Essays in War-Time | Page 3

one occasion, in 1627, Rous reports a discussion concerning the
Rochelle Expedition which exactly counterparts our experience to-day.
He was at Brandon with two gentlemen named Paine and Howlet, when
the former began to criticise the management of the expedition,
disputing the possibility of its success and then "fell in general to speak
distrustfully of the voyage, and then of our war with France, which he
would make our King the cause of"; and so went on to topics of old
popular discontent, of the great cost, the hazard to ships, etc. Rous, like
a good patriot, thought it "foul for any man to lay the blame upon our
own King and State. I told them I would always speak the best of what
our King and State did, and think the best too, till I had good grounds."
And then in his Diary he comments that he saw hereby, what he had
often seen before, that men be disposed to speak the worst of State
business, as though it were always being mismanaged, and so nourish a
discontent which is itself a worse mischief and can only give joy to
false hearts. That is a reflection which comes home to us to-day when
we find the descendants of Mr. Paine following so vigorously the
example which the parson of Downham reprobated.
That little incident at Brandon, however, and indeed the whole picture
of the ordinary English life of his time which Rous sets forth, suggest a
wider reflection. We realise what has always been the English temper.
It is the temper of a vigorous, independent, opinionated, free-spoken
yet sometimes suspicious people among whom every individual feels in
himself the impulse to rule. It is also the temper of a people always
prepared in the face of danger to subordinate these native impulses. The
one tendency and the other opposing tendency are alike based on the

history and traditions of the race. Fifteen centuries ago, Sidonius
Apollinaris gazed inquisitively at the Saxon barbarians, most ferocious
of all foes, who came to Aquitania, with faces daubed with blue paint
and hair pushed back over their foreheads; shy and awkward among the
courtiers, free and turbulent when back again in their ships, they were
all teaching and learning at once, and counted even shipwreck as good
training. One would think, the Bishop remarks, that each oarsman was
himself the arch-pirate.[1] These were the men who so largely went to
the making of the "Anglo-Saxon," and Sidonius might doubtless still
utter the same comment could he observe their descendants in England
to-day. Every Englishman believes in his heart, however modestly he
may conceal the conviction, that he could himself organise as large an
army as Kitchener and organise it better. But there is not only the
instinct to order and to teach but also to learn and to obey. For every
Englishman is the descendant of sailors, and even this island of Britain
seemed to men of old like a great ship anchored in the sea. Nothing can
overcome the impulse of the sailor to stand by his post at the moment
of danger, and to play his sailorly part, whatever his individual
convictions may be concerning the expedition to Rochelle or the
expedition to the Dardanelles, or even concerning his right to play no
part at all. That has ever been the Englishman's impulse in the hour of
peril of his island Ship of State, as to-day we see illustrated in an
almost miraculous degree. It is the saving grace of an obstinately
independent and indisciplinable people.
Yet let us not forget that this same English temper is shown not only in
warfare, not only in adventure in the physical world, but also in the
greater, and--may we not say?--equally arduous tasks of peace. For to
build up is even yet more difficult than to pull down, to create new life
a still more difficult and complex task than to destroy it. Our English
habits of restless adventure, of latent revolt subdued to the ends of law
and order, of uncontrollable freedom and independence, are even more
fruitful here, in the organisation of the progressive tasks of life, than
they are in the organisation of the tasks of war.
That is the spirit in which these essays have been written by an
Englishman of English stock in the narrowest sense, whose national

and family instincts of independence and warfare have been transmuted
into a preoccupation with the more constructive tasks of life. It is a
spirit which may give to these little essays--mostly produced while war
was in progress--a certain unity which was not designed when I wrote
them.
[1] O'Dalton, Letters of Sidonius, Vol. II., p. 149.

II
EVOLUTION AND WAR
The Great War of to-day has rendered acute the question of