Prime Ministers and Some Others Part 17

The pedagogic notion under which people of my time were reared was that every boy must learn exactly the same things as every other boy, and must go on learning them till his last day at school, whether that day arrived when he was fourteen or eighteen. "We must catch up every man, whether he is to be a clergyman or a duke, begin with him at six years of age, and never quit him till he is twenty; making him conjugate and decline for life and death; and so teaching him to estimate his progress in real wisdom as he can scan the verses of the Greek tragedians." So said Sydney Smith, and with perfect truth. "The grand, old, fortifying, cla.s.sical curriculum"

was enforced on the boy whose whole heart was in the engineer's shed, while his friend, to whom literature was a pa.s.sion, was constrained to simulate an interest in the blue lights and bad smells of a chemical lecture. "Let it be granted" (as the odious Euclid, now happily dethroned, used to say) that there is a certain amount that all alike must learn but this amount will prove, when scrutinized, to be very small. I suppose we must all learn to read and write, and it is useful to be able to do a sum in simple addition; though very eminent people have often written very illegible hands, and Dean Stanley--one of the most accomplished men of his day--could never be persuaded that eighteen pence was not the equivalent of 1s. 8d. Zealots for various "knowledges" (to use the curious plural sanctioned by Matthew Arnold) will urge the indispensability of their respective hobbies. One will say let everybody learn that the earth is round; another, that James I. was not the son of Queen Elizabeth. But let us leave, these pribbles and prabbles. Let every boy be coerced into learning what is absolutely necessary for the daily work of life; but let him, at a very early age, have his powers concentrated on the subject which really interests him.

One of the highest gifts which a teacher can possess is the power of "discerning the spirits"--of discovering what a boy's mind really is; what it is made of; what can be made of it. This power is a natural gift, and can by no means be acquired. Many teachers entirely lack it; but those who possess it are among the most valuable servants of the State. This power may be brought to bear on every boy when he is, say, from fourteen to sixteen years old--perhaps in some cases even earlier; and, when once the teacher has made the all-important discovery, then let everything be done to stimulate, and at the same time to discipline, the boy's natural inclination, his inborn apt.i.tude. Fifty years ago, every boy at every Public School, though he might be as unpoetical as Blackstone who wrote the Commentaries, or Bradshaw who compiled the Railway Guide, was forced to produce a weekly tale of Latin and Greek verses which would have made Horace laugh and Sophocles cry. The Rev. Esau Hittall's "Longs and Shorts about the Calydonian Boar," commemorated in _Friends.h.i.+p's Garland_, may stand for a sample of the absurdities which I have in mind; and the supporters of this amazing abuse a.s.sured the world that Greek and Latin versification was an essential element of a liberal education. It took a good many generations to deliver England from this absurdity, and there are others like unto it which still hold their own in the scholastic world. To sweep these away should be the first object of the educational reformer; and, when that preliminary step has been taken, the State will be able to say to every boy who is not mentally deficient: "This, or this, is the path which Nature intended you to tread.

Follow it with all your heart. We will back you, and help you, and applaud you, and will not forsake you till the goal is won."

VI

_A PLEA FOR THE INNOCENTS_

My "spiritual home" is not Berlin, nor even Rome, but Jerusalem.

In heart and mind I am there to-day, and have been there ever since the eternally memorable day on which our army entered it. What I am writing will see the light on the Feast of the Holy Innocents;[*]

and my thoughts have been running on a prophetic verse which unites the place and the festival in a picturesque accord:

"Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem:... and the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof."

The most brilliant Israelite of our times, Lord Beaconsfield, said of a brilliant Englishman, Dean Stanley, that his leading feature was his "picturesque sensibility," and that sensibility was never more happily expressed than when he inst.i.tuted the service for children in Westminster Abbey on Innocents' Day--"Childermas Day,"

as our forefathers called it, in the age when holidays were also holy days, and the Ma.s.s was the centre of social as well as of spiritual life. On this touching feast a vast congregation of boys and girls a.s.sembles in that Abbey Church which has been rightly called "the most lovable thing in Christendom"; and, as it moves in "solemn troops and sweet societies" through aisles grey with the memories of a thousand years, it seems a living prophecy of a brighter age already at the door.

[Footnote *: December 28, 1917.]

It seems--rather, it seemed. Who can pierce the "hues of earthquake and eclipse" which darken the aspect of the present world? Who can foresee, or even reasonably conjecture, the fate which is in store for the children who to-day are singing their carols in the church of the Confessor? Will it be their lot to be "playing in the streets" of a spiritual Jerusalem--the Holy City of a regenerated humanity? or are they destined to grow up in a reign of blood and iron which spurns the "Vision of Peace" as the most contemptible of dreams?

