The Project Gutenberg EBook of Victory out of Ruin, by Norman Maclean This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Victory out of Ruin Author: Norman Maclean Release Date: September 4, 2010 [EBook #33637] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORY OUT OF RUIN *** Produced by Al Haines VICTORY OUT OF RUIN BY NORMAN MACLEAN HODDER AND STOUGHTON LTD. LONDON — NEW YORK — TORONTO MCMXXII Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the Edinburgh University Press PREFACE There is a joy in battle; but the greatest of all joys is to take some part, however humble, in the fight for the triumph of righteousness. There is a thrill such as can be found nowhere else in facing a mass of people whose prejudices and social customs are as an unscalable wall, in compelling their attention and, at last, in winning them to espouse your cause. To fight your opponent, loving him all the time, is the essence of Christianity. The excitement of betting on races or watching football matches is nothing compared to the excitement of facing an audience not knowing whether you are to be trampled on or to be applauded. Those who have fought under the banner of the King of Kings know the indefinable joy there is in it. That is why the young and the chivalrous give a swift response when the call is to a forlorn hope in the service of Christ. And the joy of it is this, that, whatever may happen, you are bound to win. The Infinite has infinite resources. Those who array themselves against Him are up against all the forces in the universe. The fight for the Kingdom of God is the greatest in which man ever fought; it goes on ceaselessly without any discharge; the big battalions seem always on the other side; but God always wins. There never has been a fight for deliverance, a struggle for progress, but the forces of righteousness conquered at last. This book is the third of a series. The Great Discovery portrayed the spiritual emotions of the Great War; Stand up, Ye Dead dealt with the soul of the nation in the midst of its travail; and this third book seeks to point out the way of deliverance and renewal. The malady of the world is spiritual. The fountain of healing is with God. N. M. EDINBURGH, September 1922 NOTE Chapters I, II, III, IV, VIII, IX, XI, XII, and XIII appeared in The Glasgow Herald, and Chapters VI, VII, and X in The Scotsman. Chapter V is based on an article in The Glasgow Herald, but it has been rewritten. CONTENTS CHAPTER I THE ONLY HOPE CHAPTER II THE SUPREME NEED CHAPTER III IN THE SACRED NAME OF LIBERTY! CHAPTER IV THE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES CHAPTER V THE LAST DELIVERANCE CHAPTER VI THE PERIL OF THE CROWD CHAPTER VII LET US HAVE PEACE CHAPTER VIII THE WAY OF PEACE CHAPTER IX NO ROOM CHAPTER X DOMINION FROM SEA TO SEA CHAPTER XI THERE WERE IN THE SAME COUNTRY SHEPHERDS CHAPTER XII THE FULNESS OF THE TIME CHAPTER XIII VICTORY OUT OF RUIN CHAPTER I THE ONLY HOPE 'To a large extent the working people of this country do not care any more for the doctrines of Christianity than the upper classes care for the practice of that religion.'—JOHN BRIGHT in the year 1880. It is wonderful how quickly, when a peril is past, men forget about it and straightway compose themselves to slumbrous dreams again. It was so after the Great War; it is so already regarding the great strikes. 'Don't disturb our repose,' they as good as say; 'we have had an anxious time; do let us sleep.' But wars and strikes are only symptoms of the hidden disease; and the allaying of a symptom without the healing of the disease is of all things the most dangerous. What we must consider is the disease and set ourselves to find a remedy. Then, and then only, will the symptoms harass us no more. It was a little bald man with a straggling beard and one eye that had got a little tired of the long-continued effort to look at the other, who set me thinking. The burden of his contention was that this country and the world at large is sinking back into paganism. Though I endeavour to keep an open mind and refuse to accept opinions ready- made, however much inclined I may be to shirk the preliminary fatigue of forming opinions of my own, yet the opinions of my friend are worth recording. They are at least gropings after the truth. I 'What is the test of a Christian?' asked the little man, trying to bring his vagrant eye to bear on me; 'if we once settle that we shall be able to judge whether this is now a Christian world. The test is not beliefs or opinions regarding the Founder of Christianity (for trifles such as that men used cheerfully to burn their fellows aforetime, thinking they were doing God service); to find the true test we must go back to the only test known to those who knew Christ. What was their test? It was this—'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.' That spirit was love enduring even the Cross—love emptying itself that it might serve. Now, apply that test to our social organisation to-day. In the one city you find in one street mansions such as a Roman emperor could only desire in vain; and a few yards away a street of crowded closes and airless dugouts and fetid tenements where little children perish. Herod slaughtered a score of babies and the centuries pour the vials of infamy upon him. But this holocaust goes on, year in year out, ceaselessly. Yet the dwellers in the terraces tolerate that. The causes that produce slums and keep slums full are manifest. Yet they will not rouse themselves to remove them. Is that being a Christian? We assemble in church and recite, "I believe in God the Father," and every fact of the faith we profess condemns our callous indifference. If we realised that God is the Father of these babes, we would die to save them; yet we leave them a prey to vested interests. Is that toleration of evil compatible with Christianity?' 'You forget,' I objected, 'the law of environment. No man can live ahead of his own time—at least only the great can—and we are waking up to social duty as never before.' 