Preaching in London. Ii

January 1, 1918. — Christmas is over, thank God! The contrast between its gentle ideals and the ghastly realities round about us almost tears one in two. Here we sing, ‘Peace on earth among men of good-will’; out there, the killing of boys goes on. What irony! Still, one remembers that it was a hard old Roman world in which the Angels of the first Christmas sang their anthem of prophecy. How far off it must have seemed that day; how far off it seems today. The world is yet in twilight, and from behind dim horizons comes ceaselessly the thunder of great guns. A frost-like surface of garish gayety sparkles in our cities, as anxiety turns to laughter, or to apathy, for relief.

After all these ages, must we say that the song of Christmas is as vain as all the vain things proclaimed of Solomon? No; it will come true. It is not a myth. It is not a mockery. Surviving ages of slaughter, it returns to haunt us, proving in this last defeat its immortality. Because that music is far off, we know that it is not our own, but was sent into the world by One who is as far above our discordant noises as the stars are above the mists. Whatever befall, we dare not lose Faith, dare not surrender to Hate, since that would be the saddest of all defeats. And the children sang carols at our doors, as in the days of Dickens, as if to rebuke our misgiving and despair.

January 7. — One serious handicap besets a minister who labors abroad: he cannot deal with public questions with the same freedom that he can at home. Indeed, he can hardly touch them at all — when criticism is required — save as they may be international in their range. Yesterday, on the national Day of Prayer, I made protest in the City Temple against allowing the increase of brewery supplies to stand, on the ground that it is not cricket to destroy foodstuffs at a time when we have no bread fit to eat and cannot get sugar for our children. To-day every brewery paper in the kingdom jumped upon me with all four feet, John Bull leading the pack. It does not matter if every journal in the land stands on its hind-legs and howls, as most of them are doing. What hurts me is the silence of the churches! The majority of Free Churchmen are against the traffic, but hardly so in the Established Church. Indeed, that Church is more or less involved in the trade, at least to the extent of allowing its properties to be used by public houses. Many of the higher clergy refused to forego their wine during the war, even at the request of the King.

The situation is unlike anything we know in America. Liquor is used in England much as we use coffee; it is intrenched in custom, disinfected by habit, and protected by respectability. Moreover, the traffic is less open, less easy to get at in England, and those who profit by it are often of the most aristocratic and influential class in the community. There is, besides, a school of English political thought which holds the sublime doctrine that the way to keep the workingman quiet and contented is to keep him pickled in beer. Any suggestion of abolishing the traffic is, therefore, regarded as an invitation to anarchy, and dire predictions are made. Almost anywhere in London one sees a dozen baby-carts at the door of a public house, while the mothers are inside guzzling beer. Never before have I seen drunken mothers trying to push baby-carts! Surely England has an enemy behind the lines!

January 12. — Had a delicious tilt with Chesterton, who apparently regards the Dogma of Beer as an article of Christian faith. Every time I meet him I think of The Man Who Was Thursday

— a story in which he has drawn a portrait of himself. He is not only enormously fat, but tall to boot; a mountain of a man. His head, seen from behind, looks larger than any human head has a right to be. He is the soul of goodfellowship, and as the wine in his glass goes down, one may witness an exhibition worth going miles to see. He leads words into the arena, first in single file, then four abreast, then in regiments; and the feats they perform are hairraising. If he talks in paradoxes, it is for the same reason that more solemn persons talk in platitudes — he cannot help it.

From the Gospel of Beer, the talk turned to Wells and his new theology; and it was good to hear Chesterton laugh about a God unfinished and still in the making. His epigram hit it off to a dot. ‘The Christ of Wells is tidy; the real Christ is titanic.’ We agreed that the portraiture of Jesus by Wells is in bad drawing, being too much like Wells himself; but we remembered other portraits by the same hand, — Kipps, Polly, and the rest, — very ordinary men made extraordinary and individual and alluring by the magic of genius.

One may call Chesterton many names,

— an irrationalist, a reactionary idealist, a humorist teaching serious truth in fun, — but his rich humanity and robust common sense are things for which to give thanks. He is a prophet of normal human nature, and his uproarious faith in God is a tonic in days like these. If Dickens was the greatest American ever born in England, some of us feel that Chesterton is the best thing England has given us since Dickens. One loves him for his strength, his sanity, and his divine joyousness. The Holy Spirit, said Hernias, is a hilarious spirit!

