The Message. A. J. Dawson
in those days; we produced little street and alley men by the hundred thousand; and then we bade them exercise their rights, their imperial heritage, and rule an Empire. As for me, I was busy in my newspaper work trying to secure more rights for them; for men whose present freedom from all discipline and control was their curse.
The reporters' room at the office of the Daily Gazette was the working headquarters of five other men besides myself. One was a Cambridge man, one had been at Oxford, one came from Cork, and the other two were products of Scotch schools. Two of the five would have been called gentlemen; four of them were good fellows; the fifth had his good points, but perhaps he had been soured by a hard upbringing. One felt that the desire for money—advancement, success, or whatever you chose to call it; it all meant the one thing to Dunbar—mastered every feeling, every instinct even, in this young man, and made him about as safe and agreeable a neighbour as a wolf might be for a kennel of dogs.
A certain part of our time was devoted to waiting in the reporters' room for what Mr. Pierce called our "assignments," to this or that reporting task. Also, we did our writing here, and a prodigious amount of talking. The talk was largely of Fleet Street, the ruffianism of Mr. Pierce, the fortunes of our own and other journals, the poorness of our pay, the arduousness of our labours, the affairs of other newspaper offices, and the like. But at other times we turned to politics, and over our pipes and copy paper would readjust the concert of Europe and the balance of world power. More often we dealt with local politics, party intrigue, and scandals of Parliament; and sometimes—more frequently since my advent, it may be—we entered gaily upon large abstractions, and ventilated our little philosophies and views of the eternal verities.
By my recollection of those queer confused days, my colleagues were cynically anarchical in their political views, unconvinced and unconvincing Socialists, and indifferent Agnostics. I am not quite sure that we believed in anything very thoroughly—except that things were in a pretty bad way. Earnest belief in anything was not a feature of the period. I recall one occasion when consideration of some tyrannical act of our immediate chief, the news-editor, led our talk by way of character and morality to questions of religion. The Daily Gazette, I should mention, was a favourite organ with the most powerful religious community—the Nonconformists. Campbell, one of the two Scotch reporters, hazarded the first remark about religion, if I remember aright: something it was to the effect that men like Pierce had neither religion nor manners. Brown, the Cambridge man, took this up.
"Well now," he said, "that's a queer thing about religion. I'd like you to tell me what anybody's religion is in London."
"It's the capital of a Christian country, isn't it?" said Dunbar.
"Yes," admitted Brown. "That's just it. We're officially and politically Christian. It's a national affair. We're a Christian people; but who knows a Christian individual? Ours is a Christian newspaper, Christian city, Christian country, and all the rest of it. There's no doubt about it. All England believes; but no single man I ever meet admits that he believes. I suppose it's different up your way, Campbell. One gathers the Scotch are religious?"
"H'm! I won't answer for that," growled Campbell. "As a people, yes, as you say; but as individuals—well, I don't know. But my father's a believer; I could swear to it."
"Ah, yes; so's mine. But I'm not talking of fathers. I mean our generation."
"Well," I began, "for my part, I'm not so sure of the fathers."
"Oh, we can count you out," said Kelly, the Irishman. "All parsons' sons are atheists, as a matter of course; and bad hats at that."
"Rather a severe blow at our Christianity, isn't it?" said Brown.
I had no more to say on this point, not wishing to discuss my father. But I knew perfectly well that that good, kind man had cherished no belief whatever in many of what were judged to be the vital dogmas of Christianity.
"Well, I've just been thinking," said Campbell, "and upon my soul, Brown—if I've got one—I believe you're right. I don't know any one of our generation who believes. Every one thinks every one else believes, and everybody is most careful not to be disrespectful about the belief everybody else is supposed to hold. But, begad, nobody believes himself. We all wink at each other about it; accepting the certainty of every one else's belief, and only recognizing as a matter of course that you and me—we've got beyond that sort of thing."
"Well, I've often thought of it," said Brown. "I'll write an article about it one of these days."
"Who'll you get to publish it?"
"H'm! Yes, that's a fact. And yet, hang it, you know, how absurd! Who is there in this office that believes?"
"Echo answers, 'who?'"
"I happen to know that both Rainham and Baddeley go to church," said Dunbar, naming a proprietor and a manager.
"I don't see the connection," said Brown.
"Because there isn't any," said Campbell. "But Dunbar sees it, and so does the British public, begad. That's the kernel of the whole thing. That's why every one thinks every one else, except himself, believes. Rainham and Baddeley think their wives, and sons, and servants, and circle generally believe, and therefore would be shocked if Rainham and Baddeley didn't go to church. And every one else thinks the same. So they all go."
"But, my dear chap, they don't all go. The parsons are always complaining about it. The women do, but the men don't—not as a rule, I mean; particularly when they've got motors, and golf, and things. You know they don't. Here's six of us here. Does any one of us ever go to church?"
Dunbar, looking straight down over his nose, said: "I do—often."
"You're a fine fellow, Dunbar, sure enough," said Campbell; "and I believe you'll be a newspaper proprietor in five years. You've got your finger on the pulse. Can you look me in the face and say you believe?"
Dunbar smiled in his knowing way and wobbled. "I certainly believe it's a good thing to go to church occasionally," he said.
"And I believe you'll make a fortune in Fleet Street, my son."
"Well, in my humble opinion," said Kelly, "the trouble with you people in England is not so much that you don't believe; a good many believe, in a kind of a way, like they believe in ventilation, without troubling to act on it. They believe, but they don't think about it; they don't care, it isn't real. The poor beggars 'ld go crazy with fear of hell-fire, if the sort of armchair belief they have was real to 'em. It isn't real to 'em, like business, and money, and that, or like patriotism is in Japan."
"Well, it really is a rum thing," said Brown, with an affectation of pathos, "that in all this Christian country I shouldn't know a single believer of my generation."
"It's a devilish bad thing for the country," said Campbell. And even then, with all my fundamentally rotten sociological nostrums, I had a vague feeling that the Scotchman was right there.
"Well, then, that's why it's good to go to church," said Dunbar, with an air of finality.
"I still don't see the connection," murmured Brown.
"Because it still isn't there. But, of course, it's perfectly obvious. That's why Dunbar sees it, and why he'll presently run a paper." Then Campbell turned to Dunbar, and added slowly, as though speaking to a little child: "You see, my dear, it's not their not going to church that's bad; it's their not believing."
If I remember rightly, Mr. Pierce ended the conversation, through his telephone, by assigning to Brown the task of reporting a clerical gathering at Exeter Hall. Brown was credited with having a particularly happy touch in the reporting of religious meetings. He certainly had an open mind, for I remember his saying that day that he thought Christianity was perhaps better adapted to a skittish climate like ours than Buddhism, and that Ju-Ju worship in London would be sure to cause friction with the County Council.
As I see it now, there was a terribly large amount of truth in the view taken by Brown and Campbell and Kelly about belief in England, and more particularly in London. But there were devout men of all ages who did not happen