'Waking up!' he exclaimed; 'we are going to sleep. A Christian should never need to waken up to facts like that. He would have them as a burden ever on his heart until they were for ever banished. He would be constantly hearing the voice of Him who said of little ones like these that it was better for those who did them wrong that a millstone were hanged round their necks and that they were cast into the midst of the sea.... If only we were Christians, endued with Christ's spirit of love, we would make an end of that at once.... We are only semi-pagans.' II 'It isn't merely what you see outside,' went on the little man, polishing his shining poll, 'but look inside the churches themselves—any one of the hundreds in this city—and what do you find? You find the house of God given over to an unholy merchandise. Every church is parcelled out into so many square feet, and these are bought and sold as ecclesiastical allotments. Did you ever think of that gruesome traffic, and the weirdness of it? That good news of Love brooding over all, caring even for the grass and the sparrow, has now become the monopoly of the renter, while the poor are shut out. And it was at first proclaimed to the poor without money and without price, committed to the winds of Galilee.' 'Put like that,' I said, 'it is rather weird.' 'Aye,' he went on, 'and every half-year managers and deacons assemble in the houses of God to traffic in these square feet of pews. There is a story how One long ago knotted a whip of cords and drove the traffickers out of His Father's house, His eyes blazing with anger. Would He not wield the same whip on these deacons and managers, and drive them out to-day? How astonished they would be, with all the law and all the vested interest on their side ... and yet that whip!' The little man fell silent, and his strange eye looked as if he were seeing it all. And he smiled curiously. 'Did you ever trespass on an ecclesiastical allotment?' he asked jerkily. 'No! Well, it is a thing not to be done. I once trespassed on a garden allotment out in Kelvinside, just to admire some wonderful sweet-peas, and the man who owned it found me and welcomed me like a brother, and sent me away with a radiant bunch of flowers; but an ecclesiastical allotment is another story. An old heritor once said to me that the only thing that really roused the devil in a Scotsman's heart was trespassing on his ecclesiastical allotment.' 'That only shows,' I retorted, 'how dear to a Scotsman's heart his part in the Church is.' 'That is only quibbling,' jerked out the bald man. III 'Last Sunday evening,' went on the bald man, speaking very rapidly and walking up and down the room in his excitement, 'I went to a church situated in a mean street, surrounded by closes that each holds the population of a sparse parish. A tattered bill on the door proclaimed the traffic in seats. There seemed to be no demand. There were only eighteen present. A cheap church, with varnished pews, that could hold a thousand—and only eighteen there—old people and two or three children—none who could lay hold on life with both hands. To that handful a discouraged and hopeless preacher proclaimed the evangel of the love of God ... but his voice died in the disconsolate and empty spaces.... But when I came out, there in an open space were massed thousands of men, and the air throbbed with vitality as they listened to an orator denouncing capital and proclaiming the coming of the new day when every man could have his heart's desire—money and more money.... Eighteen at the church where the salt had lost its savour, and thousands where the chaff of worldliness was the only bread served to perishing souls.' 'But you must remember that there were some churches quite full in the city that evening,' I interjected. 'Quite so,' resumed the bald man, 'but who were they that filled them? Only the one class that has still kept its hold on the seriousness and the duty of life—the middle class—the one layer of health in the nation.' 'You forget,' I protested, 'that the other two classes have proved that they know how to die.' He came to a sudden halt, and his tripping sentences suddenly stopped. 'Yes,' he answered, 'they know how to die; but what is the use of knowing how to die if they do not know how to live?' IV 'What is the use of facing death,' went on the bald man, resuming his walk up and down, and pointing now and again an accusing finger, 'if death does not teach the way of life? Through death we conquered the greatest tyranny that ever threatened the world, but the enemy has really been the victor, for the spirit of the enemy has now conquered us. That spirit is the covetousness that knows no law but force. It does not matter whether the goal aimed at be the hegemony of the world or more and more of gold—the spirit is the same. And now it has seized us. There is the profiteer living on the results of other men's industry and fattening on the plunder of the public—his god is covetousness. There are the millions who are ready to march over the ruins of the Empire, careless of the sufferings of others if only they will get their demands on the world. Nobody realises the futility of gaining the world and losing the life. Eighteen in church and thousands out for their share of the world.... It is covetousness triumphant.' The old man came to a halt and began to speak as one weighing his words. 'We are just sinking into savagery,' he went on. 