by John Buchan
“How true!” said Mrs Wilbraham. “If we had a spiritual Debrett prepared by a committee of archangels what havoc it would make in Society!”
“I do not wish to disparage my middle class,” Lord Launceston continued. “It plays a useful part and it has many virtues. As some one has said, it is the ‘force of social persistence.’ It has also, I believe, been likened to a backbone.”
“A most dangerous metaphor,” said the Duchess. “What warrant has a backbone to make so much noise? I always thought that it was the duty of that valuable part of the human frame to remain decently covered up with flesh. An aggressive backbone is a contradiction in terms. And yet there is no doubt that we are governed by our middle, our stupidly satisfied class.”
“Yes. That is our danger, as it has been the danger of all great civilisations. It does not think, because it has no need to. The burdens of citizenship mean nothing to it, because they are not felt. The lives of its members are beyond the reach of ordinary want, they are secure from attack, they have no reason to pester themselves about the problems of statecraft. Their attitude to the poor is one of slightly contemptuous patronage. Since their standards are material they have little sympathy for those who cannot command material success. Towards the class with ambitions they feel an innate hostility, save in so far as that class contains their social superiors. I have no doubt such people are kind friends, excellent husbands, and wise fathers, but in no sense of the word are they citizens. And yet by a paradox of fate they govern. It is their votes that must be sought before any policy can be realised. It is this dull residuum who must be cajoled or persuaded before one step forward is possible. They are the support of traditionalism in all departments of life, not from conviction, like the true Tory, but from apathy.
“To such people we make no appeal. Imperialism, like all constructive policies, asks for science, for ideas, for geist, above all for courage. But it may act upon this inert mass like fire upon ore, and sublimate it into something of value. The sense of citizenship comes not from governing but from administering, and till problems are translated into homely terms, and the demands of the State hammer at the doors of those self-satisfied homes, there will be no salvation for their inmates. In the meantime our appeal must be to the first and the third of my classes. The third is obvious enough. The aristocracy of ambition in whatever social rank they may be found are our natural propagandists. We appeal to all who can think clearly and feel cleanly and act wholeheartedly — the
‘patrician spirits that refine
Their flesh to fire and issue like a flame
On brave endeavours.’
But we appeal no less eagerly to the rising democracy, the men who are still preoccupied with the elementary wants of life. These men know that they can only make their power felt by superior energy, by loyalty to their ideals, by a relentless fidelity to facts. Like us they demand that the rubbish be cleared away, like us they clamour for a recognition of the needs of things as they are. They may show signs of hysteria and impatience, but never of stagnation. Their attitude of mind is one with ours, and we have sufficient faith to believe that the same attitude will in time produce the same creed.
“There is another side of the popular cry which to my mind is most hopeful. Tour labour leader to-day wishes to bring the humblest citizen into the life of the State. That is to say, he would extend the opportunity of administrative experience by means of subordinate councils, and with such an extension must come a growth of the feeling of corporate responsibility. The lower classes, if he had his will, should not govern without administering. Now our appeal is to practical statesmen, those who know the difficulties of administration and who have acquired from experience a wider view of public interests than the merely selfish. At present, I grant you, there is too much inclination in this class to identify the interests of the State with those of one section, but I am optimistic enough to believe that a wider experience carries within itself the cure.
“The first moral condition, then, which Imperialism demands is a quickened civic conscience and a tireless intelligence. The second, for want of a better phrase, I will call a wider patriotism. The affection which with many is limited at present to their birthplace must be extended to the Empire. I do not mean that we should forego old attachments. Just as no man will ever love his fatherland in the same way as he loves the village or parish where he was bom, so to the Englishman, the Canadian, and the New Zealander, England and Canada and New Zealand will always have more intimate claims than any wider geographical area. But Imperial patriotism will stand to national, as national patriotism to-day stands to local affection. A man is not less of a patriot because the ‘lone sheiling and the misty island’ are nearer his heart than the whole realm of Britain. And a man may be a good Imperialist although his country of origin has a larger share in his interests than the Empire. There is a gradation in patriotism, and one grade differs from another in kind. If we have at one end the sentiment for what is small and unique — the village, the glen, the cottage — at the other we may have a sentiment as genuine for what is omnipotent and universal.
“This wider patriotism, as I understand it, seems to me to harmonise with the nature of our race. Our land no more than Hellas has a paltry local unity. The English genius has never regarded its civilisation as tied down to the place of its birth. Its task has been to absorb the unfamiliar and to lay bare the unknown, admitting no terra incognita into its scheme of things. There is always the home country, the centre of memories, but the working loyalties of life go to those lands it has created. As every man loves the work of his own hands, so any race must love what comes from its own toil and adventure. Such a love is no thin cosmopolitanism, but the jealous affection for its own household, and once the unity of the Empire is realised, patriotism must embrace it as naturally as family affection embraces each new inmate of the home.
