CHESTERTON-UTOPIA OF USERS - THE SERVILE STATE AGAIN
That anarchic future which the more timid Tories professed to fear has
already fallen upon us. We are ruled by ignorant people. But the most
ignorant people in modern Britain are to be found in the upper class, the
middle class, and especially the upper middle class. I do not say it
with the smallest petulance or even distaste; these classes are often
really beneficent in their breeding or their hospitality, or their
humanity to animals.
There is still no better company than the young at the two Universities,
or the best of the old in the Army or some of the other services. Also,
of course, there are exceptions in the matter of learning; real scholars
like Professor Gilbert Murray or Professor Phillimore are not ignorant,
though they are gentlemen. But when one looks up at any mass of the
wealthier and more powerful classes, at the Grand Stand at Epsom, at the
windows of Park-lane, at the people at a full-dress debate or a
fashionable wedding, we shall be safe in saying that they are, for the
most part, the most ill-taught, or untaught, creatures in these islands.
It is indeed their feeble boast that they are not literally illiterate.
They are always saying the ancient barons could not sign their own
names--for they know less of history perhaps than of anything else. The
modern barons, however, can sign their own names--or someone else's for a
change. They can sign their own names; and that is about all they can do.
They cannot face a fact, or follow an argument, or feel a tradition; but,
least of all, can they, upon any persuasion, read through a plain
impartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written to
soothe their panic or to please their pride. Looking up at these seats of
the mighty I can only say, with something of despair, what Robert Lowe
said of the enfranchised workmen: "We must educate our masters."
I do not mean this as paradoxical, or even as symbolical; it is simply
tame and true. The modern English rich know nothing about things, not
even about the things to which they appeal. Compared with them, the poor
are pretty sure to get some enlightenment, even if they cannot get liberty;
they must at least be technical. An old apprentice learnt a trade, even
if his master came like any Turk and banged him most severely. The old
housewife knew which side her bread was buttered, even if it were so thin
as to be almost imperceptible. The old sailor knew the ropes; even if he
knew the rope's end. Consequently, when any of these revolted, they were
concerned with things they knew, pains, practical impossibilities, or the
personal record.
The apprentice cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with the
precision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give.
The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much or
how little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defied
discipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in the sense
of falling off the rigging or letting the water into the hold. Similarly
the modern proletariat, however little it may know, knows what it is
talking about.
But the curious thing about the educated class is that exactly what it
does not know is what it is talking about. I mean that it is startlingly
ignorant of those special things which it is supposed to invoke and keep
inviolate. The things that workmen invoke may be uglier, more acrid, more
sordid; but they know all about them. They know enough arithmetic to know
that prices have risen; the kind Levantine gentleman is always there to
make them fully understand the meaning of an interest sum; and the
landlord will define Rent as rigidly as Ricardo. The doctors can always
tell them the Latin for an empty stomach; and when the poor man is treated
for the time with some human respect (by the Coronet) it almost seems a
pity he is not alive to hear how legally he died.
Against this bitter shrewdness and bleak realism in the suffering classes
it is commonly supposed that the more leisured classes stand for certain
legitimate ideas which also have their place in life; such as history,
reverence, the love of the land. Well, it might be no bad thing to have
something, even if it were something narrow, that testified to the truths
of religion or patriotism. But such narrow things in the past have always
at least known their own history; the bigot knew his catechism; the
patriot knew his way home. The astonishing thing about the modern rich is
their real and sincere ignorance--especially of the things they like.
Take the most topical case you can find in any drawing-room: Belfast.
Ulster is most assuredly a matter of history; and there is a sense in
which Orange resistance is a matter of religion. But go and ask any of
the five hundred fluttering ladies at a garden party (who find Carson so
splendid and Belfast so thrilling) what it is all about, when it began,
where it came from, what it really maintains? What was the history of
Ulster? What is the religion of Belfast? Do any of them know where
Ulstermen were in Grattan's time; do any of them know what was the
"Protestantism" that came from Scotland to that isle; could any of them
tell what part of the old Catholic system it really denied?
It was generally something that the fluttering ladies find in their own
Anglican churches every Sunday. It were vain to ask them to state the
doctrines of the Calvinist creed; they could not state the doctrines of
their own creed. It were vain to tell them to read the history of
Ireland; they have never read the history of England. It would matter as
little that they do not know these things, as that I do not know German;
but then German is not the only thing I am supposed to know. History and
ritual are the only things aristocrats are supposed to know; and they
don't know them.
