JAMES K.MOFFITT
 
 -;> ^
 
 OBITER SCRIPTA 
 
 1918
 
 OBITER SCRIPTA 
 
 1918 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC HARRISON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 'OLIVER CROMWELL," " WILLIAM THE SILENT," "WASHINGTON, 
 
 "CHATHAM," "on SOCIETY," ETC. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD. 
 
 1919
 
 m 
 
 TJCRAI?Y 
 
 UiMVE!5£i i Y OF C 'J.iFORNIA 
 
 SAiS TA BARBARA 
 
 n 
 
 To 
 
 WILLIAM LEONARD COURTNEY, M.A., LL.D., 
 Etc., Etc. 
 
 who accepted these occasional notes in 
 the great review of which he has been 
 director for 25 years, and to which 
 the writer has been a contributor 
 for 54 years
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 These Notes on events and books of the day 
 were published in the Fortnightly Review month 
 by month during the last year of the Great War, 
 in 1918. The twelve Parts correspond to the 
 months from January to December, inclusive. As 
 they stood as the first article in each number, they 
 had to be written in the first half of the month 
 preceding that in which they appeared. Thus 
 Part I. was composed about December 12, 191 7, 
 and Part XII. was composed just before the 
 Armistice of November 11. It was not found 
 necessary to make any addition, qualification, or 
 excision of the Notes. They are now re-issued 
 by request precisely as they appeared last year. 
 
 Bath, May 191 9.
 
 OBITER SCRIPtA 
 
 1918 
 
 PART I 
 
 The War of Nations becomes a 
 War of Class 
 
 THE dominant, urgent fact which stares us in 
 the face in a supreme hour of strife is this. 
 The War of Nations is being entangled with, 
 is merging into, the war of Class : about sovereignty, 
 ranks, upper and lower Orders ; but, essentially, 
 between those who hold Capital and those who 
 Work with their hands. National wars, as we see, 
 unite men in nations : Class wars suppress the spirit 
 of nationality, for they herald what Socialists pro- 
 mise as the grander form of Patriotism, the brother- 
 hood of the labourers. At the opening of the great 
 European War Democracy was appealed to, and 
 nobly it answered the call in the name of the 
 Nation. But, in this fourth year of war, we see all 
 over Europe how democratic patriotism is expand- 
 ing into the new Industrial Order which dreamers 
 for two generations have imagined as the Social 
 Revolution. 
 
 The Thrill of Russian Revolution 
 
 Russia, as one of these dreamers said, " led the 
 way." Chaos, anarchy, plunder, terrorism for the 
 hour are masters in that huge, amorphic, unstable
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 race. Let us not suppose, because it is so extravagant, 
 that it means nothing, and will soon be nothing but 
 a hideous memory. Wild, impossible, anti-social as 
 Bolshevism is, remember that it is the delirious orgy 
 of a passion which is very real, very wide, very deep 
 — which has many forms, and in some form has an 
 inevitable future. The Paris Revolution of 1789 
 broke out into the Terror, sans-culottic saturnalia : 
 it was but the bloody froth on the wave of a revolu- 
 tion which swept round the world and made a new 
 heaven and a new earth. So underneath Bolshevism 
 there lies a vast social evolution. Italy, France, 
 Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Britain throb with vague 
 spasms of revolutionary change. It has brought 
 disaster in Lombardy and Venice ; France, too, 
 passes from one crisis to another ; Sinn Fein spouts 
 rank treason ; even British Socialists still hold out 
 hands to their Scandinavian, German, and Russian 
 "brothers"! When 150 millions of men have 
 flung off a mighty autocracy, have sunk into a new 
 social, industrial, moral chaos, have put in motion a 
 civic earthquake on a scale such as never before was 
 seen amongst men, this sends a thrill through the 
 masses which the world has never yet known. 
 
 Constitutionalism is Menaced 
 
 How far, in what way, will it work ? The 
 Italian people is far more ignorant, more passionate, 
 more predatory than the French. The Italian king- 
 dom is a recent, artificial, somewhat shallow edifice 
 under the ancient shadow of Saint Peter. Parlia- 
 mentary government struggles on in defiance of all 
 the traditions and instincts of France ; and now is 
 a mere battle-ground for Socialistic combats, rivalries, 
 and plots. The United Kingdom has been heaving 
 with change for at least one generation, and its
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 spasms were not unconnected with this war. Our 
 royal, loyal, indefatigable George, alas ! cannot give 
 the support that a George gave to a Chatham and a 
 Pitt — however much he surpasses his ancestors in 
 every public and private gift. 
 
 Thrones are Antique — Republics are Modern 
 
 In the crash of Tsardom and the rumblings 
 everywhere of social order, Monarchy, with all its 
 undoubted good, has the undeserved weakness of 
 being the symbol of what is antique and established. 
 And yet the whole horizon blazes with new, 
 unexpected, mysterious lights and clouds. France 
 and America have no cleavage of kingdoms, have no 
 kingdoms at all. For generations each Frenchman, 
 each American, has felt in his bones that he and his 
 fellow- citizens are France, are America. They have 
 no double sense of a compound loyalty to the State 
 and another loyalty to the Throne. 
 
 The New Order 
 
 Now, what is the rhoral to be drawn from all 
 this ? It is, that behind this enormous war, there 
 is coming over civilisation a change even more 
 enormous, and much more lasting in time. When 
 fighting has ceased — and I cannot feel sure that it 
 will cease either soon, or in any complete, definitive, 
 mutually agreed way — there will be a wholly new 
 Social Order, as different, perhaps, from ours as 
 when the Catholic and Feudal Order superseded 
 that of Polytheism, slavery, art, and luxury. Many 
 things will be reconstructed. There will be no 
 special ruling class, no select educated class, no idle 
 class. If Upper House, Magnates, Honours, and 
 the stately Homes associated by history with 
 Honours continue to live — these will be more akin
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 to the obsolete noblesse of the Louis and their 
 dilapidated chateaux than to the mansions and parks 
 which make England so rich in romance and 
 charm. It will be folly, almost criminal, to hold 
 on obstinately to old Parties, worn-out Principles, 
 ingrained habits, to the arrogance of Wealth, to the 
 pride of Culture. 
 
 Opportunism is True Policy 
 
 In politics, dogged consistency was ever a doubtful 
 virtue. When the hour of New Things has struck, 
 these Catos, de Broglies, Eldons, bring the old Cause 
 to ruin and injure the new. Rigid conservatism is 
 the bane of all revolutions. For my part, I shall 
 go out of the world with a clean slate in things 
 political and economic. Free Trade, Home Rule, 
 the Suffrage, Party, Socialism, Capitalism, Reform 
 of Parliament, even the sovereignty of the Commons, 
 will all have to be recast in a new atmosphere and 
 altered relations to each other. 
 
 All Forms of Pacifism are Ruinous 
 
 This seismic and cosmic upheaval seems in the 
 fourth year of war to be affecting in opposite ways 
 two orders of politicians amongst us so that somehow 
 they converge to the same point, which in practice 
 would be craven surrender to the foe. Some of our 
 Elder Statesmen seem to have lost their nerves over 
 the continuance of horrors and the social debacle that 
 travels after them as fire succeeds an earthquake. 
 We are told that stout-hearted men can stand an 
 earthquake for a time, but their nerves begin to 
 shake if it continues long. On the other hand. 
 Commercialism, Cobdenism, Socialism, with all its 
 hundred heads and its hundred voices, Internation- 
 alism, red, grey, and black — all are agog with a
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 vision of Industrial expansion, or else of Social 
 Liquidation, cosmopolitan Brotherhood, Utopian 
 Peace — if only these dreadful Governments would 
 cease to fight. If these Elder Statesmen really 
 represent their order, it will be the last act of a 
 Ruling Class in Britain. If tradesmen and Inter- 
 nationalists really impede our victory, they will both 
 end in Bolshevic chaos. 
 
 [January, 191 8.] 
 
 Lord Morley's Recollections 
 
 1 turn from the crisis of the hour to that which is 
 a permanent monument in English literature. All 
 who follow politics or letters must study from 
 beginning to end Lord Morley's two stout volumes 
 of Recollections^ wherein almost every incident and 
 person of note over the last two generations is 
 touched with the hand of a master. It forms an 
 encyclopaedic survey of State affairs, judgments, and 
 books of our time. Turn over the eighty pages of 
 a very careful analytic Index, and you will find a 
 reference to almost every public man and to every 
 leading writer of the day. This gives a truly unique 
 interest to this book. It is the political testament of 
 a statesman who has held great offices in critical 
 times and has been at the helm in many a storrn. 
 Again, it is the life-long study of great literature by 
 one who now for fifty years has had no superior 
 in the prose writing of this age. 
 
 Partly Politics, Partly Literature 
 
 In two things this work has no exact parallel. 
 First, it is a record of the central problems of the 
 last thirty years by one of the chief actors therein, 
 written with a rare and curious revealing of arcana 
 imperii. Secondly, much of it is pure literature of
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 a very high and enduring sort, written as an English 
 classic without a thought of Parliament, party, or 
 politics. Half of the book is literature that may 
 rank with that of our great essayists from Bacon to 
 Burke. Half of it is Memoir that must make 
 English history along with Biographies of our 
 leading statesmen. The title fits but one half of 
 the contents. It should be named Recollections and 
 Meditations. Some of our statesmen have been 
 passable writers. Many of our writers have engaged 
 in politics. But no other politician has been a 
 great writer : and no other writer has directed great 
 affairs. Burke was great as a politician and great 
 as a writer. But not much of his writing is now, 
 popular reading ; and he never held high office, nor 
 did he ever act as the chief statesman responsible for 
 momentous reforms. 
 
 Can Both be Mixed } 
 
 This rare combination of high politics and great 
 literature gives a pungent interest to the book, but 
 it may irritate politicians who are deaf to Sophocles, 
 and also the learned who hate the House of 
 Commons. I am not sure that it is quite sound 
 in literary effect. The transitions from rebels to 
 Thucydides, from Lucretius to Kilmainham and 
 Indian bombs, are rather abrupt. Take a typical 
 page (I., p. 287) : "greeting Dillon on coming out 
 of Galway Gaol," line 3 ; "read Measure for 
 Measure^' line 4 ; " my report on the Irish Society 
 Committee," line 7 ; " did Goethe ever say anything 
 about it," line 10 ; " learnt some lines of Sophocles " 
 — three in the Greek — line 21 ; "read some of 
 Newman's sermons," line 34 ; " drowsy hour with 
 Tom Moore's letters," line 36. How very few of 
 us can jump like this from treason to drama, back
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 to Catholic theology, and then to Byronic scandal — 
 and so, as Pepys said, " to bed ! " Could all of us 
 sleep the sleep of the just after such an olla podrida 
 as this ? 
 
 Can They Fill the Same Page ? 
 
 The candour due to true friendship compels me 
 to say that, with all its intense versatility and vitality, 
 the composite work has not been welded into a 
 symmetric whole. Much of it was obviously 
 written at very different times under very varying 
 moods, and this makes the dates very confusing. 
 Much of it is the rough diary any of us may keep : 
 Met X — dined with Mr, G. and discussed the Bill 
 — called on Lady Y — Lord Z has a good cook, etc., 
 etc., etc. Nearly two hundred pages of the second 
 volume, during five years of Indian office, are filled 
 with private letters to the Viceroy. All most 
 interesting, historic records opening the secrets of 
 Imperial policy, but without literary form. And 
 where are Lord Minto's replies ? All this with 
 Thoughts about government which recall Marcus 
 Aurelius, Richelieu, and Edmund Burke, and again 
 with Essays and Criticisms which recall Bacon, 
 Addison, and Hume. Diaries, letters, essays, are all 
 excellent, though perhaps they do not always lie 
 well together in the same bed. 
 
 Not an Autobiography 
 
 The answer to such criticism is this. The book 
 is not designed as a true Biography like those of 
 Gibbon, Scott, Byron — nor even like the Auto- 
 biographies of Mill or Spencer. There is almost 
 nothing of Home life, of family, and personal 
 feeling. From 1838 to 1917, it is the record of 
 prodigious activity in the world of politics, literature,
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 and society — of all those inter apices of the State, of 
 Letters, of the Court. These eighty years have 
 seen vast changes, historic events, famous men. 
 The author of these Recollections has been in the 
 thick of all this, the contriver of these events, the 
 colleague of these men. It is his right — it is his 
 duty — to tell the w^orld of the part he has played in 
 such dominant affairs as that of Imperial expansion, 
 of Parliamentary reform, of Irish Home Rule, of 
 Indian re-settlement — finally how in 191 1 he w^as 
 the mouthpiece of that " ending of the Lords " 
 which he had promised the electors of Westminster 
 in 1880. It is a great, a full record. 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke 
 
 Turn to the Life of Sir Charles Dilke — a full, 
 careful, memorable record of immense energy, 
 industry, and clear judgment. This, too, will 
 make history, will be invaluable to those who 
 hereafter will have to study the tangled story of 
 Victorian politics. Dilke had all the gifts of a real 
 statesman — good sense that almost amounted to 
 genius, coolness, courage, insight — but without the 
 magnetic power of his chief colleague, without 
 the passion which moves men in supreme causes. 
 He might have held power for a time in a quiet 
 epoch ; he truly foresaw the dominant German 
 Peril, and might have helped to prepare us to meet 
 it — but for a moral disaster such as that which 
 ruined Home Rule. Public men must remember 
 that they have no private life. Two-thirds of a 
 statesman is character; and public men, just like 
 private men, cannot abolish for themselves recog- 
 nised laws of morals. It may be forgiven to relatives 
 that they prefer to disguise notorious facts with a 
 grotesque misreading of their own.
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 The Vices of Parliament 
 
 When we compare the Memoir oi Dilke with that 
 of Morley, how much larger, deeper, more con- 
 structive, bulks tliat of the living statesman ! How 
 petty, fugitive, provincial appear to-day in this 
 cosmic upheaval these squabbles in the House over 
 details of administration, personal rivalries, class 
 antagonisms ! One thing comes out from these 
 new AfemoirSy as from almost all modern Memoirs. 
 Our public men are honourable, incorruptible, 
 public-spirited servants of the State, whatever their 
 ambitions and their blunders. Yet — when they let 
 us peep into the arcana rei-pub/ide^ what vacillation 
 in Cabinets, what jealousies in Ministers, what a 
 scramble is Government, what a street mob, what 
 a tavern debating-shop is the Mother of Parliaments ! 
 An unmanageable crowd of average Town Council- 
 lors — whole groups sent there to obstruct, to wreck, 
 to worry, to swagger, to pry ! And the Government 
 of this mighty Empire at the mercy of a chance plot 
 if the Whips are careless ! I have ever distrusted 
 Parliament, and bless my kind genius who whispered 
 to me to keep off its toils. 
 
 Turkey and Poland 
 
 Two important historical volumes have been 
 completed during the War, which should be care- 
 fully studied by all who deal with the settlement of 
 Europe after the War. I mean Lord Eversley's 
 Turkish Empire and his History of Poland. Both of 
 these deal with those secular problems of Eastern 
 Europe which the War has thrust upon the West 
 and which the Peace will have to solve. Lord 
 Eversley, who was Mr. Shaw-Lefevre in Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Cabinet, has visited Turkey during some forty 
 years, and has been there the guest of Ambassadors,
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 Ministers, and the Sultan. His "just and lucid 
 narrative," as a critic truly described it, covers the 
 whole history of Turkey from its first contact 
 with Europe down to the Young Turk Revolution. 
 This valuable summary of an extraordinary story 
 has the advantage of being composed by one who 
 knows Yildiz Kiosk at home. This book, no less 
 than his History of Poland^ explains much in the 
 diplomacy of the past, and ought to give light to 
 the diplomacy of the future. 
 
 History of the French Novel 
 
 Away with politicians — whose profession makes 
 them live to accuse, abuse, trip up each other ! 
 Lawyers, priests, doctors, traders, soldiers, writers, 
 workmen — all do the best for themselves they can — 
 but success for them does not mean the ruin of their 
 colleagues and rivals. Let us turn to letters. I have 
 just read through a new book of rare erudition by 
 an acknowledged master of a vast field of learning. 
 It is Professor George Saintsbury's Hhtory of the 
 French Novel. What a helluo librorum ! He begins 
 with the eleventh century, and, as yet, closes with 
 the end of the eighteenth. Thoughtless young 
 ladies, do not hope to hear about Dumas, Zola, and 
 Anatole France from our Professor — not yet — wait 
 and see ! But read him about Saint Eulalia, Chrestien 
 de Troyes, Partenopeus of Blois^ Aucassin^ and the 
 Fabliaux^ Princesse de Cleves^ Le Sage, Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, All this is luminous and authoritative. 
 The French novel of the eighteenth century is 
 known to thoughtful readers — but how few know 
 the delightful French romances of earlier times. 
 
 Fabliaux du Moyen Age 
 Do not, ladies, attempt to follow the Professor in 
 reading through Astree and the 12,000 pages of the 
 
 10
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Grand Cyrus, but do let him guide you to some of 
 the delicious old romances. Read them in the 
 original verse if you care to learn old French, such 
 as — 
 
 Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont 
 
 or — 
 
 Et moi aures cascunc nuit. 
 
 But, in any case, do try to get to the heart of these 
 old French romances. They are worth a ton of 
 Zola any day. There is an entire literature in the 
 Fabliaux — romantic, lyric, fantastic, tragic, ribald, 
 and comic. Let me say it to my shame. Professor, 
 I read them in the modern French prose version — 
 say, of Le Grand d'Aussy. Many of the old verses 
 are uncouth jingles, for all the charm of the thought. 
 And I am too old and too idle to learn this caco- 
 graphic doggerel. But I bow my head in reverence 
 to the Professor's learned accounts of so many (ii^Xla 
 a^L^Ua. May I live to see his next volume ! 
 
 Life of Stopford Brooke 
 
 And I have just read the Life and Letters of Stop- 
 ford Brooke. Every page recalls to me the rich 
 nature of a friend whom I have known so long, so 
 much valued, with whom I and mine spent happy 
 times both in country houses and in London gather- 
 ings. In the 'sixties I used to hear him preach in 
 St. James's Chapel, as in the 'fifties I used to hear 
 Robertson preach at Brighton. I was staying with 
 Brooke at Naworth in 1880 when he showed me 
 in draft his letter of resignation to the Archbishop. 
 He seemed to think it might be a bar to his career. 
 I advised him to go on, that it would make no 
 difference to his position in the wiser world and 
 would strengthen his influence. I used again to 
 hear him preach in the Bedford Chapel, both before 
 
 Jl
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 and after his quitting Orders. I have read with 
 interest and sympathy most of his books. He was 
 a fine teacher of spiritual truth, a fine judge of art, 
 an unerring critic of poetry. He and I were real 
 friends and colleagues in many a public cause. I 
 admired and I honoured him. 
 
 Too Much Family Gossip 
 
 The two volumes of 700 pages recall the alert- 
 ness, versatility, pluck, and brilliancy of my friend, 
 but they add nothing to me about his personality 
 and his work. Indeed, his achievement as a re- 
 ligious force, as brave reformer, as social teacher, 
 as thinker, as poet, is rather overlaid with the 
 torrents of family gossip, of the banalities of society, 
 of the cooings of a most loving and lovable home 
 circle, which filial piety has poured out to the 
 world. The nemesis of all biographies by near 
 relations is, that they cannot stint the measure of 
 all their home memories. Every incident they can 
 recall seems typical, memorable, glorious ; every 
 letter they have treasured seems literature j, every 
 casual utterance a maxim or an epigram. And this 
 is specially a danger when the lost one is so recently 
 mourned. The son-in-law has given us more than 
 was needed. Yes ! the composite personality is 
 there — the compound life of Priest, Poet, Friend, 
 and Critic. But we get too much about the 
 popular preacher, the pet of drawing-rooms, the 
 camaraderie of the Press, the love of flowers, of nice 
 people, of objets (Tart^ of children, cousins, and 
 aunts. 
 
 Silly Gossip about Comte 
 
 Dr. Jacks has done his work well ; but it would 
 have been better had he not been so near. For 
 private circulation, all this would be right. But 
 
 12
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 the outside world wants to know in definite state- 
 ments what Brooke achieved in the evolution of 
 Christian faith ; what the Church, and which 
 Church, gained or lost in him ; what were his 
 services to the public; what was his place in litera- 
 ture. And all this is rather overlaid by Irish 
 exuberance and all this beautiful family canonisa- 
 tion. I wish the Life of Brooke had been more 
 like Brooke's own Life of Robertson. There was 
 not in that so much enfantillage and " chatter 
 about " the house of Brooke. Dr. Jacks, who is an 
 eminent theologian and philosopher, need not have 
 printed after forty-eight years the mendacious gossip 
 retailed by a young clergyman about Comte, which 
 is both spiteful and false, and wrong in its date by 
 more than two years (I., 112). The idle jest has 
 often been fully refuted. As to the religion of 
 Humanity, Brooke would discuss it with me with 
 candour and knowledge. Even in the 'sixties he 
 told me that he was a believer in Humanity, but he 
 preferred to call it Christ. He and I had many 
 objects of faith in common. 
 
 New Poets and Old 
 
 This vast war — this stirring of the deeps in man's 
 soul — calls out much love of poetry, not a little new 
 poetry, as is ever the case. The Revolution of 
 1789 and Napoleon's wars gave us Scott, Byron, 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Campbell, Southey, Shelley, 
 Keats. We have no Shelley, no Keats, no Words- 
 worth — yet. Indeed, amidst the flood of third-rate 
 poems that pours on day by day, there are so very 
 few which reach even to a second standard. And 
 criticism of poets, theories of poetry are incessant. 
 Notable and interesting are new books, new pieces, 
 of Keats and of Swinburne. Surely, we already
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 know all we shall know, all we need know of both ; 
 and the place of both is assured and settled. Keats 
 ranks with Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth ; but, 
 being almost nothing but a glorious promise cut 
 short, cannot be counted as above these three. And 
 Swinburne, for all his exquisite music, cannot by 
 intellect be placed on a par with Tennyson and 
 Browning. He certainly comes next to them, and 
 has none who come near him. 
 
 Too Much Talk about Poets 
 
 For my part, I find Brooke's judgments, so ad- 
 mirably expressed in many Letters^ to be quite 
 conclusive. All he says of Byron, Scott, Shelley, 
 Keats, Campbell, Coleridge, is excellent. And I 
 follow him for Tennyson, Browning, and Swin- 
 burne, whose monotonous beauty at last becomes, 
 as he says, quite wearisome. How true, how quaint 
 is his saying that, much as he had written about 
 poets, perhaps we have had too much " talk about " 
 poets, and would do better to read them. For 
 myself, to use the current slang, I am " fed up " 
 v/ith all this "chatter about" Fanny Brawne, about 
 Watts-Dunton's mystic fane, and Orestes and 
 Pylades. The private life of poets is not so really 
 important as is that of politicians, whose characters 
 we need to know before we judge their acts. Let 
 us read the poets and leave them in peace at home. 
 Happily no man can unearth the domestic privacy 
 of Homer. 
 
 Two Somerset Poets 
 
 No doubt many of the new verses are really good 
 — even if they just miss being poetry that may be 
 more than fugitive. There never was in England 
 a time when more readable verse without any bad 
 
 14
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 quality was produced — not even in the time of the 
 Tudors or the Stuarts. I read and enjoy not a few. 
 Nor, as a citizen of Bath, can I fail to note The 
 Day and other verses by our Bath Railwayman, 
 Henry Chappell, which Sir Herbert Warren intro- 
 duces with just praise. And I am myself responsible 
 for a Foreword to the graceful lyrics about memor- 
 able haunts of pilgrimage by Mrs. Richard Strachey, 
 of Ashwick Grove. Our Wessex was ever the 
 resort of the Sylvan Muse. Blow, then, the war 
 clarion in verse ! Touch the lyre of coming peace ! 
 We may see a Byron, a Shelley, a Wordsworth 
 soon ! 
 
 The Vanity Fair of London 
 
 Drawn by a happy family event, I have just 
 visited London, after an absence of five years, which 
 I never thought to have seen again. What a change 
 through war, and not entirely by war ! Hardly a 
 trace of the ruin and fires of which the great Liar 
 brags ! Much "as usual" in many things ! And 
 yet, how odious is the rush, the scramble, the roar 
 of the main streets — far worse even than in 191 2, 
 when I left them, as I thought for ever, to find a 
 little rest in my last years. It shocks, wounds, 
 disgusts me, as if, with the poet, I were in one of 
 the circles of his Inferno. Modern mechanism has 
 brutalised life. And in this rattle and crash and 
 whirl, wild luxury, games, shows, gluttony, and 
 vice work their Vanity Fair with greater reckless- 
 ness than ever. As I walked about streets blazing 
 with gems, and gold, and every form of extrava- 
 gance, I asked myself — and is this the war for very 
 life of a great race ? If the Kaiser could come and 
 see it all, he would say — " I shall conquer yet, for 
 all they threaten me ! " 
 
 \_Bath, January, \()l'i.'\ 
 
 15
 
 PART II 
 
 Momentous Years 
 
 DO all our people feel that these critical 
 years a.d. 1918-1919 will live in the 
 history of the world as momentous as 
 those years 480-479 B.C., when Spartans and 
 Athenians saved the civilisation of Europe from 
 the tyrant of Asia ? If the Greeks had not stood 
 at Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea, it would have 
 been centuries before Freedom, Patriotism, Philo- 
 sophy, and Law could have built up the ancient 
 world of the West. If we do not stand now, our 
 civilisation, democracy, and progress will be stifled 
 by Prussian tyranny — the dispensation of Him 
 they blasphemously call their " good old German 
 God." When we read again the deathless story 
 of the defence of Greece against Xerxes we find 
 striking analogies. Our immortal "first divisions" 
 died to save France in the first torrent. Our ships 
 sweep the enemy from every sea. His armies still 
 hold much of the soil they have overrun. Our 
 Plataea is yet to be fought. Can we doubt ? Can 
 we be slack .? Can we shrink from any sacrifice ? 
 In the words of iEschylus at Salamis — vvv vneg 
 ndvroiv dycbv. The struggle is now for our all on 
 earth ! 
 
 Right against Might 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than the issue between us 
 and the enemy now. All our parties are at one — 
 even sections of old parties join in the statement of 
 
 16
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 our war aims, as plain as words can make them. All 
 the Allies repeat the same resolves, first stated by 
 the Prime Minister of 19 14, restated by the Prime 
 Minister of 19 18, in agreement with the solemn 
 words of the American President, echoed back 
 from France, Italy, Belgium, Serbia, Roumania, 
 our oversea Dominions, by China, by Japan, by 
 the Orientals we protect and lead in India, in 
 Syria, in Egypt. The League of Nations in the 
 true sense has already begun. The great majority 
 of civilised people are now united to preserve 
 themselves and their posterity from the domination 
 of an aggressor, whose gospel is — The strong in 
 arms shall rule the weak. There is to-day a League 
 of Nations in alliance to end this Rule of Might. 
 
 League of Nations still Premature 
 
 To dogmatise now about the parties, the con- 
 stituents, and the procedure of a more universal 
 League of Nations is premature. The very prob- 
 lem to-day is : What makes a Nation ? Which are 
 the Nations ? Do the familiar old Nations now 
 exist ? International Socialism repudiates Nation- 
 ality as the object of patriotism. Is Russia a Nation 
 still — or how many Nations does it contain ? Is 
 Finland, Iceland, the Ukraine, Siberia, Caucasia, 
 a Nation ? Is Poland a Nation yet, is Palestine, is 
 Zion, is Babylonia, is Persia ? And, if so, what 
 are the geographical limits of each, of Finland, of 
 Poland, of the Ukraine ? Again, is Hungary a 
 nation, or Turkey, or India ? There are a thou- 
 sand answers to this, all more or less conflicting, 
 and a thousand races furiously crying to be heard. 
 This world-war has stirred to the very deeps of 
 the human kind fierce ambitions of race, deadly 
 rivalries of national extension. Nations are being 
 
 c 17
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 dissolved, recast, created, before our eyes. Why 
 dream about the Humanitarian League of Nations, 
 which all desire, which some of us trust will ulti- 
 mately prevail, whilst the very names and numbers 
 of the nations, their boundaries, their hopes and 
 claims, are all in the melting-pot of this Hell on 
 earth of war ? 
 
 [February, 191 8.] 
 
 The Trend to Autonomy 
 
 With all our talk about Empire do we note the 
 trend of the great aggregates towards local auton- 
 omy ? Two of the vastest Empires on the earth 
 are melting or preparing to melt into fractions, 
 the moment autocracy is gone. Russia now means 
 the various tribes east of the Baltic and the Car- 
 pathians. China has been simmering in rival 
 provinces ever since the end of the Manchoo dyn- 
 asty. Norway has been a separate kingdom only 
 since 1905. The air resounds with the outcries 
 of the many races of the Habsburgs, and some 
 people hope to see the huge German Empire dis- 
 integrate under the strain of hunger, bankruptcy, 
 and Prussian tyranny. Arabians, Armenians, Zion- 
 ists, Greeks, and Bulgarians hope to carve up 
 Turkey. " Home Rule all round " is a common 
 cry. And Anzacs assure us that the British 
 Empire hangs upon the maintenance of the Mon- 
 archy, its sole and irreplaceable key and bond. 
 Autonomy is in the air. 
 
 International Socialism 
 
 In the face of this disintegrating tendency of the 
 age the most popular leaders of Labour talk grandly 
 about International Socialism — or, in the foreign 
 terms workmen hardly understand, " the solidarity 
 
 18
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 of the proletariate." The common needs, feeh'ngs, 
 and aspirations of labouring men and women all 
 over the world form profound spiritual, moral, and 
 Utopian ideas, the beauty of which misleads good 
 souls to forget how impractical, suicidal, and ex- 
 travagant they would be if violently used for 
 immediate practice in a world which is full of 
 self-seeking, rapacity, and force. For any practical 
 administration of States the solidarity of the prole- 
 tariate is an empty phrase. The local proletariates 
 are in conflict in aims, as we see in Russia. Even 
 if they were agreed, they are powerless to act 
 together. The guns, the organisation, the dis- 
 cipline which control the real power are in the hands 
 of established Governments. What it really means 
 is the insurrection of Labour mobs against legal 
 authority. Such were the "Sections" in France 
 in 1793, the Soviets in Russia, the Marxist minority 
 in Germany. It is the braggadocio of visionaries. 
 
 Mendacious Catchwords 
 
 To me, an old friend and comrade of workmen 
 in their claim for legal rights, it is melancholy to 
 note how great is the power over the men of to- 
 day of catchwords — fraudulent, double-tongued, 
 mendacious catchwords. "The conscription of 
 Labour " is a masterpiece of trickery. Labour has 
 no more been called to arms than has any other 
 class, profession, order, or rank. Do these jugglers 
 mean that rich men and their children have not 
 served and bled and died? The "socialisation of 
 land" is what the moujiks in Russia are doing when 
 they have murdered the landowners. Socialisation 
 of mines, railways, docks, and forests means in words 
 expropriation by the State — and the State means 
 the labourers, voting by millions, men and women 
 
 19
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 in a Single Chamber. Yes ! no doubt in words 
 there is to be compensation to the present owners. 
 But compensation is a mere blind to cover rank 
 spoliation. The State could not pay is. in the £. 
 The reason is that the wealth of the State is largely 
 a matter of ledgers, confidence, credit, and open 
 market. Social revolution sweeps away all these 
 at a blow — involves national bankruptcy. What 
 is the wealth to-day of the Russian State ? Out 
 of what fund could the Russian State compensate 
 the -owners of land, banks, factories, and ships ? 
 It cannot pay its own police and soldiers, who have 
 to live by promiscuous plunder. 
 
 The Conscription of Wealth 
 
 The conscription of men is the calling on citizens 
 to do their duty. The " conscription of wealth " 
 is the other limb of the antithetic juggle. It is 
 possible to conscribe Labour — it was done by 
 Abdul Hamid and other tyrannies. It is not pos- 
 sible to conscribe Wealth in the mass by force and 
 by social revolution. Wealth is exchangeable value 
 — something for which others will give useful or 
 valuable things. But the revolutionary conscrip- 
 tion of wealth involves a social upheaval wherein 
 values cease ; where costly things are not worth 
 exchanging ; where there are no buyers. Suppose 
 the passengers on a big Atlantic liner cast away on 
 a barren rock and in leaky boats. One who held 
 a million sterling in diamonds, bank bills, even in 
 gold, would be poorer than one who held a pound 
 of beef and a gallon of water. Wealth implies 
 social order, trust, credit, that debts will be en- 
 forced, and pledges kept. If faith in social order 
 is destroyed wealth is sterilised, suspended, destroyed. 
 It melts away as does a snow figure in a thaw. To 
 
 20
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 seize by violence the property of the rich would be 
 to seize useless ruins, bad debts, worthless papers. 
 Wealth would have disappeared, just as if a burglar 
 had captured a rich man's cheque-book and thought 
 it was a hoard of money. 
 
 Wealth is Based on Credit 
 The most ignorant communist can hardly believe 
 that a "millionaire" means one who has a million 
 sovereigns in his safe ; but many Socialists talk as 
 if that were their belief. In reality the millionaire 
 may not have ten sovereigns in his house. His 
 castle on a noble down, if the State seized it, could 
 only be used as a sanatorium ; his hot-houses would 
 hardly be worth carrying away ; his yacht a mere 
 hulk ; his park would only grow potatoes after 
 years of labour had been spent on it ; his deer 
 forest in the Highlands would be mere waste ; his 
 shares in railways, mines, docks, banks, and factories 
 — and that covers four-fifths of his million sterling 
 — would be valueless, because the whole of the 
 profits would be absorbed in the wages which the 
 workmen voted themselves ^s their share. Of 
 course, it is possible to seize the wealth of a single 
 millionaire, because other rich men will buy what 
 he has. But if you conscribe all millionaires at 
 once there will be no buyers, and " the State " — 
 /. e. the workmen — will have nothing they can use. 
 What is the value of all the pictures, books, gardens, 
 yachts, palaces, moors, preserves, shares, banks, in 
 England ? Nothing, if they were all brought to 
 the hammer together in the midst of a furious 
 Social Liquidation. See Petrograd to-day. 
 
 Violent Reconstruction is Anarchy 
 Yet the "comrades" of the Bolshevists seem to 
 suggest this in their scheme of Reconstruction ! 
 
 21
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 An income tax of igs. in the £. levied on the rich 
 would not be paid, because there would be no 
 income at all. To vote it in a revolutionary Con- 
 vention would have dried up all money values. 
 The income of the rich means that which the law 
 will oblige their debtors to pay them. But when 
 law is abrogated for the rich and their debtors are 
 ruined, income ceases to exist. In the code of 
 Reconstruction of the Labour Party there are 
 many admirable reforms which I, for one, have 
 advocated all my life, i.e. reduced hours, minimum 
 wages, higher education, public works — which I 
 have taught as Moral and Religious Socialism — 
 to be carried out gradually by a moral and religious 
 reformation. But to force on even the most blessed 
 reforms by democratic violence, apart from a spiritual 
 and moral regeneration of Society, must end in 
 anarchy, terrorism, and famine — as Bolshevism 
 proves to us in a hideous example. 
 
 The Inflation of Currency 
 
 Another of the mendticious catchwords by which 
 the people are gulled is this — that the cause of high 
 prices is" the profiteering of capitalists." It is true 
 that some financiers, some manufacturers, are 
 making great profits, for the most part automatically, 
 in spite of enormous taxation and severe restrictions 
 by a War Council. But this does not account for 
 10 per cent, of the increased prices. The dislo- 
 cation of trade, U-boats, less production, worse 
 carriage, also affect prices. But the main cause of 
 higher prices is " the inflation of currency," by the 
 reckless issue of notes without gold . reserves. All 
 the belligerents, all the neutrals, suffer even worse 
 than we do, especially Russia, which has made the 
 wildest inflation of paper money. The United 
 
 22
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 States, being gorged with gold from us, from the 
 enemy, from neutrals, has made no new paper 
 currency. Scores of experts have proved that 
 excessive prices necessarily follow from excessive 
 paper money. Our revolutionists, distorting eco- 
 nomic facts as certain as the rising of the tides, 
 cry out that *' profiteering" is the cause of high 
 prices. And by forcing up higher wages they seek 
 to force on more issues of paper— though that is the 
 real cause of high prices. 
 
 The Gospel of Self 
 
 From the moral and religious point of view, what 
 is so saddening is this ? Socialism, which in the 
 ideal has a noble spirit of humanity, of unselfish 
 sacrifice, of love, as its inspiration (and our own 
 religion is a moral and religious Socialism), is being 
 depraved into a gospel of self, of greed, even of 
 plunder. So-called Socialists make no attempt to 
 prove that their revolution will be good for society. 
 For them it is enough that Labour will gain. The 
 capitalist — /. e. he who has saved — his wife, 
 children, and descendants are regarded as the 
 enemy. They who have never saved enough to 
 get them a house, or a plot of land, or even a 
 year's keep, or who have made away with what 
 their parents had saved, they are the Chosen People. 
 To them every good thing belongs of right. The 
 Gospel of Christ said : " Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit." The new gospel says : " Blessed are the 
 poor ; cursed are the rich." Lenin and Trotsky 
 say : " Plunder the banks of the bourgeois^ but spare 
 the very small deposits." Our British Bolshevists 
 say : " Tax the labourer at id. and the capitalist at 
 19J. in the ;^." This kind of Socialism is a gospel 
 of self, of greed, of civil war. Judas wanted the 
 
 23
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 precious ointment " sold and given to the poor." 
 Now Judas " was a thief." 
 
 The Bourgeois as the Enemy 
 
 Sociah'sts, even Lenin and Trotsky, know that 
 states cannot be kept together without trained 
 managers, financial and industrial experts ; that 
 some persons must have, at least temporarily, 
 control of capital and responsible authority. But 
 all such persons are to be treated as helots, under- 
 lings, and suspects, liable to instant dismissal and 
 penalties, used as the Jews were used in the Middle 
 Ages or in pogroms in modern Russia. To have 
 any command or any property, to be, even for a 
 time, an officer or a capitalist, is to be " an enemy 
 of the people," to be watched like an " interned " 
 German. We see to-day the growth of that 
 Frankenstein — "administration," and how little it 
 suits our English temper and instincts. Fine talk 
 about compensating those whose capital is expro- 
 priated is a mere blind. There is only one way in 
 which capital can be seized, and that way is so 
 infamous that even Bolshevists as yet only use 
 repudiation as a threat. It is too clear that very 
 soon they will be forced to act on it, when there 
 are no means of meeting the interest on loans. 
 When that comes to pass, Russia will have sunk 
 below the level of some petty bankrupt com- 
 munities in the east and west. Social liquidation 
 means collective repudiation. 
 
