Part 11
Only there is no poet among us worthy of the name to “sing the memory” of Jack Cornwell, thanks to the swarm of atheists, pessimists, decadents, and anti-idealists who have been encouraged to darken and disgrace the literary annals of Great Britain. “Casabianca” was a boy about thirteen years of age, son to the Admiral of the _Orient_, who remained at his post in the Battle of the Nile after the ship had taken fire and all the guns had been abandoned, and perished in the explosion of the vessel when the flames had reached the powder. All who have read the enthralling pages of our sea-history will remember that the _Orient_ was the French Admiral’s ship, carrying a hundred and twenty guns, and that he himself died on her quarter-deck, his little son remaining at the post where his father had placed him, all unconscious of his father’s end. “Soon after nine o’clock,” says the historian, “the _Orient_ appeared in flames, which spread with astonishing rapidity, and by their prodigious light the situation of the hostile fleets could be seen at a distance of fifteen miles. The _Orient’s_ crew, however, continued to fire from her lower-deck to the very last, and at about ten o’clock she blew up with an explosion which was felt by every vessel to the bottom of its keel. To this succeeded a silence not less awful,--the sanguinary conflict ceased on both sides,--and the first sound that broke that portentous stillness was the splash of shattered masts and yards falling into the sea.”
So “Casabianca” perished gallantly--but not more gallantly than Jack Cornwell. Both boys, the one French, the other English, were made of the same heroic stuff that gives worth and honour to the nations that breed it.
Very quaint and poetic it is to read at this time of day, the picturesque record of William Camden, Clarencieux King-at-Arms to Queen Elizabeth, concerning the entrance of the Spanish Armada into English waters:--
“The next day the English discovered the Spanish Fleet with lofty Turrets, like Castles, in front like a Half-Moon, the wings thereof spreading out about the length of seven miles, sailing very slowly, though with full sails, the Winds being, as it were, tired with carrying them, and the Ocean groaning under the weight of them.... But so far was it from terrifying the seacoasts with its name of ‘Invincible’ or with its dreadful Show, that the young Gentry of England, with incredible Cheerfulness and Alacrity (leaving their parents, children, wives, and friends at home) out of their hearty Love to their Country, hired ships from all parts at their own private charges and joined with the Fleet in great numbers.”
I think we, in our present days, have had the word “invincible” thrown at us a good deal from the braggart mouth of the “Hun”--but “so far from terrifying us”--it has had the same effect on our manhood as it had in Tudor days so far as “incredible Cheerfulness and Alacrity” are concerned! And Queen Elizabeth apparently found a prototype of Nelson and David Beatty, for, says Camden, “The command of the whole Fleet she gave to Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord Admiral of England, of whose fortunate Conduct she had a very great Persuasion, and whom she knew by his moderate and noble carriage, to be skilful in sea-matters, wary and provident, valiant and courageous, industrious and active, and of great authority and esteem among the seamen of her Navy. Drake, whom she appointed Vice-Admiral, joined with him.”
Queen Bess evidently knew how to select the best men! And we may justly claim to have kept up the breed. For there is not a word written of Admiral Lord Howard in those old days that cannot be equally written now of Admiral Sir David Beatty. Every man of the Fleet knows it; and is proud and glad to serve under his command. “Skilful in sea-matters, wary and provident, valiant and courageous, industrious and active, and of great authority and esteem among the seamen of the Navy!”
And we shall do well to remember that on the outbreak of war, the country was assured that the Mercantile Marine accepted the risks incurred in maintaining the supplies of food so indispensable to the existence of the people, and in ensuring a path of safety for commerce, and the transport of troops and war material. And British shipmasters, officers, and seamen alike expressed their resolve to keep the seas open at all costs. The result of this inflexible determination is that throughout continuous struggle, exposed to daily and nightly peril from mine and submarine, British ships continue to arrive in British ports and sail again with a splendid disregard of all the difficulties and dangers which beset them in maintaining the overseas trade of the nation. It is time such priceless valour was more absolutely defended and held dear by the Empire which owes it so much. Our merchantmen should be armed. The expenditure would be less than the loss of heroic lives! Merchant seamen should be given every possible means of protecting their own existence and securing the safety of their ships and cargoes. Their foes are ruthless,--they should be given ample means of retaliation and defence. For--
“We sing the British seamen’s praise, A theme renowned in story, It well deserves more polished lays, For ’tis your boast and glory,-- When mad-brain’d war spreads death around, By them you are protected, But oft when peace again is found, Your bulwarks are neglected! Then oh! protect the hardy tar! Be mindful of his merit, And when you’re plung’d anew in war He’ll show his dauntless spirit!”
