Part 11

Many Americans have such a militant consciousness of independence that they cannot endure the thought of having America’s destiny in any way influenced by hands across the sea. “What! do you mean to say that foreigners shall tell us what we may and may not do?” Now the truth is, that not only men in foreign nations have a vital influence on our present conduct and future acts, but that this is especially true of those foreigners who have been dead for centuries. The situation is humiliating. Bad enough to have an absentee ruler alive--how much more insupportable when he has ceased to exist!

Nothing is more foolish than to despise the past or to attempt to arrange the future without a sound knowledge of history. The difficulty with some radical reformers is that they are deficient in historical knowledge. They do not know that the experiment they have in mind has been tried so many times without success that some lesson might possibly be gained by observation of previous results. “Histories make men wise,” said Bacon; they make us wise, not merely because history books were written by wise men, but because history itself is the accumulation of human wisdom gleaned from human folly. To sneer at the past is to sneer at wisdom. For despite the glib way in which the word evolution is used, despite the advances made in personal luxuries, housing and locomotion, despite the broad (rather than deep) diffusion of culture by which reading and writing have become no more conspicuous than breathing--there is not one scintilla of evidence to prove that the individual mind has advanced a single step in the power of thought, or in the ability to reason, or in the possession of wisdom. The men of ancient times--as represented by their leaders--were in every respect as able-minded as the best products of the twentieth century.

Reflexion makes us realise the imponderable worth of traditions; we know they come only from years. Even if every man had his price, which is not true, there are things beyond all price. A boy who goes to Cambridge or Oxford has something in his education beyond the price he pays for his tuition, or the instruction he receives in lectures, or the advantages of modern laboratories. The grey walls of the cloisters, the noble old towers, the enchanting beauty of the quadrangle, represent not only the best in architecture, but they are hallowed by thousands of ghosts. Lowell coined the phrase, “God’s passionless reformers, influences.” These influences, silently but chronically active, like a deep-flowing river, give something that no recently founded institution can bring; something that makes the so-called almighty dollar look impotent. Any well-disposed multi-millionaire can start a well-equipped university; in time it, too, will have its traditions; but many centuries give a tone and a stamp that cannot be bought or sold.

A certain independent humour accompanies those who live in ancient surroundings--and this humour is frequently the Anglo-Saxon way of expressing pride. After dining in hall with the dons one evening in a college at Oxford, we adjourned successively to three rooms. I asked one of my hosts if that had always been the custom. “No, indeed,” said he, with a smile; “in fact, it is comparatively recent. We have been doing this only since the seventeenth century.” He spoke as though it were a rather startling innovation. A wealthy American was so pleased with the velvet turf of the Oxford quadrangles that he asked a janitor how such turf was produced; it appeared that he wished his front lawn at home to wear a similar aspect. The janitor replied that the matter was simple; all that was necessary was to wait a thousand years. Age sometimes really comes before beauty.

When the Englishman Thomas Hardy sat down in his house at Dorchester to write a poem, he knew that the ground in his garden was filled with the relics of Roman occupation--pottery, utensils and human bones. Twenty centuries were in his dooryard. No wonder there is dignity in his compositions when their roots go so deep.

Tennyson said:

That man’s the best cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.

I suppose he meant that the man who loved his own country was better fitted to love all countries and thus become a citizen of the world than one who, while professing to be swayed only by international sentiment, should have little affection for any country in particular. We are familiar with the type of man who is filled with enthusiasm for humanity, but who never helps an individual; love, like charity, should begin at home. It is a singular but happy human characteristic that we love so ardently the scenes of our childhood; even those brought up in a detestable climate will, when far away in golden sunlight, become homesick for the fog, the mist, and the rain. Many who have left home in early manhood will return thither in old age, as though drawn by invisible but irresistible bonds.

American traditions go back to Colonial days; and those days went back to the English country and English speech. We ought not to forget these traditions or be untrue to the best that is in Anglo-Saxon civilisation. Perhaps no one thing is more necessary to the welfare and peace of the world today than frank, hearty, sincere friendship and good will between Great Britain and the United States.

XLI

SPOOKS

There are intelligent and well-educated persons who believe in ghosts--I mean they believe in the actual reappearance on earth in visible form of certain individuals who have for some time been dead and buried. These are the genuine ghosts, not the creations of fear or fancy, but as the French call them, _revenants_, those who come back. Hamlet’s father was a true ghost, seen by a number of reliable witnesses; the bloody Banquo at the dinner table was the painting of Macbeth’s fear, actually not there at all.