January 17. — Dr. John Hutton, of Glasgow, preached in the City Temple to-day, his theme being ‘The Temptation,’that is, the one temptation that includes all others — the spirit of cynicism that haunts all high moods. Artfully, subtly it seeks to lower, somehow, the lights of the soul, to slay ideals, to betray and deliver us to base-mindedness. Such preaching! He searches like a surgeon and heals like a physician. Seldom, if ever, have I had anyone walk right into my heart with a lighted candle in his hand, as he did, and look into the dark corners. For years I had known him as a master of the inner life, whether dealing with the Bible At Close Quarters,, or with those friends and aiders of faith, like Browning; and there are passages in The Winds of God that, echo like great music. As a guide to those who are walking in the middle years of life, where bafflements of faith are many and moral pitfalls are deep, there is no one like Hutton; no one near him. But, rich as his books are, his preaching is more wonderful than his writing. While his sermon has the finish of a literary essay, it is delivered with the enthusiasm of an evangelist. The whole man goes into it; uniting humor, pathos, unction, with a certain wildness of abandon, as of one possessed, which is the note of truly great preaching. In my humble judgment he is the greatest preacher in Britain.

January 23. —Just returned from a journey into the Midlands. At Manchester I preached on Sunday in the Cavendish Street Chapel, where Joseph Parker ministered before going to the City Temple, and lectured on ‘Lincoln and the War’ the following evening. No man ever had a more cordial reception in any city. As a preface to my lecture I paid a tribute to the Manchester Guardian as one of the great institutions of this island, and expressed gratitude for its sympathetic and intelligent understanding of America and her President, in the difficult days of our neutrality. The American Consul, in seconding a vote of thanks, told an interesting fact found in the files of his office. A group of Manchester citizens, knowing the admiration of Lincoln for John Bright, — a Manchester man, — had a bust of the Quaker statesman made, and it was ready to be sent when the news of the assassination came. They cabled Mrs. Lincoln, asking what they should do. She told them to send it to Washington; and it is now in the White House.

As a fact, I did not see Birmingham at all, because a heavy fog hung over it when I arrived and had not lifted when I left. I could hardly see my audience when I rose to speak, and felt halfchoked all through the lecture. As it was my first visit to Birmingham, I began by recalling the great men with whom the city was associated in my mind. The first was Joseph Chamberlain. No sooner had I uttered the name than there were hisses and cries, ‘No, no! John Bright!' I had forgotten that Bright ever sat for a Birmingham district. The next name was that of John Henry, Cardinal Newman. It was received at first with silence, then with a few groans. But when I mentioned the name of Dr. Dale, there was loud applause; for he was not only a mighty preacher, but a great political influence in the city. Then I reminded my audience that, when Chamberlain was accused in the House of Commons of representing Dr. Dale, he retorted, in praise of the great preacher, that he had no mean constituency. The last man named was J. H. Shorthouse, the author of John Inglesant, one of my favorite books. If the name was recognized at all, there was no sign of it.

January 27. — Have been on another short tour, preaching to the men in the camps, including one of the khaki colleges of the Canadian army at Whitley. Twice, when the men were given a choice between a sermon and a lecture, they voted to have a sermon. And what they want is a straight talk, hot from the heart, about the truths that make us men; no ‘set sermon with a stunt text,’ as one of them explained. When I asked what he meant, he said: ‘Such texts as “Put on the whole armor of God,” or “Fight the good fight,” or “Quit you like men”; they are doing that now.’ But they are being undone the while by a terrible shattering of faith, and in many a moral trenchfight.

No end of nonsense has been talked about the men in the armies, as if putting on khaki made a man a saint. No, they are men like ourselves, — our boys, — with the passions and temptations of the rest of us. As one of them put it: —

And upon this basis — being a man myself, and therefore a mixture — I talked to them, without mincing words, about the fight for faith and the desperate struggles of the moral life. Never can I forget those eager, earnest, upturned faces, — bronzed by war and weather — many of which were soon to be torn by shot and shell. The difference in preaching to men who have seen little of war, and to those who have been in it for two years or more, is very great. I should know the difference if blindfolded. The latter are as hard as nails. Only now and then does the preacher know the thrill of having dug under, or broken through, the wall of adamant in which they shelter that shy and lonely thing they dare not lose.

February 18. — The American camp at Winchester. Preached four times yesterday in a large moving-picture theatre, — packed to the doors, — and to-day I am as limp as a rag. It was a great experience, talking to such vast companies of my own countrymen

— tall, upstanding, wholesome fellows from all over the Union, among them the survivors of the Tuscania, torpedoed off the coast of Ireland. They are in the best of spirits, having lost everything except their courage, as one of them said; every one with a cold, and all togged out in every kind of garb — for those who did not lose their clothing had it ruined by the sea-water.

