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What I Saw In America=
By
G. K. Chesterton
Contents
A
Meditation in a New York Hotel
=
I have never managed to lose my old
conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double
effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing
his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thou=
ght
of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders=
, embracing
Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, b=
ut
for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. Thi=
s is
not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of
nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an
illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all
men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to lea=
ve
the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of =
men
in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely =
as those
who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental=
truth
about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is
inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many
modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only=
to
meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of
supreme danger--the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old
euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.
Travel ought to
combine amusement with instruction; but most travellers are so much amused =
that
they refuse to be instructed. I do not blame them for being amused; it is
perfectly natural to be amused at a Dutchman for being Dutch or a Chinaman =
for
being Chinese. Where they are wrong is that they take their own amusement
seriously. They base on it their serious ideas of international instruction=
. It
was said that the Englishman takes his pleasures sadly; and the pleasure of
despising foreigners is one which he takes most sadly of all. He comes to s=
coff
and does not remain to pray, but rather to excommunicate. Hence in internat=
ional
relations there is far too little laughing, and far too much sneering. But I
believe that there is a better way which largely consists of laughter; a fo=
rm
of friendship between nations which is actually founded on differences. To =
hint
at some such better way is the only excuse of this book.
Let me begin my
American impressions with two impressions I had before I went to
When I went to the
American consulate to regularise my passports, I was capable of expecting t=
he
American consulate to be American. Embassies and consulates are by tradition
like islands of the soil for which they stand; and I have often found the
tradition corresponding to a truth. I have seen the unmistakable French
official living on omelettes and a little wine and serving his sacred
abstractions under the last palm-trees fringing a desert. In the heat and n=
oise
of quarrelling Turks and Egyptians, I have come suddenly, as with the cool
shock of his own shower-bath, on the listless amiability of the English
gentleman. The officials I interviewed were very American, especially in be=
ing
very polite; for whatever may have been the mood or meaning of Martin Chuzz=
lewit,
I have always found Americans by far the politest people in the world. They=
put
in my hands a form to be filled up, to all appearance like other forms I had
filled up in other passport offices. But in reality it was very different f=
rom
any form I had ever filled up in my life. At least it was a little like a f=
reer
form of the game called 'Confessions' which my friends and I invented in our
youth; an examination paper containing questions like, 'If you saw a rhinoc=
eros
in the front garden, what would you do?' One of my friends, I remember, wro=
te,
'Take the pledge.' But that is another story, and might bring Mr. Pussyfoot
Johnson on the scene before his time.
One of the questi=
ons
on the paper was, 'Are you an anarchist?' To which a detached philosopher w=
ould
naturally feel inclined to answer, 'What the devil has that to do with you?=
Are
you an atheist?' along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the offic=
ial
about what constitutes an [Greek: archê]. Then there was the question,
'Are you in favour of subverting the government of the
Now that is a mod=
el
of the sort of foreign practice, founded on foreign problems, at which a ma=
n's
first impulse is naturally to laugh. Nor have I any intention of apologising
for my laughter. A man is perfectly entitled to laugh at a thing because he
happens to find it incomprehensible. What he has no right to do is to laugh=
at
it as incomprehensible, and then criticise it as if he comprehended it. The=
very
fact of its unfamiliarity and mystery ought to set him thinking about the
deeper causes that make people so different from himself, and that without
merely assuming that they must be inferior to himself.
Superficially thi=
s is
rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this
Only the traveller
who stops at that point is totally wrong; and the traveller only too often =
does
stop at that point. He has found something to make him laugh, and he will n=
ot
suffer it to make him think. And the remedy is not to unsay what he has sai=
d,
not even, so to speak, to unlaugh what he has laughed, not to deny that the=
re
is something unique and curious about this American inquisition into our
abstract opinions, but rather to continue the train of thought, and follow =
the
admirable advice of Mr. H. G. Wells, who said, 'It is not much good thinkin=
g of
a thing unless you think it out.' It is not to deny that American officiali=
sm
is rather peculiar on this point, but to inquire what it really is which ma=
kes
It may have seemed
something less than a compliment to compare the American Constitution to the
Spanish Inquisition. But oddly enough, it does involve a truth; and still m=
ore
oddly perhaps, it does involve a compliment. The American Constitution does
resemble the Spanish Inquisition in this: that it is founded on a creed.
Now a creed is at
once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is=
as
broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limit=
ed
by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian
Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did
definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion or Greek philosoph=
y.
It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certa=
in pattern,
the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disas=
trous
distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spa=
nish
Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confes=
s to
being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might =
be
admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely
Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had=
to
be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was =
heterodox;
but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in
modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretic=
s is
also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more
evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the
great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races w=
hich
has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the=
pot
itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substa=
nce.
The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines o=
f Jeffersonian
democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless.
Now for
One morning knoc=
ked at
half-past eight A tall Red =
Indian
at his gate. In
But the converse need by no means be
true. There is nothing in the nature of things to prevent an emigration of
Turks increasing and multiplying on the plains where the Red Indians wander=
ed;
there is nothing to necessitate the Turks being extremely rare. The Red
Indians, alas, are likely to be rarer. And as I much prefer Red Indians to
Turks, not to mention Jews, I speak without prejudice; but the point here i=
s that
We do not have an=
y of
that nonsense in
Take that innocent
question, 'Are you an anarchist?' which is intrinsically quite as impudent =
as
'Are you an optimist?' or 'Are you a philanthropist?' I am not discussing h=
ere
whether these things are right, but whether most of us are in a position to=
know
them rightly. Now it is quite true that most Englishmen do not find it
necessary to go about all day asking each other whether they are anarchists=
. It
is quite true that the phrase occurs on no British forms that I have seen. =
But this
is not only because most of the Englishmen are not anarchists. It is even m=
ore
because even the anarchists are Englishmen. For instance, it would be easy =
to
make fun of the American formula by noting that the cap would fit all sorts=
of
bald academic heads. It might well be maintained that Herbert Spencer was an
anarchist. It is practically certain that Auberon Herbert was an anarchist.=
But
Herbert Spencer was an extraordinarily typical Englishman of the Nonconform=
ist
middle class. And Auberon Herbert was an extraordinarily typical English
aristocrat of the old and genuine aristocracy. Every one knew in his heart =
that
the squire would not throw a bomb at the Queen, and the Nonconformist would=
not
throw a bomb at anybody. Every one knew that there was something subconscio=
us
in a man like Auberon Herbert, which would have come out only in throwing b=
ombs
at the enemies of
Now I am very far
from intending to imply that these American tests are good tests, or that t=
here
is no danger of tyranny becoming the temptation of
When we realise t=
he
democratic design of such a cosmopolitan commonwealth, and compare it with =
our
insular reliance or instincts, we see at once why such a thing has to be not
only democratic but dogmatic. We see why in some points it tends to be
inquisitive or intolerant. Any one can see the practical point by merely
transferring into private life a problem like that of the two academic
anarchists, who might by a coincidence be called the two Herberts. Suppose a
man said, 'Buffle, my old
Of course this
generalisation about
It was before sai=
ling
for America, as I have said, that I stood with the official paper in my hand
and these thoughts in my head. It was while I stood on English soil that I
passed through the two stages of smiling and then sympathising; of realising
that my momentary amusement, at being asked if I were not an Anarchist, was
partly due to the fact that I was not an American. And in truth I think the=
re
are some things a man ought to know about America before he sees it. What we
know of a country beforehand may not affect what we see that it is; but it =
will
vitally affect what we appreciate it for being, because it will vitally aff=
ect what
we expect it to be. I can honestly say that I had never expected America to=
be
what nine-tenths of the newspaper critics invariably assume it to be. I nev=
er
thought it was a sort of Anglo-Saxon colony, knowing that it was more and m=
ore
thronged with crowds of very different colonists. During the war I felt that
the very worst propaganda for the Allies was the propaganda for the
Anglo-Saxons. I tried to point out that in one way America is nearer to Eur=
ope
than England is. If she is not nearer to Bulgaria, she is nearer to Bulgars=
; if
she is not nearer to Bohemia, she is nearer to Bohemians. In my New York ho=
tel
the head waiter in the dining-room was a Bohemian; the head waiter in the g=
rill-room
was a Bulgar. Americans have nationalities at the end of the street which f=
or
us are at the ends of the earth. I did my best to persuade my countrymen no=
t to
appeal to the American as if he were a rather dowdy Englishman, who had been
rusticating in the provinces and had not heard the latest news about the to=
wn.
I shall record later some of those arresting realities which the traveller =
does
not expect; and which, in some cases I fear, he actually does not see becau=
se
he does not expect. I shall try to do justice to the psychology of what Mr.=
Belloc
has called 'Eye-Openers in Travel.' But there are some things about America
that a man ought to see even with his eyes shut. One is that a state that c=
ame
into existence solely through its repudiation and abhorrence of the British
Crown is not likely to be a respectful copy of the British Constitution.
Another is that the chief mark of the Declaration of Independence is someth=
ing
that is not only absent from the British Constitution, but something which =
all
our constitutionalists have invariably thanked God, with the jolliest boast=
ing
and bragging, that they had kept out of the British Constitution. It is the
thing called abstraction or academic logic. It is the thing which such joll=
y people
call theory; and which those who can practise it call thought. And the theo=
ry
or thought is the very last to which English people are accustomed, either =
by
their social structure or their traditional teaching. It is the theory of
equality. It is the pure classic conception that no man must aspire to be
anything more than a citizen, and that no man should endure to be anything
less. It is by no means especially intelligible to an Englishman, who tends=
at
his best to the virtues of the gentleman and at his worst to the vices of t=
he
snob. The idealism of England, or if you will the romance of England, has n=
ot
been primarily the romance of the citizen. But the idealism of America, we =
may
safely say, still revolves entirely round the citizen and his romance. The
realities are quite another matter, and we shall consider in its place the
question of whether the ideal will be able to shape the realities or will
merely be beaten shapeless by them. The ideal is besieged by inequalities of
the most towering and insane description in the industrial and economic fie=
ld.
It may be devoured by modern capitalism, perhaps the worst inequality that =
ever
existed among men. Of all that we shall speak later. But citizenship is sti=
ll
the American ideal; there is an army of actualities opposed to that ideal; =
but
there is no ideal opposed to that ideal. American plutocracy has never got =
itself
respected like English aristocracy. Citizenship is the American ideal; and =
it
has never been the English ideal. But it is surely an ideal that may stir s=
ome
imaginative generosity and respect in an Englishman, if he will condescend =
to
be also a man. In this vision of moulding many peoples into the visible ima=
ge
of the citizen, he may see a spiritual adventure which he can admire from t=
he
outside, at least as much as he admires the valour of the Moslems and much =
more
than he admires the virtues of the Middle Ages. He need not set himself to =
develop
equality, but he need not set himself to misunderstand it. He may at least
understand what Jefferson and Lincoln meant, and he may possibly find some
assistance in this task by reading what they said. He may realise that equa=
lity
is not some crude fairy tale about all men being equally tall or equally
tricky; which we not only cannot believe but cannot believe in anybody
believing. It is an absolute of morals by which all men have a value invari=
able
and indestructible and a dignity as intangible as death. He may at least be=
a
philosopher and see that equality is an idea; and not merely one of these
soft-headed sceptics who, having risen by low tricks to high places, drink =
bad
champagne in tawdry hotel lounges, and tell each other twenty times over, w=
ith unwearied
iteration, that equality is an illusion.
In truth it is
inequality that is the illusion. The extreme disproportion between men, tha=
t we
seem to see in life, is a thing of changing lights and lengthening shadows,=
a
twilight full of fancies and distortions. We find a man famous and cannot l=
ive
long enough to find him forgotten; we see a race dominant and cannot linger=
to
see it decay. It is the experience of men that always returns to the equali=
ty
of men; it is the average that ultimately justifies the average man. It is =
when
men have seen and suffered much and come at the end of more elaborate exper=
iments,
that they see men as men under an equal light of death and daily laughter; =
and
none the less mysterious for being many. Nor is it in vain that these Weste=
rn
democrats have sought the blazonry of their flag in that great multitude of
immortal lights that endure behind the fires we see, and gathered them into=
the
corner of Old Glory whose ground is like the glittering night. For veritabl=
y,
in the spirit as well as in the symbol, suns and moons and meteors pass and
fill our skies with a fleeting and almost theatrical conflagration; and
wherever the old shadow stoops upon the earth, the stars return.
A Meditation in a New York
Hotel
All this must begin with an apology=
and
not an apologia. When I went wandering about the States disguised as a
lecturer, I was well aware that I was not sufficiently well disguised to be=
a
spy. I was even in the worst possible position to be a sight-seer. A lectur=
er
to American audiences can hardly be in the holiday mood of a sight-seer. It=
is rather
the audience that is sight-seeing; even if it is seeing a rather melancholy
sight. Some say that people come to see the lecturer and not to hear him; in
which case it seems rather a pity that he should disturb and distress their
minds with a lecture. He might merely display himself on a stand or platform
for a stipulated sum; or be exhibited like a monster in a menagerie. The ci=
rcus
elephant is not expected to make a speech. But it is equally true that the
circus elephant is not allowed to write a book. His impressions of travel w=
ould
be somewhat sketchy and perhaps a little over-specialised. In merely travel=
ling
from circus to circus he would, so to speak, move in rather narrow circles.
Jumbo the great elephant (with whom I am hardly so ambitious as to compare =
myself),
before he eventually went to the Barnum show, passed a considerable and I t=
rust
happy part of his life in Regent's Park. But if he had written a book on
England, founded on his impressions of the Zoo, it might have been a little
disproportionate and even misleading in its version of the flora and fauna =
of
that country. He might imagine that lions and leopards were commoner than t=
hey
are in our hedgerows and country lanes, or that the head and neck of a gira=
ffe
was as native to our landscapes as a village spire. And that is why I apolo=
gise
in anticipation for a probable lack of proportion in this work. Like the el=
ephant,
I may have seen too much of a special enclosure where a special sort of lio=
ns
are gathered together. I may exaggerate the territorial, as distinct from t=
he
vertical space occupied by the spiritual giraffe; for the giraffe may surel=
y be
regarded as an example of Uplift, and is even, in a manner of speaking, a
high-brow. Above all, I shall probably make generalisations that are much t=
oo
general; and are insufficient through being exaggerative. To this sort of d=
oubt
all my impressions are subject; and among them the negative generalisation =
with
which I shall begin this rambling meditation on American hotels.
In all my American
wanderings I never saw such a thing as an inn. They may exist; but they do =
not
arrest the traveller upon every road as they do in England and in Europe. T=
he
saloons no longer existed when I was there, owing to the recent reform which
restricted intoxicants to the wealthier classes. But we feel that the saloo=
ns
have been there; if one may so express it, their absence is still present. =
They
remain in the structure of the street and the idiom of the language. But the
saloons were not inns. If they had been inns, it would have been far harder
even for the power of modern plutocracy to root them out. There will be a v=
ery
different chase when the White Hart is hunted to the forests or when the Red
Lion turns to bay. But people could not feel about the American saloon as t=
hey
will feel about the English inns. They could not feel that the Prohibitioni=
st,
that vulgar chucker-out, was chucking Chaucer out of the Tabard and Shakesp=
eare
out of the Mermaid. In justice to the American Prohibitionists it must be
realised that they were not doing quite such desecration; and that many of =
them
felt the saloon a specially poisonous sort of place. They did feel that
drinking-places were used only as drug-shops. So they have effected the gre=
at reconstruction,
by which it will be necessary to use only drug-shops as drinking-places. Bu=
t I
am not dealing here with the problem of Prohibition except in so far as it =
is
involved in the statement that the saloons were in no sense inns. Secondly,=
of
course, there are the hotels. There are indeed. There are hotels toppling to
the stars, hotels covering the acreage of villages, hotels in multitudinous
number like a mob of Babylonian or Assyrian monuments; but the hotels also =
are
not inns.
Broadly speaking,
there is only one hotel in America. The pattern of it, which is a very rati=
onal
pattern, is repeated in cities as remote from each other as the capitals of
European empires. You may find that hotel rising among the red blooms of the
warm spring woods of Nebraska, or whitened with Canadian snows near the ete=
rnal
noise of Niagara. And before touching on this solid and simple pattern itse=
lf,
I may remark that the same system of symmetry runs through all the details =
of
the interior. As one hotel is like another hotel, so one hotel floor is lik=
e another
hotel floor. If the passage outside your bedroom door, or hallway as it is
called, contains, let us say, a small table with a green vase and a stuffed
flamingo, or some trifle of the sort, you may be perfectly certain that the=
re
is exactly the same table, vase, and flamingo on every one of the thirty-two
landings of that towering habitation. This is where it differs most perhaps
from the crooked landings and unexpected levels of the old English inns, ev=
en
when they call themselves hotels. To me there was something weird, like a m=
agic
multiplication, in the exquisite sameness of these suites. It seemed to sug=
gest
the still atmosphere of some eerie psychological story. I once myself
entertained the notion of a story, in which a man was to be prevented from
entering his house (the scene of some crime or calamity) by people who pain=
ted
and furnished the next house to look exactly like it; the assimilation goin=
g to
the most fantastic lengths, such as altering the numbering of houses in the
street. I came to America and found an hotel fitted and upholstered through=
out
for the enactment of my phantasmal fraud. I offer the skeleton of my story =
with
all humility to some of the admirable lady writers of detective stories in
America, to Miss Carolyn Wells, or Miss Mary Roberts Rhinehart, or Mrs. A. =
K.
Green of the unforgotten Leavenworth Case. Surely it might be possible for =
the unsophisticated
Nimrod K. Moose, of Yellow Dog Flat, to come to New York and be entangled
somehow in this net of repetitions or recurrences. Surely something tells me
that his beautiful daughter, the Rose of Red Murder Gulch, might seek for h=
im
in vain amid the apparently unmistakable surroundings of the thirty-second
floor, while he was being quietly butchered by the floor-clerk on the
thirty-third floor, an agent of the Green Claw (that formidable organisatio=
n);
and all because the two floors looked exactly alike to the virginal Western
eye. The original point of my own story was that the man to be entrapped wa=
lked
into his own house after all, in spite of it being differently painted and
numbered, simply because he was absent-minded and used to taking a certain
number of mechanical steps. This would not work in the hotel; because a lift
has no habits. It is typical of the real tameness of machinery, that even w=
hen
we talk of a man turning mechanically we only talk metaphorically; for it is
something that a mechanism cannot do. But I think there is only one real
objection to my story of Mr. Moose in the New York hotel. And that is
unfortunately a rather fatal one. It is that far away in the remote desolat=
ion
of Yellow Dog, among those outlying and outlandish rocks that almost seem to
rise beyond the sunset, there is undoubtedly an hotel of exactly the same s=
ort,
with all its floors exactly the same.
Anyhow the general
plan of the American hotel is commonly the same, and, as I have said, it is=
a
very sound one so far as it goes. When I first went into one of the big New
York hotels, the first impression was certainly its bigness. It was called =
the
Biltmore; and I wondered how many national humorists had made the obvious
comment of wishing they had built less. But it was not merely the Babylonian
size and scale of such things, it was the way in which they are used. They =
are
used almost as public streets, or rather as public squares. My first impres=
sion
was that I was in some sort of high street or market-place during a carniva=
l or
a revolution. True, the people looked rather rich for a revolution and rath=
er
grave for a carnival; but they were congested in great crowds that moved sl=
owly
like people passing through an overcrowded railway station. Even in the diz=
zy
heights of such a sky-scraper there could not possibly be room for all those
people to sleep in the hotel, or even to dine in it. And, as a matter of fa=
ct,
they did nothing whatever except drift into it and drift out again. Most of
them had no more to do with the hotel than I have with Buckingham Palace. I
have never been in Buckingham Palace, and I have very seldom, thank God, be=
en
in the big hotels of this type that exist in London or Paris. But I cannot
believe that mobs are perpetually pouring through the Hotel Cecil or the Sa=
voy in
this fashion, calmly coming in at one door and going out of the other. But =
this
fact is part of the fundamental structure of the American hotel; it is built
upon a compromise that makes it possible. The whole of the lower floor is
thrown open to the public streets and treated as a public square. But above=
it
and all round it runs another floor in the form of a sort of deep gallery,
furnished more luxuriously and looking down on the moving mobs beneath. No =
one
is allowed on this floor except the guests or clients of the hotel. As I ha=
ve
been one of them myself, I trust it is not unsympathetic to compare them to
active anthropoids who can climb trees, and so look down in safety on the h=
erds
or packs of wilder animals wandering and prowling below. Of course there are
modifications of this architectural plan, but they are generally approximat=
ions
to it; it is the plan that seems to suit the social life of the American
cities. There is generally something like a ground floor that is more publi=
c, a
half-floor or gallery above that is more private, and above that the bulk of
the block of bedrooms, the huge hive with its innumerable and identical cel=
ls.
The ladder of asc=
ent
in this tower is of course the lift, or, as it is called, the elevator. With
all that we hear of American hustle and hurry it is rather strange that
Americans seem to like more than we do to linger upon long words. And indeed
there is an element of delay in their diction and spirit, very little
understood, which I may discuss elsewhere. Anyhow they say elevator when we=
say
lift, just as they say automobile when we say motor and stenographer when we
say typist, or sometimes (by a slight confusion) typewriter. Which reminds =
me
of another story that never existed, about a man who was accused of having =
murdered
and dismembered his secretary when he had only taken his typing machine to
pieces; but we must not dwell on these digressions. The Americans may have
another reason for giving long and ceremonious titles to the lift. When fir=
st I
came among them I had a suspicion that they possessed and practised a new a=
nd
secret religion, which was the cult of the elevator. I fancied they worship=
ped
the lift, or at any rate worshipped in the lift. The details or data of this
suspicion it were now vain to collect, as I have regretfully abandoned it,
except in so far as they illustrate the social principles underlying the
structural plan of the building. Now an American gentleman invariably takes=
off
his hat in the lift. He does not take off his hat in the hotel, even if it =
is
crowded with ladies. But he always so salutes a lady in the elevator; and t=
his
marks the difference of atmosphere. The lift is a room, but the hotel is a
street. But during my first delusion, of course, I assumed that he uncovere=
d in
this tiny temple merely because he was in church. There is something about =
the
very word elevator that expresses a great deal of his vague but idealistic
religion. Perhaps that flying chapel will eventually be ritualistically
decorated like a chapel; possibly with a symbolic scheme of wings. Perhaps a
brief religious service will be held in the elevator as it ascends; in a few
well-chosen words touching the Utmost for the Highest. Possibly he would
consent even to call the elevator a lift, if he could call it an uplift. Th=
ere
would be no difficulty, except what I cannot but regard as the chief moral =
problem
of all optimistic modernism. I mean the difficulty of imagining a lift whic=
h is
free to go up, if it is not also free to go down.
I think I know my
American friends and acquaintances too well to apologise for any levity in
these illustrations. Americans make fun of their own institutions; and their
own journalism is full of such fanciful conjectures. The tall building is
itself artistically akin to the tall story. The very word sky-scraper is an
admirable example of an American lie. But I can testify quite as eagerly to=
the
solid and sensible advantages of the symmetrical hotel. It is not only a
pattern of vases and stuffed flamingoes; it is also an equally accurate pat=
tern
of cupboards and baths. It is a dignified and humane custom to have a bathr=
oom
attached to every bedroom; and my impulse to sing the praises of it brought=
me
once at least into a rather quaint complication. I think it was in the city=
of
Dayton; anyhow I remember there was a Laundry Convention going on in the sa=
me
hotel, in a room very patriotically and properly festooned with the stars a=
nd
stripes, and doubtless full of promise for the future of laundering. I was =
interviewed
on the roof, within earshot of this debate, and may have been the victim of
some association or confusion; anyhow, after answering the usual questions
about Labour, the League of Nations, the length of ladies' dresses, and oth=
er
great matters, I took refuge in a rhapsody of warm and well-deserved praise=
of
American bathrooms. The editor, I understand, running a gloomy eye down the
column of his contributor's 'story,' and seeing nothing but metaphysical te=
rms
such as justice, freedom, the abstract disapproval of sweating, swindling, =
and the
like, paused at last upon the ablutionary allusion, and his eye brightened.
'That's the only copy in the whole thing,' he said, 'A Bath-Tub in Every Ho=
me.'
So these words appeared in enormous letters above my portrait in the paper.=
It
will be noted that, like many things that practical men make a great point =
of,
they miss the point. What I had commended as new and national was a bathroo=
m in
every bedroom. Even feudal and moss-grown England is not entirely ignorant =
of
an occasional bath-tub in the home. But what gave me great joy was what
followed. I discovered with delight that many people, glancing rapidly at m=
y portrait
with its prodigious legend, imagined that it was a commercial advertisement,
and that I was a very self-advertising commercial traveller. When I walked
about the streets, I was supposed to be travelling in bath-tubs. Consider t=
he
caption of the portrait, and you will see how similar it is to the true
commercial slogan: 'We offer a Bath-Tub in Every Home.' And this charming e=
rror
was doubtless clinched by the fact that I had been found haunting the outer
courts of the temple of the ancient Guild of Lavenders. I never knew how ma=
ny
shared the impression; I regret to say that I only traced it with certainty=
in two
individuals. But I understand that it included the idea that I had come to =
the
town to attend the Laundry Convention, and had made an eloquent speech to t=
hat
senate, no doubt exhibiting my tubs.
Such was the pena=
lty
of too passionate and unrestrained an admiration for American bathrooms; yet
the connection of ideas, however inconsequent, does cover the part of social
practice for which these American institutions can really be praised. About
everything like laundry or hot and cold water there is not only organisatio=
n,
but what does not always or perhaps often go with it, efficiency. Americans=
are
particular about these things of dress and decorum; and it is a virtue whic=
h I
very seriously recognise, though I find it very hard to emulate. But with t=
hem
it is a virtue; it is not a mere convention, still less a mere fashion. It =
is
really related to human dignity rather than to social superiority. The real=
ly
glorious thing about the American is that he does not dress like a gentlema=
n;
he dresses like a citizen or a civilised man. His Puritanic particularity on
certain points is really detachable from any definite social ambitions; the=
se
things are not a part of getting into society but merely of keeping out of
savagery. Those millions and millions of middling people, that huge middle
class especially of the Middle West, are not near enough to any aristocracy=
even
to be sham aristocrats, or to be real snobs. But their standards are secure;
and though I do not really travel in a bath-tub, or believe in the bath-tub
philosophy and religion, I will not on this matter recoil misanthropically =
from
them: I prefer the tub of Dayton to the tub of Diogenes. On these points th=
ere
is really something a million times better than efficiency, and that is
something like equality.
In short, the
American hotel is not America; but it is American. In some respects it is as
American as the English inn is English. And it is symbolic of that society =
in
this among other things: that it does tend too much to uniformity; but that
that very uniformity disguises not a little natural dignity. The old Romans
boasted that their republic was a nation of kings. If we really walked abro=
ad
in such a kingdom, we might very well grow tired of the sight of a crowd of
kings, of every man with a gold crown on his head or an ivory sceptre in his
hand. But it is arguable that we ought not to grow tired of the repetition =
of
crowns and sceptres, any more than of the repetition of flowers and stars. =
The whole
imaginative effort of Walt Whitman was really an effort to absorb and anima=
te
these multitudinous modern repetitions; and Walt Whitman would be quite cap=
able
of including in his lyric litany of optimism a list of the nine hundred and
ninety-nine identical bathrooms. I do not sneer at the generous effort of t=
he
giant; though I think, when all is said, that it is a criticism of modern
machinery that the effort should be gigantic as well as generous.
While there is so
much repetition there is little repose. It is the pattern of a kaleidoscope
rather than a wall-paper; a pattern of figures running and even leaping like
the figures in a zoetrope. But even in the groups where there was no hustle
there was often something of homelessness. I do not mean merely that they w=
ere
not dining at home; but rather that they were not at home even when dining,=
and
dining at their favourite hotel. They would frequently start up and dart fr=
om
the room at a summons from the telephone. It may have been fanciful, but I =
could
not help feeling a breath of home, as from a flap or flutter of St. George's
Cross, when I first sat down in a Canadian hostelry, and read the announcem=
ent
that no such telephonic or other summonses were allowed in the dining-room.=
It
may have been a coincidence, and there may be American hotels with this
merciful proviso and Canadian hotels without it; but the thing was symbolic
even if it was not evidential. I felt as if I stood indeed upon English soi=
l,
in a place where people liked to have their meals in peace.
The process of the
summons is called 'paging,' and consists of sending a little boy with a lar=
ge
voice through all the halls and corridors of the building, making them reso=
und
with a name. The custom is common, of course, in clubs and hotels even in
England; but in England it is a mere whisper compared with the wail with wh=
ich
the American page repeats the formula of 'Calling Mr. So and So.' I remembe=
r a
particularly crowded parterre in the somewhat smoky and oppressive atmosphe=
re
of Pittsburg, through which wandered a youth with a voice the like of which=
I
have never heard in the land of the living, a voice like the cry of a lost =
spirit,
saying again and again for ever, 'Carling Mr. Anderson.' One felt that he n=
ever
would find Mr. Anderson. Perhaps there never had been any Mr. Anderson to be
found. Perhaps he and every one else wandered in an abyss of bottomless
scepticism; and he was but the victim of one out of numberless nightmares of
eternity, as he wandered a shadow with shadows and wailed by impassable
streams. This is not exactly my philosophy, but I feel sure it was his. And=
it
is a mood that may frequently visit the mind in the centres of highly active
and successful industrial civilisation.
Such are the firs=
t idle
impressions of the great American hotel, gained by sitting for the first ti=
me
in its gallery and gazing on its drifting crowds with thoughts equally
drifting. The first impression is of something enormous and rather unnatura=
l,
an impression that is gradually tempered by experience of the kindliness and
even the tameness of so much of that social order. But I should not be
recording the sensations with sincerity, if I did not touch in passing the =
note
of something unearthly about that vast system to an insular traveller who s=
ees
it for the first time. It is as if he were wandering in another world among=
the
fixed stars; or worse still, in an ideal Utopia of the future.
Yet I am not cert=
ain;
and perhaps the best of all news is that nothing is really new. I sometimes
have a fancy that many of these new things in new countries are but the
resurrections of old things which have been wickedly killed or stupidly stu=
nted
in old countries. I have looked over the sea of little tables in some light=
and
airy open-air café; and my thoughts have gone back to the plain wood=
en
bench and wooden table that stands solitary and weather-stained outside so =
many
neglected English inns. We talk of experimenting in the French café,=
as
of some fresh and almost impudent innovation. But our fathers had the French
café, in the sense of the free-and-easy table in the sun and air. The
only difference was that French democracy was allowed to develop its
café, or multiply its tables, while English plutocracy prevented any
such popular growth. Perhaps there are other examples of old types and
patterns, lost in the old oligarchy and saved in the new democracies. I am
haunted with a hint that the new structures are not so very new; and that t=
hey
remind me of something very old. As I look from the balcony floor the crowds
seem to float away and the colours to soften and grow pale, and I know I am=
in one
of the simplest and most ancestral of human habitations. I am looking down =
from
the old wooden gallery upon the courtyard of an inn. This new architectural
model, which I have described, is after all one of the oldest European mode=
ls,
now neglected in Europe and especially in England. It was the theatre in wh=
ich
were enacted innumerable picaresque comedies and romantic plays, with figur=
es
ranging from Sancho Panza to Sam Weller. It served as the apparatus, like s=
ome
gigantic toy set up in bricks and timber, for the ancient and perhaps etern=
al
game of tennis. The very terms of the original game were taken from the inn
courtyard, and the players scored accordingly as they hit the buttery-hatch=
or
the roof. Singular speculations hover in my mind as the scene darkens and t=
he
quadrangle below begins to empty in the last hours of night. Some day perha=
ps
this huge structure will be found standing in a solitude like a skeleton; a=
nd
it will be the skeleton of the Spotted Dog or the Blue Boar. It will wither=
and
decay until it is worthy at last to be a tavern. I do not know whether men =
will
play tennis on its ground floor, with various scores and prizes for hitting=
the
electric fan, or the lift, or the head waiter. Perhaps the very words will =
only
remain as part of some such rustic game. Perhaps the electric fan will no
longer be electric and the elevator will no longer elevate, and the waiter =
will
only wait to be hit. But at least it is only by the decay of modern plutocr=
acy,
which seems already to have begun, that the secret of the structure even of
this plutocratic palace can stand revealed. And after long years, when its
lights are extinguished and only the long shadows inhabit its halls and
vestibules, there may come a new noise like thunder; of D'Artagnan knocking=
at
the door.
A Meditation in Broadway<=
/span>
When I had looked at the lights of
Broadway by night, I made to my American friends an innocent remark that se=
emed
for some reason to amuse them. I had looked, not without joy, at that long
kaleidoscope of coloured lights arranged in large letters and sprawling
trade-marks, advertising everything, from pork to pianos, through the agenc=
y of
the two most vivid and most mystical of the gifts of God; colour and fire. =
I said
to them, in my simplicity, 'What a glorious garden of wonders this would be=
, to
any one who was lucky enough to be unable to read.'
Here it is but a =
text
for a further suggestion. But let us suppose that there does walk down this
flaming avenue a peasant, of the sort called scornfully an illiterate peasa=
nt;
by those who think that insisting on people reading and writing is the best=
way
to keep out the spies who read in all languages and the forgers who write in
all hands. On this principle indeed, a peasant merely acquainted with thing=
s of
little practical use to mankind, such as ploughing, cutting wood, or growin=
g vegetables,
would very probably be excluded; and it is not for us to criticise from the
outside the philosophy of those who would keep out the farmer and let in the
forger. But let us suppose, if only for the sake of argument, that the peas=
ant
is walking under the artificial suns and stars of this tremendous thoroughf=
are;
that he has escaped to the land of liberty upon some general rumour and rom=
ance
of the story of its liberation, but without being yet able to understand the
arbitrary signs of its alphabet. The soul of such a man would surely soar
higher than the sky-scrapers, and embrace a brotherhood broader than Broadw=
ay. Realising
that he had arrived on an evening of exceptional festivity, worthy to be
blazoned with all this burning heraldry, he would please himself by guessing
what great proclamation or principle of the Republic hung in the sky like a
constellation or rippled across the street like a comet. He would be shrewd
enough to guess that the three festoons fringed with fiery words of somewhat
similar pattern stood for 'Government of the People, For the People, By the=
People';
for it must obviously be that, unless it were 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternit=
y.'
His shrewdness would perhaps be a little shaken if he knew that the triad s=
tood
for 'Tang Tonic To-day; Tang Tonic To-morrow; Tang Tonic All the Time.' He =
will
soon identify a restless ribbon of red lettering, red hot and rebellious, as
the saying, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' He will fail to identify it=
as
the equally famous saying, 'Skyoline Has Gout Beaten to a Frazzle.' Therefo=
re
it was that I desired the peasant to walk down that grove of fiery trees, u=
nder
all that golden foliage, and fruits like monstrous jewels, as innocent as A=
dam
before the Fall. He would see sights almost as fine as the flaming sword or=
the
purple and peacock plumage of the seraphim; so long as he did not go near t=
he Tree
of Knowledge.
In other words, if
once he went to school it would be all up; and indeed I fear in any case he
would soon discover his error. If he stood wildly waving his hat for libert=
y in
the middle of the road as Chunk Chutney picked itself out in ruby stars upon
the sky, he would impede the excellent but extremely rigid traffic system of
New York. If he fell on his knees before a sapphire splendour, and began sa=
ying
an Ave Maria under a mistaken association, he would be conducted kindly but
firmly by an Irish policeman to a more authentic shrine. But though the for=
eign
simplicity might not long survive in New York, it is quite a mistake to sup=
pose
that such foreign simplicity cannot enter New York. He may be excluded for
being illiterate, but he cannot be excluded for being ignorant, nor for bei=
ng
innocent. Least of all can he be excluded for being wiser in his innocence =
than
the world in its knowledge. There is here indeed more than one distinction =
to
be made. New York is a cosmopolitan city; but it is not a city of
cosmopolitans. Most of the masses in New York have a nation, whether or no =
it
be the nation to which New York belongs. Those who are Americanised are
American, and very patriotically American. Those who are not thus nationali=
sed
are not in the least internationalised. They simply continue to be themselv=
es; the
Irish are Irish; the Jews are Jewish; and all sorts of other tribes carry on
the traditions of remote European valleys almost untouched. In short, there=
is
a sort of slender bridge between their old country and their new, which they
either cross or do not cross, but which they seldom simply occupy. They are
exiles or they are citizens; there is no moment when they are cosmopolitans.
But very often the exiles bring with them not only rooted traditions, but
rooted truths.
Indeed it is to a
great extent the thought of these strange souls in crude American garb that
gives a meaning to the masquerade of New York. In the hotel where I stayed =
the
head waiter in one room was a Bohemian; and I am glad to say that he called
himself a Bohemian. I have already protested sufficiently, before American
audiences, against the pedantry of perpetually talking about Czecho-Slovaki=
a. I
suggested to my American friends that the abandonment of the word Bohemian =
in
its historical sense might well extend to its literary and figurative sense=
. We
might be expected to say, 'I'm afraid Henry has got into very Czecho-Slovak=
ian habits
lately,' or 'Don't bother to dress; it's quite a Czecho-Slovakian affair.'
Anyhow my Bohemian would have nothing to do with such nonsense; he called
himself a son of Bohemia, and spoke as such in his criticisms of America, w=
hich
were both favourable and unfavourable. He was a squat man, with a sturdy fi=
gure
and a steady smile; and his eyes were like dark pools in the depth of a dar=
ker
forest, but I do not think he had ever been deceived by the lights of Broad=
way.
But I found somet=
hing
like my real innocent abroad, my real peasant among the sky-signs, in anoth=
er
part of the same establishment. He was a much leaner man, equally dark, wit=
h a
hook nose, hungry face, and fierce black moustaches. He also was a waiter, =
and
was in the costume of a waiter, which is a smarter edition of the costume o=
f a
lecturer. As he was serving me with clam chowder or some such thing, I fell
into speech with him and he told me he was a Bulgar. I said something like,
'I'm afraid I don't know as much as I ought to about Bulgaria. I suppose mo=
st of
your people are agricultural, aren't they?' He did not stir an inch from his
regular attitude, but he slightly lowered his low voice and said, 'Yes. From
the earth we come and to the earth we return; when people get away from that
they are lost.'
To hear such a th=
ing
said by the waiter was alone an epoch in the life of an unfortunate writer =
of
fantastic novels. To see him clear away the clam chowder like an automaton,=
and
bring me more iced water like an automaton or like nothing on earth except =
an
American waiter (for piling up ice is the cold passion of their lives), and=
all
this after having uttered something so dark and deep, so starkly incongruous
and so startlingly true, was an indescribable thing, but very like the pict=
ure of
the peasant admiring Broadway. So he passed, with his artificial clothes and
manners, lit up with all the ghastly artificial light of the hotel, and all=
the
ghastly artificial life of the city; and his heart was like his own remote =
and
rocky valley, where those unchanging words were carved as on a rock.
I do not profess =
to
discuss here at all adequately the question this raises about the
Americanisation of the Bulgar. It has many aspects, of some of which most
Englishmen and even some Americans are rather unconscious. For one thing, a=
man
with so rugged a loyalty to land could not be Americanised in New York; but=
it
is not so certain that he could not be Americanised in America. We might al=
most
say that a peasantry is hidden in the heart of America. So far as our
impressions go, it is a secret. It is rather an open secret; covering only =
some
thousand square miles of open prairie. But for most of our countrymen it is
something invisible, unimagined, and unvisited; the simple truth that where=
all
those acres are there is agriculture, and where all that agriculture is the=
re
is considerable tendency towards distributive or decently equalised propert=
y,
as in a peasantry. On the other hand, there are those who say that the Bulg=
ar
will never be Americanised, that he only comes to be a waiter in America th=
at
he may afford to return to be a peasant in Bulgaria. I cannot decide this
issue, and indeed I did not introduce it to this end. I was led to it by a
certain line of reflection that runs along the Great White Way, and I will
continue to follow it. The criticism, if we could put it rightly, not only
covers more than New York but more than the whole New World. Any argument a=
gainst
it is quite as valid against the largest and richest cities of the Old Worl=
d,
against London or Liverpool or Frankfort or Belfast. But it is in New York =
that
we see the argument most clearly, because we see the thing thus towering in=
to
its own turrets and breaking into its own fireworks.
I disagree with t=
he
aesthetic condemnation of the modern city with its sky-scrapers and sky-sig=
ns.
I mean that which laments the loss of beauty and its sacrifice to utility. =
It
seems to me the very reverse of the truth. Years ago, when people used to s=
ay
the Salvation Army doubtless had good intentions, but we must all deplore i=
ts
methods, I pointed out that the very contrary is the case. Its method, the
method of drums and democratic appeal, is that of the Franciscans or any ot=
her
march of the Church Militant. It was precisely its aims that were dubious, =
with
their dissenting morality and despotic finance. It is somewhat the same wit=
h things
like the sky-signs in Broadway. The aesthete must not ask me to mingle my t=
ears
with his, because these things are merely useful and ugly. For I am not
specially inclined to think them ugly; but I am strongly inclined to think =
them
useless. As a matter of art for art's sake, they seem to me rather artistic=
. As
a form of practical social work they seem to me stark stupid waste. If Mr.
Bilge is rich enough to build a tower four hundred feet high and give it a
crown of golden crescents and crimson stars, in order to draw attention to =
his manufacture
of the Paradise Tooth Paste or The Seventh Heaven Cigar, I do not feel the
least disposition to thank him for any serious form of social service. I ha=
ve
never tried the Seventh Heaven Cigar; indeed a premonition moves me towards=
the
belief that I shall go down to the dust without trying it. I have every rea=
son
to doubt whether it does any particular good to those who smoke it, or any =
good
to anybody except those who sell it. In short Mr. Bilge's usefulness consis=
ts
in being useful to Mr. Bilge, and all the rest is illusion and sentimentali=
sm. But
because I know that Bilge is only Bilge, shall I stoop to the profanity of
saying that fire is only fire? Shall I blaspheme crimson stars any more than
crimson sunsets, or deny that those moons are golden any more than that this
grass is green? If a child saw these coloured lights, he would dance with as
much delight as at any other coloured toys; and it is the duty of every poe=
t,
and even of every critic, to dance in respectful imitation of the child. In=
deed
I am in a mood of so much sympathy with the fairy lights of this pantomime
city, that I should be almost sorry to see social sanity and a sense of
proportion return to extinguish them. I fear the day is breaking, and the b=
road
daylight of tradition and ancient truth is coming to end all this delightful
nightmare of New York at night. Peasants and priests and all sorts of pract=
ical
and sensible people are coming back into power, and their stern realism may
wither all these beautiful, unsubstantial, useless things. They will not
believe in the Seventh Heaven Cigar, even when they see it shining as with
stars in the seventh heaven. They will not be affected by advertisements, a=
ny
more than the priests and peasants of the Middle Ages would have been affec=
ted
by advertisements. Only a very soft-headed, sentimental, and rather servile
generation of men could possibly be affected by advertisements at all. Peop=
le
who are a little more hard-headed, humorous, and intellectually independent,
see the rather simple joke; and are not impressed by this or any other form=
of
self-praise. Almost any other men in almost any other age would have seen t=
he
joke. If you had said to a man in the Stone Age, 'Ugg says Ugg makes the be=
st
stone hatchets,' he would have perceived a lack of detachment and
disinterestedness about the testimonial. If you had said to a medieval peas=
ant,
'Robert the Bowyer proclaims, with three blasts of a horn, that he makes go=
od
bows,' the peasant would have said, 'Well, of course he does,' and thought
about something more important. It is only among people whose minds have be=
en
weakened by a sort of mesmerism that so transparent a trick as that of
advertisement could ever have been tried at all. And if ever we have again,=
as
for other reasons I cannot but hope we shall, a more democratic distributio=
n of
property and a more agricultural basis of national life, it would seem at f=
irst
sight only too likely that all this beautiful superstition will perish, and=
the
fairyland of Broadway with all its varied rainbows fade away. For such peop=
le
the Seventh Heaven Cigar, like the nineteenth-century city, will have ended=
in
smoke. And even the smoke of it will have vanished.
But the next stag=
e of
reflection brings us back to the peasant looking at the lights of Broadway.=
It
is not true to say in the strict sense that the peasant has never seen such
things before. The truth is that he has seen them on a much smaller scale, =
but
for a much larger purpose. Peasants also have their ritual and ornament, bu=
t it
is to adorn more real things. Apart from our first fancy about the peasant =
who
could not read, there is no doubt about what would be apparent to a peasant=
who
could read, and who could understand. For him also fire is sacred, for him =
also
colour is symbolic. But where he sets up a candle to light the little shrin=
e of
St. Joseph, he finds it takes twelve hundred candles to light the Seventh
Heaven Cigar. He is used to the colours in church windows showing red for m=
artyrs
or blue for madonnas; but here he can only conclude that all the colours of=
the
rainbow belong to Mr. Bilge. Now upon the aesthetic side he might well be
impressed; but it is exactly on the social and even scientific side that he=
has
a right to criticise. If he were a Chinese peasant, for instance, and came =
from
a land of fireworks, he would naturally suppose that he had happened to arr=
ive
at a great firework display in celebration of something; perhaps the Sacred
Emperor's birthday, or rather birthnight. It would gradually dawn on the
Chinese philosopher that the Emperor could hardly be born every night. And =
when
he learnt the truth the philosopher, if he was a philosopher, would be a li=
ttle
disappointed ... possibly a little disdainful.
Compare, for inst=
ance,
these everlasting fireworks with the damp squibs and dying bonfires of Guy
Fawkes Day. That quaint and even queer national festival has been fading for
some time out of English life. Still, it was a national festival, in the do=
uble
sense that it represented some sort of public spirit pursued by some sort of
popular impulse. People spent money on the display of fireworks; they did n=
ot get
money by it. And the people who spent money were often those who had very
little money to spend. It had something of the glorious and fanatical chara=
cter
of making the poor poorer. It did not, like the advertisements, have only t=
he
mean and materialistic character of making the rich richer. In short, it ca=
me
from the people and it appealed to the nation. The historical and religious
cause in which it originated is not mine; and I think it has perished partly
through being tied to a historical theory for which there is no future. I t=
hink
this is illustrated in the very fact that the ceremonial is merely negative=
and
destructive. Negation and destruction are very noble things as far as they =
go,
and when they go in the right direction; and the popular expression of them=
has
always something hearty and human about it. I shall not therefore bring any
fine or fastidious criticism, whether literary or musical, to bear upon the
little boys who drag about a bolster and a paper mask, calling out
Guy Fawkes Guy <=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Hit him in =
the
eye.
But I admit it is a disadvantage th=
at
they have not a saint or hero to crown in effigy as well as a traitor to bu=
rn
in effigy. I admit that popular Protestantism has become too purely negative
for people to wreathe in flowers the statue of Mr. Kensit or even of Dr.
Clifford. I do not disguise my preference for popular Catholicism; which st=
ill
has statues that can be wreathed in flowers. I wish our national feast of f=
ireworks
revolved round something positive and popular. I wish the beauty of a Cathe=
rine
Wheel were displayed to the glory of St. Catherine. I should not especially
complain if Roman candles were really Roman candles. But this negative
character does not destroy the national character; which began at least in
disinterested faith and has ended at least in disinterested fun. There is
nothing disinterested at all about the new commercial fireworks. There is
nothing so dignified as a dingy guy among the lights of Broadway. In that
thoroughfare, indeed, the very word guy has another and milder significance=
. An
American friend congratulated me on the impression I produced on a lady int=
erviewer,
observing, 'She says you're a regular guy.' This puzzled me a little at the
time. 'Her description is no doubt correct,' I said, 'but I confess that it
would never have struck me as specially complimentary.' But it appears that=
it
is one of the most graceful of compliments, in the original American. A guy=
in
America is a colourless term for a human being. All men are guys, being end=
owed
by their Creator with certain ... but I am misled by another association. A=
nd a
regular guy means, I presume, a reliable or respectable guy. The point here,
however, is that the guy in the grotesque English sense does represent the
dilapidated remnant of a real human tradition of symbolising real historic
ideals by the sacramental mystery of fire. It is a great fall from the lowe=
st
of these lowly bonfires to the highest of the modern sky-signs. The new ill=
umination
does not stand for any national ideal at all; and what is yet more to the
point, it does not come from any popular enthusiasm at all. That is where it
differs from the narrowest national Protestantism of the English institutio=
n.
Mobs have risen in support of No Popery; no mobs are likely to rise in defe=
nce
of the New Puffery. Many a poor crazy Orangeman has died saying, 'To Hell w=
ith
the Pope'; it is doubtful whether any man will ever, with his last breath,
frame the ecstatic words, 'Try Hugby's Chewing Gum.' These modern and
mercantile legends are imposed upon us by a mercantile minority, and we are
merely passive to the suggestion. The hypnotist of high finance or big busi=
ness
merely writes his commands in heaven with a finger of fire. All men really =
are guys,
in the sense of dummies. We are only the victims of his pyrotechnic violenc=
e;
and it is he who hits us in the eye.
This is the real =
case
against that modern society that is symbolised by such art and architecture=
. It
is not that it is toppling, but that it is top-heavy. It is not that it is
vulgar, but rather that it is not popular. In other words, the democratic i=
deal
of countries like America, while it is still generally sincere and sometimes
intense, is at issue with another tendency, an industrial progress which is=
of
all things on earth the most undemocratic. America is not alone in possessi=
ng
the industrialism, but she is alone in emphasising the ideal that strives w=
ith
industrialism. Industrial capitalism and ideal democracy are everywhere in
controversy; but perhaps only here are they in conflict. France has a
democratic ideal; but France is not industrial. England and Germany are
industrial; but England and Germany are not really democratic. Of course wh=
en I
speak here of industrialism I speak of great industrial areas; there is, as
will be noted later, another side to all these countries; there is in Ameri=
ca
itself not only a great deal of agricultural society, but a great deal of
agricultural equality; just as there are still peasants in Germany and may =
some
day again be peasants in England. But the point is that the ideal and its e=
nemy
the reality are here crushed very close to each other in the high, narrow c=
ity;
and that the sky-scraper is truly named because its top, towering in such
insolence, is scraping the stars off the American sky, the very heaven of t=
he
American spirit.
