FOOTNOTE:[2]A schoolmaster in Austria for saying as much as this was sentenced to several years' hard labour.
[2]A schoolmaster in Austria for saying as much as this was sentenced to several years' hard labour.
[2]A schoolmaster in Austria for saying as much as this was sentenced to several years' hard labour.
My first meeting with Field-Marshal Viscount French, so long Commander-in-Chief of the "contemptible little army" that has made history, dates back to the South African War. My latest meeting with him before he returned from France, was in August, 1914. On each occasion he was on the point of leaving for the front.
In the wide space that separates the Boer War from the great international conflict, we met very often; he was frequently our guest, and we visited him at Government House, Aldershot. I have had many opportunities of hearing his views of the world problem that confronts us now, for he had seen it coming nearer and nearer, and had laboured night and day to meet it. Other men had doubts; he found no room for any.
It was at Claridge's Hotel in town that we met during the Boer War. My eldest son, Guy, had then arrived at the ripe age of seventeen, and still at Eton, had sold all his personal effects, including his fur coat and jewellery given him by family andfriends, to provide himself with the means of getting to the front and equipping himself when there. We only learned his intentions when it was too late to stop them, and I do not think that either my husband or myself was really anxious to keep him from serving his country. The only difficulty was to find him something useful to do, and Sir John French offered to take him on his staff as galloper.
I recall Lord French as I saw him at Claridge's—firm-mouthed, curt in manner, briefly incisive in speech, saying no more than was absolutely necessary, and looking at me with the curious glance that bespeaks the man of action who dreams and sees visions. A strong, resolute figure, with an iron will behind it, a human war machine in perfect order—that was my first impression.
Many of my soldier friends were with him in South Africa, where his gifts as a cavalry leader roused enthusiasm. Writing home from the front, they told me he had but one fault as a commanding officer—he could not realise that horses do not respond as readily as soldiers to human emotions. He could overdrive his men, and they did their utmost for him, as they did for another martinet, the late General Gatacre, because in each case they had implicit belief in their leader's direction and unbounded faith in his skill, but he over-worked his horses, and kept the remount department in despair.
He came back to England wearing all the laurels of a successful general, and I met him several times in town. "The dust of praise that is blown everywhere" was no more to John French than any other dust. He brushed it sharply away, and devoted all his leisure to considering the problems of the inevitable struggle with Germany. He believed then, with that curious gift of divination, that it must come, and he came near to fixing the date, for many years have passed since he assured me that it would not be later than 1915.
When the Entente Cordiale was in the air and there was a chance that Great Britain and France would work side by side, he was delighted. Such an arrangement was for him an ideal one, and he was, I may say, one of the first, if not the very first, of our leading military men who showed a full appreciation of its value. Unfortunately, though a well-educated and, in a strictly professional sense, a deeply read man, he had no knowledge of the French language, and he could not rest until that defect was remedied. So in the Summer of 1906—I think this was the year—he settled in the little village of La Boulé, near Rouen, and lived for three months in absolute retirement, mastering the language. He would not claim to have acquired the Parisian accent, but he can at least speak fluently.
We were motoring through France that summerand stayed in the little hotel he had chosen for his headquarters. He was extremely anxious to take me on a motor tour over the scene of Napoleon's last campaign, an ambition of long standing only now possible of fulfilment. We came very near to going with him, but unfortunately, something intervened. Even Lord French cannot make war anything but unspeakably horrible to me, but I am yet free to confess that his vast knowledge and soul-deep convictions make it fearfully interesting.
We could not manage the motor tour, which would have covered Waterloo, but later, when in Paris, I was able to put his views before the then Premier, M. Clemenceau, whom I knew well. I had a very long and intimate conversation about the Entente with the "Tiger," as they called him in France, and I remember how he wheeled round in his chair and said to me in the frank, outspoken way that his opponents hate and fear, "Lady Warwick, the Entente is of no use to us unless your country can put 400,000 soldiers into France in the hour of need." I may remark that the French army was not then in its present state of efficiency.
I pointed out that I was not in the confidence of our War Office, and that his application should be made to other quarters, and went on to ask him to meet General French to talk over the matters in question. "I'll do that with pleasure," said M.Clemenceau. "I regard your General French as one of the few soldiers who understand military problems from their roots upwards." So the two men met, and I think they liked and respected one another.
