W PR6027 1 K9^a6 I 1922 A A^ ^^. - = =^ zn ^^^^^^IHI = ^ ^H^^^^^^^B h - T» ^^^^^^^^H 9 - — ^ IH^^^IHI 9 = ==?^^^^^B 9 = — ^ ^^^^^^^^^1 4 = 6 ^ 1 ^^ — —4 ^^^^^^^^^^^1 -rr Vi?... LIBRARY liNIVERSriT OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE f \¥ <\ } 4 TKe KINGS TREASURIES OF LITER-ATURE GENERAL EDITOR Sir at QUILLER COUCH ::^:s:s5s;zz5:^:2!isz2Z!:sssr:!s r??'- ^ .^ *W^ .^ '■j.^-atv-^^: w- ^-r^ ::5y^-nrv^^^* v ^.»i^=;y->^>>'*s.^^w»^^».. ^^ ^'^ NEW YORK EPDUTTON AND COMPANY PR05E POETRY FRPHTHE WOK^J OF ^ HENRY NEWBOU AUTHOR JMDENT ^ SONS LTD • LONDON & TORONTO All rights reserved Sole Agbnt for Scotland THE GRANT EDUCATIONAL CO. LTD. GLASGOW PR ^027 First Published, June 1920. Reprinted, September 192a PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN CONTENTS POETRY Poetry and Politics Song of the Children in Paladore Marriage and Poetry . The Invisible Country The Pilgrim's Vision The Eternal City The Ballads. . PAGE 7 36 37 41 42 44 48 TIME Song from " Dream Market History and Time Time and the Land . Time and Music . A Mediaeval Funeral . The Secret of Oxford 55 56 58 59 61 65 LOVE The Oxford Browning Society Amore Altiero . True Thomas . 66 74 75 ENGLAND William the Singer Gerusalemme Irredenta Froissart — The First Phase 5 76 94 CONTENTS ENGLAND — continued PAGE Froissart — The Last Phase . . 103 Nothing New . . . . . . 106 The Church of Science . 114 The Body of Patriotism . 117 An English Landscape . 123 EDUCATION A Theory of School . I2S The Schoolboy in Luck . 130 Clifton Chapel .... . 136 Commemoration .... . 137 Art and Education . 139 Science and Literature . 142 The Old English School > . .146 WAR Chivalry of To-day . • I . 165 San Stefano . • . 179 Craven .... • < 189 Stonewall Jackson • • 190 Saving an Army . • « 198 Sacramentum Supremum • t 216 Nonneboschen Wood • 217 St. George's Day . • 1 223 The Spirit of Submarine War . 224 Q-BOATS • * 228 The Drifters' Battle . • 239 The Kraken's Death Grapple 242 Songs of the Fleet • 244 War and Poetry . • 249 The War Films • 251 Unlimited War • . 252 PROSE &> POETRY FROM THE WORKS OF O HENRY NEWBOLT POETRY AND POLITICS The relation of Poetry to social life — to Politics in the wider sense of the word — is not a very profound or difficult subject: but it is a little profounder, a little more difficult than it is sometimes thought to be. We have only to read or listen to what is being daily said around us to become aware that the com- mon opinion divides poetry off from other human activities — regards it as an intruder in ordinary affairs. In the Ship of State, Poetry must not speak to the man at the wheel, or indeed to any member of the crew when engaged on any kind of duty: if she does speak she must not be listened to seriously. Common sense tells us that Poetry is idealism, and that idealism has nothing to do with the practical.^ For that you need reality, truth, knowledge of things as they are in themselves: and only Science, which 1 " As to the plaintiff's verses that had been quoted, tlie jury could not judge the verses of poets from the standpoint of business men such as the jury and himself. Poets dealt with these matters in extravagant strain, as was shown by their knowledge of the poets. " The learned counsel then recited a poem by Swinburne and Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 20. These poets were to be congratulated that they had not to be cross-examined by Mr. Campbell." — The Times, April 22, 1913. 7 8 Poetry and Politics is the antithesis of Poetry, can give you these. Science then must be in supreme command, Science must steer and work the ship, while Poetry, if she is allowed any active place at all, must be restricted to such employment as decorating the saloon and playing in the band. Now it can hardly be necessary for me to insist on the vital importance of this view. Its results are visible in every department of our social system, and they are always disastrous. Our public life is before all things chaotic and quarrelsome — the crew are busying themselves not so much in working the ship as in disputing about every detail of the voyage, and particularly about its course. In Government, our method is to move b)' alternate efforts in almost opposite directions: You have, perchance, observed the inebriate's track At night when he has quitted the inn-sign : He plays diversions on the homeward line. Still that way bent, albeit his legs are slack.* Then on questions of public morality there is a direct and bitter conflict always going on : in matters of religion the common ideal of brotherhood is for- gotten in the universal ardour for faction-fighting. Yet the nation thus distracted is a collection of men and women perhaps as homogeneous as any in the world, and certainly in no way unusually deficient in political, moral, or religious sense. They are merely confused, and their confusion is, I believe, » George Meredith, The World's Advance. Poetry and Politics 9 largely due to a radical misunderstanding of the nature of Poetry and the part it plays in human hfe. To realise this we must go a little further back — • we must look into the prevalent view of our know- ledge of the world in which we live. That view is a clear and positive one : it is held by the vast majority around us, and I believe that the following statement of it would be generally accepted. First then, bodily existence, material existence, is existence in the truest sense of the word, and all true existence is primarily material existence: as compared with this outward life, our inner life is unreal, and it most nearly attains reaUty when it most closely corresponds to outward existence. Secondly, our only true know- ledge is knowledge of the external world, and it is true because it is knowledge of things as they are in themselves, knowledge of real and not imaginary things. It follows that our knowledge of our bodies is more intimate and certain than our knowledge of our souls can possibly be. This is the belief of a generation bred up on Science, but it is not one which is warranted by Science. What Science has to say in the matter may be found very clearly stated in Huxley's essay on Descartes.^ "What then is certain?" he asks. " Why, the fact that the thought, the present con- sciousness, exists. . . . Thus thought is existence. More than that, so far as we are concerned, existence is thought, all our conceptions of existence being * Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 172. 10 Poetry and Politics some kind or other of thought." Having said so much, the recollection seems to break in upon him that he is outraging the common belief — the creed which I have set forth above. He continues, "Do not for a moment suppose that these are mere para- doxes or subtleties. A Httle reflection upon the com- monest facts proves them to be irrefragable truths. For example, I take up a marble, and I find it to be a red, round, hard, single body ... all those qualities are modes of our own consciousness. . . . Whatever our marble may be in itself, all that we can know of it is under the shape of a bundle of our own consciousnesses. Nor is our knowledge of any- thing we know or feel, more or less than a knowledge of states of consciousness." He goes on to deal with the question of the cor- respondence between the external world and our impressions. " The necessary outcome of his (Des- cartes') views is what may properly be called Ideal- ism : namely, the doctrine that, whatever the universe may be, aU we can know of it is the picture presented to us by consciousness. This picture may be a true likeness — though how this can be is inconceivable — or it may have no more resemblance to its cause than one of Bach's fugues has to the person who is playing it: or, than a piece of poetry has to the mouth and Hps of a reciter. It is enough for aU the practical purposes of existence if we find that our trust in the representations of consciousness is verified by results: and that by this help we are enabled ' to walk surefootedly in this life.' " Poetrv and Politics ii Finally he has this passage ^ on body and soul : " Thus it is an indisputable truth that what we call • the material world is only known to us under the forms of the ideal world : and, as Descartes tells us, our knowledge of the soul (taken as the sum of the states of consciousness of the individual) is more intimate and certain than our knowledge of the body." In Huxley's opinion then, the common belief is wrong on every point. It is impossible to read this essay without being reminded that the poets have said the same thing and said it more m.emorably : there is Coleridge's Ode : O Lady ! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live. There is George Meredith's Sonnet, opening with the lines: Earth was not Earth before her sons appeared, Nor Beauty Beauty ere young Love was bom. And there are many more. But the poets use a truth such as this for their own purposes, which are not for the moment ours. We are not now looking for beauty on the hillside, we are climbing to reach a particular point of view and our best way is the plainest and straightest. Let us for a short time longer proceed by the direct, rough-hewn steps of prose. We start from the point to which Huxley has brought us. Man, as we know him, is a spirit : and it is only in terms of spirit that he is capable of knowing the world. We have already observed him in the process of • Collected Essays, vol. i. p. 193. 12 Poetry and Politics acquiring knowledge, we have seen that this process is not a passive one: an impression or sensation is something which is offered to us by the external world, but it will pass us by if we do not, by an activity of the spirit, seize it, and present it to our consciousness. The activity by which this is done is the aesthetic activity. When we grasp an impression, an external appearance, and present it, or express it tacitly, to our consciousness, we create a perception or intuition. When we express a perception or intuition in an external form, we make a work of art : if the expres- sion is in the form of words, the work of art is poetry : not necessarily verse, but essential poetry, that is creation. We have also seen that there is another activity of the human spirit — the logical or intellectual activity. By it man takes his intuitions and of them makes comparisons, classes, generalisations, and deductions: the expression of these in words is essential prose, that is. Science. Having then these two theoretic activities, which express themselves in Poetry and Science, how does man use them? Does he keep them distinct? Ob- viously not. Science deals with what are called facts, observed and recorded facts: but, as we have seen, these have in themselves the nature of poetry, they are facts of a world not discovered, but created, by the spirit. Science, in short, is dependent for its material on a poetic activity. Is Poetry on its side dependent on Science? Poetry and Politics 13 Practically it is. It is true that Art can dispense with logical thought — it does so to a great extent in the case of painting, and even Poetry might conceivably be limited to the expression of pure perception: The sun is warm, the sky is clear. The waves are dancing fast and bright; Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon's transparent might, The breath of the moist air is light Around its unexpanded buds: Like many a voice of one delight The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's. This is almost entirely expressive of direct im- pressions, and it charms us: but it would cease to charm if it were indefinitely prolonged or constantly repeated. The Hues are not a poem, they are only the introductory stanza of a poem which includes re- flections and comparisons, as well as simple intuitions. And this is the case in the greater number of poems : Poetry has the power of taking the finished products of Reason for her raw material, and fusing them together with her own intuitions into one substance. For a single clear example of this, Wordsworth's httle poem on the death of Lucy will suffice : A slumber did my spirit seal ; I had no human fears: She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force. She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course. With rocks and stones and trees. 14 Poetry and Politics These last two lines come from no simple intuition : man is not capable of a direct perception of the earth's daily revolution. To human sense it is the Sun which moves — which rises and sets to make our earthly years. But Science has told us a different tale, and the tale of Science has been so mastered by the imagination as to become of one substance with our intuitions. Poetry has made thought, too, a subject for the aesthetic activity. This then is, in very brief outline, what I believe to be the true account of the relations between Poetry and Science, and if we could now come together upon a scientific definition of Poetry, we should have only two stages further to go to arrive at our desired point of view. The definition we seem to have reached is this: Poetry is the expression in speech, more or less rhythmical, of the assthetic activity of the human spirit, the creative activity by which the world is presented to our consciousness. But this is not enough: it gives us only Poetry in the abstract, and makes no distinction between good and bad, greater and lesser poetry. The two necessary further stages are these: good poetry is not merely the expression of our intuitions, it is the masterly expression of rare, compl.x and difficult states of consciousness : and great poetry, the poetry which has power to stir man}^ men and stir them deeply, is the expression of our consciousness of this world, tinged with man's universal longing for a world more perfect, nearer to the heart's desire. By definition, and in a plain, prosaic way, we are all Poetry and Politics 15 poets, all makers of our own world: but the great poets re-make it for us; they take this very world of time in which we live, and by an incantation they rebuild it for us, so that for an instant we see it under a light that is not the Hght of Time. This at least is what I find they have always done in their great moments, and what I do not doubt they will always do. For, an ye heard a music, like enow They axe building still, seeing the City is built To music : therefore never built at all. And therefore built for ever. Those who have followed me so far and come to the same standpoint will now, I believe, find it easy enough to make a survey of our social system and mark what is and what ought to be the place of Poetry in it. I will imagine that a small company at any rate are still wth me, and that we are looking down together upon the world of our modem Ufe — looking not only upon it but into it, into the true nature of its activities. What do we see? Are there before us two clearly separated regions, in one of which the only activity going on is logical or scientific, while in the other there is only the creative and emotional? Do we see men divided as it were into two distinct nations— Men of Thought and Men of Feeling — the one speaking the language of Science, the other that of Poetry? Surely not. Do we not rather see a territory throughout the main part of which both languages are in common use, while on the extreme opposite outskirts of it there are two i6 Poetry and Politics comparatively small areas within which men are to be found speaking and working, on this side in the language of pure Reason, on the other in that of pure Instinct? We see also, I think, if we have the full use of our eyes, that though both these exclusive little areas are desirable places, no one could and no one does, with any success, live entirely in either of them. No one, however artistic, spends all his time in the enjoyment of his aesthetic intuitions, untroubled by remembrance or forethought or comparison. No one, however strict and powerful a thinker, passes every moment of his life in the pursuit of Science or under the absolute direction of Reason. No. Art is a place apart, and Science is a place apart; the place where men live is not in either of these, but in the larger space between them, where we speak and understand two languages at once, because we are by birth of a double nationality, and inherit, in varying degrees, the powers of both. It is true that in our present stage of civilisation one of these nationalities is apt to encroach upon the other, even to assume a dominant position. When we define man as " a reasoning animal," we are in danger of forgetting that " animal " too is part of the definition: that we are creatures of instinct first and of reason afterwards. In our long march out of the wilderness we have owed it to Reason that we men, alone of all living tribes, have come through to the conquest of the world. We therefore continue, now that the conquest is practically accom- Poetry and Politics 17 plished, to set Reason in the place of supreme authority, and we give wider scope and more com- pelling powers to that authority whenever a fresh emergency arises. This may be very right and necessary, but there are two considerations of a modifying kind which I think might well be pressed upon the partisans of pure Reason. The first is that Government has long been admitted to exist only for the happiness of the Governed, and not for the satisfaction of the Governor. It would seem to follow from this that strictly scientific enactments, though perhaps highly pleasing to their inventor, may not be really the most suitable to a society nearly every member of which is, on one side of his nature, an alien to science, full of illogical and often passionate preferences. In the Alsace-Lorraine of our daily life, negotiations which are demonstrated to be for our good may not always be for our happi- ness, and we may come to resent the dominant power which says to us: " You have lost your double nationality; so far as you were born of instinct, of art, of poetry, you are now a disinherited and subject race." The second consideration is this: that for our rulers to listen too exclusively to the strict counsel of Reason would be to fail in duty to those who gave them their authority. There is much to be said against our modem party system, but there is one strong point to be urged in its favour, and that is that the line of cleavage is not between Reason and Instinct, Science and Poetry, Utilitarianism and l8 Poetry and Politics Idealism, It is between two Ideals, both highly poetical. I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem, In England's green and pleasant land. That is the vow which binds equally the devoted of both parties: but for the Conservative, so far as he is truly Conservative, the Holy City was built somewhere in the past and comes down to us only to be saved or restored : while for the Liberal, so far as he is truly Liberal, its site lies still ahead upon a beautiful but misty horizon, and the City is the more difficult to describe because the like of it has not yet been seen on earth. I must add that, in addition to the two original and probably ultimate parties, there arise others from time to time, whose Future State is a kind of Utopia and is to be looked for round the next comer. It will be built of none but soUd prose materials, and it might, we are told, be finished to-morrow if only the designers had sufficient legislative power at their disposal. Unhappily, the jerry-builders of Utopia are not singular in this last illusion. The belief in legislation, the belief that our fellows had better be sober than Iree, is probably the greatest danger that civilisation has to fear at the present day, and the only aid that we can invoke against it is that of Poetry. There are but two ways of deahng with men in the mass — persuasion and compulsion. Reason, no longer sweet Reason, but the relentless virago more properly Poetry and Politics 19 named Logic, seems to have elected for compulsion. It remains only for Poetry to keep to the longer and surer way, however our would-be legislators clamour for the short, half -laid road, so full of imexpected pitfalls, and so cruelly up-hill for those who are to be driven along it. This way is clean against human nature. We are all — Conservatives, Liberals, Sociahsts — we are all revolutionists now: but the true and lasting Revolutions are achieved by a change of feehng and not of statute law. To awaken, stimulate, and change human feeling is the great function of Poetry, and the Poet is exerting a hundred times more beneficent power when he is doing this than he could ever exert in the more prosaic office of a legislator. The history of our literature affords a very striking example of this. Joseph Addison's poem The Cam- paign was written when he was a young and poor man. It is still remembered for two lines which both occur in the description of a great general: 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved. That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war: In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage. And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land (Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past), Calm and serene he drives the furious blast, And, pleased the .Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm. 20 Poetry and Politics Judged by a modern standard, The Campaign is not great or even good poetry, but it had the full effect of poetry upon Addison's contemporaries. It showed them England and EngHshmen, Queen, Ministers, and Generals, all in the act of hfe, but with their characters and deeds transfigured in a pseudo- heroic atmosphere. It moved them, it transported them from the mood of criticism into the mood of enthusiasm: it showed the writer to be gifted with the power of persuasion. The Government reahsed this and fell into the natural fallacy of prosaic minds : they secured his services and then used them for quite other purposes. For twelve years he spent his time in lucrative appointments, sessions of Parlia- ment, and high Offices of State. In these he made only a subordinate figure: but in the one interval when he was out of office he achieved the triumph of his life by the production of Cato, and by the perfect expression of his own personahty in the Spectator, he worked a lasting change in the thought and feeling of the nation. This is a lesson for the modern Poet: if his poems should achieve so much success as not only to influence the public but even to attract the attention of the Government, he will none the less resist all attempts to turn him into a Secretary of State: he will probably — though this is less certain — refuse even to become a member of the House of Lords. He will not forsake poetry, nor will he attempt to use poetry in the service of particular interests. The conflicts of poUcy he will judge, not by pitting arguments against each other. Poetrv and Politics 21 but bv measuring each against the ideal which is common to both sides. Those who hear him will be reminded not of their differences but of the under- lying sympathetic aspirations which are not partisan or temporary, but national and imperishable. A political poem of this kind is that famous sonnet of Wordsworth's, which keeps its power to this day, though the particular occasion which called it forth has long been forgotten: It is not to be thought of that the flood Of British freedom, which to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed " with pomp of waters unwithstood " — Roused though it be full often to a mood Which spurns the check of salutary bands — That this most famous stream in bogs and sands Should perish; and to evil and to good Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung Amiourv of the invincible knights of old: We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. — In everything we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold. It would be difficult to say whether this poem is more proudly conservative or more passionately democratic. But it lasts, because it is not partisan. Unfortunately, this is seldom the case with political polms: they do not take their origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity, but only too often from just the emotion one would not wish to recollect in tranquillity. Such was Coleridge's Eclogue of Fire, Famine, and Slaughter, a poem repented by its author within a few years, and now entirely obsolete. It is instructive to note that Pitt, who in this frenzy 22 Poetry and Politics of political hatred is consigned by Coleridge to ever- lasting flames, is the same statesman for whose " hallowed tomb " Scott wrote an Ode of a precisely opposite character. But even this is less striking than the contrast between two sonnets written in our own time by two great poets upon the same day — the day after the assassination of the Tsar Alexander. Swinburne, but for stern compassion and deep awe, would rejoice That one more sign is given against the crown, That one more head those dark red waters drown. Which rise round thrones whose trembling equipoise Is propped on sand and bloodshed and such toys As human hearts that shrink at human frown. Rossetti sees in the murdered man no tyrant, but the emancipator of forty million serfs, lamented by his people: These to-day aloud Demand of Heaven a father's blood — sore bowed With tears and thrilled with wrath; who while they grieve On every guilty head would fain achieve All torments by his edicts disallowed. These poems each expressed an unconsidered view of a mere particular fact: they give us no insight into the colossal and mysterious tragedy of the Russian Autocracy: they were momentary smd they passed with the passing of the moment. But Rossetti, at any rate, had a power beyond this. His sonnet On Refusal of Aid between Nations, written on some unremembered occasion, can never be obsolete while indignation and generosity remain to us. It expresses a deep sense of the di\dne wrath, Poetry and Politics 23 which comes, he says, not from the calamities of the time — But because man is parcelled out in men To-day: because for any wrongful blow- No man not stricken asks, " I would be told Whv thou dost thus," but his heart whispers then " He is he, I am I." By this we know That our earth falls asunder, being old. The view which I have here suggested will not commend itself to the majority of those engaged in public life. The politician desires support, the elector desires guidance, on the particular question of the day: they cannot wait for any ripening process. Their charge against Poetry will be that it is too remote, that its method of persuasion is not direct enough, that it has too little touch with " practical politics." If we could induce them to come for a moment to our point of view and look down, as we have done, upon the common everyday' life of men, half instinctive and half intellectual, might we not say to them: "There is the world you have to govern: on what power are you relying for per- suasion? First, no doubt, on Reason — but your opponents will claim Reason too. And even those who come to hear you will not perhaps be effectively gained by pure cold logic : what you need is to create enthusiasm, a fire that will bum and spread after you have passed on. Will you set aside as too remote, too unpractical, those deep and permanent emotions which belong to the innermost activity of the spirit, and which have probably before now made your own imagination glow? Then you must attempt to kindle 24 Poetry and Politics an emotion with the practical details of the matter in hand: you must appeal to the self-interest of your audience and their hatred of those who baulk it. You, too, will be remaking the world : half of it will be turned to baseness by your imagination, and the other half by assenting to it. This also is a kind of poetic activity: out of human life it builds the City of Dis." Here, too, we have an example worth remembering. This charge of remoteness has been anticipated by a living poet. The thought came to Mr. Yeats in his early days, that he might in time to come be reproached for not having done more for the cause of Ireland. It was not, of course, moonlighting that might be expected of him, nor even speeches in favour of Home Rule, but good political verse, denouncing the oppressor, instead of unpractical poetry about that Lady Beauty, whose presence keeps alive the souls of nations. These are the first lines of his Apologia: Know that I would accounted be True brother of that company Who sang to sweeten Ireland's wrong Ballad and story, rann and song; Nor be I any less of them Because the red rose-bordered hem Of her whose history began Before God made the angelic clan, Trails all about the written page. For in the world's first blossoming age The light fall of her flying feet Made Ireland's heart begin to beat, And still the starry candles flare To help her light foot here and there, And still the thoughts of Ireland brood Upon her holy quietude. Poetry and Politics 25 The poems here defended — Mr. Yeats's Irish poems — are certainly very remote: I suppose none ever touched more distantly or more obliquely a question of contemporary political strife: none ever appealed less to the selfish fears and hates of men. But I believe they have done more for Ireland than all the threats and curses of the last hundred years. Is this what it is to be unpractical ? What else is wisdom ? — what of men's endeavour Or God's high grace, so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait, To hold a hand uplifted over hate ; And shall not Loveliness be loved for ever? * What Poetry can do, then, is to express not our transitory wishes, but our eternal aspirations: she designs, but she cannot argue about details. That is the work of Reason, scientific, dispassionate, honour- ably prosaic. On the other hand, the Poet must not be so remote as to be no longer human. He, like the rest of us, is earth-bom, and must never deny his double nature. If he builds an ideal world for us, he must use the material of our actual life: otherwise he fails, he leaves us cold, we refuse to enter into his alien and unattractive Paradise. This explains the astonishing weakness of our religious poetry. We might have supposed that Art would have been at her most powerful when dealing with Religion; and this expectation is amply borne out by the history of painting in Europe. But it is hardly to be disputed that in this country at least religious poetic activity has been for the most part a feeble and mechanical ' Gilbert Murray, BacchcB. 26 Poetry and Politics activity, only saved from total failure by the aid of music and other extraneous associations. I am speaking now of poetic activity in the wider sense, of the creative imagination, whether working through prose or verse; but only as it deals with the social aspect of religion, and mainly of its operations in verse. Its endeavours have been made with too little regard for the double nature of man: it has tried not so much to remake this world as to make a new one out of unfamiliar or misplaced materials: it has invented a Paradise which is not a transfiguration of this life, but an irrelevant sequel to it. I will not quote from the rehgious verse in which this conception has been so often uttered, because, though it is mainly rubbish, I cannot forget that even a bit of rubbish may be endeared to some one by an accidental memory, a fragrance conveyed by it though not issuing from its own substance. But I do not need to quote : the feeling of alienation caused by this too unearthly ideal is well known to most of us. It was twice expressed by Mary Coleridge in her poems — expressed with perfect reverence and perfect sincerity. First, she declares ^ that she loves the Earth she knows more than the Heaven of the Hymnal: Is that the home, the Father kind. Is that the country of our birth ? Were we created deaf and blind, That we prefer the toilsome earth ? Its setting sun, its changing sea. The day, the dark refreshing night, The winds that wander wide and free, Are dearer than the Land of Light. 1 Poems, p. 95. Poetry and Politics 27 More than this: she loves even the labour of this world better than the restful monotony of that other :^ I envy not the dead that rest, The souls that sing and fly; Not for the sake of all the Blest, Am I content to die. My being would I gladly give. Rejoicing to be freed; But if for ever I must live, Then let me live indeed. '\Miat peace could ever be to me The joy that strives with strife? WTiat blissful immortality So sweet as struggling life ? Among the few h^Tnns to be excepted from this condemnation of futihty is that anonymous one — not to be found in many of the modern books for church use — in which, among all the old conven- tional splendours borrowed from the gorgeous East and to us almost senseless, among the walls of precious stones and turrets of carbuncles and streets paved with pure gold, we come suddenly upon a touch Hke this: Thy gardens and thy gallant walks Continually are green; There grow such sweet and pleasant flowers As nowhere else are seen. It is only a touch: but it is convincing because, though other-worldly, it is still human: it has still sometliing of our own, something that is a memor}' as well as a hope. In this it obviously resembles the far greater poetry from which it is derived — the ' Poems, p. 198. 28 Poetry and Politics poetry of the ancient Hebrews. We are told that the ancient Hebrews had no thought of personal im- mortality, but they had a passionate belief in an eternal excellency, and they embodied their ideal in the visible beauty of their own city. The hill of Sion is a fair place, and the joy of the whole earth: upon the north side lieth the city of the great King: God is well known in her palaces as a sure refuge. Walk about Sion and go round about her: and tell the towers thereof. Mark well her bulwarks, set up her houses: that ye may tell them that come after. For this God is our God for ever and ever: he shall be our guide unto death. This union of the fervour of patriotism with the fervour of moral aspiration produced a poetry which is to all our liturgical poetry as a great and sonorous bell is to the vague whistle of the wind. It rings to the height of heaven, but it was cast in the bowels of earth. Therefore it has in all generations moved men as no other poetry has ever moved them. There is another reason for the influence of the Psalms: they do not attempt to do the work of prose. They do not deal in history or argument : they do not, as our hymns often do, support particular dogmas, or illustrate the Calendar of a particular Church, or justify the authority of a particular hier- archy. They are, in short, remote — remote from practical religious politics: but that is only to say that they have fed the deeper springs of human emotion and exercised an unparalleled power in moments of crisis. Before our society can hope to produce such poetry as this, we must learn to clear Poetry and Politics 29 our vision and see, as we hardly see at present, what is the true nature of the reHgious ideal and how it is related to our common life. What's a religion ? 'Tis a poet's dream Done into deadly prose by earnest men, Stript of the charm, the madness, and the gleam Of highest reason, by the industrious pen. 'Tis Quixote's chivalry — in Sancho's brain Turning to islands where himself may rule — Knight-errant wandering through too real a Spain, Misapprehended by the faithful fool. Scorned by the strong, derided by the proud, Played with by Fashion, battered by the Crowd.' Lastly, there is one more problem of our social Ufe which troubles us from time to time, and which comes within the range of our present survey: the problem of the relation of Poetry, of creative Art, to public morality. This, too, will have a different and, I think, a less confusing appearance if we view it from the standpoint which I have tried to indicate. It is not so simple a question as that of the relation of Poetry to Politics and Religion, because it is not concerned only with perception and reason, but with a third force in human life, an activity which is not esthetic or intellectual. The Senses, loving Earth or well or ill, Ravel yet more the riddle of our lot. That is to say, they are not content with theoretic existence, they take man out of the sphere of pure being into that of doing, getting, becoming: they * Verse, by Bernard Holland, 191 2, p. 144. $o Poetry and Politics make him a moral as well as an instinctive and reasoning animal. The way in which the problem presents itself is this. So long as a man keeps entirely to himself and his private circle the expression of his own intuitions — that is, the works of art M'hich he creates — ^no one could possibly claim to pass any judgment upon them. But when an artist exhibits his work to his fellow-citizens, when a poet multiplies and distributes his poems, it becomes a matter of practical interest to the community in which he lives to observe what effect, if any, is produced by them. In Politics and cases of religious controversy this anxiety does not arise, because the approval of at least one party is secured; but there is no party which does not desire good public morals, though there may be disagree- ment as to the best method of achieving the desired result. The inquiry then is legitimate, but though some make it coolly, others make it with appre- hension, and often fall into error. Sometimes, for instance, they exclaim against a book as " immoral " because it supplies arguments against an established institution, such as the institution of marriage. Here they forget that as a community we in England have agreed to permit all institutions to be pubhcly criticised: a man may, if he wishes, advocate the aboUtion of the Church, the Post Office, the House of Lords, or any other institution. If he does this seriously and disinterestedly in a book, we may regret the existence of such opinions and dread their propagation, but we have no right to do any- Poetry and Politics 3^ thing but controvert them. If, however, the book claims to be a work of art, we are entitled to say that it is faulty, because argument is the business of Science, of Reason, of Prose in the true sense, not of Poetry. Poetry does not advocate a new world: it instantly and of its o-.vn power creates a new world. What happens or is done or thought or said in that world can have no direct reference to the affairs of our everyday Hfe. This is easily and very generally perceived in the case of rhythmical poetry : the form of the verse, and perhaps some peculiarity of diction, removes what we hear to a distance from the prose world. But in the common unrhythmical fiction, where too the subject-matter, the raw material, is drawn very directly from everyday experiences and expressed in language approximating to the language of ordinary hfe, there, however creative, however essentially poetic the work is, however truly it makes a new world out of the old, there is a risk of a mistaken identification, of a confusion between the two. And the risk is perhaps greatest when the art is most moving, for that is when it transfigures life most, and yet changes it least: the common mind then easily perceives the similarity and overlooks the difference. Yet it is the difference and not the simi- larity that is the more important: the fallacy lies in taking the similarity for identity. This confusion is due to that inveterate behef that Art is a de- scription, reproduction, or imitation, of things as they are. When we have freed ourselves from this unscientific delusion, and realised the true function 32 Poetry and Politics of Poetry, those who read will cease to regard fiction as a highly rhetorical method of advocacy, and those who write will perhaps remember too that they cannot be artistic and argumentative at the same time. It is possible, then, for art to be bad art : is it not possible for it to be bad morals, to be dangerous to the community? I do not doubt that it is: there may be danger of the worst, and when it exists it will be a much more insidious danger than that commonly apprehended. Information does not corrupt, nor does argument: if they did, Science would be the most dangerous of all influences, and there have been times and places in which it was so considered. What corrupts or may corrupt is contact with a corrupt personahty. Now contact with a personality is precisely what Art gives. The Poet, the artist, takes you into his new world. What you see or hear there may be painful or pleasant, but it cannot in itself be harmful: it is merely a kind of spiritual experience. But the atmosphere of that world, the quahty of the imagination you breathe there, the unseen but all-pervading presence of the creative spirit, that is a vital matter. What we should ask, then, when these moments of apprehension come, is not, " What does this book advocate? What does it attack? What painful incidents does it narrate: what plain or uncomfort- able words does it use? " The inquiry should go deeper: it should be, "What is this writer's per- sonality? Is it disinterested or selfish, fine or base? " And to this it would very seldom be difficult to find Poetry and Politics 33 the right answer if the right evidence were taken. That is not to be done by gathering isolated words, or passages, taking them out of one world and bringing them back to another — they may very likely be quite out of key here, as many persons and events in history are out of key with the life of to-day, and yet we do not demand that they should be expunged from the record. No, it is only by taking the book as a whole, and the man behind the book, by observing not mere details, but the indwelling soul which gives them life and unity, that we can estimate the possible moral effect. The danger, when there is danger, comes not from what is startling, what is called shocking, but from what is insidious. That which shocks, whether good or evil, calls forth a natural resistance: that which permeates does not, though it may be the most powerful influence in a life and the most indelible. I will set down here a quotation from the literature of a generation ago. I do not know the author's name or whether he is still alive: but in truth no one man is responsible for the work in question, because being a piece written for the theatre, it was in reality the result of a kind of collaboration between the author and his audience. I take it as typical of the world which they created by the demand and supply of this and similar expressions. In that world the ideal man addresses the ideal woman as follows: I come as a cavalier, And I think you'd take it not amiss I do as a cavalier, Who is never loth to steal a kiss. 34 Poetry and Politics And never a cavalier Would be a gallant knight and true, Who wouldn't confer a kiss Upon a girl who wished him to. This is an isolated fragment? It is. I have no space for more. But my memory tells me that in the generation in which it was written it was popular and representative. My memory also tells me that in the same generation loud cries of denunciation were hurled against a book called Tess of the D'Urber- villes. To-day there is a great change : we know that book. We have forgotten the shock it gave; we have not forgotten the pain, but it no longer troubles us, because we have learnt to share it. We know the spirit that in that world cries for beauty, and, above all, for moral beauty. Is it there or in the " gallant cavaUer " atmosphere that the soul may breathe with least danger? And if vulgarity, base- ness of thought and feeling, is the real enemy, the real disease which softens and eats away the tissues of the mind, is it not true that Science and Art are its two antidotes, and Art, great Art, the stronger of these? Yes, stronger, because while Science clarifies thought by rejecting Emotion, Poetry refines it by intensifying Emotion. When thought and sense are fused together by genius, all that is really mean or common is imperceptibly thrown off: the sorrow remains as noble sorrow, the laughter as pure laughter. The heart has learnt wisdom, but has kept innocency. Poetry and Politics 35 O mighty Mtise, ... Earthbom of sufiering, that knowest well To call thine own, and with enamouring spell Feedest the stolen powers of god-like youth On dear imagination's only truth, Building with song a temple of desire: And with the yearning music of thy quire. In nuptial sacrament of thought and sense Hallowest for toil the hours of indolence: Thou in thy melancholic beauty drest Subduest 111 to serve thy fair behest. With tragic tears, and sevenfold purified Silver of mirth: and with extremest pride. With secret doctrine and unfathomed lore Remainest yet a child for evermore.* Of Poetry this is certainly true, and none the less because the poet draws so much of his power from sympathy with every activity of the human spirit. For him, as for the great apostles of religion, nothing is to be called common or unclean. Hazlitt remarked of Shakespeare that he was " in one sense the least moral of all writers; for morality (commonly so called) is made up of antipathies, and his talent consisted in sympathy with human nature in all its shapes, degrees, depressions, and elevations." Sir Walter Raleigh, after quoting this, adds a word of his own.^ " This is indeed the everlasting difficulty of Shakespeare criticism, that the critics are so much more moral than Shakespeare himself, and so much less experienced. He makes his appeal to thought, and they respond to the appeal by a display of delicate taste. . . . They cannot endure to enter such and such a place. They turn away their 1 Robert Bridges, Recollections of Solitude. • Shakespeare (" English Men of Letters "), p. 165. 