Part 11

The walls of the churches are growing busy with beauty. The fear of idol worship is no more. Men know now, being better instructed, that it was not the wooden effigy _but the soul it put into a shape_, that was worshipped. It was a symbol, sometimes an ugly one, but still a symbol of Divine Power. The crafts are symbols of industry, of faithfulness to an ideal that only the best work counts for good, hence underlying their technical merit is a great truth that the people are understanding, and of which they are conscious, so they have pride in the ethic as well as æsthetic quality of what they are doing; but in no spirit of priggism or sermonising is this, just simply it is a pleasurable sensation added to the fulfilment of duty. For what a man does unwillingly will be bad, what he does pleasurably will be good and impressive.

Many of the pictures are strange, some would call them childish. Perhaps they are _childlike_ because they express intensity without rhetoric. To affect to be what one is not is humbug. Every “primitive” did his best. He tried hard to make his pictures look like nature. His hand was not so cultivated as his imagination. The image he formed in his mind was more complete than his power to portray it. Looking at works of art by “a primitive,” if we have the discriminating sensibility, we see what he saw and follow his mental effort, which compensates for technical shortcomings. To _affect_ childishness is to prove imbecility. What we like in the new world pictures is their real _naïvete_. That the authors of them are untaught is obvious, but there is that in them which compensates. They are done by men who believe in what they are doing and are feeling it with intensity. An academic critic can find plenty to criticise, but nothing to laugh at. The simplicity evinced comes from the fact that their authors ARE _primitive_. I heard said they are mostly by peasants, who, like the noblest of French artists, J. François Millet, saw _simply_. Even when the subjects are biblical or so-called “religious,” the artist has used modern costume, which, seeing in an abstract, not photographic, manner, he has invested with poetical interest. A return to agricultural life is everywhere evident. It is producing, or reinstating, a healthy mental temperament which industrialism was well-nigh killing. This natural aptitude to create in art and to do so sincerely is not only prominent among the people, whose chief labour is agricultural, it is shown in the design of “industrials” also, who, not wholly emancipated by the artificiality of their labour earning hours, “let themselves go” in their leisure time and show by what they produce that even their straightforward simplicity has not been killed by the monotony of their wage-earning hours. They are not machines in their off hours, but human beings who have something to say for themselves which may be uncultured, but is a spontaneous expression of something they like to think of and enjoy making.

§ 36

Machinery can never be made to feel, the hand can do nothing worth having without “feeling.” A bit of craftsmanship, like a building, a statue, a picture, a song, or a tale, gives itself away at once. If the impulse was artificial or insincere, it is at once obvious that the man who made it was not an artist; he might be anything else, but not that. The exact quantity of pleasure taken in the creation of a work of art is visible at once, in that sense the maker of it exposes his soul. The revival of craftsmanship is evident everywhere in the new city. The best designers are the best workmen. We never hear it said, “Oh, yes, he can design, but cannot make.” The craftsman makes well what he has well designed. Being simple, he asks himself, “What is the object for? What is it intended to do when it is made?” Having made up his mind to solve that question, the first in good design, he proceeds to make it answer that purpose, and something good and interesting is the result. The artist has used his intelligence from first to last, so what he makes is something that has life in it, because it is a reflection of the life of its creator. As craftsmanship grows in estimation, machinery is delegated to do what it can do well, not ill. Furthermore, the extension of the demand for craftsmanship provides occupation which may be entirely thus occupied, or only in leisure hours, and leisure hours so occupied are educational, and not only that, they are productive, inasmuch as their authors sell their productions and so add to their earnings in a manner that is useful to them and beneficial to the community.

As with the churches, so with all public buildings, which are (by the way) not made to “pattern” in accordance with this or that “style”--Gothic, Classic, Renaissance, or what not. The art they exhibit rises out of the “plan.” They are not “faced” with a skin of stone or stucco to look what they are not. The outside does not conceal but expresses the “plan.” Construction is not hidden, but revealed. Ornament is not “stuck on,” it is a growth out of construction. To an eye artificially accustomed to “shams” the new buildings look austere. They seem to reflect a serious people who want to tell the truth. Should it be necessary to erect them in steel or iron, the metal is treated against the action of weather, but is not concealed. If it forms the skeleton, the skeleton is visible, and so all through the construction. Stone looks like stone, wood like wood, and metal like metal. This principle carried out does not make for monotony, but for the reverse. These serious and impressive public buildings are, as it were, the picture galleries of the city. Not executed in a hurry, the subjects of the wall paintings are well thought out by a select committee of learned men and artists. They are proceeding. As yet some are incomplete, but enough are finished to demonstrate the care taken in their subject matter, which is not only local, but embodies episodes of English history. While being pleasant to the eye, they tell pleasant and noble tales of the lives of our ancestors who made England great. Again here, as we noticed in the churches, there is much original simplicity, which does not ape archæology, or rather does not make that valuable science the first necessity. Looking at them one feels they could only have been done to-day. The impress of what is best in the modern mind is there, not artificial, but sincere and vital. Presently we shall leave the city to see what agriculture is doing.

