CHAPTER XIIADVENTURES IN AMERICA

Infanta Eulalia at Window of Her Apartments

Infanta Eulalia at Window of Her Apartments

Infanta Eulalia at Window of Her Apartments

the House of Bourbon and sister of the Duc d’Orleans. She is a somewhat masculine type of woman, and spends a great deal of her time in Abyssinia. She leaves her husband and two boys and, with no companion except an elderly Englishwoman, sets out on a hunting expedition. She is lost in the heart of Africa for months, and then suddenly reappears and settles down to the humdrum life of her palace. But soon she hears again the call of the wild, and is away once more. What she does in Abyssinia nobody knows, if one excepts the elderly Englishwoman. The country seems to have cast a spell on her, and she cannot resist its fascinations. The Duke of Genoa, Queen Margherita’s brother, and his wife, who is a Bavarian Princess, live in the same palace as the Dowager Duchess of Aosta, but their households are independent and, in point of fact, the two duchesses rarely see each other. The duke is almost a recluse; he spends several hours in his private chapel every day, lost in prayer and meditation.

I was a little surprised the first time I went to Turin to find that the Piedmontese dialect of Italian was spoken in Royal circles. To understandwhat was said sometimes required close attention, even when one knew Italian well, and I have found a similar difficulty in other Italian cities. In Bologna, for instance, where I have lived so much, the cultured classes, as well as the peasants, talked dialect, and travelling about Italy one seemed constantly under the necessity of learning new words and phrases.

There are so many beautiful Italian cities in which agreeable society may be enjoyed that had one to choose one in which to live permanently it would be difficult to come to a decision. Venice is one of the most adorable, and the time I spent with the Duke and Duchess of Genoa at the King’s palace there was a dream of delight. But there is one objection, and that a serious one to a prolonged stay in Venice, and that is the difficulty of getting proper exercise. As everybody seemed prepared to spoil me when I was there, I made it clear that it was essential for me to do something more vigorous than gliding down silent canals in a gondola or strolling in the Piazza. It was therefore arranged that I should play tennis at the Arsenal, and that indulgence gave me the one thing that seemed lackingin the charming life of the city. Italians can play tennis very well when they choose, and Monsignor Montagnini, the Papal Legate who was turned out of France when diplomatic relations between the Republic and the Vatican were ruptured, was a case in point. He played an excellent game, and we often had a set together in Paris. Little did I guess what his means were, and never will I forget his false behaviour when his papers were captured. In Venice too, I found some good players, and so managed to get the vigorous exercise I needed. Apart from this, I lived the life of the Venetians—walked in the Piazza from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, took the air in a gondola about half-past five, went occasionally to the opera at the Fenice, that most exquisite of theatres, and ended the day by dancing in the enchanted palaces that rise from the sea. It was often sunrise when I stepped into a Royal barge with gondoliers in scarlet and, to the rhythmic music of oars that cut the water and the splash of the spray that fell from their blades, floated through the rosy dawn to the Royal palace.

Itwas during these years of travel in Europe that I was offered the opportunity of going to America to represent the Throne of Spain at the World’s Fair that was to be held in Chicago to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus’s discovery. I accepted the invitation with joy. I had no longer my childish idea that if I could only take a boat and sail to America I should be really “free”; but I had still in my mind the household saying that I was “only fit for America,” and I felt sure that I should like the great democracy, and I was eager to see it. It was planned, also, that I should visit Cuba—in the usual administrative hope that a Royal visitor might revive the loyalty of a rebellious colony exasperated by misgovernment. The misgovernment was a thing for which the Royal Family was as little to blame as the Cubans themselves; but I was willing to be made use of, in one of the few ways that royalty can be of use in a constitutionalmonarchy, and I prepared to see—and be seen by—Cuba, too.