36 Song of the Children eyes from this or that person. They do not like to remember this or that fact. Their moraUty is made up of condemnation and avoidance and protest. What they shun in Ufe they shun also in the drama, and so shut their minds to nature and to Shakespeare." We have given a fair trial, a long trial, to the system of moral training which corresponds to this system of criticism. We have not refused to enter such and such a place ourselves, but we have refused to allow others to do so: we have not turned away our eyes from this or that person, but we have looked into their books and then attempted to bum or banish them. We have inculcated a morality made up of condemnation and avoidance and protest, without any perception of the fact that the spirit draws its well-being from what it feeds on, not from what it rejects, and falls into sickness rather by the weakness of its own power of assimilation than because of any deadliness in the food supplied by the common earth. SONG OF THE CHILDREN IN PALADORE^ To Aladore, to Aladore, Who goes the pilgrim way ? Who goes with us to Aladore Before the dawn of day ? » Paladore in this story is the earthly city; Aladore its ideal counterpart. Marriage and Poetry 37 if we go the pilgrim way. Tell us, tell us true, How do they make their pilgrimage That walk the way with you ? O you must make your pilgrimage By noonday and by night, By seven years of the hard hard road And an hour of starry light. O if we go by the hard hard road. Tell us, tell us true, What shall they find in Aladore That walk the way with you? You shall find dreams in Aladore, All that ever were known : And you shall dream in Aladore The dreams that were your own. O then, O then to Aladore, We'll go the pilgrim way, To Aladore, to Aladore, Before the dawn of day. MARRIAGE AND POETRY Then with the years so passing the time came that Aithne was a damsel grown, and many knights sought her love and many asked to have her in marriage. And it happened at this time that her mother, the Lady AiUnn, was taken with sickness. 38 Marriage and Poetry and though her malady was but light to the deeming of such as saw her and heard her speak thereof, yet inwardly she knew that the end of it was to be by death only. So upon a day she lay in her chamber in the castle of Kerioc, and Aithne sat there beside her and they talked together of this and of that. And at the last the Lady Ailinn ceased from talking, and then she spoke to Aithne again and said: "My daughter, I would not have you parted from me by blindness, as others are parted from me : for they deem that in the Spring I shall be healed of this my malady, whereas I know inwardly that before the thorn is hoar I must be otherwhere. And of that, beloved, I say no more; for you too shall one day pass out by this gate, and I bid you to the Tryst after Death. But as for your earthly life I have a counsel for you: that you consider well to whom you give yourself; seeing that a woman should not love but after her own kind, and for one such as you are this may well be a hard thing to compass. For the half of your heart is with the faery, and the half of your days you live in a land that is no land of men. And of that land I also have had knowledge, for I was somewhile there in my maidenhood: and though I came never there again, yet have I remembered it in my dreams, and I know this, that few men find the way thereto. Yet will a maiden think, as I also thought, to take a man for lord and lover and to bring him in thither; but the magic of it is not so, for every man must win there by his own desire. Marriage and Poetry 39 Choose then whom you will, as of your sovranty: but if it may be, my daughter, before your choice be uttered, come you up hither into this that was my chamber, wherein also you were bom, and remember me, and how that I spoke with you of that realm that is your heritage. So shall your choice be my choice, for good fortune or for ill, and we two shall not be parted." Then Aithne when she heard those words held her mother fast by the hand and bowed her head down upon the pillow beside her: and she wept bitterly, for the heart of youth cannot bear to hear speak of death and departing. And it is no marvel, seeing that the darkness is great and the Tryst is very far off. So it was with Aithne at her mother's departing; for in no long time afterwards that lady's life failed her, as in this world, and she was gone. But Sir Ogier for aU his grief was still the more minded to make for his daughter some marriage of goot counsel: for he held women to be as it were ships, that may fetch and carry well enough, but with- out a master they are blown about and go no whither. Now came again those knights of whom I spoke before: and they were by number a hundred from the first to the last. And they loved her all of them, not for her lands only, but each with such love as he had: for her beauty some, and some for her sweet voice, for oftentimes when she spoke and looked the blood would dance in them that heard her. And many there were that came from far countries, whereof some sought her for the praise 40 Marriage and Poetry that went abroad of her, even to the out isles, and some for the renown of her father Sir Ogier; for he was a great knight under shield, and a hunter that never knew weariness, and thereby he came quickly to his end, for he took the river with a horse that was wholly spent. So Aithne was left alone, and her loneliness was great : for always in her castle of Kerioc she saw the faces of them that were otherwhere, and at night she had no peace for the crying of the sea-birds. And many times she made escape into her realm of Aladore: but there also was loneliness, for she had found as yet no soul to dwell with her. But of the knights that were her earthly servants she took much pleasure and perplexity: and to one or another of them she came near to have yielded her. Yet when the time came, at every time she held aback: for she remembered her mother the Lady Ailinn and the promise that she made to her at her departing, and always when she thought of her words she saw that they were true. And therewith she remembered a saying of her father, and she saw that this also was true, as for the most part: for he said of men and women that though they be born of one blood yet they are ever strangers each to other, both by kind and by custom, and though they sit at one board and lie under one blanket, yet they dwell apart all their life days. But Aithne hated that saying in her heart, and in her hope she bettered it. {From "Aladore," 19 14.) The Invisible Country 41 THE INVISIBLE COUNTRY Then they two left the way under the wall, and passed out between the trees: and they cast them- selves down upon the grass and lay there for a space looking towards the sea. And below them where they lay was the high steep, grey and green; and below the steep was a beach upon the margent of the water. And as for the water, that was of two kinds, for nigh land it was unvexed and still, as a deep river is still: but a mile out it was broken and foam-flecked, as it were a great green meadow and a thousand of white sheep thereon, and so continued as far out as eye could see. And Ywain marvelled to see the breaking of the water, for there was no wind and the tide was well-nigh silent upon the strand. And Hubert told him that it was no marvel, for the water inshore was deep, so that a ship might go thereon: "but out yonder," he said, "no man may sail and keep his hfe, for the sea is full on every side with banks of sand, and the name of them is called the Shepherdine Sands, and many a one have they covered from all sight and seeking." Then said Ywain, " They are well named by the name of the Shepherdine Sands, for I see the sheep plainly; but tell me this, for what sake any man should go among them to peril of death? " And Hubert said, " For the sake of Aladore." Then Ywain thought to anger him that he might be the more certainly answered: so he spoke scornfully 42 The Pilgrim's Vision and said, " What manner of men are they that for such a sake will go to peril of death ? " But Hubert was no whit angered, and he said joyfully, " Well worth the peril and the death; for they tell such tales of Aladore that if but the half of them be true, then may it well be the land of every man's desire. And this you believe not yet, for you have not seen it, nor can I tell you on what day or by what enchant- ment you may come to see it : for a man may watch half his life in vain, and suddenly in the lifting of his eyes it will be there, between sky and sea, as clear as stone in sunlight." Then, when he heard this, Ywain was silent for a space, and continued looking out to seaward: but he saw there nothing that was new, for he saw only the sttU water anear him, and afar off the blue border of the sky; and between them he saw that pasture perilous of the Shepherdine Sands. {From " Aladore," 1914.) THE PILGRIM'S VISION Then the shepherdess led Ywain forth upon the hill, and behind them was the river and before them was the little beechen grove. And they came to the grove and sat within the shade of it and looked over the valley: and the sheep went cropping the wild thyme and the milkwort, and clanking pleasantly with their bells. And the shepherdess looked down- ward upon Ywain, for he lay before her at her feet : and he turned and looked upward into her eyes. The Pilgrim's Vision 43 And as he looked the day went over him in a moment of time, between two beats of his heart: and he lacked speech of her no longer, for he dreamed under her silence as a man may dream under a starry night. Then she rose and led him again downward: and the sheep went down before them to the river, and fell to drinking greedily. And as they drank the wind of evening came softly down the stream, and upon it came a sound of piping: and Ywain's heart ached to hear that piping, for it was of a sad and piercing sweetness. Then his feet began to move beneath him, and he left the sheep to their drinking and went toward the music. And he came to a glassy pool among the rocks: and upon the rocks was the young faun sitting, and playing on his pipes, and under his feet was the evening sky, shown clearly upon the water of the pool. And Ywain came near, for the music drew him strongly: and he stood and looked upon the pool, and he saw the sky therein. And he saw it not as sky but as a great region of the sea: for the clouds upon it were like lands of earth, and they lay there after the fashion of bays and heads and islands. And there was a coast that lay fast by him, as it were beneath his very feet: and it ran to the right of him and to the left, and beyond it was the void space of the sea. And as he looked upon the coast he knew it well: for he stood by seeming upon the High Steep of Paladore, and looked out over the Shepherdine Sands. Then with the beauty of the place he fell to longing. 44 The Eternal City and because of the music that he heard his heart was restless: and he desired greatly to be seeking for the land wherefrom that music came. And in a moment it was there before him, beyond the void space of the sea. And the form of it was as the form of Paladore, with the city and the steep all fashioned out of cloud: but it lay lonely and far out, like an island of the West. And a light was upon it more delectable than all the lights of sunset, so that it seemed to burn also in the eyes of him that saw it: and the light and the music increased together, and together they faded and ceased. And when they ceased Ywain turned him aside to weep, for he per- ceived that he was homeless. But as he turned he saw his lady beside him standing, and she spoke and called him by his name as one that knew him afresh and was no more be- dumbed. And he cast himself into her arms and kissed her: for he knew that he had had sight of no earthly city but of Aladore. Then he looked again upon the pool, if by fortune he might see that city again: and he saw but a ripple in the water, for with his hoof the faun had dabbled it. {From " Aladore," 1914.) THE ETERNAL CITY Then said Ywain: "Doubtless your saying is true, and well have I proved the gift: yet I marvel not- withstanding, for man may wonder in despite of The Eternal City 45 knowledge. And there is one matter concerning which I am still perplexed." And Aithne said to him: "Say on." And he said to her: " I am per- plexed between two verities : for there is one truth of Paladore and another of Aladore, and though they be diverse yet they both have by seeming the nature of truth veritable. And many times mj^ mind is in doubt concerning them: for in our Hfe that now is we come and go between two realms, and I would that I might know which of them shall outdure other." And Aithne asked him: "After what manner seem these verities to you?" And he answered: " beloved, now am I with you in Aladore, and all things else and all men and all places are but as shadows cast by this our life, and we move them as we will, and as we will we take away their being. But when I am alone and dwelling yonder among men, then have those shadows truth of substance and of touch, and the life of Aladore becomes an image in the mind, as it was aforetime when I saw it as a cloud in heaven." Then Aithne was silent a space, and fear came into her eyes: and afterwards she spoke suddenly and said: " O my beloved, keep innocency, for to a child these things are plain. And you were a child this moment past, and I with you: and wherefore now should we cloud our wisdom with a doubt? " And she rose up and said to him: " Let us play a game together, as children that play upon the shore. For here is sand enough, and loneliness, and the 46 The Eternal City tide returning: and we will build us two cities, and see which of the two shall best endure. And you shall build your city with your hands, and name it Paladore : and you shall make it in all things like to the city that you know, with a High Steep seaward, and a wall, and a gateway and towers thereon. And I also will make a city and name it Aladore, and I will make it after the same fashion, but not of the same substance: for I will not build it with hands but with a power of the spirit." So Ywain took of the wet sand and of the dr}', and he buUt him a great mound after the manner of children. And when he had made it strong then he carved it into the hkeness of a city, with a high steep and a wall and towers thereon: and it stood upon the shore and looked out seaward, and he named it Paladore, for it was fashioned in no other wise, and the tide came running toward the edges of the steep. Then Ywain said to Aithne: "This is my city, my playfellow, and I marvel that yours is not yet a-building." But Aithne answered him not, for she was singing a song of witchery: and she sang in a low voice and sweet, and as she sang she weaved a witch-knot upon the air with both her hands. And immediately there came a Httle mist upon the shore, and the mist drew upward from the sand and hung in one place upon the air hke smoke : and so it continued the while Aithne sang her song. And when she had ceased from her singing then Ywain saw the mist no more, for it was clean vanished The Eternal City 47 and in the place thereof was another mound and another city, in semblance like unto the first, and those two cities were nigh together upon the shore and the tide came about them both by little and little. And Ywain and Aithne stood still and looked upon the tide : and it came running and lapping more fiercely, and the froth of it began to foam upon the edges of the mounds. And the water gnawed upon the sand of the one city, and that was Ywain's: and the walls and towers of it began to crumble and to crack, and at the last they were perished wholly as by ruin of time, and the tide flowed over them and they were gone. But with Aithne's city it was not so, for the sea bit not upon it nor overflowed it, but it stood above the water until the turning of the tide. And Ywain came near to touch it, but he could not, for it was but mist between his fingers. And he left it alone and stood and looked upon it again: and it endured as rock, notwithstanding it was builded of a song. Then he said to. Aithne: " Tlie game is nought, for you have played it by no fair hazard but by en- chantment." And she answered him: "Not so, for by this same enchantment is Aladore upbuilded and sustained, and that is the truth of it." And she looked into his eyes and her spirit entered into him, and they twain were one spirit. And the dusk began to fall about them and peace therewith, for they were in their own place beyond time and tide. {From "Aladore," 1914.) 48 The Ballads THE BALLADS The ballads, then, after all, are not so wholly imper- sonal as some have thought them; by choice, by rejection, and by addition they have been made to set forth a personal view, and this they do as consistently as if they were all the compositions of a single author. The view is the view of a nation and not of an individual, but it does mingle regret and desire, it does re-create the world for us. After what fashion ? Let us look once more at the ballads ; not at the manner of them, but the matter, the stories they tell, and the unconscious attitude which they reveal. The oldest of them are not of native origin; they come, as we have seen, from the ancient folk-lore of Europe, and in particular from Scandinavia. But they are British by choice and favour; they were congenial from the first. The world they tell of is full of powers stronger than man — of Tam Lins and Queens of Elfland, — and beyond it lies a grim life of the dead, fiery trials, mouldering graves, and vain revisitings of the beloved on earth. The tales are primitive, but, I think, not childish; a child may be pleased with them, but a child could not have made them. They have meaning — not symbolic meaning, for that must be consciously created; but they are in re- lation to human life. To read through Thomas the Rhymer or Binnorie and not to perceive this would The Ballads 49 be but a dull amusement. When True Thomas is warned of his danger, he replies : " Betide me weal, betide me woe,. That weird shall never daunten me." Syne he has kissed her rosy lips. All underneath the Eildon Tree. This is part of no childish fairy-tale ; nor is this that tells of the harper who found the dead lady : • He's ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair, And wi' them strung his harp sae rare. From the beginning, then, the ballads present life as a tale that has significance; and the significance arises naturally — that is, not from the supernatural side, but from the human passions. The ballads do not bhnk the passions; there is no pretence that this world is a quiet or decent place. It is not only that death, the inevitable end, is unforgotten and unhidden, but in half the stories it comes tragically, by violence, by cruelty, by treachery, or by fatal error. But there is always the tragic redemption: unflinching acceptance, without rebellion, often with- out complaint. John Steward kills his wife's lover, as he thinks; in reahty it is her son, Childe Maurice. The murderer throws the head into her lap : But when she looked on Childe Maurice' head She ne'er spoke words but three : " I never bare no child but one, And you have slain him, trulye." Under the cruellest blows the people of that world do not wince; they know what must be done, by their code, and they do it. They do not attempt to patch life; they end it. When Lord Gregory finds 50 The Ballads that his Fair Annie and her babe have been drowned at his own door, he curses his mother who has done the wrong, but makes no more ado. Then he's ta'en out a little dart Hung low down by his gore; He thrust it through and through his heart, And words spake never more. Glasgerion's lady, Uke Lucrece, scorns to outlive her honour, tilasgerion kills her betrayer, and follows: He set the sword's point till his breast The pommel till a stone; Through the falseness of that lither lad These three lives were all gone. It is pity — there is no lack of pity in the ballads. Even the greatest brute in the whole series, fause Edom o' Gordon, says, when he has killed the babe before its mother's eyes : " I canna look on that bonnie face As it lies on the grass." No, there is no lack of pity, but there is also the recognition that, pitiful as death is, there are things more pitiful and not to be endured. At Otterboume, when Percy finds the Scots five to one against him, and his father sends to bid him wait for help, he replies that his troth is plight to Douglas : Yet had I liefer be rynde and rent — By Mary, that mickle may I — Than ever my manhood be reproved With a Scot, another day. Wherefore shoot, archers, for my sake! And let sharp arrows flee. Minstrels, play up for your waryson, And well quit it shall be ! The Ballads 51 On the other side Douglas is as good : when he knows his time has come, his only care is to keep the fight going; he bids his nephew take command and conceal his death : " My wound is deep, I am fayn to sleep. Take thou the vaward of me, And hide me by the bracken bush Grows on yon lilye-lee." With this may be matched the death of Robin Hood. When Little John finds his chief dying by the treachery of the Abbess of Kirkleys, he begs as a last boon to be allowed to bum the nunnery in revenge. " Now nay, now nay," quoth Robin Hood, " That boon I'll not grant thee; I never hurt woman in all my life, Nor men in their company. I never hurt maid in all my time, Nor at mine end shall it be." There are stout men, too, among the humbler outlaws of a later time: Johnnie of Cockerslee, fighting the Seven Foresters who have wounded him in his sleep: " stand stout, stand stout, my noble dogs. Stand stout, and dinna flee ! Stand fast, stand fast, my good grey hounds. And we will gar them dee! " and Hobble Noble, banished for his misdeeds, but scorning to his last hour the private treason by which he was brought to justice: " I'd rather be ca'd Hobbie Noble, In Carlisle, where he suffers for his faut. Before I were ca'd the traitor Mains, That eats and drinks o' the meal and maut." 52 The Ballads Treachery, then, the ballad-makers hated; cruelty they regretted; and to hurt a woman, to turn away from a fight, or to give in before the blood gave out, was to them dishonour. They did not think it necessary to keep the law, but then the law was not of their own making; it was either the bondage of convention or the rule of the rich. They cared little for comfort; love and wine and gold they loved, but these are not comfort. The sleek, sensual abbot, with his ambUng pad and his fat money-bags, was their abhorrence — he and his ally, the hard, tyrannical sheriff, the mediaeval chief of police. These two stood for a social order in which the spirit was enslaved to the body, and the body to mere authority. What Borderer could bear with that? What free man would not applaud the stout fellow who struck his blow, and took to the greenwood or the green road ? The social order which the ballad- makers imagined for themselves, and which, at least in Northumberland and Nottingham, they supposed to have been put into practice, was a chaotic order, a wild and bloodstained life; but as they saw it and sang of it, it was a noble choice between two sets of evils. There are great possibilities, no doubt, in the life of peace and comfort, and we must hope they may some day be reaUsed; but perhaps there is something to be said yet for the ballad life as an ideal. With all its crimes and sorrows, it was a Ufe of the spirit; it was full of generosity and courage and sincerity; and, above all, it set Death in his right place. The Ballads 53 It is but giving over of a game That all must lose. They may have been mistaken, the ballad-makers; they may have sympathised too much with passionate lovers and bonny fighters and the young and beautiful who fling their Uves away. For my argument that does not matter; my point here is that they did re- build the world in the imagination of the thoughts of their hearts, and their work may therefore be ranked with the work of the poets. If, then, in beauty and in creative power the ballads are akin to other poetry, in what consists that " singularity " or pecuHar character of which we have spoken — a singularity so marked that even the best ballads of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Rudyard Kiphng could not properly be bound up with them in one collection — a peculiar character the taste for which we are said to have outgrown ? My answer is that the singularity lies in the artistic method of the ballads, and that I do not believe we have out- grown the pleasure to be got by it. No doubt among the minor devices of the old ballad-writers there are some which are worn out, but they were all good in their time, and there is no reason why they should not be replaced. Up then crew the red, red cock. And up and crew the grey. was once a good way to tell of the dawn ; it is good still in the story of Usher's Well, but it would not be good in a modern poem, because it would not be natural or sincere. To admit this is not to give up 54 The Ballads the ballad form. There is far more in a poetical form than mere tricks of phrasing, " The mediaeval ballad," says Professor Ker, " is a form used by poets with their eyes open upon life, and with a form of thought in their minds by which they comprehend a tragic situation." If life is to be no longer full of tragic situations, if the life of nations is to be no longer akin to the fighting life of our ancestors, then perhaps we can afford to discard that form of thought and put away the ballads as childish things. That is not an easy belief at this moment; to some of us it has never been an easy belief. It is true that for generations now our greatest poetry has been subjective, introspective, analytical — often so intellectual as to be a reflection upon life rather than itself a form of life. But on the other side there have been changes too ; the consciousness of national life has been so intensified that epic poetry has be- come once more possible. The ballads are, before all things, epic ; they are the heroic life of a people told in lyric episodes. What is Mr. Kipling's Ballad of East and West ? Is it a personal anecdote in verse ? No, for the name of the hero is never mentioned ; he is the Colonel's son, the servant of the White Queen, the type of the heroic West. What is Mr. Hardy's great poem The Dynasts ? A drama in form, but an epic in form of thought, for it is concerned with individuals only as units of national life. To these reflections our present experience is adding another; we are looking day by day upon a battle of nations, where valour is of little account unless it is the Song 55 valour of millions, and where the bonniest fighter asks for no glory but the realisation that he has " done his bit." The poets will in time sing of this battle, and will thereby express a multitude of individual feelings, their own and other men's, in forms which will be new and necessary. But it may be that one or two, less distinguished, less differentiated from the national type, will be moved to express more elementary feelings by a more ob- jective method. If so, they will be likely enough to utter them in the old ballad form — a form, I be- Heve, still of very powerful enchantment, capable of moving the heart both with the sound pf the trumpet and with the deeper music of the harp of Binnorie, strung with remembrance of the dead. {From "i4 New Study of English Poetry," 1917.) SONG {To an air by Henry Lawes, published in 1652) The flowers that in thy garden rise, Fade and are gone when Summer flies. And as their sweets by time decay, So shall thy hopes be cast away. The Sim that gilds the creeping moss Stayeth not Earth's eternal loss: He is the lord of all that live, Yet there is life he cannot give. 5^ History and Time The stir of Morning's eager breath — Beautiful Eve's impassioned death — Thou lovest these, thou lovest well, Yet of the Night thou canst not tell. In every land thy feet may tread, Time like a veil is round thy head: Only the land thou seek'st with me Never hath been nor yet shall be. It is not far, it is not near. Name it hath none that Earth can hear; But there thy Soul shall build again Memories long destroyed of men, And Joy thereby shall like a river Wander from deep to deep for ever. {Front " Dream Market," 1908.) HISTORY AND TIME You take it for a kind of literary gift in me — a power to convince by words, to make less real, less living people appear almost as real and living as those we live among. But that is the opposite of the truth. To revisit the past in my way is to strip off illusions, not to put them on. Time is the greatest of all illusions; it persuades us that our most fantastic dream is true — the dream that things and people come into being and pass out of being again — History and Time 57 though we know, if we once think of it, that eternity is a single instant, and that there are two kinds of things or people — those that are, and those that are not. Those of us who are at all are every one con- temporaries; but we live, as it were, like figures in a tapestry — invisible to each other, and fondly imagining we are made of different thread to our neighbours, whom we have never seen. There is no reason why we should not see them; they are here as much as we are; we have only to take the cap of darkness from our heads and find them as human as ourselves. In childhood we are wise; we know no difference between the centuries; but it is the first business of our teachers to lay stress upon the trivial contrasts of speech and dress which they think will make the wooden peepshow of their history attractive; the rest — the life we share — they know nothing about. I remember asking my first governess if she had ever seen the Black Prince, and whether he was like any one I knew. She scolded me for a silly child; but I have lived to know him intimately, and to see his comrades giving their own breakfast to a conquered Boer army. They did not know that they were five centuries out of date. (From " The Old Country," 1906.) 58 Time and the Land TIME AND THE LAND And what of that land itself? What of the lew hundred acres of it which the child-like Saxon in some dim century named Gardenleigh? Is it not a dream ? Even as we know it, is it not the dream of seven and twenty generations? Year after year, life after life, century after century, to all who have seen it, whether as squires or serfs, natives or settlers, it has been the fabric upon which the pattern of their days was woven — the perfect setting of high dawns and tender sunsets, of birth, and toil, and passion, and pursuit; of all joys, and many partings and inevitable death. Now they themselves are dust, or less than dust; nothing is left of them but the shrines they built, the woods they planted, the mounds in the churchyard, and a few stones, for the most part long since broken and illegible. But Gardenleigh is still as green as ever. Can it be that the dream has indeed outlasted the dreamers so utterly ? Has the slow stream of human life had no effect upon these meadows that it has so long watered? Are they no richer for all this love, no more fertile to the spirit than the raw clearings of yesterday in new-discovered countries? Are there no voices but ours in these old mossy woods and sunlit gardens, no steps but ours by this lake where the stars are mirrored in silence? What, then, is Time and Music 59 Time, that he should have power to make away with the dearest memories of seven and twenty generations ? {From " The Old Country," 1906.) TIME AND MUSIC Mr. Earnshaw lifted the string netting which hung before the open porch, and Stephen found himself inside the smallest church he had ever seen. The cool, dim interior was refreshing by contrast with the noonday glare outside, and a breath of faint perfume came from the font, which stood close to the door, and had been newly filled with flowers. Near it, and quite at the back of the church, sat Eleanor Ryder, listening to Aubrey's chants, which, now that the practice was over and the little choir departed, rolled uninterruptedly from the chancel in a low, soft current that seemed like a reverie made audible. The two men sat down silently, and Stephen fixed his eyes upon the organ chamber; but the spell of the music gained upon him imperceptibly, and in a very short time, though he was quite uncon- scious of the fact, his own outward existence and that of Aubrey herself had passed entirely from his thoughts. It was as though the life within him no longer looked out through the windows of sense, but withdrew into an inner and more real world, 6o Time and Music where he was led from depth to depth of emotion, and brought from remorse to hope, from endurance to passionate joy, with an ever growing sense of strength and purification. Things and events had become meaningless, action was one with feeling, and every feeling was intensified beyond measure, for it was no longer the emotion of an individual, but the consciousness of a vast unison — a unison so infinite that it seemed to gather into the beating of one heart the agony and the aspiration of all the generations of men. Wave after wave, the music rose and fell, and rose and fell again, with the same long, rolling cadence, as though it had begun before memory and would continue beyond time. But at last it ceased, and Stephen came back to the material world. As his outward consciousness returned, he found that his eyes were fixed on a mysterious, long-robed figure, which seemed to be receding from his sight along a stately chamber, in which the tracery of a golden canopy stood out against a background of deep ruby colour. The face, which was still turned towards him, was already too dim for the features to be distinguishable, but every- thing else about it, from the outward curves of the crozier in its hand to the chequered floor at its feet, had a clear and gem-like brightness. " The windows are the best thing in the church," he heard Mr. Earnshaw saying. " There is no older or finer glass in Somerset." {From " The Old Country," 1906.) A Mediaeval Funeral 6i A MEDI/EVAL FUNERAL Stephen , the Colonial prophet of the Future, has un- expectedly been decoyed back into the England of the fourteenth century. The days which followed were darker still. Stephen had iiad no previous experience of the preparations for an Enj^lish funeral, and there seemed to him to be something unnatural about the gloom that lay upon the house; it had the deadening oppression of a nightmare, and he felt at times as though it would never lift again, Edmund and Harry, Aubrej' and himself — he saw them all busied with duties which nuist be performed neither whoUi-heartedly nor haU-lieartedly, all going about continually under the burden of a meaningless behaviour, equally far from any true semblance of grief or joy. A tacit and nerveless consideration for each other, a conventional regard for the ex])ectations of a wider circle^ — ^these cloudy spectres had breathed an icy mist on all the more human feelings, had forl)idden sorrow its moments of agony and relief, its free expression and its high-hearted resistence, and almost seemed for tile time to have bound life about with the winding- slieet of the dead, stilling every voice and constrain- ing every movement with its frigid and unlovely folds. But this misery of deadness was not to last; it vanished for ever at the moment when they all stood 62 A Mediasval Funeral in Gardenleigh Church and heard the first words of man's immemorial petition for his beloved dead. "Requiem eternam," said a voice that was and was not the voice of Edmund, " Requiem eternam dona ei Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei." Tears sprang to Stephen's eyes; he felt himself strangled and shaken by a sudden passion. It could be no grief of his own, for that which lay before him under the blind and silent pall had never been for him the symbol of a deep or long familiar affection. But he saw around him not only the sorrow but the helplessness of those whom he loved ; he saw old age and manhood and girlish youth all alike bowed to drink of that cup which must always keep its bitterness while man keeps his human nature. He had himself laid his father in the grave; but that parting, terrible as it was, had come upon him when he was alone and in a far country; it had made a complete break in his own life, and yet had troubled the happiness of no one else, so that he had come to think of it as a grief peculiar to himself, and had never realised that death was hourly bringing to others what it had once brought to him. Now he saw that the greatest of human sorrows is one and indivisible, and that what- ever immunities man may learn or wrest from nature in the bright world of the future, he can never, even for a day, shut his ears against the passing bell, or deaden his heart to the De Profundis of his race. The sense of pity was deepened yet more as he looked round upon the company of friends and neighbours who filled the church. If men are but A Mediaeval Funeral 63 as grass, that to-day is and to-morrow is cut down and laid away, what, then, were these but the long fallen leaves of a very far-off summer, to whose hollow forms some strange, airy current of his own imagination had for a time given back a Ufelike move- ment and a whisper of the human voice? Yet again he saw that, in their love and grief and hope, there was a reality beyond that of their bodily existence, and he fell to wondering whether the hour that was waiting for them all, and for him too in his turn, would bring upon them any change of the true self, comparable to that which must befall the body. What end or what beginning is it that we peer at through the name of death ? How are we to think of the dead, or what to desire for them and for ourselves ? A second time the calm, sad, unwavering voice began its deep music — " Requiem eternam dona ei Domine " ; and then, through the murmur of the voices that echoed it, a second time he heard the words which followed: " Et lux perpetua luceat ei." The flood of thought which came upon him seemed to bear him up no longer; he sank to a depth where no light or sound of the material world could reach his consciousness. When he returned to the upper air it was to find the service over, and Edmund standing face to face with the little company of mourners, as if he could not let them go without one more word. " My friends," he said, " it has been the custom of our people from a time beyond memory to speak of death in the language of the Psalmist — to say that 64 A Mediaeval Funeral man's life is a shadow, that he passes away and his place knows him no more. We cannot deny that it is true, yet we cannot forget that it is true only with the truth of this world. For us in these later days another view is possible — the view, not of men who must remain behind, but rather of spirits who are upon the point of following. We may bethink our- selves that for those who are dead, and for us too, since we shall soon be with them, to depart hence is not to perish, but to survive the perishing of all that was less real about us, the fading of all the shadows with which our life was darkened. To-day, therefore, in this service of separation, we have been weeping not only for the loss that has befallen the home of our transitory existence, but also for our own continued blindness that will not let us see life as it is. One whom we love has been released from this darkness and bondage of time; she has passed, as the greatest of all poets was once permitted to pass before his death, from the human life to the divine, from the temporal to the eternal. In our prayers for her we must keep this always before us, lest we speak the old familiar phrases with the under- standing of a bygone age, and deceive ourselves with words of comfortable sound that are the very denial of our only true consolation. If we ask that God may give His beloved eternal rest, we must think of no such sleep as that which we have known ourselves. They shall rest — not from their work, but from their labours; not from their service, but from the wilfulness and vacillation that alone could The Secret of Oxford 65 make it wearisome : they shall cease — not from the active consciousness which is the life of the true self, but from the appetites and trivialities by which that life is here continually broken. Let us think of them, therefore, as we see them pictured upon their tombs: l>ing motionless and with folded hands, in token that for them the warfare of the body has been accomplished, and the will surrendered to the eternal peace; with eyes upturned and open, to signify that they know no longer the alternation of day and darkness, but enjoy continually all know- ledge, all love, and all fulfilment, as it were in one changeless moment of perpetual light." {From " The Old Country," 1906.) THE SECRET OF OXFORD The real charm of Oxford and the hfe men live there is not to be seen or imagined from outside. It is not an effect of mere sentiment, aroused by the presence of beautiful buildings, of immemorial customs, of gardens laid with ancient turf and shadowed by stately trees. It does not lie in the quaUty of the learning that is offered there, or the pastimes and pleasures that abound in many kinds: nor in the prestige of the great names of the past, nor in the morning freshness of youth. To all these there is one thing added: the city is a fairy city, neither in the world nor of it, neither far from the world nor oblivious of it; it stands solitary but near 66 The Browning Society by, as it were upon the cloud-hills of dawn, at the meeting-place of all yesterdays and all to-morrows, and its life is timeless. While you are there — so the Percival of a later day might have said to his younger self — the world of men will be always before your eyes, a vivid and curious spectacle for your philosophy to muse upon: but it will have no power to trouble you. You will suffer none of its anxieties, limitations, perplexities: you will be delivered from the pain of transitoriness, for though you yourself will change incessantly, it will be only as thought and feeling change, to be incessantly renewed, and in all circum- stance you will be untouched — set in am unfading oasis, a point of windless calm. Give yourself up to work or play, as you will: it is not these that will haunt you all your life after: it is the sure and certain continuance, the life of timeless, changeless, fearless perfection that we who have so long lost it so long and poignantly regret. Farewell, we said, dear city of youth and dream ! And in our boat we stepped and took the stream. {From " The Twymans," 1911.) THE OXFORD BROWNING SOCIETY For Percy, as for other dwellers in the Enchanted City, the sense of Time, as we know it in the outer world, practically did not exist. The Seasons, it is true, flitted round him in their accustomed circle, and The Browning Society 67 a very gay dance they made of it, with the help of the nine Muses, the seven-and-seventy Spirits of Delight, Pan and the River Nymphs, Thyrsis and the Dryads : among them too the iridescent wings of Cupid flashed continually in and out. The whirl was unresting, but it never seemed to move : it changed without advanc- ing. As it was last year, so was life to-day, so it would be the next year and the next, as full of mad pursuit and wild ecstasy as the men and maidens on the Grecian Urn, as fixed too in its unfading beauty, the audible and visible beauty of the little town by the river, the forest branches, the songs for ever new, the loves that are always winning near the goal, but always unfulfilled, — the beauty of the marble that has no thought for the day when it will wake and pass beyond into the world of attainment and mortality. Percy, then, and his friends saw nothing of Father Time; but with his daughters they danced merrily enough, one after another, round and round the magic circle. Soon May, for the second time, was calling them, with blowing of horns through sleepy streets, with singing of psalms on high towers at sunrise, with early wanderings in " the forest ground called Thessaly." One more week and the festival of the Eights was here again. At this the town filled suddenly with fresh life and unfamiliar beauties: you saw them everywhere — bright faces, bright frocks, bright parasols, glowing patches of colour, turning old grey streets to the semblance of garden borders newly blossomed; or 68 The Browning Society crossing and recrossing before the set back-ground of cloisters and quadrangles like the light-footed groups which pass over the stage when the curtain rises and the play is just beginning, but hardly even yet begun. Two days later the races ended: but Old May- day is not a time when any one would wish to leave Oxford who could conveniently stay there, and many of the visitors lingered on. Althea's friends were departing, but she herself accepted an invitation from the wife of Edward's tutor, who had a pleasant house beyond the Parks. The general gaiety con- tinued. A dance in the Masonic Hall was improvised: there were daily expeditions by river to Nuneham, to Godstow, to Water Eaton: the comedy of Love's Labour's Lost was played once more in every college garden, between irresistible young ladies who might have forced any blockade, and irresolute young gentlemen who proved, like Biron, how well read they were, by finding plenty of reasons against reading. At this appropriate moment a meeting of the Browning Society fell due. Edward and Percy were members: Althea could be