England

A good average man this, not at all heroic, common-sensible, and strictly moderate in his virtues, keeping a very good margin of his wages for himself, but not poaching on the remainder. Probably the wife has much the harder life of the two, with her 30s. a week steady when the good man is in work, and nothing at all but the lodgers' money at other times; probably, too, she is happy enough. May a change of fortune soon bring steady work!

Studied from the English country-side the life of the lowly appeared to me often pitiful but rarely abject. It was relieved from squalor by much heroic courage; and by evidences of that beautiful love of the green fields which the English seem to have by nature. In London the position is more depressing, for there one encounters a vast army in which are mingled inextricably poor victims worthy of the fullest compassion, and cunning "wasters" who, finding it easy to live without work, are resolved not to work.

To the "professional unemployed," I believe, the autumn entry into London is a blessed relief. He knows all the charities which can be worked for food and shelter. He has put in his penitential period in the country to give a reasonable air to the tale that he has been in work, and prepares with zest to tap the old springs of alms. London promises him winter comfort, human companionship; warm nights in shelters, when politics can be discussed and the state of the nation learnedly argued; amusing tests of his skill in bamboozling charitable societies. To the genuine seeker for work a first impression of London must be terrifying. The place is so vast, so inchoate. It seems to suggest a great organised mass into which no newcomer can hope to penetrate.

The day I tramped in—on my mission of investigation—a thin rain filled the air with a blurring mist and made a horrible mud underfoot. My too realistic boots gave this mud entrance to my feet. The soft, suggy sound and feel of this mud making its way in and out was at once depressing and enraging. I cursed the weather, and London, and the resolution which had brought me on the enterprise. It seemed as if it would be just heaven to have clean feet, and stout soles between them and the loathsome dirt. I was wet through as regards clothes. That did not matter. The rain from above was clean except for a little soot. But this stuff beneath—faugh! If other men think and feel as I do, when you wish to "lift" a man out of the mire of hopelessness give him first a stout pair of boots.

The Spitalfields "doss" to which I had been directed looked too much like the mud beneath felt. It was stale and dirty, from its ceiling to its floor; and all the air between was stale and dirty. The men steaming and smoking in the thick atmosphere were sympathetic to the place. I passed on. That dossery could be investigated another time, on some night when the streets were dry. At a "Rowton House" in Whitechapel I found a clean and endurable lodging, paying ninepence for a night's lodging. There were good facilities to wash and to eat and to cook one's food, and a reading-room even. One could be, clearly, comfortable enough here—if one had the ninepence.

There are much cheaper lodging-houses, and one absolutely free one, Medland Hall, on the Ratcliff Highway near Stepney Station. I visited it one November evening at five o'clock. Under a railway arch there was drawn up a tattered regiment of men some 300 strong. Now and again a late-comer arrived and took his place in the rear rank. Two police officers attended to keep order, but in the men there seemed not enough energy left for disorder. Like a cluster of bats they hung, dark, inert, to that wall of the arch which gave some little shelter from the driving rain. There was not one touch of colour in all the dark ranks. Each man seemed to be dressed like his fellows, in something that was black, either originally or made so from the struggle in the mud of life. It was a patient crowd. Now and again a harsh cough sounded from some man, and always he seemed to be trying to smother it, as if unwilling to break into the silence of the common misery; or a lame man shuffled uneasily on his feet, and he also seemed ashamed a little of the noise.

At six, when the great bulk of the crowd had been waiting an hour (some of them probably much longer), the order was given to march, and the men filed into Medland Hall, each one getting as he entered a half-pound of bread with a little butter. That was his meal for the night, and, like his bed, it was absolutely free. The bed was a box on the floor, with a seaweed mattress and an oilskin covering.

Most of the men were young. Few of them had gone past the labouring age. Some were obviously tuberculous, others crippled with rheumatism. The gathering, too, had its castes. A man who had been once a chief clerk, and who still wore a "boxer" hat in place of the usual cap of the unemployed, was the aristocrat of the doss.

This winter (1912) the London authorities, at last awake to the scandal of homeless men wandering or sleeping in the streets, have instituted a system by which the police will find shelter for all who are found without homes. But even that will not remove all the scandal.

For many years the charitable provision for the homeless in London has been ample, and I could not at first find an explanation for the Thames Embankment miserables who huddled on the seats throughout the nights and had their shivering sleep disturbed again and again by the police, or for the unfortunates who haunted "the Dark Arches" of the Strand and other places giving shelter from the rain. With the use of any intelligence at all, it seemed, a man could get shelter of a sort and food of a sort. Yet people, I know, did in rare cases actually perish from exposure and from hunger in London. Inquiring among the Embankment men, the unhappiest of all the miserable army, there seemed to be always one of two explanations for haunting the Embankment—either the desperate sense of shame of the man who has come down from a position of some comfort and decency and shuns a shelter because it means a display of his misery; or the dull lethargy that comes from extreme hardship and kills every suggestion of self-help.

