Yes, all is well!

Or, rather, let us say all will be well! And in our steady progress towards future good we may confidently aver that all is well even now. Even now! though the great “spring-cleaning” of the Empire’s house is scarcely half-way through. Our home is topsy-turvy, familiar objects are thrust aside, our goods and chattels are disarranged and turned out to be swept or beaten or otherwise relieved of their accumulated dust and cobwebs, and the clatter of brooms and pails and general hurry-scurry, with many irreparable breakages, make comfort and quiet impossible. Yet there is a freshness in the air, the windows have been cleaned, and one can see the sky through their lately begrimed and sooty panes, the floors are swept and the furniture polished; deft hands are arranging flowers for the rooms—we may breathe in health and hope if we will.

There is much yet to be done, for the cleansing of a nation is God’s work more than ours, and He leaves no corner unvisited. He has not done with England yet, no, not by any means! The festering mass of diseased moral fibre resulting from a long worship of Self, the canker in the body social and politic, has to be cut out ruthlessly, despite bleeding veins and torn sinews, and God will not spare the remedial knife.

But even so, it is well for England! Well, and more than well! For no greater ill could chance to her than her condition prior to the war.

Far more injurious to her fair fame than the murderous attacks of the most dishonourable and unscrupulous enemy she has ever known was the stealthy undermining of her people’s ideals through the slow but sure rot which had begun to set in at the very core of her civilian life. That rot was eating its way through commerce and crumbling down every bulwark of society. Its ravaging microbes swarmed through every channel—the pulpit, the stage, and all forms of art. Through its influence the abominable crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah were re-enacted and condoned, both in the political and social world. By gradual and subtle process, step by step on the downward grade, the unthinking public were led by certain writers of the Press who are special pleaders for vice, to accept sensuality as the only meaning of love, and every town possessing a bookseller’s shop was flooded with published outpourings of sickly and degrading sexuality, insulting to the self-respect of men and women, old and young alike. Girls and boys hardly in their teens carried these vile books in their hands, and read and discussed them without shame. Their poisonous trail is over many a young mind, and the mischief they have wrought will take years of undoing.

This kind of pernicious literature, coupled with a “sensational” Press, by which I mean that side of the Press which truckles to the baser inclinations of mankind, and flaunts pictorial representations of semi-nude women of the stage and of the demoralised portion of Society in the eyes of decent folk whether they will or no, is in a great measure responsible for the recklessness, extravagance, sloth, and selfishness which have disfigured social England for the past decade.

Things were getting worse and worse; men who truckled to vice were paid with baronetcies as “hush-money,” women passing for “ladies,” lower than the lowest of street sinners, because they had education and opportunities which the street sinner has not, were praised as embodiments of all the beauties and all the virtues, and “home,” that dear possession of the faithful soul, was voted “dull” by the younger folk, because of its wholesome restrictions on harmful impulses and runaway passions.

And let us not imagine these clouds on the sun of our country have yet passed away. They are passing, but the full splendour of the light is not yet. “Home, dull Home,” is coming back to its own as “Home, sweet Home” once more, because a dark and threatening destiny has torn sons from their mothers, and has broken up dear associations which were unvalued, because possessed. Now that death has darkened many windows and shut many doors, the bereaved ones begin to realise what “home” really was in the past days of peace, and what it never will be again; while those that are absent on the battlefield, amid the roar of the guns and the storm of shot and shell, turn back wistfully to the memory of days spent “at home,” in a tranquillity of mind and body that seemed “dull,” but that now shines forth in the visions of the brain as a reflex of positive heaven.

Few, I think, have taken the trouble to consider what this Empire would become without the saving grace of “Home”—that oasis in the desert where love has its best chance and friendship its surest footing.

It is in very truth the foundation of national safety and the basis of educational progress, and yet it is what a very large majority of us have lately esteemed but lightly, moved as we have been by a spirit of strange unrest, impelling us to wander hither and thither in search of satisfaction which, after all our quest, awaits us at our own door.

Suppose that one and all we ran “amok” in the liberty which speedily degenerates into license, without any restraining hand? Would it be “well for England” then? We know it would not, yet if our young people are brought up to disdain and to neglect their parents, and “friends” so-called, only seek other “friends” in order to make use of them for their own ends, the social code will be one of pure egotism without a shred of conscience to soften its hard and fast self-seeking. This would not be “well for England,” and from this point of view alone we have to be thankful for the scourge of this terrific war. For here God has taken the lead. He has indeed “put down the mighty from their seat, and has exalted the humble and meek,” for the humblest ranks of our British fighting men are heroes to-day, and the true spirit and mettle of the British race, long suppressed beneath a featherbed softness of prolonged peace, have sprung up in splendid and unbroken strength, proving in deeds more than words that “all is well with England!”

