Exulting in the response of the athletes, Paul Jones found his faith in the value of games confirmed by this memorable rally to the Flag. His last contribution to The Alleynian was inspired by it. Shortly after he joined the Army he wrote to the magazine a letter (published anonymously in May, 1915) under the caption "Flannelled Fools and Muddied Oafs." In this contribution he sings a paean in praise of the amateur athlete. After reminding his readers of pre-War denunciations of "the curse of athletics," he asks, "What of athletics now?"

At present, we see that the poor, despised athlete or sportsman—call him what you will—is coming to the front, practically and metaphorically, in a way which makes one wonder if, for the higher purposes of duty, athletics are not really the very best of all systems of training. When we look at the matter in the broadest light, the explanation shines forth clearly. All learning and all business are in the end simply and solely selfish. For example, you work hard for a scholarship at Oxford or Cambridge—why? So that you can obtain for yourself—(underline these words, Mr. Printer, please!)—the advantages of 'Varsity life and culture, and to the ultimate end that you may be better fitted to make your own way in life. Of course, this is necessary, but life is always very sordid in its details, and the more civilised we become, the more apparent is that sordidity. In fact, it is only on our amateur playing-fields that we become really unselfish. For here we play for a team or a side; and for the success of that side—which success, by the way, is in no sense material or selfish—we are prepared to take all sorts of pains, to scorn delights and live laborious days. It is the clearest manifestation of the simple, unsophisticated man coming to the front and tearing aside for a brief moment the cloud of materialism with which civilisation has been enveloping him.

Nothing but athletics has succeeded in doing this sort of work in England. Religion has failed, intellect has failed, art has failed, science has failed. It is clear why: because each of these has laid emphasis on man's selfish side; the saving of his own soul, the cultivation of his own mind, the pleasing of his own senses. But your sportsman joins the Colours because in his games he has felt the real spirit of unselfishness, and has become accustomed to give up all for a body to whose service he is sworn. Besides this, he has acquired the physical fitness necessary for a campaign. These facts explain the grand part played by sport in this War; they also explain why the amateur has done so enormously better than the professional.

"Let us therefore," is his injunction, "take off our hats to the amateur athlete, who is one of the brightest figures in England to-day. Let us indeed not forget that it is not in any sense only the athletes who have gone, but let us remember that in proportion no class of men has seen its duty so clearly, and done it so promptly, in the present crisis. We suggest that this War has shown the training of the playing-fields of the Public Schools and the 'Varsities to be quite as good as that of the class-rooms; nay, as good? Why, far better, if training for the path of Duty is the ideal end of education."

Here, as always, Paul distinguished between the amateur athlete and the professional athlete. For the latter his scorn was unmitigated, and he could not endure Association football with its paid players. He also loathed the betting element that defiled the Soccer game.

This letter was his last contribution to The Alleynian. Its strictures are far too sweeping; it has the dogmatism and the note of certitude to which youth is prone. But it is animated by a fine spirit. Very characteristic is the emphasis placed in it on the ideas of duty and unselfishness. The passion for sacrifice was in his blood.



CHAPTER VII

TASTES AND HOBBIES

Variety's the very spice of life. COWPER: "THE TASK."

Many of our son's vacations were spent in Llanelly, South Wales, where his mother's and my own kindred dwell. Llanelly is not a beautiful town—industrial centres seldom are—but Paul loved every aspect of it—the busy works, the spacious bay with its great stretches of sandy beach, the green and hilly hinterland, dotted with snug farmhouses and cheerful-looking cottages. Accompanied by his cousin Tom, for whom he had an intense affection, and under the guidance of his uncle, Mr. Edwin Morgan, a consulting engineer of high repute, he visited in process of time every industrial establishment in the neighbourhood—steel works, foundries, engineering shops and tinplate works. His insatiable curiosity, his desire to know the reason for everything, his alert interest in all the processes of manufacture, were noted with smiling admiration by managers and workmen. His last visit to Llanelly was in the summer of 1914. We joined him there in the third week of August. Clear in recollection is an incident that took place during our stay there. One sunny afternoon we were out in Carmarthen Bay in a little tug-boat and hailed a large four-masted vessel that had dropped anchor and was awaiting a pilot. She had just arrived from Archangel with timber. Her crew, athirst for news about the War, were most grateful for a bundle of newspapers. Paul thrilled at this meeting at sea with a vessel that had come direct from Russia, and he followed with fascinated interest the conversation between the tugboatmen and the crew of the barque. Little did any of us think then that the War was destined to claim Paul's life!

Celtic on his mother's side and mine, he was proud of the fact that he sprang from an "old and haughty nation, proud in arms." On many of his school books he wrote in bold lettering: "Cymru am byth!" ("Wales for ever!") His instinctive love of Wales was strengthened by his visits to Llanelly and by holidays on the Welsh countryside, where, amid romantic surroundings and far from the fret and fever of modern life, he obtained an insight into rural ways and things. Welsh love of music and Welsh prowess in football also appealed powerfully to him.

Like most boys he went through the usual run of hobbies: silkworms, carpentry, stamp-collecting, photography, parlour railways. Thoroughness was his quality even in his hobbies. He had the note-taking habit in marked degree. Even as a small boy on a long railway journey he would carefully record in his notebook the name of every station through which the train passed, and then, on reaching his destination, would work out the distances by maps and books, and finally draw an outline showing the route with the principal stations and junctions marked. The same passion for classifying facts made him, as soon as he began to follow cricket closely, compile tables showing the batting and bowling averages of the leading players. Similarly with football. He was familiar with the record of the leading Rugby clubs and the characteristics of the principal players.

Machinery had for him the fascination of life in motion. He would gaze with rapture at the rhythmic movement of a flywheel and was thrilled by the harmonious movement of cogs and eccentrics, pistons and connecting-rods, all "singing like the morning stars for joy that they are made." As a child visiting a printing office he used to clap his hands with delight at the sight of "the wheels all turning." For engines of all sorts he had a passion. At Plymouth he loved to watch the great G.W.R. locomotives steaming into Millbay terminus, and would often engage the driver or stoker in conversation. After our removal to London he spent part of one vacation in an engineering shop. When he was fifteen we bought for him a small gas-engine which was fixed in an upper room. Clad in overalls he spent many a happy hour with this engine, generating electricity which he used sometimes for lighting, sometimes for driving the engine and train on his miniature railway. Here are extracts from one of his vacation diaries:

JANUARY, 1912

January 1.—Went with Mother to first night of Nightbirds at the Lyric. Workman and Constance Driver excellent; Farkoa also very good.

January 2-5.—Busy making switchboard at home. At the engineering workshop I am starting on a steel rod; cutting with hack saw, cutting 5/16 standard Whitworth thread; grooving it. All this on a Drummond 3-1/2-inch lathe.

January 6.—Heard of 4 v. 20 a.h. accumulator for 10s. 6d. I must buy it. Splendid acc. it is. Finished switchboard; all correct; polished up meters and instruments. [Here is diagram of connections.]

Evening.—At Tales of Hoffmann, Opera House, with Mother. Good performance. First and third acts excellent; second ("Barcarolle" act) poor. Orchestra superb. Felice Lyne, Pollock, Victoria Fer—artistes of great promise. Renaud a master.

January 7.—Wrote Economic Electric for new dynamo. Received letter from "Humber" recommending motor bike. I will probably buy one later on, or a "Triumph."

January 10.—Took my old accumulator to electrician. To my great pleasure he said there was nothing wrong, only wanted filling and charging.

January 11.—Tried my acc. on the train, running through switchboard; a great success. Engine runs very well. All switchboard connections absolutely correct; the reading when running: volts 3.5 to 4.25, amps. 1 to 2.5.

January 12.—To Bassett Lowke's and bought wagon; yellow colour, red lettering; splendid model.

January 13.—At matinee Orpheus in the Underground, at His Majesty's. Exceedingly good show. Courtice Pounds, L. Mackinder and Lottie Venn—all first rate; good voices and not afraid to use them.

January 15.—To Hippodrome. The feature two amazingly clever Chimpanzees. Leo Fall's Eternal Waltz a pretty operetta.

January 16.—Final golf match between Dad and myself. Dad wins match and rubber by 1 up.

January 17.—Got back my P.O. bank book. Total now L6 3s. Discovered slight leakage at joint between the cylinder and combustion head of the gas engine, owing to wearing away of asbestos washer, so causing a very small but appreciable diminution of compression. Made a temporary stopping with vaseline.

Evening.—Dad and I to Tales of Hoffmann, at the Opera House. This time a magnificent performance.

January 19.—Dynamo arrived. A beautiful machine.

January 20.—Went with Dad to International football match, England v. Wales, at Twickenham. Score—England, 8 points; Wales, nil. A splendid game. Wales beaten chiefly owing to their very poor three-quarters. Little to choose between the packs.

January 31.—Having re-started music with a good teacher, a pupil of Professor Hambourg, I have practised very hard on the piano these last few days.