One unemployed with whom I conversed, or tried to converse, at midnight just near the Temple Pier was sunk in such apathy that he, I verily believe, would not have walked 400 yards to get the most comfortable bed in London. At any rate, when I gave him a shilling he made no move away from his seat, showed, indeed, very little interest in the dole. His was an extreme case, but many seemed to be almost as dead to any idea of effort. "With the use of any intelligence" a man can get shelter—yes. But the man who is down often loses his intelligence as he sinks. The "cunning" unemployed, on the other hand, flourishes.

In China they have a term "rice Christians" for heathen who pretend conversion to Christianity in order to secure food from the missionaries. The cunning unemployed is usually a "rice" Anglican, or Roman Catholic or Wesleyan of the most fervent type. His religious views are strong to the point of bigotry. But should he have a wife and household to maintain by the sweat of his brain it will often happen that, while he is a rice Anglican of the most uncompromising type, she is a rice Wesleyan or professor of some other type of Nonconformity.

For the man who has made a study of the art of living without work London offers a vast field. There are so many charities that by going the round it is possible to avoid all danger of becoming too familiar at any one of them, and since there is no effective safeguard against overlapping it is easy to be getting help from two or even more sources simultaneously.

This state of affairs, of course, does not help the genuine unemployed, the man who wants work and not charity. But it is a constant temptation to him to drop his self-respect and sink to the level of the men who, he finds, live just as comfortably without labour as he is able to do by steady industry.

The life of "toiling for leave to live," using up to-day for just as much reward as will allow you to be fit for work to-morrow—and that is the life of thousands—has, after all, not much attraction, considered dispassionately. The tramp in Mr. Wells's story who explained that it was followed only by people who had been "pithed"—i.e. had had their brains extracted while at school—had some grim reasonableness in his fancifulness. When honest work offers a hope of progressive betterment the enthusiasm for it is natural. When, as for too many, honest work offers nothing but a subsistence fractionally better than that of the dishonest loafer it is surprising not that there are so many but so few of the "cunning unemployed." Only a very strong innate sense of duty and self-respect can account for the fact that millions keep pressing desperately on in the ranks of the workers with no more real reward for their efforts than the pride that they have never been to the "workhouse" or taken alms from any one.

Recognising that, it is possible to come away from a study even of the "submerged tenth" in England with some cheerfulness. The mistakes of the past which have allowed that inundation of misery can be rectified, and, serious as those mistakes have been, they have left the character of the English people in the main sturdy and self-respecting. Of the "submerged tenth" I think only a tenth, i.e. one per cent of the total population, is actually hopeless and helpless. The others will respond to a wiser organisation of the national life offering more opportunity and less charity. On this point I have sought the views of several clergymen working in the East End, the poor quarter of London. They were all proud, and justifiably so, of the various efforts made to salve the lot of the poor—the university settlements, the hospitals, infirmaries, nursing associations, charitable and semi-charitable dormitories, the associations for the supply of food, clothing, coal, and the like. But not one, challenged to it, could truthfully claim that the sum of all this work was remedial in any real sense of the word. Not one of them could deny that most of it directly attacked the principle of self-reliance. The wretched were kept alive, and that was all. No future was opened out for the great majority of them, and very very rarely did any future mean useful citizenship of Great Britain, but rather the export of the young citizen to some other land in the hope that it would give him a chance.

Yet all agreed that as a matter of reasonable probability most of the men who are down could be saved and are worth saving. The proportion that is absolutely hopeless was variously stated. It may be averaged, in their opinion, at 5 per cent. The other 95 per cent could be brought to useful lives, these clergymen who are close students of the matter agreed.

That leaves, in the opinion of the men who have made a life study of the subject, not my one per cent, but only one-half per cent of the total English population as hopelessly "down." It is a bad wastage when one thinks that every human creature is a temple of the Divine, but it is not so gloomy a position as most imagine. And it can, and it will be stopped.

CHAPTER XI

THE ARTS IN ENGLAND

That the English are an "inartistic" people, without true appreciation of pictures, music, the drama, is a statement commonly made and commonly accepted without any very serious examination of the evidence for and against. A just judge giving the benefit of a close and impartial inquiry to the case of Madam England, indicted for that she is a Philistine without any true taste in, or proper love of, the arts, would be able to go no further than the Scottish verdict of "not proven." But few of those people who find England guilty without leaving the box have attempted to make any sound examination of the evidence available. They have heard of a Hanoverian monarch of past days, who despised "boetry und bainting," and have come to a settled conviction that that represented the English mind then and represents it now.

Elsewhere I have maintained that a nation which has such a noble taste in parks and gardens as have the English must be "æsthetic" at heart; and "æsthetic" and "inartistic" are not compatible. But apart from Nature love and delight in gardening, there is a great deal of evidence to be cited in the Englishman's favour as a lover of the arts.