There were such stories in Spain of the dangers from yellow fever in the colony that ladies-in-waiting were as reluctant to make the trip as the sailors of Columbus; and though my husband took a large suite of gentlemen, I found only one lady-in-waiting to go with me, and one maid, a faithful old servant who had been in the family for thirty years. We set out, in April, 1893, on board theReina Maria Cristinafrom Santander, after the inevitable Te Deum in the cathedral of Santander, a State dinner and reception, an illumination of the harbour, and a choir in a tender to sing us off. There were more Te Deums and receptions and illuminations at the Spanish ports and islands where we called; and at one port we were met by the authorities with a black-bordered protest against the suppression of the localcapitan general. The paper was signed by a “defence assembly.” The officials warned us that it would be unwise for us to land. I insisted on it. They went away, and as soon as I understood that they had gone for a police order I went ashore without any escort except our suite, and walked through the crowded streets to thecathedral. This proceeding aroused such a furore of popular enthusiasm that I might have been another Jeanne d’Arc entering a beleaguered town that she had relieved; and for the rest of my trip I had no hesitation about putting aside the officials and trusting myself to the people. At Las Palmas I got on so well that in the cathedral, when the bishop was singing the Te Deum, the crowd forgot they were in church and interrupted him with shouts of “Vive la Infanta!” As a matter of fact, I have found that the danger to royalty comes not from informalities of this sort so much as from the parade of bodyguards and escorts that exasperate the unhappy people by personifying the power of the social conditions that oppress them. It is usually on the most impressive occasions that bombs are thrown.

We arrived outside the wonderful harbour of Havana early in May, and I watched for the first sight of Morro Castle with curiosity. I had heard from my mother that it had cost her grandfather, King Charles IV., such an incredible sum to build that he had longed to see it, as he said, “if only through a keyhole.” I understood that I was the first of the Royal Family to look at it. Certainly,I was the last. And the fact that I should probably be the last was the strongest impression that I got from Cuba.

My first impression, of course, was of the heat. Immediately on my arrival I was visited by a physician, who came to warn me of all the diseases I might catch, and to tell me of all the things that I must do and must not do to avoid them. It was terrifying to listen to him. I had insisted on having cold drinks, and he was sure that cold drinks would be fatal. I had been installed in the palace of thecapitan general, and I was going about on the marble floors in my stockinged feet to be cooler. This also I was told was dangerous. “Well,” I said at last, “if I don’t cool myself down, I shall surely die of the heat, anyway, so what matter?” And I decided to do what I wanted and let my natural vitality take care of the consequences. Because of this policy I made what appears to have been a startling impression of energy on the Cubans. There is nothing more popular than energy in a royal person—perhaps because it is so unexpected. I had, for once, the good luck to please by doing what I pleased.

The heat was so great on my first night in thepalace that I could not sleep, and being by no means fat, and my bed being without springs—just the stretched canvas of a “petate” fastened on a bed frame—I ached with the hard discomforts of it. At two in the morning I demanded a mattress. My maid sent for one. After a half-hour of waiting a young aide-de-camp appeared, in full uniform, and when I asked whyhehad come, he replied: “But it is I who have made your bed; if it is wrong, I must fix it.” I roared. He explained that in order to have the bed prepared with all possible care for me, it had been decided that an officer should make it. I told him to send me a mattress, and go back to his sleep. My maid, a simple old soul, was in a state of distraction. “My poor Infanta! My poor Infanta!” she kept wailing. “What will become of her, with no one but these stupid men to look after her!”

When the mattress arrived we arranged it ourselves, and I settled down again; but it made the bed so much hotter that I could not sleep any better than before; and I did not dare to make any more demands for fear of disturbing the officer again. At seven in the morning a deafening uproar of militarymusic suddenly broke out in thesalonthat adjoined my bedroom, and my maid went wild with panic, crossing and blessing herself and saying frantic prayers. I hurried into a dressing-gown and opened my door on a German regimental band that had received a cable from the Kaiser to serenade me with the traditional “Guten Morgen,” and had marched at once on the palace as if they were going to take a fortress, and were now blowing their trumpets and beating their drums with an obedient diligence that seemed likely to crack the walls. None of the palace servants had understood what this was for; and these servants, by a horrible custom not uncommon in parts of Spain, were convicts who wore leg-chains and worked in the palace as in a prison, going about in livery and bare feet, and dragging their chains on the marble floors. They were as bewildered as my maid, and they were scuttling around as helplessly. As soon as I saw the uniforms that the musicians wore I guessed what had happened; and, the noise drowning my voice, I tried, by smiling and bowing, to reassure the general panic. When the music stopped I got things straightened out, but while it lasted we were a scene from a madhouse or a theatrical burlesque. I went back to my mattress feeling that my first night in Havana had not been too tame.

