CHESTERTON-THE APPETITE OF TYRANY
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Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian
Unless we are all mad, there is at the back of the most bewildering
business a story: and if we are all mad, there is no such thing as madness.
If I set a house on fire, it is quite true that I may illuminate many other
people's weaknesses as well as my own. It may be that the master of the
house was burned because he was drunk; it may be that the mistress of the
house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the
expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they
both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of
the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European
conflagration are quite as easy to tell.
Before we go on to the deeper things which make this war the most sincere
war of human history, it is easy to answer the question of why England came
to be in it at all, as one asks how a man fell down a coal-hole, or failed
to keep an appointment. Facts are not the whole truth. But facts are facts,
and in this case the facts are few and simple. Prussia, France, and
England had all promised not to invade Belgium. Prussia proposed to invade
Belgium, because it was the safest way of invading France. But Prussia
promised that if she might break in, through her own broken promise and
ours, she would break in and not steal. In other words, we were offered at
the same instant a promise of faith in the future and a proposal of perjury
in the present. Those interested in human origin may refer to an old
Victorian writer of English, who, in the last and most restrained of his
historical essays, wrote of Frederick the Great, the founder of this
unchanging Prussian policy. After describing how Frederick broke the
guarantee he had signed on behalf of Maria Theresa, he then describes how
Frederick sought to put things straight by a promise that was an insult.
"If she would but let him have Silesia, he would, he said, stand by her
against any power which should try to deprive her of her other dominions,
as if he was not already bound to stand by her, or as if his new promise
could be of more value than the old one." That passage was written by
Macaulay, but so far as the mere contemporary facts are concerned, it might
have been written by me.
Upon the immediate logical and legal origin of the English interest there
can be no rational debate. There are some things so simple that one can
almost prove them with plans and diagrams, as in Euclid. One could make a
kind of comic calendar of what would have happened to the English
diplomatist if he had been silenced every time by Prussian diplomacy.
Suppose we arrange it in the form of a kind of diary.
July 24. Germany invades Belgium.
July 25. England declares war.
July 26. Germany promises not to annex Belgium.
July 27. England withdraws from the war.
July 28. Germany annexes Belgium. England declares war.
July 29. Germany promises not to annex France. England withdraws from the
war.
July 30. Germany annexes France. England declares war.
July 31. Germany promises not to annex England.
Aug. 1. England withdraws from the war. Germany invades England...
How long is anybody expected to go with that sort of game, or keep peace at
that illimitable price? How long must we pursue a road in which promises
are all fetishes in front of us and all fragments behind us? No: upon the
cold facts of the final negotiations, as told by any of the diplomatists in
any of the documents, there is no doubt about the story. And no doubt about
the villain of the story.
These are the last facts--the facts which involved England. It is equally
easy to state the first facts--the facts which involved Europe. The Prince
who practically ruled Austria was shot by certain persons whom the Austrian
Government believed to be conspirators from Servia. The Austrian Government
piled up arms and armies, but said not a word either to Servia their
suspect or Italy their ally. From the documents it would seem that Austria
kept everybody in the dark, except Prussia. It is probably nearer the truth
to say that Prussia kept everybody in the dark, including Austria. But all
that is what is called opinion, belief, conviction or common-sense, and we
are not dealing with it here. The objective fact is that Austria told
Servia to permit Servian officers to be suspended by the authority of
Austrian officers, and told Servia to submit to this within forty-eight
hours. In other words, the sovereign of Servia was practically told to take
off not only the laurels of two great campaigns but his own lawful and
national crown, and to do it in a time in which no respectable citizen is
expected to discharge an hotel bill. Servia asked for time, for
arbitration--in short, for peace. But Prussia had already begun to
mobilise; and Prussia, presuming that Servia might thus be rescued,
declared war.
Between these two ends of fact, the ultimatum to Servia, the ultimatum to
Belgium, any one so inclined can of course talk as if everything were
relative. If any one ask why the Czar should rush to the support of Servia,
it is as easy to ask why the Kaiser should rush to the support of Austria.
