Utopia of Usurers and other Essays

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

CONTENTS

A Song of Swords

Utopia of Usurers I. Art and Advertisement II. Letters and the New Laureates III. Unbusinesslike Business IV. The War on Holidays V. The Church of the Servile State VI. Science and the Eugenists VII. The Evolution of the Prison VIII. The Lash for Labour IX. The Mask of Socialism

The EscapeThe New RaidThe New NameA Workman's History of EnglandThe French Revolution and the IrishLiberalism: A SampleThe Fatigue of Fleet StreetThe Amnesty for AggressionRevive the Court JesterThe Art of Missing the PointThe Servile State AgainThe Empire of the IgnorantThe Symbolism of KruppThe Tower of BebelA Real DancerThe Dregs of PuritanismThe Tyranny of Bad JournalismThe Poetry of the Revolution

A SONG OF SWORDS

"A drove of cattle came into a village called Swords;and was stopped by the rioters. "--Daily Paper. 

In the place called Swords on the Irish roadIt is told for a new renownHow we held the horns of the cattle, and howWe will hold the horns of the devils nowEre the lord of hell with the horn on his browIs crowned in Dublin town. 

Light in the East and light in the West, And light on the cruel lords, On the souls that suddenly all men knew, And the green flag flew and the red flag flew, And many a wheel of the world stopped, too, When the cattle were stopped at Swords. 

Be they sinners or less than saintsThat smite in the street for rage, We know where the shame shines bright; we knowYou that they smite at, you their foe, Lords of the lawless wage and low, This is your lawful wage. 

You pinched a child to a torture priceThat you dared not name in words;So black a jest was the silver bitThat your own speech shook for the shame of it, And the coward was plain as a cow they hitWhen the cattle have strayed at Swords. 

The wheel of the torrent of wives went roundTo break men's brotherhood;You gave the good Irish blood to greaseThe clubs of your country's enemies;you saw the brave man beat to the knees:And you saw that it was good. 

The rope of the rich is long and long--The longest of hangmen's cords;But the kings and crowds are holding their breath, In a giant shadow o'er all beneathWhere God stands holding the scales of DeathBetween the cattle and Swords. 

Haply the lords that hire and lendThe lowest of all men's lords, Who sell their kind like kine at a fair, Will find no head of their cattle there;But faces of men where cattle were:Faces of men--and Swords. 

UTOPIA OF USURERS

I. Art and Advertisement

I propose, subject to the patience of the reader, to devote two or threearticles to prophecy. Like all healthy-minded prophets, sacred andprofane, I can only prophesy when I am in a rage and think things lookugly for everybody. And like all healthy-minded prophets, I prophesy inthe hope that my prophecy may not come true. For the prediction made bythe true soothsayer is like the warning given by a good doctor. And thedoctor has really triumphed when the patient he condemned to death hasrevived to life. The threat is justified at the very moment when it isfalsified. Now I have said again and again (and I shall continue to sayagain and again on all the most inappropriate occasions) that we must hitCapitalism, and hit it hard, for the plain and definite reason that it isgrowing stronger. Most of the excuses which serve the capitalists asmasks are, of course, the excuses of hypocrites. They lie when they claimphilanthropy; they no more feel any particular love of men than Albu feltan affection for Chinamen. They lie when they say they have reached theirposition through their own organising ability. They generally have to paymen to organise the mine, exactly as they pay men to go down it. Theyoften lie about the present wealth, as they generally lie about their pastpoverty. But when they say that they are going in for a "constructivesocial policy, " they do not lie. They really are going in for aconstructive social policy. And we must go in for an equally destructivesocial policy; and destroy, while it is still half-constructed, theaccursed thing which they construct. 

The Example of the Arts

Now I propose to take, one after another, certain aspects and departmentsof modern life, and describe what I think they will be like in thisparadise of plutocrats, this Utopia of gold and brass in which the greatstory of England seems so likely to end. I propose to say what I thinkour new masters, the mere millionaires, will do with certain humaninterests and institutions, such as art, science, jurisprudence, orreligion--unless we strike soon enough to prevent them. And for the sakeof argument I will take in this article the example of the arts. 

Most people have seen a picture called "Bubbles, " which is used for theadvertisement of a celebrated soap, a small cake of which is introducedinto the pictorial design. And anybody with an instinct for design (thecaricaturist of the Daily Herald, for instance), will guess that it wasnot originally a part of the design. He will see that the cake of soapdestroys the picture as a picture; as much as if the cake of soap had beenused to Scrub off the paint. Small as it is, it breaks and confuses thewhole balance of objects in the composition. I offer no judgment hereupon Millais's action in the matter; in fact, I do not know what it was. The important point for me at the moment is that the picture was notpainted for the soap, but the soap added to the picture. And the spiritof the corrupting change which has separated us from that Victorian epochcan be best seen in this: that the Victorian atmosphere, with all itsfaults, did not permit such a style of patronage to pass as a matter ofcourse. Michael Angelo may have been proud to have helped an emperor or apope; though, indeed, I think he was prouder than they were on his ownaccount. I do not believe Sir John Millais was proud of having helped asoap-boiler. I do not say he thought it wrong; but he was not proud of it. And that marks precisely the change from his time to our own. Ourmerchants have really adopted the style of merchant princes. They havebegun openly to dominate the civilisation of the State, as the emperorsand popes openly dominated in Italy. In Millais's time, broadly speaking, art was supposed to mean good art; advertisement was supposed to meaninferior art. The head of a black man, painted to advertise somebody'sblacking, could be a rough symbol, like an inn sign. The black man hadonly to be black enough. An artist exhibiting the picture of a negro wasexpected to know that a black man is not so black as he is painted. Hewas expected to render a thousand tints of grey and brown and violet: forthere is no such thing as a black man just as there is no such thing as awhite man. A fairly clear line separated advertisement from art. 

The First Effect

I should say the first effect of the triumph of the capitalist (if weallow him to triumph) will be that that line of demarcation will entirelydisappear. There will be no art that might not just as well beadvertisement. I do not necessarily mean that there will be no good art;much of it might be, much of it already is, very good art. You may put it, if you please, in the form that there has been a vast improvement inadvertisements. Certainly there would be nothing surprising if the headof a negro advertising Somebody's Blacking now adays were finished with ascareful and subtle colours as one of the old and superstitious painterswould have wasted on the negro king who brought gifts to Christ. But theimprovement of advertisements is the degradation of artists. It is theirdegradation for this clear and vital reason: that the artist will work, not only to please the rich, but only to increase their riches; which is aconsiderable step lower. After all, it was as a human being that a popetook pleasure in a cartoon of Raphael or a prince took pleasure in astatuette of Cellini. The prince paid for the statuette; but he did notexpect the statuette to pay him. It is my impression that no cake of soapcan be found anywhere in the cartoons which the Pope ordered of Raphael. And no one who knows the small-minded cynicism of our plutocracy, itssecrecy, its gambling spirit, its contempt of conscience, can doubt thatthe artist-advertiser will often be assisting enterprises over which hewill have no moral control, and of which he could feel no moral approval. He will be working to spread quack medicines, queer investments; and willwork for Marconi instead of Medici. And to this base ingenuity he willhave to bend the proudest and purest of the virtues of the intellect, thepower to attract his brethren, and the noble duty of praise. For thatpicture by Millais is a very allegorical picture. It is almost a prophecyof what uses are awaiting the beauty of the child unborn. The praise willbe of a kind that may correctly be called soap; and the enterprises of akind that may truly be described as Bubbles. 

II. Letters and the New Laureates

In these articles I only take two or three examples of the first andfundamental fact of our time. I mean the fact that the capitalists of ourcommunity are becoming quite openly the kings of it. In my last (andfirst) article, I took the case of Art and advertisement. I pointed outthat Art must be growing worse--merely because advertisement is growingbetter. In those days Millais condescended to Pears' soap. In these daysI really think it would be Pears who condescended to Millais. But here Iturn to an art I know more about, that of journalism. Only in my ease theart verges on artlessness. 

The great difficulty with the English lies in the absence of something onemay call democratic imagination. We find it easy to realise an individual, but very hard to realise that the great masses consist of individuals. Our system has been aristocratic: in the special sense of there being onlya few actors on the stage. And the back scene is kept quite dark, thoughit is really a throng of faces. Home Rule tended to be not so much theIrish as the Grand Old Man. The Boer War tended not to be so much SouthAfrica as simply "Joe. " And it is the amusing but distressing fact thatevery class of political leadership, as it comes to the front in its turn, catches the rays of this isolating lime-light; and becomes a smallaristocracy. Certainly no one has the aristocratic complaint so badly asthe Labour Party. At the recent Congress, the real difference betweenLarkin and the English Labour leaders was not so much in anything right orwrong in what he said, as in something elemental and even mystical in theway he suggested a mob. But it must be plain, even to those who agreewith the more official policy, that for Mr. Havelock Wilson the principalquestion was Mr. Havelock Wilson; and that Mr. Sexton was mainlyconsidering the dignity and fine feelings of Mr. Sexton. You may say theywere as sensitive as aristocrats, or as sulky as babies; the point is thatthe feeling was personal. But Larkin, like Danton, not only talks liketen thousand men talking, but he also has some of the carelessness of thecolossus of Arcis; "Que mon nom soit fletri, que la France soit libre. "

A Dance of Degradation

It is needless to say that this respecting of persons has led all theother parties a dance of degradation. We ruin South Africa because itwould be a slight on Lord Gladstone to save South Africa. We have a badarmy, because it would be a snub to Lord Haldane to have a good army. And no Tory is allowed to say "Marconi" for fear Mr. George should say"Kynoch. " But this curious personal element, with its appalling lack ofpatriotism, has appeared in a new and curious form in another departmentof life; the department of literature, especially periodical literature. And the form it takes is the next example I shall give of the way in whichthe capitalists are now appearing, more and more openly, as the mastersand princes of the community. 

I will take a Victorian instance to mark the change; as I did in the caseof the advertisement of "Bubbles. " It was said in my childhood, by themore apoplectic and elderly sort of Tory, that W. E. Gladstone was only aFree Trader because he had a partnership in Gilbey's foreign wines. Thiswas, no doubt, nonsense; but it had a dim symbolic, or mainly prophetic, truth in it. It was true, to some extent even then, and it has beenincreasingly true since, that the statesman was often an ally of thesalesman; and represented not only a nation of shopkeepers, but oneparticular shop. But in Gladstone's time, even if this was true, it wasnever the whole truth; and no one would have endured it being the admittedtruth. The politician was not solely an eloquent and persuasive bagmantravelling for certain business men; he was bound to mix even hiscorruption with some intelligible ideals and rules of policy. And theproof of it is this: that at least it was the statesman who bulked largein the public eye; and his financial backer was entirely in the background. Old gentlemen might choke over their port, with the moral certainty thatthe Prime Minister had shares in a wine merchant's. But the old gentlemanwould have died on the spot if the wine merchant had really been made asimportant as the Prime Minister. If it had been Sir Walter Gilbey whomDisraeli denounced, or Punch caricatured; if Sir Walter Gilbey's favouritecollars (with the design of which I am unacquainted) had grown as large asthe wings of an archangel; if Sir Walter Gilbey had been credited withsuccessfully eliminating the British Oak with his little hatchet; if, nearthe Temple and the Courts of Justice, our sight was struck by a majesticstatue of a wine merchant; or if the earnest Conservative lady who threw agingerbread-nut at the Premier had directed it towards the wine merchantinstead, the shock to Victorian England would have been very great indeed. 

Haloes for Employers

Now something very like that is happening; the mere wealthy employer isbeginning to have not only the power but some of the glory. I have seenin several magazines lately, and magazines of a high class, the appearanceof a new kind of article. Literary men are being employed to praise a bigbusiness man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only findpolitical reasons for the commercial schemes--that they have done for sometime past--they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers. They describe the capitalist's brain of steel and heart of gold in a waythat Englishmen hitherto have been at least in the habit of reserving forromantic figures like Garibaldi or Gordon. In one excellent magazine Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who, when he likes, can write on letters like a man ofletters, has some purple pages of praise of Sir Joseph Lyons--the man whoruns those teashop places. He incidentally brought in a delightfulpassage about the beautiful souls possessed by some people called Salmonand Gluckstein. I think I like best the passage where he said thatLyons's charming social acaccomplishments included a talent for "imitatinga Jew. " The article is accompanied with a large and somewhat leeringportrait of that shopkeeper, which makes the parlour-trick in questionparticularly astonishing. Another literary man, who certainly ought toknow better, wrote in another paper a piece of hero-worship about Mr. Selfridge. No doubt the fashion will spread, and the art of words, aspolished and pointed by Ruskin or Meredith, will be perfected yet furtherto explore the labyrinthine heart of Harrod; or compare the simplestoicism of Marshall with the saintly charm of Snelgrove. 

Any man can be praised--and rightly praised. If he only stands on twolegs he does something a cow cannot do. If a rich man can manage to standon two legs for a reasonable time, it is called self-control. If he hasonly one leg, it is called (with some truth) self-sacrifice. I could saysomething nice (and true) about every man I have ever met. Therefore, Ido not doubt I could find something nice about Lyons or Selfridge if Isearched for it. But I shall not. The nearest postman or cab-man willprovide me with just the same brain of steel and heart of gold as theseunlucky lucky men. But I do resent the whole age of patronage beingrevived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath, nor led us into any battle. 

III. Unbusinesslike Business

The fairy tales we were all taught did not, like the history we were alltaught, consist entirely of lies. Parts of the tale of "Puss in Boots" or"Jack and the Beanstalk" may strike the realistic eye as a little unlikelyand out of the common way, so to speak; but they contain some very solidand very practical truths. For instance, it may be noted that both in"Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" if I remember aright, theogre was not only an ogre but also a magician. And it will generally befound that in all such popular narratives, the king, if he is a wickedking, is generally also a wizard. Now there is a very vital human truthenshrined in this. Bad government, like good government, is a spiritualthing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairytales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, the great employer. Thesight of a millionaire is seldom, in the ordinary sense, an enchantingsight: nevertheless, he is in his way an enchanter. As they say in thegushing articles about him in the magazines, he is a fascinatingpersonality. So is a snake. At least he is fascinating to rabbits; andso is the millionaire to the rabbit-witted sort of people that ladies andgentlemen have allowed themselves to become. He does, in a manner, cast aspell, such as that which imprisoned princes and princesses under theshapes of falcons or stags. He has truly turned men into sheep, as Circeturned them into swine. 

Now, the chief of the fairy tales, by which he gains this glory andglamour, is a certain hazy association he has managed to create betweenthe idea of bigness and the idea of practicality. Numbers of therabbit-witted ladies and gentlemen do really think, in spite of themselvesand their experience, that so long as a shop has hundreds of differentdoors and a great many hot and unhealthy underground departments (theymust be hot; this is very important), and more people than would be neededfor a man-of-war, or crowded cathedral, to say: "This way, madam, " and"The next article, sir, " it follows that the goods are good. In short, they hold that the big businesses are businesslike. They are not. Anyhousekeeper in a truthful mood, that is to say, any housekeeper in a badtemper, will tell you that they are not. But housekeepers, too, are human, and therefore inconsistent and complex; and they do not always stick totruth and bad temper. They are also affected by this queer idolatry ofthe enormous and elaborate; and cannot help feeling that anything socomplicated must go like clockwork. But complexity is no guarantee ofaccuracy--in clockwork or in anything else. A clock can be as wrong asthe human head; and a clock can stop, as suddenly as the human heart. 

But this strange poetry of plutocracy prevails over people against theirvery senses. You write to one of the great London stores or emporia, asking, let us say, for an umbrella. A month or two afterwards youreceive a very elaborately constructed parcel, containing a broken parasol. You are very pleased. You are gratified to reflect on what a vastnumber of assistants and employees had combined to break that parasol. You luxuriate in the memory of all those long rooms and departments andwonder in which of them the parasol that you never ordered was broken. Oryou want a toy elephant for your child on Christmas Day; as children, likeall nice and healthy people, are very ritualistic. Some week or so afterTwelfth Night, let us say, you have the pleasure of removing three layersof pasteboards, five layers of brown paper, and fifteen layers of tissuepaper and discovering the fragments of an artificial crocodile. You smilein an expansive spirit. You feel that your soul has been broadened by thevision of incompetence conducted on so large a scale. You admire all themore the colossal and Omnipresent Brain of the Organiser of Industry, whoamid all his multitudinous cares did not disdain to remember his duty ofsmashing even the smallest toy of the smallest child. Or, supposing youhave asked him to send you some two rolls of cocoa-nut matting: andsupposing (after a due interval for reflection) he duly delivers to youthe five rolls of wire netting. You take pleasure in the considerationof a mystery: which coarse minds might have called a mistake. It consolesyou to know how big the business is: and what an enormous number of peoplewere needed to make such a mistake. 

That is the romance that has been told about the big shops; in theliterature and art which they have bought, and which (as I said in myrecent articles) will soon be quite indistinguishable from their ordinaryadvertisements. The literature is commercial; and it is only fair to saythat the commerce is often really literary. It is no romance, but onlyrubbish. 

