see it. I feel 
 something is blinding me. I feel this craving for love, I 
 know there is love waiting for me, and yet I cannot go 
 and give and receive it. 
 
 29 October, 1909. 10.45. 
 
 I have to-day started work temporarily with the Board 
 of Trade. ... I feel tolerably cheerful as to my pros- 
 pects of work and experience. But I am beginning to 
 see that I have lived with an utterly false conception of 
 many things. Love and affection are among the best 
 things in life. The trouble is that for me they seem to 
 get hopelessly entangled with enthusiasm for intellectual 
 conceptions, and when my opinions change love is broken 
 though the craving for it remains. 
 
 What is the use of success if there is no one to rejoice 
 with you ? Satisfaction in bettering the lot of masses 
 of people is good, but it is cold and lonely.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 LEEDS 
 
 JANUARY, 1910, TO JUNE, 1911 (AGED 23-4) 
 
 KEELING'S wish for a post in a " remote provincial town " was 
 unfortunately fulfilled. He became manager in January 1910 of 
 the Leeds Labour Exchange, and was able to start life entirely 
 afresh, plunging with enormous zest into work which would have 
 been uncongenial to most men of his upbringing, but which, for 
 him, was full of interest and even of fascination. 
 
 The entire change of work and of environment enabled him to 
 thrust aside and apparently to forget his responsibilities as husband 
 and father in a way that was quite incomprehensible to many of 
 his friends. It is impossible to excuse the extraordinary egotism 
 of his outlook at this time. In order to understand it, one must 
 recognize that, impulsive though he was, he yet acted far more on 
 theory than most men, and that he was thoroughly imbued with 
 the views as to marriage which he found, or thought that he found, 
 in the writings of G. Bernard Shaw, whom he reverenced as the 
 greatest living expert in conduct. Strange as it may seem, he 
 went to Leeds convinced that the right thing for him to do was 
 to devote himself wholly to public work, and to cut himself off 
 entirely from the everyday pleasures and everyday worries of what 
 he used to call " damned domesticity." He persuaded himself 
 that his wife, for whose courage and independence of character 
 he had the greatest admiration, was eminently suited to stand 
 alone. Having provided, as he considered, for the maintenance of 
 wife and child (he had, at this time, very ascetic notions, shared 
 by his wife, as to personal expenditure), his one desire for the 
 moment was to regain entire independence of action and to fling 
 himself untrammelled into his new duties. 
 
 After a few months, his wife went up to Yorkshire with her baby 
 and found a little cottage at Menstone within easy reach of Leeds. 
 He went there pretty often and took his friends there, but he 
 remained entirely engrossed by his work and quite irresponsive 
 and aloof from any real community of interests. He called the 
 place " R.'s cottage," and rather ostentatiously washed his hands 
 of all responsibility. There was no definite disagreement, but the 
 
 57
 
 58 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 effort made by his wife in leaving home and friends for his sake 
 was so ill-recompensed, that it became obviously wiser, when it 
 was necessary for her to leave the Menstone cottage, to return to 
 London, and no further attempt at a common home was ever made. 
 
 Any memoir of Frederic Keeling which omitted these facts about 
 his personal relations would be misleading, for they coloured his 
 after life and throw light on many of his letters. 
 
 Writing several years later, when he was on a visit to Leeds, he 
 tells me how much he had enjoyed revisiting the moors he liked 
 so much, " except that, when in the neighbourhood of Menstone, 
 I felt depressed by memories of the incomparable idiocy of my 
 behaviour there." 
 
 To E. M. S.i 
 
 LABOUR EXCHANGE, MEADOW LANE, LEEDS. 
 8 March, 1910. 
 
 ... I am enjoying life hugely here. I live in an attic 
 at the top of the Exchange, and am gradually reducing 
 myself to a fruit and nut diet which makes for great physical 
 efficiency and saves cooking and the other various arts 
 which involve the attendance of woman upon man. 
 
 I am, of course, not satisfied with the way things are 
 going. We only placed 265 in February and have not 
 got up to twenty a day yet. But I plug in, and it suits 
 me down to the ground. I have no social life and avoid 
 it as much as possible. My job involves speaking to about 
 a hundred different people every day, and by the time 
 I have finished about six o'clock I am damned sick of 
 human personality. I never turned to books, memory, 
 and imagination with such zest in my life. 
 
 I generally clear out of Leeds at ten o'clock on Saturday, 
 and walk thirty to fifty miles on Saturday and Sunday. I 
 am thinking of running over to Ireland for four days at 
 Easter. I don't think I want a cottage. I am getting 
 a passion for living with the minimum of worldly goods 
 to bother about. I have four good-sized attics, but keep 
 them all bare and clean nothing but the barest necessities 
 for sitting, eating, sleeping, and reading. 
 
 By God ! I never felt so free in all my life. I am free 
 
 1 The " Memoirs of F. H. K. as a Student of Social Problems," 
 by his friend Mr. A. Greenwood (Appendix II), will throw light on 
 this letter and those which follow it.
 
 LEEDS 59 
 
 of ties human and material free of care, free to express 
 myself as best I can in the only material that I can mould 
 the raw stuff of human institutions. It is a great life. 
 It is so free because nothing but my own will prevents 
 me from clearing off to Manitoba or Western Australia 
 to-morrow. 
 
 I was called up to London to consult about various details 
 of procedure a few weeks ago. I took the opportunity 
 to visit my daughter. She is going on splendidly. On 
 the whole it is a damned interesting thing to breed about 
 the earth. I expect my daughter will dislike me violently. 
 But if we happen to hit it off all right, it will be rather 
 amusing when we are both of an age to be able to be young 
 together. Perhaps I shall change in ten years, I don't 
 know. But I have got a passion for two inexplicable 
 things which I call Truth and Facts, and that passion 
 makes me feel that the sentiment which makes a man 
 want to live constantly with a woman may be bad as well 
 as good. . . . However, I am no propagandist on these 
 questions now, I am too conscious of my own limitations. 
 I have too great a sense of the difficulty of doing anything 
 but let people alone, and, by God ! if the world doesn't let 
 me alone in my ways it may maim me, but I will let it 
 feel my teeth somehow and some time and know that they 
 are pretty sharp. 
 
 I wish you could get a really good job. If you want 
 to sufficiently if you will give up everything else for it 
 sufficiently you will, although it is harder for a woman 
 than a man. But the openings for women are growing 
 so rapidly now. 
 
 I am getting a passion for studying this place. I have 
 had a unique life in my chances of seeing different classes 
 of society really getting to know them. I am pushing on 
 my experience in that direction as much as I can. I have 
 even joined the Leeds Club the exclusive snobbish club 
 of the place for the purpose of observing the habits of 
 employers more closely. The only way to be sure of 
 defeating a man is to be able to beat him at his own game. 
 We have got to be able to be better capitalists than the 
 capitalists aie. When we that is, the administrative
 
 60 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 classes have more will, more relentlessness, more aus- 
 terity, more organizing ability, more class consciousness 
 than they have, we shall crumple them in our hands. And, 
 by God ! you and I may live to see the beginning of 
 the end. 
 
 I am more of a puritan than ever. Austerity is what 
 is needed. These miserable employers are poor creatures 
 in many ways. They eat too much ; they drink too much ; 
 they want their women too much. By God ! I will out- 
 Bacchus any man when I choose. But it shall be of my 
 free choice not of a limp necessity. From day to day 
 my dream shall be of a new model army, of vigilant ad- 
 ministrators supplanting property by organization inch 
 by inch, steadily and slowly with a jovial carouse to 
 loosen the muscles now and again. And to hell with 
 the snufflers and the pimps alike. They shall go in 
 pairs one of each to a hurdle after the precedent set by 
 Henry VIII. . . . 
 
 There are very few women who can administrate. They 
 are the women whom I feel are more than any other the 
 ones who will cause women to cease to drag down men. 
 I don't mean that really, but it. comes near to being true. 
 I think it really is true. We shall never be civilized till 
 you can stand on your own legs. Therefore blame your 
 own sex for causing the existence of the uncivilized product 
 who can write this letter. 
 
 To Brian Townshend. 
 
 LABOUR EXCHANGE, LEEDS. 
 3 April, IQIO. 
 
 I needed my holiday in Ireland more than I have ever 
 needed a holiday in my life. I had a great time in the 
 mountains and bogs of Donegal, and walked most of the 
 way there from Belfast. I took a good many notes of my 
 observations and feel I really learned something. I went 
 to Donegal via Derry and walked to Deny by way of the 
 Sperrin Mountains, which I daresay you have never 
 heard of I had not till a fortnight ago. These mountains 
 form the boundary between Derry and Tyrone. There 
 is an almost idyllic stretch of peasant proprietorship
 
 LEEDS 61 
 
 scenery just under them. I stopped at a little place 
 which is at the end of the railway and ascended the hills 
 from there. When I get my first big breakdown I think 
 I shall go and live near there for some months. 
 
 The Irish home industries are a big problem. They 
 are ruining the health of the women in many of the 
 country districts, and what is still more serious, they 
 cause neglect of the household work and of the children. 
 The women slave all day and stimulate themselves on 
 tea. The housework is left to an old grandmother or 
 not done at all. I am more and more certain that all 
 work even craftsman's work should be done in a factory 
 where everything is open to easy and effectual inspection. 
 The home is not the place for work under any circumstances. 
 I can imagine the rage of the aesthetic Socialist and of 
 the Suffragette at such opinions. But these people 
 are not seriously concerned with social organization at all. 
 
 Two general impressions have stuck very strongly in 
 my mind. First, that the Irish peasant is ten times as 
 intelligent as the English agricultural labourer. I went 
 to Ireland with a prejudice against the Irish as I am 
 decidedly a Teuton in race and in intellectual outlook. 
 Germany is far less foreign to me than Ireland. But 
 I am compelled to admit that, whatever be the cause, the 
 Irish peasant is far more alive than the labourer in any 
 rural district in England that I know. 
 
 The second general impression was that the proportion 
 of really beautiful women in the Irish rural districts was 
 far greater than in the English towns. Of course this 
 is only natural. But I have only just realized, after a 
 couple of years in the middle of urban districts, that you 
 hardly ever see a really beautiful working-class girl and 
 practically never a beautiful woman. It is a horrible 
 thought. 
 
 I get a good deal of solitude now and want nothing else. 
 I have a good deal to reflect on. I was twenty-four last 
 week, and I feel I have just reached maturity in the last 
 year or so in a pretty definite sense. I have no very 
 definite idea as to my future, except as to the immediate 
 future, which is mainly concerned with pegging away at
 
 62 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 this job. I enjoy life very much on the whole. The 
 only thing which makes me a bit gloomy at times is a 
 sort of sense of isolation. I find myself on the whole 
 drifting steadily away from definite human ties. Most 
 of my friendships were based on a community of intel- 
 lectual interests, and as I come more and more to grips 
 with the facts and realities of life as I see them or think 
 I see them I find myself building my own tabernacle of 
 wisdom which is invaluable to myself, but which is never- 
 theless so much my own that it shuts me off from the rest 
 of my fellow-men, at any rate as far as a community of 
 intellectual interests goes. I know that the wise of all 
 generations have said that there is a something greater 
 then mere opinion as a basis of human ties. I think on 
 the whole that they are right. W. B. Yeats says some- 
 where that opinions arise out of necessities of organization, 
 while ideas arise I forget his exact phrase, but I think 
 he means out of life itself direct. And Gilbert Murray 
 and Edward Carpenter and all the writers I love best are 
 always talking about these beyond-intellect phenomena. 
 But my life seems more and more destined to be closed to 
 them. I care more for the State than I care or have ever 
 cared for myself, or for any other human being. Almost 
 everyone that I know is prepared to expound his political 
 creed in a few sentences ; they have their dogmas, which 
 are be-all and end-all to them. But I have lost all my 
 dogmas, except a passionate faith in the development of a 
 collectivist spirit in relation to property and breeding. I 
 know what Carlyle means about swallowing all formulae. 
 And I feel I am separated from those who still have their 
 formula?, their party loyalty, or their sectarianism as their 
 final philosophy. I know that truth is not in these things. 
 I know that the basis of most political as well as of most 
 religious enthusiasm is that it is more enjoyable to believe 
 than to probe. But it is not well for a politician to feel 
 this. And in spite of the wise of all generations I cannot 
 restrain myself from feeling of this man or that with whom 
 I once walked in intimacy : " Oh, but he still clings to this 
 party cry or that academic generalization. I cannot bear 
 the trouble of a wrangle with him."
 
 LEEDS 63 
 
 JOURNAL POSTED AS A LETTER TO MRS. TOWNSHEND. 
 
 NORWAY. 
 
 May, 1910. 
 
 When one's holidays are limited to twenty-one working 
 days in the year one learns to be economical with time, 
 and ingenious in the disposition of it. The funeral of 
 the King occasioned the closing of business for an extra 
 day in Whit-week, and by some chance inspiration I 
 decided on Thursday 12 May to go to Norway for a week. 
 
 I sailed from Newcastle at seven o'clock. The red- 
 brick houses along the riverside of South Shields appeared 
 exceedingly picturesque in the evening light, but I was 
 not destined to enjoy the pleasures of the beginning of 
 a sea voyage for long, the swell off the mouth of the Tyne 
 soon compelling me to retire below. I was sufficiently 
 well on Sunday morning to be able to read Baedeker and 
 some novels. I finished Hardy's " Under the Greenwood 
 Tree." It does not possess the substance of " Tess " 
 or " Jude the Obscure," but it contains an extraordinarily 
 subtle and interesting study of a woman. The conflict 
 between ancient customs and modern, or rather nineteenth- 
 century, habits is presented in a double guise in the 
 life of a woman and in the supplanting of the old church 
 orchestra by the organ. The subtle interweaving of 
 these two motifs appears to me very beautiful. Although 
 there is no expression of opinion on the writer's part at 
 any point, yet each strain is made, by allusion and sugges- 
 tion, to throw light on the significance of the details of 
 the other. The study of the typical peasant characters 
 is carried through in Hardy's best style. 
 
 On Sunday afternoon the breeze died down. I was 
 able to sit and enjoy the sun and sea on deck. I made 
 some progress with McDougall's " Social Psychology." 
 His analysis of the nature of instincts is very clear and 
 seems to me to be sound. 
 
 I wrote a long letter to J. A. D. I value his friendship 
 very highly. His character always brings the epithet 
 " heroic " to my mind more readily than that of any other 
 man or woman that 1 know. Both in his activities and 
 in his limitations he is one of the most essentially English
 
 64 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 men that I know. He is one of the very small minority 
 of Englishmen who make our forms of Government actu- 
 ally workable in practice. But this minority does not 
 consist of a small number of men of genius. Those who 
 compose it are distinguished from other men by qualities 
 which I think may be justly termed ethical as opposed 
 to intellectual. They possess a more developed civic 
 sense and a larger amount of patience than the mass of 
 mankind. Were it not for them English representative 
 government and especially local government would sink 
 beneath the accumulated weight of pettiness, ambition, 
 and greed to an infinitely lower level of efficiency. 
 
 In the evening I wrote a long letter to M., but I felt 
 a sense of futility about it. Reason cannot touch stand- 
 points rooted in personal sentiment. One of the melan- 
 choly reflections which has been haunting me for some 
 time past is that affection appears inevitably to distort 
 insight into realities even in the strongest intellects. John 
 Stuart Mill's estimate of his wife is one of the strongest 
 cases in point. I suppose the " mystic " would answer 
 me by a rhapsodical statement to the effect that my esti- 
 mate of the nature of reality is an arbitrary one that 
 it is just as reasonable, or more reasonable, to regard Mill's 
 estimate of his wife rather than the world's estimate as 
 " true." Such a statement would in actual life merely 
 have the effect of causing me to lose my temper in sheer 
 annoyance at the tomfoolery to which the will for happi- 
 ness leads men. If I retained sufficient coherence, I 
 should reply that in the eyes of all reasonable men even 
 including some " mystics" this argument does not affect 
 the case where affection leads astray an estimate, not of 
 the personality of the object of affection but of external 
 facts. And it is perfectly patent to me that this frequently 
 does happen. 
 
 This conflict between affection and insight into reality 
 seems to me one of the most tragic things in life. Why 
 should affection, whether or no it inchides sexual attrac- 
 tion, be inseparable from illusion ? I am convinced 
 that this is so in the vast majority of cases in spite of the 
 " mystics' " talk about loving because of defects (analogous
 
 LEEDS 65 
 
 to credo quia incredibile). I would rather know the answer 
 to this mystery than to any of the other riddles of life. 
 I have no faith in the " mystics," because without excep- 
 tion they profess to reveal a ground of optimism or meliorism 
 behind the veil. The unanimity is too suspicious. 
 
 ' The wish is father to the thought " explains half of the 
 philosophies and nine-tenths of the religions at any rate 
 of the religions of modern Western civilization. 
 
 Perhaps Thought can never be emancipated completely 
 from Will. As Balfour is always pointing out, Thought 
 is, biologically and sociologically speaking, merely the 
 tool of Will expressing itself in the evolutionary process. 
 Thought aspiring upwards independently and for its own 
 sake is a mere bye-product a sickly growth containing 
 within itself the seed of decay, and doomed to be cut short 
 or gathered in to serve the purposes of Will. But why 
 
 why why ? Though the fruit of the Tree of Know- 
 ledge is tasteless where it is not bitter, though Love and 
 not Beauty or Truth is the only pure foundation of hap- 
 piness, yet were I a second Faust faced with another 
 Mephistopheles, I would give all the scanty impulses to 
 Beauty and Affection that I do possess for the answer 
 to a single one of the riddles that haunt me. It may 
 be a fool's bargain, yet I know I should be doomed to 
 make it. There is a curse on some of us. 
 
 The memories of all triumphant inspirations fade away. 
 The notes of the " Siegfried " motif, of the ride of the Wal- 
 kiire, of the onward march of the " Symphony Pathetique " 
 are drowned. The steady, reiterated knock of the Fifth 
 Symphony seems the last word of all the throb of the 
 heart of the world. 
 
 I do at the present moment definitely believe that 
 Fate rather than God is a better conception for the basis 
 of a faith. Herein I find myself differing from most of 
 my contemporaries. Wells says in " The Discovery of 
 the Future " that science tells him that Man is destined 
 to extinction in the course of time by the general rever- 
 sion of the solar system to a nebulous condition, but that 
 he does not cannot " believe " that or regard it as a 
 
 6
 
 66 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 possibility. Now, my habits of mind do not prevent me 
 from regarding it as a possibility. I am not a convinced 
 meliorist. 1 believe ultimately in an unknown destiny. 
 I do not want a rational basis a cheerful-faced belief in 
 cosmic progress as a basis for continuous effort. The 
 acceptance of such a belief seems to arise generally from 
 a desire to give an appearance of simple intellectual con- 
 sistency to human life. In the last resort most people 
 are meliorists because it is more pleasant, more stimu- 
 lating, to be a meliorist. There seems to me to be an 
 element of intellectual cowardice in such an attitude. 
 It is an easy way out of moods of depression. If there 
 are not adequate rational grounds for Meliorism, if we 
 cannot win it by weapons of our own intellectual forging, 
 tried steel and trusty, let us not whine for it and accept 
 it as a sweetmeat from that lusty-limbed mistress Desire- 
 for-Happiness, who is so jealous of all the Muses. 
 
 A man should be able to find a basis for action in the 
 knowledge of the nature of himself and of Things which 
 experience gives. I do not believe that History offers 
 grounds for a belief in Progress. (I am riot certain that 
 the very notion of Progress is not based on a completely 
 fallacious estimate of the value of different human char- 
 acteristics.) I am pretty certain that philosophy pro- 
 vides no adequate basis for Meliorism. But when I look 
 back on my own life, and when I consider what I regret 
 in it, and what I accept as comparatively tolerable, I find 
 that it is from thoroughly completed work little enough 
 there is of it ! that I derive most satisfaction, and for 
 ill-conceived or half-fulfilled purposes that I feel most 
 shame. This knowledge of the nature of my own self 
 and of its expression is the spur which Mind can apply 
 to flagging Will. Prove to me that the Spirit of Man 
 shall perish, that God is a hideous gamester, that human 
 effort is in the last resort Nature's trickery, still you cannot 
 destroy the sense of duty felt by my conceiving mind 
 as owed to my living if transitory self. 
 
 I awoke at eight o'clock to find the steamer in Bergen 
 harbour four hours before the appointed time. I spent
 
 LEEDS C7 
 
 nearly the whole morning in disposing of my bag, and 
 in vainly endeavouring to secure maps. The shops are 
 all as inexorably closed as in England on a Bank Holiday. 
 This was gratifying from the point of view of industrial 
 conditions, but exceedingly annoying to the traveller. 
 I spent some of the morning in the company of my fellow- 
 countryman with whom I had shared a cabin. He was 
 an extraordinarily gauche, nervous, crude creature. He 
 had come to Bergen representing a firm of jewellery im- 
 porters. He had an appointment with a friend there. 
 His friend failed to meet the boat, and I never saw any- 
 one in such a miserable fluster. His mind was of that 
 half-educated, ill-developed type which Wells sketches 
 in such clear and bold outlines. In our cabin was a notice 
 relating to the proper use to be made of the life-belt, should 
 occasion arise. Just before I left the boat for the last 
 time I noticed that he had inscribed upon the notice in 
 pencil, " Christ is your life-belt ; the Holy Ghost is your 
 straps." I was reminded of the man in one of Hardy's 
 novels who went about painting texts on barns and stiles. 
 A queer, uncanny product. Through how many centuries 
 have philosophers toiled, prophets preached, theologians 
 constructed churches to make possible that writhing little 
 abortion of a mind ! 
 
 He told me that he had read Ibsen, but regretted that 
 he could not understand the drift of some of the plays ! 
 How is the stream of modernity to find inlet into such 
 minds ? Probably rather through changed conditions 
 and environment than by means of any direct transfor- 
 mation of ideas by ideas. 
 
 Bergen is a pleasant old town, well kept, and made especi- 
 ally beautiful at this time of year by the masses of light 
 green foliage amongst the roofs. I finally gave up the 
 project of obtaining maps and with some misgivings set 
 off for the mountains, relying on the eighth or quarter 
 of an inch maps in Baedeker. 
 
 It was past mid-day when I started, and the heat grew 
 more and more oppressive. I toiled up a nameless moun- 
 tain, leaving Ulriken on my right, and skirting along the 
 pleasant lake at the foot ol it. My map was hopelessly
 
 68 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 inadequate, and I had to do the best I could with my 
 few scraps of Norwegian in asking my way. Of course 
 I lost the track. After a considerable amount of scramb- 
 ling, I emerged above the snow level, on a sort of plateau, 
 dotted with five or si>^ huts, which were used as week-end 
 residences by Bergen youths. I found four lads bathing 
 in a pool and they set me on my way to Borge. I had 
 a fine view of the fiords and islands from the plateau. In 
 a few minutes I arrived at a point where range after range 
 of snow-covered mountains inland came into sight. I 
 was reminded of the pass between the Fusio and Ariolo 
 valleys which I had crossed one afternoon last July. As 
 you arrive at the summit, the whole of the northern ranges 
 of the Alps suddenly appear. A panorama of these peak- 
 less Norwegian mountains is not so impressive as an Alpine 
 landscape. But the sudden apparition of the series of 
 loaf-shaped ranges stretching away to the horizon, and 
 looking, to one accustomed to Wales and Switzerland, 
 as if they must have been moulded and rounded and 
 smoothed by the hands of giants, was a thing not to be 
 forgotten. 
 
 I suppose contrast is more than anything else the founda- 
 tion of the appreciation of beauty. The sudden contrasts 
 which mountain walking offer give me, I believe, more 
 intense aesthetic pleasure than anything else in art or 
 Nature. I can recall half a dozen sudden revelations of 
 landscape which have moved me deeply. I have stood 
 while the mist has blown away unexpectedly from the 
 heights of Snowdon, revealing wonders of sea, river, and 
 green hills ; the Ticinese pass mentioned above the 
 turn in the road to Ulrik from Eide, suddenly revealing 
 the broad stretches of meadow and fiord, a descent out 
 of the mist enshrouding Mount Errigal in Donegal on 
 a spring evening all these will always remain for me 
 outstanding visions in the chain of dreams that we call 
 life. I remember on the last occasion to which I have 
 referred when descending the blunt knife edge Errigal, 
 the sudden revelation of the Derryveagh Mountains, and 
 the vale that goes down to Gweedore brought vividly back 
 to my memory that wonderful idealization of contrast in
 
 LEEDS 69 
 
 the "Phaedo" the passage where alternation is made 
 the very basis of knowledge and life, and adduced as a 
 principal argument for immortality. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 LEEDS. 15 June, 1910. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter, and for the book. 
 I will write again shortly. 
 
 I have just heard from B. that he is going to marry E. M. S. 
 It has moved me more than anything I have struck for 
 a long time. It is a really good thing, there is no 
 doubt about that a thing one can be certain and glad 
 about. . . . 
 
 I am growing more and more solitary and gloomy week 
 by week. Not that I am sick of life or anything like 
 that. I only see more and more clearly that work 
 or at any rate my kind of work and the art of life are 
 two things. I am possibly tolerably adapted for the 
 first. I am decidedly not a genius at the second. I 
 think perhaps I want to know too much of the why and 
 wherefore of it to do it well ever. Inquiry and practice 
 make a very good pair of horses for purposes of work ; 
 but they do not run well together when it is a matter of 
 life, not mere effort. 
 
 However, some one has got to inquire which means 
 experiment. And provided that it seems probable that 
 a reasonable majority of people are, or may be, happy 
 in a decent way, I don't mind much being in the minority. 
 Anyhow it gives me more satisfaction to think that Eva 
 and B. are likely to be happy than anything I have struck 
 for many a long month. 
 
 Work, restful sloop and meals, and solitary hills are 
 the only solid goods I seem to have a hold on now. I 
 think I shall concentrate on thorn i'or a time leave the 
 rest of life and sook peace in what I seem at loast to know. 
 Peace, by God ! I am so damned tired of wrestling with 
 facts and thought.
 
 70 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To E. M. S. 
 
 LEEDS. 15 June, igio. 
 
 I have just heard from B. I am very glad you are 
 going to marry each other. It is the best thing I have 
 struck for a very long time. I have felt more to-night than 
 I have for many long months, and I shall think of you 
 two black-headed devils last thing before I sleep to-night. 
 
 My life becomes more and more bureaucracy tempered 
 by solitude. I am afraid I am deficient in the art of 
 human intercourse, or at any rate the self that is me at 
 this stage is. I shall emerge when I have worried a few 
 things out perhaps. 
 
 A. is staying with R - just now in a cottage on the 
 moors. 1 expect to see them in a few days. 
 
 I am really more glad than I can say. I am also very 
 much pleased that B - has got a job in Liverpool. 
 
 To Mrs. Towns/tend. 
 
 LABOUR EXCHANGE, LEEDS. 
 
 Do read Margaret Macmillan's book on " The Child and 
 the State." It has inspired me enormously. Most of the 
 general stuff on education, apart from the administrative 
 side, seems to me slosh, but this is really inspiring. I 
 can't stand these blitherers with no guts who talk about 
 the harmonious development of personality and so forth, 
 but this woman has got hold of some stuff. I have also 
 been reading about the " Gruntvigian " movement in 
 Denmark a , good bit lately. There is no doubt they 
 learned to make butter as the incidental result of an en- 
 thusiasm for the humanities, which is one in the eye both 
 for the silly revival of apprenticeship people, and also 
 for the people who believe that technical education is the 
 only thing. Intelligence and (you can think me doctrin- 
 aire, radical and eighteenth-century, if you like) Reason 
 are the essentials. (I deliberately put Intelligence, by 
 which I mean appreciation of facts, before Reason, by 
 which I mean the power to correlate them.) I wish 
 Englishmen would talk more about Germany in terms of 
 Fichte and Goethe and less in terms of Charlottenburg.
 
 LEEDS 71 
 
 I am not against technical education, but it cannot arouse 
 a human passion like the passion for intelligence. By 
 God ! let us have the facts and see round them. 
 
 I think I am going to take a house near where G. lives. 
 I am getting to like him more and more. These chaps 
 who work hard for the cause, when they have to earn every 
 penny that they spend, inspire me with enthusiasm. It 
 is all very well for plutocrats like myself, with tons of 
 unearned increment, 1 to be Socialists. I am always all 
 right and have fattened on the sweat of the people for 
 years without doing anything but rave a bit. But chaps 
 like G., who have fought their way up, and still make great 
 sacrifice for the cause, make me feel damned humble and 
 a bit of a fraud. 
 
 I am thinking about a lot of things now. I hope you 
 will come and stay with me when I get my house. I 
 have got two beds, and I will get a bit more furniture. 
 I shall be near Roundhay Park, which is one of the few 
 good things in Leeds. 
 
 I am beginning to see the other side of all sorts of things, 
 which does not make me less revolutionary but more 
 sure of my ground. I shan't ask R. to share my house. 
 ... I am in sympathy with her nature and with the spirit 
 of her aspirations at least, I hope the best of me is ; but 
 in the everyday work of life I am primarily a politician 
 my religion, my whole philosophy of the business of life 
 centres round the State. Political science and ethics 
 are identical terms for me in most of my moods. Politics 
 is the art of life. Well, that being so, I can't stand second- 
 rate reasoning about politics. I am too hasty to be able 
 to live with it anyhow. And when I am conscious that 
 all my own ideals are as nothing to her, compared with the 
 third-rate logic about the working of political and economic 
 organization poured out by honest third-rate thinkers, I 
 am small enough not to be able to stan^ it. ... 
 
 I have done all I could to root out anti-feminist preju- 
 dices which every man must have who is brought up 
 in the present form of society, and I know I am more free 
 of them than appears in my speech (the old trick of 
 1 He had an inherited income of about 300 a year.
 
 72 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 covering up sensitiveness ; you are about the only person 
 who sees through it pretty thoroughly in me only it is 
 not a deliberate trick as you think, it is an involuntary 
 instinct which I hate and have sometimes wept over and 
 regarded as a sort of curse). 
 
 Well, I don't know why I should write all this to you. 
 Perhaps it will worry you. But I don't think it will. 
 And if you see that I am damned wrong somewhere, I 
 have no doubt you will make me see it, and that I shall 
 hide from you the fact that I see it as I have done dozens 
 of times. 
 
 It is interesting how the new science of heredity makes 
 parenthood a sort of gamble with a limited number of 
 differently coloured marbles. That is wrry it doesn't 
 matter that marriage is such an accident. If parenthood 
 is a gamble within fixed limits, it is only meet that marriage 
 should be regarded as such too. The only thing that 
 matters is introducing cracked marbles into the gamble. 
 
 Their exclusion is the science of Eugenics. When it 
 is really recognized that marriage is and must remain a 
 gamble (and parenthood still remains a gamble even if 
 real love is superadded to marriage), then men will begin 
 to perceive their relationship to the whole human race, 
 and society, nay humanity, will completely supplant the 
 family as the basis of the moral emotions or at least 
 the ties of immediate blood-relationship will be valued 
 mainly as symbols of the love that is a latent bond between 
 all mankind. Graham Wallas quotes a line from Dante 
 about the love that first set the stars in motion. It is 
 not such rot as it seems at first sight. It attracted my 
 attention first because I didn't understand it (I went 
 to picture-galleries first for the same reason). I see 
 something in it now, and 1 hope to read the whole of 
 Dante some day when a moral scandal or an electoral 
 defeat brings about my temporary retirement into the 
 country or on an analogous occasion. 
 
 " Don Juan " is the only epic which I have ever read 
 in toto so far.
 
 LEEDS 73 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROYAL CRESCENT HOTEL, FILEY. 
 
 Sunday, 26 February, 1911. 
 
 I am not overworking I know how to take care of 
 myself now but I am working right up to the margin. 
 I have done my duty by the State this last year and a half, 
 and in July I am going to take a long holiday for three 
 weeks or a month. I shall probably go to Switzerland, 
 then across the mountains on foot, over the plains to Venice, 
 mostly by train, by steamer down the Adriatic, and by 
 foot somewhere into the Balkans or Greece. 
 
 I am giving up the managership of the Leeds Labour 
 Exchange at the end of this month (February), and am 
 going to do special work in connection with the juvenile 
 department of the Exchange in both Lancashire and York- 
 shire. This will suit me excellently. I have several 
 ideas which I want to get an opportunity of experimenting 
 in. I have already eight Advisory Committees in separate 
 towns which I can use as corpora villa for my experiments. 
 If I can't get a thing done in one place I probably can in 
 another. It is a grand opportunity. 
 
 I have also got a pretty good way in research in one 
 or two matters connected with juvenile labour. During 
 the last eighteen months I have taught myself the use 
 of Blue-books, and have thrown off the old habit of reading 
 with excessive slowness and thoroughness as if for an 
 examination. I feel this is a huge acquisition. I cannot 
 tell yet how far I can go in administration or politics. I 
 know my extreme ethical individualism and my hatred 
 of the rich and their habits is probably a very distinct 
 bar to my going beyond a certain point in the Civil Service 
 (and quite rightly). It may be in politics too. But 
 not all the snobbery and bourgeoisie of England can shut 
 me out of the British Museum ! And to have realized 
 the power of realistic knowledge, and to have attained to 
 some extent the power of using it gives me an independence 
 of which no man can rob mo. I shall never be a broken- 
 hearted political exile ! If the worst came to the worst, I 
 should begin again across the Atlantic. Eveiy Englishman 
 is a potential American if he only has the sense to see it.
 
 74 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Blessed is the man who has found his work. I am 
 happier than ever I was. In fact, when I look over my 
 life, right back to the long, solitary fight of my boyhood, 
 I see that each year has been almost without exception 
 happier than the last. I think I learned a good deal 
 through the years of isolated struggling at Winchester. 
 No one will ever know what that meant to me. In some 
 respects it seems so horrible now more so as I grow older 
 that I can hardly bear to think of it. And yet I feel 
 that I was storing up for myself treasure in heaven 
 which is manhood to a boy. But it might not have been 
 so. There have been thousands for whom it has not been 
 so, and therefore I still cling almost superstitiously to 
 a sort of shadow of a belief in Nemesis (this happiness 
 is too good to last) and a constant warning of myself 
 that the gods love not too great pride of happiness in 
 man. 
 
 I find myself getting more and more independent in 
 spirit, more capable of enjoying life alone, less dependent 
 on any one for the essentials of the best pleasures. I 
 know some people denounce such individualism. I think 
 they are mostly people who are incapable of experiencing 
 it. It does not mean a lessening of the importance of 
 friendship or even of love. It only means that one culls 
 both of them instead of wallowing in them. I daresay 
 I am incapable of the sort of passion for an individual 
 that sweeps a man away from worldly considerations. 
 But I know that romance is not necessarily bound up 
 with that sort of passion. I know that my passion for 
 moulding the stuff that binds men together in society 
 for becoming a part of that stuff myself, an indistinguish- 
 able brick or stone in the temple of God is as unworldly 
 and as romantic as the wildest lover's passion. And 
 in my best moments I can feel the true lover's humility, 
 in my love for Earth and Man, just as really as those who 
 fall prostrate before Woman or Art. (The insolence of 
 their exclusiveness ! ! !) 
 
 And I am learning to be one of earth's children I 
 believe I am. Nature is more and more beautiful to me. 
 The simple natural (I defend the word) pleasures of sunlight
 
 LEEDS 75 
 
 and sky and food and wine to crown Life now and again 
 with an ephemeral garland become more and more real. 
 The joys of bathing in winter, of running mile after 
 mile on a moor, of pure physical love, without pretences 
 why, by God ! why not take them all and be thankful 
 without any quibbling ? They aren't any of them every- 
 thing but nor is anything else. I am losing patience 
 with those who are devoured by a sense of imperfection. 
 Their standard is wrong not too high or low, but mis- 
 conceived. I stop and wonder now and again at real 
 tragedies. Not often, I admit. I simply cannot under- 
 stand them : I can only see that by far the greater part 
 of them the most pitiable, the least dignified part at 
 any rate are remediable. All that part of tragedy which 
 is due to human wastefulness I mean social stupidity 
 is remediable. Perhaps I shall come closer to the mean- 
 ing of the other part as I grow older. I have come to 
 understand the common, routine part of the mechanism 
 of myself fairly well. I know it is no use my trying to 
 live with R. or any other woman. I get to like her 
 and respect her love her, if the word were not abused 
 more and more. But domestic life requires a certain 
 amount of energy like everything else. I find that 
 with me it requires a good deal more when conducted 
 with a woman than with a man. In the former case, too, 
 it doesn't give me the sort of change I want from work. 
 All this I have found ; it is not acting on theories. 
 
 But I am more and more keen on having children. Joan 
 fascinates me. I know it is humbug to say that I am 
 shirking parental responsibilities by not living with R. 
 every day. Perhaps I am too cocksure about my metis 
 conscia rccti in this respect but it is a real conviction. 
 
 I want to have several children. I don't care about 
 the probability that at least the majority of them 
 will never be as consciously intimate with me as my 
 best contemporary friends. Just as there are certain 
 phases of one's life (in clear contradistinction to others) 
 which one looks back over and feels, " Well, with all 
 the tarnished portions, with all the misshapen fragments, 
 still it was worth it," so I shall feel about my relations with
 
 76 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 my children when (if ever) I am sixty. " Fd do it again," 
 as William says in " You Never Can Tell." 
 
 To-day I am resting most enjoyably. I caught the 
 9 a.m. from Leeds to Scarborough and walked here in 
 glorious sunshine and wind along the coast. I gave 
 myself a good luncheon (to the frugal a half-crown luncheon 
 and half a bottle of wine once a month is Ambrosia and 
 Nectar why don't the rich find that out ?) and have 
 spent the afternoon reading " Getting Married," and 
 watching the sunlight and the sea and the cliffs of Flam- 
 borough Head. By God ! life is good. It might be good 
 for nearly, very nearly, all men. 
 
 " Getting Married " is wonderful. Damn these super- 
 Shavian, quibbling technologist critics with their " pure 
 dramatic art " and what not ! 
 
 There is Truth and Life in this thing. I will not 
 wrangle over the word " play " with them I have no 
 time. 
 
 The sun has set now, but the cliffs of Flamborough Head 
 still stand out beautiful in another way, and there is blue 
 in the sky and shining clouds and grey clouds, and the 
 hue of the sea is not colourless though no man can name 
 it. I once heard a rather pious German professor in a 
 lecture distinguish at length between Buddhism and 
 Christianity as based upon Mitlcid and Mitfreude respec- 
 tively. We have no word for Mitfreude in English. But 
 I know that though it was first Mitlcid which lit my passion 
 against human injustice and folly, and that fanned it 
 during the years of my boyhood, it is more and more 
 Mitfreude, becoming conscious of itself in moods such as 
 this, which binds me to my fellow-men and to all living 
 creatures and to the impersonal but loving forces of Nature 
 the embrace of the wind, the lap of the water, and the 
 folds of the bosom of Earth. 
 
 (By the way, I am not becoming a Christian, or anything 
 like it.) 
 
 The sky and sea and dills are all becoming greyer. 
 Behind me there is a long line of white waves leaping up 
 against a breakwater or a line of rocks which runs out 
 from the northern end of the bay ; the lighthouse on Flam-
 
 LEEDS 77 
 
 borough Head has begun to flash, first red, then white, and 
 then yellow at intervals. 
 
 Well, I must up and away. I have eight miles to walk 
 against a strong gale, to catch a train at Scarborough, 
 back to Leeds. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 12, ROMAN TERRACE, ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 13 June, 1911. 
 
 I have been rather incompetent till to-day since getting 
 back. It is too much for me trying to work hard and 
 at the same time dissipate socially in London as I did 
 last week. However, I am very fit again now, and hoping 
 to get on with my book. I enjoy being here immensely. 
 I have made friends with a young blouse manufacturer 
 who is a Fabian and Minority Report man, and am trying 
 to persuade him to come and live with me. If I could 
 find two or three congenial men to come and share this 
 house it would be really good fun. 
 
 I have read Olive Schreiner's book and think it excellent 
 except that some misunderstandings of the trade unionist 
 attitude towards women's labour rather annoy me. She, 
 like most middle-class women, doesn't seem to realize 
 that women's labour nearly always means labour at cheaper 
 rates than men's labour. Where it doesn't as in the 
 cotton trade no one objects to it. I have seen a good 
 deal of the ceaseless struggle of trade union secretaries 
 to get standard rates and conditions observed by masters. 
 Women who come in and work for less are naturally ob- 
 jected to just as men who work for less are objected to. 
 
 But I like Olive Schreiner's book immensely. I think 
 it is right that women should feel that they are fighting 
 for a right to share in the world's labour and the most 
 interesting parts of it not primarily for a right to " self- 
 development " or " experience " or some other anti-Puritan 
 catchword. 
 
 14 June, IQII. 
 
 I am looking forward immensely to my month's holiday. 
 I shall turn absolutely from books and towns. I expect 
 I shall loaf about the Tirol with old Dudley for a bit,
 
 78 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 and then perhaps cross over into Switzerland by myself. 
 I feel I shall return with the strength of a giant. 
 
 Meanwhile I am going to take a preliminary week-end 
 in Wales to-morrow, Sunday. I am simply craving for 
 a sight of the mountains. I have been feeling " I will 
 lift up mine eyes unto the hills " all this evening. The 
 smell of a wet hillside and the feel of slippery rocks will 
 be food and drink to my soul. And two nights in lonely 
 farmhouses with dips into Meredith's poems after supper 
 will be a vision of the far-off, unattainable peace which 
 I always dream of but never find. 
 
 I have a sort of affection for North Wales which I think 
 I can never lose almost a sentimentality which I am 
 ashamed of when I take up the map and look in a few 
 seconds at a dozen mountains or valleys each of which 
 I can see almost as clearly in my mind's eye as in reality, 
 and each of which is connected for me with an outburst 
 of feeling in relation to some individual I have an extra- 
 ordinary sort of melting mood come over me, which I never 
 experience except in solitude, a passionate desire to have 
 done with the perversities of my own nature which have 
 broken up so many loves and friendships, and a sort of 
 vision of a me that exists in posse and therefore as really 
 as the me of actuality a me which could translate into 
 terms of, say, a long evening's talk by the fireside with 
 each individual the most passionate feeling I ever had 
 for him or her. Peace ! I don't ask for a lifetime of it, 
 only for an hour now and again. And yet I can't get it. 
 I can get nearer it in general with men than with women. 
 It seems easier to throw the spectre of practicality over- 
 board for an hour with men, and to live wholly in the 
 visions of the moment. 
 
 By God ! I look at that map and I seem to know with 
 a sort of certainty which is strange to most everyday 
 issues that there is something more real and enduring 
 in the love that one has felt for an individual whatever 
 has happened to it in actual life than in the never-ending 
 
 clangour of discords and perversities. I can see R , 
 
 in brown gaiters and a grey skirt and coat, climbing 
 up the north side of Rhinog Fawr with me the first time
 
 LEEDS 79 
 
 I ever walked with her. I can see you walking with me 
 up the Cwmbychan road by a wood one cloudy afternoon 
 
 and meeting old Dudley with the O s ; and D. 
 
 on the lawn in front of Pen-yr-alt. (I would give any- 
 thing for a command over reasonableness sufficient to 
 force myself to show and her to see if only for half an 
 hour in the whole of the rest of my life that 1 did feel 
 genuinely in love with her, and that what was real in that 
 exists to-day. I can't express what I mean, it only makes 
 a mix up in words ; it is part of my idea of a sort of sym- 
 posium I mean literally banquet or gathering of all 
 one's loves in a triumph of reasonableness.) 
 
 Well, you see, I am a sentimentalist at bottom so gross 
 a sentimentalist that perhaps the assumption of a mask 
 of ruffianism is not only explicable but inevitable. Un- 
 fortunately, the effect of the mask may be similar to that 
 of the mask assumed by Max Beerbohm's Happy Hypocrite. 
 
 I am looking forwarckto your coming immensely. Jones, 
 late of Walworth, is coming for a few days during Corona- 
 tion. His company always rejoices my soul. Heron, 
 my blouse manufacturer friend, was here last night. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 20 June, ign. 
 
 I feel enormously benefited by my tramp. Had a 
 grand day in the mountains yesterday and thought a lot. 
 Unfortunately, I could not sleep last night except for two 
 hours. The cause was not mental at all. I had a very 
 good supper, including flesh and claret, just before going 
 to bed, after tramping from 11.30 to 9.15, and this on top 
 of a very refreshing bath made me so alert that I simply 
 could not stop thinking. I almost wished I believed 
 in the sanctity of marriage, then I should know what to 
 do anyway. 
 
 Oh what a dusty answer gets the soul 
 When hot for certainties in this our life. 
 
 It is more honourable to the human spirit to live with- 
 out ethical certainties when you know that really they are
 
 80 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 all only convenient hypotheses, but how much more difficult ! 
 I should be a much better political Socialist, and much 
 more likely to make a public success of my life, if a cursed 
 spirit of inquisitiveness and empiricism, culminating in 
 Tolstoy and last of all Shaw, hadn't made me attempt to 
 probe questions of conduct to the root. But I don't 
 think I would sooner be without that spirit on the whole.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 
 
 JULY, 1911, TO JULY, 1912 (AGED 24-5) 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 TIROL. 
 Saturday, 22 July, 191 1. 
 
 WE have arrived at a hotel right up a splendid valley. 
 We left Miinchen at 8.45 this morning and arrived at a 
 little place called Mayerhof about one o'clock. There we 
 dined, and have since then been walking up the valley. 
 I am writing on a hillock facing the snow mountains, and 
 just above the river. Zemmerthal is the name of the 
 valley, but I don't suppose you know it. I left the route 
 to Dudley, as it doesn't seem to me to matter much where 
 you get in country like this. As he changed it completely 
 about four times yesterday, I gave up trying to find out 
 where we were coming till we were nearly at the end of 
 our railway journey this morning. 
 
 I always enjoy the long journey across Germany from 
 England. There are so many things to see, even when 
 one is rushing through a country in a train. I travelled 
 most of the way with a Dutchman, and knocked some 
 of the rust off my German by talking for several hours 
 with him about the Flushing fortification question, the 
 draining of the Zuyder Zee, the Dutch education problem 
 (the religious question seems very similar to ours), the 
 Dutch East Indies, the strikes at Rotterdam and Antwerp, 
 etc., etc. It seems that many Dutchmen accept the idea 
 of ultimate incorporation in the German Empire with 
 equanimity. I think they are right, and I think England 
 should recognize the situation. Surely in the interests 
 of civilization we must have one central authority from 
 
 7 si
 
 82 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 the North Sea to the Mediterranean. It won't extinguish 
 local culture and local sentiment. Holland would be just 
 as well off, it seems to me, if she were in the position of 
 Bavaria as she is now. The incorporation of Holland in 
 the German Empire would mean, of course, (i) that Prussia 
 would no longer have a majority of votes in the Bundesrath 
 (unless this were juggled somehow), (2) that the whole 
 strategic position as regards English and German relations 
 would be revolutionized. Of course the ordinary English- 
 man would say, " We can't have a German Fleet within 
 five or six hours' sail of the English coast." But it seems 
 to me that the proximity of the German Navy would 
 render some understanding inevitable. The position would 
 be so intolerable that it could not last. 
 
 It is useless for Radicals of the j. A. Hobson type to 
 go on talking vague internationalism without definitely 
 trying to consider what Germany wants and what is the 
 relation of her wants to the general interests of civilization. 
 I think Germany should be recognized as the Power which 
 is bound to become the administrator of Central Europe 
 in so far as a common centralized administrator is 
 necessary. 
 
 Of course government isn't, and never will be, more 
 than one of the main interests of civilized life. The 
 Germans and the English can govern pretty cleanly and 
 pretty well as things go. We must to a certain extent 
 think in terms of good government. Liberty is the first 
 essential of good government. But it is no more than 
 that The problem of the administration of Central 
 Europe appears to me as primarily (not wholly) express- 
 ible in exactly the same terms as the problem of the admin- 
 istration of Greater London. I don't know enough to 
 speak confidently, but I suspect that the growth of 
 specifically Bavarian art and literature in the last genera- 
 tion has been actually helped by the unification of Germany. 
 It seems to me simply muddle-headed to say that local 
 culture is necessarily stimulated by complete political 
 independence. 
 
 Dudley and I talked about a great many things in a 
 very short time with Bonn, the head of the new Miinchener
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 83 
 
 Handelshochschule. He has the typically Jewish mental 
 qualities, but he is remarkably shrewd and well-informed. 
 
 We lunched yesterday with half a dozen German students 
 of the type who despise the duelling man and are alto- 
 gether much more like Englishmen. One of them had 
 his mistress with him a most beautiful girl with masses 
 of black hair and very dark eyes. I am told that there 
 is very little prostitution as we understand it in Munich, 
 because the mistress system is so much more general. 
 
 The hours of work of Munich waitresses distress me very 
 much. We got some figures from one girl. Apparently no 
 one, even amongst Socialists, has taken the question up. 
 The Socialists seem to be almost wholly occupied with 
 questions of general principle and imperial policy. They 
 have not found their Webb. 
 
 (It is nearly dark, and I must go in. The mountains 
 in this light are wonderful.) 
 
 I was immensely surprised to hear Bonn speak of the 
 lack of public spirit in Munich just in the same way as 
 I do in Leeds. He said that most of the members of the 
 City Council go in with a view to their own interests without 
 any direct jobbery. Very many are small shopkeepers. 
 The place is well governed, but the chief motive is really 
 to try to attract rich visitors and residents who can be 
 fleeced by the trader and tax-gatherer. (Munich is really a 
 residential not an industrial town.) 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 FRANZENSFESTE, TIROL. 
 
 Tuesday, 25 July, 1911. 
 
 Thank you very miich indeed for your letter which I 
 have just found here. I had been looking forward to 
 arriving here not least because I hoped for letters. Yes- 
 terday morning, after Dudley went off to Scherzing, I lay 
 out on the grass outside the Dominenshutte, looking up 
 the valley at the glacier and the snow, and read a most 
 fascinating pamphlet on German Kolonialpolitik by Bonn, 
 whom I met in Munich. He has specialized in colonial 
 questions, and my slight knowledge of South Africa enables 
 me to recognize that he is probably abler in his treatment
 
 84 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 of them than any one we have in England. I have never 
 seen such a mass of ideas on colonial questions, substan- 
 tiated by skilful reference to facts, within the compass 
 of fifty pages. I really think it ought to be translated 
 into English, as a contribution towards the understanding 
 of Germany by England. 
 
 The main ideas of the pamphlet are as follows : 
 The German colonial movement started in the early 
 eighties, when emigration from Germany was at its height. 
 Then the principal German possessions were acquired. 
 The main idea was to find an outlet for Germans across 
 the sea where they could remain German citizens. But 
 since then the following facts have become clear or 
 emerged : 
 
 1. The German colonies can never contain a white population 
 of all grades of society (most interesting references are made to 
 the conditions prevailing with regard to the competition of white 
 and coloured labour in Algeria, Queensland, German South-West 
 Africa, and South Africa). 
 
 2. German industry has developed so enormously that German 
 emigration has practically ceased. (Bonn might refer, though he 
 does not in detail, to the enormous immigration, both seasonal and 
 permanent, of Italians and Poles into Germany, especially in the 
 building and mining industries and agriculture.) 
 
 3. The most serious problem of German industry in many ways 
 is the rising price of raw material, e.g. in the cotton industry (this 
 is of course true of industry all over the world). 
 
 Whether or no Germany can be made to include a still 
 larger population depends on 
 
 1. A continued supply of cheap raw material (and food Bonn, 
 like Brentano and Lotze, the great Munich economists, is of course 
 a strong Free Trader. Tariff Reform probably does not include the 
 ablest economists among its adherents even in Germany). 
 
 2. The preservation of her present opening of new markets. 
 
 With regard to (i) the first of the real functions of 
 Germany's colonies emerges to supply cheap raw mate- 
 rial for German industry. Of course they provide very 
 little now, but their population is 14,000,000, and they 
 could be made to supply a great deal more.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 85 
 
 With regard to (2) (perhaps the most interesting part 
 of the pamphlet deals with this), Bonn assumes that the 
 countries to which Germany exports will offer less of a 
 market in future owing to tariffs and the growth of local 
 industries. Germany can take three possible courses to 
 deal with this problem. 
 
 1. She can try to force foreign countries to open their markets 
 by means of war. No doubt there are plenty of hard-headed fools 
 (Bonn says in effect) who would like to try this. But such a method 
 is utterly impracticable on account of the boycott. Whatever 
 treaty were made with a conquered Government, it is impossible 
 to conceive a conquered people at once beginning to buy sewing 
 machines, cloth, etc., from their conquerors. The possibilities of 
 the boycott are too great. (An interesting limitation of the economic 
 man theory.) 
 
 2. She might try to conquer a part of the incompletely settled 
 districts of the world where whites can live and bring up families 
 e.g. South America or Australia. Bonn does not absolutely dismiss 
 this as a possibility. (He evidently regards his Government rather 
 with the feeling that they are fools enough to try anything.) But 
 his own policy is 
 
 3. To stimulate the wants of native Africa by a humane and 
 civilizing policy towards the natives and so create a new market. 
 There is room for an almost indefinite extension of consumption 
 in Africa, and it is not likely to manufacture for a very long time, 
 if ever. Bonn is no sentimentalist. I should not even call him a 
 humanitarian. He is an almost callous Jew. But he riddles the 
 brutal extermination policy of the German Government in South- 
 West Africa with economic criticism, contrasting it again and again 
 with our more humane policy in South Africa. He points out that 
 there are more licensed white traders in the tiny Trankei territory * 
 than there are traders in the whole of German South- West Africa 
 in spite of the infinitely larger native and white population in the 
 latter. 
 
 Incidentally, you might as well, it seems to me, apply the 
 extension of the consumption idea to the home proletariat, 
 who, as Money says, are very bad customers so long as 
 they are badly paid (see Hobson too). But if only we 
 could make people see that the raising of the standard 
 of native African life is intimately connected with our 
 own economic interests it would be a great thing. 
 
 1 A Cape Colony native reserve, where no white man may trade 
 without a Government licence.
 
 86 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Of course, in a sense this may be anti-Socialist stimu- 
 lating the property sense, etc. But I am afraid the tribal 
 system is doomed. I am also very suspicious of any 
 idealization of primitive man (or woman). And, after 
 all, civilization is one, and the black man, though he may 
 be saved a good many of our zigzags along the road to 
 Utopia, is not going to have a private Utopia of his own. 
 
 Yesterday afternoon I crossed the pass into the valley 
 leading to this place, which is on the Brennerbahn and 
 the main road from Innsbruck to Verona. Just after I 
 got across the pass there was a thunderstorm, and it began 
 to rain. (The rolling echoes of the thunder in the moun- 
 tains was glorious.) I had coffee at one Gasthaus and 
 beer at another, but I did not like the people. The first 
 Gasthaus Was really only a Bauernhaus. There was a 
 plague of flies, and also a wench who was grossly seductive. 
 So I came away. About an hour later I went into another 
 Gasthaus. Here they were very uncivil, said they had 
 no more beds, and could only give me supper if I liked to 
 wait an hour. The tourists here were a damned lot- 
 quite different from those in the valley we went up first, 
 because in this second main valley there was a cart-road 
 of sorts. There was a yapping party of German women, 
 who grinned at me because I had on an English mackintosh, 
 the likes of which they had not seen before. On such 
 occasions I preserve complete outward composure, and 
 carry out my policy of showing how well Englishmen can 
 behave even more strictly than I usually do, but I boiled 
 tremendously within. So I walked on two hours more 
 through pouring rain. The valley was not very beautiful, 
 but I enjoyed the swish of the rain in the birch-woods 
 and the noise of the swollen river. About nine o'clock 
 I came to a Gasthaus which was very pleasant, though 
 the wench here also was rather free perhaps they are 
 all in that valley. Here I fed and slept. I had thought 
 of crossing the mountains to-day, and arriving here by a 
 roundabout route. But instead I went straight on to 
 Sterzing. I just missed the ten o'clock train here, but 
 I am glad I did, as I found a swimming bath where I had
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 87 
 
 a glorious hour. A number of Germans were bathing 
 en famille. (Whoever started the idea that mixed bathing 
 stimulates lust ? People have no right to start these 
 ideas except on a basis of realistic psychology.) After 
 my bathe I strolled round Sterzing very leisurely (the sun 
 was very hot). There was one jolly old street, with lots 
 of cool vaults and arcades. 
 
 I have read your letter several times. I am so glad 
 to hear about Joan. The main thing I shall care about 
 in connection with her future will be to do all I can to 
 enable her to have a definite place in the world's work. 
 Of course it will be much easier she will, in fact, be able 
 to do it entirely for herself if she has brains. But it is 
 even more important that she should find her place in the 
 world's work, even if she hasn't. I should imagine, at 
 any rate I hope, that there will be less need for general 
 vague woman agitators in twenty years' time, and there- 
 fore she ought to start from the first with the assumption 
 that she will do something definite. But God forbid that 
 I should ever infringe my own principles to the extent 
 of attempting to mould a course for any child of mine. 
 I hope I know the weakness of well-meaning parents well 
 enough. Perhaps I even under-estimate their value. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 VERONA. 31 July, IQTI. 
 
 I have enjoyed myself hugely to-day, trying to let 
 myself feel the influence of Italy with as little positive 
 exertion as possible. The chief thing I did this morning 
 was to climb up the Castel San Pietro on the farther side 
 of the river, whence one has a view of the whole place. 
 There I lay in the shade for nearly an hour thinking of 
 the history of Northern Italy and many other things. The 
 fact keeps forcing itself on my mind that this place is 
 about the size of a third-rate Yorkshire manufacturing 
 town say Rotherham, or the enlarged borough of Dews- 
 bury. 1 suppose it was as large, or larger, under the 
 Roman Empire (the Amphitheatre seats twenty thousand).
 
 88 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Does the fact of a great past really influence the lives 
 of the great mass of the people ? I doubt it. I don't 
 see how it can till we get a national minimum wage and 
 an eight-hours day. And I doubt whether history has 
 ever been really an intimate consciousness for the mass 
 of the people, except in so far as they felt the effects of 
 war or devastation. The things which really are important 
 for them in history, e.g. sanitation and industrial changes, 
 they have not realized simply because historians are only 
 just beginning to take any notice of them. But the day 
 will come when the history of main drainage in England 
 will supplant the study of Crecy and Agincourt, when 
 Chadwick will oust Wellington as a national hero, and 
 the youth of England will know more about the Municipal 
 Corporations Act than the Comitia Centuriata ? 
 
 The Roman Republican Constitution is about the most 
 futile to select for study by boys there might be some 
 point in studying the Athenian. Even if the contention 
 of the ordinary Public School head master or classical don 
 be admitted that a non-utilitarian study of the classical 
 politics and classical literature should be the main element 
 in education still their methods are absolutely unjusti- 
 fiable. 
 
 How the devil is anyone to understand what the 
 Comitia Centuriata, the Ecclesia, or the Boule were like if 
 he or she has never seen even a public political meeting ? 
 An Italian has recently written a book on Caesar, showing 
 that he really climbed up by being a first-rate caucus 
 manager. Probably the average Public School master has 
 never attended a ward meeting of the local Tory or Liberal 
 caucus or ever read his Ostrogorski. What is the good 
 of trying to understand the dead politics of another age 
 if you don't look at the monuments of the living organism 
 of which you are a part ? Whether an understanding of 
 the past or a practical reform of the present be your main 
 object, your method must be the same see and feel the 
 actual thing working. It is perfectly easy to do so : in 
 every village the machinery of public affairs in the Parish 
 Council, the Rural District and County Councils and their 
 officials local school managers, etc., etc. moves on day
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 89 
 
 by day. And yet we can find nothing better to stuff the 
 minds of boys of fourteen with than the dubious details 
 of the Roman Constitution. Lieber Gott in Himmel ! It is 
 enough to make one weep. And then we wonder at the 
 lack of interest in public affairs yelp against the party 
 system instead of reforming parties (which must exist) 
 from within, as the Americans are doing so successfully, 
 or grow pessimistic about democracy generally. The 
 sacrifice of intelligence in the Public Schools is openly 
 justified in the supposed interests of the production of 
 political capacity, but no one tries to give any attention 
 to the specifically political education of the mass of 
 the people. People only seek to find some dodge 
 proportional representation, the referendum which will 
 counteract the effect of political ignorance, the study of 
 civic institutions, local government, the caucus, the Civil 
 Service, and Parliament. The average boy or girl may 
 be too foolish or too divorced from the facts of life (owing 
 to his parents) to understand the interest of these things. 
 But then a lot of education has got to remain drudgery 
 until all teachers are Egerias. And facts about existing 
 government are as good for the average boy or girl in his 
 or her teens as any other facts. Some of them will stick 
 and bear fruit in the mind when the boy or girl comes 
 to read the newspaper or vote, or be asked to join a 
 political organization. 
 
 The Amphitheatre here is a wonderful place; part of 
 the arena is occupied by a circus, and acrobatic erections, 
 and advertisements of Velma milk chocolate ! I suppose 
 it is really not suited to most of the best modern sports, 
 it is not big enough for running or to start aeroplanes from. 
 What a pity it isn't a theatre ! There is a Roman theatre 
 here, but it is much smaller and more broken, and also 
 has a church in the middle. 
 
 Italy interests me tremendously, but one cannot pick 
 up any but the most superficial sociological information by 
 casually staying here, and I don't allow rrvyself to humbug 
 myself that I am more interested in churches and pictures 
 than I actually am. I did not like the cathedral here as 
 a whole nearly as much as several English cathedrals of
 
 90 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 course it is utterly different. But there are some little 
 Romanesque colonnades and a little Basilica which are 
 very pleasing. I wonder the cool of the churches 
 doesn't make them more popular. I don't know if 
 Roman Catholics are beginning to justify their practices 
 by the argument that their physical effects induce good 
 spiritual results. I was much amused by a young High 
 Church Socialist friend of mine justifying fasting on 
 hygienic grounds. If I were in Verona I would use the 
 churches as an alternative to the public baths in summer. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 7 August, 1911. 
 
 I have been reading a book on Italy by Bolton King 
 and Okey. It is very good and interesting in view of the 
 events of to-day. Last night I did not turn to my ordinary 
 work, but read in a textbook of modern history the story 
 of the Franco-Prussian War, and the outlines of diplomatic 
 history since then. I feel more and more the utter irrele- 
 vance of diplomacy to the real needs of people, and the 
 absurd gullibility of the whole of us the utter absence 
 of the elements of reasonableness in foreign affairs. What 
 does it all matter to the proletariat and peasantry of 
 Europe ? They want good government, reasonable organ- 
 ization. They have no interest in these silly squabbles 
 over precedence and national honour, which themselves 
 bear no necessary relation to valuable traditions and noble 
 sentiments. And yet the feelings of Frenchmen and 
 Germans are perfectly intelligible after the history of the 
 past centuries, and in particular the last fifty years. Vernon 
 Lee's letter in the Nation was interesting. I am glad she 
 raises her voice against this damnable Anglo-French En- 
 tente. I don't feel cocksure about my idea of the expansion 
 of Germany. Of course the curious thing is that Prussia 
 does not want Germany to expand in Europe, because 
 she would then cease to be able to out-vote the rest of 
 Germany, and the Dutch and Austrians would certainly 
 be on the whole a peaceful and liberal force iu the Empire. 
 I don't feel so wrathful against Italy over the Tripoli
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 91 
 
 question as most English people, especially Liberals, seem 
 to be. I think North Africa has got to be brought within 
 the sphere of Western European Government, and I don't 
 think the muddle in South Italy is an adequate reason 
 for stopping Italy if she wants to have a share in the 
 job. On the other hand, I doubt if she can afford it. 
 It will probably cost the Government a good lot, and 
 reading about Italian poverty is horrible. It seems prob- 
 able, on the whole, that the Italians will do better for 
 Tripoli than the Young Turks. I expect angry letters 
 from Liberals in the next Nation if any one troubles to 
 go on with the correspondence. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LF.F.DS. 
 
 14 August, 1911. 
 
 ... I am in a queer mood, not dismal but rather 
 solemn. I feel I am growing so confoundedly old, or 
 rather experienced in life. I have lived through ten 
 years in the last two. I know I am almost a different 
 man from what I was when I came up here. 
 