I remember reporting the gist of their conversation in a long letter to King Edward, who in his reply told me his interest in the military side of the Entente had been greatly strengthened. In the following year several of the leading generals of France were invited over to attend the military manœuvres and were the guests of Sir John and Lady French at Government House, Aldershot. I was asked to meet them, and heard at first hand the discussion of many difficulties that are staring us in the face as I write. I do not think I have ever had more occasion to be glad that I was taught some foreign languages properly.
On his return to England Sir John French divided his work into sections. First and foremost came the German question, for he knew perfectly well, in the light of the ample information that came to him, how, sooner or later, Germany would fling down the gauntlet, perhaps before Europe, certainly before Great Britain. His other task was concerned with the possible invasion of India by Russia. In early days he had seen service in India,and I have by me now a copy of his own plans for the defence of our great empire there.
King Edward took Lord French with him when he went to meet the Czar at Réval, and this visit, at which the foundation of Anglo-Russian good-fellowship was laid, had a most reassuring effect upon his mind. Thereafter he devoted himself whole heartedly to the study of the Anglo-German danger.
Taking for his motto the well-known maxim that it is allowable to learn even from an enemy—he adapted what he thought was best from the German methods, and it is well known that he and his close and trusted friend, Sir Douglas Haig, in making the British Army the perfect machine that it is, bore well in mind the lessons to be gathered from the German manœuvres.
He objected strongly to the German close formation, holding it wasteful and unwise. He had grafted South African experience on his stock of tactical knowledge, and if the drilling of our men was terribly hard, he and Sir Douglas found the ripe fruits of it in that wonderful retreat from Mons and in the battles round Ypres. For German thoroughness he had a generous and unstinted admiration. Prejudice can find no place in his mind.
His prevision of the course of the present campaign startles me as I recall it now. He told meyears ago much that has happened since the greatest world struggle of history began.
A born soldier, he is merciless to the inefficient. He broke a high officer, who was also a personal friend, because that officer made a bad blunder. Private considerations were swept aside, as they always are with him. He spares nobody, least of all himself, but his men love him almost as much as they trust him, and he watches over their proper comforts with a jealous eye. They are the component parts of the war machine, and must be at their best.
Lord French has not much in common with his gifted sister, Mrs. Despard, who was prominently before the public when the suffrage question came near to rivalling Home Rule in its claim on public attention, for Mrs. Despard's life is one of self-sacrifice to lighten the sorrows of others. But to one well acquainted with brother and sister, there are the qualities of calm resolution in the face of danger and of commanding will to be associated with each.
I do not think he reads much, save books dealing with military questions. He does not hunt or shoot, or play polo or, indeed, acknowledge any form of sport. He stands professionally as far apart from the ordinary mundane interests of life as any professor in the cloistered peace of an olduniversity town, and yet he is full to the brim of vitalising enthusiasms not to be overlooked by his friends because they are controlled.
He lives in his profession and breathes the very air of it; soldiering claims his every thought, and yet he is in no aspect the "beau sabreur" of the Ouida novels. If you were to drive with him through the most exquisite landscape, his mind's eye would at once select the salient points of attack and defence, he would grasp every military possibility of what lay before him, but the surrounding beauty would pass him by. Sometimes we have talked of war. "I hate war as much as you do," he has said to me more than once, "but——" There it ends, and he is looking with far-seeing eyes at encounters yet to be.
In the conventional sense he has no religion, and yet I regard him as one of the most religious men I know. His views of the hereafter are clear; he is confidently assured of the soul's survival, its reincarnation, the fulfilment of its ambitions. He is an idealist, an enthusiast, a man who could not act dishonestly if he tried, faithful to the bitter end to those in whom he trusts.
Much of the recent gossip in London has endeavoured to suggest that he has been a party to the intrigues of others. I venture to say that nobody who understands Lord French could makesuch a foolish mistake. The personal interests and trickery of small natures have no meaning for him. First and last and all the time he is a soldier, probably the one soldier who could have overcome the enormous difficulties by which he has been faced. He is the type of the leader of men, an example of the power of concentration driving a single purpose to its end. I think Frederick the Great would have made much of him and that his chief hero in a military sense, the first Napoleon, would have kept him by his side.
He has been sorely tried. It is to be hoped that Sir Douglas Haig, who in a military sense is his creation, will realise his teacher's dreams and ambitions.
