Then there came 8 rumour duced no evidence in support of his assertion, and when it is disproved he will not be disconcerted for a moment. Then, said he, "I am told you must not do business, because we disprove of the Government. That surely is a new doctrine." It is not a new doctrine. It was a doctrine preached by Mr George himself a year ago, when he refused to take Bolshevism by the hand. It is a doctrine put into practice at this very hour, when we have kept a striot blockade-itself a form of war-against Russia. It is the doctrine which inspired Pitt and Burke in fighting with all the force at their command against an armed opinion. Mr George, we believe, is not a reader, and perhaps he is not familiar with the writings of Edmund Burke. If he were, he would see at once that the doctrine which he now pretends to be new is not new at all. It was held as stoutly by the statesmen who directed our policy at the time of the French Revolution, as it was held a year ago by himself. When the Regioides of 1796 made overtures of peace, they did it in the same amiable terms as were used by Lenin. Lenin will be satisfied with no pact which does not permit him to propagate his vile opinions. The Regicides declared in 1796 that they would have no peace until they had accomplished our utter and irretrievable ruin. And here is the reply which the Georges of the day received from Edmund Burke: "To this conciliatory and ami We are used by this time to Mr George's cynicism. The worst of it is that he is bolstering up the Bolshevism which in other days he condemned without reserve, at the very moment when Bolshevism is dying of its own incompetence and misdeeds. Nor will the defence, which he made in the House of Commons, convince a single waverer. It will persuade those only who are bound in the bonds of slavery, or who believe that the world will come to an end if they lose their seats. Mr George began by declaring that in starving Russia there is grain and oil and flax and timber. He pro eable publiek communication," that we have. We have never wrote the author of the 'Regi- traded with countries which eide Peace,'" our sole answer, spend their money in debauchin effect, is this-Citizen Regi- ing our citizens, nor have we oides! whenever you find your- ever made peace with countries selves in the humour, you may whose rulers have killed our have a peace with us. That representatives in cold blood is a point you may always and have refused apology and command. We are constantly reparation. But Mr George, in attendance, and nothing you not content with unsaying all can do shall hinder us from the valiant things which he the renewal of our supplica- had formerly said about the tions. You may turn us out horrors of Bolshevism, assumed of the door, but we will jump in his speech that the latest set in at the window." of opinions which he had held were nothing less than axioms. And then he proceeded to make the sort of careless jests which may be acceptable on the hustings, but which are wholly out of place in a debate before the House of Commons That is the method of speech always adopted by our Georges, whenever they are born into the world, which is, alas! far too frequently. Our own Mr George addresses the Bolshevists as his predecessors addressed the Regioides. There is no window into which he will not jump, though he should know well that Lenin is waiting to catch him, and that the prospect of a peace with Great Britain will be the best stimulus possible to the spreading of his armed opinions. For of course it need not be said that the arrangement made with Krassin is no mere arrangement to trade; if it be persisted in, it will grow into nothing less than a solid treaty of peace with regioides and assassins, a pledge of forgiveness to those who have foully murdered and imprisoned British officials and British oitizens. Then, asks Mr George, in contradiation to his own former statements and with complete irrelevancy: "Have we never traded with countries guilty of atrocities?" It is possible on question of high policy affecting the honour and the safety of the British Empire. However, it may be that Mr George knows his audience, and is right in believing that his own sorry provincialism is good enough to deceive the elect of the British people. Thus, through a tangle of contradictions, we begin to understand what it is that Mr George has committed us to. We may dismiss as a pretence, now some weeks old, the assertion that our only engagement with Russia is to barter goods for goods. If the negotiations proceed we shall soon hear of the arrival from Russia of gold and platinum. and platinum. And when the gold and platinum have arrived, which Lenin has no right to send, and Mr George has no right to accept, we shall hear the office of the "fence" de world. fended with the familiar levity. the one friend we have in the The next step will be the announcement of a firm peace between the Court of St James's and the Soviet Government. Thus at last will the dream of Prinkipo come true, and Mr Bullitt will be justified of the confidence which he is said to have reposed in Mr Philip Kerr. It is a disgraceful story, which will be written in black upon the tablets of our history, and the only chance that we have of retrieving our national honour is that Lenin himself will go back upon his bargain. With his usual lack of candour, Mr George made a great parade of the Allies' unanimity. He declared that there was no strong feeling manifest in France against his action. One of his secretaries, acquainted with the French tongue, might have kept him better informed. Not merely does the French Government hold the opinion very strongly that Lenin's gold cannot be used for payment, since it belongs not to the Bolshevist Government but to the creditors of Russia; not merely does it threaten legal aotion: the French Press also is unanimous in condemning Mr George's cynicism. It cannot understand what is Mr George's aim, and the charitable view to take of the uncertainty is that Mr George does not understand himself. Meanwhile the Entente is put to a severe strain, and it seems possible that Mr George's frivolous temper may alienate France and Great Britain have been comrades in arms. Their courage and persistence broke