It is one of
their pre-occupations to send their children to Sunday School by
roundabout roads, lest they should pick up abominable blasphemies. When
the tills of the little shops are raided, or when the family
ne'er-do-well levies on his women with more than usual brutality, they
know, because they suffer, what principles are being put into practice.
If these people could quietly be shown a quiet way out of it all, very
many of them would call in their savings (they are richer than they
look), and slip quietly away. In the English country, as well as in the
towns, there is a feeling - not yet panic, but the dull edge of it - that
the future will be none too rosy for such as are working, or are in the
habit of working. This is all to our advantage.
Canada can best serve her own interests and those of the Empire by
systematically exploiting this new recruiting-ground. Now that South
Africa, with the exception of Rhodesia, has been paralysed, and
Australia has not yet learned the things which belong to her peace,
Canada has the chance of the century to attract good men and capital
into the Dominion. But the men are much more important than the money.
They may not at first be as clever with the hoe as the Bessarabian or
the Bokhariot, or whatever the fashionable breed is, but they have
qualities of pluck, good humour, and a certain well-wearing virtue which
are not altogether bad. They will not hold aloof from the life of the
land, nor pray in unknown tongues to Byzantine saints; while the very
tenacity and caution which made them cleave to England this long, help
them to root deeply elsewhere. They are more likely to bring their women
than other classes, and those women will make sacred and individual
homes. A little-regarded Crown Colony has a proverb that no district can
be called settled till there are pots of musk in the house-windows - sure
sign that an English family has come to stay. It is not certain how much
of the present steamer-dumped foreign population has any such idea. We
have seen a financial panic in one country send whole army corps of
aliens kiting back to the lands whose allegiance they forswore. What
would they or their likes do in time of real stress, since no instinct
in their bodies or their souls would call them to stand by till the
storm were over?
Surely the conclusion of the whole matter throughout the whole Empire
must be men and women of our own stock, habits, language, and hopes
brought in by every possible means under a well-settled policy? Time
will not be allowed us to multiply to unquestionable peace, but by
drawing upon England we can swiftly transfuse what we need of her
strength into her veins, and by that operation bleed her into health and
sanity Meantime, the only serious enemy to the Empire, within or
without, is that very Democracy which depends on the Empire for its
proper comforts, and in whose behalf these things are urged.
EGYPT OF THE MAGICIANS
1913
SEA TRAVEL.
A RETURN TO THE EAST.
A SERPENT OF OLD NILE.
UP THE RIVER.
DEAD KINGS.
THE FACE OF THE DESERT.
THE RIDDLE OF EMPIRE.
And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments. - EXODUS
vii. 22.
I
SEA TRAVEL
I had left Europe for no reason except to discover the Sun, and there
were rumours that he was to be found in Egypt.
But I had not realised what more I should find there.
A P. & O. boat carried us out of Marseilles. A serang of lascars, with
whistle, chain, shawl, and fluttering blue clothes, was at work on the
baggage-hatch. Somebody bungled at the winch. The serang called him a
name unlovely in itself but awakening delightful memories in the hearer.
'O Serang, is that man a fool?'
'Very foolish, sahib. He comes from Surat. He only comes for his food's
sake.'
The serang grinned; the Surtee man grinned; the winch began again, and
the voices that called: 'Lower away! Stop her!' were as familiar as the
friendly whiff from the lascars' galley or the slap of bare feet along
the deck. But for the passage of a few impertinent years, I should have
gone without hesitation to share their rice. Serangs used to be very
kind to little white children below the age of caste. Most familiar of
all was the ship itself. It had slipped my memory, nor was there
anything in the rates charged to remind me, that single-screws still
lingered in the gilt-edged passenger trade.
Some North Atlantic passengers accustomed to real ships made the
discovery, and were as pleased about it as American tourists at
Stratford-on-Avon.
'Oh, come and see!' they cried. 'She has one screw - only one screw!
Hear her thump! And have you seen their old barn of a saloon? And
the officers' library? It's open for two half-hours a day week-days and
one on Sundays. You pay a dollar and a quarter deposit on each book. We
wouldn't have missed this trip for anything. It's like sailing with
Columbus.'
They wandered about - voluble, amazed, and happy, for they were getting
off at Port Said.
I explored, too. From the rough-ironed table-linen, the thick
tooth-glasses for the drinks, the slummocky set-out of victuals at
meals, to the unaccommodating regulations in the curtainless cabin,
where they had not yet arrived at bunk-edge trays for morning tea, time
and progress had stood still with the P. & O. To be just, there were
electric-fan fittings in the cabins, but the fans were charged extra;
and there was a rumour, unverified, that one could eat on deck or in
one's cabin without a medical certificate from the doctor.