The big commercial concerns of to-day are quite exceptionally incompetent. They will be even more incompetent when they are omnipotent. Indeed, that is, and always has been, the whole point of a monopoly; the old andsound argument against a monopoly. It is only because it is incompetentthat it has to be omnipotent. When one large shop occupies the whole ofone side of a street (or sometimes both sides), it does so in order thatmen may be unable to get what they want; and may be forced to buy whatthey don't want. That the rapidly approaching kingdom of the Capitalistswill ruin art and letters, I have already said. I say here that in theonly sense that can be called human, it will ruin trade, too. 

I will not let Christmas go by, even when writing for a revolutionarypaper necessarily appealing to many with none of my religious sympathies, without appealing to those sympathies. I knew a man who sent to a greatrich shop for a figure for a group of Bethlehem. It arrived broken. Ithink that is exactly all that business men have now the sense to do. 

IV. The War on Holidays

The general proposition, not always easy to define exhaustively, that thereign of the capitalist will be the reign of the cad--that is, of theunlicked type that is neither the citizen nor the gentleman--can beexcellently studied in its attitude towards holidays. The specialemblematic Employer of to-day, especially the Model Employer (who is theworst sort) has in his starved and evil heart a sincere hatred of holidays. I do not mean that he necessarily wants all his workmen to work untilthey drop; that only occurs when he happens to be stupid as well as wicked. I do not mean to say that he is necessarily unwilling to grant what hewould call "decent hours of labour. " He may treat men like dirt; but ifyou want to make money, even out of dirt, you must let it lie fallow bysome rotation of rest. He may treat men as dogs, but unless he is alunatic he will for certain periods let sleeping dogs lie. 

But humane and reasonable hours for labour have nothing whatever to dowith the idea of holidays. It is not even a question of tenhours day andeight-hours day; it is not a question of cutting down leisure to the spacenecessary for food, sleep and exercise. If the modern employer came tothe conclusion, for some reason or other, that he could get most out ofhis men by working them hard for only two hours a day, his whole mentalattitude would still be foreign and hostile to holidays. For his wholemental attitude is that the passive time and the active time are alikeuseful for him and his business. All is, indeed, grist that comes to hismill, including the millers. His slaves still serve him inunconsciousness, as dogs still hunt in slumber. His grist is ground notonly by the sounding wheels of iron, but by the soundless wheel of bloodand brain. His sacks are still filling silently when the doors are shuton the streets and the sound of the grinding is low. 

The Great Holiday

Now a holiday has no connection with using a man either by beating orfeeding him. When you give a man a holiday you give him back his body andsoul. It is quite possible you may be doing him an injury (though heseldom thinks so), but that does not affect the question for those to whoma holiday is holy. Immortality is the great holiday; and a holiday, likethe immortality in the old theologies, is a double-edged privilege. Butwherever it is genuine it is simply the restoration and completion of theman. If people ever looked at the printed word under their eye, the word"recreation" would be like the word "resurrection, " the blast of a trumpet. 

A man, being merely useful, is necessarily incomplete, especially if he bea modern man and means by being useful being "utilitarian. " A man goinginto a modern club gives up his hat; a man going into a modern factorygives up his head. He then goes in and works loyally for the old firm tobuild up the great fabric of commerce (which can be done without a head), but when he has done work he goes to the cloak-room, like the man at theclub, and gets his head back again; that is the germ of the holiday. Itmay be urged that the club man who leaves his hat often goes away withanother hat; and perhaps it may be the same with the factory hand who hasleft his head. A hand that has lost its head may affect the fastidious asa mixed metaphor; but, God pardon us all, what an unmixed truth! We couldalmost prove the whole ease from the habit of calling human beings merely"hands" while they are working; as if the hand were horribly cut off, likethe hand that has offended; as if, while the sinner entered heaven maimed, his unhappy hand still laboured laying up riches for the lords of hell. But to return to the man whom we found waiting for his head in thecloak-room. It may be urged, we say, that he might take the wrong head, like the wrong hat; but here the similarity ceases. For it has beenobserved by benevolent onlookers at life's drama that the hat taken awayby mistake is frequently better than the real hat; whereas the head takenaway after the hours of toil is certainly worse: stained with the cobwebsand dust of this dustbin of all the centuries. 

The Supreme Adventure

All the words dedicated to places of eating and drinking are pure andpoetic words. Even the word "hotel" is the word hospital. And St. Julien, whose claret I drank this Christmas, was the patron saint of innkeepers, because (as far as I can make out) he was hospitable to lepers. Now I donot say that the ordinary hotel-keeper in Piccadilly or the Avenue del'Opera would embrace a leper, slap him on the back, and ask him to orderwhat he liked; but I do say that hospitality is his trade virtue. And Ido also say it is well to keep before our eyes the supreme adventure of avirtue. If you are brave, think of the man who was braver than you. Ifyou are kind, think of the man who was kinder than you. 

That is what was meant by having a patron saint. That is the link betweenthe poor saint who received bodily lepers and the great hotel proprietorwho (as a rule) receives spiritual lepers. But a word yet weaker than"hotel" illustrates the same point--the word "restaurant. " There againyou have the admission that there is a definite building or statue to"restore"; that ineffaceable image of man that some call the image of God. And that is the holiday; it is the restaurant or restoring thing that, bya blast of magic, turns a man into himself. 

This complete and reconstructed man is the nightmare of the moderncapitalist. His whole scheme would crack across like a mirror of Shallot, if once a plain man were ready for his two plain duties--ready to live andready to die. And that horror of holidays which marks the moderncapitalist is very largely a horror of the vision of a whole human being:something that is not a "hand" or a "head for figutes. " But an awfulcreature who has met himself in the wilderness. The employers will givetime to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think. 

To anyone who knows any history it is wholly needless to say that holidayshave been destroyed. As Mr. Belloc, who knows much more history than youor I, recently pointed out in the "Pall Mall Magazine, " Shakespeare'stitle of "Twelfth Night: or What You Will" simply meant that a wintercarnival for everybody went on wildly till the twelfth night afterChristmas. Those of my readers who work for modern offices or factoriesmight ask their employers for twelve days' holidays after Christmas. Andthey might let me know the reply. 

V. THE CHURCH OF THE SERVILE STATE

I confess I cannot see why mere blasphemy by itself should be an excusefor tyranny and treason; or how the mere isolated fact of a man notbelieving in God should be a reason for my believing in Him. 

But the rather spinsterish flutter among some of the old Freethinkers hasput one tiny ripple of truth in it; and that affects the idea which I wishto emphasise even to monotony in these pages. I mean the idea that thenew community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a verycomplete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothingreally independent of itself. Now, it is true that any positive creed, true or false, would tend to be independent of itself. It might be RomanCatholicism or Mahomedanism or Materialism; but, if strongly held, itwould be a thorn in the side of the Servile State. The Moslem thinks allmen immortal: the Materialist thinks all men mortal. But the Moslem doesnot think the rich Sinbad will live forever; but the poor Sinbad will dieon his deathbed. The Materialist does not think that Mr. Haeckel will goto heaven, while all the peasants will go to pot, like their chickens. In every serious doctrine of the destiny of men, there is some trace ofthe doctrine of the equality of men. But the capitalist really depends onsome religion of inequality. The capitalist must somehow distinguishhimself from human kind; he must be obviously above it--or he would beobviously below it. Take even the least attractive and popular side ofthe larger religions to-day; take the mere vetoes imposed by Islam onAtheism or Catholicism. The Moslem veto upon intoxicants cuts across allclasses. But it is absolutely necessary for the capitalist (who presidesat a Licensing Committee, and also at a large dinner), it is absolutelynecessary for him, to make a distinction between gin and champagne. TheAtheist veto upon all miracles cuts across all classes. But it isabsolutely necessary for the capitalist to make a distinction between hiswife (who is an aristocrat and consults crystal gazers and star gazers inthe West End), and vulgar miracles claimed by gipsies or travellingshowmen. The Catholic veto upon usury, as defined in dogmatic councils, cuts across all classes. But it is absolutely necessary to the capitalistto distinguish more delicately between two kinds of usury; the kind hefinds useful and the kind he does not find useful. The religion of theServile State must have no dogmas or definitions. It cannot afford tohave any definitions. For definitions are very dreadful things: they dothe two things that most men, especially comfortable men, cannot endure. They fight; and they fight fair. 

Every religion, apart from open devil worship, must appeal to a virtue orthe pretence of a virtue. But a virtue, generally speaking, does somegood to everybody. It is therefore necessary to distinguish among thepeople it was meant to benefit those whom it does benefit. Modernbroad-mindedness benefits the rich; and benefits nobody else. It wasmeant to benefit the rich; and meant to benefit nobody else. And if youthink this unwarranted, I will put before you one plain question. Thereare some pleasures of the poor that may also mean profits for the rich:there are other pleasures of the poor which cannot mean profits for therich? Watch this one contrast, and you will watch the whole creation of acareful slavery. 

In the last resort the two things called Beer and Soap end only in a froth. They are both below the high notice of a real religion. But there isjust this difference: that the soap makes the factory more satisfactory, while the beer only makes the workman more satisfied. Wait and see ifthe Soap does not increase and the Beer decrease. Wait and see whetherthe religion of the Servile State is not in every case what I say: theencouragement of small virtues supporting capitalism, the discouragementof the huge virtues that defy it. Many great religions, Pagan andChristian, have insisted on wine. Only one, I think, has insisted on Soap. You will find it in the New Testament attributed to the Pharisees. 

VI. SCIENCE AND THE EUGENISTS

The key fact in the new development of plutocracy is that it will use itsown blunder as an excuse for further crimes. Everywhere the verycompleteness of the impoverishment will be made a reason for theenslavement; though the men who impoverished were the same who enslaved. It is as if a highwayman not only took away a gentleman's horse and allhis money, but then handed him over to the police for tramping withoutvisible means of subsistence. And the most monstrous feature in thisenormous meanness may be noted in the plutocratic appeal to science, or, rather, to the pseudo-science that they call Eugenics. 

The Eugenists get the ear of the humane but rather hazy cliques by sayingthat the present "conditions" under which people work and breed are badfor the race; but the modern mind will not generally stretch beyond onestep of reasoning, and the consequence which appears to follow on theconsideration of these "conditions" is by no means what would originallyhave been expected. If somebody says: "A rickety cradle may mean arickety baby, " the natural deduction, one would think, would be to givethe people a good cradle, or give them money enough to buy one. But thatmeans higher wages and greater equalisation of wealth; and the plutocraticscientist, with a slightly troubled expression, turns his eyes andpince-nez in another direction. Reduced to brutal terms of truth, hisdifficulty is this and simply this: More food, leisure, and money for theworkman would mean a better workman, better even from the point of view ofanyone for whom he worked. But more food, leisure, and money would alsomean a more independent workman. A house with a decent fire and a fullpantry would be a better house to make a chair or mend a clock in, evenfrom the customer's point of view, than a hovel with a leaky roof and acold hearth. But a house with a decent fire and a full pantry would alsobe a better house in which to refuse to make a chair or mend a clock--amuch better house to do nothing in--and doing nothing is sometimes one ofthe highest of the duties of man. All but the hard-hearted must be tornwith pity for this pathetic dilemma of the rich man, who has to keep thepoor man just stout enough to do the work and just thin enough to have todo it. As he stood gazing at the leaky roof and the rickety cradle in apensive manner, there one day came into his mind a new and curiousidea--one of the most strange, simple, and horrible ideas that have everrisen from the deep pit of original sin. 

The roof could not be mended, or, at least, it could not be mended much, without upsetting the capitalist balance, or, rather, disproportion insociety; for a man with a roof is a man with a house, and to that extenthis house is his castle. The cradle could not be made to rock easier, or, at least, not much easier, without strengthening the hands of the poorhousehold, for the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world--to thatextent. But it occurred to the capitalist that there was one sort offurniture in the house that could be altered. The husband and wife couldbe altered. Birth costs nothing, except in pain and valour and suchold-fashioned things; and the merchant need pay no more for mating astrong miner to a healthy fishwife than he pays when the miner mateshimself with a less robust female whom he has the sentimentality to prefer. Thus it might be possible, by keeping on certain broad lines ofheredity, to have some physical improvement without any moral, political, or social improvement. It might be possible to keep a supply of strongand healthy slaves without coddling them with decent conditions. As themill-owners use the wind and the water to drive their mills, they woulduse this natural force as something even cheaper; and turn their wheels bydiverting from its channel the blood of a man in his youth. That is whatEugenics means; and that is all that it means. 

Of the moral state of those who think of such things it does not become usto speak. The practical question is rather the intellectual one: ofwhether their calculations are well founded, and whether the men ofscience can or will guarantee them any such physical certainties. Fortunately, it becomes clearer every day that they are, scientificallyspeaking, building on the shifting sand. The theory of breeding slavesbreaks down through what a democrat calls the equality of men, but whicheven an oligarchist will find himself forced to call the similarity of men. That is, that though it is not true that all men are normal, it isoverwhelmingly certain that most men are normal. All the common Eugenicarguments are drawn from extreme cases, which, even if human honour andlaughter allowed of their being eliminated, would not by their eliminationgreatly affect the mass. For the rest, there remains the enormousweakness in Eugenics, that if ordinary men's judgment or liberty is to bediscounted in relation to heredity, the judgment of the judges must bediscounted in relation to their heredity. The Eugenic professor may ormay not succeed in choosing a baby's parents; it is quite certain that hecannot succeed in choosing his own parents. All his thoughts, includinghis Eugenic thoughts, are, by the very principle of those thoughts, flowing from a doubtful or tainted source. In short, we should need aperfectly Wise Man to do the thing at all. And if he were a Wise Man hewould not do it. 

VII. THE EVOLUTION OF THE PRISON

I have never understood why it is that those who talk most about evolution, and talk it in the very age of fashionable evolutionism, do not see theone way in which evolution really does apply to our modern difficulty. There is, of course, an element of evolutionism in the universe; and Iknow no religion or philosophy that ever entirely ignored it. Evolution, popularly speaking, is that which happens to unconscious things. Theygrow unconsciously; or fade unconsciously; or rather, some parts of themgrow and some parts of them fade; and at any given moment there is almostalways some presence of thc fading thing, and some incompleteness in thegrowing one. Thus, if I went to sleep for a hundred years, like theSleeping Beauty (I wish I could), I should grow a beard--unlike theSleeping Beauty. And just as I should grow hair if I were asleep, Ishould grow grass if I were dead. Those whose religion it was that Godwas asleep were perpetually impressed and affected by the fact that he hada long beard. And those whose philosophy it is that the universe is deadfrom the beginning (being the grave of nobody in particular) think that isthe way that grass can grow. In any case, these developments only occurwith dead or dreaming things. What happens when everyone is asleep iscalled Evolution. What happens when everyone is awake is calledRevolution. 

There was once an honest man, whose name I never knew, but whose face Ican almost see (it is framed in Victorian whiskers and fixed in aVictorian neck-cloth), who was balancing the achievements of France andEngland in civilisation and social efficiencies. And when he came to thereligious aspect he said that there were more stone and brick churchesused in France; but, on the other hand, there are more sects in England. Whether such a lively disintegration is a proof of vitality in anyvaluable sense I have always doubted. The sun may breed maggots in adead dog; but it is essential for such a liberation of life that the dogshould be unconscious or (to say the least of it) absent-minded. Broadlyspeaking, you may call the thing corruption, if you happen to like dogs. You may call it evolution, if you happen to like maggots. In either case, it is what happens to things if you leave them alone. 

The Evolutionists' Error

Now, the modern Evolutionists have made no real use of the idea ofevolution, especially in the matter of social prediction. They alwaysfall into what is (from their logical point of view) the error ofsupposing that evolution knows what it is doing. They predict the Stateof the future as a fruit rounded and polished. But the whole point ofevolution (the only point there is in it) is that no State will ever berounded and polished, because it will always contain some organs thatoutlived their use, and some that have not yet fully found theirs. If wewish to prophesy what will happen, we must imagine things now moderategrown enormous; things now local grown universal; things now promisinggrown triumphant; primroses bigger than sunflowers, and sparrows stalkingabout like flamingoes. 

In other words, we must ask what modern institution has a future beforeit? What modern institution may have swollen to six times its present sizein the social heat and growth of the future? I do not think the GardenCity will grow: but of that I may speak in my next and last article ofthis series. I do not think even the ordinary Elementary School, with itscompulsory education, will grow. Too many unlettered people hate theteacher for teaching; and too many lettered people hate the teacher fornot teaching. The Garden City will not bear much blossom; the young ideawill not shoot, unless it shoots the teacher. But the one flowering treeon the estate, the one natural expansion which I think will expand, is theinstitution we call the Prison. 

