Henry Masterman Mist Diaries and Prisoners Pie Magazine
Diaries of Heny Masterman Mist and a copy of Prisoners’ Pie, the Ruhleben Camp magazine. Learn more.
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perennial source of happiness", and idleness and love of ease were condemned as vices second only to ill health.
This attitude towards disease, advocated and spread by the philosopher of Erewhon, although absolutely true for that country alone, contains a deep and valuable truth for the overworked millions of to-day. The obvious reason why disease was considered a crime in that ideal country, was because it prevented people from enjoying life, with its many coloured pleasures, to the utmost. It is difficult, really, to think accurately or respond wholeheartedly to subtle emotional or sensational stimuli when the lungs or arteries have become practically solid, or the vermiform appendix is throwing other important organs out of gear. Clearly to feel that exquisite harmony between oneself and the external world, to revel in the beauties of colour and sound which are to be experienced everywhere, in the factories as well as in the fields, one must possess a mind which is free from all preoccupations, and open to all the influences around it. Modern medicine has done much to remove many of the preoccupations arising from internal physical conditions, but has not greatly increased human happiness, because the doctrine of Industrialism, preached by so many in the guise of the dignity of labour and the beauty of effort, has created another set of factors which tend to limit the mind to one activity. The appearance of that awful type, the busy man who, whether as store manager or futurist, is always doing something, and raves eternally about thoroughness, and the growth of specialisation, with its tendency to change the individual into a tea-tasting or pin-pointing machine, should suggest the very real danger that underlies work as an institution.
And it is in this connection that our forefathers were wiser in their ignorance that we in our wisdom, for they instinctively sensed the peril and fled from it. Filled with an intense desire to live fully, and attain the summit of human happiness, they realised that ease was the absolutely essential factor, and designated the two enemies to all contentment, illness and work, by the one word, -- dis-ease. The use of this word, with its still accepted reference to the instinct of self-preservation, immediately accounts for that intense dislike of work, as work, which persist in the healthier of mankind, as a sort of irrational objection, long after civilisation has imposed the bad habit. It is curious to note here that the English, said to be the least civilised of the peoples of Western Europe, is the only nation that has partially resisted the inroads of the Gospel of Work, and cultivated ease to any extent. Examples in support of this are as unnecessary as unlimited, but it is regretable that even here the gradual decay of primitive strength is to be observed. Specialization has already made progress, especially as the younger and more talented men are usually sent abroad, and to countries where work is an honoured institution to submit themselves to courses which are calculated to kill all individuality and make the student an excellent cog in a hugh social
BC Archives, MS-2570 Box 1 File 6 MIST, Henry Masterman Ruhleben magazine, Prisoners’ Pie, 1916