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LIBRARY

University of

California

Irvine

D

MY "LITTLE BIT'
MARIE CORELLI

MY "LITTLE BIT"

BY

MARIE CORELLI,/^?

AUTHOR OF "THE YOUNG DIANA," "THE LIFE EVERLASTING,"

"INNOCENT," "ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS,"

"BARABBAS," ETC.

NEW X5JT YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

Copyright, 1919,
By George H. Doran Company

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATED

TO
MY FRIEND

A. R. M. L.

AND HIS FELLOW-MEMBERS
OP THE CARLTON CLUB

PREFACE

THE articles in this book, with the exception of the
first two, were all written during the war at the request
of the various editors by whose courtesy they are now
reproduced in volume form. Most of them, notably
those which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, were,
by my own desire, gratuitous, though payment for
them was offered. But, being unable to handle sword
or gun, I was glad to offer the free service of my pen
whenever such service was desired, or considered
useful, just as I would have been glad, had I been a
man, to fight voluntarily for Great Britain, without
any thought of other recompense than that of the
personal pride and joy such action would have given
me. The first two articles: "Savage Glory " and "The
Great Unrest," were published some considerable
time before the outbreak of war, and while the editor
of Nosh's Magazine was generous to a fault in his
praise of "Savage Glory." he was so doubtful as to the
accuracy of the indictment conveyed in "The Great
Unrest" that he felt himself compelled to preface it
by a note, stating that he, or rather "we," could not
be held responsible for any agreement with or endorse-
ment of the author's ideas. Headers can now judge
for themlseves whether those ideas were fairly pro-
phetic or otherwise. Naturally, no heed was paid to
them, except by a huge silent public, the press appar-
ently making it ? rule not to notice in any one paper

vii

viii PREFACE

what their rivals print in others, unless it happens
to be by one of their own special clique, or the utter-
ance of a Cabinet Minister, which they generally
misquote. But, such as they are, these various contri-
butions to English and American sections of journalism
indicate the straight and loyal road my pen has travelled
during the wickedest and stupidest war that ever
devastated the world. The stupidity of it was even
more glaring than the wickedness of it especially
in the case of Germany. Germany was an advancing
and prosperous nation, chiefly through the industrial
progress of her hard-working people, and her "peaceful
penetration" was conquering every quarter of commerce.
She has, for the time being, ruined everything by a
blind faith in and following of her scoundrels of
finance, for whom the Krupp and other dividends were
not sufficiently high or secure; the work of years has
now been destroyed and every gain has to be dis-
counted as loss, though there is not the slightest doubt
that her cleverness and cunning will enable her to
mend the hole in her wall far more rapidly than our
dilly-dally statesmen imagine. For the immediate
time, her degradation and ruin involve more than her
own position; other nations, even our own, are deeply
affected, and, like ships in unsafe anchorage, sway
from their moorings all are tormented by a spirit
of turbulence which will not let them rest, and men
with weak brains and vacillating purpose are playing
with the destinies of peoples in a wholly unforseeing
and nerveless way, heedless of the fact that there are
other more powerful players behind them who are
about to make an end of their game and push them
far away from the goal. In what I nave written,

PEEFACE ix

however slight and inadequate, I have had but one
aim in view: to hold up to the public as far as I can
or may, the greatness of this beloved land of ours
its splendid ancient history and tradition, and to
resent, as much as a mere pen can do, the disloyal
and agitating influences which seek to disrupt unity and
belittle the achievements of the noble British people.
Of the wicked waste of that people's money by the
most obtuse Government methods, and the iniquitous
premium on idleness foolishly given in the "Unemploy-
ment dole," I could say much, notwithstanding that
I am told it is "a sop to check Bolshevism." One does
not offer a sop to a mad bull one kills it. And it is
not credible that the sane, sound men of Great Britain,
with an Empire of glorious renown at their backs,
will ally themselves with Red Riot which means ruin
to themselves as well as to its instigators. True it
is that Stupidity is the present order of the day among
our blind leaders of the blind that very Stupidity
which Voltaire affirmed to be the only crime and there
is little else for us to do in our extremity but "wait
and see" whether Stupidity will prove more than a
blundering guide to "where the rainbow ends."

CONTENTS

. PAGE

ENGLAND, 1918 i 15

SAVAGE GLORY 16

FOR BELGIUM! 30

THE GREAT UNREST 31

THE WHIRLWIND 46

THE KAISER'S HARVEST OF DEATH 53

THIS AMAZING WAR 61

"ALL WE LIKE SHEEP" 67

WANTED MORE WOMEN! 73

THE QUALITY OF MERCY 79

STARVING BELGIUM 83

"THE TIME OF OUR LIVES" 92

THE WORLD'S GREATEST NEED 99

HAS CHRISTIANITY FAILED? 114

SNOOKS'S OPINION 116

SEA POWER, 1805-1918 122

THE SPLENDID SERVICE OF THE SEA 124

THE LILIES OF FRANCE 131

"WHOSO SHALL RECEIVE ONE SUCH LITTLE CHILD!" . 133

APPEAL FOR THE FRENCH RED CROSS 139

GLORY OF THE WORCESTERS 145

EYES OF THE SEA 156

Is ALL WELL WITH ENGLAND? 171

ri

xii CONTENTS

THE WORLD IN TEARS

GOD AND THE WAR

TRIUMPH OF WOMANHOOD ....

IN PRAISE OP ENEMIES

RECRUITING SPEECH

SPLENDID CANADA

SHELLS; AND OTHER SHELLS . . .

DARKNESS AND LIGHT

SWEEPING THE COUNTRY

To SAVE LIFE OR DESTROY IT? . .

THE WAR LOAN

FOOD PRODUCTION

OUR FORTUNATE "RESTRICTIONS" . .

"His PAINFUL DUTY"

THE POTATO "SCREAM"

"HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF" . . .

"SHODDY CHIVALRY"

"HINDENBURG'S EYE!"

"HOARDING"

THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF FAME. . .
SHAKESPEARE'S WAR BIRTHDAY IN 1917

"DON'T TRAVEL" .

"TE DEUM LAUDAMUS"

THE WOMEN'S VOTE

A "HAPPY THOUGHTS" DAY . . .
WHY DID I ?

IN THE HUSH OF THE DAWN

MY "LITTLE BIT'

MY "LITTLE BIT"

LIFT up thine eyes, Queen Warrior of the world I
Stand, fearlessr-footed, on Time's shifting verge
And watch thine everlasting Dawn emerge
From clouds that hreak and boom in thunderous War !
Lo, how thy broad East reddens to thy West,
The while thy thousand-victoried flag, unfurl'd,
Waves to thy North and South, in one royal fold
Of tent-like shelter for an Empire's rest;
O Queen, sword-girded, helmeted in gold,
Strong Conqueror of all thy many foes,
Look from thy rocky heights, and see afar
The coming Future menacing the Past
With clamour and wild change of present things,
Kingdoms down-shaken with the fall of kings;
But fear not Thou! Thou'rt still the first and last
Imperial wearer of the deathless Rose
Crown'd with the sunlight, girdled with the sea,
Mother of mightiest nations yet to bel

L15

SAVAGE GLOEY

AN APPEAL AGAINST WAR

(This article was written for "Nash's Magazine" in February,
1913, without any other than instinctive premonition of the com-
ing Great War.)

EDITORIAL NOTE. Marie Corelli's remarkable article should, be
read by every man and woman at all mindful of the welfare of
their fellow-sojourners on this little swinging ball of ours, which
we call the earth. This contribution is far and away one of the
most brilliant pieces of writing Miss Corelli has ever achieved;
it is thought-compelling and in the larger sense inspirational; it
is wellnigh epoch-maJcing in its new view, its virile logic, its sane
and forceful plea for the peace of the world peace on a basis of
common sense, broad humanity, and the honour of nations.

CIVILISATION is a great Word. It reads well it is
used everywhere it bears itself proudly in the language.
It is a big mouthful of arrogance and self-sufficiency.
The very sound of it natters our vanity and testifies to
the good opinion we have of ourselves. We boast of
"Civilisation" as if we were really civilised just as
we talk of "Christianity" as if we were really Chris-
tians. Yet it is all the veriest game of make-believe,
for we are mere Savages still. Savages in "the lust
of the eye and pride of life" savages in our national
prejudices and animosities, our jealousies, our greed and
malice, and savages in our relentless efforts to over-
reach or pull down each other in social and business
relations. If any confirmation of such a statement be

16

SAVAGE GLORY 17

needed it is found in the fact that War is still permitted
to exist. WAK is unquestionably the thrust and blow
of untamed Savagery in the face of Civilisation. !No
special pleading can make it anything else. We may
if we like call it "Patriotism" in our perpetual life-
comedy or tragedy of feigning, but in sane moments
we must surely realise that we are wilfully deceiving
ourselves. Patriotism is understood to be that virtue
which consists in serving one's country; but in what
way is this "Patria" or country served by slaying its
able-bodied men in thousands? the very men whose
peaceful and progressive toil makes the country worth
living in ? Can any adequate answer be given to this
question? Is "Honour" justly due to the heads of
Government who, themselves safely out of the fray,
send such men like sheep to the shambles men innocent
of all personal or national offence, but who in their
fine obedience to duty and the preconceived idea of
conquest which has its root in old barbaric periods,
consent to be shot down under the murderous fire of
unseen guns miles away, simply because their rulers
have so ordained it ? Is it "civilised" to spread ruin
and devastation through the land? to leave homes
desolate ? and to create a wretched surplus population
of widows and orphans for no other reason than that
one nation refuses to comply with what is demanded
of it by the other ? Is it not possible to deal with even
a difficult and refractory subject of quarrel in the way
of reason and argument, brought to bear upon it by
the soberly judging powers of all nations? And if
reason and argument should fail, then, instead of
consigning troops of blameless men to the scientific
but cruelly treacherous methods of modern warfare,

18 MY "LITTLE BIT"

would it not be more normal and humane simply to
Stop Supplies?

Here we touch a vital centre of the question. "No
nation can go to war without Money. In most cases
a very great deal of this same money is required. Who
provides it ? The nation itself ? One may doubt
whether any nation could raise sufficient funds to
carry on a serious war for any length of time without
borrowing. Supposing this to be the case, what
financial force behind the scenes so obligingly lends
the cash for the purpose of carrying out schemes of
wholesale murder? Wherever such cash is obtained
we know it must be weighted with an exorbitant rate
of interest, so that the price of human blood fills the
pockets of the lenders with a certain guaranteed over-
flow. To stop War, therefore, it should be made
impossible to borrow the sums required for warfare;
and any loan started with the object of War in view,
whether suggested or avowed, should be considered
by a National Agreement of United Powers illegal
and even criminal, as conspiring against the peace
and progress of the world. If, by what is called
diplomacy or political subterfuge, this law were cheated,
and vast sums were loaned ostensibly for other purposes
than War, and it could afterwards be proved that
War had nevertheless been, secretly and all along, the
actual purpose of such loans, then the lenders should
be compelled to forfeit all claims to repayment. For
talk fine sentiment and pious platitudes as we will,
the brutal truth is that no war can be carried on without
money money fully guaranteed and if we would
strike at the root of the evil, then these guaranteed
supplies must be cut off.

SAVAGE GLORY 19

A well-known journalist who, through his birth
and family connections, may be presumed to have more
than common knowledge of the various financial games
of chess played by the "Chancelleries" of Europe, is re-
sponsible for the statement that "War is popular."
This is one of those brisk surface sayings that shine
with apparent candour, like the sparkle of light in the
ice on a puddle, but which have no more depth than
the puddle itself. War is temporarily "popular"
so long as it is confined to its own pomp and panoply
its martial music, its flying banners, its glittering
array of armed men its marching and countermarch-
ing its sensation and "show," in fact sensation and
show which appeal to the multitude who are not brought
face to face with the disease and death of its darker
side. The elemental passions of a mob can be roused
as easily by the "savage" beating of a tom-tom as by
the "civilised" roll of the drum, or by the fussy cackling
of an excitable Hen-Press. That Hen nowadays is
always laying eggs of a curiously abnormal nature, in
fact so surprising is its daily product that the maternal
bird is for ever getting off the nest to look at results,
with an evident expectation that mere chicks may turn
out to be swans, though, as a rule, they are generally
geese. To judge from the incessant cackle and scream,
one would imagine them responsible for European opin-
ion, and occupied in raising "nation against nation,"
with "men's hearts failing them for fear," in startling
confirmation of the New Testament prophecy, and some
of us are disposed to ask: Why are sinister and dis-
turbing suggestions constantly thrown out by the Press
as baits to catch the always restless, dissatisfied and
uneasy minds of the populace? Is Finance the fisher-

20 MY "LITTLE BIT"

man behind the tree, angling with a long line and a
devil's hook at the end of it ? To one with a grain of
common sense would call it Patriotism! Our men of
science, our pathologists and physicians have of late
years teen studying to some purpose the mysterious
power of "Suggestion" and if we have sufficient intel-
ligence to understand the discovered facts which have
rewarded their researches we shall acknowledge that
ideas, started and persistently fostered in the minds
of the million by constant reiteration, frequently
develop into actions. With how much care and
earnestness therefore should we see to it th,at the
suggestions impressed on the brains of Nations are
sane, pure and noble, moving all progress forward,
with that firm gentleness which is the truest strength,
into the ways of wisdom and of peace !

