CHESTERTON-UTOPIA OF USERS - Insane Exaggeration
Here is an example from a leading Liberal paper touching the debates on
Home Rule. I am a Home Ruler; so my sympathies would be, if anything, on
the side of the Liberal paper upon that point. I merely quote it as an
example of this ridiculous way of writing, which, by insane exaggeration,
actually makes its hero look smaller than he is.
This was strange language to use about the "hypocritical sham," and Mr.
Asquith, knowing that the biggest battle of his career was upon him, hit
back without mercy. "I should like first to know," said he, with a glance
at his supporters, "whether my proposals are accepted?"
That's all. And I really do not see why poor Mr. Asquith should be
represented as having violated the Christian virtue of mercy by saying
that. I myself could compose a great many paragraphs upon the same model,
each containing its stinging and perhaps unscrupulous epigram. As, for
example:--"The Archbishop of Canterbury, realising that his choice now lay
between denying God and earning the crown of martyrdom by dying in
torments, spoke with a frenzy of religious passion that might have seemed
fanatical under circumstances less intense. 'The Children's Service,' he
said firmly, with his face to the congregation, 'will be held at half-past
four this afternoon as usual.'"
Or, we might have:--"Lord Roberts, recognising that he had now to face
Armageddon, and that if he lost this last battle against overwhelming odds
the independence of England would be extinguished forever, addressed to
his soldiers (looking at them and not falling off his horse) a speech
which brought their national passions to boiling point, and might well
have seemed blood-thirsty in quieter times. It ended with the celebrated
declaration that it was a fine day."
Or we might have the much greater excitement of reading something like
this:--"The Astronomer Royal, having realised that the earth would
certainly be smashed to pieces by a comet unless his requests in
connection with wireless telegraphy were seriously considered, gave an
address at the Royal Society which, under other circumstances, would have
seemed unduly dogmatic and emotional and deficient in scientific
agnosticism. This address (which he delivered without any attempt to
stand on his head) included a fierce and even ferocious declaration that
it is generally easier to see the stars by night than by day."
Now, I cannot see, on my conscience and reason, that any one of my
imaginary paragraphs is more ridiculous than the real one. Nobody can
believe that Mr. Asquith regards these belated and careful compromises
about Home Rule as "the biggest battle of his career." It is only justice
to him to say that he has had bigger battles than that. Nobody can
believe that any body of men, bodily present, either thundered or thrilled
at a man merely saying that he would like to know whether his proposals
were accepted. No; it would be far better for Parliament if its doors
were shut again, and reporters were excluded. In that case, the outer
public did hear genuine rumours of almost gigantic eloquence; such as that
which has perpetuated Pitt's reply against the charge of youth, or Fox's
bludgeoning of the idea of war as a compromise. It would be much better
to follow the old fashion and let in no reporters at all than to follow
the new fashion and select the stupidest reporters you can find.
Now, why do people in Fleet-street talk such tosh? People in Fleet-street
are not fools. Most of them have realised reality through work; some
through starvation; some through damnation, or something damnably like it.
I think it is simply and seriously true that they are tired of their job.
As the general said in M. Rostand's play, "la fatigue!"
I do really believe that this is one of the ways in which God (don't get
flurried, Nature if you like) is unexpectedly avenged on things infamous
and unreasonable. And this method is that men's moral and even physical
tenacity actually give out under such a load of lies. They go on writing
their leading articles and their Parliamentary reports. They go on doing
it as a convict goes on picking oakum. But the point is not that we are
bored with their articles; the point is that they are. The work is done
worse because it is done weakly and without human enthusiasm. And it is
done weakly because of the truth we have told so many times in this book:
that it is not done for monarchy, for which men will die; or for democracy,
for which men will die; or even for aristocracy, for which many men have
died. It is done for a thing called Capitalism: which stands out quite
clearly in history in many curious ways. But the most curious thing about
it is that no man has loved it; and no man died for it.