My day had been more successful, because of a curious accident that had made my arrival almost triumphant. My maid, as we neared the shore, had packed all my gowns but the one I had decided to wear—a striped gown of blue and white, around the collar of which the dressmaker had put a red edging. When I came on deck in it, some one protested at once: “But, Your Royal Highness, that is the uniform of the insurgents!” It seemed impossible, but it was so: they wore just such a blue-and-white stripe with red facings. There was consternation. My trunks had been taken from my state-room. We were nearing shore. No one seemed to know what to do. And while we delayed, talking and arguing, the boat proceeded. It was soon too late to do anything, and I said: “Never mind; it will not matter. No one will notice it.”

But they did. They not only noticed it, but they supposed that I had worn it purposely with I do not know what idea of pleasing the people or showing that the Throne of Spain was above the quarrels of the factions in the island. It aroused incredible enthusiasm. And after that beginning I was received everywhere with the honours of a national hero. Whenever I drove out my carriage was showered with pamphlets of loyal congratulations and poems and panegyrics. At a bullfight given in my honour, not having thought to bring a present for the torero when he made his speech to me from the arena, I threw him one of my finger-rings; he was offered huge sums for it, but refused to sell it, as if it had been Aladdin’s. Everything I did was accepted as admirable—whether I rode horseback at the military review when I wanted the exercise, or received in my arms a little girl who slid down a sort of fire-escape at an exhibition of the volunteer fire brigade, when I was afraid that she might fall and break her neck in my honour if some one did not catch her.

It was evident that I was making “a personal success.” But as soon as I talked to men who knew the situation in Cuba, I was convinced that the success was only personal. For too long had Spain been sending out officials to Cuba who had no ambition but to fill their pockets at the expense of the Cuban people; and the Cubans had made up their minds that they would endure it no longer. In administrativecircles, every one who was candid confessed that “it was too late.” In Spain, the people, though the victims of the same sort of corruption, had the consolation of knowing that the government was their own; here the corruption was imposed on them by a government in which they were not represented. In Spain the army could be used to suppress armed rebellion; but here, the army itself was so enfeebled by corruption, so badly led, so wasted by yellow fever, that it was nearly useless. At a dinner to the influential men of the colony I had to change the conversation several times in order to avoid hearing Spain abused. Leaders of both political parties, whether they were for or against Spain, were of the one mind: “It was too late.” Cuba was determined to be free of a maladministration which no sensible person could blame her for refusing to endure. All the sensible people were aware, at last, that the conditions ought to have been corrected, and one could only say to one’s self: “It’s too bad you didn’t think of it sooner.” As we sailed away from the harbour of Havana I was oppressed with the conviction that the Crown of Spain, in my person,was saluting for the last time the Spanish flag flying over that fortress. Cuba was gone.

Steaming northward, the weather turned delightfully cold, and I revelled in it, reviving myself after the strenuously exhausting days of our crowded week in Havana. When we picked up our pilot off Sandy Hook I was on the upper deck, promenading happily in the chill wind in light clothes, and the pilot remarked to one of the boat’s officers that it “was dangerous for that young girl” to be exposed in such a way to such weather. He was told that I was “the Spanish Infanta,” and he laughed uproariously at the idea; and the more seriously the officer assured him of it the more he enjoyed the joke. I saw him looking at me and laughing, so I inquired what was the matter; and when I found out I was slightly puzzled.

His amusement proved to be typical of my whole reception in the United States. As one of the newspapers put it, they had expected a “big, dark Spanish princess with a black moustache,” and it was with a tickled surprise that they found me “like any of the girls you see walking down Fifth Avenue.” Theirpleased curiosity was reflected in the accounts that the reporters gave of me. No conceivable personal detail escaped them. One reporter even discovered that I had a gold crown on one of my back teeth, and I was mystified to know how he could have seen it. Surely my smile was not so broad as all that! I tried myself before a mirror. No! By no possible grimace could I expose that tooth. I remained mystified. I do still.

