CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS
I feel an almost savage envy on hearing that London has been flooded in
my absence, while I am in the mere country. My own Battersea has been, I
understand, particularly favoured as a meeting of the waters. Battersea
was already, as I need hardly say, the most beautiful of human
localities. Now that it has the additional splendour of great sheets of
water, there must be something quite incomparable in the landscape (or
waterscape) of my own romantic town. Battersea must be a vision of
Venice. The boat that brought the meat from the butcher's must have shot
along those lanes of rippling silver with the strange smoothness of the
gondola. The greengrocer who brought cabbages to the corner of the
Latchmere Road must have leant upon the oar with the unearthly grace of
the gondolier. There is nothing so perfectly poetical as an island; and
when a district is flooded it becomes an archipelago.
Some consider such romantic views of flood or fire slightly lacking in
reality. But really this romantic view of such inconveniences is quite
as practical as the other. The true optimist who sees in such things an
opportunity for enjoyment is quite as logical and much more sensible
than the ordinary "Indignant Ratepayer" who sees in them an opportunity
for grumbling. Real pain, as in the case of being burnt at Smithfield or
having a toothache, is a positive thing; it can be supported, but
scarcely enjoyed. But, after all, our toothaches are the exception, and
as for being burnt at Smithfield, it only happens to us at the very
longest intervals. And most of the inconveniences that make men swear or
women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences--things
altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people
complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a
train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a
railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a
railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of
poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on
the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the
wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king
had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament
of trains. I myself am of little boys' habit in this matter. They also
serve who only stand and wait for the two fifteen. Their meditations may
be full of rich and fruitful things. Many of the most purple hours of my
life have been passed at Clapham Junction, which is now, I suppose,
under water. I have been there in many moods so fixed and mystical that
the water might well have come up to my waist before I noticed it
particularly. But in the case of all such annoyances, as I have said,
everything depends upon the emotional point of view. You can safely
apply the test to almost every one of the things that are currently
talked of as the typical nuisance of daily life.
For instance, there is a current impression that it is unpleasant to
have to run after one's hat. Why should it be unpleasant to the
well-ordered and pious mind? Not merely because it is running, and
running exhausts one. The same people run much faster in games and
sports. The same people run much more eagerly after an uninteresting;
little leather ball than they will after a nice silk hat. There is an
idea that it is humiliating to run after one's hat; and when people say
it is humiliating they mean that it is comic. It certainly is comic; but
man is a very comic creature, and most of the things he does are
comic--eating, for instance. And the most comic things of all are
exactly the things that are most worth doing--such as making love. A man
running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a
wife.
Now a man could, if he felt rightly in the matter, run after his hat
with the manliest ardour and the most sacred joy. He might regard
himself as a jolly huntsman pursuing a wild animal, for certainly no
animal could be wilder. In fact, I am inclined to believe that
hat-hunting on windy days will be the sport of the upper classes in the
future. There will be a meet of ladies and gentlemen on some high ground
on a gusty morning. They will be told that the professional attendants
have started a hat in such-and-such a thicket, or whatever be the
technical term. Notice that this employment will in the fullest degree
combine sport with humanitarianism. The hunters would feel that they
were not inflicting pain. Nay, they would feel that they were inflicting
pleasure, rich, almost riotous pleasure, upon the people who were
looking on. When last I saw an old gentleman running after his hat in
Hyde Park, I told him that a heart so benevolent as his ought to be
filled with peace and thanks at the thought of how much unaffected
pleasure his every gesture and bodily attitude were at that moment
giving to the crowd.
The same principle can be applied to every other typical domestic worry.
A gentleman trying to get a fly out of the milk or a piece of cork out
of his glass of wine often imagines himself to be irritated. Let him
think for a moment of the patience of anglers sitting by dark pools, and
let his soul be immediately irradiated with gratification and repose.
Again, I have known some people of very modern views driven by their
distress to the use of theological terms to which they attached no
doctrinal significance, merely because a drawer was jammed tight and
they could not pull it out. A friend of mine was particularly afflicted
in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day in
consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out
to him that this sense of wrong was really subjective and relative; it
rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and
would come out easily. "But if," I said, "you picture to yourself that
you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle
will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are
tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a
fellow-creature out of an Alpine crevass. Imagine even that you are a
boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English."