That seems to me =
the
main outline of the whole problem. In the first chapter of this book, I have
emphasised the fact that equality is still the ideal though no longer the
reality of America. I should like to conclude this one by emphasising the f=
act
that the reality of modern capitalism is menacing that ideal with terrors a=
nd
even splendours that might well stagger the wavering and impressionable mod=
ern
spirit. Upon the issue of that struggle depends the question of whether this
new great civilisation continues to exist, and even whether any one cares i=
f it
exists or not. I have already used the parable of the American flag, and the
stars that stand for a multitudinous equality; I might here take the opposi=
te
symbol of these artificial and terrestrial stars flaming on the forehead of=
the
commercial city; and note the peril of the last illusion, which is that the
artificial stars may seem to fill the heavens, and the real stars to have f=
aded
from sight. But I am content for the moment to reaffirm the merely imaginat=
ive
pleasure of those dizzy turrets and dancing fires. If those nightmare build=
ings
were really all built for nothing, how noble they would be! The fact that t=
hey
were really built for something need not unduly depress us for a moment, or
drag down our soaring fancies. There is something about these vertical lines
that suggests a sort of rush upwards, as of great cataracts topsy-turvy. I =
have
spoken of fireworks, but here I should rather speak of rockets. There is on=
ly
something underneath the mind murmuring that nothing remains at last of a
flaming rocket except a falling stick. I have spoken of Babylonian
perspectives, and of words written with a fiery finger, like that huge unhu=
man
finger that wrote on Belshazzar's wall.... But what did it write on
Belshazzar's wall?... I am content once more to end on a note of doubt and a
rather dark sympathy with those many-coloured solar systems turning so dizz=
ily,
far up in the divine vacuum of the night.
'From the earth we
come and to the earth we return; when people get away from that they are lo=
st.'
Irish and other Interview=
ers
It is often asked what should be the
first thing that a man sees when he lands in a foreign country; but I think=
it
should be the vision of his own country. At least when I came into New York
Harbour, a sort of grey and green cloud came between me and the towers with
multitudinous windows, white in the winter sunlight; and I saw an old brown
house standing back among the beech-trees at home, the house of only one am=
ong many
friends and neighbours, but one somehow so sunken in the very heart of Engl=
and
as to be unconscious of her imperial or international position, and out of =
the
sound of her perilous seas. But what made most clear the vision that revisi=
ted
me was something else. Before we touched land the men of my own guild, the
journalists and reporters, had already boarded the ship like pirates. And o=
ne
of them spoke to me in an accent that I knew; and thanked me for all I had =
done
for Ireland. And it was at that moment that I knew most vividly that what I
wanted was to do something for England.
Then, as it chanc=
ed,
I looked across at the statue of Liberty, and saw that the great bronze was
gleaming green in the morning light. I had made all the obvious jokes about=
the
statue of Liberty. I found it had a soothing effect on earnest Prohibitioni=
sts
on the boat to urge, as a point of dignity and delicacy, that it ought to be
given back to the French, a vicious race abandoned to the culture of the vi=
ne.
I proposed that the last liquors on board should be poured out in a pagan
libation before it. And then I suddenly remembered that this Liberty was st=
ill
in some sense enlightening the world, or one part of the world; was a lamp =
for
one sort of wanderer, a star of one sort of seafarer. To one persecuted peo=
ple
at least this land had really been an asylum; even if recent legislation (a=
s I
have said) had made them think it a lunatic asylum. They had made it so much
their home that the very colour of the country seemed to change with the
infusion; as the bronze of the great statue took on a semblance of the wear=
ing
of the green.
It is a commonpla=
ce
that the Englishman has been stupid in his relations with the Irish; but he=
has
been far more stupid in his relations with the Americans on the subject of =
the
Irish. His propaganda has been worse than his practice; and his defence more
ill-considered than the most indefensible things that it was intended to
defend. There is in this matter a curious tangle of cross-purposes, which o=
nly
a parallel example can make at all clear. And I will note the point here, b=
ecause
it is some testimony to its vivid importance that it was really the first I=
had
to discuss on American soil with an American citizen. In a double sense I
touched Ireland before I came to America. I will take an imaginary instance
from another controversy; in order to show how the apology can be worse than
the action. The best we can say for ourselves is worse than the worst that =
we
can do.
There was a time =
when
English poets and other publicists could always be inspired with instantane=
ous
indignation about the persecuted Jews in Russia. We have heard less about t=
hem
since we heard more about the persecuting Jews in Russia. I fear there are a
great many middle-class Englishmen already who wish that Trotsky had been
persecuted a little more. But even in those days Englishmen divided their m=
inds
in a curious fashion; and unconsciously distinguished between the Jews whom
they had never seen, in Warsaw, and the Jews whom they had often seen in Wh=
itechapel.
It seemed to be assumed that, by a curious coincidence, Russia possessed not
only the very worst Anti-Semites but the very best Semites. A moneylender in
London might be like Judas Iscariot; but a moneylender in Moscow must be li=
ke
Judas Maccabaeus.
Nevertheless there
remained in our common sense an unconscious but fundamental comprehension of
the unity of Israel; a sense that some things could be said, and some could=
not
be said, about the Jews as a whole. Suppose that even in those days, to say
nothing of these, an English protest against Russian Anti-Semitism had been
answered by the Russian Anti-Semites, and suppose the answer had been somew=
hat
as follows:--
'It is all very w=
ell
for foreigners to complain of our denying civic rights to our Jewish subjec=
ts;
but we know the Jews better than they do. They are a barbarous people, enti=
rely
primitive, and very like the simple savages who cannot count beyond five on
their fingers. It is quite impossible to make them understand ordinary numb=
ers,
to say nothing of simple economics. They do not realise the meaning or the =
value
of money. No Jew anywhere in the world can get into his stupid head the not=
ion
of a bargain, or of exchanging one thing for another. Their hopeless incapa=
city
for commerce or finance would retard the progress of our people, would prev=
ent
the spread of any sort of economic education, would keep the whole country =
on a
level lower than that of the most prehistoric methods of barter. What Russia
needs most is a mercantile middle class; and it is unjust to ask us to swamp
its small beginnings in thousands of these rude tribesmen, who cannot do a =
sum
of simple addition, or understand the symbolic character of a threepenny bi=
t.
We might as well be asked to give civic rights to cows and pigs as to this
unhappy, half-witted race who can no more count than the beasts of the fiel=
d.
In every intellectual exercise they are hopelessly incompetent; no Jew can =
play
chess; no Jew can learn languages; no Jew has ever appeared in the smallest
part in any theatrical performance; no Jew can give or take any pleasure co=
nnected
with any musical instrument. These people are our subjects; and we understa=
nd
them. We accept full responsibility for treating such troglodytes on our own
terms.'
It would not be
entirely convincing. It would sound a little far-fetched and unreal. But it
would sound exactly like our utterances about the Irish, as they sound to a=
ll
Americans, and rather especially to Anti-Irish Americans. That is exactly t=
he
impression we produce on the people of the United States when we say, as we=
do
say in substance, something like this: 'We mean no harm to the poor dear Ir=
ish,
so dreamy, so irresponsible, so incapable of order or organisation. If we w=
ere
to withdraw from their country they would only fight among themselves; they=
have
no notion of how to rule themselves. There is something charming about their
unpracticability, about their very incapacity for the coarse business of
politics. But for their own sakes it is impossible to leave these emotional
visionaries to ruin themselves in the attempt to rule themselves. They are =
like
children; but they are our own children, and we understand them. We accept =
full
responsibility for acting as their parents and guardians.'
Now the point is =
not
only that this view of the Irish is false, but that it is the particular vi=
ew
that the Americans know to be false. While we are saying that the Irish cou=
ld
not organise, the Americans are complaining, often very bitterly, of the po=
wer
of Irish organisation. While we say that the Irishman could not rule himsel=
f,
the Americans are saying, more or less humorously, that the Irishman rules
them. A highly intelligent professor said to me in Boston, 'We have solved =
the
Irish problem here; we have an entirely independent Irish Government.' Whil=
e we
are complaining, in an almost passionate manner, of the impotence of mere
cliques of idealists and dreamers, they are complaining, often in a very
indignant manner, of the power of great gangs of bosses and bullies. There =
are
a great many Americans who pity the Irish, very naturally and very rightly,=
for
the historic martyrdom which their patriotism has endured. But there are a
great many Americans who do not pity the Irish in the least. They would be =
much
more likely to pity the English; only this particular way of talking tends
rather to make them despise the English. Thus both the friends of Ireland a=
nd
the foes of Ireland tend to be the foes of England. We make one set of enem=
ies
by our action, and another by our apology.
It is a thing that
can from time to time be found in history; a misunderstanding that really h=
as a
moral. The English excuse would carry much more weight if it had more since=
rity
and more humility. There are a considerable number of people in the United
States who could sympathise with us, if we would say frankly that we fear t=
he
Irish. Those who thus despise our pity might possibly even respect our fear=
. The
argument I have often used in other places comes back with prodigious and
redoubled force, after hearing anything of American opinion; the argument t=
hat
the only reasonable or reputable excuse for the English is the excuse of a
patriotic sense of peril; and that the Unionist, if he must be a Unionist,
should use that and no other. When the Unionist has said that he dare not l=
et
loose against himself a captive he has so cruelly wronged, he has said all =
that
he has to say; all that he has ever had to say; all that he will ever have =
to
say. He is like a man who has sent a virile and rather vindictive rival
unjustly to penal servitude; and who connives at the continuance of the
sentence, not because he himself is particularly vindictive, but because he=
is afraid
of what the convict will do when he comes out of prison. This is not exactl=
y a
moral strength, but it is a very human weakness; and that is the most that =
can
be said for it. All other talk, about Celtic frenzy or Catholic superstitio=
n,
is cant invented to deceive himself or to deceive the world. But the vital
point to realise is that it is cant that cannot possibly deceive the Americ=
an
world. In the matter of the Irishman the American is not to be deceived. It=
is
not merely true to say that he knows better. It is equally true to say that=
he
knows worse. He knows vices and evils in the Irishman that are entirely hid=
den
in the hazy vision of the Englishman. He knows that our unreal slanders are=
inconsistent
even with the real sins. To us Ireland is a shadowy Isle of Sunset, like
Atlantis, about which we can make up legends. To him it is a positive ward =
or
parish in the heart of his huge cities, like Whitechapel; about which even =
we
cannot make legends but only lies. And, as I have said, there are some lies=
we
do not tell even about Whitechapel. We do not say it is inhabited by Jews t=
oo
stupid to count or know the value of a coin.
The first thing f=
or
any honest Englishman to send across the sea is this; that the English have=
not
the shadow of a notion of what they are up against in America. They have ne=
ver
even heard of the batteries of almost brutal energy, of which I had thus
touched a live wire even before I landed. People talk about the hypocrisy of
England in dealing with a small nationality. What strikes me is the stupidi=
ty
of England in supposing that she is dealing with a small nationality; when =
she
is really dealing with a very large nationality. She is dealing with a nati=
onality
that often threatens, even numerically, to dominate all the other nationali=
ties
of the United States. The Irish are not decaying; they are not unpractical;
they are scarcely even scattered; they are not even poor. They are the most
powerful and practical world-combination with whom we can decide to be frie=
nds
or foes; and that is why I thought first of that still and solid brown hous=
e in
Buckinghamshire, standing back in the shadow of the trees.
Among my impressi=
ons
of America I have deliberately put first the figure of the Irish-American
interviewer, standing on the shore more symbolic than the statue of Liberty.
The Irish interviewer's importance for the English lay in the fact of his b=
eing
an Irishman, but there was also considerable interest in the circumstance of
his being an interviewer. And as certain wild birds sometimes wing their way
far out to sea and are the first signal of the shore, so the first Americans
the traveller meets are often American interviewers; and they are generally=
birds
of a feather, and they certainly flock together. In this respect, there is =
a slight
difference in the etiquette of the craft in the two countries, which I was
delighted to discuss with my fellow craftsmen. If I could at that moment ha=
ve
flown back to Fleet Street I am happy to reflect that nobody in the world w=
ould
in the least wish to interview me. I should attract no more attention than =
the
stone griffin opposite the Law Courts; both monsters being grotesque but al=
so
familiar. But supposing for the sake of argument that anybody did want to
interview me, it is fairly certain that the fact of one paper publishing su=
ch
an interview would rather prevent the other papers from doing so. The
repetition of the same views of the same individual in two places would be
considered rather bad journalism; it would have an air of stolen thunder, n=
ot
to say stage thunder.
But in America the
fact of my landing and lecturing was evidently regarded in the same light a=
s a
murder or a great fire, or any other terrible but incurable catastrophe, a
matter of interest to all pressmen concerned with practical events. One of =
the
first questions I was asked was how I should be disposed to explain the wav=
e of
crime in New York. Naturally I replied that it might possibly be due to the
number of English lecturers who had recently landed. In the mood of the mom=
ent
it seemed possible that, if they had all been interviewed, regrettable inci=
dents
might possibly have taken place. But this was only the mood of the moment, =
and
even as a mood did not last more than a moment. And since it has reference =
to a
rather common and a rather unjust conception of American journalism, I thin=
k it
well to take it first as a fallacy to be refuted, though the refutation may
require a rather longer approach.
I have generally
found that the traveller fails to understand a foreign country, through
treating it as a tendency and not as a balance. But if a thing were always
tending in one direction it would soon tend to destruction. Everything that
merely progresses finally perishes. Every nation, like every family, exists
upon a compromise, and commonly a rather eccentric compromise; using the wo=
rd
'eccentric' in the sense of something that is somehow at once crazy and
healthy. Now the foreigner commonly sees some feature that he thinks fantas=
tic
without seeing the feature that balances it. The ordinary examples are obvi=
ous
enough. An Englishman dining inside a hotel on the boulevards thinks the Fr=
ench
eccentric in refusing to open a window. But he does not think the English
eccentric in refusing to carry their chairs and tables out on to the paveme=
nt
in Ludgate Circus. An Englishman will go poking about in little Swiss or
Italian villages, in wild mountains or in remote islands, demanding tea; and
never reflects that he is like a Chinaman who should enter all the wayside
public-houses in Kent and Sussex and demand opium. But the point is not mer=
ely
that he demands what he cannot expect to enjoy; it is that he ignores even =
what
he does enjoy. He does not realise the sublime and starry paradox of the
phrase, vin ordinaire, which to him should be a glorious jest like the phra=
se 'common
gold' or 'daily diamonds.' These are the simple and self-evident cases; but
there are many more subtle cases of the same thing; of the tendency to see =
that
the nation fills up its own gap with its own substitute; or corrects its own
extravagance with its own precaution. The national antidote generally grows
wild in the woods side by side with the national poison. If it did not, all=
the
natives would be dead. For it is so, as I have said, that nations necessari=
ly
die of the undiluted poison called progress.
It is so in this
much-abused and over-abused example of the American journalist. The American
interviewers really have exceedingly good manners for the purposes of their
trade, granted that it is necessary to pursue their trade. And even what is
called their hustling method can truly be said to cut both ways, or hustle =
both
ways; for if they hustle in, they also hustle out. It may not at first sight
seem the very warmest compliment to a gentleman to congratulate him on the =
fact
that he soon goes away. But it really is a tribute to his perfection in a v=
ery
delicate social art; and I am quite serious when I say that in this respect=
the
interviewers are artists. It might be more difficult for an Englishman to c=
ome
to the point, particularly the sort of point which American journalists are
supposed, with some exaggeration, to aim at. It might be more difficult for=
an
Englishman to ask a total stranger on the spur of the moment for the exact
inscription on his mother's grave; but I really think that if an Englishman
once got so far as that he would go very much farther, and certainly go on =
very
much longer. The Englishman would approach the churchyard by a rather more
wandering woodland path; but if once he had got to the grave I think he wou=
ld
have much more disposition, so to speak, to sit down on it. Our own nationa=
l temperament
would find it decidedly more difficult to disconnect when connections had
really been established. Possibly that is the reason why our national
temperament does not establish them. I suspect that the real reason that an
Englishman does not talk is that he cannot leave off talking. I suspect tha=
t my
solitary countrymen, hiding in separate railway compartments, are not so mu=
ch
retiring as a race of Trappists as escaping from a race of talkers.
However this may =
be,
there is obviously something of practical advantage in the ease with which =
the
American butterfly flits from flower to flower. He may in a sense force his
acquaintance on us, but he does not force himself on us. Even when, to our
prejudices, he seems to insist on knowing us, at least he does not insist on
our knowing him. It may be, to some sensibilities, a bad thing that a total
stranger should talk as if he were a friend, but it might possibly be worse=
if
he insisted on being a friend before he would talk like one. To a great dea=
l of
the interviewing, indeed much the greater part of it, even this criticism d=
oes
not apply; there is nothing which even an Englishman of extreme sensibility
could regard as particularly private; the questions involved are generally
entirely public, and treated with not a little public spirit. But my only
reason for saying here what can be said even for the worst exceptions is to
point out this general and neglected principle; that the very thing that we
complain of in a foreigner generally carries with it its own foreign cure.
American interviewing is generally very reasonable, and it is always very
rapid. And even those to whom talking to an intelligent fellow creature is =
as
horrible as having a tooth out may still admit that American interviewing h=
as
many of the qualities of American dentistry.
Another effect th=
at
has given rise to this fallacy, this exaggeration of the vulgarity and
curiosity of the press, is the distinction between the articles and the
headlines; or rather the tendency to ignore that distinction. The few really
untrue and unscrupulous things I have seen in American 'stories' have always
been in the headlines. And the headlines are written by somebody else; some
solitary and savage cynic locked up in the office, hating all mankind, and
raging and revenging himself at random, while the neat, polite, and rational
pressman can safely be let loose to wander about the town.
For instance, I
talked to two decidedly thoughtful fellow journalists immediately on my arr=
ival
at a town in which there had been some labour troubles. I told them my gene=
ral
view of Labour in the very largest and perhaps the vaguest historical outli=
ne;
pointing out that the one great truth to be taught to the middle classes was
that Capitalism was itself a crisis, and a passing crisis; that it was not =
so
much that it was breaking down as that it had never really stood up. Slaver=
ies
could last, and peasantries could last; but wage-earning communities could =
hardly
even live, and were already dying.
All this moral and
even metaphysical generalisation was most fairly and most faithfully reprod=
uced
by the interviewer, who had actually heard it casually and idly spoken. But=
on
the top of this column of political philosophy was the extraordinary
announcement in enormous letters, 'Chesterton Takes Sides in Trolley Strike=
.'
This was inaccurate. When I spoke I not only did not know that there was any
trolley strike, but I did not know what a trolley strike was. I should have=
had
an indistinct idea that a large number of citizens earned their living by
carrying things about in wheel-barrows, and that they had desisted from the=
beneficent
activities. Any one who did not happen to be a journalist, or know a little
about journalism, American and English, would have supposed that the same m=
an
who wrote the article had suddenly gone mad and written the title. But I kn=
ow that
we have here to deal with two different types of journalists; and the man w=
ho
writes the headlines I will not dare to describe; for I have not seen him
except in dreams.
Another innocent
complication is that the interviewer does sometimes translate things into h=
is
native language. It would not seem odd that a French interviewer should
translate them into French; and it is certain that the American interviewer
sometimes translates them into American. Those who imagine the two language=
s to
be the same are more innocent than any interviewer. To take one out of the
twenty examples, some of which I have mentioned elsewhere, suppose an
interviewer had said that I had the reputation of being a nut. I should be
flattered but faintly surprised at such a tribute to my dress and dashing
exterior. I should afterwards be sobered and enlightened by discovering tha=
t in
America a nut does not mean a dandy but a defective or imbecile person. And=
as
I have here to translate their American phrase into English, it may be very
defensible that they should translate my English phrases into American. Any=
how
they often do translate them into American. In answer to the usual question
about Prohibition I had made the usual answer, obvious to the point of dull=
ness
to those who are in daily contact with it, that it is a law that the rich m=
ake
knowing they can always break it. From the printed interview it appeared th=
at I
had said, 'Prohibition! All matter of dollar sign.' This is almost avowed t=
ranslation,
like a French translation. Nobody can suppose that it would come natural to=
an
Englishman to talk about a dollar, still less about a dollar sign--whatever
that may be. It is exactly as if he had made me talk about the Skelt and
Stevenson Toy Theatre as 'a cent plain, and two cents coloured' or condemne=
d a
parsimonious policy as dime-wise and dollar-foolish. Another interviewer on=
ce
asked me who was the greatest American writer. I have forgotten exactly wha=
t I
said, but after mentioning several names, I said that the greatest natural =
genius
and artistic force was probably Walt Whitman. The printed interview is more=
precise;
and students of my literary and conversational style will be interested to =
know
that I said, 'See here, Walt Whitman was your one real red-blooded man.' He=
re
again I hardly think the translation can have been quite unconscious; most =
of
my intimates are indeed aware that I do not talk like that, but I fancy that
the same fact would have dawned on the journalist to whom I had been talkin=
g.
And even this trivial point carries with it the two truths which must be, I
fear, the rather monotonous moral of these pages. The first is that America=
and
England can be far better friends when sharply divided than when shapelessly
amalgamated. These two journalists were false reporters, but they were true
translators. They were not so much interviewers as interpreters. And the se=
cond
is that in any such difference it is often wholesome to look beneath the
surface for a superiority. For ability to translate does imply ability to
understand; and many of these journalists really did understand. I think th=
ere
are many English journalists who would be more puzzled by so simple an idea=
as
the plutocratic foundation of Prohibition. But the American knew at once th=
at I
meant it was a matter of dollar sign; probably because he knew very well th=
at
it is.
Then again there =
is a
curious convention by which American interviewing makes itself out much wor=
se
than it is. The reports are far more rowdy and insolent than the conversati=
ons.
This is probably a part of the fact that a certain vivacity, which to some
seems vitality and to some vulgarity, is not only an ambition but an ideal.=
It
must always be grasped that this vulgarity is an ideal even more than it is=
a
reality. It is an ideal when it is not a reality. A very quiet and intellig=
ent young
man, in a soft black hat and tortoise-shell spectacles, will ask for an
interview with unimpeachable politeness, wait for his living subject with
unimpeachable patience, talk to him quite sensibly for twenty minutes, and =
go
noiselessly away. Then in the newspaper next morning you will read how he b=
eat
the bedroom door in, and pursued his victim on to the roof or dragged him f=
rom
under the bed, and tore from him replies to all sorts of bald and ruthless
questions printed in large black letters. I was often interviewed in the
evening, and had no notion of how atrociously I had been insulted till I sa=
w it
in the paper next morning. I had no notion I had been on the rack of an
inquisitor until I saw it in plain print; and then of course I believed it,
with a faith and docility unknown in any previous epoch of history. An
interesting essay might be written upon points upon which nations affect mo=
re
vices than they possess; and it might deal more fully with the American pre=
ssman,
who is a harmless clubman in private, and becomes a sort of highway-robber =
in
print.
I have turned this
chapter into something like a defence of interviewers, because I really thi=
nk
they are made to bear too much of the burden of the bad developments of mod=
ern
journalism. But I am very far from meaning to suggest that those bad
developments are not very bad. So far from wishing to minimise the evil, I
would in a real sense rather magnify it. I would suggest that the evil itse=
lf
is a much larger and more fundamental thing; and that to deal with it by
abusing poor journalists, doing their particular and perhaps peculiar duty,=
is
like dealing with a pestilence by rubbing at one of the spots. What is wron=
g with
the modern world will not be righted by attributing the whole disease to ea=
ch
of its symptoms in turn; first to the tavern and then to the cinema and the=
n to
the reporter's room. The evil of journalism is not in the journalists. It is
not in the poor men on the lower level of the profession, but in the rich m=
en
at the top of the profession; or rather in the rich men who are too much on=
top
of the profession even to belong to it. The trouble with newspapers is the
Newspaper Trust, as the trouble might be with a Wheat Trust, without involv=
ing
a vilification of all the people who grow wheat. It is the American plutocr=
acy
and not the American press. What is the matter with the modern world is not
modern headlines or modern films or modern machinery. What is the matter wi=
th the
modern world is the modern world; and the cure will come from another.
There is one point, almost to be ca=
lled a
paradox, to be noted about New York; and that is that in one sense it is re=
ally
new. The term very seldom has any relevance to the reality. The New Forest =
is
nearly as old as the Conquest, and the New Theology is nearly as old as the
Creed. Things have been offered to me as the new thought that might more pr=
operly
be called the old thoughtlessness; and the thing we call the New Poor Law is
already old enough to know better. But there is a sense in which New York is
always new; in the sense that it is always being renewed. A stranger might =
well
say that the chief industry of the citizens consists of destroying their ci=
ty;
but he soon realises that they always start it all over again with undimini=
shed
energy and hope. At first I had a fancy that they never quite finished putt=
ing
up a big building without feeling that it was time to pull it down again; a=
nd that
somebody began to dig up the first foundations while somebody else was putt=
ing
on the last tiles. This fills the whole of this brilliant and bewildering p=
lace
with a quite unique and unparalleled air of rapid ruin. Ruins spring up so
suddenly like mushrooms, which with us are the growth of age like mosses, t=
hat
one half expects to see ivy climbing quickly up the broken walls as in the
nightmare of the Time Machine, or in some incredibly accelerated cinema.
There is no sight=
in
any country that raises my own spirits so much as a scaffolding. It is a
tragedy that they always take the scaffolding away, and leave us nothing bu=
t a
mere building. If they would only take the building away and leave us a
beautiful scaffolding, it would in most cases be a gain to the loveliness of
earth. If I could analyse what it is that lifts the heart about the lightne=
ss
and clarity of such a white and wooden skeleton, I could explain what it is
that is really charming about New York; in spite of its suffering from the
curse of cosmopolitanism and even the provincial superstition of progress. =
It
is partly that all this destruction and reconstruction is an unexhausted ar=
tistic
energy; but it is partly also that it is an artistic energy that does not t=
ake
itself too seriously. It is first because man is here a carpenter; and seco=
ndly
because he is a stage carpenter. Indeed there is about the whole scene the
spirit of scene-shifting. It therefore touches whatever nerve in us has sin=
ce
childhood thrilled at all theatrical things. But the picture will be imperf=
ect
unless we realise something which gives it unity and marks its chief differ=
ence
from the climate and colours of Western Europe. We may say that the back-sc=
ene remains
the same. The sky remained, and in the depths of winter it seemed to be blue
with summer; and so clear that I almost flattered myself that clouds were
English products like primroses. An American would probably retort on my ch=
arge
of scene-shifting by saying that at least he only shifted the towers and do=
mes
of the earth; and that in England it is the heavens that are shifty. And in=
deed
we have changes from day to day that would seem to him as distinct as diffe=
rent
magic-lantern slides; one view showing the Bay of Naples and the next the N=
orth
Pole. I do not mean, of course, that there are no changes in American weath=
er;
but as a matter of proportion it is true that the most unstable part of our
scenery is the most stable part of theirs. Indeed we might almost be pardon=
ed
the boast that Britain alone really possesses the noble thing called weathe=
r;
most other countries having to be content with climate. It must be confesse=
d,
however, that they often are content with it. And the beauty of New York, w=
hich
is considerable, is very largely due to the clarity that brings out the col=
ours
of varied buildings against the equal colour of the sky. Strangely enough I
found myself repeating about this vista of the West two vivid lines in whic=
h Mr.
W. B. Yeats has called up a vision of the East:--
And coloured lik=
e the
eastern birds At evening =
in
their rainless skies.
To invoke a somewhat less poetic
parallel, even the untravelled Englishman has probably seen American posters
and trade advertisements of a patchy and gaudy kind, in which a white house=
or
a yellow motor-car are cut out as in cardboard against a sky like blue marb=
le.
I used to think it was only New Art, but I found that it is really New York=
.
It is not for not=
hing
that the very nature of local character has gained the nickname of local
colour. Colour runs through all our experience; and we all know that our
childhood found talismanic gems in the very paints in the paint-box, or eve=
n in
their very names. And just as the very name of 'crimson lake' really sugges=
ted
to me some sanguine and mysterious mere, dark yet red as blood, so the very
name of 'burnt sienna' became afterwards tangled up in my mind with the not=
ion
of something traditional and tragic; as if some such golden Italian city had
really been darkened by many conflagrations in the wars of mediaeval democr=
acy.
Now if one had the caprice of conceiving some city exactly contrary to one =
thus
seared and seasoned by fire, its colour might be called up to a childish fa=
ncy
by the mere name of 'raw umber'; and such a city is New York. I used to be
puzzled by the name of 'raw umber,' being unable to imagine the effect of f=
ried
umber or stewed umber. But the colours of New York are exactly in that key;=
and
might be adumbrated by phrases like raw pink or raw yellow. It is really in=
a
sense like something uncooked; or something which the satiric would call ha=
lf-baked.
And yet the effect is not only beautiful, it is even delicate. I had no name
for this nuance; until I saw that somebody had written of 'the pastel-tinted
towers of New York'; and I knew that the name had been found. There are no
paints dry enough to describe all that dry light; and it is not a box of
colours but of crayons. If the Englishman returning to England is moved at =
the
sight of a block of white chalk, the American sees rather a bundle of chalk=
s.
Nor can I imagine anything more moving. Fairy tales are told to children ab=
out
a country where the trees are like sugar-sticks and the lakes like treacle,=
but
most children would feel almost as greedy for a fairyland where the trees w=
ere
like brushes of green paint and the hills were of coloured chalks.
But here what
accentuates this arid freshness is the fragmentary look of the continual
reconstruction and change. The strong daylight finds everywhere the broken
edges of things, and the sort of hues we see in newly-turned earth or the w=
hite
sections of trees. And it is in this respect that the local colour can
literally be taken as local character. For New York considered in itself is
primarily a place of unrest, and those who sincerely love it, as many do, l=
ove
it for the romance of its restlessness. A man almost looks at a building as=
he
passes to wonder whether it will be there when he comes back from his walk;=
and
the doubt is part of an indescribable notion, as of a white nightmare of
daylight, which is increased by the very numbering of the streets, with its
tangle of numerals which at first makes an English head reel. The detail is=
merely
a symbol; and when he is used to it he can see that it is, like the most
humdrum human customs, both worse and better than his own. '271 West 52nd S=
treet'
is the easiest of all addresses to find, but the hardest of all addresses to
remember. He who is, like myself, so constituted as necessarily to lose any
piece of paper he has particular reason to preserve, will find himself wish=
ing
the place were called 'Pine Crest' or 'Heather Crag' like any unobtrusive v=
illa
in Streatham. But his sense of some sort of incalculable calculations, as of
the vision of a mad mathematician, is rooted in a more real impression. His=
first
feeling that his head is turning round is due to something really dizzy in =
the
movement of a life that turns dizzily like a wheel. If there be in the mode=
rn
mind something paradoxical that can find peace in change, it is here that it
has indeed built its habitation or rather is still building and unbuilding =
it.
One might fancy that it changes in everything and that nothing endures but =
its
invisible name; and even its name, as I have said, seems to make a boast of
novelty.
That is something
like a sincere first impression of the atmosphere of New York. Those who th=
ink
that is the atmosphere of America have never got any farther than New York.=
We
might almost say that they have never entered America, any more than if they
had been detained like undesirable aliens at Ellis Island. And indeed there=
are
a good many undesirable aliens detained in Manhattan Island too. But of tha=
t I
will not speak, being myself an alien with no particular pretensions to be =
desirable.
Anyhow, such is New York; but such is not the New World. The great American
Republic contains very considerable varieties, and of these varieties I
necessarily saw far too little to allow me to generalise. But from the litt=
le I
did see, I should venture on the generalisation that the great part of Amer=
ica
is singularly and even strikingly unlike New York. It goes without saying t=
hat
New York is very unlike the vast agricultural plains and small agricultural
towns of the Middle West, which I did see. It may be conjectured with some
confidence that it is very unlike what is called the Wild and sometimes the
Woolly West, which I did not see. But I am here comparing New York, not wit=
h the
newer states of the prairie or the mountains, but with the other older citi=
es
of the Atlantic coast. And New York, as it seems to me, is quite vitally di=
fferent
from the other historic cities of America. It is so different that it shows
them all for the moment in a false light, as a long white searchlight will
throw a light that is fantastic and theatrical upon ancient and quiet villa=
ges
folded in the everlasting hills. Philadelphia and Boston and Baltimore are =
more
like those quiet villages than they are like New York.
If I were to call
this book 'The Antiquities of America,' I should give rise to misunderstand=
ing
and possibly to annoyance. And yet the double sense in such words is an
undeserved misfortune for them. We talk of Plato or the Parthenon or the Gr=
eek
passion for beauty as parts of the antique, but hardly of the antiquated. W=
hen
we call them ancient it is not because they have perished, but rather becau=
se
they have survived. In the same way I heard some New Yorkers refer to
Philadelphia or Baltimore as 'dead towns.' They mean by a dead town a town =
that
has had the impudence not to die. Such people are astonished to find an anc=
ient
thing alive, just as they are now astonished, and will be increasingly asto=
nished,
to find Poland or the Papacy or the French nation still alive. And what I m=
ean
by Philadelphia and Baltimore being alive is precisely what these people me=
an
by their being dead; it is continuity; it is the presence of the life first
breathed into them and of the purpose of their being; it is the benediction=
of
the founders of the colonies and the fathers of the republic. This traditio=
n is
truly to be called life; for life alone can link the past and the future. It
merely means that as what was done yesterday makes some difference to-day, =
so what
is done to-day will make some difference to-morrow. In New York it is diffi=
cult
to feel that any day will make any difference. These moderns only die daily
without power to rise from the dead. But I can truly claim that in coming i=
nto
some of these more stable cities of the States I felt something quite since=
rely
of that historic emotion which is satisfied in the eternal cities of the
Mediterranean. I felt in America what many Americans suppose can only be fe=
lt
in Europe. I have seldom had that sentiment stirred more simply and directly
than when I saw from afar off, above the vast grey labyrinth of Philadelphi=
a,
great Penn upon his pinnacle like the graven figure of a god who had fashio=
ned a
new world; and remembered that his body lay buried in a field at the turnin=
g of
a lane, a league from my own door.
For this aspect of
America is rather neglected in the talk about electricity and headlines.
Needless to say, the modern vulgarity of avarice and advertisement sprawls =
all
over Philadelphia or Boston; but so it does over Winchester or Canterbury. =
But
most people know that there is something else to be found in Canterbury or
Winchester; many people know that it is rather more interesting; and some
people know that Alfred can still walk in Winchester and that St. Thomas at=
Canterbury
was killed but did not die. It is at least as possible for a Philadelphian =
to
feel the presence of Penn and Franklin as for an Englishman to see the ghos=
ts
of Alfred and of Becket. Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not m=
ean
that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still
matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred
years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did=
an
hour ago. And these things did and do matter. Quakerism is not my favourite
creed; but on that day when William Penn stood unarmed upon that spot and m=
ade
his treaty with the Red Indians, his creed of humanity did have a triumph a=
nd a
triumph that has not turned back. The praise given to him is not a priggish
fiction of our conventional history, though such fictions have illogically
curtailed it. The Nonconformists have been rather unfair to Penn even in
picking their praises; and they generally forget that toleration cuts both =
ways
and that an open mind is open on all sides. Those who deify him for consent=
ing
to bargain with the savages cannot forgive him for consenting to bargain wi=
th
the Stuarts. And the same is true of the other city, yet more closely conne=
cted
with the tolerant experiment of the Stuarts. The state of Maryland was the
first experiment in religious freedom in human history. Lord Baltimore and =
his Catholics
were a long march ahead of William Penn and his Quakers on what is now call=
ed
the path of progress. That the first religious toleration ever granted in t=
he
world was granted by Roman Catholics is one of those little informing detai=
ls
with which our Victorian histories did not exactly teem. But when I went in=
to
my hotel at Baltimore and found two priests waiting to see me, I was moved =
in a
new fashion, for I felt that I touched the end of a living chain. Nor was t=
he
impression accidental; it will always remain with me with a mixture of
gratitude and grief, for they brought a message of welcome from a great
American whose name I had known from childhood and whose career was drawing=
to its
close; for it was but a few days after I left the city that I learned that
Cardinal Gibbons was dead.
On the top of a h=
ill
on one side of the town stood the first monument raised after the Revolutio=
n to
Washington. Beyond it was a new monument saluting in the name of Lafayette =
the
American soldiers who fell fighting in France in the Great War. Between them
were steps and stone seats, and I sat down on one of them and talked to two
children who were clambering about the bases of the monument. I felt a prof=
ound
and radiant peace in the thought that they at any rate were not going to my=
lecture.
It made me happy that in that talk neither they nor I had any names. I was =
full
of that indescribable waking vision of the strangeness of life, and especia=
lly
of the strangeness of locality; of how we find places and lose them; and see
faces for a moment in a far-off land, and it is equally mysterious if we
remember and mysterious if we forget. I had even stirring in my head the
suggestion of some verses that I shall never finish--
If I ever go bac=
k to
Baltimore The city of=
Maryland.
But the poem would have to contain =
far
too much; for I was thinking of a thousand things at once; and wondering wh=
at
the children would be like twenty years after and whether they would travel=
in
white goods or be interested in oil, and I was not untouched (it may be sai=
d)
by the fact that a neighbouring shop had provided the only sample of the
substance called 'tea' ever found on the American continent; and in front o=
f me
soared up into the sky on wings of stone the column of all those high hopes=
of
humanity a hundred years ago; and beyond there were lighted candles in the
chapels and prayers in the ante-chambers, where perhaps already a Prince of=
the
Church was dying. Only on a later page can I even attempt to comb out such a
tangle of contrasts, which is indeed the tangle of America and this mortal
life; but sitting there on that stone seat under that quiet sky, I had some
experience of the thronging thousands of living thoughts and things, noisy =
and
numberless as birds, that give its everlasting vivacity and vitality to a d=
ead
town.
Two other cities I
visited which have this particular type of traditional character, the one b=
eing
typical of the North and the other of the South. At least I may take as
convenient anti-types the towns of Boston and St. Louis; and we might add
Nashville as being a shade more truly southern than St. Louis. To the extre=
me
South, in the sense of what is called the Black Belt, I never went at all. =
Now
English travellers expect the South to be somewhat traditional; but they are
not prepared for the aspects of Boston in the North which are even more so.=
If
we wished only for an antic of antithesis, we might say that on one side the
places are more prosaic than the names and on the other the names are more
prosaic than the places. St. Louis is a fine town, and we recognise a fine
instinct of the imagination that set on the hill overlooking the river the
statue of that holy horseman who has christened the city. But the city is n=
ot
as beautiful as its name; it could not be. Indeed these titles set up a
standard to which the most splendid spires and turrets could not rise, and
below which the commercial chimneys and sky-signs conspicuously sink. We sh=
ould
think it odd if Belfast had borne the name of Joan of Arc. We should be sli=
ghtly
shocked if the town of Johannesburg happened to be called Jesus Christ. But=
few
have noted a blasphemy, or even a somewhat challenging benediction, to be f=
ound
in the very name of San Francisco.
But on the other =
hand
a place like Boston is much more beautiful than its name. And, as I have
suggested, an Englishman's general information, or lack of information, lea=
ves
him in some ignorance of the type of beauty that turns up in that type of
place. He has heard so much about the purely commercial North as against the
agricultural and aristocratic South, and the traditions of Boston and
Philadelphia are rather too tenuous and delicate to be seen from across the
Atlantic. But here also there are traditions and a great deal of
traditionalism. The circle of old families, which still meets with a certain
exclusiveness in Philadelphia, is the sort of thing that we in England shou=
ld
expect to find rather in New Orleans. The academic aristocracy of Boston, w=
hich
Oliver Wendell Holmes called the Brahmins, is still a reality though it was
always a minority and is now a very small minority. An epigram, invented by
Yale at the expense of Harvard, describes it as very small indeed:--
Here is to jolly=
old
Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, Where Cabot=
s speak
only to Lowells, and Lowells speak only to God.
But an aristocracy must be a minori=
ty,
and it is arguable that the smaller it is the better. I am bound to say,
however, that the distinguished Dr. Cabot, the present representative of the
family, broke through any taboo that may tie his affections to his Creator =
and
to Miss Amy Lowell, and broadened his sympathies so indiscriminately as to =
show
kindness and hospitality to so lost a being as an English lecturer. But if =
the
thing is hardly a limit it is very living as a memory; and Boston on this s=
ide
is very much a place of memories. It would be paying it a very poor complim=
ent
merely to say that parts of it reminded me of England; for indeed they remi=
nded
me of English things that have largely vanished from England. There are old
brown houses in the corners of squares and streets that are like glimpses o=
f a
man's forgotten childhood; and when I saw the long path with posts where the
Autocrat may be supposed to have walked with the schoolmistress, I felt I h=
ad come
to the land where old tales come true.
I pause in this p=
lace
upon this particular aspect of America because it is very much missed in a =
mere
contrast with England. I need not say that if I felt it even about slight
figures of fiction, I felt it even more about solid figures of history. Such
ghosts seemed particularly solid in the Southern States, precisely because =
of
the comparative quietude and leisure of the atmosphere of the South. It was
never more vivid to me than when coming in, at a quiet hour of the night, i=
nto
the comparatively quiet hotel at Nashville in Tennessee, and mounting to a =
dim
and deserted upper floor where I found myself before a faded picture; and f=
rom
the dark canvas looked forth the face of Andrew Jackson, watchful like a wh=
ite
eagle.
At that moment,
perhaps, I was in more than one sense alone. Most Englishmen know a good de=
al
of American fiction, and nothing whatever of American history. They know mo=
re
about the autocrat of the breakfast-table than about the autocrat of the ar=
my
and the people, the one great democratic despot of modern times; the Napole=
on
of the New World. The only notion the English public ever got about America=
n politics
they got from a novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin; and to say the least of it, it wa=
s no
exception to the prevalence of fiction over fact. Hundreds of us have heard=
of
Tom Sawyer for one who has heard of Charles Sumner; and it is probable that
most of us could pass a more detailed examination about Toddy and Budge than
about Lincoln and Lee. But in the case of Andrew Jackson it may be that I f=
elt
a special sense of individual isolation; for I believe that there are even
fewer among Englishmen than among Americans who realise that the energy of =
that
great man was largely directed towards saving us from the chief evil which
destroys the nations to-day. He sought to cut down, as with a sword of
simplicity, the new and nameless enormity of finance; and he must have know=
n,
as by a lightning flash, that the people were behind him, because all the
politicians were against him. The end of that struggle is not yet; but if t=
he
bank is stronger than the sword or the sceptre of popular sovereignty, the =
end
will be the end of democracy. It will have to choose between accepting an
acknowledged dictator and accepting dictation which it dare not acknowledge.
The process will have begun by giving power to people and refusing to give =
them
their titles; and it will have ended by giving the power to people who refu=
se
to give us their names.
But I have a spec=
ial
reason for ending this chapter on the name of the great popular dictator who
made war on the politicians and the financiers. This chapter does not profe=
ss
to touch on one in twenty of the interesting cities of America, even in this
particular aspect of their relation to the history of America, which is so =
much
neglected in England. If that were so, there would be a great deal to say e=
ven
about the newest of them; Chicago, for instance, is certainly something mor=
e than
the mere pork-packing yard that English tradition suggests; and it has been
building a boulevard not unworthy of its splendid position on its splendid
lake. But all these cities are defiled and even diseased with industrialism=
. It
is due to the Americans to remember that they have deliberately preserved o=
ne
of their cities from such defilement and such disease. And that is the
presidential city, which stands in the American mind for the same ideal as =
the
President; the idea of the Republic that rises above modern money-getting a=
nd
endures. There has really been an effort to keep the White House white. No
factories are allowed in that town; no more than the necessary shops are
tolerated. It is a beautiful city; and really retains something of that
classical serenity of the eighteenth century in which the Fathers of the
Republic moved. With all respect to the colonial place of that name, I do n=
ot suppose
that Wellington is particularly like Wellington. But Washington really is l=
ike
Washington.
In this, as in so
many things, there is no harm in our criticising foreigners, if only we wou=
ld
also criticise ourselves. In other words, the world might need even less of=
its
new charity, if it had a little more of the old humility. When we complain =
of
American individualism, we forget that we have fostered it by ourselves hav=
ing
far less of this impersonal ideal of the Republic or commonwealth as a whol=
e.
When we complain, very justly, for instance, of great pictures passing into=
the
possession of American magnates, we ought to remember that we paved the way=
for
it by allowing them all to accumulate in the possession of English magnates=
. It
is bad that a public treasure should be in the possession of a private man =
in
America, but we took the first step in lightly letting it disappear into the
private collection of a man in England. I know all about the genuine nation=
al
tradition which treated the aristocracy as constituting the state; but these
very foreign purchases go to prove that we ought to have had a state
independent of the aristocracy. It is true that rich Americans do sometimes
covet the monuments of our culture in a fashion that rightly revolts us as
vulgar and irrational. They are said sometimes to want to take whole buildi=
ngs away
with them; and too many of such buildings are private and for sale. There w=
ere
wilder stories of a millionaire wishing to transplant Glastonbury Abbey and
similar buildings as if they were portable shrubs in pots. It is obvious th=
at
it is nonsense as well as vandalism to separate Glastonbury Abbey from
Glastonbury. I can understand a man venerating it as a ruin; and I can
understand a man despising it as a rubbish-heap. But it is senseless to ins=
ult
a thing in order to idolatrise it; it is meaningless to desecrate the shrin=
e in
order to worship the stones. That sort of thing is the bad side of American=
appetite
and ambition; and we are perfectly right to see it not only as a deliberate
blasphemy but as an unconscious buffoonery. But there is another side to the
American tradition, which is really too much lacking in our own tradition. =
And
it is illustrated in this idea of preserving Washington as a sort of paradi=
se
of impersonal politics without personal commerce. Nobody could buy the White
House or the Washington Monument; it may be hinted (as by an inhabitant of
Glastonbury) that nobody wants to; but nobody could if he did want to. Ther=
e is
really a certain air of serenity and security about the place, lacking in e=
very
other American town. It is increased, of course, by the clear blue skies of
that half-southern province, from which smoke has been banished. The effect=
is
not so much in the mere buildings, though they are classical and often
beautiful. But whatever else they have built, they have built a great blue
dome, the largest dome in the world. And the place does express something in
the inconsistent idealism of this strange people; and here at least they ha=
ve
lifted it higher than all the sky-scrapers, and set it in a stainless sky. =
In the American Country=
span>
The sharpest pleasure of a travelle=
r is
in finding the things which he did not expect, but which he might have expe=
cted
to expect. I mean the things that are at once so strange and so obvious that
they must have been noticed, yet somehow they have not been noted. Thus I h=
ad
heard a thousand things about Jerusalem before I ever saw it; I had heard r=
hapsodies
and disparagements of every description. Modern rationalistic critics, with
characteristic consistency, had blamed it for its accumulated rubbish and i=
ts
modern restoration, for its antiquated superstition and its up-to-date
vulgarity. But somehow the one impression that had never pierced through th=
eir
description was the simple and single impression of a city on a hill, with
walls coming to the very edge of slopes that were almost as steep as walls;=
the
turreted city which crowns a cone-shaped hill in so many mediaeval landscap=
es. One
would suppose that this was at once the plainest and most picturesque of all
the facts; yet somehow, in my reading, I had always lost it amid a mass of
minor facts that were merely details. We know that a city that is set upon a
hill cannot be hid; and yet it would seem that it is exactly the hill that =
is
hid; though perhaps it is only hid from the wise and the understanding. I h=
ad a
similar and simple impression when I discovered America. I cannot avoid the
phrase; for it would really seem that each man discovers it for himself.
Thus I had heard a
great deal, before I saw them, about the tall and dominant buildings of New
York. I agree that they have an instant effect on the imagination; which I
think is increased by the situation in which they stand, and out of which t=
hey
arose. They are all the more impressive because the building, while it is
vertically so vast, is horizontally almost narrow. New York is an island, a=
nd
has all the intensive romance of an island. It is a thing of almost infinite
height upon very finite foundations. It is almost like a lofty lighthouse u=
pon a
lonely rock. But this story of the sky-scrapers, which I had often heard, w=
ould
by itself give a curiously false impression of the freshest and most curious
characteristic of American architecture. Told only in terms of these great
towers of stone and brick in the big industrial cities, the story would tend
too much to an impression of something cold and colossal like the monuments=
of
Asia. It would suggest a modern Babylon altogether too Babylonian. It would
imply that a man of the new world was a sort of new Pharaoh, who built not =
so
much a pyramid as a pagoda of pyramids. It would suggest houses built by
mammoths out of mountains; the cities reared by elephants in their own
elephantine school of architecture. And New York does recall the most famou=
s of
all sky-scrapers--the tower of Babel. She recalls it none the less because =
there
is no doubt about the confusion of tongues. But in truth the very reverse is
true of most of the buildings in America. I had no sooner passed out into t=
he
suburbs of New York on the way to Boston than I began to see something else
quite contrary and far more curious. I saw forests upon forests of small ho=
uses
stretching away to the horizon as literal forests do; villages and towns and
cities. And they were, in another sense, literally like forests. They were =
all
made of wood. It was almost as fantastic to an English eye as if they had b=
een
all made of cardboard. I had long outlived the silly old joke that referred=
to Americans
as if they all lived in the backwoods. But, in a sense, if they do not live=
in
the woods, they are not yet out of the wood.
I do not say this=
in
any sense as a criticism. As it happens, I am particularly fond of wood. Of=
all
the superstitions which our fathers took lightly enough to love, the most
natural seems to me the notion it is lucky to touch wood. Some of them affe=
ct
me the less as superstitions, because I feel them as symbols. If humanity h=
ad
really thought Friday unlucky it would have talked about bad Friday instead=
of good
Friday. And while I feel the thrill of thirteen at a table, I am not so sure
that it is the most miserable of all human fates to fill the places of the
Twelve Apostles. But the idea that there was something cleansing or wholeso=
me
about the touching of wood seems to me one of those ideas which are truly
popular, because they are truly poetic. It is probable enough that the
conception came originally from the healing of the wood of the Cross; but t=
hat
only clinches the divine coincidence. It is like that other divine coincide=
nce
that the Victim was a carpenter, who might almost have made His own cross.
Whether we take the mystical or the mythical explanation, there is obviousl=
y a
very deep connection between the human working in wood and such plain and
pathetic mysticism. It gives something like a touch of the holy childishnes=
s to
the tale, as if that terrible engine could be a toy. In the same fashion a
child fancies that mysterious and sinister horse, which was the downfall of
Troy, as something plain and staring, and perhaps spotted, like his own
rocking-horse in the nursery.