If any one say that the French would attack the Germans, it is sufficient
to answer that the Germans did attack the French. There remain, however,
two attitudes to consider, even perhaps two arguments to counter, which can
best be considered and countered under this general head of facts. First of
all, there is a curious, cloudy sort of argument, much affected by the
professional rhetoricians of Prussia, who are sent out to instruct and
correct the minds of Americans or Scandinavians. It consists of going into
convulsions of incredulity and scorn at the mention of Russia's
responsibility for Servia or England's responsibility for Belgium; and
suggesting that, treaty or no treaty, frontier or no frontier, Russia would
be out to slay Teutons or England to steal colonies. Here, as elsewhere, I
think the professors dotted all over the Baltic plain fail in lucidity, and
in the power of distinguishing ideas. Of course it is quite true that
England has material interests to defend, and will probably use the
opportunity to defend them: or, in other words, of course England, like
everybody else, would be more comfortable if Prussia were less predominant.
The fact remains that we did not do what the Germans did. We did not
invade Holland to seize a naval and commercial advantage: and whether they
say that we wished to do it in our greed, or feared to do it in our
cowardice, the fact remains that we did not do it. Unless this common-sense
principle be kept in view, I cannot conceive how any quarrel can possibly
be judged. A contract may be made between two persons solely for material
advantage on each side: but the moral advantage is still generally supposed
to lie with the person who keeps the contract. Surely it cannot be
dishonest to be honest--even if honesty is the best policy. Imagine the
most complex maze of indirect motives; and still the man who keeps faith
for money cannot possibly be worse than the man who breaks faith for money.
It will be noted that this ultimate test applies in the same way to Servia
as to Belgium and Britain. The Servians may not be a very peaceful people;
but, on the occasion under discussion, it was certainly they who wanted
peace. You may choose to think the Serb a sort of born robber: but on this
occasion it was certainly the Austrian who was trying to rob. Similarly,
you may call England perfidious as a sort of historical summary; and
declare your private belief that Mr. Asquith was vowed from infancy to the
ruin of the German Empire, a Hannibal and hater of the eagles. But, when
all is said, it is nonsense to call a man perfidious because he keeps his
promise. It is absurd to complain of the sudden treachery of a business man
in turning up punctually to his appointment: or the unfair shock given to a
creditor by the debtor paying his debts.
Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown in the crisis against which I
should particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especially
to those lovers and pursuers of Peace who, very short-sightedly, have
occasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of these
preliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right or
wrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, called
War, has been begun by some or all of us; and should be ended by some or
all of us. To these people this preliminary chapter about the precise
happenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driest
part of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell these
people that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles of
human justice and historic continuity: but that they are specially and
supremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and international
peace.
These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us that
citizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and that
nations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are always
telling us that we no longer fight duels; and need no longer wage wars. In
short, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that an
ordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is he
prevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour on
the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands,
like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all responsible for
this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day
when he shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall
ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say "Let byegones be byegones;
why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can
tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there within reach of
the hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for
the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go
into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically
enquire who it was that hit first. In short we do what I have done very
briefly in this place.
Given this, it is indeed true that behind these facts there are truths;
truths of a terrible, of a spiritual sort. In mere fact, the Germanic power
has been wrong about Servia, wrong about Russia, wrong about Belgium, wrong
about England, wrong about Italy. But there was a reason for its being
wrong everywhere; and of that root reason, which has moved half the world
against it, I shall speak later. For that is something too omnipresent to
be proved, too indisputable to be helped by detail. It is nothing less than
the locating, after more than a hundred years of recriminations and wrong
explanations, of the modern European evil: the finding of the fountain from
which poison has flowed upon all the nations of the earth.