Shortly after saying this I left him; but I have no doubt at all that my
words bore the best possible fruit. I have no doubt that every day of
his life he hangs on to the handle of that drawer with a flushed face
and eyes bright with battle, uttering encouraging shouts to himself, and
seeming to hear all round him the roar of an applauding ring.
So I do not think that it is altogether fanciful or incredible to
suppose that even the floods in London may be accepted and enjoyed
poetically. Nothing beyond inconvenience seems really to have been
caused by them; and inconvenience, as I have said, is only one aspect,
and that the most unimaginative and accidental aspect of a really
romantic situation. An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly
considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.
The water that girdled the houses and shops of London must, if anything,
have only increased their previous witchery and wonder. For as the Roman
Catholic priest in the story said: "Wine is good with everything except
water," and on a similar principle, water is good with everything except
wine.
Most of us will be canvassed soon, I suppose; some of us may even
canvass. Upon which side, of course, nothing will induce me to state,
beyond saying that by a remarkable coincidence it will in every case be
the only side in which a high-minded, public-spirited, and patriotic
citizen can take even a momentary interest. But the general question of
canvassing itself, being a non-party question, is one which we may be
permitted to approach. The rules for canvassers are fairly familiar to
any one who has ever canvassed. They are printed on the little card
which you carry about with you and lose. There is a statement, I think,
that you must not offer a voter food or drink. However hospitable you
may feel towards him in his own house, you must not carry his lunch
about with you. You must not produce a veal cutlet from your tail-coat
pocket. You must not conceal poached eggs about your person. You must
not, like a kind of conjurer, produce baked potatoes from your hat. In
short, the canvasser must not feed the voter in any way. Whether the
voter is allowed to feed the canvasser, whether the voter may give the
canvasser veal cutlets and baked potatoes, is a point of law on which I
have never been able to inform myself. When I found myself canvassing a
gentleman, I have sometimes felt tempted to ask him if there was any
rule against his giving me food and drink; but the matter seemed a
delicate one to approach. His attitude to me also sometimes suggested a
doubt as to whether he would, even if he could. But there are voters who
might find it worth while to discover if there is any law against
bribing a canvasser. They might bribe him to go away.
The second veto for canvassers which was printed on the little card said
that you must not persuade any one to personate a voter. I have no idea
what it means. To dress up as an average voter seems a little vague.
There is no well-recognised uniform, as far as I know, with civic
waistcoat and patriotic whiskers. The enterprise resolves itself into
one somewhat similar to the enterprise of a rich friend of mine who went
to a fancy-dress ball dressed up as a gentleman. Perhaps it means that
there is a practice of personating some individual voter. The canvasser
creeps to the house of his fellow-conspirator carrying a make-up in a
bag. He produces from it a pair of white moustaches and a single
eyeglass, which are sufficient to give the most common-place person a
startling resemblance to the Colonel at No. 80. Or he hurriedly affixes
to his friend that large nose and that bald head which are all that is
essential to an illusion of the presence of Professor Budger. I do not
undertake to unravel these knots. I can only say that when I was a
canvasser I was told by the little card, with every circumstance of
seriousness and authority, that I was not to persuade anybody to
personate a voter: and I can lay my hand upon my heart and affirm that I
never did.
The third injunction on the card was one which seemed to me, if
interpreted exactly and according to its words, to undermine the very
foundations of our politics. It told me that I must not "threaten a
voter with any consequence whatever." No doubt this was intended to
apply to threats of a personal and illegitimate character; as, for
instance, if a wealthy candidate were to threaten to raise all the
rents, or to put up a statue of himself. But as verbally and
grammatically expressed, it certainly would cover those general threats
of disaster to the whole community which are the main matter of
political discussion. When a canvasser says that if the opposition
candidate gets in the country will be ruined, he is threatening the
voters with certain consequences. When the Free Trader says that if
Tariffs are adopted the people in Brompton or Bayswater will crawl about
eating grass, he is threatening them with consequences. When the Tariff
Reformer says that if Free Trade exists for another year St. Paul's
Cathedral will be a ruin and Ludgate Hill as deserted as Stonehenge, he
is also threatening. And what is the good of being a Tariff Reformer if
you can't say that? What is the use of being a politician or a
Parliamentary candidate at all if one cannot tell the people that if the
other man gets in, England will be instantly invaded and enslaved, blood
be pouring down the Strand, and all the English ladies carried off into
harems. But these things are, after all, consequences, so to speak.