As "civilised" peoples we continue to exhibit the
strangest barbaric inconsistency in our manners and
methods of justice. If one man or woman is murdered
in our midst our laws are set into instant operation
to find the murderer, and if the crime is brought home
to him he is sentenced to death. But in War thousands
are murdered at the mere signal of "brave" com-
manders, and instead of the wrath and horror aroused
by the slaying of a single life, an uproar of jubilation
and triumph breaks out over the poor festering corpses
that strew the field of so-called "glorious victory."
The "civilised" State protests against the murder of
one individual, but looks upon the ghastly holocaust
of slaughtered lives in battle as something almost
noble and inspiring! Is this reasonable? Is it re-
concilable with sane judgment? Is it any proof that
our "Education" is of real worth? or does it not

SAVAGE GLORY 21

rather testify to the amazing fact that in our greed
of possession, our thirst of conquest, and our curious
conceptions of religion and humanity, we have pro-
gressed scarcely a step ahead of our "barbarian" ancesr
tors and their "savage" customs !

"Alas, for men that they should be so blind f
That they should laud the scourges of their

kind

Call each man glorious who has led a host
And him most glorious who has murdered

most !"

It is said by certain special pleaders that War is
a Necessity. We are referred for verification of this
to the world of nature, where it would certainly seem
that various tribes of animals and insects do make
war upon each other. These wars, however, occur
much more frequently among the low grades of nature-
life than the high. One may doubt whether eagles
as a tribe make war upon eagles, lions upon lions,
and so forth. That every animal should fight or work
individually for food is the natural law the spirit
of prey is one from which Man himself is never exempt.
But has any one ever heard of several thousand lions
or bears taking up a stand against each other and
slaying each other wholesale for a disputed portion
of territory? Ants and emmets make continual war
among themselves, but "Civilisation" is supposed to
have set Man a trifle higher than the ant or emmet;
he is even believed to be superior in mental capacity
to the eagle or the lion. He is accredited with fine
faculties of reason, and is more or less conscious of

high spiritual impulses and in Christian countries
he professes a humane creed, and assumes to teach
the ethics of a divine moral code. During the far-off
periods of his evolution from embryonic animalism
towards the higher potentialities of his being, he was
doubtless forced to fight his way against such opposing
obstacles as threatened to stay or overwhelm him in
his progress, but now now when he stands, or thinks
he stands, on a height of intellectual power and attain-
ment which enables him to discard old barbarisms,
surely it would be possible for him to control the
lurking remains of his original savagery! War may
be, as the before-quoted journalist declares, "popular,"
but it might be as well, considering the ruin and misery
which follow in its train, to inquire into the inward
working of its asserted "popularity," apart from its
deceptive outward display.

First then, as already hinted, there are floaters of
a War Loan. With them it is undoubtedly "popular,"
for it opens several channels for the rapid making
of money. Roughly speaking, most of the money ad-
vanced at interest for all important purposes comes
from the Jews. All nations are more or less under the
thumb of Israel, disguise it as we will, or may. No
great scheme, either in peace or war, can be started
without Jewish gold and Jewish support. The Jews
are the cleverest commercial people on the globe;
they are also charitable and benevolent to a degree
that often shames Christianity. They could, as a
race, do much to stop War in its very beginnings if
they once unanimously and resolutely decided on
such a course of action. But it is not likely that they
will ever pronounce their "veto" ; the idea would be too

SAVAGE GLORY 23

Utopian and unbusinesslike. Therefore, as things
exist, it is scarcely unkind to say, that with their race
all over the world War is "popular." Its commence-
ment, progress, and continuance are in their hands.
And they will, from a purely commercial point of
view, continue to lend cash for the furtherance and
encouragement of National Savagery, so long as
National Savagery exists, and is willing to borrow
money at a high rate of interest. For with them the
God of Israel is still a God of Battles.

Secondly, War is "popular" with the Press. Unctuous
newspaper articles lamenting the "horror" of War,
and disclaiming all responsibility for fermenting and
agitating the motives of quarrel, are only so much
meaningless "copy." Useful "copy," too, because it
conveys to the ingenuous and child-like mind of the
man in the street that the intelligent editors and
journalists who "manage" his news for him are really
peace-loving, unselfish folk, and pious withal. Whereas
the very suggestion of War is a paying "sensation"
for press-men ; it gives plenty of opening for big "head-
lines" and attractive "posters," which help to sell their
penny or halfpenny sheets to the best advantage.
Whatever rumour is abroad, whatever whisper of a
"conference of the Powers" flies on the wind, the Press
makes more than the most of both rumour and whisper
and if it can only work up a national "Scare" it is as
happy as a monkey with a banana. Such a Press as
that of America and Great Britain could not exist
without "sensation." Even in "piping times of peace"
it resorts to the most ludicrous methods of producing
mild excitements, such as "Sweet Pea" or "Giant
Carnation" or "Photographic" competitions, or a

24 MY "LITTLE BIT"

"Symposium" as to whether milk or fish diet is best
for the brain. A murder is life to it ! while the useful,
brilliant, beautiful or noble work done in Art or Litera-
ture gets scarcely a helpful mention. How often we
see great space given to the description of a public
dancer! her jewels, her dresses, her opinions!
while a fine poem or picture is dismissed in a flippant
paragraph. The reason of this is obvious: it is that
many of the persons who assist in the work of daily
journalism are only educated up to the public dancer
standard the poem or the picture is lost on the
limited area of their abilities. And it may really be
said again without either prejudice or unkindness
that so far as the press is concerned War is "popular,"
because it provides just that particular "sensation"
which in its turn commands sales. Therefore if press-
men, directly or indirectly, do foster national bitter-
ness or help to stir up strife, we must remember that
they are only serving their own interests, and that
blame is chiefly due to ourselves if we give credence
to their often exaggerated statements. Bismarck is
reported to have said on one occasion, "The windows
which our Press breaks we shall have to pay for!"
This is true enough. Indeed, it is just possible that
if there were no Press at all for a few years many
dissensions would die out, and many unfortunate hap-
penings would never happen!

But setting aside the two chief forces behind the
scenes, Usury and the Press, with all other com-
mercially concerned parties in the quarrels of nations,
who can or who dare say that War is "popular" ? Let
wives and children answer ! Let us try to understand
what we ourselves mean by our conflicting theories

SAVAGE GLORY 25

and arguments we who make such ado about a
"declining birth-rate," and fall into hysterical raptures
over a family of "soldier sons" ! Let us realise clearly
that the slaughter of able-bodied men materially as-
sists towards the "declining birth-rate," and that where
there are "soldier sons" they have been brought into
the world apparently for no other reason than to
be mangled out of it! This is War! Glorious
War ! Is it sane ? Is it truly "glorious" to shoot down
thousands of human beings who have committed no
fault of their own, but are simply commanded by
their Governments to serve as marks for the bullets
of an enemy who might never have been an enemy
at all but for mischief arising out of idle and often
erroneous report, based on what is perhaps only a tem-
porary and trivial misunderstanding? The best of
friends are sometimes parted by the stupid gossip of
stupid persons who, envious of happiness and grudg-
ing it to those who possess it, never rest till some-
thing has been done to undermine and destroy it.
In the same way nations are set against each other
by some persistently irritating and ill-founded ru-
mour some difference of opinion, which, if taken in
hand reasonably and at once, could be satisfactorily
settled, provided there be not too much talk, "red
tape," and officialism employed for the purpose of cre-
ating general vacillation and muddle. The con-
ventional "ifs" and "buts" exchanged among the
Powers may be looked upon with considerable doubt
and foreboding under certain circumstances an over-
flow of fine words not unfrequently means an outbreak
of treacherous deeds.

Unhappily, and in flat contradiction to that "hu-

26 MY "LITTLE BIT"

mane" spirit, which we so frequently profess, treachery
strikes the dominant note in modern warfare, and this
is one of the chief reasons why War should no longer
be permitted. The new long-range quick-firing gun
is as dastardly as it is powerful, for surely to shoot
down men miles away who cannot see their enemies
is as reprehensible and cowardly as to stab a man in
the back unawares. Another instrument of treachery
is the submarine a truly devilish invention devised
for the avowed object of destroying war-vessels by
murderous action from the hidden depths of the sea.
No one ever seems to pause and consider what an
amount of fiendish cunning in the mind of man has
evolved the construction of this deadly engine of war-
fare still less does the question ever appear to
suggest itself as to whether such a perfidious way of
compassing slaughter is humane (we will not shame
the word "Christian") or truly "civilised." If we re-
fer back to what we are pleased to call the "dark ages"
or ages of barbarism, we read much concerning
"instruments of torture," such as the rack, the thumb-
screw, and other inventions brutally designed by man
to injure his fellow-man, but these things for the most
part avowed their murderous intention in open day-
light the doomed creatures knew what they had to
expect and prepared to die accordingly. But modern
science has sharpened our wits to a more merciless
edge we are cunning enough to hide ourselves and
our instruments of death from our intended victims
after the fashion of assassins lurking in ambush
therefore by the very law of compensation it is scarcely
to be wondered at that we are sometimes "hoist with
our own petard," of which the many appalling sub-

SAVAGE GLOKY 27

marine fatalities are proof and warning. And now,
not satisfied with attack from the secret depths of
the ocean, Zeppelins and aeroplanes shower bombs
upon open towns and innocent civilians, so that even
the hitherto neutral skies will be made spaces of van-
tage for pitiless assault. All these "civilised" in-
ventions for the practice of barbarity ought to give
so-called "Christian" empires food for serious thought
yet, strange to say, it would seem that every new
and more murderous weapon for warfare is hailed
with columns of praise in the press, and such general
acclamation as may truly be called "savage" as no
"civilised" community educated according to all that
we boast of in our advanced state of progress, could
or would rejoice over the construction of mere killing-
machines for the slaughter of their fellow-creatures!
Therefore, it may be asked: Are we truly "civilised"
or is it all a Sham? Are we really humane? or as
bloodthirsty as when, in our aboriginal savagery, we
cracked the skulls of our enemies open with flint axes ?
The continued existence of War is, in the face of
all faith and feeling, a shame to the world! So long
as nations are slaves to the barbarous idea that Blood
and Carnage alone can keep them in their places as
authoritative forces for the higher progress and welfare
of Humanity, so long will Civilisation be more or less
a farce. No one denies the self-sacrifice, the endurance,
the patience, and the courage which makes men military
heroes the pity of it all is that such splendid quali-
ties of character should be wasted on the mere con-
summation of slaughter and conquest. What good
to the world has ever come out of Napoleon's many
massacres ? Looking down upon the sarcophagus con-

28 MY "LITTLE BIT"

taining that Imperial Murderer's ashes in the gor-
geous tomb consecrated to his memory in Paris, one
wonders sadly why he was ever permited to live. We
may with the great poet Byron say:

"To think that God's fair earth hath been
The footstool of a thing so mean !"

If War is still to confirm us and other nations as
Savages, we must behave accordingly. We must train
our men and youths to kill, and to use the newest
and surest weapons for killing. When we are offered
Dreadnoughts, we accept them with salvos of rejoic-
ing and thanksgiving. Yet without War these
Dreadnoughts will, in ten years' time from the date of
their completion, be useless, and the millions they
cost will be sunk into waste material. Must we have
continuous War, then ? just for the sake of employing
Dreadnoughts and proving to our own satisfaction
that we can slaughter as many innocent thousands
as other Savages if we like? Why should any cause
arise for the visitation of such a scourge upon us or
any nation! If we have foes who show a threatening
front we are naturally bound to be on the defensive
-and we should be prepared to guard our kingdom
and coast from Savages more savage than our-
selves. But when we can get rid of our Savagery
we shall lay down our arms. We shall realise
that Civilisation means Unity; Unity in all high
purpose and progress towards the betterment of
mankind.

"Sheathed be the sword for ever let the drum
Be schoolboy's pastime let your battles cease !

SAVAGE GLOKY 29

And be the camion's voice for ever dumb
Except to celebrate the joys of Peace!
Are ye not brothers ? God, whom we revere,
Is he not Father of all climes and lands ?
Form an Alliance holy and sincere
And join your hands!"

Surely it is not too much to hope for this to pray
for this! if our Faith means anything more than
mere lip-service and false show !

80 MY "LITTLE BIT"

FOR BELGIUM!

THE PRAYER OF THE ALLIES
(Written for "King Albert's Book")

"What shall we do for our Sister in the day when she shall be

spoken of?
If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver."

Song of Solomon.

Maker of Heaven and Earth,

Thou, who hast given birth
To moving millions of pre-destined spheres,

Thou, whose resistless might

Resolves the Wrong to Right
Missing no moment of the measured years

Behold, we come to Thee!
We lift our swords, unsheath'd, towards Thy throne

Look down on us, and see
Our Sister-Nation, ruined and undone!
Martyred for nobleness, for truth and trust;
Help us, O God, to raise her from the dust !

Be Thou our witness, Lord!

We swear with one accord
Swift retribution on her treacherous foel

Her bitter wrong is ours

And heaven's full-armed powers
Shall hurl her murderer to his overthrow !

Upon her broken wall
A silver palace of sweet peace shall rise

At that high Festival

When Victory's signal flashes through the skies
But until then ! welcome the fiercest fray !
We fight for Freedom ! God, give us "The Day" I

THE GREAT UNTREST

(This article was written for "Hash's Magazine" two years
before the War, and was on its appearance prefaced by the follow-
ing Editor's Note.)

EDITOR'S NOTE. While "Nosh's Magazine" cheerfully presents
the following very radical and profoundly interesting article from
the brilliant pen of Miss Marie Corelli, this Magazine should not
in any sense be held accountable for either the Author's views or
her expression of them*.

