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Page 58
The thought, or the feeling, of those two minutes here in the village,
or in the city eight miles away, where in full market the same
opportunity was taken, was concerned in all human probability, with
the hapless dead rather than with means to preserve the living from
hapless and unnecessary death; and yet, so curiously are we wrought
out of emotion, sensibility and habit, some good besides piety may
come out of a memorial Eleventh of November. Pitying, recording,
respecting the dead or perhaps the bereaved, it may presently become
a fixed idea with us that avoidable death is taboo. It may be borne
in upon us on the next occasion when stung pride, outraged feeling or
panic fear is sweeping like a plague over our land, that nothing
but sorrow and loss was gained by the Four Years War. That is just
possible, but no more than that, we being what we are. Yet, unless we
learn to think rather of life than of death, there is no other way. As
in religion, faith comes before works, and you must fall in love with
God if you are to believe in Him, so it is in politics. Emotional
conviction must precede action. And the conviction to be established
is that war is a crime and in some nations, a vice.
In the Middle Ages a great and ever-present fear of death coincided
with an extraordinary neglect of life. Whole companies, whole classes
of men thought of little but death; yet they killed each other for a
look or a thought; in war whole cities were put to the sword and fire,
as the Black Prince put Limoges. _Timor mortis conturbat me!_ So men
shuddered and wailed, but took not the smallest trouble to keep
each other alive. The Black Death swept off at least a third of the
population of Europe; yet after it things went on exactly as before.
If nations had then possessed the technical skill which they have
to-day, it is quite on the cards that France in the Hundred Years or
Germany in the Thirty Years War, would have been emptied of its folk.
The will thereto was not wanting, that's certain.
Well, we are a little better than that. Sanitation has at last become
a fixed idea. And there is another thing. We no longer consider a man
as magnified by his office, but rather that the office is magnified in
that a man is serving it. In the old days the splendour of an army on
the march was reflected upon the men composing it, and glorified
every one of them. Now it is the other way. We are apt to see the
army glorious because it is composed of men. Lord Kitchener's host,
perhaps, has taught us that. We are getting on, then, if we are
beginning to take manhood seriously.
It is something at least, and so much to the good, that we have
imagined a new sacrament, and found it in the attitude, if not in the
act of thought. "Who rises from his prayer a better man, his prayer is
answered," said a wise man; and if that is true, the King may save
his people yet. But to enable him to do it we must pray for the living
rather than the dead, and pray for Good Will among them. For that is
what we want.
THE QUAKER EIRENICON
In our late scramble to spend our own, or secure some other body's,
money, a message of beauty, distinction and serene confidence in its
own truth, has been overlooked by this distracted world. There is
little wonder. As well might a blackbird flute on Margate Sands on a
Bank Holiday as this Quaker message, "To all men," breathe love and
goodwill among them just now. The effect has been much the same: to
those who heeded it matter for tears that such heavenly balm should be
within our hearing but out of our grasp; to the ravenous and the rabid
a mere foolishness.
To my mind nothing so admirable has been put forward by any Church
calling itself Christian throughout five years' horror and delirium.
I must not expect the _Morning Boast_ or _Long Bow_ to agree with it,
but I am inclined to ask my fellow citizens if they have not yet had
enough of these evangelists of war and ill-will towards men. If they
have, here is an alternative for them to try.
"We appeal to all men," say the Quakers to the world, "to recognise
the great spiritual force of love which is found in all, and which
makes us one common brotherhood." It is a hard saying, as things are
now; and yet, if it is true, that 'tis love that makes the world go
round, it is certain by this time that 'tis hate that makes it stop.
What stops trade? English hate Germans, Germans hate English; masters
grudge men, men masters. What holds up Ireland? Protestants hate
Catholics, Catholics Protestants; each hates England and England hates
both. The infernal brew of 1914 has poisoned the tissues of humanity;
proud flesh, sour blood, keep us all in a sick ferment. What will save
us? Who will show us any good?
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