THE CHOICE: A FANTASY

BY RICHARD BUXTON

A LITTLE While ago, after a troublesome day, I went to bed and to sleep; and either Morpheus or my Subconscious Self (by kind permission of Dr. Freud, of Vienna), proceeded to enact within my sleeping brain an entirely new and original dream.

I dreamed that I was sitting at breakfast and, as is my usual custom at that meal, reading the letters from retired admirals, ex-Lord Mayors, and others which are printed by the Times in somewhat smaller type than the rest of the paper. I should explain that I do not find this occupation amusing. I perform it as my daily act of charity, for which, I believe, I shall be rewarded. I thought at first, indeed, in this dream of which I am telling you, that my reward had actually arrived; for I looked up suddenly to see an angel standing at my right hand. The angel said, however, with some solemnity:

'I am directed to inform you that your period of life is at an end and that you must come with me.'

I own to having been considerably surprised by this; and I remember that my hand, jarred by the sudden mental agitation, shook the teapot, which was poised over the cup, and poured a stream of tea upon the tablecloth. As I strove to mop up the flood with the blue silk handkerchief which I wear in my breast-pocket on Mondays and Thursdays (this was a Thursday), I asked the angel, with as much composure as I had at my command, to repeat what he had said.

'Time's up,' he replied, with sudden asperity; and then, with a nullification of his tone, he went on. 'Sorry if I snapped at you. But you can't imagine how tired I get when people ask me

to say it again. They all do it; and yet I'm sure that I speak perfectly distinctly.'

'Do you mean at once?' I asked him, preparing to rise. But he waved me down again with a negligent though courteous gesture.

'No, no,' he said. "There's no immediate hurry. Take your own time and by all means finish your breakfast. I thanked him and suggested that I should have a place laid for him, which he declined. He then sat gracefully on the arm of a chair and smoked a cigarette which I gave him while I went on with my meal.

As the kidneys were grilled to a turn and as I did not know whether I should ever see any again, I made no haste and practised no abstemiousness; but when I had done the angel showed no sign of desiring to take an instant departure. He merely lolled further back into the seat of the chair and said:

'Of course, I'm taking you to Paradise first but, you know, there are certain formalities.' Here he hesitated a little and looked at me as if for help.

'I quite understand,' I said, encouragingly.

'Well,' he went on, 'your name has been on the waiting list for quite a while now, and you have been recommended by some really influential persons, but, of course, that does n't say

'No, no,' I murmured, heartened by even this recognition of my quality and convinced already that the formalities of which the angel spoke were not likely to trouble me.

'What I mean,' he pursued, 'is that you'd better take something with you for Peter to look at. It's his business really.'

'How do you mean, exactly?' I asked.

'Well, something to show for what

you've done here, some indication, you understand, that you're a suitable person. You see, the membership is quite restricted and the privileges are really very extensive, so that we have to You do understand, don't you?' he concluded appealingly.

'Of course, my dear fellow,' I said. 'It would be perfectly absurd to be offended by so reasonable a requirement. Now, let me see, what would it be best for me to take?' I pondered for some time, finger on forehead, seeking a solution to this problem. At last, the recollection flashed into my mind of a period in my early youth when I had been for a time private tutor to a young gentleman of quality. My charge had been at length safely bestowed in a very exclusive home for inebriates; and his father had written for me a generous testimonial, which, as it happened, I had never had occasion to use. I turned to my desk and began to look for this document.

'No, not that,' I muttered to myself, turning over my tailor's dossier and the correspondence about the over-draft at the bank. 'Nor that!' as I threw on one side the abominable letters of the man with whom I had that vexatious misunderstanding about the guinea-pig. 'Ah, here it is!' And from the bottom of a pigeonhole I drew the precious paper, now growing yellow with age and beginning to crack along the folds. This ought to do, I think,' I said to the angel, holding it up for his inspection. ""Gentlemanly appearance, uniform correctness of behavior, unfailing tact." That's the kind of thing, is n't it? And signed by a peer. A dormant title, recently revived for a soap boiler, but still a peer.'

'Well, yes,' the angel answered, slowly. I suppose you could take that, but but it's the kind of thing we should get anyway from per

sonal references. What I really meant was something that you've actually done yourself you know the kind of thing I mean. You must have got something that would do.'

'What kind of thing?' I asked.

'Oh, anything. You've surely done - oh, fretwork or pokerwork or or water-color sketches or something like that?'

'Why,' I cried, rising to a sudden illumination, there's my poetry, of course!'

'Your poetry!' said the angel, his face brightening. Now, that's the very thing. I remember Peter telling me something about you, but these details do slip out of my memory so easily. I suppose-er-I suppose some of it has been printed?'

