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The Thirteenth New Year's Feast 1 The Fourteenth New Year's Feast from the Auspicious Accession 78 The Fifteenth New Year's Feast after the Auspicious Accession 130 The Sixteenth New Year's Feast after the Auspicious Accession 199 The Seventeenth New Year's Feast after the Auspicious Accession 230 The Eighteenth New Year's Feast after the Auspicious Accession 253 The Nineteenth New Year's Feast after the Auspicious Accession 294 Index 301

THE THIRTEENTH NEW YEAR'S FEAST

On the eve of Wednesday, the 23rd Rabi`u-l-awwal, 1027 , after the lapse of fourteen and a half gharis, the entrance of the Sun--that is, H.M. the Great Light--the Benefactor of the Universe, into the constellation of the Ram, took place. Twelve years had now passed from the august Accession of this suppliant at the throne of God, in prosperity, and the New Year began in joy and thanksgiving. On Thursday, 2 Farwardin, Divine month, the festival of my Lunar weighment took place, and the fifty-first year of the age of this suppliant at God's throne began with rejoicings. I trust that my life will be spent in the doing of God's Will, and that not a breath of it will pass without remembering Him. After the weighment had been finished, a fresh feast of joy was arranged, and my domestic servants celebrated the day with brimming cups.

On this day Asaf K. , who held the rank of 5,000 with 3,000 horse, was favoured by the grant of 4,000 two-horsed and three-horsed troopers, and Sabit K. was raised to the office of Examiner of Petitions. I bestowed the post of the Artillery on Mu`tamid K. A Kachh horse had been brought as an offering by the son of Dilawar K. No horse so good as this had come into my establishment till I encamped in Gujarat, and as M. Rustam showed a great liking for it, I presented it to him. On the Jam were conferred four rings--viz., diamond, ruby, emerald, and sapphire--and two hawks. I also gave four rings--viz., ruby, cat's-eye, emerald, and sapphire--to Raja Lachmi Narayan . Muruwwat K. had sent three elephants from Bengal, and two of them were included in my private stud. On the eve of Friday I ordered lamps to be placed round the tank, and this had a very good appearance. On Sunday Haji Rafiq came from `Iraq, and had the good fortune to kiss the threshold, and laid before me a letter which my brother Shah `Abbas had sent with him. The aforesaid person is a slave of Mir Muhammad Amin K., the caravan leader, and the Mir had brought him up from his childhood. In truth, he is an excellent servant. He frequently visited `Iraq, and became intimate with my brother Shah `Abbas. This time he had brought tipchaq horses and fine cloth-stuffs, such that of the horses some were put into the private stables. As he is a skilful slave, and a servant worthy of favour, I honoured him with the title of Maliku-t-tujjar . On Monday I gave Raja Lachmi Narayan a special sword, a jewelled rosary, and four pearls for ear-rings. On Mubarak-shamba I increased by 500 horse the mansab of 5,000 personal and 1,000 horse held by Mirza Rustam; I`tiqad K. was promoted to a mansab of 4,000 and 1,000 horse; Sarfaraz K. was promoted to a mansab of 2,500 and 1,400 horse; Mu`tamid K. to the rank of 1,000 with 350 horse. On Anira'i Singh-dalan and Fida'i K., horses worth 100 muhars were conferred. As the guarding and administration of the Punjab had been entrusted to I`timadu-d-daula, I, at his request, promoted to the government of the said Subah, Mir Qasim, the Bakhshi of the Ahadis, who is related to him, and bestowed on him a mansab of 1,000 personal with 400 horse and the title of Qasim K. Before this I had given Raja Lachmi Narayan an `Iraq horse. On this day I conferred on him an elephant and a Turki horse, and gave him leave to go to Bengal. The Jam was dismissed to his native country with a present of a jewelled waist-sword, a jewelled rosary, two horses, one from `Iraq and the other a Turki, and a dress of honour. Salih, brother's son of the deceased Asaf Khan, was promoted to a mansab of 1,000 with 300 horse, and allowed to go to Bengal, and a horse was conferred on him. On this date Mir Jumla came from Persia, and had the good fortune to pay his respects. The aforesaid is one of the respectable Sayyids of Isfahan and his family have always been held in honour in Persia, and now his brother's son, Mir Riza, is in the service of my brother, Shah `Abbas, and has the rank of Sadr, and the Shah has married him to his own daughter. Mir Jumla had left Persia fourteen years before this, and gone to Golconda to Muhammad Quli Qutbu-l-mulk. His name is Muhammad Amin. Qutbu-l-mulk gave him the title of Mir Jumla. For ten years he had been his Mudar `Alaihi and his Sahib Saman . After Qutbu-l-mulk died, and the rule came to his brother's son, the latter did not treat the Mir properly, and so he took leave and hastened to his native country. The Shah, on account of his connection with Mir Riza, and the respect which he had for men of merit, showed much consideration for and kindness to him. He also presented fitting offerings, and passed three or four years in Persia, and amassed properties . As he several times represented that he wished to enter the service of this Court, I sent a farman and invited him. Immediately the farman arrived he severed his connections there, and set the face of loyalty towards this Court. This day he attained the honour of kissing the carpet, and produced as offering twelve horses, nine tuquz of silk cloths, and two rings. As he had come with devotion and sincerity, I conferred favours and kindness on him, and presented him with 20,000 darbs for his expenses and a dress of honour. On the same day I gave the post of Bakhshi of the Ahadis to `Inayat K. in place of Qasim K. I honoured Khwaja `Aqil, who is one of the old servants, with the title of `Aqil K., and presented him with a horse. On Friday, Dilawar K., coming from the Deccan, had the good fortune to kiss the threshold, and presented an offering of 100 muhars and Rs. 1,000. Baqir K., Faujdar of Multan, was promoted to a mansab of 800 personal and 300 horse. Tijarat K. and Bahu'i, Zamindar of Multan, were honoured with the gift of elephants. On Saturday, the 11th, marching from Dohad with the intention of hunting elephants, I pitched at the village of Kara Bara . On Sunday, the 12th, the village of Sajara became the place of alighting. It is 8 koss from this place to Dohad, and 1 1/2 koss to the hunting-ground. On the morning of Monday, the 13th, I went to hunt elephants with a body of my private servants. As the grazing-place of the elephants is in a hilly country, with elevations and depressions, a passage is obtained with difficulty by one on foot. Before this, a large body of horse and foot had surrounded the jungle after the manner of a qamurgha, and outside the jungle, on a tree, they had prepared a wooden platform for me. On all sides of this they had arranged seats on other trees for the Amirs. They had got ready 200 male elephants with strong nooses, and many female elephants. On each elephant there were seated two elephant-drivers of the tribe of Jarga, whose special employment is the hunting of elephants, and it had been arranged that they should bring the wild elephants from the jungle into my presence, that I might witness the hunt. It happened that at the time when the men from all sides entered the jungle, in consequence of the thickness of the forest and the heights and hollows, the chain was broken, and the order of the qamurgha did not remain perfect. The wild elephants in bewilderment turned in every direction, but twelve male and female came to this side . As the fear was that they might escape, they drove in the tame elephants and tied them up wherever they found them. Although many elephants were not caught, at least two excellent ones were captured, very handsome in shape, of good breed, and perfect marks. As there is a hill in the jungle in which the elephants were, called Rakas Pahar, or demon hill, I called these two elephants Ravan Sar and Pavan Sar, these being the names of two demons. On Tuesday, the 14th, and Kam-shamba , the 15th, I halted.