It might be said
symbolically that Americans have a taste for rocking-horses, as they certai=
nly
have a taste for rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they
select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need n=
ot
be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be
involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the
rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-hor=
se.
I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of wood a certain spi=
rit that
is childish in the good sense of the word; something that is innocent, and
easily pleased. It is not altogether untrue, still less is it unfriendly, to
say that the landscape seems to be dotted with dolls' houses. It is the true
tragedy of every fallen son of Adam that he has grown too big to live in a
doll's house. These things seem somehow to escape the irony of time by not =
even
challenging it; they are too temporary even to be merely temporal. These pe=
ople
are not building tombs; they are not, as in the fine image of Mrs. Meynell's
poem, merely building ruins. It is not easy to imagine the ruins of a doll's
house; and that is why a doll's house is an everlasting habitation. How far=
it promises
a political permanence is a matter for further discussion; I am only descri=
bing
the mood of discovery; in which all these cottages built of lath, like the
palaces of a pantomime, really seemed coloured like the clouds of morning;
which are both fugitive and eternal.
There is also in =
all
this an atmosphere that comes in another sense from the nursery. We hear mu=
ch
of Americans being educated on English literature; but I think few Americans
realise how much English children have been educated on American literature=
. It
is true, and it is inevitable, that they can only be educated on rather
old-fashioned American literature. Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his plays, n=
oted
truly the limitations of the young American millionaire, and especially the=
staleness
of his English culture; but there is necessarily another side to it. If the
American talked more of Macaulay than of Nietzsche, we should probably talk
more of Emerson than of Ezra Pound. Whether this staleness is necessarily a
disadvantage is, of course, a different question. But, in any case, it is t=
rue
that the old American books were often the books of our childhood, even in =
the
literal sense of the books of our nursery. I know few men in England who ha=
ve
not left their boyhood to some extent lost and entangled in the forests of
Huckleberry Finn. I know few women in England, from the most revolutionary =
Suffragette
to the most carefully preserved Early Victorian, who will not confess to ha=
ving
passed a happy childhood with the Little Women of Miss Alcott. Helen's Babi=
es
was the first and by far the best book in the modern scriptures of
baby-worship. And about all this old-fashioned American literature there wa=
s an
undefinable savour that satisfied, and even fed, our growing minds. Perhaps=
it
was the smell of growing things; but I am far from certain that it was not
simply the smell of wood. Now that all the memory comes back to me, it seem=
s to
come back heavy in a hundred forms with the fragrance and the touch of timb=
er.
There was the perpetual reference to the wood-pile, the perpetual backgroun=
d of
the woods. There was something crude and clean about everything; something =
fresh
and strange about those far-off houses, to which I could not then have put a
name. Indeed, many things become clear in this wilderness of wood, which co=
uld
only be expressed in symbol and even in fantasy. I will not go so far as to=
say
that it shortened the transition from Log Cabin to White House; as if the W=
hite
House were itself made of white wood (as Oliver Wendell Holmes said), 'that
cuts like cheese, but lasts like iron for things like these.' But I will say
that the experience illuminates some other lines by Holmes himself:--
Little I ask, my=
wants
are few, I
only ask a hut of stone.
I should not have known, in England=
, that
he was already asking for a good deal even in asking for that. In the prese=
nce
of this wooden world the very combination of words seems almost a
contradiction, like a hut of marble, or a hovel of gold.
It was therefore =
with
an almost infantile pleasure that I looked at all this promising expansion =
of
fresh-cut timber and thought of the housing shortage at home. I know not by
what incongruous movement of the mind there swept across me, at the same
moment, the thought of things ancestral and hoary with the light of ancient
dawns. The last war brought back body-armour; the next war may bring back b=
ows
and arrows. And I suddenly had a memory of old wooden houses in London; and=
a
model of Shakespeare's town.
It is possible in=
deed
that such Elizabethan memories may receive a check or a chill when the
traveller comes, as he sometimes does, to the outskirts of one of these str=
ange
hamlets of new frame-houses, and is confronted with a placard inscribed in
enormous letters, 'Watch Us Grow.' He can always imagine that he sees the
timbers swelling before his eyes like pumpkins in some super-tropical summe=
r.
But he may have formed the conviction that no such proclamation could be fo=
und
outside Shakespeare's town. And indeed there is a serious criticism here, to
any one who knows history; since the things that grow are not always the th=
ings
that remain; and pumpkins of that expansiveness have a tendency to burst. I=
was
always told that Americans were harsh, hustling, rather rude and perhaps
vulgar; but they were very practical and the future belonged to them. I con=
fess
I felt a fine shade of difference; I liked the Americans; I thought they we=
re
sympathetic, imaginative, and full of fine enthusiasms; the one thing I cou=
ld
not always feel clear about was their future. I believe they were happier in
their frame-houses than most people in most houses; having democracy, good
education, and a hobby of work; the one doubt that did float across me was
something like, 'Will all this be here at all in two hundred years?' That w=
as
the first impression produced by the wooden houses that seemed like the wag=
gons
of gipsies; it is a serious impression, but there is an answer to it. It is=
an
answer that opens on the traveller more and more as he goes westward, and f=
inds
the little towns dotted about the vast central prairies. And the answer is
agriculture. Wooden houses may or may not last; but farms will last; and
farming will always last.
The houses may lo=
ok
like gipsy caravans on a heath or common; but they are not on a heath or
common. They are on the most productive and prosperous land, perhaps, in the
modern world. The houses might fall down like shanties, but the fields would
remain; and whoever tills those fields will count for a great deal in the
affairs of humanity. They are already counting for a great deal, and possib=
ly
for too much, in the affairs of America. The real criticism of the Middle W=
est
is concerned with two facts, neither of which has been yet adequately appre=
ciated
by the educated class in England. The first is that the turn of the world h=
as
come, and the turn of the agricultural countries with it. That is the meani=
ng
of the resurrection of Ireland; that is the meaning of the practical surren=
der
of the Bolshevist Jews to the Russian peasants. The other is that in most
places these peasant societies carry on what may be called the Catholic
tradition. The Middle West is perhaps the one considerable place where they
still carry on the Puritan tradition. But the Puritan tradition was origina=
lly
a tradition of the town; and the second truth about the Middle West turns
largely on its moral relation to the town. As I shall suggest presently, th=
ere
is much in common between this agricultural society of America and the grea=
t agricultural
societies of Europe. It tends, as the agricultural society nearly always do=
es,
to some decent degree of democracy. The agricultural society tends to the
agrarian law. But in Puritan America there is an additional problem, which I
can hardly explain without a periphrasis.
There was a time =
when
the progress of the cities seemed to mock the decay of the country. It is m=
ore
and more true, I think, to-day that it is rather the decay of the cities th=
at
seems to poison the progress and promise of the countryside. The cinema boa=
sts
of being a substitute for the tavern, but I think it a very bad substitute.=
I
think so quite apart from the question about fermented liquor. Nobody enjoys
cinemas more than I, but to enjoy them a man has only to look and not even =
to
listen, and in a tavern he has to talk. Occasionally, I admit, he has to fi=
ght;
but he need never move at the movies. Thus in the real village inn are the =
real
village politics, while in the other are only the remote and unreal
metropolitan politics. And those central city politics are not only
cosmopolitan politics but corrupt politics. They corrupt everything that th=
ey
reach, and this is the real point about many perplexing questions.
For instance, so =
far
as I am concerned, it is the whole point about feminism and the factory. It=
is
very largely the point about feminism and many other callings, apparently m=
ore
cultured than the factory, such as the law court and the political platform.
When I see women so wildly anxious to tie themselves to all this machinery =
of
the modern city my first feeling is not indignation, but that dark and omin=
ous
sort of pity with which we should see a crowd rushing to embark in a leaking
ship under a lowering storm. When I see wives and mothers going in for busi=
ness
government I not only regard it as a bad business but as a bankrupt busines=
s.
It seems to me very much as if the peasant women, just before the French
Revolution, had insisted on being made duchesses or (as is quite as logical=
and
likely) on being made dukes.
It is as if those
ragged women, instead of crying out for bread, had cried out for powder and
patches. By the time they were wearing them they would be the only people
wearing them. For powder and patches soon went out of fashion, but bread do=
es
not go out of fashion. In the same way, if women desert the family for the
factory, they may find they have only done it for a deserted factory. It wo=
uld
have been very unwise of the lower orders to claim all the privileges of the
higher orders in the last days of the French monarchy. It would have been v=
ery
laborious to learn the science of heraldry or the tables of precedence when=
all
such things were at once most complicated and most moribund. It would be ti=
resome
to be taught all those tricks just when the whole bag of tricks was coming =
to
an end. A French satirist might have written a fine apologue about Jacques
Bonhomme coming up to Paris in his wooden shoes and demanding to be made Go=
ld
Stick in Waiting in the name of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity; but I fe=
ar
the stick in waiting would be waiting still.
One of the first
topics on which I heard conversation turning in America was that of a very =
interesting
book called Main Street, which involves many of these questions of the mode=
rn
industrial and the eternal feminine. It is simply the story, or perhaps rat=
her
the study than the story, of a young married woman in one of the multitudin=
ous
little towns on the great central plains of America; and of a sort of strug=
gle between
her own more restless culture and the provincial prosperity of her neighbou=
rs.
There are a number of true and telling suggestions in the book, but the one
touch which I found tingling in the memory of many readers was the last
sentence, in which the master of the house, with unshaken simplicity, merely
asks for the whereabouts of some domestic implement; I think it was a
screw-driver. It seems to me a harmless request, but from the way people ta=
lked
about it one might suppose he had asked for a screw-driver to screw down the
wife in her coffin. And a great many advanced persons would tell us that wo=
oden
house in which she lived really was like a wooden coffin. But this appears =
to me
to be taking a somewhat funereal view of the life of humanity.
For, after all, on
the face of it at any rate, this is merely the life of humanity, and even t=
he
life which all humanitarians have striven to give to humanity. Revolutionis=
ts
have treated it not only as the normal but even as the ideal. Revolutionary
wars have been waged to establish this; revolutionary heroes have fought, a=
nd
revolutionary martyrs have died, only to build such a wooden house for such=
a
worthy family. Men have taken the sword and perished by the sword in order =
that
the poor gentleman might have liberty to look for his screw-driver. For the=
re
is here a fact about America that is almost entirely unknown in England. The
English have not in the least realised the real strength of America. We in
England hear a great deal, we hear far too much, about the economic energy =
of
industrial America, about the money of Mr. Morgan, or the machinery of Mr.
Edison. We never realise that while we in England suffer from the same sort=
of
successes in capitalism and clockwork, we have not got what the Americans h=
ave
got; something at least to balance it in the way of a free agriculture, a v=
ast
field of free farms dotted with small freeholders. For the reason I shall
mention in a moment, they are not perhaps in the fullest and finest sense a
peasantry. But they are in the practical and political sense a pure peasant=
ry,
in that their comparative equality is a true counterweight to the toppling
injustice of the towns.
And, even in plac=
es
like that described as Main Street, that comparative equality can immediate=
ly
be felt. The men may be provincials, but they are certainly citizens; they
consult on a common basis. And I repeat that in this, after all, they do
achieve what many prophets and righteous men have died to achieve. This pla=
in
village, fairly prosperous, fairly equal, untaxed by tyrants and untroubled=
by
wars, is after all the place which reformers have regarded as their aim;
whenever reformers have used their wits sufficiently to have any aim. The m=
arch
to Utopia, the march to the Earthly Paradise, the march to the New Jerusale=
m,
has been very largely the march to Main Street. And the latest modern sensa=
tion
is a book written to show how wretched it is to live there.
All this is true,=
and
I think the lady might be more contented in her coffin, which is more
comfortably furnished than most of the coffins where her fellow creatures l=
ive.
Nevertheless, there is an answer to this, or at least a modification of it.
There is a case for the lady and a case against the gentleman and the
screw-driver. And when we have noted what it really is, we have noted the r=
eal
disadvantage in a situation like that of modern America, and especially the
Middle West. And with that we come back to the truth with which I started t=
his speculation;
the truth that few have yet realised, but of which I, for one, am more and =
more
convinced--that industrialism is spreading because it is decaying; that only
the dust and ashes of its dissolution are choking up the growth of natural
things everywhere and turning the green world grey.
In this relative
agricultural equality the Americans of the Middle West are far in advance of
the English of the twentieth century. It is not their fault if they are sti=
ll
some centuries behind the English of the twelfth century. But the defect by
which they fall short of being a true peasantry is that they do not produce
their own spiritual food, in the same sense as their own material food. The=
y do
not, like some peasantries, create other kinds of culture besides the kind
called agriculture. Their culture comes from the great cities; and that is =
where
all the evil comes from.
If a man had gone
across England in the Middle Ages, or even across Europe in more recent tim=
es,
he would have found a culture which showed its vitality by its variety. We =
know
the adventures of the three brothers in the old fairy tales who passed acro=
ss
the endless plain from city to city, and found one kingdom ruled by a wizard
and another wasted by a dragon, one people living in castles of crystal and
another sitting by fountains of wine. These are but legendary enlargements =
of
the real adventures of a traveller passing from one patch of peasantry to a=
nother,
and finding women wearing strange head-dresses and men singing new songs.
A traveller in America would be somewhat surprised if he found the people in the city of S= t. Louis all wearing crowns and crusading armour in honour of their patron sai= nt. He might even feel some faint surprise if he found all the citizens of Phil= adelphia clad in a composite costume, combining that of a Quaker with that of a Red Indian, in honour of the noble treaty of William Penn. Yet these are the so= rt of local and traditional things that would really be found giving variety to the valleys of mediaeval Europe. I myself felt a perfectly genuine and gene= rous exhilaration of freedom and fresh enterprise in new places like Oklahoma. B= ut you would hardly find in Oklahoma what was found in Oberammergau. What goes= to Oklahoma is not the peasant play, but the cinema. And the objection to the cinema is not so much that it goes to Oklahoma as that it does not come from Oklahoma. In other words, these people have on the economic side a much clo= ser approach than we have to economic freedom. It is not for us, who have allow= ed our land to be stolen by squires and then vulgarised by sham squires, to sn= eer at such colonists as merely crude and prosaic. They at least have really ke= pt something of the simplicity and, therefore, the dignity of democracy; and that democr= acy may yet save their country even from the calamities of wealth and science.<= o:p>
But, while these
farmers do not need to become industrial in order to become industrious, th=
ey
do tend to become industrial in so far as they become intellectual. Their
culture, and to some great extent their creed, do come along the railroads =
from
the great modern urban centres, and bring with them a blast of death and a =
reek
of rotting things. It is that influence that alone prevents the Middle West
from progressing towards the Middle Ages.
For, after all,
linked up in a hundred legends of the Middle Ages, may be found a symbolic
pattern of hammers and nails and saws; and there is no reason why they shou=
ld
not have also sanctified screw-drivers. There is no reason why the screw-dr=
iver
that seemed such a trifle to the author should not have been borne in trium=
ph
down Main Street like a sword of state, in some pageant of the Guild of St.
Joseph of the Carpenters or St. Dunstan of the Smiths. It was the Catholic
poetry and piety that filled common life with something that is lacking in =
the worthy
and virile democracy of the West. Nor are Americans of intelligence so igno=
rant
of this as some may suppose. There is an admirable society called the
Mediaevalists in Chicago; whose name and address will strike many as sugges=
ting
a certain struggle of the soul against the environment. With the national
heartiness they blazon their note-paper with heraldry and the hues of Gothic
windows; with the national high spirits they assume the fancy dress of fria=
rs;
but any one who should essay to laugh at them instead of with them would fi=
nd
out his mistake. For many of them do really know a great deal about mediaev=
alism;
much more than I do, or most other men brought up on an island that is crow=
ded
with its cathedrals. Something of the same spirit may be seen in the beauti=
ful
new plans and buildings of Yale, deliberately modelled not on classical har=
mony
but on Gothic irregularity and surprise. The grace and energy of the mediae=
val architecture
resurrected by a man like Mr. R. A. Cram of Boston has behind it not merely
artistic but historical and ethical enthusiasm; an enthusiasm for the Catho=
lic
creed which made mediaeval civilisation. Even on the huge Puritan plains of=
the
Middle West the influence strays in the strangest fashion. And it is notable
that among the pessimistic epitaphs of the Spoon River Anthology, in that
churchyard compared with which most churchyards are cheery, among the suici=
des
and secret drinkers and monomaniacs and hideous hypocrites of that happy
village, almost the only record of respect and a recognition of wider hopes=
is dedicated
to the Catholic priest.
But Main Street is
Main Street in the main. Main Street is Modern Street in its multiplicity of
mildly half-educated people; and all these historic things are a thousand m=
iles
from them. They have not heard the ancient noise either of arts or arms; the
building of the cathedral or the marching of the crusade. But at least they
have not deliberately slandered the crusade and defaced the cathedral. And =
if
they have not produced the peasant arts, they can still produce the peasant
crafts. They can sow and plough and reap and live by these everlasting thin=
gs; nor
shall the foundations of their state be moved. And the memory of those colo=
ssal
fields, of those fruitful deserts, came back the more readily into my mind
because I finished these reflections in the very heart of a modern industri=
al
city, if it can be said to have a heart. It was in fact an English industri=
al
city, but it struck me that it might very well be an American one. And it a=
lso
struck me that we yield rather too easily to America the dusty palm of
industrial enterprise, and feel far too little apprehension about greener a=
nd
fresher vegetables. There is a story of an American who carefully studied a=
ll
the sights of London or Rome or Paris, and came to the conclusion that 'it =
had
nothing on Minneapolis.' It seems to me that Minneapolis has nothing on
Manchester. There were the same grey vistas of shops full of rubber tyres a=
nd metallic
appliances; a man felt that he might walk a day without seeing a blade of
grass; the whole horizon was so infinite with efficiency. The factory chimn=
eys
might have been Pittsburg; the sky-signs might have been New York. One look=
ed
up in a sort of despair at the sky, not for a sky-sign but in a sense for a
sign, for some sentence of significance and judgment; by the instinct that
makes any man in such a scene seek for the only thing that has not been mad=
e by
men. But even that was illogical, for it was night, and I could only expect=
to
see the stars, which might have reminded me of Old Glory; but that was not =
the
sign that oppressed me. All the ground was a wilderness of stone and all th=
e buildings
a forest of brick; I was far in the interior of a labyrinth of lifeless thi=
ngs.
Only, looking up, between two black chimneys and a telegraph pole, I saw va=
st
and far and faint, as the first men saw it, the silver pattern of the Ploug=
h.
It is a commonplace that men are all
agreed in using symbols, and all differ about the meaning of the symbols. I=
t is
obvious that a Russian republican might come to identify the eagle as a bir=
d of
empire and therefore a bird of prey. But when he ultimately escaped to the =
land
of the free, he might find the same bird on the American coinage figuring a=
s a
bird of freedom. Doubtless, he might find many other things to surprise him=
in
the land of the free, and many calculated to make him think that the bird, =
if
not imperial, was at least rather imperious. But I am not discussing those
exceptional details here. It is equally obvious that a Russian reactionary
might cross the world with a vow of vengeance against the red flag. But that
authoritarian might have some difficulties with the authorities, if he shot=
a
man for using the red flag on the railway between Willesden and Clapham
Junction.
But, of course, t=
he
difficulty about symbols is generally much more subtle than in these simple
cases. I have remarked elsewhere that the first thing which a traveller sho=
uld
write about is the thing which he has not read about. It may be a small or
secondary thing, but it is a thing that he has seen and not merely expected=
to
see.
I gave the exampl=
e of
the great multitude of wooden houses in America; we might say of wooden tow=
ns
and wooden cities. But after he has seen such things, his next duty is to s=
ee
the meaning of them; and here a great deal of complication and controversy =
is
possible. The thing probably does not mean what he first supposes it to mea=
n on
the face of it; but even on the face of it, it might mean many different and
even opposite things.
For instance, a
wooden house might suggest an almost savage solitude; a rude shanty put
together by a pioneer in a forest; or it might mean a very recent and rapid
solution of the housing problem, conducted cheaply and therefore on a very
large scale. A wooden house might suggest the very newest thing in America =
or
one of the very oldest things in England. It might mean a grey ruin at
Stratford or a white exhibition at Earl's Court.
It is when we com=
e to
this interpretation of international symbols that we make most of the
international mistakes. Without the smallest error of detail, I will promis=
e to
prove that Oriental women are independent because they wear trousers, or
Oriental men subject because they wear skirts. Merely to apply it to this c=
ase,
I will take the example of two very commonplace and trivial objects of mode=
rn
life--a walking stick and a fur coat.
As it happened, I
travelled about America with two sticks, like a Japanese nobleman with his =
two
swords. I fear the simile is too stately. I bore more resemblance to a crip=
ple
with two crutches or a highly ineffectual version of the devil on two stick=
s. I
carried them both because I valued them both, and did not wish to risk losi=
ng
either of them in my erratic travels. One is a very plain grey stick from t=
he woods
of Buckinghamshire, but as I took it with me to Palestine it partakes of the
character of a pilgrim's staff. When I can say that I have taken the same s=
tick
to Jerusalem and to Chicago, I think the stick and I may both have a rest. =
The
other, which I value even more, was given me by the Knights of Columbus at
Yale, and I wish I could think that their chivalric title allowed me to reg=
ard
it as a sword.
Now, I do not know
whether the Americans I met, struck by the fastidious foppery of my dress a=
nd
appearance, concluded that it is the custom of elegant English dandies to c=
arry
two walking sticks. But I do know that it is much less common among America=
ns
than among Englishmen to carry even one. The point, however, is not merely =
that
more sticks are carried by Englishmen than by Americans; it is that the sti=
cks
which are carried by Americans stand for something entirely different.
In America a stic=
k is
commonly called a cane, and it has about it something of the atmosphere whi=
ch
the poet described as the nice conduct of the clouded cane. It would be an
exaggeration to say that when the citizens of the United States see a man
carrying a light stick, they deduce that if he does that he does nothing el=
se.
But there is about it a faint flavour of luxury and lounging, and most of t=
he
energetic citizens of this energetic society avoid it by instinct.
Now, in an Englis=
hman
like myself, carrying a stick may imply lounging, but it does not imply lux=
ury,
and I can say with some firmness that it does not imply dandyism. In a great
many Englishmen it means the very opposite even of lounging. By one of those
fantastic paradoxes which are the mystery of nationality, a walking stick o=
ften
actually means walking. It frequently suggests the very reverse of the beau
with his clouded cane; it does not suggest a town type, but rather speciall=
y a country
type. It rather implies the kind of Englishman who tramps about in lanes and
meadows and knocks the tops off thistles. It suggests the sort of man who h=
as
carried the stick through his native woods, and perhaps even cut it in his
native woods.
There are plenty =
of
these vigorous loungers, no doubt, in the rural parts of America, but the i=
dea
of a walking stick would not especially suggest them to Americans; it would=
not
call up such figures like a fairy wand. It would be easy to trace back the
difference to many English origins, possibly to aristocratic origins, to the
idea of the old squire, a man vigorous and even rustic, but trained to hold=
a useless
staff rather than a useful tool. It might be suggested that American citize=
ns
do at least so far love freedom as to like to have their hands free. It mig=
ht
be suggested, on the other hand, that they keep their hands for the handles=
of
many machines. And that the hand on a handle is less free than the hand on a
stick or even a tool. But these again are controversial questions and I am =
only
noting a fact.
If an Englishman
wished to imagine more or less exactly what the impression is, and how
misleading it is, he could find something like a parallel in what he himself
feels about a fur coat. When I first found myself among the crowds on the m=
ain
floor of a New York hotel, my rather exaggerated impression of the luxury of
the place was largely produced by the number of men in fur coats, and what =
we
should consider rather ostentatious fur coats, with all the fur outside.
Now an Englishman=
has
a number of atmospheric but largely accidental associations in connection w=
ith
a fur coat. I will not say that he thinks a man in a fur coat must be a wea=
lthy
and wicked man; but I do say that in his own ideal and perfect vision a wea=
lthy
and wicked man would wear a fur coat. Thus I had the sensation of standing =
in a
surging mob of American millionaires, or even African millionaires; for the=
millionaires
of Chicago must be like the Knights of the Round Table compared with the
millionaires of Johannesburg.
But, as a matter =
of
fact, the man in the fur coat was not even an American millionaire, but sim=
ply
an American. It did not signify luxury, but rather necessity, and even a ha=
rsh
and almost heroic necessity. Orson probably wore a fur coat; and he was bro=
ught
up by bears, but not the bears of Wall Street. Eskimos are generally
represented as a furry folk; but they are not necessarily engaged in delica=
te
financial operations, even in the typical and appropriate occupation called=
freezing
out. And if the American is not exactly an arctic traveller rushing from po=
le
to pole, at least he is often literally fleeing from ice to ice. He has to =
make
a very extreme distinction between outdoor and indoor clothing. He has to l=
ive
in an icehouse outside and a hothouse inside; so hot that he may be said to
construct an icehouse inside that. He turns himself into an icehouse and wa=
rms
himself against the cold until he is warm enough to eat ices. But the point=
is
that the same coat of fur which in England would indicate the sybarite life=
may
here very well indicate the strenuous life; just as the same walking stick
which would here suggest a lounger would in England suggest a plodder and
almost a pilgrim.
And these two tri=
fles
are types which I should like to put, by way of proviso and apology, at the
very beginning of any attempt at a record of any impressions of a foreign
society. They serve merely to illustrate the most important impression of a=
ll,
the impression of how false all impressions may be. I suspect that most of =
the
very false impressions have come from the careful record of very true facts.
They have come from the fatal power of observing the facts without being ab=
le
to observe the truth. They came from seeing the symbol with the most vivid =
clarity
and being blind to all that it symbolises. It is as if a man who knew no Gr=
eek
should imagine that he could read a Greek inscription because he took the G=
reek
R for an English P or the Greek long E for an English H. I do not mention t=
his
merely as a criticism on other people's impressions of America, but as a
criticism on my own. I wish it to be understood that I am well aware that a=
ll
my views are subject to this sort of potential criticism, and that even whe=
n I
am certain of the facts I do not profess to be certain of the deductions.
In this chapter I
hope to point out how a misunderstanding of this kind affects the common
impression, not altogether unfounded, that the Americans talk about dollars.
But for the moment I am merely anxious to avoid a similar misunderstanding =
when
I talk about Americans. About the dogmas of democracy, about the right of a
people to its own symbols, whether they be coins or customs, I am convinced,
and no longer to be shaken. But about the meaning of those symbols, in silv=
er
or other substances, I am always open to correction. That error is the pric=
e we
pay for the great glory of nationality. And in this sense I am quite ready,=
at
the start, to warn my own readers against my own opinions.
The fact without =
the
truth is futile; indeed the fact without the truth is false. I have already
noted that this is especially true touching our observations of a strange
country; and it is certainly true touching one small fact which has swelled
into a large fable. I mean the fable about America commonly summed up in the
phrase about the Almighty Dollar. I do not think the dollar is almighty in
America; I fancy many things are mightier, including many ideals and some
rather insane ideals. But I think it might be maintained that the dollar has
another of the attributes of deity. If it is not omnipotent it is in a sens=
e omnipresent.
Whatever Americans think about dollars, it is, I think, relatively true that
they talk about dollars. If a mere mechanical record could be taken by the
modern machinery of dictaphones and stenography, I do not think it probable
that the mere word 'dollars' would occur more often in any given number of
American conversations than the mere word 'pounds' or 'shillings' in a simi=
lar
number of English conversations. And these statistics, like nearly all
statistics, would be utterly useless and even fundamentally false. It is as=
if
we should calculate that the word 'elephant' had been mentioned a certain n=
umber
of times in a particular London street, or so many times more often than the
word 'thunderbolt' had been used in Stoke Poges. Doubtless there are
statisticians capable of carefully collecting those statistics also; and
doubtless there are scientific social reformers capable of legislating on t=
he
basis of them. They would probably argue from the elephantine imagery of the
London street that such and such a percentage of the householders were
megalomaniacs and required medical care and police coercion. And doubtless
their calculations, like nearly all such calculations, would leave out the =
only
important point; as that the street was in the immediate neighbourhood of t=
he
Zoo, or was yet more happily situated under the benignant shadow of the
Elephant and Castle. And in the same way the mechanical calculation about t=
he
mention of dollars is entirely useless unless we have some moral understand=
ing of
why they are mentioned. It certainly does not mean merely a love of money; =
and
if it did, a love of money may mean a great many very different and even
contrary things. The love of money is very different in a peasant or in a p=
irate,
in a miser or in a gambler, in a great financier or in a man doing some
practical and productive work. Now this difference in the conversation of
American and English business men arises, I think, from certain much deeper
things in the American which are generally not understood by the Englishman=
. It
also arises from much deeper things in the Englishman, of which the English=
man
is even more ignorant.
To begin with, I
fancy that the American, quite apart from any love of money, has a great lo=
ve
of measurement. He will mention the exact size or weight of things, in a way
which appears to us as irrelevant. It is as if we were to say that a man ca=
me
to see us carrying three feet of walking stick and four inches of cigar. It=
is
so in cases that have no possible connection with any avarice or greed for
gain. An American will praise the prodigal generosity of some other man in
giving up his own estate for the good of the poor. But he will generally say
that the philanthropist gave them a 200-acre park, where an Englishman woul=
d think
it quite sufficient to say that he gave them a park. There is something abo=
ut
this precision which seems suitable to the American atmosphere; to the hard
sunlight, and the cloudless skies, and the glittering detail of the archite=
cture
and the landscape; just as the vaguer English version is consonant to our
mistier and more impressionist scenery. It is also connected perhaps with
something more boyish about the younger civilisation; and corresponds to the
passionate particularity with which a boy will distinguish the uniforms of =
regiments,
the rigs of ships, or even the colours of tram tickets. It is a certain god=
like
appetite for things, as distinct from thoughts.
But there is also=
, of
course, a much deeper cause of the difference; and it can easily be deduced=
by
noting the real nature of the difference itself. When two business men in a
train are talking about dollars I am not so foolish as to expect them to be
talking about the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. But if they were two
English business men I should not expect them to be talking about business.
Probably it would be about some sport; and most probably some sport in which
they themselves never dreamed of indulging. The approximate difference is t=
hat
the American talks about his work and the Englishman about his holidays. His
ideal is not labour but leisure. Like every other national characteristic, =
this
is not primarily a point for praise or blame; in essence it involves neither
and in effect it involves both. It is certainly connected with that
snobbishness which is the great sin of English society. The Englishman does
love to conceive himself as a sort of country gentleman; and his castles in=
the
air are all castles in Scotland rather than in Spain. For, as an ideal, a S=
cotch
castle is as English as a Welsh rarebit or an Irish stew. And if he talks l=
ess
about money I fear it is sometimes because in one sense he thinks more of i=
t.
Money is a mystery in the old and literal sense of something too sacred for
speech. Gold is a god; and like the god of some agnostics has no name and is
worshipped only in his works. It is true in a sense that the English gentle=
man wishes
to have enough money to be able to forget it. But it may be questioned whet=
her
he does entirely forget it. As against this weakness the American has
succeeded, at the price of a great deal of crudity and clatter, in making
general a very real respect for work. He has partly disenchanted the danger=
ous
glamour of the gentleman, and in that sense has achieved some degree of
democracy; which is the most difficult achievement in the world.
On the other hand,
there is a good side to the Englishman's day-dream of leisure, and one which
the American spirit tends to miss. It may be expressed in the word 'holiday=
' or
still better in the word 'hobby.' The Englishman, in his character of Robin
Hood, really has got two strings to his bow. Indeed the Englishman really is
well represented by Robin Hood; for there is always something about him that
may literally be called outlawed, in the sense of being extra-legal or outs=
ide
the rules. A Frenchman said of Browning that his centre was not in the midd=
le;
and it may be said of many an Englishman that his heart is not where his tr=
easure
is. Browning expressed a very English sentiment when he said:--
I like to know a
butcher paints, A baker rhy=
mes
for his pursuit, Candlestick=
-maker
much acquaints His soul wi=
th
song, or haply mute Blows out h=
is
brains upon the flute.
Stevenson touched on the same insul=
ar
sentiment when he said that many men he knew, who were meat-salesmen to the
outward eye, might in the life of contemplation sit with the saints. Now the
extraordinary achievement of the American meat-salesman is that his poetic
enthusiasm can really be for meat sales; not for money but for meat. An
American commercial traveller asked me, with a religious fire in his eyes, =
whether
I did not think that salesmanship could be an art. In England there are many
salesmen who are sincerely fond of art; but seldom of the art of salesmansh=
ip.
Art is with them a hobby; a thing of leisure and liberty. That is why the
English traveller talks, if not of art, then of sport. That is why the two =
city
men in the London train, if they are not talking about golf, may be talking=
about
gardening. If they are not talking about dollars, or the equivalent of doll=
ars,
the reason lies much deeper than any superficial praise or blame touching t=
he
desire for wealth. In the English case, at least, it lies very deep in the
English spirit. Many of the greatest English things have had this lighter a=
nd looser
character of a hobby or a holiday experiment. Even a masterpiece has often =
been
a by-product. The works of Shakespeare come out so casually that they can be
attributed to the most improbable people; even to Bacon. The sonnets of
Shakespeare are picked up afterwards as if out of a wastepaper basket. The
immortality of Dr. Johnson does not rest on the written leaves he collected,
but entirely on the words he wasted, the words he scattered to the winds. So
great a thing as Pickwick is almost a kind of accident; it began as somethi=
ng
secondary and grew into something primary and pre-eminent. It began with me=
re
words written to illustrate somebody else's pictures; and swelled like an e=
pic
expanded from an epigram. It might almost be said that in the case of Pickw=
ick the
author began as the servant of the artist. But, as in the same story of
Pickwick, the servant became greater than the master. This incalculable and
accidental quality, like all national qualities, has its strength and weakn=
ess;
but it does represent a certain reserve fund of interests in the Englishman=
's
life; and distinguishes him from the other extreme type, of the millionaire=
who
works till he drops, or who drops because he stops working. It is the great
achievement of American civilisation that in that country it really is not =
cant
to talk about the dignity of labour. There is something that might almost be
called the sanctity of labour; but it is subject to the profound law that w=
hen anything
less than the highest becomes a sanctity, it tends also to become a
superstition. When the candlestick-maker does not blow out his brains upon =
the
flute there is always a danger that he may blow them out somewhere else, ow=
ing
to depressed conditions in the candlestick market.
Now certainly one=
of
the first impressions of America, or at any rate of New York, which is by no
means the same thing as America, is that of a sort of mob of business men,
behaving in many ways in a fashion very different from that of the swarms of
London city men who go up every day to the city. They sit about in groups w=
ith
Red-Indian gravity, as if passing the pipe of peace; though, in fact, most =
of
them are smoking cigars and some of them are eating cigars. The latter stri=
kes
me as one of the most peculiar of transatlantic tastes, more peculiar than =
that
of chewing gum. A man will sit for hours consuming a cigar as if it were a =
sugar-stick;
but I should imagine it to be a very disagreeable sugar-stick. Why he attem=
pts
to enjoy a cigar without lighting it I do not know; whether it is a more
economical way of carrying a mere symbol of commercial conversation; or whe=
ther
something of the same queer outlandish morality that draws such a distincti=
on
between beer and ginger beer draws an equally ethical distinction between
touching tobacco and lighting it. For the rest, it would be easy to make a
merely external sketch full of things equally strange; for this can always =
be done
in a strange country. I allow for the fact of all foreigners looking alike;=
but
I fancy that all those hard-featured faces, with spectacles and shaven jaws=
, do
look rather alike, because they all like to make their faces hard. And with=
the
mention of their mental attitude we realise the futility of any such extern=
al
sketch. Unless we can see that these are something more than men smoking ci=
gars
and talking about dollars we had much better not see them at all.
It is customary to
condemn the American as a materialist because of his worship of success. Bu=
t indeed
this very worship, like any worship, even devil-worship, proves him rather a
mystic than a materialist. The Frenchman who retires from business when he =
has
money enough to drink his wine and eat his omelette in peace might much more
plausibly be called a materialist by those who do not prefer to call him a =
man
of sense. But Americans do worship success in the abstract, as a sort of id=
eal
vision. They follow success rather than money; they follow money rather than
meat and drink. If their national life in one sense is a perpetual game of
poker, they are playing excitedly for chips or counters as well as for coin=
s.
And by the ultimate test of material enjoyment, like the enjoyment of an
omelette, even a coin is itself a counter. The Yankee cannot eat chips as t=
he
Frenchman can eat chipped potatoes; but neither can he swallow red cents as=
the
Frenchman swallows red wine. Thus when people say of a Yankee that he worsh=
ips
the dollar, they pay a compliment to his fine spirituality more true and
delicate than they imagine. The dollar is an idol because it is an image; b=
ut
it is an image of success and not of enjoyment.
That this romance=
is
also a religion is shown in the fact that there is a queer sort of morality
attached to it. The nearest parallel to it is something like the sense of
honour in the old duelling days. There is not a material but a distinctly m=
oral
savour about the implied obligation to collect dollars or to collect chips.=
We
hear too much in England of the phrase about 'making good'; for no sensible
Englishman favours the needless interlarding of English with scraps of fore=
ign languages.
But though it means nothing in English, it means something very particular =
in
American. There is a fine shade of distinction between succeeding and making
good, precisely because there must always be a sort of ethical echo in the =
word
good. America does vaguely feel a man making good as something analogous to=
a
man being good or a man doing good. It is connected with his serious
self-respect and his sense of being worthy of those he loves. Nor is this
curious crude idealism wholly insincere even when it drives him to what som=
e of
us would call stealing; any more than the duellist's honour was insincere w=
hen
it drove him to what some would call murder. A very clever American play wh=
ich
I once saw acted contained a complete working model of this morality. A girl
was loyal to, but distressed by, her engagement to a young man on whom there
was a sort of cloud of humiliation. The atmosphere was exactly what it woul=
d have
been in England if he had been accused of cowardice or card-sharping. And t=
here
was nothing whatever the matter with the poor young man except that some ro=
tten
mine or other in Arizona had not 'made good.' Now in England we should eith=
er
be below or above that ideal of good. If we were snobs, we should be conten=
t to
know that he was a gentleman of good connections, perhaps too much accustom=
ed
to private means to be expected to be businesslike. If we were somewhat
larger-minded people, we should know that he might be as wise as Socrates a=
nd
as splendid as Bayard and yet be unfitted, perhaps one should say therefore=
be
unfitted, for the dismal and dirty gambling of modern commerce. But whether=
we
were snobbish enough to admire him for being an idler, or chivalrous enough=
to
admire him for being an outlaw, in neither case should we ever really and in
our hearts despise him for being a failure. For it is this inner verdict of
instinctive idealism that is the point at issue. Of course there is nothing
new, or peculiar to the new world, about a man's engagement practically fai=
ling
through his financial failure. An English girl might easily drop a man beca=
use
he was poor, or she might stick to him faithfully and defiantly although he=
was
poor. The point is that this girl was faithful but she was not defiant; that
is, she was not proud. The whole psychology of the situation was that she
shared the weird worldly idealism of her family, and it was wounded as her
patriotism would have been wounded if he had betrayed his country. To do th=
em
justice, there was nothing to show that they would have had any real respect
for a royal duke who had inherited millions; what the simple barbarians wan=
ted
was a man who could 'make good.' That the process of making good would prob=
ably
drag him through the mire of everything bad, that he would make good by
bluffing, lying, swindling, and grinding the faces of the poor, did not see=
m to
trouble them in the least. Against this fanaticism there is this shadow of
truth even in the fiction of aristocracy; that a gentleman may at least be =
allowed
to be good without being bothered to make it.
Another objection=
to
the phrase about the almighty dollar is that it is an almighty phrase, and
therefore an almighty nuisance. I mean that it is made to explain everythin=
g,
and to explain everything much too well; that is, much too easily. It does =
not
really help people to understand a foreign country; but it gives them the f=
atal
illusion that they do understand it. Dollars stood for America as frogs sto=
od
for France; because it was necessary to connect particular foreigners with =
something,
or it would be so easy to confuse a Moor with a Montenegrin or a Russian wi=
th a
Red Indian. The only cure for this sort of satisfied familiarity is the sho=
ck
of something really unfamiliar. When people can see nothing at all in Ameri=
can
democracy except a Yankee running after a dollar, then the only thing to do=
is
to trip them up as they run after the Yankee, or run away with their notion=
of
the Yankee, by the obstacle of certain odd and obstinate facts that have no
relation to that notion. And, as a matter of fact, there are a number of su=
ch
obstacles to any such generalisation; a number of notable facts that have t=
o be
reconciled somehow to our previous notions. It does not matter for this pur=
pose
whether the facts are favourable or unfavourable, or whether the qualities =
are
merits or defects; especially as we do not even understand them sufficientl=
y to
say which they are. The point is that we are brought to a pause, and compel=
led
to attempt to understand them rather better than we do. We have found the o=
ne
thing that we did not expect; and therefore the one thing that we cannot
explain. And we are moved to an effort, probably an unsuccessful effort, to
explain it.
For instance,
Americans are very unpunctual. That is the last thing that a critic expects=
who
comes to condemn them for hustling and haggling and vulgar ambition. But it=
is
almost the first fact that strikes the spectator on the spot. The chief
difference between the humdrum English business man and the hustling Americ=
an
business man is that the hustling American business man is always late. Of
course there is a great deal of difference between coming late and coming t=
oo
late. But I noticed the fashion first in connection with my own lectures;
touching which I could heartily recommend the habit of coming too late. I c=
ould
easily understand a crowd of commercial Americans not coming to my lectures=
at all;
but there was something odd about their coming in a crowd, and the crowd be=
ing
expected to turn up some time after the appointed hour. The managers of the=
se
lectures (I continue to call them lectures out of courtesy to myself) often
explained to me that it was quite useless to begin properly until about hal=
f an
hour after time. Often people were still coming in three-quarters of an hou=
r or
even an hour after time. Not that I objected to that, as some lecturers are
said to do; it seemed to me an agreeable break in the monotony; but as a
characteristic of a people mostly engaged in practical business, it struck =
me
as curious and interesting. I have grown accustomed to being the most
unbusinesslike person in any given company; and it gave me a sort of dizzy
exaltation to find I was not the most unpunctual person in that company. I =
was afterwards
told by many Americans that my impression was quite correct; that American
unpunctuality was really very prevalent, and extended to much more important
things. But at least I was not content to lump this along with all sorts of=
contrary
things that I did not happen to like, and call it America. I am not sure of
what it really means, but I rather fancy that though it may seem the very
reverse of the hustling, it has the same origin as the hustling. The Americ=
an
is not punctual because he is not punctilious. He is impulsive, and has an
impulse to stay as well as an impulse to go. For, after all, punctuality
belongs to the same order of ideas as punctuation; and there is no punctuat=
ion
in telegrams. The order of clocks and set hours which English business has =
always
observed is a good thing in its own way; indeed I think that in a larger se=
nse
it is better than the other way. But it is better because it is a protection
against hustling, not a promotion of it. In other words, it is better becau=
se
it is more civilised; as a great Venetian merchant prince clad in cloth of =
gold
was more civilised; or an old English merchant drinking port in an oak-pane=
lled
room was more civilised; or a little French shopkeeper shutting up his shop=
to
play dominoes is more civilised. And the reason is that the American has th=
e romance
of business and is monomaniac, while the Frenchman has the romance of life =
and
is sane. But the romance of business really is a romance, and the Americans=
are
really romantic about it. And that romance, though it revolves round pork or
petrol, is really like a love-affair in this; that it involves not only rus=
hing
but also lingering.
The American is t=
oo
busy to have business habits. He is also too much in earnest to have busine=
ss
rules. If we wish to understand him, we must compare him not with the French
shopkeeper when he plays dominoes, but with the same French shopkeeper when=
he
works the guns or mans the trenches as a conscript soldier. Everybody used =
to
the punctilious Prussian standard of uniform and parade has noticed the
roughness and apparent laxity of the French soldier, the looseness of his
clothes, the unsightliness of his heavy knapsack, in short his inferiority =
in
every detail of the business of war except fighting. There he is much too s=
wift
to be smart. He is much too practical to be precise. By a strange illusion
which can lift pork-packing almost to the level of patriotism, the American=
has
the same free rhythm in his romance of business. He varies his conduct not =
to
suit the clock but to suit the case. He gives more time to more important a=
nd
less time to less important things; and he makes up his time-table as he go=
es
along. Suppose he has three appointments; the first, let us say, is some me=
re
trifle of erecting a tower twenty storeys high and exhibiting a sky-sign on=
the
top of it; the second is a business discussion about the possibility of
printing advertisements of soft drinks on the table-napkins at a restaurant;
the third is attending a conference to decide how the populace can be preve=
nted
from using chewing-gum and the manufacturers can still manage to sell it. He
will be content merely to glance at the sky-sign as he goes by in a trolley=
-car
or an automobile; he will then settle down to the discussion with his partn=
er
about the table-napkins, each speaker indulging in long monologues in turn;=
a
peculiarity of much American conversation. Now if in the middle of one of t=
hese
monologues, he suddenly thinks that the vacant space of the waiter's
shirt-front might also be utilised to advertise the Gee Whiz Ginger Champag=
ne,
he will instantly follow up the new idea in all its aspects and possibiliti=
es, in
an even longer monologue; and will never think of looking at his watch whil=
e he
is rapturously looking at his waiter. The consequence is that he will come =
late
into the great social movement against chewing-gum, where an Englishman wou=
ld
probably have arrived at the proper hour. But though the Englishman's condu=
ct
is more proper, it need not be in all respects more practical. The Englishm=
an's
rules are better for the business of life, but not necessarily for the life=
of
business. And it is true that for many of these Americans business is the b=
usiness
of life. It is really also, as I have said, the romance of life. We shall
admire or deplore this spirit, accordingly as we are glad to see trade
irradiated with so much poetry, or sorry to see so much poetry wasted on tr=
ade.
But it does make many people happy, like any other hobby; and one is dispos=
ed
to add that it does fill their imaginations like any other delusion. For the
true criticism of all this commercial romance would involve a criticism of =
this
historic phase of commerce. These people are building on the sand, though it
shines like gold, and for them like fairy gold; but the world will remember=
the
legend about fairy gold. Half the financial operations they follow deal with
things that do not even exist; for in that sense all finance is a fairy tal=
e.
Many of them are buying and selling things that do nothing but harm; but it
does them good to buy and sell them. The claim of the romantic salesman is
better justified than he realises. Business really is romance; for it is not
reality.
There is one real
advantage that America has over England, largely due to its livelier and mo=
re
impressionable ideal. America does not think that stupidity is practical. It
does not think that ideas are merely destructive things. It does not think =
that
a genius is only a person to be told to go away and blow his brains out; ra=
ther
it would open all its machinery to the genius and beg him to blow his brains
in. It might attempt to use a natural force like Blake or Shelley for very
ignoble purposes; it would be quite capable of asking Blake to take his tig=
er and
his golden lions round as a sort of Barnum's Show, or Shelley to hang his s=
tars
and haloed clouds among the lights of Broadway. But it would not assume tha=
t a
natural force is useless, any more than that Niagara is useless. And there =
is a
very definite distinction here touching the intelligence of the trader,
whatever we may think of either course touching the intelligence of the art=
ist.
It is one thing that Apollo should be employed by Admetus, although he is a
god. It is quite another thing that Apollo should always be sacked by Admet=
us,
because he is a god. Now in England, largely owing to the accident of a riv=
alry
and therefore a comparison with France, there arose about the end of the ei=
ghteenth
century an extraordinary notion that there was some sort of connection betw=
een dullness
and success. What the Americans call a bonehead became what the English cal=
l a
hard-headed man. The merchants of London evinced their contempt for the
fantastic logicians of Paris by living in a permanent state of terror lest
somebody should set the Thames on fire. In this as in much else it is much
easier to understand the Americans if we connect them with the French who w=
ere
their allies than with the English who were their enemies. There are a great
many Franco-American resemblances which the practical Anglo-Saxons are of c=
ourse
too hard-headed (or boneheaded) to see. American history is haunted with the
shadow of the Plebiscitary President; they have a tradition of classical
architecture for public buildings. Their cities are planned upon the square=
s of
Paris and not upon the labyrinth of London. They call their cities Corinth =
and
Syracuse, as the French called their citizens Epaminondas and Timoleon. The=
ir
soldiers wore the French kepi; and they make coffee admirably, and do not m=
ake
tea at all. But of all the French elements in America the most French is th=
is
real practicality. They know that at certain times the most businesslike of=
all
qualities is 'l'audace, et encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace.' The
publisher may induce the poet to do a pot-boiler; but the publisher would
cheerfully allow the poet to set the Mississippi on fire, if it would boil =
his
particular pot. It is not so much that Englishmen are stupid as that they a=
re
afraid of being clever; and it is not so much that Americans are clever as =
that
they do not try to be any stupider than they are. The fire of French logic =
has
burnt that out of America as it has burnt it out of Europe, and of almost e=
very
place except England. This is one of the few points on which English insula=
rity
really is a disadvantage. It is the fatal notion that the only sort of
commonsense is to be found in compromise, and that the only sort of comprom=
ise
is to be found in confusion. This must be clearly distinguished from the
commonplace about the utilitarian world not rising to the invisible values =
of
genius. Under this philosophy the utilitarian does not see the utility of
genius, even when it is quite visible. He does not see it, not because he i=
s a
utilitarian, but because he is an idealist whose ideal is dullness. For some
time the English aspired to be stupid, prayed and hoped with soaring spirit=
ual ambition
to be stupid. But with all their worship of success, they did not succeed in
being stupid. The natural talents of a great and traditional nation were al=
ways
breaking out in spite of them. In spite of the merchants of London, Turner =
did
set the Thames on fire. In spite of our repeatedly explained preference for
realism to romance, Europe persisted in resounding with the name of Byron. =
And
just when we had made it perfectly clear to the French that we despised all
their flamboyant tricks, that we were a plain prosaic people and there was =
no fantastic
glory or chivalry about us, the very shaft we sent against them shone with =
the
name of Nelson, a shooting and a falling star.