In the library this morning I came by chance upon a book that should not have been there—a "Life of Lassalle" that Lord Haldane lent me some years ago, and which I had forgotten to return. It chanced that within the hour I had thrown aside in disgust the Tory daily paper that held a vulgar and rancorous attack upon the Ex-War Minister. Perhaps it was the coincidence that set me thinking.
My mind travelled back to the day not so many years ago—King Edward had lately ascended the throne—when I met Lord Haldane for the first time. It was at Dalmeny, Lord Rosebery's home on the Firth of Forth. I forget who was of the party, at least I can remember only Winston Churchill, then coming under our host's political influence. My first recollection of Mr. Haldane as he was in those days was meeting him in the Library. He was busy arranging his host's treasures to the best advantage and was very little concerned with the house party's social side. He wouldappear at table, create an immediate impression by reason of his illuminating conversation, and, the meal taken, would slip back again to his beloved books. I carried away from Dalmeny the impression of one of the most interesting men I had ever met—a man with massive head, twinkling eye and witty speech that stimulated all and hurt none. He was thatrara avisa lawyer without guile, a philosopher untainted by the Courts. We met again, and again I was immensely attracted by his personality. In the world we met in, men and women were seeking success of some sort all the time. Wealth, prestige, political power, social influence, whatever our weakness it rose to the surface like a cork. Of all these things Mr. Haldane seemed supremely unconscious, he swam through the social waters like a kindly triton among minnows. Even in those days he had long been a devout student and an ardent admirer of what was best in Germany, and I think it was because I too was interested in the marvellous progress of that Empire that we found something in common. And he lent me the "Life of Lassalle," the book that lies before me as I write.
I have sincere belief in the intuitive perception of women. I believe that their instinct is stronger than their reasoning faculty, and that in the great majority of cases they are justified in their belief,even if they call it a prejudice. From the beginning of our acquaintance it seemed to me that Lord Haldane would in any large affairs of life be misjudged by his countrymen. In the first place he is a great intellect, and as a nation we hold all knowledge suspect. Secondly, he lacked the proper qualifications of the parliamentarian: he had nothing of the divine gift of push. He did not enjoy the limelight, and as for advertising himself, I think he would not have known how to begin. I do not believe he ever wished to enter the political arena, he never was a politician in the party sense, but he succumbed to the influence of Lord Rosebery and Mr. Asquith who saw that so great an intelligence would be of infinite value to the Liberal party. To me it always seemed a pity to drag the kindly philosopher from his study and to bring him upon the shabby stage whereon the tragi-comedy of party politics is played for the bemusement of the general public. Perhaps Lord Haldane's long and intimate study of the best side of German life led the Liberal leaders to believe that he would bepersona gratain circles that could curb the worst. Perhaps they too were fascinated by the breadth of his views, the range of his knowledge, the serenity of his outlook, and the clarity of his judgments. There is no doubt that he used all his powers to come to such a friendly arrangement withGermany as could be reached without detriment to any of the interests of our friends and allies in Europe. There is no doubt that he was face to face for years with the conditions that reached their climax in July, 1914, and that he did all that was possible to preserve peace while preparing for the defence of the country.
Our Tories demanded a scapegoat; the Lilliputians of Westminster and Fleet Street have flung a thousand venomed darts at Gulliver. I am grateful to think that I know the real man whose aspect they have succeeded for a little while in distorting. Quite steadfastly he opposed German militarism, quite hopefully he clung to the belief that he would succeed in his great quest of peace. Perhaps he was too confident. Perhaps he underrated the forces that were opposed to him not only abroad but at home.
We are too near the history of our own time to tell, but I remember one incident that revealed to me the seriousness of the struggle in which he was engaged. There was a meeting to develop the Territorial movement in the county town, and I found myself sitting by his side at the luncheon. Following it he made one of the most stimulating speeches I have ever listened to, appealing to territorials to come forward and prepare themselves to help their country. For simple direct eloquence,for a call to the highest and noblest feelings without one vulgar thought or unworthy expression, I have never heard a speech to equal it. Only a great statesman and a man full of the loftiest patriotism could have spoken as he spoke. Those who are well informed know what we owe to the system of training devised by this lawyer-philosopher and how wonderfully it has borne expansion to meet the sudden needs. His critics have never paused to remember that he was a loyal member of a Cabinet that imposed its collective will upon the people; they have not realised how largely the decisions of the Foreign Office would have availed to control his own views. It is so easy to say that, rather than submit to any reduction of our forces he should have resigned. Those who know Lord Haldane are well aware that pride of place would never have kept him in an office that absorbed all his leisure. Thoughtful people will realise that one of the tenets held by a loyal Cabinet minister is subordination of personal views to the collective views of the ministry. If every man who could not follow his chief along a given road were to resign he would not only lose all chance of giving effect to his purposes but he would make Cabinet rule an impossibility.