 The Dogma Might is Right 
 
 The sinking of the hospital ship Rewa^ with 
 some 300 wounded on board, will rouse the same 
 spasm of indignation which followed the Lusitania 
 outrage. It was a deliberate defiance of the ancient 
 
 24
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 customs of war, of international law, of The Hague 
 agreements, even of very recent pledges given by 
 the enemy Government. Not a word of excuse, 
 of regret, of palliation comes from Kaiser or people 
 — nothing except a mendacious retort. It is a case 
 of the diabolic dogma which he and his soldiers 
 have taught the German race, that war abrogates 
 morality, humanity, decency, customs, laws, 
 contracts. Until this gospel of Hell can be driven 
 out of the German mind there can be no peace for 
 civilisation. And nothing but the extremity of 
 suffering will ever drive it out of their mind. One 
 of their generals has just put this doctrine into plain 
 words : — 
 
 General von Liebert, speaking at the Conservative Congress at 
 Halle, said; — 
 
 *' For us there is only one principle to be followed, and we must 
 recognise no other. We hold that Might is Right. We must 
 know neither sentiment, humanity, consideration, nor compassion. 
 We will incorporate Courland and bring into our own population 
 60,000,000 Russians. The Slav nightmare will ride us no longer. 
 
 " We must have Belgium and the North of France. The curse 
 of God is upon the French people. Let us consider ourselves 
 fortunate that He has separated us from that nation, which is as 
 ungodly as it is infamous. The Portuguese possessions must dis- 
 appear. France must pay until she is bled white. You may call 
 me a Jingo or a Chauvinist or anything you like, but what I say is 
 we must have a strong peace." 
 
 It would seem that the Teuton has revived and 
 appropriated the ancient superstition of the Were- 
 wolf- — the man-wolf which retained human intelli- 
 gence, but took on bestial thirst of blood — even a 
 wild beast's love of cruelty. 
 
 The Great Crime 
 
 Those who would understand what the German 
 nature has been and is, what this war means to us 
 and to humanity, what was its origin, and in what 
 it may end, should read Mr. J. Seldqn WiUmore's 
 
 25
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 new book, The Great Crime, He has summed up 
 from official, enemy, and neutral records over- 
 whelming proofs of the criminal cause, form, and 
 objects of Prussian militarism, of the hideous 
 brutalities that stain it for all time, of the appalling 
 catastrophe that would mark its triumph. The 
 most obstinate Pacifist could not read this Story of 
 malignant craft without a shudder, without asking 
 himself if an honest man can be deaf to its appeal. 
 Let him study the intrigues that are unmasked in 
 diplomatic reports, the spy system before the war^ 
 the blasphemous teaching of sovereign, soldiers, 
 priests, and professors ; the military code of 
 conquest, rapine, plunder, and murder ; how " Kultur 
 is above morality, above reason " ; how they hold 
 " war is from God " ; how war is duty, " the end of 
 the State " ; how generals order the slaughter of the 
 wounded, of women, of children ; how cities, lands, 
 churches, ?.nd hospitals are to be destroyed ; how 
 " terrorism is a military duty " ; how rape, bes- 
 tiality, assassination, torture of civilians, of mothers, 
 girls, even of infants, is proved to be the systematic 
 policy of the Germans as a people. And this is 
 shown out of the mouths and the pens of German 
 statesmen and soldiers. 
 
 Brutality Bred in the German Race 
 
 No fair mind could read The Great Crime and 
 remain in the belief that a just and immediate peace 
 can be made with a people in such a delirium of 
 cruelty and pride. Nor can a fair mind now doubt 
 that the Germans as a nation are guilty of such 
 infamy and thirst for conquest. Mr. Willmore's 
 book proves that the people accept and maintain the 
 atrocious designs of their sovereign and army. As 
 the Kaiser says, in the few true words he ever 
 uttered, " my army is my people." But the book 
 
 26
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 shows further what students of German history 
 have long known, but wliat the public little under- 
 stands, that the same ferocity and brutality has 
 marked the German race even from Roman times, 
 when they were stained with "innate savagery" — 
 " natum mendacio genus " — a race born for craft. In 
 the time of Froissart they were brutal to prisoners, 
 " without pity or honour." . The horrors of the 
 Thirty Years' War are notorious. In our American 
 War, in the Napoleonic War, Germans systematic- 
 ally slaughtered prisoners — until retaliation made 
 them pause. In the Franco-German War of 
 1870-71 systematic atrocities were perpetrated on 
 civilians with the authority of Bismarck, but on a 
 smaller scale, which Englishmen knew little of, or 
 soon forgot. Underneath the smooth skin of the 
 German there lies hid the wolf and the fox. 
 
 Cheap Reprint of the Book 
 
 Mr. Willmore's indictment should serve as a 
 storehouse of information to politicians, journalists, 
 and all public men as to the facts and the menace 
 of the war. Its 320 pages contain the materials on 
 which the addresses of British, American, French, 
 and Italian statesmen are based. But this mine of 
 documentary evidence should also be in simpler 
 form in the hands of our people. For them the 
 volume is too large and too expensive. Mr. Will- 
 more shovfld at once set about editing it in a 
 summary form to be issued in a paper cover for i^. 
 and widely circulated. For this X would be needed 
 to omit the official documents already published 
 by authority, simply giving their purport in general 
 words. Then one-tenth of the immense body of 
 extracts "might serve as specimens of the rest. In 
 this way a popular pamphlet of thirty or forty pages 
 would tell the tale. The larger volume would 
 
 27
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 remain as a text-book for politicians, public speakers, 
 and writers. Were I a Prime Minister I would 
 take care to have a million copies of the shilling 
 form circulated broadcast. 
 
 Firth's Creighton Lecture 
 Every serious student of our time should know 
 Professor C. H. Firth's excellent review of our 
 country's condition under the Napoleonic War and 
 that of to-day. His Creighton Lecture — " Then 
 and Now " — compares our military, naval, economic, 
 and financial state from 1803 to 18 15 with our 
 state in 19 18. Ours is at bottom the same inevit- 
 able duty — to save our own country and to preserve 
 Europe from a military despotism. There are 
 many points of close resemblance, some points of 
 sharp contrast. From 1807 to 1812 Britain stood 
 almost alone. Now we have half the civilised 
 world with us or fairly neutral. During that 
 tremendous crisis the Parliamentary opposition to 
 government was vastly stronger than anything to- 
 day. Some of our leading statesmen and public 
 writers were pacifists and pessimists, far worse than 
 any we have now. Then, as now, the House ot 
 Commons in war was a nuisance. Wellington was 
 attacked and cabinets were continually broken up 
 by intrigues and despair. Napoleon closed Europe 
 to our trade. Li many things our condition was 
 infinitely more dark and perilous than the most 
 dismal pessimist could describe it now. 
 
 British Right Hands 
 But, as Mr. Firth shows, " On the resources and 
 on the tenacity of England depended our own 
 freedom and all that was left of the independence 
 of other nations." Wordsworth put it in memorable 
 words : — 
 
 28
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 "That in ourselves our safety must be sought : 
 That by our own right hands it must be wrought." 
 
 The 500,000 men under arras in 18 13 represented, 
 in proportion to population, about three times that 
 number to-day. The national debt had been 
 increased three and a half times ; the taxation had 
 been increased four times. On the other hand, trade 
 and manufactures were doubled and quadrupled. 
 Shipping increased ; and we were absolute masters 
 of the sea. We had no shortage of food, but 
 supplied ourselves at home. The sufferings of 
 Labour were infinitely worse than now. But after 
 seven years of tremendous efforts, in 1814 the 
 dread was "of any pretended peace with Bonaparte." 
 And in 181 5 came Waterloo. Mr. Firth closes 
 his fine address thus : — 
 
 "They w«re tried by fiercer extremes of good and evil fortune 
 than we have known, the burdens and perils we have borne for 
 three years they endured for seven times as many, and did not lay 
 down their arms till they had attained the ends they fought for." 
 
 The Freedom of the Seas 
 
 This waging of war on hospital ships, relief ships, 
 lightships, fishing-boats, even lifeboats in the act 
 of saving wounded and drowning men and women, 
 tells us plainly what the Germans mean by the 
 " Freedom of the Seas." They mean that the 
 German is to have in peace unlimited run into 
 every water, port, and dock ; and in war shall be 
 free to sink everything that lives or floats in any 
 sea in the world. The Freedom of the Seas is 
 another of the lying catchwords dear to Kaiserism 
 and to Pacifism. Our own heroic Navy has given 
 to modern civilisation the only true Freedom of 
 the Seas, for it has surveyed, lighted the furthest 
 waters of Asia and Africa, clearing them of the 
 pirates who taught Tirpitz his first lesson of lawless 
 atrocity. When to her beneficent policing of all 
 
 29
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 seas Britain added Free Trade to all alike, the 
 Comity of Nations could be carried no farther. 
 One day we shall have to consider if all this 
 amicable indulgence need be continued to those 
 who so abuse the fraternity of seamen, the too open, 
 unsuspecting use of our harbours, our coasts, our 
 pilots and charts. 
 
 Mr. Wilson 
 
 The American President has put the whole case 
 of the war into unanswerable words. The material 
 forces and the moral forces of the Old World seem 
 to be passing over to the New World. Mr. Wilson 
 is now the most powerful ruler whom the world 
 has seen for at least one hundred years. No dic- 
 tator, no Charlemagne or Napoleon ever had more 
 complete authority. He has the loyal devotion of 
 a mighty nation of boundless resources. Kaisers, 
 Kings, Ministers in other lands have open and 
 secret opponents to silence or to deceive. The 
 leaders of Parliaments live in daily threats of adverse 
 divisions. Wilson rules to-day without being 
 harassed by rival factions. He rules like Trajan 
 or Antoninus by the universal acceptance of his 
 moral and intellectual superiority, his embodiment 
 of right and of duty. The enemy cannot charge 
 any ambitious aim on him or on his people ; they 
 alone of the belligerents have nothing to gain 
 and stand for simple faith, humanity, and justice. 
 During the cynical helplessness of the Vatican, 
 Wilson is morally the Pope of Civilisation, 
 
 [February^ 191 8.] 
 
 Ambassadors 
 
 When a normal ambassador has to be sent to 
 Washington, whom will they choose ? Not, we 
 
 30
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 trust, the next in seniority on the diplomatic staff. 
 This war at least ought to cure us of returning to 
 the old-world conventions of diplomatic service. It 
 is one of the worst remnants of the monarchic 
 survival. Our Ministers to foreign courts are too 
 often hidebound clerks bred in antique routine, or 
 pretentious magnates whose chief care is to enter- 
 tain smart society and to satisfy the solicitations of 
 women of money or rank. They seldom rise 
 beyond the gifts of a popular master of the cere- 
 monies ; their staff are pedants, gossips, and dandies. 
 On the whole, they are ignorant of the country 
 they live in, often not in touch with the men in 
 it who really count, never in touch with the people 
 at all. Now and then we get a" great diplomatist, 
 a Morier, a Pauncefote, a Buchanan. As often as 
 not, an ambassador is a mere courtier or else a mere 
 precis-writer. A newspaper correspondent knows 
 far more than he does of what is going on beneath 
 the surface of courts and chanceries. We do not 
 need pompous embassies at all. Serious agreements 
 should be carried out by quiet meetings of the 
 responsible statesmen in some neutral spot, as is 
 done in this war. A business agent might be main- 
 tained in each capital to carry out formal details 
 and settle points in dispute. And then there should 
 be some experienced observers to report iti various 
 foreign centres, not under the glare of the public 
 eye, and acting as a confidential intelligence depart- 
 ment. That is how a real foreign Ministry should 
 be informed. 
 
 Some Gains in War 
 
 With all its evils and its horrors this world-war 
 has brought us some gains to humanity and progress. 
 First is the enormous fund of resources in woman 
 as a sex — even yet not completely developed. Then 
 
 31
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 the new effort to moderate our British appetite in 
 food and drink — alas ! as yet developed only in a 
 very modest minority of our people. Forced habits 
 of economy in daily life, we may trust, may become 
 permanent for at least a part of those who have 
 borne privation of their habitual luxuries and out- 
 ward shows. Marriage for love and not for fortune 
 is growing to be general, and long may it continue ! 
 Another noble practice of antiquity is being restored 
 to us. I mean Adoption, as a legal and religious 
 element of Family. Whilst the brutal German is 
 borrowing Polygamy from his ally the Turk, let 
 us restore the waste of war by economy in living, 
 by true affection, by simplicity, by adoption of the 
 orphan and the motherless child. War has forced 
 some of us to forego the vulgar parade of the 
 wedding crowd, the conventional show of " presents," 
 and the swagger of "a smart function." One 
 clerical patriot even started the self-denying formula : 
 " No presents — by special request." Presents should 
 be confined to near relations and close friends, not 
 offered to swell a public list by those who once 
 exchanged cards. 
 
 Advance of Medical Science 
 
 The most definite practical gain of war time, 
 that which for the continuance and vitality of the 
 race is the most blessed, is the almost miraculous 
 advance in medical and surgical science. For the 
 first time a great war has been waged for years 
 without its hecatombs of disease. In every branch 
 both of medicine and surgery new triumphs have 
 been achieved. Hopeless cases, incurable maladies, 
 epidemic plagues, seem to be disappearing under 
 the magic of new discoveries. One of the most 
 wonderful of these inventions awaits practical accept- 
 
 32
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 ance by moral and religious opinion. It is far too 
 vast and profound a problem to be properly discussed 
 in these notes. Its importance from the point of 
 view of science and its reaction on social morality 
 and religious sentiment is indeed momentous. 
 
 War the Test of Religion 
 
 Now, as we think of religion, the question forces 
 itself on our mind — has our current religion stood 
 the tremendous test of war so widespread and so 
 awful ? It would tax the imagination of a Dante, 
 a Michel Angelo, a Rabelais, to picture the myriads 
 of men and women gathered in a sort of Ecumenical 
 Intercession. Twenty millions of men in uniform, 
 three hundred millions of wives, mothers, children 
 at home, all offering up supplications to the Throne 
 of Mercy, to the Prince of Peace, to Virgin, Saints, 
 and Patriarchs, to Allah, Jehovah, or it might be 
 to Odin, Wotan, Thor, or Zarathustra. All cry 
 out : Help us to kill them, keep them from killing 
 us 1 Victory for us ! Destruction to them ! All 
 in opposite ranks, not so unequally balanced ! First 
 on one side, then on the other side, they try to 
 storm the Throne of Mercy. 
 
 Have the Churches resisted War ? 
 
 The secular theocracy of the Tsardom, of all 
 current forms of religion the most dominant over 
 daily life, has done nothing to stay murder, anarchy, 
 and rapine. The Kaiser, his clergy, and his people 
 are of all Christians the most confident, the most 
 violent, the most shameless. The Vatican works 
 as the covert friend of the destroyer of churches, 
 monasteries, and hospitals, amid the pillage and 
 torture of Catholic populations ; and, in Ireland, 
 prelates and priests abet rebellion and help anarchy. 
 
 D 33
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Have the Orthodox, Catholic, or Lutheran priest- 
 hoods done anything to prevent M^ar, to mitigate 
 war, to stop war ? So far from trying to soften 
 its horrors, their voice has given fresh ferocity to 
 the warrior-caste. 
 
 Protestant Christianity 
 
 Our own churches have done better. Have they 
 done enough ? Yes ! daily invocations to the very 
 same Deity whom the heir of the Reformation 
 loudly calls " the good old German God ! " incessant 
 sermons " ingeminating Peace, Peace ! " as Clarendon 
 puts it ; words of consolation to the bereaved. 
 Yes ! Yes ! all to the good, as we should expect. 
 But what did Protestant Christianity do to make 
 this war impossible r What does it do to bring it 
 to an end ? What to nerve the warrior's arm, or 
 to rouse the soul of the sorrowing wife, mother, 
 daughter, with pride, new life, almost triumph, like 
 that of the Spartan and Roman mother of old ? 
 True ! Protestant Christianity has done much ; 
 but human nature, modern training, the religion 
 of social duty, effected three-fourths of the blessed 
 work. The new Intercession Prayer rings true ; 
 the Primate's sermon in the Abbey was a fine call 
 to duty, work, and courage. Thousands of priests — 
 Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Independent 
 — have worked and died like heroes. The Gospel 
 did what it could ; the strain fell on Humanity to 
 bear. 
 
 Nobly has it borne the strain. But has the 
 Sermon on the Mount, Madonna, or St. Paul to 
 the Corinthians done more for men fighting and 
 dying than Sparta, Athens, Rome, Carthage did for 
 soldiers in old time ; or more than King, Common- 
 wealth, or Republic did for them in modern times ? 
 
 34
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 And the poetry which pours out daily from the 
 trenches or at home more often breathes the spirit 
 of Wordsworth's Happy IFarrior or Campbell's 
 Hallowed Ground than the tone of Hymns Ancient 
 and Modern. 
 
 Rabelais 
 
 In the New Age into which we are being 
 whirled all things seem in revolution, in new 
 birth : — 
 
 " Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
 From creation to decay — 
 
 New shapes they still may weave, 
 New Gods, new laws receive." 
 
 We are in a new Renascence, and memory turns 
 to the Renascence of 400 years ago. And this 
 may account for revived interest in Rabelais, one 
 of the greatest and earliest leaders of the New 
 Learning, the New Life. In the sixth chapter of 
 his new book on The French Novel Mr. George 
 Saintsbury has given us a powerful sketch of the 
 ideas and effect of this splendid genius — " the first 
 very great writer of French literature." After 
 reading him very often before, Saintsbury " put 
 himself again under the Master, and read him 
 right through," with greater interest than ever. 
 How itw of us can follow this noble example, 
 especially those of us who are repelled by antique 
 spelling of French or of English. But we may all 
 read Rabelais, at least in the capital translations we 
 have. And as Mr. Saintsbury tells us, we shall see 
 the curious and enormous learning, the inexhaust- 
 ible humour, the brilliancy of language, the innate 
 wisdom and noble courage of the PVench Cervantes 
 who satirised mediaeval obscurantism. 
 
 35
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 A Reformer of the Renascence 
 
 Mr. W. F. Smith, of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge, has just published his Rabelais in his Writings, 
 which forms an appendix and commentary on his 
 magnificent volumes of complete translation of 
 Rabelais's works issued to subscribers only, 1893, in 
 some 1,300 pp. : 750 copies, of which my copy is 
 No. 26. The present book, Cambridge Univ. 
 Press, 1 91 8, 230 pp., forms a handbook to Rabelais, 
 and should be invaluable to students who seriously 
 intend to master the mysterious learning and revel 
 in the cryptic humour of the earliest of great French 
 writers. Mr. W. F. Smith, after years of labour, 
 has now cleared up the facts and dates of Rabelais' 
 varied and somewhat misunderstood career ; he 
 works out the plan and incidents of the four great 
 books ; and then in separate chapters he discusses 
 the language and style of Rabelais, his religion, 
 knowledge of law, the stage-plays he saw ; his skill 
 as physician, physicist, humanist ; his historical 
 allusions ; and his travels. Much of this might 
 serve as footnotes, introductions, or addenda to each 
 chapter of this strange genius, this mighty iconoclast, 
 this stalwart reformer of the Renascence. 
 
 The Revival of Learning 
 
 We now get a clear view of the training that 
 produced the curious encylopsedic mastery of 
 ancient and modern learning, science, history, and 
 art. We follow his comradeship with the leaders 
 of the revival of learning, Erasmus, Pierre Amy, 
 Bude, and the humanist ecclesiastics who were 
 equally hostile to monkery and to Calvinism. 
 Then we have an analysis of the Rabelaisian 
 lano-ua^e, one of the most versatile and eccentric 
 in the range of French literature. Mr. Smith does 
 
 36
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 not countenance those who regard Rabelais as an 
 ungodly jester on the strength of some ribald 
 traditions. As to his knowledge of physics, we 
 get some new facts to connect Rabelais and his 
 time with the scientific knowledge of the ancient 
 world. His study of the classical writers was 
 surprising for the scanty resources in printed books 
 that were accessible. Those who care to unravel 
 puzzles in the personal and historical allusions (often 
 so absurdly over-done) will find ample help in Mr. 
 Smith's new book. It should be seen by every 
 Rabelaisian — /". e. by all who love great literature. 
 
 The Great Old Books 
 
 A friend asks me — what can I read in these sore 
 times ? Well ! nothing new, unless what deals 
 with the war or standard literature of the old 
 immortals. I read patiently the Press of all shades, 
 except the vilest Pacifism. Then I read such books 
 on the situation as I have just noted. For rest and 
 relief of mind I turn to the great classics. I have 
 just finished Jebb's seven tragedies of Sophocles. I 
 can read Virgil, Horace, Juvenal. I read Rabelais, 
 Fabliaux, Moliere, Shakespeare, Milton ; for 
 romance Jane Austen, Scott. How boy or girl 
 in these cruel days can soak themselves in "shockers," 
 short stories, " smart " up-to-date tales of women 
 with a past and men with no future, I cannot 
 understand. Yet such pour out daily with saugrenu 
 pictures that could hardly amuse an errand-boy. 
 
 Horace and his Translators 
 
 Of course, we all want light books that one can 
 take up in any spare half-hour. I often carry about 
 S. A. Courtauld's Odes of Horace (1908), with verse 
 translations by some fifty different hands, and one 
 
 37
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 tries to better a stanza here and there. But I come 
 now to know that Horace is untranslatable — at least 
 in rhyme. It is the plague of rhyme that spoils 
 Horace where a single needless word ruins all. If 
 Horace is to be translated, it must be in rhythmic, 
 unrhymed lines like the English Proverbs. Then I 
 can take up at a loose end of the day Mackail's 
 Greek Anthology or King's Classical and Foreign 
 Quotations — both inexhaustible reservoirs of exquisite 
 maxims and thoughts. 
 
 Mr. Austin Dobson 
 
 And now I have just got a delightful little book 
 of this class, Austin Dobson's Bookman s Budget. 
 In some 200 pages he has jotted down bits from his 
 very wide reading which have pleased his refined 
 taste, and intersperses them with verses and criti- 
 cisms of his own, not yet in his published volumes. 
 I am no bookman myself, and I only pick up shells 
 on the shore of the ocean over which Dobson sails 
 far and near. But I love to see in his Budget many 
 an old friend, many a new point cleared up, dated, 
 or revised. Extracts, mottoes, old saws delight us, 
 because, as Dobson quotes from Andre Gide, " Toutes 
 choses sont dites dija ; mais comme personne necoutey il 
 faut toujours recommencer.^'' 
 
 Famous Mots 
 
 How delightful, too, are the illustrations : Mac- 
 lise'§ wonderful caricature of Talleyrand, Lord 
 George Gordon in Jewish costume, Hugh Thomson's 
 Hogarth, Fielding, and Richardson. Then come 
 bits from the Tatler^ with the entire passage ending 
 " To love her is a liberal education," a fine criticism 
 of Hogarth (p. 54), another of Jane Austen (p. 146). 
 Here are some Latin citations also. The English 
 
 38
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 gentleman in a definition from Livy — houd minus 
 libertatis alienae quatn suae dignitatis nienior. And 
 Caesar's — insokns verbum tanquam scopulum vitan- 
 duni — to which I would like to add : necnon pariter 
 insokns versus^ tabula^ statua^ musica^ vitanda sunt. 
 
 The Most Beautiful of Epitaphs 
 
 Nothing pleased me more than to find in Dobson 
 (p. 163) the precise name, place, and occasion of 
 that which I have always thought — and am glad 
 now to find that Landor also thought — to be " the 
 most beautiful of epitaphs," the unforgettable in- 
 scription that Shenstone wrote for his cousin, Maria 
 Dolman, of Brome, in Staffordshire, Did any 
 Greek, any Roman, ever equal that ? Has any 
 anthology any epitaph to set beside it ? Here it 
 is : — 
 
 " Heu, quanto minus e 
 Cum reliquis versari st 
 Quam Tui 
 Meminisse." 
 
 Is it possible that this is not ancient ? It cannot 
 be put in English words. I tried once and 
 wrote : — 
 
 *' Ah ! can the living be to me 
 All that I feel remembering thee !" 
 
 No! this won't do. As Dobson says: "It is 
 untranslatable." 
 
 The New Woman 
 
 In these times of " plague, pestilence, and famine, 
 of battle and murder, and sudden death," everything 
 seems in flux, and all our ancient ideas are changed. 
 One of the most striking of all is the new strength 
 and place in human society of Woman. Much of 
 it is most blessed and hopeful. But withal, as a 
 
 39
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 veteran, I note a grievous falling off in manners ot 
 our girls. In the street, in the cars and trains, in 
 shops and public offices, they thrust their elders 
 aside, they scramble and leap, and play " top-dog " 
 in every crov^^d. They dress like schoolboys out 
 for "footer" and hockey. They swagger about 
 like " undergrads " of a low type. Nor is this 
 mere outside manner, vulgar as that is. There is 
 at times a cruel insolence towards the infirm and 
 the aged, especially when these are males. You 
 smile, athletic maidens, at a cross old man ! But 
 it is not my observation only. Miss Maude 
 Royden — and she hates a hoyden, I know — she 
 tells you "there is a great lack of chivalry in young 
 women towards men." I am not thinking of 
 " young ladies " described by Jane Austen, Matilda 
 Betham-Ed wards, and Trollope, a sort, we know, 
 gone with the cxtAnct fauna of past epochs. I am 
 cjuoting the public speech of an able, thoughtful, 
 and very modern woman. 
 
 An Early Victorian 
 
 But, then, I am a mere "Early Victorian," a 
 creature, they tell us, as grotesque and passe as 
 postboys and Sairey Gamps. Alas ! I wrote an 
 article in the very first number of the Fortnightly^ in 
 May, 1865, along with papers by Huxley, Bagehot, 
 Trollope, George Eliot, G. H. Lewes, Lord De 
 Tabley. And soon after came on, John Morley, 
 Lecky, Freeman, Swinburne, Meredith, Pater, 
 Leslie Stephen, Herbert Spencer, Mark Pattison, 
 Frederick Myers, Arthur J. Balfour. Ah ! we 
 were a poor lot — Gradgrinds and Pecksniffs, bred 
 up on Darwin, Stuart Mill, Spencer, Comte, and 
 Carlyle. Why, we used to think that Tennyson 
 and Browning were poets ; we knew nothing of 
 
 40
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Cubism in geometry, art, or music ; we believed 
 that Evolution opened a new world to science ; 
 that marriage vows were meant to be kept — at any 
 rate, were respectable ; that the life and the manners 
 of women were not quite those of men-about- 
 town. 
 
 The Newer Modes of Life 
 
 I am an "Early Victorian." I plead guilty. I 
 cannot help it now. Pity my white hair and forgive 
 my old-fogey fads. I take a back seat and look on 
 at the glorious new wprld that opens. That world 
 is to the young. Believe how we elders rejoice and 
 admire them. Old Army, Territorials, Kitcheners, 
 V.A.D.'s, Waacs, and Wrens, the future is yours — 
 yours, too. Young Lions and Lionesses of the new 
 Press, Poetry, and up-to-date Romance. Sing on, 
 you poets and poetesses who dream of metres, 
 rhymes, and rhythms unknown to Milton, Words- 
 worth, or Tennyson ! Plunge deep into other- 
 world mysteries, ye men of science, in defiance of 
 data^ logic, and demonstration. Imagination has 
 no need of facts. And you, prophets of the " higher 
 morality " that is to be — 
 
 " Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, 
 Ring in the neiver modes of life." 
 
 We elders of the dead world will bury our dead. 
 We will look on, wondering, and hope for you 1 
 
 [February, 1918.] 
 
 41
 
 PART III 
 
 The Advent of Revolution 
 
 WOULD that men could see that we are 
 living not only in the crisis of the 
 greatest war that has ever afflicted 
 mankind, but also in the Advent of Revolution, 
 at once material, moral, and spiritual ; wider, I 
 believe, and deeper than any which in some thou- 
 sand years has transformed civilisation on earth. 
 We are on the eve of what must prove to be a 
 revaluation of our habits and thoughts. Now in 
 a state of revolution things move, change, appear, 
 and disappear with lightning velocity. Things 
 which we imagine to be trifles suddenly swell up 
 into incalculable forces. Changes, which in normal 
 times could hardly be worked through in genera- 
 tions, spring up completed in months or weeks. 
 New things which were Utopian dreams of yester- 
 day are truisms and facts to-day, A state of 
 revolution is a social earthquake, in which neither 
 things nor persons remain what they were. All 
 are inverted. 
 
 Collapse of Tsardom 
 
 The Russian Revolution, in its scale of popula- 
 tion and area, in its overwhelming changes, in its 
 suddenness and velocity, exceeds any revolution 
 yet known. And we see how tremendous is the 
 reaction it spreads through Europe, how unstable 
 the mightiest traditions may prove, how damonic 
 
 42
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 may be the passion of a race goaded to madness, 
 how the examples it seems to offer, for good, or 
 for evil, practical or impossible, spread like wildfire 
 through the masses. Russia in 191 7 ; France in 
 1789, 184S, 1870 ; Italy in i860, 1870, 1916 ; 
 Portugal in 1910, show how sudden may be the en- 
 tire overturning of a throne or a Constitution which 
 till yesterday looked secure and imposing. Can 
 any doubt that there is a vague sense of revolution 
 in the air ? There are moments when the war 
 seems the less important crisis — when we feel that 
 our social system is challenged, that new ideals, 
 revised values of life, are thrust upon our notice. 
 How are we going to meet them ? There may 
 be scant time to ponder on our answer. 
 
 British Common Sense 
 
 I am amazed to see how patiently our elder 
 statesmen, even our practical politicians, put their 
 trust in " British common sense," and listen with 
 a quiet smile to demands and menaces such as 
 has not been heard in England since the Fifth 
 Monarchy men of the Commonwealth, which are 
 hardly softened echoes of Russian Bolshevism. We 
 keep the inveterate habit of English gentlemen 
 who take no notice of violence and threats, in sure 
 confidence that time, the Constitution, our Parlia- 
 mentary traditions, and "the healthy instinct of 
 the people" will settle things down. Yes! but 
 will there be time ? Is the British Constitution in 
 being at all ? Parliamentary traditions are as 
 extinct as pocket boroughs. The instincts of the 
 people are healthy enough in normal times ; but 
 the times are abnormal. In times of revolution 
 the "instinct" rather tends to give the new thing 
 a trial. One hundred and eighty millions of what 
 
 43
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 was once Russia are now doing this. "Instincts" 
 are catching, even of sheep following one another 
 over a precipice. The prevalent " instinct " seems 
 an inversion of meum and tuum. 
 
 The New Electorate 
 
 At this your stout Conservative, your practical 
 man, your solid Liberal, smiles and thinks — Well ! 
 the Parliament has lasted since Edward and John, 
 the Monarchy since Alfred, and we have heard 
 a good deal of wild talk since Cromwell ; but 
 the good old ship will weather many a rough 
 sea yet. Yes ! but thrones. Constitutions, 
 Dumas, Parliaments have been toppling dov»^n 
 all round. Our ancient Constitution has been 
 reforming and reconstituting itself for generations. 
 The House of Lords has committed Happy 
 Despatch for fear of being stormed. The House 
 of Commons has doubled its constituency, placing 
 women in command of the helm. Property in 
 land, property in fixed wealth, is in the hands of 
 a very small minority of our nation — perhaps not 
 five per cent. We have no written Charta of the 
 Constitution, which the real Republics have, no 
 elective President, no legal court of constitutional 
 appeal. The Commons can destroy a Govern- 
 ment in a single night, and turn everything upside 
 down by a series of votes without any check or 
 appeal. And the Commons are to represent ten 
 million men and eight million women. And these 
 millions have nothing to lose — and are told they 
 have everything to gain. 
 
 Why Labour Members } 
 
 Our political system is being depraved by the 
 use of catchwords, labels, and names ; which, if 
 
 44
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 not actually fraudulent, suggest things which are 
 not true. What is a Labour Member ? Is it one 
 elected by working men ? That is the suggestion 
 implied ; but it is not true. There is no con- 
 stituency which consists wholly of actual manual 
 workers. They are in large majorities in many 
 constituencies which elect Conservatives, capitalists, 
 and employers, such as Birmingham, Bristol, Man- 
 chester, Tower Hamlets. Is a Labour Member 
 one who, until he got his ^^400 per annum, was 
 receiving weekly wages at his bench ? We know 
 he is not. Labour M.P.'s have rarely been at 
 work for years past : some, like the Member for 
 Leicester, never were working men at all. Per- 
 haps my friend l^homas Burt is the only true 
 Labour Member, i.e. a real workman elected by 
 workmen. Then why, if Members are not them- 
 selves working men and were not elected ex- 
 clusively by working men, should they assume 
 a faked title to which they have no right ? By 
 the Constitution, Members are elected by local 
 areas of all the residents in that area — not by 
 classes. Mr. Lloyd George is Member for 
 Carnarvon — not for Welsh quarrymen. Why 
 should the Member for Leicester profess to be 
 the representative not of the entire constituency 
 which elects him, but of a section of it ? This 
 assumption involves two sophisms. One, that all 
 the working men in the borough voted for him ; 
 secondly, that none but working men did vote 
 for him. 
 
 M.P.'s should Represent the Nation 
 
 It is of the essence of our Parliamentary life, 
 that a Member, once elected, is to work for 
 the interests of the local community that returns 
 
 45
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 him, but primarily for the interests of the country 
 as a whole. So far as his sole interest — or his 
 dominant interest — is that of a class, he is false to 
 his duty as an honest patriot. No other class 
 claims to have special nominees in Parliament. 
 There are in the House of Commons bankers, 
 lawyers, farmers, ship-owners, factory-owners, 
 railway and mining capitalists. But there are no 
 banking M.P.'s, lawyer M.P.'s, no Members for 
 the Great Western Railway, nor Members for 
 the Midland coal companies. Public indignation 
 and ridicule would confront M.P.'s who proclaimed 
 that they sat for special trades or classes, and that 
 they worked directly for their exclusive class inter- 
 est. Why should not the butchers, the victuallers, 
 the brewers, and the undertakers send special 
 nominees to look after their industries ? Think of 
 the Rt. Honble. John Tompkins, Grocer M.P. ! 
 
 A Labour Party is a Class Party 
 
 Political bodies naturally divide into groups with 
 special political aims and principles which they 
 seek to make effective. Conservatives, Unionists, 
 Liberals, Radicals, Free Traders, Home Rulers, 
 Protectionists, Adult Suffragists. But these are all 
 aims which, for good or harm, affect the United 
 Kingdom, and are genuine efforts to reform — at 
 any rate, to modify — the State. But Labour, as 
 a cry and political aim, directs a member to devote 
 his labours to the benefit of a single class. It 
 may be a large class ; but it is a class the interests 
 of which are bound up with the interests of many 
 other classes whose very existence may be menaced 
 by the exclusive pursuit of Labour interests. " A 
 Labour Party," by assuming that title, proclaims 
 that it is entering on a war of class ; and a war of 
 
 46
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 class is civil war. I say war, for they well know 
 that the avowed programme of the Labour Party 
 will never be accepted by the property and trading 
 classes until they are overcome by force. And 
 these powerful orders are not so helpless and so 
 craven as in Russia. 
 
 Trade Unions have no Political Status 
 
 Another suggestio falsi in the title of Labour 
 Member is this. The immense majority of those 
 who choose Labour leaders are members of trade 
 unions. But trade unions are essentially insurance 
 societies formed and maintained for economic — 
 that is, for trade^ not for political — objects. Be- 
 cause they are bv their rules concerned with trade 
 purposes, they have been given legal statm by a 
 series of Acts. That status never has been given, 
 and would not be given, to political societies such 
 as Suffragist, Free Trade, Tariff, or Temperance 
 Leagues. But trade unions use the privileges given 
 them as economic societies for political ends. The 
 U.K. Alliance, the London and Westminster 
 Bank, Lloyds, or the Chamber of Commerce would 
 never be suflFered to pose in Parliament as a 
 political party. It is notorious that large numbers 
 of trade unionists vehemently dissent from the 
 political aims which leading officials succeed in 
 carrying through. By a gross perversion of equity 
 and law, a political knot of Law Lords forced this 
 scandalous misinterpretation of the statutes on the 
 country. Socialists, Democratic Federation, and ' 
 other similar bodies are genuine political associa- 
 tions, but they have not, and could not pretend 
 to have, statutory rights. They are in very small 
 minorities compared with trade unions. But when 
 they capture the unions they transfer their own 
 
 47
 
 obiter Scrlpta 
 
 political aims to bodies which have no political 
 constitution, and that though large numbers of the 
 unions are indifferent or hostile to these political 
 doctrines. All our reasonable workmen know very 
 well that though social revolution can destroy 
 property and pauperise wealth, this will destroy 
 its social utility in the same act, leaving nothing 
 even to divide. See Russia to-day. 
 
 Recasting the House of Lords 
 
 I follow with amusement, too, the squabble of 
 the two Houses over proportional representation, 
 which, exactly fifty years ago in a Review^ I 
 ridiculed as a nostrum of idealogues. I think so 
 still — but to-day it seems to me the idle contests 
 of two ancient institutions soon about to pass away. 
 Do noble Lords imagine their heraldic chamber 
 will be extant a few years hence ? 
 
 Haec certamina tanta 
 Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent. 
 
 Will there be any Second Chamber at all ? 
 The word has gone forth that Single Chamber 
 system is to prevail. And a Single Chamber of 
 707, nominally elected by ten million men and 
 eight million women (for the silly age-restriction 
 cannot stand and was never meant to stand), will 
 be under the orders of various Labour Conferences 
 and Societies. It is little that P.R. and W.S. will 
 signify when the whole atmosphere of politics 
 vibrates with new ideas, a new class, another 
 order of society. 
 
