The Wanderings of a Spiritualist
by Arthur Conan Doyle · English · Gutenberg #39718 · 494,771 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Wanderings of a Spiritualist
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Release date: May 17, 2012 [eBook #39718]
Language: English
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Illustration: _Photo: Stirling, Melbourne._ ON THE WARPATH IN
AUSTRALIA, 1920-21.
_THE
WANDERINGS OF A
SPIRITUALIST_
BY
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
AUTHOR OF
"THE NEW REVELATION," "THE VITAL MESSAGE," ETC.
"Aggressive fighting for the right is
the noblest sport the world affords."
_Theodore Roosevelt._
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
_By SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE_
THE NEW REVELATION
Ninth Edition. Cloth, 5/. net.. Paper, 2/6 net.
"This book is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's confession of faith, very
frank, very courageous and very resolute ... the courage and
large-mindedness of this book deserve cordial recognition."--DAILY
CHRONICLE. "It is a book that demands our respect and commands our
interest.... Much more likely to influence the opinion of the
general public than 'Raymond' or the long reports of the Society
for Psychical Research."--DAILY NEWS.
THE VITAL MESSAGE
Tenth Thousand. Cloth, 5/.
"Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The New Revelation' was his confession
of faith. 'The Vital Message' seeks to show our future relations
with the Unseen World."--DAILY CHRONICLE. "... it is a clear,
earnest presentation of the case, and will serve as a useful
introduction to the subject to anyone anxious to learn what the new
Spiritualists claim for their researches and their faith.... Sir
Arthur writes with evident sincerity, and, within the limits of his
system, with much broad-mindedness and toleration."--DAILY
TELEGRAPH. "A splendid propaganda book, written in the author's
telling and racy style, and one that will add to his prestige and
renown."--TWO WORLDS.
SPIRITUALISM AND RATIONALISM
WITH A DRASTIC EXAMINATION OF MR. JOSEPH M'CABE
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's trenchant reply to the criticisms of
Spiritualism as formulated by Mr. Joseph M'Cabe.
Paper, 1/. net.
_HODDER & STOUGHTON, Ltd., London, E.C.4_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 9
The inception of the enterprise.--The Merthyr Seance.--Experience
of British lectures.--Call from Australia.--The Holborn
luncheon.--Remarkable testimony to communication.--Is individual
proof necessary?--Excursion to Exeter.--Can Spiritualists continue
to be Christians?--Their views on Atonement.--The party on the
"Naldera."
CHAPTER II 24
Gibraltar.--Spanish right versus British might.--Relics of
Barbary Rovers, and of German militarists.--Ichabod!--Senegal
Infantry.--No peace for the world.--Religion on a liner.--Differences
of vibration.--The Bishop of Kwang-Si.--Religion in China.--Whisky
in excelsis.--France's masterpiece.--British errors.--A procession
of giants.--The invasion of Egypt.--Tropical weather.--The
Russian Horror.--An Indian experiment.--Aden.--Bombay.--The
Lambeth encyclical. A great novelist.--The Mango trick.--Snakes.--The
Catamarans.--The Robber Castles of Ceylon.--Doctrine of
Reincarnation.--Whales and Whalers.--Perth.--The Bight.
CHAPTER III 60
Mr. Hughes' letter of welcome.--Challenges.--Mr. Carlyle
Smythe.--The Adelaide Press.--The great drought.--The wine
industry.--Clairvoyance.--Meeting with Bellchambers.--The
first lecture.--The effect.--The Religious lecture.--The
illustrated lecture.--Premonitions.--The spot light.--Mr.
Thomas' account of the incident.--Correspondence.--Adelaide
doctors.--A day in the Bush,--The Mallee fowl.--Sussex in
Australia.--Farewell to Adelaide.
CHAPTER IV 84
Speculations on Paul and his Master.--Arrival at Melbourne.--Attack
in the Argus.--Partial press boycott.--Strength of the movement.--The
Prince of Wales.--Victorian football. Rescue Circle in
Melbourne.--Burke and Wills' statue.--Success of the
lectures.--Reception at the Auditorium.--Luncheon of the British
Empire League.--Mr. Ryan's experience.--The Federal Government.--Mr.
Hughes' personality.--The mediumship of Charles Bailey.--His alleged
exposure.--His remarkable record.--A test sitting.--The Indian
nest.--A remarkable lecture.--Arrival of Lord Forster.--The
future of the Empire.--Kindness of Australians.--Prohibition.
--Horse-racing.--Roman Catholic policy.
CHAPTER V 114
More English than the English.--A day in the Bush.--Immigration.--A
case of spirit return.--A seance.--Geelong.--The lava
plain.--Good-nature of General Ryrie.--Bendigo.--Down a gold
mine.--Prohibition v. Continuance.--Mrs. Knight MacLellan.
--Nerrin.--A wild drive.--Electric shearing.--Rich sheep stations.
--Cockatoo farmers.--Spinnifex and Mallee.--Rabbits.--The
great marsh.
CHAPTER VI 136
The Melbourne Cup.--Psychic healing.--M. J. Bloomfield.--My
own experience.--Direct healing.--Chaos and Ritual.--Government
House Ball.--The Rescue Circle again.--Sitting with Mrs.
Harris.--A good test case.--Australian botany.--The land of
myrtles.--English cricket team.--Great final meeting in Melbourne.
CHAPTER VII 151
Great reception at Sydney.--Importance of Sydney.--Journalistic
luncheon.--A psychic epidemic.--Gregory.--Barracking.--Town
Hall reception.--Regulation of Spiritualism.--An ether
apport.--Surfing at Manly.--A challenge.--Bigoted opponents.--A
disgruntled photographer.--Outing in the harbour.--Dr. Mildred
Creed.--Leon Gellert.--Norman Lindsay.--Bishop Leadbeater.--Our
relations with Theosophy.--Incongruities of H.P.B.--Of D.D. Home.
CHAPTER VIII 176
Dangerous fog.--The six photographers.--Comic
Advertisements.--Beauties of Auckland.--A Christian
clergyman.--Shadows in our American relations.--The
Gallipoli Stone.--Stevenson and the Germans.--Position of
De Rougemont.--Mr. Clement Wragge.--Atlantean
theories.--A strange psychic.--Wellington the windy.--A
literary oasis.--A Maori seance.--Presentation.
CHAPTER IX 198
The Anglican Colony.--Psychic dangers.--The learned dog.--Absurd
newspaper controversy.--A backward community.--The Maori
tongue.--Their origin.--Their treatment by the Empire.--A
fiasco.--The Pa of Kaiopoi.--Dr. Thacker.--Sir Joseph Kinsey.--A
generous collector.--Scott and Amundsen.--Dunedin.--A genuine
medium.--Evidence.--The Shipping strike.--Sir Oliver.--Farewell.
CHAPTER X 223
Christian origins.--Mithraism.--Astronomy.--Exercising
boats.--Bad news from home.--Futile strikes.--Labour
Party.--The blue wilderness.--Journey to Brisbane.--Warm
reception.--Friends and Foes.--Psychic experience
of Dr. Doyle.--Birds.--Criticism on Melbourne--Spiritualist
Church.--Ceremony.--Sir Matthew Nathan.--Alleged repudiation of
Queensland.--Billy tea.--The bee farm.--Domestic service in
Australia.--Hon. John Fihilly.--Curious photograph by the State
photographer.--The "Orsova."
CHAPTER XI 255
Medlow Bath.--Jenolan Caves.--Giant skeleton.--Mrs.
Foster Turner's mediumship.--A wonderful prophecy.--Final
results.--Third sitting with Bailey.--Failure of State
Control.--Retrospection.--Melbourne presentation.--Crooks.--Lecture
at Perth.--West Australia.--Rabbits, sparrows and sharks.
CHAPTER XII 280
Pleasing letters.--Visit to Candy.--Snake and Flying Fox.--Buddha's
shrine.--The Malaya.--Naval digression.--Indian trader.
--Elephanta.--Sea snakes.--Chained to a tombstone.--Berlin's escape.
--Lord Chetwynd.--Lecture in the Red Sea.--Marseilles.
CHAPTER XIII 303
The Institut Metaphysique.--Lecture in French.--Wonderful
musical improviser.--Camille Flammarion.--Test of materialised
hand.--Last ditch of materialism.--Sitting with Mrs. Bisson's medium,
Eva.--Round the Aisne battlefields.--A tragic intermezzo.
--Anglo-French Rugby match.--Madame Blifaud's clairvoyance.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
On the War-Path in Australia, 1920-1921 _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
How This Book was Written 9
The God-Speed Luncheon in London. On this occasion
250 out of 290 Guests rose as testimony that they
were in Personal touch with their Dead 16
The Wanderers, 1920-1921 72
Bellchambers and the Mallee Fowl. "Get along with
you, do" 80
Melbourne, November, 1920 96
A Typical Australian Back-Country Scene by H. J.
Johnstone, a Great Painter Who Died Unknown.
Painting in Adelaide National Gallery 128
At Melbourne Town Hall, November 12th, 1920 144
The People of Turi's Canoe, after a Voyage of Great
Hardship, at last Sight the Shores of New Zealand.
From a Painting by C. F. Goldie and L. G. A. Steele 208
Laying Foundation Stone of Spiritualist Church at
Brisbane 240
Curious Photographic Effect referred to in Text.
Taken by the Official Photographer, Brisbane.
"Absolutely mystifying" is his Description 252
Our Party _en route_ to the Jenolan Caves, January 20th,
1921. In Front of Old Court House in which Bushrangers were
Tried 256
Denis with a Black Snake at Medlow Bath 264
TO MY WIFE.
THIS MEMORIAL OF A JOURNEY WHICH
HER HELP AND PRESENCE CHANGED
FROM A DUTY TO A PLEASURE.
A. C. D.
_July 18/21._
Illustration: HOW THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN.
CHAPTER I
The inception of the enterprise.--The Merthyr Seance.--Experience
of British lectures.--Call from Australia.--The Holborn
luncheon.--Remarkable testimony to communication.--Is individual
proof necessary?--Excursion to Exeter.--Can spiritualists continue
to be Christians?--Their views on Atonement.--The party on the
"Naldera."
This is an account of the wanderings of a spiritualist, geographical and
speculative. Should the reader have no interest in psychic things--if
indeed any human being can be so foolish as not to be interested in his
own nature and fate,--then this is the place to put the book down. It
were better also to end the matter now if you have no patience with a
go-as-you-please style of narrative, which founds itself upon the
conviction that thought may be as interesting as action, and which is
bound by its very nature to be intensely personal. I write a record of
what absorbs my mind which may be very different from that which appeals
to yours. But if you are content to come with me upon these terms then
let us start with my apologies in advance for the pages which may bore
you, and with my hopes that some may compensate you by pleasure or by
profit. I write these lines with a pad upon my knee, heaving upon the
long roll of the Indian Ocean, running large and grey under a grey
streaked sky, with the rain-swept hills of Ceylon, just one shade
greyer, lining the Eastern skyline. So under many difficulties it will
be carried on, which may explain if it does not excuse any slurring of a
style, which is at its best but plain English.
There was one memorable night when I walked forth with my head throbbing
and my whole frame quivering from the villa of Mr. Southey at Merthyr.
Behind me the brazen glare of Dowlais iron-works lit up the sky, and in
front twinkled the many lights of the Welsh town. For two hours my wife
and I had sat within listening to the whispering voices of the dead,
voices which are so full of earnest life, and of desperate endeavours to
pierce the barrier of our dull senses. They had quivered and wavered
around us, giving us pet names, sweet sacred things, the intimate talk
of the olden time. Graceful lights, signs of spirit power had hovered
over us in the darkness. It was a different and a wonderful world. Now
with those voices still haunting our memories we had slipped out into
the material world--a world of glaring iron works and of twinkling
cottage windows. As I looked down on it all I grasped my wife's hand in
the darkness and I cried aloud, "My God, if they only knew--if they
could only know!" Perhaps in that cry, wrung from my very soul, lay the
inception of my voyage to the other side of the world. The wish to serve
was strong upon us both. God had given us wonderful signs, and they were
surely not for ourselves alone.
I had already done the little I might. From the moment that I had
understood the overwhelming importance of this subject, and realised how
utterly it must change and chasten the whole thought of the world when
it is whole-heartedly accepted, I felt it good to work in the matter and
understood that all other work which I had ever done, or could ever do,
was as nothing compared to this. Therefore from the time that I had
finished the history of the Great War on which I was engaged, I was
ready to turn all my remaining energies of voice or hand to the one
great end. At first I had little of my own to narrate, and my task was
simply to expound the spiritual philosophy as worked out by the thoughts
and experiences of others, showing folk so far as I was able, that the
superficial and ignorant view taken of it in the ordinary newspapers did
not touch the heart of the matter. My own experiences were limited and
inconclusive, so that it was the evidence of others which I quoted. But
as I went forward signs were given in profusion to me also, such signs
as were far above all error or deception, so that I was able to speak
with that more vibrant note which comes not from belief or faith, but
from personal experience and knowledge. I had found that the wonderful
literature of Spiritualism did not reach the people, and that the press
was so full of would-be jocosities and shallow difficulties that the
public were utterly misled. Only one way was left, which was to speak to
the people face to face. This was the task upon which I set forth, and
it had led me to nearly every considerable city of Great Britain from
Aberdeen to Torquay. Everywhere I found interest, though it varied from
the heavier spirit of the sleepy cathedral towns to the brisk reality of
centres of life and work like Glasgow or Wolverhampton. Many a time my
halls were packed, and there were as many outside as inside the
building. I have no eloquence and make profession of none, but I am
audible and I say no more than I mean and can prove, so that my
audiences felt that it was indeed truth so far as I could see it, which
I conveyed. Their earnestness and receptiveness were my great help and
reward in my venture. Those who had no knowledge of what my views were
assembled often outside my halls, waving banners and distributing
tracts, but never once in the course of addressing 150,000 people, did I
have disturbance in my hall. I tried, while never flinching from truth,
to put my views in such a way as to hurt no one's feelings, and although
I have had clergymen of many denominations as my chairmen, I have had
thanks from them and no remonstrance. My enemies used to follow and
address meetings, as they had every right to do, in the same towns. It
is curious that the most persistent of these enemies were Jesuits on the
one side and Evangelical sects of the Plymouth Brethren type upon the
other. I suppose the literal interpretation of the Old Testament was the
common bond.
However this is digression, and when the digressions are taken out of
this book there will not be much left. I get back to the fact that the
overwhelming effect of the Merthyr Seance and of others like it, made my
wife and myself feel that when we had done what we could in Britain we
must go forth to further fields. Then came the direct invitation from
spiritual bodies in Australia. I had spent some never-to-be-forgotten
days with Australian troops at the very crisis of the war. My heart was
much with them. If my message could indeed bring consolation to bruised
hearts and to bewildered minds--and I had boxes full of letters to show
that it did--then to whom should I carry it rather than to those who had
fought so splendidly and lost so heavily in the common cause? I was a
little weary also after three years of incessant controversy, speaking
often five times a week, and continually endeavouring to uphold the
cause in the press. The long voyage presented attractions, even if there
was hard work at the end of it. There were difficulties in the way.
Three children, boys of eleven and nine, with a girl of seven, all
devotedly attached to their home and their parents, could not easily be
left behind. If they came a maid was also necessary. The pressure upon
me of correspondence and interviews would be so great that my old friend
and secretary, Major Wood, would be also needed. Seven of us in all
therefore, and a cheque of sixteen hundred pounds drawn for our return
tickets, apart from outfit, before a penny could be entered on the
credit side. However, Mr. Carlyle Smythe, the best agent in Australia,
had taken the matter up, and I felt that we were in good hands. The
lectures would be numerous, controversies severe, the weather at its
hottest, and my own age over sixty. But there are compensating forces,
and I was constantly aware of their presence. I may count our adventures
as actually beginning from the luncheon which was given us in farewell a
week or so before our sailing by the spiritualists of England. Harry
Engholm, most unselfish of men, and a born organiser among our most
unorganised crowd, had the matter in hand, so it was bound to be a
success. There was sitting room at the Holborn Restaurant for 290
people, and it was all taken up three weeks before the event. The
secretary said that he could have filled the Albert Hall. It was an
impressive example of the solidity of the movement showing itself for
the moment round us, but really round the cause. There were peers,
doctors, clergymen, officers of both services, and, above all, those
splendid lower middle class folk, if one talks in our material earth
terms, who are the spiritual peers of the nation. Many professional
mediums were there also, and I was honoured by their presence, for as I
said in my remarks, I consider that in these days of doubt and sorrow, a
genuine professional medium is the most useful member of the whole
community. Alas! how few they are! Four photographic mediums do I know
in all Britain, with about twelve physical phenomena mediums and as many
really reliable clairvoyants. What are these among so many? But there
are many amateur mediums of various degrees, and the number tends to
increase. Perhaps there will at last be an angel to every church as in
the days of John. I see dimly the time when two congregations, the
living and those who have passed on, shall move forward together with
the medium angel as the bridge between them.
It was a wonderful gathering, and I only wish I could think that my own
remarks rose to the height of the occasion. However, I did my best and
spoke from my heart. I told how the Australian visit had arisen, and I
claimed that the message that I would carry was the most important that
the mind of man could conceive, implying as it did the practical
abolition of death, and the reinforcement of our present religious views
by the actual experience of those who have made the change from the
natural to the spiritual bodies. Speaking of our own experiences, I
mentioned that my wife and I had actually spoken face to face beyond all
question or doubt with eleven friends or relatives who had passed over,
their direct voices being in each case audible, and their conversation
characteristic and evidential--in some cases marvellously so. Then with
a sudden impulse I called upon those in the audience who were prepared
to swear that they had had a similar experience to stand up and testify.
It seemed for a moment as if the whole audience were on their feet. _The
Times_ next day said 250 out of 290 and I am prepared to accept that
estimate. Men and women, of all professions and social ranks--I do not
think that I exaggerated when I said that it was the most remarkable
demonstration that I had ever seen and that nothing like it had ever
occurred in the City of London.
It was vain for those journals who tried to minimise it to urge that in
a Baptist or a Unitarian assembly all would have stood up to testify to
their own faith. No doubt they would, but this was not a case of faith,
it was a case of bearing witness to fact. There were people of all
creeds, Church, dissent, Unitarian and ex-materialists. They were
testifying to an actual objective experience as they might have
testified to having seen the lions in Trafalgar Square. If such a public
agreement of evidence does not establish a fact then it is indeed
impossible, as Professor Challis remarked long ago, to prove a thing by
any human testimony whatever. I confess that I was amazed. When I
remember how many years it was before I myself got any final personal
proofs I should have thought that the vast majority of Spiritualists
were going rather upon the evidence of others than upon their own. And
yet 250 out of 290 had actually joined hands across the border. I had no
idea that the direct proof was so widely spread.
I have always held that people insist too much upon direct proof. What
direct proof have we of most of the great facts of Science? We simply
take the word of those who have examined. How many of us have, for
example, seen the rings of Saturn? We are assured that they are there,
and we accept the assurance. Strong telescopes are rare, and so we do
not all expect to see the rings with our own eyes. In the same way
strong mediums are rare, and we cannot all expect to experience the
higher psychic results. But if the assurance of those who have carefully
experimented, of the Barretts, the Hares, the Crookes, the Wallaces, the
Lodges and the Lombrosos, is not enough, then it is manifest that we are
dealing with this matter on different terms to those which we apply to
all the other affairs of science. It would of course be different if
there were a school of patient investigators who had gone equally deeply
into the matter and come to opposite conclusions. Then we should
certainly have to find the path of truth by individual effort. But such
a school does not exist. Only the ignorant and inexperienced are in
total opposition, and the humblest witness who has really sought the
evidence has more weight than they.
