Читать книгу The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence - James Owen - Страница 7
ОглавлениеTHUNDERING
1914–19
Mr. Backhouse’s gift to Bodleian
7 January 1914
Sir, I read with interest the illuminating account in your issue of December 2 of the Chinese library presented by me to the Bodleian, and thank the writer for correcting an error into which I had carelessly fallen respecting one of the Sung editions, the “Ku Chin Chi Yao.” My reason for assigning some date prior to 1085 was that a character identical with the tabooed personal name of an Emperor who reigned after that year was not written with the customary omission of a stroke as a mark of respect. This rule was rigidly enforced under the Sungs, as in later dynasties, and its contravention can only have been due to carelessness on the part of the printer, as your article shows conclusively that the earlier date which I had assigned cannot be correct. It appears from a catalogue which I have consulted that the “editio princeps” of this work was published in 1260, the first year of the Ching Ting of the Southern Sung dynasty, and also the year of Kublai’s accession to the northern throne. My belief is that the copy in the Bodleian is the first edition, so that it should be assigned to the Sung and not to the Yuan. Several reproductions of Sung printing which I have seen show the cramped style of printing which your article rightly mentioned as characteristic also of the Yuan period.
In reference to another Sung print in the collection you allude to the light shade of the paper; I do not think that this is exceptional in books of that date. I have before me a Sung edition of the collection known as “Wen Hsuan” from the library of the eminent Viceroy and collector, Tuan Fang, who was murdered by his troops in Szuch’uan during the revolution. This work is mentioned in his catalogue as indisputably Southern Sung, and in this case also the paper is almost white. I may claim some knowledge of the Sung print, “Works of Tu Fu,” now at Cambridge, to which your article also refers, as it was formerly in my collection. Personally I believe it to date from about 1230, but a former Tartar general of Canton, Feng Shan, who was an authority on ancient prints, used to tell me that its date is early Yuan, say about 1290. He denied that the colour of the paper was a conclusive test, especially in view of the skilful “doctoring” of the old Chinese prints.
I am, Sir, &c.,
EDMUND BACKHOUSE
Sir Edmund Backhouse (as he later became) was regarded for much of the 20th century as one of the greatest European scholars of China, where he lived for decades until his death in 1944. His reputation stemmed in part from the inside knowledge of the Imperial court which he supplied to The Times’s correspondent in Peking. This letter dates from the period when the newspaper was starting to group all letters to it onto
a single page and records Backhouse’s donation of eight tons of historic Chinese manuscripts to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Only in 1973 were the provenance of
many of these thrown into doubt when Backhouse’s biographer Hugh Trevor-Roper unmasked him as a liar, fraudster and fantasist who had wildly exaggerated his expertise and claims of influence.
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The Redress of Crying Shames
28 February 1914
Sir, I am moved to speak out what I and, I am sure, many others are feeling. We are a so-called civilized country: we have a so-called Christian religion: we profess humanity. We have a Parliament of chosen persons, to each of whom we pay £400 a year, so that we have at last some right to say: “Please do our business, and that quickly.” And yet we sit and suffer such barbarities and mean cruelties to go on amongst us as must dry the heart of God. I cite a few only of the abhorrent things done daily, daily left undone; done and left undone, without shadow of doubt, against the conscience and general will of the community:
Sweating of women workers.
Insufficient feeding of children.
Employment of boys on work that to all intents ruins their chances in after-life — as mean a thing as can well be done.
Foul housing of those who have as much right as you and I to the first decencies of life.
Consignment of paupers (that is of those without money or friends) to lunatic asylums on the certificate of one doctor, the certificate of two doctors being essential in the case of a person who has money or friends.
Export of horses worn-out in work for Englishmen — save the mark! Export that for a few pieces of blood-money delivers up old and faithful servants to wretchedness.
Mutilation of horses by docking, so that they suffer, offend the eye, and are defenceless against the attacks of flies that would drive men, so treated, crazy.
Caging of wild things, especially wild song-birds, by those who themselves think liberty the breath of life, the jewel above price.
Slaughter for food of millions of creatures every year by obsolete methods that none but the interested defend.
Importation of the plumes of ruthlessly slain wild birds, mothers with young in the nest, to decorate our gentlewomen.
Such as these — shameful barbarities done to helpless creatures we suffer amongst us year after year. They are admitted to be anathema; in favour of their abolition there would be found at any moment a round majority of unfettered Parliamentary and general opinion. One and all they are removable, and many of them by small expenditure of Parliamentary time, public money, and expert care. Almost any one of them is productive of more suffering to innocent and helpless creatures, human or not, and probably of more secret harm to our spiritual life, more damage to human nature, than for example, the admission or rejection of Tariff Reform, the Disestablishment or preservation of the Welsh Church. I would almost say than the granting or non-granting of Home Rule — questions that sop up ad infinitum the energies, the interest, the time of those we elect and pay to manage our business. And I say it is rotten that, for mere want of Parliamentary interest and time, we cannot have manifest and stinking sores such as these treated and banished once for all from the nation’s body. I say it is rotten that due time and machinery cannot be found to deal with these and other barbarities to man and beast, concerning which, in the main, no real controversy exists. Rotten that their removal should be left to the mercy of the ballot, to private members’ Bills, liable to be obstructed; or to the hampered and inadequate efforts of societies unsupported by legislation.
Rome, I know, is not built in a day. Parliament works hard, it has worked harder during these last years than ever perhaps before — all honour to it for that. It is an august Assembly of which I wish to speak with all respect. But it works without sense of proportion, or sense of humour. Over and over again it turns things already talked into their graves; over and over again listens to the same partisan bickerings, to arguments which everybody knows by heart, to rolling periods which advance nothing but those who utter them. And all the time the fires of live misery that could, most of them, so easily be put out, are raging and the reek thereof is going up.
It is I, of course, who will be mocked at for lack of the senses of proportion and humour in daring to compare the Home Rule Bill with the caging of wild song birds. But if the tale of hours spent on the former since the last new thing was said on both sides be set against the tale of hours not yet spent on the latter, the mocker will yet be mocked.