 One of the things which I can scarcely understand is 
 the extraordinary clearness with which I am able to see 
 my own mistakes, even quite a short way back. I think 
 there must be something queer about the relation and 
 functions of intellect and instinct in me. Sometimes I 
 seem to use intellect when most people would go by instinct 
 (or convention), and sometimes, though less commonly, 
 I trust to impulse when most people would calculate, or 
 probably not act at all. I feel I don't know what I am 
 turning into. I know if I once get a sure grip on life and 
 a definite direction I have enormous powers, which have 
 to a large extent been frittered away, or at any rate spent 
 in gaining experience during the last four years. 
 
 I feel at this moment a sort of confidence that I shall 
 eventually find a fairly clearly defined life-work, and that 
 it is only natural, my character being what it is, that I 
 should have twisted and turned a bit for a few years. If 
 that is the case I know I shall not regret these years, 
 because I have certainly become wiser in them than if
 
 92 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I had been in the, to me, far happier (and in a sense more 
 " natural ") state of a sort of elan of work-inspiration, 
 steadily, ceaselessly, remorselessly, pouring down like a 
 mountain stream with whirlpools, waterfalls, and side 
 pools, but no stopping in the main. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 18 August, 1911. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter. I have not 
 written because my mind has been very full of many 
 things in a confused way, and I have been much more 
 devoid of definite impressions than I generally am. 
 
 I thought of coming down to see you by the excursion 
 train on Sunday, but it is doubtful now whether the trains 
 will be running again, and in any case I think perhaps 
 I had best stay and work. I have been getting on with 
 my book slowly. I enjoy life most when I am writing 
 it now. The warring of ideas and impressions in my 
 mind when I am not at it is troublesome. Marion Paris, 
 at the end of her last letter, wished me peace of mind. 
 I suppose I shall get it again some day, but it seems far 
 off now. 
 
 The strike is magnificent. Nothing else really matters. 
 It is strange to see things in Leeds, crowds of railway men 
 in the streets, most of them extraordinarily solemn and 
 sober men, in their Sunday clothes, just as you see them 
 in an Adult School or a P.S.A. meeting, very English. 
 By God ! there is good stuff there, for all its dumbness and 
 slowness. Of course they are an extraordinary contrast 
 with the dockers. They are never unemployed, and the 
 dockers are chronically under-employed. At dinner-time 
 I saw detachments of Lancers come out of one of the 
 stations through a large crowd. Hundreds of soldiers have 
 been sent into Leeds. There has been hardly any disorder, 
 or even horse-play, but a lot of successful picketing. 
 
 In one of the Liberal Christian epochs of my youth I 
 used to offer up prayers to God with a mental qualification, 
 " if He exists," for the sake of honesty. I feel as if I could 
 almost pray now in the same way for the strikers. It
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 93 
 
 will be an awful thing if they are in any way defeated. 
 I think the Government have not done so badly on the 
 whole. Of course one doesn't know if they are pressing 
 the companies to recognize the Unions. It is ridiculous 
 that they should not. They are not Gods Almighty any 
 more than the Engineering Federation, the Shipbuilding 
 Federation, or the Coal Owners' Association, and all these 
 have fully recognized collective bargaining. In a way 
 the Government guaranteeing to get food through may help 
 the strikers ; it means that an absolute panic cannot 
 arise, and the cessation of passenger traffic and coal traffic 
 is enough to paralyse business and industry. I am not 
 sure that the strikers would not be wise to let food through, 
 and rigidly exclude everything else. . . . 
 
 It is awful to feel one can do nothing personally to help 
 in the struggle. If it were really Civil War, would not 
 I be at the barricades ? But, alas ! one has to be content 
 with the invisible bond which unites one with the cause 
 of humanity. In a way this reminds me of the years of 
 my boyhood, when I had not a single friend who thought 
 or felt as I did, and yet I felt that I was bound to those 
 who were working for the cause, though I might never 
 know them, and learned to be satisfied with the consciousness 
 of unity. 
 
 God help the strikers, if there be a God ! In any case, 
 they must help themselves. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 25 August, IQII. 7 p.m. 
 
 I have sworn to get three or four hours a day at my 
 book, but I will just write a few lines to you before I begin. 
 I am feeling very happy to-night. I feel that it is a great 
 thing to have discovered that I have some power of writing, 
 and enough intelligence and instinct for detail to enable 
 me to do research of some sort in sociology. It is a sort 
 of sure resource. I feel that whatever happens to me in 
 the course of the next few years I can always turn to that 
 as a means of expressing myself in useful work. I don't 
 think I get more steady and solid enjoyment from anything
 
 94 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 than from gradually collecting and sifting material, and 
 finally shaping it into a form which means some small 
 addition to the world's knowledge, however small an 
 addition it may be. 
 
 1 have got the scheme of the second chapter of my book 
 clearly thought out, have nearly finished the first sorting 
 of the pile of notes, and shall begin writing to-night. . . . 
 I am going to try to get Lord Henry Bentinck to ask a 
 question in the House about using postmen for the distri- 
 bution of newspapers, so as to do away with the labour of 
 wage-earning children. I think the P.O. might do it 
 at a profit, and yet at a cheaper rate to the newspapers 
 than the retailers. Of course the retailers would object, 
 but if the newspaper-owners were on the other side they 
 would not matter so much. ... I enjoy working here, 
 facing the sunset, hugely. To-morrow I shall work at 
 my book most of the afternoon and evening. On Sunday 
 Heron and I are going to cycle out from here to the moors 
 and then tramp all day. By God ! I have more than my 
 share of the good things of life externally. I daresay I 
 have been slightly less happy than the average on the 
 whole, but I have a lot to be thankful for. One needs 
 regular work for so many hours a day to appreciate the 
 simple blessings of life food, light, and air most keenly. 
 
 Sunday morning, 27 August, 1911. 8 o'clock. 
 I must just scribble you a few lines while I wait for 
 Heron to come down to breakfast. I have got my old 
 green coat on, which is the colour of the earth and smells 
 of a hundred moors and hills. We shall be setting out 
 shortly for a day in the wilds. There is a glorious view 
 as you descend to the valley of the Wharfe, about four 
 miles from here. We shall cycle along that road to the 
 edge of the moors and then walk. I have been up since 
 about seven repairing my sofa, of which the bottom has 
 entirely burst. By driving in three great blocks of wood 
 across the frame I have obviated the necessity for re- 
 upholstery and rendered the sofa a sort of symbol of the 
 social organism in its botched-up grogginess.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 95 
 
 I expect you will quarrel at the phrase " illusion of free 
 will." But I have been a convinced predestinationist 
 ever since I was a boy, and my convictions were strength- 
 ened at Cambridge by the arguments of the best philoso- 
 phers, it doesn't make much difference which view you 
 take to questions of practical conduct. But it makes a 
 little difference as regards one's attitude in certain situa- 
 tions. Had I lived in the seventeenth century I should 
 have been a fine old Calvinist. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 28 August, 1911. 9 p.m. 
 
 I have been too sleepy to do any work to-night, partly 
 as the result of a lot of cycling yesterday. We had a great 
 day oil the moors, and a bathe in the Wharfe. I read 
 your two papers on Zola in the evening, and liked them 
 immensely. 
 
 Yes, that stuff of Bergson's is good, and I expect it is 
 wholly right. And yet some of us have got the devil in 
 us to such an extent that the doctrine of self-expression 
 can't form a complete ethical code. There may be too 
 little of it in me, but there is also too little of the power 
 to root out. I don't suppose I could ever make any one 
 else not even you understand what I mean, except by 
 writing a history of my life as full as Rousseau. I believe 
 I could do that, but I don't expect I ever shall ; my work 
 lies in other directions. And yet it may be that salvation 
 might be found by nourishing the human so that the 
 devilish was extinguished unawares. I don't know. I 
 don't expect I ever shall know. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 5 October, 1911. 
 
 I didn't get your letter till late last night after eleven 
 o'clock as I was at Huddersfield in the evening. Miss 
 M. is going to put up a fight against the Board of Trade 
 about her marriage, and I shall back her up in any way 
 I can. I have got little or nothing to lose as far as position
 
 96 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 and reputation go. I am also trying to help an agitation 
 for higher pay for our clerks. The worst of it is they are 
 all hoping to get the next vacancy in a higher rank, and 
 are scrambling against each other for it, and don't show 
 a proper spirit of combination. Most of the managers 
 care too much about their own positions to lift a finger. 
 However, S. and I are going to back the clerks. I wish 
 we were still under Churchill. By God ! that man makes 
 good speeches. I didn't agree with all he said at Dundee, 
 but he was jolly good on the national minimum, and of 
 course the right to strike has got to be given up for that 
 it's worth nothing except sentiment (and that of a bad 
 kind), if you can get better machinery. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 8 October, ign. 
 
 I am fair sick of things to-night damned miserable 
 with a filthy sore throat and about fifteen things which 
 occurred simultaneously to worry me to-day. However, 
 I have just read a jolly story of Conrad's (" Youth "). 
 I feel I have got youth, which is not a matter of age 
 really, and it will take a damned lot to down me. When 
 I feel a bit sick, it is generally as much due to being tired 
 as anything. I often think of the dog's life I led for five 
 years in my boyhood. At any rate, I shall never go through 
 that again, and I know that my future depends as much 
 on what goes on inside me as on what goes on outside ; 
 and if " freedom " means anything it means that and 
 behind freedom there is Fate, offering eternal satisfaction 
 to those who have courage to conceive it. 
 
 I am sick of the silly injustices which are caused by 
 the inadvertence of the comfortable. I have written a 
 letter to Miss Clapham to try and get a woman clerk, who 
 is being disgracefully paid, a proper salary. The letter 
 reflects on my divisional officer, and if Miss Clapham feels 
 she cannot regard it as private (which she well may), I 
 shall be in the hell of a mess. However, the mess which 
 I should be in would be no worse for me than penury is 
 for that woman. So what matter ? And be damned to
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 97 
 
 the possibilities! I will not try to be discreet at the 
 expense of such generous emotions as I do have though 
 I could do with a good deal more discretion in other 
 directions. 
 
 Must sleep. 
 
 Good-night. 
 
 PS. The woman clerk is not attractive I haven't 
 spoken to her half a dozen times, and shan't half a dozen 
 times more. No risks in that direction. I thought you 
 would think there were. Anyhow, she won't know I 
 wrote. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 10 October, 1911. 
 
 ... I am coming to place my friendships with women 
 on as high a plane as my friendships with men. It is a 
 change which has been coming gradually in my outlook. 
 I feel the meaning of the equality of woman with man 
 far more than when I was a good deal louder in my 
 advocacy of it. I don't know why but I feel the inner 
 part of me has become enormously humanized in the last 
 year. I don't think I ever had such clear vision of my 
 own weaknesses as I have at the present minute. I feel I 
 have done practically nothing to justify the huge debt 
 I owe to society, and I see the past chiefly as a waste of 
 intelligence and energy due to stupid uncontrolled impul- 
 siveness. I don't know whether a man ever remedies 
 such faults by seeing them. As far as I can make out 
 few men do see much of their own faults, or ever get a 
 glimpse of themselves as others see them. I am more 
 and more astounded at the childlike simplicity of men of 
 forty. I see again and again that they have never analysed 
 their own motives as bitter experience is causing me to 
 do now. I don't feel superior for it. I never felt so 
 humble since I left school as I do now. As a boy I had 
 many vices, but very little conceit. I haven't been over- 
 whelmed with it at any time, but I have certainly had 
 too good an opinion of myself, or at any rate acted on the 
 assumption of my own importance too much of late. 
 
 8
 
 98 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Arnold Bennett has given me a different sort of insight 
 into individuals to that which I learnt from Wells and 
 Shaw and Galsworthy and in many ways a more pro- 
 found one. I find myself continually reminded of the 
 external limitations which narrow the lives of the vast 
 majority of men and women, and half ashamed of the 
 matter-of-fact way in which I accept my own freedom. 
 I think again and again of the limits set by material cir- 
 cumstances in the lives of the clerks whom I see and talk 
 to every day. They will never be able to play with life 
 as I have played with it. And yet they give disinterested 
 enthusiasm to the same causes which I profess to follow 
 how much more honourable than mine. Yet I don't 
 regret much of the past very little of it. I think in 
 many ways with my headstrong and blind impetuousness 
 I might have done a good deal more harm both to others 
 and to myself before I came to a sense of the fatuousness 
 of much of my methods of procedure. I believe there is 
 some chance that I may have enough will power to make 
 a better business of life, both for others and for myself. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 15 November, 1911. 
 
 I have had a great fit of energy lately, owing to that 
 tramp on the moors, and owing to running in the early 
 morning. I ran a mile or two at 6.45 yesterday. To-day 
 I got up at 5.30 and ran two miles. It was nearly pitch 
 dark, and I came a frightful whack off a grass bank on 
 to a road and tore my hands and knees a bit. However, 
 I have got a couple of hours in at my book since. 
 
 That London job question has come up again, this time 
 semi-officially. I don't think I shall take it, even if I could 
 get it, which I am not quite sure about. I don't believe 
 much can be made of it for many reasons, which are diffi- 
 cult to explain. You don't realize my weaknesses as well 
 as I do. I am not so tremendously good at administration 
 itself, though I have more ideas as to improving it than 
 most administrators seem to have. The two functions 
 are not the same altogether.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 99 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 MONDAY MORNING IN THE TRAIN.' 
 
 19 November, ign. 8.45 a.m. 
 
 I certainly have had a jolly good time, talking about 
 
 social reform the whole time. But I had no idea 
 
 was so wealthy. The stupendous amount of expenditure 
 which goes on in his place absolutely appalled me. By 
 God ! it is ridiculous that people should spend money to 
 
 this extent. is a very simple chap, and no doubt it 
 
 is simply a matter of habit with him. He would be just 
 as happy with a dinner of two lots of food as with one of 
 six or eight, only the six or eight just go on. We all 
 went to church on Sunday morning. It is the first time 
 I have ever been to a service in a village church for twelve 
 or fifteen years. I see they have altered the Litany. We 
 now pray for Parliament as well as the Lords of the Council 
 and the nobility. The whole atmosphere in church was 
 just what I remember as a child so well. Every one in 
 his own proper station : the atmosphere which I revolted 
 against, inspired partly by Matthew Arnold and partly by 
 eighteenth-century equalitarianism, and hating Bladesover 
 like hell. Bladesover gave me hell for five years at 
 Winchester, and I shall hate it to my dying day, 
 though I can exempt individual Bladesoverites from my 
 hatred in a way in which I could not and would not 
 a year ago. - is a good ally in the fight against 
 
 " the dark Satanic mills " (we were reading Blake 
 together last night). 
 
 I always enjoy talking about Yorkshire people with 
 Bagenal. We both have a deep sense of being aliens in 
 the land, and are both irritated by the frequently ignorant 
 self-sufficiency which we believe the Yorkshireman has 
 more than any other type of Englishman. 
 
 I think too much of the governing class atmosphere 
 would be bad for me. I feel I cannot get close enough 
 to the facts with which I am trying to deal. It is so 
 
 1 After a weck-cud visit at a country house.
 
 100 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 hard to catch the atmosphere the subtle interaction of 
 administrative machinery and personal character, to bear 
 constantly in mind the subjective point of view that is 
 necessary, as well as objective induction, to a truly scientific 
 sociology. No doubt the objective facts are enough for 
 the average social politician, the average administrator, 
 the average sociologist ; but I want to widen and ripen my 
 experience and cultivate my subtlety of perception so much 
 that I shall feel instinctively the subjective significance of 
 every Blue-book fact. At present I am more and more 
 conscious of my shortcomings in that respect. But I am 
 not going to exaggerate the importance of the subjective 
 point of view. Only ideally I feel we should treat all 
 facts from both. The real struggle in the sociology of the 
 future is not going to be between the inductive and deduc- 
 tive method that battle is over. The battle is going 
 to range between the claims frequently exaggerated on 
 both sides of the objective and subjective methods. 
 Psychology is the new rival of objective induction. 
 
 It seems to me that nothing is harder than for a man 
 who has been brought up in one stratum of society to 
 realize the differences which different economic circum- 
 stances make in the attitude of men in other classes towards 
 the elementary facts of life. Many people with burning 
 social sympathy never realize these differences. (I doubt 
 if Shaftesbury ever did. Lloyd George does to some 
 extent almost every man who has really lived in 
 different classes does, unless he forgets, which they some- 
 times do in the most extraordinary way.) How many 
 people who quite rightly advocate raising the school age 
 by a year realize that the immediate effect is an income 
 tax of 2s. 6d. to 6s. in the pound on most working-class 
 families, as the Webbs point out ? But one advocates the 
 raising of the age much better if one really has that in 
 mind all the time. Coming into Leeds . . . 
 
 The following six letters on Factory Legislation under Home 
 Rule are addressed to Miss Sanger, Secretary of the International 
 Association for Labour Legislation (British Section).
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 101 
 
 LEEDS. 30 December, ign. 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. Can't you make the 
 Executive take some action soon or some members of 
 it as well as circularize all members ? Are there any 
 Irish M.P.'s you can approach ? The question has been 
 so little discussed that I think hardly any one understands it. 
 
 I think it was that man, H., who used the argument to 
 me that it would pay England if Ireland sweated its 
 workers, in accordance with the pure theory of international 
 exchange. You know I hate him. 
 
 LEEDS. 4 January, 1912. 
 
 . . . The Government and Redmond have more or less 
 made it clear that they require Irish Home Rule as the 
 beginning of Home Rule all round. Welsh Home Rule 
 seems to be coming very close to the views of practical 
 politics, and Scottish Home Rule is not much behind. 
 Personally I am a specimen of that rara avis, a pure-bred 
 Englishman for an indefinite number of generations back, 
 and in my lower moments I have hated the alien Scotch, 
 Welsh, and Irish, who in certain ways keep England from 
 coming to her own. I am very keen on English Home 
 Rule, and I hope that English people will soon begin to 
 feel the necessity for it. But what I was going to say 
 before this digression is that I think we may argue on the 
 assumption that Home Rule all round is coming, and that 
 makes our case a good deal stronger than if an Irish 
 Parliament alone were contemplated. 
 
 As regards the average Liberal, the great thing is to 
 get into his woolly head that the details of federal schemes 
 are or at any rate should be a matter of political science 
 and not of Gladstonian sentimentalism. 
 
 By the way, in the course of researches for my book on 
 the Medical Supervision of Juvenile Workers I came across 
 a speech of John Cam Hobhouse's in 1825, which gave 
 as a precedent for factory legislation an act regulating 
 the hours of shipwrights' apprentices in Ireland. I am 
 hoping, when I have finished the book I am in sight of 
 the end now and when I can get to London for a bit, 
 to write some stuff about various points in the early history
 
 102 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 of factory legislation, and this is one of the things I want 
 to look into. It would be interesting if one found that 
 it was an act of Grattan's Parliament. 
 
 There is a lot of interesting stuff about the early history 
 of the Factory Acts which hasn't been brought to light. 
 There was a man called Thomas Worsley, of Stockport, 
 to whom I should like to erect a statue. He was a cotton 
 and also a silk weaver, and ultimately a shopkeeper in 
 Stockport. But he was also a champion amateur factory 
 inspector before the official chaps came along, and con- 
 ducted seventy prosecutions altogether. In Bradford I 
 found an old pamphlet in which official factory inspectors 
 were advocated on the analogy of the protector of slaves 
 who had been appointed in the West Indies. 
 
 I have just come across a case of a girl of about thirteen 
 sent by the Labour Exchange to a shop, who has been 
 told she must work till n p.m. on Saturdays. This, of 
 course, is an infringement of the law (Employment of 
 Children Act, 1903). We have sent several cases to the 
 Town Clerk, but nothing gets done. I am getting a bit 
 sick of being an impartial Labour Exchange official, and 
 I wish I could go in for wringing some of these devils' 
 necks sometimes. The Aire and Calder Canal Company 
 makes untold dividends, and pays its casuals in Leeds 
 5d. an hour, and absolutely casual work at that. They 
 paid 4d. till recently, but two strikes have brought it to 
 5d. Then there is the Post Office. I got Lord Henry 
 Bentinck to ask a question about their casuals. Samuel 
 admitted 4Jd.-6d. an hour was the wage, and " did not 
 propose," etc. And I have to remain dumb. It is jolly 
 hard. But it is no good doing anything. I have just 
 been hauled before the General Manager of the Exchange 
 for agitating about our clerks' wages and accused, abso- 
 lutely unjustly, of generally " fomenting discontent." The 
 discontent did not need any fomenting, thank God ! I 
 only made a speech at a meeting of Labour Exchange 
 officers, but all the men in better-paid positions, except 
 two others, ratted like polecats. Sometimes I think I 
 shall commit one blazing indiscretion and go burst. How- 
 ever, this is not to the point.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 103 
 
 NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 17 January, 1912. 
 
 I sent for Basil Williams' " Home Rule Problems " 
 (published by P. S. King and Son, is.) the other day to 
 see if any of the writers had anything to say about Home 
 Rule and Factory Acts. The whole scheme on pp. 8 and 
 9 seems to me singularly ill-conceived and impracticable, 
 but you might note the suggestion that Royal Assent 
 should be specially received for the case of Factory Acts. 
 
 Pease has written me that the Fabian Executive, except 
 an objectional minority probably obstreperous feminists 
 of the pernicious type approve our ideas. He has been 
 asked to consult MacDonald and other Labour leaders 
 and report. 
 
 I see the Bill is not to be produced till April. If this 
 is correct, it gives us a bit more time. 
 
 LEEDS. 21 February, 1912. 
 
 Many thanks for your postcard. The idea is apparently 
 spreading. I have written an article on the whole question 
 of the enforcement of Labour legislation by local authori- 
 ties and by provincial authorities in the foreshadowed 
 United Kingdom federal system for the Women's Industrial 
 News. I have asked them if they don't want it to let me 
 have it back soon. I rather wish now that I had tried 
 to get it into one of the regular monthly reviews. 
 
 Has the idea of trying to get an Imperial Bureau of 
 Labour, jointly supported by the U.K. and all the States 
 and dependencies in the Empire, ever been mooted on 
 the lines of the U.S.A. Bureau of Labour ? It might be 
 a good thing to bring the public opinion of the Empire 
 to bear on the laggard Governments, and it would get 
 people into the habit of thinking internationally, or at 
 least in inter-State terms, about Labour legislation. The 
 Tories might possibly be keener on it than the Liberals. 
 The Bureau should issue an annual Report on the Labour 
 legislation of the Empire and its enforcement, and under- 
 take special inquiries. It might even be given some 
 administrative power in connection with the negotiation
 
 104 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 of international treaties and proposals for securing uni- 
 formity of Labour legislation in the different parts of the 
 Empire. If there is anything in the idea, might we not 
 try to get it brought forward at the next Imperial Con- 
 ference ? I have just written to Miss V. R. Markham, 
 who is very keen on imperial questions, about it. I 
 also just alluded to the idea in my article referred to. 
 
 There might be something to be said for the Bureau 
 having its headquarters in Canada, but I am not sure 
 about this. 
 
 LEEDS. 3 March, 1912. 
 
 ... I think the critical point in your revised draft is 
 the last sentence of the second paragraph, which implies 
 that the United Kingdom Parliament should be debarred 
 from legislating, except " in matters of international 
 importance." 
 
 In point of fact, if we take the ground specially on that, 
 as I said, I think we are almost likely to do more harm 
 than good to the general cause of centralization of Labour 
 legislation. Leaving out of account for the moment the 
 general devolution question, it is really a piece of bluff 
 for us to pretend that to allow Ireland to make her own 
 Factory Acts would debar us from adhesion to treaties ; 
 because Ireland would simply be in the position of a colony 
 having power to adhere later if she liked. 
 
 The international aspect of the question has really been, 
 in my mind, all along mainly not wholly a stalking- 
 horse for covering up my general dislike of decentralization 
 of Labour legislation on other grounds namely compe- 
 tition as within the United Kingdom, and generally 
 keeping back of Labour legislation within the United 
 Kingdom. 
 
 I presume the British Association is concerned, not only 
 with the international question, but also with the inter- 
 State question as such (cf. your note on the activities of 
 the American Association in the last World's Labour Laws). 
 
 Professor Morgan's articles on the Home Rule problem 
 in the Manchester Guardian have been excellent. Have 
 you seen them ? If you like I will send you them. I
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 105 
 
 have them cut out. He has seen the difficulty in connexion 
 with Labour legislation, and I think, by his tone, takes our 
 view. But the main point which he makes is that we 
 must bear in mind the whole devolution problem in dealing 
 with Ireland, or we get into hopeless constitutional muddles. 
 I think it would be well to insert this point in the memo- 
 randum. Redmond has accepted this view incidentally. 
 If only one can make people see it, it may do something 
 to clear some of the drivelling Gladstonianism out of their 
 minds. The general principle of Home Rule is a matter 
 of sentiment in a sense though also of logic and reason. 
 But the details should be settled wholly by the aid of 
 political science and not by appeals to Gladstone's beastly 
 ghost and general slosh about the principles of nationality 
 and faith in the noble character of the Irish people (all 
 of which I will willingly swallow after dinner, but not 
 when it comes to working out a scheme in the real interests 
 of the whole country). 
 
 I am inclined to think I should alter the phraseology 
 all through, so as to make it apparent that we have in 
 mind a general scheme of devolution ; e.g. at the end of 
 paragraph i, I should say, "... any serious lack of uni- 
 formity between the Factory Acts of the different portions 
 of the United Kingdom." At the beginning of par. 2, I 
 should say, instead of " Irish Parliament," " provincial 
 or State Parliaments." And so on all through. 
 
 Also, I think I should insert after paragraph i a non-party 
 declaration, somewhat as follows : 
 
 "As a non-party organization the B.A.L.L. is not 
 concerned with the general merits of the question of the 
 desirability of Home Rule for Ireland, or any other portion 
 of the United Kingdom. But it wishes to point out that 
 certain special considerations enter into the question of 
 the division of power between the Central and the proposed 
 provincial or State authorities in connection with Labour 
 legislation, and it desires that both Home Rulers and 
 Unionists should deal with these considerations on their 
 own merits." 
 
 I think the Unionists might well object to the first words 
 of your second paragraph as being practically an assump-
 
 106 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 tion that the general principle of Home Rule is right. 
 Of course ! I am a Home Ruler and a Liberal. I am 
 wondering now whether you perhaps mean " inter-State " 
 by " international." In any case I should like to delete 
 the phrase and substitute something like this : "in cases 
 where close commercial competition or adhesion in the 
 existing or projected international treaties renders uni- 
 formity of conditions desirable." 
 
 Might it not be a sop to Cerberus to throw in my point, 
 that where, from the nature of the business, inter-State 
 competition does not arise, it is both reasonable and 
 desirable that regulation should be in the hands of the 
 local Parliament ? 
 
 Another line of advance would be simply to ask that 
 the Welsh and United Kingdom Parliaments should have 
 co-ordinate powers of Labour legislation, except that the 
 local Parliaments should not have power to cut down any 
 United Kingdom minimum now or hereafter established. 
 This way of putting it has the merit of simplicity. 
 
 I don't think we could really justify all we are asking 
 simply on the international argument. 
 
 That is why I want to get the other point in. But if 
 they will only have the international argument, I would 
 personally rather have nothing said at all by the Association, 
 in which case I shall promptly intrigue with Unionists 
 and give them all the powder and shot on the subject that 
 I can. I am too little of a party man to feel bound by 
 party ties in a matter of this sort. . . . 
 
 I am thinking seriously of clearing out of my official 
 position. I have got just enough to live on, and I am 
 wondering whether I could do more outside. Is there 
 a really large scope for research and propaganda on Labour 
 legislation on one's own, do you think ? I have thought 
 of trying to get a factory inspectorship for a few years 
 so as to get experience, but I am afraid the Board of Trade 
 would give me a bad character and stop me getting to 
 the Home Office, even if I could obtain the post otherwise. 
 There is not really a great deal I can do in my present job, 
 and it takes an awful lot of time long hours and ties 
 me up. I have been thinking for a year, on and off, of
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 107 
 
 devoting myself wholly to comparative Labour legislation 
 and writing a book on the principles and practice of Labour 
 legislation ; taking all branches of the subject and all 
 countries, showing how the theory of free contract and 
 inalienable rights of private property has actually been 
 replaced, as the basis of society and of security, by the 
 national minimum and communal provision, and how each 
 form of such State interference and provision actually 
 works in different countries. I want to get the idea of 
 private property as the main and only basis of security 
 out of people's heads. Anton Menger saw the fallacy of 
 the common juridical conceptions more clearly than any 
 one else I have ever struck, except perhaps Shaw. The 
 psychology of the thing also wants tackling the fallacy 
 of the common notion of " independence." But I must 
 apologize for all this irrelevance. You are probably too 
 busy with practical things to bother much about theory. 
 
 7 
 
 The Fabian Executive, as the result of my prodding, 
 have been hammering at this question. I am trying to 
 get them to issue an official manifesto on the question, 
 but I don't know whether they will. They have been in 
 communication with the Labour Party, and Pease could 
 tell you exactly how the question stands now if you in- 
 quired. I understood that the Labour Party rather 
 changed its mind on the question, but then found the 
 Government and the Irish quite obdurate, and so decided 
 to do nothing. But if the Government and Irish are 
 united, the Labour people could vote against the Bill 
 without fear of defeating the Government. I think it is 
 desirable to make as big a protest as possible, even if there 
 is no chance of getting all we want, (i) because if the Home 
 Rule Bill doesn't go through it might influence the form 
 of a later Bill ; (2) because it might influence either a 
 Conservative or even Liberal Government on the question 
 of making its next big Factory Act applicable to Ireland, 
 even if (as in Germany) the Irish officials were left to 
 administer the Federal Act,
 
 108 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 NORTH-WESTERN HOTEL, NORTHAMPTON. 
 1 8 January, 1912. 
 
 I was rather bored at the prospect of having to come 
 down here, but it has been very interesting, after all. I 
 must say I always rather rejoice at getting out of reach 
 of the Yorkshire lingo. This is not my own country, but 
 the manager of the Exchange here is an East Anglian, and 
 I detected my native twang as soon as I met him. And, 
 by God ! the girls here in the streets are a brighter and 
 better dressed lot than the lasses that are belched out of 
 the mills of Leeds and " Oodersfield." 
 
 I rather had the idea that too many people were 
 " looking after " these Juvenile Advisory Committees, but 
 I find things here in an awful muddle. The poor devils 
 have never been given any ideas, but with a little whetting 
 they quite begin to thirst for them. I am going to see 
 various people here to-day to try to stir things up. The 
 certifying surgeon is the Mayor, and is ill unto the point 
 of death, so unless he dies or recovers rapidly it is difficult 
 to shift much in that direction. 
 
 I went to the local " Palace " last night and was by no 
 means bored. There was a troupe of Chinese acrobats, 
 who were quite amusing. Only I always have a feeling 
 that Johnson's dictum on performing dogs applies equally, 
 or perhaps even more, to performing humans of that kind. 
 I wondered what they thought of Sun Yat Sen and the 
 Republican cause. 
 
 A very comfortable little temperance hotel was full, 
 so I only had tea there and slept at this pub. I am never 
 really at ease in English pubs. There is a glib etiquette 
 which I can never catch. However, I drank bitter with 
 a commercial, who explained to me the way to get non- 
 excised whisky after legal hours in every town in Scotland, 
 and boasted of smoking smuggled tobacco. I was very 
 affable, but the sense of the State was vaguely aroused 
 in the back of my head. Apparently you go up to any 
 constable in Inverness or Aberdeen and say, "I'm stranded." 
 He says, " What's the pass-word ? " You say, " I've a
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 109 
 
 friend outside " (or whatever else it is in that particular 
 town). He says, " Twelve paces behind me," and takes 
 you to a private house where you get a tumbler half full 
 of neat for threepence. Tobacco is passed from Dutch 
 to French fishing-boats, and thence to English, but you 
 cannot get it in the Portsmouth and Plymouth area just 
 now as the new lot of coastguards have not been corrupted. 
 Obviously it was mainly the fun of doing the State, as you 
 might do a customer, which delighted this man. It ought 
 to be curable in the next generation by means of education. 
 
 I even got as far as chucking the barmaid under the 
 chin. But the great difficulty about barmaids is what 
 to talk to them about. Of course if one could come across 
 one of the Trade Unionist barmaids in London it would 
 be all right, but I cannot get the sequence of smooth- 
 greased sentences to drop out which is necessary with the 
 ordinary barmaid. I always think of what would have 
 been a good repartee four minutes afterwards. I am not 
 so bad at a sort of sledge-hammer repartee with my friends, 
 but I cannot manage barmaids. 
 
 PS. It is a defect. 
 
 To the Same 
 
 ROUNDHAY, LEEDS. 
 
 31 January, 1912. 
 
 I think you are grossly unfair in saying that Webbites 
 (a beastly word) have no use for Morris. There is no 
 doubt that the only path to well-being for the vast mass 
 of the population is along the lines which Webb shows us 
 whatever may be the case for little aristocracies and 
 coteries of one kind or another. But conviction as to the 
 practical necessity for this course of political action is 
 neither here nor there in regard to the broad humanism 
 of Morris, which is open to all who believe that property 
 is dissoluble, and closed to all whether they are peers 
 or peasant proprietors, or commercials, or upholders of 
 co-operative production who accept Property and the 
 family as the basis of things. That is the only line of division 
 that really matters politically or sociologically, and how 
 few there are who are truly on our side of it ! I have often
 
 110 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 been struck with the number of people who have passed 
 through the Fabian Society. Few people have enough 
 courage to be Socialists when they understand Socialism. 
 Most of the avowed upholders of Socialism would abandon it 
 if they understood it, while a true understanding would like- 
 wise bring us many willing recruits of whom, by the way, 
 in reading his book, I feel sure that Holmes would be one. 
 
 To the Same. ON TRAIN T0 LEEDS 
 
 25 March, 1912. 
 
 By God ! I have enjoyed this trip to London. I feel 
 younger and more full of life, more human this morning 
 than I have ever done in my life. I always revel in a 
 long railway journey, a long flying glimpse of towns and 
 men, fields and trees that makes me feel 
 
 Mein Acker, mein Acker, 
 Wie herrlich weit und breit ! 
 Die Welt sic 1st mein Acker, 
 Mein Acker ist die Zeit. 
 
 There are few happier men on God's earth than I this 
 morning. I enjoyed seeing R. immensely. She is splendid 
 with that little beast. She has agreed to register him as 
 Bernard Sidney. After all, there is no reason why he 
 should not be called after the two greatest men on the 
 earth. I think he will be as ugly as his father, but he 
 seems pretty tough, and he has a finely shaped head ; 
 I don't know if there's aught in that. . . . 
 
 I am full of Walt Whitman just now. I have not read 
 him for a year or two, but I am going back to take a 
 draught at that most glorious spring. 
 
 W. won't stick in the City long. He will perhaps come 
 lumbering with me next spring. How I look forward to 
 that ! Rough, even sordid hardships, but a delving at 
 the roots of things. 
 
 Oh, the joy of a manly selfhood ! 
 
 I have been thinking of Matthew Arnold's poem. I forget 
 what it is called. I think its theme is introduced by a 
 young wanderer at Circe's shrine, where he describes how
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 111 
 
 it is the poet's tragedy and triumph to suffer with all men. 
 Perhaps the artist does really do that. I don't know. 
 Sometimes shadows seem as good a basis for emotion as 
 realities. But, anyhow, I must feel the earth with my 
 own hands, feel the sweat actually flow, see the problem 
 with my own eye, talk face to face with the toilers before 
 I can get the impulse of aspiration and active driving 
 genuinely, irresistibly. I believe it is so with most men if 
 they knew it. I would make the highest official share 
 the work of the meanest clerk or executive officer from time 
 to time. How easy it is to lose touch with reality ! The 
 problem of keeping it is mainly one of human education, 
 but it can also be solved partially by contrivance. Make 
 the chiefs spend a fortnight each year in carrying out 
 their own orders. But men fear the Comic Spirit too much 
 for that at present. Yet in reality she can be our saviour. 
 It is not yet regarded as cowardice to fear her, yet some 
 day, when the baser forms of cowardice are extinct, it will 
 become the normal form of cowardice to fear to plunge 
 into the icy pool before her shrine. Yet now to do so, to 
 approach her readily, to seek her converse and inspiration 
 is often taken for a barbaric whim. What fools these 
 mortals be ! 
 
 Perhaps, after all, the plutocrats and Gog Magogs will 
 be laughed away, not hung (though hate is too strong in 
 me to enable me ever to cease from willingness to hang 
 them). ... I am just passing a new line which is being 
 made. I do want to heave a few barrow-loads of dirt out 
 of a railway cutting. I wish I could swing a beetle like 
 those chaps you see breaking up an asphalte roadway : 
 three men in succession strike an iron wedge which a fourth 
 holds up chink, chink, chink. 
 
 Life is a game. If you lose the sense of adventure in 
 it, the attitude of readiness for adventure, the sense of 
 the fun of sitting on a large orange springing through 
 space, you have lost the most precious thing. 
 
 But this is not the proper mood to go back to work in. 
 I shall do something dangerous, tweak the nose of some 
 Leeds plutocrat and expound communism to him. I 
 must cool down.
 
 112 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 DONCASTER STATION. 
 
 i April, 1912. 
 
 Have run down here this afternoon to see my divisional 
 officer. It has been a pleasant windy, sunny afternoon. 
 
 I had time to look over the huge new offices which they 
 have established for the insurance work, and also to stroll 
 round the church, owing to a return train to Leeds being off. 
 
 What I have seen with regard to the nature and growth 
 of official machinery gives me furiously to think. Not that 
 I am becoming anti-collectivist hi any way, or that I am 
 up against officialism in general. I was merely irritated 
 over an incident when I saw you last. Only I feel it is 
 necessary to realize the more or less inevitable actual 
 psychology of the whole j&natter and devise means of 
 guarding against its disadvantages. 
 
 I hear that S., having to leport upon the desirability 
 of " establishing " or promoting the two hundred officials 
 in his division, took home two hundred forms and scribbled 
 remarks on each of them in a couple of hours on a Sunday 
 afternoon absolutely casually. Now here is a man of 
 average kind-heartedness who is absolutely devoid of any 
 sort of social or civic sense of justice, and who is incapable 
 of realizing that 10 per annum with a salary of 60 or 
 70 may mean all the difference between tolerable happi- 
 ness and soul-damning penury, and also absolutely devoid 
 of any qualms of conscience in respect of the waste of 
 public money by appointing or retaining or promoting 
 people who are not only useless but a positive hindrance 
 to and drag on the service. Now, some of this is a matter 
 of intelligence, or the lack of it. But some of it is due 
 to the atrophy or lack of the development of certain aspects 
 of the moral or aesthetic feeling. It is obvious that this 
 last is remediable through education, whatever may be 
 the case with regard to intelligence. The Public Schools 
 do develop a certain kind of sense of honour, which, on 
 the whole, I consider thoroughly bad in relation to modern 
 life in modern England, whatever may have been its merits 
 in India or Africa lifty or twenty years ago. McKillop 
 thinks Graham Wallas may do great things in regard to
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 118 
 
 the psychology of officialism on the Civil Service Commission. 
 Perhaps he will. 
 
 I didn't feel at all angry with things this afternoon. 
 I was in one of those rare moods of illumination, or at 
 least I think I was, and coming away from the church I 
 had a few moments of the sense of the vanity of things 
 (which is not the same as a feeling of the desperate futility 
 of things), and thought of Spenser's lines : 
 
 Which makes me loathe this state of things so tickle, (A lovely 
 
 word " tickle ! ") 
 
 And love of things so vain to cast away, 
 Whose flowering pride, so fading and so fickle. 
 Short Time shall soon cut down with his consuming sickle. 
 
 Then 'gin I think of that which Nature sayed 
 Of that same Time when no more change shall be 
 
 But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayed 
 Upon the pillars of eternitie 
 That is contraire to mutabilitie, 
 For all that moveth doth in change delight. 1 
 
 Doncaster is, of course, a very different place from the 
 North-West Riding towns. You get the Lincolnshire 
 curved red tiles (are not they called "pantiles" ?). They 
 say it is going to have a population of 200,000 in a few 
 years, as the new coalfield develops. Some steps are being 
 taken with regard to town-planning. . . . 
 
 By God ! England is a fine place, and I believe I enjoy 
 the spring more and more every year. Even this flat 
 colliery-ridden district between Leeds and Doncaster is 
 beautiful to-day. 
 
 Italy will be wonderful. How I envy you the journey ! 
 But I suppose you won't go by the Rhine and Gotthard 
 that I love so much. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 9 April, 1912. 
 
 I have only time for a short note to-night. I have had 
 an enormous clear-out of letters and papers to-day. I 
 have chucked lots of stuff into a pile to be sent to the 
 
 1 "Faerie Queene," VIII, 1-2; "things" in first line should be 
 "life." 
 
 9
 
 114 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 School of Economics library, have sorted masses of papers 
 and pamphlet boxes, and sat down to work through a 
 pile of arrears of letters, determined to clear it off and 
 avoid arrears in future. 
 
 The gale continues here, but there has been bright sun- 
 shine nearly all day. I walked round the top of the park 
 before I had breakfast, and again this evening. The top 
 of the park has become to me like the Backs at Cambridge, 
 a regular place to go to for peace and reflection and general 
 enjoyment of things. I felt rather lonely and despondent 
 for an hour this evening, but I set to work to put a lot of 
 sunflower seeds in my garden, and forgot all about it. But 
 I wonder now and again whether I do chuck away half 
 or three-quarters of the best things in life. I feel such 
 a lot of my energy runs to waste, and I cut myself off from 
 such a lot of good things. And yet I suppose it is good 
 for each generation to have a few maniacs like me who 
 insist on trying experiments in life in one way or another. 
 On the whole I make a fairly good business of it as com- 
 pared with most men. McKillop was struck with my 
 domestic arrangements, and said that I had all the really 
 essential things for comfort. So I have. I have never 
 enjoyed my physical surroundings in all my life more than 
 I have my house up here. Cambridge was too luxurious, 
 in spite of sporadic sleepings out. It is good for a man 
 a male particularly to realize now and again the nuis- 
 ance he is to the rest of mankind, by doing his own dirty 
 work. I admit I don't like it permanently. I have looked 
 after myself and washed up and kept the place fairly 
 clean this holiday, while my handmaid is away. But, 
 of course, A. really does the thing much more honestly, 
 in helping to look after his kids and in doing odd bits of 
 housework. Honestly, I do occasionally want Rachel and 
 the kids very badly. But I know that I simply cannot 
 work most of my moods into the necessary conditions of 
 existence with a wife and children. You can't ignore 
 them when you feel inclined, and I, at any rate, have 
 never been able to accept them as part of my normal self. 
 I suppose that is the trouble really. Ideas, conceptions, 
 intellectualisms do largely determine the direction that
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 115 
 
 is given to human feeling. Once get a man by unconscious 
 acceptance of tradition, or by intellectual effort, or by 
 chance knocking up against an idea and being fired by it, 
 to take a certain standpoint as his normal standpoint, to 
 twist the stuff of his life in a certain way, and he will fight 
 for that particular modus vivendi, habit of thought, like hell. 
 I have been unwillingly forced to see the parallel between 
 my family life these last two or three years and my 
 home life as a boy. There is no getting away from the 
 fact that the same motives are at work. I see myself 
 doing exactly the same sort of things as I did ten or fifteen 
 years ago with the same sort of perverseness or burst of 
 wildness, inexplicable to myself, often a sudden sort of 
 internal snarl. I used to feel as a boy that another woman 
 than my mother might have helped me to get over that 
 kind of mad, savage perversity, or at least have brought 
 it within bounds. But now I think it is more or less 
 fixed, and I must order my life in such a way that that 
 sort of feeling is not occasioned. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS, u April, 1912. 
 
 I had a delightful surprise when I returned to work on 
 Wednesday. A large parcel of books arrived from a shop 
 Morley's " Rousseau," " Voltaire," and " Diderot." They 
 were a gift from McKillop and Gordon, really far more 
 valuable than my rough hospitality. I have read most 
 of the " Rousseau " in the last two days. What a man ! 
 He fascinates me more and more, though I have just 
 received rather a setback in discovering his idealization 
 of the respectable family in " The New Heloise." Yet 
 it is really all of a piece with him. Morley's comments 
 and point of view are also most interesting. I often differ 
 from them. I did not realize that he was such an old 
 Puritan in the ordinary sense of the word not the deeper 
 sense which Shaw adopts, and which I generally have in 
 mind when I use the word. 
 
 I have always had, and have, a great admiration for 
 John Morley. His style is glorious and a real katharsis 
 to a vaporous-brained hermit-bureaucrat like myself.
 
 116 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Well, I find it hard to turn from Rousseau and Morley 
 to the details of my work. I have had a sort of upheaval 
 in the last six weeks, I think. Is it the spring merely ? 
 I believe I am getting more sensitive to the seasons. 
 
 I am determined not to waste myself by rolling from 
 one bit of uncompleted work to another, though I don't 
 see how a nature like mine can learn except by experiment. 
 I am more than ever set on America and farm-labouring, 
 navvying, anything. It would be still more fun if K. 
 really would come too. We should be a rum pair. I 
 think there must be some people, even in America, who 
 would give us a bit of a job partly for our whimsicality. 
 
 I should very much like to hear Rousseau's music. 
 Morley (who acknowledges assistance in that chapter from 
 a musician) says that Rousseau was an extreme reaction 
 against the hyper-elaborate Rameau and Lulli, the move- 
 ment which led to " the austere loveliness of Gluck." I 
 like the phrase " austere loveliness," as applied to Gluck's 
 " Orpheus," which I heard in Leeds a few weeks ago. It 
 fascinated me, and as I read that chapter of Morley's an 
 hour ago, I could hear the cry " Eurydice, Eurydice ! " 
 again and again. The piece was beautifully staged, too, 
 by the Denhof company. The dance of the unhappy 
 spiirts when Orpheus lands was wonderfully done ; the 
 white arms rising up against the blue-black prone figures 
 and the lithe wrestling and intertwining of bodies will 
 always remain in my memory. Eurydice, in the company 
 of the happy spirits before Orpheus comes, made me think 
 of the end of Shelley's " Prometheus Unbound." In fact, 
 is there not a similarity in spirit between the two dramas 
 all through ? Perhaps the Greek origin of both the legends 
 has something to do with it. It is also, I think, not an 
 accident that a woman takes the part of Orpheus in 
 Gluck's opera. Though sex-love is its theme, it is a sex- 
 love which is so transcendental as to have almost lost its 
 original sex character. Both the " Prometheus Unbound " 
 and " Orpheus " represent idealized humanism, neither 
 male nor female, but leaning if anything to the female 
 element in man (homo), the ewig-weiblige which draws 
 even man (vir), not as its complement, but as like to like.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 117 
 
 But I am probably talking damned drivel, as I know 
 nothing about poetry, less about drama, less still about 
 music, and little enough about love. 
 
 
 
 I hope you are very happy in Corsica. There have 
 been horribly cold winds here for a week, and I am not 
 in the mood for cold winds. 
 
 I very much want to see Bernard Sidney (I love writing 
 those names) and R - again, but I don't think I can 
 get down just now. 
 
 I am in a queer mood which is not worth 200 a year 
 to the Government. 
 
 My Shop Hours Act prosecution comes on to-morrow, 
 but I shan't be able to be in the court. I have whipped 
 up the Press. I hope this ruffian gets properly and heavily 
 fined, and well damned in the papers. I have put Y. up 
 to ask McKenna for a return of all prosecutions by local 
 authorities under the Shops and Employment of Children 
 Acts in the last three years. The Home Office probably 
 can't give it, but then it will show them up, and press 
 home the logic of a grant-in-aid for local authorities' 
 work in industrial regulation. Anyhow, it is rather a 
 wheeze. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 20 April, 1912. 
 
 The weather has been glorious here to-day. I have 
 not lived in the country in the spring ever since I left 
 Cambridge, and I am enjoying the experience intensely. 
 I think I shall sleep out to-night. I have idled most of 
 this afternoon, done a little in my garden, and read a 
 hundred pages of Morley's " Voltaire." 
 
 The seeds I sowed in March are just beginning to come 
 up, except the sunflowers. I am rather anxious about 
 them. I want to have a great forest of them round my 
 windows. This place is infested with pet dogs and cats 
 which irritate me. The dogs yap at my bare calves 
 when I run in the morning, and flee when I endeavour 
 to kick them in the jaw. All the humanitarianism in the
 
 118 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 world will not prevent me from slinging stones at infernal, 
 damned, and pestiferous cats which root up my seeds 
 just when they are sprouting, curse them. The cats know 
 no better. ... I don't care. There are moments when 
 a man is desperate. One particularly damned young 
 black cat, however, incensed me beyond measure, as it 
 thought I was throwing stones as a game (I couldn't hit 
 it, though I tried), and ran after them, gambolling inso- 
 lently. Such treatment of a member of the human race 
 is intolerable. It reminds me of a story which Williams 
 told me of a deputation of Manchester unemployed to the 
 Distress Committee. The formal proceedings went on in 
 the usual way. The worthy alderman and the co-opted 
 ecclesiastical dignitary expressed the deepest sympathy 
 with the poor fellows on the register. As the deputation 
 was about to retire, however, a navvy with some dim 
 sense of humour, which had doubtless saved him from a 
 successful career, stepped forward and apostrophized the 
 committee in true " navvyeze," addressing them each 
 
 in turn. " As for that old lugger there, with the b 
 
 belly, what b good is he ? " The scene was most 
 
 painful, and it was some minutes before the attendants 
 could remove the offender. I believe the report in the 
 Guardian was curtailed. 
 
 I have just bought the second volume of Rousseau's 
 " Confessions." I only got the first in Verona, and 
 never went on to the second. The contrast between 
 Rousseau and Voltaire is most fascinating. In a way it 
 belongs to all time. I mean it is symbolical. There was 
 an extraordinarily Voltairian atmosphere at Cambridge in 
 a certain set in my time. McTaggart, Antony Be van 
 (who knows all the scandalous stories about the ear\y 
 Christians), J. T. Sheppard, Norton, Whitehead, were all 
 Voltairians. The Fabians (though we could not boast of 
 men of the intellectual calibre of any of these) were a sort 
 of Rousseauite outburst in Cambridge, though some of 
 them, like Dalton, were still to a large extent tarred with 
 Voltairism. Still, broadly speaking, that was our signifi- 
 cance, strangely different from the significance of the 
 Fabian Society in London.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 119 
 
 Oxford people cannot understand the " Ecrascz I'infame" 
 spirit of Cambridge atheists. I have never found the 
 spirit of really bitter anti-clericalism so strong in any 
 other section of English thought as in Cambridge. . . . 
 
 I must say you probably will not agree I think there 
 is room and need for a definite anti-clerical element in 
 society to-day, a definite set of people who attack and ex- 
 pose the cramping and degrading influence which orthodox 
 theological religion can have on human character. Such 
 an influence definitely does make life poorer, definitely 
 does hinder individual people from facing the facts of life 
 armed with their own inner resources. 
 
 I saw the psychology of religion of this kind at work 
 at close quarters in my boyhood, and it was a pretty ugly 
 business. It is not far removed from literal savage fetichism. 
 The High Church notion of symbolism may be all right, 
 or relatively harmless for men of fairly strong intellect, or 
 for simple peasants. I don't know about the latter. But 
 it causes nothing less than pernicious degradation in half- 
 educated women living in the material complexity of 
 modern society, and suffering from the absence of bracing 
 realities, even of so commonplace a kind as those which 
 an ordinary business man gets in his work. 
 
 By God ! if the Suffrage movement were only out 
 against that sort of state of life for women it would justify 
 itself. 
 
 It is true that it is only the middle- and upper-class 
 women who suffer in that particular way. Still, they are 
 a large class, and potentially more important in the imme- 
 diate present than working-class women as regards the 
 influence they can exercise on history. 
 
 I send you the Nation. The article on Meredith is 
 interesting. " Evan Harrington " is the only one of Mere- 
 dith's novels which bored me. The fantastic apotheosis of 
 the sentiment of snobbery seemed to me too trivial a theme ; 
 it simply did not interest me. But if this article is correct, 
 it meant an enormous deal to Meredith, and I shall certainly 
 tackle the book again.
 
 120 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 2 June, 1912. 
 
 I have been extraordinarily happy for the last year 
 in spite of what would, I suppose, be fairly big disappoint- 
 ments to some men in my official career. In fact, I am 
 not sure that I have ever been happier in any year of my 
 life. I think I have done a little useful work not much, 
 but a little ; I have found out a good deal more about 
 what I can and want to do ; and I have had you to be 
 with, think of, and write to. I certainly ask for no more 
 happiness in life than I have had for the last year. I 
 do desire a consciousness of a larger output of useful work 
 and continuously purposeful effort. If I can learn more 
 per annum than I have learnt in the last year I shall be 
 pleased. But I feel I have not done badly as regards 
 real growth. I suppose most other people feel the same 
 but it is always a very strange thing to me to contemplate 
 the " me " of a year, two years, or three years ago, and 
 wonder at the crude lack of comprehension in this or that 
 episode. 
 
 I am right glad to have fired that resignation in. 
 Almost every one whom I consulted, hoping to get useful 
 advice, advised me not to resign, with an obvious inca- 
 pacity to understand the situation. Miss Hutchins is an 
 exception. I disagree with her sometimes, but on the 
 whole I think her one of the sanest and most intelligent 
 people I know. 
 
 I don't think any one who knows my inner mind could 
 call me an anti-feminist. I think the proportion of women 
 amongst the people whose friendship or intelligence I 
 really value highly grows year by year. 
 
 I wonder who that woman Rebecca West in the Free- 
 woman is. She interests me immensely, though I picture 
 her as rather overdressed and fastidious. . . . 
 
 I have this house on my hands till November. I perceive 
 that my future is very incalculable for some years. I 
 want a small cottage in the country, within fifty or sixty 
 miles of London, with about four rooms, as a permanent
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 121 
 
 pied-d-terre for my possessions of which I am going to 
 sell a lot before I leave here, but of which I think I cannot 
 absolutely get rid. Papers will be the most important 
 I am going to adopt Sam Butler's ideas about books, and 
 have done with them for the most part as possessions. 
 Beds don't much matter. Two tables, and drawers and 
 cases for papers are really the main thing. But if you 
 hear of a cottage somewhere or other you might let me 
 know preferably near (i) pines, (2) sea or bathing 
 water and anyhow in tolerable walking country. I don't 
 mind buying it outright a (crf^a tc *' The more 
 detached from neighbours the better. Anything up to 
 three miles from a station. It is primarily for myself 
 as a solitary occasional dwelling, so a place which would 
 not suit a lot of people would do. 
 
 The pleasure of having a solitary dwelling-place has 
 been so great that I don't think I will ever give it up now, 
 though I don't mind living a good deal with other people. 
 But the peace of a week-end like this ! 
 
 This is a very egotistical letter. I agree on the whole 
 with what you say about Morris, though perhaps I value 
 leisure higher than you do. If I look back over my life 
 in a flash I group it in four things : (i) an ugly, hateful 
 muddle up to nineteen, which is nothing but a struggling 
 in the womb of chcumstance in darkness ; since then, 
 (2) work and thought ; (3) rest and recreation chiefly 
 alone in the open air ; (4) human relationships. Culture 
 as such enjoyment of books, music, etc. only comes a 
 bad fifth ; but I do not think it really exists apart from 
 the others at all. But, broadly speaking, I cannot dis- 
 tinguish between work and play. It is all serious, even 
 when it is ridiculous. 
 
 I like that Wilde memorial. I will try to go and see 
 it when I am in London. 
 
 I have been getting in some odd little digs at the official 
 machine lately. I have really begun to laugh at it occa- 
 sionally. Some of these people in London are simply too 
 comic for words. When one sees them in that light it is 
 surely time to have done with them !
 
 122 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 6 June, 1912. 
 
 I always find myself in agreement with your social 
 ideas and, indeed, they generally enlighten me a great 
 deal in so far as they are statements of general, and in 
 a sense eternal, truths about human nature in relation 
 to society. But I think your extraordinary power of always 
 seeing life, or rather individual human lives, as a whole 
 amounts sometimes to a deliberate refusal to examine 
 certain aspects of the lives of large numbers of individuals 
 regarded as a single problem in a detached manner. (If 
 this cannot be done, we had better shut up our books and 
 say that sociology does not exist.) Your attitude, in my 
 opinion, leads you hopelessly wrong over questions like 
 the old Labour Party's Unemployed Workmen Bill, appren- 
 ticeship, and Syndicalism. I am mainly conceined with 
 dealing with aspects of life which for practical purposes 
 have to be treated as a detached problem, though, of 
 course, there is no such thing as a detached human problem 
 really. I will admit a thousand times over that the 
 sociologists like myself are constantly forgetting that their 
 whole superstructure rests on an arbitrary hypothesis of 
 detachment, and needs to be brought back to life as a whole. 
 But we must isolate the problems temporarily to do any- 
 thing with them as practical constructive men. And 
 therefore the bringing us back to life as a whole, though 
 very good for us, is apt to be irritating. It is a constant 
 reminder of our limitations a preaching to the labouring 
 ants of the glories of the forest. Your talk about Syndi- 
 calism is unadulterated nonsense to me as a sociologist 
 thinking in a flash of a cotton-spinning mill, and a dozen 
 workmen whom I know, and estimating the amount of 
 actual thought, or even semi-demi-conscious sentiment, 
 there is in these strike movements (which we know, as 
 surely as that two and two make four, would never have 
 arisen just now and in this way if it had not been for the 
 gold-mines and the improvements in the banking system). 
 It is no use your telling me life can't be divided into 
 compartments. I don't think it is for you. But I know I 
 am to all intents and purposes a different person at different
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 123 
 
 times and I deliberately feel and act differently in dif- 
 ferent environments and situations. Whether I shall ever 
 feel the need for a sort of unity of moods, which perhaps 
 is, as you say, the most important conception of religion, 
 I don't know. At present I am too much interested in 
 playing and trying this and that aspect of things. (You 
 see this, as we remarked the other day, much more clearly 
 and emphatically developed in A., who hasn't even yet 
 made up her mind which of her selves she is going to be. 
 I am not as much of a kaleidoscope as she is, because I 
 am a smaller person but it is the same sort of thing.) 
 
 As to Syndicalism, Graham Wallas's Fabian Lecture is 
 just about right, though it isn't very exciting. E.'s is 
 an instance of a man being unable to pierce to the spirit 
 of a prophet's words. His criticism of Shaw is about the 
 most unnecessary and silly thing I have known him do. 
 Shaw's conception and preaching of economic equality 
 is a most valuable thing though it may be casting pearls 
 before swine to try to get people to see what it means 
 now. The only things which helped me to understand 
 it were a passage in Morris's pamphlet on Communism 
 and one or two passages in Wells's " Modern Utopia " 
 (though Wells would probably disclaim association with 
 Shaw on this subject intellectually). 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 23 June, 1912. 
 
 I have been having a gloriously peaceful solitary week-end. 
 I worked hard at my lecture most of last week. I feel 
 it would be a great thing to try and drive home to people's 
 minds what all these detailed regulations mean to millions 
 of people. You people who feel so keenly the personal 
 factor in sociology will, of course, never appreciate the 
 relatively unexciting conception and evolution of common 
 rules, in the working out of which you are compelled for 
 a large part of the time to regard men impersonally in the 
 mass. Of course, you implicitly deny the whole concep- 
 tion of sociology as a science. But I think that it is 
 possible to develop one's instinct and intelligence simul- 
 taneously in the direction of an appreciation both of the
 
 124 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 personal problems of life and of the nature of society as 
 a whole. At any rate, I am going to try though I may 
 fall between two stools. 
 
 You can do damned little that is much use in solving 
 social questions now by divination and inspiration alone. 
 The number of conceptions and combinations of them 
 which you can play with is limited, and all the general 
 ideas have been stated in one way or another. Equally 
 true is it that mere conscientious compilation without 
 inspiration won't help much. But there is relatively a 
 good deal less of the latter method. It is more trouble 
 and less exciting. 
 
 I had a glorious hour in the park last night before I 
 went to bed for ten hours' solid and blessed sleep. The 
 fields and sky are so beautiful that I pine for the greener 
 green and bluer blue of the Alps. And I would give a 
 good deal for a fairly long spell of a foreign atmosphere 
 and a foreign language. I have been pretty thoroughly 
 absorbed in the heart of England in the last three years, 
 and though I suppose I am as English as ever a man was 
 in my abnormalities as well as my normalities I can 
 appreciate getting out of my own country pretty thoroughly. 
 
 I read about your Italian glassworkers, but I felt as 
 Mrs. Webb said about the same thing that I should like 
 to see it before I expressed an opinion on it, especially as 
 it is Italian and one knows what a farce their social 
 legislation and experiments of most kinds are ; I mean 
 how different they are in reality from paper accounts 
 e.g. Municipal Trading and Factory Acts. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LEEDS. 6 July, 1912. 
 
 I hope to get on to my certifying surgeon's book again 
 this week-end. I have had so many things to take me 
 away from it lately. I had begun to wonder whether 
 it was really worth publishing by itself, and whether I 
 should not incorporate the stuff in my magnum opus on 
 the history of Industrial Regulation the " History of 
 Industrial Freedom " I shall call it for which I have now 
 been accumulating material and notes and gaining odd
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 125 
 
 bits of useful knowledge for a year. But I think I shall 
 finish the book. It might help to straighten out the whole 
 administration of that side of the Factory Acts. And I 
 think it would be good literary practice for me to have 
 the shaping and finishing of another book on a fairly small 
 scale before I turn to a huge study. 
 
 I spent all last evening sorting out masses of stuff which 
 had accumulated on my table, in various pamphlet boxes 
 and envelopes. I felt at the end of it that I have almost 
 certainly acquired more real knowledge in the last three 
 years than I ever could have done simply by sitting down 
 and grinding at Blue-books without the knocking about 
 and practical experience which I have had. I wonder 
 if my mind is really untypical in this way. I must see, 
 and if possible be, a part of any social phenomenon before 
 knowledge about it becomes a burning reality. I don't 
 think I could really feel what Factory Acts mean if I hadn't 
 had three years of official work, with plenty of overtime 
 at intervals for all the difference between my work and 
 that of a spinner or weaver. And the direct feeling of 
 indignation and shame at the sweating and unjust treat- 
 ment of clerks who are a part of the same administrative 
 organization as oneself has been more " real " than the 
 knowledge of far worse injustices through Blue-books. 
 Then coming up against casuals of the worst type in Leeds 
 has given me a direct vision of what a brute beast savagery 
 society condemns such men to, by treating them with less 
 responsibility than its cattle. All this is commonplace. 
 And yet it exists for me as real knowledge. 
 
 I rather liked Morley's address at Manchester last week. 
 Of course, he is old-fashioned in some ways. But he has 
 always had a very keen sense of the relation between 
 knowledge and life and a proper scorn of culture as an 
 end in itself. There is a fine passage about that in his 
 Life of Cobden which pleased me long ago. Morley's 
 character has always attracted me. I know he isn't my 
 sort a bit, and he would disapprove of most of me probably. 
 But I feel he has a touch no more than a touch, of course 
 of that gentle strength of Julius Caesar. 
 
 I was wondering yesterday why the devil the world didn't
 
 126 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 found a religion on Caesar instead of on Christ. Of course 
 one feels instinctively that it couldn't be done. But to 
 me it also seems that Caesar was a far greater personality. 
 Of course they did worship Caesar " Divus Casar." 
 Perhaps it wasn't so incongruous as it has been made to 
 appear by damned Christian scholars. Worship isn't the 
 same thing as prayer of course the Christian religion 
 distinguishes between prayer and praise. Prayer is gener- 
 ally humbug only a very few people have the genius 
 for it ; for the rest it is mere superstition, and, of course, 
 the great majority of people, even in the hypocritical 
 England of to-day, don't pretend to practise it. But 
 praise is a much more normal line of expression. And 
 there are lots of gods that you can praise whom you wouldn't 
 pray to. And I suspect that the " Divus Ccesar " busi- 
 ness was a matter of praise rather than prayer the same 
 emotion as that indulged in by monarchists who drink 
 the health of George V, only purified and raised to a rather 
 higher level, and on the occasions when the emperors were 
 really great men whom one could admire (not convenient 
 opportunists like the pharisaical Augustus), mingled with 
 an element of genuine hero-worship. 
 