Illustration: THE GOD-SPEED LUNCHEON IN LONDON. On this occasion
250 out of 290 guests rose as testimony that they were in personal
touch with their dead.
After the luncheon my wife made the final preparations--and only ladies
can tell what it means to fit out six people with tropical and
semi-tropical outfits which will enable them for eight months to stand
inspection in public. I employed the time by running down to Devonshire
to give addresses at Exeter and Torquay, with admirable audiences at
both. Good Evan Powell had come down to give me a last seance, and I had
the joy of a few last words with my arisen son, who blessed me on my
mission and assured me that I would indeed bring solace to bruised
hearts. The words he uttered were a quotation from my London speech at
which Powell had not been present, nor had the verbatim account of it
appeared anywhere at that time. It was one more sign of how closely our
words and actions are noted from the other side. Powell was tired,
having given a sitting the night before, so the proceedings were short,
a few floating lights, my son and my sister's son to me, one or two
greetings to other sitters, and it was over.
Whilst in Exeter I had a discussion with those who would break away from
Christianity. They are a strong body within the movement, and how can
Christians be surprised at it when they remember that for seventy years
they have had nothing but contempt and abuse for the true light-bearers
of the world? Is there at the present moment one single bishop, or one
head of a Free Church, who has the first idea of psychic truth? Dr.
Parker had, in his day, so too Archdeacons Wilberforce and Colley, Mr.
Haweis and a few others. General Booth has also testified to spiritual
communion with the dead. But what have Spiritualists had in the main
save misrepresentation and persecution? Hence the movement has
admittedly, so far as it is an organised religion--and it has already
360 churches and 1,000 building funds--taken a purely Unitarian turn.
This involves no disrespect towards Him Whom they look upon as the
greatest Spirit who ever trod the earth, but only a deep desire to
communicate direct without intermediary with that tremendous centre of
force from and to whom all things radiate or return. They are very
earnest and good men, these organised religious Spiritualists, and for
the most part, so far as my experience goes, are converts from
materialism who, having in their materialistic days said very properly
that they would believe nothing which could not be proved to them, are
ready now with Thomas to be absolutely wholehearted when the proof of
survival and spirit communion has actually reached them. There, however,
the proof ends, nor will they go further than the proof extends, as
otherwise their original principles would be gone. Therefore they are
Unitarians with a breadth of vision which includes Christ, Krishna,
Buddha and all the other great spirits whom God has sent to direct
different lines of spiritual evolution which correspond to the different
needs of the various races of mankind. Our information from the beyond
is that this evolution is continued beyond the grave, and very far on
until all details being gradually merged, they become one as children of
God. With a deep reverence for Christ it is undeniable that the
organised Spiritualist does not accept vicarious atonement nor original
sin, and believes that a man reaps as he sows with no one but himself to
pull out the weeds. It seems to me the more virile and manly doctrine,
and as to the texts which seem to say otherwise, we cannot deny that the
New Testament has been doctored again and again in order to square the
record of the Scriptures with the practice of the Church. Professor
Nestle, in the preface to a work on theology (I write far from books of
reference), remarks that there were actually officials named
"Correctores," who were appointed at the time of the Council of Nicaea
for this purpose, and St. Jerome, when he constructed the Vulgate,
complains to Pope Damasus that it is practically a new book that he is
making, putting any sin arising upon the Pope's head. In the face of
such facts we can only accept the spirit of the New Testament fortified
with common sense, and using such interpretation as brings most
spiritual strength to each of us. Personally, I accept the view of the
organised Spiritual religion, for it removes difficulties which formerly
stood between me and the whole Christian system, but I would not say or
do anything which would abash those others who are getting real
spiritual help from any sort of Christian belief. The gaining of
spirituality and widening of the personality are the aims of life, and
how it is done is the business of the individual. Every creed has
produced its saints and has to that extent justified its existence. I
like the Unitarian position of the main Spiritual body, however, because
it links the movement up with the other great creeds of the world and
makes it more accessible to the Jew, the Mohammedan or the Buddhist. It
is far too big to be confined within the palings of Christianity.
Here is a little bit of authentic teaching from the other side which
bears upon the question. I take it from the remarkable record of Mr.
Miller of Belfast, whose dialogues with his son after the death of the
latter seem to me to be as certainly true as any case which has come to
my notice. On asking the young soldier some question about the exact
position of Christ in religion he modestly protested that such a
subject was above his head, and asked leave to bring his higher guide to
answer the question. Using a fresh voice and in a new and more weighty
manner the medium then said:--
"I wish to answer your question. Jesus the Christ is the proper
designation. Jesus was perfect humanity. Christ was the God idea in Him.
Jesus, on account of His purity, manifested in the highest degree the
psychic powers which resulted in His miracles. Jesus never preached the
blood of the lamb. The disciples after His ascension forgot the message
in admiration of the man. The Christ is in every human being, and so are
the psychic forces which were used by Jesus. If the same attention were
given to spiritual development which you give to the comfort and growth
of your material bodies your progress in spiritual life would be rapid
and would be characterised by the same works as were performed by Jesus.
The one essential thing for all on earth to strive after is a fuller
knowledge and growth in spiritual living."
I think that the phrase, "In their admiration of the man they forgot His
message," is as pregnant a one as I ever heard.
To come back then to the discussion at Exeter, what I said then and feel
now is that every Spiritualist is free to find his own path, and that as
a matter of fact his typical path is a Unitarian one, but that this in
no way obscures the fact that our greatest leaders, Lodge, Barrett,
Ellis Powell, Tweedale, are devoted sons of the Church, that our
literature is full of Christian aspiration, and that our greatest
prophet, Vale Owen, is a priest of a particularly sacerdotal turn of
mind. We are in a transition stage, and have not yet found any common
theological position, or any common position at all, save that the dead
carry on, that they do not change, that they can under proper physical
conditions communicate with us, and that there are many physical signs
by which they make their presence known to us. That is our common
ground, and all beyond that is matter of individual observation and
inference. Therefore, we are not in a position to take on any
anti-Christian agitation, for it would be against the conscience of the
greater part of our own people.
Well, it is clear that if I do not begin my book I shall finish it
before I have begun, so let me end this chapter by saying that in
despite of all superstition we started for Australia in the good ship
"Naldera" (Capt. Lewellin, R.N.R.), on Friday, August 13th, 1920. As we
carried two bishops in addition to our ominous dates we were foredoomed
by every nautical tradition. Our party were my dear, splendid wife, who
has shared both my evidence and my convictions. She it is who, by
breaking up her household, leaving her beloved home, breaking the
schooling of her children, and venturing out upon a sea voyage, which of
all things she hates, has made the real sacrifice for the cause. As to
me, I am fond of change and adventure, and heartily agree with President
Roosevelt when he said that the grandest sport upon earth is to champion
an unpopular cause which you know to be true. With us were Denis,
Malcolm and Baby, concerning whom I wrote the "Three of them" sketches
some years ago. In their train was Jakeman, most faithful of maids, and
in mine Major Wood, who has been mixed up in my life ever since as young
men we played both cricket and football in the same team. Such was the
little party who set forth to try and blow that smouldering glow of
truth which already existed in Australia, into a more lively flame.
CHAPTER II
Gibraltar.--Spanish right versus British might.--Relics of Barbary
Rovers, and of German militarists.--Ichabod! Senegal Infantry.--No
peace for the world.--Religion on a liner.--Differences of
vibration.--The Bishop of Kwang-Si.--Religion in China.--Whisky in
excelsis.--France's masterpiece.--British errors.--A procession of
giants.--The invasion of Egypt.--Tropical weather.--The Russian
Horror.--An Indian experiment.--Aden.--Bombay.--The Lambeth
encyclical.--A great novelist.--The Mango trick.--Snakes.--The
Catamarans.--The Robber Castles of Ceylon.--Doctrine of
Reincarnation.--Whales and Whalers.--Perth.--The Bight.
We had a favourable journey across the Bay and came without adventure to
Gibraltar, that strange crag, Arabic by name, African in type, Spanish
by right, and British by might. I trust that my whole record has shown
me to be a loyal son of the Empire, and I recognise that we must have a
secure line of communications with the East, but if any change could
give us Ceuta, on the opposite African coast, instead of this outlying
corner of proud old Spain, it would be good policy as well as good
morality to make the change. I wonder how we should like it if the
French held a garrison at Mount St. Michael in Cornwall, which would be
a very similar situation. Is it worth having a latent enemy who at any
time might become an active one, or is it wiser to hold them to us by
the memory of a great voluntary act of justice? They would pay, of
course, for all quays, breakwaters and improvements, which would give us
the money to turn Ceuta into a worthy substitute, which could be held
without offending the pride of a great nation, as old and proud as
ourselves. The whole lesson of this great war is that no nation can do
what is unjust with impunity, and that sooner or later one's sin will
find one out. How successful seemed all the scheming of Frederick of
Prussia! But what of Silesia and of Poland now? Only on justice can you
build with a permanent foundation, and there is no justice in our tenure
of Gibraltar. We had only an hour ashore, a great joy to the children,
and carried away a vague impression of grey-shirted Tommies, swarthy
loungers, one long, cobblestoned street, scarlet blossoms, and a fine
Governor's house, in which I picture that brave old warrior,
Smith-Dorrien, writing a book which will set all the critics talking,
and the military clubs buzzing a year or two from now. I do not know if
he was really forced to fight at Le Cateau, though our sympathies must
always go to the man who fights, but I do feel that if he had had his
way and straightened the salient of Ypres, there would have been a
mighty saving of blood and tears. There were sentimental reasons against
it, but I can think of no material ones--certainly none which were worth
all the casualties of the Salient. I had only one look at the place, and
that by night, but never shall I forget the murderous loop, outlined by
star shells, nor the horrible noises which rose up from that place of
wrath and misery.
On August 19th we were running up the eastern Spanish coast, a most
desolate country of high bare cliffs and barren uplands, studded with
aged towers which told of pirate raids of old. These Mediterranean shore
dwellers must have had a hellish life, when the Barbary Rover was
afloat, and they might be wakened any night by the Moslem yell. Truly,
if the object of human life was chastening by suffering, then we have
given it to each other in full measure. If this were the only life I do
not know how the hypothesis of the goodness of God could be sustained,
since our history has been one hardly broken record of recurring
miseries, war, famine, and disease, from the ice to the equator. I
should still be a materialist, as I was of yore, if it were not for the
comfort and teaching from beyond, which tells me that this is the
worst--far the worst--and that by its standard everything else becomes
most gloriously better, so long as we help to make it so. "If the boys
knew what it was like over here," said a dead soldier, "they would just
jump for it." He added however, "If they did that they would surely miss
it." We cannot bluff Providence, or short-circuit things to our liking.
We got ashore once more at Marseilles. I saw converted German merchant
ships, with names like "Burgomeister Mueller," in the harbour, and
railway trucks with "Mainz-Coeln" still marked upon their flanks--part
of the captured loot. Germany, that name of terror, how short is the
time since we watched you well-nigh all-powerful, mighty on land,
dangerous on the sea, conquering the world with your commerce and
threatening it with your arms! You had everything, numbers, discipline,
knowledge, industry, bravery, organisation, all in the highest--such an
engine as the world has never seen. And now--Ichabod! Ichabod! Your
warships lie under the waves, your liners fly the flags of your enemies,
your mother Rhine on either bank hears the bugles of your invaders. What
was wanting in you to bring you to such a pass? Was it not spirituality?
Had not your churches become as much a department of State as the Post
Office, where every priest and pastor was in State pay, and said that
which the State ordained? All other life was at its highest, but
spiritual life was dead, and because it was dead all the rest had taken
on evil activities which could only lead to dissolution and corruption.
Had Germany obeyed the moral law would she not now be great and
flourishing, instead of the ruin which we see? Was ever such an object
lesson in sin and its consequence placed before the world? But let us
look to it, for we also have our lesson to learn, and our punishment is
surely waiting if we do not learn it. If now after such years we sink
back into old ruts and do not make an earnest effort for real religion
and real active morality, then we cumber the ground, and it is time that
we were swept away, for no greater chance of reform can ever come to
us.
I saw some of the Senegal troops in the streets of Marseilles--a whole
battalion of them marching down for re-embarkation. They are fierce,
hard soldiers, by the look of them, for the negro is a natural fighter,
as the prize ring shows, and these have long service training upon the
top of this racial pugnacity. They look pure savages, with the tribal
cuts still upon their faces, and I do not wonder that the Germans
objected to them, though we cannot doubt that the Germans would
themselves have used their Askaris in Europe as well as in Africa if
they could have done so. The men who had as allies the murderers of the
Armenians would not stick at trifles. I said during the war, and I can
clearly see now, that the way in which the war was fought will prove
hardly second to the war itself as a misfortune to the human race. A
clean war could end in a clean peace. But how can we ever forget the
poison gas, the Zeppelin bombardments of helpless cities, the submarine
murders, the scattering of disease germs, and all the other atrocities
of Germany? No water of oblivion can ever wash her clean. She had one
chance, and only one. It was to at once admit it all herself and to set
to work purging her national guilt by punishing guilty individuals.
Perhaps she may even now save herself and clear the moral atmosphere of
the world by doing this. But time passes and the signs are against it.
There can be no real peace in the world until voluntary reparation has
been made. Forced reparation can only make things worse, for it cannot
satisfy us, and it must embitter them. I long for real peace, and
should love to see our Spiritualist bodies lead the van. But the time is
not yet and it is realities we need, not phrases.
Old travellers say that they never remember the Mediterranean so hot. We
went down it with a following breeze which just neutralised our own head
wind, the result being a quivering tropical heat. With the Red Sea
before us it was no joke to start our trials so soon, and already the
children began to wilt. However, Major Wood kept them at work for the
forenoons and discipline still flourished. On the third day out we were
south of Crete, and saw an island lying there which is surely the same
in the lee of which Paul's galley took refuge when Euroclydon was
behaving so badly. I had been asked to address the first-class
passengers upon psychic religion that evening, and it was strange indeed
to speak in those waters, for I knew well that however ill my little
pip-squeak might compare with that mighty voice, yet it was still the
same battle of the unseen against the material, raging now as it did
2,000 years ago. Some 200 of the passengers, with the Bishop of
Kwang-Si, turned up, and a better audience one could not wish, though
the acoustic properties of the saloon were abominable. However, I got it
across, though I was as wet as if I had fallen overboard when I had
finished. I was pleased to learn afterwards that among the most keen of
my audience were every colored man and woman on the ship, Parsees,
Hindoos, Japanese and Mohammedans.
"Do you believe it is true?" they were asked next day.
"We _know_ that it is true," was the answer, and it came from a lady
with a red caste-mark like a wafer upon her forehead. So far as I could
learn she spoke for all the Eastern folk.
And the others? At least I set them talking and thinking. I heard next
morning of a queue of six waiting at the barber's all deep in
theological discussion, with the barber himself, razor in hand, joining
warmly in. "There has never been so much religion talked on a P. & O.
ship since the line was started," said one old traveller. It was all
good-humoured and could do no harm. Before we had reached Port Said all
my books on the subject were lent out to eager readers, and I was being
led aside into remote corners and cross-questioned all day. I have a
number of good psychic photographs with me, some of them of my own
taking, and all of them guaranteed, and I find these valuable as making
folk realise that my words do in truth represent realities. I have the
famous fairy photos also, which will appear in England in the Christmas
number of the _Strand_. I feel as if it were a delay-action mine which I
had left behind me. I can imagine the cry of "Fake!" which will arise.
But they will stand investigation. It has of course nothing to do with
Spiritualism proper, but everything which can shake the mind out of
narrow, material grooves, and make it realise that endless worlds
surround us, separated only by difference of vibration, must work in the
general direction of truth.
"Difference of Vibration"--I have been trying lately to get behind mere
words and to realise more clearly what this may mean. It is a
fascinating and fruitful line of thought. It begins with my electric fan
whizzing over my head. As it starts with slow vibration I see the little
propellers. Soon they become a dim mist, and finally I can see them no
more. But they are there. At any moment, by slowing the movement, I can
bring them back to my vision. Why do I not see it all the time? Because
the impression is so fast that my retina has not time to register it.
Can we not imagine then that some objects may emit the usual light
waves, long enough and slow enough to leave a picture, but that other
objects may send waves which are short and steep, and therefore make so
swift an impression that it is not recorded? That, so far as I can
follow it, is what we mean by an object with a higher rate of vibration.
It is but a feeling out into the dark, but it is a hypothesis which may
serve us to carry on with, though the clairvoyant seems to be not a
person with a better developed physical retina, but rather one who has
the power to use that which corresponds with the retina in their own
etheric bodies which are in harmony with etheric waves from outside.
When a man can walk round a room and examine the pictures with the back
of his head, as Tom Tyrrell has done, it is clear that it is not his
physical retina which is working. In countless cases inquirers into
magnetic phenomena have caused their subjects to read with various parts
of their bodies. It is the other body, the etheric body, the
"spiritual" body of Paul, which lies behind all such phenomena--that
body which is loose with all of us in sleep, but only exceptionally in
waking hours. Once we fully understand the existence of that deathless
etheric body, merged in our own but occasionally detachable, we have
mastered many a problem and solved many a ghost story.
However, I must get back to my Cretan lecture. The bishop was
interested, and I lent him one of the Rev. Charles Tweedale's pamphlets
next day, which shows how sadly Christianity has wandered away from its
early faith of spiritual gifts and Communion of Saints. Both have now
become words instead of things, save among our ranks. The bishop is a
good fellow, red and rough like a Boer farmer, but healthy, breezy, and
Apostolic. "Do mention his kind grey eyes," says my wife. He may die a
martyr yet in that inland diocese of China--and he would not shrink from
it. Meanwhile, apart from his dogma, which must be desperately difficult
to explain to an educated Chinaman, he must always be a centre of
civilisation and social effort. A splendid fellow--but he suffers from
what all bishops and all cardinals and all Popes suffer from, and that
is superannuation. A physiologist has said that few men can ever
entertain a new idea after fifty. How then can any church progress when
all its leaders are over that age? This is why Christianity has
stagnated and degenerated. If here and there one had a new idea, how
could it survive the pressure of the others? It is hopeless. In this
particular question of psychic religion the whole order is an
inversion, for the people are ahead of the clergy and the clergy of the
bishops. But when the laymen lead strongly enough the others will follow
unless they wish to see the whole Church organisation dissolve.
He was very interesting upon the state of Christianity in China.
Protestantism, thanks to the joint British and American Missions, is
gaining upon Roman Catholicism, and has now far outstripped it, but the
Roman Catholic organisations are very wealthy on account of ancient
valuable concessions and well-invested funds. In case of a Bolshevist
movement that may be a source of danger, as it gives a reason for
attack. The Bishop made the very striking remark that if the whites
cleared right out of China all the Christian Churches of divers creeds
would within a generation merge into one creed. "What have we to do,"
they say, "with these old historical quarrels which are hardly
intelligible to us? We are all followers of Christ, and that is enough."
Truly, the converted seem far ahead of those who converted them. It is
the priesthoods, the organisations, the funds and the vested interests
which prevent the Churches from being united. In the meanwhile ninety
per cent. of our population shows what it thinks by never entering into
a church at all. Personally, I can never remember since I reached
manhood feeling myself the better for having gone into one. And yet I
have been an earnest seeker for truth. Verily, there is something deep
down which is rotten. It is want of fact, want of reality, words
instead of things. Only last Sunday I shuddered as I listened to the
hymns, and it amazed me to look around and see the composed faces of
those who were singing them. Do they think what they are saying, or does
Faith atrophy some part of the brain? We are "born through water and
blood into the true church." We drink precious blood. "He hath broken
the teeth in their jaw." Can such phrases really mean anything to any
thoughtful man? If not, why continue them? You will have your churches
empty while you do. People will not argue about it--they will, and do,
simply stay away. And the clergy go on stating and restating incredible
unproved things, while neglecting and railing at those which could be
proved and believed. On our lines those nine out of ten could be forced
back to a reconsideration of their position, even though that position
would not square with all the doctrines of present-day Christianity,
which would, I think, have offended the early Christians as much as it
does the earnest thinkers of to-day.