I am not one of those who believe we can do without party, but I do see and I do say that party measures absorb far too much of the time that our common humanity demands for the redress of crying shames. And if, Sir, laymen see this with grief and anger, how much more poignant must be the feeling of members of Parliament themselves, to whom alone remedy has been entrusted!
Yours truly,
JOHN GALSWORTHY
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Treating Married Women Fairly
6 April 1914
Sir, I think it may serve a useful purpose to enunciate clearly three inevitable results of compelling professional women to give up their professions on marriage. (1) It prevents admirable women of a certain type of character from marrying at all; (2) it deprives the community of the work and the experience of another type of woman, who does not feel able to sacrifice her private life to her career; (3) it leads other women, of a more perfect balance, who demand the right to be both normal women as well as intelligences, to (a) wilfully and “dishonestly” concealing the fact of their marriage from their employers; or (b) living in union with a man without the legal tie of marriage.
Regarding the last alternative, I may say that it is sure steadily to increase if interference with married women’s work is persisted in. My own experience of three years of marriage, in which I have discovered the innumerable coercions, restrictions, legal injustices, and encroachments on her liberty imposed on a married woman by the community or sections of it, has brought me to the point of being ready to condone in any of my educated women friends a life lived (if in serious and binding union) with a man to whom she is not legally married. Three years ago such a course would have filled me with horror.
Only by treating married women properly, i.e., by leaving them the freedom of choice allowed to all other individuals, can innumerable unexpected evils be avoided.
Yours faithfully,
MARIE C. STOPES
Dr Stopes was at the time seeking to have her marriage annulled. Married Love, the work which made her name, in part by openly advocating that women practise birth control, was published in 1918.
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NOT A MANLY GAME
6 June 1914
Sir, The sooner it is realized that golf is merely a pleasant recreation and inducement to indolent people to take exercise the better. Golf has none of the essentials of a great game. It destroys rather than builds up character, and tends to selfishness and ill-temper. It calls for none of the essential qualities of a great game, such as pluck, endurance, physical fitness and agility, unselfishness and esprit de corps, or quickness of eye and judgment. Games which develop these qualities are of assistance for the more serious pursuits of life.
Golf is of the greatest value to thousands, and brings health and relief from the cares of business to many, but to contend that a game is great which is readily mastered by every youth who goes into a professional’s shop as assistant (generally a scratch player within a year!) and by the majority of caddies is childish. No one is more grateful to golf for many a pleasant day’s exercise than the writer, or more fully recognizes the difficulties and charm of the game, but there is charm and there are difficulties in (for instance) lawn tennis and croquet. It certainly seems to the writer that no game which does not demand a certain amount of pluck and physical courage from its exponents can be called great, or can be really beneficial to boys or men.
The present tendency is undoubtedly towards the more effeminate and less exacting pastimes, but the day that sees the youth of England given up to lawn tennis and golf in preference to the old manly games (cricket, football, polo, &c.) will be of sad omen for the future of the race.
I am, yours, &c.,
B. J. T. BOSANQUET
Bosanquet was himself a cricketer, for Middlesex and England, and noted as the inventor of the googlie – of which more later (see page).
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The German people and the war
7 August 1914
Sir, May I add my testimony to that of Lady Phillips published in your issue of to-day? I started from Germany at 3 o’clock p.m. on Saturday last, with my wife and sister-in-law, and during the whole of our trying and anxious journey we experienced nothing but the utmost kindness and courtesy from both people and officials.
Perhaps I may add one thing more. It is too late to believe in the bona fides of the German Government; but in that of the German people I still believe. During my short visit I had conversations with many Germans of various classes. All believed that Russia had provoked the war in order to establish the Slav hegemony over the Germans, and that France was an accomplice in the spirit of revanche. All hated the idea of war — the look in their faces haunts me yet — but accepted it with a high courage because they believed it to be necessary for the safety of their country.
The German people, believe me, are better than their Government. We have to fight them, but let us do so in the spirit of gentlemen, giving them full credit for the admirable and amiable qualities to which those who know them best bear loudest witness.
W. ALISON PHILLIPS
Phillips was formerly a foreign correspondent with The Times. War between Britain and Germany had been declared three days earlier.
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old soldier
5 September 1914
Sir, I have, before the war was declared, offered my services as an old soldier in many regiments and as one who has been in service in South Africa (victory and disaster), to the authorities, but no acknowledgment has ever been received.
I have got over 100 men to recruit willingly in Fife.
I have had my three servants refused as “unfit” to-day — one for chest measurement, a well set up young man of 22; another very naturally, for varicose veins; a third because at some time he injured his knee and does not work well. The latter is a chauffeur, and long ago offered his services for transport service, and is a good driver. All these men are under 25 years of age. If the medical authority are not allowed to enlist such men for various services how can they render service to their country?
In my own position I consider it scandalous that I cannot fill a position in a cavalry regiment instead of a boy of 17 who has seen no service.
Yours faithfully,
ROSSLYN
The Earl of Rosslyn
P.S. — Of course I want to go to the front after a week’s drill.
Lord Rosslyn, the 5th Earl, was then in his mid-forties.
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Old Socks Wanted
12 December 1914
Sir, Mittens are wanted badly by the troops and they are scarce. A sock only wears out in the foot part, and if this is cut off (thrown away) and a hole made in the other part for the thumb to go through, an excellent mitten can be made without any expense. I am paying unemployed typists to sew them over, but in three months I have exhausted my circle of friends. May I ask your readers to send me all the old (clean) socks they can collect, in order in this way to provide more work and more comforts without cost and without interfering with the living of any other class?
Yours faithfully,
GEORGE PRAGNELL
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Colonel Cornwallis-West
12 January 1915
Sir, Lieutenant-Colonel George Cornwallis-West, who has been in continuous command since September of one of the battalions of the Royal Naval Division which were present at Antwerp, has been much annoyed and feels justly indignant at persistent rumours which have been going round to the effect that he has been “shot in England as a spy.”