It will hardly be denied that there is one lingering doubt in many, who
recognise unavoidable self-defence in the instant parry of the English
sword, and who have no great love for the sweeping sabre of Sadowa and
Sedan. That doubt is the doubt whether Russia, as compared with Prussia, is
sufficiently decent and democratic to be the ally of liberal and civilised
powers. I take first, therefore, this matter of civilisation.
It is vital in a discussion like this, that we should make sure we are
going by meanings and not by mere words. It is not necessary in any
argument to settle what a word means or ought to mean. But it is necessary
in every argument to settle what we propose to mean by the word. So long as
our opponent understands what is the thing of which we are talking, it
does not matter to the argument whether the word is or is not the one he
would have chosen. A soldier does not say "We were ordered to go to
Mechlin; but I would rather go to Malines." He may discuss the etymology
and archaeology of the difference on the march; but the point is that he
knows where to go. So long as we know what a given word is to mean in a
given discussion, it does not even matter if it means something else in
some other and quite distinct discussion. We have a perfect right to say
that the width of a window comes to four feet; even if we instantly and
cheerfully change the subject to the larger mammals; and say that an
elephant has four feet. The identity of the words does not matter, because
there is no doubt at all about the meanings; because nobody is likely to
think of an elephant as four foot long, or of a window as having tusks and
a curly trunk.
It is essential to emphasise this consciousness of the thing under
discussion in connection with two or three words that are, as it were, the
key-words of this war. One of them is the word "barbarian." The Prussians
apply it to the Russians: the Russians apply it to the Prussians. Both, I
think, really mean something that really exists, name or no name. Both mean
different things. And if we ask what these different things are, we shall
understand why England and France prefer Russia; and consider Prussia the
really dangerous barbarian of the two. To begin with, it goes so much
deeper even than atrocities; of which, in the past at least, all the three
Empires of Central Europe have partaken pretty equally, as they partook of
Poland. An English writer, seeking to avert the war by warnings against
Russian influence, said that the flogged backs of Polish women stood
between us and the Alliance. But not long before, the flogging of women by
an Austrian general led to that officer being thrashed in the streets of
London by Barclay and Perkins' draymen. And as for the third power, the
Prussians, it seems clear that they have treated Belgian women in a style
compared with which flogging might be called an official formality. But,
as I say, something much deeper than any such recrimination lies behind the
use of the word on either side. When the German Emperor complains of our
allying ourselves with a barbaric and half-oriental power he is not (I
assure you) shedding tears over the grave of Kosciusko. And when I say (as
I do most heartily) that the German Emperor is a barbarian, I am not merely
expressing any prejudices I may have against the profanation of churches or
of children. My countrymen and I mean a certain and intelligible thing when
we call the Prussians barbarians. It is quite different from the thing
attributed to Russians; and it could not possibly be attributed to
Russians. It is very important that the neutral world should understand
what this thing is.
If the German calls the Russian barbarous he presumably means imperfectly
civilised. There is a certain path along which Western nations have
proceeded in recent times; and it is tenable that Russia has not proceeded
so far as the others: that she has less of the special modern system in
science, commerce, machinery, travel or political constitution. The Russ
ploughs with an old plough; he wears a wild beard; he adores relics; his
life is as rude and hard as that of a subject of Alfred the Great.
Therefore he is, in the German sense, a barbarian. Poor fellows like Gorky
and Dostoieffsky have to form their own reflections on the scenery, without
the assistance of large quotations from Schiller on garden seats; or
inscriptions directing them to pause and thank the All-Father for the
finest view in Hesse-Pumpernickel. The Russians, having nothing but their
faith, their fields, their great courage, and their self-governing
communes, are quite cut off from what is called (in the fashionable street
in Frankfort) The True, The Beautiful and The Good. There is a real sense
in which one can call such backwardness barbaric; by comparison with the
Kaiserstrasse; and in that sense it is true of Russia.
