Henry Woodd Nevinson

“ It is not the dread of pain and torment; it is the dark that terrifies; it is Kingsley's horror of annihilation; it is the hot life's fear of ceasing to be. I grant that many are unconscious of this fear. In word, at all events, there are multitudes, perhaps the greater part of mankind, who long for the annihilation of self, who direct their lives by the great hope of becoming in the end absorbed into the Universe. Their perpetual prayer is to be rid of personality at the last, no matter through what strange embodiments the self must pass before it reach the bliss of nothingness. ”

“ When I saw Tolstoy during the Russian revolution of 1905 he said to me:
"The present movement in Russia is not a riot; it is not even a revolution; it is the end of an age. The age that is ending is the age of Empires—the collection of smaller States under one large State. There is no true community of heart or thought between Russia, Finland, Poland, the Caucasus and all our other States and races. And what has Hungary, Bohemia, Syria, or the Tyrol to do with Austria? No more than Canada, Australia, India, or Ireland has to do with England. ”

“ What have they said or done for freedom's emblem in Persia, or in Morocco, or in Turkey? What support have they given it in Finland, or in the Caucasus, or in the Baltic Provinces? To come within our own sphere, what ecstatic rhapsodies have they composed to greet the rising nationalism of Ireland, or of India, or of Egypt? Or, in this country herself, what movement of men or of women striving to be free have they welcomed with their paeans of joy? Not once have they perceived a glory in liberty's cause to-day. ”

“ Thou art the paragon of animals, the slowly elaborated link between beast and god, united by this flesh with tom-cats, swine, and hares, but united by the spirit with those eternal things that move fresh and strong as the ancient heavens in their courses, and know not fear. What pain of spikes and sharpened points, what torment that this body can endure from cold or hunger, from human torture and burning flame, what pleasure that it can enjoy from food and wine and raiment and all the satisfactions of sense is to be compared with the glory that may be revealed at any moment in thy soul? ”

“ Booths, roundabouts, Amazon queens, and the rest are the only chance of colour the English people have, and no wonder they love them. But in themselves and in mass the crowds were drab, dingy, and black. Even "ostridges" and "pearlies," that used to break the monotony like the exchange of men's and women's hats, are thought to be declining. America may rival that dulness, but in no other country of Europe, to say nothing of the East and Africa, could so colourless a crowd be seen—a mass of people so devoid of character in costume, or of tradition and pride in ornament. ”

“ For, as we are almost too frequently told, change is the law of human life.
And may not this be just the very reason we are seeking for—the very reason why all the world loves a rebel, at a distance? Perhaps the world unconsciously recognises in him a symbol of change, a symbol of the law of life. We may not like him very near us—not uncomfortably near, as we say. For most change is uncomfortable. When I was shut up for many weeks in a London hospital, I felt a shrinking horror of going out, as though my skin had become too tender for this rough world. ”

“ The sportsman is an amateur butcher—a butcher for love. Ought we to maintain soldiers for love—for fear of losing the advantages of war? Those advantages are thought considerable. War has inspired much art and much literature. It is the background or foreground in nearly all history; it sheds a gleam of uniforms and romance upon a drab world; it delivers us from the horrors of peace—the softness, the monotony, the sensual corruption, the enfeebling relaxation. No one desires a population slack of nerve, soft of body, cruel through fear of pain, and incapable of endurance or high endeavour. ”

“ Swinburne himself may have had those words in mind when, writing also of Garibaldi, he said of freedom:
"She, without shelter or station, She, beyond limit or bar, Urges to slumberless speed Armies that famish, that bleed, Sowing their lives for her seed, That their dust may rebuild her a nation, That their souls may relight her a star."
"Happy are all they that follow her," he continued, and in a sense we may well deem their fate happiness. But it is in the sense of what Carlyle in a memorable passage called the allurements to action. ”

“ It is especially in the domain of war that we, the bearers of men's bodies, who supply its most valuable munition, who, not amid the clamour and ardour of battle, but singly and alone, with a three-in-the-morning courage, shed our blood and face death that the battlefield may have its food—a food more precious to us than our heart's blood; it is we especially who, in the domain of war, have our word to say—a word no man can say for us. ”

“ But, if his cause has been high, whether he wins or loses, he will have enjoyed a comradeship such as is nowhere else to be found—- a comradeship in a common service that transfigures daily life and takes suffering and disgrace for honour. His spirit will have been illumined by a hope and an indignation that make the usual aims and satisfactions of the world appear trivial and fond. To him it has been granted to hand on the torch of that impassioned movement and change by which the soul of man appears slowly to be working out its transfiguration. ”

