كل الطرق تؤدي إلى الجلجثة

by Jerome K. Jerome, جيروم ك. جيروم, سماح ممدوح (Translator)

She had not meant to stay for the service. The door had stood invitingly open, and a glimpse of the interior had suggested to her the idea that it would make good copy. "Old London Churches: Their Social and Historical Associations." It would be easy to c

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Humor

Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels. Jerome was born in Walsall, England, and, although he was able to attend grammar school, his family suffered from poverty at times, as did he as a young man trying to earn a living in various occupations. In his twenties, he was able to publish some work, and success followed. He married in 1888, and the honeymoon was spent on a boat on the River Thames; he published Three Men in a Boat soon afterwards. He continued to write fiction, non-fiction and plays over the next few decades, though never with the same level of success.

Reviews

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unlike, this, to his most other works, or at least the more famous or most read ones, where serious thought is of short visits if not fleeting or even elusive, this one makes one wonder after a chapter or two if Jerome K. Jerome challenged himself to compete with the serious authors of the day - say, George Bernard Shaw, or Upton Sinclair - or even whether the latter wrote it and they exchanged a pair of manuscripts for fun, just to see if anybody would catch on. But if one has read more than just the two most famous books by the author, one has an inkling that he was not so out of tune with his times and his contemporaries, and instead was not only quite aware of the world, especially Europe, but even prophetic, writing about war and Russian revolution in 1905.

The author in this work weaves together several serious themes, seamlessly, on various levels of personal, interpersonal, social, national and wider levels, with politics and social economic questions occupying as much importance as those of personal lives and careers, thinking as important as other aspects of people. Jerome K. Jerome brings together his quest of answers to problems of human misery in a combination of leftist thought and religion, with all sorts of philosophical discussions thrown in. Quite impressive, and wonder why it wasn't better known, and why the author not known for those of his writings such as this, instead of being known only or mostly for humour.

That he was not a gung-ho warmonger isn't the surprise, nor that he doesn't hate other nations of the continent - although there's slight disdain for, and horror at associating with, Russia - but the scene describing the treatment meted out to the gentle cousin Arthur by a Liverpool crowd, for his having turned conscientious objector after years of service in the war, is shocking in its unexpected horror.
............

"She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended. The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her: “All Roads lead to Calvary.” It struck her as rather good. Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to. “To all of us, sooner or later,” he was saying, “comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our fellow-men—or the path to Calvary.”
............

"“Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.”"

"“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

"“Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

"“Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

"“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

"Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

"“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

"“I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”"
............

"Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

"“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.”

"She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

"“And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”"

"“They talk about the editor’s opinions,” struck in a fiery little woman who was busy flinging crumbs out of the window to a crowd of noisy sparrows. “It’s the Advertiser edits half the papers. Write anything that three of them object to, and your proprietor tells you to change your convictions or go. Most of us change.” She jerked down the window with a slam.

"“It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”"
............

"Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”"

"She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings."
............

"“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast.

"“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them."

"Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"“A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea—left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry—side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized.”"
............

"“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.

"“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

"“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

"“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

"“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”

"Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”

"“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”

"“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.

"“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”"
............

"“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”

"“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”

"“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”

"“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”"

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”

"She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”

"“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”

"“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”

"“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unlike, this, to his most other works, or at least the more famous or most read ones, where serious thought is of short visits if not fleeting or even elusive, this one makes one wonder after a chapter or two if Jerome K. Jerome challenged himself to compete with the serious authors of the day - say, George Bernard Shaw, or Upton Sinclair - or even whether the latter wrote it and they exchanged a pair of manuscripts for fun, just to see if anybody would catch on. But if one has read more than just the two most famous books by the author, one has an inkling that he was not so out of tune with his times and his contemporaries, and instead was not only quite aware of the world, especially Europe, but even prophetic, writing about war and Russian revolution in 1905.

The author in this work weaves together several serious themes, seamlessly, on various levels of personal, interpersonal, social, national and wider levels, with politics and social economic questions occupying as much importance as those of personal lives and careers, thinking as important as other aspects of people. Jerome K. Jerome brings together his quest of answers to problems of human misery in a combination of leftist thought and religion, with all sorts of philosophical discussions thrown in. Quite impressive, and wonder why it wasn't better known, and why the author not known for those of his writings such as this, instead of being known only or mostly for humour.

