CHESTERTON-ALARM AND SIDISCUTIO - How I found the Superman

How I found the Superman

Readers of Mr. Bernard Shaw and other modern writers may be

interested to know that the Superman has been found. I found him;

he lives in South Croydon. My success will be a great blow to Mr. Shaw,

who has been following quite a false scent, and is now looking

for the creature in Blackpool; and as for Mr. Wells's notion

of generating him out of gases in a private laboratory, I always

thought it doomed to failure. I assure Mr. Wells that the Superman

at Croydon was born in the ordinary way, though he himself, of course,

is anything but ordinary.

Nor are his parents unworthy of the wonderful being whom they

have given to the world. The name of Lady Hypatia Smythe-Browne

(now Lady Hypatia Hagg) will never be forgotten in the East End,

where she did such splendid social work. Her constant cry of "Save

the children!" referred to the cruel neglect of children's eyesight

involved in allowing them to play with crudely painted toys.

She quoted unanswerable statistics to prove that children allowed

to look at violet and vermilion often suffered from failing eyesight

in their extreme old age; and it was owing to her ceaseless crusade

that the pestilence of the Monkey-on-the-Stick was almost swept

from Hoxton. The devoted worker would tramp the streets untiringly,

taking away the toys from all the poor children, who were often

moved to tears by her kindness. Her good work was interrupted,

partly by a new interest in the creed of Zoroaster, and partly

by a savage blow from an umbrella. It was inflicted by a dissolute

Irish apple-woman, who, on returning from some orgy to her ill-kept

apartment, found Lady Hypatia in the bedroom taking down an oleograph,

which, to say the least of it, could not really elevate the mind.

At this the ignorant and partly intoxicated Celt dealt the social

reformer a severe blow, adding to it an absurd accusation of theft.

The lady's exquisitely balanced mind received a shock, and it was

during a short mental illness that she married Dr. Hagg.

Of Dr. Hagg himself I hope there is no need to speak.

Any one even slightly acquainted with those daring experiments

in Neo-Individualist Eugenics, which are now the one absorbing

interest of the English democracy, must know his name and often

commend it to the personal protection of an impersonal power.

Early in life he brought to bear that ruthless insight into the history

of religions which he had gained in boyhood as an electrical engineer.

Later he became one of our greatest geologists; and achieved that bold and

bright outlook upon the future of Socialism which only geology can give.

At first there seemed something like a rift, a faint, but perceptible,

fissure, between his views and those of his aristocratic wife.

For she was in favour (to use her own powerful epigram) of protecting

the poor against themselves; while he declared pitilessly,

in a new and striking metaphor, that the weakest must go to the wall.

Eventually, however, the married pair perceived an essential union

in the unmistakably modern character of both their views, and in this

enlightening and intelligible formula their souls found peace.

The result is that this union of the two highest types of

our civilization, the fashionable lady and the all but vulgar

medical man, has been blessed by the birth of the Superman,

that being whom all the labourers in Battersea are so eagerly

expecting night and day.

I found the house of Dr. and Lady Hypatia Hagg without much difficulty;

it is situated in one of the last straggling streets of Croydon,

and overlooked by a line of poplars. I reached the door towards

the twilight, and it was natural that I should fancifully see something

dark and monstrous in the dim bulk of that house which contained

the creature who was more marvellous than the children of men.

When I entered the house I was received with exquisite courtesy

by Lady Hypatia and her husband; but I found much greater

difficulty in actually seeing the Superman, who is now about

fifteen years old, and is kept by himself in a quiet room.

Even my conversation with the father and mother did not quite

clear up the character of this mysterious being. Lady Hypatia,

who has a pale and poignant face, and is clad in those impalpable

and pathetic greys and greens with which she has brightened

so many homes in Hoxton, did not appear to talk of her offspring

with any of the vulgar vanity of an ordinary human mother.

I took a bold step and asked if the Superman was nice looking.

"He creates his own standard, you see," she replied, with a slight sigh.

"Upon that plane he is more than Apollo. Seen from our lower plane,

of course--" And she sighed again.

I had a horrible impulse, and said suddenly, "Has he got any hair?"

There was a long and painful silence, and then Dr. Hagg said smoothly:

"Everything upon that plane is different; what he has got is

not... well, not, of course, what we call hair... but--"

"Don't you think," said his wife, very softly, "don't you think

that really, for the sake of argument, when talking to the mere public,

one might call it hair?"