It could certainly have been said with truth a few years ago, and probably could be said now, in spite of the recent rush of American buyers into the picture market, that the finest collection of Italian Masters of painting outside of Italy could be made from English galleries and English houses, and also the finest collection of Spanish Masters outside of Spain, of Flemish Masters outside the Low Countries, of French Masters outside of France. In short, one might get the finest and most complete collection representative of all the painting schools of the world from English collections.

One ungracious explanation is easy: that the English have been the rich people and have been able to buy. But a rich nation does not buy pictures without some national love and appreciation of pictures. I hesitate to write that in these days when one hears of a nouveau riche commissioning a friend "to buy him £10,000 worth of pictures by those old jossers"; and in any well-regulated fashionable furniture shop you may buy with the pots and the pans and the indubitably old worm-eaten antique furniture, pictures of the right age; and even books in the proper tone of binding for your old oak book-shelves. Still, taking a view by centuries and disregarding the crazes of a season or a generation, it is fair to conclude that a nation which consistently buys pictures, and good pictures at that, has some love of and taste in painting.

The lordly young Englishmen of past generations who, "doing the grand tour," came home with examples of the great continental Masters of painting for their halls, had not the motive of a blind and vulgar obedience to a passing craze. They must have known good pictures and liked good pictures. Year by year, generation by generation, they carried on their work until English collections came to have representative examples of all the great schools of the world. The while, there was no lack of English painters of distinction, and though the English schools of painting may not claim the same degree of achievement as English schools of prose and verse, they have done enough to rescue their country from the reproach of being careless as a nation of the art of painting. There are, let it be agreed, "Philistine" classes in England; and these "Philistines" have had more authority and opportunities of rule in England than in most European countries, a fact which has carried with it artistic disadvantages to weigh something in the balance against advantages in other directions. But it is absurd to attempt to represent England as a lost country artistically. The visitor who is interested chiefly in art will find in the various public galleries (not alone in London, but also in the provincial cities) many great examples of painting. If he chooses to carry his curiosity further he will find most of the private collections open to the inspection of any one who will take the trouble to ask courteously for permission to visit them.

In regard to music, it is probably just as easy to clear England of the charge of ignorance and want of sympathy. But I cannot undertake the task with any skill, for I know little of the musical world, not enough even to distinguish surely in Simonetti, the famous Italian conductor of the Athanasian orchestra (the names are laboriously fictitious), the excellent Simpson of Brixton, S.W. But the evidence (I plead always for a judgment on evidence, not on the hasty impression founded on a prejudice) would seem to show that England at one time was musical enough in a sweet wholesome way, producing a music of the open-air and the green fields. Then there came the great industrial epoch, and the people turned from the fields to the factories, and dug under the soil instead of tilling its surface; and that stream of thrush-melody was choked, and there came nothing notable to take its place, with no prompting to madrigal and pastoral, with not enough of neurasthenia to produce anything notable in the music of morbidity.

But the charge against musical England is carried further. Not only does she produce nothing, but she appreciates nothing. Dumb herself, she is resolutely deaf also to the song of others. I find it difficult to believe this in view of the fact that the hall-mark of London is still sought eagerly by the singers of the world, and is regarded as the final stamp of approval. If England were such a barbarian of the musical world as some would have us believe, why this eagerness for an English verdict of approval, an eagerness which is to be met with all over Europe, America, and Australia?

To record concrete facts, there is a great deal that is of musical interest to be explored in England. The capital has many excellent concert halls, where all the world's music from the classics to the latest frenzies of neo-Impressionism can be heard. In the provinces, too, there are many fine musical organisations, and when the "Celtic fringe" comes to be encountered, as in Wales, there is a musical fervour to match that of the most ardent of the Latin races. So—even though opera in London is of social rather than of musical importance—the English cannot be condemned at the present day as musically careless and ignorant; and in past times they have produced some worthy music and show signs in the present time of a revival of native music.

As to the art of the theatre, England, proud in a magnificent past, which is still the only rival in Christian times of the days of the ancient Greek drama, can with more good content than most nations submit to the present phase which makes production and scenery and not the play "the thing." But in dramatic as in musical art it is the fashion to represent England as sunk in a Slough of Despond, whilst other nations march gloriously forward on the upper heights. I take leave to dispute the truth of that picture. It is not a Golden Age anywhere for the drama. Our time seems to be capable of very little else than going over the tailing-heaps of past workers, searching for a little grain of gold here and there, and, after finding it, beating it out thin with infinite labour to make it appear as impressive as possible. There are no great nuggets being turned up; no one is pouring out a golden stream. But of what little pottering work there is being done, England is responsible for a fair share.

