As I write, Birmingham is in the midst of its “Big Guns Week.” The good patriots of “Brum” are “feeding the guns with War Bonds.” ap per instructions on the postmark, without a thought of such a thing as five per cent: their sole desire to “get on with the war.” At least, that is what one gathers from the speeches made on the opening day, when canons of the Christian Church made stirring appeals to the patriotism of their fellow Christians. One of the items of the opening ceremony was the singing of “O God, our help in ages past,” by children of the Bluecoat School.
It was particularly fitting that Christian ministers should give their blessing to a “Big Guns Week.Says Erasmus in his Complaint of peace “Whose invention was a cannon? Was it not the invention of the meek, lowly, merciful followers of Jesus Christ, whose law was love, and whose last legacy to His disciples and the world, peace?” To the cannon we must now add such things as high explosives, poison gas, liquid fire, torpedoes, submarines, bombing air-craft, and a hundred and one other examples of the inventive genius of Christian nations.
“Sufficient is Thine arm alone,” sang the children. Said a right reverend father in God, in effect: “M’yes – that may be so; but it is just as well that you should not lose sight of the fact that £5000 will buy four splendid quick-firing field guns. .” And as a magnificent example of pure, disinterested patriotism, the Birmingham Small Arms Company led off with an investment of £500,000.
If we continue to “feed the guns,” nothing can save the nations from another universal massacre in the near future. There is only one way to a lasting peace, and that is by the peoples of all countries insisting on Total Disarmament as the first step towards International Goodwill.
At a time when much of contemporary poetry is either strident with the feverish tone of militarism, or distraught and piteous over its effects, there is a distinctly bracing quality discernable in the voice of anyone who is happily able to treat the limitations and injustices that fall to the lot of those who attempt to lead a normal life at an abnormal period, in a spirit of brave humour that is as free from levity as it is devoid of cynicism.
The wind that blows through the country of the Comic Muse is not too rarified an air for common mortals to breather, and so it is that weary minds will find there not only relief from mental stress, but a readjustment of distorted values and warped judgements, both desirable and necessary if we would keep ourselves sane.
So one hails with genuine enthusiasm, the appearance of a little book of parodies and verses, just published by Messrs. Headley Bros. under the title “Carols of a Convict,” price 1/3. The author, Allan M. Laing, is a Liverpool man who has served a term of 12 months’ imprisonment in Wormwood Scrubs, where without paper or pencil to aid his memory, these impressions of an evidently sane, albeit a whimsical imagination, took on the garments of rhyme and reason.
No man who has served his term, however short, in Wormwood Scrubs, should miss reading this book, for is is literally packed with unerring humour at the expense of every detail of prison routine. One may well be envious of the temperament of a man who could so accept what was meant to be in the nature of a punishment. Most of the contents of the book are parodies of well-known songs; a form which makes them particularly adaptable for popular use. The sense and spirit of the originals have been so inverted and fashioned to the new purpose, that one is almost induced to believe they were written with the intention of being burlesqued, and this is surely the illusion that all good parody is meant to produce.
Mr. Laing is himself a keen enthusiast (and has on several previous occasions delighted his friends with samples of his ability) in this direction. Perhaps his Scottish heritage is mainly responsible for the caustic character of his with; but whatever good fairy bequeathed him this gift of a truly “saving” sense of humour, let us hope that the magic power will remain with him during his second sentence in Birmingham prison, even as in Wormwood Scrubs.
These men are undergoing repeated sentences of hard labour, for the one offence of refusing to relinquish their conscience and their ideals to the control of the State, and therefore become mere breathing automatons.
Their souls cry out for freedom for all the sons of men, and it is impossible for them to use any force towards a brother, but that of love.
A mighty force they hold, far stronger than puny hate, that, to live for long, even among so-called Christians of today, must be continually fed on war atrocities to keep it at high water mark. It is a force which, if allowed full sway, would crumble hate before it, as the snow melts beneath the kindly rays of the sunshine.
These men are trying to carry out Christ’s teaching embodied in the Sermon on the Mount. They, too, are despised and rejected of men. Brute force us used to try and make them surrender their souls to the demands of an earthly State, the whole ground-work of which is militarism. But they will not.
To me, the C.O.s are Christ’s Officers. They will shine out in radiant relief from this, the blackest picture of the world’s history, as having striven to guard that heritage for all Mankind, of peace. Love. Brotherhood and Liberty, that Christ left to us.
These men have striven, and are still striving, to show all with whom they come in contact that by true Christ-likeness only, can Christ’s kingdom come on earth. Although so little leaks out from our prisons, the little that does is more than sufficient to show any thinking person that brute force can crush and bruise and maim, but it is powerless to subdue the this greater force that dwells within these men.
We hear of repeated sentences of hard labour, of men released only on the point of death, of men dying in prison. Christ was hounded to His death in much the same way, by much the same people, for the very same reason. It was the High Priests and soldiers that crucified Him, because His Kingdom of Love was unthinkable. For then the poor would get their fair share and that would never do. The Kingdom of God might come after death, they had no use for it here. So they crucified Him. Now they persecute His followers.
The snow still continues to swirl. Fortunately this household has a sufficiency of coal for the next few days, but I feel sorry for the C.O.s and other prisoners some seven miles from here with nothing between them and the bitter sky but a sheet of galvanised iron, and in weather like this, spending the whole of the 24 hours in absolutely unwarmed cells. Possibly they are not worse off physically than the men in the trenches; but it is the solitariness of it that must be so trying and devilish. Few have got the resources within them that John Fletcher has, whose letter from Wormwood Scrubs are those of a saint. Copies of them reach me here, and they are doing good in one or two places.