While preparing the country for defence, Lord Haldane had to fight the militarism that has at last run wild through Europe; while providing for theworst, he had, in the highest interests of his countrymen, to seek the best and, if possible, to ensue it. His Territorial scheme was countered from first to last by the conscriptionists, they sought by every overt and covert act to render all his efforts nugatory. I venture to say, not without sound knowledge, that he occupied a position of hideous responsibility with a measure of courage, fortitude and altruism to which those who are best qualified to judge will always pay tribute. One thing he would not do. He would not descend into the arena of sordid controversy to gladden the hearts and stimulate the conceit of petty politicians. If he failed, he was a glorious failure; but I venture to say that when the impartial historian, depending on knowledge to which the general public cannot yet gain access, surveys the years that led to destruction, he will rescue Lord Haldane's name and fame from the accumulation of dirt and rubbish that have been heaped upon it by men whom none will desire to remember.
I regard it as a great privilege to know the real man and to lay my little tribute before him, though to one so amply dowered with the hate and scorn of scorn, defenders against such imputations as have been levelled at him may well be superfluous. But I owe a great debt to his master mind. Of all thedistinguished men I have been privileged to meet none has had higher qualities of heart and brain, and it seems to me that this is the season in which such a debt should be acknowledged.
Those of us who find in the stress and storm through which the world is passing an irresistible appeal for strenuous action and clear thought, must realise the dangerous tendencies of the time, but it is not right to look upon them as the sum-total of the present upheaval. The present has its tragedies that pierce to the heart of our normal self-restraint; we have to think of the future as well and see whether there is at our door any indication of the unity and brotherhood for which millions have waged a war from which many of the best and bravest will never return. Is there any indication that in the times lying before us, all classes of the community will unite to share the burdens of the State? I think there is.
In many directions the lessons of life and death are not yet learned, but there is one feature of our social life that is truly encouraging. To sum it up in a phrase I would say that people whose example is a considerable force in the national life, have decided that it is neither a vice nor a crimeto be poor. A modest establishment in England to-day is more fashionable than an extravagant one; those of us who are burdened by very large places are the objects of sympathy rather than envy.
The flunkey has been redeemed from base servitude, never again I hope and believe, to return. The descendant of Jeames de la Pluche, immortalised by Thackeray, is with the British Expeditionary Force or qualifying to go there. He has discovered that he too is a man. The butler, where he still lingers, is too old for service, the footmen, if any, have been rejected by the army doctor, or have played a part and returned home wounded and unfit as yet for a more strenuous life. They do not propose to remain in a discredited service. Even the maid-servants are reduced to the minimum that is compatible with a fair day's necessary work. The lady's-maid, that last infirmity of conscientious minds, is allowed ample time for helping the nation. The cook gives the benefit of her skill not only to the home but the hospital. The sons of the house are at the front if they are old enough and not too old to be of use, the daughters have found something better than they had imagined possible to do with their time. They have flung themselves as far in the pursuit of duty as they travelled formerly in the pursuit of pleasure.
If one entertains nowadays, it is the workingparty or the committee of which one is a member that is received. Simplicity is the order of the hour among friends and one does not entertain acquaintances. The young men have gone from stables and garage, from woods and garden. I think the expensive dressmakers, jewellers, restaurateurs, hairdressers, and the rest of those who catered for the days of our vanity, are having a bad time. I think they will see a worse one. There are still thoughtless women in our midst. I recognise them at once, for they clothe themselves in the furs of harmless animals and wear hats decked with the bodies or nuptial plumage of innocent birds, as if pride of power, vanity, and lust of slaughter had not brought enough injury to the world and vanity must still take toll of life. But these women are a minority and belong to the class that nothing short of ostracism can reach. I think it will reach them, and soon. There has been such an orgie of cruelty in the world of late that the period to be put upon it must be a full one.
