What an Irish Traveller Saw

THE pound was crashing to dangerously low levels when I was in London last week, and the newspapers were offering varying explanations to their anxious and bewildered readers. One blamed the foreign “bears” who were “plotting against the pound”; another blamed the mysterious Mr. Montagu Norman for a “defeatist speech”; a third put it down to the effect on foreign opinion of the hunger-marching demonstrations; whilst a fourth, true to type, discovered once again the workings of the Red Hand of Russia. The man in the street shook his head gloomily and blamed the blundering and incompetent politicians.

In more senses than one, the atmosphere was one of gloom. A black pall of fog had descended on the great city at noon, bringing traffic almost to a standstill and leaving pedestrians to grope their way about like dim, ghostly shadows. I walked slowly along the embankment from the Tate Gallery to the Boadicea statue watching the myriad river lights which threw a strange, spectral radiance over the darkened waters. Across the river one could glimpse the contours of the County Hall, now protected on every side with barriers of barbed wire. Here, on Saturday, because a deputation of the unemployed had come to demand from the London Co. Council food and shelter for their comrades on the march an army of police had been hurriedly mobilised. On foot, by lorry, by taxi-cab, by motor-’bus, they had been rushed here to ward off the great peril—twelve hundred of them all told. The deputation had consisted of six men and four women! Truly, Britain’s nerves are on edge.

I went across to the House of Commons, found a member whom I knew, and secured admission to the Stranger’s gallery. The egregious Thomas was on his feet, joking heavily in lieu of argument on the subject of the Ottawa Conference and shedding crocodile tears over the injury he had been obliged to inflict on the poor Irish farmer. (“My boy, this hurts me as much as it hurts you!”) His performance was punctuated with angry growls from the members of his old party, whilst his new friends on the Conservative side greeted his remarks with that subdued murmur of approval which Hansard calls “cheers,” a dull speaker arose from the Liberal benches and I seized my hat and left.

Outside, the black fog persisted and I walked across to Westminster Abbey, that glorious building with an antique beauty that even the gloom could not altogether hide. There I wandered and meditated, like the old essayists, among the tombs and the monuments. I saw Castlereagh, with outstretched arm and sneering countenance, and observed for the first time that if one followed the direction of the pointing finger it led to a plain stone slab on the floor which bore the name “Henry Grattan.” Here, indeed, was food for ironic thought! There, too, were all their great contemporaries, Pitt and Fox and Burke—Burke, the silver-tongued, the orator of flowing periods and great utterances. (“No man can indict a nation!”)

And there, in a shadow-haunted corner, were all the poets in silent and never-ending conclave, Chaucer and Spenser, rare Ben Jonson and Milton the sublime, the fierce Swift, and the gentle lovable Goldsmith. I paused by the tomb of Spenser and thought of the planter’s home by the Blackwater and of how he had woven the music of its waters into one of the greatest poems in English literature. I recalled, too, his remedy for the “festering sore” of the “turbulent Irishry”—“men doe say that it would be better if this islande were to be submerged for twenty-foure houres.” And then I thought of his wretched end in a London garret. Never was there a day or a place more fit for moralising.

Once more out into the streets, and now the fog had lifted. I boarded a ’bus going west, up Pall Mall and Piccadilly, past the theatres and luxury shops and the haunts of the clubmen. Two workingmen sat in front of me and they were deep in a discussion of the new food tariffs.

I left the ’bus and walked down Piccadilly, ablaze with sky-signs and a million electric lights. From the roof of a nearby building a huge searchlight was piercing the darkness and recording the march of civilisation by writing the name of somebody’s boot-polish among the stars. There were cinemas de luxe on every hand, and every theatre had its queues. The fashionable restaurants looked as full as in more prosperous days, and one out of every three cars that passed was a Rolls-Royce. Opera-hatted exquisites and dainty ladies stepped from shining limousines into theatre or restaurant, whilst the strains of jazz music blared out from the open doors. The traffic thundered by ceaselessly. Everywhere noise and glitter and gaiety. But over and above it all I seemed to hear, dimly, the echoes of the march of the hunger legions, converging on this city of wealth and extravagance, toiling with weary, blistered feet from the deserted mills of Lancashire, from the idle Tyneside ports, from the desolate mining… of Wales.

And turning away, I asked myself: Is England done? Is all this the last mad death-dance on the edge of a precipice? Not yet, I think! England, if she has no men of vision to-day, has still great resources. The proverbial policeman, with his white-gloved, uplifted hand can still hold up the onset of a British revolution, though it is at least significant that the truncheon has now given place to the sword-stick. But the writing on the wall is there, and he who runs may read. It was a chastened and a rather frightened England that I saw on this visit, an England no longer able to vaunt its strength and imperial greatness. Yes, England is afraid to-day, and afraid of nothing so much as herself.