That he was not a gung-ho warmonger isn't the surprise, nor that he doesn't hate other nations of the continent - although there's slight disdain for, and horror at associating with, Russia - but the scene describing the treatment meted out to the gentle cousin Arthur by a Liverpool crowd, for his having turned conscientious objector after years of service in the war, is shocking in its unexpected horror.
............

"She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended. The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her: “All Roads lead to Calvary.” It struck her as rather good. Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to. “To all of us, sooner or later,” he was saying, “comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our fellow-men—or the path to Calvary.”
............

"“Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.”"

"“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

"“Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

"“Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

"“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

"Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

"“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

"“I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”"
............

"Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

"“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.”

"She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

"“And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”"

"“They talk about the editor’s opinions,” struck in a fiery little woman who was busy flinging crumbs out of the window to a crowd of noisy sparrows. “It’s the Advertiser edits half the papers. Write anything that three of them object to, and your proprietor tells you to change your convictions or go. Most of us change.” She jerked down the window with a slam.

"“It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”"
............

"Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”"

"She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings."
............

"“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast.

"“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them."

"Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"“A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea—left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry—side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized.”"
............

"“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.

"“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

"“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

"“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

"“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”

"Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”

"“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”

"“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.

"“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”"
............

"“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”

"“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”

"“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”

"“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”"

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”

"She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”

"“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”

"“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”

"“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unlike, this, to his most other works, or at least the more famous or most read ones, where serious thought is of short visits if not fleeting or even elusive, this one makes one wonder after a chapter or two if Jerome K. Jerome challenged himself to compete with the serious authors of the day - say, George Bernard Shaw, or Upton Sinclair - or even whether the latter wrote it and they exchanged a pair of manuscripts for fun, just to see if anybody would catch on. But if one has read more than just the two most famous books by the author, one has an inkling that he was not so out of tune with his times and his contemporaries, and instead was not only quite aware of the world, especially Europe, but even prophetic, writing about war and Russian revolution in 1905.

The author in this work weaves together several serious themes, seamlessly, on various levels of personal, interpersonal, social, national and wider levels, with politics and social economic questions occupying as much importance as those of personal lives and careers, thinking as important as other aspects of people. Jerome K. Jerome brings together his quest of answers to problems of human misery in a combination of leftist thought and religion, with all sorts of philosophical discussions thrown in. Quite impressive, and wonder why it wasn't better known, and why the author not known for those of his writings such as this, instead of being known only or mostly for humour.

That he was not a gung-ho warmonger isn't the surprise, nor that he doesn't hate other nations of the continent - although there's slight disdain for, and horror at associating with, Russia - but the scene describing the treatment meted out to the gentle cousin Arthur by a Liverpool crowd, for his having turned conscientious objector after years of service in the war, is shocking in its unexpected horror.
............

"She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended. The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her: “All Roads lead to Calvary.” It struck her as rather good. Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to. “To all of us, sooner or later,” he was saying, “comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our fellow-men—or the path to Calvary.”
............

"“Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.”"

"“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

"“Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

"“Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

"“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

"Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

"“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

"“I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”"
............

"Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

"“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.”

"She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

"“And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”"

"“They talk about the editor’s opinions,” struck in a fiery little woman who was busy flinging crumbs out of the window to a crowd of noisy sparrows. “It’s the Advertiser edits half the papers. Write anything that three of them object to, and your proprietor tells you to change your convictions or go. Most of us change.” She jerked down the window with a slam.

"“It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”"
............

"Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”"

"She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings."
............

"“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast.

"“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them."

"Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"“A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea—left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry—side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized.”"
............

"“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.

"“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

"“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

"“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

"“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”

"Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”

"“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”

"“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.

"“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”"
............

"“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”

"“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”

"“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”

"“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”"

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”

"She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”

"“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”

"“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”

"“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do ....

[Rosa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the novel; his writing makes reading a real pleasure.

An in-depth introspection into the social and spiritual realms, a search for the meaning of one's soul and the real meaning of selfless caritas as opposed to crude, soul-less (and interest-laden) populism/socialism.

A human being's quest for truth and the wish to share it to change things around her. The belief that journalism is the one, all-powerful and idealistic vehicle to allow just that; the power of ideas transposed into words that can change the world.