The special interest in the changes briefly outlined above, and the list might be continued indefinitely, lies in the approximation at home to the conditions in the field of war. There the struggle for mastery is tending, on every front, to the obliteration of class distinctions. Many of these that in the days before August, 1914, were rigid asHindu caste are now dead as well as damned. Mankind has recognised something of its essential brotherhood out there, and now womankind's sisterhood is recognised too. This is almost the more important change, because so many men who remain in England waging the money war that is ever with us are far too immersed in the pursuit of pelf to care about anything else. Against them even our defenders might fail in times of peace if they were left unaided by the other sex. Women have always been the creators and supporters of extravagance, though the fault rests with the men who have until quite recent times refused to allow them any interests that will vie with money-spending and aimless pleasure-seeking. I do not think that even this war could have brought about the change I recognise so gladly and record with so much pleasure, had it not been for the feminist movement. This taught tens of thousands of women to think and thousands to make their thoughts articulate. War faced them with a sense of the value of the work they had undertaken, the urgent need of its pursuit in the interests of the world at large. I feel it is in no small part due to their influence that so much that is unworthy in the life of the modern woman has been voluntarily laid aside and that so much of infinite value has been chosen to replace it.
Just as men have mingled on the battlefield,women have mingled at home, understanding perhaps for the first time in our social history the view-point of classes other than their own, seeing the best in each other's lives and sharing anxieties and burdens as perhaps only women can. But if the good understanding was to be permanent it was essential that privilege should be laid aside. People can enjoy riches without a thought and suffer poverty without a murmur, but contrasts build barriers. It is the sense of sharp contrast that is the undoing of so many girls, that makes for so much bitterness among women. All too often the rich do not understand, the poor are painfully suspicious or self-conscious. There could not be any common meeting ground until all were rich or all were poor. It is not possible under existing social conditions—soon one hopes to be amended—for all to live in comfort. Thank God, it is at least possible for all to be poor.
Not by what we have, but by what we are, let us be judged, and for those who had great possessions there will be a certain satisfaction in the new conditions that money could not purchase.
Flattery, adulation, jealousy, envy, malice and all uncharitableness could be provoked by wealth even though it was wisely dispensed; gratitude was always hard to gain in the genuine form. Love, affection, simple unaffected candour, these wererarely vouchsafed to those whose material prosperity was considerable. It is intolerable that one should patronise or endure patronage, frank and simple relations cannot endure in an atmosphere of inequalities. In England the infection of snobbery was eating into our national life. A considerable section of the press caters for snobs and thrives in the catering. In the United States and in the British Dominions Overseas the state of the public mind is far healthier. It may be that our plight had come about through our insularity, by reason of our super-abundant national riches, by the force of our habit of despising the creator of national wealth and honouring only those who squander it. Whatever the cause the effect was ugly. War has taken drastic steps to abate the evil by depriving of theirlocus standithose who stood for great possessions. They are poorer and better. We shall have a certain number of plutocrats in our midst; out of a war expenditure of four or five millions a day somebody must make money. But the money spinners will find that while the hand of the State will weigh heavily upon them, any lavish expenditure will be eyed askance by the moderate-minded men and women of all classes. The eyes of the majority are opened. Above all, English women of the leisured classes have deliberately laid aside many of the habits and indulgences to which theirpractice gave a sanction. This tendency is still in its infancy, but the tragedy of war has enforced and will continue to enforce it. All, or at least the greater part of Europe, after this war will be a house of mourning. Death leads the van of a procession in which Poverty brings up the rear. As in a flash the world that lived almost without a serious care two years ago sees its own real needs and duties and the terrible inadequacy of the means to fulfil and perform them.
We find to-day that our national needs are greater than we knew, our resources less than they have been for many years. The only true satisfaction to be gathered from the prospect is that we recognise it. For once in our history it is not left to a few courageous men to preach an unpopular gospel in the ears of indifferent wealth and vanity-stricken fashion. The people who are alive to the truth of our national state are not devoting anxious hours to keeping up appearances. Shams that our life seemed full of so recently, are known for what they are. For the first time in the social history of our generation it suffices to be an Englishman or an Englishwoman and to have filled therôle, however modest, that the fates have assigned in this world crisis. Shall we miss the old luxuries of life? Will those of us who accepted them without thought or comment as part of the naturalorder of things, forego them without a qualm? I think we shall, because we shall all have a serious and definite occupation. The landowner must develop a good business faculty or go under, the mistress of a large establishment must learn all the domestic arts that her grandmothers practised to perfection or she will not be able to keep it together. The younger sons will not be brought up to look upon loafing as a career, and the girls will be trained to take a part in the world's work, fortified by the knowledge that the State no longer regards them as a negligible quantity. In the near future the British Empire will be demanding more of its sons and daughters and giving them less reward for it, but such a condition encourages the national virtues. We are rather a flint-like people. If we are properly struck we emit light.
