'I Believe' and other essays Part 18

These come under the normal conditions of Colony life; that is to say, they are obliged to do about nine hours work a day, of a character suited to their capacity, in return for which they receive board and lodging, and in addition, a small amount of pay.... This is partly paid in tokens valid only at the Colony stores and canteen, and partly it is banked against the time when the colonist leaves. The normal day is as follows: the colonists rise at 4.30 (summer), and after leaving the lavatory each man receives his ration of bread for the day (1-1/2 lbs.) and as much coffee (chicory) as he likes. What bread is not eaten then is kept for dinner and supper. At 6 they enter the shops, where they remain until 11.30, with a half-hour interval from 8 to 8.30 a.m., when they can go outside and smoke. At 11.30 they are all marched back to the quadrangle and go into the dining-halls in two relays. After this they rest until 1.30, when they re-enter the shops until 6, with another half-hour interval at 4 o'clock. On their return supper is served, and immediately afterwards they go to bed, when the roll-call is made, requiring every man to stand to his bed, and those missing are noted.

In the winter the short day necessitates the farmhands retiring very early to bed. Those who work in the shops begin their work at 7.30 in the morning, and work on after dusk by artificial light.

The colonists are given no meat, but the soup of vegetables is very good, and each man has a large quant.i.ty. They have a sweet drink made of liquorice-wood boiled in water, with their meals; coffee and bread for breakfast; potatoes or other vegetables, with a meat sauce for supper; and chicory-water in large cans in their dormitories. To supplement the above they can make purchases from the canteen of beer, tobaccos, lard, herrings, etc., which are sold at exceedingly small prices, representing only the actual cost price of the article when produced by the Colony labour itself.

The staff is small, and consists of a Director-in-Chief at Hoogstraeten, who exercises a general financial supervision over all the Colonies, a Director at Wortel and Merxplas, and at the latter place the following officers: Deputy-Directors, 2; Doctor, 1; Priests, 2; Teachers, 5; Clerks, 19; Manufacturing Manager, 1; Warders, 81; Sisters of Mercy, 6.

All offences against the regulations of the Colony and all cases of slack work are summarily dealt with by the Director, who has full power to transfer men from one cla.s.s to another, and from a more to a less remunerative form of work. He can also award imprisonment or solitary confinement, and bread and water diet in the Colony cells for any period up to sixty days at a time. This power can also, in case of necessity, be used repeatedly, so that a bad character can practically be permanently locked up.

A further help to the maintenance of discipline is undoubtedly the privilege of earning wages and of spending them directly on beer and tobacco, etc.

There is one feature of Merxplas which is at first rather startling; that is, that every day there are a certain number who escape. This does not seem to give the authorities much concern, because they are nearly always brought back again in a short time, either through capture, or because their mode of living brings them again to the notice of the police.

A beginning was once made of digging a moat round the grounds, but it was abandoned because it was thought that the possibility of escape helped to prevent disaffection. The colonists also, in the eyes of the law, are patients rather than criminals. Those in Cla.s.ses I. and II.

are, of course, much more closely guarded. Escape, like all other breaches of Colony discipline, can be punished by the Director with imprisonment in the Colony cells.

The results of the work done at the Colony is thus summed up in the "Blue Book" from which the greater part of the detailed particulars have been taken.

"Even more important than the economy of the system is its effect on the colonists. The men at Merxplas have retained a large proportion of whatever manual and technical skill they possessed when they first began to slip out of employment in the outside world. They have entered the Colony before the rapid deterioration, which is the inevitable result of the tramp life, has had time to take effect, and the opportunity afforded them to practise their trades has, in most cases, prevented their ever sinking to the level of the average English tramp. In every shop the keen interest the men take in their work is most noticeable; only one foreman and one warder are employed in each shop, and without coercion the men seemed all working with remarkable energy and real interest. This is, in our opinion, perhaps the most striking feature of the whole establishment.

"The permanent effect on the individual is less, perhaps, than one would at first sight expect. About ninety per cent are habituals. The reason given by all the authorities was always the same. Outside, this cla.s.s of man of weak moral fibre, and generally of inferior physique, cannot keep from drink. Sooner or later he breaks down, loses his place and returns. Inside, away from temptation, they work well, and as long as the sentence does not exceed two or three years, seem content to remain. The colonies, it must be remembered, do not claim to deal largely with the temporarily unemployed, but with a cla.s.s that is more or less permanently inefficient. In this connection, however, it seems that no attempt has been made to bring any strong religious influence to bear. There are the usual ma.s.ses and other observances of the Roman Church, but there seems to be little personal mission work undertaken."

I come to my remedy.

