Part 3

What do you know of war-madness, hate-madness? Were you capable of feeling it in your present personality, you could not write for me now, while those whom you love and respect are nearly all on one side of a war not yet finished. You may grasp hate intellectually, you may dramatize it; but you do not feel it, though you have suffered from its effects.

The worst in the German heart is very bad--though I tell you not to hate them. The worst in all people is very bad, but the German is the greatest bully on the planet. The cruel Oriental races have a restraint which has grown in them through ages of culture; the German knows only the restraint of the German law, he respects only the restraint of the German law.

He has no sense of right and wrong in the abstract, though he is often extremely sensitive as to what is right and wrong for him in his relation to those near him, his kinsmen and fellow-citizens. But those outside the race-group are outside his code of honor, however polished he may be.

I am speaking now of the race, not of the few who have by long residence abroad absorbed somewhat of world-brotherhood and the more delicate sensibilities of international relations.

And mark this also: The German can love as thoroughly as he can hate; but he can love only his own, something which is an extension of himself, a secondary ego, the _me_ in another form. A German may love a foreign wife, if he can Germanize her. A German may love a foreign friend, if that friend does not stand in the way of something he wants for himself.

I am not referring to those sudden outpourings of emotion to which those emotional people are subject. I am not referring to their surface kindliness, which is the overflow of emotion.

And still I say, love these unlovable people, love them so much that they will be detached from their race-centre and will flow out in melting response to everything that is not German. The world can never really soften the German shell by throwing stones against it. When they break down in this war, they will not be any more essentially lovable because they are weaker. Love them by trying to understand them.

It will take decades for the arrogant and self-exalting German to see that there is anything outside that may be superior to what is inside his shell.

He respects only might. He must be conquered by might. From his enforced respect of a superior might he may be led gradually to see the superior right of that gentleness which does not use its might to coerce him when further coercion is unnecessary.

I have stood in German households since this war began, I have entered into and for the time being have _become_ German men and German women, and I understand them and love them. I even admire them, for their devotion to their own is immense. Once let that strength go out in real brotherhood to all mankind, and these people would be truly great. Is it possible? All things are possible to the human soul, and these people are very human.

The defect is in their vaunted education. They teach themselves that they are the chosen people. When they learn that they are not the chosen people in war, the very force of the shock may upset the pillar of egotism that stands upright in the centre of the German soul. The world should not let that pillar fall with a crash, but softly ease the blow--not too softly, lest mercy be mistaken for war-weariness.

The World-Mother has a hard and erring child. It has to be punished, but not refused a seat at the family table.

I have said these things to you because, if you do not shrink, I have things to tell you in my next letter which will need fortitude for you to receive, fortitude and charity, whose other name is love.

_March 24._

LETTER VIII

SPECTRES OF THE CONGO

I HAVE been in Poland and I have been in Serbia; but now I want to write of Belgium and of karma,[1] race karma, karma old and new.

With and behind the invading Germans, urging them on to murder, pillage and destruction, rape and burning, were not only the devils from the outer vast, whose time for activity had come; but with and behind the German army was a horde of undeveloped and earth-bound spirits who had suffered in the Congo. Karma, always karma!

The world knows something of what has been done in Belgium, something of what Germans have done there.

I have seen men, women, and little children murdered in cold blood. I have witnessed the soul of a murdered man tearing at a soldier who was violating the murdered man’s wife. I have seen the soul of a mother wringing her hands as she would have wrung them on earth when her little daughter was being maltreated by brutes who were blind with madness. An old man out here followed a soldier for days until he saw revenge accomplished by means of a Belgian bayonet; then as the German soul came out he grappled with it again, and the two were torn by each other, the soldier not knowing he had left the body and feeling that he was at grips with an enemy still on earth.

There was much of what is called Voodoo in the Congo. Its practitioners do not go to sleep for a long time. They go on and on in the invisible world, making their evil preparations and weaving their spells. They gather round spilled blood, they absorb vitality from it, and that vitality they use to bring evil and death upon anything toward which they direct their will.