Prisons for All

If the capitalists are allowed to erect their constructive capitalistcommunity, I speak quite seriously when I say that I think Prison willbecome an almost universal experience. It will not necessarily be acruel or shameful experience: on these points (I concede certainly for thepresent purpose of debate) it may be a vastly improved experience. Theconditions in the prison, very possibly, will be made more humane. Butthe prison will be made more humane only in order to contain more ofhumanity. I think little of the judgment and sense of humour of any manwho can have watched recent police trials without realising that it is nolonger a question of whether the law has been broken by a crime; but, now, solely a question of whether the situation could be mended by animprisonment. It was so with Tom Mann; it was so with Larkin; it was sowith the poor atheist who was kept in gaol for saying something he hadbeen acquitted of saying: it is so in such cases day by day. We no longerlock a man up for doing something; we lock him up in the hope of his doingnothing. Given this principle, it is evidently possible to make the mereconditions of punishment more moderate, or--(more probably) more secret. There may really be more mercy in the Prison, on condition that there isless justice in the Court. I should not be surprised if, before we aredone with all this, a man was allowed to smoke in prison, on condition, ofcourse, that he had been put in prison for smoking. 

Now that is the process which, in the absence of democratic protest, willcertainly proceed, will increase and multiply and replenish the earth andsubdue it. Prison may even lose its disgrace for a little time: it willbe difficult to make it disgraceful when men like Larkin can be imprisonedfor no reason at all, just as his celebrated ancestor was hanged for noreason at all. But capitalist society, which naturally does not know themeaning of honour, cannot know the meaning of disgrace: and it will stillgo on imprisoning for no reason at all. Or rather for that rather simplereason that makes a cat spring or a rat run away. 

It matters little whether our masters stoop to state the matter in theform that every prison should be a school; or in the more candid form thatevery school should be a prison. They have already fulfilled theirservile principle in the case of the schools. Everyone goes to theElementary Schools except the few people who tell them to go there. Iprophesy that (unless our revolt succeeds) nearly everyone will be goingto Prison, with a precisely similar patience. 

VIII. THE LASH FOR LABOUR

If I were to prophesy that two hundred years hence a grocer would have theright and habit of beating the grocer's assistant with a stick, or thatshop girls might be flogged, as they already can be fined, many wouldregard it as rather a rash remark. It would be a rash remark. Prophecyis always unreliable; unless we except the kind which is avowedlyirrational, mystical and supernatural prophecy. But relatively to nearlyall the other prophecies that are being made around me to-day, I shouldsay my prediction stood an exceptionally good chance. In short, I thinkthe grocer with the stick is a figure we are far more likely to see thanthe Superman or the Samurai, or the True Model Employer, or the PerfectFabian Official, or the citizen of the Collectivist State. And it isbest for us to see the full ugliness of the transformation which ispassing over our Society in some such abrupt and even grotesque image atthe end of it. The beginnings of a decline, in every age of history, havealways had the appearance of being reforms. Nero not only fiddled whileRome was burning, but he probably really paid more attention to the fiddlethan to the fire. The Roi Soleil, like many other soleils, was mostsplendid to all appearance a little before sunset. And if I ask myselfwhat will be the ultimate and final fruit of all our social reforms, garden cities, model employers, insurances, exchanges, arbitration courts, and so on, then, I say, quite seriously, "I think it will be labour underthe lash. "

The Sultan and the Sack

Let us arrange in some order a number of converging considerations thatall point in this direction. (1) It is broadly true, no doubt, that theweapon of the employer has hitherto been the threat of dismissal, that is, the threat of enforced starvation. He is a Sultan who need not order thebastinado, so long as he can order the sack. But there are not a fewsigns that this weapon is not quite so convenient and flexible a one ashis increasing rapacities require. The fact of the introduction of fines, secretly or openly, in many shops and factories, proves that it isconvenient for the capitalists to have some temporary and adjustable formof punishment besides the final punishment of pure ruin. Nor is itdifficult to see the commonsense of this from their wholly inhuman pointof view. The act of sacking a man is attended with the same disadvantagesas the act of shooting a man: one of which is that you can get no more outof him. It is, I am told, distinctly annoying to blow a fellow creature'sbrains out with a revolver and then suddenly remember that he was the onlyperson who knew where to get the best Russian cigarettes. So our Sultan, who is the orderer of the sack, is also the bearer of the bow-string. Aschool in which there was no punishment, except expulsion, would be aschool in which it would be very difficult to keep proper discipline; andthe sort of discipline on which the reformed capitalism will insist willbe all of the type which in free nations is imposed only on children. Such a school would probably be in a chronic condition of breaking up forthe holidays. And the reasons for the insufficiency of this extremeinstrument are also varied and evident. The materialistic Sociologists, who talk about the survival of the fittest and the weakest going to thewall (and whose way of looking at the world is to put on the latest andmost powerful scientific spectacles, and then shut their eyes), frequentlytalk as if a workman were simply efficient or non-efficient, as if acriminal were reclaimable or irreclaimable. The employers have senseenough at least to know better than that. They can see that a servant maybe useful in one way and exasperating in another; that he may be bad inone part of his work and good in another; that he may be occasionallydrunk and yet generally indispensable. Just as a practical school-masterwould know that a schoolboy can be at once the plague and the pride of theschool. Under these circumstances small and varying penalties areobviously the most convenient things for the person keeping order; anunderling can be punished for coming late, and yet do useful work when hecomes. It will be possible to give a rap over the knuckles without whollycutting off the right hand that has offended. Under these circumstancesthe employers have naturally resorted to fines. But there is a furtherground for believing that the process will go beyond fines before it iscompleted. 

(2) The fine is based on the old European idea that everybody possessesprivate property in some reasonable degree; but not only is this not trueto-day, but it is not being made any truer, even by those who honestlybelieve that they are mending matters. The great employers will often dosomething towards improving what they call the "conditions" of theirworkers; but a worker might have his conditions as carefully arranged as aracehorse has, and still have no more personal property than a racehorse. If you take an average poor seamstress or factory girl, you will find thatthe power of chastising her through her property has very considerablelimits; it is almost as hard for the employer of labour to tax her forpunishment as it is for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tax her forrevenue. The next most obvious thing to think of, of course, would beimprisonment, and that might be effective enough under simpler conditions. An old-fashioned shopkeeper might have locked up his apprentice in hiscoal-cellar; but his coal-cellar would be a real, pitch dark coal-cellar, and the rest of his house would be a real human house. Everybody(especially the apprentice) would see a most perceptible differencebetween the two. But, as I pointed out in the article before this, thewhole tendency of the capitalist legislation and experiment is to makeimprisonment much more general and automatic, while making it, orprofessing to make it, more humane. In other words, the hygienic prisonand the servile factory will become so uncommonly like each other that thepoor man will hardly know or care whether he is at the moment expiating anoffence or merely swelling a dividend. In both places there will be thesame sort of shiny tiles. In neither place will there be any cell sounwholesome as a coal-cellar or so wholesome as a home. The weapon of theprison, therefore, like the weapon of the fine, will be found to haveconsiderable limitations to its effectiveness when employed against thewretched reduced citizen of our day. Whether it be property or libertyyou cannot take from him what he has not got. You cannot imprison a slave, because you cannot enslave a slave. 

The Barbarous Revival

(3) Most people, on hearing the suggestion that it may come to corporalpunishment at last (as it did in every slave system I ever heard of, including some that were generally kindly, and even successful), willmerely be struck with horror and incredulity, and feel that such abarbarous revival is unthinkable in the modern atmosphere. How far itwill be, or need be, a revival of the actual images and methods of rudertimes I will discuss in a moment. But first, as another of the converginglines tending to corporal punishment, consider this: that for some reasonor other the old full-blooded and masculine humanitarianism in this matterhas weakened and fallen silent; it has weakened and fallen silent in avery curious manner, the precise reason for which I do not altogetherunderstand. I knew the average Liberal, the average Nonconformistminister, the average Labour Member, the average middle-class Socialist, were, with all their good qualities, very deficient in what I consider arespect for the human soul. But I did imagine that they had the ordinarymodern respect for the human body. The fact, however, is clear andincontrovertible. In spite of the horror of all humane people, in spiteof the hesitation even of our corrupt and panic-stricken Parliament, measures can now be triumphantly passed for spreading or increasing theuse of physical torture, and for applying it to the newest and vaguestcategories of crime. Thirty or forty years ago, nay, twenty years ago, when Mr. F. Hugh O'Donnell and others forced a Liberal Government to dropthe cat-o-nine-tails like a scorpion, we could have counted on a mass ofhonest hatred of such things. We cannot count on it now. 

(4) But lastly, it is not necessary that in the factories of the futurethe institution of physical punishment should actually remind people ofthe jambok or the knout. It could easily be developed out of the manyforms of physical discipline which are already used by employers on theexcuses of education or hygiene. Already in some factories girls areobliged to swim whether they like it or not, or do gymnastics whether theylike it or not. By a simple extension of hours or complication ofexercises a pair of Swedish clubs could easily be so used as to leavetheir victim as exhausted as one who had come off the rack. I think itextremely likely that they will be. 

IX. THE MASK OF SOCIALISM

The chief aim of all honest Socialists just now is to prevent the comingof Socialism. I do not say it as a sneer, but, on the contrary, as acompliment; a compliment to their political instinct and public spirit. Iadmit it may be called an exaggeration; but there really is a sort of shamSocialism that the modern politicians may quite possibly agree to set up;if they do succeed in setting it up, the battle for the poor is lost. 

We must note, first of all, a general truth about the curious time we livein. It will not be so difficult as some people may suppose to make theServile State look rather like Socialism, especially to the more pedantickind of Socialist. The reason is this. The old lucid and trenchantexpounder of Socialism, such as Blatchford or Fred Henderson, alwaysdescribes the economic power of the plutocrats as consisting in privateproperty. Of course, in a sense, this is quite true; though they toooften miss the point that private property, as such, is not the same asproperty confined to the few. But the truth is that the situation hasgrown much more subtle; perhaps too subtle, not to say too insane, forstraight-thinking theorists like Blatchford. The rich man to-day does notonly rule by using private property; he also rules by treating publicproperty as if it were private property. A man like Lord Murray pulledthe strings, especially the pursestrings; but the whole point of hisposition was that all sorts of strings had got entangled. The secretstrength of the money he held did not lie merely in the fact that it washis money. It lay precisely in the fact that nobody had any clear idea ofwhether it was his money, or his successor's money, or his brother's money, or the Marconi Company's money, or the Liberal Party's money, or theEnglish Nation's money. It was buried treasure; but it was not privateproperty. It was the acme of plutocracy because it was not privateproperty. Now, by following this precedent, this unprincipled vaguenessabout official and unofficial moneys by the cheerful habit of alwaysmixing up the money in the pocket with the money in the till, it would bequite possible to keep the rich as rich as ever in practice, though theymight have suffered confiscation in theory. Mr. Lloyd George has fourhundred a year as an M. P. ; but he not only gets much more as a Minister, but he might at any time get immeasurably more by speculating on Statesecrets that are necessarily known to him. Some say that he has evenattempted something of the kind. Now, it would be quite possible to cutMr. George down, not to four hundred a year, but to fourpence a day; andstill leave him all these other and enormous financial superiorities. Itmust be remembered that a Socialist State, in any way resembling a modernState, must, however egalitarian it may be, have the handling of huge sums, and the enjoyment of large conveniences; it is not improbable that thesame men will handle and enjoy in much the same manner, though in theorythey are doing it as instruments, and not as individuals. For instance, the Prime Minister has a private house, which is also (I grieve to informthat eminent Puritan) a public house. It is supposed to be a sort ofGovernment office; though people do not generally give children's parties, or go to bed in a Government office. I do not know where Mr. HerbertSamuel lives; but I have no doubt he does himself well in the matter ofdecoration and furniture. On the existing official parallel there is noneed to move any of these things in order to Socialise them. There is noneed to withdraw one diamond-headed nail from the carpet; or one goldenteaspoon from the tray. It is only necessary to call it an officialresidence, like 10 Downing-street. I think it is not at all improbablethat this Plutocracy, pretending to be a Bureaucracy, will be attempted orachieved. Our wealthy rulers will be in the position which grumblers inthe world of sport sometimes attribute to some of the "gentlemen" players. They assert that some of these are paid like any professional; only theirpay is called their expenses. This system might run side by side with atheory of equal wages, as absolute as that once laid down by Mr. BernardShaw. By the theory of the State, Mr. Herbert Samuel and Mr. LloydGeorge might be humble citizens, drudging for their fourpence a day; andno better off than porters and coal-heavers. If there were presented toour mere senses what appeared to be the form of Mr. Herbert Samuel in anastrakhan coat and a motor-car, we should find the record of theexpenditure (if we could find it at all) under the heading of "Speed LimitExtension Enquiry Commission. " If it fell to our lot to behold (with theeye of flesh) what seemed to be Mr. Lloyd George lying in a hammock andsmoking a costly cigar, we should know that the expenditure would bedivided between the "Condition of Rope and Netting InvestigationDepartment, " and the "State of Cuban Tobacco Trade: Imperial Inspector'sReport. "

Such is the society I think they will build unless we can knock it down asfast as they build it. Everything in it, tolerable or intolerable, willhave but one use; and that use what our ancestors used to call usance orusury. Its art may be good or bad, but it will be an advertisement forusurers; its literature may be good or bad, but it will appeal to thepatronage of usurers; its scientific selection will select according tothe needs of usurers; its religion will be just charitable enough topardon usurers; its penal system will be just cruel enough to crush allthe critics of usurers: the truth of it will be Slavery: and the title ofit may quite possibly be Socialism. 

THE ESCAPE

We watched you building, stone by stone, The well-washed cells and well-washed gravesWe shall inhabit but not ownWhen Britons ever shall be slaves;The water's waiting in the trough, The tame oats sown are portioned free, There is Enough, and just Enough, And all is ready now but we. 

But you have not caught us yet, my lords, You have us still to get. A sorry army you'd have got, Its flags are rags that float and rot, Its drums are empty pan and pot, Its baggage is--an empty cot;But you have not caught us yet. 

A little; and we might have slippedWhen came your rumours and your salesAnd the foiled rich men, feeble-lipped, Said and unsaid their sorry tales;Great God! It needs a bolder browTo keep ten sheep inside a pen, And we are sheep no longer now;You are but Masters. We are Men. 

We give you all good thanks, my lords, We buy at easy price;Thanks for the thousands that you stole, The bribes by wire, the bets on coal, The knowledge of that naked wholeThat hath delivered our flesh and soulOut of your Paradise. 

We had held safe your parks; but whenMen taunted you with bribe and fee, We only saw the Lord of MenGrin like an Ape and climb a tree;And humbly had we stood withoutYour princely barns; did we not seeIn pointed faces peering outWhat Rats now own the granary. 

It is too late, too late, my lords, We give you back your grace:You cannot with all cajolingMake the wet ditch, or winds that sting, Lost pride, or the pawned wedding rings, Or drink or Death a blacker thingThan a smile upon your face. 

THE NEW RAID

The two kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free us atlast while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are exhibited inan easy working model in the two efforts that have been made for thesoldiers' wives--I mean the effort to increase their allowance and theeffort to curtail their alleged drinking. In the preliminaryconsideration, at any rate, we must see the second question as quitedetached from our own sympathies on the special subject of fermentedliquor. It could be applied to any other pleasure or ornament of life; itwill be applied to every other pleasure and ornament of life if theCapitalist campaign can succeed. The argument we know; but it cannot betoo often made clear. An employer, let us say, pays a seamstress twopencea day, and she does not seem to thrive on it. So little, perhaps, doesshe thrive on it that the employer has even some difficulty in thrivingupon her. There are only two things that he can do, and the distinctionbetween them cuts the whole social and political world in two. It is atouchstone by which we can--not sometimes, but always--distinguisheconomic equality from servile social reform. He can give the girl somemagnificent sum, such as sixpence a day, to do as she likes with, andtrust that her improved health and temper will work for the benefit of hisbusiness. Or he may keep her to the original sum of a shilling a week, but earmark each of the pennies to be used or not to be used for aparticular purpose. If she must not spend this penny on a bunch ofviolets, or that penny on a novelette, or the other penny on a toy forsome baby, it is possible that she will concentrate her expenditure moreupon physical necessities, and so become, from the employer's point ofview, a more efficient person. Without the trouble of adding twopence toher wages, he has added twopenny-worth to her food. In short, she has theholy satisfaction of being worth more without being paid more. 

This Capitalist is an ingenious person, and has many polishedcharacteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is hisstaggering lack of shame. Neither the hour of death nor the day ofreckoning, neither the tent of exile nor the house of mourning, neitherchivalry nor patriotism, neither womanhood nor widowhood, is safe at thissupreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the slave. Assimilar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a foot in the opendoor, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge wherever there is aslit in a sundered household or a crack in a broken heart. To a man ofany manhood nothing can be conceived more loathsome and sacrilegious thaneven so much as asking whether a woman who has given up all she loved todeath and the fatherland has or has not shown some weakness in her seekingfor self-comfort. I know not in which of the two cases I should countmyself the baser for inquiring--a case where the charge was false or acase where it was true. But the philanthropic employer of the sort Idescribe is not a man of any manhood; in a sense he is not a man at all. He shows some consciousness of the fact when he calls his workers "men" asdistinct from masters. He cannot comprehend the gallantry ofcostermongers or the delicacy that is quite common among cabmen. He findsthis social reform by half-rations on the whole to his mercantile profit, and it will be hard to get him to think of anything else. 