Spent to-day in Winchester, a city of magnificent memories, about which clusters more of history and of legend than about any city on this island, except London. It is the city of Arthur and the Round Table. Here the Saxon Chronicles were written; here King Alfred lies buried. It is the very birthplace of our civilization. The College and the St. Cross Hospital have about them the air of the Middle Ages. But the Cathedral is the gem of the scene, having the most beautiful nave I have ever seen. Less a cemetery than the Abbey, even an amateur architect can trace the old Norman style, shading into the early English, and then into the later English styles, showing the evolution of the building while enshrining the history of a race. In the south transept I

came upon the tomb of Izaak Walton, and I confess I stood beside it with mingled feelings of reverence and gratitude. Behind the tomb is a noble window, not more than fifty years old, into which the fishing scenes of the New Testament are woven with good effect — an appropriate memorial to the gentlest and wisest fisherman who has lived among us since Jesus lodged with the fishermen by the sea.

The afternoon service in the ancient temple touched me deeply, as if those who conducted it were awed by the presence of Eternity, and were carrying for a brief time the Torch of Faith, changing but eternal; a faith natural to humanity, and affirmed and expressed by the ordered beauty around them. Such a building is a symbol of that in man which refuses to be subdued, either by the brute forces of life or by the anarchy in his own heart; an emblem of that eternal resolve to love rather than hate, to hope rather than despair.

March 6.—Returning from Edinburgh, I broke my journey at the ancient city of York, where the kindest of welcomes awaited me. Looking out of my hotel window, I saw a music-shop founded in 1768 — older than the American Republic. Preached at three o’clock at the Monkgate Methodist Chapel; at five held an institute for ministers; and at seven lectured on Lincoln to a huge audience, Mr. Roundtree, Member of Parliament, presiding. The Lord Mayor presented me with a resolution of welcome, in which the most cordial good-will was expressed for the people of America.

Earlier in the day I was taken to various places of historic interest, including, of course, the beautiful old gray Minster. Also to the grave of John Woolman, the Quaker, a brief biography of whom I had once written. I knew he died while on a mission to England, but I had forgotten that he was buried in York. Reverently we stood by the grave of that simple man, — daringly radical, but divinely gentle, — who was the incarnation of the spirit of Christ, and whose life of love and service, of pity and prayer, made him a kind of sad St. Francis of the new world. York is a stronghold of the Society of Friends — the noblest body of organized mysticism on earth. Aye, the war is making men either skeptics or mystics, and wisdom lies, methinks, with the mystics whose faith is symbolized in the beautiful Listening Angel I saw the other day in the Southwell Cathedral.

March 12. — The Prime Minister spoke to the Free Church Council in the City Temple to-day, and it was an astonishing performance, as much for its wizardry of eloquence as for its moral camouflage. For weeks he has been under a barrage of criticism, as he always is when things do not go right; and the audience was manifestly unsympathetic, if not hostile. As no one knew what would happen, it was arranged that he should enter the pulpit during the singing of a hymn.

As soon as he rose to speak, — his stout body balanced on tiny, dwarflike legs, — the hecklers began a machine-gun fire of questions, and it looked as if we were in for a war of wits. The English heckler is a joy. He does not deal in slang phrases, but aims his dart straight at the target. In ten minutes the Prime Minister had his audience standing and throwing up their hats. It was pure magic. I felt the force of it. But. after it was over and I had time to think it through, I found that he had said almost nothing. On the question of Bread or Beer he turned a clever rhetorical trick, and nothing else. The Evening Star says that the Prime Minister is not a statesman at all, but a stuntsman; and one is half inclined to agree with it. Certainly his genius just now seems to consist in his agility in finding a way out of one tight corner into another, following a zigzag course. An enigmatic and elusive personality, — ruled by intuitions rather than by principles, — if he never leaves me with a sense of sincerity, he at least gives me a conservative thrill. Despite his critics the record of his actual achievements is colossal, and I know of no other personality in this kingdom that could take his place. Like Roosevelt, he knows how to dramatize what he does, making himself the hero of the story; and it is so skillfully done that few see that the hero is also the showman.

March 25. — At the Thursday-noon service on the 21st, we had news that a great battle had begun, but we little dreamed what turn it would take. Instead of the long-expected Allied advance, it was a gigantic enemy drive, which seems to be sweeping everything before it. Wave after wave of the enemy hosts beat upon the Allied lines, until they first bent and then broke; the British and French armies may be sundered and the Channel ports captured. All internal dissension is hushed in the presence of the common danger, and one sees once more the real quality of the British character, its quiet courage shining most brightly when the sky is lowering.

London is tongued-tied; people look at each other and understand. If there is any panic, it is among the politicians, not among the people. Resolute, allsuffering, unconquerably cheery, men brace themselves to face the worst — it is magnificent! There was no room for the people in the City Temple yesterday; the call to prayer comes not half so imperatively from the pulpit as from the human heart in its intolerable anxiety and sorrow. These are days when men gather up their final reasons for holding on in the battle of life, seeking the ultimate solace of the Eternal.