'The savage knows no weapon but force—and Christianity knows no weapon but love—but we have chosen force. We have, in truth, abolished the bludgeon of force as between man and man, but pagan Rome did that. We have never learned that law must rule between class and class, as well as between man and man. We remained pagan in our jealousy and distrust as between class and class, and failed to make law supreme. We failed because we had no brotherliness, no love. If we had been Christians we would have made the law of love supreme long ago.... What a hollow mockery our actions are. Our statesmen become rhetorical over a tribunal of the nations that will make wars cease for ever, while war reigns in our own midst. Tribunals and treaties are nothing if truth be not supreme in the heart. But there is never a word about that.... We think we can raise the world to a level higher than we have attained ourselves, as if water could ever rise higher than its source.... The law of force is honest paganism, but this covering up of the world's foulness with scum—that is nauseating pharisaism. Where the spirit of love and truth is not, there peace cannot be.' V Whether the bald man with the one piercing and the other straying eye was right or wrong I am no great judge. But it is clear that there is something very far wrong. It is not in our country, the fairest on God's earth, that the evil lies, nor in the Empire, the greatest and richest ever reared by man. The evil is not without but within us. The only hope for us is in a regenerated spirit. And there is none who can give us that new spirit but the Carpenter of Nazareth. He was Himself a poor working man toiling for twenty years, wielding heavy, clumsy tools as he shaped rude ploughs in a village of poor fame. He can feel for poor toiling working men; it was He who first taught brotherhood. To a generation that says, 'Let me get all I can, however much others may suffer,' He says, 'Say not so, but rather say, Let me serve all I can, however much I may suffer.' If He were here now He would be talking to men in public-houses and at the street corners and on the fringes of crowds, and He would say, 'My brothers, why excite yourselves over the world? Life is not money. Life is love and beauty and sonship with God. It is not what the hand grasps but what the eye sees and the heart feels that makes life great. If you want the fulness of life, lose it.' And to rich men He would say, 'Your riches are only yours in trust that you may serve: consecrate them or they will be taken from you.' He would have but one law for all—Love. If they but loved there could not be any more profiteering, or ca' canny, or any injustice. For love never says 'Give,' only 'Let me give.' ... But, alas! we make room for every spirit but that. For forty years we have taught the children by statute, but they have not been taught that. They have been taught figures and the records that are mainly the records of crime, and the explanations that are no explanations. We must begin again and teach our children what duty is, what the love of God and man is, what reverence is, and how there is a moral purpose working out life and death— life if men conform to it and death if they defy it. We teach everything by statute except that—the one thing needful. We teach that man is to be saved by the brain; we have forgotten that salvation is of the soul. There is but one power known among men that can turn the self-willed and self-centred life into the self-sacrificing and the God-centred life, and that power is the spirit of the Carpenter of Nazareth. If we but sought it, then it would fuse the poor fissiparous sand of our national life into the unity and potency of steel. It is our only hope. CHAPTER II THE SUPREME NEED 'To me through these thin cobwebs Death and Eternity sat gazing.'—THOMAS CARLYLE. Many eager hearts looked for the redemption of mankind to come out of Armageddon. Aceldama has been cleansed, but redemption seems to tarry. And nobody need be surprised. Out of filth and mud and horror the cleansed soul does not emerge. There was a king long ago who saw ten horrible plagues succeed each other until at last the first- born lay dead—but he was the same until the sea overwhelmed him. And man is the same in all ages. Cataclysms do not work renewal. Miracles do not regenerate. Not even the millions dead will mean a new earth or a new Britain. That new Britain of the heart's desire will only come if men and women whose souls are quickened will arise and make their world anew. The world's supreme need is not reorganisation, but a new spirit. I The pathos of humanity is that men are ever the victims of illusion. After Waterloo, when a conflict that waged for a quarter of a century ended, our fathers hailed the millennial dawn. But, alas! Peterloo succeeded Waterloo. The nation was seized with the passion for riches. To get rich quick the nation had to be reorganised on an industrial basis, and the people were swept out of the green of England and out of the straths and valleys of Scotland into sunless, airless cities. A population that formerly lived in cottages was now piled into barracks. In mills above ground and in mines beneath little children were set to labour. Social conditions were created that destroyed two hundred babies out of a thousand in the first year of life. These conditions still continue. The pages of the Press in these last days show how horrifying they still are. There are streets in our cities which are sacrificial altars on which the little children are offered to the social Moloch.... These things came after Waterloo. The cannon-fodder of war became the cannon-fodder of industry. The small minority that got rich quick were balanced by the vast multitude who got poor quick. And for four generations the ugly streets have presented the spectacle of files of men begging for work—begging for permission to exist! To-day the files wait for the dole. The folly and the greed have worked out the inevitable consequences. History goes on monotonously repeating itself. II And just as a hundred years ago men thought they were going to make a new and better world by reorganisation, so also is it to-day. On all hands the cry is reorganise. In Paris and in Glasgow it is the same. In Paris they are to save the world from all future bloodshed by a treaty. That childlike faith in treaties!