Port Said came at last, and we entered the Suez Canal. It is a shocking
thing that the entrance to this, one of the most magnificent of the
works of man, are flanked by great sky advertisements of various brands
of whisky. The sale of whisky may or may not be a tolerable thing, but
its flaunting advertisements, Dewar, Johnny Walker, and the rest, have
surely long been intolerable. If anything would make me a total
prohibitionist those would. They are shameless. I do not know if some
middle way could be found by which light alcoholic drinks could
remain--so light that drunkenness would be hardly possible--but if this
cannot be done, then let us follow the noble example of America. It is
indeed shameful to see at the very point of the world where some noble
sentiment might best be expressed these huge reminders of that which has
led to so much misery and crime. To a Frenchman it must seem even worse
than to us, while what the abstemious Mohammedan can think is beyond my
imagination. In that direction at least the religion of Mohammed has
done better than that of Christ. If all those Esquimaux, South Sea
Islanders and others who have been converted to Christianity and then
debauched by drink, had followed the prophet instead, it cannot be
denied that their development would have been a happier and a higher
one, though the cast-iron doctrines and dogmas of the Moslem have
dangers of their own.
Has France ever had the credit she deserves for the splendid faith with
which she followed that great beneficent genius Lesseps in his wonderful
work? It is beautiful from end to end, French in its neatness, its
order, its exquisite finish. Truly the opposition of our people, both
experts and public, was a disgrace to us, though it sinks into
insignificance when compared with our colossal national stupidity over
the Channel tunnel. When our descendants compute the sums spent in
shipping and transhipping in the great war, the waste of merchant ships
and convoys, the sufferings of the wounded, the delay in
reinforcements, the dependence upon the weather, they will agree that
our sin had found us out and that we have paid a fitting price for our
stupidity. Unhappily, it was not our blind guides who paid it, but it
was the soldier and sailor and taxpayer, for the nation always pays
collectively for the individual blunder. Would a hundred million pounds
cover the cost of that one? Well can I remember how a year before war
was declared, seeing clearly what was coming, I sent three memoranda to
the Naval and Military authorities and to the Imperial Council of
Defence pointing out exactly what the situation would be, and especially
the danger to our transports. It is admitted now that it was only the
strange inaction of the German light forces, and especially their want
of comprehension of the possibilities of the submarine, which enabled
our Expeditionary Force to get across at all, so that we might have lost
the war within the first month. But as to my poor memoranda, which
proved so terribly correct, I might as well have dropped them into my
own wastepaper basket instead of theirs, and so saved the postage. My
only convert was Captain, now General, Swinton, part inventor of the
tanks, who acted as Secretary to the Imperial Defence Committee, and who
told me at the time that my paper had set him thinking furiously.
Which leads my thoughts to the question of the torpedoing of merchant
vessels by submarines. So sure was I that the Germans would do this,
that after knocking at official doors in vain, I published a sketch
called "Danger," which was written a year before the war, and depicted
all that afterwards occurred, even down to such small details as the
ships zig-zagging up Channel to escape, and the submarines using their
guns to save torpedoes. I felt as if, like Solomon Eagle, I could have
marched down Fleet Street with a brazier on my head if I could only call
people's attention to the coming danger. I saw naval officers on the
point, but they were strangely blind, as is shown by the comments
printed at the end of "Danger," which give the opinions of several
admirals pooh-poohing my fears. Among others I saw Captain Beatty, as he
then was, and found him alive to the possible danger, though he did not
suggest a remedy. His quiet, brisk personality impressed me, and I felt
that our national brain-errors might perhaps be made good in the end by
the grit that is in us. But how hard were our tasks from our want of
foresight. Admiral Von Capelle did me the honour to say during the war,
in the German Reichstag, that I was the only man who had prophesied the
conditions of the great naval war. As a matter of fact, both Fisher and
Scott had done so, though they had not given it to the public in the
same detail--but nothing had been done. We know now that there was not a
single harbour proof against submarines on our whole East Coast. Truly
the hand of the Lord was over England. Nothing less could have saved
her.
We tied up to the bank soon after entering the Canal, and lay there most
of the night while a procession of great ships moving northwards swept
silently past us in the ring of vivid light cast by their searchlights
and our own. I stayed on deck most of the night to watch them. The
silence was impressive--those huge structures sweeping past with only
the slow beat of their propellers and the wash of their bow wave on
either side. No sooner had one of these great shapes slid past than,
looking down the Canal, one saw the brilliant head light of another in
the distance. They are only allowed to go at the slowest pace, so that
their wash may not wear away the banks. Finally, the last had passed,
and we were ourselves able to cast off our warps and push southwards. I
remained on deck seeing the sun rise over the Eastern desert, and then a
wonderful slow-moving panorama of Egypt as the bank slid slowly past us.
First desert, then green oases, then the long line of rude
fortifications from Kantara downwards, with the camp fires smoking,
groups of early busy Tommies and endless dumps of stores. Here and to
the south was the point where the Turks with their German leaders
attempted the invasion of Egypt, carrying flat-bottomed boats to ford
the Canal. How they were ever allowed to get so far is barely
comprehensible, but how they were ever permitted to get back again
across one hundred miles of desert in the face of our cavalry and
camelry is altogether beyond me. Even their guns got back untaken. They
dropped a number of mines in the Canal, but with true Turkish
slovenliness they left on the banks at each point the long bamboos on
which they had carried them across the desert, which considerably
lessened the work of those who had to sweep them up. The sympathies of
the Egyptians seems to have been against us, and yet they have no desire
to pass again under the rule of the Turk. Our dominion has had the
effect of turning a very poor country into a very rich one, and of
securing some sort of justice for the fellah or peasant, but since we
get no gratitude and have no trade preference it is a little difficult
to see how we are the better for all our labours. So long as the Canal
is secure--and it is no one's interest to injure it--we should be better
if the country governed itself. We have too many commitments, and if we
have to take new ones, such as Mesopotamia, it would be well to get rid
of some of the others where our task is reasonably complete. "We never
let the youngsters grow up," said a friendly critic. There is, however,
I admit, another side to the question, and the idea of permitting a
healthy moral place like Port Said to relapse into the hotbed of
gambling and syphilis which it used to be, is repugnant to the mind.
Which is better--that a race be free, immoral and incompetent, or that
it be forced into morality and prosperity? That question meets us at
every turn.
The children have been delighted by the fish on the surface of the
Canal. Their idea seems to be that the one aim and object of our
excursion is to see sharks in the sea and snakes in Australia. We did
actually see a shark half ashore upon a sandbank in one of the lower
lakes near Suez. It was lashing about with a frantic tail, and so got
itself off into deep water. To the west all day we see the very wild and
barren country through which our ancestors used to drive upon the
overland route when they travelled by land from Cairo to Suez. The smoke
of a tiny mail-train marks the general line of that most desolate road.
In the evening we were through the Canal and marked the rugged shore
upon our left down which the Israelites pursued their way in the
direction of Sinai. One wonders how much truth there is in the
narrative. On the one hand it is impossible to doubt that something of
the sort did occur. On the other, the impossibility of so huge a crowd
living on the rare wells of the desert is manifest. But numbers are not
the strong point of an Oriental historian. Perhaps a thousand or two may
have followed their great leader upon that perilous journey. I have
heard that Moses either on his own or through his wife was in touch with
Babylonian habits. This would explain those tablets of stone, or of
inscribed clay burned into brick, which we receive as the Ten
Commandments, and which only differ from the moral precepts of other
races in the strange limitations and omissions. At least ten new ones
have long been needed to include drunkenness, gluttony, pride, envy,
bigotry, lying and the rest.
The weather grows hotter and hotter, so that one aged steward who has
done 100 voyages declares it to be unique. One passenger has died.
Several stewards have collapsed. The wind still keeps behind us. In the
midst of all this I had an extensively signed petition from the second
class passengers that I should address them. I did so, and spoke on deck
for forty minutes to a very attentive audience which included many of
the officers of the ship. I hope I got my points across to them. I was a
sad example of sweated labour when I had finished. My wife tells me that
the people were impressed. As I am never aware of the presence of any
individual when I am speaking on this subject I rely upon my wife's very
quick and accurate feminine impressions. She sits always beside me,
notes everything, gives me her sympathetic atmosphere which is of such
psychic importance, and finally reports the result. If any point of mine
seems to her to miss its mark I unhesitatingly take it out. It interests
me to hear her tell of the half-concealed sneer with which men listen to
me, and how it turns into interest, bewilderment and finally something
like reverence and awe as the brain gradually realises the proved truth
of what I am saying, which upsets the whole philosophy on which their
lives are built.
There are several Australian officers on board who are coming from the
Russian front full of dreadful stories of Bolshevist atrocities, seen
with their own eyes. The executioners were Letts and Chinese, and the
instigators renegade Jews, so that the Russians proper seem to have been
the more or less innocent dupes. They had dreadful photographs of
tortured and mutilated men as corroboration. Surely hell, the place of
punishment and purgatorial expiation, is actually upon this earth in
such cases. One leader seems to have been a Sadic madman, for after
torturing his victims till even the Chinese executioners struck, he
would sit playing a violin very exquisitely while he gloated over their
agonies. All these Australian boys agree that the matter will burn
itself out, and that it will end in an immense massacre of Jews which
may involve the whole seven millions now in Russia. God forbid, but the
outlook is ominous! I remember a prophecy which I read early in the war
that a great figure would arise in the north and have power for six
years. If Lenin was the great figure then he has, according to the
prophet, about two years more to run. But prophecy is fitful, dangerous
work. The way in which the founders of the Christian faith all foretold
the imminent end of the world is an example. What they dimly saw was no
doubt the destruction of Jerusalem, which seems to have been equally
clear to Ezekiel 600 years before, for his picture of cannibalism and
dispersion is very exact.
It is wonderful what chances of gaining direct information one has
aboard a ship of this sort, with its mixed crowd of passengers, many of
them famous in their own lines. I have already alluded to the officers
returning from Russia with their prophecies of evil. But there are many
other folk with tales of deep interest. There is a Mr. Covell, a solid
practical Briton, who may prove to be a great pioneer, for he has made
farming pay handsomely in the very heart of the Indian plains. Within a
hundred miles of Lucknow he has founded the townlet of Covellpore,
where he handles 3,000 acres of wheat and cotton with the aid of about
the same number of natives. This is the most practical step I have ever
heard of for forming a real indigenous white population in India. His
son was with him, going out to carry on the work. Mr. Covell holds that
the irrigation of the North West of India is one of the greatest wonders
of the world, and Jacob the engineer responsible. I had never heard of
him, nor, I am ashamed to say, had I heard of Sir Leonard Rogers, who is
one of those great men like Sir Ronald Ross, whom the Indian Medical
Service throws up. Rogers has reduced the mortality of cholera by
intravenous injections of hypertonic saline until it is only 15 per
cent. General Maude, I am informed, would almost certainly have been
saved, had it not been that some false departmental economy had withheld
the necessary apparatus. Leprosy also seems in a fair way to yielding to
Rogers' genius for investigation.
It is sad to hear that this same Indian Medical Service which has
produced such giants as Fayrer, Ross, and Rogers is in a fair way to
absolute ruin, because the conditions are such that good white
candidates will no longer enter it. White doctors do not mind working
with, or even under, natives who have passed the same British
examinations as themselves, but they bar the native doctor who has got
through a native college in India, and is on a far lower educational
level than themselves. To serve under such a man is an impossible
inversion. This is appreciated by the medical authorities at home, the
word is given to the students, and the best men avoid the service. So
unless a change is made, the end is in sight of the grand old service
which has given so much to humanity.
Aden is remarkable only for the huge water tanks cut to catch rain, and
carved out of solid rock. A whole captive people must have been set to
work on so colossal a task, and one wonders where the poor wretches got
water themselves the while. Their work is as fresh and efficient as when
they left it. No doubt it was for the watering, not of the population,
but of the Egyptian and other galleys on their way to Punt and King
Solomon's mines. It must be a weary life for our garrison in such a
place. There is strange fishing, sea snakes, parrot fish and the like.
It is their only relaxation, for it is desert all round.
Monsoon and swell and drifting rain in the Indian Ocean. We heard that
"thresh of the deep sea rain," of which Kipling sings. Then at last in
the early morning the long quay of Bombay, and the wonderful crowd of
men of every race who await an incoming steamer. Here at least half our
passengers were disgorged, young subalterns, grey colonels, grave
administrators, yellow-faced planters, all the fuel which is grown in
Britain and consumed in the roaring furnace of India. So devoted to
their work, so unthanked and uncomprehended by those for whom they work!
They are indeed a splendid set of men, and if they withdrew I wonder how
long it would be before the wild men of the frontier would be in
Calcutta and Bombay, as the Picts and Scots flowed over Britain when the
Roman legions were withdrawn. What view will the coming Labour
governments of Britain take of our Imperial commitments? Upon that will
depend the future history of great tracts of the globe which might very
easily relapse into barbarism.
The ship seemed lonely when our Indian friends were gone, for indeed,
the pick of the company went with them. Several pleased me by assuring
me as they left that their views of life had been changed since they
came on board the "Naldera." To many I gave reading lists that they
might look further into the matter for themselves. A little leaven in
the great lump, but how can we help leavening it all when we know that,
unlike other creeds, no true Spiritualist can ever revert, so that while
we continually gain, we never lose. One hears of the converts to various
sects, but one does not hear of those who are driven out by their
narrow, intolerant doctrines. You can change your mind about faiths, but
not about facts, and hence our certain conquest.
One cannot spend even a single long day in India without carrying away a
wonderful impression of the gentle dignity of the Indian people. Our
motor drivers were extraordinarily intelligent and polite, and all we
met gave the same impression.
India may be held by the sword, but it is certainly kept very carefully
in the scabbard, for we hardly saw a soldier in the streets of this,
its greatest city. I observed some splendid types of manhood, however,
among the native police. We lunched at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and got back
tired and full of mixed impressions.
Verily the ingenuity of children is wonderful. They have turned their
active minds upon the problem of paper currency with fearsome results.
Baby writes cheques in quaint ways upon odd bits of paper and brings
them to me to be cashed. Malcolm, once known as Dimples, has made a
series of pound and five pound notes of his own. The bank they call the
money shop. I can trace every sort of atavism, the arboreal, the cave
dweller, the adventurous raider, and the tribal instinct in the child,
but this development seems a little premature.
Sunday once more, and the good Bishop preaching. I wonder more and more
what an educated Chinaman would make of such doctrines. To take an
example, he has quoted to-day with great approval, the action of Peter
in discarding the rite of circumcision as a proof of election. That
marked, according to the Bishop, the broad comprehensive mind which
could not confine the mercies of God to any limited class. And yet when
I take up the oecumenical pronouncement from the congress of Anglican
bishops which he has just attended, I find that baptism is made the
test, even as the Jews made circumcision. Have the bishops not learned
that there are millions who revere the memory of Christ, whether they
look upon him as God or man, but who think that baptism is a senseless
survival of heathendom, like so many of our religious observances? The
idea that the Being who made the milky way can be either placated or
incensed by pouring a splash of water over child or adult is an offence
to reason, and a slur upon the Divinity.
Two weary days upon the sea with drifting rain showers and wonderful
scarlet and green sunsets. Have beguiled the time with W. B. Maxwell's
"Lamp and the Mirror." I have long thought that Maxwell was the greatest
of British novelists, and this book confirms me in my opinion. Who else
could have drawn such fine detail and yet so broad and philosophic a
picture? There may have been single books which were better than
Maxwell's best--the "Garden of Allah," with its gorgeous oriental colour
would, for example, make a bid for first place, but which of us has so
splendid a list of first class serious works as "Mrs. Thompson," "The
Rest Cure," "Vivian," "In Cotton Wool," above all, "The Guarded
Flame"--classics, every one. Our order of merit will come out very
differently in a generation or so to what it stands now, and I shall
expect to find my nominee at the top. But after all, what's the odds?
You do your work as well as you can. You pass. You find other work to
do. How the old work compares with the other fellow's work can be a
matter of small concern.
In Colombo harbour lay H.M.S. "Highflyer," which we looked upon with the
reverence which everybody and everything which did well in the war
deserve from us--a saucy, rakish, speedy craft. Several other steamers
were flying the yellow quarantine flag, but our captain confided to me
that it was a recognised way of saying "no visitors," and did not
necessarily bear any pathological meaning. As we had nearly two days
before we resumed our voyage I was able to give all our party a long
stretch on shore, finally staying with my wife for the night at the
Galle Face Hotel, a place where the preposterous charges are partly
compensated for by the glorious rollers which break upon the beach
outside. I was interested in the afternoon by a native conjurer giving
us what was practically a private performance of the mango-tree trick.
He did it so admirably that I can well understand those who think that
it is an occult process. I watched the man narrowly, and believe that I
solved the little mystery, though even now I cannot be sure. In doing it
he began by laying several objects out in a casual way while hunting in
his bag for his mango seed. These were small odds and ends including a
little rag doll, very rudely fashioned, about six or eight inches long.
One got accustomed to the presence of these things and ceased to remark
them. He showed the seed and passed it for examination, a sort of large
Brazil nut. He then laid it among some loose earth, poured some water on
it, covered it with a handkerchief, and crooned over it. In about a
minute he exhibited the same, or another seed, the capsule burst, and a
light green leaf protruding. I took it in my hands, and it was certainly
a real bursting mango seed, but clearly it had been palmed and
substituted for the other. He then buried it again and kept raising the
handkerchief upon his own side, and scrabbling about with his long brown
fingers underneath its cover. Then he suddenly whisked off the
handkerchief and there was the plant, a foot or so high, with thick
foliage and blossoms, its root well planted in the earth. It was
certainly very startling.
My explanation is that by a miracle of packing the whole of the plant
had been compressed into the rag doll, or little cloth cylinder already
mentioned. The scrabbling of the hands under the cloth was to smooth out
the leaves after it was freed from this covering. I observed that the
leaves were still rather crumpled, and that there were dark specks of
fungi which would not be there if the plant were straight from nature's
manufactory. But it was wonderfully done when you consider that the man
was squatting in our midst, we standing in a semi-circle around him,
with no adventitious aid whatever. I do not believe that the famous Mr.
Maskeleyne or any of those other wise conjurers who are good enough
occasionally to put Lodge, Crookes and Lombroso in their places, could
have wrought a better illusion.
The fellow had a cobra with him which he challenged me to pick up. I did
so and gazed into its strange eyes, which some devilry of man's had
turned to a lapis lazuli blue. The juggler said it was the result of its
skin-sloughing, but I have my doubts. The poison bag had, I suppose,
been extracted, but the man seemed nervous and slipped his brown hand
between my own and the swaying venomous head with its peculiar
flattened hood. It is a fearsome beast, and I can realise what was told
me by a lover of animals that the snake was the one creature from which
he could get no return of affection. I remember that I once had three in
my employ when the "Speckled Band" was produced in London, fine, lively
rock pythons, and yet in spite of this profusion of realism I had the
experience of reading a review which, after duly slating the play, wound
up with the scathing sentence, "The performance ended with the
production of a palpably artificial serpent." Such is the reward of
virtue. Afterwards when the necessities of several travelling companies
compelled us to use dummy snakes we produced a much more realistic
effect. The real article either hung down like a pudgy yellow bell rope,
or else when his tail was pinched, endeavoured to squirm back and get
level with the stage carpenter, who pinched him, which was not in the
plot. The latter individual had no doubts at all as to the dummy being
an improvement upon the real.
