Part 2. The Awakening - Chapter 18. The Peace

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_ PART II. THE AWAKENING
CHAPTER XVIII. THE PEACE

Fair is our lot--O goodly is our heritage!
(Humble ye, my people, and be fearful in your mirth!)
For the Lord our God Most High
He hath made the deep as dry,
He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth.

-- RUDYARD KIPLING.

At a very early stage of the war with Germany, before the end of the first month, in fact, it became evident that, our own soil having once been freed, this was to be a maritime and not a land war. A little later on it was made quite clear that there would be no need to draw further upon our huge reserve force of Citizen defenders. It was then that John Crondall concentrated his efforts upon giving permanent national effect to our work of the previous year.

Fortunately, the Government recognized that it would be an act of criminal wastefulness and extravagance to allow so splendid a defensive organization as ours to lapse because its immediate purpose had been served. Accordingly, special legislation, which was to have been postponed for another session, was now hurried forward; and long before the German Revolution and the conclusion of the Peace, England was secure in the possession of that permanent organization of home defence which, humanly speaking, has made these shores positively impregnable, by converting Great Britain, the metropolis and centre of the Empire, into a nation in arms. There is no need for me to enlarge now upon the other benefits, the mental, moral, and physical advancement which this legislation has given us. Our doctors and schoolmasters and clergymen have given us full and ample testimony upon these points.

Prior to the passing of the National Defence Act, which guaranteed military training as a part of the education of every healthy male subject, the great majority of The Citizens had returned to private life. Yet, with the exception of some few hundreds of special cases, every one of The Citizens remained members of the organization. And it was that fact which provided incessant employment, not alone for John Crondall and myself, and our headquarters staff, during the progress of the war, but for our committees throughout the country.

Before reentering private life, every Citizen was personally interviewed and given the opportunity of being resworn under conditions of permanent membership. The new conditions applied only to home defence, but they included specific adherence to our propaganda for the maintenance of universal military training. They included also a definite undertaking upon the part of every Citizen to further our ends to the utmost of his ability, and, irrespective of State legislation, to secure military training for his own sons, and to abide by The Citizens' Executive in whatever steps it should take toward linking up our organization, under Government supervision, with the regular national defence force of the country.

It should be easy to understand that this process involved a great deal of work. But it was work that was triumphantly rewarded, for, upon the passage into law of the Imperial Defence Act, which superseded the National Defence Act, after the peace had been signed, we were able to present the Government with a nucleus consisting of a compact working organization of more than three million British Citizens. These Citizens were men who had undergone training and seen active service. They were sworn supporters of universal military training, and of a minimum of military service as a qualification for the suffrage.

All political writers have agreed that the knowledge of what was taking place in England, with regard to our organization, greatly strengthened the hands of the Imperial Parliament in its difficult task of framing and placing upon the Statute Book those two great measures which have remained the basis of politics and defence throughout the Empire: the Imperial Defence Act and the Imperial Parliamentary Representation Act. At the time there were not wanting critics who held that a short reign of peace would bring opposition to legislation born of a state of war; but if I remember rightly we heard the last of that particular order of criticism within twelve months of the peace, it being realized once and for all then, that the maintenance of an adequate defence system was to be regarded, not so much as a preparation for possible war, as the one and only means of preventing war.

Constance Grey worked steadily throughout the progress of the war, and it was owing almost entirely to her efforts that the Volunteer Nursing Corps, which she had organized under Citizens' auspices, was placed on a permanent footing. Admirable though this organization was as a nursing corps, its actual value to the nation went far beyond the limits of its nominal scope. By her tireless activity, and as a result of her own personal enthusiasm, Constance was able before the end of the war to establish branches of her corps in every part of the country, with a committee and headquarters in all large centres. Meetings were held regularly at all these headquarters, every one of which was visited in turn by Constance herself; and in the end The Citizens' Nursing Corps, as this great league of Englishwomen was always called, became a very potent force, an inexhaustible spring of what the Prime Minister called "the domestic patriotism of Britain."

In the earliest stage of this work of hers Constance had to cope with a certain inertia on the part of her supporters, due to the fact that no active service offered to maintain their enthusiasm. But Constance's watchword was, "Win mothers and sisters, and the fathers and brothers cannot fail you." It was in that belief that she acted, and before long the Nursing Corps might with equal justice have been called The Women Citizens. It became a great league of domestic patriots, and it would not be easy to overstate the value of its influence upon the rising generation of our race.

War has always been associated in men's minds with distress and want, and that with some reason. But after the first few months of the Anglo-German war it became more and more clearly apparent that this war, combined with the outworking of the first legislation of the Imperial Parliament, was to produce the greatest commercial revival, the greatest access of working prosperity, Britain had ever known. Two main causes were at work here; and the first of them, undoubtedly, was the protection afforded to our industries by Imperial preference. The time for tinkering with half-measures had gone by, and, accordingly, the fiscal belt with which the first really Imperial Parliament girdled the Empire was made broad and strong. The effect of its application was gradual, but unmistakable; its benefits grew daily more apparent as the end of the war approached.