"Perhaps you are right," said the doctor after a few moments' reflection.

"In connexion with hair like that one must speak in parables."

"Well, what on earth is it," I asked in some irritation, "if it

isn't hair? Is it feathers?"

"Not feathers, as we understand feathers," answered Hagg in

an awful voice.

I got up in some irritation. "Can I see him, at any rate?" I asked.

"I am a journalist, and have no earthly motives except curiosity

and personal vanity. I should like to say that I had shaken hands

with the Superman."

The husband and wife had both got heavily to their feet,

and stood, embarrassed. "Well, of course, you know," said Lady Hypatia,

with the really charming smile of the aristocratic hostess.

"You know he can't exactly shake hands ... not hands, you know....

The structure, of course--"

I broke out of all social bounds, and rushed at the door of

the room which I thought to contain the incredible creature.

I burst it open; the room was pitch dark. But from in front of me

came a small sad yelp, and from behind me a double shriek.

"You have done it, now!" cried Dr. Hagg, burying his bald brow

in his hands. "You have let in a draught on him; and he is dead."

As I walked away from Croydon that night I saw men in black carrying

out a coffin that was not of any human shape. The wind wailed above me,

whirling the poplars, so that they drooped and nodded like the plumes

of some cosmic funeral. "It is, indeed," said Dr. Hagg, "the whole

universe weeping over the frustration of its most magnificent birth."

But I thought that there was a hoot of laughter in the high wail

of the wind.







The New House

Within a stone's throw of my house they are building another house.

I am glad they are building it, and I am glad it is within

a stone's throw; quite well within it, with a good catapult.

Nevertheless, I have not yet cast the first stone at the new house--

not being, strictly speaking, guiltless myself in the matter

of new houses. And, indeed, in such cases there is a strong

protest to be made. The whole curse of the last century has

been what is called the Swing of the Pendulum; that is.

the idea that Man must go alternately from one extreme to the other.

It is a shameful and even shocking fancy; it is the denial of

the whole dignity of mankind. When Man is alive he stands still.

It is only when he is dead that he swings. But whenever one meets

modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse,

one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape

from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists,

not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because

they have tried Individualism and found it particularly nasty.

Thus, many embrace Christian Science solely because they are quite

sick of heathen science; they are so tired of believing that

everything is matter that they will even take refuge in the revolting

fable that everything is mind. Man ought to march somewhere.

But modern man (in his sick reaction) is ready to march nowhere--

so long as it is the Other End of Nowhere.

The case of building houses is a strong instance of this.

Early in the nineteenth century our civilization chose to abandon

the Greek and medieval idea of a town, with walls, limited and defined,

with a temple for faith and a market-place for politics;

and it chose to let the city grow like a jungle with blind cruelty

and bestial unconsciousness; so that London and Liverpool are

the great cities we now see. Well, people have reacted against that;

they have grown tired of living in a city which is as dark

and barbaric as a forest only not as beautiful, and there has

been an exodus into the country of those who could afford it,

and some I could name who can't. Now, as soon as this quite

rational recoil occurred, it flew at once to the opposite extreme.

People went about with beaming faces, boasting that they

were twenty-three miles from a station. Rubbing their hands,

they exclaimed in rollicking asides that their butcher only called

once a month, and that their baker started out with fresh hot

loaves which were quite stale before they reached the table.

A man would praise his little house in a quiet valley, but gloomily admit

(with a slight shake of the head) that a human habitation on

the distant horizon was faintly discernible on a clear day.

Rival ruralists would quarrel about which had the most completely

inconvenient postal service; and there were many jealous heartburnings

if one friend found out any uncomfortable situation which the other

friend had thoughtlessly overlooked.

In the feverish summer of this fanaticism there arose the phrase

that this or that part of England is being "built over."

Now, there is not the slightest objection, in itself, to England

being built over by men, any more than there is to its being

(as it is already) built over by birds, or by squirrels, or by spiders.

But if birds' nests were so thick on a tree that one could see nothing

but nests and no leaves at all, I should say that bird civilization

was becoming a bit decadent. If whenever I tried to walk down the road

I found the whole thoroughfare one crawling carpet of spiders,

closely interlocked, I should feel a distress verging on distaste.