Never, save on the west coast of Africa, have I seen "the league-long
roller thundering on the shore," as here, where the Indian Ocean with
its thousand leagues of momentum hits the western coast of Ceylon. It
looks smooth out at sea, and then you are surprised to observe that a
good-sized boat has suddenly vanished. Then it scoops upwards once more
on the smooth arch of the billow, disappearing on the further slope. The
native catamarans are almost invisible, so that you see a row of
standing figures from time to time on the crest of the waves. I cannot
think that any craft in the world would come through rough water as
these catamarans with their long outriggers can do. Man has made few
more simple and more effective inventions, and if I were a younger man I
would endeavour to introduce them to Brighton beach, as once I
introduced ski to Switzerland, or auto-wheels to the British roads. I
have other work to do now, but why does not some sportsman take the
model, have it made in England, and then give an exhibition in a gale of
wind on the south coast. It would teach our fishermen some possibilities
of which they are ignorant.
As I stood in a sandy cove one of them came flying in, a group of
natives rushing out and pulling it up on the beach. The craft consists
only of two planks edgewise and lengthwise. In the nine-inch slit
between them lay a number of great twelve-pound fish, like cod, and tied
to the side of the boat was a ten-foot sword fish. To catch that
creature while standing on a couple of floating planks must have been
sport indeed, and yet the craft is so ingenious that to a man who can at
a pinch swim for it, there is very small element of danger. The really
great men of our race, the inventor of the wheel, the inventor of the
lever, the inventor of the catamaran are all lost in the mists of the
past, but ethnologists have found that the cubic capacity of the
neolithic brain is as great as our own.
There are two robbers' castles, as the unhappy visitor calls them,
facing the glorious sea, the one the Galle Face, the other the Mount
Lavinia Hotel. They are connected by an eight-mile road, which has all
the colour and life and variety of the East for every inch of the way.
In that glorious sun, under the blue arch of such a sky, and with the
tropical trees and flowers around, the poverty of these people is very
different from the poverty of a London slum. Is there in all God's world
such a life as that, and can it really be God's world while we suffer it
to exist! Surely, it is a palpable truth that no one has a right to
luxuries until every one has been provided with necessities, and among
such necessities a decent environment is the first. If we had spent
money to fight slumland as we spent it to fight Germany, what a
different England it would be. The world moves all the same, and we have
eternity before us. But some folk need it.
A doctor came up to me in the hotel and told me that he was practising
there, and had come recently from England. He had lost his son in the
war, and had himself become unsettled. Being a Spiritualist he went to
Mrs. Brittain, the medium, who told him that his boy had a message for
him which was that he would do very well in Colombo. He had himself
thought of Ceylon, but Mrs. B. had no means of knowing that. He had
obeyed the advice thus given, and was glad that he had done so. How much
people may miss by cutting themselves away from these ministers of
grace! In all this opposition to Spiritualism the punishment continually
fits the crime.
Once again we shed passengers and proceeded in chastened mood with
empty decks where once it was hard to move. Among others, good Bishop
Banister of Kwang-si had gone. I care little for his sacramental and
vicarious doctrines, but I am very sure that wherever his robust,
kindly, sincere personality may dwell is bound to be a centre of the
true missionary effort--the effort which makes for the real original
teaching of his Master, submission to God and goodwill to our fellow
men.
Now we are on the last lap with nothing but a clear stretch of salt
water between our prow and West Australia. Our mission from being a sort
of dream takes concrete form and involves definite plans. Meanwhile we
plough our way through a deep blue sea with the wind continually against
us. I have not seen really calm water since we left the Canal. We carry
on with the usual routine of ship sports, which include an England and
Australia cricket match, in which I have the honour of captaining
England, a proper ending for a long if mediocre career as a cricketer.
We lost by one run, which was not bad considering our limited numbers.
Posers of all sorts are brought to me by thoughtful inquirers, which I
answer when I can. Often I can't. One which is a most reasonable
objection has given me a day's thought. If, as is certain, we can
remember in our next life the more important incidents of this one, why
is it that in this one we can remember nothing of that previous
spiritual career, which must have existed since nothing can be born in
time for eternity? Our friends on the other side cannot help us there,
nor can even such extended spiritual visions as those of Vale Owen clear
it up. On the whole we must admit that our Theosophical friends, with
whom we quarrel for their absence of evidence, have the best attempt at
an explanation. I imagine that man's soul has a cycle which is complete
in itself, and all of which is continuous and self conscious. This
begins with earth life. Then at last a point is reached, it may be a
reincarnation, and a new cycle is commenced, the old one being closed to
our memory until we have reached some lofty height in our further
journey. Pure speculation, I admit, but it would cover what we know and
give us a working hypothesis. I can never excite myself much about the
reincarnation idea, for if it be so, it occurs seldom, and at long
intervals, with ten years spent in the other spheres for one spent here,
so that even admitting all that is said by its supporters it is not of
such great importance. At the present rate of change this world will be
as strange as another sphere by the time we are due to tread the old
stage once more. It is only fair to say that though many spiritualists
oppose it, there is a strong body, including the whole French Allan
Kardec school, who support it. Those who have passed over may well be
divided upon the subject since it concerns their far future and is a
matter of speculation to them as to us.
Thrasher whales and sperm whales were seen which aroused the old whaling
thrill in my heart. It was the more valuable Greenland whale which I
helped to catch, while these creatures are those which dear old Frank
Bullen, a childlike sailor to the last, described in his "Cruise of the
Cachelot." How is it that sailors write such perfect English. There are
Bullen and Conrad, both of whom served before the mast--the two purest
stylists of their generation. So was Loti in France. There are some
essays of Bullen's, especially a description of a calm in the tropics,
and again of "Sunrise seen from the Crow's Nest," which have not been
matched in our time for perfection of imagery and diction. They are both
in his "Idyls of the Sea." If there is compensation in the beyond--and I
know that there is--then Frank Bullen is in great peace, for his whole
earthly life was one succession of troubles. When I think of his cruel
stepmother, his dreadful childhood, his life on a Yankee blood ship, his
struggles as a tradesman, his bankruptcy, his sordid worries, and
finally, his prolonged ill-health, I marvel at the unequal distribution
of such burdens. He was the best singer of a chanty that I have ever
heard, and I can hear him now with his rich baritone voice trolling out
"Sally Brown" or "Stormalong." May I hear him once again! Our dear ones
tell us that there is no great gap between what pleases us here and that
which will please us in the beyond. Our own brains, had we ever used
them in the matter, should have instructed us that all evolution,
spiritual as well as material, must be gradual. Indeed, once one knows
psychic truth, one can, reasoning backwards, perceive that we should
unaided have come to the same conclusions, but since we have all been
deliberately trained not to use our reason in religious matters, it is
no wonder that we have made rather a hash of it. Surely it is clear
enough that in the case of an artist the artistic nature is part of the
man himself. Therefore, if he survives it must survive. But if it
survives it must have means of expression, or it is a senseless thing.
But means of expression implies appreciation from others and a life on
the general lines of this one. So also of the drama, music, science and
literature, if we carry on they carry on, and they cannot carry on
without actual expression and a public to be served.
To the east of us and just beyond the horizon lie the Cocos Islands,
where Ross established his strange little kingdom, and where the _Emden_
met its end--a glorious one, as every fair minded man must admit. I have
seen her stern post since then in the hall of the Federal Parliament at
Melbourne, like some fossil monster, once a terror and now for children
to gaze at. As to the Cocos Islands, the highest point is, I understand,
about twenty feet, and tidal waves are not unknown upon the Pacific, so
that the community holds its tenure at very short and sudden notice to
quit.
On the morning of September 17th a low coast line appeared upon the port
bow--Australia at last. It was the edge of the West Australian State.
The evening before a wireless had reached me from the spiritualists of
Perth saying that they welcomed us and our message. It was a kind
thought and a helpful one. We were hardly moored in the port of
Fremantle, which is about ten miles from the capital, when a deputation
of these good, kind people was aboard, bearing great bunches of wild
flowers, most of which were new to us. Their faces fell when they
learned that I must go on in the ship and that there was very little
chance of my being able to address them. They are only connected with
the other States by one long thin railway line, 1,200 miles long, with
scanty trains which were already engaged, so that unless we stuck to the
ship we should have to pass ten days or so before we could resume our
journey. This argument was unanswerable, and so the idea of a meeting
was given up.
These kind people had two motors in attendance, which must, I fear, have
been a strain upon their resources, for as in the old days the true
believers and practical workers are drawn from the poor and humble.
However, they certainly treated us royally, and even the children were
packed into the motors. We skirted the Swan River, passed through the
very beautiful public park, and, finally, lunched at the busy town,
where Bone's store would cut a respectable figure in London, with its
many departments and its roof restaurant. It was surprising after our
memories of England to note how good and abundant was the food. It is a
charming little town, and it was strange, after viewing its settled
order, to see the mill where the early settlers not so very long ago had
to fight for their lives with the black fellows. Those poor black
fellows! Their fate is a dark stain upon Australia. And yet it must in
justice to our settlers be admitted that the question was a very
difficult one. Was colonisation to be abandoned, or were these brave
savages to be overcome? That was really the issue. When they speared the
cattle of the settlers what were the settlers to do? Of course, if a
reservation could have been opened up, as in the case of the Maoris,
that would have been ideal. But the noble Maori is a man with whom one
could treat on equal terms and he belonged to a solid race. The
Aborigines of Australia were broken wandering tribes, each at war with
its neighbours. In a single reservation they would have exterminated
each other. It was a piteous tragedy, and yet, even now in retrospect,
how difficult it is to point out what could have been done.
The Spiritualists of Perth seem to be a small body, but as earnest as
their fellows elsewhere. A masterful looking lady, Mrs. McIlwraith,
rules them, and seems fit for the part. They have several mediums
developing, but I had no chance of testing their powers. Altogether our
encounter with them cheered us on our way. We had the first taste of
Australian labour conditions at Fremantle, for the men knocked off at
the given hour, refusing to work overtime, with the result that we
carried a consignment of tea, meant for their own tea-pots, another
thousand miles to Adelaide, and so back by train which must have been
paid for out of their own pockets and those of their fellow citizens.
Verily, you cannot get past the golden rule, and any breach of it brings
its own punishment somehow, somewhere, be the sinner a master or a man.
And now we had to cross the dreaded Bight, where the great waves from
the southern ice come rolling up, but our luck was still in, and we went
through it without a qualm. Up to Albany one sees the barren irregular
coast, and then there were two days of blue water, which brought us at
last to Adelaide, our port of debarkation. The hour and the place at
last!
CHAPTER III
Mr. Hughes' letter of welcome.--Challenges.--Mr. Carlyle
Smythe.--The Adelaide Press.--The great drought.--The wine
industry.--Clairvoyance.--Meeting with Bellchambers.--The first
lecture.--The effect.--The Religious lecture.--The illustrated
lecture.--Premonitions.--The spot light.--Mr. Thomas' account of
the incident.--Correspondence.--Adelaide doctors.--A day in the
Bush.--The Mallee fowl.--Sussex in Australia.--Farewell to
Adelaide.
I was welcomed to Australia by a hospitable letter from the Premier, Mr.
Hughes, who assured me that he would do what he could to make our visit
a pleasant one, and added, "I hope you will see Australia as it is, for
I want you to tell the world about us. We are a very young country, we
have a very big and very rich heritage, and the great war has made us
realise that we are Australians, proud to belong to the Empire, but
proud too of our own country."
Apart from Mr. Hughes's kind message, my chief welcome to the new land
came from Sydney, and took the queer form of two independant challenges
to public debate, one from the Christian Evidence Society, and the other
from the local leader of the materialists. As the two positions are
mutually destructive, one felt inclined to tell them to fight it out
between themselves and that I would fight the winner. The Christian
Evidence Society, is, of course, out of the question, since they regard
a text as an argument, which I can only accept with many qualifications,
so that there is no common basis. The materialist is a more worthy
antagonist, for though he is often as bigotted and inaccessible to
reason as the worst type of Christian, there is always a leaven of
honest, open-minded doubters on whom a debate might make an impression.
A debate with them, as I experienced when I met Mr. MacCabe, can only
follow one line, they quoting all the real or alleged scandals which
have ever been connected with the lowest forms of mediumship, and
claiming that the whole cult is comprised therein, to which you counter
with your own personal experiences, and with the evidence of the cloud
of witnesses who have found the deepest comfort and enlarged knowledge.
It is like two boxers each hitting the air, and both returning to their
respective corners amid the plaudits of their backers, while the general
public is none the better.
Three correspondents headed me off on the ship, and as I gave each of
them a long separate interview, I was a tired man before I got ashore.
Mr. Carlyle Smythe, my impresario, had also arrived, a small alert
competent gentleman, with whom I at once got on pleasant terms, which
were never once clouded during our long travels together upon our tour.
I was fortunate indeed to have so useful and so entertaining a
companion, a musician, a scholar, and a man of many varied experiences.
With his help we soon got our stuff through the customs, and made the
short train journey which separates the Port of Adelaide from the
charming city of that name. By one o'clock we were safely housed in the
Grand Central Hotel, with windows in place of port holes, and the roar
of the trams to take the place of the murmurs of the great ocean.
The good genius of Adelaide was a figure, already almost legendary, one
Colonel Light, who played the part of Romulus and Remus to the infant
city. Somewhere in the thirties of last century he chose the site,
against strong opposition, and laid out the plan with such skill that in
all British and American lands I have seen few such cities, so pretty,
so orderly and so self-sufficing. When one sees all the amenities of the
place, botanical gardens, zoological gardens, art gallery, museum,
university, public library and the rest, it is hard to realise that the
whole population is still under three hundred thousand. I do not know
whether the press sets the tone to the community or the community to the
press, but in any case Adelaide is greatly blessed in this respect, for
its two chief papers the _Register_ and the _Advertiser_, under Sir
William Sowden and Sir Langdon Bonython respectively, are really
excellent, with a worldwide Metropolitan tone.
Their articles upon the subject in which I am particularly interested,
though by no means one-sided, were at least informed with knowledge and
breadth of mind.
In Adelaide I appreciated, for the first time, the crisis which
Australia has been passing through in the shape of a two-years drought,
only recently broken. It seems to have involved all the States and to
have caused great losses, amounting to millions of sheep and cattle. The
result was that the price of those cattle which survived has risen
enormously, and at the time of our visit an absolute record had been
established, a bullock having been sold for L41. The normal price would
be about L13. Sheep were about L3 each, the normal being fifteen
shillings. This had, of course, sent the price of meat soaring with the
usual popular unrest and agitation as a result. It was clear, however,
that with the heavy rains the prices would fall. These Australian
droughts are really terrible things, especially when they come upon
newly-opened country and in the hotter regions of Queensland and the
North. One lady told us that she had endured a drought in Queensland
which lasted so long that children of five had never seen a drop of
rain. You could travel a hundred miles and find the brown earth the
whole way, with no sign of green anywhere, the sheep eating twigs or
gnawing bark until they died. Her brother sold his surviving sheep for
one shilling each, and when the drought broke had to restock at 50s. a
head. This is a common experience, and all but the man with savings have
to take to some subordinate work, ruined men. No doubt, with
afforestation, artesian wells, irrigation and water storage things may
be modified, but all these things need capital, and capital in these
days is hard to seek, nor can it be expected that capitalists will pour
their money into States which have wild politicians who talk lightly of
past obligations. You cannot tell the investor that he is a bloated
incubus one moment, and go hat in hand for further incubation the next.
I fear that this grand country as a whole may suffer from the wild ideas
of some of its representatives. But under it all lies the solid
self-respecting British stuff, which will never repudiate a just debt,
however heavily it may press. Australians may groan under the burden,
but they should remember that for every pound of taxation they carry the
home Briton carries nearly three.
But to return for a moment to the droughts; has any writer of fiction
invented or described a more long-drawn agony than that of the man, his
nerves the more tired and sensitive from the constant unbroken heat,
waiting day after day for the cloud that never comes, while under the
glaring sun from the unchanging blue above him, his sheep, which
represent all his life's work and his hopes, perish before his eyes? A
revolver shot has often ended the long vigil and the pioneer has joined
his vanished flocks. I have just come in contact with a case where two
young returned soldiers, demobilised from the war and planted on the
land had forty-two cattle given them by the State to stock their little
farm. Not a drop of water fell for over a year, the feed failed, and
these two warriors of Palestine and Flanders wept at their own
helplessness while their little herd died before their eyes. Such are
the trials which the Australian farmer has to bear.
While waiting for my first lecture I do what I can to understand the
country and its problems. To this end I visited the vineyards and wine
plant of a local firm which possesses every factor for success, save the
capacity to answer letters. The originator started grape culture as a
private hobby about 60 years ago, and now such an industry has risen
that this firm alone has L700,000 sunk in the business, and yet it is
only one of several. The product can be most excellent, but little or
any ever reaches Europe, for it cannot overtake the local demand. The
quality was good and purer than the corresponding wines in
Europe--especially the champagnes, which seem to be devoid of that
poison, whatever it may be, which has for a symptom a dry tongue with
internal acidity, driving elderly gentlemen to whisky and soda. The
Australian product, taken in moderate doses, seems to have no poisonous
quality, and is without that lime-like dryness which appears to be the
cause of it. If temperance reform takes the sane course of insisting
upon a lowering of the alcohol in our drinks, so that one may be
surfeited before one could be drunken, then this question of good mild
wines will bulk very largely in the future, and Australia may supply one
of the answers. With all my sympathy for the reformers I feel that wine
is so useful a social agent that we should not abolish it until we are
certain that there is no _via media_. The most pregnant argument upon
the subject was the cartoon which showed the husband saying "My dear, it
is the anniversary of our wedding. Let us have a second bottle of ginger
beer."
We went over the vineyards, ourselves mildly interested in the vines,
and the children wildly excited over the possibility of concealed
snakes. Then we did the vats and the cellars with their countless
bottles. We were taught the secrets of fermentation, how the wonderful
Pasteur had discovered that the best and quickest was produced not by
the grape itself, as of old, but by the scraped bloom of the grape
inserted in the bottle. After viewing the number of times a bottle must
be turned, a hundred at least, and the complex processes which lead up
to the finished article, I will pay my wine bills in future with a
better grace. The place was all polished wood and shining brass, like
the fittings of a man-of-war, and a great impression of cleanliness and
efficiency was left upon our minds. We only know the Australian wines at
present by the rough article sold in flasks, but when the supply has
increased the world will learn that this country has some very different
stuff in its cellars, and will try to transport it to their tables.
We had a small meeting of spiritualists in our hotel sitting-room, under
the direction of Mr. Victor Cromer, a local student of the occult, who
seems to have considerable psychic power. He has a small circle for
psychic development which is on new lines, for the neophytes who are
learning clairvoyance sit around in a circle in silence, while Mr.
Cromer endeavours by mental effort to build up the thought form of some
object, say a tree, in the centre of the room. After a time he asks each
of the circle what he or she can see, and has many correct answers.
With colours in the same way he can convey impressions to his pupils. It
is clear that telepathy is not excluded as an explanation, but the
actual effect upon the participants is according to their own account,
visual rather than mental. We had an interesting sitting with a number
of these developing mediums present, and much information was given, but
little of it could be said to be truly evidential. After seeing such
clairvoyance as that of Mr. Tom Tyrell or others at home, when a dozen
names and addresses will be given together with the descriptions of
those who once owned them, one is spoiled for any lesser display.
