Essays in Rebellion Part 8

XV

A NEW CONSCRIPTION

When the Territorial exclaims that, for his part, he would refuse to inhabit a planet on which there was no hope of war, the peaceful listener shudderingly charges the inventor of Territorials with promoting a bloodthirsty mind. After all the prayers for peace in our time--prayers in which even Territorials are expected to join on church parade--it appears an impious folly to appraise war as a necessity for human happiness. Or if indeed it be a blessing, however much in disguise, why not boldly pray to have the full benefit of it in our time, instead of pa.s.sing it on, like unearned increment, for the advantage of posterity? Such a thing is unimaginable. A prayer for war would make people jump; it would empty a church quicker than the collection. Nevertheless, it is probable that the great majority of every congregation does in its heart share the Territorial's opinion, and, if there were no possibility of war ever again anywhere in the world, they would find life upon this planet a trifle flat.

The impulse to hostilities arises not merely from the delight in scenes of blood enjoyed at a distance, though that is the commonest form of military ardour, and in many a b.l.o.o.d.y battle the finest fruits of victory are reaped over newspapers and cigars at the bar or in the back garden. There is no such courage as glows in the citizen's bosom when he peruses the telegrams of slaughter, just as there is no such ferocity as he imbibes from the details of a dripping murder. "War! War! b.l.o.o.d.y war!

North, South, East, or West!" cries the soldier in one of Mr. Kipling's pretty tales; but in real life that cry arises rather from the music-halls than from the soldier, and many a high-souled patriot at home would think himself wronged if perpetual peace deprived him of his one opportunity of displaying valour to his friends, his readers, or his family. All these imaginative people, whose bravery may be none the less genuine for being vicarious, must be reckoned as the natural supporters of war, and, indeed, one can hardly conceive any form of distant conflict for which they would not stand prepared.

But still, the widespread dislike of peace is not entirely derived from their prowess; nor does it spring entirely from the nursemaid's love of the red coat and martial gait, though this is on a far n.o.bler plane, and comes much nearer to the heart of things. The gleam of uniforms in a drab world, the upright bearing, the rattle of a kettledrum, the boom of a salute, the murmur of the "Dead March," the goodnight of the "Last Post" sounding over the home-faring traffic and the quiet cradles--one does not know by what subst.i.tutes eternal peace could exactly replace them. For they are symbols of a spiritual protest against the degradation of security. They perpetually re-a.s.sert the claim of a beauty and a pa.s.sion that have no concern with material advantages. They sound defiance in the dull ears of comfort, and proclaim woe unto them that are at ease in the city of life. Dimly the nursemaid is aware of the protest; most people are dimly aware of it; and the few who seriously labour for an unending reign of peace must take it into account.

It is useless to allure mankind by promises of a pig's paradise. Much has been rightly written about the horrors of war. Everyone knows them to be sudden, hideous, and overwhelming; those who have seen them can speak also of the squalor, the filthiness, the murderous swindling, and the inconceivable absurdity of the whole monstrous performance. But the horrors of peace, if not so obvious, come nearer to our daily life, and we are naturally terrified at its softness, its monotony, and its enfeebling relaxation. Of all people in the world the wealthy cla.s.ses of England and America are probably the furthest removed from danger, and no one admires them in the least; no one in the least envies their treadmill of successive pleasures. The most unwarlike of men are haunted by the fear that perpetual peace would induce a general degeneration of soul and body such as they now behold amid the rich man's sheltered comforts. They dread the growth of a population slack of nerve, soft of body, cruel through fear of pain, and incapable of endurance or high endeavour. They dread the entire disappearance of that clear decisiveness, that disregard of pleasure, that quiet devotion of self in the face of instant death, which are to be found, now and again, in the course of every war. Even peace, they say, may be bought too dear, and what shall it profit a people if it gain a swill-tub of comforts and lose its own soul?