“ As wave after wave of indignation passed over him, his wrath at oppression extended to all mankind. In Gulliver's Travels it is the human race that lies before him, how much altered for the worse by being flayed! But it is not pity he feels for the victim now. In man he only sees the littleness, the grossness, the stupidity, or the brutal degradation of Yahoos. Unlike other satirists—unlike Juvenal or Pope or the author of Penguin Island, who comes nearest to his manner—he pours his contempt, not upon certain types of folly or examples of vice, but upon the race of man as a whole. ”

“ Cleanliness is an expensive luxury almost as far beyond poverty's reach as diamonds. The foul skin, the unwashed clothes, the layer of greasy smuts, the boots that once fitted someone, and are now held on by string, the scraps of food bought by the pennyworth, the tea, condensed milk, fried fish, bread and "strawberry flavour," the coal bought by the "half-hundred," the unceasing noise, the absence of peace or rest, the misery of sickness in a crowd—all such things may be counted among the outward conditions of unhappiness, and only people who have never known them would call them trivial. ”

“ As we all admit it, certainly it does seem very hard on all classes that there should be anything else to do in the world besides soldiering and sailoring. It is most deplorable that, in Lord Wolseley's words, some civilian occupations are very useful; for, if they were not, we might all have a fine time playing at soldiers—real soldiers, with guns!—from a tumultuous cradle to a bloody grave. If only we could abolish the civilian and his ignoble toil, what a rollicking life we should all enjoy upon this earthly field of glory! ”

“ If nationality has kindled and maintained the light of freedom, it is illuminated by a glory that transforms mountain poverty into splendour. If it has endured tyranny, its people are welded together by a common suffering and a common indignation. At the lowest, the people of the same nationality have their customs, their religion, generally their language—that most intimate bond—and always the familiar outward scenes of earth and water, hill and plain and sky, breathing with memories. Nationality enters into the soul of each man or woman who possesses it. ”

“ On the side of peace I think it is of little avail to plead the horrors and unreason of war. We all know how horrible and silly it is for two countries to pretend to settle a dispute by ordering large numbers of innocent men to kill each other. If horrors would stop it, anyone who has known war could a tale unfold surpassing all that the ghost of Hamlet's father had seen in hell. There are sights on a battlefield under shell-fire, and in a country devastated by troops, so horrible that even war correspondents have silently agreed to leave them undescribed. ”

“ For each generation must find its own way, nor would it be a consolation to have even the greatest of ancient prophets living still. But yet there breathes from the living a more intimate influence, for which an immortality of fame cannot compensate. When men like Tolstoy die, the world is colder as well as more empty. They have passed outside the common dangers and affections of man's warm-blooded circle, lighted by the sun and moon. Their spirit may go marching on; it may become immortal and shine with an increasing radiance, perpetual as the sweet influences of the Pleiades. ”

“ In the first instance, we go through all this make-believe because the Leviathan of the State is necessary for peace and self-defence, and without it our life would be solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. But we further endow the State with a personality we can almost see and handle, and we regard it as something that is able not only to protect our peace but to shed a reflected splendour on ourselves, giving us an importance not our own—just as schoolboys glory in their school, or Churchmen in their Church, or cricketers in their county, or fox-hunters in their pack of hounds. ”

“ In speaking of Finland's loss of liberty, Madame Malmberg, the Finnish patriot, once said that in old days, when their liberties seemed secure, the Finns felt no sympathy with other nationalities—the Poles, the Georgians, or the Russians themselves—struggling to be free. They did not know what it was to be a subject race. They could not realise the degrading loss of nationality. They were soon to learn, and they know now. We have not learned. We have forgotten our lesson. That is why we remain so indifferent to the cry of freedom, and to the suppression of nationality all over the world. ”

“ But how much finer to die like Romeo with a kiss, quick as the true apothecary's drugs; to sink like Shelley in the blue water, with mind still full of the Greek poet whom he tucked against his heart; to pass hot with fever, like Byron, from the height of fame, while thunder presaged to the mountaineers the loss of their great champion in freedom's war!
There is no question of it; these are axioms that all mankind is agreed upon. Every mortal soul would choose a quick and impassioned death ”

“ With what pleasure or shamefaced cowardice citizens look on while women are being violently and indecently assaulted when attempting to vindicate their political rights! How gladly everyone shouts with the largest crowd! Consider how many noble actions men leave undone through fear of being hurt or killed. "Dogs! would you live for ever?" cried Frederick the Great to his soldiers, in defeat; and most of us would certainly answer: "Yes, we would, if you please!" Only through war, or the training for war, says the argument, can this loathly cowardice be kept in check. ”