Presidents and Problems=
span>
All good Americans wish to fight the
representatives they have chosen. All good Englishmen wish to forget the
representatives they have chosen. This difference, deep and perhaps
ineradicable in the temperaments of the two peoples, explains a thousand th=
ings
in their literature and their laws. The American national poet praised his
people for their readiness 'to rise against the never-ending audacity of
elected persons.' The English national anthem is content to say heartily, b=
ut almost
hastily, 'Confound their politics,' and then more cheerfully, as if changing
the subject, 'God Save the King.' For this is especially the secret of the
monarch or chief magistrate in the two countries. They arm the President wi=
th
the powers of a King, that he may be a nuisance in politics. We deprive the
King even of the powers of a President, lest he should remind us of a
politician. We desire to forget the never-ending audacity of elected person=
s;
and with us therefore it really never does end. That is the practical objec=
tion
to our own habit of changing the subject, instead of changing the ministry.=
The
King, as the Irish wit observed, is not a subject; but in that sense the
English crowned head is not a King. He is a popular figure intended to remi=
nd
us of the England that politicians do not remember; the England of horses a=
nd ships
and gardens and good fellowship. The Americans have no such purely social
symbol; and it is rather the root than the result of this that their social
luxury, and especially their sport, are a little lacking in humanity and
humour. It is the American, much more than the Englishman, who takes his
pleasures sadly, not to say savagely.
The genuine
popularity of constitutional monarchs, in parliamentary countries, can be
explained by any practical example. Let us suppose that great social reform,
The Compulsory Haircutting Act, has just begun to be enforced. The Compulso=
ry
Haircutting Act, as every good citizen knows, is a statute which permits an=
y person
to grow his hair to any length, in any wild or wonderful shape, so long as =
he
is registered with a hairdresser who charges a shilling. But it imposes a
universal close-shave (like that which is found so hygienic during a curati=
ve detention
at Dartmoor) on all who are registered only with a barber who charges
threepence. Thus, while the ornamental classes can continue to ornament the
street with Piccadilly weepers or chin-beards if they choose, the working
classes demonstrate the care with which the State protects them by going ab=
out
in a fresher, cooler, and cleaner condition; a condition which has the furt=
her
advantage of revealing at a glance that outline of the criminal skull, whic=
h is
so common among them. The Compulsory Haircutting Act is thus in every way a
compact and convenient example of all our current laws about education, spo=
rt, liquor
and liberty in general. Well, the law has passed and the masses, insensible=
to
its scientific value, are still murmuring against it. The ignorant peasant =
maiden
is averse to so extreme a fashion of bobbing her hair; and does not see how=
she
can even be a flapper with nothing to flap. Her father, his mind already
poisoned by Bolshevists, begins to wonder who the devil does these things, =
and
why. In proportion as he knows the world of to-day, he guesses that the real
origin may be quite obscure, or the real motive quite corrupt. The pressure=
may
have come from anybody who has gained power or money anyhow. It may come fr=
om
the foreign millionaire who owns all the expensive hairdressing saloons; it=
may
come from some swindler in the cutlery trade who has contracted to sell a
million bad razors. Hence the poor man looks about him with suspicion in the
street; knowing that the lowest sneak or the loudest snob he sees may be
directing the government of his country. Anybody may have to do with politi=
cs;
and this sort of thing is politics. Suddenly he catches sight of a crowd,
stops, and begins wildly to cheer a carriage that is passing. The carriage
contains the one person who has certainly not originated any great scientif=
ic
reform. He is the only person in the commonwealth who is not allowed to cut=
off
other people's hair, or to take away other people's liberties. He at least =
is
kept out of politics; and men hold him up as they did an unspotted victim t=
o appease
the wrath of the gods. He is their King, and the only man they know is not
their ruler. We need not be surprised that he is popular, knowing how they =
are
ruled.
The popularity of=
a
President in America is exactly the opposite. The American Republic is the =
last
mediaeval monarchy. It is intended that the President shall rule, and take =
all
the risks of ruling. If the hair is cut he is the haircutter, the magistrate
that bears not the razor in vain. All the popular Presidents, Jackson and
Lincoln and Roosevelt, have acted as democratic despots, but emphatically n=
ot
as constitutional monarchs. In short, the names have become curiously inter=
changed;
and as a historical reality it is the President who ought to be called a Ki=
ng.
But it is not only
true that the President could correctly be called a King. It is also true t=
hat
the King might correctly be called a President. We could hardly find a more
exact description of him than to call him a President. What is expected in
modern times of a modern constitutional monarch is emphatically that he sho=
uld
preside. We expect him to take the throne exactly as if he were taking the
chair. The chairman does not move the motion or resolution, far less vote i=
t;
he is not supposed even to favour it. He is expected to please everybody by=
favouring
nobody. The primary essentials of a President or Chairman are that he shoul=
d be
treated with ceremonial respect, that he should be popular in his personali=
ty
and yet impersonal in his opinions, and that he should actually be a link
between all the other persons by being different from all of them. This is
exactly what is demanded of the constitutional monarch in modern times. It =
is
exactly the opposite to the American position; in which the President does =
not
preside at all. He moves; and the thing he moves may truly be called a moti=
on;
for the national idea is perpetual motion. Technically it is called a messa=
ge; and
might often actually be called a menace. Thus we may truly say that the Kin=
g presides
and the President reigns. Some would prefer to say that the President rules;
and some Senators and members of Congress would prefer to say that he rebel=
s.
But there is no doubt that he moves; he does not take the chair or even the
stool, but rather the stump.
Some people seem =
to
suppose that the fall of President Wilson was a denial of this almost despo=
tic
ideal in America. As a matter of fact it was the strongest possible asserti=
on
of it. The idea is that the President shall take responsibility and risk; a=
nd
responsibility means being blamed, and risk means the risk of being blamed.=
The
theory is that things are done by the President; and if things go wrong, or=
are
alleged to go wrong, it is the fault of the President. This does not invali=
date,
but rather ratifies the comparison with true monarchs such as the mediaeval
monarchs. Constitutional princes are seldom deposed; but despots were often
deposed. In the simpler races of sunnier lands, such as Turkey, they were
commonly assassinated. Even in our own history a King often received the sa=
me
respectful tribute to the responsibility and reality of his office. But King
John was attacked because he was strong, not because he was weak. Richard t=
he
Second lost the crown because the crown was a trophy, not because it was a
trifle. And President Wilson was deposed because he had used a power which =
is
such, in its nature, that a man must use it at the risk of deposition. As a=
matter
of fact, of course, it is easy to exaggerate Mr. Wilson's real unpopularity,
and still more easy to exaggerate Mr. Wilson's real failure. There are a gr=
eat
many people in America who justify and applaud him; and what is yet more
interesting, who justify him not on pacifist and idealistic, but on patriot=
ic
and even military grounds. It is especially insisted by some that his
demonstration, which seemed futile as a threat against Mexico, was a very
far-sighted preparation for the threat against Prussia. But in so far as the
democracy did disagree with him, it was but the occasional and inevitable
result of the theory by which the despot has to anticipate the democracy.
Thus the American
King and the English President are the very opposite of each other; yet they
are both the varied and very national indications of the same contemporary
truth. It is the great weariness and contempt that have fallen upon common
politics in both countries. It may be answered, with some show of truth, th=
at
the new American President represents a return to common politics; and that=
in
that sense he marks a real rebuke to the last President and his more uncomm=
on politics.
And it is true that many who put Mr. Harding in power regard him as the sym=
bol
of something which they call normalcy; which may roughly be translated into
English by the word normality. And by this they do mean, more or less, the
return to the vague capitalist conservatism of the nineteenth century. They
might call Mr. Harding a Victorian if they had ever lived under Victoria.
Perhaps these people do entertain the extraordinary notion that the ninetee=
nth
century was normal. But there are very few who think so, and even they will=
not
think so long. The blunder is the beginning of nearly all our present troub=
les.
The nineteenth century was the very reverse of normal. It suffered a most
unnatural strain in the combination of political equality in theory with
extreme economic inequality in practice. Capitalism was not a normalcy but =
an
abnormalcy. Property is normal, and is more normal in proportion as it is
universal. Slavery may be normal and even natural, in the sense that a bad
habit may be second nature. But Capitalism was never anything so human as a
habit; we may say it was never anything so good as a bad habit. It was neve=
r a
custom; for men never grew accustomed to it. It was never even conservative;
for before it was even created wise men had realised that it could not be c=
onserved.
It was from the first a problem; and those who will not even admit the
Capitalist problem deserve to get the Bolshevist solution. All things
considered, I cannot say anything worse of them than that.
The recent
Presidential election preserved some trace of the old Party System of Ameri=
ca;
but its tradition has very nearly faded like that of the Party System of
England. It is easy for an Englishman to confess that he never quite unders=
tood
the American Party System. It would perhaps be more courageous in him, and =
more
informing, to confess that he never really understood the British Party Sys=
tem.
The planks in the two American platforms may easily be exhibited as very
disconnected and ramshackle; but our own party was as much of a patchwork, =
and
indeed I think even more so. Everybody knows that the two American factions
were called 'Democrat' and 'Republican.' It does not at all cover the case =
to identify
the former with Liberals and the latter with Conservatives. The Democrats a=
re
the party of the South and have some true tradition from the Southern
aristocracy and the defence of Secession and State Rights. The Republicans =
rose
in the North as the party of Lincoln, largely condemning slavery. But the
Republicans are also the party of Tariffs, and are at least accused of being
the party of Trusts. The Democrats are the party of Free Trade; and in the
great movement of twenty years ago the party of Free Silver. The Democrats =
are
also the party of the Irish; and the stones they throw at Trusts are retort=
ed
by stones thrown at Tammany. It is easy to see all these things as curiously
sporadic and bewildering; but I am inclined to think that they are as a who=
le
more coherent and rational than our own old division of Liberals and Conser=
vatives.
There is even more doubt nowadays about what is the connecting link between=
the
different items in the old British party programmes. I have never been able=
to
understand why being in favour of Protection should have anything to do with
being opposed to Home Rule; especially as most of the people who were to
receive Home Rule were themselves in favour of Protection. I could never see
what giving people cheap bread had to do with forbidding them cheap beer; or
why the party which sympathises with Ireland cannot sympathise with Poland.=
I
cannot see why Liberals did not liberate public-houses or Conservatives con=
serve
crofters. I do not understand the principle upon which the causes were sele=
cted
on both sides; and I incline to think that it was with the impartial object=
of
distributing nonsense equally on both sides. Heaven knows there is enough
nonsense in American politics too; towering and tropical nonsense like a
cyclone or an earthquake. But when all is said, I incline to think that the=
re
was more spiritual and atmospheric cohesion in the different parts of the
American party than in those of the English party; and I think this unity w=
as
all the more real because it was more difficult to define. The Republican p=
arty
originally stood for the triumph of the North, and the North stood for the
nineteenth century; that is for the characteristic commercial expansion of =
the
nineteenth century; for a firm faith in the profit and progress of its great
and growing cities, its division of labour, its industrial science, and its
evolutionary reform. The Democratic party stood more loosely for all the
elements that doubted whether this development was democratic or was desira=
ble;
all that looked back to Jeffersonian idealism and the serene abstractions of
the eighteenth century, or forward to Bryanite idealism and some simplified
Utopia founded on grain rather than gold. Along with this went, not at all =
unnaturally,
the last and lingering sentiment of the Southern squires, who remembered a =
more
rural civilisation that seemed by comparison romantic. Along with this went,
quite logically, the passions and the pathos of the Irish, themselves a rur=
al
civilisation, whose basis is a religion or what the nineteenth century tend=
ed
to call a superstition. Above all, it was perfectly natural that this tone =
of
thought should favour local liberties, and even a revolt on behalf of local
liberties, and should distrust the huge machine of centralised power called=
the
Union. In short, something very near the truth was said by a suicidally sil=
ly
Republican orator, who was running Blaine for the Presidency, when he denou=
nced
the Democratic party as supported by 'Rome, rum, and rebellion.' They seem =
to
me to be three excellent things in their place; and that is why I suspect t=
hat
I should have belonged to the Democratic party, if I had been born in Ameri=
ca
when there was a Democratic party. But I fancy that by this time even this
general distinction has become very dim. If I had been an American twenty y=
ears
ago, in the time of the great Free Silver campaign, I should certainly never
have hesitated for an instant about my sympathies or my side. My feelings w=
ould
have been exactly those that are nobly expressed by Mr. Vachell Lindsay, in=
a
poem bearing the characteristic title of 'Bryan, Bryan, Bryan, Bryan.' And,=
by
the way, nobody can begin to sympathise with America whose soul does not to
some extent begin to swing and dance to the drums and gongs of Mr. Vachell
Lindsay's great orchestra; which has the note of his whole nation in this: =
that
a refined person can revile it a hundred times over as violent and brazen a=
nd
barbarous and absurd, but not as insincere; there is something in it, and t=
hat
something is the soul of many million men. But the poet himself, in the
political poem referred to, speaks of Bryan's fall over Free Silver as 'def=
eat
of my boyhood, defeat of my dream'; and it is only too probable that the ca=
use
has fallen as well as the candidate. The William Jennings Bryan of later ye=
ars
is not the man whom I should have seen in my youth, with the visionary eyes=
of
Mr. Vachell Lindsay. He has become a commonplace Pacifist, which is in its =
nature
the very opposite of a revolutionist; for if men will fight rather than sac=
rifice
humanity on a golden cross, it cannot be wrong for them to resist its being
sacrificed to an iron cross. I came into very indirect contact with Mr. Bry=
an
when I was in America, in a fashion that made me realise how hard it has be=
come
to recover the illusions of a Bryanite. I believe that my lecture agent was
anxious to arrange a debate, and I threw out a sort of loose challenge to t=
he
effect that woman's suffrage had weakened the position of woman; and while I
was away in the wilds of Oklahoma my lecture agent (a man of blood-curdling=
courage
and enterprise) asked Mr. Bryan to debate with me. Now Mr. Bryan is one of =
the
greatest orators of modern history, and there is no conceivable reason why =
he
should trouble to debate with a wandering lecturer. But as a matter of fact=
he
expressed himself in the most magnanimous and courteous terms about my pers=
onal
position, but said (as I understood) that it would be improper to debate on
female suffrage as it was already a part of the political system. And when I
heard that, I could not help a sigh; for I recognised something that I knew
only too well on the front benches of my own beloved land. The great and
glorious demagogue had degenerated into a statesman. I had never expected f=
or a
moment that the great orator could be bothered to debate with me at all; bu=
t it
had never occurred to me, as a general moral principle, that two educated m=
en
were for ever forbidden to talk sense about a particular topic, because a l=
ot
of other people had already voted on it. What is the matter with that attit=
ude
is the loss of the freedom of the mind. There can be no liberty of thought
unless it is ready to unsettle what has recently been settled, as well as w=
hat
has long been settled. We are perpetually being told in the papers that wha=
t is
wanted is a strong man who will do things. What is wanted is a strong man w=
ho
will undo things; and that will be a real test of strength.
Anyhow, we could =
have
believed, in the time of the Free Silver fight, that the Democratic party w=
as
democratic with a small d. In Mr. Wilson it was transfigured, his friends w=
ould
say into a higher and his foes into a hazier thing. And the Republican reac=
tion
against him, even where it has been healthy, has also been hazy. In fact, it
has been not so much the victory of a political party as a relapse into rep=
ose
after certain political passions; and in that sense there is a truth in the=
strange
phrase about normalcy; in the sense that there is nothing more normal than
going to sleep. But an even larger truth is this; it is most likely that
America is no longer concentrated on these faction fights at all, but is
considering certain large problems upon which those factions hardly trouble=
d to
take sides. They are too large even to be classified as foreign policy dist=
inct
from domestic policy. They are so large as to be inside as well as outside =
the
state. From an English standpoint the most obvious example is the Irish; for
the Irish problem is not a British problem, but also an American problem. A=
nd
this is true even of the great external enigma of Japan. The Japanese quest=
ion
may be a part of foreign policy for America, but it is a part of domestic
policy for California. And the same is true of that other intense and
intelligent Eastern people, the genius and limitations of which have troubl=
ed
the world so much longer. What the Japs are in California, the Jews are in =
America.
That is, they are a piece of foreign policy that has become imbedded in
domestic policy; something which is found inside but still has to be regard=
ed
from the outside. On these great international matters I doubt if Americans=
got
much guidance from their party system; especially as most of these questions
have grown very recently and rapidly to enormous size. Men are left free to
judge of them with fresh minds. And that is the truth in the statement that=
the
Washington Conference has opened the gates of a new world.
On the relations =
to
England and Ireland I will not attempt to dwell adequately here. I have alr=
eady
noted that my first interview was with an Irishman, and my first impression
from that interview a vivid sense of the importance of Ireland in
Anglo-American relations; and I have said something of the Irish problem,
prematurely and out of its proper order, under the stress of that sense of
urgency. Here I will only add two remarks about the two countries respectiv=
ely.
A great many British journalists have recently imagined that they were pour=
ing
oil upon the troubled waters, when they were rather pouring out oil to smoo=
th
the downward path; and to turn the broad road to destruction into a butter-=
slide.
They seem to have no notion of what to do, except to say what they imagine =
the
very stupidest of their readers would be pleased to hear, and conceal whate=
ver
the most intelligent of their readers would probably like to know. They
therefore informed the public that 'the majority of Americans' had abandoned
all sympathy with Ireland, because of its alleged sympathy with Germany; and
that this majority of Americans was now ardently in sympathy with its Engli=
sh
brothers across the sea. Now to begin with, such critics have no notion of =
what
they are saying when they talk about the majority of Americans. To anybody =
who has
happened to look in, let us say, on the city of Omaha, Nebraska, the remark
will have something enormous and overwhelming about it. It is like saying t=
hat
the majority of the inhabitants of China would agree with the Chinese
Ambassador in a preference for dining at the Savoy rather than the Ritz. Th=
ere
are millions and millions of people living in those great central plains of=
the
North American Continent of whom it would be nearer the truth to say that t=
hey
have never heard of England, or of Ireland either, than to say that their f=
irst
emotional movement is a desire to come to the rescue of either of them. It =
is perfectly
true that the more monomaniac sort of Sinn Feiner might sometimes irritate =
this
innocent and isolated American spirit by being pro-Irish. It is equally true
that a traditional Bostonian or Virginian might irritate it by being
pro-English. The only difference is that large numbers of pure Irishmen are
scattered in those far places, and large numbers of pure Englishmen are not.
But it is truest of all to say that neither England nor Ireland so much as
crosses the mind of most of them once in six months. Painting up large noti=
ces
of 'Watch Us Grow,' making money by farming with machinery, together with an
occasional hold-up with six-shooters and photographs of a beautiful murdere=
ss
or divorcée, fill up the round of their good and happy lives, and fl=
eet
the time carelessly as in the golden age.
But putting aside=
all
this vast and distant democracy, which is the real 'majority of Americans,'=
and
confining ourselves to that older culture on the eastern coast which the cr=
itics
probably had in mind, we shall find the case more comforting but not to be
covered with cheap and false comfort. Now it is perfectly true that any
Englishman coming to this eastern coast, as I did, finds himself not only m=
ost
warmly welcomed as a guest, but most cordially complimented as an Englishma=
n.
Men recall with pride the branches of their family that belong to England or
the English counties where they were rooted; and there are enthusiasms for =
English
literature and history which are as spontaneous as patriotism itself. Somet=
hing
of this may be put down to a certain promptitude and flexibility in all
American kindness, which is never sufficiently stodgy to be called good nat=
ure.
The Englishman does sometimes wonder whether if he had been a Russian, his
hosts would not have remembered remote Russian aunts and uncles and disinte=
rred
a Muscovite great-grandmother; or whether if he had come from Iceland, they
would not have known as much about Icelandic sagas and been as sympathetic
about the absence of Icelandic snakes. But with a fair review of the
proportions of the case he will dismiss this conjecture, and come to the
conclusion that a number of educated Americans are very warmly and sincerely
sympathetic with England.
What I began to f=
eel,
with a certain creeping chill, was that they were only too sympathetic with
England. The word sympathetic has sometimes rather a double sense. The
impression I received was that all these chivalrous Southerners and men mel=
low
with Bostonian memories were rallying to England. They were on the defensiv=
e;
and it was poor old England that they were defending. Their attitude implied
that somebody or something was leaving her undefended, or finding her
indefensible. The burden of that hearty chorus was that England was not so
black as she was painted; it seemed clear that somewhere or other she was b=
eing
painted pretty black. But there was something else that made me uncomfortab=
le;
it was not only the sense of being somewhat boisterously forgiven; it was a=
lso
something involving questions of power as well as morality. Then it seemed =
to
me that a new sensation turned me hot and cold; and I felt something I have
never before felt in a foreign land. Never had my father or my grandfather
known that sensation; never during the great and complex and perhaps perilo=
us
expansion of our power and commerce in the last hundred years had an Englis=
hman
heard exactly that note in a human voice. England was being pitied. I, as an
Englishman, was not only being pardoned but pitied. My country was beginnin=
g to
be an object of compassion, like Poland or Spain. My first emotion, full of=
the
mood and movement of a hundred years, was one of furious anger. But the ang=
er
has given place to anxiety; and the anxiety is not yet at an end.
It is not my busi=
ness
here to expound my view of English politics, still less of European politic=
s or
the politics of the world; but to put down a few impressions of American
travel. On many points of European politics the impression will be purely
negative; I am sure that most Americans have no notion of the position of
France or the position of Poland. But if English readers want the truth, I =
am
sure this is the truth about their notion of the position of England. They =
are
wondering, or those who are watching are wondering, whether the term of her
success is come and she is going down the dark road after Prussia. Many are=
sorry
if this is so; some are glad if it is so; but all are seriously considering=
the
probability of its being so. And herein lay especially the horrible folly of
our Black-and-Tan terrorism over the Irish people. I have noted that the
newspapers told us that America had been chilled in its Irish sympathies by
Irish detachment during the war. It is the painful truth that any advantage=
we
might have had from this we ourselves immediately proceeded to destroy. Ire=
land
might have put herself wrong with America by her attitude about Belgium, if
England had not instantly proceeded to put herself more wrong by her attitu=
de towards
Ireland. It is quite true that two blacks do not make a white; but you cann=
ot
send a black to reproach people with tolerating blackness; and this is quit=
e as
true when one is a Black Brunswicker and the other a Black-and-Tan. It is t=
rue
that since then England has made surprisingly sweeping concessions; concess=
ions
so large as to increase the amazement that the refusal should have been so
long. But unfortunately the combination of the two rather clinches the
conception of our decline. If the concession had come before the terror, it
would have looked like an attempt to emancipate, and would probably have su=
cceeded.
Coming so abruptly after the terror, it looked only like an attempt to
tyrannise, and an attempt that failed. It was partly an inheritance from a
stupid tradition, which tried to combine what it called firmness with what =
it
called conciliation; as if when we made up our minds to soothe a man with a
five-pound note, we always took care to undo our own action by giving him a
kick as well. The English politician has often done that; though there is
nothing to be said of such a fool, except that he has wasted a fiver. But in
this case he gave the kick first, received a kicking in return, and then ga=
ve
up the money; and it was hard for the bystanders to say anything except tha=
t he
had been badly beaten. The combination and sequence of events seems almost =
as
if it were arranged to suggest the dark and ominous parallel. The first act=
ion
looked only too like the invasion of Belgium, and the second like the
evacuation of Belgium. So that vast and silent crowd in the West looked at =
the
British Empire, as men look at a great tower that has begun to lean. Thus it
was that while I found real pleasure, I could not find unrelieved consolati=
on
in the sincere compliments paid to my country by so many cultivated America=
ns;
their memories of homely corners of historic counties from which their fath=
ers
came, of the cathedral that dwarfs the town, or the inn at the turning of t=
he
road. There was something in their voices and the look in their eyes which =
from
the first disturbed me. So I have heard good Englishmen, who died afterwards
the death of soldiers, cry aloud in 1914, 'It seems impossible, of those jo=
lly
Bavarians!' or, 'I will never believe it, when I think of the time I had at
Heidelberg!'
But there are oth=
er
things besides the parallel of Prussia or the problem of Ireland. The Ameri=
can
press is much freer than our own; the American public is much more familiar
with the discussion of corruption than our own; and it is much more conscio=
us
of the corruption of our politics than we are. Almost any man in America may
speak of the Marconi Case; many a man in England does not even know what it
means. Many imagine that it had something to do with the propriety of
politicians speculating on the Stock Exchange. So that it means a great dea=
l to
Americans to say that one figure in that drama is ruling India and another =
is
ruling Palestine. And this brings me to another problem, which is also dealt
with much more openly in America than in England. I mention it here only
because it is a perfect model of the misunderstandings in the modern world.=
If
any one asks for an example of exactly how the important part of every stor=
y is
left out, and even the part that is reported is not understood, he could ha=
rdly
have a stronger case than the story of Henry Ford of Detroit.
When I was in Det=
roit
I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ford, and it really was a pleasure. He is=
a
man quite capable of views which I think silly to the point of insanity; bu=
t he
is not the vulgar benevolent boss. It must be admitted that he is a
millionaire; but he cannot really be convicted of being a philanthropist. H=
e is
not a man who merely wants to run people; it is rather his views that run h=
im,
and perhaps run away with him. He has a distinguished and sensitive face; he
really invented things himself, unlike most men who profit by inventions; h=
e is
something of an artist and not a little of a fighter. A man of that type is
always capable of being wildly wrong, especially in the sectarian atmospher=
e of
America; and Mr. Ford has been wrong before and may be wrong now. He is chi=
efly
known in England for a project which I think very preposterous; that of the
Peace Ship, which came to Europe during the war. But he is not known in Eng=
land
at all in connection with a much more important campaign, which he has
conducted much more recently and with much more success; a campaign against=
the
Jews like one of the Anti-Semitic campaigns of the Continent. Now any one w=
ho
knows anything of America knows exactly what the Peace Ship would be like. =
It
was a national combination of imagination and ignorance, which has at least=
some
of the beauty of innocence. Men living in those huge, hedgeless inland plai=
ns
know nothing about frontiers or the tragedy of a fight for freedom; they kn=
ow
nothing of alarum and armaments or the peril of a high civilisation poised =
like
a precious statue within reach of a mailed fist. They are accustomed to a
cosmopolitan citizenship, in which men of all bloods mingle and in which me=
n of
all creeds are counted equal. Their highest moral boast is humanitarianism;
their highest mental boast is enlightenment. In a word, they are the very l=
ast
men in the world who would seem likely to pride themselves on a prejudice
against the Jews. They have no religion in particular, except a sincere
sentiment which they would call 'true Christianity,' and which specially
forbids an attack on the Jews. They have a patriotism which prides itself o=
n assimilating
all types, including the Jews. Mr. Ford is a pure product of this pacific
world, as was sufficiently proved by his pacifism. If a man of that sort has
discovered that there is a Jewish problem, it is because there is a Jewish
problem. It is certainly not because there is an Anti-Jewish prejudice. For=
if
there had been any amount of such racial and religious prejudice, he would =
have
been about the very last sort of man to have it. His particular part of the
world would have been the very last place to produce it. We may well laugh =
at
the Peace Ship, and its wild course and inevitable shipwreck; but remember =
that
its very wildness was an attempt to sail as far as possible from the castle=
of Front-de-Boeuf.
Everything that made him Anti-War should have prevented him from being
Anti-Semite. We may mock him for being mad on peace; but we cannot say that=
he
was so mad on peace that he made war on Israel.
It happened that,
when I was in America, I had just published some studies on Palestine; and I
was besieged by Rabbis lamenting my 'prejudice.' I pointed out that they wo=
uld
have got hold of the wrong word, even if they had not got hold of the wrong
man. As a point of personal autobiography, I do not happen to be a man who
dislikes Jews; though I believe that some men do. I have had Jews among my =
most
intimate and faithful friends since my boyhood, and I hope to have them til=
l I
die. But even if I did have a dislike of Jews, it would be illogical to call
that dislike a prejudice. Prejudice is a very lucid Latin word meaning the =
bias
which a man has before he considers a case. I might be said to be prejudiced
against a Hairy Ainu because of his name, for I have never been on terms of
such intimacy with him as to correct my preconceptions. But if after moving
about in the modern world and meeting Jews, knowing Jews, doing business wi=
th
Jews, and reading and hearing about Jews, I came to the conclusion that I d=
id
not like Jews, my conclusion certainly would not be a prejudice. It would
simply be an opinion; and one I should be perfectly entitled to hold; thoug=
h as
a matter of fact I do not hold it. No extravagance of hatred merely followi=
ng
on experience of Jews can properly be called a prejudice.
Now the point is =
that
this new American Anti-Semitism springs from experience and nothing but
experience. There is no prejudice for it to spring from. Or rather the
prejudice is all the other way. All the traditions of that democracy, and v=
ery
creditable traditions too, are in favour of toleration and a sort of ideali=
stic
indifference. The sympathies in which these nineteenth-century people were
reared were all against Front-de-Boeuf and in favour of Rebecca. They inher=
ited
a prejudice against Anti-Semitism; a prejudice of Anti-Anti-Semitism. These
people of the plains have found the Jewish problem exactly as they might ha=
ve
struck oil; because it is there, and not even because they were looking for=
it.
Their view of the problem, like their use of the oil, is not always
satisfactory; and with parts of it I entirely disagree. But the point is th=
at
the thing which I call a problem, and others call a prejudice, has now appe=
ared
in broad daylight in a new country where there is no priestcraft, no feudal=
ism,
no ancient superstition to explain it. It has appeared because it is a prob=
lem;
and those are the best friends of the Jews, including many of the Jews them=
selves,
who are trying to find a solution. That is the meaning of the incident of M=
r.
Henry Ford of Detroit; and you will hardly hear an intelligible word about =
it
in England.
The talk of preju=
dice
against the Japs is not unlike the talk of prejudice against the Jews. Only=
in
this case our indifference has really the excuse of ignorance. We used to
lecture the Russians for oppressing the Jews, before we heard the word
Bolshevist and began to lecture them for being oppressed by the Jews. In the
same way we have long lectured the Californians for oppressing the Japs,
without allowing for the possibility of their foreseeing that the oppression
may soon be the other way. As in the other case, it may be a persecution bu=
t it
is not a prejudice. The Californians know more about the Japanese than we d=
o;
and our own colonists when they are placed in the same position generally s=
ay
the same thing. I will not attempt to deal adequately here with the vast
international and diplomatic problems which arise with the name of the new
power in the Far East. It is possible that Japan, having imitated European
militarism, may imitate European pacifism. I cannot honestly pretend to know
what the Japanese mean by the one any more than by the other. But when
Englishmen, especially English Liberals like myself, take a superior and
censorious attitude towards Americans and especially Californians, I am mov=
ed
to make a final remark. When a considerable number of Englishmen talk of the
grave contending claims of our friendship with Japan and our friendship with
America, when they finally tend in a sort of summing up to dwell on the
superior virtues of Japan, I may be permitted to make a single comment.
We are perpetually
boring the world and each other with talk about the bonds that bind us to
America. We are perpetually crying aloud that England and America are very =
much
alike, especially England. We are always insisting that the two are identic=
al
in all the things in which they most obviously differ. We are always saying
that both stand for democracy, when we should not consent to stand their
democracy for half a day. We are always saying that at least we are all
Anglo-Saxons, when we are descended from Romans and Normans and Britons and
Danes, and they are descended from Irishmen and Italians and Slavs and Germ=
ans.
We tell a people whose very existence is a revolt against the British Crown
that they are passionately devoted to the British Constitution. We tell a n=
ation
whose whole policy has been isolation and independence that with us she can
bear safely the White Man's Burden of universal empire. We tell a continent
crowded with Irishmen to thank God that the Saxon can always rule the Celt.=
We
tell a populace whose very virtues are lawless that together we uphold the
Reign of Law. We recognise our own law-abiding character in people who make
laws that neither they nor anybody else can abide. We congratulate them on
clinging to all they have cast away, and on imitating everything which they
came into existence to insult. And when we have established all these
nonsensical analogies with a nonexistent nation, we wait until there is a
crisis in which we really are at one with America, and then we falter and
threaten to fail her. In a battle where we really are of one blood, the blo=
od
of the great white race throughout the world, when we really have one langu=
age,
the fundamental alphabet of Cadmus and the script of Rome, when we really do
represent the same reign of law, the common conscience of Christendom and t=
he
morals of men baptized, when we really have an implicit faith and honour and
type of freedom to summon up our souls as with trumpets--then many of us be=
gin
to weaken and waver and wonder whether there is not something very nice abo=
ut
little yellow men, whose heroic stories revolve round polygamy and suicide,=
and
whose heroes wore two swords and worshipped the ancestors of the Mikado.
Prohibition in Fact and F=
ancy
I went to America with some notion =
of not
discussing Prohibition. But I soon found that well-to-do Americans were only
too delighted to discuss it over the nuts and wine. They were even willing,=
if
necessary, to dispense with the nuts. I am far from sneering at this; havin=
g a
general philosophy which need not here be expounded, but which may be
symbolised by saying that monkeys can enjoy nuts but only men can enjoy win=
e.
But if I am to deal with Prohibition, there is no doubt of the first thing =
to
be said about it. The first thing to be said about it is that it does not
exist. It is to some extent enforced among the poor; at any rate it was
intended to be enforced among the poor; though even among them I fancy it is
much evaded. It is certainly not enforced among the rich; and I doubt wheth=
er
it was intended to be. I suspect that this has always happened whenever this
negative notion has taken hold of some particular province or tribe.
Prohibition never prohibits. It never has in history; not even in Moslem
history; and it never will. Mahomet at least had the argument of a climate =
and
not the interest of a class. But if a test is needed, consider what part of
Moslem culture has passed permanently into our own modern culture. You will
find the one Moslem poem that has really pierced is a Moslem poem in praise=
of
wine. The crown of all the victories of the Crescent is that nobody reads t=
he Koran
and everybody reads the Rubaiyat.
Most of us rememb=
er
with satisfaction an old picture in Punch, representing a festive old gentl=
eman
in a state of collapse on the pavement, and a philanthropic old lady anxiou=
sly
calling the attention of a cabman to the calamity. The old lady says, 'I'm =
sure
this poor gentleman is ill,' and the cabman replies with fervour, 'Ill! I w=
ish
I 'ad 'alf 'is complaint.'
We talk about
unconscious humour; but there is such a thing as unconscious seriousness.
Flippancy is a flower whose roots are often underground in the
subconsciousness. Many a man talks sense when he thinks he is talking nonse=
nse;
touches on a conflict of ideas as if it were only a contradiction of langua=
ge, or
really makes a parallel when he means only to make a pun. Some of the Punch
jokes of the best period are examples of this; and that quoted above is a v=
ery
strong example of it. The cabman meant what he said; but he said a great de=
al more
than he meant. His utterance contained fine philosophical doctrines and
distinctions of which he was not perhaps entirely conscious. The spirit of =
the
English language, the tragedy and comedy of the condition of the English
people, spoke through him as the god spoke through a teraph-head or brazen =
mask
of oracle. And the oracle is an omen; and in some sense an omen of doom.
Observe, to begin
with, the sobriety of the cabman. Note his measure, his moderation; or to u=
se
the yet truer term, his temperance. He only wishes to have half the old
gentleman's complaint. The old gentleman is welcome to the other half, along
with all the other pomps and luxuries of his superior social station. There=
is
nothing Bolshevist or even Communist about the temperance cabman. He might
almost be called Distributist, in the sense that he wishes to distribute the
old gentleman's complaint more equally between the old gentleman and himsel=
f.
And, of course, the social relations there represented are very much truer =
to
life than it is fashionable to suggest. By the realism of this picture Mr.
Punch made amends for some more snobbish pictures, with the opposite social
moral. It will remain eternally among his real glories that he exhibited a
picture in which the cabman was sober and the gentleman was drunk. Despite =
many
ideas to the contrary, it was emphatically a picture of real life. The trut=
h is
subject to the simplest of all possible tests. If the cabman were really and
truly drunk he would not be a cabman, for he could not drive a cab. If he h=
ad the
whole of the old gentleman's complaint, he would be sitting happily on the
pavement beside the old gentleman; a symbol of social equality found at las=
t,
and the levelling of all classes of mankind. I do not say that there has ne=
ver
been such a monster known as a drunken cabman; I do not say that the driver=
may
not sometimes have approximated imprudently to three-quarters of the compla=
int,
instead of adhering to his severe but wise conception of half of it. But I =
do
say that most men of the world, if they spoke sincerely, could testify to m=
ore
examples of helplessly drunken gentlemen put inside cabs than of helplessly
drunken drivers on top of them. Philanthropists and officials, who never lo=
ok
at people but only at papers, probably have a mass of social statistics to =
the
contrary; founded on the simple fact that cabmen can be cross-examined about
their habits and gentlemen cannot. Social workers probably have the whole t=
hing
worked out in sections and compartments, showing how the extreme intoxicati=
on
of cabmen compares with the parallel intoxication of costermongers; or
measuring the drunkenness of a dustman against the drunkenness of a
crossing-sweeper. But there is more practical experience embodied in the
practical speech of the English; and in the proverb that says 'as drunk as a
lord.'
Now Prohibition,
whether as a proposal in England or a pretence in America, simply means that
the man who has drunk less shall have no drink, and the man who has drunk m=
ore
shall have all the drink. It means that the old gentleman shall be carried =
home
in the cab drunker than ever; but that, in order to make it quite safe for =
him
to drink to excess, the man who drives him shall be forbidden to drink even=
in moderation.
That is what it means; that is all it means; that is all it ever will mean.=
It
tends to that in Moslem countries; where the luxurious and advanced drink
champagne, while the poor and fanatical drink water. It means that in modern
America; where the wealthy are all at this moment sipping their cocktails, =
and
discussing how much harder labourers can be made to work if only they can be
kept from festivity. This is what it means and all it means; and men are
divided about it according to whether they believe in a certain transcenden=
tal
concept called 'justice,' expressed in a more mystical paradox as the equal=
ity of
men. So long as you do not believe in justice, and so long as you are rich =
and
really confident of remaining so, you can have Prohibition and be as drunk =
as
you choose.
I see that some
remarks by the Rev. R. J. Campbell, dealing with social conditions in Ameri=
ca,
are reported in the press. They include some observations about Sinn Fein in
which, as in most of Mr. Campbell's allusions to Ireland, it is not difficu=
lt
to detect his dismal origin, or the acrid smell of the smoke of Belfast. But
the remarks about America are valuable in the objective sense, over and abo=
ve
their philosophy. He believes that Prohibition will survive and be a succes=
s, nor
does he seem himself to regard the prospect with any special disfavour. But=
he
frankly and freely testifies to the truth I have asserted; that Prohibition
does not prohibit, so far as the wealthy are concerned. He testifies to
constantly seeing wine on the table, as will any other grateful guest of the
generous hospitality of America; and he implies humorously that he asked no
questions about the story told him of the old stocks in the cellars. So the=
re
is no dispute about the facts; and we come back as before to the principles=
. Is
Mr. Campbell content with a Prohibition which is another name for Privilege=
? If
so, he has simply absorbed along with his new theology a new morality which=
is
different from mine. But he does state both sides of the inequality with eq=
ual
logic and clearness; and in these days of intellectual fog that alone is li=
ke a
ray of sunshine.
Now my primary
objection to Prohibition is not based on any arguments against it, but on t=
he
one argument for it. I need nothing more for its condemnation than the only
thing that is said in its defence. It is said by capitalists all over Ameri=
ca;
and it is very clearly and correctly reported by Mr. Campbell himself. The
argument is that employees work harder, and therefore employers get richer.
That this idea should be taken calmly, by itself, as the test of a problem =
of
liberty, is in itself a final testimony to the presence of slavery. It shows
that people have completely forgotten that there is any other test except t=
he servile
test. Employers are willing that workmen should have exercise, as it may he=
lp
them to do more work. They are even willing that workmen should have leisur=
e;
for the more intelligent capitalists can see that this also really means th=
at
they can do more work. But they are not in any way willing that workmen sho=
uld
have fun; for fun only increases the happiness and not the utility of the
worker. Fun is freedom; and in that sense is an end in itself. It concerns =
the
man not as a worker but as a citizen, or even as a soul; and the soul in th=
at
sense is an end in itself. That a man shall have a reasonable amount of com=
edy
and poetry and even fantasy in his life is part of his spiritual health, wh=
ich
is for the service of God; and not merely for his mechanical health, which =
is
now bound to the service of man. The very test adopted has all the servile
implication; the test of what we can get out of him, instead of the test of
what he can get out of life.
Mr. Campbell is
reported to have suggested, doubtless rather as a conjecture than a prophec=
y,
that England may find it necessary to become teetotal in order to compete
commercially with the efficiency and economy of teetotal America. Well, in =
the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries there was in America one of the m=
ost
economical and efficient of all forms of labour. It did not happen to be
feasible for the English to compete with it by copying it. There were so ma=
ny humanitarian
prejudices about in those days. But economically there seems to be no reason
why a man should not have prophesied that England would be forced to adopt
American Slavery then, as she is urged to adopt American Prohibition now.
Perhaps such a prophet would have prophesied rightly. Certainly it is not
impossible that universal Slavery might have been the vision of Calhoun as
universal Prohibition seems to be the vision of Campbell. The old England of
1830 would have said that such a plea for slavery was monstrous; but what w=
ould
it have said of a plea for enforced water-drinking? Nevertheless, the nobler
Servile State of Calhoun collapsed before it could spread to Europe. And th=
ere
is always the hope that the same may happen to the far more materialistic
Utopia of Mr. Campbell and Soft Drinks.
Abstract morality=
is
very important; and it may well clear the mind to consider what would be the
effect of Prohibition in America, if it were introduced there. It would, of
course, be a decisive departure from the tradition of the Declaration of
Independence. Those who deny that are hardly serious enough to demand
attention. It is enough to say that they are reduced to minimising that
document in defence of Prohibition, exactly as the slave-owners were reduce=
d to
minimising it in defence of Slavery. They are reduced to saying that the
Fathers of the Republic meant no more than that they would not be ruled by a
king. And they are obviously open to the reply which Lincoln gave to Dougla=
s on
the slavery question; that if that great charter was limited to certain eve=
nts
in the eighteenth century, it was hardly worth making such a fuss about in =
the
nineteenth--or in the twentieth. But they are also open to another reply wh=
ich
is even more to the point, when they pretend that Jefferson's famous preamb=
le
only means to say that monarchy is wrong. They are maintaining that Jeffers=
on
only meant to say something that he does not say at all. The great preamble
does not say that all monarchical government must be wrong; on the contrary=
, it
rather implies that most government is right. It speaks of human government=
s in
general as justified by the necessity of defending certain personal rights.=
I see
no reason whatever to suppose that it would not include any royal government
that does defend those rights. Still less do I doubt what it would say of a
republican government that does destroy those rights.
But what are those
rights? Sophists can always debate about their degree; but even sophists ca=
nnot
debate about their direction. Nobody in his five wits will deny that
Jeffersonian democracy wished to give the law a general control in more pub=
lic
things, but the citizens a more general liberty in private things. Wherever=
we
draw the line, liberty can only be personal liberty; and the most personal
liberties must at least be the last liberties we lose. But to-day they are =
the
first liberties we lose. It is not a question of drawing the line in the ri=
ght place,
but of beginning at the wrong end. What are the rights of man, if they do n=
ot
include the normal right to regulate his own health, in relation to the nor=
mal
risks of diet and daily life? Nobody can pretend that beer is a poison as
prussic acid is a poison; that all the millions of civilised men who drank =
it
all fell down dead when they had touched it. Its use and abuse is obviously=
a
matter of judgment; and there can be no personal liberty, if it is not a ma=
tter
of private judgment. It is not in the least a question of drawing the line
between liberty and licence. If this is licence, there is no such thing as
liberty. It is plainly impossible to find any right more individual or
intimate. To say that a man has a right to a vote, but not a right to a voi=
ce
about the choice of his dinner, is like saying that he has a right to his h=
at
but not a right to his head.
Prohibition,
therefore, plainly violates the rights of man, if there are any rights of m=
an.
What its supporters really mean is that there are none. And in suggesting t=
his,
they have all the advantages that every sceptic has when he supports a
negation. That sort of ultimate scepticism can only be retorted upon itself,
and we can point out to them that they can no more prove the right of the c=
ity
to be oppressive than we can prove the right of the citizen to be free. In =
the
primary metaphysics of such a claim, it would surely be easier to make it o=
ut for
a single conscious soul than for an artificial social combination. If there=
are
no rights of men, what are the rights of nations? Perhaps a nation has no c=
laim
to self-government. Perhaps it has no claim to good government. Perhaps it =
has
no claim to any sort of government or any sort of independence. Perhaps they
will say that is not implied in the Declaration of Independence. But without
going deep into my reasons for believing in natural rights, or rather in
supernatural rights (and Jefferson certainly states them as supernatural), =
I am
content here to note that a man's treatment of his own body, in relation to
traditional and ordinary opportunities for bodily excess, is as near to his=
self-respect
as social coercion can possibly go; and that when that is gone there is not=
hing
left. If coercion applies to that, it applies to everything; and in the fut=
ure
of this controversy it obviously will apply to everything. When I was in
America, people were already applying it to tobacco. I never can see why th=
ey
should not apply it to talking. Talking often goes with tobacco as it goes =
with
beer; and what is more relevant, talking may often lead both to beer and
tobacco. Talking often drives a man to drink, both negatively in the form of
nagging and positively in the form of bad company. If the American Puritan =
is
so anxious to be a censor morum, he should obviously put a stop to the evil
communications that really corrupt good manners. He should reintroduce the
Scold's Bridle among the other Blue Laws for a land of blue devils. He shou=
ld
gag all gay deceivers and plausible cynics; he should cut off all flattering
lips and the tongue that speaketh proud things. Nobody can doubt that
nine-tenths of the harm in the world is done simply by talking. Jefferson a=
nd
the old democrats allowed people to talk, not because they were unaware of =
this
fact, but because they were fettered by this old fancy of theirs about free=
dom
and the rights of man. But since we have already abandoned that doctrine in=
a
final fashion, I cannot see why the new principle should not be applied int=
elligently;
and in that case it would be applied to the control of conversation. The St=
ate
would provide us with forms already filled up with the subjects suitable fo=
r us
to discuss at breakfast; perhaps allowing us a limited number of epigrams e=
ach.
Perhaps we should have to make a formal application in writing, to be allow=
ed
to make a joke that had just occurred to us in conversation. And the commit=
tee
would consider it in due course. Perhaps it would be effected in a more pra=
ctical
fashion, and the private citizens would be shut up as the public-houses were
shut up. Perhaps they would all wear gags, which the policeman would remove=
at
stated hours; and their mouths would be opened from one to three, as now in
England even the public-houses are from time to time accessible to the publ=
ic.
To some this will sound fantastic; but not so fantastic as Jefferson would =
have
thought Prohibition. But there is one sense in which it is indeed fantastic,
for by hypothesis it leaves out the favouritism that is the fundamental of =
the
whole matter. The only sense in which we can say that logic will never go so
far as this is that logic will never go the length of equality. It is perfe=
ctly
possible that the same forces that have forbidden beer may go on to forbid
tobacco. But they will in a special and limited sense forbid tobacco--but n=
ot
cigars. Or at any rate not expensive cigars. In America, where large number=
s of
ordinary men smoke rather ordinary cigars, there would be doubtless a good
opportunity of penalising a very ordinary pleasure. But the Havanas of the =
millionaire
will be all right. So it will be if ever the Puritans bring back the Scold's
Bridle and the statutory silence of the populace. It will only be the popul=
ace
that is silent. The politicians will go on talking.
These I believe t=
o be
the broad facts of the problem of Prohibition; but it would not be fair to
leave it without mentioning two other causes which, if not defences, are at
least excuses. The first is that Prohibition was largely passed in a sort of
fervour or fever of self-sacrifice, which was a part of the passionate
patriotism of America in the war. As I have remarked elsewhere, those who h=
ave
any notion of what that national unanimity was like will smile when they see
America made a model of mere international idealism. Prohibition was partly=
a sort
of patriotic renunciation; for the popular instinct, like every poetic
instinct, always tends at great crises to great gestures of renunciation. B=
ut
this very fact, while it makes the inhumanity far more human, makes it far =
less
final and convincing. Men cannot remain standing stiffly in such symbolical
attitudes; nor can a permanent policy be founded on something analogous to
flinging a gauntlet or uttering a battle-cry. We might as well expect all t=
he
Yale students to remain through life with their mouths open, exactly as they
were when they uttered the college yell. It would be as reasonable as to ex=
pect
them to remain through life with their mouths shut, while the wine-cup which
has been the sacrament of all poets and lovers passed round among all the y=
outh
of the world. This point appeared very plainly in a discussion I had with a
very thoughtful and sympathetic American critic, a clergyman writing in an
Anglo-Catholic magazine. He put the sentiment of these healthier
Prohibitionists, which had so much to do with the passing of Prohibition, by
asking, 'May not a man who is asked to give up his blood for his country be
asked to give up his beer for his country?' And this phrase clearly illumin=
ates
all the limitations of the case. I have never denied, in principle, that it
might in some abnormal crisis be lawful for a government to lock up the bee=
r,
or to lock up the bread. In that sense I am quite prepared to treat the
sacrifice of beer in the same way as the sacrifice of blood. But is my Amer=
ican
critic really ready to treat the sacrifice of blood in the same way as the =
sacrifice
of beer? Is bloodshed to be as prolonged and protracted as Prohibition? Is =
the
normal noncombatant to shed his gore as often as he misses his drink? I can
imagine people submitting to a special regulation, as I can imagine them
serving in a particular war. I do indeed despise the political knavery that
deliberately passes drink regulations as war measures and then preserves th=
em
as peace measures. But that is not a question of whether drink and drunkenn=
ess
are wrong, but of whether lying and swindling are wrong. But I never denied
that there might need to be exceptional sacrifices for exceptional occasion=
s; and
war is in its nature an exception. Only, if war is the exception, why should
Prohibition be the rule? If the surrender of beer is worthy to be compared =
to
the shedding of blood, why then blood ought to be flowing for ever like a
fountain in the public squares of Philadelphia and New York. If my critic w=
ants
to complete his parallel, he must draw up rather a remarkable programme for=
the
daily life of the ordinary citizens. He must suppose that, through all their
lives, they are paraded every day at lunch time and prodded with bayonets to
show that they will shed their blood for their country. He must suppose that
every evening, after a light repast of poison gas and shrapnel, they are ma=
de to
go to sleep in a trench under a permanent drizzle of shell-fire. It is sure=
ly
obvious that if this were the normal life of the citizen, the citizen would
have no normal life. The common sense of the thing is that sacrifices of th=
is
sort are admirable but abnormal. It is not normal for the State to be
perpetually regulating our days with the discipline of a fighting regiment;=
and
it is not normal for the State to be perpetually regulating our diet with t=
he
discipline of a famine. To say that every citizen must be subject to contro=
l in
such bodily things is like saying that every Christian ought to tear himself
with red-hot pincers because the Christian martyrs did their duty in time of
persecution. A man has a right to control his body, though in a time of
martyrdom he may give his body to be burned; and a man has a right to contr=
ol
his bodily health, though in a state of siege he may give his body to be
starved. Thus, though the patriotic defence was a sincere defence, it is a
defence that comes back on the defenders like a boomerang. For it proves on=
ly
that Prohibition ought to be ephemeral, unless war ought to be eternal.