Factories and mills which had long lain idle in the North of England were hastily refitted, and they added every day to the muster-roll of hands employed. Our shipping increased by leaps and bounds, but even then barely kept pace with the increased rate of production. The price of the quartern loaf rose to sixpence, in place of fivepence; but the wages of labourers on the land rose by nearly 25 per cent., and the demand exceeded the supply. Thousands of acres of unprofitable grass-land and of quite idle land disappeared under the plough to make way for corn-fields. Wages rose in all classes of work; but that was not of itself the most important advance. The momentous change was in the demand for labour of every kind. The statistics prove that while wages in all trades showed an average increase of 19-1/2 per cent., unemployment fell during the year of the Peace to a lower level than it had ever reached since records were instituted.

In that year the cost of living among working people was 5-1/2 per cent. higher than it had been five years previously. The total working earnings for the year were 38-1/2 per cent. greater than in any previous year. Since then, as we know, expenditure has fallen considerably; but wages have never fallen, and the total earnings of our people are still on the up grade.

Another cause of the unprecedented access of prosperity which changed the face of industrial and agricultural England, was the fact that some seven-tenths of the trade lost by Germany was now not only carried in British ships, but held entirely in British hands. Germany's world markets became Britain's markets, just as the markets of the whole Empire became our own as the result of preference, and just as the great oversea countries of the Empire found Britain's home markets, with fifty million customers, exclusively their own. The British public learned once and for all, and in one year, the truth that reformers had sought for a decade to teach us--that the Empire was self-supporting and self-sufficing, and that common-sense legislative and commercial recognition of this fundamental fact spelt prosperity for British subjects the world over.

But, as John Crondall said in the course of the Guildhall speech of his which, as has often been said, brought the Disciplinary Regiments into being, "We cannot expect to cure in a year ills that we have studiously fostered through the better part of a century." There was still an unemployed class, though everything points to the conclusion that before that first year of the Peace was ended this class had been reduced to those elements which made it more properly called "unemployable." There were the men who had forgotten their trades and their working habits, and there were still left some of those melancholy products of our decadent industrial and social systems--the men who were determined not to work.

In a way, it is as well that these ills could not be swept aside by the same swift, irresistible wave which gave us "British Christianity," The Citizens' watchword, Imperial Federation, and the beginning of great prosperity. It was the continued existence of a workless class that gave us the famous Discipline Bill. At that time the title "Disciplinary Regiments" had a semidisgraceful suggestion, connected with punishment. In view of that, I shared the feeling of many who said that another name should be chosen. But now that the Disciplinary Regiments have earned their honourable place as the most valuable portion of our non-professional defence forces, every one can see the wisdom of John Crondall's contention that not the name, but the public estimate of that name, had to be altered. Theoretically the value and necessity of discipline was, I suppose, always recognized. Actually, people had come to connect the word, not with education, not with the equipment of every true citizen, but chiefly with punishment and disgrace.

At first there was considerable opposition to the law, which said, in effect: No able-bodied man without means shall live without employment. Indeed, for a few days there was talk of the Government going to the country on the question. But in the end the Discipline Act became law without this, and I know of no other single measure which has done more for the cause of social progress. Its effects have been far-reaching. Among other things, it was this measure which led to the common-sense system which makes a soldier of every mechanic and artisan employed upon Government work. It introduced the system which enables so many men to devote a part of their time to soldiering, and the rest to various other kinds of Government work. But, of course, its main reason of existence is the triumphant fact that it has done away with the loafer, as a class, and reduced the chances of genuine employment to a minimum. Some of the best mechanics and artisans in England to-day are men who learned their trade, along with soldiering and general good citizenship, in one of the Disciplinary Regiments.

Despite the increase of population, the numerical strength of our police force throughout the kingdom is 30 per cent. lower to-day than it was before the Anglo-German war; while, as is well known, the prison population has fallen so low as to have led to the conversion of several large prisons into hospitals. The famous Military Training School at Dartmoor was a convict prison up to three years after the war. There can be no doubt that, but for the Discipline Bill, our police force would have required strengthening and prisons enlarging, in place of the reverse process of which we enjoy the benefit to-day.

Its promoters deserve all the credit which has been paid them for the introduction of this famous measure; and I take the more pleasure in admitting this by token that the chief among them has publicly recorded his opinion that the man primarily responsible for the introduction of the Discipline Bill was John Crondall. At the same time it should not be forgotten that we have John Crondall's own assurance that the Bill could never have been made law but for that opening and awakening of the hearts and minds of the British people which followed the spreading of the gospel of Duty by the Canadian preachers. _

Read next: Part 2. The Awakening: Chapter 19. The Great Alliance

Read previous: Part 2. The Awakening: Chapter 17. The Penalty

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