If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic of
justice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that is,
glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves. It is essential that
they should not be mere opium visions that begin and end in smoke--and so
often in cannon smoke. I make no apology, therefore, for returning to the
purely practical and realistic point I urged last week: the fact that we
shall lose everything we might have gained if we lose the idea that the
responsible person is responsible.
For instance, it is almost specially so with the one or two things in
which the British Government, or the British public, really are behaving
badly. The first, and worst of them, is the non-extension of the
Moratorium, or truce of debtor and creditor, to the very world where there
are the poorest debtors and thc cruellest creditors. This is infamous:
and should be, if possible, more infamous to those who think the war right
than to those who think it wrong. Everyone knows that the people who can
least pay their debts are the people who are always trying to. Among the
poor a payment may be as rash as a speculation. Among the rich a
bankruptcy may be as safe as a bank. Considering the class from which
private soldiers are taken, there is an atrocious meanness in the idea of
buying their blood abroad, while we sell their sticks at home. The
English language, by the way, is full of delicate paradoxes. We talk of
the private soldiers because they are really public soldiers; and we talk
of the public schools because they are really private schools. Anyhow,
the wrong is of the sort that ought to be resisted, as much in war as in
peace.
But as long as we speak of it as a cloudy conclusion, come to by an
anonymous club called Parliament, or a masked tribunal called the Cabinet,
we shall never get such a wrong righted. Somebody is officially
responsible for the unfairness; and that somebody ought to be hammered.
The other example, less important but more ludicrous, is the silly boycott
of Germans in England, extending even to German music. I do not believe
for a moment that the English people feel any such insane fastidiousness.
Are the English artists who practise the particularly English art of
water-colour to be forbidden to use Prussian blue? Are all old ladies to
shoot their Pomeranian dogs? But though England would laugh at this, she
will get the credit of it, and will continue: until we ask who the actual
persons are who feel sure that we should shudder at a ballad of the Rhine.
It is certain that we should find they are capitalists. It is very
probable that we should find they are foreigners.
Some days ago the Official Council of the Independent Labour Party, or the
Independent Council of the Official Labour Party, or the Independent and
Official Council of the Labour Party (I have got quite nervous about these
names and distinctions; but they all seem to say the same thing) began
their manifesto by saying it would be difficult to assign the degrees of
responsibility which each nation had for the outbreak of the war.
Afterwards, a writer in the "Christian Commonwealth," lamenting war in the
name of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic middle-class, said
that all the nations must share the responsibility for this great calamity
of war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking like that we shall have
war after war, and calamity after calamity, until the crack of doom. It
simply amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start a
quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults any
other man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only to
stab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron,
the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They will
applaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. They
will willingly take all the crime, with only a quarter of the conscience:
they will be as ready to share the memory as they are to share the spoil.
The Powers will divide responsibility as calmly as they divided Poland.
But I still stubbornly and meekly submit my point: that you cannot end war
without asking who began it. If you think somebody else, not Germany,
began it, then blame that somebody else: do not blame everybody and nobody.
Perhaps you think that a small sovereign people, fresh from two
triumphant wars, ought to discrown itself before sunrise; because the
nephew of a neighbouring Emperor has been shot by his own subjects. Very
well. Then blame Servia; and, to the extent of your influence, you may be
preventing small kingdoms being obstinate or even princes being shot.