No praise can be too high for their courage, cheerfulness, and self-sacrifice; the sword of their unquenchable valour has long been sheathed, but it has not grown rusty—the blade is as bright as ever it was.

This is something to be proud of, something for us to remember when inclined to pessimism. We have nothing to fear on the score of our warriors who have gone forth in the flower of their manhood, to contend with and to conquer a brutal foe; and, if the creeping suggestion that all is not well with England steals into our minds, it is on account of traitors at home.

Yes, there is a dire possibility of mischief, a chance of infinite harm being wrought on England, and on the whole British Empire by the avarice and short-sightedness of some of our leading men who have “axes to grind.”

It may be unpleasant to face the truth, but surely it is wiser and safer to do so than to wait till it overwhelms us. And the merest tyro in diplomacy, the most casual looker-on at the moves on the political chess-board, can see how many a man “in official capacity” is playing the German game, and manœuvring towards a patched-up “peace” which shall give Germany every possible trade advantage.

The people’s confidence is being daily betrayed by such treacherous hypocrites, some of whom have financial interests closely bound in with Germany, and who hesitate and shuffle and delay action indefinitely, though the slaughter of innocent thousands may pay the price of their ineptitude.

In such scandalous matters, all is not well with England—and all will never be well, unless the people take a hand against their own spoliation and betrayal. And they cannot begin too soon. The house of the nation is being “swept and garnished.” We shall need to take care that the “unclean spirit” of Germany does not take “seven other spirits more wicked” to “enter in and dwell there,” so that “the last state” of that house be not “worse than the first.”

We need the resolved spirit of Queen Elizabeth, whose proclamation against certain troublesome foreigners “which had flocked to the coast towns of England” in 1560, commanded that they “should depart the realm within twenty days,” whether they liked it or not, “upon pain of imprisonment or loss of goods.” Queen Bess did not put on gloves when dealing with treachery; she hit it fair and square in the face. We should do wisely to imitate her example.

No great reforms are ever accomplished without opposition from prejudiced and self-interested persons, and it needs a strong soul to stand firm and full-fronted against malcontents, and to steadily baffle political intrigues. With these latter, the Ministry is hemmed in and environed, and it is a regrettable fact that in some quarters “party” is ready to overwhelm patriotism, despite all plausible assurances to the contrary.

On this point I would venture, as an independent writer who has no favours to seek and no “axe to grind,” to warn our more or less passive, silent, and patient people of dangers ahead.

The people are the nation, the people whose labour makes the wealth of the country are the worth of the country; and for them the name of Britain should represent all things British. But unless they themselves take good care, their trades will be again swamped by Germany in the future as in the past, especially if they put in less hours of work. It stands to reason that if a British workman will only work for eight hours, and a German will work for fourteen or sixteen, the German will score in every kind of labour.

Even now the German is preparing for the relaxing of “restricted” trades. The goods which the British Government declared “unnecessary” in time of war are being “made in Germany,” and at an opportune moment will be “dumped down” on these shores before the Englishman, returned from battle, can so much as set his house in order.

We may think, or we may hope, that protection against such unfairness will be guaranteed by Government—but will it? Does it look like it even now?—when Germans are permitted to run the business of absent Englishmen, and to make profit therefrom!

Sometimes it would almost seem as if there were a certain numbness or apathy in the minds of the British people here at home, which robs them of “the native hue of resolution,” so that in

There is a general tendency not to take too much personal trouble over any matter, a desire to avoid “being bothered,” and a persistent jog-trot in the same old way, like “dumb, driven cattle,” no matter whether the road lead to prosperity or ruin. This is like the fatal lethargy which overcomes the traveller in heavy snow, when he yields himself to a sleep from which he shall never wake.

Half the people in these islands do not yet realise the full meaning or the real horror of the war in which we have been forced, by all the rights of law and liberty, to engage. They do not think—they cannot. Their sense of perception seems stunned as by a heavy blow. All religion, all faith, all hope, have in a great measure failed them. They do not see why they should suffer undeservedly.

