The Raft & Socrates Asks Why Read online

  LIEUTENANT

  That is the answer you gave when I asked why sailors, whose ships had been torpedoed, went back to face the danger of the sea. ‘Because they were sailors,’ you said. But think what has lately been happening in Britain. When the cities were bombed — London, Coventry, Manchester, Bristol, Hull, and many others — the men and women of those cities also went back to work. Greengrocers and carpenters and clerks and charwomen: they went back to work. And why? You would answer, I suppose, ‘Because they were greengrocers. Because they were carpenters and clerks and charwomen.’

  SECOND MATE

  What else could they do but go back to work?

  LIEUTENANT

  At other times, and in other countries, people have submitted to fear. They have been defeated.

  SECOND MATE

  Did you expect us to throw up the sponge at the first blow?

  STOKER

  From the way some people talked, in the years before the war, you might have expected that very thing to happen. I have heard it said, at street-corners in our own country, and in many seaport towns abroad, that Britain was old and worn-out, and fit for nothing good.

  PASSENGER

  Many nations, and most people, I think, go to some trouble to hide their faults and dissemble their vices. We in these islands of Britain had recently the singular habit of concealing our virtue. The fashionable shade of an English complexion, for a generation or so, was lack-lustre.

  LIEUTENANT

  And now we have been compelled, reluctantly I suppose, to reveal the virtue within us. Britain, so far from being worn-out and fit for nothing good, is crowded-full of soldiers and sailors, of clerks, carpenters, charwomen, and greengrocers who insist on doing their duty in face of the enemy. But no one will tell me why.

  PASSENGER

  Will you not tell us?

  LIEUTENANT

  Have you ever been to Westminster Abbey?

  PASSENGER

  Occasionally.

  STOKER

  I’ve seen it from the outside. I’ve never been in.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  You can’t see much there nowadays. Half of it is full of sandbags.

  LIEUTENANT

  The nave of Westminster Abbey is two feet higher than the nave of York Minster, which is a hundred feet high. I once read that in a guidebook, and as I read it I saw the great army of English builders, in the years of faith, raising yet higher and higher their lovely roofs and great towers against the English sky. Count in your memory the number of the English cathedrals: Canterbury and York, Salisbury and Westminster and Wells, Durham and Ely — how many are there? There was a time when England gave more enthusiasm to the building of churches than we have ever given to the building of an empire. And don’t they seem, the greatest of the churches, to be competing the one against the other? Why were they built so tall and splendid?

  PASSENGER

  A sense of religious duty must have been the fundamental reason, but equally, I think, there was pleasure in the art of building. And the cathedrals are also an expression of pride.

  LIEUTENANT

  A sense of duty, and pride. That’s what built them. And that is what takes your sailors back to sea, and soldiers into battle, and greengrocers and charwomen to their work when their work is dangerous. Duty to the cause for which they fight or work, and pride in what they are. I believe in the people of these islands: not only in their goodness, but their sufficient strength. And to say this, now at this time, is an act of faith. The war has still to be won, and when the war has been won, there is peace to be made. Much of our strength has been broken in battle, and we take no delight in the war. But Britain is stronger than ever before, and pledged to endure. The people will endure. But when the war is over, they must take up another burden. Much of the world will have to be built anew, and better built than before. Britain must take her share, and not a small one, in that building. She will need all her sense of duty, and she will need her pride.

  PASSENGER

  Then she must bring it into the open. If pride is to be of proper service, it must be conscious. But we, for a long time now, have stifled our pride. Stifled it so effectively that its voice has gone. It has forgotten how to speak. It whispers in our secret heart, but that is not enough.

  LIEUTENANT

  No, it is not enough. Pride must come out of the dark.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  You’re asking too much of Britain if you expect her to carry the world on her back. There’ll be work enough, for all our people, in putting our own country to rights, after the war. If they manage to do that, they’ll have done plenty.

  LIEUTENANT

  I should like to see much of Britain built again — suburb and factory, schools and railway stations and city streets — in the delight of building, with the pride and beauty, that moved the years when the cathedrals were built.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  Then why bother about foreign countries? Why shouldn’t we give all our energy, and all our time, to making a really good job of our own?

  SECOND MATE

  Because we can’t afford to be selfish. You can put it, if you like, that the world sails in convoy nowadays, and the well-being of one nation is bound to another. I have spent my life in ships, and ships don’t go to sea for the amusement of their owners and the health of their crews. They go for trade. But if we don’t look after our customers there’ll be no foreign trade, and our last voyage will be to Carey Street.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  We have meddled too much with foreign countries. This is what Britain did: it woke up early, while other people were still asleep, and went out and grabbed an empire. And now, whenever we talk of freedom, our breath stinks of all the places we’ve killed and robbed.

