PREFACE
(BY MAURICE GIRODIAS)

CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX

VOLUME FIVE

PREFACE
(BY MAURICE GIRODIAS)

This fifth volume of Frank Harris's memoirs has a history which must now be
made public, although I cannot do so without admitting to a feat of truancy
dramatically opposed to publishing ethics.
I have recounted elsewhere the unfortunate phase of my career when I lost
my first publishing firm, in which the remains of the Obelisk Press had been
incorporated. My father, Jack Kahane, had bought the publishing rights of
My Life And Loves from Frank Harris in the early Thirties and since then the
four volumes put out by the Obelisk Press had enjoyed a large and steady
sale.
Many years later, after the Obelisk Press had become the property of my
powerful rivals, Hachette—much against my will—they went on printing
and selling My Life and Loves year after year.
I had first read the book when a boy, and I had been impressed by the
ludicrous cheek of the little Irish adventurer. I was elated by his treatment of
the reader, the half-amused, half disguised unconcern with which he fed his
cock-and-bull stories to the gullible. The large layers of sexy episodes came
between rich slices of literary and political souvenirs with model regularity;
the cocksure, vulgar tone of the recital was quite wonderful. And yet, Harris
had certainly been a sincere and courageous man in his own funny way. He
had some generous ideas, and he had been a plucky fighter when it came to
defending some rather interesting causes; alas, self-adulation had prevented
him from being quite the universal hero he fancied himself to be in literature,
sex, or politics. But he is certainly responsible to a large extent for the
invention of modern journalism, whether he should be thanked for that or
not.
When I started the Olympia press in competition with my ex-publishing
firm, the Obelisk Press, I remembered that my father's contract with Frank
Harris had contained a mention of a fifth volume to be added at a later date
to the famous first four, but that Harris's death had brought an end to that
project.
However, I decided to investigate and I went to see a lawyer who represented
the interests of Harris's widow. He was a tiny old gentleman by the name of
Adolph, living in a crepuscular apartment in the frugal fashion typical of the
bourgeoisie of old. I crashed into several chairs on the way to his office as
there was strictly no light, electric or otherwise, in the hall; then he prudently
guided me to a chair and went to sit behind his desk. Gradually my eyes
became used to the deep night and I began to perceive his frail contours.
Then the uncanny negotiation began.

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CHAPTER I.

Early in this century when I was about 45, I made up my mind to go around
the world again as I had done twenty-odd years before and study those parts
of it—India, China and Japan—which I had missed before. By this time in
my life I realized distinctly that I liked young girls more than I ought to like
them. The girlish form before the characteristics of sex become mature
attracts me intensely.
One evening in London, a friend advised me to visit India, assuring me that
my peculiarity was dominant there. I started for India determined to see all
there was to be seen and, if my friend was indeed correct, to indulge myself
whenever the temptation became overpowering.
Going through the Red Sea in September, the heat was terrific; the women
passengers for the most part chose to sleep on deck in armchairs and, as the
temperature rose, their clothing grew slighter and slighter. I had got to know
a Mrs. Wilson and her daughter of eighteen going out to join the husband
and father, a civil servant in Bombay. Mrs. Wilson was pretty, well-read and
enthusiastic about my writings, with which she was familiar. The girl, Winnie,
was far prettier with an adolescent figure on the verge of womanhood and
the loveliest dark brown eyes. I thought her almost a perfect beauty, with her
girlish outlines and entrancing face. How to win her! Naturally I began by
paying attention to her and dispensing compliments of all sorts at every
opportunity. I found she loved music, so I talked to her of Wagner and Liszt
for an hour at a time. One day I stated the thesis that perfect beauty such as
hers must be the outward and visible sign of a perfect soul. "You must live up
to it," I said, "and in ten years you will be famous. You will make all men
adore you. We all long for perfection and never find it—it is the passion of
the soul."
We soon became friends, till one day Mrs. Wilson took me to task: "You are
turning Winnie's head," she said, "and it really isn't fair of you."
"I shall do her no harm, I promise you," I said. "I only tell her she must make
her spirit as perfect as her face.
"She is pretty, isn't she?" said the mother.
"A charming girl," we both agreed. All the while I was thinking about how I
could win her. More specifically, I was scheming how I could fuck her. There
was nothing I wanted more than to plunge my throbbing cock into her tight
little receptacle...to feel her moving beneath me as I shuttled in and out until
she screamed for me to stop. I could imagine how my swollen shaft would
stretch her pussy lips and how the grasping walls of her sheath would feel as I
penetrated inch by inch. I wanted to bury myself in her until my balls
slapped her upturned buttocks with each ramming stroke. I determined I