Perhaps her surviving instinct of Puritanism stands in the way of slightly increasing a small success. There are only two stories, says some one: there is the story of one man and two women, and there is the story of one woman and two men. English custom has insisted for a century or so upon a certain reserve in the treatment of any one of the infinite variations on these two themes; and there is a Censor to enforce some unwritten and poorly-understood Rules of the Game. Censors of the Censor say that his main rule is that you may not be "sexey" and serious, though you may go far on the path of being "sexey" and frivolous. A fairly faithful study of the London theatres has suggested to me that whatever primness there was about the censorship is rapidly breaking down, and there is not an undue amount of it nowadays.

The present (1912-13) fashion in London is for spectacle plays—in which the mounting is of at least equal importance to the play—and "atmosphere plays," the scene of which must be pitched in some unfamiliar, preferably some slightly uncouth phase of life, which is reproduced with meticulous accuracy. I suppose that Sir Herbert Tree may be accepted as the leader of theatrical London of the day: and when I sought to get an impression of theatrical London "behind the scenes," I obtained permission to watch him at work in the shaping of a big "production," False Gods, from the French, a philosophical treatise in the form of a play, which was to be launched upon London with the adventitious aid of impressive "production."

"No! No!! No!!! You must go mad, go mad! Think of a French Revolution—be just that! Dance, leap, shriek. Go mad!"

That was what I heard at the first dress rehearsal of False Gods, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree speaking with gesture to match his speaking. He had been watching the rehearsal with obvious satisfaction up to that. All had gone well and smoothly. In the first stage-setting his certain eye took in the fact that there was one false god too many on the terrace of the great Egyptian house. The bulk of that god spoiled the sky and the beautiful vista of the Nile. With a brief iconoclastic phrase that god was abolished.

Then the races of Egypt took Sir Herbert Tree's attention. "Too pale, too pale! Something more of the Nile mud in your faces!" The crowd of "supers" were prompt with grease-paint to make their colour more Egyptian. But the producer was not quite satisfied, and mounting the stage took himself a stick of paint and, working on their faces like an artist at a canvas, tinted two "supers" to the proper shade of Egyptian darkness.

Having so arranged the gods and the faces of men, Sir Herbert Tree turned to the firmament. The sky must have more light here, less light there. "It must get the burnished effect." In time, after many experiments in limelight, it does.

But those are only details, which the chief of the theatre attends to between snatches of conversation, never dropping for a moment his air, a little that of a philosopher, a little that of a Beau Nash. When, however, in the great scene where the images of the false gods are torn down, the mob on the stage tears with but little noise and no rage, Sir Herbert Tree is moved out of himself. In a moment he is on the stage with the command, "You must go mad!" and giving a workmanlike imitation of what he wants. The "supers" accordingly go mad and all is peace again, and there is assurance that the big scene will "go" as it should.

A curious study it was—the finishing touches being put on to a great London production. The final result must be such art as imitates Nature and yet creates illusion. Every detail has to be most carefully considered and revised again and again to fit harmoniously in with the whole scheme. The colour of a dress, the tint of a face, the shape of an eye, the placing of a flower or an ornament is changed and changed again until there is the harmony which apes perfection. Above all, the lights must be schemed—a little more purple, or green, or grey, or rose-red, or yellow; a softening here, a heightening there. A thousand-and-one combinations of light are tested until the right one is hit upon to suggest mystery, joy, sorrow, dawn, evening, superstition, cruelty, as the case may be. Much of the story the audience will read so clearly on the stage on the first night is written by the lights. The greatest trouble of the producer has been to get those lights right, not only for each scene, but for each minute of the scene, for with every phase of the play the lights must change.

It seems a monstrous task to the uninitiated. But during it all the producer at work is, as a rule (there are exceptional moments when the "supers" must go mad), quiet, chatty, willing and able to show the other side of his personality as a philosophical critic of the drama, its aims, its ethics.

"Yes, I work in a large frame.... Problem plays would not suit my canvas. (More purple now in that evening sky.) The object of the drama? Of course, to be amusing and to make people happy. That does not exclude tragedy. There is pleasure in tragedy, if it is lofty and not repulsive. We arrive at the same physical result through weeping and through laughing. (Those hands must all be held in the same way in the invocation. Remember it is a ritual!) Torture scenes on the stage? No, not if they are repulsive. But there are ways and ways. You can put blood trickling down the steps of a scene to suggest tragedy, and you can put blood trickling down the steps so as to suggest nausea. That second thing must not be. There must be nothing repulsive. (Give more of a pause there. And don't go near her. She must hold the stage for fifteen seconds.)