The same argument is chosen by those who would persuade the whole population to submit to military training, whether it is needful for the country's defence or not. Under such training, they suppose, the virtues that peace imperils would be maintained; a sense of equality and comrades.h.i.+p would pervade all cla.s.ses, and for two or three years of life the wealthy would enjoy the realities of labour and discomfort. It is a tempting vision, and if this were the only means of escape from such a danger as is represented, the wealthy would surely be the first to embrace it for their own salvation. But is there no other means?

asked Professor William James, and his answer to the question was that distinguished psychologist's last service. What we are looking for, he rightly said, is a moral equivalent for war, and he suddenly found it in a conscription, not for fighting, but for work. After showing that the life of many is nothing else but toil and pain, while others "get no taste of this campaigning life at all," he continued:

"If now--and this is my idea--there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against _nature_, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other benefits to the commonwealth would follow.

The military ideals of hardihood and discipline would be wrought into the growing fibre of the people; no one would remain blind, as the luxurious cla.s.ses now are blind, to man's real relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently solid and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fis.h.i.+ng fleets in December, to dish-was.h.i.+ng, clothes-was.h.i.+ng, and window-was.h.i.+ng, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skysc.r.a.pers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas."

Here, indeed, is a vision more tempting than ever conscription was. To be sure, it is not new, for Ruskin had a glimpse of it, and that was why he induced the Oxford undergraduates to vary their comfortable Greek studies and games at ball with a little honest work upon the Hinksey road. But the vision is irresistible. There cannot be the smallest doubt it will be realised, and when the young dukes, landed proprietors, financiers, motorists, officers in the Guards, barristers, and curates are marched off in gangs to their apportioned labour in the stoke-holes, coal-mines, and December fis.h.i.+ng fleets, how the workmen will laugh, how exult!

Nor let it be supposed that the conscription would subject even the most luxurious conscripts to any unendurable hards.h.i.+p. So hateful is idleness to man that the toil of the poor is continually being adopted by the rich as sport. To climb a mountain was once the irksome duty of the shepherd and wandering hawker; now it is the privilege of wealth to hang by the finger-nails over an abyss. Once it was the penalty of slaves to pull the galleys; now it is only the well-to-do who labour day by day at the purposeless oar, and rack their bodies with a toil that brings home neither fish nor merchandise. Once it fell to the thin bowman and despised butcher to provide the table with flesh and fowl; now, at enormous expense, the rich man plays the poulterer for himself, and statesmen seek the strenuous life in the slaughter of a scarcely edible rhinoceros. Let the conscripts of comfort take heart. They will run more risks in the galleries of the mines than on the mountain precipice, and one night's trawl upon the Dogger Bank would provide more weight of fish than if they whipped the Tay from spring to winter.

Under this great conscription, a New Model would, indeed, be initiated, as far superior to the conscript armies as Cromwell's Ironsides were to the mercenaries of their time. The whole nation from prince to beggar would by this means be transformed, labour would cease to be despised or riches to be wors.h.i.+pped, the reproach of effeminacy would be removed, the horrors of peace mitigated, and the moral equivalent of war discovered. For the first time a true comrades.h.i.+p between cla.s.s and cla.s.s would arise, for, as Goethe said, work makes the comrade, and democracy might have a chance of becoming a reality instead of a party phrase. After three years' service down the sewers or at the smelting works, our men of leisure would no longer raise their wail over national degeneracy or the need of maintaining the standard of hardihood by barrack-square drill. As things are now, it is themselves who chiefly need the drill. "Those who live at ease," said Professor James, "are an island on a stormy ocean." In the summing up of the nation they, in their security, would hardly count, were they not so vocal; but the molten iron, the flaming mine, the whirling machine, the engulfing sea, and hunger always at the door take care that, for all but a very few among the people, the discipline of danger and perpetual effort shall not be wanting. You do not find the pitman, the dustman, or the bargee puling for bayonet exercise to make them hard, and if our nervous gentlemen were all serving the State in those capacities, they might even approach their addition sums in "Dreadnoughts" without a tremor.

Besides, as Professor James added for a final inducement, the women would value them more highly.