The majority of refined persons in our day may generally be heard
abusing the practice of canvassing. In the same way the majority of
refined persons (commonly the same refined persons) may be heard
abusing the practice of interviewing celebrities. It seems a very
singular thing to me that this refined world reserves all its
indignation for the comparatively open and innocent element in both
walks of life. There is really a vast amount of corruption and hypocrisy
in our election politics; about the most honest thing in the whole mess
is the canvassing. A man has not got a right to "nurse" a constituency
with aggressive charities, to buy it with great presents of parks and
libraries, to open vague vistas of future benevolence; all this, which
goes on unrebuked, is bribery and nothing else. But a man has got the
right to go to another free man and ask him with civility whether he
will vote for him. The information can be asked, granted, or refused
without any loss of dignity on either side, which is more than can be
said of a park. It is the same with the place of interviewing in
journalism. In a trade where there are labyrinths of insincerity,
interviewing is about the most simple and the most sincere thing there
is. The canvasser, when he wants to know a man's opinions, goes and asks
him. It may be a bore; but it is about as plain and straight a thing as
he could do. So the interviewer, when he wants to know a man's opinions,
goes and asks him. Again, it may be a bore; but again, it is about as
plain and straight as anything could be. But all the other real and
systematic cynicisms of our journalism pass without being vituperated
and even without being known--the financial motives of policy, the
misleading posters, the suppression of just letters of complaint. A
statement about a man may be infamously untrue, but it is read calmly.
But a statement by a man to an interviewer is felt as indefensibly
vulgar. That the paper should misrepresent him is nothing; that he
should represent himself is bad taste. The whole error in both cases
lies in the fact that the refined persons are attacking politics and
journalism on the ground of vulgarity. Of course, politics and
journalism are, as it happens, very vulgar. But their vulgarity is not
the worst thing about them. Things are so bad with both that by this
time their vulgarity is the best thing about them. Their vulgarity is at
least a noisy thing; and their great danger is that silence that always
comes before decay. The conversational persuasion at elections is
perfectly human and rational; it is the silent persuasions that are
utterly damnable.
If it is true that the Commons' House will not hold all the Commons, it
is a very good example of what we call the anomalies of the English
Constitution. It is also, I think, a very good example of how highly
undesirable those anomalies really are. Most Englishmen say that these
anomalies do not matter; they are not ashamed of being illogical; they
are proud of being illogical. Lord Macaulay (a very typical Englishman,
romantic, prejudiced, poetical), Lord Macaulay said that he would not
lift his hand to get rid of an anomaly that was not also a grievance.
Many other sturdy romantic Englishmen say the same. They boast of our
anomalies; they boast of our illogicality; they say it shows what a
practical people we are. They are utterly wrong. Lord Macaulay was in
this matter, as in a few others, utterly wrong. Anomalies do matter
very much, and do a great deal of harm; abstract illogicalities do
matter a great deal, and do a great deal of harm. And this for a reason
that any one at all acquainted with human nature can see for himself.
All injustice begins in the mind. And anomalies accustom the mind to the
idea of unreason and untruth. Suppose I had by some prehistoric law the
power of forcing every man in Battersea to nod his head three times
before he got out of bed. The practical politicians might say that this
power was a harmless anomaly; that it was not a grievance. It could do
my subjects no harm; it could do me no good. The people of Battersea,
they would say, might safely submit to it. But the people of Battersea
could not safely submit to it, for all that. If I had nodded their heads
for them for fifty years I could cut off their heads for them at the end
of it with immeasurably greater ease. For there would have permanently
sunk into every man's mind the notion that it was a natural thing for me
to have a fantastic and irrational power. They would have grown
accustomed to insanity.