 We shall come back to pluralism as James prophesied, 
 though anything like a Positivist calendar of great men 
 is as farcical as the popish calendar of twenty-five thousand 
 saints. 
 
 By the way, I might come down to your cottage for 
 four or five days about August Bank Holiday. Would 
 Fisher be there then ? I should like to meet him. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 12 July, 1912. 
 
 I have had a most interesting day in Bradford to-day 
 inquiring about van-boys. I feel that two or three years 
 of thinking about and working at the juvenile labour 
 problem has given us an effective sort of grasp of it as a 
 whole. I am more and more attracted by my idea of turning 
 the whole mass of unskilled boy workers into a corps T 
 if only one could get the right people to run it. 
 1 For details of this scheme see Appendix I.
 
 LEEDS AND TIROL 127 
 
 The officers of the corps would have to be Board of 
 Trade officials of quite a different sort from the grade 
 of the L.E. officials. I think they could be found enough 
 to start it anyway. It would make a decent alternative 
 career for some of the University people who become 
 teachers ; there is no reason why it shouldn't be alternated 
 with teaching work of an ordinary kind, though most 
 ordinary teachers wouldn't do the job. I imagine that 
 some Army or Navy officers could do it though I detest 
 them both in general, more especially the former.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 
 
 SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER, 1912. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 ZURICH.' 15 September, 1912. 
 
 . . . INTERNATIONAL conferences seem to be well worth 
 attending. I have learned lots of things which it would 
 have been very difficult to pick up from reading any number 
 of reports and have made quite a number of friends. . . . 
 
 The predominance of women in the English Section is 
 remarkable. A large proportion of the leading Labour 
 legislation experts in English, outside the officials, are 
 women : Miss Tuckwell, Miss C. Smith, Miss Sanger, Mrs. 
 H. J. Tennant, Miss MacArthur, Mrs. Deane Streatfield, 
 and Miss Hutchins. I don't think you can put any men 
 on a par with them except Webb and Sir T. Oliver. It is 
 a jolly fine thing, and I feel proud of my country for it. 
 They really are a very fine set of women. 
 
 The whole International Labour Legislation movement 
 seems to me immensely important. We are well on the 
 way to clearing white phosphorus off the face of the earth. 
 We have stopped the night-work of women nearly every- 
 where except that those blackleg Belgians have taken 
 a time-limit of five or ten years for it. ... 
 
 We are on the threshold of a ten-hours day for women, 
 which will mean screwing up the English standard in non- 
 textile factories by a precious half-hour. You need to be, 
 so to speak, soaked in the atmosphere of factory questions 
 to feel what that means and how much it is worth fighting 
 for. We shall also probably get the night-work of boys 
 
 1 He was at Zurich for a Conference of the " International 
 Association for Labour Legislation." See Appendix II. 
 
 128
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 129 
 
 prohibited at the same time as the result of the official 
 conference in the spring. But if we pull off an international 
 eight-hour day, for men and boys alike, in iron and steel, 
 which seems probable, that will be the biggest thing of 
 all and will bring the international aspect of factory reform 
 much more to the front. It is obvious that the difference 
 between an eight and a twelve-hour day at a rolling mill 
 or an open hearth furnace is almost the difference between 
 civilization and barbarism. And once we get eight, we 
 shall be on the way to six, which is already almost practical 
 politics in the Welsh tin-plate trade. 
 
 I had a most interesting time in Winterthur yesterday, 
 in the Salzen engineering works, where 4,500 men and lads 
 are employed. Old Salzen-Ziegler, who took me round, 
 is a Swiss M.P., and really a most enlightened old fellow 
 in some ways, though the whole atmosphere in the works 
 was a good deal too patriarchally benevolent for my English 
 tastes. Fancy every workman taking off his hat when old 
 Salzer came past. They don't do that in Yorkshire. Of 
 course they really might do it there now without any harm. 
 One doesn't mind it if one knows there is something approach- 
 ing human equality behind it. But only one-fifth of Salzer's 
 people are in unions. He evidently doesn't like trade 
 unionism, but he really is awfully good about factory 
 conditions and knows a tremendous lot about accident 
 prevention and ventilation. His system of training for 
 apprentices interested me. I got papers about it. I 
 shall have quite enough stuff to fill up my School Child 
 column from things I have picked up here, and will include 
 something about that. 
 
 Salzer cursed the French for not carrying out their 
 Factory Acts. ... He says that what happens there is 
 that the Ministry passes Factory Acts as the result of 
 sectional pressure, but does not carry them out from the 
 fear of upsetting other sections. I wonder if that is right. 
 Miss C. Smith says that Dilke used to say that Fontaine, 
 the permanent official at the head of the French Labour 
 Department, who has been here, was the best head of a 
 Labour Department in Europe. But I rather think that 
 there is something in the more or less commonplace idea 
 
 10
 
 130 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 that the business of the French is to give us a fine and 
 moving expression of general principles, as old Bourgeois 
 certainly does, while the English and Germans really work 
 them out in detail. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ZURICH. 16 September, 1912. 
 
 I have not had any intimate talks with Germans at all 
 here, excluding German-Swiss. The Germans in the Con- 
 gress seemed rather more inclined to keep to themselves 
 than the other nationalities. . . . 
 
 I think S. is wrong about Grey and foreign politics, though 
 I do think it is possible for statesmen to cause a war by 
 sheer stupidity. Perhaps most wars have been so caused. 
 
 What does Persia matter compared with the East End 
 or the Liverpool slums ? It really does look as if there 
 were abominable iniquities going on there, but I wonder 
 how much better they managed or could manage things 
 themselves. 
 
 It is a queer thing that people can't see the needs and pro- 
 blems of civilization as a whole. I think the bottom of the 
 business is that people like the sentimental position of call- 
 ing out on behalf of some miserable little persecuted tribe, 
 especially if you can attach the word " nation " to it. . . . 
 
 I am much interested in Churchill's speech. The idea 
 of about six States for England is good. I think it would 
 be good for them to have education, from University down 
 to elementary, public health, control of water, gas, light 
 railways, agriculture, police, housing, and, to a large extent, 
 land. There is enough in that to keep any parliament 
 going, and real problems too. 
 
 I cannot see any valid argument for centralizing education 
 for the whole of England. The case for centralizing com- 
 pany and commercial law and Factory and Mines Acts and 
 unemployed schemes rests on special arguments, based 
 on the nature of the thing to be dealt with. There is no 
 doubt that the Board of Education is to a large extent 
 clogged now by the friction of the internal parts of its own 
 machinery, and that it would gain greatly by being split 
 up. It has already a special department for Wales.
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 131 
 
 I am looking forward to getting to Lugano. The one 
 thing I do want now that I shall not get there is good 
 music, or music of any kind. I agree with Gissing in 
 " Henry Ryecroft " in having often felt gratitude to casual, 
 indifferent piano players at houses I have passed, or even 
 for barrel organs. There is some one in this hotel who 
 plays divinely. I wouldn't mind having a wife who could 
 play well. But I suppose that is male egoism. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ON LAKE OF LUCERNE. 
 
 17 September, 1912. 
 
 I got your letter last night and the Nation. I am getting 
 a little tired of the lack of " Real-Politik " in a lot of 
 the advanced Radical talk about certain questions. There 
 seems to me a lack of contact with reality amongst these 
 Radicals in connection with foreign politics, just as there 
 is amongst Tories in connection with social questions. I 
 am beginning to understand why we get a reputation for 
 hypocrisy. I detest the idea of war more than ever I did, 
 but we shall never get a world-peace organized on a basis 
 of quasi-English parliamentary government for every 
 blessed tribe that English Radicals choose to call a nation. 
 I should like to see Europe dominated in politics by England 
 and Germany acting in common, if possible also working 
 in conjunction with America. At the same time I see that 
 it is very hard for us to get out of the position we are in, 
 whether we need have got there or not. There is a lot of 
 force in Grey's contention that if we weakened on the 
 Entente with France, we should get a reputation for slippery 
 dealings with our friends which would make it difficult to 
 build up stable relations with any one. So in the end I 
 reach an almost negative conclusion, pretty well in general 
 support, though not enthusiastic support, of the Govern- 
 ment's foreign policy as it is, except for a suspicion that 
 greater diplomatic skill could have avoided arousing 
 German antagonism. The great thing is to keep the peace 
 somehow for thirty or forty years, with as few scares and 
 diplomatic rows as possible ; that will in the end produce 
 cessation of the waste of money on armaments, especially
 
 182 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 if, as is almost inevitable, genuine self-government and 
 genuine education are really developing in every country. 
 Realism that is what I want to cultivate in every 
 sphere of my thought and life in the next few years, a realism 
 compatible with the social and political ideals which, with 
 many tortuosities, I built up for myself in a perpetually 
 hostile environment for the first twenty years of my life, 
 and which I have flaunted in the face of the world with a 
 strange mixture of futility and (here and there) effectiveness, 
 for the last four years. A strain of fanaticism such as I 
 have can be very useful, if you know when not to apply 
 it. Whether or not I can learn that I don't know for 
 certain. I am optimistic enough to think on the whole 
 that I can, and also that I can apply it in directions 
 where most people can perceive only the laborious and the 
 commonplace. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 PENSION VILLA DU MIDI, 
 CASSARATE, LUGANO, SWITZERLAND. 
 18 September, 1912. 
 
 This place where I have settled down is in a glorious 
 position, on the edge of the lake, so that I can easily bathe 
 in the mornings, and with a fine view of Lugano, San 
 Salvatore (behind which the moon sets in the evening), 
 and of the lake nearly down to the place where the St. 
 Gotthard Railway crosses it. It is very cheap only 5.50 
 per day. The only disadvantage is the other guests, who are 
 about the stuffiest lot of Germans I ever struck. But except 
 at the somewhat tedious business of dinner and abendcssen 
 they don't bother one. The garden is a real delight. 
 
 I have been sitting here all the morning, writing some 
 necessary letters most of the time, and reading Goethe's 
 Life during the rest. I have also been reading a lot of 
 Heine's poems. How extraordinarily unlike modern Ger- 
 many he is for the matter of that, Goethe is too. I think 
 there is a great similarity between the vices of modern 
 Germans and of Americans the national vices of new- 
 fangled nationality. Self-consciousness would appear to 
 be a defect in a society, just as it is in an individual or
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 183 
 
 (vide Anatole France) in a Church. We are not and can 
 never pretend to be one " nation " in the United Kingdom ; 
 we are not much nearer being a nation than Switzerland 
 can pretend to be. The fissure between Anglicanism and 
 honest Protestantism is almost as great for political purposes 
 as that between Protestantism and honest Catholicism. 
 (It is probably bad for a religion to be too honest.) I 
 suppose there is now scarcely a single Western European 
 State which keeps two systems of law going as distinct 
 as Scottish and English law, and in which there is a more 
 marked racial fissure than between the Irish and the English. 
 I think all this is to the good. It shows that uniformity 
 and centralization can be introduced for political pur- 
 poses in spheres where they are obviously convenient 
 without interfering with differences in the expression of 
 civilized life. 
 
 I like Churchill's way of stating the case for federalism 
 very much. Were it not for the immediate political exi- 
 gencies of the case the party system, I suppose you would 
 say I don't see why Ulster, or rather the four Orange 
 counties, should not be given a separate Parliament. It 
 would be as big a State as a lot of the American or Australian 
 States or as some of the Canadian provinces. I suppose it 
 would have a larger population than Wales. And the senti- 
 mental desire of the Irish to colour the whole of their 
 island green doesn't appeal to me much. That sort of 
 political idealism is half a century out of date. The only 
 disadvantage would be that I suppose there would be a 
 wasteful cross-current of a " United Ireland " movement 
 in Irish politics. The great thing Ireland wants to do now 
 is to avoid political waste. 
 
 I must confess that I have a good deal of resentment 
 against these accursed Ulstermen, who seem to me to be 
 the most objectionable set of people in the British Isles, 
 and their outrageous brutalities in the last few weeks are 
 really far worse than anything I can think of in English 
 history since Peterloo, or the hanging of the agricultural 
 labourers that Hammond describes. But it is no use 
 letting oneself be carried away by resentment over these 
 hateful incidents. I can understand them, since I am myself
 
 184 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 a good deal nearer the type of Ulsterman than that of 
 the Irish Nationalist. 
 
 I was immensely pleased with the style of two Prefaces 
 to Heine's poems. When I have finished the Goethe and 
 the poems I shall try to get some more of Heine's prose 
 the " Reisebilder," or something. Goethe's description of 
 his childhood is very good, though I am induced to think 
 he reads things into it from his later life. But I suppose 
 every one does that. 
 
 It is a fine experience to come over the Gotthard. This is 
 the first time I have come all the way over by train in the 
 daytime. The sharp line between Italian and German life 
 is so striking. And yet the people on both sides do exactly 
 the same things in exactly the same ways most of their 
 lives. Are they really different in their natures and if so, 
 how ? I wonder. I shall climb one or two of the big 
 mountains near here, but this garden and the sun and the 
 lake will suffice for most of my time. 
 
 19 September, 1912. 
 
 A young Frenchman turned up here yesterday. I tried 
 him with a little French this afternoon, and found that I 
 could just manage to carry on a conversation. He is in 
 the French Ministry of Labour and (I presume in his spare 
 time) is taking Law and Social Economy at the University 
 of Paris. His chief professor is Raoul Jay, whom I saw 
 and heard at Zurich, and he is writing a thesis on pension 
 schemes for railway servants. We had a long talk and I 
 picked up some useful information though I don't think his 
 knowledge is very extensive. Unfortunately, I haven't, as I 
 usually do on the Continent, brought a French dictionary 
 with me. I have hardly ever spoken the language, and 
 my expressions must be very queer ; however, I generally 
 manage to get in what I want to say in some way or other. 
 
 I rather think this fellow is a sort of Catholic or Christian 
 Socialist. He spoke of Jay as a Catholic Socialist with 
 great enthusiasm, and also said that some other leading 
 French economist I think Gide is a Protestant. I shall 
 try him with Anatole France when we have another talk. 
 This morning early I had a delightful swim in the lake.
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 135 
 
 I really think this is about the most delightful spot I have 
 ever stayed at. The mountain of San Salvatore, which is 
 directly opposite, has the most beautiful shape. The moon 
 sets every evening behind it, and on the right are the 
 lights of Lugano. 
 
 I read Goethe all this morning. It is a long and fairly 
 solid book, but pretty full of interest. I wish he would 
 hurry up and get on to his women though ! Lewes writes 
 about that side of him in such a damned silly way that I 
 want to see what Goethe has to say for himself. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 PENSION VILLA DU MIDI, 
 CASSARATE, LUGANO, SWITZERLAND. 
 20 September, 1912. 
 
 I was so glad to get your letter yesterday. I have been 
 doing nothing but read, sleep, stroll about and occasionally 
 talk here. Yesterday evening I had another talk with the 
 young Frenchman. He showed me a lot of books he is 
 reading for an exam, in the theory and practice of Labour 
 Protection just the subject out of which I hope to make 
 my magnum opus in the next two or three years. It was 
 most useful to get the names of the books and have a look 
 at them I might not have come across them except after 
 considerable hunting about in England. It also interests 
 me that they make a regular course in France out of the 
 subject about which I intend to write. The French ought 
 not to be so far behind Germany and England in practice, 
 seeing that they seem to have the theory of the whole 
 business so clearly arranged. Yet there is no doubt that 
 they are. 
 
 I am afraid I cannot read the sort of stuff that Z. turns 
 out with anything but irritation. There seems to me 
 a strain of futility a sort of civilized snarl about the 
 whole thing that is utterly distasteful to me. It leads 
 nowhere. No doubt the bulk of it is true in spite of fairly 
 frequent blatant errors of fact. But somehow I don't 
 see it moving anybody to any practical purpose except 
 a small knot of kindred spirits, who are in effect an isolated 
 element in the community. It appears to me, for instance,
 
 136 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 to be utterly futile to go on yapping against the Insurance 
 Act. I don't see how any one in his senses can imagine 
 that any positive harm is done by that measure, although 
 any one who is not fundamentally an individualist should 
 see that the fresh obligations which it puts on the State, 
 and the links it sets up between the individual and the 
 community, are obviously arranged on the basis of an 
 imperfect grasp of the notion of social solidarity. 
 
 But take your England and your working classes as they 
 are, and could you expect anything else except by a lucky 
 chance such as gave us non-contributory old age pensions ? 
 The Act will do some practical good, will render the life of 
 the worker a little less insecure, will advance social solidarity 
 a little, and leaves us just as free to educate and construct 
 on a collectivist basis as before. I don't think cavilling is 
 an effective element in social education. It is always more 
 profitable to teach people about fresh fields for constructive 
 action, and take the inevitable half-good and improve it 
 as occasion arises later on. 
 
 Just so with that stuff you sent me of his about inter- 
 national finance obviously as cleverly written as it could 
 well be by any one devoid of much real, solid knowledge of 
 the subject. We know all that but how can we help 
 ourselves ? There is no short cut to democracy if you 
 haven't got some sort of real basis for it in approximate 
 economic equality and general education, and much more 
 widely spread State control of capital. I cannot help think- 
 ing often that the people who merely repeat the obvious 
 objections to the social system as it is, without any sort 
 of constructive notions based on a close contact with reality 
 and with a continual anxiety to throw overboard the half- 
 loaves that we get alternately with whole loaves that these 
 people may actually hinder progress rather than help it. 
 I may be wrong it is no use quarrelling with them ; their 
 cussedness (as it seems to me) is obviously the product of 
 psychological conditions that can't be altered. So the best 
 thing I can do is to keep away from them, seeing that I find 
 it very hard to keep my temper in their presence, learn 
 nothing from them, and distrust their judgment too much 
 to accept readily anything I might learn.
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 137 
 
 Of course I know there is always a i in (say) 20 chance 
 that you may get a social upheaval, and that then / shall 
 be utterly out of it and (possibly, though this is doubtful) 
 the people who always backed the i chance will be on top. 
 But then it is so clear to me that the chances after all are 
 only about i in 5 that they would pull anything off per- 
 manently, that on the whole I think it more civic-minded 
 to abjure a desire for the excitement as a political lever 
 altogether. 
 
 In short, I don't believe in short cuts, and purely de- 
 structive criticism is not much in my line. I am always 
 instinctively thinking of how much can be got out of this 
 or that proposal, especially if it is more or less inevitable. 
 My personal feeling is that a man like Z. would be much 
 more useful if he left politics alone and confined himself 
 to the problems of individual human life in its social 
 relations, for dealing with which his quick intelligence and 
 sympathy obviously fit him. 
 
 I don't care to have to do with him personally, because 
 his inability to keep certain inevitable assumptions at the 
 back of his head seems to me to render most of what he says 
 about the things which interest me futile, and a good part 
 of it ridiculous. I feel an instinctive repulsion for the 
 obsessed method of looking at things which I thought I 
 saw in Hyndman also in a similar sort of way. Both of 
 them obviously possess very keen intelligence, and both of 
 them seem strangely unable to apply it to certain quarters 
 of their assumptions. In ordinary stupid people, of course, 
 one takes impenetrability to reason on matters such as 
 religious dogma or common ethical notions as a matter of 
 course. But there is something uncanny to me in a mind 
 which possesses highly organized receptivity in most of 
 its parts and presents an utter impenetrability in certain 
 more or less unexpected quarters. 
 
 Well, I had rather write a letter to you about something 
 else than all this. But you more or less flung the subject 
 at me. 
 
 I turned from my German this morning to French, in 
 order to try to pick up a few words to make conversation
 
 188 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 with my friend more easy. I have a volume of Voltaire 
 with me and read " Candide " coming out here. This 
 morning I read " L'inconnu." By God ! I do enjoy Voltaire. 
 He does clear away rubbish out of the mind, though he 
 may not give you a great deal in its place. And yet his 
 humanity is a very large and noble feeling. It is easy to 
 forget what uncontrolled monarchical tyranny meant in 
 France and even in England in the seventeenth century, 
 and what a very real curse arbitrary imprisonment was. 
 I have seen Tolstoy compared to Voltaire in his moral 
 influence in Europe, but I think Voltaire is really more like 
 Shaw than any other great writer. (I seem to remember 
 that Shaw quotes him a good deal in one or more of his 
 Prefaces.) They both have that plain, straightforward, 
 direct sympathy for humanity, and both, it seems to me, 
 succeed in making it as rich and real a feeling as any super- 
 natural religious sentiment. I wonder if the world as a 
 whole is dropping back into supernaturalism just now. 
 It is noteworthy that people like MacDonald and Mrs. Webb 
 play up to religion in a way that Mill and Morley would 
 have scorned to do, and which I trust I shall never do. 
 (I don't mean to imply that MacDonald and Mrs. Webb 
 aren't sincere, they are.) But on the whole I don't think 
 there is any set-back. I don't set much store by the influence 
 of the High Church people on a good number of Oxford 
 undergraduates. All that I have met even when Socialists 
 in politics are so obviously unmodern in most of their 
 notions that one sees that they are not an essential part 
 of the brain of society. If only the State can make itself 
 sufficiently loved if only people feel that they owe a con- 
 siderable part at least of the good things of everyday life 
 to it that will be the real beginning of the end of aber- 
 glaiibc. No doubt there will always be private cults for 
 various forms of mysticism but the main stream of what 
 is now religious emotion will be bound up indistinguishably 
 both in thought and expression with the emotions of civic 
 life, of art, and of the enthusiasm of humanity. And the 
 degrading drivel of the hymn books, with which the 
 minds of millions of children are still vilified and closed 
 to finer forms of moral and aesthetic feeling, and the
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 139 
 
 nonsensical jabber of Christian theology will pass away 
 for ever. 
 
 I have just got your post card. I don't think you will 
 care for C- - much yourself. You always seem to me so 
 much more anxious to find out what we can't learn from 
 Australia than what we can. The big fact remains that we 
 have put the minimum wage into practice through their 
 example, and that all reasonable people are agreed that the 
 minimum wage all over Australia has given the working 
 classes a larger proportion of the total amount of wealth 
 produced. Melbourne, Sidney, and Adelaide don't differ 
 essentially from Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds in indus- 
 trial organization. The Brisbane strike seems to me neither 
 here nor there in the main practical issue except as showing 
 (along with one or two big recent strikes) that you can't 
 do as much by strikes as people who have forgotten the 
 earlier history of strikes in England and Sweden thought 
 you could though you may do a great deal. Of course, 
 the people who want the legal minimum wage simply in 
 order to stop strikes can make a lot out of the Brisbane 
 business but we are not in that set. C - has no ex- 
 citing ideas, is not a Socialist, and regards the political 
 Socialist in Australia as rather a nuisance, in which I am 
 inclined to agree with him, from what little I know. 
 
 I am tired of this eternal preaching of disillusionment 
 with this, that, or the other by people who expect impossible 
 things at the start. 
 
 Well, dear, I wish you hadn't put me in a bad temper 
 by sending me that stuff of G.'s. Your letter moved me 
 very much, but I can't get back into a decent mood now, 
 so I will end. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LUGANO. 
 25 September, 1912. 
 
 ... I am sorry I wrote ill-temperedly on Friday, or when- 
 ever it was. You know I am not a mere bureaucrat in 
 politics. I am a democrat in all that democracy can mean 
 in the sphere of actual life. That is why I am intolerant
 
 140 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 of what appears to me a misdirection of popular movements. 
 If I valued the movements less, I should care less. But 
 intolerance is always futile, even as against the biggest fools. 
 I know that really, but find patience the hardest of all the 
 virtues to practise. 
 
 I am sorry the new German Ambassador to England 
 has died. I think he would have done good work. He 
 was a Baden man. I am looking forward to learning more 
 about German foreign policy from Dudley. He is as anti- 
 French in foreign policy as I am and certainly started with 
 no prejudice in that direction. 
 
 The German professor really lays himself out to be 
 extraordinarily pleasant to me in a more or less formal way, 
 and I appreciate it. These people have not the knowledge 
 of the art of life that the French have, but they are our 
 natural allies in the business of government and organization. 
 If only a war is avoided, which seems to me more and more 
 probable, we are almost bound to realize that sooner or 
 later. The idea of a war becomes more and more abhorrent 
 to me. England has never had the ghastly experience 
 of a Thirty Years War, which put Germany back perhaps 
 a century. I think the French are much more likely to 
 bring on a war than we are. The more I think about the 
 whole business, the more I distrust them, and the idea of 
 their extending their colonial territory while Germany 
 gets nothing is outrageous. 
 
 I study the Frankfurter Zcitung, which is the Manchester 
 Guardian of Germany, every day carefully. The campaign 
 for Free Trade in food in the German towns is remarkable. 
 It seems to me the biggest blow the reactionaries have 
 had. . . . 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 IN TRAIN TO THURINGEN. 
 4 October, 1912. 
 
 I got your letter addressed to Lugano last night after 
 returning from seeing Strindberg's " Todtentanz " very 
 well acted at Reinhardt's theatre. . . . 
 
 The Berlin papers are full of talk about the Balkans. 
 Personally I don't feel particularly anxious for peace. I
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 141 
 
 don't think there is any chance that war in the Balkans 
 would cause a war among the big European Powers. I 
 should on the whole like to see the power of Austria in the 
 Balkans extended. Austria has done a splendid civilizing 
 work in Bosnia, and for the rest, though I am not a fanatical 
 anti-Turk, I think these Slavonic Greek people in Macedonia 
 could do better for themselves if joined on to the small 
 Christian Balkan States than the Turks do for them. It is 
 difficult to see how they could get detached from Turkey 
 without war. The Powers simply won't take the final 
 step apparently. See how they have kept Crete from 
 joining Greece for so long. War in a place like the Balkans 
 seems to me a different business altogether from war in 
 Western Europe and must be judged by different standards. 
 ... I don't know why you should assume that I ignore 
 the importance of " religion " and " art " in society, 
 because I am rather sick of the eternal klatsch of the masses 
 of second-rate people who are mainly interested in them 
 and won't take the trouble to move for the practical steps 
 which will get rid of the worst evils of poverty. I want to 
 get a level of material civilization in England equal to that 
 of Australia and to secure to every one a decent minimum. 
 That is a relatively sordid and obvious end, I know, but 
 it is so easy to forget it in the more exciting pursuit of the 
 (for civilization) perhaps in the end more important move- 
 ments for securing a real economic equality for women and 
 a higher level of real freedom and culture. My work is 
 with the relatively sordid and commonplace, and I have 
 done for ever with the froth of my first youth, which 
 has been very little good to myself or any one else. 
 
 This holiday really has been glorious for me. I intend to 
 make myself as much as possible a cosmopolitan in thought 
 and habits. Englishmen have no justifiable excuse for the 
 mistakes due to insularity now. Matthew Arnold was one 
 of the few Englishmen of his generation who knew something 
 about things outside his own country, and the immense 
 advantage it gave him over his contemporaries as a thinker 
 on politics and education has always struck me. I have 
 hopes of writing a study of him as a political thinker some 
 day. He was in many respects the first modern collectivist 
 in England.
 
 142 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 Sunday, 6 October, 1912, 8 a.m. 
 
 I had a glorious walk up from Tambach yesterday evening 
 through pine and beech woods. I do love pine woods. I 
 would give all the vines and sunshine of Italy for one deep 
 Northern pine-clad valley with a flat strip of meadow and 
 a brook running along the bottom. Is the feeling atavism 
 or merely an accidental preference hi me ? Zimmern in 
 " The Greek Commonwealth " has a fine passage about 
 the inability of the Northerner to feel really at home in 
 Mediterranean surroundings he says it takes about two 
 generations for the Teuton to become acclimatized and 
 quotes from both ancient Greek and mediaeval literature. 
 Well, I am a Northerner for good and evil, and I would 
 sooner live in a pine wood with the said strip of meadow 
 than in the most beautiful cultivated landscape. I love 
 the dark green better even than the magnificent stretches 
 of gold which the beech-woods form now. 
 
 I walked last night till it got dark, and then happened 
 on an excellent hotel three miles from anywhere, where I 
 had a good meal and much beer and went to bed very happy. 
 I should have got farther with this letter to you but for the 
 fact that I found an account of the German Continuation 
 School Congress in the paper, containing a good deal of 
 information about physical education in Continuation 
 Schools. I will make a small article of about a page for 
 the School Child out of this and further information on 
 the subject which I expect to get. 
 
 I think of my work at intervals on these long walks. I 
 happened to have the same notebook in my pocket as I 
 had when in the Tirol, and it is curious to see how my ideas 
 have developed. I must take two clear years to think and 
 read and write. I feel a need for accuracy, exactness, and 
 method in political thought, in so far as it can be obtained, 
 and want to get rid of amateurishness in every branch of 
 it. I believe I have described to you the moment when I 
 was reading Shaw's " Man and Superman " at Cambridge 
 and when the whole conception of the solubility of property 
 and marriage came on me like a flash. It was a moment
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 143 
 
 in my life comparable with Rousseau's vision of the " Social 
 Contract." It has been the main driving force of my 
 thought ever since. I have used the conception as a sort 
 of bludgeon to test the effectiveness and worth of everything 
 else. I have often used it so clumsily that it has recoiled 
 on myself. But now I want to use it as a wedge to prise 
 open the sealed chambers of thought which, though possibly 
 themselves in the main the creation of economic circum- 
 stances, still serve in their turn to enslave the souls of men. 
 The real reason why contributory insurance schemes alone 
 are practical politics in England, whereas in Australia the 
 Government is simply going to pay 5 for every baby with- 
 out any haggling with ha'pence, is that in England the con- 
 ception of social solidarity, of the unity of the individual 
 and the State, is relatively weak, whereas, though Australia 
 has done very little theorizing on the subject, the people 
 have nevertheless developed a habit of using the State 
 when they want anything as a matter of course. (This 
 isn't a very good example, because of course Australia 
 wants population more than we do, but it illustrates 
 what I mean.) Well, we have got to have a lot of 
 theorizing and investigating and propaganda to get 
 what Australia has got as a matter of common sense. 
 
 I want to clear off my certifying surgeon's business ; 
 then the principles and administration of Labour legislation 
 in England generally with a good deal of comparison with 
 foreign countries ; and then perhaps, if I have had the 
 patience to study law and psychology as well as economics 
 adequately, I can attempt to re-state the whole conception 
 of the relation of society and the individual cutting deeper 
 in a sense than the ordinary collectivist idea or than the 
 Webbs' National Minimum idea, because I want to analyse 
 carefully the changes in the conception of ownership and 
 the development of State action on behalf of the citizen 
 as consumer as well as on behalf of the citizen as producer, 
 in ways other than the upholding of personal property. 
 But I am afraid you won't sympathize with all this. I 
 can only say I feel a need to clarify my mind and try to 
 see a bit deeper into things before I claim a right to my 
 special share in government or administration. I want
 
 144 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 to use the results of economics, law, and social psychology 
 to check each other, and to both destroy much that is 
 futile in each and perhaps construct something new. 
 
 I am now going on to Eisenach. I hope to have time to 
 go up the Wartburg before catching the 5.13 train to 
 Berlin, but I doubt if I shall. 
 
 I am finishing this after dinner at Rulb, a little place with 
 some big factories where they make small metal goods and 
 where there is a large tobacco-pipe industry. It belongs, 
 half to one of the Thuringian Duchies, and half to another. 
 These little Duchies appear to eke out their incomes by 
 keeping hotels. (I have passed two Herzogliche Wirts- 
 hauser.) At one of them, Rudolstadt, there is now a tre- 
 mendous row ; ten out of the twelve members of the local 
 Parliament are Social Democrats and won't vote the Budget. 
 The Duke has proceeded to collect it, alleging that the 
 Constitution allows him to do so in cases of public danger, 
 and the highest legal authorities in Germany are discussing 
 the law of the matter. 
 
 Sunday evening. 9.30 p.m. 
 
 Dudley and I are on our way back to Berlin. I joined 
 him on the train at Erfurt. I had time to go up the Wart- 
 burg, but not to go over the old castle. I should like to 
 have done so. The Wartburg is, I suppose, the most interest- 
 ing historical spot, except perhaps Aachen and Frankfort. 
 The Minnesingers, Luther, and the early nineteenth- 
 century national movement are all connected closely with 
 the old hill. There was rather a good statue of Luther 
 in the town : he was a fine old chap, but I thought 
 of his views on women. I shall have to read more 
 about him. 
 
 I believe you saw Strindberg's " Todtentanz." I can't 
 believe they acted it according to Strindberg's instructions 
 in England even at the Stage Society. They would not dare 
 to lay sex so bare. It is a great play. Strindberg wrote 
 a continuation to it which I have got and shall read 
 shortly. Rupert Brooke, who is coming here in a day or 
 two, wants to translate ',1 Wedekind," but Dudley and I
 
 SWITZERLAND AND ITALY 145 
 
 agree that he had much better tackle Strindberg but I 
 believe some one is doing it and of course it would need 
 to be done direct from the Scandinavian. The acting was 
 splendid. It must be an awful strain for the two chief 
 players they get practically no rests. 
 
 After to-morrow I shall probably get on to a little work 
 as the result of meeting Siidekum, whom we are dining 
 with. I didn't bother to get other introductions in Berlin, 
 as my journey is mostly holiday, but I want to get at all 
 the essential people in Hamburg. I shall go to Yorkshire 
 direct from there on about the iQth, so as to save money, 
 and probably be in London about the 25th, unless I go 
 on to some ports in the north to see dock labour schemes 
 but I think I shall leave them pro tern., as my article is 
 not due till March, and it may as well be up to date. I 
 can't afford to go all round Hull, Middlesbrough, Glasgow, 
 Liverpool, and Cardiff twice. 
 
 By God ! the psychology of marriage is a queer thing. 
 That Strindberg play and Schnitzler's novel and the Danish 
 novel I am reading have all stimulated thought on the 
 subject. 
 
 I hope I shall find a letter from you when I get back 
 in an hour or so, and I am half hoping to hear from Rachel 
 some time. I should like to carry Bernard Sidney about 
 a bit more. I suppose he will be getting too old soon. 
 
 I feel I am gradually getting the hang of things about 
 Germany in some ways. Of course, being with Dudley 
 helps it having been his job simply to pick up general 
 information. This little journey to Thuringia has, for 
 instance, given me a much clearer idea of the geography 
 of the whole country. These Thuringian forests practically 
 divide North and South Germany. I never understood 
 English geography in general until I lived in the North, 
 and even now I feel very vague about Scotland. It was 
 splendid to be on this old primitive road along the tops of 
 the hills and get fine views north and south. I came 
 across a somewhat rickety great scaffolding just fifty feet 
 
 11
 
 146 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 high in the middle of the forest. I think it must have 
 been put up for military or geographical purposes. It 
 was a fearsome job climbing up the steps on a perpen- 
 dicular pole a lot of them had been broken off ; but of 
 course I could not resist doing it, though it put the fear 
 of God into me when I was about thirty feet up.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1912, TO AUGUST, 1914 (AGED 26 TO 28). 
 
 BEN had said good-bye to Leeds and given up his house there 
 before starting for Zurich in September, 1912, and after his tour 
 in Germany, which concluded with a visit to Hamburg for the 
 purpose of investigating the organization of dock labour there, he 
 returned to London and, after a few weeks, took rooms in Lincoln's 
 Inn, where he lived until his enlistment. 
 
 He never worked harder than during these months, to which 
 most of the writing and research described by Mr. Greenwood 
 (Appendix I) belong. He was associated, too, almost from its 
 beginning, with the New Statesman, and was eventually assistant 
 editor. " His special province on this journal " (I quote from the 
 biographical notice which appeared in it at the time of his death) 
 " was to deal with industrial questions, in relation to many of 
 which there were no higher authorities than he ; the Blue-book 
 supplement was also very largely his work." 
 
 From December, 1911, to December, 1913, he contributed, over 
 the signature " Accelerans," a page, sometimes two, of "Juvenile 
 Labour Notes " to a small monthly paper which, at that time, I 
 was editing. These notes were of considerable value, and it is to 
 be regretted that they were buried in a little-known periodical. 
 They show the extraordinary vigilance with which he watched 
 over any legislation, any action of Local Authorities, or any 
 administrative slackness, affecting the welfare of the child-worker. 
 They are full, too, of practical suggestions which he was, perhaps, 
 better fitted to make, owing to his experience in Care Committees 
 and Juvenile Labour Exchanges, than any one in England at 
 that time. 
 
 Wherever he went, at home or abroad, he was always keenly 
 alive to any new facts bearing on social questions. His letters to 
 me teem with records of this kind, which I have often omitted as 
 they are not usually of permanent or general interest. E. T. 
 
 117
 
 148 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To Miss C. Townshend. 1 
 
 36, LONGRIDGE ROAD. 
 
 27 December, 1912. 
 
 . . . Your mother was rather depressed when she got 
 back from Birchington, but was cheered up by receiving an 
 excellent short article on " Music in Schools " for the School 
 Child, and also by the news about your getting the order 
 for the Rockhampton windows. I also am very glad to 
 hear about the latter. Your mother showed me the letter. 
 I am amused that the difficulty is about the " Figure " 
 (capital F in respect of J. C., I suppose) in the centre. 
 In view of the many occasions on which I have been accused 
 of resembling that worthy character, perhaps you could 
 hardly do better than immortalize me at the same time as 
 commemorating him by copying one of my more shaggy 
 portraits for the window. If, as your mother says, this is 
 generally the difficulty, you could of course get over it 
 by catering for synagogues instead of churches. I don't 
 see why you should confine yourself to decorating the 
 Christian religion. Holy Moses and hoary Abraham would 
 clearly present fewer difficulties than the other gentleman. 
 Then what about the Young Turks ? I am sure they must 
 have started putting windows in the mosques since the 
 Revolution. Ali and Haroun-al-Raschid would be great 
 fun splashing over a window. When my conversion to 
 Mohammedanism is completed, I will see what I can do for 
 you in that direction. I might even go in for some houris 
 with Mohammed in one of the top lights for my bath-room 
 window in Lincoln's Inn. Have you ever tried houris ? 
 There must be a sort of Parliament House in Constantinople 
 which could do with some glass. 
 
 I have not been up to much to-day. I think I may 
 have got a slight chill through getting wet. I also nearly 
 blew myself up with the damned gas apparatus in your 
 bath-room last night, in endeavouring to heat some water 
 for a bath. I thought I did everything all right, but when 
 
 1 My daughter, who is a glass-painter, was in Switzerland, and 
 he was staying at my house till his rooms at Lincoln's Inn were 
 ready for him.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 149 
 
 I put the match to the damned thing there was an awful 
 crash like a taxicab tyre bursting. Two glasses standing 
 on the edge of the bath fell over, a lot of queer dust came 
 out of the guts of the copper apparatus, and I found myself 
 standing on the other side of the bath-room with an objec- 
 tionable feeling in the back of my throat and an awful 
 stink in the room. 
 
 I hope the apparatus was not damaged. I did not test 
 it, but confined my remaining energies in the bath-room 
 to opening the window. I think the explosion deranged 
 something inside my skull, unless that is connected with 
 getting wet. However, one or other probably explains 
 my flippancy. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 HOLGATES HOTEL, ST. MARY'S, 
 ISLES OF SCILLY. 
 
 30 March, 1913. 
 
 I have had a very pleasant time here. I have read a 
 good deal Fisher's " Napoleon," France's " Sur la Pierre 
 Blanche," the whole of Havelock Ellis on " Sex and 
 Society," a lot of Dilke's " Greater Britain " about 
 Australia, and some other things. 
 
 I have walked all round and about this island. The 
 weather was bad yesterday rain and much wind but has 
 been good otherwise. The views here are absolutely unique 
 at least, as far as I know. There may be something like 
 them in the Mediterranean, but I shouldn't think there is 
 anywhere else around the coasts of this country. The 
 sight of a score or more of islands and rocks standing out 
 of the water in the sunshine, as seen from the top of a hill 
 or headland on one of the islands, is wonderful. 
 
 This afternoon I organized a party of seven people in 
 this hotel to hire a sailing-boat. We dropped one man 
 on Tresco, an island opposite here, and the rest of us went 
 on to Bryker, which lies alongside it. I walked all round 
 this island while the other five had tea, and also got some 
 flowers, which I will send you if I can get a box. 
 
 I have a room overlooking the little harbour ; the waves
 
 150 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 break just under my window, and there are generally a lot 
 of gulls walking or rather waddling about and screaming. 
 There is no one in the hotel I care for much. There is 
 a rather rowdy lot of Oxford undergraduates with a coach, 
 who spend a lot of money and generally behave in the 
 objectionable manner of the rich young man from that 
 University. The nicest fellow amongst them, however, 
 is a peer Lord - . He is extraordinarily handsome 
 and has no swaggering manner. He also seems to do more 
 work than the rest of them. There is also a cinematograph 
 photographer here, taking views of the island, and a 
 Secondary School-master, who started life as a half-timer 
 in a Leicestershire hosiery factory and got scholarships to 
 a Secondary School and Cambridge. He really is the objec- 
 tionable Nonconformist type. He is an interesting contrast 
 with the Oxford men. Of course you or Sam Butler would 
 adjudge them the better type of the two. But I am not 
 sure which is really the better, or worse. The Oxford men 
 cost a good deal more. I admit that their narrownesses 
 are on the whole less narrow than his. But we want some- 
 thing different from either. I have aimed at that something, 
 and I think on the whole I have failed to produce anything 
 of real value in the way of an experiment in life at least, 
 anything of value to the world. I have taught myself 
 something and I may yet produce something for the world. 
 I was twenty-seven a couple of days ago. Looking back 
 on life, I see that it isn't much wonder that I have done so 
 little. There are not many men who have spent so much 
 energy in testing rules of conduct. And I can see now 
 it takes a lot of energy. Is it worth it ? It would be a 
 great deal more certain that it was worth it if I had a bit 
 more common sense than I have. I have tried so many 
 things that a wiser man would have seen were not worth 
 trying. However, all I care about now is finishing in the 
 next two or three months the bits of work I set myself 
 six months ago. I have a horror and dread of any more 
 uncompleted work, and till I see those Employment of 
 Children, Certifying Surgeons, and Casual Labour things 
 in print I shall feel too conscious of my many snapped- off 
 aspirations to be happy or peaceful. If I can do these
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 151 
 
 little things, I can do bigger things in the same and 
 other spheres. If I can't, my only value is that of an 
 exceedingly dubious kind of moral anarchist. 
 
 I liked Havelock Ellis's book immensely. I read all of 
 it in a couple of days. There is an immense amount of 
 wisdom in it. I wish I had read it six or seven years ago. 
 But I expect I could not have absorbed it. 
 
 If I can get my work finished by or before the end of 
 June, I shall be off to America for the summer harvesting. 
 If I don't get on to this jaunt soon I never shall. I expect 
 I shall come back in a few months in the autumn. But I 
 don't want you to talk about this to any one. I don't want 
 to be bothered to talk to any one except you about myself 
 and my doings in the next three months. I have got my 
 health and comparative peace of mind back, and care for 
 nothing but using it to the world's and my own advantage. 
 And for once and for a short time there is not much doubt 
 as to the identity and form of those advantages. 
 
 As soon as I get back from America I am going to finish 
 being called to the Bar another broken strand picked up. 
 
 This will be useful from a practical point of view, and 
 will also give me the knowledge of law which I need for my 
 sort of sociological work. When I have done that I shall 
 be in a position to try a number of different lines of work. 
 But I hanker after a biggish bit of writing on the history of 
 Labour legislation in England. I keep picking up odds 
 and ends about it and storing them away. 
 
 Dilke on Australia in the sixties is interesting, though 
 not very profound. But he gives me a good idea of the 
 place. It interests me much. There is no doubt to my 
 mind that English democratic progress will be along their 
 lines. Everything points in that direction, and only a few 
 Millenniumites will object besides the vested interests. 
 I am inclined to think that Australia has been fortunate in 
 not having too much conscious Socialism among her Labour 
 Parties in actual politics. I care less and less about the 
 shibboleths of Socialism, and I think I like the Socialist 
 element in the Labour Movement (except for a very small 
 number of intellectuals) less than the other parts of it.
 
 152 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 All we want is an infinite willingness to use the State or the 
 municipality, or associations of any kind, for any practical 
 ends in the direction of increasing the security, wealth, 
 and civilization of the masses and improving the position 
 of women. I doubt whether conscious Socialism and 
 the preaching of it help that any more now though they 
 may have done in the past. The number of conscious 
 Socialists has probably, as far as one can see, ceased to 
 increase, though what one may call the Socialist point of 
 view is, I should say, being accepted more and more generally. 
 Probably a much greater increase of conscious Socialism 
 would not really help practical Socialist methods. It 
 would tend to throw up more dogmatists to the front 
 and they are a pernicious race on the whole, when it comes 
 to practice. 
 
 In some ways I find myself more interested than I have 
 ever been before in the problem of changing the soul of 
 man just because I never realized so much before how 
 difficult it is. I remember Shaw once saying that the 
 ordinary enlightened young man began by revolting against 
 his family and general environment, but that he only began 
 to be of use when he was able to go and live with them in 
 peace and feel " after all we are men " (those were Shaw's 
 words), and that is more important than these squabbles 
 or something to that effect. Well, I have reached that 
 stage. Only I shan't go back to my family, because it 
 (or rather R.) isn't the sort of thing you revolt against 
 because of your revolutionism. If which might well 
 have happened I had married the ordinary type of woman 
 and then bust things up, I should at this moment be 
 recruiting my health and regaining my peace of mind along 
 with Bernard and Joan. But my family unfortunately 
 represents my first revolutionary phase. I can't get back 
 to the normal human ties through it. On the contrary, 
 it will perhaps bar me out of them for ever, which I can't 
 help regretting, because, as I say, I have begun to be 
 interested in the transformation of the soul of man and 
 you can't transform or study transformation while you live 
 in a different way, with different habits, from the great 
 mass of your fellow-men. I am not growing conservative.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 153 
 
 I am less so than I ever was. But I want to see the new 
 grow out of the old, and do what little I can to help it in 
 the thirty years or so of strength that I may reasonably 
 expect. Isolation is no use for that. 
 
 Now I must stop for dinner, which I need after the sail 
 and tramp. Good-bye. I shall be very glad to see you 
 and the children again. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshend. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 f 5 April, 1913. 
 
 ... I should like to find time to write my " Case for 
 Judas Iscariot," with an autobiographical tinge in it. You 
 might let me have my Renan back, which I lent you. . . . 
 
 I have just been to see the children at Eva's. Bernard 
 has grown enormously and is much more like Joan. He 
 too amuses himself very independently, and would take 
 no notice of Diana's persistent approaches. . . . Joan talks 
 incessantly, but with a seriousness that is most admirable. 
 Children are more serious about what they do than most 
 adults are about what they do. Play is and should be 
 serious for children. Playing playfully is an acquired adult 
 habit, and I am not certain whether it is not a vicious one. 
 Play is children's work, and, after all, involves less make- 
 believe than most adult work. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 21 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 13 April, 1913. 
 
 I have been busy with work and other things since I left 
 you. I got a good chunk of the Employment of Children 
 Report written last week. I really have dug up a lot of stuff 
 which will be of permanent use to people who are studying 
 the development of State interference with industry in the 
 nineteenth century, and I have taught myself a good deal 
 about local legislative procedure and other things. How 
 much more solid a grasp one gets of things by having to 
 find them out as one goes along in order to explain phenomena 
 one is investigating instead of taking them from text- 
 books. I think I am curing myself of the habit of delving
 
 154 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 and re-delving in details ad infinitum. That also one has 
 to learn from experience. I have finished most of a " His- 
 torical Summary of the Development of Child Labour 
 Regulations," which brings together all the multifarious 
 attempts to deal with the thing outside the Factory Acts. 
 It begins with Jonas Hanway and the wretched little boy 
 chimney-sweeps in 1770 and ends with our latest manipu- 
 lations to circumvent the newspaper proprietors over 
 Employment of Children Bills. I was reminded of the 
 problem in the concrete on Friday night by a wretched 
 van-boy who brought some things to my room from the 
 Stores. I have really been appalled by these boys when 
 they come to my rooms often at 9 p.m. They all look 
 rotten in health, tired and utterly listless. Of course they 
 are the slum boys as a whole, I suppose but I think they 
 are worse here than in Leeds. I send you the New States- 
 man, which you probably are not getting through other 
 sources. The absence of crescendo cavil and Alleluias 
 pleases me. In fact, I think it is very good. . . . 
 
 To Miss C. Townshend. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 April, 1913. 
 
 I have just been reading a most remarkable book by 
 Bury on the " History of Freedom of Thought." It is 
 a tough counterblast to James, Bergson, and the crop of 
 anti-rationalist Schwdrmeyci from Theosophy to (without 
 any offence) Syndicalism. It has stirred me up a good 
 deal. I have tacitly come to accept the position since I 
 became an active Socialist that one is entitled to help on 
 social changes, the desirability of which is demonstrable 
 to any one with intelligence and decent feeling, by some 
 sort of myth, vague visions of a Socialist State, etc., which 
 an intelligent man cannot accept literally any more than 
 he can the first chapter of Genesis. For the sake of im- 
 mediate aims we accept the humbug of royalty, avoid 
 irritating Christians whose beliefs are contemptible intel- 
 lectually and pernicious ethically, stir up the proletariat 
 with " myths " that we don't believe, and act in matters
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 155 
 
 of sexual morality with deliberate double-facedness. Now, 
 all this may be necessary, it may even be defensible ethically 
 and in accordance with some tolerable standard of conduct, 
 but I feel I want to think over my whole position. My 
 enthusiasm for social change becomes more deep-rooted 
 the more I get to think (as I do increasingly) in terms of 
 men as they are and of life as it is, in so far as one can 
 form any impression from the facts of daily life as seen from 
 a good many different corners over a few years. . . . But 
 I want to be quite clear that all this lying about religion, 
 morality, and sociology is really necessary before I go on 
 with it. I daresay it is, but unless I am convinced about it, 
 I will not go on. I shall always be deficient in discretion, 
 but I have enough courage to face any moral or practical 
 issue in life that I have ever thought of, so long as I am not 
 hampered by muddle-headedness. 
 
 To Mrs. Towns/tend. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 Sunday, 25 May, 1913, noon. 
 
 I was at Colchester most of yesterday and stopped the 
 night with Mrs. Green. I saw a lot of people. I feel 
 much more in sympathy with the people I knew as a boy 
 there than I have ever done in my life before. The habit 
 of wrangling over formulae is a miserable divider of mankind. 
 Of course I do differ from them in my outlook. But then, 
 they haven't got a definitely formulated outlook at all. 
 They have many vague (and some bad) prejudices- 
 emotions of fear, spite, or jealousy linked on to some 
 religious or political catchword. But how much is all 
 that mental equipment going to be changed by argument 
 and preaching ? To some extent it will be and should be. 
 But on the whole changes will be more subtle. 
 
 I am sure I can trace a change in the social outlook of 
 the ordinary middle-class business people in the place from 
 ten years ago. It is a little more human and sympathetic. 
 There is less hostility to change as such, and here and there 
 a slight and partial consciousness of the meaning of life 
 on a pound a week.
 
 156 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I had a long intimate talk with Mrs. Green, and also with 
 my former guardian's brother a curious mystical sort of 
 person. I was inside seven different houses yesterday. 
 It was strange to see my contemporaries all getting married 
 or with young babies. Altogether a vision of life. I 
 think I shall repeat my visits there. It depressed me at 
 times, but on the whole I feel it is all interesting experience, 
 and one has or at any rate I have got to get a modus 
 vivendi based on life as it is for the world in general. I 
 crave above all things to make myself a part of the " social 
 organism "or whatever one likes to call it as it is. I 
 don't want to be an abnormal Bohemian rebel all my life 
 I have had enough of that. The experience I have had has 
 given me the necessary sense of contrasts which enables 
 me to see the scheme of things as it is. Now I want to 
 use the tools. Forging them is not an end in itself. 
 
 Reading Webb on local government fits in with all this 
 philosophic conservatism. What a wonderful nation of 
 conservatives we are ! the Romans of modern times more 
 than any other people, I suppose. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 23 July, 1913- 
 
 iiOoc avOpio-m,) Saifuov ! I haven't got rid of that 
 vision of fate and character ever since I saw it at the head 
 of Galsworthy's book. What a grating of jagged masses 
 there is in life ! I see no reality in metaphors of harmony. 
 How Shakespeare throws a glare on realities in Angelo in 
 " Measure for Measure," which I read the other day. It is 
 not the moral issue which matters, though I daresay Shake- 
 speare had that consciously in mind when he wrote the 
 play, but the march of a human soul from one driving 
 impulse to another. 
 
 The projected visit to America never took place. He went 
 abroad in August for a few weeks to Germany and Italy, and then 
 along the Dalmatian coast. The two next letters and the two 
 articles from the New Statesman give some account of his experiences 
 during this trip. E. T.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 157 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 August, 1913. 
 
 I am leaving in an hour or so for Zara, the first stopping- 
 place on the Dalmatian coast. Had a very pleasant trip 
 from Venice last night, arriving here at 6 a.m. I enjoyed 
 Venice very much for a day ; but I shouldn't care to spend 
 much time there. I never saw a place where life seemed 
 to centre so much round a dead past, and where the essentials 
 of the present were so depressing. There seemed to be 
 more cadging and tip-seeking than in any other town I 
 have ever been to. Every one seemed to be living on 
 odd jobs performed for tourists. It also rather got on my 
 nerves that it was presumed that you wanted to be carried 
 everywhere ; my instinctive distaste to hiring private 
 conveyances would have developed into a mania in con- 
 nection with gondolas. 
 
 A good bust of Daniel Manin and a couple of inscriptions 
 in the Doge's Palace about the '49 siege and the '66 plebiscite 
 cheered me up more than anything else. I sympathize 
 with Morris's feelings about Italy. I detest the Catholic 
 atmosphere more and more, and for a mythology I would 
 rather go to the old Norse stories and the Norse and German 
 atmosphere generally. If I knew the Classics better, I 
 daresay I should be more attracted by Italy. It is mediaeval 
 Italy, not pagan Rome, I feel utterly out of sympathy with. 
 (I believe Morris disliked the whole Roman spirit, but I 
 think it was Christianity which really led men astray.) I 
 thought of an amusing idea the other day. Christianity 
 always prides itself on its connection with the emancipation 
 of slaves ; it was a religion of slaves to a large extent. 
 Just as the irruption of slaves into social life was accom- 
 panied by one form of nauseous emotionalism, so the 
 feminism of to-day appears along with all the re-emergence 
 of superstition and Orientalism which is going on now. 
 The sight of women in these Catholic churches before 
 hideous images of virgins simply makes me feel sick. 
 To explain the phenomenon is not to excuse it. 
 
 I had a splendid bathe on the Lido. I shall get to Zara 
 this evening and should be in Cattaro by Friday. I am
 
 158 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 glad to be getting amongst young peoples who have an 
 important history, but not one that absorbs their present. 
 I have read several books on the Balkans in the last few 
 weeks and am very keen to see what a lot of things are like. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 CATTARO. 31 August, 1913. 
 
 I arrived here an hour ago by boat from Ragusa. The 
 place is right at the end of a deep bay surrounded by high 
 mountains, the Montenegrin frontier being only a mile 
 or so away. It is really about the best situated place I 
 have struck. Am probably going on to Cettinje to-morrow 
 and shall spend about a week visiting various parts of 
 Montenegro. I have given up the idea of going to Sarajevo 
 and Bosnia, as it means rather long and expensive railway 
 journeys. I have seen something of Herzegovina at 
 Mostar and the surrounding country, and shall probably 
 just get a glimpse of Albania by going to Scutari via the 
 lake, which is said to be as fine as the best Swiss lakes. I 
 shall come back direct from here to Trieste by boat, as it 
 is by far the most pleasant way of travelling. I shall then 
 probably spend two or three days in some cool place in the 
 Tirol or Bavarian highlands before coming home via Munich. 
 
 The heat was bad at Mostar and up in the hills above 
 Spalato, where I did a short walk, but it is not at all bad 
 here. 
 
 These Italian-Slav cities along the coast are wonderful 
 places. I am much interested in the Southern Slav question, 
 and continue to devour pamphlets and books about it which 
 I get at the bookshops, and I am trying to learn a little 
 Serbian. 
 
 The road from here to Cettinje is one of the finest in 
 Europe ; it goes over an enormous mountain. There is an 
 automobile service, but I expect I shall walk the thirty miles. 
 There will be magnificent views of the Bocche di Cattaro, 
 the system of bays and inlets which I have come up. 
 
 I don't wonder that the Austrians cling fast to this spot 
 and have surrounded it with forts, though of course it is 
 very bad luck on the Montenegrins that they should be 
 cut off from what is their natural outlet to the sea.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 159 
 
 Ragusa was immensely interesting. It was an inde- 
 pendent republic till Napoleon took it about 1808 and 
 announced that it had " ceased to exist." It always kept 
 itself free from Venice (unlike all the other cities) by siding 
 with and paying a tribute to the Turks, who were quite 
 satisfied to leave it alone. Its culture was a mixture of 
 Slav and Italian ; both languages were and are used and 
 one of the most famous poets wrote in both. The different 
 writers give different accounts as to the predominance of 
 one or the other, according to their bias. For instance, 
 Jackson, the Oxford architect, who is an anti-Slav, says 
 that everything important was Italian, but Arthur Evans 
 gives a much more favourable account of the Slav element. 
 The Slavs are mostly Catholics down to about Ragusa, 
 but the Orthodox Church begins to be more important here. 
 
 Mostar is more than half Mohammedan, and the bazaar 
 is as Oriental as anything you could see in Asia. The 
 people are of almost pure Slav blood, but you see an 
 obviously Turkish nose pretty often. 
 
 SCUTARI UNDER THE INTERNATIONAL 
 COMMISSION * 
 
 BY F. H. K. 
 
 The most prominent feature of Scutari is the grey 
 ruined wall of the citadel on an isolated hill above the 
 quay. From here a view can be obtained across the lake 
 and over the whole plain which surrounds the town. 
 
 North-west, beyond the lake, lies the line of Montenegrin 
 mountains. The nearest hill in this direction is Tarabosch, 
 just across the river, the strategical key to Scutari, and 
 the scene of the greatest of the battles between the Mon- 
 tenegrins and Turks. South-west is the course of the 
 wide Boyana, connecting the lake with the sea. It is 
 even now in the dry season navigable for small flat- 
 bottomed steamers. At its mouth a stretch of the sea is 
 visible with the naked eye, some twelve miles away. The 
 1 From the New Statesman, 27 September, I9 I 3-
 
 160 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 international fleet is lying here, and messages are flashed 
 by day and night between the British cruiser Gloucester 
 and the detachments of the West Yorkshire Regiment 
 from Malta and of Austrian troops, which share the 
 citadel between them. To the south lies a fertile district, 
 watered by tributaries of the Boyana, and bounded by 
 distant hills. Immediately at the foot of the citadel to 
 the north-east is the bazaar, where a considerable number 
 of burnt houses testify to the recent siege and Montene- 
 grin occupation. A mile of very bad road separates the 
 bazaar from the main portion of the town. Three or four 
 miles beyond this rise the north Albanian mountains. 
 
 About a third of the population of Scutari is Catholic. 
 There is a large cathedral, which was very badly damaged 
 by shells during the late siege, and also an Orthodox church. 
 But the whole aspect of the town is Oriental and Moham- 
 medan. The costumes which may be seen in the streets 
 are of many distinct types. The Albanian kilt is not very 
 much in evidence. More common are the close-fitting 
 white trousers streaked with one or two black stripes and 
 reminiscent of the Venetian costumes of the fifteenth 
 century, as represented in Carpaccio's pictures. The chief 
 feature of the festival on the days following the close of 
 the fast of Ramazan was the beautiful costumes of the 
 children. All the cafes in the town, which probably do 
 not exceed a dozen, were filled with crowds of excited boys 
 and girls, clothed in bright, baggy breeches of every hue, 
 who were celebrating the event by being driven up and 
 down the main streets. The scene suggested a sort of 
 Mohammedan Sunday-school treat. The architecture of 
 the town is as Oriental as the costumes. Few of the shops 
 even aim at presenting a European appearance. Jewellers, 
 tinsmiths, coppersmiths, tailors, bootmakers, bakers, and 
 even a printer, all ply their crafts in workshops wholly open 
 to the street. Taking one craft with another, there must 
 be a not inconsiderable amount of productive as well as 
 of distributive industry in the town. 
 
 The authority of the International Commission is indi- 
 cated by the flags of the five nations (Russia being only 
 indirectly represented by France), which float side by side
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 161 
 
 over the citadel. The force at the disposal of the Com- 
 mission now consists mainly of soldiers, who have replaced 
 the naval detachments. England is represented by some 
 four hundred officers and men of the West Yorkshire 
 Regiment, who were sent from Malta. The town is divided 
 into sections, which are assigned to the different nations 
 for patrol work. All the streets have been given Western 
 European names, being in most cases called after the war- 
 ships of the fleet of the five nations Rue Gazelle, Rue 
 Antelope, Rue Weymouth, Rue Warrior, Rue Breslau, 
 Rue Dante. The principal sphere of activity of the English 
 soldier is in the streets of the bazaar, which is gradually 
 recovering from the alleged depredations and arson of the 
 Montenegrins. Here the Leeds " Tommy " may be seen 
 mildly ordering small Albanian children to move on, after 
 he has been enduring a game of hide and seek round his 
 legs for some considerable time. But the serious business 
 of the soldier-policeman is more exacting. No one is 
 allowed to carry arms within the town, except by special 
 permit. But Albanians and Montenegrins are in the habit 
 of carrying pistols and rifles everywhere. The disarming 
 of persons entering the town, or illegally keeping pistols, 
 is accordingly the most conspicuous feature of the police 
 work of the force of the Commission. In one case this 
 has led to a raid being made upon a house where it was 
 believed that a number of pistols were kept. The Albanian 
 occupants fired upon the raiders, and two English soldiers 
 replied. Two of the Albanians were wounded, one of 
 whom subsequently died. The others received severe 
 sentences of imprisonment. The rank and file of the English 
 soldiers are inclined to regard it as a considerable grievance 
 that the somewhat tiresome and dangerous police work on 
 which they are engaged is not regarded as active service, 
 and as entitling them to pay at active service rates. Most 
 of them seem to be anxious to be back at Malta, although 
 they do not expect to return for some months. 
 
 The authority of the International Commission only 
 extends within a radius of ten kilometres around Scutari. 
 Thus a fugitive from justice has not far to go to escape from 
 the control of the authorities. In the Albanian mountains 
 
 12
 
 162 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 government has always been a somewhat shadowy institu- 
 tion, and at the present moment in the north it is certainly 
 altogether non-existent. I have visited a few of the villages 
 east of Scutari. The first feature which forces itself on one's 
 attention is the extraordinary completeness of the devasta- 
 tion wrought by the Montenegrin and Serbian troops. 
 Scarcely a single house in the villages which I saw was 
 undamaged, and in most of them the roofs were completely 
 destroyed. The mosque of the collection of hamlets known 
 as DriSt, some five miles east of Scutari, was in ruins, and on 
 the walls were scrawled a number of words which I took 
 to be the insults of Montenegrin invaders. I confess that I 
 did not stop to endeavour to decipher these with the aid 
 of my scanty knowledge of Serb, because I found the cease- 
 less fusillade which was taking place from several quarters 
 in the surrounding mountains somewhat nerve-racking. 
 I was assured by an Albanian villager that it was nothing 
 but rifle practice, and no doubt this was the case. But when 
 the sharp whistle of the bullets, as well as the crack of the 
 rifles, became audible, it seemed time for a solitary stranger 
 to retire. One could not help speculating as to the source 
 of supply of ammunition to which the Albanians have 
 access. There is undoubtedly terrible suffering and desti- 
 tution in the district around Scutari as the result of the war. 
 But the consumption of cartridges which I heard dis- 
 charged in the course of a single day must have represented 
 the value of not a little bread or seed-corn. 
 
