SOME WAR GAINS.
THE print of the essay entitled " Some Gains of the War," which was read by Sir Walter Raleigh at a meeting of the Royal Colonial Institute on February 13th, is prefaced by the customary and formal warning that " the Institute as a body is not responsible either for the statements made or for the opinions expressed by Authors of Papers, &c." There is hardly an opinion or a sentiment in this essay which the Royal Colonial Institute or any other public and responsible body would be likely to view with doubt, or decline to father. We have seen few papers, on any aspect of the war, which have combined in so notable a degree sound judgment, temperate views clearly and forcibly expressed, human sympathy, ardent patriotism, and absolute confidence in the issue of the war and the future of the nation. What Sir Walter Raleigh has to say, and it is all worth saying, is en- livened with epigram, and a dry humour which can be caustic as well as genial.
We have heard much of late about Pacificism and the " Defeatists." Before considering Sir Walter Raleigh's review of our gains in the war, we may note what he has to say on these urgent topics of the hour :— "There is no escape for us by way of the Gospels. The Gospel plecept to turn the other cheek to the aggressor was not addressed to a meeting of trustees. Christianity has never shirked war, or even much disliked it. Where the whole soul is set on things unseen, wounds and death become of less account. And if the Christians have not helped us to avoid war, how should the pacificists be of use ? Those of them whom I happen to have met have shown themselves, in the relations of civil life, to be irritable, self-willed, combative creatures, where the average soldier is calm, unselfish, and placable. There is something incongruous and absurd in the pacificist of British descent. He has fighting in his blood, and when his creed, or his nervous sensibility to physical horrors, denies him the use of fighting, his blood turns sour. He can argue, and object, and criticise, but he cannot lead. All that he can offer us in effect is eternal quarrels in place of occasional fights."
That we should have both the eternal quarrels and the occa- sional fights, under a League of Nations, is evidently Sir Walter's opinion. The League " may do good," but imagina- tion and a knowledge of the facts shut out " high hopes of it as a full solution." So much for the Pacificists—to whom President Wilson said, in effect : " You want Peace and so do I ; but I know how to get it and you don't "—and for those who dream of the early dawn of a thousand years of peace maintained by a series of majority-verdicts among the nations. Here is Sir Walter Raleigh's analysis of the " Defeatists " :— " The people who do the half-hearted and timid talking are either young egotists, who are angry at being deprived of their personal ease and independence ; or elderly pensive gentlemen, in public offices and clubs, who are no longer fit for action, and being denied action, fall into melancholy ; or feverish journalists, who live on the proceeds of excitement, who feel the pulse and take the temperature of the war every morning, and then rush into the street to announce their fluttering hopes and fears ; or cosmo- politan philosophers, to whom the change from London to Berlin means nothing but a change in diet, and a pleasant addition to their opportunities of hearing good music ; or aliens in heart, to whom the historic fame of England, dear for her reputation through the world,' is less than nothing ; or practical jokers, who are calm and confident enough themselves, but delight in startling and depressing others. These are not the people of England ; they are the parasites of the people of England. The people of England understand a fight."
The gains of the war, which Sir Walter Raleigh enumerates and appraises, are not gains of territory, or prisoners, or booty, or indemnities--not such spoils as Germany set out to grasp,
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as deliberately in 1914 as in 1870, full of confidence that a successful war is good business. " The essence of our cause, and its greatest strength, is that we are not fighting for profit. We are fighting for no privilege except the privilege of possessing our souls, of being ourselves—a privilege which we claim also for other weaker nations." So ours are not material gains. The first of them is that we have found ourselves. We discovered, quite early in the war, the splendours of the youth of the Empire. " It is worth knowing that we are not weaker than our fathers." We have also found one another, and a new kindliness has grown up and a clearer understanding. " No Radical Member of Parliament will again, while any of us live, cast contempt on ' the carpet Captains of Mayfair.' No idle Tory talker will again dare to say that the working men of England care nothing for their country. Even the manners of railway travel have improved." Sir Walter Raleigh takes a genial view of the exactions of " profiteers " and munition workers, who " are endeavour- ing, incidentally, to better their own position." Nor doe] he fear civil strife. In the Napoleonic Wars our naval mutineers at the Nore agreed that if the French Fleet appeared during the mutiny the Wench Fleet should have their first attention.
Another war gain is that we have now some understanding of the British Commonwealth of independent nations, so widely scattered over the world. " I can only hope that the Canadians and Anzacs think as well of us as we do of them. . . . I am told that a new kind of peerage, very haughty and very self-important, has arisen in South London. Its members are those householders who have been privileged to have Anzac soldiers billeted on them." Such private ties " make the fine meshes of the web of Empire."
A further gift of the war is increased activity and alertness. We have lost our great national reputation for idleness. The Germans mistook the idleness of our athletes for softness. They were convinced of error " when the bank-clerks of Manchester broke the Prussian Guard into fragments at Contalmaison." But if as a nation we had too great love of leisure, the war has sent the idle classes " to the lathe and the plough ; women are doing a hundred things that they never did before, and doing them well." Our new industry and energy will endure beyond the war, no matter whether " we win through to real peace and real security, or are thrown back on an armed peace and the duty of unbroken vigilance."
In his own peculiar province Sir Walter Raleigh finds the clearest gain of all, and one already certain—the establishment of the English language in a greater dominion than ever before, and in world-wide security. It was never endangered by German. " You may roam the world over, and you will hear no pidgin German. . . . Armed ruffians cannot endear their language to those who have suffered from their violence." It is a gain to the world that the position of the English language, " incomparably richer, more fluid, and more vital than the German language," should be strengthened, and with it the scope and opportunities of English literatur3 enlarged still further. " Nothing has been done in German literature for which we have not a counterpart, done as well or better—except the work of Heine, and Heine was a Jew. His opinion of the Prussians was that they are a compost of beer, deceit, and sand." Sir Walter Raleigh lately asked a good German scholar what is the German word for " fair play." He replied, as they do in Parliament, that he must have notice of that question.
The war gain of English language and literature is doubly. assured by the entry of America as a combatant. " No nation,, in the whole course of human history, has ever made a more splendid decision, or performed a more magnanimous act." One result of that act, Sir Walter Raleigh believes, will be a closer approach of the speech usages of the two great Anglo-Saxon nations ; another will be the end of an old family quarrel, not very profound or significant.
In the quickening of the human conscience, as shown in our tender care of the wounded and the maimed, lies the greatest gain of the war and the greatest advance made in restraint of war:— "If the nations come to recognise that their first duty, and their first responsibility, is to those who give so much in their service, that recognition will of itself do more than can be done by any
conclave of statesmen to discourage war. . . If war, in process of time, shall be abolished, or, failing that, shall be governed by the codes of humanity and chivalry, like a decent tournament, then the one sacrificial figure which will everywhere be honoured for the change will be the figure not of a priest or a politician, but of a hospital nurse."
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