"YE hypocrites! Ye can discern the face of the sky
and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not discern
this time?"

Such was the question put to the people by the
Founder of the Christian Faith two thousand years
ago a question not yet answered. Lack of discern-
ment is still as much as ever one of humanity's chief
attributes, or is it perhaps less a lack of discernment
than an unwillingness to discern? "Ye hypocrites!"
said the Christ. Is it not, after all, sheer hypocrisy
which, in the form of social convention, does so obsess
Man that, though conscious of approaching storm,
he prefers to bury his head, ostrich-like, in a sand-
heap of his own delusions in order that he may be as
blind and as deaf as possible to the lurid glare and wild
uproar of coming disaster? He instinctively knows
disaster is imminent even at his very doors and
that it will presently swoop relentlessly down upon
him, perhaps tossing him with other fragments of

31

32 MY "LITTLE BIT"

creation into a chaos from which he shall scarcely
emerge with a sound skin; yet knowing, he pretends
not to know, and plays the fool with himself and
destiny !

To-day, now, at this very moment, all over the
civilised world, this terrible game of "playing the
fool" is going on with reckless speed and continuity.
I use the word "terrible" advisedly, for nothing more
pregnant with all the elements of positive terror was
ever seen than the present-time spectacle of Human
Humbug set face to face with that Eternal Equity
which has existed always, and which ever will exist
without any change in its Divine Source, Cause and
Intention, Man, endowed with splendid gifts of rea-
son, imagination and psychic power, is everywhere
gambling away his highest birthright for gold; Man,
whom the celestial forces have led step by step through
carefully measured gradations of intellectual evolution
till he has arrived at the open gateways of Science,
there to behold the infinitely marvellous benefits he
may possess and enjoy, still insults the Giver of all his
good by his fumbling forms of faith and worship suited
only to barbaric minds in a state of embryo Man,
semi-apathetic and in many cases wholly indifferent
to the higher roads of progress and to the steady un-
folding of that endless perspective of order and beauty
intended for the individual happiness of every indi-
vidual soul, still makes wilful havoc of his own care-
fully organised civilisations, like a child who builds
a house of cards and blows it down with a breath
and this because his civilisations are mostly of a flimsy
structure, having no foundation on any fundamental
Law which Nature can or will tolerate for more than

THE GKEAT UNKEST 33

a very brief time. All history teaches this with stern
and pitiless repetition; and the signs and portents
which gave warning of the downfall of the Koman
Empire were of precisely the same character as the
signs and portents which warn us of similar downfalls
impending for great nations to-day. The scheme of
Creation is plainly meant to be a perpetual movement
towards perpetual advancement this truth is clearly
demonstrated in all natural evolution, and Man is per-
force compelled, despite himself, to move with the
onward and upward process but he invariably "hangs
back" and tries to put a stop on the wheel, with
the result that he is himself crushed and ground
to powder in the wheel's relentless revolving. He
makes religions, laws and morals for himself which
have no prototype in the order of Nature, and he
thereby stands rebelliously opposed to the Supreme
Intelligence, whose design of life being exact mathe-
matics, swerves not by so much as the shadow of a
hair.

Hence arises, and always will arise, trouble. Trou-
ble and unrest ! The sum of things never comes right,
add it up, subtract, or multiply as we will. We persist
in our childish efforts to fit in figures which have no
place or part in the Divine quantities. Now and then
in some sudden flash of higher consciousness, we see
the folly of our actions but seeing, we pretend to
be blind. Some of us devote ourselves to a study of
the sciences, and we peep through a hundred loop-
holes into a vista of shining truths, any one of which
would help us to draw closer to God yet presently
we turn away and talk of predestination and original
sin, and feign to believe in a Deity whose rage against

34: MY "LITTLE BIT"

His own Creation is so insensate and barbaric as only
to be pacified by Blood! Blood blood! The cry
of the vengeful, the murderous, the cruel, the tyrannous
in all ages of the world! yet we do not hesitate to
insult the Creator of the whole Cosmos by endowing
Him with this animal and un-God-like craving! He,
who holds the starry heavens in the hollow of His
Hand from whose expressed Thought solar systems
are born like blossoms in the fields of ether He, whose
vast love broods tenderly over all that He hath made,
even to the nesting bird hidden under a bunch of
green leaves "not one shall fall to the ground without
your Father" even He it is whom daily we wrong
and blaspheme by our social methods of life and forms
of worship, by our deliberate opposition to His Laws,
and by the amazingly insolent indifference we exhibit
to His inviolate Will as shown through the reflection
of His Mind in visible Nature.

And so it happens that, after a certain space of time
in which we are offered fresh chances of amendment
or betterment which we seldom take, things begin to
go wrong. We know not how or where the mischief
first started, because it has stolen upon us by gradual
and insidious degrees, and we never dream of looking
for the root of the evil in ourselves or in our ancestry.
But we do become slowly and reluctantly aware that
we are not on the right track that "something" is
about to happen which will upset all our most cherished
plans and push us off our present road of what we are
pleased to call "progress" in a sufficiently disastrous
manner. We have no time to retrace our steps and
look for the way we have missed, for we find that we
are running down hill with a singular self-imposed

THE GREAT UNREST . 35

velocity which would make any sort of a stop almost
impossible while to go back would mean to climb a
very steep and difficult ascent, an exercise for which
we are neither prepared nor willing. We have no
idea how we managed the muddle in which we find
ourselves, but muddle it is and muddle it remains.

And then we enter upon the doubtful period the
kind of period in which the whole world is living to-day
a period of vague uneasiness, restlessness, and fever-
ish suspense, looking for we know not what, dissatisfied
with things as they are, yet unable to decide how they
ought to ba Then is the hour of the brazen-mouthed
religious ranter and the political demagogue. The
nations of the earth are disquieted mentally and
spiritually the pulpit braggart assumes to teach
them, and the upstart in politics offers to reform them.
And like the waves of the sea before a storm breaks,
the people surge to and fro in billowy masses, with
here and there a gleam of hope among them like light
on spraying foam, but for the most part moving in
darkness and deep unrest. For the time is past when
the balm of old tradition can be applied as a soothing
salve to the spiritual wounds of humanity. Men do
not want to be soothed, but roused fired to
noblest energy, greatest aims and splendid achieve-
ment and they need to feel that their efforts to reach
the Highest are worth the making, and that the fight
which they enter upon means victory in the end.

This, most unfortunately, is not made plain to them
by either the faiths or followings of modern society.
The Churches have in a great measure lost their hold
upon the people, and the consolidation of family life
is a thing of the past. When England was truly great,

36 MY "LITTLE BIT"

the love of home and country was the chief foundation
of her greatness, as it should be with all nations seeking
to hold high place and power but in our present
modes of living, both in England and America, "home"
is voted hum-drum and a bore sons and daughters
openly profess the gad-about principle of what they
term "pleasure," and are more or less indifferent to
the interests or convenience of their parents, showing
no more reverence or consideration for them than is
necessary to obtain financial "supplies." They snap
the chain that should bind them to filial tenderness
and duty, and follow their own particular forms of
enjoyment with a cool selfishness which can but
astonish any thoughtful beholder yet even this
reprehensible attitude of the rising generation is but
a phase of the general "Unrest" pervading all classes
and all ages the vague sense that nothing is going
to last very long that some dire mischief threatens
the world and that one must try to enjoy oneself
while one can, because there is no time left to do any-
thing else. And well-meaning fathers and mothers,
especially those of the upper classes, adapt themselves
more or less compassionately and with regret to the
new and often exceedingly bad manners of their
children, who, in nine cases out of ten, resemble the
Biblical "daughters of the horse-leech," crying "Give!
Give!" and regard their progenitors merely as human
banks on which they expect to draw ad libitum, till
the coin gives out. All this is wrong, hopelessly wrong.
Fathers should be supported by their sons, if support
is needed not sons supported by their fathers. And
in such strange times as these, when women are so
ready to throw off their womanliness and become

THE GREAT UNREST 37

mere roughs in the general fray, they too must be
expected to put themselves in harness and earn the
right to live. They have wilfully destroyed the ideal
of woman, so long and lovingly cherished by man in
the days of sentiment and chivalry and now they
can hardly wonder if husbands prove difficult to secure.
Men will think a hundred times before entering into
marriage with possible window-smashers,

Yet it is all part and parcel of the one thing the
Great Unrest which, like a storm atmosphere, envelops
all our modern civilisation. There is no country that
does not feel it no nation that is not uneasily con-
scious of being on the verge of change. The disruption
of family life the revolt of Woman against her own
nature, and the frenzied ultra-stupidity she exhibits
in the efforts she makes to reverse her own God-
ordained position in the scheme of creation the
pathetic bewilderment and weariness of Man himself,
left without any of his old ideals of faith or love, and
clinging to gold as the only seemingly tangible good
which may procure him some bodily comfort and
ease, though feeling in his own soul that even this is
little worth all these things are forerunners of coming
trouble to which we are as yet unable to give a name.
Most notable and most tremendous of all portents,
however, is the earthquake tremor that is shaking the
Churches to their foundations, and the growth and
extension of what is called the "New Thought." The
New Thought is really the Old Thought the Thought
which was the underlying germ of the mystic religions
of the East, and the foundation of the Platonic
philosophy. The "Thought" has become overlaid by
a multiplicity of differing human opinions, forming,

38 MY "LITTLE BIT"

as is their habit, into useless and mischievous systems
but in its pure beginning it is the Christ in embryo
the God-in-Man. In simplest truth it is an eternal
Thought which by Divine inspiration teaches us that
the Soul or spirit of every human being is an individual
portion of the Spirit of God and that as such it is
an immortal creature, whose destiny is glorious, whose
splendid faculties are for the purpose of evolving itself
through phases of wide advancement to wider attain-
ment, and for whom there is and can be no such thing
as death. This Earth is its present school and play-
ground Nature is its teacher, as well as its subject
and servant. It is to learn what it can and will by
patient study and grateful experience it is to use
what it finds in all things pleasant, helpful, joyous,
noble, and gracious it is to breathe in an atmosphere
of love; and with the Supreme Intelligence of which
it is a part, it may feed as it will among the lilies of
life, and may say, "My Beloved is mine and I am
His."

This spiritual tie between man and his Maker has
never been sufficiently emphasised by the Churches.
Their religious forms of worship impress upon us that
we are miserable sinners whatever we do, that we
must try to save our souls, and that we must put as
much as we can into the collection-plate. In great
sorrow or difficulty these instructions are not very
helpful. Sometimes indeed we doubt whether God
meant us to consider ourselves such "miserable sinners"
after all. Our perpetual whinings and lamentations
cannot make sweet music on the Divine records. God
gave us our bodies, not to chastise and mortify, but
to care for and make healthy and beautiful; and the

THE GEEAT UNREST 39

laws He has framed for our guidance and maintenance
are such that if one be broken, punishment is bound
to follow. There is no forgiveness, because there
simply cannot be any deviation in the mathematical
precision of the universal plan. And the punishment
is measured exactly to the fault. If we refuse to go
forward, we must go back we are not allowed to
stand still. If a man elects to throw himself headlong
from a steeple, not all the prayers of the saints could
alter the law of gravitation which causes him to fall
and break his neck. What is true of physical law is
equally true of spiritual law, since Matter is simply
Spirit substantiated and made temporarily visible in
endless temporary forms. And all God-ordained laws,
whether physical or spiritual, are framed for the guid-
ance, benefit, and advancement of creation whereas
we, by devising other laws which pull contrary to
Divine ways and means, find ourselves "in darkness
and the shadow of death" instead of in light and the
splendour of life. In our day Science has come to our
rescue, and like a great Angel stands at the open door
of the Kingdom of Heaven; she shows us the "many
mansions" of worlds upon worlds in the Father's House
she points out the loving care with which even the
tiniest organism of life is protected she instructs us
how we may press the lightning into our service and
use the waves of the air to convey our messages from
one land to the other and she impresses upon us,
even as a loving mother impresses a beautiful truth
upon her child, the fact that we even we are per-
mitted to be the rulers of this wonderful planet, so
full of exquisite beauty and joy and that we are
expected to use the endless gifts bestowed upon us

40 MY "LITTLE BIT"

with love, wisdom and courage, developing ourselves
into a noble race of creatures worthy of ever nobler
and higher issues.

Thus it has come to pass that with Science leading
us ever onward and upward, we cannot any longer
in reason look upon "Our Father" as a capricious ty-
rant, needing a sacrifice of blood to pacify His wrath
against us. Instead of this barbarous conception, we
realise that Perfect Justice cannot possibly be angry
with what it has Itself ordained and we are overpow-
ered and brought to our knees in devout adoration be-
fore the Great Spirit of Love which is the Generator of
the universe, and which out of smallest beginnings
works to greatest ends work in which we are permit-
ted, nay, expected and commanded, to take an active
part, our disobedience always resulting in disaster to
ourselves.

It is the contemplation of these truths which Science
hourly and daily demonstrates to the glory of the Cre-
ator that the "New" or "Old" Thought has arisen
in all its strength, like Christ from the grave, "walking
in the garden in the cool of the day." Hence the earth-
quake tottering of the Churches, and the ever-spreading
great wave of religious unrest. There is, among many
deeply thinking people, an uneasy sense that we have
insulted the real and ever present God by our narrow
and more or less selfish systems of faith, and that we
must hasten to make amends. Therefore, putting
the question of the mentally unfit aside in the general
sorting of the sheep from the goats, it seems evident
that the time is ripening towards a New Eevelation
of the Divine in Man a "sign from heaven" for the
better guidance of the human soul towards ultimate

THE GREAT UNREST 41

perfection, and a surer means of obtaining peace and
happiness in this life as well as in the life to come.
But before the sign be given there must and will be
heavy tribulation; "nation rising against nation,
kingdom against kingdom, earthquakes and divers
troubles" and the very beginning of these "divers
troubles" is upon us now.