introduced by her hostess as a guest. The proceedings were an- nounced to consist chiefly of a paper by Mr. Hedgeley on the Love Poems of Robert Browning: they began, however, with a kind of evening tea-party in the Hall of one of the smaller Colleges, whose master, a great scholar with a literary wife, was The Browning Society 69 chairman and entertainer for the occasion. The Society was unique among Oxford institutions: one-third of the members were dons, one-third ladies, one-third undergraduates: to-night most of them were present, and the addition of a fourth contingent of visitors made the gathering unusually large and animated. But now a door was thrown open, and the whole company was conducted from the hall into a large \vithdra wing-room, where groups of chairs and well- shaded lamps had been arranged. Every' one sat down, and the reader of the evening was called upon. Mr. Hedgeley was already on his feet, though no one had seen him rise. He stood at one end of the room, in the open, without a desk, without a pose of any kind, holding his paper out before him with one hand only, tilting his head a little back and casting his eyes down so as to show the eyelids almost closed. This effect, combined with the flowing silver of his beard, gave him a resemblance to a bust of Homer, which struck Althea at once. She noted, too, that the unconventional attitude was one which could hardly be imagined in a dress- coated figure. Finally, when he began to read she was attracted by his singularly quiet and pleasant voice. From the first moment the whole audience was silent and attentive: they sat spellbound all through the shadowy room. The paper was grave in tone, grave even when it was humorous : it flowed on from one point to another with as little apparent art as an essay by Montaigne, and much of the /o The Browning Society time was taken up by the reading aloud of consider- able passages, and even of whole poems. To the hearers these were probably all familiar, but familiar only in the dumb show of print : to-night they took on from the beauty of the reader's tones and the subtlety of his interpretation all that wealth of mean- ing and reahty which the living voice confers even upon its least memorable utterances. At every pause, low murmurs of admiration and assent came from the obscure corners of the room: the Society was responding hke an instrument to the hand of a skilled player. Percy overheard Althea replying to a glance from her brother. " Joachim," she whispered. Edward affirmed her judgment in less cautious tones. " The old man's dead on the note every time," he said; " ev-er-y time." The paper was not a long one: at the end of forty minutes it ceased as quietly as it had begun, without a word of summing-up or anything like a peroration. The audience, after following as happily as the children of Hamelin behind the Pied Piper, felt a sudden sense of loss — the music had stopped, and they were bewildered to find that they had been led so far. There was a certain strain about the pause which followed. At a slight stir every one looked up: another speaker had risen, a tall, dark man with rugged features, whose contours were etched by the shaded light in strong contrasts of pallor and blackness. As he stood silent for a moment, grasping the back The Browning Society 71 of a chair with nervous intensity, Althea turned to Percy with a question. But he was already leaning towards her. "Arthur Turnbull," he murmured; "he's a Balliol don." A lady sitting at Mr. Turnbull's side was seen to look up at him as he stood hesitating. He saw, and began to speak at once with perfect confidence. " The paper to which we have been listening has exceeded even our hopes. I do not presume to praise. I am unable to criticise. I desire to express my gratitude for it, and especially for the generosity with which the writer has given us of himself. It is but rarely that for a convito like this, a host can be found who will draw for his guests the wine of price, the wine from the inner chamber. My own store is of no such value, but I am moved to set it forth: I feel that the example is binding upon me." He looked down at his companion, Percy, with a hot and almost shamed feeling of tension, glanced sideways at Althea's face; but it showed nothing more than sympathetic interest. " The point," continued Mr, Tm-nbull, " upon which I have to speak is one upon which Mr. Hedgeley touched but lightly: he put aside the historical question, the inquiry into the origins of Browning's ideas on love. I would go further, I would venture to say that it matters little to us where he got them, since we know where alone we got them — we, the men and woman of to-day, I am speaking rashly perhaps: the influence of 72 The Browning Society Robert Browning is for me so personal, so dramatic a force, that in thinking of it my own experience becomes a universal. I may well be wrong, but I cannot believe that I am wrong, in saying that he beyond all other poets is the creator of our modern world. The poets of the past have spoken much to me of love. First, and mainly perhaps, of instinctive love — that which Browning, too, acknowledges as " the obvious human bliss," needed and sought for " To satisfy life's daily thirst With a thing men seldom miss." They have spoken also in more re- flective and more uplifted moods. To some love is a dream ; to some it is a devotion. I do not despise such conceptions, or the beauty born of them. As long as we are men we shall at times cherish the vision of "a shadowy isle of bliss Midmost the beating of that steely sea, Where tossed about all hearts of men must be." As long as we are men, love will send youth on quest and pilgrimage, for the sake of distant or half-mythical Madonnas. I do not claim that we have outgrown either of these notions of love — the idyllic or the chivakic. But in the mind and work of Browning I find a new, a greater, form of love. It includes all the old prim- itive colours and lights in one rainbow. It arches the whole landscape in which we make our earthly journey. It reveals life as dynamic instead of static, spiritual instead of sentimental, '■ Nothing is omitted there. Instinctive love — Browning forgets least of all poets, the body's mean- ing and glory. He knows the moth's kiss and the The Browning Society 73 bee's kiss — the old measure of Women and Roses. He knows too the love of great moments, of brief eternal hours. But they are not idyllic, for with him love is never an escape from life. It is always a part of life, the chief part of it, that part to which all else, in our own experience or the history of man- kind, is but an approach, a climbing of steps. It is Earth's returns " For whole centuries of folly, noise, and sin! Shut them m With their triumphs and their glories and the restl Love is best. " It is something more than best : " Ages past the soul existed, Here an age 'tis resting merely. And hence fleets again for ages. While the true end, sole and single, It stops here for is, this love-way With some other soul to mingle. " But if we believe that life is love and nothing else to speak of, what then must we say of love? Love surely cannot be anything less than Hfe, the whole of life, and the highest to which life can reach. Instinctive it may be, and idyllic too and chivalric, but it must go beyond all these and take into itself every possible communion of man and woman. It must be an intimate personal alliance for all the ends of being. " Oh! I must feel your brain prompt mine. Your heart anticipate my heart: You must be just before, in fine. See, and make me see, for your part, New depths of the divine." {From " The Twytnans," 1911.) 74 Amore Altiero AMORE ALTIERO Since thou and I have wandered from the highway And found with hearts reborn This swift and unimaginable byway Unto the hills of mom, Shall not our love disdain the unworthy uses Of the old time outworn ? I'll not entreat thy half unwilling graces With humbly folded palms, Nor seek to shake thy proud defended places With noise of vague alarms, Nor ask against my fortune's grim pursuing The refuge of thy arms, Thou'lt not withhold for pleasure vain and cruel That which has long been mine. Nor overheap with briefly burning fuel A fire of flame divine. Nor yield the key for life's profaner voices To brawl within the shrine. But thou shalt tell me of thy queenly pleasure All that I must fulfil, And I'll receive from out my royal treasure What golden gifts I will, So that two realms supreme and undisputed Shall be one kingdom still. True Thomas 75 And our high hearts shall praise the beauty hidden In starry-minded scorn By the same Lord who hath His servants bidden To seek with eyes new-born This swift and unimaginable byway Unto the hills of mom. TRUE THOMAS Queen, when we kissed beneath the Eildon tree I kissed for ever, tide me weal or woe; The broad and narrow ways lay far below; Among the fern you shook your bridle free: We dared the dark, we dared the roaring sea, We rode for Elfland — ah ! how long ago ! Body and soul you have been mine, I know. Body and soul you have been sure of me. Now comes the end — yet now when age shall cast Like withered leaves into the mouldering past The Rhymer's heart, the lips that kissed and sang, Still, still the Elfin soul of me shall flame To find the land wherefrom your beauty came, The road whereon that night your bridle rang. 7^ William the Singer WILLIAM THE SINGER Temp. Richard II In the meantime he had some hours to spend as he pleased. He first rode straight to the Tower, and great as his expectation was, it was in no way dis- appointed. He had a strong feeling for the romance of history, and here in one long-anticipated moment, as he cleared the eastern end of Thames Street, it seemed to be suddenly embodied before his eyes. The broad moat, running east and north from the angle where he had halted, the long low curtain- walls, the massive river gate beneath, the draw- bridges and rounded outworks above — all these, and the picturesque confusion of them, pleased him greatly; but again and again he turned from them to the central keep that dominated them. As he saw it under the still brightness of the March morning, with the high straight hues of its white quoins and the severe round arches of its far-up windows, shining clear through a faint haze of blue smoke from the buildings below, it seemed to him to be infinitely remote from the splendours and the trivialities of modem times: it was dreaming still of the grim methodical Norman and the long-dead century of its first youth. He would have given much to enter; but to be repulsed again, and here, was more than he could risk. He tore himself away at last and began slowly William the Singer 77 to ascend the hill. To his left, on the slope of the high green bank above the entrance to Tower Street, stood a grey stone church, surrounded on three sides by a churchyard of unusual extent and beautifully kept: on the south side a finely carved porch with a flight of stone steps came right down upon the street. Here again was antiquity in its most attractive form, and breathing a spirit which had been wanting even to the White Tower; for the music of a psalm, chanted by trained voices without accompaniment, rolled in wave after wave from the chancel and laid a spell like that of memory upon the listener below. John was fundamentally rehgious, like the great mass of his f eUow-countrymen ; he shared, certainly, some of the unorthodox opinions of his age, he had a general tendency to mistrust the clergy, and his boyhood had been one long rebeUion against enforced attendance at church; but the power of association had all the time been binding him with imperceptible bonds, and since he had been his own master he had come to find a new pleasure in devotions practised when and where he chose. At this moment the choice was not in doubt; before the alternating roll of the chant had gathered itself into the unison of the Gloria, he had shpped from his saddle, climbed the steps, and lai(^ his hand upon the iron latchet of the porch door. The music ceased, and he entered. The interior of the church was massive and severe, simply an arcade of plain round piUars and a bare open chan- cel: the first glance traversed it from end to end. yS William the Singer and to Marland's great surprise it was entirely empty. But as he advanced into the nave he heard faintly the sound of a voice reciting prayers, and perceived at the same moment a door in the wall of the north aisle. By this, too, he stood listening for a moment, and then opened it quietly during an interval of silence. He had no sooner done so than he stopped short in surprise; he seemed to have passed under some sudden illusion, so striking was the change from the monastic bareness of the church itself to the dim, rich splendour of the chapel in which he now stood. The roof was of white stone, and vaulted plainly after the Norman fashion, but the arch was lofty and graceful; the walls were covered with frescoes, and the round- headed windows of the original style had been re- placed by longer pointed lights filled with exquisite stained armorial glass: those at the east end were deeply recessed behind slender groups of detached pillars, rising at the head into quadruple mouldings of great beauty. The altar itself was invisible, behind the Lenten Veil; but from the altar steps westwards the little building was panelled with the finest carved woodwork, now dark with age; and John saw, as he glanced quickly to right and left of the door by which he st9od, that the choir stalls, elaborate as they were, bore no comparison with the magnificence of those at the west end, which had lofty canopies, reheved with gold, and were furnished with gilt sconces and with cushions and footstools of the richest crimson velvet. William the Singer 79 To-day the canopies were all unoccupied, but they seemed hardly to offer a seat to a chance visitor. On the other hand the nearest choir-stall was vacant, and one of the clerks made a sign of invitation. John took the place and began to look about him. The sense of splendour was heightened as his eye dwelt upon every detail in turn, and he was not unprepared for the discovery which he presently made, that the two central canopies facing the altar were inlaid with small plates of gold on which the royal arms of England were enamelled in colours. No wonder the chapel was splendid, since it was evidently King Richard's own; but the pride of youth was hardly abashed by this reflection, and in a few moments the remembrance of his own birth and possessions was stirring John's thoughts to emulation, or at least to imitation, of his sover- eign lord's magnificence: he resolved to enrich his own two churches by the addition of stained-glass windows, and decided that his own seats should be furnished with velvet. Perhaps, however, crimson was not the most suitable colour: he had a sense of proportion, and besides, he liked his sumptuousness to be visible at the second glance rather than the first: it seemed to him to make just the difference between ostentation and good taste. To be splendid for himself and those who could find him out — that was his desire, and he revelled in it, only me- chanically sharing in the service which was going on around him. But presently his reverie was dispersed and he 8o William the Singer found his eyes riveted upon a face opposite to him. It was that of one of the singing men, a tall, dark, handsome fellow, who sang with a concentration that marked him off from the rest, and whose features, when in repose, had an expression of very uncommon power and a kind of sad serenity. Clearly, as John saw, not the face of a man of his own class: it was too thin, too clever, too intent upon the work in hand: yet, whether he approved or no, he was held by the grip of a personality which, he had enough insight to suspect, was a rarer and a stronger one than his own. The man was older than himself, and his thoughts had probably nothing in common with those of a landed gentleman: but there were thoughts there, and John found himself again and again coming back to wonder what they were. The mere surmise of them was keeping two interesting churches out of window-glass and velvet hassocks. When the service was over and the procession left the chapel, John followed the bidding of a curiosity that refused to depart unsatisfied. He paced slowly up and down the church, keeping watch while the priest and choristers returned by ones and twos from the vestry and hurried out of the building. The tall dark man came nearly last, and there was no one with him: he was dressed very plainly, with a weather-beaten cloak of dark grey hanging from rather round shoulders, and he carried in his hand a bonnet of cloth which had once been blue. Poor he evidently was, but of a class outside John's experience: for he seemed to have nothing about William the Singer 8i him of the noble, military, clerical, rustic, or servile elements of society. Presumably he was akin to the clerical, but there was an outdoor swing in his walk, and a turn of his head, that spoke of freedom and even of recklessness. He showed no surprise at seeing Marland directly in his path and evidently about to speak with him. " You are looking for me, sir? " he asked. " No," rephed John, astonished at being spoken to first; " not originally, I mean. I came here . . . for a different reason." The other looked straight at him with a smile of intelligence. " So did I," he said; " we are both disappointed." John was still more surprised: the tone was courteous, but it might have been that of an equal. '•I do not understand you," he rephed more firmly ; " what is it that you and I have in common ? ' ' " Speech," said the other. " If that is all " . . . said John, reddening at the check. " No," replied the stranger, " we both had hope." "Hope?" " To see the king." John looked instinctively towards the door of the chapel: this man's voice had made the words so living that he felt himself for an instant almost in the Presence. The moment passed, and he turned back to his companion. " But I came here by chance," he said. " Then I am wrong," replied the other, " and sorry for it." He moved as though to take his leave. 82 William the Singer " Why are you sorry? " asked John, " and what did you expect of me? " The straight look met him again. " I no longer expect, but I always hope. I watch them come in shoals to the net: all young, all supple, and shining," — he seemed to glance at the new suit, — " but common herring every one — nothing big among them — so far." John began to catch his meaning. " If you thought I had newly come to Court, you were not so wrong: only if I am to serve any one, it is not the king, but his brother." " Ah! " said the stranger, looking thoughtfully at him but speaking almost to himself. " A hard roe, not a soft one, this time: but are they not all the king's — every fish in the four seas? " " Certainly I am the king's, if he will take me." John's head went up. " Ay! " cried his companion suddenly with a kind of poetic fervour that embarrassed John but held him fast. " One more silver belly, if the net will take it! But where among all these is the dolphin for the day of shipwreck? It is smooth sailing now and pretty sport with the glittering little lords; but when the squall comes, which of them will carry the king ashore ? I go up and down England looking for a man: I find none, there or here: Hollands and Mowbrays, Rutlands and Scropes, they take their pastime between their sleep, and their sleep between their pastimes, like the gay figures on a clock, whose only sign of life is to come out when William the Singer 83 every hour strikes, and ride their little round without change or meaning." The tone was sad rather than angry, but John felt a bitterness in it that twisted his own tongue. " A passage of arms means nothing to a clerk," he said, " but it means a good deal to a soldier." " I have seen war," said the other, " and I shall see it again; but for what war do these lords train themselves? When they have spent the treasure their fathers won in France, they will seek more in England: when they have plundered the poor, they will scheme to sack each other: they live by getting wealth, not by making it." " You don't touch me there," replied John with satisfaction. " My property is my own, well got and well kept: I do my duty to my people, and I will do my duty to the king when my time comes." " Will you? " cried the other eagerly; " will you swear it? Come! " He turned towards the door of the royal chapel, which the sacristan was preparing to lock, and John followed almost against his own will. He had the shamefacedness and conven- tionality of his age, but there were no witnesses here, and the stranger carried him away by the touch of romance he mingled with his earnestness. They passed quickly and without a word up the length of the chapel, and stopped immediately under the Lenten Veil. The singing-man bent down and with great reverence pushed back the lower edge of the drapery: in the pavement close before the altar John saw a plain stone with a large Crusader's cross 84 William the Singer upon it, and in the centre of the cross a heart: to right and left were carved in bold letters the words, Cor Ricardi Cor Leonis. " What is a kmg? " said the stranger in a low voice; " what but a sunrise and a sunset: a day in the life of a great nation. The Lion's Heart was a king once: but with him it has been night these two hundred years. It is morning still with our Lord Richard, — morning with the dew upon it: there has been no such promise yet in any kingdom under the rainbow roof." He spoke passionately, and John began to feel an answering emotion: he had been bred in the chief centre of English loyalty, where the king was always right, always adored. His companion laid a hand upon his shoulder, and he did not resent it. Then the stranger fell upon his knees, drawing John down with him. " Make your vow here," he said, " that in what- ever company you may be, henceforth so long as you and the king shall both live, never will you take rest by night or by day without this prayer first spoken aloud, 'God save Richard, King of England.' " John, with his eyes upon the stone heart below, took the vow willingly enough: it was the first time he had ever done such a thing, but he had heard the like of Chandos and Audley and other heroes of the past. For a moment longer he remained kneehng, to collect his thoughts. When he rose he became aware that his companion had left him, and was striding rapidly down the aisle. Gerusalemme Irredenta 85 He followed more slowly, and when he reached the door found the church entirely deserted, except by the sacristan, who was still waiting patiently with the keys. He gave the old man a piece of money, and asked him who was that who had just gone out. " We take him for his voice, sir, and he comes and goes as he likes. My lord the king has been pleased to notice him for his voice, and it is likely that sets him up a little, but he is an innocent creature, sir." John frowned: the apology seemed inappropriate. " But who is he? " he asked, rather peremptorily. " We call him William, sir, but I don't know if that be his name. He is quite harmless, sir, you understand." Outside the horses were waiting: John rode away at a sharp pace, and was glad to be in the sunshine again, but his horizon seemed hardly so unclouded now. He felt as if he had something to forget. {From " The New June," 1907.) GERUSALEMME IRREDENTA The nine days which he spent in Jerusalem John found to be the weariest of his life. The way of the sight-seer is always hard; it is doubly so when a continual demand is made not only on his atten- tion and admiration, but on the highest imaginative power, the deepest emotion, and the most heroic 86 Gerusalemme Irredenta credulity of which he is capable. Many of the scenes which the pilgrims visited were beautiful, and in some their feelings were rightly touched: but the true moments were but moments in long hours of standing and staring, while every sense was deadened by the mechanical patter of their dragomans and the pitiless hurry in which they were shepherded from one to another of the innumerable holy places. Above all, John never forgot the misery of the three almost sleepless nights which he and his companions spent, according to the universal custom, in the Church of the Sepulchre. The filth and squalor surrounding the place, the insolence of the Moslem officials who locked them in at night and let them out in the morning, the greed and triviality of the friars who acted as showmen of the most sacred spot on earth, and the ceaseless quarrels of the nine Christian sects who inhabited it — all these were bad, but they were not the worst. Depressing beyond everything else was the feeling of utter disillusionment, the sense of groping in an underworld of frauds and counterfeits, where even the little that might really have been priceless was lost among monstrous fictions, or heaped over with tawdry ornament. It was a very dispirited company that sat in the upper chamber of the Hospital on the last night of their stay. The room had been given up for their sole use by the courtesy of the Prior of St. John, but they had hitherto spent very little time in it: this evening, when they had finally escaped from Gerusalemme Irredenta 87 their guides, and had a few hours left to themselves, they were sitting together in front of a small fire and taking a very sober retrospect of the week. " If you ask me," said Sir Hugh, the Steward. " I say, under correction of Dom Nicholas, that the whole thing is httle better than a peep-show at a fair." " Don't," said Edmund in a low voice: he laid a hand appealingly on Sir Hugh's knee, and his eyes glistened in the dim candle-light almost as if there were tears in them. Nicholas looked at him with great affection: then moved his chair briskly, and took up the Steward's challenge in as cheerful a tone as was possible with- out arousing suspicion. " I know what Sir Hugh means," he began, " but I confess that I for one am very glad to have been here. We have seen many things that we shall never forget." " Certainly," said Sir Thomas with approval, — " many things that were well worth seeing." " I don't know what they are," rejoined Sir Hugh; "the only thing I cared to see, these infidel dogs refused to show me. They say there are a thousand lamps always kept burning in that big mosque of theirs: I should Hke to have counted them." Sir Thomas continued to make the best of his expedition. " I daresay those lamps are just as visible outside as inside: about as genuine as the rock from which Mohammed ascended into heaven." " The mosque is real at any rate," persisted Sir Hugh, " and they ought to show it." 88 Gerusalemme Irredenta "What has impressed you most, Sir Walter?" Nicholas asked the Chamberlain. "The river Jordan, I think: I brought away a jarful for the christening of my next grandchild." "You have forgotten the walls," said his lord; " you remember we thought the view of them very fine from outside." " The Church at Bethlehem," added John, " seemed to me the most beautiful building I had seen since we left Venice." " But none of those things," argued Sir Hugh, " are what we came to see: none of them are in Jerusalem." " N-no," said Edmund quickly, his eyes lighting up for a moment, " b-but Godfrey de Bouillon's sword is, and that is real enough." " It was once," murmured the monk half to himself. "Come, Nicholas," said Tom, "you haven't told us your own choice yet: you are not one of the disappointed ones? " Nicholas looked up, and John saw that his face had taken the frank impenetrable expression which generally served as a mask for his ironical mood. " Disappointed? not I," he replied; " I thought everything quite genuine — transparently genuine: and yesterday I caught a glimpse of the Holy Land itself." Tom looked puzzled. "Yesterday? — I thought you were with us." " I was at the Place of Wailing." Gerusalemme Irredenta 89 " So were we," said Tom, " but I saw no view — except a view of some miserable Jews howling." " I liked those Jews," Edmund remonstrated; " they wail outside the wall because if they went into the mosque they might tread upon the place where the Holy of Holies used to stand, without knowing it." Tom ignored this plea, " By the way," he said to Nicholas, " I meant to ask you if you knew what it was they were groaning into the wall." " It was the seventy-fourth Psalm." The words seemed to convey no very exact in- formation to any of the company, except perhaps to William the Singer, who leaned forward to listen from his place outside the circle. Nicholas turned to John. " My Lord knows it better as Ut quid Deus," he said, " but it is worth hearing even in English." He began to recite it in a quiet tone that had more sadness than passion in it. " O God, wherefore art thou absent from us so long: why is thy -^vrath so hot against the sheep of thy pasture? '' O think upon thy congregation, whom thou hast purchased and redeemed of old. " Think upon the tribe of thine inheritance, and Mount Sion, wherein thou hast dwelt." He paused, and there was a moment's silence. " It has a fine sound," said Sir Thomas at last, " but it doesn't come well from the Jews. They reaped what they sowed, and then complain of it. I hate that." 90 Gerusalemme Irredenta " Yes," replied the monk, " we naturally hate and despise Jews almost as much as we hate and despise our baser selves. But they have their use: they have expressed national repentance in a very convenient form." " Convenient for those who need it," said Sir Thomas, " but no other people have ever rejected their Redeemer." •' No," replied Nicholas, " we will not compare our case with theirs. Perhaps I did not mean to say ' convenient.' " The irony entered deep into John's soul: he under- stood, if no one else did, the tremendous accusation that lay behind the plain words and simple tone; how could he endure to sit by in silence and hear his boy-lord blunder into an argument, which, as he knew only too well, needed very wary fighting. " I don't think you have quite taken Nicholas's point," he broke in, — " not that we need discuss it here, but I know that he has a fixed idea about the condition of England just now: he thinks the ruling class are oppressive and lawless and revengeful. He seems to me to forget that there are times when a man must strike, and strike hard, too, if he is to do his duty at all. But we need not talk about it now, — it has nothing to do with this country." Tom saw no reason for cutting the argument short — it rather interested him. " I daresay there is something in what he says, John," he remarked; " you and I have seen some pretty hard cases lately. But times will mend soon; and if you won't mind my Gcrusalemme Irredenta 91 saying so, Nicholas, I think you mustn't expect us to take so clerical a view as you do of these matters." "Forgive me," replied the monk; "it is the wail- ing of those poor Jews that has got into my head. " ' O deliver not the soul of thy turtle-dove unto the multi- tude of the enemies, and forget not the congregation of the poor for ever. "'Look upon the covenant; for all the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations. " ' Forget not the voice of thine enemies: the presumption of them that hate thee increaseth ever more and more.' " Sir Thomas reddened : the point was plain enough now, and he thought his chaplain was pressing him too far. " My dear Nicholas," he began, with some attempt at severity, " you should remember that if you love England, so do we ; and some of us feel strongly that the real patriot is the man who believes the best of his country." "Ah! " replied the monk in the candid tone of one forced to an admission, " certainly the Jewish patriots never did that: they knew the worst, and could only hope the best, of theirs." John made an impatient movement at this renewal of the attack. Sir Thomas misinterpreted the gesture as agreeing with his own thought. " I cannot see," he repHed to Nicholas, " why you keep dragging in the Jews. Their history is very good, of course, for clerical purposes — for teaching and preaching and that sort of thing, and we know that it was written for our edification; but as a matter of record the Jews themselves seem to me 92 Gerusalemme Irredenta to come very badly out of it. And whatever they may have been once, you cannot be serious in com- paring them with us — now. Look at our wealth, our dominions, our famous battles and naval vic- tories, — look at our position in Europe " " Think of our beautiful forests," Edmund chimed in, " and all our castles and cathedrals." " Besides," added his brother, with an argument- ative rise in the pitch of his tone, " how can the Jews of to-day understand anything at all of pat- riotism when they don't own an acre of land: they have no country." " But they seek one to come." The deep tones fell upon the altercation and silenced it, as if by irresistible authority : on the outer edge of the circle stood WiUiam the Singer, of whose very presence every one had been ob- livious. As they now turned and looked at him in astonishment he seemed to be changed — the same, and yet wholly changed, as a wandering king might be who should suddenly reveal himself without bodily putting off his disguise. His dark eyes looked be- yond the company before him with a sombre glow in their depths : his right hand was half-raised, half- out-stretched, and his head bent a little forward, as if he were speaking to some one too far distant to hear his voice but too near his heart for silence to be any longer possible. " You that are lords of England and masters of manhood, for what will you sell the birthright of your sons? For a Uttle earth, ye that have earth Gerusalemme Irredenta 95 enough: for a little gold, ye that have gold already: for one more cup of wine before the lights go out — wine of oppression, wine of hatred, wine of anger, red wine of strength without softness and of fire without comfort. What think ye to leave behind you? Kingdoms of dust, cities and walls of dust: dust for the hungry, dust for the thirsty, dust for the portion of all your children's children. O Jeru- salem, dream of the world, visit now the eyes of these men, that they may love thee and live. For the folk and realm that serveth not thee shall perish : yea, those heathen men shall be destroyed by wilder- ness. But the sons of them that made thee low shall come low unto thee, and all they that despised thee shall worship the steps of thy feet, and they shall call thee the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Whereas thou hast been for- saken and hated so that there was none that passed by thee, God shall make thee an eternal excellency* a joy of many generations. He shall also make thy officers peace and thine exactors rightfulness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, neither destroying nor defiling within thy coasts, but Health shall occupy thy walls and thy gates Praising." His voice trembled to the close with so tender and self-forgetful a passion that John, who knew it of old, felt an unreasonable weakness blind his eyes for a moment. His companions were all moved, each in his own degree of sensitiveness: it was for Sir Thomas to relieve the general discomfort. " Wilham," he said, with a sternness half intended 94 Froissart for his own encouragement, " I think you have for- gotten yourself: we shall be glad to see you again when you have slept off your excitement." The singer went out quietly as if of his own motion. At the door he turned and bowed with a simple dignity which made matters worse rather than better for those who remained. The Controller of the Household rose and kicked his chair out of his way. " Half Lollard and half madman, I should say," he growled to his neighbour, Sir Walter. " I thought they were one and the same thing," replied the Chamberlain, and added in a lower voice, " I never understood why they brought the fellow." John overheard him. " It was my doing," he said fiercely: he did not know with whom he was most angry. {From " The New June," 1907.) FROISSART THE FIRST PHASE " This noble reahn of England," said the Earl of Salisbury, " hath been a long season in triumphant flower." The words were spoken five hundred years ago, and in every generation since then. Englishmen have delighted to find the colour and splendour of that flower still glowing freshly in the Chronicles of Sir John Froissart. The time deserved a lasting record, and the Earl of Foix, who had the right to Froissart 95 an opinion, spoke plainly to our author of his oppor- tunity, " saying to me how the history that I had begun should hereafter be more praised than any other; and the reason, he said, why, was this; how that in lifty years past there had been done more marvellous deeds of arms in the world, than in three hundred years before that." Many histories have been praised since then, and they have recorded many deeds of arms, some perhaps as marvellous as Cressy or Poitiers; but this is likely enough to keep its place among them all, for its truth is not a matter of dates, and it differs from all mere records as widely as a forest in leaf differs from a timber- yard. Nothing here is dry, nothing dead: in the hall we see the lords and bishops at their Christmas dinner, the minstrels playing and singing, " the knights and squires of honour going up and down, and talking of arms and of love "; in the battle-field the hedges and dykes, the moated abbey with the minster among the trees, or the " little windmill hill "; in the church the " goodly hearse and well- ordered " with the torches round it burning night and day, and the dead lord's banners before the High Altar. Everything is seen : sometimes in a picture, as when " at the foot of the castle they mounted on their horses and so rode away," or when " the king of England stood on the forepart of his ship apparelled in a black jacket of velvet, and he wore on his head a bonnet of black cloth, the which became him right well; and he was there so joyous as he never was seen": sometimes in drama, as ^6 Froissart when the young king of France irritates the old Constable by his childish eagerness, or the great Earl, half in anger, half in ignorance, kills his only son. Froissart's first volume was an account of the battle of Poitiers; and, though lost in its separate form, the substance of it is no doubt incorporated in the Chronicles as we now possess them. It might well be vividly and picturesquely written, for at the Court of Edward III., he was able to meet and question the very men who had borne the brunt of that day's work, and he was a favoured guest at Berkhamstead, in the house of the Black Prince him- self. His admiration for the character and achieve- ments of the English is flattering to our national pride, and we may believe that it was based upon a fair judgment of what he saw and heard; but the fact that Queen Philippa was his kindest patron and a native of his own Hainault, undoubtedly added somethmg to the colouring; for many years afterwards he saw the Court of England through a golden haze of personal feeling. But he was at least as impartial as an English writer would have been, and he gives solid and abundant reasons for his preferences. His portrait of Queen Philippa is to this day undimmed by any adverse criticism, " Tall and upright was she, wise, gay, humble, pious, liberal and courteous, decked and adorned in her time with all noble virtues, beloved of God and of mankind; and so long as she lived the kingdom of England had favour, prosperity, honour, and every Froissart 97 sort of good fortune." And whatever flaws old age may have brought to light in the character of Edward III., in the days when Froissart knew and admired him he was a king indeed. At Sluys, " in the flower of his youth, he showed himself a noble knight of his own hand." At Cressy " he rode from rank to rank, desiring every man to take heed that day to his right and honour. He spake it so sweetly, and with so good countenance and merry cheer, that all such as were discomfited took courage in the saying and hearing of him." And in the flush of unhoped-for victory, " the king would have that no man should be proud or make boast, but every man humbly to thank God." The Black Prince too in his youth, before disease and hardships dragged him down, was the true son of such a father, " worthy to guard a realm." In battle he was " courageous and cruel as a lion; he took great pleasure to fight and to chase his enemies"; but when he knew that the greatest triumph of the age was safely his, and John of France sat as a prisoner at his table, " always the prince served before the king, as humbly as he could "; and he cheered his fallen enemy with such exquisite courtesy and sincere offer of friendship, that even the French knights, sitting weary and wounded at that bitter feast, began to murmur among themselves " how that the prince had spoken nobly, and that by all estimation he should prove a noble man, if God send him life, and to persevere in such good fortune." In the end God sent him neither long life not such good fortune, but that one summer D 9^ Froissart was enough to place him apart as a figure of heroic splendour in the memory and imagination of his countrymen. And it was not the princes only of England who moved Froissart to enthusiasm; we read with an even greater and nearer pleasure his praise of the men-of-arms and archers who did the hardest of the marching and fighting; they were, to his mind, ideal soldiers; ready and orderly before the battle, cool and unabashed in the face of tremendous odds, self-restrained in the dangerous first moment of success; generous and trustful in ransoming their prisoners, to whom " they made good cheer," and would " let them go, all only on their promise of faith and truth to return again with their ransoms." Such courtesy, he says, was not to be found among the Germans, nor such steadfastness among the Spaniards: as to the French he gives no direct opinion, but puts into the mouth of the Flemings a sharp saying, " We think they will not pass into England this year, for the realm of England is not so easy to be won." Here then will be found not only history, tragedy, comedy, fairy tale, and romance, in a delightful medley, but many curious parallels between our own and other times, and some passages still more suggestive, bearing on problems which belong to the life of man and do not really change with the passing of centuries. From the beginning we shall be struck with the evident persistence of national types of character; the coolness of the Anglo-Saxon Froissart 99 in fight was not more, nor less, conspicuous " down among the vines " at Poitiers, than in the squares at Waterloo; Cressy, where the archers faced a horde of yelling enemies, and " stirred not for all that," was the very counterpart of Omdurman; and the Englishmen who " shot so wholly together " at Aljubarota were the true forefathers of the gunners at Santiago and Manila Bay, before whom the Spaniards were once more, for all their pride and fierceness, " discomfited without recovery." Some men's ideas on the invasion of England are still what they were in the time of Charles VI. and of the first Napoleon; it is still " the opinion of divers, that if they might arrive all together in England, where they intended to land, they should sore abash the country "; the comment is still true, " and so they should, without doubt," and truer still the Duke of Berry's unpopular remark, that " though we be now a thousand and five hundred ships, yet before we come there we shall not be three hundred; then behold what peril we should put ourselves in! " In these days we joust no longer, but still " for the great desire that we have to come to the know- ledge of noble gentlemen, strangers, as well on the frontiers of the realm of France as elsewhere of far countries," we send cricketers to Australia, and football teams to Paris; and when the athletes of Harvard or the oarsmen of Cornell come three thousand miles over-sea to meet us on our own ground we are " right joyful of their high courage and enterprise "; we watch the contest day by day. loo Froissart as our ancestors watched the lists at St. Ingle vere, marking the score as man after man comes out " ready to answer " when his name is called, and we understand with a perfect understanding the feelings with which those sportsmen of five hundred years ago, still aching from hard knocks, departed " in courteous manner " from their antagonists, and " thanked them greatly for their pastime." There is in truth more of the modern than the antiquated in Froissart, and the better we know him the more we shall reaUse this, and understand and admire the age in which he Hved. It was the age of cliivalry; a word of much confusion, but one worth considering with Froissart's help ; for to him it stood neither for a narrow and exaggerated view of the position of women, nor for a fantastic love of mere adventure; it was nothing sentimental, high-flown, or unreal, but a plain rule of life : and we may remem- ber that he learned it chiefly among Englishmen, the most practical people in Europe. The fourteenth, like the nineteenth and all other centuries, was cursed, and blessed, with war. Blessed, because contest being the law of this material world, where order must depend ultimately on force, it is natural and right for man to love fighting as he loves the sense of Hfe, and the virtues of the soldier are the most desirable of all: cursed, because the domination of the animal in us is a danger always to be dreaded, as a