The late William De Morgan was a devout believer in ghosts, was convinced that he had himself seen a sufficient number for purposes of verification, and hence did not scruple to introduce them into his novels.

I have not been so fortunate. I cannot even say as many do, “I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them.” I will not say that I do not believe in them, but I am not afraid of them. I never saw one. I have never seen or heard anything that could not be explained in some commonplace fashion. There are many who affirm that they have seen in broad daylight the face and figure of a friend, and as they have drawn nearer in order to converse, the appearance became a disappearance, without any rational explanation. The friend may be living, or he may have long since died. A great many persons are “seeing things,” and I rather envy them. Others have distinctly felt a touch on the shoulder, and on turning, no one was discoverable. I have always, alas, found the responsible party.

But though I have never seen spooks, I have had a few spooky experiences, of which I will mention two.

One night, with the exception of the maids on the top floor, I was alone in the house. I had not been well for many days, and felt particularly miserable when I went to bed. I had lain uneasily for some hours, and had finally lapsed into semi-consciousness. At half-past two I was startled by the loud ringing of the front door bell. Accoutred as I was, I descended, and opened the door. There was no one. For a few moments, like the man in Poe’s poem, I stood, deep into the darkness peering. But the darkness gave no token, and wonderingly I shut the door. I had not got half-way up the stairs, when once again the doorbell rang with violence. It is easy enough to tell this lightly now, but then, alone in the house, and ill, it was worse than mysterious. I ran to the door, and flung it wide open. Not a soul in sight, the street silent and deserted. Then I thought it might after all not have been the doorbell, but the telephone. Accordingly I rang up Central, only to be informed that no one had called my number. While I was considering this, the doorbell once more reverberated through the empty house. Again I opened the door. No one.

I decided that some one with a deficient or perverted sense of humour was making me a victim. Accordingly I shut the front door, and crouched directly behind it, with the intention of leaping out and seizing the humorist as soon as he rang again. In a few moments the bell rang loudly; I jerked back the door and sprang outside. But there was absolutely no one, and there was no sound of retreating steps.

I stood outside the door, lost in amazement and fear, for I was terrified. I gazed wonderingly at the button, half-expecting to see some spirit-finger push it; when, to my utter dismay, the bell rang shriller and louder than ever.

If I had really believed in ghosts, that would have been sufficient evidence. As it is, I shall never forget my distress while the bell continued ringing and I was looking directly at the only means of making it ring. I closed the door, and had a bad night.

In the morning I consulted a specialist, not on nerves, but on doorbells. The explanation was simple. A mouse was enjoying the flavour of the paraffin in which the wires in the cellar were wrapped, and every time he gave a particularly fervent bite, the bell rang. I hope it scared him as much as it did me, but if so, his hunger triumphed over his fear, for he kept returning to the feast.

On another occasion I was out shooting in a desolate place in Michigan. I was accompanied by my friend, A. K. Merritt, now Registrar of Yale College, who will vouch for the truth of the story. Dusk was falling; there was no wind. We had wandered into a scene of stagnant desolation. Dead trees had fallen in rotten ruin across the trail, and the swampy pools were covered with a green mantle of decay. Merritt was walking in front and I close behind him. The gloom and depression of the scene in the deepening dusk had affected our spirits, so that we had not spoken for some time. Suddenly I thought of the scenery of Browning’s poem, _Childe Roland_. The lines of that masterpiece of horror would well describe this place, I thought; and I began to repeat them in my mind without saying a word aloud. Then methought there was only one thing needed to make the picture complete. That was the horrible horse, which in the poem stood alone and sinister in the gathering night. If that horse were here, I said to myself, this would indeed be the veritable country of Childe Roland. Something impelled me to look behind my back, and, to my unutterable surprise and horror, I found myself looking directly into the eyes of a forlorn old horse. I let out a yell of sheer uncontrollable terror.

Merritt was as startled by the yell as I had been by its cause. I asked him if the horse was really there. It was bad to have him there, but worse if he were not. Merritt reassured me on that point.

I suppose the poor old horse had been pensioned off by some farmer, and had silently followed us on the spongy ground, either because he was lonesome or because he wanted salt. But he gave me the shock of my life.

I have thought much about it since, and I am unable to determine whether the appearance of the horse at the precise moment when I was thinking of him was a coincidence--or was I all the time subconsciously aware of his presence? That is to say, did the nearness of the horse, even though I had no conscious knowledge of it, suggest to my subconscious mind the lines from the poem? I wish I knew.

