скачать книгу бесплатно
Sir, It is becoming plain to the average observer of events that there is only one thing which can cause us to lose this war, or can force us to conclude an unsatisfactory peace, and that is the suspicion between different classes in the nation. It is not my purpose to discuss the question whether this suspicion is justified; it is enough that it exists, and that is a statement which you, Sir, are under no temptation to deny.
So far as one can see the suspicion rages mainly round two topics, the rise in the price of necessaries and the amount of war profits; but these two are really one, for the rise in prices would lose half its sting, but for the idea that it is caused by the undue profits of middlemen. The real question before the Government is, therefore, that of the abolition of all war profits; till that is done suspicion will inevitably continue.
And what is the obstacle? It is not undue sympathy on the part of the Government with profit-makers; Mr. Lloyd George’s speech at Bristol has made that plain. It is not the fear of protests in the Press; you have, if I am not mistaken, repeatedly supported such a measure. It is most assuredly not the fear of public opinion, which would be overwhelmingly on the side of such legislation. The professional classes have borne their own burdens as best they could, but they have no more sympathy than the working classes with the abnormal profits made out of the country’s need.
It is time, in fact, to ask the plain question, Who does want to make profit out of the crisis? When that question has been answered it will be time for the nation to decide what shall be allowed, but I am much mistaken if the demand will be either loud or clear. When every class has given of its own flesh and blood with such splendid readiness, it is impossible to believe that any will haggle over money. We are told that the Government have already dealt with profits in munition factories, and it is no doubt their intention to deal with other war profits by way of taxation. The purpose of this letter is to implore them to make their actions and their intentions plain beyond the possibility of mistake. Vague assertions do not quiet vague suspicions.
When once a clear principle is laid down, be it abolition or curtailment, the question resolves itself into one of fact, and suspicion will die for lack of food. There can be no objection to the fullest representation of working-class opinion on the committee which is to carry out the principle into action. The present situation of half-hearted promises and forced concessions is both humiliating and demoralizing, and to the average man it seems frankly intolerable that a Government in which we all have good reasons to believe should be unable to give expression to an elementary principle of political morality and should allow us to drift, as we are drifting, into a great and needless danger.
I am, &c.,
C. A. ALINGTON
Headmaster of Shrewsbury School
Cyril Alington subsequently became Head Master of Eton and later Dean of Durham.
* * * * * * *
The Voice of a Schoolboy
Rallies the Ranks
14 December 1915
Sir, May I say one word in reply to the letter of a “Public School Master,” which appears in The Times of to-day (11 December). As an old headmaster, I am not likely to underestimate the value of school discipline. But long experience has convinced me that we keep our boys at school too long. And, as to the commissions to boys, Clive sailed to India at the age of 17; Wolfe, “a lanky stripling of 15”, carried the colours of the 12th Regiment of Foot; Wellington was ensign in the 73rd Regiment at the age of 17; Colin Campbell gained his commission in the 9th Regiment of Foot at the age of 16. We keep our boys in leading strings too long.
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOSEPH WOOD
The writer had been headmaster of Tonbridge and Harrow schools.
* * * * * * *
Body Armour or shields
28 July 1916
Sir, it is a year now since you were good enough to allow me to express some views about body armour in your columns. Since then, so far as I know, nothing has been done, but now we have got so far that the Minister of War admits that something of the kind may some day come along. To me it seems the most important question of any, and I earnestly hope that you will use your influence to keep it before the notice of the authorities.
Upon July 1 several of our divisions were stopped by machine-gun fire. Their losses were exceedingly heavy, but hardly any of them from high explosives. The distance to traverse was only about 250 yards. The problem, therefore, is to render a body of men reasonably immune to bullets fired at that range. The German first-line trenches were thinly held, so that once across the open our infantry would have had no difficulty whatsoever.
Now, Sir, I venture to say that if three intelligent metal-workers were put together in consultation they would in a few days produce a shield which would take the greater part of those men safely across. We have definite facts to go upon. A shield of steel of 7/16 of an inch will stop a point-blank bullet. Far more will it stop one which strikes it obliquely. Suppose such a shield fashioned like that of a Roman soldier, 2ft. broad and 3ft. deep. Admittedly it is heavy—well over 30lb. in weight. What then? The man has not far to go, and he has the whole day before him. A mile in a day is good progress as modern battles go. What does it matter, then, if he carries a heavy shield to cover him?