In his enthusiasm for engineering he devoured books like "Engineering Wonders of the World," "How it Works," "How it is Made," "Engineering of To-day," "Mechanical Inventions of To-day"; also books on wireless telegraphy and aviation. A great lover of books, he liked on off-days to visit London bookshops and rummage their shelves. Very proud he was of his purchases during these excursions. From time to time he would have a run round the museums and picture galleries of London or take a trip to Hampton Court—Wolsey's palace and William III's home—a spot dear to him for its links with history and for the beauty of its surroundings. He was always enthralled at the British Museum by the Rosetta Stone—that key by means of which Champollion unlocked for the modern world the long-hidden secret of Egypt's ancient civilisation.

A subject which he pursued keenly for a couple of years—from fifteen to seventeen—and which held him in fascinated wonder, was Astronomy, a branch of knowledge that happens to be strongly represented among my books. Often on starry nights he would be a watcher of the heavens.

Many a night from yonder ivied casement, Ere he went to rest, Did he look on great Orion, sloping Slowly to the west. Many a night he saw the Pleiads, rising Thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled In a silver braid.

It has been stated that most of Paul's vacations were spent in Wales, but in 1913 he went farther afield, accompanying his mother, his brother and myself on a tour in Germany. He was enraptured with this, his first visit to the Continent. On our outward journey we halted at Brussels, in those days a bright and happy city with nothing in its cheerful, prosperous air to suggest that in less than a year there would descend upon it the baleful shadow of the Great War. Much in the old Germany appealed powerfully to our son, and even of the new Germany, with its energy and its zeal for learning, he was something of an admirer. But he hated in modern Germany its brazen materialism and boastful arrogance. He attributed the change in the spirit of the German people to the hardness of their Prussian taskmasters, whose yoke was submissively borne because of the glamour of the military victories achieved since 1866, and the rapid growth in wealth that had followed the attainment of German unity. He read and spoke German and was familiar with the literature and history of the country. Two great Germans, Goethe and Wagner, he intensely admired. It so happened that we were at Frankfort on the centenary of Goethe's death. Paul visited the Goethe house and spent a couple of hours examining its souvenirs with loving interest. He liked to see the places and the houses associated with the names or lives of great men. On our homeward journey down the Rhine he left us at Bonn to visit the house where Beethoven was born, joining-us subsequently at Cologne.

This holiday in the Rhineland and the Black Forest brought deep enjoyment to him. His enthusiasm at his first sight of the Rhine was unrestrained, and the morning after our arrival he plunged into its waters for a swim. Professor Cramb, writing of the love of Germans for the Rhine, quotes a letter from Treitschke, in which that fire-eating historian said on the eve of his leaving Bonn: "To-morrow I shall see the Rhine for the last time. The memory of that noble river will keep my heart pure and save me from sad or evil thoughts throughout all the days of my life." Paul in a marginal note writes: "Wonderful attraction of the Rhine. I have felt it myself, though not a German."

He got on excellently with the German people. One Sunday afternoon, doing the famous walk from Triberg to Hornberg, he had a long and friendly talk with a German reservist in the latter's native tongue, about the relations of Germany and England. Both agreed that war between the two nations would be madness, and both dismissed it as to the last degree improbable, but the German said significantly that he feared the Crown Prince was a menace to peace.

In the spring of the following year (1914) Paul spent Easter week with me in Paris. Never had I seen the French capital more beautiful or happier-seeming than in that bright and joyous springtime. Who could have dreamt then that war was only three months distant? Paris was a revelation to Paul. He crowded a lot of sight-seeing into half a dozen busy days. All that was noble or beautiful in Art as in Nature appealed instinctively to him. I can see him now at the Louvre gazing rapt from various angles at that glorious piece of statuary the Venus of Milo. His knowledge of history made his visit to the glittering palace of Louis XIV at Versailles an undiluted pleasure. Fascinated by the genius of Napoleon, he spent a long time at the Invalides gazing down on the sarcophagus within which the conqueror of Europe sleeps his last sleep.

Later in the year he and two other Dulwich boys arranged to spend three weeks of the summer vacation in the house of a professor at Rouen. They were to have left London on the second week in August. This hopeful project was frustrated by the rude shock of war.



CHAPTER VIII

MUSIC

Music is a kind of inarticulate, unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that.

CARLYLE.

Paul began the study of music at an early age. He had natural aptitude for it and an unerring ear. As a little boy he used to sing with much expression in a sweet, clear voice. He received great assistance from his mother in his musical studies. After he had turned fifteen, music became one of his main interests. Indeed, if we except football, it was his master passion, and, unlike football, it could be pursued throughout the year. Whenever his scholastic studies and his athletic activities permitted, he would spend his leisure at the piano. With characteristic thoroughness he studied the lives as well as the works of the great composers. During the Grand Opera season he was a frequent visitor to Covent Garden Theatre and the performances of the Nibelungen Ring were for him a fountain of pure delight. He was also a regular attendant with his mother at the Queen's Hall and Albert Hall concerts. Ballad singing did not appeal to him in the same degree as operatic and orchestral music. Thanks to instinctive gifts and assiduous practice he became a scholarly and an accomplished musician. A brilliant pianist, his playing was marked by power and passion, and the colour and glow of an intense and sensitive personality. He could memorise the most intricate composition, and would play for hours without a note. Music was almost a religion with him: he found in it solace, joy, inspiration.

Above all other musicians, he reverenced Beethoven and Wagner. For Beethoven's music, with its spiritualised emotion and divine harmonies, his admiration knew no bounds. Of the famous symphonies he assigned first place to that in C minor, No. 5, which he thought stood alone in the art of musical expression, peerless and unapproachable, a unique emanation from the soul and mind of man. "It holds us in its grasp," wrote Wagner of this composition, "as one of the rarer conceptions of the master, in which Passion, aroused by Pain as its original ground-tone, raises itself upward on the stepping-stone of conciliation and exaltation to an outburst of Joy conscious of Victory." Paul loved to play the Fifth Symphony as well as to hear it performed by an orchestral band. When playing it he seemed to lose touch with earth and to be transported to celestial heights. In his marginalia he compares the methods of expression of Shakespeare with those of Beethoven. That able critic, the late Professor Dowden, in some penetrating observations on Shakespeare's works, wrote:

In the earliest plays the idea is at times hardly sufficient to fill out the language; in the middle plays there seems a perfect balance and equality between the thought and its expression; in the latest plays this balance is disturbed by the preponderance, or excess, of ideas over the means of giving them utterance.

After underlining this passage Paul made the comment: "An extraordinary coincidence occurs to me in that the same thing happens with Beethoven, the greatest of the absolute musicians. Anyone must see that in the last symphony (No. 9 in D minor) he seems often at a loss how to put his feelings into shape (or sound), as though musical style up to his time could not express the intensity of his ideas. Hence in this symphony there is a distinct lack of balance—a defect which is absent from the works of his middle period (e.g., Symphony No. 5 or No. 7)."

Another Beethoven work that he loved was the Third Symphony in E Flat, with its epic opening; the mournful beauty of its funeral march, now sad, calm, solemn like a moonless, starless night, now shining with gleams of hope and faith; its crisp and lively scherzo; and the triumphant finale, a veritable ecstasy of divine joy. My son as an historical scholar found a peculiar attraction in this symphony by reason of its association with Napoleon Buonaparte, for it was inspired by Beethoven's belief—formed in those days when the soldier of the Revolution was regarded as the liberator of peoples and the enemy only of the old feudal order—that Napoleon was marked out by destiny to realise Plato's ideal of government. One recalls how the act of Napoleon in proclaiming himself Emperor shattered this illusion; how Beethoven erased the fallen hero's name from the title-page of his score, withheld the "Eroica" for a time, and then gave it to the world in 1805 as "An Heroic Symphony composed in memory of a great man." When Beethoven heard of Napoleon's death at St. Helena, he said he had already composed his funeral ode 17 years before. Of this marche funebre M. Ballaique wrote: "It owes its incomparable grandeur to the beauty of the melodic idea and also to a peculiarity of rhythm. At the first half of each bar there is a halt, a pause, which seems to punctuate each station, each painful slip or descent on the way to the illustrious tomb."

Of Wagner, Paul was a whole-hearted worshipper. He was familiar with the myths, legends and folk-poems from which Wagner drew his themes, and he exulted in the master's superb treatment of them. Never, he thought, had music and ideas been more felicitously blended than by Wagner, whatever the theme—the storm-tost soul of "the Flying Dutchman," to whom redemption came at last through loyalty and compassion; the conflict between sensuality and love fought out in the arena of Tannhaeuser's mind; the cosmic glories of the Ring with the resplendent figures of Siegfried and Brunhilde; the self-dedication of Parsifal, the Sir Percival of our Arthurian legends, whom "The sweet vision of the Holy Grail drew from all vain-glories, rivalries and earthly heats." Into the glowing music of Wagner my son read lessons in renunciation, the sordidness of the lust for gold, the sublimity of pure human love, the redemptive power of self-sacrifice. The occasional voluptuousness of the music was so transmuted in the alembic of his temperament that for him the sensual element was eliminated. An incident illustrative of his devotion to Wagner is worth recording. In the summer of 1913, during our holiday tour in Germany, we had for part of the time our headquarters at Assmannshausen, a smiling village sheltering snugly at the foot of vine-clad hills on the right bank of the Rhine. That great river is at its best at Assmannshausen; the broad current here flows swiftly over a stony bed. Day and night one's ears are filled with the music of the rushing waters hastening impetuously to the distant sea as though eager to lose themselves in its infinite embrace. One evening the guests at the hotel arranged a concert, and to our surprise—for we knew how diffident he was—Paul, evidently moved by the genius loci, volunteered to take part in it. When the time came he advanced to the piano through the crowded room and, with an elbow resting on the instrument, astonished the audience by a few explanatory words. He said he was going to play the "Ride of the Valkyries," and explained what Wagner meant to convey by that wild, stormy music. Then seating himself at the instrument, he proceeded to play the "Ride" from memory. His execution had a verve whose charm was irresistible. It was a lovely summer night. Through the open windows of the concert-room one caught glimpses of the moonlight quivering on the waters of the swift-flowing Rhine. Nothing could be heard save the river's melodious roar softened by distance, and this enchanting music interpreted by one who was saturated with its spirit, both sounds blending harmoniously like the double pipe of an ancient Greek flute player. All of us felt the spell of the scene and the occasion. Everyone listened tense and silent until the descending chromatic passage at the end when the "Valkyries" vanish into space, the echo of their laughter dies away, and the "Ride" ends in a sound like the fluttering of wings in the distance. When Paul rose from the piano the pent-up feelings of the audience found expression in enthusiastic applause.