—they have forgotten that treaties were unable to save even one fragment of Europe eight years ago. But this time the treaty is to be so very big that it will save. But, alas! no treaty is of value beyond the truth in the soul of its signatories—and of that there is never a word. No treaty can exorcise greed, ambition, and lust out of the heart—and it is from these wars spring. If the hearts of the nations be not changed, one more mirage will be added to the many humanity has pursued across the burning sands, strewing the barren desert with bleached bones. In London or Glasgow or Hamilton or Fife it is the same. There also the new earth is to come through redistribution. Society will be differently organised. The voice that to-day cries, 'What is yours is mine,' will to-morrow shout victory. The day of material good will come through the maximum of pay for the minimum of work. The new order will banish all our ills. But the question emerges—How is the new order to be worked? If the new order is to bless humanity it must be guided and administered by men of truth, unselfishness, and honour. Unless there be such, then the mastery of capital will be only succeeded by the tyranny of the mob. None asks how such men are to be found. The hope of the new world lies not so much in better machinery as in better men. The men in the Cabinets adjusting the map of the world and the men in the shipyards and the mines are alike in this, that they forget that man's supreme need is regeneration and not reorganisation. III It is on that ultimate fact—that the supreme need of the day is a new spirit—that the Church seeks to fix the attention of the nation. The Church has only one purpose—to make God blaze forth once more before the eyes of men. In that alone lies the salvation of the future. The great host of the toilers may adopt the watchword 'Brotherhood,' but that is only half a truth. A brotherhood that knows nothing of a common fatherhood will not stand the day of strain. The Church therefore proclaims the full truth that the brotherhood of men only realises itself in the Fatherhood of God. To the nations seeking a unity by way of parchments, the Church must also proclaim that there can be only one ultimate unity for nations—the only unity that will stand all strain—the unity of the Spirit. The Church has the one message for warring nations and for warring classes: 'One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.' The Church alone can bring home to the hearts of men that the way of honour is that of service, and the path of greatness that of sacrifice. Looking back on that long road by which humanity has marched forward even to this hour, it is strange to think how the great days on which the epochs turned have not been the days of mammon-worship or of military glory, but the days on which the Cross suddenly blazed forth in the heavens, as it did to Constantine, when the summons rang—'By this sign conquer.' It was then that men set their faces to climb upward, realising that the greatest thing a man can do with his life is to lay it down. And not by a cross blazing in heaven, but by millions of crosses round which the winds moan and sigh on earth, does God summon us to-day. It is that summons the Church would sound. By the spirit of self-sacrifice, by the law of love—by these alone can the world be saved. IV The remedy for every woe on earth is the one commandment—'Love one another, as I have loved you.' It is so divinely simple—perhaps that is why the generations refuse to listen. The measure of the law is its greatness—'As I have loved you.' To obey that law means—blood. It was the greatness of the sacrifice that was made and the greatness of the sacrifice demanded that stirred the hearts of men to life. 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me,' the Christian said, and with rapture in his heart he looked at others and said, 'He loved that man also, and gave Himself for him. I cannot rob or murder or leave in misery a man for whom Christ's hands were nailed to the cross.' That was what revolutionised the world long ago. It is the only way in which the world can be revolutionised to-day. If only the world can be brought to listen to the law of love, the world will become new. CHAPTER III IN THE SACRED NAME OF LIBERTY! 'The ranks are gathering; on the one side of men rightly informed and meaning to seek redress by lawful and honourable means only, and on the other of men capable of compassion and open to reason but with personal interests at stake so vast and with all the gear and mechanism of their arts so involved in the web of past iniquity that the best of them are helpless and the wisest blind.'—The Right Hon. C. F. G. MASTEBMAN. It is difficult for men and women to arrive at a true estimate of their own state of mind. What others think of us is often a truer gauge than what we think of ourselves, for we can only look at ourselves through the distorting glass of self-love and self-interest. In these last days we have had a wonderful revelation of what others think of us. Our hoardings and our advertisement pages are crowded with appeals which could only appeal to a generation that had ceased to think and ceased to bear upon their hearts the woes of their fellows. In the sacred name of liberty, in the cause of brotherhood and equality, we were exhorted on every horizon to hold fast and change not. And we were, above all, to beware of fanatics! We are indeed fallen very low if this measure of our intelligence be correct. I In the sacred name of liberty we are exhorted to lay no sacrilegious hand on the sacred ark of our licensing system. Whatever results may ensue of perishing babes and ruined manhood we must vote No Change, for liberty is great. Moloch of old was great; so great that he demanded and got the sacrifice of a child now and then. But ' Liberty' is greater still. If it be true that in proportion to the number of licences in a district is the death-rate among the babies; if in districts crowded with public-houses there be a death-rate of something like 160 to 180 per 1000 babies in the first year of life, while in districts where public-houses are rare the death-rate is about 40 per 1000 babies in the first year of life; and if we are to vote No Change and acquiesce in that in the name of liberty, how great that idol Liberty must be! We must examine it and make sure that its feet be not of clay. II What is freedom? Freedom is that condition of things which enables a man to co-ordinate all his faculties for the development of what is best in him. The best a man is capable of is the evolution of a character whose uprightness and honesty will command respect. But no sooner does a man set his face toward that goal than he finds that he can only climb towards it by sacrificing the liberty of his lower nature. The animal in man must be fettered