Chapter XXXIV (1)

We dined in a private room on the first floor, which overlooked the street. Hartover proved a brilliant host. Once or twice, after anecdotes a trifle too highly salted for my white tie and clerical coat, he checked himself with a pretty air of penitence, expressing a mischievous hope I ‘wasn’t shocked.’ Shocked I was not, being no puritan; but somewhat grieved, I must admit, his wit should take so gross a turn. Yet what wonder? The guard-room is hardly mealy-mouthed, I supposed; neither, I could imagine, was French Mademoiselle--in intimacy. To her, by the way, I observed, Hartover made so far no smallest allusion.

But he spoke of Braithwaite, asking, with an indifference too studied to carry conviction, if my friendship still continued with the father and daughter, and--‘were they well?’ I answered both questions briefly in the affirmative; and there, to my relief, the subject dropped.

Towards the end of dinner his high spirits, which, entertaining though he had been, struck me all along as slightly forced, deserted him, and he became silent and preoccupied. Were we approaching disclosure of the trouble which, as he asserted, brought him here hot-foot, to Cambridge and to me? How gladly would I have made the way of confession easy for him! But I had sense to know I must be passive in the matter. Whatever confidence he gave must be given spontaneously. To question him, however circumspectly, would be to put him off by arousing his sensitive pride.

As the waiter brought in coffee and lights, Hartover rose, swung out onto the balcony, and, leaning his elbows on the high iron rail of it, stood gazing down into the street. The June twilight lingered, disputing the feeble glimmer of the street lamps. Roofs, gables, pinnacles and towers showed velvet black against the sweet translucence of an almost colourless sky. Footsteps, voices, a grind of wheels and cloppet, cloppet, of horse-hoofs over the stones; the scream of swifts in the buoyant rush of their evening flight, and the tang of a chapel bell, a single reiterated note. Some five minutes must have elapsed while these varied sounds reached me from without. Then Hartover raised his head, calling imperatively over his shoulder----

‘Brownlow, Brownlow, where are you? I want you. Come here.’

Evidently he had reached some crisis of purpose or of feeling. I went out into the warm evening air and stood beside him. His head was lowered, and again he gazed down into the street.

‘I am sorry, I am ashamed, Brownlow,’ he said, an odd thickness in his speech, ‘but I am afraid I have come here to-day and disturbed you on false pretences. I am afraid I cannot bring myself to talk to you about this matter after all.’

He paused as asking an answer.

‘Very well,’ I replied. ‘I, at all events, have gained by your coming, in that I have had the joy of seeing you again. Leave the rest if you think fit. You alone can know what you wish--know what appears to you right under the circumstances. You must use your own judgment.’

‘Ah! there you have me,’ he returned sharply. ‘I don’t know what I wish. I am uncertain what is right. I distrust my own judgment. In short I’m cornered, Brownlow, miserably, detestably cornered. To speak looks to me, at this moment, like an act of unpardonable treachery. Yet, if I don’t speak, I may be rushed before many days are out, by my own mad anger, into something even worse than treachery. Do you understand?’

In a sense I did understand, by intuition born of affection and sympathy. But, unless I was greatly mistaken in my reading of him, all this was merely preliminary. If I waited, I should understand, or at least hear, the whole. And that it would be well for him I should hear the whole I had--God helping me--no shadow of doubt.

Slowly the twilight expired, while the blue of the night sky, opaque, profound, travelled stealthily, almost imperceptibly, downward from the zenith. The joyous scream of the swifts ceased, and the bell tanged irregularly, nearing its finish. As it did so, a little group of gownsmen, gathered upon the pavement immediately below, seized by an irresponsible spirit of frolic--as most young animals are prone to be at dusk--started laughing and skylarking, their black raiment fluttering, batlike, as they skirmished across the greyness of the street.

Whether the sudden outcry jarred his already strained nerves, or whether the careless whole-hearted fun and laughter of these men, so little younger than himself, offered too mordant a contrast to his own troubled state, Hartover flung in from the balcony with an oath, hesitated for an instant, then blew out the lights and threw himself into an armchair.

‘No, I’m not strong enough to hold my tongue. Wretched weakling that I am,’ he groaned, ‘I must blab. And concerning a woman too.’

He extended his hand, through the semi-darkness, motioning me to a chair.

‘Sit there, please,’ he said. ‘My God, when it comes to the point how I despise myself, Brownlow! It’s--it’s about her, about Fédore.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, as calmly as I could, for his tone moved me deeply. And the subject, too! I trembled, penetrated alike by fear and hope of what I should hear next.

‘For the last month or six weeks something’s been wrong--some mystery on hand I cannot fathom. Somebody who has, or imagines they have, a hold over her is pressing her for money, as far as I can make out. I believe--oh! it is an abominable suspicion, but I cannot rid my mind of it--this person visits the house when she is sure I shall be away. I have no idea who, Brownlow; but someone belonging to her old life, before I married her. Each time lately that I have been with her she has insisted upon my telling her exactly when I intend to come again. Nothing will pacify her but that I must fix a date and hour. Her persistence has vexed me once or twice. We nearly quarrelled over it. She says’--he choked a little--‘it is only that she may be able to put on a pretty gown, prepare a nice little dinner, and have everything smart and charming for me. But I don’t believe that is her sole reason--perhaps I am just a jealous brute--but I can’t. I wish to heaven I could!’