A poor woman receiving the news that her son was killed, had no tears—her face grew white and stiffened, as with frost—but she had nothing to say except this: “Ah, well! I couldn’t expect anything else, as there’s no God left to us now! Only man, the devil!” She could but realise that the war is man’s work—the result of his miserable ambitions, his delight in destruction, his selfish pride and cruelty. And the church had taught her little more than that the God she was told to worship was “a jealous God,” and out of that saying little comfort can be drawn for the broken heart of a bereaved mother.

Perhaps one of the most terrible notes struck from the great thunder-echoes of the war is this apparent failure of all churches to cope with the sorrow that has swept over all lands, destroying homes that were once happy.

Our Lord’s pitiful and pathetic words are realised to-day:—“Because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall grow cold.” Ah, yes, love for Him and all the tenderness He taught has “grown cold,” and many of His professed ministers are tongue-tied and spirit-frozen, and seem all unable to raise the broken lives from the dust of despair, or dry the weeping eyes which are too tired and heavy to lift themselves to heaven.

There is a strong instinctive sense among us all, no matter to what sect we belong or what religious formula we profess, that if the churches had ever truly taught and truly followed the example of Christ, war and its horrors would have been impossible. For He gave us only two commandments—two instead of the Mosaic ten—thus:—

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it—thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Who is there that can deny that if these two commandments had been obeyed by man in his social and civil life, the whole face of things would have changed to an almost divine betterment, and the world’s progress, assisted by a sanity of thought and a clarity of action, would have been towards beauty and spiritual uplifting?

The word “spiritual” is sadly wronged and degraded nowadays by misguided or semi-crazed persons who “blaspheme the Holy Ghost” by their pretensions to psychic power, and play with the names of scared things in order to further their own sinister designs. Our Lord prophesied this evil when He spoke of “false prophets” who should “show signs and wonders,” insomuch “that if it were possible they shall deceive the very elect.”

Is it not a fact that we have come upon such days? Days when the pure, simple, and helpful ethics of Christ are set aside in exchange for an insane credence in the vulgar trickery of “mediumship,” “crystal-gazing,” and other base forms of superstition pertaining to the eras of ignorant barbarism? Does it seem believable that there should be so-called “intellectual” men in this country, even statesmen of admitted ability, who are actually partially under the sway of illiterate “mediums,” generally women, who pretend to hold communication with the dead, and even presume to offer advice from the “spirits” on the affairs of the nation and the prosecution of the war? One could hardly imagine a wilder improbability, yet it is an absolute fact! The names of persons in high and trusted positions are on the books of the unscrupulous jugglers and tricksters who earn their wicked living by mischievous tampering with the brains of their dupes and victims, and the wonder is that these notabilities should so feebly allow themselves to be duped and victimized. But one has only to think of the entire submission of the Romanoffs to the villainous machinations of that unspeakable “monk,” Rasputin, to realize that there is no depth of abasement to which the human mind may not fall if it loses its hold on God.

It has to be confessed there are very few indications of real religion among us at present. A large portion of the clergy seem stricken with ineptitude, and one longs for a strong man who would not only preach the truth, but live it. A narrow egotism disfigures the ministering spirit of the Church, and I could name more than one cleric whose absorption in self entirely blinds him to the real duties he is called upon to do.

The service of Christ should be broad and all-embracing, generous, cheerful, ungrudging, and untiring in the aid of all humanity, rich and poor, old and young, sinful and sorry, and only men who are prepared to work on these lines should be admitted to such a high and holy calling.

But things are moving, and will move in the right direction presently; when the roar of the guns has died away and the memory of our slain heroes weighs on our stricken souls with sorrow and shame, and we have time to reflect that it is for us and the saving of our honour that they have died.

We shall then lift our eyes to Him from Whom cometh our strength, we shall unite in a grand revolt against hypocrisy and shams; we shall hold our homes more preciously, seeing and knowing what blood has been shed to keep them inviolate, and we shall value simplicity and purity of life for ourselves and our children far more than wealth and the fleeting, feverish pleasures which wealth can attain.

In this new dawn of our day it will be well for England!

One of the happiest and most hopeful auguries for the future is the stimulus given to agriculture and the “life of the land” by the necessity of providing food supplies for our own people on our own soil.

The menace of the submarine has done this for us, and devastating as its brutal work has been, we may regard it as a blessing in disguise. For we should not need to depend on foreign imports of food if we utilised our own acreage as fully and diligently as we might.

Life in the country, work in the country, means health and a light heart; and many there are who would like to see the olden days of purely native production come back again—the days of home spinning, home weaving, home manufacture of every kind carried on in all the towns and villages of rural England.