 One is glad to see that during the international occupation 
 of Scutari government is not confined to purely police 
 activities, necessary and valuable as these are in the present 
 unsettled condition of affairs. Attention is being paid to 
 public health and sanitary matters. The position of 
 Scutari near the lake is none too healthy, and the siege 
 naturally made matters a good deal worse. A section of 
 the British troops suffered considerably from malaria while 
 it was encamped on the meadows between the town and 
 the lake. The authorities are now providing hospital 
 treatment for natives as well as for their own troops. A 
 new road is being made to replace the existing abominable 
 track which connects the town with the bazaar and harbour.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 163 
 
 The daily performances of the military bands are a great 
 source of delight to the inhabitants, and to hear the Italian 
 band is certainly a musical education. The British band is 
 British. I last heard it strenuously engaged in drowning 
 the beautiful sound of the Muezzin calling to prayer from 
 a neighbouring minaret. 
 
 The fact is not lost sight of that the Albanians are supposed 
 to be about to govern themselves hi the near future, and 
 therefore require some training in the art of civilized adminis- 
 tration. An Albanian gendarmerie has already been formed, 
 and is working in co-operation with the European troops ; 
 while an Albanian officer deals with the examination of 
 luggage at the Customs House. How soon an Albanian 
 government will really be in working order it is difficult to 
 guess. Every one seems to expect serious trouble in connec- 
 tion with the delimitation of the Montenegrin frontier, and 
 such has indeed already commenced in the districts to the 
 east of the lake, which the Montenegrins expect to acquire. 
 It should not be forgotten that, some thirty years ago, an 
 " Albanian League " successfully resisted the attempt to 
 transfer the districts of Plava and Gusinje to Montenegro 
 in accordance with the Treaty of Berlin, and the memory of 
 that incident is still fresh. But, even apart from the frontier 
 question, the difficulties of the future government of Albania 
 are great enough. There are not a few Albanians perhaps 
 more than English observers are willing to admit who are 
 inclined to lean upon Austria and look to an extension of 
 her influence to help them through their difficulties. It 
 may be that Austria has used questionable means, ecclesi- 
 astical and otherwise, to extend her influence. But even 
 Serbian pamphleteers such as the vehement patriot who 
 uses the pseudonym " Balkanicus " recognize that the 
 influence is there. It is certain that both Austrians and 
 Germans have fully made up their minds that the Albanians 
 are to be regarded as a counterpoise against the nine million 
 Southern Slavs, who are regarded as threatening Dcutsch- 
 tum, both from within and from without the Austrian 
 Empire. The future of Albania is, indeed, difficult to fore- 
 see. I discussed the question with a number of Albanian 
 workmen who were returning to Scutari after a day's work.
 
 164 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Some of them had learnt Italian in the school which the 
 Italians have maintained for some twelve years in Scutari. 
 In reply to the question from which country they would 
 like to have a prince, they said that they did not mind 
 whence the prince came so long as he had una bella patienza 
 for Albania. What an exemplary motto for princes in 
 Albania and elsewhere ! 
 
 A MONTENEGRIN.- JOURNEY ' 
 
 There are two ways of embarking from Scutari on the 
 steamer which monopolizes the navigation of the lake. 
 You may hire a flat-bottomed boat and two Albanians to 
 propel it, in order to traverse the two or three miles of 
 shallows which separate the steamer from the quay. But 
 if you are weary of the detestable process of bargaining, 
 and are in a democratic mood, you can be carried free with 
 the common herd in a boat of more than ordinary size and 
 clumsiness. I chose the latter course, though it was a 
 Sunday morning, and the boat was packed as tight as could 
 be with Albanian and Montenegrin peasants and women. 
 The males and bolder females sat balanced on the edge 
 of the boat, while a promiscuous collection of women 
 and luggage covered the bottom. Tobacco was a welcome 
 necessary, as a means of modifying a profound sense of the 
 proximity of one's fellow-men. The heat became more 
 and more intolerable. The aristocrats, with privately 
 hired boats, all passed us before we had gone far, and their 
 boatmen made sarcastic comments on the methods of pro- 
 pulsion inefficient punting alternating with even less 
 effective paddling employed by our crew. But at last 
 we reached the steamer. There was just room enough 
 for most of us to lie down on the third-class deck, and I 
 soon fell asleep cheek by jowl with an old Turk, or Albanian 
 maybe. I only awoke when we reached Plavnitza, which 
 is the nearest port to Podgoritza, the commercial capital 
 of Montenegro. They have dredged out a channel here 
 to enable the steamer to reach a quay which is in course 
 of construction. But something seems to have gone wrong 
 1 From the New Statesman, 6 December, 1913.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 165 
 
 with the foundations, since gaping cracks have appeared 
 in the cement, which is held together by a temporary 
 woodwork structure ; and the whole quay looks as if it 
 were likely to disappear before it is completed. How- 
 ever, after considerable manoeuvring on the part of the 
 steamer, a large crowd of Montenegrins embarked here 
 in order to be taken across the lake to Virpasar. 
 
 This is the terminus of the Montenegrin railway system, 
 and most of the rolling stock was waiting to start for 
 Antivari when we arrived. I deposited my belongings 
 in a third-class compartment, but changed my mind when 
 every inch of space became occupied with my fellow- 
 passengers, while numbers of them prepared to sit on the 
 platforms at each end of the wagons. I thereupon moved 
 into the only first-class compartment in Montenegro, 
 which was already occupied by two Austrian officers. 
 No sooner had we settled down than a pompous gentleman 
 in Western European dress entered, and informed us in 
 French that we must leave all the first-class accommodation 
 for the Prince and his entourage. It was intimated, however, 
 that as a special privilege we might travel in the neighbouring 
 third-class compartment if we paid the first-class fare. 
 The peasants were unceremoniously cleared out of this, 
 but I entered into a private conspiracy with an Italian 
 and a Polish commercial traveller that we would not pay 
 first-class fare, even if we had to set the whole Montenegrin 
 Government at defiance. Before long the arrival of the 
 Prince (the King's second son) was heralded by the entry 
 into our compartment of an escort of fifteen typical Mon- 
 tenegrins. They were armed to the teeth with rifles, 
 revolvers, and enough cartridges to fight a battle with, 
 and were clad in striking red uniforms, designed more or 
 less on the lines of the peasant costume. One felt that 
 poverty-stricken Montenegro could ill-afford to turn fifteen 
 honest peasants into swaggering bravoes, dancing atten- 
 dance on a younger member of the royal house. How- 
 ever, one accepts without demur the equivalent follies in 
 the government of a Great Power. Social waste is always 
 less obvious when it is conducted on a gigantic scale. 
 
 The train slowly climbed past a rich valley across the
 
 166 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 mountains which separate Lake Scutari from the sea. 
 Near the summit is a long tunnel, which must be without 
 exception the most suffocating in Europe. Even the 
 City and South London Railway in its earliest days could 
 hardly have provided an atmosphere to rival that of the 
 Montenegrin tunnel. The experience of passing through 
 it is trying to the temper, and it was not strange that it 
 precipitated a quarrel between some Montenegrins and 
 Albanians in the last carriage. When the train was taking 
 a rest at the western end of the tunnel, and we had all 
 alighted in order to breathe, the first signs of the trouble 
 appeared in a gesticulating and shouting crowd. However, 
 we started again without much ado, and it was not till 
 the train had rattled some little way down towards the sea 
 that I suddenly heard a shot fired. I looked out just in 
 time to see the smoke of a second shot floating out of a 
 window in the rear of the train. The escort, smelling powder, 
 were like hounds on the leash. The Italian commercial 
 was terrified, until the only woman in the compartment 
 assured him that there was no danger. The Prince called 
 from his window, the train was stopped by the guard, and 
 some of the escort ran to the scene of the disturbance. 
 Two men in succession were unceremoniously hurried up 
 for judgment before His Royal Highness. The first 
 apparently established his innocence. The second seemed 
 to be a little in liquor. He declared that his life was in 
 danger, as he was in a carriage full of Albanians. Since 
 every one carries arms in these parts, no doubt he thought 
 that he could not assert himself sufficiently without letting 
 his revolver off. However, no one was hurt, and the 
 Prince contented himself with confiscating the weapon. 
 Its owner seized the opportunity to rush to the Prince's 
 window and make a speech whenever the train stopped. 
 But the escort dealt with him firmly, and I last saw him 
 ventilating his wrongs to his female relations in Antivari. 
 I hope they comforted him tactfully. Meanwhile the 
 Prince was taking his beer in front of the hotel, while I 
 swam far into the sea, through limpid water reddened 
 with the setting sun. The Italian company which has 
 leased the port are trying hard to make an eyesore of
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 167 
 
 the southern cliffs of the bay. But they cannot spoil 
 the magnificent line of mountains which rises behind the 
 northern shore. The harbour has not the fiord-like magni- 
 ficence of the Bocche de Cattaro, on the northern frontier 
 of Montenegro, which Austria holds in so firm a grip. But 
 there is no single bay along the Dalmatian coast more 
 beautiful than that of Antivari. It is at least a single 
 jewel, adorning the narrow stretch of coast where alone 
 the Serbian race has free access to the sea. 
 
 To Mrs. Towns/tend. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. Sunday, 21 September, 1913. 
 I had a good time with the children yesterday evening. 
 When I arrived I found R - in the middle of four little 
 children, two of which belonged over the road. It was 
 really very delightful. It was a great joy to hug Bernard 
 again, and the four children together made a very cheerful 
 noise. R really is angelic with them. I cannot 
 imagine any one putting their whole energy and intelligence 
 into motherhood more than she does. I never felt more 
 proud of having her as the mother of my children. She 
 is determined to get the substratum of life right for them, 
 whatever may happen to the superstructure. 
 
 You live in your children just as I do in mine, though 
 countless ancestors live in them too. It conjures up a 
 curious sort of vision of human unity. One almost gets a 
 glimpse round the other side of selfhood. 
 
 The edges of my personality are not so sharp to-night 
 either. I feel as if I were ceasing to resist the pressure 
 from outside and were throwing out myself too. I generally 
 hold up the walls stiffly. It is a strange sense of relaxation, 
 and a flowing of a wide sheet of water over a boundary. 
 
 Good God ! how can people live without having children ? 
 Still, if you were always cooped up with them in a wretched 
 working-class tenement, it would be impossible to get the 
 best out of them, just as much for mother as for father. 
 
 R - ought to have some more children to look after. 
 I shall never forget her with those four kids in her back 
 room. It was a great sight.
 
 168 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, W.C. 
 13 March, 1914. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter, which moved me 
 very much. I never looked scornfully on your general 
 view of life. I only found it hard to see you giving your 
 enthusiasm to the support of a political creed which I 
 feel more and more to be now actually opposed to the forces 
 that make for some measure of improvement in the lot of 
 the twenty or thirty million poor among my fellow-country- 
 men. I have been compelled again and again to reflect 
 on the fact that I can look forward to taking a part in the 
 causes that I care for just four times as long as I have 
 taken part in them already, and that I can hope to see 
 social changes not immeasurably greater or less than four 
 times those which I have watched already. I have cast the 
 illusion of remote future generations out of my scheme of 
 things. We cannot form ideals even for our own children. 
 Future generation may be as much of a pernicious myth as 
 a theological God. 
 
 Well, I am compelled by my nature and by the work I 
 am fitted for to be a political realist. But I really hate 
 myself for quarrelling with you over this. I have valued 
 your love for what it has taught me of life and I insist 
 on separating the individual from the political life; it is 
 the only livable theory. I am a different being when I 
 am on a committee or pushing a plan of action to what I 
 am in relation to my friends. I find more and more that 
 I don't get real intimacy from the people I work with 
 best. I am inclined to think that this is not altogether an 
 accident. I have observed not a few men who lived 
 almost entirely in their work and seemed really to have 
 lost the faculty of intimacy altogether. It is not of value 
 to man as a political animal. 
 
 I have seen you pass through enthusiasms for Women 
 Suffrage, the Labour Party, extreme political Socialism 
 and Syndicalism, while my peculiar compound of Whig 
 Socialism has become more definitely Whiggish (but not 
 in reality less Socialistic), and I have grown more and more
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 169 
 
 suspicious of any political enthusiasm based on a fixed idea. 
 I have come back to about where I was in 1906 a Liberal- 
 Labour man after a good many spasms of revolutionary 
 ardour which I now regard as being as far behind me as 
 my religious enthusiasms in fact, as being the same stuff 
 at the bottom. I want that steam for less exciting and more 
 useful purposes, like any pld Whig. When I find the political 
 extremists not merely telling me that what I am trying 
 to help in doing is not good but actively opposing it, I 
 feel it is humbug for me to pretend that I am out for the 
 same thing as they are. 
 
 I tell you all this because it is in my mind, or has been, 
 but I really do want to get back to you. I love your 
 sympathy with my work and I don't really care now about 
 its being logically inconsistent ; for it seems to me, with 
 extremist politics, life is too short to sort these things out. 
 
 Do come and see me next week. I am going to Bradford 
 to-morrow, but shall return, I think, on Sunday night. I 
 am staying with G. and am looking forward to seeing his 
 children. 
 
 W. came to see me this morning. We had some interesting 
 talk. We agreed to divide men into the " Chivalrous," 
 " Feminists/' and " Genuine Males " priding ourselves 
 much, of course, on belonging to the last. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 IN THE TRAIN TO BRADFORD. 
 
 14 March, 1914. 
 
 Thank you for your letter. I am enjoying my visit to 
 the North tremendously. By God ! I do love England. 
 I find myself more and more substituting a definite love of 
 my country for vague Socialist emotion. England is such 
 a glorious place, and the home of such a splendid people. 
 Now I have lived a somewhat detached and artificial life 
 for a year, I find that the impressions gathered in the 
 various places where I lived and mixed closely with people 
 in their everyday life have been transfused into a more 
 or less unified vision Colchester, Walworth, and Yorkshire. 
 I think of the millions of ordinary English homes in the 
 neighbourhoods that I know and the millions of men,
 
 170 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 women, and children as they are, I feel that it is childish 
 to think of them as degraded and mean, only to be redeemed 
 by some thaumaturgic social process. There is no thauma- 
 turgy in social changes, the Lord be praised ! It is because 
 of the stuff that is in the people of England that they are 
 worth living with and fighting with. If you can't see and 
 be moved by the stuff that is there, you are bound to be 
 to some extent on the wrong tack about the next move. 
 I belong to England and next to the whole English-speaking 
 world and after that to all the Teutonic races of the North. 
 We are the right arm of the world and Earth's fighting 
 men the right sort for Augean jobs. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 IN TRAIN FROM COLCHESTER. 
 19 March, 1914. 
 
 I have just been to Colchester to see Mrs. Green, whose 
 husband has just died, and also to inspect my property 
 and see my tenants. I seem to feel the ghosts of my 
 ancestors and of my old childhood stirring in my bones. 
 There are two kinds of people in the world the localized 
 and the de-localized. The former are the great majority 
 even in modern England, though intellectuals are apt to 
 forget it. I have been de-localized for ten years, in most 
 respects, though Walworth and Yorkshire got some ten- 
 tacles round me. But as I gradually cast off the tyranny 
 of youthful abstractions, I, at any rate, leave the ground 
 free for the old influences which found me as a child and 
 as a boy to grow up again. I don't suppose they really 
 will. I have burned too many of the boats, though some 
 leaky old tubs still remain. But I belong there in Col- 
 chester as much as anywhere and I am as much at 
 home there as anywhere. 
 
 I shall always remember Shaw telling me once how a young 
 man begins by rebelling against his whole environment, 
 and how he goes out and rages and smashes things up, but 
 how at length there comes a time when (without throwing 
 over his acquired convictions and knowledge) he feels 
 he must or at least can go back to his kindred and home 
 thinking, after all, we are men living life together. It is
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 171 
 
 very true, of me, anyhow, though I suppose there is the 
 kind which remains rebel and " advanced " all its life. 
 
 I had a long friendly talk with Guy the other day, recall- 
 ing many things and people in childhood and boyhood we had 
 never spoken of to each other before. In a way he is more 
 of a Radical a rooter up than I am now, curiously enough. 
 
 God ! it is queer in Colchester to talk to simple folk my 
 small-holder tenant, a railway porter, whom I have known 
 for twenty years. The old things grip. 
 
 I tried to get to Mr. Green's funeral started work at 
 seven o'clock but I had a tough job getting to the bottom 
 of this coal-mining dispute, which I was determined to make 
 clear in the Statesman because no other paper has done so, 
 and worked till two o'clock without lunch. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, LINCOLN'S INN. 
 2 May, 1914. 
 
 I think my sort of human animal gets into an unhealthy 
 state of mind if it doesn't work fourteen hours a day and 
 run two miles. At any rate, it is really healthier when it 
 does. So I have done so for three days on end, and 
 feel better. It is a great sensation to feel the stream of 
 British Blue-books flowing through one's brain. I sat down 
 with a great pile to digest for the list, on my right, last 
 night, and in four hours worked through it, heaving each 
 one to the floor on my left with a great crash as I finished 
 it. It would make a good Wagner motif. The Local 
 Taxation Report, just out, is a magnificent document, 
 the sort of thing that really makes one's brain work, a 
 first-class piece of British political meditation. I feel as 
 if my soul reached out to the uttermost parts of England 
 through these Blue-books a truly Icbcndigcs klcid for 
 the political soul of the English people. Jack Squire's 
 poem on the Holborn Restaurant is very good. I feel 
 like that when I read Blue-books about millions of people. 
 I stop and think of them all for a moment and see them in 
 streets and factories and workmen's houses and Govern- 
 ment offices all there with their bodies moving for some 
 bloody mysterious reason.
 
 172 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 I went to the cinema for half an hour on Sunday night, 
 but the long yarn was about a female detective, and not 
 nearly as good as male criminals and love affairs generally 
 are. The Boat Race was good though. 
 
 By the way, Mrs. Bianchi l has fallen ill. If she isn't 
 better, I hope to go and see her on Thursday can't get 
 before. I am rather anxious about the children. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, W.C. 
 3 June, 1914. 
 
 I really appreciated your letter very much. You know 
 my feeling for you can never die. It is in my bones so to 
 speak as much of me as anything. But I cannot express 
 the whole of myself at once and parts of me get submerged 
 at intervals. Some personal ties get practically submerged 
 beyond recovery. But I shall carry my love for you to my 
 grave I have a sense of fate about it. 
 
 I find many things trying now. It is hard to have lost 
 one's faith in Socialism as a sort of religion, and the more 
 ironical in that I believe more and more clearly in it as an 
 actual as the only conceivable way of making the basic 
 material organization of life tolerable for the mass of my 
 countrymen and of Western Europeans. The millions 
 of Hindus and Chinese are beyond my ken. Only what 
 the devil is one to live and work for ? I know about how 
 much change I shall see in my lifetime more or less. I 
 am prepared to do my humble share in that job but not 
 in a spirit of early-morning enthusiasm, only as a willing, 
 passive vehicle of the will of my country, and an infinitesi- 
 mally small active participator in the making of that will. 
 I can find plenty of satisfaction in that work. I don't 
 want the hope of place or power to goad me on ; but there 
 must be some background to it all. Nothing supernatural 
 or ecclesiastical I loathe the degradation of the human 
 spirit by priest as much as ever I did. I only want some- 
 thing to take the place of what I had as a youth in my 
 
 1 The mother of a little Italian boy he had made friends with 
 in the street.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 178 
 
 dream of a glorious marching Socialist democracy which 
 is an illusion. I seem to find shimmerings of a substitute 
 in a kind of almost Quaker-like belief in brotherly love 
 apart from any theistic sanction. That must sound queer 
 from me ! Yet it is so. I see as clearly as anything that 
 aggressiveness and quarrelsomeness is no earthly good it 
 has done me no good and it won't do any one else any good. 
 Tolstoy taken literally is absurd. I am a Big Navy man. 
 But the spirit of Tolstoy or Shaw or Voltaire (each at his 
 best) is the only tolerable outlook on life if one sees and 
 feels. And if one were strong enough to live it out in life 
 one could do without supernatural sanctions, and do without 
 pretending to know what one can't know or swaddling 
 oneself in mystical phrases. We have got to make a philo- 
 sophy out of what we can touch and feel during this twenty- 
 four hours' adventure on the merry-go-round of earth 
 not out of the guesses of truth as to the beyond, though 
 every man must have his guess or at least his wonder now 
 and again, so long as he doesn't let himself be humbugged 
 about it. 
 
 This is my inner self. Alas ! I cannot keep this mood. 
 I see and feel clearly about life at this moment. But this 
 afternoon I was another man or rather animal and 
 when you came to see me, yet another. Changes of mood 
 are almost as mysterious as life and death itself when you 
 really reflect on them. The life and death of a mood are 
 as strange as the life and death of an individual. At least, 
 it is to me in myself. 
 
 That is all now. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshcnd. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 S June, 1914. 
 
 I had a very enjoyable day yesterday, inspecting that 
 land and walking round the neighbourhood. 1 I like the 
 corner very much and have written asking the College what 
 
 1 He was thinking of building a cottage for himself at this time, 
 partly with a view to making a home for his old Cambridge " bed- 
 maker," who was to keep house for him there. The site he went 
 to inspect was seven or eight miles from Missenden, on some 
 property belonging to Magdalene College. E. T.
 
 174 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 they would want for an acre. I just didn't think yesterday 
 but gulped in life from the country. I think I must feel 
 the effects of London particularly, or at least more than 
 most people. I really haven't got through much work 
 lately. . . . 
 
 The fact is I don't really believe anything nowadays, 
 except that general kindliness would help human life on 
 a bit more and that collectivism is the only common-sense 
 way of running society, if mankind had a bit more intelli- 
 gence than it in point of fact has. 
 
 I met a wonderful old man of eighty-six on Cop Hill 
 and had a long talk with him. He had a blacksmith's 
 shop in Risboro' but is now nearly blind, though he says 
 he often walks ten miles. His mind was as clear as anything. 
 His chief passion was against war, and he talked a lot about 
 the fact that poverty, though it is bad now, is nothing 
 to what it was in the days of his youth. He described 
 once buying a penn'orth of suet for a family who had nothing 
 but a swede to eat. He also approved strongly of Old Age 
 Pensions (I don't know if he had one), and thought we had 
 a very good King, didn't like to hear him spoken ill of, 
 didn't believe in speaking ill of any one. . . . 
 
 I have a vague hope that gardening would supply a need 
 in my life. I should like to make a "lot of ten acres " and 
 grow fruit on the slopes of Cop Hill, produce something 
 solid out of the earth instead of endless talk, talk, talk. 
 Man must have either an illusion or a plaything to 
 counteract his intelligence. The day of illusions is gone 
 for me, therefore il faut cultiver noire jardin. Candide 
 is extraordinarily true. 
 
 When I say I don't believe anything, I do in a way, 
 politically. I honestly believe more and more in the 
 Liberal Party, not for doing anything wonderful, but for 
 helping the country as fast as it will go. I don't think 
 it is my part to play the Socialist game of trying to find 
 as many reasons as possible for differing from the powers 
 that be, when they take a move in the right direction. But 
 it is a belief of intellectual conviction, not of enthusiasm. 
 I feel as if I never should have an enthusiasm again for the 
 rest of my life.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 175 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, W.C. 
 14 June, 1914. 
 
 I had rather a hard week this last week, or I should have 
 replied to your letter before. It moved me very much ; 
 you know more about me than any one else ever will and 
 are quite right about my moods. 
 
 I have spent to-day with the " Sunday Tramps." Old 
 Haldane, who was one of the original Tramps along with 
 Pollock and Maitland and Leslie Stephen, came out with us. 
 He is a fine old fellow. A constitutional system which brings 
 men like him and Grey and Lloyd George and Simon and 
 Chiozza Money to the front rank of political leadership 
 has got a good deal of life in it yet. You were quite light 
 when you said I ought to mix more with people of various 
 types. I used to get a fair variety in Leeds in one way 
 or another. But, although I learn a lot from M. and N., 
 I get a bit tired of their standpoint, which is pretty well 
 my own, in theory anyhow. Perhaps I get tired of it for 
 that reason. . . . 
 
 I am hesitating on the brink of taking part in Liberal 
 politics. I think I shall. I don't see what else I can do 
 usefully in politics. I am decidedly anti-revolutionist, 
 and I don't believe in most of the doctrines which distinguish 
 the I.L.P. from the Liberals the right to work, extreme 
 anti-militarism, Little Navy and Little Englandism. The 
 Fabian or Statesman point of view does not stand for any 
 large movement of or section in English society as it is. 
 It represents very able criticism and a constructive policy 
 which is too logical for English politics. Now, I do care 
 about seeing the concrete circumstances of the life of the 
 English people appreciably ameliorated as Liberal legis- 
 lation has in fact appreciably ameliorated them. I have not 
 a very incisive critical mind. It is not my job in life to 
 cut other people's plans up. Therefore why should I 
 stultify myself by cutting myself off from the only line of 
 practical political activity open to me ? I am perhaps 
 a keener suffragist than you give me credit for, but I can't
 
 176 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 honestly say I think that that is a sufficient reason for 
 keeping out of Liberal politics. 
 
 Yet I don't like the Liberal machine the money, the 
 social snobbery and undemocratic spirit among many of 
 the leading people, and so on. The only thing is, one has 
 to put up with something and simply hope to better it. 
 I don't see that the Labour Caucus is much better than the 
 Liberal while I simply can't swallow the doctrinaire 
 generalizations of the Socialists. I feel there is in some 
 ways more room for idealism with the Liberals. 
 
 S., whom I met to-day, was a Fabian at Oxford and 
 joined the London Fabians and saw a lot of the Webbs. 
 There must be a lot of people who have passed through that 
 phase and left it. It has been a queer phenomenon in 
 English political life. I can't help thinking it would have 
 been better if Webb had taken Potter's seat at Rochdale 
 in the nineties and been a Cabinet Minister in the Liberal 
 Government when it came in in 1906. 
 
 I feel I have done things in my life in a different order 
 from the great majority of men. My virtues and vices 
 are, as you pointed out, inverted as compared with those 
 of the common run of humanity, and I suppose it is only 
 natural that the order of events in my life should be too in 
 some ways. 
 
 I should like to see you this week if you can come. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 KELBERG. 1 
 
 Monday night, 29 June, 1914. 
 
 Dudley and I started walking yesterday from the Rhine ; 
 but we happened to see about the shooting of the Erzherzog 
 at mid-day to-day in the last village reached by the railway 
 up the valley along which we were going. So he has had 
 to hurry back to Cologne and Berlin in order to write up 
 stuff, while I have come on alone. 
 
 I am vaguely intending to walk to Treves and possibly 
 just go to Luxemburg. I shall go down the Moselle by 
 boat, I think, on Sunday, and down the Rhine to Cologne on 
 
 1 A village somewhere between the Rhine and Luxemburg.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 177 
 
 Monday morning, returning to London on Tuesday morning. 
 This is quite good walking country, and is of course only 
 about sixteen hours away from London. . . . 
 
 This evening I was sitting on a grass bank by the roadside 
 watching the sunset. : There was one of these Catholic 
 image things just behind me. A peasant woman came across 
 the fields with a dog which ran round me excitedly. She 
 went past me down the road. A quarter of an hour later 
 the dog reappeared, and I heard some one tread on a board 
 which I had noticed in front of the shrine. When I looked 
 round I saw the woman going back across the field ; and 
 as I got up to return to the hotel I saw two freshly lit 
 candles in front of the image. Hardened realist as I am, 
 I could not help feeling the beauty of the act. It somehow 
 fitted with the place and time. And yet I wonder if that 
 woman's character is of a piece with the act, as it appeared. 
 My intelligence tells me that as likely as not it was a mean 
 external act of penance. Is it good to have the external 
 beauty and take your chance that it perhaps on the whole 
 means something internal, just because human beings 
 are in the main kindly and decent people ? I'm sure I 
 don't know. Anyhow the act was good for me. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshcnd. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 
 
 30 July, 1914. 
 
 . . . How horrible this threatened war is ! Where is the 
 sense of the human race ? The only thing is, that I don't 
 think it can be argued that capitalism, even the armament 
 firms, are the main force behind it. The big national 
 and racial feelings are there. One may not share them : 
 my renewal of patriotism doesn't really involve any war 
 cult, but one has to recognize them. The Southern Slav 
 movement is the most important of all the national move- 
 ments in Europe now. I have thought for some time that 
 it would probably prove to be the storm-centre of Europe, 
 but I had no idea anything like this was coming so soon. 
 I can't help thinking we and Germany will settle it somehow. 
 I can't believe in the Russians and French politically or 
 strategically. I am sure the Teuton and Anglo-Saxon are 
 
 13
 
 178 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 going to dominate the world politically. Both from a 
 sentimental and from a logical point of view, I detest our 
 position on the Franco-Russian side. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshcnd. 
 
 BLACKGANG HOTEL, 
 
 CHALE, ISLE OF WIGHT.* 
 Sunday, 2 August, 1914. 
 
 I have come down here for a couple of nights to get a 
 little opportunity for peaceful reflections. War news has 
 been trickling through ever since I left London at five 
 o'clock yesterday morning. When I reached Basingstoke 
 they gave notice that Portsmouth harbour was being closed 
 up. I was going by Southampton in order to get the 
 pleasant trip down Southampton Water. To-day I met a 
 postman on special duty taking round mobilization notices 
 to Naval Reservists. This morning I heard that Germany 
 had given twenty-four hours' notice to Russia and France 
 to cease mobilizing, and to-night there is a rumour that she 
 refuses to recognize Belgian neutrality, and has already 
 entered Belgian territory. If so it is all up, I suppose. You 
 know my feelings my sympathies are all on the other side, 
 except so far as my own country is concerned. I have a 
 sort of secondary patriotism for Germany, and it seems to 
 me madness that we should be fighting on the side of the 
 Russian barbarians and the French, who have caused most 
 of the wars of the last three centuries. The best thing 
 that can happen now is for Germany to be victorious every- 
 where on land and for us to come out top everywhere on 
 sea. We have ourselves no quarrel with Germany now 
 every one admits that. And if things were to turn out in 
 that way I think Germany and ourselves would have enough 
 sense to settle the foundations of a lasting peace and keep 
 these quarrelsome, hypersensitive Slavs and Latins in their 
 places. 
 
 But the whole thing is too dreadful for words. All 
 that is what I feel as a political animal to be the best prac- 
 ticable thing for the world. As a man, I detest the con- 
 ception of one national culture regarding itself as essentially 
 1 Returning home to-morrow.
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 179 
 
 the enemy of another. Yet we Anglo-Saxons are the 
 only race who have in any sense really grasped the idea of 
 letting people select whatever culture they like for themselves 
 and even we have only grasped it pretty imperfectly. 
 But I am no Radical Cobdenite. When I see the sort of 
 people like the visitors at this hotel, I can't help feeling 
 that peace without ideals is worse than war. Have we yet 
 found a substitute for war ? The worst of it is these people 
 only get a miserable vicarious emotion out of war. They 
 may have sixpence put on their income tax but they 
 won't really come essentially nearer realities. Well, the 
 world may learn a big lesson out of this perhaps it will 
 knock a dose of brotherly love into them which they might 
 not have learned in a century of peace or ever. 
 
 Has ever a nation gone into war more cold-bloodedly 
 and reluctantly than we are going if to-night's rumour 
 is right ? There has been no emotion discernible in London. 
 Every trace of that anti-German feeling which put a few 
 score thousands into Northcliffe's pocket and thereby 
 served its primary purpose, I suppose has disappeared 
 completely. Men whom I knew as raving anti-Germans 
 five years ago have now lost every trace of such sentiments, 
 and even the Times can't pump much enthusiasm for 
 France. Well, perhaps there will be some mess to be cleared 
 up after it all where I shall be able to help. 
 
 Monday morning. 
 
 I feel that the main thing about me, what has been the 
 determining factor of my life so far, is an enormous capacity 
 for change and experiment. I can't help feeling that for 
 good and evil I have tested a wider range of experience in 
 the past ten years than the great majority of men. I 
 don't mean to say I have necessarily lived a broader life, 
 but I have experimented in the methods of life a good deal 
 more than most men, and used myself and other people 
 as a corpus vile almost remorselessly. Well, I can't say I 
 regret it. Character is destiny and both the folly and 
 the wisdom, both the cowardice and the courage of it 
 seem alike to have flowed from my own character in the 
 main, though external circumstances have determined the
 
 180 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 particular deviations of the course. There has been much 
 waste and there might have been a good deal more. But 
 a man cannot root up the tentacles of his nature as I have 
 done without suffering for it. Had I not some fixed point 
 I don't know what might have happened to me. I am 
 impetuous enough for anything any madness. And you 
 have been my real rallying-point all these years the one 
 fixed tie which has kept me in touch with the most 
 human side of life. There is a lot of the brute in me 
 but the strand of the human that there is, though it 
 runs thin pretty often, is more subtle and sensitive than 
 the thick rope of normal social sentiments which bind 
 most men willy-nilly to their kind and to the traditions of 
 civilization. 
 
 I am curiously enough back at where I was ten years 
 ago with a difference in this as in other things. I even 
 feel a recrudescence of old ascetic plain-living aspirations. 
 I have no illusions about their value for their own sake, 
 but there is conflict in me between mental and material, 
 between ways of life which I can only regard as better and 
 worse. I feel I should be a better man living life with a 
 minimum of physical pleasure or not a minimum but 
 rather . . . 
 
 NATIONAL LIBERAL CLUB. 
 Midnight. 
 
 There is no room for one's personal feelings now. I am 
 amazed at the lack of feeling and interest about the war 
 everywhere even now. I have just passed by a ring of 
 guffawing fools sitting over their whisky in the smoking- 
 room. The holiday people at Cowes and in the train simply 
 didn't seem to grasp the fact that we are on the edge of 
 the greatest abyss in history. 
 
 It is too awful for words. I am still hesitating, but I 
 frankly confess my first emotion at the Liberal peace speeches 
 in the Commons is one of disgust at smug insular pietism. 
 One may be a peace man or a war man, but not a peace man 
 on the basis of these old-womanish platitudes. I have 
 long looked forward to a predominantly Teutonic Central 
 European State stretching from Antwerp to Trieste. I
 
 LIFE IN LONDON 181 
 
 wrote a long letter to the Nation on the subject two or 
 three years ago, but I am enough of a Liberal and Con- 
 stitutionalist to object to the foundations of such a State 
 being laid upon a blood-and-iron policy. It is not good for 
 Europe or for the Germany which I feel to be my own 
 country after England. It means a ring of Alsace-Lorraines 
 all round the heart of the country and probably a war of 
 liberation in the end. I believe firmly that Russia has 
 provoked this war, and that without Russia's intrigues it 
 might never have taken place. Germany naturally deter- 
 mines to strike as hard as she can and as soon as she can 
 and that involves invading Belgium. But the practical 
 inevitability of this first step, given the Russian aggression, 
 doesn't make it any more acceptable. I can't see now how 
 we can help going in. It may be that if as may well be 
 a deadlock occurs, Germany and France and ourselves 
 will all want to stop and Russia alone will try to keep going. 
 That may hurry on by a decade the Western combination 
 against these accursed barbarians, Jew-baiters, and up- 
 holders of gross mediaeval Christianity. They may stand 
 for culture, but they are the enemies of civilization. Europe 
 outside Germany and England has yet to learn the difference 
 between these terms. 
 
 The English Socialist and Labour anti-patriotic Quaker- 
 isms are not much good after Herve's recantation. 
 
 I may be excited or conceited or prejudiced, but what I 
 have seen to-day has given me a painful impression of 
 English insularity. I spent a couple of hours in the crowds 
 at Cowes. I had not seen an English Bank Holiday scene 
 for many years and I was glad to be mixed up with it. 
 The patient, courageous, placid stolidity of the crowd was 
 amazing. But the insularity, the inability to get a glim- 
 mering of this appalling situation ! They had better have 
 been conscripts in some ways than like this. And these 
 smug Liberals ugh ! 
 
 I spent most of two days reading a fat book by Holland 
 Rose on the development of the European nations, 1870- 
 1900. It is really very good for refurbishing and expanding 
 one's History.
 
 182 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Yet though I feel decidedly Nationalist to-night, I can 
 respect the proletariat for refusing to be these South 
 Wales miners and the engineers who have refused to end 
 the strike unless they get their terms so long as it is a 
 matter of effective action, not mere smug Pacifism. 
 
 I must go to bed. I have work to-morrow. 
 
 21, OLD BUILDINGS, 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN, LONDON, W.C. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 
 I kept this back because I don't seem to have said what 
 I mean to say to you. But it is difficult to think and act 
 as one would like at a time like this. Thank Heaven there 
 is no Maficking, except a few crowds, largely composed of 
 boys. What we have got to do in the interest of Europe 
 is to fight Germany without passion, with respect and 
 with all our might, but without bitterness. I believe 
 we may do, in spite of Garvin and Northcliffe. Did you 
 see that horrible Daily Mail poster on Monday, " Greedy 
 Germany " ? I respect the confidence magnificent con- 
 fidence of Germany daring the whole ring of nations all 
 round her. I feel rather ashamed at not being in a posi- 
 tion to be called up. I don't value my life much just 
 now, and I would be game for anything desperate that 
 was of use. 
 
 The Pacifists arouse my contempt more than ever. They 
 have made a rotten show. 
 
 There may be a chance of some invaluable experiments 
 in dealing with unemployment. Public opinion won't, 
 I think, tolerate the idea of men starving owing to this war. 
 I have just been rung up to join a private committee at 
 Toynbee Hall for suggesting plans to the Government. 
 
 I rather think the Labour and Pacifist Radical elements 
 may go down for some years over this business. I wonder 
 if there is hope for a collectivist movement at once national 
 and democratic.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 
 
 AUGUST, 1914, TO APRIL, 1915. 
 
 ONCE war was declared, Keeling did not hesitate a moment about 
 joining the Army. He began drilling at once with the Artists' 
 Rifles, but soon decided to enlist in a county regiment. His friend 
 Rupert Brooke and several other University men joined the Artists' 
 with him, but most of them accepted commissions, which were 
 offered, I think, to all of them. Keeling refused, a refusal which 
 he repeated several times later on, and by the end of August had 
 become a private in the 6th Battalion of the Duke of York's Light 
 Infantry. 
 
 The zest with which he threw himself into the new life becomes 
 abundantly clear from his letters. As we have seen already, he 
 had been haunted for years by a desire to experience the life of 
 the manual worker and to earn his living for a time by the sweat 
 of his brow. The opportunity arose in a manner totally unforeseen, 
 but none the less welcome. It was a real joy to him to throw in 
 his lot with the rank and file, and a few weeks later to share the 
 camaraderie of the sergeants' mess. He had been talking latterly, 
 sometimes regretfully, sometimes boastfully, of the death of his 
 earlier Socialist enthusiasm, but his eager adoption of the lot of 
 the common soldier, and his unwavering sympathy with his com- 
 rades, shows the old fire unquenched. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 7 August, 1914. 
 
 . . . The Belgians are really magnificent. I can't help 
 wishing we had got a few tens of thousands of troops over 
 there already ; but no doubt the Government has got 
 its plans well laid. There seems no doubt that the Chau- 
 vinists really got the bit between their teeth in Germany, 
 though I sympathize with the whole of Germany over 
 the Russian danger enormously. . . . 
 
 I think the conduct of the British nation is really fine. 
 
 183
 
 184 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Only the Northcliffe Press shows a degraded Jingo spirit, 
 and, at any rate up to two days ago, the Maficking crowds 
 were nearly all boys. I heard a story yesterday that 
 the Government heard half an hour after the German 
 refusal to agree to mediation over Serbia that Austria 
 had agreed. 
 
 It seems pretty clear that the Germans have no friends 
 anywhere in the world, except perhaps in Turkey, and 
 possibly Bulgaria. Of course, one will wait to learn 
 the German version of the whole story after the war, before 
 finally accepting the British version. I still suspect that 
 Russia really is to blame more than any one, though one 
 can't prove it on the evidence now available. 
 
 I still hope that the moral results of this war may out- 
 weigh much of the material loss. It looks as if, for instance, 
 it would settle the Irish question. I only hope that there 
 won't be a repetition of the post-i8jo spirit. The aim 
 of every one who is a good European as well as a patriot 
 is to look forward to a settlement which will avoid that. 
 How will Germany come out of it as a nation ? That 
 is the overwhelmingly interesting thing. I hope we shall 
 give Germany back every scrap of her colonial possessions, 
 and even a bit more if we can. But, of course, all that 
 assumes a complete British victory by sea, and one must 
 not be over-confident about that. I had a card from 
 Korsch which reached me just after the outbreak of war. 
 They refused to give him a commission because he is sus- 
 pected of Social Democrat leanings, so he is going in as 
 a non-commissioned officer. 
 
 I happened to have five pounds in cash when the scare 
 began, and can send you a pound if by any chance you 
 are in difficulties for money. I hope to be able to draw 
 no cheques for some days. 
 
 It will be extraordinarily interesting if the credit system 
 shows itself capable of standing a strain like this without 
 really in any way collapsing, but there is bound to be 
 frightful unemployment afterwards, if the Government 
 does not take really big steps. 
 
 I only wish things were brought home to the comfort- 
 able classes more here, as they are abroad. We all get
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 185 
 
 our meals and comfortable beds just the same, and it seems 
 rather disgraceful. 
 
 The Edmonton Co-op, has just opened a branch near 
 here, and I have joined. I am rather glad to be a co- 
 operator again. It was one of my earliest enthusiasms ; 
 I made my mother buy everything from the local Co-op, 
 when I was fifteen, and in some ways it is the finest of 
 the British working-class achievements. The Co-ops, are, of 
 course, of enormous value now in keeping down prices. 
 Bread was still at the normal price at my Co-op, on Wednes- 
 day, whereas it had gone up a penny everywhere else. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 24 August, 1914. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter. Most people 
 are cursing me for enlisting, but I think the argument 
 about being wanted at home can be pushed too far. . . . 
 They say I am doing the easy thing, shall have a good 
 time, and so forth. As far as I can see, I shall like it 
 more than I thought I should, and I feel I shall be a better 
 man for being a really hard-trained soldier, as I hope to 
 be at the end of six months. Am I not justified in doing 
 a thing which is at any rate not dishonourable in itself, 
 and gives one direct experience of another side of life 
 and another way of living altogether, at a time when one 
 is not really wanted as much as ordinarily ? The argu- 
 ment that I shall be of no more value than a bus conductor 
 in the ranks doesn't move me at all. I feel that there 
 is some value in standing level with the bus conductor 
 at a time like the present. 
 
 Rupert Brooke has dropped out. He wants a commis- 
 sion after all, and thinks he can get one through pushing 
 in various quarters. There is a young Cambridge fellow 
 who came in with us who is stopping with me, but we 
 shall probably get separated, as his parents object to his 
 volunteering for foreign service, and he is not sure if he 
 is strong enough. . . . God ! it is good to feel one's 
 muscles stiff after four hours' drilling. I don't think 
 I shall ever stoop again. I have thought of going in 
 the Kitchener Army. But our battalion really is a very
 
 186 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 fine corps, one of the crack Territorial Corps ; and 
 although there are stories that Kitchener is down on 
 the Territorials, and won't use them for foreign service, 
 it seems impossible that he won't take advantage of 
 the fifteen thousand or so who have volunteered for 
 foreign service and turn them into a special corps, or 
 convert them into regulars if he likes pro tern. I wish 
 they had made Haldane and not Kitchener Secretary for 
 War. Let K. be Commander-in-Chief, but, damn it all, 
 we are fighting European militarism if we are fighting 
 anything, and we ought to uphold our own constitutional 
 principles. I don't see what we should lose in efficiency 
 by so doing in this instance. Also the filthy Northcliffe 
 Press attack on Haldane was damnable. 
 
 I get more and more furious at these attacks on Germans 
 here. It is so damnably mean dismissing wretched 
 governesses and servants and so on. Even this " smash 
 German trade " movement has a touch of the mean about 
 it, but I suppose that is inevitable. It looks as if this 
 might be a particularly brutal war. 
 
 I do hope the Allies are holding the Lille-Namur line, 
 and may be able to break the German communications 
 by an attack from Namur and Antwerp. But the Ger- 
 mans must have foreseen the risk of that. By the way, 
 Belloc's two articles (one unsigned) in Land and Water 
 are an admirably lucid elementary exposition of the art 
 of modern war and of this campaign in the West. 
 
 The Dalmatian and Adriatic fighting is more vivid to 
 me than any other after seeing all these places. I hope 
 the Montenegrins will be too busy to attack Scutari. I 
 see that the French contingent went up from Scutari to 
 join the Montenegrin Army. That international rescuing 
 of Scutari from the Montenegrins was a single fine Euro- 
 pean achievement in the middle of all the diplomatic 
 rivalries, and it is sad to think of it going under. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. August, 1914. 
 
 . . . God ! one wonders how one would stand up to 
 some of the things one reads of, but I suppose one might.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 187 
 
 Anyhow, it is not that, but slamming hard discipline one 
 has to face in the next few months. The Germans must 
 have lost enormously. Even they can't stand that for 
 ever. They seem to have sacrificed themselves just like 
 the Japanese in the Russian War. It is magnificent. 
 I can't work up any feeling against them, in spite of the 
 atrocity stories. We're all capable of pretty bad things 
 given the least encouragement to barbarities ; it is absurd 
 to blame the men. The Germans really do seem to have 
 less power of appreciating other people's point of view 
 than most races. Louvain is a blunder. I am not 
 enough of a scholar or artist to feel directly and deeply 
 about the destruction of the beauties of the place. It 
 does move me, of course, but not as much as lots of other 
 things. The everyday life of the present is my main 
 interest, and I am not sure how much the culture of Lou- 
 vain really means to that. Of course, it would horrify 
 me a bit if I were ordered on a sudden to help destroy 
 a beautiful town ; perhaps it wouldn't if one had been en- 
 gaged in fighting for a week on end, but I can't help feeling 
 that a lot of people who execrate the conduct of the Germans 
 about Louvain wouldn't really feel much of the beauty 
 of the place in their own lives, and if so, the execration 
 partakes of cant. 
 
 I am not going into this job in a simple swelling mood 
 of patriotism. That is there, but there are a lot of other 
 things, personal and impersonal, which complicate it. But 
 no doubt the sergeant will smooth all those creases out. 
 
 Is the world going to come out of this business saner ? 
 I am rather depressed about that idea now. It seems 
 that we are perhaps simply going to learn to hate the 
 Germans. I expect I shall be a stronger Pacifist after 
 the war than any of the people who are Pacifists now. 
 But I don't feel one will have earned the right to be one 
 unless one has gone in with the rest. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. 26 August, 1914. 
 
 . . . Most of the men (sixty or seventy) in the squadron 
 in which I am drilling are getting very sick at the delay
 
 188 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 in swearing us in, and the slackness in getting through 
 the work. The Colonel addressed us to-day, and said we 
 were very fine fellows, etc., but could promise no definite 
 date. I have therefore practically decided to go in the 
 Kitchener Army. Luckily enough, I was rung up to-day 
 by an Oxford man in the Board of Trade, who heard I was 
 thinking of going in the ranks in the Kitchener Army, and 
 wants to come with me if he can get permission. He 
 is a very good fellow and would make a good comrade- 
 in-arms. We both had the idea of going and enlisting 
 in a country district West of England, Sussex, or West- 
 moreland. The men who are being enlisted in London 
 are in many cases rather awful types, much farther off 
 the decent workman than we are from the latter. I saw 
 a good deal of the type at the starting of the Exchange 
 in Leeds. Countrymen or miners or any set of men from 
 a district with something of a traditional standard of com- 
 fort would make much better fellow-soldiers, and I don't 
 see the point of running up against the worst types of 
 proletarians. 
 
 I suppose it is no good expecting to be back before 
 twelve months. It means a big break in one's life, and 
 I find it rather a business settling up my affairs. 
 
 I should be happier with a decent sort of workmen than 
 with the middle-class young men in the Artists. And I 
 think the Kitchener Army will get tougher work and 
 training; we shall be the professionals. 
 
 If the war does go on for a long time it will be queer 
 to turn into a regular professional soldier scouring Europe. 
 But I hope to God Europe will come to its senses, or at 
 any rate that Western Europe will eventually unite against 
 Russia if things drag on indefinitely. 
 
 I shall not be surprised if the Germans are in front of 
 Paris in a month. Our fellows seem to have fought well. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshcnd. 
 
 LINCOLN'S INN. i September, 1914. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter and the ripping 
 photographs of the children. I should like to have shown 
 them myself as a Tommy.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 189 
 
 I shall be glad to be off in a way. An awful rush of 
 things to-day. Two or three people are coming up 
 especially from the provinces to see me this evening, 
 so I am having a sort of beef-and-beer feed for them 
 and others, and I'm afraid I can't get away. 
 
 I hear Territorials are already going to such places as 
 Malta, so I expect the New Army ought to get the tough 
 fighting as soon as we are trained. 
 
 Philip Reid, who fought through the South African War, 
 is trying to get into a Hussar regiment as a trooper. I 
 do hope every one who can enlist will do so, because it 
 would be such a fine thing to beat the Germans with 
 Freiwillige, and it seems that we and the Russians will 
 have to do the beating ; the French, as I always thought, 
 are not nearly as tough stuff. 1 I should myself like to 
 see as large a share as possible of the victories fall to 
 us, and after us the Russians. I have no wish to aggrandize 
 the French. The Germans would have been in Paris 
 now if it hadn't been for our fellows. I begin to feel 
 more friendly towards the Russians it is all absolutely 
 irrational but I feel the French have let us down, and 
 I don't see what title a country which can't defend its 
 own frontiers has to be a first-class Power. 
 
 I can't feel any hatred against the Germans. Germany 
 will remain my second mother-country always unless she /- 
 wins. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 9 September, 1914. 
 
 It has really been nothing but beer and skittles so far ; 
 even the dullest operations have been tinged with novelty. 
 We are now gradually getting into the regular Kitchener 
 routine. This evening it has been raining, and one has 
 thereby got a slight foretaste of realities. Crouching in 
 
 1 His estimate of the French altered very considerably when he 
 got to know more about them, but he never lost his feeling of 
 kinship and affection for the Germans.
 
 190 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 a tent in the rain with the alternatives of a crowded canteen 
 or pub. is not a cheerful job. 
 
 One feels one could value real intimacy in such circum- 
 stances. Under this glorious sky and in this scenery, 
 and with all the varied interests of the new life, I thought 
 I should never want it. I am not really any more inti- 
 mate with any of the seven Oxford men than with the 
 many friends I have made among non-coms., old soldiers, 
 navvies, painters, shop assistants, and all sorts of fellows 
 here. My opinion of the human race, or at any rate of 
 the common Englishman, goes steadily up from being 
 herded with him. But of course it will be best to wait 
 till one has had many rainy days before forming a final 
 opinion ; it has been nothing but a picnic so far. 
 
 We are now finally settled in our battalions, companies, 
 and sections. We are the 6th Battalion. Our orders 
 are to be ready to go abroad by Christmas. I think we 
 shall make a tough battalion. The average calibre of the 
 fresh recruits is good, and I feel confident when I look 
 along my platoon. 
 
 I spent most of Sunday helping the overworked cooks 
 by cleaning tins and chopping wood, and it has put me 
 on better terms with the old hands than anything else 
 would have done. 
 
 Kitchener has just sent word that all extended order 
 drill is to be done at five paces' extension, as he attributes 
 the heavy casualties in France partly to the fact that 
 we have been working only on three paces' extension. The 
 training seems to me as practical and to the point as it 
 could be. . . . 
 
 One might be tolerably happy at this game all one's 
 life, but one can't cast out the personal and complicated 
 from one's life altogether. The view over Laffan's Plain, 
 on which we drill, and the sunset and delightful early misty 
 mornings bring one back to the old grubbing in one's own 
 wretched soul. However, it's a long, long way to Tip- 
 perary, and one's soul belongs to the Army as well as one's 
 body pro tern.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 191 
 
 To Miss C. Townshcnd. 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 20 September, 1914. 
 
 I have had some ups and downs lately. Was laid up 
 on Saturday, feeling pretty bad as a result of inoculation. 
 It was hours before I could see a doctor, and as a 
 tent-inspection was on, I had to lie in the open in a cold 
 wind most of the morning. However, I was quite all 
 right by Monday. Have been busy since then trying 
 to get an article written, but it is almost impossible to 
 write. I got something done, but I don't think it is worth 
 publishing. 
 
 Have been made a full corporal to-day. I am not over 
 elated, as I don't feel I know enough, and also feel that 
 a lot of the other lance-corporals are as good as me 
 or better. 
 
 I have got quite attached to the Major in our Company 
 and the Subaltern in our platoon, have got to know them 
 well, as a private or non-com, knows an officer, and I would 
 do anything for them. Our platoon sergeant is a splendid 
 fellow and it will be damnable if he goes. 
 
 It is curious how easily one can throw oneself into the 
 life of the common soldier, not be moved by the delightful 
 scenery one passes on route marches or the splendid sun- 
 sets across the plain or the wonderful early morning mists, 
 and sink either depression or exaltation in a sixpenny 
 blow-out in a Soldiers' Home (magnificent places, one 
 couldn't do without them). I have practically given 
 up both smoking and drinking alcohol without thinking 
 about it. But I have been feeling the last few days that 
 one must keep an inner life going. It will be easier as 
 we do more route-marching. I am so accustomed to 
 walking that I can think then more peacefully than 
 anywhere else in the crowded life of camp. 
 
 I am strangely isolated without feeling at all lonely, 
 and find myself more and more retiring to live my most 
 real life with my own thoughts. I have knocked about 
 in so many different atmospheres in the short space of 
 my life, that I don't find that the mere fact that people
 
 192 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 are educated makes them any better companions for me 
 than the rough-and-ready sort of workman, unless they 
 are educated in some measure within the circles of ex- 
 perience and thought which I appreciate myself. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 27 September, 1914. 
 
 Thank you very much for sending the " housewife." It 
 has been invaluable to me to-day. I got my uniform 
 this morning at least, coat and trousers ; caps are still 
 unattainable. The trousers are new, but the coat has 
 had a good deal of wear and all the buttons needed sewing 
 on, in addition to which I had the pleasurable task of 
 sewing on my stripes. 
 
 Yesterday we were inspected by the King in the morn- 
 ing, in the afternoon I began to learn semaphore with 
 the regimental sergeant-major, and in the evening bayonet 
 fighting. It is extraordinary what a lot there is to learn 
 about pigsticking one's fellow-men. I am bad at it. 
 I was canteen corporal yesterday, which means a sort 
 of official pub chucker-out. I think I am less qualified 
 for making a pub chucker-out than for any other job on 
 God's earth, and I was rather fearful, as I had never been 
 in the wet canteen here, as I heard the beer was bad, and 
 also haven't wanted any, and the crowd in the place looked 
 unattractive. I had to open and close the canteen at 
 the right hours and make fellows line up for drinks instead 
 of lighting for them, and turn out fellows with bayonets. 
 I stood at the bar, and half of the people who got drinks 
 offered me a swipe out of their mugs or tins. At first 
 it seemed like corruption, but I found it easier to get fellows 
 to do things by drinking with them first, and the sergeant 
 over me seemed to take it as a matter of courser^o I must 
 have drunk a good deal during the time I was on duty. 
 However, I am so fit now that I think I could swallow 
 several quarts of canteen beer without turning a hair. 
 That job brought me up against a rougher type of man 
 in the battalion than I had got to know before. They're 
 all right if you remember they are just overgrown children ;
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 193 
 
 but so are we all really. Once I saw there was not likely 
 to be any occasion to use my fists I was quite at ease. I 
 don't mind trying to fight any one if I have to, but I 
 frankly don't want to, and I found that my official insignia 
 (a belt and bayonet, which only the man on canteen duty 
 may wear in the wet canteen) and good-humour were 
 enough to carry me through. 
 
 I gathered that these chaps all knew me as " Uncle Sam," 
 presumably because of the beard. This afternoon I found 
 time for a leisurely cold bath in a wash-hut in the sun. 
 I have never enjoyed a bath so much in my life. 
 
 Take it all in all, this is a fine life. I feel more and more 
 that all these young fellows will be far finer chaps for the 
 experience, whether we get fighting or not. The worst 
 of it is, I don't see how any system of collective life and 
 discipline could really equal that of a soldier in war-time. 
 The only chance lies in James's idea of industrial conscrip- 
 tion, especially applied to the dangerous trades. 
 
 The camp was a fine sight this afternoon, a series of 
 football matches between the companies, impromptu 
 miniature range firing, bayonet fighting, and tent-pitching 
 and rapid-firing competitions and a few of us having cold 
 baths in the sun. It's worth a good deal of public money 
 to give us all that. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 i October, 1914. 
 
 We had a route march this afternoon and practised 
 outposts this morning. I am pretty tired. I sacrificed 
 my chance of tea when we came in just before dark for 
 the sake of getting a cold bath, and have just eaten three- 
 penn'orth of rice and two cups of cocoa in a Soldiers' Home 
 and I feel very bloated. I have heard that I am to be 
 made a sergeant in a day or two. It's a bit previous, 
 and I would really rather go on as I am for a bit. I am 
 none too good at drill. Also I don't know how I shall 
 really like the sergeants' mess. It means an end to the 
 old meals on the grass outside a tent, or inside in bad 
 weather, and a sit-down dinner. The sergeants look after 
 
 14
 
 194 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 themselves very well. Their beer is better than in the 
 ordinary wet canteen, and they say that they get better 
 cooking very often than the officers. I object strongly 
 to the principle of different ranks having different physical 
 conditions, though I think there might well be a bit more 
 Prussianism in the discipline of the Kitchener Army as 
 it is at present. You still see fellows slouch up to 
 officers to answer questions or argue with superior 
 sergeants. 
 
 I like this country immensely. There's nothing to beat 
 the sombre foreground of a wood of Scotch firs against 
 the sky. I like them especially in our early morning 
 marches, when the sun shines through the mists against 
 the trunks. 
 
 I was orderly corporal this morning, which means 
 serving out the dinner. It makes me sick to see the way 
 in which I'homme moyen sensuel will fight for food when 
 there is really plenty to give every one a good meal. 
 Frankly, such general love as I have for my fellow-man 
 oozes away when I see him behaving as a " struggle- 
 for-lifer," as we call the worst class of grabbers. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 9 October, 1914. 
 
 I am infernally tired to-night. We had extra stiff 
 gymnastics and drilling to-day, and I stood for one and 
 a half hours as witness at the pay-table while three pla- 
 toons were paid, which tired me more than anything else. 
 I drew nineteen shillings myself this week, and feel very 
 rich. I have got a cap now. I got it by buying a civilian 
 cap for a man who will be discharged shortly, and I hope 
 to get putties to-morrow. It is rotten not being dressed 
 properly when you are a sergeant. 
 
 There was a good leading article by Ensor in the Chronicle 
 on "The Education of Recruits." The difficulty is that 
 the N.C.O.'s are of course nearly all Regular Army men, 
 very fine, but not with much idea of teaching through 
 the mind. I don't think most of them would appreciate 
 the preliminary talks on the theory of drill which I give
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 195 
 
 to my squad when I am trying to get them perfect in a 
 movement. 
 
 I am thinking of offering to take a class in German in 
 the evenings. 
 
 The sergeants' mess is the finest example of a decent 
 collectivist spirit in a body of men living in common I 
 have ever found. There is no cliquiness, no backbiting 
 or discussing other sergeants in the mess behind their 
 backs. How many College common-rooms could you 
 say that of ? After all, fellowship is life, more than any- 
 thing else anyhow, and if a body of men achieve that, much 
 can be forgiven. 
 
 It is a tradition throughout sergeants' messes in the 
 Army, they tell me. It really is a genuine freemasonry 
 much more than among commissioned officers, I should 
 say. . . . 
 
 I was in charge of the whole wet canteen a few days 
 ago without any corporal to help. It really is the 
 rottenest job of all. A lot of policemen and cooks tried 
 to make a bit of trouble when I insisted on turning out 
 a man of another regiment and in closing to time ; but I 
 came through all right both times. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 ALDERSHOT. 15 October, 1914. 
 
 . . . The rain is all right now there are only six other 
 men in my tent, and all of those sergeants, and also in view 
 of the fact that there is the sergeants' mess to sit in. In 
 fact, I was not sorry to have a sleep yesterday afternoon. 
 We had a brigade route march for the first time yesterday 
 morning. One battalion each of the Somersets, Yorks, 
 and Durhams make up a brigade with us. We are now 
 beginning musketry and trench-digging. I have a lot 
 of bets on in the sergeants' mess that I can do the 
 5x3x2 trench single-handed in the regulation hour. 
 They all swear it can't be done, but I fancy myself with 
 a pick and shovel, and I'm damned if I will be beaten by 
 the Welsh miner we have got in " C " Company. 
 
 In view of the bad news, they are talking of sending us
 
 196 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 to France as soon as we have done musketry. The thing 
 I like least about the war are these tales of the Russians 
 being blown up by the thousand outside Przemysl, or 
 whatever they call that Galician fortress. I expect the 
 Germans have got that ready for us on the Rhine. How- 
 ever, it would be all over before even our new company 
 officer could expect us to do " eyelashes right chick " as 
 we call it. And it's a long way to the Rhine, as things 
 are now. 
 
 I am not having a particularly easy time just now in our 
 platoon ; in fact, all the junior non-commissioned officers 
 are rinding the position of responsibility without proper 
 authority rather trying. 
 
 I got a fellow fined three days' pay to-day and thoroughly 
 well cursed by the C.O. for insolence. The swine then 
 went sick before afternoon parade without reporting, 
 so he has been nabbed again ; I am not going to bring 
 any more of the troublesome fellows up, but just give them 
 squad drill until they are ready to drop without saying 
 a word. It is much simpler than bothering about a trial. 
 They are mostly clerks, who can make quite good soldiers if 
 they like, but can't drop into this life as easily as either 
 a gentleman or a rougher sort of chap, and don't like being 
 ordered about by sergeants who are of a rougher type 
 than themselves. They are as bad to the old hands as 
 they are to me. 
 
 Friday night. 
 
 Been trench-digging this afternoon a great game ! 
 I shifted more dirt in the time than any one else in my 
 platoon. It being pay-day, there is a lot of drunkenness. 
 I must say I am absolutely sick of that side of soldiering. 
 It isn't as if the fellows got drunk once in a way. They 
 drink too much all the time and a great deal too much 
 once a week, and then grumble at not being able to keep 
 up at the marching. Of course they are not all like that. 
 It is the men over thirty-five who are the worst. . . . 
 
 I wish you would send me a couple of volumes of Dickens 
 I have tramped all over Aldershot and Farnborough and 
 can't find a bookshop and a couple of French novels too.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 197 
 
 I have found a few chaps who want to learn German, 
 but I think I shall start entirely without books in an 
 informal way. I think that will suit them and this 
 atmosphere best. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshend. 
 
 COLCHESTER. 25 October, 1914. 
 
 I have been having the time of my life here among old 
 friends. There is no idea in a normal provincial town 
 that soldiering is a whimsical or abnormal thing to go 
 in for, and the way in which the town has pulled together 
 and is working for the men here is splendid. I think 
 we do deserve to be encouraged ; it's all very well for a 
 natural ruffian like me, but a lot of these young chaps 
 are not very happy, and only a small number get the fun 
 of obtaining stripes. I saw a girl in Aldershot selling 
 stamps to the men lined up trying to get into the post- 
 office. I was so much moved that I felt a lump in my 
 throat and went up and down two or three times wanting 
 to go and thank her, but I didn't like to. It is fine to see 
 the large number of institutes and social rooms they have 
 set up here and the number of women working in them. 
 In Aldershot one never speaks to a woman. 
 
 I am very glad I am not wholly a damned de-localized 
 intellectual. I feel I belong here to Colchester more 
 than anywhere. This is the England I am going to fight 
 for, anyway. At least, it is more of a microcosm of the 
 real England than any other place I know intimately. 
 
 I sat talking to Mrs. Green this afternoon, and in my 
 own mind passed over all the towns where I know people 
 doing things and factories and places. I know none of 
 them as well as Colchester, though some of them I know 
 a good deal about. It was satisfactory to feel so many 
 links to one's country, a kind of ferocious love of it ; though 
 I can't get up any animosity against Germans and have 
 been sticking up for them against people here, except as 
 regards their incapacity to get the idea of letting other 
 people have their own soul, and their rotten " Kultur " 
 talk, which is like Oxford intensified ten times over.
 