Hence the Great Unrest. People scurry to and
fro all over the earth, like ants disturbed on their hill
by a burning match thrown in among them. They
do not know what is the matter, but they feel that
they must keep moving. The sensation of inexplicable
haste is upon them. There is no time for anything.
Pleasure easily palls, and the most agreeable society
develops into boredom. The days of reposeful leisure,
in which the greatest works of art were created, are
ended. Everything must be got through quickly
nowadays "scamped" as a matter of fact. Sweetness
and harmony in music are no longer admired it must
be discordant and odd to suit the spirit of the age. Fine
painting is a drug in the market unless it be the work
of an "old master" a picture must be "sensational"
in colour and in execution to suit the perverted taste
of the day. Literature and the drama must present
"problems" of a questionable nature before their
productions can be pronounced "great" by the very
few critics who are more than ordinary paragraphists
while Poetry, the highest of all the arts, is practically
dead. The abnormal condition of the human mind
displays itself in costume, manners, and social obser-
vances and over all things hangs the deepening mist
of a universal dissatisfaction for which there seems

42 MY "LITTLE BIT"

to be no cause, and for which we can find no
name.

Do we mean to go on blindly, pretending we do not
see ? "Ye hypocrites ! Ye can discern the face of the
sky and of the earth, but how is it that ye do not
discern this time?"

How is it indeed ! For "this time" is one of the most
fated and historic times in the history of the world
a time when we may perhaps be called upon to witness
the commencement of the downfall of the greatest of
Empires the British ; when we may have to watch its
magnificent fabric, once the envy of all other nations,
crumbling before our very eyes its pillars of state
pulled down by riotous demagogues its splendid tradi-
tions put to shame by both parties in its Parliament
by the one in sheer outlawry, by the other in no less dis-
graceful inaction. We can look on at this and wonder
what new power will arise from its ruins, but we may
not dare to prophesy till after the event ! For this is
but "the beginning of sorrows." It little matters that
the fools and jesters of the hour make mockery of all
those who seek to warn off the misguided people from
the quicksands whither they are rushing fools and jes-
ters there have always been and always will be, ready to
toss ribaldry in the face of Deity itself without com-
punction. But the evil which darkly threatens modern
civilisation is too near and too evident to be lightly
"laughed down." Every student of history knows
that when the foundations of religious faith are shaken
when it becomes "a house divided against itself,"
then national disaster is close at hand. Man, deprived
of any high spiritual ideal of life, quickly reverts to
mere selfish savagery. The Dean of St. Paul's, called

THE GREAT TJXREST 43

"the gloomy Dean" by a halfpenny daily, because he
dares to speak truths which are not altogether pleasant
hearing, must have thought long and deeply, and
fully made up his mind as to what he meant when he
said: "It is the duty of the clergy to maintain that
it is 'other worldliness' which alone had transformed
and could transform this world" which means that
it is only spiritual progress which can make material
progress valuable and lasting. The inward enlighten-
ment and uplifting of the soul or spirit of each individ-
ual man and woman towards the highest and bravest
ideals of life and love, and conformity to the laws of
creation as made plainly visible in Nature, is the only
true civilisation. This lesson is taught by every
scientific truth we are permitted to investigate. It
is not preaching or platitudinism it is an incontestable
eternal Fact. Our lives on this planet were intended
to be lives of joy, health, beauty, love, and mutual
helpfulness and where we depart from this intention
we insult and disobey the Creator, whose design is
one of gradual development towards ultimate perfection.
We wrong Him when we call this beautiful world "a
vale of tears" for our misfortunes and diseases are
chiefly our own fault, and certainly are not His doing.
It is time we stood up with a glad courage, giving
thanks for all the benefits He has showered upon us
without asking for more. Any creed that is selfish and
whining is no creed for the soul that aspires to the
highest progress. If we invite evils upon ourselves
we must expect them to come nothing will hold
them back if we are trespassers against natural and
spiritual laws. The Reverend H. Mayne Young,

44 MY "LITTLE BIT"

preaching in Westminster Abbey itself, pronounced
the following words with a noble daring:

"The day is not far distant when, unless the Church
of England freely re-states and re-models her creeds
so as to meet the requirements of the age, she will be
left stranded on the shores of time, while the tide of
this modern life will leave her for ever farther and
farther behind a sad warning of the inevitable results
of an iron-bound system of worn-out dogmas and life-
less traditions."

"Worn-out dogmas and lifeless traditions!" A bold
utterance, but true ! And what is true of the Church
of England is equally true of all the Churches in the
world to-day, notably that of Rome. Man, walking
in a darkness of destroyed illusions, is at that point
when he may well exclaim with the Apostle "Who
will deliver me from the body of this death ?"

It needs no gift of prophecy and no special intuition
to see that we are on the brink of some tremendous
change in the destinies of the human race. Everything
points to it our tottering creeds, our fluctuating
standard of manners and morals. What it is, what
it may be no one tries to imagine. People instinctively
feel they would rather not think too much about
anything, or analyse the condition in which they find
themselves. There is "no time" for it, they say. Why
is there no time ? Is the clock of the universe running
down and are the works giving out? Materially
speaking, we know that the slightest tilt of the earth
on its axis would cause a complete redistribution of
its continents and seas, sweeping away every vestige
of civilisation as we now know it. We never consider
this, imagining that such a catastrophe is not possible.

THE GEEAT UNKEST '45

Yet God has willed it so before, and may will it so
again. Every physical movement is preconceived
by a mental or spiritual one. The Great Unrest is at
present one of Spirit which will gradually dominate
Matter and move it to equal but louder disturbance.
We spin on our earth in a gathering storm-cloud be-
tween two fathomless gulfs, the Past and the Future
our Present is the result of the past, and our future
will equally be the work of the Present We know that
there is a God of Love to serve, and his Nature-laws
to obey, and knowing this, Ourselves alone must de-
cide whether we will do as we should, or whether we
shall be forced to do as we would not I

THE WHIRLWIND

IT has come at last that great Storm foretold by
national weather prophets it has come with all the
devastating force of a fury long suppressed; and the
black cloud has gathered over our heads while yet
we drowsed in a dream of sunshine. With a sudden
thunderous Tush, as though a god or a demon should
tread the spaces of the air, heaven has let loose the
whirlwind the whirlwind of War, and far more than
War the whirlwind of Destiny. It has come because
it was bound to come, by the Unwritten Law and Code
Invisible. Men of the world who form governments,
make civilisations, and build up empires are always
forgetting this Unwritten Law the Hand behind
the scenes the inexorable and eternal forward move-
ment of the Cosmos, which in its pre-determined
progress overrides their best laid plans and makes
chaotic havoc of their most sagacious intentions.
Yet it is a perfectly straight and simple Law after all
one that has existed from the beginning of things,
and that will ever exist the law of Nature, visibly
expressing the Mind of God, and immutably set against
the predominance of evil. It is an output of the
Divine Will, resolving itself easily into common,
even domestic forms, adapted to the needs of indi-
viduals and nations alike. Nature often conducts
herself like a practical housewife bent on spring
cleaning.

46

THE WHIRLWIND 47

"Where there is dirt," she says, " it shall be removed j
where there is confusion there shall be order."

And her "cleaning-up" day is invariably a frightful
thing. The noise of her sweeping and scouring resounds
like thunder through the world. It occurs periodically,
marking epochs of history, and we read of its results
in the past with placid incredulity, setting down much
to exaggeration and more to deliberate lying, idly
amused meanwhile at the ridiculous notion, suggested
by certain fools, that any such uproar and disaster
should ever be experienced by Ourselves who have,
so we consider, "advanced" in civilisation and wisdom,
and thereby in self-control Ourselves whose "culture"
seems to our own judgment a finer and more perfect
attainment than divine justice. The tornado of the
French Revolution, the pitiless ravages of the
Napoleonic wars have appeared to us like a tale that
is told, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"
and we have lazed the time away, getting and
spending, in the peaceful high noon of national pros-
perity and contentment, feeling confident that we
should never in our day be shaken from our centre-
poise of complacent self-satisfaction by anything of
larger disturbance than occasional family quarrels
gotten up more for the sake of varying the monotony
of peace than with any serious intent. And now, lo!
the bolt falls the vials of wrath and judgment
are opened and poured forth over land and sea the
whirlwind is upon us, and we who slept are awakened
by its sweeping rage, its rattling rain, its lightning
flashing against our windows of security, and we leap
to our feet, startled but not alarmed unprepared,
maybe, but not unready. We realise what the storm

48 MY "LITTLE BIT"

means, and we know how to weather it; we are not
afraid we only wish we had not slept quite so long !
Nevertheless, though our sleep may have been
heavy, it has refreshed our forces and has not diminished
our energies. Our waking is to good purpose. The
very shame we feel at the length of our slumber is
an excellent tonic and invigorates us. Sleep shall
no more weigh down our eyelids we are alert, strong,
and resolute, even in the midst of the whirlwind.
For it is a storm in which we alone are not involved.
It has swept over a smaller nation than our own, all
undeservedly a little sister nation with the heart of
a thousand heroes beating in her small bosom and
her unmerited sorrow has served as the keynote to strike
all that is in us of Character and Conduct. We see
her defaced with blows, insulted and outraged by
ravening cruelties; and the chivalry born from cen-
turies of martial glory rises strong and full-armed in
every man that claims justice for her wrongs. We of
Britain have not warred for ourselves our fight is for
the better, broader freedom of the whole world. The
whirlwind has caught us up in the swoop of its revolv-
ing wings solely that we may take our part in the purify-
ing of the House of Man. And our victory will be
made manifest in the open response to our inward

intention.

The militarism of Prussia is a crime, springing from
old roots of human savagery and barbarism which
should have died long ago. The brutal War, made
treacherous and bloody by new devices of destruction,
the inventions of fine science misapplied, was an
outbreak of stupidity on the part of an obtuse and

THE WHIKLWIND 49

stupid set of men, sodden with selfishness and delirious
with a drunken dream of World-Power. The teachings
of Treitschke and Nietzsche are the teachings of egotists
with unsound and ill-balanced brains. Nietzsche went
mad, and howled his philosophies to the walls of the
padded room. Treitschke was covertly insane; like
the "secret drinker" who in public pretends he cannot
touch strong liquor, he assumed to be proud and
sagacious when he was no more than crazily self-
obses&ed. He preached the doctrine of Hate, and
no sane man ever did that. The German nation,
accepting this sort of "Kultur" as gospel, accepted the
ravings of the mentally deficient, and, plunging breast-
high into a sea of brothers' blood, proved itself infected
by the same madness as that which poisoned the veins
of its mad instructors. To any thoughtful student,
looking on at such a frightful, wicked, and overwhelm-
ingly stupid slaughter of men by machinery there can
be nothing more terrible, more lonely or more accursed
in all the realm of fact or fiction than the figure of
the Kaiser the miserable epileptic who is responsible
for shrouding his "Fatherland" in the black veil of
mourning, and for drowning its peace and progress
in a flood of widows' and orphans' tears. Mentally
unbalanced, physically inefficient, and morally lacking
living as one pursued by the Furies in an armoured
cage, and surrounded by guards on earth and in air, lest
by chance his "Gott" should kill him, he moves one to
amazement and pity for the whirlwind has him in
its centre, twirling him round and round like a veritable
mannikin of sport for the dread gods of destiny a
mannikin who hardly knows how he came to be where
he is, or where he will find himself when the storm is

50 MY "LITTLE BIT"

past. Meanwhile his voice is heard above the storm
shouting "To England ! England! The one foe! My
Mother's land, which I hate! Would that every drop
of British blood in my veins might be drained out
of mei"

Well, why not? A calf has been bled before now,
and not a drop of its mother's blood has been left in
its carcase there is nothing to prevent this desirable
consummation for the Kaiser since he so devoutly
wishes it. The whirlwind may strip him yet, and
perform this required kindness! But in the interval
the arrogant and half-crazed "War Lord" has sacrificed
the best flower and strength of Germany's manhood
to his criminal and insatiable lust of power. The
German people have not yet realised the mercilessness
of this military despot but when they do when they
count the desolate homes, the ruined trades, the lost
commerce, the ravaged lives and broken hearts which
mark the "triumph" of the stagey and spectacular
"hero" they have worshipped, there will be an end of
the blind credulity with which they have followed a
vain ideal.

