The grail of life; an anthology on heroic death and immortal life

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Preface

The general plan of this Anthology was conceived by me in the summer of 1918. It was at this time, it will be remembered, that the menace of the German assault upon the West was shaking not merely Europe but the world to its foundations; and the tide of misery and horror, incident to the gigantic struggle, had mounted to the full. Uppermost in all men's minds at that terrific moment, of course, was the fate of civilization, and the doom which seemed to be falling upon all things deemed precious. Deep down, however, beneath this living consciousness of battle and siege, of tottering thrones and shaking systems, of revolutions, turmoils, " chaos and black night," were the agonies silently endured by each one of numberless millions of human hearts the world around, as they contemplated the peril, and soon or late met the loss, of persons who bore into the struggle, as husbands, fathers, sons, lovers, all that made life worth the living, and victory in the battle a matter of concern. John Galsworthy, in Saint's Progress, presents a pathetic picture of the sleep of London on any night during the period of the War. " Here a mother would be whispering the name of her boy . . . and a wife would be turning, to stretch out her arms to — no one; ... By thousands the bereaved would be tossing, stifling their moans; by thousands the ruined would be gazing into the dark future. . . ." It is probable that most people felt the Great War only in this intense personal way, for most of

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us, after all, live in the realm not of ideas or institutions at all, but of individual human relations. And this feeling touched such depths of passion, in such myriads of hearts, at the climactic moments of 1918, as never before had been equalled in human history.

For nearly four years, death had been reaping an unimaginable harvest by battle, starvation and disease. In these dreadful summer months, the flood of destruction was climbing to heights unseen by man in his most dreadful dreams of world disaster. Death was become the order of the day — untimely death, unnecessary death, horrible death! By a slow turning of life, on the axis of the War, so to speak, the modern man found the frontage of his experience exactly reversed from all that he had ever known, or anticipated. By precept, by example, by the inner promptings of his own soul, he had been taught to welcome life, and use it to the uttermost. Now, however, he saw life suddenly engulfed by death, and after-death! What is it to die, and to what does dying bring us — these were become, through the vast cataclysm of universal war, the dominant personal questions of the hour ; and to the average man, the answer to these questions was more important than answers to all the gigantic questions that beset the minds of generals, statesmen and philosophers. To find this answer, would be perhaps to perform an inestimable service for the comforting and strengthening of many hearts. And where could this answer be more certainly found than in the utterances of the great and good in ages past, and of some of the humble but very valiant who were living and dying greatly at this great moment? It was in this thought that the idea of this Anthology was conceived, and work upon its pages happily begun.

On November 11, 1918, came the Armistice, which seemed to end the occasion for this book. Work, therefore, was

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halted, in anticipation of the abandonment of the plan. Then came the realization that while the Armistice undoubtedly had made the fighting on the battlefield to cease, it had worked, and could work, no such miracle upon the sorrows, perplexities, and blind despairs which this fighting through more than fifty months had accumulated in men's hearts. The problem of death and after-death was with us, as it had been always. From the moment that Cain felled Abel, man has found himself confronted by the black mystery of dying, of being and not being, of mortality and immortality. The War, after all, had not created a new problem; it had only intensified an old one. It had not raised up something which began and ended with itself; on the contrary, it had only brought momentarily into the centre of the present picture, so to speak, that which had been from the beginning, and which would be till the end of time. An anthology of heroic death and immortal life, therefore, must have a permanent interest and value. It might be occasioned, but certainly could not be bounded by, the War. So the work was resumed; and now, with the battle long since ended, and the fighting done, is presented to those who seek comfort and inspiration on these high themes.

II

The preparation of an anthology involves a twofold problem — that of the selection and the arrangement of material.