“These are platitudes which are scarcely worth repeating, were they not so often forgotten. We need not greatly concern ourselves with the by-products of empire. If the motive force is there — the new attitude of mind and all that is implied in it — we may safely trust to natural laws to produce the secondary results we desire. Our first business, then, is to have the Empire accepted, not as a pious opinion or a phrase of rhetoric, but as a living faith. It must become an unconscious presupposition in all our politics, otherwise it will not influence our conduct of affairs. Remember that a truth is only potent in English life when it has become a truism. Our duty, as we all agree, is first of all to create opinion, — to guide the alert, and to compel the inert into a certain attitude of mind.
“So far, I think, I carry Mr Wakefield with me. But after that, he will ask, what next? After that, I am afraid, he and I must agree to differ. It is not a fundamental difference, for it is only on methods, but the methods seem to me so vital a matter that I fear it is a real difference. Let me repeat some of the conclusions we have reached in our discussion. We saw that while legislative federation was out of the question as things stand to - day, some executive union was not only urgently needed, but up to a point practicable. Mr Wakefield himself outlined a scheme which promised to create gradually and without any wild change a true Imperial executive. We saw that the present theory of our Empire was one of alliance, but that it must be made a working alliance. We have a dozen great common problems, and they are all administrative — the control of subject races, the development of the tropics, labour, defence, emigration, commercial union. Our survey of these has been very slight, but we have found reason, I think, to believe that in all there is a hope of a successful settlement on an Imperial basis. But questions which concern all must be answered by the co-operation of all. At present our method is either to leave them unanswered or to answer them ourselves after a make-believe of consultation. This is bad enough, but in my opinion it is less dangerous than. the other proposal which Mr Wakefield upholds. That seeks to effect a union on a matter of immense importance to each unit, while retaining
the old loose alliance system unchanged. I am not dealing now with any economic doctrine. I am perfectly content to see our traditional faith revised if necessary, but that revision must come from a body empowered to undertake the task. To plunge the empire into a wrangle on what is after all a detail, without providing the machinery within which alone that detail has any meaning, is to my mind a gross blunder in statesmanship.”
“As if,” said Lord Appin dreamily, “a man were to embark on a violent discussion about the career of his eldest son before he had proposed to the lady of his affections.”
“Carey,” said Mr Wakefield, “I thought that subject had been forbidden. If it hasn’t, I ought to be allowed to state my case. In two words it is this. I say that before you can have an executive union you must create a desire for it. The most vital of our common problems is that of our commerce. If we once show the different peoples in the empire that on this point they can have a union to their mutual advantage, why, union will follow as a matter of course.”
Lord Launceston laughed. “My dear Wakefield, if that is all your case then I have no quarrel with you. That is very different from the ‘high priori’ line of most of your school. Many of them are Imperialists only by accident. They are insular at heart, and they stand like Ruth ‘in tears amid the alien corn’ because they lament the decline of England, not the disintegration of the empire. If the creed of a common commercial policy is only an argument for an imperial executive, then you have my best wishes in your crusade. But remember there are many other common needs, and that to attempt to meet any one without the common machinery will mean failure, utter and final, and good-bye for many a day to all hope of union. These discussions have left me with two convictions intensified. One is that in the end our creed must prevail. The other is that we are dealing with fragile things and must go very warily. We are not welding lifeless matter together, but coaxing into one growth a number of separate forms of life. And since we are handling life our touch must be delicate and sympathetic, for one hint of coercion may snap the vital link. I am one of those people who rejoice in colonial nationalism. I would not have it one jot weaker than it is to-day. When I hear of Australia clamouring for a navy of her own, and Canada asking for the treaty-making power, I am honestly delighted. They may be asking for the wrong things, but the fact that they should want them is right — right — right. I want to see every one of our daughter-peoples grow into triumphant and self-conscious nationhood, for it is all contributory to the well-being of the Empire. There is no value in the union of weak things: we want the unity of strength, the unity where every part has a vigorous self-subsistent life out of which it contributes to the common stock of imperial vitality.
“In our discussion we have insisted — rightly, I think — less upon the material splendour which our ideal involves than upon its spiritual greatness. Empire is a dream — on the brink of realisation, it is true, but still a dream. Too often these Imperial visions have a Byzantine colouring. They dwell on size and numbers and wealth, but not enough upon the new life which is bound up in them. All my days the epic of our future has sung itself in my ears, but as I — grow into late middle age I think less of the pomp and pageantry and more of the grave austerity at the heart of it. I can foresee an empire where each part shall live to the full its own life and develop an autochthonous culture. But behind it all there will be the great catholic tradition in thought and feeling, in art and conduct, of which no one part, but the empire itself, is the appointed guardian. In that confraternity of peoples the new lands will redress the balance of the old, and will gain in return an inheritance of transmitted wisdom. Men will not starve in crowded islands when there are virgin spaces waiting for them, and young nations will not be adventurers in far lands, but children of a great household carrying the fire from the ancestral hearth. Our art will be quickened by a breath from a simpler and cleaner world, and the fibre of our sons will be strung to vigour by the glimpse of more spacious horizons. And our English race will vindicate to mankind that doctrine which is the noblest of its traditions — that liberty is possible only under the dominion of order and law, and that unity is not incompatible with the amplest freedom. We of the old countries shall give and receive. Our Trojan manhood, our Trojan Lares and Penates will be there, but so too will Latium and the ancient Ausonian rites. Do you remember how at the close of the Æneid Juno asks from Jupiter that Italy may remain herself in spite of foreign conquest? —
‘Sit Latinm, sint Albani per saecula reges,
Sit Romana potens I tala yirtate propago.’
