CHESTERTON-THE APPETITE OF TYRANY - --SWINBURNE.
* * * * *
My Dear ------
The facts before all Europeans to-day are so fundamental that I still find
it easier to talk about them to you as to an old friend, rather than put it
in the shape of a pamphlet. In my last letter I pointed out two facts
which are pivots. The first is that, to any really cultured person, Prussia
is second-rate. The second is that to almost any Prussian, Prussia is
really first-rate; and is prepared, quite literally, to police the rest of
the world.
For the first matter, the comparative inferiority of German culture cannot
be doubted by people like you. One of the German papers pathetically said
that, though the mangling of Malines and Rheims was very sad, it was a
comfort to think that yet nobler works of art would spring up wherever the
German culture had passed in triumph. From the point of view of humour, it
is really rather sad that they never will. The German Emperor's idea of a
Gothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers' idea of a
wooden leg. But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended to
set up such beautiful buildings as they could. Having been blasphemous
enough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough to
replace them. Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not wholly
collapsed as it has, I doubt whether the Prussians would have destroyed
everything. I doubt whether they would even have destroyed the Venus de
Milo. More probably they would have put a pair of arms on it, designed by
some rising German artist--the Emperor or somebody. And the two arms thus
added would look at once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. The
destroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Tower
of Giotto. But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completing
it. And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be! What an
extinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle! Have
you read some of the German explanations of Hamlet? Did I tell you that
Leonardo's hair must have been German hair, because so many of his
contemporaries said it was beautiful? This is what I call being
second-rate. All the German excitement about the colonies of England is
only a half understanding of what was once heroic and is now largely
caddish. The German Emperor's naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as
certainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a bad copy of Voltaire.
But the second point was even more important; that weak as the thing is
mentally it is strong materially; and will impose itself materially if we
permit it. The Prussians have failed in everything else; but they have not
failed in getting their subject thousands to do as they are told. They
cannot put up black and white towers in Florence; but they can really put
up black and white posts in Alsace. They have failed in diplomacy. I
suppose it might be called a failure in diplomacy to come into the fight
with two enemies extra and one ally the less. If the Germans, instead of
sending spies to study the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider the
Belgian soul, they would have been saved hard work for a week or two. They
have failed in controversy. I suppose it might be called a failure in
controversy to say that England may be keeping her word for some wicked
purpose; while Germany may be breaking her word for some noble purpose. And
that is practically all that the Germans can manage to say. They say that
we are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical power; and this wild spirit
whirled us into the mad course of respecting a treaty we had signed. They
can find in us no treason except that we keep our treaties: failing to do
this I call failing in controversy. They have failed in popular persuasion.
They have had a very good opportunity. The British Empire does contain many
people who have been badly treated in various ways: the Irish, the Boers;
nay, the Americans themselves, whose national existence began with being
badly treated. With these the Prussians have done comparatively little; and
with Europeans of your sort nothing. They have never once really
sympathised with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzerland; the feeling of a
Norwegian for Norway; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. Even when
nations are neutral, Prussia can hardly bear them to be patriotic. Even
when they are courting every one else they can praise no one but
themselves. They fail in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail even in
demagogy. They have stupid plots, stupid explanations, and even stupid
apologies. But there is one thing they really do not fail in. They do not
fail in finding people stupid enough to carry them out.
Now, it is this question I would ask you to consider; you, as a good middle
type of the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an artist but a soldier. The
danger to the whole civilisation of which Rome was the fountain lies in
this. That the more this strange Pruss people fail in all the other things,
the more they will fall back on this mere fact of a brutal obedience. They
will give orders; they have nothing else to give. I say that this is the
question for you; I do not say, I do not dream of saying, that the answer
is for me. It is for you to weigh the chance that their very failures in
the arts of peace will drive them back upon the arts of war. They could
not, and they did not, dupe your people in diplomacy. They did the most
undiplomatic thing that can be done; they concealed a breach of partnership
without even concealing the concealment. They instigated the intrigue in
Austria in such a way that Italy could honestly claim all the freedom of
past ignorance, combined with all the disillusionment of present knowledge.