Selection in this case promptly opened up so tremendous a task, that it is doubtful if my collaborator and I would have had the courage to undertake this book, had we known what was before us. The material readily accessible on our chosen themes was embarrassingly abundant. That which could be made available by systematic research, was practically inexhaustible. A volume giving any adequate survey of the field would run to many hundreds of pages and

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include many thousands of quotations, and even then involve a rigorous process of elimination. But our intent from the beginning was to produce an anthology which should be small in compass, conveniently handled and easily read, a book to be loved as scripture rather than consulted as a dictionary or encyclopedia. We were moved, that is to say, by emotional considerations; our desire was to give not knowledge so much as inspiration. This end was best furthered by the plan adopted by Robert Bridges, in his rarely beautiful book. The Spirit of Man, rather than by that adopted by E. C. Stedman in his exceedingly useful American Anthology — to present not an accumulation but a distillation of the ideas which have been characteristic of the highest thought of man on the mysteries of death and life eternal. Such a purpose vastly increased the difficulty of our task, for even the essence extracted was more than could be contained in our chosen vessel. Therefore were we driven to a process of selection which was not only rigorous but in some cases arbitrary, and not always satisfactory to ourselves.

Our first task was to gather the passages which were to comprise the content of the Anthology. In doing this, we did not attempt to cover the field. We simply entered those areas which were familiar to ourselves, and garnered what we knew or felt to be precious. Even so, we found in our hands, when the work was done, more material than we could possibly use in accordance with our plans. This meant a winnowing which resulted in the rejection of nearly a third of all that we had originally collected. These passages were perfectly good in themselves, but they represented an overflow which we could not handle.

The standards which we employed in this process of selection, are three in number.

(1) First of all, in the case of each particular quotation,

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was the consideration of its aptness as an expression of the ideals of heroic death and immortal life. These ideals we had deliberately chosen to be the keynotes of our Anthology, and we were insistent that everything should be in harmony therewith. Many passages, beautiful in themselves and unquestionably inspiring, were cast aside because they did not embody the exact conceptions which we had in mind.

(2) Secondly, there was the question of the literary quality of our material. This we desired, and in most cases insisted, should be of the highest. Some passages were finally admitted to our pages which are devoid of literary distinction or beauty, because they give important expression to our chosen themes through association with great names or epochs of history. These, however, are exceptions, and are few in number. The bulk of the material in this volume constitutes what we, at least, regard as literature.

(3) Lastly, there was that indefinite, intangible question of tone, or attitude, which my collaborator and I regarded as in some ways the most important of all our standards. Through much of the writing that has to do with death and immortality there runs the taint of insipidity. In every collection of material on these subjects which I personally have seen — and as a clergyman I have seen, and used, a good many ! — the prevailing note is at the best that of intelligent piety, and at the worst that of mawkish sentimentality. In this field, if in none other, the sanctimonious Sunday School literature of two or three generations ago, is still with us. Such maudlin stuff we have sought absolutely to avoid. Through this Anthology, like fresh breezes from the "hills whence cometh (our) strength," there blow, we trust, the winds of courage and acclaim. Robustness, virility, heroic cheer, tenderness not inconsistent with valour.

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high vision controlled by reason and suffused with poetry — this is the note, or attitude, which we have desired that the material in this book should invariably express. Our Anthology will fulfil no small part of its purpose, if it teaches its readers that the atmosphere of death may be as healthful as that of life.

Our quotations selected, there came a further application of the sifting process in the problem of what part, or parts, of each particular quotation, we should use. Again with the idea of confining our material within the smallest possible space, we have reproduced from our various sources of prose and poetry, the shortest passages which could be made consistent with completeness of thought and beauty of expression. Setting down nothing as it was not written, we have yet eliminated all that seemed to be in any way extraneous to our chosen themes. We have sought to skim off what from our viewpoint was the cream of each quotation selected for inclusion, and thus fill our book with the richest possible material. We realize that to many persons this method of excision will seem inexcusable. To such we simply reply that it is our method; and ask that it be accepted as a chosen condition of our task, and judged from the standpoint of the skill and taste displayed in its accomplishment.