Perhaps you think the whole thing was a huge conspiracy of Russia, with
France as a dupe and Servia as a pretext. Very well. Then blame Russia;
and, to the extent of your influence, you may be preventing great Empires
from making racial excuses for a raid. Perhaps you think France wrong
for feeling what you call "revenge," and I should call recovery of stolen
goods. Perhaps you blame Belgium for being sentimental about her frontier;
or England for being sentimental about her word. If so, blame them; or
whichever of them you think is to blame. Or again, it is barely possible
that you may think, as I do, that the whole loathsome load has been laid
upon us by the monarchy which I have not named; still less wasted time in
abusing. But if there be in Europe a military State which has not the
religion of Russia, yet has helped Russia to tyrannise over the Poles,
that State cares not for religion, but for tyranny. If there be a State
in Europe which has not the religion of the Austrians, but has helped
Austria to bully the Servians, that State cares not for belief, but for
bullying. If there be in Europe any people or principality which respects
neither republics nor religions, to which the political ideal of Paris is
as much a myth as the mystical ideal of Moscow, then blame that: and do
more than blame. In the healthy and highly theological words of Robert
Blatchford, drive it back to the Hell from which it came.
But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done by
somebody. It may be it is no good crying over spilt blood, any more than
over spilt milk. But we do not find the culprit any more by spilling the
milk over everybody; or by daubing everybody with blood. Still less do we
improve matters by watering the milk with our tears, nor the blood either.
To say that everybody is responsible means that nobody is responsible.
If in the future we see Russia annexing Rutland (as part of the old
Kingdom of Muscovy), if we see Bavaria taking a sudden fancy to the Bank
of England, or the King of the Cannibal Islands suddenly demanding a
tribute of edible boys and girls from England and America, we may be quite
certain also that the Leader of the Labour Party will rise, with a slight
cough, and say: "It would be a difficult task to apportion the blame
between the various claims which..."
I hope the Government will not think just now about appointing a Poet
Laureate. I hardly think they can be altogether in the right mood. The
business just now before the country makes a very good detective story;
but as a national epic it is a little depressing. Jingo literature always
weakens a nation; but even healthy patriotic literature has its proper
time and occasion. For instance, Mr. Newbolt (who has been suggested for
the post) is a very fine poet; but I think his patriotic lyrics would just
now rather jar upon a patriot. We are rather too much concerned about our
practical seamanship to feel quite confident that Drake will return and
"drum them up the Channel as he drummed them long ago." On the contrary,
we have an uncomfortable feeling that Drake's ship might suddenly go to
the bottom, because the capitalists have made Lloyd George abolish the
Plimsoll Line. One could not, without being understood ironically, adjure
the two party teams to-day to "play up, play up and play the game," or to
"love the game more than the prize." And there is no national hero at
this moment in the soldiering line--unless, perhaps, it is Major
Archer-Shee--of whom anyone would be likely to say: "Sed miles; sed pro
patria." There is, indeed, one beautiful poem of Mr. Newbolt's which may
mingle faintly with one's thoughts in such times, but that, alas, is to a
very different tune. I mean that one in which he echoes Turner's
conception of the old wooden ship vanishing with all the valiant memories
of the English:
There's a far bell ringing
At the setting of the sun,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of the great days done.
There's a far bell ringing,
And a phantom voice is singing
Of a fame forever clinging
To the great days done.
For the sunset breezes shiver,
Temeraire, Temeraire,
And she's fading down the river....
Well, well, neither you nor I know whether she is fading down the river or
not. It is quite enough for us to know, as King Alfred did, that a great
many pirates have landed on both banks of the Thames.
At this moment that is the only kind of patriotic poem that could satisfy
the emotions of a patriotic person. But it certainly is not the sort of
poem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on the highest or the
lowest theory of his office. He is either a great minstrel singing the
victories of a great king, or he is a common Court official like the Groom
of the Powder Closet. In the first case his praises should be true; in
the second case they will nearly always be false; but in either case he
must praise. And what there is for him to praise just now it would be
precious hard to say. And if there is no great hope of a real poet, there
is still less hope of a real prophet. What Newman called, I think, "The
Prophetical Office," that is, the institution of an inspired protest even
against an inspired religion, certainly would not do in modern England.
The Court is not likely to keep a tame prophet in order to encourage him
to be wild. It is not likely to pay a man to say that wolves shall howl
in Downing-street and vultures build their nests in Buckingham Palace. So
vast has been the progress of humanity that these two things are quite
impossible. We cannot have a great poet praising kings. We cannot have a
great prophet denouncing kings. So I have to fall back on a third
suggestion.