that the spirit may grow. Only so can nobility of character be produced. It is manifest then that freedom to produce character is only achieved by sacrificing liberty. The idol Liberty is not, after all, really so great. The best in life is not, however, developed in isolation. For we are bound up with our fellow-men in the complex organism of life. And we have no right to exercise any liberty that will mean loss or injury to our fellows. It may be beneficial to me that I should have the stimulus of alcohol; it may add colour to my drab life, and make the bores that harass me more tolerable; and I may find in it a sacramental value, as it promotes the flow of easy fellowship; but if the provision made to supply one with that stimulus means the ruin of others—the perishing of babes and the destruction of homes—then I have no right to that provision. The limit of my personal freedom is the beginning of hurt or injury to my fellow-men. It is along this great line that civilisation has evolved. Each step forward has been a restriction of liberty. Every extension of the franchise has been a restriction of the power of the classes that ruled previously; each new law a restriction of the right to do what one liked. Every great social advance has been a restriction of previous liberty. No man is free now to leave his children uneducated; no employer is free to deal as he pleases with his employed. No sooner is the child born than the law has it in its grip: within a few days the parent must register it and give a biography of its ancestors to a registrar; then it ordains that it be inoculated. At five years of age the child is deprived of liberty, for he is shut up in barracks and then made a prisoner for ten years, compelled to learn things that will never be of any value in all the after years. After he has escaped from that prison-house, there comes an interval of illusory liberty. He comes and goes as he likes after the hours of toil. Then comes an emotional crisis and he marries—and what is there left of his liberty? Every family is established on this—the restriction of liberty. The traffic in the street and the narcotic in the shop are alike in the grasp of law. From the cradle to the grave a man is surrounded with restrictions of liberty. There is no base liberty left to-day but the liberty to get drunk. In the name of freedom there must come an end to that liberty. III And yet the horizon glows with these placarded appeals to leave things as they are in the name of liberty. There is a true feeling behind these appeals—the feeling that above all things Scotsmen love freedom. And so they do. There is no race under the sun that have hazarded their lives so much and so frequently for freedom as we have done. How it stirs our blood to read the words in which our ancestors in the year 1320 defied the Pope when his Holiness sided with England against King Robert Bruce. 'The wrongs which we have suffered under the tyranny of Edward are beyond description,' wrote the nobility and commonalty of Scotland in Parliament assembled, '... while a hundred of us exist we will never submit to England. We fight not for glory, wealth, or honour, but for that liberty without which no virtuous man can survive.' We know the end of that and of every fight our fathers fought for liberty. It was the moorsmen and cottars of Scotland, who defied three kingdoms, and fought on with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other, that saved the liberties of nations. But what liberty was it they fought for? The liberty to get drunk! The liberty to establish at every street corner a centre for the spreading of disease, misery, and pauperism! Those who make such appeals surely underrate the intelligence of a generation who have not yet quite forgotten the exploits and the sacrifices of their sires. The freedom they achieved was the freedom to worship God as their consciences directed, and to develop that national character of uprightness and understanding that has been so fraught with blessing to the world. And that freedom it is left to us to carry to fruition—by developing a State that shall be free from ignorance, from degradation, from vice, from self-indulgence—in one word, from drunkenness in every form. 'He who will not give up a little temporary liberty for essential safety, deserves neither liberty nor safety,' declared Benjamin Franklin. We shall awake and establish public safety on the ruins of a false and a degrading liberty. When we shall have achieved that— then we shall be free indeed. IV Nothing appeals to my own heart so much as the anxiety shown by those publicists regarding my taxation. They feel so much for me, and are afraid that I shall require to pay more of an income-tax if I do not vote No Change. This care for my personal interests touches me profoundly; and the desire that the nation should drink itself into financial prosperity must affect every patriot's heart. But, again, Scotsmen can think. And no sooner do we exercise our minds than we see how fallacious all this is—and how ungrounded our fears. The greatest loss the nation siistains is the revenue from alcohol. What are the losses that are entailed by that revenue? Against it must be put the pauperism that the State has to support, and which is mainly caused by alcohol; the cost of "police and judges and prisons that are mainly required because of alcohol; the loss to the State of the lives wasted and ruined by alcohol. Strike a balance— and there is no gain to the State from the revenues of alcohol. The greatest loss the State sustains is the revenue it derives from the misery and degradation of its citizens. No State can grow rich by exploiting the misery and the vice of its own people. Were the money now wasted in this non-productive trade devoted to industry, the resultant product would pay the State over and over again for any loss from the sacrifice of alcohol. Already this is being proved in the United States. In the State of Massachusetts an increase in the taxation of theatres, soft drinks, candy, and transport not only made up for the loss from the taxes on alcohol, but realised an increase of over 500,000 dollars in the first dry year! There in America the breweries and distilleries are being converted into jam factories, boot factories, and where formerly 250 men were employed they now employ 1500 men! One such factory bears the placard:— 'Once we made booze, Now we make shoes.' The revenue that comes from prosperity enriches a nation; the revenue that comes from its degradation impoverishes. When we are freed from the waste and ruin wrought by alcohol—then our national revenue will nourish as never before. In a prosperous land the revenue will look after itself. Those who are so anxious lest we be overtaxed are trying to inspire us with groundless fears. V The most sacred thing on earth is the mother and the child. It is they who suffer and perish because of conditions that are indefensible. The little spark of grey matter behind the eyes of a little child may become a Newton, a Knox, or a Walter Scott. 