He waited, fighting down his emotion.

‘Yesterday matters came to a head. I went with’--he mentioned the names of several young men, well known, not to say notorious, in fashionable and sporting circles--‘to a race meeting at ----. I meant to stop the week. But racing bores me after a little while, and the play was too high at night. Positively I couldn’t afford it. So I cut my stay short, went back to town, and to Chelsea. I can’t deny I had been living rather hard, and I was cross with myself--I really have kept awfully straight for the last six months, Brownlow--and a bit seedy and out of sorts.’

Again he waited.

‘I let myself in at the garden door, and then at the house-door--as a matter of course. I had no intention of jumping any surprise on her. I was not thinking about my suspicions or any little tiff we had had. I only wanted to get to her, Brownlow, because I knew she’d put me into good conceit with myself--tease and pet and amuse me, you know--she can be devilish amusing when she likes’----

His voice broke.

‘Yes,’ I said quietly, ‘yes’----

My heart bled for him; but I must be cautious and husband my resources. The time to speak would surely come, but it was not yet.

‘I found the house empty,’ he went on presently, recovering himself, ‘windows bolted and doors locked. I called her, and looked for her upstairs and down; but neither she nor the maid was at home. I was disappointed, of course; but I would not let myself be angry. I had told her I should be away till the end of the week, so she had a perfect right to go out if she wanted to. Finally I went into the drawing-room, meaning to wait there till she came in. But, somehow, I received a new impression of the house. It struck me as grubby, fusty, low-class. I wondered why I had never observed this before, or whether it was merely the effect of my disappointment at her absence. There were scraps of a torn-up letter on the carpet, for one thing, which I greatly disliked. I began to pick them up, and casually--I did not attempt to read it of course--I remarked the writing was in French. Then I thought I would smoke, to pass the time until she came back. I wanted something with which to cut off the end of my cigar, but found I had brought no penknife, so I rummaged in her little worktable for a pair of scissors. I could not find any in the top workbox part, and tried to pull out the square silk-covered drawer arrangement underneath, as I remembered often seeing her put her scissors away in it with her work. But the beastly thing was locked or jammed. Like a fool, I lost my temper over it, and dragged and poked till the catch gave and the drawer flew open. And--and, Brownlow, inside I saw a couple of white leather jewel-cases--oh! the whole thing was so incredible, such a profanation--it made me sick--stamped with a monogram and coronet. I recognised them at once. They belonged to my mother--own mother I mean’--

His tone grew fierce.

‘Not her Magnificence. Her hands have never touched, and touching defiled them, I am thankful to think.--These jewels would come to me, in the ordinary course of events, with certain other possessions of my mother’s, at my majority. Meanwhile they have always been kept in the strong-room at Hover. And, Brownlow--this is the point of the whole hateful business--they were among the valuables that scoundrel, Marsigli--you remember him, my step-mother’s beloved Italian butler?--made off with last year, and which by some to my mind incomprehensible stupidity on the part of the police--I have often talked it over with Fédore--have never yet been traced.’

‘Were the contents of the cases intact?’ I asked.

He hesitated.

‘No--’ he said at last, unwillingly, almost I thought despairingly--‘and that makes it all the more intolerable. The cases were empty; and from the position in which I found them it seemed to me they had been thrown into the drawer just anyhow, by a person in a frantic hurry--too great a hurry to make sure the drawer was actually locked. For, if it had been properly locked, it would not have given way so easily when I tried to force it. These signs of haste increased my fears, Brownlow. For think,’ he cried with sudden passion, ‘only think what it all points to, what it may all mean! How could these precious things of my mother’s have found their way into the drawer of Fédore’s worktable--unless? The conjunction of ideas would be positively grotesque if--if it were not so damnable.--Does not it occur to you what horrible possibilities are opened out?’

It did. I gauged those possibilities far more clearly than he, indeed, remembering my conversation with Warcop in the stables at Hover but a few weeks back. For was not Warcop’s theory in process of being proven up to the hilt? But how could I speak of either theory or proof to Hartover, distracted and tortured as he was? To do so would be incomparably cruel. No, I must play a waiting game still. The truth--or, to be exact, that which I firmly and increasingly believed to be the truth--must reach him by degrees, lest he should be driven into recklessness or violence. I would temporise, try to find excuses even, so as to retard rather than hasten the shock of that most ugly disclosure.

‘All which you tell me is very strange and perplexing,’ I said. ‘But do not let us be hurried into rash and possibly unjust conclusions. There may be some explanation which will put a very different complexion upon affairs. Have you asked for any?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It was too soon to think of that. I could not meet her, could not trust myself to see or speak to her then. My one impulse was to get away, to get out of the house in which, as it seemed to me, I had been so shamelessly betrayed and tricked. I was half mad with rage and grief. For--ah! don’t you understand, Brownlow?--I do love her. Not as I loved Nellie Braithwaite. That was unique--a love more of the soul than the senses. Pure and clean as a wind of morning, blowing straight out of paradise. The love of my youth, of--in a way--my virginity; such as can never come twice in my or any man’s life.’

