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1Gutenberg eBook Projesi, YaÅŸam ve Mektuplarla Ä°lgili Notlar, Joseph Conrad
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4Bu eKitap herhangi bir ücret ödemeden herkesin kullanımı içindir.
5neredeyse hiçbir kısıtlama yok. Kopyalayabilir, verebilirsiniz ya da
6Proje Gutenberg Lisansı kapsamında yeniden kullanım
7bu e-Kitap ile veya çevrimiçi olarak www.gutenberg.net adresinde
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13Başlık: Yaşam ve Mektuplarla İlgili Notlar
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16Yazar: Joseph Conrad
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18Yayın Tarihi: 25 Mart 2005 [e-Kitap # 1143]
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20Dil ingilizce
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22Karakter seti kodlaması: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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25*** PROJE GUTENBERG EĞİTİMİNİN YAŞAM VE MEKTUPLARDA NOTLARIN BAŞLATILMASI ***
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32David Price tarafından 1921 J. M. Dent edition tarafından yazılmıştır, e-posta
33ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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39HAYAT VE MEKTUPLARDA NOTLAR
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42İçindekiler:
43
44Yazarın notu
45
46BÖLÜM I - Mektuplar
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48KÄ°TAPLAR - 1905.
49HENRY JAMES - BÄ°R UYGULAMA - 1905
50ALPHONSE DAUDET - 1898
51GUY DE MAUPASSANT - 1904
52ANATOLE FRANSA - 1904
531917 - Turgenyev
54STEPHEN VÄ°NCÄ° - TARÄ°HLERDEN BÄ°R NOT - 1919
55DENÄ°ZÄ°N TALESI - 1898
56MALAYA'DA BİR GÖZLEMCİ - 1898
57MUTLU BÄ°R AÄžACI - 1910
58YAŞAM ÖTESİ - 1910
59EKSEN EĞİTİMİ - 1910
60OYUNCU SINIRI - BÄ°R UYGULAMA - 1907
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62BÖLÜM II - Hayat
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64AUTOCRACY VE SAVAÅž - 1905
65BÖLÜMÜN HATASI - 1919
66POLONYA SORUNUNDA BÄ°R NOT - 1916
67POLONYA REVÄ°ZE - 1915
68Ä°LK HABERLER - 1918
69YAPILDI - 1918
70GELENEK - 1918
71GÃœVEN - 1919
72UÇUŞ - 1917
73_TÄ°TANÄ°K KAYIPLARINDA BAZI YANSIMALAR - 1912
74Ä°LGÄ°LÄ° SORGULARIN BELÄ°RLENMESÄ°
75_-- 1912 _TITANIC
76OCEAN LINERLERÄ°N KORUNMASI - 1914
77DOSTU BÄ°R YER
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81
82YAZARIN NOTU
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84
85Bu koleksiyon için özür dilemem gerekip gerekmediğini bilmiyorum
86hayatla daha fazla ilişkisi olan harflerden daha fazlası var. Temyiz başvurusu yapıldı
87düzenli akıllar. Bu, bu konuda açık olmak için bir toplama sürecidir.
88Bu, şeylerin doğasından, prematüre olarak kabul edilemez.
89Gerçek şu ki, benim hissettiğim bir his yüzünden kendim yapmak istedim
90değersizlik veya değersizlik ile ilgili hiçbir şey
91bunun kapakları içinde toplanan küçük (ama kırılmamış) parçalar
92hacmi. Tabii ki bir süpürge almış olabilirim.
93bunun hakkında hiçbir şey söylemeden onu kullandı. Bu kesinlikle bir yol
94toplamak.
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96Ama bütün bunları tedavi etmemi beklemek çok fazla olurdu.
97çıkarılabilir çöp olarak madde. Bütün bu şeylerin hayatımda bir yeri vardı.
98Bunlardan herhangi birinin alınıp alınmadığı ve
99raf - bu raf - Söyleyemem ve açıkçası, aklıma izin vermedim
100soru üzerinde durmak. Kendimi bir havayla düşünmekten korkuyordum
101bu benim hislerimi incitirdi; o yazı parçaları için, ne olursa olsun
102Onların yorumuyla ilgili yorum, erkeğin karakterini değerlendirir.
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104Ve işte burada, onlar, ama yapmak için iyi bir şeydi, ama,
105hiçbir şekilde cilalanmadı, yıldan '98 yılına kadar uzanan '20, ince
106Gerçekten masum tutumların dizisi (böyle bir süre için): Conrad
107edebi, Conrad politik, Conrad anımsatan, Conrad tartışmalı.
108İyi evet! Tek kişilik bir gösteri mi - yoksa sadece bir adamın gösterisi mi?
109
110Bu Şekiller ve Nesneler arasında bulunmayacak tek şey
111vefat etti, Conrad _en pantoufles_. Bu bir
112anayasal yetersizlik. _Schlafrock und pantoffeln_! Bu deÄŸil! Asla!
113. . . Belli bir Güney Amerika gibi övünmeye cesaret edip etmediğimi bilmiyorum
114Hiç kimse, hiç bir savaş veya barış aciliyetinin bulunmadığını söylemişti
115"onun botları ile"; ama ne zaman çeşitli şeyler söyleyebilirim
116Bu kitapta sözü edilen dergilerden çıkıp çıkmam için beni çağırdı
117kişisel düşüncelerin trompet ya da konuşan dalgın lute grev
118Geçmiş, her zaman önce botlarımı çekmeye çalıştım. Ben yapmak istemedim
119Allah bilir! Editörlerim, kime teşekkür ettiğimi bildirmek için teşekkür ederim.
120Beni çoğunlukla nezaketle, kısmen de rüşvetle gerçekleştirdi. İyi evet!
121Rüşvet? Ne bekleyebilirsin? Ben asla daha iyi gibi davrandım
122Bir sonraki sokakta, hatta aynı sokakta insanlar.
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124Bu hacim (bu utanç verici tanıtım yorumları dahil)
125kamuya _deshabille_ için geleceğim gibi; ve belki de yapacak
126daha fazla vermezse, erkeğin daha iyi bir vizyonuna yardımcı olacak bir şey
127sırtının bir parçasının kısmi görünüşünden, biraz tozlu (sonra
128toplama süreci), biraz eğik ve dünyadan çekilme
129yorgunluk veya yanlışlıktan dolayı değil, başka sebeplerden dolayı
130yardımcı oldu: yaprakları düşer, su akar, saat ile keneler
131Gözlemiş olman gereken o korkunç acımasız cömertlik
132salonda saatin saatini geçiyor. Bunun gibi sebeplerden dolayı. Evet! O
133Recedes. Ve bu, bir tane daha gözden geçirme şansıydı - hatta
134kendi gözlerim
135
136Yine de bu cildin Harf adı verilen bölümü açıklıyor.
137kendi varlığını haklı çıkardığını söylemiyormuş gibi davranma. İddia ediyor
138ait olduğuna inandığım konuşma hakkı dışında kendi savunmasında hiçbir şey
139Trappist manastırının dışındaki herkese. Girişim yaptığım bölüm
140Kısacık, Hayat'ı aramak için belki de kendini haklı gösterebilir.
141Çeşitli gazetelerin dahil olduğu duyguların duygusal samimiyeti
142bu kafa altında onların kökeni vardır. Ve olaylar ile ilgili olduğu gibi
143Herkesin bir randevusu vardır, onlar işaret işaretlerinin doğası vardır
144düşüncelerim çeşitli çaprazları ele geçirmeye mecburdu
145yollar. Herhangi bir kimse seçiminde herhangi bir tutarlılık tespit ederse, bu
146Sadece bilgeliğin onunla hiçbir ilgisi olmadığını kanıtlama kanıtı olacaktır.
147Doğru ya da yanlış olsun, içgüdü tek başına değişmezdir; sadece bir gerçek
148onun doğal gizemine daha derin bir gölge ekler. Görünümünü
149bu parçalar ilk bakışta ortaya çıkabilecek entellektüellik sadece
150kelimelerin düzenlenmesi sonucu. Orada bulunabilecek mantık
151sadece dilin mantığı. Ama işe yaramama gerek yok. Orada
152herkesin yokluğunu algılayacak kadar çok sayıda insan olacak
153bu sayfalardan bilgelik. Ama insan sempatiklerinde yeterince inanıyorum
154çok azının samimiyetlerini sorgulayacağını hayal etmek. Her neyse
155acı çekmiş olabileceğim sanrılar,
156Burada yorumlanan gerçeklerin doğası. Onların yanlış değerlendirilmiş olabilir
157içe aktarma: ama bu kesin olarak beklenen bir tür hatadır
158tolerans miktarı.
159
160Daha önce hiç yayınlanmayan bu koleksiyonun tek makalesi
161Lehçe Sorununun Notu. Bir talebiyle yazılmıştır.
162Özel olarak gösterilecek arkadaş ve onun "Koruyucusu" fikri,
163Durumun kritik niteliğine güçlü anlamda, tarafından şekillendi
164zamanın gerçek koşulları. Saat yaklaşık bir ay önceydi.
165Roumania'nın savaşa girmesi ve dürüst olmak gerekirse,
166şimdiden gelen olayların gölgesi, benim üzüntüsüne izin veremedim
167planımın yapısına girip yok et. Hala buna inanıyorum
168İçinde bir şey vardı. Kesinlikle ile tahsil edilebilir
169inanç eksikliğinin ortaya çıkması ve kendini fırlatmaya açık
170birçok taş; ama benim neslim pratikti ve bende
171örtülü olarak ele alınan insanların önyargılı fikirleri,
172ve ayrıca onların haksızlık umutları. Haklı değillerdi ama kim
173Onlara anlatmak için? Yani kim yeterince bilgili ve yeterince inandırıcı
174Onlara zihinsel tutumlarının ciddiyetini gösterin? Bütün atmosfer oldu
175Sadece imkansız olduğu kadar yanlış olmayan vizyonlarla zehirlendi.
176Aynı zamanda belirsiz ve itirafsız korkuların da bir sonucuydular.
177onların gücü. Kendim için, kalbimde çok belirsiz bir korkuyla, ben
178karakterlerine hitap etmemek için dikkatliydi çünkü ben istemedim
179Okunmamış olarak atılacak not. Ve sonra bunu hatırlamak zorundaydım.
180imkansız bazen kafa karışıklığına geçmek için gelme hilesi vardır
181Akıllar ve sık sık kalplerin ezilmesi için.
182
183Diğer gazetelerden söyleyecek özel bir şeyim yok. Onlar onlar
184ve şimdi utanıyorum ki bir günahkârdan çok utanıyorum
185önemsiz kesintiler. Ve bu formdaki görünümlerine göre ben
186Bütün günahkarların kendilerine karşı olan hoşgörüsünü iddia ediyorlar.
187başlıklı.
188
189J. C.
1901920.
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192
193
194
195BÖLÜM I - DERSLER
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197
198KÄ°TAPLAR - 1905.
199
200
201BEN.
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204"Bu yazarın kitaplarını okumadım ve eğer onları okursaydım
205Ne hakkında olduklarını unuttular.
206
207Bu sözler bizim aramızda değil, bir bütün olarak dile getirilmiştir.
208Yüz yıl önce, kamuoyunda, adaletten, bir sivil tarafından
209yargıç. Belediye yöneticilerimizin sözleri bir ciddiyete sahip ve
210Diğer ölümlülerin sözlerinden çok daha önemlisi, çünkü belediyemiz
211yöneticiler diğer tüm valilerin ve ustalarımızın temsil ettiğinden daha fazladır.
212Topluluğun ortalama aklı, mizaç, duygusu ve erdemidir. Bu
213genelleme, ebediyen çıkarları doğrultusunda derhal söylenmesi gerekir
214adalet (ve yakın dostluk), Amerika Birleşik Devletleri için geçerli değildir
215Amerika. Orada, uzun ve çaresiz öfkelere inanabiliyorsa
216günlük ve haftalık basınları, belediye yöneticilerinin çoğunluğu
217özellikle baskılanamaz bir tür hırsızlar olmak. Ama bu arada. Benim
218endişe, ortalama mizaçtan ve
219büyük ve varlıklı bir toplumun ortalama bilgeliği ve bir sivil tarafından dile getirilen
220Açıkça korkmadan ve suçsuzca yargılanmak.
221
222İtiraf etmeliyim ki temkinli olmaktan öfkeleniyorum. "BEN
223kitapları okumadım, "diyor ve hemen ekliyor" ve eğer
224Onları okudum onları unuttum. "Bu mükemmel bir uyarıdır.
225onun stili: bu, yapay değildir ve manevi samimiyetin damgasını taşır. Gibi
226Bildirilen bir bildirinin bu bildirisinin okunması kolay ve değil
227inanması zor. Pek çok kitap okunmadı; hala daha var
228unutuldu. Yurttaşlık hitabının bir parçası olarak bu beyanname
229çarpıcı şekilde etkili. Popüler olanın eğilimi ile düşecek şekilde hesaplandı
230akıl, unutkanlığın her türüne aşina, aynı zamanda güce de sahip
231düşünce trenine başlarken ince bir duyguyu karıştırmak - ve
232İnsan konuşmasından daha büyük bir kuvvet beklenebilir mi? Ama içinde
233Bu deklarasyonun mükemmel olduğu için doğallık, çünkü
234ne olursa olsun unutmak bir mezar City Baba için daha doğal bir şey
235Bir zamanlar - bir süre önce okuduğu kitaplar - baştan çıkarıcı gençliğinde belki - hakkındaydı.
236
237Ve söz konusu kitaplar romanlar, ya da her halükarda,
238romanları. Bu yüzden dikkatli davranıyorum (şahane örneğimi takiben)
239çünkü korkmadan ve mümkün olduğunca uzak kalmak istemekten
240suçlamadan, bir keresinde onları okumadığımı itiraf ediyorum.
241
242Sahip değilim; ve okuduğu söylenen milyon kişi veya daha fazlası
243Onlarla hiç tanışmadım, berrak sergi yeteneği ile
244bana ne olduklarına bağlı bir hesap vermek için yeterince gelişti
245hakkında. Ama onlar insanlığın kitap, parça ve parseli, ve
246Onların giderek artan, cazip çokluğu, saygı duymaya değer,
247hayranlık ve merhamet.
248
249Özellikle şefkatli. Uzun zaman önce bu kitapların söylendi
250onların kaderini al. Onlar var ve insanın kaderine çok benziyor.
251Bizimle, şiddetli ve ihtiyatlı ya da ihtişamın büyük bir hoşgörüsünü paylaşıyorlar.
252adalet ve anlamsız zulüm - sükunet ve yanlış anlama -
253hak edilmemiş başarının utancı. Tüm erkeklerin cansız nesnelerinden
254kreasyonlar, kitaplar bizim için en
255Düşünceler, emelleri, öfkelerimizi, yanılsamalarımızı, bizim sadakatimizi
256doğruluk ve hataya doğru sürekli eğilmemiz. Ama en önemlisi onlar
257Hayattaki güvencesiz beklemede bize benziyor. Bir köprü inşa
258köprü inşa sanatının kurallarına göre bir
259uzun, onurlu ve yararlı bir kariyer. Ama onun gibi iyi bir kitap
260Köprü doğduğu günlerde belirsiz bir şekilde yok olabilir. Sanatı
261Yaratıcıları, onlara bir andan daha fazlasını vermek için yeterli değildir.
262Huzursuzluktan, ilhamdan ve makyajdan doğan kitapların
263İnsan akıllarının, Muses'ın en çok seveceği şeylerin hepsinden daha fazla yattığı
264Diğerleri erken ölüm tehdidi altında. Bazen kusurları olacak
265onları kurtar. Bazen görmek için bir kitap fuarı - bir yüce kullanmak için
266ifade - bireysel ruhları yoktur. Açıkçası bu tür bir kitap
267Ölmez Sadece toza dönüşebilir. Ama kitapların en iyisi
268erkeklerin sempatisinden ve anılarından vazgeçme yaşamış
269imha eşi, erkek anıları kısa ve onların sempati
270itiraf etmeliyiz, çok dalgalı, ilkesiz bir duygu.
271
272Formüller arasında kitaplarımız için sonsuz yaşamın sırrı bulunamadı.
273Sanatın, vücudumuzun reçeteli bir kombinasyonundan daha fazlası
274ilaçlar. Bu, bazı kitapların yaşamı sürdürmeye layık olmadığı için değil.
275ama sanatın formülleri şey değişkenine bağımlı olduğu için
276dengesiz ve güvenilmez; insan sempatileri, önyargılar, beğeni üzerine
277ve erdem ve uygunluk duygusu üzerine
278kendi içinde yıkılmaz olan inançlar ve teoriler her zaman değişir
279formları - çoğu zaman bir nesil neslin hayatında.
280
281
282II.
283
284
285Tüm kitaplardan, Muses'ın sevmesi gereken romanlar, ciddi bir iddiada bulunurlar.
286merhametimize. Romancı sanatı basittir. Aynı zamanda
287tüm yaratıcı sanatların en zorlu, en sorumlu
288hizmetkârlarının ve selamlayanların ezgileriyle gizlenmiş olan
289Öncelikle zihni ve kalbin sorununa getirmeye
290sanatçı. Sonuçta, bir dünya yaratılması küçük bir girişim değildir.
291belki de ilahi yetenekli olanlar hariç. Gerçekte her romancı gerekir
292Kendisi için bir dünya yaratarak başlar, büyük ya da küçük
293dürüstçe inanıyorum. Bu dünya kendi başına başka türlü yapamaz.
294görüntü: bireysel ve biraz gizemli kalmak için kader ve
295Deneyime aÅŸina olan bir ÅŸeye benzemelidir,
296düşünceleri ve okuyucularının hisleri. Kurgunun kalbinde,
297ismin en azına bile değin, bir çeşit doğruluk bulunabilir - eğer
298Hayattaki çocukluk tiyatrosunun sadece gerçeği,
299Dumas'ın romanları baba. Ama insan inceliğinin adil gerçeği
300Henry James'in romanlarında bulundu; ve komik, korkunç gerçek
301insanın muhabbeti yaşamın varoluş ganimetleri arasında gevşemeye
302Balzac tarafından yaratılan korkunç dünya. Mutluluk peşinde koşmak
303akıllıca tarafından istifa veya isyan yoluyla yasal ve hukuka aykırı
304sözleşmelerin manipülasyonu ya da
305Son bilimsel teori, yasal olarak geçerli olan tek temadır
306romancı tarafından geliştirilen romancı tarafından geliştirilen
307Dünyanın krallığının tehlikeleri arasında insanlık. Ve krallık
308bu dünyanın kendisi, kendi bireylerinin ayakta durduğu zemin,
309yanılmak ya da ölmek, sadık kayıt planına girmelidir. için
310Bütün bunları uyumlu bir anlayışla birleştirmek büyük bir başarıdır; ve hatta
311bunu kasıtlı olarak ciddi bir niyetle denemek, anlamsız değil
312cahil bir kalbin istilası, onurlu bir hırs. Onun için
313aptalların acele etmeye istekli olabileceği sakin bir şekilde adım atmak için biraz cesaret gerektirir.
314Bir zamanlar dikkat çekici ve başarılı bir Fransız romancı olarak
315kurgu, "C'est un art _trop_ difficile."
316
317Romancının, onunla başa çıkabilme yeteneğinden şüphe etmesi doğaldır.
318görev. Bundan daha devasa olduğunu hayal ediyor. Ve yine edebi
319İnsan faaliyetinin meşru biçimlerinden sadece biri olan yaratılışın hiçbiri yoktur.
320değer ancak tam olarak tanınmaması şartıyla
321tüm daha farklı eylem biçimleri. Bu durum bazen
322Sık sık, özellikle de gençliğinde, mektup adam tarafından unutulmuş
323kendi aralarında kendine özel üstünlük iddiasında bulunma eğiliminde
324İnsan aklının diğer görevleri. Ayetin ve düzyazının kütlesi
325Buradaki parıltılı ışıltının parıltısıyla burada ve burada parıldayarak
326insan emeğinin özel bir önemi yoktur. Hiçbir belirleyici yoktur
327başka herhangi bir sanatsal için varlığını daha fazla formül
328başarı. Geri kalanları ile unutulmaya,
329belki de en ince iz bırakmadan. Bir romancı nerede
330Diğer düşünce alanlarında çalışanlara karşı avantajı onun ayrıcalığına sahiptir.
331Özgürlük - ifade özgürlüğü ve onun itiraf özgürlüğü
332en içteki inançları -
333dolma kalem.
334
335
336III.
337
338
339Hayal gücünün özgürlüğü, en kıymetli mülk sahibi olmalıdır.
340romancı. Bazılarının fetüs dogmalarını keşfetmek için gönüllü olarak denemek
341Kendi özgür çalışmalarında romantik, gerçekçi ya da doğal inanç
342İlham, insan sapkınlığına layık olan bir hiledir.
343bir saçmalık icat etmek, onun için bir soykırımı bulmak için çabalar
344seçkin atalar. Olduğunda aşağı zihinlerin zayıflığıdır.
345yeteneklerinden emin olmayanların kurnaz aygıtı değil
346Bir okulun otoritesi tarafından ona parlaklık katmayı amaçlıyoruz. Böyle
347Örneğin, bir peygamber için Stendhal'i ilan eden yüksek rahipler
348natüralizm Fakat Stendhal'in kendisi herhangi bir sınırlama kabul etmeyecekti.
349onun özgürlüğü. Stendhal'in zihni birinci düzendeydi. Onun ruhu yukarıda
350tuhaf bir Stendhalesque scorn ve öfke ile azgın olmalıdır. İçin
351gerçek şu ki, bir tür entelektüel korkaklık gizler
352edebi formüllerin arkasında. Ve Stendhal, son derece cesurdu.
353Çok az insanın okuduğu iki büyük romanı bir ruhla yazdı.
354korkusuz özgürlüğün
355
356Sanatçı için kurguda iddia ettiğim söylenemez.
357Ahlaki Nihilizm özgürlüğü. Ondan birçok inanç isteğini isterim
358Bunlardan ilki, ölümsüz bir umudun peşinde olacaktı; ve umut,
359itiraz edilmeyecek, tüm çaba göstergesini ima edecek ve
360feragat. Bu, sihirli güce Tanrı'nın güvendiği biçimidir ve
361Bu dünyanın yaşamına ait ilham. Biz eğimliyiz
362mükemmellik yolunun entelektüel olarak olduğunu unutun
363duygusal, alçakgönüllülükten ayırt edilir. Biri ne kadar umutsuzca hissediyor?
364ilan edilen karamsarlıkta çoraklık sadece kibirdir. Sanki sanki
365Birçok insan tarafından çeşitli zamanlarda yapılan bir keşif var.
366Dünya, modernin bazılarına karşı gurur ve kutsal bir sevinç kaynağıydı.
367yazarlar. O akıl çerçevesi, yaklaşmaya uygun olanı değil.
368ciddi olarak kurgu sanatı. Bir yazar verir - iyilik sadece bilir
369Neden - kendi üstünlüğünün sevinçli hissi. Ve daha fazlası yok
370Onun mutlak sadakatine karşı böyle bir heyecandan daha tehlikeli
371Bir yazarın en yüceltilmiş halde tutması gereken duygu ve hisler
372yaratılış anları.
373
374Sanatsal anlamda ümitli olmak gerekirse,
375dünya güzeldir. İmkansız olduğuna inanmak için yeterlidir.
376onun yapılması. Hayali düşüncenin uçuşuna izin verilebilirse
377Bir romancı olarak insanlık için birçok ahlaktan daha üstün olmak
378kendini diğer erkeklere üstün bir öz olarak düşünürse
379Çağrının ilk koşulu. Sözlerin armağanına sahip olmak böyle bir şey değildir.
380büyük sorun. Uzun menzilli bir silahla donatılmış bir adam
381avcı ya da bir savaşçı sadece bir itfaiyenin sahibi tarafından; Diğer birçok
382karakter ve mizaç nitelikleri onu ya
383biri veya diğeri. Yüzde bir ifadesi olan
384Bin belki de sanatın uzak ve uzak işareti olabilir
385insanlık ile ilişkilerinde ona bir
386onların belirsiz erdemlerine ihale tanıma. Ona sahip olmazdım
387küçük başarısızlıklarıyla sabırsızlanıyor ve hatalarından mahrum kalıyorlar. ben
388onun bu insanlıktan çok şükretmesini beklemezdi.
389kaderde gösterildiği gibi kader, ona tasvir etmek için ona açıktır
390gülünç ya da korkunç. Ona büyük görünmesini isterdim
391hiçbir şekilde olmayan erkek fikirleri ve önyargılarında affetme
392Kötü niyetli olmanın sonucu, ancak eğitimlerine, sosyal
393statü, hatta meslekleri. İyi sanatçı beklememeli
394ayağının tanınması ve onun dehasının hiçbir hayranlığı yoktur, çünkü onun tokluğu
395güçlükle değerlendirilebilir ve onun dehası anlamına gelmez
396okur-yazar olmayanlara, onların korkunç bilgeliğinden bile
397Öldürülmüş ölüler, şimdiye kadar, cansızlıkları ve platürleri değil, hiçbir şeyi itiraf etmemişlerdir. ben
398onun sempatiklerini sabırlı ve sevgiyle büyütmesini isterdim
399zihinsel güçte büyürken gözlem. Tarafsız
400yaşam pratiği, herhangi bir yerde, sanatı için mükemmellik sözü
401Bunu reçetelendirmeye çalışan saçma formüller yerine bulunabilir
402ya da bu özel teknik ya da anlayış yöntemi. Bırak olgunlaşsın
403Bu dünyanın şeyleri arasındaki hayal gücünün gücü,
404işini beslemek ve bilmek ve onun çağrısını yapmaktan kaçınmak
405Bilindiği bazı mükemmelliğin cennetinden ilham kaynağı.
406hiçbir şey değil. Ve ben ona gelecek olan gururlu yanılsamaları karıştırmayacağım
407Bazen bir yazar için: başarısının neredeyse bir yanılsamaya sahip olduğu yanılsaması
408rüyasının büyüklüğüne eşittir. Başka ne için onu verebilir
409huzur ve göğsüne sarılmanın kuvvetli bir şey olarak
410insan, erdem, kendi Åžehrinin rectitude ve sagacity, ilan
411Bir Klavyenin Ağzı aracılığıyla basit bir ifadeyle: "Bende
412Bu yazarın kitaplarını okumaz ve eğer onları okursam unutmuşumdur
413. . ."
414
415
416
417HENRY JAMES - BÄ°R UYGULAMA - 1905
418
419
420Kritik fakülte, Bay Henry James'in büyüklüğünden önce tereddüt ediyor.
421iş. Kitapları, rafları üzerinde erişilebilirliği olan bir yerde duruyor.
422sık sık komünyonun alışkanlığını ilan eder. Ama tüm kitapları değil. Orada
423"ustalarımız" gibi, bugüne kadar toplanmış bir baskı yoktur
424tarafından sağlandı; buckram ya da yarım buzağıda düzgün bir dizi satır koymadan
425bütünlük için acele bir iddia ve aklıma bir ipucu aktarıyor
426Bütün bunların olduğu bu alanın kaderine bir teslimiyetin kesinliği
427zaferler kazanıldı. Bay Henry için hiçbir şey yapılmadı.
428James'in Ä°ngiltere'deki zaferleri.
429
430Bizim gibi bir dünyada, her türlü harika, çok acı veren biri
431sadece bağlar üzerinde çorak marveling kendini yormayın, yoktu
432Aslında, ya da daha doğrusu maddi gerçeğin yokluğunun, davada öne çıkan
433yazılarının sayıldığı (iyi veya kötü için) diğer erkeklerin -
434doğrudan doğruya ruhsal ve entelektüel bir ifadeyi ifade eder; Bir kaza
435- Sanırım - yayıncılık işi sembolik bir anlam kazanıyor
436olumsuz doğası. Çünkü, kesin olarak, Bay Henry'nin bedeninde.
437James'in çalışmasında, nihai bir öneri yok, hiçbir ipucu yok.
438teslimiyet, hatta teslim olma olasılığı bile, kendi kazancına
439usta olduğu o alanda başarı. Mutlu, asla olmayacak
440bütünlüğü talep edebilir; ve bir an için itiraf etmeliydi
441Kendini cehalet, o kim için çok zihin tarafından inanılmayacaktı
442Böyle bir itiraf doğal olarak ifade edilirdi. Düşünmek imkansız
443Bay Henry James, aksi halde acımasızlıktan daha "tamam" olmaya başladı.
444Mantığı anlamında, kesinliği anlamsız olan ortak kaderimiz
445Maddi bir düzene sahip olmak, düşen bir taş mantığı.
446
447Bay Henry James'in hangi mürekkebin kalemini bıraktığını bilmiyorum;
448Gerçekten de geç duyduğumu duydum; ama biliyorum ki onun
449Akıl, entelektüel çeşmeden akan sulara batırılır
450gençlik. Bir şey - bir ayrıcalık - bir mucize - ne olacak - tam olarak değil
451Okuduğumuz gibi çalışan en ustalardan gizli. Sahip olanlar için
452Ayaklarının kalması lütuftur. Yirmi yıl sonra
453Bay Henry James'in çalışmasında özenli bir şekilde tanıştı.
454Bütün kişisel duyguların birbirinden ayrı olduğu hissini veren mutlak inanç
455İnsanın sanatsal varoluşuna mutluluk. Eğer şükran varsa, biri gibi
456onu tanımladı, gelmek için canlı bir duyum hissi, çok kolay olur
457Büyükelçilerin yazarı için minnettar olmak - onun en son adını vermek
458Eserleri. İyilerin geleceğinden emin olabilirsiniz; bu yardımseverliğin baharı olacak
459Asla kurutmayınız. İlham akışı akıcı bir şekilde akar.
460kuraklık döneminden etkilenmemiş, önceden belirlenmiş yön, inkar edilmemiş
461Açıkça görüldüğü gibi, diyarın topraklarının fırtınaları tarafından
462kendi şiddetine karşı şiddet, asla kendi kendine geri koşma, yeni açılma
463zengin bir şekilde yaşadığı ülke üzerinden kursun her aşamasında vizyonlar
464Doğurganlığı bizim için, bizim kararımız için, bizim için
465keşfetmek. Aslında, sihirli bir bahardır.
466
467Bu cümle ile çok yıllık baharın metaforu,
468Bay Henry'ye uygulandığı gibi akan suların çekilmez gençleri
469James'in ilham kaynağı düşebilir. Kendi hacmi ve zorlamak
470Onun işi görkemli bir nehir yerine karşılaştırılabilir. Tüm yaratıcı sanatlar
471Sihir, ikna edici, aydınlatıcı formlarda görünmeyenlerin çağrıştırılmasıdır.
472insanoğlunun edisyonu için tanıdık ve şaşırtıcı,
473varoluş koşullarını en çok dikkate alan
474gerçeğin önemsiz gelgitleri.
475
476Özünde eylem, bir yazarın yaratıcı sanatı olabilir
477çapraz ateşler karşı karanlıkta yapılan kurtarma çalışmaları ile karşılaştırıldığında
478büyük bir çokluğun hareketini sallayan rüzgar. Bu kurtarma işi, bu
479adil kelimelerle gizlenmiş, türbülansın yok olma aşamalarının koparılması
480Doğal belirsizliğin, mücadele biçimlerinin olabileceği bir ışığa dönüşmesi
481Görüldüğü üzere, ele geçirilen, mümkün olan tek kalıcılık formuna sahip olan
482Bu göreceli değerler dünyası - belleğin kalıcılığı. Ve
483çokluk onu da açıkça hissediyor; Bireyin talebi nedeniyle
484sanatçı, aslında, "Beni kendimden çıkar!" anlam
485Çabuk bozulan ışığımdan çürümez ışığın ışığına
486bilinç. Ama her şey göreceli ve ışığın
487bilinç sadece kalıcıdır, sadece şeylerin en kalıcısı
488Bu dünya, sadece bizim kısa ömürlü çalışmalarımıza aykırıdır.
489çalışkan eller.
490
491Son su kemeri parçalara ayrıldığında, son zeplin
492yere düştüğünde, son çimlerin bıçağı ölmek üzere öldü
493sefalet ve acıya karşı direnişiyle eğitilmesinden yoksun toprak, insan,
494gözlerinin bu hafif ışığını zayıf yanıklığına karşı ayarlayacaktır.
495Güneş. Her birimizin bir dakika tane olduğu sanatsal fakültesi,
496sesini, bu son gruptaki bazı kişilerde bulabilir,
497nihai yorumu yorumlayacak kadar ifade ve cesaret gücü
498insanlık açısından mizacına göre, sanat açısından deneyimi. Ben yaparım
499son anlarını beslemeye çalışacağını söylemek istemiyorum
500ustaca bir hikaye tarafından insanlık. Beklenecek çok şey olurdu -
501insanlık. İşitenlerin kahramanlığından şüphe duyuyorum. Kahramanlık gelince
502sanatçı, şüphesiz gereklidir. Onun tarafında kahramanlık olmazdı.
503Sanatçı tercüman çağrısında bulunur (en açık biçimi
504gösteri) çünkü yapması gerekiyor. O kadar çok bir ses ki, onun için
505sessizlik ölüm gibidir; ve postula oldu, bir grup var
506canlı, son ışık titremesini izlemek için eşiğinde kümelenmiş
507kara gökyüzü, durgun atölyesinde söylenen son sözü duymak
508toprak. Herhangi biri varsa, bunun hayal gücü olacağını teyit etmek güvenlidir.
509o günün arifesinde konuşmak için taşınacak adam
510to-morrow - zorlu bir ÅŸekilde mi yoksa sardonik bir ifadeyle mi
511yorum, kim tahmin edebilir?
512
513Kendi tarafımdan, benim türümle kısa ve özverili bir tanımadan, ben
514son söylenişin formüle edeceğini düşünmeye meyilli,
515görünebilir, bazı umutlar şimdi bizim için asla düşünülemez. İnsanlık için
516Gururunda, güvencesinde ve saygısızlığından memnun. O
517savaş alanında kendi ölüleri arasında uyuyacak,
518ordu bir zafer kazandı. Ne zaman dövüldüğünü bilmeyecek.
519Ve belki de bu kalitede doÄŸrudur. Zafer belki de deÄŸildir.
520Tamamen stratejik, faydacı bir noktadan göründüğü kadar çorak
521görüş Bay Henry James bu inancı koruyor gibi görünüyor. Kimse işlenmedi
522daha iyi, belki de, öfke mukavemeti, ya da robe drape nasıl bilinir
523bir insansızda bir victorun sarkık şekli hakkında manevi şeref
524kavga. Ve onur her zaman iyi kazanılır; mücadeleler için Bay Henry
525James'in bu gibi incelikli ve doğrudan içgörüsü olan chronicles sadece
526kişisel yarışmalar, sessizliklerinde umutsuz, hiçbiri daha az kahramanca
527sesli duygunun yokluğu, silah çarpışması
528ve trompetlerin sesi. Bunlar sadece seçim ruhlarının olduğu maceralar.
529hiç dahil. Ve Bay Henry James onları korkusuz bir şekilde kaydeder ve
530yarışmadaki _peripeties_ ve hisler için ısrarlı sadakat
531muhariplerin
532
533Bir romantizmin en heyecanlı heyecanları _de cape et d'epee_, romantizm
534Avukat-kol ve yatılı pike, bu yüzden bilgi sahibi gençlere çok sevgili
535(diğer şeylerin gibi) kusurlu ve sınırlı, eşleştirilir,
536Olgunlaştırıcı yıllarımızın hızlandırılması, belirlenen görevlere göre zorluklar
537Gerçeğin duygusuna, gerekliliğe, her şeyden önce,
538Bay Henry James'in adamları ve kadınları. Onun insanlığı keyifli. Bu
539onun mukavemeti ile keyifli; kendi kendini dövmeyi reddetti; olacak
540savaş alanında uyu. Bu savaş benzeri görüntüler kendi başlarına
541kalem; İnsanın doğası ve rekabetinin ikiliğinden beri
542Bireyler, yeryüzünün yaşam-tarihinin son örnekte olması gerekir.
543Gerçekten çok acımasız bir savaşın tarihi. Ne arkadaşları ne de
544onun tanrıları, ne de tutkuları yalnız başına bir erkek bırakacak. Bunlardan dolayı
545müttefikler ve düşmanları, güvencesiz egemenliğini elinde tutar,
546uçucu önemlilik; ve tüm tezahürlerinde bu ilişkidir,
547Büyük ve küçük, yüzeysel veya derin ve bu ilişki tek başına
548romancı sanatının yorumladığı, yorumladığı, yorumlandığı
549görevin gerçekleştirilebileceği tek yolla:
550Tümüyle karşı karşıya olunan durumun ve karakterin bağımsız yaratılması
551ifadesini bulmakta zorlanan, yaratıcı bir çaba içinde
552Formlar ve duyumlar gerçeğinden ilham. Bu bir fedakârlık
553yapılmalı, bir şey vazgeçilmelidir, gerçeğin içinde oyulmuş
554Düzenlememiz için inşa edilen fuar tapınağının en içteki girintileri
555kurgu ustaları. Perdenin arkasında başka bir sır yok. Herşey
556macera, tüm aşk, her başarı bir yüce enerjide yeniden başlıyor
557vazgeçme eylemi. Bu bizim gücümüzün en büyük sınırıdır; o
558emeğimizde emeği geçen en güçlü ve etkili güç
559Onun çalışmasında yalnız bir adamın, üzerinde inşa edilmiş olan kaya
560İki okyanusun üzerinde cüce gölgesi olan milletler. Sevmek
561tarafından aydınlatılan kadar gölgelenen doğal bir güç.
562fenomenlerin çokluğu, vazgeçme gücü tarafından engellenir
563zayıflıkların kütlesi, boşluklar, ikincil motifler ve yanlış adımlar ve
564Faaliyetlerimizin toplamını oluşturan ödünler. Ama erkek ya da kadın yok
565Adına layık bir şey daha fazla bir şey için, daha büyük bir şey yapabilir. Ve
566Bay Henry James'in adamları ve kadınları, sınırlar içinde, ismine layık
567Sanatı, çok açık, kendinden çok emin, onların faaliyetlerini çekti.
568Onlar için Titanik oranlar talep eden son kişi olacaktı. Dünya
569kendisi çağlar boyunca daha küçük büyüdü. Ama her alanda
570insan şaşkınlık ve duygular, bir tane daha fazla büyüklükler var - değil
571Burada sanatçının kendisinin büyüklüğünü saymak. Nerede durduğu,
572şeylerin başında ya da sonunda, bir adam onun tanrılarını feda etmek zorundadır.
573onun tutkusu ya da onun tanrılarına olan tutkusu. Sorun bu, harika
574her halükarda, samimiyet ruhuyla yaklaşırsa ve
575bilgi.
576
577On beş yıl önce yayınladığı eleştirel çalışmalarından birinde, Bay
578Henry James, romancı için tarihçinin ayakta durduğunu iddia ediyor.
579sadece kendisi için ve seyirciden önce yeterli bir tane. bence
580the claim cannot be contested, and that the position is unassailable.
581Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.  But it is also more
582than that; it stands on firmer ground, being based on the reality of
583forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based
584on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting--on second-hand
585impression. Thus fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. bir
586historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the
587preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience.  As is meet
588for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian
589of fine consciences.
590
591Of course, this is a general statement; but I don't think its truth will
592be, or can be questioned.  Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and,
593besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be put into the
594nutshell of a phrase.  The fact remains that he has made his choice, and
595that his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success of his art.  He
596has taken for himself the greater part.  The range of a fine conscience
597covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be
598called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice
599discrimination of shades of conduct.  A fine conscience is more concerned
600with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a
601worldly sense.  There is, in short, more truth in its working for a
602historian to detect and to show.  It is a thing of infinite complication
603and suggestion.  None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James.  He
604has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of
605romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places.  There are no
606secrets left within his range.  He has disclosed them as they should be
607disclosed--that is, beautifully.  And, indeed, ugliness has but little
608place in this world of his creation.  Yet, it is always felt in the
609truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses
610close upon it.  It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the
611contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism
612of their mistakes.  For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.
613What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the
614intangible, ever-present, right.  It is most visible in their ultimate
615triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of
616renunciation.  Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous,
617like that between substance and shadow.
618
619Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm hold of the substance, of
620what is worth having, of what is worth holding.  The contrary opinion has
621been, if not absolutely affirmed, then at least implied, with some
622frequency.  To most of us, living willingly in a sort of intellectual
623moonlight, in the faintly reflected light of truth, the shadows so firmly
624renounced by Mr. Henry James's men and women, stand out endowed with
625extraordinary value, with a value so extraordinary that their rejection
626offends, by its uncalled-for scrupulousness, those business-like
627instincts which a careful Providence has implanted in our breasts.  And,
628apart from that just cause of discontent, it is obvious that a solution
629by rejection must always present a certain lack of finality, especially
630startling when contrasted with the usual methods of solution by rewards
631and punishments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden
632death.  Why the reading public which, as a body, has never laid upon a
633story-teller the command to be an artist, should demand from him this
634sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible.  But so it is;
635and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire
636for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the
637longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth.  Perhaps the only true
638desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be
639set at rest.  One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James's novels.  His
640books end as an episode in life ends.  You remain with the sense of the
641life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in
642that silence that comes upon the artist-creation when the last word has
643been read.  It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final.  Mr. Henry
644James, great artist and faithful historian, never attempts the
645impossible.
646
647
648
649ALPHONSE DAUDET--1898
650
651
652It is sweet to talk decorously of the dead who are part of our past, our
653indisputable possession.  One must admit regretfully that to-day is but a
654scramble, that to-morrow may never come; it is only the precious
655yesterday that cannot be taken away from us.  A gift from the dead, great
656and little, it makes life supportable, it almost makes one believe in a
657benevolent scheme of creation.  And some kind of belief is very
658necessary.  But the real knowledge of matters infinitely more profound
659than any conceivable scheme of creation is with the dead alone.  That is
660why our talk about them should be as decorous as their silence.  Their
661generosity and their discretion deserve nothing less at our hands; ve
662they, who belong already to the unchangeable, would probably disdain to
663claim more than this from a mankind that changes its loves and its hates
664about every twenty-five years--at the coming of every new and wiser
665generation.
666
667One of the most generous of the dead is Daudet, who, with a prodigality
668approaching magnificence, gave himself up to us without reserve in his
669work, with all his qualities and all his faults.  Neither his qualities
670nor his faults were great, though they were by no means imperceptible.  It
671is only his generosity that is out of the common.  What strikes one most
672in his work is the disinterestedness of the toiler.  With more talent
673than many bigger men, he did not preach about himself, he did not attempt
674to persuade mankind into a belief of his own greatness.  He never posed
675as a scientist or as a seer, not even as a prophet; and he neglected his
676interests to the point of never propounding a theory for the purpose of
677giving a tremendous significance to his art, alone of all things, in a
678world that, by some strange oversight, has not been supplied with an
679obvious meaning.  Neither did he affect a passive attitude before the
680spectacle of life, an attitude which in gods--and in a rare mortal here
681and there--may appear godlike, but assumed by some men, causes one, very
682unwillingly, to think of the melancholy quietude of an ape.  He was not
683the wearisome expounder of this or that theory, here to-day and spurned
684to-morrow.  He was not a great artist, he was not an artist at all, if
685you like--but he was Alphonse Daudet, a man as naively clear, honest, and
686vibrating as the sunshine of his native land; that regrettably
687undiscriminating sunshine which matures grapes and pumpkins alike, and
688cannot, of course, obtain the commendation of the very select who look at
689life from under a parasol.
690
691Naturally, being a man from the South, he had a rather outspoken belief
692in himself, but his small distinction, worth many a greater, was in not
693being in bondage to some vanishing creed.  He was a worker who could not
694compel the admiration of the few, but who deserved the affection of the
695many; and he may be spoken of with tenderness and regret, for he is not
696immortal--he is only dead.  During his life the simple man whose business
697it ought to have been to climb, in the name of Art, some elevation or
698other, was content to remain below, on the plain, amongst his creations,
699and take an eager part in those disasters, weaknesses, and joys which are
700tragic enough in their droll way, but are by no means so momentous and
701profound as some writers--probably for the sake of Art--would like to
702make us believe.  There is, when one thinks of it, a considerable want of
703candour in the august view of life.  Without doubt a cautious reticence
704on the subject, or even a delicately false suggestion thrown out in that
705direction is, in a way, praiseworthy, since it helps to uphold the
706dignity of man--a matter of great importance, as anyone can see; yine
707one cannot help feeling that a certain amount of sincerity would not be
708wholly blamable.  To state, then, with studied moderation a belief that
709in unfortunate moments of lucidity is irresistibly borne in upon most of
710us--the blind agitation caused mostly by hunger and complicated by love
711and ferocity does not deserve either by its beauty, or its morality, or
712its possible results, the artistic fuss made over it.  It may be
713consoling--for human folly is very _bizarre_--but it is scarcely honest
714to shout at those who struggle drowning in an insignificant pool: You are
715indeed admirable and great to be the victims of such a profound, of such
716a terrible ocean!
717
718And Daudet was honest; perhaps because he knew no better--but he was very
719honest.  If he saw only the surface of things it is for the reason that
720most things have nothing but a surface.  He did not pretend--perhaps
721because he did not know how--he did not pretend to see any depths in a
722life that is only a film of unsteady appearances stretched over regions
723deep indeed, but which have nothing to do with the half-truths,
724half-thoughts, and whole illusions of existence.  The road to these
725distant regions does not lie through the domain of Art or the domain of
726Science where well-known voices quarrel noisily in a misty emptiness; o
727is a path of toilsome silence upon which travel men simple and unknown,
728with closed lips, or, maybe, whispering their pain softly--only to
729themselves.
730
731But Daudet did not whisper; he spoke loudly, with animation, with a clear
732felicity of tone--as a bird sings.  He saw life around him with extreme
733clearness, and he felt it as it is--thinner than air and more elusive
734than a flash of lightning.  He hastened to offer it his compassion, his
735indignation, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a moment of thought
736to the momentous issues that are supposed to lurk in the logic of such
737sentiments.  He tolerated the little foibles, the small ruffianisms, the
738grave mistakes; the only thing he distinctly would not forgive was
739hardness of heart.  This unpractical attitude would have been fatal to a
740better man, but his readers have forgiven him.  Withal he is chivalrous
741to exiled queens and deformed sempstresses, he is pityingly tender to
742broken-down actors, to ruined gentlemen, to stupid Academicians; o
743glad of the joys of the commonplace people in a commonplace way--and he
744never makes a secret of all this.  No, the man was not an artist.  What
745if his creations are illumined by the sunshine of his temperament so
746vividly that they stand before us infinitely more real than the dingy
747illusions surrounding our everyday existence?  The misguided man is for
748ever pottering amongst them, lifting up his voice, dotting his i's in the
749wrong places.  He takes Tartarin by the arm, he does not conceal his
750interest in the Nabob's cheques, his sympathy for an honest Academician
751_plus bete que nature_, his hate for an architect _plus mauvais que la
752gale_; he is in the thick of it all.  He feels with the Duc de Mora and
753with Felicia Ruys--and he lets you see it.  He does not sit on a pedestal
754in the hieratic and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose greatness
755consists in being too stupid to care.  He cares immensely for his Nabobs,
756his kings, his book-keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos.  He vibrates
757together with his universe, and with lamentable simplicity follows M. de
758Montpavon on that last walk along the Boulevards.
759
760"Monsieur de Montpavon marche a la mort," and the creator of that unlucky
761_gentilhomme_ follows with stealthy footsteps, with wide eyes, with an
762impressively pointing finger. And who wouldn't look? But it is hard; o
763is sometimes very hard to forgive him the dotted i's, the pointing
764finger, this making plain of obvious mysteries.  "Monsieur de Montpavon
765marche a la mort," and presently, on the crowded pavement, takes off his
766hat with punctilious courtesy to the doctor's wife, who, elegant and
767unhappy, is bound on the same pilgrimage.  This is too much!  We feel we
768cannot forgive him such meetings, the constant whisper of his presence.
769We feel we cannot, till suddenly the very _naivete_ of it all touches us
770with the revealed suggestion of a truth.  Then we see that the man is not
771false; all this is done in transparent good faith.  The man is not
772melodramatic; he is only picturesque.  He may not be an artist, but he
773comes as near the truth as some of the greatest.  His creations are seen;
774you can look into their very eyes, and these are as thoughtless as the
775eyes of any wise generation that has in its hands the fame of writers.
776Yes, they are _seen_, and the man who is not an artist is seen also
777commiserating, indignant, joyous, human and alive in their very midst.
778Inevitably they _marchent a la mort_--and they are very near the truth of
779our common destiny: their fate is poignant, it is intensely interesting,
780and of not the slightest consequence.
781
782
783
784GUY DE MAUPASSANT--1904 {1}
785
786
787To introduce Maupassant to English readers with apologetic explanations
788as though his art were recondite and the tendency of his work immoral
789would be a gratuitous impertinence.
790
791Maupassant's conception of his art is such as one would expect from a
792practical and resolute mind; but in the consummate simplicity of his
793technique it ceases to be perceptible.  This is one of its greatest
794qualities, and like all the great virtues it is based primarily on self-
795denial.
796
797To pronounce a judgment upon the general tendency of an author is a
798difficult task.  One could not depend upon reason alone, nor yet trust
799solely to one's emotions.  Used together, they would in many cases
800traverse each other, because emotions have their own unanswerable logic.
801Our capacity for emotion is limited, and the field of our intelligence is
802restricted.  Responsiveness to every feeling, combined with the
803penetration of every intellectual subterfuge, would end, not in judgment,
804but in universal absolution.  _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner_.  And
805in this benevolent neutrality towards the warring errors of human nature
806all light would go out from art and from life.
807
808We are at liberty then to quarrel with Maupassant's attitude towards our
809world in which, like the rest of us, he has that share which his senses
810are able to give him. But we need not quarrel with him violently. EÄŸer
811our feelings (which are tender) happen to be hurt because his talent is
812not exercised for the praise and consolation of mankind, our intelligence
813(which is great) should let us see that he is a very splendid sinner,
814like all those who in this valley of compromises err by over-devotion to
815the truth that is in them.  His determinism, barren of praise, blame and
816consolation, has all the merit of his conscientious art.  The worth of
817every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is
818held.