violation of man's nature and the destruction of his hopes. Now in that age the Holy Church herself was militant, and the question of the absolute Froissart loi wrongfulness of war, which weighs so hea\'ily upon the modern world, was perhaps never even raised; but if it had been pressed upon them as it has been upon us, we may be sure that Froissart and those among whom he lived would have wondered how an}- one could so hastily deny that man may live happily and honourably in a world of arms. To know his answer, we have only to mark what are the characters he loved: the brave, such as those " noble jousters " Sir John d'Ambreticourt and Sir Reginald de Roye, who " feared neither pain nor death," knowing that these are the conditions of the game, and not its worst possibilities; the faithful, such as the French knights and squires at Poitiers, " who, though their masters departed, yet had rather have died than have had any reproach," and so died accordingly ; the victorious king, who would have no man proud, but humbly to thank God; the prince, who loved and served his conquered enemy; the men of honour, who scorned to mistrust or imprison their captives; the soldiers, who wept to see their own general beheading their enemies in cold blood. For much as he loved courage, Froissart loved gentleness more: he is never squeamish over the necessities of war, but cruelty he cannot pass by, even in his great and admirable patron the Earl of Foix; and over the sack of Limoges he cries aloud: " There was not so hard a heart, an if he had any remembrance of God, but that wept piteously for the great mischief that they saw before their eyes; for more than three thousand men, women, and I02 Froissart children were slain and beheaded that day; God have mercy upon their souls, for I trow they were martyrs." He was of the mind of Sir John de Vienne and his companions, who would " endure as much pain as ever knights did, rather than consent that the poorest lad in the town should have to bear any more evil than the greatest of us all " ; and of Eustace de St. Pierre, who thought that " great mischief it should be, to suffer to die such people as be in this town, when there is a means to save them " — by giving his own life for theirs. By these and many such passages Froissart has shown us not merely his own ideal, but the ideal of his age; for he learned from the knights of England and France that which he wrote, and that which he wrote was in turn read and approved by them. For them, as for Nelson, to be fighting was to be " in the full tide of happiness," and I do not doubt that their descendants, for some generations yet, will feel the same stirring of the blood. It will be well if they will frankly own to it, taking care that at the same time they keep alive the soldierly in- stincts of discipline, generosity, loyalty, and fair play; that the new men-of-arms, like the old, look with sympathy on all human fortitude, and with tenderness on all human suffering: that they learn, like their ancestors, to fight without hatred, to conquer without insolence, and to meet death without terror; to think of honour as the true self-interest, and of nobility as the right to serve. {From " Stories from Froissart," 1898.) Froissart 103 FROISSART THE LAST PHASE Froissart is, at the end of his life, a historian who has learned both impartiality and discretion; he will not openly take sides in a quarrel of the great: also he is one who is not easily startled, for he has seen that " the fortunes of this world are marvellous," and " that that shall be, shall be." But this is not to say that experience or custom have deadened Ms feelings or debased that gentle and enthusiastic philosophy which made him so charming a companion in the days when the world of chivalry was young. He makes but little direct comment, but he throws over the later part of his Enghsh history an atmos- phere which is more unforgettable than any words. " Such miscliievousness fell in those days upon great lords of England." " This King Richard reigned king of England twenty-two years in great prosperity, holding great estate and seignory: I was in his court more than a quarter of a year together, and he made me good cheer, because that in my youth I was clerk and servant to the noble King Edward the Third his grandfather, and with my lady Philippa of Hainault, queen of England, his grandam: where- fore I am bound to pray to God for his soul, and with much sorrow I write of his death: but because I have continued this history, therefore I write thereof 104 Froissart to follow it." These words are the last echo of the thought that has been haunting us all through, from the moment when we heard how Queen Phil- ippa passed " out of this transitory life," to be followed, after few and evil years, by her son and her husband. " So the body of King Edward the Third, with great processions, weepings and lamen- tations, his sons behind him, with all the nobles and prelates of England, was brought along the city of London, with open visage, to Westminster, and there he was buried beside the queen his wife." This is no longer so much a picture, as an anthem or a solemn music; a dirge at vespers for the morning splendours of Cressy and Poitiers. No man had rejoiced more in that double glory or seen more hope in it, than Froissart: the king was " a noble knight of his own hand," the prince was his " true son, worthy to guard a realm "; the vital principle of their chivaky was, in that age, as for all we know it will continue to be in every age, the one saving faith for man that is born to fighting, and Froissart had learned that faith in spirit and in truth. And now all seemed to have vanished. It had been hard enough, when he came back to England after twenty- seven years, to find " no man of my knowledge: and young children were become men and women that knew me not, nor I them : so that I was at the fiorst all abashed, for if I had seen any ancient knight that had been with King Edward or with the prince, I had been well recomforted and would have gone to him; but I could see none such." This was hard. Froissart 105 but something more was gone, besides the men themselves: their very creed seemed eclipsed by the shadow of the coming age. The change was beginning which altered the forms of all things — religion, social order, commerce, and the art of war: and it is admirable to see how the sunset sadness which fell upon Froissart and which is reflected so inevitably upon the mind of those who read him, brings with it no touch of frosty conservatism, no chill wind of doubt for the future. Would that, as we see in imagination the genial, wise old man spending his last quiet days in his ingle nook at Chimay, we could send back to him a word of the sympathy we feel: " Courage, Sir John! you had the right of it: from * this uncertain world ' all must pass, kings, lords, prelates, knights, and squires; but their descendants, and the descendants, too, of those poor ' commons ' whose rights and worth your heroes so little understood, shall bear witness on a hundred fields that the inborn, inbred faith of a great race does not perish in the natural changes of their destiny." {From " Froissart in Britain," 1899.) io6 Nothing New NOTHING NEW A conversation between Stephen Buhner, a young Englishman of Colonial upbringing, author of " The Uplands of the Future " ; Philip Saltwode, a Conservative ; and Walter Earnshaw, his father-in-law, a Liberal landowner. Philip Saltwode was some years older than the rest of Mr. Earnshaw's family circle, and had already sat in three Parliaments. He belonged to the Con- servative party, which had been in power for practi- cally the whole of that period, and promotion had not yet come to him in the form of office; but he had long been distinguished by the intimacy of several of his chiefs, and was private secretary to one of them. His capacity for this kind of work was very considerable, but his future was a little com- promised by his fondness for ideas. His interests were, in fact, those of a philosopher rather than what is called a practical politician; but if his prospects suffered by this, he found great consolation in the whispers which would brand him as a" dan- gerous " young man. Of all the party now at Garden- leigh he was probably the one who had read Stephen's book with most care; for though the author's views had not for him the personal interest that they had for Aubrey and Eleanor, he assigned to them a much higher place among opinions of public importance. After dinner, when the dining-room was deserted Nothing New 107 for the verandah, he seated himself by Stephen, who turned to him with pleasure, attracted already by his intellectual face and unconventional charm of manner. " I don't want to ask an indiscreet question," Saltwode began; " but if you are thinking of taking any part in political life, it would interest me very much to hear about it." " I can only say," replied Stephen, readily, " that I am unconscious of any such inclination at present; but I am always glad to talk politics, especially English politics, about which I have very little first-hand information. I don't count the news- papers." " Well," said Philip, "if it were merely inform- ation that you wanted, in the ordinary sense of the word, the press has never been so well informed as it is now. But I take it your inquiry is really one into principles, and in that case the less you read about tactics the better." " You make me feel very unfledged," said Stephen. " I suppose principles are a kind of juvenile ailment in the life of a politician? " " Not in my opinion," replied Philip, seriously. " The party division is to me as real as the difference between the sexes; and when a mind is once estab- lished in either class it can never change — except in abnormal instances, which are generally cases of degeneration or of fraudulent disguise." " May I ask," said Stephen, laughing, " to which political sex you yourself belong? " io8 Nothing New " The masculine — what we call the Conservative." " Why the masculine? " asked Stephen. " I have always thought of Conservatism as the passive element." " That is the common idea; and it is true that the Conservative party must naturally include all the timid, senile, and old-womanish minds of the community. But they are under the same mis- conception as yourself, if you will forgive me for saying so. They take Conservatism to be the creed of immobility, the cause of crystaUisation. But obviously that is impossible; the status quo has never been, and can never be, preserved. A mere * stop-the-clock ' party would perish in a year — that is, as soon as it became evident that it had entirely failed to stop the clock." " Oh, oh! " said Stephen; " do you deny that there has ever been such a thing as a reactionary party ? " " Reactionary is only a nickname for Conservative; the fundamental principle implied by both is loyalty to the past, admiration of the past, imitation of the past. But the past was no more static than the present is; those were living trees which our ancestors tended, and under which they sat. They change, of course, because they grow; but it is our business to see that they remain in their places, and are not cut down or rooted up in favour of others which are not indigenous." *' I accept your simile," replied Stephen, " and I ask you what you propose to do when your trees no longer give you adequate shelter; when they are Nothing New 109 leafless at the extremities, and decayed in every branch and hollow at the core." " Radicalism," said Philip, smiling, " is the creed of the faddist with the axe. He has always gone about seeking what he may cut down, and naturally he magnifies the decay and minimises the surviving utility of every institution that comes in his way." " Is it your position, then," said Stephen, " that he is always wrong — that the moment will never come for a radical operation? " " I do not venture to prophesy," replied Philip, " but I say that in England the moment has never yet been in sight when a sacrifice of the kind was called for." " I am no historian," said Stephen, " but I should have thought that feudalism was in a fair way to be forgotten." " Never less so. You have been misinformed by the painters and poets and pessimists, who call us degenerate because the armoury of our invincible forefathers is hung in our halls and not on our backs. So it was in 1805; so it was in 1815; so it always has been. The picturesque is always obsolete; but the spirit of the thing, the love of war and sport, and the religious regard for the weaker — that is more alive than ever it was." " Not quite so effectively, is it? " asked Stephen. " The Germans claim to be able to beat you in war, and the Americans in athletics." PhiUp smiled disdainfully. " That ' you ' be- trays the exile," he said; "but not more clearly iio Nothing New than the argument does. Somebody has always been beating us. It is in our blood to desire the Olympic dust more than the Olympic crown; and there are, as you say, certain other nations who seek victory with long odds rather than a fair fight against the strong. We don't win oftener than others — we never did — but we forget our defeats, and they brood over theirs." He threw his cigarette away and took another. " By the way," he began again, "we are a long way off the track; we are talking about chivalry, which is only a concomitant of feudalism." " Yes," said Stephen, " I was going to bring you back to that. You have to persuade me that this aristocratic-looking English system is not what it looks like to me — a modern dynamo-house with a row of waxworks outside in gaudy robes and tinsel coronets." " I admit the tinsel and deny the waxworks. We love tinsel; in our climate it does something to make glad the heart of man, and we know that it does not prevent the workman from doing his work well." "If he is really a workman and not a waxwork. But if you choose him for the coronet ? " "Yes, yes," said Philip, "that is the idea; but we don't, and we never have. You see, in this country we are real believers in equality. We don't reject a man because of his class or surname. Even if he is born a Howard, he may yet rise to be a post- of&ce manager." Nothing New 1 1 1 "Good!" said Stephen, laughing; "but he has to rise. The feudal system saved him that trouble by making birth and power the same thing." " Pardon me," said Philip, " but you must really let me contradict you there. In the Middle Ages they thought nearly as much of birth as we do; but they annexed power not to birth, but to property. They deprived a duke of his dukedom for being poor." "I did not know that," replied Stephen; "but it was surely only the precaution of a privileged class, anxious for its own prestige." "Possibly; but it was strictly in accordance with feudal principles. The system was simply an organisation of the resources of the country for the use of all. Every one had his place, his duty, and his living wage. A and B had the land and titles, and C and D and the rest of the alphabet had a definite claim upon them for housing, food, and employment. They have very foolishly ex- changed it for an indefinite claim for charitable patronage, in order that they may be free to boast of their independence." " Oh," replied Stephen, " they are not all paupers, surely; and they have a vote." "They have; but the individual has little, if anything, more than he has always had; the power is not with him, but with the head of his organisation. He used to be represented by his Lord. Lord and Villein they are still, though we call them Capital and Labour in modern English." 112 Nothing New " But Labour has its own organisation now." " Not for production; only for revolt. That is the uncomfortable stage which we have reached; but it cannot last." " Still less can it lead back to feudalism." Philip smiled meaningly and looked at Stephen. " I can tell you with some confidence about that," he said, "for I have studied the works of Bulmer, our most trustworthy sociologist. The present state of things is leading us back, or rather leading us round, to the old idea of an organised community. In that community every man will have a place, a duty, and a living wage, and also a further reward, proportionate to his value. The tinsel, which with your leave we shall preserve, because we like it, will adorn the brows of those who fiU the higher and more responsible places. Wealth in reason will be permitted too; but it will never be acquired by mere chance, or held without definite obligations. Those who do the best part of the most intelligent work will be enabled to live the most dignified lives." " I recognise the sketch," said Stephen, " and I am very glad that it appeals to you; but I must teU you that my method was simply to draw it as different as possible from anything that has existed, or now exists, in England." "It is a happy failure, then," replied Philip, " for it represents very attractively the ideal of State Socialism, the system from which we have come, which we have never entirely abandoned, and to which we are inevitably returning," Nothing New 1 13 " It is a pretty paradox," said Stephen. " But I need no conversion; you must try it on your Conservative friends." " I thought you would say that," rephed Philip, with an appreciative smile, " and I confess that you hit me hard. There are no hindrances like those of one's own household. The Conservatives shy at the very name of Socialism, because they own most of the great fortunes and titles, and they fear either to lose them or to have them burdened with hard- and-fast responsibilities. The Englishman loves duty, but hates obligation." " I should like to ask Mr, Earnshaw," said Stephen, seeing his host approach at this moment, "which of the two great parties is, in his opinion, the more likely to coalesce with the Sociahsts." " If bidding were buying, I should say the Con- servatives," replied Mr. Earnshaw; " but in some bargains there are other considerations beside the mere price." " The Socialists," said Philip, " are not selling an old horse to a kind home." " No," said Mr. Earnshaw, when they had all done laughing, " they are not looking for affection, but they are looking for success; and they will find it by joining the party which is least handicapped by devotion to system. So long as socialistic measures come singly and are purely opportunist, there is apparently no limit to the amount we can absorb; for, among Englishmen, the best individualist is at heart the best fellow-citizen. But your German TI4 The Church of Science system spoils all for us. When logic comes in at the door, persuasion flies out of the window." " My father-in-law is incorrigible," said Philip to Stephen; " it is an old quarrel between us." "It is an older quarrel than us," replied Mr. Earnshaw; "it is as old as that " — he pointed to the long, silent slope of the park, where the cattle were wandering in the moonlight. The spell of the summer night fell upon the three men, and they sat for some time without a word, their thoughts all following the same train. For the first few moments the scene had a strange air of unreality ; they saw the hills and trees and silvered water as things which had been enchanted from life into tapestry; but soon they themselves were bound with the same magic. This alone was real, and to think again of their politics was to look from far off upon the transient and dusty struggles of a half- forgotten world. Is it possible, they wondered, that such things are still in issue ? " Yes," said Mr. Earnshaw at last; " there is nothing new under the moon. Let us go in." And he led the way into the house. {From " The Old Country," 1906.) THE CHURCH OF SCIENCE Stephen drew a long breath and plunged. " Well," he said, " I try to see everything in as generalised a form as possible before admitting it to my new world. Religion I can place there, because it is a The Church of Science 115 universal, an inclusive element; but a Church is particularist and exclusive by its very nature. A reasonable, scientifically ordered community, if it were given anything like a fair start, would never allow such an influence to get a hold at all." " I follow you," said Mr. Eamshaw : " the Churches, taken all together, are a terrible satire on the idea of the Church. But all Christendom has belonged to one or another of them. Why is this, do you think? and why should this be not the case in the future? " " Men have always desired incorporation; it is in their nature to wish to have something larger behind them — some great body to which they can refer themselves." "Why should that natural feeling cease? " •" Because it is in reality, like patriotism, not essential." " Patriotism has certainly changed," said Mr. Eamshaw; "it is less concentrated now than it probably was in more tribal days, and I, for one, rather regret the fact. But supposing that patriotism must widen until it ultimately disappears, I think you are overlooking a real difference in using it as an analogy here. Patriotism is essentially defensive. It will be impossible, you say, in a world-state, because a world-state can have no enemies. But a spiritual communion among men can never be useless, for in the spiritual world man will always be at war." " I should not myself use the word ' war, » >» Il6 The Church of Science replied Stephen; "it seems to imply personal op- ponents — Powers and Spirits of the nethermost abyss." "I had no such intention," said Mr. Eamshaw; " I was thinking of the strenue militantes of Thomas h. Kempis — the warriors who have overcome the world. You don't deny that Hfe is a conflict, in which man needs all the help he can find? " " No. But surely, if it is to be a force stronger than his own, he must seek it from a higher power, not from his fellow-man." " Then we are all to live entirely separate lives — each in his narrow cell for ever laid? " "No, no," said Stephen, earnestly; "that is the opposite of my behef. I look to see men helping one another as they have never helped before; but it will be mainly in the ways of science — in clearing away obstacles and tangles and dangers, and giving a fair field to ' original goodness,' which is, at least, as natural and as visible as original sin. I do not say that goodness may not be fostered, too, by fellow- ship; but I do say that the fellowships which at present exist for that object seem to have done far more harm than good." " It is difi&cult to think without enthusiasm," said Mr. Eamshaw, " of the cause of science and the ser- vice by which it has been forwarded. But hitherto it has done but little for the clearing of man's spiritual path, because it has hardly yet recognised the exist- ence of spiritual phenomena at all. It recognises flowers," he continued, pointing to the water-lilies The Body of Patriotism I17 which covered the bay at their feet, " because they are substantisd; they appeal to the common senses of all men; they float on water, grow on stalks, and are rooted in mud. But it turns away from our mental experiences, as inconsistently, it seems to me, as though it should refuse to recognise those slender bars of turquoise that you see coming and going upon the water-lilies — mere flashes of momen- tary hght from nowhere." " Yes," said Stephen, " dragon-flies and dreams should all come in. But the scientific people have developed a dogmatism of their own; they have founded the Materialistic Church, and it is showing the characteristic faults of all Churches." {From " The Old Country," 1906.) THE BODY OF PATRIOTISM Sir Henry asked at breakfast how the day was to be spent. " There is a little service to-day," said Lady Marland; "it is the Translation of King Edward. I shall go to church; I hope every one will go to church." She looked at Stephen, who replied without enthusiasm that he would certainly come. " It is also Midsummer Eve," said Aubrey to him. " How are you going to keep that? " Stephen replied that he had never kept Mid- summer Eve, and knew no way of doing so. Ii8 The Body of Patriotism "What!" cried Aubrey. "Have you never looked for the way to Fairyland? " He smiled a little bitterly. " I thought I had found it once," he said, " but some one misled me, after all." " Would you Hke to try again? " she asked, with bright eyes full of a childish playfulness. They made his heart ache, but there was no resisting them. So these two started together towards the cool of the day, when the sun was westering, in a direction that was new to Stephen almost from the first. They left the park by a stile below the lodge where he had come with Edmund to meet the Bishop, crossed the road where it passes through the hamlet of Lower Croonington, and found themselves at the entrance of the little valley through which the river Sel winds quietly between two high tablelands of green pasture. From the upper level the ground falls steeply to the water meadows, which lie one beyond another in the folds of the stream: on the further bank are orchards, a cottage or two, and an ancient mill; the space on the near side is narrower, and shut mysteriously in by a succession of high hedges and by the long, undulating line of alders which marks the river's course. In each great hedge, as it comes steeply down to the foot of the hill, there is a gate at the lowest and narrowest point; and when Stephen and Aubrey passed through these gates one after another, and saw before them each time a yet more remote and bowery meadow sleeping under the golden stillness of the evening, it was as The Body of Patriotism 119 though they were retracing the path by which they had come so far from childhood, and wandering further moment by moment back into the land where people and facts are so small, and colours, songs, and fancies so abundant and so magically powerful. " This is the end of Eden Vale," said Aubrey, as they came towards the last of the green hedges, beyond which the valley widens, and the steep pitch of the bank upon their left melted away into a long and gentle slope. " And who named it Eden Vale? " asked Stephen, looking at her. "Not I," she said, ahnost indignantly; "how could you think it ? " " It is a charming name," he said in self-defence, " and a right name." " It would not be a right name," she repUed, " if it were only an invention of mine." "Forgive me," he said; "I have offended, but I do not know how." She reddened, and was silent for a moment; then looked up again at him with clear, frank eyes that seemed determined to be understood. " I love this country," she said; " I love it as I love nothing else in life. It is to me everything that men have ever loved — a mother, a nurse, a queen, a lover, and something greater and more sacred still. There is not one look of it that I shall ever forget or cease to long for, and I would as soon kill a friend as change the name of the smallest of its fields." I20 The Body of Patriotism Her voice quivered and rang in Stephen's memory: this was surely the music that for him could have no counterpart. But it was still beyond his power to speak of that. " I understand," he said, " but I had almost forgotten that patriotism could be so intense and yet so local." " If you forget that," she replied, " you forget all. Patriotism has its own high spiritual thoughts; but it has a body too — very earth of very earth, bom of time and the land, and never to be found or made; it is as human as our other passions, instinctive and deep and unreasonable, and as hot as the blood by which we live." Stephen remembered how the white cliffs had stirred his pulse against his own will. " I have been long away," he said, " but I know you are right." " You must come back to it," said Aubrey, in a more matter-of-fact tone. " You will have no difficulty there; it can no more be lost than acquired. But now," she continued, returning lightly to her old serious playfulness, " we have come to fairyland itself." She pointed through the last gate, and he saw before him a field unlike any of those through which they had yet come. It rose on the left very gradually to the far-receding crest of the hill, and in its upper part was studded with great oaks, now casting enormous shadows across the slope; but it was the lower stretch, where it ran level to the riverside, The Body of Patriotism I2I upon which Stephen and Aubrey were now entering, and it was this that gave the place its curious dis- tinction. Here, as in the field before it, the deep green grass was thickly set with rushes, but in this place alone the rushes were of a pale and bluish tinge, and completely changed the colour of the field. Aubrey stooped and gathered a handful of the fine smooth stems. " Look," she said, handing them to Stephen: ''slim and pointed every one; and you may come here when you will, at any time of the year, you will never find them different. When all other rushes are brown and thick with flower, these are always slender and blue-green, as you see them now: they are the true fair^' rushes, of which the Little People make their lances, and their colour is so pale, because they sow them by moonlight instead of by day." " On Midsummer Eve? " he asked. " No," she repUed gravely, as if to a child, " on Midsummer Eve we gather them, those of us who are wise; but every one must gather his own," she added, taking back the bunch she had given to Stephen, and pointing to the ground before him. He stooped obediently and picked an ample handful; they had to be taken one by one, and he had time for many thoughts as he gathered them. When he rose at last and looked up, he met the low rays of the setting sun. For a moment he was dazzled and closed his eyes; when he opened them 122 The Body of Patriotism again he found himself alone. He turned quickly and looked in every direction round the field; but it was empty, and now it seemed to be far wider and more lonely than he had thought. The great oaks were a long, long way up the hill, the elms in the hedge opposite stretched out enormous shadows towards him, the gate by which he had come he saw across an infinite space of misty gold: there was a dead hush everywhere, except in the alders by the stream, where a single robin sat eyeing him maliciously between the snatches of his restless and elfish little song. The sensation of loneUness caught him suddenly, as the void seems to snatch a falling man: there was something unnatural in this sudden and utter solitude. He ran breathlessly to the gate; whether it was for himself or Aubrey that he feared he hardly knew, but certainly it was fear that drove him. When he saw her once more the fear ceased, but the mystery remained, for she was further off than he could have thought possible, and was even then disappearing through the next gate on her home- ward way along the valley. It was some time before he overtook her, and she seemed to greet him with the same air of malicious understanding as the elfin robin in the alder tree. " How did I miss you? " he cried; " when did you leave me? " " It is easy to see that you have been in fairyland," she said; " one is always alone there; and minutes seem like years, and years like minutes." An English Landscape 123 " There is certainly something uncanny about the place," he replied, " but it is very beautiful." " ' But ' is the wrong word," she said. " Of course it is beautiful, and of course it is magical — haunted from ages beyond memory by the spirits of the earth. You will see to-night "; and she touched the rushes in his hand with those which she was carrying herself. He looked at her with a smile, but met a face more inscrutable than ever; if he could read anything there, it was a touch of kindly scorn, a gentle tolerance of a blindness that could not last. So far as it was bhndness to beauty it was cured, he felt, already; her love of the land he understood too; but there was something more, and all the way home he wondered, while they talked of other things, what it could be that this child knew and he did not. {From " The Old Country," 1906.) AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE The sky cleared at last, the gale dropped, and the nightmare faded away before the returning sun. There were fallen trees to be trimmed and lopped and sawn, and carted to the timber-yard— -a week's work at least, and a great grief to Aubrey, who loved the dead giants as if they had been human. For her they all had characters and voices of their own, and it was a lucky moment that inspired Stephen to speak of them as her " fellow-countrymen." She joined 124 An English Landscape in the laugh at herself, but laid the saying away in a secret place among others much more serious; and went out with him to see the woodmen at their work. The park echoed with the crash of timber and the ringing strokes of the axe; the great teams stood patiently by, waiting motionless, until the huge trunk was stripped and fettered for its last journey. Then the whip cracked, and the word of command from a gruff Saxon throat set the shaggy horses thudding ponderously on the turf; the head-bells rang, and the bright brass on the martingales flashed in the sun; the vast baulk started, stuck, started again, and glided at last from the rollers to the waggon with a heart-shaking rattle. Then once more the chains were shifted and made fast, and the horses went on their way with a slow, majestic step worthy of a great king's obsequies. " Ah! " cried Aubrey, with shining eyes, " how I love the earth! She builds trees where we can only build houses." " Houses can be English too," said Stephen, half laughing at her. "They can; but they change. Yesterday they were of wood, to-day they are of stone, to-morrow they may be of something else; there is no finality in houses. But trees are always trees, and what we have been looking at is a picture that might belong to any generation since England was England." {From " The Old Country," 1906.) A Theory of School 125 A THEORY OF SCHOOL Mr. Mundy, a scientific man and a gentle hut deter- mined critic of Public Schools, visits Downton, where his ward, Percival Twyman, is a new hoy. With his usual fairness and deliberation, Mr. Mundy delayed his first visit of inspection until the boys had been a full year at the school. The British Association happened then to be meeting at Downton, and he foresaw that by attending it he would gain the opportunity of making acquaintance with some of the masters on neutral groimd, and at a time when they were not too much immersed in their work to be able to discuss the theory of it. This fell out as he expected, and by good fortune the master whom he first encountered chanced to be Mr. Don, Percival's host of the year before, a man of quaint appearance and eccentric manner, but, like many of the Downton stafi at this time, of strong and original character, not without a touch of genius. The meeting took place during an excur- sion down the Bristol Channel, the two men leaning side by side against the rail of the small steamer and watching the cloud-shadows on the Welsh coast while they talked. Mr. Mundy had been answering a series of ques- tions on the geology of the district, but he was glad when they came to an end, for he was more inter- ested in the personality of his companion — a curious 126 A Theory of School and arresting figure, with his long grey hair, high forehead, goat-hke beard, and intense visionary eyes. " I thank you," said Mr. Don after a moment's pause. " You shame my ignorance. I thank you." He compressed his Ups, grasped his chin with one hand and forced it down upon his chest, as if in meditation. " I wish," repHed Mr. Mundy with the slow, modest manner habitual to him, — " I wish you would be kind enough to do the same for me. I have never known enough about Public Schools — my criticism of them has probably been beside the mark in some ways." " In all ways, no doubt," said the other. " Our critics are as much in error as our defenders. You say we play too much: we reply that Waterloo was won upon our playing-fields. Where, then, was America lost? Where do French or German boys learn the battle of life ? We are stupid: we lie with- out thinking." Mr. Mundy was puzzled: but he felt the vehe- mence and abruptness to be full of meaning. " What is your reason then," he asked, " for giving so much importance to athletics? " " We do so because they are wholly unimportant. This is the doctrine of by-products. Pursue one thing to gain another — seek the trivial to find the permanent. Observe: I must have an object for my walk: I go to buy a pig, or pay a call upon a fool: as I go along — out of the corner of my eye — I gather beauty. My liver, too, benefits." A Theory of School 127 He drove an earnest glance into Mr. Mundy's eyes, and then continued as if he had heard a reply. " No — certainly not. At nothing of importance must you aim directly. Art pleases by felicities, but it does not aim at them. They are a bonus. So in religion — which is not Salvationism : seek ye first the Kingdom, but by losing your life, not by saving it. You were thinking of education: very well, we grasp information by handfuls, we find learning somewhere in the bunch. Yes, the bunch," he repeated in a tone of intense reflection — " the bunch." Mr. Mundy ventured again. " I understand some- thing of by-products in chemistry," he said, " but what is the by-product you get from athletics? " " I wandered," repUed Mr. Don, " I did not stray: I wandered to the other side of the road. It is all one: we learn to hit a ball, to call it (r(f)atpa or pila — what do we gain by that? Nothing, but inciden- tally we learn to construct the Universe. I say to my form, * Why do you come into this life, where you cheat and waste, and beget cheats and wasters? Why do you come to this school to idle and kick each other's shins and worry me? My boys,' " he raised his right hand and lowered his voice dramati- cally, — " ' you come because you have to build a new world, every one of you for himself: a new world: the world you see is chaos— raw material in heaps — a box of bricks. Out of it you must make a house — the House of Eternity.' " " I agree," said Mr. Mundy, " that facts are useless 128 A Theory of School until they are co-ordinated, but you have still to convince me that your schools " " Not as schools," Mr. Don interrupted, " but as societies, microcosms complete with nations, senates, battlefields, crimes, and seats of justice. They have even birth and death: their generations are always coming to them from an obscurer life and passing away into a wider one. There, too, it is building that is learnt, sometimes better than at school, sometimes worse." " You think that teaching is more efficient at the Universities? " Mr. Don's equanimity was not in the least dis- turbed by this misunderstanding: his candour and his courtesy reinforced each other. " My dear sir," he replied, " you have dropped the catch: I am glad of it: you see how difficult is the receiving of direct information — difficult for you, more difficult for softer and less wiUing hands. We talk of teaching, but you and I do not mean the same thing — there is an Undistributed Middle between us. Information, I say, is nothing — cin illusion of thoughtless parents. For information you would purchase a text-book, an encyclopaedia, perhaps a tutor. For education you live in a society. Man is a builder from birth, but he does not learn his building in solitude. A Public School is a Guild, a Fellowship of builders : it has a tradition, the secret of a style. I would say, an Order: best if akin to the Doric. Spartam nactus es." The word Sparta seemed to Mr. Mundy to offer a clue. " I think I am following," he said. " We A Theory of School 129 send our sons to you not only for instruction, but for discipline — which we should find it difficult to enforce ourselves." " You do," repHed Mr. Don, "it is another of your illusions — ' Flog my rascal for me. Dominie.' But Magister is not Dominie. No, the People must be their own Police — Prefect is the word. A crime is a crime against the community, not against me. Amicus curicB — I cannot go beyond that if I am to remain amicus pueri." " If I may take you literally," said Mr. Mundy, " the whole duty of a Public Schoolmaster is neither to instruct nor to control, but to befriend his boys." Mr. Don grasped his chin once more, and looked down: there was a tragic sincerity in his attitude. "My friend," he replied, "you press me home: you pierce me. To befriend — would not that be also to instruct and to control? Yes! We fail — ■ the Masters of the Guild — we fail. I fail : I have been boasting to you. I take these young friends you send me: Mith them I follow the paper-chase, the rotifer, the irregular verb. I say to myself, ' While we are running together surely they will see and hear what I see and hear — the light on the horizon, the music to which the City is built.' " The long-drawn intensity of his voice changed suddenly to a candour without self-pity. "They do not see," he said, "they go away: they have heard nothing but a middle-aged pedagogue talking to himself. You have heard him too: I beg you will forgive me, and forget as they do." E 13^1 The Schoolboy in Luck Mr, Mundy's heart was touched: between this man's point of view and his own there was a wide difference, and he did not lose sight of it, but he recognised and honoured a selfless enthusiasm. "Oh! no," he replied sympathetically; "that is, if I may say so, an illusion on your side. Whether they profit or not, I am quite sure they don't forget." He was probably right: upon him, the mere acquaintance of an hour, that strange dramatic personality, that abrupt and vital utterance, left an impression that was long in fading. Upon Percival's memory they had for a year past been stamped indelibly. {From " The Twymans," 1911.) THE SCHOOLBOY IN LUCK With Homer he had long been famiUar before he entered the Sixth Form, — that is to say, he had drudged through certain battles of the Iliad, where men killed each other with barbarous weapons, after unchivalrous boasting, and by the unfair assistance of preposterous gods. He hardly reahsed his good fortune when Sherwin, the master of the Upper Fifth, proposed to read the Odyssey with him out of school hours. He did not even remember at the moment that this friend, whose duty to him had ended when he left his form a year ago, was offering him a gift of pure generosity and of considerable cost. But he accepted readily, glad of any reason The Schoolboy in Luck 131 for spending time with a man whom he hked, and sure of the coming pleasure because he had not for- gotten how invariably, in the days of his pupilage, Mr. Sherwin's tastes had confirmed and enriched his own. So it proved again: the gift was one of those fortunate ones that can never be exhausted. The Odyssey, its matchless story, its wine-dark sea, its caverns welling with the fresh springs of Romance, — the Odyssey itself was but the half of it. To read with Sherwin was to walk in a hall of mirrors, edl the splendours of literature flashing back light upon each other, setting each other forth in new aspects, illuminating, extending, revealing. About the man himself there was something Pythian or Sibylline: in the half obscurity of a perpetually renewed cloud of smoke he sat with large round eyes and a faint ironic smile, as classic and as wise as Athene's owl. His speech was winged with a soft unwearying enthusiasm, and his pauses were no less alive, for when he threw back his head and closed his eyes in the odd way he had, it was always to find an apt phrase, or to touch the words he had just read with a meaning never before perceived, never afterwards forgotten. How should Percy ever forget the scene where Odysseus on his return home in disguise reveals himself to his dear son, so strangely hard and un- believing? To begin with, Telemachus cannot see the goddess, standing close at hand, and manifest enough to the old beggarman: " for the gods 132 The Schoolboy in Luck do not by any means appear visibly to ail " — "a remark," said Sherwin, with his faintest smile, " that might still, I think, be earning its living among us." Then when Telemachus is at last told the truth, that the old beggar is his own father, long and ardently expected, he doubts and questions and argues, until Odysseus rebukes him, for marvelHng overmuch, in words that have a strangely deep echo: " For thou shalt find no other Odysseus come hither any more." " Art thou He that should come," said Sherwin quietly, "or do we look for another? It appears that the meeting of Doubt and the Deliverer is always so: whether in Homer's age or Huxley's." They read fast, having no need of dictionary or grammar, but the better part of every evening was consumed in digressions. In a hall of mirrors you may find your eye drawn irresistibly down avenue within avenue, till it loses itself for the moment in the infinitely distant perspective. Around these two hung all the classics of the old and new worlds, and though it must be admitted that they did not very perceptibly increase Percival's chance of making a living as a stockbroker or an engineer, yet he may not have been altogether wrong when he imagined himself to be learning as well as enjoying himself. From Sherwin's Vergifian rambhngs, which were of constant occurrence, he got perhaps the greatest satisfaction of all — a continual suggestion of feeling, of mystery, of the underlying significance The Schoolboy in Luck 133 of things. The poUtics of Cicero, the artistic common- sense of Horace, the positive tone of the books recommended to him by teachers of science, the arid reaUsm of the novels then in vogue, all combined with the routine of the school and its practical interpretation of ideals to parch a tongue that was by nature thirsty for the waters that are beneath the earth and above it. In Vergil's country, for those who tramped with Sherwin, they welled up on every page, or fell in the finest dew. Percy was here at one with the men of the Middle Ages — a period hardly ever in sight of Downton — ^he re- cognised in these " pathetic half-lines," these haunt- ing and inexpUcable rhythms, the presence of a supernal power: and was as read}^ as any of his forefathers, at the Wizard's word, to be " going diml}' through shadows, beneath the lonely night." No other of the ancients, except perhaps Sophocles, gave him anything like this help: but he found it again in the poets of his own century, found it with the sense of immediate certainty, of complete owner- ship, which always came to him at the moment of meeting with great romance in either prose or verse. And they are gone: ay, ages long ago Those lovers fled away into the storm. It is surprising that these lines had not been among his early possessions: but Keats happened to be absent from the family bookshelves and insufficiently represented in the anthologies then popular. There they were now, under the lamplight of a January evening, lying upon the table in the handwriting 134 The Schoolboy in Luck of the sixth-form master, reproduced in the bilious violet ink peculiar to the copying-machine of that period. Three stanzas were there, headed only with the words " For Hexameters." Percy loved Latin verses, and wrote them with some ease : the evening devoted to them was generally one of those which passed most quickly and profit- ably. But to-night a stronger spell was upon him: he had not read six lines of the twenty-seven before he had forgotten dactyls, duty, marks, and masters as completely as any truant — had indeed most truly run away from school altogether. " Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found " — ^who were they, those stealthy passionate companions, for whose sake he was so ready to risk his life in a blind adventure? Ha! what was that? The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound, fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar, and the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. What was this endless, shadowy, sleeping house, so strange and yet so intimately remembered, so stirring with mediaeval beauty and the terror of the living moment ? He could half beheve it his own home, yet every nerve is straining in the effort to escape from it. A cold, tense hand draws him: they glide like phantoms into the wide hall, like phantoms to the iron porch: a-tiptoe now, past the huge besotted porter, and again with an agony of the heart past the great bloodhound, friendly after all. The door — ah! softly! by one and one the bolts full easy glide — softly again, and the chains lie silent on the foot- The Schoolboy in Luck 135 worn stones — ^the key turns — the door upon its hinges groans — and they are gone ! Ay! ages long ago, and to-night, and for ever, those lovers fled away into the storm, and by some malign enchantment their poor young friend Percival found himself alone in the rain, hurrjing under the lamps of College Road towards the house of Mr. Smith. " Whatisit, Twyman? " " The verses, sir, the verses for to-morrow: could you lend me the book? " " Why, have you lost your copy? I have plenty more." " No, sir, but I can't get on with the verses till I've read the whole poem." Mr. Smith had been only half attending, in his absent- minded way, but he was roused by this reply. " Hullo ! " he said, " what's this? You don't know Keats? " He took the volume from the shelf and began to read aloud. Percy's mortal part was comfortably dumped upon a sofa by the fire : the rest of him was shivering back through the elfin storm to that arras- hung and windy house. This time he entered by the way we all know, through the chapel aisle; he passed the sculptured dead on each side, imprisoned in black purgatorial rails — knights, ladies, praying in dumb oratories, — passed northward through a Httle door to where already he could hear the silver snarling trumpets beginning to chide: already the level chambers were glowing to receive a thousand guests. . . . The dream was broken: Mr. Smith had been 136 Clifton Chapel interrupted. "You'll stay to supper, Twyman? " he said, as the white cloth was laid upon the table. " We can finish this afterwards, and the verses we'll take as written." So, with Mr. Smith's wine and cakes, Percival kept his fixst St. Agnes' Eve. {From " The Twymans," 1911.) CLIFTON CHAPEL This is the Chapel : here, my son, Your father thought the thoughts of youth. And heard the words that one by one The touch of Life has turned to truth. Here in a day that is not far, You too may speak with noble ghosts Of manhood and the vows of war You made before the Lord of Hosts. To set the cause above renown, To love the game beyond the prize, To honour, while you strike him down, The foe that comes with fearless eyes ; To count the hfe of battle good, And dear the land that gave you birth, And dearer yet the brotherhood That binds the brave of all the earth — My son, the oath is yours : the end Is His, Who built the world of strife. Who gave His children Pain for friend. Commemoration 137 And Death for surest hope of Hfe. To-day and here the fight's begun, Of the great fellowship you're free; Henceforth the School and you are one. And what You are, the race shall be. God send you fortune : yet be sure. Among the lights that gleam and pass, You'll live to follow none more pure Than that which glows on yonder brass. " Qui procul htnc," the legend's writ, — The frontier-grave is far away — • " Qui ante diem periit: Sed miles, sed pro patrid." COMMEMORATION I SAT by the granite pillar, and sunlight fell Where the sunlight fell of old, And the hour was the hour my heart remembered well, And the sermon rolled and rolled As it used to roll when the place was still unhaunted. And the strangest tale in the world was still untold. And I knew that of all this rushing of urgent sound That I so clearly heard, The green young forest of saplings clustered round Was heeding not one word : Their heads were bowed in a still serried patience Such as an angel's breath could never have stirred. 