There was one man whom I had particularly determined to meet when I came
to Australia. This was Mr. T. P. Bellchambers, about whom I had read an
article in some magazine which showed that he was a sort of humble
Jeffries or Thoreau, more lonely than the former, less learned than the
latter, who lived among the wild creatures in the back country, and was
on such terms with our humble brothers as few men are ever privileged to
attain. I had read how the eagle with the broken wing had come to him
for succour, and how little birds would sit on the edge of his pannikin
while he drank. Him at all cost would we see. Like the proverbial
prophet, no one I met had ever heard of him, but on the third day of our
residence there came a journalist bearing with him a rudely dressed,
tangle-haired man, collarless and unkempt, with kind, irregular features
and clear blue eyes--the eyes of a child. It was the man himself. "He
brought me," said he, nodding towards the journalist. "He had to, for I
always get bushed in a town."
This rude figure fingering his frayed cap was clearly out of his true
picture, and we should have to visit him in his own little clearing to
see him as he really was. Meanwhile I wondered whether one who was so
near nature might know something of nature's more occult secrets. The
dialogue ran like this:
"You who are so near nature must have psychic experiences."
"What's psychic? I live so much in the wild that I don't know much."
"I expect you know plenty we don't know. But I meant spiritual."
"Supernatural?"
"Well, we think it is natural, but little understood."
"You mean fairies and things?"
"Yes, and the dead."
"Well, I guess our fairies would be black fairies."
"Why not?"
"Well, I never saw any."
"I hoped you might."
"No, but I know one thing. The night my mother died I woke to find her
hand upon my brow. Oh, there's no doubt. Her hand was heavy on my brow."
"At the time?"
"Yes, at the very hour."
"Well, that was good."
"Animals know more about such things."
"Yes."
"They see something. My dog gets terrified when I see nothing, and
there's a place in the bush where my horse shies and sweats, he does,
but there's nothing to see."
"Something evil has been done there. I've known many cases."
"I expect that's it."
So ran our dialogue. At the end of it he took a cigar, lighted it at the
wrong end, and took himself with his strong simple backwoods atmosphere
out of the room. Assuredly I must follow him to the wilds.
Now came the night of my first lecture. It was in the city hall, and
every seat was occupied. It was a really magnificent audience of two
thousand people, the most representative of the town. I am an
embarrassed and an interested witness, so let me for this occasion quote
the sympathetic, not to say flattering account of the _Register_.
"There could not have been a more impressive set of circumstances
than those which attended the first Australian lecture by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle at the Adelaide Town Hall on Saturday night,
September 25th. The audience, large, representative and thoughtful,
was in its calibre and proportions a fitting compliment to a world
celebrity and his mission. Many of the intellectual leaders of the
city were present--University professors, pulpit personalities,
men eminent in business, legislators, every section of the
community contributed a quota. It cannot be doubted, of course,
that the brilliant literary fame of the lecturer was an attraction
added to that strange subject which explored the 'unknown drama of
the soul.' Over all Sir Arthur dominated by his big arresting
presence. His face has a rugged, kindly strength, tense and earnest
in its grave moments, and full of winning animation when the sun of
his rich humour plays on the powerful features."
"It is not altogether a sombre journey he makes among the shadows,
but apparently one of happy, as well as tender experiences, so that
laughter is not necessarily excluded from the exposition. Do not
let that be misunderstood. There was no intrusion of the slightest
flippancy--Sir Arthur, the whole time, exhibited that attitude of
reverence and humility demanded of one traversing a domain on the
borderland of the tremendous. Nothing approaching a theatrical
presentation of the case for Spiritualism marred the discourse. It
was for the most part a plain statement. First things had to be
said, and the explanatory groundwork laid for future development.
It was a lucid, illuminating introduction."
"Sir Arthur had a budget of notes, but after he had turned over a
few pages he sallied forth with fluent independence under the
inspiration of a vast mental store of material. A finger jutted out
now and again with a thrust of passionate emphasis, or his big
glasses twirled during moments of descriptive ease, and
occasionally both hands were held forward as though delivering
settled points to the audience for its examination. A clear,
well-disciplined voice, excellent diction, and conspicuous
sincerity of manner marked the lecture, and no one could have found
fault with the way in which Sir Arthur presented his case."
"The lecturer approached the audience in no spirit of impatient
dogmatism, but in the capacity of an understanding mind seeking to
illumine the darkness of doubt in those who had not shared his
great experiences. He did not dictate, but reasoned and pleaded,
taking the people into his confidence with strong conviction and a
consoling faith. 'I want to speak to you to-night on a subject
which concerns the destiny of every man and woman in this room,'
began Sir Arthur, bringing everybody at once into an intimate
personal circle. 'No doubt the Almighty, by putting an angel in
King William Street, could convert every one of you to
Spiritualism, but the Almighty law is that we must use our own
brains, and find out our own salvation, and it is not made too easy
for us.'"
It is awkward to include this kindly picture, and yet I do not know how
else to give an idea of how the matter seemed to a friendly observer. I
had chosen for my theme the scientific aspect of the matter, and I
marshalled my witnesses and showed how Professor Mayo corroborated
Professor Hare, and Professor Challis Professor Mayo, and Sir William
Crookes all his predecessors, while Russell Wallace and Lombroso and
Zollner and Barrett, and Lodge, and many more had all after long study
assented, and I read the very words of these great men, and showed how
bravely they had risked their reputations and careers for what they knew
to be the truth. I then showed how the opposition who dared to
contradict them were men with no practical experience of it at all. It
was wonderful to hear the shout of assent when I said that what struck
me most in such a position was its colossal impertinence. That shout
told me that my cause was won, and from then onwards the deep silence
was only broken by the occasional deep murmur of heart-felt agreement. I
told them the evidence that had been granted to me, the coming of my
son, the coming of my brother, and their message. "Plough! Plough!
others will cast the seed." It is hard to talk of such intimate matters,
but they were not given to me for my private comfort alone, but for that
of humanity. Nothing could have gone better than this first evening, and
though I had no chairman and spoke for ninety minutes without a pause, I
was so upheld--there is no other word for the sensation--that I was
stronger at the end than when I began. A leading materialist was among
my audience. "I am profoundly impressed," said he to Mr. Smythe, as he
passed him in the corridor. That stood out among many kind messages
which reached me that night.
Illustration: _Photo: Stirling, Melbourne._ THE WANDERERS, 1920-21.
My second lecture, two nights later, was on the Religious aspect of the
matter. I had shown that the phenomena were nothing, mere material
signals to arrest the attention of a material world. I had shown also
that the personal benefit, the conquest of death, the Communion of
Saints, was a high, but not the highest boon. The real full flower of
Spiritualism was what the wisdom of the dead could tell us about their
own conditions, their present experiences, their outlook upon the secret
of the universe, and the testing of religious truth from the viewpoint
of two worlds instead of one. The audience was more silent than before,
but the silence was that of suspense, not of dissent, as I showed them
from message after message what it was exactly which awaited them in the
beyond. Even I, who am oblivious as a rule to my audience, became aware
that they were tense with feeling and throbbing with emotion. I showed
how there was no conflict with religion, in spite of the
misunderstanding of the churches, and that the revelation had come to
extend and explain the old, even as the Christ had said that he had much
more to tell but could not do it now. "Entirely new ground was
traversed," says my kindly chronicler, "and the audience listened
throughout with rapt attention. They were obviously impressed by the
earnestness of the speaker and his masterly presentation of the theme."
I cannot answer for the latter but at least I can for the former, since
I speak not of what I think but of what I know. How can a man fail to be
earnest then?
A few days later I followed up the lectures by two exhibitions of
psychic pictures and photographs upon a screen. It was certainly an
amazing experience for those who imagined that the whole subject was
dreamland, and they freely admitted that it staggered them. They might
well be surprised, for such a series has never been seen, I believe,
before, including as it does choice samples from the very best
collections. I showed them the record of miracle after miracle, some of
them done under my very eyes, one guaranteed by Russell Wallace, three
by Sir William Crookes, one of the Geley series from Paris, two of Dr.
Crawford's medium with the ecto-plasm pouring from her, four
illustrating the absolutely final Lydia Haig case on the island of
Rothesay, several of Mr. Jeffrey's collection and several also of our
own Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, with the fine
photograph of the face within a crystal. No wonder that the audience sat
spellbound, while the local press declared that no such exhibition had
ever been seen before in Australia. It is almost too overwhelming for
immediate propaganda purposes. It has a stunning, dazing effect upon the
spectators. Only afterwards, I think, when they come to turn it all over
in their minds, do they see that the final proof has been laid before
them, which no one with the least sense for evidence could reject. But
the sense for evidence is not, alas, a universal human quality.
I am continually aware of direct spirit intervention in my own life. I
have put it on record in my "New Revelation" that I was able to say that
the turn of the great war would come upon the Piave months before that
river was on the Italian war map. This was recorded at the time, before
the fulfilment which occurred more than a year later--so it does not
depend upon my assertion. Again, I dreamed the name of the ship which
was to take us to Australia, rising in the middle of the night and
writing it down in pencil on my cheque-book. I wrote _Nadera_, but it
was actually _Naldera_. I had never heard that such a ship existed until
I visited the P. & O. office, when they told me we should go by the
_Osterley_, while I, seeing the _Naldera_ upon the list, thought "No,
that will be our ship!" So it proved, through no action of our own, and
thereby we were saved from quarantine and all manner of annoyance.
Never before have I experienced such direct visible intervention as
occurred during my first photographic lecture at Adelaide. I had shown a
slide the effect of which depended upon a single spirit face appearing
amid a crowd of others. The slide was damp, and as photos under these
circumstances always clear from the edges when placed in the lantern,
the whole centre was so thickly fogged that I was compelled to admit
that I could not myself see the spirit face. Suddenly, as I turned away,
rather abashed by my failure, I heard cries of "There it is," and
looking up again I saw this single face shining out from the general
darkness with so bright and vivid an effect that I never doubted for a
moment that the operator was throwing a spot light upon it, my wife
sharing my impression. I thought how extraordinarily clever it was that
he should pick it out so accurately at the distance. So the matter
passed, but next morning Mr. Thomas, the operator, who is not a
Spiritualist, came in great excitement to say that a palpable miracle
had been wrought, and that in his great experience of thirty years he
had never known a photo dry from the centre, nor, as I understood him,
become illuminated in such a fashion. Both my wife and I were surprised
to learn that he had thrown no ray upon it. Mr. Thomas told us that
several experts among the audience had commented upon the strangeness of
the incident. I, therefore, asked Mr. Thomas if he would give me a note
as to his own impression, so as to furnish an independant account. This
is what he wrote:--
_"Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide._
"_In Adelaide, on September 28th, I projected a lantern slide
containing a group of ladies and gentlemen, and in the centre of
the picture, when the slide was reversed, appeared a human face. On
the appearance of the picture showing the group the fog incidental
to a damp or new slide gradually appeared covering the whole slide,
and only after some minutes cleared, and then quite contrary to
usual practice did so from a central point just over the face that
appeared in the centre, and refused even after that to clear right
off to the edge. The general experience is for a slide to clear
from the outside edges to a common centre. Your slide cleared only
sufficiently in the centre to show the face, and did not, while the
slide was on view, clear any more than sufficient to show that
face. Thinking that perhaps there might be a scientific
explanation to this phenomenon, I hesitated before writing you, and
in the meantime I have made several experiments but have not in any
one particular experiment obtained the same result. I am very much
interested--as are hundreds of others who personally witnessed the
phenomenon._"
Mr. Thomas, in his account, has missed the self-illuminated appearance
of the face, but otherwise he brings out the points. I never gave
occasion for the repetition of the phenomenon, for in every case I was
careful that the slides were carefully dried beforehand.
So much for the lectures at Adelaide, which were five in all, and left,
as I heard from all sides, a deep impression upon the town. Of course,
the usual abusive messages poured in, including one which wound up with
the hearty words: "May you be struck dead before you leave this
Commonwealth." From Melbourne I had news that before our arrival in
Australia at a public prayer meeting at the Assembly Hall, Collins
Street, a Presbyterian prayed that we might never reach Australia's
shores. As we were on the high seas at the time this was clearly a
murderous petition, nor could I have believed it if a friend of mine had
not actually been present and heard it. On the other hand, we received
many letters of sympathy and thanks, which amply atoned. "I feel sure
that many mothers, who have lost their sons in the war, will, wherever
you go, bless you, as I do, for the help you have given." As this was
the object of our journey it could not be denied that we had attained
our end. When I say "we," I mean that such letters with inquiries came
continually to my wife as well as myself, though she answered them with
far greater fullness and clearness than I had time to do.
Hotel life began to tell upon the children, who are like horses with a
profusion of oats and no exercise. On the whole they were wonderfully
good. When some domestic crisis was passed the small voice of Malcolm,
once "Dimples," was heard from the darkness of his bed, saying, "Well,
if I am to be good I must have a proper start. Please mammie, say one,
two, three, and away!" When this ceremony had been performed a still
smaller voice of Baby asked the same favour, so once more there was a
formal start. The result was intermittent, and it is as well. I don't
believe in angelic children.
The Adelaide doctors entertained me to dinner, and I was pleased to meet
more than one who had been of my time at Edinburgh. They seemed to be a
very prosperous body of men. There was much interesting conversation,
especially from one elderly professor named Watson, who had known Bully
Hayes and other South Sea celebrities in the semi-piratical,
black-birding days. He told me one pretty story. They landed upon some
outlying island in Carpentaria, peopled by real primitive blacks, who
were rounded up by the ships crew on one of the peninsulas which formed
the end of the island. These creatures, the lowest of the human race,
huddled together in consternation while the white men trained a large
camera upon them. Suddenly three males advanced and made a speech in
their own tongue which, when interpreted, proved to be an offer that
those three should die in exchange for the lives of the tribe. What
could the very highest do more than this, and yet it came from the
lowest savages. Truly, we all have something of the divine, and it is
the very part which will grow and spread until it has burned out all the
rest. "Be a Christ!" said brave old Stead. At the end of countless aeons
we may all reach that point which not only Stead but St. Paul also has
foreshadowed.
I refreshed myself between lectures by going out to Nature and to
Bellchambers. As it was twenty-five miles out in the bush, inaccessible
by rail, and only to be approached by motor roads which were in parts
like the bed of a torrent, I could not take my wife, though the boys,
after the nature of boys, enjoy a journey the more for its roughness. It
was a day to remember. I saw lovely South Australia in the full beauty
of the spring, the budding girlhood of the year, with all her winsome
growing graces upon her. The brilliant yellow wattle was just fading
upon the trees, but the sward was covered with star-shaped purple
flowers of the knot-grass, and with familiar home flowers, each subtly
altered by their transportation. It was wild bush for part of the way,
but mostly of the second growth on account of forest fires as much as
the woodman's axe. Bellchambers came in to guide us, for there is no one
to ask upon these desolate tracks, and it is easy to get bushed. Mr.
Waite, the very capable zoologist of the museum, joined the party, and
with two such men the conversation soon got to that high nature talk
which represents the really permanent things of material life--more
lasting than thrones and dynasties. I learned of the strange storks, the
"native companions" who meet, 500 at a time, for their stately balls,
where in the hush of the bush they advance, retreat, and pirouette in
their dignified minuets. I heard of the bower birds, who decorate their
homes with devices of glass and pebbles. There was talk, too, of the
little red beetles who have such cunning ways that they can fertilise
the insectivorous plants without being eaten, and of the great ants who
get through galvanised iron by the aid of some acid-squirting insect
which they bring with them to the scene of their assault. I heard also
of the shark's egg which Mr. Waite had raped from sixty feet deep in
Sydney Harbour, descending for the purpose in a diver's suit, for which
I raised my hat to him. Deep things came also from Bellchambers' store
of knowledge and little glimpses of beautiful humanity from this true
gentleman.
"Yes," he said, "I am mostly vegetarian. You see, I know the beasts too
well to bring myself to pick their bones. Yes, I'm friends with most of
them. Birds have more sense than animals to my mind. They understand you
like. They know what you mean. Snakes have least of any. They don't get
friendly-like in the same way. But Nature helps the snakes in queer
ways. Some of them hatch their own eggs, and when they do Nature
raises the temperature of their bodies. That's queer."
Illustration: _Photo: W. G. Smith, Adelaide._ BELLCHAMBERS AND THE
MALLEE FOWL. "GET ALONG WITH YOU, DO!"
I carried away a mixed memory of the things I had seen. A blue-headed
wren, an eagle soaring in the distance; a hideous lizard with a huge
open mouth; a laughing jackass which refused to laugh; many more or less
tame wallabies and kangaroos; a dear little 'possum which got under the
back of my coat, and would not come out; noisy mynah birds which fly
ahead and warn the game against the hunter. Good little noisy mynah! All
my sympathies are with you! I would do the same if I could. This
senseless lust for killing is a disgrace to the race. We, of England,
cannot preach, for a pheasant battue is about the worst example of it.
But do let the creatures alone unless they are surely noxious! When Mr.
Bellchambers told us how he had trained two ibises--the old religious
variety--and how both had been picked off by some unknown local
"sportsman" it made one sad.
We had a touch of comedy, however, when Mr. Bellchambers attempted to
expose the egg of the Mallee fowl, which is covered a foot deep in
mould. He scraped into the mound with his hands. The cock watched him
with an expression which clearly said: "Confound the fellow! What is he
up to now?" He then got on the mound, and as quickly as Bellchambers
shovelled the earth out he kicked it back again, Bellchambers in his
good-humoured way crying "Get along with you, do!" A good husband is the
Mallee cock, and looks after the family interests. But what we humans
would think if we were born deep underground and had to begin our career
by digging our way to the surface, is beyond imagination.
There are quite a clan of Bellchambers living in or near the little
pioneer's hut built in a clearing of the bush. Mrs. Bellchambers is of
Sussex, as is her husband, and when they heard that we were fresh from
Sussex also it was wonderful to see the eager look that came upon their
faces, while the bush-born children could scarce understand what it was
that shook the solid old folk to their marrow. On the walls were old
prints of the Devil's Dyke and Firle Beacon. How strange that old Sussex
should be wearing out its very life in its care for the fauna of young
Australia. This remarkable man is unpaid with only his scanty holding
upon which to depend, and many dumb mouths dependent upon him. I shall
rejoice if my efforts in the local press serve to put his affairs upon a
more worthy foundation, and to make South Australia realise what a
valuable instrument lies to her hand.
Before I left Adelaide I learned many pleasing things about the
lectures, which did away with any shadow cast by those numerous
correspondents who seemed to think that we were still living under the
Mosaic dispensation, and who were so absent-minded that they usually
forgot to sign their names. It is a curious difference between the
Christian letters of abuse and those of materialists, that the former
are usually anonymous and the latter signed. I heard of one man, a lame
stockman, who had come 300 miles from the other side of Streaky Bay to
attend the whole course, and who declared that he could listen all
night. Another seized my hand and cried, "You will never know the good
you have done in this town." Well, I hope it was so, but I only regard
myself as the plough. Others must follow with the seed. Knowledge,
perseverance, sanity, judgment, courage--we ask some qualities from our
disciples if they are to do real good. Talking of moral courage I would
say that the Governor of South Australia, Sir Archibald Weigall with
Lady Weigall, had no hesitation in coming to support me with their
presence. By the end of September this most successful mission in
Adelaide was accomplished, and early in October we were on our way to
Melbourne, which meant a long night in the train and a few hours of the
next morning during which we saw the surface diggings of Ballarat on
every side of the railway line, the sandy soil pitted in every direction
with the shallow claims of the miners.
CHAPTER IV
Speculations on Paul and his Master.--Arrival at Melbourne.--Attack
in the Argus.--Partial press boycott.--Strength of the
movement.--The Prince of Wales.--Victorian football.--Rescue Circle
in Melbourne.--Burke and Wills' statue.--Success of the
lectures.--Reception at the Auditorium.--Luncheon of the British
Empire League.--Mr. Ryan's experience.--The Federal
Government.--Mr. Hughes' personality.--The mediumship of Charles
Bailey.--His alleged exposure.--His remarkable record.--A second
sitting.--The Indian nest.--A remarkable lecture.--Arrival of Lord
Forster.--The future of the Empire.--Kindness of
Australians.--Prohibition.--Horse-racing.--Roman Catholic policy.