§ 37

We have seen that the Fine Arts are not commercial incidents in the life here, they are part of the scheme of it. The Drama is also not only a source of pleasure or, of momentary emotion. It is held to be a prominent factor in education, whose mission it is to elevate intelligence, encourage noble ardour, stimulate heroism and provide beauty. Under the old system the Drama was too often used ill. The play played down to the people, often exciting the lower passions. To be made familiar with vice is, in a measure, to take part in it. To sow vice on the boards of the stage is to make it popular. The idea that vice is romantic is combated now. Vice is ugly, as virtue is lovely. Art has no business with ugliness except it be used as a contrast to beauty. To perpetuate ugliness by Art is like encouraging the durance of the plague. Higher intelligence verified by education should be employed to uplift, not depress, choice. Lower intelligence must be guided by the higher!

What is being done by Art in the churches, in public buildings, gives evidence that the people are regarding it as essential, not as a thing to be played with. Our city, not being large, is manageable. Being near the country, every citizen is in touch with country life. Indeed, there are few who do not labour on their own bit of garden in however small a way. Country life is not foreign to the artizan or to the factory worker. SQUALOR, that curse of big cities, the result of ignorant and debased people herding together, is unknown here. Poverty there is, of course, that must be everywhere, but it need not be debasing. So much that was degrading has gone. _Sloth_ is no more. What was useless is purged away, and what were positive scandals of misrule have been replaced by order, sobriety and uplifting. It is recognised that while a city must be a centre of commerce it need not be that of greed, and need not be divorced from country life. Hence the gardens provide for the people adequate means of employment in such matters; so that while the city is commercial, it is not out of touch with many forms of agriculture; and the blanched, hopeless faces in the past too prevalent, are replaced by bronzed faces and the open happy countenances of a contented industrious people.

What has been gained? Fraternity. A clean atmosphere and more sun, more leisure and more work, a broader outlook on the life of a city, expanded agriculture and education, greater variety of pleasures, a more _human_ as well as _humane_ ideal, and an equable government covering a great variety of interests, with absence of class legislation, death to profiteering, and education in honesty for tradesmen. What has been lost? Squalor, trade tyranny, jobbery, pollution of rivers, smoke, drunkenness, bloodless bodies and ill-nourished souls, and, above all, selfish class egoism. Government is carried on with less talk and more action. There is not less but more money in the country, which is more distributed. Agriculture pays sufficiently. The middleman having found his match, tradesmen can no longer extort from workers prices they cannot afford to pay. Politicians have not the opportunity of getting the country into a muddle and then muddling their way out of it by false promises to whichever class is for the moment uppermost. The people, better educated, are not easily led by windbags. They see that the whole nation counts before the individual, that a nation which, for temporary wealth, neglects to till the land to (as far as possible) produce, but purchases from foreign countries its food, is neglecting the first duty to the community. It has come to them to know that the success of agriculture is the first necessity to be secured. The people are being taught that a country which in an emergency cannot feed itself off its own land may be at the mercy of its enemy at any moment. The great war taught them that the weakest spot was not to be found in difficulty to make guns and shells and even an army in a hurry, but in providing them and the people at home with food. Empty bellies are bad generals! And so the people have turned to, and resolve that their country shall never again be exposed to the risk of a great _débâcle_, which was nearer than politicians desire them to know. While our cities are better organised, more healthfully disposed, they are smaller in area; hence congestion which produces squalor, is no more. A large proportion of what were useless folk, undisciplined, and a drag upon the State, as well as a shame to it, are performing the first duty of man, the tillage, the care of, and the provisioning of the land in all matters connected with agriculture. Agriculture being first now, industrialism second, the cities are released from over-population, and the countryside is adequately populated. Owing to the growth of an agricultural population, more small towns and villages are growing up all over England. Much of what was not a relative but positive scandal is no more. There is plenty of work for everybody who chooses to find it and take it. It is considered unmanly to live on doles.