Decidedly the world is out of joint, and it is possible to survey the situation and find ample material for pessimism. But we who have made the mistakes or inherited them can set the crooked straight if we recognise the nature of the task. And I see on all sides of me men and women who do. They are preparing the ground on which the virtues engendered by a struggle for national existence may blossom and bear fruit.
The Anglo-Saxon race is on its trial just now, and, however strenuous the times, they do not deny us a measure of leisure in which to estimate the forces upon which we may rely. With battleships and regiments woman has nothing to do, she does but bring painfully into the world those who serve both. It is her mission to shield them with her love and devotion in the season of their helplessness and wait, watch, and pray while the battles join. Hers too it is to do what may be done to heal the wounds of battle, to comfort and to minister, to know the anxiety without the excitement of conflict, to see much of the horror and little of the glory. Yet, far outside the area of strife, woman plays no negligible part in controlling the destinies of nations, for there is a field of social diplomacy in which she labours persistently and the measure of Anglo-Saxon unity that obtains to-day is in no small measure the fruit of her effort.
It will be remembered that before there was an Anglo-American social life, relations between themother country and the United States were the reverse of cordial. Many people in the States regarded this country with suspicion, many in this country looked upon the States with the contempt born of ignorance. Emerson, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and others helped Englishmen to understand Americans, but perhaps the best work was done by women. As soon as they began to understand one another the divergent standpoints were brought into line, old prejudices were seen to lie no deeper than the surface of things. The freshness and vigour of American manhood, the honest, unconventional outlook of the country's womanhood were instantly recognised when social intercourse had been established and visitors from the States began to realise that in coming to England they were but returning to the land of their fathers. Mistakes are not immortal. The worst blunderer of a hundred years ago and the people who suffered most by the blunders have long been one in the dust to which all that is mortal of us must return. Latent and underlying sympathies have declared themselves. For thirty years I have watched the slow conquest of prejudice, the steady discovery of points of sympathy, the dismissal of the old stereotyped ideas that made for antagonism. To-day, when we are fighting for our life against a Power that has sworn to dominatecivilisation or perish in the attempt, we find ourselves rich in the sympathy and moral support of all the North American continent, not only the British born of Canada are with us, but in the United States, despite the multitude of foreign influences and the great admixture of interests the general tone is manifestly sympathetic. The German menace has stirred Anglo-Saxon blood throughout the whole world. The observance of a strict and proper neutrality is no bar to American goodwill, our cousins know that this struggle has been forced upon us and that we would have avoided it had not honour forbade.
In the brief intervals of the work of organising the woman's service in my native county of Essex I have been trying to estimate the forces that have brought the changed conditions about, and I think I can see most of them. I have met most if not all the leading men and women of America, both in their own country and here, and no subject has been more completely canvassed in our conversations than the future that the Anglo-Saxon race may hope to share. My views, right or wrong, are my own, and I ask nobody to accept any responsibility for them; if they are correct they should help to explain the present and to indicate lines that the future may follow.
First and foremost among the forces that haveimproved Anglo-American relations I place the Anglo-American marriages that should go far to improve not only the finances but the breed of our English aristocracy. Byron writes of mixed marriages that they "ruin the blood but much improve the breed." I accept only the latter proposition. I think the young generation born of these marriages will be powerful, mentally and physically, that it may even be in time to stand in the breach and save the class to which it will belong from submersion. Certainly our aristocracy, enfeebled by intermarriage and circumscribed financially by modern taxation and the depreciation in agricultural values, degraded by the sale of "honours," would be bound to go under in the struggle with democracy, and if it is possible to predicate any of the results of the present cataclysm I should say that the democracy will issue from it as the dominating force in Europe. Another section of a royalty that tends ever to diminish has been weighed in the balances of war and will, I imagine, be found wanting.
Anglo-American marriages have given our cousins of the New World an interest in the old firm's business, have made them, even if in a limited sense, partners in the British Empire unlimited. I said as much at the dinner-table the other night and was promptly challenged until I reminded my criticthat an ex-First Lord of the Admiralty, to whose genius all, including Lord Charles Beresford, now pay tribute, is as much American as English. Miss Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, was one of the first recruits to the ranks of the British aristocracy and has played no small part in English social life. Winston Churchill has had time to grow up, there are dozens of Anglo-American lads to whom in the course of time opportunity will be given. Who shall say that they too will not prove worthy?