But there are people assisting him, people like the Duchess of Marlborough, who know not their right hand from their left, and to these we maylegitimately address our remonstrance and a resume of some of the factsthey do not know. The Duchess of Marlborough is, I believe, an American, and this separates her from the problem in a special way, because thedrink question in America is entirely different from the drink question inEngland. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would pin up in herprivate study, side by side with the Declaration of Independence, adocument recording the following simple truths: (1) Beer, which is largelydrunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog or a cocktail or a drug. It is the common English liquid for quenching the thirst; it is so stillamong innumerable gentlemen, and, until very lately, was so amonginnumerable ladies. Most of us remember dames of the last generationwhose manners were fit for Versailles, and who drank ale or Stout as amatter of course. Schoolboys drank ale as a matter of course, and theirschoolmasters gave it to them as a matter of course. To tell a poor womanthat she must not have any until half the day is over is simply cracked, like telling a dog or a child that he must not have water. (2) Thepublic-house is not a secret rendezvous of bad characters. It is the openand obvious place for a certain purpose, which all men used for thatpurpose until the rich began to be snobs and the poor to become slaves. One might as well warn people against Willesden Junction. (3) Many poorpeople live in houses where they cannot, without great preparation, offerhospitality. (4) The climate of these picturesque islands does not favourconducting long conversations with one's oldest friends on an iron seat inthe park. (5) Halfpast eleven a. M. Is not early in the day for a womanwho gets up before six. (6) The bodies and minds of these women belong toGod and to themselves. 

THE NEW NAME

Something has come into our community, which is strong enough to save ourcommunity; but which has not yet got a name. Let no one fancy I confessany unreality when I confess the namelessness. The morality calledPuritanism, the tendency called Liberalism, the reaction called ToryDemocracy, had not only long been powerful, but had practically done mostof their work, before these actual names were attached to them. Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing to have some portable andpracticable way of referring to those who think as we do in our mainconcern. Which is, that men in England are ruled, at this minute by theclock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, andby fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave. 

Let me explain first why I am not satisfied with the word commonly used, which I have often used myself; and which, in some contexts, is quite theright word to use. I mean the word "rebel. " Passing over the fact thatmany who understand the justice of our cause (as a great many at theUniversities) would still use the word "rebel" in its old and strict senseas meaning only a disturber of just rule. I pass to a much more practicalpoint. The word "rebel" understates our cause. It is much too mild; itlets our enemies off much too easily. There is a tradition in all westernlife and letters of Prometheus defying the stars, of man at war with theUniverse, and dreaming what nature had never dared to dream. All this isvaluable in its place and proportion. But it has nothing whatever to dowith our ease; or rather it very much weakens it. The plutocrats will beonly too pleased if we profess to preach a new morality; for they knowjolly well that they have broken the old one. They will be only toopleased to be able to say that we, by our own confession, are merelyrestless and negative; that we are only what we call rebels and they callcranks. But it is not true; and we must not concede it to them for amoment. The model millionaire is more of a crank than the Socialists;just as Nero was more of a crank than the Christians. And avarice hasgone mad in the governing class to-day, just as lust went mad in thecircle of Nero. By all the working and orthodox standards of sanity, capitalism is insane. I should not say to Mr. Rockefeller "I am a rebel. "I should say "I am a respectable man: and you are not. "

Our Lawless Enemies

But the vital point is that the confession of mere rebellion softens thestartling lawlessness of our enemies. Suppose a publisher's clerkpolitely asked his employer for a rise in his salary; and, on beingrefused, said he must leave the employment? Suppose the employer knockedhim down with a ruler, tied him up as a brown paper parcel, addressed him(in a fine business hand) to the Governor of Rio Janeiro and then askedthe policeman to promise never to arrest him for what he had done? Thatis a precise copy, in every legal and moral principle, of the "deportationof the strikers. " They were assaulted and kidnapped for not accepting acontract, and for nothing else; and the act was so avowedly criminal thatthe law had to be altered afterwards to cover the crime. Now supposesome postal official, between here and Rio Janeiro, had noticed a faintkicking inside the brown paper parcel, and had attempted to ascertain thecause. And suppose the clerk could only explain, in a muffled voicethrough the brown paper, that he was by constitution and temperament aRebel. Don't you see that he would be rather understating his case?Don't you see he would be bearing his injuries much too meekly? Theymight take him out of the parcel; but they would very possibly put himinto a mad-house instead. Symbolically speaking, that is what they wouldlike to do with us. Symbolically speaking, the dirty misers who rule uswill put us in a mad-house--unless we can put them there. 

Or suppose a bank cashier were admittedly allowed to take the money out ofthe till, and put it loose in his pocket, more or less mixed up with hisown money; afterwards laying some of both (at different odds) on "BlueMurder" for the Derby. Suppose when some depositor asked mildly what daythe accountants came, he smote that astonished inquirer on the nose, crying: "Slanderer! Mud-slinger!" and suppose he then resigned hisposition. Suppose no books were shown. Suppose when the new cashiercame to be initiated into his duties, the old cashier did not tell himabout the money, but confided it to the honour and delicacy of his ownmaiden aunt at Cricklewood. Suppose he then went off in a yacht to visitthe whale fisheries of the North Sea. Well, in every moral and legalprinciple, that is a precise account of the dealings with the Party Funds. But what would the banker say? What would the clients say? One thing, Ithink, I can venture to promise; the banker would not march up and downthe office exclaiming in rapture, "I'm a rebel! That's what I am, a rebel!"And if he said to the first indignant depositor "You are a rebel, " Ifear the depositor might answer, "You are a robber. " We have no need toelaborate arguments for breaking the law. The capitalists have broken thelaw. We have no need of further moralities. They have broken their ownmorality. It is as if you were to run down the street shouting, "Communism! Communism! Share! Share!" after a man who had run away withyour watch. 

We want a term that will tell everybody that there is, by the commonstandard, frank fraud and cruelty pushed to their fierce extreme; and thatwe are fighting THEM. We are not in a state of "divine discontent"; we arein an entirely human and entirely reasonable rage. We say we have beenswindled and oppressed, and we are quite ready and able to prove it beforeany tribunal that allows us to call a swindler a swindler. It is theprotection of the present system that most of its tribunals do not. Icannot at the moment think of any party name that would particularlydistinguish us from our more powerful and prosperous opponents, unless itwere the name the old Jacobites gave themselves; the Honest Party. 

Captured Our Standards

I think it is plain that for the purpose of facing these new and infamousmodern facts, we cannot, with any safety, depend on any of the oldnineteenth century names; Socialist, or Communist, or Radical, or Liberal, or Labour. They are all honourable names; they all stand, or stood, forthings in which we may still believe; we can still apply them to otherproblems; but not to this one. We have no longer a monopoly of thesenames. Let it be understood that I am not speaking here of thephilosophical problem of their meaning, but of the practical problem oftheir use. When I called myself a Radical I knew Mr. Balfour would notcall himself a Radical; therefore there was some use in the word. When Icalled myself a Socialist I knew Lord Penrhyn would not call himself aSocialist; therefore there was some use in the word. But the capitalists, in that aggressive march which is the main fact of our time, have capturedour standards, both in the military and philosophic sense of the word. And it is useless for us to march under colours which they can carry aswell as we. 

Do you believe in Democracy? The devils also believe and tremble. Do youbelieve in Trades Unionism? The Labour Members also believe; and tremblelike a falling teetotum. Do you believe in the State? The Samuels alsobelieve, and grin. Do you believe in the centralisation of Empire? Sodid Beit. Do you believe in the decentralisation of Empire? So does Albu. Do you believe in the brotherhood of men: and do you, dear brethren, believe that Brother Arthur Henderson does not? Do you cry, "The worldfor the workers!" and do you imagine Philip Snowden would not? What weneed is a name that shall declare, not that the modern treason and tyrannyare bad, but that they are quite literally, intolerable: and that we meanto act accordingly. I really think "the Limits" would be as good a nameas any. But, anyhow, something is born among us that is as strong as aninfant Hercules: and it is part of my prejudices to want it christened. Iadvertise for godfathers and godmothers. 

A WORKMAN'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND

A thing which does not exist and which is very much wanted is "AWorking-Man's History of England. " I do not mean a history written forworking men (there are whole dustbins of them), I mean a history, writtenby working men or from the working men's standpoint. I wish fivegenerations of a fisher's or a miner's family could incarnate themselvesin one man and tell the story. 

It is impossible to ignore altogether any comment coming from so eminent aliterary artist as Mr. Laurence Housman, but I do not deal here sospecially with his well known conviction about Votes for Women, as withanother idea which is, I think, rather at the back of it, if not with himat least with others; and which concerns this matter of the true story ofEngland. For the true story is so entirely different from the falseofficial story that the official classes tell that by this time theworking class itself has largely forgotten its own experience. Eitherstory can be quite logically linked up with Female Suffrage, which, therefore, I leave where it is for the moment; merely confessing that, solong as we get hold of the right story and not the wrong story, it seemsto me a matter of secondary importance whether we link it up with FemaleSuffrage or not. 

Now the ordinary version of recent English history that most moderatelyeducated people have absorbed from childhood is something like this. Thatwe emerged slowly from a semi-barbarism in which all the power and wealthwere in the hands of Kings and a few nobles; that the King's power wasbroken first and then in due time that of the nobles, that this piece-mealimprovement was brought about by one class after another waking up to asense of citizenship and demanding a place in the national councils, frequently by riot or violence; and that in consequence of such menacingpopular action, the franchise was granted to one class after another andused more and more to improve the social conditions of those classes, until we practically became a democracy, save for such exceptions as thatof the women. I do not think anyone will deny that something like that isthe general idea of the educated man who reads a newspaper and of thenewspaper that he reads. That is the view current at public schools andcolleges; it is part of the culture of all the classes that count for muchin government; and there is not one word of truth in it from beginning toend. 

That Great Reform Bill

Wealth and political power were very much more popularly distributed inthe Middle Ages than they are now; but we will pass all that and considerrecent history. The franchise has never been largely and liberallygranted in England; half the males have no vote and are not likely to getone. It was _never_ granted in reply to pressure from awakened sectionsof the democracy; in every case there was a perfectly clear motive forgranting it solely for the convenience of the aristocrats. The GreatReform Bill was not passed in response to such riots as that whichdestroyed a Castle; nor did the men who destroyed the Castle get anyadvantage whatever out of the Great Reform Bill. The Great Reform Billwas passed in order to seal an alliance between the landed aristocrats andthe rich manufacturers of the north (an alliance that rules us still); andthe chief object of that alliance was to _prevent_ the English populacegetting any political power in the general excitement after the FrenchRevolution. No one can read Macaulay's speech on the Chartists, forinstance, and not see that this is so. Disraeli's further extension ofthe suffrage was not effected by the intellectual vivacity and purerepublican theory of the mid-Victorian agricultural labourer; it waseffected by a politician who saw an opportunity to dish the Whigs, andguessed that certain orthodoxies in the more prosperous artisan might yetgive him a balance against the commercial Radicals. And while this verythin game of wire-pulling with the mere abstraction of the vote was beingworked entirely by the oligarchs and entirely in their interests, thesolid and real thing that was going on was the steady despoiling of thepoor of all power or wealth, until they find themselves to-day upon thethreshold of slavery. That is The Working Man's History of England. 

Now, as I have said, I care comparatively little what is done with themere voting part of the matter, so long as it is not claimed in such a wayas to allow the plutocrat to escape his responsibility for his crimes, bypretending to be much more progressive, or much more susceptible topopular protest, than he ever has been. And there is this danger in manyof those who have answered me. One of them, for instance, says that womenhave been forced into their present industrial situations by the same ironeconomic laws that have compelled men. I say that men have not beencompelled by iron economic laws, but in the main by the coarse andChristless cynicism of other men. But, of course, this way of talking isexactly in accordance with the fashionable and official version of Englishhistory. Thus, you will read that the monasteries, places where men ofthe poorest origin could be powerful, grew corrupt and gradually decayed. Or you will read that the mediaeval guilds of free workmen yielded at lastto an inevitable economic law. You will read this; and you will bereading lies. They might as well say that Julius Caesar graduallydecayed at the foot of Pompey's statue. You might as well say thatAbraham Lincoln yielded at last to an inevitable economic law. The freemediaeval guilds did not decay; they were murdered. Solid men with solidguns and halberds, armed with lawful warrants from living statesmen brokeup their corporations and took away their hard cash from them. In thesame way the people in Cradley Heath are no more victims of a necessaryeconomic law than the people in Putumayo. They are victims of a veryterrible creature, of whose sins much has been said since the beginning ofthe world; and of whom it was said of old, "Let us fall into the hands ofGod, for His mercies are great; but let us not fall into the hands of Man. "

The Capitalist Is in the Dock

Now it is this offering of a false economic excuse for the sweater that isthe danger in perpetually saying that the poor woman will use the vote andthat the poor man has not used it. The poor man is prevented from usingit; prevented by the rich man, and the poor woman would be prevented inexactly the same gross and stringent style. I do not deny, of course, that there is something in the English temperament, and in the heritage ofthe last few centuries that makes the English workman more tolerant ofwrong than most foreign workmen would be. But this only slightly modifiesthe main fact of the moral responsibility. To take an imperfect parallel, if we said that negro slaves would have rebelled if negroes had been moreintelligent, we should be saying what is reasonable. But if we were tosay that it could by any possibility be represented as being the negro'sfault that he was at that moment in America and not in Africa, we shouldbe saying what is frankly unreasonable. It is every bit as unreasonableto say the mere supineness of the English workmen has put them in thecapitalist slave-yard. The capitalist has put them in the capitalistslaveyard; and very cunning smiths have hammered the chains. It is justthis creative criminality in the authors of the system that we must notallow to be slurred over. The capitalist is in the dock to-day; and sofar as I at least can prevent him, he shall not get out of it. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE IRISH

It will be long before the poison of the Party System is worked out of thebody politic. Some of its most indirect effects are the most dangerous. One that is very dangerous just now is this: that for most Englishmen theParty System falsifies history, and especially the history of revolutions. It falsifies history because it simplifies history. It paints everythingeither Blue or Buff in the style of its own silly circus politics: while areal revolution has as many colours as the sunrise--or the end of theworld. And if we do not get rid of this error we shall make very badblunders about the real revolution which seems to grow more and moreprobable, especially among the Irish. And any human familiarity withhistory will teach a man this first of all: that Party practically doesnot exist in a real revolution. It is a game for quiet times. 

If you take a boy who has been to one of those big private schools whichare falsely called the Public Schools, and another boy who has been to oneof those large public schools which are falsely called the Board Schools, you will find some differences between the two, chiefly a difference inthe management of the voice. But you will find they are both English in aspecial way, and that their education has been essentially the same. Theyare ignorant on the same subjects. They have never heard of the sameplain facts. They have been taught the wrong answer to the same confusingquestion. There is one fundamental element in the attitude of the Etonmaster talking about "playing the game, " and the elementary teachertraining gutter-snipes to sing, "What is the Meaning of Empire Day?" Andthe name of that element is "unhistoric. " It knows nothing really aboutEngland, still less about Ireland or France, and, least of all, of course, about anything like the French Revolution. 

Revolution by Snap Division

Now what general notion does the ordinary English boy, thus taught toutter one ignorance in one of two accents, get and keep through life aboutthe French Revolution? It is the notion of the English House of Commonswith an enormous Radical majority on one side of the table and a smallTory minority on the other; the majority voting solid for a Republic, theminority voting solid for a Monarchy; two teams tramping through twolobbies with no difference between their methods and ours, except that(owing to some habit peculiar to Gaul) the brief intervals were brightenedby a riot or a massacre, instead of by a whisky and soda and a Marconi tip. Novels are much more reliable than histories in such matters. Forthough an English novel about France does not tell the truth about France, it does tell the truth about England; and more than half the historiesnever tell the truth about anything. And popular fiction, I think, bearswitness to the general English impression. The French Revolution is asnap division with an unusual turnover of votes. On the one side stand aking and queen who are good but weak, surrounded by nobles with rapiersdrawn; some of whom are good, many of whom are wicked, all of whom aregood-looking. Against these there is a formless mob of human beings, wearing red caps and seemingly insane, who all blindly follow ruffians whoare also rhetoricians; some of whom die repentant and others unrepentanttowards the end of the fourth act. The leaders of this boiling mass ofall men melted into one are called Mirabeau, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and so on. And it is conceded that their united frenzy may have beenforced on them by the evils of the old regime. 