Instead of reviving the Court Poet, why not revive the Court Fool? He is
the only person who could do any good at this moment either to the Royal
or the judicial Courts. The present political situation is utterly
unsuitable for the purposes of a great poet. But it is particularly
suitable for the purposes of a great buffoon. The old jester was under
certain privileges: you could not resent the jokes of a fool, just as you
cannot resent the sermons of a curate. Now, what the present Government
of England wants is neither serious praise nor serious denunciation; what
it wants is satire. What it wants, in other words, is realism given with
gusto. When King Louis the Eleventh unexpectedly visited his enemy, the
Duke of Burgundy, with a small escort, the Duke's jester said he would
give the King his fool's cap, for he was the fool now. And when the Duke
replied with dignity, "And suppose I treat him with all proper respect?"
the fool answered, "Then I will give it to you." That is the kind of
thing that somebody ought to be free to say now. But if you say it now
you will be fined a hundred pounds at the least.
For the things that have been happening lately are not merely things that
one could joke about. They are themselves, truly and intrinsically, jokes.
I mean that there is a sort of epigram of unreason in the situation
itself, as there was in the situation where there was jam yesterday and
jam to-morrow but never jam to-day. Take, for instance, the extraordinary
case of Sir Edward Carson. The point is not whether we regard his
attitude in Belfast as the defiance of a sincere and dogmatic rebel, or as
the bluff of a party hack and mountebank. The point is not whether we
regard his defence of the Government at the Old Bailey as a chivalrous and
reluctant duty done as an advocate or a friend, or as a mere case of a
lawyer selling his soul for a fat brief. The point is that whichever of
the two actions we approve, and whichever of the four explanations we
adopt, Sir Edward's position is still raving nonsense. On any argument,
he cannot escape from his dilemma. It may be argued that laws and customs
should be obeyed whatever our private feelings; and that it is an
established custom to accept a brief in such a case. But then it is a
somewhat more established custom to obey an Act of Parliament and to keep
the peace. It may be argued that extreme misgovernment justifies men in
Ulster or elsewhere in refusing to obey the law. But then it would
justify them even more in refusing to appear professionally in a law court.
Etiquette cannot be at once so unimportant that Carson may shoot at the
King's uniform, and yet so important that he must always be ready to put
on his own. The Government cannot be so disreputable that Carson need not
lay down his gun, and yet so respectable that he is bound to put on his
wig. Carson cannot at once be so fierce that he can kill in what he
considers a good cause, and yet so meek that he must argue in what he
considers a bad cause. Obedience or disobedience, conventional or
unconventional, a solicitor's letter cannot be more sacred than the King's
writ; a blue bag cannot be more rational than the British flag. The thing
is rubbish read anyway, and the only difficulty is to get a joke good
enough to express it. It is a case for the Court Jester. The phantasy
of it could only be expressed by some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson ought
to be crowned with the shamrocks and emeralds and followed by green-clad
minstrels of the Clan-na-Gael, playing "The Wearing of the Green."
But all the recent events are like that. They are practical jokes. The
jokes do not need to be made: they only need to be pointed out. You and
I do not talk and act as the Isaacs brothers talked and acted, by their
own most favourable account of themselves; and even their account of
themselves was by no means favourable. You and I do not talk of meeting
our own born brother "at a family function" as if he were some infinitely
distant cousin whom we only met at Christmas. You and I, when we suddenly
feel inclined for a chat with the same brother about his dinner and the
Coal Strike, do not generally select either wireless telegraphy or the
Atlantic Cable as the most obvious and economical channel for that
outburst of belated chattiness. You and I do not talk, if it is proposed
to start a railway between Catsville and Dogtown, as if the putting up of
a station at Dogtown could have no kind of economic effect on the putting
up of a station at Catsville. You and I do not think it candid to say
that when we are at one end of a telephone we have no sort of connection
with the other end. These things have got into the region of farce; and
should be dealt with farcically, not even ferociously.