The American girl, married into the wide circle of Britain's comfortable classes, finds many interests that unite the country of her adoption with the land of her birth. Visited by her family and friends, giving introductions for use in the United States to her husband's relatives, she has been powerful in spreading social intercourse and in establishing the vital truth that, in face of many of the great world problems, England and America see eye to eye and may work hand in hand. Philanthropy and social service are the finest solvents of prejudice between people speaking one language and, when that prejudice is not founded on fundamental disagreement, and is dependent for its maintenance upon ignorance, suspicion and the absence of intercourse, it cannot long survive under modern conditions. Every Atlantic Liner is a missionary of Anglo-American good-will. London and NewYork can exchange their thoughts in a few moments, the great sundering force of the Atlantic grows ever less, and the American girl has played a part in unifying Anglo-Saxon thought and sympathy that makes her social reward seem but a small payment for a great service.
Perhaps the great antagonising force in America has been the Irishman. Our administration of the Sister Island has left scars that had been past healing but for Mr. Gladstone and his successors in the office of Liberalism. Happily to-day we stand upon the brink of wiser times, a sane policy has promised to realise the national ambitions of Ireland and a grave danger has united in resistance to foreign aggression the two antagonistic camps. They will meet in the service of a common cause, they will face danger side by side, happily they may learn the full lesson of toleration and mutual respect. It is better I think, much as I hate war, that a thousand Home Rulers and Ulstermen should fall side by side resisting foreign aggression than that fifty should fall in civil strife each by the other's hands. The effect in America of Home Rule, and a union of hearts and hands in the national defence, cannot but be significant. The powerful Irish contingent, as generous as it is quick to anger, almost as prompt to forgive an injury for which atonement has been made as toresent one that is not repaired, will cease to be a hostile factor. Conscious that the old country has done its best to right a grave and lasting wrong, it will forget, as the American born citizen is forgetting, the days of Lords North and Castlereagh. All these quarrels, however serious, have been family quarrels, in the face of foreign aggression the old wounds are healed. I was struck by the splendid action of all parties to the labour disputes when war broke out. In twenty-four hours there were no disputants.
To-day the Anglo-American influences at which I have hinted find no opposing factors in their path. Good will is well-nigh universal, moral support and encouragement are freely ours at this grave moment when we stand so much in need of them. I have always thought, when I have been in America and when I have been entertained by or have entertained Americans at home, that there is a little feeling of pride in the old country. If our short-sighted policy of the third Georgian era turned friends to foes we have paid the price in full and to-day the Anglo-American marriages are giving our trans-Atlantic cousins the material for a noble revenge. They are coming to the relief of the class that persecuted them of old time, renewing its blood, refilling its coffers and preparing through it to administer theworld's greatest Empire. It is no unworthy ambition that animates the American girl to-day when she quits the land of her fathers for the land of her grandparents and their forebears, and she has shown herself well able to fulfil it. The pages of Debrett bear witness to what she has done, while those who have been brought into constant and intimate association with her realise that she has shown exceptional capacity in adapting herself to the new environment, in mastering the rather formidable etiquette, in modifying old points of view, and in fitting herself to fill the rather exactingrôleshe has undertaken.
When I look round social London and see the many-sided work of the American women I feel that they will cover the whole ground. Their energy and resource are admirable and many of their houses are centres of philanthropic as well as social life. Think of the reflex action of all this energy in the States, think of the tens of thousands of American visitors to London in the course of the year and of the hundreds who see English social life as it is and partake of it, and the sympathy and understanding that are ours to-day can be accounted for and understood.
I have long been cognisant of the two great forces that were working, side by side though independently, to destroy Anglo-Americanfriendship. The first was Irish-American resentment, a perfectly natural expression of feeling. Home Rule for Ireland was the only possible permanent cure, and the time for palliatives has long passed. With the coming of the cure we may look for the end of the complaint. The other force was more subtle, and was founded upon the presence in the States of tens of thousands of the Kaiser's subjects. They have carried across the Atlantic their old mischievous motto, "Deutschland über Alles," and have lost no opportunity of giving it effect. A powerful press, a great financial group, direct encouragement from the Kaiser, whose policy—a relic of Bismarck's day—was to sow ill-will between Great Britain and the United States under all circumstances, have been their weapons. To conciliate the States, to flatter them, to suggest that they needed German help against British intrigue, to show their leading representatives every courtesy, even to affect a sympathy with democracy, all this was the part of a settled programme. It lacked nothing but success.