*

For us BritisE, the Whirlwind is a grand thing.
It is blowing us fiercely clean of Self it is tearing away
from us the silly sophistries of fashion and frivolity
and showing us things in their true light. Our ape-
like jesters of the press, of the Bernard Shaw type,
who have mocked at all things holy, serious, and earnest,
are finding their proper level, and shrinking into corners
where they are scarcely seen where it is to be hoped
they may be peaceably forgotten. Our "sex-problems,"
our "advanced" women, our screaming Doll Tear-sheets

THE WHIKLWIND 51

of militant suffrage these trouble the air no more with
the hysterics which are engendered by having nothing
useful to do. We have no time for trifling. We are
face to face with the long-despised Obvious "Life is
real, life is earnest" and we are casting off the slough
of political humbug and social sham, and are as one
in the splendid bond of patriotism and love of country.
We may trust the Storm; we may welcome the Whirl-
wind. It has come to clear the sky of miasma and
vapour it is making light to show us where we truly
stand. If we are honest with ourselves we shall admit
that in latter years we have given ourselves over-much
to the pursuit of material gain and personal pleasure,
we have neglected our faith in divine and high ideals,
and Self has been more or less our god; it was time
that we received a wholesome check and a warning
before we lost all that has made us great. We have
responded swiftly to the goading spur our crust of
selfishness was but thin after all, and has broken and
melted away in a flood of magnificent generosity and
practical sympathy for never had nation a nobler
Cause than ours, when, as brothers in arms with our
brave allies, we fought to right the unspeakable wrongs
of unoffending Belgium, and to aid in defending France
from the invader and usurper. Should the enemy con-
quer in this mighty struggle the whole world will be
the impoverished loser; should we and our allies win,
the whole world will gain by our victory and share
with us a wider, nobler freedom than before. It is for
this cause that the Whirlwind has come upon us to
cleanse a cancer from our midst, and to put away from
ourselves and our neighbours the dread contamination
of a disease involving the whole trend of civilisation.

52 MY "LITTLE BIT"

We may thank God for it, despite all its terrors, its
rain of blood, its thunders of the air and sea, its
swift death dealt to thousands of innocent souls it is
a storm that was needed to clear the air. And when
it is past, and the sun shines once more, we shall realise
that its causes were to be found not in one nation
only, but in many in ourselves as well as in our foes
and that some great and forceful movement of destiny
was urgently called for to sweep away from humanity
the accumulating mass of its own self-wrought evil.
And if victory should be ours, it will behove us to take
it with all humility, giving thanks to God "lest we
forget!"

THE KAISER'S HARVEST OF DEATH

A CRIME OF STUPIDITY
(First published in the "Sunday Times")

IN every great national crisis, when war or revolution
brings havoc on existing civilisation and works sudden
and violent change in all social, political, and diplo-
matic relations, we are invariably able to discover One
Man or at the most, perhaps, two or three men
primarily responsible for the general upheaval.

History is impressively explicit concerning these
personages. She never fails to show us how, by some
strange lack of the most ordinary foresight and com-
mon sense, they stumble when apparently on the height
of success, and commit irreparable blunders which
hasten their careers to a disastrous close. Such was
the case with Napoleon and many other would-be
Alexanders of ambition ; but of all the tragic blunderers
of time surely none can equal or surpass the "War
Lord" of Germany. Here is a man who had the splen-
did chance of securing for his country and people the
largest share of the commerce of Europe; it lay easily
within his grasp. Yet he has let it go, like a handful
of sand and shells dropped by a child at play on the
seashore. To satisfy the personal cravings of a vaunting,
blustering Egoism for blood-and-thunder "effects" he
has lost the peaceful conquest of a world !

Amazing, deplorable, and incredible folly! when
such conquest could have been gained without a blow,

53

54 MY "LITTLE BIT"

without the boom of a single gun, without the explosion
of a single shell! It could have been attained in the
only way by which any truly "civilised" nation should
ever seek supremacy through the development of in-
dustry and commerce, and the quiet assumption of
the power that industry and commerce give. All that
we call "progress" should fortijjy the stand of human
resolution on this basis. It is not necessary, it is
not even sane or decent that any peoples should tolerate
what Carlyle describes as "the spectacle of men with
clenched teeth and hell-fire eyes hacking one another's
flesh, converting precious living bodies and priceless
living souls into nameless masses of putrescence, useful
only for turnip manure" which is a rough but ac-
curate picture of war deprived of all its devilish excite-
ment and glamour.

WASTED OPPOETUNITY

To Kaiser William more than to any other monarch
of his time was given the glorious chance of becoming
the greatest benefactor of Germany which that realm
had ever known. He could have created for his people
such conditions of peace, happiness, and prosperity
as were almost incalculable. He stood in the broad
sunshine of ripening trade t]ie markets of the world
were open to him fields of wealth were spreading
around him on all sides, and his cheerfully working
millions had but to reap the grain their industries had
sown and gather in a rich and plenteous harvest. Why,
then, in the name of all that is great, noble, and pitiful,
did he choose to make a harvest of death instead of
life?

THE KAISER'S HARVEST 55

A TRAGIC WITNESS

During the grim and ghastly struggle at Verdun
we are told the Kaiser, standing "at safe distance,"
watched through his field-glasses the fiery mowing
down of his countrymen to the number of forty-five
thousand ! Does any one, reading this, take the trouble
to pause and consider what it means ? Forty-five thou-
sand strong, brave men in the flower of manhood (for
let us hope we are none of us so unjust as to deny our
enemies their strength or their courage) ; forty-five
thousand capable human beings fit for every sort of
industrial labour the blood and bone of future gen-
erations slaughtered like vermin ; and their Emperor,
their sworn Defender and Protector, within sight-range,
looking on!

What a "Harvest Home" ! Are we able to conceive
the nature and temperament of a monarch who could
so look on at this massacre of his subjects and not
rush among them to stop the advance of their serried
ranks and "massed formations," resulting in such a
wanton and wicked waste of life? The crazy antics
of Nero were mere child's play compared with this
callous attitude of William of Hohenzollern ; an attitude
which even his French foes cannot maintain. For,
fired with vengeance for old wrongs as they are, and
bent on victorious justice, they have declared themselves
"sick with slaughter."

"Such hecatombs," writes Colonel Rousset, "cannot
last. Our adversary, while carrying his disregard of
human life to the point of madness, cannot go on
throwing his soldiers into the charnel-house without
thinking of to-morrow."

56 MY "LITTLE BIT"

The losses of the Germans at Verdun have been
estimated at 10,000 per day! "I dream at night,"
writes one French artillery officer, "of those ghastly
crumpled heaps of shattered gray-green bodies! Ger-
many's wives and mothers must curse the Kaiser in
their prayers!"

THE CRIME OF STUPIDITY

Voltaire is accredited with the saying that "the only
crime is stupidity." According to this dictum one
must come to consider the "All-Highest War Lord" the
greatest criminal of an epoch, his stupidity being al-
most without parallel in history. What man, not en-
tirely mad, seeing a world of prosperity within reach of
his hand would clench his fist and knock the whole
splendid sphere away from him at one blow ! The prop-
osition seems absurd and untenable, yet it has been and
continues to be the Kaiser's policy, or the policy of
his ministers and advisers; clear to all save those
who remain perversely and wilfully blind.

For it is not too much to say that before the war
Germany was pushing quietly but surely through
every branch of commerce. From triumph to triumph
she moved easily onward; everywhere her ramifica-
tions were spreading like the vigorous roots of a fast-
growing tree. In Great Britain she had possessed
herself of many of our trades; her goods were every-
where; her cutlery, her glass, her woollens, her linens,
her dyes, her silver and copper ware, her chemicals
why, even our very window-frames were "Made in
Germany" ! She was at work in our mines and coal-
fields; she was ahead of us in science, in invention,
in industry and general "thoroughness."

THE KAISEK'S HAEVEST 57

And let us not forget that we were, or appeared to
be, supinely indifferent to her inroads on all that we
used to claim as our "special line" and particular
property. We were, like Hamlet, "growing fat and
scant of breath." We were disposed to indolence and
self-indulgence, and, when we saw Germans working
for us, and ly us, and through us, taking the very tools
out of our listless hands, we were agreeably convinced
that they saved us a deal of trouble. They worked
so cheaply, too ! and cheapness in necessary goods
appealed to us, because it gave us more to spend on
racing and football. The "Space for Special News"
in our Press was not reserved (as intelligent foreigners
conceive it ought to be) for serious information on
world's business ; but for "Football Results" or cricket,
in the respective seasons of these gamesome athletics
and the very word "patriotism" was laughed out of
court as "Jingoism." We gave the honours of heroes
to our tennis champions, and played about while the
Germans worked. They worked as many of the
British refuse to work; they saved as many of the
British decline to save ; they gained their ends, because
by our very inertia we gave them every opportunity
to do so.

BEITISH APATHY

Mr. Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia, said in a
recent speech that Germany "had abused our foolishly
generous hospitality." This is not quite accurate,
since we were neither so generous nor hospitable as
careless and lazy. We allowed our trades to slip
through our fingers the State did nothing for native
work, science, or invention and ambitious men of

58 MY "LITTLE BIT"

hope and endeavour left the country in shoals to make
fortunes in other lands, many firms establishing them-
selves in Germany in order to win the rewards denied
them in their native home I

Germany held a more tenacious grip on every corner
of the earth than we in our latter "go-as-you-please"
way ever realised. All over the United States, Canada,
and Australia her people have spread; you find them
in India, in Persia, in Egypt, in Africa; as a matter
of fact, there is no country where German influence
has not been actively at work while other nations
looked On. Antwerp itself was wellnigh possessed
by German commerce before its military bombard-
ment; it was already a centre of German trade and
German shipping, and in many of its business houses
more German was spoken than either French or
Flemish. Great Britain was lagging behind in the
race; and had peace been maintained for another
twenty-five years Germany might easily have mastered
the world; and we might have lost all leading hold
on commerce.

For let us not delude ourselves on the subject of
our own inertia ! It is owing to the magnificent stand
made for justice and right by the hero-King of Belgium
that we have been awakened from long apathy; had
it not been for his resolute example, both France and
England would have suffered far more than they are
suffering now ! Friend and Defender of both nations,
he stands out as the noblest figure in the struggle
the one who, when victory sits upon our helm,
must be the first to receive that which is due
to him: the restoration of his country and his
throne.

THE KAISER'S HARVEST 59

LOSS AND GAIN

And now the rivers of gold that were flowing into
Germany through her trade are stopped, "damned
up" as the sensational special correspondent would
say by British, French, and German dead! The
latest estimate of German losses at Verdun is two
hundred thousand ! Does the Kaiser, at safe distance,
still "look on" ? What blessing has this monarch of
a great and productive realm brought upon his people ?
Mourning, desolation, and irremediable misery! No
triumph, no victory can atone for such a deluge of
blood and tears! That capricious Personage "some-
where in Heaven," whom Wilhelm calls "Unser Gott,"
may possibly resent the deliberate casting away of
golden opportunities on the part of his crowned earthly
"familiar," to whom a peaceful world was offered,
only to be kicked aside for a battered helmet and
broken sword!

"Thrust in thy sickle and reap !" O Emperor of a
brief and bitter day! The harvest of death, not life!
the harvest of curses, not blessings ! The thousands
of dead men dead in the very strength of manhood
sacrificed in a holocaust on the flaming altar of the
wickedest war the world has ever seen, may have
their own story to tell to "Unser Gott"; so may the
bereaved and wretched women whose husbands and
eons have been torn from their arms for ever. May
the true God help them all! for in the unspeakable
hell of iniquity around us man is wellnigh powerless;
though, like every evil thing, war has its good side.
It shows us with each day heroism of the finest, courage
of the strongest, self-sacrifice of the noblest, existing

60 MY "LITTLE BIT"

among us all ; and it has reawakened the higher spirit
of England. For this we have cause to be devoutly
thankful! In a certain sense it has saved us from
ourselves; and from the enervating love of pleasure
and personal avarice which was slowly undermining
our better qualities.

And even the Kaiser, "looking on" at the legions of
his own subjects falling like withered leaves in a whirl-
wind of fire, may one day shake off his frenzied night-
mare of battle, and repent exclaiming with Judas:

"I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent
blood!"

THIS AMAZING WAR

A WOMAN'S POINT OF VIEW

(Reprinted by special request from the "Sunday Pictorial" of
March 28, 1915)

WHAT can be said or thought of it? This wonderful
massing of nations this appalling slaughter of men
this relentless rolling on of a Divine Elemental
Force, too vast and powerful and resolute for humanity
to resist ! It is a War so terrible, yet withal so grand,
and so pregnant with infinite issues that we, who are
swept by the dust and carnage of its fighting millions
we, who are stunned by the clash and clamour of
the frightful weapons of modern science which it uses
on land, under sea, and in air, are more or less in-
credulous and stupefied, and we have been only with
difficulty aroused to try and understand its fateful
import. It is Destiny in labour; and the pangs and
throes of her child-birth will give us a New World!
For the Old World is fast crumbling and crushing
down upon us like an ancient ruin struck by lightning-
flash and thunderbolt; the old vices, lusts, and little-
nesses are being torn away from us as a storm-wind
tears away the parasite ivies from mouldering walls
and we shall presently see a break in the clouds and
light through the darkness. This thing of terror and
confusion Was To Be; it Had To Be! It has been
coming upon us slowly, but steadily, for years and

61

62 MY "LITTLE BIT"

if we are honest with ourselves we shall admit that we
have felt its approach instinctively in a general sense
of insecurity in a feverish impulse of haste to live
lest we should suddenly die !

Something we know not what a cloud or a blight
has visibly lowered over the face of European
civilisation, and in order to set aside certain strange
and perplexing inconsistencies of such conduct among
us as might induce us seriously to Think we have
flung ourselves eagerly into a vortex of "sensations"
new and old, bad and good, virtuous and vicious,
with a kind of furious recklessness, bordering on
insanity. Any lapse of morals, any bizarre or weird
"craze" in art, any indecency in literature, has been
acclaimed and encouraged as "new" and "strong"
instead of being condemned for being old and weak
as such things truly are and in many vital matters
the nation has been moved by a petulant spirit of
selfish, restless irritability, like that of a querulous
old man who has neither the grace nor the courage
to accept his age with wisdom, sweetness, and dignity.
And among various mad things we have done, one
stands out pre-eminently as the maddest and that
is the tacit encouragement given by a section
of society and the press to a brood of Atheists,
who have trailed their poisonous slime along the
pathways of peace where the youth of this

"Happy breed of men, this little world.
This precious stone set in the silver sea,"

have wandered unsuspectingly, gathering the ugly
stain on the innocent white of their souls' garments.