 198 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Well, I must write another letter. Have been picking 
 the best walnuts in the world from a fine old tree in my 
 garden here. I have got a plan for making an avenue 
 of walnut-trees along a private road across our estate. 
 To plant walnut-trees is to confer a substantial benefit 
 on humanity, and it's a good way to lay out a few pounds. 
 They won't grow up for thirty years, but they will be a 
 sort of memorial of the Great War to a few people, and 
 I daresay there will be a lot of kids in a hundred years' 
 time who will enjoy climbing about them as I enjoyed 
 climbing about the old tree at the bottom of our garden. 
 So you see I am a whole-hearted sentimentalist now, a 
 real sentimental soldier, and I shan't be jogged out of it 
 by any bloody enlightenment. 
 
 Joan was not the least impressed by my uniform. 
 She didn't seem to know what a soldier meant, but of 
 course that is not taught in an enlightened household. 
 I don't mean to be nasty, only I feel the contrast with my 
 own childhood. I daresay the new ideas are right ; 
 perhaps if all kids were brought up not to play at soldiers 
 like good little Fabians, they wouldn't want to play at 
 the same game when they grew up. But then they will 
 never get the particular bite on the apple of life which 
 I have had the last two months, and, by Christ ! I wouldn't 
 change places with them even if I am going to be popped 
 to glory in six months. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 SERGEANTS' MESS, 
 
 WATTS COMMON, ALDERSHOT. 
 
 15 November, 1914. 
 
 I have had the devil of a week of it as company orderly 
 sergeant. Up any time after 5 a.m., and tearing about 
 the camp in rain and swamps of mud, warning fatigues 
 and musketry parties, compiling endless rolls and absentee 
 reports, calling rolls, acting as a sort of magistrate's clerk, 
 jailer, and usher rolled into one when men come up for 
 trial at orderly room, etc., in addition to attending orderly 
 parades and being in charge of half a platoon for musketry. 
 You can imagine that I have enjoyed myself. On Friday
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 199 
 
 night we suddenly had field firing put on our company 
 at twelve hours' notice, so I had to rout all our lines out 
 of bed at five o'clock. As a lot of them had been frozen 
 to death pretty well on a motor-lorry when on fatigue at 
 Witley, and had missed most of their grub, they were 
 inclined to grumble, but I am learning how to mix discipline 
 and persuasion and flatter myself that I got them on 
 parade smarter than the company sergeant-major would 
 have done. 
 
 I have got to know the roughs in our platoon pretty well 
 fellows who are in and out of clink regularly for drunk- 
 enness and answering back to N.C.O.'s, and am rather proud 
 of the fact that I have managed to get on good terms with 
 them and at the same time got some control over them. 
 It's easy enough to deal with the cheekiness of young 
 clerks and mechanics, or relatively easy, but these fellows 
 lie and thieve and fight as part of their everyday life, and 
 are as slim as Old Nick. You never get to the stage of 
 really trusting them, but you can establish working 
 relations with them by expedients which seem almost 
 childish, silly jokes and a kind of assumed (for me) music- 
 hall, pub-loafing heartiness. It's acting, of course, but 
 I come to feel more and more that all leadership is in a 
 way acting, conscious or unconscious. Only, like Beer- 
 bohm's " Happy Hypocrite," after a time you become 
 the character you act, whether it is a sergeant in the 
 D. C.L.I., or a popular politician, or a music-hall character, 
 or a barrister. There is very little difference in the quality 
 of any of the parts. 
 
 I am as happy as ever at this job. I have read Shaw's 
 Statesman supplement with enormous joy. It renews 
 his old spell over me completely. It is so magnificently 
 sane. Of course, I disagree at some points for instance, 
 his Fabian contempt for the Army. All civilians assume 
 soldiers are fools until they have been soldiers themselves. 
 I did the same, but the idea makes me savage now. Also, 
 whatever may be the moral or immoral results of war 
 itself on actual belligerents, training for war in time of 
 war is the greatest game and the finest school for men in 
 the world.
 
 200 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Like most of the sergeants who talk about the thing 
 at all, I honestly expect to be plugged out when we get 
 over the water, and in the occasional moments when one 
 thinks of things in general at all it puts them in their right 
 proportion. The one thing that is clear is that it is no 
 good fussing too much about life. One ought to regard 
 the whole world just as one regards our camp a collective 
 adventure in which you have just got to help each other 
 out as best you can. There's nothing else about it. The 
 question whether there is anything beyond this life or not 
 really makes very little difference to the only possible 
 reasonable and decent philosophy of conduct which a man 
 can have. Above all, it is no use being too solemn, even 
 if you are a bit solemn by nature, as I am. I make no 
 secret of my religious opinions here. We had a fire- 
 worshipper (Parsee) among our recruits, subsequently 
 discharged for ill-health. He used to take a mat and 
 pray at the canal side at sunrise. They were talking 
 about him in the sergeants' mess. I said that the sun 
 was as good a god to worship as any other. The simple 
 Homeric old regimental sergeant-major, who organizes 
 a Church Parade to absolute perfection in the last detail, 
 said, " Yes, I expect you'll get as much answer to your 
 prayer there as in any other quarter." I can't get over 
 the irony of that Church Parade. Why can't men 
 stand up collectively to the facts of life ? We don't know 
 about the beyond ; all we know is that there is honour 
 and dishonour here and now, even if the shrapnel is the 
 end of everything for me and the cooling of the earth the 
 end of all things for the particular ants who call them- 
 selves men. 
 
 To Miss C. Townshend. 
 
 WITLEY CAMP. 27 November, 1914. 
 
 Am enjoying firing my course of musketry huge.y. 
 Succeeded in getting seven bulls in succession to-day 
 amidst roars of applause from my platoon in the rear, 
 and have done better than several of the other sergeants 
 the last two days, though I made a bad start.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 201 
 
 We were firing at 300 yards to-day. If it had been 
 Germans instead of targets a good many of my shots would 
 have laid a man low. Old Philip Reid came down to see 
 me to-day. He is on leave. 
 
 It is very fine of a man of his age (forty-five) to go as 
 a trooper. He is enjoying it hugely. We agree very 
 much about our view of Army life. Neither of us has 
 any desire for a commission. If ever I do take one it will 
 be from a sense of duty. The sergeants' mess is really 
 the most congenial atmosphere I have ever livecj in. I 
 like it more and more. I am absolutely at ease here 
 and begin automatically to say " was " for " were " and 
 drop my h's. Why should I go and bother about 
 being a gentleman ? It's a strain to me in a different 
 way from what it would be to an ordinary sergeant, but 
 still a strain. I am, as a matter of fact, on fairly intimate 
 terms with all the officers in my company and with some 
 others. For everyday companionship I honestly prefer 
 the sergeants. They really are nearer me than the officers, 
 though I respect and like practically all of those whom 
 I know. I feel myself getting more and more of a personal 
 influence over my platoon. Why should I throw all that 
 away ? I know that even now they would follow me 
 anywhere under fire. It is a big thing to feel that, and 
 I feel more and more attached to them individually ; they 
 get to know my ways. I expect more than most sergeants 
 here on parade, and in return there is nothing I won't do 
 for them off parade. 
 
 But I must be off to bed breakfast 6.30 a.m. 
 
 My platoon is firing better than any other. These 
 clerks and young mechanics and shop assistants will beat 
 the slum roughs at most things ; mine is by far the most 
 civilized platoon in the company. 
 
 To Mrs. Toivnshcnd. 
 
 WITLEY CAMP. 19 December, 1914. 
 
 Just got the Regimental Magazine off my hands. It 
 is to appear on Monday. I am on canteen duty to-morrow, 
 but I think I can be out of camp from 2 to 7.30, which
 
 202 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 will give me time to walk over to see you. I am rather 
 keen to make something of the Magazine. Of course, 
 a lot of it has to be stuff that doesn't appeal to me much ; 
 still, one can make it as good as possible of its kind. 
 
 Just been having rather an interesting talk in the mess 
 with several old sergeants. I like the life in the huts 
 enormously. It is queer how one gets more and more 
 attached to the regiment. It is a real home to me. If 
 it weren't for drink, I think it would be as fine a way of 
 organizing the ways of life for men as could be found. I 
 am rather looking forward to Christmas here. It will 
 be rather fun in the mess. We have just got a draft of 
 recruits, the first we have had. The half-dozen allotted 
 to my platoon are very nice fellows, including a little Welsh 
 pit-boy who is an amusing little lad. 
 
 I rather expect we shall go as a whole Division to help 
 in a big move in the spring I liked the R.A.M.C. man's 
 letter in the Times to-day. I believe the loathsome, 
 vitriolic hatred of the Germans is confined to journalists 
 and civilian intellectuals. I doubt if it exists among 
 the men who have got to face the bullets. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 April, 1915. 
 
 I grow more and more convinced of the Tightness of our 
 side in this war not, I think, merely because I have be- 
 come so definitely and closely associated with the fighters, 
 but by honest conviction and without any hatred of Ger- 
 mans as such. I don't think an average man can be sure 
 of being sane about this business unless he knows he is 
 going to face death like the rest ; this may seem prejudiced, 
 but I think there is something in it. As the days draw 
 nearer and nearer for going, one gets a more and more 
 realistic sense of values in life, and on the political as 
 opposed to the individual side English liberty is certainly 
 one of them. I can't help thinking more than most men 
 about the first near screech of the shells while one is lying 
 in the bloody mud, or the first near glimpse of a German 
 uniform perhaps through the trees when one is scouting, 
 and it's all a matter of touch and go whether you or he
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 203 
 
 shoot first, or (remembering the textbook maxims) try 
 to hide so as not reveal yourself your heart beating like 
 a bloody engine all the time (it does even when one is 
 on manceuvres). I think I have more than the average 
 amount of cowardice in me. But, by God, what a thing 
 to have lived through, if one does live through it ! 
 
 What a brotherhood there will be between all those who 
 shared the experience ! I shan't be much of a political 
 or Labour Socialist after this war am not much of one 
 now but I am more and more keen on the practical Social- 
 ism of a living and continuous wage, and I think these 
 pensions and separation allowances will do probably more 
 than anything to raise the nation's conception of the 
 standard of life of the workers 
 
 Must stop now to rush off up at 5 a.m. to-morrow. 
 
 EARLY DAYS' 
 BY A RECRUIT (F. H. K.) 
 
 There is no surer method of escape from excitement 
 over the war than enlistment in Kitchener's Army. Ever 
 since the moment three weeks ago when I swore to defend 
 His Majesty George V and his successors from all their 
 enemies, the direct impressions of life as a recruit have 
 almost completely effaced all feverish interest in the actual 
 progress of the war. The campaign is scarcely ever dis- 
 cussed in our camp ; we are certainly less well-informed 
 about it than any average aggregation of two thousand 
 civilians. News of the casualties amongst the battalion of 
 our own regiment at the front creates as much interest as 
 any large movement of the Allied Armies. It is more 
 related to our daily life, both because the regiment is a 
 very present reality in the consciousness of the slackest of 
 us and also because it may affect our chance of going 
 abroad to fill up gaps in the ranks. 
 
 As one of a party originally numbering three, I made 
 a preliminary visit to the Scotland Yard Recruiting Station 
 
 From the Xeiv Statesman, 26 September, 1914.
 
 204 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 before actually being sworn in. Each of us was about 
 six feet high, and we were at first pressed by the recruiting 
 officer to enlist in the Guards. ' That's the place for 
 fine young fellows like you," he said. We were flattered, 
 but deterred by imaginary visions of pipeclay and cere- 
 monial drill. As we were all moved by a terror of horses, 
 the cavalry was out of the question. I had a weakness 
 for artillery, but a musician in the party objected to being 
 deafened. We therefore decided by a method of ex- 
 clusion on the infantry. " Well, then," said the recruiting 
 officer, " why not try a county light infantry regiment ? 
 You'll like it better than a regiment recruited from London 
 or a big town." (Light infantry, I may remark, march at 
 140 to the minute, instead of the 120 of an ordinary line 
 regiment.) We hit more or less by accident on the 
 
 shire Light Infantry, and four days later returned to 
 Scotland Yard at 8.45 a.m. for the purpose of being 
 sworn 'in. In connection with the preliminaries to this 
 process some of us protested against the official system 
 of religious classification. " What religion ? " said the 
 inquiry clerk. " No religion," I replied firmly. " Come, 
 come, you must have some religion," he urged. " Well, 
 atheist, if you like," I said. " That isn't a religion," he 
 said. I didn't want to clog the machine, so I said, 
 "Well, you can call me a bit of a Unitarian, if you like." 
 (After all, any one can be "a bit of a Unitarian.") 
 " Well, I'll write in ' Unitarian ' specially to oblige you," 
 he said, " but that isn't really in the list either." As 
 we don't attend Church Parade till we get our uniforms, 
 I have not yet discovered what provision the Army makes 
 for Unitarians. To avoid trouble I have decided in the 
 last resort to go with the Presbyterians. But, seriously, 
 why cannot an English soldier at this time of day be 
 avowedly a Freethinker ? 
 
 After being sworn in and receiving our first day's pay 
 (one and ninepence), we were sent off to the regimental 
 
 depot at P , a train journey of some seven hours. 
 
 Before starting we each received sixpence ration money, 
 but sixpence does not go far in a railway refreshment-room. 
 Fortunately, when we arrived at - a committee of
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 205 
 
 ladies of the town provided us with an excellent supper at 
 the station. After three cheers for our hosts, we marched 
 up to the barracks, received a blanket, and then marched 
 back to the local assembly rooms. There the Major in 
 charge of the depot addressed us. He explained that 
 the accommodation in the barracks was intended for less 
 than two hundred men, but that over two thousand were 
 on his hands. He appealed to us, for the sake of the 
 honour of the regiment, not to wreck the hall a feat which 
 he evidently expected us to perform. Of course, the place 
 was in a state of pandemonium even before the Major 
 had finished, and when the lights were put out the high- 
 spirited youth of Poplar and Stepney only substituted 
 cat-calls for conversation across the hall. I did not expect 
 a wink of sleep. But the noise did gradually subside, 
 in spite of repeated cheers at the offer of a sergeant to 
 fight any one who wanted to speak. Actually I slept 
 well and woke to the sound of an impromptu game of 
 football in the road outside. We fared better than the 
 thousand or so recruits in the barracks, many of whom 
 slept on the grass under trees. But those did best who, 
 as they put it, " went in for a billeting job " in the town. 
 For breakfast we obtained loaves of bread, torn up at ease 
 on the grass, and rumours of butter and tea. The dinner 
 was an excellent stew of beef and potatoes. Few of us 
 could obtain knives or forks, but a hungry man can dis- 
 pense with these. Tea a good many of us missed owing 
 to the prolongation of the medical inspection, but for 
 threepence one could buy an excellent meal of cocoa, corned 
 beef, and bread in the canteen. 
 
 Every one wanted to got away from P . We were 
 
 lucky enough to spend only two nights there. Some of 
 our comrades loafed and scrambled for food for five days. 
 To the lay mind it is not clear why we were sent three 
 hundred miles from London and then, equally unequipped 
 and untrained, another two or three hundred miles to 
 
 K . But " you must all go through the depot " 
 
 there is no getting behind that. Arrived at K - in 
 a special train, we found ourselves almost the last de- 
 tachment in a camp of 2,300 men, nearly all recruits
 
 206 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 from London and Birmingham. The first night in the 
 camp is as indelibly stamped on my memory as the first 
 
 night in P . Our party of ten friends had secured 
 
 a tent to ourselves and were mostly asleep, when suddenly 
 a head appeared in the aperture. " Who are you ? " 
 we asked. " Well, they calls me Joe," replied a voice, 
 " but I am the Police. Are you all right ? " " Yes, 
 we're all right." " Have you got any whisky ? " 
 Unfortunately we hadn't. " What do the Police do at 
 night ? " I asked, being eager to lose no opportunity of 
 extending my military knowledge. " Well," said Joe, 
 " we mostly 'unts the bushes for women, and f oilers the 
 sound of our own footsteps round the camp " And then 
 followed an illuminating disquisition on the ins and outs 
 of military discipline which kept us in roars of laughter 
 for an hour, until Joe became rather too muddled and 
 was finally induced to depart. 
 
 In the course of a fortnight we have certainly made 
 some progress in the way of transformation from a rabble 
 into a military unit. After two or three days the task 
 of serious training began. Reveille is at 6 a.m., parade 
 at 7, breakfast at 8, morning parade from 9 to I, and after- 
 noon parade from 2 to 5. The training in Kitchener's 
 Army must strike every one as being above all practical 
 and to the point, at any rate in a battalion which is so 
 fortunate in its nucleus of trained officers and sergeants 
 as our own. Little time is wasted in ceremonial drill. 
 The number of formal rifle exercises to be learned is reduced 
 to an absolute minimum. Extended order drill, taking 
 cover, and skirmishing are practised almost from the first 
 day of training. And we are already becoming proficient 
 in certain new movements which have been devised in 
 order to meet special features of the tactics adopted by 
 the Germans during the present war, and on which the 
 commanding officer gave an excellent lecture to all officers 
 and N.C.O.'s. Special arrangements are made for train- 
 ing fresh N.C.O.'s. The regimental sergeant-major, whom 
 we all regard as the perfect type of soldier and who is in 
 addition almost the most perfect physical specimen of a 
 man I have ever seen instructs a special class of about
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 207 
 
 thirty lance-corporals and possible lance-corporals every 
 afternoon and evening on such subjects as musketry, 
 judging distance, patrols, and bivouacking. Judging dis- 
 tance, by the way, is the point upon which most emphasis 
 is placed in our training, and we have all laid to heart 
 the regimental sergeant-major's dictum that after this 
 war it will be considered more important than accuracy 
 in firing. 
 
 But the progress in the securing of discipline has on the 
 whole been less than that in technical training. There 
 is a perpetual chatter in platoons which are supposed to 
 be standing or marching at attention, and a pestilent 
 minority of slackers only intermittently trouble to keep 
 in step on the march. Several men have taken French 
 leave for two or three days, and only been punished by 
 loss of pay. Probably a majority of the battalion would 
 welcome a tightening up of discipline in most directions. 
 
 Much has been written about the hardships which have 
 been suffered by the recruits. I cannot say that I think 
 that any man in my battalion has experienced any physical 
 hardship for which a recruit ought not to be prepared 
 under existing conditions. The food is excellent, if some- 
 what monotonous. I have lived on it without spending 
 more than a few pence a day on luxuries as often as 
 not consisting merely of a pennyworth or two of fruit. 
 The only really serious criticisms which might be directed 
 against the physical conditions under which we live relate 
 to the sanitary arrangements. The non-commissioned 
 officers have a healthy terror of enteric, but the lack of 
 discipline in the battalion reflects itself in the failure to 
 enforce the orders and instructions issued with a view 
 to keep the camp healthy. One cannot help feeling that 
 a little more zeal in the enforcement of sanitary rules and 
 the provision of the means of enforcing them would be 
 more to the point than the mechanical insistence on double 
 inoculation against enteric. The arrangements for wash- 
 ing are also miserably inadequate. But there has been 
 nothing really outrageous in any of these things. As far 
 as concerns our battalion, indignation may best be reserved 
 for the shameful delays in providing for the wives and
 
 208 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 children of recruits owing to the failure to issue that strange 
 fetish the regimental number, without which apparently 
 no payments to dependents can be made. For a fort- 
 night a constant stream of anxious men was inquiring 
 of every one in authority about separation allowances. 
 Fortunately, most of the families now seem to be receiving 
 their allowances. It is to be hoped that the War Office 
 has devised means for preventing the recurrence of such 
 delays among the new units which are being created every 
 week. 
 
 IN KITCHENER'S ARMY' 
 BY A SEPTEMBER RECRUIT (F. H. K.) 
 
 I 
 
 After three months of soldiering one is something of a 
 veteran in the New Army. The last shadows of one's 
 civilian past have long since faded away. For a month 
 after enlisting I scarcely spoke to a civilian except occa- 
 sionally to shop assistants or hawkers in the course of 
 making small purchases. I have only once been away 
 from camp for a night and slept in a bed. In so far as 
 I think of the future at all it is on my possible experiences 
 as a soldier that I reflect. But I have been too exhilarated 
 to think. I have certainly never in my life experienced 
 more continuous cheerfulness and in the truest sense of 
 the word more happiness than in these three months. 
 The sense of physical fitness ; the exhilaration of a col- 
 lective regimental life ; the constant opportunities for 
 the formation of new friendships with men of widely 
 varying experiences ; the congeniality of a life which is 
 communistic in just the aspects in which communism 
 is convenient and stimulating ; the variety of the work 
 (which does not seem to me personally to lose its sense 
 of freshness and novelty to any extent), and last but not 
 least, the humorous aspects of one's own and one's com- 
 rades' activities, all combine to expel the baneful elements 
 1 From the New Statesman, 5 December, 1914.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 209 
 
 of existence. I may possibly live to think differently ; 
 but at the present moment, assuming this war had to 
 come, I feel nothing but gratitude to the gods for sending 
 it in my time. Whatever war itself may be like, pre- 
 paring to fight in time of war is the greatest game and 
 the finest work in the world. 
 
 I may have been particularly fortunate in my experi- 
 ences. I was lucky enough to become a lance-corporal after 
 about a fortnight's service, a corporal a week later, and 
 finally to find myself the only raw recruit in the sergeants' 
 mess of my battalion, where active-service medals are the 
 rule rather than the exception. And thus, in addition 
 to going through the necessarily varied experiences of 
 a compressed military training, I have found myself con- 
 stantly undertaking various auxiliary jobs which no one 
 so lately a civilian and with a glimmering of humour could 
 fail to enjoy. Who, for instance, would not swell with 
 pride, in spite of an inward smile at himself, when execut- 
 ing the duty of fetching a drunken deserter from a civilian 
 police-station and marching him to the railway station 
 under escort through the streets of Battersea ? When 
 your turn comes to act as battalion orderly sergeant a 
 really exciting day is in store for you. The " B.O.," 
 as he is familiarly termed, supervises the issue of all meals 
 along with the orderly officer ; and an enthusiast can 
 find plenty to do in dealing with complaints, keeping 
 orderly corporals and tent orderlies up to the mark, and 
 so on. After breakfast you see that the sick get " fell 
 in " by companies to the sound of a bugle, order them 
 to spring smartly to attention, parade them before the 
 medical officer, and watch carefully to see that those 
 awarded " light duty " or " medicine and duty " do not 
 slip through the meshes of the disciplinary net. But 
 you reach the summit of your glory as B.O. when at 10.15 
 a.m. you proceed to accompany the commanding officer 
 round camp. The second-in-command, the adjutant, the 
 quartermaster, the regimental sergeant-major, the pioneer 
 sergeant and the B.O. conduct a tour in every quarter 
 of the camp, which amounts to an amateur, but severely 
 practical, sanitary inspection. The talk is of coagula- 
 
 15
 
 210 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 tions of flies, the pursuit of lice, ventilation, refuse dis- 
 posal, and the general cleanliness of tents and lines as 
 regards which tent prizes for tidiness have achieved a 
 certain measure of success. 
 
 But the office of battalion orderly sergeant is an orna- 
 mental sinecure compared with that of company orderly 
 sergeant, which is held for a week continuously by each 
 of the sergeants and full corporals in the company. The 
 company orderly sergeant calls the roll at reVeilte and at 
 first post, and is responsible for reporting all absentees. 
 This is no light task in a battalion of the New Army under 
 canvas. The company orderly sergeant has further to 
 warn personally all men who are placed on special duties 
 and fatigues. I have had to hunt out as many as eighty 
 men between 8.45 p.m. and 7 a.m. for this purpose. He 
 also compiles lists of and hands out all passes at the hour 
 at which they become effective I have calculated that 
 the value of my pay as sergeant, in cash, kind, and allow- 
 ances, is considerably over two pounds a week, and have 
 wondered at times whether I was not overpaid. But 
 after a week as company orderly sergeant in a camp alter- 
 nately boggy with rain and stiff with frost, I felt that 
 my money was well earned. 
 
 The light infantry battalion to which I belong consists 
 mainly of raw recruits from London and Birmingham, 
 with a few score Welshmen, mostly miners, and a sprinkling 
 of natives of the remote county which gives its name to 
 our regiment. Including the forty odd sergeants there 
 are over a hundred old or serving soldiers in the battalion. 
 There are a fair number of men of middle-class origin 
 in the ranks, and about ten of these have been given com- 
 missions, mostly in other battalions of the New Army. 
 There are very noticeable differences between the char- 
 acters of individual tents or individual platoons corre- 
 sponding to the origin of the predominant type of men in 
 them. For instance, my own platoon consists mainly 
 of young clerks and mechanics, while the platoon which 
 occupies the tents at the top of the lines is composed of 
 a much rougher and possibly, in certain respects, tougher 
 type of man. A battalion of recruits of the most hetero-
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 211 
 
 geneous type acquires a sense of unity and common pride 
 in a very short time. But this is only one element in the 
 creation of a trained military unit. How far we have 
 really gone in the direction of becoming a fighting force 
 comparable to British Regular Army standards I am not 
 capable of judging. But we can certainly already be 
 regarded as an actual military unit of some immediate 
 value for fighting purposes, and if we spend the next two 
 months in field work and in preparing for and firing another 
 course of musketry, we should be capable of doing credit 
 to the traditions of the British Army in the firing-line. 
 
 One not unimportant point in the organization of the 
 New Army has been repeatedly impressed upon me ever 
 since I enlisted. The policy of mixing a few score re- 
 servists (other than sergeants or ex-non-commissioned 
 officers likely to be capable of doing sergeant's work) with 
 a battalion of raw recruits has not been justified by its 
 results. There appear to have been two ideas underlying 
 the policy. It is natural to assume that a sprinkling of 
 veterans will stiffen the quality of a recently recruited 
 fighting force on active service. And on paper it seems 
 an excellent plan to keep a certain number of trained 
 veterans in a new battalion for the purpose of undertaking 
 the work of cooks, pioneers, sanitary squad, etc., and 
 thus enabling the untrained men to be constantly on parade. 
 But in practice these advantages prove to be very doubtful, 
 and, in any case, are counterbalanced by the constant 
 trouble caused by the old soldiers from the disciplinary 
 point of view. The offences for which the old soldiers 
 have been responsible have been out of all proportion 
 to their number in the battalion. They have con- 
 stantly been under arrest, mainly for drunkenness and for 
 absence without leave, and it is certain that they have, 
 directly and indirectly, made it more difficult to build up 
 systematic discipline in the whole battalion. Moreover, 
 it is not easy for an average young lance-corporal, acting 
 as a section leader after perhaps two months' service, to 
 control effectively two or three rough old soldiers who have 
 come back after five or more years in civil life. The fact 
 is that many of these men seem to possess the essential
 
 212 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 qualities of the soldier to a less degree than many of the 
 young recruits who have only served a few weeks. The 
 youngsters, as often as not, shoot better and march better 
 than the old hands. I do not wish to say a word against 
 the better type of reservist, who is also represented in 
 my own battalion. But it is difficult not to believe that 
 these men could be used to the greatest advantage at the 
 front or in battalions for home service consisting wholly 
 of reservists, from whom men could be selected from time 
 to time for the position of sergeants in the battalions of 
 raw recruits in the New Army. 
 
 IN KITCHENER'S ARMY' 
 BY A SEPTEMBER RECRUIT (F. H. K.) 
 
 II 
 
 The grievances of the newly enrolled soldier have been 
 freely and frankly discussed in the Press of late. I have 
 already implied that I do not consider that I personally 
 have any serious cause for complaint against the authori- 
 ties. But there have been not a few cases even in my 
 own battalion where men have suffered minor hardships 
 and inconveniences which can hardly be regarded as irre- 
 mediable. Take, for instance, the question of washing 
 accommodation. During the last three weeks of our 
 period under canvas an excellent rough-and-ready hot- 
 water bathroom has been provided in the shape of a marquee 
 equipped with a number of zinc baths and a boiler out- 
 side. But for the first two months of our life in camp 
 it was impossible to obtain a hot-water bath except by 
 waiting for perhaps half the evening at a crowded Soldiers' 
 Home. The weekly compulsory visit to a swimming 
 bath, where the water was often very definitely opaque 
 as the result of contact with several hundred previous 
 bathers, was scarcely an adequate substitute for a hot 
 bath, and the opportunities for a splash in a cold tub in 
 
 1 From the New Statesman, 12 December, 1914.
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 218 
 
 camp were not frequent. Although one is grateful for 
 the practical arrangements eventually made, it seems 
 unfortunate that the new recruit should have been left 
 for two months entirely dependent upon private and 
 philanthropic enterprise for an elementary essential of 
 cleanliness. 
 
 I have very definitely formed the impression that 
 drunkenness, or even excessive drinking in any sense, in 
 the New Army is confined to a relatively small minority 
 of the men in most battalions. And it is only a very tiny 
 proportion of this minority of men who get drunk owing 
 to any craving for alcohol or pleasure in the consumption 
 of large quantities of it. The genuine alcoholist in the 
 New Army is always a middle-aged man, and generally 
 an old soldier. The men under thirty, whether serving 
 soldiers or recruits, who drink to excess do so for three 
 reasons : first and foremost, for lack of any intelligent 
 interests or habits of recreation outside their work ; secondly, 
 owing to the prevalent notion that beer-swilling is a fine, 
 expansive, John-Bullish, soldierly recreation ; and, thirdly, 
 owing to the custom of standing drinks, which at times 
 undoubtedly adds to the congeniality of life, but as often 
 as not is an irritating nuisance to any sensible man, whether 
 he is the recipient or the donor of the drink in question. 
 Obviously the first of the three causes of excessive drinking 
 is, in the Army as everywhere else, by far the most im- 
 portant ; and for that reason, among others, the provision 
 of facilities for recreation and education is an all-important 
 feature in the New Army, if only from the most narrowly 
 military point of view. I frankly do not think that the 
 superior authorities have done all that they could have 
 done in this matter. They have rightly made the fullest 
 use of voluntary effort ; but voluntary effort, even includ- 
 ing the gigantic enterprise of the Y.M.C.A., has fallen far 
 short of the need. 
 
 In the important military centre of Colchester the task 
 has perhaps been as adequately carried out as anywhere ; 
 which is attributable to the fact that the Town Council, 
 under the energetic leadership of the Mayor, Alderman 
 Marriage, has taken the lead in making provision for the
 
 214 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 troops, and has incidentally published an invaluable guide 
 to all the places of recreation, the foreign language classes, 
 the bathrooms, etc., available for soldiers in the town. 
 But where the local population was small in relation to 
 the number of troops, and above all in the military centres 
 far removed from any town, it was obviously the duty of 
 the War Office to see that every soldier had at least an 
 opportunity in the evening of finding a seat in a cheerful, 
 brightly lighted tent or shed, where he was under no obliga- 
 tion to purchase alcohol and could obtain a decent cup of 
 coffee (which the canteen contractors, in their rush for 
 profits, as often as not did not find it worth while to pro- 
 vide). However, it is satisfactory to find that in the new 
 camps of huts there are to be company recreation-rooms, 
 and a site is even marked out for a cinema theatre. One 
 only hopes that steps will also be taken to provide ade- 
 quately for the small but not insignificant number of men 
 serving in the ranks who, at least if a little encouragement 
 were given, would be glad of an opportunity to attend 
 some sort of classes in the evening, whether in French or 
 German, European history, or some of the special branches 
 of military knowledge, such as semaphore signalling, map 
 reading, or first aid. There are thousands of young men 
 now serving in the Army who, if the war had not broken 
 out, would have been attending polytechnics, Workers' 
 Educational Association classes, or evening schools of one 
 kind or another, after a day's work often as hard as that 
 which they are now carrying through in their new circum- 
 stances. And every effort ought certainly to be made 
 to ensure that (apart from the invaluable education which 
 life in the Army itself provides) the mental equipment of 
 the tens of thousands of young men above the average 
 in intelligence is not needlessly dulled through their 
 experience of soldiering. 
 
 A good deal of the criticism of the arrangements made 
 for the New Army has related to the all-important question 
 of food. My own experience is that, as regards the quality 
 of the provisions supplied by the authorities, there is no 
 reasonable ground of complaint. When men have gone 
 short, or have had uneatable food, the trouble has always
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 215 
 
 been due either to the organization for serving out and 
 cooking food within the regiment or to groups of men 
 scrambling for more than their fair share of food. The 
 ordinary Army routine for serving out rations in camp is 
 as follows : The company orderly corporal draws the rations 
 from the battalion store or cookhouse and distributes 
 them to the orderly men from each tent in his company. 
 For this purpose the orderly men are paraded before each 
 meal. The company and battalion orderly officers for 
 the day are responsible for seeing that the routine is ob- 
 served properly. Obviously any irregularity in the routine 
 is almost certain to result in some men being deprived 
 of their fair share of food. A second difficulty in the 
 feeding of the troops arises from the cooking. As I have 
 mentioned before, this work has mostly been relegated 
 to old soldiers in order to enable recruits to be constantly 
 on parade. The result has not been satisfactory ; and 
 this must be attributed in part to the slackness and dirti- 
 ness of the subordinate cooks, since making tea and the 
 simple stewing and roasting of meat on camp fires or in 
 field ovens require no technical knowledge beyond what 
 is supplied by the sergeant cook. 
 
 But I believe that probably the most important source 
 of complaints about food in the New Army is due to an 
 apparently trivial point which can scarcely be fully appreci- 
 ated by any one who has not had some experience of camp 
 life in the Army. It is useless to supply good rations, 
 to give technical instruction to cooks, and to make elaborate 
 arrangements for the distribution of food if the camp 
 kettles (so-called " dicksies ") in which tea, cocoa, soup, 
 potatoes, and stews are all cooked are not kept clean. 
 In point of fact, in many camps it has been the rule rather 
 than the exception to find each meal unpleasantly remi- 
 niscent of the last one's tea, for instance, tastes strongly 
 of onions or is swimming with the mutton fat of the last 
 dinner. Now, if each tent (or in the new camps each 
 hut) had its own numbered or labelled camp kettles, this 
 objectionable feature of Army catering would automatically 
 disappear, because the men in each tent or hut would 
 take effective steps to compel their orderlies (taken in
 
 216 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 rotation from among themselves) to wash up properly. 
 As it is, any tent has been liable to have its tea served 
 in a kettle which has not been properly cleaned for days 
 because the tent orderlies through whose hands it passed 
 have preferred the luxury of a quiet smoke after dinner 
 to the rather unpleasant task of scrubbing out a greasy 
 kettle with probably inadequate materials trusting to 
 luck with regard to getting some one else's clean kettle 
 for tea. I am prepared to uphold the thesis that the 
 numbering or labelling of camp kettles with a view to 
 assigning them to definite groups of men is one of the most 
 important reforms which could be carried out in the British 
 Army at the present time for the purpose of improving 
 the food and thereby the physical and fighting efficiency 
 of hundreds of the new units. 
 
 But once one has had the good fortune to enter the 
 sergeants' mess the trouble of the daily distribution of food 
 no longer affects one, since even under canvas one enjoys 
 the luxury of sit-down meals at a table. The sergeants' 
 mess of the British Army is one of the many English social 
 institutions which have developed a mass of vital tradi- 
 tions scarcely known outside the classes which come im- 
 mediately into contact with them. 
 
 I shall never forget how one sergeant (who was a com- 
 plete stranger to me) said to me on the day on which I 
 had just received my stripes : ' You know, a corporal 
 might often be glad to see another corporal make a fool 
 of himself ; but sergeants always try to help each other 
 out." Whether or no this way of stating the case involves 
 a libel on corporals, it certainly represents the spirit which 
 I have almost invariably found amongst the sergeants. 
 Another point in the sergeants' mess which is striking 
 to any one who has been familiar with Public School and 
 University life is the tolerance of eccentricity or individu- 
 ality in matters which do not directly affect a man's 
 duties as a soldier. Perhaps here, again, the exceptional 
 atmosphere of a sergeants' mess in a new battalion in war- 
 time does not provide a fair criterion ; but I have certainly 
 gained the impression that the standards of good form in the 
 sergeants' mess throughout the Army do not involve the
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 217 
 
 narrow spirit of hostility to most forms of intelligent initia- 
 tive in conduct which characterizes a common type of 
 English Public School. I have certainly never felt more 
 at home among any body of men than I have in my regi- 
 mental sergeants' mess, though I am about as unsergeant- 
 like a type of person as could be found. If it is my good 
 fortune to come back safe and sound from over the water 
 after the war, it is the sergeants' mess which will form the 
 centre of the memories of my military past. 
 
 ON THE EVE' 
 
 BY A SERGEANT OF THE FIRST NEW ARMY (F. H. K.) 
 
 When " No parade to-day " sounded the other day at 
 the conclusion of the inter-divisional manoeuvres my work 
 as scout sergeant had taken me some distance from my 
 own detachment. The enemy, numbering two divisions 
 in opposition to our one, had succeeded in forcing their 
 way between two of our brigades, which had advanced 
 along parallel roads, and had completely outflanked my 
 own, the central brigade. I hastened to begin my march 
 home, expecting to fall in with one or the other of the 
 battalions in my brigade later on. As I hurried along I 
 passed a considerable number of troops, most of whom 
 were basking in the delicious afternoon sunshine on the 
 roadside or in the fields, awaiting the order to form up. 
 They belonged to all parts of the country men of the 
 North and the Midlands, East Anglians, and Cockneys 
 and were probably a fair sample of the First New Army. 
 The sight of them gave one a thrill of pride. They looked 
 as tough, well-set-up, and hearty a body as any man could 
 wish to fight with. There is no doubt whatever that in 
 physique and in enthusiasm the first " Kitchener " Army 
 could hardly be surpassed. Everywhere one sees the 
 same thing and hears the same story continual grumbling 
 at the delay in getting into the firing-line. 
 
 1 From the New Statesman, 29 May, 1915.
 
 218 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 It goes without saying that this discontent is merely 
 a temporary phase, important only as a symptom of the 
 spirit of the New Armies. The public, taking that spirit 
 for granted, is perhaps more concerned to know, not 
 what Kitchener's Army feels like and thinks of itself, but 
 what is its real military quality as a disciplined force. What 
 can the 120,000 men of the First New Army do that they 
 could not do nine months ago ? To begin with, they 
 are capable of infinitely greater physical endurance. There 
 is little doubt that in this respect they would prove superior 
 even to the original Expeditionary Force which fought 
 at Mons for two reasons. In the first place, the New 
 Army is more sober than the old. And in the second, 
 the original Expeditionary Force included large numbers 
 of Reservists who were called straight up from civilian 
 life. These were the men whose feet went to pieces in 
 the retreat from Mons it is extraordinary that most of 
 them lasted as well as they did. We of the First New 
 Army, on the other hand, have had nine months of hard 
 continuous training, and we shall never be fitter than we 
 are. We have learned to march, to bivouac, to cook 
 our own dinners in mess-tins over a fire of a few sticks, 
 and, last but not least, to wait for hours in every variety 
 of weather by day or night. We have had experience 
 of life under canvas, in huts, and in billets. Our musketry 
 is good, but not on the average as good as that of the 
 old Regular Army, though we have plenty of crack shots. 
 Our specialists, such as signallers and machine-gunners, 
 are thoroughly trained and keen. Our drill on the barrack 
 square is not generally up to the standard of the Old Army, 
 but when we turn out for an inspection and really put 
 our minds to the job, I think we can do a march-past or 
 a rifle movement as well as a line battalion. A plethora 
 of mimic warfare has made us perhaps rather more careless 
 in such matters as taking cover than we were six months 
 ago ; but a breath of reality will alter that. 
 
 Incidentally, the important part which athletics have 
 played in the training of the New Army is worth noting. 
 Cross-country running, football, and boxing have en- 
 couraged physical development, bred esprit dc corps, and
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 219 
 
 relieved the monotony of life. Some weeks ago I had the 
 good fortune to win a medal in a cross-country run of 
 seven miles in which there were five hundred competitors 
 out of a single division. The King's presence at the race 
 was briefly noticed in the Press ; and German papers, 
 misunderstanding the reference, jeered at the British 
 Monarch for attending a horse-race meeting in time of 
 war. If a few Teutonic journalists could have witnessed 
 the scene, there might perhaps be less nonsense talked 
 in Germany about the quality and spirit of the New English 
 Army. Anyway, I wish our division could take on five 
 hundred German recruits in a seven-mile team race. 
 
 As regards discipline, it is hard to speak. The discipline 
 of the New Armies is different from that of the old Regular 
 Army because the conditions are different. One of the 
 natural bases of discipline, the subordination of rank to 
 rank more or less according to seniority of service, is neces- 
 sarily absent in battalions composed almost entirely of 
 men who enlisted en masse as raw recruits. The great 
 majority of the men who are now non-commissioned officers 
 knew no more than the other recruits when they joined. 
 Their authority (apart from legal powers of coercion, which 
 in the hands of a fool will not suffice in any army in the 
 world to secure the instinctive obedience which is discipline) 
 therefore depends almost solely upon their inherent capacity 
 and the goodwill of their subordinates. Discipline, of 
 course, varies a good deal from one battalion to another 
 in Kitchener's Army as it does, by the way, in the 
 Regular Army, where the differences between English 
 and Irish regiments or between Guards and some of the 
 line regiments are particularly striking. The differences 
 in the New Army are largely due to the personal idiosyn- 
 crasies of officers commanding companies and battalions. 
 But they are also attributable to the varying extent to 
 which old Army N.C.O.'s are scattered through the new 
 units. From accounts which I have heard of the more 
 recently formed battalions of Kitchener's Army, I should 
 say that in some respects there is at the present moment 
 less difference from the point of view of discipline and 
 military spirit between the old Regular Army and the
 
 220 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 First New Army than there is between the First New 
 Army and these new battalions of the later New Armies. 
 Undoubtedly, there has been an enormous improvement 
 during the past few months, and the chief difference that 
 still remains in this respect between a First Army battalion 
 and a Regular battalion is perhaps that the personal factor 
 in the maintenance of discipline counts for more in the 
 former than in the latter. Much therefore depends upon 
 the N.C.O.'s of the New Armies, and as one of them I may 
 be regarded as a prejudiced witness, but I do not think 
 they will fail. On the contrary, I cannot help feeling 
 that the New Army sergeants and corporals, taken as a 
 whole, will prove an extraordinarily valuable military 
 asset. They are naturally the pick of the autumn recruits. 
 They have been selected purely by merit, and the field 
 of selection was exceptional in quality and quantity alike. 
 The result, therefore, ought to be good, and I believe it is. 
 Nor have the non-commissioned ranks been depleted to 
 any marked extent to supply officers to more recently 
 formed units. Probably almost any New Army N.C.O. 
 would be prepared to accept a commission if he were defi- 
 nitely asked to do so on patriotic grounds ; but unless 
 he is asked he generally prefers to stay where he is. As 
 regards my own battalion (which at the present moment 
 contains four University men amongst the N.C.O.'s), nearly 
 all the score or so of men who have left the ranks to take 
 commissions have been privates or at most lance-corporals. 
 And so, I understand, it has been elsewhere. The New 
 Army sergeants and full corporals have practically all 
 been content with their position. 
 
 Personally, I feel that a sergeant has as wide and useful 
 a scope for work as a subaltern, and I find the social aspects 
 of regimental life in the New Army more congenial than 
 ever. Take a battalion like my own, which is made up 
 of every class, from unskilled labourers to professional 
 men. Now that under strict active service conditions 
 our sergeants' mess is for the moment abolished, I sit 
 down to meals with a brass-caster, a railway porter, a 
 sugar-boiler, a bricklayer, an engine-cleaner, an " oyster- 
 man " (i.e., a man who serves behind an oyster bar in
 
 SOLDIERING IN ENGLAND 221 
 
 Shaftesbury Avenue), a tailor, and several clerks and ware- 
 housemen of various types ; and there is nothing forced 
 or difficult in the association. We are all " here because 
 we're here," as our marching song says. It has been incon- 
 venient at times in the past to sleep in the same tent with 
 a miscellaneous collection of men, a minority of whom 
 were prepared to appropriate, and on occasion did ap- 
 propriate, one's boots in order to obtain the price of a few 
 drinks. But on the whole, during the past nine months 
 I have certainly found life as pleasant as at any other 
 period of my existence and as much, or more, worth living. 
 For there is no doubt that the bugle calls gradually eat 
 into one's soul. The habits of a military communal life 
 become a second nature. After all, the regiment is a 
 home and a mother to us. It feeds us and clothes us 
 and provides us with healthy work, comradeship, and 
 opportunities for enjoyable leisure. Indeed, I sometimes 
 think that the ritual of everyday regimental life the 
 parading of orderly men for rations or of orderly sergeants 
 on " staff parade," the morning bugle calls of reveille, 
 retreat, and last post, guard-mounting, ceremonial duties, 
 and so on comes nearer than anything else in modern 
 society to that theology-less religion of social ritual about 
 which Miss Jane Harrison writes so convincingly in her 
 "Alpha and Omega." It takes the episodes of our daily 
 collective life and gives them a dignity in fact, almost 
 a dramatic form. And it would be difficult to find a 
 ritual more calculated to call forth in one a thrill of col- 
 lective emotion than a big ceremonial parade as, for 
 instance, when our whole brigade marched past the Minister 
 for War the other day in columns of platoons. It may 
 seem ridiculous, but I certainly never in my life felt more 
 wrapped up in the flood of collective humanity than on that 
 occasion. Perhaps I am more of an enthusiast than most, 
 or, rather, more conscious of what is happening to me 
 and to those around me ; but it is unquestionably a fact 
 that the battalions and even the brigades of the First 
 New Army are no longer mere congeries of men. They 
 have their collective souls. They are more living, corporate 
 entities than any bodies corporate with hundreds of years 
 of history behind them.
 
 222 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 Two impressions about myself are uppermost in my 
 mind on the eve of leaving England with a prospect of 
 stiff fighting in a very few weeks, perhaps in a few days. 
 In the first place, my mind is more alert and keen than 
 ever in my life before. I am nothing of a philosopher 
 in the technical sense of the term, but I find myself con- 
 tinually reflecting on the mysteries of life and time and 
 the reality behind things as they seem. I have even made 
 some headway with Bergson's L'Evolution Creatrice, which 
 I am carrying to France on my back. (I was prejudiced 
 against him before by the way he has been seized on by 
 certain religious sects, political reactionaries, emotional 
 syndicalists, et hoc genus omne. But Wilkes was no 
 Wilkite !) If only the war lasts long enough and I don't 
 get knocked out, I shall have much clearer notions on these 
 subjects than I ever should have had otherwise. In the 
 second place, all my enthusiasm about fighting has come 
 to centre round my connection with my own regiment 
 and brigade. I suppose I could take root somewhere 
 else in the Army if I had to, but to part from my battalion 
 would be to break one of the strongest ties I have ever 
 known. This feeling has taken many months to grow 
 up. At first one knew and felt little beyond the restricted 
 circle of one's platoon. Gradually first one's company, 
 then one's battalion, and finally one's brigade and division 
 become living realities. Nine months ago I enlisted 
 from a number of motives general patriotism, indigna- 
 tion at the invasion of Belgium, enthusiasm for the prin- 
 ciple of nationality, and sheer egotistical adventurousness. 
 But now all my feelings about my own country and the 
 rights and wrongs of this war seem to have been, as far 
 as my everyday emotional life is concerned, absorbed in 
 the sentiment of attachment to my own battalion and 
 brigade. I don't personally bother about hating Germans ; 
 and patriotic and humanitarian sentiment only stirs me 
 consciously at distant intervals. The thoughts that 
 habitually rouse me to a desire of coming through this 
 job tolerably creditably are the honour of my own battalion 
 and its opinion of me. Those are now my sustaining 
 motives in this game of war.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 
 
 To R. C. K. Ensor 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I.. 
 
 MAIDA BARRACKS, ALDERSHOT. 
 April, 1915. 
 
 WE are expecting to move very shortly now. We 
 have been on a trek, including a night's bivouacking, and 
 have had rather a rough time altogether for the last 
 fortnight. 
 
 This last business in Flanders seems to have been a 
 nasty knock. These battles seem to get more and more 
 unpleasant from an infantryman's point of view. If 
 asphyxiating gases are going to be part of the ordinary 
 game in future, the prospect is decidedly vile. It certainly 
 would be more satisfactory to go anywhere rather than 
 to Flanders. At the same time, I suppose the Germans 
 will continue to break through there, and somebody must 
 do the dirty work of plugging the hole. I wonder why 
 there are still French on our left. You would think 
 that the Belgians and ourselves ought to be able to cover 
 all the ground from the coast down to our right now. 
 
 Thank you very much for your kind offer to get me an}'- 
 thing. I think I have all I want now some one has 
 just sent me a torch. I shall get some leather gloves 
 I think they might be useful. But I am carrying more 
 than any one else in the battalion already every ounce 
 seems to tell when you get up to about 60 or 70 Ib. 
 
 I shall look forward to a pleasant talk in about eighteen 
 months' time. 
 
 I hope the new infant goes on well. It looks splendid. 
 I am damned glad I got a couple of kids before going off 
 to the wars.
 
 224 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To E. S. P. Haynes. 
 
 6-TH D.C.L.I., 
 
 MAIDA BARRACKS, ALDERSHOT. 
 May, 1915. 
 
 . . . Rupert Brooke's death seems a peculiarly tragic 
 episode. I have felt it the more as we started soldiering 
 together when the war broke out. It has intensified 
 my conviction that I shall not come back or rather my 
 expectation for the feeling has no rational basis and I 
 can imagine myself analysing it with interest after the 
 war. Still, it is there. I wonder if most men who think 
 and have not been accustomed to face Death before have 
 it when they go on active service. 
 
 Many thanks for writing to stir me up about the will. 
 I have now completed it, and enclose it herewith along 
 with all the relevant papers. . 
 
 We have had an embarkation leave, and I expect we 
 shall be off in a few days now. I think this battalion 
 will fully maintain the honour of our regiment you will 
 have seen French's reference to the Cornwalls. I hope 
 to have many more jovial meals with you in the future ; 
 and if there is a Valhalla by any chance and I find my 
 way there before you, I will keep a place for you at the 
 festive board and sample the brews for you in advance. . . . 
 
 To Mrs. Hubback (Miss Eva Spielmann). 
 
 ALDERSHOT 15 May, 1915. 
 
 Yes, it is only a matter of a wire to our Divisional Head- 
 quarters, hourly expected now. 
 
 I hope I shall come back, it would be very interesting, 
 but I don't hope for any more life. I shall be very grateful 
 to Fate if I get it. Have just been reading Jane Harri- 
 son's "Essays" and have begun Bergson in French as a 
 result. I was prejudiced against him owing to the way he is 
 seized on by Christians, anti-rationalists, and reactionaries 
 of all kinds, including the newest brands of revolutionaries, 
 but I wanted badly to get my mind on to some philo- 
 sophical thinking. I never felt more convinced in all my
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 225 
 
 life that the chances are a thousand to one that things 
 as we see them for purposes of daily life are not things as 
 they really are. That is trite philosophy, but when one 
 comes to think it habitually it becomes important. And so 
 I like to feel vaguely out behind time and the shadows 
 of things as they seem. 
 
 Soldiering in springtime has been very pleasant. I 
 feel very tough and fit. 
 
 Kitchener inspected the 43rd Brigade a few days ago. 
 We marched past in column of platoons. I never felt 
 so mad with emotion in all my life. The ritual of the 
 Army beats that of the Christian Church any day. In 
 fact, the ritual of soldiering comes nearer a decent civic 
 religion than anything else I know. It is a queer thing 
 that I should have found the social and emotional en- 
 vironment that suits me best in the Army. I wonder 
 if I could ever find a family an adequate substitute for 
 a regiment. If I do come back from the war I shall want 
 to keep up a bit of soldiering as long as I can. I feel 
 as if I couldn't live for evermore without bugle calls. 
 They have eaten into my soul. 
 
 Of course I have experienced all the advantages of 
 war for nine months. Now I am to come up against the 
 horrors pretty badly perhaps. I get very depressed at 
 this German-baiting and spirit of hatred. I can't help 
 feeling the Germans had something of a case about the 
 Lusitania, for instance, horrible as it may seem and 
 although I think they were very foolish to sink her. 
 
 Well, good-bye. I shall always be glad of a line from 
 you. Give me any news of Joan and Bernard and Diana. 
 I wonder if Joan will remember me. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 27 May, 1915. 
 
 My first week of warfare has been a delightful picnic 
 two days in a splendid camp over the sea, three days in 
 an idyllic French Flemish village, then two days of easy 
 marching towards the firing-line. Our village where we 
 stopped three days was one of the most charming typically 
 Flemish places you can imagine. The people all over 
 
 1C
 
 226 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 here mostly speak Flemish naturally. The kids learn 
 French first in the schools. I found a Belgian Fleming 
 working in the village who could hardly speak French. 
 I got on with him by speaking my few words of Dutch 
 mixed in with German where I didn't know the Dutch. 
 We have just got into the area where there are odd de- 
 tachments of armies in the firing-line and where also there 
 was fighting with the Germans last year. Weather de- 
 lightful all the time. Since Sunday night we have been 
 hearing the big guns in the distance. 
 
 Well, we are living like fighting-cocks and enjoying a 
 continental tour at the Government's expense. That is 
 all that war means so far, except for the boom of the 
 guns, which has just come to my ear again as I lie in this 
 pleasant meadow girt with pollarded elms. We sleep in 
 barns on straw, absolutely the best bed in the world. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 16 June, 1915. 
 
 Have just come out of the trenches for two days after 
 two days in. It was a pretty warm corner. We went 
 for instruction with our 1st Battalion. I happened to 
 be close by when two of the 6th Battalion fellows were 
 shot through the head. I am glad to get away for a bit 
 to another very pleasant camp by a large village with a 
 fresh flowing brook where you can get water for washing. 
 Our ist Battalion have been in these trenches for fifty- 
 two days : it is as hot a place as you can find along the line, 
 but it is good to get instruction from such excellent fellows. 
 I am specializing on bomb-throwing now ; in fact, my 
 scouts are being turned into a bomb-throwing squad. 
 One did not expect to become a British Grenadier when 
 one went in for soldiering. You can do a lot with bombs 
 in this hand-to-hand fighting, but it seems a rum way of 
 settling international affairs. I was sitting for some time 
 at the end of a sap within fifteen yards of the Germans. 
 The trenches run very close together where our ist Bat- 
 talion are even when you are out of the trenches in the 
 bivvies (dugouts) just behind, the bullets come through 
 the trees over your head all the time, making a beastly
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 327 
 
 row as they go through the tree trunks. We were awak- 
 ened on Sunday morning by the Germans having a bit 
 of a hate in the form of shelling our wood. You could 
 hear the whizz for a second or so before the explosion 
 came, and of course every one kept under cover in the 
 bivvies. This is a delightful village where we now are. 
 You can't imagine how one's spirits went up as we marched 
 here in the early hours between one and six a.m., once 
 we were out of the range of stray bullets. It was a relief 
 to feel oneself out of the regular death area. I am 
 becoming quite attached to this part of Flanders, which 
 is slightly undulating, not absolutely flat like the part 
 more to the north and west. The meadows and fields 
 around the camp slope gradually down to the brook, and 
 the A.S.C. Camp which adjoins ours is quite picturesque, 
 with the horses and wagons and little bivouacs made of 
 waterproof sheets, surrounded by rows of tall trees with 
 bare trunks after the regular French and Belgian style. 
 The brier roses are blossoming in the hedges just as, I 
 suppose, they are in England. It was rather pathetic 
 to find a cottage garden with gooseberry and currant 
 bushes and blossoming roses only a couple of hundred 
 yards behind the point where our rifles were cracking. 
 The cottage itself was smashed to pieces. I picked a red 
 rose and meant to enclose it, but I think it has got broken 
 in my pack. The Belgians here are delighted when they 
 find one tries to sprecken Vlaams and compliment one 
 most profusely on one's efforts. 
 
 To R. C. K. Ensor. 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 Monday, 28 June, 1915. 
 
 Many thanks for your p.c. Am going on fit and strong. 
 My brigade is now doing duty in the trenches for the first 
 time, but my battalion happens to be in reserve, so we 
 are living in dugouts and in the vaults of a brewery in 
 the ruins of a famous town. The scene is extraordinary. 
 I go for peace to read and write in the ruins of a church 
 opposite. There are generally shells exploding a few 
 score yards off and our batteries replying very near by.
 
 228 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 We have done two instructional spells in the trenches; 
 as luck would have it, a lot of us went to our own ist 
 Battalion, who are in a very hot place and lose about five 
 or six men daily on the average. Saps go down to within 
 fifteen yards of the Germans. I had two of our men 
 shot through the head close by me on my second day up. 
 We had a good few casualties during these two spells 
 and when digging trenches close behind the front line, 
 of which we have done a good deal. Our job in reserve 
 now is mostly carrying rations, water, etc., for the battalion 
 linked with us in the brigade, which is doing front-line 
 duty in a whole new trench newly made after an advance 
 the one they took from the Germans was too full of 
 dead bodies to use. 
 
 I am now battalion bomb sergeant every one is going 
 in increasingly for the use of grenades in this close trench 
 warfare. 
 
 Writing this in the vault by candle-light at mid-day. 
 
 There is not a single house here anything like complete. 
 I hope they will put a ring fence round the place and keep 
 it as a memorial of what war is. 
 
 This is not a life for any one with anything like nerves 
 three men have already broken down in our battalion 
 but I don't see myself coming to an.y harm by it unless 
 by the inevitable bullet or shell or bomb. (Trench mortars 
 are about the most bloody things in the trenches.) 
 
 As far as I can judge we shall very likely escape epi- 
 demics and disease out here. The sanitary discipline 
 and arrangements, though rough, are pretty good though 
 I think there is still room for improvement in the training 
 and teaching of the New Armies in this respect. 
 
 Should be awfully glad to hear your views of the pros- 
 pects and progress of the war /as a whole from time to 
 time, if you can spare time to write. 
 
 I don't see a great deal of use in this " National Register." 
 Some good, no doubt, will be got from it, but it is mostly 
 the outcome of very crude thinking as far as I can see. 
 I hope more keenly than ever we beat the Germans without
 
 229 
 
 conscription. It would be a great moral achievement. 
 That is, of course, not an overwhelming argument against 
 conscription, but it has weight. . . . 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 
 
 IN A DUGOUT JUST BEHIND THE FIRING-LINE. 
 29 July, 1915. 
 
 I have been in the battle I think it is pretty well a 
 battle, which you will read about in the papers and I 
 am wounded, but not badly. We stood to in our rest- 
 camp at 4.30 this morning. The big guns had been 
 going some time. We marched about three or four miles 
 and then halted. The news came of the German attack 
 with liquid fire. Then another brigade of our Division 
 sent to ask our regiment for bombers to detonate that is, 
 to prepare for exploding three or four hundred bombs. I 
 took three of my four sections up to their Brigade Head- 
 quarters and did the job. At first they proposed to send 
 us as a separate detachment to the firing-line to replace 
 the bombers of a regiment which had suffered badly, but 
 the Major commanding now, as our Colonel was wounded 
 in the trenches last week, wanted to keep us, so we rejoined 
 our battalion about 11.45, finding our way to a given point 
 on the map. Then we went up to supports and were 
 shelled heavily all the way up. One company officer 
 was killed and several men wounded. At 2 p.m. our 
 batteries started giving them hell. They replied. We 
 were near the firing-line then and things were warm, but 
 the great thing to keep you cool and happy is to have 
 something to do. I could never have lived through the 
 nine days in the trenches last time if I had not been worked 
 to death day and night. We waited in a support trench 
 half an hour. My bombers had got mixed up with the 
 company's, but there were enough to make a unit. I 
 was ordered to lead the second party which went up to 
 support the firing-line. I led my men across a field which 
 had been heavily shelled just before, but fortunately 
 we got none. We reported to the Sth Rifle Brigade C.O. 
 in the wood ; he sent us on to the right ; shells were
 
 230 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 falling everywhere. I passed several men dead or horribly 
 wounded ; less wounded men were wending their way back 
 to the dressing station. I felt cheer ml nevertheless, 
 really a sort of tinge of joy of battle in spite of the hell- 
 ishness of it all, though you can't get a real joy of battle 
 in these artillery days. Then suddenly I heard a speci- 
 ally loud crash and fell, seeing " red," and thinking, " Am 
 I going to die ? This is not so bad as I thought it 
 would be ; let me get the thing tied up before I suffer 
 from loss of blood," which I could feel and see a good deal 
 of. As I rushed to an officer and asked him to do me 
 up, I thought, " What a coward I am, not looking to my 
 corporal ! " who was wounded next to me. However, there 
 was no arterial bleeding I learnt about this at our M.O.'s 
 lectures on First Aid. I had got about four cuts on the 
 back of the head and neck, and slight cuts on ear and hand, 
 and various bruises on legs and arms. The officer did 
 me up, and I reminded him of the iodine, which he forgot 
 at first. Then I came back to the dressing station, a 
 little ashamed of not going back to the firing-line. It 
 was awfully difficult to say whether one was bad enough 
 not to go back ; however, they all said I mustn't go back, 
 so I came here. It isn't a " Blighty," I am pretty sure, 
 so I shan't see you yet, and shall be back to have another 
 smack at them with Ticklers' artillery soon. I am not 
 sure whether it was a shell itself or whether a shell fragment 
 hit one of the bundles of bombs we were carrying up and 
 exploded them. The only trouble now is if one will get 
 down all right. The shelling has died away a bit now, 
 though they are still exploding uncomfortably near this 
 dugout. There are contrary rumours as to whether we 
 have taken the lost trenches or not the ones we took 
 from the Germans about the middle of June and lost a 
 week ago anyhow, if I post this letter you will know I 
 am all right I have suffered no pain really. 
 
 Later, 10.30 p.m. Dressing station. 
 
 Have been dressed properly and expect to go off to the 
 casualty clearing station in a few hours, and meanwhile I 
 will try and get a " kip." I have had a very lucky escape
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 231 
 
 and I feel I have done some good work to-day. They ran 
 short of bombs last night. I got 350 up to them, and 
 although at least ten out of my fifty-five bombers were 
 knocked out by 5 p.m. and I never chucked one bomb 
 myself, I have left some good men up there who will do 
 fine work when required. 
 
 I shall be all right very soon. 
 
 Saturday morning : On ambulance train to Boulogne 
 or somewhere. They keep on finding little bits of shell 
 all over me. I have been inoculated against tetanus 
 and am sleepy and happy. 
 
 To E. S. P. Hayncs. 
 
 LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS' MOBILE HOSPITAL, B.E.F. 
 i August, 1915. 
 
 Here I am very comfortably in bed in a hospital a few 
 miles from the coast. I was wounded slightly in the 
 battle at Hooge, east of Ypres, on Friday, and was, as I 
 have been on several occasions, extraordinarily lucky. . . 
 
 I thought of you this morning on reading the report 
 in yesterday's paper of the action in the Court of Appeal 
 with a view to upsetting the gift of 10,000 to the Secular 
 Society. The Master of the Rolls' comments on the sub- 
 ject of blasphemy and religious liberty seem to have been 
 rather good. Who the devil brought the action ? Some 
 confounded Christian organization, I suppose. No doubt 
 you have seen about the incident. Could you do some- 
 thing to show up whoever brought the action ? If I were 
 in England I would ferret it out and make a row. 
 
 To J. C. Squire. 
 
 LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS' MOBILE HOSPITAL, B.E.F. 
 
 7 August. 1915- 
 
 ... I am, unlike a lot of people out here, genuinely 
 hard-worked. That is to say it is quite a job for me to get 
 an hour to myself. I am doing an officer's and sergeant's 
 work for sixty men, and in addition do quartermaster- 
 sergeant for 150 men (the Headquarters' detachments 
 i.e. bombers, machine-gunners, signallers, etc.) when
 
 232 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 we are out of the trenches. Then the Red Feather * takes 
 up no small amount of time arranging for distribution, 
 collecting addresses for posting to and collecting money 
 and sending it to England is as much bother as the writing 
 and editing. This time, as you have seen, a good pro- 
 portion comes from my pen " Ypres," " Bivviarchi- 
 tecture," the Notes, and the account of our meeting with 
 the ist Battalion. 
 
