章节正文
The Engiishmen wanted to know why.
"You haven't priests in robes. You don't chant and worship
crosses and pictures, and quarrel among yourselves."
"We worship the same God as you do," said the Englishman.
"Then why do we fight?"
"That's what we want to know."
"Why do you call yourselves Christians? And take part against
us? All who worship the One God are brothers."
"They ought to be," said the Englishman, and thought. He was
struck by what seemed to him an amazingly novel idea.
"If it weren't for religions all men would serve God together,"
he said. "And then there would be no wars--only now and then
perhaps just a little honest fighting...."
"And see here," said the Angel. "Here close behind this
frightful battle, where the German phalanx of guns pounds its way
through the Russian hosts. Here is a young German talking to two
wounded Russian prisoners, who have stopped to rest by the
roadside. He is a German of East Prussia; he knows and thinks a
little Russian. And they too are saying, all three of them, that
the war is not God's will, but the confusion of mankind.
"Here," he said, and the shadow of his hand hovered over the
burning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion
watched the straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the
glow of the late afternoon, while he talked to an English
painter, his friend, of the blind intolerance of race and caste
and custom in India.
"Or here."
The Angel pointed to a group of people who had gathered upon a
little beach at the head of a Norwegian fiord. There were three
lads, an old man and two women, and they stood about the body of
a drowned German sailor which had been washed up that day. For a
time they had talked in whispers, but now suddenly the old man
spoke aloud.
"This is the fourth that has come ashore," he said. "Poor
drowned souls! Because men will not serve God."
"But folks go to church and pray enough," said one of the
women.
"They do not serve God," said the old man. "They just pray to
him as one nods to a beggar. They do not serve God who is their
King. They set up their false kings and emperors, and so all
Europe is covered with dead, and the seas wash up these dead to
us. Why does the world suffer these things? Why did we
Norwegians, who are a free-spirited people, permit the Germans
and the Swedes and the English to set up a king over us? Because
we lack faith. Kings mean secret counsels, and secret counsels
bring war. Sooner or later war will come to us also if we give
the soul of our nation in trust to a king.... But things will not
always be thus with men. God will not suffer them for ever. A day
comes, and it is no distant day, when God himself will rule the
earth, and when men will do, not what the king wishes nor what is
expedient nor what is customary, but what is manifestly
right."....
"But men are saying that now in a thousand places," said the
Angel. "Here is something that goes a little beyond that."
His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders
riding down to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by
side and talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with
them. He had put sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his
life was fairly forfeit, and he was not to be killed. "We want no
more hate in South Africa," they agreed. "Dutch and English and
German must live here now side by side. Men cannot always be
killing."
"And see his thoughts," said the Angel.
The German's mind was one amazement. He had been sure of being
shot, he had meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a
relentless fighter to the last; and these men who might have shot
him like a man were going to spare him like a dog. His mind was a
tumbled muddle of old and new ideas. He had been brought up in an
atmosphere of the foulest and fiercest militarism; he had been
trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness and so forth; war was war
and the bitterer the better, frightfulness was your way to
victory over every enemy. But these people had found a better
way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago
they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform
and rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because
he was for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his
arms and looking level at the executioners' rifles. There were to
be no executioners' rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and
English, why shouldn't it be so presently with French and
Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English,
Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star of mankind,
the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker was
left to poison the wells of goodwill?
His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas. "Austere,"
he whispered. "The ennobling tests of war." A trooner rode up
alongside, and offered him a drink of water
"Just a mouthful," he said apologetically. "We've had to go
rather short."...
"There's another brain busy here with the same idea," the Angel
interrupted. And the bishop found himself looking into the
bedroom of a young German attache in Washington, sleepless in the
small hours.
"Ach!" cried the young man, and sat up in bed and ran his hands
through his fair hair.
He had been working late upon this detestable business of the
Lusitania; the news of her sinking had come to hand two days
before, and all America was aflame with it. It might mean war.