XLII

TRIAL BY JURY

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, we were fortunate in having as one of our professors Edward John Phelps, who was unexpectedly appointed minister to England by Grover Cleveland, and who, after making a fine impression at the Court of _St. James_--do you know why it is called that?--returned to his professorship. He was fond of making general statements, not only concerned with his specialty, the law, but on anything that rose to the surface of his mind; so that to take his course was in itself a liberal education.

I well remember his beginning one lecture by saying emphatically, “Trial by jury is a good thing which has outlived its usefulness.”

I believe that when he made that statement, he spoke the truth. If it was true then, it is certainly true now; nothing has happened since to improve the situation, or to make jury trials fairer or less expensive to the state. In America, we have two pieces of obsolete machinery--the electoral college and trial by jury. When I began university teaching, one of my freshman pupils made the only interesting contribution to the workings of the electoral college that I have ever seen. I gave out as a theme subject, “The Electoral College,” and the first theme handed in opened with this sentence--“I do not believe in the Electoral College.” Well, neither did I, so thus far I agreed with my pupil; I read the next sentence to get his reasons; it was the next sentence that contained the original contribution to the subject, “The trouble is,” wrote the freshman, “that in the Electoral College everybody chooses snap courses.”

Now the original idea on which the scheme of trial by jury was founded was as good as human ingenuity could devise. Any person accused of anything involving legal punishment was to be tried by a jury of his peers--twelve average, common-sensible, fair-minded men, who, after hearing all the evidence and the pleas of the lawyers, would bring in a verdict, which presumably would be in accordance with the facts, and therefore just. But in the course of time, although human nature has not changed, circumstances have, and it is difficult to avoid today the conclusion that the chief qualification for a member of a jury is that he should not be fit to serve. Unfitness is the only fitness. Anyone who has an opinion is barred; in order therefore for one to be eligible he must be one who knows little of the world in which he lives and who is curiously insensitive to what everybody is talking about. In a recent editorial in the _New Haven Journal-Courier_, the point is well made.

An intelligent man even with prejudice would appear to be a better person to entrust the decision of life or death with, after the presentation of the evidence and the interpretation of it by counsel and the judge’s charge, than an ignorant person who knows too little of current life to form any opinions whatever upon any subject.

Furthermore, it frequently happens that after a trial lasting for months the jury disagree, making another trial necessary, and involving an enormous waste of public money. There ought to be some better way of reaching a decision.

Then the very fact that the members of a jury are apt to be below rather than above the average person in intelligence, makes them particularly susceptible to emotional response when skilfully handled by a clever criminal lawyer. Only a short time ago a jealous woman deliberately murdered her husband and the woman she suspected, although neither then nor at any time were they caught in a compromising situation; at the trial the evidence certainly looked black because it was all against the murderess. She was, however, an attractive physical specimen. Her lawyer stood her up in front of the jury, put his arm around her, and defiantly asked the jury if they were going to put to death this beautiful woman whose only offence was that she was a defender of the ideals of the home, American ideals. Should she, who stood so nobly and resolutely for family purity, be slaughtered? The jury acquitted her.

Furthermore, jury verdicts, instead of being in accordance with the evidence and with the law, are often determined by local sentiment. I remember two events in America at the same time, only in widely separated parts of our country. In the first instance, a husband who had for some time suspected his wife, happened to stumble upon the unmistakable proof of guilt; in a transport of rage, he killed his man. He was convicted of murder in the first degree, but the death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. He is in prison now. In the second instance, a husband hearing that his wife had gone to a hotel with another man, deliberately armed himself, went thither and killed both. The local jury instantly acquitted him, and he was a popular hero.

I do not believe in capital punishment, and should like to see it abolished. But its sole merit, acting as a deterrent to crime, can be realised only in a country like England, where trials are conducted with absolute formality, where a decision is speedily reached, and where the verdict of guilty is speedily followed by execution. In the United States the murderer is too often a romantic hero, and has a long career as a great actor, whether or not he is convicted.

It seems to me that the best judges of any case are those who by education and training are best qualified to judge. It is significant that in Connecticut the prisoner may now choose to be tried by three professional judges rather than by twelve incompetent men. In a recent famous instance the prisoner did make that choice.

Too often a public trial by jury becomes a public scandal; of greater harm to the community and to the state than the crime of which the prisoner is accused.

Mark Twain said: “We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.”

