Part 6

(2) Insufficient feeding of children.

(3) Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life.

(4) Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.

(5) Consignment of paupers (that is, those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor—the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.

(6) Export of horses worn out in work. Export that, for a few pieces of blood-money, delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.

(7) Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies.

(8) Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life.

(9) Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by methods that can easily be improved.

(10) Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our women.

Such as these—shameful barbarities done to helpless creatures—we suffer amongst us year after year. They are admitted to be anathema; in favour of their abolition there would be found at any moment a round majority of unfettered parliamentary and general opinion. One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. It is pitiable that, for mere want of parliamentary time, we cannot get manifest sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body; pitiable that due machinery cannot be devised to deal with these and other barbarities to man and beast, concerning which, in the main, no real controversy exists; scandalous that their removal should be left to the mercy of the ballot, to private members’ Bills—for ever liable to be obstructed; or to the hampered and inadequate efforts of societies unsupported by legislation.

Rome, I know, was not built in a day. Parliament works hard, has worked harder during these last years than ever perhaps before; all honour to it for that! It is an august assembly of which I wish to speak with all respect. But it works without sense of proportion, or sense of humour. Over and over again it turns things already talked into their graves; over and over again listens to the same partizan bickerings, to arguments which everybody knows by heart. And all the time the fires of live misery that could, most of them, so easily be put out are raging, and the reek thereof is going up.

It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the senses of proportion and humour. But if the tale of hours spent on certain party measures be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on measures of health and humanity, the mockers will yet be mocked.

I am not one of those who believe we can do without party; but I do see and I do say that party business absorbs far too much of the time that our common sense and common humanity demands for the redress of crying shames. And if laymen see this with grief and anger, how much more poignant must be the feeling of members of Parliament themselves, to whom alone remedy has been entrusted!

II

THE NATURE OF LAWS (Written in 1914.)

Among comments on the foregoing letter there occurred again and again criticisms conveniently summed up in a sentence from an American journal: “It is not the part of Government to make men moral.”

One who is generally blamed for offering no practical remedies for the hard cases he provides is not quite so foolish as to think men are to be made into angels by law. Cut-and-dried formulæ are hardly his little gods; and he knows well that far more important than change and reform of laws and systems is improvement in the spirit of the men who administer them. For all that, it is fatal to think that public feeling can be divorced from law in the social organism. In effect these critics say:

“It is impossible to diminish cruelty and injustice by law; any attempt to do so will only divert the cruelty or injustice banned to another form of expression.” Very well! It is therefore demonstrably needless and even ridiculous to prohibit, by law, murder, rape, and the deliberate torture of children. The murderer, the ravisher, and the torturer should be allowed to vent their cruelty in these forms, for fear that if they are not so allowed they will vent it in other forms! That is the _reductio ad absurdum_ implicit in all such anarchistic doctrine; and how far it is really held by those who talk of the futility of passing laws against inhumanity one must leave to their own consciences. In any case, the doctrine takes no account of the real nature of laws. In a democratic society, such as ours, only public opinion, or, I would rather say, the true secret consensus of general thought, makes laws possible—I am speaking of laws against inhumanity. And laws so made are but constant reminders to every one that public opinion is against such and such a thing. Laws were made against murder and rape because public feeling against such acts became so strong that, until the laws were made, normal individuals did not rest till they had torn to pieces persons who acted in such abnormal ways. It was therefore considered more convenient that certain recognized professional persons should undertake the work of punishment. And so on through all the gamut of laws down to those against quite minor cruelties, which would not perhaps provoke individual retaliation, but which nevertheless would evoke pity and anger from a majority of those who with their own eyes saw them inflicted. Admitting that the state of public feeling toward a particular form of cruelty must always be more or less a matter of discretionary judgment for legislators, it is yet quite wrong to suppose that laws must wait until the majority of individuals in a community have openly declared a feeling of which perhaps, never having been tested personally, they are not conscious. When one urges the passing of laws to prohibit certain cruelties, one is only urging that the Legislature should give concrete expression to what it believes would be the general opinion of the country, if every man and woman therein could be taken apart—isolated, as juries are—and then actually put face to face with instances of these cruelties, so that they might judge them with the fresh and genuine feelings of unfettered men and women. One is, in fact, only urging the recording of a judgment which he believes to have been secretly delivered; asking that this secret judgment should be published in the form of law as a daily and forcible reminder that some things are “not done.”

