This is a branch of the Army\'s work with which I have been more or less acquainted for some years.
The idea of an Anti-Suicide Bureau arose in the Army four or five years ago; but every one seems to have forgotten with whom it actually originated. I suppose that it grew, like Topsy, or was discovered simultaneously by several Officers, like a new planet by different astronomers studying the heavens in faith and hope. At any rate, the results of the idea are remarkable. Thus in London alone 1,064 cases were dealt with in the year 1909, and of those cases it is estimated that all but about a dozen were turned from their fatal purpose. Let us halve these figures, and say that 500 lives were actually saved, that 500 men live to-day in and about London who otherwise would be dead by their own hands and buried in dishonoured graves. Or let us even quarter them, and surely this remains a wonderful work, especially when we remember that London is by no means the only place in which it is being carried on.
How is it done? the reader may ask. I answer by knowledge of human nature, by the power of sympathy, by gentle kindness. A poor wretch staggers into a humble little room at the Salvation Army Headquarters in Queen Victoria Street. He unfolds an incoherent tale. He is an unpleasant and disturbing person whom any lawyer or business man would get rid of as soon as possible. He vapours about self-destruction, he hints at dark troubles with his wife. He produces drugs or weapons—a point at which most people would certainly show him out. But the Officers in charge do nothing of the sort. They laugh at him or give him a cup of tea. They bid him brace himself together, and tell them the truth and nothing but the truth. Then out pours the awful tale, which, however bad it may be, they listen to quite unmoved though not unconcerned, for they hear such every day. When it is finished, they ask coolly enough why, in the name of all that their visitor reverences or holds dear, he considers it necessary to commit suicide for a trifling job like that. A new light dawns upon the desperate man. He answers, because he can see no other way out.
Why, exclaims the Officer, there are a dozen ways out. Let us find one of them. You, A., have been faithless to your wife. Well, when the matter is explained to her, I daresay she will forgive you. You, B., have defrauded your employer. Well, employers are not always relentless. I\'ll call on him this evening and talk the matter over. You, C., are hopelessly in debt through horse-racing or speculation. Well, at the worst you can go through the Court and start afresh. You, D., have committed a crime. Go and own up to it like a man, stand your trial, and work out your sentence. I daresay it won\'t be so very heavy if you take that course, and we will look after you when it is over. You, E., have been brought into this state through your miserable vices, drink, or whatever they may be. Cure yourself of the vices—we\'ll show you how—don\'t crown them by cutting your throat like a cur. You, F., have been afflicted with great sorrows. Well, those sorrows have some purpose and some meaning. There\'s always a dawn beyond the night; wait for that dawn; it will come here or hereafter.
And so on, and on, through all the gamut of human sin and misery.
Of course, there are cases in which the Army fails. As I have said, there were about a dozen of these last year, six of which, if I remember right, occurred with startling rapidity one after the other. The Suicide Officers of the Army always take up the daily paper with fear and trembling, and not infrequently find that the man whom they thought they had consoled and set upon a different path, has been discovered dead by drowning in the river, or by poison in the streets, or by whatever it may be. But everything has its proportion of failures, and where intending suicides are concerned 1 or 2 per cent, or on the quarter basis that I have adopted as beyond question of sincerity of intent, 4 or 8 per cent is not a large average. Indeed, 20 per cent would not be large, or even 50 per cent. But these figures do not occur.
Of course, it is suggested that many of those who drift into the Anti-Suicide Bureau have no real intention of making away with themselves, but that they come there only to see what they can get in the way of money or other comfort. As regards money, the answer is that, except very occasionally, the Army gives none, for the simple reason that it has none to give. For the rest the fatal cases which happen show that there is a grim purpose at work in the minds of many of the applicants. But I repeat, let us halve the figures, let us even quarter them, which, as Euclid remarked, is absurd, and even then what are we to conclude?
Before proceeding with my comments upon this work I ought to state, perhaps, that the Army has various branches of this Anti-Suicide Crusade. Thus, it is at work in almost all our big cities, and also in America, in Australia, and in Japan. The Japanese Bureau was opened last year with very good results. This is the more remarkable in a country where ancient tradition and immemorial custom hallow the system of hara-kiri in any case of trouble or disgrace.
Moreover, the idea is spreading, Count Tolstoy is said to have been interested in it. Applications have been received from the Hague for particulars of the Army methods in the matter. Similar work is being carried out in Vienna, not by the Army, but on its lines. The Army has been informed that if it will open an Anti-Suicide Bureau in Budapest, office accommodation, etc., will be found for it. And so forth.
Colonel Unsworth who, until recently had charge of the Anti-Suicide Bureau from its commencement, is of opinion that suicide is very much on the increase, a statement that it would be difficult to dispute in view of the number of cases recorded daily in the local Press. For instance, I read one on this morning of writing, in a Norfolk paper, where a farmer had blown out his brains, to all appearance because he had a difference of opinion with his wife as to whether he should, or should not, take on another farm.
Colonel Unsworth attributed this sad state of affairs to sundry causes. The first of these was the intense and ever-increasing nervous pressure of our time. The second, the spread of fatalism, The third, the advance of materialistic ideas, and of the general disbelief in the doctrine of future retribution. The fourth, a certain noticeable return in such matters to the standard of Pagan nations, especially of ancient Rome, where it was held that if things went wrong and life became valueless, or even uninteresting, to bring it to an end was in no sense shameful but praiseworthy. In illustration of this point, he quoted a remark said to have been made by a magistrate not long ago, to the effect that in certain conditions a man was not to be blamed for taking his own life.
His fifth reason was that circumstances arise in which some people convince themselves that their deaths would benefit their families. Thus, insurances may fall in, for, after one or two premiums have been paid, many offices take the risk of suicide. Or they may know that when they are gone, wealthy relatives will take care of their children, who will thus be happier and better off than these are while they, the fathers, live. Wrong as it may be, this, indeed, is an attitude with which it is difficult not to feel a certain sympathy. After all, we are told that there is no greater love than that of a man who lays down his life for his friend, though there ran be no doubt that the saying was not intended to include this kind of laying down of life.
Colonel Unsworth\'s sixth cause was the increasing atrophy of the public conscience. He stated that suicide is rarely preached against from the pulpit, as drunkenness is for instance. Further, a jury can seldom be induced to bring in a verdict of felo-de-se. Even where the victim was obviously and, perhaps painfully sane, his act is put down to temporary insanity.
Other causes are drink, hereditary disposition, madness in all its protean shapes; incurable disease, unwillingness to face the consequences of sin or folly; the passion of sexual love, which is sometimes so mighty as to amount to madness; the effects of utter grief such as result from the loss of those far more beloved than self, of which an instance is at hand in the case of the Officer in charge of the Shelter at Great Peter Street, Westminster, mentioned earlier in this book, who, it may be remembered, tried to kill himself after the death of his wife and child; and lastly, where women are concerned, terror and shame at the prospect of giving birth to a child, whose appearance in the world is not sanctioned by law or custom.
Suicide among women is, however, comparatively rare, a fact which suggests either that the causes which produce it press on or affect them less, or that in this particular, their minds are better balanced than are those of men. I was told, at any rate, that but few women apply to the Suicide Bureau of the Army for help in this temptation; though, perhaps, that ............