For, in order that men should resist injustice, something more is
necessary than that they should think injustice unpleasant. They must
think injustice absurd; above all, they must think it startling. They
must retain the violence of a virgin astonishment. That is the
explanation of the singular fact which must have struck many people in
the relations of philosophy and reform. It is the fact (I mean) that
optimists are more practical reformers than pessimists. Superficially,
one would imagine that the railer would be the reformer; that the man
who thought that everything was wrong would be the man to put everything
right. In historical practice the thing is quite the other way;
curiously enough, it is the man who likes things as they are who really
makes them better. The optimist Dickens has achieved more reforms than
the pessimist Gissing. A man like Rousseau has far too rosy a theory of
human nature; but he produces a revolution. A man like David Hume thinks
that almost all things are depressing; but he is a Conservative, and
wishes to keep them as they are. A man like Godwin believes existence to
be kindly; but he is a rebel. A man like Carlyle believes existence to
be cruel; but he is a Tory. Everywhere the man who alters things begins
by liking things. And the real explanation of this success of the
optimistic reformer, of this failure of the pessimistic reformer, is,
after all, an explanation of sufficient simplicity. It is because the
optimist can look at wrong not only with indignation, but with a
startled indignation. When the pessimist looks at any infamy, it is to
him, after all, only a repetition of the infamy of existence. The Court
of Chancery is indefensible--like mankind. The Inquisition is
abominable--like the universe. But the optimist sees injustice as
something discordant and unexpected, and it stings him into action. The
pessimist can be enraged at wrong; but only the optimist can be
surprised at it.
And it is the same with the relations of an anomaly to the logical
mind. The pessimist resents evil (like Lord Macaulay) solely because it
is a grievance. The optimist resents it also, because it is an anomaly;
a contradiction to his conception of the course of things. And it is not
at all unimportant, but on the contrary most important, that this course
of things in politics and elsewhere should be lucid, explicable and
defensible. When people have got used to unreason they can no longer be
startled at injustice. When people have grown familiar with an anomaly,
they are prepared to that extent for a grievance; they may think the
grievance grievous, but they can no longer think it strange. Take, if
only as an excellent example, the very matter alluded to before; I mean
the seats, or rather the lack of seats, in the House of Commons. Perhaps
it is true that under the best conditions it would never happen that
every member turned up. Perhaps a complete attendance would never
actually be. But who can tell how much influence in keeping members away
may have been exerted by this calm assumption that they would stop away?
How can any man be expected to help to make a full attendance when he
knows that a full attendance is actually forbidden? How can the men who
make up the Chamber do their duty reasonably when the very men who built
the House have not done theirs reasonably? If the trumpet give an
uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for the battle? And what if
the remarks of the trumpet take this form, "I charge you as you love
your King and country to come to this Council. And I know you won't."
If a man must needs be conceited, it is certainly better that he should
be conceited about some merits or talents that he does not really
possess. For then his vanity remains more or less superficial; it
remains a mere mistake of fact, like that of a man who thinks he
inherits the royal blood or thinks he has an infallible system for Monte
Carlo. Because the merit is an unreal merit, it does not corrupt or
sophisticate his real merits. He is vain about the virtue he has not
got; but he may be humble about the virtues that he has got. His truly
honourable qualities remain in their primordial innocence; he cannot see
them and he cannot spoil them. If a man's mind is erroneously possessed
with the idea that he is a great violinist, that need not prevent his
being a gentleman and an honest man. But if once his mind is possessed
in any strong degree with the knowledge that he is a gentleman, he will
soon cease to be one.
But there is a third kind of satisfaction of which I have noticed one or
two examples lately--another kind of satisfaction which is neither a
pleasure in the virtues that we do possess nor a pleasure in the virtues
we do not possess. It is the pleasure which a man takes in the presence
or absence of certain things in himself without ever adequately asking
himself whether in his case they constitute virtues at all. A man will
plume himself because he is not bad in some particular way, when the
truth is that he is not good enough to be bad in that particular way.
Some priggish little clerk will say, "I have reason to congratulate
myself that I am a civilised person, and not so bloodthirsty as the Mad
Mullah." Somebody ought to say to him, "A really good man would be less
bloodthirsty than the Mullah. But you are less bloodthirsty, not because
you are more of a good man, but because you are a great deal less of a
man. You are not bloodthirsty, not because you would spare your enemy,
but because you would run away from him." Or again, some Puritan with a
sullen type of piety would say, "I have reason to congratulate myself
that I do not worship graven images like the old heathen Greeks." And
again somebody ought to say to him, "The best religion may not worship
graven images, because it may see beyond them. But if you do not worship
graven images, it is only because you are mentally and morally quite
incapable of graving them. True religion, perhaps, is above idolatry.
But you are below idolatry. You are not holy enough yet to worship a
lump of stone."
Mr. F. C. Gould, the brilliant and felicitous caricaturist, recently
delivered a most interesting speech upon the nature and atmosphere of
our modern English caricature. I think there is really very little to
congratulate oneself about in the condition of English caricature. There
are few causes for pride; probably the greatest cause for pride is Mr.
