Gossamer Part 15

He was interested in international politics, the international politics of the western hemisphere. I found that he was distrustful of the growing power of the United States. He suspected a policy of Empire, a far-reaching scheme of influence, if not actual dominion, centred in Washington. He regarded the Monroe Doctrine as the root from which such an extension of power might grow. It was no business of mine to argue with him, though I am convinced that the citizens of the United States are of all peoples the least obsessed by the imperial idea. I tried, by looking sympathetic, to induce him to develop his theory. In the end I gathered that he hoped for security from the imperial peril through the increase of wealth and therefore power in the South American republics.

"Our natural resources," he said, "are enormous, but undeveloped. We cannot become strong in a military sense. We cannot possess fleets with which to negotiate----"

I should have said "threaten" instead of "negotiate" for that was plainly what he meant. But statesmen have to be careful in their use of words.

"--Unless we can obtain capital with which to develop our wealth. The great money-lending countries, England and France, ought in their own interests to pour capital into our republics. The return, in the end, would be enormous. But more important still, they would establish a balance of power in the western world. Why do not your financiers understand?"

Again Ascher. Battleships are to be towed across the ocean, from the ship yards of the Clyde to these far-off seas, at the ends of the gossamer threads which Ascher spins. The Gospel and international politics are caught in the same web. I seemed to see Diocletian the Emperor and Saint John, who said, "Love not the world," doing homage together to the power of capital, leading each other by the hand through the mazes of the system of credit.

I saw beautiful scenes, wide harbours where stately ships lay anch.o.r.ed, through whose shining gates fleets of steamers trudged. I never escaped from the knowledge that the gossamer threads stretched from mast to mast, a rigging more essential than the ropes of hemp and wire. I saw the lines of steel on which trains go, stretched out across vast prairies, and knew that they were not in reality lines of steel at all but gossamer threads. I saw torrents made the slaves of man, the weight of falling water trans.m.u.ted into light and heat and force to drive cars swiftly through city streets; but all the wheels and giant ma.s.ses of forged steel were tied together by these same slender threads which Ascher spun in the shrine of that Greek temple of his, Ascher and his fellow bankers.

Always the desire was for more capital. There was room for thousands of ships instead of hundreds. There were whole territories over which no trains ran. There was potentiality of wealth so great that, if it were realised, men everywhere would be raised above the fear of want. A whole continent was crying out to Ascher that he should fling his web across it, join point to point with gossamer, in Amazonian jungles, Peruvian mountain heights, Argentine plains and tropical fruit gardens.

I met and talked with many men whose outlook upon life was profoundly interesting to me. Those whom I came to know best were Englishmen or men of English origin. Some of them had built up flourishing businesses, selling the products of English factories. Some acted as the agents of steamboat companies, arranging for freights and settling the destinations of ships which went voyaging. Some grew wheat or bred cattle. Like all Englishmen whose lot is cast in far countries they retained their feeling for England as a home and became conscious as Englishmen in England seldom are, of love for their own land. Like all Englishmen they grumbled ceaselessly at what they loved.

They spoke with contempt of everything English. They abused English business methods and complained that Germans were ousting Englishmen from the markets of the world. They derided English Government and English statesmanship, ignoring party loyalties with a fine impartiality. They decried English social customs, contrasting the freedom of life in the land of their adoption with the convention-bound ways of their home. Yet it always was their home. I felt that, even when their contempt expressed itself in the bitterest words.

Whatever their opinions were or their affectations, however widely their various activities were separated, these men were all consciously dependent on the smooth working of the system of world-wide credit.

They were Ascher's clients, or if not Ascher's, the clients of others like Ascher. They were in a sense Ascher's dependents. They were united to England, to Europe, to each other, by Ascher's threads. Whether they bred cattle and sold them, whether they grew corn, whether they shipped cargoes or imported merchandise, the gossamer net was over them.

I returned to London with these impressions vivid in my mind, perhaps--I tried to persuade myself of this--too vivid. I had travelled, so I argued, under the shadow of a great banker. I had gone among bankers.

It was natural, inevitable, that I should see the world through bankers' eyes. Perhaps credit was not after all the life blood of our civilisation. I failed to convince myself. The very fact that I could go so far under the shadow of a bank proves how large a shadow a bank throws. The fact that Ascher's correspondents brought me into touch with every kind of man, goes to show that banking has permeated, leavened life, that human society is saturated with finance.