819
820Except for his philosophy, which in the case of so consummate an artist
821does not matter (unless to the solemn and naive mind), Maupassant of all
822writers of fiction demands least forgiveness from his readers.  He does
823not require forgiveness because he is never dull.
824
825The interest of a reader in a work of imagination is either ethical or
826that of simple curiosity.  Both are perfectly legitimate, since there is
827both a moral and an excitement to be found in a faithful rendering of
828life.  And in Maupassant's work there is the interest of curiosity and
829the moral of a point of view consistently preserved and never obtruded
830for the end of personal gratification.  The spectacle of this immense
831talent served by exceptional faculties and triumphing over the most
832thankless subjects by an unswerving singleness of purpose is in itself an
833admirable lesson in the power of artistic honesty, one may say of
834artistic virtue.  The inherent greatness of the man consists in this,
835that he will let none of the fascinations that beset a writer working in
836loneliness turn him away from the straight path, from the vouchsafed
837vision of excellence.  He will not be led into perdition by the
838seductions of sentiment, of eloquence, of humour, of pathos; of all that
839splendid pageant of faults that pass between the writer and his probity
840on the blank sheet of paper, like the glittering cortege of deadly sins
841before the austere anchorite in the desert air of Thebaide.  This is not
842to say that Maupassant's austerity has never faltered; but the fact
843remains that no tempting demon has ever succeeded in hurling him down
844from his high, if narrow, pedestal.
845
846It is the austerity of his talent, of course, that is in question. let
847the discriminating reader, who at times may well spare a moment or two to
848the consideration and enjoyment of artistic excellence, be asked to
849reflect a little upon the texture of two stories included in this volume:
850"A Piece of String," and "A Sale."  How many openings the last offers for
851the gratuitous display of the author's wit or clever buffoonery, the
852first for an unmeasured display of sentiment!  And both sentiment and
853buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the
854meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty.  Here it is where
855Maupassant's austerity comes in.  He refrains from setting his cleverness
856against the eloquence of the facts.  There is humour and pathos in these
857stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his
858artistic conscience, that all his high qualities appear inherent in the
859very things of which he speaks, as if they had been altogether
860independent of his presentation.  Facts, and again facts are his unique
861concern.  That is why he is not always properly understood.  His facts
862are so perfectly rendered that, like the actualities of life itself, they
863demand from the reader the faculty of observation which is rare, the
864power of appreciation which is generally wanting in most of us who are
865guided mainly by empty phrases requiring no effort, demanding from us no
866qualities except a vague susceptibility to emotion.  Nobody has ever
867gained the vast applause of a crowd by the simple and clear exposition of
868vital facts.  Words alone strung upon a convention have fascinated us as
869worthless glass beads strung on a thread have charmed at all times our
870brothers the unsophisticated savages of the islands.  Now, Maupassant, of
871whom it has been said that he is the master of the _mot juste_, has never
872been a dealer in words.  His wares have been, not glass beads, but
873polished gems; not the most rare and precious, perhaps, but of the very
874first water of their kind.
875
876That he took trouble with his gems, taking them up in the rough and
877polishing each facet patiently, the publication of the two posthumous
878volumes of short stories proves abundantly.  I think it proves also the
879assertion made here that he was by no means a dealer in words. üzerinde
880looking at the first feeble drafts from which so many perfect stories
881have been fashioned, one discovers that what has been matured, improved,
882brought to perfection by unwearied endeavour is not the diction of the
883tale, but the vision of its true shape and detail.  Those first attempts
884are not faltering or uncertain in expression.  It is the conception which
885is at fault.  The subjects have not yet been adequately seen.  His
886proceeding was not to group expressive words, that mean nothing, around
887misty and mysterious shapes dear to muddled intellects and belonging
888neither to earth nor to heaven.  His vision by a more scrupulous,
889prolonged and devoted attention to the aspects of the visible world
890discovered at last the right words as if miraculously impressed for him
891upon the face of things and events.  This was the particular shape taken
892by his inspiration; it came to him directly, honestly in the light of his
893day, not on the tortuous, dark roads of meditation.  His realities came
894to him from a genuine source, from this universe of vain appearances
895wherein we men have found everything to make us proud, sorry, exalted,
896and humble.
897
898Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted.  It
899is not difficult to perceive why.  Maupassant is an intensely national
900writer.  He is so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness, in
901his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has been accepted by his
902countrymen without having had to pay the tribute of flattery either to
903the nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division of the nation.
904The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands
905excused from the duty of patriotic posturing.  He is a Frenchman of
906Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to
907be universally comprehensible.  What is wanting to his universal success
908is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness.  He neglects to
909qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew
910paper roses over the tombs.  The disregard of these common decencies lays
911him open to the charges of cruelty, cynicism, hardness.  And yet it can
912be safely affirmed that this man wrote from the fulness of a
913compassionate heart. He is merciless and yet gentle with his mankind; o
914does not rail at their prudent fears and their small artifices; o yapıyor
915not despise their labours.  It seems to me that he looks with an eye of
916profound pity upon their troubles, deceptions and misery.  But he looks
917at them all.  He sees--and does not turn away his head.  As a matter of
918fact he is courageous.
919
920Courage and justice are not popular virtues.  The practice of strict
921justice is shocking to the multitude who always (perhaps from an obscure
922sense of guilt) attach to it the meaning of mercy.  In the majority of
923us, who want to be left alone with our illusions, courage inspires a
924vague alarm.  This is what is felt about Maupassant.  His qualities, to
925use the charming and popular phrase, are not lovable.  Courage being a
926force will not masquerade in the robes of affected delicacy and
927restraint.  But if his courage is not of a chivalrous stamp, it cannot be
928denied that it is never brutal for the sake of effect.  The writer of
929these few reflections, inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with
930the work of the man, has been struck by the appreciation of Maupassant
931manifested by many women gifted with tenderness and intelligence.  Their
932more delicate and audacious souls are good judges of courage.  Their
933finer penetration has discovered his genuine masculinity without display,
934his virility without a pose.  They have discerned in his faithful
935dealings with the world that enterprising and fearless temperament, poor
936in ideas but rich in power, which appeals most to the feminine mind.
937
938It cannot be denied that he thinks very little.  In him extreme energy of
939perception achieves great results, as in men of action the energy of
940force and desire.  His view of intellectual problems is perhaps more
941simple than their nature warrants; still a man who has written _Yvette_
942cannot be accused of want of subtlety.  But one cannot insist enough upon
943this, that his subtlety, his humour, his grimness, though no doubt they
944are his own, are never presented otherwise but as belonging to our life,
945as found in nature, whose beauties and cruelties alike breathe the spirit
946of serene unconsciousness.
947
948Maupassant's philosophy of life is more temperamental than rational.  He
949expects nothing from gods or men.  He trusts his senses for information
950and his instinct for deductions.  It may seem that he has made but little
951use of his mind.  But let me be clearly understood.  His sensibility is
952really very great; and it is impossible to be sensible, unless one thinks
953vividly, unless one thinks correctly, starting from intelligible premises
954to an unsophisticated conclusion.
955
956This is literary honesty.  It may be remarked that it does not differ
957very greatly from the ideal honesty of the respectable majority, from the
958honesty of law-givers, of warriors, of kings, of bricklayers, of all
959those who express their fundamental sentiment in the ordinary course of
960their activities, by the work of their hands.
961
962The work of Maupassant's hands is honest.  He thinks sufficiently to
963concrete his fearless conclusions in illuminative instances.  He renders
964them with that exact knowledge of the means and that absolute devotion to
965the aim of creating a true effect--which is art.  He is the most
966accomplished of narrators.
967
968It is evident that Maupassant looked upon his mankind in another spirit
969than those writers who make haste to submerge the difficulties of our
970holding-place in the universe under a flood of false and sentimental
971assumptions.  Maupassant was a true and dutiful lover of our earth.  He
972says himself in one of his descriptive passages: "Nous autres que seduit
973la terre . . ."  It was true.  The earth had for him a compelling charm.
974He looks upon her august and furrowed face with the fierce insight of
975real passion.  His is the power of detecting the one immutable quality
976that matters in the changing aspects of nature and under the
977ever-shifting surface of life.  To say that he could not embrace in his
978glance all its magnificence and all its misery is only to say that he was
979human.  He lays claim to nothing that his matchless vision has not made
980his own. This creative artist has the true imagination; o asla
981condescends to invent anything; he sets up no empty pretences.  And he
982stoops to no littleness in his art--least of all to the miserable vanity
983of a catching phrase.
984
985
986
987ANATOLE FRANCE--1904
988
989
990I.--"CRAINQUEBILLE"
991
992
993The latest volume of M. Anatole France purports, by the declaration of
994its title-page, to contain several profitable narratives.  The story of
995Crainquebille's encounter with human justice stands at the head of them;
996a tale of a well-bestowed charity closes the book with the touch of
997playful irony characteristic of the writer on whom the most distinguished
998amongst his literary countrymen have conferred the rank of Prince of
999Prose.
1000
1001Never has a dignity been better borne.  M. Anatole France is a good
1002prince. He knows nothing of tyranny but much of compassion.
1003detachment of his mind from common errors and current superstitions
1004befits the exalted rank he holds in the Commonwealth of Literature.  It
1005is just to suppose that the clamour of the tribes in the forum had little
1006to do with his elevation.  Their elect are of another stamp.  They are
1007such as their need of precipitate action requires.  He is the Elect of
1008the Senate--the Senate of Letters--whose Conscript Fathers have
1009recognised him as _primus inter pares_; a post of pure honour and of no
1010privilege.
1011
1012It is a good choice.  First, because it is just, and next, because it is
1013safe.  The dignity will suffer no diminution in M. Anatole France's
1014hands.  He is worthy of a great tradition, learned in the lessons of the
1015past, concerned with the present, and as earnest as to the future as a
1016good prince should be in his public action.  It is a Republican dignity.
1017And M. Anatole France, with his sceptical insight into an forms of
1018government, is a good Republican.  He is indulgent to the weaknesses of
1019the people, and perceives that political institutions, whether contrived
1020by the wisdom of the few or the ignorance of the many, are incapable of
1021securing the happiness of mankind.  He perceives this truth in the
1022serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his mind.  He expresses his
1023convictions with measure, restraint and harmony, which are indeed
1024princely qualities.  He is a great analyst of illusions.  He searches and
1025probes their innermost recesses as if they were realities made of an
1026eternal substance. And therein consists his humanity; bu
1027expression of his profound and unalterable compassion.  He will flatter
1028no tribe no section in the forum or in the market-place.  His lucid
1029thought is not beguiled into false pity or into the common weakness of
1030affection.  He feels that men born in ignorance as in the house of an
1031enemy, and condemned to struggle with error and passions through endless
1032centuries, should be spared the supreme cruelty of a hope for ever
1033deferred.  He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the
1034almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege,
1035to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat
1036their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can
1037conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their
1038irremediable littleness.  He knows this well because he is an artist and
1039a master; but he knows, too, that only in the continuity of effort there
1040is a refuge from despair for minds less clear-seeing and philosophic than
1041his own.  Therefore he wishes us to believe and to hope, preserving in
1042our activity the consoling illusion of power and intelligent purpose.  He
1043is a good and politic prince.
1044
1045"The majesty of justice is contained entire in each sentence pronounced
1046by the judge in the name of the sovereign people.  Jerome Crainquebille,
1047hawker of vegetables, became aware of the august aspect of the law as he
1048stood indicted before the tribunal of the higher Police Court on a charge
1049of insulting a constable of the force."  With this exposition begins the
1050first tale of M. Anatole France's latest volume.
1051
1052The bust of the Republic and the image of the Crucified Christ appear
1053side by side above the bench occupied by the President Bourriche and his
1054two Assessors; all the laws divine and human are suspended over the head
1055of Crainquebille.
1056
1057From the first visual impression of the accused and of the court the
1058author passes by a characteristic and natural turn to the historical and
1059moral significance of those two emblems of State and Religion whose
1060accord is only possible to the confused reasoning of an average man. Fakat
1061the reasoning of M. Anatole France is never confused.  His reasoning is
1062clear and informed by a profound erudition.  Such is not the case of
1063Crainquebille, a street hawker, charged with insulting the constituted
1064power of society in the person of a policeman.  The charge is not true,
1065nothing was further from his thoughts; but, amazed by the novelty of his
1066position, he does not reflect that the Cross on the wall perpetuates the
1067memory of a sentence which for nineteen hundred years all the Christian
1068peoples have looked upon as a grave miscarriage of justice.  He might
1069well have challenged the President to pronounce any sort of sentence, if
1070it were merely to forty-eight hours of simple imprisonment, in the name
1071of the Crucified Redeemer.
1072
1073He might have done so.  But Crainquebille, who has lived pushing every
1074day for half a century his hand-barrow loaded with vegetables through the
1075streets of Paris, has not a philosophic mind.  Truth to say he has
1076nothing.  He is one of the disinherited.  Properly speaking, he has no
1077existence at all, or, to be strictly truthful, he had no existence till
1078M. Anatole France's philosophic mind and human sympathy have called him
1079up from his nothingness for our pleasure, and, as the title-page of the
1080book has it, no doubt for our profit also.
1081
1082Therefore we behold him in the dock, a stranger to all historical,
1083political or social considerations which can be brought to bear upon his
1084case.  He remains lost in astonishment.  Penetrated with respect,
1085overwhelmed with awe, he is ready to trust the judge upon the question of
1086his transgression.  In his conscience he does not think himself culpable;
1087but M. Anatole France's philosophical mind discovers for us that he feels
1088all the insignificance of such a thing as the conscience of a mere street-
1089hawker in the face of the symbols of the law and before the ministers of
1090social repression.  Crainquebille is innocent; but already the young
1091advocate, his defender, has half persuaded him of his guilt.
1092
1093On this phrase practically ends the introductory chapter of the story
1094which, as the author's dedication states, has inspired an admirable
1095draughtsman and a skilful dramatist, each in his art, to a vision of
1096tragic grandeur.  And this opening chapter without a name--consisting of
1097two and a half pages, some four hundred words at most--is a masterpiece
1098of insight and simplicity, resumed in M. Anatole France's distinction of
1099thought and in his princely command of words.
1100
1101It is followed by six more short chapters, concise and full, delicate and
1102complete like the petals of a flower, presenting to us the Adventure of
1103Crainquebille--Crainquebille before the justice--An Apology for the
1104President of the Tribunal--Of the Submission of Crainquebille to the Laws
1105of the Republic--Of his Attitude before the Public Opinion, and so on to
1106the chapter of the Last Consequences.  We see, created for us in his
1107outward form and innermost perplexity, the old man degraded from his high
1108estate of a law-abiding street-hawker and driven to insult, really this
1109time, the majesty of the social order in the person of another police-
1110constable.  It is not an act of revolt, and still less of revenge.
1111Crainquebille is too old, too resigned, too weary, too guileless to raise
1112the black standard of insurrection.  He is cold and homeless and
1113starving.  He remembers the warmth and the food of the prison.  He
1114perceives the means to get back there.  Since he has been locked up, he
1115argues with himself, for uttering words which, as a matter of fact he did
1116not say, he will go forth now, and to the first policeman he meets will
1117say those very words in order to be imprisoned again.  Thus reasons
1118Crainquebille with simplicity and confidence.  He accepts facts.  Nothing
1119surprises him.  But all the phenomena of social organisation and of his
1120own life remain for him mysterious to the end.  The description of the
1121policeman in his short cape and hood, who stands quite still, under the
1122light of a street lamp at the edge of the pavement shining with the wet
1123of a rainy autumn evening along the whole extent of a long and deserted
1124thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision.  From under
1125the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just
1126uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the
1127popular slang--_Mort aux vaches_!  They look upon him shining in the deep
1128shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, vigilance, and
1129contempt.
1130
1131He does not move.  Crainquebille, in a feeble and hesitating voice,
1132repeats once more the insulting words.  But this policeman is full of
1133philosophic superiority, disdain, and indulgence.  He refuses to take in
1134charge the old and miserable vagabond who stands before him shivering and
1135ragged in the drizzle.  And the ruined Crainquebille, victim of a
1136ridiculous miscarriage of justice, appalled at this magnanimity, passes
1137on hopelessly down the street full of shadows where the lamps gleam each
1138in a ruddy halo of falling mist.
1139
1140M. Anatole France can speak for the people.  This prince of the Senate is
1141invested with the tribunitian power.  M. Anatole France is something of a
1142Socialist; and in that respect he seems to depart from his sceptical
1143philosophy.  But as an illustrious statesman, now no more, a great prince
1144too, with an ironic mind and a literary gift, has sarcastically remarked
1145in one of his public speeches: "We are all Socialists now."  And in the
1146sense in which it may be said that we all in Europe are Christians that
1147is true enough.  To many of us Socialism is merely an emotion.  An
1148emotion is much and is also less than nothing.  It is the initial
1149impulse.  The real Socialism of to-day is a religion.  It has its dogmas.
1150The value of the dogma does not consist in its truthfulness, and M.
1151Anatole France, who loves truth, does not love dogma.  Only, unlike
1152religion, the cohesive strength of Socialism lies not in its dogmas but
1153in its ideal.  It is perhaps a too materialistic ideal, and the mind of
1154M. Anatole France may not find in it either comfort or consolation.  It
1155is not to be doubted that he suspects this himself; ama orada
1156something reposeful in the finality of popular conceptions.  M. Anatole
1157France, a good prince and a good Republican, will succeed no doubt in
1158being a good Socialist.  He will disregard the stupidity of the dogma and
1159the unlovely form of the ideal.  His art will find its own beauty in the
1160imaginative presentation of wrongs, of errors, and miseries that call
1161aloud for redress.  M. Anatole France is humane.  He is also human.  He
1162may be able to discard his philosophy; to forget that the evils are many
1163and the remedies are few, that there is no universal panacea, that
1164fatality is invincible, that there is an implacable menace of death in
1165the triumph of the humanitarian idea.  He may forget all that because
1166love is stronger than truth.
1167
1168Besides "Crainquebille" this volume contains sixteen other stories and
1169sketches.  To define them it is enough to say that they are written in M.
1170Anatole France's prose.  One sketch entitled "Riquet" may be found
1171incorporated in the volume of _Monsieur Bergeret a Paris_.  "Putois" is a
1172remarkable little tale, significant, humorous, amusing, and symbolic.  It
1173concerns the career of a man born in the utterance of a hasty and
1174untruthful excuse made by a lady at a loss how to decline without offence
1175a very pressing invitation to dinner from a very tyrannical aunt.  This
1176happens in a provincial town, and the lady says in effect: "Impossible,
1177my dear aunt.  To-morrow I am expecting the gardener."  And the garden
1178she glances at is a poor garden; it is a wild garden; its extent is
1179insignificant and its neglect seems beyond remedy.  "A gardener!  What
1180for?" asks the aunt.  "To work in the garden."  And the poor lady is
1181abashed at the transparence of her evasion.  But the lie is told, it is
1182believed, and she sticks to it.  When the masterful old aunt inquires,
1183"What is the man's name, my dear?" she answers brazenly, "His name is
1184Putois."  "Where does he live?"  "Oh, I don't know; anywhere.  He won't
1185give his address. One leaves a message for him here and there."  "Oh! ben
1186see," says the other; "he is a sort of ne'er do well, an idler, a
1187vagabond.  I advise you, my dear, to be careful how you let such a
1188creature into your grounds; but I have a large garden, and when you do
1189not want his services I shall find him some work to do, and see he does
1190it too.  Tell your Putois to come and see me."  And thereupon Putois is
1191born; he stalks abroad, invisible, upon his career of vagabondage and
1192crime, stealing melons from gardens and tea-spoons from pantries,
1193indulging his licentious proclivities; becoming the talk of the town and
1194of the countryside; seen simultaneously in far-distant places; tarafından takip edilen
1195gendarmes, whose brigadier assures the uneasy householders that he "knows
1196that scamp very well, and won't be long in laying his hands upon him."  A
1197detailed description of his person collected from the information
1198furnished by various people appears in the columns of a local newspaper.
1199Putois lives in his strength and malevolence.  He lives after the manner
1200of legendary heroes, of the gods of Olympus.  He is the creation of the
1201popular mind.  There comes a time when even the innocent originator of
1202that mysterious and potent evil-doer is induced to believe for a moment
1203that he may have a real and tangible presence.  All this is told with the
1204wit and the art and the philosophy which is familiar to M. Anatole
1205France's readers and admirers.  For it is difficult to read M. Anatole
1206France without admiring him.  He has the princely gift of arousing a
1207spontaneous loyalty, but with this difference, that the consent of our
1208reason has its place by the side of our enthusiasm.  He is an artist.  As
1209an artist he awakens emotion.  The quality of his art remains, as an
1210inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but the proceedings of his
1211thought compel our intellectual admiration.
1212
1213In this volume the trifle called "The Military Manoeuvres at Montil,"
1214apart from its far-reaching irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit
1215of automobilism.  Somehow or other, how you cannot tell, the flight over
1216the country in a motor-car, its sensations, its fatigue, its vast
1217topographical range, its incidents down to the bursting of a tyre, are
1218brought home to you with all the force of high imaginative perception.  It
1219would be out of place to analyse here the means by which the true
1220impression is conveyed so that the absurd rushing about of General
1221Decuir, in a 30-horse-power car, in search of his cavalry brigade,
1222becomes to you a more real experience than any day-and-night run you may
1223ever have taken yourself.  Suffice it to say that M. Anatole France had
1224thought the thing worth doing and that it becomes, in virtue of his art,
1225a distinct achievement.  And there are other sketches in this book, more
1226or less slight, but all worthy of regard--the childhood's recollections
1227of Professor Bergeret and his sister Zoe; the dialogue of the two upright
1228judges and the conversation of their horses; the dream of M. Jean
1229Marteau, aimless, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams one
1230ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike.  The vision of M. Anatole
1231France, the Prince of Prose, ranges over all the extent of his realm,
1232indulgent and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding treasures
1233of truth and beauty concealed from less gifted magicians.  Contemplating
1234the exactness of his images and the justice of his judgment, the freedom
1235of his fancy and the fidelity of his purpose, one becomes aware of the
1236futility of literary watchwords and the vanity of all the schools of
1237fiction.  Not that M. Anatole France is a wild and untrammelled genius.
1238He is not that.  Issued legitimately from the past, he is mindful of his
1239high descent.  He has a critical temperament joined to creative power.  He
1240surveys his vast domain in a spirit of princely moderation that knows
1241nothing of excesses but much of restraint.
1242
1243
1244II.--"L'ILE DES PINGOUINS"
1245
1246
1247M. Anatole France, historian and adventurer, has given us many profitable
1248histories of saints and sinners, of Roman procurators and of officials of
1249the Third Republic, of _grandes dames_ and of dames not so very grand, of
1250ornate Latinists and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and
1251generals--in fact, the history of all humanity as it appears to his
1252penetrating eye, serving a mind marvellously incisive in its scepticism,
1253and a heart that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice,
1254contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony.  As to M. Anatole
1255France's adventures, these are well-known.  They lie open to this
1256prodigal world in the four volumes of the _Vie Litteraire_, describing
1257the adventures of a choice soul amongst masterpieces.  For such is the
1258romantic view M. Anatole France takes of the life of a literary critic.
1259History and adventure, then, seem to be the chosen fields for the
1260magnificent evolutions of M. Anatole France's prose; but no material
1261limits can stand in the way of a genius.  The latest book from his
1262pen--which may be called golden, as the lips of an eloquent saint once
1263upon a time were acclaimed golden by the faithful--this latest book is,
1264up to a certain point, a book of travel.
1265
1266I would not mislead a public whose confidence I court.  The book is not a
1267record of globe-trotting.  I regret it.  It would have been a joy to
1268watch M. Anatole France pouring the clear elixir compounded of his
1269Pyrrhonic philosophy, his Benedictine erudition, his gentle wit and most
1270humane irony into such an unpromising and opaque vessel.  He would have
1271attempted it in a spirit of benevolence towards his fellow men and of
1272compassion for that life of the earth which is but a vain and transitory
1273illusion.  M. Anatole France is a great magician, yet there seem to be
1274tasks which he dare not face.  For he is also a sage.
1275
1276It is a book of ocean travel--not, however, as understood by Herr Ballin
1277of Hamburg, the Machiavel of the Atlantic.  It is a book of exploration
1278and discovery--not, however, as conceived by an enterprising journal and
1279a shrewdly philanthropic king of the nineteenth century.  It is nothing
1280so recent as that.  It dates much further back; long, long before the
1281dark age when Krupp of Essen wrought at his steel plates and a German
1282Emperor condescendingly suggested the last improvements in ships' dining-
1283tables.  The best idea of the inconceivable antiquity of that enterprise
1284I can give you is by stating the nature of the explorer's ship.  It was a
1285trough of stone, a vessel of hollowed granite.
1286
1287The explorer was St. Mael, a saint of Armorica.  I had never heard of him
1288before, but I believe now in his arduous existence with a faith which is
1289a tribute to M. Anatole France's pious earnestness and delicate irony.
1290St. Mael existed.  It is distinctly stated of him that his life was a
1291progress in virtue.  Thus it seems that there may be saints that are not
1292progressively virtuous. St. Mael was not of that kind. O
1293industrious.  He evangelised the heathen.  He erected two hundred and
1294eighteen chapels and seventy-four abbeys.  Indefatigable navigator of the
1295faith, he drifted casually in the miraculous trough of stone from coast
1296to coast and from island to island along the northern seas.  At the age
1297of eighty-four his high stature was bowed by his long labours, but his
1298sinewy arms preserved their vigour and his rude eloquence had lost
1299nothing of its force.
1300
1301A nautical devil tempting him by the worldly suggestion of fitting out
1302his desultory, miraculous trough with mast, sail, and rudder for swifter
1303progression (the idea of haste has sprung from the pride of Satan), the
1304simple old saint lent his ear to the subtle arguments of the progressive
1305enemy of mankind.
1306
1307The venerable St. Mael fell away from grace by not perceiving at once
1308that a gift of heaven cannot be improved by the contrivances of human
1309ingenuity.  His punishment was adequate.  A terrific tempest snatched the
1310rigged ship of stone in its whirlwinds, and, to be brief, the dazed St.
1311Mael was stranded violently on the Island of Penguins.
1312
1313The saint wandered away from the shore.  It was a flat, round island
1314whence rose in the centre a conical mountain capped with clouds.
1315rain was falling incessantly--a gentle, soft rain which caused the simple
1316saint to exclaim in great delight: "This is the island of tears, the
1317island of contrition!"
1318
1319Meantime the inhabitants had flocked in their tens of thousands to an
1320amphitheatre of rocks; they were penguins; but the holy man, rendered
1321deaf and purblind by his years, mistook excusably the multitude of silly,
1322erect, and self-important birds for a human crowd.  At once he began to
1323preach to them the doctrine of salvation.  Having finished his discourse
1324he lost no time in administering to his interesting congregation the
1325sacrament of baptism.
1326
1327If you are at all a theologian you will see that it was no mean adventure
1328to happen to a well-meaning and zealous saint.  Pray reflect on the
1329magnitude of the issues!  It is easy to believe what M. Anatole France
1330says, that, when the baptism of the Penguins became known in Paradise, it
1331caused there neither joy nor sorrow, but a profound sensation.
1332
1333M. Anatole France is no mean theologian himself.  He reports with great
1334casuistical erudition the debates in the saintly council assembled in
1335Heaven for the consideration of an event so disturbing to the economy of
1336religious mysteries.  Ultimately the baptised Penguins had to be turned
1337into human beings; and together with the privilege of sublime hopes these
1338innocent birds received the curse of original sin, with the labours, the
1339miseries, the passions, and the weaknesses attached to the fallen
1340condition of humanity.
1341
1342At this point M. Anatole France is again an historian.  From being the
1343Hakluyt of a saintly adventurer he turns (but more concisely) into the
1344Gibbon of Imperial Penguins.  Tracing the development of their
1345civilisation, the absurdity of their desires, the pathos of their folly
1346and the ridiculous littleness of their quarrels, his golden pen lightens
1347by relevant but unpuritanical anecdotes the austerity of a work devoted
1348to a subject so grave as the Polity of Penguins.  It is a very admirable
1349treatment, and I hasten to congratulate all men of receptive mind on the
1350feast of wisdom which is theirs for the mere plucking of a book from a
1351shelf.
1352
1353
1354
1355TURGENEV {2}--1917
1356
1357
1358Dear Edward,
1359
1360I am glad to hear that you are about to publish a study of Turgenev, that
1361fortunate artist who has found so much in life for us and no doubt for
1362himself, with the exception of bare justice.  Perhaps that will come to
1363him, too, in time.  Your study may help the consummation.  For his luck
1364persists after his death.  What greater luck an artist like Turgenev
1365could wish for than to find in the English-speaking world a translator
1366who has missed none of the most delicate, most simple beauties of his
1367work, and a critic who has known how to analyse and point out its high
1368qualities with perfect sympathy and insight.
1369
1370After twenty odd years of friendship (and my first literary friendship
1371too) I may well permit myself to make that statement, while thinking of
1372your wonderful Prefaces as they appeared from time to time in the volumes
1373of Turgenev's complete edition, the last of which came into the light of
1374public indifference in the ninety-ninth year of the nineteenth century.
1375
1376With that year one may say, with some justice, that the age of Turgenev
1377had come to an end too; yet work so simple and human, so independent of
1378the transitory formulas and theories of art, belongs as you point out in
1379the Preface to _Smoke_ "to all time."
1380
1381Turgenev's creative activity covers about thirty years.  Since it came to
1382an end the social and political events in Russia have moved at an
1383accelerated pace, but the deep origins of them, in the moral and
1384intellectual unrest of the souls, are recorded in the whole body of his
1385work with the unerring lucidity of a great national writer. Ä°lk
1386stirrings, the first gleams of the great forces can be seen almost in
1387every page of the novels, of the short stories and of _A Sportsman's
1388Sketches_--those marvellous landscapes peopled by unforgettable figures.
1389
1390Those will never grow old.  Fashions in monsters do change, but the truth
1391of humanity goes on for ever, unchangeable and inexhaustible in the
1392variety of its disclosures.  Whether Turgenev's art, which has captured
1393it with such mastery and such gentleness, is for "all time" it is hard to
1394say.  Since, as you say yourself, he brings all his problems and
1395characters to the test of love, we may hope that it will endure at least
1396till the infinite emotions of love are replaced by the exact simplicity
1397of perfected Eugenics.  But even by then, I think, women would not have
1398changed much; and the women of Turgenev who understood them so tenderly,
1399so reverently and so passionately--they, at least, are certainly for all
1400time.
1401
1402Women are, one may say, the foundation of his art.  They are Russian of
1403course.  Never was a writer so profoundly, so whole-souledly national.
1404But for non-Russian readers, Turgenev's Russia is but a canvas on which
1405the incomparable artist of humanity lays his colours and his forms in the
1406great light and the free air of the world.  Had he invented them all and
1407also every stick and stone, brook and hill and field in which they move,
1408his personages would have been just as true and as poignant in their
1409perplexed lives.  They are his own and also universal.  Any one can
1410accept them with no more question than one accepts the Italians of
1411Shakespeare.
1412
1413In the larger, non-Russian view, what should make Turgenev sympathetic
1414and welcome to the English-speaking world, is his essential humanity.  All
1415his creations, fortunate and unfortunate, oppressed and oppressors, are
1416human beings, not strange beasts in a menagerie or damned souls knocking
1417themselves to pieces in the stuffy darkness of mystical contradictions.
1418They are human beings, fit to live, fit to suffer, fit to struggle, fit
1419to win, fit to lose, in the endless and inspiring game of pursuing from
1420day to day the ever-receding future.
1421
1422I began by calling him lucky, and he was, in a sense.  But one ends by
1423having some doubts.  To be so great without the slightest parade and so
1424fine without any tricks of "cleverness" must be fatal to any man's
1425influence with his contemporaries.
1426
1427Frankly, I don't want to appear as qualified to judge of things Russian.
1428It wouldn't be true.  I know nothing of them.  But I am aware of a few
1429general truths, such as, for instance, that no man, whatever may be the
1430loftiness of his character, the purity of his motives and the peace of
1431his conscience--no man, I say, likes to be beaten with sticks during the
1432greater part of his existence.  From what one knows of his history it
1433appears clearly that in Russia almost any stick was good enough to beat
1434Turgenev with in his latter years.  When he died the characteristically
1435chicken-hearted Autocracy hastened to stuff his mortal envelope into the
1436tomb it refused to honour, while the sensitive Revolutionists went on for
1437a time flinging after his shade those jeers and curses from which that
1438impartial lover of _all_ his countrymen had suffered so much in his
1439lifetime.  For he, too, was sensitive.  Every page of his writing bears
1440its testimony to the fatal absence of callousness in the man.
1441
1442And now he suffers a little from other things.  In truth it is not the
1443convulsed terror-haunted Dostoievski but the serene Turgenev who is under
1444a curse.  For only think!  Every gift has been heaped on his cradle:
1445absolute sanity and the deepest sensibility, the clearest vision and the
1446quickest responsiveness, penetrating insight and unfailing generosity of
1447judgment, an exquisite perception of the visible world and an unerring
1448instinct for the significant, for the essential in the life of men and
1449women, the clearest mind, the warmest heart, the largest sympathy--and
1450all that in perfect measure.  There's enough there to ruin the prospects
1451of any writer.  For you know very well, my dear Edward, that if you had
1452Antinous himself in a booth of the world's fair, and killed yourself in
1453protesting that his soul was as perfect as his body, you wouldn't get one
1454per cent. of the crowd struggling next door for a sight of the Double-
1455headed Nightingale or of some weak-kneed giant grinning through a horse
1456collar.
1457
1458J. C.
1459
1460
1461
1462STEPHEN CRANE--A NOTE WITHOUT DATES--1919
1463
1464
1465My acquaintance with Stephen Crane was brought about by Mr. Pawling,
1466partner in the publishing firm of Mr. William Heinemann.
1467
1468One day Mr. Pawling said to me: "Stephen Crane has arrived in England.  I
1469asked him if there was anybody he wanted to meet and he mentioned two
1470names.  One of them was yours."  I had then just been reading, like the
1471rest of the world, Crane's _Red Badge of Courage_.  The subject of that
1472story was war, from the point of view of an individual soldier's
1473emotions.  That individual (he remains nameless throughout) was
1474interesting enough in himself, but on turning over the pages of that
1475little book which had for the moment secured such a noisy recognition I
1476had been even more interested in the personality of the writer.
1477picture of a simple and untried youth becoming through the needs of his
1478country part of a great fighting machine was presented with an
1479earnestness of purpose, a sense of tragic issues, and an imaginative
1480force of expression which struck me as quite uncommon and altogether
1481worthy of admiration.
1482
1483Apparently Stephen Crane had received a favourable impression from the
1484reading of the _Nigger of the Narcissus_, a book of mine which had also
1485been published lately.  I was truly pleased to hear this.
1486
1487On my next visit to town we met at a lunch.  I saw a young man of medium
1488stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating blue eyes, the
1489eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can brood over them to some
1490purpose.
1491
1492He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the things
1493of this earth and of our mortal humanity with a penetrating force that
1494seemed to reach, within life's appearances and forms, the very spirit of
1495life's truth.  His ignorance of the world at large--he had seen very
1496little of it--did not stand in the way of his imaginative grasp of facts,
1497events, and picturesque men.
1498
1499His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight interesting,
1500and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some people, mainly
1501Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect.  But not on me.  Whatever he
1502said had a personal note, and he expressed himself with a graphic
1503simplicity which was extremely engaging.  He knew little of literature,
1504either of his own country or of any other, but he was himself a wonderful
1505artist in words whenever he took a pen into his hand.  Then his gift came
1506out--and it was seen then to be much more than mere felicity of language.
1507His impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the surface.  In his
1508writing he was very sure of his effects.  I don't think he was ever in
1509doubt about what he could do.  Yet it often seemed to me that he was but
1510half aware of the exceptional quality of his achievement.
1511
1512This achievement was curtailed by his early death.  It was a great loss
1513to his friends, but perhaps not so much to literature.  I think that he
1514had given his measure fully in the few books he had the time to write.
1515Let me not be misunderstood: the loss was great, but it was the loss of
1516the delight his art could give, not the loss of any further possible
1517revelation.  As to himself, who can say how much he gained or lost by
1518quitting so early this world of the living, which he knew how to set
1519before us in the terms of his own artistic vision?  Perhaps he did not
1520lose a great deal.  The recognition he was accorded was rather languid
1521and given him grudgingly.  The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales
1522in this country was from Mr. W. Henley in the _New Review_ and later,
1523towards the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his
1524magazine.  For the rest I must say that during his sojourn in England he
1525had the misfortune to be, as the French say, _mal entoure_.  He was beset
1526by people who understood not the quality of his genius and were
1527antagonistic to the deeper fineness of his nature.  Some of them have
1528died since, but dead or alive they are not worth speaking about now. ben
1529don't think he had any illusions about them himself: yet there was a
1530strain of good-nature and perhaps of weakness in his character which
1531prevented him from shaking himself free from their worthless and
1532patronising attentions, which in those days caused me much secret
1533irritation whenever I stayed with him in either of his English homes. Benim
1534wife and I like best to remember him riding to meet us at the gate of the
1535Park at Brede.  Born master of his sincere impressions, he was also a
1536born horseman.  He never appeared so happy or so much to advantage as on
1537the back of a horse.  He had formed the project of teaching my eldest boy
1538to ride, and meantime, when the child was about two years old, presented
1539him with his first dog.
1540
1541I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his arrival in London.  I saw him
1542for the last time on his last day in England.  It was in Dover, in a big
1543hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the sea. O vardı
1544been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some place in Germany, but
1545one glance at that wasted face was enough to tell me that it was the most
1546forlorn of all hopes.  The last words he breathed out to me were: "I am
1547tired.  Give my love to your wife and child."  When I stopped at the door
1548for another look I saw that he had turned his head on the pillow and was
1549staring wistfully out of the window at the sails of a cutter yacht that
1550glided slowly across the frame, like a dim shadow against the grey sky.
1551
1552Those who have read his little tale, "Horses," and the story, "The Open
1553Boat," in the volume of that name, know with what fine understanding he
1554loved horses and the sea.  And his passage on this earth was like that of
1555a horseman riding swiftly in the dawn of a day fated to be short and
1556without sunshine.
1557
1558
1559
1560TALES OF THE SEA--1898
1561
1562
1563It is by his irresistible power to reach the adventurous side in the
1564character, not only of his own, but of all nations, that Marryat is
1565largely human.  He is the enslaver of youth, not by the literary
1566artifices of presentation, but by the natural glamour of his own
1567temperament.  To his young heroes the beginning of life is a splendid and
1568warlike lark, ending at last in inheritance and marriage.  His novels are
1569not the outcome of his art, but of his character, like the deeds that
1570make up his record of naval service.  To the artist his work is
1571interesting as a completely successful expression of an unartistic
1572nature.  It is absolutely amazing to us, as the disclosure of the spirit
1573animating the stirring time when the nineteenth century was young.  There
1574is an air of fable about it.  Its loss would be irreparable, like the
1575curtailment of national story or the loss of an historical document.  It
1576is the beginning and the embodiment of an inspiring tradition.
1577
1578To this writer of the sea the sea was not an element.  It was a stage,
1579where was displayed an exhibition of valour, and of such achievement as
1580the world had never seen before.  The greatness of that achievement
1581cannot be pronounced imaginary, since its reality has affected the
1582destinies of nations; nevertheless, in its grandeur it has all the
1583remoteness of an ideal.  History preserves the skeleton of facts and,
1584here and there, a figure or a name; but it is in Marryat's novels that we
1585find the mass of the nameless, that we see them in the flesh, that we
1586obtain a glimpse of the everyday life and an insight into the spirit
1587animating the crowd of obscure men who knew how to build for their
1588country such a shining monument of memories.
1589
1590Marryat is really a writer of the Service.  What sets him apart is his
1591fidelity.  His pen serves his country as well as did his professional
1592skill and his renowned courage.  His figures move about between water and
1593sky, and the water and the sky are there only to frame the deeds of the
1594Service.  His novels, like amphibious creatures, live on the sea and
1595frequent the shore, where they flounder deplorably.  The loves and the
1596hates of his boys are as primitive as their virtues and their vices.  His
1597women, from the beautiful Agnes to the witch-like mother of Lieutenant
1598Vanslyperken, are, with the exception of the sailors' wives, like the
1599shadows of what has never been.  His Silvas, his Ribieras, his Shriftens,
1600his Delmars remind us of people we have heard of somewhere, many times,
1601without ever believing in their existence.  His morality is honourable
1602and conventional.  There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent puns in
1603the midst of carnage.  His naiveties are perpetrated in a lurid light.
1604There is an endless variety of types, all surface, with hard edges, with
1605memorable eccentricities of outline, with a childish and heroic effect in
1606the drawing.  They do not belong to life; they belong exclusively to the
1607Service.  And yet they live; there is a truth in them, the truth of their
1608time; a headlong, reckless audacity, an intimacy with violence, an
1609unthinking fearlessness, and an exuberance of vitality which only years
1610of war and victories can give. His adventures are enthralling;
1611rapidity of his action fascinates; his method is crude, his
1612sentimentality, obviously incidental, is often factitious.  His greatness
1613is undeniable.
1614
1615It is undeniable.  To a multitude of readers the navy of to-day is
1616Marryat's navy still.  He has created a priceless legend.  If he be not
1617immortal, yet he will last long enough for the highest ambition, because
1618he has dealt manfully with an inspiring phase in the history of that
1619Service on which the life of his country depends.  The tradition of the
1620great past he has fixed in his pages will be cherished for ever as the
1621guarantee of the future.  He loved his country first, the Service next,
1622the sea perhaps not at all.  But the sea loved him without reserve.  It
1623gave him his professional distinction and his author's fame--a fame such
1624as not often falls to the lot of a true artist.
1625
1626At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, another man wrote of
1627the sea with true artistic instinct.  He is not invincibly young and
1628heroic; he is mature and human, though for him also the stress of
1629adventure and endeavour must end fatally in inheritance and marriage.  For
1630James Fenimore Cooper nature was not the frame-work, it was an essential
1631part of existence.  He could hear its voice, he could understand its
1632silence, and he could interpret both for us in his prose with all that
1633felicity and sureness of effect that belong to a poetical conception
1634alone.  His fame, as wide but less brilliant than that of his
1635contemporary, rests mostly on a novel which is not of the sea.  But he
1636loved the sea and looked at it with consummate understanding.  In his sea
1637tales the sea inter-penetrates with life; it is in a subtle way a factor
1638in the problem of existence, and, for all its greatness, it is always in
1639touch with the men, who, bound on errands of war or gain, traverse its
1640immense solitudes.  His descriptions have the magistral ampleness of a
1641gesture indicating the sweep of a vast horizon.  They embrace the colours
1642of sunset, the peace of starlight, the aspects of calm and storm, the
1643great loneliness of the waters, the stillness of watchful coasts, and the
1644alert readiness which marks men who live face to face with the promise
1645and the menace of the sea.
1646
1647He knows the men and he knows the sea.  His method may be often faulty,
1648but his art is genuine.  The truth is within him.  The road to legitimate
1649realism is through poetical feeling, and he possesses that--only it is
1650expressed in the leisurely manner of his time.  He has the knowledge of
1651simple hearts.  Long Tom Coffin is a monumental seaman with the
1652individuality of life and the significance of a type.  It is hard to
1653believe that Manual and Borroughcliffe, Mr. Marble of Marble-Head,
1654Captain Tuck of the packet-ship _Montauk_, or Daggett, the tenacious
1655commander of the _Sea Lion_ of Martha's Vineyard, must pass away some day
1656and be utterly forgotten.  His sympathy is large, and his humour is as
1657genuine--and as perfectly unaffected--as is his art.  In certain passages
1658he reaches, very simply, the heights of inspired vision.
1659
1660He wrote before the great American language was born, and he wrote as
1661well as any novelist of his time.  If he pitches upon episodes redounding
1662to the glory of the young republic, surely England has glory enough to
1663forgive him, for the sake of his excellence, the patriotic bias at her
1664expense. The interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging; ve
1665there runs through his work a steady vein of friendliness for the old
1666country which the succeeding generations of his compatriots have replaced
1667by a less definite sentiment.
1668
1669Perhaps no two authors of fiction influenced so many lives and gave to so
1670many the initial impulse towards a glorious or a useful career.  Through
1671the distances of space and time those two men of another race have shaped
1672also the life of the writer of this appreciation.  Life is life, and art
1673is art--and truth is hard to find in either.  Yet in testimony to the
1674achievement of both these authors it may be said that, in the case of the
1675writer at least, the youthful glamour, the headlong vitality of the one
1676and the profound sympathy, the artistic insight of the other--to which he
1677had surrendered--have withstood the brutal shock of facts and the wear of
1678laborious years.  He has never regretted his surrender.
1679
1680
1681
1682AN OBSERVER IN MALAYA {3}--1898
1683
1684
1685In his new volume, Mr. Hugh Clifford, at the beginning of the sketch
1686entitled "At the Heels of the White Man," expresses his anxiety as to the
1687state of England's account in the Day-Book of the Recording Angel "for
1688the good and the bad we have done--both with the most excellent
1689intentions."  The intentions will, no doubt, count for something, though,
1690of course, every nation's conquests are paved with good intentions; or it
1691may be that the Recording Angel, looking compassionately at the strife of
1692hearts, may disdain to enter into the Eternal Book the facts of a
1693struggle which has the reward of its righteousness even on this earth--in
1694victory and lasting greatness, or in defeat and humiliation.
1695
1696And, also, love will count for much.  If the opinion of a looker-on from
1697afar is worth anything, Mr. Hugh Clifford's anxiety about his country's
1698record is needless.  To the Malays whom he governs, instructs, and guides
1699he is the embodiment of the intentions, of the conscience and might of
1700his race.  And of all the nations conquering distant territories in the
1701name of the most excellent intentions, England alone sends out men who,
1702with such a transparent sincerity of feeling, can speak, as Mr. Hugh
1703Clifford does, of the place of toil and exile as "the land which is very
1704dear to me, where the best years of my life have been spent"--and where
1705(I would stake my right hand on it) his name is pronounced with respect
1706and affection by those brown men about whom he writes.
1707
1708All these studies are on a high level of interest, though not all on the
1709same level.  The descriptive chapters, results of personal observation,
1710seem to me the most interesting.  And, indeed, in a book of this kind it
1711is the author's personality which awakens the greatest interest; o
1712shapes itself before one in the ring of sentences, it is seen between the
1713lines--like the progress of a traveller in the jungle that may be traced
1714by the sound of the _parang_ chopping the swaying creepers, while the man
1715himself is glimpsed, now and then, indistinct and passing between the
1716trees.  Thus in his very vagueness of appearance, the writer seen through
1717the leaves of his book becomes a fascinating companion in a land of
1718fascination.
1719
1720It is when dealing with the aspects of nature that Mr. Hugh Clifford is
1721most convincing.  He looks upon them lovingly, for the land is "very dear
1722to him," and he records his cherished impressions so that the forest, the
1723great flood, the jungle, the rapid river, and the menacing rock dwell in
1724the memory of the reader long after the book is closed.  He does not say
1725anything, in so many words, of his affection for those who live amid the
1726scenes he describes so well, but his humanity is large enough to pardon
1727us if we suspect him of such a rare weakness.  In his preface he
1728expresses the regret at not having the gifts (whatever they may be) of
1729the kailyard school, or--looking up to a very different plane--the genius
1730of Mr. Barrie.  He has, however, gifts of his own, and his genius has
1731served his country and his fortunes in another direction.  Yet it is when
1732attempting what he professes himself unable to do, in telling us the
1733simple story of Umat, the punkah-puller, with unaffected simplicity and
1734half-concealed tenderness, that he comes nearest to artistic achievement.
1735
1736Each study in this volume presents some idea, illustrated by a fact told
1737without artifice, but with an elective sureness of knowledge.  The story
1738of Tukang Burok's love, related in the old man's own words, conveys the
1739very breath of Malay thought and speech.  In "His Little Bill," the
1740coolie, Lim Teng Wah, facing his debtor, stands very distinct before us,
1741an insignificant and tragic victim of fate with whom he had quarrelled to
1742the death over a matter of seven dollars and sixty-eight cents.
1743story of "The Schooner with a Past" may be heard, from the Straits
1744eastward, with many variations.  Out in the Pacific the schooner becomes
1745a cutter, and the pearl-divers are replaced by the Black-birds of the
1746Labour Trade. But Mr. Hugh Clifford's variation is very good. Var
1747a passage in it--a trifle--just the diver as seen coming up from the
1748depths, that in its dozen lines or so attains to distinct artistic value.
1749And, scattered through the book, there are many other passages of almost
1750equal descriptive excellence.
1751
1752Nevertheless, to apply artistic standards to this book would be a
1753fundamental error in appreciation.  Like faith, enthusiasm, or heroism,
1754art veils part of the truth of life to make the rest appear more
1755splendid, inspiring, or sinister.  And this book is only truth,
1756interesting and futile, truth unadorned, simple and straightforward.
1757Resident of Pahang has the devoted friendship of Umat, the punkah-puller,
1758he has an individual faculty of vision, a large sympathy, and the
1759scrupulous consciousness of the good and evil in his hands.  He may as
1760well rest content with such gifts.  One cannot expect to be, at the same
1761time, a ruler of men and an irreproachable player on the flute.
1762
1763
1764
1765A HAPPY WANDERER--1910
1766
1767
1768Converts are interesting people.  Most of us, if you will pardon me for
1769betraying the universal secret, have, at some time or other, discovered
1770in ourselves a readiness to stray far, ever so far, on the wrong road.
1771And what did we do in our pride and our cowardice?  Casting fearful
1772glances and waiting for a dark moment, we buried our discovery
1773discreetly, and kept on in the old direction, on that old, beaten track
1774we have not had courage enough to leave, and which we perceive now more
1775clearly than before to be but the arid way of the grave.
1776
1777The convert, the man capable of grace (I am speaking here in a secular
1778sense), is not discreet.  His pride is of another kind; he jumps gladly
1779off the track--the touch of grace is mostly sudden--and facing about in a
1780new direction may even attain the illusion of having turned his back on
1781Death itself.