Did you fancy that will was weakened when man lays aside the brain? It is weakened in the sense that there is less freedom of choice; but there is tremendous will in following a choice already set up when the physical base of the brain was attached to the will.

But now all the evil karma of Belgium is lived out, and she stands like a new soul in the face of time.

Another race has taken up the load that she laid down. Will that too be expended soon, or late? Germany has woven round herself a shirt of evil causes that will cling to her and chafe her flesh for generations. “It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.”

The karma of nations is known to the Masters and Adepts.

The karma of England! Have you ever thought about the karma of England? Granting that she has done much wrong, as all old nations have, yet she has allowed herself to be used by the world-will. She, more than all the other old races, has been an instrument in the unifying of the races. Did you fancy that the British Empire was a fortuitous concourse of atoms? Did you think the British Empire merely happened?

And now the British Empire _may_ be used further. She may be used in Belgium. And I do not mean the mere presence of her army in Belgium.

It is said that the Masters, the world’s teachers, hold back the awful karma of the world. I am trying to do a little toward holding back the awful karma of Germany.

She has disgraced the human race in Belgium. Everything that has been believed about German outrages in Belgium is true except one thing. So far as I know, and I have enquired of those who know more than I, German soldiers have not cut off the hands of living Belgian children. But they have murdered women, and outraged women, and mocked and insulted pregnant women, and maltreated the new-made mothers of babes that they have murdered. They have burned men alive, and they have buried men still alive.

I say that Germans have done these things. Should I say that the forces of evil, the beings of evil, the superhuman and the once-human forces of evil, have done these things, using as their instruments the forms of German soldiers from which they had thrust for the moment the moral soul?

Take it whichever way you please, for both ways are true. The men who ravaged and destroyed Belgium were not all obsessed, save that evil may be always an obsession.

Help to hold back the awful karma that Germany has made in Belgium.

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven.”

_March 27._

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The law of ethical causation.]

LETTER IX

UNSEEN GUARDIANS

IN the devastated region of Belgium--and most of Belgium is devastated--there stands a little house unharmed and tranquil as before the war. Round about it are ruined walls, standing black with smoke or grey with the powder of shell-fire.

Two women live there, middle-aged women. They did not flee their home when the war-tide rushed over them. They were frightened--yes, but they did not flee. They saw neighboring houses in flames, they heard the detonation of shells bursting; but they remained between their four thin walls, and waited and prayed. Four gods they prayed to, God the Father and God the Son, and two others--their father and mother, who had passed on some years before into the other world, their Belgian father and their German mother!

So great was their faith that they believed they would be unharmed, and they were not harmed. Incredible as it may seem, that little house stands there secure in the midst of desolation.

Love is a protective force. The father and mother of those two middle-aged women had loved each other tenderly. Race was no barrier to their love. The German woman and the Belgian man had taught their children that Germany was their mother and Belgium was their father.

Their bones lie together in the village churchyard, and their souls kept watch when the armies passed over. They guarded the children they loved.

Does this seem an impossible story? I know it to be a fact. I have spoken with that father and mother, and I shall speak with them again. Their faith is rare, and their love is rare, and their reward has been rare.

It is easier to guard a little house than to move a mountain, and it has been said that faith like a grain of mustard-seed could move a mountain.

Those two souls had not yet passed away from the neighborhood of the earth; they waited for their children. When the war-tide rolled over, they stood guard at the doorstone of their home. The spirits of the peaceful dead do not like the sound of shells, but those two did not fly away. Had they been frightened from their vigil, the little house might now be like its neighbors.

Am I over-credulous? Do you remember my telling you one day years ago that you were not credulous enough? I see that you remember. These two--the Belgian father and the German mother--were also credulous, as the world uses the word, and their children were credulous, too. Had the nations been equally credulous of the power of love, there would have been no war; for there would have been no armies to make war.

I am not preaching against armies. I am only preaching love and faith. When love and faith grow greater, armies will grow smaller, and war will be at an end.