One cannot help speculating about those great ones who first carried to
the world the Christian revelation. What were their domestic ties! There
is little said about them, but we should never have known that Peter had
a wife were it not for a chance allusion to his mother-in-law, just as
another chance allusion shows us that Jesus was one of a numerous
family. One thing can safely be said of Paul, that he was either a
bachelor or else was a domestic bully with a very submissive wife, or he
would never have dared to express his well known views about women. As
to his preaching, he had a genius for making a clear thing obscure, even
as Jesus had a genius for making an obscure thing clear. Read the
Sermon on the Mount and then a chapter of Paul as a contrast in styles.
Apart from his style one can reconstruct him as a preacher to the extent
that he had a powerful voice--no one without one could speak from the
historic rocky pulpit on the hill of Mars at Athens, as I ascertained
for myself. The slope is downwards, sound ascends, and the whole
conditions are abominable. He was certainly long-winded and probably
monotonous in his diction, or he could hardly have reduced one of his
audience to such a deep sleep that he fell out of the window. We may add
that he was a man of brisk courage in an emergency, that he was subject
to such sudden trances that he was occasionally unaware himself whether
he was normal or not, and that he was probably short-sighted, as he
mistook the person who addressed him, and had his letters usually
written for him. At least three languages were at his command, he had an
intimate and practical knowledge of the occult, and was an authority
upon Jewish law--a good array of accomplishments for one man.
There are some points about Paul's august Master which also help in a
reconstruction of Himself and His surroundings. That His mother was
opposed to His mission is, I think, very probable. Women are dubious
about spiritual novelties, and one can well believe that her heart ached
to see her noble elder son turn from the sure competence of His father's
business at Nazareth to the precarious existence of a wandering
preacher. This domestic opposition clouded Him as one can see in the
somewhat cold, harsh words which He used to her, and his mode of address
which began simply as "Woman." His assertion to the disciples that one
who followed His path had to give up his family points to the same
thing. No doubt Mary remained with the younger branches at Nazareth
while Jesus pursued His ministry, though she came, as any mother would,
to be near Him at the end.
Of His own personality we know extraordinarily little, considering the
supreme part that He played in the world. That He was a highly trained
psychic, or as we should say, medium, is obvious to anyone who studies
the miracles, and it is certainly not derogatory to say that they were
done along the line of God's law rather than that they were inversions
of it. I cannot doubt also that he chose his apostles for their psychic
powers--if not, on what possible principle were they selected, since
they were neither staunch nor learned? It is clear that Peter and James
and John were the inner circle of psychics, since they were assembled
both at the transfiguration and at the raising of Jairus' daughter. It
is from unlearned open-air men who are near Nature that the highest
psychic powers are obtained. It has been argued that the Christ was an
Essene, but this seems hard to believe, as the Essenes were not only
secluded from the world, but were certainly vegetarians and total
abstainers, while Jesus was neither. On the other hand baptism was not a
Jewish rite, and his undergoing it--if He did, indeed, undergo it--marks
Him as belonging to some dissenting sect. I say "if He did" because it
is perfectly certain that there were forgeries and interpolations
introduced into the Gospels in order to square their teaching with the
practice of the Church some centuries later. One would look for those
forgeries not in the ordinary narrative, which in the adult years bears
every mark of truth, but in the passages which support ceremonial or
tributes to the Church--such as the allusions to baptism, "Unless a man
be born again," to the sacrament, "This is my body, etc.," and the whole
story of Ananias and Sapphira, the moral of which is that it is
dangerous to hold anything back from the Church.
Physically I picture the Christ as an extremely powerful man. I have
known several famous healers and they were all men who looked as if they
had redundant health and strength to give to others. His words to the
sick woman, "Who has touched me? Much power" (_dunamis_ is the word in
the original Greek) "has gone out of me," show that His system depended
upon His losing what He gave to others. Therefore He was a very strong
man. The mere feat of carrying a wooden cross strong enough to bear a
man from Jerusalem to Calvary, up a hill, is no light one. It is the
details which convince me that the gospel narrative is correct and
really represents an actual event. Take the incident during that sad
journey of Simon of Cyrene having helped for a time with the cross. Why
should anyone invent such a thing, putting an actual name to the person?
It is touches of this kind which place the narrative beyond all
suspicion of being a pure invention. Again and again in the New
Testament one is confronted with incidents which a writer of fiction
recognises as being beyond the reach of invention, because the inventor
does not put in things which have no direct bearing upon the matter in
hand. Take as an example how the maid, seeing Peter outside the door
after his escape from prison, ran back to the guests and said that it
was his angel (or etheric body) which was outside. Such an episode could
only have been recorded because it actually occurred.
But these be deep waters. Let me get back to my own humble experiences,
these interpolated thoughts being but things which have been found upon
the wayside of our journey. On reaching Melbourne we were greeted at the
station by a few devoted souls who had waited for two trains before they
found us. Covered with the flowers which they had brought we drove to
Menzies Hotel, whence we moved a few days later to a flat in the Grand,
where we were destined to spend five eventful weeks. We found the
atmosphere and general psychic conditions of Melbourne by no means as
pleasant or receptive as those of Adelaide, but this of course was very
welcome as the greater the darkness the more need of the light. If
Spiritualism had been a popular cult in Australia there would have been
no object in my visit. I was welcome enough as an individual, but by no
means so as an emissary, and both the Churches and the Materialists, in
most unnatural combination, had done their best to make the soil stony
for me. Their chief agent had been the _Argus_, a solid, stodgy paper,
which amply fulfilled the material needs of the public, but was not
given to spiritual vision. This paper before my arrival had a very
violent and abusive leader which attracted much attention, full of such
terms as "black magic," "Shamanism," "witchcraft," "freak religion,"
"cranky faith," "cruelty," "black evil," "poison," finishing up with the
assertion that I represented "a force which we believe to be purely
evil." This was from a paper which whole-heartedly supports the liquor
interest, and has endless columns of betting and racing news, nor did
its principles cause it to refuse substantial sums for the advertising
of my lectures. Still, however arrogant or illogical, I hold that a
paper has a perfect right to publish and uphold its own view, nor would
I say that the subsequent refusal of the _Argus_ to print any answer to
its tirade was a real breach of the ethics of journalism. Where its
conduct became outrageous, however, and where it put itself beyond the
pale of all literary decency, was when it reported my first lecture by
describing my wife's dress, my own voice, the colour of my spectacles,
and not a word of what I said. It capped this by publishing so-called
answers to me by Canon Hughes, and by Bishop Phelan--critics whose
knowledge of the subject seemed to begin and end with the witch of
Endor--while omitting the statements to which these answers applied.
Never in any British town have I found such reactionary intolerance as
in this great city, for though the _Argus_ was the chief offender, the
other papers were as timid as rabbits in the matter. My psychic
photographs which, as I have said, are the most wonderful collection
ever shown in the world, were received in absolute silence by the whole
press, though it is notorious that if I had come there with a comic
opera or bedroom comedy instead of with the evidence of a series of
miracles, I should have had a column. This seems to have been really due
to moral cowardice, and not to ignorance, for I saw a private letter
afterwards in which a sub-editor remarked that he and the chief
leader-writer had both seen the photographs and that they could see no
possible answer to them.
There was another and more pleasing side to the local conditions, and
that lay in the numbers who had already mastered the principles of
Spiritualism, the richer classes as individuals, the poorer as organised
churches. They were so numerous that when we received an address of
welcome in the auditorium to which only Spiritualists were invited by
ticket, the Hall, which holds two thousand, was easily filled. This
would mean on the same scale that the Spiritualists of London could fill
the Albert Hall several times over--as no doubt they could. Their
numbers were in a sense an embarrassment, as I always had the fear that
I was addressing the faithful instead of those whom I had come so far to
instruct. On the whole their quality and organisation were
disappointing. They had a splendid spiritual paper in their midst, the
_Harbinger of Light_, which has run for fifty years, and is most ably
edited by Mr. Britton Harvey. When I think of David Gow, Ernest Oaten,
John Lewis and Britton Harvey I feel that our cause is indeed well
represented by its press. They have also some splendid local workers,
like Bloomfield and Tozer, whole-hearted and apostolic. But elsewhere
there is the usual tendency to divide and to run into vulgarities and
extravagances in which the Spiritual has small share. Discipline is
needed, which involves central powers, and that in turn means command of
the purse. It would be far better to have no Spiritual churches than
some I have seen.
However, I seem to have got to some of my final conclusions at Melbourne
before I have begun our actual experience there. We found the place
still full of rumours and talk about the recent visit of the Prince of
Wales, who seems to have a perfect genius for making himself popular and
beloved. May he remain unspoiled and retain the fresh kindliness of his
youth. His success is due not to any ordered rule of conduct but to a
perfectly natural courtesy which is his essential self and needs no
effort. Our waiter at the hotel who had waited upon him remarked: "God
never made anything nearer to Nature than that boy. He spoke to me as he
might have spoken to the Governor." It was a fine tribute, and
characteristic of the humbler classes in this country, who have a vigour
of speech and an independence of view which is very refreshing. Once as
I passed a public house, a broken old fellow who had been leaning
against the wall with a short pipe in his mouth, stepped forward to me
and said: "I am all for civil and religious liberty. There is plenty of
room for your cult here, sir, and I wish you well against the bigots." I
wonder from what heights that old fellow had fallen before he brought up
against the public house wall?
One of my first afternoons in Melbourne was spent in seeing the final
tie of the Victorian football cup. I have played both Rugby and Soccer,
and I have seen the American game at its best, but I consider that the
Victorian system has some points which make it the best of
all--certainly from the spectacular point of view. There is no off-side,
and you get a free kick if you catch the ball. Otherwise you can run as
in ordinary Rugby, though there is a law about bouncing the ball as you
run, which might, as it seemed to me, be cut out without harming the
game. This bouncing rule was put in by Mr. Harrison who drew up the
original rules, for the chivalrous reason that he was himself the
fastest runner in the Colony, and he did not wish to give himself any
advantage. There is not so much man-handling in the Victorian game, and
to that extent it is less dramatic, but it is extraordinarily open and
fast, with none of the packed scrums which become so wearisome, and with
linesmen who throw in the ball the instant it goes out. There were
several points in which the players seemed better than our best--one was
the accurate passing by low drop kicking, very much quicker and faster
than a pass by hand. Another was the great accuracy of the place kicking
and of the screw kicking when a runner would kick at right angles to his
course. There were four long quarters, and yet the men were in such
condition that they were going hard at the end. They are all, I
understand, semi-professionals. Altogether it was a very fine display,
and the crowd was much excited. It was suggestive that the instant the
last whistle blew a troop of mounted police cantered over the ground and
escorted the referees to the safety of the pavilion.
I began at once to endeavour to find out the conditions of local
Spiritualism, and had a long conversation with Mr. Tozer, the chairman
of the movement, a slow-talking, steady-eyed man, of the type that gets
a grip and does not easily let go. After explaining the general
situation, which needs some explanation as it is full of currents and
cross-currents caused by individual schisms and secessions, he told me
in his gentle, earnest way some of his own experiences in his home
circle which corroborate much which I have heard elsewhere. He has run a
rescue circle for the instruction of the lower spirits who are so
material that they can be reached more easily by humanity than by the
higher angels. The details he gave me were almost the same as those
given by Mr. MacFarlane of Southsea who had a similar circle of which
Mr. Tozer had certainly never heard. A wise spirit control dominates the
proceedings. The medium goes into trance. The spirit control then
explains what it is about to do, and who the spirit is who is about to
be reformed. The next scene is often very violent, the medium having to
be held down and using rough language. This comes from some low spirit
who has suddenly found this means of expressing himself. At other times
the language is not violent but only melancholy, the spirit declaring
that he is abandoned and has not a friend in the universe. Some do not
realise that they are dead, but only that they wander all alone, under
conditions they could not understand, in a cloud of darkness.
Then comes the work of regeneration. They are reasoned with and
consoled. Gradually they become more gentle. Finally, they accept the
fact that they are spirits, that their condition is their own making,
and that by aspiration and repentance they can win their way to the
light. When one has found the path and has returned thanks for it,
another case is treated. As a rule these errant souls are unknown to
fame. Often they are clergymen whose bigotry has hindered development.
Occasionally some great sinner of the past may come into view. I have
before me a written lament professing to come from Alva, the bigoted
governor of the Lowlands. It is gruesome enough. "Picture to yourself
the hell I was in. Blood, blood everywhere, corpses on all sides,
gashed, maimed, mutilated, quivering with agony and bleeding at every
pore! At the same time thousands of voices were raised in bitter
reproaches, in curses and execrations! Imagine the appalling spectacle
of this multitude of the dead and dying, fresh from the flames, from the
sword, the rack, the torture chambers and the gibbet; and the
pandemonium of voices shrieking out the most terrible maledictions!
Imagine never being able to get away from these sights and sounds, and
then tell me, was I not in hell?--a hell of greater torment than that to
which I believed all heretics were consigned. Such was the hell of the
'bloody Alva,' from which I have been rescued by what seems to me a
great merciful dispensation of Almighty God."
Sometimes in Mr. Tozer's circle the souls of ancient clerics who have
slumbered long show their first signs of resuscitation, still bearing
their old-world intolerance with them. The spirit control purports to be
a well-educated Chinaman, whose presence and air of authority annoy the
ecclesiastics greatly. The petrified mind leads to a long period of
insensibility which means loss of ground and of time in the journey
towards happiness. I was present at the return of one alleged Anglican
Bishop of the eighteenth century, who spoke with great intolerance. When
asked if he had seen the Christ he answered that he had not and that he
could not understand it. When asked if he still considered the Christ to
be God he threw up his hand and shouted violently, "Stop! That is
blasphemy!" The Chinese control said, "He stupid man. Let him wait. He
learn better"--and removed him. He was succeeded by a very noisy and
bigoted Puritan divine who declared that no one but devils would come to
a seance. On being asked whether that meant that he was himself a devil
he became so abusive that the Chinaman once more had to intervene. I
quote all this as a curious sidelight into some developments of the
subject which are familiar enough to students, but not to the general
public. It is easy at a distance to sneer at such things and to ask for
their evidential value, but they are very impressive to those who view
them at closer quarters. As to evidence, I am informed that several of
the unfortunates have been identified in this world through the
information which they gave of their own careers.
Melbourne is a remarkable city, far more solid and old-established than
the European visitor would expect. We spent some days in exploring it.
There are few cities which have the same natural advantages, for it is
near the sea, with many charming watering places close at hand, while
inland it has some beautiful hills for the week-end villas of the
citizens. Edinburgh is the nearest analogy which I can recall. Parks and
gardens are beautiful, but, as in most British cities, the public
statues are more solid than impressive. The best of them, that to Burke
and Wills, the heroic explorers, has no name upon it to signify who the
two figures are, so that they mean nothing at all to the casual
observer, in spite of some excellent bas-reliefs, round the base, which
show the triumphant start and the terrible end of that tragic but
successful journey, which first penetrated the Continent from south to
north. Before our departure I appealed in the press to have this
omission rectified and it was, I believe, done.
Illustration: _Photo: Stirling, Melbourne._ MELBOURNE, NOVEMBER,
1920.
Mr. Smythe, my agent, had been unfortunate in being unable to secure one
of the very few large halls in Melbourne, so we had to confine ourselves
to the Playhouse which has only seating for about 1,200. Here I
opened on October 5th, following my lectures up in the same order as in
Adelaide. The press was very shy, but nothing could have exceeded the
warmth and receptivity of my hearers. Yet on account of the inadequate
reports of the press, with occasional total suppression, no one who was
not present could have imagined how packed was the house, or how
unanimous the audience.
On October 14th the Spiritualists filled the Auditorium and had a
special service of welcome for ourselves. When I went down to it in the
tram, the conductor, unaware of my identity, said, when I asked to be
put down at the Auditorium, "It's no use, sir; it's jam full an hour
ago." "The Pilgrims," as they called us, were in special seats, the
seven of us all in a line upon the right of the chair. Many kind things
were said, and I replied as best I might. The children will carry the
remembrance of that warm-hearted reception through their lives, and they
are not likely to forget how they staggered home, laden with the flowers
which were literally heaped upon them.
The British Empire League also entertained my wife and myself to lunch,
a very select company assembling who packed the room. Sir Joseph Cook,
Federal Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a pleasant speech, recalling
our adventures upon the Somme, when he had his baptism of fire. In my
reply I pulled the leg of my audience with some success, for I wound up
by saying, very solemnly, that I was something greater than Governments
and the master of Cabinet Ministers. By the time I had finished my
tremendous claims I am convinced that they expected some extravagant
occult pretension, whereas I actually wound up with the words, "for I am
the man in the street." There was a good deal of amusement caused.
Mr. Thomas Ryan, a very genial and capable member of the State
Legislature, took the chair at this function. He had no particular
psychic knowledge, but he was deeply impressed by an experience in
London in the presence of that remarkable little lady, Miss Scatcherd.
Mr. Ryan had said that he wanted some evidence before he could accept
psychic philosophy, upon which Miss Scatcherd said: "There is a spirit
beside you now. He conveys to me that his name is Roberts. He says he is
worried in his mind because the home which you prepared for his widow
has not been legally made over to her." All this applied to a matter in
Adelaide. In that city, according to Mr. Ryan, a seance was held that
night, Mr. Victor Cromer being the medium, at which a message came
through from Roberts saying that he was now easy in his mind as he had
managed to convey his trouble to Mr. Ryan who could set it right. When
these psychic laws are understood the dead as well as the living will be
relieved from a load of unnecessary care; but how can these laws be
ignored or pooh-poohed in the face of such instances as this which I
have quoted? They are so numerous now that it is hardly an exaggeration
to say that every circle of human beings which meets can supply one.
Mr. Hughes was good enough to ask me to meet the members of the Federal
Government at lunch, and the experience was an interesting one, for here
round one small table were those who were shaping the course of this
young giant among the nations. They struck me as a practical hard-worked
rough-and-ready lot of men. Mr. Hughes dominated the conversation, which
necessarily becomes one-sided as he is very deaf, though his opponents
say that he has an extraordinary knack of hearing what he is not meant
to hear. He told us a series of anecdotes of his stormy political youth
with a great deal of vivacity, the whole company listening in silence.
He is a hard, wiry man, with a high-nosed Red Indian face, and a good
deal of healthy devilry in his composition--a great force for good
during the war.
After lunch he conducted me through the library, and coming to a
portrait of Clemenceau he cried: "That's the man I learned to admire in
Europe." Then, turning to one of Wilson, he added, "And that's the man I
learned to dislike." He added a number of instances of Wilson's
ignorance of actual conditions, and of his ungenial coldness of heart.
"If he had not been so wrapped in himself, and if he had taken Lodge or
some other Republican with him, all could have easily been arranged." I
feel that I am not indiscreet in repeating this, for Hughes is not a man
who conceals his opinions from the world.
I have been interested in the medium Bailey, who was said to have been
exposed in France in 1910. The curious will find the alleged exposure
in "Annals of Psychical Science," Vol. IX. Bailey is an apport
medium--that is to say, that among his phenomena is the bringing of
objects which are said to come from a distance, passing through the
walls and being precipitated down upon the table. These objects are of
the strangest description--Assyrian tablets (real or forged), tortoises,
live birds, snakes, precious stones, &c. In this case, after being
searched by the committee, he was able to produce two live birds in the
seance room. At the next sitting the committee proposed an obscene and
absurd examination of the medium, which he very rightly resented and
refused. They then confidently declared that on the first occasion the
two live birds were in his intestines, a theory so absurd that it shakes
one's confidence in their judgment. They had, however, some more solid
grounds for a charge against him, for they produced a married couple who
swore that they had sold three such birds with a cage to Bailey some
days before. This Bailey denied, pointing out that he could neither
speak French, nor had he ever had any French money, which Professor
Reichel, who brought him from Australia, corroborated. However, the
committee considered the evidence to be final, and the seances came to
an end, though Colonel de Rochas, the leading member, wound up the
incident by writing: "Are we to conclude from the fraud that we have
witnessed that all Bailey's apports may have been fraudulent? I do not
think so, and this is also the opinion of the members of the committee,
who have had much experience with mediums and are conversant with the
literature of the subject."