“Still!” would say these critics who want to see no more laws made because men cannot be made humane by law, and who certainly should logically wish all our present laws removed by law (for this criticism is radical and not one of degree!). “Still!” they would say, “all you have done is to make A. and B. mechanically avoid, for example, caging wild song-birds, or docking horses’ tails; but the devil of natural man is so strong in A. and B. that they will instantly set to work to invent some other form of torture.” This is too cynical. Many of the cruelties that _can_ be prohibited by law—that is to say, those for whose prohibition the true and secret public feeling is ripe—are cruelties that come rather from lack of thought than from a natural savagery. And it is a very large order to say that, because you stop A. and B. from “not thinking” in a certain direction, their lack of thought must result in other cruelties. True, the reason for their “lack of thought” is often that they profit by it; but, even so, it does not follow that if one channel of thoughtless and pain-provoking profit be cut off, they must necessarily seek another. As a fact, many social cruelties (such as the sweating of women, foul housing, and the harmful kind of child labour) are but dubious sources of profit in the long run; and some cruelties practised on animals (such as the wearing of certain feathers, or the docking of horses’ tails) are but the outcome of “fashion.”

To put it another way. We feel there are certain things _our neighbours_ must not do—we even feel that we ourselves must not do them; and we pass laws to put it out of our own reach to yield to the temptation of profit or temper!

Take a person who is guiltless of thought or temptation in the matter, and show him first a number of wild song-birds in freedom, and then a bird fancier’s shop, with the same kinds of birds in their tiny cages, and ask him whether or no he thinks they ought to be kept like that. In nine cases out of ten he will say: “Poor little beggars! No.”

If then, the Legislature passes a law to penalize such caging, this law will be effective and will in time stop wild birds from being caged, because the secret feeling of the majority is really against such a practice.

But pass a law to penalize the moderate smacking of small naughty children, it will simply be disregarded, because nine out of ten people do not see any harm in either their neighbours or themselves moderately smacking their imps.

Spirit and body (that is, public feeling and the law) in the social organism are as inextricably conjoint as the spirit and body of a man—public feeling needing its proper clothing of laws, as our souls need due clothing by our bodies. And if men cannot be made kind by law, they can and are by law reminded that they must not, under temptation, do what, in cool and disinterested blood, they disapprove of their neighbours doing.

But there is another and perhaps more convincing answer to these critics. “You say it’s no good passing laws. If men are prevented from ill-treating one object, they’ll only ill-treat another.” So be it! Is that any reason for not trying to save the victims of such cruelty as we can actually see. Are we in fact to disregard the sufferer because his torturer may break out in a fresh direction. That would be as much as to say that a man watching another making his beasts go faster to market by jabbing them with a pitch-fork must pass by on the other side and do nothing to help the creatures, because if the prodder be prevented he may to-morrow cut off the tail of his horse to improve the poor brute’s value. No! Where you see cruelty, stop it! On that principle the individual and the State know where they are; the opposite is but that: “What’s the good of anyfink—why! noffink!” philosophy which, purged from all need for effort, in a world of facts, is so truly ethereal and pleasant to hold!

Some of these critics, no doubt, would carry the matter further. “We don’t think of the object,” they would say, “because the weak must go to the wall, cruelty being inherent in the struggle for existence.” Well! The sort of cruelties we have any chance of legislating against are certainly not necessary to the preservation of our existence; they are luxuries, excrescences, or that kind of short-cut which often takes one round the longer way. The struggle for sheer existence we cannot, of course, annul; it goes on, and always will. But in this age the human being is surely bound to say: “I am not only thankful that I am alive, but that all these other creatures are alive; I am not only thankful that I am without pain, but that none of these others are in pain either. I wish the world to be a decent place for them as well as for myself!”

And if these critics, returning to their mutton, say: “Quite so, sir, we desire that as much as you, perhaps more; we only tell you that you can’t make men feel like that by law!” the answer once more is: “Freely admitted! But if you do not concrete and record in laws such humane feelings as you secretly and truly have, if you do not keep the body of the social organism in time and tune with its soul, you are handicapping the growth of your humane feeling for want of signboards against temptation to profit at the expense of others; and you are passing by on the other side instead of going to the help of those you see being ill-treated.”

III

PASSING (From the _Westminster Gazette_, 1914.)

I was standing on the Bridge before dawn of the summer morning; heat-mist down on the water, and the bright face of Big Ben up there, disjoint, set as it were in sky—so dark it was.

I had been there some time, seeking what air there might be in the town, staring vaguely down the broadway of blackness between the misted lights of the river banks, thinking idle thoughts, dreaming perhaps a little, when suddenly I became conscious of something on the parapet. It seemed to be perching there, a thin, gray shape, without face or limbs; and, peering at it, I sidled along, till I found that I was getting no nearer! Startled, I said:

“What is that? Who is it?”

Only a faint sigh answered.

I called again: “Who are you?”