138 Commemoration For some were already away to the hazardous pitch, Or lining the parapet wall, And some were in glorious battle, or great and rich, Or throned in a college hall: And among the rest was one like my own young phantom, Dreaming for ever beyond my utmost call. " Youth," the preacher was crying, " deem not thou Thy life is thine alone ; Thou bearest the will of the ages, seeing how They built thee bone by bone, And within thy blood the Great Age sleeps sepulchred Till thou and thine shall roll away the stone. *' Therefore the days are coming when thou shalt bum With passion whitely hot ; Rest shall be rest no more ; thy feet shall spurn All that thy hand hath got ; And One that is stronger shall gird thee, and lead thee swiftly Whither, O heart of Youth, thou wouldest not." And the School passed ; and I saw the living and dead Set in their seats again, And I longed to hear them speak of the word that was said, But I knew that I longed in vain. And they stretched forth their hands, and the wind of the spirit took them Lightly as drifted leaves on an endless plain. Art and Education 139 ART AND EDUCATION The prevalence of a low view of art, and especially of the poetic art, has been the chief cause of our present educational distresses. Let me trace very briefly what has been happening. At a time still within living memory, a feeling arose that the old literary education — that is, the classical education of our public schools and universities — WcLS no longer adequate. This was supposed to be due to a change in the demand: it was really due to a defect in the supply. Our age was thought to be a scientific age, as distinguished from the more literary, more poetic ages which preceded it. But in every age there are, and have always been, the same two activities of the human spirit, the scientific and the aesthetic, and in every age the only education which can deal adequately with life must cover them both. The great scholars of the Renaissance, with their passion for the rediscovered literature of Greece and Rome, would have been astonished to hear that the natural sciences were not their province. The advancement of learning, the discovery of Utopia, were the work of men who were blind neither of one eye nor of the other. But as time went on, the new learning fell from its high estate: it shrank from life to literature, and, further still, from literature to language. It not only lost touch with the sciences, it became an affair of mere Greek and Latin ; for the brilliant man a pair of lace ruffles, for the dull one a pair of grammatical dumb-bells. 14° Art and Education Less than fifty years ago the first attempt was made to restore, at any rate, the possibility of a wider education. Science, modern languages, and modern history were introduced into the public school curriculum. The movement was at once misunder- stood and misused; it was treated as a concession to commercialism, and there followed an outcry, of which we have not yet heard the last, demanding the substitution of technical training for education by the dead languages. The struggle continues, but it is going against the classics; Greek is in the last ditch, Latin is trembling at sight of the thin end of the wedge. The scholars are wailing to a hostile or indifferent public that information, however true and however useful, is not education. They are right so far, but they do not go far enough. They do not offer the real alternative — the real education, based partly upon the sciences, but mainly upon literature, rightly so called and treated. Treated, that is, not as language, not as an ingenious set of symbols, or a graceful set of traditional gestures, but as the self-expression of great natures, the record and rekindling of spiritual experiences. Between life and words the connection is at times but slight; at times it ceases to exist or passes into an antagonism. But human life and poetry can never be separated; even the most material of facts are born of the human spirit and retain their hold upon it; an iceberg, a coal mine, a burning ship, exist for us only by our perception, and may be tests of our conduct or sparks to our emotion. Since we live in two worlds. Art and Education 141 how can any education serve us which does not take account of both ? There is one other point which cannot be passed over. The new teachers must treat Hterature in this process of education with not less respect than science. They must not only recognise it for what it is — no mere elegance or accomplishment, but the character- istic expression of life in high moments of intuition — they must deal with it whole and give no heed to the frivolous accusation of indecorum. In art, as in science, there is neither decorous nor indecorous ■ — there is only relevant or irrelevant. The sea- captain is not trained upon windless and open water, nor the physician upon the records of unfailing health. If the soul is to be its own captain and physician through life, it must learn to look upon the mistakes and disasters, even upon the disgraces, of human nature. The old education was never more futile than when it expurgated both the works of the classical poets and their lives: when it classed them all together as purveyors of gems, and left its pupils to stumble by themselves upon the vice of Catullus, the morbidity of Propertius, the cynical materialism of Ovid, the brutality of Martial, and the essential banality of Horace. The real Roman poet — how little they knew him, or how little they told of him ! And now that a greater poetry is available, and the life-history of more intelligible souls — is the opportunity to be lost once more ? If so, the fault will lie once more not with the poets, but with their friends. {From " A New Study 0/ English PoeUy," 1917.) 142 Science and Literature SCIENCE AND LITERATURE The recollection of Bacon's work may act as a warning to us: we must not repeat in our education the mistake against which he protested, the mistake of trying to live on ideas detached from experience. We may get our ideas from literature or from science, but we must get them living. Our education must not be too abstract, it must be drawn from that life which it is to teach. The paradox is a perfectly inteUigible one — we must learn to swim before we can be safe in the water, but also we must enter the water if we are to learn to swim. The knowledge of the world which is desired to fit us for life is twofold — a knowledge of men and a knowledge of things. Hitherto the first of these two has been our chief care, and in this respect we Britons have no reason to reproach ourselves. From time to time both our enemies and our allies have admired the results of our system: our people have been described as the only grown-up nation in Europe, the only nation with a genius for politics — that is, for life in a great society. Our leading classes have been able and ready to lead, wherever the qualities required have been qualities of character. It is not here but on the scientific side, the methodical and intellectual side, that we have shown inferiority, that we have even, it would seem, preferred inferiority. The danger of the present situation lies precisely in the fact that we have been strong on one side and weak on the Science and Literature 143 other: there would be less partisanship if we had done badly all round. It will be a disaster if the literar}' education is entirely ousted by the scientific: it will be a still greater disaster if the demands of the friends of science are repelled. First, because they are right in saying that to deal with humanity only and not with the material world is impossible, and that we cannot live the life of man as he now is without learning to understand better his physical conditions and opportunities. Time must be made for this study, and that means that the time-table must be shared more equally between science and literature. The advantages offered in return for this sacrifice have been admirably stated by the Poet Laureate in a recent speech. " We have no wish to exclude the humanistic side of learning, with its necessary study of Greek, Those who most value that are too well aware of its advantages to fear that its serious study can ever be supplanted. But for the ordinary schoolboy, natural science has one great superiority, which is this, that whereas the grammatical rudiments of Greek are of no value — above other grammatical rudiments — except as a key to Greek style and thought, so that a boy who learns them imperfectly or never gets beyond them, gains nothing from them and is never likely to make any use of them whatever; on the other hand, the rudiments of natural science are in and for them- selves rewarding, and in aU its stages this learning is of value to a man, for it tells of the things among which he must pass his life and is a constant source of 144 Science and Literature intellectual pleasure and of usefulness, and it is the living grammar of the universe, without which no man can ever hope to read in its full significance the epic of his spiritual experience." Mr. Bridges prefaces this with a warning against the mischief which might be done by preachers of dogmatic materialism. As to this we must hope that the leaders of scientific thought will prevent the establishment of a Church of Science with a new orthodoxy of consecrated hypotheses based on a partial survey of the evidence. Another warning he might have added, against expecting — with Science' any more than with the Classics — good results from bad teaching. If the rudiments of science are taught as a mass of unco-ordinated facts, and not as the data of great generalisations, they will prove as useless as the rudiments of Greek. But if they are so taught as to give the student a glimpse of the passion for truth, the sense of fellowship, and the disinterestedness, which are the cause and the accompaniment of true scientific work, then I think Mr. Bridges has even understated his case. We shall not go far in the study of any science without gaining from it something more than the promised reward of knowledge and efficiency. In itself, science is bound by nature to be emotionless, impartial, prosaic. But, in fact, its high laws cannot long be contem- plated without irresistible emotion. If Beauty is Truth, so is Truth Beauty. We need not ask why: but the passion for truth of reason in the material world is not far removed from the passion for truth Science and Literature 145 of feeling in those other worlds of art and conduct. It will stir men to the same sacrifice, and reward them with the same spiritual peace. Let us welcome science then, and give up the hours that are necessary: with those that remain to literature we can still do better than we have done in the past. Even for its own sake our literary education has hitherto had too much time allotted to it. With all the term before them, our teachers have laboured too slowly and too heavily. No poem, no history, however fine, will stand being read so many hours a week for thirteen weeks. Even a promising pupil, who began the term with a certain appetite for the new book, is sick with indigestion before the end and looks back with disgust on the process by which his food has been chopped small into a kind of intellectual forcemeat. With what a different heart does he devour Homer or Vergil or Cicero's Letters, if some more humane master offer to read them with him out of hours! It is a real experience of life, for he is at the same moment in contact with two characters of men — tangible in the style of the one and the comments and preferences of the other. There is nothing wanting, for the author has been understood; and nothing that can be lost, for the touches of character make impressions that are deeper than memory. If we give up half the week to science, we can perhaps no longer afford to teach literature as grammar or as archaeology, but we shall still have ample time to teach it as literature. We need not despair because we cannot teach it all: the years of youth never 146 The Old English School did suffice for any complete study, and they never will. It is not even to be regretted: as Anatole France has said, " Ne vous flattez pas d'enseigner un grand nombre de choses . . . mettez I'etincelle aux esprits. D'eux-memes ils s'eprendront par Ten- droit ou ils sont sensibles." Here, then, is something to aim at : by putting the spark to these young spirits, which are, after all, inflammable enough by nature, we can give them the chance of catching fire, here or there. But if it proves to be literature that fires them, we can do more than that. Literary art is not a method of decoration, it is a method of expression : to read poetry is to come in contact not with a pattern but with a personality, to be taken into a living world. Into such a world if a young reader once fairly enters, he cannot come out of it without change, if indeed he can ever come out of it entirely. And when he has undergone the transforming influence of the greatest art of his own country, still fiurther changes of the same kind are open to him — he can enter into the literature of other countries and undergo the magic of words that are not his own natural inheritance. {From " A New Study of English Poetry,'" 1917.) THE OLD ENGLISH SCHOOL One of our enemies in the present war is said to have summed up the differences between his countrymen and ours in these words: " I suppose it will be to the end as it has been from the beginning: you will The Old English School 147 always be fools, and we shall never be gentlemen." It is verv much to be hoped that the story is true, for if it be so, the speaker was a witty and generous enemv, and his account of us shows great under- standing. As a nation we have always been fools in our unpreparedness, our easy good-nature, and our faith in the good-nature of others; and we have always kept alive and handed down more and more widely the belief that to be a gentleman is the secret of social Hfe. Every one knows that the word " gentleman " has been often misused: it has been used as a boast, or a claim to privilege, and, worse still, it has been taken to mean a man who, by reason of birth or wealth, is able to live without working, and to look down upon and domineer over those who are in a different position. This is turning the better and older meaning upside down. There have no doubt always been ill-conditioned people whose only idea of superiority was to rely on their advantages of position, or to despise and bully those within their power; but in practical life they do not pass current for real gentlemen, for the national ideal has been entirely opposed to theirs ever since England was a nation. Let us go back to the middle of the four- teenth century, the time when English began to be spoken by all classes alike, and when the old division between Norman and Saxon had finally disappeared. If we put ourselves under Chaucer's guidance and look into the courtyard of the Tabard Inn in South- wark, on April 18, 1387, we may see a company of 148 The Old English School about thirty riders setting out together to go on pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. They are all English, men and women, of every profession and class except the highest and the lowest, and the first two whom Chaucer sets before us are gentlemen, a father and son. The father is a knight, the son a young squire: they are not persons of unusual distinction, but just ordinary examples of their class. A knight there was, and that a worthy man. That from the time that he first began To riden out, he lovM chivalry, Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy. Full worthy was he in his lordes war, And thereto had he ridden, no man far [farther], As well in Christendom as heathenesse, And ever honoured for his worthiness. He had, in fact, spent most of his life in fighting; he had been in many campaigns in many countries, present at three great sieges and fifteen mortal battles, and three times he had slain his man in single combat in the lists. But though he was a war-hardened soldier, there was nothing brutal in his character, and nothing proud or overbearing in his manners. And though that he were worthy, he was wise. And of his port as meek as is a maid. He never yet no villainy ne said In all his life, unto no manner wight. He was a very perfect gentle knight. Not a word is said of high birth or wealth ; whether he had these or not he made no show of them. He had only one servant with him, and he himself was The Old English School 149 in plain and soldierlike kit ; he wore a coat of fustian under his shirt of mail, just as he had come from the wars. But for to tellen you of his array. His horse were goode, but he was not gay. The young squire, his son, was only twenty years of age, but he was a well-grown boy, strong and active, and he had already been some time on active service in Flanders and the North of France, and had done well, in hope of standing in his lady's grace. He was a good deal smarter in appearance than his father, with hair carefully pressed and an embroidered coat. His education was complete: he could ride well and joust, make songs and sing them, dance, write, and draw. In everything he did he was keen ; he was singing or whistling all the day, and so hotly in love that at night " he slept no more than doth a nightingale." But with all this youthful vivacity he had the makings of the same character as the knight. Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable, And carved before his father at the table. It is hardly necessary to say that in these two portraits every line and every touch of colour is obviously true to life. We know that EngUshmen were like that in Chaucer's time, and probably in every generation since, because we know that they are like that now, not here or there, but everywhere, by tens of thousands. They belong to a type, which remains true by inheritance, and by tradition, which is a kind of spiritual inheritance. This tradition is of great importance: an Englishman's kindliness 150 The Old English School and fair-mindedness may be his by natm:e, but courtesy and self-restraint are acquired qualities and have come to him from the order of chivalry, into which his ancestors were initiated by another race. That order contained perishable and im- perishable elements; the perishable, that is to say, the ceremonies and pageantry, died out, perhaps more quickly in England than elsewhere; even in Chaucer's time they seem to be already in the back- ground. But the imperishable part of chivalry, that which belongs to character, has survived, and we have only to look at the history of our latest war to see this. When the peoples who make up our great Commonwealth have finished their present work, they will have no need to boast about it; but we may be confident that they will gain the verdict of posterity. It will be found that they have, as an army, kept faith with humanity; they have fought without hatred and conquered without cruelty, and when they could not conquer fairly and lawfully they have preferred death, and even defeat, to the deliberate use of foul means. Our enemies have adopted a theory which is the opposite of ours: they proclaim that \dctory is an end in itself, and justifies any method used to attain it. We cannot understand this; to us it seems clear that human welfare is the end in view for all com- munities of men, and that if victory for any one nation can only be achieved by ruining and corrupting human Hfe, then we must do without victory. This will often mean that we must forgo the use of our The Old English School 151 physical superiority; we must treat peaceably with our neighbours though we have the power to end the discussion by brute force, we must keep our treaties, and respect the rights of small States; in short, in public as in private life, we must see that the weak do not suffer injustice from the strong; otherwise the world will be destroyed as a place for men to live in, and not even the strongest will have gained an^'thing worth having. This was the danger that threatened Europe in the Dark Ages, and it was to meet it that chivalry arose. The same danger has threatened us in these days, and it is being met by the same method, a method handed down through the centuries. If we in turn are to hand it on to those who come after us, we ought to know how the tradition has been kept and developed in the past. Happily it is a very interesting story, being made up chiefly of the Hves and deeds of famous fighting men. The Song of Roland may be said to be the oldest soldier's pocket-book in Europe : it was to the early Middle Ages what Homer's Iliad was to the Greeks, not only a great tale of war, but an example or manual of conduct. The night before the battle of Hastings, while the Saxons were drinking jovially, the Normans were reciting the Chanson de Roland to fire each other to great deeds of arms. The next day, when the two armies faced one another, the Norman minstrel Taillefer rode out between them, tossing his sword into the air and singing of Roland. He charged alone, struck the first blow, and died 152 The Old English School among his lord's enemies — an example, not of tactics, but of the spirit that is above the fear of death. Wherever the Song of Roland is read, this should be told for a remembrance of him. But though the poem is full of the pride of fight, there is much more in it than that. There is the first glow of patriotism, a love of country of a kind well known to the French, but not even yet common among us. We love our royal commonwealth, and its good name, and all that is kindly and honourable in its life; but we have not yet that passionate affection for the very soil of the fatherland. To the poilu to-day, as to Roland a thousand years ago, France is always "sweet France" — le doux pays', an Englishman may go as far as " Old England," but he would never get to " sweet England," because that is not our way of thinking of our country. Another saying of Roland's would suit our men better: " God forbid that France by me should be the loser! " and we understand him perfectly when he says to his sword, " May no man own thee that does cowardly. God! let not France be so dis- honoured! " and again, when in the moment of death he remembers Charlemagne, his lord, and " the men of France, of whom he was so trusted." Here we have come on two of the great principles of chivalry. The first is the principle of service: you may think of it as the service of your King, or the service of your country; for all free peoples it is the same thing, for the king of free men is only the symbol of their country personified, and everything The Old English School 153 he does is the expression of their will. A soldier knows this better than others because he knows it in- stinctively: he finds the only perfect freedom in service, where all men might find it if they would; and he is proud to serve, because the finest pride can only come from serving something greater than self. So from the beginning this joy of service was strong in the knight, who was just miles, a soldier, and had the soldier's pride, not in himself, but in his order — parage, he called it, as distinguished from orgueil, which was the evil personal pride; and parage, of course, means simply " equality." This is the second principle of chivalry : every man mthin the order was the equal of every other, and was bound to him as by brotherhood. No doubt there must be commanders and subordinates; no doubt among soldiers, as among other men, there must always be particular friendships, and the friendship of Roland and Oliver is one of the most famous instances. To Roland, Oliver is not only " Sir Comrade," he is " Oliver my brother," and wlien he is dead, Roland weeps over him: " Never on earth will \'ou hear tell of a man more sorrowful." But for the other men of France too he mourns "like a noble knight"; and at the same moment, among the army beyond the pass, " there is none but is lamenting not to be with Roland, the captain who is fighting the Saracens of Spain." In later times, when chivalry had spread to other nations, this bond of brotherhood among soldiers was so strong that it held good even between those of 154 The Old English School different races; honourable knights could never be foreigners to one another, since they all belonged to one spiritual fraternity; and this feeling, though it did not abolish war, went a long way towards taking the bitterness out of it. There were plenty of reasons why Bertrand du Guesclin and the English should have hated each other ; he was an enemy of the rough and tough kind, bent upon turning his opponents out of France at all costs; they, on their side, were playing a losing game, and no one likes to be beaten. Yet again and again they treated him even better than they would have thought it necessary to treat one of their own men: they let him come storming into their tents to complain of his wrongs, they gave him their own chargers to put him on a fair footing with their own champion, and when he was their prisoner they subscribed enormous sums to help him pay ransom to themselves! In the same spirit Saphadin the Saracen sent to Richard Coeur de Lion, when he saw him hard tried in battle, two Arab horses of the finest breed, wishing to honour and help so brave an enemy. " What a virtue is chivalry," says the Chronicler, " even in a foe! " And it is good to read how the Christians on their side admired the Turks for their valour and honesty all round, in spite of their not being " of the right faith." Richard was almost too generous, in the opinion of some of the Crusaders : they thought he went too far in his interchange of courtesies with Saladin. But so wonderful a fighter could never be unpopular, and his own men knew that he was The Old English School 155 true to them. When he was advised not to attempt a rescue against dangerous odds, he changed colour with indignation, and swore that if by his default his dear comrades met their death, he would never again be called a king. With all his faults of temper, Richard was a great knight. So was St. Louis of France; he had neither Richard's skill in war nor his tremendous bodily prowess, but he was wise with a deeper wisdom and courteous with a more perfect gentle courtesy. He too thought of his men before himself: he might have escaped the pestilence that was destro\dng them, by hving aboard his ship, but he would rather die than leave his people. Richard, for the Holy War, would raise money by any and every means; he atoned for his unscrupulousness by his great gener- osity, but St. Louis was more generous still, for he would not take advantage even of his enemies. When the Saracens, in counting his ransom, made an error of ten thousand livres to their own loss, he was enraged with his men for not correcting the mistake, and refused to go free till the amount promised had been paid in full. This scrupulous honour about money became in time so characteristic a part of chivalry that in Froissart's day the English and French, he says, always made good cheer to their prisoners and let them go " all only on their promise " to return and pay their ransom. It may have been unbusinesslike, but they seem not to have lost by it, and in any case it was the way in which a gentle- man to this day would always prefer to deal. Let the 156 The Old English School churl call him fantastic ; where money and love are con- cerned the word " fantastic" only means high-minded. Certainly in their worship of their ladies the young knights and squires of the Middle Ages did go to extremes, but their feelings were right and natural, however they expressed them. They set women in their right place, as the stars and counsellors of men, and it was only when chivalry declined for a time that the position of women was altered for the worse. Among the real knights there was never any talk of the inequality of the sexes: ladies ruled castles and armies in the absence of their husbands, and more than held their own in their presence. As for the lovers, if they did dress ex- travagantly, and lie awake at nights, and do reckless things to gain the approval of their ladies, they only acted as lovers will always be acting to the end of time; the fashions have changed but little, the feelings still less. The important thing was the habit of a particular courtesy towards women, a gentleness of manner and a readiness to serve, based upon a real feeling of reverence. We may see this custom and this feeling, as they were known in England, set forth plainly in the story of Robin Hood. The writer of the ballads in which that story is told is not likely to have been a knight — probably he was a plain middle-class man — but he knew how a gentleman should feel, and he tells us that Robin Hood's rules were rules of perfect chivalry. " Look ye first that ye do no harm to any company where there is a woman therein; and The Old English School 157 after that look ye do no man harm that tilleth with plough; no more shall ye harm no good yeoman, nor knight, nor squire that will be a good fellow." The whole of the '• Lytel Geste of Robin Hood " is made to turn upon Robin's devotion to Our Lady, the ideal of womanhood, and rather than break his life- long faith, he forgave a treacherous woman his death. In all the romances of chivalry there is no better story than this, and it is the more delightful because it expresses the feeling, not of one class in England, but of the Commons. We can say nothing more honourable even of Bayard, the pattern of all knight- hood, than that in a later and much degenerate age, he still upheld the old law of the English greenwood. In another way, too, Robin was a right English- man: yeoman though he was, he loved sport as much as any knight. At court he pined, and ran away to his forest. "It is a far time," he said, " since I was here last; it would please me to shoot a little at the dun deer." A year or so before, King Edward had caught him at it, but he had forgiven him easily, because of the natural fellowship of sport — he was " a good fellow." The same spirit was common among the knights who met in tournament: they desired honour for themselves and their own country, but so long as they kept their courtesy, they acknowledged that the love of sport was the strongest bond. The French knights at St. Inglebert challenged all nations, and especially the English, not '■ for any pride, hatred, or ill-will, but all only to have their honourable company and acquaintance. 158 The Old English School the which with our entire hearts we desire," and the EngUsh team, when they went home defeated, " thanked them greatly for their pastime." There are many earnest people who will read the account of so elaborate a " pastime " as this without sym- pathy, perhaps even with indignation, just as there are from time to time protests against our national fondness for our modern games and modern forms of sport. Certainly these things may be overdone, they may monopolise the interest and the prestige which ought to be shared with other activities, and they may end in dulling the minds of the young. But the objectors, though they are right in fearing this, fail to understand the real source of the prestige of sport. They do not know the history of our love of games — they have not themselves come under the influence of the tradition. Our ancestors, like ourselves, liked an outdoor life and the practice of bodily skill and endurance, with the spice of bodily danger. But the deeper reason for which they valued these exercises, the deeper foundation on which they built their great fellowship, was the feeling that in games, as in war, and in all active life, there is something more than amusement. You cannot make a bond of brotherhood out of a companionship in amusements. That which bound the hunting men and j ousters of old time together was their faithful observance of the rules. You may win a battle, per- haps a war, by carefuUy prepared treachery and unscrupulous brutality, but you will have corrupted hiunan life, the life you depend upon for your own The Old English School 159 happiness. In the same way you may make sure of killing your fish or your fox, or winning your game or your race, if you put killing or winning before every other consideration, but you will have spoiled the sport in which you looked to find your own pleasure. If you give your opponent, man or animal, no fair chance, you will, in a minor depart- ment, be corrupting life for yourself as well as others. It is the sense of this, the sense that there is some- thing better than success, something that must not be sacrificed even for the sake of winning, which bound men together and will always bind the best of them. The knights of old time felt this, instinctively, but very strongly. To secure the safe handing on of their feeling they made chivalrous sport and chivalrous games a large part of the education of their sons. The history of schools and schoolmasters in England is a very significant one. From the first the keeping of schools, for the education of boys' brains, was entirely in the hands of the clergy, and the main object, almost the only possible object, was to train the more promising pupils to become clerics themselves. For boys who had no special bent, and who were not driven that way by the necessity of getting a living out of the Church, these schools were of little or no use; the sons of knights, franklins, gentlemen, or yeomen were either not sent to them, or were kept there only during childhood. We need not wonder at this, for we know with some accuracy what a boy's life was at a fourteenth-century school, and it is clear i6o The Old English School that he got nothing there which could be of much value to a soldier or country gentleman, a farmer or a man of business. The poet John Lydgate was a Suffolk boy; he was about twelve years old when Chaucer's Pilgrims rode to Canterbury — that is, about eight years younger than the squire whom we have already met — and he is thought to have been educated at the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, where he afterwards became a monk. This is his account of his schooldays up to the time when he " entered into religion." Void of reason, given to wilfulness, Froward to virtue, of tlirift took little heed. Loth to learn, loved no busyness Save play or mirth; strange to spell or read; Following all appetites longing to childhead; Lightly turning, wild and seldom sad [serious], Weeping for nought, and anon after glad. Full lightly wroth to strive with my fellawe As my passions did my bridle lead; Of the yard [rod] sometime I stood in awe. To be scoured, that was all my dread. Loth toward school, lost my time in deed, Like a young colt that runneth without bridle; Made my friends their good to spend in idle. I had in custom to come to school late, Not for to learn, but for a countenance ; With my fellawes ready to debate, To jangle or jape was set all my pleasaunce; Whereof rebuked, this was my chevisaunce [resource] To forge a lie, and thereupon to muse When I trespassed, myselven to excuse. To my betters did no reverence, Of my sovereigns gave no force at all; Waxed obstinate by inobedience; Ran into gardens, apples there I stall [stole] ; The Old English School l6i To gather fruits spared neither hedge nor wall, To pluck grapes in other mennes vines Was more ready, than to say matines. Loth to rise, lother to bed at eve; With unwashed handes ready to dinner; My paternoster, my crede or my believe Cast at the cook, lo! this was my manner! Waved with each wind, as doth a reed-spear; Snibbed of my friends, such tetches [faults] to amend, Made deaf ear, list not to them attend. When John Lydgate wrote that, his conscience was plaguing him — perhaps not without good cause, for he goes on to say that even after he had " made his profession " he continued his evil course, and added secret wine-bibbing and other sins. But when we think of the methods of the monkish school- masters, we cannot help sympathising with the bad boy. Bishop Grandisson of Exeter, the greatest Churchman of that generation, himself complains that these masters had " a preposterous and un- profitable method of teaching " — they made their pupils learn Latin prayers and creeds by heart without knowing or understanding how to construe anything of them, so that " when they are grown up they understand not the things which they daily read or say," In future, he says, he shall refuse to ordain to the priesthood boys so badly educated. We know also how horrible was the whole system of the clerical schools. " Espionage and the rod were the two main pillars of monastic and scholastic discipline in the Middle Ages. The scholars of Pem- broke, Cambridge, held their scholarships on the express condition of acting as faithful tale-bearers; i62 The Old English School and a frequent complaint recorded by an inspector against the monasteries which he visits is that ' they do not inform against each other.' " No wonder that when England became the land of Englishmen this kind of education became un- popular. It was at this exact time, when Lydgate was eighteen and Chaucer's squire would have been twenty-six, that William of Wykeham founded the first English Public School. Evidently he meant it to be an improvement on the monkish system and to attract a better class of boys; and it is easy to see what was the improvement that was needed if we compare the boyhood of poor Lydgate with that of the squire. The squire, no doubt, was a child once, desirous of "following all appetites longing to childhood": probably he too was loth to learn his books, and sorry when bedtime came. But he did not, like Lydgate and his like, go on till the age of fifteen with the " private school " tricks of a little boy, playing truant, robbing orchards, and spending his time on such games as "cherry-stones." At the age of seven he left babyhood behind, and was sent to live in the house of some nobleman or great Churchman to receive knightly breeding among the squires and pages in service there. This was his school; the knight or nobleman or bishop was his housemaster, and took in hand to teach him not merely book learning, but the whole art of life. The first thing in chivalrous life, as we have seen, was personal service; it was the foundation of The Old English School 163 everything. No one even thought of being " inde- pendent "; it was realised that society cannot exist at all except by every man both giving and receiving service. In those days " no kind of service was ignoble in itself, but the service of the hall, the armoury, the tiltyard, the stable, the park, and all that concerned hunting and hawking, v*^as eminently noble. "^ The boy who entered a great household was at first left a good deal to the ladies, and to the chaplain, who taught him reading and writing cind heraldry and the kings of England, and, if he were like Nicholas Love, poetry too. Then came the time when, like young Bayard, he was old enough to ride a pony and pour out the wine at table: he was then a page or henchman, and was under the orders of a senior squire called " the master of the henchmen." After that he learned to be useful in the armoury. At the age of fourteen he was old enough, if he had done well, to wear a silver collar and be entitled squire. These forms of personal service were matters for care and pride; in some degree they lasted on for centuries