If one were at every turn crowded, elbowed, overlooked, overcharged,

sweated, rack-rented, swindled, and sold up by avaricious and

arrogant squirrels, one might at last remonstrate. But the great towns

have grown intolerable solely because of such suffocating vulgarities

and tyrannies. It is not humanity that disgusts us in the huge cities;

it is inhumanity. It is not that there are human beings;

but that they are not treated as such. We do not, I hope, dislike men

and women; we only dislike their being made into a sort of jam:

crushed together so that they are not merely powerless but shapeless.

It is not the presence of people that makes London appalling.

It is merely the absence of The People.

Therefore, I dance with joy to think that my part of England

is being built over, so long as it is being built over in

a human way at human intervals and in a human proportion.

So long, in short, as I am not myself built over, like a pagan

slave buried in the foundations of a temple, or an American clerk

in a star-striking pagoda of flats, I am delighted to see the faces

and the homes of a race of bipeds, to which I am not only attracted

by a strange affection, but to which also (by a touching coincidence)

I actually happen to belong. I am not one desiring deserts.

I am not Timon of Athens; if my town were Athens I would stay in it.

I am not Simeon Stylites; except in the mournful sense that every

Saturday I find myself on the top of a newspaper column.

I am not in the desert repenting of some monstrous sins;

at least, I am repenting of them all right, but not in the desert.

I do not want the nearest human house to be too distant to see; that is

my objection to the wilderness. But neither do I want the nearest human

house to be too close to see; that is my objection to the modern city.

I love my fellow-man; I do not want him so far off that I can

only observe anything of him through a telescope, nor do I want

him so close that I can examine parts of him with a microscope.

I want him within a stone's throw of me; so that whenever it is

really necessary, I may throw the stone.

Perhaps, after all, it may not be a stone. Perhaps, after all,

it may be a bouquet, or a snowball, or a firework, or a Free Trade Loaf;

perhaps they will ask for a stone and I shall give them bread.

But it is essential that they should be within reach: how can I

love my neighbour as myself if he gets out of range for snowballs?

There should be no institution out of the reach of an indignant

or admiring humanity. I could hit the nearest house quite well

with the catapult; but the truth is that the catapult belongs to a

little boy I know, and, with characteristic youthful 'selfishness,

he has taken it away.







The Wings of Stone

The preceding essay is about a half-built house upon my

private horizon; I wrote it sitting in a garden-chair; and as,

though it was a week ago, I have scarcely moved since then

(to speak of), I do not see why I should not go on writing about it.

Strictly speaking, I have moved; I have even walked across a field--

a field of turf all fiery in our early summer sunlight--and studied

the early angular red skeleton which has turned golden in the sun.

It is odd that the skeleton of a house is cheerful when the skeleton

of a man is mournful, since we only see it after the man is destroyed.

At least, we think the skeleton is mournful; the skeleton himself

does not seem to think so. Anyhow, there is something strangely

primary and poetic about this sight of the scaffolding and main

lines of a human building; it is a pity there is no scaffolding

round a human baby. One seems to see domestic life as the daring

and ambitious thing that it is, when one looks at those open staircases

and empty chambers, those spirals of wind and open halls of sky.

Ibsen said that the art of domestic drama was merely to knock one wall

out of the four walls of a drawing-room. I find the drawing-room

even more impressive when all four walls are knocked out.

I have never understood what people mean by domesticity

being tame; it seems to me one of the wildest of adventures.

But if you wish to see how high and harsh and fantastic an adventure

it is, consider only the actual structure of a house itself.

A man may march up in a rather bored way to bed; but at least

he is mounting to a height from which he could kill himself.

Every rich, silent, padded staircase, with banisters of oak,

stair-rods of brass, and busts and settees on every landing,

every such staircase is truly only an awful and naked ladder

running up into the Infinite to a deadly height. The millionaire

who stumps up inside the house is really doing the same thing

as the tiler or roof-mender who climbs up outside the house;

they are both mounting up into the void. They are both making an

escalade of the intense inane. Each is a sort of domestic mountaineer;

he is reaching a point from which mere idle falling will kill a man;

and life is always worth living while men feel that they may die.

I cannot understand people at present making such a fuss about

flying ships and aviation, when men ever since Stonehenge and

the Pyramids have done something so much more wild than flying.

A grasshopper can go astonishingly high up in the air, his

biological limitation and weakness is that he cannot stop there.

Hosts of unclean birds and crapulous insects can pass through the sky,

but they cannot pass any communication between it and the earth.

But the army of man has advanced vertically into infinity,

and not been cut off. It can establish outposts in the ether,

and yet keep open behind it its erect and insolent road.

