TOPICS OF THE DAY • " A NEW WAY OF
LIFE."
IN a brilliant summary of the events of the past month to be found in the April For1night7y, the writer, while dealing with the naval crisis, uses these words :— " The problem will not depart. We shall have to meet it not by battleahips alone but by a new way of life." We are profoundly convinced of the truth of this statement. We have get as a nation to face a situation which can only be adequately met bv "a new way of life." 'When we say this we must not be 'thought to be yielding to the pessimism which has affected a certain section of the population, or to give encouragement to the notion that we have become decadent as a people, or that we have in any way begun to decline as one of the Great Powers of the world. We are not among those who think that the nation has suffered in its moral health, or that we are worse from that point of view than our forefathers. On the contrary, we believe that the nation was never better in this respect, and that there never was a larger proportion of the popula- tion anxious to do right, and to act in accordance with what it believes to be the will of God. Again, we doubt whether there ever was a, time when men were more sincerely patriotic, and more anxious to maintain the Empire " n health and wealth long to live." It is true, no doubt, that now, as when Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet, there is much to deplore in the national character, and much that needs change. We are far too much given to luxury and softness. If our richer classes are less drunken, they are more gluttonous and more extravagant and effeminate in their personal habits. Our life is still too often the "mean handiwork of craftsman, cook, or groom." But thougli these are evils that cry aloud for remedy. and though we do not forget them, they are not the evils on which we want to dwell at the present moment. While we do not deny the continuous need for higher Moral ideals, what we specially desire to emphasise is the need for a greater seriousness, or, if you Will, hardness, of outlook. What we have got to change is a certain light-heartedness, or complacency of temper, that has lately marked our peeple,—the env belief that every one must admire and respect our good intentions and our noble and humanitarian point of view. We have got in future to face the world, not AS we should like it to be, but as it is,—the world of blood and iron, controlled by men who are not humanitarians and philanthropists, but persons intensely human on the other side of man's nature,.persons who do not take what they would call a Sunday-school view of the world, but rather the view that man is still a wild beast, that the race is to the strong and not to the well-intentioned, that victory belongs to the big battalions, not to those who say that they envy no man anything, and who cannot understand why nations should hate or be jealous of each other.
Marston in the prologue to one of his tragedies warns his audience that if they have been too long "nuzzled 'twixt the breasts of happiness," and if they dare not face life as it is, and realise what men have been and will be, they had better avoid his play. As far as the -great external national responsibilities are concerned, we as a nation have been to long "nuzzled 'twixt the breasts of happiness "; or, as another Elizabethan poet has said, we have come very near to being "drowned in security." Hitherto, though we may have had periodical scares about the Fleet and the command of the sea, at heart the British people have always felt that there was little or no risk of our supreme power at sea being successfully challenged. They have been willing every now and then to indulge in, or even to encourage, a slight sense of anxiety about the Navy in order to "make assurance doubly sure." They have never believed, however, that there was any real risk of the command of the sea being taken from us. The mood of the nation has been similar to that which Sir John Fisher seventeen months ago recom- mended to his countrymen in stentorian tones. It was the mood of those who say : We have got a Fleet so invincible that even if things are not quite as well with the Navy as they might be, there is no appreciable danger, and we can all of us sleep comfortably in our beds, knowing that the worst that could possibly happen to us would be some trouble in India or on the Continent, a trouble which, however disagreeable, cotild never touch our hearths and homes.' Like the Anglo-Saxons so well described by Carlyle, we have gone about our business in "pot-bellied equanimity," good-temperedly oblivious of the hard realities of life, end sure that nothing disastrous could ever overtake us. Carlyle, remember, went on to point out how the Norman invasion woke the Anglo-Saxon out of this "pot-bellied equanimity" and braced him for higher things.