XLIII

ATHLETICS

The whole world, with the exception of India, China, Siberia and a few other countries, has gone wild over athletics. Although new stadiums and amphitheatres are in process of construction everywhere, it is impossible to accommodate the crowds. Millions of people have apparently the money and the time to devote to these spectacular contests, and many more millions “listen in” on the radio. In England last June Wimbledon was not half large enough to hold the frantic crowd that wished to see the tennis matches; the same is true of France. At a recent wrestling contest in Austria, after all the seats were taken, the gates were broken down by the mob of spectators who wished to enter; about 150,000 people saw a prize fight in Chicago and it is significant of the times that the only vacant seats were the cheapest.

Every newspaper devotes an immense amount of space to sporting news; and all the leading daily journals employ a highly paid staff of experts on sports, who keep the public agog with excitement before every contest and who endeavour to satisfy its curiosity after the battle is over.

Now there are some pessimistic philosophers who look upon all this athletic fever as a sign of degeneration, as evidence of the coming eclipse of civilisation. They point out that during the decay of the Roman Empire there was a universal excitement over sports, and they draw the inference that European and American civilisation is headed toward disaster.

No one can read the future, although innumerable fakers are paid for doing so. But it is at least possible that the ever-growing interest in athletics, instead of being a sign of degeneration, is in reality one more proof of the gradual domination of the world by Anglo-Saxon language, customs and ideas.

Extreme interest in athletics, though it cannot be defended on strictly rational grounds, is not necessarily accompanied by a lack or loss of interest in intellectual matters. If one had to name the place and the time when civilisation reached its climax, one might well name Athens in the fifth century before Christ. If one compares Athenian public interest in the tragedies of Sophocles with New York public interest in musical comedy, the contrast is not flattering to American pride. Yet that intellectual fervour in Athens was accompanied by a tremendous interest in track athletics. Every Greek city was a separate state; their only bond of union was the track meet held every four years and called the Olympic Games, to which the flower of youth from every Greek town contributed; and the winner of each event--a simon-pure amateur, receiving as prize only a laurel wreath--was a hero for at least four years.

From the strictly rational point of view it is impossible to defend or even to explain the universal ardour over athletics, but it is best to regard it as a fact, and then see what its causes are.

The majority of Anglo-Saxons have always had sporting blood, and the Latin races are now being infused with it. I well remember a train journey near Chicago during the darkest days of the World War. We were all awaiting the newspapers. Suddenly a newsboy entered and we bought eagerly. The man sitting next to me was a clergyman in Episcopal uniform. He looked not at the front part of the paper, but turned feverishly to the sporting page, which he read carefully. When I called on the Very Reverend Dean of Rochester Cathedral, in England, Dean Hole, I was shown into a room containing several thousand books. I glanced over these and all I saw dealt exclusively with sport.

Many excellent men without sporting blood have protested against the domination of athletics. The famous English novelist, Wilkie Collins, published a novel, _Man and Wife_, which was a protest against the British love of sports, in which both athletes and the public were ridiculed. Why should thousands pay money to see two men run a race? What difference did it make to civilisation which man won?

Yet, although it is easy to overdo excitement about athletics, the growing interest in sport which has been so characteristic of France, Germany and Italy during the last ten years is a good thing for the youth of these countries and for their national and international temper.

Years ago, the space occupied in England and in America by fields devoted to various outdoor sports was in Germany and France used for public gardens, where people sat and drank liquor while listening to a band or watching some vaudeville. When I first travelled on the Continent, I found only one tennis court and that was at Baden-Baden. Today one finds everywhere in France and Germany tennis courts, golf links and football fields.

It is surely not a change for the worse that a German student who used to test his physical endurance by the number of quarts of beer he could drink at a sitting tests it today in tennis, rowing and football, and that the French students with silky beards, who used to strain their eyes looking at women, now, clean-shaven and alert, are looking at the tennis ball.

It is, of course, irrational to take an eager interest in a prize fight, but if you have sporting blood you cannot help it. My father was an orthodox Baptist minister. As I had never heard him mention prize fighting, I supposed he took no interest in it.

But the day after a famous battle, as I was reading aloud the newspaper to him, I simply read the headline, “Corbett Defeats Sullivan,” and was about to pass on to something important when my father leaned forward and said earnestly, “Read it by rounds.”

XLIV

A PRIVATE LIBRARY ALL YOUR OWN

A borrowed book is like a guest in the house; it must be treated with punctiliousness, with a certain considerate formality. You must see that it sustains no damage; it must not suffer while under your roof. You cannot leave it carelessly, you cannot mark it, you cannot turn down the pages, you cannot use it familiarly. And then, some day, although this is seldom done, you really ought to return it.