Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (53 page)

But it is at this point, Mr. Hull, that Max would ask: Is that all? Have you no more to say? I mean that Max could never bear the thought that any failure was final, that a way of life was not always open to everyone. And I believe that he was right, and that the proof of his rightness lies in the organic oneness of his life and death. I think that, alive, Max Divver was basically a happy man, because private happiness was what he never demanded, because he spent a life-time rejecting the escapist way and facing the forces of his time. He was so doing when at last those forces proved too strong.

I have told you all these things, Mr. Hull, because I believe that your Department may, with your assistance, draw from them a moral as desirable for it as for us. Max Divver’s life and death help to rid you and me of cant, and to replant our respective acres with a more positive, democratic affirmation. I cannot tell what form this affirmation may take in your case, but I can be sure of what I and my liberal colleagues will strive to do. May I explain what this will be?

We have learnt from Max Divver that
we
have
not
been
serious
men,
that the ideals we have so noisily proclaimed have not been activized by us into comparable deeds. We have
learnt that from now on we must work far more earnestly, not turning aside with our former ease, never succumbing to private apathy, pressing on indefatigably until the principles for which Divver died have become the foundation on which to-morrow shall be built. In the comfortable disguises of tolerance and human sympathy, we have basked in languor and ridden along with back-sliding: we shall not do so any more. Where we were firm before, we shall now struggle to be inexorable; where we were casual, we shall be relentless. Those who differ from us will not find themselves greeted, as before, with easy-going, irresponsible phrases. We shall try to carry Max Divver’s way of life into every part of this continent, rural and urban; nor shall we neglect to support our sympathizers and allies in other nations of the world. Above all, we shall not let it be said that while serious men died to reconstruct society,
we
embraced the sibling neuroses of private language and personal preference.

This shall be our monument to the memory of our friend—a monument built not of dead stones but of the behaviour which made his life a glowing thing. We shall fall short of his brilliance, Mr. Hull, just as we fell short in the past: the life-of-the-self cannot be wiped out overnight, no matter how furiously we may strive to obliterate it. History will record the specific extent of our success or failure—and history will have her specific niche for Maxwell Prentice Divver. It may be no large niche, but it will be sizeable enough to contain social aspirations which far transcend the mere act of individual living. We have been tragically reminded, and we have no excuse to forget again, that there are periods and forces in history where Man’s social function, boldly followed, leads him into harmony not with life, but with death.

THE END