It is clear that the men of the present generation have got to abandon their mood of " pot-bellied equanimity." - Though we have not been, and we believe we shall not be in the end, passed in the race for naval supremacy by Germany, the rivalry for the command of the sea which we are now experiencing is something wholly different from anything which we have known for the past hundred years. Even though by a great effort at construction we pass unscathed through the danger zone of 1911 and 1912, we shall still have to face the fact that Germany is determined in the course of the next ten or fifteen years to produce a fleet of battleships equal, if not indeed superior, to our own, and that this determination has been come to by a nation more populous than our own, and quite as rich, quite as capable, quite as energetic, and with a capacity for seamanship hardly inferior to ours, and a capacity for discipline and organisation probably superior. Again, we have got to face the fact that though our start in the race has been a very great one, it is a start which by the nature of things we cannot maintain. Our handicap at present consists in the possession of ships which, though they are good ships now, and may remain good ships for another seven or eight years, must in the end, and owing to natural causes, disappear. Dreadnoughts ' may not be, and probably are not, all that their constructors fancy them, but be the ' Dreadnoughts ' good or bad per se, the pre-' Dreadnought' type of ship is bound to become antiquated with time. But the period in which the pre-' Dreadnought ' type will become obsolete coincides with the period, in which the German rate of construction will have become, or may have become, equal, and in certain years superior, to our own. Here is the new fact,— a new fact from which there is no escape. Our command of the sea is being challenged by a. people with material resources just as great as, if not greater than, our own. That the prospect is a hard and disagreeable one it would be absurd to deny. [We do not believe it in any sense to be hopeless, because we believe that when our people become fully alive to a specific danger there are no men on the face of the globe so resolute, so bravo, so self-sacrificing, and therefore so likely to be successful in war.] The sense of absolute security which we used to enjoy may have been injurious to us as a nation, but we are not going to be so hypocritical as to pretend that it was anything but pleasant. It gave us a sense of stability at home and of the power to influence the world in regard to many humanitarian and philanthropic objects abroad which, we are not ashamed to say, was extremely gratifying. For example, it was our invincible power at sea which enabled us to do so much to abate the greatest moral evil from which the world has ever suffered,—slavery and the slave trade. It enabled vs, again, to do much for the cause of political liberty throughout the world. No doubt we may not always have exerted our power as we should, yet on the whole we believe that the influence conferred by the command of the sea was not ignobly employed, nor without the sincere desire to benefit mankind as a whole. Our determination to maintain the command of the sea as a matter of self- preservation may therefore not utijustly be mixed with a desire to use that command, of the sea in the future for the beneficent purposes in which it has been used in the past.
If we are asked specifically how we are to reach the new way of life, we should answer, in the first place, by refusing to feed ourselves any longer upon what Wordsworth called "emasculating food,"—the food of sentiment and un- reality. We must not pretend that the world is better than it is or different from what it is, but take its true measure, and face the facts like men. We must realise that in public as in private life business is business, and that we are not engaged in a pleasant game of bridge, bet in transactions where failure to maintain our ground means ruin, and the international equivalent of the Bankruptcy Court. We must give up the pleasant pretence that nobody could really be so wicked, so hard-hearted, so unkind as to mean us any barna, or to desire to bully me- te knock on the head, in fact, so beneficent and kindly and " intich respected" a middle-aged gentleman as John Bull. We must not accept the politenesses of diplomacy and the eon phrases of "international amity" too seriously, and when we find that they do not mean much show ill-temper and indignation.—To do that is to act as foolish and unbecoming a part as if a man on the duelling-ground were to take the salutes and courtesies of his antagonist as a Bien of goodwill, and then complain that after treatment so kindly he had been rud clean through the body, or had had a bullet lodged in his shoulder.