THIS AMAZING WAR 63

Never did a sin of this nature occur in the history of
nations without Divine punishment inflicted, not so
much to destroy as to purify. The chronicles of every
civilisation ever known or heard of bear unswerving
testimony to the truth that whenever a nation or a
people assumes to itself Divine right, dismissing from
its mind and conscience the idea of any higher Supreme
Power before Whom it should humiliate itself daily
with thanksgiving and prayer, that nation or people
has been allowed to follow the lure of its own intel-
lectual pride and self-sufficiency to inevitable disaster.

IDEAL WOBTH FIGHTING FOB

This is, and this will be, the case with Germany.
For years her people have willingly listened to the
teachings of egoists and madmen such as Treitschke
and Nietzsche for years they have scoffed at Christi-
anity, its Founder and its ethics; and they have
tempted the Divine Spirit in Man with the devil's
whisper, "All these things will I give thee if thou wilt
fall down and worship me!" iBut that Divine Spirit
is stronger than all Germany and its rulers; and "Get
thee behind me, Satan!" is the keynote of this great
War. The Satan of ambition, greed, and cruelty
embodied in the creed of Prussian militarism must be
driven "hence" ; and it is for this holy Cause that we
and our Allies are fighting. We must have a free
world! free in the sense of highest, purest freedom
a world of ideas, thoughts, and deeds built up on
the golden law of Christ, "Love thy neighbour as thy-
self." As a statesman has so nobly expressed it:
"We wish the nations of Europe to be free to live

64 MY "LITTLE BIT"

their independent lives, working out their own form
of government for themselves, and their own national
development, whether they be great nations or small
States, in full liberty. This is our ideal."

An ideal worth fighting for worth dying for!
this "glorious liberty of the free !" None of us would
grudge life or fortune to attain the splendid goal in
sight a radiant vision of the true "Holy City," where
as we are told "the nations of them which are saved
shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth
do bring their glory and honour within it."

POISONOUS TEACHING

Glory and honour never accompany the creed of
selfish Materialism, which is the "Kultur" of Germany.
What a miserable man was he who wrote down in
cold blood these words: "I condemn Christianity.
To me it is the greatest of all possible corruptions.
I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great
intrinsic depravity, the one immortal shame and
blemish in the human race!" This was Nietzsche
poor, sickly, egoist, Nietzsche! He died mad yet
he was the "guide, philosopher, and friend" of modern
Germany! How has his teaching worked? Let the
slaughtered thousands of his countrymen on the battle-
fields reply. And let us take heed that we in our
turn be not infected by the poisonous breathings of
such insanity! Our nation our Imperial Britain
has been dangerously far along the road to similar
madness let us hope devoutly that we have been
pulled up in time! But "we have done those things
which we ought not to have done" as, for example,

THIS AMAZING WAE 65

we have thrown the sneer of "Jingoism!" contemptu-
ously in the face of many an honest patriot and now we
are loud in our expressions of wrath and astonishment
at the "want of patriotism" displayed by certain tribes
of working men who "strike" for more pay, indifferent
to the country's needs! What have these working
men been taught for the last twenty years? Why,
that Money is the only god, and Self the only master !
When we reproach them for unpatriotic conduct, we
should reproach ourselves still more for the en-
couragement and applause we have systematically
given to every new or revived doctrine of selfishness
and materialism that ever infected the world with
its sickly symptoms of decay. Patriotism is a mental
and spiritual attitude as heroism is as love and
faith are. Such things cannot be taught; they are
the result of ennobling influences brought to bear on
life and its environment. Considering how little our
educational system holds of such subtle and delicate
training, we have reason to be proud of the splendid
response of our men throughout the Empire to the
call of "King and Country," and of the real national
"grit" which in every Briton underlies his surface
show of levity and indifference.

But have I, as a woman, nothing to say of the war,
save in its ethical aspect? Oh, yes! I, as a woman,
could say much, in a woman's way. Of the agony of
parting from men dearer to us than life, and seeing
them disappear behind a veil of impenetrable silence
for weeks or months, their fate or fortune all unknown !
I could weep all day and night for the cruel loss of
young and gallant lives crushed out and left bleeding
and festering on the awful fields of contest and I

66 MY "LITTLE BIT"

long to speak words of consolation and hope to the
dear women who wait in strained suspense for news
of their husbands, fathers, lovers, and sons! I know
all they feel; and the aching throb of their unuttered
misery strikes on my own heart with keenest pain!
But with all the sorrow and all the suffering, I would
not, if I could, hold back one man from taking his
share in the noble struggle for the betterment and
future peace of the world! One can die but once;
and "Greater love hath no man than this that a man
lay down his life for his friends 1"

"ALL WE LIKE SHEEP"
A PEOPLE'S PATIENCE

(First published in the "Sunday Times")

THE words "people" and "popular," viewed by aca-
demic dark-lanterns of literature, are opprobious epi-
thets. Any person designated as "popular," or fav-
oured by "the People," falls at once outside the pale of
mutual-admiration societies ergo, is not an academic
dark-lantern for the blind to lead the blind, so that
both fall into the ditch. Yet it is well understood that
those who affect to despise the People and "popular"
opinion are the very ones most influenced by both,
inasmuch as not one among them but knows that in
the long run the People alone are the arbiters of national
destiny. Sometimes it hardly appears as if it were
so yet so it is. Though at this present fateful moment
of time it would seem that the People of the British
Empire are stricken dumb. They are a voiceless
multitude, rendered inert by the knowledge that if
they speak every effort will be made to silence them,
and that though they have much to ask they will not
be truthfully answered. For they are only "the Peo-
ple" ! the ruck of taxpayers the grist that goes to the
mill!

But what a People! Consider them as they are
to-day, straining every nerve and sinew in the work
necessary for the carrying on of a wicked and barbarous
world-war, wherein they truly, as a People, gought

67

68 MY "LITTLE BIT"

and desired no part, but into which they were plunged
unsuspectingly, without fair warning or honest prep-
aration; and now, being involved in the struggle
for justice and right, do most nobly acquit themselves
a People who are giving up their sons, their life-
blood, their All for which they have worked through
years of anxious toil a People who, when their little
harmless children are torn to shreds by enemy bombs
falling from hitherto beneficent skies, are told by a
fatherly Government that "no material damage was
done by the raid" a People who are cozened with
lies and flattered by false news a People who in the
gallant thousands of their slaughtered men are dying
that Britain may live ! or, shall we venture to say, that
Cabinet Ministers may "take their salary and continue
to take it!" an historic utterance which will ring
through the vault of posterity like Nelson's "England
expects" only with something of a difference! How
long will this splendid People endure in sheep-like
patience what the Press justly calls "Waste and Mud-
dle" in high places, without giving vent to their forcible
but natural outburst known as "popular" feeling ?

We read in one of the columns of a sane and non-
party daily journal the following: "No one can say
that the nation is satisfied with the way it is governed."
This expresses in one clear phrase the apparent situa-
tion. The word "apparent" is used advisedly, for in
many spectral things of recent statesmanship some of us
feel with Macbeth that "Life's but a walking shadow."
The present Government, being of a sometimes severe,
sometimes indulgent parental character, seems to
look upon the public, or "the People," as a sort of
promising Child, that sits quietly waiting to be told

"ALL WE LIKE SHEEP" 69

things, no matter whether the things are false or
true. Wedged in a nursery chair with a bar across
its bulgy waist to prevent it tumbling out on the floor,
this Child is supposed to smile and suck its finger
all day long in a state of blissful belief in nonsense
rhymes and fairy tales. It is a wonderfully good
Child, and Papa Government is pleased to find how
easily it can be played with. Its simplicity is delight-
ful! Things printed in large type catch its eye and
tickle its fancy, because occasionally (though more in
the past than in the present) it fancies that large type
means something of national importance. But with all
its guilelessness it has a vast amount of natural intelli-
gence, and it begins to understand that it is not, and
never will be, allowed to learn the drift of Governmental
tactics, or the true state of parties in politics. It is haz-
ily becoming aware that it is kept in its nursery chair
to be gulled, not to be enlightened. In happier moments
it has shown that it likes to be amused, thrilled,
startled, horrified, or moved to indignation, and, so
far as the "Censor" permits, the gagged and bound
Press tries to do its best on these lines, and dances
for its entertainment as well as a poor bear in chains
can dance, though growling sotto voce all the while!
iBut, considered as a Child, the public is not thought
fit to be told the truth. Its opinion on national affairs
is neither sought nor wanted; all that is required of
it are Silence and Obedience. These it gives, with
what result? Why, as Mr. Asquith said, "Wait and
see!"

Yet surely the waiting is long ? "All we like sheep
are gone astray;" but possibly we have been led
astray more than we have gone of our own accord.

70 MY "LITTLE BIT"

All peoples have a certain sheep-like tendency; they
follow a lead. Where the leader goes the flock goes
likewise. This is sometimes set down as evidence of
weakness, but with the British people it marks both
duty and discipline, obedience to law and order, love
and maintenance of home and country. Yet let us
suppose NO leader! That is NO leader capable of
leading anywhere save into quagmires and pitfalls of
"Waste and Muddle" !

"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,
But swollen with wind and the rank mist

they draw,
Hot inwardly."

Humour has it that on our East Coast the inhabi-
tants have been "prepared" for a "German landing,"
and have been told where to go inland as "refugees."
Whether true or false, such a report should never have
gained currency; the word "refugees" should never
be even whispered as likely to be applicable to British
subjects. Similarly on the East Coast it is openly
said that during the last enemy air-raid two Zeppelins
were "within easy gun-shot" and could have been
brought down, but that our anti-aircraft men were
"forbidden to fire." By whom ? Ah ! There we touch
upon secrets not to be disclosed by Papa Government
to any inquiring Child! Though when half a secret
comes to light the other half is not far behind ! Let us
not forget the warning given by the greatest of all
Teachers :

"A man's foes shall be they of his own household."
It is idle to deny that there are traitors in our own

"ALL WE LIKE SHEEP" 71

camp; men of position and influence who are more
pro-German than British who would not scruple to
pave the way to any dishonour provided they could
serve their own personal ends. Is any one so intel-
lectually blind and bereft of common sense as to
suppose that even with certain of our statesmen
financial interests do not outweigh their patriotism?
Time is a merciless revealer of facts, and in its record
of this war some strange things will be written !

To those who have eyes to watch and brains to
understand, the advent of Mr. Hughes, Premier of
Australia, is a wonderful, almost touching, circum-
stance. Here is a Man at last ! a man who loves
his country and is not afraid to say so a man who
appeals to the right spirit of the nation straightly and
truly, with courage and conviction. "The People"
answer to his voice : that "People" whom snobs abhor !
Snobbery is apt to speak of the fine Younger Race of
Imperial Britain as "Colonials," with a touch of con-
tempt, as though they represented something small
and negligible, instead of embodying as they do the
future power and stability of the Empire. This
"Colonial" Prime Minister shows strength, boldness,
and sincerity; he is a leader, and "All we like sheep"
are disposed to follow him, if he can show us a way
out of the thickets where we wander, torn and bleeding.
Pray Heaven he be not wearied by specious talk, or
repelled by still more specious hypocrisy ! or hampered
and discouraged by the working of the "wheels within
wheels" which move with such secret and perplexing
intricacy, crushing honest effort and smothering honest
speech ! Surely the (British people can be trusted to
know what their foes know, what their Allies know,

72 MY "LITTLE BIT"

what America knows ? Are they alone to be deceived ?
even into purchasing goods "from America" which
are German? Mr. Hughes needs to speak yet more
forcibly ; he must rouse the slothful and the unthinking,
and tell them that if they would conquer their skilful
and insidious Teuton foe, they must equally conquer
themselves; and that when the markets are open for
British labour, British labour must not fall back in
energy or stint its output. Business must go hand-
in-hand with industry and quickness, for "the race is
to the swift and the battle to the strong !"

"All we like sheep" are waiting, not for compromise,
but for conquest; conquest full, splendid and lasting!
The "People" are patient and submissive enough, but
they seek to put their confidence in a Government
that shows confidence in itself. If they feel that they
cannot do this, what then? Should not the following
words of Carlyle be remembered ? :

"Urge not this noble, silent People. Rouse not the
Berseker rage that lies in them ! Do you know their
Cromwells, Hampdens, their Pyms and Bradshaws?
Men very peaceable, but men that can be made very
terrible ! Men, who like their old Fathers in Agrippa's
days, have a soul that despises death; to whom death,
compared with falsehoods and injustices, is light!
Yes, just so godlike as this People's patience was,
even so godlike must its impatience be !"

WANTED MOKE WOMEN!

AN APPEAL
(Written for the London "Daily Chronicle")

WOMEN ! You are wanted by the Nation ! In the
words of the recruiting posters "Your Country calls!"
It calls even You you, who for centuries have been
the "weak vessels" of man's passion and humour, are
now needed to strengthen man's hands in the terrific
business of a world's battle. You have helped them
already; but you must help them still more. Now
is the day and hour to prove your "undaunted met-
tle," and not only your mettle but your generosity, your
magnanimity, your forgiveness! For in peace times
man has denied you the very possession of ordinary
common sense; he has thrust you out of intellectual
and academic honours; he has grudged you any place
in art, literature or science, and he has made you the
butt of every cynic, comedian, and caricaturist ever
since he arrogated to himself the "everything" of life.
You have been and are the grist to the mill of the
comic press; your fathers have often been glad to
sell you in the marriage market to the highest bidders ;
your lovers have played with you and deserted you
as bees the flowers whose honey they have stolen;
your husbands have often been faithless and perjured;
and in certain of man's legal forms, you have been

73

74 MY "LITTLE BIT"

classed with "children, criminals, and lunatics," but
now ! now, you are wanted !