In the Roman Republic there was a Tribune of the People, whose person was
inviolable like an ambassador's. There was much the same idea in Becket's
attempt to remove the Priest, who was then the popular champion, from the
ordinary courts. We shall have no Tribune; for we have no republic. We
shall have no Priest; for we have no religion. The best we deserve or can
expect is a Fool who shall be free; and who shall deliver us with laughter.
Missing the point is a very fine art; and has been carried to something
like perfection by politicians and Pressmen to-day. For the point is
generally a very sharp point; and is, moreover, sharp at both ends. That
is to say that both parties would probably impale themselves in an
uncomfortable manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether. I
have just been looking at the election address of the official Liberal
candidate for the part of the country in which I live; and though it is,
if anything, rather more logical and free from cant than most other
documents of the sort it is an excellent example of missing the point.
The candidate has to go boring on about Free Trade and Land Reform and
Education; and nobody reading it could possibly imagine that in the town
of Wycombe, where the poll will be declared, the capital of the Wycombe
division of Bucks which the candidate is contesting, centre of the
important and vital trade on which it has thriven, a savage struggle about
justice has been raging for months past between the poor and rich, as real
as the French Revolution. The man offering himself at Wycombe as
representative of the Wycombe division simply says nothing about it at all.
It is as if a man at the crisis of the French Terror had offered himself
as a deputy for the town of Paris, and had said nothing about the Monarchy,
nothing about the Republic, nothing about the massacres, nothing about
the war; but had explained with great clearness his views on the
suppression of the Jansenists, the literary style of Racine, the
suitability of Turenae for the post of commander-in-chief, and the
religious reflections of Madame de Maintenon. For, at their best, the
candidate's topics are not topical. Home Rule is a very good thing, and
modern education is a very bad thing; but neither of them are things that
anybody is talking about in High Wycombe. This is the first and simplest
way of missing the point: deliberately to avoid and ignore it.
It would be an amusing experiment, by the way, to go to the point instead
of avoiding it. What fun it would be to stand as a strict Party
candidate, but issue a perfectly frank and cynical Election Address. Mr.
Mosley's address begins, "Gentlemen,--Sir Alfred Cripps having been chosen
for a high judicial position and a seat in the House of Lords, a
by-election now becomes necessary, and the electors of South Bucks are
charged with the responsible duty of electing, etc., etc." But suppose
there were another candidate whose election address opened in a plain,
manly style, like this: "Gentlemen,--In the sincere hope of being myself
chosen for a high judicial position or a seat in the House of Lords, or
considerably increasing my private fortune by some Government appointment,
or, at least, inside information about the financial prospects, I have
decided that it is worth my while to disburse large sums of money to you
on various pretexts, and, with even more reluctance to endure the bad
speaking and bad ventilation of the Commons' House of Parliament, so help
me God. I have very pronounced convictions on various political questions;
but I will not trouble my fellow-citizens with them, since I have quite
made up my mind to abandon any or all of them if requested to do so by the
upper classes. The electors are therefore charged with the entirely
irresponsible duty of electing a Member; or, in other words, I ask my
neighbours round about this part, who know I am not a bad chap in many
ways, to do me a good turn in my business, just as I might ask them to
change a sovereign. My election will have no conceivable kind of effect
on anything or anybody except myself; so I ask, as man to man, the
Electors of the Southern or Wycombe Division of the County of Buckingham
to accept a ride in one of my motor-cars; and poll early to please a
pal--God Save the King." I do not know whether you or I would be elected
if we presented ourselves with an election address of that kind; but we
should have had our fun and (comparatively speaking) saved our souls; and
I have a strong suspicion that we should be elected or rejected on a
mechanical majority like anybody else; nobody having dreamed of reading an
election address any more than an advertisement of a hair restorer.
