Part 23 (1/2)
”You Englishmen aren't like our Christians,” he went on.
The Englishmen wanted to know why.
”You haven't priests in robes. You don't chant and wors.h.i.+p crosses and pictures, and quarrel among yourselves.”
”We wors.h.i.+p the same G.o.d as you do,” said the Englishman.
”Then why do we fight?”
”That's what we want to know.”
”Why do you call yourselves Christians? And take part against us? All who wors.h.i.+p the One G.o.d are brothers.”
”They ought to be,” said the Englishman, and thought. He was struck by what seemed to him an amazingly novel idea.
”If it weren't for religions all men would serve G.o.d together,” he said. ”And then there would be no wars--only now and then perhaps just a little honest fighting....”
”And see here,” said the Angel. ”Here close behind this frightful battle, where the German phalanx of guns pounds its way through the Russian hosts. Here is a young German talking to two wounded Russian prisoners, who have stopped to rest by the roadside. He is a German of East Prussia; he knows and thinks a little Russian. And they too are saying, all three of them, that the war is not G.o.d's will, but the confusion of mankind.
”Here,” he said, and the shadow of his hand hovered over the burning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion watched the straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the glow of the late afternoon, while he talked to an English painter, his friend, of the blind intolerance of race and caste and custom in India.
”Or here.”
The Angel pointed to a group of people who had gathered upon a little beach at the head of a Norwegian fiord. There were three lads, an old man and two women, and they stood about the body of a drowned German sailor which had been washed up that day. For a time they had talked in whispers, but now suddenly the old man spoke aloud.
”This is the fourth that has come ash.o.r.e,” he said. ”Poor drowned souls!
Because men will not serve G.o.d.”
”But folks go to church and pray enough,” said one of the women.
”They do not serve G.o.d,” said the old man. ”They just pray to him as one nods to a beggar. They do not serve G.o.d who is their King. They set up their false kings and emperors, and so all Europe is covered with dead, and the seas wash up these dead to us. Why does the world suffer these things? Why did we Norwegians, who are a free-spirited people, permit the Germans and the Swedes and the English to set up a king over us?
Because we lack faith. Kings mean secret counsels, and secret counsels bring war. Sooner or later war will come to us also if we give the soul of our nation in trust to a king.... But things will not always be thus with men. G.o.d will not suffer them for ever. A day comes, and it is no distant day, when G.o.d himself will rule the earth, and when men will do, not what the king wishes nor what is expedient nor what is customary, but what is manifestly right.”....
”But men are saying that now in a thousand places,” said the Angel.
”Here is something that goes a little beyond that.”
His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders riding down to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by side and talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with them. He had put sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his life was fairly forfeit, and he was not to be killed. ”We want no more hate in South Africa,”
they agreed. ”Dutch and English and German must live here now side by side. Men cannot always be killing.”
”And see his thoughts,” said the Angel.
The German's mind was one amazement. He had been sure of being shot, he had meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a relentless fighter to the last; and these men who might have shot him like a man were going to spare him like a dog. His mind was a tumbled muddle of old and new ideas. He had been brought up in an atmosphere of the foulest and fiercest militarism; he had been trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness and so forth; war was war and the bitterer the better, frightfulness was your way to victory over every enemy. But these people had found a better way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform and rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because he was for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his arms and looking level at the executioners' rifles. There were to be no executioners'
rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and English, why shouldn't it be so presently with French and Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English, Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star of mankind, the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker was left to poison the wells of goodwill?
His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas. ”Austere,” he whispered. ”The enn.o.bling tests of war.” A trooner rode up alongside, and offered him a drink of water
”Just a mouthful,” he said apologetically. ”We've had to go rather short.”...
”There's another brain busy here with the same idea,” the Angel interrupted. And the bishop found himself looking into the bedroom of a young German attache in Was.h.i.+ngton, sleepless in the small hours.