Colonel West desires us to say that he is alive and well, and he will be much obliged if you will accord him the favour of publishing this letter.
We write as Colonel West’s solicitors. He was with us this morning.
We are, yours faithfully,
ROOPER AND WHATELY
Rooper and Whately, Solicitors
Cornwallis-West was primarily known to readers of The Times for his marriages. His first wife was the former Lady Randolph Churchill, thus making him stepfather to Winston Churchill — albeit the two men were the same age. He had recently wed the actress
Mrs Patrick Campbell, who first played Eliza Doolittle on stage.
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More Leeches needed
28 January 1915
Sir, Our country has been for many months suffering from a serious shortage of leeches. As long ago as last November there were only a few dozen left in London, and they were second-hand.
Whilst General Joffre, General von Kluck, General von Hindenburg, and the Grand Duke Nicholas persist in fighting over some of the best leech-areas in Europe, possibly unwittingly, this shortage will continue, for even in Wordsworth’s time the native supply was diminishing, and since then we have for many years largely depended on importations from France and Central Europe. In November I made some efforts to alleviate the situation by applying to America and Canada, but without success. I then applied to India, and last week, owing to the kindness of Dr. Annandale, Director of the Indian Museum at Calcutta, and to the officers of the P. and O. Company and to Colonel Alcock, M.D., of the London School of Tropical Medicine, I have succeeded in landing a fine consignment of a leech which is used for blood-letting in India. It is true that the leech is not the Hirudo medicinalis of our pharmacopœias, but a different genus and species, Limnatis granulosa. Judging by its size, always a varying quantity in a leech, we may have to readjust our ideas as to a leech’s cubic capacity, yet I believe, from seeing them a day or two ago, they are willing and even anxious to do their duty. They have stood the voyage from Bombay and the changed climatic conditions very satisfactorily, and are in a state of great activity and apparent hunger at 50, Wigmore-street, London, W.
It is true that leeches are not used to anything like the extent they were 80 years ago — Paris alone, about 1830, made use of some 52 millions a year — but still they are used, though in much smaller numbers.
It may be of some consolation to my fellow-countrymen to know that our deficiency in leeches is more than compensated by the appalling shortage of sausage-skins in Middle Europe. With true German thoroughness they are trying to make artificial ones!
I am yours faithfully,
A. E. SHIPLEY
The zoologist and Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, Arthur Shipley, an expert on parasitic worms, was knighted in 1920 for his war work, which included letting the Master’s lodgings be used as a convalescent home for the wounded.
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Intelligent Passports
17 February 1915
Sir, A little light might be shed, with advantage, upon the high-handed methods of the Passports Department at the Foreign Office. On the form provided for the purpose I described my face as “intelligent.” Instead of finding this characterization entered, I have received a passport on which some official utterly unknown to me, has taken it upon himself to call my face “oval.”
Yours very truly,
BASSETT DIGBY
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Racing in Wartime
5 March 1915
Sir, I am afraid I cannot follow your reasoning with regard to Epsom and Ascot as set forth in your brief leading article to-day. I put aside the remarks about the affair of the Epsom Grand Stand, as to which there has been both misstatement and misapprehension, which I should have thought the matter-of-fact statement of the Stewards of the Jockey Club would have finally cleared away.
But that is a side, and I may add a false, issue. You say that our Allies “cannot understand how Englishmen can go to race meetings when their country is engaged in a life and death struggle.” With all submission I think our Allies understand us better than this. They know that Englishmen do not think it necessary to put up the shutters whenever they are engaged in war. They know that we are paying two millions a day for this war, and do not think that we shall add the sacrifice of our thoroughbred horses, which are so invaluable for the future of our Army. For, make no mistake, if our races are to cease our thoroughbred horses must disappear. No man can afford to keep bloodstock for the mere pleasure of looking at them in the stable. You hope that there will be no attempt to hold meetings at Epsom, and, “above all,” at Ascot this year. Of what nature, may I ask, is the original sin attaching to these meetings? You record races of a very inferior character almost daily in your columns, sometimes in impressive print. Why do you sanction these and select for special reprobation the two noblest exhibitions of the thoroughbred in the world?
But you say our Allies will misunderstand us. There are many, however, of our French allies who will remember that the winner of the Derby was announced in General Orders during the Crimean War.
Why, indeed, should we embark on the unprecedented course which you indicate, and condemn all our historical practice? Once before our country has been “engaged in a life and death struggle,” at least as strenuous and desperate as this; I mean that against the French Revolution and Napoleon. All through that score of bloody years the Epsom and Ascot Meetings were regularly held, nor indeed does it seem to have occurred to our forefathers that it was guilty to witness races while we were at war. I remember asking the late Lord Stradbroke which was the most interesting race that he had ever witnessed for the Ascot Cup. He replied (I am almost sure, though it is outside my argument) that for 1815, which was run on June 8, eight days before Quatre Bras, 10 days before Waterloo, when Napoleon and Wellington were confronting each other to contend for the championship of the world.
I am and desire to remain remote from controversy, but am anxious to remind you of our history and tradition with regard to this question, and to ask you to pause before you condemn not merely Epsom and “above all” Ascot, but also the principles and practice of ancestors not less chivalrous and humane than ourselves.
ROSEBERY
The 5th Earl of Rosebery — prime minister from 1894–95 — won several classic races as an owner, including the Derby twice.
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No Profits from War
14 September 1915
Sir, It is becoming plain to the average observer of events that there is only one thing which can cause us to lose this war, or can force us to conclude an unsatisfactory peace, and that is the suspicion between different classes in the nation. It is not my purpose to discuss the question whether this suspicion is justified; it is enough that it exists, and that is a statement which you, Sir, are under no temptation to deny.
So far as one can see the suspicion rages mainly round two topics, the rise in the price of necessaries and the amount of war profits; but these two are really one, for the rise in prices would lose half its sting, but for the idea that it is caused by the undue profits of middlemen. The real question before the Government is, therefore, that of the abolition of all war profits; till that is done suspicion will inevitably continue.