Here and there of late years there have been some efforts in this direction—there is a spinning and weaving school at Haslemere, at Stratford-on-Avon, and elsewhere—but the support given to these praiseworthy industries is not sufficiently certain and prolonged to push them with sufficient prominence into the public notice. Nevertheless, many a woman helps the movement by electing to wear only home-woven goods; they are beautiful and artistic enough to deserve patronage, and can be purchased direct from the weavers and spinners without the intervention of the middle-man whose business is “profiteering.”

What an England it might be—what an England it will be—when every acre of suitable soil bears its weight of golden grain!—when every orchard’s value can be appraised by its measure of luscious fruit!—when farmyards are full of cattle, and good wives are so clever at poultry and dairy work that the country can do without “millions of foreign eggs”—having such “millions” of its own—and when prosperous farms in the country are esteemed more valuable possessions than houses in town, where money is often uselessly wasted on so-called “pleasures” which have their end in damaged health and “vexation of spirit”!

To my own mind there is nothing more lovely or more satisfying than the life of the country, where one may see the real breadth of the sky, and feel the real freshness of the air.

In great cities, where humanity is a mere hive, the houses of brick and stone block out the sky and impede the air, and somehow one imagines that God is a long way off, while in the country He seems “nearer than hands and feet.” Everything speaks of His infinite care and providence—the birds, the flowers, the trees, the murmur of the leaves that clap together like little fairy hands in the wind, and the low, sweet, sigh that sways through the long grass at sunset.

The nearer man approaches to Nature, the more he becomes conscious of a Divine, mysterious Presence to which his whole being instinctively, though almost unconsciously, responds as “Our Father.”

In the rush and roar of great cities he loses this delicate intimacy with his own origin, and all that is or might be divine in himself becomes lowered to the level of gross material needs and ideas which are the reflex of the coarser atmosphere around him.

The dweller among country sights and scenes is an idealist—sometimes even a poet, though he may never express himself in words—and many an ordinary labourer turning the rich clods of soil with the plough can be found who will at times say things both trenchant and eloquent which will give food for thought to the most cultivated stylist.

Some people imagine that cities educate, and that the country does not; but one may question whether it is not quite the other way about. In any case, the life of the country makes for health and strength, and these are two potent factors for happiness. No man can be happy or contented if he is ailing and weakly, and in our many “new” systems of education, which are now being so much talked of, it is to be hoped that health for the children will be the first thing to be considered and maintained.

Here I may perhaps touch upon a point where one may trust that “all is well with England,” in the immense change the war has wrought as regards the position of women in the State.

Some years ago I was one of the many who were strongly opposed to the “Votes for Women” movement, judging it to be wholly unnecessary.

I had been brought up on the chivalric view of man as taken by Sir Walter Scott in his immortal romances, and my idea, gathered from these exalted specimens of the race, was that as man was always ready to worship woman it seemed invidious on her part to contend with him in his own particular sphere. But when it was forced on me that, more often than not, man was more ready to deride rather than worship woman, that the special “strain” of Walter Scott’s heroes was in Walter Scott’s delightful imagination only, and that as a matter of fact men denied to women such lawful honours as they might win through intellectual attainment, and that in certain forms of their legal procedure women were classed with “children, criminals, and lunatics,” I began to change my opinion.

I thought that if the mothers of the race were to be assorted with “criminals and lunatics,” the men they had given birth to might be, in their toleration of such a stigma, criminals and lunatics themselves. And when the war broke out and all the world raised itself, as it were, on tiptoe to see what was going to happen, and beheld among many marvels perhaps the greatest marvel of all—the women going forth to work in the places of men, going in thousands, without demur or hesitation, and taking their full share of the hardest and most menial labour with a cheerfulness and spirit no less remarkable than the intelligence with which they handled difficulties hitherto unknown, it was no longer possible to deny them equal rights with men in every relation of life and every phase of work. By every law of justice they deserved the vote—and I who, as a woman, was once against it, am bound to support the cause. All the same I shall be sorry to see them in Parliament; deeply sorry to find them straying so far out of their higher and far more influential sphere. The vanishing of modest and refined womanhood will prove a greater loss to the nation than any other asset of its power and renown. No woman can mingle with the mess of political intrigue without losing something of the charm and reticence originally in her nature, which has inspired men to their noblest aims and ends. I imagine that a true woman would rather be the Madonna of a Faith than the Premier of an Empire!

