How aptly said that Dante seems to have tried to write a poem with a sculptor's chisel or a painter's brush.
Froissart observes clearly, but his observation is limited to the world of nobles and chivalry; he ignores the life, the sufferings and the joys of the people.
Ben Jonson, master of dignified declamatory drama, was the greatest of the post-Shakespeare school. We may justly say post-Shakespeare, though Jonson was nearly contemporaneous with the Bard of Avon, because the influence of such a man clearly belongs to an age in which the freedom and romantic magnificence of Shakespeare have been forgotten.
Gibbon is the first of historians. The "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" runs its course like some majestic river.
Burns is a microcosm of Scotland.
Burke—a stainless and beautiful character. A theorist in practice; a practical man in theory.
Burke's view of Rousseau was biased and unjust.
Though contemptuous of Wordsworth, Byron himself is a romantic of the romanticists. He was the guiding star of rebels the world over.
In the calm purity of his verse, Shelley is more classic than romantic. What ecstatic melody in his lyrics!
Dickens is often mawkish and often portrays oddities; but these oddities do exist, especially in London (e.g., Sam Weller, Mrs. Todgers, Jo, etc.), and Dickens unearthed them for the first time. How his heart warms for the poor and the wretched! He is the great poet of London life.
Macaulay is not a philosophic writer; but then the English genius is certainly non-philosophic.
Froude in his essay on Homer says: "The authors of the Iliad and the Odyssey stand alone with Shakespeare far away above mankind." Paul's marginal note: "Add to them Milton, Goethe, the author of the Nibelungen-lied, Browning."
Froude, I think, has misunderstood the Nibelungen-lied entirely. There is really much savagery and much glory in both the German and the Greek epic.
How strange that men like Rabelais and Swift, Goldsmith and Dickens, who have done so much to make the world laugh, experienced in their own lives great unhappiness.
Browning is always an optimist. His manliness and vigour are unfailing:
I find earth not grey but rosy,
Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
Do I stand and stare? All's blue.
Paul considered that Macaulay lacked ideas and vision. He liked the lilt and swing of the Lays and Ballads, and enjoyed the Essays with their superb colouring. Disputing Macaulay's dictum that neither painters nor poets are helped by the advances in civilisation, science and refinement, he wrote: "This argument disproved by the examples of men like Shakespeare and Goethe, like Browning and Kipling. And did not Leonardo da Vinci become a student of anatomy in order to learn how to depict the human body properly on his canvas?"
Macaulay in his Essay on Mackintosh's "History of The Revolution" describes the condition of England in 1678, after eighteen years of Charles the Second's reign, in graphic words, beginning "Such was the nation which, awaking from its rapturous trance, found itself sold to a foreign, a despotic, a Popish court, defeated on its own seas and rivers by a State of far inferior resources, and placed under the rule of pandars and buffoons."
Paul's comment reads: "This superb passage is one of the most inspired of Macaulay's utterances. Contrast with it in the same Essay the vivid sentence beginning 'In the course of seven centuries,' in which he pronounces a magnificent panegyric on the greatness of Britain."
He thought the music of Macaulay's prose had often a metallic sound, and that it suffered from excess of epithet and addiction to antithetical phrases. In pithiness of style, sureness of touch and dispassionate judgment, he contrasted Acton as an historical writer with Macaulay, to the latter's disadvantage. He found every page of Acton packed with thought, every essay richly freighted with ideas. Moreover, Acton was sternly impartial and impersonal in his judgment of persons and in his estimate of influences. Paul wrote:
There has never been in historical writing such inexorable logic, such compact phraseology, so much pith and point, as are to be found in Acton's Essays.
His view of Carlyle was thus expressed: "Take away his style and half his greatness vanishes. Carlyle's works are not English in spirit, nor have they any point of resemblance to those of any other English writer." As for his views: "he has, alas! no love for democracy." Carlyle's habit of apotheosising heroes and his worship of the Strong Man made Paul pose the familiar problem: "Is the great man the fashioner of his age, or its product?" He thought something was to be said on both sides, and that it was impossible to lay down a positive proposition on what he called "this terribly difficult question." But he agreed with Guizot that "great events and great men are fixed points and summits of historical survey." He emphasises the fact that in his "French Revolution" Carlyle, in spite of his hero-worship, accepts the evolutionary view of history.
Among essayists he had a special liking for Froude, Matthew Arnold and Edmund Gosse. He often turned for refreshment to Froude's "Short Studies," and felt the fascination of his "Erasmus." In his essay on the Book of Job, Froude writes: "Happiness is not what we are to look for; our place is to be true to the best which we know; to seek that and do that." On this my son comments: "I don't hold with this idea; for, while happiness is not the end, yet it always in its purest and brightest form comes to the really good or great man in the consciousness of the work he has done." Froude in his essay on "Representative Men" enlarges on the importance of educating boys by holding up before them the pattern of noble lives. By picturing the career of a noble man rising above temptation and "following life victoriously and beautifully forward," Froude thinks you will kindle a boy's heart as no threat of punishment here or hereafter will kindle it. On this Paul writes: "A noble plea for an education of youth far more effective than the cursed nonsense of forbidding this or that on penalty of hell-fire."
Matthew Arnold, whom in some moods he admired, occasionally got on his nerves. I find this footnote on a page of "Culture and Anarchy": "This is self-satisfied swank." On another page: "Matthew Arnold himself often wanting in sweetness and light." On another: "Admirably put; here I do agree with M. A." He liked Arnold's essay on "The Function of Criticism," although he differed from some of the author's judgments. "The French Revolution took a political, practical character," wrote Arnold; on which my son's comment is: "Surely the French Revolution was only one aspect of a great world-movement of liberation! One side of it is Romanticism; another the Revolution itself; yet another, the Industrial Revolution. No movement has ever a character sui generis." On Joubert's remark: "Force and Right are the governors of this world, Force till Right is ready," his comment is: "A regular German theory." Paul's final note on "The Function of Criticism" reads:
I consider that Matthew Arnold insists too much on the non-practical element of criticism. After all, it is the lesson of life that the practical man wins in the end. When we are brought face to face with the realities of things—as in a war like the present one—all thought of art and letters simply vanishes. How is it that the mass of the world is always inartistic? How is it that the one people in the world—the Greeks—who built up their State on what Arnold regards as ideal conditions, collapsed in headlong ruin before the inartistic but practical Romans?