This is not the time to go into details of deliberate attempts made to undermine Anglo-American good will. On a more fitting occasion I may reveal some. At the moment it does not seem right to increase the prevailing bitterness, but I may say that many social intrigues havecome to my own notice and have left me wondering at Teuton pertinacity, at the persistence with which large and small matters alike are pursued, and at the curious psychological failing that nearly always loses count of the human element. Theoretically, logically perhaps, the German advances should have been entirely successful. Unhappily for the Kaiser's ambitions, it was always fairly obvious that behind every courtesy, however extravagant, behind every diplomatic action, however grave or trivial, there lay an Anglophobe bias. It was not perhaps always conscious to its originators; the state of mind towards Great Britain in Germany is largely inherited, and I sometimes think it is well-nigh sub-conscious. Indeed, I would venture the proposition that it is more obvious to an American than it is to the German possessors of it. The United States is of course the world's melting pot; happily for us, and I think for the world at large, the Anglo-Saxon element is dominant. In such an environment Anglophobia cannot thrive, and I think the Kaiser's representatives have mistaken the actualities of the situation. Anglo-American squabbles are the little family quarrels with which we are all familiar; if one were to come from the outside and seek to take part in them, he would soon learn that such an intrusion was unwarranted andunwelcome. Instead of extending the area of the original quarrel it would reduce it to vanishing point. In Anglo-American relations the Kaiser must remain an "outsider," accepted while he behaves himself, but known all the time for the representative of a proud, powerful nation that is avid of world power and will shrink from no effort to obtain it, a nation that, if it is to be judged by its rulers, holds that the result justifies the cause, and that kindness, deceit, generosity, cajolery, persuasion, threats, candour, and deceit are all weapons that find a proper place in the armoury of a subtle diplomacy and may be called upon in turn. There is a world in which this standard of things passes current, the world of the company promoter, the international financier, the Jesuit who holds that the end justifies if it cannot sanctify. On the other hand, all these mental processes are abhorrent to the Anglo-Saxon. He is by nature plain and blunt, subtleties are foreign to him. It is his ambition to play the game, and he requires the game to be clean that it may be worth the playing. He likes to place his cards on the table, you will not find them in his sleeve or his boot. We know that the sowing of mistrust between the United States and Great Britain has been one of the chief pre-occupations of German diplomacy, we know too that it has failed as signallyas the early and vital attacks upon the Liége forts failed. To accomplish its destiny the Anglo-Saxon race must stand together. We need not interfere in each other's quarrels, we need not model our lives to a pattern that is not sanctified by use and custom, but we will not allow any other nation to come between us and our friendship, or to interfere with that slow, sure growth of understanding and good feeling that may bring to generations unborn the blessing of universal good-fellowship and peace.
In all human probability the Teuton has postponed his own day for generations. The triumphs of more than forty years of peaceful progress have been bartered and have been used as gambling counters, and I believe that a double menace is now in slow course of removal, first from this little island whose sons and great grandsons in their millions are looking, anxious to see how we acquit ourselves, and from those South American Republics that purpose by grace of Providence to work out their own salvation without either the help or the permission of the Kaiser and his legions. When we have succeeded in our present struggle—I do not admit the possibility of a doubt about the issue—the way will be open for the triumphs of peace and for the passing of armaments and tyrannies. Surely in these great changes so longlooked for, so eagerly anticipated on both sides of the Atlantic, the whole voice of the United Anglo-Saxon Race will speak in unison. I believe we shall play no small part in the re-shaping and rebuilding of a shattered and exhausted world, and that the genuine friendliness of our relations will make the task as pleasant as it is responsible. Side by side we have sought peace and ensued it, the overwhelming tragedy may have shown that "man is one and the Fates are three," but it will not alter our national and racial belief that we must develop the tranquillity of the world, that we must develop the arts of peace and arm for defence rather than defiance. Through the gloom and murk of the present hour I find myself looking with assured confidence to the world's future, and whatever the Vision I see the whole Anglo-Saxon race massing irresistible forces for the service of the world.