The amusement, however, was not altogether on their side. The newspapers had not prepared me for this familiar but kindly tone of the American Press; and the people of European countries had not the simple benevolence of the curiosity that brought the smiling crowds to greet me in the United States. The American young girl is the spoiled darling of the nation, and they were all as willing to spoil me—and I was willing to be spoiled—by their almost affectionate and chivalrous desire to give me “a good time.”

I cannot pretend that I saw anything at all of the problems of government in the country—nothing of the poverty, of the industrial exploitation, of the inequalities of opportunity and the control by themoneyed classes, of which we have since come to hear so much in all the kingdoms and republics and democracies of this changing world. I was merely a caller in the parlour. I knew nothing of the family life in the house, much less of the difficulties below-stairs.

We did not land at New York, but at Jersey City, where a special train was waiting to carry us to Washington. It would have taken us in Spain twenty-four hours to go the distance; we covered it in five hours, and I did not feel shaken. In Spain, if luncheon had been served us on the train it would have been “to kill time”; here it was served us “to save time.” One was struck at once by the busyness of the life and its efficiency. We had been caught up by an organisation that transported us, fed us, housed us, delivered us into the hands of a host or at the doors of an entertainment, returned us to our hotel, took us on excursions, provided us with drives, protected us from intrusion, conducted us through crowds, intelligently, suavely, without any hitch, comfortably, almost invisibly, with a foresight that seemed to provide for every contingency that could happen, and to be prepared for any changeof plan that we could wish. And the spectacle of the life, through which we hurried, had the same air of having conquered the material agents of existence to the same end; namely, that every one should get as much as possible done in a day with as little friction as possible in the mechanical means of doing it.

From some of the Americans whom I have seen abroad I had not got a very happy impression, and now I understood why. They had been out of their element; they had left at home their reason for being. The women, for example, were less conspicuously dressed than some I had seen in Paris, and less nervously self-assertive; and the men were more easy and more natural. They were not on the defensive among foreigners whom they felt to be critical, or whom they desired to impress. They were not blatant nor apologetic. They were happy, intelligent, hospitable, and altogether engaging. I found no one with whom conversation was not instantly possible; and the volubility of my conversations was a matter of amused comment with our suite. The truth was that I was not only sympathetically interested in all I saw and eager to talk about it, I was also at once aware of the friendliness of the eyes that watched and listened; and I talked, and myvis-à-vistalked, without any awkwardness of restraint.

There were no royal “monkey tricks” expected of me. I was unable to dance—though I often longed to—because I was on an official visit, and questions of precedence would have made it necessary for me to choose the most important personage in the room as my partner, or take the risk of offending him. And the most important person at a dance is not always the best dancer. But I was not set apart on a dais as I would have been at home—“always on a stand, like a harp,” as I used to complain—and I enjoyed myself. I felt that I was really meeting the people whom I met. I was not merely royalty; I was a sort of national guest, whom every one tried to interest and entertain.

One accepted as an inevitable part of one’s public character the army of reporters and photographers who surrounded us at every official appearance. They were not intrusive; and having learned that I could not give interviews they did not try to get any. The goodwill of the crowds, who were as omnipresent as the newspaper men, was always delightful. They gathered, of course, merely out of curiosity, but their stares were not, as in other countries, either awed or inimical, or just curious. They greeted you, as they might greet one of their own representatives, with amiable smiles and cheers, waving their handkerchiefs. In the thronged streets of the exposition they could not be held back by our police escort, who struggled with them good-naturedly as they, good-naturedly, pressed in upon us; and one could not help but accept their pressure with a smile. It was all quite human and jolly and inoffensive—a democratic crowd, democratically unrestrained in its interest in everything and everybody. When I was complimented on the popular impression which I seemed to make I could reply, quite truthfully, that if the Americans liked me it must be because they could see how I liked them. I liked them immensely.

They seemed all prosperous and all happy. We had no begging letters and petitions for alms thrown into our carriage, such as would have overwhelmed us at home. We did not meet any of those affected excesses of deference to royalty which would have been so out of place in a country where there is noCrown. If people crowded to see us, out of curiosity, I could not complain; I was just as curious to see them. They were not rude—and I hope I was not.