In the spring of 1913, just after he had turned 17, he wrote the following appreciation of Wagner for the Llanelly Star:

The 22nd of May, 1913, marks the centenary of an event of supreme importance in the annals of music. To-day just one hundred years ago was born at Leipzig Richard Wagner, king of the music-drama, who towers above all other operatic composers like some lofty mountain rising from the midst of a dull and featureless plain. Such a colossal revolution as was effected by Wagner in Art can hardly find a parallel in any walk of life. What, in brief, was the scope of Wagner's reforms? To answer this question it is necessary to glance at the state in which the opera stood in pre-Wagner days. From the days of Scarlatti the opera had consisted of a number of semi-detached solos, duets or choruses to which tunes were set. These pieces were joined up by any jumble of notes sung by the characters on the stage, usually with no artistic meaning whatsoever, known as the recitative. In a word, the opera was a mere ballad concert. The recitative was so utterly foolish and meaningless, as a rule, that men like Beethoven and Weber, when they composed music-dramas, abolished it altogether, and composed what is known as "Singspiel"—that is, a number of ballads connected simply by spoken words. (The well-known Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are really Singspiels in a lesser form.) Thus it is obvious that the meaning of the opera—that is, a drama whose significance is made more clear by the aid of music suitable to the situation in hand—had been entirely lost sight of.

In the average French or Italian opera, or in the singspiels, all that matters is a number of songs, ballads or arias—call them what you will—entirely disconnected and quite destructive to the continuity that must be the essence of every drama. This continuity is an absolute necessity to every spoken play; imagine the effect if Shakespeare or Ibsen had written little pieces of rhyming verse joined up by any jumble of nonsensical prose! Neglect of this fact led every opera composer before Wagner astray. We can imagine a pre-Wagner composer telling his librettist, "Now, mind you arrange that in certain parts the words will allow me to put in arias or choruses." In short, the situation was summed up in Wagner's famous phrase, "The means of expression (music) has been made the end, while the end of expression (the drama) has been made the means." Now this state of affairs is clearly wrong. If there is no dramatic idea kept as end to work to, then what is the use of writing opera at all? Why not be content with song-cycles or ballads, or lieder like Brahms's and Schumann's?

There are no divisions into aria and recitative in Wagner's operas, but dramatic continuity is retained by the voices of the characters singing music the succession of whose notes is determined by the emotional requirements of the moment. Meanwhile, the orchestra forms a sort of musical background by giving forth music which exactly suits the dramatic situation. The orchestra, in a word, as Wagner himself said of Tristan und Isolde, forms an emotional tide on which the voice floats like a boat on the waters. The essential relevance of the music to the dramatic situation is obtained, as a rule, by means of what are known as "leading motives." These form the basis of all Wagner's reforms. A leading motive is simply a musical phrase suggestive of a dramatic idea. Wagner's motives are marvellous in their descriptive and soul-stirring power. They seem to indicate not only the pith, but the utmost depths of the heart of the ideas which they represent. It is this that makes Wagner so very like Shakespeare. All can appreciate him, yet he is above all criticism, universal in his appeal.

Who but Wagner could make us feel the awful tragedy of Siegfried's death, the calm of the primeval elements, the pompous yet somewhat venerable character of the Mastersingers, the agony of Tristan's delirium, the superb majesty of Valhalla, or the free, noble nature of Parsifal? Even when Wagner uses motives comparatively little, writing rather "freely," as in Tristan und Isolde, he always has the power of imprinting an idea with the utmost clearness upon our souls. He will sometimes make a slight change in a motive, or make a development of it, that gives us an entirely different psychological impression of the idea represented by the motive, as indicating some new aspect of it in which the motives are all dovetailed together into a compact whole that is simply marvellous. If one considers the "Ring," that gigantic web of motives, and at the same time, in the words of that able critic, Mr. Ernest Newman, "beyond all comparison the biggest thing ever conceived by the mind of a musician," colossal yet logical, gigantic yet compact, the power of the Bayreuth master will become even still more evident.

Wagner's first work, Rienci, composed frankly in the blatant Meyerbeerian style, has no artistic significance. The Flying Dutchman marks a great advance. Tannhaeuser and Lohengrin are milestones of progress, but in all these works Wagner's full ideal is, generally speaking, but little perceptible. The really great Wagner operas are his later works, Tristan und Isolde, Parsifal, Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg, and, above all, that gigantic tetralogy (a complete musico-dramatic rendering of the Icelandic Saga put into English verse under the title of Sigurd the Volsung by William Morris) which consists of four stupendous operas, Das Rheingold, Die Walkuere, Siegfried, and Gotterdaemmerung. These marvellous works, the consummation of the Bayreuth master's principles, undoubtedly stand with Beethoven's symphonies as the greatest achievements in music.

For the rest, it may be mentioned that Wagner was in private life a most kindly man, albeit at times quick-tempered, a great lover of children and animals. His philosophy was a somewhat variable quantity; he fell under the influence first of Feuerbach, then of Schopenhauer, and to some extent possibly of Nietzsche. But still, throughout all his works runs the doctrine of the Free Individual, of which Siegfried and Parsifal are perhaps the most striking impersonations.

Like Browning, Wagner believed in redemption by means of sacrifice. In his richness and strength Wagner typified the abounding vitality of the new Germany. To the Fatherland he is what Shakespeare is to England. One may apply to him the noble words Milton wrote of Shakespeare:

"Thou in our wonder and astonishment Hast built thyself a livelong monument.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie That kings for such a tomb would wish to die."

H. P. M. J.

I found among my son's papers a sketch in manuscript of Wagner's life and work. It begins with some observations on Romanticism and Classicism.

Whereas in the Classical style the spirit is held in restraint by certain forms, in the Romantic it refuses to acknowledge these forms and breaks away to give the soul entirely free play. It necessarily follows that the Romantic style makes the wider appeal, for it touches chords of the heart that the Classical cannot. Also the Romantic is rather more definite and less purely intellectual than the Classical, though the ideal may be equally high in the one as in the other. In short, the Romantic style is human in its appeal, while the Classical is superhuman. The best examples of men great in these two forms of art are Shakespeare in the Romance and Milton in the Classic.

Returning to music, he thought that Bach, "immortal though many of his works are," was fettered by his servitude to rules.

The Classical may become too cold, may lose all connection with the warmth of humanity. Such a fate does Haydn seem to have met in many of his works. Beethoven, the mightiest classicist, also to some extent Mozart, saw that the soul must not hold entirely aloof from humanity. Hence it is that Beethoven broke deliberately several, though not indeed very many, of Bach's more enchaining rules, while Mozart, in his operas at least, had a large amount of Romance worked into his music. On the other hand, by its very nature the Romance style is occasionally apt to slip into what is pre-eminently Classicism.

He confutes the argument that because base things have to be expressed in the Romantic style therefore that style degrades Art, for "base things handled artistically excite pure emotions of anger or indignation."

Wagner, though he broke every rule set up by Bach, though he abolished all the ideas of Classicism, produced with his later works (i.e., The Ring, Die Meistersinger, Tristan, and Parsifal) music which reveals infinitudes of art to quite as great an extent as any classicist has done.... Wagner gives us Nature's message, Beethoven the message of the incomprehensible Empyrean, and it is for no one to say that the one message is any greater or less than the other.

Necessarily the opera must be more romantic than the symphony. "Composers who have given the world both opera and symphony such as Beethoven, Mozart, Weber, Spohr, Berlioz, always wrote Romantically in their operas and Classically in their symphonies." Of the development of opera he wrote:

Opera was fast degenerating into a sort of collection of ballads, with hardly any orchestration at all, when a strong man rose to check these abuses. Gluck was the forerunner of the earlier German school of opera composers, which includes such men as Beethoven, Mozart, Weber and Schubert. Gluck had studied carefully the progress of non-operatic music since Bach's time, and seeing what vast strides the art had made in this direction, tried to bring into line with the opera its improvements. He was the first composer to show the immense and inestimable necessity of properly orchestrated music in opera. Gluck's rich scoring, beautiful melodies combined with dramatic connection between action, voice and orchestra, entirely revolutionised the opera. Fortunately, he had a still greater contemporary to carry on his reforms. Gluck has himself explained how he set out to avoid any concession of music to the vocal abilities of the singer; how he had tried to bring music to its proper function, i.e., to go side by side with the poetry of the drama—a clear forecasting of Wagner's own reforms.