And no man of any class needs a “dauntless spirit” more. Courage alone makes him what he is. For though I love the sea with an intense love beyond all world-expression, I know how cruel it can be, although so beautiful--and while I rejoice and revel in the splendour of terrific waves breaking in pillars of foam up against rocks a hundred or more feet high, I cannot but hear in my soul the wild and despairing cries of drowning men, and the noise of breaking ships--I see the horror of drifting dead forms and faces swirling on the blackness of the deep, and with my whole heart I join in the prayer:--
“God, Who alone spreadest out the heavens, and rulest the raging of the sea, be pleased to receive into Thy most gracious protection the persons of Thy servants and the Fleet in which they serve! Preserve them from the dangers of the sea and from the violence of the enemy, that they may be a safeguard!--and that the inhabitants of our Island may in peace and quietness serve Thee, our God!”
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Amen, and many times Amen! And it is possible that Admiral Sir David Beatty, like his great prototype, Admiral Lord Nelson, may have sent the same message to the Fleet on the day of the German surrender which Nelson sent after the Battle of the Nile, thus:--
“Almighty God having blessed his Majesty’s arms with Victory, the Admiral intends returning Public Thanksgiving for the same at two o’clock this day, and he recommends every ship doing the same as soon as convenient.--Signed, HORATIO NELSON. August 2, 1798.”
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A similar devotional spirit inspires our “David” of the sea, when he says that England must look to the future “with a prayer on her lips.” This great War, the greatest in all history, will, with all its wickedness and bloodshed, prove a blessing, if the cloud of Atheism which has swept over us through perverted and decadent German ideals, is rolled away,--leaving a clear and wholesome heaven of faith and hope for a nation brought back to God through humility, self-sacrifice and splendid heroism!
Eyes of the Sea! Steadfast and clear as the light of a midsummer morning, Sure in your vigilance, swift in the flash of your warning, Pledges of safety for us and our land of the free. Slumberless Eyes of the Sea!
Eyes of the Sea! Watchful at midnight, companioning stars in their courses, Fronting the storm or the fire of the foe in his forces; Yours be the honour of all that we are or shall be! Glorious Eyes of the Sea!
IS ALL WELL WITH ENGLAND?
A QUESTION OF THE MOMENT
Yes, all is well!
Or, rather, let us say all _will_ be well! And in our steady progress towards future good we may confidently aver that all is well even now. Even now! though the great “spring-cleaning” of the Empire’s house is scarcely half-way through. Our home is topsy-turvy, familiar objects are thrust aside, our goods and chattels are disarranged and turned out to be swept or beaten or otherwise relieved of their accumulated dust and cobwebs, and the clatter of brooms and pails and general hurry-scurry, with many irreparable breakages, make comfort and quiet impossible. Yet there is a freshness in the air, the windows have been cleaned, and one can see the sky through their lately begrimed and sooty panes, the floors are swept and the furniture polished; deft hands are arranging flowers for the rooms--we may breathe in health and hope if we will.
There is much yet to be done, for the cleansing of a nation is God’s work more than ours, and He leaves no corner unvisited. He has not done with England yet, no, not by any means! The festering mass of diseased moral fibre resulting from a long worship of Self, the canker in the body social and politic, has to be cut out ruthlessly, despite bleeding veins and torn sinews, and God will not spare the remedial knife.
But even so, it is well for England! Well, and more than well! For no greater ill could chance to her than her condition prior to the war.
Far more injurious to her fair fame than the murderous attacks of the most dishonourable and unscrupulous enemy she has ever known was the stealthy undermining of her people’s ideals through the slow but sure rot which had begun to set in at the very core of her civilian life. That rot was eating its way through commerce and crumbling down every bulwark of society. Its ravaging microbes swarmed through every channel--the pulpit, the stage, and all forms of art. Through its influence the abominable crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah were re-enacted and condoned, both in the political and social world. By gradual and subtle process, step by step on the downward grade, the unthinking public were led by certain writers of the Press who are special pleaders for vice, to accept sensuality as the only meaning of love, and every town possessing a bookseller’s shop was flooded with published outpourings of sickly and degrading sexuality, insulting to the self-respect of men and women, old and young alike. Girls and boys hardly in their teens carried these vile books in their hands, and read and discussed them without shame. Their poisonous trail is over many a young mind, and the mischief they have wrought will take years of undoing.
This kind of pernicious literature, coupled with a “sensational” Press, by which I mean that side of the Press which truckles to the baser inclinations of mankind, and flaunts pictorial representations of semi-nude women of the stage and of the demoralised portion of Society in the eyes of decent folk whether they will or no, is in a great measure responsible for the recklessness, extravagance, sloth, and selfishness which have disfigured social England for the past decade.