The other excuse =
is
much less romantic and much more realistic. I have already said enough of t=
he
cause which is really realistic. The real power behind Prohibition is simply
the plutocratic power of the pushing employers who wish to get the last inc=
h of
work out of their workmen. But before the progress of modern plutocracy had
reached this stage, there was a predetermining cause for which there was a =
much
better case. The whole business began with the problem of black labour. I h=
ave
not attempted in this book to deal adequately with the question of the negr=
o. I
have refrained for a reason that may seem somewhat sensational; that I do n=
ot
think I have anything particularly valuable to say or suggest. I do not pro=
fess
to understand this singularly dark and intricate matter; and I see no use in
men who have no solution filling up the gap with sentimentalism. The chief
thing that struck me about the coloured people I saw was their charming and
astonishing cheerfulness. My sense of pathos was appealed to much more by t=
he
Red Indians; and indeed I wish I had more space here to do justice to the R=
ed
Indians. They did heroic service in the war; and more than justified their =
glorious
place in the day-dreams and nightmares of our boyhood. But the negro problem
certainly demands more study than a sight-seer could give it; and this book=
is
controversial enough about things that I have really considered, without
permitting it to exhibit me as a sight-seer who shoots at sight. But I beli=
eve
that it was always common ground to people of common sense that the enslave=
ment
and importation of negroes had been the crime and catastrophe of American
history. The only difference was originally that one side thought that, the
crime once committed, the only reparation was their freedom; while the othe=
r thought
that, the crime once committed, the only safety was their slavery. It was o=
nly
comparatively lately, by a process I shall have to indicate elsewhere, that
anything like a positive case for slavery became possible. Now among the ma=
ny
problems of the presence of an alien and at least recently barbaric figure
among the citizens, there was a very real problem of drink. Drink certainly=
has
a very exceptionally destructive effect upon negroes in their native countr=
ies;
and it was alleged to have a peculiarly demoralising effect upon negroes in=
the
United States; to call up the passions that are the particular temptation of
the race and to lead to appalling outrages that are followed by appalling
popular vengeance. However this may be, many of the states of the American
Union, which first forbade liquor to citizens, meant simply to forbid it to
negroes. But they had not the moral courage to deny that negroes are citize=
ns.
About all their political expedients necessarily hung the load that hangs so
heavy on modern politics; hypocrisy. The superior race had to rule by a sor=
t of
secret society organised against the inferior. The American politicians dar=
ed
not disfranchise the negroes; so they coerced everybody in theory and only =
the
negroes in practice. The drinking of the white men became as much a conspir=
acy
as the shooting by the white horsemen of the Ku-Klux Klan. And in that
connection, it may be remarked in passing that the comparison illustrates t=
he
idiocy of supposing that the moral sense of mankind will ever support the
prohibition of drinking as if it were something like the prohibition of
shooting. Shooting in America is liable to take a free form, and sometimes a
very horrible form; as when private bravos were hired to kill workmen in the
capitalistic interests of that pure patron of disarmament, Carnegie. But wh=
en
some of the rich Americans gravely tell us that their drinking cannot be
interfered with, because they are only using up their existing stocks of wi=
ne,
we may well be disposed to smile. When I was there, at any rate, they were =
using
them up very fast; and with no apparent fears about the supply. But if the
Ku-Klux Klan had started suddenly shooting everybody they didn't like in br=
oad
daylight, and had blandly explained that they were only using up the stocks=
of
their ammunition, left over from the Civil War, it seems probable that there
would at least have been a little curiosity about how much they had left. T=
here
might at least have been occasional inquiries about how long it was likely =
to
go on. It is even conceivable that some steps might have been taken to stop=
it.
No steps are take=
n to
stop the drinking of the rich, chiefly because the rich now make all the ru=
les
and therefore all the exceptions, but partly because nobody ever could feel=
the
full moral seriousness of this particular rule. And the truth is, as I have
indicated, that it was originally established as an exception and not as a
rule. The emancipated negro was an exception in the community, and a certain
plan was, rightly or wrongly, adopted to meet his case. A law was made prof=
essedly
for everybody and practically only for him. Prohibition is only important as
marking the transition by which the trick, tried successfully on black labo=
ur,
could be extended to all labour. We in England have no right to be Pharisai=
c at
the expense of the Americans in this matter; for we have tried the same tri=
ck
in a hundred forms. The true philosophical defence of the modern oppression=
of
the poor would be to say frankly that we have ruled them so badly that they=
are
unfit to rule themselves. But no modern oligarch is enough of a man to say
this. For like all virile cynicism it would have an element of humility; wh=
ich would
not mix with the necessary element of hypocrisy. So we proceed, just as the
Americans do, to make a law for everybody and then evade it for ourselves. =
We
have not the honesty to say that the rich may bet because they can afford i=
t;
so we forbid any man to bet in any place; and then say that a place is not a
place. It is exactly as if there were an American law allowing a negro to be
murdered because he is not a man within the meaning of the Act. We have not=
the
honesty to drive the poor to school because they are ignorant; so we preten=
d to
drive everybody; and then send inspectors to the slums but not to the smart
streets. We apply the same ingenuous principle; and are quite as undemocrat=
ic
as Western democracy. Nevertheless there is an element in the American case=
which
cannot be present in ours; and this chapter may well conclude upon so impor=
tant
a change.
America can now s=
ay
with pride that she has abolished the colour bar. In this matter the white
labourer and the black labourer have at last been put upon an equal social
footing. White labour is every bit as much enslaved as black labour; and is
actually enslaved by a method and a model only intended for black labour. We
might think it rather odd if the exact regulations about flogging negroes w=
ere
reproduced as a plan for punishing strikers; or if industrial arbitration i=
ssued
its reports in the precise terminology of the Fugitive Slave Law. But this =
is
in essentials what has happened; and one could almost fancy some negro orgy=
of
triumph, with the beating of gongs and all the secret violence of Voodoo,
crying aloud to some ancestral Mumbo Jumbo that the Poor White Trash was be=
ing
treated according to its name.
Fads and Public Opinion=
span>
A foreigner is a man who laughs at
everything except jokes. He is perfectly entitled to laugh at anything, so =
long
as he realises, in a reverent and religious spirit, that he himself is
laughable. I was a foreigner in America; and I can truly claim that the sen=
se
of my own laughable position never left me. But when the native and the
foreigner have finished with seeing the fun of each other in things that are
meant to be serious, they both approach the far more delicate and dangerous=
ground
of things that are meant to be funny. The sense of humour is generally very
national; perhaps that is why the internationalists are so careful to purge=
themselves
of it. I had occasion during the war to consider the rights and wrongs of
certain differences alleged to have arisen between the English and American
soldiers at the front. And, rightly or wrongly, I came to the conclusion th=
at
they arose from the failure to understand when a foreigner is serious and w=
hen
he is humorous. And it is in the very nature of the best sort of joke to be=
the
worst sort of insult if it is not taken as a joke.
The English and t=
he
American types of humour are in one way directly contrary. The most American
sort of fun involves a soaring imagination, piling one house on another in a
tower like that of a sky-scraper. The most English humour consists of a sor=
t of
bathos, of a man returning to the earth his mother in a homely fashion; as =
when
he sits down suddenly on a butter-slide. English farce describes a man as b=
eing
in a hole. American fantasy, in its more aspiring spirit, describes a man as
being up a tree. The former is to be found in the cockney comic songs that =
concern
themselves with hanging out the washing or coming home with the milk. The
latter is to be found in those fantastic yarns about machines that turn live
pigs into pig-skin purses or burning cities that serve to hatch an egg. But=
it
will be inevitable, when the two come first into contact, that the bathos w=
ill
sound like vulgarity and the extravagance will sound like boasting.
Suppose an Americ=
an
soldier said to an English soldier in the trenches, 'The Kaiser may want a
place in the sun; I reckon he won't have a place in the solar system when we
begin to hustle.' The English soldier will very probably form the impression
that this is arrogance; an impression based on the extraordinary assumption
that the American means what he says. The American has merely indulged in a
little art for art's sake, and abstract adventure of the imagination; he has
told an American short story. But the Englishman, not understanding this, w=
ill
think the other man is boasting, and reflecting on the insufficiency of the
English effort. The English soldier is very likely to say something like, '=
Oh, you'll
be wanting to get home to your old woman before that, and asking for a kipp=
er
with your tea.' And it is quite likely that the American will be offended in
his turn at having his arabesque of abstract beauty answered in so personal=
a
fashion. Being an American, he will probably have a fine and chivalrous res=
pect
for his wife; and may object to her being called an old woman. Possibly he =
in
turn may be under the extraordinary delusion that talking of the old woman
really means that the woman is old. Possibly he thinks the mysterious demand
for a kipper carries with it some charge of ill-treating his wife; which his
national sense of honour swiftly resents. But the real cross-purposes come =
from
the contrary direction of the two exaggerations, the American making life m=
ore
wild and impossible than it is, and the Englishman making it more flat and
farcical than it is; the one escaping from the house of life by a skylight =
and
the other by a trap-door.
This difficulty of
different humours is a very practical one for practical people. Most of tho=
se
who profess to remove all international differences are not practical peopl=
e.
Most of the phrases offered for the reconciliation of severally patriotic
peoples are entirely serious and even solemn phrases. But human conversatio=
n is
not conducted in those phrases. The normal man on nine occasions out of ten=
is
rather a flippant man. And the normal man is almost always the national man=
. Patriotism
is the most popular of all the virtues. The drier sort of democrats who des=
pise
it have the democracy against them in every country in the world. Hence the=
ir
international efforts seldom go any farther than to effect an international
reconciliation of all internationalists. But we have not solved the normal =
and
popular problem until we have an international reconciliation of all
nationalists.
It is very diffic=
ult
to see how humour can be translated at all. When Sam Weller is in the Fleet
Prison and Mrs. Weller and Mr. Stiggins sit on each side of the fireplace a=
nd
weep and groan with sympathy, old Mr. Weller observes, 'Vell, Sammy, I hope=
you
find your spirits rose by this 'ere lively visit.' I have never looked up t=
his
passage in the popular and successful French version of Pickwick; but I con=
fess
I am curious as to what French past-participle conveys the precise effect of
the word 'rose.' A translator has not only to give the right translation of=
the
right word but the right translation of the wrong word. And in the same way=
I
am quite prepared to suspect that there are English jokes which an Englishm=
an
must enjoy in his own rich and romantic solitude, without asking for the
sympathy of an American. But Englishmen are generally only too prone to cla=
im
this fine perception, without seeing that the fine edge of it cuts both way=
s. I
have begun this chapter on the note of national humour because I wish to ma=
ke
it quite clear that I realise how easily a foreigner may take something
seriously that is not serious. When I think something in America is really
foolish, it may be I that am made a fool of. It is the first duty of a
traveller to allow for this; but it seems to be the very last thing that oc=
curs
to some travellers. But when I seek to say something of what may be called =
the
fantastic side of America, I allow beforehand that some of it may be meant =
to
be fantastic. And indeed it is very difficult to believe that some of it is=
meant
to be serious. But whether or no there is a joke, there is certainly an
inconsistency; and it is an inconsistency in the moral make-up of America w=
hich
both puzzles and amuses me.
The danger of
democracy is not anarchy but convention. There is even a sort of double mea=
ning
in the word 'convention'; for it is also used for the most informal and pop=
ular
sort of parliament; a parliament not summoned by any king. The Americans co=
me
together very easily without any king; but their coming together is in every
sense a convention, and even a very conventional convention. In a democracy
riot is rather the exception and respectability certainly the rule. And tho=
ugh
a superficial sight-seer should hesitate about all such generalisations, and
certainly should allow for enormous exceptions to them, he does receive a
general impression of unity verging on uniformity. Thus Americans all dress
well; one might almost say that American women all look well; but they do n=
ot,
as compared with Europeans, look very different. They are in the fashion; t=
oo
much in the fashion even to be conspicuously fashionable. Of course there a=
re
patches, both Bohemian and Babylonian, of which this is not true, but I am
talking of the general tone of a whole democracy. I have said there is more=
respectability
than riot; but indeed in a deeper sense the same spirit is behind both riot=
and
respectability. It is the same social force that makes it possible for the
respectable to boycott a man and for the riotous to lynch him. I do not obj=
ect
to it being called 'the herd instinct,' so long as we realise that it is a
metaphor and not an explanation.
Public opinion ca=
n be
a prairie fire. It eats up everything that opposes it; and there is the
grandeur as well as the grave disadvantages of a natural catastrophe in that
national unity. Pacifists who complained in England of the intolerance of
patriotism have no notion of what patriotism can be like. If they had been =
in
America, after America had entered the war, they would have seen something
which they have always perhaps subconsciously dreaded, and would then have
beyond all their worst dreams detested; and the name of it is democracy. Th=
ey
would have found that there are disadvantages in birds of a feather flockin=
g together;
and that one of them follows on a too complacent display of the white feath=
er.
The truth is that a certain flexible sympathy with eccentrics of this kind =
is
rather one of the advantages of an aristocratic tradition. The imprisonment=
of
Mr. Debs, the American Pacifist, which really was prolonged and oppressive,
would probably have been shortened in England where his opinions were share=
d by
aristocrats like Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Ponsonby. A man like Lord Hugh
Cecil could be moved to the defence of conscientious objectors, partly by a=
true
instinct of chivalry; but partly also by the general feeling that a gentlem=
an
may very probably have aunts and uncles who are quite as mad. He takes the
matter personally, in the sense of being able to imagine the psychology of =
the
persons. But democracy is no respecter of persons. It is no respecter of th=
em,
either in the bad and servile or in the good and sympathetic sense. And Debs
was nothing to democracy. He was but one of the millions. This is a real
problem, or question in the balance, touching different forms of government;
which is, of course, quite neglected by the idealists who merely repeat long
words. There was during the war a society called the Union of Democratic
Control, which would have been instantly destroyed anywhere where democracy=
had
any control, or where there was any union. And in this sense the United Sta=
tes
have most emphatically got a union. Nevertheless I think there is something
rather more subtle than this simple popular solidity behind the assimilatio=
n of
American citizens to each other. There is something even in the individual
ideals that drives towards this social sympathy. And it is here that we hav=
e to
remember that biological fancies like the herd instinct are only figures of
speech, and cannot really cover anything human. For the Americans are in so=
me
ways a very self-conscious people. To compare their social enthusiasm to a
stampede of cattle is to ask us to believe in a bull writing a diary or a c=
ow
looking in a looking-glass. Intensely sensitive by their very vitality, they
are certainly conscious of criticism and not merely of a blind and brutal a=
ppetite.
But the peculiar point about them is that it is this very vividness in the =
self
that often produces the similarity. It may be that when they are unconscious
they are like bulls and cows. But it is when they are self-conscious that t=
hey
are like each other.
Individualism is =
the
death of individuality. It is so, if only because it is an 'ism.' Many
Americans become almost impersonal in their worship of personality. Where t=
heir
natural selves might differ, their ideal selves tend to be the same. Anybody
can see what I mean in those strong self-conscious photographs of American
business men that can be seen in any American magazine. Each may conceive
himself to be a solitary Napoleon brooding at St. Helena; but the result is=
a
multitude of Napoleons brooding all over the place. Each of them must have =
the
eyes of a mesmerist; but the most weak-minded person cannot be mesmerised b=
y more
than one millionaire at a time. Each of the millionaires must thrust forward
his jaw, offering (if I may say so) to fight the world with the same weapon=
as
Samson. Each of them must accentuate the length of his chin, especially, of
course, by always being completely clean-shaven. It would be obviously
inconsistent with Personality to prefer to wear a beard. These are of course
fantastic examples on the fringe of American life; but they do stand for a
certain assimilation, not through brute gregariousness, but rather through
isolated dreaming. And though it is not always carried so far as this, I do
think it is carried too far. There is not quite enough unconsciousness to
produce real individuality. There is a sort of worship of will-power in the=
abstract,
so that people are actually thinking about how they can will, more than abo=
ut
what they want. To this I do think a certain corrective could be found in t=
he
nature of English eccentricity. Every man in his humour is most interesting
when he is unconscious of his humour; or at least when he is in an intermed=
iate
stage between humour in the old sense of oddity and in the new sense of iro=
ny.
Much is said in these days against negative morality; and certainly most
Americans would show a positive preference for positive morality. The virtu=
es
they venerate collectively are very active virtues; cheerfulness and courage
and vim, otherwise zip, also pep and similar things. But it is sometimes fo=
rgotten
that negative morality is freer than positive morality. Negative morality i=
s a
net of a larger and more open pattern, of which the lines or cords constric=
t at
longer intervals. A man like Dr. Johnson could grow in his own way to his o=
wn
stature in the net of the Ten Commandments; precisely because he was convin=
ced
there were only ten of them. He was not compressed into the mould of positi=
ve
beauty, like that of the Apollo Belvedere or the American citizen.
This criticism is
sometimes true even of the American woman, who is certainly a much more
delightful person than the mesmeric millionaire with his shaven jaw.
Interviewers in the United States perpetually asked me what I thought of Am=
erican
women, and I confessed a distaste for such generalisations which I have not
managed to lose. The Americans, who are the most chivalrous people in the
world, may perhaps understand me; but I can never help feeling that there is
something polygamous about talking of women in the plural at all; something
unworthy of any American except a Mormon. Nevertheless, I think the
exaggeration I suggest does extend in a less degree to American women,
fascinating as they are. I think they too tend too much to this cult of
impersonal personality. It is a description easy to exaggerate even by the
faintest emphasis; for all these things are subtle and subject to striking =
individual
exceptions. To complain of people for being brave and bright and kind and
intelligent may not unreasonably appear unreasonable. And yet there is
something in the background that can only be expressed by a symbol, somethi=
ng
that is not shallowness but a neglect of the subconsciousness and the vaguer
and slower impulses; something that can be missed amid all that laughter and
light, under those starry candelabra of the ideals of the happy virtues.
Sometimes it came over me, in a wordless wave, that I should like to see a
sulky woman. How she would walk in beauty like the night, and reveal more
silent spaces full of older stars! These things cannot be conveyed in their
delicate proportion even in the most detached description. But the same thi=
ng was
in the mind of a white-bearded old man I met in New York, an Irish exile an=
d a
wonderful talker, who stared up at the tower of gilded galleries of the gre=
at
hotel, and said with that spontaneous movement of style which is hardly hea=
rd
except from Irish talkers: 'And I have been in a village in the mountains w=
here
the people could hardly read or write; but all the men were like soldiers, =
and
all the women had pride.'
It sounds like a =
poem
about an Earthly Paradise to say that in this land the old women can be more
beautiful than the young. Indeed, I think Walt Whitman, the national poet, =
has
a line somewhere almost precisely to that effect. It sounds like a parody u=
pon
Utopia, and the image of the lion lying down with the lamb, to say it is a
place where a man might almost fall in love with his mother-in-law. But the=
re
is nothing in which the finer side of American gravity and good feeling does
more honourably exhibit itself than in a certain atmosphere around the olde=
r women.
It is not a cant phrase to say that they grow old gracefully; for they do
really grow old. In this the national optimism really has in it the national
courage. The old women do not dress like young women; they only dress bette=
r.
There is another side to this feminine dignity in the old, sometimes a litt=
le
lost in the young, with which I shall deal presently. The point for the mom=
ent
is that even Whitman's truly poetic vision of the beautiful old women suffe=
rs a
little from that bewildering multiplicity and recurrence that is indeed the
whole theme of Whitman. It is like the green eternity of Leaves of Grass. W=
hen
I think of the eccentric spinsters and incorrigible grandmothers of my own
country, I cannot imagine that any one of them could possibly be mistaken f=
or another,
even at a glance. And in comparison I feel as if I had been travelling in an
Earthly Paradise of more decorative harmonies; and I remember only a vast c=
loud
of grey and pink as of the plumage of cherubim in an old picture. But on se=
cond
thoughts, I think this may be only the inevitable effect of visiting any
country in a swift and superficial fashion; and that the grey and pink clou=
d is
probably an illusion, like the spinning prairies scattered by the wheel of =
the train.
Anyhow there is
enough of this equality, and of a certain social unity favourable to sanity=
, to
make the next point about America very much of a puzzle. It seems to me a v=
ery
real problem, to which I have never seen an answer even such as I shall att=
empt
here, why a democracy should produce fads; and why, where there is so genui=
ne a
sense of human dignity, there should be so much of an impossible petty tyra=
nny.
I am not referring solely or even specially to Prohibition, which I discuss=
elsewhere.
Prohibition is at least a superstition, and therefore next door to a religi=
on;
it has some imaginable connection with moral questions, as have slavery or
human sacrifice. But those who ask us to model ourselves on the States which
punish the sin of drink forget that there are States which punish the equal=
ly
shameless sin of smoking a cigarette in the open air. The same American
atmosphere that permits Prohibition permits of people being punished for
kissing each other. In other words, there are States psychologically capabl=
e of
making a man a convict for wearing a blue neck-tie or having a green
front-door, or anything else that anybody chooses to fancy. There is an
American atmosphere in which people may some day be shot for shaking hands,=
or hanged
for writing a post-card.
As for the sort of
thing to which I refer, the American newspapers are full of it and there is=
no
name for it but mere madness. Indeed it is not only mad, but it calls itself
mad. To mention but one example out of many, it was actually boasted that s=
ome
lunatics were teaching children to take care of their health. And it was
proudly added that the children were 'health-mad.' That it is not exactly t=
he
object of all mental hygiene to make people mad did not occur to them; and =
they
may still be engaged in their earnest labours to teach babies to be
valetudinarians and hypochondriacs in order to make them healthy. In such
cases, we may say that the modern world is too ridiculous to be ridiculed. =
You
cannot caricature a caricature. Imagine what a satirist of saner days would=
have
made of the daily life of a child of six, who was actually admitted to be m=
ad
on the subject of his own health. These are not days in which that great
extravaganza could be written; but I dimly see some of its episodes like
uncompleted dreams. I see the child pausing in the middle of a cart-wheel, =
or
when he has performed three-quarters of a cart-wheel, and consulting a litt=
le
note-book about the amount of exercise per diem. I see him pausing half-way=
up
a tree, or when he has climbed exactly one-third of a tree; and then produc=
ing
a clinical thermometer to take his own temperature. But what would be the g=
ood
of imaginative logic to prove the madness of such people, when they themsel=
ves
praise it for being mad?
There is also the
cult of the Infant Phenomenon, of which Dickens made fun and of which
educationalists make fusses. When I was in America another newspaper produc=
ed a
marvellous child of six who had the intellect of a child of twelve. The only
test given, and apparently one on which the experiment turned, was that she
could be made to understand and even to employ the word 'annihilate.' When
asked to say something proving this, the happy infant offered the polished
aphorism, 'When common sense comes in, superstition is annihilated.' In rep=
ly
to which, by way of showing that I also am as intelligent as a child of twe=
lve,
and there is no arrested development about me, I will say in the same elega=
nt
diction, 'When psychological education comes in, common sense is annihilate=
d.'
Everybody seems to be sitting round this child in an adoring fashion. It did
not seem to occur to anybody that we do not particularly want even a child =
of
twelve to talk about annihilating superstition; that we do not want a child=
of
six to talk like a child of twelve, or a child of twelve to talk like a man=
of
fifty, or even a man of fifty to talk like a fool. And on the principle of
hoping that a little girl of six will have a massive and mature brain, ther=
e is
every reason for hoping that a little boy of six will grow a magnificent an=
d bushy
beard.
Now there is any
amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may prop=
ose
to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis--that is, enforce
confession without absolution. And I confess I cannot connect this feature =
with
the genuine democratic spirit of the mass. I can only suggest, in concluding
this chapter, two possible causes rather peculiar to America, which may have
made this great democracy so unlike all other democracies, and in this so m=
anifestly
hostile to the whole democratic idea.
The first histori=
cal
cause is Puritanism; but not Puritanism merely in the sense of Prohibitioni=
sm.
The truth is that prohibitions might have done far less harm as prohibition=
s,
if a vague association had not arisen, on some dark day of human unreason,
between prohibition and progress. And it was the progress that did the harm,
not the prohibition. Men can enjoy life under considerable limitations, if =
they
can be sure of their limited enjoyments; but under Progressive Puritanism we
can never be sure of anything. The curse of it is not limitation; it is
unlimited limitation. The evil is not in the restriction; but in the fact t=
hat
nothing can ever restrict the restriction. The prohibitions are bound to
progress point by point; more and more human rights and pleasures must of
necessity be taken away; for it is of the nature of this futurism that the
latest fad is the faith of the future, and the most fantastic fad inevitably
makes the pace. Thus the worst thing in the seventeenth-century aberration =
was
not so much Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched for truth not by synthe=
sis
but by subdivision. It not only broke religion into small pieces, but it wa=
s bound
to choose the smallest piece. There is in America, I believe, a large relig=
ious
body that has felt it right to separate itself from Christendom because it
cannot believe in the morality of wearing buttons. I do not know how the sc=
hism
arose; but it is easy to suppose, for the sake of argument, that there had
originally existed some Puritan body which condemned the frivolity of ribbo=
ns
though not of buttons. I was going to say of badges but not buttons; but on
reflection I cannot bring myself to believe that any American, however insa=
ne,
would object to wearing badges. But the point is that as the holy spirit of=
progressive
prophesy rested on the first sect because it had invented a new objection to
ribbons, so that holy spirit would then pass from it to the new sect who
invented a further objection to buttons. And from them it must inevitably p=
ass
to any rebel among them who shall choose to rise and say that he disapprove=
s of
trousers because of the existence of trouser-buttons. Each secession in turn
must be right because it is recent, and progress must progress by growing
smaller and smaller. That is the progressive theory, the legacy of
seventeenth-century sectarianism, the dogma implied in much modern politics,
and the evident enemy of democracy. Democracy is reproached with saying that
the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always=
right.
Progressives are prophets; and fortunately not all the people are prophets.
Thus in the atmosphere of this slowly dying sectarianism anybody who choose=
s to
prophesy and prohibit can tyrannise over the people. If he chooses to say t=
hat
drinking is always wrong, or that kissing is always wrong, or that wearing
buttons is always wrong, people are afraid to contradict him for fear they
should be contradicting their own great-grandchild. For their superstition =
is
an inversion of the ancestor-worship of China; and instead of vainly appeal=
ing
to something that is dead, they appeal to something that may never be born.=
There is another
cause of this strange servile disease in American democracy. It is to be fo=
und
in American feminism, and feminist America is an entirely different thing f=
rom
feminine America. I should say that the overwhelming majority of American g=
irls
laugh at their female politicians at least as much as the majority of Ameri=
can
men despise their male politicians. But though the aggressive feminists are=
a minority,
they are in this atmosphere which I have tried to analyse; the atmosphere in
which there is a sort of sanctity about the minority. And it is this
superstition of seriousness that constitutes the most solid obstacle and
exception to the general and almost conventional pressure of public opinion.
When a fad is frankly felt to be anti-national, as was Abolitionism before =
the
Civil War, or Pro-Germanism in the Great War, or the suggestion of racial
admixture in the South at all times, then the fad meets far less mercy than
anywhere else in the world; it is snowed under and swept away. But when it =
does
not thus directly challenge patriotism or popular ideas, a curious halo of
hopeful solemnity surrounds it, merely because it is a fad, but above all i=
f it
is a feminine fad. The earnest lady-reformer who really utters a warning ag=
ainst
the social evil of beer or buttons is seen to be walking clothed in light, =
like
a prophetess. Perhaps it is something of the holy aureole which the East se=
es
shining around an idiot.
But I think there=
is
another explanation, feminine rather than feminist, and proceeding from nor=
mal
women and not from abnormal idiots. It is something that involves an old
controversy, but one upon which I have not, like so many politicians, chang=
ed
my opinion. It concerns the particular fashion in which women tend to regar=
d,
or rather to disregard, the formal and legal rights of the citizen. In so f=
ar
as this is a bias, it is a bias in the directly opposite direction from that
now lightly alleged. There is a sort of underbred history going about, acco=
rding
to which women in the past have always been in the position of slaves. It is
much more to the point to note that women have always been in the position =
of
despots. They have been despotic because they ruled in an area where they h=
ad
too much common sense to attempt to be constitutional. You cannot grant a
constitution to a nursery; nor can babies assemble like barons and extort a
Great Charter. Tommy cannot plead a Habeas Corpus against going to bed; and=
an
infant cannot be tried by twelve other infants before he is put in the corn=
er.
And as there can be no laws or liberties in a nursery, the extension of fem=
inism
means that there shall be no more laws or liberties in a state than there a=
re
in a nursery. The woman does not really regard men as citizens but as child=
ren.
She may, if she is a humanitarian, love all mankind; but she does not respe=
ct
it. Still less does she respect its votes. Now a man must be very blind
nowadays not to see that there is a danger of a sort of amateur science or
pseudo-science being made the excuse for every trick of tyranny and
interference. Anybody who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policema=
n at
the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the
policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. In other words, =
it
is a danger of turning the policeman into a sort of benevolent burglar. Aga=
inst
this protests are already being made, and will increasingly be made, if men=
retain
any instinct of independence or dignity at all. But to complain of the woman
interfering in the home will always sound like complaining of the oyster
intruding into the oyster-shell. To object that she has too much power over
education will seem like objecting to a hen having too much to do with eggs.
She has already been given an almost irresponsible power over a limited reg=
ion
in these things; and if that power is made infinite it will be even more
irresponsible. If she adds to her own power in the family all these alien f=
ads
external to the family, her power will not only be irresponsible but insane.
She will be something which may well be called a nightmare of the nursery; a
mad mother. But the point is that she will be mad about other nurseries as =
well
as her own, or possibly instead of her own. The results will be interesting;
but at least it is certain that under this softening influence government of
the people, by the people, for the people, will most assuredly perish from =
the
earth.
But there is alwa=
ys
another possibility. Hints of it may be noted here and there like muffled g=
ongs
of doom. The other day some people preaching some low trick or other, for
running away from the glory of motherhood, were suddenly silenced in New Yo=
rk;
by a voice of deep and democratic volume. The prigs who potter about the gr=
eat
plains are pygmies dancing round a sleeping giant. That which sleeps, so fa=
r as
they are concerned, is the huge power of human unanimity and intolerance in=
the
soul of America. At present the masses in the Middle West are indifferent to
such fancies or faintly attracted by them, as fashions of culture from the
great cities. But any day it may not be so; some lunatic may cut across the=
ir
economic rights or their strange and buried religion; and then he will see
something. He will find himself running like a nigger who has wronged a whi=
te
woman or a man who has set the prairie on fire. He will see something which=
the
politicians fan in its sleep and flatter with the name of the people, which
many reactionaries have cursed with the name of the mob, but which in any c=
ase
has had under its feet the crowns of many kings. It was said that the voice=
of the
people is the voice of God; and this at least is certain, that it can be the
voice of God to the wicked. And the last antics of their arrogance shall
stiffen before something enormous, such as towers in the last words that Job
heard out of the whirlwind; and a voice they never knew shall tell them that
his name is Leviathan, and he is lord over all the children of pride.
When I was in America I had the fee=
ling
that it was far more foreign than France or even than Ireland. And by forei=
gn I
mean fascinating rather than repulsive. I mean that element of strangeness
which marks the frontier of any fairyland, or gives to the traveller himself
the almost eerie title of the stranger. And I saw there more clearly than i=
n countries
counted as more remote from us, in race or religion, a paradox that is one =
of
the great truths of travel.
We have never even
begun to understand a people until we have found something that we do not
understand. So long as we find the character easy to read, we are reading i=
nto
it our own character. If when we see an event we can promptly provide an
explanation, we may be pretty certain that we had ourselves prepared the ex=
planation
before we saw the event. It follows from this that the best picture of a
foreign people can probably be found in a puzzle picture. If we can find an
event of which the meaning is really dark to us, it will probably throw som=
e light
on the truth. I will therefore take from my American experiences one isolat=
ed
incident, which certainly could not have happened in any other country I ha=
ve
ever clapped eyes on. I have really no notion of what it meant. I have heard
even from Americans about five different conjectures about its meaning. But
though I do not understand it, I do sincerely believe that if I did underst=
and
it, I should understand America.
It happened in the
city of Oklahoma, which would require a book to itself, even considered as a
background. The State of Oklahoma is a district in the south-west recently
reclaimed from the Red Indian territory. What many, quite incorrectly, imag=
ine
about all America is really true of Oklahoma. It is proud of having no hist=
ory.
It is glowing with the sense of having a great future--and nothing else. Pe=
ople
are just as likely to boast of an old building in Nashville as in Norwich; =
people
are just as proud of old families in Boston as in Bath. But in Oklahoma the
citizens do point out a colossal structure, arrogantly affirming that it wa=
sn't
there last week. It was against the colours of this crude stage scenery, as=
of
a pantomime city of pasteboard, that the fantastic figure appeared which st=
ill
haunts me like a walking note of interrogation. I was strolling down the ma=
in
street of the city, and looking in at a paper-stall vivid with the news of
crime, when a stranger addressed me; and asked me, quite politely but with a
curious air of having authority to put the question, what I was doing in th=
at city.
He was a lean bro=
wn
man, having rather the look of a shabby tropical traveller, with a grey
moustache and a lively and alert eye. But the most singular thing about him=
was
that the front of his coat was covered with a multitude of shining metallic
emblems made in the shape of stars and crescents. I was well accustomed by =
this
time to Americans adorning the lapels of their coats with little symbols of
various societies; it is a part of the American passion for the ritual of
comradeship. There is nothing that an American likes so much as to have a
secret society and to make no secret of it. But in this case, if I may put =
it
so, the rash of symbolism seemed to have broken out all over the man, in a =
fashion
that indicated that the fever was far advanced. Of this minor mystery, howe=
ver,
his first few sentences offered a provisional explanation. In answer to his
question, touching my business in Oklahoma, I replied with restraint that I=
was
lecturing. To which he replied without restraint, but rather with an expans=
ive
and radiant pride, 'I also am lecturing. I am lecturing on astronomy.'
So far a certain =
wild
rationality seemed to light up the affair. I knew it was unusual, in my own
country, for the Astronomer Royal to walk down the Strand with his coat
plastered all over with the Solar System. Indeed, it was unusual for any
English astronomical lecturer to advertise the subject of his lectures in t=
his
fashion. But though it would be unusual, it would not necessarily be
unreasonable. In fact, I think it might add to the colour and variety of li=
fe,
if specialists did adopt this sort of scientific heraldry. I should like to=
be
able to recognise an entomologist at sight by the decorative spiders and co=
ckroaches
crawling all over his coat and waistcoat. I should like to see a conchologi=
st
in a simple costume of shells. An osteopath, I suppose, would be agreeably
painted so as to resemble a skeleton, while a botanist would enliven the st=
reet
with the appearance of a Jack-in-the-Green. So while I regarded the
astronomical lecturer in the astronomical coat as a figure distinguishable,=
by
a high degree of differentiation, from the artless astronomers of my island
home (enough their simple loveliness for me) I saw in him nothing illogical,
but rather an imaginative extreme of logic. And then came another turn of t=
he
wheel of topsy-turvydom, and all the logic was scattered to the wind.
Expanding his sta=
rry
bosom and standing astraddle, with the air of one who owned the street, the
strange being continued, 'Yes, I am lecturing on astronomy, anthropology,
archaeology, palaeontology, embryology, eschatology,' and so on in a thunde=
rous
roll of theoretical sciences apparently beyond the scope of any single
university, let alone any single professor. Having thus introduced himself,
however, he got to business. He apologised with true American courtesy for
having questioned me at all, and excused it on the ground of his own exacti=
ng responsibilities.
I imagined him to mean the responsibility of simultaneously occupying the
chairs of all the faculties already mentioned. But these apparently were
trifles to him, and something far more serious was clouding his brow.
'I feel it to be =
my
duty,' he said, 'to acquaint myself with any stranger visiting this city; a=
nd
it is an additional pleasure to welcome here a member of the Upper Ten.' I
assured him earnestly that I knew nothing about the Upper Ten, except that I
did not belong to them; I felt, not without alarm, that the Upper Ten might=
be
another secret society. He waved my abnegation aside and continued, 'I have=
a
great responsibility in watching over this city. My friend the mayor and I =
have
a great responsibility.' And then an extraordinary thing happened. Suddenly
diving his hand into his breast-pocket, he flashed something before my eyes
like a hand-mirror; something which disappeared again almost as soon as it
appeared. In that flash I could only see that it was some sort of polished
metal plate, with some letters engraved on it like a monogram. But the rewa=
rd
of a studious and virtuous life, which has been spent chiefly in the readin=
g of
American detective stories, shone forth for me in that hour of trial; I
received at last the prize of a profound scholarship in the matter of imagi=
nary
murders in tenth-rate magazines. I remembered who it was who in the Yankee =
detective
yarn flashes before the eyes of Slim Jim or the Lone Hand Crook a badge of
metal sometimes called a shield. Assuming all the desperate composure of Sl=
im
Jim himself, I replied, 'You mean you are connected with the police authori=
ties
here, don't you? Well, if I commit a murder here, I'll let you know.' Where=
upon
that astonishing man waved a hand in deprecation, bowed in farewell with the
grace of a dancing master; and said, 'Oh, those are not things we expect fr=
om
members of the Upper Ten.'
Then that moving
constellation moved away, disappearing in the dark tides of humanity, as the
vision passed away down the dark tides from Sir Galahad and, starlike, ming=
led
with the stars.
That is the probl=
em I
would put to all Americans, and to all who claim to understand America. Who=
and
what was that man? Was he an astronomer? Was he a detective? Was he a wande=
ring
lunatic? If he was a lunatic who thought he was an astronomer, why did he h=
ave
a badge to prove he was a detective? If he was a detective pretending to be=
an
astronomer, why did he tell a total stranger that he was a detective two
minutes after saying he was an astronomer? If he wished to watch over the c=
ity
in a quiet and unobtrusive fashion, why did he blazon himself all over with=
all
the stars of the sky, and profess to give public lectures on all the subjec=
ts
of the world? Every wise and well-conducted student of murder stories is
acquainted with the notion of a policeman in plain clothes. But nobody could
possibly say that this gentleman was in plain clothes. Why not wear his
uniform, if he was resolved to show every stranger in the street his badge?
Perhaps after all he had no uniform; for these lands were but recently a wi=
ld
frontier rudely ruled by vigilance committees. Some Americans suggested to =
me
that he was the Sheriff; the regular hard-riding, free-shooting Sheriff of =
Bret
Harte and my boyhood's dreams. Others suggested that he was an agent of the
Ku-Klux Klan, that great nameless revolution of the revival of which there =
were
rumours at the time; and that the symbol he exhibited was theirs. But wheth=
er
he was a sheriff acting for the law, or a conspirator against the law, or a
lunatic entirely outside the law, I agree with the former conjectures upon =
one
point. I am perfectly certain he had something else in his pocket besides a
badge. And I am perfectly certain that under certain circumstances he would
have handled it instantly, and shot me dead between the gay bookstall and t=
he
crowded trams. And that is the last touch to the complexity; for though in =
that
country it often seems that the law is made by a lunatic, you never know wh=
en
the lunatic may not shoot you for keeping it. Only in the presence of that
citizen of Oklahoma I feel I am confronted with the fullness and depth of t=
he mystery
of America. Because I understand nothing, I recognise the thing that we cal=
l a
nation; and I salute the flag.
But even in
connection with this mysterious figure there is a moral which affords anoth=
er
reason for mentioning him. Whether he was a sheriff or an outlaw, there was
certainly something about him that suggested the adventurous violence of the
old border life of America; and whether he was connected with the police or=
no,
there was certainly violence enough in his environment to satisfy the most
ardent policeman. The posters in the paper-shop were placarded with the ver=
dict
in the Hamon trial; a cause célèbre which reached its crisis =
in
Oklahoma while I was there. Senator Hamon had been shot by a girl whom he h=
ad wronged,
and his widow demanded justice, or what might fairly be called vengeance. T=
here
was very great excitement culminating in the girl's acquittal. Nor did the
Hamon case appear to be entirely exceptional in that breezy borderland. The
moment the town had received the news that Clara Smith was free, newsboys
rushed down the street shouting, 'Double stabbing outrage near Oklahoma,' or
'Banker's throat cut on Main Street,' or otherwise resuming their regular m=
ode
of life. It seemed as much as to say, 'Do not imagine that our local energi=
es
are exhausted in shooting a Senator,' or 'Come, now, the world is young, ev=
en
if Clara Smith is acquitted, and the enthusiasm of Oklahoma is not yet cold=
.'
But my particular
reason for mentioning the matter is this. Despite my friend's mystical rema=
rks
about the Upper Ten, he lived in an atmosphere of something that was at lea=
st
the very reverse of a respect for persons. Indeed, there was something in t=
he
very crudity of his social compliment that smacked, strangely enough, of th=
at
egalitarian soil. In a vaguely aristocratic country like England, people wo=
uld
never dream of telling a total stranger that he was a member of the Upper T=
en.
For one thing, they would be afraid that he might be. Real snobbishness is =
never
vulgar; for it is intended to please the refined. Nobody licks the boots of=
a
duke, if only because the duke does not like his boots cleaned in that way.
Nobody embraces the knees of a marquis, because it would embarrass that
nobleman. And nobody tells him he is a member of the Upper Ten, because
everybody is expected to know it. But there is a much more subtle kind of
snobbishness pervading the atmosphere of any society trial in England. And =
the
first thing that struck me was the total absence of that atmosphere in the
trial at Oklahoma. Mr. Hamon was presumably a member of the Upper Ten, if t=
here
is such a thing. He was a member of the Senate or Upper House in the Americ=
an
Parliament; he was a millionaire and a pillar of the Republican party, which
might be called the respectable party; he is said to have been mentioned as=
a
possible President. And the speeches of Clara Smith's counsel, who was know=
n by
the delightfully Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in =
all
conscience; but they left very little of my friend's illusion that members =
of
the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite
presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had do=
ne
with him. But the difference was deeper, and even in a sense more delicate =
than
this. There is a certain tone about English trials, which does at least beg=
in
with a certain scepticism about people prominent in public life being
abominable in private life. People do vaguely doubt the criminality of 'a m=
an
in that position'; that is, the position of the Marquise de Brinvilliers or=
the
Marquis de Sade. Prima facie, it would be an advantage to the Marquis de Sa=
de that
he was a marquis. But it was certainly against Hamon that he was a milliona=
ire.
Wild Bill did not minimise him as a bankrupt or an adventurer; he insisted =
on
the solidity and size of his fortune, he made mountains out of the 'Hamon
millions,' as if they made the matter much worse; as indeed I think they do.
But that is because I happen to share a certain political philosophy with W=
ild
Bill and other wild buffaloes of the prairies. In other words, there is rea=
lly
present here a democratic instinct against the domination of wealth. It does
not prevent wealth from dominating; but it does prevent the domination from=
being
regarded with any affection or loyalty. Despite the man in the starry coat,=
the
Americans have not really any illusions about the Upper Ten. McLean was
appealing to an implicit public opinion when he pelted the Senator with his
gold.
But something mor=
e is
involved. I became conscious, as I have been conscious in reading the crime
novels of America, that the millionaire was taken as a type and not an
individual. This is the great difference; that America recognises rich croo=
ks
as a class. Any Englishman might recognise them as individuals. Any English
romance may turn on a crime in high life; in which the baronet is found to =
have
poisoned his wife, or the elusive burglar turns out to be the bishop. But t=
he
English are not always saying, either in romance or reality, 'What's to be
done, if our food is being poisoned by all these baronets?' They do not mur=
mur
in indignation, 'If bishops will go on burgling like this, something must be
done.' The whole point of the English romance is the exceptional character =
of a
crime in high life. That is not the tone of American novels or American
newspapers or American trials like the trial in Oklahoma. Americans may be
excited when a millionaire crook is caught, as when any other crook is caug=
ht;
but it is at his being caught, not at his being discovered. To put the matt=
er
shortly, England recognises a criminal class at the bottom of the social sc=
ale.
America also recognises a criminal class at the top of the social scale. In
both, for various reasons, it may be difficult for the criminals to be
convicted; but in America the upper class of criminals is recognised. In bo=
th America
and England, of course, it exists.
This is an assump=
tion
at the back of the American mind which makes a great difference in many way=
s;
and in my opinion a difference for the better. I wrote merely fancifully ju=
st
now about bishops being burglars; but there is a story in New York,
illustrating this, which really does in a sense attribute a burglary to a
bishop. The story was that an Anglican Lord Spiritual, of the pompous and n=
ow
rather antiquated school, was pushing open the door of a poor American tene=
ment
with all the placid patronage of the squire and rector visiting the cottage=
rs, when
a gigantic Irish policeman came round the corner and hit him a crack over t=
he
head with a truncheon on the assumption that he was a house-breaker. I hope
that those who laugh at the story see that the laugh is not altogether agai=
nst
the policeman; and that it is not only the policeman, but rather the bishop,
who had failed to recognise some fine logical distinctions. The bishop, bei=
ng a
learned man, might well be called upon (when he had sufficiently recovered =
from
the knock on the head) to define what is the exact difference between a
house-breaker and a home-visitor; and why the home-visitor should not be
regarded as a house-breaker when he will not behave as a guest. An impartia=
l intelligence
will be much less shocked at the policeman's disrespect for the home-visitor
than by the home-visitor's disrespect for the home.
But that story sm=
acks
of the western soil, precisely because of the element of brutality there is=
in
it. In England snobbishness and social oppression are much subtler and soft=
er;
the manifestations of them at least are more mellow and humane. In comparis=
on
there is indeed something which people call ruthless about the air of Ameri=
ca, especially
the American cities. The bishop may push open the door without an apology, =
but
he would not break open the door with a truncheon; but the Irish policeman's
truncheon hits both ways. It may be brutal to the tenement dweller as well =
as
to the bishop; but the difference and distinction is that it might really be
brutal to the bishop. It is because there is after all, at the back of all =
that
barbarism, a sort of a negative belief in the brotherhood of men, a dark de=
mocratic
sense that men are really men and nothing more, that the coarse and even
corrupt bureaucracy is not resented exactly as oligarchic bureaucracies are
resented. There is a sense in which corruption is not so narrow as nepotism=
. It
is upon this queer cynical charity, and even humility, that it has been
possible to rear so high and uphold so long that tower of brass, Tammany Ha=
ll.
The modern police system is in spirit the most inhuman in history, and its =
evil
belongs to an age and not to a nation. But some American police methods are
evil past all parallel; and the detective can be more crooked than a hundre=
d crooks.
But in the States it is not only possible that the policeman is worse than =
the
convict, it is by no means certain that he thinks that he is any better. In=
the
popular stories of O. Henry there are light allusions to tramps being kicked
out of hotels which will make any Christian seek relief in strong language =
and
a trust in heaven--not to say in hell. And yet books even more popular than=
O.
Henry's are those of the 'sob-sisterhood' who swim in lachrymose lakes after
love-lorn spinsters, who pass their lives in reclaiming and consoling such
tramps. There are in this people two strains of brutality and sentimentalis=
m which
I do not understand, especially where they mingle; but I am fairly sure they
both work back to the dim democratic origin. The Irish policeman does not
confine himself fastidiously to bludgeoning bishops; his truncheon finds pl=
enty
of poor people's heads to hit; and yet I believe on my soul he has a sort of
sympathy with poor people not to be found in the police of more aristocratic
states. I believe he also reads and weeps over the stories of the spinsters=
and
the reclaimed tramps; in fact, there is much of such pathos in an American
magazine (my sole companion on many happy railway journeys) which is not on=
ly
devoted to detective stories, but apparently edited by detectives. In these
stories also there is the honest, popular astonishment at the Upper Ten exp=
ressed
by the astronomical detective, if indeed he was a detective and not a demon
from the dark Red-Indian forests that faded to the horizon behind him. But I
have set him as the head and text of this chapter because with these elemen=
ts
of the Third Degree of devilry and the Seventh Heaven of sentimentalism I t=
ouch
on elements that I do not understand; and when I do not understand, I say s=
o.
The Republican in the Rui=
ns
The heathen in his blindness bows d=
own to
wood and stone; especially to a wood-cut or a lithographic stone. Modern pe=
ople
put their trust in pictures, especially scientific pictures, as much as the
most superstitious ever put it in religious pictures. They publish a portra=
it of
the Missing Link as if he were the Missing Man, for whom the police are alw=
ays
advertising; for all the world as if the anthropoid had been photographed
before he absconded. The scientific diagram may be a hypothesis; it may be a
fancy; it may be a forgery. But it is always an idol in the true sense of an
image; and an image in the true sense of a thing mastering the imagination =
and
not the reason. The power of these talismanic pictures is almost hypnotic to
modern humanity. We can never forget that we have seen a portrait of the
Missing Link; though we should instantly detect the lapse of logic into
superstition, if we were told that the old Greek agnostics had made a statu=
e of
the Unknown God. But there is a still stranger fashion in which we fall vic=
tims
to the same trick of fancy. We accept in a blind and literal spirit, not on=
ly images
of speculation, but even figures of speech. The nineteenth century prided
itself on having lost its faith in myths, and proceeded to put all its fait=
h in
metaphors. It dismissed the old doctrines about the way of life and the lig=
ht
of the world; and then it proceeded to talk as if the light of truth were
really and literally a light, that could be absorbed by merely opening our
eyes; or as if the path of progress were really and truly a path, to be fou=
nd
by merely following our noses. Thus the purpose of God is an idea, true or
false; but the purpose of Nature is merely a metaphor; for obviously if the=
re
is no God there is no purpose. Yet while men, by an imaginative instinct, s=
poke
of the purpose of God with a grand agnosticism, as something too large to be
seen, something reaching out to worlds and to eternities, they speak of the
purpose of Nature in particular and practical problems of curing babies or
cutting up rabbits. This power of the modern metaphor must be understood, by
way of an introduction, if we are to understand one of the chief errors, at
once evasive and pervasive, which perplex the problem of America.