Suppose that the first line of stormers carried such shields. Their only other armament, besides their helmets, should be a bag of bombs. With these they clear up the machine-guns. The second wave of attack with rifles, and possibly without shields, then comes along, occupies and cleans up the trench, while the heavily armed infantry, after a rest advance upon the next one. Men would, of course, be hit about the legs and arms, and high explosives would claim their victims, but I venture to say that we should not again see British divisions held up by machine-guns and shrapnel. Why can it not be tried at once? Nothing elaborate is needed. Only so many sheets of steel cut to size and furnished with a double thong for arm-grip. Shields are evidently better than body armour, since they can be turned in any direction, or form a screen for a sniper or for a wounded man.
The present private contrivances seem inadequate, and I can well understand that those who could afford to buy them would shrink from using a protection which their comrades did not possess. Yet I have seen letters in which men have declared that they owed their lives to these primitive shields. Let the experiment be made of arming a whole battalion with proper ones—and, above all, let it be done at once. Then at last the attack will be on a level with the defence.
Yours faithfully,
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
The first tanks had been demonstrated to the Army command in great secrecy five months earlier and made their first appearance on the battlefield in September 1916.
* * * * * * *
Russell in chains
5 September 1916
Sir, Mr. Bertrand Russell’s view of pre-war diplomacy is not mine, and it is very far from yours; nevertheless, I hope The Times will allow me to protest against the military edict which forbids him to reside in any part of Scotland, in Manchester or Liverpool, or on the greater part of the English coast. Such an edict is obviously aimed at a man who may justly be suspected of communicating with the enemy, or of assisting his cause. Mr. Russell is not only the most distinguished bearer of one of the greatest names in English political history, but he is a man so upright in thought and deed that such action is, in the view of every one who knows him, repugnant to his character. It is a gross libel, and an advertisement to the world that the administration of the Defence of the Realm Regulations is in the hands of men who do not understand their business. Incidentally, their action deprives Mr. Russell, already debarred from entering the United States, of the power of earning his livelihood by arranged lectures on subjects unconnected with the war. The Times is the most active supporter of that war; but its support is intelligent, and it speaks as the mouthpiece of the country’s intelligence as well as of its force. May I therefore appeal to it to use its great influence to discourage the persecution of an Englishman of whose accomplishments and character the nation may well be proud, even in the hour when his conscientious conclusions are not accepted by it?
Yours, &c.,
H. W. MASSINGHAM
The philosopher, a grandson of the Victorian prime minister Earl Russell, was a pacifist. He had been fined £100 in June 1916 and compelled to resign his Cambridge fellowship because of his anti-war speeches.
* * * * * * *
popular Representation
30 March 1917
Sir, there seems to be a very general failure to grasp the importance of what is called—so unhappily—Proportional Representation in the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference. It is the only rational, honest, and efficient electoral method. It is, however, in danger of being thrust on one side as a mere fad of the intellectuals. It is regarded by many ill-informed people as something difficult, “high-browed,” troublesome, and of no practical value, much as science and mathematics were so regarded by the “practical” rule-of-thumb industrialists of the past. There are all too many mean interests in machine politics threatened by this reform, which are eager to seize upon this ignorant mistrust and use to delay or burke1 (#ulink_b80f5884-43ff-568e-a459-ee52cabaea8b) the political cleaning-up that Proportional Representation would involve. Will you permit me to state, as compactly and clearly as I can, the real case for this urgently-needed reform—a reform which alone can make Parliamentary government anything better than a caricature of the national thought and a mockery of the national will?
The essential point to grasp is that Proportional Representation is not a novel scheme, but a carefully worked-out remedy for universally recognized ills. An election is not the simple matter it appears to be at the first blush. Methods of voting can be manipulated in various ways, and nearly every method has its own liability to falsification. Take the commonest, simplest case—the case that is the perplexity of every clear-thinking voter under British or American conditions: the case of a constituency in which every elector has one vote, and which returns one representative to Parliament. The naive theory on which we go is that all the possible candidates are put up, that each voter votes for the one he likes best, and that the best man wins. The bitter experience is that hardly ever are there more than two candidates, and still more rarely is either of these the best man possible.