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While we were traveling through the Red Sea, my mind had turned
naturally to Colonial problems, for it was not possible, nor even desirable, to
be concerned with Winnie all the time. Perhaps the most useful way to reveal
my thoughts would have been to contrast the characters of Cecil Rhodes and
the German Kaiser. The former was without doubt an Empire Builder; the
latter, as few men before 1914 realized, was an Empire Destroyer. But two
such portraits would have taken me beyond the scope of the present part of
my memoir. For this reason, using the personality of Rhodes as a kind of
springboard, I shall attempt to record exactly what my thoughts were at the
time. I have since found no reason to alter them.
As early as 1887 at the Colonial Conference in London, Rhodes had outlined
the true colonial policy of England in the future. There was no snobbishness
in him and he saw that the despotism of the aristocratic class was out of
keeping with modern ideas. He told me once that if there had been any
brains in English rulers, the seat of government would have been settled for
five years in Washington and then five years in London. To him "the British
constitution" was an absurd anachronism and should have been remodeled
on the lines of the American Union with federal self-governing colonies as
the constituent states.
Rhodes had many faults, but there was greatness in him and in the main he
seemed to gravitate to what was right. He made dreadful mistakes: He could
not believe that Krüger would fight. He was the only man in South Africa of
any position who held that view. He believed too that the English would beat
the Boers easily and again he found himself mistaken. But he was the ablest
exponent of the true imperialism.
At the beginning of the century when the war was practically over, he
addressed a meeting of the South Africa League in Cape Town and his words
deserve to be remembered:
"The Dutch are not beaten; what is beaten is Krügerism, a corrupt and evil
government, no more Dutch in essence than English. No! The Dutch are as
vigorous and unconquered today as they have ever been; the country is still
as much theirs as it is yours, and you will have to live and work with them
hereafter as in the past. Remember that when you go back to your homes in
the towns or in the up-country farms and villages, let there be no vaunting
words, no vulgar triumph over your Dutch neighbors; make them feel that
the bitterness is past and that the need of cooperation is greater than ever.
Teach your children to remember when they go to their village school that
the little Dutch boys and girls they find sitting on the same benches with
them are as much part of the South African nation as they are themselves,
and that as they learn the same lessons together now, so hereafter they must
work together as comrades for a common object—the good of South Africa."

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My proof that the South African War had cost Great Britain millions and
had worsened our relations with South Africa made me many enemies in
England. All the evil effects of the war had seldom been adequately or
carefully stated. Let me give here some new facts.
In 1901, the Commission of Police in London reported that in the twelve
months during which Lord Kitchener was looting and burning and
devastating South Africa, the criminal classes were carrying on similar
operations in the heart of the Empire. In a single twelve months, burglaries in
London rose 50 per cent. Forgeries also showed a similar increase; housebreaking
rose 22 per cent, and shop-breaking 15 per cent. As with crime, so
with drunkenness. The number of convictions for drunkenness in the five
years from 1897 to 1901 showed an increase of 50 per cent in London over the
convictions for the five years from 1892 to 1896. The increase in vagrancy
was even more appalling. In 1901 the number of vagrants relieved at the
workhouse showed an increase of 20 per cent, and in 1901 the number was
actually 100 per cent higher than the figure at which it stood ten years
before.
The tide of pauperism, which had been steadily ebbing during the liberal
regime of peace, turned completely. In 1900 there was 1 pauper for 42 of the
population, in 1901 1 in 40, and in November 1902, 1 in 38.4. Not less ominous
was the tale told in the Labor Gazette as to the increase in the number of
unemployed. When the war began, the percentage reported as unemployed
by the trades unions was little more than 2.5. In November 1902, the
percentage had doubled. The poverty in England chiefly due to the English
ruling classes was intensified through this purposeless war. Here I will use
another authority:
In 1904, Montague Crackenthorpe in an article in The Nineteenth Century
gave some figures which deserve to be widely known. He proved that "nine
hundred and twenty-nine out of every thousand persons in the Kingdom die
in poverty and one of every four in London dies supported by public charity.