This comment illustrates one effect of the War on Paul's mind: he was becoming less of an idealist and more of a realist.
For Mr. W. H. Hudson's "Introduction to the Study of Literature" he had high esteem. This book he has carefully annotated. Of Mr. Hudson's remarks on the contrast between the style of Milton and that of Dryden, between Hooker and Defoe, he writes: "A comparison of remarkable discernment. The difference between the Miltonic and Drydenic styles, i.e., pre-1660 and post-1660, was simply due to the change in ideas caused by the reaction against Puritanism." Agreeing with Hudson that there is much poetry which is prosaic and much prose which is poetical, he cites as examples: "Prose in Poetry: Pope, Dryden, Walt Whitman. Poetry in Prose: Carlyle, Macaulay, Goethe." He did not concur with Hudson's remark that the "full significance of poetry can be appreciated only when it addresses us through the ear," and that "the silent perusal of the printed page will leave one of its principal secrets unsurprised." Paul's comment on this:
Too sweeping a statement. Take, for example, poets like Milton and Browning, where every line is fraught with some deep philosophic meaning and must be pondered over for some time before the whole of the greatness of the poetry is realised. In these cases reading aloud is not nearly so good as private, silent study.
He demurred to the proposition that while the function of Ethics is to instruct, that of Art is to delight. "I hold," he writes, "that Art's duty is to instruct as much as, if not more than, that of Ethics. Art to be great must elevate and edify." Hudson wrote: "The common view that the primitive ages of the world were ages of colossal individualism is grotesquely unhistorical; they were, on the contrary, ages in which group-life and group-consciousness were in the ascendant." "Quite true," notes Paul. "See Maine's 'Ancient Law,' where he points out that ancient history has nothing to do with the individual but only with groups." Another annotated book is Maeterlinck's "Wisdom and Destiny." To Maeterlinck's remark, "It is often of better avail from the start to seek that which is highest," he adds: "Always, not often." He heartily subscribed to Maeterlinck's doctrine that our attitude to life ought to be one of "gladsome, enlightened acceptance, not a hostile, gloomy submission."
His philosophy of life was expressed in that beautiful passage in Carlyle's essay on "Characteristics":
Here on earth we are as soldiers fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of the campaign and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is at our hand to be done, let us do it like soldiers, with submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind each one of us, lie 6,000 years of human effort, human conquest. Before us is the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered continents and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of Eternity there shine for us celestial guiding stars.
My inheritance, how wide and fair!
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.
The ethical side of Paul's character is reflected in the appended quotations from some of his essays:
Sacrifice is always the lot of the divine man.
What is "to do good"? It is to think of other people.
Joy only comes to Faust when at last he is labouring for others. As Wolsey puts it in Henry VIII: "Love thyself last," and "bear peace in thy right hand."
The Epicurean idea is vile and detestable. If everyone thinks only of his own indulgence, how can the wherewithal for that indulgence be forthcoming? What is the use of man having all his glorious gifts of character and intellect if he does not use them? Why is man made so different from the animals if he is to be the mere slave of his passions?
Stoicism finally degenerates into mere pessimism.
The great defect of Puritanism was its hostility to Art; for Art glorifies and ennobles Life.
"What is the final cause of the Universe?" This is the old problem of the philosophers. Goethe's lines leap to the mind:
"How, when and where?
The Gods make no reply;
To causes give thy care,
And cease to question why."
Carlyle in "Heroes and Hero Worship" shows the folly of condemning a man for the faults noted down by the world about him—by those blind to the true inner secret of his life. "Who art thou that judgest thy fellow?"
Naturalism is illogical because it postulates Nature without mind.
If you do not place faith in humanity, what really is the use of any philosophy of life?
Let us remember St. Paul's injunction, "Bear ye one another's burdens."
It is a thought to make one ponder, that by far the finest Life of Christ was written by an agnostic, Renan.
Action is a great joy in life.
When prehistoric man took up a flint and laboriously beat it into a shape that his brain told him would be of use to him, he laid the foundations of all civilisation. Man's progress is the story of brute force laid low by Thought—which is the one really irresistible influence in the Universe:
"In the world there is nothing great but Man;
In Man there is nothing great but Mind."
It is a perplexing reflection that there is no absolute moral standard. The moral law appears to vary with environment and according to conditions of time and place. I am reminded of Pope's lines:
"Where the extreme of vice was ne'er agreed.
Ask where's the North? At York 'tis on the Tweed;
In Scotland, at the Orcades; and there
At Greenland, Zembla, or the Lord knows where."
The greater a man is in one direction, the more prone he usually is to weakness in another: that is why we must never condemn indiscriminately.
The laws governing the Universe, so far from being mechanical and dead, are elements filled with Truth and Beauty.
Materialism is fatal to the higher instincts, because it introduces that most sordid element—earthly pomp, circumstance and recompense.
The Universe, History, Life are before us. Why should they not be investigated? It is not true that science leads to Atheism or Fatalism. What science does is to destroy that fabric of Aberglaube or superstition which chokes and asphyxiates the best parts of religion. What science does is to set up a new, purer creed based on certainty and truth.
Of French writers Paul liked most Taine, Sainte-Beuve, and Victor Hugo. His love of reading he took with him into the War. A box of books returned to us with his other effects from France included "The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," Macaulay's "Essays," Saint-Simon's "Memoirs," Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries," "The Imitation of Christ," Lecky's "History of European Morals," and works by Goethe, Victor Hugo, Dumas the elder, Flaubert, Maurice Barrès, and Mrs. Humphry Ward.[Back to Contents]
History is philosophy teaching by examples.
