Part 10

I think that the men and women who have paid their vows to peace, those who, while realising that the present war must go on to the end, will make any sacrifice to deprive it of a successor, may find in the picture play, carefully conditioned to the needs of our fateful times, the fulcrum that will enable them to move the world. I can see it passing from the domain of the theatre to the lecture hall. I can see the best features of the enterprise enlarged and developed until at last the benefits of travel and a knowledge of history are put before those who under normal conditions--or rather the conditions that the Moloch of commercialism has made normal--would never be able to enjoy either. I hold and shall always hold, that the ultimate power of directing their lives is in the hands of the people, it is not rightly in the gift of Kings or Kaisers, diplomats, statesmen, or soldiers. The sunrise of peace waits upon the dawn of knowledge, of knowledge that can be acquired by men, women and grown-up children of the working classes, the classes that accomplish all that is worth accomplishing, and pay the fullest penalty of the greed and vanity of those who live upon their labours. But, as I have so often insisted, the workers are inarticulate, particularly in the southern counties and round the metropolis of England; they do not breathe the fresh air of the north, and it is notorious that London ruins the breed of the workers. The greater the city, the greater the unemployment, the keener the competition, the readier the acceptance of conditions that make men the slaves instead of the masters of their task, the smaller the leisure to think or to study the curious and manifold complexities of existing conditions. Only by making that study easy and by giving it the form of relaxation, by stimulating the tired brain, can the worker be roused. It is a matter of fact rather than of conjecture, that the picture "palace" is beginning to claim his scanty leisure, and his tiny surplus over the paramount demands of a minimum of food and clothing. Democratic in its essence and secure in its appeal, it seems to me that the picture theatre can be developed to the most instructive and useful ends. It can teach the working man the history of his own career and long struggle towards fairer conditions of life and labour, it can show the world's workers all aiming to reach the same legitimate goal and it can enforce the lesson that a unity of ideals, and a stern rejection of the counsels of those who would make mankind his enemies rather than his friends will make war impossible. It may be that in America, that great melting-pot, as Mr. Zangwill calls it, of all jarring nationalities, the lesson is more obvious and more quickly mastered, but there is a work well-nigh as great to be done in England, where if the mixing of the nationalities is less noticeable, the need for knowledge is still greater. The States, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice, entirely self-supporting, and utterly unchallenged by any Power within striking distance, may well laugh in the face of those who would impose upon them the extravagant horrors of militarism.

We shall have to face militarism over here; it has had its advocates for many years, and--why deny it?--their position will be immensely strengthened by the war. We know by now that our rulers cannot save us, that if we would be saved it must be by ourselves, and we know too that salvation will be born of knowledge and of knowledge alone. I regard the picture theatre as the finest medium for the spread of knowledge now before the public, and I am confident that if the great engineers of enterprise will devote their energies to the sane peace propaganda that consists in showing not only the history but the aims of the great majority of civilised people, the lesson will travel far and sink deep. "The Birth of a Nation" reveals the infinite capacity of the master film makers, their resource and resources, the measure of skill they can command. It also shows by reason of its success the immense public interest, the desire to learn, and to make use of knowledge. It is not often that a venture avowedly commercial in its aims can perform a world-wide service, and I am optimistic enough to believe that those in charge of such a work as that which is responsible for my own conversion and enthusiasm will be quick to see that in serving themselves they can serve humanity.

XVII

TRUTH WILL OUT

It seems only a few years since Truth, if not precisely popular, enjoyed a certain reputation, a little definite vogue. To tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth was not only a nominal obligation in the courts of law, but a tradition among a certain class, small but not negligible, of English men and women. Truth was found in all sorts of places, you met it sometimes in Parliament, generally on the back benches, now and again it was seen or suspected in the Press; it frequented the Pulpit, and was not unknown upon the public platform if the gathering was not one of the political rallies that it resolutely ignored. To be sure when intended for the appreciation or admiration of sensitive folk, it was always dressed up in garments that hid a part of its native ugliness, and over the hard, unrelenting features a certain veil, enforcing a decent obscurity, was scrupulously drawn. The higher Truth climbed in the social scale, the more the trappings, the thicker the veil, while on the lowest rungs of the social ladder there were none to supply dress or wrappings, and Truth stood revealed in such an ugly guise that only the strong minded dared to look. When they told what they had seen, all those who lived on any of the rungs above them deplored at the top of their voices the indecency of the revelation and devised thicker veils and heavier drapery. And yet for all men and all women, according to their capacity for looking courageously before them, Truth existed. Among most of those who live in comfort there was a tradition that Truth had borrowed the head of Medusa the Gorgon lady who incontinently turned to stone all those who looked upon her, and was ultimately tricked out of life and activity by Perseus; on the other hand, the people of the underworld, the world that does the rough work, had looked upon Truth and found the cold implacable eyes had in them more of stimulus than death. They even went so far as to hope that in times yet to come the robing and veiling of Truth would be regarded as an offence and the duty of looking Truth straight in the face, would be obligatory upon kings, statesmen, clergymen, county and district councillors, journalists and lawyers alike. Against the gross indelicacy of this democratic suggestion there was not unnaturally a revolt, as many of those people just mentioned had every reason to fear that such a decision would rob them of occupations that, if not actually profitable to their fellow-men, were at least sometimes dignified and very often lucrative.