 I can't mention the name of this place, although I saw 
 a description of it by name in the Times or the Telegraph 
 the other day ! However, I can tell you that it is a mile 
 from the sea. One has a glorious view of it from the 
 last chalk ridge which runs into the sand-hills. One 
 looks across a backwater and a wooded sand-hill ridge 
 to a little red seaside resort with two lighthouses which 
 keep on reminding me in an absurd way of the minarets 
 of Scutari. Over the ridge, and beyond the red houses, 
 is the sea. Turning half-right, you can see the mouth 
 of the backwater, formed of low tapering sandbanks 
 enclosing a few fishing - boats, and then the open sea 
 beyond. The skies have mostly been grey since I came 
 here. Grey and blue seem to dominate all other colours ; 
 the green of the woods on the sand ridges and of the 
 vegetation on the stretches of sand is so subdued. 
 
 It is the first time this summer that I have had a chance 
 of enjoying a landscape in the old way. One does enjoy 
 scenery, of course, when campaigning I had a most pictur- 
 esque view of Poperinghe over the corn and hop fields and 
 trees from the entrance of my bivvy in the last camp. But 
 everything up there is under the shadow of the big gun. 
 One lives enjoys life full-bloodedly and even thinks and 
 feels aesthetically now and again but having come away, 
 one knows that there was a special abnormal tinge over 
 the whole of life. 
 
 I really have hopes of a big democratic international 
 outburst against war. After six or seven months in and 
 near the firing-line, I am sure that the English, French, 
 Belgians, and Italians would respond to it. The only 
 question is the Germans. And I can't help having hopes 
 1 His regimental paper.
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 233 
 
 even of them if only we don't humiliate them too much. 
 The Austro-German Alliance is an example of how a 
 generous peace does pay. We must definitely defeat 
 the Germans, or at the least very definitely defeat their 
 aggression even that is not nearly done yet, in spite of 
 the habitual phrases of the English newspapers. But 
 having done that, I am for all possible generosity in spite 
 of all atrocities and barbarities. 
 
 I am afraid there is little chance of this view being 
 adopted. I think I am more for generosity than the 
 Statesman is at the moment. But, of course, it is really 
 too early to discuss the point semi-academically. The 
 demand for a public discussion of the terms of peace 
 now is too childish for words even from a Pacifist point 
 of view. 
 
 This business of fighting depends to a tremendous extent 
 on one's moods. I think I am more cheerful at it than 
 most. I have never been depressed since I came out 
 here, except for the third and fourth days in this hospital, 
 when I got a fit of funk and dread of the firing-line. 
 But I know I am all right again now, and shall be righter 
 if possible when I am back there. After all, it's just a 
 game of dice with Death. She has to win a lot of throws 
 to get you beat, and (at least in the eyes of a good atheist) 
 the dice aren't loaded. 
 
 The great thing to keep you going is to be busy. And 
 so I am likely to keep going without much difficulty, for 
 I somehow always manage to be busy and always see 
 undone work immediately ahead of me. 
 
 Tell Randall that the soldier with the brown beard is 
 coming to see him again some day. . . . 
 
 To Mrs. Hubback. 
 
 LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS' HOSPITAL. 
 8 August, 1915. 
 
 This is to let you know that I am quite all right again 
 after a week in hospital and expect to be back at duty 
 very soon. ... I never suffered any pain. I was lucky 
 to be knocked out soon after my battalion got up there. 
 I don't think we have more than half a dozen officers left
 
 234 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 and probably half the men in action were wiped out. It 
 was all shell fire in the part where I was, in a wood. I 
 never saw a German. In the original attack which they 
 made early in the day they used liquid fire for the first 
 time against the English. . . . 
 
 God, how one will value and enjoy life if one does have 
 the luck to survive the war ! You can't think what the 
 simple luxuries mean to one. I tasted a good bit of roast 
 beef to-day for the first time for months. You can't 
 imagine the rough standard of physical civilization one 
 sinks to when one has slept on the ground almost without 
 intermission for months, eaten and drunk out of a dirty 
 tin, chased lice or tried to chase them out of one's clothes 
 as a matter of course every few days, and not used a hand- 
 kerchief for God knows how long. The excellent baths 
 one gets after coming out of the trenches are the one thing 
 that keeps one on a somewhat higher level. 
 
 I don't think people realize the difference between the 
 officers' and common soldiers' lot out here. The differ- 
 ence in regard to hardships endured is enormous. That 
 is the chief thing which makes a commission distasteful 
 to me. One doesn't grudge it to the company officers, 
 but I think the subalterns get more than their share of 
 comfort, though I daresay that their health rate entitles 
 them to a bit more. And one does not blame the individuals ; 
 it is just the system that is obnoxious in a democratic age. 
 
 I was a bit irritated just before I got wounded at some 
 incidents in a small town near where we were lying. Officers 
 could go there freely ; we had to get passes and could 
 only get a limited number. Then when we got there 
 and tried to get a simple meal, poached eggs and coffee, 
 at a restaurant, one was put off with excuses, while all 
 the time the young officers, not of the most attractive 
 class, were enjoying a jolly good feed. This happened 
 to me and also to some of my men on a separate occasion. 
 When one had just come out of the trenches, up to which 
 men already overloaded with their equipment had had 
 to carry special bags of rations and whisky for officers 
 through communication trenches with water up to their 
 knees, one felt a bit sick. I am afraid the language that
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 235 
 
 I and a Radical fellow-sergeant used about officers on our 
 way back to camp was decidedly " detrimental to good 
 order and military discipline." 
 
 However, I have known officers' rations go astray in the 
 trenches. Some day, if I come back, I can tell you some 
 amusing yarns about that. I will omit them now, in case 
 a Censor reads so far. 
 
 I am extraordinarily fit now and am really very lucky 
 to get this rest. What with frequent nocturnal digging 
 expeditions when out of the trenches and training bomb- 
 throwers, one doesn't get a great deal of rest, and sleep 
 in the trenches, at any rate in trenches in the Ypres salient, 
 is not exactly easy to obtain. 
 
 I hope the children are flourishing. I should like to 
 be able to have a talk to you. I feel as if I should talk 
 for days on end if Fate took me back to Blighty. 
 
 To R. C. K. Ensor. 
 
 LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS' MOBILE HOSPITAL, B.E.F. 
 n August, 1915. 
 
 It really amounts to something pretty near a continuous 
 battle in (at any rate a large portion of) the trenches in 
 the Ypres salient. You go " in " for a week, expecting 
 to lose from fifty to a hundred and fifty men, without 
 making or repelling an attack. We (i.e. my battalion) 
 lost fifty-six, including live or six killed, in eight days, 
 and were considered lucky. Big shells, whizz-bangs, 
 trench mortars, rifle grenades, and bullets all take their 
 toll and hand grenades too in places like the barriers 
 of " international trenches " (generally old communica- 
 tion trenches which formerly were wholly within the lines 
 of one side or the other, but, owing to an advance, run 
 across from one fire-trench to the other and are barricaded 
 generally by both sides at two or more points). The 
 barriers of the international trenches are generally manned 
 by bombers. Of course, the international trench also 
 serves as a. starting-point from which to make a lateral 
 sap and so secure un advanced fire-trench it saves you
 
 236 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 the trouble of making a preliminary sap at right angles 
 (roughly) to your own fire-trench and also the risk of de- 
 tection while making such a preliminary sap. 
 
 Life in the trenches at any rate all round the Ypres 
 salient is by no means a matter of sitting or standing 
 still on guard, varied by sniping. There is endless work 
 improving and repairing trenches, making dug-outs, bomb- 
 stores (frequently carelessly made and occasionally blown 
 up by a casual bit of shell), working at saps (under direction 
 of R.E.'s) and mines (by which of course one means the 
 underground tunnel as distinguished from the open sap 
 though the terms " sap " and " mine " are sometimes used 
 loosely as equivalents). I scarcely ever got over four hours' 
 sleep in the twenty-four for the eight days which I did 
 in the fire-trench in the third week in July. The com- 
 panies did four days in the fire-trench and four in supports, 
 and I had practically all my sixty bomb-throwers up the 
 whole time. There was an awful lot of work for us to 
 do, partly owing in a roundabout way to the fact that 
 our brigade worked the trenches in a different way to the 
 brigade we took over from. The other brigade had only 
 two battalions up at once ; whereas we had three up. 
 So we had to take over fragments of two battalions' lines 
 instead of having simply to take over from one battalion 
 (I expect it means that our brigade had the same number 
 of companies in the firing-line as the other I never tried 
 to calculate it exactly though each battalion had a different 
 in-and-out system). Anyway it was a damned nuisance 
 to me, as I had to make a new central bomb-store, etc. 
 My officer had nearly blown himself up lost his right 
 hand and nearly lost a leg in a horrible bomb accident 
 just before we went up, so I have since been in sole 
 charge of our bomb-throwing department and had no end 
 of work. 
 
 Three days after we had come out we got the order to 
 stand to at 4.30 a.m. in our rest camp, and soon after 
 moved off to help another brigade of our Division against 
 that bloody liquid-fire attack. You will have seen the 
 account of my experience on that day. I was devilish 
 lucky in not being killed and in being knocked out pretty
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 237 
 
 early on. My battalion did not get relieved till about 
 thirty hours after I was knocked out. And I believe 
 our Division has been in this additional fighting in the 
 same place, reported in yesterday's paper. The bombers 
 went up fifty-five strong on the day when I was wounded. 
 Nineteen men were laid out none, I believe, killed before 
 they left, and I think we fared better proportionately than 
 the battalion as a whole. 
 
 I have nothing wrong with me now except one or two 
 small sore lumps on the head still containing tiny pieces 
 of shell, which are not worth the trouble of cutting out 
 and an apparently permanently enlarged and rather sore 
 knuckle. I expect I shall carry said bits of shell as a 
 memento of Flanders to my grave-; none of these things 
 are of any serious inconvenience or enough to affect my 
 value as an effective fighting unit. . . . 
 
 I am a little depressed about the mechanical equipment 
 and detailed trench tactics of the British Army out here. 
 Shells and artillery are all right as far as I can judge 
 my opinion on this, of course, is not based on any personal 
 knowledge. But I don't think we pay nearly enough 
 attention to the details of trench warfare. The Germans 
 are not so wonderfully clever at it. The tricks of trench 
 warfare are mostly of the schoolboy hide-and-seek level, 
 from the intellectual point of view. But having once 
 discovered a really successful trick probably an almost 
 childish stratagem you want to exploit it systematic- 
 ally for all it is worth. That is what the Germans do 
 well and what we don't do well. I realized this the more 
 as I lived in what had been a German trench for the last 
 eight days that I was " up " and occupied a German dug- 
 out, wore a German pair of boots when I saw the chance 
 of having dry feet at least for a few hours but of course, 
 they got soaked too ate out of a German canteen, and 
 generally helped myself to all sorts of conveniences from 
 old German trenches in the rear. I don't know how much 
 I can say without running a risk of the Censor excising 
 something or destroying this letter. But I will say that 
 I don't think our lower-grade Staff work is good I mean 
 brigade and possibly divisional Staffs. I daresay, on
 
 238 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 the other hand, our Army Corps and Army and General 
 Headquarters Staffs are very good. 
 
 There is an enormous contrast between the hardships 
 endured by officers and men out here. One doesn't 
 grudge extra comforts to the company officers, but I think 
 the subalterns get more than their share of it, considering 
 that they have a good deal less work than the average 
 sergeant, far less physical labour than our average private. 
 
 Well, I hope this bloody war is going to end soon of 
 course there is really no chance of that, but the sooner 
 the better. I really think that the sense of relief on the 
 part of millions of fighting men may fire some pen Euro- 
 pean expression though one doesn't want to hope for too 
 much. But I do think it will be a bit of a job for the 
 rulers of Europe to get us soldiers all at each others' throats 
 again. I am all for a definite defeat of Germany (we 
 are far enough from that), but I think I am probably a little 
 less Germania est delenda than a lot of people at home 
 not from a desire to see the misery of fighting ended, but 
 from the point of view of the future. There seems to be 
 an awful lot of talk amongst English people of carving 
 Germany up, scrapping her Navy completely, etc. I can't 
 see any hope that way. But anyway it is too early 
 to talk about that except in private. 
 
 There is a fine view of an estuary and the sea here 
 a delightfully romantic miniature scenery in the sand-hills, 
 which are pretty well covered with vegetation and trees 
 and mixed up with the chalk ridges in a, way that I don't 
 think you see anywhere in England. . . . 
 
 I expect I shall be back in the firing-line before long. 
 I don't want to stop at the Base long, as I feel I ought 
 to be back with my men, as I am in sole charge of them, 
 and if my other sergeant were knocked out there would 
 only be rather young N.C.O.'s left. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 LIVERPOOL MERCHANTS' MOBILE HOSPITAL, B.E.F. 
 13 August, 1915. 
 
 Thank you very much for the books which came last 
 night, just the sort I wanted. Unfortunately, I shall
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 239 
 
 be leaving here to-morrow or the day after ; they are awfully 
 good to me here and would have kept me a bit longer, I 
 expect, if I had said nothing, but I felt I ought to be back 
 with my men and asked for my discharge. I wish I could 
 have stayed and read those books. However, I daresay 
 I shall have a day or two in the convalescent camp and 
 another day or two at the Base camp, both of which are close 
 by here, waiting for the draft to go up to my battalion. . . . 
 
 I had a letter from A. last night that carried me back 
 to many old days in my dead, mad past. Well, there is 
 always a chance that there is some sort of a personal life 
 beyond death, and if so, I might see B. again before 
 very long. 
 
 It is dying, not death, that one fears. I feel more and 
 more that there is nothing to fear in death. Some men 
 really are brave by nature. I myself, like, I think, the 
 majority of civilized men, am only brave by conviction 
 and histrionic effort. 
 
 By the way, the yarns in some of the papers about the 
 revival of religion at the Front amongst the English are all 
 rot ; as you might imagine, the chaplains have to hunt 
 out their flock by ones. There are a few religious fellows 
 about, and it is quite clear that their religion is a help to 
 them in the firing-line. One dark night I was talking in 
 the trenches to a corporal of my battalion whom I only knew 
 by sight. We were discussing our feelings in the middle 
 of the dangers of the trenches, which were a hot place. 
 Suddenly he said, " Well, you see, I am the Lord's, and 
 that is a great thing." I thought I had not heard what 
 he said, and asked him to repeat it. Then he explained 
 that he was one of the chosen. I responded politely, and 
 went away marvelling at human nature and religion, and 
 the history of mankind in general. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. i September, 1915. 
 
 I am now engaged in running a school for teaching men 
 bomb-throwing for my brigade. It is a week's job, instead 
 of going into the trenches. It is a good way back, which 
 is not unpleasant for a change. Enclosed is a very small
 
 240 KEELING LETTERS \ 
 
 fragment of shell which I got out of my head to-day. I 
 carry several similar pieces about in various places it is 
 rather an amusing souvenir. No sooner had I arrived in 
 this camp than I was bitten by the farm dog in the leg, not 
 very badly though, and having iodine at hand, I was able to 
 stop any risk of poisoning and went down and got dressed 
 at the field ambulance in a limber wagon, which I will 
 never do again as long as I live. The jolting over the 
 cobbles was much worse than the dog bite. It was rather 
 depressing to come back and find only 260 of the original 
 fighting men of my battalion left, beside a hundred or so 
 of Staff men who do not go into the firing-line. All my 
 best friends amongst the officers are deader badly wounded. 
 You probably saw my name in the casualty lists last Satur- 
 day. Weather a bit chilly to-day, an anticipation of 
 the autumn and winter campaign, but it doesn't do to 
 think ahead here. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
 thereof. I may possibly come on five days' leave any 
 time during the next two or three months. My nerves 
 are not what they were before I was wounded ; every one 
 seems to be the same. One gets steadily less cool out here. 
 Every bombardment uses one up a bit more, I think at any 
 rate if you have been hit. What damnable rot this con- 
 scription agitation is ! It is all nonsense for the Harmsworth 
 Press to pretend that every one out here is keen about it. 
 I am more against it than ever I was, and I very much doubt 
 if a plebiscite of the Army here would get a majority for 
 compulsory service. There aren't going to be many 
 militarists among those of us who go through and survive 
 this war; in fact, I get more and more hopeful of a really 
 big international democratic movement after the war. 
 I think it will swamp all such hatred sentiment as civilian 
 journalists succeed in stirring up. I hope to goodness 
 something is going to happen to our advantage in South- 
 East Europe ; that is the critical place now. The Dardan- 
 elles fighting must be pretty awful, a good deal worse 
 than this as regards the ordinary trench warfare I should 
 think, though I daresay things are about the same there 
 as in the Ypres salient. 
 Well, no time for more now.
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 241 
 
 To J. C. Squire. 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 15 September, 1915. 
 
 Glad to see you are dealing with soldiers' songs. The 
 best one is unfortunately unprintable. We sang it as 
 we marched across the Belgian frontier some months 
 ago. It goes as follows : 
 
 But the following is not a bad specimen. It originated 
 in England, but may also be heard ou the cobbled roads 
 of French and Belgian Flanders : 
 
 Kitchener's Army, 
 
 Shillin' a day ! 
 Stuck in the guardroom, 
 
 Lose all your pay ! 
 What shall we do, boys ? 
 
 Let's run away ! 
 Kitchener's Army, 
 
 Shillin' a day. 
 
 An interesting variant on the last two lines, which I 
 believe originated in my own battalion, is : 
 
 Join the Canadians, 
 Dollar a day ! 
 
 This song clearly justifies the German description of 
 Kitchener's Army as " mercenaries " attracted by an 
 enormous remuneration. 
 
 I do not know whether my next specimen is really a 
 genuine soldiers' song or an adaptation of a " curry " 
 rhyme. But I have never come across it outside the 
 New Army : 
 
 We work all day, we work all night, 
 
 We work all day on Sunday, 
 And all we get for overtime 
 
 Is " Don't go sick on Monday." 
 
 " At the halt on the right form platoon " used to be a 
 great favourite when we were performing this evolution 
 
 17
 
 242 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 ad nauseam among the mole-hills of Laffan's Plain. But 
 it has not been quite forgotten out here. The tune belongs 
 by right to a song called " The Red, White, and Blue," 
 which seems to suggest Unionist Working Men's Clubs : 
 
 At the halt on the right form platoon, 
 
 At the halt on the right form platoon, 
 
 If the odd numbers don't mark time two paces, 
 
 How the hell can the rest form platoon ? 
 
 Repetition of the same line seems to be a characteristic 
 of many of the soldier folk-songs of the New Army. I 
 believe there is a civilian song or hymn with a well-known 
 tune called " When the roll is called up yonder." The 
 tune has been provided with the following words out here : 
 
 When the beer is on the table, 
 
 When the beer is on the table, 
 
 When the beer is on the ta-a-ble, 
 
 When the beer is on the table I'll be there. 
 
 I taught my section to sing this in something like 
 French : 
 
 Quand la biere est sur la table 
 Je suis la ! 
 
 And for the benefit of the worthies of Flemish beer- 
 houses I translated it into what I hope is good Flemish : 
 
 Als het bier is op de tabel 
 Ik ben daar. 
 
 Sometimes the simplicity of the words reaches a point 
 beyond which refinement is impossible. For instance, 
 one rainy night when we were marching out of reserve 
 dugouts into a bare field which was the site of our rest 
 camp, some one started to drone to a hymn tune the 
 words : 
 
 Forty days and forty nights, 
 
 Forty days and forty n-n-ights, 
 
 Forty days and forty n-n-n-nights, 
 
 Forty days and (celerrima) forty nights.
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 243 
 
 What the point of the forty days and forty nights was, 
 God alone knows ! But the song lasted till we were 
 fed-up and drowned it with something else. 
 
 E. contrasts the soldier folk-song with the " machine- 
 made " music-hall ditty. I don't agree with him. 
 
 Anyway, I will have no aspersions on the ballad of 
 " Isabel." A lance-corporal out of my lot brought it 
 back from an Aldershot music-hall one night shortly before 
 we left England. It has cheered us up on many an occa- 
 sion. Well do I remember how I brought a detachment 
 out of the trenches one night after eight days in the front 
 line of the salient. My feet had been wet for some days 
 on end, except for a brief interval of a few hours after I 
 had put on a dry pair of socks and a good pair of German 
 boots which I found in an old German dugout. Ordinarily 
 I swear I can down any man in my battalion at marching 
 or carrying ; but that night my feet seemed like pulp 
 and each step on the cobbles made me wince. We were 
 all tired and hungry. Then I started to sing " Isabel," 
 and she took us all the way home into camp to hot tea 
 and a dry " kip " : 
 
 Farewell, Isabel, Isabel ! 
 
 I got to leave you, I got to go. 
 You know very well, Isabel, 
 
 I got to leave you, to right the foe. 
 You know very well, Isabel, 
 
 As the battle I go through, 
 I shall do my best when I'm in it to win it 
 
 As I won you. 
 
 " As I won yow " is what the Brummies (Brummagem 
 lads) say, and the form in which I always think of that 
 line I think I shall call my next daughter Isabel after 
 the war. 
 
 If you could get me a Flemish grammar I should be 
 grateful. And I should like to have Seton \Vatson 's new 
 pamphlet and Brailsford's book on foreign policy. 
 
 I see that a Frenchman has just dug out the history 
 of Mme. de War ens. I was always very much interested 
 in her from the " Confessions " and hope to read the book
 
 244 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 some time, but no time for that now. The writer of the 
 review is rather merciless to poor Jean Jacques. Unlike 
 most people, I detest his politics and political writings 
 but feel a keen interest in, if not a sympathy with, him as 
 a man. He was the eighteenth-century Wells, and Voltaire 
 was the Tolstoi-Shaw. Voltaire was much the more 
 important man on the whole. 
 
 At an Army bomb school in a pleasant neighbourhood 
 now. Returning to my own brigade bomb school in a 
 day or two. 
 
 A SOLDIER ON COMPULSION ' 
 
 BY A SERGEANT OF THE FIRST NEW ARMY (F. H. K.) 
 
 One has not the time or the opportunity out here to 
 follow in detail the course of public political controversies 
 in England. But I have recently read some account 
 of the efforts of certain officers who have been serving 
 at the Front to add fuel to the flame of the conscription- 
 ist agitation in England. These officers appear to have 
 represented that there is a general, if not a universal, demand 
 for compulsory service among the Army in France and 
 Belgium. Since definite statements of such a nature 
 have been made, it seems desirable that, if they do not 
 represent the facts, a public denial should be given to 
 them. Now as a matter of fact there is nothing approach- 
 ing a general public opinion upon debatable topics among 
 the soldiers in Flanders, for the simple reason that the 
 organs for the creation of a general public opinion among 
 a million men do not exist. Moreover, the great majority 
 of the soldiers serving in Flanders were in civilian life at 
 the outbreak of the war. Even several months of active 
 service do not avail to extinguish one's civilian ideas and 
 prejudices on matters of public interest. We have not 
 ceased to be Conservatives or Radicals or Socialists because 
 we are soldiers. And although the tremendous experience 
 of a few months in the firing-line has a far-reaching effect 
 on the personal outlook of the individual, the absence of 
 
 1 From the New Statesman, 2 October, 1915.
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 245 
 
 opportunities for public discussion prevents the creation 
 of any general trend of opinion which could cut across 
 the civilian politics of the men at the Front. 
 
 I happen to have had exceptional opportunities for 
 discovering what are in fact the various types of opinion 
 on the subject of conscription held by the Army in France 
 and Belgium. For over two months I was serving in 
 my regiment on a " battalion job " which brought me 
 into contact with officers and men of every company. 
 (The great bulk of men live very much in their own com- 
 panies, if not in their own platoons.) I then spent the 
 best part of a month in a hospital, a convalescent camp, 
 and a base camp, meeting and talking to literally hundreds 
 of men of numerous regiments of the old Regular Army, 
 the New Army, the Territorials, and the Canadians. The 
 last month I have spent close up to the firing-line, but 
 mainly in brigade and Army training schools for a certain 
 specialized branch of infantry work. I have discussed the 
 question of compulsory service with large numbers of men, 
 not in a combative or propagandist spirit, but with a view 
 to discovering what men are thinking and feeling. I deny 
 confidently that there is any general demand for conscrip- 
 tion. The great majority of men have not thought about 
 the matter one way or the other. One minority is anxious 
 to see the " millions of slackers " still in England made 
 to "do their bit " in the trenches. Another minority, 
 at least as large and probably larger, is equally emphatic 
 on the other side, for just the same reasons, good and bad, 
 that the average Radical or Labour man at home is opposed 
 to compulsory service. Underlying these is a feeling 
 which a soldier can perhaps appreciate better than a civilian 
 that it is " up to " the voluntary Army which has begun 
 the fighting for England in this war to see the job through, 
 and that the introduction of a conscripted element would 
 be a blow to our pride. I share this feeling strongly ; 
 but I admit that, in spite of its importance in the con- 
 scription controversy, it does not amount to a conclusive 
 argument. 
 
 So much for my attempt to gauge the feelings of my 
 comrades out here. May I be permitted to add to this
 
 246 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 a brief statement of the arguments which, after four months 
 of active service, have made me personally more definitely 
 opposed to conscription than ever I was before ? 
 
 The first argument is simply this : Now that I know 
 what one's experiences in the firing-line at their worst 
 actually are, I cannot as a responsible citizen of a demo- 
 cratic community be a party to compelling any man willy- 
 nilly to share them. I do not care what may be the logical 
 outcome of this point of view in relation to collectivist 
 or individualist theories of the State ; I simply object 
 to forcing any man into the hell which I have myself ex- 
 perienced, and I cannot but regard any step taken by the 
 State to compel men to go into the firing-line as a set- 
 back in political evolution. I feel a moral objection to 
 compulsory service which I never felt before I had come 
 to France as a soldier. 
 
 In the second place, the view which I now hold of my 
 position as a soldier in the New Army makes me strongly 
 opposed to any measure of compulsory military service. 
 I came up to fight as a volunteer because I believed in 
 England's position in this war. If I had not believed in 
 England's position I would not have come up. I should 
 be perfectly willing, if I should be lucky enough to survive 
 this war, to continue to keep myself fit as a soldier by 
 undergoing a short annual period of training. But I 
 would under no circumstances bind myself to come up 
 and fight in any future war. I demand the right of exer- 
 cising my individual choice before I take up a rifle for my 
 country ; and if compulsory service is introduced I shall 
 feel that I have been deprived of the most precious form 
 of political liberty which I have ever enjoyed the oppor- 
 tunity of volunteering to serve as a soldier in a just war. 
 Circumstances have made me directly conscious of the 
 meaning of political liberty, and therefore conscious of 
 what its loss would mean. If my sentiment appears 
 to be obsolete cant to conscriptionists at home, I can only 
 reply that it is backed by a sczva indignatio which makes 
 me impervious to ridicule. 
 
 My third and last argument is the impersonal and social 
 reflection of my second. A Government or a Parliament
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 247 
 
 which can legally call on a conscript Army is obviously 
 less dependent upon public opinion in regard to declaring 
 war than a Government which knows that it must rely 
 upon volunteers for its conduct of the war. I have no 
 illusions about the wisdom of democracies in general in 
 matters of foreign policy ; but we are all pretty certain 
 out here that democracy will in fact make for peace in 
 the next generation. 
 
 I admit that my three arguments are not conclusive 
 if compulsory service is a proved necessity from the point 
 of view of national organization. But so far as I can 
 gather, conscription is being advocated for two main reasons 
 first from the point of view of national expediency, and 
 secondly, from the point of view of " justice " or " fair 
 play " as between one citizen and another and as between 
 the individual citizen and the State. I maintain that 
 my contentions are conclusive as against the second line 
 of conscriptionist argument, and that they make it in- 
 cumbent upon the conscriptionist to prove his case from 
 the point of view of national necessity far more conclu- 
 sively and definitely than he so far seems to have done. 
 In fact, of course, only the Government has the necessary 
 information for proving that case. 
 
 FLANDF.RS, September 
 
 To Airs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. ii November, 1915. 
 
 It is raining heavily again, but I am sitting snugly by 
 a coal fire in a large clay stove, which I built with my own 
 hands, listening to the patter on the tin hut which is our 
 lecture-room, also largely the fruit of my personal handi- 
 work. Have been finishing "These Twain" and also 
 scanning the Flemish Grammar. I am decidedly better 
 off as regards comfort as long as I stay here than I was 
 a year ago in Blighty, and have nothing to grumble at 
 but occasional fits of boredom. Of course I haven't an 
 absolutely safe job ; an appreciable proportion of bomb 
 instructors get blown up, but I know the detailed explana- 
 tion of so many accidents that have occurred that it will
 
 248 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 probably be my own fault if I am the victim of an un- 
 intentional explosion. Half my regiment have gone up 
 the line again to dig, and then go into the trenches. I saw 
 the C.O. last night and told him that I was ready to return 
 as and when required ; in fact, I shall probably volunteer 
 for the trenches again sooner or later if I stop here a great 
 deal longer. I don't want to feel after the war that I 
 was to any extent an embusqud. They have applied 
 several times to my regiment to get me back from my 
 brigade job, but the brigade insists on keeping me so far. 
 I get as much satisfaction out of my work as a large pro- 
 portion, probably the majority, of men do in peace-time. 
 I am glad when the day's work is done and I can live my 
 own life as I like, but at the same time I enjoy teaching 
 of any kind, even in the limited sphere of instruction which 
 I have. There is a satisfaction to be got out of making 
 men's minds work, even around the ghoulish knowledge 
 of how to blow up their fellow-creatures. We shall all 
 be expert anarchists after the war. I see they are using 
 bombs a lot in Serbia. They are handy for throwing on 
 to roofs of houses in village fighting. 
 
 I see from the papers that the silly sentimental agitation 
 about Nurse Cavell still goes on at home. A good many 
 soldiers out here don't think much of it. I have discussed 
 it with many and found them all of my opinion while 
 admiring the woman immensely, I think the Germans were 
 quite within their rights in shooting her. The agitation 
 reveals the worst side of the English character. I hope 
 some Suffragists who prefer to stand for the principle of 
 women's equal responsibility for their actions will protest 
 against the rot that is being talked. I read Balfour's 
 speech to-day. I am more and more in favour of him and 
 Asquith and the respectable, decent men as against North- 
 cliff e and Lloyd George and that gang. The dividing line 
 in politics now seems to be largely one of temperament, 
 and for all my erratic habits I have, I believe, a good deal 
 of rock-bottom English instincts in me. I do not like 
 Welshmen or hustlers, or phrasemongering do-the-trick 
 demagogues, who damn the Cabinet just because they all 
 backed their money on the wrong horse in the Dardanelles
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 249 
 
 if they really did ; I am not sure yet that they did. 
 It is the old nous sommcs Irakis cry at bottom which the 
 demagogue always tries to rouse a democracy with. Will 
 politics go back to the old lines after the war ? I am 
 decidedly not a Socialist any more, according to the logical 
 definition of Socialism. I believe in State ownership of 
 railways, urban land, and big trusts and monopolies, but I 
 believe in private enterprise very emphatically in lots of 
 industries, hedged in by Factory Acts and a minimum wage 
 and so on the Australian Labour programme, in fact. 
 My Flemish peasants have made me look kindly on peasant 
 proprietorship, which the average peasant Australian man 
 quite accepts. The amenity of communism as you get 
 it in the Army is very attractive, but its wastefulness is also 
 very obvious. In fact, I believe I have now swallowed 
 all formulas in a sense in which I never had before. It 
 is a satisfactory feeling, but no doubt Socialists will call 
 me a renegade, while Tories will find me just as revolu- 
 tionary, and Liberals will have little use for one who has 
 finally landed in their fold from a fautc de mieux point of 
 view. But I shall never cut a very big caper on the stage 
 of history, so it doesn't much matter, and if Europe goes 
 to war again I might die a good American. 
 
 Well, I enjoyed " These Twain " immensely, but I ended 
 with something approaching indignation with Hilda. She 
 emphatically has no case against Edwin. If she is in any 
 sense typical of women's real desires, then I am almost 
 a disciple of Mr. Belfort Bax. He Edwin, not Mr. 
 B. B. keeps the machinery of society going. She ends 
 with wholly ignoble snobbish aspirations a dogcart 
 driving into Burslem to gratify her vanity ; it is outrageous, 
 and I would never have allowed her about the works, 
 using the works horse outrageous ! Of course, I see 
 her difficulty : not enough outlet. Well, I am an honest 
 Suffragist : still, I admit it is a difficult case, but after all 
 boredom with leisure is not so infinitely much worse than 
 boredom with work. Hilda's end at Ledderedge Hall 
 is in one sense an awful come-down a materialistic 
 surrender, the manufacture of an outlet for her energies 
 in a more elaborate material existence. No bon, as the
 
 250 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 lingua franca here has it. What a fine Englishman I am, 
 criticizing a novel from an ethical point of view ! Well, 
 it is the ethics and not the literature that interests me. 
 After all, ethics is the art of life, and " life," some say, " is 
 worthy of the muse." I talked long this evening with 
 my two Yorkshire corporals, who come from the G.N.R. 
 plant at Doncaster, where they work as skilled engineers. 
 There is less of a gap between the upper middle class and 
 them than between them and their labourers. Their 
 lives interest me immensely. I know the family history 
 and all about the relations of one of them as well as I 
 know about my own family. If you know how to talk 
 to men you can cut novels from the stuff of life yourself 
 all day as you go along. 
 
 I shall get my leave some time, but there is a lot of rotten 
 cadging for it out here, there being no defined rule as to 
 the order in which men go in each unit, and I would rather 
 the men who are still going up the line went first. 
 
 Well, good-night. 
 
 To E. S. P. Hay nes. 
 
 GTH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 12 November, 1915. 
 
 Your letter written early in August reached me just 
 a month afterwards by a very circuitous route. I forget 
 why it was so much delayed. 
 
 I can now join with you in hating Lloyd George sin- 
 cerely. He and Northcliffe are the devil. Perhaps 
 yon saw my article against conscription ... a month or 
 so ago ? 
 
 Rain and mud pretty bad but I personally am living 
 a good deal more comfortably than I was a year ago. 
 But of course my turn to go up to the trenches may come 
 any day. I am ready when it does. I can't go through 
 anything much worse than I have already been through, 
 and what I have done before, I can do again though I 
 do think one gets steadily less brave out here as one goes 
 on. If you are fairly strong-nerved by nature, the less 
 material your imagination has to work on the better. 
 
 Am getting fairly proficient at Flemish and mixing with
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 251 
 
 the peasants. I have made friends with the people at 
 the farm and went to a wedding party of one of the 
 family. There was a baby there whose mother and 
 brother and sister (children) had been wounded by a shell 
 near the firing-line, and whom the bride (its aunt) was 
 looking after while the mother was in hospital in France. 
 
 Send me any book on history or foreign policy if you 
 happen to come across one of any interest. I get a good 
 deal of time for reading, and enjoy it now, but cannot 
 stand trash. 
 
 I heard that the Zepp. which missed my chambers got 
 your offices. Is that right ? I hope you didn't lose any- 
 thing much. Am giving up my chambers can't afford to 
 keep them going for the sake of the remote chance of 
 returning within a year or so, and I may not be able to 
 afford them then. . . . 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 13 November, 1915. 
 
 Well, the next two months may prove the climax of the 
 war. There is something Napoleonic about the German 
 stroke for an Empire from Antwerp to Bagdad. I can't 
 help admiring it in a way, when I close my mind for a 
 moment to the horrors of the whole war. Things are in 
 a very dramatic position. Are not people getting utterly 
 sick of the Northcliffe Press in England ? It is common 
 to hear fellows here curse the Daily Mail. It and the 
 Times simply infuriate me. I loathe conscription, but 
 I am prepared to accept it in the last resort if Asquith 
 and Grey and Kitchener say it is needed. But the dis- 
 honesty of the conscriptionist agitation seems to me almost 
 unspeakable. These people must know that even now 
 equipment lags miles behind enlistment. As I write, the 
 continuous thunder of the guns four or six or more miles 
 away rolls on, punctuated by the horrible " woof " of 
 the big howitzers on both sides. This " woof " is 
 occasionally followed by the shriek of a big shell fired 
 at the town a mile and a half away ; but of the half- 
 dozen dropped into the town in the last quarter of an 
 hour, not one has exploded. They have just fallen
 
 252 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 with a thud into the earth and in all probability have 
 done no damage at all " duds " we call these 
 shells that don't explode. Things look black in the 
 Balkans, but one must just keep cheerful. The political 
 intrigues at home seem to me to be despicable. I am all 
 for the stodgy, respectable old gang, Asquith, Balfour, Grey, 
 and Kitchener, against the adventurers. One is almost 
 tempted to ask whether these journalists and politicians 
 who stir up dissension are patriots in any real sense. What 
 evidence of patriotism have they given ? They have not 
 voluntarily sacrificed a penny. They don't risk their 
 lives and they don't lose their comforts. One does not 
 say that they should necessarily do any of these things, 
 but I can't help feeling that those who have not been 
 called upon to do so might be a little less violent in their 
 controversial methods. The articles coming out in the 
 Northcliffe Press now seem to me to embody absolutely 
 the worst side of England, but I won't readily admit that 
 they do embody anything that is an essential part of the 
 England that I belong to. When I think of the things, 
 places, and people that I know and love in England, they 
 seem utterly unrelated to this blabber. Only one can't 
 help regretting that just at the moment when perhaps 
 we are at the crisis of all the war (the future of the world 
 seems to me to be hanging in the balance more obviously 
 than ever now) the catchwords and rant and intrigues 
 and egotism of men like Northcliffe and Bottomley, and I 
 think we might add Lloyd George, for he has practically 
 joined that gang, should have such a vogue. They stand 
 out, in my mind, contrasted equally with decent, simple 
 gentlemen, with men of intellect, with ordinary provincial 
 middle-class people, and with the various types of work- 
 men whom I know now as well as I know the average 
 Cambridge man. These ranters and intriguers seem to 
 me simply a scum floating above the natures of all these 
 types, that do stand for something real in England. 
 
 I have nearly finished Kinglake's " Eothen." The first 
 chapter is very interesting at the moment his journey 
 from Semlin by Belgrade and Sofia to Constantinople ; 
 it shows how seventy years ago people simply were not
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 253 
 
 aware of the existence of these latent nationalities in Euro- 
 pean Turkey. What an extraordinary thing their emer- 
 gence is, as an historical phenomenon ! Here almost more 
 than anywhere else we can see right and wrong, unqualified 
 and naked, ranged respectively on the English and German 
 sides, for Germany does stand for obliterating that phase 
 of history. I could dream of many worse things for the 
 world's future than a single federal State stretching from 
 Antwerp to Bagdad, uniting in peace the civilizations of 
 the East and the West even more effectively perhaps than 
 the British Empire can ; but one knows that German 
 dominion means an exacerbation of racial hatreds, that 
 they simply cannot rise to what that commonplace English 
 politician Campbell-Bannerman achieved for South Africa. 
 
 I am separated from my battalion now, and even when 
 I am in it the death and departure of the great majority 
 of the men with whom I did my first year's soldiering 
 prevents it from being the same corporate body which it 
 once was for me. It seems no more than a mere neces- 
 sary trough for shovelling us poor human units into the 
 war machine ; and as the idea of it has receded into the 
 background, as a source of vision for making this life worth 
 living, and this work worth doing, the idea of England 
 as a whole takes its place. Religion I have none ; it seems 
 no good in this hell. Vision a man needs, but not shadowy 
 wraiths ; his gods must be like the old pagan gods that 
 spring from the realities of the human heart upon the earth. 
 Honour, patriotism, and comradeship are one's best stays. 
 Patriotism we English have, but I think a far less culti- 
 vated patriotism than men of some other races. God forbid 
 that we should cultivate it like the Germans ! But a 
 man can gain strength from refining and winnowing and 
 treasuring his views of what he means by his country, 
 just as men have undoubtedly gained strength by com- 
 muning with what they call their God. 
 
 The bombardment is heavy. I can picture the scenes 
 in the trenches, too awful to contemplate. I am truly as 
 sorry for the German poor devils as for English infantrymen. 
 No man can hate his enemy while he is being bombarded 
 in the trenches ; even the apostles of hate who are there
 
 254 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 leave that to Fleet Street for the time being, and if I have 
 to practise my ghoulish art of bombing in an actual battle, 
 I shall do my best to kill, that I know from experience, but 
 it will be entirely without malice. That is the tragedy and 
 comedy of it all. 
 
 Well, good luck to the Serbs, and good-night. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 18 November, 1915. 
 
 Well, I expect I shall be going up to the trenches again 
 at last ; it is still unsettled, but our Division is now reliev- 
 ing another, and I think our Brigade bomb school will 
 probably be broken up. I am quite ready when they 
 want me. I think I can stand cold and wet as well as 
 most, and I ought to be able to stand shells as well as most, 
 too. I could probably have got leave before now, but 
 have not liked to push for getting it before others in my 
 regiment who were going into the trenches. The scramble 
 for leave vacancies is rather wretched. It is every man 
 for himself in most things out here when mutual aid is 
 not an urgent practical necessity, and leave from the 
 trenches will be worth a great deal more than leave from 
 this place, where I am really quite comfortable. I shall be 
 very much interested in Bennett's new story. Will you 
 also please send me the Contemporary every month ? 
 
 What are we now fighting for ? I prophesy that in 
 a very short time the issues will begin to get narrowed 
 down. We shall begin to see clearly that certain things, 
 such as the utter humiliation of Germany, thank goodness, 
 are out of the question. I can't see why we should want 
 to shut Germany out of the East altogether, provided that 
 we secure our through route to India. I think a fair 
 criterion is that we must find outlets for German expan- 
 sion which will avoid the danger as far as possible of 
 Germany clashing with us. Thus Belgium must remain 
 outside her sphere of influence, and German South-West 
 Africa must be left in our hands. But I can't see why 
 Turkey should not become a German Egypt, provided 
 that the Balkan States are left genuinely free ; and why 
 particularly should Russia be re-established in Poland,
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 255 
 
 unless she is going to give Poland real freedom, excluding 
 preferably freedom to bully Jews and Ruthenes ? I sup- 
 pose Germany will have to be kept out of the Pacific, 
 but I don't see why she should be kept out of East and 
 West Africa ; but I have no hopes of or seriously a desire 
 for an early peace. We must do something decisive first 
 and also get some definite issue out of the Balkan fighting. 
 I am all against anything like a premature peace. I 
 should not be surprised if Northcliffe proves to be the 
 traitor in that direction in the end. I don't think there 
 is much to be said for Ic bon Dicu after all this. I 
 should think humanism will gain considerably over theism 
 after the war. I don't think we English will give way 
 to sentimental revivals, as the French are alleged to do. 
 It is not uncommon for officers to keep up their courage on 
 whisky in the trenches out here. I should regard a draught 
 of supernatural religion as an aid to courage in much the 
 same way as I regard the whisky-bottle in the trenches. 
 I haven't much natural courage I did not enjoy the bomb- 
 ing from German aeroplanes which we got in this neigh- 
 bourhood this morning but I hope I shall be able to push 
 through, keeping up appearances tolerably, without recourse 
 to either physical or mental drugs. One must just try 
 to set one's teeth and think of the credit of one's better 
 self and one's country. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. i December, 1915. 
 
 Thanks very much for Punch and the Cambridge Magazine ; 
 the latter appears to let as much pacifism of a rather bad 
 kind come to the surface as it dare. I don't think it is 
 a journal to be encouraged on the whole. Surreptitious 
 pacifism seems to be its main note. I would not suppress 
 that kind of thing by censorship at all ; but when you still 
 feel, as I do, that you would willingly volunteer over again 
 for the Front, even knowing all you do, for the sake of help- 
 ing to win this war, you cannot exactly love people who 
 are trying to weaken England's resolution. I am sorry 
 that Jane Addam is on the wrong track. I have always 
 admired her. It is all rot to say we don't know what
 
 256 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 we are fighting for. We do. Germany set the pace in 
 militarism, though Jingoes in other countries must bear 
 part of the blame ; and we are fighting to show that 
 not the most perfect military machine and most perfectly 
 militarized nation is invincible. Of course, no one but 
 drivelling bishops and stupid professional soldiers imagines 
 that it is a case of black versus white, an absolutely holy 
 war. We are out for our own hand, too have to be ; but 
 it is all rot for pacifists to say that we don't know what 
 we are out for. We must definitely prevent German 
 militarism from in any sense being triumphant. To achieve 
 that is to defeat it, and that will take a lot of doing yet. 
 I am against conscription, and all for allowing freedom of 
 speech to these Union of Democratic Control and Socialist 
 pacifists. I confess that I am bitter against them, when 
 I think of good men that I have fought with dying, and 
 these people stopping to whine at home, and I don't want 
 
 to have anything to do with . His attitude simply 
 
 makes me sick. He complains that I am intolerant 
 towards his opinions ; but I do tolerate them and I don't 
 want the State to suppress them ; only it is too much to ask 
 me, as he does in effect, to feel amiably towards a man 
 who definitely disclaims his country and coolly sits and 
 enjoys his income and security under the protection of 
 its civil and military armed forces. And to think that 
 he should live in safety while Rupert Brooke and scores 
 of good men that I know go down before the dice of war ! 
 Besides, my own turn may come next, and I am damned if 
 I am anxious to die. 
 
 Look here I want something badly. I have just, after 
 some weeks' waiting, got one short novel, " De Werk- 
 man," of Stijn Struvels, the Flemish novelist. I want 
 half a dozen of any others of his works. They can 
 be got at Amsterdam ; several of them are published 
 pretty cheaply. Can you write to the Dutch lady, 
 whom I am dying to meet from your account of her, and 
 get these sent over ? Also anything else in the way of 
 Flemish and Dutch literature she would think likely to 
 interest an intelligent Englishman who has just reached 
 the stage of having swallowed all formulas, and is
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 257 
 
 passing from Sturm und Drang into relatively discreet 
 middle age. 
 
 Well, 1 think poor old Fritz is really beginning to feel 
 the pinch now more than we are. I shall go back to the 
 discomforts of the trenches with a good heart. I believe 
 skilful financial direction is more needed than military 
 effort in England now. 
 
 Please get me the books very soon. I can read one 
 novel of Struvels' in a day. I may as well make a fairly 
 good job of Flemish now that I have got so far. 
 
 To R. C. K. Ensor. 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 23 December, 1915. 
 
 . . . Since last Friday I have been back in my battalion 
 after three days in the field ambulance camp as a result 
 of a slight attack of " flu." The specialized bomb-throwers 
 (apart from ordinary riflemen trained as bomb-throwers) 
 are now so numerous in my battalion that we have made 
 them into a " grenadier company " 140 strong, and I have 
 the rank of company sergeant-major, as their senior N.C.O. 
 I was, in fact, anyhow very nearly, though not quite, the 
 senior sergeant in the battalion so many of the old hands 
 had gone under. I feel I am doing all that I should be 
 doing as an officer unless I happened to be in the ex- 
 ceptional position of adjutant in an ordinary infantry 
 battalion, and don't feel inclined to break the many 
 ties by which I am bound for better or worse to my bat- 
 talion. People at home who talk glibly about one's " taking 
 a commission " don't seem to realize anything about the 
 hundred ties and associations which bind a man to his 
 unit in any soldiering worthy of the name. It is a strange 
 thing, but I feel that much of such pluck and fighting 
 spirit as I possess doesn't come from my own self only 
 it is born of the ties which I have with ^jores of individuals 
 with whom my soldiering is associated. When you come 
 back to a battalion after an absence you feel this very 
 strongly. It is only as you pick up the ties again that 
 you feel yourself getting the better of the shivers which 
 the horrible " wuff " and thump of the guns send down you. 
 
 18
 
 258 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 By Christ ! there was hell let loose last Sunday morning 
 over that gas business, and I lit my candle expecting the 
 order to stand-to just as we got it before we went up to 
 Hooge on 3oth July : in fact, it seemed like the Hooge 
 morning over again. However, we did not have to stand- 
 to till breakfast-time, and we did not move off, but 
 stood down again at tea-time. For which relief, much 
 thanks ! 
 
 My battalion had been at rest since I rejoined them, 
 and unless Fritz lets hell loose by way of celebrating 
 Christmas Day and something very big happens, we shall 
 probably not go up to the trenches again in this cursed 
 area where we have shed our blood for eight damned 
 months. 
 
 Well, do you honestly think there is a chance that I 
 shall be able to celebrate next Christmas in peace and 
 safety ? It is pathetic to find how many of the Tommies 
 are always believing that peace is coming before some 
 date a month or two hence. One can see vividly how 
 religions are born and grow the human craving for a 
 comforting doctrine is very strong. 
 
 We are in a camp of tents with a very few mud huts. 
 By the way, the Chronicle published some time ago some 
 rot from some blithering correspondent who, I suppose, 
 drives about comfortably in G.H.O. motor-cars and thinks 
 it a wonderful thing to come under shell fire, to the effect 
 that all the troops are comfortably housed for the winter 
 in nice warm huts. That sort of thing makes men swear 
 out here. I don't grumble at a tent with a coke fire 
 (when coke is available) even in the coldest weather ; but 
 it is a bloody shame to deceive the public at home and 
 say we are in comfortable huts when we aren't. Till 
 the autumn we hadn't even got tents, but generally just 
 our waterproof sheets as roofs for bivvy shelters. It 
 is rather like these blessed deputations who are taken 
 into the trenches in some convalescent home where they 
 fire about one shell and two rifle shots a day, and who 
 spread the impression that time hangs on our hands in 
 the trenches. In our brigade a man is damned lucky if 
 he gets a dozen hours' sleep in three days in the trenches
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 259 
 
 it's working and carrying parties whenever it isn't sentry 
 and listening post, and trench mortars and whizz-bangs on 
 and off all day and night in the intervals of bombardments 
 by crumps. I don't pretend to have been through any- 
 thing like as much as men who have been out here eight 
 months and never missed the trenches, but I have been 
 through enough to know what they have been through. 
 And then people think it is mud and wet we mind ; that 
 is nothing, absolutely nothing, compared with the nerve- 
 racking hell of bombardment. Of course, people at 
 home can imagine that more easily than the bombard- 
 ments, so that is what they talk about. I can't think that 
 human nature ever had to stand in any kind of warfare 
 in history what the modern infantryman has to stand. 
 The strange thing in a way is that there doesn't seem to 
 be any limit to what you can make human nature stand. 
 But I do think that after the war there will be a wave of 
 practical pacifism from the ex-infantrymen of Western 
 Europe that will sweep many barriers to progress away. 
 I will go on fighting as long as is necessary to get a decision 
 in this war and show that prepared militarism cannot 
 dominate the world whatever hell may be in store for 
 me. But I will not hate Germans to the order of any 
 bloody politician, and the first thing I shall do after I am 
 free will be to go to Germany and create all the ties I can 
 with German life. It is the soldiers who will be the good 
 Pacifists just as every decent Pacifist should be a soldier 
 now, whether he is a German or an Englishman. I dis- 
 like Liebknecht almost as much as I do the Union of 
 Democratic Control. 
 
 What a miserable business the Cavell agitation was ! 
 I believe a large proportion of the men out here who think 
 at all share my sentiments about it. I have no sympathy 
 with people who want to execrate the whole German nation 
 as much as possible. It doesn't help to win the war. 
 Women seem to be particularly bad in this way. I met 
 a lady a \vard-maid in the hospital where I was after 
 Hooge whose catlike ferocity of sentiments about Ger- 
 mans and Germany simply made me sick. A dose of 
 shelling would cure a lot of that in any one. When you 
 are lying at rest and hear a bombardment going on, you
 
 260 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 can't help thinking of the poor devils of infantry in the 
 trenches on both sides with sympathy. You are none 
 the worse soldier or fighter for that. 
 
 To the Rev. William Danks, Canon of Canterbury. 
 
 31 December, 1915. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter and the Round 
 Table. I sent you in return the last issue of our Regimental 
 Magazine, which I more or less edit. I am going up to 
 the trenches again to-morrow for the first time since July. 
 I am moving in an hour from a dugout in the nearest 
 reserve to immediate reserve, and then go to the fire-trench 
 to-morrow night, I expect. 
 
 Well, I hope you aren't one of these ecclesiastical German- 
 haters I am sure you aren't. Few Englishmen out 
 here hate their enemies I feel as sorry for the Germans as 
 for our own men in the bombardments, and am none the 
 worse soldier for that. The Scotch and Irish are, I think, 
 more ferocious. The " Holy War " idea is Christian cant 
 of the worst kind. It is all rot to suppose that we are 
 white and the Germans black. Don't think I am a half- 
 hearted fighter. I am not. But I loathe this orgy of 
 hatred. The idea of a sort of permanent trade war after 
 the end of the military war is huckstering beastliness. 
 
 After all, every German soldier who has been to the Front 
 has done penance a hundred times over for his individual 
 share of the sins of his country, bar the insignificant 
 minority who really have had a hand in atrocities. When 
 we do get peace, for God's sake let it be a real peace. 
 
 The article in the Round Table was right humanity 
 first. Christianity, of course, never really has emerged 
 from the tribal god stage, and never will. The spectacle 
 of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the leading German 
 ecclesiastic each calling on their blessed " Gods " is amusing 
 to anti-clericals like myself. Not but what I admit there 
 are individual men out here whose religion does help them 
 to act more nobly. You come across them here and there, 
 and a sceptic who denies the fact is no true sceptic. 
 
 Well, let's hope to goodness that there will be " peace
 
 APRIL TO DECEMBER, 1915 261 
 
 on earth and goodwill towards men " next New Year's 
 Eve. If men will really act up to that, even I will not 
 boggle at their theology, provided we can keep you black- 
 coated gentlemen out of politics. 
 
 Well, I am off to march up to the reserve dugouts in 
 the dark alone, except with my orderly. I shall think of 
 you on the way. I wish you all good luck for the New 
 Year, and I hope we may meet again before 1916 is over ' ; 
 if not, at any rate as soon as may be. Thank you ever 
 so much for writing. Send me a line about anything 
 when you can find time. 
 
 ' Canon Danks died in March, 1916, and F. H. K. in August.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 JANUARY i TO MAY 4, 1916 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 6 January, 1916. 
 
 WE came out safely from the trenches last night. It was 
 simply awful beyond words. I would rather not try to 
 describe it. Not so bad from the point of view of danger 
 only two killed and four wounded in six days but 
 mud and water up to your waist, unholy smells, churned- 
 up graves, cold, and utter discomfort. This is in the front 
 line. Not so bad in supports, and in fact very good in 
 reserve. I did forty-eight hours in the front line at an 
 isolated post where you could not sit, stand, or lie at full 
 length, and dared not show yourself by day. No fires or 
 light at any time. You could only get along the trench at 
 night by walking between ours and the German lines, and 
 the mud was so bad that it took an hour and a half to 
 carry rations from trench headquarters to our flank. It 
 was where the gas attack was pretty bad last month. 
 
 I read Bryce's article in the Hibbert in a peaceful moment 
 in the front line. It was great, and I felt much moved 
 by it. Then heavy shells started dropping just behind 
 our line, between us and supports, shaking our frail shelter 
 and in fact the whole trench. But enough of it. I will 
 admit I have felt utterly sick of everything to-day ; it makes 
 ill life seem " red." I was completely worn out last night ; 
 and if I went on feeling like I did most of to-day I would 
 welcome a sudden end to it all. One gets so utterly fed- 
 up with the mud, monotony, and murderousness of war. 
 But you are wrong when you, like most people at home, 
 think that the mere dirt, wet, and discomfort of the trenches 
 are the thing to be feared. No one minds that relatively 
 
 262
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 263 
 
 to the shells and trench mortars ; it is waiting for death or 
 dismemberment in bombardments that breaks men up. 
 There is nothing in getting wet and cold as compared 
 with this, but of course one can stick it all as long as is 
 necessary, and I have quite cheered myself up to-night. 
 
 I have been reading Gogol. It is good stuff, but does 
 not exactly help one to feel more convinced that all this is 
 worth enduring. Well, it must all end somehow, some day. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 16 January, 1916. 
 
 Thank you very much for the two letters. I did six 
 days in the firing-line and supports there from Saturday 
 night to Friday night. There was heavy shelling in the 
 daytime on Sunday and Monday, nearly all day on Tuesday, 
 and sometimes on Wednesday. My duties make it practi- 
 cally impossible for me to get any sleep at night. I am 
 prowling about between the English and German lines, 
 visiting my advanced bombing posts, seeing to construction 
 of bomb stores, dugouts, etc., making sure that my men 
 get their rations and rum, and conferring with officers nearly 
 all night. Then if they shell in the daytime it is practically 
 impossible to sleep. They don't shell near the front lines 
 at night just now. If one side did, the other side would too, 
 and neither side would be able to get their rations up and 
 life would be practically impossible. Mud and water not 
 so bad in these trenches as in the last, but the work of my 
 men in the advanced bomb posts is very dangerous and 
 nerve-racking. They are quite isolated by day and simply 
 have to lie in the mud ; if they were to get hit with a 
 " crump " or trench mortar, they would simply be done. 
 I got a telephone fixed up to one of the posts the most 
 dangerous one. Some of us have got a scheme for a bit 
 of a show next time in a rifle and bombing attack on some 
 German listening posts ; it may not come to anything, but 
 I have a lot of fellows who would volunteer to come and have 
 a bit of a smack at them with me. The company on our 
 right wounded and captured a German a fine big fellow ; 
 it appears to be true that the bullets in his cartridges were 
 reversed, i.e. would inflict horrible wounds in effect were
 
 264 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 " Dum-dums." He was shot with his own rifle after a scuffle 
 and got a very bad wound was not expected to live, but 
 I believe is in fact going on well. I am very sorry about 
 the reversed bullets ; I prefer to believe the best rather than 
 the worst about the enemy. I do not care for the poem 
 you sent me, because in the bitterness of things out here 
 I have no use for " God " or for the sentiment that we in 
 our holy righteousness are fighting a nation of brutes. I 
 respect the Germans as soldiers, I sympathize with the poor 
 devil of the German infantryman who goes through the 
 same hell as I do in a bombardment, and I see the German 
 point of view about the Lusilania, the Cavell business, 
 and other matters too clearly to feel any sympathy for the 
 yap, yap, yap of the Press about these things. I am out 
 to do my bit towards inflicting as much as possible of a 
 military defeat on the Germans. I am not interested in 
 exaggerating their infamy. If it were a question of being 
 deceived into believing them either better or worse than 
 they are, I would choose the former alternative. Why ? 
 Because no conceivable good can be done to mankind at 
 large by exaggerating the infamy of any nation. And 
 speaking as a man face to face with the chances of death, 
 I can honestly say that humanity and England's contribu- 
 tion to the Temple of Humanity are the only ideal con- 
 ceptions for which I have any use. 
 
 At nights, where we are now and as things are, it is only 
 bullets from fixed rifles and machine-guns along roads 
 and between lines that we have to fear. The whizz of the 
 bullets has little terror for me one often gets them pretty 
 close when knocking round. I think the psychology of 
 fear is largely based on one's own experience shells take 
 the guts out of me altogether. The impression of the wound 
 and shock I got in July is too vividly impressed upon the 
 conscious and sub-conscious parts of my mind. Other 
 men tell me that the whizz of bullets near by upsets them, 
 but I think on the whole that shells are the things that 
 most men fear. I am really much, more cheerful and happy 
 this time out than after the previous lot of trenches. My 
 moral is better. I could go up to an attack pretty coolly, 
 which I could not have done last time out. We expect 
 to be in and out of the trenches in this sector till about the
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 265 
 
 end of February, when we may be held to have earned three 
 weeks' or so " rest " out of the trenches. We were lucky 
 to get off with only five wounded and none killed last time 
 in. Thursday was a bright, nice day and there was a relief 
 from the shelling of the four previous days. It cheered 
 every one up. I said " Go hang " to sleep and played whist 
 all the morning in my dugout. The first time I have played 
 cards for many years I enjoyed the distraction immensely. 
 Last time out I was so fed-up with three days of life in mud 
 up to my thighs, and the prospect of several more days of 
 it, that for the first time in my Army career I " damned the 
 consequences " of breaking rules and outstayed my pass 
 into the town, over a cheerful supper party up till ten o'clock. 
 You are supposed to be clear of the town after 8.30. I 
 and the N.C.O.'s with me had the bad luck to be caught 
 by the Town Major, so yesterday, to the great amusement 
 of the regiment, I was up before the Colonel with my hat 
 off and got a " rep." I don't care a damn, the pleasure 
 made it worth while. I got a pass in again last night and 
 went to the Pictures, and had a good feed and a bottle of 
 wine with my friends, but got back just only just in 
 time. You must do something to make life livable here 
 there is nowhere to go in this camp and the sole source of 
 cheerfulness is a coke fire in one's tent if one can make 
 the stuff burn. Why don't these Y.M.C.A. huts come up 
 here, where we could do with them, instead of catering for 
 troops in safety at the Base and those A.S.C. and R.A.M.C. 
 people in safe jobs ? 
 
 I have taken a stray black cat into my tent ; she is lying 
 by the coke fire and miaouing in her sleep. It is strange 
 what a lot of men talk in their sleep out here. I suppose 
 all our nerves are on edge really. I was tired when I got 
 on to the bus three or four miles from the firing-line on 
 Friday night, but I feel quite fresh again to-night, and 
 have been to the barber's to-day with my company. It 
 makes us out here smile to read the official communiques, 
 " only normal artillery activity." People in Blighty think, 
 I suppose, that that means nothing doing for the infantry. 
 If only they realized ! 
 
 Very late lights out long ago.
 
 266 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 5 February, 1916. 
 
 At last I have a chance of writing to you. The battalion 
 is in the trenches, but I did not go with them on Tuesday 
 night, as I was summoned to G.H.Q. without any explanation 
 whatever. I was there for three days, returning this morn- 
 ing to our transport camp. I lived in luxury at an hotel, 
 but had a good deal of work to do, the nature of which I 
 must not divulge. I shall very likely have to go back there 
 for a couple of days next week on the same job, which 
 will then be finished as far as I am concerned. It was an 
 extraordinary pleasant change to get as far away from 
 the war as G.H.Q. is, and to live in a really civilized way 
 in a pleasant little French town. Incidentally I saw Tawney 
 there, and he asked after you. He is going on leave next 
 week in all probability. I wish I were. I can go when 
 I like, but I decline to take preference over the large number 
 of privates in my company who have never missed trenches 
 since the battalion came out here. I was too busy to read 
 or think much while at G.H.Q. But it was good to be in 
 France among French people. I feel that the sufferings 
 and trials of France in this war are almost immeasurable, 
 and I certainly find myself more and more moved by 
 sympathy with the French people. The toll of their dead 
 is simply appalling. 
 
 I am busy writing stuff for the Red Feather. 
 
 I don't see why we should feel annoyed with America. 
 My American friends rather surprise me by their (as it 
 seems to me) excessive pro-British sentiment. I don't 
 blame any neutral for keeping out of this business as long 
 as possible. Of course if you really believe in the black 
 and white or holy-war theory, you can call the Americans 
 cowards ; but like, I think, most soldiers, I don't believe 
 in that. Execration is a civilian trade. Good-bye. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 9 February, 1916. 
 
 I must lose no time in telling you a great story about 
 myself. My batman went to an estaminet to-night and
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 267 
 
 met a lot of R.F.A. men in our Division. One of them told 
 him that my paybook, which I had lost a few days ago, 
 had been found in the road near a place called Pushbike 
 Farm. Then they got talking about me and said to my 
 batman, " What do you call him in your mob ? " " Oh, 
 I've 'card 'im called all sorts of names." " Well, do you 
 know what we calls 'im ? " " No." " Can you guess ? " 
 " No." " Well, we calls 'im Siberian Joe." 
 
 I think I would go through another Hooge and take 
 the chance of pegging out in at least six bombardments 
 for the sake of the glory of going down to history as 
 " Siberian Joe." 
 
 THE BULLY BEEF MINE 
 FROM A MILITARY CORRESPONDENT IN FRANCE (F. H. K.) 
 