In a very few months, before the end of the summer which followed my home-coming, I was to see the whole machine stop working suddenly. The war G.o.d stalked across the world and brushed aside, broke, tore, tangled up, the gossamer threads. Then, long before his march was done, while awe-struck men and weeping women still listened to the strident clamour of his arms, the spinners of the webs were at work again, patiently joining broken threads, flinging fresh filaments across unbridged gulfs, refastening to their points of attachment the gossamer which seemed so frail, which yet the storm of violence failed to destroy utterly.

CHAPTER X.

I reached home early in May and underwent an experience common, I suppose, to all travellers.

The city clerk, returning after a glorious week in Paris, finds that his family is still interested in the peculiarities of the housemaid, the Maud, or Ethel of the hour. To him, with his heart enlarged by nightly visits to the Folies Bergeres, it seems at first almost impossible that any one can care to talk for hours about the misdeeds of Maud. He knows that he himself was once excited over these domestic problems, but it seems impossible that he ever can be again. Yet he is. A week pa.s.ses, a week of the old familiar life. The voluptuous joys of Parisian music halls fade into dim memories. The realities of life, the things on which his mind works, are the new lace curtains for the drawing-room window, the ridiculous "sw.a.n.k" of young Jones in the office, and the question of the dismissal of Maud the housemaid.

I found London humming with excitement over Irish affairs and for a while I wondered how any one could think that Irish affairs mattered in the least. Fresh from my wanderings over a huge continent Ireland seemed to me a small place. It took me a week to get my mind into focus again.

Then I began once more to see the Home Rule question as it should be seen. South America and Ascher's web of international credit sank into their proper insignificance.

I met Malcolmson in my club a week after my return. He very nearly pulled the b.u.t.tons off my waistcoat in his eagerness to explain the situation to me. Malcolmson has a vile habit of grabbing the clothes of any one he particularly wants to speak to. If the subject is only moderately interesting he pulls a sleeve or a lappet of a coat. When he has something very important to say, he inserts two fingers between the b.u.t.tons of your waistcoat and pulls. I knew I was in for something thrilling when he towed me into a quiet corner of the smoking room by my two top b.u.t.tons.

I have known Malcolmson for nearly twenty years. He was adjutant of my old regiment when I joined. He was senior Major when I resigned my commission. He became colonel a few years later and then retired to his place near Belfast, where he has practised political Protestanism ever since. I have never met any one more sincere than Malcolmson. He believes in civil and religious liberty. He is prepared at any moment to do battle for his faith. I do not know that he really deserves much credit for this, because he is the sort of man who would do battle for the love of it, even if there were no faith to be fought for. Still the fact remains that he has a faith, rather a rare possession.

When he had me cornered near the window of the smoking room, he told me that the hour of battle had almost come. Ulster was drilled, more or less armed, and absolutely united. Rather than endure Home Rule Malcolmson and, I think, a hundred thousand other men were going to lay down their lives. It took Malcolmson more than an hour to tell me that because he kept wandering from the main point in order to abuse the Government and the Irish Party. Of the two he seemed to dislike the Government more.

Irish politics are of all subjects the most wearisome to me; but I must admit that Malcolmson interested me before he stopped talking. I began to wish to hear what Gorman had to say about the matter. I could not imagine that he and his friends contemplated a siege of Belfast, to rank in history alongside of the famous attempt to starve Derry.

There was no difficulty about getting hold of Gorman. In times of furious political excitement he is sure to be found at the post of duty, that is to say, in the smoking room of the House of Commons. I wrote to him and invited him to dine with me in my rooms. It would have been much more convenient to give him dinner at one of my clubs. But I was afraid to do that. I belonged to two clubs in London and unfortunately Malcolmson is a member of both of them. I do not know what would have happened if he had found himself in the same room with Gorman. The threatened civil war might have begun prematurely, and Malcolmson is such a determined warrior that a table fork might easily have become a lethal weapon in his hands. I did not want to have Gorman killed before I heard his opinion about the Ulster situation and I disliked the thought of having to explain the circ.u.mstances of his death to the club committee afterwards. There is always an uncertainty about the view which a club committee will take of any unusual event. I might very easily have been asked to resign my membership.

Gorman accepted my invitation, but said he would have to be back in the House of Commons at 9 o'clock. I fixed dinner for half past seven, which gave me nearly an hour and a half with Gorman, more time than Malcolmson had required to state his side of the case.

But Gorman was very much more difficult to deal with. He was not inclined to discuss Home Rule or the Ulster situation. He wanted to talk about Tim's cash register, and, later on, about the new way of putting cinematograph pictures on the stage.