But there is another and more subtle way in which we may miss the point;
and that is, not by keeping a dead silence about it, but by being just
witty enough to state it wrong. Thus, some of the Liberal official papers
have almost screwed up their courage to the sticking-point about the
bestial coup d'etat in South Africa. They have screwed up their courage
to the sticking-point; and it has stuck. It cannot get any further;
because it has missed the main point. The modern Liberals make their
feeble attempts to attack the introduction of slavery into South Africa by
the Dutch and the Jews, by a very typical evasion of the vital fact. The
vital fact is simply slavery. Most of these Dutchmen have always felt
like slave-owners. Most of these Jews have always felt like slaves. Now
that they are on top, they have a particular and curious kind of impudence,
which is only known among slaves. But the Liberal journalists will do
their best to suggest that the South African wrong consisted in what they
call Martial Law. That is, that there is something specially wicked about
men doing an act of cruelty in khaki or in vermilion, but not if it is
done in dark blue with pewter buttons. The tyrant who wears a busby or a
forage cap is abominable; the tyrant who wears a horsehair wig is
excusable. To be judged by soldiers is hell; but to be judged by lawyers
is paradise.
Now the point must not be missed in this way. What is wrong with the
tyranny in Africa is not that it is run by soldiers. It would be quite as
bad, or worse, if it were run by policemen. What is wrong is that, for
the first time since Pagan times, private men are being forced to work for
a private man. Men are being punished by imprisonment or exile for
refusing to accept a job. The fact that Botha can ride on a horse, or
fire off a gun, makes him better rather than worse than any man like
Sidney Webb or Philip Snowden, who attempt the same slavery by much less
manly methods. The Liberal Party will try to divert the whole discussion
to one about what they call militarism. But the very terms of modern
politics contradict it. For when we talk of real rebels against the
present system we call them Militants. And there will be none in the
Servile State.
I read the other day, in a quotation from a German newspaper, the highly
characteristic remark that Germany having annexed Belgium would soon
re-establish its commerce and prosperity, and that, in particular,
arrangements were already being made for introducing into the new province
the German laws for the protection of workmen.
I am quite content with that paragraph for the purpose of any controversy
about what is called German atrocity. If men I know had not told me they
had themselves seen the bayoneting of a baby; if the most respectable
refugees did not bring with them stories of burning cottages--yes, and of
burning cottagers as well; if doctors did not report what they do report
of the condition of girls in the hospitals; if there were no facts; if
there were no photographs, that one phrase I have quoted would be quite
sufficient to satisfy me that the Prussians are tyrants; tyrants in a
peculiar and almost insane sense which makes them pre-eminent among the
evil princes of the earth. The first and most striking feature is a
stupidity that rises into a sort of ghastly innocence. The protection of
workmen! Some workmen, perhaps, might have a fancy for being protected
from shrapnel; some might be glad to put up an umbrella that would ward
off things dropping from the gentle Zeppelin in heaven upon the place
beneath. Some of these discontented proletarians have taken the same view
as Vandervelde their leader, and are now energetically engaged in
protecting themselves along the line of the Yser; I am glad to say not
altogether without success. It is probable that nearly all of the Belgian
workers would, on the whole, prefer to be protected against bombs, sabres,
burning cities, starvation, torture, and the treason of wicked kings. In
short, it is probable--it is at least possible, impious as is the
idea--that they would prefer to be protected against Germans and all they
represent. But if a Belgian workman is told that he is not to be
protected against Germans, but actually to be protected by Germans, I
think he may be excused for staring. His first impulse, I imagine, will
be to ask, "Against whom? Are there any worse people to come along?"
But apart from the hellish irony of this humanitarian idea, the question
it raises is really one of solid importance for people whose politics are
more or less like ours. There is a very urgent point in that question,
"Against whom would the Belgian workmen be protected by the German laws?"