What days to read the Bible! Itself a book of battles, its simple words find new interpretation in the awful exegesis of events. Many a Psalm for the day might have been written for the day; the leaping up of fires through the crust of the earth makes them luminous. As we enter the depths, those strange songs follow us. Doubt, elation, anger, and even hate are there perfectly expressed. To-day, as of old, the people imagine a vain thing; the earth trembles; the honor of God is threatened. The Apocalypse, too, has a new force, color, and beauty, as we regard it in the light of burning cities. Its pictures are like the work of some mighty artist on a vast, cloudy canvas, dipping his brush in earthquake and eclipse and the shadows of the bottomless pit. Once more we see the Four Horses riding over the earth. The challenge of the Book of Job is taken up again; Jeremiah is justified in his sorrow; and the Suffering Servant of God is a living figure in this new crucifixion of humanity.

And the Gospels! Never has there been so complete a vindication of the ethics of Jesus. If, the Facts now say, you take the anti-Christ point of view, this is what it means. Repent, or the Kingdom of Hell will swallow you up! Thus the Galilean triumphs, in the terror of denying his words, no less than in the blessing of obeying them: ‘Thou hast the words of eternal life.’

March 31. — Easter Day! Dr. Rondel Harris tells how, in the musty pages of the Journal of a learned society, he came upon a revealing fact. It was there recorded that, on a morning in May, 1797, which broke calmly after a stormy night, it was possible to see from the cliffs of Folkestone even the color of the cottages on the French mainland. In the spiritual world, also, there is the record of such a day of clear tranquillity, when the fierce night of the Passion had passed, and the day of the Resurrection dawned white and serene. On that Day, and until the Ascension, — when the Great Adventurer was welcomed home, — the Unseen World was known to be near, homelike, and real.

To-day is the anniversary of that Day of Divine Lucidity, when men — plain, ordinary men like ourselves — saw through the shadows into the life of things. Softly, benignly, the Day of Eternal Life dawns upon a world red with war and billowed with the graves of those who seem doubly dead, because they died so young. Never did this blessed day shine with deeper meaning; never was its great Arch of Promise so thronged with hurrying feet. Blessed Day! When its bells have fallen into silence, and its lilies have faded into dust, pray God there may live in our hearts the promise that, after the winter of war, there shall be a springtime of peace and good-will!

When one thinks of the number of the fallen, and the heartache that follows the evening sun around the world, it is not strange that many seek communication, as well as communion, with the dead — longing to see even in a filmy vapor the outlines of forms familiar and dear. The pathos of it is heartbreaking! Even when one is sure that such use of what are called psychical faculties is a retrogression, — since genius is the only medium through which, so far, Heaven has made any spiritual revelation to mankind, — it is none the less hard to rebuke it.

Some think Spiritualism may become a new religion, with Sir Oliver Lodge as its prophet and Sir Conan Doyle as its evangelist. No matter; it has done good, and in a way too easily overlooked. Nearly all of us grew up with a definite picture in our minds of a city with streets of gold and gates of pearl; but that picture has faded. Time and criticism have emptied it of actuality. Since then, the walls of the universe have been pushed back into infinity, and the old scenery of faith has grown dim. Admit that its imagery was crude; it did help the imagination, upon which both faith and hope lean more heavily than we are aware. Now that the old picture has vanished, the unseen world is for many only a bare, blank infinity, soundless and colorless. These new seekers after truth have at least helped to humanize it once more, touching it with light and color and laughter; and that is a real service, both to faith and to the affections. Meanwhile, not a few are making discoveries in another and better way, as witness this letter: —

DEAR MINISTER, —

Early in the war I lost my husband, and I was mad with grief. I had the children to bring up and no one to help me, so I just raged against God for taking my husband from my side and yet calling Himself good. Someone told me that God could be to me all that my husband was and more. And so I got into the way of defying God in my heart. ‘Now and here,’ I used to say, ‘this is what I want and God can’t give it to me.’ After a while I came, somehow, to feel that God liked the honesty of it; liked this downright telling Him all my needs, though I had no belief that He could help me. One day I had gone into the garden to gather some flowers, and suddenly I knew that my husband was there with me — just himself, only braver and stronger than he had ever been. I do not know how I knew; but I knew. There was no need of a medium, for I had found God myself, and, finding Him, I had found my husband too.

April 15. — No spring drive is equal to the drive of spring itself, when April comes marching down the world. Kew Garden is like a bit of paradise, and neither war nor woe can mar its glory. How the English love flowers! Even in the slums of London — which are among the most dismal and God-forsaken spots on earth — one sees in the windows tiny pots of flowers, adding a touch of color to the drab and dingy scene. At the front, in dugouts, one finds old tin cans full of flowers, gathered from no one knows where. Each English home is walled in for privacy, — unlike our American way, — and each has its own garden of flowers, like a little Eden. One of the first things an Englishman shows bis guest is the garden, where the family spend much of their time in summer. April sends everybody digging in the garden.