Whereas in Monteverde's operas the dramatic significance was kept, but only at the expense of the music, which had absolutely no signification at all, in the works of Gluck, Mozart and Scarlatti the musical part is elevated, but entirely at the expense of the dramatic idea, which is quite lost. A Mozart melody, rhythmic, square-cut, is as different as possible from a Wagner theme, for whereas the former suggests nothing the latter is very rich in suggestion. It is clear that Gluck and Mozart, though they performed an inestimable service to the musical art by the raising of the orchestra to its proper position with regard to the voice and the music, yet failed to keep in view the continuity of the drama in opera. Hence it was that Weber and Beethoven frankly abolished the recitative that joins the formal melodies of the arias and melodic passages and composed Singspiel, having their works built up of airs and melodies joined by spoken dialogue. Such is Weber's Der Freischuetz and such Beethoven's Fidelio.

After discussing Meyerbeer, Scarlatti, and Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, my son comes to Wagner and the revolution in music he accomplished:

Wagner was a man of ripe culture, who was equally familiar with Beethoven's symphonies, Shakespeare's dramas, Kant's philosophic writings and Homer's epics. All the great works of literature and philosophy were well known to him. Thus he brought to bear on his music a mind singularly well equipped in every direction. He was, too, essentially a Teuton, with all the German massiveness of conception and depth of soul. A lesser man must have fallen before the prospect of attempting such a colossal reform. What was that reform in its essentials? It was this—to compose opera in which the idea of the drama was made the ruling conception; to attain this end by a wedding of suitable poetry to music of such a kind as should reflect by its themes what was happening on the stage or in the minds of the characters. There was to be no aria or fixed form of ballad, but continuous melody, in which the voices of the characters are regarded as extra instruments of the orchestra, with just that element of personality included....

To have succeeded entirely in this bold design he would have had to be a Shakespeare in poetry and knowledge of human nature, as well as a musician of equal ability. How could any one man fulfil both of these roles? In the matter of the music Wagner is a very Shakespeare. But if we take his own writings as evidences of what he meant to do, then his librettos must necessarily be unsatisfactory. They keep the dramatic idea in sight so much as almost entirely to lose sight of poetic beauty. Wagner was pre-eminently a musician; he was not a poet, as he wished also to be. Whatever his poetical achievements, the main fact is unaltered. The dramatic idea and the musical expression are kept so indissolubly close by Wagner as to be one for all intents and purposes.

Of Wagner's treatment of the vocalist he says:

The melody sung is modelled upon the way in which the speaking voice rises and falls in accordance with the feelings of the moment. With marvellous skill the master of Bayreuth has made the music sung reflect as clearly as any oration what are the thoughts and feelings of the character. The orchestra makes, as it were, a tide or ocean, over which the voice, in this manner, floats, now rising high on the crest of the wave, now sinking into the trough of the seas. Sometimes for added poignancy, Wagner makes the voice sing the leitmotif of some idea connected with the idea of the moment. This is constantly occurring in Die Meistersinger.

After scornful allusions to French and Italian opera, he shows how Wagner re-fashioned opera on new and nobler lines. Replying to those who say "You must have lightness sometimes," he wrote:

Yes, but never triviality. If we want lightness of touch and wittiness, have we not Die Meistersinger, the greatest comedy in the world, or a merry piece like Mozart's Nozze di Figaro? Here is all the wit that one wants, yet the level is kept high throughout. It is the same in literature. We have absurd, banal pieces, said to be humorous, such as The Glad Eye, which really contain not one-millionth the humour that there is in a noble comedy like Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or As You Like It, or a Shavian play like John Bull's Other Island. Man is too great a thing ever to be of his nature low and banal. We have in life farce sometimes, comedy very often indeed, but never banality.

The essay thus concludes:

If we have been flooded with rag-times and musical comedies, the fault lies in the first place with the French and Italian composers of the period 1790-1850. Pre-Wagner opera is as low a concoction as can possibly be conceived. It took all the genius of the great Bayreuth master to turn things back into their proper channel. But he has succeeded, and the old style is moribund. Anyone who glances over the list of living composers must see that they are all enormously influenced by Wagner's principle. The last of the old style was Massenet, and he is dead. We see Richard Strauss, an extreme Wagnerian, only without the master's full powers; Engelbert Humperdinck, who is a user of the leitmotif and a most skilled orchestrator, though his motifs are not so powerful as Wagner's or even Strauss's; Pietro Mascagni, a Mozartean composer; Bruneau, an extreme Wagnerian; Glazounov and Mossourgsky have combined Wagner's ideas with Tschaikovsky's; Puccini at least is a very strong supporter and admirer of Wagner. It will thus be seen that, with the exception of Mascagni, Wagnerian ideas have been paid tribute to by all the leading opera composers of the day. In a word, the Man is here. Opera, as represented by Richard Wagner's music-dramas, takes its place on a level with the absolute music of which Beethoven's work is the noblest example.

Paul found keen pleasure in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, liking the witty libretto as much as the bright, tuneful melodies. For the work of Caesar Franck, a gifted Belgian musician who died on the threshold of manhood, he had profound admiration, and was of opinion that had he lived Franck would have taken rank with the great masters. As was to be expected, my son had for Welsh music a strong natural sympathy. He held that "Men of Harlech" was one of the greatest of all battle hymns, and that "Morfa Rhuddlan," the ancient Cymric dirge, had never been surpassed as a piece of funereal music. Some of the old Welsh hymn tunes he regarded as unique in their wistfulness and devout aspiration; and as for Welsh choral singing, he thought it was matchless for richness, fire and harmony.



CHAPTER IX

LITERATURE AND ETHICS

Without the blessing of reading the burden of life would be intolerable and the riches of life reduced to the merest penury.

GLADSTONE.

The taste for reading stores the mind with pleasant thoughts, banishes ennui, fills up the unoccupied interstices and enforced leisures of an active life; and if it is judiciously managed it is one of the most powerful means of training character and disciplining and elevating thought. To acquire this taste in early life is one of the best fruits of education.

LECKY: "THE MAP OF LIFE."

From his childhood Paul Jones had been a voracious and an omnivorous reader. He read with amazing rapidity. The first book he enjoyed whole-heartedly was Mabel Dearmer's "Noah's Ark Geography," one of the best children's books written in the past twenty years. He read and re-read this book as a little boy and used to talk lovingly of Kit and his friends, Jum-Jum and the Cockyolly Bird. Alas! Kit (Mrs. Dearmer's son Christopher) and his gifted mother have been claimed as victims by the World War. Paul revelled in "AEsop's Fables," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "Don Quixote," "Treasure Island," "The Arabian Nights," "Gulliver's Travels," and classical legends. As he grew older he passed on to "The Mabinogion," "The Pilgrim's Progress," Lamb's "Tales of Shakespeare," and writers like Henty, Manville Fenn, Clark Russell, W. H. Fitchett and P. G. Wodehouse. He followed with delight the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, whose charm never faded for him. He made a point of reading everything written by Conan Doyle. But he gave first place among living writers to George Bernard Shaw, and next place to H. G. Wells. He would never miss a Shaw play. His delight at the first performance he saw of John Bull's Other Island was boisterous. He loved to read that play as well as to see it performed. The glimpses of Ireland and the portraits of Irish character enchanted him. Broadbent—typifying the self-complacency of the well-meaning but Philistine Victorian who had solved to his own satisfaction all mysteries in earth and heaven—he regarded as a masterpiece of creative art. For Kipling his admiration was qualified; but he loved "M'Andrews' Hymn," and often recited lines from the "Recessional." Of the great novelists Dickens was easily his first favourite; a long way behind came Scott, Stevenson and Jules Verne. Dickens he knew and loved in every mood. Pickwick like Falstaff was to him a source of perennial delight. He loved and honoured Dickens for his rich and tender humanity, the passion of pity that suffused his soul, the lively play of his comic fancy. Endowed with a keen sense of humour, he read Mark Twain and W. W. Jacobs with gusto. As a relaxation from historical studies he would sometimes devour a bluggy story, and as he read would shout with laughter at its grotesque out-topping of probabilities. He tried his own hand at sensational yarns. I recall one of them, rich in gory incidents, with a villain who is constantly leaping from a G.W.R. express to elude his pursuers. Among his papers I found the manuscript of a detective story, vivaciously written after the Sherlock Holmes and Watson manner.

At one time Paul liked to read Homer and Thucydides, Virgil and Tacitus; but as soon as he was at home in the wide realm of English literature he thrust the old classics from him, and subsequently his hard historical reading gave him no opportunity, even if he had felt the desire, to revert to Greek and Latin writers. But he was fully conscious of the world's debt in culture to Greece and in law and government to Rome. He wrote: "The influence of Greek thought, Greek form, Greek art, is universal and eternal."