I am not fed on turtle soup and Tokay because of my exquisite intimacy
with the style and idiom of Heine and Richter. The English governing
class is fed on turtle soup and Tokay to represent the past, of which it
is literally ignorant, as I am of German irregular verbs; and to represent
the religious traditions of the State, when it does not know three words
of theology, as I do not know three words of German.
This is the last insult offered by the proud to the humble. They rule
them by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. They smile and smile;
but they have forgotten the secret.
The curious position of the Krupp firm in the awful story developing
around us is not quite sufficiently grasped. There is a kind of academic
clarity of definition which does not see the proportions of things for
which everything falls within a definition, and nothing ever breaks beyond
it. To this type of mind (which is valuable when set to its special and
narrow work) there is no such thing as an exception that proves the rule.
If I vote for confiscating some usurer's millions I am doing, they say,
precisely what I should be doing if I took pennies out of a blind man's
hat. They are both denials of the principle of private property, and are
equally right and equally wrong, according to our view of that principle.
I should find a great many distinctions to draw in such a matter. First,
I should say that taking a usurer's money by proper authority is not
robbery, but recovery of stolen goods. Second, I should say that even if
there were no such thing as personal property, there would still be such a
thing as personal dignity, and different modes of robbery would diminish
it in very different ways. Similarly, there is a truth, but only a
half-truth, in the saying that all modern Powers alike rely on the
Capitalist and make war on the lines of Capitalism. It is true, and it is
disgraceful. But it is not equally true and equally disgraceful. It is
not true that Montenegro is as much ruled by financiers as Prussia, just
as it is not true that as many men in the Kaiserstrasse, in Berlin, wear
long knives in their belts as wear them in the neighbourhood of the Black
Mountain. It is not true that every peasant from one of the old Russian
communes is the immediate servant of a rich man, as is every employee of
Mr. Rockefeller. It is as false as the statement that no poor people in
America can read or write. There is an element of Capitalism in all
modern countries, as there is an element of illiteracy in all modern
countries. There are some who think that the number of our
fellow-citizens who can sign their names ought to comfort us for the
extreme fewness of those who have anything in the bank to sign it for, but
I am not one of these.
In any case, the position of Krupp has certain interesting aspects. When
we talk of Army contractors as among the base but active actualities of
war, we commonly mean that while the contractor benefits by the war, the
war, on the whole, rather suffers by the contractor. We regard this
unsoldierly middleman with disgust, or great anger, or contemptuous
acquiescence, or commercial dread and silence, according to our personal
position and character. But we nowhere think of him as having anything to
do with fighting in the final sense. Those worthy and wealthy persons who
employ women's labour at a few shillings a week do not do it to obtain the
best clothes for the soldiers, but to make a sufficient profit on the
worst. The only argument is whether such clothes are just good enough for
the soldiers, or are too bad for anybody or anything. We tolerate the
contractor, or we do not tolerate him; but no one admires him especially,
and certainly no one gives him any credit for any success in the war.
Confessedly or unconfessedly we knock his profits, not only off what goes
to the taxpayer, but what goes to the soldier. We know the Army will not
fight any better, at least, because the clothes they wear were stitched by
wretched women who could hardly see; or because their boots were made by
harassed helots, who never had time to think. In war-time it is very
widely confessed that Capitalism is not a good way of ruling a patriotic
or self-respecting people, and all sorts of other things, from strict
State organisation to quite casual personal charity, are hastily
substituted for it. It is recognised that the "great employer," nine
times out of ten, is no more than the schoolboy or the page who pilfers
tarts and sweets from the dishes as they go up and down. How angry one is
with him depends on temperament, on the stage of the dinner--also on the
number of tarts.