"Yes, I think the drama is growing in influence in England. We have a stronger drama than a decade ago. To-day the theatre is stronger in England than in any other part of the world. I say it deliberately. Stronger than in France, stronger than in America. And its influence grows. It is partly due, I think, to the decline of dogma. (Please, please, that music a little softer; but quicker too, brighter!) The stage's influence grows as dogma declines. What do I mean by dogma? Well, faith of the open-your-mouth-and-shut-your-eyes brand. But the stage must not have a pose nor a preach. We must be unconsciously ethical and proud of our craft. There's not enough pride in craftsmanship these days, not enough of the artist's spirit either in the artisan or in the artiste.

"Above all, if we are to be artistes we must be tolerant."

Then the time had come for Sir Herbert Tree to dress as the High Priest of Egypt. The two concluding acts of False Gods are coming, and in those two acts Sir Herbert Tree has to take part. The rehearsal afterwards misses the stimulus of his running comment and his suave sagacities. But it is still absorbingly interesting. Five minutes of high, emotional tragedy are sandwiched between discussions of lights, of dresses, of positions. When anything is not quite right the play is stopped, and voices fall from intensity to commonplace. Midnight approaches. Here and there a super, who has not quite enough of the artist's spirit to be able to take a pride and joy in doing his super's service of standing by and waiting, yawns. But the producer hammers and hammers away like a metal-worker fashioning a beautiful gate. With infinite multiplication of touches the production begins to take its shape.

At 1 a.m. the rehearsal is over. "Things are fairly satisfactory." It has lasted since 5 p.m. For three more days and nights the same task will be gone through, so that the "first night" may be perfect and the first-night audience may have no hint of the labour that perfection has cost.

It is all very fine; in a good producer's hands very artistic. But is it "dramatic art" in the full sense of the word? The question arises more insistently when the "production" is not that of a philosophical treatise in the form of a drama, which must be freely and splendidly illustrated if it is to "sell" at all, but of a Shakespeare play. Sir Herbert Tree is a great producer of Shakespeare; and he illustrates dramas of noble passion and lofty thought with the same elaborate care as he lavishes on a play like False Gods, or some "patriotic spectacle" of snippets and fustian.

There is another school of "producers" in London, aiming at strangeness, perhaps a little more than at simplicity. It is, in a sense, a school of revolt against elaborate production. I do not think that either school is destined to save or to condemn dramatic art.

Meanwhile, the theatres in London (and in the provinces which reproduce London successes, and also bring, with the aid of their Repertory Theatres, a valuable addition to the current of dramatic life) can be always trusted to offer something amusing to all tastes, from the serious to the gay and the raffish. A very well-defined type of London theatrical entertainment is the "musical comedy," a taste for which has spread to America, and is now invading France. It grew out of French opera-bouffe by way of burlesque, and of the "comic opera" type which Gilbert and Sullivan made famous. "Musical comedy" has to be bright, tuneful, inconsequential, and illustrated by charming women in charming costumes. Its aid to the happy digestion of dinner is one of its chief claims to popularity, and it strives to amuse without making undue demands on the intelligence.

The explorer in the theatrical life of England must not miss the music halls—the smaller ones usually owing part of their attraction to the fact that they are the resort of people whose chief business in life it is to be gay, the larger ones much more regardful of British Puritanism.

Yes, perhaps in reviewing the whole situation in painting, music, drama, Art is not so kind to England as Nature; or rather the Englishman does not give so much loving care to the arts as he does to his gardens and parks. Nevertheless, England is not a land altogether of Philistines.

CHAPTER XII

POLITICAL LIFE IN ENGLAND

After cataloguing carefully the industries which occupy the working hours of the Englishman and the sports which amuse his leisure, there would still be left to be considered a great field of activity which can come strictly under the heading neither of work nor of amusement, though it affords much of both. That is the field of politics.

Huge amounts of time, energy, money, are expended yearly by the Englishman on politics. To some of the wealthy and leisured, political activity in some direction or another is the chief interest of life. To some of the poor and discontented, politics seems to offer a way to better things. To the middle classes a degree of political activity is dictated if not by personal predilection then by the dictates of fashion or by the ambition to "get on" socially. There is no better way of social advancement than the way of politics. It is not only that knighthoods, orders, peerages even, reward the political worker, but that entry into social circles otherwise closed becomes possible when some mutual political interest smooths the way. Thus the ranks of those genuinely interested in political issues are recruited by a great crowd of social aspirants, sincere enough probably, but with, as their main object, the desire to parade their excellent political principles as a reason for advancement into "good society."

This aspect of political life is not peculiar to England. Wherever representative institutions exist it may be found in some degree. But in England it has gone to an extreme length. The existence of a very numerous leisured class is partly responsible, no doubt. Another explanation is that in England with political issues are inextricably involved personal and clan rivalries. The Montagues and Capulets do not brawl in the streets of London or Manchester. They fight out their rivalries on the hustings and in the field of politics. Where there are no ready-made leaders of political faction in a town or district they soon develop; or there may grow up a joint-stock rivalry between the political clubs, in which the personal leadership becomes of minor importance but the corporate struggle for supremacy is tremendous. Then the position resembles the fierce but on the whole good-natured contests between football clubs and their supporters.