He stopped, a sob in his throat. But not for long. The floodgates were open--all the proud, wayward, undisciplined, sensitive nature in revolt.

‘My love for Fédore is different--no morning wind from Eden about that. How should there be? In the interval I had very effectually parted company with all claims to the angelic state. But think--she nursed me, dragged me back from the very mouth of hell; protected me from those who sought to ruin me; gave herself to me; made a home for me, too, of a sort--oh! that poor, poor, hateful little Chelsea house!--coaxed me, flirted with me, kept me from gambling and from drink. How could I do otherwise than marry her, and love her, out of the merest decency of ordinary gratitude? I owe her so much---- And now’----

Here Hartover gave way completely. I felt rather than saw him--there was no light in the room save that thrown upward from the lamps in the street--fling himself sideways in the chair, crushing his face down upon the arm of it in a paroxysm of weeping.

Only a woman should look on a man’s tears, since the motherhood resident in every woman--whether potential or as an accomplished act--has power to staunch those tears without humiliation and offence. To his fellow-man the sight is disabling; painful or unseemly according to individual quality, but, in either case, excluding all possibility of approach.

I rose, went over to the window, and waited there. The boy should have his cry out, unhindered by my neighbourhood, since I knew he was beyond my clumsy male capacity of consolation. Later, when he came to himself, he would understand I had withdrawn not through callousness, but through reverence. Meanwhile, what a position and what a prospect! My heart sank. How, in heaven’s name, could he be drawn up out of this pit he had digged for himself? And he loved Nellie still. And, whatever his faults, whatever his weaknesses--vices even--his beauty and charm remained, beguiling, compelling, as ever. What woman could resist him? The thought gave me a pang. I put it from me sternly. Self, and again self--would self never die? Even in this hour of my dear boy’s agony, as he lay sobbing his hot young heart out within half a dozen paces of me, must I think of myself and of my private sorrow?

I looked up into the vast serenity of the star-gemmed sky above the black irregular outline of the buildings opposite, and renewed my vow to Nellie--remembering no greater love hath any man than this, that he lay down his life--life of the body, or far dearer life of emotions, the affections--for his friend.

And presently, as I still mused, I became aware of a movement in the room and of Hartover close beside me, his right arm cast about my neck.

‘Dear old man, dear old man,’ he said hoarsely, yet very gently, ‘forgive me. I have felt for these past twenty-four hours as though the last foothold had gone, the last foothold between me and perdition. But it isn’t so--you are left. Stay by me, Brownlow. See me through. Before God, I want to do right. Your worthless pupil wants for once to be a credit to you. But I cannot stand alone. I am afraid of myself. I distrust my own nature. If I go to her--to Fédore--with those empty jewel boxes of my mother’s in my hand and she lies to me, I shall want to kill her. And if she tells we what I can’t but believe is the truth, I shall want to blow my own brains out. For she has been very much to me. She is my wife--and what can the future hold for either of us but estrangement, misery and disgrace?’

He waited, steadied his voice, and then--

‘I know it is no small thing I ask of you; but will you come back to town with me to-morrow? And will you see her first, and so give me time to get myself in hand and decide what is to be done, before she and I meet? Will you stand between me and the devils of revenge and despair who tempt me? Will you do this because--barring you, Brownlow--I have nothing, no one, left?’

Needless to set down here what I answered. He should have his way. How, in God’s name, could I refuse him?

Then, as on that first night of my arrival at Hover long ago, I got him away to bed. Sat by him till he slept--at first restlessly, feverishly, murmuring to himself; and once--it cut me to the quick--calling Fédore by name, as one who calls for help in limitless distress.

The brief summer night was over and the dawn breaking before I felt free to leave him, seek my room, and take some much-needed rest.

(_To be continued._)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. in the United
States of America.

_LEST WE FORGET._

_A WORD ON WAR MEMORIALS._

An old friend of mine, who was a boy at Rugby under the kindly, orthodox and dignified Dr. Goulburn, told me that on his first evening at that great school, a bewildered and timid little creature, after he had been much catechised and derided by a lot of cheerful youngsters, and with a terrible perspective before him of endless interviews with countless strange and not necessarily amiable mortals, a loud bell rang, and all trooped down to prayers. He sat on a bench in a big bare hall with a timbered roof, a door opened and a grave butler appeared, carrying two wax candles in silver candlesticks, followed by the Headmaster in silk gown and bands, in unimaginable state. The candles were set down on a table. The Headmaster opened a great Bible, and in a sonorous voice read the twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua, a gloomy enough record, which begins, ‘Now these are the kings of the land, which the Children of Israel smote,’ and ends up with a sinister catalogue, ‘The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, one’--and so on for many verses, finishing up with ‘The king of the nations of Gilgal, one; the king of Tirzah, one; all the kings, thirty and one.’ After which pious and edifying exercise, the book was closed, and prayer offered.