Of all names in literature he reverenced most that of Shakespeare, in whom he saw "the spirit of the Renaissance personified," and whom he described "as romantic, philosophic, realistic, and as varied and impersonal as Nature." He was never weary of reading the tragedies and historical plays. He resented any word in disparagement of Shakespeare, and could not understand the inability of a supreme artist like Tolstoy to appreciate his greatness. Though he has written a noble sonnet in homage to Shakespeare's genius, Matthew Arnold once permitted himself to say that "Homer leaves Shakespeare as far behind as perfection leaves imperfection." Paul wrote in a marginal note, "Bosh! to put it bluntly." He would say with Goethe, "The first page of Shakespeare made me his for life, and when I had perused an entire play I stood like one born blind, to whom sight by some miraculous power had been restored in a moment." Paul and I often exchanged ideas on Shakespeare. He was lost in wonder at Shakespeare's creative power, his inexhaustible fertility, the universality of his range, the perfection of his portraiture, his mastery over all moods, his cunning artistry in the use of words, his exuberant imagery and effortless ease. He made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on-Avon to see with his own eyes the spots and scenes amid which Shakespeare's youth and declining years were spent. The smiling beauty of Stratford and the rich rural charm of its surroundings left on his mind a delightful impression that was never erased.

Next to Shakespeare his admiration flowed out to Milton. When he went into the battle-line he took with him only two books—his Shakespeare and his Milton. With Milton's character he had some marked affinities—the virginal purity of Milton's youth, his love of learning, his hatred of all tyrannies, secular and spiritual, making a strong appeal to the sympathies of my son. "Milton," he wrote, "is perhaps the very grandest figure in English history." "In Milton the spirit of Puritanism is combined with a purely Hellenic love of beauty." "'Paradise Lost' may be regarded (1) as a reflection of the Puritan point of view; (2) as a poem pure and simple; (3) as an epic of the classical school."

Profound as was his admiration for "Paradise Lost," he could not forbear smiling at Taine's quip that the Miltonic Adam is "your true Paterfamilias, a member of the Opposition, a Whig, a Puritan, who entered Paradise via England."

Paul extolled Pope's ingenuity and metrical felicity—he has thoroughly annotated the "Essay on Man"—but was acutely conscious of aridity and the absence of rapture and vision in Pope as in Dryden. He singled out as "the finest passage in the 'Essay on Man'" the eight lines in which Pope contrasts the majesty of the Universe with the insignificance of man, beginning:

Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, Planets and suns run lawless through the sky.

He had not much respect for Pope's philosophy, and, commenting on one passage in the same poem, writes: "Pope, like many other unsound reasoners, when his position becomes dangerous, seeks to vindicate himself by insults."

Above all nineteenth-century poets he loved Wordsworth, the revelation of whose richness and glory only came to him after he was seventeen. There were no bounds to his admiration for the Wordsworth sonnets. Many a time since the War he would recite the glorious sonnet which proclaims that

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold Which Milton held. In every thing we are sprung Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifest.

The magic of Keats and his adoration of beauty struck a responsive chord in Paul's nature. Tennyson did not stir him to the depths of his being like Wordsworth. "Ulysses," "The Revenge," and "Crossing the Bar" were the only Tennyson poems that he cared for. In an essay written when he was eighteen he defined poetry as "the soul of man put into untrammelled speech, the voice of angels, the music of the spheres." He read with critical discernment, sometimes agreeing, sometimes disagreeing, with the author. It was his habit when reading a book to mark passages that impressed him and make comments in the margin. Some of his obiter dicta shall be given. In judging them it should be remembered that they were all pronounced before he was nineteen.

How aptly said that Dante seems to have tried to write a poem with a sculptor's chisel or a painter's brush.

Froissart observes clearly, but his observation is limited to the world of nobles and chivalry; he ignores the life, the sufferings and the joys of the people.

Ben Jonson, master of dignified declamatory drama, was the greatest of the post-Shakespeare school. We may justly say post-Shakespeare, though Jonson was nearly contemporaneous with the Bard of Avon, because the influence of such a man clearly belongs to an age in which the freedom and romantic magnificence of Shakespeare have been forgotten.

Gibbon is the first of historians. The "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" runs its course like some majestic river.

Burns is a microcosm of Scotland.

Burke—a stainless and beautiful character. A theorist in practice; a practical man in theory.

Burke's view of Rousseau was biased and unjust.

Though contemptuous of Wordsworth, Byron himself is a romantic of the romanticists. He was the guiding star of rebels the world over.

In the calm purity of his verse, Shelley is more classic than romantic. What ecstatic melody in his lyrics!

Dickens is often mawkish and often portrays oddities; but these oddities do exist, especially in London (e.g., Sam Weller, Mrs. Todgers, Jo, etc.), and Dickens unearthed them for the first time. How his heart warms for the poor and the wretched! He is the great poet of London life.

Macaulay is not a philosophic writer; but then the English genius is certainly non-philosophic.

Froude in his essay on Homer says: "The authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey stand alone with Shakespeare far away above mankind." Paul's marginal note: "Add to them Milton, Goethe, the author of the Nibelungen-lied, Browning."

Froude, I think, has misunderstood the Nibelungen-lied entirely. There is really much savagery and much glory in both the German and the Greek epic.

How strange that men like Rabelais and Swift, Goldsmith and Dickens, who have done so much to make the world laugh, experienced in their own lives great unhappiness.

Browning is always an optimist. His manliness and vigour are unfailing:

I find earth not grey but rosy, Heaven not grim but fair of hue. Do I stoop? I pluck a posy. Do I stand and stare? All's blue.

Paul considered that Macaulay lacked ideas and vision. He liked the lilt and swing of the Lays and Ballads, and enjoyed the Essays with their superb colouring. Disputing Macaulay's dictum that neither painters nor poets are helped by the advances in civilisation, science and refinement, he wrote: "This argument disproved by the examples of men like Shakespeare and Goethe, like Browning and Kipling. And did not Leonardo da Vinci become a student of anatomy in order to learn how to depict the human body properly on his canvas?"

Macaulay in his Essay on Mackintosh's "History of The Revolution" describes the condition of England in 1678, after eighteen years of Charles the Second's reign, in graphic words, beginning "Such was the nation which, awaking from its rapturous trance, found itself sold to a foreign, a despotic, a Popish court, defeated on its own seas and rivers by a State of far inferior resources, and placed under the rule of pandars and buffoons."

Paul's comment reads: "This superb passage is one of the most inspired of Macaulay's utterances. Contrast with it in the same Essay the vivid sentence beginning 'In the course of seven centuries,' in which he pronounces a magnificent panegyric on the greatness of Britain."

He thought the music of Macaulay's prose had often a metallic sound, and that it suffered from excess of epithet and addiction to antithetical phrases. In pithiness of style, sureness of touch and dispassionate judgment, he contrasted Acton as an historical writer with Macaulay, to the latter's disadvantage. He found every page of Acton packed with thought, every essay richly freighted with ideas. Moreover, Acton was sternly impartial and impersonal in his judgment of persons and in his estimate of influences. Paul wrote:

There has never been in historical writing such inexorable logic, such compact phraseology, so much pith and point, as are to be found in Acton's Essays.

His view of Carlyle was thus expressed: "Take away his style and half his greatness vanishes. Carlyle's works are not English in spirit, nor have they any point of resemblance to those of any other English writer." As for his views: "he has, alas! no love for democracy." Carlyle's habit of apotheosising heroes and his worship of the Strong Man made Paul pose the familiar problem: "Is the great man the fashioner of his age, or its product?" He thought something was to be said on both sides, and that it was impossible to lay down a positive proposition on what he called "this terribly difficult question." But he agreed with Guizot that "great events and great men are fixed points and summits of historical survey." He emphasises the fact that in his "French Revolution" Carlyle, in spite of his hero-worship, accepts the evolutionary view of history.

Among essayists he had a special liking for Froude, Matthew Arnold and Edmund Gosse. He often turned for refreshment to Froude's "Short Studies," and felt the fascination of his "Erasmus." In his essay on the Book of Job, Froude writes: "Happiness is not what we are to look for; our place is to be true to the best which we know; to seek that and do that." On this my son comments: "I don't hold with this idea; for, while happiness is not the end, yet it always in its purest and brightest form comes to the really good or great man in the consciousness of the work he has done." Froude in his essay on "Representative Men" enlarges on the importance of educating boys by holding up before them the pattern of noble lives. By picturing the career of a noble man rising above temptation and "following life victoriously and beautifully forward," Froude thinks you will kindle a boy's heart as no threat of punishment here or hereafter will kindle it. On this Paul writes: "A noble plea for an education of youth far more effective than the cursed nonsense of forbidding this or that on penalty of hell-fire."

Matthew Arnold, whom in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although he differed from some of the author's judgments. "The French Revolution took a political, practical character," wrote Arnold; on which my son's comment is: "Surely the French Revolution was only one aspect of a great world-movement of liberation! One side of it is Romanticism; another the Revolution itself; yet another, the Industrial Revolution. No movement has ever a character sui generis." On Joubert's remark: "Force and Right are the governors of this world, Force till Right is ready," his comment is: "A regular German theory." Paul's final note on "The Function of Criticism" reads:

I consider that Matthew Arnold insists too much on the non-practical element of criticism. After all, it is the lesson of life that the practical man wins in the end. When we are brought face to face with the realities of things—as in a war like the present one—all thought of art and letters simply vanishes. How is it that the mass of the world is always inartistic? How is it that the one people in the world—the Greeks—who built up their State on what Arnold regards as ideal conditions, collapsed in headlong ruin before the inartistic but practical Romans?

