Escape and Other Essays | Page 4

heart of
hearts feel to be worth fighting for, and that is for the hope of liberty. It
is hard to say what liberty is, because the essence of it is the
subjugation of personal inclinations. The Germans claim that they
alone know the meaning of liberty, and that they have arrived at it by
discipline. But the bitterness of this war lies in the fact that the
Germans are not content to set an example of attractive virtue, and to
leave the world to choose it; but that if the world will not choose it,
they will force it upon them by violence and the sword. It is this which
makes me feel that the war may be a vast protest of the nations, which
have the spirit of the future in their hearts, against a theory of life that
represents the spirit of the past. And I thus, with some seeming
inconsistency, believe that the war may represent the hope of peace at
bay. If the nations can keep this clearly before them, and not be
tempted either into reprisals, or into rewarding themselves by the spoils
of victory, if victory comes; if it ends in the Germans being sincerely
convinced that they have been misled and poisoned by a conception of
right which is both uncivilised and unchristian, then I believe that all
our sufferings may not be too great a price to pay for the future
well-being of the world. That is the largest and brightest hope I dare to
frame; and there are many hours and days when it seems all clouded

and dim.
6
We cannot at this time disengage our thoughts from the war; we cannot,
and we ought not. Still less can we take refuge from it in idle dreams of
peace and security; but at a time when every paper and book that we
see is full of the war and its sufferings, there must be men and women
who would do well to turn their hearts and minds for a little away from
it. If we brood over it, if we feed our minds upon it, especially if we are
by necessity non- combatants, it is all apt to turn to a festering horror
which makes us useless and miserable. Whatever happens, we must try
not to be simply the worse for the war--morbid, hysterical, beggared of
faith and hope, horrified with life. That is the worst of evils; and I
believe that it is wholesome to put as far as we can our cramped minds
in easier postures, and to let our spirits have a wider range. We know
how a dog who is perpetually chained becomes fierce and furious, and
thinks of nothing but imaginary foes, so that the most peaceful
passer-by becomes an enemy. I have felt, since the war began, a certain
poison in the air, a tendency towards suspicion and contentiousness and
vague hostility. We must exorcise that evil spirit if we can; and I
believe it is best laid by letting our minds go back to the old peace for a
little, and resolving that the new peace which we believe is coming
shall be of a larger and nobler quality; we may thus come to appreciate
the happiness which we enjoyed but had not earned; and lay our plans
for earning a new kind of happiness, the essence of which shall be a
mutual trust, that desires to give and share whatever it enjoys, instead
of hoarding it and guarding it.
A wise and unselfish woman wrote to me the other day in words which
will long live in my mind; she had sent out one whom she dearly loved
to the front, and she was fighting her fears as gallantly as she could.
"Whatever happens, we must not give way to dread," she wrote. "It
does not do to dread anything for our own treasures."
That is the secret! What we must not do, in the time of war, is to
indicate to everyone else what their sacrifices ought to be; we must just
make our own sacrifices; and perhaps the man who loves and values

peace most highly does not sacrifice the least. But even he may try to
realise that life does not contradict itself; but that the parts of it,
whether they be delightful or dreadful, do work into each other in a
marvellous way.

I
ESCAPE

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality--the story of
an escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all
times--how to escape. The stories of Joseph, of Odysseus, of the
prodigal son, of the Pilgrim's Progress, of the "Ugly Duckling," of
Sintram, to name only a few out of a great number,