His task had been to pour out explanations and justifications to
the press; to show that it was an act of necessity, to pretend a
conviction that the great ship was loaded with munitions, to
fight down the hostility and anger that blazed across a
continent. He had worked to his limit. He had taken cup after cup
of coffee, and had come to bed worked out not two hours ago. Now
here he was awake after a nightmare of drowning women and
children, trying to comfort his soul by recalling his own
arguments. Never once since the war began had he doubted the
rightness of the German cause. It seemed only a proof of his
nervous exhaustion that he could doubt it now. Germany was the
best organized, most cultivated, scientific and liberal nation
the earth had ever seen, it was for the good of mankind that she
should be the dominant power in the world; his patriotism had had
the passion of a mission. The English were indolent, the French
decadent, the Russians barbaric, the Americans basely democratic;
the rest of the world was the "White man's Burthen"; the clear
destiny of mankind was subservience to the good Prussian eagle.
Nevertheless--those wet draggled bodies that swirled down in
the eddies of the sinking Titan--Ach! He wished it could have
been otherwise. He nursed his knees and prayed that there need
not be much more of these things before the spirit of the enemy
was broken and the great Peace of Germany came upon the world.
And suddenly he stopped short in his prayer.
Suddenly out of the nothingness and darkness about him came the
conviction that God did not listen to his prayers....
Was there any other way?
It was the most awful doubt he had ever had, for it smote at
the training of all his life. "Could it be possible that after
all our old German God is not the proper style and title of the
true God? Is our old German God perhaps only the last of a long
succession of bloodstained tribal effigies--and not God at
all?"
For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts
that gathered in the young attache's mind. Until suddenly he
broke into a quotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe,
for "Light. More Light!"...
"Leave him at that," said the Angel. "I want you to hear these
two young women."
The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at
the mouth of the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an
overnight Zeppelin raid. People had got up hours before their
usual time in order to look at the wrecked houses before they
went up to their work in town. Everybody seemed abroad. Two
nurses, not very well trained as nurses go nor very well-educated
women, were snatching a little sea air upon the front after an
eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep. They were
talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nasty thing
"up there," and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They had
both hated it.
"There didn't ought to be such things," said one.
"They don't seem needed," said her companion.
"Men won't always go on like this--making wars and all such
wickedness."
"It's 'ow to stop them?"
"Science is going to stop them."
"Science?"
"Yes, science. My young brother--oh, he's a clever one--he
says such things! He says that it's science that they won't
always go on like this. There's more sense coming into the world
and more--my young brother says so. Says it stands to reason;
it's Evolution. It's science that men are all brothers; you can
prove it. It's science that there oughtn't to be war. Science is
ending war now by making it horrible like this, and making it so
that no one is safe. Showing it up. Only when nobody is safe will
everybody want to set up peace, he says. He says it's proved
there could easily be peace all over the world now if it wasn't
for flags and kings and capitalists and priests. They still
manage to keep safe and out of it. He says the world ought to be
just one state. The World State, he says it ought to be."
("Under God," said the bishop, "under God.")
"He says science ought to be King of the whole world."
"Call it Science if you will," said the bishop. "God is
wisdom."
"Out of the mouths of babes and elementary science students,"
said the Angel. "The very children in the board schools are
turning against this narrowness and nonsense and mischief of
nations and creeds and kings. You see it at a thousand points, at
ten thousand points, look, the world is all flashing and
flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it is aquiver with the
light that is coming to mankind. It is on the verge of blazing
even now."
"Into a light."
"Into the one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here!
This brave little French priest in a helmet of steel who is
daring to think for the first time in his life; this
gentle-mannered emir from Morocco looking at the grave-diggers on
the battlefield; this mother who has lost her son....
"You see they all turn in one direction, although none of them
seem to dream yet that they are all turning in the same
direction. They turn, every one, to the rule of righteousness,
which is the rule of God. They turn to that communism of effort
in the world which alone permits men to serve God in state and
city and their economic lives.... They are all coming to the
verge of the same salvation, the salvation of one human
brotherhood under the rule of one Righteousness, one Divine
will.... Is that the salvation your church offers?"
(8)
"And now that we have seen how religion grows and spreads in
men's hearts, now that the fields are white with harvest, I want
you to look also and see what the teachers of religion are
doing," said the Angel.
He smiled. His presence became more definite, and the earthly
globe about them and the sun and the stars grew less distinct and
"You haven't priests in robes. You don't chant and worship
crosses and pictures, and quarrel among yourselves."
"We worship the same God as you do," said the Englishman.
"Then why do we fight?"
"That's what we want to know."