Suppose, for example, the constituency is mainly Conservative. A little group of pot-house politicians, wire-pullers, busy-bodies, local journalists, and small lawyers working for various monetary interests, have “captured” the Conservative organization. For reasons that do not appear they put up an unknown Mr. Goldbug as the official Conservative candidate. He professes generally Conservative view of things, but few people are sure of him and few people trust him. Against him the weaker (and therefore still more venal) Liberal organization puts up a Mr. Kentshire (former Wurstberg) to represent the broader thought and finer generosities of the English mind. A number of Conservative gentlemen, generally too busy about their honest businesses to attend the party “smokers” and the party cave, realize suddenly that they want Goldbug hardly more than they want Wurstberg. They put up their long-admired, trusted, and able friend Mr. Sanity as an Independent Conservative. Every one knows the trouble that follows. Mr. Sanity is “going to split the party vote.” The hesitating voter is told, with considerable truth, that a vote given for Mr. Sanity is a vote given for Wurstberg. At any price we do not want Wurstberg. So at the eleventh hour Mr. Sanity is induced to withdraw, and Mr. Goldbug goes into parliament to misrepresent us. That in its simplest form is the dilemma of democracy. The problem that has confronted modern democracy since its beginning has not been the representation of organized minorities, but the protection of the unorganized masses of busily occupied, fairly intelligent men from the tricks of specialists who work the party machines. We know Mr. Sanity, we want Mr. Sanity, but we are too busy to watch the incessant intrigues to oust him in favour of the obscurely influential people, politically docile, who are favoured by the organization. We want an organizer-proof method of voting. It is in answer to this demand, as the outcome of a most careful examination of the ways in which voting may be protected from the exploitation of those who work elections, that the method of Proportional Representation with a single transferable vote has been evolved. It is organizer-proof. It defies the caucus.
If you do not like Mr. Goldbug you can put up and vote for Mr. Sanity, giving Mr. Goldbug your second choice, in the most perfect confidence that in any case your vote cannot help to return Mr. Wurstberg.
There is the cardinal fact in the discussion of this matter. Let the reader grasp that, and he has the key to the significance of this question. With Proportional Representation with a single transferable vote (this specification is necessary because there are also inferior imitations of various election-riggers figuring as proportional representation) it is impossible to prevent the effective candidature of independent men of repute beside the official candidates. Without it the next Parliament, the Parliament that will draw the broad lines of the Empire’s destinies for many years, will be just the familiar gathering of old Parliamentary hands and commonplace party hacks. It will be a Parliament gravitating fatally from the very first towards the old party dualism, and all the falsity and futility through which we drifted in the years before the war. Proportional Representation is the door for the outside man; the Bill that establishes it will be the charter to enfranchise the non-party Briton. Great masses of people to-day are utterly disgusted with “party” and an anger gathers against the “party politician” as such that he can scarcely suspect. To close that door now that it has been opened ever so slightly, and to attempt the task of Imperial Reconstruction with a sham representative Parliament on the old lines, with large masses of thwarted energy and much practical ability and critical power locked out, may be a more dangerous and disastrous game than those who are playing it seem to realize at the present time.
I am, &c.,
H. G. WELLS
1 (#ulink_a54d56f9-9c26-5d42-a198-80f456b712fa): meaning “to murder by smothering” and derived from the crimes of the early 19th-century Edinburgh “body-snatchers” Burke and Hare.
* * * * * * *
Votes for WomEn
26 May 1917
Sir, Mrs. Humphry Ward disputes the authority of the present House of Commons to deal with the question of Women’s Suffrage. She seems to have forgotten that at the time of the last General Election the subject was already prominently before the country: the majority of members were more or less definitely pledged to the women of their constituencies to support it; and Mr. Asquith had given a definite assurance that if his party returned to power the matter should be dealt with exactly as it is proposed to deal with it in the present Bill — by a free vote of the House of Commons.
Mrs. Ward prophesies that the age limit of 30 for women voters will not be long maintained. She says nothing of the much more important barrier against complete equality which the Bill proposes to set up; by basing the men’s vote on residence, the women’s on occupation. The effect of this and the age limit together will be that men voters will be in an overwhelming majority in every constituency in the country. If, therefore, as women hope and believe will be the case, the franchise should be further extended and eventually placed on a basis of complete equality, it can only be because men are willing for it, having become convinced by experience of its actual working that the effect will be beneficial and not harmful.
She says, also, nothing at all of the argument which, perhaps more than any other, has moved many of the most weighty and inveterate opponents of former years to give the Bill their active support. In what sort of position will Parliament be placed, when the time comes at the end of the war to redeem the pledges it has given to trade unionists, if women are still outside the pale of the franchise? Legislation will be necessary, involving probably, as Mr. Asquith has pointed out “large displacements of female labour.” Will it be to the credit or dignity of Parliament that it should be open to the charge of bartering away the interests of non-voters in order that it may protect those of its constituents?
