ARE IVE BARABBASQUE ?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] was Dante who wrote " I found the original of may hell in the world which we inhabit," and most must confess that there is greater truth in this than is usually comprehended.
Despite wars and rumours of wars, and Leagues and Con- ferences, and the fatuity which seems inseparable from these things, there arc some who still dream wistfully of an ideal organization of society.
No doubt the Christian ethic would give peace and joy in our time, and most abundantly ; but as Mr. Shaw has said. " the moneyed, respectable, capable world has been steadily anti-Christian and Barabbasque since the Crucifixion, and the specific doctrine of Jesus has not in all that time been put into political or general social practice:' After all, how can pure, disinterested love appeal to those who are love's bankrupts ? And even as to mere common sense, somehow or other we have been unable to act upon an enlightened self-interest, which alone would transform the world into a heaven on earth.
Sir Austen Chamberlain said recently in the House of Com- mons that '• moral disarmament has to precede physical dis- armament,- and one wonders whether that day will ever dawn when we shall cease to aspire to the impossible, that to say to found universal happiness upon political and economic measures. Having given the spirit of emulation, and strife, and envy an ample trial through the ages, it is for us now to decide whether we will continue in the same spirit, and. sinking gradually from one depth of material and spiritual degradation to another, cultivate a hell upon earth, or whether we will lift up our eyes unto the hills for the spirit of Another, in and through which the world may become a heaven. It is at our choice.
Those who would sacrifice to the good and the true arc small in number, and the probability is that the world will not- despite its bitter experience—desire to break with the Barabbasque tradition of the past, but blindly stumble along the well-worn path away from the hill country, wondering why it is that all, even its successes, seems a failure. The
Spirit of Grace will cont. to evade us as a Will o the wisp. and, bewildered. we shall exclaim (like certain of the Jews of old) What manner of saying is this that He said, 'Ye shall seek Mc and shall not find Me : and where I am, thither ye cannot conic' ?" - I Inn, Sir, &C.,
2:3 Tierney Road, S.11'.2. Parr. II. C. PRENTICE.
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