engaging ruffians. This gave me some food for thought. Was it, then, in that
guise that they appeared through the mists of the sea, distant, perplexed, and
simple-minded? And what on earth is an “engaging ruffian”? He must be a
creature of literary imagination, I thought, for the two words don’t match in my
personal experience. It has happened to me to meet a few ruffians here and
there, but I never found one of them “engaging.” I consoled myself, however,
by the reflection that the friendly reviewer must have been talking like a parrot,
which so often seems to understand what it says.
Yes, in the mists of the sea, and in their remoteness from the rest of the race, the
shapes of those men appeared distorted, uncouth and faint—so faint as to be
almost invisible. It needed the lurid light of the engines of war to bring them out
into full view, very simple, without worldly graces, organised now into a body of
workers by the genius of one of themselves, who gave them a place and a voice
in the social scheme; but in the main still apart in their homeless, childless
generations, scattered in loyal groups over all the seas, giving faithful care to
their ships and serving the nation, which, since they are seamen, can give them
no reward but the supreme “Well Done.”
TRADITION—1918
“Work is the law. Like iron that lying idle degenerates into a mass of useless
rust, like water that in an unruffled pool sickens into a stagnant and corrupt state,
so without action the spirit of men turns to a dead thing, loses its force, ceases
prompting us to leave some trace of ourselves on this earth.” The sense of the
above lines does not belong to me. It may be found in the note-books of one of
the greatest artists that ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci. It has a simplicity and a
truth which no amount of subtle comment can destroy.
The Master who had meditated so deeply on the rebirth of arts and sciences, on
the inward beauty of all things,—ships’ lines, women’s faces—and on the
visible aspects of nature was profoundly right in his pronouncement on the work
that is done on the earth. From the hard work of men are born the sympathetic
consciousness of a common destiny, the fidelity to right practice which makes
great craftsmen, the sense of right conduct which we may call honour, the
devotion to our calling and the idealism which is not a misty, winged angel
without eyes, but a divine figure of terrestrial aspect with a clear glance and with
its feet resting firmly on the earth on which it was born.