That, I think, is the commonest English view of the French Revolution; andit will not survive the reading of two pages of any real speech or letterof the period. These human beings were human; varied, complex andinconsistent. But the rich Englishman, ignorant of revolutions, wouldhardly believe you if you told him some of the common human subtleties ofthe case. Tell him that Robespierre threw the red cap in the dirt indisgust, while the king had worn it with a broad grin, so to speak; tellhim that Danton, the fierce founder of the Republic of the Terror, saidquite sincerely to a noble, "I am more monarchist than you;" tell him thatthe Terror really seems to have been brought to an end chiefly by theefforts of people who particularly wanted to go on with it--and he willnot believe these things. He will not believe them because he has nohumility, and therefore no realism. He has never been inside himself; andso could never be inside another man. The truth is that in the Frenchaffair everybody occupied an individual position. Every man talkedsincerely, if not because he was sincere, then because he was angry. Robespierre talked even more about God than about the Republic because hecared even more about God than about the Republic. Danton talked evenmore about France than about the Republic because he cared even more aboutFrance than about the Republic. Marat talked more about Humanity thaneither, because that physician (though himself somewhat needing aphysician) really cared about it. The nobles were divided, each man fromthe next. The attitude of the king was quite different from the attitudeof the queen; certainly much more different than any differences betweenour Liberals and Tories for the last twenty years. And it will sadden_some_ of my friends to remember that it was the king who was the Liberaland the queen who was the Tory. There were not two people, I think, inthat most practical crisis who stood in precisely the same attitudetowards the situation. And that is why, between them, they saved Europe. It is when you really perceive the unity of mankind that you reallyperceive its variety. It is not a flippancy, it is a very sacred truth, to say that when men really understand that they are brothers theyinstantly begin to fight. 

The Revival of Reality

Now these things are repeating themselves with an enormous reality in theIrish Revolution. You will not be able to make a Party System out of thematter. Everybody is in revolt; therefore everybody is telling the truth. The Nationalists will go on caring most for the nation, as Danton andthe defenders of the frontier went on caring most for the nation. Thepriests will go on caring most for religion, as Robespierre went on caringmost for religion. The Socialists will go on caring most for the cure ofphysical suffering, as Marat went on caring most for it. It is out ofthese real differences that real things can be made, such as the modernFrench democracy. For by such tenacity everyone sees at last that thereis something in the other person's position. And those drilled in partydiscipline see nothing either past or present. And where there is nothingthere is Satan. 

For a long time past in our politics there has not only been no realbattle, but no real bargain. No two men have bargained as Gladstone andParnell bargained--each knowing the other to be a power. But in realrevolutions men discover that no one man can really agree with another manuntil he has disagreed with him. 

LIBERALISM: A SAMPLE

There is a certain daily paper in England towards which I feel very muchas Tom Pinch felt towards Mr. Pecksniff immediately after he had found himout. The war upon Dickens was part of the general war on all democrats, about the eighties and nineties, which ushered in the brazen plutocracy ofto-day. And one of the things that it was fashionable to say of Dickensin drawing-rooms was that he had no subtlety, and could not describe acomplex frame of mind. Like most other things that are said indrawing-rooms, it was a lie. Dickens was a very unequal writer, and hissuccesses alternate with his failures; but his successes are subtle quiteas often as they are simple. Thus, to take "Martin Chuzzlewit" alone, Ishould call the joke about the Lord No-zoo a simple joke: but I shouldcall the joke about Mrs. Todgers's vision of a wooden leg a subtle joke. And no frame of mind was ever so selfcontradictory and yet so realistic asthat which Dickens describes when he says, in effect, that, though Pinchknew now that there had never been such a person as Pecksniff, in hisideal sense, he could not bring himself to insult the very face and formthat had contained the legend. The parallel with Liberal journalism isnot perfect; because it was once honest; and Pecksniff presumably neverwas. And even when I come to feel a final incompatibility of temper, Pecksniff was not so Pecksniffian as he has since become. But thecomparison is complete in so far as I share all the reluctance of Mr. Pinch. Some old heathen king was advised by one of the Celtic saints, Ithink, to burn what he had adored and adore what he had burnt. I am quiteready, if anyone will prove I was wrong, to adore what I have burnt; but Ido really feel an unwillingness verging upon weakness to burning what Ihave adored. I think it is a weakness to be overcome in times as bad asthese, when (as Mr. Orage wrote with something like splendid common sensethe other day) there is such a lot to do and so few people who will do it. So I will devote this article to considering one case of the astoundingbaseness to which Liberal journalism has sunk. 

Mental Breakdown in Fleet Street

One of the two or three streaks of light on our horizon can be perceivedin this: that the moral breakdown of these papers has been accompanied bya mental breakdown also. The contemporary official paper, like the "DailyNews" or the "Daily Chronicle" (I mean in so far as it deals withpolitics), simply cannot argue; and simply does not pretend to argue. Itconsiders the solution which it imagines that wealthy people want, and itsignifies the same in the usual manner; which is not by holding up itshand, but by falling on its face. But there is no more curious quality inits degradation than a sort of carelessness, at once of hurry and fatigue, with which it flings down its argument--or rather its refusal to argue. It does not even write sophistry: it writes anything. It does not so muchpoison the reader's mind as simply assume that the reader hasn't got one. For instance, one of these papers printed an article on Sir Stuart Samuel, who, having broken the great Liberal statute against corruption, willactually, perhaps, be asked to pay his own fine--in spite of the fact thathe can well afford to do so. The article says, if I remember aright, thatthe decision will cause general surprise and some indignation. That anymodern Government making a very rich capitalist obey the law will causegeneral surprise, may be true. Whether it will cause general indignationrather depends on whether our social intercourse is entirely confined toPark Lane, or any such pigsties built of gold. But the journalistproceeds to say, his neck rising higher and higher out of his collar, andhis hair rising higher and higher on his head, in short, his resemblanceto the Dickens' original increasing every instant, that he does not meanthat the law against corruption should be less stringent, but that theburden should be borne by the whole community. This may mean thatwhenever a rich man breaks the law, all the poor men ought to be made topay his fine. But I will suppose a slightly less insane meaning. I willsuppose it means that the whole power of the commonwealth should be usedto prosecute an offender of this kind. That, of course, can only meanthat the matter will be decided by that instrument which still pretends torepresent the whole power of the commonwealth. In other words, theGovernment will judge the Government. 

Now this is a perfectly plain piece of brute logic. We need not go intothe other delicious things in the article, as when it says that "in oldtimes Parliament had to be protected against Royal invasion by the man inthe street. " Parliament has to be protected now against the man in thestreet. Parliament is simply the most detested and the most detestable ofall our national institutions: all that is evident enough. What isinteresting is the blank and staring fallacy of the attempted reply. 

When the Journalist Is Ruined

A long while ago, before all the Liberals died, a Liberal introduced aBill to prevent Parliament being merely packed with the slaves offinancial interests. For that purpose he established the excellentdemocratic principle that the private citizen, as such, might protestagainst public corruption. He was called the Common Informer. I believethe miserable party papers are really reduced to playing on thedegradation of the two words in modern language. Now the word "comnon" in"Common Informer" means exactly what it means in "common sense" or "Bookof Common Prayer, " or (above all) in "House of Commons. " It does not meananything low or vulgar; any more than they do. The only difference isthat the House of Commons really is low and vulgar; and the CommonInformer isn't. It is just the same with the word "Informer. " It doesnot mean spy or sneak. It means one who gives information. It means what"journalist" ought to mean. The only difference is that the CommonInformer may be paid if he tells the truth. The common journalist will beruined if he does. 

Now the quite plain point before the party journalist is this: If hereally means that a corrupt bargain between a Government and a contractorought to be judged by public opinion, he must (nowadays) mean Parliament;that is, the caucus that controls Parliament. And he must decide betweenone of two views. Either he means that there can be no such thing as acorrupt Government. Or he means that it is one of the characteristicqualities of a corrupt Government to denounce its own corruption. I laugh;and I leave him his choice. 

THE FATIGUE OF FLEET STREET

Why is the modern party political journalism so bad? It is worse eventhan it intends to be. It praises its preposterous party leaders throughthick and thin; but it somehow succeeds in making them look greater foolsthan they are. This clumsiness clings even to the photographs of publicmen, as they are snapshotted at public meetings. A sensitive politician(if there is such a thing) would, I should think, want to murder the manwho snapshots him at those moments. For our general impression of a man'sgesture or play of feature is made up of a series of vanishing instants, at any one of which he may look worse than our general impression records. Mr. Augustine Birrell may have made quite a sensible and amusing speech, in the course of which his audience would hardly have noticed that heresettled his necktie. Snapshot him, and he appears as convulsivelyclutching his throat in the agonies of strangulation, and with his headtwisted on one side as if he had been hanged. Sir Edward Carson mightmake a perfectly good speech, which no one thought wearisome, but mighthimself be just tired enough to shift from one leg to the other. Snapshothim, and he appears as holding one leg stiffly in the air and yawningenough to swallow the audience. But it is in the prose narratives of thePress that we find most manifestations of this strange ineptitude; thisknack of exhibiting your own favourites in an unlucky light. It is not somuch that the party journalists do not tell the truth as that they telljust enough of it to make it clear that they are telling lies. One oftheir favourite blunders is an amazing sort of bathos. They begin bytelling you that some statesman said something brilliant in style orbiting in wit, at which his hearers thrilled with terror or thundered withapplause. And then they tell you what it was that he said. Silly asses!

Insane Exaggeration

Here is an example from a leading Liberal paper touching the debates onHome Rule. I am a Home Ruler; so my sympathies would be, if anything, onthe side of the Liberal paper upon that point. I merely quote it as anexample 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, hitback without mercy. "I should like first to know, " said he, with a glanceat his supporters, "whether my proposals are accepted?"

That's all. And I really do not see why poor Mr. Asquith should berepresented as having violated the Christian virtue of mercy by sayingthat. I myself could compose a great many paragraphs upon the same model, each containing its stinging and perhaps unscrupulous epigram. As, forexample:--"The Archbishop of Canterbury, realising that his choice now laybetween denying God and earning the crown of martyrdom by dying intorments, spoke with a frenzy of religious passion that might have seemedfanatical under circumstances less intense. 'The Children's Service, ' hesaid firmly, with his face to the congregation, 'will be held at half-pastfour this afternoon as usual. '"

Or, we might have:--"Lord Roberts, recognising that he had now to faceArmageddon, and that if he lost this last battle against overwhelming oddsthe independence of England would be extinguished forever, addressed tohis soldiers (looking at them and not falling off his horse) a speechwhich brought their national passions to boiling point, and might wellhave seemed blood-thirsty in quieter times. It ended with the celebrateddeclaration that it was a fine day. "

Or we might have the much greater excitement of reading something likethis:--"The Astronomer Royal, having realised that the earth wouldcertainly be smashed to pieces by a comet unless his requests inconnection with wireless telegraphy were seriously considered, gave anaddress at the Royal Society which, under other circumstances, would haveseemed unduly dogmatic and emotional and deficient in scientificagnosticism. This address (which he delivered without any attempt tostand on his head) included a fierce and even ferocious declaration thatit 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 myimaginary paragraphs is more ridiculous than the real one. Nobody canbelieve that Mr. Asquith regards these belated and careful compromisesabout Home Rule as "the biggest battle of his career. " It is only justiceto him to say that he has had bigger battles than that. Nobody canbelieve that any body of men, bodily present, either thundered or thrilledat a man merely saying that he would like to know whether his proposalswere accepted. No; it would be far better for Parliament if its doorswere shut again, and reporters were excluded. In that case, the outerpublic did hear genuine rumours of almost gigantic eloquence; such as thatwhich has perpetuated Pitt's reply against the charge of youth, or Fox'sbludgeoning of the idea of war as a compromise. It would be much betterto follow the old fashion and let in no reporters at all than to followthe new fashion and select the stupidest reporters you can find. 

Their Load of Lies

Now, why do people in Fleet-street talk such tosh? People in Fleet-streetare not fools. Most of them have realised reality through work; somethrough 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 getflurried, Nature if you like) is unexpectedly avenged on things infamousand unreasonable. And this method is that men's moral and even physicaltenacity actually give out under such a load of lies. They go on writingtheir leading articles and their Parliamentary reports. They go on doingit as a convict goes on picking oakum. But the point is not that we arebored with their articles; the point is that they are. The work is doneworse because it is done weakly and without human enthusiasm. And it isdone 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 havedied. It is done for a thing called Capitalism: which stands out quiteclearly in history in many curious ways. But the most curious thing aboutit is that no man has loved it; and no man died for it. 

THE AMNESTY FOR AGGRESSION

If there is to rise out of all this red ruin something like a republic ofjustice, it is essential that our views should be real views; that is, glimpses of lives and landscapes outside ourselves. It is essential thatthey should not be mere opium visions that begin and end in smoke--and sooften in cannon smoke. I make no apology, therefore, for returning to thepurely practical and realistic point I urged last week: the fact that weshall lose everything we might have gained if we lose the idea that theresponsible person is responsible. 

For instance, it is almost specially so with the one or two things inwhich the British Government, or the British public, really are behavingbadly. The first, and worst of them, is the non-extension of theMoratorium, or truce of debtor and creditor, to the very world where thereare the poorest debtors and thc cruellest creditors. This is infamous:and should be, if possible, more infamous to those who think the war rightthan to those who think it wrong. Everyone knows that the people who canleast pay their debts are the people who are always trying to. Among thepoor a payment may be as rash as a speculation. Among the rich abankruptcy may be as safe as a bank. Considering the class from whichprivate soldiers are taken, there is an atrocious meanness in the idea ofbuying their blood abroad, while we sell their sticks at home. TheEnglish language, by the way, is full of delicate paradoxes. We talk ofthe private soldiers because they are really public soldiers; and we talkof 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 inpeace. 

Ought to Be Hammered

But as long as we speak of it as a cloudy conclusion, come to by ananonymous club called Parliament, or a masked tribunal called the Cabinet, we shall never get such a wrong righted. Somebody is officiallyresponsible for the unfairness; and that somebody ought to be hammered. The other example, less important but more ludicrous, is the silly boycottof Germans in England, extending even to German music. I do not believefor a moment that the English people feel any such insane fastidiousness. Are the English artists who practise the particularly English art ofwater-colour to be forbidden to use Prussian blue? Are all old ladies toshoot their Pomeranian dogs? But though England would laugh at this, shewill get the credit of it, and will continue: until we ask who the actualpersons 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 veryprobable that we should find they are foreigners. 

Some days ago the Official Council of the Independent Labour Party, or theIndependent Council of the Official Labour Party, or the Independent andOfficial Council of the Labour Party (I have got quite nervous about thesenames and distinctions; but they all seem to say the same thing) begantheir manifesto by saying it would be difficult to assign the degrees ofresponsibility which each nation had for the outbreak of the war. Afterwards, a writer in the "Christian Commonwealth, " lamenting war in thename of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic middle-class, saidthat all the nations must share the responsibility for this great calamityof war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking like that we shall havewar after war, and calamity after calamity, until the crack of doom. Itsimply amounts to a promise of pardon to any person who will start aquarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The moment any man assaults anyother man he makes all the other men as bad as himself. He has only tostab, and to vanish in a fog of forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron, the predatory Empires, will be delighted with this doctrine. They willapplaud the Labour Concert or Committee, or whatever it is called. Theywill 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. 

The Whole Loathsome Load

But I still stubbornly and meekly submit my point: that you cannot end warwithout 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 twotriumphant wars, ought to discrown itself before sunrise; because thenephew of a neighbouring Emperor has been shot by his own subjects. Verywell. Then blame Servia; and, to the extent of your influence, you may bepreventing small kingdoms being obstinate or even princes being shot. Perhaps you think the whole thing was a huge conspiracy of Russia, withFrance 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 Empiresfrom making racial excuses for a raid. Perhaps you think France wrongfor feeling what you call "revenge, " and I should call recovery of stolengoods. Perhaps you blame Belgium for being sentimental about her frontier;or England for being sentimental about her word. If so, blame them; orwhichever of them you think is to blame. Or again, it is barely possiblethat you may think, as I do, that the whole loathsome load has been laidupon us by the monarchy which I have not named; still less wasted time inabusing. But if there be in Europe a military State which has not thereligion of Russia, yet has helped Russia to tyrannise over the Poles, that State cares not for religion, but for tyranny. If there be a Statein Europe which has not the religion of the Austrians, but has helpedAustria to bully the Servians, that State cares not for belief, but forbullying. If there be in Europe any people or principality which respectsneither republics nor religions, to which the political ideal of Paris isas much a myth as the mystical ideal of Moscow, then blame that: and domore than blame. In the healthy and highly theological words of RobertBlatchford, drive it back to the Hell from which it came. 

Crying Over Spilt Blood

But whatever you do, do not blame everybody for what was certainly done bysomebody. It may be it is no good crying over spilt blood, any more thanover spilt milk. But we do not find the culprit any more by spilling themilk over everybody; or by daubing everybody with blood. Still less do weimprove 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 oldKingdom of Muscovy), if we see Bavaria taking a sudden fancy to the Bankof England, or the King of the Cannibal Islands suddenly demanding atribute of edible boys and girls from England and America, we may be quitecertain also that the Leader of the Labour Party will rise, with a slightcough, and say: "It would be a difficult task to apportion the blamebetween the various claims which. .. "

REVIVE THE COURT JESTER

I hope the Government will not think just now about appointing a PoetLaureate. I hardly think they can be altogether in the right mood. Thebusiness just now before the country makes a very good detective story;but as a national epic it is a little depressing. Jingo literature alwaysweakens a nation; but even healthy patriotic literature has its propertime and occasion. For instance, Mr. Newbolt (who has been suggested forthe post) is a very fine poet; but I think his patriotic lyrics would justnow rather jar upon a patriot. We are rather too much concerned about ourpractical 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 tothe bottom, because the capitalists have made Lloyd George abolish thePlimsoll Line. One could not, without being understood ironically, adjurethe 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 atthis moment in the soldiering line--unless, perhaps, it is MajorArcher-Shee--of whom anyone would be likely to say: "Sed miles; sed propatria. " There is, indeed, one beautiful poem of Mr. Newbolt's which maymingle faintly with one's thoughts in such times, but that, alas, is to avery different tune. I mean that one in which he echoes Turner'sconception of the old wooden ship vanishing with all the valiant memoriesof the English:

There's a far bell ringingAt the setting of the sun, And a phantom voice is singingOf the great days done. There's a far bell ringing, And a phantom voice is singingOf a fame forever clingingTo 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 ornot. It is quite enough for us to know, as King Alfred did, that a greatmany pirates have landed on both banks of the Thames. 