This comment illustrates one effect of the War on Paul's mind: he was becoming less of an idealist and more of a realist.

For Mr. W. H. Hudson's "Introduction to the Study of Literature" he had high esteem. This book he has carefully annotated. Of Mr. Hudson's remarks on the contrast between the style of Milton and that of Dryden, between Hooker and Defoe, he writes: "A comparison of remarkable discernment. The difference between the Miltonic and Drydenic styles, i.e., pre-1660 and post-1660, was simply due to the change in ideas caused by the reaction against Puritanism." Agreeing with Hudson that there is much poetry which is prosaic and much prose which is poetical, he cites as examples: "Prose in Poetry: Pope, Dryden, Walt Whitman. Poetry in Prose: Carlyle, Macaulay, Goethe." He did not concur with Hudson's remark that the "full significance of poetry can be appreciated only when it addresses us through the ear," and that "the silent perusal of the printed page will leave one of its principal secrets unsurprised." Paul's comment on this:

Too sweeping a statement. Take, for example, poets like Milton and Browning, where every line is fraught with some deep philosophic meaning and must be pondered over for some time before the whole of the greatness of the poetry is realised. In these cases reading aloud is not nearly so good as private, silent study.

He demurred to the proposition that while the function of Ethics is to instruct, that of Art is to delight. "I hold," he writes, "that Art's duty is to instruct as much as, if not more than, that of Ethics. Art to be great must elevate and edify." Hudson wrote: "The common view that the primitive ages of the world were ages of colossal individualism is grotesquely unhistorical; they were, on the contrary, ages in which group-life and group-consciousness were in the ascendant." "Quite true," notes Paul. "See Maine's 'Ancient Law,' where he points out that ancient history has nothing to do with the individual but only with groups." Another annotated book is Maeterlinck's "Wisdom and Destiny." To Maeterlinck's remark, "It is often of better avail from the start to seek that which is highest," he adds: "Always, not often." He heartily subscribed to Maeterlinck's doctrine that our attitude to life ought to be one of "gladsome, enlightened acceptance, not a hostile, gloomy submission."

His philosophy of life was expressed in that beautiful passage in Carlyle's essay on "Characteristics":

Here on earth we are as soldiers fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of the campaign and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done, let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind each one of us, lie 6,000 years of human effort, human conquest. Before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity there shine for us celestial guiding stars.

My inheritance, how wide and fair! Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.

The ethical side of Paul's character is reflected in the appended quotations from some of his essays:

Sacrifice is always the lot of the divine man.

What is "to do good"? It is to think of other people.

Joy only comes to Faust when at last he is labouring for others. As Wolsey puts it in Henry VIII: "Love thyself last," and "bear peace in thy right hand."

The Epicurean idea is vile and detestable. If everyone thinks only of his own indulgence, how can the wherewithal for that indulgence be forthcoming? What is the use of man having all his glorious gifts of character and intellect if he does not use them? Why is man made so different from the animals if he is to be the mere slave of his passions?

Stoicism finally degenerates into mere pessimism.

The great defect of Puritanism was its hostility to Art; for Art glorifies and ennobles Life.

"What is the final cause of the Universe?" This is the old problem of the philosophers. Goethe's lines leap to the mind:

"How, when and where? The Gods make no reply; To causes give thy care, And cease to question why."

Carlyle in "Heroes and Hero Worship" shows the folly of condemning a man for the faults noted down by the world about him—by those blind to the true inner secret of his life. "Who art thou that judgest thy fellow?"

Naturalism is illogical because it postulates Nature without mind.

If you do not place faith in humanity, what really is the use of any philosophy of life?

Let us remember St. Paul's injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens."

It is a thought to make one ponder, that by far the finest Life of Christ was written by an agnostic, Renan.

Action is a great joy in life.

When prehistoric man took up a flint and laboriously beat it into a shape that his brain told him would be of use to him, he laid the foundations of all civilisation. Man's progress is the story of brute force laid low by Thought—which is the one really irresistible influence in the Universe:

"In the world there is nothing great but Man; In Man there is nothing great but Mind."

It is a perplexing reflection that there is no absolute moral standard. The moral law appears to vary with environment and according to conditions of time and place. I am reminded of Pope's lines:

"Where the extreme of vice was ne'er agreed. Ask where's the North? At York 'tis on the Tweed; In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where."

The greater a man is in one direction, the more prone he usually is to weakness in another: that is why we must never condemn indiscriminately.

The laws governing the Universe, so far from being mechanical and dead, are elements filled with Truth and Beauty.

Materialism is fatal to the higher instincts, because it introduces that most sordid element—earthly pomp, circumstance and recompense.

The Universe, History, Life are before us. Why should they not be investigated? It is not true that science leads to Atheism or Fatalism. What science does is to destroy that fabric of Aberglaube or superstition which chokes and asphyxiates the best parts of religion. What science does is to set up a new, purer creed based on certainty and truth.

Of French writers Paul liked most Taine, Sainte-Beuve, and Victor Hugo. His love of reading he took with him into the War. A box of books returned to us with his other effects from France included "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," Macaulay's "Essays," Saint-Simon's "Memoirs," Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries," "The Imitation of Christ," Lecky's "History of European Morals," and works by Goethe, Victor Hugo, Dumas the elder, Flaubert, Maurice Barres, and Mrs. Humphry Ward.



CHAPTER X

HISTORY AND POLITICS

History is philosophy teaching by examples.

BOLINGBROKE.

The science of Politics is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river.

ACTON.

Reared in the home of a political journalist, it was natural that Paul Jones should be attracted to public affairs. He followed with lively curiosity the progress of the two general elections of 1910, and from that year was an interested observer of political events. As he grew older his bent towards politics became more pronounced. A youth familiar with Roman, mediaeval and modern history could not fail to be fascinated by the political drama unfolding before his eyes. He watched history in the making with the same eagerness that he read the history of the past. The prevailing tone at Dulwich, as at most public schools, is Conservative. Paul was a perfervid Liberal. In school and out of school, not only did he not disguise, he gloried in his advanced opinions. The extent of his political knowledge and the ripeness of his views were astonishing in one so young.

From the moment he began to think for himself his sympathies flowed out to the wage-earning classes. What he remembered and what he had heard of his Puritan grandfather, William Jones, a grand specimen of the Victorian artisan, who died in December, 1905, on the verge of 80, deepened his regard for them. But his own broad and sympathetic nature would have drawn him instinctively to their side. In his judgment it was on and by the working-classes that the wheels of the world moved forward. He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and their non-receptivity to ideas. He for his part must breathe an ampler air. He was wont to speak disdainfully of the Victorian era, because, in spite of all the advances it witnessed in the physical sciences and of Britain's rapid growth in wealth between 1850 and 1890, it did so little for social welfare.

For feudal magnates and the nouveaux riches he had scant respect, holding that both the aristocracy and the plutocracy had used their political power for selfish ends. Old feudalism in some respects he regarded as better than new Capital, for the landed aristocracy did at least recognise some obligations to those under their sway, whereas Capital was so concerned with its rights that it forgot altogether its reciprocal duties. His view was that, under shelter of the laissez-faire system, with its false presumption that employers and employed were on a parity in bargaining power, Capital had scandalously evaded its obligations to Labour. He regarded the conditions of life in some of our industrial districts as a grave reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a strange caprice. But though there is inequality of natural gifts, he thought it was the duty of the State to ensure equality of opportunity to all its citizens. His ideal was a co-operative commonwealth, in which the competitive spirit would be held in check by communal needs and aims, and where every career would be opened freely to talent. In one of his essays he deplores the fact that political economists had fallen into the delusion of applying the laws that govern the exchange of commodities without any variation to Labour, and leaving out of account intangibles and imponderables like moral forces and other expressions of the delicate and mysterious human spirit. Political economy, he thought, would have to be recast and humanised. "The economists," he said, "have entirely ignored the human factor."

Paul's conviction was that when the rule of enlightened democracy was established wars would cease. "The peoples never want wars," he wrote; "under a pure democracy wars would be impossible." Because of the associations clustering around it the word "Imperialism" jarred on him, but he took pride in the greatness of the free and liberal British Empire, with its rule of law, its love of peace, its humane ideals. He had the historical sense in highly developed degree. The story of human progress stretched before the eye of his mind in a series of vivid pictures. Surveying the immense and imposing fabric of recorded events woven by the ceaseless loom of Time, he had an unerring instinct for the shining figures, the salient characteristic, the determining factor. Away from a library he could have written a quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Caesar, Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her enigmatical personality, marvellous statecraft and capacity for inspiring devotion, and of the brilliant galaxy of great men, statesmen and sailors, poets and scholars, who enriched her reign with so much glory. Another epoch he loved to study was that of the French Revolution. I have already referred to his habit of annotating the books he read. From notes he made on political books and from some of his essays I have culled the following:

Man's tool-using power is simply a symbol of man's unique reasoning gifts. Its connotations may be extended to mean the entire intellect.