in schools and colleges where junior scholars used to wait on the seniors, and they were the origin of fagging in our schools of to-day. In degenerate times people became unchivalrous enough to look down on "servitors"; they forgot that all great knights had once carved at table and stood behind ' This and the following notes on education are taken from Chivalry, by the late Frank Warre-Cornish, Vice-Provost of Eton, and the very perfect gentle housemaster of his time. 164 The Old English School their lord's chair, as the Black Prince and his best friends waited on King John of France, Joinville on the King of Navarre, Sir Thomas More on Car- dinal Morton, and a whole " mess of young lords " on Cardinal Wolsey. No doubt it was hard work, but it was honourable, and the compensations were great. The outdoor part of the education filled the larger half of the time-table : it began with wrestling, boxing, fives and racquets, tilting at the ring and the quintain, and, better still, it included attendance on the lords and ladies at every kind of hunting party. There was not much study of books, but a great deal of music and singing. The squires who had charge of the pages were required " to learn them to ride cleanly and surely, to draw them also to jousts, to learn them wear their harness {i.e., armour), to have all courtesy in words, deeds, and degrees. . . . Moreover to teach them sundry languages and other learnings virtuous, to harp, to pipe, sing, dance . . . with corrections in their chambers." And always there was before the boys the example of the knight, their housemaster, whose mariners they imitated every day and whose fame they knew by heart. In time the best of them might hope to be the body squires of such a man — to arm him for tourney or for battle, to unhelm him when victorious or pick him up when defeated, possibly to bring him off from some great field, as the four brought Sir James Audley out of the scrimmage at Poitiers, and to leave to their descendants a coat of arms with an honourable augmentation from Chivalry of To-day 165 his own. In time the}' might themselves have squires and hand on the tradition they had received. This was a very different education from that of the monastic school. Its defect was that it trained boys only for one kind of career, the career of soldier- ing and sport. Its great merit was that it made men, and not sneaks or bookworms, and that its direct objects were character and efficiency. What troubled John de Grandisson and William of Wykeham was that the clerical education of their time aimed at neither of these ; its effort was directed to the making of sham Latinists and sham saints. But the world of chivalry, though limited, was a real world, a world of real needs and real feelings. It had no use for any pretended efficiency; your fighting, your riding, your shooting, your singing, your courtesy, your love, were all put to the test of action, of com- petition, of risk, of life and death. Shamming and cramming were useless, for you were examined every day in the whole art of life by those who lived it on the same terms. And you obeyed them because you wished to be like them. {From " The Book of the Happy Warrior," 1917.) CHIVALRY OF TO-DAY William of Wykeham no doubt intended his new type of school to provide a training in the art of life, for he gave it the significant motto, " Manners makyth Man." To a certain extent he and those i66 Chivalry of To-day who followed his example at Eton and elsewhere did succeed in combining the merits of the two old forms of education: from the monastic system they took on the book learning without the espionage and the parrot-like repetition ; from the custom of the castles they adopted the principle of the boarding-house and the system of prefects, " with corrections in their chambers." But they had to provide for a society which was rapidly developing into many different classes and professions; and among these the country gentlemen were only one class, and the soldiers a still smaller number. Edu- cation became more and more scholastic and less and less chivalrous: the tradition of the knights was kept alive, not by the school curriculum, but by the boys themselves, and thus a division crept in, for, however you may educate them in school hours, nearly all English boys are born to the love of fighting and of service. This division between book learning and the life boys love continued for four hundred years — from 1393, when the premier public school was founded, down to 1793, when the Great War began. Then came twenty years of fighting, in which, to save Europe from Csesarism, England had to make a great and sustained effort both by sea and land. It was difftcult but always possible to get men for navy and army; what might well have seemed impossible was to find the officers. The old English navy had been worked by sea-dogs — the few gen- tlemen aboard were of little use, for they had not Chivalry of To-day 167 been trained to the profession. It was only after some heavy beatings from the Dutch that the Duke of York invented the modern midshipman — that is, the young gentleman born to the chivalrous tra- dition and bred to the sea. The sea-dog, with all his skill, was not first and foremost a fighting man; in the seventeenth century he was too often, when the pinch came, a dog with his tail down, going for home. By the time of Jervis and Nelson all that was forgotten; the training had been provided, the officer class was ready. The tradition had been successfully introduced and kept so perfectly that if the Black Prince and Chandos and Audley looked in upon the Nile and Trafalgar, they must have seen themselves reflected as in a mirror by Nelson and his captains, that " band of brothers " who served and loved and died by all the rules of chiv- alry. And if the founders of the Garter still feast on St. George's Day, as some have thought, in the castle of Windsor, it is likely enough that the Iron Duke sits with them, and Colborne and Ross, and Pack and Picton and Ponsonby, and they agree heartily about the meaning of war and honour, and wonder together at those who do not understand. The boys of that generation were happy, because they felt that their education had a direct bearing upon life — the life they desired. Their letters show that whatever they learnt, they learnt with a single object in view — to serve their country as soon as they reached the age for a commission. Wordsworth says they were taught too much book learning, and i68 Chivalry of To-day taught it badly. He was no doubt right, but beneath all the conventional elegance of the classical education they succeeded in finding the ideas they needed, the patriotism, the fellowship, and the love of fair play. They may have got it from their Homer and Vergil lessons; more likely they got it from their own tradition or from their masters out of school. In any case, their books did not trouble them long, for the navy took them at eleven, and the army at seventeen or even earlier. But after aterloo all this was changed ; soldiering went into the background, and the old division be- tween books and life began again. After forty years came the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny; when they were past, the boys of England took matters into their own hands, invented organised games, and revived the old passion for tournaments under many new forms. For thirty years the gulf between learning and athletics, between the training of the mind and the training of the bod}', widened every year. Some criticism began to be heard; the answer was that athletics trained the character as well as the bodily powers. Then came the Boer War; the army was outwitted in a new and peculiar kind of fighting, and a cry arose that we had wasted our time on mere games and sports, which were no preparation for war. The nation resented this cry, especially when uttered in verse; but it had truth in it: you may get from the playing-fields the moral qualities, such as leadership and endurance and fair-play, which are indispensable for war, but Chivalry of To-day 169 vou cannot get the scientific training which is also indispensable. The old school of mediaeval chivalry gave both; the squire who learned his business learned not only to be brave and serviceable and courteous, but to be master of the whole science of war as then practised. It was not for the making of " records " or the amusement of idle afternoons that he gave and took those terrific tumbles in the lists: he was rehearsing shock tactics, and not infrequently the rehearsal was as deadly as the real thing. If our games are to be a thorough training for war, they must include throwing the bomb as well as the cricket ball, and racing not only in boats, but in aeroplanes and armoured cars. The same thing holds good of the non-military departments of life: a great deal of science is needed, and it must be taught if we are to live to the advantage of the common- wealth. Let it be taught, then; the matter is no longer seriously in dispute. The fact remains that the more valuable element in war and the more difficult to make sure of, is the moral element, and for that there is nothing like the old EngHsh school tradition. In 1914 we began the Great War of our own time with an expeditionary force of seven divisions, unsurpassed for spirit, training and equipment. The scientific part of their efficiency was due to Lord Haldane and those who carried out his organisation; the moral part was due to the chivalric tradition, handed down in the rightly called " gentle " class and fostered in the schools where they are bred. This is not a matter lyo Chivalry of To-day for mere self -congratulation ; it would be a national misfortune if any feeling were engendered which could increase the sense of class differences among us. But it would be an even greater misfortune if the truth were not recognised, for our future develop- ment depends upon this recognition. The plain fact is that among the few absolutely vital elements of success in modem war, one, and that, perhaps, the most vital of all, has been supplied by our schools and universities. Our enemies were aware that if we could but gain the time, we might reach a certain number of enlistments and a certain output of material; what they openly denied to us was an adequate supply of of&cers, for they were certain that the necessary spirit of energy and self-sacrifice was dead among our wealthier class. Yet that class has not only made possible the winning of this war, it has proved to be almost the only trustworthy source of leadership. It follows that our hope for the future must lie in extending the tradition beyond the boundaries of class; and happily a great deal has already been done in this direction. There is more yet to be done. The better a tradition is, the more it should be spread by those who hold it; if this tradition is, as we believe, a noble one, it must ennoble all who receive it. There must be no ex- clusiveness, no orgueil, no looking down upon com- rades, no talk of " temporary gentlemen." Every one knows and recognises with admiration that in that first black year of the war our line was held by the men of birth — that is, by the great-grandsons of Chivalry of To-day 171 those who faced Napoleon a hundred years ago. They in their turn cannot fail to welcome to their fellow- ship the men from smaUer schools and less known families who rushed in to take their places when they were decimated and exhausted. Harry the Fifth allowed coats of arms as of right to all who had fought with him in France. He would have approved the saying of a great Englishwoman in 191 5 : " There are only two classes now — those who have been in the trenches, and those who have not." The widening of the chivalric fellowship is the more vitally necessary because its principle is not one for soldiering only; it is good for all social life, national and international. If it were universally adopted it would free the world at once of both mihtarism and pacifism. The militarist cannot see that aggressive war is a monstrous and inhuman crime; the pacifist cannot see that to stand aside, in sight of wrong and oppression, is a monstrous and inhuman crime no less. Both agree in speaking of Peace, as if it were simply the opposite of War, as if it were attained whenever physical force is not resisted by physical force. This is the peace ex- perienced by Belgium and Serbia after complete conquest by their enemies. But if both militarist and pacifist are mistaken, are they both mistaken in the same way? They are not; their objects are different. The militarist aims at domination; for him there is no virtue in peace if only he can have power, for by his creed it is power alone which distinguishes a good State from a bad 17^ Chivalry of To-day one. We need not stay to reason with those who hold this doctrine; it is contrary to the natural desire of all peoples for freedom and equal rights, and it has been professed by one nation only out of the nineteen or twenty now at war. The pacifist is in reality a greater danger to the world, for he desires what nearly all of us desire, but he thinks and feels about Peace confusedly, and he proposes to attain it by impossible means. In theory he would admit that it is a state of mind, a spiritual condition; but when it comes to practice he identifies it with physical passivity, the mere negation of phj^sical war. The man of peace, he says, will never be tempted to aggression. All civilised men will assent to this. He says, further, that the man of peace will rather submit to suffer wrong than oppose it by brute force. Few people have ever been able to act on this principle; many have professed it — in England a whole sect — but they have been led unconsciously into a false position, for they have practised their passive virtue under the protection of military and civil forces, maintained and administered by others for their benefit. Let us hasten to add that when war came the conscience of all honourable Quakers was touched by this reflection, and the majority of them, with a doubly heroic courage, gave themselves to the active service of their country in the fight against oppression. A remnant only hold still with the extreme pacifist, that the man of peace will never use force, even to defend the weak from oppression, women from outrage, children from massacre, and Chivalry of To-day 173 whole populations from the cruellest slavery. His own salvation, his own spiritual happiness, his own peace, requires that he should sacrifice not only his own life, but the life and happiness of his nearest and dearest, and the whole brotherhood of men, rather than strike a blow in their defence. This, they say, is demanded by the law of Christianity, which forbids man to hate his brother. On this point chivalry long ago accepted and put in practice the law of Christianity. The soldier was not to hate his enemies; he was bound, by the brotherhood of arms, to honour them even while he did his best to defeat them, and no less when he had defeated them. This rule has not been kept invariably — it is not easy to honour men who have been guilty of barbarous cruelty and cold-blooded murder; but towards clean fighters it has been kept so often and so conspicuously that it has become not only a rule, but a custom among white men. The British soldier seldom feels hatred or ill-humour towards his enemies in the field; he fights hard, but he does not sing Hymns of Hate — he does not even resent the singing of them in the trenches opposite. The British airman, when he has killed an Immel- mann or a Boelcke in the aerial lists, will plane down under fire to drop a wreath upon his grave. The officers of the Sydney cordially admired Captain Miiller of the Emden, and the whole country heard with pleasure how Admiral von Spee, at a banquet in South America, rebuked an orator who spoke offensively of our Navy. No, hatred does not come 174 Chivalry of To-day of fighting between honourable men and according to the rules ; it comes only of aggression and insolence and frightful cruelty, and against these man must defend the weak as he would defend them against wild beasts or maniacs. War, then, wiU not destroy the soldier's peace, if he is a soldier of chivalry. On the contrary, the sense of service, of brotherhood, of self-sacrifice, may give him peace for the first time. " I never knew what peace was before " — so men have written from the trenches in France. But the soldier inflicts pain and death? Certainly, and faces them too. Pain and death are incidents in the life of time; they come to all men sooner or later. The soldier sees them in their true light; he knows better than other men how little is the difference between "sooner" and " later " when compared with the eternal difference between honour and dishonour. His belief holds good for his enemy as for himself; he will take from him his life or his power of fighting, but not his peace or his self-respect. The pacifist desires to end all war. For this, too, chivalry has long ago provided. It aimed at ending, not war, but the main causes and evils of war, and if we now propose more sweeping measures, we must take care that our attempt is equally consistent with hmnan nature. It will, at any rate, do no harm if we keep the old tradition in mind as an alternative. We have done, perhaps for ever, with the pageantry and symbolism of chivalry, but we shall see how far it is from being obsolete as a faith and a way of Chivalry of To-day 175 life if we imagine it formally refounded and its principles restated in modern fashion. It might reappear, perhaps, as follows: The Universal Association for the Attainment of Peace The object of this Society is the attainment of peace by the eUmination of hatred from human affairs. Mem-, bership is free to all who are, or who wish to be, gentle, brave, loyal, and courteous. The Society recognises no distinction of rank, creed, colour, or nationality. Rules (i) Members are bound to one another in all circum- stances by the obligation of brotherhood. (2) Every member shall be bound to forbear all men courteously, to deal honourably, to fight in a just quarrel and in no other. (3) Every member shall bear himself in war without hatred, in pain or death without flinching, in defeat without complaining, in victory without insolence. (4) Every member shall hold himself under a special obUgation to help and serve those who are weak, poor, or suffering, and particularly women and conquered enemies. This prospectus was written many years ago, during the first winter of the South African War, as part of a reply to the pacifists of that generation; and for the purposes of argument it was composed after a formal and scientific pattern. It does not perfectly express the tradition which has come down to us, for chivalry, though it once had some of the forms of an institution, is not really an institution, but an ideal, a personal standard of conduct com- 176 Chivalry of To-day municated by the touch of a personal fire. The writer who imagined this Association for Peace looked forward to seeing the chivalrous ideal spread from the older schools and older families to the younger and newer, a long and gradual process, which might in time bridge the gaps between social classes, but not the old gulf between the life and the education of boys. He could not foresee that a high-spirited and ingenious soldier, then busy with the defence of Mafeking, would, when the war was over, solve both these problems by one simple device. Colonel Baden-Powell, desiring like others to spread more widely the tradition which he had inherited, did not, like others, confine his hopes to spreading it slowly from the centre to the circumference of the English boy world. Pie went straight to the outer circle, to the youngest and least wealthy class, to the great mass whose schools and schooling were then of so recent a date that they could not yet be said to have any tradition of their own of any kind. These boys he summoned to be Scouts. The Scout Law which he set before them is the Law of what our ancestors called " the Noble and High Order of Knighthood " — the law of honour, loyalty, brother- hood, and courtesy, and especially of service to women and children, to the old and to the weak or suffering. The astonishing and almost world-wide success of the movement is due to the method of the call. It is not an appeal to the intellect, nor a habit imposed by teaching, nor even a reminder of in- herited pride — it is a personal invitation to play the Chivalry of To-day 177 game of life after the manner most desired by the heart of boys. Come and make yourself a man, with a man's life; not a narrow, shut-in life, selfish or idle or entirely specialised, but a useful, friendly, all-round life, mth a wide outlook on the world you live in and the people you live among. Take the full happiness of life, the happiness of serving, loving, befriending, and defending — the happiness of fighting and conquering all that is difficult or dangerous or devilish, whether in men or circumstances. Play games, for recreation, but not too seriously, because when they are serious they are neither quite games nor quite the real thing. The real thing is mastery, the power to use the world and all its resources, and hand it on improved to those who come after you. One joy of this mastery is what is called sport — the joy of pitting your courage, your endurance, or your skill against others, men, animals, or mechan- isms; better still if it is team work, and best of all if it is the great hazard of life and death, in the service of a cause that is worth a man's fife. To gain this mastery, to fit yourself for such a service, you must accept the training offered you, and you must help to train yourself; learn to do everything that man can do, learn the wood-craft of an Indian trapper and the multifarious handicrafts of a modern soldier; learn to ride and run and march and swim, not for the sake of a prize or a record, but for the power to serve your country. Above all, learn to admire men and obey them, that in your time you may under- stand men and lead them; learn the history and the 178 Chivalry of To-day languages of great nations; learn the lives and the adventures of great men, and the thoughts and feelings they have recorded in their books; learn to be a man yourself, not a half-developed or lop-sided creature, but a man full-grown, full of all life that can be got from men and spent for men again. This organisation, this school for Happy Warriors, is open not only to Enghsh and Welsh, Scottish and Irish, not only to the nations of the Commonwealth, but to all nations whatever, and it has already been accepted by several who are not of our own kindred. It offers to the whole world what the old chivalry offered to a single class, a fighting ideal and a scientific training. The miUtarist will hate and fear it, for it forbids his existence: the pacifist will reject it, for it teaches clear instead of confused thinking, and service rather than personal salvation. But the great majority of our people will accept it readily, for it is in accordance with the tradition of one class and the instinct of all. From this time onward we may hope that the tradition wiU become the tradition of all ; it is vain to believe that it can ever be obsolete. The time may come when fighting will be infrequent, but so long as there remain in the world wild beasts, savages, maniacs, autocrats, and worshippers of Woden, there will always be the possibiHty of it, the necessity for the indignant heart and the ready hand. And even if the possibility were done away, man must still keep the soldier's faith, for human life itself is a warfare, in which there is no victory but by the soldier's virtues, and no security but in San Stefano I79 their faithful transmission. Peace is given only to the Happy Warrior, in life or in death. HIC JACET Qui in hoc sesculo fideliter miliiavit He that has left hereunder The signs of his release. Feared not the battle's thunder Nor hoped that wars should cease; No hatred set asunder His warfare from his peace. Nor feared he in his sleeping To dream his work undone. To hear the heathen sweeping Over the lands he won; For he has left in keeping His sword unto his son. (From " The Book of the Happy Warrior," 1917.) SAN STEFANO You may think that after four or five months of this sort of life, cruising close to the enemy, with a chance every day of chasing or being chased, or fighting a duel with a fort or a couple of frigates, Charles would become so used to it as to be no longer excited, but to take everything as a matter of course. This is not quite what happened. No doubt he was able to take things more coolly; he learned to keep his head both in the moment of action and when looking back at it afterwards. He no longer " sailed large," as he used to do, when he wrote home; on i8o San Stefano the contrary, he sent his father accounts of his adventures in very sober, long, restrained phrases, the sort of language suitable for despatches written by an admiral of fifty. Being now eighteen, he thought himself not only a man but a man of some standing, and carefully imitated the manners of the heutenants, in hope of being one himself before long. But underneath he was just as enthusiastic as ever, and if he had used all the strongest words he could think of, he would never have been able to say how much he admired his captain. Sir Peter was a kind and generous friend to all his officers, but he specially loved his midshipmen, and they one and all adored him, talked of him, and wrote about him. If you could read all the letters written in these years by Charles and by his friends Harry Finucane and George Monroe, I believe you would find a good deal more in them about their captain than about them- selves. A distinguished Soldier who once spent a few days in the Menelaus said that her officers were like a knight and his squires in the days of chivalrj^ and the midshipmen, he declared, habitually said " St. Peter " when they meant " Sir Peter." Charles was so much anno37ed at that, that it must have been very nearly true: and whether he ever said it or not, there is no doubt that St. Peter was his patron saint. He had a fresh proof of this soon after the fight at Ciotat. On the 25th of June the Admiral sent a frigate to take the place of the Menelaus, and it was known at once that she brought sailing orders for San Stefano i8i Sir Peter, because he began to write letters for home, and told his officers that they had better do the same. An hour later he sent for Charles and asked him how old he was and how many years' service he had. These were not difficult questions to answer, but Charles knew in a flash what they meant, and his heart thumped so that he could hardly speak steadily. To be made a lieutenant it was necessary to be over eighteen, to have been more than six years on the books, and to pass an examination conducted by a board of post-captains. Charles was now eighteen and a half, and he had served for six and a half j^ears. " Verj^ good," said Sir Peter, " then there are three things that I should like you to do. First, I think you should write to-day to the Navy Office to get your certificate of service made out and sent to you. Then I should like you to enter your- self for six months' duty as master's mate in this ship. We shall be making prizes soon, I hope, and some of them ma}' have to be taken in to distant ports. The third thing must wait awhile; but if all goes well I should advise you, when we are in port or in the fleet again, to ask to go before a board of examiners." You will think perhaps that Charles was over- whelmed with joy; this was certainly the greatest thing that had ever yet happened to him — his captain, his hero. Sir Peter himself, thought him worthy of promotion. He felt like a new man, with a new career opening before him. But it was just that that made him almost inclined to draw back. i82 San Stefano When an officer was promoted, it was almost always a vacancy in another ship that was given him. " Thank you, Sir Peter," Charles said; " I will do everything you are good enough to suggest; and I am most grateful, but . . . but that will mean leaving the Menelaus." Sir Peter looked at him very kindly. " We must all part some day," he said; " meanwhile go and write that letter." Charles was entered as master's mate that same day, and early next morning the frigate sailed for Palermo, with orders to cruise afterwards between the islands of Ponza and Elba. A week later, on August 7th, as she was tacking northwards with a light wind, she sighted a gun brig off Monte Argentario, a big headland which stands right out on the west coast of Italy and forms the bay of Orbetello. The brig was not in a position to get into the bay, so she ran for the island of Giglio opposite, where there was a fortified harbour. By the time she was safely moored it was late in the afternoon; the Menelaus reconnoitred the harbour in hope of finding it suitable for a night attack, but the batteries on the island all began firing at once, and as the dusk fell the whole coast was alive with alarm lights. There was nothing to be done that night, and next morning at daybreak the brig was sighted with two smaller vessels running for the mainland. The frigate made all sail to cut them off, but when she was seen to be gaining the Frenchmen hauled up for the port of San Stefano in Orbetello San Stefano 183 Bay. Sir Peter was determined to have them out, and at once reconnoitred the harbour, but the appearance of it was not encouraging. The ships were moored within half musket shot of the shore, the brig with six cables ; and the shore was defended by two batteries, one of two guns and one of foiir, a tower with one long gun, and a citadel with fourteen. Evidently a surprise would be the most likely kind of attack for such a strong position. The Menelaus pretended to be no longer bold: she stood out to sea as if the game was up, and in a few hours was out of sigh't beyond the island of Monte Cristo. She gave the enemy the rest of that day and the whole of the next to forget her, but that was not nearly long enough. When she ran down again on the night of the 9th, and sent her boats into the harbour, they were signalled at once, though it was nearly midnight, and so hot a fire was opened that Sir Peter saw it could not be faced without the help of the frigate's guns. He called off his men and again stood out to sea, planning a fresh attack for two days later. The new plan was this: the Me-nelaus was to enter the harbour after dark and lie off ready to engage the attention of the citadel. The four-gun battery on the hillside, which contained three very big guns — forty-two-pounders — and would be in a position to rake the frigate as well as the boats, was to be attacked by a landing-party of marines. If they were successful the cutting-out party would then make a dash for the brig: and with luck the whole 184 San Stefano affair would be over before daylight. One more point was noted in the despatch afterwards sent home by the Admiral. " The service being of a most desperate nature, to which in the event of failure an imputation of rashness might attach, Sir Peter resolved to lead the attack himself." He accordingly put the ship in charge of the first lieutenant, Row- land Mainwaring, and ordered lieutenants Crease and Pierson, with all the midshipmen and mates and 130 seamen, to go with him in the gigs and cutters; the forty marines under their own lieutenants, Beynon and Wilcocks, were to have the launch, with an eighteen-pounder carronade mounted in the bow. Finally, to avoid any possible mistakes in the dark, the different parties were instructed to use a sign and countersign — " Nelson " and " Wellington." Nothing now remained but to whistle up a suffi- cient wind, and that seemed less hopeful as time went on. The nth of August was cloudless and almost windless. At 4 o'clock in the afternoon the frigate was scarcely moving. But Mr. Ruther- ford, the master who had succeeded Mr. Cunningham, was prepared, as he said, to fetch a wind from the sky if he couldn't find one on the water — he got up his sky-sail masts and assured everybody that all would be right at the right time. At 7 o'clock he set royals, royal studding-sails, skysails, and moon- sails, and as the twilight fell the frigate began to move towards Orbetello Bay like a phantom float- ing over the still water. At 8.30 the boats were lowered very quietly; at 10 they were still more San Stefano 185 quietly amied. Lights began to come out all along the shore; overhead there were stars but no moon. The Menelaus now entered the bay in dea.d silence. Sanderson, master's mate of the ship, was at the wheel; the master himself was forward, standing close to Charles, who was heaving the lead from the larboard fore-chains and whispering, instead of cr^dng, the depth of the soundings. At 11 the ma- rines were put into the launch and rowed off to a point about 150 5^ards from the heavy battery. Before midnight the other four boats were lying off, waiting for them to make their attack. They got ashore with the greatest caution, but it was very slow work, and i o'clock struck before they were ready to move. At that moment Charles, who was in the last boat with lieutenant Pierson, saw a flash straight beyond the landing-place, and the sound of the shot was followed by a wild noise of shouting from the sentinel who had fired it. Another shot answered from the slope above, and more shouting. Then over the still water Beynon's voice could be heard quietly and very distinctly giving the order to charge. A voile}' immediately flashed out from above, which seemed to Charles near enough and heavy enough to destroy the whole party, but he knew a moment after that it had not done so, for it was followed by more shouting in the fort itself, among which English voices could be distinguished quite plainly. The men in the boats became desper- ately keen to know how the fight was going: at last one of them shouted " Nelson," and a big voice i86 San Stefano from the fort answered " Wellington." The saOors all replied together and were again answered from above; for several minutes the bay and the hillside echoed and re-echoed " Nelson " — " Wellington " — " Nelson," till the marines, having spiked all the guns and picked up their wounded men, came down to the shore and were re-embarked. By this time the news had reached the citadel, and lights were being hung out on the brig to direct their fire; but before the boats came within range the frigate opened on the town with her broadside. She was too far off either to do much damage or to run much risk as long as it was dark; but she kept the troops in the citadel busy, making shots at the flash of her guns, and Sir Peter's men had only to face the musketry fire from the shore, which was wild and harmless. They boarded the brig immediately and cut her adrift; there was not a breath of wind stirring, so Sir Peter set to work to tow her out with two boats. The other two he sent to destroy a bombard which had been run on shore and deserted by her crew. Pierson and Charles were in one of these two boats, and Finucane and Monroe in the other. They took some time over their job, for they had to scuttle the bombard — to burn her would have been to give the enemy too good a light. Up to this time they had been completely success- ful, but now came a very anxious half -hour. The enemy, finding that their ships were lost, began to fire at them, and as they knew their position pretty exactly they made rather better shooting. The San Stefano 187 towing-cable of the brig was immediately cut in two by a round shot, and as soon as the loss was made good the sharp swish of grape-shot was heard upon the water. Pierson's men rowed their hardest and got clear, but Finucane's boat was struck in the stem, and Charles knew that some one was hit by the sound of the orders which he heard being given. No questions were asked; both boats went on at full speed. Charles began to think gloomy thoughts: he remembered that dawn would be coming soon, and there was not a puff of wind to carr\^ the Menelaus and her prize out of range. At that moment fortune changed again: unex- pectedly, miraculously, a fine breeze sprang up, and when Charles sighted the brig she was getting under sail, and Sir Peter was making straight for the frigate. He was at the gangway to receive the other boats, inquiring as each came aboard what casualties they had had. In the first three there had been only one seaman killed and one wounded; but when Finucane's turn came, he said in a slow steady voice: " We have had a terrible misfortune, sir; we have lost Monroe." Sir Peter made no reply: he took the dead mid- shipman in his arms and knelt to support him, feeling his heart, listening for his breatliing, and even calling him by his name. The men brought battle lanterns and stood round in a wide circle; over the water the guns of the citadel went on flashing and booming. No one paid any attention to them; every one looked intently at the surgeon i88 San Stefano who was now kneeling too. Sir Peter was sure, desperately sure, that there was a faint sign of life; the surgeon, after a very careful examination, said that it was too late to hope. Sir Peter rose to his feet. " I will not give him up," he said, and he ordered the dead boy to be carried to his own cabin and laid in his own cot. Then he stood still for a moment to regain control over himself. Before he looked up again the brig ran alongside and touched with a slight shock; the boatswain in- stantly grappled her to the frigate's quarter, and the two ships began to move slowly ahead together. Sir Peter raised his head and saw what was being done; he saw also Charles and Finucane watching him like two dogs. Very quietly he asked Charles to pro- vision the prize, take ten men aboard, and sail her into port. Then he gripped Finucane by the arm. and walked aft with him; Charles went about his own business with a feeUng of great weariness. Day broke as the two ships left the bay. Six days later the brig came safely into the har- bour of Valetta where the Menelaus was already moored. Charles went aboard to report himself; Sir Peter was ashore, the first lieutenant told him, and he added: " He was hard hit over that affair; he has not smiled since." And in fact it was long before Charles saw his captain smile again. {From " The Book of the Blue Sea," 1914.) Craven 189 CRAVEN (.Mobile Bay, 1864) Over the turret, shut in his iron-clad tower, Craven was conning his ship through smoke and flame ; Gun to gun he had battered the fort for an hour. Now was the time for a charge to end the game. There lay the narrowing channel, smooth and grim, A hundred deaths beneath it, and never a sign; There lay the enemy's ships, and sink or swim. The flag was flying, and he was head of the line. The fleet behind was jamming; the monitor hung Beating the stream ; the roar for a moment hushed ; Craven spoke to the pilot ; slow she swung ; Again he spoke, and right for the foe she rushed. Into the narrowing channel, between the shore And the sunk torpedoes lying in treacherous rank ; She turned but a yard too short ; a muifled roar, A mountainous wave, and she rolled, righted, and sank. Over the manhole, up in the iron-clad tower. Pilot and Captain met as they turned to fly : The hundredth part of a moment seemed an hour. For one could pass to be saved, and one must die. They stood like men in a dream : Craven spoke. Spoke as he lived and fought, with a Captain's pride, " After you, Pilot ": the pilot woke, Down the ladder he went, and Craven died. 190 Stonewall Jackson All men ■praise the deed and the manner, hut we — We set it apart from the pride that stoops to the proud, The strength that is supple to serve the strong and free. The grace of the empty hands and promises loud : Sidney thirsting a humbler need to slake, Nelson waiting his turn for the surgeon's hand, Lucas crushed with chains for a comrade's sake Otdram coveting right before command. These were paladins, these were Craven's peers. These with him, shall be crowned in story and song. Crowned with the glitter of steel and the glimmer of tears. Princes of courtesy, merciful, proud and strong. STONEWALL JACKSON Let us talk for a little now about Jackson himself, and what he was like to those who knew him. Any man, if he is lucky, may have adventures, and yet remain quite an average man, nothing out of the common. A great man is great, not because he happens to have adventures, but because he is the cause of adventures; to meet him is in itself an adventure, and makes a change in those who experi- ence it. You may be sure that no one who knew Jackson ever forgot him: even those who have only read his life remember him continually. Soldiers learn from it how great campaigns may be fought; the rest of us see how a great life may be lived. Stonewall Jackson 191 Naturalh', as Jackson was a soldier, it is from soldiers that we hear most about him. They tell us that he was a really great general, and it is easy to believe them, for they have plenty of proofs to show. After the battle of Bull Run he was placed in com- mand of a separate army to co-operate in the defence of the Shenandoah Valley. In the " Valley Cam- paign," as it was called, he showed in a very high degree the power of guessing what the enemy was most likely to do, and at the same time concealing what he was going to do himself. If you look at a good map of that famous valley, you will see that it is a most convenient place for playing hide-and-seek with an army. The mountains run in four great lines, each consisting of narrow ridges, with gaps in them at irregular intervals. Between these four ridges there are, of course, three parallel valleys; the middle one of the three is the Shenandoah valley, with the river Shenandoah in it, and also an extra clump of mountains near the upper end called the Massanuttons. The whole place is rather like three great streets with smaller alleys or passages leading' through from one to another at unequal distances You can imagine how difficult it was to catch a fellow like Jackson in such a country, even with a superior force or two superior forces. When pressed, he could always leave one street and slip through into the next; and if the enemy tried to occupy a town, he could slip back again another way and turn the position. On one occasion he and his whole army suddenly disappeared from sight altogether, going 192 Stonewall Jackson east as was supposed; but they dodged back west by the next side-alley and upset all calculations. In this way he constantly puzzled and defeated superior armies which were trying to combine and crush him ; his soldiers said that " he knew every hole and corner of the valley as if he had made it himself," and he bewildered and tired the enemy till their officers resigned and their men deserted. In thirty-eight days he marched 400 miles, fought three battles and a number of smaller engagements, and won them all. He took 3500 prisoners and put 3500 more out of action, besides capturing nine guns and 10,000 rifles. Of course, to do all this he had to work his men hard: they did so much marching and at such a pace that they were called " the foot cavalry." They complained, but they admired him for it; and they expressed both their complaint and their admiration by saying that Moses took forty years to get the Children of Israel through the wilderness, but Old Jack would have double-quicked them through in three days on half rations! In the Valley Campaign and afterwards, as at ChanceUorsville, he would now and then march clean round his enemy in a manner that seemed simply impossible, by all the rules of war. His men made a legend out of these flank marches. " Stonewall died," they said " and two angels came down from Heaven to take him back with them. They went to his tent. He was not there. They went to the hospital. He was not there. They went to the outposts. He was not there. They went to the prayer-meeting. He was not there. Stonewall Jackson 193 So they had to return without him; but when they reported that he had disappeared, they found that he had made a flank march and reached Heaven before them." His enemies must often have wished that that flank march had taken place earher. His men too were a bit afraid of him at first: he was so secret and so stern. They never knew where they were going or why. They got used to this at last, and when any one asked, " Where are you going?" they only laughed and said, "We don't know, but Old Jack does." His sternness they could not laugh about: it was no joke. He never let off a man condemned to death for deser- tion. On one occasion there were four of these cases and the chaplain made a very strong appeal to him. " General," he said, " consider your responsibility before the Lord. You are sending these men's souls to hell." Jackson answered in his severest tones, " That, sir, is my business: do you do yours! " and he took him by the shoulders and put him through the door. It was not that he wished to be harsh: when a case for mercy was put before him properly he considered it carefully, but always from a military point of view. Once his officers begged lum to pardon a soldier sentenced to be shot for striking his captain. " To pardon this man," he said, " would be to encour- age insubordination throughout the army, and to ruin our cause. Still, I will review the whole case, and no man will be happier than myself if I can reach the same conclusions as you have done." He decided that it was impossible to pardon: dis- G 194 Stonewall Jackson cipline was the weak point of the armies in that war. They were continually tempted to plunder, for the commissariat was often disorganised. But this Jack- son was determined they should not do : he hated the " f rightfulness " of war, and was always chivalrous in protecting non-combatants. On one of his marches he forbade his men to enter any private house: one of them not only entered a house but used insulting language to the women in it. When this was re- ported to the General he had the man tried by drum- head court-martial and shot in twenty minutes. This sternness was merciful, and it was entirely successful. It is recorded to the honour of the Con- federate armies that they were almost invariably courteous and considerate to the country people on both sides of the border, and that though they were often half -starved and ragged, and sometimes bitterly provoked, they never gave man, woman, or child reason to dread their coming. This does not in the least imply that Jackson was weak: it only means that he was not a Hun. He knew how to make war. " War," he once said, " means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps: but to find the enemy and strike him, to invade his country and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts: but such a war will of necessity be one of short continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To Stonewall Jackson 195 move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war." He never burnt a town or shot a non-combatant. But he loved war: he loved fighting: he loved danger and the excitement of a charge. He loved especially the peculiar yell which his men had in- vented — " the rebel yell." One night he heard it raised at a tattoo in his camp; he listened silently until it died away, and then said, half to himself, " That was the sweetest music I ever heard." It goes without saying that his courage in battle was perfect. At Cedar Run he saw his men breaking: he drew his sword, and rushed into the middle of the fight, shouting, " Rally, men, and follow me! " General Taliaferro rode up and told him he had no business to be where he was : he gave in to him and went back, but the work was done and the men were charging. He could be beautifully cool, too ; he used to go reconnoitring for himself, and was found once peering right into a wood full of the enemy's sharp- shooters, who were firing continually. Another time he was again reconnoitring in the fields, with Lieu- tenant Smith, when a sharpshooter began firing from some tall weeds at the two officers. The bullet passed between their heads: Jackson said with a smile to his companion, " Mr. Smith, you had better go to the rear; they may shoot you." He then deliberately finished his reconnoitring and went back to his position. It goes without saying, too, that his patriotism was perfect. The American Civil War was a terrible 196 Stonewall Jackson struggle, but it had one unique and redeeming characteristic: it was a volunteer war, fought for none but patriotic reasons; both sides were equally devoted, and both had a righteous cause. The North fought for the unity of the nation, and afterwards for the abolition of slavery ; the South fought to pre- serve their independence. Jackson felt his position as a Southerner keenly. " Certainly," he said, " no man has more that should make life dear to him than I have, in the affection of my home; but I do not desire to survive the independence of my country," And when he made his farewell speech to his brigade after Bull Run, he ended by hoping, in a burst of enthusiasm, that they would be " handed down to posterity as the First Brigade in this our Second War of Independence." The regiments assented with a tornado of cheers. His popularity was universal. His men cheered him whenever they saw him; his charger. Little Sorrel, learned to gallop away whenever the noise began. When the troops in a bivouac heard a distant sound of shouting, they always said, "Boys! look out! here comes old Stonewall or an old hare! " One soldier adds the explanation, "these being the only individuals who never failed to bring down the whole house." He was famous among civilians too: at Martinsburg the ladies took so many souvenirs from his charger's mane and tail that a sentry had to be placed before the stable door. Even the enemy admired him — when he took Harper's Ferry the Federals hned the street to see him ; and once, on the Stonewall Jackson 197 Rappahannock, they actually cheered him. His own men were cheering him as usual, and some of the Federal pickets, just over the water, called across to ask who was there. " General StonewaU Jackson," said the sentry. " Hurrah for Stonewall Jackson! " cried the enemy, and both sides went on cheering together. The last time he had such a triumph was when he lay mortally wounded at Chancellorsville, and Lee's army made its victorious charge on the entrenchments to the crj.