Part 3 (1/2)
CHAPTER VII
VICTORY AND PEACE
_Toi qui nous apportas l'epee_-- _Le glaive de Justice_-- _Et nous ordonnas de l'acheter_ _Fut ce an prix de nos tuniques,_ _Toi qui renversas les tables des marchants_ _Installes sous Tes portiques,_ _Donne a nos bras la foi et la rage a nos coeurs_ _Afin que la Victoire couronne de fleurs_ _Le front de nos enfants._-- EMILE CAMMAERTS, ”Priere Paques,” 1915.
A few still perhaps remain of those who, as under-graduates at the time of the Franco-German War, remember Dean Stanley's first sermons after many years of exclusion from the Oxford University pulpit. Using in one of them his favourite plan of giving life to ancient literature by modern ill.u.s.trations and conversely making modern tendencies clearer by references to ancient thought, he took the words of the Hebrew prophet, applying them to the troubles and strife of the time. ”Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Bozrah?” What will emerge from the bloodshed of war and the chaos of communal revolution? The answer was given--”It may be, it must be a united Germany; it may be, it must be a regenerate France.”
Truly it has been a regenerate France that, with firm resolve and calm courage, has suffered and withstood invasion, far different from the France which in 1870 went to war with light heart, excited and unprepared, antic.i.p.ating easy victory. War shattered the Empire and the true soul of France was found.
Well might the ”Song before Sunrise” again greet the purified France:--
Who is this that rises red with wounds and splendid.
All her breast and brow made beautiful with scars?
May we soon be able to add the conclusion!--
In her eyes the light and fire of long pain ended, In her lips a song as of the morning stars.
The prophecy in both parts was fulfilled. Germany did indeed become united, united not only by closer political ties between all its divisions, but united in its aims and in its methods, conscious of union and of strength, marvellous in its power of organisation, fitting each member into his special position in the consolidated state, and moulding him for the place he was to occupy; drilled from earliest youth how to act and how to think, his commonest acts done, and very gestures made, according to rule. Yet they, too, had their ideals. I remember in 1871, the year after the Franco-German War, meeting a party of Germans who were unveiling a tablet by the Pasterze Glacier in memory of a comrade fallen in the war--Karl Hoffman, a pioneer of mountaineering in the Glockner district--and hearing their impa.s.sioned speeches. The mountains of Austrian Tyrol were to them ”die Alpen seines Vaterlandes,” and the song with the refrain, ”Lieb Vaterland muss grosser sein” echoed from the rocks, ”My beloved Fatherland must be greater”; may not this be the expression of a n.o.ble patriotism? But it so easily turns to ”my country must have more, must take more,” and becomes the very watchword of greed. ”Deutschland uber Alles” might perhaps mean first to the German ”My country before everything to me.” _Corruptio optimi pessima_, it easily becomes ”Germany over all,”--the country which dominates an inferior world and is thus the condensed motto of supreme insolence.
”Insolence breeds the tyrant,” and the doom the ancient poet prophesies is the divine ordinance to be fulfilled by the action of man.
”Insolence, swollen with vain thought, mounts to the highest place, and is hurled down to the doom decreed.”
Insolence seems the nearest equivalent for the Greek word [Greek: hybris], which implies much more. Some translate it ”pride.” It is a sense of superiority, greater strength, higher culture, leading to a claim to dominate the minds and the lives, the destinies, of others, and then in its arrogant self-a.s.sertion to override all laws and all restraints imposed by justice. It is the exact opposite of the Christian precept: ”Let each esteem other better than himself.” This, like some other Christian precepts, may never have been meant to express the whole truth, but only that side which men are naturally apt to neglect. It was hardly necessary to insist that men should defend themselves against attack, maintain their rights, and keep their self-respect. There are some crimes, too, which it required no special revelation to condemn; man revolts from them as _contra naturam_. One of these crimes is refusal to aid their fellow-countrymen who are fighting against aggression.
With the spirit that claims to dominate in its ”will to power,” to override the eternal laws of justice, there can be no compromise. Until that spirit is vanquished, the answer to the question, ”Is it peace?”
must be, ”What hast thou to do with peace, so long as thy brutal acts and thy tyrannies are so many?” The order is given to smite. With profit now we may recall the old narrative,--”And he smote thrice, and stayed.
