CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND
A famous and epigrammatic author said that life copied literature; it
seems clear that life really caricatures it. I suggested recently that
the Germans submitted to, and even admired, a solemn and theatrical
assertion of authority. A few hours after I had sent up my "copy," I saw
the first announcement of the affair of the comic Captain at Koepenick.
The most absurd part of this absurd fraud (at least, to English eyes) is
one which, oddly enough, has received comparatively little comment. I
mean the point at which the Mayor asked for a warrant, and the Captain
pointed to the bayonets of his soldiery and said. "These are my
authority." One would have thought any one would have known that no
soldier would talk like that. The dupes were blamed for not knowing that
the man wore the wrong cap or the wrong sash, or had his sword buckled
on the wrong way; but these are technicalities which they might surely
be excused for not knowing. I certainly should not know if a soldier's
sash were on inside out or his cap on behind before. But I should know
uncommonly well that genuine professional soldiers do not talk like
Adelphi villains and utter theatrical epigrams in praise of abstract
violence.
We can see this more clearly, perhaps, if we suppose it to be the case
of any other dignified and clearly distinguishable profession. Suppose a
Bishop called upon me. My great modesty and my rather distant reverence
for the higher clergy might lead me certainly to a strong suspicion that
any Bishop who called on me was a bogus Bishop. But if I wished to test
his genuineness I should not dream of attempting to do so by examining
the shape of his apron or the way his gaiters were done up. I have not
the remotest idea of the way his gaiters ought to be done up. A very
vague approximation to an apron would probably take me in; and if he
behaved like an approximately Christian gentleman he would be safe
enough from my detection. But suppose the Bishop, the moment he entered
the room, fell on his knees on the mat, clasped his hands, and poured
out a flood of passionate and somewhat hysterical extempore prayer, I
should say at once and without the smallest hesitation, "Whatever else
this man is, he is not an elderly and wealthy cleric of the Church of
England. They don't do such things." Or suppose a man came to me
pretending to be a qualified doctor, and flourished a stethoscope, or
what he said was a stethoscope. I am glad to say that I have not even
the remotest notion of what a stethoscope looks like; so that if he
flourished a musical-box or a coffee-mill it would be all one to me. But
I do think that I am not exaggerating my own sagacity if I say that I
should begin to suspect the doctor if on entering my room he flung his
legs and arms about, crying wildly, "Health! Health! priceless gift of
Nature! I possess it! I overflow with it! I yearn to impart it! Oh, the
sacred rapture of imparting health!" In that case I should suspect him
of being rather in a position to receive than to offer medical
superintendence.
Now, it is no exaggeration at all to say that any one who has ever known
any soldiers (I can only answer for English and Irish and Scotch
soldiers) would find it just as easy to believe that a real Bishop would
grovel on the carpet in a religious ecstasy, or that a real doctor would
dance about the drawing-room to show the invigorating effects of his own
medicine, as to believe that a soldier, when asked for his authority,
would point to a lot of shining weapons and declare symbolically that
might was right. Of course, a real soldier would go rather red in the
face and huskily repeat the proper formula, whatever it was, as that he
came in the King's name.
Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are
never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught
severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is
obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is
held to be right) is in the one man who commands them. They learn to
obey symbols, arbitrary things, stripes on an arm, buttons on a coat, a
title, a flag. These may be artificial things; they may be unreasonable
things; they may, if you will, be wicked things; but they are weak
things. They are not Force, and they do not look like Force. They are
parts of an idea: of the idea of discipline; if you will, of the idea of
tyranny; but still an idea. No soldier could possibly say that his own
bayonets were his authority. No soldier could possibly say that he came
in the name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd as if a postman
said that he came inside his bag. I do not, as I have said, underrate
the evils that really do arise from militarism and the military ethic.