The savage using his language with joy like a child, gives us the wealth of beautiful mythology about all natural objects.

It is wonderful to think that Julius Caesar's imperial system was handed right down to the nineteenth century, until one not unlike Caesar himself set his foot upon its neck in 1806. But long before it fell the Holy Roman Empire had really ceased, in Voltaire's words, to be holy, or Roman, or an empire.

Froude holds up to admiration the "serene calmness" of Tacitus, and says he took no side. But I ask anyone who has read the sarcastic remarks about Domitian and the Emperors in the "Agricola" whether he thinks Tacitus took no side in writing history.

Nothing can alter the fact that Mohammedanism has done a vast amount of good. Compare Carlyle's appreciation of Mahomet with Gibbon's acrimonious insinuations.

Much that is strange in human history is explained if we remember that aristocracies in the West were political, while in the East they were religious.

Hildebrand, who boldly declared that the Church compared to the State was as the sun to the moon—the State only shining by light borrowed from the greater orb—was now on the papal throne. His giant intellect and tremendous personality had overawed Henry IV into ignominious capitulation at Canossa. With Europe at his feet Hildebrand cannot but have desired to assert his authority over the island-State across the Channel. William the Conqueror and Hildebrand were rarely-matched antagonists—the one determined to set bounds to the Pope's scheme of world-domination; the Pope equally determined to bend the stubborn Norman to his will. It was the Conqueror who won.

The conception of the Norman Conquest has shifted from the grotesque over-estimate of Thierry to the under-estimate of Freeman and Maitland. To the moderns the Conquest is now little more than a change of dynasty. A juster estimate would be that the very change of dynasty gave the Conquest its vital importance.... The effects were really immense. The Conquest substituted for the degenerate race of Anglo-Saxon kings a virile dynasty able to give to England what it needed—a vigorous central administration—and brought the English people into the stream of European civilisation.

It was the hope of Erasmus that Catholic forms could be blended with the Greek spirit.

Luther's songs express the very soul of old Germany; above all, the great hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott."

Though the Reformation in freeing the mind of man from ecclesiastical tyranny made eventually for political liberty, its whole tendency in England for the time being was in favour of absolute monarchy. Its first outcome here was to set up a secular monarchy, supreme in Church and State, founded on the theory of the divine right of kings, based on an aristocracy made loyal by the instinct of self-interest.

Commerce and national wealth were at stake in the war between England and Spain in the sixteenth century, and not merely, perhaps not even mainly, religion.

Drake was a very great sailor, but he was undoubtedly a buccaneer.

Many Ministers had been sent to the block for offences far less rank than those of Charles I; nevertheless, his execution was absolutely illegal and a fatal mistake in policy.

Few men experienced such hard treatment at the hands of fortune as Cromwell. In every case, save the rule of the major-generals, his constitutional experiments were wise, far-seeing and well-conceived. It was the perverse conduct of those who professed to be his followers that ruined all.

There has never been a shrewder king on a throne than Charles II.

In the popular view, James II will always be regarded as the tyrannical despot, the subverter of the religious and political institutions of England, while his brother, Charles II, will be looked upon as a kindly and amiable gentleman, who oppressed no one and treated everyone kindly. Yet in the view of the student of history Charles becomes the tyrant and James an honest though bigoted fool.

To compare the age of Cromwell with that of Charles II is to see the Dorian and Lydian spirits respectively in their most contrasted lights.

The difference between Richelieu and Mazarin is the difference between the creator and the developer.

The political revolution of 1688 was contemporaneous with a revolution in physics, shown by Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; with a revolution in astronomical thought, shown by Newton's "Principia"; with a small revolution in literature, shown by the rise of English prose; with a revolution in popular feeling all over the world, as shown by the riots against excessive taxation in France and the ejection of de Witt in Holland. All the different threads of life seem to run interwoven, and one cannot be disturbed without disturbing the others.

The character of Frederick the Great was stained by many infamous deeds; he was in many ways unscrupulous, yet he was never petty, and he was devoted to his country. He was the greatest genius in practical reforms and in the art of war that the eighteenth century produced.

Frederick the Great has had a far stronger and better influence on history than a selfish, callous person like Louis XIV.

Of all the benevolent despots there is only one, Frederick the Great, to whom can be fitly applied what Johnson said of Goldsmith: "Let not his faults be remembered: he was a very great man."

Under a despotism the aristocracy loses all its powers, and, except for the bureaucracy and "King's friends," there is no privileged class unless the King is a weak man and under the thumb of his court (e.g., contrast the France of Louis XIV with that of Louis XV).

Carlyle in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views of de Tocqueville.

Carlyle in his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes: "We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of Front-de-Boeuf in 'Ivanhoe.'"

Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude in re France to illustrate the general lack of vision on the subject.

Voltaire's summing up of the consequences of Turgot's fall may be expressed in Sir Edward Grey's phrase: "Death, disaster and damnation."

If Louis XVI had been wiser and more capable, would he have averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent despot in Joseph II.

There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the younger Pitt.

Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling and agonising that I know.

Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of the most ineffective geniuses in history.

Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon, knew the contrary.

William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his great Ministers.

Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the Danube?" Paul's comment on this:

"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim; three, the Battle of Ulm."

The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding influence in the world.

England's geographical position does not fit her for the role of a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire world-wide.

Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent qualities have time and time again been baffled—as the examples of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate.... As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single State. Every people has the right to believe that certain powers of the Divine Reason display themselves in it at their highest."

Patriotism may indeed be but a larger form of selfishness, but it is a larger form. It does involve devotion to others. As long as men are men, it is so unlikely as almost to be impossible that patriotism will ever be replaced by cosmopolitanism.

A great point in favour of the rule of democracy is its character-building power.

It is customary in a certain class of society to abuse trade-unionism. People talk of the tyranny of trade-unionism; it would be as easy, perhaps more justifiable, to talk of the tyranny of Capital. The trade union has its counterpart in what are termed the "upper classes." For example, the British Medical Association is nothing but a trade union under another name. The trade union is an absolute necessity to the worker in modern society.

Laissez-faire has advantages up to a point; State control has advantages up to a point. The most successful nation will be that one which succeeds in making a judicious mixture of the two systems.

The Englishman in his devil-may-care way does not trouble to persecute or oppress; his tolerant spirit, aided by the splendid devotion of a few great men, has, in the words of Seeley, built up a glorious free Empire "in a fit of absence of mind."

You will never make the English people idealistic, but you will never conquer them on that very account.

While the German talks and dreams of world-Empire, the Englishman smiles, puts his pipe in his mouth and goes off to found it by accident.

The modern system of diplomacy is as vile as anything can be. Even in England it is the negation of popular government.

Man's duty to his neighbour ought to be observed as well as the harsh and pitiless laws of trade and competition.

The social conditions of our industrial towns to-day are a standing indictment of the laissez-faire system.

The great warrior is no more important than the humble toiler.

Gladstone's finance was governed by the determination to spend as little as possible. It does not seem to be so good as that of Lloyd George, viz., to be prepared to spend a great deal provided you are sure it is for the benefit of the people.

On a remark of Dr. Sarolea's in re the alleged inherent antagonism between Europe and America on the one side and Asia and Africa on the other: "Absurd! If we are to be good Europeans we must first of all be good world citizens. The Asiatic is as much our brother as is the Belgian or the American."

It is not the case that England has checked Germany's Colonial development. Germany has herself to blame—herself and destiny. But I must say that Germany had to some extent right on her side in the Morocco dispute.

The Germans ignore the fact that wherever we British go we throw our ports open to the commerce of the world.

In the autumn of 1914 my son read General von Bernhardi's book, "Germany and the Next War." In his notes on this book he drew attention to Bernhardi's frequent self-contradictions and his false philosophy. From these notes the following excerpts are taken:

Here Bernhardi flatly contradicts the biological argument he uses earlier in the chapter. Biology knows nothing of States; it sees only human beings.

Look at the intimate connection between Darwinism and the political and economic views of the Individualist Radicals of the mid-Victorian era.

Bernhardi assumes that mere material existence is always to be man's destiny. But the perpetuation of existence beyond the immediate present cannot be guided by the instinct of grabbing.

The modern theory is that good and bad as abstract considerations do not exist, but that they are what experience shows to be best for us in the end. The animal knows this subconsciously; man consciously to a certain extent.

Emphatically No; mere brute force is not the law of the universe.

Bernhardi may as well talk of conquering the moon as of conquering the U.S.A.

Man's true development consists above all in the negation of his selfish elements for the good of humanity.

Bernhardi's proposition, "Only the State which strives after an enlarged sphere of influence can create the conditions under which mankind develops into the most splendid perfection," Paul counters by asking: "How does this theory fit in with the case of the Greeks, who, politically so weak, were yet intellectually so great that to-day, after 2,000 years, their influence in Europe is as great as ever? Which would you rather have been, tiny Greece or vast Persia?"

On Bernhardi's remark: "No excuse for revolutionary agitation in Germany now exists."

No excuse? When the people have no power at all, and can at any moment be led to the slaughter by a pack of Junkers—"all for the good of the State"; in other words, to give the military caste more wealth and dignity. In a few years Bernhardi will see whether the people have any cause for revolution or not.