'Certainly it has,' I answered, a little hurt. 'And my last book was most favorably noticed in the Belfast Courier. But that settles the matter. I need n't keep you waiting any longer. I'll take my poetry.' And I took down my four volumes from the conspicuous position where they have always stood and waited for the angel to lead the

way.

He showed, however, no intention of rising, but looked rather dubiously at the books which I had tucked under my arm.

'Is that what you have decided to take?' he said. 'You know, it is n't my business and you must do what you think best; but if you'll take my tip you won't show Peter as much as that. You see, he gets rather a lot of that sort of stuff given him to read and he's always been just a trifle impatient.'

Naturally, I saw his point at once. I have been a reviewer myself.

'I'll tell you what I'll do,' I said, putting three of the volumes back on the shelf. 'I'll take him only my last book. It has been generally considered a remarkable advance on any

'Yes, yes,' the angel interrupted, speaking even more hesitatingly than before, but even that, you know. Is n't it rather a biggish book?'

'Nearly three hundred pages,' I answered, proudly. 'I never did believe in these meagre little pamphlets in paper covers.'

'Ye-es,' said the angel. 'But, you know, really, if I were you, I'd just take up a few of the best things out of it. I've known Peter for quite a goodish while now.'

I own that I was a little taken aback; but I have always prided myself on being a sensible and not an intransigent man.

'Well, look here,' I said, 'of course you know Peter much better than I do. Would it be too much to ask you to look through this and suggest.'

'I'd do it with pleasure, old thing,' the angel answered, helping himself to a cigarette, 'but the fact is I never did like the kind of thing that Peter likes. His taste is a good deal too old-fashioned according to my notions. Only there it is. But I really should n't be of any use to you in that way. Only I'd better warn you not to show him any vers libre. It's like a red rag to a bull to him, poor old chap.'

'I've never written any,' I said, stiffly. I entirely disapprove of it.'

"That's all right,' the angel murmured. You go ahead and pick out what you feel most bucked about. That will be much the best way. There's no immediate hurry; but I do wish you'd give me a match.'

I gave him a match and sat down to make my selection. I found it a more difficult business than I had anticipated. I inclined strongly myself to the 'Ode of Spring' and Jones himself

had praised it; but, on the other hand, Smith, whose judgment I value at least as much, though the world has not yet heard of him, had never liked it and had once or twice almost convinced me. Then there was the 'Sonnet on a Dog-fish,' which contains, I think, the finest single line I ever wrote; but it contains also that unlucky Cockney rhyme in the sextet, which I never could get rid of and which would very likely offend Peter's susceptibilities beyond repair. I turned the pages backward and forward, growing more and more perplexed; and the morning drifted by.

'I don't want to hurry you,' the angel observed at last, but if you could manage You see, I prom

ised to lunch with Azrael to-day and I had to put him off once last week, and so

,

'All right,' I said, 'all right. I won't be a moment.' And I plunged more feverishly into my work while the angel shuffled his wings behind my back in a restless manner.

'Do you think you are likely to get it done this morning?' he asked, presently, in a much more querulous and irritable voice. He was now flying up and down the room with short, impatient strokes of his wings; and I feared very much lest he should dislodge some of the valuable specimens of late Victorian crockery which stood on my mantelpiece. I wished to hand on this fine collection intact to my legatees; and I did not wish to vex the angel. I, therefore, stood up with about thirty pages in my hand, torn out of my latest book.

"These will do, I expect,' I told him, trying to conceal my uncertainty. The expression of doubt came again over his face as he looked at them.

"That's still rather a lot,' he murmured.

'Well,' I said, perhaps a little an

grily, will you tell me frankly how many you think I ought to take?'

"To be perfectly honest with you,' he replied, in a cool tone, 'I don't think you'll stand very much chance with Peter if you ask him to read more than one. And if you get pilled,' he added, reflectively, 'that'll mean another long journey after lunch.'

'One!' I cried, in dismay. "Why on earth did n't you tell me that before?' "I was hoping that you'd realize it for yourself,' the angel answered, shrugging his pinions.

'One!' I cried again. 'However am I to fix on one?'

'Well, anyway, I wish you'd hurry up about it,' he snapped, now growing quite pettish.