However, the parcours leading to the discovery and understanding of the fabric of her soul, of the working of caritas around her, is not matched by her mission in real life - that far removed from the downtrodden, the have-nots, the honest blokes she wishes to inform, help, raise from their sad lot.

Politics and money (not matter what side of the fence they are) control the press - by intrigue and malfaisance - making it impossible for her to continue to write and serve false masters rather than truth. It is a rude awakening but one that leads her, through a painful trial, to a realization of far better things than anyone could expect or wish.

In our superficial and ignorant age, in which MSM feeds overt lies as truths and rabid hatred as peace, we know most pens are for hire and newspapers, owned by the powers that control our lot, do not/cannot publish truths, only manipulated, falsified pulp - it was almost the same in JK Jerome's time.

[Yesenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Jerome K. Jerome when he is funny,
but I simply really like him when he is serious.

And perhaps, I only like him when he is religious.

This book is very much religious. But the critiques of the press and politics and power are very interesting. And his thoughts on womanhood/sexism/patriarchy, despite their being sexist, male-centered and patriarchal, are also worth reading. They reflect the thoughts of an illustrated, progressive man of his time. Which is kind of sad and tragic. But it goes to show you how limited brilliant, progressive men can be when it comes to women, feminism, gender equality, etc.

[Rebekah Morel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely surprised by this book. It was nothing like I expected from beginning to end. In a good way.
I've just recently discovered Jerome K. Jerome and his humor. And even though I had been warned that this book was different, it still surprised me.
I loved the insightfulness so often missing in today's fiction. And the uplifting message of faith.
Definitely worth the read.

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unlike, this, to his most other works, or at least the more famous or most read ones, where serious thought is of short visits if not fleeting or even elusive, this one makes one wonder after a chapter or two if Jerome K. Jerome challenged himself to compete with the serious authors of the day - say, George Bernard Shaw, or Upton Sinclair - or even whether the latter wrote it and they exchanged a pair of manuscripts for fun, just to see if anybody would catch on. But if one has read more than just the two most famous books by the author, one has an inkling that he was not so out of tune with his times and his contemporaries, and instead was not only quite aware of the world, especially Europe, but even prophetic, writing about war and Russian revolution in 1905.

The author in this work weaves together several serious themes, seamlessly, on various levels of personal, interpersonal, social, national and wider levels, with politics and social economic questions occupying as much importance as those of personal lives and careers, thinking as important as other aspects of people. Jerome K. Jerome brings together his quest of answers to problems of human misery in a combination of leftist thought and religion, with all sorts of philosophical discussions thrown in. Quite impressive, and wonder why it wasn't better known, and why the author not known for those of his writings such as this, instead of being known only or mostly for humour.

That he was not a gung-ho warmonger isn't the surprise, nor that he doesn't hate other nations of the continent - although there's slight disdain for, and horror at associating with, Russia - but the scene describing the treatment meted out to the gentle cousin Arthur by a Liverpool crowd, for his having turned conscientious objector after years of service in the war, is shocking in its unexpected horror.
............

"She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended. The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her: “All Roads lead to Calvary.” It struck her as rather good. Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to. “To all of us, sooner or later,” he was saying, “comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our fellow-men—or the path to Calvary.”
............

"“Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.”"

"“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

"“Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

"“Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

"“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

"Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

"“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

"“I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”"
............

"Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

"“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.”

"She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

"“And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”"

"“They talk about the editor’s opinions,” struck in a fiery little woman who was busy flinging crumbs out of the window to a crowd of noisy sparrows. “It’s the Advertiser edits half the papers. Write anything that three of them object to, and your proprietor tells you to change your convictions or go. Most of us change.” She jerked down the window with a slam.

"“It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”"
............

"Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”"

"She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings."
............

"“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast.

"“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them."

"Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"“A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea—left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry—side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized.”"
............

"“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.

"“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

"“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

"“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

"“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”

"Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”

"“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”

"“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.

"“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”"
............

"“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”

"“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”

"“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”

"“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”"

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”

"She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”

"“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”

"“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”

"“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do ....