America is always
spoken of as a young nation; and whether or no this be a valuable and sugge=
stive
metaphor, very few people notice that it is a metaphor at all. If somebody =
said
that a certain deserving charity had just gone into trousers, we should
recognise that it was a figure of speech, and perhaps a rather surprising
figure of speech. If somebody said that a daily paper had recently put its =
hair
up, we should know it could only be a metaphor, and possibly a rather strai=
ned
metaphor. Yet these phrases would mean the only thing that can possibly be
meant by calling a corporate association of all sorts of people 'young'; th=
at
is, that a certain institution has only existed for a certain time. I am no=
t now
denying that such a corporate nationality may happen to have a psychology
comparatively analogous to the psychology of youth. I am not even denying t=
hat
America has it. I am only pointing out, to begin with, that we must free
ourselves from the talismanic tyranny of a metaphor which we do not recogni=
se
as a metaphor. Men realised that the old mystical doctrines were mystical; =
they
do not realise that the new metaphors are metaphorical. They have some sort=
of
hazy notion that American society must be growing, must be promising, must =
have
the virtues of hope or the faults of ignorance, merely because it has only =
had
a separate existence since the eighteenth century. And that is exactly like
saying that a new chapel must be growing taller, or that a limited liability
company will soon have its second teeth.
Now in truth this
particular conception of American hopefulness would be anything but hopeful=
for
America. If the argument really were, as it is still vaguely supposed to be,
that America must have a long life before it, because it only started in the
eighteenth century, we should find a very fatal answer by looking at the ot=
her
political systems that did start in the eighteenth century. The eighteenth
century was called the Age of Reason; and there is a very real sense in whi=
ch
the other systems were indeed started in a spirit of reason. But starting f=
rom
reason has not saved them from ruin. If we survey the Europe of to-day with
real clarity and historic comprehension, we shall see that it is precisely =
the
most recent and the most rationalistic creations that have been ruined. The=
two
great States which did most definitely and emphatically deserve to be called
modern states were Prussia and Russia. There was no real Prussia before
Frederick the Great; no real Russian Empire before Peter the Great. Both th=
ose
innovators recognised themselves as rationalists bringing a new reason and
order into an indeterminate barbarism; and doing for the barbarians what the
barbarians could not do for themselves. They did not, like the kings of Eng=
land
or France or Spain or Scotland, inherit a sceptre that was the symbol of a
historic and patriotic people. In this sense there was no Russia but only a=
n Emperor
of Russia. In this sense Prussia was a kingdom before it was a nation; if it
ever was a nation. But anyhow both men were particularly modern in their wh=
ole
mood and mind. They were modern to the extent of being not only
anti-traditional, but almost anti-patriotic. Peter forced the science of the
West on Russia to the regret of many Russians. Frederick talked the French =
of
Voltaire and not the German of Luther. The two experiments were entirely in=
the
spirit of Voltairean rationalism; they were built in broad daylight by men =
who
believed in nothing but the light of common day; and already their day is d=
one.
If then the promi=
se
of America were in the fact that she is one of the latest births of progres=
s,
we should point out that it is exactly the latest born that were the first =
to
die. If in this sense she is praised as young, it may be answered that the
young have died young, and have not lived to be old. And if this be confused
with the argument that she came in an age of clarity and scepticism,
uncontaminated by old superstitions, it could still be retorted that the wo=
rks
of superstition have survived the works of scepticism. But the truth is, of
course, that the real quality of America is much more subtle and complex th=
an
this; and is mixed not only of good and bad, and rational and mystical, but=
also
of old and new. That is what makes the task of tracing the true proportions=
of
American life so interesting and so impossible.
To begin with, su=
ch a
metaphor is always as distracting as a mixed metaphor. It is a double-edged
tool that cuts both ways; and consequently opposite ways. We use the same w=
ord
'young' to mean two opposite extremes. We mean something at an early stage =
of
growth, and also something having the latest fruits of growth. We might cal=
l a commonwealth
young if it conducted all its daily conversation by wireless telegraphy;
meaning that it was progressive. But we might also call it young if it
conducted all its industry with chipped flints; meaning that it was primiti=
ve.
These two meanings of youth are hopelessly mixed up when the word is applie=
d to
America. But what is more curious, the two elements really are wildly entan=
gled
in America. America is in some ways what is called in advance of the times,=
and
in some ways what is called behind the times; but it seems a little confusi=
ng
to convey both notions by the same word.
On the one hand,
Americans often are successful in the last inventions. And for that very re=
ason
they are often neglectful of the last but one. It is true of men in general,
dealing with things in general, that while they are progressing in one thin=
g,
such as science, they are going back in another thing, such as art. What is
less fully realised is that this is true even as between different methods =
of
science. The perfection of wireless telegraphy might well be followed by the
gross imperfection of wires. The very enthusiasm of American science brings
this out very vividly. The telephone in New York works miracles all day lon=
g.
Replies from remote places come as promptly as in a private talk; nobody cu=
ts anybody
off; nobody says, 'Sorry you've been troubled.' But then the postal service=
of
New York does not work at all. At least I could never discover it working.
Letters lingered in it for days and days, as in some wild village of the
Pyrenees. When I asked a taxi-driver to drive me to a post-office, a look of
far-off vision and adventure came into his eyes, and he said he had once he=
ard
of a post-office somewhere near West Ninety-Seventh Street. Men are not
efficient in everything, but only in the fashionable thing. This may be a m=
ark
of the march of science; it does certainly in one sense deserve the descrip=
tion
of youth. We can imagine a very young person forgetting the old toy in the =
excitement
of a new one.
But on the other
hand, American manners contain much that is called young in the contrary se=
nse;
in the sense of an earlier stage of history. There are whole patches and
particular aspects that seem to me quite Early Victorian. I cannot help hav=
ing
this sensation, for instance, about the arrangement for smoking in the rail=
way
carriages. There are no smoking carriages, as a rule; but a corner of each =
of
the great cars is curtained off mysteriously, that a man may go behind the =
curtain
and smoke. Nobody thinks of a woman doing so. It is regarded as a dark,
bohemian, and almost brutally masculine indulgence; exactly as it was regar=
ded
by the dowagers in Thackeray's novels. Indeed, this is one of the many such
cases in which extremes meet; the extremes of stuffy antiquity and cranky
modernity. The American dowager is sorry that tobacco was ever introduced; =
and
the American suffragette and social reformer is considering whether tobacco
ought not to be abolished. The tone of American society suggests some sort =
of compromise,
by which women will be allowed to smoke, but men forbidden to do so.
In one respect,
however, America is very old indeed. In one respect America is more historic
than England; I might almost say more archaeological than England. The reco=
rd
of one period of the past, morally remote and probably irrevocable, is there
preserved in a more perfect form as a pagan city is preserved at Pompeii. I=
n a
more general sense, of course, it is easy to exaggerate the contrast as a m=
ere contrast
between the old world and the new. There is a superficial satire about the
millionaire's daughter who has recently become the wife of an aristocrat; b=
ut
there is a rather more subtle satire in the question of how long the aristo=
crat
has been aristocratic. There is often much misplaced mockery of a marriage
between an upstart's daughter and a decayed relic of feudalism; when it is
really a marriage between an upstart's daughter and an upstart's grandson. =
The
sentimental socialist often seems to admit the blue blood of the nobleman, =
even
when he wants to shed it; just as he seems to admit the marvellous brains o=
f the
millionaire, even when he wants to blow them out. Unfortunately (in the
interests of social science, of course) the sentimental socialist never doe=
s go
so far as bloodshed or blowing out brains; otherwise the colour and quality=
of
both blood and brains would probably be a disappointment to him. There are
certainly more American families that really came over in the Mayflower than
English families that really came over with the Conqueror; and an English
county family clearly dating from the time of the Mayflower would be consid=
ered
a very traditional and historic house. Nevertheless, there are ancient thin=
gs in
England, though the aristocracy is hardly one of them. There are buildings,
there are institutions, there are even ideas in England which do preserve, =
as
in a perfect pattern, some particular epoch of the past, and even of the re=
mote
past. A man could study the Middle Ages in Lincoln as well as in Rouen; in
Canterbury as well as in Cologne. Even of the Renaissance the same is true,=
at
least on the literary side; if Shakespeare was later he was also greater th=
an
Ronsard. But the point is that the spirit and philosophy of the periods were
present in fullness and in freedom. The guildsmen were as Christian in Engl=
and
as they were anywhere; the poets were as pagan in England as they were
anywhere. Personally I do not admit that the men who served patrons were fr=
eer than
those who served patron saints. But each fashion had its own kind of freedo=
m;
and the point is that the English, in each case, had the fullness of that k=
ind
of freedom. But there was another ideal of freedom which the English never =
had
at all; or, anyhow, never expressed at all. There was another ideal, the so=
ul
of another epoch, round which we built no monuments and wrote no masterpiec=
es.
You will find no traces of it in England; but you will find them in America=
.
The thing I mean =
was
the real religion of the eighteenth century. Its religion, in the more defi=
ned
sense, was generally Deism, as in Robespierre or Jefferson. In the more gen=
eral
way of morals and atmosphere it was rather Stoicism, as in the suicide of W=
olfe
Tone. It had certain very noble and, as some would say, impossible ideals; =
as that
a politician should be poor, and should be proud of being poor. It knew Lat=
in;
and therefore insisted on the strange fancy that the Republic should be a
public thing. Its Republican simplicity was anything but a silly pose; unle=
ss
all martyrdom is a silly pose. Even of the prigs and fanatics of the Americ=
an
and French Revolutions we can often say, as Stevenson said of an American, =
that
'thrift and courage glowed in him.' And its virtue and value for us is that=
it
did remember the things we now most tend to forget; from the dignity of lib=
erty
to the danger of luxury. It did really believe in self-determination, in the
self-determination of the self, as well as of the state. And its determinat=
ion
was really determined. In short, it believed in self-respect; and it is
strictly true even of its rebels and regicides that they desired chiefly to=
be
respectable. But there were in it the marks of religion as well as
respectability; it had a creed; it had a crusade. Men died singing its song=
s;
men starved rather than write against its principles. And its principles we=
re
liberty, equality, and fraternity, or the dogmas of the Declaration of
Independence. This was the idea that redeemed the dreary negations of the
eighteenth century; and there are still corners of Philadelphia or Boston or
Baltimore where we can feel so suddenly in the silence its plain garb and
formal manners, that the walking ghost of Jefferson would hardly surprise u=
s.
There is not the
ghost of such a thing in England. In England the real religion of the
eighteenth century never found freedom or scope. It never cleared a space in
which to build that cold and classic building called the Capitol. It never =
made
elbow-room for that free if sometimes frigid figure called the Citizen.
In eighteenth-cen=
tury
England he was crowded out, partly perhaps by the relics of better things of
the past, but largely at least by the presence of much worse things in the
present. The worst things kept out the best things of the eighteenth centur=
y.
The ground was occupied by legal fictions; by a godless Erastian church and=
a
powerless Hanoverian king. Its realities were an aristocracy of Regency
dandies, in costumes made to match Brighton Pavilion; a paganism not frigid=
but
florid. It was a touch of this aristocratic waste in Fox that prevented that
great man from being a glorious exception. It is therefore well for us to r=
ealise
that there is something in history which we did not experience; and therefo=
re
probably something in Americans that we do not understand. There was this
idealism at the very beginning of their individualism. There was a note of
heroic publicity and honourable poverty which lingers in the very name of
Cincinnati.
But I have another
and special reason for noting this historical fact; the fact that we English
never made anything upon the model of a capitol, while we can match anybody
with the model of a cathedral. It is far from improbable that the latter mo=
del
may again be a working model. For I have myself felt, naturally and for a l=
ong
time, a warm sympathy with both those past ideals, which seem to some so
incompatible. I have felt the attraction of the red cap as well as the red
cross, of the Marseillaise as well as the Magnificat. And even when they we=
re
in furious conflict I have never altogether lost my sympathy for either. Bu=
t in
the conflict between the Republic[1] and the Church, the point often made
against the Church seems to me much more of a point against the Republic. I=
t is
emphatically the Republic and not the Church that I venerate as something
beautiful but belonging to the past. In fact I feel exactly the same sort of
sad respect for the republican ideal that many mid-Victorian free-thinkers =
felt
for the religious ideal. The most sincere poets of that period were largely
divided between those who insisted, like Arnold and Clough, that Christiani=
ty
might be a ruin, but after all it must be treated as a picturesque ruin; and
those, like Swinburne, who insisted that it might be a picturesque ruin, but
after all it must be treated as a ruin. But surely their own pagan temple o=
f political
liberty is now much more of a ruin than the other; and I fancy I am one of =
the
few who still take off their hats in that ruined temple. That is why I went
about looking for the fading traces of that lost cause, in the old-world
atmosphere of the new world.
But I do not, as a
fact, feel that the cathedral is a ruin; I doubt if I should feel it even i=
f I
wished to lay it in ruins. I doubt if Mr. M'Cabe really thinks that Catholi=
cism
is dying, though he might deceive himself into saying so. Nobody could be
naturally moved to say that the crowded cathedral of St. Patrick in New York
was a ruin, or even that the unfinished Anglo-Catholic cathedral at Washing=
ton
was a ruin, though it is not yet a church; or that there is anything lost or
lingering about the splendid and spirited Gothic churches springing up under
the inspiration of Mr. Cram of Boston. As a matter of feeling, as a matter =
of
fact, as a matter quite apart from theory or opinion, it is not in the
religious centres that we now have the feeling of something beautiful but
receding, of something loved but lost. It is exactly in the spaces cleared =
and
levelled by America for the large and sober religion of the eighteenth cent=
ury;
it is where an old house in Philadelphia contains an old picture of Frankli=
n,
or where the men of Maryland raised above their city the first monument of
Washington. It is there that I feel like one who treads alone some banquet =
hall
deserted, whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead, and all save he depar=
ted.
It is then that I feel as if I were the last Republican.
But when I say th=
at
the Republic of the Age of Reason is now a ruin, I should rather say that at
its best it is a ruin. At its worst it has collapsed into a death-trap or is
rotting like a dunghill. What is the real Republic of our day as distinct f=
rom
the ideal Republic of our fathers, but a heap of corrupt capitalism crawling
with worms; with those parasites, the professional politicians? I was re-re=
ading
Swinburne's bitter but not ignoble poem, 'Before a Crucifix,' in which he b=
ids
Christ, or the ecclesiastical image of Christ, stand out of the way of the
onward march of a political idealism represented by United Italy or the Fre=
nch
Republic. I was struck by the strange and ironic exactitude with which every
taunt he flings at the degradation of the old divine ideal would now fit the
degradation of his own human ideal. The time has already come when we can a=
sk
his Goddess of Liberty, as represented by the actual Liberals, 'Have you fi=
lled
full men's starved-out souls; have you brought freedom on the earth?' For e=
very
engine in which these old free-thinkers firmly and confidently trusted has
itself become an engine of oppression and even of class oppression. Its free
parliament has become an oligarchy. Its free press has become a monopoly. If
the pure Church has been corrupted in the course of two thousand years, what
about the pure Republic that has rotted into a filthy plutocracy in less th=
an a
hundred?
O, hidden face o=
f man,
whereover The years h=
ave
woven a viewless veil, If thou wert
verily man's lover What did th=
y love
or blood avail? Thy blood t=
he
priests make poison of; And in gold
shekels coin thy love.
Which has most to do with shekels t=
o-day,
the priests or the politicians? Can we say in any special sense nowadays th=
at
clergymen, as such, make a poison out of the blood of the martyrs? Can we s=
ay
it in anything like the real sense, in which we do say that yellow journali=
sts make
a poison out of the blood of the soldiers?
But I understand =
how
Swinburne felt when confronted by the image of the carven Christ, and,
perplexed by the contrast between its claims and its consequences, he said =
his
strange farewell to it, hastily indeed, but not without regret, not even re=
ally
without respect. I felt the same myself when I looked for the last time on =
the
Statue of Liberty.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] In the conclu=
sion
of this chapter I mean by the Republic not merely the American Republic, but
the whole modern representative system, as in France or even in England.
A certain kind of question is asked=
very
earnestly in our time. Because of a certain logical quality in it, connected
with premises and data, it is very difficult to answer. Thus people will ask
what is the hidden weakness in the Celtic race that makes them everywhere f=
ail
or fade away; or how the Germans contrived to bring all their organisation =
into
a state of such perfect efficiency; and what was the significance of the re=
cent
victory of Prussia. Or they will ask by what stages the modern world has
abandoned all belief in miracles; and the modern newspapers ceased to print=
any
news of murders. They will ask why English politics are free from corruptio=
n;
or by what mental and moral training certain millionaires were enabled to
succeed by sheer force of character; in short, they will ask why plutocrats
govern well and how it is that pigs fly, spreading their pink pinions to the
breeze or delighting us as they twitter and flutter from tree to tree. The
logical difficulty of answering these questions is connected with an old st=
ory
about Charles the Second and a bowl of goldfish, and with another anecdote
about a gentleman who was asked, 'When did you leave off beating your wife?'
But there is something analogous to it in the present discussions about the=
forces
drawing England and America together. It seems as if the reasoners hardly w=
ent
far enough back in their argument, or took trouble enough to disentangle th=
eir
assumptions. They are still moving with the momentum of the peculiar
nineteenth-century notion of progress; of certain very simple tendencies
perpetually increasing and needing no special analysis. It is so with the
international rapprochement I have to consider here.
In other places I
have ventured to express a doubt about whether nations can be drawn togethe=
r by
an ancient rumour about races; by a sort of prehistoric chit-chat or the go=
ssip
of the Stone Age. I have ventured farther; and even expressed a doubt about
whether they ought to be drawn together, or rather dragged together, by the
brute violence of the engines of science and speed. But there is yet another
horrible doubt haunting my morbid mind, which it will be better for my cons=
titution
to confess frankly. And that is the doubt about whether they are being drawn
together at all.
It has long been a
conversational commonplace among the enlightened that all countries are com=
ing
closer and closer to each other. It was a conversational commonplace among =
the
enlightened, somewhere about the year 1913, that all wars were receding far=
ther
and farther into a barbaric past. There is something about these sayings th=
at
seems simple and familiar and entirely satisfactory when we say them; they =
are
of that consoling sort which we can say without any of the mental pain of t=
hinking
what we are saying. But if we turn our attention from the phrases we use to=
the
facts that we talk about, we shall realise at least that there are a good m=
any
facts on the other side and examples pointing the other way. For instance, =
it
does happen occasionally, from time to time, that people talk about Ireland=
. He
would be a very hilarious humanitarian who should maintain that Ireland and
England have been more and more assimilated during the last hundred years. =
The
very name of Sinn Fein is an answer to it, and the very language in which t=
hat
phrase is spoken. Curran and Sheil would no more have dreamed of uttering t=
he
watchword of 'Repeal' in Gaelic than of uttering it in Zulu. Grattan could
hardly have brought himself to believe that the real repeal of the Union wo=
uld
actually be signed in London in the strange script as remote as the snaky
ornament of the Celtic crosses. It would have seemed like Washington signing
the Declaration of Independence in the picture-writing of the Red Indians.
Ireland has clearly grown away from England; and her language, literature, =
and
type of patriotism are far less English than they were. On the other hand, =
no
one will pretend that the mass of modern Englishmen are much nearer to talk=
ing
Gaelic or decorating Celtic crosses. A hundred years ago it was perfectly
natural that Byron and Moore should walk down the street arm in arm. Even t=
he sight
of Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. W. B. Yeats walking down the street arm in a=
rm
would now arouse some remark.
I could give any
number of other examples of the same new estrangement of nations. I could c=
ite
the obvious facts that Norway and Sweden parted company not very long ago, =
that
Austria and Hungary have again become separate states. I could point to the=
mob
of new nations that have started up after the war; to the fact that the gre=
at
empires are now nearly all broken up; that the Russian Empire no longer dir=
ects
Poland, that the Austrian Empire no longer directs Bohemia, that the Turkis=
h Empire
no longer directs Palestine. Sinn Fein is the separatism of the Irish. Zion=
ism
is the separatism of the Jews. But there is one simple and sufficing exampl=
e,
which is here more to my purpose, and is at least equally sufficient for it.
And that is the deepening national difference between the Americans and the
English.
Let me test it fi=
rst
by my individual experience in the matter of literature. When I was a boy I
read a book like The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table exactly as I read anot=
her
book like The Book of Snobs. I did not think of it as an American book, but
simply as a book. Its wit and idiom were like those of the English literary
tradition; and its few touches of local colour seemed merely accidental, li=
ke
those of an Englishman who happened to be living in Switzerland or Sweden. =
My father
and my father's friends were rightly enthusiastic for the book; so that it
seemed to come to me by inheritance like Gulliver's Travels or Tristram Sha=
ndy.
Its language was as English as Ruskin, and a great deal more English than
Carlyle. Well, I have seen in later years an almost equally wide and
well-merited popularity of the stories of O. Henry. But never for one moment
could I or any one else reading them forget that they were stories by an
American about America. The very first fact about them is that they are told
with an American accent, that is, in the unmistakable tones of a brilliant =
and
fascinating foreigner. And the same is true of every other recent work of w=
hich
the fame has managed to cross the Atlantic. We did not say that The Spoon R=
iver
Anthology was a new book, but that it was a new book from America. It was
exactly as if a remarkable realistic novel was reported from Russia or Ital=
y.
We were in no danger of confusing it with the 'Elegy in a Country Churchyar=
d.'
People in England who heard of Main Street were not likely to identify it w=
ith
a High Street; with the principal thoroughfare in any little town in Berksh=
ire
or Buckinghamshire. But when I was a boy I practically identified the board=
ing-house
of the Autocrat with any boarding-house I happened to know in Brompton or
Brighton. No doubt there were differences; but the point is that the
differences did not pierce the consciousness or prick the illusion. I said =
to
myself, 'People are like this in boarding-houses,' not 'People are like thi=
s in
Boston.'
This can be seen =
even
in the simple matter of language, especially in the sense of slang. Take, f=
or
instance, the delightful sketch in the causerie of Oliver Wendell Holmes; t=
he
character of the young man called John. He is the very modern type in every
modern country who does specialise in slang. He is the young fellow who is
something in the City; the everyday young man of the Gilbertian song, with a
stick and a pipe and a half-bred black-and-tan. In every country he is at o=
nce
witty and commonplace. In every country, therefore, he tends both to the vi=
vacity
and the vulgarity of slang. But when he appeared in Holmes's book, his lang=
uage
was not very different from what it would have been in a Brighton instead o=
f a
Boston boarding-house; or, in short, if the young man called John had more
commonly been called 'Arry. If he had appeared in a modern American book, h=
is
language would have been almost literally unintelligible. At the least an
Englishman would have had to read some of the best sentences twice, as he
sometimes has to read the dizzy and involved metaphors of O. Henry. Nor is =
it
an answer that this depended on the personalities of the particular writers=
. A
comparison between the real journalism of the time of Holmes and the real j=
ournalism
of the time of Henry reveals the same thing. It is the expansion of a slight
difference of style into a luxuriant difference of idiom; and the process
continued indefinitely would certainly produce a totally different language.
After a few centuries the signatures of American ambassadors would look as
fantastic as Gaelic, and the very name of the Republic be as strange as Sinn
Fein.
It is true that t=
here
has been on the surface a certain amount of give and take; or at least, as =
far
as the English are concerned, of take rather than give. But it is true that=
it
was once all the other way; and indeed the one thing is something like a ju=
st
nemesis of the other. Indeed, the story of the reversal is somewhat singula=
r,
when we come to think of it. It began in a certain atmosphere and spirit of
certain well-meaning people who talked about the English-speaking race; and
were apparently indifferent to how the English was spoken, whether in the a=
ccent
of a Jamaican negro or a convict from Botany Bay. It was their logical tend=
ency
to say that Dante was a Dago. It was their logical punishment to say that
Disraeli was an Englishman. Now there may have been a period when this Angl=
o-American
amalgamation included more or less equal elements from England and America.=
It
never included the larger elements, or the more valuable elements of either.
But, on the whole, I think it true to say that it was not an allotment but =
an interchange
of parts; and that things first went all one way and then all the other. Pe=
ople
began by telling the Americans that they owed all their past triumphs to
England; which was false. They ended up by telling the English that they wo=
uld
owe all their future triumphs to America; which is if possible still more
false. Because we chose to forget that New York had been New Amsterdam, we =
are
now in danger of forgetting that London is not New York. Because we insisted
that Chicago was only a pious imitation of Chiswick, we may yet see Chiswic=
k an
inferior imitation of Chicago. Our Anglo-Saxon historians attempted that co=
nquest
in which Howe and Burgoyne had failed, and with infinitely less justificati=
on
on their side. They attempted the great crime of the Anglicisation of Ameri=
ca.
They have called down the punishment of the Americanisation of England. We =
must
not murmur; but it is a heavy punishment.
It may lift a lit=
tle
of its load, however, if we look at it more closely; we shall then find that
though it is very much on top of us, it is only on top. In that sense such
Americanisation as there is is very superficial. For instance, there is a
certain amount of American slang picked up at random; it appears in certain
pushing types of journalism and drama. But we may easily dwell too much on =
this
tragedy; of people who have never spoken English beginning to speak America=
n. I
am far from suggesting that American, like any other foreign language, may =
not frequently
contribute to the common culture of the world phrases for which there is no
substitute; there are French phrases so used in England and English phrases=
in
France. The word 'high-brow,' for instance, is a real discovery and revelat=
ion,
a new and necessary name for something that walked nameless but enormous in=
the
modern world, a shaft of light and a stroke of lightning. That comes from
America and belongs to the world, as much as 'The Raven' or The Scarlet Let=
ter
or the novels of Henry James belong to the world. In fact, I can imagine He=
nry
James originating it in the throes of self-expression, and bringing out a w=
ord
like 'high-browed,' with a sort of gentle jerk, at the end of searching
sentences which groped sensitively until they found the phrase. But most of=
the
American slang that is borrowed seems to be borrowed for no particular reas=
on.
It either has no point or the point is lost by translation into another con=
text
and culture. It is either something which does not need any grotesque and
exaggerative description, or of which there already exists a grotesque and =
exaggerative
description more native to our tongue and soil. For instance, I cannot see =
that
the strong and simple expression 'Now it is for you to pull the police
magistrate's nose' is in any way strengthened by saying, 'Now it is up to y=
ou
to pull the police magistrate's nose.' When Tennyson says of the men of the
Light Brigade 'Theirs but to do and die,' the expression seems to me perfec=
tly
lucid. 'Up to them to do and die' would alter the metre without especially
clarifying the meaning. This is an example of ordinary language being quite
adequate; but there is a further difficulty that even wild slang comes to s=
ound
like ordinary language. Very often the English have already as humorous and=
fanciful
idiom of their own, only that through habit it has lost its humour. When Ke=
ats
wrote the line, 'What pipes and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!' I am willing =
to
believe that the American humorist would have expressed the same sentiment =
by
beginning the sentence with 'Some pipe!' When that was first said, somewher=
e in
the wilds of Colorado, it was really funny; involving a powerful understate=
ment
and the suggestion of a mere sample. If a spinster has informed us that she
keeps a bird, and we find it is an ostrich, there will be considerable poin=
t in
the Colorado satirist saying inquiringly, 'Some bird?' as if he were offeri=
ng
us a small slice of a small plover. But if we go back to this root and
rationale of a joke, the English language already contains quite as good a
joke. It is not necessary to say, 'Some bird'; there is a far finer irony in
the old expression, 'Something like a bird.' It suggests that the speaker s=
ees
something faintly and strangely birdlike about a bird; that it remotely and
almost irrationally reminds him of a bird; and that there is about ostrich
plumes a yard long something like the faint and delicate traces of a feathe=
r.
It has every quality of imaginative irony, except that nobody even imagines=
it
to be ironical. All that happens is that people get tired of that turn of
phrase, take up a foreign phrase and get tired of that, without realising t=
he
point of either. All that happens is that a number of weary people who used=
to say,
'Something like a bird,' now say, 'Some bird,' with undiminished weariness.=
But
they might just as well use dull and decent English; for in both cases they=
are
only using jocular language without seeing the joke.
There is indeed a
considerable trade in the transplantation of these American jokes to England
just now. They generally pine and die in our climate, or they are dead befo=
re
their arrival; but we cannot be certain that they were never alive. There i=
s a
sort of unending frieze or scroll of decorative designs unrolled ceaselessly
before the British public, about a hen-pecked husband, which is indistingui=
shable
to the eye from an actual self-repeating pattern like that of the Greek Key=
, but
which is imported as if it were as precious and irreplaceable as the Elgin
Marbles. Advertisement and syndication make mountains out of the most funny
little mole-hills; but no doubt the mole-hills are picturesque enough in th=
eir
own landscape. In any case there is nothing so national as humour; and many
things, like many people, can be humorous enough when they are at home. But
these American jokes are boomed as solemnly as American religions; and their
supporters gravely testify that they are funny, without seeing the fun of it
for a moment. This is partly perhaps the spirit of spontaneous institutiona=
lism
in American democracy, breaking out in the wrong place. They make humour an=
institution;
and a man will be set to tell an anecdote as if to play the violin. But when
the story is told in America it really is amusing; and when these jokes are
reprinted in England they are often not even intelligible. With all the
stupidity of the millionaire and the monopolist, the enterprising proprietor
prints jokes in England which are necessarily unintelligible to nearly every
English person; jokes referring to domestic and local conditions quite pecu=
liar
to America. I saw one of these narrative caricatures the other day in which=
the
whole of the joke (what there was of it) turned on the astonishment of a ho=
usewife
at the absurd notion of not having an ice-box. It is perfectly true that ne=
arly
every ordinary American housewife possesses an ice-box. An ordinary English
housewife would no more expect to possess an ice-box than to possess an
iceberg. And it would be about as sensible to tow an iceberg to an English =
port
all the way from the North Pole, as to trail that one pale and frigid joke =
to
Fleet Street all the way from the New York papers. It is the same with a
hundred other advertisements and adaptations. I have already confessed that=
I
took a considerable delight in the dancing illuminations of Broadway--in
Broadway. Everything there is suitable to them, the vast interminable
thoroughfare, the toppling houses, the dizzy and restless spirit of the who=
le
city. It is a city of dissolving views, and one may almost say a city in
everlasting dissolution. But I do not especially admire a burning fragment =
of Broadway
stuck up opposite the old Georgian curve of Regent Street. I would as soon
express sympathy with the Republic of Switzerland by erecting a small Alp, =
with
imitation snow, in the middle of St. James's Park.
But all this
commercial copying is very superficial; and above all, it never copies anyt=
hing
that is really worth copying. Nations never learn anything from each other =
in
this way. We have many things to learn from America; but we only listen to
those Americans who have still to learn them. Thus, for instance, we do not
import the small farm but only the big shop. In other words, we hear nothin=
g of
the democracy of the Middle West, but everything of the plutocracy of the
middleman, who is probably as unpopular in the Middle West as the miller in=
the
Middle Ages. If Mr. Elihu K. Pike could be transplanted bodily from the nei=
ghbourhood
of his home town of Marathon, Neb., with his farm and his frame-house and a=
ll
its fittings, and they could be set down exactly in the spot now occupied by
Selfridge's (which could be easily cleared away for the purpose), I think we
could really get a great deal of good by watching him, even if the watching
were inevitably a little too like watching a wild beast in a cage or an ins=
ect
under a glass case. Urban crowds could collect every day behind a barrier or
railing, and gaze at Mr. Pike pottering about all day in his ancient and
autochthonous occupations. We could see him growing Indian corn with all the
gravity of an Indian; though it is impossible to imagine Mrs. Pike blessing=
the
cornfield in the manner of Minnehaha. As I have said, there is a certain la=
ck
of humane myth and mysticism about this Puritan peasantry. But we could see=
him
transforming the maize into pop-corn, which is a very pleasant domestic rit=
ual
and pastime, and is the American equivalent of the glory of roasting chestn=
uts.
Above all, many of us would learn for the first time that a man can really =
live
and walk about upon something more productive than a pavement; and that whe=
n he
does so he can really be a free man, and have no lord but the law. Instead =
of
that, America can give nothing to London but those multiple modern shops, of
which it has too many already. I know that many people entertain the innoce=
nt illusion
that big shops are more efficient than small ones; but that is only because=
the
big combinations have the monopoly of advertisement as well as trade. The b=
ig
shop is not in the least remarkable for efficiency; it is only too big to be
blamed for its inefficiency. It is secure in its reputation for always sack=
ing
the wrong man. A big shop, considered as a place to shop in, is simply a
village of small shops roofed in to keep out the light and air; and one in
which none of the shopkeepers is really responsible for his shop. If any one
has any doubts on this matter, since I have mentioned it, let him consider =
this
fact: that in practice we never do apply this method of commercial combinat=
ion
to anything that matters very much. We do not go to the surgical department=
of
the Stores to have a portion of our brain removed by a delicate operation; =
and
then pass on to the advocacy department to employ one or any of its barrist=
ers,
when we are in temporary danger of being hanged. We go to men who own their=
own
tools and are responsible for the use of their own talents. And the same tr=
uth
applies to that other modern method of advertisement, which has also so lar=
gely
fallen across us like the gigantic shadow of America. Nations do not arm th=
emselves
for a mortal struggle by remembering which sort of submarine they have seen
most often on the hoardings. They can do it about something like soap,
precisely because a nation will not perish by having a second-rate sort of
soap, as it might by having a second-rate sort of submarine. A nation may
indeed perish slowly by having a second-rate sort of food or drink or medic=
ine;
but that is another and much longer story, and the story is not ended yet. =
But
nobody wins a great battle at a great crisis because somebody has told him =
that
Cadgerboy's Cavalry Is the Best. It may be that commercial enterprise will
eventually cover these fields also, and advertisement-agents will provide t=
he
instruments of the surgeon and the weapons of the soldier. When that happen=
s,
the armies will be defeated and the patients will die. But though we modern
people are indeed patients, in the sense of being merely receptive and
accepting things with astonishing patience, we are not dead yet; and we have
lingering gleams of sanity.
For the best thin=
gs
do not travel. As I appear here as a traveller, I may say with all modesty =
that
the best people do not travel either. Both in England and America the normal
people are the national people; and I repeat that I think they are growing =
more
and more national. I do not think the abyss is being bridged by cosmopolitan
theories; and I am sure I do not want it bridged by all this slang journali=
sm
and blatant advertisement. I have called all that commercial publicity the
gigantic shadow of America. It may be the shadow of America, but it is not =
the light
of America. The light lies far beyond, a level light upon the lands of suns=
et,
where it shines upon wide places full of a very simple and a very happy peo=
ple;
and those who would see it must seek for it.
Lincoln and Lost Causes=
span>
It has already been remarked here t=
hat
the English know a great deal about past American literature, but nothing a=
bout
past American history. They do not know either, of course, as well as they =
know
the present American advertising, which is the least important of the three.
But it is worth noting once more how little they know of the history, and h=
ow illogically
that little is chosen. They have heard, no doubt, of the fame and the great=
ness
of Henry Clay. He is a cigar. But it would be unwise to cross-examine any
Englishman, who may be consuming that luxury at the moment, about the Misso=
uri
Compromise or the controversies with Andrew Jackson. And just as the states=
man
of Kentucky is a cigar, so the state of Virginia is a cigarette. But there =
is
perhaps one exception, or half-exception, to this simple plan. It would per=
haps
be an exaggeration to say that Plymouth Rock is a chicken. Any English pers=
on
keeping chickens, and chiefly interested in Plymouth Rocks considered as ch=
ickens,
would nevertheless have a hazy sensation of having seen the word somewhere
before. He would feel subconsciously that the Plymouth Rock had not always =
been
a chicken. Indeed, the name connotes something not only solid but antiquate=
d;
and is not therefore a very tactful name for a chicken. There would rise up
before him something memorable in the haze that he calls his history; and he
would see the history books of his boyhood and old engravings of men in
steeple-crowned hats struggling with sea-waves or Red Indians. The whole th=
ing
would suddenly become clear to him if (by a simple reform) the chickens were
called Pilgrim Fathers.
Then he would
remember all about it. The Pilgrim Fathers were champions of religious libe=
rty;
and they discovered America. It is true that he has also heard of a man cal=
led
Christopher Columbus; but that was in connection with an egg. He has also h=
eard
of somebody known as Sir Walter Raleigh; and though his principal possession
was a cloak, it is also true that he had a potato, not to mention a pipe of
tobacco. Can it be possible that he brought it from Virginia, where the
cigarettes come from? Gradually the memories will come back and fit themsel=
ves
together for the average hen-wife who learnt history at the English element=
ary schools,
and who has now something better to do. Even when the narrative becomes
consecutive, it will not necessarily become correct. It is not strictly tru=
e to
say that the Pilgrim Fathers discovered America. But it is quite as true as
saying that they were champions of religious liberty. If we said that they =
were
martyrs who would have died heroically in torments rather than tolerate any
religious liberty, we should be talking something like sense about them, and
telling the real truth that is their due. The whole Puritan movement, from =
the
Solemn League and Covenant to the last stand of the last Stuarts, was a str=
uggle
against religious toleration, or what they would have called religious
indifference. The first religious equality on earth was established by a
Catholic cavalier in Maryland. Now there is nothing in this to diminish any
dignity that belongs to any real virtues and virilities in the Pilgrim Fath=
ers;
on the contrary, it is rather to the credit of their consistency and
conviction. But there is no doubt that the note of their whole experiment in
New England was intolerance, and even inquisition. And there is no doubt th=
at
New England was then only the newest and not the oldest of these colonial
experiments. At least two Cavaliers had been in the field before any Purita=
ns.
And they had carried with them much more of the atmosphere and nature of the
normal Englishman than any Puritan could possibly carry. They had establish=
ed it
especially in Virginia, which had been founded by a great Elizabethan and n=
amed
after the great Elizabeth. Before there was any New England in the North, t=
here
was something very like Old England in the South. Relatively speaking, ther=
e is
still.
Whenever the
anniversary of the Mayflower comes round, there is a chorus of Anglo-Americ=
an
congratulation and comradeship, as if this at least were a matter on which =
all
can agree. But I knew enough about America, even before I went there, to kn=
ow
that there are a good many people there at any rate who do not agree with i=
t.
Long ago I wrote a protest in which I asked why Englishmen had forgotten the
great state of Virginia, the first in foundation and long the first in
leadership; and why a few crabbed Nonconformists should have the right to e=
rase
a record that begins with Raleigh and ends with Lee, and incidentally inclu=
des Washington.
The great state of Virginia was the backbone of America until it was broken=
in
the Civil War. From Virginia came the first great Presidents and most of the
Fathers of the Republic. Its adherence to the Southern side in the war made=
it
a great war, and for a long time a doubtful war. And in the leader of the
Southern armies it produced what is perhaps the one modern figure that may =
come
to shine like St. Louis in the lost battle, or Hector dying before holy Tro=
y.
Again, it is
characteristic that while the modern English know nothing about Lee they do
know something about Lincoln; and nearly all that they know is wrong. They =
know
nothing of his Southern connections, nothing of his considerable Southern
sympathy, nothing of the meaning of his moderation in face of the problem of
slavery, now lightly treated as self-evident. Above all, they know nothing
about the respect in which Lincoln was quite un-English, was indeed the very
reverse of English; and can be understood better if we think of him as a
Frenchman, since it seems so hard for some of us to believe that he was an
American. I mean his lust for logic for its own sake, and the way he kept
mathematical truths in his mind like the fixed stars. He was so far from be=
ing
a merely practical man, impatient of academic abstractions, that he reviewed
and revelled in academic abstractions, even while he could not apply them to
practical life. He loved to repeat that slavery was intolerable while he
tolerated it, and to prove that something ought to be done while it was
impossible to do it. This was probably very bewildering to his
brother-politicians; for politicians always whitewash what they do not dest=
roy.
But for all that this inconsistent consistency beat the politicians at their
own game, and this abstracted logic proved the most practical of all. For w=
hen
the chance did come to do something, there was no doubt about the thing to =
be
done. The thunderbolt fell from the clear heights of heaven; it had not been
tossed about and lost like a common missile in the market-place. The matter=
is
worth mentioning, because it has a moral for a much larger modern question.=
A wise
man's attitude towards industrial capitalism will be very like Lincoln's
attitude towards slavery. That is, he will manage to endure capitalism; but=
he
will not endure a defence of capitalism. He will recognise the value, not o=
nly
of knowing what he is doing, but of knowing what he would like to do. He wi=
ll
recognise the importance of having a thing clearly labelled in his own mind=
as bad,
long before the opportunity comes to abolish it. He may recognise the risk =
of
even worse things in immediate abolition, as Lincoln did in abolitionism. He
will not call all business men brutes, any more than Lincoln would call all=
planters
demons; because he knows they are not. He will regard many alternatives to
capitalism as crude and inhuman, as Lincoln regarded John Brown's raid; bec=
ause
they are. But he will clear his mind from cant about capitalism; he will ha=
ve
no doubt of what is the truth about Trusts and Trade Combines and the
concentration of capital; and it is the truth that they endure under one of=
the
ironic silences of heaven, over the pageants and the passing triumphs of he=
ll.
But the name of
Lincoln has a more immediate reference to the international matters I am
considering here. His name has been much invoked by English politicians and
journalists in connection with the quarrel with Ireland. And if we study the
matter, we shall hardly admire the tact and sagacity of those journalists a=
nd
politicians.
History is an ete=
rnal
tangle of cross-purposes; and we could not take a clearer case, or rather a
more complicated case, of such a tangle, than the facts lying behind a
political parallel recently mentioned by many politicians. I mean the paral=
lel
between the movement for Irish independence and the attempted secession of =
the
Southern Confederacy in America. Superficially any one might say that the
comparison is natural enough; and that there is much in common between the
quarrel of the North and South in Ireland and the quarrel of the North and
South in America. In both cases the South was on the whole agricultural, th=
e North
on the whole industrial. True, the parallel exaggerates the position of
Belfast; to complete it we must suppose the whole Federal system to have
consisted of Pittsburg. In both the side that was more successful was felt =
by
many to be less attractive. In both the same political terms were used, suc=
h as
the term 'Union' and 'Unionism.' An ordinary Englishman comes to America,
knowing these main lines of American history, and knowing that the American
knows the similar main lines of Irish history. He knows that there are stro=
ng
champions of Ireland in America; possibly he also knows that there are very
genuine champions of England in America. By every possible historical analo=
gy, he
would naturally expect to find the pro-Irish in the South and the pro-Engli=
sh
in the North. As a matter of fact, he finds almost exactly the opposite. He
finds Boston governed by Irishmen, and Nashville containing people more
pro-English than Englishmen. He finds Virginians not only of British blood,
like George Washington, but of British opinions almost worthy of George the
Third.
But I do not say
this, as will be seen in a moment, as a criticism of the comparative Toryis=
m of
the South. I say it as a criticism of the superlative stupidity of English
propaganda. On another page I remark on the need for a new sort of English
propaganda; a propaganda that should be really English and have some remote
reference to England. Now if it were a matter of making foreigners feel the
real humours and humanities of England, there are no Americans so able or
willing to do it as the Americans of the Southern States. As I have already
hinted, some of them are so loyal to the English humanities, that they thin=
k it
their duty to defend even the English inhumanities. New England is turning =
into
New Ireland. But Old England can still be faintly traced in Old Dixie. It c=
ontains
some of the best things that England herself has had, and therefore (of cou=
rse)
the things that England herself has lost, or is trying to lose. But above a=
ll,
as I have said, there are people in these places whose historic memories and
family traditions really hold them to us, not by alliance but by affection.
Indeed, they have the affection in spite of the alliance. They love us in s=
pite
of our compliments and courtesies and hands across the sea; all our
ambassadorial salutations and speeches cannot kill their love. They manage =
even
to respect us in spite of the shady Jew stockbrokers we send them as English
envoys, or the 'efficient' men, who are sent out to be tactful with foreign=
ers because
they have been too tactless with trades unionists. This type of traditional
American, North or South, really has some traditions connecting him with
England; and though he is now in a very small minority, I cannot imagine why
England should wish to make it smaller. England once sympathised with the
South. The South still sympathises with England. It would seem that the Sou=
th,
or some elements in the South, had rather the advantage of us in political
firmness and fidelity; but it does not follow that that fidelity will stand
every shock. And at this moment, and in this matter, of all things in the w=
orld,
our political propagandists must try to bolster British Imperialism up, by
kicking Southern Secession when it is down. The English politicians eagerly
point out that we shall be justified in crushing Ireland exactly as Sumner =
and
Stevens crushed the most English part of America. It does not seem to occur=
to
them that this comparison between the Unionist triumph in America and a
Unionist triumph in Britain is rather hard upon our particular sympathisers,
who did not triumph. When England exults in Lincoln's victory over his foes,
she is exulting in his victory over her own friends. If her diplomacy conti=
nues
as delicate and chivalrous as it is at present, they may soon be her only
friends. England will be defending herself at the expense of her only
defenders. But however this may be, it is as well to bear witness to some of
the elements of my own experience; and I can answer for it, at least, that
there are some people in the South who will not be pleased at being swept i=
nto
the rubbish heap of history as rebels and ruffians; and who will not, I reg=
ret
to say, by any means enjoy even being classed with Fenians and Sinn Feiners=
.
Now touching the
actual comparison between the conquest of the Confederacy and the conquest =
of
Ireland, there are, of course, a good many things to be said which politici=
ans
cannot be expected to understand. Strange to say, it is not certain that a =
lost
cause was never worth winning; and it would be easy to argue that the world
lost very much indeed when that particular cause was lost. These are not da=
ys in
which it is exactly obvious that an agricultural society was more dangerous
than an industrial one. And even Southern slavery had this one moral merit,
that it was decadent; it has this one historic advantage, that it is dead. =
The
Northern slavery, industrial slavery, or what is called wage slavery, is not
decaying but increasing; and the end of it is not yet. But in any case, it
would be well for us to realise that the reproach of resembling the Confede=
racy
does not ring in all ears as an unanswerable condemnation. It is scarcely a
self-evident or sufficient argument, to some hearers, even to prove that the
English are as delicate and philanthropic as Sherman, still less that the I=
rish
are as criminal and lawless as Lee. Nor will it soothe every single soul on=
the
American continent to say that the English victory in Ireland will be follo=
wed
by a reconstruction, like the reconstruction exhibited in the film called '=
The
Birth of a Nation.' And, indeed, there is a further inference from that fine
panorama of the exploits of the Ku-Klux Klan. It would be easy, as I say, to
turn the argument entirely in favour of the Confederacy. It would be easy to
draw the moral, not that the Southern Irish are as wrong as the Southern
States, but that the Southern States were as right as the Southern Irish. B=
ut
upon the whole, I do not incline to accept the parallel in that sense any m=
ore
than in the opposite sense. For reasons I have already given elsewhere, I d=
o believe
that in the main Abraham Lincoln was right. But right in what?
If Lincoln was ri=
ght,
he was right in guessing that there was not really a Northern nation and a
Southern nation, but only one American nation. And if he has been proved ri=
ght,
he has been proved right by the fact that men in the South, as well as the
North, do now feel a patriotism for that American nation. His wisdom, if it
really was wisdom, was justified not by his opponents being conquered, but =
by
their being converted. Now, if the English politicians must insist on this =
parallel,
they ought to see that the parallel is fatal to themselves. The very test w=
hich
proved Lincoln right has proved them wrong. The very judgment which may have
justified him quite unquestionably condemns them. We have again and again
conquered Ireland, and have never come an inch nearer to converting Ireland=
. We
have had not one Gettysburg, but twenty Gettysburgs; but we have had no Uni=
on.
And that is where, as I have remarked, it is relevant to remember that flyi=
ng
fantastic vision on the films that told so many people what no histories ha=
ve
told them. I heard when I was in America rumours of the local reappearance =
of
the Ku-Klux Klan; but the smallness and mildness of the manifestation, as c=
ompared
with the old Southern or the new Irish case, is alone a sufficient example =
of
the exception that proves the rule. To approximate to any resemblance to re=
cent
Irish events, we must imagine the Ku-Klux Klan riding again in more than the
terrors of that vision, wild as the wind, white as the moon, terrible as an=
army
with banners. If there were really such a revival of the Southern action, t=
here
would equally be a revival of the Southern argument. It would be clear that=
Lee
was right and Lincoln was wrong; that the Southern States were national and
were as indestructible as nations. If the South were as rebellious as Irela=
nd,
the North would be as wrong as England.
But I desire a new
English diplomacy that will exhibit, not the things in which England is wro=
ng
but the things in which England is right. And England is right in England, =
just
as she is wrong in Ireland; and it is exactly that rightness of a real nati=
on
in itself that it is at once most difficult and most desirable to explain to
foreigners. Now the Irishman, and to some extent the American, has remained=
alien
to England, largely because he does not truly realise that the Englishman l=
oves
England, still less can he really imagine why the Englishman loves England.
That is why I insist on the stupidity of ignoring and insulting the opinion=
s of
those few Virginians and other Southerners who really have some inherited
notion of why Englishmen love England; and even love it in something of the
same fashion themselves. Politicians who do not know the English spirit when
they see it at home, cannot of course be expected to recognise it abroad.
Publicists are eloquently praising Abraham Lincoln, for all the wrong reaso=
ns;
but fundamentally for that worst and vilest of all reasons--that he succeed=
ed.
None of them seems to have the least notion of how to look for England in
England; and they would see something fantastic in the figure of a traveller
who found it elsewhere, or anywhere but in New England. And it is well,
perhaps, that they have not yet found England where it is hidden in England;
for if they found it, they would kill it.