On the eve of Thursday, the 16th, I marched, and halted at the stage of Kara Bara. Hakim Beg, who is one of the household of the Court, was honoured with the title of Hakim K., and a sum of Rs. 3,000 was given to Sangram, a Zamindar of the hill country of the Panjab. As the heat was very great, and marching by day was to be avoided, I marched by night. On Saturday, the 18th, a halt was made in the parganah of Dohad. On Sunday, the 19th, the sun that bestows favour on the world attained the highest point in the constellation of Aries. On this day a great entertainment was held, and I sat on the throne. I promoted Shah-nawaz K., who held a mansab of 5,000, with the favour of 2,000 horse, of two and three horses. Khwaja Abu-l-Hasan, the Chief Bakhshi, was given a mansab, original and increased, of 4,000 with 2,000 horse. As Ahmad Beg K., of Kabul, who had obtained the governorship of Kashmir, had promised that he would conquer in the space of two years Tibet and Kishtwar, and the promised time had elapsed, and he had not fulfilled this service, I removed him, and promoted Dilawar K. Kakar to the Government of Kashmir. I gave him a dress of honour and an elephant, and sent him off. He also made a promise in writing that in the course of two years he would conquer Tibet and Kishtwar. Badi'u-z-Zaman, s. Shahrukh M. came from the jagir he held in Sultanpur, and had the good fortune to kiss the threshold. Having at this time honoured Qasim K. with a jewelled dagger and an elephant, I dismissed him to the Government of the Punjab.

On the night of Tuesday, the 21st, I marched from the stage mentioned, and turned the reins of the army of prosperity towards Ahmadabad. As in consequence of the great heat and the corruption of the air I would have had to undergo much hardship, and would have had to traverse a long distance before reaching Agra, it occurred to me not to proceed at this hot season to the capital. As I heard much praise of the rainy season in Gujarat, and there was no report about the evil reputation of Ahmadabad , I finally conceived the idea of remaining there. Inasmuch as the protection and guardianship of God was in all places and at all times extended to this suppliant, just at this crisis news arrived that signs of the plague had shown themselves again at Agra, and many people were dying, my intention of not going to Agra, which had thrown its rays on my mind through Divine inspiration, was confirmed. The entertainment of Thursday, the 23rd, was held at the station of Jalod.

Previously to this, the rule of coinage was that on one face of the metal they stamped my name, and on the reverse the name of the place, and the month and year of the reign. At this time it entered my mind that in place of the month they should substitute the figure of the constellation which belonged to that month; for instance, in the month of Farwardin the figure of a ram, and in Urdibihisht the figure of a bull. Similarly, in each month that a coin was struck, the figure of the constellation was to be on one face, as if the sun were emerging from it. This usage is my own, and has never been practised until now.

On this day I`tiqad K. was promoted to the dignity of a standard, and a standard was also conferred on Muruwwat K., who was attached to Bengal. On the night of Monday, the 27th, the camp was pitched in the village of Badrwala, in the parganah of Sahra. At this stage was heard the voice of the koel . The koel is a bird of the crow tribe, but smaller. The crow's eyes are black, and those of the koel red. The female has white spots, but the male is all black. The male has a very pleasant voice, quite unlike that of the female. It is in reality the nightingale of India. Just as the nightingale is agitated and noisy in the spring, so is the cry of the koel at the approach of the rainy season, which is the spring of Hindustan. Its cry is exceedingly pleasant and penetrating, and the bird begins its exhilaration when the mangoes ripen. It frequently sits on the mango-trees, and is delighted with the colour and scent of the mango. A strange thing about the koel is that it does not bring up its young from the egg, but, finding the nest of the crow unguarded at the time of laying, it breaks the crow's eggs with its beak, throws them out, and lays its own in the place of them, and flies off. The crow, thinking the eggs its own, hatches the young and brings them up. I have myself seen this strange affair at Allahabad.

On the night of Kamshamba , the 29th, the camp was on the bank of the Mahi, and the entertainment of Mubarakshamba was held there. Two springs appeared on the bank of the Mahi, that had very clear water, so much so that if a poppy-seed fell into them the whole of it was visible. All that day I passed with the ladies. As it was a pleasant place to walk about in, I ordered them to build a raised seat round each of the springs. On Friday I fished in the Mahi, and large fish with scales fell into the net. I first told my son, Shah-Jahan, to try his sword on them. After this I ordered the Amirs to strike them with the swords they had in their belts. My son's sword cut better than all of theirs. These fish were divided among the servants who were present. On the eve of Saturday, the 1st of Urdibihisht, marching from the above-mentioned stage, I ordered the mace-bearers and tawachiyan to collect the widows and poor people from the villages on the road and near it, and bring them before me, so that I might bestow charity on them with my own hand, which would be an occupation, and the helpless ones might also find grace. What better occupation could there be than this? On Monday, the 3rd, Shaja`at K. `Arab, and Himmat K., and other servants who belonged to the Deccan and Gujarat, had the good fortune to kiss the threshold. The holy men and the possessors of blessing who lived at Ahmadabad paid their respects to me. On Tuesday, the 4th, the bank of the river at Mahmudabad became the alighting place. Rustam K., whom my son, Shah-Jahan, had left in the Government of Gujarat, was honoured by paying his respects. The entertainment of Thursday, the 6th, was held on the bank of the Kankriya tank. Nahir K., according to order, came from the Deccan and raised the head of honour with the good fortune of prostrating himself before me.