And such bird-song! The day begins with a concert, and there is an anthem or a solo at any hour. They sing as if the heart of the world were a mystic, unfathomable joy; and even a pessimist like Thomas Hardy wondered what secret the ‘Darkling Thrush’ knew that he did not know ; and, further, what right he had to sing in such a world as this. After listening to the birds, one cannot despair of man, seeing Nature at the task of endlessly renewing her life. His war, his statecraft, his science, may be follies or sins; but his life is only budding even yet, and the flower is yet to be. So one feels in April, with a lilac beneath the window.

April 20. — Housekeeping in England, for an American woman, is a trying enough experience at any time; but it is doubly so in war-time when food and fuel conditions are so bad. Until the rationing went into effect, it was a problem to get anything to eat, as the shops would not take new customers. Even now the bread tastes as if it had been made out of sawdust; and butter being almost an unknown quality, the margarine, like the sins of the King, in Hamlet, smells to heaven. Shopping is an adventure. Literally one has to deal, not only with ‘the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker,’ but with the fish-market, the greengrocer, the dry grocer, — everything at a different place, — so it takes time and heroic patience, and even then one often comes home empty-handed. As a last resort, we fall back on eggs and peanuts, — monkey-nuts, the English call them, — to both of which I take off my hat. It is impossible for one person to keep an English house clean — it is so illarranged, and cluttered up with bric-àbrac. There are none of the American appliances for saving labor—no brooms; and the housemaid must get down on her knees, with a dustpan and handbrush, to sweep the room. There is enough brass in the house to keep one able-bodied person busy polishing it. Arnold Bennett has more than one passage of concentrated indignation about the time and energy spent in polishing brass in English houses. It is almost a profession. One compensation is the soft-voiced, well-trained English servants, and often even they are either thievish or sluttish.

April 25. — Twice I have heard Bernard Shaw lecture recently, and have not yet recovered from the shock and surprise of meeting him. My idea of Shaw was a man alert, aggressive, selfcentred, vastly conceited, craving publicity, laying claim to an omniscience 1 hat would astonish most deities. That, is to say, a literary acrobat, standing on his head to attract attention, or walking the tight-rope in the top of the tent. But that Shaw is a myth, a legend, a pose. The real Shaw is no such man. Instead, he is physically finicky, almost old-maidish, not only shy and embarrassed off the platform, but awkward, blushing like a schoolgirl when you meet him. He is gentle, modest, generous, full of quick wisdom, but suggesting lavender, and China tea served in dainty old-world cups. The most garrulous man in Europe before the war, he was smitten dumb by the insanity of it, having no word of comfort or command. Unlike Romain Rolland, he could not even frame a bitter condemnation of it. So, after one or two feeble protests, he went back into his drawing-room, pulled the blinds down, and drank China tea out of his dainty cups, leaving the world to stew in its own juice. Who can describe the fineness, the fatuousness, the futility of him! Whether prophet or harlequin, he has shot his bolt and missed the mark. Of course, the artist will live on in his work — most, vividly, perhaps, in his sham-shattering wit.

April 30. — Few Americans realize what the Throne and the Royal Family mean in the life of the British people. Our idea of the King is colored by our republican preconceptions, to say nothing of our prejudices — not knowing that England is in many ways more democratic than America. The other day, in the City Temple, an American minister spoke of the King as ‘an animated flag,’little dreaming of the thing of which he is a symbol and the profound affection in which he is held. There is something spiritual in this devotion to the King, something mystical, and the Empire would hardly hold together without it. The Royal Family is really an exaltation of the Home, which is ever the centre of British patriotism. Never, in their true hours, do the English people brag of Britain as a worldpower, actual or potential. It is always the home and the hearth, now to be defended, — and nowhere is the home more sacred and tender. Of every Briton we may say, as Bunyan said of Greatheart: ‘But that which put glory of grace into all that he did was that he did it for pure love of his Country.’ This sentiment finds incarnation in the Royal Family, in whom the Home rises above party and is untouched by the gusts of passion.

‘Their gracious Majesties’ is a phrase which exactly describes the reigning King and Queen, though neither can be said to possess, in the same measure, that mysterious quality so difficult to define which, in King Edward and Queen Alexandra, appealed so strongly to the popular imagination. Gentle-hearted, if not actually shy, one feels that the formalism and ceremony of the Court appeal less to the King than to the Queen, whose stateliness sometimes leaves an impression of aloofness. Something of the same shyness one detects in the modest, manly, happy-hearted Prince of Wales, whose personality is so captivating alike in its simplicity and its sincerity. At a time when thrones are falling, the British King moves freely among his people, everywhere honored and beloved — and all who know the worth of this Empire to civilization rejoice and give thanks.

