Читать книгу: «The Secret of the League: The Story of a Social War», страница 19
"Hear! hear!" said Mr Vossit perfunctorily, as he looked round solicitously for his hat. "Well, I suppose we may as well be going."
Cecil Brown recalled his wistful smile from the contemplation of a future chequered with many scenes of light and shade.
"I thank you, Sir John," he replied with a look of friendly understanding, "but I also must go down with my own party."
"I hope that the decision in neither case will be irrevocable," said Hampden with regret, but as he spoke he knew that the hope was vain.
They had already begun to file out of the room, with a touch here and there of that air of constraint that the party had never been quite able to shake off on ceremonial occasions. They left Mr Tubes cowering before the stove, and raising his head nervously from time to time to listen to the noises of the street.
Mr Guppling, determined that his claims should not escape the eye of Fame, paused at the door.
"When we leave this room, John Hampden," he proclaimed in a loud and impressive voice, and throwing out his hand with an appropriate gesture, "we leave Liberty behind us, bound, gagged, and helpless, on the floor!"
"Very true, Mr Guppling," replied Sir John good-humouredly. "We will devote our first efforts to releasing her."
Mr Guppling smiled a bitter, cutting smile, and left the shaft to rankle. It was not until he was out in the street that a sense of the possible ambiguity of his unfortunate remark overwhelmed him with disgust.
CHAPTER XXII
"POOR ENGLAND."
With the account of the signing of the dissolution terms, and a brief reference to the sweeping victory of the League party – already foreshadowed, indeed, to the point of the inevitable – the unknown chronicler, whose version of the Social War this narrative has followed, brings his annals to a close. That war being finished, and by the repudiation of their Socialistic mentors on the part of a large section of the working classes, finished by more than a mere paper treaty, the worthy scribe announces with praiseworthy restraint that there is no more to be said.
"These men," he declares, in the quaint and archaic language of the past, – and he might surely have added "these women" also – "came not reluctantly, but in no wise ambitiously, out of the business of their own private lives to serve their country as they deemed; and that being accomplished to a successful end, would have returned, nothing loth, to more obscure affairs, having sought no personal gain beyond that which grew from public security, an equitable burden of citizenship, and a recovered pride among the nations. Albeit some must needs remain to carry on the work."
Even the not unimportant detail of who remained to carry on the work, and in what capacities, is not recorded, but the distribution of rewards and penalties, on the lines of strict poetic justice, may be safely left to the individual reader's sympathies, with the definite assurance that everything happened exactly as he would have it. At the length of three times as much space as would have sufficed to dispose of these points once and for all, this superexact historian goes on to set out his reasons for not doing so. He claims, in short, that his object was to portray the course of the social war, not to recount the adventures of mere individuals; and with the suggestion of a wink between his pen and paper that may raise a doubt whether he, on his side, might not be endowed with the power of casting a critical eye upon other periods than his own, he indulges in a little pleasantry at the expense of writers who, under the pretext of developing their hero's character, begin with his parent's childhood, and continue to the time of his grandchildren's youth. For himself, he asserts that nothing apart from the course of the social war, its rise and progress, has been allowed to intrude, and that ended, and their work accomplished, its champions are rather heroically treated, very much as the Arabian magician's army was disposed of until it was required again, and to all intents and purposes turned into stone just where they stood.
But from other sources it is possible to glean a little here and there of the course of subsequent events. To this patchwork record the Minneapolis Journal contributes a cartoon laden with the American satirist's invariable wealth of detail.
A very emaciated John Bull, stretched on his bed, is just struggling back to consciousness and life. On a table by his side stands a bottle labelled "Hampden's U. L. Mixture," to which he owes recovery. On the walls one sees various maps which depict a remarkably Little England indeed. Some sagacious economist, in search of a strip of canvas with which to hold together a broken model of a black man, has torn off the greater part of South Africa for the purpose. Over India a spider has been left to spin a web so that scarcely any of the Empire is now to be seen. Upper Egypt is lost behind a squab of ink which an irresponsible urchin has mischievously taken the opportunity to fling. Every colony and possession shows signs of some ill-usage.
"Say, John," "Uncle Sam," who has looked in, is represented as saying, "you've had a bad touch of the 'sleeping sickness.' You'd better take things easy for a spell to recuperate. I'll keep an eye on your house while you go to the seashore."
That was to be England's proud destiny for the next few years – to take things easy and recuperate! There is nothing else for the pale and shaken convalescent to do; but the man who has delighted in his strength feels his heart and soul rebel against the necessity. Fortunate for England that she had good friends in that direful hour. The United States, sinking those small rivalries over which cousins may strive even noisily at times in amiable contention, stretched a hand across the waters and astonished Europe by the message, "Who strikes England wantonly, strikes me": a sentiment driven home by the diplomatic hint that for the time being the Monroe Doctrine was suspended west of Suez.