A diamond ring was presented to my son, Shah-Jahan, as part of the offering of Qutbu-l-mulk. It was of the value of 1,000 muhars, and on it there appeared three letters of equal size and of good form, such that they made the word Lillahi . This diamond had been sent, as it was reckoned one of the marvels of the world. In fact, veins and scratches are flaws in precious stones, but it was generally thought that the marks on this one were fabricated. Moreover, the diamond did not come from any celebrated mine. As my son, Shah-Jahan, wished that it should be sent to my brother, Shah `Abbas, as a souvenir of the conquest of the Deccan it was sent to the Shah along with other gifts.

On this day I presented Brikha Ray bad-farush with Rs. 1,000. He is a Gujarati by origin, and is fully versed in the chronicles and circumstances of that country. His name was Bunta--that is, a sapling . It seemed to me that it was anomalous to call an old man Bunta, especially now that he had become verdant and fruit-bearing through the irrigation of our kindness. I therefore ordered that henceforth he should be called Brikha Ray. Brikha means "tree" in Hindi. On Friday, the 7th of the aforesaid month, corresponding with the 1st Jumada-l-awwal, at a chosen propitious hour, I entered the city of Ahmadabad with all enjoyment. At the time of mounting, my son of prosperous fortune, Shah-Jahan, had brought 20,000 charan, or Rs. 5,000, for the nisar , and I scattered them as I hastened to the palace. When I alighted there he laid before me by way of an offering a jewelled turra of the value of Rs. 25,000, and those of his officers whom he had left in this Subah also presented offerings. They altogether amounted to nearly Rs. 40,000. As it was represented to me that Khwaja Beg Mirza Safawi had reached the neighbourhood of the forgiveness of God--i.e., had died--at Ahmadnagar, I promoted to a mansab of 2,000 personal and horse, original and increased, Khanjar K., whom he had adopted as his son, and, indeed, held dearer than a son of his loins, and who was in truth, an intelligent, ambitious youth, and a servant worthy of patronage, and entrusted him with the charge of the fort of Ahmadnagar.

In these days, in consequence of the great heat and the corruption of the air, sickness had broken out among the people, and of those in the city and the camp there were few who for two or three days had not been ill. Inflammatory fever or pains in the limbs attacked them, and in the course of two or three days they became exceedingly ill--so much so that even after recovery they remained for a long time weak and languid. They mostly at last recovered, so that but few were in danger of their lives. I heard from old men who resided in this country that thirty years before this the same kind of fever prevailed, and passed away happily. Anyhow, there appeared some deterioration in the climate of Gujarat, and I much regretted having come here. I trust that the great and glorious God, in His mercy and grace, will lift up this burden, which is a source of uneasiness to my mind, from off the people. On Mubarak-shamba , the 13th, Badi`u-z-zaman, s. Mirza Shahrukh, was promoted to the mansab of 1,500 personal and horse, and presented with a standard, and appointed faujdar of Sarkar Patan. Sayyid Nizam, faujdar of Sarkar Lucknow, was raised to the mansab of 1,000 personal and 700 horse. The mansab of `Ali Quli Darman, who was attached to the province of Qandahar, at the request of Bahadur K., the governor thereof, was ordered to be 1,000 personal and 700 horse. Sayyid Hizbar K. Barha was dignified with the mansab of 1,000 personal and 400 horse. I promoted Zabardast K. to the rank of 800 personal and 350 horse. On this day Qasim Khwaja of Dihbid had sent from Ma-wara'a-n-nahr by the hand of one of his tribesmen by way of supplication five tuyghun falcons. One died on the road, and four arrived at Ujjain in safety. I ordered them to hand over the sum of Rs. 5,000 to someone among them, that he might purchase and take with him whatever things would be agreeable to the Khwaja, and gave a reward of Rs. 1,000 to himself. At this time Khan `Alam, who had been sent as ambassador to the ruler of Persia, sent an ashyani falcon , which in the Persian language they call ukna. Outwardly one cannot distinguish between these and baz dami falcons by any particular mark, but after they have been flown the difference is clear. On Thursday, the 20th, Mir Abu-s-Salih, a relation of the deceased Mirza Yusuf K., came from the Deccan by order, and enjoyed the good fortune of kissing the threshold. He presented as an offering 100 muhars and a jewelled plume . Mirza Yusuf K. was one of the Rizawi Sayyids of Mashhad, and his family was always held in great honour in Khurasan, and just now my brother Shah `Abbas has given his daughter in marriage to the younger brother of the aforesaid Abu-s-Salih. His father, Mirza Atagh, was the head of the attendants of the mausoleum of Riza, the 8th Imam. Mirza Yusuf Khan, by means of the patronage of H.M. , had risen to nobility, and attained to the mansab of 5,000. Without doubt he was a good Mir, and held his many servants in good order. A number of relations gathered round him. He died in the Deccan. Although he left many sons, who obtained favours in consideration of former services, special attention was paid to the development of his eldest son. In a short time I advanced him to the rank of nobility. Certainly there is a great difference between him and his father.