Now here comes in the real and sinister significance of Krupps. There are
many capitalists in Europe as rich, as vulgar, as selfish, as rootedly
opposed to any fellowship of the fortunate and unfortunate. But there is
no other capitalist who claims, or can pretend to claim, that he has very
appreciably helped the activities of his people in war. I will suppose
that Lipton did not deserve the very severe criticisms made on his firm by
Mr. Justice Darling; but, however blameless he was, nobody can suppose
that British soldiers would charge better with the bayonet because they
had some particular kind of groceries inside them. But Krupp can make a
plausible claim that the huge infernal machines to which his country owes
nearly all of its successes could only have been produced under the
equally infernal conditions of the modern factory and the urban and
proletarian civilisation. That is why the victory of Germany would be
simply the victory of Krupp, and the victory of Krupp would be simply the
victory of Capitalism. There, and there alone, Capitalism would be able
to point to something done successfully for a whole nation--done (as it
would certainly maintain) better than small free States or natural
democracies could have done it. I confess I think the modern Germans
morally second-rate, and I think that even war, when it is conducted most
successfully by machinery, is second-rate war. But this second-rate war
will become not only the first but the only brand, if the cannon of Krupp
should conquer; and, what is very much worse, it will be the only
intelligent answer that any capitalist has yet given against our case that
Capitalism is as wasteful and as weak as it is certainly wicked. I do not
fear any such finality, for I happen to believe in the kind of men who
fight best with bayonets and whose fathers hammered their own pikes for
the French Revolution.
Among the cloudy and symbolic stories in the beginning of the Bible there
is one about a tower built with such vertical energy as to take a hold on
heaven, but ruined and resulting only in a confusion of tongues. The
story might be interpreted in many ways--religiously, as meaning that
spiritual insolence starts all human separations; irreligiously, as
meaning that the inhuman heavens grudge man his magnificent dream; or
merely satirically as suggesting that all attempts to reach a higher
agreement always end in more disagreement than there was before. It might
be taken by the partially intelligent Kensitite as a judgment on Latin
Christians for talking Latin. It might be taken by the somewhat less
intelligent Professor Harnack as a final proof that all prehistoric
humanity talked German. But when all was said, the symbol would remain
that a plain tower, as straight as a sword, as simple as a lily, did
nevertheless produce the deepest divisions that have been known among men.
In any case we of the world in revolt--Syndicalists, Socialists, Guild
Socialists, or whatever we call ourselves--have no need to worry about the
scripture or the allegory. We have the reality. For whatever reason,
what is said to have happened to the people of Shinak has precisely and
practically happened to us.
None of us who have known Socialists (or rather, to speak more truthfully,
none of us who have been Socialists) can entertain the faintest doubt that
a fine intellectual sincerity lay behind what was called "L'Internationale."
It was really felt that Socialism was universal like arithmetic. It
was too true for idiom or turn of phrase. In the formula of Karl Marx men
could find that frigid fellowship which they find when they agree that two
and two make four. It was almost as broadminded as a religious dogma.
Yet this universal language has not succeeded, at a moment of crisis, in
imposing itself on the whole world. Nay, it has not, at the moment of
crisis, succeeded in imposing itself on its own principal champions.
Herve is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking French. Bebel is
not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking German. Blatchford is not
talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking English, and jolly good English,
too. I do not know whether French or Flemish was Vandervelde's nursery
speech, but I am quite certain he will know more of it after this struggle
than he knew before. In short, whether or no there be a new union of
hearts, there has really and truly been a new division of tongues.
How are we to explain this singular truth, even if we deplore it? I
dismiss with fitting disdain the notion that it is a mere result of
military terrorism or snobbish social pressure. The Socialist leaders of
modern Europe are among the most sincere men in history; and their
Nationalist note in this affair has had the ring of their sincerity. I
will not waste time on the speculation that Vandervelde is bullied by
Belgian priests; or that Blatchford is frightened of the horse-guards
outside Whitehall. These great men support the enthusiasm of their
conventional countrymen because they share it; and they share it because
there is (though perhaps only at certain great moments) such a thing as
pure democracy.
Timour the Tartar, I think, celebrated some victory with a tower built
entirely out of human skulls; perhaps he thought that would reach to
heaven. But there is no cement in such building; the veins and ligaments
that hold humanity together have long fallen away; the skulls will roll
impotently at a touch; and ten thousand more such trophies could only make
the tower taller and crazier. I think the modern official apparatus of
"votes" is very like that tottering monument. I think the Tartar "counted
heads," like an electioneering agent. Sometimes when I have seen from the
platform of some paltry party meeting the rows and rows of grinning
upturned faces, I have felt inclined to say, as the poet does in the "The
Vision of Sin"--"Welcome fellow-citizens, Hollow hearts and empty heads."