It would be grand (as in Jules Verne) to fire a cannon-ball at the moon;

but would it not be grander to build a railway to the moon?

Yet every building of brick or wood is a hint of that high railroad;

every chimney points to some star, and every tower is a Tower

of Babel. Man rising on these awful and unbroken wings of stone

seems to me more majestic and more mystic than man fluttering

for an instant on wings of canvas and sticks of steel. How sublime

and, indeed, almost dizzy is the thought of these veiled ladders

on which we all live, like climbing monkeys! Many a black-coated

clerk in a flat may comfort himself for his sombre garb by

reflecting that he is like some lonely rook in an immemorial elm.

Many a wealthy bachelor on the top floor of a pile of mansions

should look forth at morning and try (if possible) to feel like

an eagle whose nest just clings to the edge of some awful cliff.

How sad that the word "giddy" is used to imply wantonness or levity!

It should be a high compliment to a man's exalted spirituality

and the imagination to say he is a little giddy.

I strolled slowly back across the stretch of turf by the sunset,

a field of the cloth of gold. As I drew near my own house,

its huge size began to horrify me; and when I came to the porch of it

I discovered with an incredulity as strong as despair that my house

was actually bigger than myself. A minute or two before there

might well have seemed to be a monstrous and mythical competition

about which of the two should swallow the other. But I was Jonah;

my house was the huge and hungry fish; and even as its jaws darkened

and closed about me I had again this dreadful fancy touching the dizzy

altitude of all the works of man. I climbed the stairs stubbornly,

planting each foot with savage care, as if ascending a glacier.

When I got to a landing I was wildly relieved, and waved my hat.

The very word "landing" has about it the wild sound of some one washed

up by the sea. I climbed each flight like a ladder in naked sky.

The walls all round me failed and faded into infinity; I went up

the ladder to my bedroom as Montrose went up the ladder to the gallows;

sic itur ad astro. Do you think this is a little fantastic--

even a little fearful and nervous? Believe me, it is only one of

the wild and wonderful things that one can learn by stopping at home.







The Three Kinds of Men

Roughly speaking, there are three kinds of people in this world.

The first kind of people are People; they are the largest and probably

the most valuable class. We owe to this class the chairs we sit down on,

the clothes we wear, the houses we live in; and, indeed (when we

come to think of it), we probably belong to this class ourselves.

The second class may be called for convenience the Poets;

they are often a nuisance to their families, but, generally speaking,

a blessing to mankind. The third class is that of the Professors

or Intellectuals; sometimes described as the thoughtful people;

and these are a blight and a desolation both to their families and

also to mankind. Of course, the classification sometimes overlaps,

like all classification. Some good people are almost poets and

some bad poets are almost professors. But the division follows

lines of real psychological cleavage. I do not offer it lightly.

It has been the fruit of more than eighteen minutes of earnest

reflection and research.

The class called People (to which you and I, with no little pride,

attach ourselves) has certain casual, yet profound, assumptions,

which are called "commonplaces," as that children are charming,

or that twilight is sad and sentimental, or that one man fighting

three is a fine sight. Now, these feelings are not crude;

they are not even simple. The charm of children is very subtle;

it is even complex, to the extent of being almost contradictory.

It is, at its very plainest, mingled of a regard for hilarity and a

regard for helplessness. The sentiment of twilight, in the vulgarest

drawing-room song or the coarsest pair of sweethearts, is, so far

as it goes, a subtle sentiment. It is strangely balanced between

pain and pleasure; it might also be called pleasure tempting pain.

The plunge of impatient chivalry by which we all admire a man

fighting odds is not at all easy to define separately, it means

many things, pity, dramatic surprise, a desire for justice, a delight

in experiment and the indeterminate. The ideas of the mob are really

very subtle ideas; but the mob does not express them subtly.

In fact, it does not express them at all, except on those occasions

(now only too rare) when it indulges in insurrection and massacre.

Now, this accounts for the otherwise unreasonable fact of the existence

of Poets. Poets are those who share these popular sentiments,

but can so express them that they prove themselves the strange

and delicate things that they really are. Poets draw out the shy

refinement of the rabble. Where the common man covers the queerest

emotions by saying, "Rum little kid," Victor Hugo will write "L'art

d'etre grand-pere"; where the stockbroker will only say abruptly,

"Evenings closing in now," Mr. Yeats will write "Into the twilight";

where the navvy can only mutter something about pluck and being

"precious game," Homer will show you the hero in rags in his own hall

defying the princes at their banquet. The Poets carry the popular

sentiments to a keener and more splendid pitch; but let it always be

remembered that it is the popular sentiments that they are carrying.