On Mubarak-shamba , the 27th, I presented Hakim Masihu-z-zaman with 20,000 darbs , and to Hakim Ruhu-llah 100 muhars and Rs. 1,000. As he had thoroughly diagnosed my constitution, he perceived that the climate of Gujarat was very inimical to it. He said: "As soon as you moderate your habit of taking wine and opium, all these troubles of yours will disappear." Indeed, when I in one day diminished both of them, there was a great gain on that first day. On Mubarak-shamba , the 3rd Khurdad, Qizilbash K. was promoted to the mansab, original and increased, of 1,500 personal and 1,200 horse. A report was received from Gajpat K., superintendent of the elephant stables, and Baluch K., chief huntsman , that up to this time sixty-nine elephants, male and female, had been caught. Whatever took place after this would be reported. I ordered them to beware not to take old or small elephants; but with this exception they should catch all they saw, male or female. On Monday, the 14th, the sum of Rs. 2,000 was presented for Shah `Alam's anniversary, to Sayyid Muhammad, his representative. A special Kachh horse, one of the good horses of the Jam which had been presented to me, was given to Raja Bir Singh Deo. I made a present of Rs. 1,000 to Baluch K., the chief huntsman, who is engaged in capturing elephants. On Tuesday, 15th, I found I had a severe headache, which at last ended in fever. At night I did not drink my usual number of cups, and after midnight crop-sickness was added to my fever, and till morning I rolled about on my couch. On Wednesday, the 16th, at the end of the day, the fever diminished, and, after asking the advice of my doctors, I took my usual number of cups on the third night. Although they urged me to take some broth of pulse and rice, I could not make up my mind to do so. Since I arrived at the age of discretion, I never remember having taken bughan broth, and hope that I may not want it in future. When they brought food for me this day, I had no inclination for it. In short, for three days and two nights I remained fasting. Though I had fever for a day and a night, and my weakness was such that it appeared as if I had been confined to bed for a long time, I had no appetite left, and had no inclination towards food.

I am amazed to think what pleasure or goodness the founder of this city could have seen in a spot so devoid of the favour as to build a city on it. After him, others, too, have passed their lives in precious trouble in this dustbin. Its air is poisonous, and its soil has little water, and is of sand and dust, as has already been described. Its water is very bad and unpalatable, and the river, which is by the side of the city, is always dry except in the rainy season. Its wells are mostly salt and bitter, and the tanks in the neighbourhood of the city have become like buttermilk from washermen's soap. The upper classes who have some property have made reservoirs in their houses, which they fill with rainwater in the rainy season, and they drink that water until the next year. The evils of water to which the air never penetrates, and which has no way for the vapour to come out by, are evident. Outside the city, in place of green grass and flowers, all is an open plain full of thorn-brakes , and as for the breeze that blows off the thorns, its excellence is known:

"O thou, compendium of goodness, by which of thy names shall I call thee? I had already called Ahmadabad Gardabad ."

Now, I do not know whether to call it Samumistan or Bimaristan , or Zaqqum-zar , or Jahannamabad , for it contains all these varieties. If the rainy season had not prevented me, I would not have delayed one day in this abode of trouble, but, like Solomon, would have seated myself on the throne of the wind, and hastened out, and released the people of God from this pain and trouble. As the men of this city are exceedingly weak-hearted and wretched, in order to guard against any of the men from the camp entering their houses with a view to oppress them, or interfering with the affairs of the poor and miserable: and lest the Qazi and Mir `Adl should, from fear of the face of men , temporize and not stop such oppression, I, from the date on which I entered the city, notwithstanding the heat of the air, every day, after completing the midday prayer, went and sat in the Jharoka. It was towards the river, and had no impediment in the shape of gate, or wall, or watch-men , or chobdars . For the sake of administering justice, I sat there for two or three sidereal hours and listened to the cries for redress, and ordered punishments on the oppressors according to their faults and crimes. Even in the time of weakness I have gone every day to the jharoka, though in great pain and sorrow, according to my fixed custom, and have looked on ease of body as something unlawful of its citizens. No State can grow rich by exploiting the misery and the vice of its own people. Were the money now wasted in this non-productive trade devoted to industry, the resultant product would pay the State over and over again for any loss from the sacrifice of alcohol. Already this is being proved in the United States. In the State of Massachusetts an increase in the taxation of theatres, soft drinks, candy, and transport not only made up for the loss from the taxes on alcohol, but realised an increase of over 500,000 dollars in the first dry year! There in America the breweries and distilleries are being converted into jam factories, boot factories, and where formerly 250 men were employed they now employ 1500 men! One such factory bears the placard:--

'Once we made booze, Now we make shoes.'

The revenue that comes from prosperity enriches a nation; the revenue that comes from its degradation impoverishes. When we are freed from the waste and ruin wrought by alcohol--then our national revenue will flourish as never before. In a prosperous land the revenue will look after itself. Those who are so anxious lest we be overtaxed are trying to inspire us with groundless fears.

The most sacred thing on earth is the mother and the child. It is they who suffer and perish because of conditions that are indefensible. The little spark of grey matter behind the eyes of a little child may become a Newton, a Knox, or a Walter Scott. 'There is no wealth but life,' declared Ruskin. Every motive of patriotism and religion moves us to do everything in our power to save childhood and motherhood. There never in any land was any propaganda so cynical, so unblushing as the propaganda that for weary weeks has now screamed in our ears--'No Change.' The blood of four dread years, and then--'No Change!' The agony of the world's most awful Gethsemane, and at its end--'No Change!' ... Nothing more need be said. Only the blind could have made such appeals.

THE GREATEST OF TYRANNIES

The deadliest foe of humanity is the deadening power of custom. What we have seen from our earliest days has no power to stir our conscience or kindle the fire of indignation. It may be the case that when Lot went down to Sodom he was at first 'vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked.' But he did not continue vexed very long. He got to like it. At last he sat at the gates of that city with great enjoyment. As he sank into the mire he became unconscious of the slough. Otherwise he would never have returned to it. When the great war of the five kings against four reached its consummation, and Lot was a prisoner going north with a halter round his neck, he often groaned, 'If I ever get out of this I'll never look near that filthy Sodom again.' Like a bolt from the blue came deliverance and victory and spoils--and back he went to Sodom and its filthy conversations as before. It is such a wonderfully modern story. In every age men get so accustomed to the filth that it no longer seems filth. The mud of their daily habit becomes their gold.