 The Short Shift System 
 
 A very striking proposal just made by Lord 
 Leverhulme greatly interests me. He has pro- 
 posed that great works, such as his own, shall be 
 
 48
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 run on the principle of continuous short shifts. 
 This, on the ground that machinery plays so 
 dominant a part in modern industry that it is 
 wanton waste of power to let machines stand idle 
 from fourteen or even sixteen hours out of the 
 twenty-four. By a system of shifts of seven or 
 six hours each, alternating duly so as not to in- 
 volve regular night work for any single shift, 
 production could be immensely increased and hours 
 of the workers immensely reduced, even to allow- 
 ing for each shift eighteen hours for meals, sleep, 
 rest, amusement, and education. This change, 
 whilst giving a vast addition to production, would 
 give the workers an off time greater than ever has 
 been dreamed of by the most ardent philanthropist. 
 
 Treble Shifts Proposed 
 
 In 1872 Lord Brassey proposed this same plan, 
 and I wrote a series of articles in the Bee-hive^ 
 the organ of the Trade Unions, strongly sup- 
 porting the scheme. I pointed out that in most 
 coal mines, in all ships, and many docks, railways, 
 and other works, the double shift system works 
 regularly to the satisfaction of all concerned. I 
 have always argued that a treble-shift system of 
 seven or six hours each, allowing for repairs, 
 adjustments, and casual obstacles, would give the 
 workman practically three-quarters of the whole 
 twenty-four hours to himself. During this war 
 five or six millions of men and women directly 
 engaged in war-work, and two or three millions 
 more engaged in war-industries, have been em- 
 ployed on the system of continuous shifts. I look 
 forward with absolute conviction to this most 
 blessed advance in the life of Labour becoming the 
 rule of all great works. The only opposition 
 
 E 49
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 would come from the ignorant apprehension of 
 jealous institutions obstinately clinging to trade 
 rules. 
 
 [March, 1918.] 
 
 The Sublimity of War ! 
 
 As if to shut down any talk of peace the 
 General Staff at Berlin have just issued a Code 
 of Militarism by the pen of its foremost writer. 
 Baron von Freytag's Deductions out-Herod the 
 most violent claims of the Prussian soldiery to 
 dominate Germany and to be masters in the world. 
 " War has its basis in human nature and war will 
 continue for thousands of years." " We can only 
 safeguard our peace by the might of our sword." 
 " A lasting peace is guaranteed only by strong 
 armaments." Accordingly, "a larger expenditure 
 on the army and the fleet is absolutely essential " — 
 not now, but after peace is made. There must 
 be no exemptions ; military service must be uni- 
 versal, as it never has been yet. More must be 
 done to train officers. They must all come from 
 the noble class : education, intellect, ambition, are 
 not to count as qualification. Nobles only can 
 keep their eyes fixed " on the grandeur and sub- 
 limity of the soldier's calling." Napoleon's mot 
 about the field-marshal's baton only applies to 
 officers. In fact, this world-war is only a trial trip, 
 a preliminary canter, an object lesson of what must 
 be done to bring the next war up to the standard 
 of Prussian junkerdom. 
 
 The German Staff Praises War 
 
 All talk about mutual agreements between nations, 
 says the German Staff, is idle, because they never 
 can hold in check " the forces seething within the 
 
 50
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 States." A universal League of Peace would be 
 " intolerable to a great and proud-spirited nation." 
 " Universal military service holds sway over our 
 age, and for generations will not vanish." The 
 passion of war has infected whole nations, and so 
 " the barriers of International Law collapsed." 
 Freytag speaks like Moloch in Pandemonium : 
 " My sentence is for open war." This is not the 
 bluster of an irresponsible publicist. It is the official 
 report of the General Staff preparing the German 
 people for another war on a far greater scale, and 
 warning them against any attempt to obtain peace 
 except by overwhelming military ascendency, both 
 on land and sea. The most fervent believer in 
 " peace by agreement " must see that, whilst this 
 caste controls the mighty German race, to hope for 
 any settlement with them would be like asking 
 Satan to swear obedience to the Sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 The Prussian Moloch and Belial 
 
 The book has neither rhetoric nor appeal to 
 popular passion at all; it is a thoroughly scientific 
 exposition by a great official with a view to future 
 legislation and administration, and it comes from 
 the inner council of the War Lord. It is a cool, 
 businesslike survey of the past and forecast of the 
 future with all the grilndUchkeit of a master of his 
 science. It has none of Treitschke's swelled head 
 or Bernhardi's Bomhastei Furioso. In many things 
 it is a luminous manual on the art of war by a con- 
 summate expert. There is no genius or new revela- 
 tion about it, nor anything which our own experts 
 might not say and have said. What is original in 
 it is the insolence of its mendacity. This really 
 record liar dares to say that the Belgian people 
 
 51
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 forced the Germans " to resort to retaliation so 
 alien to the nature of our soldiers." He dares to 
 say that the French treated German prisoners " like 
 savages,"" and the English were " not behind them 
 in brutality." And we, with our mutilated prisoners 
 fresh from the infamies of Wittenberg, are charged 
 with "deeds of horror and senseless destruction'" 
 in defiance of "the chivalrous customs" — of 
 Germans — say in the Thirty Years' War. If the 
 Prussian soldier is not the greatest hero that ever 
 appeared on earth, he can always claim to be the 
 most stupendous liar. The Baron doubles the part 
 of the bloodthirsty Moloch and the false Belial in 
 Pandemonium. 
 
 Air-plane and U-Boat in 1751 
 
 Our learned bibliopole, Mr. George Gregory, 
 has just pointed out to me some strange anticipations 
 of aeroplanes and submarines in a copy of the curious 
 volume, The Scribleriad^ R. Dodsley, 4to, 1751. 
 There is described a combat in the air between a 
 Briton and a German : 
 
 "The one a German of distineuish'd fame: 
 His rival from projecting Britain came. 
 They spread their wings, and with a rising bound, 
 Swift as the wind together quit the ground." 
 
 Book iv. p. 137. 
 
 And there is a large copper-plate engraving by 
 Boitard of the fight. Then comes a submarine 
 vessel : 
 
 " from the flood, 
 A Bark emergent rose ; with oars well-timed, 
 Cut the smooth wave, and o'er the surface skimmed. 
 Then sunk again, but still her course pursu'd." 
 
 Book ii. p. 312. 
 
 The air-plane and the U-boat are both described as 
 among the new scientific wonders recounted by 
 Scriblerus. 
 
 52
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 R. O. Cambridge's Scribkriad 
 
 The Scribler'iad^ by Richard Owen Cambridge 
 (17 18-1802), a man of some wit and learning, was 
 a mock-heroic satire on science and discovery, a 
 continuation of Martinus Scrib/eruSy of Arbuthnot, 
 Pope, and others in 1741. It is imitated from the 
 Dunciady and is a parody of Pope's Homer. Cam- 
 bridge profusely expounds his satire epic with notes 
 from the classics and modern science. Both air- 
 plane and submarine are described by quotations 
 from the Mathematical Magick^ 1648, of Bishop 
 Wilkins,. Warden of Wad ham College, 1 648-1659, 
 ^' for whom I am specially bound to pray," as we 
 used to say at St. Mary's Sermon. Certainly the 
 extracts from Wilkins's Tracts cxttd in the Scrihleriad^ 
 ii., pp. 26, 27, are singularly interesting. Wilkins 
 was deeply impressed with the idea of aerial naviga- 
 tion, and even still more with that ot submarine 
 navigation (his own word) and its manifold uses. 
 It is a striking proof of the imagination of this great 
 thinker, friend and colleague of Newton, founder 
 and secretary of the Royal Society, and brother-in- 
 law of Cromwell. 
 
 W. H. Mallock on Democracy 
 
 I have been deeply impressed by Mr. W. H. Mal- 
 lock's new volume. The Limits of Pure Democracy 
 (Chapman and Hall, 191 8, pp. 400), especially by the 
 singular way in which its arguments are enforced 
 by the most recent economic movements and by 
 the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. His drastic 
 exposure of the sophisms of " natural rights," of the 
 absolute " equality of men," of " pure democracy " 
 in the Jacobin sense, of the Marxian and Shavian 
 dogmas of Labour, might seem to-day hardly needed, 
 were it not that these Utopias still underlie much 
 
 53
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 of what passes as Socialism. Perhaps of more 
 immediate usefulness are the accounts of seven 
 typical attempts to found Socialist communities in 
 different countries and under varied conditions (in 
 Chapters ii. and iii. of Bk. IV.). The noble social 
 virtues which were developed in these experiments, 
 the promising conditions and the contrasted areas in 
 which they were made, all lead to exactly similar 
 results — chaos, dissensions, and starvation — and all 
 alike through the indelible qualities of human 
 nature, the instincts of family, of personality, of 
 freedom. 
 
 Pure Democracy ends in Chaos 
 
 Mr. Mallock's book was practically completed 
 before the Russian Revolution, which almost seems 
 to have been arranged as an object-lesson to prove 
 his conclusions. The biggest experiment ever 
 made by men to run a vast country and to close a 
 world-war on the strictest principles of pure 
 democracy and absolute equality has ended in the 
 most terrific social, physical, and economic crash 
 ever seen on earth. All this from the ineradicable 
 nature of man, his personal, family, and class selfish- 
 ness, the helpless feebleness of the average man to 
 master even the simplest economic problems, the 
 jealousy and strife that rise directly any one is found 
 to be more capable than his " comrades," and then 
 the reaction to make the millennium succeed by 
 autocracy more ferocious than any Tsardom, and an 
 orgy of destruction which is the only way to establish 
 equality in general destitution. And Mr. Mallock 
 shows us that all this is the inevitable result of a 
 blind devotion to flattering dreams which defy 
 human nature as revealed to us by history and by 
 science. 
 
 54
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 A True Socialism 
 
 Mr. Mallock is far from being merely critical and 
 negative, for a large part of his book is constructive. 
 In these few notes it is impossible to examine his 
 elaborate review of economic problems. He treats 
 this grotesque sophistry of Communism with studied 
 courtesy and patience. Nor is he at all hostile to 
 the merits and promises of a true and nobler Socialism 
 as he would understand it. All he asks is that 
 Utopia of a new and social industry must be pre- 
 ceded by a deep improvement in our education and 
 culture, and by a reformation of morality, thought, 
 and religion. I come to this from a different point 
 of view from that of Mr. Mallock ; but I find him 
 in agreement with much that I have taught for 
 forty years. In my book Order and Progress^ 1875 
 and 19 1 7, I showed the fallacy of any "pure" — 
 i.e. abstract — Democracy being even possible, 
 much less desirable. In my Moral and Religious 
 Socialism (1891), now re-issued in my National and 
 Social Problemi (1908), I urged that the re-organisation 
 of society, in the interest of the masses of manual 
 workers, could be brought about only after an im- 
 mense regeneration of soul in mankind as a whole 
 — a new world, moral, spiritual, and intellectual. 
 
 {March, 1918.] 
 
 P.S. — So, too, in my book On Society^ 191 8. 
 
 [June, 19 19.] 
 
 55
 
 PART IV 
 
 The Kaiser's Boast 
 
 TWO events of importance have affected the 
 situation abroad and at home — the first as to 
 war, the second as to Parliament. It is now 
 proved on the word of the All-Highest, by his public 
 Treaties, by the act of his armies, that a " German 
 Peace" means German Conquest, the domination 
 of all Europe east of the Rhine, and through it of 
 Asia as far as he may reach. His Tamburlainian 
 boast that, with God's help, he will occupy the 
 Baltic Provinces of Russia " for all time," the 
 advance of his armies into Russia in defiance of a 
 formal peace, the seizure of the coasts and islands ot 
 Finland in menace to Sweden, the crushing and 
 spoliation of Roumania — all this is the Imperial 
 sanction to the extreme claims of Pan-German 
 militarism in its most arrogant and brutal form. 
 After this the blindest Pacifist must see how foolish, 
 nay, how false, is all talk about "negotiation," "a 
 fair compromise," " no annexations," and all the 
 other tricky phrases with which growling malcon- 
 tents have intrigued to paralyse Government, lose 
 the war, and deliver up their country to ruin and 
 to shame. 
 
 Our Pacifists at Home 
 
 We have borne with these wrigglings too long. 
 It is time now to treat Pacifists no longer as silly 
 fanatics or sour grumblers. In face of the manifest 
 
 56
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 falsehood of all their hymns to Teuton intellect and 
 of their appeals to the brotherhood of their Socialist 
 " comrades," let us mark them down as traitors to 
 their country, as pro-enemy conspirators, and dan- 
 gerous propagandists of Kaiserism — whether they 
 be peers, journalists, or Labour Lenins and Keren- 
 skys. Their excuses are as worthless as Bolo's pleas 
 to the Court Martial. The French know how to 
 deal with their Bolos and Caillaux, M. Clemen- 
 ceau says, " My policy is war, war to all who try 
 to hamper us ! " We trust there has been no 
 German money in England, whatever there may 
 have been in Ireland, no Judas and pieces of silver. 
 But there has been enough of base coin — in speech 
 and in print. And we need Clemenceau's bold 
 temper that those who seek to paralyse his war 
 council by intrigues are enemies, traitors, and 
 should be, not answered, but watched and 
 interned. 
 
 [J/>ri/y 19 1 8.] 
 
 John Redmond, M.P. 
 
 The startling event at home is the sudden death 
 of John Redmond. He was indeed a great, noble, 
 sane Irishman, and his loss means much to Ireland 
 and to Britain, I knew and honoured both John 
 and William Redmond, five-and-thirty years ago, 
 when they were first known in London as brilliant 
 young lawyers and promising politicians ; and I 
 have since had friendly relations with the late 
 leader. The words that have been spoken in his 
 memory by colleagues and opponents, by his 
 friends, his critics, and the Press of all shades alike, 
 have not one syllable too much ; nor will I venture 
 now to equal them or add to them. The only 
 question for ine is the effect of his loss. I count it 
 
 57
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 vefY great both on Irish parties and on our own 
 House of Commons. No one can doubt how 
 dominant was the influence of John Redmond, of 
 his gallant brother and immediate followers, in 
 securing the support of the party to the great cause 
 of civilisation ; at least, in restraining them from 
 yielding to the deep current of Irish disaffection. 
 The Redmonds and some other Nationalists have 
 nobly redeemed the stain which history will stamp 
 on the Irish masses who- took the side of the Enemy 
 of manicind, who took his promises, his help, his 
 gold. 
 
 The Extinction of the Nationalists 
 
 He has gone. Will any other play the same part 
 in keeping loyal the Nationalist Party — on the , 
 whole not actively impeding the conduct of the 
 war, and giving a lip assent to the measures needed 
 for our salvation as a free people ? No ! No 
 successor will have the will and the prestige to 
 keep the bulk of the Nationalist Party even as a 
 benevolent neutral to Lloyd George. The Na- 
 tionalists cannot now control, represent, much less 
 lead, Ireland. It is doubtful if half , of them would 
 return on a General Election. The pressure on 
 them, and the menace to their very existence as 
 politicians, will be too strong to resist, and not a 
 few of them will give a more or less qualified 
 adhesion to the Sinn Fein revolution, to which some 
 of the more prominent and possible successors to 
 the leadership have often shown an indulgent 
 patronage. There is no one now to keep the 
 Nationalist block solid. And there is nothing of 
 importance it could now do in Ireland if it were 
 solid. In February, 191 7, I warned Lloyd George 
 not to attempt to carry on a war for the life and 
 death of Britain^ with a strong Irish Party menacing 
 
 58
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 his flank and dictating their terms of alliance. He 
 will now find them broken up, bitter, and more 
 than half hostile. 
 
 Irish Ingratitude 
 It is the fashion to dilate on the personal tragedy 
 of John Redmond's career — how near he was before 
 the war to be Prime Minister of an independent, 
 national Irish Parliament — how sad that the hope is 
 for ever lost ! No ; the hope was a dream. He 
 never could have held such an office at any time, 
 least of all in our time. Nor will any man in this 
 immediate generation. Tragic as was John Red- 
 mond's life of brave effort, I can almost think of 
 him zs> felix opportunitate mortis. He has died with- 
 out the bitter consciousness that he had become 
 powerless, hopeless, and almost forgotten, and has 
 not lived to s&e failure written on his cause. The 
 Irish heart with all its passionate loyalty to its chiefs 
 has also an equally convulsive strain of disloyalty, 
 as O'Connell, Parnell, Gladstone, Morley, O'Brien, 
 and Redmond have known. Irish as I am in blood 
 and temperament, Nationalist of fifty years standing, 
 I say to-day, what I wrote in April, 1910 [Memoirs 
 ii, 238), "after these seven cruel centuries, I still 
 feel doubtful of the issue, for I find deep-seated in 
 the Irish mind how the thirst for revenge^ and for 
 retaliation outweighs and paralyses efforts for improve- 
 ment.^^ Are all Irish Reformers to die without 
 seeing the fruition of their hopes ? If the religion 
 of Pan-Germans is war, the religion of Irish 
 Catholics is revenge. 
 
 [April, 1918.] 
 
 Parliamentary Government Undermined 
 
 For fifty years I have criticised the assumption 
 by the House of Commons of direct executive 
 
 59
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 authorityy as contrary to the proper duties and to 
 the essential limits of a representative Parliament. 
 The evils, the futilities of this assumption have been 
 manifested in this most awful war, and were 
 never more pernicious than in the present crisis. 
 But let the House be warned that in a revolutionary- 
 epoch, such as that which has now broken in upon 
 our civilisation, the very basis of Parliamentary 
 Government has been undermined. The new, the 
 dominant forces in our now deeply agitated people 
 do not trust Parliament, will not acce'pt it as repre- 
 sentative, respect it only as a tool and an interlude. 
 The present House of Commons has long lost any 
 representative or real power it ever had. But the 
 revolutionary tone of our time tends to repudiate 
 any form of national Parliament as the depository 
 of power, and seeks it in local, class, trade leagues 
 of sectional, propagandist aims. Imperial Parlia- 
 ments, Chambers, and Dumas are being superseded 
 by Industrial Conferences, Democratic Unions, 
 Soviets, in fact. We may one day have our own 
 Soviets in Endand. 
 
 Trade Unions Undermined 
 
 In the same way the Trade Unions are being 
 undermined by local groups. Under their Shop- 
 stewards the regular officials of Trade Unions are 
 repudiated and defied. When the Unions suflfered 
 themselves to be utilised by Socialist adventurers, 
 men often drawn from the middle-class ; when, 
 throwing over their true and legal function as 
 benefit clubs for their members, they allowed their 
 names to be used for cosmopolitan Utopias and 
 insurrectionary schemes, the hotter Union men 
 found their officials to be retrograde and the regular 
 policy of the Society to be tyranny. So the inevitable 
 
 60
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 decentralisation — /. e. disorganisation — set in, and 
 towns and factories insisted on having each their 
 own local fight, and electing their own inde- 
 pendent nominees. Vast Trade National Unions 
 were broken up into local "shops," or Syndicates, 
 with international and almost treasonable aims. 
 Parliamentary government and Trade Unionism 
 alike are dissolving away in a sort of democratic 
 anarchy. 
 
 Democratic Delirium 
 
 The fate of the Russian Duma, of the Russian, 
 Turkish, and other ephemeral Conventions, over- 
 hangs the British House of Commons. It is easy 
 to say that our people have not the gross ignorance, 
 wild passions, and sinister traditions of the Russians. 
 No one need fear that London will ever witness 
 the horrible delirium of Petrograd. But, by common 
 consent, even that of a Cardinal Archbishop, we 
 are in the mid-stream of Democracy, as a kind of 
 national creed. And Russia presents us with the 
 example of Democracy in its most naked and most 
 drastic shape, with almost every other Social element 
 in abeyance. Hence, we see there how Dumas, 
 National Conventions, elective bodies, even govern- 
 ments, Radas, and Ministers are swept away day 
 after day by small, local, class insurrections. Why 
 so ? Because any sort of concentration of authority, 
 national or governmental, offends the democratic 
 genius. It portends and looks like tyranny. Any 
 collective authority violates the law of equality — 
 sacred equality ! And this can be saved only by 
 local, small groups, which can meet and vote and 
 change policies and dictate to rulers, fresh and fresh 
 from day to day. That is the democratic force 
 . of the People which supersedes and undermines 
 
 6i
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Parliament, decentralising all national authority, or 
 forcing Parliament to register and legalise its decrees. 
 
 Impotence of Parliament 
 
 We see this in Russia, where Democracy is in 
 its elemental form ; but the same thing appears 
 elsewhere. In Ireland Sinn Fein not only defies 
 Britain, but derides the Convention, loudly assert- 
 ing both Britain and Convention to be helpless 
 and obsolete, and itself to be the true Ireland 
 — as indeed it may be. In France, in Italy, in 
 Scandinavia, various Leagues treat themselves to 
 be the effective voice of the People, but the Official 
 Chamber and Ministry to be obstructive relics of 
 monarchy and feudalism. For some years now at 
 home the countless democratic and industrial Unions 
 meet in conference, put forth proclamations, issue 
 mandates to governments, entirely ignoring Parlia- 
 ment and Cabinet, and assuming to be the voice 
 and the power of the United Kingdom. They use 
 the House of Commons as a licensed platform, from 
 which they can pour insult on Government, where 
 they can publish mendacious calumnies and air 
 revolutionary nostrums under the veil of" questions." 
 And the House sinks lower daily in public estimate. 
 And ministers make no real answer nor do they 
 punish treasonable talk, nor assert their national 
 right to govern. They make mild excuses, feeble 
 remonstrances, hardly daring to claim that they and 
 the House have the Nation at their back. In war 
 Parliament is an Incubus. 
 
 [Jpril, 1 91 8.] 
 
 The Cardinal Archbishop a Socialist 
 
 A striking proof of the new world on which we 
 are entering is given by the remarkable " Message 
 
 62
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 to the Nation," by Cardinal Bourne [Times^ 
 February 15th). He speaks in a language which, 
 at the least, must be described as Christian Socialism. 
 The times portend "grave social upheaval." It is 
 admitted that " a new order of things, new social 
 conditions," will arise on the destruction of the 
 existing situation. Down to the age of the Reforma- 
 tion all went well between the classes (!) ; and 
 peasant, workman, landowner, peer, and Sovereign, 
 all did their Christian duties, apparently in har- 
 mony (!). But, as Catholic principles were dis- 
 carded, capitalism set in. Hence, "the present 
 social dislocation." The legal disabilities of Trade 
 Unions were caused because " the Catholic voice 
 was silenced," So England fell "under a capitalistic 
 and oligarchic regime^ The " territorial oligarchy " 
 was fused with the " commercial magnates," and 
 the fusion produced " plutocracy." Then legislation, 
 under " the guise of social reform," marked off the 
 wage-earners as "a definitely servile class." Well 
 — but this is simply the Bolshevik programme to 
 abolish capitalism, wage-earning, private property, 
 oligarchy, and magnates. The difference is that 
 Trotsky holds these evils as bound up with religion, 
 churches, and priests. 
 
 Is the Catholic Church Socialist.^ 
 
 So far, the Cardinal, in the name of the Church, 
 echoes the general voice of Social Democracy 
 throughout Europe and the scheme of our own 
 Labour Party. But with this great difference. We 
 know what Bolshevism means by its own acts, 
 decrees, and confiscations — the suppression of estates, 
 loans, and property. We know what our own 
 Labour Party proposes — nationalisation of railways, 
 mines, harbours, and roads, the universal minimum^ 
 
 63
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 common labour for all, the conscription of wealth, 
 revolutionary finance, democratic control of industry. 
 These are clear political objects to be obtained by 
 legislation, without the cynical tyranny of Petrograd. 
 Now, does the Catholic Church teach, preach, and 
 bless these legislative proposals ? Does it do so in 
 Catholic lands, in Austria, in Italy, in Spain, in 
 Portugal, in Ireland? Do our Catholic "oligarchs 
 and magnates " here at home accept and labour for 
 this form of social reconstruction ? If not, what 
 are the remedies for "the present social dislocation," 
 which the Cardinal calls on his dear reverend brothers 
 to bring to an end ? Unless, on these intricate 
 economic and social problems he has definite schemes 
 to propose such as can be embodied in Acts, and 
 effected by the State, he is only indulging in loose 
 rhetoric. To refer it all to "the social teaching of 
 Christ " is nothing but an unctuous sermon. 
 
 What Reforms does it Propose ? 
 
 Far be it from me to look upon the Catholic 
 clergy with Protestant eyes. My grief is that all 
 Christian Churches have been so little able to 
 prevent or even to mitigate this horrible war, or 
 to give the world a social lead for a moral recon- 
 struction of life. But our English prelates, if they 
 have no economic millennium to offer the people, do 
 not talk social revolution. The Cardinal denounces 
 " with execration the crimes of which the German 
 rulers are guilty," which is more than the Vatican 
 has ever done. What did the teaching of Christ do 
 to stop the Catholics of Austria and of Germany 
 from taking part in these infamies ? What did it 
 do to prevent the plutocrats of Austria, Italy, or 
 Spain from forming the ascendency of oligarchy 
 and the degradation of a servile class ? The 
 
 64
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 people want to know if the Churches support the 
 scheme of the Labour Party, of Nationalisation, of 
 democratic control in the State, in industry, in 
 education — " Yes " or " No " ? These are the 
 burning questions. It is idle to enlarge on " the 
 message of war-shrines, crucifixes, and rosaries," on 
 "Catholic social literature," on the C.Y.M.S., and 
 the C.VV.L., and the blessed but vague ejaculations 
 of Leo XIII. If Socialism is to save us, we must 
 know what Bills and Reforms it tables. To talk 
 about our Divine Master and His Mother is only 
 an Easter sermon, which has been preached for 
 nearly two thousand years. But still — - 
 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. 
 
 Has War Inspired Great Poetry ? 
 
 A question often occurs to me which, I think, 
 can find an answer in the unexampled conditions of 
 this war. An immense quantity of verse has been 
 poured out in these four years — at home, and from 
 the trenches, from the Greek Islands and coasts, from 
 Mesopotamia and Palestine. There is an irresistible 
 desire to express the feelings in verse. Not a little 
 of it is real poetry, such as Sir W. Watson's, much 
 of it full of fine emotion, all of it well above the 
 average of former times of peace. And yet, if we 
 compare with our own the years of war and revolu- 
 tion — say, from the Bastille in 1789 to Waterloo in 
 1 815 — why have we now no great poetry ? In those 
 tremendous years of our grandfathers much of the 
 finest poetry of modern times was composed — some 
 of the sweetest, most fanciful, most original, in all 
 our literature. Scott, Byron,Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Southey, Campbell, Crabbe, were all at work — 
 Chi Me Harold^ The Lady of the Lake^ Lyrical Ballads^ 
 The Excursion and the Prelude — everything best of 
 
 F 65
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 the Lake School. Not only was it an era of some 
 of our very best lyrics, but it was the date when 
 our poetry was taking on a new flight from the 
 lower strata of the heroic couplet into the high 
 empyrean of imagination. If our ancestors made 
 great poetry in the midst of desperate war, why is 
 ours not quite their equal ? 
 
 The Older Poets Untouched by War 
 
 An answer is found by referring to the Lives of 
 these poets. Nearly all their finest work was pro- 
 duced in places wholly removed from the storm of 
 war and from the daily excitements of stirring 
 events. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were 
 abroad early in life, but war and revolution soon 
 ceased to fill their souls. Nearly all Byron's poetry 
 was composed abroad. Campbell, it is true, was 
 fired by battle and by dreams of liberty. Cowper's 
 idyllic letters seem absolutely untouched by all that 
 was passing in Britain and in Europe, and so seem 
 Jane Austen's romances, even though her brother 
 was serving with Nelson. For those twenty-five 
 years of tumult and war, our poets were at rest of 
 body and spirit in rustic homes. Occasional reports 
 of battles hardly broke the repose of their quiet 
 lives. How different to-day. Now, not a family 
 in the kingdom but is hourly anxious for news. 
 Telegrams, letters, journals, pour in on every home. 
 It is a universal struggle for life. Old and young, 
 women and men, girls and boys, suffer the same 
 strain. The widowed, the fatherless, the childless, 
 surround every door. Want, mutilation, agony, 
 death, meet us hour by hour. We live day and 
 night too near the roar of the trenches for great 
 poetry to come forth — as yet ! 
 
 [April, 191 8.] 
 
 66
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 The Language being Vulgarised 
 
 It is sad to see how the slang of the trenches and 
 the camp, the rage to be topical and up-to-date, is 
 infecting even our higher journahsm and our Parha- 
 mentary and platform oratory. Things are described 
 with preposterous overstatement or under-statement, 
 or are referred to with literary and historical 
 commonplaces, nicknames, and catchwords, until 
 the ordinary man can hardly guess the sense, and is 
 certainly worried by incessant tropes. Why not use 
 plain words instead of trying to be so tediously funny, 
 so smart ? Why describe everything in comical 
 allusions ? Then come those stale American phrases 
 which " catch-on," A statesman now is " out " for 
 victory; he is "up against" Pacifism, and is all 
 for the " knock-out," He has a card " up his 
 sleeve " by which the enemy are at last to be 
 "euchred." Then a fierce fight in which hundreds 
 of noble fellows are mangled or drowned is " a 
 scrap." When Germans murder civilians and burn 
 churches this is " not cricket," To criticise a 
 politician is to call for "his scalp," or for "his head 
 on a charger." One minister is "top-dog"; the 
 other fellow is beaten " to a frazzle," His supporters 
 " bark and howl," or else offer mere " eye-wash," 
 Some one is for ever " riding for a fall," and the 
 eternal " red-herring " still misleads the pack. Then, 
 the iteration of some pet term — " orientation," 
 "mentality," " a diflFerent angle," " quintessentially," 
 " solidarity," and "self-determination," Bolshevism 
 is ruining language as well as society. 
 
 Nicknames from Novelists 
 
 It is natural that our fine fellows in the trenches 
 and in the ships should come out of a horrible 
 carnage and call it " liveliness," or a "pretty thing." 
 
 67
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 But serious writers at home need not talk of the hero- 
 ism of our men with a round of tiresome slang. And 
 what bores me even more is to find the most acute 
 problems of State reeled off" with phrases manu- 
 factured out of popular novels. The well-weighed 
 arguments of a minister are so much " Pod-snap- 
 pery." His critic is Mr. Dick with his " King 
 Charles' Head." " Jorkins," " Oliver Twist," the 
 " Fat Boy," and the " Little Judge " are flung 
 about in political controversy, till one almost 
 wishes Charles Dickens' head would lie quiet in his 
 grave. Not Dickens alone, but half-a-dozen other 
 familiar books, British and Transatlantic, furnish 
 the endless vocabulary of allusive titles and jocose 
 abuse. Even serious literature is being Heathen- 
 Chineed and Dick-Swivellerised ; and a famous 
 critic is the worst offender by writing in 
 Dickensese. 
 
 Armenia and Rumania Sacrificed 
 
 So the last remnant of mangled Armenia is to be 
 given up to the once " unspeakable " Turk — and 
 that even by Russia herself. Thus, as it were, by 
 the extermination of the Armenian race, an end 
 appears to be placed on the efforts of over forty 
 years of vain and desultory diplomatic intervention 
 by British Liberalism to rescue that unhappy people 
 from the horrible Kurd. The "mailed fist" now 
 grimly points to the sv/ord as the ultimate arbiter, 
 and not platform talk. And this is the end of all 
 the Gladstonian rhetoric about " Holy Russia," 
 " that ancient Christian race," the voice of a free 
 people — happy England — " the silver sea ! " — when 
 the only sanctions behind that eloquent voice were 
 " No bloated armaments ! " — " Reduced naval esti- 
 mates " — " No blood-tax ! " — " Peace, freedom of 
 
 68
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 trade," and a hearty welcome to our kindred in 
 German lands. The latest tragedy closes, like so 
 many others, " with a smile on the face of the 
 tiger." Ah ! and poor little Roumania, too, cruelly 
 deserted by her false friend, the victim of her 
 enthusiasm and courage, of unwise encouragement 
 and vain promises, not, we trust, from any voice of 
 ours. 
 
 [y^/r/7, 19 1 8.] 
 
 The Science of Power 
 
 I am commissioned to notice the new work of 
 Mr. Benjamin Kidd — The Science of Power — which 
 is advertised as a " startling and dramatic book," 
 with nothing to indicate that it is posthumous. 
 Mr. Kidd's former work in 1902 was described by 
 a hostile critic as " sonorous fatuity," as " big 
 phrases blown around empty bubbles." Of this 
 volume the lang^aage is less incoherent, at times is 
 lucid enough, and there are some passages of real 
 eloquence. But the fuliginous mask of common- 
 place remains ; the parading of truisms as super- 
 scientific sublimities is as droll as ever ; and almost 
 every sentence, many of which state obvious facts, 
 is clothed with grotesque exaggeration. This is 
 the hour of megaphonics and megalomania. But 
 Lenin and Trotsky are outdone by Mr. Kidd in 
 his superb scorn of every preceding philosopher, 
 and his Gargantuan boasts that he set the world 
 right — at last — and for ever. 
 
 What is Truth .? 
 
 On page 183 we are told "not to be startled" 
 by the revelation of the axiom that Truth is the 
 science of Power ; and we are told " that the develop- 
 ment of knowledge two thousand years hence, or 
 
 69
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 twenty thousand years hence, will only have served 
 to establish the conviction that this is the final 
 answer " to the secular question — What is truth ? 
 So far does our prophet see into futurity. To put 
 this stilted language into plain words, the meaning 
 seems to be this : Truth (z. e. seemingly, the 
 realisation of human life) depends on the under- 
 standing that the spiritual ideals of humanity [i.e. 
 Power) will in the end master the material Forces 
 of Egoism (z. e. Force). And the altruistic in- 
 stincts, in their highest form. Religion, are rooted, 
 not in the physical inheritance of generations in- 
 spiring Self, but in the social call to Sacrifice, to be 
 impressed on the Future of mankind by the com- 
 munities of which we are part, and the education 
 given us by those who have gone before. Now, 
 for myself, I am far from disputing this. Indeed, 
 all this is what I understand by Positivism, as taught 
 by Auguste Comte just sixty years ago. Mr. Kidd 
 is simply translating Positivism into a sort of 
 mystical jargon of his own manufactuie. 
 
 Disguised Positivism 
 
 And then this disguised Positivism of his is 
 acclaimed as a new revelation, of which all previous 
 philosophers had no glimpse. Was no trace of the 
 ultimate supremacy of social Utopias — what is here 
 called " the emotion of the ideal " becoming the 
 true " Power in Civilisation " — to be found in all 
 religious systems, nothing of the kind in Mill and 
 his school, nothing in Eucken and his followers, 
 nothing in Caird, or Bradley, or in any of our 
 modern sociologists ? No, says Mr. Kidd ; they 
 all lay wrapped in Cimmerian darkness. It is no 
 part of mine to defend recent Darwinism or Spen- 
 cerism or any other school. But when Mr. Kidd's 
 
 70
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 " startling sensation," as advertisements put it, is 
 found to be the spiritual Power of Women over the 
 moral progress of society, I am bound to remind 
 him that this was the very essence of Comte's 
 system. The fourth chapter of Comte's General 
 View is one systematic forecast of the social in- 
 fluence of Woman as the embodiment of the moral 
 Power which must finally transform the more 
 material energies of male Force. And Mr. Kidd 
 claims this as his "startling" discovery, though he 
 must know it has been preached, and taught, and 
 published abroad and at home for forty years by 
 our school in continuous works on Sociology, 
 morals, and religion — all of which Mr. Kidd takes 
 good care not to name, nor even to allude to in a 
 passing note. The wise "convey" it all. The 
 publishers call it " The Science of Power." 
 
 71
 
 PART V 
 
 A Tremendous Crisis 
 
 IN the tremendous crisis of this war, of Parlia- 
 ment, of our country, one who writes on 
 public affairs — by the exigencies of the Press 
 some three weeks before his words will be read — 
 can only express the intense anxiety with which we 
 all are watching events hour by hour. The exist- 
 ence of our country, the future of the British race, 
 are at stake. Our armies, our Constitution, the 
 Government, may have triumphed — or may be 
 shattered — before these words are in print. It is in 
 vain for a man who, for sixty years, has tried to 
 make his voice heard to keep rigid silence, to force 
 his thoughts to turn only to literature and current 
 topics. Yet a wise man, in the heat of the greatest 
 battle of the world, of the keenest political crisis of 
 our history, will venture neither comment nor 
 forecast, standing, as it were, in the very line of 
 fire. All that he can do is to utter his proud trust 
 in the staunch heroism of our fighting men — in the 
 solid good sense of the British race. 
 
 [April, 19 1 8]. 
 
 Stand by Government 
 
 Away with all recrimination, all censure on what 
 is past and gone, or idle guesses about what may be 
 and ought to be! To-day [April 12], with our 
 lines swaying to and fro, with the great new 
 armament at issue, the Ministry challenging the 
 verdict of an excited House, the patriotic spirit will 
 
 72
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 add no word to increase the confusion of cross- 
 purposes, nor a doubt that might weaken the 
 efficiency of our actual rulers. Right or wrong — 
 the nation chose them. Right or wrong — it is for 
 them to act. Our duty (whilst they are there) is 
 to follow them, support them, submit to the lawful 
 orders they make. For myself, speaking for no 
 man, no party, no cause, but for myself only, I will 
 say but this : Much as I deplore the controversies 
 in the House of Commons, much as I deprecate at 
 such a time its assumption of executive control, I 
 would bear witness to the honest conviction that 
 inspires all sides in this debate — I except none. 
 We all feel with pride that our politicians of all 
 shades alike have solid reason in their minds, and are 
 deeply inspired by love of their native land. 
 