And the King of the Gods replies: —
‘Sermonem Ausonii patrium moresque tenebunt,
Utque eat nomen erit; commixti corpore tantum
Subaident Teucri. Morem ritusque sacrorum
Adjiciam faciamque omnes uno ore Latinos.
Hinc genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine suiget
Supra homines, supra ire deos pietate videbis,
Nec gens ulla tuos aeque celebrabit honores.’
(Æneid, xii 826, 827; 834-840. “Let Latium stand, to all ages let there be Alban kings! let the Roman stock be potent in Italian valour.... Her ancient speech and ways shall Ausonia keep, and as her name is, it shall be; mingled into her blood shall the Trojan sink. Law and holy rites will I add, and I will make Latins of all with a single tongue. Thence thou wilt see a race arise tempered of Ausonian blood, transcending men, yea, and gods in duty, and no other folk will so nobly pay thee thy meed of worship.”)
I take these words as the best and simplest statement of our faith. That idea has been the master-passion of my life, and I ask no higher task than to contribute my mite of effort to so divine an end.”
There was silence for a little as Lord Launceston’s quiet voice ceased. Then Carey from the fireplace spoke.
“It is a religion,” he said, “to me, and I think to others. If you quarrel with the word, I can only say that what any man desires with his whole heart, what wakens all that is best in him and curbs all that is worst, is a religion, whatever else the term may mean. No man can be religious who is not a fighter, who does not know the odds which the world sets against him, who has not suffered and struggled and tried the temper of the human spirit against the iron rigour of nature. Religion is not a comfortable thing of easy prayers and ready thanksgivings, but something as fierce and stubborn and consuming as life itself. How else is it to wither the hosts of the enemy? I want my allies to be fanatics. If my religion is not to include my politics, then I am content to have none, for to me the one as much as the other is an attempt to subdue the material world of our common sight into harmony with an unseen world of the spirit.”
The stillness which still reigned in the room showed the Duchess that an atmosphere had been created too emotional for her comfort. But in spite of herself she had been impressed, and the cool tones of her voice had an unwonted feeling in them as she once more brought back the discussion to what she considered a reasonable level “It is a great creed, no doubt, and I am not going to criticise. Some of it frightens me a little, but then I am old-fashioned and easily frightened. The merit of it all seems to me to be that it allows for such ample differences among its disciples. You can add to and subtract from it without altering its character. I suppose, Bob, that you would say that that is because it is a living thing, with all the generous waste and superabundance of life.”
Lord Appin rose and walked to the window, where he stood for a little before he replied.
“Yes; it is alive, and in saying that we have used the final word of commendation. There is room within its shadow for all the policies which can inspire the hearts of wise men to a keener public duty. There is room for Carey’s mysticism, and Wakefield’s practical good sense, and Susan’s Liberal principles, and Lady Amysfort’s Toryism — room, too, for the hard scientific faith of young men like Astbury and Hugh; room even for Sir Edward’s anarchic individualism. It is still a far-away ideal, and there is a long task before us till it has beco
me a fact. Few of us here will live to witness the realisation, but we shall see the outworks passed, and Flora’s grandchildren perhaps may see the winning of the fort. I have always been suspicious of political fervour. To me there is something ill-bred and irrational about a heart worn on the sleeve of the shabby garments we use in public life. But I hold the man in contempt who is afraid to stake all on his ideal, and on this one ultimate ideal I have never wavered. I am on the verge of old age, and I can claim the privilege of a life of candour and fair criticism and permit myself once in a while to become an enthusiast. So in all hope and in all humility I — would paraphrase the words of another converted cynic and adopt them as my confession of faith: ‘I shall see it, but not now: I shall behold it, but not nigh.’”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE party wandered out to the verandah where a young moon was beginning to climb the vast arch of sky. So thin was its horn that it did not diminish the brilliance of the stars. The great trough beneath the house was lit by a stellar glow, which caught a few outjutting headlands in the sea of shadows, and outlined without revealing the abysses around them. The air was very quiet, cool without a hint of frost or wind; and only the tinkle of falling water broke in upon the stillness. The light from the drawingroom filled half the verandah, but the edge near the parapet was dark, and to one standing there the great house, looming up against the sky, was like a pharos in the wastes of night.