Any one who makes a royal visit to any country must see it superficially; and if I wrote here that President Cleveland and his beautiful wife were charming hosts, that the country around Washington reminded me of England, that the lake front in Chicago (which was about all of Chicago that I really saw) was handsome, that New York was New York, and the Hudson River the Hudson River—I should not relieve my mind of anything that even Lewis Carroll’s conversational walrus would have cared to hear. And I should not interest even myself by writing it. If I had come to America as a person distinguished by intellect instead of merely by birth, I might have been very proud of the crowds that came to see me; and my contact with American life might have been an illuminating experience worth detailing. As it was, my apparent popularity could mean nothing to me personally; and my experiences, though pleasant, can mean nothing to any one else. Nothing had happened to change my belief that mypublic life as a royal personage was a busy futility. And when our steamship drew away from the shores of New York, and all the farewells had been said, and the last cheers of the last crowd had sounded, I was at once sad to watch a land recede that I felt I should never see again, and glad to be alone with my own thoughts and free to lay off my public character.

I suppose the truth is that I do not easily reflect the “collectif” sentiment. I am not able sincerely to laugh or cry because others are laughing or crying. And I return gladly to solitude, because it is only in solitude that I seem to be myself.

As I have said before, this desire for solitude had been growing in me for years. And for years I was held in royal circles by my desire to establish a future for my sons. But my eldest son inherited the fortune of the Duc de Montpensier, and my youngest the fortune of the Duchess; and they became independent of me. The death of the Duc deprived me of one of the few dear friends I had in the world, and broke the last of the few sympathies that had made my life with my husband possible. We had discovered no affection for each other. He had freedhimself, in all but name, from the marriage contract. We had never quarrelled; I should say we were never sufficiently interested in each other to quarrel. I decided that we should separate. And in spite of the opposition of Royalty, who would have had me endure anything rather than bring a scandal near the Crown, I forced the separation with the aid of my husband’s relatives, who sympathised with me. I returned to my mother’s home in Paris, the Palais de Castile, and it was one of the happiest mornings of my life when I awakened there, alone, and free. I could get no divorce, because divorce is not possible to any one in Spain—least of all to an Infanta—but I was at liberty to live my life in my own way, and that satisfied me.

When my mother died, I was able to get wholly clear of the formalities of Court life, and I left the Palais to rent an apartment for myself where I could live like a private person, with my maids, without even a lady-in-waiting. I bought a few acres of land on the seashore of my beloved Normandy, and built myself a summer cottage cooled by the happy breezes that I had known as a child. And here I can say, and do, and think, and write what I please, untroubled by the prohibitions of crowned heads, who can enforce no command on me and impose no punishment—except to deny me an entrance to Courts from which I have been only too glad to escape.

When my first little book was about to be published, the King of Spain wired me that I could not publish it without his consent. I repudiated that control of my liberty, and they threatened to deprive me of my title and the small income that comes with it. I was puzzled to know what they would decide to call me, if not “the Infanta Eulalia”; and I was interested to see if the King would set a precedent for depriving the “inviolable” Royal Family of its titles and its property by legislative enactment. He decided, wisely, to let the matter drop, and I heard no more of it.

It is my final realisation of freedom that I celebrate now in these pages. I have escaped, mind and body, from my gilded cage. It has taken a lifetime, but it was worth it. I have no respect for anything in the world except intelligence. I live in France because it is the most intelligent of all the countries I have known. I have seen the world waking to the fact that the rule of money is no better than the ruleof rank, except when it is more intelligent; and I can foresee the day when the inequalities of property will have no more authority than the inequalities of rank to oppress mankind. I read and write to keep my own intelligence in health by exercising it. And I am afraid of no critic except the one who may find my intelligence feeble, with a prison pallor, in spite of its joy in its escape.

Whatinterests—fascinates—the student of contemporary humanity rather than of contemporary politics is to what extent the war will either advance or set us back as a civilisation; shall we be better for it, will life be better for it?