1782
1783Some converts have, indeed, earned immortality by their exquisite
1784indiscretion.  The most illustrious example of a convert, that Flower of
1785chivalry, Don Quixote de la Mancha, remains for all the world the only
1786genuine immortal hidalgo.  The delectable Knight of Spain became
1787converted, as you know, from the ways of a small country squire to an
1788imperative faith in a tender and sublime mission.  Forthwith he was
1789beaten with sticks and in due course shut up in a wooden cage by the
1790Barber and the Priest, the fit ministers of a justly shocked social
1791order.  I do not know if it has occurred to anybody yet to shut up Mr.
1792Luffmann in a wooden cage. {4}  I do not raise the point because I wish
1793him any harm.  Quite the contrary.  I am a humane person.  Let him take
1794it as the highest praise--but I must say that he richly deserves that
1795sort of attention.
1796
1797On the other hand I would not have him unduly puffed up with the pride of
1798the exalted association.  The grave wisdom, the admirable amenity, the
1799serene grace of the secular patron-saint of all mortals converted to
1800noble visions are not his.  Mr. Luffmann has no mission.  He is no Knight
1801sublimely Errant.  But he is an excellent Vagabond.  He is full of merit.
1802That peripatetic guide, philosopher and friend of all nations, Mr.
1803Roosevelt, would promptly excommunicate him with a big stick.  The truth
1804is that the ex-autocrat of all the States does not like rebels against
1805the sullen order of our universe.  Make the best of it or perish--he
1806cries.  A sane lineal successor of the Barber and the Priest, and a
1807sagacious political heir of the incomparable Sancho Panza (another great
1808Governor), that distinguished litterateur has no mercy for dreamers.  And
1809our author happens to be a man of (you may trace them in his books) some
1810rather fine reveries.
1811
1812Every convert begins by being a rebel, and I do not see myself how any
1813mercy can possibly be extended to Mr. Luffmann.  He is a convert from the
1814creed of strenuous life.  For this renegade the body is of little
1815account; to him work appears criminal when it suppresses the demands of
1816the inner life; while he was young he did grind virtuously at the sacred
1817handle, and now, he says, he has fallen into disgrace with some people
1818because he believes no longer in toil without end.  Certain respectable
1819folk hate him--so he says--because he dares to think that "poetry,
1820beauty, and the broad face of the world are the best things to be in love
1821with."  He confesses to loving Spain on the ground that she is "the land
1822of to-morrow, and holds the gospel of never-mind."  The universal
1823striving to push ahead he considers mere vulgar folly.  Didn't I tell you
1824he was a fit subject for the cage?
1825
1826It is a relief (we are all humane, are we not?) to discover that this
1827desperate character is not altogether an outcast.  Little girls seem to
1828like him.  One of them, after listening to some of his tales, remarked to
1829her mother, "Wouldn't it be lovely if what he says were true!"  Here you
1830have Woman!  The charming creatures will neither strain at a camel nor
1831swallow a gnat.  Not publicly.  These operations, without which the world
1832they have such a large share in could not go on for ten minutes, are left
1833to us--men.  And then we are chided for being coarse.  This is a refined
1834objection but does not seem fair.  Another little girl--or perhaps the
1835same little girl--wrote to him in Cordova, "I hope Poste-Restante is a
1836nice place, and that you are very comfortable."  Woman again!  I have in
1837my time told some stories which are (I hate false modesty) both true and
1838lovely.  Yet no little girl ever wrote to me in kindly terms.  And why?
1839Simply because I am not enough of a Vagabond.  The dear despots of the
1840fireside have a weakness for lawless characters.  This is amiable, but
1841does not seem rational.
1842
1843Being Quixotic, Mr. Luffmann is no Impressionist.  He is far too earnest
1844in his heart, and not half sufficiently precise in his style to be that.
1845But he is an excellent narrator.  More than any Vagabond I have ever met,
1846he knows what he is about.  There is not one of his quiet days which is
1847dull.  You will find in them a love-story not made up, the
1848_coup-de-foudre_, the lightning-stroke of Spanish love; and you will
1849marvel how a spell so sudden and vehement can be at the same time so
1850tragically delicate.  You will find there landladies devoured with
1851jealousy, astute housekeepers, delightful boys, wise peasants, touchy
1852shopkeepers, all the _cosas de Espana_--and, in addition, the pale girl
1853Rosario.  I recommend that pathetic and silent victim of fate to your
1854benevolent compassion.  You will find in his pages the humours of
1855starving workers of the soil, the vision among the mountains of an
1856exulting mad spirit in a mighty body, and many other visions worthy of
1857attention.  And they are exact visions, for this idealist is no
1858visionary.  He is in sympathy with suffering mankind, and has a grasp on
1859real human affairs.  I mean the great and pitiful affairs concerned with
1860bread, love, and the obscure, unexpressed needs which drive great crowds
1861to prayer in the holy places of the earth.
1862
1863But I like his conception of what a "quiet" life is like!  His quiet days
1864require no fewer than forty-two of the forty-nine provinces of Spain to
1865take their ease in.  For his unquiet days, I presume, the seven--or is it
1866nine?--crystal spheres of Alexandrian cosmogony would afford, but a
1867wretchedly straitened space.  A most unconventional thing is his notion
1868of quietness.  One would take it as a joke; only that, perchance, to the
1869author of _Quiet Days in Spain_ all days may seem quiet, because, a
1870courageous convert, he is now at peace with himself.
1871
1872How better can we take leave of this interesting Vagabond than with the
1873road salutation of passing wayfarers: "And on you be peace! . . . You
1874have chosen your ideal, and it is a good choice.  There's nothing like
1875giving up one's life to an unselfish passion.  Let the rich and the
1876powerful of this globe preach their sound gospel of palpable progress.
1877The part of the ideal you embrace is the better one, if only in its
1878illusions.  No great passion can be barren.  May a world of gracious and
1879poignant images attend the lofty solitude of your renunciation!"
1880
1881
1882
1883THE LIFE BEYOND--1910
1884
1885
1886You have no doubt noticed that certain books produce a sort of physical
1887effect on one--mostly an audible effect.  I am not alluding here to Blue
1888books or to books of statistics.  The effect of these is simply
1889exasperating and no more.  No! the books I have in mind are just the
1890common books of commerce you and I read when we have five minutes to
1891spare, the usual hired books published by ordinary publishers, printed by
1892ordinary printers, and censored (when they happen to be novels) by the
1893usual circulating libraries, the guardians of our firesides, whose names
1894are household words within the four seas.
1895
1896To see the fair and the brave of this free country surrendering
1897themselves with unbounded trust to the direction of the circulating
1898libraries is very touching.  It is even, in a sense, a beautiful
1899spectacle, because, as you know, humility is a rare and fragrant virtue;
1900and what can be more humble than to surrender your morals and your
1901intellect to the judgment of one of your tradesmen?  I suppose that there
1902are some very perfect people who allow the Army and Navy Stores to censor
1903their diet.  So much merit, however, I imagine, is not frequently met
1904with here below.  The flesh, alas! is weak, and--from a certain point of
1905view--so important!
1906
1907A superficial person might be rendered miserable by the simple question:
1908What would become of us if the circulating libraries ceased to exist?  It
1909is a horrid and almost indelicate supposition, but let us be brave and
1910face the truth.  On this earth of ours nothing lasts.  _Tout passe, tout
1911casse, tout lasse_.  Imagine the utter wreck overtaking the morals of our
1912beautiful country-houses should the circulating libraries suddenly die!
1913But pray do not shudder.  There is no occasion.
1914
1915Their spirit shall survive.  I declare this from inward conviction, and
1916also from scientific information received lately.  For observe: the
1917circulating libraries are human institutions.  I beg you to follow me
1918closely.  They are human institutions, and being human, they are not
1919animal, and, therefore, they are spiritual.  Thus, any man with enough
1920money to take a shop, stock his shelves, and pay for advertisements shall
1921be able to evoke the pure and censorious spectre of the circulating
1922libraries whenever his own commercial spirit moves him.
1923
1924For, and this is the information alluded to above, Science, having in its
1925infinite wanderings run up against various wonders and mysteries, is
1926apparently willing now to allow a spiritual quality to man and, I
1927conclude, to all his works as well.
1928
1929I do not know exactly what this "Science" may be; and I do not think that
1930anybody else knows; but that is the information stated shortly. Bu
1931contained in a book reposing under my thoughtful eyes. {5}  I know it is
1932not a censored book, because I can see for myself that it is not a novel.
1933The author, on his side, warns me that it is not philosophy, that it is
1934not metaphysics, that it is not natural science. Bundan sonra
1935comprehensive warning, the definition of the book becomes, you will
1936admit, a pretty hard nut to crack.
1937
1938But meantime let us return for a moment to my opening remark about the
1939physical effect of some common, hired books.  A few of them (not
1940necessarily books of verse) are melodious; the music some others make for
1941you as you read has the disagreeable emphasis of a barrel-organ;
1942tinkling-cymbals book (it was not written by a humorist) I only met once.
1943But there is infinite variety in the noises books do make.  I have now on
1944my shelves a book apparently of the most valuable kind which, before I
1945have read half-a-dozen lines, begins to make a noise like a buzz-saw. ben
1946am inconsolable; I shall never, I fear, discover what it is all about,
1947for the buzzing covers the words, and at every try I am absolutely forced
1948to give it up ere the end of the page is reached.
1949
1950The book, however, which I have found so difficult to define, is by no
1951means noisy.  As a mere piece of writing it may be described as being
1952breathless itself and taking the reader's breath away, not by the
1953magnitude of its message but by a sort of anxious volubility in the
1954delivery.  The constantly elusive argument and the illustrative
1955quotations go on without a single reflective pause.  For this reason
1956alone the reading of that work is a fatiguing process.
1957
1958The author himself (I use his own words) "suspects" that what he has
1959written "may be theology after all."  It may be.  It is not my place
1960either to allay or to confirm the author's suspicion of his own work. Fakat
1961I will state its main thesis: "That science regarded in the gross
1962dictates the spirituality of man and strongly implies a spiritual destiny
1963for individual human beings."  This means: Existence after Death--that
1964is, Immortality.
1965
1966To find out its value you must go to the book.  But I will observe here
1967that an Immortality liable at any moment to betray itself fatuously by
1968the forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor Crookes is scarcely
1969worth having.  Can you imagine anything more squalid than an Immortality
1970at the beck and call of Eusapia Palladino?  That woman lives on the top
1971floor of a Neapolitan house, and gets our poor, pitiful, august dead,
1972flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, who have
1973loved, suffered and died, as we must love, suffer, and die--she gets them
1974to beat tambourines in a corner and protrude shadowy limbs through a
1975curtain.  This is particularly horrible, because, if one had to put one's
1976faith in these things one could not even die safely from disgust, as one
1977would long to do.
1978
1979And to believe that these manifestations, which the author evidently
1980takes for modern miracles, will stay our tottering faith; to believe that
1981the new psychology has, only the other day, discovered man to be a
1982"spiritual mystery," is really carrying humility towards that universal
1983provider, Science, too far.
1984
1985* * * * *
1986
1987We moderns have complicated our old perplexities to the point of
1988absurdity; our perplexities older than religion itself.  It is not for
1989nothing that for so many centuries the priest, mounting the steps of the
1990altar, murmurs, "Why art thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou trouble
1991me?"  Since the day of Creation two veiled figures, Doubt and Melancholy,
1992are pacing endlessly in the sunshine of the world.  What humanity needs
1993is not the promise of scientific immortality, but compassionate pity in
1994this life and infinite mercy on the Day of Judgment.
1995
1996And, for the rest, during this transient hour of our pilgrimage, we may
1997well be content to repeat the Invocation of Sar Peladan.  Sar Peladan was
1998an occultist, a seer, a modern magician.  He believed in astrology, in
1999the spirits of the air, in elves; he was marvellously and deliciously
2000absurd.  Incidentally he wrote some incomprehensible poems and a few
2001pages of harmonious prose, for, you must know, "a magician is nothing
2002else but a great harmonist."  Here are some eight lines of the
2003magnificent Invocation.  Let me, however, warn you, strictly between
2004ourselves, that my translation is execrable.  I am sorry to say I am no
2005magician.
2006
2007"O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive!  Open your arms to the son,
2008prodigal and weary.
2009
2010"I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal from
2011us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery. . . .
2012OEdipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young Faust,
2013regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I come back to
2014you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!"
2015
2016
2017
2018THE ASCENDING EFFORT--1910
2019
2020
2021Much good paper has been lamentably wasted to prove that science has
2022destroyed, that it is destroying, or, some day, may destroy poetry.
2023Meantime, unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the guileless poets have
2024gone on singing in a sweet strain.  How they dare do the impossible and
2025virtually forbidden thing is a cause for wonder but not for legislation.
2026Not yet.  We are at present too busy reforming the silent burglar and
2027planning concerts to soothe the savage breast of the yelling hooligan.  As
2028somebody--perhaps a publisher--said lately: "Poetry is of no account now-
2029a-days."
2030
2031But it is not totally neglected.  Those persons with gold-rimmed
2032spectacles whose usual occupation is to spy upon the obvious have
2033remarked audibly (on several occasions) that poetry has so far not given
2034to science any acknowledgment worthy of its distinguished position in the
2035popular mind.  Except that Tennyson looked down the throat of a foxglove,
2036that Erasmus Darwin wrote _The Loves of the Plants_ and a scoffer _The
2037Loves of the Triangles_, poets have been supposed to be indecorously
2038blind to the progress of science.  What tribute, for instance, has poetry
2039paid to electricity?  All I can remember on the spur of the moment is Mr.
2040Arthur Symons' line about arc lamps: "Hung with the globes of some
2041unnatural fruit."
2042
2043Commerce and Manufacture praise on every hand in their not mute but
2044inarticulate way the glories of science.  Poetry does not play its part.
2045Behold John Keats, skilful with the surgeon's knife; but when he writes
2046poetry his inspiration is not from the operating table.  Here I am
2047reminded, though, of a modern instance to the contrary in prose.  Mr. H.
2048G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has never written a line of verse, was
2049inspired a few years ago to write a short story, _Under the Knife_.  Out
2050of a clock-dial, a brass rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured
2051for us a sensation of space and eternity, evoked the face of the
2052Unknowable, and an awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment
2053Day; a great voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the
2054words: "There shall be no more pain!"  I advise you to look up that
2055story, so human and so intimate, because Mr. Wells, the writer of prose
2056whose amazing inventiveness we all know, remains a poet even in his most
2057perverse moments of scorn for things as they are.  His poetic imagination
2058is sometimes even greater than his inventiveness, I am not afraid to say.
2059But, indeed, imaginative faculty would make any man a poet--were he born
2060without tongue for speech and without hands to seize his fancy and fasten
2061her down to a wretched piece of paper.
2062
2063* * * * *
2064
2065The book {6} which in the course of the last few days I have opened and
2066shut several times is not imaginative.  But, on the other hand, it is not
2067a dumb book, as some are.  It has even a sort of sober and serious
2068eloquence, reminding us that not poetry alone is at fault in this matter.
2069Mr. Bourne begins his _Ascending Effort_ with a remark by Sir Francis
2070Galton upon Eugenics that "if the principles he was advocating were to
2071become effective they must be introduced into the national conscience,
2072like a new religion."  "Introduced" suggests compulsory vaccination.  Mr.
2073Bourne, who is not a theologian, wishes to league together not science
2074and religion, but science and the arts.  "The intoxicating power of art,"
2075he thinks, is the very thing needed to give the desired effect to the
2076doctrines of science.  In uninspired phrase he points to the arts playing
2077once upon a time a part in "popularising the Christian tenets." Ä°le
2078painstaking fervour as great as the fervour of prophets, but not so
2079persuasive, he foresees the arts some day popularising science.  Until
2080that day dawns, science will continue to be lame and poetry blind.  He
2081himself cannot smooth or even point out the way, though he thinks that "a
2082really prudent people would be greedy of beauty," and their public
2083authorities "as careful of the sense of comfort as of sanitation."
2084
2085As the writer of those remarkable rustic note-books, _The Bettesworth
2086Book_ and _Memoirs of a Surrey Labourer_, the author has a claim upon our
2087attention.  But his seriousness, his patience, his almost touching
2088sincerity, can only command the respect of his readers and nothing more.
2089He is obsessed by science, haunted and shadowed by it, until he has been
2090bewildered into awe.  He knows, indeed, that art owes its triumphs and
2091its subtle influence to the fact that it issues straight from our organic
2092vitality, and is a movement of life-cells with their matchless
2093unintellectual knowledge.  But the fact that poetry does not seem
2094obviously in love with science has never made him doubt whether it may
2095not be an argument against his haste to see the marriage ceremony
2096performed amid public rejoicings.
2097
2098Many a man has heard or read and believes that the earth goes round the
2099sun; one small blob of mud among several others, spinning ridiculously
2100with a waggling motion like a top about to fall.  This is the Copernican
2101system, and the man believes in the system without often knowing as much
2102about it as its name.  But while watching a sunset he sheds his belief;
2103he sees the sun as a small and useful object, the servant of his needs
2104and the witness of his ascending effort, sinking slowly behind a range of
2105mountains, and then he holds the system of Ptolemy.  He holds it without
2106knowing it.  In the same way a poet hears, reads, and believes a thousand
2107undeniable truths which have not yet got into his blood, nor will do
2108after reading Mr. Bourne's book; he writes, therefore, as if neither
2109truths nor book existed.  Life and the arts follow dark courses, and will
2110not turn aside to the brilliant arc-lights of science.  Some day, without
2111a doubt,--and it may be a consolation to Mr. Bourne to know it--fully
2112informed critics will point out that Mr. Davies's poem on a dark woman
2113combing her hair must have been written after the invasion of
2114appendicitis, and that Mr. Yeats's "Had I the heaven's embroidered
2115cloths" came before radium was quite unnecessarily dragged out of its
2116respectable obscurity in pitchblende to upset the venerable (and
2117comparatively naive) chemistry of our young days.
2118
2119There are times when the tyranny of science and the cant of science are
2120alarming, but there are other times when they are entertaining--and this
2121is one of them.  "Many a man prides himself" says Mr. Bourne, "on his
2122piety or his views of art, whose whole range of ideas, could they be
2123investigated, would be found ordinary, if not base, because they have
2124been adopted in compliance with some external persuasion or to serve some
2125timid purpose instead of proceeding authoritatively from the living
2126selection of his hereditary taste."  This extract is a fair sample of the
2127book's thought and of its style.  But Mr. Bourne seems to forget that
2128"persuasion" is a vain thing.  The appreciation of great art comes from
2129within.
2130
2131It is but the merest justice to say that the transparent honesty of Mr.
2132Bourne's purpose is undeniable.  But the whole book is simply an earnest
2133expression of a pious wish; and, like the generality of pious wishes,
2134this one seems of little dynamic value--besides being impracticable.
2135
2136Yes, indeed.  Art has served Religion; artists have found the most
2137exalted inspiration in Christianity; but the light of Transfiguration
2138which has illuminated the profoundest mysteries of our sinful souls is
2139not the light of the generating stations, which exposes the depths of our
2140infatuation where our mere cleverness is permitted for a while to grope
2141for the unessential among invincible shadows.
2142
2143
2144
2145THE CENSOR OF PLAYS--AN APPRECIATION--1907
2146
2147
2148A couple of years ago I was moved to write a one-act play--and I lived
2149long enough to accomplish the task.  We live and learn.  When the play
2150was finished I was informed that it had to be licensed for performance.
2151Thus I learned of the existence of the Censor of Plays.  I may say
2152without vanity that I am intelligent enough to have been astonished by
2153that piece of information: for facts must stand in some relation to time
2154and space, and I was aware of being in England--in the twentieth-century
2155England.  The fact did not fit the date and the place.  That was my first
2156thought.  It was, in short, an improper fact.  I beg you to believe that
2157I am writing in all seriousness and am weighing my words scrupulously.
2158
2159Therefore I don't say inappropriate.  I say improper--that is: something
2160to be ashamed of.  And at first this impression was confirmed by the
2161obscurity in which the figure embodying this after all considerable fact
2162had its being.  The Censor of Plays!  His name was not in the mouths of
2163all men.  Far from it.  He seemed stealthy and remote.  There was about
2164that figure the scent of the far East, like the peculiar atmosphere of a
2165Mandarin's back yard, and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, that epoch
2166when mankind tried to stand still in a monstrous illusion of final
2167certitude attained in morals, intellect and conscience.
2168
2169It was a disagreeable impression.  But I reflected that probably the
2170censorship of plays was an inactive monstrosity; not exactly a survival,
2171since it seemed obviously at variance with the genius of the people, but
2172an heirloom of past ages, a bizarre and imported curiosity preserved
2173because of that weakness one has for one's old possessions apart from any
2174intrinsic value; one more object of exotic _virtu_, an Oriental
2175_potiche_, a _magot chinois_ conceived by a childish and extravagant
2176imagination, but allowed to stand in stolid impotence in the twilight of
2177the upper shelf.
2178
2179Thus I quieted my uneasy mind.  Its uneasiness had nothing to do with the
2180fate of my one-act play.  The play was duly produced, and an
2181exceptionally intelligent audience stared it coldly off the boards.  It
2182ceased to exist.  It was a fair and open execution.  But having survived
2183the freezing atmosphere of that auditorium I continued to exist,
2184labouring under no sense of wrong.  I was not pleased, but I was content.
2185I was content to accept the verdict of a free and independent public,
2186judging after its conscience the work of its free, independent and
2187conscientious servant--the artist.
2188
2189Only thus can the dignity of artistic servitude be preserved--not to
2190speak of the bare existence of the artist and the self-respect of the
2191man.  I shall say nothing of the self-respect of the public.  To the self-
2192respect of the public the present appeal against the censorship is being
2193made and I join in it with all my heart.
2194
2195For I have lived long enough to learn that the monstrous and outlandish
2196figure, the _magot chinois_ whom I believed to be but a memorial of our
2197forefathers' mental aberration, that grotesque _potiche_, works!
2198absurd and hollow creature of clay seems to be alive with a sort of
2199(surely) unconscious life worthy of its traditions.  It heaves its
2200stomach, it rolls its eyes, it brandishes a monstrous arm: and with the
2201censorship, like a Bravo of old Venice with a more carnal weapon, stabs
2202its victim from behind in the twilight of its upper shelf.  Less
2203picturesque than the Venetian in cloak and mask, less estimable, too, in
2204this, that the assassin plied his moral trade at his own risk deriving no
2205countenance from the powers of the Republic, it stands more malevolent,
2206inasmuch that the Bravo striking in the dusk killed but the body, whereas
2207the grotesque thing nodding its mandarin head may in its absurd
2208unconsciousness strike down at any time the spirit of an honest, of an
2209artistic, perhaps of a sublime creation.
2210
2211This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western
2212Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's plug
2213hat and umbrella, is with us.  It is an office.  An office of trust.  And
2214from time to time there is found an official to fill it.  He is a public
2215man.  The least prominent of public men, the most unobtrusive, the most
2216obscure if not the most modest.
2217
2218But however obscure, a public man may be told the truth if only once in
2219his life.  His office flourishes in the shade; not in the rustic shade
2220beloved of the violet but in the muddled twilight of mind, where tyranny
2221of every sort flourishes.  Its holder need not have either brain or
2222heart, no sight, no taste, no imagination, not even bowels of compassion.
2223He needs not these things.  He has power.  He can kill thought, and
2224incidentally truth, and incidentally beauty, providing they seek to live
2225in a dramatic form.  He can do it, without seeing, without understanding,
2226without feeling anything; out of mere stupid suspicion, as an
2227irresponsible Roman Caesar could kill a senator.  He can do that and
2228there is no one to say him nay.  He may call his cook (Moliere used to do
2229that) from below and give her five acts to judge every morning as a
2230matter of constant practice and still remain the unquestioned destroyer
2231of men's honest work.  He may have a glass too much.  This accident has
2232happened to persons of unimpeachable morality--to gentlemen.  He may
2233suffer from spells of imbecility like Clodius. He may . . . ne olabilir
2234he not do!  I tell you he is the Caesar of the dramatic world.  There has
2235been since the Roman Principate nothing in the way of irresponsible power
2236to compare with the office of the Censor of Plays.
2237
2238Looked at in this way it has some grandeur, something colossal in the
2239odious and the absurd.  This figure in whose power it is to suppress an
2240intellectual conception--to kill thought (a dream for a mad brain, my
2241masters!)--seems designed in a spirit of bitter comedy to bring out the
2242greatness of a Philistine's conceit and his moral cowardice.
2243
2244But this is England in the twentieth century, and one wonders that there
2245can be found a man courageous enough to occupy the post.  It is a matter
2246for meditation.  Having given it a few minutes I come to the conclusion
2247in the serenity of my heart and the peace of my conscience that he must
2248be either an extreme megalomaniac or an utterly unconscious being.
2249
2250He must be unconscious.  It is one of the qualifications for his
2251magistracy.  Other qualifications are equally easy.  He must have done
2252nothing, expressed nothing, imagined nothing.  He must be obscure,
2253insignificant and mediocre--in thought, act, speech and sympathy.  He
2254must know nothing of art, of life--and of himself.  For if he did he
2255would not dare to be what he is.  Like that much questioned and
2256mysterious bird, the phoenix, he sits amongst the cold ashes of his
2257predecessor upon the altar of morality, alone of his kind in the sight of
2258wondering generations.
2259
2260And I will end with a quotation reproducing not perhaps the exact words
2261but the true spirit of a lofty conscience.
2262
2263"Often when sitting down to write the notice of a play, especially when I
2264felt it antagonistic to my canons of art, to my tastes or my convictions,
2265I hesitated in the fear lest my conscientious blame might check the
2266development of a great talent, my sincere judgment condemn a worthy mind.
2267With the pen poised in my hand I hesitated, whispering to myself 'What if
2268I were perchance doing my part in killing a masterpiece.'"
2269
2270Such were the lofty scruples of M. Jules Lemaitre--dramatist and dramatic
2271critic, a great citizen and a high magistrate in the Republic of Letters;
2272a Censor of Plays exercising his august office openly in the light of
2273day, with the authority of a European reputation.  But then M. Jules
2274Lemaitre is a man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine
2275conscience--not an obscure hollow Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr.
2276Stiggins's plug hat and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother--the
2277State.
2278
2279Frankly, is it not time to knock the improper object off its shelf?  It
2280has stood too long there.  Hatched in Pekin (I should say) by some Board
2281of Respectable Rites, the little caravan monster has come to us by way of
2282Moscow--I suppose.  It is outlandish.  It is not venerable.  It does not
2283belong here.  Is it not time to knock it off its dark shelf with some
2284implement appropriate to its worth and status?  With an old broom handle
2285for instance.
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290PART II--LIFE
2291
2292
2293AUTOCRACY AND WAR--1905
2294
2295
2296From the firing of the first shot on the banks of the Sha-ho, the fate of
2297the great battle of the Russo-Japanese war hung in the balance for more
2298than a fortnight.  The famous three-day battles, for which history has
2299reserved the recognition of special pages, sink into insignificance
2300before the struggles in Manchuria engaging half a million men on fronts
2301of sixty miles, struggles lasting for weeks, flaming up fiercely and
2302dying away from sheer exhaustion, to flame up again in desperate
2303persistence, and end--as we have seen them end more than once--not from
2304the victor obtaining a crushing advantage, but through the mortal
2305weariness of the combatants.
2306
2307We have seen these things, though we have seen them only in the cold,
2308silent, colourless print of books and newspapers.  In stigmatising the
2309printed word as cold, silent and colourless, I have no intention of
2310putting a slight upon the fidelity and the talents of men who have
2311provided us with words to read about the battles in Manchuria.  I only
2312wished to suggest that in the nature of things, the war in the Far East
2313has been made known to us, so far, in a grey reflection of its terrible
2314and monotonous phases of pain, death, sickness; a reflection seen in the
2315perspective of thousands of miles, in the dim atmosphere of official
2316reticence, through the veil of inadequate words.  Inadequate, I say,
2317because what had to be reproduced is beyond the common experience of war,
2318and our imagination, luckily for our peace of mind, has remained a
2319slumbering faculty, notwithstanding the din of humanitarian talk and the
2320real progress of humanitarian ideas.  Direct vision of the fact, or the
2321stimulus of a great art, can alone make it turn and open its eyes heavy
2322with blessed sleep; and even there, as against the testimony of the
2323senses and the stirring up of emotion, that saving callousness which
2324reconciles us to the conditions of our existence, will assert itself
2325under the guise of assent to fatal necessity, or in the enthusiasm of a
2326purely aesthetic admiration of the rendering.  In this age of knowledge
2327our sympathetic imagination, to which alone we can look for the ultimate
2328triumph of concord and justice, remains strangely impervious to
2329information, however correctly and even picturesquely conveyed.  As to
2330the vaunted eloquence of a serried array of figures, it has all the
2331futility of precision without force.  It is the exploded superstition of
2332enthusiastic statisticians.  An over-worked horse falling in front of our
2333windows, a man writhing under a cart-wheel in the streets awaken more
2334genuine emotion, more horror, pity, and indignation than the stream of
2335reports, appalling in their monotony, of tens of thousands of decaying
2336bodies tainting the air of the Manchurian plains, of other tens of
2337thousands of maimed bodies groaning in ditches, crawling on the frozen
2338ground, filling the field hospitals; of the hundreds of thousands of
2339survivors no less pathetic and even more tragic in being left alive by
2340fate to the wretched exhaustion of their pitiful toil.
2341
2342An early Victorian, or perhaps a pre-Victorian, sentimentalist, looking
2343out of an upstairs window, I believe, at a street--perhaps Fleet Street
2344itself--full of people, is reported, by an admiring friend, to have wept
2345for joy at seeing so much life.  These arcadian tears, this facile
2346emotion worthy of the golden age, comes to us from the past, with solemn
2347approval, after the close of the Napoleonic wars and before the series of
2348sanguinary surprises held in reserve by the nineteenth century for our
2349hopeful grandfathers.  We may well envy them their optimism of which this
2350anecdote of an amiable wit and sentimentalist presents an extreme
2351instance, but still, a true instance, and worthy of regard in the
2352spontaneous testimony to that trust in the life of the earth, triumphant
2353at last in the felicity of her children.  Moreover, the psychology of
2354individuals, even in the most extreme instances, reflects the general
2355effect of the fears and hopes of its time.  Wept for joy!  I should think
2356that now, after eighty years, the emotion would be of a sterner sort.  One
2357could not imagine anybody shedding tears of joy at the sight of much life
2358in a street, unless, perhaps, he were an enthusiastic officer of a
2359general staff or a popular politician, with a career yet to make.  And
2360hardly even that.  In the case of the first tears would be
2361unprofessional, and a stern repression of all signs of joy at the
2362provision of so much food for powder more in accord with the rules of
2363prudence; the joy of the second would be checked before it found issue in
2364weeping by anxious doubts as to the soundness of these electors' views
2365upon the question of the hour, and the fear of missing the consensus of
2366their votes.
2367
2368No!  It seems that such a tender joy would be misplaced now as much as
2369ever during the last hundred years, to go no further back.  The end of
2370the eighteenth century was, too, a time of optimism and of dismal
2371mediocrity in which the French Revolution exploded like a bombshell. İçinde
2372its lurid blaze the insufficiency of Europe, the inferiority of minds, of
2373military and administrative systems, stood exposed with pitiless
2374vividness.  And there is but little courage in saying at this time of the
2375day that the glorified French Revolution itself, except for its
2376destructive force, was in essentials a mediocre phenomenon.
2377parentage of that great social and political upheaval was intellectual,
2378the idea was elevated; but it is the bitter fate of any idea to lose its
2379royal form and power, to lose its "virtue" the moment it descends from
2380its solitary throne to work its will among the people.  It is a king
2381whose destiny is never to know the obedience of his subjects except at
2382the cost of degradation.  The degradation of the ideas of freedom and
2383justice at the root of the French Revolution is made manifest in the
2384person of its heir; a personality without law or faith, whom it has been
2385the fashion to represent as an eagle, but who was, in truth, more like a
2386sort of vulture preying upon the body of a Europe which did, indeed, for
2387some dozen of years, very much resemble a corpse.  The subtle and
2388manifold influence for evil of the Napoleonic episode as a school of
2389violence, as a sower of national hatreds, as the direct provocator of
2390obscurantism and reaction, of political tyranny and injustice, cannot
2391well be exaggerated.
2392
2393The nineteenth century began with wars which were the issue of a
2394corrupted revolution.  It may be said that the twentieth begins with a
2395war which is like the explosive ferment of a moral grave, whence may yet
2396emerge a new political organism to take the place of a gigantic and
2397dreaded phantom.  For a hundred years the ghost of Russian might,
2398overshadowing with its fantastic bulk the councils of Central and Western
2399Europe, sat upon the gravestone of autocracy, cutting off from air, from
2400light, from all knowledge of themselves and of the world, the buried
2401millions of Russian people.  Not the most determined cockney
2402sentimentalist could have had the heart to weep for joy at the thought of
2403its teeming numbers!  And yet they were living, they are alive yet,
2404since, through the mist of print, we have seen their blood freezing
2405crimson upon the snow of the squares and streets of St. Petersburg; dan beri
2406their generations born in the grave are yet alive enough to fill the
2407ditches and cover the fields of Manchuria with their torn limbs; göndermek
2408up from the frozen ground of battlefields a chorus of groans calling for
2409vengeance from Heaven; to kill and retreat, or kill and advance, without
2410intermission or rest for twenty hours, for fifty hours, for whole weeks
2411of fatigue, hunger, cold, and murder--till their ghastly labour, worthy
2412of a place amongst the punishments of Dante's Inferno, passing through
2413the stages of courage, of fury, of hopelessness, sinks into the night of
2414crazy despair.
2415
2416It seems that in both armies many men are driven beyond the bounds of
2417sanity by the stress of moral and physical misery.  Great numbers of
2418soldiers and regimental officers go mad as if by way of protest against
2419the peculiar sanity of a state of war: mostly among the Russians, of
2420course.  The Japanese have in their favour the tonic effect of success;
2421and the innate gentleness of their character stands them in good stead.
2422But the Japanese grand army has yet another advantage in this
2423nerve-destroying contest, which for endless, arduous toil of killing
2424surpasses all the wars of history. It has a base for its operations; bir
2425base of a nature beyond the concern of the many books written upon the so-
2426called art of war, which, considered by itself, purely as an exercise of
2427human ingenuity, is at best only a thing of well-worn, simple artifices.
2428The Japanese army has for its base a reasoned conviction; it has behind
2429it the profound belief in the right of a logical necessity to be appeased
2430at the cost of so much blood and treasure.  And in that belief, whether
2431well or ill founded, that army stands on the high ground of conscious
2432assent, shouldering deliberately the burden of a long-tried faithfulness.
2433The other people (since each people is an army nowadays), torn out from a
2434miserable quietude resembling death itself, hurled across space, amazed,
2435without starting-point of its own or knowledge of the aim, can feel
2436nothing but a horror-stricken consciousness of having mysteriously become
2437the plaything of a black and merciless fate.
2438
2439The profound, the instructive nature of this war is resumed by the
2440memorable difference in the spiritual state of the two armies; biri
2441forlorn and dazed on being driven out from an abyss of mental darkness
2442into the red light of a conflagration, the other with a full knowledge of
2443its past and its future, "finding itself" as it were at every step of the
2444trying war before the eyes of an astonished world.  The greatness of the
2445lesson has been dwarfed for most of us by an often half-conscious
2446prejudice of race-difference.  The West having managed to lodge its hasty
2447foot on the neck of the East, is prone to forget that it is from the East
2448that the wonders of patience and wisdom have come to a world of men who
2449set the value of life in the power to act rather than in the faculty of
2450meditation.  It has been dwarfed by this, and it has been obscured by a
2451cloud of considerations with whose shaping wisdom and meditation had
2452little or nothing to do; by the weary platitudes on the military
2453situation which (apart from geographical conditions) is the same
2454everlasting situation that has prevailed since the times of Hannibal and
2455Scipio, and further back yet, since the beginning of historical
2456record--since prehistoric times, for that matter; by the conventional
2457expressions of horror at the tale of maiming and killing; by the rumours
2458of peace with guesses more or less plausible as to its conditions.  All
2459this is made legitimate by the consecrated custom of writers in such time
2460as this--the time of a great war.  More legitimate in view of the
2461situation created in Europe are the speculations as to the course of
2462events after the war.  More legitimate, but hardly more wise than the
2463irresponsible talk of strategy that never changes, and of terms of peace
2464that do not matter.
2465
2466And above it all--unaccountably persistent--the decrepit, old, hundred
2467years old, spectre of Russia's might still faces Europe from across the
2468teeming graves of Russian people.  This dreaded and strange apparition,
2469bristling with bayonets, armed with chains, hung over with holy images;
2470that something not of this world, partaking of a ravenous ghoul, of a
2471blind Djinn grown up from a cloud, and of the Old Man of the Sea, still
2472faces us with its old stupidity, with its strange mystical arrogance,
2473stamping its shadowy feet upon the gravestone of autocracy already
2474cracked beyond repair by the torpedoes of Togo and the guns of Oyama,
2475already heaving in the blood-soaked ground with the first stirrings of a
2476resurrection.
2477
2478Never before had the Western world the opportunity to look so deep into
2479the black abyss which separates a soulless autocracy posing as, and even
2480believing itself to be, the arbiter of Europe, from the benighted,
2481starved souls of its people.  This is the real object-lesson of this war,
2482its unforgettable information.  And this war's true mission, disengaged
2483from the economic origins of that contest, from doors open or shut, from
2484the fields of Korea for Russian wheat or Japanese rice, from the
2485ownership of ice-free ports and the command of the waters of the East--its
2486true mission was to lay a ghost. It has accomplished it. olup olmadığını
2487Kuropatkin was incapable or unlucky, whether or not Russia issuing next
2488year, or the year after next, from behind a rampart of piled-up corpses
2489will win or lose a fresh campaign, are minor considerations.  The task of
2490Japan is done, the mission accomplished; the ghost of Russia's might is
2491laid.  Only Europe, accustomed so long to the presence of that portent,
2492seems unable to comprehend that, as in the fables of our childhood, the
2493twelve strokes of the hour have rung, the cock has crowed, the apparition
2494has vanished--never to haunt again this world which has been used to gaze
2495at it with vague dread and many misgivings.
2496
2497It was a fascination.  And the hallucination still lasts as inexplicable
2498in its persistence as in its duration.  It seems so unaccountable, that
2499the doubt arises as to the sincerity of all that talk as to what Russia
2500will or will not do, whether it will raise or not another army, whether
2501it will bury the Japanese in Manchuria under seventy millions of
2502sacrificed peasants' caps (as her Press boasted a little more than a year
2503ago) or give up to Japan that jewel of her crown, Saghalien, together
2504with some other things; whether, perchance, as an interesting
2505alternative, it will make peace on the Amur in order to make war beyond
2506the Oxus.
2507
2508All these speculations (with many others) have appeared gravely in print;
2509and if they have been gravely considered by only one reader out of each
2510hundred, there must be something subtly noxious to the human brain in the
2511composition of newspaper ink; or else it is that the large page, the
2512columns of words, the leaded headings, exalt the mind into a state of
2513feverish credulity.  The printed page of the Press makes a sort of still
2514uproar, taking from men both the power to reflect and the faculty of
2515genuine feeling; leaving them only the artificially created need of
2516having something exciting to talk about.
2517
2518The truth is that the Russia of our fathers, of our childhood, of our
2519middle-age; the testamentary Russia of Peter the Great--who imagined that
2520all the nations were delivered into the hand of Tsardom--can do nothing.
2521It can do nothing because it does not exist.  It has vanished for ever at
2522last, and as yet there is no new Russia to take the place of that ill-
2523omened creation, which, being a fantasy of a madman's brain, could in
2524reality be nothing else than a figure out of a nightmare seated upon a
2525monument of fear and oppression.
2526
2527The true greatness of a State does not spring from such a contemptible
2528source.  It is a matter of logical growth, of faith and courage.  Its
2529inspiration springs from the constructive instinct of the people,
2530governed by the strong hand of a collective conscience and voiced in the
2531wisdom and counsel of men who seldom reap the reward of gratitude.  Many
2532States have been powerful, but, perhaps, none have been truly great--as
2533yet.  That the position of a State in reference to the moral methods of
2534its development can be seen only historically, is true.  Perhaps mankind
2535has not lived long enough for a comprehensive view of any particular
2536case.  Perhaps no one will ever live long enough; and perhaps this earth
2537shared out amongst our clashing ambitions by the anxious arrangements of
2538statesmen will come to an end before we attain the felicity of greeting
2539with unanimous applause the perfect fruition of a great State. Bu
2540even possible that we are destined for another sort of bliss altogether:
2541that sort which consists in being perpetually duped by false appearances.
2542But whatever political illusion the future may hold out to our fear or
2543our admiration, there will be none, it is safe to say, which in the
2544magnitude of anti-humanitarian effect will equal that phantom now driven
2545out of the world by the thunder of thousands of guns; none that in its
2546retreat will cling with an equally shameless sincerity to more unworthy
2547supports: to the moral corruption and mental darkness of slavery, to the
2548mere brute force of numbers.
2549
2550This very ignominy of infatuation should make clear to men's feelings and
2551reason that the downfall of Russia's might is unavoidable.  Spectral it
2552lived and spectral it disappears without leaving a memory of a single
2553generous deed, of a single service rendered--even involuntarily--to the
2554polity of nations.  Other despotisms there have been, but none whose
2555origin was so grimly fantastic in its baseness, and the beginning of
2556whose end was so gruesomely ignoble.  What is amazing is the myth of its
2557irresistible strength which is dying so hard.
2558
2559* * * * *
2560
2561Considered historically, Russia's influence in Europe seems the most
2562baseless thing in the world; a sort of convention invented by
2563diplomatists for some dark purpose of their own, one would suspect, if
2564the lack of grasp upon the realities of any given situation were not the
2565main characteristic of the management of international relations. bir
2566glance back at the last hundred years shows the invariable, one may say
2567the logical, powerlessness of Russia.  As a military power it has never
2568achieved by itself a single great thing.  It has been indeed able to
2569repel an ill-considered invasion, but only by having recourse to the
2570extreme methods of desperation.  In its attacks upon its specially
2571selected victim this giant always struck as if with a withered right
2572hand.  All the campaigns against Turkey prove this, from Potemkin's time
2573to the last Eastern war in 1878, entered upon with every advantage of a
2574well-nursed prestige and a carefully fostered fanaticism.  Even the half-
2575armed were always too much for the might of Russia, or, rather, of the
2576Tsardom.  It was victorious only against the practically disarmed, as, in
2577regard to its ideal of territorial expansion, a glance at a map will
2578prove sufficiently.  As an ally, Russia has been always unprofitable,
2579taking her share in the defeats rather than in the victories of her
2580friends, but always pushing her own claims with the arrogance of an
2581arbiter of military success.  She has been unable to help to any purpose
2582a single principle to hold its own, not even the principle of authority
2583and legitimism which Nicholas the First had declared so haughtily to rest
2584under his special protection; just as Nicholas the Second has tried to
2585make the maintenance of peace on earth his own exclusive affair.  And the
2586first Nicholas was a good Russian; he held the belief in the sacredness
2587of his realm with such an intensity of faith that he could not survive
2588the first shock of doubt.  Rightly envisaged, the Crimean war was the end
2589of what remained of absolutism and legitimism in Europe.  It threw the
2590way open for the liberation of Italy.  The war in Manchuria makes an end
2591of absolutism in Russia, whoever has got to perish from the shock behind
2592a rampart of dead ukases, manifestoes, and rescripts.  In the space of
2593fifty years the self-appointed Apostle of Absolutism and the
2594self-appointed Apostle of Peace, the Augustus and the Augustulus of the
2595_regime_ that was wont to speak contemptuously to European Foreign
2596Offices in the beautiful French phrases of Prince Gorchakov, have fallen
2597victims, each after his kind, to their shadowy and dreadful familiar, to
2598the phantom, part ghoul, part Djinn, part Old Man of the Sea, with beak
2599and claws and a double head, looking greedily both east and west on the
2600confines of two continents.
2601
2602That nobody through all that time penetrated the true nature of the
2603monster it is impossible to believe.  But of the many who must have seen,
2604all were either too modest, too cautious, perhaps too discreet, to speak;
2605or else were too insignificant to be heard or believed.  Yet not all.
2606
2607In the very early sixties, Prince Bismarck, then about to leave his post
2608of Prussian Minister in St. Petersburg, called--so the story goes--upon
2609another distinguished diplomatist.  After some talk upon the general
2610situation, the future Chancellor of the German Empire remarked that it
2611was his practice to resume the impressions he had carried out of every
2612country where he had made a long stay, in a short sentence, which he
2613caused to be engraved upon some trinket.  "I am leaving this country now,
2614and this is what I bring away from it," he continued, taking off his
2615finger a new ring to show to his colleague the inscription inside: "La
2616Russie, c'est le neant."
2617
2618Prince Bismarck had the truth of the matter and was neither too modest
2619nor too discreet to speak out.  Certainly he was not afraid of not being
2620believed.  Yet he did not shout his knowledge from the house-tops.  He
2621meant to have the phantom as his accomplice in an enterprise which has
2622set the clock of peace back for many a year.
2623
2624He had his way.  The German Empire has been an accomplished fact for more
2625than a third of a century--a great and dreadful legacy left to the world
2626by the ill-omened phantom of Russia's might.
2627
2628It is that phantom which is disappearing now--unexpectedly,
2629astonishingly, as if by a touch of that wonderful magic for which the
2630East has always been famous.  The pretence of belief in its existence
2631will no longer answer anybody's purposes (now Prince Bismarck is dead)
2632unless the purposes of the writers of sensational paragraphs as to this
2633_Neant_ making an armed descent upon the plains of India.  That sort of
2634folly would be beneath notice if it did not distract attention from the
2635real problem created for Europe by a war in the Far East.
2636
2637For good or evil in the working out of her destiny, Russia is bound to
2638remain a _Neant_ for many long years, in a more even than a Bismarckian
2639sense.  The very fear of this spectre being gone, it behoves us to
2640consider its legacy--the fact (no phantom that) accomplished in Central
2641Europe by its help and connivance.
2642
2643The German Empire may feel at bottom the loss of an old accomplice always
2644amenable to the confidential whispers of a bargain; but in the first
2645instance it cannot but rejoice at the fundamental weakening of a possible
2646obstacle to its instincts of territorial expansion.  There is a removal
2647of that latent feeling of restraint which the presence of a powerful
2648neighbour, however implicated with you in a sense of common guilt, is
2649bound to inspire.  The common guilt of the two Empires is defined
2650precisely by their frontier line running through the Polish provinces.
2651Without indulging in excessive feelings of indignation at that country's
2652partition, or going so far as to believe--with a late French
2653politician--in the "immanente justice des choses," it is clear that a
2654material situation, based upon an essentially immoral transaction,
2655contains the germ of fatal differences in the temperament of the two
2656partners in iniquity--whatever the iniquity is.  Germany has been the
2657evil counsellor of Russia on all the questions of her Polish problem.
2658Always urging the adoption of the most repressive measures with a
2659perfectly logical duplicity, Prince Bismarck's Empire has taken care to
2660couple the neighbourly offers of military assistance with merciless
2661advice.  The thought of the Polish provinces accepting a frank
2662reconciliation with a humanised Russia and bringing the weight of
2663homogeneous loyalty within a few miles of Berlin, has been always
2664intensely distasteful to the arrogant Germanising tendencies of the other
2665partner in iniquity.  And, besides, the way to the Baltic provinces leads
2666over the Niemen and over the Vistula.
2667
2668And now, when there is a possibility of serious internal disturbances
2669destroying the sort of order autocracy has kept in Russia, the road over
2670these rivers is seen wearing a more inviting aspect.  At any moment the
2671pretext of armed intervention may be found in a revolutionary outbreak
2672provoked by Socialists, perhaps--but at any rate by the political
2673immaturity of the enlightened classes and by the political barbarism of
2674the Russian people.  The throes of Russian resurrection will be long and
2675painful.  This is not the place to speculate upon the nature of these
2676convulsions, but there must be some violent break-up of the lamentable
2677tradition, a shattering of the social, of the administrative--certainly
2678of the territorial--unity.
2679
2680Voices have been heard saying that the time for reforms in Russia is
2681already past.  This is the superficial view of the more profound truth
2682that for Russia there has never been such a time within the memory of
2683mankind.  It is impossible to initiate a rational scheme of reform upon a
2684phase of blind absolutism; and in Russia there has never been anything
2685else to which the faintest tradition could, after ages of error, go back
2686as to a parting of ways.
2687
2688In Europe the old monarchical principle stands justified in its
2689historical struggle with the growth of political liberty by the evolution
2690of the idea of nationality as we see it concreted at the present time; tarafından
2691the inception of that wider solidarity grouping together around the
2692standard of monarchical power these larger, agglomerations of mankind.
2693This service of unification, creating close-knit communities possessing
2694the ability, the will, and the power to pursue a common ideal, has
2695prepared the ground for the advent of a still larger understanding: for
2696the solidarity of Europeanism, which must be the next step towards the
2697advent of Concord and Justice; an advent that, however delayed by the
2698fatal worship of force and the errors of national selfishness, has been,
2699and remains, the only possible goal of our progress.
2700
2701The conceptions of legality, of larger patriotism, of national duties and
2702aspirations have grown under the shadow of the old monarchies of Europe,
2703which were the creations of historical necessity.  There were seeds of
2704wisdom in their very mistakes and abuses.  They had a past and a future;
2705they were human.  But under the shadow of Russian autocracy nothing could
2706grow.  Russian autocracy succeeded to nothing; it had no historical past,
2707and it cannot hope for a historical future.  It can only end.  By no
2708industry of investigation, by no fantastic stretch of benevolence, can it
2709be presented as a phase of development through which a Society, a State,
2710must pass on the way to the full consciousness of its destiny.  It lies
2711outside the stream of progress.  This despotism has been utterly
2712un-European.  Neither has it been Asiatic in its nature.  Oriental
2713despotisms belong to the history of mankind; they have left their trace
2714on our minds and our imagination by their splendour, by their culture, by
2715their art, by the exploits of great conquerors.  The record of their rise
2716and decay has an intellectual value; they are in their origins and their
2717course the manifestations of human needs, the instruments of racial
2718temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith and fanaticism.  The Russian
2719autocracy as we see it now is a thing apart.  It is impossible to assign
2720to it any rational origin in the vices, the misfortunes, the necessities,
2721or the aspirations of mankind.  That despotism has neither an European
2722nor an Oriental parentage; more, it seems to have no root either in the
2723institutions or the follies of this earth.  What strikes one with a sort
2724of awe is just this something inhuman in its character.  It is like a
2725visitation, like a curse from Heaven falling in the darkness of ages upon
2726the immense plains of forest and steppe lying dumbly on the confines of
2727two continents: a true desert harbouring no Spirit either of the East or
2728of the West.