Ill

The preparation of an anthology, as we have seen, involves not only the selection, but also the arrangement of material. We doubt if anybody, who has not actually undertaken the work, can realize what it means to arrange material with which one has grown inordinately familiar through the task of selection. When perfectly done, as in Palgrave's Golden Treasury, arrangement becomes as invisible a thing as the air. When imperfectly done, it seems

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to be a condition of the inevitable limitation of the task attempted. In both cases, the difficulties involved are hidden from the consciousness of those who see the finished product and not the structural process.

Chronology is of course the obvious, and the most common, method of arranging such material as my collaborator and I have gathered. This method, however, we abandoned altogether in Part I of this Anthology; and utilized only in rough outline form in Part II. Our desire throughout was to have the matter of arrangement determined not so much by dates, or even by subjects, as by feeling. Dates, of course, have played their role, as in Part II; subjects have worked their influence, as in Part I. But we shall be disappointed if some few readers, sensitive to the emotions which we have felt and tried to convey in the making of this book, do not catch some view at least of what has controlled us in this matter of arrangement. I know of no more definite way of expressing it, than to refer to what the musician calls " the melodic line " in the orchestral score of a symphony or opera. No matter how numerous the themes or how complicated their development, there runs unbroken through every great musical composition, like a trail through a forest, "the melodic line." This is the song which the musician is singing, adorned with a wilderness of notes and chords, now major, now minor, now rising to clear sonorous heights, now submerged in stormy sound, but always pursuing its course, and always clearly felt by the heart that understands. Through this book we have tried, as best we could, to create a " melodic line." We fear that it is broken at times by the fact that we were engaged not in singing our own song but in blending the songs that have been sung by others. But when broken, it is quickly recovered, and never at any time, we believe, wholly lost. It is this, at any rate, which has been xiv PREFACE

the motif of our arrangement; and by this, it must be judged.

IV

In closing, I must bear testimony to the inspiration involved in the preparation of this book. If our readers derive a fraction of the comfort and strength from reading it, which we have derived from compiling it, the Anthology will be indeed as a volume of holy scripture.

Valiant is the heart of man. Set in a world whose bounds he cannot trace — armed with puny hands and brain, to do battle against the gigantic forces of sky and sea and earth — beset behind and before by the twin mysteries of birth and death — knowing only the unknowable, searching only the unsearchable, living only to die — man has stood erect as one lifted by God's hand, and has moved ever onward, through centuries of unspeakable pain, fear and frustration, with unconquerable courage and unquenchable faith. It is impossible to read however imperfect a record of man's thoughts on death and after, as written from earliest to latest times, without confessing that there is indeed an undying fire of the divine within us, and bowing in adoration before it. Especially is this true of the testimony which has been coming to us from brave young hearts, in the filth of the trenches, in the icy wastes of the sea, even in the vast spaces of the air, during these years of the world's blackest tragedy and most awful agony. This Anthology is throughout profoundly eloquent of spiritual faith, but nowhere more so than in those poems at the opening and the close, telling of death met bravely and immortality anticipated surely, which have been written by the youthful soldiers of the Great War. Something there is within man or above him, that makes him greater than himself, stronger than the universe, mightier than the mysteries which always challenge, and sometimes beat him

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downward, to despair. Man, in his fronting of death and his dream of immortality, is all that we need, after all, to teach us of God. The soul is its own best testimony to the everlasting reality of religion.

Acknowledgments are due in this place, first of all, to my collaborator and dear friend, Mrs. Lillian Browne-Olf. Without her untiring labour, this book could never have been prepared; to her fine literary taste is due much of such merit as it may possess. The volume is hers quite as much as mine. We offer it together as our common handiwork.

I would also give sincere thanks to my secretaries. Miss Mary C. Baker and Miss Mary Andrews, for their indispensable assistance and interest. I am grateful also to our publishers for their patience while the work was proceeding, and their appreciation when it was done.

Acknowledgments and thanks to publishers and authors, who have generously permitted the use of copyrighted material, are set down in the Appendix.

Contents

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Dedication v

Preface vii