The chief argument, however, of Mrs. Ward’s letter is that the physical sufferings and sacrifices of women in the present war are not comparable with those of men. This is undeniable. Women have not based their claims to the vote on their sufferings or their services. They have never asked for it as a reward for doing their obvious duty to the country in its time of peril. But the vote, after all, is not a sort of D.S.O. It is merely the symbol of the responsibilities of ordinary citizenship, which requires every one to serve the country according to the measures of his or her opportunity, and to make sacrifices for it, if the call for that comes. Is physical suffering, physical sacrifice, the only kind that counts?
I saw recently a letter from a young wife whose husband had just fallen in the trenches. She wrote — “After all, we have nothing to regret. If it were all to come over again and we knew what would happen, he would go just as cheerily as before, and God knows I would not hold him back.”
There spoke the authentic voice of the women of this country, women who have in their blood and their bones the traditions of an Imperial race. In time of peace they may have been bemused by the false doctrine taught by Mrs. Ward and her school, that Imperial and national questions are matters for men, not women. In time of war instinct reasserts itself. They feel as patriots and as citizens, and their citizenship so manifests itself that it compels recognition in the traditional form for which women have asked so long by granting of the Parliamentary vote.
Yours faithfully,
ELEANOR F. RATHBONE
Eleanor Rathbone was a leading campaigner for women’s rights and social reform, including the introduction of child benefit. She became an MP in 1929, 11 years after women (at first aged 30 and above) were given the right to vote, and to be elected to Parliament.
* * * * * * *
An Act of Wilful Defiance
31 July 1917
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that the war upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them and that had this been done the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.
I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practised upon them; also I believe it may help to destroy the callous complacency with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share and which they have not enough imagination to realise.
LT. SIEGFRIED SASSOON
The poet’s celebrated letter of protest was sent originally to the Bradford Pioneer newspaper and republished four days later in The Times, having been read out in the House of Commons. Sassoon, who had won the Military Cross in France, had been on convalescent leave after being wounded. He wrote the letter after deciding to refuse to return to the trenches. His friend and fellow war poet Robert Graves persuaded the authorities that Sassoon was mentally ill and therefore unfit to be court-martialled. He was treated instead for shell shock at Craiglockhart Hospital, Edinburgh, where he met and encouraged Wilfred Owen in his writing.
* * * * * * *
Poppies
17 September 1917
Sir, The subjoined letter has been received by the mother of a young officer in the Household Battalion, and was written from the fighting line in Flanders. It pleasantly varies the story of devastation daily transmitted from the front, and incidentally reveals the sort of young fellow who, in various degrees of rank, is captaining our gallant Armies. This one, impatiently awaiting the birthday that marked the minimum age for military service, went from Eton straight to a training camp, and in due course had his heart’s desire by obtaining a commission. He followed close in the footsteps of an elder brother, also an Etonian, killed in his first month’s fighting.
“In England there seems to be a general belief that nothing but every imaginable hardship and horror is connected with the letters B.E.F., and, looking at these three letters, people see only bully beef, dug-outs, shell holes, mud, and such like as the eternal routine of life. True enough, these conditions do prevail very often, but in between whiles they are somewhat mitigated by most unexpected ‘corners.’ The other day we took over from a well-known Scottish regiment, whose reputation for making themselves comfortable was well known throughout the division, and when I went to examine my future abode I found everything up to the standard which I had anticipated. Standing on an oak table in the middle of the dug-out was a shell-case filled with flowers, and these not ordinary blossoms, but Madonna lilies, mignonette, and roses. This vase, if I may so term the receptacle, overshadowed all else and by its presence changed the whole atmosphere, the perfume reminding me of home, and what greater joy or luxury is there for any of us out here than such a memory?