Now we, the French and English, do not mean this when we call the Prussians
barbarians. If their cities soared higher than their flying ships, if
their trains travelled faster than their bullets, we should still call them
barbarians. We should know exactly what we meant by it; and we should know
that it is true. For we do not mean anything that is an imperfect
civilisation by accident. We mean something that is the enemy of
civilisation by design. We mean something that is wilfully at war with the
principles by which human society has been made possible hitherto. Of
course it must be partly civilised even to destroy civilisation. Such ruin
could not be wrought by the savages that are merely undeveloped or inert.
You could not have even Huns without horses; or horses without
horsemanship. You could not have even Danish pirates without ships, or
ships without seamanship. This person, whom I may call the Positive
Barbarian, must be rather more superficially up-to-date than what I may
call the Negative Barbarian. Alaric was an officer in the Roman legions:
but for all that he destroyed Rome. Nobody supposes that Eskimos could have
done it at all neatly. But (in our meaning) barbarism is not a matter of
methods but of aims. We say that these veneered vandals have the perfectly
serious aim of destroying certain ideas which, as they think, the world has
outgrown; without which, as we think, the world will die.
It is essential that this perilous peculiarity in the Pruss, or Positive
Barbarian, should be seized. He has what he fancies is a new idea; and he
is going to apply it to everybody. As a fact it is simply a false
generalisation; but he is really trying to make it general. This does not
apply to the Negative Barbarian: it does not apply to the Russian or the
Servian, even if they are barbarians. If a Russian peasant does beat his
wife, he does it because his fathers did it before him: he is likely to
beat less rather than more as the past fades away. He does not think, as
the Prussian would, that he has made a new discovery in physiology in
finding that a woman is weaker than a man. If a Servian does knife his
rival without a word, he does it because other Servians have done it. He
may regard it even as piety, but certainly not as progress. He does not
think, as the Prussian does, that he founds a new school of horology by
starting before the word "Go." He does not think he is in advance of the
world in militarism, merely because he is behind it in morals. No; the
danger of the Pruss is that he is prepared to fight for old errors as if
they were new truths. He has somehow heard of certain shallow
simplifications; and imagines that we have never heard of them. And, as I
have said, his limited but very sincere lunacy concentrates chiefly in a
desire to destroy two ideas, the twin root ideas of rational society. The
first is the idea of record and promise: the second is the idea of
reciprocity.
It is plain that the promise, or extension of responsibility through time,
is what chiefly distinguishes us, I will not say from savages, but from
brutes and reptiles. This was noted by the shrewdness of the Old Testament,
when it summed up the dark irresponsible enormity of Leviathan in the words
"Will he make a pact with thee?" The promise, like the wheel, is unknown in
Nature: and is the first mark of man. Referring only to human civilisation
it may be said with seriousness, that in the beginning was the Word. The
vow is to the man what the song is to the bird, or the bark to the dog; his
voice, whereby he is known. Just as a man who cannot keep an appointment is
not fit even to fight a duel, so the man who cannot keep an appointment
with himself is not sane enough even for suicide. It is not easy to mention
anything on which the enormous apparatus of human life can be said to
depend. But if it depends on anything, it is on this frail cord, flung from
the forgotten hills of yesterday to the invisible mountains of to-morrow.
On that solitary string hangs everything from Armageddon to an almanac,
from a successful revolution to a return ticket. On that solitary string
the Barbarian is hacking heavily, with a sabre which is fortunately blunt.
Any one can see this well enough, merely by reading the last negotiations
between London and Berlin. The Prussians had made a new discovery in
international politics: that it may often be convenient to make a promise;
and yet curiously inconvenient to keep it. They were charmed, in their
simple way, with this scientific discovery, and desired to communicate it
to the world. They therefore promised England a promise, on condition that
she broke a promise, and on the implied condition that the new promise
might be broken as easily as the old one. To the profound astonishment of
Prussia, this reasonable offer was refused! I believe that the astonishment
of Prussia was quite sincere. That is what I mean when I say that the
Barbarian is trying to cut away that cord of honesty and clear record, on
which hangs all that men have made.