It tends to give people wooden faces and sometimes wooden heads. It
tends moreover (both through its specialisation and through its constant
obedience) to a certain loss of real independence and strength of
character. This has almost always been found when people made the
mistake of turning the soldier into a statesman, under the mistaken
impression that he was a strong man. The Duke of Wellington, for
instance, was a strong soldier and therefore a weak statesman. But the
soldier is always, by the nature of things, loyal to something. And as
long as one is loyal to something one can never be a worshipper of mere
force. For mere force, violence in the abstract, is the enemy of
anything we love. To love anything is to see it at once under lowering
skies of danger. Loyalty implies loyalty in misfortune; and when a
soldier has accepted any nation's uniform he has already accepted its
defeat.
Nevertheless, it does appear to be possible in Germany for a man to
point to fixed bayonets and say, "These are my authority," and yet to
convince ordinarily sane men that he is a soldier. If this is so, it
does really seem to point to some habit of high-faultin' in the German
nation, such as that of which I spoke previously. It almost looks as if
the advisers, and even the officials, of the German Army had become
infected in some degree with the false and feeble doctrine that might is
right. As this doctrine is invariably preached by physical weaklings
like Nietzsche it is a very serious thing even to entertain the
supposition that it is affecting men who have really to do military work
It would be the end of German soldiers to be affected by German
philosophy. Energetic people use energy as a means, but only very tired
people ever use energy as a reason. Athletes go in for games, because
athletes desire glory. Invalids go in for calisthenics; for invalids
(alone of all human beings) desire strength. So long as the German Army
points to its heraldic eagle and says, "I come in the name of this
fierce but fabulous animal," the German Army will be all right. If ever
it says, "I come in the name of bayonets," the bayonets will break like
glass, for only the weak exhibit strength without an aim.
At the same time, as I said before, do not let us forged our own faults.
Do not let us forget them any the more easily because they are the
opposite to the German faults. Modern England is too prone to present
the spectacle of a person who is enormously delighted because he has not
got the contrary disadvantages to his own. The Englishman is always
saying "My house is not damp" at the moment when his house is on fire.
The Englishman is always saying, "I have thrown off all traces of
anaemia" in the middle of a fit of apoplexy. Let us always remember
that if an Englishman wants to swindle English people, he does not dress
up in the uniform of a soldier. If an Englishman wants to swindle
English people he would as soon think of dressing up in the uniform of a
messenger boy. Everything in England is done unofficially, casually, by
conversations and cliques. The one Parliament that really does rule
England is a secret Parliament; the debates of which must not be
published--the Cabinet. The debates of the Commons are sometimes
important; but only the debates in the Lobby, never the debates in the
House. Journalists do control public opinion; but it is not controlled
by the arguments they publish--it is controlled by the arguments between
the editor and sub-editor, which they do not publish. This casualness is
our English vice. It is at once casual and secret. Our public life is
conducted privately. Hence it follows that if an English swindler wished
to impress us, the last thing he would think of doing would be to put on
a uniform. He would put on a polite slouching air and a careless,
expensive suit of clothes; he would stroll up to the Mayor, be so
awfully sorry to disturb him, find he had forgotten his card-case,
mention, as if he were ashamed of it, that he was the Duke of Mercia,
and carry the whole thing through with the air of a man who could get
two hundred witnesses and two thousand retainers, but who was too tired
to call any of them. And if he did it very well I strongly suspect that
he would be as successful as the indefensible Captain at Koepenick.
Our tendency for many centuries past has been, not so much towards
creating an aristocracy (which may or may not be a good thing in
itself), as towards substituting an aristocracy for everything else. In
England we have an aristocracy instead of a religion. The nobility are
to the English poor what the saints and the fairies are to the Irish
poor, what the large devil with a black face was to the Scotch poor--the
poetry of life. In the same way in England we have an aristocracy
instead of a Government. We rely on a certain good humour and education
in the upper class to interpret to us our contradictory Constitution. No
educated man born of woman will be quite so absurd as the system that he
has to administer. In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad
people. We get good people to restrain bad laws. And last of all we in
England have an aristocracy instead of an Army. We have an Army of which
the officers are proud of their families and ashamed of their uniforms.
If I were a king of any country whatever, and one of my officers were
ashamed of my uniform, I should be ashamed of my officer. Beware, then,
of the really well-bred and apologetic gentleman whose clothes are at
once quiet and fashionable, whose manner is at once diffident and frank.