A soft voice replied: “Don’t be alarmed, sir, I am the Plumage Bill.”

Its shape had grown no clearer; but in sheer amazement I went on speaking as though it were a being.

“What are you doing out here? Why aren’t you in there?” And I pointed to Big Ben.

The voice answered again: “They have no time for me, sir. I am resting a moment before I pass.”

“But,” I said, “you ‘pass’ in there, not out here!”

I could have sworn I heard it laugh, much as a dying child will laugh if you show it a jumping toy: “Oh! no, sir! It is here we pass into nothing and the summer night.”

And, as it spoke, around me came the most extraordinary beating and vibration in the air, a kind of white-gray wonder of invisible wings wheeling and hovering. The whole of dark space seemed full of millions of these invisible wings, so that I stood utterly bewildered. Then from out of that noiseless swirl rose suddenly hundreds of thousands of tiny voices as of birds too young to fly, calling, crying, calling. And, flinging up my hands, I pressed them against the drums of my ears till I thought I should break them in; but still I heard the hundreds of thousands of shrill little voices crying, and crying. “Hush!” I called out: “For heaven’s sake, hush!” But on they went, feeble and shrill amid that invisible swirl of winged mothers trying to reach and feed them; then, just when I thought I could bear it no longer, the mist on the water curled over and broke like a wave, something sighed out “Farewell!” and the thin gray shape was no longer there.

All was still once more. The Bridge stretched empty. Big Ben glowed in the sky. I drew a long breath and turned to look down at the water. There, on the parapet, was that thin gray shape again!

“Not gone?” I cried.

A voice answered: “Sir, I have only just come. I am the Bill of the Worn-out Horses.”

“What!” I cried; “had they no time even for you?”

And, as I spoke, I heard the sound of thousands of hoofs, and saw, passing me slowly on the dark air, the gaunt shapes of horses. From side to side, up, down—horses dragging worn feet, halting, passing—their heads lower than their hoofs.

And I cried out: “For Christ’s sake, pass!”

The voice answered: “We pass, sir. Farewell!”

With a sound of plunging the water rose black through the mist to the level of the Bridge, fell again, and all was once more still.

“I’m haunted!” I thought; and crossed to the other side. There, again, before me on the parapet was a gray shape that said: “I am the Bill of the Slaughtered Beasts.”

And, on the instant, there came at me in the air, as though I were the centre of a wheel, a million spokes of beasts, great beasts and little, snorting, writhing, quivering, with a sound of the gurgling of blood. And in terror I cried: “Pass!”

The voice answered: “We pass, sir. Farewell.”

And the river ran by below, swollen to the height of a hill—all red.

I began to run, crying out: “Enough!”

But still there on the parapet before me was the thin gray shape, and its voice said: “I am the Bill of the Caged Wild Songbirds.”

And from the darkness above came the flutter of myriads of tiny hearts maddened with terror, and a sound such as no other man can have heard—of thousands on thousands of little wings struggling, beating, struggling against cage wires. That sound came slanting down to the water like a swallow dipping, and passed—invisible as wind.

On either parapet, before me, behind, were many, many thin gray shapes, like rows of penguins. They sighed and waved, moving this way and that, as though saying farewell, then one by one dived and passed into the dark water below. And the whole air was alive with the sobbing of men and women, of children, and the cries of pain and terror from beasts and birds. And just as I thought that I, too, would leap down into the water and escape, the dawn broke . . .

I rubbed my eyes. Nothing there, save the river running quiet and full, with a gray sheen on it; that bright clock joined once more to earth by its tower; and the sky flecked from pole to pole with tiny white clouds. A breeze fanned my face. Beside me on the Bridge a gentleman in top hat and black coat was stretching himself, and breathing deeply. I turned to him.

“Did you see them, sir?”

“See what?”

“The Bills.”

“What Bills?”

“The Bills of Suffering! There, on the parapet; thin gray things, passing into nothing and the summer night?”

He looked at me, and I saw he thought I was demented. Then, with a smile on his pleasant red face, he pointed to the Clock Tower, and said:

“Bills! I get enough of them in there!”

“Didn’t you even hear them?”

He answered coldly:

“My dear Sir, I am a matter-of-fact and hard-worked man, with no time to ‘see’ things; I have seen and heard nothing. I came out here for a breath of air after sitting there all night!” And pounding with his clenched fist at the air, he added:

“We have just had a glorious scrap!”

Understanding then that I must have dreamed, I begged his pardon and moved towards home, passing the Clock Tower.

IV

THE MODERN STOIC: AN ILL-NATURED DUOLOGUE. (From the _Outlook_, 1913.)