My old friend was an impressionable boy, and it seemed to him, he said, that there was a fearful and ominous significance in this list of slaughtered monarchs, depicting and emphasizing the darker side of life. But I have often thought that a few words from the Headmaster, on the vanity of human greatness and the triumph of the divine purpose, might have turned these lean and bitter memorials of the dead into an unforgettable parable. What, for instance, could be more profoundly moving in the scene of the ‘Passing of Arthur,’ where the knight steps slowly in the moonlight from the ruined shrine and the place of tombs:

‘Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men,
Old knights--and over them the sea-wind sang
Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam’?

That seems to lend the last touch of mystery and greatness to a scene of human endeavour, that the earth beneath the living feet should cover the bones, the hardy and heroic limbs of those who had lived and fought worthily. As the dying king, with the poignant accent of passion cries aloud:

‘“Such a sleep
They sleep--the men I loved!”’

For nothing surely in the world can be so utterly and simply moving as the record of dead greatness--unless perhaps it be the oblivion which is the end of all greatness at the last. There is a place on the bleak top of the South Downs, a great tumulus, with an earth-work round it, all grassy now and tufted with gorse, the sheep grazing over it, which looks for miles north and east and west over the fertile weald, with shadowy hills on the horizon; and to the south, where the great ridges fold together, you can catch through the haze a golden glint of the sea. I never pass the place without a deep and strange thrill. It is called the Mound of the Seven Kings; it looks over a grassy space which is known as ‘Terrible Down,’ and of what day and what doom it is the record, who shall say?

It seems impossible to us now, just as it seemed to the old hill-men who raised that tumulus, that as the world welters and widens onward, the great tragedies and losses and sacrifices which we have seen with our eyes, and the thought of which has so possessed our souls with a sense of grief and glory combined, should become but a tale that is told. But it is one of the thoughts which lie deepest and noblest in the mind and soul of man, the thought of old and infinite strife and endeavour, pain and death, courage and hope so richly blended, till it seems too great for the heart to hold. The mystery of it is that, as the Psalmist says: ‘I see that all things come to an end; but Thy commandment is exceeding broad.’ The thought, if I can define it, leaps like fire from crumbling ashes--all this great pageant of energy and heroism and fame fading farther and farther into the past--and yet, in spite of the hush of the tolling bell and the solemn music, the certainty that it is all worth doing and enduring, that we must wrest the great values out of life and make of it a noble thing; and that while memory fades and honour seems to perish, yet the seed once sown, it springs up again and again in life and beyond death, beyond all possibility of extinction.

One of the things for which, in a great time like the present--great for all its sadness, and perhaps because of its sadness--one of the things for which I thank God is that this war has revealed as nothing else could have done the latent heroism of our nation. If only it could make us poets and cure us of being prophets! I have often been ashamed to the bottom of my heart of the cries of panic-mongers and crabbed pessimists shrieking in our ears that we were a nation sunk in sloth and luxury and indifference. I have lived all my life among the young, and if ever there was a thing of which I was certain, it was that our youth was brave and modest and manly--as this long and bitter fight has daily and hourly proved.

And we have a task before us--to see that the memory of those who have fought for us and died for us should be as stably and as durably commemorated as possible. It is not that I think of a memorial as being in any sense a reward for the honoured dead. If there is one thing which our heart tells us, it is that they have a nobler reward than that. A new life, doubtless, a passing from strength to strength. But as Shelley so immortally said, ‘Fame is love disguised,’ and we owe it to our love and gratitude not only to remember, but to commemorate. I defy anyone, however simple and stolid, to set foot in our great Abbey, and not be thrilled with the thought, ‘After all, humanity is a splendid thing, so full of devotion and greatness as it is!’ Statesmen, monarchs, writers, artists, men of science, men of learning, there they sleep; there is a generous glow in many young hearts, which may thus be kindled. The poet of boyhood makes the boy, just disengaging himself from the beloved school and stepping into the world, say to himself:

‘Much lost I: something stayed behind,
A snatch maybe of ancient song,
Some breathings of a deathless mind;
Some love of truth; some hate of wrong.

And to myself in games I said,
“What mean the books? Can I win fame?
I would be like the faithful dead,
A fearless man and pure of blame.”’

This, then, is our present task--to see that our dead are worthily commemorated for our own sakes and for the sake of those who come after. How shall we do it?

In the first place, we must not do it idly and carelessly--we must take thought, have a plan and a purpose, not be in too great a hurry. Hurry is the worst foe of memorials. We have a national habit--I think it is rather a sign of greatness--not to do anything until we are obliged; but the result of that often is a loss of grace and fineness; because people who must act, and are a little ashamed of not having acted, accept any solution.

What I hope we shall do is to take careful thought where our memorials shall be set, so that they may be most constantly and plainly seen; and then how they may best fulfil their purpose, which is to remind us first, and next to kindle emotion and imagination. We have an ugly habit of combining, if we can, local utility with a memorial, as in the well-known story of the benevolent clergyman who read out the announcement of the death of a great statesman and added, ‘That is just what we wanted! We have long needed a new water supply!’ That is like using a grandfather’s sword to trim a privet-hedge with! I do not believe in fitting things in. If we commemorate, let us commemorate by a memorial which arrests and attracts the eye, is long and gratefully remembered, and by an inscription which touches the heart, and does not merely merge a man among the possessors of all human gifts and virtues. I remember a Georgian monument in a cathedral, where a lean man in a toga peeped anxiously out of an arbour of fluted columns, and of whom it was announced that in him ‘every talent which adorns the human spirit was united with every virtue which sustains it.’ How different is the little tablet in a church I know on which a former choir-boy is commemorated! He had joined the army, and had won a Victoria Cross in the Boer War which he did not live to receive. The facts were most briefly told; and below were the words, which I can hardly read without tears:

‘Thou hast put a new song in my mouth.’