Beware how you admit him into your domestic secrets, for he may be a
bogus Earl. Or, worse still, a real one.
I have no sympathy with international aggression when it is taken
seriously, but I have a certain dark and wild sympathy with it when it
is quite absurd. Raids are all wrong as practical politics, but they are
human and imaginable as practical jokes. In fact, almost any act of
ragging or violence can be forgiven on this strict condition--that it is
of no use at all to anybody. If the aggressor gets anything out of it,
then it is quite unpardonable. It is damned by the least hint of utility
or profit. A man of spirit and breeding may brawl, but he does not
steal. A gentleman knocks off his friend's hat; but he does not annex
his friend's hat. For this reason (as Mr. Belloc has pointed out
somewhere), the very militant French people have always returned after
their immense raids--the raids of Godfrey the Crusader, the raids of
Napoleon; "they are sucked back, having accomplished nothing but an
epic."
Sometimes I see small fragments of information in the newspapers which
make my heart leap with an irrational patriotic sympathy. I have had the
misfortune to be left comparatively cold by many of the enterprises and
proclamations of my country in recent times. But the other day I found
in the Tribune the following paragraph, which I may be permitted to
set down as an example of the kind of international outrage with which I
have by far the most instinctive sympathy. There is something
attractive, too, in the austere simplicity with which the affair is set
forth--
"Geneva, Oct. 31.
"The English schoolboy Allen, who was arrested at Lausanne railway
station on Saturday, for having painted red the statue of General Jomini
of Payerne, was liberated yesterday, after paying a fine of L24. Allen
has proceeded to Germany, where he will continue his studies. The people
of Payerne are indignant, and clamoured for his detention in prison."
Now I have no doubt that ethics and social necessity require a contrary
attitude, but I will freely confess that my first emotions on reading of
this exploit were those of profound and elemental pleasure. There is
something so large and simple about the operation of painting a whole
stone General a bright red. Of course I can understand that the people
of Payerne were indignant. They had passed to their homes at twilight
through the streets of that beautiful city (or is it a province?), and
they had seen against the silver ending of the sunset the grand grey
figure of the hero of that land remaining to guard the town under the
stars. It certainly must have been a shock to come out in the broad
white morning and find a large vermilion General staring under the
staring sun. I do not blame them at all for clamouring for the
schoolboy's detention in prison; I dare say a little detention in prison
would do him no harm. Still, I think the immense act has something about
it human and excusable; and when I endeavour to analyse the reason of
this feeling I find it to lie, not in the fact that the thing was big or
bold or successful, but in the fact that the thing was perfectly
useless to everybody, including the person who did it. The raid ends in
itself; and so Master Allen is sucked back again, having accomplished
nothing but an epic.
There is one thing which, in the presence of average modern journalism,
is perhaps worth saying in connection with such an idle matter as this.
The morals of a matter like this are exactly like the morals of anything
else; they are concerned with mutual contract, or with the rights of
independent human lives. But the whole modern world, or at any rate the
whole modern Press, has a perpetual and consuming terror of plain
morals. Men always attempt to avoid condemning a thing upon merely moral
grounds. If I beat my grandmother to death to-morrow in the middle of
Battersea Park, you may be perfectly certain that people will say
everything about it except the simple and fairly obvious fact that it is
wrong. Some will call it insane; that is, will accuse it of a deficiency
of intelligence. This is not necessarily true at all. You could not tell
whether the act was unintelligent or not unless you knew my grandmother.
Some will call it vulgar, disgusting, and the rest of it; that is, they
will accuse it of a lack of manners. Perhaps it does show a lack of
manners; but this is scarcely its most serious disadvantage. Others will
talk about the loathsome spectacle and the revolting scene; that is,
they will accuse it of a deficiency of art, or aesthetic beauty. This
again depends on the circumstances: in order to be quite certain that
the appearance of the old lady has definitely deteriorated under the
process of being beaten to death, it is necessary for the philosophical
critic to be quite certain how ugly she was before. Another school of
thinkers will say that the action is lacking in efficiency: that it is
an uneconomic waste of a good grandmother. But that could only depend on
the value, which is again an individual matter. The only real point that
is worth mentioning is that the action is wicked, because your
grandmother has a right not to be beaten to death. But of this simple
moral explanation modern journalism has, as I say, a standing fear. It
will call the action anything else--mad, bestial, vulgar, idiotic,
rather than call it sinful.