Praise and Prophecy Impossible

At this moment that is the only kind of patriotic poem that could satisfythe emotions of a patriotic person. But it certainly is not the sort ofpoem that is expected from a Poet Laureate, either on the highest or thelowest theory of his office. He is either a great minstrel singing thevictories of a great king, or he is a common Court official like the Groomof the Powder Closet. In the first case his praises should be true; inthe second case they will nearly always be false; but in either case hemust praise. And what there is for him to praise just now it would beprecious hard to say. And if there is no great hope of a real poet, thereis still less hope of a real prophet. What Newman called, I think, "TheProphetical Office, " that is, the institution of an inspired protest evenagainst an inspired religion, certainly would not do in modern England. The Court is not likely to keep a tame prophet in order to encourage himto be wild. It is not likely to pay a man to say that wolves shall howlin Downing-street and vultures build their nests in Buckingham Palace. Sovast has been the progress of humanity that these two things are quiteimpossible. We cannot have a great poet praising kings. We cannot have agreat prophet denouncing kings. So I have to fall back on a thirdsuggestion. 

The Field for a Fool

Instead of reviving the Court Poet, why not revive the Court Fool? He isthe only person who could do any good at this moment either to the Royalor the judicial Courts. The present political situation is utterlyunsuitable for the purposes of a great poet. But it is particularlysuitable for the purposes of a great buffoon. The old jester was undercertain privileges: you could not resent the jokes of a fool, just as youcannot resent the sermons of a curate. Now, what the present Governmentof England wants is neither serious praise nor serious denunciation; whatit wants is satire. What it wants, in other words, is realism given withgusto. When King Louis the Eleventh unexpectedly visited his enemy, theDuke of Burgundy, with a small escort, the Duke's jester said he wouldgive the King his fool's cap, for he was the fool now. And when the Dukereplied 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 ofthing that somebody ought to be free to say now. But if you say it nowyou will be fined a hundred pounds at the least. 

Carson's Dilemma

For the things that have been happening lately are not merely things thatone could joke about. They are themselves, truly and intrinsically, jokes. I mean that there is a sort of epigram of unreason in the situationitself, as there was in the situation where there was jam yesterday andjam to-morrow but never jam to-day. Take, for instance, the extraordinarycase of Sir Edward Carson. The point is not whether we regard hisattitude in Belfast as the defiance of a sincere and dogmatic rebel, or asthe bluff of a party hack and mountebank. The point is not whether weregard his defence of the Government at the Old Bailey as a chivalrous andreluctant duty done as an advocate or a friend, or as a mere case of alawyer selling his soul for a fat brief. The point is that whichever ofthe two actions we approve, and whichever of the four explanations weadopt, Sir Edward's position is still raving nonsense. On any argument, he cannot escape from his dilemma. It may be argued that laws and customsshould be obeyed whatever our private feelings; and that it is anestablished custom to accept a brief in such a case. But then it is asomewhat more established custom to obey an Act of Parliament and to keepthe peace. It may be argued that extreme misgovernment justifies men inUlster or elsewhere in refusing to obey the law. But then it wouldjustify them even more in refusing to appear professionally in a law court. Etiquette cannot be at once so unimportant that Carson may shoot at theKing's uniform, and yet so important that he must always be ready to puton his own. The Government cannot be so disreputable that Carson need notlay down his gun, and yet so respectable that he is bound to put on hiswig. Carson cannot at once be so fierce that he can kill in what heconsiders a good cause, and yet so meek that he must argue in what heconsiders a bad cause. Obedience or disobedience, conventional orunconventional, a solicitor's letter cannot be more sacred than the King'swrit; a blue bag cannot be more rational than the British flag. The thingis rubbish read anyway, and the only difficulty is to get a joke goodenough to express it. It is a case for the Court Jester. The phantasyof it could only be expressed by some huge ceremonial hoax. Carson oughtto be crowned with the shamrocks and emeralds and followed by green-cladminstrels of the Clan-na-Gael, playing "The Wearing of the Green. "

Belated Chattiness by Wireless

But all the recent events are like that. They are practical jokes. Thejokes do not need to be made: they only need to be pointed out. You andI do not talk and act as the Isaacs brothers talked and acted, by theirown most favourable account of themselves; and even their account ofthemselves was by no means favourable. You and I do not talk of meetingour own born brother "at a family function" as if he were some infinitelydistant cousin whom we only met at Christmas. You and I, when we suddenlyfeel inclined for a chat with the same brother about his dinner and theCoal Strike, do not generally select either wireless telegraphy or theAtlantic Cable as the most obvious and economical channel for thatoutburst of belated chattiness. You and I do not talk, if it is proposedto start a railway between Catsville and Dogtown, as if the putting up ofa station at Dogtown could have no kind of economic effect on the puttingup of a station at Catsville. You and I do not think it candid to saythat when we are at one end of a telephone we have no sort of connectionwith the other end. These things have got into the region of farce; andshould be dealt with farcically, not even ferociously. 

A Fool Who Shall Be Free

In the Roman Republic there was a Tribune of the People, whose person wasinviolable like an ambassador's. There was much the same idea in Becket'sattempt to remove the Priest, who was then the popular champion, from theordinary courts. We shall have no Tribune; for we have no republic. Weshall have no Priest; for we have no religion. The best we deserve or canexpect is a Fool who shall be free; and who shall deliver us with laughter. 

THE ART OF MISSING THE POINT

Missing the point is a very fine art; and has been carried to somethinglike perfection by politicians and Pressmen to-day. For the point isgenerally a very sharp point; and is, moreover, sharp at both ends. Thatis to say that both parties would probably impale themselves in anuncomfortable manner if they did not manage to avoid it altogether. Ihave just been looking at the election address of the official Liberalcandidate 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 otherdocuments 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 andEducation; and nobody reading it could possibly imagine that in the townof Wycombe, where the poll will be declared, the capital of the Wycombedivision of Bucks which the candidate is contesting, centre of theimportant and vital trade on which it has thriven, a savage struggle aboutjustice has been raging for months past between the poor and rich, as realas the French Revolution. The man offering himself at Wycombe asrepresentative 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 himselfas a deputy for the town of Paris, and had said nothing about the Monarchy, nothing about the Republic, nothing about the massacres, nothing aboutthe war; but had explained with great clearness his views on thesuppression of the Jansenists, the literary style of Racine, thesuitability of Turenae for the post of commander-in-chief, and thereligious reflections of Madame de Maintenon. For, at their best, thecandidate's topics are not topical. Home Rule is a very good thing, andmodern education is a very bad thing; but neither of them are things thatanybody is talking about in High Wycombe. This is the first and simplestway of missing the point: deliberately to avoid and ignore it. 

The Candid Candidate

It would be an amusing experiment, by the way, to go to the point insteadof avoiding it. What fun it would be to stand as a strict Partycandidate, but issue a perfectly frank and cynical Election Address. Mr. Mosley's address begins, "Gentlemen, --Sir Alfred Cripps having been chosenfor a high judicial position and a seat in the House of Lords, aby-election now becomes necessary, and the electors of South Bucks arecharged with the responsible duty of electing, etc. , etc. " But supposethere were another candidate whose election address opened in a plain, manly style, like this: "Gentlemen, --In the sincere hope of being myselfchosen for a high judicial position or a seat in the House of Lords, orconsiderably increasing my private fortune by some Government appointment, or, at least, inside information about the financial prospects, I havedecided that it is worth my while to disburse large sums of money to youon various pretexts, and, with even more reluctance to endure the badspeaking and bad ventilation of the Commons' House of Parliament, so helpme God. I have very pronounced convictions on various political questions;but I will not trouble my fellow-citizens with them, since I have quitemade up my mind to abandon any or all of them if requested to do so by theupper classes. The electors are therefore charged with the entirelyirresponsible duty of electing a Member; or, in other words, I ask myneighbours round about this part, who know I am not a bad chap in manyways, to do me a good turn in my business, just as I might ask them tochange a sovereign. My election will have no conceivable kind of effecton anything or anybody except myself; so I ask, as man to man, theElectors of the Southern or Wycombe Division of the County of Buckinghamto accept a ride in one of my motor-cars; and poll early to please apal--God Save the King. " I do not know whether you or I would be electedif we presented ourselves with an election address of that kind; but weshould have had our fun and (comparatively speaking) saved our souls; andI have a strong suspicion that we should be elected or rejected on amechanical majority like anybody else; nobody having dreamed of reading anelection address any more than an advertisement of a hair restorer. 

Tyranny and Head-Dress

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 justwitty enough to state it wrong. Thus, some of the Liberal official papershave almost screwed up their courage to the sticking-point about thebestial coup d'etat in South Africa. They have screwed up their courageto the sticking-point; and it has stuck. It cannot get any further;because it has missed the main point. The modern Liberals make theirfeeble attempts to attack the introduction of slavery into South Africa bythe Dutch and the Jews, by a very typical evasion of the vital fact. Thevital fact is simply slavery. Most of these Dutchmen have always feltlike slave-owners. Most of these Jews have always felt like slaves. Nowthat they are on top, they have a particular and curious kind of impudence, which is only known among slaves. But the Liberal journalists will dotheir best to suggest that the South African wrong consisted in what theycall Martial Law. That is, that there is something specially wicked aboutmen doing an act of cruelty in khaki or in vermilion, but not if it isdone in dark blue with pewter buttons. The tyrant who wears a busby or aforage cap is abominable; the tyrant who wears a horsehair wig isexcusable. To be judged by soldiers is hell; but to be judged by lawyersis paradise. 

Now the point must not be missed in this way. What is wrong with thetyranny in Africa is not that it is run by soldiers. It would be quite asbad, or worse, if it were run by policemen. What is wrong is that, forthe first time since Pagan times, private men are being forced to work fora private man. Men are being punished by imprisonment or exile forrefusing to accept a job. The fact that Botha can ride on a horse, orfire off a gun, makes him better rather than worse than any man likeSidney Webb or Philip Snowden, who attempt the same slavery by much lessmanly methods. The Liberal Party will try to divert the whole discussionto one about what they call militarism. But the very terms of modernpolitics contradict it. For when we talk of real rebels against thepresent system we call them Militants. And there will be none in theServile State. 

THE SERVILE STATE AGAIN

I read the other day, in a quotation from a German newspaper, the highlycharacteristic remark that Germany having annexed Belgium would soonre-establish its commerce and prosperity, and that, in particular, arrangements were already being made for introducing into the new provincethe German laws for the protection of workmen. 

I am quite content with that paragraph for the purpose of any controversyabout what is called German atrocity. If men I know had not told me theyhad themselves seen the bayoneting of a baby; if the most respectablerefugees did not bring with them stories of burning cottages--yes, and ofburning cottagers as well; if doctors did not report what they do reportof the condition of girls in the hospitals; if there were no facts; ifthere were no photographs, that one phrase I have quoted would be quitesufficient to satisfy me that the Prussians are tyrants; tyrants in apeculiar and almost insane sense which makes them pre-eminent among theevil princes of the earth. The first and most striking feature is astupidity that rises into a sort of ghastly innocence. The protection ofworkmen! Some workmen, perhaps, might have a fancy for being protectedfrom shrapnel; some might be glad to put up an umbrella that would wardoff things dropping from the gentle Zeppelin in heaven upon the placebeneath. Some of these discontented proletarians have taken the same viewas Vandervelde their leader, and are now energetically engaged inprotecting themselves along the line of the Yser; I am glad to say notaltogether without success. It is probable that nearly all of the Belgianworkers would, on the whole, prefer to be protected against bombs, sabres, burning cities, starvation, torture, and the treason of wicked kings. Inshort, it is probable--it is at least possible, impious as is theidea--that they would prefer to be protected against Germans and all theyrepresent. But if a Belgian workman is told that he is not to beprotected against Germans, but actually to be protected by Germans, Ithink he may be excused for staring. His first impulse, I imagine, willbe to ask, "Against whom? Are there any worse people to come along?"

But apart from the hellish irony of this humanitarian idea, the questionit raises is really one of solid importance for people whose politics aremore 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 thatpoison--very largely a Prussian poison--which has long been working in ourown commonwealth, to the enslavement of the weak and the secretstrengthening of the strong. For the Prussian armies are, pre-eminently, the advance guard of the Servile State. I say this scientifically, andquite apart from passion or even from preference. I have no illusionsabout either Belgium or England. Both have been stained with the soot ofCapitalism and blinded with the smoke of mere Colonial ambition; both havebeen caught at a disadvantage in such modern dirt and disorder; both havecome out much better than I should have expected countries so modern and soindustrial to do. But in England and Belgium there is Capitalism mixed upwith a great many other things, strong things and things that pursue otheraims; Clericalism, for instance, and militant Socialism in Belgium; TradesUnionism and sport and the remains of real aristocracy in England. ButPrussia is Capitalism; that is, a gradually solidifying slavery; and thatmajestic unity with which she moves, dragging all the dumb Germanies afterher, is due to the fact that her Servile State is complete, while ours isincomplete. There are not mutinies; there are not even mockeries; thevoice of national self-criticism has been extinguished forever. For thispeople is already permanently cloven into a higher and a lower class: inits industry as much as its army. Its employers are, in the strictest andmost sinister sense, captains of industry. Its proletariat is, in thetruest and most pitiable sense, an army of labour. In that atmospheremasters bear upon them the signs that they are more than men; and toinsult an officer is death. 

If anyone ask how this extreme and unmistakable subordination of theemployed to the employers is brought about, we all know the answer. It isbrought about by hunger and hardness of heart, accelerated by a certainkind of legislation, of which we have had a good deal lately in England, but which was almost invariably borrowed from Prussia. Mr. HerbertSamuel's suggestion that the poor should be able to put their money inlittle boxes and not be able to get it out again is a sort of standingsymbol of all the rest. I have forgotten how the poor were going tobenefit eventually by what is for them indistinguishable from droppingsixpence 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 beinoculated, or trepanned, or circumcised, or something. Germany is fullof this sort of legislation; and if you asked an innocent German, whohonestly believed in it, what it was, he would answer that it was for theprotection of workmen. 

And if you asked again "Their protection from what?" you would have thewhole plan and problem of the Servile State plain in front of you. Whatever notion there is, there is no notion whatever of protecting theemployed person _from his employer_. Much less is there any idea of hisever being anywhere except under an employer. Whatever the Capitalistwants he gets. He may have the sense to want washed and well-fedlabourers rather than dirty and feeble ones, and the restrictions mayhappen to exist in the form of laws from the Kaiser or by-laws from theKrupps. But the Kaiser will not offend the Krupps, and the Krupps willnot offend the Kaiser. Laws of this kind, then, do not attempt to protectworkmen against the injustice of the Capitalist as the English TradeUnions did. They do not attempt to protect workmen against the injusticeof the State as the mediaeval guilds did. Obviously they cannot protectworkmen against the foreign invader--especially when (as in the comic caseof Belgium) they are imposed by the foreign invader. What then are suchlaws designed to protect workmen against? Tigers, rattlesnakes, hyenas?

Oh, my young friends; oh, my Christian brethren, they are designed toprotect this poor person from something which to those of established rankis more horrid than many hyenas. They are designed, my friends, toprotect a man from himself--from something that the masters of the earthfear more than famine or war, and which Prussia especially fears aseverything fears that which would certainly be its end. They are meant toprotect a man against himself--that is, they are meant to protect a managainst his manhood. 

And if anyone reminds me that there is a Socialist Party in Germany, Ireply that there isn't. 

THE EMPIRE OF THE IGNORANT

That anarchic future which the more timid Tories professed to fear hasalready fallen upon us. We are ruled by ignorant people. But the mostignorant people in modern Britain are to be found in the upper class, themiddle class, and especially the upper middle class. I do not say itwith the smallest petulance or even distaste; these classes are oftenreally beneficent in their breeding or their hospitality, or theirhumanity 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 scholarslike Professor Gilbert Murray or Professor Phillimore are not ignorant, though they _are_ gentlemen. But when one looks up at any mass of thewealthier and more powerful classes, at the Grand Stand at Epsom, at thewindows of Park-lane, at the people at a full-dress debate or afashionable wedding, we shall be safe in saying that they are, for themost part, the most ill-taught, or untaught, creatures in these islands. 