2729
2730This pitiful fate of a country held by an evil spell, suffering from an
2731awful visitation for which the responsibility cannot be traced either to
2732her sins or her follies, has made Russia as a nation so difficult to
2733understand by Europe.  From the very first ghastly dawn of her existence
2734as a State she had to breathe the atmosphere of despotism; buldu
2735nothing but the arbitrary will of an obscure autocrat at the beginning
2736and end of her organisation.  Hence arises her impenetrability to
2737whatever is true in Western thought.  Western thought, when it crosses
2738her frontier, falls under the spell of her autocracy and becomes a
2739noxious parody of itself.  Hence the contradictions, the riddles of her
2740national life, which are looked upon with such curiosity by the rest of
2741the world.  The curse had entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing
2742else in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of
2743slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless
2744fatalism.  It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental
2745activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating
2746assertion of purity and holiness.  The Government of Holy Russia,
2747arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the
2748bodies of its subjects like a God-sent scourge, has been most cruel to
2749those whom it allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensation.
2750worst crime against humanity of that system we behold now crouching at
2751bay behind vast heaps of mangled corpses is the ruthless destruction of
2752innumerable minds.  The greatest horror of the world--madness--walked
2753faithfully in its train.  Some of the best intellects of Russia, after
2754struggling in vain against the spell, ended by throwing themselves at the
2755feet of that hopeless despotism as a giddy man leaps into an abyss.  An
2756attentive survey of Russia's literature, of her Church, of her
2757administration and the cross-currents of her thought, must end in the
2758verdict that the Russia of to-day has not the right to give her voice on
2759a single question touching the future of humanity, because from the very
2760inception of her being the brutal destruction of dignity, of truth, of
2761rectitude, of all that is faithful in human nature has been made the
2762imperative condition of her existence.  The great governmental secret of
2763that imperium which Prince Bismarck had the insight and the courage to
2764call _Le Neant_, has been the extirpation of every intellectual hope.  To
2765pronounce in the face of such a past the word Evolution, which is
2766precisely the expression of the highest intellectual hope, is a gruesome
2767pleasantry.  There can be no evolution out of a grave.  Another word of
2768less scientific sound has been very much pronounced of late in connection
2769with Russia's future, a word of more vague import, a word of dread as
2770much as of hope--Revolution.
2771
2772In the face of the events of the last four months, this word has sprung
2773instinctively, as it were, on grave lips, and has been heard with solemn
2774forebodings.  More or less consciously, Europe is preparing herself for a
2775spectacle of much violence and perhaps of an inspiring nobility of
2776greatness.  And there will be nothing of what she expects.  She will see
2777neither the anticipated character of the violence, nor yet any signs of
2778generous greatness.  Her expectations, more or less vaguely expressed,
2779give the measure of her ignorance of that _Neant_ which for so many years
2780had remained hidden behind this phantom of invincible armies.
2781
2782_Neant_!  In a way, yes!  And yet perhaps Prince Bismarck has let himself
2783be led away by the seduction of a good phrase into the use of an inexact
2784form.  The form of his judgment had to be pithy, striking, engraved
2785within a ring. If he erred, then, no doubt, he erred deliberately.
2786saying was near enough the truth to serve, and perhaps he did not want to
2787destroy utterly by a more severe definition the prestige of the sham that
2788could not deceive his genius.  Prince Bismarck has been really
2789complimentary to the useful phantom of the autocratic might.  There is an
2790awe-inspiring idea of infinity conveyed in the word _Neant_--and in
2791Russia there is no idea.  She is not a _Neant_, she is and has been
2792simply the negation of everything worth living for.  She is not an empty
2793void, she is a yawning chasm open between East and West; a bottomless
2794abyss that has swallowed up every hope of mercy, every aspiration towards
2795personal dignity, towards freedom, towards knowledge, every ennobling
2796desire of the heart, every redeeming whisper of conscience.  Those that
2797have peered into that abyss, where the dreams of Panslavism, of universal
2798conquest, mingled with the hate and contempt for Western ideas, drift
2799impotently like shapes of mist, know well that it is bottomless; o
2800there is in it no ground for anything that could in the remotest degree
2801serve even the lowest interests of mankind--and certainly no ground ready
2802for a revolution.  The sin of the old European monarchies was not the
2803absolutism inherent in every form of government; it was the inability to
2804alter the forms of their legality, grown narrow and oppressive with the
2805march of time.  Every form of legality is bound to degenerate into
2806oppression, and the legality in the forms of monarchical institutions
2807sooner, perhaps, than any other.  It has not been the business of
2808monarchies to be adaptive from within.  With the mission of uniting and
2809consolidating the particular ambitions and interests of feudalism in
2810favour of a larger conception of a State, of giving self-consciousness,
2811force and nationality to the scattered energies of thought and action,
2812they were fated to lag behind the march of ideas they had themselves set
2813in motion in a direction they could neither understand nor approve.  Yet,
2814for all that, the thrones still remain, and what is more significant,
2815perhaps, some of the dynasties, too, have survived.  The revolutions of
2816European States have never been in the nature of absolute protests _en
2817masse_ against the monarchical principle; they were the uprising of the
2818people against the oppressive degeneration of legality.  But there never
2819has been any legality in Russia; she is a negation of that as of
2820everything else that has its root in reason or conscience.  The ground of
2821every revolution had to be intellectually prepared.  A revolution is a
2822short cut in the rational development of national needs in response to
2823the growth of world-wide ideals.  It is conceivably possible for a
2824monarch of genius to put himself at the head of a revolution without
2825ceasing to be the king of his people.  For the autocracy of Holy Russia
2826the only conceivable self-reform is--suicide.
2827
2828The same relentless fate holds in its grip the all-powerful ruler and his
2829helpless people.  Wielders of a power purchased by an unspeakable
2830baseness of subjection to the Khans of the Tartar horde, the Princes of
2831Russia who, in their heart of hearts had come in time to regard
2832themselves as superior to every monarch of Europe, have never risen to be
2833the chiefs of a nation.  Their authority has never been sanctioned by
2834popular tradition, by ideas of intelligent loyalty, of devotion, of
2835political necessity, of simple expediency, or even by the power of the
2836sword.  In whatever form of upheaval autocratic Russia is to find her
2837end, it can never be a revolution fruitful of moral consequences to
2838mankind.  It cannot be anything else but a rising of slaves.  It is a
2839tragic circumstance that the only thing one can wish to that people who
2840had never seen face to face either law, order, justice, right, truth
2841about itself or the rest of the world; who had known nothing outside the
2842capricious will of its irresponsible masters, is that it should find in
2843the approaching hour of need, not an organiser or a law-giver, with the
2844wisdom of a Lycurgus or a Solon for their service, but at least the force
2845of energy and desperation in some as yet unknown Spartacus.
2846
2847A brand of hopeless mental and moral inferiority is set upon Russian
2848achievements; and the coming events of her internal changes, however
2849appalling they may be in their magnitude, will be nothing more impressive
2850than the convulsions of a colossal body.  As her boasted military force
2851that, corrupt in its origin, has ever struck no other but faltering
2852blows, so her soul, kept benumbed by her temporal and spiritual master
2853with the poison of tyranny and superstition, will find itself on
2854awakening possessed of no language, a monstrous full-grown child having
2855first to learn the ways of living thought and articulate speech. Bu
2856safe to say tyranny, assuming a thousand protean shapes, will remain
2857clinging to her struggles for a long time before her blind multitudes
2858succeed at last in trampling her out of existence under their millions of
2859bare feet.
2860
2861That would be the beginning.  What is to come after?  The conquest of
2862freedom to call your soul your own is only the first step on the road to
2863excellence.  We, in Europe, have gone a step or two further, have had the
2864time to forget how little that freedom means.  To Russia it must seem
2865everything.  A prisoner shut up in a noisome dungeon concentrates all his
2866hope and desire on the moment of stepping out beyond the gates.  It
2867appears to him pregnant with an immense and final importance; buna karşılık
2868what is important is the spirit in which he will draw the first breath of
2869freedom, the counsels he will hear, the hands he may find extended, the
2870endless days of toil that must follow, wherein he will have to build his
2871future with no other material but what he can find within himself.
2872
2873It would be vain for Russia to hope for the support and counsel of
2874collective wisdom.  Since 1870 (as a distinguished statesman of the old
2875tradition disconsolately exclaimed) "il n'y a plus d'Europe!"  There is,
2876indeed, no Europe.  The idea of a Europe united in the solidarity of her
2877dynasties, which for a moment seemed to dawn on the horizon of the Vienna
2878Congress through the subsiding dust of Napoleonic alarums and excursions,
2879has been extinguished by the larger glamour of less restraining ideals.
2880Instead of the doctrines of solidarity it was the doctrine of
2881nationalities much more favourable to spoliations that came to the front,
2882and since its greatest triumphs at Sadowa and Sedan there is no Europe.
2883Meanwhile till the time comes when there will be no frontiers, there are
2884alliances so shamelessly based upon the exigencies of suspicion and
2885mistrust that their cohesive force waxes and wanes with every year,
2886almost with the event of every passing month.  This is the atmosphere
2887Russia will find when the last rampart of tyranny has been beaten down.
2888But what hands, what voices will she find on coming out into the light of
2889day?  An ally she has yet who more than any other of Russia's allies has
2890found that it had parted with lots of solid substance in exchange for a
2891shadow.  It is true that the shadow was indeed the mightiest, the darkest
2892that the modern world had ever known--and the most overbearing.  But it
2893is fading now, and the tone of truest anxiety as to what is to take its
2894place will come, no doubt, from that and no other direction, and no
2895doubt, also, it will have that note of generosity which even in the
2896moments of greatest aberration is seldom wanting in the voice of the
2897French people.
2898
2899Two neighbours Russia will find at her door.  Austria, traditionally
2900unaggressive whenever her hand is not forced, ruled by a dynasty of
2901uncertain future, weakened by her duality, can only speak to her in an
2902uncertain, bilingual phrase.  Prussia, grown in something like forty
2903years from an almost pitiful dependant into a bullying friend and evil
2904counsellor of Russia's masters, may, indeed, hasten to extend a strong
2905hand to the weakness of her exhausted body, but if so it will be only
2906with the intention of tearing away the long-coveted part of her
2907substance.
2908
2909Pan-Germanism is by no means a shape of mists, and Germany is anything
2910but a _Neant_ where thought and effort are likely to lose themselves
2911without sound or trace.  It is a powerful and voracious organisation,
2912full of unscrupulous self-confidence, whose appetite for aggrandisement
2913will only be limited by the power of helping itself to the severed
2914members of its friends and neighbours.  The era of wars so eloquently
2915denounced by the old Republicans as the peculiar blood guilt of dynastic
2916ambitions is by no means over yet.  They will be fought out differently,
2917with lesser frequency, with an increased bitterness and the savage tooth-
2918and-claw obstinacy of a struggle for existence.  They will make us regret
2919the time of dynastic ambitions, with their human absurdity moderated by
2920prudence and even by shame, by the fear of personal responsibility and
2921the regard paid to certain forms of conventional decency.  For, if the
2922monarchs of Europe have been derided for addressing each other as
2923"brother" in autograph communications, that relationship was at least as
2924effective as any form of brotherhood likely to be established between the
2925rival nations of this continent, which, we are assured on all hands, is
2926the heritage of democracy.  In the ceremonial brotherhood of monarchs the
2927reality of blood-ties, for what little it is worth, acted often as a drag
2928on unscrupulous desires of glory or greed.  Besides, there was always the
2929common danger of exasperated peoples, and some respect for each other's
2930divine right.  No leader of a democracy, without other ancestry but the
2931sudden shout of a multitude, and debarred by the very condition of his
2932power from even thinking of a direct heir, will have any interest in
2933calling brother the leader of another democracy--a chief as fatherless
2934and heirless as himself.
2935
2936The war of 1870, brought about by the third Napoleon's half-generous,
2937half-selfish adoption of the principle of nationalities, was the first
2938war characterised by a special intensity of hate, by a new note in the
2939tune of an old song for which we may thank the Teutonic thoroughness.  Was
2940it not that excellent bourgeoise, Princess Bismarck (to keep only to
2941great examples), who was so righteously anxious to see men, women and
2942children--emphatically the children, too--of the abominable French nation
2943massacred off the face of the earth?  This illustration of the new war-
2944temper is artlessly revealed in the prattle of the amiable Busch, the
2945Chancellor's pet "reptile" of the Press.  And this was supposed to be a
2946war for an idea!  Too much, however, should not be made of that good
2947wife's and mother's sentiments any more than of the good First Emperor
2948William's tears, shed so abundantly after every battle, by letter,
2949telegram, and otherwise, during the course of the same war, before a dumb
2950and shamefaced continent.  These were merely the expressions of the
2951simplicity of a nation which more than any other has a tendency to run
2952into the grotesque.  There is worse to come.
2953
2954To-day, in the fierce grapple of two nations of different race, the short
2955era of national wars seems about to close.  No war will be waged for an
2956idea.  The "noxious idle aristocracies" of yesterday fought without
2957malice for an occupation, for the honour, for the fun of the thing.
2958virtuous, industrious democratic States of to-morrow may yet be reduced
2959to fighting for a crust of dry bread, with all the hate, ferocity, and
2960fury that must attach to the vital importance of such an issue.
2961dreams sanguine humanitarians raised almost to ecstasy about the year
2962fifty of the last century by the moving sight of the Crystal
2963Palace--crammed full with that variegated rubbish which it seems to be
2964the bizarre fate of humanity to produce for the benefit of a few
2965employers of labour--have vanished as quickly as they had arisen.
2966golden hopes of peace have in a single night turned to dead leaves in
2967every drawer of every benevolent theorist's writing table.  A swift
2968disenchantment overtook the incredible infatuation which could put its
2969trust in the peaceful nature of industrial and commercial competition.
2970
2971Industrialism and commercialism--wearing high-sounding names in many
2972languages (_Welt-politik_ may serve for one instance) picking up coins
2973behind the severe and disdainful figure of science whose giant strides
2974have widened for us the horizon of the universe by some few inches--stand
2975ready, almost eager, to appeal to the sword as soon as the globe of the
2976earth has shrunk beneath our growing numbers by another ell or so.  And
2977democracy, which has elected to pin its faith to the supremacy of
2978material interests, will have to fight their battles to the bitter end,
2979on a mere pittance--unless, indeed, some statesman of exceptional ability
2980and overwhelming prestige succeeds in carrying through an international
2981understanding for the delimitation of spheres of trade all over the
2982earth, on the model of the territorial spheres of influence marked in
2983Africa to keep the competitors for the privilege of improving the nigger
2984(as a buying machine) from flying prematurely at each other's throats.
2985
2986This seems the only expedient at hand for the temporary maintenance of
2987European peace, with its alliances based on mutual distrust, preparedness
2988for war as its ideal, and the fear of wounds, luckily stronger, so far,
2989than the pinch of hunger, its only guarantee.  The true peace of the
2990world will be a place of refuge much less like a beleaguered fortress and
2991more, let us hope, in the nature of an Inviolable Temple.  It will be
2992built on less perishable foundations than those of material interests.
2993But it must be confessed that the architectural aspect of the universal
2994city remains as yet inconceivable--that the very ground for its erection
2995has not been cleared of the jungle.
2996
2997Never before in history has the right of war been more fully admitted in
2998the rounded periods of public speeches, in books, in public prints, in
2999all the public works of peace, culminating in the establishment of the
3000Hague Tribunal--that solemnly official recognition of the Earth as a
3001House of Strife.  To him whose indignation is qualified by a measure of
3002hope and affection, the efforts of mankind to work its own salvation
3003present a sight of alarming comicality.  After clinging for ages to the
3004steps of the heavenly throne, they are now, without much modifying their
3005attitude, trying with touching ingenuity to steal one by one the
3006thunderbolts of their Jupiter.  They have removed war from the list of
3007Heaven-sent visitations that could only be prayed against; onlar sahip
3008erased its name from the supplication against the wrath of war,
3009pestilence, and famine, as it is found in the litanies of the Roman
3010Catholic Church; they have dragged the scourge down from the skies and
3011have made it into a calm and regulated institution.  At first sight the
3012change does not seem for the better.  Jove's thunderbolt looks a most
3013dangerous plaything in the hands of the people.  But a solemnly
3014established institution begins to grow old at once in the discussion,
3015abuse, worship, and execration of men.  It grows obsolete, odious, and
3016intolerable; it stands fatally condemned to an unhonoured old age.
3017
3018Therein lies the best hope of advanced thought, and the best way to help
3019its prospects is to provide in the fullest, frankest way for the
3020conditions of the present day.  War is one of its conditions; it is its
3021principal condition.  It lies at the heart of every question agitating
3022the fears and hopes of a humanity divided against itself.  The succeeding
3023ages have changed nothing except the watchwords of the armies.
3024intellectual stage of mankind being as yet in its infancy, and States,
3025like most individuals, having but a feeble and imperfect consciousness of
3026the worth and force of the inner life, the need of making their existence
3027manifest to themselves is determined in the direction of physical
3028activity.  The idea of ceasing to grow in territory, in strength, in
3029wealth, in influence--in anything but wisdom and self-knowledge--is
3030odious to them as the omen of the end.  Action, in which is to be found
3031the illusion of a mastered destiny, can alone satisfy our uneasy vanity
3032and lay to rest the haunting fear of the future--a sentiment concealed,
3033indeed, but proving its existence by the force it has, when invoked, to
3034stir the passions of a nation.  It will be long before we have learned
3035that in the great darkness before us there is nothing that we need fear.
3036Let us act lest we perish--is the cry.  And the only form of action open
3037to a State can be of no other than aggressive nature.
3038
3039There are many kinds of aggressions, though the sanction of them is one
3040and the same--the magazine rifle of the latest pattern. Hazırlık aşamasında
3041for or against that form of action the States of Europe are spending now
3042such moments of uneasy leisure as they can snatch from the labours of
3043factory and counting-house.
3044
3045Never before has war received so much homage at the lips of men, and
3046reigned with less disputed sway in their minds.  It has harnessed science
3047to its gun-carriages, it has enriched a few respectable manufacturers,
3048scattered doles of food and raiment amongst a few thousand skilled
3049workmen, devoured the first youth of whole generations, and reaped its
3050harvest of countless corpses.  It has perverted the intelligence of men,
3051women, and children, and has made the speeches of Emperors, Kings,
3052Presidents, and Ministers monotonous with ardent protestations of
3053fidelity to peace.  Indeed, war has made peace altogether its own, it has
3054modelled it on its own image: a martial, overbearing, war-lord sort of
3055peace, with a mailed fist, and turned-up moustaches, ringing with the din
3056of grand manoeuvres, eloquent with allusions to glorious feats of arms;
3057it has made peace so magnificent as to be almost as expensive to keep up
3058as itself.  It has sent out apostles of its own, who at one time went
3059about (mostly in newspapers) preaching the gospel of the mystic sanctity
3060of its sacrifices, and the regenerating power of spilt blood, to the poor
3061in mind--whose name is legion.
3062
3063It has been observed that in the course of earthly greatness a day of
3064culminating triumph is often paid for by a morrow of sudden extinction.
3065Let us hope it is so.  Yet the dawn of that day of retribution may be a
3066long time breaking above a dark horizon.  War is with us now; and,
3067whether this one ends soon or late, war will be with us again.  And it is
3068the way of true wisdom for men and States to take account of things as
3069they are.
3070
3071Civilisation has done its little best by our sensibilities for whose
3072growth it is responsible.  It has managed to remove the sights and sounds
3073of battlefields away from our doorsteps.  But it cannot be expected to
3074achieve the feat always and under every variety of circumstance.  Some
3075day it must fail, and we shall have then a wealth of appallingly
3076unpleasant sensations brought home to us with painful intimacy. Bu
3077not absurd to suppose that whatever war comes to us next it will _not_ be
3078a distant war waged by Russia either beyond the Amur or beyond the Oxus.
3079
3080The Japanese armies have laid that ghost for ever, because the Russia of
3081the future will not, for the reasons explained above, be the Russia of to-
3082day. It will not have the same thoughts, resentments and aims. Bu
3083even a question whether it will preserve its gigantic frame unaltered and
3084unbroken.  All speculation loses itself in the magnitude of the events
3085made possible by the defeat of an autocracy whose only shadow of a title
3086to existence was the invincible power of military conquest.  That
3087autocratic Russia will have a miserable end in harmony with its base
3088origin and inglorious life does not seem open to doubt.  The problem of
3089the immediate future is posed not by the eventual manner but by the
3090approaching fact of its disappearance.
3091
3092The Japanese armies, in laying the oppressive ghost, have not only
3093accomplished what will be recognised historically as an important mission
3094in the world's struggle against all forms of evil, but have also created
3095a situation.  They have created a situation in the East which they are
3096competent to manage by themselves; and in doing this they have brought
3097about a change in the condition of the West with which Europe is not well
3098prepared to deal.  The common ground of concord, good faith and justice
3099is not sufficient to establish an action upon; since the conscience of
3100but very few men amongst us, and of no single Western nation as yet, will
3101brook the restraint of abstract ideas as against the fascination of a
3102material advantage.  And eagle-eyed wisdom alone cannot take the lead of
3103human action, which in its nature must for ever remain short-sighted.
3104trouble of the civilised world is the want of a common conservative
3105principle abstract enough to give the impulse, practical enough to form
3106the rallying point of international action tending towards the restraint
3107of particular ambitions.  Peace tribunals instituted for the greater
3108glory of war will not replace it.  Whether such a principle exists--who
3109can say?  If it does not, then it ought to be invented.  A sage with a
3110sense of humour and a heart of compassion should set about it without
3111loss of time, and a solemn prophet full of words and fire ought to be
3112given the task of preparing the minds.  So far there is no trace of such
3113a principle anywhere in sight; even its plausible imitations (never very
3114effective) have disappeared long ago before the doctrine of national
3115aspirations.  _Il n'y a plus d'Europe_--there is only an armed and
3116trading continent, the home of slowly maturing economical contests for
3117life and death and of loudly proclaimed world-wide ambitions. Var
3118also other ambitions not so loud, but deeply rooted in the envious
3119acquisitive temperament of the last corner amongst the great Powers of
3120the Continent, whose feet are not exactly in the ocean--not yet--and
3121whose head is very high up--in Pomerania, the breeding place of such
3122precious Grenadiers that Prince Bismarck (whom it is a pleasure to quote)
3123would not have given the bones of one of them for the settlement of the
3124old Eastern Question.  But times have changed, since, by way of keeping
3125up, I suppose, some old barbaric German rite, the faithful servant of the
3126Hohenzollerns was buried alive to celebrate the accession of a new
3127Emperor.
3128
3129Already the voice of surmises has been heard hinting tentatively at a
3130possible re-grouping of European Powers.  The alliance of the three
3131Empires is supposed possible.  And it may be possible.  The myth of
3132Russia's power is dying very hard--hard enough for that combination to
3133take place--such is the fascination that a discredited show of numbers
3134will still exercise upon the imagination of a people trained to the
3135worship of force.  Germany may be willing to lend its support to a
3136tottering autocracy for the sake of an undisputed first place, and of a
3137preponderating voice in the settlement of every question in that south-
3138east of Europe which merges into Asia.  No principle being involved in
3139such an alliance of mere expediency, it would never be allowed to stand
3140in the way of Germany's other ambitions.  The fall of autocracy would
3141bring its restraint automatically to an end.  Thus it may be believed
3142that the support Russian despotism may get from its once humble friend
3143and client will not be stamped by that thoroughness which is supposed to
3144be the mark of German superiority.  Russia weakened down to the second
3145place, or Russia eclipsed altogether during the throes of her
3146regeneration, will answer equally well the plans of German policy--which
3147are many and various and often incredible, though the aim of them all is
3148the same: aggrandisement of territory and influence, with no regard to
3149right and justice, either in the East or in the West.  For that and no
3150other is the true note of your _Welt-politik_ which desires to live.
3151
3152The German eagle with a Prussian head looks all round the horizon, not so
3153much for something to do that would count for good in the records of the
3154earth, as simply for something good to get.  He gazes upon the land and
3155upon the sea with the same covetous steadiness, for he has become of late
3156a maritime eagle, and has learned to box the compass.  He gazes north and
3157south, and east and west, and is inclined to look intemperately upon the
3158waters of the Mediterranean when they are blue.  The disappearance of the
3159Russian phantom has given a foreboding of unwonted freedom to the _Welt-
3160politik_.  According to the national tendency this assumption of Imperial
3161impulses would run into the grotesque were it not for the spikes of the
3162_pickelhaubes_ peeping out grimly from behind.  Germany's attitude proves
3163that no peace for the earth can be found in the expansion of material
3164interests which she seems to have adopted exclusively as her only aim,
3165ideal, and watchword.  For the use of those who gaze half-unbelieving at
3166the passing away of the Russian phantom, part Ghoul, part Djinn, part Old
3167Man of the Sea, and wait half-doubting for the birth of a nation's soul
3168in this age which knows no miracles, the once-famous saying of poor
3169Gambetta, tribune of the people (who was simple and believed in the
3170"immanent justice of things"), may be adapted in the shape of a warning
3171that, so far as a future of liberty, concord, and justice is concerned:
3172"Le Prussianisme--voila l'ennemi!"
3173
3174
3175
3176THE CRIME OF PARTITION--1919
3177
3178
3179At the end of the eighteenth century, when the partition of Poland had
3180become an accomplished fact, the world qualified it at once as a crime.
3181This strong condemnation proceeded, of course, from the West of Europe;
3182the Powers of the Centre, Prussia and Austria, were not likely to admit
3183that this spoliation fell into the category of acts morally reprehensible
3184and carrying the taint of anti-social guilt.  As to Russia, the third
3185party to the crime, and the originator of the scheme, she had no national
3186conscience at the time.  The will of its rulers was always accepted by
3187the people as the expression of an omnipotence derived directly from God.
3188As an act of mere conquest the best excuse for the partition lay simply
3189in the fact that it happened to be possible; there was the plunder and
3190there was the opportunity to get hold of it.  Catherine the Great looked
3191upon this extension of her dominions with a cynical satisfaction.  Her
3192political argument that the destruction of Poland meant the repression of
3193revolutionary ideas and the checking of the spread of Jacobinism in
3194Europe was a characteristically impudent pretence.  There may have been
3195minds here and there amongst the Russians that perceived, or perhaps only
3196felt, that by the annexation of the greater part of the Polish Republic,
3197Russia approached nearer to the comity of civilised nations and ceased,
3198at least territorially, to be an Asiatic Power.
3199
3200It was only after the partition of Poland that Russia began to play a
3201great part in Europe.  To such statesmen as she had then that act of
3202brigandage must have appeared inspired by great political wisdom.
3203King of Prussia, faithful to the ruling principle of his life, wished
3204simply to aggrandise his dominions at a much smaller cost and at much
3205less risk than he could have done in any other direction; for at that
3206time Poland was perfectly defenceless from a material point of view, and
3207more than ever, perhaps, inclined to put its faith in humanitarian
3208illusions.  Morally, the Republic was in a state of ferment and
3209consequent weakness, which so often accompanies the period of social
3210reform. The strength arrayed against her was just then overwhelming; ben
3211mean the comparatively honest (because open) strength of armed forces.
3212But, probably from innate inclination towards treachery, Frederick of
3213Prussia selected for himself the part of falsehood and deception.
3214Appearing on the scene in the character of a friend he entered
3215deliberately into a treaty of alliance with the Republic, and then,
3216before the ink was dry, tore it up in brazen defiance of the commonest
3217decency, which must have been extremely gratifying to his natural tastes.
3218
3219As to Austria, it shed diplomatic tears over the transaction.  They
3220cannot be called crocodile tears, insomuch that they were in a measure
3221sincere.  They arose from a vivid perception that Austria's allotted
3222share of the spoil could never compensate her for the accession of
3223strength and territory to the other two Powers.  Austria did not really
3224want an extension of territory at the cost of Poland.  She could not hope
3225to improve her frontier in that way, and economically she had no need of
3226Galicia, a province whose natural resources were undeveloped and whose
3227salt mines did not arouse her cupidity because she had salt mines of her
3228own.  No doubt the democratic complexion of Polish institutions was very
3229distasteful to the conservative monarchy; Austrian statesmen did see at
3230the time that the real danger to the principle of autocracy was in the
3231West, in France, and that all the forces of Central Europe would be
3232needed for its suppression.  But the movement towards a _partage_ on the
3233part of Russia and Prussia was too definite to be resisted, and Austria
3234had to follow their lead in the destruction of a State which she would
3235have preferred to preserve as a possible ally against Prussian and
3236Russian ambitions.  It may be truly said that the destruction of Poland
3237secured the safety of the French Revolution.  For when in 1795 the crime
3238was consummated, the Revolution had turned the corner and was in a state
3239to defend itself against the forces of reaction.
3240
3241In the second half of the eighteenth century there were two centres of
3242liberal ideas on the continent of Europe: France and Poland.  On an
3243impartial survey one may say without exaggeration that then France was
3244relatively every bit as weak as Poland; even, perhaps, more so. Fakat
3245France's geographical position made her much less vulnerable.  She had no
3246powerful neighbours on her frontier; a decayed Spain in the south and a
3247conglomeration of small German Principalities on the east were her happy
3248lot.  The only States which dreaded the contamination of the new
3249principles and had enough power to combat it were Prussia, Austria, and
3250Russia, and they had another centre of forbidden ideas to deal with in
3251defenceless Poland, unprotected by nature, and offering an immediate
3252satisfaction to their cupidity.  They made their choice, and the untold
3253sufferings of a nation which would not die was the price exacted by fate
3254for the triumph of revolutionary ideals.
3255
3256Thus even a crime may become a moral agent by the lapse of time and the
3257course of history.  Progress leaves its dead by the way, for progress is
3258only a great adventure as its leaders and chiefs know very well in their
3259hearts.  It is a march into an undiscovered country; and in such an
3260enterprise the victims do not count.  As an emotional outlet for the
3261oratory of freedom it was convenient enough to remember the Crime now and
3262then: the Crime being the murder of a State and the carving of its body
3263into three pieces.  There was really nothing to do but to drop a few
3264tears and a few flowers of rhetoric upon the grave.  But the spirit of
3265the nation refused to rest therein.  It haunted the territories of the
3266Old Republic in the manner of a ghost haunting its ancestral mansion
3267where strangers are making themselves at home; a calumniated, ridiculed,
3268and pooh-pooh'd ghost, and yet never ceasing to inspire a sort of awe, a
3269strange uneasiness, in the hearts of the unlawful possessors.  Poland
3270deprived of its independence, of its historical continuity, with its
3271religion and language persecuted and repressed, became a mere
3272geographical expression.  And even that, itself, seemed strangely vague,
3273had lost its definite character, was rendered doubtful by the theories
3274and the claims of the spoliators who, by a strange effect of uneasy
3275conscience, while strenuously denying the moral guilt of the transaction,
3276were always trying to throw a veil of high rectitude over the Crime.  What
3277was most annoying to their righteousness was the fact that the nation,
3278stabbed to the heart, refused to grow insensible and cold.  That
3279persistent and almost uncanny vitality was sometimes very inconvenient to
3280the rest of Europe also.  It would intrude its irresistible claim into
3281every problem of European politics, into the theory of European
3282equilibrium, into the question of the Near East, the Italian question,
3283the question of Schleswig-Holstein, and into the doctrine of
3284nationalities.  That ghost, not content with making its ancestral halls
3285uncomfortable for the thieves, haunted also the Cabinets of Europe, waved
3286indecently its bloodstained robes in the solemn atmosphere of Council-
3287rooms, where congresses and conferences sit with closed windows.  It
3288would not be exorcised by the brutal jeers of Bismarck and the fine
3289railleries of Gorchakov.
3290
3291As a Polish friend observed to me some years ago: "Till the year '48 the
3292Polish problem has been to a certain extent a convenient rallying-point
3293for all manifestations of liberalism.  Since that time we have come to be
3294regarded simply as a nuisance.  It's very disagreeable."
3295
3296I agreed that it was, and he continued: "What are we to do?  We did not
3297create the situation by any outside action of ours.  Through all the
3298centuries of its existence Poland has never been a menace to anybody, not
3299even to the Turks, to whom it has been merely an obstacle."
3300
3301Nothing could be more true.  The spirit of aggressiveness was absolutely
3302foreign to the Polish temperament, to which the preservation of its
3303institutions and its liberties was much more precious than any ideas of
3304conquest.  Polish wars were defensive, and they were mostly fought within
3305Poland's own borders.  And that those territories were often invaded was
3306but a misfortune arising from its geographical position.  Territorial
3307expansion was never the master-thought of Polish statesmen.
3308consolidation of the territories of the _serenissime_ Republic, which
3309made of it a Power of the first rank for a time, was not accomplished by
3310force.  It was not the consequence of successful aggression, but of a
3311long and successful defence against the raiding neighbours from the East.
3312The lands of Lithuanian and Ruthenian speech were never conquered by
3313Poland.  These peoples were not compelled by a series of exhausting wars
3314to seek safety in annexation.  It was not the will of a prince or a
3315political intrigue that brought about the union.  Neither was it fear.
3316The slowly-matured view of the economical and social necessities and,
3317before all, the ripening moral sense of the masses were the motives that
3318induced the forty three representatives of Lithuanian and Ruthenian
3319provinces, led by their paramount prince, to enter into a political
3320combination unique in the history of the world, a spontaneous and
3321complete union of sovereign States choosing deliberately the way of
3322peace.  Never was strict truth better expressed in a political instrument
3323than in the preamble of the first Union Treaty (1413).  It begins with
3324the words: "This Union, being the outcome not of hatred, but of
3325love"--words that Poles have not heard addressed to them politically by
3326any nation for the last hundred and fifty years.
3327
3328This union being an organic, living thing capable of growth and
3329development was, later, modified and confirmed by two other treaties,
3330which guaranteed to all the parties in a just and eternal union all their
3331rights, liberties, and respective institutions.  The Polish State offers
3332a singular instance of an extremely liberal administrative federalism
3333which, in its Parliamentary life as well as its international politics,
3334presented a complete unity of feeling and purpose.  As an eminent French
3335diplomatist remarked many years ago: "It is a very remarkable fact in the
3336history of the Polish State, this invariable and unanimous consent of the
3337populations; the more so that, the King being looked upon simply as the
3338chief of the Republic, there was no monarchical bond, no dynastic
3339fidelity to control and guide the sentiment of the nations, and their
3340union remained as a pure affirmation of the national will."  The Grand
3341Duchy of Lithuania and its Ruthenian Provinces retained their statutes,
3342their own administration, and their own political institutions.  That
3343those institutions in the course of time tended to assimilation with the
3344Polish form was not the result of any pressure, but simply of the
3345superior character of Polish civilisation.
3346
3347Even after Poland lost its independence this alliance and this union
3348remained firm in spirit and fidelity.  All the national movements towards
3349liberation were initiated in the name of the whole mass of people
3350inhabiting the limits of the old Republic, and all the Provinces took
3351part in them with complete devotion.  It is only in the last generation
3352that efforts have been made to create a tendency towards separation,
3353which would indeed serve no one but Poland's common enemies.  And,
3354strangely enough, it is the internationalists, men who professedly care
3355nothing for race or country, who have set themselves this task of
3356disruption, one can easily see for what sinister purpose.  The ways of
3357the internationalists may be dark, but they are not inscrutable.
3358
3359From the same source no doubt there will flow in the future a poisoned
3360stream of hints of a reconstituted Poland being a danger to the races
3361once so closely associated within the territories of the Old Republic.
3362The old partners in "the Crime" are not likely to forgive their victim
3363its inconvenient and almost shocking obstinacy in keeping alive.  They
3364had tried moral assassination before and with some small measure of
3365success, for, indeed, the Polish question, like all living reproaches,
3366had become a nuisance.  Given the wrong, and the apparent impossibility
3367of righting it without running risks of a serious nature, some moral
3368alleviation may be found in the belief that the victim had brought its
3369misfortunes on its own head by its own sins.  That theory, too, had been
3370advanced about Poland (as if other nations had known nothing of sin and
3371folly), and it made some way in the world at different times, simply
3372because good care was taken by the interested parties to stop the mouth
3373of the accused.  But it has never carried much conviction to honest
3374minds.  Somehow, in defiance of the cynical point of view as to the Force
3375of Lies and against all the power of falsified evidence, truth often
3376turns out to be stronger than calumny.  With the course of years,
3377however, another danger sprang up, a danger arising naturally from the
3378new political alliances dividing Europe into two armed camps.  It was the
3379danger of silence.  Almost without exception the Press of Western Europe
3380in the twentieth century refused to touch the Polish question in any
3381shape or form whatever.  Never was the fact of Polish vitality more
3382embarrassing to European diplomacy than on the eve of Poland's
3383resurrection.
3384
3385When the war broke out there was something gruesomely comic in the
3386proclamations of emperors and archdukes appealing to that invincible soul
3387of a nation whose existence or moral worth they had been so arrogantly
3388denying for more than a century.  Perhaps in the whole record of human
3389transactions there have never been performances so brazen and so vile as
3390the manifestoes of the German Emperor and the Grand Duke Nicholas of
3391Russia; and, I imagine, no more bitter insult has been offered to human
3392heart and intelligence than the way in which those proclamations were
3393flung into the face of historical truth.  It was like a scene in a
3394cynical and sinister farce, the absurdity of which became in some sort
3395unfathomable by the reflection that nobody in the world could possibly be
3396so abjectly stupid as to be deceived for a single moment.  At that time,
3397and for the first two months of the war, I happened to be in Poland, and
3398I remember perfectly well that, when those precious documents came out,
3399the confidence in the moral turpitude of mankind they implied did not
3400even raise a scornful smile on the lips of men whose most sacred feelings
3401and dignity they outraged.  They did not deign to waste their contempt on
3402them.  In fact, the situation was too poignant and too involved for
3403either hot scorn or a coldly rational discussion.  For the Poles it was
3404like being in a burning house of which all the issues were locked.  There
3405was nothing but sheer anguish under the strange, as if stony, calmness
3406which in the utter absence of all hope falls on minds that are not
3407constitutionally prone to despair.  Yet in this time of dismay the
3408irrepressible vitality of the nation would not accept a neutral attitude.
3409I was told that even if there were no issue it was absolutely necessary
3410for the Poles to affirm their national existence.  Passivity, which could
3411be regarded as a craven acceptance of all the material and moral horrors
3412ready to fall upon the nation, was not to be thought of for a moment.
3413Therefore, it was explained to me, the Poles _must_ act.  Whether this
3414was a counsel of wisdom or not it is very difficult to say, but there are
3415crises of the soul which are beyond the reach of wisdom.  When there is
3416apparently no issue visible to the eyes of reason, sentiment may yet find
3417a way out, either towards salvation or to utter perdition, no one can
3418tell--and the sentiment does not even ask the question.  Being there as a
3419stranger in that tense atmosphere, which was yet not unfamiliar to me, I
3420was not very anxious to parade my wisdom, especially after it had been
3421pointed out in answer to my cautious arguments that, if life has its
3422values worth fighting for, death, too, has that in it which can make it
3423worthy or unworthy.
3424
3425Out of the mental and moral trouble into which the grouping of the Powers
3426at the beginning of war had thrown the counsels of Poland there emerged
3427at last the decision that the Polish Legions, a peace organisation in
3428Galicia directed by Pilsudski (afterwards given the rank of General, and
3429now apparently the Chief of the Government in Warsaw), should take the
3430field against the Russians.  In reality it did not matter against which
3431partner in the "Crime" Polish resentment should be directed.  There was
3432little to choose between the methods of Russian barbarism, which were
3433both crude and rotten, and the cultivated brutality tinged with contempt
3434of Germany's superficial, grinding civilisation.  There was nothing to
3435choose between them.  Both were hateful, and the direction of the Polish
3436effort was naturally governed by Austria's tolerant attitude, which had
3437connived for years at the semi-secret organisation of the Polish Legions.
3438Besides, the material possibility pointed out the way.  That Poland
3439should have turned at first against the ally of Western Powers, to whose
3440moral support she had been looking for so many years, is not a greater
3441monstrosity than that alliance with Russia which had been entered into by
3442England and France with rather less excuse and with a view to
3443eventualities which could perhaps have been avoided by a firmer policy
3444and by a greater resolution in the face of what plainly appeared
3445unavoidable.
3446
3447For let the truth be spoken.  The action of Germany, however cruel,
3448sanguinary, and faithless, was nothing in the nature of a stab in the
3449dark.  The Germanic Tribes had told the whole world in all possible tones
3450carrying conviction, the gently persuasive, the coldly logical; in tones
3451Hegelian, Nietzschean, warlike, pious, cynical, inspired, what they were
3452going to do to the inferior races of the earth, so full of sin and all
3453unworthiness.  But with a strange similarity to the prophets of old (who
3454were also great moralists and invokers of might) they seemed to be crying
3455in a desert.  Whatever might have been the secret searching of hearts,
3456the Worthless Ones would not take heed.  It must also be admitted that
3457the conduct of the menaced Governments carried with it no suggestion of
3458resistance.  It was no doubt, the effect of neither courage nor fear, but
3459of that prudence which causes the average man to stand very still in the
3460presence of a savage dog.  It was not a very politic attitude, and the
3461more reprehensible in so far that it seemed to arise from the mistrust of
3462their own people's fortitude.  On simple matters of life and death a
3463people is always better than its leaders, because a people cannot argue
3464itself as a whole into a sophisticated state of mind out of deference for
3465a mere doctrine or from an exaggerated sense of its own cleverness. ben
3466speaking now of democracies whose chiefs resemble the tyrant of Syracuse
3467in this, that their power is unlimited (for who can limit the will of a
3468voting people?) and who always see the domestic sword hanging by a hair
3469above their heads.
3470
3471Perhaps a different attitude would have checked German self-confidence,
3472and her overgrown militarism would have died from the excess of its own
3473strength.  What would have been then the moral state of Europe it is
3474difficult to say.  Some other excess would probably have taken its place,
3475excess of theory, or excess of sentiment, or an excess of the sense of
3476security leading to some other form of catastrophe; but it is certain
3477that in that case the Polish question would not have taken a concrete
3478form for ages.  Perhaps it would never have taken form!  In this world,
3479where everything is transient, even the most reproachful ghosts end by
3480vanishing out of old mansions, out of men's consciences.  Progress of
3481enlightenment, or decay of faith?  In the years before the war the Polish
3482ghost was becoming so thin that it was impossible to get for it the
3483slightest mention in the papers.  A young Pole coming to me from Paris
3484was extremely indignant, but I, indulging in that detachment which is the
3485product of greater age, longer experience, and a habit of meditation,
3486refused to share that sentiment.  He had gone begging for a word on
3487Poland to many influential people, and they had one and all told him that
3488they were going to do no such thing.  They were all men of ideas and
3489therefore might have been called idealists, but the notion most strongly
3490anchored in their minds was the folly of touching a question which
3491certainly had no merit of actuality and would have had the appalling
3492effect of provoking the wrath of their old enemies and at the same time
3493offending the sensibilities of their new friends.  It was an unanswerable
3494argument.  I couldn't share my young friend's surprise and indignation.
3495My practice of reflection had also convinced me that there is nothing on
3496earth that turns quicker on its pivot than political idealism when
3497touched by the breath of practical politics.
3498
3499It would be good to remember that Polish independence as embodied in a
3500Polish State is not the gift of any kind of journalism, neither is it the
3501outcome even of some particularly benevolent idea or of any clearly
3502apprehended sense of guilt.  I am speaking of what I know when I say that
3503the original and only formative idea in Europe was the idea of delivering
3504the fate of Poland into the hands of Russian Tsarism.  And, let us
3505remember, it was assumed then to be a victorious Tsarism at that. Öyleydi
3506an idea talked of openly, entertained seriously, presented as a
3507benevolence, with a curious blindness to its grotesque and ghastly
3508character.  It was the idea of delivering the victim with a kindly smile
3509and the confident assurance that "it would be all right" to a perfectly
3510unrepentant assassin, who, after sawing furiously at its throat for a
3511hundred years or so, was expected to make friends suddenly and kiss it on
3512both cheeks in the mystic Russian fashion.  It was a singularly
3513nightmarish combination of international polity, and no whisper of any
3514other would have been officially tolerated.  Indeed, I do not think in
3515the whole extent of Western Europe there was anybody who had the
3516slightest mind to whisper on that subject.  Those were the days of the
3517dark future, when Benckendorf put down his name on the Committee for the
3518Relief of Polish Populations driven by the Russian armies into the heart
3519of Russia, when the Grand Duke Nicholas (the gentleman who advocated a
3520St. Bartholomew's Night for the suppression of Russian liberalism) was
3521displaying his "divine" (I have read the very word in an English
3522newspaper of standing) strategy in the great retreat, where Mr. Iswolsky
3523carried himself haughtily on the banks of the Seine; and it was beginning
3524to dawn upon certain people there that he was a greater nuisance even
3525than the Polish question.
3526
3527But there is no use in talking about all that.  Some clever person has
3528said that it is always the unexpected that happens, and on a calm and
3529dispassionate survey the world does appear mainly to one as a scene of
3530miracles.  Out of Germany's strength, in whose purpose so many people
3531refused to believe, came Poland's opportunity, in which nobody could have
3532been expected to believe.  Out of Russia's collapse emerged that
3533forbidden thing, the Polish independence, not as a vengeful figure, the
3534retributive shadow of the crime, but as something much more solid and
3535more difficult to get rid of--a political necessity and a moral solution.
3536Directly it appeared its practical usefulness became undeniable, and also
3537the fact that, for better or worse, it was impossible to get rid of it
3538again except by the unthinkable way of another carving, of another
3539partition, of another crime.
3540
3541Therein lie the strength and the future of the thing so strictly
3542forbidden no farther back than two years or so, of the Polish
3543independence expressed in a Polish State.  It comes into the world
3544morally free, not in virtue of its sufferings, but in virtue of its
3545miraculous rebirth and of its ancient claim for services rendered to
3546Europe.  Not a single one of the combatants of all the fronts of the
3547world has died consciously for Poland's freedom.  That supreme
3548opportunity was denied even to Poland's own children.  And it is just as
3549well!  Providence in its inscrutable way had been merciful, for had it
3550been otherwise the load of gratitude would have been too great, the sense
3551of obligation too crushing, the joy of deliverance too fearful for
3552mortals, common sinners with the rest of mankind before the eye of the
3553Most High.  Those who died East and West, leaving so much anguish and so
3554much pride behind them, died neither for the creation of States, nor for
3555empty words, nor yet for the salvation of general ideas.  They died
3556neither for democracy, nor leagues, nor systems, nor yet for abstract
3557justice, which is an unfathomable mystery.  They died for something too
3558deep for words, too mighty for the common standards by which reason
3559measures the advantages of life and death, too sacred for the vain
3560discourses that come and go on the lips of dreamers, fanatics,
3561humanitarians, and statesmen. They died . . . .
3562
3563Poland's independence springs up from that great immolation, but Poland's
3564loyalty to Europe will not be rooted in anything so trenchant and
3565burdensome as the sense of an immeasurable indebtedness, of that
3566gratitude which in a worldly sense is sometimes called eternal, but which
3567lies always at the mercy of weariness and is fatally condemned by the
3568instability of human sentiments to end in negation.  Polish loyalty will
3569be rooted in something much more solid and enduring, in something that
3570could never be called eternal, but which is, in fact, life-enduring.  It
3571will be rooted in the national temperament, which is about the only thing
3572on earth that can be trusted.  Men may deteriorate, they may improve too,
3573but they don't change.  Misfortune is a hard school which may either
3574mature or spoil a national character, but it may be reasonably advanced
3575that the long course of adversity of the most cruel kind has not injured
3576the fundamental characteristics of the Polish nation which has proved its
3577vitality against the most demoralising odds.  The various phases of the
3578Polish sense of self-preservation struggling amongst the menacing forces
3579and the no less threatening chaos of the neighbouring Powers should be
3580judged impartially.  I suggest impartiality and not indulgence simply
3581because, when appraising the Polish question, it is not necessary to
3582invoke the softer emotions.  A little calm reflection on the past and the
3583present is all that is necessary on the part of the Western world to
3584judge the movements of a community whose ideals are the same, but whose
3585situation is unique.  This situation was brought vividly home to me in
3586the course of an argument more than eighteen months ago.  "Don't forget,"
3587I was told, "that Poland has got to live in contact with Germany and
3588Russia to the end of time.  Do you understand the force of that
3589expression: 'To the end of time'?  Facts must be taken into account, and
3590especially appalling facts, such as this, to which there is no possible
3591remedy on earth.  For reasons which are, properly speaking,
3592physiological, a prospect of friendship with Germans or Russians even in
3593the most distant future is unthinkable.  Any alliance of heart and mind
3594would be a monstrous thing, and monsters, as we all know, cannot live.
3595You can't base your conduct on a monstrous conception.  We are either
3596worth or not worth preserving, but the horrible psychology of the
3597situation is enough to drive the national mind to distraction.  Yet under
3598a destructive pressure, of which Western Europe can have no notion,
3599applied by forces that were not only crushing but corrupting, we have
3600preserved our sanity.  Therefore there can be no fear of our losing our
3601minds simply because the pressure is removed.  We have neither lost our
3602heads nor yet our moral sense.  Oppression, not merely political, but
3603affecting social relations, family life, the deepest affections of human
3604nature, and the very fount of natural emotions, has never made us
3605vengeful.  It is worthy of notice that with every incentive present in
3606our emotional reactions we had no recourse to political assassination.