Nevertheless I grant freely and fully that it will be “well for England” when women have a voice in the education of children, and when they can refuse to “temporise” on questions of the national morality and well-being.

The recent “food muddle” under the management of men is a proof, if one were needed, of the superiority of women in all matters of domestic management, for any capable housekeeper would have organised the scheme with better knowledge and finer tact. That there will be jealousy and injustice displayed by the stronger sex towards the weaker on this matter of the vote, goes without saying. But jealousy and injustice exist anyhow, and a proof of man’s inconsistency towards women in matters of art alone is furnished by the purchase of Lucy Kemp-Welsh’s fine picture “Forward the guns!” in the Royal Academy, which has been bought “for the nation.” Yet, mark you, though this woman’s work is considered worthy of national keeping, she herself may not be admitted as an R. A.! Comment is superfluous. But it is possible that the granting of votes to women will alter all this, and that the barriers which the men have carefully erected against the sex of their mothers will be broken down for good.

The Jewish dispensation has to be credited for the rule of “keeping women in their place,” along with flocks and herds. But the Christian dispensation teaches a lovelier lesson—for a woman was the first to hold the God-Man in her arms, and a woman was the first to greet Him on His resurrection from the dead.

Does this teach nothing? Is there no symbol of the future of womanhood thus gloriously foreshadowed? I venture to think there is.

I believe and hope that a wider freedom to woman will mean a nobler heritage to man, and that through her intelligence and influence he may find and prove the “god” in him, and rise from the grave of old prejudice to the light of more brilliant possibilities. And this will be “well for England.”

Many changes are bound to come, many sorrowful and tragic happenings are yet in store for this dear country, but “it is well” that so these things should be, to the end that we realise where we have missed the way, and take heed that we stumble not again.

The secret of our regeneration is not in this or that government; it is with the people.

Yet on the whole, despite clouds in our sky, it is well for England so far. We shall come out of the darkness if—if the people will it. Up to the present they have grudged nothing—neither time, nor labour, nor money, nor sacrifice. They have been in every sense worthy of British tradition—a people splendid. Now it is that they must see they do not fall a prey to “party” traps, designed for the safeguarding of Germany in those quarters where British financial interests are concerned.

I repeat, “All is well with England!”—all will be well—if the people are awake and alert, if they will unite to remove the German foe from their midst, and if they will in time remember the old proverb which says, “It’s no use shutting the stable door when the horse is stolen.” The German has the fixed intention of re-monopolising trade when the war is over, and already our Indian Empire is in advance of us by the ban announced against German trade in India, and the barring of German ships from Indian ports.

Decisive action must be taken in these matters before it is too late. British trade interests, British artisans, British workers of all classes must be defended and protected and encouraged.

The agricultural arts and sciences must be made a primary matter of education for the people, and our productive soil must be given a fair chance. Landowners who have held thousands of acres for the pleasure of sport alone must yield to the necessity of feeding men instead of preserving game, and a prosperous, smiling England, “a land flowing with milk and honey,” will be the reward of all those who steadily set their energies to work in the right direction, that right direction being always for the good of the many and not for self or the few. It should surely be the aim of every true patriot to leave his country better than he found it, and all personal interest should and must go to the wall where the welfare of the people is at all concerned. The trend of thought is all in this one way, for which we may thank God. A renewed faith in the highest, a return to the devotional spirit of true religion, and a resolve to root out from every educational system, from every art, from every form of literature all that makes for evil and degradation; this will ensure all being “well for England,” so well, that neither the hatred, envy, nor malice of rivals can move her from her sure foundations of peace.

She should be, and she must be great and pure, with the greatness and pureness for which our heroes have fought in the past, and for which they fight to-day, and for this high cause, though we mourn our slain manhood, we must grudge no sacrifice, however hard. We have not grudged anything as yet—we shall never begin to do so. And so both now and in the days to come, through God’s mercy, may we ever be able to say—

(When the above was first issued as a booklet by the publishers, Messrs. Greening, it elicited a long and eloquent letter from the “St. Andrews Society,” asking me why I addressed my pamphlet to England? Where was Scotland in my thoughts? Knowing the curious prejudice some Scotsmen entertain for the word “England” (which I have liked to imagine included Scotland, Ireland, and Wales), I made haste to reply that I had not presumed to ask “Is all well with Scotland?” as I know all must be well, and that all would be for ever well! How could anything go ill with Scotland? I do not know whether I satisfied my truculent correspondent, but I hope I did.)