Then came War, and the people of all combatant countries formed amid and despite their bitter antagonisms an unwritten, unsigned compact to the effect that whatever the divergence of their aims and policies, they would at least conduct one part of their campaign in common, against a common foe. Agreements having lost their validity, it was impossible to reduce this one to writing, and they knew, too, that actions speak louder than words. So with unanimity that forgot all causes of dispute, the fighting powers found time and means and occasion in the midst of their awful traffic to wage war against Truth. In this country the naked Truth may no longer find a resting place, if the well in which Truth is said to dwell could be located it would incontinently be filled up and no material would be regarded as too poisonous for the purpose. As the well cannot be located, the Defence of the Realm Act has, in these islands instituted sumptuary laws so strict that Truth is now robed, veiled, and manacled past recognition. The delight of those who have suffered from the constant fear of the apparition, who have found their enjoyment of the feast of life constantly menaced by the report that Truth was in the neighbourhood, is unbounded. It is admitted by every government that Truth is one of the greatest obstacles to the proper progress of universal destruction and all Governments have substituted in the interests of public digestion Fiction, a far more popular creation and more palatable too. They call it by the title of Official Report. If one Report contradicts and is contradicted by all the others, you can at least pay your money and take your choice and the task of selection is eased by the certain knowledge that Truth is not admitted to any.

In the Parliaments of the world responsible speakers have but to declare that the irresponsible ones are endeavouring to bring back Truth to the high assembly, and every one of Fiction's countless adherents will rise in his place to protest. In the pulpit, to which Truth still seeks admittance, the veil has become a mask, and the garments have a double thickness, but in the Courts of whatever kind and in Fleet Street it has been found that the precautions in vogue before the war are sufficiently adequate.

To any mortal such persecution had been fatal, but Truth is immortal and persists. Not even the Jews whose sufferings are eternal, or the Belgians, Poles, Armenians, Servians, and others whose persecution though intolerable is temporary, strive to recover their vanished freedom as resolutely as Truth. The harder you use it, the greater its persistence. Drive it out at the door it returns by the window, an indefatigable, untiring immortal, seemingly unconscious of the loss of popularity, convinced that it has a place in the great scheme of things. It whispers to kings on their thrones, and to chancellors in their studies, to statesmen on Government and opposition benches, to clergymen in their pulpits, lawyers in their consulting rooms; passing by janitor, secretary, and a sub-editorial array, it even invades the editor's desk, persistent though ignored. Trampled upon, cast aside, ignored, eviscerated, turned inside out, confuted, obscured, denied, perverted, misunderstood and damned, it still labours, powerful as in the days when old Thomas Carlyle watched its progress through the world and hailed it alone immortal. With a striking disregard of the laws of emergency and confusion, it declines to be regarded as an enemy alien. With an utter contempt for a Fiction entrenched behind all the barbed wires of popularity, it whispers the most disconcerting statements to those who hoped or believed that it was dead. None can say what form the instructions, warnings, and admonitions take, but all may guess them, and the temptation so to do is ever present.

