BY THE CHRISTMAS FIRE

As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with a
bayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worse
days. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. I
was attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened old
sinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peaceful
position. I was glad to have a hand in his reformation.

To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled
smith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of
the least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to
forsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle.
Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men,
but to encourage combustion on winter nights.

The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into
the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what
is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of
which the hymn-writers sing, but which ordinary people have never seen.
The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce
celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will
come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted
for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker
that is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not even
remotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that,
it serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.


The difficulty with the Christmas message is not in getting itself
proclaimed, but in getting itself believed; that is, in any practicable
fashion. Every one recognizes the eminent desirability of establishing
more amicable relations between the members of the human family. But is
this amiable desire likely to be fulfilled in this inherently bellicose
world?