[Dr.J.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very unlike, this, to his most other works, or at least the more famous or most read ones, where serious thought is of short visits if not fleeting or even elusive, this one makes one wonder after a chapter or two if Jerome K. Jerome challenged himself to compete with the serious authors of the day - say, George Bernard Shaw, or Upton Sinclair - or even whether the latter wrote it and they exchanged a pair of manuscripts for fun, just to see if anybody would catch on. But if one has read more than just the two most famous books by the author, one has an inkling that he was not so out of tune with his times and his contemporaries, and instead was not only quite aware of the world, especially Europe, but even prophetic, writing about war and Russian revolution in 1905.

The author in this work weaves together several serious themes, seamlessly, on various levels of personal, interpersonal, social, national and wider levels, with politics and social economic questions occupying as much importance as those of personal lives and careers, thinking as important as other aspects of people. Jerome K. Jerome brings together his quest of answers to problems of human misery in a combination of leftist thought and religion, with all sorts of philosophical discussions thrown in. Quite impressive, and wonder why it wasn't better known, and why the author not known for those of his writings such as this, instead of being known only or mostly for humour.

That he was not a gung-ho warmonger isn't the surprise, nor that he doesn't hate other nations of the continent - although there's slight disdain for, and horror at associating with, Russia - but the scene describing the treatment meted out to the gentle cousin Arthur by a Liverpool crowd, for his having turned conscientious objector after years of service in the war, is shocking in its unexpected horror.
............

"She must have knelt and stood mechanically, for the service was ended. The pulpit was occupied by an elderly uninteresting-looking man with a troublesome cough. But one sentence he had let fall had gripped her attention. For a moment she could not remember it, and then it came to her: “All Roads lead to Calvary.” It struck her as rather good. Perhaps he was going to be worth listening to. “To all of us, sooner or later,” he was saying, “comes a choosing of two ways: either the road leading to success, the gratification of desires, the honour and approval of our fellow-men—or the path to Calvary.”
............

"“Men stand more in awe of a well-dressed woman than they do even of a beautiful woman,” Madge was of opinion. “If you go into an office looking dowdy they’ll beat you down. Tell them the price they are offering you won’t keep you in gloves for a week and they’ll be ashamed of themselves. There’s nothing infra dig. in being mean to the poor; but not to sympathize with the rich stamps you as middle class.”"

"“The revolution that the world is waiting for,” was Flossie’s opinion, “is the providing of every man and woman with a hundred and fifty a year. Then we shall all be able to afford to be noble and high-minded. As it is, nine-tenths of the contemptible things we do comes from the necessity of our having to earn our living. A hundred and fifty a year would deliver us from evil.”

"“Would there not still be the diamond dog-collar and the motor car left to tempt us?” suggested Madge.

"“Only the really wicked,” contended Flossie. “It would classify us. We should know then which were the sheep and which the goats. At present we’re all jumbled together: the ungodly who sin out of mere greed and rapacity, and the just men compelled to sell their birthright of fine instincts for a mess of meat and potatoes.”

"“Yah, socialist,” commented Madge, who was busy with the tea things.

"Flossie seemed struck by an idea.

"“By Jove,” she exclaimed. “Why did I never think of it. With a red flag and my hair down, I’d be in all the illustrated papers. It would put up my price no end. And I’d be able to get out of this silly job of mine. I can’t go on much longer. I’m getting too well known. I do believe I’ll try it. The shouting’s easy enough.” She turned to Joan. “Are you going to take up socialism?” she demanded.

"“I may,” answered Joan. “Just to spank it, and put it down again. I’m rather a believer in temptation—the struggle for existence. I only want to make it a finer existence, more worth the struggle, in which the best man shall rise to the top. Your ‘universal security’—that will be the last act of the human drama, the cue for ringing down the curtain.”"
............

"Mrs. Denton seemed to be reading her, and then still retaining Joan’s hand she turned to Madge with a smile.

"“So this is our new recruit,” she said. “She is come to bring healing to the sad, sick world—to right all the old, old wrongs.”

"She patted Joan’s hand and spoke gravely. “That is right, dear. That is youth’s métier; to take the banner from our failing hands, bear it still a little onward.” Her small gloved hand closed on Joan’s with a pressure that made Joan wince.

"“And you must not despair,” she continued; “because in the end it will seem to you that you have failed. It is the fallen that win the victories.”"

