第56章 TO THE COUNTRY!--THE FARM COLONY.(3)

"What,"it will be said,"do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?"Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom."After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the Out-of-Works,whom we have already registered at our Labour Bureau,we find that at least sixty per cent.are country folk,men,women,boys,and girls,who have left their homes in the counties to come up to town in the hope of bettering themselves.They are in no sense of the word Cockneys,and they represent not the dregs of the country but rather its brighter and more adventurous spirits who have boldly tried to make their way in new and uncongenial spheres and have terribly come to grief.Of thirty cases,selected haphazard,in the various Shelters during the week ending July 5th,1890,twenty-two were country-born,sixteen were men who had come up a long time ago,but did not ever seem to have settled to regular employ,and four were old military men.

Of sixty cases examined into at the Bureau and Shelters during the fortnight ending August 2nd,forty-two were country people;twenty-six men who had been in London for various periods;ranging from six months to four years;nine were lads under eighteen,who had run away from home and come up to town;while four were ex-military.Of eighty-five cases of dossers who were spoken to at night when they slept in the streets,sixty-three were country people.A very small proportion of the genuine homeless Out-of-Works are Londoners bred and born.

There is another element in the matter,the existence of which will be news to most people,and that is the large proportion of ex-military men who are among the helpless,hopeless destitute.Mr.Arnold White,after spending many months in the streets of London interrogating more than four thousand men whom he found in the course of one bleak winter sleeping out of doors like animals returns it as his conviction that at least 20per cent.are Army Reserve men.Twenty per cent!That is to say one man in every five with whom we shall have to deal has served Her Majesty the Queen under the colours.This is the resource to which these poor fellows come after they have given the prime of their lives to the service of their country.Although this may be largely brought about by their own thriftless and evil conduct,it is a scandal and disgrace which may well make the cheek of the patriot tingle.

Still,I see in it a great resource.A man who has been in the Queen's Army is a man who has learnt to obey.He is further a man who has been taught in the roughest of rough schools to be handy and smart,to make the best of the roughest fare,and not to consider himself a martyr if he is sent on a forlorn hope.I often say if we could only get Christians to have one-half of the practical devotion and sense of duty that animates even the commonest Tommy Atkins what a change would be brought about in the world!

Look at poor Tommy!A country lad who gets himself into some scrape,runs away from home,finds himself sinking lower and lower,with no hope of employment,no friends to advise;him,and no one to give him a helping hand.In sheer despair he takes the Queen's shilling and enters the ranks.He is handed over to an inexorable drill sergeant,he is compelled to room in barracks where privacy is unknown,to mix with men,many of them vicious,few of them companions whom he would of his own choice select.He gets his rations,and although he is told he will get a shilling a day,there are so many stoppages that he often does not finger a shilling a week.He is drilled and worked and ordered hither and thither as if he were a machine,all of which he takes cheerfully,without even considering that there is any hardship in his lot,plodding on in a dull,stolid kind of way for his Queen and his country,doing his best,also,poor chap,to be proud of his red uniform,and to cultivate his self-respect by reflecting that he is one of the defenders of his native land,one of the heroes upon whose courage and endurance depends the safety of the British realm.

Some fine day at the other end of the world some prancing pro-consul finds it necessary to smash one of the man-slaying machines that loom ominous on his borders,or some savage potentate makes an incursion into territory of a British colony,or some fierce outburst of Mahommedan fanaticism raises up a Mahdi in mid-Africa.In a moment Tommy Atkins is marched off to the troop-ship,and swept across the seas,heart-sick and sea-sick,and miserable exceedingly,to tight the Queen's enemies in foreign parts.When he arrives there he is bundled ashore,brigaded with other troops,marched to the front through the blistering glare of a tropical sun over poisonous marshes in which his comrades sicken and die,until at last he is drawn up in square to receive the charge of tens of thousands of ferocious savages.

Far away from all who love him or care for him,foot-sore and travel weary,having eaten perhaps but a piece of dry bread in the last twenty-four hours,he must stand up and kill or be killed.Often he falls beneath the thrust of an assegai or the slashing broadsword of the charging enemy.Then,after the fight is over his comrades turn up the sod where he lies,bundle his poor bones into the shallow pit,and leave him without even a cross to mark his solitary grave.