The friends of the German cause have complained that Asiatics and Africans
upon the very verge of savagery have been brought against them from India
and Algiers. And, in ordinary circumstances, I should sympathise with such
a complaint made by a European people. But the circumstances are not
ordinary. Here, again, the quite unique barbarism of Prussia goes deeper
than what we call barbarities. About mere barbarities, it is true, the
Turco and the Sikh would have a very good reply to the superior Teuton.
The general and just reason for not using non-European tribes against
Europeans is that given by Chatham against the use of the Red Indian: that
such allies might do very diabolical things. But the poor Turco might not
unreasonably ask, after a weekend in Belgium, what more diabolical things
he could do than the highly cultured Germans were doing themselves.
Nevertheless, as I say, the justification of any extra-European aid goes
deeper than any such details. It rests upon the fact that even other
civilisations, even much lower civilisations, even remote and repulsive
civilisations, depend as much as our own on this primary principle on which
the super-morality of Potsdam declares open War. Even savages promise
things; and respect those who keep their promises. Even Orientals write
things down: and though they write them from right to left, they know the
importance of a scrap of paper. Many merchants will tell you that the word
of the sinister and almost unhuman Chinaman is often as good as his bond:
and it was amid palm trees and Syrian pavilions that the great utterance
opened the tabernacle, to him that sweareth to his hurt and changeth not.
There is doubtless a dense labyrinth of duplicity in the East, and perhaps
more guile in the individual Asiatic than in the individual German. But we
are not talking of the violations of human morality in various parts of the
world. We are talking about a new and inhuman morality, which denies
altogether the day of obligation. The Prussians have been told by their
literary men that everything depends upon Mood: and by their politicians
that all arrangements dissolve before "necessity." That is the importance
of the German Chancellor's phrase. He did not allege some special excuse in
the case of Belgium, which might make it seem an exception that proved the
rule. He distinctly argued, as on a principle applicable to other cases,
that victory was a necessity and honour was a scrap of paper. And it is
evident that the half-educated Prussian imagination really cannot get any
further than this. It cannot see that if everybody's action were entirely
incalculable from hour to hour, it would not only be the end of all
promises, but the end of all projects. In not being able to see that, the
Berlin philosopher is really on a lower mental level than the Arab who
respects the salt, or the Brahmin who preserves the caste. And in this
quarrel we have a right to come with scimitars as well as sabres, with bows
as well as rifles, with assegai and tomahawk and boomerang, because there
is in all these at least a seed of civilisation that these intellectual
anarchists would kill. And if they should find us in our last stand girt
with such strange swords and following unfamiliar ensigns, and ask us for
what we fight in so singular a company, we shall know what to reply: "We
fight for the trust and for the tryst; for fixed memories and the possible
meeting of men; for all that makes life anything but an uncontrollable
nightmare. We fight for the long arm of honour and remembrance; for all
that can lift a man above the quicksands of his moods, and give him the
mastery of time."
In the last summary I suggested that Barbarism, as we mean it, is not mere
ignorance or even mere cruelty. It has a more precise sense, and means
militant hostility to certain necessary human ideas. I took the case of the
vow or the contract, which Prussian intellectualism would destroy. I urged
that the Prussian is a spiritual Barbarian, because he is not bound by his
own past, any more than a man in a dream. He avows that when he promised to
respect a frontier on Monday, he did not foresee what he calls "the
necessity" of not respecting it on Tuesday. In short, he is like a child,
who at the end of all reasonable explanations and reminders of admitted
arrangements, has no answer except "But I want to."