I hurriedly looked through my selection. There seemed to be some flaw in every piece. I had almost settled on the 'Ode to Spring' when I detected an error of grammar in the seventeenth stanza, that hitherto had always escaped my notice. The Dog-fish Sonnet, I remembered, had been reprinted (with acknowledgments) by the Coventry Evening News after its first appearance in the St. Stephen's Gazette; but when I looked at it again, the Cockney rhyme seemed more offensive than ever. Then, almost weeping and distracted by the angel's evident impatience, I cast my mind wildly over all that I had ever written. Perhaps could it be that none of these were perfect? In that moment I recalled one piece that indubitably had awakened in others an emotion comparable to my own. I had never printed it, I had almost forgotten it; and yet now the conviction grew in me that my applauding friends had been right, that this was a composition I never surpassed. As I thought about it, the others faded to insignificance in its light. I seized it, but, just as I soared through the roof into the cold of outer space, one hand in that of the

angel, the other clutching a sheet of paper, I awoke. I shall never know now whether Peter really would have appreciated that matchless poem; that red-hot lyric tossed off in a moment how many years ago, the Limerick which I composed in my youth upon the Keeper of the Printed Books in the British Museum!

The New Statesman

AVIATION AND WORLD BROTHERHOOD

BY A MILITARY PILOT

Now that, in a manner of speaking and with the usual wise reservations, it is all over bar the shouting, the still small voice of the contemporary little Peterkin can already be heard asking in the middle of the night, 'What did we kill each other for?'

'Civilization?' So we swore during the war, but like Omar Khayyam we now ask ourselves, 'Were we sober when we swore?' People who profess to be sober have begun to talk in the solemn old pre-war way, not about civilization at all, but about prestige and interests and supremacy. Even the balance of power, though publicly damned, is far from dead. When the gods go, the half-gods seek to return. Old gentlemen, who have never been to the war, sit in London and worship them in public. They write about 'our share in the war,' and sneer at President Wilson as an impossible idealist. Middle-aged generals, who ran the war from offices somewhere in France, or elsewhere, not infrequently follow suit. But the private soldier and the footslogging infantry officer, who lived with the war at close quarters, stick to their guns and their gods. A free civilization is still their heart's motto.

The new force that has come into

the world with the war is the realization in the minds of many men that a free international civilization is a thing for which it is worth fighting. People who professed to think internationally before the war were genererally dubbed, and frequently deservedly, either watery cosmopolitans or prating pacifists. The first had often axes to grind in more capitals than one, and were suspected by fullblooded patriots. The second were regarded as ridiculous people, who talked much of civilization but held war in such horror that they were not prepared to back a fight, even for their own beliefs.

Of the watery cosmopolitans there is no need to speak further. But we can all see now what was the matter with the pacifists. They lacked the nerve of the Irish, who are ever to be found

Fighting like devils for conciliation
And hating each other for the love of God.

They had, in fact, a totally exaggerated estimate of the value of human life. We know that it is often worth just nothing at all, unless it be laid down. The whole essence of pacifism is materialism. It is a denial of all the faiths of all the ages of all the world. It fears those that kill the body instead of those that hurt and destroy the soul. But the fighter knows better. And he knows in his heart, even if he has never reasoned it, that when he kills his enemy in fair fight he has done the latter no wrong.

This is the new pacifism, and hence it is that internationalism is to-day a living creed. Millions of ordinary men are prepared to fight to enforce peace' Many a man now thinks it a finer cause to strike a blow for than 'my country, right or wrong.' The 'prestige' mongers and the 'sovereignty' merchants, and all the official patriots,

would do well to note the times. Either you are for President Wilson, or you are against him. The present writer is strongly of the opinion that nine out of ten of the private soldiers, the 'Ole Bills' of every great combatant country, are for him.

If this be so, the League of Nations will have a force behind it. And the force of the future is Air Force. The road may be the King's highway or the route nationale, but the air, which knows no frontiers, is the highway of the League of Nations. In time it will make our national frontiers seem the limits of County Councils. The citizen of the world will be a good Briton or a good Frenchman in the sense that to-day he is a good Yorkshire man or a good Lancashire man. War will be as impossible between England and France as it is between Yorkshire and Lancashire. Let us remember that once peace was impossible between the roses of Lancaster and York.

But the citizen of the world must be bred and trained. The League of Nations will be a farce if it rests on nothing but the separate armies and navies of its members. Intrigue and jealousy and the parochialism of national statesmen can paralyze its arm. There can be conspiracy within its bosom. There could be no generalship, and there would be conflict of military schools and tradition. The citizen of the world, who will defend the world, must be bred to his task, and trained in a World's War College. Why should not the League of Nations levy a world tax, to be collected for it by national governments from their own subjects, and maintain the only military air force of the world? All pilots except the League's pilots could be trained for commercial aviation only, and the creation of national military air colleges could be strictly prevented.