Literally Illiterate

It is indeed their feeble boast that they are not literally illiterate. They are always saying the ancient barons could not sign their ownnames--for they know less of history perhaps than of anything else. Themodern barons, however, can sign their own names--or someone else's for achange. 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 plainimpartial book, English or foreign, that is not specially written tosoothe their panic or to please their pride. Looking up at these seats ofthe mighty I can only say, with something of despair, what Robert Lowesaid of the enfranchised workmen: "We must educate our masters. "

I do not mean this as paradoxical, or even as symbolical; it is simplytame and true. The modern English rich know nothing about things, noteven about the things to which they appeal. Compared with them, the poorare pretty sure to get some enlightenment, even if they cannot get liberty;they must at least be technical. An old apprentice learnt a trade, evenif his master came like any Turk and banged him most severely. The oldhousewife knew which side her bread was buttered, even if it were so thinas to be almost imperceptible. The old sailor knew the ropes; even if heknew the rope's end. Consequently, when any of these revolted, they wereconcerned with things they knew, pains, practical impossibilities, or thepersonal record. 

But They Know

The apprentice cried "Clubs?" and cracked his neighbours' heads with theprecision and fineness of touch which only manual craftsmanship can give. The housewives who flatly refused to cook the hot dinner knew how much orhow little, cold meat there was in the house. The sailor who defieddiscipline by mutinying at the Nore did not defy discipline in the senseof falling off the rigging or letting the water into the hold. Similarlythe modern proletariat, however little it may know, knows what it istalking about. 

But the curious thing about the educated class is that exactly what itdoes not know is what it is talking about. I mean that it is startlinglyignorant of those special things which it is supposed to invoke and keepinviolate. The things that workmen invoke may be uglier, more acrid, moresordid; but they know all about them. They know enough arithmetic to knowthat prices have risen; the kind Levantine gentleman is always there tomake them fully understand the meaning of an interest sum; and thelandlord will define Rent as rigidly as Ricardo. The doctors can alwaystell them the Latin for an empty stomach; and when the poor man is treatedfor the time with some human respect (by the Coronet) it almost seems apity he is not alive to hear how legally he died. 

Against this bitter shrewdness and bleak realism in the suffering classesit is commonly supposed that the more leisured classes stand for certainlegitimate 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 havesomething, even if it were something narrow, that testified to the truthsof religion or patriotism. But such narrow things in the past have alwaysat least known their own history; the bigot knew his catechism; thepatriot knew his way home. The astonishing thing about the modern rich istheir real and sincere ignorance--especially of the things they like. 

No!

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 inwhich Orange resistance is a matter of religion. But go and ask any ofthe five hundred fluttering ladies at a garden party (who find Carson sosplendid and Belfast so thrilling) what it is all about, when it began, where it came from, what it really maintains? What was the history ofUlster? What is the religion of Belfast? Do any of them know whereUlstermen were in Grattan's time; do any of them know what was the"Protestantism" that came from Scotland to that isle; could any of themtell what part of the old Catholic system it really denied?

It was generally something that the fluttering ladies find in their ownAnglican churches every Sunday. It were vain to ask them to state thedoctrines of the Calvinist creed; they could not state the doctrines oftheir own creed. It were vain to tell them to read the history ofIreland; they have never read the history of England. It would matter aslittle 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 andritual are the only things aristocrats are supposed to know; and theydon't know them. 

Smile and Smile

I am not fed on turtle soup and Tokay because of my exquisite intimacywith the style and idiom of Heine and Richter. The English governingclass is fed on turtle soup and Tokay to represent the past, of which itis literally ignorant, as I am of German irregular verbs; and to representthe religious traditions of the State, when it does not know three wordsof theology, as I do not know three words of German. 

This is the last insult offered by the proud to the humble. They rulethem by the smiling terror of an ancient secret. They smile and smile;but they have forgotten the secret. 

THE SYMBOLISM OF KRUPP

The curious position of the Krupp firm in the awful story developingaround us is not quite sufficiently grasped. There is a kind of academicclarity of definition which does not see the proportions of things forwhich everything falls within a definition, and nothing ever breaks beyondit. To this type of mind (which is valuable when set to its special andnarrow 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'shat. They are both denials of the principle of private property, and areequally 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 notrobbery, but recovery of stolen goods. Second, I should say that even ifthere were no such thing as personal property, there would still be such athing as personal dignity, and different modes of robbery would diminishit in very different ways. Similarly, there is a truth, but only ahalf-truth, in the saying that all modern Powers alike rely on theCapitalist and make war on the lines of Capitalism. It is true, and it isdisgraceful. But it is _not_ equally true and equally disgraceful. It isnot true that Montenegro is as much ruled by financiers as Prussia, justas it is not true that as many men in the Kaiserstrasse, in Berlin, wearlong knives in their belts as wear them in the neighbourhood of the BlackMountain. It is not true that every peasant from one of the old Russiancommunes is the immediate servant of a rich man, as is every employee ofMr. Rockefeller. It is as false as the statement that no poor people inAmerica can read or write. There is an element of Capitalism in allmodern countries, as there is an element of illiteracy in all moderncountries. There are some who think that the number of ourfellow-citizens who can sign their names ought to comfort us for theextreme fewness of those who have anything in the bank to sign it for, butI am not one of these. 

In any case, the position of Krupp has certain interesting aspects. Whenwe talk of Army contractors as among the base but active actualities ofwar, we commonly mean that while the contractor benefits by the war, thewar, on the whole, rather suffers by the contractor. We regard thisunsoldierly middleman with disgust, or great anger, or contemptuousacquiescence, or commercial dread and silence, according to our personalposition and character. But we nowhere think of him as having anything todo with fighting in the final sense. Those worthy and wealthy persons whoemploy women's labour at a few shillings a week do not do it to obtain thebest clothes for the soldiers, but to make a sufficient profit on theworst. The only argument is whether such clothes are just good enough forthe soldiers, or are too bad for anybody or anything. We tolerate thecontractor, 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 goesto the taxpayer, but what goes to the soldier. We know the Army will notfight any better, at least, because the clothes they wear were stitched bywretched women who could hardly see; or because their boots were made byharassed helots, who never had time to think. In war-time it is verywidely confessed that Capitalism is not a good way of ruling a patrioticor self-respecting people, and all sorts of other things, from strictState organisation to quite casual personal charity, are hastilysubstituted for it. It is recognised that the "great employer, " ninetimes out of ten, is no more than the schoolboy or the page who pilferstarts and sweets from the dishes as they go up and down. How angry one iswith him depends on temperament, on the stage of the dinner--also on thenumber of tarts. 

Now here comes in the real and sinister significance of Krupps. There aremany capitalists in Europe as rich, as vulgar, as selfish, as rootedlyopposed to any fellowship of the fortunate and unfortunate. But there isno other capitalist who claims, or can pretend to claim, that he has veryappreciably _helped_ the activities of his people in war. I will supposethat Lipton did not deserve the very severe criticisms made on his firm byMr. Justice Darling; but, however blameless he was, nobody can supposethat British soldiers would charge better with the bayonet because theyhad some particular kind of groceries inside them. But Krupp can make aplausible claim that the huge infernal machines to which his country owesnearly all of its successes could only have been produced under theequally infernal conditions of the modern factory and the urban andproletarian civilisation. That is why the victory of Germany would besimply the victory of Krupp, and the victory of Krupp would be simply thevictory of Capitalism. There, and there alone, Capitalism would be ableto point to something done successfully for a whole nation--done (as itwould certainly maintain) better than small free States or naturaldemocracies could have done it. I confess I think the modern Germansmorally second-rate, and I think that even war, when it is conducted mostsuccessfully by machinery, is second-rate war. But this second-rate warwill become not only the first but the only brand, if the cannon of Kruppshould conquer; and, what is very much worse, it will be the onlyintelligent answer that any capitalist has yet given against our case thatCapitalism is as wasteful and as weak as it is certainly wicked. I do notfear any such finality, for I happen to believe in the kind of men whofight best with bayonets and whose fathers hammered their own pikes forthe French Revolution. 

THE TOWER OF BEBEL

Among the cloudy and symbolic stories in the beginning of the Bible thereis one about a tower built with such vertical energy as to take a hold onheaven, but ruined and resulting only in a confusion of tongues. Thestory might be interpreted in many ways--religiously, as meaning thatspiritual insolence starts all human separations; irreligiously, asmeaning that the inhuman heavens grudge man his magnificent dream; ormerely satirically as suggesting that all attempts to reach a higheragreement always end in more disagreement than there was before. It mightbe taken by the partially intelligent Kensitite as a judgment on LatinChristians for talking Latin. It might be taken by the somewhat lessintelligent Professor Harnack as a final proof that all prehistorichumanity talked German. But when all was said, the symbol would remainthat a plain tower, as straight as a sword, as simple as a lily, didnevertheless produce the deepest divisions that have been known among men. In any case we of the world in revolt--Syndicalists, Socialists, GuildSocialists, or whatever we call ourselves--have no need to worry about thescripture or the allegory. We have the reality. For whatever reason, what is said to have happened to the people of Shinak has precisely andpractically 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 thata fine intellectual sincerity lay behind what was called "L'Internationale. "It was really felt that Socialism was universal like arithmetic. Itwas too true for idiom or turn of phrase. In the formula of Karl Marx mencould find that frigid fellowship which they find when they agree that twoand two make four. It was almost as broadminded as a religious dogma. 

Yet this universal language has not succeeded, at a moment of crisis, inimposing itself on the whole world. Nay, it has not, at the moment ofcrisis, succeeded in imposing itself on its own principal champions. Herve is not talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking French. Bebel isnot talking Economic Esperanto; he is talking German. Blatchford is nottalking Economic Esperanto; he is talking English, and jolly good English, too. I do not know whether French or Flemish was Vandervelde's nurseryspeech, but I am quite certain he will know more of it after this strugglethan he knew before. In short, whether or no there be a new union ofhearts, there has really and truly been a new division of tongues. 

How are we to explain this singular truth, even if we deplore it? Idismiss with fitting disdain the notion that it is a mere result ofmilitary terrorism or snobbish social pressure. The Socialist leaders ofmodern Europe are among the most sincere men in history; and theirNationalist note in this affair has had the ring of their sincerity. Iwill not waste time on the speculation that Vandervelde is bullied byBelgian priests; or that Blatchford is frightened of the horse-guardsoutside Whitehall. These great men support the enthusiasm of theirconventional countrymen because they share it; and they share it becausethere is (though perhaps only at certain great moments) such a thing aspure democracy. 

Timour the Tartar, I think, celebrated some victory with a tower builtentirely out of human skulls; perhaps he thought _that_ would reach toheaven. But there is no cement in such building; the veins and ligamentsthat hold humanity together have long fallen away; the skulls will rollimpotently at a touch; and ten thousand more such trophies could only makethe tower taller and crazier. I think the modern official apparatus of"votes" is very like that tottering monument. I think the Tartar "countedheads, " like an electioneering agent. Sometimes when I have seen from theplatform of some paltry party meeting the rows and rows of grinningupturned faces, I have felt inclined to say, as the poet does in the "TheVision of Sin"--"Welcome fellow-citizens, Hollow hearts and empty heads. "

Not that the people were personally hollow or empty, but they had come ona hollow and empty business: to help the good Mr. Binks to strengthen theInsurance Act against the wicked Mr. Jinks who would only promise tofortify 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 learnmany things. I, for one, am not above learning them. 

The Marxian dogma which simplifies all conflicts to the Class War is somuch nobler a thing than the nose-counting of the parliaments that onemust apologise for the comparison. And yet there is a comparison. Whenwe 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 ofProletarians would be everywhere opposed to the minority, consisting ofCapitalists, we were counting by skulls. Why, yes; if all men's headshad been cut off from the rest of them, as they were by the good sense andforesight of Timour the Tartar; if they had no hearts or bellies to bemoved; no hand that flies up to ward off a weapon, no foot that can feel afamiliar soil--if things were so the Marxian calculation would be not onlycomplete but correct. As we know to-day, the Marxian calculation iscomplete, but it is not correct. 

Now, this is the answer to the questions of some kind critics, whoseactual words I have not within reach at the moment, about whether mydemocracy meant the rule of the majority over the minority. It means therule of the rule--the rule of the rule over the exception. When a nationfinds a soul it clothes it with a body, and does verily act like oneliving 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 abstractfor decades, this is Democracy, and it is marvellous in our eyes. It isnot the difference between ninetynine persons and a hundred persons; it isone person--the people. I do not know or care how many or how few of theBelgians like or dislike the pictures of Wiertz. They could not be eitherjustified or condemned by a mere majority of Belgians. But I am verycertain that the defiance to Prussia did not come from a majority ofBelgians. 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 canhappen the better for us. For it is this spontaneous spiritual fellowshipof communities under certain conditions to which the four or five mostindependent minds of Europe willingly bear witness to-day. 

But is there no exception: is there no one faithful among the unfaithfulfound? Is no great Socialist politician still untouched by the patriotismof the vulgar? Why, yes; the rugged Ramsay MacDonald, scarred with ahundred savage fights against the capitalist parties, still lifts up hishorny hand for peace. What further need have we of witnesses? I, for mypart, am quite satisfied, and do not doubt that Mr. MacDonald will be asindustrious in damping down democracy in this form as in every other. 

A REAL DANGER

Heaven forbid that I should once more wade in those swamps of logomachyand tautology in which the old guard of the Determinists still seem to befloundering. The question of Fate and Free Will can never attain to aconclusion, though it may attain to a conviction. The shortestphilosophic summary is that both cause and choice are ultimate ideaswithin us, and that if one man denies choice because it seems contrary tocause, the other man has quite as much right to deny cause because itseems contrary to choice. The shortest ethical summary is thatDeterminism either affects conduct or it does not. If it does not, it ismorally not worth preaching; if it does, it must affect conduct in thedirection of impotence and submission. A writer in the "Clarion" saysthat the reformer cannot help trying to reform, nor the Conservative helphis Conservatism. But suppose the reformer tries to reform theConservative and turn him into another reformer? Either he can, in whichcase Determinism has made no difference at all, or he can't, in which caseit can only have made reformers more hopeless and Conservatives moreobstinate. And the shortest practical and political summary is thatworking men, most probably, will soon be much too busy using their FreeWill to stop to prove that they have got it. Nevertheless, I like towatch the Determinist in the "Clarion" Cockpit every week, as busy as asquirrel--in a cage. But being myself a squirrel (leaping lightly frombough to bough) and preferring the form of activity which occasionallyends in nuts, I should not intervene in the matter even indirectly, exceptupon a practical point. And the point I have in mind is practical to theextent of deadly peril. It is another of the numerous new ways in whichthe restless rich, now walking the world with an awful insomnia, maymanage to catch us napping. 

Must Be a Mystery

There are two letters in the "Clarion" this week which in various waysinterest me very much. One is concerned to defend Darwin against thescientific revolt against him that was led by Samuel Butler, and amongother 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 andinteresting book ever can be; but in pure philosophy nothing can be out ofdate, 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 todescribe somebody as behind the times. That is when the man in question, thinking of some state of affairs that has passed away, is really helpingthe very things he would like to hinder. The principles cannot alter, butthe problems can. Thus, I should call a man behind the times who, in theyear 1872, pleaded for the peaceful German peasants against the triumphantmilitarism of Napoleon. Or I should call a man out of date who, in theyear 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 Icertainly 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 materialwealth and worked with all the material sciences, thinks that our chiefdanger is from an excess of moral and religious responsibility. Hereminds 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 "compelledby his reason" to think the universe without beginning or end, which (Imay remark) he cannot imagine either. But the letter ends with somethingmuch more ominous than bad metaphysics. Here, in the middle of the"Clarion, " in the centre of a clean and combative democratic sheet, I meetagain my deplorable old acquaintance, the scientific criminologist. "Theso-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 signedby millionaires. A short time ago a Bill was introduced to holdirresponsible 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 meansgoing to sleep to a lullaby of long words), let us use our own brains alittle, and ask ourselves what is the real difference between punishing aman and restraining him. The material difference may be any or none; forpunishment 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 benecessary to restrain him at all. And I assure you he will get no greatglow of comfort out of your calling him irresponsible after you have madehim impotent. A man does not necessarily feel more free and easy in astraight waistcoat than in a stone cell. The moral difference is that aman can be punished for a crime because he is born a citizen; while he canbe constrained because he is born a slave. But one arresting andtremendous difference towers over all these doubtful or arguabledifferences. There is one respect, vital to all our liberties and all ourlives, in which the new restraint would be different from the oldpunishment. It is of this that the plutocrats will take advantage. 