May 19. — Dr. Jowett began his ministry at Westminster Chapel today,— the anniversary of Pentecost, — welcomed by a hideous air-raid. Somehow, while Dr. Jowett always kindles my imagination, he never gives me that sense of reality which is the greatest thing in preaching. One enjoys his musical voice, his exquisite elocution, his mastery of the art of illustration, and his fastidious style; but the substance of his sermons is incredibly thin. Of course, this is due, in large part, to the theory of popular preaching on which he works. His method is to take a single idea — large or small — and turn it over and over, like a gem, revealing all its facets, on the ground that one idea is all that the average audience is equal to. Of this method Dr. Jowett is a consummate master, and it is a joy to see him make use of it, though at times it leads to a tedious repetition of the text. Often, too, he seems to be laboring under the handicap of a brilliant novelist, who must needs make up in scenery what is lacking in plot.

Since his return to London he has been less given to filigree rhetoric, and he has struck almost for the first time a social note, to the extent, at any rate, of touching upon public affairs — although no one would claim that Dr. Jowett has a social message, in the real meaning of that phrase. No, his forte is personal religious experience of a mild evangelical type; and to a convinced Christian audience of that tradition and training he has a ministry of edification and comfort. But for the typical man of modern mind, caught in the currents and alive to the agitations of our day, Dr. Jowett has no message. However, we must not expect everything from any one servant of God, and the painter is needed as well as the prophet.

June 2. — Spent a lovely day yesterday at Selborne, a town tucked away among the chalk-hills of Hampshire. There, well-nigh two hundred years ago, Gilbert White watched the Hangar grow green in May and orange and scarlet in October, and learned to be wise. One can almost see him in the atmosphere and setting of his life, — an old-bachelor parson, his face marked by the smallpox, as so many were in that day, — walking over the hills, which he called ‘majestic mountains,’ a student and lover of nature. He was a man who knew his own mind, worked his little plot of earth free from the delusions of grandeur, and published his classic book, The Natural History of Selborne, in the year of the fall of the Bastille. Because of this coincidence of dates, it has been said that White was more concerned with the course of events in a martin’s nest than with the crash of empires. No doubt; but it may be that the laws of the universe through which empires fall are best known by a man who has such quietness of soul that a brooding mother-bird will not fly away when he visits her. White asked the universe one question, and waited to hear the answer: Take away fear, and what follows? The answer is: Peace, even the peace without which a man cannot learn that when ’redstarts shake their tails, they move them horizontally.’ It was a day to refresh the soul.

June 10. — Attended a Ministerial Fraternal to-day, and greatly enjoyed the freedom and frankness of the discussion. A conservative in England would be a radical in America, so far are they in advance of us. Evidently our English brethren have gotten over the theological mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. For one thing, they have accepted the results of the critical study of the Bible, without losing any of the warmth and glow of evangelical faith, — uniting liberal thought with orthodoxy of the heart, — as we in America have not succeeded in doing. All confessed that the atmosphere of their work has changed; that the fingers of their sermons grope blindly amid the hidden keys of the modern mind, seeking the great new words of comfort and light. It was agreed that a timid, halting, patched-up restatement of faith will not do: there must be a radical reinterpretation, if we are to speak to the new time, which thinks in new terms. On social questions, too, the discussion was trenchant, at times even startling. There was real searching of hearts, drawing us together in a final candor, and driving us back to the permanent fountains of power. The spirit of the meeting was most fraternal, and I, for one, felt that fellowship is both creative and revealing.

June 25. — American troops are pouring into England, and the invasion is a revelation to the English people. Nothing could surpass the kindness and hospitality with which they open their hearts and homes to their kinsmen from the great West. They are at once courteous and critical, torn between feelings of joy, sorrow, and a kind of gentle jealousy — at thought of their own fine fellows who went away and did not come back. They have seen many kinds of Americans, among them the tourist, the globe-trotter, the unspeakable fop, and the newly rich who spread their vulgarity all over Europe; but now they are discovering the real American, — the manly, modest, intelligent lad from the college, the store, the farm,—and they like him. He is good to look at, wholesome, hearty, straightforward, serious but not solemn, and he has the air of one on an errand. On the surface the British Tommy affects to take the war as a huge joke, but our men take it in dead earnest. ‘Why, your men are mystics; they are crusaders,’ said an English journalist to me recently; and I confess they do have that bearing — for such they really are. Last night, in a coffee-house on the Strand, I asked the Cockney proprietor if he had seen many American boys and what he thought of them. Something like this is what I heard: —

‘Yerce, and I like what I’ve seen of ’em. No swank about ’em, y’ know — officers an’ men, just like pals together. Talks to yeh mately-like — know what I mean? — man to man sort o’ thing. Nice, likable chaps, I alwis finds ’em. Bit of a change after all these damn foreigners. I get on with ’em top-’ole. And eat? Fair clean me out. Funny the way they looks at London, though. Mad about it, y’ know. I bin in London yers an’ yers, and it don’t worry me. Wants to know where that bloke put ’is cloak down in the mud for some Queen, and ’ow many generals is buried in Westminster Abbey. Ow should I know? I live in Camden Town. I got a business t’ attend to. Likable boys, though. ’Ere’s to’em!’

