to-day i discussed the women's movement with my class. they were all agreed that women should not have votes. i asked for reasons.
"they can't fight like men," said a boy.
i pointed out that they risk their lives more than men do. a woman risks her life so that life may come into the world; a soldier risks his life so that death may come into the world.
"women speak too much," said margaret steel.
"read the parliamentary debates," said i.
"women have not the brains," said a boy.
i made no reply, i lifted his last exam. paper, and showed the class his 21 per cent, then i showed him violet brown's 93 per cent. but i was careful to add that the illustration was not conclusive.
i went on to tell them that the vote was[pg 87] of little use to men, and that i did not consider it worth striving for. but i tried to show them that the women's movement was a much bigger thing than a fight for political power. it was a protest against the system that made sons doctors and ministers, and daughters typists and shopgirls, that made girls black their idle brothers' boots, that offered ￡60 to a lady teacher who was doing as good work as the man in the next room with his ￡130. i did not take them to the deeper topics of marriage, inheritance, the economic dependence of women on men that makes so many marry for a home. but i tried to show that owing to woman's being voteless the laws are on the man's side, and i instanced the corporation baths in the neighbouring city. there only one day a week is set aside for women. then it struck me that perhaps the women of the city have municipal votes, and i suggested that if this were the case, women are less interested in cold water than men, a circumstance that goes to show that women have a greater need of freedom than i thought they had.
[pg 88]
on the whole it was a disappointing discussion.
* * *
i went up to see lawson of rinsley school to-night. i talked away gaily about having scrapped my readers and rural arithmetic. he was amused; i know that he considers me a cheerful idiot. but he grew serious when i talked about my socialism.
"you blooming socialists," he said, with a dry laugh, "are the most cocky people i have yet struck. you think you are the salt of the earth and that all the others are fatheads."
"quite right, lawson," i said with a laugh. and i added seriously: "you see, my boy, that if you have a theory, you've simply got to think the other fellow an idiot. i believe in socialism—the guild socialism of the new age, and naturally i think that lloyd george and bonar law and the cecils, and all that lot are hopelessly wrong."
"do you mean to tell me that you are a greater thinker than arthur james balfour?" lawson sat back in his chair and watched the effect of this shot.
i considered for a minute.
[pg 89]
"it's like this," i said slowly, "you really cannot compare a duck with a rabbit. you can't say that shakespeare is greater than napoleon or burns than titian. balfour is a good man in his own line, and—"
"and you?"
"i sometimes think of great things," i replied modestly. "balfour has an ideal; he believes, as lord roberts believed, in the public schools, in oxford and cambridge, in the type of englishman who becomes an imperialist cromer. he believes in the aristocracy, in land, in heredity of succession. his ideal, so far as i can make out, is to have an aristocracy that behaves kindly and charitably to a deserving working-class—which, after all, is nietzsche's ideal.
i believe in few of these things. i detest charity of that kind; i hate the type of youth that our public schools and oxfords turn out. i want to see the land belong to the people, i want to see every unit of the state working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring. the aristocracy has merits that i appreciate. along with the poor they cheerfully die for their country ... it is the profiteering class with[pg 90] its "business as usual" cant that i want to slay. i want to see all the excellent material that exists in our aristocracy turned to nobler uses than bossing niggers in india so that millionaires at home may be multi-millionaires, than wasting time and wealth in the social rounds of london."
"are you a greater thinker than balfour?"
i sighed.
"i think i have a greater ideal," i said. "and," i added, "i am sure that if balfour were asked about it he would reply: 'i wish i could have got out of my aristocratic environment at your age.'"
"lawson," i continued, "i gathered tatties behind the digger once. that is the chief difference between me and balfour. when first i went through eton on a motor-bus and saw the boys on the playing grounds, i said to myself, 'thank god i wasn't sent to eton!'"
"class prejudice and jealousy," said lawson. "will the rangers get into the final?"
* * *
i met wilkie the mason, on the road to-night. he cannot write his name, and he is the richest man in the village.
[pg 91]
"what's this aw hear aboot you bein' are o' they socialists?" he demanded. "aw didna ken that when aw voted for ye."
"if you had?"
"not a vote wud ye hae gotten frae me. ye'll be layin' yer bombs a' ower the place," he said half jocularly.
"ye manna put ony o' they ideas in the bairns' heids," he continued anxiously. "politics have no place in a schule."
i did not pursue the subject; i sidetracked him on to turnips, and by using what i had picked up from andrew smith i made a fairly good effort. when we parted wilkie grasped my hand.
"ye're no dozzent," he said kindly, "but, tak ma advice, and leave they politics alone. it's a dangerous game for a schulemester to play."
* * *
i find that i am becoming obsessed by my creed. i see that i place politics before everything else in education. but i feel that i am doing the best i can for true education. after all it isn't socialism i am [pg 92]teaching, it is heresy. i am trying to form minds that will question and destroy and rebuild.
morris's news from nowhere appeals to me most as a utopia. like him i want to see an artistic world.
i travelled to newcastle on saturday, and the brick squalor that stretches for miles out elswick and blaydon way sickened me. dirty bairns were playing on muddy patches, dirty women were gossiping at doors, miners were wandering off in twos and threes with whippets at their heels. and smoke was over all. britain is the workshop of the world. good old merrie england!
these are strange entries for a dominie's log. i must bring my mind back to vulgar fractions and composition.
* * *
there was a cinema show in the village hall to-night. my bairns turned out in force. most of the pictures were drivel ... the typist wrongly accused, the seducing employer; the weeping parents at home. the average cinema plot is of the same brand as the plots in a washerwoman's weekly. then we had the inevitable indian chase on horseback, and[pg 93] the hero pardoned after the rope was round his neck.
i enjoyed the comic films. to see the comic go down in diver's dress to wreck a german submarine was delightfully ludicrous. he took off his helmet under water and wiped the sweat from his brow. excellent fun!
i have often thought about the cinema as an aid to education. at the present time it is a drag on education, for its chief attraction is its piffling melodrama. yet i have seen good plays and playlets filmed ... that is good melodramatic and incident plays.
i have seen hamlet filmed, and then i understood what tolstoi (or was it shaw?) meant when he said that shakespeare without his word music is nowhere. yet i must be just; philosophy had to go along with music when the cinema took up hamlet.
the cinema may have a future as an educational force, but it will deal with what i consider the subsidiary part of education—the facts of life. pictures of foreign countries are undoubtedly of great use. the cinema can never give us theories and philosophy. so with its lighter side. charley's aunt might make a good film; [pg 94]the importance of being earnest could not. the cinema can give us humour but not wit. what will happen when the cinema and the phonograph are made to work together perfectly i do not know. i may yet be able to take my bairns to a performance of nan or the wild duck or the doctor's dilemma.
* * *
"please, sir, willie smith was swearing." thus little maggie shepherd to me to-day.
i always fear this complaint, for what can i do? i can't very well ask maggie what he said, and if he says he wasn't swearing ... well, his word is as good as maggie's. i can summon witnesses, but bairns have but the haziest notion of what swearing is. (for that matter so do i.) if a boy shoves his fingers to his nose.... "please, sir, he swore!"
i try to be a just man, and ... well, i was bunkered at the ninth hole on saturday, and i dismissed willie smith—without an admonition. but i am worried to-night, for i can't recollect whether willie has ever caddied for me; i have a shrewd suspicion that he has.