They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had to admit your grievance, at
the very moment when they claimed your aid. The English are stupider and
less sensitive than you are; but even the English found the German
Chancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but simply insulting; I swear I
would be a better diplomatist myself. In the same way, there is no danger
of people like you being corrupted in controversy. There is no fear that
the professors who pullulate all over the Baltic Plain will overcome the
Latins in logic. Some of them even claim to be super-logical; and say they
are too big for syllogisms; generally having found even one syllogism too
big for them. If they complain either of your abstention from their cause
or your adhesion to any other, you have an unanswerable answer. You will
say, as you did say, that you did not break the Triple Alliance, even for
the sake of peace. It was they who broke it for the sake of war. You,
obviously, had as much right to be consulted about Servia as Austria had;
and on the mere chess-board of argument it is mate in one move. Nor are
they in the least fitted to make an appeal to the popular sentiment of your
people. The English, I dare say, and the French, have talked an amazing
amount of nonsense about you; but they understand a little better. They do
not write exactly like this, which is from the most public and accepted
Prussian political philosopher (Chamberlain). "Who can live in Italy
to-day and mix with its amiable and highly gifted inhabitants without
feeling with pain that here a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost,
because it lacks the inner driving power," etc., which has brought Von
Kluck so triumphantly through Paris. Even a half-educated Englishman, who
has heard of no Italian poet except Dante, knows that he was something more
than amiable. Even a positively illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no
Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that it was not in "inner driving
force" that the artilleryman in question was deficient. "Who can live in
Italy to-day?" Evidently the Prussian philosopher can't. His impressions
are taken from Italian operas; not from Italian streets; certainly not from
Italian fields. As a matter of fact such images of Italy as burn in the
memories of most open-minded Northerners who have been there, are of
exactly the other kind. I for one should be inclined to say, "Who can live
in Italy to-day without feeling that a woman feeding children, or a man
chopping wood, may almost touch him with fear with the fulness of their
humanity: so that he can almost smell blood, as one smells burning?"
Italians often look lazy; that is, they look as if they would not move; but
not as if they could not move, as many Germans do. But even though this
formula fitted the Italians, it seems scarcely calculated to please them.
For the Prussians, then, with the failure of their diplomacy, the failure
of their philosophy, we may also place the failure of their appeals to a
foreign people. The Prussian writer may continue his attempts to soothe
and charm you by telling you that you are irredeemably lost, and that all
great Italians must have been something else. But the method seems to me
ill adapted to popular propaganda; and I cannot but say that on this third
point of persuasion, the German attempt is not striking.
Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefully
you will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:
and put an end to her military and material power to do things. If we all
have to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If we
find allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it must
be done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done,
other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the
heavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and
laughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could be
more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in
Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling,"
tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and
then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their
native tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of
Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better
not, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer can beat
little boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away
the stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position
of Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit to
be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody,
including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not,
should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an
officer can sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it
until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that
makes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a
half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black
and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had
yellow hair, the mere doing of it which for some of us would be the most
unlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing. They do not hear the
laughter of the ages. If they had the power to treat the English or Italian
Premier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, they
are quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality: and
scattering his brains before they had collected their own. They do not feel
atmospheres. They are all a little deaf; as they are all a little
short-sighted. They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiences
as those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises. And in one
sense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probably
would keep. If they have promised to respect a free country, or an old
friend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population,
they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome. They will ask some
professor on what principle they are discarding it. But if they have
promised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot into
somebody's beer, or bring home somebody's ears in their pocket for the
pleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sort
of a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, as
distinct from the making of it. And, in consideration of such cases, I
cannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussian
will never keep his promise.
Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of actuality and fulfilment that
makes it urgent that Europe should put forth her whole energy to drag down
these antique demoniacs; these idiots filled with force as by fiends. They
will do things, as a maniac will, until he cannot do them. To me it
seemed that some things could not be said and done. I thought a man would
have been ashamed to bribe a new enemy like England to betray an old enemy
like France. I thought a man would have been ashamed to punish the pure
self-defence of folk so offenceless as the Belgians. These hopes must go
from us, my friend. There is only one thing of which the Prussian would be
ashamed; and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall taste before the end.