3607Arms in hand, hopeless or hopefully, and always against immeasurable
3608odds, we did affirm ourselves and the justice of our cause; but wild
3609justice has never been a part of our conception of national manliness. İçinde
3610all the history of Polish oppression there was only one shot fired which
3611was not in battle.  Only one!  And the man who fired it in Paris at the
3612Emperor Alexander II. was but an individual connected with no
3613organisation, representing no shade of Polish opinion.  The only effect
3614in Poland was that of profound regret, not at the failure, but at the
3615mere fact of the attempt.  The history of our captivity is free from that
3616stain; and whatever follies in the eyes of the world we may have
3617perpetrated, we have neither murdered our enemies nor acted treacherously
3618against them, nor yet have been reduced to the point of cursing each
3619other."
3620
3621I could not gainsay the truth of that discourse, I saw as clearly as my
3622interlocutor the impossibility of the faintest sympathetic bond between
3623Poland and her neighbours ever being formed in the future.  The only
3624course that remains to a reconstituted Poland is the elaboration,
3625establishment, and preservation of the most correct method of political
3626relations with neighbours to whom Poland's existence is bound to be a
3627humiliation and an offence.  Calmly considered it is an appalling task,
3628yet one may put one's trust in that national temperament which is so
3629completely free from aggressiveness and revenge.  Therein lie the
3630foundations of all hope.  The success of renewed life for that nation
3631whose fate is to remain in exile, ever isolated from the West, amongst
3632hostile surroundings, depends on the sympathetic understanding of its
3633problems by its distant friends, the Western Powers, which in their
3634democratic development must recognise the moral and intellectual kinship
3635of that distant outpost of their own type of civilisation, which was the
3636only basis of Polish culture.
3637
3638Whatever may be the future of Russia and the final organisation of
3639Germany, the old hostility must remain unappeased, the fundamental
3640antagonism must endure for years to come.  The Crime of the Partition was
3641committed by autocratic Governments which were the Governments of their
3642time; but those Governments were characterised in the past, as they will
3643be in the future, by their people's national traits, which remain utterly
3644incompatible with the Polish mentality and Polish sentiment.  Both the
3645German submissiveness (idealistic as it may be) and the Russian
3646lawlessness (fed on the corruption of all the virtues) are utterly
3647foreign to the Polish nation, whose qualities and defects are altogether
3648of another kind, tending to a certain exaggeration of individualism and,
3649perhaps, to an extreme belief in the Governing Power of Free Assent: the
3650one invariably vital principle in the internal government of the Old
3651Republic.  There was never a history more free from political bloodshed
3652than the history of the Polish State, which never knew either feudal
3653institutions or feudal quarrels.  At the time when heads were falling on
3654the scaffolds all over Europe there was only one political execution in
3655Poland--only one; and as to that there still exists a tradition that the
3656great Chancellor who democratised Polish institutions, and had to order
3657it in pursuance of his political purpose, could not settle that matter
3658with his conscience till the day of his death.  Poland, too, had her
3659civil wars, but this can hardly be made a matter of reproach to her by
3660the rest of the world.  Conducted with humanity, they left behind them no
3661animosities and no sense of repression, and certainly no legacy of
3662hatred.  They were but a recognised argument in political discussion and
3663tended always towards conciliation.
3664
3665I cannot imagine, whatever form of democratic government Poland
3666elaborates for itself, that either the nation or its leaders would do
3667anything but welcome the closest scrutiny of their renewed political
3668existence.  The difficulty of the problem of that existence will be so
3669great that some errors will be unavoidable, and one may be sure that they
3670will be taken advantage of by its neighbours to discredit that living
3671witness to a great historical crime.  If not the actual frontiers, then
3672the moral integrity of the new State is sure to be assailed before the
3673eyes of Europe.  Economical enmity will also come into play when the
3674world's work is resumed again and competition asserts its power.  Charges
3675of aggression are certain to be made, especially as related to the small
3676States formed of the territories of the Old Republic.  And everybody
3677knows the power of lies which go about clothed in coats of many colours,
3678whereas, as is well known, Truth has no such advantage, and for that
3679reason is often suppressed as not altogether proper for everyday
3680purposes.  It is not often recognised, because it is not always fit to be
3681seen.
3682
3683Already there are innuendoes, threats, hints thrown out, and even awful
3684instances fabricated out of inadequate materials, but it is historically
3685unthinkable that the Poland of the future, with its sacred tradition of
3686freedom and its hereditary sense of respect for the rights of individuals
3687and States, should seek its prosperity in aggressive action or in moral
3688violence against that part of its once fellow-citizens who are Ruthenians
3689or Lithuanians.  The only influence that cannot be restrained is simply
3690the influence of time, which disengages truth from all facts with a
3691merciless logic and prevails over the passing opinions, the changing
3692impulses of men.  There can be no doubt that the moral impulses and the
3693material interests of the new nationalities, which seem to play now the
3694game of disintegration for the benefit of the world's enemies, will in
3695the end bring them nearer to the Poland of this war's creation, will
3696unite them sooner or later by a spontaneous movement towards the State
3697which had adopted and brought them up in the development of its own
3698humane culture--the offspring of the West.
3699
3700
3701
3702A NOTE ON THE POLISH PROBLEM--1916
3703
3704
3705We must start from the assumption that promises made by proclamation at
3706the beginning of this war may be binding on the individuals who made them
3707under the stress of coming events, but cannot be regarded as binding the
3708Governments after the end of the war.
3709
3710Poland has been presented with three proclamations.  Two of them were in
3711such contrast with the avowed principles and the historic action for the
3712last hundred years (since the Congress of Vienna) of the Powers
3713concerned, that they were more like cynical insults to the nation's
3714deepest feelings, its memory and its intelligence, than state papers of a
3715conciliatory nature.
3716
3717The German promises awoke nothing but indignant contempt; the Russian a
3718bitter incredulity of the most complete kind.  The Austrian proclamation,
3719which made no promises and contented itself with pointing out the Austro-
3720Polish relations for the last forty-five years, was received in silence.
3721For it is a fact that in Austrian Poland alone Polish nationality was
3722recognised as an element of the Empire, and individuals could breathe the
3723air of freedom, of civil life, if not of political independence.
3724
3725But for Poles to be Germanophile is unthinkable.  To be Russophile or
3726Austrophile is at best a counsel of despair in view of a European
3727situation which, because of the grouping of the powers, seems to shut
3728from them every hope, expressed or unexpressed, of a national future
3729nursed through more than a hundred years of suffering and oppression.
3730
3731Through most of these years, and especially since 1830, Poland (I use
3732this expression since Poland exists as a spiritual entity to-day as
3733definitely as it ever existed in her past) has put her faith in the
3734Western Powers.  Politically it may have been nothing more than a
3735consoling illusion, and the nation had a half-consciousness of this. Fakat
3736what Poland was looking for from the Western Powers without
3737discouragement and with unbroken confidence was moral support.
3738
3739This is a fact of the sentimental order.  But such facts have their
3740positive value, for their idealism derives from perhaps the highest kind
3741of reality.  A sentiment asserts its claim by its force, persistence and
3742universality.  In Poland that sentimental attitude towards the Western
3743Powers is universal.  It extends to all classes.  The very children are
3744affected by it as soon as they begin to think.
3745
3746The political value of such a sentiment consists in this, that it is
3747based on profound resemblances.  Therefore one can build on it as if it
3748were a material fact.  For the same reason it would be unsafe to
3749disregard it if one proposed to build solidly.  The Poles, whom
3750superficial or ill-informed theorists are trying to force into the social
3751and psychological formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at all.
3752In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are
3753Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought,
3754even of those which are remote from their historical experience.
3755
3756That element of racial unity which may be called Polonism, remained
3757compressed between Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian
3758Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels nothing but hatred. Fakat
3759between Polonism and Slavonism there is not so much hatred as a complete
3760and ineradicable incompatibility.
3761
3762No political work of reconstructing Poland either as a matter of justice
3763or expediency could be sound which would leave the new creation in
3764dependence to Germanism or to Slavonism.
3765
3766The first need not be considered.  The second must be--unless the Powers
3767elect to drop the Polish question either under the cover of vague
3768assurances or without any disguise whatever.
3769
3770But if it is considered it will be seen at once that the Slavonic
3771solution of the Polish Question can offer no guarantees of duration or
3772hold the promise of security for the peace of Europe.
3773
3774The only basis for it would be the Grand Duke's Manifesto.  But that
3775Manifesto, signed by a personage now removed from Europe to Asia, and by
3776a man, moreover, who if true to himself, to his conception of patriotism
3777and to his family tradition could not have put his hand to it with any
3778sincerity of purpose, is now divested of all authority.  The forcible
3779vagueness of its promises, its startling inconsistency with the hundred
3780years of ruthlessly denationalising oppression permit one to doubt
3781whether it was ever meant to have any authority.
3782
3783But in any case it could have had no effect.  The very nature of things
3784would have brought to nought its professed intentions.
3785
3786It is impossible to suppose that a State of Russia's power and
3787antecedents would tolerate a privileged community (of, to Russia,
3788unnational complexion) within the body of the Empire.  All history shows
3789that such an arrangement, however hedged in by the most solemn treaties
3790and declarations, cannot last.  In this case it would lead to a tragic
3791issue.  The absorption of Polonism is unthinkable.  The last hundred
3792years of European History proves it undeniably.  There remains then
3793extirpation, a process of blood and iron; and the last act of the Polish
3794drama would be played then before a Europe too weary to interfere, and to
3795the applause of Germany.
3796
3797It would not be just to say that the disappearance of Polonism would add
3798any strength to the Slavonic power of expansion.  It would add no
3799strength, but it would remove a possibly effective barrier against the
3800surprises the future of Europe may hold in store for the Western Powers.
3801
3802Thus the question whether Polonism is worth saving presents itself as a
3803problem of politics with a practical bearing on the stability of European
3804peace--as a barrier or perhaps better (in view of its detached position)
3805as an outpost of the Western Powers placed between the great might of
3806Slavonism which has not yet made up its mind to anything, and the
3807organised Germanism which has spoken its mind with no uncertain voice,
3808before the world.
3809
3810Looked at in that light alone Polonism seems worth saving.  That it has
3811lived so long on its trust in the moral support of the Western Powers may
3812give it another and even stronger claim, based on a truth of a more
3813profound kind.  Polonism had resisted the utmost efforts of Germanism and
3814Slavonism for more than a hundred years.  Why?  Because of the strength
3815of its ideals conscious of their kinship with the West.  Such a power of
3816resistance creates a moral obligation which it would be unsafe to
3817neglect.  There is always a risk in throwing away a tool of proved
3818temper.
3819
3820In this profound conviction of the practical and ideal worth of Polonism
3821one approaches the problem of its preservation with a very vivid sense of
3822the practical difficulties derived from the grouping of the Powers.
3823uncertainty of the extent and of the actual form of victory for the
3824Allies will increase the difficulty of formulating a plan of Polish
3825regeneration at the present moment.
3826
3827Poland, to strike its roots again into the soil of political Europe, will
3828require a guarantee of security for the healthy development and for the
3829untrammelled play of such institutions as she may be enabled to give to
3830herself.
3831
3832Those institutions will be animated by the spirit of Polonism, which,
3833having been a factor in the history of Europe and having proved its
3834vitality under oppression, has established its right to live.  That
3835spirit, despised and hated by Germany and incompatible with Slavonism
3836because of moral differences, cannot avoid being (in its renewed
3837assertion) an object of dislike and mistrust.
3838
3839As an unavoidable consequence of the past Poland will have to begin its
3840existence in an atmosphere of enmities and suspicions.  That advanced
3841outpost of Western civilisation will have to hold its ground in the midst
3842of hostile camps: always its historical fate.
3843
3844Against the menace of such a specially dangerous situation the paper and
3845ink of public Treaties cannot be an effective defence.  Nothing but the
3846actual, living, active participation of the two Western Powers in the
3847establishment of the new Polish commonwealth, and in the first twenty
3848years of its existence, will give the Poles a sufficient guarantee of
3849security in the work of restoring their national life.
3850
3851An Anglo-French protectorate would be the ideal form of moral and
3852material support.  But Russia, as an ally, must take her place in it on
3853such a footing as will allay to the fullest extent her possible
3854apprehensions and satisfy her national sentiment.  That necessity will
3855have to be formally recognised.
3856
3857In reality Russia has ceased to care much for her Polish possessions.
3858Public recognition of a mistake in political morality and a voluntary
3859surrender of territory in the cause of European concord, cannot damage
3860the prestige of a powerful State.  The new spheres of expansion in
3861regions more easily assimilable, will more than compensate Russia for the
3862loss of territory on the Western frontier of the Empire.
3863
3864The experience of Dual Controls and similar combinations has been so
3865unfortunate in the past that the suggestion of a Triple Protectorate may
3866well appear at first sight monstrous even to unprejudiced minds.  But it
3867must be remembered that this is a unique case and a problem altogether
3868exceptional, justifying the employment of exceptional means for its
3869solution.  To those who would doubt the possibility of even bringing such
3870a scheme into existence the answer may be made that there are
3871psychological moments when any measure tending towards the ends of
3872concord and justice may be brought into being.  And it seems that the end
3873of the war would be the moment for bringing into being the political
3874scheme advocated in this note.
3875
3876Its success must depend on the singleness of purpose in the contracting
3877Powers, and on the wisdom, the tact, the abilities, the good-will of men
3878entrusted with its initiation and its further control.  Finally it may be
3879pointed out that this plan is the only one offering serious guarantees to
3880all the parties occupying their respective positions within the scheme.
3881
3882If her existence as a state is admitted as just, expedient and necessary,
3883Poland has the moral right to receive her constitution not from the hand
3884of an old enemy, but from the Western Powers alone, though of course with
3885the fullest concurrence of Russia.
3886
3887This constitution, elaborated by a committee of Poles nominated by the
3888three Governments, will (after due discussion and amendment by the High
3889Commissioners of the Protecting Powers) be presented to Poland as the
3890initial document, the charter of her new life, freely offered and
3891unreservedly accepted.
3892
3893It should be as simple and short as a written constitution can
3894be--establishing the Polish Commonwealth, settling the lines of
3895representative institutions, the form of judicature, and leaving the
3896greatest measure possible of self-government to the provinces forming
3897part of the re-created Poland.
3898
3899This constitution will be promulgated immediately after the three Powers
3900had settled the frontiers of the new State, including the town of Danzic
3901(free port) and a proportion of seaboard.  The legislature will then be
3902called together and a general treaty will regulate Poland's international
3903portion as a protected state, the status of the High Commissioners and
3904such-like matters.  The legislature will ratify, thus making Poland, as
3905it were, a party in the establishment of the protectorate.  A point of
3906importance.
3907
3908Other general treaties will define Poland's position in the Anglo-Franco-
3909Russian alliance, fix the numbers of the army, and settle the
3910participation of the Powers in its organisation and training.
3911
3912
3913
3914POLAND REVISITED--1915
3915
3916
3917I.
3918
3919
3920I have never believed in political assassination as a means to an end,
3921and least of all in assassination of the dynastic order.  I don't know
3922how far murder can ever approach the perfection of a fine art, but looked
3923upon with the cold eye of reason it seems but a crude expedient of
3924impatient hope or hurried despair.  There are few men whose premature
3925death could influence human affairs more than on the surface.  The deeper
3926stream of causes depends not on individuals who, like the mass of
3927mankind, are carried on by a destiny which no murder has ever been able
3928to placate, divert, or arrest.
3929
3930In July of last year I was a stranger in a strange city in the Midlands
3931and particularly out of touch with the world's politics.  Never a very
3932diligent reader of newspapers, there were at that time reasons of a
3933private order which caused me to be even less informed than usual on
3934public affairs as presented from day to day in that necessarily
3935atmosphereless, perspectiveless manner of the daily papers, which
3936somehow, for a man possessed of some historic sense, robs them of all
3937real interest.  I don't think I had looked at a daily for a month past.
3938
3939But though a stranger in a strange city I was not lonely, thanks to a
3940friend who had travelled there out of pure kindness to bear me company in
3941a conjuncture which, in a most private sense, was somewhat trying.
3942
3943It was this friend who, one morning at breakfast, informed me of the
3944murder of the Archduke Ferdinand.
3945
3946The impression was mediocre.  I was barely aware that such a man existed.
3947I remembered only that not long before he had visited London.
3948recollection was rather of a cloud of insignificant printed words his
3949presence in this country provoked.
3950
3951Various opinions had been expressed of him, but his importance was
3952Archducal, dynastic, purely accidental.  Can there be in the world of
3953real men anything more shadowy than an Archduke?  And now he was no more;
3954removed with an atrocity of circumstances which made one more sensible of
3955his humanity than when he was in life.  I connected that crime with
3956Balkanic plots and aspirations so little that I had actually to ask where
3957it had happened.  My friend told me it was in Serajevo, and wondered what
3958would be the consequences of that grave event.  He asked me what I
3959thought would happen next.
3960
3961It was with perfect sincerity that I answered "Nothing," and having a
3962great repugnance to consider murder as a factor of politics, I dismissed
3963the subject.  It fitted with my ethical sense that an act cruel and
3964absurd should be also useless.  I had also the vision of a crowd of
3965shadowy Archdukes in the background, out of which one would step forward
3966to take the place of that dead man in the light of the European stage.
3967And then, to speak the whole truth, there was no man capable of forming a
3968judgment who attended so little to the march of events as I did at that
3969time.  What for want of a more definite term I must call my mind was
3970fixed upon my own affairs, not because they were in a bad posture, but
3971because of their fascinating holiday-promising aspect.  I had been
3972obtaining my information as to Europe at second hand, from friends good
3973enough to come down now and then to see us.  They arrived with their
3974pockets full of crumpled newspapers, and answered my queries casually,
3975with gentle smiles of scepticism as to the reality of my interest.  And
3976yet I was not indifferent; but the tension in the Balkans had become
3977chronic after the acute crisis, and one could not help being less
3978conscious of it.  It had wearied out one's attention.  Who could have
3979guessed that on that wild stage we had just been looking at a miniature
3980rehearsal of the great world-drama, the reduced model of the very
3981passions and violences of what the future held in store for the Powers of
3982the Old World?  Here and there, perhaps, rare minds had a suspicion of
3983that possibility, while they watched Old Europe stage-managing fussily by
3984means of notes and conferences, the prophetic reproduction of its
3985awaiting fate.  It was wonderfully exact in the spirit; same roar of
3986guns, same protestations of superiority, same words in the air; race,
3987liberation, justice--and the same mood of trivial demonstrations.  One
3988could not take to-day a ticket for Petersburg.  "You mean Petrograd,"
3989would say the booking clerk.  Shortly after the fall of Adrianople a
3990friend of mine passing through Sophia asked for some _cafe turc_ at the
3991end of his lunch.
3992
3993"Monsieur veut dire Cafe balkanique," the patriotic waiter corrected him
3994austerely.
3995
3996I will not say that I had not observed something of that instructive
3997aspect of the war of the Balkans both in its first and in its second
3998phase.  But those with whom I touched upon that vision were pleased to
3999see in it the evidence of my alarmist cynicism.  As to alarm, I pointed
4000out that fear is natural to man, and even salutary.  It has done as much
4001as courage for the preservation of races and institutions.  But from a
4002charge of cynicism I have always shrunk instinctively.  It is like a
4003charge of being blind in one eye, a moral disablement, a sort of
4004disgraceful calamity that must he carried off with a jaunty bearing--a
4005sort of thing I am not capable of.  Rather than be thought a mere jaunty
4006cripple I allowed myself to be blinded by the gross obviousness of the
4007usual arguments.  It was pointed out to me that these Eastern nations
4008were not far removed from a savage state.  Their economics were yet at
4009the stage of scratching the earth and feeding the pigs.
4010highly-developed material civilisation of Europe could not allow itself
4011to be disturbed by a war.  The industry and the finance could not allow
4012themselves to be disorganised by the ambitions of an idle class, or even
4013the aspirations, whatever they might be, of the masses.
4014
4015Very plausible all this sounded.  War does not pay.  There had been a
4016book written on that theme--an attempt to put pacificism on a material
4017basis.  Nothing more solid in the way of argument could have been
4018advanced on this trading and manufacturing globe.  War was "bad
4019business!"  This was final.
4020
4021But, truth to say, on this July day I reflected but little on the
4022condition of the civilised world.  Whatever sinister passions were
4023heaving under its splendid and complex surface, I was too agitated by a
4024simple and innocent desire of my own, to notice the signs or interpret
4025them correctly.  The most innocent of passions will take the edge off
4026one's judgment.  The desire which possessed me was simply the desire to
4027travel.  And that being so it would have taken something very plain in
4028the way of symptoms to shake my simple trust in the stability of things
4029on the Continent. My sentiment and not my reason was engaged there. Benim
4030eyes were turned to the past, not to the future; the past that one cannot
4031suspect and mistrust, the shadowy and unquestionable moral possession the
4032darkest struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace.
4033
4034In the preceding month of May we had received an invitation to spend some
4035weeks in Poland in a country house in the neighbourhood of Cracow, but
4036within the Russian frontier.  The enterprise at first seemed to me
4037considerable.  Since leaving the sea, to which I have been faithful for
4038so many years, I have discovered that there is in my composition very
4039little stuff from which travellers are made.  I confess that my first
4040impulse about a projected journey is to leave it alone.  But the
4041invitation received at first with a sort of dismay ended by rousing the
4042dormant energy of my feelings.  Cracow is the town where I spent with my
4043father the last eighteen months of his life.  It was in that old royal
4044and academical city that I ceased to be a child, became a boy, had known
4045the friendships, the admirations, the thoughts and the indignations of
4046that age.  It was within those historical walls that I began to
4047understand things, form affections, lay up a store of memories and a fund
4048of sensations with which I was to break violently by throwing myself into
4049an unrelated existence. It was like the experience of another world.
4050wings of time made a great dusk over all this, and I feared at first that
4051if I ventured bodily in there I would discover that I who have had to do
4052with a good many imaginary lives have been embracing mere shadows in my
4053youth.  I feared.  But fear in itself may become a fascination.  Men have
4054gone, alone and trembling, into graveyards at midnight--just to see what
4055would happen.  And this adventure was to be pursued in sunshine.  Neither
4056would it be pursued alone.  The invitation was extended to us all.  This
4057journey would have something of a migratory character, the invasion of a
4058tribe.  My present, all that gave solidity and value to it, at any rate,
4059would stand by me in this test of the reality of my past.  I was pleased
4060with the idea of showing my companions what Polish country life was like;
4061to visit the town where I was at school before the boys by my side should
4062grow too old, and gaining an individual past of their own, should lose
4063their unsophisticated interest in mine.  It is only in the short instants
4064of early youth that we have the faculty of coming out of ourselves to see
4065dimly the visions and share the emotions of another soul.  For youth all
4066is reality in this world, and with justice, since it apprehends so
4067vividly its images behind which a longer life makes one doubt whether
4068there is any substance.  I trusted to the fresh receptivity of these
4069young beings in whom, unless Heredity is an empty word, there should have
4070been a fibre which would answer to the sight, to the atmosphere, to the
4071memories of that corner of the earth where my own boyhood had received
4072its earliest independent impressions.
4073
4074The first days of the third week in July, while the telegraph wires
4075hummed with the words of enormous import which were to fill blue books,
4076yellow books, white books, and to arouse the wonder of mankind, passed
4077for us in light-hearted preparations for the journey.  What was it but
4078just a rush through Germany, to get across as quickly as possible?
4079
4080Germany is the part of the earth's solid surface of which I know the
4081least.  In all my life I had been across it only twice.  I may well say
4082of it _vidi tantum_; and the very little I saw was through the window of
4083a railway carriage at express speed.  Those journeys of mine had been
4084more like pilgrimages when one hurries on towards the goal for the
4085satisfaction of a deeper need than curiosity.  In this last instance,
4086too, I was so incurious that I would have liked to have fallen asleep on
4087the shores of England and opened my eyes, if it were possible, only on
4088the other side of the Silesian frontier.  Yet, in truth, as many others
4089have done, I had "sensed it"--that promised land of steel, of chemical
4090dyes, of method, of efficiency; that race planted in the middle of
4091Europe, assuming in grotesque vanity the attitude of Europeans amongst
4092effete Asiatics or barbarous niggers; and, with a consciousness of
4093superiority freeing their hands from all moral bonds, anxious to take up,
4094if I may express myself so, the "perfect man's burden."  Meantime, in a
4095clearing of the Teutonic forest, their sages were rearing a Tree of
4096Cynical Wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be seen now lying
4097over the prostrate body of Belgium.  It must be said that they laboured
4098openly enough, watering it with the most authentic sources of all
4099madness, and watching with their be-spectacled eyes the slow ripening of
4100the glorious blood-red fruit.  The sincerest words of peace, words of
4101menace, and I verily believe words of abasement, even if there had been a
4102voice vile enough to utter them, would have been wasted on their ecstasy.
4103For when the fruit ripens on a branch it must fall.  There is nothing on
4104earth that can prevent it.
4105
4106
4107II.
4108
4109
4110For reasons which at first seemed to me somewhat obscure, that one of my
4111companions whose wishes are law decided that our travels should begin in
4112an unusual way by the crossing of the North Sea.  We should proceed from
4113Harwich to Hamburg.  Besides being thirty-six times longer than the Dover-
4114Calais passage this rather unusual route had an air of adventure in
4115better keeping with the romantic feeling of this Polish journey which for
4116so many years had been before us in a state of a project full of colour
4117and promise, but always retreating, elusive like an enticing mirage.
4118
4119And, after all, it had turned out to be no mirage.  No wonder they were
4120excited.  It's no mean experience to lay your hands on a mirage.  The day
4121of departure had come, the very hour had struck.  The luggage was coming
4122downstairs.  It was most convincing.  Poland then, if erased from the
4123map, yet existed in reality; it was not a mere _pays du reve_, where you
4124can travel only in imagination.  For no man, they argued, not even
4125father, an habitual pursuer of dreams, would push the love of the
4126novelist's art of make-believe to the point of burdening himself with
4127real trunks for a voyage _au pays du reve_.
4128
4129As we left the door of our house, nestling in, perhaps, the most peaceful
4130nook in Kent, the sky, after weeks of perfectly brazen serenity, veiled
4131its blue depths and started to weep fine tears for the refreshment of the
4132parched fields.  A pearly blur settled over them, and a light sifted of
4133all glare, of everything unkindly and searching that dwells in the
4134splendour of unveiled skies.  All unconscious of going towards the very
4135scenes of war, I carried off in my eye, this tiny fragment of Great
4136Britain; a few fields, a wooded rise; a clump of trees or two, with a
4137short stretch of road, and here and there a gleam of red wall and tiled
4138roof above the darkening hedges wrapped up in soft mist and peace.  And I
4139felt that all this had a very strong hold on me as the embodiment of a
4140beneficent and gentle spirit; that it was dear to me not as an
4141inheritance, but as an acquisition, as a conquest in the sense in which a
4142woman is conquered--by love, which is a sort of surrender.
4143
4144These were strange, as if disproportionate thoughts to the matter in
4145hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday.  And I am
4146certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble
4147but the suppressed excitement of pleasurable anticipation.  The forms and
4148the spirit of the land before their eyes were their inheritance, not
4149their conquest--which is a thing precarious, and, therefore, the most
4150precious, possessing you if only by the fear of unworthiness rather than
4151possessed by you.  Moreover, as we sat together in the same railway
4152carriage, they were looking forward to a voyage in space, whereas I felt
4153more and more plainly, that what I had started on was a journey in time,
4154into the past; a fearful enough prospect for the most consistent, but to
4155him who had not known how to preserve against his impulses the order and
4156continuity of his life--so that at times it presented itself to his
4157conscience as a series of betrayals--still more dreadful.
4158
4159I down here these thoughts so exclusively personal, to explain why there
4160was no room in my consciousness for the apprehension of a European war. ben
4161don't mean to say that I ignored the possibility; I simply did not think
4162of it.  And it made no difference; for if I had thought of it, it could
4163only have been in the lame and inconclusive way of the common uninitiated
4164mortals; and I am sure that nothing short of intellectual
4165certitude--obviously unattainable by the man in the street--could have
4166stayed me on that journey which now that I had started on it seemed an
4167irrevocable thing, a necessity of my self-respect.
4168
4169London, the London before the war, flaunting its enormous glare, as of a
4170monstrous conflagration up into the black sky--with its best Venice-like
4171aspect of rainy evenings, the wet asphalted streets lying with the sheen
4172of sleeping water in winding canals, and the great houses of the city
4173towering all dark, like empty palaces, above the reflected lights of the
4174glistening roadway.
4175
4176Everything in the subdued incomplete night-life around the Mansion House
4177went on normally with its fascinating air of a dead commercial city of
4178sombre walls through which the inextinguishable activity of its millions
4179streamed East and West in a brilliant flow of lighted vehicles.
4180
4181In Liverpool Street, as usual too, through the double gates, a continuous
4182line of taxi-cabs glided down the inclined approach and up again, like an
4183endless chain of dredger-buckets, pouring in the passengers, and dipping
4184them out of the great railway station under the inexorable pallid face of
4185the clock telling off the diminishing minutes of peace.  It was the hour
4186of the boat-trains to Holland, to Hamburg, and there seemed to be no lack
4187of people, fearless, reckless, or ignorant, who wanted to go to these
4188places.  The station was normally crowded, and if there was a great
4189flutter of evening papers in the multitude of hands there were no signs
4190of extraordinary emotion on that multitude of faces.  There was nothing
4191in them to distract me from the thought that it was singularly
4192appropriate that I should start from this station on the retraced way of
4193my existence.  For this was the station at which, thirty-seven years
4194before, I arrived on my first visit to London.  Not the same building,
4195but the same spot.  At nineteen years of age, after a period of probation
4196and training I had imposed upon myself as ordinary seaman on board a
4197North Sea coaster, I had come up from Lowestoft--my first long railway
4198journey in England--to "sign on" for an Antipodean voyage in a deep-water
4199ship.  Straight from a railway carriage I had walked into the great city
4200with something of the feeling of a traveller penetrating into a vast and
4201unexplored wilderness. No explorer could have been more lonely. yaptım
4202not know a single soul of all these millions that all around me peopled
4203the mysterious distances of the streets.  I cannot say I was free from a
4204little youthful awe, but at that age one's feelings are simple. ben ... idim
4205elated.  I was pursuing a clear aim, I was carrying out a deliberate plan
4206of making out of myself, in the first place, a seaman worthy of the
4207service, good enough to work by the side of the men with whom I was to
4208live; and in the second place, I had to justify my existence to myself,
4209to redeem a tacit moral pledge.  Both these aims were to be attained by
4210the same effort.  How simple seemed the problem of life then, on that
4211hazy day of early September in the year 1878, when I entered London for
4212the first time.
4213
4214From that point of view--Youth and a straightforward scheme of conduct--it
4215was certainly a year of grace.  All the help I had to get in touch with
4216the world I was invading was a piece of paper not much bigger than the
4217palm of my hand--in which I held it--torn out of a larger plan of London
4218for the greater facility of reference.  It had been the object of careful
4219study for some days past.  The fact that I could take a conveyance at the
4220station never occurred to my mind, no, not even when I got out into the
4221street, and stood, taking my anxious bearings, in the midst, so to speak,
4222of twenty thousand hansoms.  A strange absence of mind or unconscious
4223conviction that one cannot approach an important moment of one's life by
4224means of a hired carriage?  Yes, it would have been a preposterous
4225proceeding.  And indeed I was to make an Australian voyage and encircle
4226the globe before ever entering a London hansom.
4227
4228Another document, a cutting from a newspaper, containing the address of
4229an obscure shipping agent, was in my pocket.  And I needed not to take it
4230out.  That address was as if graven deep in my brain.  I muttered its
4231words to myself as I walked on, navigating the sea of London by the chart
4232concealed in the palm of my hand; for I had vowed to myself not to
4233inquire my way from anyone.  Youth is the time of rash pledges.  Had I
4234taken a wrong turning I would have been lost; and if faithful to my
4235pledge I might have remained lost for days, for weeks, have left perhaps
4236my bones to be discovered bleaching in some blind alley of the
4237Whitechapel district, as it had happened to lonely travellers lost in the
4238bush.  But I walked on to my destination without hesitation or mistake,
4239showing there, for the first time, some of that faculty to absorb and
4240make my own the imaged topography of a chart, which in later years was to
4241help me in regions of intricate navigation to keep the ships entrusted to
4242me off the ground.  The place I was bound to was not easy to find.  It
4243was one of those courts hidden away from the charted and navigable
4244streets, lost among the thick growth of houses like a dark pool in the
4245depths of a forest, approached by an inconspicuous archway as if by
4246secret path; a Dickensian nook of London, that wonder city, the growth of
4247which bears no sign of intelligent design, but many traces of freakishly
4248sombre phantasy the Great Master knew so well how to bring out by the
4249magic of his understanding love.  And the office I entered was Dickensian
4250too.  The dust of the Waterloo year lay on the panes and frames of its
4251windows; early Georgian grime clung to its sombre wainscoting.
4252
4253It was one o'clock in the afternoon, but the day was gloomy.  By the
4254light of a single gas-jet depending from the smoked ceiling I saw an
4255elderly man, in a long coat of black broadcloth.  He had a grey beard, a
4256big nose, thick lips, and heavy shoulders.  His curly white hair and the
4257general character of his head recalled vaguely a burly apostle in the
4258_barocco_ style of Italian art.  Standing up at a tall, shabby, slanting
4259desk, his silver-rimmed spectacles pushed up high on his forehead, he was
4260eating a mutton-chop, which had been just brought to him from some
4261Dickensian eating-house round the corner.
4262
4263Without ceasing to eat he turned to me his florid, _barocco_ apostle's
4264face with an expression of inquiry.
4265
4266I produced elaborately a series of vocal sounds which must have borne
4267sufficient resemblance to the phonetics of English speech, for his face
4268broke into a smile of comprehension almost at once.--"Oh, it's you who
4269wrote a letter to me the other day from Lowestoft about getting a ship."
4270
4271I had written to him from Lowestoft.  I can't remember a single word of
4272that letter now.  It was my very first composition in the English
4273language.  And he had understood it, evidently, for he spoke to the point
4274at once, explaining that his business, mainly, was to find good ships for
4275young gentlemen who wanted to go to sea as premium apprentices with a
4276view of being trained for officers.  But he gathered that this was not my
4277object.  I did not desire to be apprenticed.  Was that the case?
4278
4279It was.  He was good enough to say then, "Of course I see that you are a
4280gentleman.  But your wish is to get a berth before the mast as an Able
4281Seaman if possible.  Is that it?"
4282
4283It was certainly my wish; but he stated doubtfully that he feared he
4284could not help me much in this.  There was an Act of Parliament which
4285made it penal to procure ships for sailors.  "An Act-of-Parliament.  A
4286law," he took pains to impress it again and again on my foreign
4287understanding, while I looked at him in consternation.
4288
4289I had not been half an hour in London before I had run my head against an
4290Act of Parliament!  What a hopeless adventure!  However, the _barocco_
4291apostle was a resourceful person in his way, and we managed to get round
4292the hard letter of it without damage to its fine spirit.  Yet, strictly
4293speaking, it was not the conduct of a good citizen; and in retrospect
4294there is an unfilial flavour about that early sin of mine.  For this Act
4295of Parliament, the Merchant Shipping Act of the Victorian era, had been
4296in a manner of speaking a father and mother to me.  For many years it had
4297regulated and disciplined my life, prescribed my food and the amount of
4298my breathing space, had looked after my health and tried as much as
4299possible to secure my personal safety in a risky calling.  It isn't such
4300a bad thing to lead a life of hard toil and plain duty within the four
4301corners of an honest Act of Parliament.  And I am glad to say that its
4302seventies have never been applied to me.
4303
4304In the year 1878, the year of "Peace with Honour," I had walked as lone
4305as any human being in the streets of London, out of Liverpool Street
4306Station, to surrender myself to its care.  And now, in the year of the
4307war waged for honour and conscience more than for any other cause, I was
4308there again, no longer alone, but a man of infinitely dear and close ties
4309grown since that time, of work done, of words written, of friendships
4310secured.  It was like the closing of a thirty-six-year cycle.
4311
4312All unaware of the War Angel already awaiting, with the trumpet at his
4313lips, the stroke of the fatal hour, I sat there, thinking that this life
4314of ours is neither long nor short, but that it can appear very wonderful,
4315entertaining, and pathetic, with symbolic images and bizarre associations
4316crowded into one half-hour of retrospective musing.
4317
4318I felt, too, that this journey, so suddenly entered upon, was bound to
4319take me away from daily life's actualities at every step.  I felt it more
4320than ever when presently we steamed out into the North Sea, on a dark
4321night fitful with gusts of wind, and I lingered on deck, alone of all the
4322tale of the ship's passengers.  That sea was to me something
4323unforgettable, something much more than a name.  It had been for some
4324time the schoolroom of my trade.  On it, I may safely say, I had learned,
4325too, my first words of English.  A wild and stormy abode, sometimes, was
4326that confined, shallow-water academy of seamanship from which I launched
4327myself on the wide oceans.  My teachers had been the sailors of the
4328Norfolk shore; coast men, with steady eyes, mighty limbs, and gentle
4329voice; men of very few words, which at least were never bare of meaning.
4330Honest, strong, steady men, sobered by domestic ties, one and all, as far
4331as I can remember.
4332
4333That is what years ago the North Sea I could hear growling in the dark
4334all round the ship had been for me.  And I fancied that I must have been
4335carrying its voice in my ear ever since, for nothing could be more
4336familiar than those short, angry sounds I was listening to with a smile
4337of affectionate recognition.
4338
4339I could not guess that before many days my old schoolroom would be
4340desecrated by violence, littered with wrecks, with death walking its
4341waves, hiding under its waters.  Perhaps while I am writing these words
4342the children, or maybe the grandchildren, of my pacific teachers are out
4343in trawlers, under the Naval flag, dredging for German submarine mines.
4344
4345
4346III.
4347
4348
4349I have said that the North Sea was my finishing school of seamanship
4350before I launched myself on the wider oceans.  Confined as it is in
4351comparison with the vast stage of this water-girt globe, I did not know
4352it in all its parts.  My class-room was the region of the English East
4353Coast which, in the year of Peace with Honour, had long forgotten the war
4354episodes belonging to its maritime history.  It was a peaceful coast,
4355agricultural, industrial, the home of fishermen.  At night the lights of
4356its many towns played on the clouds, or in clear weather lay still, here
4357and there, in brilliant pools above the ink-black outline of the land. üzerinde
4358many a night I have hauled at the braces under the shadow of that coast,
4359envying, as sailors will, the people on shore sleeping quietly in their
4360beds within sound of the sea.  I imagine that not one head on those
4361envied pillows was made uneasy by the slightest premonition of the
4362realities of naval war the short lifetime of one generation was to bring
4363so close to their homes.
4364
4365Though far away from that region of kindly memories and traversing a part
4366of the North Sea much less known to me, I was deeply conscious of the
4367familiarity of my surroundings.  It was a cloudy, nasty day: and the
4368aspects of Nature don't change, unless in the course of thousands of
4369years--or, perhaps, centuries.  The Phoenicians, its first discoverers,
4370the Romans, the first imperial rulers of that sea, had experienced days
4371like this, so different in the wintry quality of the light, even on a
4372July afternoon, from anything they had ever known in their native
4373Mediterranean.  For myself, a very late comer into that sea, and its
4374former pupil, I accorded amused recognition to the characteristic aspect
4375so well remembered from my days of training.  The same old thing.  A grey-
4376green expanse of smudgy waters grinning angrily at one with white foam-
4377ridges, and over all a cheerless, unglowing canopy, apparently made of
4378wet blotting-paper.  From time to time a flurry of fine rain blew along
4379like a puff of smoke across the dots of distant fishing boats, very few,
4380very scattered, and tossing restlessly on an ever dissolving, ever re-
4381forming sky-line.
4382
4383Those flurries, and the steady rolling of the ship, accounted for the
4384emptiness of the decks, favouring my reminiscent mood.  It might have
4385been a day of five and thirty years ago, when there were on this and
4386every other sea more sails and less smoke-stacks to be seen.  Yet, thanks
4387to the unchangeable sea I could have given myself up to the illusion of a
4388revised past, had it not been for the periodical transit across my gaze
4389of a German passenger.  He was marching round and round the boat deck
4390with characteristic determination.  Two sturdy boys gambolled round him
4391in his progress like two disorderly satellites round their parent planet.
4392He was bringing them home, from their school in England, for their
4393holiday.  What could have induced such a sound Teuton to entrust his
4394offspring to the unhealthy influences of that effete, corrupt, rotten and
4395criminal country I cannot imagine.  It could hardly have been from
4396motives of economy.  I did not speak to him.  He trod the deck of that
4397decadent British ship with a scornful foot while his breast (and to a
4398large extent his stomach, too) appeared expanded by the consciousness of
4399a superior destiny.  Later I could observe the same truculent bearing,
4400touched with the racial grotesqueness, in the men of the _Landwehr_
4401corps, that passed through Cracow to reinforce the Austrian army in
4402Eastern Galicia.  Indeed, the haughty passenger might very well have
4403been, most probably was, an officer of the _Landwehr_; and perhaps those
4404two fine active boys are orphans by now.  Thus things acquire
4405significance by the lapse of time.  A citizen, a father, a warrior, a
4406mote in the dust-cloud of six million fighting particles, an unconsidered
4407trifle for the jaws of war, his humanity was not consciously impressed on
4408my mind at the time.  Mainly, for me, he was a sharp tapping of heels
4409round the corner of the deck-house, a white yachting cap and a green
4410overcoat getting periodically between my eyes and the shifting
4411cloud-horizon of the ashy-grey North Sea.  He was but a shadowy intrusion
4412and a disregarded one, for, far away there to the West, in the direction
4413of the Dogger Bank, where fishermen go seeking their daily bread and
4414sometimes find their graves, I could behold an experience of my own in
4415the winter of '81, not of war, truly, but of a fairly lively contest with
4416the elements which were very angry indeed.
4417
4418There had been a troublesome week of it, including one hateful night--or
4419a night of hate (it isn't for nothing that the North Sea is also called
4420the German Ocean)--when all the fury stored in its heart seemed
4421concentrated on one ship which could do no better than float on her side
4422in an unnatural, disagreeable, precarious, and altogether intolerable
4423manner.  There were on board, besides myself, seventeen men all good and
4424true, including a round enormous Dutchman who, in those hours between
4425sunset and sunrise, managed to lose his blown-out appearance somehow,
4426became as it were deflated, and thereafter for a good long time moved in
4427our midst wrinkled and slack all over like a half-collapsed balloon.
4428whimpering of our deck-boy, a skinny, impressionable little scarecrow out
4429of a training-ship, for whom, because of the tender immaturity of his
4430nerves, this display of German Ocean frightfulness was too much (before
4431the year was out he developed into a sufficiently cheeky young ruffian),
4432his desolate whimpering, I say, heard between the gusts of that black,
4433savage night, was much more present to my mind and indeed to my senses
4434than the green overcoat and the white cap of the German passenger
4435circling the deck indefatigably, attended by his two gyrating children.
4436
4437"That's a very nice gentleman."  This information, together with the fact
4438that he was a widower and a regular passenger twice a year by the ship,
4439was communicated to me suddenly by our captain.  At intervals through the
4440day he would pop out of the chart-room and offer me short snatches of
4441conversation.  He owned a simple soul and a not very entertaining mind,
4442and he was without malice and, I believe, quite unconsciously, a warm
4443Germanophil.  And no wonder!  As he told me himself, he had been fifteen
4444years on that run, and spent almost as much of his life in Hamburg as in
4445Harwich.
4446
4447"Wonderful people they are," he repeated from time to time, without
4448entering into particulars, but with many nods of sagacious obstinacy.
4449What he knew of them, I suppose, were a few commercial travellers and
4450small merchants, most likely.  But I had observed long before that German
4451genius has a hypnotising power over half-baked souls and half-lighted
4452minds.  There is an immense force of suggestion in highly organised
4453mediocrity.  Had it not hypnotised half Europe?  My man was very much
4454under the spell of German excellence.  On the other hand, his contempt
4455for France was equally general and unbounded.  I tried to advance some
4456arguments against this position, but I only succeeded in making him
4457hostile.  "I believe you are a Frenchman yourself," he snarled at last,
4458giving me an intensely suspicious look; and forthwith broke off
4459communications with a man of such unsound sympathies.
4460
4461Hour by hour the blotting-paper sky and the great flat greenish smudge of
4462the sea had been taking on a darker tone, without any change in their
4463colouring and texture.  Evening was coming on over the North Sea.  Black
4464uninteresting hummocks of land appeared, dotting the duskiness of water
4465and clouds in the Eastern board: tops of islands fringing the German
4466shore.  While I was looking at their antics amongst the waves--and for
4467all their solidity they were very elusive things in the failing
4468light--another passenger came out on deck.  This one wore a dark overcoat
4469and a grey cap.  The yellow leather strap of his binocular case crossed
4470his chest.  His elderly red cheeks nourished but a very thin crop of
4471short white hairs, and the end of his nose was so perfectly round that it
4472determined the whole character of his physiognomy.  Indeed nothing else
4473in it had the slightest chance to assert itself.  His disposition, unlike
4474the widower's, appeared to be mild and humane.  He offered me the loan of
4475his glasses.  He had a wife and some small children concealed in the
4476depths of the ship, and he thought they were very well where they were.
4477His eldest son was about the decks somewhere.
4478
4479"We are Americans," he remarked weightily, but in a rather peculiar tone.
4480He spoke English with the accent of our captain's "wonderful people," and
4481proceeded to give me the history of the family's crossing the Atlantic in
4482a White Star liner.  They remained in England just the time necessary for
4483a railway journey from Liverpool to Harwich.  His people (those in the
4484depths of the ship) were naturally a little tired.
4485
4486At that moment a young man of about twenty, his son, rushed up to us from
4487the fore-deck in a state of intense elation.  "Hurrah," he cried under
4488his breath.  "The first German light!  Hurrah!"
4489
4490And those two American citizens shook hands on it with the greatest
4491fervour, while I turned away and received full in the eyes the brilliant
4492wink of the Borkum lighthouse squatting low down in the darkness.
4493shade of the night had settled on the North Sea.
4494
4495I do not think I have ever seen before a night so full of lights.
4496great change of sea life since my time was brought home to me.  I had
4497been conscious all day of an interminable procession of steamers.  They
4498went on and on as if in chase of each other, the Baltic trade, the trade
4499of Scandinavia, of Denmark, of Germany, pitching heavily into a head sea
4500and bound for the gateway of Dover Straits.  Singly, and in small
4501companies of two and three, they emerged from the dull, colourless,
4502sunless distances ahead as if the supply of rather roughly finished
4503mechanical toys were inexhaustible in some mysterious cheap store away
4504there, below the grey curve of the earth.  Cargo steam vessels have
4505reached by this time a height of utilitarian ugliness which, when one
4506reflects that it is the product of human ingenuity, strikes hopeless awe
4507into one.  These dismal creations look still uglier at sea than in port,
4508and with an added touch of the ridiculous.  Their rolling waddle when
4509seen at a certain angle, their abrupt clockwork nodding in a sea-way, so
4510unlike the soaring lift and swing of a craft under sail, have in them
4511something caricatural, a suggestion of a low parody directed at noble
4512predecessors by an improved generation of dull, mechanical toilers,
4513conceited and without grace.
4514
4515When they switched on (each of these unlovely cargo tanks carried tame
4516lightning within its slab-sided body), when they switched on their lamps
4517they spangled the night with the cheap, electric, shop-glitter, here,
4518there, and everywhere, as of some High Street, broken up and washed out
4519to sea.  Later, Heligoland cut into the overhead darkness with its
4520powerful beam, infinitely prolonged out of unfathomable night under the
4521clouds.
4522
4523I remained on deck until we stopped and a steam pilot-boat, so
4524overlighted amidships that one could not make out her complete shape,
4525glided across our bows and sent a pilot on board.  I fear that the oar,
4526as a working implement, will become presently as obsolete as the sail.
4527The pilot boarded us in a motor-dinghy.  More and more is mankind
4528reducing its physical activities to pulling levers and twirling little
4529wheels.  Progress!  Yet the older methods of meeting natural forces
4530demanded intelligence too; an equally fine readiness of wits.  And
4531readiness of wits working in combination with the strength of muscles
4532made a more complete man.
4533
4534It was really a surprisingly small dinghy and it ran to and fro like a
4535water-insect fussing noisily down there with immense self-importance.
4536Within hail of us the hull of the Elbe lightship floated all dark and
4537silent under its enormous round, service lantern; a faithful black shadow
4538watching the broad estuary full of lights.
4539
4540Such was my first view of the Elbe approached under the wings of peace
4541ready for flight away from the luckless shores of Europe.  Our visual
4542impressions remain with us so persistently that I find it extremely
4543difficult to hold fast to the rational belief that now everything is dark
4544over there, that the Elbe lightship has been towed away from its post of
4545duty, the triumphant beam of Heligoland extinguished, and the pilot-boat
4546laid up, or turned to warlike uses for lack of its proper work to do.  And
4547obviously it must be so.
4548
4549Any trickle of oversea trade that passes yet that way must be creeping
4550along cautiously with the unlighted, war-blighted black coast close on
4551one hand, and sudden death on the other.  For all the space we steamed
4552through that Sunday evening must now be one great minefield, sown thickly
4553with the seeds of hate; while submarines steal out to sea, over the very
4554spot perhaps where the insect-dinghy put a pilot on board of us with so
4555much fussy importance.  Mines; Submarines.  The last word in sea-warfare!
4556Progress--impressively disclosed by this war.
4557
4558There have been other wars!  Wars not inferior in the greatness of the
4559stake and in the fierce animosity of feelings.  During that one which was
4560finished a hundred years ago it happened that while the English Fleet was
4561keeping watch on Brest, an American, perhaps Fulton himself, offered to
4562the Maritime Prefect of the port and to the French Admiral, an invention
4563which would sink all the unsuspecting English ships one after another--or,
4564at any rate most of them.  The offer was not even taken into
4565consideration; and the Prefect ends his report to the Minister in Paris
4566with a fine phrase of indignation: "It is not the sort of death one would
4567deal to brave men."
4568
4569And behold, before history had time to hatch another war of the like
4570proportions in the intensity of aroused passions and the greatness of
4571issues, the dead flavour of archaism descended on the manly sentiment of
4572those self-denying words.  Mankind has been demoralised since by its own
4573mastery of mechanical appliances.  Its spirit is apparently so weak now,
4574and its flesh has grown so strong, that it will face any deadly horror of
4575destruction and cannot resist the temptation to use any stealthy,
4576murderous contrivance.  It has become the intoxicated slave of its own
4577detestable ingenuity.  It is true, too, that since the Napoleonic time
4578another sort of war-doctrine has been inculcated in a nation, and held
4579out to the world.