 Our Civilisation is at Stake 
 
 But to abstain from criticism and from prophecy 
 is not to shut the mind close without thought. 
 We see now that the future of our civilisation 
 hangs upon this stupendous campaign. It has taken 
 four years of storm and stress for, this awful truth to 
 have forced itself upon our people. Have they 
 even yet understood all that this means ? And in 
 the ten — the twenty — years before the storm broke, 
 when many of us who saw its menace poured out 
 unheeded warnings and vain appeals to avert it, why 
 were our countrymen content only to grow rich and 
 joyful ? Even now do they see that Parliamentary 
 eloquence is not national strength, that empire is 
 not secured by giving votes to unnumbered millions 
 of men and women, but rather by training millions 
 of men to scientific war ? The Empire of Britain, 
 the United Kingdom, Parliamentary Government, 
 the British Constitution, Commerce, Trade, 
 
 73
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 " Business as Usual," the traditions of three centuries 
 — all these to-day stand in the issue of the world's 
 evolution. Let us hope for victory in this great 
 Day of Judgmen't ! 
 
 Confusion in Ireland 
 
 And now for Ireland — the Convention — Man- 
 Power — one is forbidden to speak : 
 
 — TO. 5' &K\r aiyo), ^ovs eVl yXd/acry, fxtyas — 
 
 The great Ox — the Censor — presses our tongue 
 (i2th April); the rest is silence. What a great 
 Ox is it, indeed ! This it may be permitted to 
 say : Can human blundering, want of tact, neglect 
 of time, stupid ignorance of passions, of race tradi- 
 tions, of national hopes, be carried farther than in 
 the political welter of to-day ? This only will I 
 add — speaking, as I have said, solely for myself : 
 If unity of command in allied armies is a vital 
 necessity, unity in government at home is even 
 more vital. The attempt, under inveterate tradi- 
 tions, to carry on a war for very life by a Parlia- 
 ment with a dozen groups, some of them bitterly 
 hostile, is the road to Bolshevist ruin. O Ireland, 
 with your deep heart and your lyric brain, will you 
 for ever stab yourself to death and heap shame upon 
 your name — all for the sake of a suicidal revenge ? 
 O Britain, with your solid sense and honest soul, 
 will you for ever be Too Late — blind to others' 
 feelings, tactless, slow, trusting to compromise, to 
 worry through somehow ? Are we both to descend 
 together into chaos ? 
 
 [April, 191 8.] 
 
 Educational Reform 
 
 The air, the Press, Parliament, all ring with 
 discussion about education which has taken up 
 
 74
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 the energy of Cabinet and House, at any rate 
 withdrawing both from less useful work; But 
 there is one branch of education of which we hear 
 nothing, one of high and universal importance, 
 far more urgent than half-time and continuation 
 schools. Germany in this, as in many things intel- 
 lectual and national, shows the way : it has been 
 her prime asset in war, even more vital for her 
 than U-boats or monster guns. It is the German 
 systematic, universal, all-round education in Patriot- 
 ism, Loyalty, Love of Fatherland. It doubles and 
 trebles the heroic sacrifice of her armies ; it doubles 
 and trebles the patience and union of her people. 
 From infancy to the latest academic course, every 
 German man and woman is scientifically trained to a 
 life of Patriotism, Loyalty, Nationhood. Horribly 
 perverted in aim — no doubt in this generation — 
 but right in original purpose — a tremendous force ! 
 There is nothing equal to it in modern civilisation 
 — distorted, poisoned, as it has been by recent con- 
 spirators. Still, it is to-day the most potent organic 
 force in Europe. Have we Britons anything like 
 this kind of national education ? We wrangle for 
 whole sessions about salaries, " standards," language 
 versus science. We do not teach our people Loyalty, 
 Country, Duty, the inheritance of Britain. 
 
 Other Nations teach Patriotism 
 
 Other great nations do this. The religious 
 teaching of Germans is — Germany ! In French 
 schools they teach French history. We have seen 
 what " France " means to every French man and 
 woman : their training in patriotism is hardly less 
 than that of the German, and it has not been so 
 deeply perverted. In the United States the Re- 
 public is the basis of school education. On the 
 
 75
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Fourth of July, on the anniversaries of Washington 
 and of Lincoln, America celebrates, with too much 
 noise and swagger, a sort of Olympic Festival in 
 its somewhat transatlantic style. On these holi- 
 days millions of school pupils are gathered to wave 
 the Stars and Stripes and sing " Hail Columbia ! " 
 " Rather vulgar," say our superior persons. Yes ! 
 but it means Force, Union, Self-devotion ! See 
 how to-day the Republic spontaneously develops a 
 Dictator ! Our dictator has to wheedle snarling 
 groups of busybodies, cranks, and traitors. They 
 were never taught Loyalty to Government or 
 Country. Their business in politics is to patch 
 up an obsolete and battered Constitution. Is " De- 
 mocracy " as noble a watchword for Patriotism as 
 " Fatherland " ? 
 
 Obsolete Watchwords 
 
 For this fatal blot there are at least three causes. 
 The first is that our entire system of education 
 has been for generations under the influence of 
 Churches, sects, Bible, and creeds ; that it has 
 been unduly absorbed in the antiquities of Judaea, 
 parables, texts, and Hymns about Heaven. In this 
 theological curriculum there is no room for homely 
 England. Secondly, ever since John, Tudors, 
 and Stuarts, Parliament has worked to dethrone 
 the King ; but it has not taken his place in the 
 imagination and loyalty of the people as Republic 
 has taken the place of Monarchy for France and 
 America. Who would now sing " God Save the 
 House of Commons " ? — unless it be the windy 
 patriots who hope to enter it ? Our loudest " God 
 Save the King" rings hollow beside the cheers that 
 greeted an Edward, a Henry, and Elizabeth, and 
 yet it does not quite mean " England." To the 
 
 76
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Upper Ten Thousand, in a tepid, conventional 
 way, it still does mean our truly brave, generous, 
 untiring Sovereign George and all of his. To the 
 Governing Classes our National Anthem means 
 neither Monarch, nor England — but Empire. To 
 those who officer Army, Navy, Commerce, Manu- 
 factures, Trade, Literature, Art, it means Empire. 
 To the masses of Labour, Empire is often a sinister 
 name for exile, dispersion, class oppression — War. 
 
 Empire is not Fatherland 
 
 This, the third, is perhaps the essential cause 
 why our education does nothing to teach patriotism. 
 Empire is not Fatherland to any but those who 
 make it their " profession." It is too vague, too 
 vast, too mixed to rouse the feu sacre de la Patrie^ 
 as the Marseillaise has it. Empire displaces Country, 
 but does not succeed to its holy inspiration. These 
 vast Empires have no innate national soul. Their 
 union is one of force, of emergency, common 
 danger, and passing occasion. Look at the once 
 mighty Empires ot Russia, of China, which fall to 
 pieces when the Imperial bond is snapped. They 
 are not nations, they are aggregates of nationalities, 
 of races, of tongues. Four hundred millions of 
 stout, industrious, and intelligent Chinamen, bonded 
 for centuries under a material despotism, are over- 
 powered by forty millions of Japanese bred up under 
 a real national patriotism — their religion of Bushido. 
 This patriotism of Japan is impossible for an amor- 
 phous Empire, with fifty different languages, habits, 
 traditions, and blood. The cry of pan-Germans, 
 " from Berlin to Bagdad," we trust will be the ruin 
 of Kaiserism. Would that England could be to 
 the youth of England all that Nippon is to Japs, 
 Ireland to Celts, France to Frenchmen. 
 
 77
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Schools do not teach England 
 
 English men and women in the mass were 
 never taught England in the way Germans have 
 been taught Deutschland, Frenchmen France, and 
 Americans "Our Republic." England in our 
 education is taken for granted, and it does not go 
 deep down into the people. Those of us who 
 were trained at Universities and Public Schools on 
 Shakespeare, Milton — on memories of Drake, and 
 Nelson, Cromwell, Chatham, Pitt — we love England. 
 What do the working masses know of Alfred, 
 Harold, Plantagenets, and Tudors ? To them 
 these are hardly names. England is the land in 
 which they sweat — which very often they leave 
 for ever. " England " is not a word to rouse the 
 Labour of England, as PVance is to Frenchmen, 
 as Republic is to Americans, as Ireland is to Irish- 
 men — nay, even it is not so much as England is 
 still to Canadians and Anzacs. In our School 
 system, Country is a blank page between the 
 Catechism and the Multiplication Table. Our 
 little ones can gabble off the Kings of Israel and 
 Gospel Miracles ; of the history of England and 
 the Duties of Citizens they never hear a single 
 word. Hence the v'wus Snowdenicum works in so 
 many Labour men and women ! 
 
 Pennis nunc homini datis 
 
 Of all the wonders of our wondrous time the 
 development of Flying is the first in power and in 
 promise. Marvellous and incalculable as is the 
 power of submarines, that other new marvel is no less 
 important. The U-Boat may be of vast influence 
 in war, and in all matters of naval blockade, affect- 
 ing belligerents and neutrals alike, transforming 
 public law and insular States. But its value in 
 
 78
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 peace, in commerce, and industry is not yet evident. 
 Aviation, however, already opens new worlds to 
 trade, transit, and intercourse in ordinary life in 
 peace. Of all this there is no need to prophesy 
 yet. But we now see that the Air Corps is trans- 
 forming war. It renews and overtops the wildest 
 romance and poetry of human audacity and skill. 
 Nothing in Homer, Pindar, or Livy comes near the 
 heroic combats in the air. Our very fairy-tales, 
 our myths, idylls, and fabliaux of mediaeval chivalry 
 are tame beside the realistic reports of our champion 
 airmen. Achilles, Ajax, the Decii, Siegfried, and 
 Lancelot are mere children's songs now. The 
 Cavalry of the Air forebode as great a revolution 
 in tactics as when mounted Franks and Huns with 
 lance and bow made obsolete the Macedonian 
 phalanx and the Roman legion. The new arm 
 repeats and far extends the feats of horsemen in 
 the armies of Cromwell, Frederick, and Napoleon. 
 It looks as if the Air Corps would some day be the 
 decisive element in battle, even shattering artillery 
 and any close formation of horse or foot. All that 
 the poet ever vaunted of the audax lapeti genus is 
 far outshone. We may even adapt the famous lines 
 and say : — • 
 
 Expertus vacuum Daedalus aera 
 pennis NUNC homini datis. 
 
 Airships supersede Armies 
 
 These miracles of daring in the skies and beneath 
 the sea fire the imagination. The day may come 
 when such fighting as there may be then shall be 
 waged not on land but in air, not on the water 
 but underneath it, when Dreadnoughts will be as 
 obsolete as plate-armour, and the only armies will 
 be huge flights of flying squadrons darkening the 
 day, like monster flocks of Valkyrie choosing the 
 
 79
 
 ^fej^^ obiter Scripta 
 
 slain. Nay, I can conceive that, if ever the civilised 
 world resolve that war between nations shall cease, 
 vast reserves of airships, the only standing armies, 
 shall form a sort of International Police. Then, 
 the Nations bound together to preserve peace in 
 the world could, by common action, so menace the 
 cities, docks, and barracks of the offending Power, 
 that he could not move ship or regiment without 
 annihilation. One hundred thousand airmen acting 
 together would cool the passions of the most aggres- 
 sive Junkerdom. And to maintain them in reserve 
 as a police or militia would not involve the cost of 
 one-hundredth part of modern armaments. Endur- 
 ance and heroism in war can go no further than 
 ours of to-day. The age which poets have told us 
 was unmanly and which philosophers tell us is deca- 
 dent proves to excel all that history and tradition 
 have ever attempted to picture in poetry or in prose, 
 in epic or in romance. 
 
 The Allies are a League of Nations 
 
 Why all this talk about a League of Nations ? 
 There is a League of Nations now : the Allied 
 Powers, striving to save civilisation and secure a 
 permanent peace. There will never be any other 
 such League in our generation. A general and 
 peaceful League of Nations will never be formed 
 until the conversion of mankind to a purer moral 
 and religious form of life. In the meantime, all 
 wordy recrimination about it is mischievous nonsense, 
 whatever eminent men may choose to say to con- 
 ciliate pacifism and fads. It is one of the many 
 devices to draw ofF our minds from the one task 
 that admits of no delay and no interruption — the 
 final and utter defeat of the enemy of mankind. 
 At present, some two hundred millions of men, 
 
 80
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 firmly posted in Central and Eastern Europe, are 
 filled with a passion to crush and dominate the 
 West. If they are to be outside the League, how 
 are we going to restrain their ambition otherwise 
 than as we are doing ; which means maintaining 
 our crushing armaments ? If they are to be inside 
 the League, we, the rest, will be at the mercy of 
 their incarnate fraud, falsehood, and ferocity. The 
 triflers and the tricksters who perorate about a 
 League of Nations without facing these questions 
 are talking random verbiage or intentional treason. 
 
 [May, 19 1 8.] 
 
 Nations are in Flux 
 It is folly to think of any union of Nations until 
 we know which are the Nations that may survive, 
 or which will be formed out of, this fiery and 
 abysmal earthquake of our planet. Perhaps many 
 races may hardly exist as nations a few years hence : 
 there are many races which may finally emerge as 
 nations. Are the tribes that made up the old 
 Russian, Austrian, Turkish Empires to count as 
 substantive nations ? Are the Chinese races to 
 count as one, or as many ? And Germans ask if 
 Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia, India, and Ireland 
 are to count as nations. Who is to apportion the 
 relative votes to a people of three millions and an 
 Empire of three hundred millions ? And are Britons 
 and Frenchmen who have bled and suffered for 
 Fatherland likely to submit their very existence to 
 the intrigues of a miscellaneous Areopagus of 
 foreigners ? A moribund Lady of Fashion was 
 once found to be compiling a Visitors' List of the 
 company she meant to keep in Heaven. " My 
 good madam," said a cynical neighbour, "you had 
 better wait till you get to Heaven, and look round 
 to see if any of your friends are there."
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Illusions of Dr. Johnson 
 
 In the days of spasm, grief, pride, and hope, when 
 things too weighty or too recent seem to pall on 
 us, we turn to the ever-fresh Lyrics of our elder 
 poets, to their Letters^ their sayings and judgments. 
 We must always value their estimates ; let us not 
 too blindly trust them at all times. Amongst the 
 " Curiosities of Literature " are the strange illusions 
 of some of our most famous critics. Dr. Johnson 
 is truly a great Critic — admirable on Shakespeare, 
 and generally on Milton ; but think of his calling 
 Gray "a dull fellow," "a mechanical poet." We 
 may not accept the contemporary praise of all the 
 Odes^ but to think of the author of the Elegy having 
 written only " two good stanzas," and being inferior 
 to Alcenside ! And then, he says. Fielding is a 
 "blockhead," "a barren rascal." And Johnson 
 would never read Joseph Andrews. The Doctor, 
 we know, was violent in his loves and in his hates ; 
 and, especially towards contemporaries, was carried 
 away by his prejudices and personal opinion of their 
 character. Where the " personal equation " does 
 not come in, Johnson is a consummate judge ; but 
 we always have to guard against his passions and 
 his superstitions. 
 
 Those of Carlyle and of Coleridge 
 
 The same tendency to judge books by the personal 
 life of the author no doubt accounts for another 
 strange error of a great man — Carlyle's poor estimate 
 of Scott's superb historical romances. The Sage 
 of Chelsea never could get over Abbotsford and the 
 baronetcy. To us who live upon these immortal 
 creations the commonplaces of Lockhart count as 
 little as Milton's wives and Shakespeare's escapades. 
 And Carlyle, one of the prime voices of his century, 
 
 82
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 could care for John Knox more than for Scott ; 
 and wished that England in her struggle with 
 Napoleon had been go\crned by " the thunder- 
 god," Robert Burns, rather than by " a lean William 
 Pitt." So, too, Coleridge, who, to take him all 
 round, is our foremost critic, and in Shakespeare 
 is absolutely supreme, could strangely undervalue 
 Scott, could call Ivanhoe and The Bride of Lamrner- 
 moor " abortions." And the I-ake poets altogether 
 are in the minor key about Scott — both in his 
 poems and his, romances. "Not twenty lines of 
 his poetry will ever reach posterity," says Coleridge, 
 and as to his romances, their merit lay in their 
 "subjects." There was, of course, some personal 
 feeling in the eclipse of the Lakists at the time 
 when Scott's romances were in their zenith. 
 
 The Best Critics may Stumble 
 
 In recent times our best judges do nod now and 
 then; at any rate, forget to put on their magic 
 robes. How strange that Edward Fitzgerald, a 
 rare guide in literature, one of the most perfect 
 writers of Letters in our language, close friend and 
 ally of Tennyson, Carlyle, Thackeray, could 
 prefer Tennyson's early poems, down to 1844, to 
 all his later work, the best of which he thought a 
 waste of his grand gifts. Tennyson, again we are 
 told, would have liked to be succeeded as Laureate 
 by his protige^ Sir Lewis Morris, in lieu of Swin- 
 burne ! Tant^ne animis ccskitibm ir^e ? And old 
 "Fitz" had no patience with Jane Austen, nor 
 George Eliot, and could commit a positive outrage 
 on the mangled remains of Agamemnon ! Swinburne 
 has a sense of Shakespeare in him hardly inferior to 
 Coleridge ; and it would seem to be impossible to 
 write of Shakespeare with extravagant praise. But 
 
 83
 
 obiter Scrlpta 
 
 his Swinburne, too, can achieve. Matthew Arnold, 
 our almost unerring master in criticism, apart from 
 his gaucheries in philosophy and theology, could 
 call Shelley an " ineffectual angel." And in a 
 recent volume we find that Lord Acton could pour 
 out unreasonable glorification to George Eliot and 
 unreasonable insults on Mazzini. Let us mark, 
 learn, and inwardly digest all that the acknowledged 
 critics of literature tell us. But let us remember 
 that the greatest of them have their off" days when 
 the oracle misleads ; and especially, that in judging 
 their own contemporaries their personal bias may 
 unconsciously aff'ect their insight. 
 
 Coleridge's Table Talk 
 
 Mention of Coleridge reminds me of the recent 
 publication by the Oxford Clarendon Press of a 
 very handy volume (i2mo, in cheap form) of the 
 Table Talk of Coleridge, with the further notes of 
 Thomas Allsopp, and the Coleridge contributions 
 to Southey's Omniana^ the fine preface of H. N. 
 Coleridge and an introduction by Coventry Patmore 
 — altogether a useful reprint, in these hard times. 
 Coleridge, in his shorter poems a rare and exquisite 
 poet, in his rambling and long-winded prose a 
 prejudiced partisan, was a consummate critic in his 
 spoken addresses and a brilliant master of apoph- 
 thegms in familiar talk. How pithy, how witty, 
 how original are these bursts of humour and 
 wisdom ; what marvels of memory ; what vast and 
 universal outpouring of knowledge ! If it were 
 not quite so exact and systematic as the learning of 
 a Bacon, a Selden, or a Bentley, the reading of 
 Coleridge was as mnivorous as his mind was 
 seminal. With all the errors, scandals, perversities 
 of his wasted life, the stranded wreck of this 
 
 84
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 marvellous veteran is almost as fascinating as his 
 amazing youth. For my pa.rt, I can read and 
 re-read his pungent Talk almost as often as I read 
 his Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 The Hawarden Letters 
 
 We are all grateful for being allowed a sight of 
 more Hawarden Letters^ 1878- 19 13, for, as twenty 
 years have passed since his death, and the whole 
 political world has been so deeply transformed, the 
 interest in the personality of Mr. Gladstone is ever 
 more absorbing. How different is the atmosphere 
 oT these Hawarden Letters from the great world of 
 action that we know in the official Life. In this 
 new book Mr. Gladstone does not directly inter- 
 vene ; yet his influence as a superintending Provi- 
 dence is circumambient and never absent in the 
 home circle. Here he is not the statesman, orator, 
 theologian, critic, and essayist, but the patriarch 
 and prophet of a group who live in a world of their 
 own far from Parliament, cities, or busy work, 
 with a communion of affection and thought akin 
 to that of a group of spiritual reformers and religious 
 enthusiasts. It is a modern Decameron in a fair 
 remote garden ! Art, literature, the joy of life, 
 the love of beauty, absorb them. Personally, I 
 knew most of these writers : I often had letters 
 from them ; some of those named I knew much 
 longer and more closely than did the Hawarden set 
 or Mr. Gladstone himself. But how different they 
 seem under his roof and shadow — how unexpected 
 is the form of their letters ! Browning, Ruskin, 
 Burne- Jones, Lord Acton, George Eliot, seem in 
 this book to take on some new aspect and gift. 
 How different do men of genius seem to their men 
 friends from the way in which they expand in the 
 magic of a sympathetic woman. 
 
 85
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 The Irish Convention 
 
 " The Convention has laid a foundation of 
 agreement unprecedented in Irish history," says its 
 Chairman, Sir Horace Plunkett. " This is an 
 opportunity for a settlement by consent that may 
 never recur," says the Prime Minister. Both 
 assertions are momentous — both are true. It is 
 idle now^ to regret that the Convention was not 
 unanimous, that it has been dragging on vi^hilst 
 Ireland was in ferment, and appears at the moment 
 of a new outburst in a complex tangle of cross 
 proposals. It should have been the work of a small 
 body ; we wanted it six months ago ; the Report 
 should have borne the substantive conclusions of a 
 great judge, in lieu of the miscellaneous statement 
 of irreconcilable claims. It tells us nothing that 
 those who understand Irish parties did not know. 
 But there it is at last — late, unwieldy, confused, 
 indecisive — but still the material out of which 
 constructive statesmanship can — and must — find a 
 settlement. The essential difficulties, says Sir 
 Horace, were two — Ulster and Customs. Put 
 together the Majority Report and Lloyd George's 
 Letter, February 25th, and a solution can be found. 
 "A solution must be found," says the Government. 
 It must — it will — be found. 
 
 [15 April, 1918.] 
 
 A Possible Settlement 
 
 Both Ulster and Customs fnay be solved — one by 
 the great concessions and guarantees given by 
 Nationalists ; the other by the Prime Minister's 
 ymyatotium. The reports prove (what we well 
 knew) that Ireland is not one, but compound : 
 with three races, three Churches, interests, and 
 
 86
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 parties — and these three subdivided. As well call 
 Austria one realm, or the Balkan peoples one 
 nation. Almost for the first time in their history 
 the Celtic Catholic majority seem to recognise 
 this. The all-important guarantees and reciprocal 
 concessions obtained and given by Lord Midleton 
 and his fellow landowners should amply satisfy the 
 fears of Protestants and landlords. And the bar- 
 gain for Customs and Excise should relieve the 
 doubts of Northern traders. When Lord Midleton 
 with his brother peers and magnates come in to 
 Home Rule, the contest is closed ; and it would 
 be perverse folly for the North-East corner of the 
 island to claim to be a separate nation. The 
 dangers they feared are now fairly out of the way. 
 Separation, Colonial independence, domination by 
 a Southern and Western majority, are no longer 
 possible under the scheme signed by the Chairman. 
 And out of this scheme the Government are pledged 
 to frame a Bill at once for the efficient Self-govern- 
 ment of Ireland. The settlement of the internecine 
 struggles of fifty years depends on its acceptance by 
 Irishmen and by Britons. 
 
 Fatal Race Antagonism 
 
 What the new settlement is to be, or ought to 
 be, this is not the place to discuss. Let us trust it 
 may be free from the defects of the past. It will 
 come, alas ! at an hour of desperate strain on us all, 
 of crazy rebellion, and wild defiance. If Unionists 
 in either country maintain an attitude of dogged 
 non possumuSy the sanity of Saxon patriotism is a 
 thing of the past. If Irish race-hatred and thirst 
 for revenge fight against the last chance of peace — 
 their blood be upon their head ! Should rebellion, 
 
 87
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 war, anarchy, be the issue of this crisis in the very 
 agony of our battle for life, the solemn voice of 
 history hereafter will stamp with the ban of incurable 
 wastrels the Irish who cause this shame — be they 
 Presbyterian or Roman, Saxon or Celt, settler or 
 home-bred, peasant or peer.
 
 PART VI 
 
 Parliamentary Tactics in War 
 
 IF it should prove that Great Britain fails to 
 defeat Kaiserism, and thereby ceases to be 
 Great Britain — at least, to be the British 
 Empire — the cause of failure will be our super- 
 stitious belief in a House of Commons as the only 
 possible government in w^ar. To Britains that 
 House has become a sacred fetish in which they 
 put absolute faith, and which they vaunt as the 
 principle of Democracy. As the German race are 
 ready to sacrifice their nation to the Army, their 
 Kaiser, and Kultur^ as Irishmen seem ready to 
 sacrifice Ireland to revenge, so Britains will see 
 England go down rather than doubt the collective 
 wisdom of Parliament. All our disasters and our 
 blunders Can be ultimately traced to this : that 
 from the inveterate tradition of centuries we put 
 trust in the Majesty of Parliament, we can only 
 think parliamentarily, and look to Parliamentary 
 tactics as the road to victory. It would be idle to 
 raise an academic argument about Parliamentary 
 government in peace and normal times. In war 
 and in revolution, I say, it means disaster, confusion, 
 ruin. And we are in war and in revolution. 
 
 Parliament Ultimately Responsible 
 
 Against this it will be said that Parliament is 
 being gagged, misled, and ignored by Ministers. 
 There are indeed loud outcries about the tyranny of 
 
 89
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 the dictator of the hour, how criticism is silenced, 
 and information refused. But this is no real 
 answer. Prime Minister, War Council, Cabinet, 
 and Ministers, however much invested with 
 arbitrary power, exercise their office under rigid 
 conditions of Parliamentary tactics. The tone of 
 the House of Commons, party combinations, 
 divisions and whips, are ever in their minds and 
 govern their decrees. Be the nominal head of the 
 government Asquith or Lloyd George — as it might 
 be with Henderson — his policy is framed to meet 
 what the House will say, or want, or do. Mr. 
 Lloyd George is in no sense a real dictator. At 
 any rate, he is living from day to day at the mercy 
 of a hostile division, as Clemenceau is not, as Wilson 
 is not— much less as Hindenburg is not. Hinden- 
 burg finds the Reichsrat useful to blow off steam. 
 Clemenceau is master of the Chamber, as Wilson 
 is far more master of Congress. Even the power of 
 the Press, which is so often denounced, acts by and 
 through the House of Commons. 
 
 Parliamentary Obstruction 
 
 In the six years before the war, when Asquith, 
 Grey, and Haldane knew that a tremendous attack 
 from Germany was inevitable, why did they not 
 make full preparation to meet it ? Because they 
 dared not face the House of Commons. When the 
 blow came in 19 14, why did they not call the 
 nation to arms ? The House was still under 
 the intoxication of " Peace, Retrenchment, Home 
 Rule." When the nation forced them into Con- 
 scription, why did they not include Irishmen ? 
 The Nationalist Party were masters of the Parlia- 
 mentary situation. When all the vital problems of 
 Suffrage, Education, House of Lords, Agriculture, 
 
 90
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 and Finance were mooted, why was the one thought 
 to concihate the rival factions in the House, instead 
 of trusting the real sense of the nation, which 
 detested most of these factions ? When, a year 
 ago, it became certain that the enemy would have 
 enormous fresh resources, why was nothing done ? 
 Because the House would not like to do anything ? 
 When in a panic they sought to raise an unpre- 
 cedented age of service, why did they bethink them 
 of Irish Conscription plus Irish Home Rule ? 
 
 [June, 19 1 8.] 
 
 Obsolete Parliamentary Machine 
 
 Why ? Because it seemed a good House of 
 Commons answer to opposition. And when Con- 
 scription in Ireland raised a storm, why was an Irish 
 Secretary appointed — for the very reason that he had 
 voted against it ? Because it would reassure Mr. 
 Dillon and his friends, and bring them back to West- 
 minster where their presence seemed so much desired ! 
 No ! In this world-war, in this world-revolution, 
 Britain has no dictator ; no Government ; no 
 statesmen at all. Why not ? Because the House 
 of Commons makes it impossible. We have able, 
 patriotic, eloquent, devoted public men, who were 
 bred in the atmosphere of St Stephen's — that 
 mephitic Hall of muddle, talk, and compromise — 
 men who never see their country, Europe, or the 
 world unless under the historic eye of Mr. Speaker. 
 Our most famous Parliamentary Ministers — 
 Walpole, North, W. Pitt, Gladstone — in European 
 policy led us into a series of disasters. We were 
 only successful in war when men like Cromwell, 
 Chatham, and Wellington broke away from the 
 Parliamentary fetters. There is no one to deliver 
 us from it now. The old humdrum Parliamentary 
 
 91
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 machine — with weeks of futile debate, questions, 
 committees, intrigues, busybodies, Paul Prys, and 
 envious traitors — has to go rumbling along, though 
 our men die and food-ships sink. 
 
 Home Rule not Independence 
 
 So, too, the Irish dilemma is mainly due to 
 the superstition which surrounds the name of 
 Parliament. To the average Briton Parliament 
 is a sort of terrestrial Providence — a heaven to 
 which patriotic souls may ascend to glory. A 
 glamour of mundane omnipotence gilds it. When 
 Mr. Gladstone proposed Home Rule for Ireland, 
 very wisely, as most of us thought, but identified 
 this with the ambiguous term of Parliament, Irishmen 
 and too many Britons, Australians, and Americans 
 took this to mean the practical autonomy and inde- 
 pendent supremacy of an Irish House of Commons. 
 All Parliaments within the British Empire have 
 real independence with only a formal suzerainty. 
 To the average Briton the idea of any Parliament 
 being subordinate to another Parliament was a 
 paradox. Mr. Gladstone and his party might 
 reiterate with cogent eloquence that the new 
 Parliament in Dublin was quite an understudy to 
 the old Parliament in Westminster. To the Irish 
 this seemed only meant to save Mr. Gladstone's 
 face and ease the Gladstonian conscience ; but that, 
 in fact and for the future, a Parliament in Dublin 
 really meant the national independence of Ireland. 
 And the more familiar the idea of a Dublin Parlia- 
 ment became to Britons, to Ulster, to our Colonies, 
 and abroad, the more readily it settled down to the 
 idea of Irish independence — which, as Euclid says, 
 " is absurd." 
 
 92
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Evil of House of Commons Autocracy 
 
 Of course, the believers in Parliamentary parties 
 will cry out that all this means a military dictator- 
 ship for autocracy, and rank Prussianism. To 
 charge me with anything of the kind, who for 
 fifty years now have denounced all forms of 
 aggression, warlike adventures, and absolutism, 
 would be ridiculous. A veteran republican in 
 principle, a fervent advocate for a real popular 
 government and the root principle of the purse- 
 strings being in the absolute control of representa- 
 tives of the Nation, I have never been false to this 
 faith for an hour. But I have always repudiated 
 the autocracy vested in the House of Commons — 
 and I have always held up the American as a far 
 wiser type of Government. In such war — such 
 revolution — as this, I see that our venerable for- 
 mulas about Hampden, Pym, Somers, Pitt, and Fox 
 are leading us straight to ruin, I make no charge 
 against our public men. They are doing their best 
 in the system in which they were bred. It is the 
 obsolete system which is at fault. I join in no 
 factious cry. I only say this : In the death-grapple 
 of the nation there must be one head ; in a world- 
 war strategy belongs to trained soldiers — not to 
 orators. 
 
 Lord Bryce on a Second Chamber 
 
 The Report of Lord Bryce on a Second Chamber 
 (Cd, 9038) is a most able document which will 
 have permanent interest and great authority. By 
 cruel chance it appears in a time of military crises 
 and of a whirligig at home, so that no immediate 
 effect can be given, though it well deserves to be 
 studied, even in mid-revolution as we are. Ever 
 since 1906 I have constantly written and spoken on 
 
 93
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 this problem, and in March, 1910, I published an 
 elaborate scheme of reform, which, with one 
 essential difference, runs parallel to the proposals 
 of the Conference. The points of identity in these 
 two schemes are these : (i) A Chamber of 300 ; 
 (2) Having different sections by different modes of 
 elections ; (3) All on the proportional system ; 
 (4) With one small section from the present House 
 of Peers ; (5) The principal section to be chosen 
 by electors of local areas ; (6) The sections sitting 
 for different terms of years ; (7) The present rules 
 as to all financial questions to be retained and 
 improved ; (8) Differences between the two Houses 
 to be settled by joint Conference. All of these 
 points are most ably discussed in the Report, which 
 is especially cogent in respect to the Functions and 
 the Elements of a Second Chamber ; on Indirect 
 Election ; on Proportional Election ; on Territorial 
 Areas for Electoral Bodies ; on Finance ; and on 
 maintenance of those traditional elements which are 
 compatible with modern democracy. All this is 
 excellent and convincing. 
 
 The Report Criticised 
 
 The points on which I propose to offer criticism 
 are these : (i) The election of eighty-one Peers, 
 including five bishops ; (2) Payment of salaries to 
 Senators ; (3) Election by the House of Commons 
 in geographical groups ; (4) Settlement of differences 
 between the two Houses, not by aggregate voting of 
 a two-thirds majority, but by Conferences of sixty 
 members of the two Houses, and finally " by the 
 House of Commons alone," 'Of these points Nos. 
 (i) and (2) are subordinate ; but Nos. (3) and (4) 
 would reduce the Second Chamber to be a mere 
 appendage and creature of the First Chamber, and 
 
 94
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 thus would fall back on the one-chamber system, 
 however much disguised. 
 
 Too Many Peers 
 
 The retention in a Second Chamber of an element 
 from the present House of Lords is a sound principle 
 and is forcibly argued in Section 26 of Lord Bryce's 
 Report. But the retention of eighty-one Peers, 
 including five Bishops, and these to be jointly 
 selected by the two Houses, is excessive in number, 
 and nugatory as a maintenance of historic continuity. 
 The scheme I propounded in 19 10 gave fifty 
 Senators to be elected by the House of Lords — 
 being Peers, Commoners, or ecclesiastics of any 
 Church. By this method probably one-third of 
 those chosen would not be Peers — and the Peers 
 who were elected would be chosen not as Peers but 
 as statesmen. The suggestion of salaries to the 
 new Senators is a sorry concession to democratic 
 greed. 
 
 An Echo of the People's House 
 
 But the proposed selection of three-fourths of the 
 Second Chamber by the First Chamber voting by 
 panels, and the final decision of differences " by the 
 House of Commons alone," takes the heart out of 
 the Senate as a moderating power and would make 
 it a hollow echo of the People's House. In admir- 
 able words of mature wisdom Lord Bryce in 
 Section i of his Report urges that a Second Chamber 
 should be " different in type and composition from 
 the popular assembly," that it should have " strength 
 sufficient to act as a moderating influence in the 
 conduct of national affairs." What "difference 
 in type," what " moderating influence " wovdd be 
 left to a chamber which at every stage is elected 
 more or less by the other House ? The House of 
 
 95
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Commons is to choose three-fourths ; the other 
 fourth is to be chosen hy Joint Committees ; differ- 
 ences are to be settled by joint Conferences, and 
 finally by the House of Commons. What freedom, 
 what character, what influence, what efficiency 
 would be left to a House so controlled by its great 
 neighbour, as a Russian Rada or a Roumanian 
 monarchy is under the heel of a German General ? 
 
 Mischief of Single-Chamber 
 
 All this is the one-chamber plan, saving the face 
 of the historic House. Was it not Lord Grey who 
 said that "single-chamber was damnation"? In 
 less vigorous language I venture to put in a plea for 
 the one plank of conservative force left in the wreck 
 of our ancient Constitution. My canons in 1910 
 were : — 
 
 1. That hereditary legislation is effete. 
 
 2. That a real and strong Senate is a sine qua non 
 of legislation and of government. 
 
 3. That its title must be personal merit and 
 elective choice. 
 
 Above all, it must be chosen by a body different 
 from the House of Commons^ and I proposed 
 election by the County Councils in proportion 
 to their constituencies. The essence of a Senate 
 is to bring a moderating and critical judgment on 
 the measures of a democratic House. In order to 
 be a revising force at all it must have different men, 
 of a different order, chosen by a different order of 
 electors. And so some of the ablest members of the 
 Conference seem to think. The good sense of 
 Englishmen will hold to the principle of a Second 
 Chamber differing from the first in origin and in 
 constitution, with real power, not only to delay, 
 but to moderate the legislation of the First Chamber. 
 
 96
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Omnipotent Democracy 
 
 But at present the discussion is purely academic, 
 and this masterly Report of a great jurist and 
 diplomat will sink, we fear, into the lethal Limbo 
 ot Parliamentary Papers. In the revolutionary 
 wave that is sweeping over Britain, there seems 
 little prospect of a reformed Second Chamber on 
 this or any other plan. The still calm voice of 
 Reason will not be heard amid the roar of millions 
 of voices of men and women adoring omnipotent 
 Democracy — in unison. All the signs now point 
 to this : that the new House of Commons, with 
 twenty millions of voters, half of them untried and 
 ignorant in politics, will sufFer nothing to come be- 
 tween the wind and their autocracy. Why should 
 a House of Commons be " the People " — the sole 
 representative of Democracy — and a Chamber, 
 equally elected on the score of merit by popular 
 representatives, be treated as an antique incubus ? 
 Whilst a House of Lords remains, that might be so. 
 But when the hereditary Chamber is superannuated 
 by common consent, as all serious reformers agree, 
 a true Senate, elected by chosen representatives of 
 the people, would be no less really the voice of the 
 Nation— indeed, as we see in America and in France, 
 mi^ht be the more mature and considered voice of 
 the Nation. Democracy ! What sophisms, what 
 follies, what crimes are committed in thy hallowed 
 name ! 
 
 The Gains of the War 
 
 If any of us feel downhearted at the prospect of 
 of a fifth year of this unspeakable war, let them 
 turn to Sir Walter Raleigh's Ga'ms of the War 
 (Clarendon Press, g^^.) and they will find our future 
 situation foreshadowed with judgment, courage, 
 
 H 97
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 wit, and hope. He shows that, come what may, 
 the tremendous lessons that we, the honourable 
 saviours of civilisation, have dealt to its barbarous 
 enemies, will have left the world purer and easier 
 for our sons and grandsons. The union of France, 
 Britain, Italy, and of these our Allies with the 
 mighty people of America will form a permanent 
 (/". e. a moral) League of Nations more real than 
 the dream of a formal international authority with 
 armed force. Sir Walter truly sees that we must 
 have severe trials to meet after the war, even for 
 one whole generation. We are fighting and suffer- 
 ing for our descendants — for a nobler, happier world 
 to come. Our " clear gains," he says, will be 
 found in the lessons of honour, truth, endurance, 
 simplicity, union which we have learned ourselves 
 and have taught humanity to trust — in the final 
 reconciliation of Britain with the nations that we 
 have long held at arm's length, in the vast ascendency 
 in the future of our incomparable English tongue 
 and of our immortal English literature, when both 
 will be the possession of one hundred and seventy 
 millions, spread across our planet. 
 