When we look back on the long road by which humanity has travelled and read of the things men once did in cold blood, we wonder how they could ever have had the heart to do them. The answer is--custom. To us it is incredible that men should once have trafficked in human flesh and blood. And yet to our forefathers of even recent years it seemed the most natural thing. Were there not slaves from the beginning, and naturally there would be unto the end! The captains of the slave ships would assemble their crews in their cabins for prayer meetings while the holds of their ships were filled with men and women dying in these gehennas! So far from experiencing any twinges of conscience, these slave captains regarded themselves as benefactors of humanity. Sir John Hawkins was not alone in priding himself on the fact that he brought so many of the heathen of Africa into Christian lands, where they might hear the Gospel. It is not so long ago when children of six years worked in factories from five in the morning to nine at night. We who play with our babes and build our brick castles in Spain while they shout for joy--think of it! What hearts they must have had--these fathers of ours--who took the babes by their thousands and harnessed them to the car of their juggernaut! And yet they were not any different from us. They were only blinded by custom.... Whoever has wandered over the hills of his native land will remember the leap of the heart when he has suddenly seen some fair valley open up before his amazed eyes. He can hear the song of the river that waters it, he sees the clouds playing on the slopes, his awestruck lips murmur with the great artist as he looked on Glen Feshie, 'Lord God Almighty!' But no human dwelling is there, only heaps of stones where the homesteads once stood; only the bleating of sheep where children once shouted at play. What became of the people? They were driven out. The will of one man or one woman drove the population of a parish into the Cowcaddens of Glasgow or exiled them beyond the seas. And the Church of Christ looked on silent. And the men who made the countryside waste prided themselves on the fact that they set the people, whom they drove forth, on the way of fortune! How could men do deeds like these? How could the Church be silent in the face of them? Again it was just custom. The ears had got so accustomed to phrases such as the 'sacredness of property,' the 'right of a man to do what he liked with his own,' that the heart forgot the sacredness of the Gospel and the rights of the people in the land of their birth. It is time we stopped mouthing about the cannon-fodder of war, and began to speak about the cannon-fodder of custom.

If poor, blundering, pitiful humanity had not been blinded by custom to the folly of war, it would have made an end of war long ago. But all the days of youth humanity has shut into dreary barracks, learning all sorts of foolish things. And the history it learns is just the history of war after war! At fourteen the centuries seem to a boy but a river of blood. He deems it an inevitable weapon in the progress of the world--this ceaseless killing! It is custom alone that prevents humanity from making an end of that horror. And strikes are only war in another form--the bludgeon of force! Kaiserism is not dead. World dominion for me or destruction for you has its counterpart in two shillings for me or ruin for you. The spirit is the same. If custom had not deadened us to the meaning of war and strike, we would shrink back in horror at the very sound of the words. But, instead of that, ere humanity has recovered from the woe of the one, we are plunged into the woes of the other.... It sounds a respectable sort of word! And the right of a man to stop working seems elementary--for we are not slaves. But humanity has learned there is a higher word than rights--and that is duty. We owe service to our brethren. We can pay too high a price for two shillings more a day if they mean starving women and perishing children. Life is more than livelihood; and if the endeavour to better livelihood means the destruction of life, then it is condemned. And that is what it means. Europe is perishing. Vienna is dying. All over the world Rachel is weeping for her children. What Europe needs is coal and raw materials, that it may have wherewith to buy food. And we go on strike. And ships can no longer carry food or cotton; and Europe will starve ... starving is a good discipline and I shouldn't mind ... but, God! the little children ... the babies.... 'Strike,' we shout, finding it easy through long custom. But our striking is only completing the work that Kaiserism began. And the little graves are dug faster and faster; and you can hear the falling of tears like soft rain.... What savages we are, unable through any disciple to learn that the world can only be saved by submitting to law and by ceasing to wield the bludgeon of force.... When one thinks of the poor suffering, quarrelling, dying slaves of custom; when one sees the world in one blinding flash convulsed in the death throes--Oh, God! if only there came a gale from Heaven--a sudden, rushing wind. Only that could save a world blinded like this.

You may imagine that I am exaggerating the power of this tyrant of whose despotism you are unconscious. But you have only to think and you will at once recognise that my words are but the words of soberness. Use your eyes as if for the first time--and what a world this is that surrounds us! I read the other day a paragraph in the morning paper that made my blood cold. A discharged soldier got his gratuity and spent his day in jollity. He came home at night and, in the presence of his children, trampled his wife to death, and not his wife only, but the unborn child--and in the presence of his children. That, in the most cultured city in Bible-loving and Christian Scotland. And every day the tale is much the same. Little children are perishing, mothers are broken-hearted, and the streets are strewn with human wreckage. The casualties of war pale in significance before the casualties of peace! But this does not move us: we are accustomed to it. These crowded, reeking public-houses, thirty to the half-mile, battening on the misery of the poor--we have seen them from our youth and they move us not. How many in our Circuses and Terraces and Places will even trouble themselves to so much as vote for the deliverance of their fellow-citizens? Very few in these particular places, if I mistake not. For they cannot shake themselves loose from the yoke of custom.

And this same tyrant blinds us to the goal to which we are hastening. The last great proof of the power of custom is that when nations and empires were perishing they never knew they were perishing. Men were so accustomed to the riches and greatness and security of the Roman empire, that even when it was tottering to its fall they never realised that it was doomed. All nations have gone the one road. They have abolished God or the gods! They have cast duty to the winds; they have given themselves to Mammon and to pleasure; and they perished--but they never knew that the world that seemed to them so secure was passing away. And unless there comes a change--a mighty gale from Heaven--then this world we know must perish. Custom alone blinds us to the fact, plain to the open eye. Scotland cannot feed her people but for a few weeks in the year. For the rest they must be fed by the food brought from overseas by the fruits of our industries. If these industries fail ... we perish. The Clyde will no longer hum with the throbbing engines or great ships come with food.... And every strike, every stoppage of labour, is but a step towards the abyss.... But probably that is what God means. He makes the wrath of men to praise Him--He will use hunger as the instrument wherewith to scatter the great Scottish race broadcast over the world, to people the mighty plains of Canada and the wastes of Australasia. A great silence will fall over the plain of central Scotland. The most hideous of all the workings of man will be beautified when the lichen grows over the crumbling ruins. The mavis will sing in the thorn-tree, dewy with fragrance, where Motherwell now stands ... or Anderston. That may be the hidden purpose of our follies and our crimes. This, at least, is sure, that if we cannot shake ourselves loose from the grip of custom--custom will be our destruction.