Things were getting worse and worse; men who truckled to vice were paid with baronetcies as “hush-money,” women passing for “ladies,” lower than the lowest of street sinners, because they had education and opportunities which the street sinner has not, were praised as embodiments of all the beauties and all the virtues, and “home,” that dear possession of the faithful soul, was voted “dull” by the younger folk, because of its wholesome restrictions on harmful impulses and runaway passions.
And let us not imagine these clouds on the sun of our country have yet passed away. They are passing, but the full splendour of the light is not yet. “Home, _dull_ Home,” is coming back to its own as “Home, sweet Home” once more, because a dark and threatening destiny has torn sons from their mothers, and has broken up dear associations which were unvalued, because possessed. Now that death has darkened many windows and shut many doors, the bereaved ones begin to realise what “home” really was in the past days of peace, and what it never will be again; while those that are absent on the battlefield, amid the roar of the guns and the storm of shot and shell, turn back wistfully to the memory of days spent “at home,” in a tranquillity of mind and body that seemed “dull,” but that now shines forth in the visions of the brain as a reflex of positive heaven.
Few, I think, have taken the trouble to consider what this Empire would become without the saving grace of “Home”--that oasis in the desert where love has its best chance and friendship its surest footing.
It is in very truth the foundation of national safety and the basis of educational progress, and yet it is what a very large majority of us have lately esteemed but lightly, moved as we have been by a spirit of strange unrest, impelling us to wander hither and thither in search of satisfaction which, after all our quest, awaits us at our own door.
Suppose that one and all we ran “amok” in the liberty which speedily degenerates into license, without any restraining hand? Would it be “well for England” then? We know it would not, yet if our young people are brought up to disdain and to neglect their parents, and “friends” so-called, only seek other “friends” in order to make use of them for their own ends, the social code will be one of pure egotism without a shred of conscience to soften its hard and fast self-seeking. This would not be “well for England,” and from this point of view alone we have to be thankful for the scourge of this terrific war. For here God has taken the lead. He has indeed “put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek,” for the humblest ranks of our British fighting men are heroes to-day, and the true spirit and mettle of the British race, long suppressed beneath a featherbed softness of prolonged peace, have sprung up in splendid and unbroken strength, proving in deeds more than words that “all is well with England!”
No praise can be too high for their courage, cheerfulness, and self-sacrifice; the sword of their unquenchable valour has long been sheathed, but it has not grown rusty--the blade is as bright as ever it was.
This is something to be proud of, something for us to remember when inclined to pessimism. We have nothing to fear on the score of our warriors who have gone forth in the flower of their manhood, to contend with and to conquer a brutal foe; and, if the creeping suggestion that all is _not_ well with England steals into our minds, it is on account of _traitors at home_.
Yes, _there_ is a dire possibility of mischief, a chance of infinite harm being wrought on England, and on the whole British Empire by the avarice and short-sightedness of some of our leading men who have “axes to grind.”
It may be unpleasant to face the truth, but surely it is wiser and safer to do so than to wait till it overwhelms us. And the merest tyro in diplomacy, the most casual looker-on at the moves on the political chess-board, can see how many a man “in official capacity” is playing the German game, and manœuvring towards a patched-up “peace” which shall give Germany every possible trade advantage.
The people’s confidence is being daily betrayed by such treacherous hypocrites, some of whom have financial interests closely bound in with Germany, and who hesitate and shuffle and delay action indefinitely, though the slaughter of innocent thousands may pay the price of their ineptitude.
In such scandalous matters, all is _not_ well with England--and all will never be well, unless the people take a hand against their own spoliation and betrayal. And they cannot begin too soon. The house of the nation is being “swept and garnished.” We shall need to take care that the “unclean spirit” of Germany does not take “seven other spirits more wicked” to “enter in and dwell there,” so that “the last state” of that house be not “worse than the first.”
We need the resolved spirit of Queen Elizabeth, whose proclamation against certain troublesome foreigners “which had flocked to the coast towns of England” in 1560, commanded that they “should depart the realm within twenty days,” whether they liked it or not, “upon pain of imprisonment or loss of goods.” Queen Bess did not put on gloves when dealing with treachery; she hit it fair and square in the face. We should do wisely to imitate her example.
No great reforms are ever accomplished without opposition from prejudiced and self-interested persons, and it needs a strong soul to stand firm and full-fronted against malcontents, and to steadily baffle political intrigues. With these latter, the Ministry is hemmed in and environed, and it is a regrettable fact that in some quarters “party” is ready to overwhelm patriotism, despite all plausible assurances to the contrary.
On this point I would venture, as an independent writer who has no favours to seek and no “axe to grind,” to warn our more or less passive, silent, and patient people of dangers ahead.