"“They talk about the editor’s opinions,” struck in a fiery little woman who was busy flinging crumbs out of the window to a crowd of noisy sparrows. “It’s the Advertiser edits half the papers. Write anything that three of them object to, and your proprietor tells you to change your convictions or go. Most of us change.” She jerked down the window with a slam.

"“It’s the syndicates that have done it,” was a Mrs. Elliot’s opinion. She wrote “Society Notes” for a Labour weekly. “When one man owned a paper he wanted it to express his views. A company is only out for profit. Your modern newspaper is just a shop. It’s only purpose is to attract customers. Look at the Methodist Herald, owned by the same syndicate of Jews that runs the Racing News. They work it as far as possible with the same staff.”"
............

"Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists to whom all life was but so much “copy.” This monstrous conspiracy, once of the Sword, of the Church, now of the Press, that put all Government into the hands of a few stuffy old gentlemen, politicians, leader writers, without sympathy or understanding: it was time that it was swept away. She would raise a new standard. It should be, not “Listen to me, oh ye dumb,” but, “Speak to me. Tell me your hidden hopes, your fears, your dreams. Tell me your experience, your thoughts born of knowledge, of suffering.”"

"She would build again the Forum. The people’s business should no longer be settled for them behind lackey-guarded doors. The good of the farm labourer should be determined not exclusively by the squire and his relations. The man with the hoe, the man with the bent back and the patient ox-like eyes: he, too, should be invited to the Council board. Middle-class domestic problems should be solved not solely by fine gentlemen from Oxford; the wife of the little clerk should be allowed her say. War or peace, it should no longer be regarded as a question concerning only the aged rich. The common people—the cannon fodder, the men who would die, and the women who would weep: they should be given something more than the privilege of either cheering platform patriots or being summoned for interrupting public meetings."
............

"“There was an old Egyptian chap,” he said, “a governor of one of their provinces, thousands of years before the Pharaohs were ever heard of. They dug up his tomb a little while ago. It bore this inscription: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ I’d rather have that carved upon my gravestone than the boastings of all the robbers and the butchers of history. Think what it must have meant in that land of drought and famine: only a narrow strip of river bank where a grain of corn would grow; and that only when old Nile was kind. If not, your nearest supplies five hundred miles away across the desert, your only means of transport the slow-moving camel. Your convoy must be guarded against attack, provided with provisions and water for a two months’ journey. Yet he never failed his people. Fat year and lean year: ‘In my time no man went hungry.’ And here, to-day, with our steamships and our railways, with the granaries of the world filled to overflowing, one third of our population lives on the border line of want. In India they die by the roadside. What’s the good of it all: your science and your art and your religion! How can you help men’s souls if their bodies are starving? A hungry man’s a hungry beast.

"“I spent a week at Grimsby, some years ago, organizing a fisherman’s union. They used to throw the fish back into the sea, tons upon tons of it, that men had risked their lives to catch, that would have fed half London’s poor. There was a ‘glut’ of it, they said. The ‘market’ didn’t want it. Funny, isn’t it, a ‘glut’ of food: and the kiddies can’t learn their lessons for want of it. I was talking with a farmer down in Kent. The plums were rotting on his trees. There were too many of them: that was the trouble. The railway carriage alone would cost him more than he could get for them. They were too cheap. So nobody could have them."

"Suppose you tried to run an army with your men half starved while your officers had more than they could eat. It’s been tried and what’s been the result? See that your soldiers have their proper rations, and the General can sit down to his six-course dinner, if he will. They are not begrudging it to him.

"“A nation works on its stomach. Underfeed your rank and file, and what sort of a fight are you going to put up against your rivals. I want to see England going ahead. I want to see her workers properly fed. I want to see the corn upon her unused acres, the cattle grazing on her wasted pastures. I object to the food being thrown into the sea—left to rot upon the ground while men are hungry—side-tracked in Chicago, while the children grow up stunted. I want the commissariat properly organized.”"
............

"“But they report his speeches. They are bound to,” explained Joan.