“After having duly appreciated this most unexpected corner I inquired where the flowers had been gathered, and was told they had come from the utterly ruined village of Fampoux close by. At once I set out to explore and verify this information. Sure enough, between piles of bricks, shell holes, dirt, and every sort of débris, suddenly a rose in full bloom would smile at me, and a lily would waft its delicious scent and seem to say how it had defied the destroyer and all his frightfulness. In each corner where I saw a blossoming flower or even a ripening fruit, I seemed to realize a scene belonging to this unhappy village in peaceful days. Imagination might well lose her way in the paths of chivalry and romance perhaps quite unknown to the inhabitants of Fampoux. I meandered on through the village until I struck a trench leading up to the front line; this
I followed for a while until quite suddenly I was confronted by a brilliancy which seemed to me one of the most perfect bits of colour I have ever seen. Amongst innumerable shell holes there was a small patch of ground absolutely carpeted with buttercups, over which blazed bright, red poppies intermixed with the bluest of cornflowers. Here was a really glorious corner, and how quickly came memories of home! No one, however hardened by the horrors of war, could pass that spot without a smile or a happy thought. Perhaps it is the contrast of the perfection of these corners with the sordidness of all around that makes them of such inestimable value. Some such corners exist throughout France, even in the front line trenches. It may not be flowers, it may be only the corner of a field or barn; it may be some spoken word or a chance meeting. No matter what it is if it brings back a happy memory or reminds one of home. It is like a jewel in a crown of thorns giving promise of another crown and of days to come wherein, under other circumstances, we may be more worthy of the wearing.”
Yours faithfully,
HENRY LUCY
* * * * * * *
On the Eton Word “Rouge”
13 October 1917
Sir, I was once, about 30 years ago, discussing the Eton word “rouge” and the verb “to rouge” among some English friends at Florence, one of whom was the Hon. Alethea Lawley, sister of Lord Wenlock, of Escrick, in East Yorkshire. (NB — She has been for several years married to a Venetian, Signor Wiel, formerly Librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana.) Miss Lawley exclaimed: “Oh, but ‘to rouge’ is quite a common word in our part of Yorkshire, meaning ‘to push one’s way through anything’, and I have often, when two people are quarrelling, heard one of them say, ‘Now don’t ye come a-rouging against me!’” even as at Eton we might have said: “There against was an awful crowd, but I soon rouged my way through it!” Whenever I see a doubtful East Yorkshire word, I always turn to Vigfussen’s Icelandic Dictionary, wherein I have occasionally found the solution of some difficulties both in Norwegian as well as in East Yorkshire provincialisms. I find in Vigfussen, s.v.: Rydja (more anciently hrjóda) — rydja sér til rúms = “to make oneself room”; again, rydja sér til rikis = “to clear the way to a kingdom, i.e., to conquer it”; and III, “to clear one’s way, to make great havoc — to throng, to crowd.” I never can ignore the possible Scandinavian origin of any word, if it be in use in the east of England.
To give another instance. On one occasion I was reading in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, where that rascal is relating a lying tale to his foolish old mother of how he sprang on to the back of a wounded buck and galloped along the Gendin Edge, when suddenly
“paa en raadlös braabraet plet
for ivrejret rype-steggan
flaksed, kaglende, forskraemt
fra den knart, hvor han sad gemt
klods for bukkens fod paa eggen.”
“Steggan” did not appear in any Norwegian dictionary that I possessed at that time, though it is given in Iver Aasen’s Dictionary of Provincial Dialects, but I bethought me of Vigfussen, and I found “Steggr m. Steggi, a.m. (properly a mounter); in Yorkshire a steg is a gander, from stiga (to mount); a he bird, Andar Steggi a male duck,” &c. Therefore the lines translate:
“(All at once — at a desperate break-neck spot)
Rose a great cock ptarmigan,
Flapping, cackling, terrified,
From the crack where he lay hidden
(at the buck’s feet on the Edge).”
Had I not known from Miss Lawley (30 years ago) that the word “rouge” is in common use round Escrick, I might not have thought more about it; but as it is, I cannot agree that it is the same in sound and meaning as “scrooge” (pronounced scroodge) whereas “rouge” is pronounced exactly like the French equivalent of “red”.
As it may possibly interest some Old Etonians who know Scandinavia, I venture to send you this for what it may be worth.
I remain yours faithfully,
WILLIAM WARREN VERNON
A letter which gives some indication, perhaps, of the presumed readership of the newspaper and their interests in 1917. A rouge is a scoring play in Eton’s Field Game, an ancestor of soccer. Some scholars have seen a link between the attritional nature of it and Eton’s other unique sport the Wall Game, the preponderance of Etonian generals in the First World War and the strategy of grim slogging used for much of the conflict.
* * * * * * *
Unmarried Mother
25 February 1918
Sir, Mr Galsworthy, in his article in to-day’s Times on “The Nation’s Young Lives,” strongly advocates the adoption of widows’ or mothers’ pensions, and the proper protection and care of unmarried girl mothers and their illegitimate children. His words are opportune. No amount of Welfare Centres can do anything radical to help the children of widows or those born out of wedlock, until the State has awakened to its grave responsibility for their welfare.