The rival political organisations, under these circumstances, seek always eagerly the man who can win or hold the seat, and their chief interest is that the party platform shall be so framed that it will be most likely to attract the "wobblers," who are not definitely and permanently bound to either party. Victory carries with it intense satisfaction. With defeat there is rarely any enduring bitterness. In politics, as in other games, the Englishman is a "good sport," and if he loses to-day hopes to win next time, or consoles himself, when he is permanently and hopelessly outnumbered, that at least he has won a "moral victory." A "moral victory" is won when you are decisively beaten, but would certainly have won on account of the excellence of your cause but that Providence was on the side of the bigger battalions.

Aside from the main party issue:

English political activity finds expression in numberless leagues, societies, organisations, and unions to promote some special idea in politics. These usually have a nucleus of enthusiasts and a great body of followers with no very precise idea of what they want, but an impression that the league is a good thing because it has this or that personality among its office-bearers. I tried once to make a census of the political organisations of England, and gave up the task when the number passed into the hundreds without the end being in sight. Each party has several organisations to meet the needs of different types of supporters. Then each idea claims its league to advocate, and often also its league to oppose. Further, there are all sorts of leagues which aim at the abolition of something, and again there are some leagues pseudo-political, which really have no more serious purpose than afternoon tea.

But usually the purpose is serious and sincere. Else why the street meeting, which in the English climate is usually a harsh tax on the comfort of speakers and audience? My first impression in London of one of these street meetings at first inspired in me ridicule, then a reluctant admiration. At a street corner—brilliantly lighted from a public-house on one side and a grocery store on the other—a little pulpit set up in the road: from it a man speaking vigorously, almost passionately, apparently to the idle wind, for no one is there to listen, unless indeed that horse drowsing in the shafts of a cart at the grocery store is listening, and what looks like sleepiness on its part is really quiet and intelligent appreciation. This was strange enough to arrest attention. I forgot a purpose to see from Primrose Hill the young moon rise over London on a clear night, and stopped to listen. That was the first of the audience. The speaker had announced, "We are met here to-night to——"; but that was, it seemed at first, an unjustifiable optimism, for nobody had met; nobody seemed inclined to meet.

But the speaker, after all, knew. There was to be, later on, a meeting, and he, with a stolid courage that evoked an admiration strong enough to smother the first sense of ludicrousness, was making that meeting. To speak to a meeting which isn't, to pour out eloquence to an empty waste of street for half an hour or so until the curious are attracted and an odd bystander swells to a group, and a group to a crowd—that surely calls for courage of the highest; it calls, too, for that stolid self-confidence and imperviousness to ridicule which seems characteristic of the Englishman when he feels that he is in the right.

But very depressing is the beginning of this street meeting. The speaker has put up his little barricade, a street pulpit of deal, which bears a placard urging "the electors to insist on a candidate who will support British work for British hands"; but at first there is neither friend to help nor enemy to fight. In a little while two supporting speakers appear with bundles of pamphlets. Three small boys, attracted by curiosity, are enlisted to distribute these among the audience (as yet non-existent). The man in the pulpit talks energetically and sensibly. There are all the essentials of a good meeting, except an audience. The horse at the street corner still drowses. With irritating persistency a street beggar—a sturdy young chap apparently, perhaps one of the victims of the political evils that the speaker is talking of—plays a dismal tune again and again on a concertina. The air is eager and nipping, and it seems hopeless to expect that any number will give up their Saturday night to stand listening at this cold street corner.

But gradually the crowd swells. There are at least 150 people listening by the time that the first speaker has concluded and makes way for another. I seek from him an explanation of this strange form of political propaganda. Is this a casual incident or is it a habit? It seems that it is a habit, the expression of the faith that is in them by a small group of enthusiasts who think they see England in danger and wish to send to the people a warning word. The meeting grows with every minute and livens up considerably. A bystander, on whom Fate has evidently not inflicted a drought, interrupts persistently, and finally accosts the speaker and puts an affectionate and unsober hand on his shoulder and wishes to help him to run the meeting; but the police interfere, and the speaker goes on pouring out facts in vigorous phrases. Now and again a wife comes into the crowd and draws away her unwilling husband; for there are Saturday night marketing duties to be done, and on them political education must wait. But such losses in the audience are made up by gains, and the meeting goes forward to a cheerful, even an enthusiastic conclusion. It has dealt with one of the big questions of the day. But—so strong is the political habit of the English—it might have attracted almost as much attention if its object had been the advocacy of the setting up of a Jewish Republic in Jerusalem, or some amendment of the law to protect hansom cabs from motor-cab competition.