Reading the alleged exposure, one is struck, as so often in such cases,
with its unsatisfactory nature. There is the difficulty of the language
and the money. There is the disappearance of the third bird and the
cage. Above all, how did the birds get into the carefully-guarded seance
room, especially as Bailey was put in a bag during the proceedings? The
committee say the bag may not have been efficient, but they also state
that Bailey desired the control to be made more effective. Altogether it
is a puzzling case. On my applying to Bailey himself for information, he
declared roundly that he had been the victim of a theological plot with
suborned evidence. The only slight support which I can find for that
view is that there was a Rev. Doctor among his accusers. I was told
independently that Professor Reichel, before his death in 1918, came
also to the conclusion that there had been a plot. But in any case most
of us will agree with Mr. Stanford, Bailey's Australian patron, that the
committee would have been wise to say nothing, continue the sittings,
and use their knowledge to get at some more complete conclusion.
With such a record one had to be on one's guard with Mr. Bailey. I had a
sitting in my room at the hotel to which I invited ten guests, but the
results were not impressive. We saw so-called spirit hands, which were
faintly luminous, but I was not allowed to grasp them, and they were
never further from the medium than he could have reached. All this was
suspicious but not conclusive. On the other hand, there was an attempt
at a materialisation of a head, which took the form of a luminous patch,
and seemed to some of the sitters to be further from the cabinet than
could be reached. We had an address purporting to come from the control,
Dr. Whitcombe, and we also had a message written in bad Italian. On the
whole it was one of those baffling sittings which leave a vague
unpleasant impression, and there was a disturbing suggestion of cuffs
about those luminous hands.
I have been reading Bailey's record, however, and I cannot doubt that he
has been a great apport medium. The results were far above all possible
fraud, both in the conditions and in the articles brought into the room
by spirit power. For example, I have a detailed account published by Dr.
C. W. McCarthy, of Sydney, under the title, "Rigid Tests of the Occult."
During these tests Bailey was sealed up in a bag, and in one case was
inside a cage of mosquito curtain. The door and windows were secured and
the fire-place blocked. The sitters were all personal friends, but they
mutually searched each other. The medium was stripped naked before the
seance. Under these stringent conditions during a series of six sittings
138 articles were brought into the room, which included eighty-seven
ancient coins (mostly of Ptolemy), eight live birds, eighteen precious
stones of modest value and varied character, two live turtles, seven
inscribed Babylonian tablets, one Egyptian Scarabaeus, an Arabic
newspaper, a leopard skin, four nests and many other things. It seems
to me perfect nonsense to talk about these things being the results of
trickery. I may add that at a previous test meeting they had a young
live shark about 1-1/2 feet long, which was tangled with wet seaweed and
flopped about on the table. Dr. McCarthy gives a photograph of the
creature.
My second sitting with Bailey was more successful than the first. On his
arrival I and others searched him and satisfied ourselves he carried
nothing upon him. I then suddenly switched out all the lights, for it
seemed to me that the luminous hands of the first sitting might be the
result of phosphorised oil put on before the meeting and only visible in
complete darkness, so that it could defy all search. I was wrong,
however, for there was no luminosity at all. We then placed Mr. Bailey
in the corner of the room, lowered the lights without turning them out,
and waited. Almost at once he breathed very heavily, as one in trance,
and soon said something in a foreign tongue which was unintelligible to
me. One of our friends, Mr. Cochrane, recognised it as Indian, and at
once answered, a few sentences being interchanged. In English the voice
then said that he was a Hindoo control who was used to bring apports for
the medium, and that he would, he hoped, be able to bring one for us.
"Here it is," he said a moment later, and the medium's hand was extended
with something in it. The light was turned full on and we found it was a
very perfect bird's nest, beautifully constructed of some very fine
fibre mixed with moss. It stood about two inches high and had no sign of
any flattening which would have come with concealment. The size would be
nearly three inches across. In it lay a small egg, white, with tiny
brown speckles. The medium, or rather the Hindoo control acting through
the medium, placed the egg on his palm and broke it, some fine albumen
squirting out. There was no trace of yolk. "We are not allowed to
interfere with life," said he. "If it had been fertilised we could not
have taken it." These words were said before he broke it, so that he was
aware of the condition of the egg, which certainly seems remarkable.
"Where did it come from?" I asked.
"From India."
"What bird is it?"
"They call it the jungle sparrow."
The nest remained in my possession, and I spent a morning with Mr.
Chubb, of the local museum, to ascertain if it was really the nest of
such a bird. It seemed too small for an Indian sparrow, and yet we could
not match either nest or egg among the Australian types. Some of Mr.
Bailey's other nests and eggs have been actually identified. Surely it
is a fair argument that while it is conceivable that such birds might be
imported and purchased here, it is really an insult to one's reason to
suppose that nests with fresh eggs in them could also be in the market.
Therefore I can only support the far more extended experience and
elaborate tests of Dr. McCarthy of Sydney, and affirm that I believe Mr.
Charles Bailey to be upon occasion a true medium, with a very
remarkable gift for apports.
It is only right to state that when I returned to London I took one of
Bailey's Assyrian tablets to the British Museum and that it was
pronounced to be a forgery. Upon further inquiry it proved that these
forgeries are made by certain Jews in a suburb of Bagdad--and, so far as
is known, only there. Therefore the matter is not much further advanced.
To the transporting agency it is at least possible that the forgery,
steeped in recent human magnetism, is more capable of being handled than
the original taken from a mound. Bailey has produced at least a hundred
of these things, and no Custom House officer has deposed how they could
have entered the country. On the other hand, Bailey told me clearly that
the tablets had been passed by the British Museum, so that I fear that I
cannot acquit him of tampering with truth--and just there lies the great
difficulty of deciding upon his case. But one has always to remember
that physical mediumship has no connection one way or the other with
personal character, any more than the gift of poetry.
To return to this particular seance, it was unequal. We had luminous
hands, but they were again within reach of the cabinet in which the
medium was seated. We had also a long address from Dr. Whitcombe, the
learned control, in which he discoursed like an absolute master upon
Assyrian and Roman antiquities and psychic science. It was really an
amazing address, and if Bailey were the author of it I should hail him
as a master mind. He chatted about the Kings of Babylon as if he had
known them all, remarked that the Bible was wrong in calling Belthazar
King as he was only Crown Prince, and put in all those easy side
allusions which a man uses when he is absolutely full of his subject.
Upon his asking for questions, I said: "Please give me some light as to
the dematerialisation and subsequent reassembly of an object such as a
bird's nest." "It involves," he answered, "some factors which are beyond
your human science and which could not be made clear to you. At the same
time you may take as a rough analogy the case of water which is turned
into steam, and then this steam which is invisible, is conducted
elsewhere to be reassembled as visible water." I thought this
explanation was exceedingly apt, though of course I agree that it is
only a rough analogy. On my asking if there were libraries and
facilities for special study in the next world, he said that there
certainly were, but that instead of studying books they usually studied
the actual objects themselves. All he said was full of dignity and
wisdom. It was curious to notice that, learned as he was, Dr. Whitcombe
always referred back with reverence to Dr. Robinson, another control not
present at the moment, as being the real expert. I am told that some of
Dr. Robinson's addresses have fairly amazed the specialists. I notice
that Col. de Rochas in his report was equally impressed by Bailey's
controls.
I fear that my psychic experiences are pushing my travels into the
background, but I warned the reader that it might be so when first we
joined hands. To get back to the earth, let me say that I saw the
procession when the new Governor-General, Lord Forster, with his
charming wife, made their ceremonial entry into Melbourne, with many
workman-like Commonwealth troops before and behind their carriage. I
knew Lord Forster of old, for we both served upon a committee over the
Olympic Games, so that he gave quite a start of surprised recognition
when his quick eye fell upon my face in the line of spectators. He is a
man who cannot fail to be popular here, for he has the physical as well
as the mental qualities. Our stay in Melbourne was afterwards made more
pleasant by the gracious courtesy of Government House for, apart from
attending several functions, we were invited to a special dinner, after
which I exhibited upon a screen my fairy portraits and a few of my other
very wonderful psychic photographs. It was not an occasion when I could
preach, but no quick intelligence could be brought in contact with such
phenomena without asking itself very seriously what lay behind them.
When that question is earnestly asked the battle is won.
One asks oneself what will be the end of this system of little viceroys
in each State and a big viceroy in the Capital--however capable and
excellent in themselves such viceroys may be. The smaller courts are, I
understand, already doomed, and rightly so, since there is no need for
them and nothing like them elsewhere. There is no possible purpose that
they serve save to impose a nominal check, which is never used, upon
the legislation. The Governor-Generalship will last no doubt until
Australia cuts the painter, or we let go our end of it, whichever may
come first.
Personally, I have no fear of Britain's power being weakened by a
separation of her dominions. Close allies which were independent might
be a greater source of moral strength than actual dependencies. When the
sons leave the father's house and rule their own homes, becoming fathers
in turn, the old man is not weakened thereby. Certainly I desire no such
change, but if it came I would bear it with philosophy. I hope that the
era of great military crises is for ever past, but, if it should recur,
I am sure that the point of view would be the same, and that the starry
Union Jack of the great Australian nation would still fly beside the old
flag which was its model.
If one took a Machiavelian view of British interests one would say that
to retain a colony the surest way is not to remove any danger which may
threaten her. We conquered Canada from the French, removing in
successive campaigns the danger from the north and from the west which
threatened our American colonies. When we had expended our blood and
money to that end, so that the colonies had nothing to fear, they took
the first opportunity to force an unnecessary quarrel and to leave us.
So I have fears for South Africa now that the German menace has been
removed. Australia is, I think, loyal to the core, and yet self-interest
is with every nation the basis of all policy, and so long as the British
fleet can guard the shores of the great empty northern territories, a
region as big as Britain, Germany, France and Austria put together, they
have need of us. There can be no doubt that if they were alone in the
world in the face of the teeming millions of the East, they might, like
the Siberian travellers, have to throw a good deal to the wolves in
order to save the remainder. Brave and capable as they are, neither
their numbers nor their resources could carry them through a long
struggle if the enemy held the sea. They are natural shots and soldiers,
so that they might be wiser to spend their money in a strategic railway
right across their northern coast, rather than in direct military
preparations. To concentrate rapidly before the enemy was firmly
established might under some circumstances be a very vital need.
But so long as the British Empire lasts Australia is safe, and in twenty
years' time her own enlarged population will probably make her safe
without help from anyone. But her empty places are a danger. History
abhors a vacuum and finds some one to fill it up. I have never yet
understood why the Commonwealth has not made a serious effort to attract
to the northern territories those Italians who are flooding the
Argentine. It is great blood and no race is the poorer for it--the blood
of ancient Rome. They are used to semitropical heat and to hard work in
bad conditions if there be only hope ahead. Perhaps the policy of the
future may turn in that direction. If that one weak spot be guarded then
it seems to me that in the whole world there is no community, save only
the United States, which is so safe from outside attack as Australia.
Internal division is another matter, but there Australia is in some ways
stronger than the States. She has no negro question, and the strife
between Capital and Labour is not likely to be so formidable. I wonder,
by the way, how many people in the United States realise that this small
community lost as many men as America did in the great war. We were
struck also by the dignified resignation with which this fact was faced,
and by the sense of proportion which was shown in estimating the
sacrifices of various nations.
We like the people here very much more than we had expected to, for one
hears in England exaggerated stories of their democratic bearing. When
democracy takes the form of equality one can get along with it, but when
it becomes rude and aggressive one would avoid it. Here one finds a very
pleasing good fellowship which no one would object to. Again and again
we have met with little acts of kindness from people in shops or in the
street, which were not personal to ourselves, but part of their normal
good manners. If you ask the way or any other information, strangers
will take trouble to put you right. They are kindly, domestic and
straight in speech and in dealings. Materialism and want of vision in
the broader affairs of life seem to be the national weakness, but that
may be only a passing phase, for when a nation has such a gigantic
material proposition as this continent to handle it is natural that
their thoughts should run on the wool and the wheat and the gold by
which it can be accomplished. I am bound to say, however, that I think
every patriotic Australian should vote, if not for prohibition, at least
for the solution which is most dear to myself, and that is the lowering
of the legal standard of alcohol in any drink. We have been shocked and
astonished by the number of young men of decent exterior whom we have
seen staggering down the street, often quite early in the day. The
Biblical test for drunkenness, that it was not yet the third hour, would
not apply to them. I hear that bad as it is in the big towns it is worse
in the small ones, and worst of all in the northern territories and
other waste places where work is particularly needed. It must greatly
decrease the national efficiency. A recent vote upon the question in
Victoria only carried total abstinence in four districts out of about
200, but a two-third majority was needed to do it. On the other hand a
trial of strength in Queensland, generally supposed to be rather a rowdy
State, has shown that the temperance men all combined can out-vote the
others. Therefore it is certain that reform will not be long delayed.
The other curse of the country, which is a real drag upon its progress,
is the eternal horse-racing. It goes on all the year round, though it
has its more virulent bouts, as for example during our visit to this
town when the Derby, the Melbourne Cup, and Oaks succeeded each other.
They call it sport, but I fear that in that case I am no sportsman. I
would as soon call the roulette-table a sport. The whole population is
unsettled and bent upon winning easy money, which dissatisfies them
with the money that has to be worked for. Every shop is closed when the
Cup is run, and you have lift-boys, waiters and maids all backing their
fancies, not with half-crowns but with substantial sums. The danger to
honesty is obvious, and it came under our own notice that it is not
imaginary. Of course we are by no means blameless in England, but it
only attacks a limited class, while here it seems to the stranger to be
almost universal. In fact it is so bad that it is sure to get better,
for I cannot conceive that any sane nation will allow it to continue.
The book-makers, however, are a powerful guild, and will fight tooth and
nail. The Catholic Church, I am sorry to say, uses its considerable
influence to prevent drink reform by legislation, and I fear that it
will not support the anti-gamblers either. I wonder from what hidden
spring, from what ignorant Italian camarilla, this venerable and in some
ways admirable Church gets its secular policy, which must have central
direction, since it is so consistent! When I remember the recent
sequence of world events and the part played by that Church, the attack
upon the innocent Dreyfus, the refusal to support reform in the Congo,
and finally the obvious leaning towards the Central Powers who were
clearly doomed to lose, one would think that it was ruled by a Council
of lunatics. These matters bear no relation to faith or dogma, so that
one wonders that the sane Catholics have not risen in protest. No doubt
the better class laymen are ahead of the clergy in this as in other
religious organisations. I cannot forget how the Duke of Norfolk sent me
a cheque for the Congo Reform Movement at the very time when we could
not get the Catholic Church to line up with the other sects at a Reform
Demonstration at the Albert Hall. In this country also there were many
brave and loyal Catholics who took their own line against Cardinal
Mannix upon the question of conscription, when that Cardinal did all
that one man could do to bring about the defeat of the free nations in
the great war. How he could face an American audience afterwards, or how
such an audience could tolerate him, is hard to understand.
CHAPTER V
More English than the English.--A day in the Bush.--Immigration.--A
case of spirit return.--A Seance.--Geelong.--The lava
plain.--Good-nature of General Ryrie.--Bendigo.--Down a gold
mine.--Prohibition v. Continuance.--Mrs. Knight
MacLellan.--Nerrin.--A wild drive.--Electric shearing.--Rich sheep
stations.--Cockatoo farmers.--Spinnifex and Mallee.--Rabbits.--The
great marsh.
In some ways the Australians are more English than the English. We have
been imperceptibly Americanised, while our brethren over the sea have
kept the old type. The Australian is less ready to show emotion, cooler
in his bearing, more restrained in applause, more devoted to personal
liberty, keener on sport, and quieter in expression (as witness the
absence of scare lines in the papers) than our people are. Indeed, they
remind me more of the Scotch than the English, and Melbourne on a
Sunday, without posts, or Sunday papers, or any amenity whatever, is
like the Edinburgh of my boyhood. Sydney is more advanced. There are
curious anomalies in both towns. Their telephone systems are so bad that
they can only be balanced against each other, for they are in a class by
themselves. One smiles when one recollects that one used to grumble at
the London lines. On the other hand the tramway services in both towns
are wonderful, and so continuous that one never hastens one's step to
catch a tram since another comes within a minute. The Melbourne trams
have open bogey cars in front, which make a drive a real pleasure.
One of our pleasant recollections in the early days of our Melbourne
visit was a day in the bush with Mr. Henry Stead and his wife. My
intense admiration for the moral courage and energy of the father made
it easy for me to form a friendship with his son, who has shown the
family qualities by the able way in which he has founded and conducted
an excellent journal, _Stead's Monthly_. Australia was lucky ever to get
such an immigrant as that, for surely an honest, fearless and
clear-headed publicist is the most valuable man that a young country,
whose future is one long problem play, could import. We spent our day in
the Dandenong Hills, twenty miles from Melbourne, in a little hostel
built in a bush clearing and run by one Lucas, of good English cricket
stock, his father having played for Sussex. On the way we passed Madame
Melba's place at Lilydale, and the wonderful woods with their strange
tree-ferns seemed fit cover for such a singing bird. Coming back in
Stead's light American car we tried a short cut down roads which proved
to be almost impossible. A rather heavier car ahead of us, with two
youths in it, got embedded in the mud, and we all dismounted to heave it
out. There suddenly appeared on the lonely road an enormous coloured
man; he looked like a cross between negro and black fellow. He must
have lived in some hut in the woods, but the way his huge form suddenly
rose beside us was quite surprising. He stood in gloomy majesty
surveying our efforts, and repeating a series of sentences which
reminded one of German exercises. "I have no jack. I had a jack. Some
one has taken my jack. This is called a road. It is not a road. There is
no road." We finally levered out the Australian car, for which, by the
way, neither occupant said a word of thanks, and then gave the black
giant a shilling, which he received as a keeper takes his toll. On
looking back I am not sure that this slough of despond is not carefully
prepared by this negro, who makes a modest income by the tips which he
gets from the unfortunates who get bogged in it. No keeper ever darted
out to a trap quicker than he did when the car got stuck.
Stead agreed with me that the Australians do not take a big enough view
of their own destiny. They--or the labour party, to be more exact--are
inclined to buy the ease of the moment at the cost of the greatness of
their continental future. They fear immigration lest it induce
competition and pull down prices. It is a natural attitude. And yet that
little fringe of people on the edge of that huge island can never
adequately handle it. It is like an enormous machine with a six
horsepower engine to drive it. I have a great sympathy with their desire
to keep the British stock as pure as possible. But the land needs the
men, and somewhere they must be found. I cannot doubt that they would
become loyal subjects of the Empire which had adopted them. I have
wondered sometimes whether in Lower California and the warmer States of
the Union there may not be human material for Australia. Canada has
received no more valuable stock than from the American States, so it
might be that another portion of the Union would find the very stamp of
man that Queensland and the north require. The American likes a big
gamble and a broad life with plenty of elbow-room. Let him bring his
cotton seeds over to semi-tropical Australia and see what he can make of
it there.
To pass suddenly to other-worldly things, which are my mission. People
never seem to realise the plain fact that one positive result must
always outweigh a hundred negative ones. It only needs one single case
of spirit return to be established, and there is no more to be said.