What we want, then, are beauty, dignity, simplicity, and force. We want what appeals directly to the eye, and then darts a strong emotion into the heart, an emotion in which gratitude and hope are blended.

I must not here attempt to unfold a wide technical scheme; indeed I could not if I would; but I may perhaps outline a few principles.

First comes the difficulty that places like to manage their own affairs; and that the men who administer local interests, however devotedly and industriously, do not acquire their influence by artistic tastes. The next difficulty is that our artistic instinct in England is not widely diffused. When Walter Pater’s attention was called to some expensive tribute, and he became aware that an expression of admiration was required, he used to say in his soft voice, ‘Very costly, no doubt,’ and this was always accepted as an appropriate compliment, he said. A third difficulty is the deep-seated mistrust in England of the expert--it is all part of our independence--but the expert is often regarded simply as a man who lets you in for heavier expense than you had intended.

It would be well if some central advisory board could be established--a central authority can hardly be expected, and indeed would not even be desirable. The nature of memorials should be carefully scrutinised. We are always weak in allegorical representation, and perhaps for that very reason have a great fondness for it. Our civic heraldry, for instance, is woefully weak, not by excess of symbolism, so much as by a desperate inclusiveness of all local tradition, till the shield becomes a landscape in which a company of travellers have hung their private property on every bush.

Thus with our taste for representing and explaining and accounting and cataloguing, our memorials become architectural first, with every cornice loaded with precarious figures, like the painting described by Dickens of six angels carrying a stout gentleman to heaven in festoons with some difficulty. Our inscriptions become biographies. Again, the surrounding scene is little regarded. A statesman in a bronze frock-coat and trousers reading aloud a bronze manuscript behind the railings of a city square, embowered in acacias, has no power over the mind except the power of a ludicrous sense of embarrassment. A statue, majestic enough in a pillared alcove, is only uncomfortable in a storm of wind and rain.

We ought, I believe, to fight shy of elaborate _designs_, because the pantomime of allegory at once begins. What we rather need is simplicity of statement, with perhaps a touch of emblem, no more, of characteristic material, of perfect gravity, so that the gazer can see at once that the matter recorded is great and significant, and desires to know more. It is said that an inscription was once to be seen in India, marking one of the farthest points of the advance of Alexander the Great. It was a slab with the words:

ΕΝΤΑΥΘΑ · ΕϹΤΗΝ

‘Here I stood’--upon it. What could be more impressive, what more calculated to sow a seed of wonder in an imaginative mind?

These memorials should, I believe, evoke the spirit of the artist, as a craftsman, rather than as a designer. Alike in inscriptions and in representations, the wholesome and humble appeal must be direct and personal, avoiding rhetoric and over-emphasis, as well as elaborate conventions which other hands will dully and mechanically reproduce. If, as in cast metal-work, reproduction is natural and inevitable, let the designs be perfectly simple and sincere; if again it be painter, sculptor, carver, or builder that is called upon to create a memorial, let the responsibility and originality of the craft be his, and not be superseded or overruled by the authority of the design--for this indeed is, as Professor Prior said wittily to me the other day, as though a surgeon should provide a specification and an estimate for an operation, and leave the execution of it to other hands.

But we must not suppose that we can insist upon any particular form of memorial in any particular place. What we may desire is that the memorial, whatever it is, of this great and heroic trial through which we are passing, should grow up out of the minds of the inhabitants of a city or a town, and should be made by the hands of inhabitants as well. I do not desire that they should be too costly. Indeed it may well be that we shall have given so much of our resources to the prosecution of the war that we shall have but little left for adorning our trophies. I do not desire that they should be constructed to serve other uses, at least not primarily. They are to tell their own story, a story of noble deeds, and provide alike a dedication of our dead to honour, and a dedication of ourselves to gratitude and future effort.

I hope too most earnestly that we shall not accumulate resources on one national monument, to astonish tourists and to feed our vanity; but that as many places as possible should have a record of a great fact which has penetrated our national life more deeply than any historical event in the whole of our annals.

Forethought, then, simplicity, naturalness, eloquence of emotion rather than of word, native feeling, these will, I hope, be the notes of our memorials. Let us try for once to express ourselves, not to cover up truth with turgid verdicts, but to say what we mean and what we feel as simply and emphatically as we can.