XVI

THE LAST OF THE RUNNYMEDES

The high debate was over, and Lord Runnymede issued from the House, proud in his melancholy, like a garrison withdrawing from a fortress with colours flying and all the honours of war. He had sent a messenger (he called him an "orderly") for his carriage. He might have telephoned, but he disliked the Board-School voice that said "Number, please!" and he still more disliked the idea of a coachman speaking down a tube (as he imagined it) into his ear. Not that he was opposed to inventions, or the advance of science as such. He recognised the necessity of progress, and had not openly reproached his own sister when she inst.i.tuted a motor in place of her carriage. But for himself the two dark bays were waiting--heads erect, feet firmly planted on the solid earth. For he loved horses, and the Runnymede stables maintained the blood of King Charles's importations from Arabian chivalry. Besides, what manners, what sense, could be expected of a chauffeur, occupied with oily wheels and engines, instead of living things and corn?

Some of the small crowd standing about the gate recognised him as he came out, and one called his name and said "What ho!" For his appearance was fairly well known through political caricatures, which usually represented him in plate-armour, holding a spear, and wearing a coat-of-arms. He had once instructed his secretary to write privately to an editor pointing out that the caricaturist had committed a gross error in heraldry; but in his heart he rather enjoyed the pictures, and it was the duty of one of his maids to stick them into a sc.r.a.p-book, inscribed with the proper dates, for the instruction and entertainment of his descendants. In fact, he had lately been found showing the book to a boy of three, who picked out his figure by its long nose, and said "Granpa!"

with unerring decision.

But what was the good of son or grandchild now? He had nothing to hand down to them but the barren t.i.tle, the old estate, and wealth safely invested in urban land and financial enterprises which his stockbroker recommended. t.i.tles, estates, and wealth were but shadows without the vitalising breath of power. Cotton-spinners, boot-finishers, purveyors of food at popular prices could now possess such things, and they appeared to enjoy them. There were people, he believed, satisfied with comfort, amus.e.m.e.nts, rounds of visits, social ambitions, and domestic or luxurious joys. But for a Runnymede thus to decline would be worse than extinction.

For six centuries the Runnymedes had served their country. Edward I had summoned one of them to his "model Parliament," and the present lord could still spell out a word or two of the ancient writ that hung framed in the hall at Stennynge, with the royal seal attached. Two of his ancestors had died by public violence (one killed in battle, fighting for the Yorkists, who Lord Runnymede inclined to think represented the Legitimist side; the other executed under Elizabeth, apparently by mistake), and regretting there were not more, he had searched the records of the Civil Wars and the 'Forty-five in vain. But never had a Runnymede failed in Parliament, or the Council of the King, as he preferred to call it; and their name had frequently appeared among the holders of subordinate but dignified offices, such as the Masters.h.i.+p of the Buckhounds, to which special knowledge gave an honourable claim.

Trained from his first pony in political tradition, and encouraged by every gamekeeper to follow the footsteps of his ancestors, Lord Runnymede had inevitably taken "n.o.blesse oblige" as his private motto.

But of what service was n.o.bility if its obligations were abolished? He sometimes pictured with a shudder the fate of the surviving French n.o.bility--retaining their t.i.tles by courtesy, and compelled to fritter away their lives upon chateaux, travelling, aeroplanes, or amatory intrigues, instead of directing their wisdom and influence to the right government of the State. The guillotine was better. He could not imagine his descendants without a House of Lords to sit in. Without the Lords, he was indeed the last of the Runnymedes, and upon the scaffold he might at least die worthy of his name.