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The only man I knew in Bombay was a man called Taylor. He had some kind
of position with the railways. Here I find my memory at fault. In a long life
lived energetically over three parts of the globe, this lapse is perhaps
excusable. I shall go straight to the things which most concerned me, for they,
like certain pages of Virgil and like certain immortal lines of Meredith, will
remain with me always.
It was late afternoon when Taylor conducted me through the bazaar. There is
nothing so picturesque as the bazaars of India, and nothing so chaotic. The
men, women, and the skinny brown children are as thick as flies in the midst
of the gaudy bales and bundles of their colorful wares. I couldn't help
noticing how, when they saw us, they seemed to make way for us and to
impede us at the same time. Taylor called my attention to the Chinese silks,
the Tibetan shawls, and to the large drums of brown and yellow spices. I
feigned interest, but to tell the truth, I was interested in the people more than
in the gaudy merchandise which they held up for us to see. It seemed to me
significant that Taylor, who was, after all, a man of no breadth of mind, a man
who missed alike the joys of the spirit and the sweetest of the body's delights,
should barge his way like a railway porter through the crowd. He typified for
me the worst aspect of the British Raj, the kind of man who, like Lord Milner,
was devoid of the sense of justice and fair play when he was confronted by
the subject races. I allowed him to walk ahead, like a bad-mannered guide.
Thoughtfully, taking everything in, I followed in his wake.
It occurred to me immediately that Taylor was not the kind of man I could
trust to advise me in the matter which was closest to my heart. I decided,
therefore, to take Mrs. Redfern at her word, and to accept her offer to be my
guide and friend in sexual matters during my sojourn in India. Walking
behind Taylor, I could not help feeling very anti-English. That this in general
should have been the type of man they sent out to bring Western civilization
to the East made me boil with rage. What kind of future could we expect
when we showed such little wisdom in the choice of our emissaries? I
remembered suddenly what I had said to Molly, the beautiful daughter of
the innkeeper at Ballinasloe: "I am not ambitious, Molly, of place or power or
riches; but of knowledge and wisdom I'm the lover and priest. I don't want
happiness even, Molly, nor comfort, though I'll take all I can get of both. I'm
wedded to that one quest for knowledge like a knight in search of the Holy
Grail and my whole life will go to that achievement." When I'd said that, I
had been thinking of Smith, my friend and professor in Lawrence, Kansas.
Now, for the thousandth time in my life, I was thinking of him again. If only
our western governments would be sensible enough to use the fine qualities
of men like Smith! There are true Empire Builders, the men in whom moral
courage is leavened by wisdom, the men who, in their wisdom, despise not the
body in its pleasures nor are insensitive to it in its afflictions. That kind of
man, more than those who learn their manners on the cricket field of Eton, is
the one who will build the only true empire...the everlasting Empire of Love!