No man ever wrote any good poetry to show that childhood was shocking,

or that twilight was gay and farcical, or that a man was

contemptible because he had crossed his single sword with three.

The people who maintain this are the Professors, or Prigs.

The Poets are those who rise above the people by understanding them.

Of course, most of the Poets wrote in prose--Rabelais, for instance,

and Dickens. The Prigs rise above the people by refusing

to understand them: by saying that all their dim, strange

preferences are prejudices and superstitions. The Prigs make

the people feel stupid; the Poets make the people feel wiser

than they could have imagined that they were. There are many

weird elements in this situation. The oddest of all perhaps

is the fate of the two factors in practical politics. The Poets

who embrace and admire the people are often pelted with stones

and crucified. The Prigs who despise the people are often loaded

with lands and crowned. In the House of Commons, for instance,

there are quite a number of prigs, but comparatively few poets.

There are no People there at all.

By poets, as I have said, I do not mean people who write poetry,

or indeed people who write anything. I mean such people as,

having culture and imagination, use them to understand and share

the feelings of their fellows; as against those who use them

to rise to what they call a higher plane. Crudely, the poet

differs from the mob by his sensibility; the professor differs

from the mob by his insensibility. He has not sufficient

finesse and sensitiveness to sympathize with the mob. His only

notion is coarsely to contradict it, to cut across it, in

accordance with some egotistical plan of his own; to tell

himself that, whatever the ignorant say, they are probably wrong.

He forgets that ignorance often has the exquisite intuitions of

innocence.

Let me take one example which may mark out the outline of the contention.

Open the nearest comic paper and let your eye rest lovingly upon

a joke about a mother-in-law. Now, the joke, as presented for

the populace, will probably be a simple joke; the old lady will be

tall and stout, the hen-pecked husband will be small and cowering.

But for all that, a mother-in-law is not a simple idea.

She is a very subtle idea. The problem is not that she is big

and arrogant; she is frequently little and quite extraordinarily nice.

The problem of the mother-in-law is that she is like the twilight:

half one thing and half another. Now, this twilight truth,

this fine and even tender embarrassment, might be rendered,

as it really is, by a poet, only here the poet would have to be

some very penetrating and sincere novelist, like George Meredith,

or Mr. H. G. Wells, whose "Ann Veronica" I have just been reading

with delight. I would trust the fine poets and novelists

because they follow the fairy clue given them in Comic Cuts.

But suppose the Professor appears, and suppose he says (as he almost

certainly will), "A mother-in-law is merely a fellow-citizen.

Considerations of sex should not interfere with comradeship.

Regard for age should not influence the intellect. A mother-in-law

is merely Another Mind. We should free ourselves from these tribal

hierarchies and degrees." Now, when the Professor says this

(as he always does), I say to him, "Sir, you are coarser than Comic Cuts.

You are more vulgar and blundering than the most elephantine

music-hall artiste. You are blinder and grosser than the mob.

These vulgar knockabouts have, at least, got hold of a social shade

and real mental distinction, though they can only express it clumsily.

You are so clumsy that you cannot get hold of it at all.

If you really cannot see that the bridegroom's mother and the bride

have any reason for constraint or diffidence, then you are neither

polite nor humane: you have no sympathy in you for the deep

and doubtful hearts of human folk." It is better even to put

the difficulty as the vulgar put it than to be pertly unconscious

of the difficulty altogether.

The same question might be considered well enough in the old

proverb that two is company and three is none. This proverb

is the truth put popularly: that is, it is the truth put wrong.

Certainly it is untrue that three is no company. Three is

splendid company: three is the ideal number for pure comradeship:

as in the Three Musketeers. But if you reject the proverb altogether;

if you say that two and three are the same sort of company;

if you cannot see that there is a wider abyss between two

and three than between three and three million--then I regret

to inform you that you belong to the Third Class of human beings;

that you shall have no company either of two or three, but shall

be alone in a howling desert till you die.







The Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds

The other day on a stray spur of the Chiltern Hills I

climbed up upon one of those high, abrupt, windy churchyards

from which the dead seem to look down upon all the living.