Bolingbroke.
The science of Politics is the one science that is deposited by the stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river.
Acton.
Reared in the home of a political journalist, it was natural that Paul Jones should be attracted to public affairs. He followed with lively curiosity the progress of the two general elections of 1910, and from that year was an interested observer of political events. As he grew older his bent towards politics became more pronounced. A youth familiar with Roman, mediæval and modern history could not fail to be fascinated by the political drama unfolding before his eyes. He watched history in the making with the same eagerness that he read the history of the past. The prevailing tone at Dulwich, as at most public schools, is Conservative. Paul was a perfervid Liberal. In school and out of school, not only did he not disguise, he gloried in his advanced opinions. The extent of his political knowledge and the ripeness of his views were astonishing in one so young.
From the moment he began to think for himself his sympathies flowed out to the wage-earning classes. What he remembered and what he had heard of his Puritan grandfather, William Jones, a grand specimen of the Victorian artisan, who died in December, 1905, on the verge of 80, deepened his regard for them. But his own broad and sympathetic nature would have drawn him instinctively to their side. In his judgment it was on and by the working-classes that the wheels of the world moved forward. He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and their non-receptivity to ideas. He for his part must breathe an ampler air. He was wont to speak disdainfully of the Victorian era, because, in spite of all the advances it witnessed in the physical sciences and of Britain's rapid growth in wealth between 1850 and 1890, it did so little for social welfare.
For feudal magnates and the nouveaux riches he had scant respect, holding that both the aristocracy and the plutocracy had used their political power for selfish ends. Old feudalism in some respects he regarded as better than new Capital, for the landed aristocracy did at least recognise some obligations to those under their sway, whereas Capital was so concerned with its rights that it forgot altogether its reciprocal duties. His view was that, under shelter of the laissez-faire system, with its false presumption that employers and employed were on a parity in bargaining power, Capital had scandalously evaded its obligations to Labour. He regarded the conditions of life in some of our industrial districts as a grave reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a strange caprice. But though there is inequality of natural gifts, he thought it was the duty of the State to ensure equality of opportunity to all its citizens. His ideal was a co-operative commonwealth, in which the competitive spirit would be held in check by communal needs and aims, and where every career would be opened freely to talent. In one of his essays he deplores the fact that political economists had fallen into the delusion of applying the laws that govern the exchange of commodities without any variation to Labour, and leaving out of account intangibles and imponderables like moral forces and other expressions of the delicate and mysterious human spirit. Political economy, he thought, would have to be recast and humanised. "The economists," he said, "have entirely ignored the human factor."
Paul's conviction was that when the rule of enlightened democracy was established wars would cease. "The peoples never want wars," he wrote; "under a pure democracy wars would be impossible." Because of the associations clustering around it the word "Imperialism" jarred on him, but he took pride in the greatness of the free and liberal British Empire, with its rule of law, its love of peace, its humane ideals. He had the historical sense in highly developed degree. The story of human progress stretched before the eye of his mind in a series of vivid pictures. Surveying the immense and imposing fabric of recorded events woven by the ceaseless loom of Time, he had an unerring instinct for the shining figures, the salient characteristic, the determining factor. Away from a library he could have written a quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Cæsar, Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her enigmatical personality, marvellous statecraft and capacity for inspiring devotion, and of the brilliant galaxy of great men, statesmen and sailors, poets and scholars, who enriched her reign with so much glory. Another epoch he loved to study was that of the French Revolution. I have already referred to his habit of annotating the books he read. From notes he made on political books and from some of his essays I have culled the following:
Man's tool-using power is simply a symbol of man's unique reasoning gifts. Its connotations may be extended to mean the entire intellect.
The savage using his language with joy like a child, gives us the wealth of beautiful mythology about all natural objects.
It is wonderful to think that Julius Cæsar's imperial system was handed right down to the nineteenth century, until one not unlike Cæsar himself set his foot upon its neck in 1806. But long before it fell the Holy Roman Empire had really ceased, in Voltaire's words, to be holy, or Roman, or an empire.
Froude holds up to admiration the "serene calmness" of Tacitus, and says he took no side. But I ask anyone who has read the sarcastic remarks about Domitian and the Emperors in the "Agricola" whether he thinks Tacitus took no side in writing history.
Nothing can alter the fact that Mohammedanism has done a vast amount of good. Compare Carlyle's appreciation of Mahomet with Gibbon's acrimonious insinuations.
Much that is strange in human history is explained if we remember that aristocracies in the West were political, while in the East they were religious.
Hildebrand, who boldly declared that the Church compared to the State was as the sun to the moon—the State only shining by light borrowed from the greater orb—was now on the papal throne. His giant intellect and tremendous personality had overawed Henry IV into ignominious capitulation at Canossa. With Europe at his feet Hildebrand cannot but have desired to assert his authority over the island-State across the Channel. William the Conqueror and Hildebrand were rarely-matched antagonists—the one determined to set bounds to the Pope's scheme of world-domination; the Pope equally determined to bend the stubborn Norman to his will. It was the Conqueror who won.
The conception of the Norman Conquest has shifted from the grotesque over-estimate of Thierry to the under-estimate of Freeman and Maitland. To the moderns the Conquest is now little more than a change of dynasty. A juster estimate would be that the very change of dynasty gave the Conquest its vital importance.... The effects were really immense. The Conquest substituted for the degenerate race of Anglo-Saxon kings a virile dynasty able to give to England what it needed—a vigorous central administration—and brought the English people into the stream of European civilisation.
It was the hope of Erasmus that Catholic forms could be blended with the Greek spirit.
Luther's songs express the very soul of old Germany; above all, the great hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott."