* * * * *
My Dear ------
The Prussianised German, of whatever blend of races he may be, has one
quality which may perhaps be racially simple; but which is, at any rate,
very plain. Chamberlain, the German philosopher or historian (I know not
which to call him or how to call him either) remarks somewhere that
purebred races possess fidelity; he instances the negro and the dog--and, I
suppose, the German. Anyhow, it is true that there is a recognisable and
real thing which might be called fidelity (or perhaps monotony) which
exists in Germans in about the same style as in dogs and niggers. The North
Teuton really has in this respect the simplicities of the savage and the
lower animals; that he has no reactions. He does not laugh at himself. He
does not want to kick himself. He does not, like most of us, repent--or
occasionally even repent of repenting. He does not read his own works and
find them much worse or much better than he had expected. He does not feel
a faint irrational sense of debauch, after even divine pleasures of this
life. Watch him at a German restaurant, and you will satisfy yourself that
he does not. In short, both in the most scientific and in the most casual
sense of the word, he does not know what it is to have a temper. He does
not bend and fly back like steel; he sticks out, like wood. In this he
differs from any nation I have known, from your nation and mine, from the
French, the Spanish, the Scotch, the Welsh and the Irish. Bad luck never
braces him as it does us. Good luck never frightens him as it does us. It
can be seen in what the French call Chauvinism and we call Jingoism. For us
it is fireworks; for him it is daylight. On Mafeking Night, celebrating a
small but picturesque success against the Boers, nearly everybody in London
came out waving little flags. Nearly everybody in London is now heartily
ashamed of it. But it would never occur to the Prussians not to ride their
high horses with the freshest insolence for the far-off victory of Sedan;
though on that very anniversary the star of their fate had turned scornful
in the sky, and Von Kluck was in retreat from Paris. Above all, the
Prussian does not feel annoyed, as I do, when foreigners praise his country
for all the wrong reasons. The Prussian will allow you to praise him for
any reasons, for any length of time, for any eternity of folly; he is there
to be praised. Probably he is proud of this; probably he thinks he has a
good digestion, because the poison of praise does not make him sick. He
thinks the absence of such doubt, or self-knowledge, makes for composure,
grandeur, a colossal calm, a superior race--in short, the whole claim of
the Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution.
But as I have noticed a calm unity even more complete, not only in dogs and
negroes, but in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, mud and bits of
stone, I am a sceptic about this test for the marshalling in rank of all
the children of God. Now I point this out to you here for a very practical
reason. The Prussian will never understand revolutions--which are
generally reactions. He regards them, not only with dislike, but with a
mysterious kind of pity. Throughout his confused popular histories, there
runs a strange suggestion that civic populations have failed hitherto, and
failed because they were always fighting. The population of Berlin does not
fight, or can't; and therefore Berlin will succeed where Greece and Rome
have failed. Hitherto it is plain enough that Berlin has succeeded in
nothing except in bad copies of Greece and Rome; and Prussians would be
wiser to discuss the details of the Greek and Roman past, which we can
follow, rather than the details of their own future, about which we are
naturally not so well informed. Well, every dome they build, every pillar
they put upright, every pedestal for epitaph or panel for decoration, every
type of church, Catholic or Protestant, every kind of street, large or
small, they have copied from the old Pagan or Catholic cities; and those
cities, when they made those things, were boiling with revolutions. I
remember a German professor saying to me, "I should have no scruple about
extinguishing such republics as Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua; they
are perpetually rioting for one thing or another." I said I supposed he
would have had no scruple in extinguishing Athens, Rome, Florence and
Paris; for they were always rioting for one thing or another. His reply
indicated, I thought, that he felt about Caesar or Rienzi very much as the
Scotch Presbyterian Minister felt about Christ, when he was reminded of the
corn-plucking on the Sabbath, and said, "Weel, I dinna think the better of
him." In other words he was quite positive, like all his countrymen, that
he could impose a sort of Pax Germanica, which would satisfy all the needs
of order and of freedom forever; leaving no need for revolutions or
reactions. I am myself of a different opinion. When I was a child, when the
toy-trade of Germany had begun to flood this country, there was a priggish
British couplet, engraven on the minds of governesses, which ran--
What the German children delight to make
The English children delight to break.