I think that the one outstanding fact upon which Truth insists is that until it is allowed to prevail there can be no peace in the world, that even victories must be unavailing while the hard-won lessons they bring are taught in terms of fiction. Truth tells us that the fog of war is hardly more horrible than the fog of falsehood; product of a poison gas that is manufactured by every country alike. To the Prussians who are in our midst striving to fasten upon us the fetters fashioned by our enemies for the control of all liberty, comes the secret warning that such fetters will not fit the Anglo-Saxon people, that the rivets will not hold, that they will be torn asunder and even used as weapons against all forgers. Truth will tell those who seek to effect economies at the expense of education that only sound training and diligent application to every form of activity can enable us to hold our own against Germany, whether the defeat of that country be whole or partial. Truth says the will of the people is being forged as of wrought iron upon the fields of war, and that the days of privilege are numbered. Truth whispers that the burdens imposed upon those yet unborn, not only in Great Britain, but in every belligerent country can only be met if they are shared by one and all, not with any sense of precedence or class distinction but in a brotherhood that embraces all who labour whether with hand or brain to the common end. Truth will whisper to those who shrink before strong, whole-hearted and courageous methods necessary to bring all classes into line that the needs of the time are paramount and that those who will not steer the ship of State to a safe harbour because of the adverse winds and storming waves that lie ahead, must yield to other pilots cast in sterner mould. It will point out that the old days of political trifling and dalliance are numbered, that right and wrong, bravery and cowardice, energy and inaction, whatever their future, can no longer be weighed in the unjust balances of the party system. Truth will say that our empire needs the best service, not only of every man, but of every woman, and in consequence, that both must be rendered fit to serve and allowed to express themselves to the State's best advantage without reference to pedigree or sex. It will declare that an England in which the labours of six men out of seven are valued at three pounds a week or under, cannot endure for the simple reason that under the present social system, hundreds of thousands of really capable people who could deserve well of their country are doomed by poverty to ineffectiveness. Truth will say bluntly that the future demands statesmen rather than politicians, men in their prime rather than men in their decline. It will whisper of the vigorous democracies that the genius of empire has brought into being, the democracies that have striven so nobly to save the empire and must--not for reasons of sentiment alone--play their part in administering it. There will not be wanting the reminder that the season in which crises, military, social, political, can be smothered in platitudes is past, not in our time to return.

If Truth were to proclaim these facts duly pointed and applied, together with many another of like weight and significance from the house-tops, the Defence of the Realm Act would intervene promptly, strongly and passionately on behalf of Fiction; but the Act has limitations. The Still Small Voice evades the Act every time, it speaks less from the lips than to the hearts of men. There is no humbug so highly placed as to be able to shut it out, there is no man or woman so befogged or bewildered by the horror of the hour that he cannot hear the silences made audible. For Truth is not cast out of life, it is but despised and rejected by the world's rulers and even they cannot shut out the voice that whispers through all their waking hours, for while many men can deceive others, few, if any, are permitted entirely to deceive themselves in times like these. So many soft conventions have fallen by the way, so many of life's excuses and subterfuges have fallen into everlasting nothingness. Before the horror-stricken eyes of authority the world over, Truth, muzzled, bedraped, masked, and shrouded appears again like the skeleton at the feast, like the grinning skull that accompanied the Roman Emperors on their Triumphs to remind them that they too were mortal. Slowly yet with deliberation Truth is beginning to shed the coverings that officialdom had heaped in such designed profusion. The day is not far distant when the fetters will fall from the limbs, the shroud from the dread face, and in that hour not all the Acts and Proscriptions will avail to frame a covering. Europe, bleeding, sore, wounded, poverty-stricken, shattered beyond recognition, will see Truth face to face. And then----?

XVIII

THE CLAIM OF ALL THE CHILDREN

I have been trying to look through the clouds of war to what lies behind. Quite resolutely I have closed my ears to certain empty cries about the commercial conquest of Germany, about the coming of Protection, about all the panaceas of political and other quacks. Most of us who take the trouble to think can trace these cries to their source. I have endeavoured to look to the time when this old country of ours will be faced by a new set of conditions, by forces yet incalculable that war has brought into being. People have talked and written glibly about changes of heart, of the fraternising of capital and labour, of sin and crime and disease exorcised by some supreme spirit of good will, but I have my doubts. "Cœlum non animum mutant," wrote Horace, two thousand years ago.

Men have always made good resolutions in times of stress; they range from the nation's ideals voiced by its spokesmen down to the promise of candles for the shrine of some saint. The mind can follow the road that connects our English House of Commons or the Russian home of the Duma with the church of Notre Dame de la Garde whereto the men who traffic in the mighty waters of the Gulf of Lyons pay with knick-knacks for their real or imaginary protection. I have no faith in the power of good intentions to act automatically. When this war is over and we are faced with a victory, an indecisive result, or a defeat, the tendency of our insularity will be to interfere as little as may be with pre-existing conditions. Men who serve in high places will be overwrought; you do not carry a part of the burden of the British Empire upon your shoulders without a maximum of strain. The tendency will, I fear, be to declare that the evil of the day is sufficient, that the nation must be kept secure from new ideas. There will be few to make excursion in search of trouble. Yet there can be very few students of social progress who will not admit that the only way in which we can make good the losses of war, is by turning to the best possible account the assets left to us at its conclusion. And the supreme asset of a State is its children.