One example can be found in such cases as that of the prank of the boy
and the statue. When some trick of this sort is played, the newspapers
opposed to it always describe it as "a senseless joke." What is the good
of saying that? Every joke is a senseless joke. A joke is by its nature
a protest against sense. It is no good attacking nonsense for being
successfully nonsensical. Of course it is nonsensical to paint a
celebrated Italian General a bright red; it is as nonsensical as "Alice
in Wonderland." It is also, in my opinion, very nearly as funny. But the
real answer to the affair is not to say that it is nonsensical or even
to say that it is not funny, but to point out that it is wrong to spoil
statues which belong to other people. If the modern world will not
insist on having some sharp and definite moral law, capable of resisting
the counter-attractions of art and humour, the modern world will simply
be given over as a spoil to anybody who can manage to do a nasty thing
in a nice way. Every murderer who can murder entertainingly will be
allowed to murder. Every burglar who burgles in really humorous
attitudes will burgle as much as he likes.
There is another case of the thing that I mean. Why on earth do the
newspapers, in describing a dynamite outrage or any other political
assassination, call it a "dastardly outrage" or a cowardly outrage? It
is perfectly evident that it is not dastardly in the least. It is
perfectly evident that it is about as cowardly as the Christians going
to the lions. The man who does it exposes himself to the chance of being
torn in pieces by two thousand people. What the thing is, is not
cowardly, but profoundly and detestably wicked. The man who does it is
very infamous and very brave. But, again, the explanation is that our
modern Press would rather appeal to physical arrogance, or to anything,
rather than appeal to right and wrong.
In most of the matters of modern England, the real difficulty is that
there is a negative revolution without a positive revolution. Positive
aristocracy is breaking up without any particular appearance of positive
democracy taking its place. The polished class is becoming less polished
without becoming less of a class; the nobleman who becomes a guinea-pig
keeps all his privileges but loses some of his tradition; he becomes
less of a gentleman without becoming less of a nobleman. In the same way
(until some recent and happy revivals) it seemed highly probable that
the Church of England would cease to be a religion long before it had
ceased to be a Church. And in the same way, the vulgarisation of the
old, simple middle class does not even have the advantage of doing away
with class distinctions; the vulgar man is always the most
distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
At the same time, it must be remembered that when a class has a morality
it does not follow that it is an adequate morality. The middle-class
ethic was inadequate for some purposes; so is the public-school ethic,
the ethic of the upper classes. On this last matter of the public
schools Dr. Spenser, the Head Master of University College School, has
lately made some valuable observations. But even he, I think, overstates
the claim of the public schools. "The strong point of the English public
schools," he says, "has always lain in their efficiency as agencies for
the formation of character and for the inculcation of the great notion
of obligation which distinguishes a gentleman. On the physical and moral
sides the public-school men of England are, I believe, unequalled." And
he goes on to say that it is on the mental side that they are defective.
But, as a matter of fact, the public-school training is in the strict
sense defective upon the moral side also; it leaves out about half of
morality. Its just claim is that, like the old middle class (and the
Zulus), it trains some virtues and therefore suits some people for some
situations. Put an old English merchant to serve in an army and he would
have been irritated and clumsy. Put the men from English public schools
to rule Ireland, and they make the greatest hash in human history.
Touching the morality of the public schools, I will take one point only,
which is enough to prove the case. People have got into their heads an
extraordinary idea that English public-school boys and English youth
generally are taught to tell the truth. They are taught absolutely
nothing of the kind. At no English public school is it even suggested,
except by accident, that it is a man's duty to tell the truth. What is
suggested is something entirely different: that it is a man's duty not
to tell lies. So completely does this mistake soak through all
civilisation that we hardly ever think even of the difference between
the two things. When we say to a child, "You must tell the truth," we do
merely mean that he must refrain from verbal inaccuracies. But the thing
we never teach at all is the general duty of telling the truth, of
giving a complete and fair picture of anything we are talking about, of
not misrepresenting, not evading, not suppressing, not using plausible
arguments that we know to be unfair, not selecting unscrupulously to
prove an ex parte case, not telling all the nice stories about the
Scotch, and all the nasty stories about the Irish, not pretending to be
disinterested when you are really angry, not pretending to be angry when
you are really only avaricious. The one thing that is never taught by
any chance in the atmosphere of public schools is exactly that--that
there is a whole truth of things, and that in knowing it and speaking it
we are happy.