And what is the obstacle? It is not undue sympathy on the part of the Government with profit-makers; Mr. Lloyd George’s speech at Bristol has made that plain. It is not the fear of protests in the Press; you have, if I am not mistaken, repeatedly supported such a measure. It is most assuredly not the fear of public opinion, which would be overwhelmingly on the side of such legislation. The professional classes have borne their own burdens as best they could, but they have no more sympathy than the working classes with the abnormal profits made out of the country’s need.
It is time, in fact, to ask the plain question, Who does want to make profit out of the crisis? When that question has been answered it will be time for the nation to decide what shall be allowed, but I am much mistaken if the demand will be either loud or clear. When every class has given of its own flesh and blood with such splendid readiness, it is impossible to believe that any will haggle over money. We are told that the Government have already dealt with profits in munition factories, and it is no doubt their intention to deal with other war profits by way of taxation. The purpose of this letter is to implore them to make their actions and their intentions plain beyond the possibility of mistake. Vague assertions do not quiet vague suspicions.
When once a clear principle is laid down, be it abolition or curtailment, the question resolves itself into one of fact, and suspicion will die for lack of food. There can be no objection to the fullest representation of working-class opinion on the committee which is to carry out the principle into action. The present situation of half-hearted promises and forced concessions is both humiliating and demoralizing, and to the average man it seems frankly intolerable that a Government in which we all have good reasons to believe should be unable to give expression to an elementary principle of political morality and should allow us to drift, as we are drifting, into a great and needless danger.
I am, &c.,
C. A. ALINGTON
Headmaster of Shrewsbury School
Cyril Alington subsequently became Head Master of Eton and later Dean of Durham.
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The Voice of a Schoolboy
Rallies the Ranks
14 December 1915
Sir, May I say one word in reply to the letter of a “Public School Master,” which appears in The Times of to-day (11 December). As an old headmaster, I am not likely to underestimate the value of school discipline. But long experience has convinced me that we keep our boys at school too long. And, as to the commissions to boys, Clive sailed to India at the age of 17; Wolfe, “a lanky stripling of 15”, carried the colours of the 12th Regiment of Foot; Wellington was ensign in the 73rd Regiment at the age of 17; Colin Campbell gained his commission in the 9th Regiment of Foot at the age of 16. We keep our boys in leading strings too long.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOSEPH WOOD
The writer had been headmaster of Tonbridge and Harrow schools.
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Body Armour or shields
28 July 1916
Sir, it is a year now since you were good enough to allow me to express some views about body armour in your columns. Since then, so far as I know, nothing has been done, but now we have got so far that the Minister of War admits that something of the kind may some day come along. To me it seems the most important question of any, and I earnestly hope that you will use your influence to keep it before the notice of the authorities.
Upon July 1 several of our divisions were stopped by machine-gun fire. Their losses were exceedingly heavy, but hardly any of them from high explosives. The distance to traverse was only about 250 yards. The problem, therefore, is to render a body of men reasonably immune to bullets fired at that range. The German first-line trenches were thinly held, so that once across the open our infantry would have had no difficulty whatsoever.
Now, Sir, I venture to say that if three intelligent metal-workers were put together in consultation they would in a few days produce a shield which would take the greater part of those men safely across. We have definite facts to go upon. A shield of steel of 7/16 of an inch will stop a point-blank bullet. Far more will it stop one which strikes it obliquely. Suppose such a shield fashioned like that of a Roman soldier, 2ft. broad and 3ft. deep. Admittedly it is heavy—well over 30lb. in weight. What then? The man has not far to go, and he has the whole day before him. A mile in a day is good progress as modern battles go. What does it matter, then, if he carries a heavy shield to cover him?
Suppose that the first line of stormers carried such shields. Their only other armament, besides their helmets, should be a bag of bombs. With these they clear up the machine-guns. The second wave of attack with rifles, and possibly without shields, then comes along, occupies and cleans up the trench, while the heavily armed infantry, after a rest advance upon the next one. Men would, of course, be hit about the legs and arms, and high explosives would claim their victims, but I venture to say that we should not again see British divisions held up by machine-guns and shrapnel. Why can it not be tried at once? Nothing elaborate is needed. Only so many sheets of steel cut to size and furnished with a double thong for arm-grip. Shields are evidently better than body armour, since they can be turned in any direction, or form a screen for a sniper or for a wounded man.
The present private contrivances seem inadequate, and I can well understand that those who could afford to buy them would shrink from using a protection which their comrades did not possess. Yet I have seen letters in which men have declared that they owed their lives to these primitive shields. Let the experiment be made of arming a whole battalion with proper ones—and, above all, let it be done at once. Then at last the attack will be on a level with the defence.
Yours faithfully,
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The first tanks had been demonstrated to the Army command in great secrecy five months earlier and made their first appearance on the battlefield in September 1916.
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Russell in chains
5 September 1916
Sir, Mr. Bertrand Russell’s view of pre-war diplomacy is not mine, and it is very far from yours; nevertheless, I hope The Times will allow me to protest against the military edict which forbids him to reside in any part of Scotland, in Manchester or Liverpool, or on the greater part of the English coast. Such an edict is obviously aimed at a man who may justly be suspected of communicating with the enemy, or of assisting his cause. Mr. Russell is not only the most distinguished bearer of one of the greatest names in English political history, but he is a man so upright in thought and deed that such action is, in the view of every one who knows him, repugnant to his character. It is a gross libel, and an advertisement to the world that the administration of the Defence of the Realm Regulations is in the hands of men who do not understand their business. Incidentally, their action deprives Mr. Russell, already debarred from entering the United States, of the power of earning his livelihood by arranged lectures on subjects unconnected with the war. The Times is the most active supporter of that war; but its support is intelligent, and it speaks as the mouthpiece of the country’s intelligence as well as of its force. May I therefore appeal to it to use its great influence to discourage the persecution of an Englishman of whose accomplishments and character the nation may well be proud, even in the hour when his conscientious conclusions are not accepted by it?