France – France who had been so chivalrously true to her own ally in that stricken giant's day of incredible humiliation – looked across The Sleeve with troubled, anxious eyes, and whispered words of sympathy and hope. Gently, very tactfully, she offered friendship with both hands, without a tinge of the patronage or protection that she could extend; and by the living example of her own tempestuous past and gallant recovery from every blow, pointed the way to power and self-respect.
Japan, whose treaty had been thrown unceremoniously back to her many years before, now drew near again with the cheerful smile that is so mild in peace, so terrible in war. Prefacing that her own enviable position was entirely due to the enlightened virtues of her emperor, she now proposed another compact on broad and generous lines, by which England – a "high contracting Power," as she was still magnanimously described – was spared the most fruitful cause for anxiety in the East.
"You didn't mind allying with us when you were at the head of the nations," said Japan. "We come to you – now. Besides, all very good business for us in the end. You build up again all right, no time."
Japan's authority to speak on the subject of "building up" was not to be disputed. The nations had forgotten the time, scarcely a quarter of a century before, when they had been amused by "Little Japan's" progressive ambitions. And when Japan had taken over the "awakening" arrangements of a sister-nation on terms that gave her fifty million potential warriors to draw upon and train (warriors whom one of England's most revered generals had characterised as "Easily led; easily fed; fearless of death"), non-amusement in some quarters gave way to positive trepidation.
The sympathetic nations spoke together, and agreed that something must be done to give "Poor England" another chance; as, in the world of commerce, friendly rivals will often gather round the man who has fallen on evil days to set him on his feet again.
So England was to have a fair field and liberty to work out her own salvation. But she was not to wake up and find that it had all been a hideous dream. Egypt had been put back to the time of the Khalifa. India had lost sixty years of pacification and progress. Ireland was a republic, at least in name, and depending largely on Commemoration Issues of postage stamps for a revenue. South Africa was for the South Africans. There were many other interesting items, but these were, as it might be expressed to a nation of shopkeepers, the leading lines.
If the worst abroad was bad enough, there was one encouraging feature at home. With the election of the new government industries began to revive, trade to improve, the money market to throw off its depression, and the natural demand for labour to increase: not gradually, but instantly, phenomenally. It was as though a dam across some great river had been removed, and with the impetus every sluggish little tributary was quickened and drawn on in new and sparkling animation. It was not necessary to argue upon it from a party point of view; it was a concrete fact that every one admitted. There was only one explanation, and it met the eye at every turn. Capital reappeared, and money began to circulate freely again. Why? There was security.
It was not the Millennium; it was the year 19 – , and a "capitalistic" government was in office; but the "masses" discovered that they were certainly not worse off than before. Working men now wore, it is true, a little less of the air of being so many presidents of South American republics when they walked about the streets; but that style had never really suited them, and they soon got out of it. The men who had come into power were not of the class who oppress. The strife of the past was being forgotten; its lessons were remembered. What was good and practical of Socialistic legislation was retained. So it came about that the vanquished gained more by defeat than they would have done by victory.
It was undeniable that, in common with mankind at large, they still from time to time experienced pain, sickness, disappointment, hardship, and general adversity. Those who were employed by gentlemen were treated as gentlemen treat their work-people; those who were so unfortunate as to be in the service of employers who had no claim to that title continued to be treated as cads and despots treat their employés. Those among them who were gentlemen themselves extended a courteous spirit towards their masters, and those among them who were the reverse continued to act towards employers and the world around as churls and blusterers act, and so the compensating balance of nature was more or less harmoniously preserved.
And what of the future? Will the nation that was so sharply taught dread the fire like the burned child, or return to the flame as the scorched moth does? Alas, the memory of a people is short, even as the wisdom of a proverb is conflictingly two-edged.
Or, if the warning fades and the necessity grows large again, will there be found another Stobalt to respond to the call? "For those whom Heaven afflicts there is a chance," contributes the Sage of another land; "but they who persistently work out their own undoing are indeed hopeless."
Or may it be that the faith of Tirrel will be justified, and that in the process of time there will emerge from man's ceaseless groping after perfection a new wisdom, under whose yet undreamt-of scheme and dispensation all men will be content and reconciled?
The philosopher shakes his head weightily and remains silent – thereby adding to his reputation. The prophets prophesy; the old men dream dreams and the young men see visions, and the dispassionate speculate. On all sides there is a multitude of the counsel in which, as we must believe, lies wisdom.
It is an interesting situation, and as it can only be definitely settled beyond the dim vista of future centuries, the pity is that we shall never know.