- of " Remember Jackson! " The hold he had upon his fellow-countrymen was shown by their sayings after his death — the most remarkable, perhaps, occurred in the prayer of the chaplain at the unveiling of the Jackson monument in New Orleans. It ended with these words : "When in Thine inscrutable decree it was ordained that the Confederacy should fail, it became necessary for Thee to remove Thy servant Stonewall Jackson." Another monument, a bronze statue, was long after- wards placed above Jackson's grave at Lexington; his men were old by then, but they came in numbers to the unveiling and gave the " rebel yell " once more. Two officers were silent, and each saw that the other was weeping. " Fm not ashamed of it, Snowden," said one. " Nor I, old boy," replied the other. Last of all, the columns marched past the monument. One old soldier of the Stonewall Brigade turned round at the cemetery gate, and waved his hat. " Good-bye, old man, good-bye," he called back, " we've done all we could for you: Good-bye! " {From " The Book of the Thin Red Line," 1915.) 198 Saving an Army SAVING AN ARMY The retirement was then continued. The impedi- menta had been sent away at 2 a.m. There was a good deal of grumbling among the men; but it was generally believed that the French were beginning to hold the enemy on the right, and that a stand would be made all along the line in the next position, at Le Cateau, Sir Horace's face was watched as a kind of moral barometer. " He looks a winner," one man was heard to say, " and that's enough for me." But beneath the General's imperturbable coolness and courtesy there were serious anxieties. The two army corps had up to now been in fairly regular touch — they had actually converged on Bavai. But to-day they had to separate rather widely. Sir Horace passing to the west of the Foret de Mormal and Sir Douglas to the east, in order to avoid the thick wood and uncertain roads. It was arranged, at Sir Horace's request, that the start should be early, and orders were issued for the force to be all south of the Valenciennes-Maubeuge road by 5.30 a.m.; but the 1st Corps found it impossible to keep time as accurately as they wished, and it was 8.30 a.m. before their last brigade got away. Even then they were delayed. Sir Horace, of course, knew nothing of the reasons; but he found the gap between his own corps and Sir Douglas's steadily widening, till the two were some eight miles apart. Lord Ernest Hamilton explains that this was, in fact, due to Saving an Army 199 (< scares," or reports of rearguard attacks, which made it necessary for some of the ist Corps to halt, or even to go back at times. The Oxfords, for in- stance, had to retrace the distance from Leval to Pont-sur-Sambre, only to find nothing doing. The reports were probably spread by Germans, dis- guised as British officers. The situation therefore was becoming anxious, and after midday a fresh disappointment had to be met. Sir Horace had spent the morning directing the retirement from his motor, and went finally about 3.30 P.M. to Le Cateau to see Sir John French. He failed to find him, for Sir John had started at 2 P.M. for St. Quentin, twenty-five miles off. From Sir Archibald Murray, however, the Chief of the Staff, he received Sir John's orders not to make a stand at Le Cateau, but to continue retiring. The General Headquarters were even then in the act of preparing to evacuate Le Cateau — clerks, typists and orderlies swarming off in motor-lorries to follow the Commander-in-Chief to St. Quentin. Sir Horace spent the next few hours in selecting a position in case he had to fight next day, and then drove to Bertry, where his own Headquarters were to be. On the way he saw some of General Sordet's French cavalry corps moving across to our left rear. They had been asked to help us during the retirement, but their horses had been too tired — they did their best for us next day, when they were most needed. The evening was spent in the difficult task of finding out the exact whereabouts of the troops, 200 Saving an Army many of whom had covered thirty miles, and whose rearguards were desperately engaged. It was not until 1.30 A.M. that this was done; and Sir Horace, by way of a night's rest, had to solve two problems. First, how was he to deal with General AUenby's cavalry' division. General Snow's 4th Division of infantry and General Drummond's 19th Brigade — which were none of them under his command though actually fighting near his corps at the moment? And secondly, in face of the orders he had received, not to fight, how was he to save his weary force from being crushed in the act of retiring — for the Germans were now close up and outflanking him on both sides? He quickly came to the con- clusion that it was an occasion when he would be justified in disobeying his orders; and taking the cavalry, the 4th Division and the 19th Brigade under his command, he issued instructions for a battle at dawn. In the early morning of August 26, news came in that the ist Corps had been attacked after dark at Landrecies and had inflicted a severe check upon the enemy. A Prussian division had made a forced march right through the Foret de Mormal, hoping to smash up our troops in their night quarters, when they were tired and off guard. They came up against the wrong men — Landrecies was occu- pied by the 4th Brigade of Guards. The most vivid account of the fight is that sent home by Lieutenant Percy Wyndham of the 3rd Coldstream. " Had a hurried tea and at 7 o'clock went out with the Saving an Army 201 company (No. 3) to guard all the approaches to the town. We were told there were some English and French troops who would want to come through. Hardly was it dark, about 8 p.m., and raining, when we heard a body of men approaching. We challenged them to halt; they came on, answering in French. We told them again to halt; they were then only ten or twenty yards off, and with a yowl they sprang forward and yelled ' Deutschland ! ' After that, words fail me. Hell was let loose. Our men lay down flat and poured volle}^ after volley into them. I flattened myself against a wall and quaked. In about three minutes it subsided and awful groans filled the air. Then little Charles Monk came out and said, ' Come on. No. 3, line the road! ' and we all gathered round. Another company came up in support, and David (Bingham) got his machine- guns into action. Nothing can describe what fol- lowed. They kept charging up to us, and we replied with volley after volley. The men were marvellous, quite cool, and obeyed all our fire orders to the letter. I have never known anything like the bursts of fire. They then brought up a gun, at 200 yards, and fired lyddite point blank at us! My word, it was a caper. They kept coming on, and at about 12.30 made a final desperate effort. I thought we never could stick it, but we did. I just said my prayers as I lay, nose buried in the ground, and waited for my bit of shell or bullet. But, glory be to God! it never came. We drove them right back with our fire and they never came on again, and they 202 Saving an Army tell me 2000 of them never will again. . . . Our losses were 119 killed and wounded." This news was cheerful enough in itself, but to the General of the 2nd Corps it meant that he could expect no help from his colleague. Sir Douglas Haig was evidently delayed far to the north and east of him, and von Kluck was forcing a wedge in between them. Sir Horace must play the game out alone — • he was in the tightest of tight places, for he had his orders, and to obey them literally meant destruction. He knew how foot-weary his men were, and how near to discouragement; if he called upon them to retreat once more, with a confident enemy close upon their heels, the retreat must almost certainly become a rout. It would be no one's fault — the army would be annihilated by an overwhelming force; but it would be annihilated, and the Empire would be in mourning for fifty years. The position was desperate ; how could it be saved ? By military skill, by high courage, by dogged en- durance? All these qualities were necessary; but all put together, they were not sufficient — they could not make one corps the equal of three, or save it when surrounded from being forced to surrender or collapse. What was needed first of all was character. This is where games are the miniature of war and of any active life. We have all known good cricketers who could see clearly and make beautiful shots when nothing much depended on them, but who lost their form when a rot set in, and went to pieces with the rest. The great General is the one who never Saving an Army 203 loses his form. Even if he is called upon to face some awful moment on which great issues hang, he will still see clearly, decide unhesitatingly, and play to win; and this he will do because he has the power to be always himself, to draw upon the vital reserve which we call character. None of our Generals had more of this power than Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien ; he saved us in our greatest danger by being simply himself. We shall always read the history of those black days happily, because they are not a tale of hesitation or passive acceptance of disaster, but an example of how, by decision, by initiative, and by determination, drawn from the stores of his own past, a commander may turn to-day's defeat into to-morrow's victory. Before daybreak on August 26, Sir Horace had made his two decisions. The first was that he must be master of his weapons. He sent word to General Allenby and General Snow that the cavalry and the 4th Division would come under his command. He made no bones about it, nor did they. It was not the moment to stand on etiquette or wait for official confirmation. The 4th Division was ordered to form the left of the line from Haucourt to Caudry, with the 3rd next it in the centre from Caudry to Trois- villes, and the 5th (with the 19th Brigade) on the right at Le Cateau. The cavalry were widely scat- tered; the brigade and a half near Caudry were to fall back on Ligny and try to guard the left flank, the two and a half brigades at Catillon were to move to the support of the right flank. 204 Saving an Army The second decision was the great one — the one for which Horace Smith-Dorrien was bom and bred. He made it in the small hours of the 26th, and shortly afterwards wired to General Headquarters to tell the Commander-in-Chief what he had decided. The reply he received was that the Commander- in-Chief wished to speak to him on the telephone: so at 7 A.M. he walked into the railway station at Bertry and asked to be put through to the British General Headquarters at St. Quentin. He soon heard the voice of General Henry Wilson, Assistant Chief of the Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, and at once explained to him the state of affairs as he saw it. "My orders are not to fight but to keep on retiring. My men are too weary to march; before they can retire I must fight ; a blow to the Germans is the only way of staving off a disaster; and the battle has actually begun." General Wilson repHed, " Sir John did not intend you to fight, and he wishes you to break off the battle and retire at the earliest moment possible. He cannot send you any support — the ist Corps is incapable of movement. His opinion is that in not retiring you are risking a Sedan." Sir Horace was prepared to take this risk. " We shall put up a real grand fight," he said, " but with my men too weary to march, both my flanks in the air, and a vastly superior number of the enemy against us, no doubt there is a possibility of our being surrounded." General Wilson then suggested that Sir John French might be willing to come back and take over the actual command. But Sir Horace Saving an Army 205 had no desire to avoid a responsibility that was rightly his own. " I strongly deprecate that," he replied. " The battle is now going on, on such an extended front that the troops would not know of Sir John's presence on the field, and it is not as if I had any large reserves which he could handle. After all, this is only the commencement of a great war, and if a disaster should occur, it is essential for the good of the cause we are fighting for that the Commander-in-Chief should be free to go to England and bring over another army. But my one chance is to fight and I am going to do it." General Wilson could not conceal his admiration. " Well," he said, " your voice is the only cheerful thing I've heard for three days." Sir Horace, as we have seen, had already made his preparations. His instructions for the fight had been issued to all the troops at 4 a.m., and at 2 a.m. he had sent to General Sordet an urgent message saying, " I am going to fight, and I hope you will be able to cover my left." Sordet sent back no reply, but in the hour of need he was there. By this time the enemy had got the artillery of at least four army corps into position. Our guns were outnumbered, five to one; but they made a magni- ficent fight of it and inflicted huge losses on the Germans advancing in mass. So did our infantry; they made and lay in shallow trenches, some few of which had been hastily and imscientifically dug for them by devoted Frenchwomen, and they were desperately tired; but they shot as no other troops 2o6 Saving an Army- had ever shot, and for seven hours their enemies went down before them like cut grass. At one time the 4th Division, on the left flank, was forced back, but by a brilhant counter-attack they regained their ground. Nothing could really shift them but over- whelming gun power. By midday the main artillery duel was over, and some of our guns, especially of the 5th Division, were silenced. This was a severe loss; for, to infantry, even the sound of their own guns is a support. By 2 o'clock the 5th Division had been outflanked, and pounded almost to pieces. At 2.30 Sir Horace received a message from Sir Charles Fergusson that he feared his men could stand it no longer, and were beginning to dribble away. Sir Horace sent him instructions to order the 5th Divi- sion to retire. He had not a word of blame for them : he knew they would not fail him till they were in extremes, and he sent instructions to the rest of the troops what to do in case they fell back. His only reserves were two battahons and one battery; these he had already had to use once, and now he sent them in again to cover the retirement. For the moment the General had done his part; the task of carrying out his orders was for his sub- ordinates. I have told you how Sir Horace took over General Grierson's staff: he was fortunate in finding such officers, for it was in his judgment largely due to this staff that the British force fighting at Le Cateau was able to be withdrawn. The Chief of Staff of the 2nd Corps, Brigadier-General Forestier- Walker, was a man of great nerve and ability, and a Saving an Army 207 very rapid worker. He had drawn up concise in- structions for the retirement of the several divisions, if such a move should become necessary, and conse- quently every divisional commander and staff knew exactly by what roads they were to move, so that the danger of their running into each other and getting blocked was provided against. Then the head of the Quartermaster-General's department, working in with him, had laid his plans for clearing the road of all unnecessary impedimenta, such as food and ammunition columns, field ambulances, etc. Thus, when the 5th Division were being forced back, all that remained to be done was for the staff to tell the commanders of the other divisions to conform to the movements of the 5th Division, which had already begun to retire by pre-arranged roads. It was now past 3 o'clock and the 5th Division were coming back in great disorder. It is best to be precise about this, because exaggerated and even hysterical descriptions were sent over to England soon afterwards. Admirably terse and well-balanced accounts also came in private letters; one of the best is by Lieutenant Frederick Longman of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, one of General Hamilton's reserve battalions. " At i p.m., a lull — we all thought we had beaten them off. Suddenly a tremendous burst of firing in the centre of our line; 3.30, order for a general retirement. Then I saw a sight I hope never to see again. Our line of retreat was down two roads which converged on a village about a mile behind the position. Down these roads came a mob 2o8 Saving an Army — men from every regiment there, guns, riderless horses, hmbers packed with wounded, quite unat- tended and lying on each other, jostling over ruts, etc. It was not a rout, only complete confusion. This was the Germans' chance. One battery of artillery sent forward, or one squadron of cavalry, would have turned this rabble into a complete rout, and the whole army would have been cut up piecemeal. Meanwhile, we were the only regiment I saw in any order. We had not been engaged, and had only lost one officer and about thirty men; we had also had a hot meal, so that we were in good condition. We went back in a succession of extended lines, in absolute order, and formed up behind a farmhouse near where the roads met. Here we waited in mass, while the rest of the army streamed past. It was a most trying half-hour. It seemed inevitable that they would follow up, and then the jam in that village would have been indescribable — I have since heard that they had sustained fearful losses, and also a division of French cavalry was covering our retreat. WTien the rabble had got past we moved off, marching at attention, arms sloped, fours dressed, etc., through the village; 7.0 P.M., moved off again and marched till i.o a.m." Sir Horace too saw this, and no doubt he too hoped never to see the like again. But he gave not the least sign of dismay. His business was to save his army. He had already sent his car away, and was now on horseback, with some of his staff; the rest had gone, in accordance with a well-thought- Saving an Army 209 out plan, to important points on the several roads along which the force was retiring, to maintain order and direct those who had lost their units. Sir Horace rode along the line, and hearing very heavy artillery firing to the westward, naturally began to fear that the enemy were outflanking the 4th Divi- sion. To make sure about this the General with one A.D.C. galloped up a piece of rising ground, and perceived with joy and gratitude that the noise was not that of German guns only, but the short sharp bark of the inimitable French Horse Artillery. Sordet had plaj'ed up, and our left flank was safe. Sir Horace then rode back to the Roman road — the long and dead straight road from Bavai to Estrees by which the 5th Division were retiring. It was a dispiriting sight, for heavy rain was now falling, and the men who came staggering past were so tired and footsore that many threw away their packs and entrenching tools, and some could go no further, but rolled over by the roadside and were dead asleep in a moment. The greater number trudged on in a solid mass, units all broken up and mixed together, and groups of men all beheving that they themselves were the sole survivors of their regiment. It might be thought that a General had no part to plsLy here — Napoleon, on a day not un- hke this, rode off with a "tout est perdu; sauve qui peut." Smith-Dorrien stayed among his men, knowing that all was not lost, because he had the power to handle them even in extreme distress. An American volunteer, who was present, has said 2IO Saving an Army the right word ^ about him both here and after- wards. " I speak," he says, " with profound recog- nition of his high attainments as a mihtary leader, and of his great heart. Truly, a kinder man I have never met." You may imagine what it meant to these tired soldiers — tired a dozen times over, tired with four days' marching and fighting, tired with killing endless hordes of enemies, tired with facing for nine hours an irresistible tornado of shell and shrapnel — ^to come suddenly upon this quiet, com- manding figure of their General. Here was the head of everything, the man who must know all that there was to know; yet he was kind, cheery, un- hurried and unworried, walking his horse amongst them, talking to them in his cool, courteous voice, assuring them that all was well, that the attack was over, that they had beaten their enemy to a stand- still, that they were only retiring to keep in hue with the French Army and to share in the coming advance. " Right ahead," he said to one little bunch after another. " You'll find a lot more of your bat- taHon further down the road." For two hours they had the comfort of this voice, and every minute that passed proved the words more true. There was practically no pursuit, no rearguard action: guns were still firing, but without effect. " Never mind the guns," said the General, " I'll look after them; you go quietly on." They did go on. It was a very sorry crowd that worked their way back > From Mons to Ypres, by Frederic Coleman (Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.). Saving an Army 211 towards St. Quentin that night, but it was not a panic-stricken crowd. The staff backed up their Commander; at the gate of every field, and the entrance of every by-lane stood an officer collecting a certain battalion or brigade. " This way Suffolks, this way Manchesters, all this way the 14th Bri- gade." It was a tremendous piece of work; more officers were borrowed to help the staff, and the motor-drivers took a hand as well. The General himself, having done what he could for them, went on at 9 P.M. to report to his Commander-in-Chief. He reached St. Quentin at 10 p.m. only to find that General Headquarters were no longer there— the Commander-in-Chief had gone back at midday to Noyon, thirty-five miles further and fifty-five miles behind where the battle was raging at Le Cateau. There was nothing for it but to follow. Sir Horace had left his staff on the road near Estr6es, helping to keep the troops moving and straighten out blocks in the fine of march. He now took Cap- tain Bowley and Prince Henri d'Orleans in his car and ran down to Noyon, after arranging with Colonel Maclnnes, the Director of Railways at St. Quentin, for some trains to pick up the lamest of the men. His hurried journey was not a good substitute for a night's rest. It was long past midnight when they reached Noyon and woke up the Commander- in-Chief. Reports of the direst kind had reached him — he had been convinced that the 2nd Corps was no longer in existence, and Sir Horace's un- defeated serenity seemed to him at first almost 212 Saving an Army outrageous. When he realised that the fight had, in fact, achieved its object, and that the three divi- sions were being put in order to rejoin the line, his scepticism was overcome and he spoke in warm terms of Sir Horace's achievement. The journey back was still a sleepless one; there was plenty to think of. When Sir Horace reached St. Quentin once more, at 5.30 a.m., the day's work was waiting for him. His staff had come in an hour before and were asleep on the floor. The bulk of the troops were still out on the road; they had to be brought in, built up into an army, and started again on their march southward. This was a heavy day's work, but it was not an impossible one; the men were unbeaten — their General had told them so and they believed him, for they saw that he was unbeaten himself. His divisional commanders and brigadiers were worthy of him; they had worked magnificently all night and their regimental officers had backed them magnificently in turn. In one of the finest narratives of the retreat ^ there is a story which tells us just what we should wish to know about our men and their officers — how even in the hardest times they can keep their kindliness and self-restraint. " Soon after sunrise we came up with two of our ambulance wagons, and one of our filter water-carts. The wounded were in such a state of of exhaustion with the long trek and the awful jolting of the wagons, that Major Fawcett decided to find some farm where water could be boiled. He * Quoted by Mr. John Buchan, History of the War, vol. ii. Saving an Army 213 had hardly gone when a battahon of exhausted infantry came up, and, as soon as they saw the water- carts, made a dash for them. Hastily I rode up to them and told them that there was very Uttle water left in the carts, and that it was needed for their wounded comrades. ' I am thirsty myself,' I said, ' and I am awfully sorry for you chaps, but you see how it is ; the wounded must come first.' ' Quite right, Sir,' was the ready response; ' didn't know it was a hospital water-cart.' And without a mur- mur they went thirsty on their way." Meanwhile, in St. Quentin, the General was busier and cheerier than ever. Our American volunteer saw a great deal of him this day, for he and his car were lent to him by Lord Loch. He says, " It was good to see Smith-Dorrien's face and hear his voice. I had heard much of him during those days and never was he spoken of save in terms of affection. ... It was of inestimable value that morning in St. Quentin — Smith-Dorrien's smile. It put heart into many a man. ... It was a treat to watch the General. Kindly and cheery, his personality pervaded every- thing about him. . . . Staff, officers, soldiers, every one — all were parts of the whole. It was a lesson, watching him saving the scattered pieces of his corps and welding them into a fighting force that would be all the better for the awful experience through which they had passed." This last bit sounds an optimistic opinion, but it is strongly confirmed by a remark of Lieutenant Longman's, in a letter written a day or two later. 214 Saving an Army " At first my shoulders used to get rather tired with my load; now I have nearly doubled the load and don't feel it, and I can keep going all day quite happily, and if necessary most of the night. Most of the men are very fit too. I would much rather go into action with the twenty men I have left than the fifty-nine I started with, as I can trust all of them to the last inch now, and before there were some semi- shirkers and many unfit." Two- thirds of the platoon gone — that was a dangerously high rate of loss, if it was anything like general. The first reports which came in caused Sir Horace great anxiety; the 3rd Division alone believed their casualties to be 150 officers and over 5000 other ranks. Another constant worry was the false news of rearguards hard pressed and throwing in their last reserves. Captain Bowley was sent back in the car to ascertain the facts and reported all the stories to be untrue. Altogether the day was a trying one to the nerves, and many officers felt it severely after the long bombardment of the day before, and the still longer march. The worst moment of all came late at night on the 27th, when an order arrived from General Headquarters which, however kindly it was meant, very nearly had a disastrous effect. The retirement was to be con- tinued at once; and not only that, but ammuni- tion, officers' kits, etc., were to be taken from the wagons and destroyed, to make room for carrying weary men. It was naturally supposed that news of some fresh attack had come in to General Head- quarters. The effect on nerves shaken by heavy Saving an Army 215 fighting and want of sleep was bad, and might have been very bad. But panic and Smith-Dorrien could not exist together; he quietly countermanded the order on his own responsibility and all was well — except for some of the 4th Division, who had already burnt eleven wagon-loads. On this night, the 27th, the troops reached Ham. The retreat was not over, but the danger point was past. The enemy had hovered about the rearguards with cavalry and horse artillery, but his infantry had been too heavily punished to come on again ; Smith- Dorrien had snatched their chance from them. It is impossible to overestimate his achievement. " The extrication of the Le Cateau army," says Lord Ernest Hamilton,^ " from a position which on paper was all but hopeless, was undoubtedly a very fine piece of generalship." And Mr. John Buchan says: " No praise can be too high for the services rendered by the Commander of the 2nd Corps at Le Cateau." The voice of the army is not less emphatic. One of Sir Horace's own generals wrote: " If the staff work went smoothly and well, it was only because we had a chief who knew his own mind, never hesitated about momentous decisions (Le Cateau at 4 a.m.!), but shouldered all responsibility and never fussed. I have since then often talked with other staffs, and have realised how they have been hampered even in the smallest routine work, and it has made me very grateful to the finest Commander I have ever worked under." Finally Sir John French wrote in his des- ' The First Seven Divisions, p. 65. 2i6 Sacramentum Supremum patch: "I say without hesitation that the saving of the left wing of the army under my command on the morning of August 26 could never have been accomphshed unless a Commander of rare and un- usual coolness, intrepidity and determination had been present to personally conduct the operation." In our military history we have long kept one picture apart from all the rest — the great Duke riding in twilight behind the 52nd as they made the final advance across the field of Waterloo. We shall never see a moment of more complete triumph. But we have now another picture to set beside that — the quiet, indomitable figure in the rain, facing the full stream of defeat. A very different scene, but the two go well together ; for they both show what the spirit of man can do against material odds. {From " Tales of The Great War," 1915.) SACRAMENTUM SUPREMUM Ye that with me have fought and failed and fought To the last desperate trench of battle's crest, Not yet to sleep, not yet; our work is nought; On that last trench the fate of all may rest. Draw near, my friends ; and let your thoughts be high ; Great hearts are glad when it is time to give; Life is no hfe to him that dares not die. And death no death to him that dares to hve. Draw near together ; none be last or first ; We are no longer names, but one desire; Nonneboschen Wood 217 With the same burning of the soul we thirst. And the same wine to-night shall quench our fire. Drink ! to our fathers who begot us men. To the dead voices that are never dumb; Then to the land of all our loves, and then To the long parting, and the age to come. NONNEBOSCHEN WOOD The climax of this stupendous battle came, after three days of comparative quiet, on Wednesday, November 11. For the final stroke at Ypres the Kaiser had brought up the ist and 4th Brigades of the Prussian Guards — thirteen battalions in all, including the ist and 3rd Foot Guards, the Kaiser Franz Grenadier Regiment No. 2, and the Koenigin Augusta Grenadier Regiment No. 4. In the twi- light of early morning the huge column advanced with all the pomp of their parade step against our saHent at Gheluvelt. At this moment the 52nd, who had been reUeved and sent north on the 9th, were in reserve at Verloe- renhoek, on the Ypres-Zonnebeke road. On the morning of the nth they were unpacking their equipment for the first time for weeks, and preparing for a rest, when an urgent message reached them: " The line is broken — the Prussian Guards are through." The few available supports were des- perately needed. The 52nd covered the two miles 2i8 Nonneboschen Wood to Externest as fast as they could go: they arrived to find a strange and bev/ildering scene before them. In the angle of the cross-roads near the rear of the Nonneboschen wood they saw some French guns, silent and apparently deserted; across the road behind them were some English guns, also deserted — their gunners were deployed in front with rifles — " the only men," said their commander, " between the Germans and Ypres — thank God you've come! " The wood itself was full of Prussians, who had broken the ist Division by sheer weight and flowed over their trenches; many of them were now visible on the near edge of the wood, but they seemed un- certain of their direction and they had not yet dis- covered the silent guns. Colonel Da vies had the chance of a hundred years before him, and he took it on the instant. He established the Regimental Headquarters on the right front of the French guns, at the point where the road ran nearest to the rear angle of the wood; D Company (Captain Tolson and Lieutenant Vere Spencer) he stationed for the moment behind the guns as a reserve. B Company (Lieutenant Baines) and C Company (2nd Lieu- tenants Tylden-Pattenson and Titlierington) were to charge, while A Company (Captain Dillon, Lieu- tenant Pepys and 2nd Lieutenant Pendavis) kept up a covering fire on their left flank. The four companies mustered perhaps 350 in all; of the Prussian Guards there were about 800, and the officers of the 52nd as they charged were struck by the immense superiority of the enemy in phy- Nonneboschen Wood 219 sical bulk — our men appeared to be only half their size.^ But there the superiority ended: the Prus- sians had already met the ist Guards Brigade, and though their weight had carried them through the trenches they had lost their sense of direction, their cohesion, and some part of their resolution. They were now face to face with the finest Light Infantry in the world: it is Httle shame to them that their courage and their discipline were not equal to their need. In the hundredth year since Waterloo the 52nd were not out to flinch or fumble; they manoeuvred and fought with the swift precision which alone could honour the memory of Moore and Colbome. The open ground to be covered was some 300 yards; as Baines and Tylden-Pattenson crossed it with their slender converging hues the enemy had their chance, but Dillon's fire pinned them in their covert; then when the two companies had rushed the edge of the wood and were entering the dense undergrowth, he joined in on the left, and as the thin hne went forward, stretched to its utmost, Tolson came on with his company as second line. The whole attack went with the old Light Division click; even the wood of Redinha was not cleared " in more gallant style " than this. The giants made no effective stand; the drive was carried through without a check, our men enjoying it, said one of them, "as if we were all beating the wood for pheasants, at the double." The comparison was > Lieutenant Titherington buried three who were over seven feet in height. 