  LIEUTENANT

  It is so much easier to blame than to praise. Until I grew up I could see very little good in the British Empire, but slowly, as I learnt something about the world as it is, I began to think better of it. Does it really make a bad smell in the world? Is it nothing but the creation of a dead hand? Consider one of the smallest of our colonies: Malta. Would Malta have made for itself a new name of gallantry if we, the imperial power, had crushed the life and spirit of its people? If you summon Britain to court on a charge of imperialism, is Malta not a witness for the defence?

  GUNNER

  If Malta gave evidence, it would sound very like the story of David and Goliath. The Philistines, you will remember, stood on a mountain, and Israel stood on a mountain on the other side, and there was a valley between them. And a champion came out of the camp of the Philistines, whose name was Goliath of Gath. He was wearing a helmet of brass and a coat of mail that weighed five thousand shekels of brass, and he had a shield of brass, and brass upon his legs. His spear was as thick as a weaver’s beam, and the head of it weighed six hundred shekels of iron. But when David went against him, David was wearing no more than a boy would be wearing.

  Nevertheless David said, ‘Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.’

  So David took five smooth stones out of a brook, and put them in a kind of a bag, and his sling was in his hand. And when Goliath came within range he put a hand in his bag and took out a stone, and slung it. And he smote Goliath in his forehead, so that the stone sunk into his forehead, and Goliath fell upon his face to the earth.

  LIEUTENANT

  So the air-fleets of Rome and Germany, heavily armed, brassily arrogant, made war against Malta. But Malta, like young David, pelted them shrewdly, and their bombers came tumbling down. ‘Let no man’s heart fail because of them,’ said Malta. ‘Thy servant will fight with these Philistines.’

  PASSENGER

  It is a good argument. Malta, for one, has not been frozen by the dead hand of imperialism.

  LIEUTENANT

  And the great Dominions that we planted do not look like dead growths. Have you ever seen the fathom-high soldiers of Australia, leat
her-skinned, swaggering, talking as though they had never breathed anything less than a gale snatched out of the sky, their boots striking the ground as if earth were a ball for their play?

  Do you know the great width of Canada, the silver-streaked mountains, the prairie-gold ocean of wheat, the lakes in the wind and the cloud-soaring cities? In the fall of the year the estuary of the St. Lawrence is most beautiful. It is lined with a crimson forest. And it would need, I think, a mouth as wide as the St. Lawrence to tell the whole story of Canada’s delight in being Canada.

  Remember, too, the armies that fought, a year or so back, from the highlands of Kenya through fever-swamp, thorn-scrub and desert, over the Juba river, and took at a swoop the town like a sneeze, Mogadisciu, then leapt with a roar that frightened the Tuscans high into Ogaden, so to the mountains of blasted stone, and over them, still at a run, to Harar, Jijiga, and down the new Roman road to Haile Selassie’s drab capital city. That campaign over — the swiftest that ever was won — they stooped like an eagle, out of the African sky, on the enemy lines on the Cyrenaican border, and fought with high spirit and speed and the toughest resolve in that sour debatable land. They were South Africans, most of that army. Forty years ago they were fighting against us. But between us we made up a peace that not only stitched but healed the wounds of that war. And now in this war for To-morrow, this battle that’s joined on the cross-roads of Time, we are fighting together.

  For some little time the sound of unsynchronised engines has been heard, growing steadily louder, and now dominating the continuous soft noises of the sea.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  Do you hear that? It’s an aeroplane.

  PASSENGER

  It has come too late.

  SECOND MATE

  Yes, too late to help us — if it is one of ours.

  STOKER

  And if it is one of theirs, well, it’s too late to do us any harm.

  The noise grows louder, rises to a scream and abruptly fades, as the aeroplane dives low upon the raft and rises beyond it.

  LIEUTENANT

  If it is one of ours they will go home and say: ‘We found six dead men on a raft.’ But if they could see the truth, they would say: ‘We found six men with a living faith.’

  PASSENGER

  I am older than you, and faith is more difficult for me. But in this matter that divides the world we have right on our side, we have not wasted our strength in fighting for it, and good will come of the fight. Our country is a tree that bears good fruit. That I believe. That is the message I would give them.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  I don’t know if I believe or not, but I have played for my side.

  STOKER

  I would give them a message to my wife.…

  The noise returns, swelling to a roar. The aeroplane dives again. Machine-guns open fire. The bullets tear white flakes from the sodden wood of the raft, and make fountains in the sea. But no one is hit. The stammer of gunfire ceases, the engine-noise grows less and dies away.

  PASSENGER

  I found that very comforting. I was, and still am, a peace-loving man. Though I saw from the beginning the necessity of this war, I could not for a long time play a part in it with any enthusiasm. Because even a good war is a very beastly thing. How comforting, then, to see a last glimpse of the enemy.