But political life is not all street-speaking. Indeed, that is generally left to the stark enthusiasts and to the faddists. When the big actors on the stage of politics take the platform, it is in a theatre or a great hall of amusement, and there is an orchestra; sometimes, too, eminent vocalists; and even occasionally also a cinematograph entertainment, to make the evening "go off well." I recall a nicely-balanced evening at which there was a duke in the chair—a true nobleman this particular duke, but not at all an orator, and he did not attempt to speak. Then a breezy speaker filled in an hour with advocacy of "the cause"; after that music and moving pictures for an hour. For the audience the winter evening had been filled very comfortably. There was something of an atmosphere of "high society," some earnest and not very dull explanation of a political issue, and some entertainment.

To make the pursuit of politics still more comfortable there are very many political clubs. Almost every electorate has its Conservative Club and its Liberal Club, to which the only qualification for membership is a sound political faith. At these clubs there are newspapers, magazines, games of all sorts, refreshments (at club prices), and occasional political discussions and lectures. Then in the capital and the big provincial towns there are clubs of a more "exclusive" type, membership of which is more or less reserved. The two biggest political clubs are the National Liberal—with a magnificent house fronting the Thames—and the Constitutional (Conservative) in Northumberland Avenue. These are the great popular headquarters for the young fighters of the two big parties. It is almost necessary to be a member of the National Liberal Club if you wish to show as an earnest Liberal. There is a popular gibe "from the other side" which gives the definition of the "complete Liberal": "I have always refrained from intoxicating liquors; I have married my deceased wife's sister; none of our children have been vaccinated; and I am a member of the National Liberal Club." The "other side," galled a little at this, has not so far responded with anything better than this definition of the "complete Tory": "I am incurably stupid; and a member of the Constitutional Club."

The party chiefs have their club citadels in Pall Mall, London—the Carlton on the Unionist side, the Reform on the Liberal side. Here one gets sound politics of one's own particular brand, with sound port, good dinners, and comfortable chairs. (The English "club chair," by the way, is the standard of manly comfort the wide world over. You find the English "club chair" proudly announced as a luxury in all Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and Africa; and "club" is a word found in every civilised language.) Membership of these clubs is difficult to win, and it carries with it some claim to be considered one of the managing committee of the party. (The Reform, however, is not quite so rigidly a "party" organisation as the Carlton, which will force you to resign if your politics do not remain sound from a Unionist point of view.)

But apart from the great well-defined political clubs there are scores of minor examples of these social-political organisations. Whenever a political "group" is formed, it finds the need of a club where it may talk over its enthusiasms at dinner. Thus when recently Lord Halsbury led a schism against the main body of opinion among the Unionist peers, a "Halsbury Club" was formed to band together in social as well as political unity those who agreed with him. Not all these clubs acquire club-houses. Sometimes they seek the hospitality of other clubs, sometimes are content to engage a private room at an hotel for their periodical dinners and discussions.

A very interesting political club in England is that secret organisation known as "the Confederacy," a very advanced and extreme Unionist body, which has a marked influence on political life, and which is proud of that testimonial of its usefulness based on the declaration of one of its opponents that it is an association of "political Jack-the-Rippers."

Who are the Confederates? The names, of course, cannot be disclosed. It is allowed for any member to declare himself to be a Confederate if he so chooses. But few care to do so. The strictest secrecy must be maintained as to his fellow-members, and no report or record is allowed to be taken of any proceedings of the Confederacy; not even a balance-sheet is ever disclosed. There is a small inner circle of them—known as "the Allies"—who manage the finances and administer the affairs of the Confederacy generally, taking their instructions from the mass of the members, who meet monthly in a strictly-guarded room of a private club, or at the house of one of their number, from which all servants are excluded as soon as the dinner (which ushers in all meetings) is over. The aim is that no one shall be indictable in the camp of the enemy as a "Confederate" except on his own confession.

"Who are the Confederates?" cannot therefore be answered with any list of names. As a class, they represent the young bloods of the Tariff Reform Party, the forward spirits who believe that in politics one should be strenuous as well as politic. They have raised among themselves a big fighting fund. They have at their command a list of speakers (who, however, are not always allowed to know under what prompting they are sent out into the political firing line), and they command by various means a great newspaper influence.

The professed object of secrecy is to secure the greatest possible efficiency. It is the Unknown that is terrible. A "Jack-the-Ripper" who openly declared himself would have nothing like the power of one working in the dark. These political "Jack-the-Rippers" recognise that fact, and do not in the least object to the savage epithet which they earn by their secrecy.

A meeting of the Confederacy is always preluded by a dinner. Thus, to the outer world, and to the servants of the club or of the private house which is chosen as a meeting-place, it is just a gathering of men to dine together. After dinner, with the port and the coffee and the cigars, the doors being barred against the intrusion of servants, business begins. Every member is entrusted with the duty of observing some phase of the political fight and reporting thereon. The chances in various electorates are discussed. Funds are voted, when that is necessary, to assist candidates "on the right side." Flights of orators are despatched to points where they are needed. The newspaper side of the campaign is canvassed. Executive action on all the points raised is left to the three "Allies."