The people are the nation, the people whose labour makes the wealth of the country are the worth of the country; and for them the name of Britain should represent all things British. But unless they themselves take good care, their trades will be again swamped by Germany in the future as in the past, especially if they put in less hours of work. It stands to reason that if a British workman will only work for eight hours, and a German will work for fourteen or sixteen, the German will score in every kind of labour.
Even now the German is preparing for the relaxing of “restricted” trades. The goods which the British Government declared “unnecessary” in time of war are being “made in Germany,” and at an opportune moment will be “dumped down” on these shores before the Englishman, returned from battle, can so much as set his house in order.
We may think, or we may hope, that protection against such unfairness will be guaranteed by Government--but will it? Does it look like it even now?--when Germans are permitted to run the business of absent Englishmen, and to make profit therefrom!
Sometimes it would almost seem as if there were a certain numbness or apathy in the minds of the British people here at home, which robs them of “the native hue of resolution,” so that in
“Enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.”
There is a general tendency not to take too much personal trouble over any matter, a desire to avoid “being bothered,” and a persistent jog-trot in the same old way, like “dumb, driven cattle,” no matter whether the road lead to prosperity or ruin. This is like the fatal lethargy which overcomes the traveller in heavy snow, when he yields himself to a sleep from which he shall never wake.
Half the people in these islands do not yet realise the full meaning or the real horror of the war in which we have been forced, by all the rights of law and liberty, to engage. They do not think--they cannot. Their sense of perception seems stunned as by a heavy blow. All religion, all faith, all hope, have in a great measure failed them. They do not see why they should suffer undeservedly.
A poor woman receiving the news that her son was killed, had no tears--her face grew white and stiffened, as with frost--but she had nothing to say except this: “Ah, well! I couldn’t expect anything else, as there’s no God left to us now! Only man, the devil!” She could but realise that the war is man’s work--the result of his miserable ambitions, his delight in destruction, his selfish pride and cruelty. And the church had taught her little more than that the God she was told to worship was “a jealous God,” and out of that saying little comfort can be drawn for the broken heart of a bereaved mother.
Perhaps one of the most terrible notes struck from the great thunder-echoes of the war is this apparent failure of all churches to cope with the sorrow that has swept over all lands, destroying homes that were once happy.
Our Lord’s pitiful and pathetic words are realised to-day:--“Because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall grow cold.” Ah, yes, love for Him and all the tenderness He taught _has_ “grown cold,” and many of His professed ministers are tongue-tied and spirit-frozen, and seem all unable to raise the broken lives from the dust of despair, or dry the weeping eyes which are too tired and heavy to lift themselves to heaven.
There is a strong instinctive sense among us all, no matter to what sect we belong or what religious formula we profess, that if the churches had ever truly taught and truly followed the example of Christ, war and its horrors would have been impossible. For He gave us only two commandments--two instead of the Mosaic ten--thus:--
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it--thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Who is there that can deny that if these two commandments had been obeyed by man in his social and civil life, the whole face of things would have changed to an almost divine betterment, and the world’s progress, assisted by a sanity of thought and a clarity of action, would have been towards beauty and spiritual uplifting?
The word “spiritual” is sadly wronged and degraded nowadays by misguided or semi-crazed persons who “blaspheme the Holy Ghost” by their pretensions to psychic power, and play with the names of scared things in order to further their own sinister designs. Our Lord prophesied this evil when He spoke of “false prophets” who should “show signs and wonders,” insomuch “that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect.”
Is it not a fact that we have come upon such days? Days when the pure, simple, and helpful ethics of Christ are set aside in exchange for an insane credence in the vulgar trickery of “mediumship,” “crystal-gazing,” and other base forms of superstition pertaining to the eras of ignorant barbarism? Does it seem believable that there should be so-called “intellectual” men in this country, even statesmen of admitted ability, who are actually partially under the sway of illiterate “mediums,” generally women, who pretend to hold communication with the dead, and even presume to offer advice from the “spirits” on the affairs of the nation and the prosecution of the war? One could hardly imagine a wilder improbability, yet it is an absolute fact! The names of persons in high and trusted positions are on the books of the unscrupulous jugglers and tricksters who earn their wicked living by mischievous tampering with the brains of their dupes and victims, and the wonder is that these notabilities should so feebly allow themselves to be duped and victimized. But one has only to think of the entire submission of the Romanoffs to the villainous machinations of that unspeakable “monk,” Rasputin, to realize that there is no depth of abasement to which the human mind may not fall if it loses its hold on God.
It has to be confessed there are very few indications of real religion among us at present. A large portion of the clergy seem stricken with ineptitude, and one longs for a strong man who would not only preach the truth, but _live_ it. A narrow egotism disfigures the ministering spirit of the Church, and I could name more than one cleric whose absorption in self entirely blinds him to the real duties he is called upon to do.