July 4. — Went to the American Army and Navy baseball game, taking as my guests a Member of Parliament and a City Temple friend. Never has there been such a ball game since time began. The King pitched the first ball and did it right well, too. The papers say he has been practising for days.

Then bedlam broke loose; barbaric pandemonium reigned. Megaphones, whistles, every kind of instrument of torture kept accompaniment to tossing arms and dancing hats — while the grandstand gave such an exhibition of ‘rooting’ in slang as I never heard before. Much of the slang was new to me, and to interpret it to my English friends, and at the same time explain the game, was a task for a genius. Amazement sat upon their faces. They had never imagined that a hard business people could explode in such a hysteria of play. An English crowd is orderly and ladylike in comparison. Of course, the players, aware of an audience at once distinguished and astonished, put on extra airs; and as the game went on, the fun became faster and more furious. My friends would stop their ears to save their sanity, at the same time pretending, with unfailing courtesy, to see, hear, and understand everything. The Navy won, and one last, long, lusty yell concluded the choral service of the day.

July 20. — ‘The Miracle of St. Dunstan’s.’ It is no exaggeration, if by miracle you mean the triumph of spirit, over matter and untoward disaster. St. Dunstan’s is the college where young men who gave their eyes for their country learn to be blind; and as I walked through it to-day I thought of Henley’s lines: —

Many of the men are horribly disfigured, and it is a mercy that they cannot see their own faces. Yet, for the most part, they are a jolly set, accepting the inevitable with that spirit of sport which is so great a trait of their race. At least, the totally blind are happy. Those who see partially, and do not know how it will turn out, mope a good deal. At the head of the college is Sir Arthur Pearson, himself a blind man who has learned to find his way in the dark — a blind leader of the blind. It is wonderful to hear him talk to a boy brought into the college dejected and rebellious against his fate. There is no maudlin sentiment. It is much easier to cry than to succor. They sit hand in hand, — comrades in a conquest,—while Sir Arthur tells the lad, out of his own experience, that, though night has come at noon, the day is not ended. His words, taken out of their context and atmosphere, might sound preachy, as he tells how he refused to be beaten, and how darkness has its surprises. All honor to Sir Arthur, — Knight of the Dark Table, — unforgettable for his courage, his chivalry, and his cheerfulness!

(Early in August I went again to America, on another speaking tour, crossing the bar at Liverpool, in the glow of a miraculous sunset, the sacramental beauty of which haunts me still. Time out of mind I had known Uncle Sam, in his suit of nankeen trousers strapped under his instep, his blue swallow-tail coat and brass buttons, and his ancient high hat. It was not easy to recognize him clad in khaki, wearing a gas-mask and a ‘tin lid,’ and going over the top with a Springfield rifle in his hand; and that change in outward garb was a visible sign of much else. Down the streets of New York, at midnight, one saw long lines of men marching, singing ‘Over There’; and Service Stars were everywhere, changing from silver to gold. It was an awe-inspiring America, — new in its unity, its pow er, and its vision of duty, — albeit to-day, it seems like a dim dream of some previous state of existence. Returning to England in October, my ship was one of fifteen loaded with troops, following a zigzag course over a lonely sea. It was at the time of the influenza epidemic, and almost every ship kept a funeral flag flying all the way. Off the north coast of Ireland we witnessed the destruction of an enemy submarine. Once more, on a Thursday noon, I took up my labors at the City Temple, in an address entitled ‘The New America,’ in which I tried to describe the novel experience of rediscovering my own country. Events moved rapidly, and I need add only one or two items from the diary, telling of the end of the greatest war in history, the meaning and issue of which are locked in the bosom of God.)

October 25. — Three times since I returned I have spoken to groups in behalf of Anglo-American friendship, but to little avail. My audiences were already utterly convinced, and it was like arguing with Miss Pankhurst in favor of woman suffrage — as useless as rain at sea. Somehow we never get beyond the courtesies and commonplaces of after-dinner eloquence. Yet the matter is of vital importance just now. Already there are rumors of friction between our boys and the Tommies. These are little things, but the sum of them is very great, and in the mood of the hour so many reactions of personal antagonism may be fatal. Not much idealism is left after the long struggle, and one fears a dreadful reaction, — a swift, hideous slip backward, — driving Britain and America further apart than they were before the war. Little groups do something, but what we need is some great gesture, to compel attention and dramatize the scene for the masses on both sides of the sea. Frankly, I am not clear as to the best method

— except that we have not found it. Even now, all feel that the end of the war is near, and one detects tokens which foretell a different mood when peace arrives.