 [May, 191 8.] 
 
 Bishop Wilkins' Tracts 
 
 Turning to the scientific treatises of Bishop 
 Wilkins (1614— [672), a founder and first secretary 
 of the Royal Society, I was struck by a singular 
 point in the history of science and religion. 
 Wilkins, a man certainly of original mind, the 
 inventor of the term " submarine navigation," and 
 the first to consider the problem seriously as a 
 competent mathematician, published, in 1640, a 
 learned Discourse in 150 pages to prove that the 
 earth is a planet and goes round the sun. And this 
 
 98
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 adventurous essay, full oF some sound, and much 
 absurd, mechanical science, was published in a fifth 
 edition in 1707, twenty years after Newton's 
 Principiaj forty years after Newton's telescope, 
 seventy years after Galileo's Dialogues, nearly one 
 hundred years after the publication of Kepler's 
 New Astronomy, and nearly twb hundred years after 
 Copernicus began to revolutionise our conception of 
 the solar system. And Wilkins' Discourse of 640 
 was first published twenty years after the Novum 
 Organum, many years after the death of Bacon, and 
 some years after the Geometry of Descartes. That 
 is to sav, it required some two centuries before even 
 men of science were quite certain that the earth 
 moved round the sun. 
 
 Science held in fetters 
 
 When we read these mathematical Tracts of 
 Wilkins', published just a hundred years after the 
 Reformation, in the very dawn of modern philosophy 
 and physical science, we may see how original 
 thought was in the bondage of ancient fetters, even 
 in the lifetime of Descartes, Galileo, Pascal, Hobbes, 
 and Toricelli. Wilkins, keen, learned, ingenious as 
 he was, is dominated by three forces : antique 
 learning, false observations of natural phenomena, 
 and the Scriptures. He quotes Pythagoras, Aristotle, 
 Pliny, Seneca, Plutarch, Josephus, Tycho, Kepler, 
 Galileo, all as of equal authority. To them he 
 adds citations from schoolmen, renascence physicists. 
 Dr. Gilbert, both Bacons, and Talmudists. An 
 observation recorded by Mendo9a, or by Fracas- 
 torius, by Vallesius, or Fromondus, is to Wilkins 
 as conclusive as anything seen by Galileo's telescope 
 — which, by the way, he does not cite. Lastly, he 
 feels bound by the words of Scripture, and he labours 
 
 99
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 to show by a crowd of theological witnesses that 
 Revelation nowhere compels us to believe our 
 earth to be the only world, nor that the sun goes 
 round the earth. The Bible in fact seems far more 
 repressive to Free Thought, even than Pope, 
 Council, and Inquisition. The moral of all this 
 is to show how the progress of science, even of 
 mechanical invention and of human civilisation, 
 depends on the solution of ultimate problems of 
 philosophy and religion. 
 
 The German Don Quixotes 
 
 In these days of strain I find relief in bathing my 
 spirit again in the great books of all time ; and of 
 late I have been turning to Don Quixote. The 
 sanguinary infatuation of the bellicose Knight and 
 the abject submission of his very human Squire 
 prefigure the insane ambition of the German 
 Quixote and the servile surrender of the German 
 people. It would seem incredible that a race of 
 such high intellect, vast learning, and wide experi- 
 ence of Nature and of Man can have nursed the 
 crazy dream of world dominion which the Kaiser 
 thunders forth to his dupes. For some two gener- 
 ations he and his kind have been taught a Hebrew 
 creed, a phantasmic philosophy, and a false history, 
 just as the Don had lost his reason by poring over 
 Knight-errantry, A perverted literature and an 
 education of drill has turned the brain of the leaders 
 of German politics and thought. They cling still 
 to their wild hopes in defiance of the rest of man- 
 kind, finding as did Quixote some subtle excuse 
 to explain every failure. Like Sancho, too, the 
 German Huns and the troopers under the whip 
 march on to death in blind faith in their imperious 
 
 100
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 masters. An inhuman doctrine of humanity, trans- 
 figured into a national religion, can alone account 
 for the Quixote of Potsdam and the delusion of 
 the Sanchos who worship him as a Saint Michael 
 in arms. 
 
 Emile Boutroux's Oxford Lecture 
 
 Having given the first lecture of the series in 
 1905, I naturally feel interested in the Herbert 
 Spencer Lecture at Oxford in 191 7. It was given 
 by M. Emile Boutroux, Hon, D.Litt., of the 
 French Academy, etc, etc., and has recently been 
 published by the Clarendon Press — The relation 
 between Thought and Action from the German and 
 fro?n the Classical point of view. After a good deal 
 of metaphysical verbiage, which to our school reads 
 only as a kind of idealist conundrum, M. Boutroux 
 settles down to a very interesting discussion on the 
 influence of German metaphysical philosophy on 
 the German mentality, especially in relation to 
 politics and war. He traces it from Kant's separa- 
 tion of Thought from Action, and then by the 
 modifications of Fichte and Hegel ; until, under 
 the Bismarckian era. Action became for the Kultur 
 of Germans its own law, and its own innate 
 development was Might. Now M. Boutroux 
 shows that, with Plato, Aristotle, and the higher 
 classical genius, 1 bought and Action are not 
 separate, but cognate, co-ordinate, and related, and 
 Action is controlled by Feeling, under the inspira- 
 tion of Thought. As a philosophical explanation 
 of the way in which violence — and then brutality 
 — has taken possession of the German mind as a 
 form both of wisdom and religion, all this is 
 excellent and suggestive. 
 
 lOI 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UMVERSITY OF CALIFORVTA
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 German Kultur and State Metaphysics 
 
 The hold which this Satanic metaphysic has 
 obtained over German Kultur and the German 
 pubhc is due to the absolute docility of German 
 education to the iron discipline of the State, i.e. to 
 the Prastorian army. There is something comic 
 in the picture of German professore, so dreamy and 
 unpractical in real life, presenting to their pupils 
 Might as the supreme law of God and Man. Such 
 is the outcome of a rotten metaphysic, M. Bou- 
 troux concludes with great force that all rightness 
 in human life comes from the due combination of 
 Thought, Feeling, and Action — " when Thought 
 and Action are both upheld and inspired by Feel- 
 ing"; "so that their relation would be one of 
 reciprocity and harmony." Now this quite funda- 
 mental truth M. Boutroux asserts almost in the 
 very words of Comte. Strangely enough, he mis- 
 quotes Comte in attributing to him the predomi- 
 nance of Feeling. Comte's maxims, as shown in 
 the handbook edited by myself, insist on the co- 
 operation and harmony of Thought, Feeling, Action. 
 " Act from Affection, Think in order to Act." 
 "The Heart suggests Problems and the Intellect 
 solves them." "The human problem consists in 
 the subordination of Egoism to Altruism." M. 
 Boutroux quotes Pascal, but omits Comte's favourite 
 motto from Vauvenargues : " Les grandes penshs 
 viennent du cceur.^'' In fact, M. Boutroux's solution 
 of the problem of life, I can assure him, is pure 
 Positivism — and is stated (in his pp. 25—32) almost 
 exactly in the language of Comte. But then, the 
 Positive Philosophy is under a conspiracy of silence 
 in the French Academy — perhaps even in some 
 Academies and Societies in England. 
 
 102
 
 A 
 
 PART VII 
 
 Suspense 
 
 S I write (June lOth) all is in suspense — 
 like the awful hush before the bursting ot 
 a tornado — 
 
 There is silence deep as death, 
 And the boldest holds his breath 
 For a time. 
 
 All seems to be waiting — waiting on the Aisne and 
 the Marne, waiting before Amiens, waiting on the 
 Belgian coast, on the Lombard plain, in Russia, in 
 the Balkans, in Asia — waiting at home for the birth 
 of our new men's and new women's Democracy — 
 especially waiting in Ireland, What is behind the 
 vast curtain of lowering cloud charged on all sides 
 with lightning, the impenetrable cloud which 
 stretches from the North Sea to the Mediterranean 
 shores and thence to Central Asia, India, and 
 Japan ? What is to come ? None but fools will 
 hazard a forecast. All that a wise man will say is, 
 all round there is coming a profoundly new world ! 
 
 The Renascence of Humanity 
 
 That tremendous date — August, 19 14 — will 
 mark an epoch — the ecumenical Revolution of the 
 Twentieth Century — far deeper and wider, far 
 more vital to Humanity than July, 1789 — the date 
 of the European Revolution in the Eighteenth 
 Century. 
 
 The year 19 14 will for ever hereafter mark a 
 
 103
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Renascence of Humanity to a common life of peace 
 and progress — social, industrial, moral, and spiritual 
 — far greater than any Renascence of the famous 
 years between 1450 and 1550 ; greater than the 
 settlement of Western Europe in the Catholic and 
 Feudal system of the Middle Ages. As the Roman 
 system waned, such men as Pliny, Seneca, Tacitus, 
 Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius felt that some cataclys- 
 mal change was coming : they had but a dim sense 
 of what it was. To-day we have but a dim sense. 
 We know that it must bring to us all dire sacrifices 
 and agonies, material and spiritual. But we know 
 that in the end it will issue in a better and a happier 
 world — or else Hell will be found on the surface of 
 this earth amid its sights and fruits, not in any fabled 
 Hell below. 
 
 No Real Peace Yet 
 
 One thing in the future, which I shall never see, 
 seems to me inevitable. When bloodshed and 
 destruction have ceased — as I firmly trust in the 
 triumphant victory of Right — there can be no 
 immediate era of peaceful settlement, international 
 communion, or social harmony. The upheaval of 
 States and orders, of sexes, of habits and beliefs has 
 been too deep and universal ; the passions have been 
 too fierce and bitter; the scars are too cruel ; the 
 hopes, the fears, the surprises, the bewilderment 
 have been so bitten into the soul that hardly one 
 generation can efface them. The aspirations of all 
 the races on earth, from the Arctic to the Pacific, 
 of all the classes and orders of society, of all the 
 multiform ranks of industry, of all the grades ot 
 civic organisation — these have been so keenly stirred 
 to their marrow that they will break forth even more 
 fiercely with any formal Peace. There will be no 
 
 104
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 real settlement with any self-styled Peace Congress. 
 When cannons cease to belch forth death, all the 
 hopes, dreams, and lusts will be wilder yet for a 
 generation — or more. The pains of new birth — 
 economic, social, national — will be constant, often 
 savage, sometimes with waste, blood, and ruin. 
 There will be no time of real peace for a generation 
 yet. Belgium — August, 191 4 — may be like the 
 Bastille in July, 1789 — only the prelude to the real 
 Revolution to come. 
 
 Chaos in Ireland 
 
 As to Ireland, the same impenetrable mystery, 
 the same hush before the storm, seems to hang over 
 all. Every one, every party, every plan seems to be 
 waiting, watching, unwilling to move. Nationalists, 
 Sinn Fein, Unionists, Ulster, priests, courts, councils, 
 troops, Government refuse to show their hands, are 
 waiting for the others to begin. The situation 
 changes every day, and nothing happens ; elections 
 are hotly debated yet do not occur ; threats, promises, 
 challenges, proclamations, Bills are scattered broad- 
 cast with flaming rhetoric, with soft allurement, 
 with fanatic treason — and yet nothing happens ; 
 all melt away and are forgotten. Ireland to-day is 
 a mere Wonderland, a Mad Hatter's tea party, in 
 which idiotic things are said and done, and extrava- 
 gant nonsense raises neither a smile nor a frown. 
 One who had no party interest but great experience 
 was heard to say : " The problems of Ireland are 
 insoluble ; nothing remains but for Britain to re- 
 cover the mastery of an island broken up into many 
 factions all at inter-racial and inter-religious war." 
 That is a pessimist view. But that is what is 
 actually the case as it stands. And perhaps it may 
 so remain — until Britain is out of this war. 
 
 105
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Federation 
 
 Life to-day is one continuous thrill. In the 
 midst of the Irish deadlock there bursts forth a new 
 cry — A Happy Thought : Federation — Home Rule 
 all round — that is to solve all difficulties, they say ! 
 This is neither the time nor is this the place to 
 touch this tremendous problem. I will only say 
 that it is big enough and intricate enough to en- 
 gross the entire thought of British statesmen for 
 years. It is a problem of vast range and difficulty. 
 What is it to include ? Is it merely to group the 
 four nations of the United Kingdom, or is it to 
 affect the whole Empire ? Is it confined to the 
 British Commonwealth ? Is India, Uganda, Rho- 
 desia, Manitoba to be dealt with ? Now there is 
 one point of crucial importance that I have not 
 seen considered : the British Constitution, by a very 
 rare exception, is unwritten. Many great authori- 
 ties regard this as its unique merit. Federation 
 involves written statutes to define Federal rights 
 and powers. Can the supreme Imperial Constitu- 
 tion then remain unwritten P Who is to write it, 
 and destroy or define its traditional elasticity, making 
 it rigid? And another dilemma arises. Jurists 
 know that the Crown has latent but legal powers 
 not familiar to the public. If these are to be stated 
 in express words by statute the entire Key Status of 
 Monarchy will be raised. If the dormant privi- 
 leges of the Crown were formally renounced we 
 are brought a step nearer to anarchic ochlocracy. 
 
 [June, 191 8]. 
 
 Memoirs of Frederick II 
 
 Historians and politicians should study with care 
 the recent translation of Henri de Catt's Memoirs 
 
 106
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 of Frederick the Great, to which Lord Rosebery 
 has added a masterly portrait of the Prussian King 
 and his Prussian Kultur} No more scathing in- 
 dictment of the vast system of Tyranny and War 
 we are fighting to destroy has yet appeared in all 
 the literature of our time. As a revelation of the 
 great king's soul I take it to be worth all the ten 
 volumes that Carlyle published in 1865. Catt's 
 French MS. in the Prussian Archives was first 
 published in Leipzig in 1 884, and the original 
 seems to have been very slightly known to Carlyle, 
 who casually alludes in four places to the " honest 
 Catt," but perhaps had no liking for the autobio- 
 graphic details which Frederick dictated to his 
 " reader." Those of us who were wearied by 
 Carlyle's interminable garrulity about every fight 
 and every creature of his Friedrich should mark this 
 picture he draws of himself — of his ruthlessness, his 
 cynicism, his inhumanity crossed with sentiment- 
 ality, his energy, his heroism, his self-devotion to his 
 ideals, his abnormal nature, his loneliness. 
 
 Lord Rosebery on Frederick 
 
 Lord Rosebery's portrait of Frederick crystallises 
 the character of this marvellous ruler, as a Holbein 
 records the old age of Henry VIH. It reveals the 
 sinister inner nature which Carlyle treats so lightly 
 — the brutal jests, the abundant tears, " reminding 
 us of the iron tears down Pluto's cheek," the 
 temper "ground harder than steel." He came to 
 the throne " with a shrivelled heart and a sardonic 
 scorn for all mankind, its morals, its conventions, its 
 cant ; there was little human left." Full justice is 
 
 ^ Frederick the Great — the Memcirs of his Reader, H. de Catt, 1758- 
 1760, translated by F. S. Flint, with an introduction by Lord 
 Rosebery. (Constable & Co., Ltd. 2 Vols., 8vo. 1916.) 
 
 107
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 done to his amazing industry, his intense devotion 
 to duty, his stern abhorrence of such infamies as 
 Prussians commit to-day. Alas ! this is the only 
 part of his life and example which they have failed 
 to assimilate. All else is Frederick's system hard- 
 ened into a national religion — the pitiless self- 
 assertion, the dogged self-sacrifice for domination, 
 the savage discipline from birth to death. Frederick 
 has become " the Patron Saint of Germany," and 
 every German in arms to-day bears in his heart the 
 Bible of his national Evangelist. This brilliant 
 study of Prussianism in its sources by Lord Rose- 
 bery ought to be issued separately as a war-pamphlet 
 by the Public Department of Information and 
 circulated broadcast by it or by one of the war- 
 literature leagues. It would show our people, it 
 would show neutrals — perhaps even Germans — 
 what a mask of horror their War-God wears in 
 our eyes. 
 
 Lord Rosebery on Pitt 
 
 And now Lord Rosebery in his learned retire- 
 ment, by which Literature gains all that Politics 
 has lost, publishes in library form his Pitt of 1891.^ 
 The small volume in Lord Morley's " Statesmen " 
 series has been reissued sixteen times since 1891, 
 and it was right that it should take a permanent 
 form in handsome type. Photographs of the three 
 portraits at different ages by Gainsborough, by 
 Hoppner, and by Sir Thomas Lawrence, all three 
 pictures being in his lordship's possession, add greatly 
 to the interest of the book. We now may know 
 exactly how the famous orator looked to his con- 
 temporaries. The Hoppner and the Lawrence 
 
 ^ Pitt, by Lord Rosebery. (Macmillan & Co. 8vo. 191 8. 
 Pp. 316.) 
 
 108
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 portraits are so curiously similar in every feature 
 and expression that they might almost be impres- 
 sions from a single plate. There are strange 
 analogies and glaring contrasts between the age of 
 Pitt and our own. But to-day it is a fascinating 
 study and a lesson rich in instruction to compare 
 our difficulties and our efforts with those of our 
 grandfathers, to judge if we are fighting the Kaiser 
 with the great heart by which Pitt faced Napoleon. 
 Let us turn again to the keen and exhaustive judg- 
 ment which Lord Rosebery brings to the Life of 
 the statesman with whom he has been associated by 
 family connection, by intimate tradition, as well as 
 by his own personal interest. 
 
 Two German Professors 
 
 There arc no more typical representatives ot 
 Teutonic Thought than Professors Troeltsch and 
 Harnack, whose views on the war have lately 
 been made public. Troeltsch, indeed, we now 
 know, opened to an Oxford professor, in 1907, 
 the same strident claims for world-dominion which 
 he utters in a Review in April, 1918. In most 
 insolent form he now declares that the Western 
 Powers by refusing to cry Kamerad and throw 
 down their arms before the Kaiser deserve con- 
 dign punishment, and so Germany has now " the 
 moral right " to exact such indemnities as will 
 leave the perverse opponents of German Kultur 
 quite prostrate and exhausted. But this is not 
 simply due to " the unfair conduct " of France 
 and England in defending themselves from in- 
 vasion, for eleven years ago Troeltsch told an 
 English friend that the annihilation of the British 
 Empire "was a necessity." Germany wanted it 
 herself. There was no more to be said. How 
 
 109
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 could Germany " fulfil her role as a World-State " 
 without it ? She must have " Australia, South 
 Africa, Hong-Kong, India." These sources of 
 wealth must fall to a World- Power. It might be 
 painful to part with, but it must be. It was Fate. 
 Britain is too weak to resist it. 
 
 Responsibility of Professortum 
 
 Now this seems to be the deliberate conviction 
 of the learned in Germany, They have given the 
 word to the reading public and have supplied the 
 War Lord and his staff with moral and even re- 
 ligious sanctions to their ambition. Among all our 
 spoony apologies for German crimes and our gullible 
 submission to German bookmen nothing has been 
 more weak than our trust that they would see 
 the error of their ways and listen to reason and 
 truth. They are themselves the living pervertcrs 
 of truth, the authorised distorters of reason. I 
 once tried to get my old friend Professor Brentano 
 to see the gulf into which Professortum was 
 plunging their pupils. Alas ! he only wondered 
 that one whom he had known on the side of 
 justice to the weak and the oppressed could have 
 so fallen from grace as to doubt the justice of 
 German claims. No ! The whole intellectual 
 system of German education has been so bewitched 
 by subtlety and self-conceit that nothing can 
 unteach them but such a lesson as the Russian 
 imperialism has brought on itself and its people. 
 
 The Poison of Kultur 
 
 From the first I thought any "Invitation to Ger- 
 man Scholars " to see the truth and to cease inciting 
 
 no
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 crimes was a futile misunderstanding of the men- 
 tality of German learning. They are, indeed, the 
 worst of all the evil elements of the nation. As 
 M. Boutroux in his Oxford lecture showed, it is 
 they who have poisoned their people with an 
 inhuman philosophy of self-righteousness and self- 
 aggrandisement. "Their poison is like the poison 
 of a serpent : they are like the deaf adder which 
 stoppeth her ears." 1 hey will not hearken to the 
 voice of the British Academy, "charming never 
 so wisely." " Adders' poison is under their lips." 
 Indeed, one of the ultimate gains of the war, we 
 trust, will be that modern learning may free itself 
 from that German ponderosity which for two 
 generations has enthralled it. In many subjects 
 its industry, patience, thoroughness, and subtlety 
 have taught the world much. But in all the moral 
 and spiritual forms of mind it has laid its heavy 
 hand on Thought by pedantic specialism, baseless 
 hypotheses, and gaseous metaphysic. Let us free 
 the world of this Kultiir of the Book along with 
 the Ktiltur of the sword. 
 
 Coxwell's Chronicles of Man 
 
 I often wonder why this time of intense strain, 
 which gives voice to so much verse, seems to pro- 
 duce no long or even no substantial poems as did 
 other wars — nothing but epitaphs, sonnets, or 
 hymns. But let no one think that the poetic 
 oestrus is ended or dormant. For now there has 
 been sent me what I suppose is one of the longest 
 — certainly one of the most ambitious, most elabor- 
 ate of human compositions in verse. ^ Its length 
 
 1 Chronicles of Man, by C. Fillingham Coxwell. (Watts and 
 Co., 1915, Cr. 8vo. Pp. 655.) 
 
 Ill '
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 is portentous. It is much longer than the twenty- 
 four books of the Iliad ^ and the lines also are 
 hexameters. It is double as long as the Mneid 
 or Paradise Lost^ and longer by a quarter than the 
 Divina Commedia. In range of subject Dante's 
 poem alone can be compared with it, for it 
 narrates the entire history of Nature and Man from 
 the nebular origin of our planet down to the 
 battle of Ypres. The whole poem covers 655 pages 
 octavo — the Table of Contents covers ten pages. 
 There are four Parts, eighteen Cantos, and 366 
 separate stanzas. It recounts the entire history of 
 civilisation from the arboreal ape to the defeat of 
 the Hun. As a monument of human industry, 
 courage, and rhyming power the book really forms 
 a new record. 
 
 Rhymed Iambic Hexameters 
 
 Not only in scale and in range is this extra-, 
 ordinary poem unique, for it is written throughout 
 in a metre of which I can find rare examples. It 
 is in rhymed iambic hexameter — Pope's Iliad and 
 Dryden's Virgil being in rhymed iambic penta- 
 meter. Tennyson's ten lines In the Valley of 
 Cauterez are perhaps rhymed hexameters, but 
 irregular, with occasional use of trochees, or tri- 
 brachs. Chapman's Iliad (but not his Odyssey) is 
 in rhymed iambic heptameter, and so is William 
 Morris's Mneid. Tennyson often used longer lines, 
 but they were trochaic, dactylic, or anapaestic. 
 Rhymed iambic hexameters were used by Drayton 
 in his Polyolbion. They have much to recommend 
 them for a poem of this enormous length and 
 encyclopaedic grasp. They break the monotonous 
 tum-turn-diim-dum which even Pope and Dryden 
 can hardly make majestic, and they avoid the 
 
 112
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 long-drawn, crowded lines of Chapman and Morris. 
 English rhymed iambics in six feet have some 
 advantages over the common couplet of five feet, 
 and they adapt themselves better to evolution and 
 analysis. They can be made into fine lines. 
 
 The Epic of Humanity 
 
 I fear that the execution does not bear out the 
 audacity of this impossible task. Homer, Shake- 
 speare, Milton, combined with Bacon, Newton, 
 and Doctor Johnson in one brain could not trans- 
 fuse the entire story of Nature and Man, politics 
 and literature, into a single poem. But the idea 
 interests me, as a forecast, just as John Brown's 
 heroic death heralded emancipation. The author 
 devotes thirty-four lines of a whole stanza (Part 
 IV., iii.) to Auguste Comte, and he seems to have 
 been inspired to attempt the Epic of Humanity 
 adumbrated in the Positive Polity (IV., p. 420). 
 Comte conceived that one day a poet might arise 
 who, as Dante took his aerial flight through the 
 triple worlds of theologic vision, so he would 
 survey in an ideal vision the whole past of Man 
 on earth through all the stages of progress until 
 he reaches the earthly Paradise of Man's normal 
 perfected existence in the glorified expansion of 
 Heart, Mind, and Character in harmony ; even as 
 Dryden says : — 
 
 From harmony — from heavenly harmony 
 ' This universal frame began : 
 
 From harmony to harmony 
 Through all the compass of tlie notes it ran, 
 The diapason closing full in man. 
 
 Alas ! we have no Dryden. It will need a 
 Dryden, a Milton, a Wordsworth raised to the 
 nth power of inspiration to effect such a task. 
 
 I 113
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 And the age is not propitious even to a fraction 
 of a Wordsworth. 
 
 Lyric Poets Short-lived 
 
 In this awful war we have lost many a young 
 poet ; and the thought often makes me remember 
 how short was the life of our most promising and 
 beloved singers. Passion, courage, ambition swal- 
 lowed up too many ere their prime — Marlowe 
 and R. Greene at 31, Sidney at 32, Charles Wolfe 
 at 32, T. Nash at 34, Herbert at 39, Lovelace at 
 40, Spenser at 46. In a later age Keats died at 
 27, Shelley at 30, Byron at 36, Burns at 37, 
 Goldsmith at 46 ; and Gray, whom we think of 
 as a meditative veteran, was only 55 at his death. 
 We all remember that Shakespeare's vast work was 
 complete long before his death at the age of 52, 
 But perhaps few persons are aware that 52 is the 
 normal age to which the lyric poet can attain. 
 Poetry begins so early : and too often it wears 
 out the frame. 
 
 Average Age of Lyric Poets is 52 
 
 It occurred to me to calculate the average age 
 of our Lyrists. I took Palgrave's Golden Treasury 
 as a good list, from Sir T. Wyat (died 1542) 
 down to Wordsworth (died 1850). In those three 
 centuries Palgrave includes some seventy poets, and 
 on striking the average age of them all together the 
 result is just 52 — Shakespeare's age. Of course, 
 lyric poetry was usually composed in early youth. 
 I did not include the names of three who can 
 hardly be reckoned as poets : CoUey Cibber (died 
 at 86), Mary Lamb (died at 83), and Mrs. Bar- 
 bauld (died at 82). The only poets in Palgrave's 
 
 114
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 list who reached four-score are Herrick at 83, 
 Waller at 82, Wordsworth at 80. Samuel Rogers 
 alone — quantum valeat — attained the age of 92. 
 
 The Greater Poets Live Longer 
 
 There does not seem to be any inexorable law 
 which carries off poets in early life. The tragic 
 and comic poets of Athens lived to a great age. 
 Homer and Pindar are believed to be venerable. 
 The great Italian poets did not die young, nor 
 did the Spanish dramatists, nor the French. The 
 early death of the Roman poets of the Augustan 
 age was no doubt due to the violent times in which 
 the Republic ended, and to the reckless lives that 
 are bred by an era of destruction and change, 
 intellectual, moral, and political. And this is 
 peculiarly the case with our Renascence movement 
 of the sixteenth century and the Revolution of 
 the seventeeth century. But as Milton, Dryden, 
 Cowper, Blake, Wordsworth lived to full age, as 
 did our recent poets, we may trust that meditative 
 and narrative poetry is not inimical to life. In the 
 spasms which produce the higher lyrics there may 
 be some poison. And this may account for it that 
 our seventy English lyrists did not exceed in the 
 average the age of 52, and nearly all the best 
 scarcely reached 40, 
 
 "5
 
 PART VIII 
 
 Idle Formulas 
 
 I AM in a mood of wonder, of criticism, some 
 might say of pessimism. Have the various 
 orders of men w^ho for two centuries now 
 have ruled the Empire, who have built up our 
 vast trade, finance, and industries ; have our match- 
 less workmen, whose good sense we held to be 
 equal to their strength, their patience, and their 
 skill — have all these lost their grip of facts ? In- 
 stead of facing real dilemmas with their old clear 
 sight and stout heart they seem given up to catch- 
 words, grand phrases, Utopian dreams. On the 
 fourth of August, 1789, in the French Revolution, 
 all the ranks resigned every right, and "overturned 
 the ancient order of the kingdom," as Mirabeau 
 said, in a single night. They gave themselves 
 up to an orgy of grandiloquence. Declarations, 
 mottoes, "principles" followed in profuse rhetoric. 
 They decreed honours to " the deputation of the 
 human race," decreed Te Deums^ proclaimed 
 " Rights of Man," and named the King " the 
 restorer of liberty." Are we having our Fourth 
 of August, flinging to the winds the British 
 Constitution and trusting to formulas and words } 
 
 The League of Nations 
 
 Formulas, phrases, catchwords are the only 
 answers to every riddle of the Sphinx. To 
 
 116
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 establish peace after the war — nay, even now, in 
 mid-war — "A League of Nations" is to come 
 out of a ** deputation of the human race. Are 
 enemy nations to be in it ? Well ! why not, 
 if they like ? Anyhow, we can see how things 
 pan out ! Is the League to have super-sovereign 
 and coercive powers — and if so, what powers ? 
 Well, that is a detail ; we can settle all that when 
 the deputies from the nations meet ! Home Rule 
 is an old trouble. But the blessed word " Federa- 
 tion " will solve the puzzle. " Home Rule all 
 round," don't you see ! Four nations in these 
 islands — four Parliaments ! Four new Home Rule 
 Bills ! It is so much easier to pass four Home 
 Rule Acts than it was to pass one ! Are all four 
 to be identical — are England and Wales, England 
 and Ireland so entirely alike ? Well, that is a 
 detail — matter of drafting — we can settle that 
 when we get the Bills in print ! 
 
 Dominion Home Rule 
 
 The Principle is the main thing — pass the first 
 reading and all will go straight. How about the 
 Dominions ? Oh ! they have Home Rule now. 
 Are the British and the Irish Home Rule Acts 
 to be on the Dominion type ? Well ! why not ? 
 — it works very well in Australia ! How about 
 Customs and Excise ? Oh ! these are matters of 
 finance, of ^ s. d. — must not interfere with great 
 moral and social blessings. What about India ? 
 Is it .to have Dominion Home Rule, raise its 
 own Army, settle its own Revenue, Customs and 
 Parliament ? Well ! well ! we shall see when 
 350,000,000 Indians get adult suffrage. We shall 
 make politicians of them, citizens, patriots. They
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 won't do anything foolish. Trust the People — 
 white or dark, male or female. 
 
 \_July, 1918.] 
 
 Industrial Unrest 
 
 Then there is Industrial Unrest — perhaps more 
 vital, more urgent even than Leagues of Nations, 
 or Federation. There are tremendous problems to 
 settle when peace comes at last. Trade Union 
 rules, dilutees, return of soldiers, displacement of 
 labour, men replaced by women, equal wages for 
 men and women, the minimum wage of 305. to 
 man and woman, shop stewards, control of works 
 by the workers, wages during unemployment, the 
 return of the women — wives, at least, must return 
 to home work. Have ministers, employers, capi- 
 talists, and financiers worked out solutions to these 
 problems ? The millions of what are called 
 "organised labour" — which means those who vote 
 " by the card " anything that passionate orators and 
 Mr. Sidney Webb calls the social programme — 
 declare that they intend to do away with the 
 capitalist system of industry, root and branch. Is 
 British industry, urban and rural, to be recast on 
 the Socialist basis ? 
 
 The Popular Nostrums 
 
 There are a dozen kinds of Socialism, varying 
 from the Trotsky Red method to a bourgeois co- 
 operative grocery. All we see is that Congresses 
 cheer Russian terrorists, or Russian demagogues 
 who have escaped from the chaos they produced ; 
 they embrace " comrades " from any country that 
 can utter the Marxian shibboleth. The definite 
 things voted seem to be " Conscription of Wealth," 
 
 u8
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 maintenance of war wages, reduction of war prices, 
 equal rights of men and women, and State support 
 of all who need it. Ye who rule, ye who have 
 capital to employ, ye who will have to pay the 
 taxes — have you fairly made up your minds what 
 you intend to do about all these ? No ! they say, 
 it will be time enough to do this when we -see what 
 the new Parliament will do or say ! If twenty 
 millions of British — and Irish — men and women 
 cannot find the right answer, who can ? How can 
 we ? 
 
 The Babel of Reform 
 
 What troubles me is that in mid-war we seem to 
 be shouting to one another tremendous formulas 
 which may mean anything or nothing, but of which 
 no detailed and practical explanation is given. A 
 grand Irish Convention incubates for months ; 
 Irish Acts of sweeping range follow one another 
 like film pictures and disappear like them ; Pro- 
 clamations, Commissions, Leagues follow and die 
 away, too ; Irish electors thunder out Treason, 
 Separation, The Republic, and no one is a penny 
 the worse ; Ulster, Nationalists, Sinn Fein orate, 
 bow, and leave the stage. So, too, overboard goes 
 the House of Lords ! What is to take its place ? 
 A dozen new Senates are proposed, discussed with 
 learning and wisdom, and then they, too, melt away 
 off the curtain. Is there to be any Second 
 Chamber at all ? Well ! why worry ? Need 
 there be any ? The Lords still can do any amount 
 of talk — what more do we v/ant ? Then education 
 goes along with interminable amendments to grand 
 ideals which grow dim as they are watched. 
 Reforms, watchwords, panaceas succeed each other 
 in ceaseless outbursts, just as they did in France in 
 
 119
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 1789. Listen to the "Maternity" cry! — "Save 
 the Babies ! " Feed the children before lessons ; 
 purify milk ; abolish drink ; destroy infectious 
 disease ; expel alien traitors ; restore Russia, give 
 them a new army, send them boots, flannel shirts, 
 motors, steam ploughs, another 150 million 
 sterling ; tax luxury to zero ; restore the Jews to 
 the Holy Land ! Why the Jews ? Why not 
 Philistines, Canaanites, Jebusites — the autoch- 
 thonous inhabitants by the principle of nationalities ? 
 And then a buffoon with a drum and a crowd of 
 men and women with a past goes about " smelling 
 out" Huns like an African witch-doctor. How is 
 all this to be done ? How ? we ask. All I hear 
 are fresh cries — louder, more grandiloquent. 
 
 Schemes too Vague 
 
 As to these portentous reforms to recast the 
 Bri'-ish Constitution, to consolidate the Empire, I 
 do not venture to offer an opinion. A League of 
 Nations, Federation, Home Rule for Ireland, Adult 
 Suffrage (it must come to that). Socialism v. 
 Capitalism — all these have been urged by very 
 eminent statesmen or by leaders of powerful parties. 
 I will not declare against them. I only ask. What 
 exactly does each of them imply ? With profound 
 respect for the Prime Minister, for the American 
 President, and Viscount Grey — all of whom have 
 served their country and its cause beyond praise — 
 none of them have yet answered such questions as 
 those raised by myself, by Mr. Firth and others. 
 Is not our Alliance a real League of Nations now ? 
 Can there be any other until the infernal ambition 
 of the enemy is extinct ? Is the League to control 
 armed power in order to enforce its will ? If not, 
 it is the impotent Hague Convention over again, 
 
 I2Q
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 If it has armed power, is not that the prolonged 
 maintenance of huge armaments ? Who, and when, 
 is to decide which nations are to join, and in what 
 proportion of votes and of force ? And are the 
 nations to be stereotyped as they stand — will they 
 not rise and fall, break up, and re-group ? 
 
 Lord Grey's Pamphlet 
 
 Take the pamphlet of the late Foreign Secretary 
 — a perfectly " correct " but anasmic diplomatic 
 document. His conditions for the League are that 
 it must be adopted by the Executive Heads of 
 States. Who are they ? A vote one night in the 
 Commons, an election in America, a crisis in 
 PVance, may change them. " They must lead — 
 not follow." Does a British Prime Minister 
 always lead, and never follow ? Secondly, says 
 Lord Grey, the League will limit the sovereignty 
 of each Power. Well ! that is a formidable 
 demand. We should like to know what kind ot 
 limitation, what amount of limitation would be 
 involved. Also, would our own empire, and all 
 parts of it, accept such outside authority ; would 
 America, would France — to say nothing of Russia 
 — or the enemy monarchs ? In any case, the 
 League must crush all recalcitrant or " conscien- 
 tious" members with all their force — "economic, 
 military, or naval." Well ! but this is the World- 
 War back again, in its most awful and endless form. 
 Alas ! the Lord of Fallodon, whom we all honour 
 and trust, has not used well his well-earned rest. 
 He has not gauged deep enough the seas of trouble 
 around us ; he has not shown us how to land the 
 German sword-fish ; he has only added to the vague 
 and empty cries which resound in the air — to which 
 Echo answers : Where, oh ! where ? — and how ? 
 
 121
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 The Wreck of International Law 
 
 Surely a condition that must precede any League 
 of Nations — indeed, any permanent peace — has 
 been strangely forgotten. The intercourse of 
 nations until this war has always been based upon 
 what used to be known as International Law. But 
 International Law is dead — shattered — riddled with 
 mockery and insult. Our enemies, Germany, 
 Austria, Turkey, Bulgaria — of late, some of the 
 de facto Governments of Russia, or of countries that 
 once made up Russia — have violently, systematic- 
 ally, and officially broken and even denounced the 
 most sacred rules of civilised war. Sovereigns, 
 diplomatists, legists, speaking for some 200 millions 
 of men, repudiate with ridicule the binding force 
 of these *' obsolete " fetters on mighty races. How 
 is any sort of common international agreement 
 possible until this temper is cast out ? Who is to 
 be the new Grotius, the modern Wheaton ? The 
 vast edifice of civilised jurisprudence, built up with 
 centuries of thought, has been pulverised like the 
 Cathedral of Reims. How are nations to rest 
 whilst half Europe glories in perfidy, piracy, and 
 murder ? How are they to rebuild the vast Code 
 of Law, of which the wreckage drifts on every sea, 
 on every shore, on half the cities and houses we 
 once thought safe from rank savagery ? It would 
 be as vain a hope to rebuild the ancient Code as 
 to restore the sculptures and pictured windows ot 
 Reims. 
 