I have always had a horror of war. I hoped and thought up to the last moment that it would be averted. It seemed impossible that France and Germany could come to blows; the cost looked to be too big. Yet I see the Kaiser swept away by the war party behind him, urged by that mysticism, which always characterised him, to believe that war was a divine duty. This is the only reason I can find for his declaration. He loved to preach and pray and live and talk among the stars. The impulse of religious fervour ran riot in him, and he persuaded himself that to plunge the world into the most horrible war of all time was his divine mission.

The horror of war which we feel was naturallyenough not shared by the Kaiser and the war party in Berlin. They had grown used to the idea, for years it had been among their ambitions, and many of them had spent all their lives training for it. In fact, that is the biggest and most tragic mistake of modern history—Germany’s conception that to conquer the rest of Europe was her divinely appointed mission; you can see it in every bellicose utterance of the Kaiser! This was never a mere pose. He was in his private life exactly the same man as in his public utterances.

What is to be the result of this war? The setbacks are obvious. It will take Great Britain, with all the wealth and resources of her Empire, a dozen years to recover from the exhaustion of it. France, with large stretches of her country desolated, and crippled financially, will perhaps take longer. Russia will feel it less in many ways, and certainly will reap one big benefit in that the war will, I do not doubt, help to cement her scattered and immense population and bring in a new era of unity.

It may well be, indeed, that the end of the war will see a Russia reborn, rid of her antiquated systems of local government, released from methodswhich were mediæval—a country set upon a definite road to freedom.

I do not mean that a Russian republic is a likely result. I think the war will strengthen the monarchy; a successful war always does.

Why, even in France to-day there is a widespread feeling that a return to monarchy would be welcome. Personally, however, I do not believe the monarchical party will gain much headway; the whole tendency of the world is against it.

The spirit of the times is democratic. When a people realises that kings and queens are in no way superior mortals it gradually brings about a republic. This is the only natural and logical conclusion of things. France has learned this lesson well enough, she will never go back from her present methods of government—methods which have developed the natural genius and intelligence of her people and brought such prosperity that she has become one of the wealthiest countries in the world. The aristocracy of France has not sufficient power to overthrow the people, especially now when the people have been fighting with true patriotism, not for the idealof a kingship, but for the ideal of a country—confraternity.

This spirit of democracy, I think, will extend all over Europe. Republics will arise, not by force of arms, mutinies or revolutions, but by natural evolution. To kill a king does not make a republic; that comes from the natural growth of ideas and ideals, from the development of the democratic spirit, the spirit of freedom, which follows in the wake of liberal education.

One effect of the war, then, may be to substantiate monarchy for the time being, save in France, where I think it will create a bigger confidence in the Republic. In other words, if the Allies emerge with considerable success, conditions of government as they are will be strengthened, particularly in Russia.

A great deal has been written in the past about the tottering power of the monarchy in Russia. All of this has been mostly untrue, and certainly misleading. I can recall statements in print of the fear of the Tsar to appear before his people. This is not the truth. When I was in Petrograd he often came to visit me practically unattended, and whenever hehas been counselled to take precaution he has adopted such measures only because he has thought it best for his country. He loves Russia; how much has been splendidly evident since the war broke out, and when all is over one effect will surely be that he will be all the more beloved by Russia. I see, too, as a result of his generous attitude the possibility of a resurrected Poland, whose populace will freely give suzerainty to Nicholas II. because they recognise amid all the riot and disaster of to-day that he is their friend.

Exaggerated statements have also been made that the Tsaritza fears assassination. The writers have based their reports no doubt on the fact that the Tsar’s grandfather met his death in this way, and they have no doubt assumed the fears of the present monarchs as a matter of course. The Empress is said visibly to tremble in public, but this is occasioned simply because she is unhappily a sufferer from timidity!

But what about Germany? Who shall dare to prophesy?

But more interesting than these things is the question of armament—or rather disarmament. Is thelatter possible? Arbitration in council instead of the sword and the gun—shall we, any of us, live to see that dream come true? Democracy, and a world-wide development of a Hague Conference of the Powers—these are the hopes of those who think. Is it too near the Utopia of the Romanticists? Is it the impossible Millennium?

