SOME NOTABLE PASSAGES FROM MRS ASQLITH’S SECOND VOLUME.

Otago Witness, Issue 3615, 26 June 1923, Page 60

SOME NOTABLE PASSAGES FROM MRS ASQLITH’S SECOND VOLUME.

Three weeks ago I here gave a short notice of Mrs Asquith's second autobiographical volume. A few additional extracts may interest readers who are not likely to see the book themselves. Mrs Asquith is a shrewd observer and clear thinker, and commands an incisive style. In her introduction to this second volume she comments on the many adverse criticisms made on the first—she was blamed for self-revelations, for discussing dead persons, for criticising living cues, lor publishing letters. As to the first charge, the interest of an autobiograpfiy as distinct from memoirs depends on the personal element. And one must be thankful to have been given the privilege of reading such, a beautiful letter as that oi Lord Grey, with which this article concludes. ON WAR. “People say the same thing about the inevitability of war as they said about the inevitability cf duelling, and with possibly as little reason. War is not glorious; it is futile and bestial. The training for it forces men to obey with wooden precision commands not only muddled and murderous, but which are against ail their intelligence ; nor can anyone believe to-day that there such a thing as victory. I will go a step further and say with confidence that, whatever war may have done for the lead, it has not unproved the living. The cranks are crankier, the gamblers more extravagant, the backbiters more spiteful, the rich more alarmed, the poor more restless, the clergy more confused, and the Government moi’e corrupt. “If Germany is not sufficiently punished for having equipped a vast army for an unprovoked war, the mills of God grind exceeding slow. It was pride in their progress that hardened the hearts and turned the heads of our enemy. Let the Allies be careful lest love of themselves or fear of the future does not turn theirs also. There is only one antidote to vanity after victory, and that is to remember God.” An extract from Mrs Asquith’s diary tells of the death of her father in 19C8, and of his burial near the old family home in Scotland. “He was buried in Traquair Kirk on the Bth. and we all travelled up from London the night before for the funeral. We arrived at Innerleithen station on a characteristic Peebleshire morning—misty, pearly, and windless —and followed the coffin at a foot's pace in covered carriages along the winding road leading to Traquair. My mother. Jack’s wife, Helen, Laura and her little son, and all of us are buried in Traquair. I have knelt many times in the dark and said my prayers without disturbing the lambs huddled against the cross of Laura’s grave, and I love the churchyard. It is away from the noise of life, guarded by the Yarrow and the Tweed, and surrounded by the beckoning hills. I wondered as we stood by the open tomb that morning which of us would die next, and whether I would be buried in Traquair.” The Laura mentioned here was the sister next in age to Mrs Asquith. The two sisters were united by specially close love and comradeship, and Laura’s death a year after her marriage was a bitter and enduring grief to her sister. Mrs Humphrey Ward in her own autobiographical record tells of the rare charm and spirituality cf Laura Tennant. Writing of the education pf her children Mrs Asquith says: “Every child unless an invalid should be able to read at the age of five. I do not believe in reading out loud to children except very occasionally, as I think it discourages them from reading by themselves, but it is an arguable point. Although it is certain that a wise mother should never forbid an undesirable book it is equally true that she can guide the tastes of her children. There is time enough when you are young to justify delay in reading what is ugly, however brilliant, and books have an unconscious influence upon the character which Mr ’Freud and others of the same mind do not say much about. “I took my little son to school in the summer term of 1912 (when he was in his tenth year and already showing a great talent for music). As he was forbidden by the doctors to go for the regular school walks, he and I spent most of our Sunday afternoons together, playing the piano, reciting verse, or telling stories, and generally ended by saying our prayers in the garden before I motored back to join my guests at the Wharf. Later, -in a letter to the Winchester master who was to prepare her son for confirmation, Mrs Asquith wrote explaining her views and hopes about religion and her son. She says: “I have discussed every aspect of religion with Elizabeth and my little son from their earliest age, and it is because I wish you to know the form these discussions have taken that I write to you to-day. . . . I want Anthony to meet life in the spirit of Christ, whose authority rested neither upon His knowledge or His position, but upon the Love and Faith to which His life was dedicated. It is in this spirit that men should approach the pupils they are going to prepare for the Holv Communion, and it is tor lack