Yours, &c.,
H. W. MASSINGHAM
The philosopher, a grandson of the Victorian prime minister Earl Russell, was a pacifist. He had been fined £100 in June 1916 and compelled to resign his Cambridge fellowship because of his anti-war speeches.
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popular Representation
30 March 1917
Sir, there seems to be a very general failure to grasp the importance of what is called—so unhappily—Proportional Representation in the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference. It is the only rational, honest, and efficient electoral method. It is, however, in danger of being thrust on one side as a mere fad of the intellectuals. It is regarded by many ill-informed people as something difficult, “high-browed,” troublesome, and of no practical value, much as science and mathematics were so regarded by the “practical” rule-of-thumb industrialists of the past. There are all too many mean interests in machine politics threatened by this reform, which are eager to seize upon this ignorant mistrust and use to delay or burke1 the political cleaning-up that Proportional Representation would involve. Will you permit me to state, as compactly and clearly as I can, the real case for this urgently-needed reform—a reform which alone can make Parliamentary government anything better than a caricature of the national thought and a mockery of the national will?
The essential point to grasp is that Proportional Representation is not a novel scheme, but a carefully worked-out remedy for universally recognized ills. An election is not the simple matter it appears to be at the first blush. Methods of voting can be manipulated in various ways, and nearly every method has its own liability to falsification. Take the commonest, simplest case—the case that is the perplexity of every clear-thinking voter under British or American conditions: the case of a constituency in which every elector has one vote, and which returns one representative to Parliament. The naive theory on which we go is that all the possible candidates are put up, that each voter votes for the one he likes best, and that the best man wins. The bitter experience is that hardly ever are there more than two candidates, and still more rarely is either of these the best man possible.
Suppose, for example, the constituency is mainly Conservative. A little group of pot-house politicians, wire-pullers, busy-bodies, local journalists, and small lawyers working for various monetary interests, have “captured” the Conservative organization. For reasons that do not appear they put up an unknown Mr. Goldbug as the official Conservative candidate. He professes generally Conservative view of things, but few people are sure of him and few people trust him. Against him the weaker (and therefore still more venal) Liberal organization puts up a Mr. Kentshire (former Wurstberg) to represent the broader thought and finer generosities of the English mind. A number of Conservative gentlemen, generally too busy about their honest businesses to attend the party “smokers” and the party cave, realize suddenly that they want Goldbug hardly more than they want Wurstberg. They put up their long-admired, trusted, and able friend Mr. Sanity as an Independent Conservative. Every one knows the trouble that follows. Mr. Sanity is “going to split the party vote.” The hesitating voter is told, with considerable truth, that a vote given for Mr. Sanity is a vote given for Wurstberg. At any price we do not want Wurstberg. So at the eleventh hour Mr. Sanity is induced to withdraw, and Mr. Goldbug goes into parliament to misrepresent us. That in its simplest form is the dilemma of democracy. The problem that has confronted modern democracy since its beginning has not been the representation of organized minorities, but the protection of the unorganized masses of busily occupied, fairly intelligent men from the tricks of specialists who work the party machines. We know Mr. Sanity, we want Mr. Sanity, but we are too busy to watch the incessant intrigues to oust him in favour of the obscurely influential people, politically docile, who are favoured by the organization. We want an organizer-proof method of voting. It is in answer to this demand, as the outcome of a most careful examination of the ways in which voting may be protected from the exploitation of those who work elections, that the method of Proportional Representation with a single transferable vote has been evolved. It is organizer-proof. It defies the caucus.
If you do not like Mr. Goldbug you can put up and vote for Mr. Sanity, giving Mr. Goldbug your second choice, in the most perfect confidence that in any case your vote cannot help to return Mr. Wurstberg.
There is the cardinal fact in the discussion of this matter. Let the reader grasp that, and he has the key to the significance of this question. With Proportional Representation with a single transferable vote (this specification is necessary because there are also inferior imitations of various election-riggers figuring as proportional representation) it is impossible to prevent the effective candidature of independent men of repute beside the official candidates. Without it the next Parliament, the Parliament that will draw the broad lines of the Empire’s destinies for many years, will be just the familiar gathering of old Parliamentary hands and commonplace party hacks. It will be a Parliament gravitating fatally from the very first towards the old party dualism, and all the falsity and futility through which we drifted in the years before the war. Proportional Representation is the door for the outside man; the Bill that establishes it will be the charter to enfranchise the non-party Briton. Great masses of people to-day are utterly disgusted with “party” and an anger gathers against the “party politician” as such that he can scarcely suspect. To close that door now that it has been opened ever so slightly, and to attempt the task of Imperial Reconstruction with a sham representative Parliament on the old lines, with large masses of thwarted energy and much practical ability and critical power locked out, may be a more dangerous and disastrous game than those who are playing it seem to realize at the present time.
I am, &c.,
H. G. WELLS
1: meaning “to murder by smothering” and derived from the crimes of the early 19th-century Edinburgh “body-snatchers” Burke and Hare.
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Votes for WomEn
26 May 1917
Sir, Mrs. Humphry Ward disputes the authority of the present House of Commons to deal with the question of Women’s Suffrage. She seems to have forgotten that at the time of the last General Election the subject was already prominently before the country: the majority of members were more or less definitely pledged to the women of their constituencies to support it; and Mr. Asquith had given a definite assurance that if his party returned to power the matter should be dealt with exactly as it is proposed to deal with it in the present Bill — by a free vote of the House of Commons.
Mrs. Ward prophesies that the age limit of 30 for women voters will not be long maintained. She says nothing of the much more important barrier against complete equality which the Bill proposes to set up; by basing the men’s vote on residence, the women’s on occupation. The effect of this and the age limit together will be that men voters will be in an overwhelming majority in every constituency in the country. If, therefore, as women hope and believe will be the case, the franchise should be further extended and eventually placed on a basis of complete equality, it can only be because men are willing for it, having become convinced by experience of its actual working that the effect will be beneficial and not harmful.