"“It doesn’t read quite the same,” he answered. “Phillips goes home under the impression that he has made a great success and has roused the country. He and millions of other readers learn from the next morning’s headlines that it was ‘A Tame Speech’ that he made. What sounded to him ‘Loud Cheers’ have sunk to mild ‘Hear, Hears.’ That five minutes’ hurricane of applause, during which wildly excited men and women leapt upon the benches and roared themselves hoarse, and which he felt had settled the whole question, he searches for in vain. A few silly interjections, probably pre-arranged by Carleton’s young lions, become ‘renewed interruptions.’ The report is strictly truthful; but the impression produced is that Robert Phillips has failed to carry even his own people with him. And then follow leaders in fourteen widely-circulated Dailies, stretching from the Clyde to the Severn, foretelling how Mr. Robert Phillips could regain his waning popularity by the simple process of adopting Tariff Reform: or whatever the pet panacea of Carleton and Co. may, at the moment, happen to be.”

"“Don’t make us out all alike,” pleaded his sister with a laugh. “There are still a few old-fashioned papers that do give their opponents fair play.”

"“They are not increasing in numbers,” he answered, “and the Carleton group is. There is no reason why in another ten years he should not control the entire popular press of the country. He’s got the genius and he’s got the means.”

"“The cleverest thing he has done,” he continued, turning to Joan, “is your Sunday Post. Up till then, the working classes had escaped him. With the Sunday Post, he has solved the problem. They open their mouths; and he gives them their politics wrapped up in pictures and gossipy pars.”

"Miss Greyson rose and put away her embroidery. “But what’s his object?” she said. “He must have more money than he can spend; and he works like a horse. I could understand it, if he had any beliefs.”

"“Oh, we can all persuade ourselves that we are the Heaven-ordained dictator of the human race,” he answered. “Love of power is at the bottom of it. Why do our Rockefellers and our Carnegies condemn themselves to the existence of galley slaves, ruining their digestions so that they never can enjoy a square meal. It isn’t the money; it’s the trouble of their lives how to get rid of that. It is the notoriety, the power that they are out for. In Carleton’s case, it is to feel himself the power behind the throne; to know that he can make and unmake statesmen; has the keys of peace and war in his pocket; is able to exclaim: Public opinion? It is I.”

"“It can be a respectable ambition,” suggested Joan.

"“It has been responsible for most of man’s miseries,” he answered. “Every world’s conqueror meant to make it happy after he had finished knocking it about. We are all born with it, thanks to the devil.” He shifted his position and regarded her with critical eyes. “You’ve got it badly,” he said. “I can see it in the tilt of your chin and the quivering of your nostrils. You beware of it.”"
............

"“But he’s quite common, isn’t he?” he asked again. “I’ve only met him in public.”

"“No, that’s precisely what he isn’t,” answered Joan. “You feel that he belongs to no class, but his own. The class of the Abraham Lincolns, and the Dantons.”

"“England’s a different proposition,” he mused. “Society counts for so much with us. I doubt if we should accept even an Abraham Lincoln: unless in some supreme crisis. His wife rather handicaps him, too, doesn’t she?”

"“She wasn’t born to be the châtelaine of Downing Street,” Joan admitted. “But it’s not an official position.”"

“I’m not so sure that it isn’t,” he laughed. “It’s the dinner-table that rules in England. We settle everything round a dinner-table.”

"She was sitting in front of the fire in a high-backed chair. She never cared to loll, and the shaded light from the electric sconces upon the mantelpiece illumined her.

"“If the world were properly stage-managed, that’s what you ought to be,” he said, “the wife of a Prime Minister. I can see you giving such an excellent performance.”

"“I must talk to Mary,” he added, “see if we can’t get you off on some promising young Under Secretary.”

"“Don’t give me ideas above my station,” laughed Joan. “I’m a journalist.”

"“That’s the pity of it,” he said. “You’re wasting the most important thing about you, your personality. You would do more good in a drawing-room, influencing the rulers, than you will ever do ....

[Mbuye · Rating 4 out of 5]

More in the spirit of ‘The Passing of the Third Floor Back’ than ‘Three Men,’ Jerome's ‘All Roads Lead to Calvary’ is partly a coming-of-age story, partly a critical appraisal of the changing relations between journalism and politics, partly a grim social commentary, but most of all, as the title implies, a very Christian novel. Along the way, Jerome reflects on the commercialisation of news, women's suffrage, sexual relations between men and women, World War I, a false ideal of glory and patriotism and the true one of sacrifice, even if it goes unnoticed and unsung.