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In my quarter of a century in London there were at least two men of
conspicuous ability who came to the front by proclaiming the certainty of life
after death. The one was a Mr. Sinnett who preached in a new magazine
entitled Broad Views. "I know people," he said boldly, "who not only
remember their past lives, but are in a position, if it were worthwhile, to write
a complete diary of every day of those antenatal lives. For all persons the
faculty in due course of time will come."
Every soul now being born into the world, Mr. Sinnett insisted, went out of the
world from 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. We are therefore all contemporaries of
the Apostles and the Caesars, and the antenatal autobiographies of some of
us ought to be worth reading. Dr. Anna Kingsford believed she was a
reincarnation of Plato, and Mrs. Besant is said to be Hypatia come to life
again, but these are mere assertions.
Mr. Sinnett sets forth "what happens to the soul after the death of the body.
The experiences that come on first when a human soul is emancipated from
the prison of the flesh are not of a very exalted order. As consciousness fades
from the physical vehicle, it carries with it the finer sheath of astral matter
which has interpenetrated the coarser physical vehicle during life, and in
this ethereal but still quite material envelope, it exists for a time in the region
commonly called the astral plane.
"On the astral plane the soul, in a vehicle of consciousness which is
insusceptible to heat or cold, incapable of fatigue, subject to no waste, and
therefore superior to the necessity of taking food, continues an existence for a
variable period which in many of its aspects is so like the life just abandoned
that uninstructed people who pass over find it impossible to believe that they
are what is called dead. But that state of things, though, as it grows familiar,
and as the field of view is enlarged, may be agreeable enough, and may be
associated with the renewal of friendships and affections interrupted for a
time by death, is not the stage of things that corresponds to the Heaven of
religious teaching.
"Nothing that has ever been said from the religious point of view concerning
the blissful condition of the soul in Heaven involves any exaggeration. On
the contrary, the basic fact connected with existence on the plane of nature
corresponding to the Heaven of theology is bliss, absolute, complete and
unalloyed."
But surely the methods of nature provide for all cases, and not merely for
those of the spiritual aristocracy. What are we to think of the condition in
Heaven of, let us say, a drunken coal heaver, whose earthly life has been
anything but meritorious. Mr. Sinnett might reply that even in such a man's
life there may have been some little gleam of spiritual feeling, something
resembling love for a woman or a child.

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It was in Shanghai that I first learned that various poisons and aliments are
supposed to increase desire or intensify sensation, but I found them no more
efficacious than the spiritual theories of Mr. Sinnett. Indeed, in time I came to
explain the wide use of drugs throughout China with reference to the curious
insensitiveness of Chinese women.
I was taken by a Chinese I met shortly after my arrival from Burma to one of
the famous "opium dens" for which China is famous. Frankly, I was very
disappointed. I achieved neither the desired physical effect nor that intense
state of clear vision attained by Coleridge on the eve on which he wrote
"Kubla Khan." I smoked the prescribed twenty pipes again and again
without ever achieving either object.
This was especially true in regards to sex. My friend had obtained a young
Chinese woman for me. When I was "high" I was to make love to her. We
were taken to the place of our assignation in a rickshaw and once in the room,
the Chinese girl immediately put herself at my disposal. A few words of
description would not be out of place since, in spite of the fact that I was
disappointed with the effect the drug had on me, the girl herself was the
picture of loveliness.
She lay cool and naked as yellow marble on the gaudy red-covered divan,
her little hands crossed on her full breast and her legs together. Her nipples
were large and dark, though they were not engorged, even when I removed
my clothes and I stood naked before her, my cock standing straight out in
anticipation of the pleasure to come. Her hair was thick and lay in crushed
tresses under her back. Between her thighs, under a glossy chevron of hair,
her pussy lips were obvious, larger than I personally would have expected,
but pretty and warmly moist to the touch. But she made no response as I laid
my hand on her mount She remained as cool as a cucumber through the
entire operation.
Only the slightest tremor passed through her limbs as I applied my lips to
hers, and even when I hovered on the verge of fucking her, it was merely a
matter of opening her legs. She had gathered her knees up and they fell open
like the pages of a heavy book. I shrugged and moved up closer to her slit,
placing the head of my cock against that warmly throbbing entrance.
Usually, it has been my experience that a woman will respond to this with
either some gesture or word, or even a moan signaling her rising passion. But
with this one there was nothing. I entered her slowly, studying her eyes,
which remained expressionless through the entire affair. I pumped her
slowly, then hard, almost brutally, in an effort to elicit some sort of response.
When I reached forward and took her breasts in my hands and squeezed the
nipples, not harshly, I thought I saw a flicker of emotion, perhaps discomfort,
but she soon reverted to type. I sighed inwardly and simply continued to saw
between her legs.