She says, also, nothing at all of the argument which, perhaps more than any other, has moved many of the most weighty and inveterate opponents of former years to give the Bill their active support. In what sort of position will Parliament be placed, when the time comes at the end of the war to redeem the pledges it has given to trade unionists, if women are still outside the pale of the franchise? Legislation will be necessary, involving probably, as Mr. Asquith has pointed out “large displacements of female labour.” Will it be to the credit or dignity of Parliament that it should be open to the charge of bartering away the interests of non-voters in order that it may protect those of its constituents?
The chief argument, however, of Mrs. Ward’s letter is that the physical sufferings and sacrifices of women in the present war are not comparable with those of men. This is undeniable. Women have not based their claims to the vote on their sufferings or their services. They have never asked for it as a reward for doing their obvious duty to the country in its time of peril. But the vote, after all, is not a sort of D.S.O. It is merely the symbol of the responsibilities of ordinary citizenship, which requires every one to serve the country according to the measures of his or her opportunity, and to make sacrifices for it, if the call for that comes. Is physical suffering, physical sacrifice, the only kind that counts?
I saw recently a letter from a young wife whose husband had just fallen in the trenches. She wrote — “After all, we have nothing to regret. If it were all to come over again and we knew what would happen, he would go just as cheerily as before, and God knows I would not hold him back.”
There spoke the authentic voice of the women of this country, women who have in their blood and their bones the traditions of an Imperial race. In time of peace they may have been bemused by the false doctrine taught by Mrs. Ward and her school, that Imperial and national questions are matters for men, not women. In time of war instinct reasserts itself. They feel as patriots and as citizens, and their citizenship so manifests itself that it compels recognition in the traditional form for which women have asked so long by granting of the Parliamentary vote.
Yours faithfully,
ELEANOR F. RATHBONE
Eleanor Rathbone was a leading campaigner for women’s rights and social reform, including the introduction of child benefit. She became an MP in 1929, 11 years after women (at first aged 30 and above) were given the right to vote, and to be elected to Parliament.
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An Act of Wilful Defiance
31 July 1917
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.
LT. SIEGFRIED SASSOON
The poet’s celebrated letter of protest was sent originally to the Bradford Pioneer newspaper and republished four days later in The Times, having been read out in the House of Commons. Sassoon, who had won the Military Cross in France, had been on convalescent leave after being wounded. He wrote the letter after deciding to refuse to return to the trenches. His friend and fellow war poet Robert Graves persuaded the authorities that Sassoon was mentally ill and therefore unfit to be court-martialled. He was treated instead for shell shock at Craiglockhart Hospital, Edinburgh, where he met and encouraged Wilfred Owen in his writing.
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Poppies
17 September 1917
Sir, The subjoined letter has been received by the mother of a young officer in the Household Battalion, and was written from the fighting line in Flanders. It pleasantly varies the story of devastation daily transmitted from the front, and incidentally reveals the sort of young fellow who, in various degrees of rank, is captaining our gallant Armies. This one, impatiently awaiting the birthday that marked the minimum age for military service, went from Eton straight to a training camp, and in due course had his heart’s desire by obtaining a commission. He followed close in the footsteps of an elder brother, also an Etonian, killed in his first month’s fighting.
“In England there seems to be a general belief that nothing but every imaginable hardship and horror is connected with the letters B.E.F., and, looking at these three letters, people see only bully beef, dug-outs, shell holes, mud, and such like as the eternal routine of life. True enough, these conditions do prevail very often, but in between whiles they are somewhat mitigated by most unexpected ‘corners.’ The other day we took over from a well-known Scottish regiment, whose reputation for making themselves comfortable was well known throughout the division, and when I went to examine my future abode I found everything up to the standard which I had anticipated. Standing on an oak table in the middle of the dug-out was a shell-case filled with flowers, and these not ordinary blossoms, but Madonna lilies, mignonette, and roses. This vase, if I may so term the receptacle, overshadowed all else and by its presence changed the whole atmosphere, the perfume reminding me of home, and what greater joy or luxury is there for any of us out here than such a memory?
“After having duly appreciated this most unexpected corner I inquired where the flowers had been gathered, and was told they had come from the utterly ruined village of Fampoux close by. At once I set out to explore and verify this information. Sure enough, between piles of bricks, shell holes, dirt, and every sort of débris, suddenly a rose in full bloom would smile at me, and a lily would waft its delicious scent and seem to say how it had defied the destroyer and all his frightfulness. In each corner where I saw a blossoming flower or even a ripening fruit, I seemed to realize a scene belonging to this unhappy village in peaceful days. Imagination might well lose her way in the paths of chivalry and romance perhaps quite unknown to the inhabitants of Fampoux. I meandered on through the village until I struck a trench leading up to the front line; this
I followed for a while until quite suddenly I was confronted by a brilliancy which seemed to me one of the most perfect bits of colour I have ever seen. Amongst innumerable shell holes there was a small patch of ground absolutely carpeted with buttercups, over which blazed bright, red poppies intermixed with the bluest of cornflowers. Here was a really glorious corner, and how quickly came memories of home! No one, however hardened by the horrors of war, could pass that spot without a smile or a happy thought. Perhaps it is the contrast of the perfection of these corners with the sordidness of all around that makes them of such inestimable value. Some such corners exist throughout France, even in the front line trenches. It may not be flowers, it may be only the corner of a field or barn; it may be some spoken word or a chance meeting. No matter what it is if it brings back a happy memory or reminds one of home. It is like a jewel in a crown of thorns giving promise of another crown and of days to come wherein, under other circumstances, we may be more worthy of the wearing.”