 New Problems of Public Law 
 
 Only a shallow mind can dream of reviving 
 International Law as it stood in 1913. Its only 
 sources were treaties, official pronouncements, and 
 the books of eminent jurists. But now these are a 
 
 122^
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 confused and contradictory mass, and some men 
 who once were honoured authorities have joined in 
 destroying the accepted canons. But there is a 
 deeper point behind all this which is so strangely 
 overlooked. It is this. The new elements of war 
 and the altered conditions of State authority have 
 really made much of the old law inapplicable and 
 impossible. Three things are new — air warfare, 
 submarine warfare, and the entire nation in war 
 work. The enormous range, height, and incalcu- 
 lable chances of all air work open even more 
 insoluble problems than do the extension of guns 
 and explosives. If submarine war is legitimate — 
 and how is it to be stopped ? — what are to be its 
 lawful conditions ? If the entire nation — men and 
 women of all ages, even children — are helping on 
 war, is there any real distinction between com- 
 batants and noncombatants left ? If the whole 
 population is under military order, and every 
 Minister is practically an army chief, and every 
 '' board " is almost a court-martial, is there any real 
 difference between a soldier and a civilian ? The 
 enemy have solved all these questions with their 
 own brutal arrogance ; and we have been forced 
 too often to follow their cruel lead. But can we 
 in reason say that the old rules need no kind of 
 amendment ? 
 
 Old Law Inadequate 
 
 Think of all the intricate rules as to "civilian 
 population," as to " prisoners and wounded," as to 
 the use of "poisons," "embargo," "blockade," 
 "confiscation," "military occupation," "requisi- 
 tions," "neutral commerce," "enemy civilians," 
 " contraband," and all the mass of decisions and 
 dicta relating to these matters. All the old rules 
 
 123
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 have been ruthlessly defied for four years as obsolete 
 rubbish, and learned arguments by diplomats and 
 jurists have been piled up to show that the new- 
 instruments and conditions of " modern " war make 
 it utterly impossible to observe them. We very 
 indignantly deny this : but as we do not observe 
 the old rules consistently now ourselves, can we 
 feel confident that no new modifications are needed ? 
 If so, w^hat are they ? Who is going to make 
 them ? Can we suppose that the Germans at the 
 fancied Peace Congress are going placidly to return 
 to Vattel, Bynkershoek, and the judgments of 
 British Prize Courts ? " How can we see, one 
 thousand feet up in the air [say the Germans], 
 which is a school or a hospital and which is a factory 
 of bombs ? And if we kill women — they are 
 helping to kill our men." And " if we feed badly 
 your prisoners it is because you are starving our 
 women and children." What is to be the new 
 rule as to " retorsion " or " reprisals " ? There will 
 be fifty such knots to untie before the world has 
 agreed to a Twentieth Century International Law. 
 
 New Frontiers of Nations 
 
 Before we can frame a League of Nations there 
 is a preliminary question : What are the frontiers of 
 nations — where in the new maps are the borders of 
 Germany, of Austria, of Turkey, of Russia ? Do 
 we realise that even for civil purposes and in peace 
 air transport, submarine transport in their certain 
 expansion will practically neutralise or modify all 
 national frontiers, especially those of coasts ? How 
 can foreign goods or persons be kept out, customs 
 tariffs levied if fleets of submarine smugglers can 
 dump their cargoes on any unseen spot by day or 
 jiight ? Our coast-guard can watch for ships, but 
 
 124
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 they cannot watch for submarines. Valuable cargoes 
 of small bulk — watches, tobacco, spirits can be run 
 in any cove by night from submarines of 5,000 tons. 
 Persons, papers, and articles prohibited from enter- 
 ing any country can be dropped from air-ships. It 
 will be impossible to enforce customs, police, pass- 
 port, or any other frontier regulation when practically 
 frontiers will have ceased to exist. 
 
 Air-Craft and Submarines 
 
 Any cargo in moderate bulk can be landed from 
 invisible boats, and any person or thing can be sud- 
 denly dropped in the middle of any country from 
 a machine which is practically invisible until the 
 moment it descends. All this is possible in settled 
 times of peace : much more in the time of bitter 
 estrangement and desperate competition which must 
 succeed to actual fi^htin";. No one can fortell the 
 possible developments of air-craft and submarine 
 craft. For merely commercial use, where neither 
 size nor speed nor defence are in question, there 
 seems to be no definite limit to their power. In 
 that case frontiers will be geographical but not 
 material boundaries. Much of the old conditions 
 of police, revenue, alienage, and even of military 
 guard will have to be transformed. The conse- 
 quence of this unforeseen, unparalleled, desperate 
 world-war and of all the scientific novelties of 
 destruction, transport, and reaction which it has 
 called out must require a complete recasting of the 
 Law of Nations, both in the side of war as in that 
 of peace, for our old books are useless. The Law 
 of Nations avowedly rests on " use and wont," the 
 "practice" of civilised nations. Half the civilised 
 nations are decivilised, their " practice " has become 
 barbarous, and we are forced to imitate much of 
 
 125
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 their " practice." Need we lay down the law as to 
 the League of Nations until we see our way to a 
 new Law of Nations — which nearly all nations have 
 now torn up ? 
 
 Federation Dilemma 
 
 And now as to Federation, which many eminent 
 Statesmen favour, quite suddenly, as a solution of 
 the Home Rule imbroglio. What in practical form 
 do they mean ? Federation means the combination 
 of national units previously separated or hostile. 
 Home Rule in any form means severance of units 
 previously joined — in its more extreme form at pre- 
 sent in Ireland it means separation^ antagonism. 
 When the German Empire was formed in 187 1 
 it became a Federation of States previously more 
 or less independent. When Norway and Sweden 
 parted. Home Rule expanded into separation, as it 
 has done to-day in Finland. But if we are to have 
 Home Rule all round and four new Parliaments 
 under four elaborate Acts, what is to be the place 
 of the Imperial Parliament ? What is to be the 
 brand-new British Constitution ? Who is to re- 
 duce to written words the mysteries and traditions 
 of the Privy Council ? Who will draft in clauses 
 the rights, powers, prerogatives of the British 
 Crown ? Would any be left ? 
 
 Conscription of Wealth 
 
 Then as to the abysmal problem of exchanging 
 Capitalism for Socialisjn, as to Conscription of 
 Wealth, as to Labour becoming its own employer, 
 its own manager, its own paymaster — I have heard 
 no answer to my questions. How are the work- 
 men to obtain the intricate expert knowledge 
 
 126
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 required to direct modern industry ? How can the 
 business of trade be carried on if it has to be settled 
 by public meeting ? How will Labour be in con- 
 trol unless it is allowed to know what is being 
 done ? Who is to find the funds if Parliament (that 
 is, twenty millions of men and women electors) 
 are to determine their own wages ? If the State 
 has to meet expenditure so enormously increased, 
 how is the revenue to be raised ? How can wealth 
 be conscribed unless by repudiating payment of the 
 National Debt ? To repudiate it, or even to reduce 
 the interest on it, is to destroy credit. But wealth 
 means credit. 
 
 Wealth Means Credit and Law 
 
 Wealth means that which is owed under contract. 
 If the cardinal national credit is destroyed by re- 
 pudiating loans, wealth disappears. Estates mean 
 what tenants are required to pay. Shares are the 
 dividend that companies contract to pay. Luxuries 
 are produced because rich men will buy them. 
 But shatter credit by ceasing to enforce contracts 
 and wealth disappears. The things that wealthy 
 owners possess, if all seized at once, become like 
 wasted Russian estates, useless to the Socialist 
 captors until an immense amount of Capital and 
 Labour has been expended on them. Social con- 
 vulsion annihilates wealth — meaning what is owed 
 under contract. Nothing is left but bare tracts of 
 land, insolvent companies, worthless title deeds, 
 and useless articles of pleasure — yachts, pictures, 
 hot-houses, and jewels. 
 
 The Mirage of Bolshevism 
 
 Some suppose that the hideous collapse of Bol- 
 shevism will cure our men of Socialism. I do not 
 
 127
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 think so. All our best Labour leaders, and the 
 sane mass of our workmen, look with disgust on 
 the crimes and anarchy in Russia. They still 
 believe and hope that Socialism in Britain will 
 avoid such folly, such disasters. The tremendous 
 story of the Revolution, like that of 1789, over- 
 shadows its failures. The sudden overthrow of a 
 Tsar, absolute ruler over 150 millions of subjects, 
 and that by an almost spontaneous upheaval without 
 war, the spoliation of 100,000 tyrannous nobles, 
 the ruin of capitalism, and the abject panic of 
 bourgeois intellectuals and officials — all this without 
 parallel in the history of man — has sent through 
 the proletariat of the world a thrill, a hope, an 
 inspiration far wider and deeper than the French 
 uprising of 1789. 
 
 [July, 19 1 8.] 
 
 Mr. Asquith's Romanes Lecture 
 
 The Romanes Lecture at Oxford is a joy to all 
 Victorians who have suffered from Early Georgian 
 ribaldry, with cries of: "Go up, ye Baldheads ! " 
 Mr. Asquith, who is at once Victorian, Edwardian, 
 and Georgian, has deftly hit off the characters of 
 the Victorian Age with that sure touch which 
 Jowett, they say, saw as "the rare good sense that 
 amounts to genius." It is delightful to have the 
 master described by his pupil as having that pecu- 
 liar mixture " of worldly and unworldly wisdom." 
 As one who knew most of the persons mentioned 
 in the Lecture I can bear witness to the truth of 
 these portraits. I resided in Oxford from 1849 ^^ 
 1855 — Jowett and Pattison were the examiners for 
 my Degree ; I was ten years junior to Matthew 
 Arnold (whom Swinburne used to call " David, 
 the son of Goliath ") ; and John Morley came 
 
 128 
 
 iAmX^ 
 
 ^t^-'^
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 half-way between myself and Mr. Asquith in 
 1870. Whatever may be said of the Victorians, 
 they did things, they saw things, they left things. 
 By the terms of the Romanes Trust the lecturer 
 was limited to literature and science. But politics 
 and theology, as Mr. Asquith justly points out, 
 absorbed so much of the energies of the Victorians 
 that it will prove the most copious material for the 
 future historian. Would that some new benefactor 
 to Alma Mater would found a Lecture for these 
 two dominant objects of thought. Surely Oxford 
 has had something to do and to say in politics and 
 in theology within the last hundred years. Alas ! 
 perhaps these burning topics might kindle a fire 
 that would lay the Sheldonian Theatre in ashes. 
 
 The Story of Roumania 
 
 To know what is the fate of a land which falls 
 into the claws of the Hun one may read the ghastly 
 story in Mrs. Will Gordon's new book on Rou- 
 mania.^ The author of A JVoman in the Balkans^ 
 and of other works, has long been an ardent tra- 
 veller, and has an intimate knowledge of the Court, 
 the literature, and the people of that picturesque 
 and legendary land. The first part of her volume 
 gives an interesting account of the beauty and rare 
 resources of the country, with a sketch of its 
 history from its foundation as a Roman province 
 by Trajan in the second century a.d., down to the 
 war and the reign of King Ferdinand of Hohen- 
 zollern and Queen Marie, daughter of our Duke 
 of Edinburgh. The picture of the mountains 
 and then of the great plain, with the quaint con- 
 
 '^ Roumania, Yesterday and 'To-day, by Mrs. Will Gordon, F.R.G.S., 
 with an Introduction and two chapters by H.M. the Queen of 
 Roumania, and Illustrations. 8vo. John Lane. 1 9 18, 
 
 K 129
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 trast of peasant homes and Bucharest elegance, 
 is a fascinating tale of a gay and graceful race. 
 Then in the second part comes the awful crash 
 which the Kaiser's ferocity vented upon all this 
 beauty, peace, and charm. The story of the 
 bleeding to death of this fair land and of the 
 tearing out of its vitals by the Prussian vulture 
 is one long thrill of horror, such as must stir the 
 cold blood in the dull veins of the most caitiff 
 pacifist amongst us. 
 
 Queen Marie 
 
 A special grace is given to the book by the truly 
 pathetic chapters contributed by Queen Marie, who 
 also sends some admirable photographs. A second 
 Queen of Roumania now proves herself to have a 
 lyric soul of her own and a poet's sympathy with 
 the life of the people. This beautiful woman, this 
 heroic leader of her crushed soldiers, this mother 
 in her agony of grief, has poured out her heart 
 in cries that might have been wrung from Leon 
 Tolstoy in his Peace and War. Granddaughter at 
 once of our Victoria and of the Tsar Alexander II, 
 Oueen Marie seems to blend our English grasp on 
 truth, good faith, and justice, with the Russian 
 passion of pity, grief, vision, and hope. No royal 
 man or woman, no one of such high race and place 
 of trust, has ever touched notes of a broken heart 
 so deep and so rich with the music of inspiration. 
 Queen Marie, as well as her friend, the authoress, 
 deserve the grateful thanks of Briton and of 
 Rouman, for whom both have worked and wept. 
 
 130
 
 PART IX 
 
 Problems of the League 
 
 NOW that the military genius of Foch and 
 the heroism of France and her Allies has 
 averted the great peril — nay, has opened 
 a path to certain victory over barbarism — v^^e can 
 w^ith more freedom consider the settlement of civil- 
 isation when the fighting is at an end. We all thirst 
 for peace, and vi^ith it some insurance against these 
 horrors of war. And so, statesmen, writers, and 
 speakers are invoking what is called a League of 
 Nations. A peaceful understanding between all 
 civilised peoples — this is the hope of every creed and 
 the object of every public act. Statesmen, publicists, 
 priests, and democrats, all alike profess this as their 
 aim. But, let us know what we mean, let us look at 
 hard facts to-day. Do not let fine phrases do duty 
 foe practical forethought. Without this our League 
 of Nations will end in disastrous delusions, such as 
 have beguiled the spasmodic craving for peace in 
 the races of Russia. Fervent believer in inter- 
 national union as I have been all my life, and as 
 I am still, I trust that England will listen to all 
 that has been said by Lord Sydenham, by Sir John 
 Macdonell, Mr. Firth, by myself and others, to 
 show how many things must be done, how many 
 dangers must be overcome before any working 
 League of Nations can bring about real and 
 permanent peace. 
 
 [August, 1918.]
 
 obiter Scrlpta 
 
 Pacifists and Socialists 
 
 If we were now to give effect to any such 
 League in the crude form in which it is proposed, 
 it would land us in another Brest-Litovsk Treaty, 
 whereby the Allies would be sold to their enemies. 
 The temptation to hope much from Treaties of 
 Peace is great. Whilst the whole world is panting 
 for rest, statesmen dare not summarily reject a 
 Utopia for the materialising of which they need 
 not immediately be troubled. The public, which 
 knows little of diplomatic traps, and knows nothing 
 of the Law of Nations, has no idea of the innate 
 differences which keep Nations apart and domi- 
 nate their common action. But whilst statesmen 
 and public easily yield to the popular cry which 
 promises some hope, there are at least two move- 
 ments among us which actively promote a Brest- 
 Litovsk settlement. Just as the landlords of Fin- 
 land and the Baltic provinces of Russia hailed a 
 peace " made in Germany," to save them from 
 spoliation by Trotsky's Red Guards, so we have 
 a small group of Elder Statesmen whose terror of 
 Social ruin makes them ready for peace on nominal 
 terms. Again, our Socialist Pacifists, like the Bol- 
 shevists, are so eager to get to work on " social 
 liquidation," that they care not how soon Old 
 England is wrecked, and they enlist under the 
 feudal banner of a Norman Chief. 
 
 Dangers of Idealism 
 
 The popular cry now is all for Idealism — a noble 
 hope, if only we recognise it as an ideal, not as a 
 practicable policy. Ministers naturally accept the 
 Principle^ well knowing that the " Ways and 
 Means" can wait. And then Ex-ministers are 
 
 132
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 anxious to go one better, having even less responsi- 
 bility for details and schemes. But just consider 
 the manifold problems to be settled before a League 
 of Nations can be reduced from a formula to a 
 Treaty of Peace, (i) Which are real Nations .? 
 The vast Russian and Chinese Empires have been 
 breaking up ; we know^ not yet what states may 
 be formed out of their frafrmcnts. The Balkan 
 races are still in a condition of chaos. Belgium 
 and Roumania are mere bond-slaves of the German 
 conqueror. The Habsburg Empire is in manifest 
 dissolution, and we trust that the Turkish Empire 
 is not more stable. In Europe, in Asia, in Africa, 
 new nationalities are struggling into birth. How 
 can we construct a League of Nations until we 
 know which, how many, how solid are the Nations 
 to be our partners, even our judges ? There are 
 now a dozen races claiming to be new nations. 
 
 (2) When we know which are the substantive 
 Nations in the League, how are we to apportion 
 the respective vote and weight of each — say of the 
 British Empire and Belgium, or Serbia ? 
 
 Coercive Power of the League 
 
 Then come the two crucial questions which, it- 
 unsolved, reduce the whole thing to a pious wish. 
 
 (3) Is the League to have coercive power ? (4) Are 
 our enemies to be members of the League ? To 
 these Key-problems the most diverse answers have 
 been offered, and few on either side seem to grasp 
 the tremendous import of both questions. The 
 Peers who have led the debate seem agreed that 
 the League must have coercive powers. Lord 
 Grey puts it bluntly in plain words : " economic 
 military and naval forces." Indeed, all reasonable 
 opinions agree that unless the League can enforce
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 its decisions, it is mere " scrap of paper," Hague 
 Conventions over again — all gone to Limbo with 
 the Imperial Founder of that ill-fated dream. But 
 all clear minds now see that if the League is to 
 have all this force, it is simply to do what we and 
 our Allies are still struggling to do. For four years 
 the greatest League of Nations that ever existed, 
 or was ever thought of, has been wading through 
 blood and horror to ensure a lasting peace on earth. 
 A League which must ever keep ready its whole 
 collective force, " economic, military and naval," 
 will only make world-war a permanent potential 
 institution. 
 
 Ten New Problems 
 
 There are still endless dilemmas to be solved : 
 (5) What is to supersede the battered Law of 
 Nations ? (6) What are to be the new rules as to 
 Submarines? (7) as to Air-ships? (8) as to prisoners? 
 as to civilians working on munitions ? (9) as to 
 aliens? (10) as to Naturalisation? Here are ten 
 problems, any one of which might occupy a Con- 
 gress of Nations and a Senate of Professors for 
 months — even years. And the Peers and Elder 
 Statesmen treat them as details ! The grotesque 
 Lansdowne-Snowden group say nothing : all they 
 ask is to get out of war — somehow. And how we 
 have a semi-official view of the whole question 
 from the Socialist Pacifist side, in a Prize Study by 
 a practised and eloquent journalist. It is the work 
 of an able and thoughtful writer who has at any 
 rate faced some parts of the problem. He does 
 not solve them ; but he is evidently aware that 
 there is much to be solved — somehoiv^ by somebody. 
 He darkly refers to the " Architect of the League." 
 I should like to meet that very responsible gentle-
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 man, and put to him a few preliminary questions 
 as to his authority and his powers. 
 
 The League Based on Good Will 
 
 The only answers I can find to these questions 
 are — first, that if there are difficulties and risks in 
 any such League until the whole nature of our 
 enemies is changed, so there are difficulties and 
 risks in any alternative plan. Secondly, a League 
 of Nations presupposes good faith^ good will. A 
 League, they say, would be an empty form unless 
 it includes our present enemies. Peers, Pacifists, 
 Socialists all agree in that. And all we have to 
 trust is their good faith ^ their good ivi II. The good 
 faith of the Prussian whose career is one long story 
 of falsehood, treachery, lying, forgery, and perjury ! 
 The good will of men whose name for generations 
 to come will spell hatred, savagery, and lust ! The 
 really ugly side in this Socialist Pacifist pronounce- 
 ment is that it suggests the extinction of nationality 
 in a cosmopolitan proletariate. The sacred name 
 of Country is to pale before that of Class. Patriot- 
 ism is retrograde and effete ! The Brotherhood of 
 Labour overrides the old fetish of Fatherland ! 
 That is the very essence of Bolshevism. Our 
 Bolshevists, and the terrorised Capitalists who in- 
 trigue with them, care not how soon Old England 
 disappears. 
 
 How Convince our Enemy 
 
 The common-sense of Englishmen seems now to 
 agree that any such League must include the enemy 
 Powers — but only when they have ceased to be the 
 infamous brutes they are. How is that to come
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 about ? Veteran statesmen, writers, and orators, 
 seem to think this is a simple matter, a detail, 
 which will automatically follow when they find 
 they cannot " win the war " and beat the Allies. 
 Even such experienced statesmen as Lord Lans- 
 downe, Lord Grey, Mr. Asquith — such eminent 
 thinkers as Lord Parker, Professor Murray, Sir 
 Frederick Pollock, and others who take the League 
 of Nations as inevitable, offer no other hope of 
 changing the spirit of evil in the Prussian soul, 
 except that of showing them how mistaken they 
 have been, how unwise, how immoral — in a word 
 by " convincing them." And, under the inspiration 
 of their illustrious President, a group of American 
 Jurists and Publicists have published an elaborate 
 " Draft Convention " for the League, with a com- 
 plex scheme of rules for an " International Council," 
 the decisions of which shall be binding on each 
 Nation and shall be enforced by their collective 
 power ! Well ! but this is the effete Hague 
 Convention. As well preach vegetarianism to a 
 man-eating tiger in order to " convince " him to 
 leave off his disgusting ways. 
 
 Visible Defeat Necessary 
 
 For my part, I say frankly, there is but one way 
 in which the people of these Hohenzollerns and 
 Habsburgs can be "convinced," and that is by 
 bringing home to their own doors the ruin they 
 have wrought for the world and for themselves. 
 Their retirement in arms across the Rhine and the 
 Alps, with their hand left free in the chaos of the 
 East, would leave them impenitent, even triumphant, 
 full of wrath at their partial failure, of contempt for 
 the weakness of the Allies, of iDurning resolve to do 
 better next time. They would boast of four years 
 
 136
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 of .incessant glories, brilliant victories, and the 
 domination of Countries ten times the area of their 
 own. Nothing can " convince " the German race, 
 fed up with lies, swollen with arrogance, vanity, 
 and hatred, except the visible defeat of their armies 
 and the utter exhaustion of their country. When 
 the Allies have occupied Berlin, Vienna, Buda, 
 Hamburg, the Canal, the docks and ports, and the 
 chief centres of German industry, when our men 
 shall have marched down the Sieges AU^e to the 
 sound of God save the King, the Marseillaise and 
 Hail Columbia, when mines, ports, railways and 
 factories have been held as pawns till retribution is 
 paid in full — then the German race may be "" con- 
 vinced " that they had better enter the League of 
 Nations in a spirit of peace and honesty. Nothing 
 but this will take the wild beast out of them. As 
 to " convincing " them by talk and generous advice, 
 you might as well sing psalms to the leopard to 
 induce him to change his spots ; you might as well 
 invite Satan to study the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 American Social Democrats 
 
 The craven hypocrites and traitors who here and 
 abroad pose as Socialist Pacifists have been justly 
 rebuked in the noble Address to the Socialists of All 
 Lands issued by the Social Democratic League of 
 America (New York, April, 1 9 1 8). They refute with 
 indignation the "hypocritical" cry that "all the 
 belligerents are equally guilty of the war," and the 
 fatuous pretext that it was " caused by Capitalism." 
 It was due, they say, " to the madness of dynastic 
 imperialism." It had its origin, they insist, " in 
 the imperialist visions of the Hohenzollerns, using 
 the worm-eaten Habsburgs as their tool." There 
 is abundant evidence, they show, "that the German
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Emperor and his satellites had long cherished the 
 vision of a vast Empire stretching from the North 
 Sea to the Persian Gulf and dominating the whole 
 world." Against this insane ambition the Social 
 Democratic League of America cites in full the 
 great address to Congress made by President 
 Wilson on January 8, 191 8. To the fourteen 
 clauses of this programme the League stoutly adheres, 
 adding an indispensable elucidation that the self- 
 determination of nationalities must be understood 
 in no narrow sense of local exclusion, but with 
 regard to the permanent interests of civilisation. 
 
 The False Social Democrats 
 
 The principal weight of this scathing appeal to 
 International Socialism falls upon the Majority 
 Socialists of the Central Empires who have made 
 themselves, the League asserts, " the co-partners of 
 Hohenzollerns and Habsburgs, accessories to their 
 infamous crimes against mankind." They have 
 betrayed the cause of International Socialism. The 
 part played by German Social Democracy, they 
 say, " can only be described as infamous." The 
 Majority, led by Scheidemann, Sudekum, David 
 and others, has been " the willing and servile tool 
 of the Government and the accomplice of the 
 assassins of Potsdam." And they quote the speech 
 of David in the Reichstag that " Germany must 
 have two pincers — the military pincer and the paci- 
 fist pincer." " fVhilst German armies fighty German 
 Socialists must stimulate pacifism among Germany's 
 enemies^ For such false Socialists the Social 
 Democratic League "has an inexpressible con- 
 tempt and loathing." With such traitors to the 
 Socialist cause the League will hold no parley and 
 enter into no Conference. Hendersons, Mac- 
 
 •38
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 donalds, Webbs and Snowdens, mark, learn and 
 inwardly digest this ! Editors of Pacifist, 
 No Conscription, Conscientious and Fellowship 
 Journals, " please copy " ! 
 
 B. Constant on Napoleon 
 
 The very able treatise on The Spirit of Conquest^ 
 written by Benjamin Constant, the eminent critic, 
 more than one hundred years ago, when Napoleon 
 was in Russia — a treatise which Mr. Albert Thomas, 
 the French Minister, has just had re-issued and 
 which he recommends his countrymen to study — 
 contains a striking parallel between the system of 
 Bonaparte at its worst and the system which 
 the Hohenzollern and his staff have copied and 
 enormously aggravated in infamy and in volume. 
 Evidently the Creed of Militarism and of Pan- 
 Germanism has been systematically studied from 
 the doings and the sayings of what our grandfathers 
 called " The Corsican Bandit." M. Constant shows 
 how a despot, becoming master of a warlike and 
 intellectual nation, drills it into a discipline of 
 national plunder, so that, being fed up with false- 
 hood and self-glory, it believes itself to be invincible 
 and the apostle of a higher civilisation, whilst at the 
 same time its energies and its brain are devoted to 
 crushing their neighbours and seizing their goods. 
 Constant's scathing indictment of Napoleon's Empire 
 in 1 813 reads to-day like a prophecy of Prussian 
 Kaiserism in igi8. This masterly brochure should 
 be translated and circulated to neutrals. 
 
 Drayton's Polyolbion 
 
 The very singular use by a modern poet of 
 rhymed Alexandrine couplets of six feet and twelve
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 syllables led me to look into the point. Drayton's 
 Polyolbion is in the same Alexandrines. The 
 Polyolbion^ in its thirty " Songs," or Cantos, with 
 something like 25,000 lines, may well be described 
 by its author as "this herculean task." Drayton 
 never was a favourite of mine, though I ought not to 
 forget all he says of Somerset and of the City of Bath, 
 of which I am a citizen. So far as I can find, and 
 I have spent some pleasant hours in looking through 
 several volumes and collections of our poets, with 
 the exception of occasional verses, and Drayton, no 
 poet ever wrote rhymed hexameters, as the metre of 
 a very long and serious poem in couplets, before 
 Mr. Coxwell essayed another " herculean task." 
 And yet, for philosophic, encyclopaedic poems, 
 there is something to be said for this metre. 
 
 Professor Gilbert's Religio 
 
 Not only every " man of letters," but every reader 
 of serious literature will enjoy Professor Gilbert 
 Murray's Religio grammatici (G. Allen and Unwin), 
 which he tells us is " the special religion of a Man 
 of Letters." Too many men of letters, alas ! have 
 no religion to speak of — at least they are very shy 
 of speaking of it. All of us, every sensible reader 
 as well as every scholar, will thank Dr. Murray for 
 his noble appeal to hold fast by the great books of 
 all time — and in a special degree for his ardent 
 defence of Greek poetry, philosophy and history as 
 a xrfjjua eIq dei. And for myself, I specially thank 
 him for his masterly argument to make a wise and 
 drastic selection of the best books of all ages and of 
 many peoples and tongues, beginning with a broad 
 basis of the ancients. His idea of the " central 
 grasp on the grammata of the human race," again 
 of the "handing down of the intellectual acquisi- 
 
 14Q
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 tions of the human race from one generation to 
 another," is the very conception of the Library of 
 Auguste Comte which he made *' to guide the more 
 thoughtful minds of the people in their choice of 
 books for constant use." This is the very thing 
 (often ridiculed by pedants) to which I have 
 devoted so much of my own teaching. And we 
 hail the Regius Professor as a leader in this indis- 
 pensable work. 
 
 Culture is not Religion 
 
 What I fail to understand in this excellent 
 address on the Choice of Books are the title of it 
 and the definition of religion. Man, he says, is 
 imprisoned in the present, and a man's religion is 
 that which offers him an escape from that prison. 
 " Religion " is a means of salvation from the terror 
 to come or deliverance from the body. I can 
 believe that a fanatical Calvinist can talk like this, 
 that his religion is the contemplation of the glory 
 of Heaven and fear of the horrors of Hell. But, 
 surely, all modern and rational ideas of religion 
 mean the faith and the resolution to do one's work 
 in the world in accordance with the moral and 
 spiritual purposes of a righteous life, and in con- 
 tinuous communion of soul with those of a like 
 mind who are working out their duty in the eye 
 and with the help of Providence. If we were to 
 take Dr. Murray's definition of religion literally, it 
 would put aside any active share in a practical life 
 of goodness, and all fellowship with men and 
 women who could not construe Greek and seldom 
 read Milton or Calderon. Some, he says, find 
 "this escape from the present" in theology, in art, 
 in human affection, in work, in the search for 
 Truth. The scholar finds his freedom — that is, 
 
 141
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 his religion — in keeping hold on the best literature 
 of the past. That is a right and invaluable occupa- 
 tion for a cultured spirit. It may well be the 
 scholar's consolation, happiness, or duty. But to 
 call it his religion is to take a narrow and fantastic 
 view of that sacred bond of human society. 
 
 Miss Royden on Fellowship 
 
 A spiritual antidote to this egoistic idea of 
 Religion comes also from Ruskin House in Miss 
 Maude Royden's eloquent appeal for Church Union, 
 with broadening in its area and its creed [The Hour 
 and the Church : G. Allen and Unwin, 191 8.). 
 " No religion," she says, " can exist without fellow- 
 ship." Nothing can shake this belief that "man- 
 kind is still incurably religious." If Christianity 
 survives the war, she writes, it will be by a wider 
 fellowships a more rational faith. The Professor, 
 perhaps, will say that his fellowship is with Homer 
 and ^schylus, Aristophanes and Plato, who enable 
 him to escape from the present — i. e. the illiterate 
 masses. More truly, more like a Christian and a 
 Socialist, Miss Royden's cry goes up for fellowship 
 with the living, their wants, their hopes. With 
 entire sympathy I read the plea of an ardent 
 Churchwoman for a truer Union of all Christians, 
 in a more modern and scientific creed, and also her 
 burning repudiation of the slackness, the impotence, 
 the insincerity of too many Churchmen. The 
 whole Tract of some 100 pages is well worth study, 
 as the voice wrung from a cultivated and devout 
 Churchwoman during the war, but also for its 
 bearing on the new claims and powers of the 
 Feminist movement. Her ideal of a reformed 
 " National Church " leaves me, I need hardly say, 
 incredulous and cold. 
 
 142
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Mr. Belfort Bax's Memoirs 
 
 I have been much interested in the Reminiscences 
 (1860-1914) of Mr. Belfort Bax (G. Allen and 
 Unwin) ; for he has acted on his idea that it is a 
 sacred duty to leave for future historians some notes 
 of what each generation has seen and heard. As a 
 fellow diarist myself, with much the same thought, 
 1 desired to compare with my own memories Mr. 
 Bax's record of the Victorian era. I have been in 
 close touch with nearly all the persons and move- 
 ments both at home and abroad whom he mentions ; 
 I have a very much longer memory, for mine 
 extends over eighty, not over sixty, years ; and I 
 may say that my experience is of a far wider area 
 and of more decisive forces. Let me say at once 
 that Mr. Bax's estimates of the men and the causes 
 with which he has been specially intimate ought 
 to be of real value not only to future historians but 
 to present politicians and public writers. Mr. 
 Bax's lines lay with what is known as Advanced 
 Thought- in philosophy and politics, in Socialism, 
 national and international in all its phases, and with 
 the leaders of all the revolutionary schools of 
 Europe. His judgment of all these men and his 
 history of their parties, groups, and aims seem to 
 me eminently fair, impartial and discerning. All 
 he says of W. Morris, of Hyndman, of J. Burns, 
 G. B. Shaw, B. Tillett, of Jaures, of Jung, of 
 Marx, of Kovalewski, of Kropotkin, Stepniak, and 
 Moscheles is at once candid, outspoken, and just. 
 
 Limited in Time and Range 
 
 Within his own range of vision, and for the not 
 very long period of his adult recollection (about 
 forty years), Mr. Belfort Bax is a guide at once 
 
 143
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 right and informing. But it would be a mistake 
 to regard him as a general authority on the whole 
 period from 1837. At this date my own recollec- 
 tions begin, and they are somewhat different from 
 his. I was fellow of my College and a student at 
 Lincoln's Inn, in the year of his birth, and I was 
 in the public service and in daily communication 
 with statesmen, writers, artists and priests when 
 he was a schoolboy. Again, Mr. Bax, for the first 
 twenty or thirty years of his life had little experience 
 beyond that of Evangelical families. Radical clubs 
 and foreign journalism. He studied the Social, 
 political, academic and clerical world from the 
 point of view of the atmosphere in which he was 
 bred and educated and of those with whom he 
 worked and lived. The judgment of a man so 
 brave, sincere, and clear-sighted as Mr. Bax is 
 extremely useful, and it has a special significance 
 from the environment out of which it issued. But 
 that environment was deep rather than wide. And 
 we have no reason to treat his estimates as sufficient 
 for times and movements which he does not claim 
 to have known, nor to have adequate means to 
 gauge. 
 
 No Real Victorian Era 
 
 In the main I hold with Mr. Bax as to the 
 essential points of his view of the Mid-Victorian 
 era — say between 1 870-1 880 ; but he somewhat 
 exaggerates both the differences between that 
 time and the reign of George V, as well as the 
 pace at which social changes move. My own 
 belief is that European civilisation has been 
 passing through a constant evolution — material, 
 social and intellectual — for at least a century and a 
 half with a continuous course, broken by periodic 
 
 144
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 bursts of energy and speed. Voltaire's age, 1789, 
 1812-18, 1848, 1871, 1882 and 1901, mark definite 
 changes. But the idea of Mr. Bax that his own 
 lifetime has witnessed a change greater than any for 
 a century or more is an exaggeration. The change 
 is not in the world, so much as in himself and the 
 development of his own mental range. To me his 
 outlook on the years from 1837 to 1877 reads as a 
 parody or caricature of the world I remember. 
 Talk about a Victorian era has been absurdly over- 
 done. There is no Victorian era at all. I have 
 lived and observed things from William IV to 
 George V, and, great as the changes have been, both 
 material and spiritual, there has been little spasmodic 
 in it at any time. From 1789 to 1918 there has 
 been a continuous post-revolutionary stream. The 
 wild men and women who are the froth upon the 
 waves of this mighty flood may fancy they have set 
 it in motion. They come only from the bubbles it 
 casts up. 
 
 145
 
 PART X 
 
 The Enemy Confesses 
 
 IN the hour of triumph over barbarism, it is 
 cheering to know that in all our long history 
 as a nation — in all the history of the modern 
 world — there has never been a war fought out with 
 a cause so absolutely just, so undeniably imposed on 
 us for our very existence and our honour. Nations, 
 in a war of life and death are liable to strange 
 delusions, as we see the Germans are. But we have 
 the justice of our cause proclaimed by most com- 
 petent witnesses from our enemy itself. Habemus 
 confitentem reum. Out of the mouth of the criminal 
 in the dock we are justified and even honoured for 
 our good faith. In every war in which England 
 has been engaged there have been at home strong 
 criticism and opposition. Elizabeth's seamen and 
 statesmen were denounced by her Catholic subjects. 
 Cromwell, Churchill, Walpole, Chatham, North, 
 Pitt, Wellington, Palmerston, Beaconsfield, Salis- 
 bury, were bitterly opposed by strong parties — and 
 often with more or less justice and success. Their 
 wars were often decried as unjust or unwise by good 
 and reasonable patriots at home. But in this, the 
 most awful of all our wars, the very Pacifists have 
 now ceased to flaunt the White Flag ; and enemy 
 witnesses of the highest standing and of unimpeach- 
 able credit have proved our case up to the hilt. 
 
 146
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Two Unimpeachable Witnesses 
 
 Turn to two such witnesses who testify to British 
 good faith and Prussian treachery — the former 
 German Ambassador, Prince Lichnowsky, and the 
 Diary of Dr. Wilhelm Muehlon. These men, 
 both of the highest character, have been driven by 
 the fraud of their own government to record their 
 experiences in private, in order to ease their con- 
 sciences and to clear themselves to their own 
 descendants and to history. Their indignant re- 
 pudiation of the official crimes with which they 
 were implicated as agents was wrung from them ; 
 and in after years when ruin seemed to be coming 
 on their country, they at last allowed the record to 
 be shown to their fellow-countrymen. No authorities 
 could be higher. The Prince, after a life in the 
 diplomatic service and in the Foreign Office of the 
 Empire, had been German Ambassador in London 
 for two years before the war ; and the whole of the 
 direct relations during the menace and the outbreak 
 of war passed through his hands, whilst he has been 
 able to track and discover the indirect relations 
 which went on behind his back. Dr. Muehlon 
 was one of the confidential directors of the Krupp 
 Company, which was the innermost circle of the 
 War machine, and as such he was the confidant of 
 the Kaiser's plans both before and during the early 
 period of the great war. 
 