"Why do you call yourselves Christians? And take part against
us? All who worship the One God are brothers."
"They ought to be," said the Englishman, and thought. He was
struck by what seemed to him an amazingly novel idea.
"If it weren't for religions all men would serve God together,"
he said. "And then there would be no wars--only now and then
perhaps just a little honest fighting...."
"And see here," said the Angel. "Here close behind this
frightful battle, where the German phalanx of guns pounds its way
through the Russian hosts. Here is a young German talking to two
wounded Russian prisoners, who have stopped to rest by the
roadside. He is a German of East Prussia; he knows and thinks a
little Russian. And they too are saying, all three of them, that
the war is not God's will, but the confusion of mankind.
"Here," he said, and the shadow of his hand hovered over the
burning-ghats of Benares, where a Brahmin of the new persuasion
watched the straight spires of funereal smoke ascend into the
glow of the late afternoon, while he talked to an English
painter, his friend, of the blind intolerance of race and caste
and custom in India.
"Or here."
The Angel pointed to a group of people who had gathered upon a
little beach at the head of a Norwegian fiord. There were three
lads, an old man and two women, and they stood about the body of
a drowned German sailor which had been washed up that day. For a
time they had talked in whispers, but now suddenly the old man
spoke aloud.
"This is the fourth that has come ashore," he said. "Poor
drowned souls! Because men will not serve God."
"But folks go to church and pray enough," said one of the
women.
"They do not serve God," said the old man. "They just pray to
him as one nods to a beggar. They do not serve God who is their
King. They set up their false kings and emperors, and so all
Europe is covered with dead, and the seas wash up these dead to
us. Why does the world suffer these things? Why did we
Norwegians, who are a free-spirited people, permit the Germans
and the Swedes and the English to set up a king over us? Because
we lack faith. Kings mean secret counsels, and secret counsels
bring war. Sooner or later war will come to us also if we give
the soul of our nation in trust to a king.... But things will not
always be thus with men. God will not suffer them for ever. A day
comes, and it is no distant day, when God himself will rule the
earth, and when men will do, not what the king wishes nor what is
expedient nor what is customary, but what is manifestly
right."....
"But men are saying that now in a thousand places," said the
Angel. "Here is something that goes a little beyond that."
His pointing hand went southward until they saw the Africanders
riding down to Windhuk. Two men, Boer farmers both, rode side by
side and talked of the German officer they brought prisoner with
them. He had put sheep-dip in the wells of drinking-water; his
life was fairly forfeit, and he was not to be killed. "We want no
more hate in South Africa," they agreed. "Dutch and English and
German must live here now side by side. Men cannot always be
killing."
"And see his thoughts," said the Angel.
The German's mind was one amazement. He had been sure of being
shot, he had meant to make a good end, fierce and scornful, a
relentless fighter to the last; and these men who might have shot
him like a man were going to spare him like a dog. His mind was a
tumbled muddle of old and new ideas. He had been brought up in an
atmosphere of the foulest and fiercest militarism; he had been
trained to relentlessness, ruthlessness and so forth; war was war
and the bitterer the better, frightfulness was your way to
victory over every enemy. But these people had found a better
way. Here were Dutch and English side by side; sixteen years ago
they had been at war together and now they wore the same uniform
and rode together, and laughed at him for a queer fellow because
he was for spitting at them and defying them, and folding his
arms and looking level at the executioners' rifles. There were to
be no executioners' rifles.... If it was so with Dutch and
English, why shouldn't it be so presently with French and
Germans? Why someday shouldn't French, German, Dutch and English,
Russian and Pole, ride together under this new star of mankind,
the Southern Cross, to catch whatever last mischief-maker was
left to poison the wells of goodwill?
His mind resisted and struggled against these ideas. "Austere,"
he whispered. "The ennobling tests of war." A trooner rode up
alongside, and offered him a drink of water
"Just a mouthful," he said apologetically. "We've had to go
rather short."...
"There's another brain busy here with the same idea," the Angel
interrupted. And the bishop found himself looking into the
bedroom of a young German attache in Washington, sleepless in the
small hours.
"Ach!" cried the young man, and sat up in bed and ran his hands
through his fair hair.
He had been working late upon this detestable business of the
Lusitania; the news of her sinking had come to hand two days
before, and all America was aflame with it. It might mean war.