October 29. — Ever and again one hears rumors of a revolution in England in which things will be turned upside down. One might be more alarmed, but for the fact that the revolution has already taken place. The old England has gone, taking with it much that was lovely and fair; a new England is here,

— new in spirit, in vision, in outlook, — not only changing in temper, but actually changing hands. As the Napoleonic wars ended the aristocratic epoch and brought the middle class to the fore, so the great war has ended the rule of the middle class and will bring the man down under to the top. Of course, as to outward appearance, the aristocratic and middle classes still rule; but their ideas do not rule. There will be no violent upheaval in England; the genius of the British mind — a practical mysticism, so to name it. though the practicality is often more manifest than the mysticism — will not let it be so. Again and again I have seen them drawn up in battle-array, ready for a fight to a finish — then, the next moment, they begin to parley, to give and take; and, finally, they compromise, each getting something and nobody getting all he asked. Therein they are wise, and their long political experience, their instinct for the middle way, as well as their non-explosive temperament, stand them in good stead in these days. Besides, if English society is a house of three stories, the house has been so shaken by the earthquake of war that all classes have a new sense of kinship and obligation. No doubt there will be flare-ups in Wales, or among the hot-heads on the Clyde; but there is little danger of anything more.

November 8. — Went to Oxford last night to hear Professor Gilbert Murray lecture on the Peloponnesian War of the Greeks as compared with our great war; and his words haunt me. With an uncanny felicity, the great scholar — who is also a great citizen — told the story of the war that destroyed Greek civilization; and the parallel with the present war was deadly, even down to minute details. About the only differences are the magnitude of the armies and the murderous efficiency of the weapons we now employ. As I listened, I found myself wondering whether I was in Oxford or in ancient Athens.

The lecturer has the creative touch which makes history live in all its vivid human color. Euripides and Aristophanes seemed like contemporaries.

What depressed me was the monotonous sameness of human nature throughout the ages. Men are doing the same things they did when Homer smote his lyre or Hammurabi framed his laws. For example, in the Athens of antiquity there were pacifists and bitter-enders, profiteers and venal politicians — everything, in fact, with which the great war has made us familiar. After twenty centuries of Christian influence, we do the same old things in the same old fashion, only on a more gigantic scale.

This shadow fell over me to-day as I talked with a young French officer in my study. He used this terrible sentence with an air of sad finality: ‘Ideals, my reverend friend, are at the mercy of the baser instincts.’ What faith it takes to sustain an ardent, impatient, forward-looking soul in a slow universe! ‘Keep facing it,’ said the old skipper to the young mate in Conrad’s Typhoon; and ere we know it, the ship has become a symbol of the life of man. He did not know whether the ship would be lost or not — nor do we. But he kept facing the storm, taking time to be just to the coolies on board, much to the amazement of Jukes. He never lost hope; and if he was an older man when he got through the storm, he at least sailed into the harbor.

November 11. — London went wild to-day. As a signal that the Armistice had been signed, the air-raid guns sounded, — bringing back unhappy memories,—but we knew that ‘the desired, delayed, incredible time’ had arrived. The war has ended; and humanity, on its knees, thanks God. Words were not made for such a time. They stammer, and falter, and fail. Whether to shout or weep, men did not know; so we did both. Something not ourselves has made for righteousness, and we are awed, subdued, overwhelmed. The triumph seems wrought, not by mortal, but by immortal thews, and shouts of joy are muffled by thoughts of the gay and gallant dead.

The rebound from the long repression was quick, the outburst startling. Men danced in the streets. They hugged and kissed and sobbed. Flags flew everywhere, flags of every color. Women wore dresses made of flags. Shops and factories emptied of their own accord. At an early hour a vast host gathered at the gates of Buckingham Palace, singing the national anthem. The King and Queen appeared on the balcony, and a mighty shout went up — like the sound of many waters.

St. Paul’s was jammed by noon; the Abbey was packed. It melted the heart to hear them sing — there was an echo of a sob in every song. All know that the secret of our joy is locked in the cold young hearts that sleep in Flanders, in eyes that see the sun no more. Never was the world so coerced by its dead. They command; we must obey. From prayer the city turned to play again. No wonder; the long strain, the bitter sorrow , the stern endurance had to find vent. At first, peace seemed as unreal as war. It took time to adjust the mind to the amazing reality. Even now it seems half a dream. There is little hate, only pity. The rush of events has been so rapid, so bewildering, that men are dazed. Down on the Embankment I saw two old men, walking armin-arm, one blind, the other half-blind, and both in rags. One played an old battered hand-organ, and the other sang in a cracked voice. They swayed to and fro, keeping time to the hymn, ‘Our God, our hope in ages past.’ So it was from end to end of London. The gray old city seemed like a cathedral, its streets aisles, its throngs worshipers.