 Every one has heard of the waste of bully beef at the 
 Front. But perhaps the following story will help to make 
 clear the causes of this appalling waste and will also indicate 
 the nature and progress of the efforts at reform. Last 
 summer the regimental quartermaster-sergeant of a certain 
 battalion in Flanders was finding, like many of his col- 
 leagues, that a large proportion of the men refused to 
 consume the tin of bully and allowance of Army biscuits, 
 which was then issued more frequently than at present in 
 lieu of fresh meat and bread. As a matter of fact, a whole 
 tin of bully (three-quarters of a pound in weight) is more 
 than even a very hungry man will generally require for a 
 meal. Moreover, most of the men spend practically all 
 the five francs a week which they generally receive on account 
 of their pay upon food and drink. So long as they can buy 
 eggs, bread, coffee, butter, etc., in the farmhouses which 
 adjoin the rest camps or in the villages and little towns a 
 mile or two away, many of them will not touch what they 
 regard as the less palatable items in Army rations. The 
 regimental quartermaster-sergeant therefore found bully 
 and biscuits strewn about the camp, thrown on to the in- 
 cinerator, or accumulating in his stores. He tried to induce 
 
 1 From the New Statesman, 26 February, 1916.
 
 268 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 the Army Service Corps to keep a certain proportion of 
 the bully and biscuits to which the battalion was entitled 
 in their own hands. The Army Service Corps refused to do 
 so unless the numbers entered on the ration indent were 
 reduced. That is to say, supposing that the strength of the 
 battalion was 1,000, the quartermaster could, if he chose, 
 apply for only 850 rations on a given day. He would then 
 only receive 850 tins of bully instead of 1,000 ; but he would 
 also have the battalion's rations of bacon, butter, potatoes 
 (if any), tea, and sugar all reduced proportionately. Now, 
 all the other items of Army food are highly popular and are 
 rarely wasted. The men demand their full ration of bacon, 
 tea, etc., and grumble furiously if they do not obtain it. But 
 the authorities insisted on treating the" individual man's 
 daily ration allowance of so much meat, bread or biscuits, 
 jam, butter, tea, and so on, as an indivisible whole, which 
 had to be taken or left in toto. 
 
 The quartermaster-sergeant of the battalion in question 
 is an exceptionally able and conscientious man. Having 
 been beaten at one attempt to obviate waste, he resolved 
 to try another. There is in all battalions at the Front a 
 constant stream of men leaving and rejoining the unit for 
 innumerable reasons. Rations have to be indented for two 
 days ahead, and men are constantly arriving who find them- 
 selves not " in rations " for the day. In point of fact, they 
 can generally be provided for ; but it would be convenient 
 in a stationary rest camp if a reserve store of non-perishable 
 rations could be kept for emergencies. The quartermaster- 
 sergeant therefore began to use some of his surplus bully for 
 building up such an emergency store. But here again he 
 found himself in trouble. The camp was visited by a 
 superior supply officer. He discovered the surplus store and 
 proceeded to " strafe " the quartermaster on the ground that 
 in accordance with regulations he must indent for rations 
 corresponding to the exact number of men on the strength 
 of the battalion, and must issue every man with his full 
 amount of rations. 
 
 The conscientious quartermaster-sergeant gave it up. The 
 bully and biscuits continued to accumulate. There was 
 only one way out a decent and thorough burial. A fatigue
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 269 
 
 v, 
 
 party was turned out and hundreds of tins of bully and 
 biscuits disappeared in the clay of Flanders. 
 
 Months passed away. The battalion continued in the 
 weary routine of trench life in the same district throughout 
 the late summer, the autumn, and the winter. They were 
 quartered in one rest camp after another, but often found 
 themselves hi a collection of huts or tents which they had 
 occupied some weeks or months before. The transport of 
 the battalion came to be stationed permanently near the 
 spot which had become the bully beef cemetery. Mean- 
 while the scandal of the waste had begun to touch even 
 the official conscience. Some " redhat " (Staff officer) 
 decided that there was no irrefutable reason why the regula- 
 tion soldier's ration should be treated as a sacred indivisible 
 unity, to be thrown at the individual man irrespective of 
 the manner in which he would in fact dispose of it. At 
 last it was permitted to battalion quartermasters to refrain 
 from taking the full issue of bully beef and biscuits to which 
 they were entitled. And some one started experimenting 
 in the culinary possibilities of bully. It was found that 
 with the addition of a little flour and some onions highly 
 palatable rissoles could be made out of the tinned meat. 
 The necessary flour was supplied to battalions in lieu of 
 a part of the bread or biscuits to which they were entitled 
 on any one day. The onions came out of the ordinary 
 issue of vegetables. The rissoles were eagerly devoured 
 by the troops, and became a highly popular dish both in 
 rest camps and in the trenches, where they were carried 
 up in boxes either to be eaten cold or to be warmed up by 
 the men themselves in their mess-tins. It had taken a 
 year and a half of warfare to dissolve the theory of the indi- 
 visible soldier's ration and to discover how to make rissoles 
 out of bully beef. Still, we must remember that though 
 the mills of God grind slowly they grind exceeding sure. 
 And, after all, as we say in the trenches when the shells 
 are falling thickest, the first seven years of the war will 
 certainly be the worst. 
 
 Then an extraordinary thing happened. There was 
 actually now and again a shortage of bully in this battalion. 
 The best of the company cooks, anxious to provide as
 
 270 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 adequately as possible for the men in the trenches, used to 
 scour the camps for bully to make into rissoles, ransacking 
 the huts, the hedges and ditches, the vicinity of the incine- 
 rator, and the latest refuse pits. One day a certain cook 
 actually could not find enough. He was an old hand and 
 bethought himself of yet another source of supply. Making 
 his way to the quartermaster's stores, he secured a pick 
 and shovel and started excavating operations at a spot 
 where he remembered that large quantities of bully had 
 been buried in the previous summer. He was soon re- 
 warded by finding his pick go through a thin sheet of metal 
 into something soft. He had reached the upper limit of 
 the bully beef deposit. He soon exhumed thirty or forty 
 rusty tins of bully, put them into a sack, and made his way 
 to the cookhouse. His rissoles gave general satisfaction. 
 
 Obviously this sort of thing wants organizing. The ten- 
 dency nowadays is for the brigade or division to take over 
 specialist jobs. It is to be hoped that G.H.Q. will consider 
 the formation of brigade bully beef excavation detachments 
 at an early date. The biscuit question has not yet been 
 solved quite so satisfactorily. It is widely known that Army 
 biscuits form an excellent substitute for coke or charcoal, 
 and it is not uncommon nowadays to see a number of 
 braziers in a camp glowing with the peculiar bluish flame 
 which distinguishes the biscuit fire. But some critics regard 
 this as an extravagant method of preventing waste. An 
 artillery major, commanding a battery about halfway 
 down the British line, having failed to dispose of all his 
 men's surplus biscuits by free distribution to the local 
 peasantry, started mashing them up for his horses. Perhaps 
 we shall soon see transport sergeants detailing fatigue parties 
 to exhume tins of biscuits in order to provide dainty suppers 
 for their favourite mules. But the biscuits buried by the 
 infantry battalion to which I have alluded now form the 
 main foundation of the roadway leading into the camp. 
 They will therefore probably remain undisturbed, at least 
 until the archaeologists begin to investigate the manners and 
 customs of the twentieth-century English by means of 
 excavations on the plains of Flanders.
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 271 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 27 February, 1916. 
 
 Have been on trek over snow-covered plateaux and 
 valleys of late. On Friday we had an awful journey in 
 a snowstorm. The wagons all had to be man-handled, 
 and we got no rations or hot food on Friday night, or on 
 Saturday till the afternoon. We have rested in one place 
 new for two days, and expect to be in our new trenches 
 in a few days' time. The billets are very poor. On Friday 
 night half my company were sleeping without blankets 
 in an open barn with no doors. However, we have got 
 blankets all right now and I am very comfortable personally, 
 sleeping in an outhouse which is also used as a cook-house. 
 I got the book by Bazin which you sent just before leaving 
 the last place. It only just escaped being dumped, but I 
 came to the conclusion that perhaps it was the last straw 
 but one on the camel's back. Have finished Anatole 
 France's " Jocaste " to-day. There is something very 
 exquisite about his perception of things. It is immensely 
 interesting to be in touch with the French. 
 
 I feel more and more that there is something accursed 
 in the huge amount of money-making in connection with the 
 war that is going on in England both as regards employers 
 and as regards workpeople. The nation ought to have risen 
 to the level of insisting on placing a lot more of the war 
 industries on an entirely non-profit basis. Broadly speaking, 
 the English either volunteer for this hell or else sit down 
 and grow fat on big money at home. The contrast between 
 the two fates is too great. I am looking forward very 
 much to seeing what England is like when I come home 
 on leave when ! The men in the place where I am 
 writing are all talking about their time on leave. Here 
 are some of the remarks : "Do yer know, the first 
 bloke I spoke to when I got 'ome to Brum was a 
 Belgian. I cud ha knocked 'im dahn. 'E knew all the 
 places where we 'ad been." " I went out in civics one 
 arternoon and felt bloody-well ashamed of myself." " Do 
 yer know, the funniest thing was when my sister told 
 me she was workin' nights. I could na ha believed my 
 sister was workin' nights. It's a rum thing when you
 
 272 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 ha to go down to the firm to get your sister off 
 for a night. I don't like women workin' nights." " My 
 brother's gettin' four or five pund a week and my sister's 
 gettin' thirty bob." " The gaffers won't loose a lot of the 
 blokes for the Army. We say, Why don't they join the 
 Army ? but the gaffers won't loose 'em." " Aye, but I 
 think they ought ter let some of those as 'as been up the 
 line all the time go 'ome to work munitions. Let some 
 of 'em Durby blokes come art 'ere." 
 
 We are moving off to-morrow morning from here. 
 
 Good-bye. 1 suppose I shall see good old Blighty again 
 some day. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 7 March, 1916. 
 
 I am still in the support line, but have been laid up for 
 two days with " flu." I felt rotten yesterday, too ill to read 
 or smoke, or even read or write. When the medical corporal 
 came round he found my temperature was 103, but he 
 gave me some aspirin and it brought my temperature 
 down marvellously in the night. To-day I have stopped 
 in bed again and have been very comfortable. There was 
 a friendly rat who was sharing the straw of my bed with 
 me, but my batman drove him out remorselessly this 
 afternoon, and just caught his tail with a spade as he fled 
 through a hole at the side of the door. 
 
 We had rather bad luck here the other day and lost 
 three killed and two wounded by a shell ; there have been 
 a good many shells screaming overhead to-day, and just 
 as I have been writing this page our battery a few hundred 
 yards behind here have been sending over a dose. I shall 
 be all right again very soon. I don't want to be evacuated 
 just now, as I am waiting for my promotion to warrant 
 officer rank. This practically doubles my pay without 
 increasing my expenses and is also a status worth acquiring. 
 
 I have finished Anatole France's " Le Chat maigre," and 
 am now reading Bazin's " De Toute son Ame." I have 
 also raided a good deal of official Local Government and 
 theological books from the ruins of the Mairie and the 
 village cure's house, and find them amusing for skimming.
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 273 
 
 Incidentally M. le Cure had an odd number of the Revue 
 Catholique et Royaliste. Mon Dieu ! our Tories and clericals 
 would not dare to whisper what their confreres blazon 
 forth. They are both equally wicked, but the French 
 are more explicit. 
 
 Our artillery have opened out again. You should hear 
 the infantry curse when our artillery starts. Our Army 
 swore terribly in Flanders in Uncle Toby's time, but it 
 never swore worse than the infantry do now at their own 
 artillery, and then the British public is fed with stories by 
 the newspaper correspondents of the noble British infantry- 
 man thirsting to leap over the parapet, craving for a cease- 
 less rain of shells on the German lines, etc., etc. The article 
 in the Nation of the igth February on the " Victory of Time " 
 was a very good answer to the anti-Germans. This " war 
 on German trade for ever " cry is bad politics and bad 
 economics from the most cynical as well as from any decent 
 civilized point of view. As the writer points out, the abuse 
 of Kaiser Bill and Germany to-day is nothing to the abuse 
 of Napoleon and the Huns to be found in the Press of 
 a hundred years ago, and yet we and the French were as 
 thick as thieves in no time. Of course it is true that we 
 did destroy the Napoleonic tyranny, but even if by some 
 chance Napoleon had been left on the throne of a France 
 deprived of her foreign conquests, much the same thing 
 would in all probability have happened. I have been much 
 interested in the Local Government Official Annuals which 
 I found in the Maine; they have Annuaires Statistiques 
 for the Department going back to Napoleonic times, be- 
 ginning with very well compiled and edited annuals. 
 Voila ! one of the fruits of the work of the Revolution 
 and Napoleon ! I should like to write an article about 
 these books, and those I found in the cure's house, if I 
 could find time. Compare this well organized and system- 
 atized local government with the chaos of the English 
 parish and county in 1800. 
 
 Terrific bombardment over on the left. I hope they are 
 not going to start a Verdun here, but I would go through 
 anything to lend the French a hand. I only wish we could 
 fight under a French Staff. 
 
 19
 
 274 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 22 March, 1916. 
 
 I have come to the I4th Divisional Rest Camp. There is 
 nothing much the matter with me, only that I am weak 
 from three successive attacks of the " flu " in a fortnight. 
 It is pretty rotten doing the trenches when you are not 
 absolutely fit. I am sure shelling affects one's nerves a 
 lot more under these circumstances. I know I have got 
 a good deal more " nervy " lately. Perhaps this is partly 
 due to the shock of having a man killed right by me the 
 other day. 
 
 This spring weather seems a mockery in the midst of 
 this fighting. The songs of the birds simply make me sad. 
 The skylarks start every morning soon after stand-to in the 
 trenches, but one knows the shelling will begin about nine 
 or ten o'clock. 
 
 I have only just got your letters posted the week before 
 last. I shall be interested to know why you were not sur- 
 prised to hear of my being nearly killed the other day. If 
 it was a case of telepathy, I have been always inclined to 
 believe in that. I sympathize entirely with what you feel 
 about thrift. The Government should go in for thump- 
 ing big taxes. At the same time the way in which the 
 ten or twenty millions paid to the men out here is wasted 
 rather appals me. I should think 75 per cent, goes in 
 alcohol and gambling. The extent to which the latter goes 
 on here is extraordinary. Men who rim " Crown and 
 Anchor Boards " make hundreds and hundreds of francs, 
 and you continually come across cases of men losing ten 
 or twenty francs within a few hours of receiving it as 
 pay. As soon as the war has been going two years the 
 New Army men will be beginning to get the extra 6d. 
 a day proficiency pay. This will simply be wasted like 
 the rest. In my opinion it should be made deferred pay, 
 and handed over to men in the form of a Savings Bank 
 account at the end of the war. 
 
 I have just finished Voltaire's " Siecle de Louis Quatorze " 
 and de Maupassant's " En Famille." Maupassant's stories 
 are decidedly diverting ; you might let me have some more.
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 275 
 
 By the way, don't send me Rupert Brooke's " Letters 
 from America." I have read most of them already, and 
 the Brooke mania seems so remote from the Rupert I 
 knew so well. What Rupert would have said about some 
 of his worshippers, fervent Christians and such-like people ! 
 How they can swallow poems like that on " Fish " passes 
 my comprehension but obviously it pays them to claim 
 genius as belonging to themselves, especially when it cannot 
 say them nay. 
 
 Also I do not want Shakespeare sent because of any 
 " commemoration." It is quite right, no doubt, that he 
 should be commemorated, but reading now for me has a 
 touch of desperation about it. I feel it is as if my mind 
 were twitching in efforts to clutch at the life of thought. 
 Not but what I turn to reading with enormous relief. But 
 it is too intensely personal now for me to feel for a literary 
 celebration. However, I could do with " Hamlet " and 
 " Lear " now in small editions. 
 
 I can't disguise the fact that I am utterly sick of this 
 fighting. Being nearly killed about once in every three 
 weeks ceases to be an " adventure " after ten months ; 
 it becomes monotonous. The one thing I crave for more 
 than anything else, especially at this time of year, is an 
 opportunity of enjoying nature in peace, away from the 
 danger of shells, the sound of guns, and all the appurtenance 
 of war. Every pleasant landscape now seems to suggest 
 the horrors of war by contrast. Plave just got the news 
 of the three Zepp. raids yesterday. This kind of slaughter 
 really is pretty horrible. One wonders how far it is going. 
 I hope they did not come near you this time. I hope I 
 shall hear from you soon. 
 
 To E. S. P. Haynes. 
 
 GTH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 25 March, 1916. 
 
 ... At present I am in the Divisional Camp a sort of 
 semi-hospital, not far from the firing-line, for the slight 
 cases of sickness. I have had three attacks of " flu " in 
 three weeks. I got going again twice after lying up for a 
 day or two in the trenches, but collapsed after each effort.
 
 276 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 They say I am thoroughly run down. I am certainly more 
 fed-up with fighting than I have ever been. 
 
 I had as near a squeak as one can have ten days ago when 
 going down from the trenches accompanied only by a private 
 at nine o'clock on a delightful spring morning. They were 
 shelling quite unpleasantly all the time we were going down. 
 We reached the outskirts of the village which we were 
 making for safely and I thought we were all right, when 
 suddenly a high-velocity shell burst right by us. I could 
 see nothing for the thick smoke. Instinctively I jumped 
 into a deep trench on the edge of which we were walking. 
 As I jumped I heard the private one of my best men 
 call out, " Oh, major ! " (short for sergeant-major) " the 
 bastards have got me at last ! " He had been through 
 everything with our battalion without a scratch, and I 
 was in the devil of a funk, knowing that the cunning Boche 
 frequently sends two shells in the same place if he suspects 
 any one of being there. But I scrambled out of the trench 
 as quickly as I could (having no equipment on) and found 
 the lad lying horribly wounded in the stomach. I cut his 
 trousers down and stopped the blood in the worst place with 
 a large shell dressing which I had carried for months. He 
 was so bad that I could not bear to lift him down into the 
 trench alone, as it was so deep and I should have hurt him 
 badly. So I took the chance of another shell doing us 
 both in, and bellowed for stretcher-bearers there was 
 another regiment billeted in the village. After some 
 minutes they arrived, and we got the lad to their dress- 
 ing station after numerous halts due to damned German 
 aeroplanes overhead. He was fetched away by the 
 motor-ambulance, but died the same day. 
 
 That sort of thing, repeated a good many times, in addi- 
 tion to the nervous strain of shelling and bombardments, 
 makes one utterly war- weary. On this particular occasion 
 I was damned lucky. I was not touched, but found a 
 couple of holes in my clothes, made, I think, by bits from 
 the shell which killed the lad who was with me. 
 
 Of course, I don't want peace to be made as things are. 
 The job must be finished off. And the thought of the 
 French at Verdun inspires one to endure as nothing else
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 277 
 
 does at the moment. But how one dreams of the end ! 
 I used to be primarily a reformer full of zeal for remedying 
 this or that specific social injustice. I still am it au fond. 
 But when I dream of aprds la guerre I do not think at 
 all of the great social problems which will immediately 
 arise. I just think of the world this good old cheery 
 ball of earth as a place of exquisite beauty, adventure, 
 joy, love, and experience. I am perfectly content with 
 it as it [is]. I even almost love its defects, as one almost 
 loves the defects of a friend or lover who satisfies one. You 
 will not find the man from the trenches is going to hate 
 the German to the order of the politician, and refuse to buy 
 German goods which are obviously preferable to the British 
 product. By God ! I can see the scene before the peace, 
 even during the armistice. The infantrymen will swarm 
 over the parapets of the trenches on both sides and will 
 exchange every damned thing which they can spare off 
 their persons down to their buttons and hats and bits 
 of their equipment for " souvenirs." 
 
 If only one has the luck to be alive to enjoy that day ! 
 The happiest fate of all would be to be alive and to be in 
 the trenches. 
 
 I am not far from the original haunts where my battalion 
 spent its first nine months out here. It is pleasant to 
 have a change, but it is not in all ways for the better. 
 The spring is delightful in this rolling chalk country. 
 Every morning when I was in the front-line trenches I 
 used to hear the larks singing soon after we stood- 
 to about dawn. But those wretched larks made me 
 more sad than almost anything else out here. . . . 
 Their songs are so closely associated in my mind with 
 peaceful summer days in gardens or pleasant landscapes 
 in Blighty. Here one knows that the larks sing at 
 seven and the guns begin at nine or ten. Every 
 damned morning the Boches whizz-banged and trench- 
 mortared the trench that I was in. For some reason they 
 never touched the greater part of the front of our battalion. 
 It was only one end where I happened to be that they 
 worried. We had some but not a great many casualties 
 from the shelling. But it gets on one's nerves. The
 
 278 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 humorous side of being shelled is well portrayed by that 
 fellow Bairnsfather. Have you seen his collection of draw- 
 ings " Fragments from France " ? They are not art, but 
 they are extraordinary good expressions of the soldier's 
 humour about his own rat-in-a-trap predicaments. He 
 has a drawing called " Where did that one go [to] ? " 
 when the shell has actually " blown in " as we say the 
 speaker's own dugout. That is the remark you hear after 
 every burst ; each man anxiously asks his neighbour, 
 " Where did that one go ? " It is funny if one's nerves 
 have left one any sense of humour and funnier still when 
 you reflect that the " next one " may by force majeure 
 prevent you from making any inquiry at all. 
 
 Excuse these dirty " scraps of paper " but perhaps they 
 are appropriate for the correspondence of one who rushed 
 to volunteer on the inspiration caused by poor old Bethmann- 
 Hollweg'a unfortunate phrases of those hot August days 
 of long ago. I write lying on the floor of a well-built hut 
 which we English have taken over from the French Red 
 Cross. The bright sunshine, blue sky, and clouds and 
 budding trees which I can see through the window make me 
 think of the Alps and Northern Italy. But, damn it, they 
 are fighting even where I tramped for pleasure in the Dolo- 
 mites ! Well, it will end some time and somehow. Only 
 let it be a definite, well-established peace when it does 
 come. The Prussian monarchy must be smashed, but the 
 German people must be given a chance to live an honourable 
 life in the world if they will dissociate themselves from the 
 bloody system of militarism. 
 
 . . . By the way, public movements unconnected with the 
 war probably languish for lack of funds now, so I enclose 
 my humble sub. for the D.L.R.O. (five-franc notes can be 
 changed at any P.O.), which kindly forward to the Treasurer, 
 whose address I forget. . . . 
 
 Have been reading Anatole France, Voltaire, and Maupas- 
 sant while I have been ill. Voltaire is one of the great figures 
 of all the ages his combination of luminous sanity and 
 passion for human rights makes him stand out even 
 among the great. I have always ranked him far above 
 Rousseau.
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 279 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 Good Friday, 1916. In the trenches. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter and the photo- 
 graphs of the children. Bernard is certainly getting like 
 me in some respects. Mrs. Green was much struck by it. 
 
 I am a bit rheumaticky as a result of two days in the 
 wet in the trenches, but am beginning to take it as part 
 of the normal troubles of life. Had another dose of trench 
 fever on Sunday, but determined to come up the line on 
 Monday and have felt all right since. . . . They have 
 started pretty big stuff into our village into which we go 
 in support. (At present in front line.) But I think the 
 cellars are fairly safe as things go. Our artillery takes the 
 aggressive, and one can hardly blame them for hitting back. 
 I hope you have got the Red Feather. It is not a bad 
 number, I think. The French Foreign Office is making 
 a collection of trench magazines and has written to me for 
 a set of the Red Feather. You will probably recognize 
 " Ons Heeres Boomtje." 
 
 I can vaguely remember learning to tell the time and 
 appreciate Bernard's efforts. I suppose they don't learn 
 from " Reading Without Tears " now. But I probably 
 learnt the three " R's " in the style of your generation 
 rather than that of your children, let alone your grand- 
 children. I begin to feel very old, and shall till I am born 
 again after the war. That is what survival will mean to 
 some of us. 
 
 Well, good-bye. 
 
 Thanks for the Nation and Nineteenth Century. Remain 
 Rolland never reached me. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 28 April, 1916. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter and papers, which 
 came up with the rations last night. A. G. G.'s denuncia- 
 tion of George in the Daily News is excellent. I should 
 think it would penetrate even that toughening hide, and it 
 is good to find the truth let out in the Liberal Press. No ! 
 don't send me that volume of poems. I am thankful that
 
 280 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 there has been no good war poetry, or very little. There 
 is not much that is poetic about this war. It is bad enough 
 to have to listen to those people who justify war because 
 it gives them a quasi-sensual satisfaction to see humanity 
 crucified after the manner of the founder of Christianity. 
 It would be almost worse to find our intellectual reactionaries 
 ineligible for the trenches deriving satisfaction from war 
 as a stimulant of great literature. I am more interested 
 in life than in poetry, and I should regard it as a disaster 
 to humanity if really great war poems began to appear. It 
 would imply that war did really express something essential 
 and inevitable in the human soul. I do not regard that 
 little volume of Gibson's poems as really war poetry. It 
 is about war, but not war poetry. The same applies to 
 Squire's poem in the Statesman, which seemed to me rather 
 good. I have seen too much, and my heart is too much 
 set on a new life, to leave me much emotion to spare for the 
 ruined stones of Ypres. When I was there I acquired a 
 sort of affection for the place from our Army's association 
 with it. But debris are debris, and the Cloth Hall is rather 
 reminiscent of the dead beauty of Venice, which simply 
 gets on my nerves. I am much more interested in the 
 Annuaires Statistiqucs of the Pas de Calais and the histories 
 of the Comte of Artois, which I collected here and which 
 some brute has now destroyed. They were a genuine 
 and direct link with the past. There is a hopeless gap 
 between the Cloth Hall and us. 
 
 My rheumatic demons performed a culminating war- 
 dance by way of a sort of piece de resistance, I suppose 
 for about four hours yesterday evening. Then I slept from 
 sheer exhaustion, dreaming a lot, which I rarely do, and 
 waking up for a few minutes at the sound of a very heavy 
 bombardment a few miles away. The Boches have been 
 sending pretty heavy stuff just over my head this morning. 
 Am sorely tempted to come on leave next Wednesday. 
 Only three of my men who have never missed trenches 
 remain to go. 
 
 Well, I must be off to have a look at my scavenging 
 party. I hope to specialize on dead rats, which I think 
 are rather pernicious.
 
 JANUARY 1 TO MAY 4, 1916 281 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 4 May, 1916. 
 
 All being well, which it possibly may not be, I shall come 
 out of the trenches some time towards midnight on Saturday 
 and leave our rest billets at 5 p.m. on Sunday, to start on 
 my journey on leave. Of course one never knows if leave 
 may not be suddenly stopped for a few days or indefinitely, 
 so do not be disappointed if I do not come after all. I 
 shall wire as soon as possible after my arrival in Blighty. 
 By Gad ! the thought of Blighty seems too good to be true. 
 
 I think stands a good chance of being nabbed for 
 
 the Army after all. Although I disapprove of this in 
 principle, it is difficult not to feel a malicious satisfaction 
 at the prospect. I know a large proportion of these Pacifist 
 agitators whose names are very prominent nowadays. 
 The alliance of the two types, demagogic Socialists and 
 hypersensitive aesthetic intellectuals, is rather amusing 
 to one who is familiar with both lots. They have nothing 
 in common really. I once stayed for a week in the same 
 Swiss chalet with one of them (a lady), who disliked 
 me intensely. If any one was ever vaterlandslos it is she. 
 Resident in Italy, and the friend of all sorts of scholars 
 in Germany and France, steeped in eighteenth-century 
 " enlightenment," she is as cosmopolitan as a typical 
 Roman citizen of the third century. I should rather like 
 to have an hour with her for all that. I am not so 
 crude as I was when I met her at the age of twenty- 
 three, and she interests me as a kind of Zoological Gardens 
 specimen of Homo sapiens. 
 
 I have been talking this afternoon with my company 
 officer, with whom I get on excellently. He has spent 
 some dozen years in the ranks on foreign service. The 
 foreign-service English soldier is a very different man from 
 the home-service man far more to my liking. 
 
 Well, I have done a lot of foolish things in my time, but 
 I think there are few men or women who can be so much 
 at home in so many different environments as I can. And 
 after all that is not a bad foundation for a life worth living. 
 I find it difficult to believe that I shall ever be bored or
 
 282 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 dissatisfied if I survive the war unmanned. But that, of 
 course, is an illusion analogous to that of the perfect 
 marriage. 
 
 This place is steadily getting warmer for trench mor- 
 taring and shelling. I hate the sound of a bombardment 
 more and more, as week by week the sights and sufferings 
 that it implies become more and more familiar to me. 
 But the larks sing all day over these trenches, undisturbed 
 by shells, aeroplanes, and all the appurtenances of war. 
 They seem to flourish here much more than in Flanders. 
 
 This Irish revolt is a tragedy for Ireland, for which the 
 Ulstermen are as much responsible as any one, since they 
 started the fashion of keeping private armies. I should 
 hope that mankind will be weary of violence as a means of 
 settling disputes within the limit of a single State after 
 this war, and that revolutionary Syndicalism and feminism 
 will be rather out of fashion. But, on the other hand, I 
 have seen it argued that Anglo-Saxon ex-soldiers will be 
 more prone to violence in civil and labour disputes. It 
 is difficult to say. 
 
 Well, anyhow, I hope to see you next week. A week 
 of liberty will be glorious. I look forward above all to 
 a bit of peace at Colchester. Auf wicdcrschcn !
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 VICTORIA STATION. 
 
 13 May, 1916, 6.15 a.m. 
 
 AN extraordinary night. Row after row of England's fight- 
 ing men lying sleeping on the platform or sitting on their 
 packs reading the papers. I have just had a lovely " kip " 
 with my back against a corner, but the owner of a stall has 
 come along and wakened me in order to open his shop 
 front. I got into one of Smith's carts a little way from 
 Liverpool Station along with a lot of the Hants Carabineers 
 going to Waterloo. From there I got another Smith's cart 
 to Victoria. You can't get on to Smith's carts or " kip " 
 on the platform in civil life ! Well, it has been fine, my 
 leave in Blighty. The happiest week in my life undiluted 
 happiness ! I was afraid at one time that leave would 
 unnerve me on the contrary, it has bucked me up con- 
 siderably. All the trench mortars, whizz-bangs, and crumps 
 that Fritz is keeping especially for me have no terror for 
 me, and even if they send me to yon side of the Styx I 
 shall probably upset the boat going over for a joke, except 
 that it might hurt poor old Charon's feelings. I wonder if 
 Charon will take paper money for his obol now the war 
 is on ; it seems a much better douceur than a French five- 
 franc note ! I wonder whether the guillotined Royalists 
 tried to get over with an assignat. It would be just like 
 a Frenchman to try. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 CAMP NEAR PORT OF DISEMBARKATION. 
 
 14 May, 1916, 8 a.m. 
 
 Last night, after a rather rough crossing, we were formed 
 up on the quay and stood there for well over half an hour, 
 
 283
 
 284 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 patience, punctuated by blasphemy, being the predominant 
 note in the tone of the gathering. It appears that no guides 
 to the famous and much cursed " rest " camp of this port 
 had appeared, so of course, when they did set off they took 
 us for a jolly route-march of three or four miles over the 
 mountains in the wrong direction, and ended up at another 
 camp only partially full up. I call it a " march," but I 
 should have been sorry for any one, from Sir Douglas Haig 
 downwards, who tried to make us march. We " went " 
 in our own sweet way, in twos and threes and fours and 
 nineteens. The military police on the quay showed a 
 great improvement in manners during the past few months. 
 They said " please," and treated us, quite rightly, as a 
 well-trained civilian policeman treats a civilian crowd. 
 Last May I saw one draw a revolver, but an R.S.M. of our 
 brigade promptly put him under arrest, as I should have 
 been delighted to do myself. There is no doubt that the 
 whole B.E.F. becomes more and more like armed civilians, 
 which is quite right, because it is the nature of the English 
 race to fight as armed civilians. As a matter of fact the 
 French are much the same. The conception of a soldier 
 as a wholly different sort of animal from a civilian is really 
 now simply Prussian. Of course, special sentiments and 
 points of honour are emphasized by military life, but they 
 are not, or should not be, different from those of civilian 
 life. Part of the game of knocking about these sort of 
 places as a C.S.M. is that you suddenly find yourself in 
 charge of anything up to two hundred men from every part 
 of the British Empire, whom you have never set eyes on 
 before. When I was in a convalescent camp after being 
 wounded I had to look after a barrack-room of forty men, 
 including every type of British and colonial soldier. They 
 frightened me a little at first, but I managed them all right. 
 This morning I have had a company including every sort 
 of man from Anzacs to Irish. Last night we just scrambled 
 into tents anyhow frightfully cold and no blankets. We 
 marched from the wrong camp to the right one this 
 morning, and I have just made a first-rate breakfast. 
 There are lots of Anzacs about here. I think they mix 
 less readily with the English than the Canadians do, but
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 285 
 
 I like the men immensely, though I think they look 
 down on us. 
 
 Off presently up the line and to all that that means. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 17 May, 1916. 
 
 Here I am again in the old dugout with a cheerful brazier 
 giving out a red glow. I got all the papers you sent last 
 night. I am cheerfully replete with bacon and eggs and tea 
 and enjoying your Russian cigarettes. The weather is 
 good again this week, and I lay in a field all yellow with 
 buttercups and dandelions just opposite my dugout this 
 morning and thought much of Colchester. The shells 
 don't drop very near here, but the noise of them and an 
 occasional " zip " of bullets is irritating. I suppose I am 
 six or seven hundred yards from the Germans, not much 
 farther back than where I live when the battalion is in the 
 front line. I am thinking of going to bathe this afternoon 
 in a stream three hundred yards or so back. Shells don't 
 seem to drop there and the willows and elms along the 
 bank look very tempting. I hope that brute who shot 
 Skeffington is heavily punished, otherwise I shall begin to 
 think that England has Prussianized herself in fighting 
 Prussia. I think nothing short of a death sentence on that 
 man can suffice, if a fair trial confirms the facts which we 
 all assume to be true. Life is getting too cheap altogether, 
 especially in the eyes of people who read of death every 
 day but never witness it. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 19 May, 1916. 
 
 Here is a flower which a lad just tossed me as he passed 
 my dugout in a long string of men on the way to carry 
 or dig far into the night. He said, " That will remind you 
 of Blighty, Major." A graceful act like that is among 
 the very best things in the world. The flower has brought 
 me nearer to home. That was its end in life as you and I 
 see it, though I hate the Christian philosophy which would
 
 286 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 go on to point a moral of general self-effacement of every 
 living thing for every other living thing. We go into the 
 line again to-morrow night. Rather sorry to leave my 
 pleasant existence here. I have cut a seat in the earth 
 outside my dugout and have got to enjoy the look of the 
 fields and hills by the little river behind here. All the 
 fields between and behind the lines of trenches are now 
 ablaze with yellow wild flowers ; there are not so many 
 poppies here as in some of the fields of Flanders which 
 war has driven out of cultivation. The corn is now coming 
 up half wild amongst the weeds and flowers for the second 
 time. The peasants will have almost a hopeless job to get 
 these fields into good cultivation after the war. We here 
 often wonder what will happen to the trenches. Every 
 division or other unit thinks it does more " fatigues " than 
 any one else, and prophesies gloomily that it will be kept 
 out here after every one else to fill in the trenches, just as 
 we used to have to fill in the practice trenches we made 
 in Blighty. 
 
 I have found that the alluring grey and white cat which 
 used to prowl round my dugout is the mother of four 
 kittens. I went to see them in their nest in the dressing 
 station dugout two nights ago. Yesterday she carried 
 them about four hundred yards up the road to a big dugout 
 where fifty or sixty of my men are. There are two other 
 nests of kittens about here, one of them up in the trenches, 
 and one is almost always meeting new dogs and puppies 
 that roam about and get board and lodging off any old 
 soldier in the trenches or the ruined village. They say 
 that one came over from the German lines. The trenches 
 are rather a fine place for these creatures when things are 
 quiet. There was hardly any bombarding round here last 
 night. It is rather strange how we regard bombarding 
 as a matter dependent on some great power above, and 
 independent of us. You say to a man in the morning, 
 " A decent quiet night last night," just as you might say, 
 " A fine day this morning." Every one hates the sound 
 of even a distant bombardment. It makes you appre- 
 hensive, especially if you have been through any sort of 
 a hot time in the past.
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 287 
 
 Reverting to the animals about here, one of my men tells 
 me that when they bombarded a wood behind the village 
 not long ago, several dogs ran out of it yelping and bark- 
 ing. There is something comic in the idea of the animal 
 creation unwittingly letting itself in for the consequences 
 of human folly. 
 
 Thanks for Public Opinion ; it is a useful paper out here ; 
 but I wish the gentleman would not always cover his front 
 page with a speech or article most like an " uplift " sermon 
 that he can find. I do not like " uplift " and it has not 
 much use for me. But perhaps he caters largely for the 
 parson who wants to be well informed, can only afford one 
 daily paper, and is too lazy to go to a Public Library. 
 
 One of my men who is a plumber is making a drain to 
 take off the waste water from a pump from which a good 
 deal of the water for the trenches is fetched. As the result, 
 I think, of the earth being stirred up, the fumes of a lachry- 
 matory gas shell which had pitched there were let loose, 
 and when I went to see him at the end of the morning 
 yesterday his eyes were all red and watering. I had not 
 been there five minutes myself before I began to blink and 
 wipe my eyes. I suppose the main idea of these shells in 
 a big show is to cause bad shooting and perhaps also 
 " wind up." 
 
 With regard to what you say about Women Suffrage, I 
 am a realist or try to be before all things in politics, and am 
 always testing my general ideas in relation to facts of social 
 and individual life. I am not only a Suffragist, I would 
 throw every political position from Cabinet rank downwards 
 open to women ; but I am confident that there will never 
 be more than a minority of women in such positions, and I 
 am convinced that it would be a disaster if there were more 
 than a minority. Gurney Benham, who is a keen Suffragist, 
 said to me that he thought men and women were similar 
 creatures in public affairs. I don't. The homo sum 
 argument is valid up to a point, but only up to a point. 
 Most Suffragists would consider this appalling high treason ; 
 that is because Ic Ion Dieu has not thought fit to enlarge 
 their dear little minds. A cynic might say that I am 
 prepared to free women because I am convinced of the
 
 288 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 superiority of men, but he would be a very horrid cynic 
 and would only be speaking about 3 of the truth. 
 
 To Mrs. Townshend. 
 
 B.E.F. I June, 1916. 
 
 I was very glad to get your letter while in the trenches, 
 and Shaw's article on the Germans delighted me, though 
 I confess that the New Age as a whole is too modern for me. 
 I have all along been and am now one of the people interested 
 in politics who remember and cannot remain unconscious 
 of what English political conditions were like before 1906. 
 It often strikes me as very curious, or perhaps it isn't really, 
 that among the Intelligentzia a large proportion of the 
 most " advanced " people of the present day are those who 
 were bitterly opposed to what was generally recognized as 
 progressive before 1906. People who were anti-Suffragists 
 then became prison-going feminist revolutionists about 
 1909, and anti-Socialists became Syndicalists. The first 
 political book which influenced me profoundly was Maine's 
 " Ancient Law," and my political thinking is descended 
 from the Whiggery of Maine and goes back through Macaulay 
 to the Puritanism of the seventeenth century and ultimately 
 perhaps to classical republicanism. Therefore I cannot 
 swing from one pole to another of social theory, though I 
 should be far from claiming consistency as a virtue in all 
 or perhaps in many circumstances. 
 
 You are quite right in saying that Colchester represents 
 England better than London now. All my past civilian 
 life seems a very long way away now, and I can review the 
 past ten years impartially. I shall certainly never live 
 in London again if I can possibly help it. All this North- 
 cliffism is, I think, mainly due to the unhealthy condition 
 of " the wen," as Cobbett called it. Urban Yorkshire is 
 barbarous, perhaps half American, and East Anglia may have 
 a drowsy atmosphere overhanging it, but they are pretty 
 well denned living communities of men familiar as entities 
 to every one's thought. They can hit back, vaguely and 
 half blindly perhaps, but still as unities, against bamboozle- 
 ment. London cannot and won't, and swallows these 
 beastly lies much more easily.
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 289 
 
 You, of course, look forward to craft or industrial organiza- 
 tion splitting across local governmental organization. But 
 I don't see much to be proud of in the conduct either of 
 the big employers or of the workmen and their organiza- 
 tions in this war. 
 
 Neither of them is ashamed to enrich themselves with the 
 price of blood, and no one can conceive of the present-day 
 urban worker ever being in general as fine a creature in his 
 workshop as he is as a soldier. 
 
 Of course, it is hard for people at home to realize what 
 we are going through. I found myself after a day or two 
 automatically placing every one I met either in one or 
 other of the two types, those who do and those who don't 
 feel for the " trench population," as Churchill rightly 
 called us in contradistinction to all the limpets who cling 
 to safe jobs behind the lines. There are very few of them 
 who could not be replaced by war-worn men. (That speech 
 of Churchill's voiced the sentiments of an Army as few 
 speeches in history have ever done.) I think women on 
 the whole feel for us more than men, though some women 
 are bestially cruel in their anti-German sentiments. 
 
 I am in no way a peace-at-any-price man and follow Grey 
 in his admirable speech entirely. 
 
 Of course we don't have a bad time always. Just now 
 we are having a glorious six days' rest (including some night 
 trench digging as a fly in the ointment) after eighteen days 
 " in." We are in a nicer village than the last one we had, 
 though we can easily be shelled if Fritz likes and perhaps 
 he will like soon, as a big gun near by, worked by marines, 
 was smashing him up this afternoon. However, it is a 
 good Army and a good war to-day, as we say, and it is no 
 good living for anything but the present out here, except 
 when the present is too unpleasant to be tolerable ; then 
 think of the future or of anything but your own environment. 
 
 . . . There does seem to be a fair hope of peace before 
 Christmas. No more winters in Northern Europe for me ! 
 I have had enough wet and cold for all my natural. England 
 won't see much more of me after the war. I have repaid 
 some of the bounty she has showered on me and am ripe 
 for life in a new land. I think there is no doubt that a lot 
 
 20
 
 290 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 of men will be making for the colonies. The war has brought 
 out the Robinson Crusoe that is in every Englishman. 
 
 Well, I only hope they won't blow my head off next 
 week to put an end to the realization of the scheme of 
 my next chapter. 
 
 I am having Curtis's book sent me. I hope I shall live 
 to see great developments in the Anglo-Saxon Common- 
 wealth. I am glad that they are talking about Common- 
 wealth and not Empire. . . . 
 
 It is not without significance that Dilke and Chamberlain, 
 two of the great founders of what is unfortunately called 
 Imperialism, were both also republicans by choice and only 
 opportunist monarchists. 
 
 I cannot understand why some of my friends (Pacifists 
 or semi-Pacifists mostly) are gloomy about the political 
 future. I am full of hope. The English spirit is going to 
 extend itself in the world, I feel convinced. 
 
 To Clifford D. Sharp. 
 
 4 June, 1916. 
 
 Enclosed is first instalment of stuff for the eighth number 
 of the Red Feather a drawing and two poems. We have 
 got the next number more or less planned out, and I expect 
 :more stuff will be in soon. . . . 
 
 The 2 ist May was the anniversary of our landing in 
 France. We could not do anything to celebrate it, as we 
 were in front-line trenches. Am enjoying six days' rest. 
 
 Things have been fairly quiet since I returned in our 
 sector, and no one has been killed, though several have been 
 wounded and got shell-shock the latter from a bloody 
 enormous trench-mortar projectile which they have just 
 brought up into our region ; it makes a hole like a Jack 
 Johnson hole and is damnably nerve-shattering. The 
 Germans have revived the practice of dropping arrows from 
 aeroplanes in these parts rather heavy things with fowls' 
 feathers for a tail. These have not been dropped while 
 we have been at rest, but we have found a good many in 
 the village. It is the best village we have had for some time 
 some decent people in it though peasant women are
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 291 
 
 bloody about objecting to one's playing cricket on their 
 fields, even if you offer to pay and take care to do no 
 damage. 
 
 Churchill has obviously made some misstatements, but 
 his criticisms have been very useful on the whole, I think. 
 It is a bit of a blow to find him talking in a matter-of-fact 
 way of the fighting Army of late 1917. If I really expected 
 to be here till then, I think life would be absolutely un- 
 bearable. 
 
 The most violent trade-war people seem to me to imply 
 that we are not going to defeat and destroy Prussian 
 militarism. If we do a trade war as they preach, it is simply 
 a mischievous idea. Of course we must be prepared with 
 much State support of industry against not only Germany, 
 but many other post-war dangers. But these people seem 
 to be determined never to give Germany a chance of being 
 a reformed character, and don't want to hope that she will 
 ever be. I don't expect miracles or a revolution, but I 
 am sure that the German is by nature more peace-loving 
 than the Englishman, and that there will be a great revulsion 
 of feeling in Germany, which may overcome even the hopes 
 which the idea of the future naval war with England might 
 contain for some Germans. 
 
 Queer thing to see nothing but crucifixes in the villages 
 here, while in Flanders it was all Virgins. I wonder if it 
 is because religion has a hold on men as well as women in 
 Flanders, and for the most part only on women here. 
 Obviously one needs a God of the opposite sex to oneself 
 in the kind of religion these people have. Perhaps, on the 
 other hand, the contrast represents the historical conse- 
 quences of two different pagan cults of centuries ago. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F 4 June, 1916. 
 
 I have this morning read Toynbee and Bryce's pamphlet 
 on the Armenian atrocities. Much as I prefer the Turk 
 to the Armenian, I cannot help feeling that this is about
 
 292 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 the most dreadful of all the horrible things in this war, and 
 I felt compelled to send a humble obol to the Refugees 
 Fund. Allowing for all the exaggerations, I suppose the 
 total number of Armenian men, women, and children mas- 
 sacred must exceed the total number of British subjects 
 killed in this war. One cannot get away from the fact 
 that the Armenian in Turkey, just as the Jew in Russia, 
 does constitute a very difficult problem, each of these races 
 possessing the money-getting instinct and capacity to a 
 far greater degree than the natives in whose land they 
 live. But nothing can justify this sort of massacre. I am 
 inclined to think that the solving of the nationality problem 
 after the war really ought to be helped out by a certain 
 amount of deliberate geographical sorting out and trans- 
 portation of alien minorities, with whom majorities cannot 
 live in peace, to other areas. The general uprooting which 
 the war has brought about in various places would make 
 this practicable, I think, in particular areas. I think 
 Zionism ought to be given a chance, for instance, and the 
 population of Macedonia could be sorted out to a certain 
 extent. It is extraordinary how the Anglo-Saxons seem 
 able to assimilate and, where they do not assimilate, to 
 live at peace with aliens much better than any one else. 
 The French can assimilate too, but they do not tolerate 
 other languages and cultures as we do. Why cannot 
 mankind at large learn the lesson of toleration ? I am 
 both cosmopolitan and nationalist more nationalist, I 
 admit, than I was before the war, because the distinctive 
 qualities of the English have come to light more positively 
 than before. 
 
 I have been knocking about near the front line planning 
 out the men's work for to-night with an officer and sergeant. 
 We came eventually on our journey to a road which runs 
 through our lines into the Germans'. The road was, of 
 course, overgrown with grass. There is something very 
 mysterious about these roads which run from your own lines 
 into enemy country. It would be so simple to walk a couple 
 of hundred yards farther were it not for all the weapons 
 of war, and it is extraordinary to live in such close prox- 
 imity to the gentlemen opposite, and to know nothing, or
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 293 
 
 next to nothing, about their doings. The road unites us. 
 I am sure many a mystically fanciful German has thought 
 as wistfully as I have of the continuation of one of 
 these many international roads as he sat behind his 
 barricade. 
 
 We played cricket yesterday evening with great enjoy- 
 ment. Lord Henry Bentinck has sent my men a set, which 
 they greatly appreciate. An old peasant woman turned 
 us off her field and would not even listen to offers of pay- 
 ment. I wonder if Germany's sergeant-majors offer to pay 
 and make the men move under such circumstances. How- 
 ever, in the end I gave her two minutes' continuous of my 
 very choicest, knowing that she would not " compree." 
 We moved to a bare patch and then a Taube came over ; 
 however, we finished our game. 
 
 I don't altogether care for the British Workers' National 
 League, whose manifesto you sent. I think it is rather a 
 false adaptation of Australian labourism to English circum- 
 stances. It is ridiculous to suppose that German sweating 
 is what we have to fear in industrial competition. The 
 manifesto implies too much truckling to the Trade War 
 business for my liking. 
 
 I have just finished Barres's "Au Service derAllemagne." 
 I enjoyed it, but if that is really the French case for having 
 Alsace-Lorraine, then I cannot say I am much impressed 
 by it. In effect it simply amounts to the claim that the 
 mission of France is to civilize Germans and that to civilize 
 Germans is to Gallicize them. This is simply polite Prus- 
 sianism. I don't think I want you to send me any more 
 of Barres. He represents reactionary France, which is in 
 many ways more alien to us English than reactionary 
 Germany. As between Barres and Kaiser Bill I have very 
 little feeling of partisanship. If Barres and Bazin really 
 represented France I should feel that much of our English 
 blood was being spilt in vain. Here are some oats and 
 poppies from the old trench near where I am going to live. 
 Oats seem to flourish wild better than barley. This is the 
 second year that the corn in the fields in which our trenches 
 lie must have come up wild.
 
 294 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 6 June, 1916. 
 
 I am in the trenches again. We came up last night 
 without mishap. 
 
 Thank you for the Nation that review of the Grenville 
 Letters was delightful and also for the magazine you sent. 
 I like Bairnsfather immensely, but those quasi-society 
 weekly papers honestly revolt my moral sense. There is 
 a kind of half-hearted sensuality about them, extending 
 even to the paper they are printed on. You get the same 
 in the gossip pages of the halfpenny illustrated papers, 
 and I think it is the most unclean thing in England. I do 
 think that the Anglo-Saxon peoples make more of a mess 
 of sex than any one else in the world. I don't think it is 
 really in the blood, and I believe that probably the practical 
 Anglo-Saxon capacity will in the end reform social sexual 
 morality more effectively than any other force in the world, 
 possibly in part because the need for reform is greater with 
 us than it is with any other race. 
 
 I have just been interrupted again by the old black rat. 
 My batman had got him in a corner outside and called me 
 to help to dispatch him. Just as I got up from sitting on 
 the dugout steps the old beggar tried his usual dodge of 
 running down the steps to his hole downstairs. I got him 
 with my heel, he squeaked, turned back, and ran under a 
 board ; Kearney poked him out while I snatched up a 
 bayonet and smashed his head open as he ran out of cover 
 again. He did not suffer long, and now he is under ground. 
 
 I have been talking to Kearney about his trade union. 
 He works in the Bermondsey leather trade, and in a strong 
 union shop. It is interesting to find that the man in their 
 trade who corresponds to the " shop steward " in the 
 engineering trade or the " father of the chapel " in the 
 printing trade is called " the lord of the shop." The English 
 manage to make nearly all their institutions marvellously 
 picturesque in a solid sort of way. There is something 
 great about the " lord of the shop " and " father of the 
 chapel."
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 295 
 
 The point about sergeant-majors, to whose general 
 position you were alluding the other day, is that there are 
 relatively few of them, far fewer than there are captains, 
 for instance, and a great deal fewer than there are sub- 
 alterns. Also I should think they have, or can have, more 
 influence over the men's lives for good or evil than any other 
 rank. I don't think I should like to change into any other 
 position off the Staff, except perhaps that of a regimental 
 sergeant-major, and I should not care for that job outside 
 my own battalion. 
 
 A bit of a strafe has just started some sort of big stuff 
 dropping in our second line. I suppose they must keep 
 the war going. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 10 June, 1916. 
 
 I have been pretty busy this time "in." I have got a 
 new idea for the construction of trenches, or at least two 
 new schemes. I have a special gang of men working out 
 one of the schemes this time, and I go round and direct 
 operations a good deal. I have about five parties working 
 in different parts of the trenches, beside the men manning 
 saps and bombing posts ; all these need my fatherly eye, 
 and as we hold about a mile of front, and the trenches are 
 a sort of Hampton Court maze, I get a good deal of walking 
 about. I have now moved into my renovated French 
 dugout in a maze of trenches overgrown with weeds 
 and corn, which C. and I call the " jungle." My batman, 
 the Holborn Restaurant waiter, has returned and lives 
 with me again. Yesterday morning, when I was still in 
 the bomb store, and just after I had had breakfast, a whizz- 
 bang skimmed the top of the place and burst near. I had 
 my boots and equipment off, my tunic was soaking wet 
 and being dried by a brazier, as I had been out in the rain 
 all night, but I leaped up and ran like a rabbit, in my 
 bare feet, down the trench just as another one burst. I 
 think my new quarters will be a bit safer. 
 
 The last parcel was excellent, especially Rose's cake. 
 The steak and kidney pie gave me the best dinner I had 
 had since I left Blighty, only I cut my finger on the tin in
 
 296 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 opening it ; there is no reason why I should have cut it, 
 as I have opened scores of bully tins without mishap. 
 
 The General is coming to see my new trench as soon as 
 I get it done. I had a Colonel of the - - and the Brigade 
 Major and Staff Captain round to-day. I have got a good 
 lot of men doing it, and I have offered them one five-franc 
 note, and the company officer has offered them another, if 
 they get it done before we go out to the sunken road and 
 ruined village to-morrow night. The corporal is in the 
 building trade, and the men include Cornish miners and 
 farm hands as well as townies. The " jungle " is an extra- 
 ordinary place, hardly any one can find their way to it, 
 and C. and I threaten any officers in other companies who 
 give us trouble with abduction and shooting, or confine- 
 ment in the " jungle." The old French dugouts here 
 had largely got clogged up with fallen earth. I hope that 
 the Germans will think that this one is still disused and 
 will not drop stuff here. 
 
 I hope we don't have any more Generals as Secretary of 
 State for War. We ought to have a civilian now on 
 principle. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 17 June, 1916. 
 
 It is a delightful breezy, sunny day to-day, but the only 
 result of the breeze is that we have to be alert against 
 gas, and the only result of the sunshine is that the artillery 
 can observe better. Things continue to be pretty quiet 
 here. Well, I should think that Austria will soon have 
 had enough, but I can't see any real likelihood of a 
 separate peace with her. 
 
 Thanks for the Nation. Its attitude irritates me, rather. 
 It seems too anxious to run with the belligerent hare and 
 chase with the Pacifist hound. The idea of a separate 
 peace with Turkey or Bulgaria, which Largnet is advocating, 
 involves dastardly desertion of Russia or Serbia or both. 
 I can't see why Russia cannot have Constantinople. No 
 one can claim it on grounds of nationality. The religious 
 sentiment in the matter does not interest me, though I 
 have a growing liking for Mohammedanism, and have no
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 297 
 
 desire to extend the sphere of the Cross at the expense of 
 the Crescent, but it seems to me that the peace of the world 
 is more likely to be assured if Russia holds Constantinople 
 than if any one else does. For one thing, it would be 
 good to put Constantinople once and for ever out of the 
 reach of these Balkan nationalities, none of whom is ob- 
 viously fit to run it, or to rule any people of alien race. 
 The main hope for the Serbs is to de-Balkanize them by 
 uniting them with the Croats, who, as the result of centuries 
 of Austrian rule (give the devil his due), are much more 
 civilized than their southern brethren, especially more 
 civilized than those stage brigands, the Montenegrins, but 
 we must do all we can to put the Southern Slav race on its 
 legs. The attitude of the Italians in the matter, and their 
 utter inability to sympathize with a nation which is trying 
 to do what they did a century ago, is what disgusts me with 
 them. They have behaved like Dagos, not like nationalists. 
 Frenchmen and Italians of the reactionary type are both 
 inclined to presume too much on their charming manners 
 and ancient history. Their ancient history can go to blazes 
 as far as I am concerned, and I don't care much more about 
 their charming manners, if they cannot learn to do their 
 duty in the comity of nations. Their chauvinism is more 
 invidious than that of Prussia because it is less hideous. 
 I think Austria would be much the most interesting place 
 to visit after the war, or the South of France for pure 
 pleasure, but anywhere will be all right out of this 
 hideous life. 
 
 Interrupted by a rat. Also a German aeroplane over. 
 Had a few shots at it by way of amusement. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 23 June, 1916. 
 
 This desolate area of craters and half destroyed trenches 
 seems more and more extraordinary after one has lived 
 here a day or two. The lower stratum of solid chalk has 
 simply come down on top of the uppermost soil in miniature 
 mountains and valleys, and the crater ridges stand out 
 in fantastic shapes on the sky-line. When I come to the 
 inner lip of one of the craters at night I see three or four
 
 298 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 black forms stretched on the chalk on the other side. These 
 are my bombers, watching over the edge of the outer lip. 
 A lot of Germans here were blown up with their own mines. 
 You can find old German rifles and bits of equipment mixed 
 up with English overcoats ripped in half and great logs 
 which have fallen all over the place. I am salvaging some 
 of these logs, by the way, to make new dugouts with. It 
 is both less wasteful and less laborious than having new 
 logs carried up from the battalion dump. To-day there 
 was a most remarkable thunderstorm, which added to the 
 general atmosphere of death and destruction which seems 
 to have found an almost perfect expression in this place. 
 A light cloud seemed to be coming almost down to the 
 trenches. For a moment I wondered if it was some form 
 of poisonous gas. Fine rain began to fall ; suddenly there 
 was a gust of wind which culminated in a brief hurricane, 
 while the rain seemed to develop into a solid torrent. There 
 was a little thunder and sheet lightning, not very close. 
 In less than half an hour it was all over. 
 
 I am very glad you have got Havelock Ellis's volumes. 
 I think they show an extraordinary combination of human 
 insight and scientific method. Desmond MacCarthy was 
 very good on Stendhal in the current Statesman. 
 
 I am much interested in the Arab revolt. I feel more 
 and more that Mohammedanism ought to be regarded 
 with intelligent respect, and that we ought to supersede 
 Turkey as the great Mohammedan Power. After all, most 
 Mohammedanism comes much nearer to intelligent 
 Unitarianism than most Christianity does, and I doubt 
 whether Mohammed has done any more harm to women 
 than various Christians have done taken together. And 
 the traditional Mohammedan attitude to women is prob- 
 ably not regarded by intelligent Mohammedans as an 
 essential part of their ethics. It is interesting to remember 
 that England has quite rightly in certain places restricted 
 Christian missionary effort amongst Mohammedans. I 
 wish that a body of our Intelligentzia such people as 
 Bernard Shaw and Arnold Bennett would issue a mani- 
 festo of sympathy with Mohammedanism, or at any rate 
 that in some way a public recognition of an equal status
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 299 
 
 of Mohammedanism with Christianity in the Empire should 
 be accorded. Why should not George V become a sort 
 of protector of Islam ? He is already both a Presbyterian 
 and an Anglican ! Can you get a pocket edition of the 
 Koran to send me and any small, light book about 
 Mohammedanism ? I once started to read that one in 
 the Home University Library, but found it rather jejune 
 and uninterestingly written. However, if there appears 
 to be no other, send me that, and I will see if I can get it 
 down better under shell fire than I could in times of peace. 
 This extraordinary bastard negro movement in Christian 
 Nigeria is very interesting. How little we understand 
 the dull stirring of the minds of people in that stage of 
 development ! 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 4 July, 1916. 
 
 I am in rather more comfortable and secure quarters 
 now, and shall be for a few nights. I feel full of pity for 
 the poor devils in the big fighting. I shall go into it with 
 a good heart when my turn comes, but the stuff in the papers 
 about men thirsting to attack is such utter nonsense r and 
 one imagines that it must be realized to some extent that 
 it is so even by civilians. Why do these foolish journalists 
 want to write like that ? It simply gives a false account 
 of what undoubtedly our good moral is like, and throws 
 a false glamour over the bestiality of war. Well, I shall 
 sleep with my boots off to-night for the first time for a 
 fortnight. 
 
 Last night I saw, I think, the most symbolical scene of 
 warfare which I have ever come across. As I turned a 
 corner of a trench with a young officer we suddenly faced 
 a fair expanse of ground over which the contour lines 
 enabled us to look. The horizon was near only three 
 hundred yards or so away topped by an avenue of trees, 
 bare and shell-stricken on the right, the end nearest the 
 firing-line, and gradually becoming more leafy as we looked 
 to the left. On the extreme right the scene ended in the 
 hummocks, holes, and gradual slope upwards of one of the 
 big mine craters. The dominating colour of the ground was
 
 300 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 white. Trenches, shell holes, and mine upheavals had torn 
 up the chalk from below the surface soil, but there was 
 a solid mass of scarlet poppies in the middle of the picture, 
 contrasting wonderfully with the white and grey ground 
 and the yellowish background of an early twilight sky. I 
 shall never forget the vision of beauty .and desolation which 
 I saw in a flash that moment. 
 
 I saw a report that Bethmann-Hollweg had endorsed a 
 speech by Scheidemann in which the latter stated that 
 B.-H. took the view that there could be no durable peace 
 if Germany demanded any territorial aggrandizement. If 
 this is correct it is not unimportant. B.-H. certainly 
 seems to be seeking support from the pro-war Socialists 
 and Liberals against the extremists. I think that in England 
 there may be quite probably a controversy over peace 
 comparable with that over the Treaty of Utrecht. Some 
 of our fire-eaters will never be satisfied. But some basis 
 for the beginnings of a League of Peace is as important as 
 the territorial terms of this particular peace itself. 
 
 Rats are as bad here as in any place I have stopped in. 
 They have innumerable holes all round my dugout, and if 
 one is sitting quiet and alone it is not long before a grey or 
 tawny nose peeps out from somewhere and a beady black 
 eye fixes one. A glorious day to-day. One never suffers from 
 extreme heat in underground dugouts, and deep trenches 
 don't get much sun in them. I think this has a lot to do 
 with such uiihealthiness as there is in trench life. Of 
 course aeroplanes are active, as it is good flying weather, 
 and the anti-aircraft shells are bursting rapidly one after 
 another over my head. The flying bits have just driven 
 my batman under cover. 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 9 July, 1916. 
 
 We had a bit of a concert after we got back from the 
 line last night, where I had been working on the winch 
 and heaving sand-bags all day. C. appeared dressed in a 
 French suit of civilian clothes, and one of the men did a 
 clog dance clad in a pair of boots. I never laughed so much 
 in all my life. Two young officers dressed up as French
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 801 
 
 ladies and went round the place with C., to the amazement 
 of all the sentries. I have got dry things now for the first 
 time for four days. The weather is very bright and sunny 
 now, and what a pleasure it is to be dry once more ! When 
 my grand-children ask me, " What did you do in the Great 
 War ? " I shall reply, " I turned a winch down a mine." 
 I never felt I understood the soul of those Belgian dogs 
 that work things by running inside wheels so completely 
 before. 
 
 Well, your Home Defence soldiers do not get the all- 
 round experience that we do. Honestly I enjoy the manual 
 labour, and it is fun to work with these Australian miners. 
 The weak point of the Colonial is the lack of fine subtlety 
 of mind that you find very often even in the humblest 
 people in the old countries. I believe it is a thing which 
 only comes as man becomes thoroughly acclimatized to 
 his natural environment through several generations. Some 
 Americans are beginning to get it. 
 
 I read Gibbs's dispatch in the last Chronicle that you 
 sent me. It certainly is good. It was the horrible cant 
 about men thirsting to go over the top, in the first account 
 of the fighting, that disgusted me. When I opened Great 
 Thoughts it really made me swear badly for some considerable 
 time. The interview with Lady - - was really horrible. 
 I begin to feel more and more sure that I shall never settle 
 down to purely sedentary or administrative or propagandist 
 work again. I feel that the brain and the hand are both 
 the better for being worked together, or rather alternately. 
 It is really absurd that such a lot of physical energy should 
 be worked off in sports when an equal amount of pleasure 
 and more satisfaction could be obtained if brain workers 
 got a chance of a by-occupation involving manual work. 
 And after two years in the Army I have learnt to forgo the 
 artificial need for cultured society which was stimulated 
 in me by years of association with the Intelligentzia of 
 Cambridge and London. It is good to meet a fine mind 
 well versed in the latest thought of the world, but to be 
 dependent for one's ordinary social needs upon an associa- 
 tion with such minds implies, I think, an alienation from 
 the ordinary life of mankind. Really there is nothing
 
 302 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 narrower than a Metropolitan intellectual set. I should 
 like to combine colonial farming with some sort of specialized 
 sociological study and public work as the main themes of 
 my life. I have picked up a lot about New Zealand from 
 these fellow* down the mines, and I feel it is the country 
 for me, but it is no use counting one's chickens while 
 this business is still on, and if one is left alive at the 
 end one may well find oneself minus a limb or with a 
 broken back. 
 