—Next, and most important of all, we must strain every nerve, not merely to provide the material means of defence, though these of course are essential, but also to brace the nation as a. whole for the great and patriotic struggle to which in all human probability it will be exposed in the course Of the next ten or fifteen years, if not before. To our inietd, one of the best ways of doing this is to train the nation as a whole to the use of arms, and to call im citizen capable unless he is able to use his rifle in active co-operation with his fellows, and under an appropriate organisation awl discipline, in the defence of his country. teiversal training and. national service will give us a i military force in these islands which will make t im- possible for any Power to invade us. To conquer a million of trained men you must bring at least a million and a half, or probably two millions, to match them, and this is beyond the resources of what we somewhat strangely term civilisa- tion. Again, universal training gives us a reservoir from which, in the event of any great Imperial catastrophe, we can draw volunteers for oversee service. If we were faced with another Indian Mutiny, we might have to ask for half-a-million volunteers. As it is, we should no doubt get them, but they would be of little or no use to us because they would be without training. If we had had universal training for some ten or fifteen years, ouch an aPnettl would give us volunteers in whom the foundations of military service had been well and truly laid. The new way of life which we desire to see in this Country must not be confined to the political outlook or to naval and military preparations. It must go deep into the fibre of the people. Every man, whether he is tilling the soil, hewing coal, laying bricks, writing books, organising business, or planning some industrial work great or small, must accustom himself to feel that be is doing it, not for himself or his family alone, but partly for his country. In every form of activity the Motherland must be the silent partner who calls upon him for an extra margin of effort, energy, and self-sacrifice. The present writer can best put the matter in concrete form by recalling a criticisin made of this country by a very friendly and els° most able German Professor. "You English- men,' he said in effect, "differ from us Germans in the 'way. in which you regard your business, whether it is writing books, manufacturing industrial products, or doing Work under Government. The Englishman is always looking forward to the time when he will be able to give up the boredom of the shop or the office and retire to amuse himself by field-sports, or golf, or travel, or literature, or whatever interests him as an individual. His object is to make enough money to become what he calls a free 111, an- In Germany rtenan's object is different. He wants !") be able to feel that he has done the particular work whieli he has been engaged better than auy one else has ever done it,—that be has written the very best book or compiled the very best table of statistics on the special matter which he has in baud, or that he has produced the very best material product that the world has ever seen, 7i developedthe best organisation conceivable either in s own trade or in a Government office. His work is !,19t a servitude to be got over, but a passion. He believes nimself to be doing patriotic and public work, no matter what the particular drudgery in which be is engaged, and he knows that his fellow-countrymen as a whole will understand this, and will give him the reward of praise tan(' sympathy according as he shall deserve .it. Hence (1.0ea not look for his reward in relief from his work, nut in its more complete accomplishment." . That the contrast was too strongly drawn may be true, but it is a criticism which is enforced, we may by a very remarkable letter in the Observer of last Sunday, in which the attitude of the German towards his work is well and sympathetically described. Our new way of life as a nation must be to copy the German spirit in this respect. It ought not to seem . the most natural thing in the world to say that a man is going to give up work, not because his health and energy are exhausted, but because lie has earned the right to go and amuse himself. Hitherto Englishmen have thought that rather a fine thing and a noble thing to say, and a. proof of how little they care for money and material concerns. We trust it will not be so regarded in future, but that instead a man may feel proud. to say :—" I could.
leave off work if I liked, but I mean to stick to my job, pleasant or unpleasant, as long its I feel I can do it thoroughly and well, because what I want is not an easy time, but to do my share of the nation's work as a. whole."
At the crisis of the Revolution Denton, copying Bacon, told his countrymen that what was needed was Boldness, Boldness, and again Boldness. It is not necessary for us, or for any one else, to say that to the British people, for they have enough, perhaps too much, of boldness and reck- lessness in their composition. The word that they need . said to them, and we hope it may be said to them by voices that will reach further than our own, is Prepare, Prepare, and again Prepare. Preparation is the need of the moment, and want of preparation has always been, though we trust it may not be in future, the chief of our national weaknesses. Our new way of life must be a way of pre- paring ourselves, morally, intellectually, and materially, for the coming struggle,—a struggle which, by the paradox of life, may be avoided by the perfection of such preparation, but in no other conceivable way.
For fear of misconception, let us say once more that if we have dwelt less upon moral than upon material regeneration, it is not because we ignore the need of higher moral ideals. That need is always with us. What is wanted in addition is a new way of facing the hard and.
disagreeable facts of the world. A mere sentimental rush towards higher things, to be followed only too probably by a reaction towards sloth and luxury, will not save us.
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