“Well, I can only say that to my mind it’s just another appeal to false emotion; pandering to the softness of our times. This mawkish humanitarianism is undermining our virility. I protest against all this agitation and rot about suffering.”

“Suffering of _others_ is what you mean, I believe?”

“How do you know they suffer?”

“Forgive me, but where there is all the _primâ facie_ evidence of suffering, it is surely ‘up’ to you to prove its non-existence. Now, if you yourself were to try these various experiences of animals which you tell us it is mawkish to concern ourselves about, then when you say they are nothing, we shall perhaps believe you.”

“Ah! Will you be good enough to suggest how I can do that?”

“Get yourself chained to your study chair—as a watchdog is to its kennel—for a year or so. You could then write convincingly on our morbidity for desiring to do away with your chain by law. ‘It is nothing,’ you would say; ‘no virile person——’ Or, better, cause yourself to be taken down a mine and kept there all your life working goodness knows how many hours a day, like one of those pit ponies, to gush about whose sufferings you told me was effeminate. The papers would be delighted to get a letter from your death-bed saying that it was all greatly exaggerated.”

“Your suggestions don’t excite me, so far.”

“Very well. Why not, in the interests of science, submit your body to some of the less exacting vivisections, in order that you may reinforce from personal experience your remarks about the squeamishness of cranks, and the efficacy of curare. For, think how much more valuable to us all experiments on the human _you_ would be! I won’t go so far as to suggest that you should be killed for food; for even under the comparatively slow present methods, which, in contempt of morbid sensibility I suppose you would uphold, you would not be in a condition (though you might possibly have time) to write a letter to the paper saying that your suffering was really nothing. No! I should rather advise you to have little bits cut off your ears—a pity you have not a tail!—but the effect can well be got by having your hands tied behind you on a hot day in a fly-infested field. We should then get from you a definite pronouncement that the sufferings of being nicked and docked are nothing, instead of the mere contemptuous silence with which you at present regard our mawkish attempts to stop these processes. Oh! there are lots of things you could experience, so that your letters to the Press might acquire that convincing quality which at present seems to me rather lacking.”

“Quite finished? You forget a little, don’t you, that a human being is not an animal; so that if I followed your charming suggestions I should still be no nearer knowing whether or no animals suffer, as you say they do.”

“Oh! there’s no necessity for you to restrict your experiences to those which you advocate for animals. I’ve noticed that you are always complaining of the morbid twaddle talked about the sufferings of criminals, the unhappily married, and the poor. It would very much increase our respect for your pronouncements if you would cause yourself to be confined in a space eight feet by twelve, in your own company, for twenty-three hours out of twenty-four, for those nine months, whose reduction not long ago, in the case of convicts, I remember you disapproved of. Or again, if you would marry a hopeless inebriate, or merely grow to hate your wife—a letter from you to some well-known journal to say that it was all really of no consequence would then be of incalculably greater value than it is at present. Or dare I hope that you might be induced to embrace the career of making match-boxes, or carding buttons, or sewing shirts or trousers for, say, twelve or fifteen hours a day, on a wage of seven shillings or so a week, in order that we might have the benefit of knowing that your strenuous remarks about the mawkishness of believing that the poor really suffer were inspired by a thorough and personal knowledge of the subject.”

“You’re unfortunate in your choice of sufferings. Those you mention are all necessary—society being what it is.”

“Oh! then you admit that they are sufferings?”

“To an extent—much exaggerated.”

“Very well! You have not yet, I perceive, grasped my points: First, what gives _you_ the right to say these sufferings are necessary to society, and to interfere with our attempts to reduce them so far as we can? Secondly, what makes _you_ an authority at all on the nature and degree of suffering?”

“I refuse to answer your first question, which I consider insolent. As to the second, which is also insolent, of what use is one’s imagination, if not to gauge the experiences of others without experiencing them oneself?”

“My dear sir, imagination is not, believe me, a mere capacity for failing to grasp what you have not yourself experienced. It is an active quality, and even when stretched to the utmost is a little liable to fall short of the poignancy of experience. Let me remind you of Poe’s tale about the man on whom the walls of a room gradually closed in. That tale, I am sure, made even you feel that his sufferings might not be _nil_—though I honestly believe it only roused you because it was so obviously romance. But do you think your imagination when you read the story really provided you with the intensity of the sensations of that man, especially at the moment when the walls were grinding his bones?”

“That was, as you say, romance. But you humanitarians are always magnifying and distorting into the dreadful what is very ordinary experience; your imaginations are your masters, not your servants. What you want is to be familiarized with the ordinary sights of Nature, and the look of blood; we shouldn’t then have all this namby-pambyism to put up with.”