My Little Bit

The articles in this book, with the exception of the first two, were all written during the war at the request of the various editors by whose courtesy they are now reproduced in volume form. Most of them, notably those which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, were, by my own desire, gratuitous, though payment for them was offered. But, being unable to handle sword or gun, I was glad to offer the free service of my pen whenever such service was desired, or considered useful, just as I would have been glad, had I been a man, to fight voluntarily for Great Britain, without any thought of other recompense than that of the personal pride and joy such action would have given me. The first two articles: “Savage Glory” and “The Great Unrest,” were published some considerable time before the outbreak of war, and while the editor of Nash’s Magazine was generous to a fault in his praise of “Savage Glory” he was so doubtful as to the accuracy of the indictment conveyed in “The Great Unrest” that he felt himself compelled to preface it by a note, stating that he, or rather “we,” could not be held responsible for any agreement with or endorsement of the author’s ideas. Readers can now judge for themselves whether those ideas were fairly prophetic or otherwise. Naturally, no heed was paid to them, except by a huge silent public, the press apparently making it a rule not to notice in any one paper what their rivals print in others, unless it happens to be by one of their own special clique, or the utterance of a Cabinet Minister, which they generally misquote. But, such as they are, these various contributions to English and American sections of journalism indicate the straight and loyal road my pen has travelled during the wickedest and stupidest war that ever devastated the world. The stupidity of it was even more glaring than the wickedness of it—especially in the case of Germany. Germany was an advancing and prosperous nation, chiefly through the industrial progress of her hard-working people, and her “peaceful penetration” was conquering every quarter of commerce. She has, for the time being, ruined everything by a blind faith in and following of her scoundrels of finance, for whom the Krupp and other dividends were not sufficiently high or secure; the work of years has now been destroyed and every gain has to be discounted as loss, though there is not the slightest doubt that her cleverness and cunning will enable her to mend the hole in her wall far more rapidly than our dilly-dally statesmen imagine. For the immediate time, her degradation and ruin involve more than her own position; other nations, even our own, are deeply affected, and, like ships in unsafe anchorage, sway from their moorings—all are tormented by a spirit of turbulence which will not let them rest, and men with weak brains and vacillating purpose are playing with the destinies of peoples in a wholly unforseeing and nerveless way, heedless of the fact that there are other more powerful players behind them who are about to make an end of their game and push them far away from the goal. In what I have written, however slight and inadequate, I have had but one aim in view: to hold up to the public as far as I can or may, the greatness of this beloved land of ours—its splendid ancient history and tradition, and to resent, as much as a mere pen can do, the disloyal and agitating influences which seek to disrupt unity and belittle the achievements of the noble British people. Of the wicked waste of that people’s money by the most obtuse Government methods, and the iniquitous premium on idleness foolishly given in the “Unemployment dole,” I could say much, notwithstanding that I am told it is “a sop to check Bolshevism.” One does not offer a sop to a mad bull—one kills it. And it is not credible that the sane, sound men of Great Britain, with an Empire of glorious renown at their backs, will ally themselves with Red Riot which means ruin to themselves as well as to its instigators. True it is that Stupidity is the present order of the day among our blind leaders of the blind—that very Stupidity which Voltaire affirmed to be the only crime—and there is little else for us to do in our extremity but “wait and see” whether Stupidity will prove more than a blundering guide to “where the rainbow ends.”