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Looking back over my life, I realize with dismay that there are many people
and places of which I have not had the opportunity to speak. In this volume
therefore there was from the beginning a kind of dual purpose. In the first
place, I wished to continue the true story of my life and loves and, in the
second, to make up for the unfortunate omissions in the earlier volumes I'd
written. Thus, formally speaking, this last, and in a sense, most final of my
expressions, will doubtless lack the purposeful continuity of the earlier. In a
summing up, that is only to be expected. I make no apologies for it. I should be
untrue to my purpose were I to do otherwise than I am doing. For the truth is
that I am not satisfied with what I have written; I might have done it better. I
am obsessed by the desire to make each chapter of this volume memorable
by some new thought.
The greatest omission as I see it has been amongst some of the great names
with whom I was off and on acquainted throughout my colorful life. Without
hesitation, therefore, and despising a mechanical chronology, I move now
into the consideration of some of the men who have inspired me and whom,
not seldom, I have numbered among my friends.
I was more interested in Meredith than in any other man of my time. I thought
him one of the greatest of men, worthy to stand with Shakespeare and
Wordsworth. He was one of the handsomest of men, just above middle height,
slight and strong of figure with a superb head and face, the head all outlined
in graying hair, but excellently shaped and the face noble—straight nose,
incomparable blue eyes, now laughing, now pathetic, excellent mouth and
chin—in sum a very good-looking man, sane and strong. When Grant Allen
sent him one of my earliest stories, "Montes the Matador," he praised it as
better than the "Carmen" of Mérimée because, he explained, I had given
even the bulls individuality. He ended his praise with the words: "If there is
any hand in England that can do better, I don't know it." As I have said
somewhere, I regarded that judgment as my knighting. No contempt touched
me afterwards; Meredith to me already stood among the greatest.
Born in 1828, he brought out his first book of Poems in 1851 and I think he was
always more of a poet than a prose writer. But good as his best poetry is—
even "Love in the Valley" has stanzas I can never forget and Modern Loves
with the entrancing "Margaret's Bridal Eve" is greater still; yet neither in
poetry nor in prose has Meredith reached the highest or given his full
measure.
The reason always escaped me. When I knew him first about 1885 he was the
reader for Chapman and Hall and made his £500 or £600 a year out of this
easily enough while his books added perhaps as much more to his income. He
had a house on Box Hill in Surrey, and lived like a modest country
gentleman. Nothing in his circumstances hindered him from reaching
Cervantes or Shakespeare.

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I have written little about the greatest English and French actresses of my
time; little about Ellen Terry whom I love, and little about Sarah Bernhardt,
who for twenty years was the idol of civilized Europe. No two women could
be more dissimilar. Whatever height Ellen Terry reached as an actress, she
was before and above everything a woman, whereas Sarah was always an
actress pure and simple, even when she was most a woman. I knew both
women pretty intimately, though Sarah was far nearer to me than Ellen.
Ellen Terry was the best actress in half a dozen of Shakespeare's plays that I
have ever seen. She even made Ophelia interesting.
Very early in her career I noticed that she talked on the stage, now giving
directions to some other actress, now criticizing even Irving. She was the acme
of naturalness even on the stage, or rather the stage was the true scene of her
life and triumphs. Now she is eighty-odd years old and just as charming and
attractive as ever.
Her first marriage with the great painter, Watts, took place when she was
sixteen. Watts was thirty years older. She sat for him in a dozen characters