of it that parsons fail. Some of us are unlucky in our choice, as many of the clergy are more at their ease with God than is convincing—a sign of moral vulgarity which I distrust in people and detest in priests. Familiarity breeds as much contempt in religion as it does in society. “The spirit of mail is an inward flame, a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out, and this is what I want you to teach my son. If the clerical guides to Christ would emphasise the development rather than the destination of the soul, and avoid the heaven and hell part of their teaching, I cannot but think they would achieve their purpose. “I would like Anthony to feel the significance of compassion as compared with pity. I would like him to be fundamentally humble and tender, without which we cannot hope to help one another, and I want him to have no intellectual arrogance, or that fatiguing dialectical skill that scores, but a desire to search for and find the truth. T would like him to hare no blindness o: heart, and perfect moral manners as well as moral courage. Most of the earlier virtues which I care about have passed cut of fashion. Consideration for the oid, and discipline for the voting, and, though the fear of God has disappeared, it has taken with it both awe and mystery. ‘T want my son to keep his Saturdays as well as his Sundays; to protect people’s failings instead of ma'd-n* rr jnout of them, and to spread what is of (> 'l p cport. I want ium not to laugh at other people’s gods, and never to he afraid o* saying what is right, even if it is, or even if it is not, an epigram.” Elsewhere Mrs Asquith rays: “A child is unlucky if it is not taught early by its mother or nurse that t;ie object of life is to go to heaven, and that if we are good when we die we go there. Going to heaven is departing from self, which is not only the teaching of Christ but the foundation of all education ; so much did our Lord believe in self-departure that He startled the world by the greatest of all sayings; ‘Love thine enemy. (Heaven is thus begun on earth by the surrender of the soul to Christ,' and entered into fully after release from the hindrances of our mortal nature.')” That intellect and intellectual differences may be overestimated is tersely pointed out in the following line : “In the great moments of life, in times of love, or of birth, or of death, brains count for nothing.” The following beautiful letter was written by Sir lid ward—now Lord—Grey when a dear friend of Mrs Asquith’s was dying. “I can really say nothing in answer to your letter. There is a suffering which purifies, raises, and strengthens, and in which one can see the Crown as well as the Cross, but where there is no Crown visible it is terrible even to see suffering, and must be intolerable to undergo it. My own belief is that if we could know all we should understand everything; hut there is much in the world that cannot be explained without knowing what came before life and what is to come after it, and of that we know nothing, for faith is not knowledge. All that we can do is to take refuge in reverence and submission. ‘God is in Heaven and thou art upon earth, therefore let thy words be few’ is one way of expressing the reverence, and ‘I was dumb and opened not my mouth, for it was Thy doing’ is an expression c-f submission. They are hard things to say, but I don’t know what else is to be said, and it is better to sav them than to rail against what we cannot understand, or to attempt to belittle it, and put a gloss oqion it. . . . . The abyss is unfathomable to those who stand upon the brink, and I fear each of us who has to descend into it must find for himself or herself on what ledges a foot can be placed, a-’d the oath bv which one can find his way is not always that which is practica.j,e tor another. I have been through that which would make it very easy for me to die, but that path is no use for nivone who has to die and wants to live.” BIRD LIFE. I have noticed with - pleasure the Prize Competition conducted by Dr Fulton in the D.L.F. pages for the best letters on native birds. There are some good letters in this week’s Witness —that of June 19. Julie's is particularly interesting, as there has been much doubt whether the black and the pied fantails are distinct species, or merely varieties. Julie’s observation loads to the conclusion that they are merely varieties. I remember having watched a nest -T-elonging to a pair of fantails both of which were black. Three or four young birds were hatched out, all black I think.—Esther.