4580
4581
4582IV.
4583
4584
4585On this journey of ours, which for me was essentially not a progress, but
4586a retracing of footsteps on the road of life, I had no beacons to look
4587for in Germany.  I had never lingered in that land which, on the whole,
4588is so singularly barren of memorable manifestations of generous
4589sympathies and magnanimous impulses.  An ineradicable, invincible,
4590provincialism of envy and vanity clings to the forms of its thought like
4591a frowsy garment.  Even while yet very young I turned my eyes away from
4592it instinctively as from a threatening phantom.  I believe that children
4593and dogs have, in their innocence, a special power of perception as far
4594as spectral apparitions and coming misfortunes are concerned.
4595
4596I let myself be carried through Germany as if it were pure space, without
4597sights, without sounds.  No whispers of the war reached my voluntary
4598abstraction.  And perhaps not so very voluntary after all!  Each of us is
4599a fascinating spectacle to himself, and I had to watch my own personality
4600returning from another world, as it were, to revisit the glimpses of old
4601moons.  Considering the condition of humanity, I am, perhaps, not so much
4602to blame for giving myself up to that occupation.  We prize the sensation
4603of our continuity, and we can only capture it in that way.  By watching.
4604
4605We arrived in Cracow late at night.  After a scrambly supper, I said to
4606my eldest boy, "I can't go to bed.  I am going out for a look round.
4607Coming?"
4608
4609He was ready enough.  For him, all this was part of the interesting
4610adventure of the whole journey.  We stepped out of the portal of the
4611hotel into an empty street, very silent and bright with moonlight. ben
4612was, indeed, revisiting the glimpses of the moon.  I felt so much like a
4613ghost that the discovery that I could remember such material things as
4614the right turn to take and the general direction of the street gave me a
4615moment of wistful surprise.
4616
4617The street, straight and narrow, ran into the great Market Square of the
4618town, the centre of its affairs and of the lighter side of its life. Biz
4619could see at the far end of the street a promising widening of space. at
4620the corner an unassuming (but armed) policeman, wearing ceremoniously at
4621midnight a pair of white gloves which made his big hands extremely
4622noticeable, turned his head to look at the grizzled foreigner holding
4623forth in a strange tongue to a youth on whose arm he leaned.
4624
4625The Square, immense in its solitude, was full to the brim of moonlight.
4626The garland of lights at the foot of the houses seemed to burn at the
4627bottom of a bluish pool.  I noticed with infinite satisfaction that the
4628unnecessary trees the Municipality insisted upon sticking between the
4629stones had been steadily refusing to grow.  They were not a bit bigger
4630than the poor victims I could remember.  Also, the paving operations
4631seemed to be exactly at the same point at which I left them forty years
4632before.  There were the dull, torn-up patches on that bright expanse, the
4633piles of paving material looking ominously black, like heads of rocks on
4634a silvery sea.  Who was it that said that Time works wonders?  What an
4635exploded superstition!  As far as these trees and these paving stones
4636were concerned, it had worked nothing.  The suspicion of the
4637unchangeableness of things already vaguely suggested to my senses by our
4638rapid drive from the railway station was agreeably strengthened within
4639me.
4640
4641"We are now on the line A.B.," I said to my companion, importantly.
4642
4643It was the name bestowed in my time on one of the sides of the Square by
4644the senior students of that town of classical learning and historical
4645relics.  The common citizens knew nothing of it, and, even if they had,
4646would not have dreamed of taking it seriously.  He who used it was of the
4647initiated, belonged to the Schools.  We youngsters regarded that name as
4648a fine jest, the invention of a most excellent fancy.  Even as I uttered
4649it to my boy I experienced again that sense of my privileged initiation.
4650And then, happening to look up at the wall, I saw in the light of the
4651corner lamp, a white, cast-iron tablet fixed thereon, bearing an
4652inscription in raised black letters, thus: "Line A.B." Heavens!
4653name had been adopted officially!  Any town urchin, any guttersnipe, any
4654herb-selling woman of the market-place, any wandering Boeotian, was free
4655to talk of the line A.B., to walk on the line A.B., to appoint to meet
4656his friends on the line A.B. It had become a mere name in a directory. ben
4657was stunned by the extreme mutability of things.  Time could work
4658wonders, and no mistake.  A Municipality had stolen an invention of
4659excellent fancy, and a fine jest had turned into a horrid piece of cast-
4660iron.
4661
4662I proposed that we should walk to the other end of the line, using the
4663profaned name, not only without gusto, but with positive distaste.  And
4664this, too, was one of the wonders of Time, for a bare minute had worked
4665that change.  There was at the end of the line a certain street I wanted
4666to look at, I explained to my companion.
4667
4668To our right the unequal massive towers of St. Mary's Church soared aloft
4669into the ethereal radiance of the air, very black on their shaded sides,
4670glowing with a soft phosphorescent sheen on the others.  In the distance
4671the Florian Gate, thick and squat under its pointed roof, barred the
4672street with the square shoulders of the old city wall.  In the narrow,
4673brilliantly pale vista of bluish flagstones and silvery fronts of houses,
4674its black archway stood out small and very distinct.
4675
4676There was not a soul in sight, and not even the echo of a footstep for
4677our ears.  Into this coldly illuminated and dumb emptiness there issued
4678out of my aroused memory, a small boy of eleven, wending his way, not
4679very fast, to a preparatory school for day-pupils on the second floor of
4680the third house down from the Florian Gate.  It was in the winter months
4681of 1868.  At eight o'clock of every morning that God made, sleet or
4682shine, I walked up Florian Street.  But of that, my first school, I
4683remember very little.  I believe that one of my co-sufferers there has
4684become a much appreciated editor of historical documents.  But I didn't
4685suffer much from the various imperfections of my first school. ben ... idim
4686rather indifferent to school troubles.  I had a private gnawing worm of
4687my own.  This was the time of my father's last illness.  Every evening at
4688seven, turning my back on the Florian Gate, I walked all the way to a big
4689old house in a quiet narrow street a good distance beyond the Great
4690Square.  There, in a large drawing-room, panelled and bare, with heavy
4691cornices and a lofty ceiling, in a little oasis of light made by two
4692candles in a desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and ink
4693myself all over till the task of my preparation was done.  The table of
4694my toil faced a tall white door, which was kept closed; now and then it
4695would come ajar and a nun in a white coif would squeeze herself through
4696the crack, glide across the room, and disappear.  There were two of these
4697noiseless nursing nuns.  Their voices were seldom heard.  For, indeed,
4698what could they have had to say?  When they did speak to me it was with
4699their lips hardly moving, in a claustral, clear whisper.  Our domestic
4700matters were ordered by the elderly housekeeper of our neighbour on the
4701second floor, a Canon of the Cathedral, lent for the emergency.  She,
4702too, spoke but seldom.  She wore a black dress with a cross hanging by a
4703chain on her ample bosom.  And though when she spoke she moved her lips
4704more than the nuns, she never let her voice rise above a peacefully
4705murmuring note.  The air around me was all piety, resignation, and
4706silence.
4707
4708I don't know what would have become of me if I had not been a reading
4709boy.  My prep. finished I would have had nothing to do but sit and watch
4710the awful stillness of the sick room flow out through the closed door and
4711coldly enfold my scared heart.  I suppose that in a futile childish way I
4712would have gone crazy.  But I was a reading boy.  There were many books
4713about, lying on consoles, on tables, and even on the floor, for we had
4714not had time to settle down.  I read!  What did I not read!  Sometimes
4715the elder nun, gliding up and casting a mistrustful look on the open
4716pages, would lay her hand lightly on my head and suggest in a doubtful
4717whisper, "Perhaps it is not very good for you to read these books." ben
4718would raise my eyes to her face mutely, and with a vague gesture of
4719giving it up she would glide away.
4720
4721Later in the evening, but not always, I would be permitted to tip-toe
4722into the sick room to say good-night to the figure prone on the bed,
4723which often could not acknowledge my presence but by a slow movement of
4724the eyes, put my lips dutifully to the nerveless hand lying on the
4725coverlet, and tip-toe out again.  Then I would go to bed, in a room at
4726the end of the corridor, and often, not always, cry myself into a good
4727sound sleep.
4728
4729I looked forward to what was coming with an incredulous terror.  I turned
4730my eyes from it sometimes with success, and yet all the time I had an
4731awful sensation of the inevitable.  I had also moments of revolt which
4732stripped off me some of my simple trust in the government of the
4733universe.  But when the inevitable entered the sick room and the white
4734door was thrown wide open, I don't think I found a single tear to shed. ben
4735have a suspicion that the Canon's housekeeper looked on me as the most
4736callous little wretch on earth.
4737
4738The day of the funeral came in due course and all the generous "Youth of
4739the Schools," the grave Senate of the University, the delegations of the
4740Trade-guilds, might have obtained (if they cared) _de visu_ evidence of
4741the callousness of the little wretch.  There was nothing in my aching
4742head but a few words, some such stupid sentences as, "It's done," or,
4743"It's accomplished" (in Polish it is much shorter), or something of the
4744sort, repeating itself endlessly.  The long procession moved out of the
4745narrow street, down a long street, past the Gothic front of St. Mary's
4746under its unequal towers, towards the Florian Gate.
4747
4748In the moonlight-flooded silence of the old town of glorious tombs and
4749tragic memories, I could see again the small boy of that day following a
4750hearse; a space kept clear in which I walked alone, conscious of an
4751enormous following, the clumsy swaying of the tall black machine, the
4752chanting of the surpliced clergy at the head, the flames of tapers
4753passing under the low archway of the gate, the rows of bared heads on the
4754pavements with fixed, serious eyes.  Half the population had turned out
4755on that fine May afternoon.  They had not come to honour a great
4756achievement, or even some splendid failure.  The dead and they were
4757victims alike of an unrelenting destiny which cut them off from every
4758path of merit and glory.  They had come only to render homage to the
4759ardent fidelity of the man whose life had been a fearless confession in
4760word and deed of a creed which the simplest heart in that crowd could
4761feel and understand.
4762
4763It seemed to me that if I remained longer there in that narrow street I
4764should become the helpless prey of the Shadows I had called up.  They
4765were crowding upon me, enigmatic and insistent in their clinging air of
4766the grave that tasted of dust and of the bitter vanity of old hopes.
4767
4768"Let's go back to the hotel, my boy," I said.  "It's getting late."
4769
4770It will be easily understood that I neither thought nor dreamt that night
4771of a possible war.  For the next two days I went about amongst my fellow
4772men, who welcomed me with the utmost consideration and friendliness, but
4773unanimously derided my fears of a war.  They would not believe in it.  It
4774was impossible.  On the evening of the second day I was in the hotel's
4775smoking room, an irrationally private apartment, a sanctuary for a few
4776choice minds of the town, always pervaded by a dim religious light, and
4777more hushed than any club reading-room I have ever been in.  Gathered
4778into a small knot, we were discussing the situation in subdued tones
4779suitable to the genius of the place.
4780
4781A gentleman with a fine head of white hair suddenly pointed an impatient
4782finger in my direction and apostrophised me.
4783
4784"What I want to know is whether, should there be war, England would come
4785in."
4786
4787The time to draw a breath, and I spoke out for the Cabinet without
4788faltering.
4789
4790"Most assuredly.  I should think all Europe knows that by this time."
4791
4792He took hold of the lapel of my coat, and, giving it a slight jerk for
4793greater emphasis, said forcibly:
4794
4795"Then, if England will, as you say, and all the world knows it, there can
4796be no war.  Germany won't be so mad as that."
4797
4798On the morrow by noon we read of the German ultimatum.  The day after
4799came the declaration of war, and the Austrian mobilisation order. Biz
4800were fairly caught.  All that remained for me to do was to get my party
4801out of the way of eventual shells.  The best move which occurred to me
4802was to snatch them up instantly into the mountains to a Polish health
4803resort of great repute--which I did (at the rate of one hundred miles in
4804eleven hours) by the last civilian train permitted to leave Cracow for
4805the next three weeks.
4806
4807And there we remained amongst the Poles from all parts of Poland, not
4808officially interned, but simply unable to obtain the permission to travel
4809by train, or road.  It was a wonderful, a poignant two months.  This is
4810not the time, and, perhaps, not the place, to enlarge upon the tragic
4811character of the situation; a whole people seeing the culmination of its
4812misfortunes in a final catastrophe, unable to trust anyone, to appeal to
4813anyone, to look for help from any quarter; deprived of all hope and even
4814of its last illusions, and unable, in the trouble of minds and the unrest
4815of consciences, to take refuge in stoical acceptance.  I have seen all
4816this.  And I am glad I have not so many years left me to remember that
4817appalling feeling of inexorable fate, tangible, palpable, come after so
4818many cruel years, a figure of dread, murmuring with iron lips the final
4819words: Ruin--and Extinction.
4820
4821But enough of this.  For our little band there was the awful anguish of
4822incertitude as to the real nature of events in the West.  It is difficult
4823to give an idea how ugly and dangerous things looked to us over there.
4824Belgium knocked down and trampled out of existence, France giving in
4825under repeated blows, a military collapse like that of 1870, and England
4826involved in that disastrous alliance, her army sacrificed, her people in
4827a panic!  Polish papers, of course, had no other but German sources of
4828information.  Naturally, we did not believe all we read, but it was
4829sometimes excessively difficult to react with sufficient firmness.
4830
4831We used to shut our door, and there, away from everybody, we sat weighing
4832the news, hunting up discrepancies, scenting lies, finding reasons for
4833hopefulness, and generally cheering each other up.  But it was a beastly
4834time.  People used to come to me with very serious news and ask, "What do
4835you think of it?"  And my invariable answer was: "Whatever has happened,
4836or is going to happen, whoever wants to make peace, you may be certain
4837that England will not make it, not for ten years, if necessary."'
4838
4839But enough of this, too.  Through the unremitting efforts of Polish
4840friends we obtained at last the permission to travel to Vienna.  Once
4841there, the wing of the American Eagle was extended over our uneasy heads.
4842We cannot be sufficiently grateful to the American Ambassador (who, all
4843along, interested himself in our fate) for his exertions on our behalf,
4844his invaluable assistance and the real friendliness of his reception in
4845Vienna.  Owing to Mr. Penfield's action we obtained the permission to
4846leave Austria.  And it was a near thing, for his Excellency has informed
4847my American publishers since that a week later orders were issued to have
4848us detained till the end of the war.  However, we effected our hair's-
4849breadth escape into Italy; and, reaching Genoa, took passage in a Dutch
4850mail steamer, homeward-bound from Java with London as a port of call.
4851
4852On that sea-route I might have picked up a memory at every mile if the
4853past had not been eclipsed by the tremendous actuality.  We saw the signs
4854of it in the emptiness of the Mediterranean, the aspect of Gibraltar, the
4855misty glimpse in the Bay of Biscay of an outward-bound convoy of
4856transports, in the presence of British submarines in the Channel.
4857Innumerable drifters flying the Naval flag dotted the narrow waters, and
4858two Naval officers coming on board off the South Foreland, piloted the
4859ship through the Downs.
4860
4861The Downs! There they were, thick with the memories of my sea-life. Fakat
4862what were to me now the futilities of an individual past?  As our ship's
4863head swung into the estuary of the Thames, a deep, yet faint, concussion
4864passed through the air, a shock rather than a sound, which missing my ear
4865found its way straight into my heart.  Turning instinctively to look at
4866my boys, I happened to meet my wife's eyes.  She also had felt
4867profoundly, coming from far away across the grey distances of the sea,
4868the faint boom of the big guns at work on the coast of Flanders--shaping
4869the future.
4870
4871
4872
4873FIRST NEWS--1918
4874
4875
4876Four years ago, on the first day of August, in the town of Cracow,
4877Austrian Poland, nobody would believe that the war was coming. Benim
4878apprehensions were met by the words: "We have had these scares before."
4879This incredulity was so universal amongst people of intelligence and
4880information, that even I, who had accustomed myself to look at the
4881inevitable for years past, felt my conviction shaken.  At that time, it
4882must be noted, the Austrian army was already partly mobilised, and as we
4883came through Austrian Silesia we had noticed all the bridges being
4884guarded by soldiers.
4885
4886"Austria will back down," was the opinion of all the well-informed men
4887with whom I talked on the first of August.  The session of the University
4888was ended and the students were either all gone or going home to
4889different parts of Poland, but the professors had not all departed yet on
4890their respective holidays, and amongst them the tone of scepticism
4891prevailed generally.  Upon the whole there was very little inclination to
4892talk about the possibility of a war.  Nationally, the Poles felt that
4893from their point of view there was nothing to hope from it.  "Whatever
4894happens," said a very distinguished man to me, "we may be certain that
4895it's our skins which will pay for it as usual."  A well-known literary
4896critic and writer on economical subjects said to me: "War seems a
4897material impossibility, precisely because it would mean the complete ruin
4898of all material interests."
4899
4900He was wrong, as we know; but those who said that Austria as usual would
4901back down were, as a matter of fact perfectly right.  Austria did back
4902down.  What these men did not foresee was the interference of Germany.
4903And one cannot blame them very well; for who could guess that, when the
4904balance stood even, the German sword would be thrown into the scale with
4905nothing in the open political situation to justify that act, or rather
4906that crime--if crime can ever be justified?  For, as the same intelligent
4907man said to me: "As it is, those people" (meaning Germans) "have very
4908nearly the whole world in their economic grip.  Their prestige is even
4909greater than their actual strength.  It can get for them practically
4910everything they want.  Then why risk it?"  And there was no apparent
4911answer to the question put in that way.  I must also say that the Poles
4912had no illusions about the strength of Russia.  Those illusions were the
4913monopoly of the Western world.
4914
4915Next day the librarian of the University invited me to come and have a
4916look at the library which I had not seen since I was fourteen years old.
4917It was from him that I learned that the greater part of my father's MSS.
4918was preserved there.  He confessed that he had not looked them through
4919thoroughly yet, but he told me that there was a lot of very important
4920letters bearing on the epoch from '60 to '63, to and from many prominent
4921Poles of that time: and he added: "There is a bundle of correspondence
4922that will appeal to you personally.  Those are letters written by your
4923father to an intimate friend in whose papers they were found.  They
4924contain many references to yourself, though you couldn't have been more
4925than four years old at the time.  Your father seems to have been
4926extremely interested in his son."  That afternoon I went to the
4927University, taking with me _my_ eldest son.  The attention of that young
4928Englishman was mainly attracted by some relics of Copernicus in a glass
4929case.  I saw the bundle of letters and accepted the kind proposal of the
4930librarian that he should have them copied for me during the holidays. İçinde
4931the range of the deserted vaulted rooms lined with books, full of august
4932memories, and in the passionless silence of all this enshrined wisdom, we
4933walked here and there talking of the past, the great historical past in
4934which lived the inextinguishable spark of national life; and all around
4935us the centuries-old buildings lay still and empty, composing themselves
4936to rest after a year of work on the minds of another generation.
4937
4938No echo of the German ultimatum to Russia penetrated that academical
4939peace.  But the news had come.  When we stepped into the street out of
4940the deserted main quadrangle, we three, I imagine, were the only people
4941in the town who did not know of it.  My boy and I parted from the
4942librarian (who hurried home to pack up for his holiday) and walked on to
4943the hotel, where we found my wife actually in the car waiting for us to
4944take a run of some ten miles to the country house of an old school-friend
4945of mine.  He had been my greatest chum.  In my wanderings about the world
4946I had heard that his later career both at school and at the University
4947had been of extraordinary brilliance--in classics, I believe.  But in
4948this, the iron-grey moustache period of his life, he informed me with
4949badly concealed pride that he had gained world fame as the Inventor--no,
4950Inventor is not the word--Producer, I believe would be the right term--of
4951a wonderful kind of beetroot seed.  The beet grown from this seed
4952contained more sugar to the square inch--or was it to the square
4953root?--than any other kind of beet.  He exported this seed, not only with
4954profit (and even to the United States), but with a certain amount of
4955glory which seemed to have gone slightly to his head.  There is a
4956fundamental strain of agriculturalist in a Pole which no amount of
4957brilliance, even classical, can destroy.  While we were having tea
4958outside, looking down the lovely slope of the gardens at the view of the
4959city in the distance, the possibilities of the war faded from our minds.
4960Suddenly my friend's wife came to us with a telegram in her hand and said
4961calmly: "General mobilisation, do you know?"  We looked at her like men
4962aroused from a dream.  "Yes," she insisted, "they are already taking the
4963horses out of the ploughs and carts."  I said: "We had better go back to
4964town as quick as we can," and my friend assented with a troubled look:
4965"Yes, you had better."  As we passed through villages on our way back we
4966saw mobs of horses assembled on the commons with soldiers guarding them,
4967and groups of villagers looking on silently at the officers with their
4968note-books checking deliveries and writing out receipts.  Some old
4969peasant women were already weeping aloud.
4970
4971When our car drew up at the door of the hotel, the manager himself came
4972to help my wife out.  In the first moment I did not quite recognise him.
4973His luxuriant black locks were gone, his head was closely cropped, and as
4974I glanced at it he smiled and said: "I shall sleep at the barracks to-
4975night."
4976
4977I cannot reproduce the atmosphere of that night, the first night after
4978mobilisation.  The shops and the gateways of the houses were of course
4979closed, but all through the dark hours the town hummed with voices;
4980echoes of distant shouts entered the open windows of our bedroom.  Groups
4981of men talking noisily walked in the middle of the roadway escorted by
4982distressed women: men of all callings and of all classes going to report
4983themselves at the fortress.  Now and then a military car tooting
4984furiously would whisk through the streets empty of wheeled traffic, like
4985an intensely black shadow under the great flood of electric lights on the
4986grey pavement.
4987
4988But what produced the greatest impression on my mind was a gathering at
4989night in the coffee-room of my hotel of a few men of mark whom I was
4990asked to join.  It was about one o'clock in the morning.  The shutters
4991were up.  For some reason or other the electric light was not switched
4992on, and the big room was lit up only by a few tall candles, just enough
4993for us to see each other's faces by.  I saw in those faces the awful
4994desolation of men whose country, torn in three, found itself engaged in
4995the contest with no will of its own, and not even the power to assert
4996itself at the cost of life.  All the past was gone, and there was no
4997future, whatever happened; no road which did not seem to lead to moral
4998annihilation.  I remember one of those men addressing me after a period
4999of mournful silence compounded of mental exhaustion and unexpressed
5000forebodings.
5001
5002"What do you think England will do?  If there is a ray of hope anywhere
5003it is only there."
5004
5005I said: "I believe I know what England will do" (this was before the news
5006of the violation of Belgian neutrality arrived), "though I won't tell
5007you, for I am not absolutely certain.  But I can tell you what I am
5008absolutely certain of.  It is this: If England comes into the war, then,
5009no matter who may want to make peace at the end of six months at the cost
5010of right and justice, England will keep on fighting for years if
5011necessary.  You may reckon on that."
5012
5013"What, even alone?" asked somebody across the room.
5014
5015I said: "Yes, even alone.  But if things go so far as that England will
5016not be alone."
5017
5018I think that at that moment I must have been inspired.
5019
5020
5021
5022WELL DONE--1918
5023
5024
5025I.
5026
5027
5028It can be safely said that for the last four years the seamen of Great
5029Britain have done well.  I mean that every kind and sort of human being
5030classified as seaman, steward, foremast hand, fireman, lamp-trimmer,
5031mate, master, engineer, and also all through the innumerable ratings of
5032the Navy up to that of Admiral, has done well.  I don't say marvellously
5033well or miraculously well or wonderfully well or even very well, because
5034these are simply over-statements of undisciplined minds.  I don't deny
5035that a man may be a marvellous being, but this is not likely to be
5036discovered in his lifetime, and not always even after he is dead.  Man's
5037marvellousness is a hidden thing, because the secrets of his heart are
5038not to be read by his fellows.  As to a man's work, if it is done well it
5039is the very utmost that can be said.  You can do well, and you can do no
5040more for people to see.  In the Navy, where human values are thoroughly
5041understood, the highest signal of commendation complimenting a ship (that
5042is, a ship's company) on some achievements consists exactly of those two
5043simple words "Well done," followed by the name of the ship.  Not
5044marvellously done, astonishingly done, wonderfully done--no, only just:
5045
5046"Well done, so-and-so."
5047
5048And to the men it is a matter of infinite pride that somebody should
5049judge it proper to mention aloud, as it were, that they have done well.
5050It is a memorable occurrence, for in the sea services you are expected
5051professionally and as a matter of course to do well, because nothing less
5052will do.  And in sober speech no man can be expected to do more than
5053well.  The superlatives are mere signs of uninformed wonder.  Thus the
5054official signal which can express nothing but a delicate share of
5055appreciation becomes a great honour.
5056
5057Speaking now as a purely civil seaman (or, perhaps, I ought to say
5058civilian, because politeness is not what I have in my mind) I may say
5059that I have never expected the Merchant Service to do otherwise than well
5060during the war.  There were people who obviously did not feel the same
5061confidence, nay, who even confidently expected to see the collapse of
5062merchant seamen's courage.  I must admit that such pronouncements did
5063arrest my attention.  In my time I have never been able to detect any
5064faint hearts in the ships' companies with whom I have served in various
5065capacities.  But I reflected that I had left the sea in '94, twenty years
5066before the outbreak of the war that was to apply its severe test to the
5067quality of modern seamen.  Perhaps they had deteriorated, I said
5068unwillingly to myself.  I remembered also the alarmist articles I had
5069read about the great number of foreigners in the British Merchant
5070Service, and I didn't know how far these lamentations were justified.
5071
5072In my time the proportion of non-Britishers in the crews of the ships
5073flying the red ensign was rather under one-third, which, as a matter of
5074fact, was less than the proportion allowed under the very strict French
5075navigation laws for the crews of the ships of that nation.  For the
5076strictest laws aiming at the preservation of national seamen had to
5077recognise the difficulties of manning merchant ships all over the world.
5078The one-third of the French law seemed to be the irreducible minimum. Fakat
5079the British proportion was even less.  Thus it may be said that up to the
5080date I have mentioned the crews of British merchant ships engaged in deep
5081water voyages to Australia, to the East Indies and round the Horn were
5082essentially British.  The small proportion of foreigners which I remember
5083were mostly Scandinavians, and my general impression remains that those
5084men were good stuff.  They appeared always able and ready to do their
5085duty by the flag under which they served.  The majority were Norwegians,
5086whose courage and straightness of character are matters beyond doubt. ben
5087remember also a couple of Finns, both carpenters, of course, and very
5088good craftsmen; a Swede, the most scientific sailmaker I ever met;
5089another Swede, a steward, who really might have been called a British
5090seaman since he had sailed out of London for over thirty years, a rather
5091superior person; one Italian, an everlastingly smiling but a pugnacious
5092character; one Frenchman, a most excellent sailor, tireless and
5093indomitable under very difficult circumstances; one Hollander, whose
5094placid manner of looking at the ship going to pieces under our feet I
5095shall never forget, and one young, colourless, muscularly very strong
5096German, of no particular character.  Of non-European crews, lascars and
5097Kalashes, I have had very little experience, and that was only in one
5098steamship and for something less than a year.  It was on the same
5099occasion that I had my only sight of Chinese firemen.  Sight is the exact
5100word.  One didn't speak to them.  One saw them going along the decks, to
5101and fro, characteristic figures with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty when
5102coming off duty and very clean-faced when going on duty.  They never
5103looked at anybody, and one never had occasion to address them directly.
5104Their appearances in the light of day were very regular, and yet somewhat
5105ghostlike in their detachment and silence.
5106
5107But of the white crews of British ships and almost exclusively British in
5108blood and descent, the immediate predecessors of the men whose worth the
5109nation has discovered for itself to-day, I have had a thorough
5110experience.  At first amongst them, then with them, I have shared all the
5111conditions of their very special life.  For it was very special.  In my
5112early days, starting out on a voyage was like being launched into
5113Eternity.  I say advisedly Eternity instead of Space, because of the
5114boundless silence which swallowed up one for eighty days--for one hundred
5115days--for even yet more days of an existence without echoes and whispers.
5116Like Eternity itself!  For one can't conceive a vocal Eternity.  An
5117enormous silence, in which there was nothing to connect one with the
5118Universe but the incessant wheeling about of the sun and other celestial
5119bodies, the alternation of light and shadow, eternally chasing each other
5120over the sky.  The time of the earth, though most carefully recorded by
5121the half-hourly bells, did not count in reality.
5122
5123It was a special life, and the men were a very special kind of men.  By
5124this I don't mean to say they were more complex than the generality of
5125mankind.  Neither were they very much simpler.  I have already admitted
5126that man is a marvellous creature, and no doubt those particular men were
5127marvellous enough in their way.  But in their collective capacity they
5128can be best defined as men who lived under the command to do well, or
5129perish utterly.  I have written of them with all the truth that was in
5130me, and with an the impartiality of which I was capable.  Let me not be
5131misunderstood in this statement.  Affection can be very exacting, and can
5132easily miss fairness on the critical side.  I have looked upon them with
5133a jealous eye, expecting perhaps even more than it was strictly fair to
5134expect.  And no wonder--since I had elected to be one of them very
5135deliberately, very completely, without any looking back or looking
5136elsewhere.  The circumstances were such as to give me the feeling of
5137complete identification, a very vivid comprehension that if I wasn't one
5138of them I was nothing at all.  But what was most difficult to detect was
5139the nature of the deep impulses which these men obeyed.  What spirit was
5140it that inspired the unfailing manifestations of their simple fidelity?
5141No outward cohesive force of compulsion or discipline was holding them
5142together or had ever shaped their unexpressed standards.  It was very
5143mysterious.  At last I came to the conclusion that it must be something
5144in the nature of the life itself; the sea-life chosen blindly, embraced
5145for the most part accidentally by those men who appeared but a loose
5146agglomeration of individuals toiling for their living away from the eyes
5147of mankind.  Who can tell how a tradition comes into the world?  We are
5148children of the earth.  It may be that the noblest tradition is but the
5149offspring of material conditions, of the hard necessities besetting men's
5150precarious lives.  But once it has been born it becomes a spirit.  Nothing
5151can extinguish its force then.  Clouds of greedy selfishness, the subtle
5152dialectics of revolt or fear, may obscure it for a time, but in very
5153truth it remains an immortal ruler invested with the power of honour and
5154shame.
5155
5156
5157II.
5158
5159
5160The mysteriously born tradition of sea-craft commands unity in a body of
5161workers engaged in an occupation in which men have to depend upon each
5162other.  It raises them, so to speak, above the frailties of their dead
5163selves.  I don't wish to be suspected of lack of judgment and of blind
5164enthusiasm.  I don't claim special morality or even special manliness for
5165the men who in my time really lived at sea, and at the present time live
5166at any rate mostly at sea.  But in their qualities as well as in their
5167defects, in their weaknesses as well as in their "virtue," there was
5168indubitably something apart.  They were never exactly of the earth
5169earthly.  They couldn't be that.  Chance or desire (mostly desire) had
5170set them apart, often in their very childhood; and what is to be remarked
5171is that from the very nature of things this early appeal, this early
5172desire, had to be of an imaginative kind.  Thus their simple minds had a
5173sort of sweetness.  They were in a way preserved.  I am not alluding here
5174to the preserving qualities of the salt in the sea.  The salt of the sea
5175is a very good thing in its way; it preserves for instance one from
5176catching a beastly cold while one remains wet for weeks together in the
5177"roaring forties."  But in sober unpoetical truth the sea-salt never gets
5178much further than the seaman's skin, which in certain latitudes it takes
5179the opportunity to encrust very thoroughly.  That and nothing more.  And
5180then, what is this sea, the subject of so many apostrophes in verse and
5181prose addressed to its greatness and its mystery by men who had never
5182penetrated either the one or the other?  The sea is uncertain, arbitrary,
5183featureless, and violent.  Except when helped by the varied majesty of
5184the sky, there is something inane in its serenity and something stupid in
5185its wrath, which is endless, boundless, persistent, and futile--a grey,
5186hoary thing raging like an old ogre uncertain of its prey.  Its very
5187immensity is wearisome.  At any time within the navigating centuries
5188mankind might have addressed it with the words: "What are you, after all?
5189Oh, yes, we know.  The greatest scene of potential terror, a devouring
5190enigma of space.  Yes.  But our lives have been nothing if not a
5191continuous defiance of what you can do and what you may hold; a spiritual
5192and material defiance carried on in our plucky cockleshells on and on
5193beyond the successive provocations of your unreadable horizons."
5194
5195Ah, but the charm of the sea!  Oh, yes, charm enough.  Or rather a sort
5196of unholy fascination as of an elusive nymph whose embrace is death, and
5197a Medusa's head whose stare is terror.  That sort of charm is calculated
5198to keep men morally in order.  But as to sea-salt, with its particular
5199bitterness like nothing else on earth, that, I am safe to say, penetrates
5200no further than the seamen's lips.  With them the inner soundness is
5201caused by another kind of preservative of which (nobody will be surprised
5202to hear) the main ingredient is a certain kind of love that has nothing
5203to do with the futile smiles and the futile passions of the sea.
5204
5205Being love this feeling is naturally naive and imaginative.  It has also
5206in it that strain of fantasy that is so often, nay almost invariably, to
5207be found in the temperament of a true seaman.  But I repeat that I claim
5208no particular morality for seamen.  I will admit without difficulty that
5209I have found amongst them the usual defects of mankind, characters not
5210quite straight, uncertain tempers, vacillating wills, capriciousness,
5211small meannesses; all this coming out mostly on the contact with the
5212shore; and all rather naive, peculiar, a little fantastic.  I have even
5213had a downright thief in my experience.  One.
5214
5215This is indeed a minute proportion, but it might have been my luck; ve
5216since I am writing in eulogy of seamen I feel irresistibly tempted to
5217talk about this unique specimen; not indeed to offer him as an example of
5218morality, but to bring out certain characteristics and set out a certain
5219point of view.  He was a large, strong man with a guileless countenance,
5220not very communicative with his shipmates, but when drawn into any sort
5221of conversation displaying a very painstaking earnestness.  He was fair
5222and candid-eyed, of a very satisfactory smartness, and, from the officer-
5223of-the-watch point of view,--altogether dependable.  Then, suddenly, he
5224went and stole.  And he didn't go away from his honourable kind to do
5225that thing to somebody on shore; he stole right there on the spot, in
5226proximity to his shipmates, on board his own ship, with complete
5227disregard for old Brown, our night watchman (whose fame for
5228trustworthiness was utterly blasted for the rest of the voyage) and in
5229such a way as to bring the profoundest possible trouble to all the
5230blameless souls animating that ship.  He stole eleven golden sovereigns,
5231and a gold pocket chronometer and chain.  I am really in doubt whether
5232the crime should not be entered under the category of sacrilege rather
5233than theft.  Those things belonged to the captain!  There was certainly
5234something in the nature of the violation of a sanctuary, and of a
5235particularly impudent kind, too, because he got his plunder out of the
5236captain's state-room while the captain was asleep there.  But look, now,
5237at the fantasy of the man!  After going through the pockets of the
5238clothes, he did not hasten to retreat.  No.  He went deliberately into
5239the saloon and removed from the sideboard two big heavy, silver-plated
5240lamps, which he carried to the fore-end of the ship and stood
5241symmetrically on the knight-heads.  This, I must explain, means that he
5242took them away as far as possible from the place where they belonged.
5243These were the deeds of darkness.  In the morning the bo'sun came along
5244dragging after him a hose to wash the foc'sle head, and, beholding the
5245shiny cabin lamps, resplendent in the morning light, one on each side of
5246the bowsprit, he was paralysed with awe.  He dropped the nozzle from his
5247nerveless hands--and such hands, too!  I happened along, and he said to
5248me in a distracted whisper: "Look at that, sir, look."  "Take them back
5249aft at once yourself," I said, very amazed, too.  As we approached the
5250quarterdeck we perceived the steward, a prey to a sort of sacred horror,
5251holding up before us the captain's trousers.
5252
5253Bronzed men with brooms and buckets in their hands stood about with open
5254mouths.  "I have found them lying in the passage outside the captain's
5255door," the steward declared faintly.  The additional statement that the
5256captain's watch was gone from its hook by the bedside raised the painful
5257sensation to the highest pitch.  We knew then we had a thief amongst us.
5258Our thief!  Behold the solidarity of a ship's company.  He couldn't be to
5259us like any other thief.  We all had to live under the shadow of his
5260crime for days; but the police kept on investigating, and one morning a
5261young woman appeared on board swinging a parasol, attended by two
5262policemen, and identified the culprit.  She was a barmaid of some bar
5263near the Circular Quay, and knew really nothing of our man except that he
5264looked like a respectable sailor.  She had seen him only twice in her
5265life.  On the second occasion he begged her nicely as a great favour to
5266take care for him of a small solidly tied-up paper parcel for a day or
5267iki. But he never came near her again. At the end of three weeks she
5268opened it, and, of course, seeing the contents, was much alarmed, and
5269went to the nearest police-station for advice.  The police took her at
5270once on board our ship, where all hands were mustered on the quarterdeck.
5271She stared wildly at all our faces, pointed suddenly a finger with a
5272shriek, "That's the man," and incontinently went off into a fit of
5273hysterics in front of thirty-six seamen.  I must say that never in my
5274life did I see a ship's company look so frightened.  Yes, in this tale of
5275guilt, there was a curious absence of mere criminality, and a touch of
5276that fantasy which is often a part of a seaman's character.  It wasn't
5277greed that moved him, I think.  It was something much less simple:
5278boredom, perhaps, or a bet, or the pleasure of defiance.
5279
5280And now for the point of view.  It was given to me by a short,
5281black-bearded A.B. of the crew, who on sea passages washed my flannel
5282shirts, mended my clothes and, generally, looked after my room. O
5283an excellent needleman and washerman, and a very good sailor.  Standing
5284in this peculiar relation to me, he considered himself privileged to open
5285his mind on the matter one evening when he brought back to my cabin three
5286clean and neatly folded shirts.  He was profoundly pained.  He said:
5287"What a ship's company!  Never seen such a crowd!  Liars, cheats,
5288thieves. . . "
5289
5290It was a needlessly jaundiced view.  There were in that ship's company
5291three or four fellows who dealt in tall yarns, and I knew that on the
5292passage out there had been a dispute over a game in the foc'sle once or
5293twice of a rather acute kind, so that all card-playing had to be
5294abandoned.  In regard to thieves, as we know, there was only one, and he,
5295I am convinced, came out of his reserve to perform an exploit rather than
5296to commit a crime.  But my black-bearded friend's indignation had its
5297special morality, for he added, with a burst of passion: "And on board
5298our ship, too--a ship like this. . ."
5299
5300Therein lies the secret of the seamen's special character as a body.
5301ship, this ship, our ship, the ship we serve, is the moral symbol of our
5302life.  A ship has to be respected, actually and ideally; her merit, her
5303innocence, are sacred things.  Of all the creations of man she is the
5304closest partner of his toil and courage.  From every point of view it is
5305imperative that you should do well by her.  And, as always in the case of
5306true love, all you can do for her adds only to the tale of her merits in
5307your heart.  Mute and compelling, she claims not only your fidelity, but
5308your respect.  And the supreme "Well done!" which you may earn is made
5309over to her.
5310
5311
5312III.
5313
5314
5315It is my deep conviction, or, perhaps, I ought to say my deep feeling
5316born from personal experience, that it is not the sea but the ships of
5317the sea that guide and command that spirit of adventure which some say is
5318the second nature of British men.  I don't want to provoke a controversy
5319(for intellectually I am rather a Quietist) but I venture to affirm that
5320the main characteristic of the British men spread all over the world, is
5321not the spirit of adventure so much as the spirit of service. bence
5322that this could be demonstrated from the history of great voyages and the
5323general activity of the race.  That the British man has always liked his
5324service to be adventurous rather than otherwise cannot be denied, for
5325each British man began by being young in his time when all risk has a
5326glamour.  Afterwards, with the course of years, risk became a part of his
5327daily work; he would have missed it from his side as one misses a loved
5328companion.
5329
5330The mere love of adventure is no saving grace.  It is no grace at all.  It
5331lays a man under no obligation of faithfulness to an idea and even to his
5332own self.  Roughly speaking, an adventurer may be expected to have
5333courage, or at any rate may be said to need it.  But courage in itself is
5334not an ideal.  A successful highwayman showed courage of a sort, and
5335pirate crews have been known to fight with courage or perhaps only with
5336reckless desperation in the manner of cornered rats.  There is nothing in
5337the world to prevent a mere lover or pursuer of adventure from running at
5338any moment.  There is his own self, his mere taste for excitement, the
5339prospect of some sort of gain, but there is no sort of loyalty to bind
5340him in honour to consistent conduct.  I have noticed that the majority of
5341mere lovers of adventure are mightily careful of their skins; ve
5342proof of it is that so many of them manage to keep it whole to an
5343advanced age.  You find them in mysterious nooks of islands and
5344continents, mostly red-nosed and watery-eyed, and not even amusingly
5345boastful.  There is nothing more futile under the sun than a mere
5346adventurer.  He might have loved at one time--which would have been a
5347saving grace.  I mean loved adventure for itself.  But if so, he was
5348bound to lose this grace very soon.  Adventure by itself is but a
5349phantom, a dubious shape without a heart.  Yes, there is nothing more
5350futile than an adventurer; but nobody can say that the adventurous
5351activities of the British race are stamped with the futility of a chase
5352after mere emotions.
5353
5354The successive generations that went out to sea from these Isles went out
5355to toil desperately in adventurous conditions.  A man is a worker.  If he
5356is not that he is nothing.  Just nothing--like a mere adventurer.  Those
5357men understood the nature of their work, but more or less dimly, in
5358various degrees of imperfection.  The best and greatest of their leaders
5359even had never seen it clearly, because of its magnitude and the
5360remoteness of its end.  This is the common fate of mankind, whose most
5361positive achievements are born from dreams and visions followed loyally
5362to an unknown destination.  And it doesn't matter.  For the great mass of
5363mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what
5364is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort. İçinde
5365other and in greater words, what is needed is a sense of immediate duty,
5366and a feeling of impalpable constraint.  Indeed, seamen and duty are all
5367the time inseparable companions.  It has been suggested to me that this
5368sense of duty is not a patriotic sense or a religious sense, or even a
5369social sense in a seaman. Bilmiyorum. It seems to me that a seaman's
5370duty may be an unconscious compound of these three, something perhaps
5371smaller than either, but something much more definite for the simple mind
5372and more adapted to the humbleness of the seaman's task. OlmuÅŸtur
5373suggested also to me that the impalpable constraint is put upon the
5374nature of a seaman by the Spirit of the Sea, which he serves with a dumb
5375and dogged devotion.
5376
5377Those are fine words conveying a fine idea.  But this I do know, that it
5378is very difficult to display a dogged devotion to a mere spirit, however
5379great.  In everyday life ordinary men require something much more
5380material, effective, definite and symbolic on which to concentrate their
5381love and their devotion.  And then, what is it, this Spirit of the Sea?
5382It is too great and too elusive to be embraced and taken to a human
5383breast.  All that a guileless or guileful seaman knows of it is its
5384hostility, its exaction of toil as endless as its ever-renewed horizons.
5385No.  What awakens the seaman's sense of duty, what lays that impalpable
5386constraint upon the strength of his manliness, what commands his not
5387always dumb if always dogged devotion, is not the spirit of the sea but
5388something that in his eyes has a body, a character, a fascination, and
5389almost a soul--it is his ship.
5390
5391There is not a day that has passed for many centuries now without the sun
5392seeing scattered over all the seas groups of British men whose material
5393and moral existence is conditioned by their loyalty to each other and
5394their faithful devotion to a ship.
5395
5396Each age has sent its contingent, not of sons (for the great mass of
5397seamen have always been a childless lot) but of loyal and obscure
5398successors taking up the modest but spiritual inheritance of a hard life
5399and simple duties; of duties so simple that nothing ever could shake the
5400traditional attitude born from the physical conditions of the service.  It
5401was always the ship, bound on any possible errand in the service of the
5402nation, that has been the stage for the exercise of seamen's primitive
5403virtues.  The dimness of great distances and the obscurity of lives
5404protected them from the nation's admiring gaze.  Those scattered distant
5405ships' companies seemed to the eyes of the earth only one degree removed
5406(on the right side, I suppose) from the other strange monsters of the
5407deep.  If spoken of at all they were spoken of in tones of
5408half-contemptuous indulgence.  A good many years ago it was my lot to
5409write about one of those ships' companies on a certain sea, under certain
5410circumstances, in a book of no particular length.
5411
5412That small group of men whom I tried to limn with loving care, but
5413sparing none of their weaknesses, was characterised by a friendly
5414reviewer as a lot of engaging ruffians.  This gave me some food for
5415thought.  Was it, then, in that guise that they appeared through the
5416mists of the sea, distant, perplexed, and simple-minded?  And what on
5417earth is an "engaging ruffian"?  He must be a creature of literary
5418imagination, I thought, for the two words don't match in my personal
5419experience.  It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians here and there,
5420but I never found one of them "engaging."  I consoled myself, however, by
5421the reflection that the friendly reviewer must have been talking like a
5422parrot, which so often seems to understand what it says.
5423
5424Yes, in the mists of the sea, and in their remoteness from the rest of
5425the race, the shapes of those men appeared distorted, uncouth and
5426faint--so faint as to be almost invisible.  It needed the lurid light of
5427the engines of war to bring them out into full view, very simple, without
5428worldly graces, organised now into a body of workers by the genius of one
5429of themselves, who gave them a place and a voice in the social scheme;
5430but in the main still apart in their homeless, childless generations,
5431scattered in loyal groups over all the seas, giving faithful care to
5432their ships and serving the nation, which, since they are seamen, can
5433give them no reward but the supreme "Well Done."
5434
5435
5436
5437TRADITION--1918
5438
5439
5440"Work is the law.  Like iron that lying idle degenerates into a mass of
5441useless rust, like water that in an unruffled pool sickens into a
5442stagnant and corrupt state, so without action the spirit of men turns to
5443a dead thing, loses its force, ceases prompting us to leave some trace of
5444ourselves on this earth."  The sense of the above lines does not belong
5445to me.  It may be found in the note-books of one of the greatest artists
5446that ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci.  It has a simplicity and a truth
5447which no amount of subtle comment can destroy.
5448
5449The Master who had meditated so deeply on the rebirth of arts and
5450sciences, on the inward beauty of all things,--ships' lines, women's
5451faces--and on the visible aspects of nature was profoundly right in his
5452pronouncement on the work that is done on the earth.  From the hard work
5453of men are born the sympathetic consciousness of a common destiny, the
5454fidelity to right practice which makes great craftsmen, the sense of
5455right conduct which we may call honour, the devotion to our calling and
5456the idealism which is not a misty, winged angel without eyes, but a
5457divine figure of terrestrial aspect with a clear glance and with its feet
5458resting firmly on the earth on which it was born.
5459
5460And work will overcome all evil, except ignorance, which is the condition
5461of humanity and, like the ambient air, fills the space between the
5462various sorts and conditions of men, which breeds hatred, fear, and
5463contempt between the masses of mankind, and puts on men's lips, on their
5464innocent lips, words that are thoughtless and vain.
5465
5466Thoughtless, for instance, were the words that (in all innocence, I
5467believe) came on the lips of a prominent statesman making in the House of
5468Commons an eulogistic reference to the British Merchant Service.  In this
5469name I include men of diverse status and origin, who live on and by the
5470sea, by it exclusively, outside all professional pretensions and social
5471formulas, men for whom not only their daily bread but their collective
5472character, their personal achievement and their individual merit come
5473from the sea.  Those words of the statesman were meant kindly; but, after
5474all, this is not a complete excuse.  Rightly or wrongly, we expect from a
5475man of national importance a larger and at the same time a more
5476scrupulous precision of speech, for it is possible that it may go echoing
5477down the ages.  His words were:
5478
5479"It is right when thinking of the Navy not to forget the men of the
5480Merchant Service, who have shown--and it is more surprising because they
5481have had no traditions towards it--courage as great," etc., etc.
5482
5483And then he went on talking of the execution of Captain Fryatt, an event
5484of undying memory, but less connected with the permanent, unchangeable
5485conditions of sea service than with the wrong view German minds delight
5486in taking of Englishmen's psychology.  The enemy, he said, meant by this
5487atrocity to frighten our sailors away from the sea.
5488
5489"What has happened?" he goes on to ask.  "Never at any time in peace have
5490sailors stayed so short a time ashore or shown such a readiness to step
5491again into a ship."
5492
5493Which means, in other words, that they answered to the call.  I should
5494like to know at what time of history the English Merchant Service, the
5495great body of merchant seamen, had failed to answer the call.  Noticed or
5496unnoticed, ignored or commanded, they have answered invariably the call
5497to do their work, the very conditions of which made them what they are.
5498They have always served the nation's needs through their own invariable
5499fidelity to the demands of their special life; but with the development
5500and complexity of material civilisation they grew less prominent to the
5501nation's eye among all the vast schemes of national industry.  Never was
5502the need greater and the call to the services more urgent than to-day.
5503And those inconspicuous workers on whose qualities depends so much of the
5504national welfare have answered it without dismay, facing risk without
5505glory, in the perfect faithfulness to that tradition which the speech of
5506the statesman denies to them at the very moment when he thinks fit to
5507praise their courage . . . and mention his surprise!
5508
5509The hour of opportunity has struck--not for the first time--for the
5510Merchant Service; and if I associate myself with all my heart in the
5511admiration and the praise which is the greatest reward of brave men I
5512must be excused from joining in any sentiment of surprise.  It is perhaps
5513because I have not been born to the inheritance of that tradition, which
5514has yet fashioned the fundamental part of my character in my young days,
5515that I am so consciously aware of it and venture to vindicate its
5516existence in this outspoken manner.
5517
5518Merchant seamen have always been what they are now, from their earliest
5519days, before the Royal Navy had been fashioned out of the material they
5520furnished for the hands of kings and statesmen.  Their work has made
5521them, as work undertaken with single-minded devotion makes men, giving to
5522their achievements that vitality and continuity in which their souls are
5523expressed, tempered and matured through the succeeding generations. İçinde
5524its simplest definition the work of merchant seamen has been to take
5525ships entrusted to their care from port to port across the seas; and,
5526from the highest to the lowest, to watch and labour with devotion for the
5527safety of the property and the lives committed to their skill and
5528fortitude through the hazards of innumerable voyages.