His task had been to pour out explanations and justifications to
the press; to show that it was an act of necessity, to pretend a
conviction that the great ship was loaded with munitions, to
fight down the hostility and anger that blazed across a
continent. He had worked to his limit. He had taken cup after cup
of coffee, and had come to bed worked out not two hours ago. Now
here he was awake after a nightmare of drowning women and
children, trying to comfort his soul by recalling his own
arguments. Never once since the war began had he doubted the
rightness of the German cause. It seemed only a proof of his
nervous exhaustion that he could doubt it now. Germany was the
best organized, most cultivated, scientific and liberal nation
the earth had ever seen, it was for the good of mankind that she
should be the dominant power in the world; his patriotism had had
the passion of a mission. The English were indolent, the French
decadent, the Russians barbaric, the Americans basely democratic;
the rest of the world was the "White man's Burthen"; the clear
destiny of mankind was subservience to the good Prussian eagle.
Nevertheless--those wet draggled bodies that swirled down in
the eddies of the sinking Titan--Ach! He wished it could have
been otherwise. He nursed his knees and prayed that there need
not be much more of these things before the spirit of the enemy
was broken and the great Peace of Germany came upon the world.
And suddenly he stopped short in his prayer.
Suddenly out of the nothingness and darkness about him came the
conviction that God did not listen to his prayers....
Was there any other way?
It was the most awful doubt he had ever had, for it smote at
the training of all his life. "Could it be possible that after
all our old German God is not the proper style and title of the
true God? Is our old German God perhaps only the last of a long
succession of bloodstained tribal effigies--and not God at
all?"
For a long time it seemed that the bishop watched the thoughts
that gathered in the young attache's mind. Until suddenly he
broke into a quotation, into that last cry of the dying Goethe,
for "Light. More Light!"...
"Leave him at that," said the Angel. "I want you to hear these
two young women."
The hand came back to England and pointed to where Southend at
the mouth of the Thames was all agog with the excitement of an
overnight Zeppelin raid. People had got up hours before their
usual time in order to look at the wrecked houses before they
went up to their work in town. Everybody seemed abroad. Two
nurses, not very well trained as nurses go nor very well-educated
women, were snatching a little sea air upon the front after an
eventful night. They were too excited still to sleep. They were
talking of the horror of the moment when they saw the nasty thing
"up there," and felt helpless as it dropped its bombs. They had
both hated it.
"There didn't ought to be such things," said one.
"They don't seem needed," said her companion.
"Men won't always go on like this--making wars and all such
wickedness."
"It's 'ow to stop them?"
"Science is going to stop them."
"Science?"
"Yes, science. My young brother--oh, he's a clever one--he
says such things! He says that it's science that they won't
always go on like this. There's more sense coming into the world
and more--my young brother says so. Says it stands to reason;
it's Evolution. It's science that men are all brothers; you can
prove it. It's science that there oughtn't to be war. Science is
ending war now by making it horrible like this, and making it so
that no one is safe. Showing it up. Only when nobody is safe will
everybody want to set up peace, he says. He says it's proved
there could easily be peace all over the world now if it wasn't
for flags and kings and capitalists and priests. They still
manage to keep safe and out of it. He says the world ought to be
just one state. The World State, he says it ought to be."
("Under God," said the bishop, "under God.")
"He says science ought to be King of the whole world."
"Call it Science if you will," said the bishop. "God is
wisdom."
"Out of the mouths of babes and elementary science students,"
said the Angel. "The very children in the board schools are
turning against this narrowness and nonsense and mischief of
nations and creeds and kings. You see it at a thousand points, at
ten thousand points, look, the world is all flashing and
flickering; it is like a spinthariscope; it is aquiver with the
light that is coming to mankind. It is on the verge of blazing
even now."
"Into a light."
"Into the one Kingdom of God. See here! See here! And here!
This brave little French priest in a helmet of steel who is
daring to think for the first time in his life; this
gentle-mannered emir from Morocco looking at the grave-diggers on
the battlefield; this mother who has lost her son....
"You see they all turn in one direction, although none of them
seem to dream yet that they are all turning in the same
direction. They turn, every one, to the rule of righteousness,
which is the rule of God. They turn to that communism of effort
in the world which alone permits men to serve God in state and
city and their economic lives.... They are all coming to the
verge of the same salvation, the salvation of one human
brotherhood under the rule of one Righteousness, one Divine
will.... Is that the salvation your church offers?"