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I have been asked frequently why, on my African travels, I was so cold in
regard to native women. This will perhaps be my last opportunity briefly to
outline all that befell me in the Dark Continent. In the first place, it would
not be true to assert that I was always cold. On the contrary, some of my most
passionate encounters took place on the same continent on which Rhodes
and Krüger struggled and upon which the irresponsible German Kaiser cast
an envious eye. Of the ludicrous braggadocio of the Emperor of Germany I
shall have occasion to speak in the chapter which follows. For the moment—
Africa.
Much has been said of this continent in many places. All I can add is that
kind of personal reminiscence which sometimes throws a new and
penetrating light on what is sometimes considered to be a problem incapable
of solution. I refer to my knowledge of the African people, and in particular to
my knowledge of African women. If I did not spend more time among them, it
was not, as has sometimes been imputed, that I was the victim of color
prejudice, but that there is an archaic quality in the tribeswomen of Africa
which must eternally set them at a distance from a European. This is not true,
as we shall see, of Egyptians and other Arab peoples, whose cultural
development was on a par with that of the early Christians and who have
lent to the West, in the shape of a workable mathematical symbolism, the
basis of modern science. Let anyone who doubts this attempt a complex
problem of multiplication and division using only the old Roman numerals
and then let him judge in what measure the Arab culture has contributed
towards our own.
But I shall speak first of the dark races. I have seen Zulu girls and Swahili
girls with superb figures. Statues in ebony appeal to me as keenly as statues
in ivory. How then could I live among these people on the most familiar terms
without yielding occasionally to passion?
I had stayed for a number of days as the guest of the headsman of the village.
At first the people in the village were curious about me, but after a while
they became used to my presence at their dances and at the other few social
functions of the group. One night the chief, who spoke English very well,
began to talk to me about women. He asked me if white women were
passionate. I said that some of them were and some of them weren't.
"It is the same here in my country," he said. "There are some who like to make
love all the time and there are others who always appear to do so
reluctantly."
He, himself, had five wives, three of whom were very passionate. The other
two, he said, seemed to care for nothing but their children. He asked me if I
had been attracted by any of the women of the village. I smiled and said that
I had had little opportunity to be close enough to any of them to feel passion
for them. He laughed and said that on that very evening there was going to

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The talk of all the first years of the new century was the change in feeling
between England and Germany. The feeling in England towards Germany
grew steadily worse ever since the Kaiser's letter backing up Krüger in 1896.
Every brag by the German Emperor about the growth of the German fleet
intensified the bitterness in England.
Curiously enough, almost all the chief London journalists worked
persistently to increase the bad feeling. Colonel Maxse and his friends in the
National Review let no opportunity pass unused and Mr. Strachey and his
staff in The Spectator were just as venomous. Sir Rowland Blennerhasset, too,
in The Fortnightly; Dr. Billon in The Contemporary and Mr. Arnold White as
a free lance did all they could to fan the flame of hatred.
In June 1913, the Kaiser celebrated the 25th anniversary of his ascension to
the throne. The assemblage of kings and princes and all the notables of
Germany gave a truly imperial color to the proceedings. The military
pageant was very impressive. The unparalleled expansion of German
commerce and manufacture owed something to his encouragement. In not a
few departments, German science had achieved superiority over the rest of
the world. The population had increased from 42 to 66 million. The birthrate,
though decreasing, averaged 31 per 1,000 against 26 in England and 10 in
France. Agriculture had prospered greatly and supplied Germany with 95
per cent of her necessary food, though prices had risen considerably. The
German railways totaled 60,000 kilometers, 230,000 ships passed in and
out of her harbors annually, and the commerce of Hamburg was exceeded
only by that of London. In the production of sugar, Germany stood first with
two million tons yearly, and potash was almost exclusively a German
possession. More important still, in the production of iron, Germany was
second only to the United States, in that of coal she took the third place after
the United States and England. It was stated in the Reichstag that if the
recent growth of trade could be maintained, Germany in this respect would
surpass England in ten years and occupy the first place.
From the dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 till the World War in 1914, the chief
figure in Europe was Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. When I met him, along
with Edward, Prince of Wales, I was astonished by his rude authoritativeness.
Whoever wants to understand and to realize all the tragedy of the World
War has only to read the book of Emil Ludwig entitled Kaiser Wilhelm II. It
is not a great biography, but it is a most damning indictment. Ludwig shows
that the Emperor really thought he could make himself the protector of
Krüger and the Transvaal even at the cost of a war with England. He did not
see that he could not have landed a single German soldier in the Transvaal
against the will of the English. When he began building his battle fleet,
avowedly to match the English, he did not see that the English would be
forced to keep the upper hand in sea power. And if England left anything to