I can answer for the delight of the English children; a just and godlike
delight. I am not so sure about the delight of the German children, when
they were caught in the infernal wheels of the modern civilisation of
factories. But, for the present, I am only concerned to say that I do not
accept this line of historical division. I do not think history supports
the view that those who could break things could not make them.
This is the least intrusive approach by which I can touch on a topic that
must of necessity be a delicate one; yet which may well be a difficulty
among Latins like yourself. Against this preposterous Prussian upstart we
have not only to protect our unity; we have even to protect our quarrels.
And the deepest of the reactions or revolts of which I have spoken is the
quarrel which (very tragically as I think) has for some hundred years
cloven the Christian from the Liberal ideal. It would ill become me, in
whose country there is neither such clear doctrine nor such combative
democracy, to suppose it can be easy for any of you to close up such sacred
wounds. There must still be Catholics who feel they can never forgive a
Jacobin. There must still be old Republicans who feel that they could never
endure a priest. And yet there is something, the mere sight of which should
lock them both in an instant alliance. They have only to look northward and
hold the third thing, which thinks itself superior to either: the enormous
turnip-face of ce type la, as the French say, who conceives that he can
make them both like himself and yet remain superior to both.
I implore you to keep out of the hands of this Fool the quarrel of the
great saints and of the great blasphemers. He will do to religion what he
will do to art; mix up all the colours on your palette into the colour of
mud: and then say that only the purified eyes of Teutons can see that it is
pure white. The other day the Director of Museums in Berlin was said to be
setting about the creation of a new kind of Art: German Art. Philosophers
and men of science were at the same time directed to meet round the table
and found a new Religion: German Religion. How can such people appreciate
art; how can they appreciate religion--nay, how can they appreciate
irreligion? How does one invent a message? How does one create a Creator?
Is it not the plain meaning of the Gospel that it is good news? And is it
not the plain meaning of good news that it must come from outside oneself?
Otherwise I could make myself happy this moment, by inventing an enormous
victory in Flanders. And I suppose (now I come to think of it) that the
Germans do.
By the fulness of your faith and even the fulness of your despair, you that
remember Rome, have earned a right to prevent all our quarrels being
quenched in such cold water from the north. But it is not too much to say
that neither religion at its worst nor republicanism at its worst ever
offered the coarse insult to all mankind that is offered by this new and
nakedly universal monarchy.
There has always been something common to civilised men, whether they
called it being merely a citizen; or being merely a sinner. There has
always been something which your ancestors called Verecundia; which is at
once humility and dignity. Whatever our faults, we do not do exactly as
the Prussians do. We do not bellow day and night to draw attention to our
own stern silence. We do not praise ourselves solely because nobody else
will praise us. I, for one, say at the end of these letters, as I said at
the beginning; that in these international matters I have often differed
from my countrymen; I have often differed from myself. I shall not claim
the completeness of this silly creature we discuss. I shall not answer his
boasts with boasts; but with blows.
My front-door is beaten in and broken down suddenly. I see nothing outside,
except a sort of smiling, straw-haired commercial traveller with a notebook
open, who says, "Excuse me, I am a faultless being, I have persuaded
Poland; I can count on my respectful Allies in Alsace. I am simply loved in
Lorraine. Quae reggio in terris ... What place is there on earth where
the name of Prussia is not the signal for hopeful prayers and joyful
dances? I am that German who has civilised Belgium; and delicately trimmed
the frontiers of Denmark. And I may tell you, with the fulness of
conviction, that I have never failed, and shall never fail in anything.
Permit me, therefore, to bless your house by the passage of my beautiful
boots; that I may burgle the house next door."
And then something European that is prouder than pride will rise up in me;
and I shall answer:--
"I am that Englishman who has tortured Ireland, who has been tortured by
South Africa; who knows all his mistakes, who is heavy with all his sins.
And he tells you, Faultless Being, with a truth as deep as his own guilt,
and as deathless as his own remembrance, that you shall not pass this way."
CHESTERTON-THE APPETITE OF TYRANY - --SWINBURNE.