You, so often despised, are prayed not to return
scorn with scorn; you, with your patience, doggedness,
and strongly determined zeal for attainment, are
asked to come forward in your willing thousands, and
let the men go ! For the cry is "havoc ! and let slip
the dogs of war!" war, bitter, merciless, bloody and
more savage than the cruelest wars of ancient days;
war in the air, on the earth and under seas war that
is as stupid, as blind, as criminal and as selfish as are
all the acts which men commit when they have so
far brutalised woman as to check and restrain her
highest impulses, kill her idealism, obstruct her intel-
lectual aspirations, and treat her as the slave and
tool of a degrading animalism. Had they from the
first dawn of civilisation made her their mental and
spiritual equal, by this time there would have been
no wars. Her love would have constrained and edu-
cated them, her instincts guided :them, hetr inborn,
maternity shielded them from the wrongs their ambi-
tions and jealousies persuade them to wreak upon each
other. Now, in the very midst of the combat which
they have brought upon themselves, they are caught
within a black cloud of almost superhuman disaster,
where but one ray of the veiled sun shines through
that Divine sense of Justice for which all true peoples
are bound to fight if indeed they be not wholly given
over to the devil of Materialism.

In this, women are, and must be, with them; they,
who from the legended days of Eve have laboured
under the sense of utter injustice, will be eager to
help in any struggle for the Eight against Might,

WANTED MORE WOMEN"! 75

because it is their own cause the very essence of
their own existence.

Eight against Might, women! Be with the men
now in their manliest, most pressing time of action!
Forget their petty carping and cavilling at "the female
element" in workmanship and endeavour; laugh at
the rough and childish hands that beat and batter
the woman's breast with all the petulance of spoilt
children; fling every other thought aside but the will
and intent to help them on to victory! Make, and
buckle on their armour let your hands prepare them
for both attack and defence. Nothing nobler will you
ever find to do than this !

In old Arthurian legends, many were the fair women
eager to buckle on the armour of the peerless Knight
Lancelot; but to-day there are a million and more
Lancelots in the field young, brave, dauntless
heroes all ! Arm them, women ! and by arming them,
defend them! Thousands of you, strong and willing,
are already at work but we want thousands more!
Even you "toy-women" who dance half-nude o' nights
at restaurants and in basement saloons of "fashionable"
hotels, wreaking a sly vengeance on men by poisonous
lure and seduction, even you can be brave and helpful
if you will! Give up your foolish sensualities, and
take to sturdy, sensible Work; wash the paint from
your cheeks, the dye from your hair, and clothe your-
selves as fit women who mean to help, and not to
destroy men.

And you, too you who turn your private homes
into "Bridge Clubs" where "officers on leave" may
become members "without the payment of a fee"
rookeries, where silly young subalterns are "rooked"

76 MY "LITTLE BIT"

indeed, of every penny, losing not only cash but honour
can you not give up this unprincipled and unwomanly
"way of doing business" and come out of your dens?
You have hands deft enough for something better
than "Bridge" and eyes that can see how to make
shells for killing the enemy, which is better than
studying how to change a card that shall cheat a
friend ! Put these ephemeral nothings of an ephemeral
"society" aside, and WORK! Work is the saviour of
both body and soul !

I admit that as Women, we have long and old scores
to settle with the men who have denied us any place
in their counsels, and who elect of themselves to treat
us merely as "toys" and fools. We shall have our
revenge upon them, but not now. Now is the time
when we have the chance to show our ability, our
powers of organisation, our reasonableness, our cour-
age, our industry, and patience. Let us not fail ! The
curse of the Jew who wrote Genesis and swore to Eve
"I will greatly multiply thy sorrow" has been upon
woman ever since the days when courteous old Abraham
yoked her with his cattle and drove her with his sheep ;
but there are evidences nowadays that the modern Abra-
ham will not always triumph, even though every true
son of Israel who attends religious service in his
synagogue still says with Pecksniffian fervour:

"Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the
universe, who hast not made me a woman!" (See
Authorised Jewish Daily Prayer Book.)

But, despite this most manly thanksgiving, it is
paramount that now, whether Jew or Gentile, men
want the women! not for pleasure, not for fooling,
not for seduction, not for betrayal, but for work!

"WANTED MOKE WOME^! TY

Man's work must be done in the absence of men. For
men must be set free, like uncaged wolves and lions,
to fly at the throat of the foe and strangle him for
good and all ! Therefore, man's work must be accom-
plished by women. O women, be glad and proud
of this! Lady Frances Balfour, who has a brain
sufficing for three of our modern statesmen, has recently
written on "The Discovery of Women," describing it
wittily as similar to "the discovery of America by
Christopher Columbus." She reminds us of Lord
Lansdowne's "early Victorian" pronouncement that
"the place for women is the home." Eut the worthy
peer forgot to mention that it is not given to every
woman to have a home, or to run the cooking, the
child-bearing, and general washing-up business for
any special one of the male sex. On the other hand,
there are thousands of women who not only earn the
money to make a home and keep it, but who also have
the affectionate unwisdom to keep a lazy loafer of a
man also; some drone who finds as many plausible
excuses for idleness as he does for living on the woman's
work. He, by the way, is generally the sort of fellow
who speaks of woman with sniggering contempt, and
while taking her earnings with the left hand stabs her
in the back with the right. But even such rogues as
these have to go forth to the battle to-day; so let us
not grudge the buckling on of their armour if we can
inspire courage in cowards! Just now, when omens
and portents are thick in the air, and unnatural
threatenings hover above us like shapeless spectres
of evil, our Ministers and statesmen are chattering
for all the world like the feeblest "patriarchs of the
yillage" that ever waggled grey pates over pipes of

78 MY "LITTLE BIT"

tobacco. They who complain of women's "talk" are
talking the heads of the nation off into impatience
and fury; let women not talk, therefore, but act!
Come to work, women of all classes! the more the
better! the more silently, the more swiftly! There
is a great climax at hand ; the "push" is about to begin.
EVEBY ABLE-BODIED MAN Is NEEDED TO ENSURE
VICTOBY. Let us make no mistake about that ! Every
woman is likewise needed, to put her hand to the
plough, and NOT look back. Munitions must not fail
us. Show your resolve, brave women of England,
Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and nerve your slender
hands to the task of turning out the weapons of attack
and defence that shall flame our conquest of the foe
on land and sea and in the air ! And when the war
is over when "Peace with Honour" shines once more
above us like a glorious rainbow after storm shall
we we Women who have worked, sink to our old
footing of debasement and exclusion from the counsels
of men? No! To paraphrase a famous Asquith
utterance: "We have taken our place, and we shall
continue to take it, and to keep it 1"

THE QUALITY OF MEECT

AN APPEAL TO AMERICA FOR SUFFERERS IN THE .
GREAT WAR

(Written by special request for the American "Committee of
Mercy")

THERE is no greater virtue in the human character
than mercy; it is the nearest atribute and approach
to the Divine Perfection towards Whom all creation
instinctively moves. We, the offspring of that infinite
Thought and Will, are still far away from such sweet
and strong attainment of power as can find infinitude
of joy in the infinitude of Giving but we can in some
measure bless and purify our brief poor lives with some-
what of that everlasting plenitude and beauty by an
effort, no matter how feeble, towards a God-like
perpetuity of grace and pity. The golden opportunity
for that effort is Now and Here; we may never have
so great a chance again. For Now and Here, in the
fair days of spring and summer, when singing, blossom-
ing Nature breaks out in its Te Deum of thankfulness
for yet another space of time wherein to express the
gladness and glory of life, we are confronted with the
hideous, ravaging spectacle of War; War, in its most
cruel, pitiless, and appalling shape War, to the
grimmest death ! The groans and shrieks of wounded,
tortured, and dying men are forced upon our ears; a
monstrous Devil of Self, black with the crimes of

79

80 MY "LITTLE BIT"

treachery, lust, and murder, stalks abroad seeking what
it may devour of faith, freedom, and civilisation
a demon possibly born of mankind's own neglect of
the highest ideals, and indifference to countless
blessings long bestowed.

And the most evil part of this evil visitation is that
the terrific whirlwind of disaster sweeps over the
innocent as well as the guilty, and men of valour and
worth in all the nations now at war with one another
are driven by the force of a barbarous necessity into
the agony of wounds and death for no fault of their
own, but for the mistakes and aggressions of their
governmental rulers. They are as falling leaves blown
before a storm as smoke before fire drifting into
darkness! Yet every one of them is moved by the
inspiration and love of liberty by the sense of right
and justice and by the desire to help in doing what
is good and true for the larger benefit of the whole
world. And in this sense every one of them is noble;
each life is worth our grateful care. We, who appeal
for them, take no part in the contest. To us they are
all our brothers in humanity; their mothers, wives,
sisters, children, and lovers are ours also! We wish
to lift them in our helping arms out of the blood and
mire of battle, and by our impartial love and tender-
ness, to comfort them as much as we may, and relieve
their bitter need.

We want every American citizen to help us in this
great, this divine, work; for so best shall we prove the
largeness of our thought, and the wideness and scope
of the civilisation of the Kepublic and it ideals; so
shall we best display the spirit of the young New
World, uprising on the waters of this deluge like an-

THE QUALITY OF MERCY 81

other ark of the covenant, sending forth the dove of hope
and promise to those who are struggling for life in the
overwhelming waves. We would like to write the
noble words of Man's universal Poet, Shakespeare,
across the doors of all our fellow-countrymen upon
whom we now call for aid, convinced of their generous
response :

"The quality of mercy is not strained ;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes ;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown

. . . We do pray for mercy ;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

In this mind and mood we appeal for help: for
ungrudging, tenderest, quickest help! the help that
brave persons would instantly give if they saw children
drowning. For every man disabled, sick, or deprived
of his strength is as a struggling child in the flood of
adversity, and indeed more pitiful than a child, for
the child's day may be yet to come, while his is past.
Moreover, he has been snatched from all that made
life pleasant and useful to himself, to fight his country's
battle, for which he, personally, is not responsible,
but which he enters upon for the sake of a duty which
is purely heroic self-sacrifice. Let us therefore accept
this free gift of his manhood in the cause of Right and
Justice and Freedom, with no less cheerful and willing
gifts and self-sacrifices of our own; let us give and

82 MY "LITTLE BIT"

still give, in the all-beneficent spirit of the daily sun-
light which pours itself out unasked over the fields
and pastures to bless and fructify them! And let us
never weary of giving! From every man and woman
of the teeming population of the United States we
ask a donation for our Holy Cause our new Crusade
of the Lord's Sepulchre for such it is, inasmuch as
we seek to raise from the grave of silence and despair
those who have been giving the best of their lives in
suffering the horrors of this terrific War. Be the gift
small or great it will add to the sum of what we hope
to make the most wonderful and munificent gift and
act of homage to martyred heroes that has ever been
known in the world ! We are a Committee of Mercy,
and we make this Appeal to all the merciful, in God's
Name, and for the sweet uplifting of a Star of Hope
in the darkness!

STAKVISTG BELGIUM

AN APPEAL

( Written "by request for Mr. Hoover's "Belgium, Relief Fund" amd
ovrculated through the United, States Press)

"Six million of people are on the verge of starvation
in Belgium!"