In some form or another these questions must force themselves on the mind of anyone who contemplates the boys and girls of to-day, and tries to forecast what may befall them in the next four or five years.

It is a gruesome thought that the children of to-day are growing up in an atmosphere of war. Bloodshed, slaughter, peril and privation, bereavement and sorrow and anxiety--all the evils from which happy childhood is most sedulously guarded have become the natural elements in which they live and move and have their being. For the moment the cloud rests lightly on them, for not "all that is at enmity with joy" can depress the Divine merriment of healthy childhood; but the cloud will become darker and heavier with each succeeding year of war; and every boy and girl is growing up into a fuller realization of miseries which four years ago would have been unimaginable.

But at Christmastide, if ever, we are bound to take the brightest view which circ.u.mstances allow. Let us then a.s.sume the best. Let us a.s.sume that before next Innocents' Day the war will have ended in a glorious peace. G.o.d grant it; but, even in that beatific event, what will become of the children? They cannot be exactly what they would have been if their lot had been cast in normal times. Unknown to themselves, their "subconscious intelligence" must have taken a colour and a tone from the circ.u.mstances in which they have been reared. As to the colour, our task will be to wipe out the tinge of blood; as to the tone, to restore the note which is a.s.sociated with the Angels' Song.

This is my "Plea for the Innocents." What will the State offer them as they emerge from childhood into boyhood, and from boyhood into adolescence?

Perhaps it will offer Conscription; and, with no "perhaps" at all, some strident voices will p.r.o.nounce that offer the finest boon ever conferred upon the youth of a nation. Then, if there is any manliness or fibre left in the adherents of freedom, they will answer that we adopted Conscription for a definite object, and, when once that object is attained, we renounce it for ever.

What will the State offer? Obviously it must offer education--but what sort of education? The curse of militarism may make itself felt even in the school-room. It would be deplorable indeed if, as a result of our present experience, children were to be taught what J. R. Green called a "drum-and-trumpet history," and were made to believe that the triumphs of war are the highest achievements of the human spirit.

As long as there is an Established Church, the State, in some sense, offers religion. Is the religion of the next few years to be what Ruskin commends: a "religion of pure mercy, which we must learn to defend by fulfilling"; or is it to be the sort of religion which Professor Cramb taught, and which Prussian Lutheranism has subst.i.tuted for the Gospel?

And, finally, what of home? After all said and done, it is the home that, in the vast majority of cases, influences the soul and shapes the life. What will the homes of England be like when the war is over? Will they be homes in which the moral law reigns supreme; where social virtue is recognized as the sole foundation of national prosperity; where the "strange valour of goodwill towards men", is revered as the highest type of manly resolution?

It is easy enough to ask these questions: it is impossible to answer them. The Poet is the Prophet, and this is the Poet's vision:

"The days are dark with storm;-- The coming revolutions have to face Of peace and music, but of blood and fire; The strife of Races scarce consolidate, Succeeded by the far more bitter strife Of Cla.s.ses--that which nineteen hundred years, Since Christ spake, have not yet availed to close, But rather brought to issue only now, When first the Peoples international Know their own strength, and know the world is theirs."[*]

_Know their own strength, and know the world is theirs_--a solemn line, which at this season we may profitably ponder.

[Footnote *: "The Disciples," by H. E. Hamilton King.]

VI

MISCELLANEA

I

_THE "HUMOROUS STAGE"_

I am not adventuring on the dangerous paths of dramatic criticism.

When I write of the "humorous stage," I am using the phrase as Wordsworth used it, to signify a scene where new characters are suddenly a.s.sumed, and the old as suddenly discarded.

Long ago, Matthew Arnold, poking fun at the clamours of Secularism, asked in mockery, "Why is not Mr. Bradlaugh a Dean?" To-day I read, in a perfectly serious manifesto forwarded to me by a friendly correspondant, this searching question: "Why is not the Archbishop of Canterbury Censor of Plays?" It really is a great conception; and, if adopted in practice, might facilitate the solution of some perplexing problems. If any lover of the ancient ways should demur on the ground of incongruity, I reply that this objection might hold good in normal times, but that just now the "humorous stage"

of public life so abounds in incongruities that one more or less would make no perceptible difference. Everyone is playing a part for which, three years ago, we should have thought him or her totally unqualified. Old habits, old prepossessions--even in some cases old principles--are cast aside with a levity which even Wordsworth's young actor could not have surpa.s.sed. We all are saying and doing things of which we should have thought ourselves incapable; and even our surprise at ourselves, great as it is, is less than our surprise at our friends.