 Professor Munroe Smith's Edition 
 
 There were not five righteous men in Sodom, 
 but there have been at least two righteous servants 
 of the Kaiser who hope to escape the condemnation 
 of future ages. Prince Lichnowsky 's Memorandum 
 has been published in The Times and the Press at 
 
 HI
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 home and abroad, and by Cassell and Company ; 
 but the edition that I prefer to quote is the careful 
 copy issued by the American International Concilia- 
 tion in June, 191 8, No. 127, New York, pp. 185. 
 This has the entire text in German, from the 
 Berliner Borsen-Courier^ March 21, 19 18, with 
 translation on the opposite page by Munroe Smith ; 
 also an Introduction, pp. 5-23, by Munroe Smith, 
 Professor of Jurisprudence, Columbia University : 
 the Reply of Herr von Jagow, March, 191 8, and, 
 lastly. Appendices, xxiv., official and public docu- 
 ments. This very valuable collection should be 
 widely circulated at home and with neutrals. We 
 have in this conclusive volume (i) the text of the 
 Ambassador's yJ</tv«(?/>, published in Berlin ; (2) the 
 Reply of the late German Foreign Secretary, the 
 official representative of the Empire to the world at 
 the moment of war ; (3) all the essential documents 
 which prove the truth of the Memoir ; and (4) the 
 crushing analysis of the whole case by Professor 
 Munroe Smith, a great authority on International 
 Law. 
 
 The German Ambassador 
 
 Prince Lichnowsky, who is more the Austrian 
 magnate than the Prussian Junker, is a thorough 
 gentleman and a man of honour, which his imperial 
 master is not. The Prince perhaps takes himselt 
 rather too seriously, and he is naturally bitter with 
 the bureaucrats and staff who deceived him and 
 tricked him. He understands England and English 
 ways, and his personal notes of Grey, Asquith, 
 Haldane, Churchill, Burns, our ministers and our 
 Press, are intelligent and amusing. He writes " was 
 der Brite hasst, ist a bore^ a schemer^ a prig — was er 
 
 148
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 liebt, ist a good fellow" [sic in English words]. An 
 ambassador, who for two years had been the official 
 mouthpiece of German policy, who was in daily 
 communication with our Foreign Office, and who 
 is too clear-sighted to misunderstand events and too 
 proud to falsify them, is a witness of such insight 
 and truthfulness that we get from him " the truth, 
 the whole truth, and nothing but the truth " — as 
 completely as if we had the Imperial Chancellor at 
 the bar of the Recording Angel himself. 
 
 What the Prince Proves 
 
 Now, the points whereon the witness of the 
 Prince is conclusive are these : — 
 
 (i) That for many years the German Empire 
 had been elaborately organised to undertake a great 
 European war ; 
 
 (2) That PVance was to be crushed first by a 
 tremendous sudden rush, before either Britain or 
 Russia could be ready to help her ; 
 
 (3) That Great Britain was to be cajoled by 
 pretence of friendship of which the Prince, himself 
 the dupe, was to be a chief agent. 
 
 (4) That every effort was made to embroil 
 Britain with France and with Russia ; 
 
 (5) That the real aim was to crush the British 
 Empire, and on its ruins to succeed to a world- 
 dominion ; 
 
 (6) That the Serbian incident was merely a 
 pretext by which European war might seem to be 
 originated by Austria ; 
 
 (7) That Sir Edward Grey and the Cabinet 
 made every effort for years to satisfy German 
 interests, and to the last hour sought to prevent 
 war ; 
 
 149
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 (8) That these efforts were on the point of 
 succeeding when the Kaiser and the war-staff had 
 already resolved to force on the war. 
 
 Efforts of Our Ministers 
 
 The Prince was surprised to find the Embassy 
 offered to him, and he discovered too late that he 
 was only used as a catspaw to deceive us. When 
 he came to London in November, 191 2, he found 
 himself welcomed with effusion by the Government 
 and the country. He saw that the naval policy of 
 the Kaiser and his provocative and blustering tone 
 in 1905, 1908 and 191 1 had convinced soldiers and 
 publicists that Germany was preparing for war. 
 So far from any " encircling," to hem in or injure 
 Germany, what he found was a general rapproche- 
 ment of Powers to defend themselves against German 
 aggression. Sir Edward Grey met the Prince with 
 sincere efforts " to secure the peace of the world " 
 — " den W eltfrieden sichern." The Entente^ he says, 
 " was a mutual assurance against the risk of war." 
 The policy of our Foreign Office, says the German 
 Ambassador, was " to bring the two groups nearer " — 
 he writes these words in italics and in English. All 
 through the two years of his service in London, the 
 German envoy found Sir Edward Grey siding with 
 him on Balkan problems, and even offering him 
 territorial and commercial advantages, first in South- 
 east Africa, and then in Mesopotamia and Bagdad. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey 
 
 The very friendly policy of Sir Edward Grey in 
 these three matters brought on his head, both at the 
 time and since, opposition and criticism from British 
 
 150
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 conservatives ; but this proves how false and even 
 absurd are the German charges on our Foreign Secre- 
 tary that he was hostile to them, much more the wild 
 nonsense that " the false Grey caused the war." 
 The Ambassador writes : " The British Government 
 showed the utmost readiness to meet our interests 
 and wishes." He even writes in English and in 
 italics the remark of a member of the Cabinet — ■ 
 " IV e dorit want to grudge Germany her colonial 
 development y The Prince is proud of his success 
 in the African treaty, and well he may be pleased. 
 He is even more proud of his success in the Asiatic 
 treaty he obtained, by which the German sphere 
 of influence was extended, and the Bagdad and 
 Anatolian railway secured to Germany. Both 
 treaties — fortunately for us — were never ratified, 
 owing to the jealousy of the War-StafF, who feared 
 that such success, diplomatic and commercial, would 
 enlarge the power of the traders and satisfy the 
 popular ambition, and so make for peace and post- 
 pone war. But the fact that the ministry of 
 Asquith and Grey made such striking concessions 
 in the cause of peace, is overwhelming proof of 
 their almost abject Pacifism. 
 
 Mr. Asquith 
 
 Of Lord Grey himself, with whom the Prince 
 was mainly in relation, the Ambassador speaks in the 
 highest terms of confidence and honour. " In all 
 ' questions of foreign policy his influence was almost 
 unlimited." " Falsehood and intrigue are equally 
 foreign to him." As to Mr. Asquith, "like his 
 friend Grey, he is a pacifist and inclined to an under- 
 standing with Germany." The whole effect of the 
 Memoir is to show that the British statesmen were 
 
 151
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 absolutely bent on peace, and that Grey impressed 
 his opponent as a man " of complete honesty and 
 unmistakable sincerity." Indeed, in the Prince's 
 opinion, if the Conference proposed by Grey on 
 the eve of war had been accepted by Germany, the 
 war would have been averted. 
 
 Von Jagow's Reply 
 
 To this scathing indictment of Kaiserism and 
 defence of British good faith by an honourable man, 
 von Jagow has made an official reply. Not a single 
 point of importance does he attempt to deny or to 
 refute. Except by a few trivial personalities, he 
 makes no real answer at all. But he goes farther. 
 This Secretary of State, writing in March last, says : 
 " I believe in Sir Edward's Grey's love of peace 
 and in his earnest wish to arrive at an agreement 
 with us." Can any public utterances carry further 
 the justification of our country that we entered into 
 war, as the American jurist says, " with spotlessly 
 clean hands " ? 
 
 Diary of Dr. Muehlon 
 
 If anything could strengthen the witness of 
 Prince Lichnowsky, it will be found in the Diary of 
 Dr. W. Muehlon (Cassell and Co., 191 8). This, 
 too, is an official revelation, inasmuch as Dr. Muehlon, 
 for some time before the war, and until the end of 
 1 9 14, was a Director of Krupps, the great armament 
 firm at Essen. Before his resignation he was 
 pressed by his colleagues to remain, and even to be 
 their chairman. His diary was a private record 
 kept for himself, and written from August to 
 November in the first year of the war, Now, the
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 great manufactory of Essen, in which the Kaiser is 
 a large shareholder, and which is almost regarded as 
 attached to the Supreme Staff, has always been 
 treated with special confidence, and no director could 
 be kept from full knowledge of war projects. 
 Every one will remember how the American 
 Ambassador was allowed a sight of the mysterious 
 giant gun which destroyed the Belgian forts and 
 was the first great surprise and the first great success 
 of the German Staff. Dr. Muehlon was one of 
 the makers of that tremendous engine. As the 
 horrors of the war deepened, he wrote day by day 
 his personal anxieties and his private knowledge of 
 the doings of the War Lord and his Staff. At last, 
 when he had quitted his office and his country in 
 shame and foreboding, his Diary was published at 
 Zurich, in May, 191 8, with the title. The Devasta- 
 tion of Europe. 
 
 The Doctor Supports the Prince 
 
 In every point, Dr. Muehlon entirely supports 
 the Prince, and he thoroughly justifies the efforts of 
 Lord Grey to avert the war. He saw at once when 
 the Archduke was assassinated on June 28, 19 14, 
 that " the European war is now a certainty." He 
 knew that "a blow against Serbia would be a blow 
 against Russia," that France must support Russia, 
 and that England must support France. He knew 
 that the Kaiser and the War-Staff were the real 
 authors of the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. On 
 July 17, before the war, he knew that the Kaiser 
 had promised an act of war to Austria. When the 
 l>Jote of July 22 was sent, " all classes of the popula- 
 tion interpreted it to mean a world war." The 
 British proposal for a Conference was thrust aside 
 
 153
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 by Berlin, which declared war against Russia and 
 France. The Chancellor's speech " that necessity- 
 knows no law," when they invaded Belgium, 
 shocked Dr. Muehlon, who wrote " it means fearful 
 moral injury to ourselves " ; "even a victorious war 
 would not restore to us the confidence of Europe 
 and of the world." " That will bring its own 
 nemesis." " I respect the King of the Belgians, who 
 would not submit to degradation." 
 
 Denounces German Brutality 
 
 As the enormities of the Hun invasion extended 
 this high-minded German patriot is filled with 
 indignation and alarm. " The trick we played on 
 Belgium is unspeakably mean and loathsome." It 
 would stain any laurels they might win. " Universal 
 conscription is a crime." " The Germans circulate 
 lies or truth to suit their momentary purpose." This 
 just man, having intimate knowledge of the real 
 facts, is scandalised by official mendacity and public 
 credulity. " They are taught that political and 
 private morality are, and must be, two entirely 
 different spheres." The favourite preacher, Traub, 
 said that the Chancellor's confession of wrong 
 *' converud that wrong into a rights In the mean- 
 time. Kaiser, Army, and Church poured out invo- 
 cations to " the German God." This was too 
 much for one honest German, who writes : 
 " Nauseous hypocrisy and cunning, contempt for 
 the people, and fear such as criminals feel — these 
 are the ingredients of that Government Piety ; and 
 its aims are nothing but the sanctification of the 
 Lie, the worship of Brutality, the deification of 
 Wilhelm 11."
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 And Pedantic Barbarism 
 
 This clear and just spirit, admitted behind the 
 secrets of the German war-aims, foresees the result 
 even of German victory. " Disdain and abhorrence 
 will make every one insist upon being spared the 
 sight of a German," he says. The professors 
 " preach a kind of regulated and pedantic barbarism." 
 Germans, he cries out, " In your blind servility you 
 are becoming a common danger ! " He sees with 
 horror how the whole German nation were equally 
 guilty of these outrages, massacre of civilians, burn- 
 ing and sacking of towns, murder of prisoners in 
 cold blood. He sees it and he foretells that it 
 will stamp infamy on the German name. Every 
 line in his book supports the Memoir of the Prince, 
 proves the truth and the good faith of the case made 
 out by our Government and our Press. Dr. 
 Muehlon at times himself is taken in by official 
 mendacity ; he is a man of sensitive morality ; 
 perhaps with us he might have been a Pacifist or 
 even a CO. ; but of his honesty and veracity there 
 can be no kind of doubt. His Diary — the confes- 
 sions and groans wrung from him by the Power of 
 which he was once the confidential agent, and now 
 is the innocent victim, should be widely circulated 
 and read amongst us in every army, in every 
 factory, in every club, as the story of Militarism 
 told by one " who knows," who knows it at home, 
 and sees " the future of abhorrence it has brought 
 down on itself." 
 
 Appeal of the CO. 
 
 It amused me to receive from the Society of 
 Friends their Appeal to the Conscience of the 
 
 155
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Nation, which they hoped would commend itself 
 to me so that I would circulate it for free dis- 
 tribution. This appeal to " the cause of religious 
 liberty" and "of freedom of opinion" is mendacious 
 cant. No one attempts to disturb the religious 
 liberty of Friends or any other body of worshippers. 
 They are perfectly free to follow their own mode 
 of worship. No one seeks to limit the expression of 
 their own opinion. They are indeed using it to 
 misrepresent and slander the public authority of the 
 State. Men who defy the law of the land, who 
 are deserters in face of the enemy, are public 
 enemies, criminals, and outcasts. Every thief, 
 murderer, and firebrand can say in times of 
 revolution that he is following his own conscience 
 and "obeying the law of God." None talk so 
 loudly of "obeying the law of God" as do the 
 Kaiser and his soldiers, when they slay, burn, and 
 rape, as being the Holy Mission of their chosen 
 race. In any other country but ours men who 
 refuse to fulfil the duty of citizens would be tried 
 by court-martial and shot. They are lucky not to 
 be hung as common murderers ; for they are accom- 
 plices of the savages who are slaughtering in cold 
 blood their brothers and sisters wholesale — the 
 modern Huns who glory in reviving the title of — 
 The scourge of God. 
 
 Social Reform 
 
 Even in the midst of tremendous struggles and 
 splendid feats of arms — which make 191 8 more 
 striking in our history than Chatham's great year, 
 1758 — we are being daily stunned with the conflict 
 of domestic and economic parties, with Trade Con- 
 gresses, Industrial Reconstruction, Whitley Com- 
 
 156
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 mittees, Leagues, Strikes, Employers and Workmen's 
 Associations. To one who follows the endless 
 ramifications of Labour programmes, all the projects, 
 the forecasts, the resolutions, hopes, and fears on 
 one side and on the other, what a Babel of irrecon- 
 cilable cries does it seem ! Compare the formal 
 votes of the recent Congress — which at least could 
 show huge numerical forces — with the survey and 
 proposals of a leading capitalist of great experience 
 and influence. Sir Charles Macara, President of the 
 Cotton Spinners' Association, ^ Here is a great 
 master of conciliation. Can he and all the able 
 and public-spirited men associated with him, can 
 the Whitley Committee, can the Industrial Com- 
 mittee — can any conciliator whatever, conciliate 
 such keenly opposed, such passionate interests in the 
 future of the economic world ? And yet we all 
 know that unless, when war ends, organised Labour, 
 and scientific Capital, Industrial strategy, and excited 
 linesmen, can be brought to work together with a 
 will — work as British men never worked so well 
 before — there is opening to us the seething chaos 
 of Russian anarchy and famine. 
 
 No Peace Yet 
 
 As I think of the days that are coming — days 
 that I am too old to see — the idea still haunts me 
 that, immeasurable and unforeseen as the events of 
 these four years of war have been, perhaps when 
 war is at an end, events even more incalculable and 
 more prodigious may await this sorely-tried people — 
 for whom, but ten years ago, all seemed, to so many 
 of us, happy, prosperous, and assured. Sir Charles 
 
 ^Social and Industrial Reform, by Sir Charles W. Macara, Bt. 
 (Sherratt and Hughes, Manchester. 191 8.)
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Macara, in his " Survey of present conditions," 
 quotes the famous warning — " More States have 
 been ruined by faction than have fallen before 
 the sword of the conqueror." I trust that when 
 our men return from the brightest page of our 
 history, as the nation in arms and victorious to 
 save its future life, they may not come to a Britain 
 in the throes of civil conflict and factious confusion. 
 Our poet told us — 
 
 Peace hath its victories. 
 
 May it not be that Peace may have its battles also ? 
 
 158
 
 PART XI 
 
 Optimism and Cynicism 
 
 '' J^ETRO SJTJNJS! ExltAttlla! Down 
 #|/ comes the Tower of Babel, which has 
 been building these four years and was 
 preparing for forty years ! " — so said the Rev. 
 Curate at the Club, as he read Dr. Solfs reply to 
 Wilson on October I2th, "Wait a bit !" rejoined 
 a somewhat cynical senior beside him, who was 
 thought to write up Lansdowne in the Pacifist 
 Press. " I tell you, Wilson is bent on stopping 
 the war, like Neptune calming a stormy sea. He 
 is bent on Peace, and will let you ' knock-out ' 
 men give in before Christmas. He is going to 
 have * conversations,' of which with his academic 
 training he is past-master. ' Chateau qui parle et 
 femme qui ecoute ' — you know." 
 
 "Impossible!" cried the Curate, "after all his 
 elaborate points and his fulminations against 
 Hohenzollerns and militarism." " Don't you 
 know," said the pacifist, " that U.S.A. has every- 
 thing to gain by coming in fresh when all Europe 
 is exhausted and has bled itself white in this suicidal 
 war ? The Yanks are splendid fellows and mean 
 to do their best. But the bosses of finance and of 
 trade dominate State politics. They are the power 
 behind Wilson. They mean that New York shall 
 supersede London as the bank of the world, that 
 Chicago shall take the place of Manchester, and 
 Brooklyn succeed to Liverpool. Europe is now a 
 
 .^59
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 back number. If you don't yet see it, Pershing and 
 his men will go home ! " 
 
 "We won't stand it !" cried the Curate. "If 
 the Yanks want to go home they will have to 
 swim ; our ships are all bespoke. What ! the Hun 
 is to keep his army unbroken, his fleet untouched, 
 to find his own country safe and sound, to flood the 
 markets of the world with his goods, his metals, 
 coal, and chemicals ! He is to trade, and manu- 
 facture, and swagger about till he is ready to begin 
 again ! All the cities he has burnt, the priceless 
 glories of art he has destroyed, the tens of thousands 
 of men, women, and children he has slaughtered in 
 cold blood to be unavenged and unransomed ! I 
 will never believe it ! Wilson is incapable of such 
 a thing. The American Senators and people will 
 not suffer it. ' The day of vengeance is in Mine 
 heart, and the year of My redeemed is come,' saith 
 Isaiah." The Club said "Hear, hear" to the 
 Curate, and the cynic went off to write his article. 
 
 Unconditional Surrender 
 
 Writing as I do, on October 15th, in this amaz- 
 ing whirlpool of the final crisis, I will not presume 
 to foresee what November may bring forth. Fore- 
 casts and warnings are idle in the imminent advance 
 of the great triumph, the great restitution, retribu- 
 tion, reconstuction. One word only will I add. 
 Unconditional surrender is the only possible end. 
 The example of Sedan in 1870, of Bulgaria, of 
 Turkey to-day, must be followed. The Prussians 
 — sovereign, army, people — must be made to know 
 that we hold them in the name of humanity to be 
 inhuman monsters. They must pay the penalty or 
 their crimes — or this earth will not be freed from 
 
 160
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 the stain of their offence. How that can best be 
 done is a matter for soldiers — not for civilians. 
 Statesmen have only to say : '' Marshal Foch, 
 Marshal Haig, General Pershing, do your duty." 
 
 [October 15, 1918] 
 
 Industrial Peace 
 
 It is with lively hope that I see the very able 
 periodical entitled Industrial Peace enter with its 
 third volume on a new public career.^ It is, in my 
 judgment, far the best-informed, far the most inde- 
 pendent and clear-sighted of any organ, newspaper, or 
 review that deals with the vast and burning problems 
 of Industrial Peace and Industrial Unrest. When 
 I pledge my name to so strong a testimony, I must 
 hazard a few words on the personal question. In 
 these days when every organ and every writer is 
 suspected of having some party or trade interest, I 
 had better make my own position clear. It is now 
 some sixty years that I have been closely associated 
 with Economic and Labour movements, and no 
 man has ever suspected me either of capitalist or of 
 Socialist interests. Now I do not hesitate to say 
 that Industrial Peace is an honest, independent, 
 impartial organ of genuine inquiry and open 
 publicity. I have studied carefully during the 
 past year the first two volumes, and I find in them 
 a mine of invaluable information and clear judgment. 
 The writers and directors are personally unknown 
 to me ; but I can give my word to readers that 
 they are trustworthy students of actual facts, and 
 have no capitalist purse behind them or trade interest 
 to serve. Those who to-day care to learn more 
 about Labour than they find in the daily Press should 
 
 1 Industrial Peace. Vol. III., No. i, September, 1918. (London ; 
 The Arden Press.) Monthly, 11. 
 
 M 161
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 mark, learn, and inwardly digest what they read in 
 
 Industrial Peace. 
 
 Latent Bolshevism 
 
 The special value of its work consists not so much 
 in its original articles on current topics as in the 
 constant analyses it gives us of economic and Labour 
 programmes put forward in many quarters, and in 
 the citations it gives verbatim' from all kinds of 
 Trade and Labour journals. Usually, about one- 
 quarter of its thirty-two pages consists of extracts 
 from various Labour organs, speeches, and docu- 
 ments. These are cited without comment. Those 
 whose reading consists of the London daily and 
 weekly Press can have not a glimpse of the under- 
 current of Labour which flows forth in a multi- 
 plicity of prints. In the October number there are 
 more than twenty different views published in 
 journals of which the ordinary reader of newspapers 
 never heard the names and never saw a copy. Some 
 of these utterances no doubt represent the views of 
 small — and, to the bourgeois, obscure — groups. In- 
 deed, in Industrial Peace they are usually cited 
 " From the Minority Press." But we all know 
 that, in times of revolution and even of evolution, 
 it is the ideas of minorities, even of small minorities 
 with tempting cries, which prevail. We are seeing 
 the really small Bolshevist minority dominating 
 Russia worse than any Tsar. Few people have 
 any idea how much of Bolshevism to-day is latent 
 in Labour organs. Their ideas may be enlarged if 
 they will read Industrial Peace — not for its own 
 estimates, but for the subterranean fires of which it 
 quotes the words and states the avowed purposes and 
 hopes. Will our intelligentsia ignore all this, as the 
 Russian did until the crash ? 
 
 162
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Industrial Unrest 
 
 The object of Industrial Peace is well defined in 
 the admirable motto of its September number — 
 " Publicity is the quickest solvent of Industrial 
 disputes." It states that its task is that of " record- 
 ing, analysing, and discussing the phenomena" of 
 industrial Unrest under perfectly new conditions. 
 There is now in Labour a Pacifist wing which 
 sought to stop the war ; and a Syndicalist wing 
 which seeks to dispossess the capitalist. The two 
 wings have coalesced in a common attack on 
 Government — which war had made the principal 
 employer of Labour and which also was the arbiter 
 of war and peace. Hence the policy of Strike to 
 coerce the Government into yielding to the cry ot 
 peace, and at the same time to place the control of 
 industry in the hands of the workers. Then, the 
 Russian upheaval and the consequent inroad ot 
 Internationalism and Bolshevism, with fraternal 
 delegates from abroad, broke into the British Trade 
 Unions, led to defiance of the Executives, and, 
 deserting the traditional policy of industrial reform, 
 " abandoned itself to the excitement of cosmopolitan 
 intrigue." It is pointed out how the Trade UnioiT 
 leaders, no longer meeting the expert experienced 
 capitalists whom they knew and who knew them, 
 but confronted too often with Government officials 
 who were raw amateurs about industry, were repu- 
 diated by organised sections of " the rank and file " 
 in the workshops. I assert with confidence that 
 the "Retrospect and Prospect" in the September 
 number is at once the most lucid, the best instructed, 
 and the most impartial explanation of industrial 
 Unrest that I know. I am convinced by every 
 word of it ; and I only wish that our Government 
 officials and Trade Unionists would take it to heart. 
 
 163
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 '* Peace in industry," they truly say, "has now 
 become a question of life and death in the whole 
 community." 
 
 Trade Minority Press 
 
 Let it not be supposed that Industrial Peace is in 
 any real sense devoted to capitalist interests. It is 
 devoted to the very existence of our nation, and to 
 counteract the poison of Anti-nationalism. Again, 
 its main business is to state facts, to spread know- 
 ledge of actual events, to record the public (and the 
 private) utterances of active groups. Look down 
 the Index of some forty articles in the first two 
 volumes, September 1917-August 191 8 : "The 
 Rank and File Movement," eight articles full ot 
 recorded facts and statements ; " The Control of 
 Industry " ; " Profiteering and Finance " ; " Con- 
 scription of Wealth " ; " The No-Conscription 
 Fellovi^ship " ; "Payment by Results," four articles ; 
 " National Guilds," three articles ; " Leaving 
 Certificates " ; " The Socialist Labour Party " ; 
 " The Meaning of Syndicalism " ; " British 
 Socialist Party " ; " The Block Vote " ; " Equal 
 Pay for Equal Work " ; " The Embargo " ; 
 " The Minority Press." All of these essays are 
 not so much matters of opinion as extracts from 
 published documents and explanations of their 
 meaning. It may be said : Are not these matters 
 to be read in the daily Press ? Only in a frag- 
 mentary w^ay amid masses of diverse and urgent 
 matter, which rarely clear up obscure trade dis- 
 putes for the ordinary reader. Again, as the 
 Government is usually concerned in any movement 
 or dispute, the Censor suppresses any full statement 
 of fact, much more any discussion, but the Pacifist 
 and the Syndicalist conspirators manage to get in 
 
 164
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 a garbled story of their own. For these reasons 
 there is pressing need of an organ solely devoted to 
 the cause of Industrial Peace, to tell Labour and 
 Capital, Government and Public the true facts, and 
 with perfect honesty and full knowledge to warn 
 this nation of the tremendous problems it has to 
 solve, if we are still to be a great Power and to 
 have a world-wide Commonwealth. 
 
 Mr. W. L. Courtney's New Book 
 
 I have studied with much sympathy and instruc- 
 tion Mr. W, L. Courtney's new volume of essays^ 
 — mainly criticism of drama ancient and modern, of 
 which he is one of the very few scholarly masters. 
 From iEschylus to Tree, from Demosthenes to 
 Venizelos, from Sappho to Thomas Hardy, he 
 passes with a sure touch as becomes an old Oxford 
 don and a veteran dramatic critic. To me the 
 special interest in these studies is the combination 
 of classical learning with the playgoer's judgment 
 and experience. The Porsons of University class- 
 rooms are not often seen at " first-nights" to-day. 
 The critics who tell the public next morning what 
 they ought to see are too often like a certain 
 people, " sadly to seek " in Greek — and i^schylus, 
 Aristophanes, and Euripides are all heathen Greek 
 to them. But here we have a scholar who has 
 entered into the very soul of Attic drama from his 
 college days, who for years has been the unfailing 
 arbiter for whose Plaudite managers and green- 
 rooms are accustomed to wait. 
 
 1 Old Saws and Modern Instances. By W. L. Courtney, M.A., 
 LL.D. 8vo, pp. 269. (Chapman and Hall, 1918.) 
 
 .65
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 ^schylus and Thomas Hardy 
 
 All that Mr. Courtney tells us of ^schylus in 
 the first two essays gratifies me, for to me the 
 greatest of tragedians is more than poet — he is at 
 once an Isaiah, a Dante, and a Milton. His seven 
 plays are my Bible — nocturna versanda manu^ ver- 
 sanda diurna. So I welcome what Mr. Courtney 
 says of " his lofty and pious mind." With pro- 
 found lyrical gift his dramas are " philosophical 
 essays touched with emotion." Would that those 
 who crowd our theatres would read what a great 
 modern critic has to tell us in his analyses of these 
 immortal tragedies. His estimate of iEschylus is 
 full of " Wise Saws " ; not that it goes far enough 
 for me. I have often said that the Trilogy and 
 Prometheus are the greatest tragedies ever conceived 
 by human genius. And why encumber the mighty 
 A-Iarathonian hero with " Modern Instances " — 
 why " drag in " Mr. Thomas Hardy ? I am a 
 hearty believer in our prophet of Wessex, and I 
 )oin in what Mr, Courtney says about Hardy as 
 novelist and as thinker. But learned and acute 
 essays entitled " i^schylus and Mr. Hardy " sound 
 to me too much like "Isaiah and Dr. Inge." All 
 four men in widely different poles of thought have 
 fhuch to tell us in their due sphere. But the in- 
 tellectual leap from the awful son of Euphorion to 
 the popular novelist is a gymnastic feat. It is like 
 asking us to pass from the Parthenon to the Albert 
 Memorial at Kensington, i^schylus has no fellow ; 
 he is alone, " remote, serene, and inaccessible." 
 Nor docs Thomas Hardy need any Plutarchian 
 parallel. His great place in modern literature is 
 assured. 
 
 1 66
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 Mr. Courtney on the Drama 
 
 Excellent, too, is all that Mr. Courtney says ot 
 Aristophanes the Pacifist — but do not let us 
 group Aristophanes and Mr. Snowden. As I 
 call i^schylus the greatest of all tragedians, I call 
 Aristophanes the greatest of all comedians ; and 
 his plays about the Peace parties are specially 
 amusing now. Like Plutarch, Mr. Courtney 
 brackets his men : ^schylus and Thomas Hardy, 
 Euripides and Eugene Brieux, Demosthenes and 
 Venizelos. One might as well say : Aristophanes 
 and Bernard Shaw, Aspasia and — well! — George 
 Sand. Mr. Courtney on Sappho and Aspasia is 
 convincing as becomes a past-master of the Eternal 
 Feminine. Just as he throws a fresh light on Attic 
 drama by his familiarity with the modern stage, so 
 as a student of Moliere, Ibsen, and Pinero, and a 
 protagonist in the New- Woman Cause, he makes 
 Sappho and Aspasia live to us as do the characters 
 in a novel by Hardy or James. Again, the estimate 
 of Herbert Tree is generous, instructive, and true. 
 Mr. Courtney does his friend ample justice, and 
 yet he does not overrate his powers or deny his 
 limitations. Though I am far away from being a 
 playgoer (at least for many long years past), I saw 
 a good deal of Tree once. He was a delightful 
 friend, a keen and versatile spirit, and, with all 
 its hopeless dilemmas and impossibilities, a zealous 
 worker in the cause of a more intellectual stage. I 
 grieved for him as a friend ; and with Mr. Courtney 
 I say now — How much has English drama lost now 
 he is gone. 
 
 Italian Patriots of 1848 
 
 [taly 
 ation 
 
 167 
 
 We all know that Italy has taken a noble part 
 in the defence of civilisation, but 1 fear that few of
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 the present generation can fully understand what 
 Italy was some sixty years ago under the cruel 
 tyranny of Austria and her Ducal allies, under the 
 Vatican and its black army, and the antique dis- 
 memberment of the glorious peninsula into weak 
 and jealous provinces. Only those who were 
 young in the revolutionary epoch of 1848 can 
 conceive what the heroes of the Revival were to 
 us — Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour, Manin, Ricasoli, 
 Poerio, d'Azeglio. To us they were what Hamp- 
 den, Pym, Eliot, Cromwell were to the men who 
 fifty years later broke the Stuart chain and made 
 a free Britain. Hence, it was a happy thought 
 of Countess Martinengo Cesaresco to issue a cheap 
 and handy edition of her Italian Characters.^ An 
 .English lady, married into one of the great Lom- 
 bard families which have bred soldiers and patriots 
 since the time of Dante, now tells us the thrilling 
 story of the devoted leaders of the people who after 
 long trials and defeats finally made United Italy. 
 Countess Evelyn Martinengo wrote the admirable 
 Life of Cavour in the " Foreign Statesmen Series," 
 edited by Prof. J. B. Bury, of Cambridge, and her 
 Lombard Studies and other books are well known. 
 The palace on the shore of the Lago di Garda has 
 been converted into a sanatorium for the wounded, 
 and she has held on amongst her own people there 
 within reach of Austrian bombs. Her Lives of 
 Italian patriots should be known to our soldiers in 
 the Italian campaign. 
 
 Admiral Sir C. Napier 
 
 A happy chance has put into my hands the 
 original letters from famous statesmen, soldiers, 
 
 ^ Italian Characters in the Epoch of Unification, izmo, pp. 380. 
 (T. Nelson and Sons.) zs. 
 
 168
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 sailors, and princes written to Admiral Sir Charles 
 Napier between 1830 and i860. These let- 
 ters, carefully preserved by his granddaughter, 
 formed the material for both the biographies of the 
 old sea-dog, the Life by his stepson. Col. Elers 
 Napier, 186.2, and also the recent work by H. Noel 
 Williams, 191 7. How strange it is to read the 
 dispatches of Lord Palmerston about the brilliant 
 capture of Acre and Beyrout and the fight with 
 Mehemet Ali in Egypt, which after nearly eighty 
 years again come to the front. And then the 
 dispatches of Lord Russell, Sir James Graham, and 
 the Admiralty during the Baltic expedition in the 
 Crimean War. How surely all that has happened 
 in this war justifies the Admiral — first in his belief 
 of the great opportunity that Syria opened to British 
 arms ; secondly, in his sound refusal to attack great 
 fortresses by ships alone. The vices of our adminis- 
 trative system seem to be inveterate. Again we 
 have had the arrogant assumption of civilian rulers 
 to control practical officers, the same want of pro- 
 vision for adequate supplies, and the same want of 
 unity in strategy by the hide-bound traditions of our 
 home authorities. The public at last have remedied 
 these evils, just as public opinion at last justified 
 Napier. With all his faults of self-will and temper, 
 " Charlie " was a seaman of action and of insight. 
 The story of his struggles with the politicians reads 
 like much we now know about the earliest phases 
 of the present war. 
 
 The Crescent and the Cross ^ 1845 
 
 After reading the Admiral's account of Syria, 
 Constantinople, and Egypt, I took down that de- 
 lightful book. The Crescent and the CrosSy 1845, by 
 Eliot Warburton. Well do I recall the delight it 
 
 169
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 gave us when it appeared along with Kinglake's 
 Eothen, and well do I remember the shock of the 
 author's premature death in the burning at sea ot 
 the s.s. Amazon. Do our young people to-day who 
 love the slangy stories of " Our Motor Outings," 
 "A Run Round the Pacific," or "The Girl on 
 Mount Ararat " know The Crescent and the Cross ? 
 I do not see it in a cheap reprint, though it ran 
 through ten editions in a few years. How vivid, 
 and how clear-sighted, are Warburton's pictures ot 
 Egypt, the Nile, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, with 
 what pure and graceful English, with what poetic 
 touch, with what insight into foreign habits and 
 ideas ! I always thought it on the whole even a 
 more pleasant book of travels than Eothen^ less 
 witty, but more generous, more graceful, of a 
 broader nature. Why not turn to it to-day now 
 that Cairo, Jerusalem, Lebanon, and Damascus are 
 in every mouth ? And be it remembered that this 
 was a picture of the true East, the native Crescent, 
 the simple Cross, eighty years ago, not yet touristed, 
 Cooked, steam- and rail-smoked, till it seems almost 
 a Hounsditch variety of the Holy Land, This was 
 the East that we saw generations back, before it 
 was vulgarised to imitate the West. To turn 
 Juvenal into prose and the modern world — 
 
 jam pridem Thamesis defiuxit in 
 Nilum et in Orontem, 
 
 170
 
 PART XU 
 
 Alsace-Lorraine 
 
 \Nov ember i.] 
 
 OF all the international problems which the 
 settlement of Europe presents, the most 
 urgent, the most complex, the most vital, is 
 that of Alsace-Lorraine. And I have studied with 
 great interest and sympathy a new book by a jurist of 
 authority and learning: Alsace Lorraine^ Past^ Present 
 and Future^ by Coleman Phillipson, LL.D. (Fisher 
 Unwin, 8vo, 1918.) This is a book which every 
 one who speaks or writes on war problems is bound 
 to master. That country was truly " the virtual 
 cause of the war " ; and its future will be the key 
 to the permanent peace of Europe. Dr. Phillipson 
 is well known as an international lawyer by his 
 previous works, International Law and the Great 
 IVar^ and Termination of War and Treaties of Peace 
 (same publishers) ; and in the new book on Alsace- 
 Lorraine (8vo, pp. 327) he discusses the past, the 
 present, and the future of both provinces with 
 exhaustive learning, rigid impartiality, and states- 
 manlike good sense. We have enough of violent 
 and absolute protests, first from German and then 
 from French partisans. Our own public men, in 
 office, on the platform, and in the Press, have looked 
 on the problem too often as being simple, and with 
 but moderate knowledge of all its intricacies. They 
 should study Dr. Phillipson and see that it bristles 
 with dilemmas, and raises a mass of indirect and also 
 direct questions which must be faced if permanent
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 peace is to be reached. This book, whilst fully 
 explaining both the German and the French claims 
 and interests, may be said rather to state the whole 
 problem from the point of view of Alsace-Lorraine 
 itself, and of the Alsatians and Lorrainers, who 
 reside in it, who have quitted it, and who have 
 settled in it. 
 
 Its Varied History 
 
 The history of Alsace and of Lorraine, until 
 modern times quite distinct provinces, is exceedingly 
 curious and varied, and is still perhaps in its details 
 and its consequences known only to students of 
 history. In the third chapter Dr. PhilHpson dis- 
 cusses the story in its changing aspects from Cassar 
 down to the settlement of 1815. In the fourth 
 chapter he narrates the annexation of 187 1 ; in the 
 fifth and sixth chapters he treats the Bismarckian 
 settlement and the French and native protests 
 against it. He then expounds from the best au- 
 thorities the German claims to these regions ; first, 
 on historical grounds of nationality, race, and 
 language ; secondly, on military grounds of defence, 
 conquest, and force of treaties. Chapter IX. de- 
 scribes the German regime from 1871 down to 
 1 9 14, with the alterations as to race, language, 
 institutions, and economics, which took place in 
 those forty-three years. Chapter X. describes the 
 rise and development of the Nationalist movement 
 from 1874 down to the Declaration of the two 
 local Chambers in 191 7. In Chapter XI. he 
 describes, as before from authoritative statements 
 and documents, the three phases of French feeling : 
 {a) revanche^ [b) causes of its evanescence, and {c) its 
 revival under the stress of war and its acceptance by 
 British and American politicians. 
 