Let us leave aside for the moment all the other burning social questions of the time. They are not the less poignant because a great patriotic impulse has kept so much suffering silent. The question of the future of our great Empire is one that must be decided in a large measure by those who are children to-day. We have to ask ourselves what we are doing to prepare them for their labours, and how far such preparation can bear comparison with that made by the nations which will be our competitors. We are the trustees of the British Empire, Unlimited. What manner of estate are we going to bequeath to our children?

Down to the summer of 1914, we had every means of doing well for the generation that must grasp the reins when at Time's bidding we relinquish them. That we had misused those means goes without saying. As far as education goes it was said years ago of our richest schools that a vast sum of money was expended on education, and that a beggarly account of empty brains was the result. That indictment holds good to-day. The education of the children of the wealthy is both costly and ineffective. Much that is taught bears no relation to the needs of twentieth-century life. Middle class education is better without being good, while the State education that, as far as the poor is concerned, is both obligatory and free, is worth what it costs. Secondary Education is pursued if at all under conditions of the greatest difficulty. Boys and girls too under our present evil economic conditions are turned into wage-earners at the earliest possible moment. County Council classes, often capably conducted and well within the reach of the great majority, cannot find adequate support for many reasons. One is that the primary education of the poor does not encourage the habit of study. The ill-fed children of the slums look upon school as a necessary evil, redeemed to a small extent by the gift of free meals, over which, we, the richest nation of the earth, haggled so long. When the children of the poor have reached the standard or the age that sets them free, the struggle for life begins and finds them too jaded at the end of the normal day's work to seek fresh instruction, even if they have an inclination or ambition to improve their minds. Untrained, undisciplined, condemned in many instances to blind-alley employment, what better is to be expected? Again we are face to face with the demand for cheap labour, the labour that enriches the employer and even gives an illusory benefit to the State. Save in the direction of making laws, most of them foolish, and raising money, much of it ill spent, the State follows a policy of _laissez faire_. The effort to make primary education compulsory has seemingly left it without the energy to see that it should also be sound and effective. The latter-day squabbles between Church and State in the schoolroom have always been regarded as more interesting than education itself. Legislators by the score have shown in Parliament that the question of feeding hungry children so that they may be physically fit to learn, is the only side of education over which they are prepared to spend any thought, and that in order to oppose action. So these things were down to the time when England went to war, so they will be after England returns to peace unless the great body of public opinion in the country will realise that no victory can be enduring if countries anxious to compete with us in the future give a genuine education to their children while we remain content with a spurious one for ours. The issue cannot be evaded; the responsibility cannot be shirked. French education, German, Dutch, Danish, and Swiss are better than ours. They take into account the needs of the times. They are not founded upon old and obsolete prejudices. The technical side of educational needs is fairly and fully met. The State equipment is better. The teachers know that there are people in the world who do not speak English, and that several European languages not only have a claim to consideration, but must be taught by competent masters; that is to say, by men and women with a liberal education born in the land whose language they teach. Travelling scholarships should be the first reward of those who excel at school. The incentive would be immense, and the contribution to the forces of peace immeasurable.

Even our cousins across the Atlantic, who have made their educational system a living thing, have failed to teach us. Andrew Carnegie, remembering the land of his birth, has liberally endowed Scottish University Education with the gold of Pittsburg. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other American colleges are an example to the world, in Canada the lesson has been learned, in Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere, and will soon be fully applied. But here in England those who cannot go to Oxford or Cambridge will find that, for the most part, they must be external students in pursuit of the higher education, with little of the joyous intercourse that kindles ambitions and ideals. We look a little askance at education. For the man in the street the really great representatives of Cam and Isis are those who can row from Putney to Mortlake in the early spring, and those who can shine at the cricket ground in Marylebone about midsummer. Scholarship is something in the nature of a harmless eccentricity, calling less for rebuke than for derision. For this view-point our hopeless system of primary education is responsible. To be effective in this country education must be revised to meet the times we live in, made popular and finally democratised. As I write we are waging war at the price of some four or five million pounds a day. We must wage peace with as fine a disregard for inevitable expenditure. The cost of one week's war will maintain an entirely different system of national education for a year. I would like to deal in brief broad outline with what might be attempted.