Cities are not less but more successful commercial centres. But the influx is native, not foreign. England supplies herself out of the exertions of her people, for she is no longer buying necessities from foreign markets, but from her own. The country is the source of the wealth of the towns. The great war taught that in the future England must be self-providing. She must grow her own timber, her own fruit and corn, provide her own meat and, as far as possible, in case of another naval war, provide her own fish from inland sources as well as from the sea. Her fine rivers, her lakes, her ponds must be kept stocked with fresh water fish. To do this, the pollution of all inland waters is absolutely, not relatively, forbidden, not forbidden by an Act of Parliament which is quite a negligible affair when made by lawyers who leave open a back door for the escape of a rich delinquent, who will pay a nominal fine over and over again if it suits his purpose to destroy valuable fish by the thousand. What does the payment of a nominal fine mean to a rich manufacturer? Nothing. The pollution of rivers as of the air has been stopped by the people, who very rightly say, “We will not be deprived of the food provided for us by our rivers, and we will not be deprived of a grain of corn unnourished by the sun, or a blade of grass for the cattle poisoned by deleterious acids from factories.” “We have a right,” they say, “to pure water, to pure air, and all the benefits from life-giving rays of the sun essential in a country placed as England is in the centre of the sea, where clouds must always hide a considerable portion of sunlight.” The people are learning from science that light is essential to life, that darkness is a symbol of death.

§ 38

A few sentences back, arboriculture has been mentioned. Let us see how in the new England, it has become a factor in the wealth of the country, how, once almost wholly neglected, it has become an industry at once profitable, engaging and health-giving. It takes time to grow a forest. Time will come when coal gives out, of that there is no doubt, so the sooner we set to work to provide wood for burning as well as for building the better. It is clear, then, that England must provide wood. A war which would prevent influx of wood into England might happen at any moment. Millions a year are spent on a navy to protect commerce, but that navy may be rendered powerless by mine-sowing, by stealthy under-water craft which, with one torpedo, can sink the biggest ship ever constructed, or by a bomb from an aeroplane, become a wreck in a moment. If that be so, it is obvious that to neglect provision for such a fatality would be the height of folly, which even a party politician cannot fail to acknowledge. It is clear, then, that Britain must have wood, and wood of her own growing. I gather from my travels that this is at last being accomplished. Wherever, in the length and breadth of Britain, Forests can be planted and trees grown, the Communes see to it. Some counties lend themselves to the form of industry which forestry implies more than others. Certain trees suffer from situations where storms of wind prevail, some do not suffer. The fir tribe will flourish well in windy districts, but sand is necessary for their root nourishment. This is proved by the miles of fir forests grown on the flat lands between the Carrara Mountains and Leghorn, and on the damp but still sandy districts around Ravenna. Most trees, to flourish, need drainage, but some will flourish where there is none. So now, in Britain, forests are being planted wherever possible, so long as they do not interfere with open land necessary to the growth of corn.

To one of these forests I made my silent, unseen way, and it was a revelation. Thousands of hands were occupied. Forest life is primeval, it is dignified; it is a life by itself quite away from the distractions of city life; it breeds a hardy race. A self-contained life, it is pre-eminently health producing. The settlers live in wooden huts built by themselves in glades cleared for the purpose. In a measure the people are supported with food, for game is plentiful, and fish from lakes and ponds made for the purpose and constantly restocked are sufficient to supply nourishing food. Game laws are no more. There is no stoppage in production. Fresh stocks of game and fish are constantly coming in, and this is an industry by itself, which provides labour, ingenuity and expert technical knowledge.

The people have made their own “close time” in breeding seasons, and have learnt not to consume more than they can breed. I heard it said that mistakes were made at first, which experience rectified. Laws followed the dictation of necessity. Wages are low but sufficient, as the greater part of food is provided by nature. One law is obligatory. When a tree is cut down, another small one is immediately planted in its place, so there are no gaps and no waste. For this purpose there are nurseries managed by experts in the growing of young saplings from seed. This industry is a specialised one, needing great skill. It is pleasant to hear the merry sound of the axe, the music made by wind among the branches, and the sound of singing as the people work is a sign of their health and happiness. The huts built of wood are erected upon posts driven deep into the ground. Their habitable parts above the ground are reached by an open stairway. The ground floor, well concreted, is the receptacle for forestry implements.