Though the Reformation in freeing the mind of man from ecclesiastical tyranny made eventually for political liberty, its whole tendency in England for the time being was in favour of absolute monarchy. Its first outcome here was to set up a secular monarchy, supreme in Church and State, founded on the theory of the divine right of kings, based on an aristocracy made loyal by the instinct of self-interest.
Commerce and national wealth were at stake in the war between England and Spain in the sixteenth century, and not merely, perhaps not even mainly, religion.
Drake was a very great sailor, but he was undoubtedly a buccaneer.
Many Ministers had been sent to the block for offences far less rank than those of Charles I; nevertheless, his execution was absolutely illegal and a fatal mistake in policy.
Few men experienced such hard treatment at the hands of fortune as Cromwell. In every case, save the rule of the major-generals, his constitutional experiments were wise, far-seeing and well-conceived. It was the perverse conduct of those who professed to be his followers that ruined all.
There has never been a shrewder king on a throne than Charles II.
In the popular view, James II will always be regarded as the tyrannical despot, the subverter of the religious and political institutions of England, while his brother, Charles II, will be looked upon as a kindly and amiable gentleman, who oppressed no one and treated everyone kindly. Yet in the view of the student of history Charles becomes the tyrant and James an honest though bigoted fool.
To compare the age of Cromwell with that of Charles II is to see the Dorian and Lydian spirits respectively in their most contrasted lights.
The difference between Richelieu and Mazarin is the difference between the creator and the developer.
The political revolution of 1688 was contemporaneous with a revolution in physics, shown by Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood; with a revolution in astronomical thought, shown by Newton's "Principia"; with a small revolution in literature, shown by the rise of English prose; with a revolution in popular feeling all over the world, as shown by the riots against excessive taxation in France and the ejection of de Witt in Holland. All the different threads of life seem to run interwoven, and one cannot be disturbed without disturbing the others.
The character of Frederick the Great was stained by many infamous deeds; he was in many ways unscrupulous, yet he was never petty, and he was devoted to his country. He was the greatest genius in practical reforms and in the art of war that the eighteenth century produced.
Frederick the Great has had a far stronger and better influence on history than a selfish, callous person like Louis XIV.
Of all the benevolent despots there is only one, Frederick the Great, to whom can be fitly applied what Johnson said of Goldsmith: "Let not his faults be remembered: he was a very great man."
Under a despotism the aristocracy loses all its powers, and, except for the bureaucracy and "King's friends," there is no privileged class unless the King is a weak man and under the thumb of his court (e.g., contrast the France of Louis XIV with that of Louis XV).
Carlyle in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth century: compare the views of de Tocqueville.
Carlyle in his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes: "We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of Front-de-Bœuf in 'Ivanhoe.'"
Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's complacent attitude in re France to illustrate the general lack of vision on the subject.
Voltaire's summing up of the consequences of Turgot's fall may be expressed in Sir Edward Grey's phrase: "Death, disaster and damnation."
If Louis XVI had been wiser and more capable, would he have averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent despot in Joseph II.
There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the younger Pitt.
Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling and agonising that I know.
Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of the most ineffective geniuses in history.
Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon, knew the contrary.
William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his great Ministers.
Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the Danube?" Paul's comment on this:
"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim; three, the Battle of Ulm."
The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding influence in the world.
England's geographical position does not fit her for the rôle of a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire world-wide.
Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent qualities have time and time again been baffled—as the examples of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate.... As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single State. Every people has the right to believe that certain powers of the Divine Reason display themselves in it at their highest."
Patriotism may indeed be but a larger form of selfishness, but it is a larger form. It does involve devotion to others. As long as men are men, it is so unlikely as almost to be impossible that patriotism will ever be replaced by cosmopolitanism.
A great point in favour of the rule of democracy is its character-building power.
It is customary in a certain class of society to abuse trade-unionism. People talk of the tyranny of trade-unionism; it would be as easy, perhaps more justifiable, to talk of the tyranny of Capital. The trade union has its counterpart in what are termed the "upper classes." For example, the British Medical Association is nothing but a trade union under another name. The trade union is an absolute necessity to the worker in modern society.
Laissez-faire has advantages up to a point; State control has advantages up to a point. The most successful nation will be that one which succeeds in making a judicious mixture of the two systems.
The Englishman in his devil-may-care way does not trouble to persecute or oppress; his tolerant spirit, aided by the splendid devotion of a few great men, has, in the words of Seeley, built up a glorious free Empire "in a fit of absence of mind."
You will never make the English people idealistic, but you will never conquer them on that very account.
While the German talks and dreams of world-Empire, the Englishman smiles, puts his pipe in his mouth and goes off to found it by accident.
The modern system of diplomacy is as vile as anything can be. Even in England it is the negation of popular government.
Man's duty to his neighbour ought to be observed as well as the harsh and pitiless laws of trade and competition.
The social conditions of our industrial towns to-day are a standing indictment of the laissez-faire system.
The great warrior is no more important than the humble toiler.
Gladstone's finance was governed by the determination to spend as little as possible. It does not seem to be so good as that of Lloyd George, viz., to be prepared to spend a great deal provided you are sure it is for the benefit of the people.
On a remark of Dr. Sarolea's in re the alleged inherent antagonism between Europe and America on the one side and Asia and Africa on the other: "Absurd! If we are to be good Europeans we must first of all be good world citizens. The Asiatic is as much our brother as is the Belgian or the American."
It is not the case that England has checked Germany's Colonial development. Germany has herself to blame—herself and destiny. But I must say that Germany had to some extent right on her side in the Morocco dispute.
The Germans ignore the fact that wherever we British go we throw our ports open to the commerce of the world.
In the autumn of 1914 my son read General von Bernhardi's book, "Germany and the Next War." In his notes on this book he drew attention to Bernhardi's frequent self-contradictions and his false philosophy. From these notes the following excerpts are taken:
Here Bernhardi flatly contradicts the biological argument he uses earlier in the chapter. Biology knows nothing of States; it sees only human beings.