  GUNNER

  They used to come down and shoot at fishermen in their open boats. It was not a generous thing to do.

  LIEUTENANT

  That is their ultimate condemnation: they have no generosity. And no one should set out to conquer even a village, let alone the world, if he is not generous.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  I don’t admire them for shooting at fishermen in open boats, or at dead men on a raft, but have we the right to condemn them? I read a book about the Indian Mutiny, not the sort of book you read in school, but an honest book, and according to it we behaved then almost as badly as the Germans.

  PASSENGER

  At the time of the Mutiny there were only a few thousand Englishmen in India. When the sepoys rose against them, they were very naturally afraid. And being frightened they did certain things which were unforgivable, but not incomprehensible. You cannot, however, say that our policy in India has been one of constant brutality and suppression.

  WIRELESS OPERATOR

  A lot of Indians do say that, and say it openly.

  PASSENGER

  Then the policy of suppression cannot be very rigorously applied.

  SECOND MATE

  I’ve been in India. In Bombay, and Calcutta, and Madras, and a dozen other places. I’ve seen their local newspapers, and till you’ve read what Indian papers are allowed to write about the British administration, you don’t know what freedom of speech really means. Don’t talk about suppression to me.

  PASSENGER

  A lot of nonsense has been written about India, by people who know nothing of the land and little of its history. They call it a nation nowadays, and say therefore it has the right to determine its own future. But who made it a nation?

  There was a king called Asoka, two hundred years before Christ, and he, perhaps, unified it then. But two hundred years before Gandhi there was chaos, and a parcel of adventurers — courtiers of the dead Moguls and wiry Maratha generals — were carving, like bandits at a feast, the body of Hindustan into gobbets of meat. For long ages India had been shredded by conquest, then patched up to pay revenue, and shredded again. The nation vanished, and no memory of it remained.

  SECOND MATE

  There was a story I heard about one of the invaders of India called Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. He came down from the north, and conquered Gujerat, on the west coast. There was a very holy temple at a place called Somnath, and the Hindus did their best to keep him out of that, because the most famous idol of their god Siva stood in the shrine. But Mahmud forced his way in, and struck the idol with his club. It broke open, and a stream of jewels ran out.

  PASSENGER

  That is the story of Mahmud of Ghazni, and for a long time it was the story of all India. There was a recipe for wealth: Strike India. We also, in the beginning, struck India. We went in, and shook the pagoda-tree.

  But that is not the whole story. We imposed our peace, and gave India the rule of law. If now it claims to be a nation, it is because we have given it that peace which is the mother of thought and womb of consciousness. Many upright men of our race have served India with all their strength. With honesty and perseverance. They gave their service for love of the land and its people, out of a steadfast belief in the justice they taught and imposed. No one denies that we first went into India for the reason that took Mahmud of Ghazni there; but the sons of the first traders went back as the servants of India, and the children of those who plundered returned to teach, and the conquering soldiers remained on guard. Look at the balance now. Lay on the one side the tattered lands that were left when the Moguls died; on the other scale set the nation that clamours to-day, not for mercy, but equal place with our own. — Have we repaid?

  SECOND MATE

  I say we have done well by India.

  LIEUTENANT

  Conquerors do not usually teach their subjects that men have the right, and nations the right, to be free. But that has been our lesson. We have built an empire, but not of slaves. We have taught and maintained the law that the weak and the strong have equal rights under law, and now India brings us into court in the name of our law. Surely that means we have been good teachers?

  PASSENGER

  Empire-building is a foolish and misleading phrase. It calls to mind the building of pyramids, great monuments of power built of dead stone. What we have done has been more like creation, and India, loudly articulate and full of argument, is proof that our rule doesn’t destroy, but gives life.

  LIEUTENANT

  I was speaking of the four Dominions when the aeroplane came to show us the meaning of German rule. I had spoken of three. The soldiers of the fourth Domini
on, New Zealand, I saw when I was serving aboard a destroyer in the Mediterranean. We took the remnant of them out of Greece after they had fought in that most heart-breaking of all campaigns. They were solid men, loving their native farms and the mountains of their own land. Then fortune took them to famous ground. They held, a single brigade of them, Leonidas’ pass at Thermopylae. The Germans launched their attack with two armoured divisions and two mountain divisions. Their Stukas came screaming, bombed the coverless roads. For eleven days the attack rolled up to the pass, and beaten, fell back. Like the long-haired Spartans before them, the men from New Zealand held fast. Stalwart men, stock of these islands, and Maoris. A single brigade, they defended Thermopylae. You cannot say that New Zealand has come to its manhood with a spirit poorly nourished.