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June 1913, President Poincaré paid a visit to England and was toasted
everywhere as "a friend and ally." Of course, it was a formal visit to King
George, yet Poincaré was the chief figure at the great review of English
battleships at Portmouth.
Meanwhile peace conferences followed each other as if in derision. At the
end of August 1913, a great Palace of Peace, due to the liberality of Andrew
Carnegie, was opened at The Hague. It was the first universally recognized
Temple of Peace and was praised in the press as a mark of "visible history."
First the Hague Peace Conference of 1899, and now this "pledge of peace
universal and eternal" as the magazines called it. Mr. Van Swinderen, the
head of the permanent Board of Arbitration, in his speech accepting the
custody of the magnificent building, said: "No international controversies are
so serious that they cannot be settled peaceably if both parties desire it." It
was asserted openly by the representatives of labor that the previous Peace
Conference had been a failure because no one cared to propose that
merchant ships should be immune in all wars.
The second Hague Conference held in 1907 had proposed that the third
should be held in 1915 and that each nation should prepare a committee and
charge it to make the proposals considered necessary. But in 1913 neither

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When I first began to hear things that led me to believe a world war was
possible, I did not believe them. Grey, I said to myself, is too sensible and
France has too much to fear; but Germany was always there with her
brainless, provoking Kaiser. Still, I made up my mind that there was nothing
serious to fear. Then, in the spring of 1914, I was imprisoned by Judge
Horridge for contempt. Never was there a more unjust verdict. In the journal I
had founded, Modern Society, an article had appeared commenting on Lord
Fitzwilliam's divorce case; but I was not the editor. I had gone to the South of
England to write my book on Oscar Wilde and never even saw the article
before it was published. For the first time the managing director of a
company was held responsible as if he had been the editor of the company
magazine. The judge's clerk told me I would be forgiven if I apologized, but I
had nothing to apologize for and therefore refused.
I was not a criminal and was only imprisoned by order of the judge and could
be let out at any moment. I was therefore treated better than the perpetrators
of even the pettiest crimes, but I can never describe how dreadful to me the
prison was. Fixed hours for everything; at 7 o'clock the light went out and you
had to pass the hours till 7 next morning in complete darkness. To get hot
water to shave was only possible if you paid the keepers. Thanks to my wife
who brought me money, I paid them lavishly, so lavishly that one day the
cook came up to know what I would like to eat for lunch. But he could not
make bad meat into good meat, or bad mutton into palatable mutton. When I
stopped eating altogether because of the dreadful attacks of indigestion, the
doctor came in and found me fainting. He told me that if I would not eat, I
would be forcibly fed. I asked him to let me have hot water to wash my
stomach out. He told me he had nothing to do with that. I suffered like a
beaten dog every day. Prison in England is for healthy people. For those with
indigestion, it is a perfect hell.
The man in the next cell kept crying and groaning half the night. But at the
end of the week, I was told once again that if I apologized I would be freed.
Again I refused to apologize. Still, my friends did a good deal for me. Lord
Grimthorpe and others went to the Home Secretary and declared that my
punishment was disgraceful and must be stopped. At the end of the month,
Mr. Justice Horridge sent his own doctor to see if I was indeed ill.

