Escape and Other Essays | Page 3

helplessly in a
dreadful series of problems: namely, how it comes to pass that a
calamity, grievous and intolerable beyond all calamities in its pain and
sorrow and waste, a strife abhorred and dreaded by all who are
concerned in it, fruitful in every shade of misery and wretchedness,
should yet have come about so inevitably and relentlessly. No one
claims to have desired war; all alike plead that it is in self-defence that
they are fighting, and maintain that they have laboured incessantly for
peace. Yet the great mills of fate are turning, and grinding out death
and shame and loss. Everyone sickens for peace, and yet any proposal
of peace is drowned in cries of bitterness and rage. The wisest spend
their time in pointing out the blessings which the conflict brings. The
mother hears that the son she parted with in strength and courage is
mouldering in an unknown grave, and chokes her tears down. The fruit
of years of labour is consumed, lands are laid desolate, the weak and
innocent are wronged; yet the great war-engine goes thundering and
smashing on, leaving hatred and horror behind it; and all the while men
pray to a God of mercy and loving-kindness and entreat His blessing on

the work they are doing.
Is there then, if we are confronted with such problems as these,
anything to do except to stay prostrate, like Job, in darkness and despair,
just enduring the stroke of sorrow? Is there any excuse for bringing
before the world at such a time as this the delightful reveries, the easy
happiness, the gentle schemes of serener and less troubled days? The
book which follows was the work of a time which seems divided from
the present by a dark stream of unhappiness. Is it right, is it decent, to
unfold an old picture of peace before the eyes of those who have had to
look into chaos and destruction? Would it not be braver to burn the
record of the former things that have passed away? Or is it well to fix
our gaze firmly upon the peaceful things that have been and will be
once more?
4
Yes, I believe that it is right and wholesome to do this, because the
most treacherous and cowardly thing we can do is to disbelieve in life.
Those old dreams and visions were true enough, and they will be true
again. They represent the real life to which we must try to return. We
must try to build up the conception afresh, not feebly to confess that we
were all astray. We cannot abolish evil by confessing ourselves worsted
by it; we can only overcome it by holding fast to our belief in labour
and order and peace. It is a temptation which we must resist, to
philosophise too much about war. Very few minds are large enough
and clear enough to hold all the problems in their grasp. I do not
believe for an instant that war has falsified our vision of peace. We
must cling to it more than ever, we must emphasize it, we must dwell in
it. I regard war as I regard an outbreak of pestilence; the best way to
resist it is not to brood over it, but to practise joy and health. The
ancient plagues which devastated Europe have not been overcome by
philosophy, but by the upspringing desire of men to live cleaner and
more wholesome lives. That instinct is not created by any philosophy
or persuasion; it just arises everywhere and finds its way to the light.
To brood over the war, to spend our time in disentangling its intricate
causes, seems to me a task for future historians. But a lover of peace,

confronted by the hideousness of war, does best to try, if he can, to
make plain what he means by peace and why he desires it. I do not
mean by peace an indolent life, lost in gentle reveries. I mean hard
daily work, and mutual understanding, and lavish help, and the effort to
reassure and console and uplift. And I mean, too, a real conflict--not a
conflict where we set the best and bravest of each nation to spill each
other's blood--but a conflict against crime and disease and selfishness
and greediness and cruelty. There is much fighting to be done; can we
not combine to fight our common foes, instead of weakening each other
against evil? We destroy in war our finest parental stock, we waste our
labour, we lose our garnered store; we give every harsh passion a
chance to grow; we live in the traditions of the past, and not in the
hopes of the future.
5
And yet there is one thing in the present war which I do in my