Yours faithfully,
HENRY LUCY
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On the Eton Word “Rouge”
13 October 1917
Sir, I was once, about 30 years ago, discussing the Eton word “rouge” and the verb “to rouge” among some English friends at Florence, one of whom was the Hon. Alethea Lawley, sister of Lord Wenlock, of Escrick, in East Yorkshire. (NB — She has been for several years married to a Venetian, Signor Wiel, formerly Librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana.) Miss Lawley exclaimed: “Oh, but ‘to rouge’ is quite a common word in our part of Yorkshire, meaning ‘to push one’s way through anything’, and I have often, when two people are quarrelling, heard one of them say, ‘Now don’t ye come a-rouging against me!’” even as at Eton we might have said: “There against was an awful crowd, but I soon rouged my way through it!” Whenever I see a doubtful East Yorkshire word, I always turn to Vigfussen’s Icelandic Dictionary, wherein I have occasionally found the solution of some difficulties both in Norwegian as well as in East Yorkshire provincialisms. I find in Vigfussen, s.v.: Rydja (more anciently hrjóda) — rydja sér til rúms = “to make oneself room”; again, rydja sér til rikis = “to clear the way to a kingdom, i.e., to conquer it”; and III, “to clear one’s way, to make great havoc — to throng, to crowd.” I never can ignore the possible Scandinavian origin of any word, if it be in use in the east of England.
To give another instance. On one occasion I was reading in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where that rascal is relating a lying tale to his foolish old mother of how he sprang on to the back of a wounded buck and galloped along the Gendin Edge, when suddenly
“paa en raadlös braabraet plet
for ivrejret rype-steggan
flaksed, kaglende, forskraemt
fra den knart, hvor han sad gemt
klods for bukkens fod paa eggen.”
“Steggan” did not appear in any Norwegian dictionary that I possessed at that time, though it is given in Iver Aasen’s Dictionary of Provincial Dialects, but I bethought me of Vigfussen, and I found “Steggr m. Steggi, a.m. (properly a mounter); in Yorkshire a steg is a gander, from stiga (to mount); a he bird, Andar Steggi a male duck,” &c. Therefore the lines translate:
“(All at once — at a desperate break-neck spot)
Rose a great cock ptarmigan,
Flapping, cackling, terrified,
From the crack where he lay hidden
(at the buck’s feet on the Edge).”
Had I not known from Miss Lawley (30 years ago) that the word “rouge” is in common use round Escrick, I might not have thought more about it; but as it is, I cannot agree that it is the same in sound and meaning as “scrooge” (pronounced scroodge) whereas “rouge” is pronounced exactly like the French equivalent of “red”.
As it may possibly interest some Old Etonians who know Scandinavia, I venture to send you this for what it may be worth.
I remain yours faithfully,
WILLIAM WARREN VERNON
A letter which gives some indication, perhaps, of the presumed readership of the newspaper and their interests in 1917. A rouge is a scoring play in Eton’s Field Game, an ancestor of soccer. Some scholars have seen a link between the attritional nature of it and Eton’s other unique sport the Wall Game, the preponderance of Etonian generals in the First World War and the strategy of grim slogging used for much of the conflict.
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Unmarried Mother
25 February 1918
Sir, Mr Galsworthy, in his article in to-day’s Times on “The Nation’s Young Lives,” strongly advocates the adoption of widows’ or mothers’ pensions, and the proper protection and care of unmarried girl mothers and their illegitimate children. His words are opportune. No amount of Welfare Centres can do anything radical to help the children of widows or those born out of wedlock, until the State has awakened to its grave responsibility for their welfare.
I have, within the last two days, been present at a meeting of a committee of women Poor Law Guardians in one of our great provincial cities. They were engaged, no doubt unconsciously, in a game which, for want of a better name, I must call girl-baiting. I saw a young expectant mother cruelly handled, and tortured with bitter words and threats; an ordeal which she will have had to endure at the hands of four different sets of officials by the time her baby is three weeks old. These guardians told her, in my presence, that they hoped she would suffer severely for her wrong-doing, that they considered that her own mother, who had treated her kindly, had been too lenient, and that her sin was so great that she ought to be ashamed to be a cost to self-respecting ratepayers.
They added that the man who was responsible for her condition was very good to have acknowledged his paternity, but expressed the belief, nay, rather the hope, that he would take an early opportunity of getting out of his obligation. Meanwhile, a pale, trembling girl, within a month of her confinement, stood, like a hunted animal, in the presence of such judges.
We pray constantly in our churches for “all women labouring of child, sick persons, and young children, the fatherless, the widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed,” and yet we continue this oppression of the desolate.
Yours faithfully,
DOROTHEA IRVING
* * * * * * *
air sewage
1 November 1918
Sir, Few of us can do more than pass a very short period of the day in the open air. In a country in which a large proportion of the inhabitants spend most of their lives in industrial occupations, it is wiser to teach them the importance of introducing fresh air into their houses than to urge them to the impossible duty of spending much of their time out of doors.
If we devote, on average, eight hours to sleep, then a third at least of our 24-hour day is spent indoors, and each individual who reaches 60 years of life will have passed no less than 20 years of his existence in the one and only room where he is likely to be sole arbiter of the ventilation. Unless there are exceptional conditions, the windows of every sleeping room should be wide open all night and every night. The blinds should be drawn up, otherwise, from their valve-like action, they will only permit intermittent and uncertain ingress of fresh air, while the only egress for devitalized air is by the inadequate route of the chimney. The hours of night should also be employed for regularly and continuously flushing all day-rooms, where sewage air is manufactured in such quantities that it is never adequately scavenged during working hours. I know of crowded offices where the ventilation is imperfect through the day, and where the windows are all religiously closed up every night, so that the next morning the workers start by breathing more or less sewage air. The windows of many workrooms, hotels, schools, banks, churches and clubs are regularly “shut up for the night”. It has been shown that the sense of fatigue is more the consequence of breathing devitalized and stagnant air than of any other single factor. There is no harm in a room or railway carriage being warmed, if the air is regularly changed as it is used up. Scavenging our air sewage ensures a supply of fresh air. It is our chief safeguard against the onset or severity of influenza. The possibility of “a draught” — still a bogy to many — is best avoided by remembering that doors should be kept closed and windows kept open.
In 1867 Ruskin wrote: “A wholesome taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final attainments of humanity.” Let us hope that this attainment may be advanced by the lessons of science applied in the present epidemic.
ST. CLAIR THOMSON
The letter was written during the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. An estimated 20 million to 50 million people died worldwide.