Compromise he despised as the artifice of lawyers and upstart politicians. It had been a dagger in his heart to hear his leader speaking of some readjustment between the two Houses as inevitable. He denied the necessity, unless the readjustment augmented the power of the Lords. Planting himself on Edward I's statute, he had vehemently maintained the right of the Lords to control finance, though he was willing to allow the commercial gentlemen in the Commons the privilege of working out the figures of national income and expenditure. He now regarded the threatened creation of Peers as a gross insult to public decency. Properly speaking, he protested, Peers cannot be created. You might as well put terriers into kennels and call them foxhounds. Now and then a distinguished soldier or even a statesman could be enn.o.bled without much harm; and he supposed there was something to be said for a learned man, and a writer or two, though he preferred them to be childless. He had once published a book himself, with the Runnymede arms on the cover. But the thought of making Lords by batches vulgarised the King's majesty, and reversed the order of nature. "Are we worse than Chinamen," he asked, "that we seek to confer n.o.bility on fellows sprung from unknown forefathers?" The Archbishop of Canterbury had appealed to the House to approach the question with mutual consideration and respect, high public spirit and common sense. But on such a question consideration was dangerous, and common sense fatal. He wished the Bishops had stuck to their own Convocation from Plantagenet times, instead of intruding their inharmonious white sleeves where they were not wanted. He was sorry he had subscribed so handsomely to the restoration of Stennynge Church. He ought to have ear-marked his contribution for the Runnymede aisle.

Worse still, the Archbishop had mentioned "the average voter in tramcar or railway train," and the words had called up a haunting vision of disgust. He often said that he had no objection to the working cla.s.ses as such. He rather liked them. He found them intelligent and unpretentious. He could converse with them without effort, and they always had the interest of sport in common. He felt no depression in pa.s.sing through the working quarters of the city, and at Stennynge he was well acquainted with all the cottagers and farmers alike. In one family he had put out a puppy at walk; in another he had let off a man who had poached a pheasant when his wife was ill; in a third he had stood G.o.dfather to the baby when the father was killed falling from a stack. He felt a kind of warmth towards the poor whenever he saw them upon his own estate.

But of the average voter, such as the Archbishop described, he could not think without pain and apprehension. Coming to London from any part of the country, he always closed his eyes as the train entered the suburbs.

Those long rows of monotonous little houses--so decent, so uneventful, so temporary--oppressed him like a physical disease. If he contemplated them, they induced violent dyspepsia, such as he had once incurred by visiting the Crystal Palace. The consciousness that they were there, even as he pa.s.sed through tunnels, lowered his vitality until he reached his town house or club in the centre of things. Not even the considerable income he derived from land on the outskirts of a large manufacturing town consoled him for the horror of the town's extension.

In those uniform houses--in their railings, their Venetian blinds, indiarubber plants, and stained-gla.s.s panels to the doors--he beheld the coming degradation of his country. He saw them, like great armies of white or red ants, creeping over the land, devouring all that was beautiful in it, or ancient, or redolent of grandeur. Bit by bit, street by street, the ign.o.ble, the tidy, the pettiness of the parlour, was gaining upon splendour and renown, and the antic.i.p.ation of the change cast a foreboding sadness over the beauty of his own ancestral home. It tainted even his unuttered pride in his son, who had been at Eton without expulsion, and served two years in the Foot Guards without discredit. And now, there was his grandson.

What future could be theirs? Should a Runnymede sit in a House shorn of its prerogatives, bound to impotence, reduced to a mere echo of popular caprice, with hardly the delaying power of a chaperon at a ball? Or should a son of his trot round from door to door, seeking the suffrages of those distressing suburbs at the polls--a son whose ancestry had known the favour of princes, and withstood foes and traitors upon the field? Lord Runnymede himself had never thought of election, even before the House of Lords received him. Yet if you wanted representatives, who was more truly representative of his own estates and the interests of every soul upon it--interests identical with his own? Who was more fit to control the country than a man who had breathed the atmosphere of State from childhood, and learnt history from the breast-plates, the swords, the cloaks, the wigs, and the side-whisker portraits of men whose very blood beat in his heart?

