Shadows of Ecstasy by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

reason but by profounder experiments of passion, to the conquest of death in the renewed ecstasy of vivid experience; assured of these things the Allied Supremacies appeal to the whole world for belief and discipleship and devotion.’”
    Roger paused and looked up. Rosamond, again frowning a little, was eating cake. Philip was listening with his mouth open and his eyes staring. Isabel was attending with a serious and serene care. Roger grinned at her and resumed.
    â€œâ€˜The peoples of Africa appear before the world in arms, in order to claim from the sovereign authorities of Europe that freedom which is their due and their necessity on the one hand; on the other their privilege and opportunity. They will and they are fated to achieve that freedom. But their arms are of defence and not of aggression. They are willing to concede all possible time and convenience to the Powers of Europe. They no more desire to waste their energies and those of their opponents on war than on any other lower exterior imitation of heroic interior conquest. They are not anxious that the discipleship of the European imagination should be made more difficult by the mundane stupidities of dispute and battle. But the administration of Africa by the white race is now a thing of the past—to be remembered only as intellectual sovereignty will be remembered, a necessary moment that was willed and was fated and has ceased.
    â€œâ€˜To those among the peoples of Europe who know that their lives have origin and nourishment in the great moments of the exalted imagination, the High Executive offers salute and recognition’”—Roger’s voice began to linger over the words—“‘to all who owe their devotion to music, to poetry, to painting and sculpture, to the servants of every more than rational energy; greater than those and more numerous, to all who at this present moment exist in the exchanged or unexchanged adoration of love, it calls more especially. There, perhaps more surely and swiftly than in any other state of being outside the transmuting Way, can the labour of exploration be begun; there is the knowledge, the capacity, the herald apprehension of victory. These visionaries are already initiate; they know in themselves the prophecy of the conquest of death. To all such the High Executive appeals, with ardour and conviction. Believe, imagine, live. Know exaltation and feed on it; in the strength of such food man shall enter into his kingdom.
    â€œâ€˜The High Executive permits itself to offer to the Christian Churches its congratulations on the courage and devotion of those their servants who have sustained death by martyrdom. Convinced as it is that the Churches have, almost from the beginning, been misled by an erring principle, it nevertheless honours those martyrs as sublime if misguided instances of that imagination which it is its purpose to make known to mankind and which the rites and dogmas of the Christian religion dimly proclaim. It is assured by its belief in man and by the exalted courage of those martyrs that they would have desired no other end, and it takes full responsibility for having advised its august sovereigns that they could bestow on Christian missionaries no more perfect gift.
    â€œâ€˜The High Executive will be prepared to send representatives at any time to any place fixed by the Powers of Europe or by any of them; or to enter into negotiations in any other way that the Powers may desire. It will assume the fixing of such time and place or the opening of such negotiations to be a guarantee of safe-conduct for its representatives, and it will be prepared to suspend as soon as possible the military, naval, and aerial operations upon which it is engaged.
    â€œâ€˜Given in London, by direction of the High Executive, in the First Year of the Second Evolution of Man.’”
    Roger stopped. Almost before his voice had ceased, Rosamond said: “Philip, darling, you