the power of Germany, and the one hope of Great Britain as of France is that the two countries will still be knit together in the bonds of friendship. The civilisation of Europe will, in truth, be threatened if we come to loggerheads. Even were the mythical granaries of Russia really on the point of bursting, even were to trade with murderers found exceedingly profitable, it would avail us nothing if, in the process of enriching ourselves, we parted in anger from the French. The one sentiment which we are bound in duty to cherish is the sentiment of solidarity with our neighbours across the Channel. But Mr George, who aspires to the autooracy of Europe, cares as little for the friendship of France as for the good repute of England. He must have Lenin's alliance at all hazards, and when he dies Prinkipo will be found written upon his heart. What hope, then, have we for safety? The fragile hope that there exists one or two honest men in the House of Commons, who will dare, in open rebellion against the Prime Minister, to plead the honourable cause of England. Mr Ronald Knox's admirable biography of Patrick ShawStewart needs no word of apology. It is but just that the men of high promise, who fell in the war, should live in the records of their friends. prizes were beyond his reach. He had that serviceable and efficient sort of brain which could be turned to any account. He passed through Eton and Balliol with an air of easy triumph. He won the Newcastle, the Ireland, the Hertford, and capped his career at Oxford by winning a fellowship at All Souls. of Truly, as A life out short prevented Patrick Shaw - Stewart and many another of his kind from proving to the world the force and talent that were in them, and it is a pious duty to rescue them from oblivion. We would not, if we could, turn away from what Mr Knox calls "the imperfect monuments of a generation that died before its time.' The more monuments, perfect or imperfect, the better shall we understand what we have lost in the great generation which has been taken from us. And what we value most highly in these plain records, in these colleotions of familiar letters, is the detachment of mind which they suggest. The men who became soldiers, not because soldiering was their business, but because they were discharging the duty they owed to their country, were no specialists. They needed no maps to explain their movements. As Mr Knox says, "their letters do not speak of advances or of hand-to-hand fighting, but of books, of quiet hours, of welcome rest-camps; they appeal, not for credit or sympathy, but for trivial daily needs, pathetic because trivial-bootpolish and pipe-cleaners and shaving-soap.' Of those who died quietly and without parade none is better worth a record than Patrick Shaw - Stewart. He was, above all, a competent man. If he felt that he had no definite vocation in life, he knew also that few of life's his kindly biographer says, he " was not one of the passengers of his generation.' And it is his very distinction which makes the work of portraiture difficult. He was too busy in converting life into a success to express himself in literature. He left no lasting memory of himself in words, as did his friend Julian Grenfell. Whatever lay before him, he took in his stride without fuss and without emphasis. "He had a genius," says Mr Knox, "for relating means to ends, for doing just so much work as was required to gain this scholarship, for making just so much impression as was required to consolidate this acquaintanceship; and his whole life (I think) was mapped out on a plan which involved the acquisition of an assured position in the world before he began to toy with literature, with Movements, with serious politics." In other words, there was a kind of worldliness in Patrick ShawStewart which he shared with very few of his contemporaries. He meant to get on, and not to sacrifice the hope of solid happiness to any forlorn hope of art or letters. His system of life, if rarely applied, is clearly intelligible. certainties: an enthymeme, for The danger is that, when men him, should never do duty for have attained an assured po- a syllogism. He could not bear sition, the impetus "to toy that any action of his should with literature" is weak in- be ascribed to a good motive deed. Literature is a jealous if there were any unworthy mistress, apt to punish severely motive that had put a grain the slights that are put upon on the balance of decision." It her in youth. Alas! it is too was consonant with his charlate to speculate about what acter, then, that he should Patrick Shaw-Stewart might take the work that he did in have done. It is enough to the war lightly and gaily. He record that in many fields he never complains or repines. accomplished as much as or The ready jest is on his more than the most of his tongue; a literary allusion or friends and colleagues. reminiscence is always at the point of his pen. He found his way about the East with Homer and Herodotus for his guides. He recognised Eumæus when he met him on a Greek island, and belies at every turn the half-contempt which he poured upon his own scholarship as a means of deceiving the examiners. But that, of course, was only a part of his inverted pride. He died in France, fighting with the highest gallantry, and refusing, though wounded, to go back to Battalion H.Q. to be dressed. His life, so far as it went, was rounded and complete; and fortunate in many things, Patrick Shaw-Stewart was fortunate also in finding so profoundly sympathetio and so wisely understanding a a biographer as Mr Knox. Moreover, as all those who knew Shaw-Stewart will remember, he purposely put stumbling-blocks in the path of those who would understand him. Mr Knox points out that he had acquired at Eton a habit of writing in a sort of parody of journalese. He did not think he was writing good English when he dealt in long words and stock phrases. He wanted you to know that what he said upon paper he put into inverted commas. And, as Mr Knox adds in a passage of clairvoyance, he was in inverted commas himself. He had a "fierce candour both about himself and about other people which sometimes left his friends aghast. He hated false enthusiasms and sham Printed by William Blackwood and Sons. |