To begin at the top. I have long held the present Prime Minister in high admiration. I can never forget--nor allow others to forget--that he fought for the cause of Justice and Freedom in South Africa almost single-handed, and at the risk of his life. An orator, a patriot, a lover of justice, a hater of privilege, I knew him to be. I did not see in him the makings of a Dictator directing the destinies of an Empire at war, and in his spare moments appointing Successors to the Apostles within the precincts of an Established Church. Certainly of Mr. Lloyd George, if of no one else, it is true that

"The little actor cons another part,"

and I heartily wish him success in it. But it is true of everyone, and true in every corner of the stage. Let me strike into the medley at random. The anti-feminists, where are they? They have changed their garb and their "lines" so thoroughly that it is difficult for even a practised eye to recognize them in their new parts.

Lord Curzon is a member of a Cabinet which established the women's vote, and such stalwarts as Mr. Asquith and Lord Harcourt welcome with effusion the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the victorious suffragette.

And what of the Pacificists? Where are they? Some, I know, are in prison, but, if it had not been for the rapid change of parts which the war has brought, they would have had a good many more fellow-captives than they have. The writer of this article was, from his first entrance into public affairs, a Pacificist to the backbone. He believed that war was the greatest of preventible evils, and that no war which had occurred in his lifetime had been justified by the laws of right and wrong. To-day that Pacificist is heart and soul with his countrymen in their struggle; and, having lived to see England engaged in a righteous war, he has changed his motto from "Rub lightly" to "Mak sicker."

Not less remarkable is the transformation of the liberty-lovers (among whom also the present writer has always reckoned himself).

Four years ago we were eagerly and rightly on the alert to detect the slightest attempt by Ministers or bureaucrats or public bodies to invade our glorious privilege of doing and saying exactly what we like. To-day the pressure of the war has turned us into the willing subjects of a despotism. We tumble over each other in our haste to throwaway the liberties which we used to consider vital to our being; and some of us have been not merely the victims, but the active agents, of an administrative system which we believe to be necessary for the safety of the State.

But is there not a remnant? Have all the lovers of Liberty changed their garb and conned new parts? Not all. A remnant there is, and it is to be found in the House of Lords. This is perhaps the most astonis.h.i.+ng feature of the "humorous stage"; and if, among superlatives, a super-superlative is possible, I reserve that epithet for the fact that the most vigorous champion of personal freedom in the House of Lords has been an ecclesiastical lawyer. From Lord Stowell to Lord Parmoor is indeed a far cry. Who could have dreamt that, even amid the upheaval of a world, a spokesman of liberty and conscience would emerge from the iron-bound precincts of the Consistory Court and the Vicar-General's Office?

Bishops again--not even these most securely placed of all British officials can escape the tendency to change which pervades the whole stage of public life. The Bishop of Winchester, whom all good Progressives used to denounce as a dark conspirator against the rights of conscience; the Bishop of Oxford, whom we were taught to regard as a Hildebrand and a Torquemada rolled into one--these admirable prelates emerge from the safe seclusion of Castle and Palace to rebuke the persecution of the Conscientious Objector, even when his objection is "nearly intolerable."

That the Press should have had its share in this general readjustment of parts was only natural; but even in what is natural there may be points of special interest. There is a weekly journal of high repute which has earned a secure place in the regard of serious-minded people by its lifelong sobriety, moderation, and respect for the prunes and prisms. When this staid old print, this steady-going supporter of all established inst.i.tutions, bursts out in a furious attack on the man who has to bear the chief responsibility of the war, I can only rub my eyes in amazement. If a sheep had suddenly gone mad, and begun to bark and bite, the transformation could not have been more astonis.h.i.+ng.

But I reserve my most striking ill.u.s.tration of the "humorous stage"

for the last. Fifteen years ago it was the fas.h.i.+on to point at Lord Hugh Cecil as a belated upholder of exploded superst.i.tions; as an "ecclesiastical layman" (the phrase was meant to be sarcastic) who lived in a realm of speculative theology, out of touch with all practical life; as a zealot, a bigot, a would-be persecutor; an interesting survival of the Middle Age; a monk who had strayed into politics. To-day we salute him as the one Member of Parliament who has had the courage to affirm the supremacy of the moral law, and to a.s.sert the imperious claim which Christianity makes on the whole of man's being.

II

_THE JEWISH REGIMENT_

It was an old and a true allegation against John Bull that he had no tact in dealing with other races than his own. He did not mean to be unjust or unfair, but he trampled on the sensitiveness, which he could not understand. In Ireland he called the Roman Catholic faith "a lie and a heathenish superst.i.tion"; or, in a lighter mood, made imbecile jokes about pigs and potatoes. In Scotland, thriftiness and oatmeal were the themes of his pleasantry; in Wales, he found the language, the literature, and the local nomenclature equally comic, and reserved his loudest guffaw for the Eisteddfod. Abroad, "Foreigners don't wash" was the all-embracing formula. Nasality, Bloomerism, and Dollars epitomized his notion of American civilization; and he cheerfully echoed the sentiments