If any one has the smallest doubt of this neglect of truth in public
schools he can kill his doubt with one plain question. Can any one on
earth believe that if the seeing and telling of the whole truth were
really one of the ideals of the English governing class, there could
conceivably exist such a thing as the English party system? Why, the
English party system is founded upon the principle that telling the
whole truth does not matter. It is founded upon the principle that half
a truth is better than no politics. Our system deliberately turns a
crowd of men who might be impartial into irrational partisans. It
teaches some of them to tell lies and all of them to believe lies. It
gives every man an arbitrary brief that he has to work up as best he may
and defend as best he can. It turns a room full of citizens into a room
full of barristers. I know that it has many charms and virtues, fighting
and good-fellowship; it has all the charms and virtues of a game. I only
say that it would be a stark impossibility in a nation which believed in
telling the truth.
It is customary to remark that modern problems cannot easily be attacked
because they are so complex. In many cases I believe it is really
because they are so simple. Nobody would believe in such simplicity of
scoundrelism even if it were pointed out. People would say that the
truth was a charge of mere melodramatic villainy; forgetting that
nearly all villains really are melodramatic. Thus, for instance, we say
that some good measures are frustrated or some bad officials kept in
power by the press and confusion of public business; whereas very often
the reason is simple healthy human bribery. And thus especially we say
that the Yellow Press is exaggerative, over-emotional, illiterate, and
anarchical, and a hundred other long words; whereas the only objection
to it is that it tells lies. We waste our fine intellects in finding
exquisite phraseology to fit a man, when in a well-ordered society we
ought to be finding handcuffs to fit him.
This criticism of the modern type of righteous indignation must have
come into many people's minds, I think, in reading Dr. Horton's eloquent
expressions of disgust at the "corrupt Press," especially in connection
with the Limerick craze. Upon the Limerick craze itself, I fear Dr.
Horton will not have much effect; such fads perish before one has had
time to kill them. But Dr. Horton's protest may really do good if it
enables us to come to some clear understanding about what is really
wrong with the popular Press, and which means it might be useful and
which permissible to use for its reform. We do not want a censorship of
the Press; but we are long past talking about that. At present it is not
we that silence the Press; it is the Press that silences us. It is not a
case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is
a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If
we attack the Press we shall be rebelling, not repressing. But shall we
attack it?
Now it is just here that the chief difficulty occurs. It arises from
the very rarity and rectitude of those minds which commonly inaugurate
such crusades. I have the warmest respect for Dr. Horton's thirst after
righteousness; but it has always seemed to me that his righteousness
would be more effective without his refinement. The curse of the
Nonconformists is their universal refinement. They dimly connect being
good with being delicate, and even dapper; with not being grotesque or
loud or violent; with not sitting down on one's hat. Now it is always a
pleasure to be loud and violent, and sometimes it is a duty. Certainly
it has nothing to do with sin; a man can be loudly and violently
virtuous--nay, he can be loudly and violently saintly, though that is
not the type of saintliness that we recognise in Dr. Horton. And as for
sitting on one's hat, if it is done for any sublime object (as, for
instance, to amuse the children), it is obviously an act of very
beautiful self-sacrifice, the destruction and surrender of the symbol of
personal dignity upon the shrine of public festivity. Now it will not do
to attack the modern editor merely for being unrefined, like the great
mass of mankind. We must be able to say that he is immoral, not that he
is undignified or ridiculous. I do not mind the Yellow Press editor
sitting on his hat. My only objection to him begins to dawn when he
attempts to sit on my hat; or, indeed (as is at present the case), when
he proceeds to sit on my head.