There is another idea in human arrangements so fundamental as to be
forgotten; but now for the first time denied. It may be called the idea of
reciprocity; or, in better English, of give and take. The Prussian appears
to be quite intellectually incapable of this thought. He cannot, I think,
conceive the idea that is the foundation of all comedy; that, in the eyes
of the other man, he is only the other man. And if we carry this clue
through the institutions of Prussianised Germany, we shall find how
curiously his mind has been limited in the matter. The German differs from
other patriots in the inability to understand patriotism. Other European
peoples pity the Poles or the Welsh for their violated borders; but Germans
pity only themselves. They might take forcible possession of the Severn or
the Danube, of the Thames or the Tiber, of the Garry or the Garonne--and
they would still be singing sadly about how fast and true stands the watch
on Rhine; and what a shame it would be if any one took their own little
river away from them. That is what I mean by not being reciprocal: and you
will find it in all that they do: as in all that is done by savages.
Here, again, it is very necessary to avoid confusing this soul of the
savage with mere savagery in the sense of brutality or butchery; in which
the Greeks, the French and all the most civilised nations have indulged in
hours of abnormal panic or revenge. Accusations of cruelty are generally
mutual. But it is the point about the Prussian that with him nothing is
mutual. The definition of the true savage does not concern itself even with
how much more he hurts strangers or captives than do the other tribes of
men. The definition of the true savage is that he laughs when he hurts you;
and howls when you hurt him. This extraordinary inequality in the mind is
in every act and word that comes from Berlin. For instance, no man of the
world believes all he sees in the newspapers; and no journalist believes a
quarter of it. We should, therefore, be quite ready in the ordinary way to
take a great deal off the tales of German atrocities; to doubt this story
or deny that. But there is one thing that we cannot doubt or deny: the seal
and authority of the Emperor. In the Imperial proclamation the fact that
certain "frightful" things have been done is admitted; and justified on the
ground of their frightfulness. It was a military necessity to terrify the
peaceful populations with something that was not civilised, something that
was hardly human. Very well. That is an intelligible policy: and in that
sense an intelligible argument. An army endangered by foreigners may do the
most frightful things. But then we turn the next page of the Kaiser's
public diary, and we find him writing to the President of the United
States, to complain that the English are using Dum-dum bullets and
violating various regulations of the Hague Conference. I pass for the
present the question of whether there is a word of truth in these charges.
I am content to gaze rapturously at the blinking eyes of the True, or
Positive, Barbarian. I suppose he would be quite puzzled if we said that
violating the Hague Conference was "a military necessity" to us; or that
the rules of the Conference were only a scrap of paper. He would be quite
pained if we said that Dum-dum bullets, "by their very frightfulness,"
would be very useful to keep conquered Germans in order. Do what he will,
he cannot get outside the idea that he, because he is he and not you, is
free to break the law; and also to appeal to the law. It is said that the
Prussian officers play at a game called Kriegsspiel, or the War Game. But
in truth they could not play at any game; for the essence of every game is
that the rules are the same on both sides.
But taking every German institution in turn, the case is the same; and it
is not a case of mere bloodshed or military bravado. The duel, for
example, can legitimately be called a barbaric thing; but the word is here
used in another sense. There are duels in Germany; but so there are in
France, Italy, Belgium, and Spain; indeed, there are duels wherever there
are dentists, newspapers, Turkish baths, time-tables, and all the curses of
civilisation; except in England and a corner of America. You may happen to
regard the duel as a historic relic of the more barbaric States on which
these modern States were built. It might equally well be maintained that
the duel is everywhere the sign of high civilisation; being the sign of its
more delicate sense of honour, its more vulnerable vanity, or its greater
dread of social disrepute. But whichever of the two views you take, you
must concede that the essence of the duel is an armed equality. I should
not, therefore, apply the word barbaric, as I am using it, to the duels of
German officers, or even to the broadsword combats that are conventional
among the German students. I do not see why a young Prussian should not
have scars all over his face if he likes them; nay, they are often the
redeeming points of interest on an otherwise somewhat unenlightening
countenance. The duel may be defended; the sham duel may be defended.