As the carriage went down Piccadilly, he was overwhelmed with the darkness of the prospect. He saw an ancient country staggering from side to side on its road to ruin, while the hands which had directed and steadied it for centuries lay bound or idle. He saw coverts and meadows and cornfields eaten away by desirable residences, angular garden cities, and Socialist communities. He saw his own Stennynge advertised for plots, and its relics catalogued for a museum, while factories spouted smoke from its lawns and shrubberies, and if a Runnymede survived, he lived in a rough-cast villa, like an eagle in a cage at the Zoo. The soul of all his ancestors rose within him. Never should it happen while he had a sword to draw. At least he could display the courage of the fine old stock. If he submitted to the degradation, he would feel himself a coward, unfit for the position he and his fathers had occupied. Let the enemy do their worst; they should find him steady at his post. Before him lay one solemn duty still to be performed for G.o.d and country. The spirit of n.o.ble sacrifice was not dead. The populace should see how an aristocrat still could die. Come what might, he would vote against the third reading of the Bill!

Dismounting from his carriage, he approached the entrance-porch of his house with so proud and resolute a bearing that three hatless working-girls pa.s.sing by, in white frocks, with arms interlaced, all cried out "Percy!" as their ironic manner is.

XVII

CHILDREN OF THE STATE

I

Mrs. Reeve was an average widow with enc.u.mbrances. Ten years before she had married a steady-going man--a cabinet-maker during working hours, and something of a Dissenter and a Radical in the evenings and on Sundays. His wages had touched thirty s.h.i.+llings, and they had lived in three rooms, first floor, in a quiet neighbourhood, keeping themselves to themselves, as they boasted without undue pride. In their living-room was a flowery tablecloth; a gla.s.s shade stood on the mantelpiece; there were a few books in a cupboard. They had thoughts of buying a live indiarubber plant to stand by the window, when unexpectedly the man died.

He had followed the advice of economists. He had practised thrift.

During his brief illness his society had supplied a doctor, and it provided a comfortable funeral. His widow was left with a small sum in hand to start her new life upon, and she increased it by at once p.a.w.ning the superfluous furniture and the books. She lost no time hanging about the old home. Within a week she had dried her eyes, washed out her handkerchiefs, made a hatchment of her little girl's frock with quarterings of c.r.a.pe, piled the few necessities of existence on a barrow and settled in a single room in the poorest street of the district.

It was not much of a place, and it cost her half a crown a week, but in six months she had come to think of it as a home. She had brushed the ceiling and walls, and scrubbed the boards, the children helping. She had added the touch of art with advertis.e.m.e.nts and picture almanacs. A bed for the three children stood in one corner--a big green iron bed, once her own. On the floor was laid a mattress for herself and the baby.

Round it she hung her shawl and petticoats as a screen over some lengths of cords. Right across the room ran a line for the family's bits of was.h.i.+ng. A tiny looking-gla.s.s threw mysterious rays on to the ceiling at night. On the whole, it really was not so bad, she thought, as she looked round the room one evening. Only unfortunately her capital had been slipping away s.h.i.+lling by s.h.i.+lling, and the first notice to quit had been served that day. She was what she called "upset" about it.

"Now, Alfred," she said to her eldest boy, "it's time I got to my work, and it won't do for you to start gettin' 'ungry again after yer teas. So you put yerself and Lizzie to bed, and I'll make a race of it with Hen and the baby."

"There now," she said when the race was over, "that's what's called a dead 'eat, and that's a way of winnin' as saves the expense of givin' a prize."

With complete disregard for the theorising of science, she then stuck the poker up in front of the bars to keep the fire bright.

"Now, Alfred," she said, "you mind out for baby cryin', and if she should 'appen to want for anythink, just give a call to Mrs. Thomas through the next door."

"Right you are," said Alfred, feeling as important as a 'bus conductor.

Mrs. Reeve hurried towards the City to her work. Office cleaning was the first thing that had offered itself, and she could arrange the hours so as to look after the children between whiles. Late at night and again early in the morning she was in the offices, and she earned a fraction over twopence an hour.

"You're not seemin' exackly saloobrious to-night, my dear," said the old woman who had lately come to the same staircase, as they began to scour the stone with whitening. "I do 'ope 'e ain't been layin' 'is 'and on yer."

"My 'usband didn't 'appen to be one of them sort, thankin' yer kindly,"

said Mrs. Reeve.

"Oh, a widder, and beggin' yer pardon. And you'll 'ave children, of course?"