 172
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 The Problems to Solve 
 
 So far Dr. Phillipson's book deals with the 
 political and international problems of Alsace and of 
 Lorraine : matter essential for any adequate treat- 
 ment of their future. The other six chapters are 
 the kernel of the work, for they deal, systematically 
 and from authoritative papers, with all the possible 
 solutions of this problem, none of which are either 
 simple or practical unless with careful modifications. 
 First comes the obvious, and no longer Utopian, 
 solution of re-annexation to France. Dr. Phillip- 
 son perhaps overrates (p. 236) such a complete 
 prostration of Germany as would force her to sur- 
 render the provinces. But he shows from the 
 mouth of patriotic Alsatians how many things have 
 to be reorganised before the two provinces can enter 
 integrally into the French Republic. Forty-seven 
 years of strenuous action by German government, 
 industry, and wealth, by continuous emigration and 
 immigration, by the union of Alsace and Lorraine 
 in a new local patriotism of their own, have deeply 
 modified the practical conditions as well as the 
 opinion, hopes, and necessities of the resident popu- 
 lation. There is the old German cry (not altogether 
 false) that Metz and Strassburg constitute sally-ports 
 into Germany. Then comes the question of the 
 original French Departments and their local ad- 
 ministration, long extinct and superseded by far 
 more scientifie systems. Then comes language^ and 
 it seems only a minority use the French, and there 
 are no possible local divisions by the language test. 
 The legal system is German, not French ; the 
 substitution of a new legal system is a difficult and 
 vexatious problem. The same is true of indus- 
 trial, commercial, fiscal, educational, and religious 
 organisation. All these have to be solved. 
 
 173
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 Autonomy Proposed 
 
 In his thirteenth chapter Dr. Phillipson treats the 
 crucial problem of the coal, iron, and mineral wealth 
 of the disputed provinces. It is a highly technical 
 question full of vital interests both to France and 
 to Germany which alone has created its immense 
 modern importance. The fourteenth chapter dis- 
 cusses the problem of autonomy of the provinces 
 within the German Empire, which the German 
 Socialists proposed even in 19 17. But it is obvious 
 that this solution would be repudiated by France, 
 even if accepted or claimed by the present popula- 
 tion. Another solution is the virtual independence 
 of Alsace-Lorraine as a neutralised State, guaranteed 
 by a League of Nations, as proposed in 1871, and 
 worked out in a systematic scheme at the Inter- 
 national League of Peace and Liberty held at 
 Geneva in 1884. This might be an Alsace- 
 Lorraine Republic, neutralised as is Luxemburg 
 by European treaties, not like Belgium, but without 
 an army or fortresses, its independence guaranteed 
 by the combined League of Nations in the pacific 
 Europe. It would be a real " buffer State," resting 
 not on " paper," but on the armed PoweVs of 
 United Europe, and thus no longer a cause of war 
 between Germany and France, This solution is 
 fairly discussed by Dr. Phillipson. But, as in the 
 case of all the other proposed solutions, it must be 
 conditional on a free, legalised, and unmistakable 
 vote of the population involved. 
 
 Possible Compromises 
 
 A genuine and unrestricted expression of wishes 
 by Alsatians and Lorrainers themselves is the key 
 
 174
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 to the whole problem, and this in all its aspects is 
 discussed in the final Chapter XVII. There is much 
 to be said both for and against any kind of plebiscite^ 
 and there are many cases in which it may be inap- 
 plicable. This Dr. Phillipson believes to be a very 
 suitable case for it. He quite recognises the force 
 of the French contention that to hold a referendum 
 is to ignore or reject the French claim of right. 
 But he quotes views of the British Labour Party, 
 of the French Socialist and of the German Socialist 
 Parties, that the wishes of the population are para- 
 mount to State rights of former generations. There 
 is the popular formula of "no annexations." There 
 is the question of " mixed " marriages between 
 Germans and French. There is the immense 
 change by emigration and immigration. Out of 
 one million and a half in 1871, 160,000 asked to 
 continue French ; but not half of these actually 
 left. In 1900 about 500,000 French had emigrated 
 and 300,000 Germans had immigrated. The com- 
 promise suggested is to hold ?i plebiscite of (i) domi- 
 ciled native males of legal age, (2) of domiciled 
 native spinsters or widows, (3) of domiciled natural- 
 ised inhabitants, neither French nor German, (4) 
 German immigrants with a ten years' domicile, 
 (5) of Alsatian and Lorraine emigrants, men, 
 spinsters, and widows who have emigrated within 
 the last ten years. I do not pretend to decide on 
 this difficult problem. Dr. Phillipson evidently 
 inclines to this solution, and he believes that a 
 vote would result in favour of " neutralised inde- 
 pendence " of the two provinces as a free solid 
 republic. I express no other opinion but this, 
 that if an appeal to the population is made, it 
 should be carried out by the United States re- 
 publican machinery, the American army being in 
 sole occupation and control.
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 The Spoliation of Denmark 
 
 Let it not be forgotten that it was Bismarck, in 
 1862, who really began the orgy of rapine of which 
 we are witnessing the crash : William II. in 1914 
 merely parodied and exaggerated the aims of his 
 ancestors which Bismarck had reduced to a science. 
 He began with the spoliation of Denmark, con- 
 tinued with the humiliation of Austria, and closed 
 with the plunder of France. But throughout his 
 diplomatic career Bismarck treated all the smaller 
 States as matter of negotiations — " diplomatic 
 fodder" — between the great Powers. From 1866 
 down to 1870 our own Government was kept 
 continually informed of the various territorial claims 
 and territorial concessions which he proposed as 
 subjects of his bargain. The Netherlands, Belgium, 
 Luxemburg, were treated by him as countries to 
 be handed about by secret conventions. He would 
 not object to France indemnifying herself at the 
 expense of Belgium, if Prussia could do the same 
 with Holland and Luxemburg. Bismarck's dealings 
 with Benedetti, the Ambassador of France, were 
 simply a cardsharper's trick. When the British 
 Government in 1867 pointed out to Bismarck, in 
 the tangle of secret negotiations, that Belgium was 
 guaranteed as a neutral by the European Powers, 
 he replied that " a guarantee in these days is of 
 little value." So it was Bismarck in 1867 — not 
 Bethmann-Hollweg in 19 14 — who concocted the 
 formula of " scrap of paper." It has been for half 
 a century the catchword of Prussian chanceries, the 
 creed of the German people. 
 
 Britain Responsible 
 
 The career of "Bismarckism," an international 
 plague which, on platforms and by pen, I have not 
 
 176
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 ceased to denounce for more than half a century, 
 began with the dismemberment of Denmark in 
 1864 — which of all the blunders and treacheries 
 committed by British statesmen was the most 
 shameful, Britain was bound by the treaty of 
 1852 to protect the integrity of Denmark — and 
 eleven years afterwards Britain abandoned that 
 maritime nation to her fate — abandoned it in the 
 most wanton and cynical manner, after advising 
 her to resist aggression, and in the face of Parlia- 
 ment promising our aid. Denmark, with its im- 
 mense coast, practically a nest of islands in the 
 Baltic, was a land which the British fleet could 
 have saved against a Prussia then without a navy. 
 We told the Great Powers we would fight to save 
 Denmark, we told our own people 'that we would 
 — and we ran away. The Whig braggarts who 
 talked about civis Romanus when they wanted to 
 bully Greece in 1850, allowed our Teutophile 
 dynasty to override them. Well might Lord Salis- 
 bury say that time could not efface the stain on 
 the honour of England. It is the foulest blot on 
 the escutcheon of England. The spirits of all the 
 victims of U-boat massacre seem still to cry aloud 
 to their countrymen : "Why did you ever suffer 
 Kiel to pass to the hands of pirates ? " It is not 
 too late to redress the crimes and the treachery by 
 which Slesvig was torn from the Danes. It must 
 be restored at the peace restitutions, or else " the 
 meteor flag of England " should be flown half-mast 
 high. We owe the Danes two acts of " reparation " 
 — one of the battle of 1 801, another of the desertion 
 of 1864. Cannot we say again : — 
 
 "Ye are brothers ! Ye are men ! 
 And we conquer but to save." 
 
 Or was Prince Gortchakoff right when he said : 
 " England never fights on a point of her honour " ? 
 
 N 177
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 The Value of Memoirs 
 
 This is an age of personal Memoirs : it is right 
 that it should be. Those of us who have some 
 seventy or eighty years of memory to recall have 
 witnessed the most tremendous evolution in the 
 history of mankind. The European Revolution of 
 1848 — itself the product of the revolution and of 
 the new world that was heralded in the eighteenth 
 century — led on to drastic changes in the political, 
 moral, economic, material, and spiritual domain, 
 ending in the ecumenic upheaval that is around us 
 to-day. New things, new thoughts, new hopes, 
 such as this earth never imagined, have been born 
 in the- seventy years that separate 1848 from 1918. 
 Those of us who have seen and understood all this 
 have a message to deliver to the present and to 
 the future. Would that we had more intimate 
 Memoirs of the Augustan age, the Carlian age, of 
 the Renascence and the Reformation. Changes 
 mightier than any of those times have come about 
 -in the last seventy years. And all competent 
 witnesses of them should be heard. 
 
 Mrs. Humphry Ward 
 
 Now Mrs. Humphry Ward is a very competent 
 witness of one thread of the Victorian fabric ; and 
 I have read with much interest her Recollectiom^ 
 for I have an intimate knowledge of the Oxford, 
 of the political and literary world she describes. 
 My own life and my Oxford times preceded hers 
 
 ^ A IVriter's Recollections: Mrs. Humphry Ward, 1 856-1900. 
 (W. Collins.) I note for Errata. — Page 48. Letter — date — for 
 "8" read "28." Page 162. ^^ Nineteenth Century" — should be in 
 "ronian." Page 182. For " Frederick " read " Frederic." Page 
 196. For "Morrison" read " Morison." — F. H. 
 
 178
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 by twenty years ; I belonged to another school, 
 had many other friends, and different interests. 
 From my own recollections I can heartily recom- 
 mend Mrs. Ward's vignettes as true and graceful 
 portraits of so many whom I have known both at 
 home and in public : such as the Arthur Stanleys, 
 the W. E. Forsters, the Gladstones, the Morleys, 
 the G. H. Lewes, Pattisons, Huxleys, Creightons 
 — Liddon, Jowett, Acton, Henry James, Pater, 
 Browning, Tennyson, Renan, Scherer, Gambetta — 
 including, of course, the authoress and her husband. 
 May I say with what pleasure I have read the 
 studies Mrs. Ward gives us of these and of so many 
 others I can recall ? I have written about most 
 of these myself, and I am glad to see in how many 
 traits we agree. My own few lines were meant 
 as summary estimates of their intellectual position 
 and their public influence. Mrs. Ward, as becomes 
 so eminent a writer of romance, has given us bril- 
 liant portraits of these men and women as they 
 looked, lived, and spoke to a sympathetic friend, 
 having the magic of a woman's art. 
 
 The Arnold Family 
 
 The early chapters about the mother, sons, and 
 family of the Arnolds are a really touching piece 
 of biography, and what is more, a genuine contri- 
 bution to Victorian psychology. Arnold of Rugby 
 was a great moral force, whatever his narrowness, 
 his conventions, and his dogged orthodoxy. The 
 singular thing is that his disciples, his apostles, his 
 children, and his grandchildren have broken out 
 in ways so different from his and from each other. 
 This Anglican Luther seems the parent of English 
 Voltaires, Diderots, de Maistres, Renans, and Saint 
 Beuves. For my part, my master at Oxford, and 
 
 179
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 in no small degree in after lite, was an eminent 
 Rugbeian colleague of Dr. Arnold. At Oxford I 
 lived entirely in the Rugby circle, and my closest 
 friends were typical products of Rugby School, and 
 of Rugby ideals. Positivist as I am, I am intel- 
 lectually and morally a proselyte of the Rugby 
 Gate. I cannot subscribe to all the beautiful things 
 Mrs. Ward says of Matt, for I was his contem- 
 porary critic, not his devoted niece. At least, I 
 am a fervent admirer of his poems, as I have often 
 said. To me his verses, if deficient in music, are 
 the most profound in thought of the whole Vic- 
 torian age. Again, I cannot join in the rapturous 
 tribute to Jowett, nor to " Old Pat." They were 
 two of the examiners for my degree ; I knew them 
 in lectures, in their homes, and in their writings ; 
 and not being their admiring pupil I am perhaps 
 a more impartial witness of their limitations as well 
 as of their services to thought. 
 
 Friends of the Arnolds 
 
 Mrs. Ward's task, and it is that 'of a lady friend 
 and an imaginative writer, is to tell us how these 
 famous leaders of the academic, the literary, and 
 the political world looked as she saw them in 
 society and in their homes. And she paints them 
 with a woman's sympathy and a master hand. 
 There may be too much about the Arnold clan : 
 but to be an " Arnold " is an asset in the social 
 and literary world. I enjoy them all : Matt, Tom, 
 Willy, Jane, Mary, old Mrs. Arnold, Mrs. Words- 
 worth, J. R. Green, Alfred Lyall, George Howard, 
 and Stoprord Brooke. Of all these cinema portraits 
 none are more life-like than those of " Aunt Jane," 
 of the group at Rydal Mount, that kindred group 
 at Fox How, of Laura Tennant and the " Souls," 
 
 1 80
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 of Henry James, and the visits to Rome. I was the 
 guest of the Forsters at Warfedale — would that she 
 could have endowed her rugged husband with some- 
 thing of her own culture, sobriety, and grace — I 
 knew the Eliot Nortons at Shady Hill ; I know 
 that Lake country, those Surrey commons and 
 glades ; Rome and the Campagna, the manifold 
 world of the Eternal City of the Vatican. All 
 these pictures, both of interiors and of landscapes, 
 are fascinating in themselves and make up a sug- 
 gestive background to Mrs. Ward's own novels, 
 which gain from them new colour and charm. 
 
 The Oxford Modernism 
 
 As my own interests lie, not in imaginative 
 literature, but in the development of modern 
 thought, it is from this ground that I dwell on 
 Mrs. Ward's book. It unveils the inner working 
 of the Academic mind on the progress of our time. 
 That Academic mind — that Oxford mind — was 
 assuredly a power in the Victorian age. I was 
 bred in it, I am of it, I feel it still, I honour it. 
 But let us remember that it was only one of the 
 powers, even a subordinate power, beside that of 
 Science, Truth, Social reorganisation. This grace- 
 ful, learned poetic Arnold ism, Elsmerism, Jowett- 
 ism was a critical rather than a constructive move- 
 ment — dispersive, sceptical, vague, cloudy. It took 
 many incompatible forms, evaded any definite 
 doctrine, had many doubts, and no positive creed. 
 As I told Matthew Arnold, he talked of the 
 Church like a witty Abbe in a pre-Revolution 
 salon. As I told Mrs. Ward herself when I dis- 
 cussed with her Robert Ehmere and Richard 
 Meynelly it would be hopeless to find any stable 
 resting-place in this Anglican Modernism. As I 
 
 l8i
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 told the authors of Essays and Reviews in i860, 
 the idea of Churchmen making a new Reformation 
 within the Church when they did not believe in 
 any literal sense the Apostles' Creed was futile and 
 dishonest. 
 
 Neo-Christianity 
 
 What has become of this Neo-Christianity ? 
 What are its aims, organisation, doctrines, apostles ? 
 What does it offer or teach to the amazing new 
 social world on which we are entering ? What 
 have Arnold, Jowett, Green, Pattison, their schools 
 and successors, to guide us as intellectual leaders in 
 the tremendous welter of New Thought — of New 
 Society — on which we must enter with the World 
 Peace ? What have they to say about the Union 
 of Nations, about Socialism, about Democracy, 
 about women's work and task ? Mrs. Ward her- 
 self has done far more in the way of social reno- 
 vation than Arnold, Pattison, and Jowett ever 
 dreamed of, and her public services therein are no 
 less valuable than her very thoughtful, truly grace- 
 ful tales. By her art, by her wise and humane 
 work in the cause of women and of the young, 
 she has done what no modernist, English or French, 
 could do. But the attempt to solve the problems 
 of religion by affirming that they have "no intel- 
 lectual answer" is to admit that Truth is a matter 
 of indifference. It is to play about that vital 
 axiom of life, when you dream of founding a new 
 Christian Church, whilst you believe the Creeds 
 to be antique formulas and the Gospels to be 
 confused traditions. If you find that the only 
 Creed or Gospel left is the idea of "a Divine 
 Life " — this can only be what each believer thinks 
 may be good, humane, and hopeful. To the pure, 
 
 182
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 humane, cultured soul this may be enough and 
 issue in a good and happy life. As the Gospel 
 of a Church to be preached to the masses, to the 
 ignorant, the worldly, the average man and woman, 
 it is too vague and unsubstantial to eradicate self, 
 to inspire virtue, purity, good faith. 
 
 Dr. James Sully's Life 
 
 A study of a different and more serious side of 
 Victorian Thought will be found in Dr. James 
 Sully's Life and Friends (Fisher Unwin, 191 8). 
 Having known him, and almost every one of his 
 literary friends, having visited almost all the 
 countries he describes, as myself now a Wessex 
 man, and some eleven years his senior, I have 
 followed with sympathy as well as curiosity this 
 honest record of a laborious philosopher's life. It 
 serves to correct any view of the later nineteenth 
 century as seen from Church, the ancient Uni- 
 versities, the Social and Official world. James 
 Sully's career came from a stout Baptist home, out 
 of the Radical party of Bright, Cobden, and Miall, 
 from the philosophic age of Mill, Bain, and Herbert 
 Spencer. Thence he worked his way on through 
 a College for Baptist Ministers, two German 
 Universities, the London periodical Press, travels 
 in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and Norway, to 
 various Provincial Colleges and lecture rooms, 
 to the publication of solid books on Psychology, 
 to the Chair of Grote Professor at University 
 College, and the London world of letters. It is 
 a story worth telling, and it is well told. I have 
 been myself almost equally in both camps and often 
 as a somewhat detached observer. So I enjoy the 
 confessions of this very sensitive, very sincere, 
 observant, introspective student of Psychology. 
 
 183
 
 obiter Scrip ta 
 
 Nonconformists in i860 
 
 Dr. Sully tells us with winning na'iveti the aims 
 and beliefs of a sterling Nonconformist family and 
 society in the West Country in Mid-Victorian 
 times — a society of which the numbers and the 
 power are in our day so much reduced. It was the 
 ground out of which modern Liberalism and Social- 
 ism have grown. It was created by the upheaval of 
 1832, and it has almost disappeared in the upheaval 
 of 1 9 14. My own life, almost my memory, covers 
 the whole 82 years. Dr. Sully gives us a faithful 
 picture of one element of this epoch, but it is only 
 one : the Church, the Universities, the British 
 Constitution and British Society represent another 
 element. But Carlyle, Darwin, French and 
 German Socialism, and Auguste Comte, have each 
 had something to say to our insular minds. Dr. 
 Sully calls his book My L'lfe^ but it is hardly a 
 model of Autobiography. He does not tell us the 
 date of his birth, nor the name or origin of his 
 mother. He is curiously reticent or shy about his 
 own domestic circle. Suddenly, like a bolt from 
 the blue, we come upon this (on page 127) : "In 
 1868 I married : incurring, apparently, no serious 
 
 risk ." But he does not tell us the lady's name, 
 
 nor her origin, nor how they came to meet. 
 " We " occurs at times in the book, but we know 
 no more of Mrs. Sully, so we hope the " serious 
 risk " developed into married happiness. Later on 
 (page 148) we learn "the arrival of a little girl," 
 so we suppose it was all right. But the author 
 of Studies of Childhood might have let us into the 
 psychology of his own household. Not a word of 
 the sort. This is not the way to write a " Life " 
 of any one — much less an Autobiography. 
 
 184
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 His Literary Friends 
 
 Though Dr. Sully tells us so little of his married 
 life he candidly describes his struggles to profes- 
 sorial office, his literary ventures, and his travels 
 abroad. It would be most unfair to find egoism 
 in all this. The very business of anything auto- 
 biographic is to record what the writer saw, heard, 
 and felt. We veterans whose crowded memories 
 force us to do this are told that we are egotists if 
 we do, and dvdl if we do not. All of this in his 
 book gives me at least very lively interest, being 
 as I am so near to his friends, and familiar with the 
 places he visited, all which may be connu to many 
 others. But the valuable part of the whole seems 
 to me to be Part II., the seven chapters of what 
 he calls " Pen Portraits of Friends." Now, I knew 
 all of these myself, some of them with a much 
 longer and closer intimacy of mind than Dr. Sully. 
 And I bear witness that they are all truthful and 
 vivid portraits. Of some no doubt his opportuni- 
 ties of studying his sitter were limited. But his 
 psychologic subtlety of observation and his ex- 
 tremely sensitive nature give him something of 
 that delicate personality which women impart to 
 their portraits of friends. In what I have ever 
 written about these men and women I had in mind 
 the sum of the eflfect of their work on the world. 
 Dr. Sully is chiefly recalling the effect they pro- 
 duced on his imagination and his heart when he 
 found them in their libraries or their homes. His 
 written text follows the excellent photographic 
 portraits by which his book is illustrated. Like 
 these photographs, his "pen portraits" tell us how 
 these men and women looked to him and how 
 their expression and presence touched his feelings. 
 One often cherishes a photograph of a friend. But 
 
 185
 
 obiter Scripta 
 
 a photograph does not reveal what a friend has done 
 — seldom, indeed, what a friend has been. 
 
 G. Eliot— G. Meredith 
 
 The account of the Leweses in the Priory is 
 good enough as a snapshot of the party there on a 
 Sunday afternoon, and as a study of George Eliot 
 is worth having. I wish that Dr. Sully had known 
 more of her, and certainly more of George Henry 
 Lewes, who was a far too important thinker to be 
 dismissed by George Meredith's gibes. Very good, 
 too, is Sully's portrait of J. Cotter Morison, of 
 whom also I think my own " In Memoriam " 
 address gives a more complete estimate. I am glad 
 to find our author doing justice to Morison's in- 
 exhaustible elasticity of mind and ebullient heart. 
 Dr. Sully knew little but the outside of Herbert 
 Spencer, though he evidently recognises his great 
 philosophical importance. He knew Leslie Stephen 
 far better, and so did I, and I heartily sympathise 
 with all Dr. Sully records of Leslie's superb critical 
 acumen and his feats as a climber and a pedestrian. 
 I, too, have tramped with Leslie over the heaths 
 of Surrey and the snows of Mont Blanc, and have 
 worked at his side at the British Museum and in 
 the London Library. To every word of Dr. 
 Sully's eulogy of Stephen 1 utter : " Yes ! so say 
 we all ! " But perhaps the most attractive of all 
 Dr. Sully's portraits is that of George Meredith — 
 whom I have known both for a longer time and in 
 more varied ways than Dr. Sully has done. In- 
 deed, I think the sketch of Meredith at home and 
 in a circle of his own has never been given with 
 a touch so sympathetic, so feminine, as in this 
 book by Dr. Sully. I wish he had given us more 
 Meredithiana. But the one irritating defect I 
 
 i8§
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 notice in the book is a way of alluding to persons 
 whom he declines to name, and of mentioning 
 " brilliant remarks " and " piquant anecdotes " 
 which he has either forgotten or would keep to 
 himself. 
 
 Women Novelists 
 
 A thoroughly useful account of the splendid 
 development of women's romance in the 140 years 
 since Evelina is to be found in Mr. R. Brimley 
 Johnson's Women Novelists (Collins and Co.). His 
 four protagonists of course are Fanny Burney, 
 Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and George Eliot ; 
 but between each he gives a summary account of 
 the women novelists of intermediate dates. There 
 is sound judgment in all of these studies. Mr. 
 Johnson is an ardent admirer of each of his prin- 
 cipal writers ; he sees clearly their points of con- 
 trast ; he is not blind to their mannerisms and 
 their defects. He is specially interested in two 
 things : first, the rise, evolution, and idiosyncrasy 
 of women's novels ; secondly, the different tone — 
 as we now say, the angle of vision — between women 
 as seen by women and men as seen by men. It 
 is clearly right to take Fanny Burney as the true 
 founder of women's novels, in spite of h^ egregrious 
 faults, especially in her later works, to take Jane 
 Austen as faultless and matchless in her own 
 modest role^ to treat Charlotte Bronte as a lonely 
 genius that cannot be classified or paired, to treat 
 George Eliot as a mind far wider and deeper, even 
 if she wanted the passion of a Bronte, and the 
 exquisite art of miniature of an Austen. It was 
 a happy idea to trace the development of women's 
 romance for a century and a half as an independent 
 and fruitful form of art, as it really is. It is best 
 
 187
 
 Obiter Scrlpta 
 
 understood when studied historically without refer- 
 ence to Richardson, Scott, or Thackeray. And 
 Mr. Johnson does this with wide knowledge and 
 sound judgment of the whole field of romance. 
 The curiosity of readers and authors will be 
 allayed if we assure them that no living person 
 is named by this critic. 
 
 Irish Convention and Sinn Fein 
 
 Politicians who speak or write on Irish problems 
 should study The Irish Convention and Sinn Fein, 
 by Warre B. Wells and N. Marlowe (Maunsel 
 and Co., 191 8). It is a careful documentary 
 history of all sides and actors in all Irish questions 
 from July, 1916, down to May, 1918. This 
 impartial story shows how absurd is the claim of 
 any leader or any party in Ireland to represent 
 the Irish Nation. No one — neither de Valera, 
 nor Dillon, nor Carson can speak for " Ireland." 
 There are three Irelands, not one ; and whatever 
 their numbers, not very unequally ranged in real 
 strength, if the wealth, intelligence, union, and 
 resolution of each be respectively estimated. When 
 Labour men, Mr. Asquith's men, American or 
 Colonial men, cry out to the Coalition "to settle 
 the Irish problem," they well know that it is an 
 impossible dilemma. It is agreed by all that 
 Ireland is not to be delivered over to Bolshevik 
 civil war. To reconcile irreconcilables is a futile 
 task. To revive now the act of 19 14 means civil 
 war. Irish and British malcontents call out to 
 make Home Rule without civil war. As well 
 say : Make bricks without straw and without clay. 
 They do not show how it can be done. Let the 
 eight million women voters try if women's wit 
 cannot untie the Gordian knot of British politics.
 
 obiter Scnpta 
 
 The Armistice 
 
 [Postscript, November 12.] 
 
 The greatest of all our perils as a free people 
 is over ! The greatest of all our triumphs as a 
 stalwart nation is won ! Perhaps the hardest of 
 all our tasks as leaders of a new era is at hand ! 
 In the noble utterance of the Prime Minister in 
 the Commons — he bore himself as the Chief of a 
 great people should bear himself at the hour of 
 deliverance and hope — it was truly said : " This 
 is no time for words — our hearts are too full." 
 Yes ! too full of gratitude to those by whom our 
 salvation has been achieved ; of grief for all that 
 we have lost ; of awe for the future on which 
 we have to enter. King, Parliament, People, have 
 never shown their true nature more honourably 
 than in this end of Horror and opening of Hope. 
 It is no time for words : and I will waste none 
 on the past. 
 
 Union now Indispensable 
 
 When in January last I began this series ot 
 Occasional Thoughts, I ventured to utter a warn- 
 ing against the danger threatening Europe from 
 Russian anarchy, lest the national war might pass 
 from thence into a class war. And now in 
 December, as I close this series, I still look with 
 anxiety on symptoms of unrest, faction, and civil 
 war in germ, which may try us as deeply as 
 four years of war. We are surrounded by a 
 circle of imperious problems to solve — of the 
 United Kingdom — of the Empire — of the Consti- 
 tution — of Finance — of Industry. Some are vitally 
 urgent ; some are immensely complex ; some are 
 immature visions ; some even are criminal projects. 
 
 189
 
 Obiter Scripta 
 
 The one hope for meeting all our tasks lies in 
 Union. To break up the Union which has won 
 this War would bring down this Peace to our ruin. 
 We are to choose a new Parliament under con- 
 ditions never yet attempted in our country — or in 
 any other country. Can we not for at least one 
 Parliament more retain the Combination of Parties, 
 postpone old sections, old watchwords, stale 
 formulae, marching together as the two Chief 
 Leaders passed side by side, after the Speaker, to 
 St. Margaret's Church. Can we not trust the 
 greatest War Minister in our history to lead us 
 to an even greater and more enduring victory in 
 the reorganisation of Peace at home and abroad ? 
 
 190
 
 INDEX 
 
 ^SCHYLUS, l6, 166-167 
 Air-craft, efl'ecls of, 125 
 Air-plane, in 1 751, 52 
 
 , in 1918, 78-80, 125 
 
 Alexandrine rhymed verses, 
 
 139-140 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 171-175 
 Ambassador, German, 147- 
 
 155 
 Ambassadors, 30-31 
 American President, 30, 159 
 
 Social Democrats, 137 
 
 Anarchy, 21-22. 
 Aristophanes, 167 
 Armenia, 68 
 Armistice, Nov. 12, 191 8, 
 
 189-190 
 Arnold family, 179-182 
 Asquith, H. H., Komaties 
 
 Lecture, 128-129 
 , his peaceable policy, 
 
 151-152 
 Austen, Jane, 187 
 Autonomy, 18 
 
 Bax, Bel fort, Memoirs, 143- 
 
 .145 
 Bismarck, 176-177 
 Bismarckism, I'jd-i'j'j 
 Bolshevism, 2, 24, 127, 162 
 Bourgeois, the enemy, 24 
 Bourne, Cardinal, 62-64 
 Boutroux, Emile, Lecture, loi 
 Brassey, Lord, scheme of, 
 
 49 
 Bronte, Charlotte, 187 
 Brooke, Stopford, Life and 
 
 Letters, I1-13 
 
 Bryce, Lord, on Second 
 
 Chamber, 93-96 
 Btidget, the Bookman's, 38-39 
 Burney, Fanny, 187 
 
 Cambridge, R. O., his 
 
 Scribleriad, 52-53 
 Catchwords, mendacious, 19- 
 
 20, 118-I19 
 Catholic Church, 63-64 
 Chamber, a Second, 93-97 
 Chappell, H., The Day, 15 
 Chronicles of Man, Coxwell's, 
 
 111-112 
 Churches, the, on War, 33-34, 
 
 63-64 
 Civilisation at stake, 73 
 Class War, 1-2 
 Coleridge, S. T., Table- Talk, 
 
 84 
 Confessions of the enemy, 
 
 146715S 
 Conscientious Objectors, 156 
 Conscription of wealth, 20- 
 
 21, 126-127 
 
 Constant, Benjamin, on 
 
 Napoleon, 139 
 Constitutionalism, 2 
 Courtney, W. L., Old Saws, 
 
 etc., 165-167 
 Coxwell, C. F., Chronicles of 
 
 Man, 111-112 
 Creighton Lecture, the, 28-29 
 Crescent and Cross, 169- 1 70 
 Crisis, April 19 18, 72 
 
 June 1918, 103 
 
 Currency, inflation of, 22-23 
 Cynicism of Pacifists, 159 
 
 191
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Democracy, Mr. Mallock on, 
 
 53-54 
 
 omnipotent, 97 
 
 Denmark, spoliation of, 176- 
 
 177 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, Life of, 8-9 
 Dobson, Austin, 38 
 Drama, ancient and modern, 
 
 165-167 
 Drayton, Polyolbion, 140 
 
 Education, new Act, 74-75) 
 
 76, 78 
 Electorate, the new, 44 
 Eliot, George, 186 
 Empire — not Fatherland, 77 
 Epitaphs, beautiful, 39 
 Eversley, Lord, Turkish 
 
 Empire, 9-10 
 History of Poland, 9-10 
 
 Fabliaux du Moyen Age, 10- 1 1 
 
 Federation, 106, 126 
 
 Firth, Prof. C. H., Creighton 
 
 Lecture, 28-29 
 Formulas, idle, 116 
 Frederick the Great, 106-110 
 Freedom of the seas, 29-30 
 Friends, Society of, appeal 
 
 from, 156 
 
 George, Lloyd, 72-73, 189-190 
 George V., 3 
 
 German Don Quixotes, 100 
 Kultur, 102, no 
 
 race, 25-27, 100, 136, 
 
 154-155 
 
 Socialists, 138 
 
 War Staff, 50-51, 100 
 
 Gordon, Mrs. Will, on 
 
 Roumania, 129 
 Great Crime, The, 26-28 
 Grey, Viscount, his pamphlet, 
 
 121 
 
 his peaceable policy, 
 
 150-151 
 
 Hardy, Thomas, 166-167 
 Hawarden Letters, 85 
 
 Hexameters, rhymed iambic, 
 
 112 
 Home Rule, 92, 105, 117, 126 
 Horace, translators of, 37-38 
 Humanity, Renascence of, 
 
 103 
 Epic of, 113 
 
 Idealism, dangers of, 132, 135 
 Illusions of critics, 82-83 
 Indefinite schemes, 120, 135 
 Industrial Peace, 16 1, 163- 
 
 164 
 Industrial unrest, 118, 157, 
 
 163-164 
 Internationalism, 18-19 
 International law, 122-125 
 Ireland, chaos in, 105, 188 
 Convention, 86-88, 92, 
 
 188 
 
 leaders, 58, 74, 188 
 
 Italian patriots, 167-168 
 
 Jagow, von, German Minister, 
 
 152 . . o 
 
 Johnson, Dr., illusions of, 82 
 
 Kaiser, the, 56 
 
 Kidd, Benjamin, Science of 
 
 Power, 68—71 
 Kiel, torn from Denmark, 177 
 Kultur, German, no 
 
 Labour Members, 44-47 
 Language, English, 67 
 Law, international, 122-125 
 League of Nations, 17, 80-81, 
 
 116, 131, 133 
 problems of, 131, 
 
 134 
 
 Leverhulme, Lord, scheme of, 
 48-49 
 
 Lichnowsky, Prince, Memo- 
 randum, 147-153. 
 
 Literary portraits, 1 78-186 
 
 Lords, House of, 48 
 
 Lorraine- Alsace, 171-175 
 
 Lyric, poets, 65-66, 114 
 
 age of, 1 14 
 
 192
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Mallock, W. H., on De- 
 mocracy, 53-55 
 
 Martinengo-Cesaresco, Count- 
 ess, i68 
 
 Medical science, 32-33 
 
 Memoirs, value of, 178, 183 
 
 Meredith, George, 186 
 
 Might is Right, dogma of, 
 24-27 
 
 Modernism, 181-182 
 
 Momentous years, 1918-1919, 
 16 
 
 Monarchy, 3 
 
 Morley, Lord, Recollections ^ 
 5-8 
 
 Muehlon, Dr., Diary of, 147- 
 
 155 
 Murray, Professor Gilbert, on 
 Religion, 140-141 
 
 Napier, Admiral Sir Charles, 
 
 168-169 
 Napoleon, B. Constant on, 
 
 139- 
 National War, i 
 Nationalists, Irish, 58-59, 
 
 119 
 Nations, 17, 18, 81 
 
 and see League, 124 
 
 Neo-Christianity, 182 
 Nicknames from novels, 67 
 Nonconformists, 1 832-1 914, 
 
 184 
 
 Opportunism, 4 
 Optimism, 159 
 Order, the N ew, 3 
 Oxford schools, 128-129, 181- 
 183 
 
 Pacificism, 4 
 
 Pacificists, 4, 56, 132, 159 
 
 Parliament, vices of, 9 
 
 Members, of, 44-46 
 
 Parliamentary government, 
 
 59-62, 89-91, 93, 97 
 Patriotism, teaching of, 75-76 
 Peace, no real peace in 19 19, 
 
 104, 157 
 
 Phillipson, Dr. Coleman, ot» 
 Alsace-Lorraine, 1 71-175 
 
 Poets, old and new, 13-15, 
 37, 65-66, 114-115 
 
 Poland, His lory of, 9 
 
 Positivism, disguised, 70-71, 
 102 
 
 Professors, German, 109-III 
 
 Rabelais, 35, 37 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 97-98 
 Redmond, John, M.P., 57-58 
 Reform, babel of, 1 19 
 Religion, 141-142 
 Renascence, the, 36-37 
 
 of humanity, 103 
 
 Republic, American, 3 
 
 French, 3 
 
 Revolution, 1-2, 3, 42 
 
 of 1918, 103 
 
 Romanes Lecture, Mr. As- 
 
 quith's, 128-129 
 Rosebery, Lord, on Frederick. 
 
 the Great, 107-108 
 
 on Pitt, 108-109 
 
 Roumania, 68, 129-130 
 
 Queen of, 130 
 
 Russian Revolution, i 
 
 Saintsbury, Prof., The French 
 
 Novel, lo-ir, 35 
 Scrtbleriad, the, 52-53 
 Self, gospel of, 23-24 
 Shenstone, epitaph by, 39 
 Shift, short, scheme of, 48-49 ' 
 
 treble, proposed, 49 
 
 Sinn Fein, Irish, 188 
 Slesvig, annexation of, 177' 
 Social Reform, 156 
 Socialism, International, iS- 
 
 19, 21-24 
 true, 55 
 
 Catholic Church on, 
 
 62-64 
 
 Socialists, 47-48, 132, 138 
 Spencer, Herbert, LecturCy 
 
 lOI 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, 186 
 Strachey, Mrs. R., Lyrics, 15 
 
 193
 
 Index 
 
 Sully, Dr. James, Memoirs, 
 
 183-186 
 Surrender, unconditional, 160 
 Suspense, time of, June 19 18, 
 
 103 
 
 Tracts, scientific, of Bishop 
 
 Wilkins, 98-100 
 Trade Unions, 47-60 
 Tree, Sir Herbert, 167 
 Tsardom, i, 42 
 
 U-boat, of 1 75 1, 52 
 
 Union, necessity for, 189-190 
 
 Victorian, early, 40-41, 143 
 era, no, 144-145 
 
 War of Class, i 
 
 gains of, 31-32, 97-98 
 
 of Nations, i 
 
 Poetry of, 65-66 
 
 sublimity of, 50 
 
 test of religion, 33 
 
 Warburton, Eliot, 169-170 
 Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 179- 
 
 182 
 Wealth, conscription of, 20- 
 
 21, 126-127 
 
 is credit, 21, 127 
 
 Wilkins, Bishop, Tracts, 98- 
 
 100 
 Willmore, G. S., The Great 
 
 Crime, 26-27 
 Wilson, President, 30 
 Woman, the New, 39-40 
 Women novelists, 187 
 
 194
 
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