There is no Liberal analogue—so far as I know—to the Confederacy. But one might exist without any one knowing of it except the actual members. Certainly there are secret groups in all the political parties. Sometimes the secrecy is dictated by real motives of expediency. Sometimes it is just a device to give zest to a jaded political palate, and is comparable with the elaborate make-believe of children.

Women are not banished from the political life of England. Almost every party organisation has a separate branch for women, and the influence of these women's organisations is very great. Indeed, some believe that the drawing-room is more powerful than the platform in English public life. But women do not confine their efforts to the drawing-room. They invade the platform also and are sometimes very effective speakers indeed. Lately the agitation for giving women the Parliamentary vote has brought a fresh incursion of feminine workers into the political field, and some of them have shown a remarkable originality in educational work. To raise false alarms of fire so that the Fire Brigades may have useless trouble, to destroy letters in postal pillar-boxes with corrosives, to break windows, and to inflict mild assaults on public men—these are some of the recent methods of political life in England introduced by the agitators for the enfranchisement of women.

It is curious to note with what relative patience such political methods are received. If any one attacked the people's letters for some motive not political, the public indignation would know no bounds, and the sternest punishment would be insisted upon. But "politics" explains most things, condones most things. The English have a phrase, "politically speaking," which in effect means "not really." They have two great games, cricket and politics. In cricket you must observe all the rules of fair play with most scrupulous nicety. In politics there is practically but one rule—to stick to your side. To say that something is "not cricket" is to signify that it is within the law, but transgresses some delicate tradition of justice, and therefore is reprehensible. To say that something is "politics" means that it must be condoned, unfair though it may seem, because it has a political motive.

In this chat about the political life of England I have sought to be impartial and "non-party"; and that is, by the way, the one really serious political misdeed. Every one must have a label of some sort, or otherwise be accounted somewhat in the category of an unregistered dog.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DEFENCE OF ENGLAND

To keep this England secure, what are the means? A glance at that question at once makes it necessary to tell of Britain rather than of England. There is no English Army, no English Navy. In each case it is a British force, and in the case of the Navy it is being rapidly developed into an Imperial force representing the strength not merely of England and of Britain, but also of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the other Dominions. Yet no picture of England could pass without some reference to the Navy, which is the supreme maritime force of the world, and the Army, which, though it is a very thin line these days compared with the great continental masses, is probably prepared to uphold in the future the great traditions of the past. And Navy and Army, though not wholly English, are in the main representative of the senior partner in the British firm.

The problem of the defence of England is a great deal complicated by the fact that the British power has spread itself so much over the globe. Outside of Europe it possesses nearly one half of North America, a great share of the East Indies, the West Indies, and the islands of the Pacific, the whole of Australia and New Zealand, the best parts of Africa and of Asia. In past days there have been some astonishing cases of a wide range of power from a small focus: the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, the Mohammedan Empire, for examples. But in no case was the comparison between the mother-country and the actual stretch of real dominion so astonishing as in the case of Britain and her Empire. In most of those cases, too, the Empire was short-lived, and soon broke up into its constituent parts. But the British Empire remains incredibly vast, and seemingly permanent.

The position is that the parent country of that Empire has to face a far greater task than the securing of her own safety. History shows that part of the price of Empire to be paid by Britain is a mutual jealousy and hostility between her and the next greatest Power in Europe. British foreign policy, more or less consciously, has had to be always founded on that basis. She has in the past fought down Spain, Holland, France. After the Napoleonic Era, when Russia seemed to be the paramount power of Europe, she inevitably set herself to thwarting and checking Russia. When Russian power lessened and Germany became the first Power of Europe, she likewise stepped into the place of the Power which is doomed to be in antagonism to Great Britain. Were German might to fade away, the nation that took Germany's place as the most powerful in Europe would also take her place as the feared rival. The British Empire has taken up so much of the limited room "in the sun" that it must tempt to attack an aspiring Power; and it must face with a nervous dread the growing strength of the paramount Power for the time being in Europe.

In the old struggles to maintain the British Empire, we relied successfully on a policy of "splendid isolation." Without making permanent alliances we held aloof and when a struggle came threw in our weight with one set of Powers or the other and usually secured thus a victory. For many reasons that policy is not the "official" policy of England to-day, though it still has many warm advocates. But, as under that policy for a century a supreme Navy was considered to be necessary for Britain, so to-day that need still survives, and the Navy is the senior defence force of the country. The reliance on naval strength is so complete that the Army is kept to very small dimensions, comparatively speaking, and none of the great cities are fortified. The naval ports have fortifications, but one looks in vain for fortresses around London, Birmingham, and Manchester. England is committed to float or sink on the Navy. As Campbell proudly put it: