Duties And Sacrifices

( Originally Published 1920 )

BY SIR ANTHONY HOPE HAWKING

" Is it a New World? " is an old question. Since recorded history began it has been asked repeatedly. The answer has always been an affirmative one, and it has always been wrong. Such, at least, is the first impression that we get from reading history, and in a sense it is a true one. What the eager and enthusiastic question and answer meant has never happened ; the sudden change from old to new, from bad to good, the half-miraculous transformation of human society, has never come about ; if it has seemed to for a moment, the delusion has been a short one ; the Old World has awakened from its dream and, scratching its head, half in rue, half perhaps in relief, has decided that it has not changed after all, and, moreover, that it is not quite sure that it wants to. There are always large numbers of people, not uninfluential people, who have their own reasons for liking to leave things pretty much as they are, and large numbers more who are afraid of changing the ills they have for something that might turn out worse.

Besides, to make a New World we must not only " scrap " admitted evils ; we must revise our estimate of what we have been used to regard as the virtues and graces of life. The vices of the old order die the harder because they are, or seem to be, bound up with its virtues as it were in pairs ; militarism with valour and self-sacrifice ; patriotism with the lust of conquest and commercial greed ; religious ardour with intolerance ; old loyalties with obstinate prejudices ; the love of beauty and the encouragement of the arts with inordinate wealth and luxury. Here to name no more are wheat and tares which it is not easy to separate, to garner the good grain for the future use of mankind, while burning - the rest in the fire of a new enthusiasm.

Bearing these matters in mind, we shall not, if we are wise as well as ardent, expect the New World to be born full-grown, any more than the old one was. The form of our question will rather be, " Is there going to be a better world, and what, if any, signs pointing in that direction can we discern with reason-able clearness ? " Public feeling the general conscience in the end determines public action. Where can we discern such changes, or developments, in public feeling as may justify us in giving a hopeful answer to our question? I believe that there are two directions at least in which the current of public feeling is running strongly and permanently, and in which it will not suffer more than temporary checks.

There are two things which the conscience of the civilised world has at least condemned ; it has decided that they must somehow be abolished.

MILITARISM AND POVERTY

The one was considered glorious, if successful ; even if unsuccessful, gallant, becoming to princes and gentlemen in modern phrase, " sporting." That is aggressive warfare or (we may go so far as to say) the martial spirit in general ; to argue with your hand on the hilt of your sword and to consider any other appeal craven, or at least bourgeois. The other thing has been considered inevitable, and, indeed, especially approved by God, for His own admittedly inscrutable purposes. That is poverty, dura paupertas; perpetual, life-long, uncertain struggle for the bare means of living, hopeless renunciation of all but the most elementary pleasures of life, of almost all its beauty and almost all its worth. And this or a more or less close approach to it for the lot of the majority of mankind in the countries which boasted loudest of their civilisation !

Now, however long the abolition of these two things has tarried in its coming, it has lain from the first in the womb of civilisation, if we are to attach any real or worthy meaning to that word ; or perhaps it would be better to say any adequately modern and developed meaning, since it has taken centuries to read into it what the conscience of to-day demands. Against these two abominations, standing where they ought not, civilisation has begun its warfare in earnest, inspired by its two great characteristics, one intellectual, the other moral, yet so closely allied that they are hardly to be distinguished in their action and results. The two are reason and sympathy. In aggressive war men are robbed of life and of much else for the real or hoped-for gain or glory of other men; by extreme poverty they lose for the benefit of other men (we are speaking of communities of a certain degree of economic development) the fruits of their toil and the enjoyment of their lives. How can either of those results justify themselves when arraigned before the bar of reason and sympathy?

When civilisation is in earnest, when the reason and sympathy which inspire it are really efficient in determining the will and action of men and nations, it wins in the long run, though perhaps it is not safe to say that in any single matter the victory is yet absolutely complete. If civilisation is in earnest about these two abominations it will march forward heavily burdened with the survival of antique accoutrement, and across heavy and encumbered ground, but steadily, and with lengthening strides towards their abolition.

OPEN HEART AND OPEN MIND

But what does it mean to be in earnest about a desired object ? The answer is obvious ; it means to be ready to make efforts, sacrifices, and surrenders in order to achieve it resolute efforts and disagreeable surrenders. Abelard said that God has told us that He is the Truth, but has never told us that He is what we have been accustomed to believe. So we may and indeed ought to continue to believe that nations, classes, and individuals have their rights, but by no means are we to assume that these rights are what they have hitherto by the mass of operative opinion, at all events been considered to be. They may turn out, in the new light dawning on the nascent New World, to be something quite different, much greater here, much less there. We may—" shall " is the better word, if we have the courage to write it--have to make sacrifices which, according to the old order of ideas, would have seemed not merely unreasonable, but humiliating, and even perhaps disgraceful.

We shall have to be ready to sacrifice not only what seems to be our interest, our wealth, our pleasure, but also our dignity, pride, and prejudices. Perhaps even our well-considered convictions of justice, whether as between man and man, class and class, or nation and nation, may have to go. We have not only to resolve to vindicate the Right ; we have, in half-a-hundred matters of human concern, to discover what it is.

An open heart is much commoner than an open mind. Both are needed for our talk, but the more urgent demand is, as usual, for the rarer commodity. Most people who advocate the wrong thing honestly think it, and are honestly convinced that they are in the right. That is the tragedy and the great obstacle. The London man-about-town, who perhaps has never done a stroke of work in his life, passionately and sincerely denounces the claims of " Labour." The extreme wing of " Labour " will concede nothing to brains and leadership. Both lack the open mind.

The difficulties, then, are obviously great. Nevertheless, the omens are favourable with regard to the two great evils which we have touched upon here. There is a determination against aggressive war of a strength and solidity such as, I think, has never been known before. The well-to-do classes have submitted to unparalleled taxation with notable good temper. Labour has made some mistakes, but broadly its claims are no more than the general con-science recognises to be reasonable and just. Men of different nations and different classes are more ready to hear one another, to argue and discuss, and to settle matters according to the merits of the case. If this temper holds and grows, there is good hope.

And if society were once free of militarism and of grinding poverty, what a difference on the earth ! Then we might hope, without foolishness, that in time all other things would be added unto us.