"I have been wandering about since I saw you last," I said, "and I've been in all sorts of strange places. I've lost touch with things at home. Hardly ever saw an English newspaper. I want you to tell me----"

"Interesting time you must have had," said Gorman. "Run across the trail of our friend Ascher much? I expect you did."

Gorman very nearly sidetracked me there. I was strongly tempted to tell him about the impression which Ascher's gossamer had made on me.

"The slime of the financier," said Gorman, "lies pretty thick over the world. You've seen those large black slugs which come out in summer after rain, big juicy fellows which crawl along and leave a shiny track on the gra.s.s. They're financiers."

"Yes," I said, "quite so. But tell me about Home Rule."

"It's all right. Can't help becoming law. We have it in our pockets."

"This time next year," I said, "you'll be sitting in a Parliament in Dublin."

"There'll be a Parliament in Dublin all right this time next year; but I'm not sure that I'll be in it. After all, you know, Dublin's rather a one-horse place. I don't see how I could very well live there. I might run over for an important debate now and then, but---- You see I've a lot of interests in London. I suppose you've heard about the new Cash Register Company and what Ascher's done."

"Not a word. Do I still hold those shares of mine?"

"Unless you've sold them you do, but they'll be very little good to you.

Ascher has simply thrown away a sure thing. We might have had--well, I needn't mention the sum, but it was a pretty big one. I had the whole business arranged. Those fellows would have paid up. But nothing would do Ascher except to put in his spoon. I'm blest if I see what his game is. He has one of course; but I don't see it."

"Perhaps," I said, "he wants to have your brother's invention worked for what it's worth."

"Rot," said Gorman. "Why should he? I expect he has some dodge for squeezing us out and then getting a bigger price all for himself; but I'm d.a.m.ned if I see how he means to work it. These financial men are as cunning as Satan and they all hang together. We outsiders don't have a chance."

"What about Ulster?" I said. "I was talking to a man last week who told me----"

"All bluff," said Gorman. "Nothing in it. How can they do anything? What Ascher says is that he wants the old company to take up Tim's invention and work it. There's to be additional capital raised and we're to come in as shareholders. Ascher, Stutz & Co. will underwrite the new issues and take three and one-half per cent. That's what he says. But, of course, that's not the real game. There's something behind."

"Doesn't it occur to you that there may be something behind the Ulster movement too?"

"No. What can they do? The Bill will be law before the end of July."

"They say they'll fight."

"Oh," said Gorman, "we've heard all about that till we're sick of the sound of it. There's nothing in it. The thing's as plain as anything can be. We have a majority in Parliament and the bill will be pa.s.sed. That's all there is to say. I wish to goodness I saw my way as plainly in the cash register affair."

Gorman's faith in parliamentary majorities is extremely touching. I suppose that only politicians believe that the voting of men who are paid to vote really affects things. I doubt whether men of any other profession have the same whole-hearted faith in the efficacy of their own craft. Doctors are often a little sceptical about the value of medicines and operations. No barrister, that I ever met, thinks he achieves justice by arguing points of law. But politicians, even quite intelligent politicians like Gorman, seem really to hold that human life will be altered in some way because they walk round the lobbies of a particular building in London and have their heads counted three or four times an hour. To me it seemed quite plain that Malcolmson would not bate an ounce of his devotion to civil and religious liberty even if Gorman's head were counted every five minutes for ten years and Gorman were paid a thousand a year instead of four hundred a year for letting out his head for the purpose. Why should Malcolmson care how often Gorman is counted? There is in the end only the original Gorman with his single head.

"Anyhow," said Gorman, "I'm keeping in with Mrs. Ascher."

He winked at me as he said this. I like Gorman's way of adding explanatory winks to his remarks. I should frequently miss the meaning, the full meaning of what he says if he did not help out his words with these expressive winks. This time he made me understand that he had no great affection for Mrs. Ascher, regarded her rather as a joke which had worn thin; but hoped to pick up from her some information about her husband's subtle schemes. I knew his hopes were vain. In the first place the Aschers do not talk business to each other and she knows nothing of what he is doing. In the next place Ascher had no underhand plot with regard to the cash register. He was acting in a perfectly open and straightforward way. But Gorman cannot believe that any one is straightforward. That is one of the drawbacks to the profession of politics. The practice of it destroys a man's faith in human honesty.

"How's Tim?" I asked. "Last time I saw him he was in great trouble because Mrs. Ascher said he was committing blasphemy."

"Tim's in England," said Gorman. "I was rather angry with him myself for a while. If he had followed my advice about the cash register----. But Tim always was a fool about money, though he has brains of a sort, lots of them."