Look at the intimate connection between Darwinism and the political and economic views of the Individualist Radicals of the mid-Victorian era.
Bernhardi assumes that mere material existence is always to be man's destiny. But the perpetuation of existence beyond the immediate present cannot be guided by the instinct of grabbing.
The modern theory is that good and bad as abstract considerations do not exist, but that they are what experience shows to be best for us in the end. The animal knows this subconsciously; man consciously to a certain extent.
Emphatically No; mere brute force is not the law of the universe.
Bernhardi may as well talk of conquering the moon as of conquering the U.S.A.
Man's true development consists above all in the negation of his selfish elements for the good of humanity.
Bernhardi's proposition, "Only the State which strives after an enlarged sphere of influence can create the conditions under which mankind develops into the most splendid perfection," Paul counters by asking: "How does this theory fit in with the case of the Greeks, who, politically so weak, were yet intellectually so great that to-day, after 2,000 years, their influence in Europe is as great as ever? Which would you rather have been, tiny Greece or vast Persia?"
On Bernhardi's remark: "No excuse for revolutionary agitation in Germany now exists."
No excuse? When the people have no power at all, and can at any moment be led to the slaughter by a pack of Junkers—"all for the good of the State"; in other words, to give the military caste more wealth and dignity. In a few years Bernhardi will see whether the people have any cause for revolution or not.
The Germany of philosophy, poetry and song will rescue the German people from the abyss into which the War Lords have plunged them.
Germany was indeed unfortunate in entering the world as a great Power so late. But she will not make any progress by perpetually brandishing a sword before Europe.
I do think that Prussia's policy in the past was largely determined by her geographical situation.
The Entente with France was the price we paid for Egypt. Germany never entered our thoughts at all.
On Bernhardi's allusion to India, Paul wrote: "Curiously enough, the very day I read this I heard in the House of Commons the wonderful story of the gifts presented to the British Government for war purposes by the Indian princes. Such a passionate outburst of loyalty has never been equalled. This gratitude and devotion we have won not by the rule of force, but by that of justice and kindness."
In regard to Bernhardi's prediction that our self-governing Dominions would separate from the British Empire:
Our policy toward them nobly justified. Now in our time of need the Colonies have flown to our side.
God help civilisation when the Bernhardis set to work on it!
Strange that people so far apart as Bernhardi and we Socialists should yet be at one on this question of checking selfish individualism by measures of State Socialism.
A frequent visitor to the Lobby and Press Gallery of the House of Commons, my son was known to many members of Parliament and political journalists. Thanks to his free, affable manner, he was on terms of cordial regard with several of the attendants and police-constables on duty in and about the House of Commons. His last visit to the Press Gallery was in May, 1916. He was stirred by the life and movement of the House and enjoyed a good Parliamentary debate, but he had a feeling that politicians were apt to mistake illusions for realities and to think that words could take the place of deeds.
In the last three years of his life, though his democratic sympathies never waned, some of his opinions underwent a change. He was disappointed at the indifference of the masses of the people to their own interests, at their low standard of taste, at the ease with which they could be exploited by charlatans. I remember his telling me once, in 1915, apropos of the blatancy of some noisy patriots: "I now realise for the first time what Dr. Johnson meant when he wrote, 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'" He disliked the squalor of the political game and the glibness of tongue and tenuity of thought of the mere politician. A generous-minded youth of high ideals, he had not learnt to make allowances for political human nature, or for the fact that the mass of mankind are necessarily occupied with petits soins and apt to be dulled by the mechanical routine of their daily lives. Latterly he often told me that, after all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political and social views were advanced: to Paul I was little better than a Whig with a veneration for Mr. Gladstone. He had a bold, forward-looking mind, and was in favour of root-and-branch changes. He was only 21 when he died, and his views on social and political questions would doubtless have been modified in one direction or another had he lived. But his passion for liberty of thought and action and his deep sympathy with the unprivileged multitude would have remained, for these things were inherent in his character. He would have said with Ibsen: "I want to awaken the democracy to its true task—of making all the people noblemen by freeing their wills and purifying their minds."
Literature, athletics, music, politics did not exhaust the interests of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of the catholicity of his tastes I may mention that, going over his papers after his death, I discovered in the same drawer a manuscript appreciation of Wagner, "Football Hints," memoranda on "Pascal and Descartes on Method," and the outline of an essay on "The Norman Conquest and its Effects."[Back to Contents]
Ever the faith endures,
England, my England:
"Take and break us, we are yours,"
England, my own.
W. E. Henley.
In the first flush of enthusiasm for the War in 1914 Paul wanted to join the Public Schools Battalion, but I induced him to postpone doing so, pointing out that he had been preparing hard for an Oxford Scholarship, and that there would be ample time for him to join the Army after the examination early in December. My reasons were reinforced by his own desire to carry out his duties as Captain of Football. After winning the Balliol Scholarship, and with the knowledge that the number of recruits for the Army at that time was far in excess of the provision of equipment, he was persuaded to stay at Dulwich College till the end of the football season. But he became very restless in the early months of 1915. He had never cared for military exercises, much preferring free athletics, but in 1914 he had joined the O.T.C. at the College. He assiduously applied himself to drill and took part in many marches and several field-days. Meanwhile he followed every phase of the War with fascinated interest. He read all the War books he could get and began a War diary, which he entered up every week-end, giving a succinct account of the War's progress on land and sea and in the air. This diary he continued until he entered the Army, and at his request I have kept it up since.
From copious entries by my son under the dates named the appended excerpts are taken. They indicate with what intelligence and comprehension he followed every phase of the War.
August 18, 1914.—The British Expeditionary Force has landed safely in France: embarkation, transportation and debarkation carried out with great precision and without a single casualty. Our men have made a magnificent impression on the French people by their athletic demeanour, cheerfulness and orderly discipline. Their arrival a source of great moral strength to France.
The Belgian King and Staff have left Brussels for Antwerp.