Not that the people were personally hollow or empty, but they had come on
a hollow and empty business: to help the good Mr. Binks to strengthen the
Insurance Act against the wicked Mr. Jinks who would only promise to
fortify the Insurance Act. That night it did not blow the democratic gale.
Yet it can blow on these as on others; and when it does blow men learn
many things. I, for one, am not above learning them.
The Marxian dogma which simplifies all conflicts to the Class War is so
much nobler a thing than the nose-counting of the parliaments that one
must apologise for the comparison. And yet there is a comparison. When
we used to say that there were so many thousands of Socialists in Germany,
we were counting by skulls. When we said that the majority consisting of
Proletarians would be everywhere opposed to the minority, consisting of
Capitalists, we were counting by skulls. Why, yes; if all men's heads
had been cut off from the rest of them, as they were by the good sense and
foresight of Timour the Tartar; if they had no hearts or bellies to be
moved; no hand that flies up to ward off a weapon, no foot that can feel a
familiar soil--if things were so the Marxian calculation would be not only
complete but correct. As we know to-day, the Marxian calculation is
complete, but it is not correct.
Now, this is the answer to the questions of some kind critics, whose
actual words I have not within reach at the moment, about whether my
democracy meant the rule of the majority over the minority. It means the
rule of the rule--the rule of the rule over the exception. When a nation
finds a soul it clothes it with a body, and does verily act like one
living thing. There is nothing to be said about those who are out of it,
except that they are out of it. After talking about it in the abstract
for decades, this is Democracy, and it is marvellous in our eyes. It is
not the difference between ninetynine persons and a hundred persons; it is
one person--the people. I do not know or care how many or how few of the
Belgians like or dislike the pictures of Wiertz. They could not be either
justified or condemned by a mere majority of Belgians. But I am very
certain that the defiance to Prussia did not come from a majority of
Belgians. It came from Belgium one and indivisible--atheists, priests,
princes of the blood, Frenchified shopkeepers, Flemish boors, men, women,
and children, and the sooner we understand that this sort of thing can
happen the better for us. For it is this spontaneous spiritual fellowship
of communities under certain conditions to which the four or five most
independent minds of Europe willingly bear witness to-day.
But is there no exception: is there no one faithful among the unfaithful
found? Is no great Socialist politician still untouched by the patriotism
of the vulgar? Why, yes; the rugged Ramsay MacDonald, scarred with a
hundred savage fights against the capitalist parties, still lifts up his
horny hand for peace. What further need have we of witnesses? I, for my
part, am quite satisfied, and do not doubt that Mr. MacDonald will be as
industrious in damping down democracy in this form as in every other.
Heaven forbid that I should once more wade in those swamps of logomachy
and tautology in which the old guard of the Determinists still seem to be
floundering. The question of Fate and Free Will can never attain to a
conclusion, though it may attain to a conviction. The shortest
philosophic summary is that both cause and choice are ultimate ideas
within us, and that if one man denies choice because it seems contrary to
cause, the other man has quite as much right to deny cause because it
seems contrary to choice. The shortest ethical summary is that
Determinism either affects conduct or it does not. If it does not, it is
morally not worth preaching; if it does, it must affect conduct in the
direction of impotence and submission. A writer in the "Clarion" says
that the reformer cannot help trying to reform, nor the Conservative help
his Conservatism. But suppose the reformer tries to reform the
Conservative and turn him into another reformer? Either he can, in which
case Determinism has made no difference at all, or he can't, in which case
it can only have made reformers more hopeless and Conservatives more
obstinate. And the shortest practical and political summary is that
working men, most probably, will soon be much too busy using their Free
Will to stop to prove that they have got it. Nevertheless, I like to
watch the Determinist in the "Clarion" Cockpit every week, as busy as a
squirrel--in a cage. But being myself a squirrel (leaping lightly from
bough to bough) and preferring the form of activity which occasionally
ends in nuts, I should not intervene in the matter even indirectly, except
upon a practical point. And the point I have in mind is practical to the
extent of deadly peril. It is another of the numerous new ways in which
the restless rich, now walking the world with an awful insomnia, may
manage to catch us napping.