* * * * * * *
doing your bit
24 June 1919
Sir, It is now a truism to say that in August 1914, the nation was face to face with the greatest crisis in her history. She was saved by the free will offerings of her people. The best of her men rushed to the colours; the best of her women left their homes to spend and be spent; the best of her older men worked as they had never worked before, to a common end, and with a sense of unity and fellowship as new as it was exhilarating. It may be that in four and half years the ideals of many became dim, but the spiritual impetus of those early days carried the country through to the end.
To-day on the eve of peace, we are faced with another crisis, less obvious but none the less searching. The whole country is exhausted. By natural reaction, not unlike that which led to the excesses of the Restoration after the reign of the Puritans, all classes are in danger of being submerged on a wave of extravagance and materialism. It is so easy to live on borrowed money; so difficult to realise that you are doing so.
It is so easy to play; so hard to learn that you cannot play for long without work. A fool’s paradise is only the ante-room to a fool’s hell.
How can a nation be made to understand the gravity of the financial situation; that love of country is better than love of money?
This can only be done by example and the wealthy classes have to-day an opportunity of service which can never recur.
They know the danger of the present debt; they know the weight of it in the years to come. They know the practical difficulties of a universal statutory capital levy. Let them impose upon themselves, each as he is able, a voluntary levy. It should be possible to pay to the Exchequer within twelve months such a sum as would save the tax payer 50 millions a year.
I have been considering this matter for nearly two years, but my mind moves slowly; I dislike publicity, and I had hoped that somebody else might lead the way. I have made as accurate an estimate as I am able of the value of my own estate, and have arrived at a total of about £580,000. I have decided to realize 20% of that amount or say £120,000 which will purchase £150,000 of the new War Loan, and present it to the Government for cancellation.
I give this portion of my estate as a thank-offering in the firm conviction that never again shall we have such a chance of giving our country that form of help which is so vital at the present time.
Yours, etc.,
F.S.T.
The writer refers to ‘the eve of peace’ as the letter was written a few days before the Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919.
The initials F.S.T. stood for Financial Secretary to the Treasury — Stanley Baldwin, who would become prime minister for the first time in 1923. His net worth was equivalent to about £50 million now. The scheme he proposed does not appear to have caught on.
* * * * * * *
Here’s how
15 July 1919
Sir, Will you permit an elderly man, who is not a politician nor a public character, but merely an individual among millions of honest, sober persons whose liberty is attacked by a moral tyranny, to state an opinion with regard to the crusade which is being started against moderate drinkers?
It is not needed even in the cause of morality. That drunkenness has not entirely ceased is obvious, but that it is rapidly declining, from the natural action of civilization, is equally obvious. When I was a child, even in the country village where I was brought up, excess in drinking was patent in every class of society. Now, in my very wide circle of various acquaintances, I do not know of one single man or woman who is ever seen “under the influence of liquor”. Why not leave the process of moderation, so marked within 60 years, to pursue its normal course?
It is untrue to say that a limited and reasonable use of alcohol is injurious to mind, or body, or morality. My father, whose life was one of intense intellectual application, and who died, from the result of an accident, in his 79th year, was the most rigidly conscientious evangelical I have ever known.
He would have been astonished to learn that his claret and water at his midday meal, and his glass of Constantia when he want to bed, were either sinful in themselves or provocative to sin in others. There is no blessing upon those who invent offences for pleasure of giving pain and who lay burdens wantonly on the liberty of others. We have seen attempts by the fantastically righteous to condemn those who eat meat, who go to see plays, those who take walks on Sundays. The campaign against the sober use of wine and beer is on a footing with these efforts, and should be treated as they have been. Already tobacco is being forbidden to the clergy!
The fact that Americans are advertised as organizing and leading the campaign should be regarded with alarm. It must, I think, be odious to all right-thinking Americans in America. We do not express an opinion, much less do we organize a propaganda against “dryness” in the United States. The conditions of that country differ extremely from our own. It is not for us to interfere in their domestic business. If Englishmen went round America urging Americans to defy their own laws and revolt against their national customs, we should be very properly indignant. Let crusading Americans be taught the same reticence. It was never more important than it is now for Great Britain and the United States to act in harmony, and to respect each the habits and prejudices of the other.
These considerations may be commonplace; I hope they are. But many people seem afraid of saying in public what they are unanimously saying in private. The propagandist teetotaler is active and unscrupulous. He does not hesitate to bring forward evidence, or to attach moral opprobrium to his opponents. He fights with all weapons, whether they are clean or no. We must openly resist, without fear of consequences, what those of us who share my view judge to be cruel and ignorant fanaticism of these apostles. We should offer no apology for insisting on retaining our liberty.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
EDMUND GOSSE
The next year, the sale of alcohol was banned in the United States: Prohibition.
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The Future of War
6 November 1919
Sir, By land and sea the approaching prodigious aircraft development knocks out the present Fleet, makes invasion impracticable, cancels our country being an island, and transforms the atmosphere into the battle-ground of the future.
I say to the Prime Minister there is only one thing to do to the ostriches who are spending these vast millions (“which no man can number”) on what is as useful for the next war as bows and arrows! — “Sack the lot.”
Yours,
FISHER
Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher
Postscript.—As the locusts swarmed over Egypt so will the aircraft swarm in the heavens, carrying (some of them) inconceivable cargoes of men and bombs, some fast, some slow. Some will act like battle cruisers, others as destroyers. All cheap and (this is the gist of it) requiring only a few men as the crew.
No one’s imagination can as yet depict it all. If I essayed it now I should be called a lunatic. I gently forecast it in January, 1915, and more vividly on July 11, 1918. We have the star guiding us, if only we will follow it.
Time and the Ocean and some fostering star
In high cabal — have made us what we are!
On Friday last the presiding genius at the “Marine Engineers” said, “The day of oil fuel and the oil engine had arrived.” In 1885 I was called an “oil maniac.” — Nunc Dimittis
The former First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher was a prolific and often percipient correspondent to The Times on naval matters, and blessed with an inimitable style of writing. He died in 1920, before much of his vision of future warfare was vindicated.