But in reading between the lines of Dr. Horton's invective one
continually feels that he is not only angry with the popular Press for
being unscrupulous: he is partly angry with the popular Press for being
popular. He is not only irritated with Limericks for causing a mean
money-scramble; he is also partly irritated with Limericks for being
Limericks. The enormous size of the levity gets on his nerves, like the
glare and blare of Bank Holiday. Now this is a motive which, however
human and natural, must be strictly kept out of the way. It takes all
sorts to make a world; and it is not in the least necessary that
everybody should have that love of subtle and unobtrusive perfections in
the matter of manners or literature which does often go with the type of
the ethical idealist. It is not in the least desirable that everybody
should be earnest. It is highly desirable that everybody should be
honest, but that is a thing that can go quite easily with a coarse and
cheerful character. But the ineffectualness of most protests against the
abuse of the Press has been very largely due to the instinct of
democracy (and the instinct of democracy is like the instinct of one
woman, wild but quite right) that the people who were trying to purify
the Press were also trying to refine it; and to this the democracy very
naturally and very justly objected. We are justified in enforcing good
morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in
enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners. We
have no right to purge the popular Press of all that we think vulgar or
trivial. Dr. Horton may possibly loathe and detest Limericks just as I
loathe and detest riddles; but I have no right to call them flippant
and unprofitable; there are wild people in the world who like riddles.
I am so afraid of this movement passing off into mere formless rhetoric
and platform passion that I will even come close to the earth and lay
down specifically some of the things that, in my opinion, could be, and
ought to be, done to reform the Press.
First, I would make a law, if there is none such at present, by which an
editor, proved to have published false news without reasonable
verification, should simply go to prison. This is not a question of
influences or atmospheres; the thing could be carried out as easily and
as practically as the punishment of thieves and murderers. Of course
there would be the usual statement that the guilt was that of a
subordinate. Let the accused editor have the right of proving this if he
can; if he does, let the subordinate be tried and go to prison. Two or
three good rich editors and proprietors properly locked up would take
the sting out of the Yellow Press better than centuries of Dr. Horton.
Second, it's impossible to pass over altogether the most unpleasant, but
the most important part of this problem. I will deal with it as
distantly as possible. I do not believe there is any harm whatever in
reading about murders; rather, if anything, good; for the thought of
death operates very powerfully with the poor in the creation of
brotherhood and a sense of human dignity. I do not believe there is a
pennyworth of harm in the police news, as such. Even divorce news,
though contemptible enough, can really in most cases be left to the
discretion of grown people; and how far children get hold of such
things is a problem for the home and not for the nation. But there is a
certain class of evils which a healthy man or woman can actually go
through life without knowing anything about at all. These, I say, should
be stamped and blackened out of every newspaper with the thickest black
of the Russian censor. Such cases should either be always tried in
camera or reporting them should be a punishable offence. The common
weakness of Nature and the sins that flesh is heir to we can leave
people to find in newspapers. Men can safely see in the papers what they
have already seen in the streets. They may safely find in their journals
what they have already found in themselves. But we do not want the
imaginations of rational and decent people clouded with the horrors of
some obscene insanity which has no more to do with human life than the
man in Bedlam who thinks he is a chicken. And, if this vile matter is
admitted, let it be simply with a mention of the Latin or legal name of
the crime, and with no details whatever. As it is, exactly the reverse
is true. Papers are permitted to terrify and darken the fancy of the
young with innumerable details, but not permitted to state in clean
legal language what the thing is about. They are allowed to give any
fact about the thing except the fact that it is a sin.
Third, I would do my best to introduce everywhere the practice of signed
articles. Those who urge the advantages of anonymity are either people
who do not realise the special peril of our time or they are people who
are profiting by it. It is true, but futile, for instance, to say that
there is something noble in being nameless when a whole corporate body
is bent on a consistent aim: as in an army or men building a cathedral.
The point of modern newspapers is that there is no such corporate body
and common aim; but each man can use the authority of the paper to
further his own private fads and his own private finances.
CHESTERTON-ALL THING CONSIDERED - EDWARD VII. AND SCOTLAND