As I see it, what we have to do is this--we must establish colonies in which the Unemployables shall spend their lives. When once a man has been proved to be irreclaimable by ordinary methods, when a properly established tribunal, after searching inquiry, has p.r.o.nounced him a burden and a drag upon the community, then I would put him away for life, if he is irreclaimable, and continues to remain so.

I would make his life just as pleasant as he himself chose to make it.

If he refused to work, then his lot should be a prison cell and bread and water until he did. If he made the best of the situation in which his own fault had placed him, he should be enabled to earn enough to keep him in considerable comfort, and to provide him with harmless and judicious pleasures.

Such a man should live in a state of almost freedom. The one thing denied him would be the privilege of mixing with the outside world and of reproducing his kind. Such gratifications and amus.e.m.e.nts as he had earned should be supplied him with no ungrudging hand. The consolations of religion should be always at his command and should be constantly brought before him.

But he should not be allowed to beget children who would swell the ranks of the Unemployable and increase the intolerable burden already carried by the honest working man. It is just about as certain as science and economic experience can make it, that the child of an Unemployable will become an Unemployable too. It is possible that one child in a thousand may turn out a decent citizen. That is about the maximum percentage, and if, for the sake of possibly producing one ordinary worker we ought to allow nine hundred and ninety-nine hopeless idlers to come into existence, then I have nothing more to say.

I do not think such a position can be maintained for a moment. I venture to think that you will agree with me.

I admit that such a method would be inhuman, immoral and unchristian, if we were to treat the hopeless social failure as a criminal pure and simple. Let us make his life as happy as he chooses to make it; treat him as a criminal if he won't work in the colony, comfort and pet him if he will. But we need go no further than this. I do not honestly think that our duty as Christians or sociologists imposes more consideration upon us than just this. "If thine arm offend thee cut it off."

Sir Robert Anderson, for many years a.s.sistant Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, has long held the view that the professional criminal is not a necessity of civilization, and that a reform of the method of dealing with him would soon bring about his complete extinction. Sir Robert, with his extensive Scotland Yard experience behind him, declares that the number of high-cla.s.s criminals in England does not exceed a few dozen, and that if these were got out of the way organized crime against property would cease. The plan which Sir Robert Anderson has conceived is that of providing asylums in place of the present prisons, where a man who has proved to have devoted his life to crime would be sent for life and made to earn his living.

We must provide asylums for the Unemployables also, in order to preserve ourselves. It is no use being sentimental. We must relegate social parasites to a state and condition where they can no longer infest the social body and cannot increase in numbers. When we have done this, when you working men have done this, in less than a generation the question of the Unemployed will be satisfactorily settled. It may well be, moreover, that such a method will change the least degraded Unemployables into honest, hard-working citizens who can be once more admitted into the world on probation.

These are my opinions, and though I have given you but a sketch of them to-night, I submit that they are at least reasonable and worth consideration.

The words of the poet Sh.e.l.ley are no less applicable in the present than they were in the past. He had an unconquerable faith in the spiritual destiny of our race, and his lines, when he wrote his "song to the men of England" were filled with flame:--

"The seed ye sow another reaps; The wealth ye find another keeps; The robes ye weave another wears; The arms ye forge another bears.

Sow seed--but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth--let no impostor heap; Weave robes--let not the idle wear; Forge arms, in your defence to bear."

AN AUTHOR'S POST-BAG

VII

AN AUTHOR'S POST-BAG

"_You have the letters Cadmus gave_"----

As I sit down to write this paper I am experiencing a quite novel sensation. Most of us like to talk about ourselves when any one will listen, and nearly all of us do so now and then. But to write about one's self in the reasonable expectation that a large number of people, friends, enemies and those who are indifferent, will read what one has written, is curious. There have been times when an interviewer has come from a Magazine and I have found myself trying to explain my views, to answer questions that were put, with some degree of fluency, to do myself justice and yet not to be egotistical in a somewhat difficult situation. Knowing quite well what I wanted to say, and exactly how I wished to explain myself, I have listened to my words with a kind of embarra.s.sed wonder at their inadequacy. "What an a.s.s this fellow must be thinking me!" has been one's continual thought.

Then, when the interview appears, sometimes with pictures of "Mr. Guy Thorne at his desk," "the dining-room," "shooting upon the moor," one finds that the writer has made a nice smooth sequence of the conversation, just as the photographer has taken charming pictures of one's carefully-arranged furniture. Yet one was rather prevented from really saying what one would have liked to say because of the interviewer's presence as the medium who was to give the words to the public. This is a foolish self-consciousness, no doubt, but it is not easy to overcome. Now, and at this moment, there is no such restriction upon free speech. The snow is driving over the Dover cliffs, no sound penetrates to the ancient room in which I write, and for the first time in my life I am sitting down to talk of myself, as an author to his readers.