The Plain Difference

The perfectly plain difference is this. All punishment, even the mosthorrible, proceeds upon the assumption that the extent of the evil isknown, and that a certain amount of expiation goes with it. Even if youhang the man, you cannot hang him twice. Even if you burn him, you cannotburn him for a month. And in the case of all ordinary imprisonments, thewhole aim of free institutions from the beginning of the world has been toinsist that a man shall be convicted of a definite crime and confined fora definite period. But the moment you admit this notion of medicalrestraint, you must in fairness admit that it may go on as long as theauthorities choose to think (or say) that it ought to go on. The man'spunishment refers to the past, which is supposed to have been investigated, and which, in some degree at least, has been investigated. But hisrestraint refers to the future, which his doctors, keepers, and wardenshave yet to investigate. The simple result will be that, in thescientific Utopia of the "Clarion, " men like Mann or Syme or Larkin willnot be put in prison because of what they have done. They will be kept inprison because of what they might do. Indeed, the builders of the newtyranny have already come very near to avowing this scientific andfuturist method. When the lawyers tried to stop the "Suffragette" fromappearing at all, they practically said: "We do not know your next week'scrime, because it isn't committed yet; but we are scientifically certainyou have the criminal type. And by the sublime and unalterable laws ofheredity, all your poor little papers will inherit it. "

This is a purely practical question; and that is why I insist on it, evenin such strenuous times. The writers on the "Clarion" have a perfectright to think Christianity is the foe of freedom, or even that thestupidity and tyranny of the present Government is due to the monkishmysticism of Lord Morley and Mr. John M. Robertson. They have a right tothink the theory of Determinism as true as Calvin thought it. But I donot like seeing them walk straight into the enormous iron trap set open bythe Capitalists, who find it convenient to make our law even more lawlessthan it is. The rich men want a scientist to write them a _lettre decachet_ as a doctor writes a prescription. And so they wish to seal up ina public gaol the scandals of a private asylum. Yes; the writers on the"Clarion" are indeed claiming irresponsibility for human beings. But itis the governments that will be irresponsible, not the governed. 

But I will tell them one small secret in conclusion. There is nothingwhatever wrong in the ancient and universal idea of Punishment--exceptthat we are not punishing the right people. 

THE DREGS OF PURITANISM

One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that hisslightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, andhypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbsor 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 aboutthe pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common soldiers. Thisis how he talks about it. He is reported as having said, "By the help ofGod, they wanted this cigarette business stopped. " How one could write avolume on that sentence, a great thick volume called "The Decline of theEnglish Middle Class. " In taste, in style, in philosophy, in feeling, inpolitical project, the horrors of it are as unfathomable as hell. 

First, to begin with the trifle, note something slipshod and vague in themere verbiage, typical of those who prefer a catchword to a creed. "Thiscigarette business" might mean anything. It might mean Messrs. Salmonand Gluckstein's business. But the pastor at Bromley will not interferewith that, for the indignation of his school of thought, even when it issincere, always instinctively and unconsciously swerves aside fromanything that is rich and powerful like the partners in a big business, and strikes instead something that is poor and nameless like the soldiersin a trench. Nor does the expression make clear who "they" are--whetherthe inhabitants of Britain or the inhabitants of Bromley, or theinhabitants of this one crazy tabernacle in Bromley; nor is it evident howit is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it. All thesethings are trifles compared to the more terrible offences of the phrase;but they are not without their social and historical interest. About thebeginning of the nineteenth century the wealthy Puritan class, generallythe class of the employers of labour, took a line of argument which wasnarrow, but not nonsensical. They saw the relation of rich and poor quitecoldly as a contract, but they saw that a contract holds both ways. ThePuritans of the middle class, in short, did in some sense start talkingand thinking for themselves. They are still talking. They have long agoleft off thinking. They talk about the loyalty of workmen to theiremployers, and God knows what rubbish; and the first small certainty aboutthe reverend gentleman whose sentence I have quoted is that his brainstopped working as a clock stops, years and years ago. 

Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These peopleare always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficienttraining for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why, then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, therude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser; andso he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe thatanyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyonstraddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like thatabout a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarettebusiness stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the wholecompany of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of theChivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flamingpatience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped. Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone tothat a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?

Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, whichrises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live youngmen are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever and hungerand horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword blades andbayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But Mr. Price (Ithink that's his name) is still anxious that they should not be hurt bycigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that can be found inthe deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for the health is a verytenable opinion to which the minister is quite entitled. If he happens tothink that the youth of Bromley smoke too many cigarettes, and that he hasany influence in urging on them the unhealthiness of the habit, I shouldnot blame him if he gave sermons or lectures about it (with magic-lanternslides), so long as it was in Bromley and about Bromley. Cigarettes maybe bad for the health: bombs and bayonets and even barbed wire are notgood 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 tothe scale of things. He would do very good service if he would go amongthe rich aristocratic ladies and tell them not to take drugs in a chronicsense, as people take opium in China. But he would be doing very badservice if he were to go among the doctors and nurses on the field andtell them not to give drugs, as they give morphia in a hospital. But itis 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 abnormalperson 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 andnatural to a man. 

Fourth (for I need not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that canregard 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 mainfeature in the degradation of the old middle class: the utterdisappearance of its old appetite for liberty. Here there is no questionof whether the men are to smoke cigarettes, or the women choose to sendcigarettes, or even that the officers or doctors choose to allowcigarettes. The thing is to cease, and we may note one of the mostrecurrent 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!

THE TYRANNY OF BAD JOURNALISM

The amazing decision of the Government to employ methods quite alien toEngland, and rather belonging to the police of the Continent, probablyarises from the appearance of papers which are lucid and fighting, likethe papers of the Continent. The business may be put in many ways. Butone way of putting it is simply to say that a monopoly of bad journalismis resisting the possibility of good journalism. Journalism is not thesame thing as literature; but there is good and bad journalism, as thereis good and bad literature, as there is good and bad football. For thelast twenty years or so the plutocrats who govern England have allowed theEnglish nothing but bad journalism. Very bad journalism, simplyconsidered as journalism. 

It always takes a considerable time to see the simple and central factabout anything. All sorts of things have been said about the modern Press, especially the Yellow Press; that it is Jingo or Philistine orsensational or wrongly inquisitive or vulgar or indecent or trivial; butnone of these have anything really to do with the point. 

The point about the Press is that it is not what it is called. It is notthe "popular Press. " It is not the public Press. It is not an organ ofpublic opinion. It is a conspiracy of a very few millionaires, allsufficiently similar in type to agree on the limits of what this greatnation (to which we belong) may know about itself and its friends andenemies. The ring is not quite complete; there are old-fashioned andhonest papers: but it is sufficiently near to completion to produce on theordinary purchaser of news the practical effects of a corner and amonopoly. He receives all his political information and all his politicalmarching orders from what is by this time a sort of half-conscious secretsociety, with very few members, but a great deal of money. 

This enormous and essential fact is concealed for us by a number oflegends that have passed into common speech. There is the notion that thePress is flashy or trivial _because_ it is popular. In other words, anattempt is made to discredit democracy by representing journalism as thenatural literature of democracy. All this is cold rubbish. Thedemocracy has no more to do with the papers than it has with the peerages. The millionaire newspapers are vulgar and silly because the millionairesare vulgar and silly. It is the proprietor, not the editor, not thesub-editor, least of all the reader, who is pleased with this monotonousprairie of printed words. The same slander on democracy can be noticed inthe case of advertisements. There is many a tender old Tory imaginationthat vaguely feels that our streets would be hung with escutcheons andtapestries, if only the profane vulgar had not hung them withadvertisements of Sapolio and Sunlight Soap. But advertisement does notcome from the unlettered many. It comes from the refined few. Did youever hear of a mob rising to placard the Town Hall with proclamations infavour of Sapolio? Did you ever see a poor, ragged man laboriouslydrawing and painting a picture on the wall in favour of SunlightSoap--simply as a labour of love? It is nonsense; those who hang ourpublic walls with ugly pictures are the same select few who hang theirprivate walls with exquisite and expensive pictures. The vulgarisation ofmodern life has come from the governing class; from the highly educatedclass. Most of the people who have posters in Camberwell have peerages atWestminster. But the strongest instance of all is that which has beenunbroken until lately, and still largely prevails; the ghastly monotony ofthe Press. 

Then comes that other legend; the notion that men like the masters of theNewspaper Trusts "give the people what they want. " Why, it is the wholeaim and definition of a Trust that it gives the people what it chooses. In the old days, when Parliaments were free in England, it was discoveredthat one courtier was allowed to sell all the silk, and another to sellall the sweet wine. A member of the House of Commons humorously asked whowas allowed to sell all the bread. I really tremble to think what thatsarcastic legislator would have said if he had been put off with themodern nonsense about "gauging the public taste. " Suppose the firstcourtier had said that, by his shrewd, self-made sense, he had detectedthat people had a vague desire for silk; and even a deep, dim human desireto pay so much a yard for it! Suppose the second courtier said that hehad, by his own rugged intellect, discovered a general desire for wine: andthat people bought his wine at his price--when they could buy no other!Suppose a third courtier had jumped up and said that people always boughthis bread when they could get none anywhere else. 

Well, that is a perfect parallel. "After bread, the need of the people isknowledge, " said Danton. Knowledge is now a monopoly, and comes throughto the citizens in thin and selected streams, exactly as bread might comethrough to a besieged city. Men must wish to know what is happening, whoever has the privilege of telling them. They must listen to themessenger, even if he is a liar. They must listen to the liar, even if heis a bore. The official journalist for some time past has been both abore and a liar; but it was impossible until lately to neglect his sheetsof news altogether. Lately the capitalist Press really has begun to beneglected; because its bad journalism was overpowering and appalling. Lately we have really begun to find out that capitalism cannot write, justas it cannot fight, or pray, or marry, or make a joke, or do any otherstricken human thing. But this discovery has been quite recent. Thecapitalist newspaper was never actually unread until it was actuallyunreadable. 

If you retain the servile superstition that the Press, as run by thecapitalists, is popular (in any sense except that in which dirty water ina desert is popular), consider the case of the solemn articles in praiseof the men who own newspapers--men of the type of Cadbury or Harmsworth, men of the type of the small club of millionaires. Did you ever hear aplain man in a tramcar or train talking about Carnegie's bright genialsmile or Rothschild's simple, easy hospitality? Did you ever hear anordinary citizen ask what was the opinion of Sir Joseph Lyons about thehopes and fears of this, our native land? These few small-minded menpublish, papers to praise themselves. You could no more get anintelligent poor man to praise a millionaire's soul, except for hire, thanyou could get him to sell a millionaire's soap, except for hire. And Irepeat that, though there are other aspects of the matter of the newplutocratic raid, one of the most important is mere journalistic jealousy. The Yellow Press is bad journalism: and wishes to stop the appearance ofgood journalism. 

There is no average member of the public who would not prefer to haveLloyd George discussed as what he is, a Welshman of genius and ideals, strangely fascinated by bad fashion and bad finance, rather than discussedas what neither he nor anyone else ever was, a perfect democrat or anutterly detestable demagogue. There is no reader of a daily paper whowould not feel more concern--and more respect--for Sir Rufus Isaacs as aman who has been a stockbroker, than as a man who happens to beAttorney-General. There is no man in the street who is not moreinterested in Lloyd George's investments than in his Land Campaign. Thereis no man in the street who could not understand (and like) Rufus Isaacsas a Jew better than he can possibly like him as a British statesman. There is no sane journalist alive who would say that the official accountof Marconis would be better "copy" than the true account that such papersas this have dragged out. We have committed one crime against thenewspaper proprietor which he will never forgive. We point out that hispapers are dull. And we propose to print some papers that areinteresting. 

THE POETRY OF THE REVOLUTION

Everyone but a consistent and contented capitalist, who must be somethingpretty near to a Satanist, must rejoice at the spirit and success of theBattle of the Buses. But one thing about it which happens to please meparticularly was that it was fought, in one aspect at least, on a pointsuch as the plutocratic fool calls unpractical. It was fought about asymbol, a badge, a thing attended with no kind of practical results, likethe flags for which men allow themselves to fall down dead, or the shrinesfor which men will walk some hundreds of miles from their homes. When aman has an eye for business, all that goes on on this earth in that styleis simply invisible to him. But let us be charitable to the eye forbusiness; the eye has been pretty well blacked this time. 

But I wish to insist here that it is exactly what is called theunpractical part of the thing that is really the practical. The chiefdifference between men and the animals is that all men are artists; thoughthe overwhelming majority of us are bad artists. As the old fable trulysays, lions do not make statues; even the cunning of the fox can go nofurther than the accomplishment of leaving an exact model of the vulpinepaw: and even that is an accomplishment which he wishes he hadn't got. There are Chryselephantine statues, but no purely elephantine ones. And, though we speak in a general way of an elephant trumpeting, it is only byhuman blandishments that he can be induced to play the drum. But man, savage or civilised, simple or complex always desires to see his own souloutside himself; in some material embodiment. He always wishes to pointto a table in a temple, or a cloth on a stick, or a word on a scroll, or abadge on a coat, and say: "This is the best part of me. If need be, itshall be the rest of me that shall perish. " This is the method whichseems so unbusinesslike to the men with an eye to business. This is alsothe method by which battles are won. 

The Symbolism of the Badge

The badge on a Trade Unionist's coat is a piece of poetry in the genuine, lucid, and logical sense in which Milton defined poetry (and he ought toknow) when he said that it was simple, sensuous, and passionate. It issimple, because many understand the word "badge, " who might not evenunderstand the word "recognition. " It is sensuous, because it is visibleand tangible; it is incarnate, as all the good Gods have been; and it ispassionate in this perfectly practical sense, which the man with an eye tobusiness may some day learn more thoroughly than he likes, that there aremen who will allow you to cross a word out in a theoretical document, butwho will not allow you to pull a big button off their bodily clothing, merely because you have more money than they have. Now I think it is thissensuousness, this passion, and, above all, this simplicity that are mostwanted in this promising revolt of our time. For this simplicity isperhaps the only thing in which the best type of recent revolutionistshave failed. It has been our sorrow lately to salute the sunset of one ofthe very few clean and incorruptible careers in the most corruptible phaseof Christendom. The death of Quelch naturally turns one's thoughts tothose extreme Marxian theorists, who, whatever we may hold about theirphilosophy, have certainly held their honour like iron. And yet, even inthis instant of instinctive reverence, I cannot feel that they werepoetical enough, that is childish enough, to make a revolution. They hadall the audacity needed for speaking to the despot; but not the simplicityneeded for speaking to the democracy. They were always accused of beingtoo bitter against the capitalist. But it always seemed to me that theywere (quite unconsciously, of course) much too kind to him. They had afatal habit of using long words, even on occasions when he might withpropriety have been described in very short words. They called him aCapitalist when almost anybody in Christendom would have called him a cad. And "cad" is a word from the poetic vocabulary indicating rather ageneral and powerful reaction of the emotions than a status that could bedefined in a work of economics. The capitalist, asleep in the sun, letsuch long words crawl all over him, like so many long, soft, furrycaterpillars. Caterpillars cannot sting like wasps. And, in repeatingthat the old Marxians have been, perhaps, the best and bravest men of ourtime, I say also that they would have been better and braver still if theyhad never used a scientific word, and never read anything but fairy tales. 

The Beastly Individualist

Suppose I go on to a ship, and the ship sinks almost immediately; but I(like the people in the Bab Ballads), by reason of my clinging to a mast, upon a desert island am eventually cast. Or rather, suppose I am not caston it, but am kept bobbing about in the water, because the only man on theisland is what some call an Individualist, and will not throw me a rope;though coils of rope of the most annoying elaboration and neatness areconspicuous beside him as he stands upon the shore. Now, it seems to me, that if, in my efforts to shout at this fellow-creature across thecrashing breakers, I call his position the "insularistic position, " and myposition "the semi-amphibian position, " much valuable time may be lost. Iam not an amphibian. I am a drowning man. He is not an insularist, oran individualist. He is a beast. Or rather, he is worse than any beastcan be. And if, instead of letting me drown, he makes me promise, while Iam drowning, that if I come on shore it shall be as his bodily slave, having no human claims henceforward forever, then, by the whole theory andpractice of capitalism, he becomes a capitalist, he also becomes a cad. 

Now, the language of poetry is simpler than that of prose; as anyone cansee who has read what the old-fashioned protestant used to callconfidently "his" Bible. And, being simpler, it is also truer; and, beingtruer, it is also fiercer. And, for most of the infamies of our time, there is really nothing plain enough, except the plain language of poetry. Take, let us say, the ease of the recent railway disaster, and theacquittal of the capitalists' interest. It is not a scientific problemfor us to investigate. It is a crime committed before our eyes; committed, perhaps, by blind men or maniacs, or men hypnotised, or men in some otherways unconscious; but committed in broad daylight, so that the corpse isbleeding on our door-step. Good lives were lost, because good lives donot pay; and bad coals do pay. It seems simply impossible to get anyother meaning out of the matter except that. And, if in human historythere be anything simple and anything horrible, it seems to have beenpresent in this matter. If, even after some study and understanding ofthe old religious passions which were the resurrection of Europe, wecannot endure the extreme infamy of witches and heretics literally burnedalive--well, the people in this affair were quite as literally burnedalive. If, when we have really tried to extend our charity beyond theborders of personal sympathy, to all the complexities of class and creed, we still feel something insolent about the triumphant and acquitted manwho is in the wrong, here the men who are in the wrong are triumphant andacquitted. It is no subject for science. It is a subject for poetry. But for poetry of a terrible sort.