This conviction that the world kingdom of God is the only true method of human service, is so clear and final in my own mind, it seems so inevitably the conviction to which all right-thinking men must ultimately come, that I feel almost like a looker-on at a game of blind-man's bluff as I watch the discussion of synthetic political ideas.The blind man thrusts his seeking hands into the oddest corners, he clutches at chairs and curtains, but at last he must surely find and hold and feel over and guess the name of the plainly visible quarry.
Some of the French and Italian people I talked to said they were fighting for "Civilisation." That is one name for the kingdom of God, and I have heard English people use it too.But much of the contemporary thought of England stills wanders with its back to the light.Most of it is pawing over jerry-built, secondary things.I have before me a little book, the joint work of Dr.
Grey and Mr.Turner, of an ex-public schoolmaster and a manufacturer, called /Eclipse or Empire?/ (The title /World Might or Downfall?/ had already been secured in another quarter.) It is a book that has been enormously advertised; it has been almost impossible to escape its column-long advertisements; it is billed upon the hoardings, and it is on the whole a very able and right-spirited book.It calls for more and better education, for more scientific methods, for less class suspicion and more social explicitness and understanding, for a franker and fairer treatment of labour.But why does it call for these things? Does it call for them because they are right? Because in accomplishing them one serves God?
Not at all.But because otherwise this strange sprawling empire of ours will drop back into a secondary place in the world.
These two writers really seem to think that the slack workman, the slacker wealthy man, the negligent official, the conservative schoolmaster, the greedy usurer, the comfortable obstructive, confronted with this alternative, terrified at this idea of something or other called the Empire being "eclipsed," eager for the continuance of this undefined glory over their fellow-creatures called "Empire," will perceive the error of their ways and become energetic, devoted, capable.They think an ideal of that sort is going to change the daily lives of men....Isympathise with their purpose, and I deplore their conception of motives.If men will not give themselves for righteousness, they will not give themselves for a geographical score.If they will not work well for the hatred of bad work, they will not work well for the hatred of Germans.This "Empire" idea has been cadging about the British empire, trying to collect enthusiasm and devotion, since the days of Disraeli.It is, I submit, too big for the mean-spirited, and too tawdry and limited for the fine and generous.It leaves out the French and the Italians and the Belgians and all our blood brotherhood of allies.It has no compelling force in it.We British are not naturally Imperialist; we are something greater--or something less.For two years and a half now we have been fighting against Imperialism in its most extravagant form.It is a poor incentive to right living to propose to parody the devil we fight against.
The blind man must lunge again.
For when the right answer is seized it answers not only the question why men should work for their fellow-men but also why nation should cease to arm and plan and contrive against nation.
The social problem is only the international problem in retail, the international problem is only the social one in gross.
My bias rules me altogether here.I see men in social, in economic and in international affairs alike, eager to put an end to conflict, inexpressibly weary of conflict and the waste and pain and death it involves.But to end conflict one must abandon aggressive or uncordial pretensions.Labour is sick at the idea of more strikes and struggles after the war, industrialism is sick of competition and anxious for service, everybody is sick of war.But how can they end any of these clashes except by the definition and recognition of a common end which will establish a standard for the trial of every conceivable issue, to which, that is, every other issue can be subordinated; and what common end can there be in all the world except this idea of the world kingdom of God? What is the good of orienting one's devotion to a firm, or to class solidarity, or /La Republique Francais/, or Poland, or Albania, or such love and loyalty as people profess for King George or King Albert or the Duc d'Orleans--it puzzles me why--or any such intermediate object of self-abandonment? We need a standard so universal that the platelayer may say to the barrister or the duchess, or the Red Indian to the Limehouse sailor, or the Anzac soldier to the Sinn Feiner or the Chinaman, "What are we two doing for it?" And to fill the place of that "it," no other idea is great enough or commanding enough, but only the world kingdom of God.
However long he may have to hunt, the blind man who is seeking service and an end to bickerings will come to that at last, because of all the thousand other things he may clutch at, nothing else can satisfy his manifest need.