August 30.—News filtering through of the retreat from Mons. After the battle of Charleroi and the collapse of the French on our right, the British troops fought stubbornly, but had to fall back before enormous forces of the enemy, which sought to annihilate them by sheer weight of numbers. In most difficult circumstances the ten days' retreat was carried out with wonderful skill.
September 3 and 4.—The Germans now within forty miles of Paris. Note, however, these important considerations: (1) The German losses are terrific; (2) the whole Allied forces are absolutely intact and in good order. The situation is very different from that of 1870, when the French field armies were destroyed before the war had been in progress a month.
The French Government has quitted Paris for Bordeaux.
September 14-16.—It is now evident that the battle of the Marne was a great victory for the Franco-British forces. On September 6 the German advance southwards reached its extreme points at Coulommiers and Provins. This movement was covered by a large flanking force west of the Ourcq watching the outer Paris defences. The southward movement left the enemy's right wing in a dangerous position, as the Creil-Senlis-Compiègne line, by which the Germans had advanced, had been evacuated. The Allies attacked this wing in front and flank on September 8, and a French Army was hurried from Paris to attend to the flanking force. The frontal attack carried out by French and British. The enemy retreated skilfully to the line of the Ourcq, and from here tried to crush the French by a counter-attack. This failed utterly, and the enemy right wing-fell back over the Marne on September 10, pursued by the French and the British. Large captures of German prisoners and guns.
September 16.—Official report of the Belgian Commission on German atrocities too awful to read. The horrible things done by the Kaiser's brutal soldiery in Belgium must remove every vestige of respect for the Germans.
September 19-21.—Conflict on the Aisne continues. No decisive advantage to either side: both armies now strongly entrenched.
September 29-Oct. 2.—The pater came in very gloomy one night this week saying he had got information that could not be published to the effect that Antwerp must fall in a few days, and that the military situation in Belgium is as bad as it can be.
October 12-15.—Ostend evacuated by the Belgian Government, which has moved to Havre. Germans have occupied Ghent and Bruges and are attempting a sweeping cavalry movement to and along the coast. This coincident with an infantry advance on Calais, which was skilfully checked by a British force that had lain concealed near Ypres.
October 18.—German troops in Belgium are now in contact with von Kluck's army; that is, they are on the right of the force that invaded France, roughly on a line drawn from a point a few miles north of Lille to Ostend. The Allies still occupy part of Belgium including Fleurbaix, Ypres and the surrounding portion of the right bank of the Lys. It was feared that the German force liberated by the fall of Antwerp would be able to combine with von Kluck, so as to effect a great turning movement on the Allies' left. Thanks, however, to the excellent railways in north-east France, skilful disposition of British and French forces, and the stubborn courage of our troops, this danger was averted. We have not only checked the movement, but have ourselves advanced, and the Allies' line to the sea is secure.
November 15-22.—Lord Roberts died of pneumonia. He breathed his last at St. Omer in sound of the guns. He had gone to France to greet his beloved Indian soldiers. A fitting end for this really great man.
December 13-20.—On Wednesday morning, December 16, German warships bombarded Scarborough and Hartlepool. This incident of no military value, but (1) it is a distinct "buck-up" for the Germans, as no hostile shots had struck any part of English soil before since the days of de Ruyter; (2) it may arouse unpleasant misgivings among unthinking people as to the functions and efficiency of our Navy. A tip-and-run bombardment only possible because the Germans can concentrate on any selected point of our coast, whereas we have to guard its whole length. Scarborough an undefended town, and the bombardment a gross breach of international law; but we are getting used now to that sort of thing.
England has formally taken over Egypt, which hitherto had only been in our occupation, Turkey's suzerainty being recognised. The old Khedive, who is absent from the country and intriguing with the enemy, deposed, and Hussein Ali appointed Sultan.
December 20-27.—Full story of the Falkland Islands victory now published. This swift, clean and sure naval stroke appears to have been planned from London by Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord. Von Spee, the German Admiral, with his two sons and other officers, went down on the Scharnhorst, refusing to surrender.
January 3, 1915.—A rather blunt note from the U.S.A. complaining that American merchant vessels have been stopped and searched by our warships without justification, that serious delays have been caused, and that American commercial interests have suffered. Specific instances quoted, and freedom of American ships from molestation in the future demanded. It is the old question of the right of search come up again.
January 17-24.—On Tuesday the famous Zeppelins made their first appearance on the English scene. Several of the airships appeared over Yarmouth, King's Lynn, Sheringham, and Sandringham. Many bombs dropped, but absolutely no military damage; total result, a number of innocent people killed and injured. This marvellous achievement said to have given vast joy to Berlin. Well, they are easily pleased. The destructive power of the Zepps has been greatly overrated.
February, 1-8.—Early in the week von Tirpitz avowed Germany's intention to torpedo or otherwise destroy every British ship on the sea, whether a vessel of war or a merchant trader—this to be done without warning. Our Admiralty countered this declaration by announcing their intention of using neutral flags for non-combatant British vessels—a permissible ruse de guerre. Thus the Lusitania has set sail from New York flying the American flag. "Diamond cut diamond" with a vengeance!
February 8-14.—U.S.A. warn Germany that any attack on a vessel flying the American flag before it is ascertained whether the flag is or is not fictitious will be "viewed as a serious matter."
February 14-21.—The Germans have gained an immense victory over the Russians along a front extending from the Niemen to the Bzura, and Warsaw is as much in danger of capture as Paris was last September. With marvellous accuracy and skill Hindenburg seized the opportunity of using his railways in East Prussia to outflank the Russians on both sides. One fact stands out clear in the war—the British are the only troops who have as yet held their ground against the Germans. Of what use are our Allies?
March 14-20.—Neuve Chapelle battle not the success for us that the first reports suggested. I fear some disagreeable facts are being concealed. The reticence imposed by the Censor is deplorable. We have suffered heavy casualties in winning a sector of two miles wide by one mile long: our gains disproportionate to our losses. We ought to have shaken the German position right up to Lille.