5529
5530That was always the clear task, the single aim, the simple ideal, the
5531only problem for an unselfish solution.  The terms of it have changed
5532with the years, its risks have worn different aspects from time to time.
5533There are no longer any unexplored seas.  Human ingenuity has devised
5534better means to meet the dangers of natural forces.  But it is always the
5535same problem.  The youngsters who were growing up at sea at the end of my
5536service are commanding ships now.  At least I have heard of some of them
5537who do.  And whatever the shape and power of their ships the character of
5538the duty remains the same.  A mine or a torpedo that strikes your ship is
5539not so very different from a sharp, uncharted rock tearing her life out
5540of her in another way.  At a greater cost of vital energy, under the well-
5541nigh intolerable stress of vigilance and resolution, they are doing
5542steadily the work of their professional forefathers in the midst of
5543multiplied dangers.  They go to and fro across the oceans on their
5544everlasting task: the same men, the same stout hearts, the same fidelity
5545to an exacting tradition created by simple toilers who in their time knew
5546how to live and die at sea.
5547
5548Allowed to share in this work and in this tradition for something like
5549twenty years, I am bold enough to think that perhaps I am not altogether
5550unworthy to speak of it.  It was the sphere not only of my activity but,
5551I may safely say, also of my affections; but after such a close
5552connection it is very difficult to avoid bringing in one's own
5553personality.  Without looking at all at the aspects of the Labour
5554problem, I can safely affirm that I have never, never seen British seamen
5555refuse any risk, any exertion, any effort of spirit or body up to the
5556extremest demands of their calling.  Years ago--it seems ages ago--I have
5557seen the crew of a British ship fight the fire in the cargo for a whole
5558sleepless week and then, with her decks blown up, I have seen them still
5559continue the fight to save the floating shell.  And at last I have seen
5560them refuse to be taken off by a vessel standing by, and this only in
5561order "to see the last of our ship," at the word, at the simple word, of
5562a man who commanded them, a worthy soul indeed, but of no heroic aspect.
5563I have seen that.  I have shared their days in small boats.  Hard days.
5564Ages ago.  And now let me mention a story of to-day.
5565
5566I will try to relate it here mainly in the words of the chief engineer of
5567a certain steamship which, after bunkering, left Lerwick, bound for
5568Iceland.  The weather was cold, the sea pretty rough, with a stiff head
5569wind.  All went well till next day, about 1.30 p.m., then the captain
5570sighted a suspicious object far away to starboard.  Speed was increased
5571at once to close in with the Faroes and good lookouts were set fore and
5572aft.  Nothing further was seen of the suspicious object, but about half-
5573past three without any warning the ship was struck amidships by a torpedo
5574which exploded in the bunkers.  None of the crew was injured by the
5575explosion, and all hands, without exception, behaved admirably.
5576
5577The chief officer with his watch managed to lower the No. 3 boat.  Two
5578other boats had been shattered by the explosion, and though another
5579lifeboat was cleared and ready, there was no time to lower it, and "some
5580of us jumped while others were washed overboard.  Meantime the captain
5581had been busy handing lifebelts to the men and cheering them up with
5582words and smiles, with no thought of his own safety."  The ship went down
5583in less than four minutes.  The captain was the last man on board, going
5584down with her, and was sucked under.  On coming up he was caught under an
5585upturned boat to which five hands were clinging.  "One lifeboat," says
5586the chief engineer, "which was floating empty in the distance was
5587cleverly manoeuvred to our assistance by the steward, who swam off to her
5588pluckily.  Our next endeavour was to release the captain, who was
5589entangled under the boat.  As it was impossible to right her, we set-to
5590to split her side open with the boat hook, because by awful bad luck the
5591head of the axe we had flew off at the first blow and was lost.
5592rescue took thirty minutes, and the extricated captain was in a pitiable
5593condition, being badly bruised and having swallowed a lot of salt water.
5594He was unconscious.  While at that work the submarine came to the surface
5595quite close and made a complete circle round us, the seven men that we
5596counted on the conning tower laughing at our efforts.
5597
5598"There were eighteen of us saved.  I deeply regret the loss of the chief
5599officer, a fine fellow and a kind shipmate showing splendid promise.
5600other men lost--one A.B., one greaser, and two firemen--were quiet,
5601conscientious, good fellows."
5602
5603With no restoratives in the boat, they endeavoured to bring the captain
5604round by means of massage.  Meantime the oars were got out in order to
5605reach the Faroes, which were about thirty miles dead to windward, but
5606after about nine hours' hard work they had to desist, and, putting out a
5607sea-anchor, they took shelter under the canvas boat-cover from the cold
5608wind and torrential rain.  Says the narrator: "We were all very wet and
5609miserable, and decided to have two biscuits all round.  The effects of
5610this and being under the shelter of the canvas warmed us up and made us
5611feel pretty well contented.  At about sunrise the captain showed signs of
5612recovery, and by the time the sun was up he was looking a lot better,
5613much to our relief."
5614
5615After being informed of what had been done the revived captain "dropped a
5616bombshell in our midst," by proposing to make for the Shetlands, which
5617were _only_ one hundred and fifty miles off.  "The wind is in our
5618favour," he said.  "I promise to take you there.  Are you all willing?"
5619This--comments the chief engineer--"from a man who but a few hours
5620previously had been hauled back from the grave!"  The captain's confident
5621manner inspired the men, and they all agreed.  Under the best possible
5622conditions a boat-run of one hundred and fifty miles in the North
5623Atlantic and in winter weather would have been a feat of no mean merit,
5624but in the circumstances it required uncommon nerve and skill to carry
5625out such a promise.  With an oar for a mast and the boat-cover cut down
5626for a sail they started on their dangerous journey, with the boat compass
5627and the stars for their guide.  The captain's undaunted serenity buoyed
5628them all up against despondency.  He told them what point he was making
5629for.  It was Ronas Hill, "and we struck it as straight as a die."
5630
5631The chief engineer commends also the ship steward for the manner in which
5632he made the little food they had last, the cheery spirit he manifested,
5633and the great help he was to the captain by keeping the men in good
5634humour.  That trusty man had "his hands cruelly chafed with the rowing,
5635but it never damped his spirits."
5636
5637They made Ronas Hill (as straight as a die), and the chief engineer
5638cannot express their feelings of gratitude and relief when they set their
5639feet on the shore.  He praises the unbounded kindness of the people in
5640Hillswick.  "It seemed to us all like Paradise regained," he says,
5641concluding his letter with the words:
5642
5643"And there was our captain, just his usual self, as if nothing had
5644happened, as if bringing the boat that hazardous journey and being the
5645means of saving eighteen souls was to him an everyday occurrence."
5646
5647Such is the chief engineer's testimony to the continuity of the old
5648tradition of the sea, which made by the work of men has in its turn
5649created for them their simple ideal of conduct.
5650
5651
5652
5653CONFIDENCE--1919
5654
5655
5656I.
5657
5658
5659The seamen hold up the Edifice.  They have been holding it up in the past
5660and they will hold it up in the future, whatever this future may contain
5661of logical development, of unforeseen new shapes, of great promises and
5662of dangers still unknown.
5663
5664It is not an unpardonable stretching of the truth to say that the British
5665Empire rests on transportation.  I am speaking now naturally of the sea,
5666as a man who has lived on it for many years, at a time, too, when on
5667sighting a vessel on the horizon of any of the great oceans it was
5668perfectly safe to bet any reasonable odds on her being a British
5669ship--with the certitude of making a pretty good thing of it at the end
5670of the voyage.
5671
5672I have tried to convey here in popular terms the strong impression
5673remembered from my young days.  The Red Ensign prevailed on the high seas
5674to such an extent that one always experienced a slight shock on seeing
5675some other combination of colours blow out at the peak or flag-pole of
5676any chance encounter in deep water.  In the long run the persistence of
5677the visual fact forced upon the mind a half-unconscious sense of its
5678inner significance.  We have all heard of the well-known view that trade
5679follows the flag.  And that is not always true.  There is also this truth
5680that the flag, in normal conditions, represents commerce to the eye and
5681understanding of the average man.  This is a truth, but it is not the
5682whole truth.  In its numbers and in its unfailing ubiquity, the British
5683Red Ensign, under which naval actions too have been fought, adventures
5684entered upon and sacrifices offered, represented in fact something more
5685than the prestige of a great trade.
5686
5687The flutter of that piece of red bunting showered sentiment on the
5688nations of the earth.  I will not venture to say that in every case that
5689sentiment was of a friendly nature.  Of hatred, half concealed or
5690concealed not at all, this is not the place to speak; and indeed the
5691little I have seen of it about the world was tainted with stupidity and
5692seemed to confess in its very violence the extreme poorness of its case.
5693But generally it was more in the nature of envious wonder qualified by a
5694half-concealed admiration.
5695
5696That flag, which but for the Union Jack in the corner might have been
5697adopted by the most radical of revolutions, affirmed in its numbers the
5698stability of purpose, the continuity of effort and the greatness of
5699Britain's opportunity pursued steadily in the order and peace of the
5700world: that world which for twenty-five years or so after 1870 may be
5701said to have been living in holy calm and hushed silence with only now
5702and then a slight clink of metal, as if in some distant part of mankind's
5703habitation some restless body had stumbled over a heap of old armour.
5704
5705
5706II.
5707
5708
5709We who have learned by now what a world-war is like may be excused for
5710considering the disturbances of that period as insignificant brawls, mere
5711hole-and-corner scuffles.  In the world, which memory depicts as so
5712wonderfully tranquil all over, it was the sea yet that was the safest
5713place.  And the Red Ensign, commercial, industrial, historic, pervaded
5714the sea!  Assertive only by its numbers, highly significant, and, under
5715its character of a trade--emblem, nationally expressive, it was symbolic
5716of old and new ideas, of conservatism and progress, of routine and
5717enterprise, of drudgery and adventure--and of a certain easy-going
5718optimism that would have appeared the Father of Sloth itself if it had
5719not been so stubbornly, so everlastingly active.
5720
5721The unimaginative, hard-working men, great and small, who served this
5722flag afloat and ashore, nursed dumbly a mysterious sense of its
5723greatness.  It sheltered magnificently their vagabond labours under the
5724sleepless eye of the sun.  It held up the Edifice.  But it crowned it
5725too.  This is not the extravagance of a mixed metaphor.  It is the sober
5726expression of a not very complex truth.  Within that double function the
5727national life that flag represented so well went on in safety, assured of
5728its daily crust of bread for which we all pray and without which we would
5729have to give up faith, hope and charity, the intellectual conquests of
5730our minds and the sanctified strength of our labouring arms.  I may
5731permit myself to speak of it in these terms because as a matter of fact
5732it was on that very symbol that I had founded my life and (as I have said
5733elsewhere in a moment of outspoken gratitude) had known for many years no
5734other roof above my head.
5735
5736In those days that symbol was not particularly regarded.  Superficially
5737and definitely it represented but one of the forms of national activity
5738rather remote from the close-knit organisations of other industries, a
5739kind of toil not immediately under the public eye.  It was of its Navy
5740that the nation, looking out of the windows of its world-wide Edifice,
5741was proudly aware.  And that was but fair.  The Navy is the armed man at
5742the gate.  An existence depending upon the sea must be guarded with a
5743jealous, sleepless vigilance, for the sea is but a fickle friend.
5744
5745It had provoked conflicts, encouraged ambitions, and had lured some
5746nations to destruction--as we know.  He--man or people--who, boasting of
5747long years of familiarity with the sea, neglects the strength and cunning
5748of his right hand is a fool.  The pride and trust of the nation in its
5749Navy so strangely mingled with moments of neglect, caused by a
5750particularly thick-headed idealism, is perfectly justified.  It is also
5751very proper: for it is good for a body of men conscious of a great
5752responsibility to feel themselves recognised, if only in that fallible,
5753imperfect and often irritating way in which recognition is sometimes
5754offered to the deserving.
5755
5756But the Merchant Service had never to suffer from that sort of
5757irritation.  No recognition was thrust on it offensively, and, truth to
5758say, it did not seem to concern itself unduly with the claims of its own
5759obscure merit.  It had no consciousness.  It had no words.  It had no
5760time.  To these busy men their work was but the ordinary labour of
5761earning a living; their duties in their ever-recurring round had, like
5762the sun itself, the commonness of daily things; their individual fidelity
5763was not so much united as merely co-ordinated by an aim that shone with
5764no spiritual lustre.  They were everyday men.  They were that, eminently.
5765When the great opportunity came to them to link arms in response to a
5766supreme call they received it with characteristic simplicity,
5767incorporating self-sacrifice into the texture of their common task, and,
5768as far as emotion went, framing the horror of mankind's catastrophic time
5769within the rigid rules of their professional conscience.  And who can say
5770that they could have done better than this?
5771
5772Such was their past both remote and near.  It has been stubbornly
5773consistent, and as this consistency was based upon the character of men
5774fashioned by a very old tradition, there is no doubt that it will endure.
5775Such changes as came into the sea life have been for the main part
5776mechanical and affecting only the material conditions of that inbred
5777consistency.  That men don't change is a profound truth.  They don't
5778change because it is not necessary for them to change even if they could
5779accomplish that miracle.  It is enough for them to be infinitely
5780adaptable--as the last four years have abundantly proved.
5781
5782
5783III.
5784
5785
5786Thus one may await the future without undue excitement and with unshaken
5787confidence.  Whether the hues of sunrise are angry or benign, gorgeous or
5788sinister, we shall always have the same sky over our heads.  Yet by a
5789kindly dispensation of Providence the human faculty of astonishment will
5790never lack food.  What could be more surprising for instance, than the
5791calm invitation to Great Britain to discard the force and protection of
5792its Navy?  It has been suggested, it has been proposed--I don't know
5793whether it has been pressed.  Probably not much.  For if the excursions
5794of audacious folly have no bounds that human eye can see, reason has the
5795habit of never straying very far away from its throne.
5796
5797It is not the first time in history that excited voices have been heard
5798urging the warrior still panting from the fray to fling his tried weapons
5799on the altar of peace, for they would be needed no more!  And such voices
5800have been, in undying hope or extreme weariness, listened to sometimes.
5801But not for long.  After all every sort of shouting is a transitory
5802thing.  It is the grim silence of facts that remains.
5803
5804The British Merchant Service has been challenged in its supremacy before.
5805It will be challenged again.  It may be even asked menacingly in the name
5806of some humanitarian doctrine or some empty ideal to step down
5807voluntarily from that place which it has managed to keep for so many
5808years.  But I imagine that it will take more than words of brotherly love
5809or brotherly anger (which, as is well known, is the worst kind of anger)
5810to drive British seamen, armed or unarmed, from the seas.  Firm in this
5811indestructible if not easily explained conviction, I can allow myself to
5812think placidly of that long, long future which I shall not see.
5813
5814My confidence rests on the hearts of men who do not change, though they
5815may forget many things for a time and even forget to be themselves in a
5816moment of false enthusiasm.  But of that I am not afraid.  It will not be
5817for long.  I know the men.  Through the kindness of the Admiralty (which,
5818let me confess here in a white sheet, I repaid by the basest ingratitude)
5819I was permitted during the war to renew my contact with the British
5820seamen of the merchant service.  It is to their generosity in recognising
5821me under the shore rust of twenty-five years as one of themselves that I
5822owe one of the deepest emotions of my life.  Never for a moment did I
5823feel among them like an idle, wandering ghost from a distant past.  They
5824talked to me seriously, openly, and with professional precision, of
5825facts, of events, of implements, I had never heard of in my time; ama
5826hands I grasped were like the hands of the generation which had trained
5827my youth and is now no more.  I recognised the character of their
5828glances, the accent of their voices.  Their moving tales of modern
5829instances were presented to me with that peculiar turn of mind flavoured
5830by the inherited humour and sagacity of the sea.  I don't know what the
5831seaman of the future will be like.  He may have to live all his days with
5832a telephone tied up to his head and bristle all over with scientific
5833antennae like a figure in a fantastic tale.  But he will always be the
5834man revealed to us lately, immutable in his slight variations like the
5835closed path of this planet of ours on which he must find his exact
5836position once, at the very least, in every twenty-four hours.
5837
5838The greatest desideratum of a sailor's life is to be "certain of his
5839position."  It is a source of great worry at times, but I don't think
5840that it need be so at this time.  Yet even the best position has its
5841dangers on account of the fickleness of the elements.  But I think that,
5842left untrammelled to the individual effort of its creators and to the
5843collective spirit of its servants, the British Merchant Service will
5844manage to maintain its position on this restless and watery globe.
5845
5846
5847
5848FLIGHT--1917
5849
5850
5851To begin at the end, I will say that the "landing" surprised me by a
5852slight and very characteristically "dead" sort of shock.
5853
5854I may fairly call myself an amphibious creature.  A good half of my
5855active existence has been passed in familiar contact with salt water, and
5856I was aware, theoretically, that water is not an elastic body: but it was
5857only then that I acquired the absolute conviction of the fact. ben
5858remember distinctly the thought flashing through my head: "By Jove! it
5859isn't elastic!"  Such is the illuminating force of a particular
5860experience.
5861
5862This landing (on the water of the North Sea) was effected in a Short
5863biplane after one hour and twenty minutes in the air.  I reckon every
5864minute like a miser counting his hoard, for, if what I've got is mine, I
5865am not likely now to increase the tale.  That feeling is the effect of
5866age.  It strikes me as I write that, when next time I leave the surface
5867of this globe, it won't be to soar bodily above it in the air.  Quite the
5868contrary. And I am not thinking of a submarine either. . . .
5869
5870But let us drop this dismal strain and go back logically to the
5871beginning.  I must confess that I started on that flight in a state--I
5872won't say of fury, but of a most intense irritation.  I don't remember
5873ever feeling so annoyed in my life.
5874
5875It came about in this way.  Two or three days before, I had been invited
5876to lunch at an R.N.A.S. station, and was made to feel very much at home
5877by the nicest lot of quietly interesting young men it had ever been my
5878good fortune to meet.  Then I was taken into the sheds.  I walked
5879respectfully round and round a lot of machines of all kinds, and the more
5880I looked at them the more I felt somehow that for all the effect they
5881produced on me they might have been so many land-vehicles of an eccentric
5882design.  So I said to Commander O., who very kindly was conducting me:
5883"This is all very fine, but to realise what one is looking at, one must
5884have been up."
5885
5886He said at once: "I'll give you a flight to-morrow if you like."
5887
5888I postulated that it should be none of those "ten minutes in the air"
5889affairs.  I wanted a real business flight.  Commander O. assured me that
5890I would get "awfully bored," but I declared that I was willing to take
5891that risk.  "Very well," he said.  "Eleven o'clock to-morrow.  Don't be
5892late."
5893
5894I am sorry to say I was about two minutes late, which was enough,
5895however, for Commander O. to greet me with a shout from a great distance:
5896"Oh!  You are coming, then!"
5897
5898"Of course I am coming," I yelled indignantly.
5899
5900He hurried up to me.  "All right.  There's your machine, and here's your
5901pilot.  Come along."
5902
5903A lot of officers closed round me, rushed me into a hut: two of them
5904began to button me into the coat, two more were ramming a cap on my head,
5905others stood around with goggles, with binoculars. . . I couldn't
5906understand the necessity of such haste.  We weren't going to chase Fritz.
5907There was no sign of Fritz anywhere in the blue.  Those dear boys did not
5908seem to notice my age--fifty-eight, if a day--nor my infirmities--a gouty
5909subject for years.  This disregard was very flattering, and I tried to
5910live up to it, but the pace seemed to me terrific.  They galloped me
5911across a vast expanse of open ground to the water's edge.
5912
5913The machine on its carriage seemed as big as a cottage, and much more
5914heybetli. My young pilot went up like a bird. There was an idle, able-
5915bodied ladder loafing against a shed within fifteen feet of me, but as
5916nobody seemed to notice it, I recommended myself mentally to Heaven and
5917started climbing after the pilot.  The close view of the real fragility
5918of that rigid structure startled me considerably, while Commander O.
5919discomposed me still more by shouting repeatedly: "Don't put your foot
5920there!"  I didn't know where to put my foot.  There was a slight crack; I
5921heard some swear-words below me, and then with a supreme effort I rolled
5922in and dropped into a basket-chair, absolutely winded.  A small crowd of
5923mechanics and officers were looking up at me from the ground, and while I
5924gasped visibly I thought to myself that they would be sure to put it down
5925to sheer nervousness.  But I hadn't breath enough in my body to stick my
5926head out and shout down to them:
5927
5928"You know, it isn't that at all!"
5929
5930Generally I try not to think of my age and infirmities.  They are not a
5931cheerful subject.  But I was never so angry and disgusted with them as
5932during that minute or so before the machine took the water.  As to my
5933feelings in the air, those who will read these lines will know their own,
5934which are so much nearer the mind and the heart than any writings of an
5935unprofessional can be.  At first all my faculties were absorbed and as if
5936neutralised by the sheer novelty of the situation.  The first to emerge
5937was the sense of security so much more perfect than in any small boat
5938I've ever been in; the, as it were, material, stillness, and immobility
5939(though it was a bumpy day).  I very soon ceased to hear the roar of the
5940wind and engines--unless, indeed, some cylinders missed, when I became
5941acutely aware of that.  Within the rigid spread of the powerful planes,
5942so strangely motionless I had sometimes the illusion of sitting as if by
5943enchantment in a block of suspended marble.  Even while looking over at
5944the aeroplane's shadow running prettily over land and sea, I had the
5945impression of extreme slowness.  I imagine that had she suddenly nose-
5946dived out of control, I would have gone to the final smash without a
5947single additional heartbeat. I am sure I would not have known. Bu
5948doubtless otherwise with the man in control.
5949
5950But there was no dive, and I returned to earth (after an hour and twenty
5951minutes) without having felt "bored" for a single second.  I descended
5952(by the ladder) thinking that I would never go flying again.  No, never
5953any more--lest its mysterious fascination, whose invisible wing had
5954brushed my heart up there, should change to unavailing regret in a man
5955too old for its glory.
5956
5957
5958
5959SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE LOSS OF THE TITANIC--1912
5960
5961
5962It is with a certain bitterness that one must admit to oneself that the
5963late _S.S. Titanic_ had a "good press."  It is perhaps because I have no
5964great practice of daily newspapers (I have never seen so many of them
5965together lying about my room) that the white spaces and the big lettering
5966of the headlines have an incongruously festive air to my eyes, a
5967disagreeable effect of a feverish exploitation of a sensational God-send.
5968And if ever a loss at sea fell under the definition, in the terms of a
5969bill of lading, of Act of God, this one does, in its magnitude,
5970suddenness and severity; and in the chastening influence it should have
5971on the self-confidence of mankind.
5972
5973I say this with all the seriousness the occasion demands, though I have
5974neither the competence nor the wish to take a theological view of this
5975great misfortune, sending so many souls to their last account.  It is but
5976a natural _reflection_.  Another one flowing also from the phraseology of
5977bills of lading (a bill of lading is a shipping document limiting in
5978certain of its clauses the liability of the carrier) is that the "King's
5979Enemies" of a more or less overt sort are not altogether sorry that this
5980fatal mishap should strike the prestige of the greatest Merchant Service
5981of the world.  I believe that not a thousand miles from these shores
5982certain public prints have betrayed in gothic letters their
5983satisfaction--to speak plainly--by rather ill-natured comments.
5984
5985In what light one is to look at the action of the American Senate is more
5986difficult to say.  From a certain point of view the sight of the august
5987senators of a great Power rushing to New York and beginning to bully and
5988badger the luckless "Yamsi"--on the very quay-side so to speak--seems to
5989furnish the Shakespearian touch of the comic to the real tragedy of the
5990fatuous drowning of all these people who to the last moment put their
5991trust in mere bigness, in the reckless affirmations of commercial men and
5992mere technicians and in the irresponsible paragraphs of the newspapers
5993booming these ships!  Yes, a grim touch of comedy.  One asks oneself what
5994these men are after, with this very provincial display of authority. ben
5995beg my friends in the United States pardon for calling these zealous
5996senators men.  I don't wish to be disrespectful.  They may be of the
5997stature of demi-gods for all I know, but at that great distance from the
5998shores of effete Europe and in the presence of so many guileless dead,
5999their size seems diminished from this side.  What are they after?  What
6000is there for them to find out?  We know what had happened.  The ship
6001scraped her side against a piece of ice, and sank after floating for two
6002hours and a half, taking a lot of people down with her.  What more can
6003they find out from the unfair badgering of the unhappy "Yamsi," or the
6004ruffianly abuse of the same.
6005
6006"Yamsi," I should explain, is a mere code address, and I use it here
6007symbolically.  I have seen commerce pretty close.  I know what it is
6008worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one
6009must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings.  Is it indignation at
6010the loss of so many lives which is at work here?  Well, the American
6011railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say.  Then
6012why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own
6013railroads, of which one can't say whether they are mere means of
6014transportation or a sort of gambling game for the use of American
6015plutocrats.  Is it only an ardent and, upon the whole, praiseworthy
6016desire for information?  But the reports of the inquiry tell us that the
6017august senators, though raising a lot of questions testifying to the
6018complete innocence and even blankness of their minds, are unable to
6019understand what the second officer is saying to them.  We are so informed
6020by the press from the other side.  Even such a simple expression as that
6021one of the look-out men was stationed in the "eyes of the ship" was too
6022much for the senators of the land of graphic expression.  What it must
6023have been in the more recondite matters I won't even try to think,
6024because I have no mind for smiles just now.  They were greatly exercised
6025about the sound of explosions heard when half the ship was under water
6026already.  Was there one?  Were there two?  They seemed to be smelling a
6027rat there!  Has not some charitable soul told them (what even schoolboys
6028who read sea stories know) that when a ship sinks from a leak like this,
6029a deck or two is always blown up; and that when a steamship goes down by
6030the head, the boilers may, and often do break adrift with a sound which
6031resembles the sound of an explosion?  And they may, indeed, explode, for
6032all I know.  In the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there
6033was such a sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate.  She
6034was not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was
6035impressive enough.  I shall never forget the muffled, mysterious
6036detonation, the sudden agitation of the sea round the slowly raised
6037stern, and to this day I have in my eye the propeller, seen perfectly
6038still in its frame against a clear evening sky.
6039
6040But perhaps the second officer has explained to them by this time this
6041and a few other little facts.  Though why an officer of the British
6042merchant service should answer the questions of any king, emperor,
6043autocrat, or senator of any foreign power (as to an event in which a
6044British ship alone was concerned, and which did not even take place in
6045the territorial waters of that power) passes my understanding.  The only
6046authority he is bound to answer is the Board of Trade.  But with what
6047face the Board of Trade, which, having made the regulations for 10,000
6048ton ships, put its dear old bald head under its wing for ten years, took
6049it out only to shelve an important report, and with a dreary murmur,
6050"Unsinkable," put it back again, in the hope of not being disturbed for
6051another ten years, with what face it will be putting questions to that
6052man who has done his duty, as to the facts of this disaster and as to his
6053professional conduct in it--well, I don't know!  I have the greatest
6054respect for our established authorities.  I am a disciplined man, and I
6055have a natural indulgence for the weaknesses of human institutions; but I
6056will own that at times I have regretted their--how shall I say it?--their
6057imponderability. A Board of Trade--what is it? A Board of . . . ben
6058believe the Speaker of the Irish Parliament is one of the members of it.
6059A ghost.  Less than that; as yet a mere memory.  An office with adequate
6060and no doubt comfortable furniture and a lot of perfectly irresponsible
6061gentlemen who exist packed in its equable atmosphere softly, as if in a
6062lot of cotton-wool, and with no care in the world; for there can be no
6063care without personal responsibility--such, for instance, as the seamen
6064have--those seamen from whose mouths this irresponsible institution can
6065take away the bread--as a disciplinary measure.  Yes--it's all that.  And
6066what more? The name of a politician--a party man! Less than nothing; bir
6067mere void without as much as a shadow of responsibility cast into it from
6068that light in which move the masses of men who work, who deal in things
6069and face the realities--not the words--of this life.
6070
6071Years ago I remember overhearing two genuine shellbacks of the old type
6072commenting on a ship's officer, who, if not exactly incompetent, did not
6073commend himself to their severe judgment of accomplished sailor-men.  Said
6074one, resuming and concluding the discussion in a funnily judicial tone:
6075
6076"The Board of Trade must have been drunk when they gave him his
6077certificate."
6078
6079I confess that this notion of the Board of Trade as an entity having a
6080brain which could be overcome by the fumes of strong liquor charmed me
6081exceedingly.  For then it would have been unlike the limited companies of
6082which some exasperated wit has once said that they had no souls to be
6083saved and no bodies to be kicked, and thus were free in this world and
6084the next from all the effective sanctions of conscientious conduct.  But,
6085unfortunately, the picturesque pronouncement overheard by me was only a
6086characteristic sally of an annoyed sailor.  The Board of Trade is
6087composed of bloodless departments.  It has no limbs and no physiognomy,
6088or else at the forthcoming inquiry it might have paid to the victims of
6089the _Titanic_ disaster the small tribute of a blush.  I ask myself
6090whether the Marine Department of the Board of Trade did really believe,
6091when they decided to shelve the report on equipment for a time, that a
6092ship of 45,000 tons, that _any_ ship, could be made practically
6093indestructible by means of water-tight bulkheads?  It seems incredible to
6094anybody who had ever reflected upon the properties of material, such as
6095wood or steel.  You can't, let builders say what they like, make a ship
6096of such dimensions as strong proportionately as a much smaller one.
6097shocks our old whalers had to stand amongst the heavy floes in Baffin's
6098Bay were perfectly staggering, notwithstanding the most skilful handling,
6099and yet they lasted for years.  The _Titanic_, if one may believe the
6100last reports, has only scraped against a piece of ice which, I suspect,
6101was not an enormously bulky and comparatively easily seen berg, but the
6102low edge of a floe--and sank.  Leisurely enough, God knows--and here the
6103advantage of bulkheads comes in--for time is a great friend, a good
6104helper--though in this lamentable case these bulkheads served only to
6105prolong the agony of the passengers who could not be saved.  But she
6106sank, causing, apart from the sorrow and the pity of the loss of so many
6107lives, a sort of surprised consternation that such a thing should have
6108happened at all.  Why?  You build a 45,000 tons hotel of thin steel
6109plates to secure the patronage of, say, a couple of thousand rich people
6110(for if it had been for the emigrant trade alone, there would have been
6111no such exaggeration of mere size), you decorate it in the style of the
6112Pharaohs or in the Louis Quinze style--I don't know which--and to please
6113the aforesaid fatuous handful of individuals, who have more money than
6114they know what to do with, and to the applause of two continents, you
6115launch that mass with two thousand people on board at twenty-one knots
6116across the sea--a perfect exhibition of the modern blind trust in mere
6117material and appliances. And then this happens. General uproar.
6118blind trust in material and appliances has received a terrible shock. ben
6119will say nothing of the credulity which accepts any statement which
6120specialists, technicians and office-people are pleased to make, whether
6121for purposes of gain or glory.  You stand there astonished and hurt in
6122your profoundest sensibilities.  But what else under the circumstances
6123could you expect?
6124
6125For my part I could much sooner believe in an unsinkable ship of 3,000
6126tons than in one of 40,000 tons.  It is one of those things that stand to
6127reason.  You can't increase the thickness of scantling and plates
6128indefinitely.  And the mere weight of this bigness is an added
6129disadvantage.  In reading the reports, the first reflection which occurs
6130to one is that, if that luckless ship had been a couple of hundred feet
6131shorter, she would have probably gone clear of the danger.  But then,
6132perhaps, she could not have had a swimming bath and a French cafe.  That,
6133of course, is a serious consideration.  I am well aware that those
6134responsible for her short and fatal existence ask us in desolate accents
6135to believe that if she had hit end on she would have survived.  Which, by
6136a sort of coy implication, seems to mean that it was all the fault of the
6137officer of the watch (he is dead now) for trying to avoid the obstacle.
6138We shall have presently, in deference to commercial and industrial
6139interests, a new kind of seamanship.  A very new and "progressive" kind.
6140If you see anything in the way, by no means try to avoid it; smash at it
6141full tilt.  And then--and then only you shall see the triumph of
6142material, of clever contrivances, of the whole box of engineering tricks
6143in fact, and cover with glory a commercial concern of the most
6144unmitigated sort, a great Trust, and a great ship-building yard, justly
6145famed for the super-excellence of its material and workmanship.
6146Unsinkable!  See?  I told you she was unsinkable, if only handled in
6147accordance with the new seamanship.  Everything's in that.  And,
6148doubtless, the Board of Trade, if properly approached, would consent to
6149give the needed instructions to its examiners of Masters and Mates.
6150Behold the examination-room of the future.  Enter to the grizzled
6151examiner a young man of modest aspect: "Are you well up in modern
6152seamanship?"  "I hope so, sir."  "H'm, let's see.  You are at night on
6153the bridge in charge of a 150,000 tons ship, with a motor track, organ-
6154loft, etc., etc., with a full cargo of passengers, a full crew of 1,500
6155cafe waiters, two sailors and a boy, three collapsible boats as per Board
6156of Trade regulations, and going at your three-quarter speed of, say,
6157about forty knots.  You perceive suddenly right ahead, and close to,
6158something that looks like a large ice-floe.  What would you do?"  "Put
6159the helm amidships."  "Very well.  Why?"  "In order to hit end on."  "On
6160what grounds should you endeavour to hit end on?"  "Because we are taught
6161by our builders and masters that the heavier the smash, the smaller the
6162damage, and because the requirements of material should be attended to."
6163
6164And so on and so on.  The new seamanship: when in doubt try to ram
6165fairly--whatever's before you.  Very simple.  If only the _Titanic_ had
6166rammed that piece of ice (which was not a monstrous berg) fairly, every
6167puffing paragraph would have been vindicated in the eyes of the credulous
6168public which pays.  But would it have been?  Well, I doubt it.  I am well
6169aware that in the eighties the steamship Arizona, one of the "greyhounds
6170of the ocean" in the jargon of that day, did run bows on against a very
6171unmistakable iceberg, and managed to get into port on her collision
6172bulkhead.  But the _Arizona_ was not, if I remember rightly, 5,000 tons
6173register, let alone 45,000, and she was not going at twenty knots per
6174hour.  I can't be perfectly certain at this distance of time, but her sea-
6175speed could not have been more than fourteen at the outside.  Both these
6176facts made for safety.  And, even if she had been engined to go twenty
6177knots, there would not have been behind that speed the enormous mass, so
6178difficult to check in its impetus, the terrific weight of which is bound
6179to do damage to itself or others at the slightest contact.
6180
6181I assure you it is not for the vain pleasure of talking about my own poor
6182experiences, but only to illustrate my point, that I will relate here a
6183very unsensational little incident I witnessed now rather more than
6184twenty years ago in Sydney, N.S.W.  Ships were beginning then to grow
6185bigger year after year, though, of course, the present dimensions were
6186not even dreamt of.  I was standing on the Circular Quay with a Sydney
6187pilot watching a big mail steamship of one of our best-known companies
6188being brought alongside.  We admired her lines, her noble appearance, and
6189were impressed by her size as well, though her length, I imagine, was
6190hardly half that of the _Titanic_.
6191
6192She came into the Cove (as that part of the harbour is called), of course
6193very slowly, and at some hundred feet or so short of the quay she lost
6194her way.  That quay was then a wooden one, a fine structure of mighty
6195piles and stringers bearing a roadway--a thing of great strength.
6196ship, as I have said before, stopped moving when some hundred feet from
6197it.  Then her engines were rung on slow ahead, and immediately rung off
6198again.  The propeller made just about five turns, I should say.  She
6199began to move, stealing on, so to speak, without a ripple; gelecek
6200alongside with the utmost gentleness.  I went on looking her over, very
6201much interested, but the man with me, the pilot, muttered under his
6202breath: "Too much, too much."  His exercised judgment had warned him of
6203what I did not even suspect.  But I believe that neither of us was
6204exactly prepared for what happened.  There was a faint concussion of the
6205ground under our feet, a groaning of piles, a snapping of great iron
6206bolts, and with a sound of ripping and splintering, as when a tree is
6207blown down by the wind, a great strong piece of wood, a baulk of squared
6208timber, was displaced several feet as if by enchantment.  I looked at my
6209companion in amazement.  "I could not have believed it," I declared.
6210"No," he said.  "You would not have thought she would have cracked an
6211egg--eh?"
6212
6213I certainly wouldn't have thought that.  He shook his head, and added:
6214"Ah!  These great, big things, they want some handling."
6215
6216Some months afterwards I was back in Sydney.  The same pilot brought me
6217in from sea.  And I found the same steamship, or else another as like her
6218as two peas, lying at anchor not far from us.  The pilot told me she had
6219arrived the day before, and that he was to take her alongside to-morrow.
6220I reminded him jocularly of the damage to the quay.  "Oh!" he said, "we
6221are not allowed now to bring them in under their own steam.  We are using
6222tugs."
6223
6224A very wise regulation.  And this is my point--that size is to a certain
6225extent an element of weakness.  The bigger the ship, the more delicately
6226she must be handled.  Here is a contact which, in the pilot's own words,
6227you wouldn't think could have cracked an egg; with the astonishing result
6228of something like eighty feet of good strong wooden quay shaken loose,
6229iron bolts snapped, a baulk of stout timber splintered.  Now, suppose
6230that quay had been of granite (as surely it is now)--or, instead of the
6231quay, if there had been, say, a North Atlantic fog there, with a full-
6232grown iceberg in it awaiting the gentle contact of a ship groping its way
6233along blindfold?  Something would have been hurt, but it would not have
6234been the iceberg.
6235
6236Apparently, there is a point in development when it ceases to be a true
6237progress--in trade, in games, in the marvellous handiwork of men, and
6238even in their demands and desires and aspirations of the moral and mental
6239kind.  There is a point when progress, to remain a real advance, must
6240change slightly the direction of its line.  But this is a wide question.
6241What I wanted to point out here is--that the old _Arizona_, the marvel of
6242her day, was proportionately stronger, handier, better equipped, than
6243this triumph of modern naval architecture, the loss of which, in common
6244parlance, will remain the sensation of this year.  The clatter of the
6245presses has been worthy of the tonnage, of the preliminary paeans of
6246triumph round that vanished hull, of the reckless statements, and
6247elaborate descriptions of its ornate splendour.  A great babble of news
6248(and what sort of news too, good heavens!) and eager comment has arisen
6249around this catastrophe, though it seems to me that a less strident note
6250would have been more becoming in the presence of so many victims left
6251struggling on the sea, of lives miserably thrown away for nothing, or
6252worse than nothing: for false standards of achievement, to satisfy a
6253vulgar demand of a few moneyed people for a banal hotel luxury--the only
6254one they can understand--and because the big ship pays, in one way or
6255another: in money or in advertising value.
6256
6257It is in more ways than one a very ugly business, and a mere scrape along
6258the ship's side, so slight that, if reports are to be believed, it did
6259not interrupt a card party in the gorgeously fitted (but in chaste style)
6260smoking-room--or was it in the delightful French cafe?--is enough to
6261bring on the exposure.  All the people on board existed under a sense of
6262false security.  How false, it has been sufficiently demonstrated.  And
6263the fact which seems undoubted, that some of them actually were reluctant
6264to enter the boats when told to do so, shows the strength of that
6265falsehood.  Incidentally, it shows also the sort of discipline on board
6266these ships, the sort of hold kept on the passengers in the face of the
6267unforgiving sea.  These people seemed to imagine it an optional matter:
6268whereas the order to leave the ship should be an order of the sternest
6269character, to be obeyed unquestioningly and promptly by every one on
6270board, with men to enforce it at once, and to carry it out methodically
6271and swiftly.  And it is no use to say it cannot be done, for it can.  It
6272has been done.  The only requisite is manageableness of the ship herself
6273and of the numbers she carries on board.  That is the great thing which
6274makes for safety.  A commander should be able to hold his ship and
6275everything on board of her in the hollow of his hand, as it were. Fakat
6276with the modern foolish trust in material, and with those floating
6277hotels, this has become impossible.  A man may do his best, but he cannot
6278succeed in a task which from greed, or more likely from sheer stupidity,
6279has been made too great for anybody's strength.
6280
6281The readers of _The English Review_, who cast a friendly eye nearly six
6282years ago on my Reminiscences, and know how much the merchant service,
6283ships and men, has been to me, will understand my indignation that those
6284men of whom (speaking in no sentimental phrase, but in the very truth of
6285feeling) I can't even now think otherwise than as brothers, have been put
6286by their commercial employers in the impossibility to perform efficiently
6287their plain duty; and this from motives which I shall not enumerate here,
6288but whose intrinsic unworthiness is plainly revealed by the greatness,
6289the miserable greatness, of that disaster.  Some of them have perished.
6290To die for commerce is hard enough, but to go under that sea we have been
6291trained to combat, with a sense of failure in the supreme duty of one's
6292calling is indeed a bitter fate.  Thus they are gone, and the
6293responsibility remains with the living who will have no difficulty in
6294replacing them by others, just as good, at the same wages.  It was their
6295bitter fate.  But I, who can look at some arduous years when their duty
6296was my duty too, and their feelings were my feelings, can remember some
6297of us who once upon a time were more fortunate.
6298
6299It is of them that I would talk a little, for my own comfort partly, and
6300also because I am sticking all the time to my subject to illustrate my
6301point, the point of manageableness which I have raised just now.  Since
6302the memory of the lucky _Arizona_ has been evoked by others than myself,
6303and made use of by me for my own purpose, let me call up the ghost of
6304another ship of that distant day whose less lucky destiny inculcates
6305another lesson making for my argument.  The _Douro_, a ship belonging to
6306the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, was rather less than one-tenth the
6307measurement of the _Titanic_.  Yet, strange as it may appear to the
6308ineffable hotel exquisites who form the bulk of the first-class Cross-
6309Atlantic Passengers, people of position and wealth and refinement did not
6310consider it an intolerable hardship to travel in her, even all the way
6311from South America; this being the service she was engaged upon.  Of her
6312speed I know nothing, but it must have been the average of the period,
6313and the decorations of her saloons were, I dare say, quite up to the
6314mark; but I doubt if her birth had been boastfully paragraphed all round
6315the Press, because that was not the fashion of the time.  She was not a
6316mass of material gorgeously furnished and upholstered.  She was a ship.
6317And she was not, in the apt words of an article by Commander C.
6318Crutchley, R.N.R., which I have just read, "run by a sort of hotel
6319syndicate composed of the Chief Engineer, the Purser, and the Captain,"
6320as these monstrous Atlantic ferries are.  She was really commanded,
6321manned, and equipped as a ship meant to keep the sea: a ship first and
6322last in the fullest meaning of the term, as the fact I am going to relate
6323will show.
6324
6325She was off the Spanish coast, homeward bound, and fairly full, just like
6326the _Titanic_; and further, the proportion of her crew to her passengers,
6327I remember quite well, was very much the same.  The exact number of souls
6328on board I have forgotten.  It might have been nearly three hundred,
6329certainly not more.  The night was moonlit, but hazy, the weather fine
6330with a heavy swell running from the westward, which means that she must
6331have been rolling a great deal, and in that respect the conditions for
6332her were worse than in the case of the _Titanic_.  Some time either just
6333before or just after midnight, to the best of my recollection, she was
6334run into amidships and at right angles by a large steamer which after the
6335blow backed out, and, herself apparently damaged, remained motionless at
6336some distance.
6337
6338My recollection is that the _Douro_ remained afloat after the collision
6339for fifteen minutes or thereabouts.  It might have been twenty, but
6340certainly something under the half-hour.  In that time the boats were
6341lowered, all the passengers put into them, and the lot shoved off.  There
6342was no time to do anything more.  All the crew of the _Douro_ went down
6343with her, literally without a murmur.  When she went she plunged bodily
6344down like a stone.  The only members of the ship's company who survived
6345were the third officer, who was from the first ordered to take charge of
6346the boats, and the seamen told off to man them, two in each.  Nobody else
6347was picked up.  A quartermaster, one of the saved in the way of duty,
6348with whom I talked a month or so afterwards, told me that they pulled up
6349to the spot, but could neither see a head nor hear the faintest cry.
6350
6351But I have forgotten.  A passenger was drowned.  She was a lady's maid
6352who, frenzied with terror, refused to leave the ship.  One of the boats
6353waited near by till the chief officer, finding himself absolutely unable
6354to tear the girl away from the rail to which she dung with a frantic
6355grasp, ordered the boat away out of danger.  My quartermaster told me
6356that he spoke over to them in his ordinary voice, and this was the last
6357sound heard before the ship sank.
6358
6359The rest is silence.  I daresay there was the usual official inquiry, but
6360who cared for it?  That sort of thing speaks for itself with no uncertain
6361voice; though the papers, I remember, gave the event no space to speak
6362of: no large headlines--no headlines at all.  You see it was not the
6363fashion at the time.  A seaman-like piece of work, of which one cherishes
6364the old memory at this juncture more than ever before.  She was a ship
6365commanded, manned, equipped--not a sort of marine Ritz, proclaimed
6366unsinkable and sent adrift with its casual population upon the sea,
6367without enough boats, without enough seamen (but with a Parisian cafe and
6368four hundred of poor devils of waiters) to meet dangers which, let the
6369engineers say what they like, lurk always amongst the waves; sent with a
6370blind trust in mere material, light-heartedly, to a most miserable, most
6371fatuous disaster.
6372
6373And there are, too, many ugly developments about this tragedy.  The rush
6374of the senatorial inquiry before the poor wretches escaped from the jaws
6375of death had time to draw breath, the vituperative abuse of a man no more
6376guilty than others in this matter, and the suspicion of this aimless fuss
6377being a political move to get home on the M.T. Company, into which, in
6378common parlance, the United States Government has got its knife, I don't
6379pretend to understand why, though with the rest of the world I am aware
6380of the fact.  Perhaps there may be an excellent and worthy reason for it;
6381but I venture to suggest that to take advantage of so many pitiful
6382corpses, is not pretty.  And the exploiting of the mere sensation on the
6383other side is not pretty in its wealth of heartless inventions.  Neither
6384is the welter of Marconi lies which has not been sent vibrating without
6385some reason, for which it would be nauseous to inquire too closely.  And
6386the calumnious, baseless, gratuitous, circumstantial lie charging poor
6387Captain Smith with desertion of his post by means of suicide is the
6388vilest and most ugly thing of all in this outburst of journalistic
6389enterprise, without feeling, without honour, without decency.
6390
6391But all this has its moral.  And that other sinking which I have related
6392here and to the memory of which a seaman turns with relief and
6393thankfulness has its moral too.  Yes, material may fail, and men, too,
6394may fail sometimes; but more often men, when they are given the chance,
6395will prove themselves truer than steel, that wonderful thin steel from
6396which the sides and the bulkheads of our modern sea-leviathans are made.
6397
6398
6399
6400CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE ADMIRABLE INQUIRY INTO THE LOSS OF THE
6401TITANIC--1912
6402
6403
6404I have been taken to task by a friend of mine on the "other side" for my
6405strictures on Senator Smith's investigation into the loss of the
6406_Titanic_, in the number of _The English Review_ for May, 1912.  I will
6407admit that the motives of the investigation may have been excellent, and
6408probably were; my criticism bore mainly on matters of form and also on
6409the point of efficiency. In that respect I have nothing to retract.
6410Senators of the Commission had absolutely no knowledge and no practice to
6411guide them in the conduct of such an investigation; and this fact gave an
6412air of unreality to their zealous exertions.  I think that even in the
6413United States there is some regret that this zeal of theirs was not
6414tempered by a large dose of wisdom.  It is fitting that people who rush
6415with such ardour to the work of putting questions to men yet gasping from
6416a narrow escape should have, I wouldn't say a tincture of technical
6417information, but enough knowledge of the subject to direct the trend of
6418their inquiry.  The newspapers of two continents have noted the remarks
6419of the President of the Senatorial Commission with comments which I will
6420not reproduce here, having a scant respect for the "organs of public
6421opinion," as they fondly believe themselves to be.  The absolute value of
6422their remarks was about as great as the value of the investigation they
6423either mocked at or extolled.  To the United States Senate I did not
6424intend to be disrespectful.  I have for that body, of which one hears
6425mostly in connection with tariffs, as much reverence as the best of
6426Americans.  To manifest more or less would be an impertinence in a
6427stranger.  I have expressed myself with less reserve on our Board of
6428Trade.  That was done under the influence of warm feelings.  We were all
6429feeling warmly on the matter at that time.  But, at any rate, our Board
6430of Trade Inquiry, conducted by an experienced President, discovered a
6431very interesting fact on the very second day of its sitting: the fact
6432that the water-tight doors in the bulkheads of that wonder of naval
6433architecture could be opened down below by any irresponsible person. Böylece
6434the famous closing apparatus on the bridge, paraded as a device of
6435greater safety, with its attachments of warning bells, coloured lights,
6436and all these pretty-pretties, was, in the case of this ship, little
6437better than a technical farce.
6438
6439It is amusing, if anything connected with this stupid catastrophe can be
6440amusing, to see the secretly crestfallen attitude of technicians.  They
6441are the high priests of the modern cult of perfected material and of
6442mechanical appliances, and would fain forbid the profane from inquiring
6443into its mysteries.  We are the masters of progress, they say, and you
6444should remain respectfully silent.  And they take refuge behind their
6445mathematics.  I have the greatest regard for mathematics as an exercise
6446of mind.  It is the only manner of thinking which approaches the Divine.
6447But mere calculations, of which these men make so much, when unassisted
6448by imagination and when they have gained mastery over common sense, are
6449the most deceptive exercises of intellect.  Two and two are four, and two
6450are six. That is immutable; you may trust your soul to that; ama sen
6451must be certain first of your quantities.  I know how the strength of
6452materials can be calculated away, and also the evidence of one's senses.
6453For it is by some sort of calculation involving weights and levels that
6454the technicians responsible for the _Titanic_ persuaded themselves that a
6455ship _not divided_ by water-tight compartments could be "unsinkable."
6456Because, you know, she was not divided.  You and I, and our little boys,
6457when we want to divide, say, a box, take care to procure a piece of wood
6458which will reach from the bottom to the lid.  We know that if it does not
6459reach all the way up, the box will not be divided into two compartments.
