The Valley of Vision Part 15

who have always made a noise around the Quebec hotels at night. They shout much: they swear abominably: but they have no real fight in them. They can be hired and used--up to a certain point--but beyond that they are worthless. It is a waste of money to employ them.

The trouble below Cape Diamond froths up and goes down as quickly as the effervescence on a bottle of ginger beer. Before you can find out what it is all about, it is all over. It has not even touched the real French-Canadians, the men of the forests and the farms. They are loyal by nature, and slow by temperament. You have got to give them time, and light.

What is happening in Quebec now? Just what ought to happen. The draft is going forward smoothly and steadily, without resistance.

Sons of the best French-Canadian families are volunteering for the war. Recruits from Laval University are coming in, stirred perhaps by the knowledge that forty thousand Catholic priests in France have entered the army which fights against the Prussian paganism.

The petty politicians who have sought to serve their own ends by putting forward the mad notion of secession and an independent "Republic of Quebec" have gone to cover under a storm of ridicule and indignation. M. Boura.s.sa's iridescent dream of French-Canadian nationalism has disappeared like a soap-bubble. M. Francoeur's motion in the Quebec legislature, carrying a vague hint that the province might withdraw from the Dominion if the other provinces were not particularly nice to it, was snowed under by an overwhelming vote. The patriotic and eloquent speech of the provincial Premier, M. Gouin, was received with every sign of approval. The political cinema has shown its latest film, and the t.i.tle is evidently _"Fidelite de Quebec."_

Meantime a Catholic missioner has been in the province. The visit of Archbishop Mathieu of Saskatchewan was probably made on the invitation, certainly with the consent, of the hierarchy of Quebec.

That intelligent and fearless preacher brought with him a clear and ringing gospel, a call to all Christian folk to stand up together and "resist even unto blood, striving against sin"--the sin of the German war-lords who have plunged the world in agony to enforce their heresy that Might makes Right.

Such a message, at this time, must be of inestimable value to the humble and devout people of the province, attached as they are to their church, and looking patiently to her for guidance. The parish priests, devoted to their lonely tasks in obscure hamlets, may get a new and broader inspiration from it. They may have a vision of the ashes of Louvain University, the ruin of Rheims Cathedral, wrought by ruthless German hands. Then the church in Quebec will measure up to the church in Belgium and in France. Then the village cure will say to his young men: "Go! Fight! It is for the glory of G.o.d and the good of the world. It is for the Christian religion and the life of free Canada."

"Well, then," says the gentle reader, of a sociological turn of mind, who has followed me thus far, "what have you got to say about the big political problem of Quebec? Is a French-speaking province a safe factor in the Dominion of Canada, in the British Empire? Why was Quebec so late in coming into this world war against Germany?"

Dear man, I have nothing whatever to say about what you call the big political problem of Quebec. I told you that at the beginning.

That is a question for Canada and Great Britain to settle. The British colonial policy has always been one of the greatest liberality and fairness, except perhaps in that last quarter of the eighteenth century, when the madness of a German king and his ministers in England forced the United States to break away from her, and form the republic which has now become her most powerful friend.

The perpetuation of a double language within a state, an _enclave_, undoubtedly carries with it an element of inconvenience and possibly of danger. Yet Belgium is bilingual and Switzerland is quadrilingual.

If any tongue other than that of the central government is to be admitted, what could be better than French--the language of culture, which has spoken the large words, _liberte, egalite, fraternite?_ The native dialect of French Canada is a quaint and delightful thing--an eighteenth-century vocabulary with pepper and salt from the speech of the woodsmen and hunters. I should be sorry if it had to fade out. But evidently that is a question for Canada to decide. She has been a bilingual country for a long time.

I see no reason why the experiment should not be carried on.

Quebec has been rather slow in waking up to the meaning of this war for world-freedom. But she has been very little slower than some of the United States, after all.

The Church? Well, the influence of the Church always has depended and always must depend upon the quality of her ministers. In France, in Belgium, they have not fallen short of their high duty.

The Archbishop of Saskatchewan, who came to Quebec, preached a clear gospel of self-sacrifice for a righteous cause.

But the plain people of Quebec--the _voyageurs_, the _habitants_, my old friends in the back districts--that is what I am thinking about. I am sure they are all right. They are very simple, old-fas.h.i.+oned, childish, if you like; but there is no pacifist or pro-German virus among them. If their parochial politicians will let them alone, if their priests will speak to them as prophets of the G.o.d of Righteousness, they will show their mettle. They will prove their right to be counted among the free peoples of the world who are willing to defend peace with arms.

That is what I expect to find if I ever get back to my canoemen on the _Sainte Marguerite_ again.

SYLVANORA, July 10, 1918.

A CLa.s.sIC INSTANCE

"Latin and Greek are dead," said Hardman, lean, eager, absolute, a fanatic of modernity. "They have been a long while dying, and this war has finished them. We see now that they are useless in the modern world. n.o.body is going to waste time in studying them.

Education must be direct and scientific. Train men for efficiency and prepare them for defense. Otherwise they will have no chance of making a living or of keeping what they make. Your cla.s.sics are musty and rusty and fusty. _Heraus mit----"_

He checked himself suddenly, with as near a blush as his sallow skin could show.