THE LAST DELIVERANCE

Every great social advance made by men in the past has been made under the pressure of public opinion. That public opinion was created by a free and an unfettered Press. The grim fact that we are now faced with is that the day of the free Press is over. Syndicates of capitalists control the Press of the country, and newspapers whose circulation approaches a couple of millions create the opinion their owners desire. The duty of the newspaper is to record facts, and communicate to the people the correct data on which public opinion can be based. If the Press purposely suppresses what is true, lends itself to the colouring of the records so that the false seems to be the true and the true false, then it becomes the greatest public peril. A generation that is doped with doctored news can scarcely arrive at the truth. The newspapers are supplied free by the bureaux of the interested with news that serve their purpose. Thus it comes that the machinery for creating public opinion is largely in the hands of those whose purpose is that public opinion shall not destroy or lessen their profits. There are noble exceptions; but, taking it as a whole, the syndicated Press of this country is no longer a mirror of the truth.

In the United States of America and in Canada there are one hundred and twenty millions who speak our language, whose religion is also ours, who are the most intelligent and hard-headed people on the face of the earth, yet if one were to believe what the Press of this country says, one would be driven to the conclusion that they are poor foolish idealists who have said farewell to their senses. And that because the Press serves the public with doctored news. One day we are told how a hundred thousand New Yorkers are to march in procession through the streets demanding the return of their alcoholic drinks. The columns are full of the preparations for the greatest uprising of the oppressed and parched citizens. The great day comes and the procession is a fiasco. But the syndicated Press omit to record that only a miserable handful paraded the streets, the offscourings of the city's purlieus, amid the derision of the onlookers. We are later informed under great headlines that the American Medical Association or some such society has called for the annulling of the Prohibition Law. We feel that the climate is bound to become wet again, for the doctors demand it. But we soon learn that this particular association of doctors is a mere fragment of a noble profession--a fragment separate from the American Association which corresponds to the British Medical Association. But the syndicated Press does not record that fact. The Press that distorts events after that manner can only flourish among a generation that desires not the truth.

There is nothing more to be desired than that the people of Great Britain should acquaint themselves with the facts regarding the greatest social advance ever made by humanity in a generation. Can it be the case that the millions of America committed an act of social folly when they outlawed the liquor traffic and closed the saloons, and that, awakening from their dream, they are to restore the traffic in alcohol and the saloon once more? That is the impression that a spoon-fed Press seeks to create. Can it be true?

To answer that question we must ascertain first whether the prohibition of the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the States was an act of panic legislation, the result of a snap vote, the effect of a passing enthusiasm or a fanaticism that was triumphant for a moment? If it be of that order, then it may be expected to be cast aside by a wearied and disillusioned people. But the movement that prohibited alcohol across the Atlantic has the toil and sacrifice and devotion of three generations behind it. It is not a thing of yesterday. As far back as 1834 the selling of liquor to Indians was forbidden by law. Seventy-six years ago the first Prohibition Law was enacted in the State of Maine. Fifty-seven years ago the Presbyterian General Assembly excluded liquor distillers and liquor sellers from the membership of the Church. In 1873 the Women's Temperance Crusade movement was inaugurated--a movement whose ideal was to make the United States safe for women and children by the suppression of the saloon. In 1893 the Anti-Saloon League was formed--an organisation that brought the various societies into unity and fused them into the strength of steel. There were long years of work in school and of teaching in the churches ere on the 18th December 1917 the Amendment in favour of Prohibition passed the Legislative Assemblies at Washington. Having passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, it had to be ratified by a majority of the various States. The States had seven years in which to ratify; but within one year and two months forty-five States, with a population of over one hundred millions, ratified the Amendment. Only three out of the forty-eight States failed to ratify. On the 29th January, it being certified that three-fourths of the States had ratified as the Constitution requires, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting alcohol, became law. And on that night the leaders of the movement held a service of thanksgiving in Washington, and when the hour struck ushering in the first day of the new era, Mr. W. J. Bryan began his address by reading the words: 'They are dead that sought the young child's life.' An Amendment to a National Constitution which has the generations behind it is not one to be repealed. To repeal it requires now a majority of three-fourths of the States! The one great fact to remember, is that by local option two thousand two hundred and thirty-five counties in the United States had made an end of the liquor traffic in their areas before Prohibition became the national law, and that there were only three hundred and five counties in all the States which had not declared themselves dry before Prohibition became the law. If anything be certain under the sun it is that Prohibition is the settled and unalterable policy of the United States of America. During a visit of three months, and after inquiries in several cities, I never met a single person who wanted the saloon again reopened in the States. Whatever criticism might be made, there was among everybody only one sentiment regarding the saloon--and that was thankfulness that it was closed for ever.

There are, however, those who desire the Volstead law defining alcohol amended so that the sale of beer and light wines may be permitted in restaurants with meals. To us that seems reasonable; but there is no chance of such a policy being adopted. The reason is that these experiments have already been made in the States and have been found unworkable and unsatisfactory. The settled policy of the reformers in the States is to seal up the sources of drunkenness. Every drunkard began as a moderate drinker; and the evil has to be stayed at its source. Mr. Bryan described the process dramatically: 'The moderate drinker says every man should stop when he has had enough. But the difficulty is to know when one has had enough, for enough is a horizon that recedes as one approaches it. A frail brother was advised by a friend to drink a glass of sarsaparilla when he had had enough. "That's right," was the reply, "but when I have had enough I cannot say sarsaparilla!"' The prevailing opinion among the Church and social leaders is that the liquor trade as it was conducted in America could not be mended, and that it had to be ended. And it was ended. Having been ended, there is no possibility of its being amended!

