She didn’t object to the celebrations for the anniversary of the signing of Armistice–in fact, she quite enjoyed them–but she did object to the few minutes’ silent remembrance of the Glorious Dead. It depressed her. She brought out the old “tag” so beloved of people who dread sadness, even reverential sadness, that “the world is […]

And the worst of that road to Calvary which we all of us must follow, whether it be a long or short way, is that it is always, as it were, a lonely journey into the Unknown. It is a mystery–a terrific mystery–and sometimes it frightens us so terribly that men and women have been […]

She was sitting half dreaming, half listening to the old preacher, when suddenly one sentence in a sermon, otherwise prosy and conventional, arrested her attention. For the moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her. “All roads lead to Calvary.” Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to at last. […]

I have come to the conclusion that the only books which people are really fond of are those which rightly belong to other people. To them they are always faithful. They are faithful to them not in spite of themselves, which is the way with those “classics” which everybody is supposed to have read while […]

Whenever I lend a book–and, in parenthesis, I never lend a book of which I am particularly fond–I always say “good-bye” to it under my breath. I have found that, whereas the majority of people are perfectly honest when dealing with thousands, their sense of uprightness suddenly leaves them when it is only a question […]

The worst of government by the people is that the moment the people put them into power they are gracefully forgotten. The only real government by the people comes through the people themselves in the form of disturbances and strikes and revolutions. Then, alas, the tiny craft of Progress is borne towards the ocean on […]

Personally, I blame the poor for boozing less than I blame the rich for “jazzing.” If I had to live the lives which millions of working men and women lead, and amid the same surroundings, and with the same hopeless future–I would booze with the booziest. You can’t expect the poor to respect themselves when […]

“Humanity is one, and an injury to one member is an injury to the whole.” I cull this line from Mr. Gilbert Cannan’s book, “The Anatomy of Society.” And I quote it because I believe that it sums up in a few words, not only the world-politics of the future, but the religion–the real, practical […]

For myself, I consider that it would do the world good if it had one whole day of silent remembrance each year. And if it be depressing–well, that will be all to the good. The world will come to no harm if it be depressed once a year–depressed for such a noble cause. After all, […]

Looking back on one’s life, I always think it is so strange that just those blows of fate which logic would consider as certain to destroy such things as Faith and Belief, optimism and steadfastness of soul-vision, so many times provide their very foundations. How often those whose Belief in a Life Hereafter is the […]

Most especially do I feel sorry for those people who cannot find a certain illusion of happiness in reading. I thank whatever gods there be that I can generally find the means of “getting-away” between the covers of a book. A book has to be very puerile indeed if I cannot enjoy it to a […]

Everybody, as I said before, has his or her own receipt for “getting away.” Some find it in long “chats” over the fireside with old friends; some in reading and music and art; some in travel, some in “good works” and just a few in “bad” ones. A new hat will often lift a woman […]

I suppose that we all of us have our own little secret “dream-sanctuary”–our way-of-escape which nobody knows anything about, and by which we go when we are weary of the trivialities of the domestic hearth and sick unto death of the “cackle-cackle” of the crowds. When we are very young we long to share this […]

Yet these people, as I said before, must be married to one of the two Adored, if their sentiment for each can be called Love. Love, in which passion plays the larger part, is so all-absorbing while it lasts, that only the deep affection and respect which may come through the intimacy of matrimony can […]

How strange it is that human endeavour is, for the most part, always expended upon accomplishing something for which no one has any particular use, while the things which, as it were, are simply begging to be done, are usually among the great “undone” for which we ask forgiveness every Sunday morning in church–that is, […]

Only those who have worked in the offices of an important newspaper, know that the Power Behind the Throne–which is the Editorial Chair–is rarely the Church, scarcely ever the State, infrequently the Capitalist, and never Labour,–but simply the Advertisement Department. I was sitting the other afternoon–dreaming, as is my wont; and smoking cigarettes, which is […]

And this mention of the piano-crime among the munition-makers brings me to another fact–how utterly impossible it is for the majority of people to judge any big scheme without having regard to the particular instances which threaten its success. Because some working people are so utterly bestial that they are unfit to live in decent […]

I believe in the heart of democracy, but I am extremely suspicious of its head. Popular education among the masses is the most derelict thing in all our much-vaunted civilisation. To talk to the masses concerning anything outside the radius of their own homes and stomachs is, for the most part, like talking to children. […]

Were it not for the fact that we are usually eating at the same time, and so in no mood to criticise the mastication of others, I am sure that not half so many people would fall into love, nor be able to keep up the passionate illusion when fate had pushed them into it. […]

All marriage is a lottery–that is why the modern tendency is to examine both sides of the hedge before you ask someone to jump over it with you. A single man may be said to have his own career in his own hands; but once married, he runs the risk of having to begin all […]