All I am concerne=
d to
consider here is the inevitable failure of this sort of Anglo-American
propaganda to create a friendship. To praise Lincoln as an Englishman is ab=
out
as appropriate as if we were praising Lincoln as an English town. We are
talking about something totally different. And indeed the whole conversatio=
n is
rather like some such cross-purposes about some such word as 'Lincoln'; in
which one party should be talking about the President and the other about t=
he
cathedral. It is like some wild bewilderment in a farce, with one man wonde=
ring
how a President could have a church-spire, and the other wondering how a ch=
urch
could have a chin-beard. And the moral is the moral on which I would insist
everywhere in this book; that the remedy is to be found in disentangling the
two and not in entangling them further. You could not produce a democrat of=
the
logical type of Lincoln merely out of the moral materials that now make up =
an
English cathedral town, like that on which Old Tom of Lincoln looks down. B=
ut
on the other hand, it is quite certain that a hundred Abraham Lincolns, wor=
king
for a hundred years, could not build Lincoln Cathedral. And the farcical
allegory of an attempt to make Old Tom and Old Abe embrace to the glory of =
the illogical
Anglo-Saxon language is but a symbol of something that is always being
attempted, and always attempted in vain. It is not by mutual imitation that=
the
understanding can come. It is not by erecting New York sky-scrapers in Lond=
on
that New York can learn the sacred significance of the towers of Lincoln. I=
t is
not by English dukes importing the daughters of American millionaires that
England can get any glimpse of the democratic dignity of American men. I ha=
ve
the best of all reasons for knowing that a stranger can be welcomed in Amer=
ica;
and just as he is courteously treated in the country as a stranger, so he
should always be careful to treat it as a strange land. That sort of imagin=
ative
respect, as for something different and even distant, is the only beginning=
of
any attachment between patriotic peoples. The English traveller may carry w=
ith
him at least one word of his own great language and literature; and wheneve=
r he
is inclined to say of anything 'This is passing strange,' he may remember t=
hat
it was no inconsiderable Englishman who appended to it the answer, 'And
therefore as a stranger give it welcome.'
There was recently a highly disting=
uished
gathering to celebrate the past, present, and especially future triumphs of
aviation. Some of the most brilliant men of the age, such as Mr. H. G. Wells
and Mr. J. L. Garvin, made interesting and important speeches, and many
scientific aviators luminously discussed the new science. Among their grace=
ful felicitations
and grave and quiet analyses a word was said, or a note was struck, which I
myself can never hear, even in the most harmless after-dinner speech, witho=
ut
an impulse to leap up and yell, and smash the decanters and wreck the
dinner-table.
Long ago, when I =
was
a boy, I heard it with fury; and never since have I been able to understand=
any
free man hearing it without fury. I heard it when Bloch, and the old prophe=
ts
of pacifism by panic, preached that war would become too horrible for patri=
ots
to endure. It sounded to me like saying that an instrument of torture was b=
eing
prepared by my dentist, that would finally cure me of loving my dog. And I =
felt
it again when all these wise and well-meaning persons began to talk about t=
he inevitable
effect of aviation in bridging the Atlantic, and establishing alliance and
affection between England and America.
I resent the
suggestion that a machine can make me bad. But I resent quite equally the
suggestion that a machine can make me good. It might be the unfortunate fact
that a coolness had arisen between myself and Mr. Fitzarlington Blenkinsop,
inhabiting the suburban villa and garden next to mine; and I might even be
largely to blame for it. But if somebody told me that a new kind of lawn-mo=
wer
had just been invented, of so cunning a structure that I should be forced to
become a bosom-friend of Mr. Blenkinsop whether I liked it or not, I should=
be very
much annoyed. I should be moved to say that if that was the only way of cut=
ting
my grass I would not cut my grass, but continue to cut my neighbour. Or sup=
pose
the difference were even less defensible; suppose a man had suffered from a
trifling shindy with his wife. And suppose somebody told him that the
introduction of an entirely new vacuum-cleaner would compel him to a reluct=
ant
reconciliation with his wife. It would be found, I fancy, that human nature
abhors that vacuum. Reasonably spirited human beings will not be ordered ab=
out
by bicycles and sewing-machines; and a sane man will not be made good, let
alone bad, by the things he has himself made. I have occasionally dictated =
to a
typewriter, but I will not be dictated to by a typewriter, even of the newe=
st
and most complicated mechanism; nor have I ever met a typewriter, however
complex, that attempted such a tyranny.
Yet this and noth=
ing
else is what is implied in all such talk of the aeroplane annihilating
distinctions as well as distances; and an international aviation abolishing
nationalities. This and nothing else was really implied in one speaker's
prediction that such aviation will almost necessitate an Anglo-American
friendship. Incidentally, I may remark, it is not a true suggestion even in=
the
practical and materialistic sense; and the speaker's phrase refuted the
speaker's argument. He said that international relations must be more frien=
dly when
men can get from England to America in a day. Well, men can already get from
England to Germany in a day; and the result was a mutual invitation of which
the formalities lasted for five years. Men could get from the coast of Engl=
and
to the coast of France very quickly, through nearly all the ages during whi=
ch
those two coasts were bristling with arms against each other. They could get
there very quickly when Nelson went down by that Burford Inn to embark for
Trafalgar; they could get there very quickly when Napoleon sat in his tent =
in
that camp at Boulogne that filled England with alarums of invasion. Are the=
se
the amiable and pacific relations which will unite England and America, whe=
n Englishmen
can get to America in a day? The shortening of the distance seems quite as
likely, so far as that argument goes, to facilitate that endless guerilla
warfare which raged across the narrow seas in the Middle Ages; when French
invaders carried away the bells of Rye, and the men of those flats of East
Sussex gloriously pursued and recovered them. I do not know whether American
privateers, landing at Liverpool, would carry away a few of the more elegant
factory chimneys as a substitute for the superstitious symbols of the past.=
I
know not if the English, on ripe reflection, would essay with any enthusias=
m to
get them back. But anyhow it is anything but self-evident that people cannot
fight each other because they are near to each other; and if it were true,
there would never have been any such thing as border warfare in the world. =
As a
fact, border warfare has often been the one sort of warfare which it was mo=
st
difficult to bring under control. And our own traditional position in face =
of
this new logic is somewhat disconcerting. We have always supposed ourselves
safer because we were insular and therefore isolated. We have been
congratulating ourselves for centuries on having enjoyed peace because we w=
ere
cut off from our neighbours. And now they are telling us that we shall only
enjoy peace when we are joined up with our neighbours. We have pitied the p=
oor
nations with frontiers, because a frontier only produces fighting; and now =
we
are trusting to a frontier as the only thing that will produce friendship. =
But,
as a matter of fact, and for a far deeper and more spiritual reason, a fron=
tier
will not produce friendship. Only friendliness produces friendship. And we =
must
look far deeper into the soul of man for the thing that produces friendline=
ss.
But apart from th=
is
fallacy about the facts, I feel, as I say, a strong abstract anger against =
the
idea, or what some would call the ideal. If it were true that men could be
taught and tamed by machines, even if they were taught wisdom or tamed to
amiability, I should think it the most tragic truth in the world. A man so
improved would be, in an exceedingly ugly sense, losing his soul to save it.
But in truth he cannot be so completely coerced into good; and in so far as=
he
is incompletely coerced, he is quite as likely to be coerced into evil. Of =
the
financial characters who figure as philanthropists and philosophers in such
cases, it is strictly true to say that their good is evil. The light in the=
ir
bodies is darkness, and the highest objects of such men are the lowest obje=
cts
of ordinary men. Their peace is mere safety, their friendship is mere trade;
their international friendship is mere international trade. The best we can=
say
of that school of capitalism is that it will be unsuccessful. It has every
other vice, but it is not practical. It has at least the impossibility of
idealism; and so far as remoteness can carry it, that Inferno is indeed a
Utopia. All the visible manifestations of these men are materialistic; but =
at
least their visions will not materialise. The worst we suffer; but the best=
we shall
at any rate escape. We may continue to endure the realities of cosmopolitan
capitalism; but we shall be spared its ideals.
But I am not
primarily interested in the plutocrats whose vision takes so vulgar a form.=
I
am interested in the same thing when it takes a far more subtle form, in me=
n of
genius and genuine social enthusiasm like Mr. H. G. Wells. It would be very
unfair to a man like Mr. Wells to suggest that in his vision the Englishman=
and
the American are to embrace only in the sense of clinging to each other in
terror. He is a man who understands what friendship is, and who knows how to
enjoy the motley humours of humanity. But the political reconstruction whic=
h he
proposes is too much determined by this old nightmare of necessitarianism. =
He
tells us that our national dignities and differences must be melted into the
huge mould of a World State, or else (and I think these are almost his own
words) we shall be destroyed by the instruments and machinery we have ourse=
lves
made. In effect, men must abandon patriotism or they will be murdered by
science. After this, surely no one can accuse Mr. Wells of an undue tendern=
ess
for scientific over other types of training. Greek may be a good thing or n=
o;
but nobody says that if Greek scholarship is carried past a certain point, =
everybody
will be torn in pieces like Orpheus, or burned up like Semele, or poisoned =
like
Socrates. Philosophy, theology and logic may or may not be idle academic
studies; but nobody supposes that the study of philosophy, or even of theol=
ogy,
ultimately forces its students to manufacture racks and thumb-screws against
their will; or that even logicians need be so alarmingly logical as all tha=
t.
Science seems to be the only branch of study in which people have to be wav=
ed
back from perfection as from a pestilence. But my business is not with the =
scientific
dangers which alarm Mr. Wells, but with the remedy he proposes for them; or
rather with the relation of that remedy to the foundation and the future of
America. Now it is not too much to say that Mr. Wells finds his model in
America. The World State is to be the United States of the World. He answers
almost all objections to the practicability of such a peace among states, by
pointing out that the American States have such a peace, and by adding, tru=
ly
enough, that another turn of history might easily have seen them broken up =
by
war. The pattern of the World State is to be found in the New World.
Oddly enough, as =
it
seems to me, he proposes almost cosmic conquests for the American Constitut=
ion,
while leaving out the most successful thing in that Constitution. The point
appeared in answer to a question which many, like myself, must have put in =
this
matter; the question of despotism and democracy. I cannot understand any
democrat not seeing the danger of so distant and indirect a system of
government. It is hard enough anywhere to get representatives to represent.=
It
is hard enough to get a little town council to fulfil the wishes of a little
town, even when the townsmen meet the town councillors every day in the str=
eet,
and could kick them down the street if they liked. What the same town
councillors would be like if they were ruling all their fellow-creatures fr=
om
the North Pole or the New Jerusalem, is a vision of Oriental despotism beyo=
nd the
towering fancies of Tamberlane. This difficulty in all representative
government is felt everywhere, and not least in America. But I think that if
there is one truth apparent in such a choice of evils, it is that monarchy =
is
at least better than oligarchy; and that where we have to act on a large sc=
ale,
the most genuine popularity can gather round a particular person like a Pop=
e or
a President of the United States, or even a dictator like Caesar or Napoleo=
n,
rather than round a more or less corrupt committee which can only be define=
d as
an obscure oligarchy. And in that sense any oligarchy is obscure. For peopl=
e to
continue to trust twenty-seven men it is necessary, as a preliminary formal=
ity,
that people should have heard of them. And there are no twenty-seven men of
whom everybody has heard as everybody in France had heard of Napoleon, as a=
ll
Catholics have heard of the Pope or all Americans have heard of the Preside=
nt.
I think the mass of ordinary Americans do really elect their President; and
even where they cannot control him at least they watch him, and in the long=
run
they judge him. I think, therefore, that the American Constitution has a re=
al
popular institution in the Presidency. But Mr. Wells would appear to want t=
he
American Constitution without the Presidency. If I understand his words
rightly, he seems to want the great democracy without its popular instituti=
on.
Alluding to this danger, that the World State might be a world tyranny, he
seems to take tyranny entirely in the sense of autocracy. He asks whether t=
he
President of the World State would not be rather too tremendous a person, a=
nd
seems to suggest in answer that there need not even be any such person. He
seems to imply that the committee controlling the planet could meet almost
without any one in the chair, certainly without any one on the throne. I ca=
nnot
imagine anything more manifestly made to be a tyranny than such an acephalo=
us
aristocracy. But while Mr. Wells's decision seems to me strange, his reason=
for
it seems to me still more extraordinary.
He suggests that =
no
such dictator will be needed in his World State because 'there will be no w=
ars
and no diplomacy.' A World State ought doubtless to go round the world; and
going round the world seems to be a good training for arguing in a circle.
Obviously there will be no wars and no war-diplomacy if something has the p=
ower
to prevent them; and we cannot deduce that the something will not want any
power. It is rather as if somebody, urging that the Germans could only be
defeated by uniting the Allied commands under Marshal Foch, had said that a=
fter
all it need not offend the British Generals because the French supremacy ne=
ed
only be a fiction, the Germans being defeated. We should naturally say that=
the
German defeat would only be a reality because the Allied command was not a
fiction. So the universal peace would only be a reality if the World State =
were
not a fiction. And it could not be even a state if it were not a government.
This argument amounts to saying, first that the World State will be needed
because it is strong, and then that it may safely be weak because it will n=
ot
be needed.
Internationalism =
is
in any case hostile to democracy. I do not say it is incompatible with it; =
but
any combination of the two will be a compromise between the two. The only
purely popular government is local, and founded on local knowledge. The
citizens can rule the city because they know the city; but it will always b=
e an
exceptional sort of citizen who has or claims the right to rule over ten
cities, and these remote and altogether alien cities. All Irishmen may know
roughly the same sort of things about Ireland; but it is absurd to say they=
all
know the same things about Iceland, when they may include a scholar steeped=
in Icelandic
sagas or a sailor who has been to Iceland. To make all politics cosmopolita=
n is
to create an aristocracy of globe-trotters. If your political outlook really
takes in the Cannibal Islands, you depend of necessity upon a superior and
picked minority of the people who have been to the Cannibal Islands; or rat=
her
of the still smaller and more select minority who have come back.
Given this diffic=
ulty
about quite direct democracy over large areas, I think the nearest thing to
democracy is despotism. At any rate I think it is some sort of more or less
independent monarchy, such as Andrew Jackson created in America. And I beli=
eve
it is true to say that the two men whom the modern world really and almost
reluctantly regards with impersonal respect, as clothed by their office with
something historic and honourable, are the Pope and the President of the Un=
ited
States.
But to admire the
United States as the United States is one thing. To admire them as the World
State is quite another. The attempt of Mr. Wells to make America a sort of =
model
for the federation of all the free nations of the earth, though it is
international in intention, is really as narrowly national, in the bad sens=
e,
as the desire of Mr. Kipling to cover the world with British Imperialism, o=
r of
Professor Treitschke to cover it with Prussian Pan-Germanism. Not being
schoolboys, we no longer believe that everything can be settled by painting=
the
map red. Nor do I believe it can be done by painting it blue with white spo=
ts,
even if they are called stars. The insufficiency of British Imperialism does
not lie in the fact that it has always been applied by force of arms. As a =
matter
of fact, it has not. It has been effected largely by commerce, by colonisat=
ion
of comparatively empty places, by geographical discovery and diplomatic
bargain. Whether it be regarded as praise or blame, it is certainly the tru=
th
that among all the things that have called themselves empires, the British =
has
been perhaps the least purely military, and has least both of the special g=
uilt
and the special glory that goes with militarism. The insufficiency of Briti=
sh
Imperialism is not that it is imperial, let alone military. The insufficien=
cy
of British Imperialism is that it is British; when it is not merely Jewish.=
It
is that just as a man is no more than a man, so a nation is no more than a
nation; and any nation is inadequate as an international model. Any state l=
ooks
small when it occupies the whole earth. Any polity is narrow as soon as it =
is
as wide as the world. It would be just the same if Ireland began to paint t=
he
map green or Montenegro were to paint it black. The objection to spreading
anything all over the world is that, among other things, you have to spread=
it
very thin.
But America, which
Mr. Wells takes as a model, is in another sense rather a warning. Mr. Wells
says very truly that there was a moment in history when America might well =
have
broken up into independent states like those of Europe. He seems to take it=
for
granted that it was in all respects an advantage that this was avoided. Yet
there is surely a case, however mildly we put it, for a certain importance =
in
the world still attaching to Europe. There are some who find France as
interesting as Florida; and who think they can learn as much about history =
and
humanity in the marble cities of the Mediterranean as in the wooden towns of
the Middle West. Europe may have been divided, but it was certainly not des=
troyed;
nor has its peculiar position in the culture of the world been destroyed.
Nothing has yet appeared capable of completely eclipsing it, either in its
extension in America or its imitation in Japan. But the immediate point her=
e is
perhaps a more important one. There is now no creed accepted as embodying t=
he
common sense of all Europe, as the Catholic creed was accepted as embodying=
it
in mediaeval times. There is no culture broadly superior to all others, as =
the
Mediterranean culture was superior to that of the barbarians in Roman times=
. If
Europe were united in modern times, it would probably be by the victory of =
one
of its types over others, possibly over all the others. And when America was
united finally in the nineteenth century, it was by the victory of one of i=
ts
types over others. It is not yet certain that this victory was a good thing=
. It
is not yet certain that the world will be better for the triumph of the Nor=
th
over the Southern traditions of America. It may yet turn out to be as
unfortunate as a triumph of the North Germans over the Southern traditions =
of
Germany and of Europe.
The men who will =
not
face this fact are men whose minds are not free. They are more crushed by
Progress than any pietists by Providence. They are not allowed to question =
that
whatever has recently happened was all for the best. Now Progress is Provid=
ence
without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually
gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an
everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle. If there be no
purpose, or if the purpose permits of human free will, then in either case =
it
is almost insanely unlikely that there should be in history a period of ste=
ady
and uninterrupted progress; or in other words a period in which poor bewild=
ered
humanity moves amid a chaos of complications, without making a single mista=
ke.
What has to be hammered into the heads of most normal newspaper-readers to-=
day
is that Man has made a great many mistakes. Modern Man has made a great many
mistakes. Indeed, in the case of that progressive and pioneering character,=
one
is sometimes tempted to say that he has made nothing but mistakes. Calvinism
was a mistake, and Capitalism was a mistake, and Teutonism and the flattery=
of
the Northern tribes were mistakes. In the French the persecution of Catholi=
cism
by the politicians was a mistake, as they found out in the Great War; when =
the
memory gave Irish or Italian Catholics an excuse for hanging back. In Engla=
nd
the loss of agriculture and therefore of food-supply in war, and the power =
to
stand a siege, was a mistake. And in America the introduction of the negroes
was a mistake; but it may yet be found that the sacrifice of the Southern w=
hite
man to them was even more of a mistake.
The reason of this
doubt is in one word. We have not yet seen the end of the whole industrial
experiment; and there are already signs of it coming to a bad end. It may e=
nd
in Bolshevism. It is more likely to end in the Servile State. Indeed, the t=
wo
things are not so different as some suppose, and they grow less different e=
very
day. The Bolshevists have already called in Capitalists to help them to cru=
sh
the free peasants. The Capitalists are quite likely to call in Labour Leade=
rs
to whitewash their compromise as social reform or even Socialism. The cosmo=
politan
Jews who are the Communists in the East will not find it so very hard to ma=
ke a
bargain with the cosmopolitan Jews who are Capitalists in the West. The Wes=
tern
Jews would be willing to admit a nominal Socialism. The Eastern Jews have
already admitted that their Socialism is nominal. It was the Bolshevist lea=
der
himself who said, 'Russia is again a Capitalist country.' But whoever makes=
the
bargain, and whatever is its precise character, the substance of it will be=
servile.
It will be servile in the only rational and reliable sense; that is, an
arrangement by which a mass of men are ensured shelter and livelihood, in
return for being subjected to a law which obliges them to continue to labou=
r.
Of course it will not be called the Servile State; it is very probable that=
it
will be called the Socialist State. But nobody seems to realise how very ne=
ar
all the industrial countries are to it. At any moment it may appear in the
simple form of compulsory arbitration; for compulsory arbitration dealing w=
ith
private employers is by definition slavery. When workmen receive unemployme=
nt
pay, and at the same time arouse more and more irritation by going on strik=
e,
it may seem very natural to give them the unemployment pay for good and for=
bid them
the strike for good; and the combination of those two things is by definiti=
on
slavery. And Trotsky can beat any Trust magnate as a strike-breaker; for he
does not even pretend that his compulsory labour is a free bargain. If Trot=
sky
and the Trust magnate come to a working compromise, that compromise will be=
a
Servile State. But it will also be the supreme and by far the most construc=
tive
and conclusive result of the industrial movement in history; of the power of
machinery or money; of the huge populations of the modern cities; of scient=
ific
inventions and resources; of all the things before which the agricultural
society of the Southern Confederacy went down. But even those who cannot se=
e that
commercialism may end in the triumph of slavery can see that the Northern
victory has to a great extent ended in the triumph of commercialism. And the
point at the moment is that this did definitely mean, even at the time, the
triumph of one American type over another American type; just as much as any
European war might mean the triumph of one European type over another. A
victory of England over France would be a victory of merchants over peasant=
s;
and the victory of Northerners over Southerners was a victory of merchants =
over
squires. So that that very unity, which Mr. Wells contrasts so favourably w=
ith
war, was not only itself due to a war, but to a war which had one of the mo=
st questionable
and even perilous of the results of war. That result was a change in the
balance of power, the predominance of a particular partner, the exaltation =
of a
particular example, the eclipse of excellent traditions when the defeated l=
ost
their international influence. In short, it made exactly the same sort of
difference of which we speak when we say that 1870 was a disaster to Europe=
, or
that it was necessary to fight Prussia lest she should Prussianise the whol=
e world.
America would have been very different if the leadership had remained with
Virginia. The world would have been very different if America had been very
different. It is quite reasonable to rejoice that the issue went as it did;
indeed, as I have explained elsewhere, for other reasons I do on the whole
rejoice in it. But it is certainly not self-evident that it is a matter for
rejoicing. One type of American state conquered and subjugated another type=
of
American state; and the virtues and value of the latter were very largely l=
ost
to the world. So if Mr. Wells insists on the parallel of a United States of
Europe, he must accept the parallel of a Civil War of Europe. He must suppo=
se
that the peasant countries crush the industrial countries or vice versa; an=
d that
one or other of them becomes the European tradition to the neglect of the
other. The situation which seems to satisfy him so completely in America is,
after all, the situation which would result in Europe if the Germanic Empir=
es,
let us say, had entirely arrested the special development of the Slavs; or =
if
the influence of France had really broken off short under a blow from Brita=
in.
The Old South had qualities of humane civilisation which have not sufficien=
tly
survived; or at any rate have not sufficiently spread. It is true that the
decline of the agricultural South has been considerably balanced by the gro=
wth
of the agricultural West. It is true, as I have occasion to emphasise in an=
other
place, that the West does give the New America something that is nearly a
normal peasantry, as a pendant to the industrial towns. But this is not an
answer; it is rather an augmentation of the argument. In so far as America =
is
saved it is saved by being patchy; and would be ruined if the Western patch=
had
the same fate as the Southern patch. When all is said, therefore, the
advantages of American unification are not so certain that we can apply the=
m to
a world unification. The doubt could be expressed in a great many ways and =
by a
great many examples. For that matter, it is already being felt that the
supremacy of the Middle West in politics is inflicting upon other localities
exactly the sort of local injustice that turns provinces into nations
struggling to be free. It has already inflicted what amounts to religious
persecution, or the imposition of an alien morality, on the wine-growing
civilisation of California. In a word, the American system is a good one as=
governments
go; but it is too large, and the world will not be improved by making it
larger. And for this reason alone I should reject this second method of uni=
ting
England and America; which is not only Americanising England, but Americani=
sing
everything else.
But the essential
reason is that a type of culture came out on top in America and England in =
the
nineteenth century, which cannot and would not be tolerated on top of the
world. To unite all the systems at the top, without improving and simplifyi=
ng
their social organisation below, would be to tie all the tops of the trees
together where they rise above a dense and poisonous jungle, and make the
jungle darker than before. To create such a cosmopolitan political platform
would be to build a roof above our own heads to shut out the sunlight, on w=
hich
only usurers and conspirators clad in gold could walk about in the sun. Thi=
s is
no moment when industrial intellectualism can inflict such an artificial
oppression upon the world. Industrialism itself is coming to see dark days,=
and
its future is very doubtful. It is split from end to end with strikes and
struggles for economic life, in which the poor not only plead that they are
starving, but even the rich can only plead that they are bankrupt. The
peasantries are growing not only more prosperous but more politically
effective; the Russian moujik has held up the Bolshevist Government of Mosc=
ow
and Petersburg; a huge concession has been made by England to Ireland; the
League of Nations has decided for Poland against Prussia. It is not certain
that industrialism will not wither even in its own field; it is certain that
its intellectual ideas will not be allowed to cover every field; and this s=
ort
of cosmopolitan culture is one of its ideas. Industrialism itself may peris=
h;
or on the other hand industrialism itself may survive, by some searching an=
d scientific
reform that will really guarantee economic security to all. It may really p=
urge
itself of the accidental maladies of anarchy and famine; and continue as a
machine, but at least as a comparatively clean and humanely shielded machin=
e;
at any rate no longer as a man-eating machine. Capitalism may clear itself =
of
its worst corruptions by such reform as is open to it; by creating humane a=
nd
healthy conditions for labour, and setting the labouring classes to work un=
der
a lucid and recognised law. It may make Pittsburg one vast model factory for
all who will model themselves upon factories; and may give to all men and w=
omen
in its employment a clear social status in which they can be contented and
secure. And on the day when that social security is established for the mas=
ses,
when industrial capitalism has achieved this larger and more logical
organisation and found peace at last, a strange and shadowy and ironic triu=
mph,
like an abstract apology, will surely hover over all those graves in the
Wilderness where lay the bones of so many gallant gentlemen; men who had al=
so
from their youth known and upheld such a social stratification, who had the
courage to call a spade a spade and a slave a slave.
A New Martin Chuzzlewit=
span>
The aim of this book, if it has one=
, is
to suggest this thesis; that the very worst way of helping Anglo-American
friendship is to be an Anglo-American. There is only one thing lower, of
course, which is being an Anglo-Saxon. It is lower, because at least Englis=
hmen
do exist and Americans do exist; and it may be possible, though repulsive, =
to
imagine an American and an Englishman in some way blended together. But if =
Angles
and Saxons ever did exist, they are all fortunately dead now; and the wilde=
st
imagination cannot form the weakest idea of what sort of monster would be m=
ade
by mixing one with the other. But my thesis is that the whole hope, and the
only hope, lies not in mixing two things together, but rather in cutting th=
em
very sharply asunder. That is the only way in which two things can succeed
sufficiently in getting outside each other to appreciate and admire each ot=
her.
So long as they are different and yet supposed to be the same, there can be
nothing but a divided mind and a staggering balance. It may be that in the
first twilight of time man and woman walked about as one quadruped. But if =
they
did, I am sure it was a quadruped that reared and bucked and kicked up its
heels. Then the flaming sword of some angel divided them, and they fell in =
love
with each other.
Should the reader
require an example a little more within historical range, or a little more
subject to critical tests, than the above prehistoric anecdote (which I need
not say was revealed to me in a vision) it would be easy enough to supply t=
hem
both in a hypothetical and a historical form. It is obvious enough in a gen=
eral
way that if we begin to subject diverse countries to an identical test, the=
re
will not only be rivalry, but what is far more deadly and disastrous, super=
iority.
If we institute a competition between Holland and Switzerland as to the
relative grace and agility of their mountain guides, it will be clear that =
the
decision is disproportionately easy; it will also be clear that certain fac=
ts
about the configuration of Holland have escaped our international eye. If we
establish a comparison between them in skill and industry in the art of
building dykes against the sea, it will be equally clear that the injustice
falls the other way; it will also be clear that the situation of Switzerlan=
d on
the map has received insufficient study. In both cases there will not only =
be rivalry
but very unbalanced and unjust rivalry; in both cases, therefore, there will
not only be enmity but very bitter or insolent enmity. But so long as the t=
wo
are sharply divided there can be no enmity because there can be no rivalry.
Nobody can argue about whether the Swiss climb mountains better than the Du=
tch
build dykes; just as nobody can argue about whether a triangle is more
triangular than a circle is round.
This fancy exampl=
e is
alphabetically and indeed artificially simple; but, having used it for
convenience, I could easily give similar examples not of fancy but of fact.=
I
had occasion recently to attend the Christmas festivity of a club in London=
for
the exiles of one of the Scandinavian nations. When I entered the room the
first thing that struck my eye, and greatly raised my spirits, was that the
room was dotted with the colours of peasant costumes and the specimens of
peasant craftsmanship. There were, of course, other costumes and other craf=
ts
in evidence; there were men dressed like myself (only better) in the garb of
the modern middle classes; there was furniture like the furniture of any ot=
her
room in London. Now, according to the ideal formula of the ordinary
internationalist, these things that we had in common ought to have moved me=
to
a sense of the kinship of all civilisation. I ought to have felt that as the
Scandinavian gentleman wore a collar and tie, and I also wore a collar and =
tie,
we were brothers and nothing could come between us. I ought to have felt th=
at
we were standing for the same principles of truth because we were wearing t=
he
same pair of trousers; or rather, to speak with more precision, similar pai=
rs
of trousers. Anyhow, the pair of trousers, that cloven pennon, ought to have
floated in fancy over my head as the banner of Europe or the League of Nati=
ons.
I am constrained to confess that no such rush of emotions overcame me; and =
the
topic of trousers did not float across my mind at all. So far as those thin=
gs
were concerned, I might have remained in a mood of mortal enmity, and
cheerfully shot or stabbed the best dressed gentleman in the room. Precisely
what did warm my heart with an abrupt affection for that northern nation was
the very thing that is utterly and indeed lamentably lacking in my own nati=
on.
It was something corresponding to the one great gap in English history,
corresponding to the one great blot on English civilisation. It was the
spiritual presence of a peasantry, dressed according to its own dignity, and
expressing itself by its own creations.
The sketch of Ame=
rica
left by Charles Dickens is generally regarded as something which is either =
to
be used as a taunt or covered with an apology. Doubtless it was unduly
critical, even of the America of that day; yet curiously enough it may well=
be
the text for a true reconciliation at the present day. It is true that in t=
his,
as in other things, the Dickensian exaggeration is itself exaggerated. It is
also true that, while it is over-emphasised, it is not allowed for. Dickens=
tended
too much to describe the United States as a vast lunatic asylum; but partly
because he had a natural inspiration and imagination suited to the descript=
ion
of lunatic asylums. As it was his finest poetic fancy that created a lunatic
over the garden wall, so it was his fancy that created a lunatic over the
western sea. To read some of the complaints, one would fancy that Dickens h=
ad
deliberately invented a low and farcical America to be a contrast to his hi=
gh
and exalted England. It is suggested that he showed America as full of rowdy
bullies like Hannibal Chollop, or ridiculous wind-bags like Elijah Pogram,
while England was full of refined and sincere spirits like Jonas Chuzzlewit,
Chevy Slime, Montague Tigg, and Mr. Pecksniff. If Martin Chuzzlewit makes
America a lunatic asylum, what in the world does it make England? We can on=
ly
say a criminal lunatic asylum. The truth is, of course, that Dickens so des=
cribed
them because he had a genius for that sort of description; for the making of
almost maniacal grotesques of the same type as Quilp or Fagin. He made these
Americans absurd because he was an artist in absurdity; and no artist can h=
elp
finding hints everywhere for his own peculiar art. In a word, he created a
laughable Pogram for the same reason that he created a laughable Pecksniff;=
and
that was only because no other creature could have created them.
It is often said =
that
we learn to love the characters in romances as if they were characters in r=
eal
life. I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love=
the
characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should
accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought =
of
them as people in a story. Martin Chuzzlewit is itself indeed an unsatisfac=
tory
and even unfortunate example; for it is, among its author's other works, a
rather unusually harsh and hostile story. I do not suggest that we should f=
eel towards
an American friend that exact shade or tint of tenderness that we feel towa=
rds
Mr. Hannibal Chollop. Our enjoyment of the foreigner should rather resemble=
our
enjoyment of Pickwick than our enjoyment of Pecksniff. But there is this am=
ount
of appropriateness even in the particular example; that Dickens did show in
both countries how men can be made amusing to each other. So far the point =
is
not that he made fun of America, but that he got fun out of America. And, a=
s I
have already pointed out, he applied exactly the same method of selection a=
nd exaggeration
to England. In the other English stories, written in a more amiable mood, he
applied it in a more amiable manner; but he could apply it to an American t=
oo,
when he was writing in that mood and manner. We can see it in the witty and
withering criticism delivered by the Yankee traveller in the musty refreshm=
ent
room of Mugby Junction; a genuine example of a genuinely American fun and
freedom satirising a genuinely British stuffiness and snobbery. Nobody expe=
cts
the American traveller to admire the refreshments at Mugby Junction; but he
might admire the refreshment at one of the Pickwickian inns, especially if =
it
contained Pickwick. Nobody expects Pickwick to like Pogram; but he might li=
ke
the American who made fun of Mugby Junction. But the point is that, while h=
e supported
him in making fun, he would also think him funny. The two comic characters
could admire each other, but they would also be amused at each other. And t=
he
American would think the Englishman funny because he was English; and a very
good reason too. The Englishman would think the American amusing because he=
was
American; nor can I imagine a better ground for his amusement.
Now many will deb=
ate
on the psychological possibility of such a friendship founded on reciprocal
ridicule, or rather on a comedy of comparisons. But I will say of this harm=
ony
of humours what Mr. H. G. Wells says of his harmony of states in the unity =
of
his World State. If it be truly impossible to have such a peace, then there=
is
nothing possible except war. If we cannot have friends in this fashion, the=
n we
shall sooner or later have enemies in some other fashion. There is no hope =
in
the pompous impersonalities of internationalism.
And this brings u=
s to
the real and relevant mistake of Dickens. It was not in thinking his Americ=
ans
funny, but in thinking them foolish because they were funny. In this sense =
it
will be noticed that Dickens's American sketches are almost avowedly
superficial; they are descriptions of public life and not private life. Mr.
Jefferson Brick had no private life. But Mr. Jonas Chuzzlewit undoubtedly h=
ad a
private life; and even kept some parts of it exceeding private. Mr. Pecksni=
ff
was also a domestic character; so was Mr. Quilp. Mr. Pecksniff and Mr. Quilp
had slightly different ways of surprising their families; Mr. Pecksniff by =
playfully
observing 'Boh!' when he came home; Mr. Quilp by coming home at all. But we=
can
form no picture of how Mr. Hannibal Chollop playfully surprised his family;
possibly by shooting at them; possibly by not shooting at them. We can only=
say
that he would rather surprise us by having a family at all. We do not know =
how
the Mother of the Modern Gracchi managed the Modern Gracchi; for her matern=
ity
was rather a public than a private office. We have no romantic moonlit scen=
es
of the love-making of Elijah Pogram, to balance against the love story of S=
eth Pecksniff.
These figures are all in a special sense theatrical; all facing one way and=
lit
up by a public limelight. Their ridiculous characters are detachable from t=
heir
real characters, if they have any real characters. And the author might
perfectly well be right about what is ridiculous, and wrong about what is r=
eal.
He might be as right in smiling at the Pograms and the Bricks as in smiling=
at
the Pickwicks and the Boffins. And he might still be as wrong in seeing Mr.
Pogram as a hypocrite as the great Buzfuz was wrong in seeing Mr. Pickwick =
as a
monster of revolting heartlessness and systematic villainy. He might still =
be
as wrong in thinking Jefferson Brick a charlatan and a cheat as was that gr=
eat
disciple of Lavater, Mrs. Wilfer, in tracing every wrinkle of evil cunning =
in
the face of Mrs. Boffin. For Mr. Pickwick's spectacles and gaiters and Mrs.
Boffin's bonnets and boudoir are after all superficial jokes; and might be
equally well seen whatever we saw beneath them. A man may smile and smile a=
nd
be a villain; but a man may also make us smile and not be a villain. He may
make us smile and not even be a fool. He may make us roar with laughter and=
be
an exceedingly wise man.
Now that is the
paradox of America which Dickens never discovered. Elijah Pogram was far mo=
re
fantastic than his satirist thought; and the most grotesque feature of Brick
and Chollop was hidden from him. The really strange thing was that Pogram
probably did say, 'Rough he may be. So air our bars. Wild he may be. So air=
our
buffalers,' and yet was a perfectly intelligent and public-spirited citizen
while he said it. The extraordinary thing is that Jefferson Brick may really
have said, 'The libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood,' and
yet Jefferson Brick may have served freedom, resisting unto blood. There re=
ally
has been a florid school of rhetoric in the United States which has made it
quite possible for serious and sensible men to say such things. It is amusi=
ng
simply as a difference of idiom or costume is always amusing; just as Engli=
sh
idiom and English costume are amusing to Americans. But about this kind of
difference there can be no kind of doubt. So sturdy not to say stuffy a
materialist as Ingersoll could say of so shoddy not to say shady a financial
politician as Blaine, 'Like an arméd warrior, like a pluméd
knight, James G. Blaine strode down the hall of Congress, and flung his spe=
ar
full and true at the shield of every enemy of his country and every traduce=
r of
his fair name.' Compared with that, the passage about bears and buffaloes,
which Mr. Pogram delivered in defence of the defaulting post-master, is rea=
lly
a very reasonable and appropriate statement. For bears and buffaloes are wi=
ld
and rough and in that sense free; while pluméd knights do not throw =
their
lances about like the assegais of Zulus. And the defaulting post-master was=
at
least as good a person to praise in such a fashion as James G. Blaine of the
Little Rock Railway. But anybody who had treated Ingersoll or Blaine merely=
as
a fool and a figure of fun would have very rapidly found out his mistake. B=
ut
Dickens did not know Brick or Chollop long enough to find out his mistake. =
It
need not be denied that, even after a full understanding, he might still ha=
ve
found things to smile at or to criticise. I do not insist on his admitting =
that
Hannibal Chollop was as great a hero as Hannibal, or that Elijah Pogram was=
as
true a prophet as Elijah. But I do say very seriously that they had somethi=
ng about
their atmosphere and situation that made possible a sort of heroism and eve=
n a
sort of prophecy that were really less natural at that period in that Merry
England whose comedy and common sense we sum up under the name of Dickens. =
When
we joke about the name of Hannibal Chollop, we might remember of what nation
was the general who dismissed his defeated soldiers at Appomatox with words
which the historian has justly declared to be worthy of Hannibal: 'We have
fought through this war together. I have done my best for you.' It is not f=
air
to forget Jefferson, or even Jefferson Davis, entirely in favour of Jeffers=
on Brick.
For all these thr=
ee
things, good, bad, and indifferent, go together to form something that Dick=
ens
missed, merely because the England of his time most disastrously missed it.=
In
this case, as in every case, the only way to measure justly the excess of a
foreign country is to measure the defect of our own country. For in this ma=
tter
the human mind is the victim of a curious little unconscious trick, the cau=
se of
nearly all international dislikes. A man treats his own faults as original =
sin
and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes t=
hat
men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple foundat=
ion
of his own private vices. It would astound him to realise that they have
actually, by their strange erratic path, avoided his vices as well as his
virtues. His own faults are things with which he is so much at home that he=
at
once forgets and assumes them abroad. He is so faintly conscious of them in
himself that he is not even conscious of the absence of them in other peopl=
e.
He assumes that they are there so that he does not see that they are not th=
ere.
The Englishman takes it for granted that a Frenchman will have all the Engl=
ish
faults. Then he goes on to be seriously angry with the Frenchman for having
dared to complicate them by the French faults. The notion that the Frenchman
has the French faults and not the English faults is a paradox too wild to c=
ross
his mind.
He is like an old
Chinaman who should laugh at Europeans for wearing ludicrous top-hats and
curling up their pig-tails inside them; because obviously all men have
pig-tails, as all monkeys have tails. Or he is like an old Chinese lady who
should justly deride the high-heeled shoes of the West, considering them a
needless addition to the sufficiently tight and secure bandaging of the foo=
t;
for, of course, all women bind up their feet, as all women bind up their ha=
ir.
What these Celestial thinkers would not think of, or allow for, is the wild
possibility that we do not have pig-tails although we do have top-hats, or =
that
our ladies are not silly enough to have Chinese feet, though they are silly=
enough
to have high-heeled shoes. Nor should we necessarily have come an inch near=
er
to the Chinese extravagances even if the chimney-pot hat rose higher than a
factory chimney or the high heels had evolved into a sort of stilts. By the
same fallacy the Englishman will not only curse the French peasant as a mis=
er,
but will also try to tip him as a beggar. That is, he will first complain of
the man having the surliness of an independent man, and then accuse him of
having the servility of a dependent one. Just as the hypothetical Chinaman
cannot believe that we have top-hats but not pig-tails, so the Englishman
cannot believe that peasants are not snobs even when they are savages. Or he
sees that a Paris paper is violent and sensational; and then supposes that =
some
millionaire owns twenty such papers and runs them as a newspaper trust. Sur=
ely
the Yellow Press is present everywhere to paint the map yellow, as the Brit=
ish
Empire to paint it red. It never occurs to such a critic that the French pa=
per
is violent because it is personal, and personal because it belongs to a rea=
l and
responsible person, and not to a ring of nameless millionaires. It is a
pamphlet, and not an anonymous pamphlet. In a hundred other cases the same
truth could be illustrated; the situation in which the black man first assu=
mes
that all mankind is black, and then accuses the rest of the artificial vice=
of
painting their faces red and yellow, or the hypocrisy of white-washing them=
selves
after the fashion of whited sepulchres. The particular case of it now befor=
e us
is that of the English misunderstanding of America; and it is based, as in =
all
these cases, on the English misunderstanding of England.
For the truth is =
that
England has suffered of late from not having enough of the free shooting of
Hannibal Chollop; from not understanding enough that the libation of freedom
must sometimes be quaffed in blood. The prosperous Englishman will not admit
this; but then the prosperous Englishman will not admit that he has suffered
from anything. That is what he is suffering from. Until lately at least he
refused to realise that many of his modern habits had been bad habits, the
worst of them being contentment. For all the real virtue in contentment
evaporates, when the contentment is only satisfaction and the satisfaction =
is
only self-satisfaction. Now it is perfectly true that America and not Engla=
nd has
seen the most obvious and outrageous official denials of liberty. But it is
equally true that it has seen the most obvious flouting of such official
nonsense, far more obvious than any similar evasions in England. And nobody=
who
knows the subconscious violence of the American character would ever be
surprised if the weapons of Chollop began to be used in that most lawful
lawlessness. It is perfectly true that the libation of freedom must sometim=
es
be drunk in blood, and never more (one would think) than when mad millionai=
res
forbid it to be drunk in beer. But America, as compared with England, is the
country where one can still fancy men obtaining the libation of beer by the
libation of blood. Vulgar plutocracy is almost omnipotent in both countries;
but I think there is now more kick of reaction against it in America than i=
n England.
The Americans may go mad when they make laws; but they recover their reason
when they disobey them. I wish I could believe that there was as much of th=
at
destructive repentance in England; as indeed there certainly was when Cobbe=
tt
wrote. It faded gradually like a dying fire through the Victorian era; and =
it
was one of the very few realities that Dickens did not understand. But any =
one
who does understand it will know that the days of Cobbett saw the last lost
fight for English democracy; and that if he had stood at that turning of the
historic road, he would have wished a better fate to the frame-breakers and=
the
fury against the first machinery, and luck to the Luddite fires.
Anyhow, what is
wanted is a new Martin Chuzzlewit, told by a wiser Mark Tapley. It is typic=
al
of something sombre and occasionally stale in the mood of Dickens when he w=
rote
that book, that the comic servant is not really very comic. Mark Tapley is a
very thin shadow of Sam Weller. But if Dickens had written it in a happier
mood, there might have been a truer meaning in Mark Tapley's happiness. For=
it
is true that this illogical good humour amid unreason and disorder is one of
the real virtues of the English people. It is the real advantage they have =
in that
adventure all over the world, which they were recently and reluctantly indu=
ced
to call an Empire. That receptive ridicule remains with them as a secret
pleasure when they are colonists--or convicts. Dickens might have written
another version of the great romance, and one in which America was really s=
een
gaily by Mark instead of gloomily by Martin. Mark Tapley might really have =
made
the best of America. Then America would have lived and danced before us like
Pickwick's England, a fairyland of happy lunatics and lovable monsters, and=
we
might still have sympathised as much with the rhetoric of Lafayette Kettle =
as
with the rhetoric of Wilkins Micawber, or with the violence of Chollop as w=
ith
the violence of Boythorn. That new Martin Chuzzlewit will never be written;=
and
the loss of it is more tragic than the loss of Edwin Drood. But every man w=
ho
has travelled in America has seen glimpses and episodes in that untold tale=
; and
far away on the Red-Indian frontiers or in the hamlets in the hills of
Pennsylvania, there are people whom I met for a few hours or for a few mome=
nts,
whom I none the less sincerely like and respect because I cannot but smile =
as I
think of them. But the converse is also true; they have probably forgotten =
me;
but if they remember they laugh.
I suggest that diplomatists of the
internationalist school should spend some of their money on staging farces =
and
comedies of cross-purposes, founded on the curious and prevalent idea that
England and America have the same language. I know, of course, that we both
inherit the glorious tongue of Shakespeare, not to mention the tune of the
musical glasses; but there have been moments when I thought that if we spoke
Greek and they spoke Latin we might understand each other better. For Greek=
and
Latin are at least fixed, while American at least is still very fluid. I do=
not
know the American language, and therefore I do not claim to distinguish bet=
ween
the American language and the American slang. But I know that highly theatr=
ical
developments might follow on taking the words as part of the English slang =
or
the English language. I have already given the example of calling a person =
'a
regular guy,' which in the States is a graceful expression of respect and
esteem, but which on the stage, properly handled, might surely lead the way
towards a divorce or duel or something lively. Sometimes coincidence merely
clinches a mistake, as it so often clinches a misprint. Every proof-reader
knows that the worst misprint is not that which makes nonsense but that whi=
ch makes
sense; not that which is obviously wrong but that which is hideously right.=
He
who has essayed to write 'he got the book,' and has found it rendered
mysteriously as 'he got the boob' is pensively resigned. It is when it is
rendered quite lucidly as 'he got the boot' that he is moved to a more
passionate mood of regret. I have had conversations in which this sort of
accident would have wholly misled me, if another accident had not come to t=
he
rescue. An American friend of mine was telling me of his adventures as a
cinema-producer down in the south-west where real Red Indians were procurab=
le.
He said that certain Indians were 'very bad actors.' It passed for me as a =
very
ordinary remark on a very ordinary or natural deficiency. It would hardly s=
eem
a crushing criticism to say that some wild Arab chieftain was not very good=
at
imitating a farmyard; or that the Grand Llama of Thibet was rather clumsy at
making paper boats. But the remark might be natural in a man travelling in
paper boats, or touring with an invisible farmyard for his menagerie. As my
friend was a cinema-producer, I supposed he meant that the Indians were bad
cinema actors. But the phrase has really a high and austere moral meaning,
which my levity had wholly missed. A bad actor means a man whose actions are
bad or morally reprehensible. So that I might have embraced a Red Indian who
was dripping with gore, or covered with atrocious crimes, imagining there w=
as
nothing the matter with him beyond a mistaken choice of the theatrical
profession. Surely there are here the elements of a play, not to mention a
cinema play. Surely a New England village maiden might find herself among t=
he
wigwams in the power of the formidable and fiendish 'Little Blue Bison,' me=
rely
through her mistaken sympathy with his financial failure as a Film Star. The
notion gives me glimpses of all sorts of dissolving views of primeval fores=
ts
and flamboyant theatres; but this impulse of irrelevant theatrical producti=
on
must be curbed. There is one example, however, of this complication of lang=
uage
actually used in contrary senses, about which the same figure can be used t=
o illustrate
a more serious fact.
Suppose that, in =
such
an international interlude, an English girl and an American girl are talking
about the fiancé of the former, who is coming to call. The English g=
irl
will be haughty and aristocratic (on the stage), the American girl will of
course have short hair and skirts and will be cynical; Americans being more
completely free from cynicism than any people in the world. It is the great
glory of Americans that they are not cynical; for that matter, English
aristocrats are hardly ever haughty; they understand the game much better t=
han
that. But on the stage, anyhow, the American girl may say, referring to her
friend's fiancé, with a cynical wave of the cigarette, 'I suppose he=
's
bound to come and see you.' And at this the blue blood of the Vere de Veres
will boil over; the English lady will be deeply wounded and insulted at the=
suggestion
that her lover only comes to see her because he is forced to do so. A
staggering stage quarrel will then ensue, and things will go from bad to wo=
rse;
until the arrival of an Interpreter who can talk both English and American.=
He
stands between the two ladies waving two pocket dictionaries, and explains =
the
error on which the quarrel turns. It is very simple; like the seed of all
tragedies. In English 'he is bound to come and see you' means that he is
obliged or constrained to come and see you. In American it does not. In
American it means that he is bent on coming to see you, that he is irrevoca=
bly
resolved to do so, and will surmount any obstacle to do it. The two young
ladies will then embrace as the curtain falls.
Now when I was
lecturing in America I was often told, in a radiant and congratulatory mann=
er,
that such and such a person was bound to come and hear me lecture. It seeme=
d a
very cruel form of conscription, and I could not understand what authority
could have made it compulsory. In the course of discovering my error, howev=
er,
I thought I began to understand certain American ideas and instincts that l=
ie
behind this American idiom. For as I have urged before, and shall often urge
again, the road to international friendship is through really understanding=
jokes.
It is in a sense through taking jokes seriously. It is quite legitimate to
laugh at a man who walks down the street in three white hats and a green
dressing gown, because it is unfamiliar; but after all the man has some rea=
son
for what he does; and until we know the reason we do not understand the sto=
ry,
or even understand the joke. So the outlander will always seem outlandish in
custom or costume; but serious relations depend on our getting beyond the f=
act
of difference to the things wherein it differs. A good symbolical figure for
all this may be found among the people who say, perhaps with a self-reveali=
ng simplicity,
that they are bound to go to a lecture.
If I were asked f=
or a
single symbolic figure summing up the whole of what seems eccentric and
interesting about America to an Englishman, I should be satisfied to select
that one lady who complained of Mrs. Asquith's lecture and wanted her money
back. I do not mean that she was typically American in complaining; far from
it. I, for one, have a great and guilty knowledge of all that amiable Ameri=
can
audiences will endure without complaint. I do not mean that she was typical=
ly
American in wanting her money; quite the contrary. That sort of American sp=
ends
money rather than hoards it; and when we convict them of vulgarity we acquit
them of avarice. Where she was typically American, summing up a truth
individual and indescribable in any other way, is that she used these words:
'I've risen from a sick-bed to come and hear her, and I want my money back.=
'
The element in th=
at
which really amuses an Englishman is precisely the element which, properly
analysed, ought to make him admire an American. But my point is that only b=
y going
through the amusement can he reach the admiration. The amusement is in the
vision of a tragic sacrifice for what is avowedly a rather trivial object. =
Mrs.
