Welsh Journals

This is a ground of hope. War is not inevitable. A review of the last generation or so would convince any candid enquirer that Great Britain has avoided war with Russia, with France and with Germany. So if we are pressed we admit in the end that the tyranny of circumstance in this instance is only apparent. We Europeans have made the mistakes. We have applied ourselves to the perfection of means and neglected the end of civilisation. We believe that circumstance can be moulded to our will, but our will is not yet informed by that moral passion which alone can make it desire peace and ensue it. The idealist then should not despair. He may suffer from disappointment, but there is no reason to suppose that the attainment of his end is frustrated by any power outside and beyond the heart of man. But this suggests a second ground for impatience- the folly of mankind. Here the idealist meets a more subtle temptation. Defeated at every turn he is apt to draw up an indictment against his kind to accuse them of ignorance, levity and folly; to feel something of that cynical contempt with which a Jonathan Swift or a Frederick the Great regarded the human race. The embittered idealist is to be found in all countries where the natural development has suffered a set-back. And these cynics have a constant theme in what is probably the most personal and poignant of the disappointments idealists encounter. The defection of leaders is a heavy blow. The man in whom we placed implicit faith seems won over, compromised, or possibly has proved false to his professed principles. Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat." If these, then, are the main sources of disillusion- ment, how are idealists to face them and resist that impatience which is an admission of defeat ? It is a hard lesson to learn that the realisation of ideals is largely a matter of means. The end must always be clearly conceived and kept in view. But there is no short cut to it. Circumstances, opposition, dis- appointment will defeat the man who has a fixed idea and no imagination, sympathy and insight. Within limits you must be reasonable and prepared to make compromises that do not involve a surrender of principle. The idealist has to remember that he must work through and for other people. No social end can be achieved against their will. To dragoon men to be saints is no less tyranny than to reduce them to slavery. We must not quarrel with our material or despise it. Men and women with their limitations, narrow views, ignorance and indifference are the elements of the problem. It is no use abusing them. They are there to win or lose. The idealist must also remember what his ideal involves. It means, if it is worthy, self-sacrifice and devotion. If a man takes up the cause of his country, his class or what you will, he should realise that the cause is greater than himself. So he should keep a guard on his words and deeds. How many great causes have suffered from the impatience of idealists-the resort to crude violence of word or action which has meant a serious set-back and made the task of those who came after almost insuperably difficult? Wild instinctive protests are nearly always harmful. They alienate sympathy and achieve nothing. The appeal to force sets against the idealist the very opposition which he cannot en- counter without endangering his cause. Impatience is no doubt a form of egotism. One wishes to see the end achieved, the victory won. Possibly Euro- peans are more impatient then Asiatics. For my part, I am afraid of such generalisation. The unchanging East," which heard the legions thunder past and plunged in thought again, has become a mere literary idea. The typical Westerner is usually torn between a contempt for the East because it does not adopt European ideas, and a dismay if it shows any tendency to do so. But let it be granted that individualism is not so blatant in the East as in the West. A man may be inclined to sink himself in the contemplation of some end. In that case the idealist needs to learn that continual effort is essential. On the value of ideals I need not insist. But there is one conception which I should like to examine. It is constantly urged that time-con- siderable time-is needed for the realisation of an ideal. The temptation is-to stress time as though the mere passage of it would solve the problem. Nothing could be more misleading. Time in this connection must not be interpreted in a mechanical sense. Under the stress of a great experience a youth may become a man in a week. A nation may make more progress in one year than in the previous century. What is true is that no real advance can be made except in a certain logical order. It may be necessary to pass through two stages to arrive at a third. To omit the stages would mean that a short cut to the third stage would be an empty victory. And no progress is made without human effort, continuous, strenuous and enlightened. An Australian correspondent of the New Statesman recently made some remarks on Australian politics which may or may not be fair, but they illustrate what I mean. Neither he (Mr. William Hughes) nor his party have any of that idealism which is