The forest is warm in winter, cool in summer. Wood only is permitted as fuel; it would cost too much to get coal there; besides, the people would object to the smoke of that bituminous and blackening product. From what I hear said, colliery owners disliked the innovation; it would reduce their profits. They considered that they, and they only, held rights on fuel to provide warmth, but public opinion obliged them to stop their class prejudice in their own favour. Every block of buildings has its vegetable and fruit gardens for whose well-being, for light and air, spaces are cleared of trees.

§ 39

Never were seen healthier children or more honest countenanced people--the men at the labour, the women at their looms. The men are hunters, too. They employ the ancient bow and arrow, so the sweet silence is not spoiled by the irritating sound of firearms so closely connected with war and all its abominations. The skins of stags and roe deer form winter garments made at home, for there are no shops here. Every household provides its own needs. Here and there are artificial lakes where the people bathe and swim. After all, a primitive life is the natural one, to which we soon revert when the artificiality of life in cities is far distant.

There are millions of acres of these forests growing up in Britain now. There is a population growing thereon second to none in the country for healthy manhood and industrious, thrifty womanhood. Two generations of such a healthy state of things is enough to eliminate the supineness of so-called civilised life. I saw no complicated machinery. The axe and double-handed saw does well, if leisurely, all necessary work for a generation that is learning that speed is not essential to good workmanship or sustained trade! Light railways driven by electricity take the timber to its destination, but I noticed that few people travel in them. They have lost a restless spirit, being content with the interests provided by their environment. Learned in their craft and entertained by the practice of it, these foresters have little need for _books_, but I did hear that story-tellers visit them in winter time, and that they act plays among themselves, and well can I imagine the big log fires, the warm ale, the venison and fish suppers and the story-telling, delightful and simple, of these forest folk. I imagined that a new folklore was dawning and new poets might come out of this natural life. One thing we may be sure of. A new life will set in motion a new set of ideas; new, anyway, to modern minds, but ancient in their simplicity and growth under identical circumstances. I heard it said that this new life is productive of Romance, and is very satisfying to that part of the human that asks for it. There is a great deal left still in us which is closely allied to the instincts of our forefathers. The temptation to roam is less acute now. Romance, badly needed by all of us, is found in the new life. What a contrast this is to the impositions of ruthless industrialism, that Juggernaut, that tyrannical destroyer of agricultural life, that brutalising devastator of Beauty, that cold but systematised muck rake, which, while it pretended to give liberty, was making slaves, which, while it was providing a Health Minister, was destroying health, and while providing artificial wealth was destroying the soul of the people, because it was withdrawing them from simple and leading them to artificial pleasures, and so was breeding discontent. What is necessary for the future of England is industry less concentrated in cities, more extended over the whole country, and this industry of Forestry is one act in the new drama that is doing it.

The new life is recreating honesty and straight dealing. Once corrupt, Borough and County Councils are composed of honourable men, not of selfish _class legislators_. Jobbery, that fatal failing among tradesmen who formed the majority in the old system of municipal rule, is at a minimum, it was in a maximum. Unscrupulous agitators have been found out and given a dismissal. Trades unions, not in principle bad, only bad as far as they became decadent, played an artificial game, have been broken up by the people, who discovered before it was too late that a tyranny of the gravest character was being enacted and growing stealthily was ruining a class under the pretence of giving power to it. The great war proved that as a class tradesmen are untrustworthy; as individuals there is good in them, but the nature of their education being, “Get all you can, at whatever cost to your neighbour,” is a policy the reverse of a good one. As soon as these things were realised by the people they began to see straight. Blinkers were withdrawn from their eyes and they looked right and left for the cause of impending disaster. The people, led now by honesty and intelligence in place of crafty subterfuge, know that industry, not industrialism, is the key to happiness. By largely extended agriculture, the necessities, indeed, most of the luxuries of life, can be secured. More grass, more beasts, more cows, sheep and goats, more milk, more wool, more hides, more grain, more bread, more cheap and good houses for workmen and craftsmen. No smoke, more sun, hence a quicker ripening of grain and fruit. Hence finer energies, more vitality, and less discontent. The invasion of industrialism has been the creation of an enemy to light, to joy, to freedom. To turn a man into a machine is to contradict the first elements of his creation. To put him on a level with a screwdriver, a hammer, a grease-pot, is to lower him all round. Why does it lower him? Because it kills his individuality, blunts his ambition, and destroys his creative faculty. Hand labour is dignified, but a man reduced to the level of a machine is a cripple.