220 Nonneboschen Wood curiously apt: for an officer of the ist Division has described how a remnant of the ist Brigade, hearing the firing in the wood, had posted themselves by their old trenches on the other side, and waited, like the line of guns at a " hot corner." When the beaters approached, the first sign of life was a rise of phea- sants on the edge of the wood, followed by a rush of a few Germans, who were all shot down as they left the covert. The 52nd saw nothing of this; they drove straight out to the front, and found there a great number of killed and wounded, with a few scattered men of the ist Division, and further off a confused mass of Prussians occupying trenches under cover of artillery fire. Here, when the wood was practically cleared, B Company lost their only officer, Lieutenant Baines, wounded by shrapnel in the right shoulder. He was able, however, to walk the two miles back to Regimental Headquarters, escorted by a Prussian officer and five other prisoners of the Guards, who carried his equipment for him. To an English officer of another regiment, who met them at the cross-roads, this procession was, perhaps, the most surprising sight of his life. The front companies of the 52nd were now joined by some of the Northamptonshire Regiment on the right and some of the Connaught Rangers and the 5th Field Company, R.E., on the left. Led by Captain Dillon, they charged the Germans, and took one line of trenches, with some prisoners. They would have taken the second line too, but for the fire of the French guns, which kept shelling the trenches until Nonneboschen Wood 221 dark, in ignorance of our progress. The regiment was now collected and entrenched for the night, to the west of the Polygon wood. The casualties for the day were extraordinarily slight: 2nd Lieut. Jones and four men were killed, and Lieutenant Baines and seventeen men wounded. With this counter-attack of the 52nd the crisis of the first battle of Ypres had passed; the Kaiser's final attempt of November 17 never came so near to success. The fight of the nth assured us of vic- tory, and the victory was in the main our own. It was made possible by the co-operation of the French and Belgians, " and no allies," says Mr. Buchan, " ever fought in more splendid accord. But the most critical task fell to the British troops, and not the least of the gain was the assurance it gave of their quality. They opposed the blood and iron of the Germans with a stronger blood and a finer iron. . . . The steady old regiments of the line revealed their ancient endurance." That is well said: it is enough. A regiment like the 52nd cannot surpass their ancient record; but they can add to it, and keep it fresh in the memory and admira- tion of their countrymen. When the first lists of honours appeared in 1914, those who know the history of the Light Division noted with a familiar pride that of the eight company officers who led the 52nd at Ypres five received the Distinguished Service Order and another the Military Cross. No other single battalion in the army equalled or nearly equalled this achievement; yet even these are but 222 Nonneboschen Wood the honours of the living, and they are no brighter than the unclaimed honours of the dead. Nor, perhaps, is it any honours that the officers of such a regiment most desire. It is easy to believe that they would value most the acknowledgment, in a few plain words from a tried commander, that their great tradition had been kept. If so, the 52nd have already had their wish. When Major-General Haking, C.B., relinquished the command of the 5th Brigade, he wrote a letter of thanks to the regiment in these words: " The rapid and skilful manoeuvring of the bat- talion during the retirement from Mons and the subsequent advance to the Aisne, their defence during the long occupation of the latter, and, above all, their splendid attacks and defence round Ypres, are well known throughout the whole Army, and will later on become a matter of history. The batta- lion has always been celebrated for its attack at Waterloo, but in my opinion it will in future be distinguished above others for its magnificent attack near Ypres. ... I cannot tell you what satisfaction it gives me to be able to record in this brief manner the heroic doings of the battalion during the present campaign, the value of which cannot be exaggerated." {From " The Story of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry," 1915.) St. George's Day 223 ST. GEORGE'S DAY Ypres, 1915 To fill the gap, to bear the brunt With bayonet and with spade, Four hundred to a four-mile front Unbacked and undismayed — What men are these, of what great race, From what old shire or town. That run with such goodwill to face Death on a Flemish down ? Let he ! they bind a broken line : As men die, so die they. Land of the free ! their life was thine, It is St. George's Day. Yet say whose ardour bids them stand At bay by yonder bank, Wliere a boy's voice and a boy's hand Close up the quivering rank. WTio under those all-shattering skies Plays out his captain's part With the last darkness in his eyes And Domum in his heart ? Let he, let he ! in yonder line All names are burned away. Land of his love ! the fame be thine. It is St. George's Day. 24 Spirit of Submarine War THE SPIRIT OF SUBMARINE WAR As with men, so with nations — none becomes utterly base on a sudden, or utterly heroic. Their vices and their virtues are the harvesting of their past. Let us take a single virtue, like courage, which is common to all nations but shows under a different form or colour in each, and so becomes a national characteristic, plainly visible in action. A historical study of British courage would, I believe, show two facts: first, that the peculiar quality of it has per- sisted for centuries ; and, secondly, that if our people have changed at all in this respect, they have only changed in the direction of greater uniformity. Once they had two kinds of courage in war; now they have but one, and that by far the better one. In the old days, among the cool and determined captains of our race, there were always a certain number of hot-heads — " men of courage without discipline, of enthusiasm without reason, of will without science." The best of them, like Sir Richard Grenville, had the luck to die conspicuously, in their great moments, and so to leave us an example of the spirit that defies odds, and sets men above the fear of death. The rest led their men into mad adventures, where they perished to the injury of their cause. Most English- men can understand the pure joy of onset, the freedom of the moment when everything has been given for the hope of winning one objective; but it has been the more characteristic way of our people — at any Spirit of Submarine War 225 rate for the last live centuries — to double courage with coolness, and fight not only their hardest but their best. From Cressy to Waterloo, and from Mons to Arras, we have won many battles by standing steadily and shooting the attack to pieces. Charges our men have made, but under discipline and in the nick of opportunity. The Black Prince charged fiercely at Poitiers; but it was only when he had broken three attacks, and saw his chance to win. The charge of the Worcesters at Gheluvelt, the charge of the Oxfords at Nonneboschen, and a hundred more like them, were as desperate as any "ride of death"; but they were neither reckless nor useless, they were simply the heroic move to win the game. Still more is this the rule at sea. Beatty at Jutland, like Nelson and Collingwood at Trafalgar, played an opening in which he personally risked annihilation ; but nothing was ever done with greater coolness, or more admirable science. The perfect picture of all courage is, perhaps, a great British warship in action; for there you have, among a thousand men, one spirit of elation, of fearlessness, of determination, backed by trained skill and a self-forgetful desire to apply it in the critical moment. The submarine, and the anti- submarine ship, trawler or patrol-boat are, on a smaller scale, equally perfect examples; for there is no hour of their cruise when they are not within call of the critical moment. In the trenches, in the air, in the fleet, you will see the same steady skilful British courage almost universally exemplified. H 226 Spirit of Submarine War But in the submarine war, the disciphne needed is even more absolute, the skill even more delicate, the ardour even more continuous and self-forgetful; and all these demands are even more completely fulfilled. This is fortunate, and doubly fortunate; for the submarine war has proved to be the main battlefield of our spiritual crusade, as well as a vital military campaign. The men engaged in it have been marked out by fate, as our champions in the contest of ideals. They are the patterns and defenders of human nature in war, against those who preach and practise barbarism. Here — and nowhere else so clearly as here — the world has seen the death-struggle between the two spirits now contending for the future of mankind. Between the old chivalry, and the new savagery, there can be no more truce; one of the two must go under, and the barbarians knew it when they cried " Weltmacht oder Niedergang." Of the spirit of the German nation it is not necessary to say much. Everything that could be charged against them has been already proved, by their own words and actions. They have sunk without warning women and children, doctors and nurses, neutrals and wounded men, not by tens or hundreds but by thousands. They have publicly rejoiced over these murders with medals and flags, with songs and school holidays. They have not only broken the rules of international law; they have with un- paralleled cruelty, after sinking even neutral ships, shot and drowned the crews in open boats, that they might leave no trace of their crimes. The men who Spirit of Submarine War 227 have done — and are still doing— these things have courage of a kind. They face danger and hardship to a certain point, though, by their own account, in the last extreme they fail to show the dignity and sanity with which our own men meet death. But their peculiar defect is not one of nerve, but of spirit. They lack that instinct which, with all civilised races, intervenes, even in the most violent moment of conflict or desperation, and reminds the combatant that there are blows which it is not lawful to strike in any circumstances whatever. This instinct — the religion of all chivalrous peoples — is connected by some with humanity, by some with courtesy, by ourselves with sport. In this matter we are all in the right. The savage in conflict thinks of nothing but his own violent will ; the civilised and the chival- rous are always conscious of the fact that there are other rights in the world beside their own. The humane man forbears his enemy ; the courteous man respects him, as one with rights like his own; the man with the instinct of sport knows that he must not snatch success by destroying the very game itself. The civilised nation will not hack its way to victory through the ruins of human life. It will be restrained, if by no other consideration, yet at least by the recollection that it is but one member of a human fellowship, and that the greatness of a part can never be achieved by the corruption of the whole. The German nature is not only devoid of this instinct, it is roused to fury by the thought of it. Any act, however cruel and barbarous, if only it 228 Q-Boats tends to defeat the enemies of Germany, is a good deed, a brave act, and to be commended. The German general who lays this down is supported by the German professor who adds: " The spontaneous and elementary hatred towards England is rooted in the deepest depths of our own being — there, where considerations of reason do not count, where the irrationcd, the instinct, alone dominates. We hate in the Enghsh the hostile principle of our inner- most and highest nature. And it is well that we are fully aware of this, because we touch therein the vital meaning of this War." Before the end comes, the barbarian will find this hostile principle, and will hate it, in the French, the Italians, the Americans — in the whole fellowship of nations against which he is fighting with savage fury. But, to our satis- faction, he has singled us out first; for, when we hear him, we too are conscious of a spontaneous hatred in the depths of our being; and we see that in this we do " touch the vital meaning of this War." {From " Submarine and Anti-Suhmarine, 1918.) Q-BOATS It is not often that any man, or any ship's company, can repeat their best performance and better it; yet Commander Campbell's third victory was followed by a fourth, of which, as the Admiral on his station said truly, it is difficult to speak in sober terms. Four months after Q. 5 had struggled back to port, Q-Boats 229 her men were out again in the Pargust, a merchant vessel on the same Special Service. The ship was going 8 knots in heavy rain and mist, with a fresh southerly breeze and a choppy sea. Like Q. 5, she got what she was looking for — what others run fast and far to avoid. A torpedo was seen coming towards her on the starboard beam. It was apparently fired at very close range, for it had not yet settled down to its depth, but jumped out of the water when only a hundred yards from the ship. This time there was no choice, and no manoeuvring; Pargust received the shot in the engine-room and near the water-line. It made a large rent, filled the boiler-room, the engine-room and No. 5 hold with water, killed a stoker, wounded Engineer Sub-Lieutenant John Smith, R.N.R., and blew the starboard lifeboat into the air, landing pieces of it on the aerial. The alarm had already been sounded and " Aban- don ship" ordered. The three remaining boats — one lifeboat and two dinghies — were lowered, full of men, the ship's helm being put hard a-starboard to get a lee for them. Lieutenant F. R. Hereford, R.N.R., as before, went in charge of them and greatly distinguished himself by the coolness and propriety with which he acted the part of Master of the supposed merchantman. As the last boat was pushing off, the enemy's periscope was seen for the first time, just before the port beam, and about 400 yards from the ship. He turned and came straight on ; but ten minutes later, when only fifty yards from the ship and close to the 230 Q-Boats stern of the lifeboat, he submerged completely and disappeared. His periscope was sighted again a few minutes later, directly astern ; he then steamed to the starboard quarter, turned round and went across to the port beam, turned again towards the ship and hfeboat, and finally, after all this nosing about, broke surface within fifty yards or less. But even now he was extremely cautious, showing only his conning-tower and ends; and when the hfeboat pulled away round the ship's stem he followed close behind, with only one man visible on top of the conning-tower, shouting directions to those below. For the next three minutes of this long game of patience, the strain was intense. Commander Camp- bell was watching the man on the conning-tower care- fully, for as long as he saw him perched up there he knew that he could reserve his fire. Lieutenant Hereford was waiting till he was certain that his captain was in a winning position. As soon as that was attained, he pulled deliberately towards the ship. This annoyed the submarine, whose object was evidently, in case of a fight, to keep the boats as much as possible in the line of fire. He came right up to the surface and began to semaphore to the boats, at the same time training a Maxim on them. But by this time the U-boat was only one point before the ship's beam, with all guns bearing on him at fifty yards' range — Commander Campbell's chance had come. He opened fire with a shot from the 4-inch gun, which struck the base of the conning- Q-Boats 231 tower and also removed the two periscopes. Hit after hit followed, nearly all in the conning-tower, which could no longer be closed. The submarine took a list to port, and several men rushed up, out of the hatch abaft the conning-tower. Then, as the stem began to sink and oil squirted from the boat's sides, the rest of the crew came out, held up their hands and waved in token of surrender. Commander Campbell, of course, ordered "cease fire"; but no sooner had the order been obeyed, than the pirate started to move off on the surface, hoping, though listing to port and down by the stern, and in honour bound a prisoner, to get away in the mist. The Pargtist could not follow, so that she was obliged to open fire again. The U-boat's breach of faith did not save her. In her quick rush, she got to about 300 yards from her captor, whose guns continued to speak straight to her. Then a shot apparently touched off one of her torpedoes — there was an explosion forward, and she fell over on her side. For a moment her bow was seen jutting up sharply out of the water, and the next she was gone. In her reckless rush to escape she had washed overboard her men abaft the conning-tower ; one man went down clinging to her bow, and some who came up the fore-hatch were left struggling in the thick oil. The boats of the Pargtist were sent to the rescue. They had a hard pull to windward in a choppy sea; but they managed to save the only two whom they found alive. The Pargust lay tossing helplessly for nearly four hours. Then H.M.S. Crocus arrived and 232 Q-Boats towed her into port, escorted by another of H.M.'s ships and the U.S.S, Gushing. " It is difficult," says Commander Campbell, "where all did well, to mention individual officers and men, as any one officer or man could easily have spoiled the show. It was a great strain for those on board to have to remain entirely concealed for thirty- five minutes after the ship was torpedoed — especially, for instance, the foremost gun's crew, who had to remain flat on the deck without moving a muscle." And the actual combatants were not the only heroes; for he adds: " The men in the boats, especially the lifeboat, ran a great risk of being fired on by me if the submarine closed them." It is difficult for a grateful country, difficult even for the most generously sympathetic of sovereigns, to deal adequately with a ship's company like this. Every man on board had already been mentioned or decorated, most of them more than once, and by the very names of their successive ships they were already marked out for lasting honour. Still, for our sake rather than for theirs, we may be glad to know that what tokens could be given them, were given. First, Commander Campbell became a Captain, and others were promoted in their various ranks. Then the memorable thirteenth clause of the Statutes of the Victoria Cross was put into operation. By this it is ordained that in the event of a gallant and daring act having been performed by a ship's company, or other body of men, in which the Admiral, General, or other officer commanding such forces may deem that all Q-Boats 233 are equally brave and distinguished, then the officer commanding may direct that one officer shall be selected, by the officers engaged, for the decoration; and in like manner, one man shall be selected by the seamen or private soldiers, for the decoration. Knowing as we do what Captain Campbell felt about his officers and men, we can imagine something of his satisfaction at being able to recommend that the V.C. should be worn on behalf of the whole ship's company by Lieutenant R. N. Stuart, D.S.O., R.N.R., and by Seaman William Williams, D.S.M., R.N.R. The latter, when one of the gun-ports was damaged by the shock of the torpedo, saved it from falling down and exposing the whole secret of the ship, by bearing at great personal risk and with great presence of mind the whole weight of the port until assistance could be given him. The former was the Captain's first lieutenant and second self. These two crosses, and his high rank, were the Captain's own reward ; but to mark the occasion, a bar was also added to his D.S.O. To these men there was now but one thing wanting — ^to show their greatness in adversity : and Fortune, that could deny nothing to Gordon Campbell, gave him this too. Less than two months after the Par- gust's action he was at sea in the Special Service ship Dunraven, disguised as an armed British mer- chant vessel, and zigzagging at eight knots in rough water. A submarine was sighted on the horizon two points before the starboard beam ; but the zigzag course was maintained, and the enemy steered to- wards the ship, submerging about twenty minutes 234 Q-Boats after she was first seen. Twenty-six minutes later she broke surface on the starboard quarter at 5000 yards, and opened fire. Captain Campbell at once ran up the white ensign, returned the fire with his after-gun, a 2 ^-pounder, and ordered the remainder of the crew to take " shell cover." He also gave directions for much smoke to be made, but at the same time reduced speed to seven knots, with an occasional zigzag, to give the U-boat a chance of closing. If he had been the merchantman he seemed, he could in all probabiUty have escaped. He was steaming head to sea, and the submarine's firing was very poor, the shots nearly all passing over. After about half an hour the enemy ceased firing and came on at full speed. A quarter of an hour later he turned broadside on, and reopened fire. The Dunraven's gun kept firing short, intentionally, and signals were made en clair for the U-boat's benefit, such as " Submarine chasing and shelling me " — " Submarine overtaking me. Help. Come quickly! " — and finally, " Am abandoning ship." The shells soon began to fall closer. Captain Campbell made a cloud of steam to indicate boiler trouble, and ordered " Abandon ship," at the same time stopping, blowing off steam, and turning his broadside so that all he did should be visible. To add to the appearance of panic, a boat was let go by the foremost fall on its side. The pirate (thoroughly confident now) closed, and continued his shelling. One shell went through Dunraven's poop, exploding a depth-charge and blowing Lieutenant Charles Bonner, D.S.C., R.N.R., Q-Boats 235 out of his control station. After two more shells into the poop, the U-boat ceased fire again and closed. He was " coming along very nicely " from port to starboard, so as to pass four or five hundred yards away. But in the meantime, the poop was on fire. Clouds of dense black smoke were issuing from it and partially hiding the submarine. It was obvious to Captain Campbell that since the magazine and depth-charges were in the poop, an explosion must soon take place. He was faced with the choice of opening fire through the smoke, with a poor chance of success, or waiting till the enemy should have got on to the weather side. He decided to wait, trusting his men as faithfully as they were trusting him. The U-boat came on, but all too slowly. She was only just passing across Dunraven's stern when the dreaded explosion took place in the poop. The 4-inch gun and gun's crew complete were blown into the air. The gun landed forward on the well-deck, and the crew in various places — one man in the water. This was a misfortune that might well have broken their captain's heart — the submarine had only to steam another 200 yards, and he would have had a clear sight and three guns bearing on her at 400 yards range. Moreover the explosion had started the " Open fire " buzzers at the guns; and the gun on the bridge, which was the only one then bearing, had duly opened fire. The U-boat had already started to submerge, alarmed by the explosion; but it was thought that one hit was obtained on the conning-tower as he disappeared. 236 Q-Boats Captain Campbell's heart was not broken, nor was his natural force abated. Realising that a torpedo would probably come next, he ordered the doctor, Surgeon-Probationer Alexander Fowler, D.S.C., R.N.V.R., to remove all the wounded and lock them up in cabins or elsewhere, so as not to risk detection in " the next part." He then turned hoses on to the flaming poop, where, though the deck was red-hot, the magazine was apparently still intact and danger- ous. At the same time he remembered that a man- of-war had answered his signal for assistance when the explosion took place; and being determined on trying for a second fight, he now signalled to this ship to keep away, as the action was not yet ended. She not only kept away, but kept the ring, by deflect- ing traffic while these invincibles fought the pirate to a finish. The torpedo came at last, from a point about 1000 yards on the starboard side, and it struck abaft the engine-room. Captain Campbell at once ordered a second " Abandon ship " or " Q abandon ship," as he called it; for by it he was professing to completely abandon a ship whose disguise had been detected. He left his guns visible, and sent a second party of men away on a raft and a damaged boat. The poop con- tinued to burn fiercely, and 4-inch shells exploded every few minutes. The submarine put up her peri- scope and circled round at various ranges, viewing the position cautiously. After forty minutes she broke surface directly astern, where no gun would bear upon her, and shelled the Dunraven at a range of Q-Boats 237 a few hundred yards. Nearly every shot was a hit, but some fell near the boats. Two burst on the bridge and did much damage. In another twenty minutes the enemy ceased firing and again submerged. Captain Campbell had now no resource left but his torpedoes, of which he carried two — one on each side. He fired the first as the U-boat steamed past the port side at 150 yards — too short a range for certainty of depth. The bubbles passed just ahead of the periscope, and the enemy failed to notice it. He turned very sharply round the ship's bow and came slowly down the starboard side at three knots. The second torpedo was then fired, but the bubbles passed a couple of feet abaft the periscope. This was cruelly hard luck, for the maximum depth Wcis on ; but there is no doubt that this torpedo, like the other, must have leapt over, from being fired at so close a range. This time the enemy saw his danger, and instantly submerged. Captain Campbell had now lost his last chance of a kill, and was bound to signal urgently for assistance. He did so; but in case the U-boat re- appeared to torpedo or shell again, he arranged for some of his remaining men to be ready to jump over- board in a final panic, leaving still himself and one gun's crew to fight a forlorn hope. This last extremity was not reached. The U.S.S. Noma arrived almost immediately and fired at a periscope a few hundred yards astern until it disappeared. Then came two King's ships, the Attack and Christaphcr. Boats were recalled, the fire extinguished, and everything on 238 Q-Boats board having now exploded, arrangements were made for towing. For twenty-four hours the Christopher bore her burden hke a saint. Then the weather began to tell upon the half-dead ship, and sixty of her crew and her wounded were transferred to the trawler Foss. The next night the sea claimed the Dunraven in unmistakable tones. The Christopher came along- side and brought off her captain and the rest of her crew; and when she rolled end up, gave her a gun- shot and a depth-charge, to take her to her last berth. In reporting the action. Captain Campbell brought specially to notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant Bonner and the 4-inch gun's crew. " Lieutenant Bonner having been blown out of his control by the first explosion, crawled into the gun-hatch with the crew. They there remained at their posts with a fire raging in the poop below, and the deck getting red- hot. One man tore up his shirt to give pieces to the gun's crew, to stop the fumes getting into their throats; others lifted the boxes of cordite off the deck to keep it from exploding, and all the time they knew that they must be blown up, as the second- ary supply and magazine were immediately below. They told me afterwards that communication with the main control was cut off, and although they knew they would be blown up, they also knew that they would spoil the show if they moved; so they remained until actually blown up with their gun. Then when, as wounded men, they were ordered to remain quiet in various places during the second action, they had to lie there unattended and bleeding. The Drifters' Battle 239 with explosions continually going on aboard, and splinters from the enemy's shell-fire penetrating their quarters. Lieutenant Bonner, himself wounded, did what he could for two who were with him in the ward-room. When I visited them after the action, they thought little of their wounds, but only ex- pressed their disgust that the enemy had not been sunk. Surely such bravery is hard to equal." Hard to equal — harder far to speak about! The King said all that can be said: " Greater bravery than was shown by all officers and men on this occasion can hardly be conceived." And again he testified the same by symbols — among them a second bar for Captain Campbell, V.C, D.S.O., R.N.; the Victoria Cross for Lieutenant C. G. Bonner, D.S.C., R.N.R. ; and another, under Article 13, for the 4-inch gun's crew, who named Ernest Pitcher, P.O., to wear it to the honour of them all. The whole ship's company is now starred like a constellation ; but the memory of their service will long outshine their stars. {From " Submarine and Anti-Submarine," 1918.) THE DRIFTERS' BATTLE Our fishermen can show their battles too, battles worthy of the sea-dogs who kept the narrow seas against more worthy enemies. In the Downs, and in the first twilight of a November morning, three of His Majesty's armed drifters — Present Help, Paramount and Majesty — were beginning their daily 240 The Drifters' Battle sweep, when Skipper Thomas Lane, R.N.R., of the Present Help, which was spare ship at the moment, sighted an object one mile distant to the eastward. As day was breaking, she was quickly marked for a pirate submarine — a huge one, with two big guns mounted on deck, one a 4-inch and one a 22- pounder. Nevertheless Present Help, Paramount and Majesty opened fire at once with their 6-pounders, not standing off, but closing their enemy, and con- tinuing to close her under heavy fire until they were hitting her with their own light guns. Even our history can hardly show a grander hne of battle than those three tiny ships bearing down upon their great antagonist; and if U. 48 did not fall to their fire, it is none the less true that her surrender was due in the first place to their determined onset. It was Paramount who took and gave the first knocks. Her searchhght was shot away, and she in reply succeeded in putting one of the pirate's guns out of action. In the meantime — ^and none too soon — Present Help had sent up the red rocket; it was seen by two other armed drifters. Accept- able and Feasible, who were less than two miles off, and by H.M.S. Gipsy, who was four miles away. Skipper Lee, of the Acceptable, immediately sang out "Action," and both boats blazed away at 3000 yards' range, getting in at least one hit on the enemy's conning-tower. At the same moment came the sound of the Gipsy's 12-pounder as she rushed in at full speed. The U-boat started with an enormous, and appar- The Drifters' Battle 241 ently overwhelming, advantage of gun power. She ought to have been a match, twice over, for all six of our little ships. But she was on dangerous ground, and the astounding resolution of the attack drove her off her course. In ten minutes the drifters had actuaUy pushed her ashore on the Goodwin Sands — Paramount had closed to thirty yards! Drake himself was hardly nearer to the galleons. Then came Gipsy, equally resolute. Her first two shots fell short; the third was doubtful, but after that she got on, and the pirate's bigger remaining gun was no match for her 12-pounder. After two hits with common pointed shell, she put in eight out of nine lyddite, smashed the enemy's last gun and set him on fire forward. Thereupon the pirate crew surrendered and jumped overboard. It was now 7.20 and broad dayhght. Lieutenant- Commander Frederick Robinson, of the Gipsy, gave the signal to cease fire, and the five drifters set to work to save their drowning enemies. Paramount, who was nearest, got thirteen, Feasible one, and Acceptable two, of whom one was badly wounded. The Gipsy's whaler was got away, and her crew, under Lieutenant Gilbertson, R.N.R., tried for an hour to make headway against the sea, but could not go further than half a mile, the tide and weather being heavily against them. They brought back one dead body, and one prisoner in a very exhausted condition; afterwards they went off again and collected the prisoners from the other ships. Then came the procession back to port — a quiet and 242 The Kraken's Death Grapple unobtrusive return, but as glorious as any that the Goodwins have ever seen. Full rewards followed, and the due decorations for Skippers Thomas Lane, Edward Kemp and Richard William Barker, But their greatest honour was already their own — they had commanded, in victorious action, His Majesty's Armed Drifters, Present Help, Paramount and Majesty. (From " Suhnarine and Anti-Submarine," 1918.) THE KRAKEN'S DEATH GRAPPLE In such a case, only a lucky chance could bring the duellists together; and even then successful shooting would be difiicult. But a bold submarine commander, having once closed, would improvise a new form of attack rather than let a pirate go his way. E. 50 was commanded by an officer of this temper when she sighted an enemy 'submarine, during a patrol off the east coast. Both boats were submerged at the time; but they recognised each other's nationality by the different appearance of their periscopes. The German had two — thin ones of a light-grey colour, and with an arched window at the top, pecuhar to their Service. The British commander drove straight at the enemy at full speed, and reached her before she had time to get down to a depth of complete invisibility. E. 50 The Kraken's Death Grapple 243 struck fair between the periscopes; her stem cut through the plates of the U-boat's shell and re- mained embedded in her back. Then came a terrific fight, like the death grapple of two primeval mon- sters. The German's only chance, in his wounded condition, was to come to the surface before he was drowned by leakage ; he blew his ballast-tanks and struggled almost to the surface, bringing E. 50 up with him. The English boat countered by flooding her main ballast - tanks, and weighing her enemy down into the deep. This put the U-boat to the desperate necessity of freeing herself, leak or no leak. For a minute and a half she drew slowly aft, bumping E. 50's sides as she did so; then her effort seemed to cease, and her periscopes and conning- towers showed on E. 50's quarter. She was evi- dently filling fast ; she had a list to starboard and was heavily down by the bows. As she sank, E. 50 took breath and looked to her own condition. She was apparently uninjured, but she had negative buoy- ancy and her forward hydroplanes were jammed, so that it was a matter of great difficulty to get her to rise. After four strenuous minutes she was brought to the surface, and traversed the position, search- ing for any further sign of the U-boat or her crew. But nothing was seen beyond the inevitable lake of oil, pouring up like the thick rank life-blood of the dead sea-monster. {From "Submarine and Anti-Submarine," 1918.) 244 Songs of the Fleet SONGS OF THE FLEET (1912) I.— SAILING AT DAWN One by one the pale stars die before the day now, One by one the great ships are stirring from their sleep, Cables all are rumbling, anchors all a-weigh now. Now the fleet's a fleet again, gliding towards the deep. Now the fleet's a fleet again, hound upon the old ways. Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray ; Admirals 0/ old time, bring us on the bold ways ! Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day ! Far away behind us town and tower are dwindling. Home becomes a fair dream faded long ago ; Infinitely glorious the height of heaven is kindling. Infinitely desolate the shoreless sea below. Now the fleet's a fleet again, bound upon the old ways. Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray ; Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways I Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day I Once again with proud hearts we make the old sur- render, Once again with high hearts serve the age to be. Not for us the warm hfe of Earth, secure and tender. Ours the eternal wandering and warfare of the sea. Songs of the Fleet 245 Now the fleet's a fleet again, hound upon the old ways, Splendour of the past comes shining in the spray ; Admirals of old time, bring us on the bold ways ! Souls of all the sea-dogs, lead the line to-day ! II.— THE MIDDLE WATCH In a blue dusk the ship astern Uplifts her slender spars, With golden lights that seem to bum Among the silver stars. Like fleets along a cloudy shore The constellations creep, Like planets on the ocean floor Our silent course we keep. And over the endless plain. Out of the night forlorn Rises a faint refrain, A song of the day to be born — Watch, oh watch till ye find again Life and the land of morn. From a dim West to a dark East Our lines unwavering head, As if their motion long had ceased And Time itself were dead. Vainly we watch the deep below. Vainly the void above, They died a thousand years ago — Life and the land we love. 246 Songs of the Fleet But over the endless plain, Out of the night forlorn Rises a faint refrain, A song of the day to be born — Watch, oh watch till ye find again Life and the land of morn. III.— THE LITTLE ADMIRAL Stand b}^ to reckon up your battleships — • Ten, twenty, thirty, there they go. Brag about your cruisers hke Leviathans — A thousand men apiece down below. But here's just one little Admiral, We're all of us his brothers and his sons, And he's worth, O he's worth at the very least Double all your tons and all your guns. Stand by, etc. See them on the forebridge signaUing — A score of men a-hauling hand to hand. And the whole fleet flying like the wild geese Moved by some mysterious command. Where's the mighty will that shows the way to them, The mind that sees ahead so quick and clear? He's there, Sir, walking all alone there — The little man whose voice you never hear. Stand by, etc. There are queer things that only come to sailor-men; They're true, but they're never understood; And I know one thing about the Admiral, Songs of the Fleet 247 That I can't tell rightly as I should. I've been with him when hope sank under us — He hardly seemed a mortal like the rest, I could swear that he had stars upon his uniform. And one sleeve pinned across his breast. Stand by, etc. Some day we're bound to sight the enemy. He's coming, tho' he hasn't yet a name. Keel to keel and gun to gun he'll challenge us To meet him at the Great Armada game. None knows what may be the end of it, But we'll all give our bodies and our souls To see the little Admiral a-playing him A rubber of the old Long Bowls I Stand by, etc. IV.— THE SONG OF THE GUNS AT SEA Oh hear ! Oh hear ! Across the sullen tide. Across the echoing dome horizon-wide What pulse of fear Beats with tremendous boom ? What call of instant doom. With thunderstroke of terror and of pride, With urgency that may not be denied. Reverberates upon the heart's own drum Come! . . . Come! . . . for thou must comet 248 Songs of the Fleet Come forth, O Soul! This is thy day of power. This is the day and this the glorious hour That was the goal Of thy self-conquering strife. The love of child and wife, The fields of Earth and the wide ways of Thought — Did not thy purpose count them all as nought That in this moment thou thyself mayst give And in thy country's hfe for ever Uve ? Therefore rejoice That in thy passionate prime Youth's nobler hope disdained the spoils of Time And thine own choice Fore-earned for thee this day. Rejoice! rejoice to obey In the great hour of life that men call Death The beat that bids thee draw heroic breath, Deep-throbbing till thy mortal heart be dumb Come! . . . Come! . . . the time is cornel v.— FAREWELL Mother, with unbowed head Hear thou across the sea The farewell of the dead. The dead who died for thee. Greet them again with tender words and grave, For, saving thee, themselves they could not save. War and Poetry 249 To keep the house unharmed Their fathers built so fair, Deeming endurance armed Better than brute despair, They found the secret of the word that saith, " Service is sweet, for all true life is death." So greet thou well thy dead Across the homeless sea, And be thou comforted Because they died for thee. Far off they served, but now their deed is done For evermore their life and thine are one. WAR AND POETRY No one need be surprised if it should appear upon examination that the greatest battle in our history has not produced the greatest poem in our language. The common belief that wars are the prolific seed of literature is a mistaken one. There are conspicuous instances of great wars preceding or accompanying wide outbursts of literary genius, but the relation between the two is not that of cause and effect ; rather they have both sprung from the same stirring of the national character, which, like a soil new fertilised, throws up a quick and vigorous crop of various kinds. If war and literature chance to be two of these simultaneous growths, war will in all likelihood be found to choke and overshadow litera- ture, rather than to feed or support it. 250 War and Poetry But has not war been from the beginning one of the chief subjects of poetry ? Certainly, and it must be so to the end. The sword will always be among the first of the magical symbols that work upon the hearts of mortal men. War can never depart altogether from human life, of whose activities and tragedies it is the copy writ large, whether in noble or in hideous characters. But it is not so clear that this war or that can be the immediate subject of great verse. To its own generation it is too near, too intertwined with glaring realities and confused with disturbing detail. The emotions of the fight, the sacrifice, the triumph, must be remembered in tranquillity — or at least in peace — if they are to be harmonised into anything deserving of the name and the immortality of music. Whether these principles be universally true or not, they are strikingly exemplified by the poems of Trafalgar. A national war for life and death, a national outburst of the highest poetical genius, are to be seen side by side on the grandest scale as the eighteenth century passes into the nineteenth. It must be admitted that the one gave but little mater- ial to the other. The poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron cannot be justly described as war- like or patriotic. Poems of such a kind there are among the rest, but in number and importance they fall infinitely short of the proportion which the events and thoughts of war bore to the life of the time. Even Campbell, whose volume, published in 1809, con- tained " Hohenlinden," " The Battle of the Baltic," and " Ye Mariners of England," made nothing of The War Films 251 a subject far more rich in emotion and in visible beauty than any of these; and Wordsworth, though he wrote an incomparable poem on Nelson's char- acter, had not the dramatic power to handle the supreme tragedy of his life and death. It was not until 1904, a century after the battle, that a drama- tic setting of this theme appeared from the hand of an Englishman of genius; and even then Trafalgar was treated by Thomas Hardy from a professedly impersonal point of view, and as an episode in one part of a titanic spectacle. It is true, and most for- tunate for us, that the subject here dominated the master of the show. The episode glowed back upon the hand that painted it, revealing lines of virile beauty and a rhythmic power which moves to such a sombre march as " The Night of Trafalgar," From Wordsworth, then, from Scott, Rossetti, Hardy, and one or two others, we get the after-thought of a great nation upon a breathless moment in its life. {From " The Year 0/ Trafalgar," 1905.) THE WAR FILMS LIVING pictures of the dead, O songs without a sound, O fellowship whose phantom tread Hallows a phantom ground — How in a gleam have these revealed The faith we had not found. 252 Unlimited War We have sought God in a cloudy Heaven, We have passed by God on earth : His seven sins and his sorrows seven. His wayworn mood and mirth, Like a ragged cloak have hid from us The secret of his birth. Brother of men, when now I see The lads go forth in line, Thou knowest my heart is hungry in me As for thy bread and wine: Thou knowest my heart is bowed in me To take their death for mine. UNLIMITED WAR When I was your age, I loved no stories so well as stories of war. Why then do I give them up ? Be- cause, though I have not changed, war has changed, It still shows the finest qualities of men — it shows them leaving everything they love best in the world, facing dangers and enduring hardships, matching their courage and skill against those of the other side, overcoming difficulties by land and sea, and all this for an idea, the love of their country and that for which their country is fighting, the honour and welfare of mankind. But unfortunately this is not aU that war does: it also shows men at their worst. I am not now speaking of the unheard-of barbarities committed by one side in the late war : I am speaking of certain things done by both sides, and quite fair according to the rules of war, in fact unavoidable if Unlimited War 253 you are to fight at all under modern conditions : mil- lions of men killed or mutilated, millions of homes made desolate, houses and churches, roads and bridges, orchards, pastures, and ploughlands turned to mud and dustheaps — in a word, the life of the world made hideous for years, with the survivors glaring at each other across the ruins. This, as you know, was not always so : nations used to fight by teams, as schools do — a small picked army on this side against a small picked army on that. Even then they did a lot of damage and caused a lot of misery; but the case is a thousand times worse now. Now the whole population of each country goes to war, the whole world is involved, and the nations fight desperately because they fight for their existence — world-power or downfall — ^and they feel that they must hack their way through and stick at nothing to save themselves. Do you think that this kind of fighting can go on? One such war has brought the world to the brink of ruin and starvation : what would another leave us? Can you imagine what would become of your school life if in a football match the whole of both schools played in one big scrimmage, and a hundred boys were killed on each side and a hundred injured for life, and both sides always joined in burning down the buildings of the school on whose ground the game was played? But that would be very much less cruel and absurd than modem war. War then must stop, and you will, I hope, have no more stories of new wars. But you may have good 254 Unlimited War stories for all that — stories of the same races showing the same fine qualities, setting the same endurance and courage and skill against difficulties and dangers, upholding the honour of their country too, and furthering the welfare of all mankind instead of saving part at the expense of the rest. I daresay you will not agree to this right off: you know what you want in a story, you have always got it in stories of war, and you can hardly believe you will find it anywhere else. Well, let us consider what it is that you, and I, have always wanted and found in stories of war. Is it an account of the wounds and miseries our side have inflicted on the other side, or of the sufferings of non-combatants or our own people at home? No, in our stories we have always had to leave out that kind of detail: we wanted to forget the cruel and wasteful part, and think only of three things — ^first the contest, the struggle against odds and obstacles, second the moments of special daring or success, and third and best of all, the men who were the heroes of these struggles and great moments. What did they do, what were they like, how did they feel, how did they come to be what they were, great men for their country, loved and honoured in their own generation and famous for long afterwards ? Now if these are really, as I beUeve they are, the points we looked for in our war stories, we can have them in plenty without going to the wars for them. You will find them all in the lives of our great ex- plorers: the right stuff is there, the stuff that we all want and can never do without. Where will you Unlimited War 255 look for finer men than these, or for more honourable enterprises than those they undertook, or greater dangers and sufferings than theirs, or moments more full of daring and excitement? Every one of them was in truth an army commander, though the army was only a handful of men and was never out to kill. What territories they invaded, these explorers, what campaigns they made, what forced marches, what flanking movements : how they managed their trans- port and commissariat, what risks they took, what casualties they suffered, how they supported each other, and, when disaster came, what lonely and undefeated deaths they died! If any men were ever worth your knowing, these are they : and if you once get to know them intimately in their own records, you will have men to remember and admire all your life : and no possession can be greater than that. There is one more point. Travel and exploration are not only as interesting as war in the ways I have mentioned : they have also another set of characters and experiences which are entirely their own. The explorer often has enemies, but he cannot simply shoot them down — he must conciliate or outwit them without fighting. This is more dangerous, and more exciting — think of Burton, disguised for months and in danger of his life every hour of every day: or of Younghusband riding unarmed into the Tibetan camp, and again through the streets of the Forbidden City, swarming with fierce and hostile monks. Then there is often sheer starvation to be faced: hunting to be done not for sport or exercise, but for the next 256 ■ Unlimited War meal: friends to be backed or rescued at all costs: natives to be traded with, trusted, or guarded against. Perhaps, in the true explorer's story, the natives are even more interesting than the countries they live in. Some of them belong to the ancient races of the East, and can only be understood by a Young- husband or a Burton: others are just wild children — Burke and Wills, Livingstone and Stanley all knew how to get the best out of these: others again hve an ordered but very primitive kind of life, Uke the Red Indians who were so good to Franklin, the men of the Stone Age whom Wollaston describes. Some among them even have names, and stand out as curious and delightful people. Who would not wish to have known Akaitcho and Augustus, Liusan and Wali, the Tongsa Penlop and the Ti Rimpoche? Who would not long for such days of romance as that on which Wollaston and his companions at last found their way through the forest labyrinth and stood in the pygmy village: or that on which the boy of twenty-four started alone across the vast Mongolian plain in the first freshness of an April morning? Perhaps the start is the best part of a journey: it is fine to reach your goal, and to come home in triumph; but finest, I suspect, to be just going across the threshold. " How much better," as Scott said at the end, " than lounging in too great comfort at home!" {From "The Book of the Long Trail," 1919.) PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY J. B. PEACE, M.A. AT THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS DATE DUE 1 1 1 1 CAYLORO PRINTED IN U.S.A. UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 599 946 i