F. C. Gould. But Mr. F. C. Gould, forbidden by modesty to adduce this
excellent ground for optimism, fell back upon saying a thing which is
said by numbers of other people, but has not perhaps been said lately
with the full authority of an eminent cartoonist. He said that he
thought "that they might congratulate themselves that the style of
caricature which found acceptation nowadays was very different from the
lampoon of the old days." Continuing, he said, according to the
newspaper report, "On looking back to the political lampoons of
Rowlandson's and Gilray's time they would find them coarse and brutal.
In some countries abroad still, 'even in America,' the method of
political caricature was of the bludgeon kind. The fact was we had
passed the bludgeon stage. If they were brutal in attacking a man, even
for political reasons, they roused sympathy for the man who was
attacked. What they had to do was to rub in the point they wanted to
emphasise as gently as they could." (Laughter and applause.)
Anybody reading these words, and anybody who heard them, will certainly
feel that there is in them a great deal of truth, as well as a great
deal of geniality. But along with that truth and with that geniality
there is a streak of that erroneous type of optimism which is founded on
the fallacy of which I have spoken above. Before we congratulate
ourselves upon the absence of certain faults from our nation or society,
we ought to ask ourselves why it is that these faults are absent. Are we
without the fault because we have the opposite virtue? Or are we without
the fault because we have the opposite fault? It is a good thing
assuredly, to be innocent of any excess; but let us be sure that we are
not innocent of excess merely by being guilty of defect. Is it really
true that our English political satire is so moderate because it is so
magnanimous, so forgiving, so saintly? Is it penetrated through and
through with a mystical charity, with a psychological tenderness? Do we
spare the feelings of the Cabinet Minister because we pierce through all
his apparent crimes and follies down to the dark virtues of which his
own soul is unaware? Do we temper the wind to the Leader of the
Opposition because in our all-embracing heart we pity and cherish the
struggling spirit of the Leader of the Opposition? Briefly, have we left
off being brutal because we are too grand and generous to be brutal? Is
it really true that we are better than brutality? Is it really true
that we have passed the bludgeon stage?
I fear that there is, to say the least of it, another side to the
matter. Is it not only too probable that the mildness of our political
satire, when compared with the political satire of our fathers, arises
simply from the profound unreality of our current politics? Rowlandson
and Gilray did not fight merely because they were naturally pothouse
pugilists; they fought because they had something to fight about. It is
easy enough to be refined about things that do not matter; but men
kicked and plunged a little in that portentous wrestle in which swung to
and fro, alike dizzy with danger, the independence of England, the
independence of Ireland, the independence of France. If we wish for a
proof of this fact that the lack of refinement did not come from mere
brutality, the proof is easy. The proof is that in that struggle no
personalities were more brutal than the really refined personalities.
None were more violent and intolerant than those who were by nature
polished and sensitive. Nelson, for instance, had the nerves and good
manners of a woman: nobody in his senses, I suppose, would call Nelson
"brutal." But when he was touched upon the national matter, there sprang
out of him a spout of oaths, and he could only tell men to "Kill! kill!
kill the d----d Frenchmen." It would be as easy to take examples on the
other side. Camille Desmoulins was a man of much the same type, not only
elegant and sweet in temper, but almost tremulously tender and
humanitarian. But he was ready, he said, "to embrace Liberty upon a pile
of corpses." In Ireland there were even more instances. Robert Emmet was
only one famous example of a whole family of men at once sensitive and
savage. I think that Mr. F.C. Gould is altogether wrong in talking of
this political ferocity as if it were some sort of survival from ruder
conditions, like a flint axe or a hairy man. Cruelty is, perhaps, the
worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of
cruelty. But there is nothing in the least barbaric or ignorant about
intellectual cruelty. The great Renaissance artists who mixed colours
exquisitely mixed poisons equally exquisitely; the great Renaissance
princes who designed instruments of music also designed instruments of
torture. Barbarity, malignity, the desire to hurt men, are the evil
things generated in atmospheres of intense reality when great nations or
great causes are at war. We may, perhaps, be glad that we have not got
them: but it is somewhat dangerous to be proud that we have not got
them. Perhaps we are hardly great enough to have them. Perhaps some
great virtues have to be generated, as in men like Nelson or Emmet,
before we can have these vices at all, even as temptations. I, for one,
believe that if our caricaturists do not hate their enemies, it is not
because they are too big to hate them, but because their enemies are not
big enough to hate. I do not think we have passed the bludgeon stage. I
believe we have not come to the bludgeon stage. We must be better,
braver, and purer men than we are before we come to the bludgeon stage.
