In Darkest England and The Way Out [174]
the sons of England--speakers of the English language, were it nothing more--will in all times have the ineradicable predisposition to trade with England. Mycale was the Pan-Ionian--rendezvous of all the tribes of Ion--for old Greece; why should not London long continue the All Saxon Home, rendezvous of all the 'Children of the Harz-Rock,' arriving, in select samples, from the Antipodes and elsewhere by steam and otherwise, to the 'season' here? What a future! Wide as the world, if we have the heart and heroism for it, which, by Heaven's blessing, we shall.
"Keep not standing fixed and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam; Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, And stout heart are still at home. In what land the sun does visit Brisk are we, what e'er betide; To give space for wandering is it That the world was made so wide.
"Fourteen hundred years ago it was a considerable 'Emigration Service,' never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion, and apparatus that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable island, and got into our present difficulties among others."--("Past and Present," pages 228-230)
"The main substance of this immense problem of organising labour, and first of all of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it, by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie potentially extant in those two classes who are to obey such enactment. A human chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it; order never can arise there." ("Past and Present," pages 231-32.)
"Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness. They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-and-demand principle: they will not; nor ought they; nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order; begin reducing them to order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be sane and ever saner. Not as a bewildered bewildering mob, but as a firm regimented mass, with real captains over them, will these men march any more. All human interests, combined human endeavours, and social growth in this world have, at a certain stage of their development, required organising and work, the grandest of human interests, does not require it.
"God knows the task will be hard, but no noble task was ever easy. This task will wear away your lives and the lives of your sons and grandsons; but for what purpose, if not for tasks like this, were lives given to men? Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound scalps; the noble of you shall cease! Nay, the very scalps, as I say, will not long be left, if you count only these. Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws, and become noble European nineteenth-century men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never such gigs and flunky 'respectabilities' in not the alone God; that of himself he is but a devil and even a brute-god.
"Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton; that, too, was difficult. The waste-cotton shrub, long useless, disobedient as the thistle by the wayside; have ye not conquered it, made it into beautiful bandana webs, white woven shirts for men, bright tinted air garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty; the forest-giants-- marsh-jotuns--bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir--the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor, red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the gray dawn of Time! Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of Difficulties
"Keep not standing fixed and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam; Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, And stout heart are still at home. In what land the sun does visit Brisk are we, what e'er betide; To give space for wandering is it That the world was made so wide.
"Fourteen hundred years ago it was a considerable 'Emigration Service,' never doubt it, by much enlistment, discussion, and apparatus that we ourselves arrived in this remarkable island, and got into our present difficulties among others."--("Past and Present," pages 228-230)
"The main substance of this immense problem of organising labour, and first of all of managing the working classes, will, it is very clear, have to be solved by those who stand practically in the middle of it, by those who themselves work and preside over work. Of all that can be enacted by any Parliament in regard to it, the germs must already lie potentially extant in those two classes who are to obey such enactment. A human chaos in which there is no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate by light shed on it; order never can arise there." ("Past and Present," pages 231-32.)
"Look around you. Your world-hosts are all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on the eve of fiery wreck and madness. They will not march farther for you, on the sixpence a day and supply-and-demand principle: they will not; nor ought they; nor can they. Ye shall reduce them to order; begin reducing them to order, to just subordination; noble loyalty in return for noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh mad; let yours be sane and ever saner. Not as a bewildered bewildering mob, but as a firm regimented mass, with real captains over them, will these men march any more. All human interests, combined human endeavours, and social growth in this world have, at a certain stage of their development, required organising and work, the grandest of human interests, does not require it.
"God knows the task will be hard, but no noble task was ever easy. This task will wear away your lives and the lives of your sons and grandsons; but for what purpose, if not for tasks like this, were lives given to men? Ye shall cease to count your thousand-pound scalps; the noble of you shall cease! Nay, the very scalps, as I say, will not long be left, if you count only these. Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vulturous Chactaws, and become noble European nineteenth-century men. Ye shall know that Mammon, in never such gigs and flunky 'respectabilities' in not the alone God; that of himself he is but a devil and even a brute-god.
"Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The short-fibre cotton; that, too, was difficult. The waste-cotton shrub, long useless, disobedient as the thistle by the wayside; have ye not conquered it, made it into beautiful bandana webs, white woven shirts for men, bright tinted air garments wherein flit goddesses? Ye have shivered mountains asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you as soft putty; the forest-giants-- marsh-jotuns--bear sheaves of golden grain; AEgir--the Sea-Demon himself stretches his back for a sleek highway to you, and on Firehorses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are most strong. Thor, red-bearded, with his blue sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy North, of the far East, far marching from your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hitherward from the gray dawn of Time! Ye are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of Difficulties