SHOOTING THROUGH THE DOOR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11872, 25 January 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

SHOOTING THROUGH THE DOOR.

[BY tohtjnga.]

Will somebody tell us why; the British people are, at once the most intensely national and the most intensely un-national of all the peoples of the earth? The Frenchman is for France, '.he German for Germany, and the Spaniard for Spain. The very Chinaman cleaves to his people as mercury to —scatter it as you will it only needs a shake to become one and the same. But we British— the Napoleonic wars there was the pro-French opposition and to-day there is the pro-Boer. We have to go back to the Elizabethan day to find Englishman standing by Englishman, regardless of class or creed.

Perhaps in this condition of Elizabethan England there is the key to the conundrum. Then England fought; for its life and forgot every domestic quarrel in the fierce instinct for national existence. For a man to side with the Spaniard, to give aid and succour to Phillip of Spain, was to threaten his womenfolk with the fate of Maestrieht and Antwerp, to call the doom of the Inquisition upon his neighbour. The issues were too simple to be in doubt, too serious to be played with, too deadly to be even discussed. The traitor who would bring the Spaniard into England was like a poisonous snake, and had no place inside the national pale. He was made outlaw by that deed alone. The axe and gibbet rooted him from among the living, whose every happiness his existence endangered.

And if we go back to the centuries beyond we find in England and among the English the same instinct to save themselves by unfaltering loyalty to each other from the evils which reigned . among the disorganised peoples of the Continent. Of civil wars England haft many, but after the lesson of the Conquest the foreigner was always held at arm's length by the entire people, even the foreign Church having but weak suzerainty over its own English adherents. So deeply had the feeling become set that even among the lawless freebooters who plundered Europe under the leadership of free lance captains and sold their swords to the highest bidder, -with supreme indifference to the cause, it was a matter of common acceptation that the .English adventurers would - never fight against the banner of their country, but would rally as one man at the command of the English King.

It is based on historic happening, that dramatic story of Conan Doyle's, who tells how Pedro of Spain, captive in the camp of his enemies, hears the name of a great English free lance captain, and gives to him an order from the Black Prince, commanding all Englishmen to aid and succour him as England's ally. There is no hesitation. Pedro is surrounded by English lances and English bows and carried to freedom by lawless adventurers whose national allegiance was the one religious principle of their reckless lives.

.; From that . lasgon of English loyalty, from hundreds of similar lessons, France herself learned at last what nationality means and found out what it could do. Came Joan of Arc, with her gospel of " France for the French,'' that revelation which seemed to her as an inspiration from heaven, but bad unquestionably filtered to her from the shrewd peasant perception of where the strength of the English lay. And united | France, made one for the first time by this simple peasant girl, who was one of the babes and sucklings from whose mouths men learn truths hidden; from the wise,. shook . rioin-riKk' the handful -«f- •isltftldi , rs*"V.'fio?e' magic of mastery was in their loyalty 'to each other.

And Germany, divided and templed under the feet of Napoleon, found her unity in the tongs of her great war-poet, and made herself freewith British assistance, let her remember. And Italy, inspired by a common sailor-man, similarly won through unity to place among the nations, as old men can still remember.

It is the lesson of history, the teaching of all the ages, that freedom and safety can only come by national unity. We have been free for so long, secure for so many centuries, that many of our countrymen have forgotten the patriotism without which the greatest nation of the earth would soon be humbled to the dust.

While the Spanish wolf was at our door and we were all conscious of his cruel teeth and wicked jaws the Englishman who was false to England was rare enough, and met scant mercy when he was found. But wo have become so used to peace at Home, to safety in our streets, and free way at sea, that these things seem to many as in the ordinary nature of things, and as resulting from the mildness towards the foreigner which they have really caused. So that now when Britain wars there are to be found among her own people men and women who are her worst and deadliest enemies, speaking unashamed against her and encouraging her enemies to do their worst and not to be dismayed.