Asquith is a candid lady of considerable humour; and I feel sure she does n=
ot
regard the experience of hearing her read her diary as an ecstasy for which=
the
sick should thus suffer martyrdom. She also is English; and had no other cl=
aim
but to amuse Americans and possibly to be amused by them. This being so, it=
is
rather as if somebody said, 'I have risked my life in fire and pestilence to
find my way to the music hall,' or, 'I have fasted forty days in the wilder=
ness
sustained by the hope of seeing Totty Toddles do her new dance.' And there =
is
something rather more subtle involved here. There is something in an Englis=
hman
which would make him feel faintly ashamed of saying that he had fasted to h=
ear Totty
Toddles, or risen from a sick-bed to hear Mrs. Asquith. He would feel that =
it
was undignified to confess that he had wanted mere amusement so much; and
perhaps that he had wanted anything so much. He would not like, so to speak=
, to
be seen rushing down the street after Totty Toddles, or after Mrs. Asquith,=
or
perhaps after anybody. But there is something in it distinct from a mere
embarrassment at admitting enthusiasm. He might admit the enthusiasm if the
object seemed to justify it; he might perfectly well be serious about a ser=
ious
thing. But he cannot understand a person being proud of serious sacrifices =
for what
is not a serious thing. He does not like to admit that a little thing can
excite him; that he can lose his breath in running, or lose his balance in
reaching, after something that might be called silly.
Now that is where=
the
American is fundamentally different. To him the enthusiasm itself is
meritorious. To him the excitement itself is dignified. He counts it a part=
of
his manhood to fast or fight or rise from a bed of sickness for something, =
or
possibly for anything. His ideal is not to be a lock that only a worthy key=
can
open, but a 'live wire' that anything can touch or anybody can use. In a wo=
rd,
there is a difference in the very definition of virility and therefore of
virtue. A live wire is not only active, it is also sensitive. Thus sensibil=
ity becomes
actually a part of virility. Something more is involved than the vulgar
simplification of the American as the irresistible force and the Englishman=
as
the immovable post. As a fact, those who speak of such things nowadays
generally mean by something irresistible something simply immovable, or at
least something unalterable, motionless even in motion, like a cannon ball;=
for
a cannon ball is as dead as a cannon. Prussian militarism was praised in th=
at
way--until it met a French force of about half its size on the banks of the
Marne. But that is not what an American means by energy; that sort of Pruss=
ian
energy is only monotony without repose. American energy is not a soulless
machine; for it is the whole point that he puts his soul into it. It is a v=
ery
small box for so big a thing; but it is not an empty box. But the point is =
that
he is not only proud of his energy, he is proud of his excitement. He is not
ashamed of his emotion, of the fire or even the tear in his manly eye, when=
he
tells you that the great wheel of his machine breaks four billion butterfli=
es
an hour.
That is the point
about American sport; that it is not in the least sportive. It is because i=
t is
not very sportive that we sometimes say it is not very sporting. It has the
vices of a religion. It has all the paradox of original sin in the service =
of
aboriginal faith. It is sometimes untruthful because it is sincere. It is
sometimes treacherous because it is loyal. Men lie and cheat for it as they
lied for their lords in a feudal conspiracy, or cheated for their chieftain=
s in
a Highland feud. We may say that the vassal readily committed treason; but =
it
is equally true that he readily endured torture. So does the American athle=
te
endure torture. Not only the self-sacrifice but the solemnity of the Americ=
an
athlete is like that of the American Indian. The athletes in the States have
the attitude of the athletes among the Spartans, the great historical nation
without a sense of humour. They suffer an ascetic régime not to be
matched in any monasticism and hardly in any militarism. If any tradition of
these things remains in a saner age, they will probably be remembered as a
mysterious religious order of fakirs or dancing dervishes, who shaved their
heads and fasted in honour of Hercules or Castor and Pollux. And that is re=
ally
the spiritual atmosphere though the gods have vanished; and the religion is=
subconscious
and therefore irrational. For the problem of the modern world is that it has
continued to be religious when it has ceased to be rational. Americans real=
ly
would starve to win a cocoa-nut shy. They would fast or bleed to win a race=
of
paper boats on a pond. They would rise from a sick-bed to listen to Mrs.
Asquith.
But it is the real
reason that interests me here. It is certainly not that Americans are so st=
upid
as not to know that cocoa-nuts are only cocoa-nuts and paper boats only mad=
e of
paper. Americans are, on an average, rather more intelligent than Englishme=
n;
and they are well aware that Hercules is a myth and that Mrs. Asquith is
something of a mythologist. It is not that they do not know that the object=
is
small in itself; it is that they do really believe that the enthusiasm is g=
reat
in itself. They admire people for being impressionable. They admire people =
for
being excited. An American so struggling for some disproportionate trifle (=
like
one of my lectures) really feels in a mystical way that he is right, becaus=
e it
is his whole morality to be keen. So long as he wants something very much,
whatever it is, he feels he has his conscience behind him, and the common s=
entiment
of society behind him, and God and the whole universe behind him. Wedged on=
one
leg in a hot crowd at a trivial lecture, he has self-respect; his dignity i=
s at
rest. That is what he means when he says he is bound to come to the lecture=
.
Now the Englishma=
n is
fond of occasional larks. But these things are not larks; nor are they
occasional. It is the essential of the Englishman's lark that he should thi=
nk
it a lark; that he should laugh at it even when he does it. Being English
myself, I like it; but being English myself, I know it is connected with
weaknesses as well as merits. In its irony there is condescension and there=
fore
embarrassment. This patronage is allied to the patron, and the patron is al=
lied
to the aristocratic tradition of society. The larks are a variant of lazine=
ss
because of leisure; and the leisure is a variant of the security and even
supremacy of the gentleman. When an undergraduate at Oxford smashes half a
hundred windows he is well aware that the incident is merely a trifle. He c=
an
be trusted to explain to his parents and guardians that it was merely a tri=
fle.
He does not say, even in the American sense, that he was bound to smash the
windows. He does not say that he had risen from a sick-bed to smash the
windows. He does not especially think he has risen at all; he knows he has
descended (though with delight, like one diving or sliding down the baniste=
rs)
to something flat and farcical and full of the English taste for the bathos=
. He
has collapsed into something entirely commonplace; though the owners of the
windows may possibly not think so. This rather indescribable element runs
through a hundred English things, as in the love of bathos shown even in the
sound of proper names; so that even the yearning lover in a lyric yearns fo=
r somebody
named Sally rather than Salome, and for a place called Wapping rather than a
place called Westermain. Even in the relapse into rowdiness there is a sort=
of
relapse into comfort. There is also what is so large a part of comfort;
carelessness. The undergraduate breaks windows because he does not care abo=
ut
windows, not because he does care about more fresh air like a hygienist, or
about more light like a German poet. Still less does he heroically smash a
hundred windows because they come between him and the voice of Mrs. Asquith.
But least of all does he do it because he seriously prides himself on the
energy apart from its aim, and on the will-power that carries it through. H=
e is
not 'bound' to smash the windows, even in the sense of being bent upon it. =
He
is not bound at all but rather relaxed; and his violence is not only a rela=
xation
but a laxity. Finally, this is shown in the fact that he only smashes windo=
ws
when he is in the mood to smash windows; when some fortunate conjunction of
stars and all the tints and nuances of nature whisper to him that it would =
be
well to smash windows. But the American is always ready, at any moment, to
waste his energies on the wilder and more suicidal course of going to lectu=
res.
And this is because to him such excitement is not a mood but a moral ideal.=
As
I note in another connection, much of the English mystery would be clear to
Americans if they understood the word 'mood.' Englishmen are very moody,
especially when they smash windows. But I doubt if many Americans understan=
d exactly
what we mean by the mood; especially the passive mood.
It is only by try=
ing
to get some notion of all this that an Englishman can enjoy the final crown=
and
fruit of all international friendship; which is really liking an American t=
o be
American. If we only think that parts of him are excellent because parts of=
him
are English, it would be far more sensible to stop at home and possibly enj=
oy
the society of a whole complete Englishman. But anybody who does understand
this can take the same pleasure in an American being American that he does =
in a
thunderbolt being swift and a barometer being sensitive. He can see that a
vivid sensibility and vigilance really radiate outwards through all the
ramifications of machinery and even of materialism. He can see that the
American uses his great practical powers upon very small provocation; but he
can also see that there is a kind of sense of honour, like that of a duelli=
st,
in his readiness to be provoked. Indeed, there is some parallel between the
American man of action, however vulgar his aims, and the old feudal idea of=
the
gentleman with a sword at his side. The gentleman may have been proud of be=
ing
strong or sturdy; he may too often have been proud of being thick-headed; b=
ut
he was not proud of being thick-skinned. On the contrary, he was proud of b=
eing
thin-skinned. He also seriously thought that sensitiveness was a part of
masculinity. It may be very absurd to read of two Irish gentlemen trying to
kill each other for trifles, or of two Irish-American millionaires trying to
ruin each other for trash. But the very pettiness of the pretext and even t=
he
purpose illustrates the same conception; which may be called the virtue of
excitability. And it is really this, and not any rubbish about iron will-po=
wer
and masterful mentality, that redeems with romance their clockwork cosmos a=
nd
its industrial ideals. Being a live wire does not mean that the nerves shou=
ld
be like wires; but rather that the very wires should be like nerves.
Another approxima=
tion
to the truth would be to say that an American is really not ashamed of
curiosity. It is not so simple as it looks. Men will carry off curiosity wi=
th
various kinds of laughter and bravado, just as they will carry off drunkenn=
ess
or bankruptcy. But very few people are really proud of lying on a door-step,
and very few people are really proud of longing to look through a key-hole.=
I
do not speak of looking through it, which involves questions of honour and
self-control; but few people feel that even the desire is dignified. Now I
fancy the American, at least by comparison with the Englishman, does feel t=
hat
his curiosity is consistent with his dignity, because dignity is consistent=
with
vivacity. He feels it is not merely the curiosity of Paul Pry, but the curi=
osity
of Christopher Columbus. He is not a spy but an explorer; and he feels his
greatness rather grow with his refusal to turn back, as a traveller might f=
eel
taller and taller as he neared the source of the Nile or the North-West
Passage. Many an Englishman has had that feeling about discoveries in dark
continents; but he does not often have it about discoveries in daily life. =
The
one type does believe in the indignity and the other in the dignity of the
detective. It has nothing to do with ethics in the merely external sense. It
involves no particular comparison in practical morals and manners. It is
something in the whole poise and posture of the self; of the way a man carr=
ies himself.
For men are not only affected by what they are; but still more, when they a=
re
fools, by what they think they are; and when they are wise, by what they wi=
sh
to be.
There are truths =
that
have almost become untrue by becoming untruthful. There are statements so o=
ften
stale and insincere that one hesitates to use them, even when they stand for
something more subtle. This point about curiosity is not the conventional
complaint against the American interviewer. It is not the ordinary joke aga=
inst
the American child. And in the same way I feel the danger of it being
identified with the cant about 'a young nation' if I say that it has some of
the attractions, not of American childhood, but of real childhood. There is
some truth in the tradition that the children of wealthy Americans tend to =
be
too precocious and luxurious. But there is a sense in which we can really s=
ay
that if the children are like adults, the adults are like children. And that
sense is in the very best sense of childhood. It is something which the mod=
ern
world does not understand. It is something that modern Americans do not
understand, even when they possess it; but I think they do possess it.
The devil can quo=
te
Scripture for his purpose; and the text of Scripture which he now most comm=
only
quotes is, 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' That text has been the st=
ay
and support of more Pharisees and prigs and self-righteous spiritual bullies
than all the dogmas in creation; it has served to identify self-satisfaction
with the peace that passes all understanding. And the text to be quoted in
answer to it is that which declares that no man can receive the kingdom exc=
ept
as a little child. What we are to have inside is the childlike spirit; but =
the
childlike spirit is not entirely concerned about what is inside. It is the
first mark of possessing it that one is interested in what is outside. The =
most
childlike thing about a child is his curiosity and his appetite and his pow=
er
of wonder at the world. We might almost say that the whole advantage of hav=
ing
the kingdom within is that we look for it somewhere else. The Spirit of Eng=
land
Nine times out of ten a man's
broad-mindedness is necessarily the narrowest thing about him. This is not
particularly paradoxical; it is, when we come to think of it, quite inevita=
ble.
His vision of his own village may really be full of varieties; and even his
vision of his own nation may have a rough resemblance to the reality. But h=
is
vision of the world is probably smaller than the world. His vision of the
universe is certainly much smaller than the universe. Hence he is never so =
inadequate
as when he is universal; he is never so limited as when he generalises. Thi=
s is
the fallacy in the many modern attempts at a creedless creed, at something
variously described as essential Christianity or undenominational religion =
or a
world faith to embrace all the faiths in the world. It is that every sectar=
ian
is more sectarian in his unsectarianism than he is in his sect. The
emancipation of a Baptist is a very Baptist emancipation. The charity of a
Buddhist is a very Buddhist charity, and very different from Christian char=
ity.
When a philosophy embraces everything it generally squeezes everything, and
squeezes it out of shape; when it digests it necessarily assimilates. When a
theosophist absorbs Christianity it is rather as a cannibal absorbs Christi=
an
missionaries. In this sense it is even possible for the larger thing to be
swallowed by the smaller; and for men to move about not only in a Clapham s=
ect
but in a Clapham cosmos under Clapham moon and stars.
But if this danger
exists for all men, it exists especially for the Englishman. The Englishman=
is
never so insular as when he is imperial; except indeed when he is
international. In private life he is a good friend and in practical politics
generally a good ally. But theoretical politics are more practical than
practical politics. And in theoretical politics the Englishman is the worst
ally the world ever saw. This is all the more curious because he has passed=
so
much of his historical life in the character of an ally. He has been in twe=
nty
great alliances and never understood one of them. He has never been farther
away from European politics than when he was fighting heroically in the thi=
ck
of them. I myself think that this splendid isolation is sometimes really sp=
lendid;
so long as it is isolation and does not imagine itself to be imperialism or
internationalism. With the idea of being international, with the idea of be=
ing
imperial, comes the frantic and farcical idea of being impartial. Generally
speaking, men are never so mean and false and hypocritical as when they are
occupied in being impartial. They are performing the first and most typical=
of
all the actions of the devil; they are claiming the throne of God. Even whe=
n it
is not hypocrisy but only mental confusion, it is always a confusion worse =
and
worse confounded. We see it in the impartial historians of the Victorian Ag=
e, who
now seem far more Victorian than the partial historians. Hallam wrote about=
the
Middle Ages; but Hallam was far less mediaeval than Macaulay; for Macaulay =
was
at least a fighter. Huxley had more mediaeval sympathies than Herbert Spenc=
er
for the same reason; that Huxley was a fighter. They both fought in many wa=
ys
for the limitations of their own rationalistic epoch; but they were nearer =
the
truth than the men who simply assumed those limitations as rational. The wa=
r of
the controversionalists was a wider thing than the peace of the arbiters. A=
nd
in the same way the Englishman never cuts a less convincing figure before o=
ther
nations than when he tries to arbitrate between them.
I have by this ti=
me
heard a great deal about the necessity of saving Anglo-American friendship,=
a
necessity which I myself feel rather too strongly to be satisfied with the
ambassadorial and editorial style of achieving it. I have already said that=
the
worst style of all is to be Anglo-American; or, as the more illiterate would
express, to be Anglo-Saxon. I am more and more convinced that the way for t=
he Englishman
to do it is to be English; but to know that he is English and not everything
else as well. Thus the only sincere answer to Irish nationalism is English
nationalism, which is a reality; and not English imperialism, which is a
reactionary fiction, or English internationalism, which is a revolutionary =
one.
For the English a=
re
reviled for their imperialism because they are not imperialistic. They disl=
ike
it, which is the real reason why they do it badly; and they do it badly, wh=
ich
is the real reason why they are disliked when they do it. Nobody calls Fran=
ce
imperialistic because she has absorbed Brittany. But everybody calls England
imperialistic because she has not absorbed Ireland. The Englishman is fixed=
and
frozen for ever in the attitude of a ruthless conqueror; not because he has=
conquered
such people, but because he has not conquered them; but he is always trying=
to
conquer them with a heroism worthy of a better cause. For the really native=
and
vigorous part of what is unfortunately called the British Empire is not an
empire at all, and does not consist of these conquered provinces at all. It=
is
not an empire but an adventure; which is probably a much finer thing. It was
not the power of making strange countries similar to our own, but simply the
pleasure of seeing strange countries because they were different from our o=
wn.
The adventurer did indeed, like the third son, set out to seek his fortune,=
but
not primarily to alter other people's fortunes; he wished to trade with peo=
ple
rather than to rule them. But as the other people remained different from h=
im,
so did he remain different from them. The adventurer saw a thousand strange
things and remained a stranger. He was the Robinson Crusoe on a hundred des=
ert
islands; and on each he remained as insular as on his own island.
What is wanted for
the cause of England to-day is an Englishman with enough imagination to love
his country from the outside as well as the inside. That is, we need somebo=
dy
who will do for the English what has never been done for them, but what is =
done
for any outlandish peasantry or even any savage tribe. We want people who c=
an
make England attractive; quite apart from disputes about whether England is
strong or weak. We want somebody to explain, not that England is everywhere,
but what England is anywhere; not that England is or is not really dying, b=
ut
why we do not want her to die. For this purpose the official and convention=
al
compliments or claims can never get any farther than pompous abstractions a=
bout
Law and Justice and Truth; the ideals which England accepts as every civili=
sed
state accepts them, and violates as every civilised state violates them. Th=
at
is not the way in which the picture of any people has ever been painted on =
the
sympathetic imagination of the world. Enthusiasts for old Japan did not tel=
l us
that the Japs recognised the existence of abstract morality; but that they =
lived
in paper houses or wrote letters with paint-brushes. Men who wished to inte=
rest
us in Arabs did not confine themselves to saying that they are monotheists =
or
moralists; they filled our romances with the rush of Arab steeds or the col=
ours
of strange tents or carpets. What we want is somebody who will do for the
Englishman with his front garden what was done for the Jap and his paper ho=
use;
who shall understand the Englishman with his dog as well as the Arab with h=
is
horse. In a word, what nobody has really tried to do is the one thing that
really wants doing. It is to make England attractive as a nationality, and =
even
as a small nationality.
For it is a wild
folly to suppose that nations will love each other because they are alike. =
They
will never really do that unless they are really alike; and then they will =
not
be nations. Nations can love each other as men and women love each other, n=
ot
because they are alike but because they are different. It can easily be sho=
wn,
I fancy, that in every case where a real public sympathy was aroused for so=
me
unfortunate foreign people, it has always been accompanied with a particular
and positive interest in their most foreign customs and their most foreign =
externals.
The man who made a romance of the Scotch High-lander made a romance of his =
kilt
and even of his dirk; the friend of the Red Indians was interested in pictu=
re
writing and had some tendency to be interested in scalping. To take a more
serious example, such nations as Serbia had been largely commended to
international consideration by the study of Serbian epics, or Serbian songs.
The epoch of negro emancipation was also the epoch of negro melodies. Those=
who
wept over Uncle Tom also laughed over Uncle Remus. And just as the admirati=
on for
the Redskin almost became an apology for scalping, the mysterious fascinati=
on
of the African has sometimes almost led us into the fringes of the black fo=
rest
of Voodoo. But the sort of interest that is felt even in the scalp-hunter a=
nd
the cannibal, the torturer and the devil-worshipper, that sort of interest =
has
never been felt in the Englishman.
And this is the m=
ore
extraordinary because the Englishman is really very interesting. He is
interesting in a special degree in this special manner; he is interesting
because he is individual. No man in the world is more misrepresented by
everything official or even in the ordinary sense national. A description of
English life must be a description of private life. In that sense there is =
no
public life. In that sense there is no public opinion. There have never been
those prairie fires of public opinion in England which often sweep over
America. At any rate, there have never been any such popular revolutions si=
nce
the popular revolutions of the Middle Ages. The English are a nation of
amateurs; they are even a nation of eccentrics. An Englishman is never more=
English
than when he is considered a lunatic by the other Englishmen. This can be
clearly seen in a figure like Dr. Johnson, who has become national not by b=
eing
normal but by being extraordinary. To express this mysterious people, to
explain or suggest why they like tall hedges and heavy breakfasts and crook=
ed
roads and small gardens with large fences, and why they alone among Christi=
ans
have kept quite consistently the great Christian glory of the open fireplac=
e,
here would be a strange and stimulating opportunity for any of the artists =
in
words, who study the souls of strange peoples. That would be the true way to
create a friendship between England and America, or between England and
anything else; yes, even between England and Ireland. For this justice at l=
east
has already been done to Ireland; and as an indignant patriot I demand a mo=
re
equal treatment for the two nations.
I have already no=
ted
the commonplace that in order to teach internationalism we must talk
nationalism. We must make the nations as nations less odious or mysterious =
to
each other. We do not make men love each other by describing a monster with=
a
million arms and legs, but by describing the men as men, with their separate
and even solitary emotions. As this has a particular application to the
emotions of the Englishman, I will return to the topic once more. Now Ameri=
cans
have a power that is the soul and success of democracy, the power of sponta=
neous
social organisation. Their high spirits, their humane ideals are really
creative, they abound in unofficial institutions; we might almost say in
unofficial officialism. Nobody who has felt the presence of all the leagues=
and
guilds and college clubs will deny that Whitman was national when he said he
would build states and cities out of the love of comrades. When all this
communal enthusiasm collides with the Englishman, it too often seems litera=
lly
to leave him cold. They say he is reserved; they possibly think he is rude.=
And
the Englishman, having been taught his own history all wrong, is only too
likely to take the criticism as a compliment. He admits that he is reserved
because he is stern and strong; or even that he is rude because he is shrewd
and candid. But as a fact he is not rude and not especially reserved; at le=
ast
reserve is not the meaning of his reluctance. The real difference lies, I
think, in the fact that American high spirits are not only high but level; =
that
the hilarious American spirit is like a plateau, and the humorous English
spirit like a ragged mountain range.
The Englishman is
moody; which does not in the least mean that the Englishman is morose. Dick=
ens,
as we all feel in reading his books, was boisterously English. Dickens was
moody when he wrote Oliver Twist; but he was also moody when he wrote Pickw=
ick.
That is, he was in another and much healthier mood. The mood was normal to =
him
in the sense that nine times out of ten he felt and wrote in that humorous =
and hilarious
mood. But he was, if ever there was one, a man of moods; and all the more o=
f a
typical Englishman for being a man of moods. But it was because of this, al=
most
entirely, that he had a misunderstanding with America.
In America there =
are
no moods, or there is only one mood. It is the same whether it is called hu=
stle
or uplift; whether we regard it as the heroic love of comrades or the last
hysteria of the herd instinct. It has been said of the typical English
aristocrats of the Government offices that they resemble certain ornamental
fountains and play from ten till four; and it is true that an Englishman, e=
ven
an English aristocrat, is not always inclined to play any more than to work.
But American sociability is not like the Trafalgar fountains. It is like Ni=
agara.
It never stops, under the silent stars or the rolling storms. There seems
always to be the same human heat and pressure behind it; it is like the cen=
tral
heating of hotels as explained in the advertisements and announcements. The
temperature can be regulated; but it is not. And it is always rather
overpowering for an Englishman, whose mood changes like his own mutable and
shifting sky. The English mood is very like the English weather; it is a
nuisance and a national necessity.
If any one wishes=
to
understand the quarrel between Dickens and the Americans, let him turn to t=
hat
chapter in Martin Chuzzlewit, in which young Martin has to receive endless
defiles and deputations of total strangers each announced by name and deman=
ding
formal salutation. There are several things to be noticed about this incide=
nt.
To begin with, it did not happen to Martin Chuzzlewit; but it did happen to
Charles Dickens. Dickens is incorporating almost without alteration a passa=
ge from
a diary in the middle of a story; as he did when he included the admirable
account of the prison petition of John Dickens as the prison petition of
Wilkins Micawber. There is no particular reason why even the gregarious
Americans should so throng the portals of a perfectly obscure steerage pass=
enger
like young Chuzzlewit. There was every reason why they should throng the
portals of the author of Pickwick and Oliver Twist. And no doubt they did. =
If I
may be permitted the aleatory image, you bet they did. Similar troops of
sociable human beings have visited much more insignificant English travelle=
rs
in America, with some of whom I am myself acquainted. I myself have the luc=
k to
be a little more stodgy and less sensitive than many of my countrymen; and
certainly less sensitive than Dickens. But I know what it was that annoyed =
him
about that unending and unchanging stream of American visitors; it was the =
unending
and unchanging stream of American sociability and high spirits. A people li=
ving
on such a lofty but level tableland do not understand the ups and downs of =
the
English temperament; the temper of a nation of eccentrics or (as they used =
to
be called) of humorists. There is something very national in the very name =
of
the old play of Every Man in His Humour. But the play more often acted in r=
eal
life is 'Every Man Out of His Humour.' It is true, as Matthew Arnold said, =
that
an Englishman wants to do as he likes; but it is not always true even that =
he
likes what he likes. An Englishman can be friendly and yet not feel friendl=
y.
Or he can be friendly and yet not feel hospitable. Or he can feel hospitable
and yet not welcome those whom he really loves. He can think, almost with t=
ears
of tenderness, about people at a distance who would be bores if they came i=
n at
the door.
American sociabil=
ity
sweeps away any such subtlety. It cannot be expected to understand the para=
dox
or perversity of the Englishman, who thus can feel friendly and avoid frien=
ds.
That is the truth in the suggestion that Dickens was sentimental. It means =
that
he probably felt most sociable when he was solitary. In all these attempts =
to
describe the indescribable, to indicate the real but unconscious difference=
s between
the two peoples, I have tried to balance my words without the irrelevant bi=
as
of praise and blame. Both characteristics always cut both ways. On one side
this comradeship makes possible a certain communal courage, a democratic
derision of rich men in high places, that is not easy in our smaller and mo=
re
stratified society. On the other hand the Englishman has certainly more
liberty, if less equality and fraternity. But the richest compensation of t=
he
Englishman is not even in the word 'liberty,' but rather in the word 'poetr=
y.'
That humour of escape or seclusion, that genial isolation, that healing of
wounded friendship by what Christian Science would call absent treatment, t=
hat is
the best atmosphere of all for the creation of great poetry; and out of that
came 'bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang' and 'Thou wast not
made for death, immortal bird.' In this sense it is indeed true that poetry=
is
emotion remembered in tranquillity; which may be extended to mean affection
remembered in loneliness. There is in it a spirit not only of detachment but
even of distance; a spirit which does desire, as in the old English rhyme, =
to
be not only over the hills but also far away. In other words, in so far as =
it
is true that the Englishman is an exception to the great truth of Aristotle=
, it
is because he is not so near to Aristotle as he is to Homer. In so far as h=
e is
not by nature a political animal, it is because he is a poetical animal. We=
see
it in his relations to the other animals; his quaint and almost illogical l=
ove
of dogs and horses and dependants whose political rights cannot possibly be
defined in logic. Many forms of hunting or fishing are but an excuse for the
same thing which the shameless literary man does without any excuse. Sport =
is
speechless poetry. It would be easy for a foreigner, by taking a few libert=
ies
with the facts, to make a satire about the sort of silent Shelley who decid=
es
ultimately to shoot the skylark. It would be easy to answer these poetic su=
ggestions
by saying that he himself might be responsible for ruining the choirs where
late the sweet birds sang, or that the immortal bird was likely to be mortal
when he was out with his gun. But these international satires are never jus=
t;
and the real relations of an Englishman and an English bird are far more
delicate. It would be equally easy and equally unjust to suggest a similar
satire against American democracy; and represent Americans merely as birds =
of a
feather who can do nothing but flock together. But this would leave out the
fact that at least it is not the white feather; that democracy is capable o=
f defiance
and of death for an idea. Touching the souls of great nations, these critic=
isms
are generally false because they are critical.
But when we are q=
uite
sure that we rejoice in a nation's strength, then and not before we are
justified in judging its weakness. I am quite sure that I rejoice in any
democratic success without arrière pensée; and nobody who kno=
ws
me will credit me with a covert sneer at civic equality. And this being
granted, I do think there is a danger in the gregariousness of American
society. The danger of democracy is not anarchy; on the contrary, it is
monotony. And it is touching this that all my experience has increased my
conviction that a great deal that is called female emancipation has merely =
been
the increase of female convention. Now the males of every community are far=
too
conventional; it was the females who were individual and criticised the
conventions of the tribe. If the females become conventional also, there is=
a
danger of individuality being lost. This indeed is not peculiar to America;=
it
is common to the whole modern industrial world, and to everything which sub=
stitutes
the impersonal atmosphere of the State for the personal atmosphere of the h=
ome.
But it is emphasised in America by the curious contradiction that Americans=
do
in theory value and even venerate the individual. But individualism is still
the foe of individuality. Where men are trying to compete with each other t=
hey
are trying to copy each other. They become featureless by 'featuring' the s=
ame
part. Personality, in becoming a conscious ideal, becomes a common ideal. I=
n this
respect perhaps there is really something to be learnt from the Englishman =
with
his turn or twist in the direction of private life. Those who have travelle=
d in
such a fashion as to see all the American hotels and none of the American
houses are sometimes driven to the excess of saying that the Americans have=
no
private life. But even if the exaggeration has a hint of truth, we must bal=
ance
it with the corresponding truth; that the English have no public life. They=
on
their side have still to learn the meaning of the public thing, the republi=
c; and
how great are the dangers of cowardice and corruption when the very State
itself has become a State secret.
The English are
patriotic; but patriotism is the unconscious form of nationalism. It is bei=
ng
national without understanding the meaning of a nation. The Americans are on
the whole too self-conscious, kept moving too much in the pace of public li=
fe,
with all its temptations to superficiality and fashion; too much aware of
outside opinion and with too much appetite for outside criticism. But the
English are much too unconscious; and would be the better for an increase in
many forms of consciousness, including consciousness of sin. But even their=
sin
is ignorance of their real virtue. The most admirable English things are not
the things that are most admired by the English, or for which the English
admire themselves. They are things now blindly neglected and in daily dange=
r of
being destroyed. It is all the worse that they should be destroyed, because
there is really nothing like them in the world. That is why I have suggeste=
d a
note of nationalism rather than patriotism for the English; the power of se=
eing
their nation as a nation and not as the nature of things. We say of some ba=
llad
from the Balkans or some peasant costume in the Netherlands that it is uniq=
ue;
but the good things of England really are unique. Our very isolation from
continental wars and revolutionary reconstructions have kept them unique. T=
he
particular kind of beauty there is in an English village, the particular ki=
nd
of humour there is in an English public-house, are things that cannot be fo=
und
in lands where the village is far more simply and equally governed, or where
the vine is far more honourably served and praised. Yet we shall not save t=
hem
by merely sinking into them with the conservative sort of contentment, even=
if
the commercial rapacity of our plutocratic reforms would allow us to do so.=
We
must in a sense get far away from England in order to behold her; we must r=
ise
above patriotism in order to be practically patriotic; we must have some se=
nse
of more varied and remote things before these vanishing virtues can be seen
suddenly for what they are; almost as one might fancy that a man would have=
to
rise to the dizziest heights of the divine understanding before he saw, as =
from
a peak far above a whirlpool, how precious is his perishing soul. The Futur=
e of
Democracy
The title of this final chapter req=
uires
an apology. I do not need to be reminded, alas, that the whole book require=
s an
apology. It is written in accordance with a ritual or custom in which I cou=
ld
see no particular harm, and which gives me a very interesting subject, but a
custom which it would be not altogether easy to justify in logic. Everybody=
who
goes to America for a short time is expected to write a book; and nearly ev=
erybody
does. A man who takes a holiday at Trouville or Dieppe is not confronted on=
his
return with the question, 'When is your book on France going to appear?' A =
man
who betakes himself to Switzerland for the winter sports is not instantly
pinned by the statement, 'I suppose your History of the Helvetian Republic =
is
coming out this spring?' Lecturing, at least my kind of lecturing, is not m=
uch
more serious or meritorious than ski-ing or sea-bathing; and it happens to
afford the holiday-maker far less opportunity of seeing the daily life of t=
he
people. Of all this I am only too well aware; and my only defence is that I=
am
at least sincere in my enjoyment and appreciation of America, and equally
sincere in my interest in its most serious problem, which I think a very
serious problem indeed; the problem of democracy in the modern world. Democ=
racy
may be a very obvious and facile affair for plutocrats and politicians who =
only
have to use it as a rhetorical term. But democracy is a very serious problem
for democrats. I certainly do not apologise for the word democracy; but I do
apologise for the word future. I am no Futurist; and any conjectures I make
must be taken with the grain of salt which is indeed the salt of the earth;=
the
decent and moderate humility which comes from a belief in free will. That f=
aith
is in itself a divine doubt. I do not believe in any of the scientific
predictions about mankind; I notice that they always fail to predict any of=
the
purely human developments of men; I also notice that even their successes p=
rove
the same truth as their failures; for their successful predictions are not
about men but about machines. But there are two things which a man may reas=
onably
do, in stating the probabilities of a problem, which do not involve any cla=
im
to be a prophet. The first is to tell the truth, and especially the neglect=
ed
truth, about the tendencies that have already accumulated in human history;=
any
miscalculation about which must at least mislead us in any case. We cannot =
be
certain of being right about the future; but we can be almost certain of be=
ing
wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past. The other thing tha=
t he
can do is to note what ideas necessarily go together by their own nature; w=
hat
ideas will triumph together or fall together. Hence it follows that this fi=
nal
chapter must consist of two things. The first is a summary of what has real=
ly
happened to the idea of democracy in recent times; the second a suggestion =
of
the fundamental doctrine which is necessary for its triumph at any time.
The last hundred
years has seen a general decline in the democratic idea. If there be anybody
left to whom this historical truth appears a paradox, it is only because du=
ring
that period nobody has been taught history, least of all the history of ide=
as.
If a sort of intellectual inquisition had been established, for the definit=
ion
and differentiation of heresies, it would have been found that the original=
republican
orthodoxy had suffered more and more from secessions, schisms, and backslid=
ings.
The highest point of democratic idealism and conviction was towards the end=
of
the eighteenth century, when the American Republic was 'dedicated to the
proposition that all men are equal.' It was then that the largest number of=
men
had the most serious sort of conviction that the political problem could be
solved by the vote of peoples instead of the arbitrary power of princes and
privileged orders. These men encountered various difficulties and made vari=
ous
compromises in relation to the practical politics of their time; in England
they preserved aristocracy; in America they preserved slavery. But though t=
hey
had more difficulties, they had less doubts. Since their time democracy has
been steadily disintegrated by doubts; and these political doubts have been
contemporary with and often identical with religious doubts. This fact coul=
d be
followed over almost the whole field of the modern world; in this place it =
will
be more appropriate to take the great American example of slavery. I have f=
ound
traces in all sorts of intelligent quarters of an extraordinary idea that a=
ll
the Fathers of the Republic owned black men like beasts of burden because t=
hey
knew no better, until the light of liberty was revealed to them by John Bro=
wn and
Mrs. Beecher Stowe. One of the best weekly papers in England said recently =
that
even those who drew up the Declaration of Independence did not include negr=
oes
in its generalisation about humanity. This is quite consistent with the cur=
rent
convention, in which we were all brought up; the theory that the heart of
humanity broadens in ever larger circles of brotherhood, till we pass from
embracing a black man to adoring a black beetle. Unfortunately it is quite
inconsistent with the facts of American history. The facts show that, in th=
is
problem of the Old South, the eighteenth century was more liberal than the
nineteenth century. There was more sympathy for the negro in the school of
Jefferson than in the school of Jefferson Davis. Jefferson, in the dark est=
ate
of his simple Deism, said the sight of slavery in his country made him trem=
ble,
remembering that God is just. His fellow Southerners, after a century of the
world's advance, said that slavery in itself was good, when they did not go
farther and say that negroes in themselves were bad. And they were supporte=
d in
this by the great and growing modern suspicion that nature is unjust.
Difficulties seemed inevitably to delay justice, to the mind of Jefferson; =
but
so they did to the mind of Lincoln. But that the slave was human and the
servitude inhuman--that was, if anything, clearer to Jefferson than to Linc=
oln.
The fact is that the utter separation and subordination of the black like a
beast was a progress; it was a growth of nineteenth-century enlightenment a=
nd
experiment; a triumph of science over superstition. It was 'the way the wor=
ld
was going,' as Matthew Arnold reverentially remarked in some connection; pe=
rhaps
as part of a definition of God. Anyhow, it was not Jefferson's definition of
God. He fancied, in his far-off patriarchal way, a Father who had made all =
men
brothers; and brutally unbrotherly as was the practice, such democratical
Deists never dreamed of denying the theory. It was not until the scientific
sophistries began that brotherhood was really disputed. Gobineau, who began
most of the modern talk about the superiority and inferiority of racial sto=
cks,
was seized upon eagerly by the less generous of the slave-owners and trumpe=
ted
as a new truth of science and a new defence of slavery. It was not really u=
ntil
the dawn of Darwinism, when all our social relations began to smell of the =
monkey-house,
that men thought of the barbarian as only a first and the baboon as a second
cousin. The full servile philosophy has been a modern and even a recent thi=
ng;
made in an age whose invisible deity was the Missing Link. The Missing Link=
was
a true metaphor in more ways than one; and most of all in its suggestion of=
a
chain.
By a symbolic
coincidence, indeed, slavery grew more brazen and brutal under the
encouragement of more than one movement of the progressive sort. Its youth =
was
renewed for it by the industrial prosperity of Lancashire; and under that
influence it became a commercial and competitive instead of a patriarchal a=
nd
customary thing. We may say with no exaggerative irony that the unconscious
patrons of slavery were Huxley and Cobden. The machines of Manchester were
manufacturing a great many more things than the manufacturers knew or wante=
d to
know; but they were certainly manufacturing the fetters of the slave, doubt=
less
out of the best quality of steel and iron. But this is a minor illustration=
of the
modern tendency, as compared with the main stream of scepticism which was
destroying democracy. Evolution became more and more a vision of the break-=
up
of our brotherhood, till by the end of the nineteenth century the genius of=
its
greatest scientific romancer saw it end in the anthropophagous antics of the
Time Machine. So far from evolution lifting us above the idea of enslaving =
men,
it was providing us at least with a logical and potential argument for eati=
ng
them. In the case of the American negroes, it may be remarked, it does at a=
ny
rate permit the preliminary course of roasting them. All this materialistic
hardening, which replaced the remorse of Jefferson, was part of the growing=
evolutionary
suspicion that savages were not a part of the human race, or rather that th=
ere
was really no such thing as the human race. The South had begun by agreeing
reluctantly to the enslavement of men. The South ended by agreeing equally
reluctantly to the emancipation of monkeys.
That is what had
happened to the democratic ideal in a hundred years. Anybody can test it by
comparing the final phase, I will not say with the ideal of Jefferson, but =
with
the ideal of Johnson. There was far more horror of slavery in an
eighteenth-century Tory like Dr. Johnson than in a nineteenth-century Democ=
rat
like Stephen Douglas. Stephen Douglas may be mentioned because he is a very
representative type of the age of evolution and expansion; a man thinking in
continents, like Cecil Rhodes, human and hopeful in a truly American fashio=
n,
and as a consequence cold and careless rather than hostile in the matter of=
the
old mystical doctrines of equality. He 'did not care whether slavery was vo=
ted
up or voted down.' His great opponent Lincoln did indeed care very much. Bu=
t it
was an intense individual conviction with Lincoln exactly as it was with
Johnson. I doubt if the spirit of the age was not much more behind Douglas =
and
his westward expansion of the white race. I am sure that more and more men =
were
coming to be in the particular mental condition of Douglas; men in whom the=
old
moral and mystical ideals had been undermined by doubt but only with a nega=
tive
effect of indifference. Their positive convictions were all concerned with =
what
some called progress and some imperialism. It is true that there was a sinc=
ere
sectional enthusiasm against slavery in the North; and that the slaves were
actually emancipated in the nineteenth century. But I doubt whether the
Abolitionists would ever have secured Abolition. Abolition was a by-product=
of
the Civil War; which was fought for quite other reasons. Anyhow, if slavery=
had
somehow survived to the age of Rhodes and Roosevelt and evolutionary
imperialism, I doubt if the slaves would ever have been emancipated at all.
Certainly if it had survived till the modern movement for the Servile State,
they would never have been emancipated at all. Why should the world take the
chains off the black man when it was just putting them on the white? And in=
so
far as we owe the change to Lincoln, we owe it to Jefferson. Exactly what g=
ives
its real dignity to the figure of Lincoln is that he stands invoking a prim=
itive
first principle of the age of innocence, and holding up the tables of an
ancient law, against the trend of the nineteenth century; repeating, 'We ho=
ld
these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they =
are
endowed by their Creator, etc.,' to a generation that was more and more
disposed to say something like this: 'We hold these truths to be probable
enough for pragmatists; that all things looking like men were evolved someh=
ow,
being endowed by heredity and environment with no equal rights, but very
unequal wrongs,' and so on. I do not believe that creed, left to itself, wo=
uld
ever have founded a state; and I am pretty certain that, left to itself, it
would never have overthrown a slave state. What it did do, as I have said, =
was
to produce some very wonderful literary and artistic flights of sceptical i=
magination.
The world did have new visions, if they were visions of monsters in the moon
and Martians striding about like spiders as tall as the sky, and the workmen
and capitalists becoming two separate species, so that one could devour the
other as gaily and greedily as a cat devours a bird. No one has done justic=
e to
the meaning of Mr. Wells and his original departure in fantastic fiction; to
these nightmares that were the last apocalypse of the nineteenth century. T=
hey
meant that the bottom had fallen out of the mind at last, that the bridge o=
f brotherhood
had broken down in the modern brain, letting up from the chasms this infern=
al
light like a dawn. All had grown dizzy with degree and relativity; so that
there would not be so very much difference between eating dog and eating
darkie, or between eating darkie and eating dago. There were different sort=
s of
apes; but there was no doubt that we were the superior sort.
Against all this
irresistible force stood one immovable post. Against all this dance of doubt
and degree stood something that can best be symbolised by a simple example.=
An
ape cannot be a priest, but a negro can be a priest. The dogmatic type of
Christianity, especially the Catholic type of Christianity, had riveted its=
elf
irrevocably to the manhood of all men. Where its faith was fixed by creeds =
and
councils it could not save itself even by surrender. It could not gradually
dilute democracy, as could a merely sceptical or secular democrat. There st=
ood,
in fact or in possibility, the solid and smiling figure of a black bishop. =
And
he was either a man claiming the most towering spiritual privileges of a ma=
n,
or he was the mere buffoonery and blasphemy of a monkey in a mitre. That is=
the
point about Christian and Catholic democracy; it is not that it is necessar=
ily
at any moment more democratic, it is that its indestructible minimum of
democracy really is indestructible. And by the nature of things that mystic=
al
democracy was destined to survive, when every other sort of democracy was f=
ree
to destroy itself. And whenever democracy destroying itself is suddenly mov=
ed
to save itself, it always grasps at rag or tag of that old tradition that a=
lone
is sure of itself. Hundreds have heard the story about the mediaeval demago=
gue
who went about repeating the rhyme
When Adam delved=
and
Eve span, Who was the=
n the
gentleman?
Many have doubtless offered the obv=
ious
answer to the question, 'The Serpent.' But few seem to have noticed what wo=
uld
be the more modern answer to the question, if that innocent agitator went a=
bout
propounding it. 'Adam never delved and Eve never span, for the simple reason
that they never existed. They are fragments of a Chaldeo-Babylonian mythos,=
and
Adam is only a slight variation of Tag-Tug, pronounced Uttu. For the real
beginning of humanity we refer you to Darwin's Origin of Species.' And then=
the
modern man would go on to justify plutocracy to the mediaeval man by talking
about the Struggle for Life and the Survival of the Fittest; and how the
strongest man seized authority by means of anarchy, and proved himself a
gentleman by behaving like a cad. Now I do not base my beliefs on the theol=
ogy
of John Ball, or on the literal and materialistic reading of the text of
Genesis; though I think the story of Adam and Eve infinitely less absurd and
unlikely than that of the prehistoric 'strongest man' who could fight a hun=
dred
men. But I do note the fact that the idealism of the leveller could be put =
in
the form of an appeal to Scripture, and could not be put in the form of an =
appeal
to Science. And I do note also that democrats were still driven to make the
same appeal even in the very century of Science. Tennyson was, if ever there
was one, an evolutionist in his vision and an aristocrat in his sympathies.=
He
was always boasting that John Bull was evolutionary and not revolutionary, =
even
as these Frenchmen. He did not pretend to have any creed beyond faintly
trusting the larger hope. But when human dignity is really in danger, John =
Bull
has to use the same old argument as John Ball. He tells Lady Clara Vere de =
Vere
that 'the gardener Adam and his wife smile at the claim of long descent'; t=
heir
own descent being by no means long. Lady Clara might surely have scored off=
him
pretty smartly by quoting from 'Maud' and 'In Memoriam' about evolution and=
the
eft that was lord of valley and hill. But Tennyson has evidently forgotten =
all
about Darwin and the long descent of man. If this was true of an evolutioni=
st
like Tennyson, it was naturally ten times truer of a revolutionist like
Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on=
the
fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not
created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal.
There is no basis=
for
democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfe=
ctly
simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact.
Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal
echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for t=
he
vital purpose of constraining the tyrant. An idealist may say to a capitali=
st,
'Don't you sometimes feel in the rich twilight, when the lights twinkle fro=
m the
distant hamlet in the hills, that all humanity is a holy family?' But it is
equally possible for the capitalist to reply with brevity and decision, 'No=
, I
don't,' and there is no more disputing about it further than about the beau=
ty
of a fading cloud. And the modern world of moods is a world of clouds, even=
if
some of them are thunderclouds.
For I have only t=
aken
here, as a convenient working model, the case of negro slavery; because it =
was
long peculiar to America and is popularly associated with it. It is more and
more obvious that the line is no longer running between black and white but
between rich and poor. As I have already noted in the case of Prohibition, =
the
very same arguments of the inevitable suicide of the ignorant, of the
impossibility of freedom for the unfit, which were once applied to barbaria=
ns
brought from Africa are now applied to citizens born in America. It is argu=
ed even
by industrialists that industrialism has produced a class submerged below t=
he
status of emancipated mankind. They imply that the Missing Link is no longer
missing, even from England or the Northern States, and that the factories h=
ave
manufactured their own monkeys. Scientific hypotheses about the feeble-mind=
ed
and the criminal type will supply the masters of the modern world with more=
and
more excuses for denying the dogma of equality in the case of white labour =
as
well as black. And any man who knows the world knows perfectly well that to
tell the millionaires, or their servants, that they are disappointing the s=
entiments
of Thomas Jefferson, or disregarding a creed composed in the eighteenth
century, will be about as effective as telling them that they are not obser=
ving
the creed of St. Athanasius or keeping the rule of St. Benedict.
The world cannot =
keep
its own ideals. The secular order cannot make secure any one of its own nob=
le
and natural conceptions of secular perfection. That will be found, as time =
goes
on, the ultimate argument for a Church independent of the world and the sec=
ular
order. What has become of all those ideal figures from the Wise Man of the
Stoics to the democratic Deist of the eighteenth century? What has become of
all that purely human hierarchy of chivalry, with its punctilious pattern of
the good knight, its ardent ambition in the young squire? The very name of =
knight
has come to represent the petty triumph of a profiteer, and the very word
squire the petty tyranny of a landlord. What has become of all that golden
liberality of the Humanists, who found on the high tablelands of the cultur=
e of
Hellas the very balance of repose in beauty that is most lacking in the mod=
ern
world? The very Greek language that they loved has become a mere label for
snuffy and snobbish dons, and a mere cock-shy for cheap and half-educated
utilitarians, who make it a symbol of superstition and reaction. We have li=
ved
to see a time when the heroic legend of the Republic and the Citizen, which
seemed to Jefferson the eternal youth of the world, has begun to grow old in
its turn. We cannot recover the earthly estate of knighthood, to which all =
the
colours and complications of heraldry seemed as fresh and natural as flower=
s.
We cannot re-enact the intellectual experiences of the Humanists, for whom =
the
Greek grammar was like the song of a bird in spring. The more the matter is
considered the clearer it will seem that these old experiences are now only
alive, where they have found a lodgment in the Catholic tradition of
Christendom, and made themselves friends for ever. St. Francis is the only
surviving troubadour. St. Thomas More is the only surviving Humanist. St. L=
ouis
is the only surviving knight.
It would be the w=
orst
sort of insincerity, therefore, to conclude even so hazy an outline of so g=
reat
and majestic a matter as the American democratic experiment, without testif=
ying
my belief that to this also the same ultimate test will come. So far as that
democracy becomes or remains Catholic and Christian, that democracy will re=
main
democratic. In so far as it does not, it will become wildly and wickedly un=
democratic.
Its rich will riot with a brutal indifference far beyond the feeble feudali=
sm
which retains some shadow of responsibility or at least of patronage. Its
wage-slaves will either sink into heathen slavery, or seek relief in theori=
es
that are destructive not merely in method but in aim; since they are but the
negations of the human appetites of property and personality.
Eighteenth-century ideals, formulated in eighteenth-century language, have =
no
longer in themselves the power to hold all those pagan passions back. Even
those documents depended upon Deism; their real strength will survive in men
who are still Deists; and the men who are still Deists are more than Deists.
Men will more and more realise that there is no meaning in democracy if the=
re
is no meaning in anything; and that there is no meaning in anything if the
universe has not a centre of significance and an authority that is the auth=
or
of our rights. There is truth in every ancient fable, and there is here even
something of it in the fancy that finds the symbol of the Republic in the b=
ird
that bore the bolts of Jove. Owls and bats may wander where they will in
darkness, and for them as for the sceptics the universe may have no centre;
kites and vultures may linger as they like over carrion, and for them as for
the plutocrats existence may have no origin and no end; but it was far back=
in
the land of legends, where instincts find their true images, that the cry w=
ent forth
that freedom is an eagle, whose glory is gazing at the sun.