I do most honestly believe this will be the last big war; it will be a lesson to the wide world of the cost of fighting, the cost in lives, in comforts, in money. The English will surely feel this; they are fond of luxury. When I visited England I was impressed by the almost reckless extravagance of living; money did not count so long as entertainment was obtained; women seemed to have a careless disregard of all things save pleasure. I have wondered and marvelled at the way they have acted since war broke out; now no sacrifice is too great for them to make. Truly the English are remarkable; they are on the surface lovers of ease and lazy luxury, so as to seem almost degenerate. Yet, beneath it all, there is stamina, grit, the power to bear hardship, the spirit of the real adventurer. The war will do English social life good—for a time; but though for a littlewhile the English will eschew gaiety perhaps—I mean the recklessly extravagant gaieties which were their wont—will their phlegmatic nature presently allow this disturbance to be forgotten and the old conditions to recur?

Sincerely I hope not. To end some of the senseless dissipations would be one of the best results of the war; there is no room in life for stupid extravagances, for heedless rushing after novel excitement. For English Society I hope the lesson will go too deep to be forgotten lightly. And I am interested too in the movement which is just now on foot in England to prohibit, or at least to curtail so extensive a sale of alcohol. An abstemious Europe would have made the war almost worth while. And why should it be impossible? France has closed down the sale of absinthe, Russia sells and consumes no more vodka. In England the evil is whisky.

But the question of disarmament: there is so much to hinder it. Each country has a different condition of things to consider; England, for instance, has never kept her army for her own insular needs; her army has been maintained to protect and uphold the ends of her Empire—and those needs will remain;how can she disarm altogether when India has to be considered, and while she has interests to defend, not against the great Powers, but against the native insurgent in so many parts of the world, it is vital to her—and the present crisis emphasises it beyond mistake—that the seas should be kept open, and were there no force behind that need she as well as her food supply would be at the mercy of any pirate. Similarly France has colonies which call for a guard by land and sea.

But the day of the big military power will surely pass with the defeat of Prussian militarism, and the nations should see to it that never again shall one country deliberately arm herself so as to be a menace to the world’s peace. Is it not possible that the great nations should have an amalgamated navy and army powerful enough to command peace from insurgents—to be a sort of world-wide police? Surely at some conference of the Powers a decision should be arrived at by which the boundaries and influence of nations could be fixed for all time, with due regard to the scope required for the natural development of the ambitions of each.

It is certain that there is enough territory in theworld for the peoples of the earth; it is equally certain that the laws of supply and demand would balance and leave a reasonable living for all the people of the world if only economic conditions could be properly adjusted. I fancy that here lie the big problems of the future—not the conquering of one another by the force of sword and gun, but the equalisation of the possibilities of possession. There are too many men with big fortunes and too many homes with not sufficient income; on the face of it there should be a way to balance these discrepancies, and there the big thinkers and the students of political economy will step in. The ultimate destiny of the world, when this terrible war is over and done with, will rest upon the shoulders of those thinkers and economists, and upon the success of their efforts will depend the peace and happiness of our children’s children.

I know that here I am laying down the ethics of Socialism, but not the Socialism that depends upon labour upheavals in which the worker merely seeks to get all he can from the employer, but that larger Socialism whose aim is the good of the communityas opposed to the fortune of the individual in the pursuit of the general well-being.

I see all over the world evidences that this spirit is alive and prospering. In Switzerland, for instance, if a company earns more than a certain percentage upon its capital the surplus goes to the State to be used in the public interest—subsidise education and mitigate such poverty as there may be. As a fact—and as a result—you see very little poverty in Switzerland. In the Scandinavian countries, too, no man may become absurdly wealthy, and even in rich England a levelling-up process is in the act of formation by means of taxes upon the very wealthy. Soon I am hopeful that this spirit will spread among our Governments; it is the way to universal peace, for unquestionably money and the acquisition of money lies at the back of most international unrest.

It lies, if you think of it, behind this war. What was at the back of Germany’s dream of world-wide conquest? Was it not the expansion of her commerce? Was it not her envy of other nations’ wealth that drove her to seek a first place among the nations? She wanted to extend her borders, to enlarge her trade, to increase her wealth. End this amazing of private fortunes and you will end this constant fighting and intriguing for power and position. America’s worship of the almighty dollar influences her attitude to-day.