March 21-28.—Fall of Przemysl to the Russians after a siege of 203 days. The garrison that surrendered comprised nine Generals, ninety-three superior officers, 2,500 subalterns and officials, 117,000 rank and file. This great success frees a large Russian force for active work elsewhere.
Our Commander-in-Chief in France, Sir John French, in his last communiqué talks of a protracted war and warns us against over-sanguineness. "The protraction of the war depends entirely upon the supply of men and munitions. Should these be unsatisfactory the war will be accordingly prolonged."
In Alsace the French have captured the position of Hartmannsweilerkopf; they have penetrated twelve miles into German territory.
March 29-April 4.—The Dardanelles operations are fizzling out in melancholy fashion. Owing to the fact that we began the naval bombardment before our land forces had arrived, the Turks have been able to repair nearly all the damage. However, now that Ian Hamilton has arrived to direct operations in Gallipoli, things ought to begin to move.
April 5-12.—The French have gained a position which overlooks and commands the whole of the Woevre Plain; they are now fighting like demons. This district (Lorraine) is very near to the French heart. The first substantial advance that the French have made since the battle of the Marne.
No official news of any value from the British front (the Censor is hard at work), but for the last six days our casualties have been terrible. It is maddening to see this long catalogue of brave men killed or wounded and yet to have all information withheld.
The Americans, having fallen out for a short time with us, are now quarrelling with the Germans, the cause being a very insolent message to the White House from the German Ambassador. In frantic tones Count Bernstorff demands that America shall cease to supply munitions of war to England and her Allies, his object being to neutralise the effect of our sea-power.
Paul joined the Army on April 15, 1915, within a month of his 19th birthday. His application for a commission in the Infantry was refused point-blank because of his defective vision. The War Office authorities, much impressed by his school and athletic record, had requested him to undergo a special examination by an oculist; and on receipt of the oculist's report showing how extreme was his short sight, wrote to me on March 26, "It is quite impossible to think of passing him for a commission, as his sight is so very much below the necessary standard." Subsequently at an interview at the War Office he admitted that if his spectacles were lost or broken he would be helpless; but he said he would equip himself with several pairs to provide against such emergencies. It was pointed out to him that in wet weather rain-spots on the lenses of his glasses would obscure his vision.
"I am willing to take the risk," was his reply.
"Yes," came the rejoinder, "but as an officer you would be jeopardising other lives and not merely your own."
He was constrained to admit the force of this reasoning. Nevertheless, his rejection for the Infantry was a grievous disappointment to him.
Eventually he obtained a commission in the Army Service Corps. He was very proud to don the King's uniform. On April 15 he reported himself for duty at a home port which is the principal centre of supply for our armies abroad. There he remained for over three months. As his nature was in taking up any work, he got absorbed in his new duties, and, I am informed, executed them with the utmost efficiency. To keep himself physically fit he gave some of his leisure to golf and to long walks, some days tramping twenty miles and more. Looking forward impatiently to the prospect of going abroad, he used to worry himself by the thought that he, an athlete, had no more useful work to do than to superintend the unloading of railway trucks and the loading of vessels and seeing that supplies were up to specification. At Whitsuntide his mother, brother and I spent a week-end in the vicinity of the port where he was employed. One day we visited a little country town, where he had arranged to join us after his duty was done. Near to the town was a huge camp, also a hospital for wounded soldiers. We met Paul on his arrival by train and walked with him to the hotel. On the way he was kept busy acknowledging the salutes of soldiers who passed us. At tea he was grave and preoccupied—for him a most unusual mood. I rallied him on it, and asked whether he was in trouble with his C.O.
"Certainly not," was his reply, "I get on excellently with the Colonel."
Then a moment or two later he exclaimed with emotion, "Dad, I simply can't stand it."
"Stand what!" I exclaimed.
"I can't stand receiving the salutes of men who have fought or are going out to fight while I spend my time about wharves and warehouses."
As he spoke his eyes filled with tears. To appease him was not easy. This outburst was indicative of something more than a fugitive mood.
To his intense delight he received orders to go abroad a couple of months later. On July 27, 1915, he left England for France, in which country and Flanders the next two years of his life were to be spent. His first appointment abroad was that of Requisitioning Officer to the 9th Cavalry Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division—a Brigade that took part in the severe fighting of the early months of the War and was now waiting eagerly for a fresh opportunity to display its prowess. Our Cavalry officers are a distinct type, with traditions and modes of life and thought of their own. Paul, to whom nothing human was alien, studied them with keen curiosity. He found them gay-hearted, chivalrous gentlemen, and soon shared their enthusiasm for horses. His experiences with the 9th Brigade are described in his letters. The psychology of the French peasantry and tradespeople with whom he came into contact also vastly interested him. It was very responsible work he had to do for a lad of 19, but he did it ably and zealously. He liked the work for its variety; it involved a great deal of riding on horseback and much motoring, and gave opportunities for practising his French.
Yet from time to time he heard voices from the trenches calling him. He was always contrasting his lot with the hardships that were being patiently endured in the front line by, as he would say, "better men than myself." He received his promotion to lieutenant in the spring of 1916. His pleasure at that step upward was soon dashed by his appointment to a Supply Column. This "grocery work," as he characterised it, was most distasteful to him; he thought of throwing up his commission and trying to enlist as a private, but finally decided to seek a commission in the Royal Field Artillery. After two unhappy months in the Supply Column he was appointed in command of an ammunition working-party at an advanced railhead in the Somme battlefield. How he enjoyed this work his letters will show. It involved, however, the hanging up of his application for transfer to the R.F.A. In October, 1916, he was appointed Requisitioning Officer to the 2nd Cavalry Brigade. He rejoiced at his escape from the inglorious, albeit necessary, work of the Supply Column, and was soon at home with his new comrades.