"Excuse me," he stammered; "bad habit, contracted when I was a student at Kiel--only place where they really understood metallurgy."

Professor John De Vries, round, rosy, white-haired, steeped in the mellow lore of ancient history, puffed his cigar and smiled that benignant smile with which he was accustomed joyfully to enter a duel of wits. Many such conflicts had enlivened that low-ceilinged book-room of his at Calvinton.

"You are excused, my dear Hardman," he said, "especially because you have just given us a valuable ill.u.s.tration of the truth that language and the study of language have a profound influence upon thought. The tongue which you inadvertently used belongs to the country that bred the theory of education which you advocate. The theory is as crude and imperfect as the German language itself.

And that is saying a great deal."

Young Richard De Vries, the professor's favorite nephew and adopted son, whose chief interest was athletics, but who had a very pretty side taste for verbal bouts, was sitting with the older men before a cheerful fire of logs in the chilly spring of 1917. He tucked one leg comfortably underneath him and leaned forward in his chair, lighting a fresh cigarette. He foresaw a brisk encounter, and was delighted, as one who watches from the side-lines the opening of a lively game.

"Well played, sir," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed; "well played, indeed. Score one for you, Uncle."

"The approbation of the young is the consolation of the aged,"

murmured the professor sententiously, as if it were a quotation from Plutarch. "But let us hear what our friend Hardman has to say about the German language and the Germanic theory of education. It is his turn."

"I throw you in the German language," answered Hardman, rather tartly. "I don't profess to admire it or defend it. But n.o.body can deny its utility for the things that are taught in it. You can learn more science from half a dozen recent German books than from a whole library of Latin and Greek. Besides, you must admit that the Germans are great cla.s.sical scholars too."

"Rather neat," commented d.i.c.k; "you touched him there, Mr. Hardman.

Now, Uncle!"

"I do not admit," said the professor firmly, "that the Germans are great cla.s.sical scholars. They are great students, that is all.

The difference is immense. Far be it from me to deny the value of the patient and laborious researches of the Germans in the grammar and syntax of the ancient languages and in archaeology. They are painstaking to a painful degree. They gather facts as bees gather pollen, indefatigably. But when it comes to making honey they go dry. They cannot interpret, they can only instruct. They do not comprehend, they only cla.s.sify. Name me one recent German book of cla.s.sical interpretation to compare in sweetness and light with Jowett's 'Dialogues of Plato' or Butcher's 'Some Aspects of the Greek Genius' or Croiset's 'Histoire de la Litterature Grecque.'

You can't do it," he ended, with a note of triumph.

"Of course not," replied Hardman sharply. "I never claimed to know anything about cla.s.sical literature or scholars.h.i.+p. My point at the beginning--you have cleverly led the discussion away from it, like one of your old sophists--the point I made was that Greek and Latin are dead languages, and therefore practically worthless in the modern world. Let us go back to that and discuss it fairly and leave the Germans out."

"But that, my dear fellow, is precisely what you cannot do. It is partly because they have insisted on treating Latin and Greek as dead that the Germans have become what they are--spectacled barbarians, learned Huns, veneered Vandals. In older times it was not so bad. They had some perception of the everlasting current of life in the cla.s.sics. When the Latin spirit touched them for a while, they acquired a sense of form, they produced some literature that was good--Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller. But it was a brief illumination, and the darkness that followed it was deeper than ever. Who are their foremost writers to-day? The Hauptmanns and the Sudermanns, gropers in obscurity, violent sentimentalists, 'bigots to laxness,' Dr. Johnson would have called them. Their world is a moral and artistic chaos agitated by spasms of hysteria.

Their work is a ma.s.s of decay touched with gleams of phosph.o.r.escence.

The Romans would have called it _immunditia_. What is your new American word for that kind of thing, Richard? I heard you use it the other day."

"Punk," responded d.i.c.k promptly. "Sometimes, if it's very sickening, we call it pink punk."

"All right," interrupted Hardman impatiently. "Say what you like about Hauptmann and Sudermann. They are no friends of mine. Be as ferocious with them as you please. But you surely do not mean to claim that the right kind of study and understanding of the cla.s.sics could have had any practical influence on the German character, or any value in saving the German Empire from its horrible blunders."

"Precisely that is what I do mean."

"But how?"

"Through the mind, _animus_, the intelligent directing spirit which guides human conduct in all who have pa.s.sed beyond the stage of mere barbarism."

"You exaggerate the part played by what you call the mind. Human conduct is mainly a matter of heredity and environment. Most of it is determined by instinct, impulse, and habit."

"Granted, for the sake of argument. But may there not be a mental as well as a physical inheritance, an environment of thought as well as of bodily circ.u.mstances?"

"Perhaps so. Yes, I suppose that is true to a certain extent."

"A poor phrase, my dear Hardman; but let it pa.s.s. Will you admit that there may be habits of thinking and feeling as well as habits of doing and making things?"

"Certainly."

"And do you recognize a difference between bad habits and good habits?"

"Of course."