From childhood, Joan Allway, one of the new women, a beautiful but headstrong girl, does not find the easy faith of her family and seniors easy to accept without question. As she grows older, she fails to find an easy solution to life in the philosophy of Nietzsche or Marx. She sees an imperfect world, and decides to put it right.

As she toys with journalism, or the Church as Art, she meets friends who are active, even aggressive suffragettes, and who try to warn her of the consequences of an unbridled enthusiasm which might lead to adverse results. Pointing out the good work done in prisons and hospitals by women is entirely praiseworthy; “exposing the neglect and even cruelty too often inflicted upon the helpless patients of private Nursing Homes” is another matter altogether, since it would harm the cause of women, who were engaged in a battle for political and economic rights. Joan finds a solution in a wholly unique manner: she falls in love with a married man, a rising politician, who because of his high visibility, can never have anything to do with her without risking his professional career and personal life. In this crisis of nearly wrecking a man’s career, his home and his wife's happiness, Joan takes a step back to think.

It is hard to believe that the author of ‘Three Men in a Boat’ could have penned this deeply reflective story of a very young woman who eventually works as an ambulance driver in war-torn France, thus substituting practical and at times heart-breaking work for a life of of words and empty ideals.

In 1919, when this novel was published, World War I had denuded Europe of most of its able-bodied men under forty. For the first time in history, women in Britain were working not merely as governesses and seamstresses, but in offices, factories, farms and public services such as buses and hospitals. ‘Conchies’ or Conscientious Objectors were brutally and publicly humiliated as the war brought out the worst kind of jingoism in men or women.

Although it starts off a little slowly, Joan Allways’s character develops and changes as she grows up emotionally; her relations with the people around her form a large part of the plot, and we share her disillusionment with people and ideas that seem promising, but turn out to be hollow. In this book, as in all his serious writing, Jerome displays sophistication in a high degree, looks at the raging issues of his day with clarity and realism, never losing his touch either for compassion or for the light hearted irony that characterises his more famous novels.

[Reem · Rating 3 out of 5]

الرواية ممكن أصنفها سياسية، أحداثها تدور قبيل وخلال الحرب العالمية الأولى، وتعطي لمحة عن أوضاع البلاد الأوربية آنذاك.
كانت البطلة جوان شخصية ذكية، وجميلة، وطموحة، ومخلصة لبلادها. وبحكم محدودية مجالات عمل المرأة ذلك الوقت، تختار أن تصبح صحفية حيث أنها الطريقة الأمثل والمتاحة للمساهمة في إصلاح البلد وإيصال صوتها للجمهور، لذا تنتقل إلى لندن حيث تعمل في جريدة يديرها صحفي وأخته.
أثناء وجودها في لندن تتعرف على رجل سياسي بينهما أهداف مشتركة، فتمد له يد العون حتى يصل إلى منصبه، ولكنها تقع في حبه لاحقًا، وبحكم الظروف لا تستطيع الارتباط به.
بعد ذلك تندلع الحرب وتشارك جوان على الجبهة كممرضة، ثم تعود للبلاد وتتزوج من الرجل الذي كان يدير الجريدة.
احترت بتقييم الرواية، في الأخير الأحداث كانت وتيرتها سريعة وكأن الكاتب يريد إنهاءها بأي طريقة.
حتى طريقة الانتقال بين كل حدث وآخر داخل الرواية مشوشة، لا أعلم هل المشكلة بالترجمة أم بأسلوب الكاتب.
عمومًا الرواية ناقشت عدة أفكار الإيمان والحب والحرب، ووضحت مدى بشاعة الأخيرة وأثرها الذي لا يزول من نفوس البشر.

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me a good view into the heady days of Socialism and the Social Gospel in England before and during WWI. How different it is from Jerome's most well known book, Three Men in a boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog! I'm glad I read it. I never would have found it had it not been for Tolstoy, my Kindle.

[Helen Sews-Knits · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is horrible. Unfunny, sanctimonious, and just terrible to the point where you can tell that he just gives up on it himself 2/3 of the way though. The theme is God and will annoy both believers and non-believers alike. Avoid.