The Discipline of War Part 2

Lord Kitchener and the Archbishop of Canterbury have both on several occasions called the attention of the nation to the terrible evils arising from the unhappy custom of treating soldiers to strong drink.

_Punch_, always on the side of morality and rightness, has dealt with it in the following trenchant fashion:--

TO A FALSE PATRIOT

He came obedient to the Call; He might have shirked, like half his mates Who, while their comrades fight and fall, Still go to swell the football gates.

And you, a patriot in your prime, You waved a flag above his head, And hoped he'd have a high old time, And slapped him on the back, and said:

"You'll show 'em what we British are!

Give us your hand, old pal, to shake"; And took him round from bar to bar And made him drunk--for England's sake.

That's how you helped him. Yesterday Clear-eyed and earnest, keen and hard, He held himself the soldier's way-- And now they've got him under guard.

That doesn't hurt you; you're all right; Your easy conscience takes no blame; But he, poor boy, with morning's light, He eats his heart out, sick with shame.

What's that to you? You understand Nothing of all his bitter pain; You have no regiment to brand; You have no uniform to stain;

No vow of service to abuse; No pledge to King and country due; But he has something dear to lose, And he has lost it--thanks to you.[1]

[Footnote 1: O.S. in _Punch_, November 4th, 1914. By kind permission of the Proprietors.]

A man who had so distinguished himself at the front as to be mentioned in a despatch came home slightly wounded. In less than twenty-four hours he was in a cell at a police station, and the next day fined forty shillings. Oh! the pathetic pity of it. That man got into trouble through the exhibition of one of the purest and best features of our human nature, the desire to show kindness. In their well-intentioned ignorance this man's friends--yes, they were real friends--knew of only one way of displaying friendliness--they gave him liquor.

I am not going to blame them, nor him entirely; I am going to lay some of the fault upon ourselves.

Since the beginning of the last century the habits of the upper cla.s.ses, to use a generic though unpleasant term, have improved immeasurably.

Then excess was more or less the rule among men of good position, was to a certain extent expected and provided for; witness _The School for Scandal_, or the leading novels of the period. Now, the man who disgraces himself at a dinner-table is never invited again.

And even as we go down in the social scale much improvement is apparent.

Those who remember Bank Holidays on their first introduction will recollect that the excess of the working cla.s.ses was quite open and shameless; but to-day some effort is generally made by the victims, or their friends, to hide the disgrace, because Public Opinion is improving. That is where we come in.

Many causes of intemperance in strong drink are matters for legislative or munic.i.p.al action; for example, overcrowding, insanitary dwellings or surroundings, sweating, excessive hours of labour, adulteration of liquors. But there are two factors upon which we can exercise direct influence, because they are connected with that great corporate ent.i.ty called Public Opinion.

First let us take the one upon which we have already touched--the notion that friendliness and good fellowship are essentially connected with strong drink. This is at the bottom of those terrible scenes when troops are leaving our great London railway stations. Scenes so inexpressibly sad to all thinking people.

Everyone who abstains entirely, or who takes the khaki b.u.t.ton--a pledge not to treat nor be treated to strong drink during the continuance of the war--is helping to knock a nail into the coffin of one of the silliest and most fatal delusions that has ever wrought havoc to body, soul, and spirit.

And then there is that other weird notion that you cannot be really strong and healthy without stimulant. For you the gla.s.s of beer or wine may be a mere harmless luxury, in the way in which you take it. I purposely exclude spirits, which I am fanatic enough to think should only be used medicinally. But every individual total abstainer helps to swell the testimony not only to the non-necessity of alcohol, but to the fact that, according to the view of a large part of the medical profession, the human frame is better without it.

You may say, "What good will my abstinence do to people with whom I never come in contact?" Tell me what influence really is; how it spreads, by what unseen modes it ramifies and extends.

Tell me the real significance, the true spiritual value, of the fact that "if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it: if one member rejoice, all the members rejoice with it."

Then perhaps you can explain in some way, how your abstinence shall spread to desolated homes, to stricken lives, in crowded slums or quiet villages, in fire-raked trenches or storm-tossed ships.

No act of self-sacrifice for His sake, Who though He was rich yet for our sakes became poor, ever went without its rich reward.

No tiny wave of influence ever yet sped forth from a Christian heart, but what reached its mark and wrought its work of beneficent power.

_For suggested meditations during the week, see Appendix._

III

=The Discipline of the Soul=

SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

St. John vi. 38

"For I am come down from Heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me."

To-day we are going to speak of the soul not in its popular sense, as set over against the body, but in the scriptural meaning of the word as the broad equivalent of life.

To enter upon a philosophical discussion might prove interesting from a merely academic point of view, but would be eminently unpractical.

Suffice it to say that when S. Paul speaks of the "body, soul and spirit" (1 Thess. v. 23), he takes the two latter as different faculties of the invisible part of man.

Soul ([Greek: psyche]) is the lower attribute which man has in common with the animals; spirit ([Greek: pneuma]) the higher one which they do not possess, and which makes man capable of religion.

In this sense, then, the soul would mean the life the man or woman is leading, in the home, the business, the pleasures, the relaxations, as distinct from the definite exercise of devotion or worship.

Of course it is absolutely impossible to draw a hard and fast line between sacred and secular. All secular affairs, rightly conducted, have their sacred side; and conversely all sacred matters have their secular side, for they form part of the life the man is living "in the age."

It is the neglect of this truth which is responsible for much of the moral and religious failure of the day.

Business is secular, prayer is sacred, and so they have no practical connection each with other.

Amus.e.m.e.nt is secular (often vastly too much so, in the very lowest sense of the word); Holy Communion is sacred; therefore there is no link between them. Whereas the prayer and the Communion should be the enn.o.bling and sanctifying power alike of work and play.

Bearing this caution in mind, we shall to-day look at certain features of the so-called secular life of the day in which discipline needs to be strongly exercised.

No doubt about it, the soul of the nation has been growing sick, sick "nigh unto death."

Luxury has been increasing with giant strides; the mad race for pleasure has helped to empty our Churches, to rob our Charities, to diminish the number of our Candidates for Holy Orders, to make countless ears deaf to the call which the country, through that magnificent Christian soldier, Lord Roberts, and many others, has been making to manhood of the land.

Week-ending, meals in restaurants, turning night into day, have robbed home-life of its grace and power, and produced a generation of young folk _blase_ and discontented before they are out of girlhood and boyhood.

With this has come, inevitably, the loss of sense of responsibility. So long as I can enjoy myself and get my own way, why should I vex myself with the outworn question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" No! That has gone into the limbo of effete superst.i.tion.

And further, loss of the sense of proportion. There are some to whom it causes no moral shock to wear a dress costing a hundred guineas, while a vast number of seamstresses, shirtmakers, artificial flower makers, boot-closers, and the like, are working seventy hours for 5s. to 8s. a week. One mantle-presser, in Dalston, receives 1/2_d._ per mantle; she is most respectable, has four children, and earns from 5_s._ 6_d._ to 7_s._ a week!

We do not grumble at the hundred guineas being spent upon the dress, or a thousand guineas even, if the money went in due proportion all round to supply the _full living wage to each one engaged in its production_: and if the wearer interested herself keenly in social problems, and used her means wisely and well to afford relief where it was needed. This, alas! does not happen when the sense of proportion is lacking.