We are not likely to forget the war; but what we may forget is that the result of it is the outcome of modest, faithful, loyal services done with no flourish or vanity, by thousands of very simple, straightforward people, who did not argue themselves into indignation, or reflect much about what they were doing, but came forward, leaving comfort and home and work and love, without any balancing of motives, but just because they felt that they must take their place in the battle of liberty and right with intolerable pride and aggression. That is the plain truth; and that is the best and only proof of the greatness of a nation that it should prefer death, if need be, to all the pleasant business of life. If this or any of this can be recorded, if this national impulse can be kept alive in our children, we need not fear either life with all its complications, or death with all its mysteries. The nation will live; and the memorials of these dark and great days will stand to witness to our far-off sons and daughters that their old forefathers did not live to no purpose and did not die in vain.

_A GERMAN BUSINESS MIND._

BY SIR JOHN WOLFE BARRY, K.C.B.

Now that we are entering on the third year of the war so shamelessly brought about by Germany, the accompanying correspondence, commencing in August 1914, may interest your readers. It indicates the extreme rancour against our country of a leading and capable German manufacturer, not merely evoked by our declaration of war, but pre-existing for a long time and very carefully concealed from his English friends. It was to me in 1914 a curious lifting of the curtain, and indicates for our present guidance what will remain to be encountered by us in the economic struggle against the mercantile interests of Germany when the war ends.

The manufacturer’s letter is also interesting as showing clearly the anticipations held in Germany, when she declared war, of a speedy and highly successful result of the wicked and stealthy attack on her neighbours for which she had been so long preparing. It is astonishing moreover in the extraordinary ignorance displayed, on the part of a clever leader of German enterprise, as to the Constitution, resources, and temper of the British Empire, and it gives full vent to his hatred and contempt of France, Russia, and Japan.

This letter, printed second in the series, was addressed to an intimate friend of mine who was closely connected with engineering interests in Germany, and who had known the writer well for some years, having had important interests with him in business. My friend sent me the letter for my perusal, but did not disclose the name of the writer.

The third letter is an attempted reply on my part to the statements and misstatements of the German manufacturer, and requires no comment from me. My friend sent a copy of my letter to his German correspondent, but it evoked no reply.

Copies of both these letters were forwarded, anonymously, by my friend to a well-known English engineer long resident in Germany, who occupied a leading and acknowledged position in that country. He had been for many years closely in touch with very many members of his profession there, and was connected with numerous commercial interests.

As will be seen, he promptly identified the German manufacturer, and his note on the correspondence is placed first in the series in order to make clear the character and position of the writer of the amazing letter No. 2. He expresses the astonishment which he felt at its contents, remarking that the sentiments expressed in it had been carefully concealed in his interviews with him both before and after the outbreak of the war. The correspondence appears to me to give much food for thought in many various ways, and I may, with these few explanatory comments, let the letters speak for themselves.

Letter No. 1.

Extract from a letter received by Mr. A. B. of London from Mr. C. D., a gentleman long resident in Germany and unusually well acquainted with German commercial life:

Received February 1915.

‘I now see from whom the letter came. He is a friend of
mine. I have had a good deal to do with him lately, also
after the outbreak of war. Curiously, although knowing
me to be an Englishman, he has never in the slightest
manner expressed himself in a like sense to me. He has
evidently written to you in a great state of excitement.
Nevertheless I cannot understand his doing so nor his
harbouring the thoughts expressed in his letter. He is a
clever and clear-headed man and much respected. His conduct
in the labour question is looked upon as exemplary. He has
proceeded by quiet well-considered but energetic measures
to get his working staff entirely free from labour and
social-democratic influences. His workmen are all content
with their conditions, and his works therefore free from
labour troubles when these break out in other works. I
am told that all works at ---- have profited by his wise
measures. I therefore can all the less understand his
writing you such an incredible letter. How can men of his
position be so blinded to the true facts?

‘The reply you sent[2] me sets this forth very clearly. I
entirely concur in the contents and the opinions expressed
in the same.’

Letter No. 2.

A letter written on August 29, 1914, to Mr. A. B. of London by a German business friend, and sent by Mr. A. B., in September 1914, to Sir John Wolfe Barry for his perusal:

‘The poisonous seed sown by your good King Edward VII. has
sprung up. It is a well-known fact that the great aim of
his life, to which he devoted all his energy, was to unite
the whole world in one bond against Germany, to annihilate
that hated nation.

‘His disciple Minister Grey has seized the opportunity of
tightening the noose with which Germany is to be strangled.
For ten years English diplomacy has worked for that end,
to close up the ring round us. Now the die is irrevocably
cast and Destiny goes its way. No one can say positively
what the outcome will be, but one thing I do believe, and
sixty-seven million Germans believe it with me, and that is
that we shall be victorious.

‘We shall win because we are fighting for the right, for
our national existence, for civilization. Without England’s
intervention this war would have been inconceivable. In
France, whom we sincerely pity, and whom this war will
crush, one hears a united cry that she is ready for peace.
In Russia it was only the aristocratic party that has
forced on the war, and they will seize this opportunity to
steal. That party of course owns the anti-German press,
such as the _Nowoje Wremja_ and other papers, which are
financed by England. England alone was thirsting for war,
and has pressed the other nations into war against us.
For years she has seen how we have excelled her more and
more in the industrial world. If people were but honest,
they would know that the reason for our success lies in
the fact that we are an industrious and hardworking folk.
In England, on the other hand, there exists a widespread
tendency to avoid work. We have no public holidays. Our
working week averages fifty-eight hours. We Directors have
no “week-ends,” we work in the factory on an average from
fifty to sixty hours a week, and as a rule spend one or two
nights and sometimes even all Sunday in the train in order
to get work for our business. Moreover we understand how
to adapt ourselves to all possible circumstances, while
your people in their well-known arrogance, do not concern
themselves with the requirements of other countries.