As time went on, it became more and more evident that our cavalry would not have much opportunity in the War. The enforced inaction preyed upon Paul's spirits, and in December he determined to do his utmost to exchange into a unit in the front line. In his application for transfer he put his preferences in this order: 1st, Infantry; 2nd, M.G.C., heavies; 3rd, Artillery. The authorities, realising that his extreme short sight disqualified him for the Infantry, assigned him to the Tank Corps, which he joined on February 13, 1917.
Paul's delight at the change of employment was unbounded. His letters from the time he joined the Tank Corps sing with happiness. Having pushed all obstacles aside in order to walk the sacrificial road, he found great gladness in breasting its steeps. A singular change is discernible in his letters in the last seven months of his life. No longer was there any reference in them to political affairs at home or to international events. He who used to follow the progress of the world with so much intentness had not a word to say about the change in the Premiership of Great Britain, or any comment to offer on such momentous events as the overthrow of the Tsardom in Russia, and the entry into the war of the United States of America. He was either too absorbed in his new duties to continue his old habit of observation and comment, or else his gaze was now turned otherwhere, and he was following the gleam.
A few weeks before his death I wrote to him suggesting that, as he was then twenty-one, a joint banking account in his name and my own might now be transferred to him so that he would have the money under his own control. His reply was: "I have a large number of serious questions, coupled with much hard work, engrossing my attention at present and would prefer to leave all subsidiary matters severely alone." This letter was a sign, and not the only one, that he was liberating himself from mundane ties.
Brother officers have told me of my son's happiness in the Tank Corps. His youthful love of engines had returned in full measure. For his Tank—a "male," carrying Lewis guns and two six-pounders—he had a positive affection, and would spend hours pottering about it after his crew had knocked off for the day. Captain Gates, M.C., who had charge of the section to which Paul's Tank belonged and who was wounded in the battle in which my son was killed, came to see us in London in September. From him we had a full account of the last three months of Paul's life. Among other things, Captain Gates spoke of his joie de vivre, infectious gaiety, hearty appetite, liberal contributions to the mess funds. Paul, he said, was the life and soul of the section. When they were out of the battle-line he used to begin his day by a plunge in the adjacent river. He would come into breakfast looking radiant, and even then was ready for a frolic. "Some of us would be a bit down at times," said Captain Gates, "but Paul never. He was always merry. He had immense strength. In frolicsome moods he would lift a brother officer in his arms like a child, hold him helpless, and then drop him gently on the ground; but it took three or four of us to get him down. To see him come down a village in his Tank was a sight; his gaiety was so great, and he had a shout or a greeting for every passer-by. A braver boy I have never met; he was quite calm and unruffled under shell-fire. If anything, he was too keen. He always wanted to be in the danger zone, and was most eager to get into personal touch with the Boches. I told Major Haslam that whenever Paul would be in battle it would be a case of the V.C. or death; for him there could be no medium course. On the morning of 31st July, when he was thrilling at the prospect of the coming attack, I said to him before we set out: 'Now, don't be too rash; remember that the lives of your crew are in your keeping.' Unfortunately he was killed quite early in the fight by a sniper's bullet. His death cast a gloom over the whole company. In our own mess we shall miss him dreadfully."
On New Year's Day, 1918, Gunner Phillips, of "C" Battalion, Tank Corps, called at our house in London, and told us a great deal about Paul from the standpoint of the men in the battalion. Mr. Phillips, a young craftsman of high intelligence, spoke with intense affection of our son, whom he knew almost from the first day Paul joined the Tanks. He said: "Lieutenant Paul Jones was sociable and most considerate. He was a grand officer and treated his men like brothers. He would never ask the men to do what he would not do himself. The result was that we would all have done anything for him. There are a few rough chaps in our battalion—men who know the guard-room—but even these yielded gladly to his influence, and liked him very much. No officer in the battalion was so loved and respected by the men. One day last summer, when a number of Tanks had assembled in a wood, our whereabouts were discovered by the Germans, who at daybreak simply peppered the place with shells. The order was given to go to the dug-outs. Lieut. Jones, aroused from sleep, came out half-dressed, but he was as cool as if he was on parade, and insisted on every man going into the dug-outs before he himself would take shelter. His merry spirits made him a great favourite with us all. My own relations with him were particularly cordial, because I was a Welshman and an athlete."
It was comforting to have these accounts at first-hand of our son's unalloyed happiness in the last seven months of his life. Countless brave men, gifted and simple, eminent and obscure, have sacrificed their lives in this War, none with more complete self-surrender than Paul Jones. In War as in Peace, he bore himself like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior."
Whose powers shed round him in the common strife,
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad for humankind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired.
......
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay,
Nor thought of tender happiness betray,
Who, not content that former Worth stand fast,
Looks forward, persevering to the last,
From well to better, daily self-surpast:
Who, whether praise of him must walk the earth
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth,
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame
And leave a dead, unprofitable name—
Finds comfort in himself and in his cause:
And while the mortal mist is gathering, draws
His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause.[Back to Contents]
Heaven doth with us as we with torches do,
Not light them for themselves.
Shakespeare: "Measure for Measure."
Man he loved
As man; and, to the mean and the obscure
And all the homely in their homely works,
Transferred a courtesy which had no air
Of condescension....
A kind of radiant joy
Diffused around him.
Wordsworth: "The Prelude."
Paul Jones was a prodigious worker. What he accomplished in his brief life is proof that he did not waste his time. He had an abnormal capacity for prolonged exertion, whether at work or at play. Such was the vigour of his physical frame that he was usually fresh even at the end of a hard-fought game of football. In fact, he hardly knew what physical fatigue was; and only once, when he was suffering from a chill, and had to sit for his senior scholarship examination, do I recollect his exhibiting any sign of mental fag. He found rest in change of employment. Athletic exercises were a natural antidote to his strenuous intellectual work; and music lifted him into the region of pure emotion and soothed his soul with the concord of sweet sounds.