And if we pursue it, we shall be enabled to analyse something of that
poison--very largely a Prussian poison--which has long been working in our
own commonwealth, to the enslavement of the weak and the secret
strengthening of the strong. For the Prussian armies are, pre-eminently,
the advance guard of the Servile State. I say this scientifically, and
quite apart from passion or even from preference. I have no illusions
about either Belgium or England. Both have been stained with the soot of
Capitalism and blinded with the smoke of mere Colonial ambition; both have
been caught at a disadvantage in such modern dirt and disorder; both have
come out much better than I should have expected countries so modern and so
industrial to do. But in England and Belgium there is Capitalism mixed up
with a great many other things, strong things and things that pursue other
aims; Clericalism, for instance, and militant Socialism in Belgium; Trades
Unionism and sport and the remains of real aristocracy in England. But
Prussia is Capitalism; that is, a gradually solidifying slavery; and that
majestic unity with which she moves, dragging all the dumb Germanies after
her, is due to the fact that her Servile State is complete, while ours is
incomplete. There are not mutinies; there are not even mockeries; the
voice of national self-criticism has been extinguished forever. For this
people is already permanently cloven into a higher and a lower class: in
its industry as much as its army. Its employers are, in the strictest and
most sinister sense, captains of industry. Its proletariat is, in the
truest and most pitiable sense, an army of labour. In that atmosphere
masters bear upon them the signs that they are more than men; and to
insult an officer is death.
If anyone ask how this extreme and unmistakable subordination of the
employed to the employers is brought about, we all know the answer. It is
brought about by hunger and hardness of heart, accelerated by a certain
kind of legislation, of which we have had a good deal lately in England,
but which was almost invariably borrowed from Prussia. Mr. Herbert
Samuel's suggestion that the poor should be able to put their money in
little boxes and not be able to get it out again is a sort of standing
symbol of all the rest. I have forgotten how the poor were going to
benefit eventually by what is for them indistinguishable from dropping
sixpence down a drain. Perhaps they were going to get it back some day;
perhaps when they could produce a hundred coupons out of the Daily Citizen;
perhaps when they got their hair cut; perhaps when they consented to be
inoculated, or trepanned, or circumcised, or something. Germany is full
of this sort of legislation; and if you asked an innocent German, who
honestly believed in it, what it was, he would answer that it was for the
protection of workmen.
And if you asked again "Their protection from what?" you would have the
whole plan and problem of the Servile State plain in front of you.
Whatever notion there is, there is no notion whatever of protecting the
employed person from his employer. Much less is there any idea of his
ever being anywhere except under an employer. Whatever the Capitalist
wants he gets. He may have the sense to want washed and well-fed
labourers rather than dirty and feeble ones, and the restrictions may
happen to exist in the form of laws from the Kaiser or by-laws from the
Krupps. But the Kaiser will not offend the Krupps, and the Krupps will
not offend the Kaiser. Laws of this kind, then, do not attempt to protect
workmen against the injustice of the Capitalist as the English Trade
Unions did. They do not attempt to protect workmen against the injustice
of the State as the mediaeval guilds did. Obviously they cannot protect
workmen against the foreign invader--especially when (as in the comic case
of Belgium) they are imposed by the foreign invader. What then are such
laws designed to protect workmen against? Tigers, rattlesnakes, hyenas?
Oh, my young friends; oh, my Christian brethren, they are designed to
protect this poor person from something which to those of established rank
is more horrid than many hyenas. They are designed, my friends, to
protect a man from himself--from something that the masters of the earth
fear more than famine or war, and which Prussia especially fears as
everything fears that which would certainly be its end. They are meant to
protect a man against himself--that is, they are meant to protect a man
against his manhood.
And if anyone reminds me that there is a Socialist Party in Germany, I
reply that there isn't.
CHESTERTON-UTOPIA OF USERS - Insane Exaggeration