I asked the Belgian father how he felt about the war, and he looked toward his German wife; I asked the German mother how she felt about the war, and she looked toward her Belgian husband. Neither would speak for fear of wounding the other.

How should I feel now if my nation were at war, you wonder? But since the eyes of my memory opened and I saw my past lives, I realize that I have had so many nations, have fought in so many armies, have lain in the lap of so many mothers of mine in so many lands, that my spirit is uprooted.

I have joined the great White Brotherhood, to which all men are brothers and all women sisters. It would be difficult for you to see with my eyes. I watch and wait, like the parents of the two old maids in Belgium, and so far the house of my faith stands untouched by the fires of war.

In the great White Brotherhood there are members from many races, there are members from the races now at war. Do you fancy that they looked askance at one another when the world went mad? They did not look askance at one another. Each stood guard where he could do the most good. Each sought to soften the blow for the brethren of his brother, each sought to soften the hearts of his own blood-brethren. But as this war was written in the stars, the Teachers of the world could not prevent it when the hour struck.

Do you know what it means to be a member of the great White Brotherhood? It means to work for the welfare of the human race, for the good of the planet as a whole.

And there is another thing I want to tell you. You have heard of a Black Brotherhood. It is a misnomer. Brotherhood is never black. There is no Black _Brotherhood_. There are many Black Masters, for Mastership, like a garment, may be either white or black. In this war the black forces who have inspired hatred in men have worked for one end, and that very fact will weaken their power to do evil for a long time, when the results of their present labors are over.

Do you get my meaning? A combination of evil forces, in the very act of combining, weakens the individual power of its members; for evil is strongest when individual.

Two who are full of love may work together with the power of four; but two who work together for evil have only the power of--shall I say one and a half? And one and a half against four! If you love power, use power for good and increase it.

It is because of the _multitude_ of elementary evil forces, all hurling their malice at the world, not because of their combination, that this madness was made possible.

Hate is a disintegrating force. Those who hate after this war will disintegrate themselves. Those who love after this war will grow strong. France especially will grow strong, because there is more love than hate in France. France loves so much that even her enemies do not hate her. It is not merely because she is not so brutally strong as her great enemy.

Love your enemies. That is the surest way to overcome them.

_March 29._

LETTER X

ONE DAY AS A THOUSAND YEARS

AS I am writing about war, I wish to talk to those who have lost their loved ones in this war.

You who grieve for the untimely dead, have you not read that one day shall be as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day?

We must start on the basis of rebirth, whose other name is rhythm, and whose course is immortality. Immortality presupposes no beginning and looks forward to no end. The spirit always was and always will be. In the life of the spirit one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as one day.

Birth is the morning of a new day, and death is the evening of that day, and the period between lives is the period of sleeping and dreaming. Or you may turn it the other way and say that life is a dream and death the awakening to reality. But the rhythm is sure.

Falling asleep is a passing through the astral world, much as the soul passes through it after death. You who write for me, and a few others, pass through it in full consciousness. Some day all men will pass through it consciously and will bring back the memory.

You who grieve for the dead, remember that a lifetime is but a day to the immortal spirit. Often have you parted from a loved one for a day and felt no grief thereat. The loved one left home to perform a duty and you felt sure that the next day you would see him again. Can you not feel that in the next day of the soul, the next lifetime (it is all the same in eternity), you will greet your loved one again?

Friends do not meet in every life unless they are very intimate. As you do not see one friend or another oftener than once a week, so in the greater days of the soul you may not meet all your friends every day. You part from one on Monday with a definite engagement to meet on Friday. Four days, four lifetimes, it is all the same in eternity.

But from some you only part for a few hours, from noon to sunset, and meet again in the evening in the intimacy of home. Those who have left you now at the midday of life will perhaps come home to you at the sunset; which is only another way of saying that they may meet you at the end of this day of the soul, the end of this life, and be with you in the twilight period of the astral life and in the sweet dream of heaven beyond. Do not grieve. Love waits for its own.