What cannot be defended is something really peculiar to Prussia, of which
we hear numberless stories, some of them certainly true. It might be called
the one-sided duel. I mean the idea that there is some sort of dignity in
drawing the sword upon a man who has not got a sword; a waiter, or a shop
assistant, or even a schoolboy. One of the officers of the Kaiser in the
affair at Saberne was found industriously hacking at a cripple. In all
these matters I would avoid sentiment. We must not lose our tempers at the
mere cruelty of the thing; but pursue the strict psychological distinction.
Others besides German soldiers have slain the defenceless, for loot or lust
or private malice, like any other murderer. The point is that nowhere else
but in Prussian Germany is any theory of honour mixed up with such things;
any more than with poisoning or picking pockets. No French, English,
Italian or American gentleman would think he had in some way cleared his
own character by sticking his sabre through some ridiculous greengrocer who
had nothing in his hand but a cucumber. It would seem as if the word which
is translated from the German as "honour" must really mean something quite
different in German. It seems to mean something more like what we should
call "prestige."
The fundamental fact, however, is the absence of the reciprocal idea. The
Prussian is not sufficiently civilised for the duel. Even when he crosses
swords with us his thoughts are not as our thoughts; when we both glorify
war, we are glorifying different things. Our medals are wrought like his,
but they do not mean the same thing; our regiments are cheered as his are,
but the thought in the heart is not the same; the Iron Cross is on the
bosom of his king, but it is not the sign of our God. For we, alas, follow
our God with many relapses and self-contradictions, but he follows his very
consistently. Through all the things that we have examined, the view of
national boundaries, the view of military methods, the view of personal
honour and self-defence, there runs in their case something of an atrocious
simplicity; something too simple for us to understand: the idea that glory
consists in holding the steel, and not in facing it.
If further examples were necessary, it would be easy to give hundreds of
them. Let us leave, for the moment, the relation between man and man in
the thing called the duel. Let us take the relation between man and woman,
in that immortal duel which we call a marriage. Here again we shall find
that other Christian civilisations aim at some kind of equality; even if
the balance be irrational or dangerous. Thus, the two extremes of the
treatment of women might be represented by what are called the respectable
classes in America and in France. In America they choose the risk of
comradeship; in France the compensation of courtesy. In America it is
practically possible for any young gentleman to take any young lady for
what he calls (I deeply regret to say) a joy-ride; but at least the man
goes with the woman as much as the woman with the man. In France the young
woman is protected like a nun while she is unmarried; but when she is a
mother she is really a holy woman; and when she is a grandmother she is a
holy terror. By both extremes the woman gets something back out of life.
There is only one place where she gets little or nothing back; and that is
the north of Germany. France and America aim alike at equality; America by
similarity; France by dissimilarity. But North Germany does definitely
aim at inequality. The woman stands up, with no more irritation than a
butler; the man sits down, with no more embarrassment than a guest. This is
the cool affirmation of inferiority, as in the case of the sabre and the
tradesman. "Thou goest with women; forget not thy whip," said Nietzsche. It
will be observed that he does not say "poker"; which might come more
naturally to the mind of a more common or Christian wife-beater. But then a
poker is a part of domesticity; and might be used by the wife as well as
the husband. In fact, it often is. The sword and the whip are the weapons
of a privileged caste.
Pass from the closest of all differences, that between husband and wife, to
the most distant of all differences, that of the remote and unrelated races
who have seldom seen each other's faces, and never been tinged with each
other's blood. Here we still find the same unvarying Prussian principle.
Any European might feel a genuine fear of the Yellow Peril; and many
Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Russians have felt and expressed it. Many might
say, and have said, that the Heathen Chinee is very heathen indeed; that if
he ever advances against us he will trample and torture and utterly
destroy, in a way that Eastern people do, but Western people do not. Nor do
I doubt the German Emperor's sincerity when he sought to point out to us
how abnormal and abominable such a nightmare campaign would be, supposing
that it could ever come. But now comes the comic irony; which never fails
to follow on the attempt of the Prussian to be philosophic. For the Kaiser,
after explaining to his troops how important it was to avoid Eastern
Barbarism, instantly commanded them to become Eastern Barbarians. He told
them, in so many words, to be Huns: and leave nothing living or standing
behind them. In fact, he frankly offered a new army corps of aboriginal
Tartars to the Far East, within such time as it may take a bewildered
Hanoverian to turn into a Tartar. Any one who has the painful habit of
personal thought, will perceive here at once the non-reciprocal principle
again. Boiled down to its bones of logic, it means simply this: "I am a
German and you are a Chinaman. Therefore I, being a German, have a right
to be a Chinaman. But you have no right to be a Chinaman; because you are
only a Chinaman." This is probably the highest point to which the German
culture has risen.