This is probably the explanation of our Pro-Boerisms. That no other nations have had our security for so long explains why such madness is not to be found elsewhere. And the best remedy would possibly be to let an invading army into Britain for about three days, at the end of which time there would not be a traitor unrepentant or tinburied in Britain. For ignorance, dense, dire, stupid ignorance, is the cause of this Pro-Boer rift in our British lute. Some people do not know when they are well off or why. "It is always cunningly conceited ignorance which admits the snake into Eden.

You hear this amazing ignorance voiced by people who should know better, by cultured people who look with complacent scorn upon the to them barbaric instincts of the common man. " Look at the millions we spend on warships!" they say. "Look at the thousands of sailors who might be doing something useful, and are waiting to kill, their fellow-men!" But if they were seized at sea by pirates and shown how to walk the plank or worse they would doubtless think differently of the ocean-police. They never take time to consider that, excepting for signal-guns, every peaceful ship now sails unarmed and without fear, that the sea is as safe from robbers as a city road, and safer, that the most barbarous coasts are now passed without alarm by the travellers of to-day. They are like lunatics who wonder why houses have roofs, since no rain falls inside them. They cannot imagine what the state of the world would Be without its military and naval organisation. , They, amuse themselves with dreams of how the lion would lie down with the lamb were it not for the wicked shepherd. They always forget that the lamb would be inside.

That lack of patriotism is due to the effect upon dull and querulous minds of longcontinued security is further demonstrated by its restoration wherever British men come face to face with perilous conditions. The colonies are more generally loyal and patriotic than Britain; the more isolated the colony the more intense its feeling for Imperial unity. It is impossible to imagine a disloyalist among the British residents in our alien possessions. Outside the Empire, on the wide frontier of civilisation itself, where primitive conditions regain their sway, the scattered adventurers of British birth may quarrel among themselves, but against the alien they present an impregnable . front. Indeed, for quixotic pride' of birth and dominant glory in nationality you must go to the Englishman whose lot is cast far from tHe English-speaking folk. At Home, it is possible-that same man might have been a Pro-Boer; as things are with him he would die rather than fail to make evident that by birthright he is a king among men—and often does. It is not for nothing that " on the word of an Englishman" has become the most solemn of oaths among alien nations arid I races in' all the dark countries of the earth ; nor that th 3 twitch-grass wllich travels with the European is almost as widely known as "the Englishman's foot." When it once gets' into the land you. cannot root it out, you know. ' -

An Englishman who had knocked "about used to laugh' heartily over " the worst scare he ever had in his life." He and a ; mate had formed a mining camp in pretty rough country, and amused themselves for a week in spinning th/> most terrifying stories of native treachery and cruelty to a lad who had just joined them, green as grass, from Home. They invented accounts of camps being stormed and inmates slowly toasted to death. There was only one way of safety, they said, for a man to give in and get painted and take a native girl to wife and join her people. And at the end of the week they rode forty miles to. drink at another English camp, leaving the lad in charge* Returning glorious, they arranged to give him a shock, and hammered suddenly at the hut door, whooping fiendishly and calling upon him in pigeon-English to surrender, adding the influence of bloodcurdling threats. The reply they got was a fusillade from the lad's Remington that splintered holes through the door. " Hanged if I know how we got clear," the narrator used to say. "There was a bullet through my mate's hat, another went between my arm and side, and another snipped my mate's finger. When we tried it after we couldn't stand at the door so as to clear the holes. Sobered! We got as sober as though we hadn't seen a drink for a month; Wo jumped to the wall and went flat 031 the ground for fear he should start his revolvers going through the mud walls, and as we lay there whispering hanged if he didn't slip out of the back and sneak on us round the corner of the hut and let drive along the wall. If we'd been standing we'd have had no more chance than a pig. And when we called to him and rounded on him all he said was that it was lucky for us we hadn't happened to tell him of the ground' trick. We'd thought he was just green, you see. We'd forgotten that he had the right' blood in him." , > And the Pro-Boers! They also have forgotten that they have the right blood in them—or ought to have. They want the trouble to be in their own street before they get sense enough to know that shooting through the door is the winning policy. Patriotism teaches that it isn't always necessary to know what you're shooting at to be right in pulling the trigger.