Some friends you may meet again two, four or seven lifetimes away; but those who are really your intimates, your lovers, your own, you will meet again at the sunset, or at the latest tomorrow--the next day of the soul on earth.

How will you prepare for the meeting? Will you not work cheerfully all day, knowing that at dusk Love will come back to you? As sunset approaches, will you not robe yourself in the white garment of faith, the evening garment, and watch for Love at the window? Love will come. Can you not in anticipation hear his footstep on the gravel? Can you not hear the click of the lifted latch? Will you not go forward with a smile to greet Love? Surely, one day shall be as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.

I took counsel with the soul of an English officer who died in leading a charge. His death was quick and painless. A shot through the heart and he found himself--after a period of unconsciousness--still, as he supposed, leading a charge.

But there was no enemy before him, nothing but the tranquil fields above the tumult; for so great was his exaltation of spirit--he had died with the thought of his Love in his heart--that he had gone up and up to the region where Love may have room.

Seeing nothing before him he paused, looked round and saw me.

“Brother,” I said, “you have left the war behind you.”

He understood. Those who have lived for weeks in the tents of Death are not slow in recognizing Death when he lifts the curtain.

“And what of the charge?” he asked eagerly. “Was the charge won?”

“Yes,” I replied, “the force of your spirit won it.”

“Then all is well,” was his answer.

“Rest a little,” I said. “Rest and talk with me.”

“Have we met before?” he asked. “For your face is familiar to me.”

“My face is familiar to many on the battlefields,” I said.

“When did you come----out here?”

“Three years ago.”

“Then you can teach me much.”

“Perhaps I can teach you something. What do you want to know?”

“I would know how to comfort one to whom my death will bring great grief.”

“Where is she?” I asked.

He named the place.

“Then come,” I said, “I will go with you.”

We found a beautiful woman in a little room in England, a little room which contained a little bed. And in the bed was a boy four or five years old. We could hear the voices of the mother and child as they talked together.

“And when will father come home?” the little one asked.

“I do not know,” said the mother.

“Father _will_ come home, won’t he? Are you sure that he will come home?”

“I pray that he comes home soon,” was all the mother said.

The eyes of children, as they pass into the twilight world, the world between waking and sleeping, are sometimes very clear.

“Why, father has come home!” the child cried, and he stretched out his arms to the father with a glad cry.

And the mother knew and was very still.

But her grief was softened by knowing that he whom she loved had come home and that her child had seen him. I think he will remain with her until she can join him here. The delay will not retard the progress of his soul. Love is the fulfilling of the law. There is time in eternity for love and the delays of love. In love a thousand years are as one day.

_March 29._

LETTER XI

MANY TONGUES

LEARN languages. My work in this war has been hampered by my knowing so little of German.

With the souls of those long here I can hold converse by pure thought; but the souls of the newly-come speak the language they spoke on earth and often that language is but a _patois_. That is one reason why I have had best success among the English armies.

I can read the thoughts of the Germans and the French, but they cannot always understand me. The father and mother of the two women in Belgium had been so long out here that we could understand each other’s thoughts.

Learn languages. When you come to work in this world you may want them even more than on earth, for distances here are short as thought, and one goes from place to place in the twinkling of an eye.

_March 30._

LETTER XII

THE BEAUTIFUL BEING

THE angel we call the Beautiful Being, who guided me on my journey among the planets, would like to insert here a few words on Love and Hate. They seem to be an expression of the mortal and the Immortal Self, in the early days of the war.

LOVE AND HATE

_One whom I loved made war on me, and the nations of the earth made war on one another. The green fields were stained with blood and the hum of the harvest crickets was drowned in cries of pain and rage, as men rushed on to wreak their hate upon their human kindred. My heart was sadder than the skies of the London winter. No joy there seemed in all the earth; for love was dying and peace was dead, and men were going everywhere to death._ MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN _was written on the walls of the human temple_.

_And I said to my heart_:

“_Where have we drifted in the midday of our life? And why do we wait for the sunset? For love has failed, and the world has failed, and have we not failed, too?_”