The essay has come to be written in this way. There were still some pages of this book to fill when last week, I was asked to open a bazaar in Dover. The vicar said a good many absurdly kind things about my stories when he introduced me to the people there, and afterwards I had to stand a continuous fire of questions for two hours. I could not understand, and I do not now understand, why any one should be interested in the _personal_ explanations of a writer as to how he writes, what happens when he is writing, and so forth. I do not often go to a theatre, but when I do I never buy a programme. I don't want to know the private name of the lady who plays Ophelia or the gentleman who is the Hamlet of the night. I pay my money in order that they shall be Hamlet and Ophelia to me, that I shall watch the agonies of a dark and troubled spirit, shall sigh over the tender fancies of an unhappy love-sick girl, and the more I am forced to realize that the gentleman is Mr. Jones, who was fined five pounds in the morning for driving his motor-car too fast, the less real he is as the Prince.

But, although this is my way of thinking, I am well aware it is not the general way; and as I have proved for myself that there is a demand for some sort of personal explanation, and as I endeavour to conduct my trade of writing upon common-sense principles, this essay is getting itself written.

Addison said that "So excessive is the egotism of the egotist that he makes himself the darling theme of contemplation; he admires and loves himself to that degree that he can talk of nothing else." This is an obvious statement, and made with little of Mr. Secretary's usual charm of style. But it is perfectly true. I beg leave to submit, however, that what I am doing here is not so much an act of egotism--egoism is the better word--but a legitimate statement for those, if there are any, who care to read it.

I have strong convictions upon certain points, and I endeavour to pack my stories with these convictions. That, by doing this, I please many readers who think as I do I am presently going to show, by quoting some of their letters which have reached me.

A novel is simply this: it is a certain portion of the lives of certain people imagined by the author and seen through his temperament. Very well then; let me proceed to prove that the modern nonsense which would have people believe that Christianity in fiction is _against the canons of art_, is simply a lie.

The life of every single human being in England is punctuated and impinged upon by Christianity. As I pointed out in my first essay, the usual modern novel never mentions--never even mentions!--Sunday. Yet on Sunday, the shops, factories, theatres and public-houses close. The drunkard has as much reason to find Sunday the most dismal day in the week as the saint to know it the happiest and best. For half-an-hour in every town and village the bells of church and chapel ring--if indeed chapels are "ritualistic" enough to have bells, a point upon which I am not informed!

And again, speaking of the constant reminder we all have of religion, every coin we have in our pockets bears the inscription REX FID.

DEF.--our King is officially known as the Defender of the Christian Faith. Every day as I write, the newspapers are full of the controversy--the religious controversy--of the Education Bill. Each time you and I go to a concert we finish it with the music of the National Anthem, which is a prayer to G.o.d that he will bless and preserve the Dynasty. Is it necessary to multiply instances? I think not.

How can any one say, as the literary critics have sometimes said of my own books and of others much more important, that "religion" is out of place in a novel?

As I have pointed out at some length, the greatest novels are one and all permeated with the sense of religion. Take your Thackeray and read in _Vanity Fair_ of George Osborne going out to battle and first saying "Our Father" with his wife. Read the works of this great writer and regard how, whenever a great emotion, a poignant situation occurs, so surely the author sends up a prayer to Almighty G.o.d either in his own person or that of his characters. In that almost greatest of English novels, Charles Reade's _The Cloister and the Hearth_, the hero dies with the holy name of Jesus on his lips. There is religion in _Pickwick!_--we read of the Christmas of Dingley Dell. In _Les Miserables_, that huge epic novel, Victor Hugo has drawn more than one saint of G.o.d, has made Christianity the motive of his drama.

It _is_ so in life, be certain that it is and always will be.

Christianity is the central thing, the only important thing, and the attempt to minimize its importance and influence is as the chirping of a linnet on the roadside as some stately procession pa.s.ses by.

_They say. What say they? Let them say!_

But let no one be deluded into believing that the printed sneers of those who are afraid to recognize our Lord represent any real opinion, any weight of opinion, as to the public distaste to Christianity as an integral part of the fiction which they buy.

Sir Arthur Helps once said, "The influence of works of fiction is unbounded. Even the minds of well-informed people are more often stored with characters from acknowledged fiction than from history or biography, or the real life around them. We dispute about these characters as if they were realities. Their experience is our experience; we adopt their feelings and imitate their acts.

Shakespeare's Plays were the only history to the Duke of Marlborough.

Thousands of Greeks acted under the influence of what Achilles or Ulysses did in Homer."

All this is entirely true. As a young American novelist once put it to me, "To-day is the day of the novel." In no other day and by no other vehicle is contemporaneous life so adequately expressed, and the critics of the twenty-second century, reviewing our times, striving to reconstruct our civilization, will look not to the painters, not to the architects nor dramatists, but to the novelists to find our idiosyncrasy.