And the man of G.o.d was wroth with him, and said, Thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten” the enemy till thou hadst destroyed his evil will. The work must be completed thoroughly; but that task once accomplished, to continue war, whether open or veiled, either to satisfy national hatred and the mere wish for vengeance, or, still more, in the desire of gain, would be to become--to use George Herbert's words--”parcel devils in d.a.m.nation” with those who have driven or beguiled Germany to crime against humanity and to her own undoing. It is but too easy for heroic effort and firm determination to defend the right, to be corrupted either by a spirit of insolence or greed. Even as we sow the seeds for a fruitful harvest of good, the arch-enemy may be sowing the tares. On the other hand, to cease from work and from struggle, either through fear or slackness or weariness, or even from that pacific temperament which shrinks from contest of any kind, may have results almost equally fatal. That other prayer of the Greek poet is for us also. ”But I ask that the G.o.d will never relax that struggle which is for the State's true welfare”--”the contest in which citizen vies with citizen who shall best serve the State.”
_B.--POLITICAL PEACE_
CHAPTER VIII
PEACE AND THE CONSt.i.tUTION
_The question for the British nation is--Can we work our course pacifically on firm land into the New Era, or must it be for us as for others, through the black abysses of Anarchy, hardly escaping, if we do with all our struggles escape, the jaws of eternal death?_--THOMAS CARLYLE.
It is not only international peace that must be a.s.sured. As a necessary condition for reconstruction comes the need for Peace, peace real and lasting, and peace all round. There may be times when the nation or the individual needs the bracing stimulus, if not of war, at least of compet.i.tion and of conflict in the realm of thought and in the realm of action; times when old inst.i.tutions, old creeds, old systems, old customs, are fiercely attacked and vigorously defended. The storm clears the air, and the struggle ends in the survival of the fittest. After the War the nations, and our own not least, wearied of strife, exhausted by losses, will need all their energies to repair those losses, to rebuild, often in quite new form, what the havoc of war has destroyed, and to adapt themselves to the changed conditions of an altered world. It will be a time neither for contest nor for rest, but for co-operation, mutual help in the work, not merely of restoration, but of building up something better in its place, where the old has been destroyed, or shown its defects under the strain. For this, Peace is needed, peace not only between the nations, but peace between different cla.s.ses and opposing parties, and even divergent Churches; international, industrial, political and religious peace. There will be so much that ought by general agreement to be done, the ideals to be set before us will have so much in common, their realisation will need so much work in concert, such concurrence as to the practical steps to be taken, such goodwill among those who must work together with a common aim, that a ”truce of G.o.d” between those who were once opponents may be called for.
For a time at least old s.h.i.+bboleths might be forgotten, and the old so-called ”principles,” round which so many barren contests of the past have been waged, might cease to hamper us in adopting the practical measures which the exigencies of the time demand.
It is a significant fact, a note of sure and certain hope of the ultimate result in the struggle against the powers of darkness, that men are ready now to think and to act on the a.s.sumption that complete victory will be achieved, and that the foundations for reconstruction may now be laid, even while war is raging most fiercely. This work of preparation to meet the difficulties that will arise after the War need not interfere in any way with the paramount necessity of carrying on the War to a successful issue, or divert the attention of those who are engaged in that task. It is indeed matter for congratulation that in the present Parliament, in spite of necessary preoccupation with matters directly affecting the conduct of the War, a great Parliamentary Reform, changing and enlarging the basis of representation, has been carried through, and that the way to a great advance in Education has been made possible.
These great changes have been made with something approaching to general concurrence. On one question unfortunately proposals made as part of their considered scheme for electoral reform by a representative conference were set aside. The influence of old party machinery and a sluggish reluctance to take the trouble to understand either its character or its importance prevented the introduction of a system of proportional representation. The representatives of the caucuses scored a success towards slamming the door of the House of Commons in the face of the detached judgment, moderation of language, and independence of character which Parliament needs. The electors desire to have such qualities in their representatives, but care is taken to prevent their giving effect to it. But it is better to let even that question rest for a time.