There are two letters in the "Clarion" this week which in various ways
interest me very much. One is concerned to defend Darwin against the
scientific revolt against him that was led by Samuel Butler, and among
other things it calls Bernard Shaw a back number. Well, most certainly
"The Origin of Species" is a back number, in so far as any honest and
interesting book ever can be; but in pure philosophy nothing can be out of
date, since the universe must be a mystery even to the believer. There is,
however, one condition of things in which I do call it relevant to
describe somebody as behind the times. That is when the man in question,
thinking of some state of affairs that has passed away, is really helping
the very things he would like to hinder. The principles cannot alter, but
the problems can. Thus, I should call a man behind the times who, in the
year 1872, pleaded for the peaceful German peasants against the triumphant
militarism of Napoleon. Or I should call a man out of date who, in the
year 1892, wished for a stronger Navy to compete with the Navy of Holland,
because it had once swept the sea and sailed up the Thames. And I
certainly call a man or a movement out of date that, in the year 1914,
when we few are fighting a giant machine, strengthened with all material
wealth and worked with all the material sciences, thinks that our chief
danger is from an excess of moral and religious responsibility. He
reminds me of Mr. Snodgrass, who had the presence of mind to call out
"Fire!" when Mr. Pickwick fell through the ice.
The other letter consists of the usual wiredrawn argument for fatalism.
Man cannot imagine the universe being created, and therefore is "compelled
by his reason" to think the universe without beginning or end, which (I
may remark) he cannot imagine either. But the letter ends with something
much more ominous than bad metaphysics. Here, in the middle of the
"Clarion," in the centre of a clean and combative democratic sheet, I meet
again my deplorable old acquaintance, the scientific criminologist. "The
so-called evil-doer should not be punished for his acts, but restrained."
In forty-eight hours I could probably get a petition to that effect signed
by millionaires. A short time ago a Bill was introduced to hold
irresponsible and "restrain" a whole new class of people, who were
"incapable of managing their affairs with prudence." Read the supporters'
names on the back of that Bill, and see what sort of democrats they were.
Now, clearing our heads of what is called popular science (which means
going to sleep to a lullaby of long words), let us use our own brains a
little, and ask ourselves what is the real difference between punishing a
man and restraining him. The material difference may be any or none; for
punishment may be very mild, and restraint may be very ruthless. The man,
of course, must dislike one as much as the other, or it would not be
necessary to restrain him at all. And I assure you he will get no great
glow of comfort out of your calling him irresponsible after you have made
him impotent. A man does not necessarily feel more free and easy in a
straight waistcoat than in a stone cell. The moral difference is that a
man can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen; while he can
be constrained because he is born a slave. But one arresting and
tremendous difference towers over all these doubtful or arguable
differences. There is one respect, vital to all our liberties and all our
lives, in which the new restraint would be different from the old
punishment. It is of this that the plutocrats will take advantage.
The perfectly plain difference is this. All punishment, even the most
horrible, proceeds upon the assumption that the extent of the evil is
known, and that a certain amount of expiation goes with it. Even if you
hang the man, you cannot hang him twice. Even if you burn him, you cannot
burn him for a month. And in the case of all ordinary imprisonments, the
whole aim of free institutions from the beginning of the world has been to
insist that a man shall be convicted of a definite crime and confined for
a definite period. But the moment you admit this notion of medical
restraint, you must in fairness admit that it may go on as long as the
authorities choose to think (or say) that it ought to go on. The man's
punishment refers to the past, which is supposed to have been investigated,
and which, in some degree at least, has been investigated. But his
restraint refers to the future, which his doctors, keepers, and wardens
have yet to investigate. The simple result will be that, in the
scientific Utopia of the "Clarion," men like Mann or Syme or Larkin will
not be put in prison because of what they have done. They will be kept in
prison because of what they might do. Indeed, the builders of the new
tyranny have already come very near to avowing this scientific and
futurist method. When the lawyers tried to stop the "Suffragette" from
appearing at all, they practically said: "We do not know your next week's
crime, because it isn't committed yet; but we are scientifically certain
you have the criminal type. And by the sublime and unalterable laws of
heredity, all your poor little papers will inherit it."
This is a purely practical question; and that is why I insist on it, even
in such strenuous times. The writers on the "Clarion" have a perfect
right to think Christianity is the foe of freedom, or even that the
stupidity and tyranny of the present Government is due to the monkish
mysticism of Lord Morley and Mr. John M. Robertson. They have a right to
think the theory of Determinism as true as Calvin thought it. But I do
not like seeing them walk straight into the enormous iron trap set open by
the Capitalists, who find it convenient to make our law even more lawless
than it is. The rich men want a scientist to write them a lettre de
cachet as a doctor writes a prescription. And so they wish to seal up in
a public gaol the scandals of a private asylum. Yes; the writers on the
"Clarion" are indeed claiming irresponsibility for human beings. But it
is the governments that will be irresponsible, not the governed.