6460It will be only partly divided.  The _Titanic_ was only partly divided.
6461She was just sufficiently divided to drown some poor devils like rats in
6462a trap.  It is probable that they would have perished in any case, but it
6463is a particularly horrible fate to die boxed up like this.  Yes, she was
6464sufficiently divided for that, but not sufficiently divided to prevent
6465the water flowing over.
6466
6467Therefore to a plain man who knows something of mathematics but is not
6468bemused by calculations, she was, from the point of view of
6469"unsinkability," not divided at all.  What would you say of people who
6470would boast of a fireproof building, an hotel, for instance, saying, "Oh,
6471we have it divided by fireproof bulkheads which would localise any
6472outbreak," and if you were to discover on closer inspection that these
6473bulkheads closed no more than two-thirds of the openings they were meant
6474to close, leaving above an open space through which draught, smoke, and
6475fire could rush from one end of the building to the other?  And,
6476furthermore, that those partitions, being too high to climb over, the
6477people confined in each menaced compartment had to stay there and become
6478asphyxiated or roasted, because no exits to the outside, say to the roof,
6479had been provided!  What would you think of the intelligence or candour
6480of these advertising people?  What would you think of them?  And yet,
6481apart from the obvious difference in the action of fire and water, the
6482cases are essentially the same.
6483
6484It would strike you and me and our little boys (who are not engineers
6485yet) that to approach--I won't say attain--somewhere near absolute
6486safety, the divisions to keep out water should extend from the bottom
6487right up to the uppermost deck of _the hull_.  I repeat, the _hull_,
6488because there are above the hull the decks of the superstructures of
6489which we need not take account.  And further, as a provision of the
6490commonest humanity, that each of these compartments should have a
6491perfectly independent and free access to that uppermost deck: that is,
6492into the open.  Nothing less will do.  Division by bulkheads that really
6493divide, and free access to the deck from every water-tight compartment.
6494Then the responsible man in the moment of danger and in the exercise of
6495his judgment could close all the doors of these water-tight bulkheads by
6496whatever clever contrivance has been invented for the purpose, without a
6497qualm at the awful thought that he may be shutting up some of his fellow
6498creatures in a death-trap; that he may be sacrificing the lives of men
6499who, down there, are sticking to the posts of duty as the engine-room
6500staffs of the Merchant Service have never failed to do.  I know very well
6501that the engineers of a ship in a moment of emergency are not quaking for
6502their lives, but, as far as I have known them, attend calmly to their
6503duty.  We all must die; but, hang it all, a man ought to be given a
6504chance, if not for his life, then at least to die decently.  It's bad
6505enough to have to stick down there when something disastrous is going on
6506and any moment may be your last; but to be drowned shut up under deck is
6507too bad.  Some men of the _Titanic_ died like that, it is to be feared.
6508Compartmented, so to speak.  Just think what it means!  Nothing can
6509approach the horror of that fate except being buried alive in a cave, or
6510in a mine, or in your family vault.
6511
6512So, once more: continuous bulkheads--a clear way of escape to the deck
6513out of each water-tight compartment.  Nothing less.  And if specialists,
6514the precious specialists of the sort that builds "unsinkable ships," tell
6515you that it cannot be done, don't you believe them.  It can be done, and
6516they are quite clever enough to do it too.  The objections they will
6517raise, however disguised in the solemn mystery of technical phrases, will
6518not be technical, but commercial.  I assure you that there is not much
6519mystery about a ship of that sort.  She is a tank.  She is a tank ribbed,
6520joisted, stayed, but she is no greater mystery than a tank.
6521_Titanic_ was a tank eight hundred feet long, fitted as an hotel, with
6522corridors, bed-rooms, halls, and so on (not a very mysterious arrangement
6523truly), and for the hazards of her existence I should think about as
6524strong as a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin.  I make this comparison
6525because Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tins, being almost a national
6526institution, are probably known to all my readers.  Well, about that
6527strong, and perhaps not quite so strong.  Just look at the side of such a
6528tin, and then think of a 50,000 ton ship, and try to imagine what the
6529thickness of her plates should be to approach anywhere the relative
6530solidity of that biscuit-tin.  In my varied and adventurous career I have
6531been thrilled by the sight of a Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tin kicked by
6532a mule sky-high, as the saying is.  It came back to earth smiling, with
6533only a sort of dimple on one of its cheeks.  A proportionately severe
6534blow would have burst the side of the _Titanic_ or any other "triumph of
6535modern naval architecture" like brown paper--I am willing to bet.
6536
6537I am not saying this by way of disparagement.  There is reason in things.
6538You can't make a 50,000 ton ship as strong as a Huntley and Palmer
6539biscuit-tin.  But there is also reason in the way one accepts facts, and
6540I refuse to be awed by the size of a tank bigger than any other tank that
6541ever went afloat to its doom.  The people responsible for her, though
6542disconcerted in their hearts by the exposure of that disaster, are giving
6543themselves airs of superiority--priests of an Oracle which has failed,
6544but still must remain the Oracle.  The assumption is that they are
6545ministers of progress. But the mere increase of size is not progress. EÄŸer
6546it were, elephantiasis, which causes a man's legs to become as large as
6547tree-trunks, would be a sort of progress, whereas it is nothing but a
6548very ugly disease.  Yet directly this very disconcerting catastrophe
6549happened, the servants of the silly Oracle began to cry: "It's no use!
6550You can't resist progress.  The big ship has come to stay."  Well, let
6551her stay on, then, in God's name!  But she isn't a servant of progress in
6552any sense.  She is the servant of commercialism.  For progress, if
6553dealing with the problems of a material world, has some sort of moral
6554aspect--if only, say, that of conquest, which has its distinct value
6555since man is a conquering animal. But bigness is mere exaggeration.
6556men responsible for these big ships have been moved by considerations of
6557profit to be made by the questionable means of pandering to an absurd and
6558vulgar demand for banal luxury--the seaside hotel luxury.  One even asks
6559oneself whether there was such a demand?  It is inconceivable to think
6560that there are people who can't spend five days of their life without a
6561suite of apartments, cafes, bands, and such-like refined delights. ben
6562suspect that the public is not so very guilty in this matter.  These
6563things were pushed on to it in the usual course of trade competition. EÄŸer
6564to-morrow you were to take all these luxuries away, the public would
6565still travel.  I don't despair of mankind.  I believe that if, by some
6566catastrophic miracle all ships of every kind were to disappear off the
6567face of the waters, together with the means of replacing them, there
6568would be found, before the end of the week, men (millionaires, perhaps)
6569cheerfully putting out to sea in bath-tubs for a fresh start.  We are all
6570like that.  This sort of spirit lives in mankind still uncorrupted by the
6571so-called refinements, the ingenuity of tradesmen, who look always for
6572something new to sell, offers to the public.
6573
6574Let her stay,--I mean the big ship--since she has come to stay.  I only
6575object to the attitude of the people, who, having called her into being
6576and having romanced (to speak politely) about her, assume a detached sort
6577of superiority, goodness only knows why, and raise difficulties in the
6578way of every suggestion--difficulties about boats, about bulkheads, about
6579discipline, about davits, all sorts of difficulties.  To most of them the
6580only answer would be: "Where there's a will there's a way"--the most wise
6581of proverbs.  But some of these objections are really too stupid for
6582anything.  I shall try to give an instance of what I mean.
6583
6584This Inquiry is admirably conducted.  I am not alluding to the lawyers
6585representing "various interests," who are trying to earn their fees by
6586casting all sorts of mean aspersions on the characters of all sorts of
6587people not a bit worse than themselves.  It is honest to give value for
6588your wages; and the "bravos" of ancient Venice who kept their stilettos
6589in good order and never failed to deliver the stab bargained for with
6590their employers, considered themselves an honest body of professional
6591men, no doubt.  But they don't compel my admiration, whereas the conduct
6592of this Inquiry does.  And as it is pretty certain to be attacked, I take
6593this opportunity to deposit here my nickel of appreciation.  Well,
6594lately, there came before it witnesses responsible for the designing of
6595the ship.  One of them was asked whether it would not be advisable to
6596make each coal-bunker of the ship a water-tight compartment by means of a
6597suitable door.
6598
6599The answer to such a question should have been, "Certainly," for it is
6600obvious to the simplest intelligence that the more water-tight spaces you
6601provide in a ship (consistently with having her workable) the nearer you
6602approach safety.  But instead of admitting the expediency of the
6603suggestion, this witness at once raised an objection as to the
6604possibility of closing tightly the door of a bunker on account of the
6605slope of coal.  This with the true expert's attitude of "My dear man, you
6606don't know what you are talking about."
6607
6608Now would you believe that the objection put forward was absolutely
6609futile?  I don't know whether the distinguished President of the Court
6610perceived this.  Very likely he did, though I don't suppose he was ever
6611on terms of familiarity with a ship's bunker.  But I have.  I have been
6612inside; and you may take it that what I say of them is correct.  I don't
6613wish to be wearisome to the benevolent reader, but I want to put his
6614finger, so to speak, on the inanity of the objection raised by the
6615expert.  A bunker is an enclosed space for holding coals, generally
6616located against the ship's side, and having an opening, a doorway in
6617fact, into the stokehold.  Men called trimmers go in there, and by means
6618of implements called slices make the coal run through that opening on to
6619the floor of the stokehold, where it is within reach of the stokers'
6620(firemen's) shovels.  This being so, you will easily understand that
6621there is constantly a more or less thick layer of coal generally shaped
6622in a slope lying in that doorway.  And the objection of the expert was:
6623that because of this obstruction it would be impossible to close the
6624water-tight door, and therefore that the thing could not be done.  And
6625that objection was inane.  A water-tight door in a bulkhead may be
6626defined as a metal plate which is made to close a given opening by some
6627mechanical means.  And if there were a law of Medes and Persians that a
6628water-tight door should always slide downwards and never otherwise, the
6629objection would be to a great extent valid.  But what is there to prevent
6630those doors to be fitted so as to move upwards, or horizontally, or
6631slantwise?  In which case they would go through the obstructing layer of
6632coal as easily as a knife goes through butter.  Anyone may convince
6633himself of it by experimenting with a light piece of board and a heap of
6634stones anywhere along our roads.  Probably the joint of such a door would
6635weep a little--and there is no necessity for its being hermetically
6636tight--but the object of converting bunkers into spaces of safety would
6637be attained.  You may take my word for it that this could be done without
6638any great effort of ingenuity.  And that is why I have qualified the
6639expert's objection as inane.
6640
6641Of course, these doors must not be operated from the bridge because of
6642the risk of trapping the coal-trimmers inside the bunker; but on the
6643signal of all other water-tight doors in the ship being closed (as would
6644be done in case of a collision) they too could be closed on the order of
6645the engineer of the watch, who would see to the safety of the trimmers.
6646If the rent in the ship's side were within the bunker itself, that would
6647become manifest enough without any signal, and the rush of water into the
6648stokehold could be cut off directly the doorplate came into its place.
6649Say a minute at the very outside.  Naturally, if the blow of a
6650right-angled collision, for instance, were heavy enough to smash through
6651the inner bulkhead of the bunker, why, there would be then nothing to do
6652but for the stokers and trimmers and everybody in there to clear out of
6653the stoke-room.  But that does not mean that the precaution of having
6654water-tight doors to the bunkers is useless, superfluous, or impossible.
6655{7}
6656
6657And talking of stokeholds, firemen, and trimmers, men whose heavy labour
6658has not a single redeeming feature; which is unhealthy, uninspiring,
6659arduous, without the reward of personal pride in it; sheer, hard,
6660brutalising toil, belonging neither to earth nor sea, I greet with joy
6661the advent for marine purposes of the internal combustion engine.
6662disappearance of the marine boiler will be a real progress, which anybody
6663in sympathy with his kind must welcome.  Instead of the unthrifty,
6664unruly, nondescript crowd the boilers require, a crowd of men _in_ the
6665ship but not _of_ her, we shall have comparatively small crews of
6666disciplined, intelligent workers, able to steer the ship, handle anchors,
6667man boats, and at the same time competent to take their place at a bench
6668as fitters and repairers; the resourceful and skilled seamen--mechanics
6669of the future, the legitimate successors of these seamen--sailors of the
6670past, who had their own kind of skill, hardihood, and tradition, and
6671whose last days it has been my lot to share.
6672
6673One lives and learns and hears very surprising things--things that one
6674hardly knows how to take, whether seriously or jocularly, how to
6675meet--with indignation or with contempt?  Things said by solemn experts,
6676by exalted directors, by glorified ticket-sellers, by officials of all
6677sorts.  I suppose that one of the uses of such an inquiry is to give such
6678people enough rope to hang themselves with.  And I hope that some of them
6679won't neglect to do so.  One of them declared two days ago that there was
6680"nothing to learn from the catastrophe of the _Titanic_."  That he had
6681been "giving his best consideration" to certain rules for ten years, and
6682had come to the conclusion that nothing ever happened at sea, and that
6683rules and regulations, boats and sailors, were unnecessary; that what was
6684really wrong with the _Titanic_ was that she carried too many boats.
6685
6686No; I am not joking.  If you don't believe me, pray look back through the
6687reports and you will find it all there.  I don't recollect the official's
6688name, but it ought to have been Pooh-Bah.  Well, Pooh-Bah said all these
6689things, and when asked whether he really meant it, intimated his
6690readiness to give the subject more of "his best consideration"--for
6691another ten years or so apparently--but he believed, oh yes! o
6692certain, that had there been fewer boats there would have been more
6693people saved.  Really, when reading the report of this admirably
6694conducted inquiry one isn't certain at times whether it is an Admirable
6695Inquiry or a felicitous _opera-bouffe_ of the Gilbertian type--with a
6696rather grim subject, to be sure.
6697
6698Yes, rather grim--but the comic treatment never fails.  My readers will
6699remember that in the number of _The English Review_ for May, 1912, I
6700quoted the old case of the _Arizona_, and went on from that to prophesy
6701the coming of a new seamanship (in a spirit of irony far removed from
6702fun) at the call of the sublime builders of unsinkable ships.  I thought
6703that, as a small boy of my acquaintance says, I was "doing a sarcasm,"
6704and regarded it as a rather wild sort of sarcasm at that.  Well, I am
6705blessed (excuse the vulgarism) if a witness has not turned up who seems
6706to have been inspired by the same thought, and evidently longs in his
6707heart for the advent of the new seamanship.  He is an expert, of course,
6708and I rather believe he's the same gentleman who did not see his way to
6709fit water-tight doors to bunkers.  With ludicrous earnestness he assured
6710the Commission of his intense belief that had only the _Titanic_ struck
6711end-on she would have come into port all right.  And in the whole tone of
6712his insistent statement there was suggested the regret that the officer
6713in charge (who is dead now, and mercifully outside the comic scope of
6714this inquiry) was so ill-advised as to try to pass clear of the ice. Böylece
6715my sarcastic prophecy, that such a suggestion was sure to turn up,
6716receives an unexpected fulfilment.  You will see yet that in deference to
6717the demands of "progress" the theory of the new seamanship will become
6718established: "Whatever you see in front of you--ram it fair. . ."
6719new seamanship!  Looks simple, doesn't it?  But it will be a very exact
6720art indeed.  The proper handling of an unsinkable ship, you see, will
6721demand that she should be made to hit the iceberg very accurately with
6722her nose, because should you perchance scrape the bluff of the bow
6723instead, she may, without ceasing to be as unsinkable as before, find her
6724way to the bottom.  I congratulate the future Transatlantic passengers on
6725the new and vigorous sensations in store for them.  They shall go
6726bounding across from iceberg to iceberg at twenty-five knots with
6727precision and safety, and a "cheerful bumpy sound"--as the immortal poem
6728has it. It will be a teeth-loosening, exhilarating experience.
6729decorations will be Louis-Quinze, of course, and the cafe shall remain
6730open all night.  But what about the priceless Sevres porcelain and the
6731Venetian glass provided for the service of Transatlantic passengers?
6732Well, I am afraid all that will have to be replaced by silver goblets and
6733plates.  Nasty, common, cheap silver.  But those who _will_ go to sea
6734must be prepared to put up with a certain amount of hardship.
6735
6736And there shall be no boats.  Why should there be no boats?  Because Pooh-
6737Bah has said that the fewer the boats, the more people can be saved; ve
6738therefore with no boats at all, no one need be lost.  But even if there
6739was a flaw in this argument, pray look at the other advantages the
6740absence of boats gives you.  There can't be the annoyance of having to go
6741into them in the middle of the night, and the unpleasantness, after
6742saving your life by the skin of your teeth, of being hauled over the
6743coals by irreproachable members of the Bar with hints that you are no
6744better than a cowardly scoundrel and your wife a heartless monster.  Less
6745Boats.  No boats!  Great should be the gratitude of passage-selling
6746Combines to Pooh-Bah; and they ought to cherish his memory when he dies.
6747But no fear of that.  His kind never dies.  All you have to do, O
6748Combine, is to knock at the door of the Marine Department, look in, and
6749beckon to the first man you see.  That will be he, very much at your
6750service--prepared to affirm after "ten years of my best consideration"
6751and a bundle of statistics in hand, that: "There's no lesson to be
6752learned, and that there is nothing to be done!"
6753
6754On an earlier day there was another witness before the Court of Inquiry.
6755A mighty official of the White Star Line.  The impression of his
6756testimony which the Report gave is of an almost scornful impatience with
6757all this fuss and pother.  Boats!  Of course we have crowded our decks
6758with them in answer to this ignorant clamour.  Mere lumber!  How can we
6759handle so many boats with our davits?  Your people don't know the
6760conditions of the problem.  We have given these matters our best
6761consideration, and we have done what we thought reasonable.  We have done
6762more than our duty.  We are wise, and good, and impeccable.  And whoever
6763says otherwise is either ignorant or wicked.
6764
6765This is the gist of these scornful answers which disclose the psychology
6766of commercial undertakings.  It is the same psychology which fifty or so
6767years ago, before Samuel Plimsoll uplifted his voice, sent overloaded
6768ships to sea.  "Why shouldn't we cram in as much cargo as our ships will
6769hold?  Look how few, how very few of them get lost, after all."
6770
6771Men don't change.  Not very much.  And the only answer to be given to
6772this manager who came out, impatient and indignant, from behind the plate-
6773glass windows of his shop to be discovered by this inquiry, and to tell
6774us that he, they, the whole three million (or thirty million, for all I
6775know) capital Organisation for selling passages has considered the
6776problem of boats--the only answer to give him is: that this is not a
6777problem of boats at all.  It is the problem of decent behaviour.  If you
6778can't carry or handle so many boats, then don't cram quite so many people
6779on board.  It is as simple as that--this problem of right feeling and
6780right conduct, the real nature of which seems beyond the comprehension of
6781ticket-providers.  Don't sell so many tickets, my virtuous dignitary.
6782After all, men and women (unless considered from a purely commercial
6783point of view) are not exactly the cattle of the Western-ocean trade,
6784that used some twenty years ago to be thrown overboard on an emergency
6785and left to swim round and round before they sank.  If you can't get more
6786boats, then sell less tickets.  Don't drown so many people on the finest,
6787calmest night that was ever known in the North Atlantic--even if you have
6788provided them with a little music to get drowned by.  Sell less tickets!
6789That's the solution of the problem, your Mercantile Highness.
6790
6791But there would be a cry, "Oh!  This requires consideration!"  (Ten years
6792of it--eh?)  Well, no!  This does not require consideration.  This is the
6793very first thing to do.  At once.  Limit the number of people by the
6794boats you can handle.  That's honesty.  And then you may go on fumbling
6795for years about these precious davits which are such a stumbling-block to
6796your humanity.  These fascinating patent davits.  These davits that
6797refuse to do three times as much work as they were meant to do. Oh!
6798wickedness of these davits!
6799
6800One of the great discoveries of this admirable Inquiry is the fascination
6801of the davits.  All these people positively can't get away from them.
6802They shuffle about and groan around their davits.  Whereas the obvious
6803thing to do is to eliminate the man-handled davits altogether.  Don't you
6804think that with all the mechanical contrivances, with all the generated
6805power on board these ships, it is about time to get rid of the hundred-
6806years-old, man-power appliances?  Cranes are what is wanted; low, compact
6807cranes with adjustable heads, one to each set of six or nine boats.  And
6808if people tell you of insuperable difficulties, if they tell you of the
6809swing and spin of spanned boats, don't you believe them.  The heads of
6810the cranes need not be any higher than the heads of the davits.  The lift
6811required would be only a couple of inches.  As to the spin, there is a
6812way to prevent that if you have in each boat two men who know what they
6813are about.  I have taken up on board a heavy ship's boat, in the open sea
6814(the ship rolling heavily), with a common cargo derrick.  And a cargo
6815derrick is very much like a crane; but a crane devised _ad hoc_ would be
6816infinitely easier to work.  We must remember that the loss of this ship
6817has altered the moral atmosphere.  As long as the _Titanic_ is
6818remembered, an ugly rush for the boats may be feared in case of some
6819accident.  You can't hope to drill into perfect discipline a casual mob
6820of six hundred firemen and waiters, but in a ship like the _Titanic_ you
6821can keep on a permanent trustworthy crew of one hundred intelligent
6822seamen and mechanics who would know their stations for abandoning ship
6823and would do the work efficiently.  The boats could be lowered with
6824sufficient dispatch.  One does not want to let rip one's boats by the run
6825all at the same time.  With six boat-cranes, six boats would be
6826simultaneously swung, filled, and got away from the side; and if any sort
6827of order is kept, the ship could be cleared of the passengers in a quite
6828short time.  For there must be boats enough for the passengers and crew,
6829whether you increase the number of boats or limit the number of
6830passengers, irrespective of the size of the ship.  That is the only
6831honest course.  Any other would be rather worse than putting sand in the
6832sugar, for which a tradesman gets fined or imprisoned.  Do not let us
6833take a romantic view of the so-called progress.  A company selling
6834passages is a tradesman; though from the way these people talk and behave
6835you would think they are benefactors of mankind in some mysterious way,
6836engaged in some lofty and amazing enterprise.
6837
6838All these boats should have a motor-engine in them.  And, of course, the
6839glorified tradesman, the mummified official, the technicians, and all
6840these secretly disconcerted hangers-on to the enormous ticket-selling
6841enterprise, will raise objections to it with every air of superiority.
6842But don't believe them.  Doesn't it strike you as absurd that in this age
6843of mechanical propulsion, of generated power, the boats of such ultra-
6844modern ships are fitted with oars and sails, implements more than three
6845thousand years old? Old as the siege of Troy. Older! . . . And I know
6846what I am talking about.  Only six weeks ago I was on the river in an
6847ancient, rough, ship's boat, fitted with a two-cylinder motor-engine of
68487.5 h.p.  Just a common ship's boat, which the man who owns her uses for
6849taking the workmen and stevedores to and from the ships loading at the
6850buoys off Greenhithe.  She would have carried some thirty people.  No
6851doubt has carried as many daily for many months.  And she can tow a
6852twenty-five ton water barge--which is also part of that man's business.
6853
6854It was a boisterous day, half a gale of wind against the flood tide.  Two
6855fellows managed her.  A youngster of seventeen was cox (and a first-rate
6856cox he was too); a fellow in a torn blue jersey, not much older, of the
6857usual riverside type, looked after the engine.  I spent an hour and a
6858half in her, running up and down and across that reach.  She handled
6859perfectly.  With eight or twelve oars out she could not have done
6860anything like as well.  These two youngsters at my request kept her
6861stationary for ten minutes, with a touch of engine and helm now and then,
6862within three feet of a big, ugly mooring buoy over which the water broke
6863and the spray flew in sheets, and which would have holed her if she had
6864bumped against it.  But she kept her position, it seemed to me, to an
6865inch, without apparently any trouble to these boys.  You could not have
6866done it with oars.  And her engine did not take up the space of three
6867men, even on the assumption that you would pack people as tight as
6868sardines in a box.
6869
6870Not the room of three people, I tell you!  But no one would want to pack
6871a boat like a sardine-box.  There must be room enough to handle the oars.
6872But in that old ship's boat, even if she had been desperately
6873overcrowded, there was power (manageable by two riverside youngsters) to
6874get away quickly from a ship's side (very important for your safety and
6875to make room for other boats), the power to keep her easily head to sea,
6876the power to move at five to seven knots towards a rescuing ship, the
6877power to come safely alongside.  And all that in an engine which did not
6878take up the room of three people.
6879
6880A poor boatman who had to scrape together painfully the few sovereigns of
6881the price had the idea of putting that engine into his boat.  But all
6882these designers, directors, managers, constructors, and others whom we
6883may include in the generic name of Yamsi, never thought of it for the
6884boats of the biggest tank on earth, or rather on sea.  And therefore they
6885assume an air of impatient superiority and make objections--however sick
6886at heart they may be.  And I hope they are; at least, as much as a grocer
6887who has sold a tin of imperfect salmon which destroyed only half a dozen
6888people.  And you know, the tinning of salmon was "progress" as much at
6889least as the building of the _Titanic_.  More, in fact.  I am not
6890attacking shipowners.  I care neither more nor less for Lines, Companies,
6891Combines, and generally for Trade arrayed in purple and fine linen than
6892the Trade cares for me.  But I am attacking foolish arrogance, which is
6893fair game; the offensive posture of superiority by which they hide the
6894sense of their guilt, while the echoes of the miserably hypocritical
6895cries along the alley-ways of that ship: "Any more women?  Any more
6896women?" linger yet in our ears.
6897
6898I have been expecting from one or the other of them all bearing the
6899generic name of Yamsi, something, a sign of some sort, some sincere
6900utterance, in the course of this Admirable Inquiry, of manly, of genuine
6901compunction.  In vain.  All trade talk.  Not a whisper--except for the
6902conventional expression of regret at the beginning of the yearly
6903report--which otherwise is a cheerful document. Dividends, you know.
6904shop is doing well.
6905
6906And the Admirable Inquiry goes on, punctuated by idiotic laughter, by
6907paid-for cries of indignation from under legal wigs, bringing to light
6908the psychology of various commercial characters too stupid to know that
6909they are giving themselves away--an admirably laborious inquiry into
6910facts that speak, nay shout, for themselves.
6911
6912I am not a soft-headed, humanitarian faddist.  I have been ordered in my
6913time to do dangerous work; I have ordered, others to do dangerous work; ben
6914have never ordered a man to do any work I was not prepared to do myself.
6915I attach no exaggerated value to human life.  But I know it has a value
6916for which the most generous contributions to the Mansion House and
6917"Heroes" funds cannot pay.  And they cannot pay for it, because people,
6918even of the third class (excuse my plain speaking), are not cattle.  Death
6919has its sting.  If Yamsi's manager's head were forcibly held under the
6920water of his bath for some little time, he would soon discover that it
6921has.  Some people can only learn from that sort of experience which comes
6922home to their own dear selves.
6923
6924I am not a sentimentalist; therefore it is not a great consolation to me
6925to see all these people breveted as "Heroes" by the penny and halfpenny
6926Press.  It is no consolation at all.  In extremity, in the worst
6927extremity, the majority of people, even of common people, will behave
6928decently.  It's a fact of which only the journalists don't seem aware.
6929Hence their enthusiasm, I suppose.  But I, who am not a sentimentalist,
6930think it would have been finer if the band of the _Titanic_ had been
6931quietly saved, instead of being drowned while playing--whatever tune they
6932were playing, the poor devils.  I would rather they had been saved to
6933support their families than to see their families supported by the
6934magnificent generosity of the subscribers.  I am not consoled by the
6935false, written-up, Drury Lane aspects of that event, which is neither
6936drama, nor melodrama, nor tragedy, but the exposure of arrogant folly.
6937There is nothing more heroic in being drowned very much against your
6938will, off a holed, helpless, big tank in which you bought your passage,
6939than in dying of colic caused by the imperfect salmon in the tin you
6940bought from your grocer.
6941
6942And that's the truth.  The unsentimental truth stripped of the romantic
6943garment the Press has wrapped around this most unnecessary disaster.
6944
6945
6946
6947PROTECTION OF OCEAN LINERS {8}--1914
6948
6949
6950The loss of the _Empress of Ireland_ awakens feelings somewhat different
6951from those the sinking of the _Titanic_ had called up on two continents.
6952The grief for the lost and the sympathy for the survivors and the
6953bereaved are the same; but there is not, and there cannot be, the same
6954undercurrent of indignation.  The good ship that is gone (I remember
6955reading of her launch something like eight years ago) had not been
6956ushered in with beat of drum as the chief wonder of the world of waters.
6957The company who owned her had no agents, authorised or unauthorised,
6958giving boastful interviews about her unsinkability to newspaper reporters
6959ready to swallow any sort of trade statement if only sensational enough
6960for their readers--readers as ignorant as themselves of the nature of all
6961things outside the commonest experience of the man in the street.
6962
6963No; there was nothing of that in her case.  The company was content to
6964have as fine, staunch, seaworthy a ship as the technical knowledge of
6965that time could make her.  In fact, she was as safe a ship as nine
6966hundred and ninety-nine ships out of any thousand now afloat upon the
6967sea.  No; whatever sorrow one can feel, one does not feel indignation.
6968This was not an accident of a very boastful marine transportation; bu
6969was a real casualty of the sea.  The indignation of the New South Wales
6970Premier flashed telegraphically to Canada is perfectly uncalled-for.  That
6971statesman, whose sympathy for poor mates and seamen is so suspect to me
6972that I wouldn't take it at fifty per cent. discount, does not seem to
6973know that a British Court of Marine Inquiry, ordinary or extraordinary,
6974is not a contrivance for catching scapegoats.  I, who have been seaman,
6975mate and master for twenty years, holding my certificate under the Board
6976of Trade, may safely say that none of us ever felt in danger of unfair
6977treatment from a Court of Inquiry.  It is a perfectly impartial tribunal
6978which has never punished seamen for the faults of shipowners--as, indeed,
6979it could not do even if it wanted to.  And there is another thing the
6980angry Premier of New South Wales does not know.  It is this: that for a
6981ship to float for fifteen minutes after receiving such a blow by a bare
6982stem on her bare side is not so bad.
6983
6984She took a tremendous list which made the minutes of grace vouchsafed her
6985of not much use for the saving of lives.  But for that neither her owners
6986nor her officers are responsible.  It would have been wonderful if she
6987had not listed with such a hole in her side.  Even the _Aquitania_ with
6988such an opening in her outer hull would be bound to take a list.  I don't
6989say this with the intention of disparaging this latest "triumph of marine
6990architecture"--to use the consecrated phrase.  The _Aquitania_ is a
6991magnificent ship.  I believe she would bear her people unscathed through
6992ninety-nine per cent. of all possible accidents of the sea.  But suppose
6993a collision out on the ocean involving damage as extensive as this one
6994was, and suppose then a gale of wind coming on.  Even the _Aquitania_
6995would not be quite seaworthy, for she would not be manageable.
6996
6997We have been accustoming ourselves to put our trust in material,
6998technical skill, invention, and scientific contrivances to such an extent
6999that we have come at last to believe that with these things we can
7000overcome the immortal gods themselves.  Hence when a disaster like this
7001happens, there arises, besides the shock to our humane sentiments, a
7002feeling of irritation, such as the hon. gentleman at the head of the New
7003South Wales Government has discharged in a telegraphic flash upon the
7004world.
7005
7006But it is no use being angry and trying to hang a threat of penal
7007servitude over the heads of the directors of shipping companies. Sen
7008can't get the better of the immortal gods by the mere power of material
7009contrivances.  There will be neither scapegoats in this matter nor yet
7010penal servitude for anyone.  The Directors of the Canadian Pacific
7011Railway Company did not sell "safety at sea" to the people on board the
7012_Empress of Ireland_.  They never in the slightest degree pretended to do
7013so.  What they did was to sell them a sea-passage, giving very good value
7014for the money.  Nothing more.  As long as men will travel on the water,
7015the sea-gods will take their toll.  They will catch good seamen napping,
7016or confuse their judgment by arts well known to those who go to sea, or
7017overcome them by the sheer brutality of elemental forces.  It seems to me
7018that the resentful sea-gods never do sleep, and are never weary; wherein
7019the seamen who are mere mortals condemned to unending vigilance are no
7020match for them.
7021
7022And yet it is right that the responsibility should be fixed.  It is the
7023fate of men that even in their contests with the immortal gods they must
7024render an account of their conduct.  Life at sea is the life in which,
7025simple as it is, you can't afford to make mistakes.
7026
7027With whom the mistake lies here, is not for me to say.  I see that Sir
7028Thomas Shaughnessy has expressed his opinion of Captain Kendall's
7029absolute innocence.  This statement, premature as it is, does him honour,
7030for I don't suppose for a moment that the thought of the material issue
7031involved in the verdict of the Court of Inquiry influenced him in the
7032least.  I don't suppose that he is more impressed by the writ of two
7033million dollars nailed (or more likely pasted) to the foremast of the
7034Norwegian than I am, who don't believe that the _Storstad_ is worth two
7035million shillings.  This is merely a move of commercial law, and even the
7036whole majesty of the British Empire (so finely invoked by the Sheriff)
7037cannot squeeze more than a very moderate quantity of blood out of a
7038stone.  Sir Thomas, in his confident pronouncement, stands loyally by a
7039loyal and distinguished servant of his company.
7040
7041This thing has to be investigated yet, and it is not proper for me to
7042express my opinion, though I have one, in this place and at this time.
7043But I need not conceal my sympathy with the vehement protestations of
7044Captain Andersen.  A charge of neglect and indifference in the matter of
7045saving lives is the cruellest blow that can be aimed at the character of
7046a seaman worthy of the name.  On the face of the facts as known up to now
7047the charge does not seem to be true.  If upwards of three hundred people
7048have been, as stated in the last reports, saved by the _Storstad_, then
7049that ship must have been at hand and rendering all the assistance in her
7050power.
7051
7052As to the point which must come up for the decision of the Court of
7053Inquiry, it is as fine as a hair.  The two ships saw each other plainly
7054enough before the fog closed on them.  No one can question Captain
7055Kendall's prudence.  He has been as prudent as ever he could be.  There
7056is not a shadow of doubt as to that.
7057
7058But there is this question: Accepting the position of the two ships when
7059they saw each other as correctly described in the very latest newspaper
7060reports, it seems clear that it was the _Empress of Ireland's_ duty to
7061keep clear of the collier, and what the Court will have to decide is
7062whether the stopping of the liner was, under the circumstances, the best
7063way of keeping her clear of the other ship, which had the right to
7064proceed cautiously on an unchanged course.
7065
7066This, reduced to its simplest expression, is the question which the Court
7067will have to decide.
7068
7069And now, apart from all problems of manoeuvring, of rules of the road, of
7070the judgment of the men in command, away from their possible errors and
7071from the points the Court will have to decide, if we ask ourselves what
7072it was that was needed to avert this disaster costing so many lives,
7073spreading so much sorrow, and to a certain point shocking the public
7074conscience--if we ask that question, what is the answer to be?
7075
7076I hardly dare set it down.  Yes; what was it that was needed, what
7077ingenious combinations of ship-building, what transverse bulkheads, what
7078skill, what genius--how much expense in money and trained thinking, what
7079learned contriving, to avert that disaster?
7080
7081To save that ship, all these lives, so much anguish for the dying, and so
7082much grief for the bereaved, all that was needed in this particular case
7083in the way of science, money, ingenuity, and seamanship was a man, and a
7084cork-fender.
7085
7086Yes; a man, a quartermaster, an able seaman that would know how to jump
7087to an order and was not an excitable fool.  In my time at sea there was
7088no lack of men in British ships who could jump to an order and were not
7089excitable fools.  As to the so-called cork-fender, it is a sort of soft
7090balloon made from a net of thick rope rather more than a foot in
7091diameter.  It is such a long time since I have indented for cork-fenders
7092that I don't remember how much these things cost apiece.  One of them,
7093hung judiciously over the side at the end of its lanyard by a man who
7094knew what he was about, might perhaps have saved from destruction the
7095ship and upwards of a thousand lives.
7096
7097Two men with a heavy rope-fender would have been better, but even the
7098other one might have made all the difference between a very damaging
7099accident and downright disaster.  By the time the cork-fender had been
7100squeezed between the liner's side and the bluff of the _Storstad's_ bow,
7101the effect of the latter's reversed propeller would have been produced,
7102and the ships would have come apart with no more damage than bulged and
7103started plates.  Wasn't there lying about on that liner's bridge, fitted
7104with all sorts of scientific contrivances, a couple of simple and
7105effective cork-fenders--or on board of that Norwegian either?  There must
7106have been, since one ship was just out of a dock or harbour and the other
7107just arriving.  That is the time, if ever, when cork-fenders are lying
7108about a ship's decks.  And there was plenty of time to use them, and
7109exactly in the conditions in which such fenders are effectively used.
7110water was as smooth as in any dock; one ship was motionless, the other
7111just moving at what may be called dock-speed when entering, leaving, or
7112shifting berths; and from the moment the collision was seen to be
7113unavoidable till the actual contact a whole minute elapsed.  A minute,--an
7114age under the circumstances.  And no one thought of the homely expedient
7115of dropping a simple, unpretending rope-fender between the destructive
7116stern and the defenceless side!
7117
7118I appeal confidently to all the seamen in the still United Kingdom, from
7119his Majesty the King (who has been really at sea) to the youngest
7120intelligent A.B. in any ship that will dock next tide in the ports of
7121this realm, whether there was not a chance there.  I have followed the
7122sea for more than twenty years; I have seen collisions; I have been
7123involved in a collision myself; and I do believe that in the case under
7124consideration this little thing would have made all that enormous
7125difference--the difference between considerable damage and an appalling
7126disaster.
7127
7128Many letters have been written to the Press on the subject of collisions.
7129I have seen some.  They contain many suggestions, valuable and otherwise;
7130but there is only one which hits the nail on the head.  It is a letter to
7131the _Times_ from a retired Captain of the Royal Navy.  It is printed in
7132small type, but it deserved to be printed in letters of gold and crimson.
7133The writer suggests that all steamers should be obliged by law to carry
7134hung over their stern what we at sea call a "pudding."
7135
7136This solution of the problem is as wonderful in its simplicity as the
7137celebrated trick of Columbus's egg, and infinitely more useful to
7138mankind.  A "pudding" is a thing something like a bolster of stout rope-
7139net stuffed with old junk, but thicker in the middle than at the ends.  It
7140can be seen on almost every tug working in our docks.  It is, in fact, a
7141fixed rope-fender always in a position where presumably it would do most
7142good.  Had the _Storstad_ carried such a "pudding" proportionate to her
7143size (say, two feet diameter in the thickest part) across her stern, and
7144hung above the level of her hawse-pipes, there would have been an
7145accident certainly, and some repair-work for the nearest ship-yard, but
7146there would have been no loss of life to deplore.
7147
7148It seems almost too simple to be true, but I assure you that the
7149statement is as true as anything can be.  We shall see whether the lesson
7150will be taken to heart.  We shall see.  There is a Commission of learned
7151men sitting to consider the subject of saving life at sea.  They are
7152discussing bulkheads, boats, davits, manning, navigation, but I am
7153willing to bet that not one of them has thought of the humble "pudding."
7154They can make what rules they like.  We shall see if, with that disaster
7155calling aloud to them, they will make the rule that every steamship
7156should carry a permanent fender across her stern, from two to four feet
7157in diameter in its thickest part in proportion to the size of the ship.
7158But perhaps they may think the thing too rough and unsightly for this
7159scientific and aesthetic age.  It certainly won't look very pretty but I
7160make bold to say it will save more lives at sea than any amount of the
7161Marconi installations which are being forced on the shipowners on that
7162very ground--the safety of lives at sea.
7163
7164We shall see!
7165
7166* * * * *
7167
7168To the Editor of the _Daily Express_.
7169
7170SIR,
7171
7172As I fully expected, this morning's post brought me not a few letters on
7173the subject of that article of mine in the _Illustrated London News_.  And
7174they are very much what I expected them to be.
7175
7176I shall address my reply to Captain Littlehales, since obviously he can
7177speak with authority, and speaks in his own name, not under a pseudonym.
7178And also for the reason that it is no use talking to men who tell you to
7179shut your head for a confounded fool.  They are not likely to listen to
7180sen.
7181
7182But if there be in Liverpool anybody not too angry to listen, I want to
7183assure him or them that my exclamatory line, "Was there no one on board
7184either of these ships to think of dropping a fender--etc.," was not
7185uttered in the spirit of blame for anyone.  I would not dream of blaming
7186a seaman for doing or omitting to do anything a person sitting in a
7187perfectly safe and unsinkable study may think of.  All my sympathy goes
7188to the two captains; much the greater share of it to Captain Kendall, who
7189has lost his ship and whose load of responsibility was so much heavier! ben
7190may not know a great deal, but I know how anxious and perplexing are
7191those nearly end-on approaches, so infinitely more trying to the men in
7192charge than a frank right-angle crossing.
7193
7194I may begin by reminding Captain Littlehales that I, as well as himself,
7195have had to form my opinion, or rather my vision, of the accident, from
7196printed statements, of which many must have been loose and inexact and
7197none could have been minutely circumstantial.  I have read the reports of
7198the _Times_ and the _Daily Telegraph_, and no others.  What stands in the
7199columns of these papers is responsible for my conclusion--or perhaps for
7200the state of my feelings when I wrote the _Illustrated London News_
7201article.
7202
7203From these sober and unsensational reports, I derived the impression that
7204this collision was a collision of the slowest sort.  I take it, of
7205course, that both the men in charge speak the strictest truth as to
7206preliminary facts.  We know that the _Empress of Ireland_ was for a time
7207lying motionless.  And if the captain of the _Storstad_ stopped his
7208engines directly the fog came on (as he says he did), then taking into
7209account the adverse current of the river, the _Storstad_, by the time the
7210two ships sighted each other again, must have been barely moving _over
7211the ground_.  The "over the ground" speed is the only one that matters in
7212this discussion.  In fact, I represented her to myself as just creeping
7213on ahead--no more.  This, I contend, is an imaginative view (and we can
7214form no other) not utterly absurd for a seaman to adopt.
7215
7216So much for the imaginative view of the sad occurrence which caused me to
7217speak of the fender, and be chided for it in unmeasured terms.  Not by
7218Captain Littlehales, however, and I wish to reply to what he says with
7219all possible deference.  His illustration borrowed from boxing is very
7220apt, and in a certain sense makes for my contention.  Yes.  A blow
7221delivered with a boxing-glove will draw blood or knock a man out; ama o
7222would not crush in his nose flat or break his jaw for him--at least, not
7223always.  And this is exactly my point.
7224
7225Twice in my sea life I have had occasion to be impressed by the
7226preserving effect of a fender.  Once I was myself the man who dropped it
7227over.  Not because I was so very clever or smart, but simply because I
7228happened to be at hand.  And I agree with Captain Littlehales that to see
7229a steamer's stern coming at you at the rate of only two knots is a
7230staggering experience.  The thing seems to have power enough behind it to
7231cut half through the terrestrial globe.
7232
7233And perhaps Captain Littlehales is right?  It may be that I am mistaken
7234in my appreciation of circumstances and possibilities in this case--or in
7235any such case.  Perhaps what was really wanted there was an extraordinary
7236man and an extraordinary fender.  I care nothing if possibly my deep
7237feeling has betrayed me into something which some people call absurdity.
7238
7239Absurd was the word applied to the proposal for carrying "enough boats
7240for all" on board the big liners.  And my absurdity can affect no lives,
7241break no bones--need make no one angry.  Why should I care, then, as long
7242as out of the discussion of my absurdity there will emerge the acceptance
7243of the suggestion of Captain F. Papillon, R.N., for the universal and
7244compulsory fitting of very heavy collision fenders on the stems of all
7245mechanically propelled ships?
7246
7247An extraordinary man we cannot always get from heaven on order, but an
7248extraordinary fender that will do its work is well within the power of a
7249committee of old boatswains to plan out, make, and place in position. ben
7250beg to ask, not in a provocative spirit, but simply as to a matter of
7251fact which he is better qualified to judge than I am--Will Captain
7252Littlehales affirm that if the _Storstad_ had carried, slung securely
7253across the stem, even nothing thicker than a single bale of wool (an
7254ordinary, hand-pressed, Australian wool-bale), it would have made no
7255difference?
7256
7257If scientific men can invent an air cushion, a gas cushion, or even an
7258electricity cushion (with wires or without), to fit neatly round the
7259stems and bows of ships, then let them go to work, in God's name and
7260produce another "marvel of science" without loss of time.  For something
7261like this has long been due--too long for the credit of that part of
7262mankind which is not absurd, and in which I include, among others, such
7263people as marine underwriters, for instance.
7264
7265Meanwhile, turning to materials I am familiar with, I would put my trust
7266in canvas, lots of big rope, and in large, very large quantities of old
7267junk.
7268
7269It sounds awfully primitive, but if it will mitigate the mischief in only
7270fifty per cent. of cases, is it not well worth trying?  Most collisions
7271occur at slow speeds, and it ought to be remembered that in case of a big
7272liner's loss, involving many lives, she is generally sunk by a ship much
7273smaller than herself.
7274
7275JOSEPH CONRAD.
7276
7277
7278
7279A FRIENDLY PLACE
7280
7281
7282Eighteen years have passed since I last set foot in the London Sailors'
7283Home.  I was not staying there then; I had gone in to try to find a man I
7284wanted to see.  He was one of those able seamen who, in a watch, are a
7285perfect blessing to a young officer.  I could perhaps remember here and
7286there among the shadows of my sea-life a more daring man, or a more agile
7287man, or a man more expert in some special branch of his calling--such as
7288wire splicing, for instance; but for all-round competence, he was
7289unequalled.  As character he was sterling stuff.  His name was Anderson.
7290He had a fine, quiet face, kindly eyes, and a voice which matched that
7291something attractive in the whole man.  Though he looked yet in the prime
7292of life, shoulders, chest, limbs untouched by decay, and though his hair
7293and moustache were only iron-grey, he was on board ship generally called
7294Old Andy by his fellows.  He accepted the name with some complacency.
7295
7296I made my enquiry at the highly-glazed entry office.  The clerk on duty
7297opened an enormous ledger, and after running his finger down a page,
7298informed me that Anderson had gone to sea a week before, in a ship bound
7299round the Horn.  Then, smiling at me, he added: "Old Andy.  We know him
7300well, here.  What a nice fellow!"
7301
7302I, who knew what a "good man," in a sailor sense, he was, assented
7303without reserve.  Heaven only knows when, if ever, he came back from that
7304voyage, to the Sailors' Home of which he was a faithful client.
7305
7306I went out glad to know he was safely at sea, but sorry not to have seen
7307him; though, indeed, if I had, we would not have exchanged more than a
7308score of words, perhaps.  He was not a talkative man, Old Andy, whose
7309affectionate ship-name clung to him even in that Sailors' Home, where the
7310staff understood and liked the sailors (those men without a home) and did
7311its duty by them with an unobtrusive tact, with a patient and humorous
7312sense of their idiosyncrasies, to which I hasten to testify now, when the
7313very existence of that institution is menaced after so many years of most
7314useful work.
7315
7316Walking away from it on that day eighteen years ago, I was far from
7317thinking it was for the last time.  Great changes have come since, over
7318land and sea; and if I were to seek somebody who knew Old Andy it would
7319be (of all people in the world) Mr. John Galsworthy.  For Mr. John
7320Galsworthy, Andy, and myself have been shipmates together in our
7321different stations, for some forty days in the Indian Ocean in the early
7322nineties.  And, but for us two, Old Andy's very memory would be gone from
7323this changing earth.
7324
7325Yes, things have changed--the very sky, the atmosphere, the light of
7326judgment which falls on the labours of men, either splendid or obscure.
7327Having been asked to say a word to the public on behalf of the Sailors'
7328Home, I felt immensely flattered--and troubled.  Flattered to have been
7329thought of in that connection; troubled to find myself in touch again
7330with that past so deeply rooted in my heart.  And the illusion of
7331nearness is so great while I trace these lines that I feel as if I were
7332speaking in the name of that worthy Sailor-Shade of Old Andy, whose
7333faithfully hard life seems to my vision a thing of yesterday.
7334
7335* * * * *
7336
7337But though the past keeps firm hold on one, yet one feels with the same
7338warmth that the men and the institutions of to-day have their merit and
7339their claims.  Others will know how to set forth before the public the
7340merit of the Sailors' Home in the eloquent terms of hard facts and some
7341few figures.  For myself, I can only bring a personal note, give a
7342glimpse of the human side of the good work for sailors ashore, carried on
7343through so many decades with a perfect understanding of the end in view.
7344I have been in touch with the Sailors' Home for sixteen years of my life,
7345off and on; I have seen the changes in the staff and I have observed the
7346subtle alterations in the physiognomy of that stream of sailors passing
7347through it, in from the sea and out again to sea, between the years 1878
7348and 1894.  I have listened to the talk on the decks of ships in all
7349latitudes, when its name would turn up frequently, and if I had to
7350characterise its good work in one sentence, I would say that, for seamen,
7351the Well Street Home was a friendly place.
7352
7353It was essentially just that; quietly, unobtrusively, with a regard for
7354the independence of the men who sought its shelter ashore, and with no
7355ulterior aims behind that effective friendliness.  No small merit this.
7356And its claim on the generosity of the public is derived from a long
7357record of valuable public service.  Since we are all agreed that the men
7358of the merchant service are a national asset worthy of care and sympathy,
7359the public could express this sympathy no better than by enabling the
7360Sailors' Home, so useful in the past, to continue its friendly offices to
7361the seamen of future generations.
7362
7363
7364
7365
7366Footnotes
7367
7368
7369{1}  Yvette and Other Stories.  Translated by Ada Galsworthy.
7370
7371{2}  _Turgenev_: A Study.  By Edward Garnett.
7372
7373{3}  _Studies in Brown Humanity_.  By Hugh Clifford.
7374
7375{4}  _Quiet Days in Spain_.  By C. Bogue Luffmann.
7376
7377{5}  Existence after Death Implied by Science.  By Jasper B. Hunt, M.A.
7378
7379{6}  _The Ascending Effort_.  By George Bourne.
7380
7381{7}  Since writing the above, I am told that such doors are fitted in the
7382bunkers of more than one ship in the Atlantic trade.
7383
7384{8}  The loss of the _Empress of Ireland_.
7385
7386
7387
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