The principle here neglected, which may be called Mutuality by those who
misunderstand and dislike the word Equality, does not offer so clear a
distinction between the Prussian and the other peoples as did the first
Prussian principle of an infinite and destructive opportunism; or, in other
words, the principle of being unprincipled. Nor upon this second can one
take up so obvious a position touching the other civilisations or
semi-civilisations of the world. Some idea of oath and bond there is in the
rudest tribes, in the darkest continents. But it might be maintained, of
the more delicate and imaginative element of reciprocity, that a cannibal
in Borneo understands it almost as little as a professor in Berlin. A
narrow and one-sided seriousness is the fault of barbarians all over the
world. This may have been the meaning, for aught I know, of the one eye of
the Cyclops: that the Barbarian cannot see round things or look at them
from two points of view; and thus becomes a blind beast and an eater of
men. Certainly there can be no better summary of the savage than this,
which as we have seen, unfits him for the duel. He is the man who cannot
love--no, nor even hate--his neighbour as himself.
But this quality in Prussia does have one effect which has reference to the
same question of the lower civilisations. It disposes once and for all at
least of the civilising mission of Germany. Evidently the Germans are the
last people in the world to be trusted with the task. They are as
shortsighted morally as physically. What is their sophism of "necessity"
but an inability to imagine to-morrow morning? What is their
non-reciprocity but an inability to imagine, not a god or devil,
but merely another man? Are these to judge mankind? Men of two tribes
in Africa not only know that they are all men, but can understand
that they are all black men. In this they are quite seriously in
advance of the intellectual Prussian; who cannot be got to see
that we are all white men. The ordinary eye is unable to perceive
in the North-East Teuton anything that marks him out especially
from the more colourless classes of the rest of Aryan mankind. He is simply
a white man, with a tendency to the grey or the drab. Yet he will explain,
in serious official documents, that the difference between him and us is a
difference between "the master-race and the inferior-race." The collapse of
German philosophy always occurs at the beginning rather than the end of an
argument; and the difficulty here is that there is no way of testing which
is a master-race except by asking which is your own race. If you cannot
find out (as is usually the case) you fall back on the absurd occupation of
writing history about pre-historic times. But I suggest quite seriously
that if the Germans can give their philosophy to the Hottentots, there is
no reason why they should not give their sense of superiority to the
Hottentots. If they can see such fine shades between the Goth and the
Gaul, there is no reason why similar shades should not lift the savage
above other savages; why any Ojibway should not discover that he is one
tint redder than the Dacotahs; or any nigger in the Cameroons say he is not
so black as he is painted. For this principle of a quite unproved racial
supremacy is the last and worst of the refusals of reciprocity. The
Prussian calls all men to admire the beauty of his large blue eyes. If they
do, it is because they have inferior eyes: if they don't, it is because
they have no eyes.
Wherever the most miserable remnant of our race, astray and dried up in
deserts, or buried forever under the fall of bad civilisations, has some
feeble memory that men are men, that bargains are bargains, that there are
two sides to a question, or even that it takes two to make a quarrel--that
remnant has the right to resist the New Culture, to the knife and club and
the splintered stone. For the Prussian begins all his culture by that act
which is the destruction of all creative thought and constructive action.
He breaks that mirror in the mind, in which a man can see the face of his
friend or foe.
CHESTERTON-THE APPETITE OF TYRANY