'There is no wealth but life,' declared Ruskin. Every motive of patriotism and religion moves us to do everything in our power to save childhood and motherhood. There never in any land was any propaganda so cynical, so unblushing as the propaganda that for weary weeks has now screamed in our ears—'No Change.' The blood of four dread years, and then—'No Change!' The agony of the world's most awful Gethsemane, and at its end—'No Change!' ... Nothing more need be said. Only the blind could have made such appeals. CHAPTER IV THE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES The deadliest foe of humanity is the deadening power of custom. What we have seen from our earliest days has no power to stir our conscience or kindle the fire of indignation. It may be the case that when Lot went down to Sodom he was at first 'vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked.' But he did not continue vexed very long. He got to like it. At last he sat at the gates of that city with great enjoyment. As he sank into the mire he became unconscious of the slough. Otherwise he would never have returned to it. When the great war of the five kings against four reached its consummation, and Lot was a prisoner going north with a halter round his neck, he often groaned, 'If I ever get out of this I'll never look near that filthy Sodom again.' Like a bolt from the blue came deliverance and victory and spoils—and back he went to Sodom and its filthy conversations as before. It is such a wonderfully modern story. In every age men get so accustomed to the filth that it no longer seems filth. The mud of their daily habit becomes their gold. I When we look back on the long road by which humanity has travelled and read of the things men once did in cold blood, we wonder how they could ever have had the heart to do them. The answer is—custom. To us it is incredible that men should once have trafficked in human flesh and blood. And yet to our forefathers of even recent years it seemed the most natural thing. Were there not slaves from the beginning, and naturally there would be unto the end! The captains of the slave ships would assemble their crews in their cabins for prayer meetings while the holds of their ships were filled with men and women dying in these gehennas! So far from experiencing any twinges of conscience, these slave captains regarded themselves as benefactors of humanity. Sir John Hawkins was not alone in priding himself on the fact that he brought so many of the heathen of Africa into Christian lands, where they might hear the Gospel. It is not so long ago when children of six years worked in factories from five in the morning to nine at night. We who play with our babes and build our brick castles in Spain while they shout for joy—think of it! What hearts they must have had— these fathers of ours—who took the babes by their thousands and harnessed them to the car of their juggernaut! And yet they were not any different from us. They were only blinded by custom.... Whoever has wandered over the hills of his native land will remember the leap of the heart when he has suddenly seen some fair valley open up before his amazed eyes. He can hear the song of the river that waters it, he sees the clouds playing on the slopes, his awestruck lips murmur with the great artist as he looked on Glen Feshie, 'Lord God Almighty!' But no human dwelling is there, only heaps of stones where the homesteads once stood; only the bleating of sheep where children once shouted at play. What became of the people? They were driven out. The will of one man or one woman drove the population of a parish into the Cowcaddens of Glasgow or exiled them beyond the seas. And the Church of Christ looked on silent. And the men who made the countryside waste prided themselves on the fact that they set the people, whom they drove forth, on the way of fortune! How could men do deeds like these? How could the Church be silent in the face of them? Again it was just custom. The ears had got so accustomed to phrases such as the 'sacredness of property,' the 'right of a man to do what he liked with his own,' that the heart forgot the sacredness of the Gospel and the rights of the people in the land of their birth. It is time we stopped mouthing about the cannon-fodder of war, and began to speak about the cannon- fodder of custom. II If poor, blundering, pitiful humanity had not been blinded by custom to the folly of war, it would have made an end of war long ago. But all the days of youth humanity has shut into dreary barracks, learning all sorts of foolish things. And the history it learns is just the history of war after war! At fourteen the centuries seem to a boy but a river of blood. He deems it an inevitable weapon in the progress of the world—this ceaseless killing! It is custom alone that prevents humanity from making an end of that horror. And strikes are only war in another form—the bludgeon of force! Kaiserism is not dead. World dominion for me or destruction for you has its counterpart in two shillings for me or ruin for you. The spirit is the same. If custom had not deadened us to the meaning of war and strike, we would shrink back in horror at the very sound of the words. But, instead of that, ere humanity has recovered from the woe of the one, we are plunged into the woes of the other.... It sounds a respectable sort of word! And the right of a man to stop working seems elementary—for we are not slaves. But humanity has learned there is a higher word than rights—and that is duty. We owe service to our brethren. We can pay too high a price for two shillings more a day if they mean starving women and perishing children. Life is more than livelihood; and if the endeavour to better livelihood means the destruction of life, then it is condemned. And that is what it means. Europe is perishing. Vienna is dying. All over the world Rachel is weeping for her children. What Europe needs is coal and raw materials, that it may have wherewith to buy food. And we go on strike. And ships can no longer carry food or cotton; and Europe will starve ... starving is a good discipline and I shouldn't mind ... but, God! the little children ... the babies.... 