Such news as this writes itself across the brain in
letters of fire! Great Goddess of Liberty, think of
it! You, America! you, who represent that goddess,
with the light of an ever-widening glory on her brow,
think of this shame to the very name of Freedom!
this blot on civilisation this degrading result, as it
were, of our long-boasted intellectual supremacy and
scientific advancement! Six million people on the
verge of starvation! through no fault of their own,
an industrious, peaceful, marvellously heroic little
nation, deprived of its honestly-earned right to live,
and dragged from its altars of prayer to weep in the
dust of beggary and famine! You, America! you,
Star-crowned States of Freedom that have already
done so much and are doing so much for this broken
and bleeding victim of bitter circumstance you
cannot stay your hand now! you cannot you will
not! You will do more! and still more! You can-
not see a brave nation die of sheer hunger! it is not

83

84 MY "LITTLE BIT"

in your heart to look on at such a frightful thing
unmoved ; therefore you will listen to all unprejudiced
appeal even to mine, though I have little claim
to your hearing save that of the affection freely
given to me hy thousands of my readers in your
country an affection gratefully accepted and as
warmly reciprocated! I have naught to do with
the quarrels and murderous onslaughts of men filled
with blind fury and lust of world-power; all that I
can see or hear is the sorrow and suffering befalling
those who are innocent of any quarrel the wives,
the mothers, the young girls and boys, the little children
the helpless and bewildered old people! Cruel
famine is already torturing these piteous and patiently
enduring souls, on whom such a black cloud of un-
merited disaster has fallen that it seems as if it would
never lift ! All who have power to visualise their
unparalleled distress must and surely will take every
possible means to soften and mitigate the horrors of
their situation. Generous America! you have done
and are doing much! you have worked and are
working strenuously to relieve the burden of Belgium's
heavy affliction, but work to you is the very pulse of
your large life, and bigness of conception in noble
deeds is your breathing power! Therefore, no hesi-
tation need be felt in asking you to go on Working
and Doing all you can for the tortured, half dying
people of a devastated country a people whose
magnificent heroism has blazoned itself in a chronicle
of glory for the wonder of the future years a nation
that has faced her foes unflinchingly in the simple
defence of her freedom, and whose noble King, a hero
to the manner born, has not uttered one undignified

STAKVING BELGIUM 85

word of complaint against the sudden and harsE
calamities meted out to him by the cruel caprices
of a cruel destiny. To America all grand things
are possible America, as yet aloof from combat, can
accomplish what other nations, involved in difficulties
at this juncture, can barely attempt: America can
approach Germany with the ease of one at peace
in the midst of strife, and can with humane fore-
thought and certainty secure such distribution of
food supplies to the Belgian civil population as
may save them from the sufferings which now con-
front them every day. This is what America can
do and with all our hearts and souls we pray that it
may be quickly done! We, in Great Britain, are
never weary of helping, to the best of our ability,
those exiles who have lost their homes and means of
livelihood we strive to make their hard lot less bitter
and to one and all we accord a welcome as to those
of our own blood and kindred. But we are at war,
and though our Government is using all the means
available to prevent the threatening disaster of millions
of non-combatants, women, children, and the aged,
being sacrified to what is called "military necessity,"
such means are not enough, being perforce obstructed
by the difficulties of the situation. The grim idol of
Militarism must have its burnt offerings that pitiless
god of Battle so aptly and magnificently described
in Lord Byron's CJiilde Harold:

"Lo ! where the Giant on the mountain stands,
His blood-red tresses deep'ning in the sun,
With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands,
And eye that scorcheth all it glares upon ;

86 MY "LITTLE BIT"

i

Restless, it rolls, now fix'd, and now anon.
Plashing afar and at his iron feet
Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are

done;

All join the chase, but few the triumph share,
The Grave shall bear the chiefest prize away,
And Havoc scarce for joy can number their
array !"

Time presses! The wolf of famine is at the very
doors! Our hearts grow cold with terror and with
pity as we see once prosperous and happy Belgium,
a land of prosperous and happy people, shadowed by
the fearful spectres of Hunger and Disease. And
while we do all we can and all we may to keep back
these menacing destroyers of the innocent, we clasp
hands across the sea with America, and look to her
reasonableness, her boundless compassion and benev-
olence, for wider, more continuous help, feeling
that she can, and will, most assuredly move the
German administration in Belgium to see to the
free distribution of food, and to guarantee that
such distribution shall be made for the benefit of
the Belgian civil population. I believe the Germans
would willingly consent to this, if they have not
already consented, for it cannot be even to their own
advantage that disease should be sown broadcast in
Belgium, and the entire industrial population decimated
by famine. Indeed, as a matter of fact, Mr. Whitlock,
the American Minister at Brussels, has made definite
and official statement to the effect that he is satisfied
by close investigation on the spot that not an ounce

STAKVING BELGIUM 87i

of food sent in by the Commission for Relief is being
appropriated by the Germans. It should, perhaps,
be considered that Germany has a heart somewhere!
There are natural emotions in the mortal composition
of a German as well as in a Frenchman or a Briton
differently strung, no doubt, and differently placed
but no man of any nationality whatsoever is made
solely of "blood and iron," according to that hackneyed
catch-penny phrase which seems to have been coined
by some tall-talking journalist. I am not one of the
many who "thrill" over the various and sensational
reports gotten up by the world's press, whether such
reports emanate from Great Britain or the "Wolff
Bureau." I am as doubtful of statements circulated
by British journalism as of those which are unblush-
ingly "made in Germany." Each newspaper proprie-
tor has his own axe to grind, and not always does hon-
esty or unsullied patriotism have much to do with the
grinding. More mischief than can be easily calculated
is caused by irresponsible journalists who are allowed
to print their wholly useless and unnecessary personal
opinions on some great world-crisis in leading news-
papers. When Edward the Seventh ascended the Brit-
ish Throne he had something to say on one occcasion
to "the gentlemen of the Press," and he expressed
the hope that they would "do their best to foster amity
and good-will between the British Empire and other
nations." That the "gentlemen" have not so acquit-
ted themselves is a sad and sober fact; and in these
very days of the most terrific contest the world has
ever seen, many of them show an unworthy eagerness
to "work up" suspicion and ill-feeling between the

88 MY "LITTLE BIT"

combating parties, rather than to hold the balance
equably and with dignity. Insult, cheap sneers, and
vulgar jesting are all out of place in the present tre-
mendous clash of conflicting powers; when the gods
grasp their thunderbolts it is no time to listen to the
chattering of apes. And when we are told by the
Irresponsible Journalist of more battle horrors and
outrages than seem humanly possible of occurrence,
it does us good to learn through plain, unvarnished
fact conveyed in simply-written, straightforward let-
ters from brave men at the front and in the "firing
line," that, left to themselves, the Germans and their
Allied foes would be glad enough to play football
together, if allowed, like healthy schoolboys, and that
even as it is they give each other cigarettes across the
trenches, proof positive that when not acting "under
orders," they are human, normal, and friendly, and
have no thirst for each other's blood. I quote the
following from the letter of a brave young Englishman
serving in the Third Battalion of the Rifle Brigade :

"On Christmas morning some of us went out in front
of the German trenches and shook hands with them,
and they gave us cigars, cigarettes, and money as
souvenirs. We helped them to bury their dead, who
had been lying in the fields for two months. It was a
strange sight to see English and German soldiers as
well as officers shaking hands and chatting together.
We asked them to play us at football, but they had no
time. I got into conversation with one who worked
at Selfridge's in London, aud he said he was very
sorry to have to fight against us,"

STABVING BELGIUM 89

Heading this and various other letters of similar
tone from men in the very thick of battle, all bearing
ample testimony to the same truth, I cannot believe
that the foe is so utterly a monster as to wish to see
six million innocent people slowly starved to death;
for such a dire business would serve his purpose little,
while strongly intensifying his immediate unpopularity.
War is war; and if, after all, civilisation is so poorly
advanced that war must still play its barbarous part
in the world's policy, then of course there must be
exigencies of war which can neither be ameliorated
nor minimised. But the deliberate starvation of six
million innocent human beings, more or less useful to
their kind, does not and cannot come under the head
of "military necessity." Therefore, it should be the
proud privilege and duty of "neutrals" to do all that
is possible to soften and mitigate the fearful conditions
of life as at present lived in unhappy but undaunted
Belgium. The Commission for Belief, acting in Lon-
don, and comprising representatives of the Spanish,
Dutch, and Italian Embassies as well as the American,
has undertaken a task which is almost herculean. Work
as they will and there is no pause and no shirking
it is like coping with the waves of an engulfing sea.
The needs of the people become more urgent every
day that the fierce tug-of-war grows closer and more
insistent: Great Britain has found it imperative to
stop the importation of grain into Belgium, and all
this is coupled with the fact that under the Hague
convention the German army has the right to (re-
quisition food supplies, and is not bound (save mor-
ally) to feed the enemy's population. Nevertheless,
common sense and diplomacy, as well as mercy and jus-

90 MY "LITTLE BIT"

tice, may here step in and show that starvation and
sickness may breed evil among the Germans themselves
as well as among the Belgians, by sheer force of con-
tagion evil of a kind which might just as conveniently
be avoided. Any starving nation claims instant help
and compassion the sufferings it is compelled to un-
dergo are too awful to contemplate with any degree
of calmness, and may make even the sternest "Teuton"
shudder. Therefore, if any of us can, or dare, call
ourselves Christians in the face of this un-Christian
warfare, which neither religion, science, nor "New
Thought," spiritual or intellectual, has been deep or
sincere enough to hinder, let us gather up the fragile
fragments of our faith and try to piece them together
in one heart-whole, soul-strong effort to save from
impending misery the brave little nation, rich in his-
torical splendour of renown, artistic beauty, and in-
dustrial progress, whose hard-working people have de-
sired nothing but peace and freedom to attend to their
own business unmolested. If Christianity is worth
anything in the world we would not let one starving
creature go unfed from our doors shall we leave
six million to such an undeserved fate? If we do,
then well may the great Powers Invisible chastise us
to our own doom, and vengeful Furies whip us to a
hell of shame and oblivion ! Let us hold out rescue at
once with no uncertain hands, and let our practical
aid be swift, and "of good measure, pressed down and
running over." In all such deeds of love and sympathy
and charity Great Britain and America have led the
world by their splendid example. There has been
no grudging, no paltry personal discussion as to ways
and means. For every good and worthy cause gold

91

pours out as from a magical horn of plenty ; the more
the demand, the greater the supply. And now ? Now
when a nation starves ! Shall not a veritable argosy
of gold make its way across the miles of ocean which
divide the Fortunate from the Unhappy, and bridge
the gulf of tears and sorrow, striking light from dark-
ness, and hope from despair ? This can be so if Amer-
ica wills it ! Shall not a radiant Angel of Consolation
appear within the deepest gloom of battle, stretching
out hands of blessings and sustenance, lifting the fallen,
cheering the desolate, soothing the dying, and shed-
ding heavenly sunshine on a sorrow-clouded land?
This can be so if America wills it! Shall not the
true brotherhood of humanity be re-affirmed and
strengthened in the rescue of one nation by another?
in the succour of the smaller by the greater? in
the full acknowledgment of a brave fight for freedom
by a power that is more than free? This can be so
if America wills it !

"O Liberty! what crimels fare committed in thy
name !" were the last words of Madame Roland, heroic
victim of the French Revolution but we would say:
"O Liberty! what love is perfected in thy name!"
when starving Belgium is fed ! because America wills
it! Hear my appeal, O Star-crowned States of Free-
dom! hear me! hear all! Let no pleading voice
pass you by tm-heard! For the brave Nation that is
dying must live! shall live! if America wills it!

"THE TIME OF OUE LIVES"

OUE WOMEN IN WAB
(An answer to an American misjudgment)

"You women over here seem to be having the time of
your lives!" said an American friend to me the other
day. "You lunch and dine at all the restaurants with
whatever men 'on leave' you can pick up; you go
with them to music-halls and theatres and supper
dances, and 'peacock' about in extravagant clothes as
if there were no such thing as a war on !"

My American friend, being a man, took, as is often
the case with men, rather a one-sided view of things ;
but what he said is true, and I fully endorse his
statement. I am proud and eager to assure our Ameri-
can sisters "on the other side," that most surely we are
having "the time of our lives" ! ~No doubt about it !
But, do you understand, you women of New York,
Boston, Chicago, and every other great and growing
city in the United States, what that "time" exactly is ?
Are you able to measure it and give it your true under-
standing? I think not! It is easy to sit as spectators
in your vast amphitheatre of across ocean and watch
from comfortably-cushioned points of view the struggle
in the world's arena between Men and Beasts ; the con-
test is terrific, revolting, yet sensational and pro-
vides "thrills" for those who are not actively engaged
in combat. But for women whose husbands, lovers, and

92

"THE TIME OF OUK LIVES" 93

sons are being mauled and crushed and torn by the
teeth and claws of ravening and unreasoning brutes,
it is a spectacle demanding "nerve," to say the least
of it. This "nerve" this power of valiant endurance
is what Great Britain's women are displaying in "the
time of their lives" the time of loss and sorrow,
danger and difficulty; and I doubt whether the true
history of this indomitable pluck, cheerfulness, pa-
tience, and resignation will ever be rightly known!
They have been, and still are magnificent! a glory
and an honour to their sex ! "The time of their lives"
will be recorded in the country's annals as among the
most sublime things witnessed and proved in a century.
They have grudged no sacrifice, no pain; they have
sent their best and dearest to the great slaughter-
house of Flanders with smiles on their lips, restraining
the sobs of agony in their hearts they have not shrunk
in one single instance from any clear duty, however
difficult or apart from their own ways of life. Where
men's places have needed to be filled, they have filled
them most ably, conscientiously, and loyally, without
grumbling or complaint; and though some of their
male employers, too old to fight, but never too old to
"bully," have occasionally made things uncomfortable
for them by coarse words and coarser actions, they
have held their peace for the sake of their men at the
front, and are content to bear with insolence and
insult in silence rather than interrupt the routine of
the work they have undertaken in order to "release"
the men, such "release" often meaning for themselves
sheer heart-break and desolation. Oh, yes! we are
having "the time of our lives" ! a time such as this
world never saw, and which we all pray it may never see

94 MY "LITTLE BIT"

again! a time when wives toil in munition worts to
"release" their husbands, knowing that such "release"
may mean their own widowhood when mothers part
bravely from their sons, conscious that they are going
into such a hell of barbarous slaughter as never was
known even in the days of the Roman butcher, Nero
1 when girls "release" their lovers, and bend their
own slight bodies to the heavy toil usually undertaken
by the physically stronger sex, and say nothing of their
own fatigue, suspense, and sorrow! There are thou-
sands of such splendid women to set against the few
hundreds who "din at restaurants" and "peacock
about," and even these latter are not so abandoned
to self and vainglory as they seem. True, there are
women who push their own ends under cover of pro-
fessing charity, and are never so happy as when they
see their own portraits in the lower grade press
this class has always existed in every country and will
no doubt continue to exist. And there are plenty of
female "decoys" for men "on leave" who dine and
dance at public restaurants in wn-dress that would dis-
grace a savage; but, again, these have always existed,
and will probably continue to exist. The good Bishop
of London seems to have only just discovered them,
which is a great testimony to his guilelessness. Then
there is a particularly unfortunate section of the pic-
torial press which seeks to