It was a mountain of ghosts as Olympus was a mountain of gods.

In that church lay the bones of great Puritan lords, of a time when most

of the power of England was Puritan, even of the Established Church.

And below these uplifted bones lay the huge and hollow valleys

of the English countryside, where the motors went by every now

and then like meteors, where stood out in white squares and oblongs

in the chequered forest many of the country seats even of those

same families now dulled with wealth or decayed with Toryism.

And looking over that deep green prospect on that luminous

yellow evening, a lovely and austere thought came into my mind,

a thought as beautiful as the green wood and as grave as the tombs.

The thought was this: that I should like to go into Parliament,

quarrel with my party, accept the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds,

and then refuse to give it up.

We are so proud in England of our crazy constitutional anomalies

that I fancy that very few readers indeed will need to be told

about the Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds. But in case there

should be here or there one happy man who has never heard of such

twisted tomfooleries, I will rapidly remind you what this legal

fiction is. As it is quite a voluntary, sometimes even an eager,

affair to get into Parliament, you would naturally suppose

that it would be also a voluntary matter to get out again.

You would think your fellow-members would be indifferent,

or even relieved to see you go; especially as (by another exercise

of the shrewd, illogical old English common sense) they have carefully

built the room too small for the people who have to sit in it.

But not so, my pippins, as it says in the "Iliad." If you are

merely a member of Parliament (Lord knows why) you can't resign.

But if you are a Minister of the Crown (Lord knows why) you can.

It is necessary to get into the Ministry in order to get out

of the House; and they have to give you some office that doesn't

exist or that nobody else wants and thus unlock the door.

So you go to the Prime Minister, concealing your air of fatigue,

and say, "It has been the ambition of my life to be Steward of the

Chiltern Hundreds." The Prime Minister then replies, "I can imagine

no man more fitted both morally and mentally for that high office."

He then gives it you, and you hurriedly leave, reflecting how

the republics of the Continent reel anarchically to and fro for lack

of a little solid English directness and simplicity.

Now, the thought that struck me like a thunderbolt as I sat on

the Chiltern slope was that I would like to get the Prime Minister

to give me the Chiltern Hundreds, and then startle and disturb him

by showing the utmost interest in my work. I should profess a general

knowledge of my duties, but wish to be instructed in the details.

I should ask to see the Under-Steward and the Under-Under-Steward,

and all the fine staff of experienced permanent officials who are

the glory of this department. And, indeed, my enthusiasm would

not be wholly unreal. For as far as I can recollect the original

duties of a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds were to put down

the outlaws and brigands in that part of the world. Well, there are

a great many outlaws and brigands in that part of the world still,

and though their methods have so largely altered as to require

a corresponding alteration in the tactics of the Steward, I do

not see why an energetic and public-spirited Steward should not

nab them yet.

For the robbers have not vanished from the old high forests

to the west of the great city. The thieves have not vanished;

they have grown so large that they are invisible. You do not

see the word "Asia" written across a map of that neighbourhood;

nor do you see the word "Thief" written across the countrysides

of England; though it is really written in equally large letters.

I know men governing despotically great stretches of that country,

whose every step in life has been such that a slip would have sent

them to Dartmoor; but they trod along the high hard wall between right

and wrong, the wall as sharp as a swordedge, as softly and craftily

and lightly as a cat. The vastness of their silent violence itself

obscured what they were at; if they seem to stand for the rights

of property it is really because they have so often invaded them.

And if they do not break the laws, it is only because they make them.

But after all we only need a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds

who really understands cats and thieves. Men hunt one animal

differently from another; and the rich could catch swindlers

as dexterously as they catch otters or antlered deer if they

were really at all keen upon doing it. But then they never have

an uncle with antlers; nor a personal friend who is an otter.

When some of the great lords that lie in the churchyard behind me

went out against their foes in those deep woods beneath I wager

that they had bows against the bows of the outlaws, and spears against

the spears of the robber knights. They knew what they were about;

they fought the evildoers of their age with the weapons of their age.

If the same common sense were applied to commercial law,

in forty-eight hours it would be all over with the American Trusts

and the African forward finance. But it will not be done:

for the governing class either does not care, or cares very much,

for the criminals, and as for me, I had a delusive opportunity

of being Constable of Beaconsfield (with grossly inadequate powers),

but I fear I shall never really be Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.








CHESTERTON-ALARM AND SIDISCUTIO - How I found the Superman