 I had a pleasant walk in the sunshine across the town to 
 the baths this morning. A few nights ago, when hurrying 
 back from the mine at midnight, I lost my way and wandered 
 through a maze of dead, deserted streets, only coming very 
 occasionally on a sentry, or rattling limber-wagon. I should 
 think there has never been a deserted town like this in 
 history. Wypers is smashed to bits as well as being deserted. 
 Here * the pulverization has not gone nearly so far and the 
 place is much bigger, but the ruins of the classic cathedral 
 look almost Cyclopean. The fallen stones are enormous, 
 and over a great heap of them which blocks the road a 
 regular track has been worn by passers-by, who climb over 
 them rather than walk three hundred yards round. I think 
 it is wonderful of the French to have made this fresh attack 
 after all the battering they have had at Verdun. Is there 
 no hope that Germany will recognize the inevitable now ? 
 No one expects to crush her utterly. I suppose we shall 
 advance at Salonica as soon as these treacherous Greeks 
 have had their teeth drawn by demobilization, and as soon 
 as we can finish the East African business a good part of 
 these troops will be available for Mesopotamia or elsewhere^ 
 but the limits of possible terms of peace must be becoming 
 clearer now to the people in power in every country. There 
 will come a point when only journalistic cut-throats and 
 military fanatics will want to secure infinitesimal gains 
 through a prolongation of the slaughter, but I think, as I 
 said before, that we should be prepared for a Treaty of 
 Utrecht intervening. 
 
 * Albert.
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 303 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 14 July, 1916. 
 
 I have just finished Fremaux's " Derniere Jours de 
 1'Empereur," which you sent me some time ago. What 
 a swine Hudson Lowe was and what a thousand pities 
 Napoleon did not know when to stop ! But I agree with 
 Herbert Fisher that he certainly did not know. You could 
 not regard his progress as a triumph in the essentials of 
 human progress. A French tyranny might have been less 
 brutal than a Prussian or Russian tyranny, but Voltaire 
 reminds us what a French tyranny could be like. It is 
 interesting to know what a favourite of Napoleon's Voltaire 
 was. Napoleon's attitude towards religion on his death- 
 bed is curious, and I think instructive. He feels the need 
 of traditional ceremonial forms, but obviously he is not in 
 any sense a believer. This, I think, goes down to the root 
 of things, and foreshadows what the world will come back 
 to. Primitive religions were essentially ritual and not 
 belief ritual can unite us ; speculation must divide us. 
 We shall end up uncommonly near where the South Sea 
 Islanders are some few generations after the Christians 
 have extirpated the last remnants of paganism in Polynesia. 
 I have often been tempted to become a Freemason in the 
 hope of finding forms which would express the essentials 
 of religion, and which would get one away from the con- 
 nection between public religion and speculation which now 
 rules. Public religion and private religion are two entirely 
 distinct, though indirectly connected, things ; theology, 
 philosophy, and speculation should have nothing to do 
 with the former. There are two types of people, one of 
 whom would find that what I call public or social religion 
 in the end gives a greater satisfaction to their innermost 
 spiritual needs than any private mystical or theological 
 belief. Napoleon's final external submission to the Catholic 
 rites shows that he was one of this sort. The other type is 
 much less common, though the Christian Churches try to 
 make every one conform to it, with the result that hypocrisy, 
 superstition, and religiosity are rampant. It is the type 
 of person who really has a gift for transcendental cults or
 
 804 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 personal religion. If a person has not the gift of what I 
 call private religion he should not be expected to go in for 
 it. It should be regarded as a cult, good for some but not 
 for all. Public religion is good for every one, and the early 
 Christians were rightly detested for objecting to sacrifice 
 to the Emperor, though it is unfortunate that they were 
 persecuted for their anti-social conduct. They were on the 
 whole the same objectionable sort of people as the conscien- 
 tious objectors of to-day, including, like these, a few very 
 good people. I regret to have to report that I was at one 
 stage of my career uncommonly like an early Christian, but 
 I don't think I shall ever revert. 
 
 Fritz gave us a dose of whizz-bangs and shrapnel this 
 morning, but did no damage to any individual. It is getting 
 dark and near the single hour during which we are free to 
 leave our billets without being on duty. It is rather a 
 precious hour of liberty in this hole, but monotony is better 
 than being in the thick of the hottest fighting now. There 
 is more good news in to-day's French paper. We seem to 
 be steadily widening the salient which we and the French 
 have made. The woods and fortified villages -which 
 really means villages with deep underground dugouts 
 seem to be the difficult points in this advance, but I know 
 little more than you do about how things really stand no 
 more, actually. I wonder if German munition production 
 is growing in anything like the same ratio as ours. If so, 
 God help the poor devils of infantrymen on both sides in 
 the end ! 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 16 July, 1916. 
 
 I have been reading the Fortnightly you sent to-day. 
 Dillon seems to be getting vapid, and I think it is extra- 
 ordinary that no one seems to consider how we are going 
 both to beat Germany sufficiently, and having done so, 
 give her a chance of living a reasonable national life in the 
 world, without being a continual nuisance to every one else. 
 Anything like an economic boycott is obviously nonsense, 
 though I have no Free Trade principles personally and have 
 no objection to preserving the national character of any
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 305 
 
 particular industry, if there is a justifiable case for doing 
 so, by State interference. But bounties are obviously 
 far preferable to tariffs if you are going to protect. The 
 New Statesman's exposure of Bonar Law's silly attempt 
 to deal with the West African palm-oil trade was very good. 
 
 I have been looking over a map this afternoon at all the 
 places where I have been. They would make a good long 
 list in three French departments and in Belgium. Most 
 men out here swear they will never set foot in the country 
 again, but I think a good many, like myself, will if they get 
 a chance. With all its unpleasant associations this tract 
 of country has become a kind of second homeland for 
 one, albeit one's home has often been no more than the 
 waterproof sheet one carries on one's back. Last night 
 I saw a great golden flaming moon behind the ruins at the 
 end of the street along which I was walking. A sort of 
 sentimental scene, I thought, to delight the soul of a German 
 and make a very pleasant Munich lithograph. Poor old 
 Miinchen and Wien ! I have a very deep-rooted affection 
 for them still. They did not make this war, and I think 
 they will both be only too glad to see the Englishman back 
 in their streets. 
 
 I received Margoliouth's " Mohammedanism " last night 
 and have read nearly all of it to-day. It confirms what I 
 wrote about Mohammed's views. In fact, I feel that what 
 we are accustomed to associate with Mohammedanism prob- 
 ably represents Mohammed even less than what we associate 
 with Christianity represents Christ. Margoliouth is very 
 emphatic about the fact that the veil, the denial of souls 
 to women, and the tenets of an extreme fatalism are none 
 of them apparently derived from the teachings of the 
 Prophet, and it seems rather far-fetched to suppose that 
 Mohammed taught that there was a special class of feminine 
 creatures houris, to wit who were to share the immortal 
 pleasures of men, but who were not the women who shared 
 their mortal pleasures on earth. Obviously most men, or 
 at any rate a good many men, would prefer to have their 
 earthly women re-endowed in Paradise with the immortal 
 youth which the Prophet promises to the faithful male, 
 rather than have the most perfect Paradise houris allotted 
 
 21
 
 306 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 to them. I am sure that the Prophet would realize the 
 force of this point, and until I have discovered the pas- 
 sage which contradicts my view I shall not believe that he 
 taught this. 
 
 We are going up to the front-line trenches again to- 
 morrow to the region of trench mortars and mines. I 
 think the trenches become more distasteful each time one 
 goes up. I certainly get more nervous, but even this is 
 better than being in the thick of it down there, nerve- 
 racking as it is here. 
 
 One of the things I hope to do if I survive the war is to 
 make up in some degree for the appalling lack of science 
 in my education I think classical education is the utmost 
 nonsense. People with a gift for ancient languages can take 
 them up at the age of nineteen or twenty, as Jane Harrison 
 did. I had a very poor literary sense as a boy and the 
 Classics did me no earthly good, though I did appreciate 
 Roman and Greek History. 
 
 How I long for the end of all this murderous business ! 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 22 July, 1916. 
 
 I have read Pease's " History of the Fabian Society " 
 all through to-day in the thunder of a terrific bombardment, 
 interrupted in my absorption of the reading only by meals, 
 by a few items of company work, and coming out to see a 
 poor devil in my company who came past my dugout half 
 blinded and almost speechless from shell-shock, due to the 
 explosion of a huge trench-mortar bomb very near him. 
 There is, of course, much personal as well as general interest 
 in the book for me. I have led an erratic life since I 
 left Cambridge, but there are threads of continuity in it, 
 and it is continuity which I find myself seeking more and 
 more in life, and that has brought me gradually more and 
 more back to Colchester with its old associations. It is 
 the only bit of England that I really can look on as home. 
 Pease has taken me back to the world of peace-time, its 
 varied interests and all the rich stream of life. Whether 
 I am to enjoy it again or not is on the knees of the gods. 
 I can face death, though not the circumstances of death,
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 307 
 
 out here with equanimity, but the deep longing for the 
 normal things of life is strong in me to-day. When I think 
 of the millions of lighting men who feel in all their various 
 ways the same longing as I do, it seems inconceivable that 
 war will ever occur again ; but how soon mankind forgets ! 
 I heard a couple of days ago that Lloyd has been lucky 
 enough to be wounded slightly. The gold braid for the 
 wounded is not at all popular out here, where everyone 
 regards any wound, except a serious one, as a stroke of 
 luck. What would have been popular is a trench medal, 
 distinguishing the men who have been under fire, for say a 
 hundred days, from the Staff job men. 
 
 To Edward R. Pease. 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I., B.E.F. 
 
 27 July, 1916. 
 
 I have read your book " History of the Fabian Society " 
 with great interest in a dugout under the chalk amidst 
 the rumble of big bombardments a few miles away and the 
 occasional crash of unpleasant things near by. It has 
 touched my conscience about my subscription to the Fabian 
 Society. Frankly, my interest in the Society lapsed in 
 recent years mainly because it seemed dominated by the 
 Guild Socialist and feminist elements, to which I had an 
 antipathy more personal than as a matter of principle. My 
 views are much the same in fundamentals as they have been 
 for the last ten years, except that I am prepared openly 
 to support and work with the Liberal Party in particular 
 circumstances. I send you a subscription of 30 francs, 
 which you can change at any P.O., I believe. I should like 
 to have the last dozen numbers of Fabian News to bring 
 me into touch with recent doings of the Society. 
 
 About the only point where I disagree with you in your 
 book is on the compensation question. I do think your 
 footnote is a quibble, and 1 think you contradict yourself 
 elsewhere. But it is a minor matter. 
 
 I don't know what I shall do with myself after the war ; 
 but I shall always remain a Fabian or something like it in 
 political outlook. Of that I feel tolerably certain. I am 
 about as fed-up as I can be over fourteen months out here
 
 308 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 now. Churchill's speeches are very good. He criticizes 
 in exactly the right way and selects the points which most 
 need emphasizing. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 28 July, 1916. 
 
 We have marched five miles from the trenches this even- 
 ing, and are billeted in a sugar factory. It is the first 
 time I have walked along a country road by daylight for 
 months. It has been a delightful summer day, and in spite 
 of the heavy packs and rather sore feet, owing to my being 
 badly trancheed, I enjoyed the walk. The country is 
 delightful just here, though for most of the way one side 
 of the road was barred by rope welting ten feet high to 
 prevent observation. 
 
 Your large parcel of socks arrived last night. Please 
 thank whoever has helped you with them. They will be 
 invaluable for my men on our march. Of course I have not 
 the remotest idea where we are going and don't worry 
 much about it Kismet. I think after a certain stage of 
 fed-upness one does cease to worry. I have been again 
 reading a good deal of the agriculture book. But I can't 
 tackle " Mitteleuropa " just now while we are on the 
 move. I could do with Carpenter, though, and later on 
 the Butler book. 
 
 Churchill's speech was very good. I have just read the 
 full report in the Times. His criticisms on organization 
 are exactly what we all think out here, and George is evi- 
 dently prepared to go in for them thoroughly. Well, the 
 most satisfying reflection of all is that the "Bodies" must 
 at least be as fed-up as oneself. I am very sorry that 
 Grey has gone to the Lords. He is a great Englishman 
 and has the confidence of the country more, I believe, than 
 any other man. One liked to think of him as a commoner. 
 Shaw's repeated attacks on Grey have always seemed to 
 me inconsistent with his generally sound outlook on things. 
 Good-night. We have a fairly long march to-morrow. 
 I don't care a bit if we do go over the top. I can take my 
 chance with the rest.
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 309 
 
 To the Same. 
 
 B.E.F. 8 August, 1916. 
 
 We had a good deal of marching and train journey 
 yesterday. Slept under a bit of sacking propped up on 
 shell boxes last night. Got a rest and a bath to-day. 
 Feel a bit tired and fed-up mentally, keener on reading 
 and absorbing than on thinking. Cornfields on rolling 
 ridges surround our camp. Just now it is pretty peaceful, 
 but the crash of a big gun near by occasionally disturbs 
 one, and there have been some pretty devilish bombard- 
 ments a few miles away. 
 
 I got the books " South America " and " Buried Alive " 
 to-night. I had read " Buried Alive " and seen the play, 
 but it bears skimming through again a real vision of the 
 kindly sensibleness of the English people. Alice is delicious. 
 What a real grasp of life ! Have read some of the agriculture 
 book with much pleasure. I used to take the ordinary 
 democratic, bureaucratic view against technical education, 
 but I am not sure that the best way of imparting science for 
 the great mass of people is not in connection with its appli- 
 cations. That brings it nearer life, and after all the whole 
 difference between knowledge and mere information lies 
 in the completeness of their absorption in the daily mental 
 life of the learner. 
 
 Mrs. Besant is illuminating on India, but I suspect her 
 facts all through. She has all the vices of the propagandist 
 mind that is no doubt why she is a Theosophist, and made 
 such ridiculous prophecies in Fabian Essays. I distrust 
 these people who formulate too easily. I have just heard 
 that the man I enlisted with was killed a fortnight ago. 
 He took a commission a month after he enlisted along 
 with us six Oxford and Cambridge men. At least one other 
 of them was killed some months ago. One seems uncom- 
 monly near the dead nowadays in the course of our tight- 
 rope dance, in which a certain proportion are always falling 
 over into the abyss. I chink I grow more and more desirous 
 of life, but obviously dying cannot be very difficult or 
 dreadful so many people manage to accomplish it. How 
 I long for home again ! But peace seems too good to be 
 ever going to be true.
 
 310 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 To Mrs. Townsheiid. 
 
 12 August, 1916. 
 
 . . . Thank you very much for the Carpenter book. I 
 enjoyed it immensely. Read it in an awful heat, lying 
 under a bit of sacking, in less than twenty-four hours. I 
 have always felt I understood Carpenter pretty thoroughly, 
 and he has influenced me much. 
 
 F. is damned lucky, but I do think it is wrong that people 
 like him should not take their turn at the Front. The 
 strain falls too much on the war-worn soldier. 
 
 To Mrs. Green. 
 
 B.E.F. 14 August, 1916. 
 
 A chance to get off a letter to-day. Thank you very 
 much for letters and parcel received. I got a good sleep 
 in an old German dugout last night, but the night before 
 was half in and half out of a hole in the chalk at the side of 
 the trench. You might always put a candle in parcels. 
 Sometimes they are plentiful and we can buy them easily, 
 but when one wants them most they seem to be scarcest. 
 
 Don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for some 
 days, though I will try to send field postcards. I will 
 leave one ready written for each day with my Q.M.S., who 
 will probably get to hear each night if I am all right. But 
 even this arrangement easily may go wrong. 
 
 I have been pretty busy of late and also rather tired till 
 to-day, as we have had parades at 3.30 a.m. on two succes- 
 sive days. But we have had good chances of bathing 
 which has been pleasant in the heat. 
 
 I am rather sick at Trinity's treatment of Bertie Russell. 
 As far as I can see the facts, I do not understand why the 
 Quakers should have a vested interest in tolerance. 
 
 I can't help feeling rather disturbed at the return to power 
 of these pro-German reactionaries in Russia. I don't 
 understand the forces really at work there, only I am 
 sure that Stephen Graham's accounts of the peasants and 
 Russian religion are all nonsense. 
 
 Flies are a bit bad here and have begun to get a taste of
 
 MAY 13 TO AUGUST 18, 1916 311 
 
 the familiar smell of dead men again. But have nothing 
 very bad as yet. 
 
 What a blessed and comforting doctrine the idea of fate 
 is ! It does somehow enter into the soul of the soldier. 
 I see no one around worrying about going into battle. 
 
 Well, good-bye. Peaceful Colchester seems in another 
 world now. 
 
 To Mrs. Toivnshcnd. 1 
 
 12 August, 1916. 
 
 I may be knocked out in the next few days. If so, 
 this is just a last line to you, dear. I don't anticipate 
 death, but it is all bloody chance out here. 
 
 If there is any sort of survival of consciousness, death 
 can hardly fail to be interesting, and if there is anything 
 doing on the other side, I will stir something up. 
 
 Nirvana be damned ! Love from Ben. 
 
 1 This letter was the intimation I received of his death, which 
 took place on the i8th August, 1916. E. T.
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 LETTERS FROM OFFICERS OF THE D.C.L.I. WITH 
 REFERENCE TO REELING'S DEATH 
 
 DEAR MADAM, 
 
 Lieutenant Barrington-Ward has handed to me your 
 letter and cuttings of the local papers' reference to Sergeant- 
 Major Keeling. Seeing that you were one of his oldest friends, 
 I should like to tell you how every officer and man in the 
 battalion felt his loss. Perhaps his two years in the Army 
 were the happiest and most useful that he spent. From the 
 moment he joined with two thousand or more other men, his 
 influence and brilliance were felt throughout the battalion. He 
 was an immense factor for good among the non-commissioned 
 ranks, and a link between officers and them. I three times 
 asked him to take a commission, but he always replied he 
 thought he was doing more useful work where he was. I have 
 no hesitation in saying he was one of the bravest men I have 
 ever seen, and he died leading a desperate bombing attack at 
 a most critical moment. 
 
 You will find a memoir of him in the coming edition of the 
 Red Feather, 1 and a poem by Barrington-Ward which he will 
 send you. 
 
 If Reeling's diary is ever published, I hope whoever edits it 
 will put in the tribute we have paid him in the Red Feather. 
 
 He was an awful loss to the battalion and me. 
 
 With sincere sympathy, 
 
 I am, 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 T. R. STOKOE, 
 Lt.-Colonel, 6th D.C.L.I. 
 
 1 The publication of this issue was stopped, and the transmission 
 of the material for it prevented, by the Censor. 
 
 313
 
 314 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 6TH D.C.L.I., B.E.F., 
 
 30 August, 1916. 
 
 You will, I expect, have learnt by this time that Keeling has 
 been killed in action. All of us in the regiment arc most awfully 
 distressed about it. Though many good fellows went on the 
 day of the battle (18 August), none left behind him more wide- 
 spread regrets. 
 
 He was killed out along a German trench up which our bombers 
 were working. I understand that there was a risk of our 
 bombers bombing our own men in this trench. Keeling jumped 
 up on the parapet to make sure that the Germans were ahead, 
 and he was caught by a bullet and died at once. The officer 
 with the party took his papers off him. 
 
 It is a very sad business. He did magnificently in the fight, 
 and the party he was leading did particularly valiant work, 
 protecting at a ticklish moment our own flank and the flank of 
 the battalion on our right. We were unable to hold, at the 
 time, the position we had taken, and the vigorous bombing 
 offensive which Keeling's party undertook saved us and ensured 
 the success of the battalion on our right. 
 
 I need not expound Keeling's merits to you. I think, how- 
 ever, you may be interested to know how he was appreciated 
 as a soldier by the rest of us. 
 
 He was always a great disciplinarian and certainly began as 
 a somewhat unpopular N.C.O. His keenness and efficiency and 
 military attention to detail did not conciliate the enemies he 
 had at first enemies because as a (forgive the word) " gentle- 
 man "-soldier he was suspect, suspect also because he knew 
 German ! This was in the earliest days. As time wore on 
 Keeling's extraordinary kindness to the men (coupled often 
 with most horrific language !) and his unfailing energy in 
 securing their comfort and seeing that they got their due, also 
 his keenness on the regiment and everything regimental- 
 sports cross-country, etc. gave him a very different place in 
 the eyes of the men. It was thanks to Keeling and this strong 
 regimental spirit that the Red Feather our best regimental 
 effort had such a great and continued success. He became 
 an institution and (I am not exaggerating) a regular pillar of 
 the battalion, whose absence at any time was strongly notice- 
 able. This is a rare thing to say of any one in a battalion. We 
 shall be hard put to it to rearrange ourselves without him. 
 
 He became sergeant-major of the Grenadier Company a fifth 
 and officially unrecognized organization which drew, as such
 
 APPENDIX I 815 
 
 things always will, a good deal of enmity from the four " estab- 
 lished " companies, and needed, in consequence, extra energy 
 and watchfulness in administration. Keeling was always 
 anxious to have his bombers thus separate in the interests of 
 their efficiency, and he undertook to make a success of it. 
 This he most certainly did. He was always a shield and buckler 
 to " the bombers " in real or fancied slights and injustices, 
 indefatigable in looking after them and in seeing that he got 
 the right men. As a consequence he had them all in the hollow 
 of his hand. The pains he took reaped for us a rich result in 
 the splendid way the bombers fought the other day Sergeant- 
 Major Keeling at their head. 
 
 All of us who knew him and that includes all the brigade 
 and a large part, in fact, of the Division keenly hoped he 
 might come through all right. I like to think at all events 
 that he was killed well ahead of the line out in the enemy 
 trenches and among his own men. I feel sure he would have 
 wished for no other end. 
 
 The Red Feather is especially closely connected with Keeling. 
 He and I were projecting another number shortly, and I should 
 like to complete one in a week or two. 
 
 The magazine becomes two things now a history of the 
 doings and the moods of the regiment, and now, in addition, a 
 memorial to one of the most remarkable men in the Army. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 (Signed) R. BARRINGTON-WARD, 
 Captain.
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 FREDERIC KEELING AS A STUDENT OF SOCIAL 
 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 BY ARTHUR GREENWOOD 
 
 IT was our common interest in social problems that first 
 brought me into contact with Keeling, and to that side of his 
 life I shall confine my attention in this brief and quite inadequate 
 sketch of his work. When he left Cambridge he went to live 
 in South London, where he threw himself with characteristic 
 thoroughness and enthusiasm into social work of various kinds, 
 among others that of organizing meals for school-children. 
 This was the beginning of his special interest in juvenile labour. 
 On the passage of the Labour Exchanges Act, he became 
 secretary of a Board of Trade Committee which drafted the 
 rules and organization of the Exchanges. When they were 
 inaugurated Mr. Winston Churchill offered him a post as Labour 
 Exchange Manager. His youth was against his appointment 
 as a Divisional Officer, but Mr. Churchill allowed him to choose 
 his Exchange. Keeling, who had up to that time no knowledge 
 of the industrial North, decided to come to Leeds. The choice 
 was more or less accidental. He had never seen the city ; he 
 knew nothing about it, except that it was a large manufacturing 
 town, offering opportunities for a close study of industrial 
 problems. In the meantime, he had written a small volume 
 on " The Labour Exchange in relation to Boy and Girl Labour," l 
 dedicated to his friend Ashley Dukes. It bears many marks of 
 Keeling's individuality. In the Preface he complains of the 
 incomplete character of the library of the Board of Education. 
 He always wanted to read literally everything that had been 
 published bearing on the subject he happened to be studying. 
 " Local Authorities," he wrote, " do not respond to the appeals 
 of the Board [of Education] to forward copies of all their printed 
 matter. It seems more desirable in the interest of the study 
 of educational administration that some sort of compulsory 
 
 1 P. S. King and Son, 1910, 6d. net. 
 
 316
 
 APPENDIX II 317 
 
 powers should be conferred upon the Central Authority in this 
 matter." These sentences are characteristic of his interests 
 and point of view at this time. Administrative problems 
 attracted him very strongly, and when afterwards we devised 
 social reforms we always considered the problem of administra- 
 tion as an integral part of our schemes. The volume on 
 Juvenile Labour Exchanges, small though it is, represented a 
 large amount of work, as is clear from the footnotes. During 
 the first period of his residence in Leeds he was absorbed in 
 the working of a new institution. Its problems fascinated 
 him ; and he gave his mind, not only to running his own 
 Exchange, but to the larger questions of divisional administra- 
 tion the Divisional Office at that time being in Leeds. 
 
 On coming to Leeds, he put himself in touch with me at the 
 suggestion of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. For some time he 
 lived in two or three rooms on the top floor of the building 
 in which the Labour Exchange was housed. The furnishings 
 were of the simplest and the floors uncovered. I well remember 
 that we first met in these rooms, where he had invited me to 
 lunch off " doggers " the hard biscuits he was fond of walnuts, 
 and tea made from water which had been warmed but never 
 boiled. We talked about the Labour Exchanges and juvenile 
 labour, and became friends from the first. From that time 
 onward, so long as he remained in Leeds, we were in daily 
 touch, working together on the problems in which we were 
 both interested. He later left his rooms above the Exchange, 
 and took a house on the outskirts of Leeds, in order, he said, 
 to be near me. He lived but a few minutes' walk away ; and 
 when he was seized with a new idea, or had discovered a new 
 source of information, or had a problem to discuss, he would 
 tear across, leaving the door of his house, in which he lived 
 alone, wide open, regardless of weather or the time. Though 
 his rooms were invariably in a state of confusion, he was 
 methodical in his work. Before beginning work on any particular 
 problem, we used to prepare an elaborate outline which I 
 often thought to be unnecessary, as frequently we had to depart 
 from it and he insisted on our notes being prepared on a 
 common plan. He was a born researcher, with a passion for 
 thoroughness and accuracy, a great power of handling large 
 masses of information, and an unerring instinct for essentials. 
 
 At times Keeling found his position as a civil servant some- 
 what irksome. He occasionally contributed anonymously to 
 such papers as the Crusade, and wrote regularly on juvenile 
 labour questions for the School Child under the nom de plume
 
 318 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 " Accelerans." He always enjoyed this part of his work, which 
 he took very seriously, in spite of the fact that the paper was 
 not widely known. There was always a strong desire to do 
 something more ambitious, and very early during our friend- 
 ship we had, with all the light-heartedness of youth, decided on 
 a great work on adolescence, which, as might perhaps be expected, 
 was never written. We made masses of notes, from books, 
 pamphlets, articles and official publications. We concerned our- 
 selves with practical problems and evolved a scheme of schools 
 for unemployed juveniles, outlined in a small volume which 
 I wrote, 1 and also dealt with in a paper I read at the National 
 Conference on the Prevention of Destitution in London in 1911.* 
 Later Keeling elaborated a method of dealing with " blind-alley " 
 labour which is worth mention. " The State should schedule the 
 well-known blind-alley occupations and processes, just as we 
 schedule dangerous trades under the Factory Act. In every urban 
 district a Juvenile Labour Authority should be established. 
 . . . There would be no attempt to prohibit blind-alley occupa- 
 tions. But if an employer wanted to engage a boy as an errand- 
 boy or as a doffer, he would have to engage him from the Corps 
 or Guild of boys organized by the Local Juvenile Labour 
 Authority, just as, if you want a boy to take a message for you 
 in London, you apply to the District Messenger Company. Boys 
 engaged in the scheduled trades would receive wages continually, 
 whether working or not, from the Commission Authority. They 
 would be, in fact, hired out by the Commission at rates which 
 would be high enough to provide a continuous remuneration 
 for the whole Corps. Part-time education would have a natural 
 place in the scheme, and every boy would, as a matter of course, 
 be sent to a holiday camp in the country for a fortnight in the 
 summer. There would be nothing to prevent an employer 
 from selecting and keeping a particular boy if he chose to do 
 so, provided that he would have to be content with a substitute 
 while his regular boy was attending continuation classes. The 
 cost of accommodation for continuation classes would be mini- 
 mized by arranging that a certain proportion of the workers 
 should always be at school, and the provision of teachers would 
 thus be simplified. The Corps would supply boys for casual 
 as well as permanent jobs. It could easily take over the part- 
 
 1 " Juvenile Labour Exchanges and After Care" (King and Son, 
 1911, is. net, pp. 95-8). 
 
 1 Report of National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution 
 (P. S. King and Son, 1911, pp. 281 tf.).
 
 APPENDIX II 319 
 
 time work now performed out of school hours by school-children. 
 Whatever views we may have as to the Boy Scouts, we could 
 at least take a few hints from their methods of organization 
 and of appealing to boys' instincts. The outdoor boy-workers 
 might wear some sort of distinctive uniform (though I tremble 
 here lest I should be accused of leanings towards the servile 
 State). The officers of the Corps or Guild would be chosen for 
 their power of dealing with boys. On leaving school the boy 
 would be attached to a company in a Corps, under a particular 
 officer, who would be responsible for all matters of discipline, 
 for organized games, for conducting summer camps, and so forth. 
 At the age of eighteen or so the boy would leave the Corps for 
 a definite situation. All the numerous public services, which 
 are recruited largely from adult labour, would naturally draw 
 their recruits from the publicly organized industrial army of 
 boy-workers. And those youths who could not be placed in 
 situations of absolutely assured permanency would, at any rate, 
 be better equipped for the chances of life than the overgrown 
 errand-boy, or the superfluous little piecer or van-boy." ' 
 
 Keeling became much interested in the history and work of the 
 certifying factory surgeons. Although the question is one arising 
 out of the study of juvenile labour, I have forgotten exactly 
 why it was that for a time his interest in this overshadowed 
 his interest in other aspects of the juvenile problem, but I 
 remember that his enthusiasm infected me. The paper " The 
 Medical Supervision of Juvenile Workers " read by me at the 
 National Conference on the Prevention of Destitution 2 in 1912, 
 was the first outcome in this direction. Keeling, who investi- 
 gated the whole problem with great thoroughness, intended to 
 publish a book on it, and got a considerable way with the arrange- 
 ment of his materials and the actual writing of it. The book 
 was never published. In his " Child Labour in the United 
 Kingdom " there is a footnote to the effect that " a work by 
 F. Keeling on the history and present position of medical 
 inspection of employed children and juveniles will be published 
 shortly." 3 Before he had finished this inquiry other interests 
 
 1 " The Present Position of the Juvenile Labour Problem," by 
 Frederic Keeling. Read at a Conference at Bradford on 14 March, 
 1914 ; published by the North- Western District of the Workers' 
 Educational Association. This paper is packed with fact and 
 thought ; it contains both tables and charts illustrating points 
 made in the paper. 
 
 1 Pp. -M5-53- 
 
 J P. xii.
 
 320 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 were absorbing his mind, though but for the war I have no 
 doubt that the book would have been completed. It is probable 
 that his manuscript and notes are now lost, but if they still 
 exist I hope some day to be able to complete hi$ study of the 
 subject for publication. Though Keeling possessed adminis- 
 trative ability of a very high order, his temperament unfitted 
 him for official life. It cramped and irritated him after a time, 
 and he determined to resign. He was glad to become a free-lance 
 again, though the restrictions of official responsibility were not 
 the only reasons for his resignation. He wanted more leisure for 
 his studies than his Labour Exchange work allowed him. But 
 though he breathed a sigh of relief on regaining his freedom, 
 he never regretted the time he spent as a Government official. 
 He valued highly the administrative experience it gave and 
 the peculiar vantage-ground it offered for the study of industrial 
 problems. He left Yorkshire for London, there to begin a new 
 period of intense activity the chief fruits of which was his 
 " Child Labour in the United Kingdom." l 
 
 Keeling had joined the International Association for Labour 
 Legislation in 1911, and attended its Biennial Conference at 
 Zurich in September, 1912, as one of the delegates of the British 
 Section, serving on the " Commission " which had under dis- 
 cussion the insurance of foreign workmen, child labour, and 
 the administration of Labour laws. The Conference adopted 
 a resolution of this " Commission " requesting the various 
 national sections to appoint special committees in their respective 
 countries to investigate and report on the question of child 
 labour and the best method of enforcing and extending the 
 existing laws for the protection of children to a Special Inter- 
 national Commission appointed to discuss the whole question. 
 Accordingly, in October, 1912, the Committee of the British 
 Section appointed a Sub-committee to prepare a report. The 
 Sub-committee consisted of Keeling as chairman, Lord Henry 
 Bentinck, M.P., Miss Constance Smith, Miss Mary Phillips, and 
 Miss Sophie Sanger. Keeling drafted the report, 2 and the part 
 
 1 " Child Labour in the United Kingdom : A Study of the 
 Development and Administration of the Law Relating to the 
 Employment of Children," by Frederic Keeling, M.A., late scholar 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge ; formerly Manager and Senior 
 Organizing Officer on the Board of Trade Labour Exchanges 
 (P. S. King and Son, 1914, js. 6d. net). 
 
 J In 1913 the Special International Commission on Child Labour 
 met in Basle, and part of the proofs of the book were submitted
 
 APPENDIX II 321 
 
 he played in its preparation is sufficiently indicated by the fact 
 that his name appears on the title-page as its author. Miss 
 Sanger refers to him as " the leading spirit " of the Committee. 
 He brought his wide knowledge to bear on the question and 
 put an enormous amount of effort and enthusiasm into the 
 work. It is pretty certain that no other national section of 
 the Association has presented so elaborate and complete a 
 report. Keeling was always thorough, and the volume on child 
 labour shows it. Those who helped in its preparation know 
 that he never counted any trouble too much in his search for 
 information. He always worked with great vigour and con- 
 siderable speed, and his letters to me at this time indicate that 
 he " sweated like hell " to use his own expressive phrase 
 over the inquiry. The book consists largely of tables, statistics, 
 detailed reports of local administration of the Employment of 
 Children Act and kindred laws, and a reprint of the laws them- 
 selves, but the historical and analytical sections are the most 
 interesting. The former is a piece of research ; the latter is 
 a masterly study of the administration of children's employ- 
 ment laws. 
 
 Juvenile labour was, however, not the only side of the social 
 problem which interested Keeling. He visited factories, work- 
 shops, and mills in Yorkshire, and familiarized himself with 
 industrial processes and conditions. In the West Riding of 
 Yorkshire ke studied with the deliberateness and patience of 
 the investigator the industrial system at work. It fascinated 
 him ; previous to his coming to the North he had never come 
 in close contact with the industrial world, and his round of 
 visits to workplaces was in the nature of a voyage of discovery 
 He mastered the intricacies of the woollen and worsted, engineer- 
 ing, boot and shoe and other industries. Industrial organization 
 interested him immensely, and we talked more than once of a 
 book dealing with industrial administration. But Keeling had 
 more than an academic interest in industry. He was interested 
 in the workers, their conditions, wages and hours, their lives 
 outside the factory, their organizations, 1 and their problems. 
 
 for discussion. Keeling did not attend this meeting. He had, 
 however, been appointed to attend the next Biennial Conference, 
 which should have taken place in September, 1914. 
 
 1 He attended many meetings of trade-union branches and 
 Trades Councils. It was typical of him that he described the 
 sergeants' mess of which he was a member as like " a good Trades 
 Council." This he regarded as complimentary to both. 
 
 22
 
 822 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 He had many opportunities of coming into close touch with 
 working-class life, and he had many friends amongst the trade 
 unionists of Yorkshire. At one time Keeling gave a good deal 
 of thought to wages questions, but, so far as I remember, he 
 never wrote on the subject. The problems of unemployment 
 and casual labour, however, claimed his attention much more. 
 Both were barriers to the permanent improvement in the 
 position of the workers. What added interest to these questions 
 was the administrative problems to which they give rise. After 
 he left the Labour Exchanges he went to Germany and, 
 inter alia, studied the treatment of casual labour at the 
 Hamburg Docks. The results of his inquiry he published in the 
 Economic Journal. 1 He was a member of the International 
 Association against Unemployment, and attended a Conference 
 at Zurich shortly before the meeting of the International 
 Association on Labour Legislation to which I have already 
 referred. He spoke at the Conference in criticism of certain 
 schemes for dealing with unemployment. He wrote a supple- 
 ment to the Crusade a for January, 1913, on " The Un- 
 employment Problem in 1913." He spent a good deal of time 
 on this, as he contemplated writing a book on Unemployment 
 for the Social Workers' Series, edited by his friend William Foss. 
 The volume was announced in Mr. Lloyd's " Trade Unionism " 
 in the same series, but, so far as I am aware, Keeling never 
 got beyond the preparation of his materials. He had on his 
 hands the book on Certifying Factory Surgeons, and then the 
 inquiry into " Child Labour in the United Kingdom " came 
 along before the former was written. Had it not been for the 
 war, I think he would certainly have published a volume on 
 unemployment, for he hated to begin a job which he could not 
 complete. 
 
 In the meantime, and before he left the Labour Exchanges 
 Department, we began to consider the question of Labour laws 
 more scientifically than had been done previously. This led 
 Keeling into a close study of the whole range of industrial laws. 
 He had in mind an ambitious work on the history and principles 
 of industrial regulation. The only fruits of this study was a 
 lecture which Keeling delivered at Leeds University to its 
 University tutorial class students, and a course of six lectures 
 
 1 Economic Journal, March, 1913, " The Casual Labour Problem." 
 The monthly organ of the National Committee for the Preven- 
 tion of Destitution. He contributed several short unsigned articles 
 to this paper on Juvenile Labour questions, etc.
 
 APPENDIX II 823 
 
 which I delivered at Balliol College, Oxford, in August, 1914, 
 to the Summer School of tutorial class students. At the request 
 of the students I promised to republish the lectures as an Intro- 
 duction to the history and principles of industrial regulation, 
 as the larger projected work would certainly not have appeared 
 for a considerable time. The outbreak of war, however, put 
 an end to the smaller scheme, and with the death of Keeling 
 the larger scheme vanished, at any rate for a very long time. 
 When Keeling died we lost the man who knew more about the 
 theory and principles of industrial regulation than any one else, 
 probably, in the world. 
 
 When I saw him on his last leave about three months before 
 he was killed a change had come over him. It was not that 
 he had lost interest in the old problems. He was intensely 
 interested in life, and he had had new experiences which put 
 his varied interests in a new perspective. I remember being 
 amused at the time by his paternal attitude, towards some of 
 the younger students of social problems. " When we went in 
 for these things," he said, " we did it properly." I fear he 
 misjudged the new school, perhaps because in some ways he 
 had become less " advanced " in his views during the war. He 
 talked of coming to stay with me for a month when he left the 
 Army, in order to finish his reading for the Bar, after which 
 though his personal plans were always subject to sudden and 
 violent upheaval he intended to go to New Zealand and 
 practise law, with a view to politics. 1 
 
 This was not the only plan for the future he told me of. 
 He was, indeed, full of plans. But none was to be realized. 
 What was lost by his death to the causes for which he cared 
 will only be realized by those who had learnt to value in him 
 the union of the tireless curiosity and attention to detail of the 
 scientific student and the tireless energy of the propagandist 
 with which, when he had reached conclusions, he threw them 
 into a scheme and expounded and defended them. 
 
 I say nothing of his character and human qualities "with 
 this side of him I am not concerned. He was a great man in 
 the making. When he died he had not reached the height of 
 his powers. All his work up to the time he entered the Army 
 was but the promise of greater accomplishments. Those who 
 knew him do not need to be told of his intellectual ability. He 
 had most of the qualities of both the scholar and the adminis- 
 trator. And though there are some who might be inclined to 
 
 1 At one time he had thought of entering Parliament at home.
 
 824 KEELING LETTERS 
 
 think otherwise, he was strongly self-disciplined. Few people 
 work as intensely and whole-heartedly as Keeling did, and 
 though there may be many who work more rapidly, there are 
 none who worked more thoroughly than he did. He never put 
 pen to paper until he was absolutely sure of his facts. He had 
 infinite patience, so far as his researches were concerned, and 
 though we often spun Utopias, his studies were always severely 
 practical. Had Keeling survived the war, there is no doubt 
 whatever that the world would have been enriched by the 
 fruits of his fertile mind, his intimate knowledge of social and 
 economic problems, and his passion for truth. 
 
 When I say that he should be regarded as one of the first 
 six men of his generation, I am repeating what I said many 
 times during his lifetime. And looking back on those few 
 years of intense effort, I remember the long and intimate dis- 
 cussions we had, with half-conceived ideas and plans floating 
 through them, and the tragedy of his death comes home with 
 terrific force. 
 
 When Keeling died, the British Commonwealth (as he preferred 
 to call it) lost one of its worthiest citizens. Though in the old 
 days he was a State Socialist, yet his complex personality 
 cherished liberty as its chief possession. No man had a stronger 
 passion for liberty than he. " This crushing German trade 
 agitation is disgusting," he wrote to me in April, 1916. " I 
 
 took up a rifle to fight for human liberty, not for one 
 
 set of hucksterers against another." Human liberty 
 
 that was the real motive behind all his work, and eventually 
 he died for it.
 
 INDEX 
 
 ADDAMS, JANE, 255-6 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 293 
 
 America, plans to work in, 1x6, 
 
 151 
 
 Anglo-French Entente, 90 
 Anti-clericalism in Cambridge, 119 
 Appendix I, 313-15 
 Appendix II, 316-24 
 Arab revolt, views on 298-9 
 Archduke Francis Ferdinand, mur- 
 der of, 176 
 
 Armenian atrocities, 291-2 
 Arnold, Matthew, no, 141 
 Arran, Isle of, 19-20 
 Athletics, value of, in the Army, 
 
 218-19 
 
 Australia, minimum wage in, 139 
 Australian Labour politics, 151 
 Austrian rule in Bosnia, 141 
 
 BALKANS, 141 
 Barres, Maurice, 293 
 Barrington-Ward, R., Capt., 313 ; 
 
 letter from, 314-15 
 Beatenberg, Switzerland, 50 
 Bennett, Arnold, 98, 298 
 Bentinck, Lord Henry, 94, 293 
 Besant, Mrs., 309 
 Bethmann Hollweg, 300 
 Bianco-White, Mrs. G. R., 9-10 
 Board of Education, 130 
 Bombardments, horrors of, 259, 263 
 Bonn, Dr., 82-3 
 Bottomley, Horatio, 252 
 Boy Labour, 126-7, 129, 318 
 Boy Scouts, 319 
 Brailsford, H. N. ( 243 
 British Workers' National League, 
 
 293 
 
 Brooke, Rupert, death of, 224 ; 
 references, 18, 23, 144, 185, 256, 
 263, 275 
 
 Buddhism v. Christianity, 76 
 
 Budget, 1909, 53-4 
 
 Bully Beef Mine, The, by F. H. 
 
 Keeling, 267 
 Burge, Dr., 3 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, LIFE AT, 22-37 
 Cambridge Magazine, 255 
 Cambridge University Fabian 
 
 Society, 8-14 
 
 Camp life, 189-97, 198-203 
 Campbell, A. Y., letter to, 52 
 Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 253 
 Canada, 133 
 
 Care Committee, work on, 46 
 Carpenter, Edward, 20, 62, 308-10 
 Casual labour, research work on, 
 
 322 
 
 Cavell, Nurse, 248, 259 
 Central Europe, views on, 81-2 
 Child and the State, The, by Margaret 
 
 Macmillan, 70 
 Child Labour in the United Kingdom, 
 
 by F. H. Keeling, 31921 
 Churchill, Winston, 52, 96, 130-3, 
 
 289, 290, 308, 316 
 Coit, R. V., 9 
 Colchester, i, 155, 197, 282, 285, 
 
 288, 306, 311 
 Collectivism v. Individualism, 43, 
 
 62 
 Common Sense about the War, by 
 
 G. B. Shaw, 199 
 Commonwealth v. Empire, 290 
 Conscription, views on, 228-9, 240, 
 
 244-7, 251 
 
 Constantinople, 296-7 
 Constructive criticism, value of, 136 
 Contemporary Review, 254 
 Co-operative system, praise of, 185 
 Corporal, promotion to, 191 
 Coxall. Mrs.. 18 
 
 336
 
 32G 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Cricket in war-time, 293 
 Crusade, the, 322 
 Curran, Pete, 10 
 
 Daily Chronicle, the, 258 
 
 Daily Mail, the, 251 
 
 Daily News, the, 279 
 
 Dalmatia, trip to, 157-67 
 
 Dalton, Hugh, 12, 23 
 
 Danks, W., Rev., letter to, 260-1 
 
 Democracy, 136 
 
 Dilke, Charles, Sir, 129 
 
 Diplomacy, 90 
 
 Doncaster, 113 
 
 Drill, value of, 185 
 
 Drink in the Army, 213 
 
 Drummond, Mrs., 10 
 
 Early Days, by F. H. Keeling, 
 
 203-8 
 
 Education, 13, 88-9, 130-2, 136 
 Eight-hour day, 129 
 Eisenach, 144 
 Ensor, R. C. K., letters to, 223, 227- 
 
 9, 2 35-8, 257-60 
 Entente with France, 131-40 
 Eugenics, 73 
 
 Fabian News, the, 307 
 Fabian Society, 14, 109-10, 307-8 
 Factory Acts in France, 129-30 
 Factory legislation under Home 
 
 Rule, 100-7 
 Family v. new social organization, 
 
 24-5 
 
 Federalism, views on, 133 
 " Fish and Chimney," 19 
 Fontaine, Mr., 129 
 Food in the Army, 214-16 
 Fort, Mr., 6 
 
 Fortnightly Review, the, 304 
 Fragments from France, by B. 
 
 Bairnsfather, 278 
 France, Anatole, 133, 135 
 Frankfurter Zeitung, 140 
 French, appreciation of the, 273 
 French Labour Department, 129, 
 
 134-5 
 French v. English and German 
 
 Labour reforms, 129-30 
 Friendship between men and 
 
 women, 97 
 
 GAMBLING IN THE ARMY, 274 
 
 German colonial movement, 84-5 
 
 Germans, comparison with French 
 and English, 130, 131, 135, 137, 
 140, 142 
 
 Germany, visit to, 4 
 
 Getting Married, by G. B. Shaw, 76 
 
 Gide, Charles, 134 
 
 Girton College, 20 
 
 Gissing, George, 131 
 
 Gluck's "Orpheus," 116 
 
 Goethe, J. W., 132, 134, 135 
 
 Graham, Stephen, 310 
 
 Green, Mrs., letters to, 225-7, 
 239-40, 247-50, 251-7, 262-3, 
 263-6, 266-7, 271-2, 272-4, 274- 
 5, 279-80, 281-2, 283-5, 285-8, 
 291-4, 294-5, 295-6, 296-7, 297- 
 9, 299-300, 300-2, 303-4, 304-6, 
 306-7, 308-9, 310-11 
 
 Grey, Sir Edward, 130, 289, 308 
 
 Guest, Haden, 9 
 
 HALDANB, LORD, 186 
 Hardie, Keir, 10, 11, 39-40 
 Haynes, E. S. P., letters to, 224, 
 
 231-3,250-1,275-8 
 Heine, Heinrich, 132, 134 
 Hibbert Journal, 262 
 History of the Fabian Society, by 
 
 E. R. Pease, 306 
 History, better teaching of, 88-9 
 Hobson, J. A., 82 
 " Home Rule all round," 101 
 Home Rula Problems, by Basil 
 
 Williams, 103 
 
 Home v. foreign politics, 130 
 Hubback, F. W., n, 19 
 Hubback, Mrs. (Miss Eva Spiel- 
 
 mann), letters to, 224-5, 234-5 
 Humanism v. Theism, 255 
 Hyndman, 137 
 
 INDEPENDENT LABOUR PARTY, 12, 
 
 39-41 
 
 Individual v. State, 143 
 Individualism, 74 
 Individual's debt to society, 97 
 Industrial organization, 321 
 Insurance Act, 136 
 International conferences, value of, 
 
 128
 
 INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 International eight-hour day, hopes 
 
 of, 129 
 International Labour legislation, 
 
 103-7, 128 
 International movement against 
 
 war, hopes of, 232-3 
 Ireland, visit to, 60-1 
 Irish revolution, 282 
 Italy, travels in, 128-47 
 
 JAY, RAOUL, 134 
 
 KEELING, F. H. Childhood of, 1-3; 
 
 early Fabian activities of, 8-14 ; 
 
 enlistment of, 185 ; marriage of, 
 
 47-8 ; School days of, 3-8 ; 
 
 University days of, 8-21 
 Kitchener's Army, In t by F. H. 
 
 Keeling, 208-17 
 Kitchener's Army, 188, 194, 203, 
 
 217-22, 241 
 Kropotkin, Madame, 13 
 
 LABOUR EXCHANGE, WORK IN, 316 
 
 Labour legislation, 103-7 
 
 Labour protection, books on, 135-7 
 
 Lago Maggiore, 49 
 
 Land and Water , 186 
 
 Law, Scottish and English, 133 
 
 Lay ton, W. T., 9 
 
 League of Peace, views on, 300 
 
 Leave, on, 283 
 
 Leeds Labour Exchange, 57-80 
 
 Leeds, life in, 57-80, 81-127, 3 1 ? 
 
 Liberal politics, appreciation of, 
 
 174, 175-6 
 
 Liebknecht, Dr. Carl., 259 
 
 Llanbedr, 22-37 
 
 Lloyd George, D., Rt. Hon., 248-50 
 
 Local Taxation Report, 171 
 
 London, life in, 147-82 
 
 Louvain, 187 
 
 Love's Coming of Age, by E. Car- 
 penter, 20 
 
 Lugano, 132 
 
 Luther, Martin, Dr., 144 
 
 MCCARTHY, DESMOND, 298 
 Macarthy, Lilian, 18 
 Macdonald, T. Ramsay, M.P., 103 
 Macedonia, 141 
 
 Man and Superman , by G. B. Shaw, 
 28 
 
 Manchester Guardian, 104, 140 
 
 Markham, Miss V. R., 104 
 
 Marshall, Prof., 21 
 
 Meliorism, 65-6 
 
 Memoir, 1-21 
 
 Meredith, George, 49, 1 19 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 138 
 
 Mines Acts, 130 
 
 Minimum wage, 139 
 
 Missenden, Great, 49, 52 
 
 Modern Utopia, A, by H. G. Wells, 
 123 
 
 Moggridge, Edith, 10 
 
 Mohammedanism, 298-9, 305-6 
 
 Montague, E. S., 18 
 
 Montenegro, visit to, 164-7 
 
 Morley, Lord, 36, 115, 125, 138 
 
 Mottram, V. H., 10, n (photo- 
 graphs, frontispieca and facing 
 
 P- 39) 
 
 Munich, 82, 83 
 Murray, Gilbert, Prof., 62 
 
 NAPOLEON, VIEWS ON, 303 
 Nation, the, 119, 131, 181, 273, 
 
 279, 294, 296 
 New Agt, the, 288 
 Newnham, 20 
 New Statesman, the, 154, 199, 203, 
 
 280, 298, 305 
 
 Northcliffe, Lord, 248, 250 
 North Wales, 78-9 
 Norway, journey to, 63-8 
 
 OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE 
 methods in sociology, too 
 
 Officers and privates on active 
 service, 234-5, 238 
 
 Official machinery, defects in, 112- 
 
 13 
 
 Old Age Pensions, 136 
 Olivier, Sidney, Sir, 10 
 On the Eve t by F. H. Keeling, 217-22 
 Oxford, 138 
 
 PACIFISM, FUTURE OF, 259 
 Pan-Germanism, 90 
 Patriotism, views on, 252, 253 
 Pease, Edward R., letter to, 8, 10, 
 
 307-8 
 
 Persia, 130 
 Personal experience of industrial 
 
 problems, 125
 
 328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Political science v. sentimentalism, 
 
 101 
 
 Predestination, 95 
 Profiteering, on, 271-2, 289 
 Protestants, 133, 134 
 Public Opinion, 287 
 Public School system, defects of, 89 
 Punch, 255 
 
 RADICALS, 131 
 
 Realism, need of, 131-2 
 
 Red Feather, the, 266, 279, 313, 
 
 314-15 
 Regimental life, appreciation of, 
 
 202, 221 
 Revolutionary v. evolutionary 
 
 methods, 41-2 
 Round Table, the, 260 
 Rousseau, J. Jacques, 115-43 
 Russell, Bertrand, Hon., 310 
 Russian Revolution, 13 
 
 SALONICA, 302 
 
 Salzen-Ziegler, Mr., 129 
 
 Sanger, Miss, 100 
 
 Scawfell, 45 
 
 Scilly Isles, visit to, 149-51 
 
 School Child, the, 129, 142 
 
 School-feeding, 13, 45 
 
 School of Economics, 113 
 
 Scotland, 133 
 
 Selwyn, Rev. E. G., 23 
 
 Sergeants' messes, collectivist spirit 
 
 in, 195 
 
 Sergeant-majors, views on, 295 
 Sergeant, promotion to, 193 
 Sex and Society, by Havelock Ellis, 
 
 149, 151 
 
 Scutari, visit to, 159-64 
 Shakespeare, William, 15, 19 
 Sharp, Clifford D., letter to, 290-1 
 Shaw, G. B., 10, 14, 18, 20, 138, 142, 
 
 298, 308 
 
 Sheehy Skeffington, 285 
 Smuggling in Scotland, 108-9 
 Snowden, Mrs. Philip, 13 
 Socialism, views on, 2, 151-2, 
 
 172-3 
 
 Social legislation in Italy, 124 
 Social problems, urgency of, 130 
 Sociology, functions of, 123-4 
 Sociology, research work in, 93-4, 
 
 100 
 
 Soldiering in England, 183-222 
 
 Soldiering, views on, 257 
 
 Soldier on Compulsion, A, by F. H. 
 
 Keeling, 244-7 
 
 Soldiers' Homes, praise of, 191 
 Soldiers' songs, 241-4 
 Southern Slav question, 297 
 Squire, J. C., 9, 19 ; letters to, 23, 
 
 241-4 
 
 St. Gothard, 113, 134-5 
 Staff-work, criticism of, 237-8 
 State, the, 71, 108, 136, 138 
 Stokoe, T. R., Lt.-Col., letter from, 
 
 3U 
 
 Strikes of 1911, 92-3 
 Strindberg's Toientang, 140, 144, 
 
 M5 
 
 Sudekum, Dr., 10 
 Switzerland, travels in, 50-1, 128- 
 
 47 
 Syndicalism, 122-3 
 
 TECHNICAL EDUCATION, 70-1 
 Times, the, 202, 251, 308 
 Tolstoy, 138 
 
 Townshend, Miss C., letters to, 
 148-9, 153, 154-5, 177-8. 188-9, 
 
 I9I-2, 197-8, 2OO-I 
 
 Townshend, Miss R. (Mrs. F. H. 
 
 Keeling). 30, 33, 49, 70. 71. 75. 
 
 '45, 167 
 
 Trade unionism, 92-3, 129 
 Trade war, views on, 291, 293, 304- 
 
 5, 324 
 
 Trades Disputes Bill, 13 
 Trenches, life in the, 236, 253-4, 
 
 262, 295 
 
 Trinity College, 4 
 Tripoli, 90-91 
 Turkey, 141 
 
 ULSTER, SEPARATE PARLIAMENT 
 
 for, 133, 134 
 Unemployment Problem in 1913, 
 
 The, by F. M. Keeling, 322 
 Union of Democratic Control, 256, 
 
 259 
 
 VENICE, VISIT TO, 157 
 
 Vernon Lee (Miss Paget), 50, 90, 
 
 281 
 
 Verona, visit to, 87-90 
 Voltaire, 138, 278
 
 INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 WAGNER, RICHARD, 15 
 
 Wallas, Graham, 112, 123 
 
 Walworth Road, life in, 38-56 
 
 War, first taste of, 226-44 
 
 War work in provincial towns, 197 
 
 War poetry. 280 
 
 Ward, Dudley, 31, 33, 140, 145, 
 
 176 
 
 Wartburg, the, 144 
 Webb, Mrs. Sidney, 10, 30, 138 
 Webb, Sidney, 10, 18, 20 
 Wells, H. G., 10, 14, 18 
 West, Rebecca, 121 
 Winchester College, 2, 6-8 
 
 Winchester College Corps, 6 
 Winterthur, 129 
 Woman Labour, 77, 128 
 Woman Suffrage, 13, 287 
 Women's Industrial News, 103 
 World's Labour Laws, 104 
 
 Y.M.C.A. HUTS, 265 
 Yorkshire, 99 
 Ypres, 280, 302 
 
 ZIMMERN, ALFRED, 142 
 
 Zionism, 292 
 
 Zurich, Conference at, 128-30 
 
 PnnUd in Great Hntain by 
 UNWIhi BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE BKKSlUil I'KRSS. WOKI.M, AND I ONDON
 
 Reminiscences & Reflexions 
 of a XlXth Century Man 
 
 BY ERNEST BELFORT BAX 
 Demy 8vo. js. 6d. net. Postage 6J. 
 
 This book offers in some respects a unique sketch of men, manners, and 
 movements from the Sixties of the last century to the present time, as seen 
 through the author's personal experience and outlook. The book will 
 prove especially interesting to students of English intellectual and socio- 
 political life and thought during the middle and late Victorian periods. 
 
 In writing about Mr. Belfort Bax, Mr. H. M. HYNUMAN says: "I 
 consider he has never received anything approaching to the recognition 
 which is due to him. He seems to me, at the present time, the only 
 original thinker in Europe. Like all men ahead of his period he has 
 had to suffer from unscrupulous misrepresentation and equally un- 
 scrupulous plagiarism. But I have no doubt that the time is not far 
 distant when his great services to philosophy and sociology will be 
 generally admitted." 
 
 My Days and Dreams 
 
 Autobiographical Notes BY EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 Demy Svo, Cloth. 3RD EDN. ILLUSTRATED, js. 6J. net. Postage 6</. 
 
 "A challenging and richly suggestive story." Manchester Guardian. 
 
 An Autobiography 
 
 BY ROBERT F. HORTON, M.A., D.D. 
 'Demy 8vo. js. 6d. net. Postage 6J. 
 
 " Here is a good man who has spent his life in the service of goodness 
 talking aloud to us as if we were old and intimate friends." MR. JAMES 
 DOUGLAS. 
 
 " It is a fine, a noble, a most moving book." Church Times. 
 
 " It is, above everything, the frank record of a man whose life continues 
 to glow with passion for the salvation of men." The Christian. 
 
 " Every time I lay it down I shall be, as now, humbled, enlightened, 
 inspired, and reconsecrated by its perusal." MR. HENRY SMITH in the 
 United Methodist. 
 
 " A singularly revealing book in which he stands pictured as a knight 
 of the unshielded heart." Christian Commonwealth. 
 
 The Diary of a Dead Officer 
 
 BEING THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF ARTHUR GRAEME WEST. 
 Crown 8vo. About \s. 6d. net. 
 
 An account of the experiences of a young University man first as a 
 private and then as an officer in the war, in the form of a diary which 
 describes with obvious truth and minute exactness what the horrors of 
 the war meant to a cultured gentleman who had never wilfully caused 
 pain to a living thing in his life. The diary describes how the war 
 came upon him as he was reading English literature at Oxford, swept 
 him from the study into the world, and carried him off in the first mad 
 impetuous enthusiasm to the recruiting office ; his subsequent training 
 and his death at the front early in April 1917,
 
 RECENT ESSAYS, BIOGRAPHY, &c. 
 
 Memoirs of M. Thiers 1870-1873 
 
 Translated by F. M. ATKINSON. 
 
 Medium 8vo, I2s. 6rf. net. Postage 6d. 
 
 " The whole work is of great interest . . . has a timeliness that is not 
 to be overlooked." Daily Chronicle. 
 
 Dostoievsky : His Life and Literary Activity 
 
 By EVGENII SOLO VI EV. Translated by C. J. HOGARTH. 
 
 Large Crown 8vo, 55. net. Postage $rf. 
 
 " An admirable study of the man in all the stress and strain of his 
 storm-tossed circumstances, as well as in all the diversities of his 
 impulsive moods." Standard. 
 
 The Autobiography of John Ruskin (Praeterita) 
 
 NEW EDITION. 3 vols. 2s. 6d. net each. Postage &/. 3 vols. , 5rf. vol. 
 
 Maurice Maeterlinck By MACDONALD CLARK. 
 
 With Photograph. Demy 8vo, Cloth, 75. 6d. net. Postage $d. 
 
 " This timely appreciation . . . tells us all we could wish to know about 
 his work, his outlook, and his personality." Camb. Mag. 
 
 Bernard Shaw, the Twentieth Century Moliere 
 
 By AUGUSTIN HAMON. Translated by EDEN and CEDAR 
 PAUL. Demy 8vo, 75. 6d. net. Postage 5d. 
 
 Archbishop Darboy : and Some French Tragedies, 
 
 1813-1871 ByREV.L.C. PRICE. Illus. Demy 8vo, 8s. 6d. net. 
 " Cannot be read without interest." The Times. 
 
 John Huss : His Life, Teachings, and Death, 
 after Five Hundred Years 
 
 By DAVID S. SCHAFF, D.D., Professor of Church History in the 
 Western Theological Seminary. Royal 8vo, IDS. net. Postage 6d. 
 
 The Life and Works of Treitschke 75. 6d. net.
 
 RECENT HISTORICAL LITERATURE 
 
 The Political History of Japan in the Meiji Era 
 
 By PROF. W. W. McLAREN. Demy 8vo, I2s. 6d. net. Postage 64. 
 A valuable and suggestive book." Saturday Review. 
 
 History of Germany in the Nineteenth Century 
 
 By HEINRICH VON TREITSCHKE. Translated by E. and C. 
 PAUL. With INTRODUCTIONS by WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON. 
 Six Vols. Price I2s. 6d. net per vol. (in sets only). Postage 64. per vol. 
 
 Poland and the Polish Question Impressions and 
 Afterthoughts By NINIAN HILL. 
 Demy 8vo, with Illustrations and a Map, IDS. 64. net. Postage 64. 
 
 Poland's Case for Independence 
 
 Demy 8vo, 75. 64. net. Postage 64. 
 
 "A book . . . rich in instruction and in interest for all classes of 
 readers." Scotsman. " An admirable summary of the country's 
 
 distinguished and turbulent past." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 History of Africa South of the Zambesi 
 
 From September 1505 to September 1795. 1 Three Volumes. 
 With Maps and Plates. By DR. GEORGE McCALL THEAL. 
 Vol. I., THIRD EDITION, Revised and Enlarged. (Vols. II. and 
 III., REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION, in preparation.) Demy 8vo, 
 8s. 64. net 
 
 History of South Africa from 1795 to 1872 
 
 Five Volumes. With 15 Maps and Plans. By DR. GEORGE 
 McCALL THEAL. Vols. I. and II., FOURTH EDITION ; Vol. III., 
 THIRD EDITION, all Enlarged and Rewritten ; Vols. IV. and V. are in 
 their SECOND EDITION. Demy 8vo, 8s. 64. net. 
 SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME (1873-1881) in preparation. 
 
 History of the Renaissance, the Protestant 
 Revolution, and the Catholic Reformation in 
 Continental Europe By EDWARD M. HULME. 
 
 Demy 8vo, 589 pages, with 8 Maps, IDS. net. Postage 64. 
 
 The French Renascence By DR. CHARLES SAROLEA. 
 
 Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, with Illustrations, 55. net. Postage 6d. 
 " This is the work of a philosopher, a jurist, and a keen observer." Globe. 
 
 A Brief History of the French Revolution 
 
 By F. W. AVELING, M.A., B.Sc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 2s. net. 
 "A concise and clear sketch of that terrible drama." 
 
 A Short History of English Rural Life 
 
 From the Anglo-Saxon Invasion to the Present Time. By 
 MONTAGUE FORDHAM, M.A. (Cantab). With a PREFACE by 
 SIR CHARLES BATHURST, M.A., M.P. 
 Large Crown 8vo, Cloth, 35. 64, net ; Paper 2S. 64. net. Postage 4^.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES 
 
 COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 This book is due on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Book Slip-25i-9,'60(.B2036s4)4280
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 001 138913 7 
 
 Library 
 
 UCLA-College Library 
 
 DA 574 K4A5 
 
 L 005 712 327 5 
 
 DA 
 
 574 
 
 K4A5