But I will tell them one small secret in conclusion. There is nothing
whatever wrong in the ancient and universal idea of Punishment--except
that we are not punishing the right people.
One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that his
slightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, and
hypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbs
or prepositions, as well as in what he says, which is generally bad enough.
Thus I see that a Nonconformist pastor in Bromley has been talking about
the pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common soldiers. This
is how he talks about it. He is reported as having said, "By the help of
God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped." How one could write a
volume on that sentence, a great thick volume called "The Decline of the
English Middle Class." In taste, in style, in philosophy, in feeling, in
political project, the horrors of it are as unfathomable as hell.
First, to begin with the trifle, note something slipshod and vague in the
mere verbiage, typical of those who prefer a catchword to a creed. "This
cigarette business" might mean anything. It might mean Messrs. Salmon
and Gluckstein's business. But the pastor at Bromley will not interfere
with that, for the indignation of his school of thought, even when it is
sincere, always instinctively and unconsciously swerves aside from
anything that is rich and powerful like the partners in a big business,
and strikes instead something that is poor and nameless like the soldiers
in a trench. Nor does the expression make clear who "they" are--whether
the inhabitants of Britain or the inhabitants of Bromley, or the
inhabitants of this one crazy tabernacle in Bromley; nor is it evident how
it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it. All these
things are trifles compared to the more terrible offences of the phrase;
but they are not without their social and historical interest. About the
beginning of the nineteenth century the wealthy Puritan class, generally
the class of the employers of labour, took a line of argument which was
narrow, but not nonsensical. They saw the relation of rich and poor quite
coldly as a contract, but they saw that a contract holds both ways. The
Puritans of the middle class, in short, did in some sense start talking
and thinking for themselves. They are still talking. They have long ago
left off thinking. They talk about the loyalty of workmen to their
employers, and God knows what rubbish; and the first small certainty about
the reverend gentleman whose sentence I have quoted is that his brain
stopped working as a clock stops, years and years ago.
Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These people
are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient
training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why,
then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the
rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser; and
so he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe that
anyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyon
straddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like that
about a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette
business stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the whole
company of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of the
Chivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flaming
patience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped.
Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone to
that a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?
Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, which
rises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live young
men are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever and hunger
and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword blades and
bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (I
think that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt by
cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found in
the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for the health is a very
tenable opinion to which the minister is quite entitled. If he happens to
think that the youth of Bromley smoke too many cigarettes, and that he has
any influence in urging on them the unhealthiness of the habit, I should
not blame him if he gave sermons or lectures about it (with magic-lantern
slides), so long as it was in Bromley and about Bromley. Cigarettes may
be bad for the health: bombs and bayonets and even barbed wire are not
good for the health. I never met a doctor who recommended any of them.
But the trouble with this sort of man is that he cannot adjust himself to
the scale of things. He would do very good service if he would go among
the rich aristocratic ladies and tell them not to take drugs in a chronic
sense, as people take opium in China. But he would be doing very bad
service if he were to go among the doctors and nurses on the field and
tell them not to give drugs, as they give morphia in a hospital. But it
is the whole hypothesis of war, it is its very nature and first principle,
that the man in the trench is almost as much a suffering and abnormal
person as the man in the hospital. Hit or unhit, conqueror or conquered,
he is, by nature of the case, having less pleasure than is proper and
natural to a man.
Fourth (for I need not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that can
regard beer or tobacco as in some way evil and unseemly in themselves),
there is the most important element in this strange outbreak; at least,
the most dangerous and the most important for us. There is that main
feature in the degradation of the old middle class: the utter
disappearance of its old appetite for liberty. Here there is no question
of whether the men are to smoke cigarettes, or the women choose to send
cigarettes, or even that the officers or doctors choose to allow
cigarettes. The thing is to cease, and we may note one of the most
recurrent ideas of the servile State: it is mentioned in the passive mood.
It must be stopped, and we must not even ask who has stopped it!
CHESTERTON-UTOPIA OF USERS - THE SERVILE STATE AGAIN