The Germany of philosophy, poetry and song will rescue the German people from the abyss into which the War Lords have plunged them.

Germany was indeed unfortunate in entering the world as a great Power so late. But she will not make any progress by perpetually brandishing a sword before Europe.

I do think that Prussia's policy in the past was largely determined by her geographical situation.

The Entente with France was the price we paid for Egypt. Germany never entered our thoughts at all.

On Bernhardi's allusion to India, Paul wrote: "Curiously enough, the very day I read this I heard in the House of Commons the wonderful story of the gifts presented to the British Government for war purposes by the Indian princes. Such a passionate outburst of loyalty has never been equalled. This gratitude and devotion we have won not by the rule of force, but by that of justice and kindness."

In regard to Bernhardi's prediction that our self-governing Dominions would separate from the British Empire:

Our policy toward them nobly justified. Now in our time of need the Colonies have flown to our side.

God help civilisation when the Bernhardis set to work on it!

Strange that people so far apart as Bernhardi and we Socialists should yet be at one on this question of checking selfish individualism by measures of State Socialism.

A frequent visitor to the Lobby and Press Gallery of the House of Commons, my son was known to many members of Parliament and political journalists. Thanks to his free, affable manner, he was on terms of cordial regard with several of the attendants and police-constables on duty in and about the House of Commons. His last visit to the Press Gallery was in May, 1916. He was stirred by the life and movement of the House and enjoyed a good Parliamentary debate, but he had a feeling that politicians were apt to mistake illusions for realities and to think that words could take the place of deeds.

In the last three years of his life, though his democratic sympathies never waned, some of his opinions underwent a change. He was disappointed at the indifference of the masses of the people to their own interests, at their low standard of taste, at the ease with which they could be exploited by charlatans. I remember his telling me once, in 1915, apropos of the blatancy of some noisy patriots: "I now realise for the first time what Dr. Johnson meant when he wrote, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'" He disliked the squalor of the political game and the glibness of tongue and tenuity of thought of the mere politician. A generous-minded youth of high ideals, he had not learnt to make allowances for political human nature, or for the fact that the mass of mankind are necessarily occupied with petits soins and apt to be dulled by the mechanical routine of their daily lives. Latterly he often told me that, after all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political and social views were advanced: to Paul I was little better than a Whig with a veneration for Mr. Gladstone. He had a bold, forward-looking mind, and was in favour of root-and-branch changes. He was only 21 when he died, and his views on social and political questions would doubtless have been modified in one direction or another had he lived. But his passion for liberty of thought and action and his deep sympathy with the unprivileged multitude would have remained, for these things were inherent in his character. He would have said with Ibsen: "I want to awaken the democracy to its true task—of making all the people noblemen by freeing their wills and purifying their minds."

Literature, athletics, music, politics did not exhaust the interests of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of the catholicity of his tastes I may mention that, going over his papers after his death, I discovered in the same drawer a manuscript appreciation of Wagner, "Football Hints," memoranda on "Pascal and Descartes on Method," and the outline of an essay on "The Norman Conquest and its Effects."



CHAPTER XI

IN THE ARMY

Ever the faith endures, England, my England: "Take and break us, we are yours," England, my own.

W. E. HENLEY.

In the first flush of enthusiasm for the War in 1914 Paul wanted to join the Public Schools Battalion, but I induced him to postpone doing so, pointing out that he had been preparing hard for an Oxford Scholarship, and that there would be ample time for him to join the Army after the examination early in December. My reasons were reinforced by his own desire to carry out his duties as Captain of Football. After winning the Balliol Scholarship, and with the knowledge that the number of recruits for the Army at that time was far in excess of the provision of equipment, he was persuaded to stay at Dulwich College till the end of the football season. But he became very restless in the early months of 1915. He had never cared for military exercises, much preferring free athletics, but in 1914 he had joined the O.T.C. at the College. He assiduously applied himself to drill and took part in many marches and several field-days. Meanwhile he followed every phase of the War with fascinated interest. He read all the War books he could get and began a War diary, which he entered up every week-end, giving a succinct account of the War's progress on land and sea and in the air. This diary he continued until he entered the Army, and at his request I have kept it up since.

From copious entries by my son under the dates named the appended excerpts are taken. They indicate with what intelligence and comprehension he followed every phase of the War.

August 18, 1914.—The British Expeditionary Force has landed safely in France: embarkation, transportation and debarkation carried out with great precision and without a single casualty. Our men have made a magnificent impression on the French people by their athletic demeanour, cheerfulness and orderly discipline. Their arrival a source of great moral strength to France.

The Belgian King and Staff have left Brussels for Antwerp.

August 30.—News filtering through of the retreat from Mons. After the battle of Charleroi and the collapse of the French on our right, the British troops fought stubbornly, but had to fall back before enormous forces of the enemy, which sought to annihilate them by sheer weight of numbers. In most difficult circumstances the ten days' retreat was carried out with wonderful skill.

September 3 and 4.—The Germans now within forty miles of Paris. Note, however, these important considerations: (1) The German losses are terrific; (2) the whole Allied forces are absolutely intact and in good order. The situation is very different from that of 1870, when the French field armies were destroyed before the war had been in progress a month.

The French Government has quitted Paris for Bordeaux.

September 14-16.—It is now evident that the battle of the Marne was a great victory for the Franco-British forces. On September 6 the German advance southwards reached its extreme points at Coulommiers and Provins. This movement was covered by a large flanking force west of the Ourcq watching the outer Paris defences. The southward movement left the enemy's right wing in a dangerous position, as the Creil-Senlis-Compiegne line, by which the Germans had advanced, had been evacuated. The Allies attacked this wing in front and flank on September 8, and a French Army was hurried from Paris to attend to the flanking force. The frontal attack carried out by French and British. The enemy retreated skilfully to the line of the Ourcq, and from here tried to crush the French by a counter-attack. This failed utterly, and the enemy right wing-fell back over the Marne on September 10, pursued by the French and the British. Large captures of German prisoners and guns.

September 16.—Official report of the Belgian Commission on German atrocities too awful to read. The horrible things done by the Kaiser's brutal soldiery in Belgium must remove every vestige of respect for the Germans.

September 19-21.—Conflict on the Aisne continues. No decisive advantage to either side: both armies now strongly entrenched.

September 29-Oct. 2.—The pater came in very gloomy one night this week saying he had got information that could not be published to the effect that Antwerp must fall in a few days, and that the military situation in Belgium is as bad as it can be.

October 12-15.—Ostend evacuated by the Belgian Government, which has moved to Havre. Germans have occupied Ghent and Bruges and are attempting a sweeping cavalry movement to and along the coast. This coincident with an infantry advance on Calais, which was skilfully checked by a British force that had lain concealed near Ypres.

October 18.—German troops in Belgium are now in contact with von Kluck's army; that is, they are on the right of the force that invaded France, roughly on a line drawn from a point a few miles north of Lille to Ostend. The Allies still occupy part of Belgium including Fleurbaix, Ypres and the surrounding portion of the right bank of the Lys. It was feared that the German force liberated by the fall of Antwerp would be able to combine with von Kluck, so as to effect a great turning movement on the Allies' left. Thanks, however, to the excellent railways in north-east France, skilful disposition of British and French forces, and the stubborn courage of our troops, this danger was averted. We have not only checked the movement, but have ourselves advanced, and the Allies' line to the sea is secure.

November 15-22.—Lord Roberts died of pneumonia. He breathed his last at St. Omer in sound of the guns. He had gone to France to greet his beloved Indian soldiers. A fitting end for this really great man.

December 13-20.—On Wednesday morning, December 16, German warships bombarded Scarborough and Hartlepool. This incident of no military value, but (1) it is a distinct "buck-up" for the Germans, as no hostile shots had struck any part of English soil before since the days of de Ruyter; (2) it may arouse unpleasant misgivings among unthinking people as to the functions and efficiency of our Navy. A tip-and-run bombardment only possible because the Germans can concentrate on any selected point of our coast, whereas we have to guard its whole length. Scarborough an undefended town, and the bombardment a gross breach of international law; but we are getting used now to that sort of thing.

England has formally taken over Egypt, which hitherto had only been in our occupation, Turkey's suzerainty being recognised. The old Khedive, who is absent from the country and intriguing with the enemy, deposed, and Hussein Ali appointed Sultan.

December 20-27.—Full story of the Falkland Islands victory now published. This swift, clean and sure naval stroke appears to have been planned from London by Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord. Von Spee, the German Admiral, with his two sons and other officers, went down on the Scharnhorst, refusing to surrender.

January 3, 1915.—A rather blunt note from the U.S.A. complaining that American merchant vessels have been stopped and searched by our warships without justification, that serious delays have been caused, and that American commercial interests have suffered. Specific instances quoted, and freedom of American ships from molestation in the future demanded. It is the old question of the right of search come up again.

January 17-24.—On Tuesday the famous Zeppelins made their first appearance on the English scene. Several of the airships appeared over Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Sheringham, and Sandringham. Many bombs dropped, but absolutely no military damage; total result, a number of innocent people killed and injured. This marvellous achievement said to have given vast joy to Berlin. Well, they are easily pleased. The destructive power of the Zepps has been greatly overrated.