'Strike,' we shout, finding it easy through long custom. But our striking is only completing the work that Kaiserism began. And the little graves are dug faster and faster; and you can hear the falling of tears like soft rain.... What savages we are, unable through any disciple to learn that the world can only be saved by submitting to law and by ceasing to wield the bludgeon of force.... When one thinks of the poor suffering, quarrelling, dying slaves of custom; when one sees the world in one blinding flash convulsed in the death throes—Oh, God! if only there came a gale from Heaven—a sudden, rushing wind. Only that could save a world blinded like this. III You may imagine that I am exaggerating the power of this tyrant of whose despotism you are unconscious. But you have only to think and you will at once recognise that my words are but the words of soberness. Use your eyes as if for the first time—and what a world this is that surrounds us! I read the other day a paragraph in the morning paper that made my blood cold. A discharged soldier got his gratuity and spent his day in jollity. He came home at night and, in the presence of his children, trampled his wife to death, and not his wife only, but the unborn child—and in the presence of his children. That, in the most cultured city in Bible-loving and Christian Scotland. And every day the tale is much the same. Little children are perishing, mothers are broken-hearted, and the streets are strewn with human wreckage. The casualties of war pale in significance before the casualties of peace! But this does not move us: we are accustomed to it. These crowded, reeking public-houses, thirty to the half-mile, battening on the misery of the poor—we have seen them from our youth and they move us not. How many in our Circuses and Terraces and Places will even trouble themselves to so much as vote for the deliverance of their fellow-citizens? Very few in these particular places, if I mistake not. For they cannot shake themselves loose from the yoke of custom. IV And this same tyrant blinds us to the goal to which we are hastening. The last great proof of the power of custom is that when nations and empires were perishing they never knew they were perishing. Men were so accustomed to the riches and greatness and security of the Roman empire, that even when it was tottering to its fall they never realised that it was doomed. All nations have gone the one road. They have abolished God or the gods! They have cast duty to the winds; they have given themselves to Mammon and to pleasure; and they perished—but they never knew that the world that seemed to them so secure was passing away. And unless there comes a change—a mighty gale from Heaven— then this world we know must perish. Custom alone blinds us to the fact, plain to the open eye. Scotland cannot feed her people but for a few weeks in the year. For the rest they must be fed by the food brought from overseas by the fruits of our industries. If these industries fail ... we perish. The Clyde will no longer hum with the throbbing engines or great ships come with food.... And every strike, every stoppage of labour, is but a step towards the abyss.... But probably that is what God means. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him—He will use hunger as the instrument wherewith to scatter the great Scottish race broadcast over the world, to people the mighty plains of Canada and the wastes of Australasia. A great silence will fall over the plain of central Scotland. The most hideous of all the workings of man will be beautified when the lichen grows over the crumbling ruins. The mavis will sing in the thorn-tree, dewy with fragrance, where Motherwell now stands ... or Anderston. That may be the hidden purpose of our follies and our crimes. This, at least, is sure, that if we cannot shake ourselves loose from the grip of custom—custom will be our destruction. CHAPTER V THE LAST DELIVERANCE Every great social advance made by men in the past has been made under the pressure of public opinion. That public opinion was created by a free and an unfettered Press. The grim fact that we are now faced with is that the day of the free Press is over. Syndicates of capitalists control the Press of the country, and newspapers whose circulation approaches a couple of millions create the opinion their owners desire. The duty of the newspaper is to record facts, and communicate to the people the correct data on which public opinion can be based. If the Press purposely suppresses what is true, lends itself to the colouring of the records so that the false seems to be the true and the true false, then it becomes the greatest public peril. A generation that is doped with doctored news can scarcely arrive at the truth. The newspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news that serve their purpose. Thus it comes that the machinery for creating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose is that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits. There are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated Press of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth. I In the United States of America and in Canada there are one hundred and twenty millions who speak our language, whose