Incidentally, how absurd is the position of those wiseacres who say
"nine-tenths of the phenomena are fraud." Can they not see that if they
grant us one-tenth, they grant us our whole contention?
These remarks are elicited by a case which occurred in 1883 in
Melbourne, and which should have converted the city as surely as if an
angel had walked down Collins Street. Yet nearly forty years later I
find it as stagnant and material as any city I have ever visited. The
facts are these, well substantiated by documentary and official
evidence. Mr. Junor Browne, a well-known citizen, whose daughter
afterwards married Mr. Alfred Deakin, subsequently Premier, had two
sons, Frank and Hugh. Together with a seaman named Murray they went out
into the bay in their yacht the "Iolanthe," and they never returned. The
father was fortunately a Spiritualist and upon the second day of their
absence, after making all normal inquiries, he asked a sensitive, Mr.
George Spriggs, formerly of Cardiff, if he would trace them. Mr. Spriggs
collected some of the young men's belongings, so as to get their
atmosphere, and then he was able by psychometry to give an account of
their movements, the last which he could see of them being that they
were in trouble upon the yacht and that confusion seemed to reign aboard
her. Two days later, as no further news was brought in, the Browne
family held a seance, Mr. Spriggs being the medium. He fell into trance
and the two lads, who had been trained in spiritual knowledge and knew
the possibilities, at once came through. They expressed their contrition
to their mother, who had desired them not to go, and they then gave a
clear account of the capsizing of the yacht, and how they had met their
death, adding that they had found themselves after death in the exact
physical conditions of happiness and brightness which their father's
teaching had led them to expect. They brought with them the seaman
Murray, who also said a few words. Finally Hugh, speaking through the
medium, informed Mr. Browne that Frank's arm and part of his clothing
had been torn off by a fish.
"A shark?" asked Mr. Browne.
"Well, it was not like any shark I have seen."
Mark the sequel. Some weeks later a large shark of a rare deep-sea
species, unknown to the fishermen, and quite unlike the ordinary blue
shark with which the Brownes were familiar, was taken at Frankston,
about twenty-seven miles from Melbourne. Inside it was found the bone of
a human arm, and also a watch, some coins, and other articles which had
belonged to Frank Browne. These facts were all brought out in the papers
at the time, and Mr. Browne put much of it on record in print before the
shark was taken, or any word of the missing men had come by normal
means. The facts are all set forth in a little book by Mr. Browne
himself, called "A Rational Faith." What have fraudulent mediums and all
the other decoys to do with such a case as that, and is it not perfectly
convincing to any man who is not perverse? Personally, I value it not so
much for the evidence of survival, since we have that so complete
already, but for the detailed account given by the young men of their
new conditions, so completely corroborating what so many young officers,
cut off suddenly in the war, have said of their experience. "Mother, if
you could see how happy we are, and the beautiful home we are in, you
would not weep except for joy. I feel so light in my spiritual body and
have no pain, I would not exchange this life for earth life even it were
in my power. Poor spirits without number are waiting anxiously to
communicate with their friends when an opportunity is offered." The
young Brownes had the enormous advantage of the education they had
received from their father, so that they instantly understood and
appreciated the new conditions.
On October 8th we had a seance with Mrs. Hunter, a pleasant middle-aged
woman, with a soft South of England accent. Like so many of our mediums
she had little sign of education in her talk. It does not matter in
spiritual things, though it is a stumbling block to some inquirers.
After all, how much education had the apostles? I have no doubt they
were very vulgar provincial people from the average Roman point of view.
But they shook the world none the less. Most of our educated people have
got their heads so crammed with things that don't matter that they have
no room for the things that do matter. There was no particular success
at our sitting, but I have heard that the medium is capable of better
things.
On October 13th I had my first experience of a small town, for I went to
Geelong and lectured there. It was an attentive and cultured audience,
but the hall was small and the receipts could hardly have covered the
expenses. However, it is the press report and the local discussion which
really matter. I had little time to inspect Geelong, which is a
prosperous port with 35,000 inhabitants. What interested me more was the
huge plain of lava which stretches around it and connects it with
Melbourne. This plain is a good hundred miles across, and as it is of
great depth one can only imagine that there must be monstrous cavities
inside the earth to correspond with the huge amount extruded. Here and
there one sees stunted green cones which are the remains of the
volcanoes which spewed up all this stuff. The lava has disintegrated on
the surface to the extent of making good arable soil, but the harder
bits remain unbroken, so that the surface is covered with rocks, which
are used to build up walls for the fields after the Irish fashion. Every
here and there a peak of granite has remained as an island amid the
lava, to show what was there before the great outflow. Eruptions appear
to be caused by water pouring in through some crack and reaching the
heated inside of the earth where the water is turned to steam, expands,
and so gains the force to spread destruction. If this process went on it
is clear that the whole sea might continue to pour down the crack until
the heat had been all absorbed by the water. I have wondered whether the
lava may not be a clever healing process of nature, by which this soft
plastic material is sent oozing out in every direction with the idea
that it may find the crack and then set hard and stop it up. Wild
speculation no doubt, but the guess must always precede the proof.
The Australians are really a very good-natured people. It runs through
the whole race, high and low. A very exalted person, the Minister of
War, shares our flat in the hotel, his bedroom being imbedded among our
rooms. This is General Sir Granville Ryrie, a famous hero of Palestine,
covered with wounds and medals--a man, too, of great dignity of bearing.
As I was dressing one morning I heard some rather monotonous whistling
and, forgetting the very existence of the General, and taking it for
granted that it was my eldest boy Denis, I put my head out and said,
"Look here, old chap, consider other people's nerves and give up that
rotten habit of whistling before breakfast." Imagine my feelings when
the deep voice of the General answered, "All right, Sir Arthur, I will!"
We laughed together over the incident afterwards, and I told him that he
had furnished me with one more example of Australian good humour for my
notes.
On October 13th I was at the prosperous 50,000 population town of
Bendigo, which every one, except the people on the spot, believes to
have been named after the famous boxer. This must surely be a world
record, for so far as my memory serves, neither a Grecian Olympic
athletic, nor a Roman Gladiator, nor a Byzantine Charioteer, has ever
had a city for a monument. Borrow, who looked upon a good honest
pugilist as the pick of humanity, must have rejoiced in it. Is not
valour the basis of all character, and where shall we find greater
valour than theirs? Alas, that most of them began and ended there! It is
when the sage and the saint build on the basis of the fighter that you
have the highest to which humanity can attain.
I had a full hall at Bendigo, and it was packed, I am told, by real
old-time miners, for, of course, Bendigo is still the centre of the gold
mining industry. Mr. Smythe told me that it was quite a sight to see
those rows of deeply-lined, bearded faces listening so intently to what
I said of that destiny which is theirs as well as mine. I never had a
better audience, and it was their sympathy which helped me through, for
I was very weary that night. But however weary you may be, when you
climb upon the platform to talk about this subject, you may be certain
that you will be less weary when you come off. That is my settled
conviction after a hundred trials.
On the morning after my lecture I found myself half a mile nearer to
dear Old England, for I descended the Unity mine, and they say that the
workings extend to that depth. Perhaps I was not at the lowest level,
but certainly it was a long journey in the cage, and reminded me of my
friend Bang's description of the New York elevator, when he said that
the distance to his suburban villa and his town flat was the same, but
the one was horizontal and the other perpendicular.
It was a weird experience that peep into the profound depths of the
great gold mine. Time was when the quartz veins were on the surface for
the poor adventurer to handle. Now they have been followed underground,
and only great companies and costly machinery can win it. Always it is
the same white quartz vein with the little yellow specks and threads
running through it. We were rattled down in pitch darkness until we came
to a stop at the end of a long passage dimly lit by an occasional
guttering candle. Carrying our own candles, and clad in miner's costume
we crept along with bent heads until we came suddenly out into a huge
circular hall which might have sprung from Dore's imagination. The
place was draped with heavy black shadows, but every here and there was
a dim light. Each light showed where a man was squatting toad-like, a
heap of broken debris in front of him, turning it over, and throwing
aside the pieces with clear traces of gold. These were kept for special
treatment, while the rest of the quartz was passed in ordinary course
through the mill. These scattered heaps represented the broken stuff
after a charge of dynamite had been exploded in the quartz vein. It was
strange indeed to see these squatting figures deep in the bowels of the
earth, their candles shining upon their earnest faces and piercing eyes,
and to reflect that they were striving that the great exchanges of
London and New York might be able to balance with bullion their output
of paper. This dim troglodyte industry was in truth the centre and
mainspring of all industries, without which trade would stop. Many of
the men were from Cornwall, the troll among the nations, where the tools
of the miner are still, as for two thousand years, the natural heritage
of the man. Dr. Stillwell, the geologist of the company, and I had a
long discussion as to where the gold came from, but the only possible
conclusion was that nobody knew. We know now that the old alchemists
were perfectly right and that one metal may change into another. Is it
possible that under some conditions a mineral may change into a metal?
Why should quartz always be the matrix? Some geological Darwin will come
along some day and we shall get a great awakening, for at present we
are only disguising our own ignorance in this department of knowledge. I
had always understood that quartz was one of the old igneous primeval
rocks, and yet here I saw it in thin bands, sandwiched in between clays
and slates and other water-borne deposits. The books and the strata
don't agree.
These smaller towns, like the Metropolis itself, are convulsed with the
great controversy between Prohibition and Continuance, no reasonable
compromise between the two being suggested. Every wall displays posters,
on one side those very prosperous-looking children who demand that some
restraint be placed upon their daddy, and on the other hair-raising
statements as to the financial results of restricting the publicans. To
the great disgust of every decent man they have run the Prince into it,
and some remark of his after his return to England has been used by the
liquor party. It is dangerous for royalty to be jocose in these days,
but this was a particularly cruel example of the exploitation of a
harmless little joke. If others felt as I did I expect it cost the
liquor interest many a vote.
We had another seance, this time with Mrs. Knight MacLellan, after my
return from Bendigo. She is a lady who has grown grey in the service of
the cult, and who made a name in London when she was still a child by
her mediumistic powers. We had nothing of an evidential character that
evening save that one lady who had recently lost her son had his
description and an apposite message given. It was the first of several
tests which we were able to give this lady, and before we left Melbourne
she assured us that she was a changed woman and her sorrow for ever
gone.
On October 18th began a very delightful experience, for my wife and I,
leaving our party safe in Melbourne, travelled up country to be the
guests of the Hon. Agar Wynne and his charming wife at their station of
Nerrin-Nerrin in Western Victoria. It is about 140 miles from Melbourne,
and as the trains are very slow, the journey was not a pleasant one. But
that was soon compensated for in the warmth of the welcome which awaited
us. Mr. Agar Wynne was Postmaster-General of the Federal Government, and
author of several improvements, one of which, the power of sending long
letter-telegrams at low rates during certain hours was a triumph of
common sense. For a shilling one could send quite a long communication
to the other end of the Continent, but it must go through at the time
when the telegraph clerk had nothing else to do.
It was interesting to us to find ourselves upon an old-established
station, typical of the real life of Australia, for cities are much the
same the world over. Nerrin had been a sheep station for eighty years,
but the comfortable verandahed bungalow house, with every convenience
within it, was comparatively modern. What charmed us most, apart from
the kindness of our hosts, was a huge marsh or lagoon which extended for
many miles immediately behind the house, and which was a bird
sanctuary, so that it was crowded with ibises, wild black swans, geese,
ducks, herons and all sorts of fowl. We crept out of our bedroom in the
dead of the night and stood under the cloud-swept moon listening to the
chorus of screams, hoots, croaks and whistles coming out of the vast
expanse of reeds. It would make a most wonderful hunting ground for a
naturalist who was content to observe and not to slay. The great morass
of Nerrin will ever stand out in our memories.
Next day we were driven round the borders of this wonderful marsh, Mr.
Wynne, after the Australian fashion, taking no note of roads, and going
right across country with alarming results to anyone not used to it.
Finally, the swaying and rolling became so terrific that he was himself
thrown off the box seat and fell down between the buggy and the front
wheel, narrowly escaping a very serious accident. He was able to show us
the nests and eggs which filled the reed-beds, and even offered to drive
us out into the morass to inspect them, a proposal which was rejected by
the unanimous vote of a full buggy. I never knew an answer more
decidedly in the negative. As we drove home we passed a great gum tree,
and half-way up the trunk was a deep incision where the bark had been
stripped in an oval shape some four foot by two. It was where some
savage in days of old had cut his shield. Such a mark outside a modern
house with every amenity of cultured life is an object lesson of how two
systems have over-lapped, and how short a time it is since this great
continent was washed by a receding wave, ere the great Anglo-Saxon tide
came creeping forward.
Apart from the constant charm of the wild life of the marsh there did
not seem to be much for the naturalist around Nerrin. Opossums bounded
upon the roof at night and snakes were not uncommon. A dangerous
tiger-snake was killed on the day of our arrival. I was amazed also at
the size of the Australian eels. A returned soldier had taken up fishing
as a trade, renting a water for a certain time and putting the contents,
so far as he could realise them, upon the market. It struck me that
after this wily digger had passed that way there would not be much for
the sportsman who followed him. But the eels were enormous. He took a
dozen at a time from his cunning eel-pots, and not one under six pounds.
I should have said that they were certainly congers had I seen them in
England.
I wonder whether all this part of the country has not been swept by a
tidal wave at some not very remote period. It is a low coastline with
this great lava plain as a hinterland, and I can see nothing to prevent
a big wave even now from sweeping the civilisation of Victoria off the
planet, should there be any really great disturbance under the Pacific.
At any rate, it is my impression that it has actually occurred once
already, for I cannot otherwise understand the existence of great
shallow lakes of salt water in these inland parts. Are they not the
pools left behind by that terrible tide? There are great banks of sand,
too, here and there on the top of the lava which I can in no way
account for unless they were swept here in some tremendous world-shaking
catastrophe which took the beach from St. Kilda and threw it up at
Nerrin. God save Australia from such a night as that must have been if
my reading of the signs be correct.
Illustration: A TYPICAL AUSTRALIAN BACK-COUNTRY SCENE. By H. J.
Johnstone, a great painter who died unknown. (Painting in Adelaide
National Gallery.)
One of the sights of Nerrin is the shearing of the sheep by electric
machinery. These sheep are merinos, which have been bred as
wool-producers to such an extent that they can hardly see, and the wool
grows thick right down to their hoofs. The large stately creature is a
poor little shadow when his wonderful fleece has been taken from him.
The electric clips with which the operation is performed, are, I am
told, the invention of a brother of Garnet Wolseley, who worked away at
the idea, earning the name of being a half-crazy crank, until at last
the invention materialised and did away with the whole slow and clumsy
process of the hand-shearer. It is not, however, a pleasant process to
watch even for a man, far less a sensitive woman, for the poor creatures
get cut about a good deal in the process. The shearer seizes a sheep,
fixes him head up between his knees, and then plunges the swiftly-moving
clippers into the thick wool which covers the stomach. With wonderful
speed he runs it along and the creature is turned out of its covering,
and left as bare as a turkey in a poulterer's window, but, alas, its
white and tender skin is too often gashed and ripped with vivid lines of
crimson by the haste and clumsiness of the shearer. It was worse, they
say, in the days of the hand-shearer. I am bound to say, however, that
the creature makes no fuss about it, remains perfectly still, and does
not appear to suffer any pain. Nature is often kinder than we know, even
to her most humble children, and some soothing and healing process seems
to be at work.
The shearers appear to be a rough set of men, and spend their whole time
moving in gangs from station to station, beginning up in the far north
and winding up on the plains of South Australia. They are complete
masters of the situation, having a powerful union at their back. They
not only demand and receive some two pounds a day in wages, but they
work or not by vote, the majority being able to grant a complete
holiday. It is impossible to clip a wet sheep, so that after rain there
is an interval of forced idleness, which may be prolonged by the vote of
the men. They work very rapidly, however, when they are actually at it,
and the man who tallies most fleeces, called "the ringer," receives a
substantial bonus. When the great shed is in full activity it is a
splendid sight with the row of stooping figures, each embracing his
sheep, the buzz of the shears, the rush of the messengers who carry the
clip to the table, the swift movements of the sorters who separate the
perfect from the imperfect wool, and the levering and straining of the
packers who compress it all into square bundles as hard as iron with 240
pounds in each. With fine wool at the present price of ninety-six pence
a pound it is clear that each of these cubes stands for nearly a hundred
pounds.
They are rich men these sheep owners--and I am speaking here of my
general inquiry and not at all of Nerrin. On a rough average, with many
local exceptions, one may say that an estate bears one sheep to an acre,
and that the sheep may show a clear profit of one pound in the year.
Thus, after the first initial expense is passed, and when the flock has
reached its full, one may easily make an assessment of the owner's
income. Estates of 10,000 acres are common, and they run up to 50,000
and 60,000 acres. They can be run so cheaply that the greater part of
income is clear profit, for when the land is barb-wired into great
enclosures no shepherds are needed, and only a boundary rider or two to
see that all is in order. These, with a few hands at lambing time, and
two or three odd-job men at the central station, make up the whole
staff. It is certainly the short cut to a fortune if one can only get
the plant running.
Can a man with a moderate capital get a share of these good things?
Certainly he can if he have grit and a reasonable share of that luck
which must always be a factor in Nature's processes. Droughts, floods,
cyclones, etc., are like the zero at Monte Carlo, which always may turn
up to defeat the struggling gamester. I followed several cases where
small men had managed to make good. It is reckoned that the man who gets
a holding of from 300 to 500 acres is able on an average in three years
to pay off all his initial expenses and to have laid the foundations of
a career which may lead to fortune. One case was a London baker who knew
nothing of the work. He had 300 acres and had laid it out in wheat,
cows, sheep and mixed farming. He worked from morning to night, his wife
was up at four, and his child of ten was picking up stones behind the
furrow. But he was already making his L500 a year. The personal equation
was everything. One demobilised soldier was doing well. Another had come
to smash. Very often a deal is made between the small man and the large
holder, by which the latter lets the former a corner of his estate,
taking a share, say one-third, of his profits as rent. That is a plan
which suits everyone, and the landlord can gradually be bought out by
the "cockatoo farmer," as he is styled.
There is a great wool-clip this year, and prices in London are at record
figures, so that Australia, which only retains 17 per cent. of her own
wool, should have a very large sum to her credit. But she needs it. When
one considers that the debt of this small community is heavier now than
that of Great Britain before the war, one wonders how she can ever win
through. But how can anyone win through? I don't think we have fairly
realised the financial problem yet, and I believe that within a very few
years there will be an International Council which will be compelled to
adopt some such scheme as the one put forward by my friend, Mr.
Stilwell, under the name of "The Great Plan." This excellent idea was
that every nation should reduce its warlike expenditure to an absolute
minimum, that the difference between this minimum and the 1914 pre-war
standard should be paid every year to a central fund, and that
international bonds be now drawn upon the security of that fund,
anticipating not its present amount but what it will represent in fifty
years' time. It is, in fact, making the future help the present, exactly
as an estate which has some sudden great call upon it might reasonably
anticipate or mortgage its own development. I believe that the salvation
of the world may depend upon some such plan, and that the Council of the
League of Nations is the agency by which it could be made operative.
Australia has had two plants which have been a perfect curse to her as
covering the land and offering every impediment to agriculture. They are
the Spinnifex in the West and the Mallee scrub in the East. The latter
was considered a hopeless proposition, and the only good which could be
extracted from it was that the root made an ideal fire, smouldering long
and retaining heat. Suddenly, however, a genius named Lascelles
discovered that this hopeless Mallee land was simply unrivalled for
wheat, and his schemes have now brought seven million acres under the
plough. This could hardly have
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