Let us then, by all means, be proud of the virtues that we have not got;
but let us not be too arrogant about the virtues that we cannot help
having. It may be that a man living on a desert island has a right to
congratulate himself upon the fact that he can meditate at his ease. But
he must not congratulate himself on the fact that he is on a desert
island, and at the same time congratulate himself on the self-restraint
he shows in not going to a ball every night. Similarly our England may
have a right to congratulate itself upon the fact that her politics are
very quiet, amicable, and humdrum. But she must not congratulate herself
upon that fact and also congratulate herself upon the self-restraint she
shows in not tearing herself and her citizens into rags. Between two
English Privy Councillors polite language is a mark of civilisation, but
really not a mark of magnanimity.
Allied to this question is the kindred question on which we so often
hear an innocent British boast--the fact that our statesmen are
privately on very friendly relations, although in Parliament they sit on
opposite sides of the House. Here, again, it is as well to have no
illusions. Our statesmen are not monsters of mystical generosity or
insane logic, who are really able to hate a man from three to twelve and
to love him from twelve to three. If our social relations are more
peaceful than those of France or America or the England of a hundred
years ago, it is simply because our politics are more peaceful; not
improbably because our politics are more fictitious. If our statesmen
agree more in private, it is for the very simple reason that they agree
more in public. And the reason they agree so much in both cases is
really that they belong to one social class; and therefore the dining
life is the real life. Tory and Liberal statesmen like each other, but
it is not because they are both expansive; it is because they are both
exclusive.
* * * * *
I notice that some papers, especially papers that call themselves
patriotic, have fallen into quite a panic over the fact that we have
been twice beaten in the world of sport, that a Frenchman has beaten us
at golf, and that Belgians have beaten us at rowing. I suppose that the
incidents are important to any people who ever believed in the
self-satisfied English legend on this subject. I suppose that there are
men who vaguely believe that we could never be beaten by a Frenchman,
despite the fact that we have often been beaten by Frenchmen, and once
by a Frenchwoman. In the old pictures in Punch you will find a
recurring piece of satire. The English caricaturists always assumed that
a Frenchman could not ride to hounds or enjoy English hunting. It did
not seem to occur to them that all the people who founded English
hunting were Frenchmen. All the Kings and nobles who originally rode to
hounds spoke French. Large numbers of those Englishmen who still ride to
hounds have French names. I suppose that the thing is important to any
one who is ignorant of such evident matters as these. I suppose that if
a man has ever believed that we English have some sacred and separate
right to be athletic, such reverses do appear quite enormous and
shocking. They feel as if, while the proper sun was rising in the east,
some other and unexpected sun had begun to rise in the north-north-west
by north. For the benefit, the moral and intellectual benefit of such
people, it may be worth while to point out that the Anglo-Saxon has in
these cases been defeated precisely by those competitors whom he has
always regarded as being out of the running; by Latins, and by Latins of
the most easy and unstrenuous type; not only by Frenchman, but by
Belgians. All this, I say, is worth telling to any intelligent person
who believes in the haughty theory of Anglo-Saxon superiority. But,
then, no intelligent person does believe in the haughty theory of
Anglo-Saxon superiority. No quite genuine Englishman ever did believe in
it. And the genuine Englishman these defeats will in no respect dismay.
The genuine English patriot will know that the strength of England has
never depended upon any of these things; that the glory of England has
never had anything to do with them, except in the opinion of a large
section of the rich and a loose section of the poor which copies the
idleness of the rich. These people will, of course, think too much of
our failure, just as they thought too much of our success. The typical
Jingoes who have admired their countrymen too much for being conquerors
will, doubtless, despise their countrymen too much for being conquered.
But the Englishman with any feeling for England will know that athletic
failures do not prove that England is weak, any more than athletic
successes proved that England was strong. The truth is that athletics,
like all other things, especially modern, are insanely individualistic.
The Englishmen who win sporting prizes are exceptional among Englishmen,
for the simple reason that they are exceptional even among men. English
athletes represent England just about as much as Mr. Barnum's freaks
represent America. There are so few of such people in the whole world
that it is almost a toss-up whether they are found in this or that
country.