‘Because we have attained great prosperity by ability and
hard work, the hatred and jealousy you bear us Germans has
grown beyond all bounds. This embarrassing competition
must be crushed so that you can go on in your comfortable
decadent existence.

‘In order that a people, who appear particularly Christian,
may attain this worthy goal, the barbarian hordes of the
Slavs are mobilised against the champions of civilization,
to whom the world owes so much. The natives in Africa are
incited against us, and we are even betrayed in Japan. This
last act has raised a storm of indignation in our country
which would alarm you, had you any idea of it. England will
certainly make terrible amends for this underhand deed.
The hatred which is raging among Germany’s sixty-seven
millions will avenge itself on England in a most fearful
way. For a hundred years the fist of every German will be
clenched whenever the word “England” is spoken.

‘I have had many experiences in my time, but never have
I known anything like the satisfaction which prevailed
throughout our country yesterday, when it first became
known that your army of mercenaries had been under the
fire of our noble reserves, and that we were in a position
to shoot down the people who draw the sword for money.
Your soldiers who oppose us in the field will yet learn
something of the loathing which our army has for anything
that is English. Our sailors look forward eagerly to the
time when your fleet, of which you talk so much, appears
in German waters. You may be quite sure that a large part
of it will never again see the shores of England, even
if we lose the whole of our navy. It is to be hoped that
your fleet will at last summon up courage to attack us. If
they come under the guns of Heligoland and Kuxhaven, your
battleships will share the same fate as befell the forts at
Liège and Namur.

‘In this war, which is the most shameful crime that has
ever been committed against humanity, and which lies
entirely at the door of English statesmen, we shall be
triumphant. England will be shaken to her foundations.
Mankind could not but lose its belief in right and
justice, and more particularly in the Divine guidance of
the universe, if a country, who in the most shameless way
professes Christianity and yet allies herself with Asiatics
and barbarians, were to be victorious.

‘Your newspapers, of which we still regularly receive
copies, may overwhelm English readers with falsehoods
about our army and its successes. Truth is going forward,
and before fourteen days have passed our forces will be
investing Paris. Belgium, whom you incited to oppose us,
is cursing you. France, whom you likewise forced into war
against us, will in future show perfidious Albion the door.

‘It is very sad that a country like England which has won
for herself so much merit in the progress of mankind,
and has produced so many able men, should abandon moral
principles proved through the centuries and hand herself
over to a band of unscrupulous men like Minister Grey.
When one considers all the misery which this war, which is
the most terrible the world has yet seen, has caused, it
makes one shudder to imagine what sort of conscience the
Councillors of the Czar, your Minister Grey and Minister
Churchill must have.

‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed
prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes
political downfall. England has become the champion of
a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated
their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign
prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires
with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen,
the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most
treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that
the earth holds, the Japanese.

‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath
towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful
to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese
more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the
British world-empire will split off in all directions. The
world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations,
and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your
country’s action.

‘If I have offended you by what I have written, just
consider I cannot do otherwise than say what is my opinion.
My personal esteem for you is not altered by what is taking
place.’

Letter No. 3.

From Sir John Wolfe Barry to Mr. A. B.:

October 4th, 1914.

‘I have read with profound interest and grief the copy of
the letter of August 29th from your German friend. The
rancour which it displays is beyond words. It is apparently
useless to criticise its contents looking to the frame of
mind of the writer, who, I think and fear, expresses the
present general feeling in Germany of hatred and anger
with our country. Many of his statements and arguments are
however absolutely and fundamentally erroneous and are
capable of complete refutation.

‘The poisoning of German thought in respect of Great
Britain does not date from anything done by King Edward
and still less from Sir Edward Grey or the present or
former Ministry. It began long earlier in the antagonism
between the military class and what may be termed the
liberal aspirations of many thoughtful Germans when the
Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick William,
married our Princess Royal. Both were in sympathy with
liberal ideas and they were violently opposed by Bismarck
and the blood-and-iron school, while the youth of Germany
were systematically taught by the professors and writers of
Germany, under the encouragement of Bismarck and his school
of thought, to hate and despise Great Britain. There is not
and never has been a corresponding feeling here towards
Germany.

‘Of course the two countries are rivals in trade and
commerce, but that is no reason for rancorous hatred.
We are keen rivals in trade with the United States and
other countries, but such rivalries have not engendered
any other feelings than that each country should do its
best honourably to succeed in competition. It must never
be forgotten in this connection that in England and in
our colonies Germans, though keeping a strict barrier
of tariffs themselves, have had absolute freedom in
competition, that they have availed themselves of it and
have made huge profits under our Free Trade system. Thus
the rancour of Germany against Great Britain must be sought
for in other directions, and it cannot be truthfully put
down to trade rivalry.