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* * * * * *

One word more to show the idiocy of war. Considerable commotion was
stirred up in 1905 by the publication of Sir W. Butler's report on the clever
scheme by which, after the South African war was over, millions of pounds
worth of supplies were sold by the British government to contractors at a low
price and immediately bought back by the government from the same
contractors at a very high price. As there was no need to sell it at all—this
transaction represented an ingenious contrivance to put a great deal of
money into somebody's pocket at the expense of the British taxpayer. The
hopeless state of confusion into which the Ministers had allowed everything
to slide in South Africa is shown by the fact that they were quite unable to
say what had been lost by sheer dishonesty or whether, as Mr. Balfour wished
to make out, England had actually made money on the transactions. Jingo
finance is a mere affair of blind man's bluff. The War Office at first objected
to selling the stores by contract, then gave way. It first demanded monthly
returns of sales, and then allowed month after month to pass without any
returns being made. Meanwhile, contractors got rich. Ministers obstinately
turned a deaf ear to the warnings of the Liberal leader, and instead of
exposing the scandal, did all they could to hush it up. Fortunately the
Auditor-General, an official independent of the executive, brought the
matter before the Accounts Committee. By this means General Butler's
report came to be published. Otherwise everything would have been hushed
up "in the best interest of the Army."

* * * * * *

I hate accusing my adopted nation of crimes, but now and then it is an
imperative duty, an obligation of conscience. These accusations shame me to
the soul.
In 1910 Secretary of War Baker promised to punish the officers who were
found guilty of brutalities to soldiers in prison camps in France. "It is not too
late," he declared, "to punish any officer or enlisted man still in the service."
It was not too late to punish, but it was certainly too late to prevent the
atrocious cruelties that stained the name of America and which it was
Secretary Baker's obvious duty to prevent at all costs.

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My first visit to Japan, nearly half a century ago now, was one of intense
enjoyment. I was interested at once as I have never been interested anywhere
else. Almost immediately I grasped the main fact that the people were freer
of morality than even the French. I meant to stay a month and stayed nearly
six. I went all the way up the inland sea and began, I think, to understand that
great people. I had good help from an English captain who owned the chief
English newspaper in Japan. He soon became a friend and never tired of
putting me right.
The first thing that struck me wherever I went in Japan was the astonishing
politeness and courtesy of the people. To enter a hotel or an inn was a real
pleasure—everyone seemed glad to see you and the waitresses were smiling
with pleasure and delighted to do whatever they could for you.
Japan has been called the land of flowers. It is also the land of the most
tender and passionate of women. The experience that brought home to me
the truth of my last remark took place only one day after I arrived. It was with
one of the pretty waitresses who, from the moment I entered the hotel, did
their utmost to make my stay a pleasant one.
The waitress who served at my table in the dining room appeared the next
morning at my bedside with a loaded breakfast tray. I had retired late,
having talked far into the night with my friend, the English captain, and I
had left instructions with the desk clerk for my breakfast to be served in my
room at 10 a.m.
I woke up as the curtains were drawn back. The warm sunlight fell softly
across my bed and a moment later, returned to consciousness, I was aware of
the pleasantly featured young waitress. She moved across to me with the
breakfast tray. Her smile was so real and her whole demeanor so charming
that I broke out in English: "Your country is truly the land of flowers!"
She blushed prettily and set the tray in front of me.
"You understand English then?" I exclaimed delightedly. The day before she
had not uttered a word.
"Yes sir," she said politely. "Since we have so many English and American
guests at the hotel, our manager insists that all the waitresses should speak a
little English."
I nodded delightedly. The Japanese were indeed a wonderful people!
"How old are you?" I asked.
"I am nearly nineteen!" she exclaimed.

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THE END