If any one wants a simple proof of this, it is easy to find. When the
great English athletes are not exceptional Englishmen they are generally
not Englishmen at all. Nay, they are often representatives of races of
which the average tone is specially incompatible with athletics. For
instance, the English are supposed to rule the natives of India in
virtue of their superior hardiness, superior activity, superior health
of body and mind. The Hindus are supposed to be our subjects because
they are less fond of action, less fond of openness and the open air. In
a word, less fond of cricket. And, substantially, this is probably true,
that the Indians are less fond of cricket. All the same, if you ask
among Englishmen for the very best cricket-player, you will find that he
is an Indian. Or, to take another case: it is, broadly speaking, true
that the Jews are, as a race, pacific, intellectual, indifferent to war,
like the Indians, or, perhaps, contemptuous of war, like the Chinese:
nevertheless, of the very good prize-fighters, one or two have been
Jews.
This is one of the strongest instances of the particular kind of evil
that arises from our English form of the worship of athletics. It
concentrates too much upon the success of individuals. It began, quite
naturally and rightly, with wanting England to win. The second stage was
that it wanted some Englishmen to win. The third stage was (in the
ecstasy and agony of some special competition) that it wanted one
particular Englishman to win. And the fourth stage was that when he had
won, it discovered that he was not even an Englishman.
This is one of the points, I think, on which something might really be
said for Lord Roberts and his rather vague ideas which vary between
rifle clubs and conscription. Whatever may be the advantages or
disadvantages otherwise of the idea, it is at least an idea of procuring
equality and a sort of average in the athletic capacity of the people;
it might conceivably act as a corrective to our mere tendency to see
ourselves in certain exceptional athletes. As it is, there are millions
of Englishmen who really think that they are a muscular race because
C.B. Fry is an Englishman. And there are many of them who think vaguely
that athletics must belong to England because Ranjitsinhji is an Indian.
But the real historic strength of England, physical and moral, has never
had anything to do with this athletic specialism; it has been rather
hindered by it. Somebody said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on
Eton playing-fields. It was a particularly unfortunate remark, for the
English contribution to the victory of Waterloo depended very much more
than is common in victories upon the steadiness of the rank and file in
an almost desperate situation. The Battle of Waterloo was won by the
stubbornness of the common soldier--that is to say, it was won by the
man who had never been to Eton. It was absurd to say that Waterloo was
won on Eton cricket-fields. But it might have been fairly said that
Waterloo was won on the village green, where clumsy boys played a very
clumsy cricket. In a word, it was the average of the nation that was
strong, and athletic glories do not indicate much about the average of a
nation. Waterloo was not won by good cricket-players. But Waterloo was
won by bad cricket-players, by a mass of men who had some minimum of
athletic instincts and habits.
It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly. It shows
that all the people are doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation
when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few
experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely
looking on. Suppose that whenever we heard of walking in England it
always meant walking forty-five miles a day without fatigue. We should
be perfectly certain that only a few men were walking at all, and that
all the other British subjects were being wheeled about in Bath-chairs.
But if when we hear of walking it means slow walking, painful walking,
and frequent fatigue, then we know that the mass of the nation still is
walking. We know that England is still literally on its feet.
The difficulty is therefore that the actual raising of the standard of
athletics has probably been bad for national athleticism. Instead of the
tournament being a healthy melee into which any ordinary man would
rush and take his chance, it has become a fenced and guarded
tilting-yard for the collision of particular champions against whom no
ordinary man would pit himself or even be permitted to pit himself. If
Waterloo was won on Eton cricket-fields it was because Eton cricket was
probably much more careless then than it is now. As long as the game was
a game, everybody wanted to join in it. When it becomes an art, every
one wants to look at it. When it was frivolous it may have won Waterloo:
when it was serious and efficient it lost Magersfontein.
In the Waterloo period there was a general rough-and-tumble athleticism
among average Englishmen. It cannot be re-created by cricket, or by
conscription, or by any artificial means. It was a thing of the soul. It
came out of laughter, religion, and the spirit of the place. But it was
like the modern French duel in this--that it might happen to anybody. If
I were a French journalist it might really happen that Monsieur
Clemenceau might challenge me to meet him with pistols. But I do not
think that it is at all likely that Mr. C. B. Fry will ever challenge me
to meet him with cricket-bats.
CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - THE FALLACY OF SUCCESS