Though in the Western States full enforcement of the Prohibition Law has not been effected so far, yet the beneficial effects of the closing of the saloons are so many and great, that he who runs may read. There were four millions idle in the States at the time when I was there, but the nation was going through the greatest industrial crisis in its history with perfect calm, and without suffering the pangs of destitution, because workmen no longer wasted their money in the saloons. Here in Britain the idle have been pauperised by doles from the public exchequer; in the United States there have been no doles. The nation can thus come through a crisis of unemployment without half its number becoming a charge on the remainder. That is possible because the sources of waste are sealed up. Statistics amply prove that drunkenness is rapidly disappearing. The Salvation Army ceased its rescue work among the drunkards in New York because there were no more drunkards to be rescued. In Pittsburg I found the jail well-nigh empty and the poorhouse without sufficient inmates to keep it clean. It is the same everywhere. One great employer of labour, whose opinion I asked, said: 'Prohibition has given us a good Monday in our factory.' That was the most terse and effective testimony to Prohibition that I heard. There is no broken time owing to drunkenness. Industrial efficiency has been increased 20 per cent. One man who had an interest in a big hotel told me that the profits from soft drinks were last year double the profit they used to make by the sale of alcohol. Hotels never had such a time of prosperity as they have had lately. The reason is that men can bring their wives and children to stay at the hotels with perfect safety. The proprietor of the biggest hotel in a city where I stayed told me that he was glad to be rid of the bar and that he would never have it back on any account. A Canadian-Scot who has prospered greatly told me how he became a Prohibitionist. 'I am interested in a mine in the north,' said he, 'and I went to visit it. I saw the men wasting their substance and their lives in the saloons--lying around drugged, with their pockets empty. It was shocking. I used to give 0 to fight Prohibition. When the wet agent came to my office after that for my subscription, I said: "Get out! I'll give 0 a year in the future to make an end of all saloons!" It is thus the movement spreads. The moderate drinker is as determined as the Rechabites that the saloon shall never open its door again--and it never will. One of the oddest testimonies in behalf of the success of the new law was this saying: 'In Detroit there has been a falling off in the taxi-cab trade.' The inference is that everybody can walk home now. 'We saw,' says Mr. Harold Spender, 'only a single drunken man in America for three weeks, and then he was a politician going to Washington.' In a period of three months I saw none. Though this reform has been in operation for so short a time, it has already effected the greatest miracle in modern history. It has healed the sick by the hundred thousand and it has raised the dead.

The readers of the commercialised Press when they scan the inspired articles regarding America's social uprising have only to use their common-sense to realise that they are being served up falsehoods. They have only to think what a mighty change for the betterment of humanity has been wrought in the great cities where alcohol no longer seeks and lies in wait for the unwary at every street corner. Instead of liquor seeking him, the drouth must now seek the liquor--and the search is a toilsome one in a dry and parched land. What a deliverance that must be for the weak-willed when the State no longer, by licensed premises every few yards in the crowded streets, tempts them to take the road to pauperism and destruction. They have only to think of the lives of rich and poor whom they themselves knew, that have made shipwreck on these rocks and shoals, and think what a deliverance has come to the nation that no longer, with the marshalled host of its liquor sellers, seeks to enslave and destroy its citizens. They have only to look at the city of their habitation and ask themselves why it is that so many hundred thousand of their fellow-citizens live under conditions that mean unspeakable misery. Why are families doomed to one-roomed houses? why are children reared under conditions that mean their being damned before they are born? The answer is--Alcohol! In proportion to the number of public-houses in any district is the misery of the housing conditions. You have but to scratch the surface of human misery anywhere in our cities and you find the turgid stream of alcohol. Let the reader of the subsidised Press ask himself why all the money spent on clearing and cleaning slums has wrought no result? It is that alcohol creates new slums faster than the old are cleared away. Let him ask why all the money spent in mission work, in philanthropic work, in rescue work, has not diminished the mass of human misery; and the answer is--Alcohol! Let him think of the money now wasted by the workers in the reeking public-houses being used to clothe and feed and house the children--and what wonderful cities we would have and what a new race we would become. And all that has been done in the United States and in Canada. 'Our great claim as Prohibitionists,' said Admiral Sims, 'is that it has shut up the schools of future drunkards, the saloons and the clubs. We have saved the rising generation.' No amount of misrepresentations can alter facts. The Americans are not fools. They know their own business. 'In every community,' said President Harding recently, 'men and women have had an opportunity to know what Prohibition means. They know that debts are more promptly paid, that men take home the wages that once were wasted in saloons, that families are better clothed and fed, and more money finds its way into the savings bank. In another generation I believe that liquor will have disappeared, not merely from our politics, but from our memories.'

Great Britain led the world in the deliverance of humanity from the degradation of slavery; the United States and Canada are leading the world in the still greater deliverance of humanity from the degradation of alcohol. Out of the West cometh the world's salvation. America, that is for ever singing of itself as the 'sweet land of liberty,' is now the seat of the greatest experiment in personal coercion that the world has known. And that is because the American has freed his mind from cant. He has replaced the conception of liberty as liberty to do as we like by the conception of liberty which is the liberation of large masses of the community from thraldom to their base appetites and from the oppression of grafters and profiteers. The main cause of that deliverance was the awakened conscience of the people. When the power to veto licences was placed in the hands of the people, the citizens became conscious of the fact that when they voted for a licence they were just as much partners in the saloon as if they furnished the liquor and sold it standing behind the bar. When they considered that the poisoning of the poor by alcohol was a road to wealth, when they traced the misery and ruin that afflicted the community to the saloons, they felt that they could not any longer be sharers in the traffic nor incur responsibility for it. It was the Churches of the land that wakened the conscience of the people. It was better that any community perish rather than that they should offend one of the little ones for which Christ died.... What we need is that the conscience of the community should be wakened in the same manner. The Church of Christ alone can sound the trumpet that wakens from the slumber of torpor. But the Church seems more concerned about dealing out soothing syrup to its soporific members than about wakening the dead. The spectacle of bishops denouncing Prohibition in the name of Freedom; of representative Church Councils refusing to recommend the cause of No-Licence; of congregations being narcotised to the slaughter of the innocents that goes on ceaselessly all around them--the victims of Bacchus laid for ever on his altar--while the preacher proclaims peace, peace, where there is no peace, and expounds an evangel of sweetness and light while the people are perishing--all that may well make angels weep. But the Churches are wakening. The founder of Christianity prayed, 'Lead us not into temptation,' and Christians cannot for ever acquiesce in the State tempting its own children to their destruction. Just as we look back and marvel how any Christian could ever defend slavery, so fifty years hence, when the liquor traffic will have become a memory, men will marvel how Christians could ever have defended the Liquor Trade and looked on, silent, while it swept the young and the strong to doom.