‘The cause is in fact to be found in the _Welt Politik_,
the jealousy of Germany of British world power and in the
aspirations of crushing Great Britain by force of arms.
This has been the persistent and avowed policy of the
Kaiser and the Junker class.

‘The idea was to fight France and Russia to a finish
and then concentrate all forces against England (and
parenthetically against Belgium) and to destroy the British
Empire. The present extreme and violent hatred on the part
of Germany is due to the probability of the failure of
that deep-laid scheme in consequence of England supporting
her Allies, and refusing to break her pledged word to
Belgium. It may be also caused by the feeling which must
be somewhere embedded in German thought, that Germany has
behaved dishonourably and scandalously to Belgium, whose
neutrality she most solemnly guaranteed.

‘If one looks back on the history of the last twenty-five
years, or thereabouts, one sees Bismarck threatening an
unprovoked war with France, and only withdrawing under the
threat of the opposition of Russia and Great Britain. This
proposed attack on France by Bismarck was a most shameful
episode, for France’s only offence was her existence and
recuperative power after her disasters in 1870. Then came
the Emperor’s policy in our South African War, when, if he
could have done so, he would have arrayed Europe against
this country, but ended only in having lured Kruger to
ruin. Then came the “mailed fist” in China, the seizure
of Tsing-tau, and Germany’s efforts to crush Japan after
the Russo-Japanese war. The demonstrations at Tangiers and
Agadir occurred soon afterwards, with more threats of an
European war. Afterwards came the annexation of Bosnia by
Austria backed by Germany and the insults hurled at Russia
by Germany in “shining armour.”

‘It is these things and others of a similar nature when
the German “sabre has been rattled” constantly in the face
of Europe, that demonstrated that Germany was the enemy of
peace, and which, crowned by the breach of the Treaty of
Belgium, showed to the Allies that no treaty would hold
Germany, and that her aspirations and lust for world power
were Napoleonic. Lastly the Allies knew that Germany had
resolved on war and was making a catspaw of Austria by
preventing her from coming to an agreement with Servia and
Russia.

‘I have said nothing about the systematic building of
the German navy. It was within her rights as a Sovereign
Power, but none the less the avowed object was to seize the
“Trident of the Seas” and to attack Great Britain. It was
obviously intended to attack our coasts, so as to enable an
invasion of this country to be possible, and to seize the
colonies of Great Britain and France.

‘Germany was utterly deceived by her diplomatists about
England, which was troubled with threats of civil war and
by trade disputes, and they never thought that we would
stand up for Belgium and fight now rather than later. It is
chagrin at the miscalculation, combined with the effects
of our maritime power, which has produced the outburst of
hatred against us. Commercial rivalry has no real basis for
hatred, and as for the question of a “place in the sun,”
Germany has large and advantageous colonial possessions
but can do but little with those which she owns, and has
preferred to compete with us in our colonies as she has
done so long and so successfully.

‘All this history of German jealousy, hatred and designs
is very sad, and I do not suppose that your German friend,
obsessed as he is, would listen to any facts or arguments.
But since I began to write, somewhat hurriedly, to you I
have been led on to write more than I intended to try to
deal with. I do not imagine that he has seen or would be
allowed to see the statement of the British case in the
White Paper, which I understand will be further elaborated
in a new paper to be published next Tuesday.

‘Have you answered your friend’s letter, or have you looked
upon it as hopeless to do so? In the temper in which he
wrote there was nothing visible but fighting to a finish.

‘Yours very sincerely,
‘(_Signed_) J. WOLFE BARRY.

‘_P.S._--I suppose you have not had another letter? It
would be interesting to see one of a later date than August
29th.
‘J. W. B.’

_N.B._--A copy of Sir John Wolfe Barry’s letter was sent by Mr. A. B. to his German business friend, but no reply was attempted and the correspondence then ceased.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Viz. that of Sir John Wolfe Barry printed below as
letter No. 3.

_THE NEW TEMPTATION OF ST. ANTHONY._

BY JOHN W. N. SULLIVAN.

(_The time is the present day. St. Anthony is discovered seated on the ground outside his hut. The cross stands in its accustomed place, erect before him; and the great panorama, of which he is now weary, lies below him. He has changed but slightly with the years; something of his old immobility has disappeared. He occasionally shrugs his shoulders when speaking, and he often accompanies his reflections with slight gestures of the hands._)

ANTHONY (_thinking_). I have attained peace. Those troubling visions have disappeared. Never for an instant have I departed from grace since the Saviour’s face appeared to me in its shining disc of gold. The burning days and solemn nights pass noiselessly. Rare tempests mutter unnoticed about me. Nothing has power to disturb my beatific monotony; nor hope, nor fear, nor love, nor regrets. I have triumphed over all temptations. The devil has left me. (_He sighs._) That journey through space, upborne on his wings! (_Stars commence to shine: the daylight lingers._) I have resisted all the seductions of the flesh. I value not the riches of the mind. (_He starts, and looks fixedly at a vague light which advances across the desert._) It seems as if----. But that cannot be: I have already sustained all assaults.