(8)
"And now that we have seen how religion grows and spreads in
men's hearts, now that the fields are white with harvest, I want
you to look also and see what the teachers of religion are
doing," said the Angel.
He smiled. His presence became more definite, and the earthly
globe about them and the sun and the stars grew less distinct and
- worship [´wə:ʃip]
n.&v.崇拜；敬仰 (初中英语单词) - confusion [kən´fju:ʒən] n.混乱(状态)；骚乱 (初中英语单词)
- ascend [ə´send] v.登；上升；追溯 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- beggar [´begə] n.乞丐 (初中英语单词)
- amazement [ə´meizmənt] n.惊愕；惊奇 (初中英语单词)
- fierce [fiəs] a.残忍的；强烈的 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- poison [´pɔizən] n.毒物 v.毒害 a.有毒的 (初中英语单词)
- bishop [´biʃəp] n.主教 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- pretend [pri´tend] v.假装；借口；妄求 (初中英语单词)
- scientific [,saiən´tifik] a.科学(上)的 (初中英语单词)
- liberal [´libərəl] a.大方的 n.开明的人 (初中英语单词)
- passion [´pæʃən] n.激情；激怒；恋爱 (初中英语单词)
- mission [´miʃən] n.代表团；使馆vt.派遣 (初中英语单词)
- otherwise [´ʌðəwaiz] ad.另外 conj.否则 (初中英语单词)
- excitement [ik´saitmənt] n.兴奋；骚动；煽动 (初中英语单词)
- abroad [ə´brɔ:d] ad.海外；到处；广泛 (初中英语单词)
- horror [´hɔrə] n.恐怖；战栗 (初中英语单词)
- helpless [´helpləs] a.无助的，无依靠的 (初中英语单词)
- horrible [´hɔrəbəl] a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词)
- mischief [´mistʃif] n.伤害；故障；调皮 (初中英语单词)
- priest [pri:st] n.教士；牧师；神父 (初中英语单词)
- helmet [´helmit] n.钢盔 (初中英语单词)
- harvest [´hɑ:vist] n.&v.收获；收割 (初中英语单词)
- definite [´definit] a.确定的，明确的 (初中英语单词)
- distinct [di´stiŋkt] a.清楚的；独特的 (初中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- customary [´kʌstəməri] a.通常的；惯例的 (高中英语单词)
- southward [´sauθwəd] a.&n.向南方向(的) (高中英语单词)
- fighter [´faitə] n.战士；战斗机 (高中英语单词)
- hostility [hɔ´stiliti] n.敌意 战斗(争) (高中英语单词)
- quotation [kwəu´teiʃən] n.引用；引文；语录 (高中英语单词)
- nonsense [´nɔnsəns] n.胡说 int.胡说!废话 (高中英语单词)
- communism [´kɔmjunizəm] n.共产主义 (高中英语单词)
- salvation [sæl´veiʃən] n.救助；拯救 (高中英语单词)
- norwegian [nɔ:´wi:dʒən] a.&n.挪威人(语)(的) (英语四级单词)
- forfeit [´fɔ:fit] n.罚金 a.丧失了的 (英语四级单词)
- nightmare [´naitmeə] n.梦魇；恶梦 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- exhaustion [ig´zɔ:stʃən] n.用完；精疲力尽 (英语四级单词)
- dominant [´dɔminənt] a.统治的；占优势的 (英语四级单词)
- evolution [,i:və´lu:ʃən] n.进化；发展；发育 (英语四级单词)
- elementary [,eli´mentəri] a.基本的；初级的 (英语四级单词)
- amazingly [ə´meiziŋli] ad.惊人地；惊奇地 (英语六级单词)
- scornful [´skɔ:nful] a.轻蔑的，藐视的 (英语六级单词)
- sleepless [´sli:pləs] a.失眠的；寂静的 (英语六级单词)
- cultivated [´kʌltiveitid] a.在耕作的；有教养的 (英语六级单词)
- thames [temz] n.泰晤士河 (英语六级单词)
- battlefield [´bætlfi:ld] n.战场 (英语六级单词)
- righteousness [raitʃəsnis] n.正直；正当；正义 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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