THE PERIL OF THE CROWD

The history of humanity is in large measure the history of its own illusions. It has always been towards the mirage that men have tramped with bleeding feet, only to strew the desert with bleached bones. One great illusion has been that the golden age would come when the world's autocracies gave place at last to democracy, and the will of the multitude became law. It has come; democracy now wields the world's sceptre. But alas! the golden age tarries, and the wistful doubt arises whether the greatest peril confronting humanity may not be just that--the sceptre in the hand of the unregenerate crowd.

For what we have to remember is that the crowd is by its very nature and spirit capable of crimes such as the individual autocrat would shrink from in horror. You may think that fantastic, and imagine that a crowd consists, after all, of so many individuals, and that the spirit of the crowd can only be the aggregate of the individuals comprising it. But such a view is mistaken. The corporate spirit of the crowd is not that of the units composing it. The best illustration of this is the sudden reeling back into the jungle of a crowd when a panic seizes them. Let the cry 'Fire' be raised in a crowded building, and though the separate individuals be of the gentlest and most considerate, yet instantly the crowd becomes daemonic, a wrestling, writhing, struggling mass trampling the weak under foot, with no thought but self-preservation.

There are various explanations. One is the law of sympathy, by which an emotion is intensified in being shared. At the first cry of peril a wave of fear passes through the crowd; and as each looks at the faces around him he sees fear in every eye. The emotion suddenly unloosed is like a river whose source is amid the silent hills, that gathers in its course a thousand rills, until at last it sweeps in mighty floods everything before it. Before the flood of terror generated by the crowd all the decencies of civilisation vanish, and man becomes once more the animal with but the one instinct--to fight for one's life. And it is the same with anger. Let a skilled orator set himself to rouse the passion of a crowd, and he will soon generate a spirit that utterly obliterates the individual. Let him depict the wrongs they suffer, and anger sweeps through the multitude, bending them to the spirit of the orator as the corn field bends before the wind. Though as individuals they may tremble in their shoes before their wives, now, fused by rhetoric into one glowing mass, they are ready to loot a city, pull down a Bastille, and level an absolutist throne with the dust. But the great explanation of the spirit of the crowd as distinct from the individual is that in the surge of contagious emotion generated by the crowd the sense of personal identity is lost. Each only lives in the crowd. And with the loss of identity comes the loss of personal responsibility. I no longer stand alone to be judged for my acts; it is the crowd who will be judged. The brake of personal responsibility suddenly snaps. It is thus that a crowd will commit a crime that the individual afterwards remembers with horror. Only a crowd could have said: 'His blood be on us and on our children.'

In these last years the horrors that struck a chill into the heart of the world were committed by the crowd. Suddenly in a Belgian village the cry was raised, 'We are being sniped.' Instantly the soldiers were swept by one emotion, and there rose the cry for vengeance. Then the Mayor and the priest and a handful of village notables would be gathered and shot. It was the rage and panic of a crowd seeking its own safety through brutality.

It is plain, then, that the spirit of the crowd is something far other than that of the individual, and is capable of the greatest crimes. It was the crowd that compelled Socrates to drink the hemlock; it was the crowd that overbore that poor vacillating weakling, Pilate, with their monotonous chant, 'Crucify, Crucify'; it has always been the crowd that has turned the sanctuaries into the nesting-places of owls and bats; and the rock on which humanity may make shipwreck at last is just this--the crowd. The millions of the dead have made the world safe for democracy: the appalling question now is--Who will make democracy safe for the world?

It is, however, only when the crowd is organised that the crowd becomes a real menace. The horrors of war are unspeakable just because they are the horrors committed by the crowd perfectly organised. A crowd that has met for no purpose, and is a mere fortuitous concourse of atoms, can do neither good nor harm. In proportion to its organisation is the peril of the crowd. The power of the crowd that committed the greatest crime in the history of the world lay in the fact that it was perfectly organised. It was there in that chilly morning with only one purpose, to cry, 'Crucify, Crucify.' Across all the mists of the centuries we can see the organisers at work moving among the crowd. They whisper to one group: 'He struck you in your property, overturning the tables of your barter; if he lives you are ruined'; and to the other: 'Remember his blasphemies: what he called himself.' ... And in the trail of the organisers arose with intenser volume the cry, 'Crucify, Crucify.' It was the organised crowd that nailed the Son of Man to the cross.

The fact that confronts us to-day is that the crowd is at last perfectly organised; so perfectly organised that all the industry and transport of three kingdoms can be stopped by the flash of an electric wire. The crowd knows what it wants, and it has organised itself to get it. But the crowd to-day is not an isolated handful such as that of old in Athens or Jerusalem. The crowd is now world-wide and international. What is shouted on the banks of the Volga in the morning, at noon is shouted on the Clyde, and at the setting of the sun in New York. For the cable and the telephone and the wireless have woven humanity into one web. From the rising to the setting of the sun, slowly but steadily on the forge the international crowd is being hammered into the unity of steel.

In the old days the crowd had to storm their way into the presence of their Pilates before they could cry 'Crucify.' But to-day the organised, super-national crowd has changed all that. Now the crowd can make itself heard across half the world. It assembles on the banks of the Ganges and formulates its demands. The Turk must stay at Constantinople! If not, well, there will be trouble. There in London or Paris or Washington the modern Pilate receives his message. The cry of the crowd hums in his ears across five thousand miles. 'What shall I do with the bleeding and persecuted?' asks he. 'What is that to us?' answers the crowd on the Ganges. And expediency gains the day as it did in Jerusalem.... And fifteen thousand crosses arise with their bleeding, agonising victims in Anatolia.... The governors of this world have had but one rule in all the ages. Instead of fixing their eyes on the stars they have gazed at the streets and have listened to the crowd.... And the organised crowd can to-day make itself heard round all the world as it cries, 'Crucify, Crucify.'

There is to-day one other added element in the peril of the crowd, and that is the removal of the forces that formerly restrained and curbed. The witness of history is that only one spirit can stand up against and cast out the spirit of the crowd, and that is the spirit of religion. I am not speaking of Christianity merely, but of religion in its generic sense. There was only one force in Jerusalem on Good Friday stronger than the thirst for blood, and that was the feeling that they, the crowd, must not defile themselves ceremonially. Only one power, religion alone, can cut the claws of the tiger in man.... In the midst of the darkest deeds the thought of God's judgment-seat has ever and again pulled humanity up.

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