I wonder shall we ever find a substitute for money which will reduce its value. The value of money is the curse of life; it leads to wars, it creates half the intrigues in Court and political life, it provokes senseless luxury. But I am talking of a Utopia, and we live in an age of greed and personal aggrandisement, however sure to those who look beneath the surface are the signs of coming reform.

One good thing the war will leave in its train is a recurrence of simplicity. It cannot but be that the awful costliness of it all will reduce the means left for wastefulness in living. I wish the larger nations—and especially England and America—would study the life of the Scandinavian towns and see how much preferable is their simpler life, how much happier folk are when there is not this greed for gold, which takes up all one’s time and makes men forget the joy and the meaning of life while they are earning and cheating and hoarding. Thereshould be a law preventing great possessions. I don’t mean that the genius in his business or profession should not be able to earn enough to give him greater comforts than those who have not succeeded so well as he—probably because they have not tried so hard. To give the industrious and the indolent an equal reward, to be sure, would set a premium on laziness, and much of the world’s work would go undone. But there ought to be a limit to what a man can own, or what one company can earn, especially when there are so many quite deserving poor who are poor not because of indolence but through lack of opportunity.

This is a part of Socialism, and I know in England Socialism is a bad word to use. Socialism is unfortunate in its champions in England; Socialism has come to mean, in the popular, thoughtless sense of the word, strikes and demands for improved wages and conditions. No doubt Socialism would so revolutionise industry that the present wages and conditions would then seem antiquated to the point of mediævalism, but I think your wise men of England are those who carry on the work of social reformation and leave the word Socialism alone. Mr. LloydGeorge has the right idea; I call him a Socialist, though perhaps he wouldn’t agree with the designation.

Will the new era which follows the close of this European holocaust be one of social advancement? If so, the war will not have been in vain. And everything points that way.

In a second way, the war will bring improvement more complete than a generation of peace could ever have done. On the battlefields of France the British aristocrat and the boy from the slums will have met and become brothers. Class distinctions will break down not a little, and this is a good thing, for the private who came from the estates whereon his ancestors have lived for centuries, and the soldier who came from the foundry or the pit, have found each other of the same flesh and blood, comrades in a common cause. Hitherto the class distinctions have been very definite; they did not merge. After the war those barriers will become far more shadowy.

Surely also if there are no more gigantic wars, but a vast curtailment of armaments, millions and millions will be saved, and this money, after settling thewar bills, will be available for setting our houses in order.

I do not think there will be any great hardships and poverty when the war is over. On the contrary I anticipate a great trade revival, and in this respect the understanding between the present Allies will greatly increase the business done by them. Germany will no doubt be crippled, her military role will end, and her business men—among the best in the world—will find many of the old works closed. It will take Germany many years to rebuild her fortunes, for she will have made her one gigantic throw for world power, and lost.

France and England and Russia have between them most of the necessities of life, and this should tend to keep down the cost of those necessities. But I hope that a revival of trade will not mean a return to riotous living and deadening indulgence.

To all the Allies the war has brought individual unity within their own boundaries; there was danger of internal trouble in all three a year before the cloud burst. Undoubtedly the fears of civil war in Great Britain had some foundation; France was in a certain sense in a condition of unpreparedness;and Russia was on the edge of a revolution. In a day these questions were laid aside. To-day the French army is as one man; France has behaved with a splendour that cannot be over-extolled, and she will never lose that power of cohesion she gained through the opening stages of this conflict. Indeed, in all the countries of the Allies I fancy the old questions will never recur in the same degree.

On the whole, then, the outlook has its bright side. We are appalled at the loss of life, at the desolation of territory, at the complicated wastage of war. But the Allies will come out of it stronger in many ways, not only with recovered territory—France with her long-lost children returned, and Russia no doubt with her southern port (which means her emancipation)—but with ancient instincts of race reawakened and sharpened, with broader views, particularly on the part of France and Great Britain; for this war has killed the distance across the English Channel, and England, losing her insularity, will become more and more closely attached to her great Republican neighbour.

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,Z

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