religion is also ours, who are the most intelligent and hard-headed people on the face of the earth, yet if one were to believe what the Press of this country says, one would be driven to the conclusion that they are poor foolish idealists who have said farewell to their senses. And that because the Press serves the public with doctored news. One day we are told how a hundred thousand New Yorkers are to march in procession through the streets demanding the return of their alcoholic drinks. The columns are full of the preparations for the greatest uprising of the oppressed and parched citizens. The great day comes and the procession is a fiasco. But the syndicated Press omit to record that only a miserable handful paraded the streets, the offscourings of the city's purlieus, amid the derision of the onlookers. We are later informed under great headlines that the American Medical Association or some such society has called for the annulling of the Prohibition Law. We feel that the climate is bound to become wet again, for the doctors demand it. But we soon learn that this particular association of doctors is a mere fragment of a noble profession—a fragment separate from the American Association which corresponds to the British Medical Association. But the syndicated Press does not record that fact. The Press that distorts events after that manner can only flourish among a generation that desires not the truth. II There is nothing more to be desired than that the people of Great Britain should acquaint themselves with the facts regarding the greatest social advance ever made by humanity in a generation. Can it be the case that the millions of America committed an act of social folly when they outlawed the liquor traffic and closed the saloons, and that, awakening from their dream, they are to restore the traffic in alcohol and the saloon once more? That is the impression that a spoon-fed Press seeks to create. Can it be true? To answer that question we must ascertain first whether the prohibition of the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the States was an act of panic legislation, the result of a snap vote, the effect of a passing enthusiasm or a fanaticism that was triumphant for a moment? If it be of that order, then it may be expected to be cast aside by a wearied and disillusioned people. But the movement that prohibited alcohol across the Atlantic has the toil and sacrifice and devotion of three generations behind it. It is not a thing of yesterday. As far back as 1834 the selling of liquor to Indians was forbidden by law. Seventy-six years ago (in 1846) the first Prohibition Law was enacted in the State of Maine. Fifty- seven years ago the Presbyterian General Assembly excluded liquor distillers and liquor sellers from the membership of the Church. In 1873 the Women's Temperance Crusade movement was inaugurated—a movement whose ideal was to make the United States safe for women and children by the suppression of the saloon. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed—an organisation that brought the various societies into unity and fused them into the strength of steel. There were long years of work in school and of teaching in the churches ere on the 18th December 1917 the Amendment in favour of Prohibition passed the Legislative Assemblies at Washington. Having passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, it had to be ratified by a majority of the various States. The States had seven years in which to ratify; but within one year and two months forty-five States, with a population of over one hundred millions, ratified the Amendment. Only three out of the forty-eight States failed to ratify. On the 29th January, it being certified that three-fourths of the States had ratified as the Constitution requires, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting alcohol, became law. And on that night the leaders of the movement held a service of thanksgiving in Washington, and when the hour struck ushering in the first day of the new era, Mr. W. J. Bryan began his address by reading the words: 'They are dead that sought the young child's life.' An Amendment to a National Constitution which has the generations behind it is not one to be repealed. To repeal it requires now a majority of three- fourths of the States! The one great fact to remember, is that by local option two thousand two hundred and thirty-five counties in the United States had made an end of the liquor traffic in their areas before Prohibition became the national law, and that there were only three hundred and five counties in all the States which had not declared themselves dry before Prohibition became the law. If anything be certain under the sun it is that Prohibition is the settled and unalterable policy of the United States of America. During a visit of three months, and after inquiries in several cities, I never met a single person who wanted the saloon again reopened in the States. Whatever criticism might be made, there was among everybody only one sentiment regarding the saloon—and that was thankfulness that it was closed for ever. III There are, however, those who desire the Volstead law defining alcohol amended so that the sale of beer and light wines may be permitted in restaurants with meals. To us that seems reasonable; but there is no chance of such a policy being adopted. The reason is that these experiments have already been made in the States and have been found unworkable and unsatisfactory. The settled policy of the reformers in the States is to seal up the sources of drunkenness. Every drunkard began as a moderate drinker; and the evil has to be stayed at its source. Mr. Bryan described the process dramatically: 'The moderate drinker says every man should stop when he has had enough. But the difficulty is to know when one has had enough, for enough is a horizon that recedes as one approaches it. A frail brother was advised by a friend to drink a glass of sarsaparilla when he had had enough. "That's right," was the reply, "but when I have had enough I cannot say sarsaparilla!"' The prevailing opinion among the Church and social leaders is that the liquor tra...