SOMEWHERE at the back of all Chesterton's political and religious ideas
lies an ideal country, a Utopia which actually existed. Its name is the
Middle Ages. If some unemployed Higher Critic chose to undertake the
appalling task of reading steadily through all the works of G.K.C.,
copying out those passages in which there was any reference to the
Middle Ages, the result would be a description of a land flowing with
milk and honey. The inhabitants would be large, strong Christian men,
and red-haired, womanly women. Their children would be unschooled, save
by the Church. They would all live in houses of their own, on lands
belonging to them. Their faith would be one. They would speak Latin as a
sort of Esperanto, and drink enormous quantities of good beer. The
Church--but I have found the passage relating to the Church:
Religion, the immortal maiden, has been a
maid-of-all-work as well as a servant of mankind.
She provided men at once with the theoretic laws
of an unalterable cosmos; and also with the
practical rules of the rapid and thrilling game of
morality. She taught logic to the student and
taught fairy tales to the children; it was her
business to confront the nameless gods whose fear
is on all flesh, and also to see that the streets
were spotted with silver and scarlet, that there
was a day for wearing ribbons or an hour for
ringing bells.
The inhabitants of this happy realm would be instinctively democratic,
and no woman would demand a vote there. They would have that exalted
notion of patriotism that works outwards from the village pump to the
universe at large. They would understand all humanity because they
understood themselves. They would understand themselves because they
would have no newspapers to widen their interests and so make them
shallower.
In _Magic_, as we have seen, Chesterton's mouthpiece, the Conjuror, gave
us to understand that it was better to believe in Apollo than merely to
disbelieve in God. The Chestertonian Middle Ages are like Apollo; they
did not exist, but they make an admirable myth. For Chesterton, in
common with the rest of us, flourishes on myths like the green bay; we,
however, happen not to know, in most cases, when our myths have a
foundation. Mankind demands myths--and it has them. Some day a History
of the World's Myths will be compiled. It will show humanity climbing
perilous peaks in pursuit of somebody's misinterpretations of somebody
else's books, or fighting bloodily because somebody asserted or denied
that a nation was the chosen one, or invading new continents, physical
or metaphysical, because of legendary gold to be found therein, or in
fact committing all its follies under the inspiration of myths--as in
fact it has done. The Middle Ages are to Chesterton what King Alfred was
to the Chartists and early Radicals. They believed that in his days
England was actually governed on Chartist principles. So it happens that
two Radical papers of the early part of last century actually called
themselves The Alfred, and that Major Cartwright spent a considerable
amount of energy in inducing the Greeks to substitute pikes for bayonets
in their struggles against the Turks, on the grounds that the pike was
used in Alfred's England.
So there we have Chesterton believing devoutly that that servile state,
stricken with plague, and afflicted with death in all its forms, is the
dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are
England was decent once--let us apply the same recipe to the England of
to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive.
He would dam the flood of modern legislative tendencies because it is
taking England farther away from his Middle Ages. But he will not say
"do this" about anything, because in the Middle Ages they made few laws,
not having, in point of fact, the power to enforce those offences
against moral and economic law which then took the place of legislation.
It is impossible to say to what extent Chesterton has surrendered
himself to this myth; whether he has come to accept it because he liked
it, or in order to please his friend, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, from whom
G.K.C. never differs politically. Once they stood side by side and
debated against Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells, arguing from Socialism to beer,
and thence to religion.
In January, 1908, Chesterton accepted the invitation of the Editor of
The New Age to explain why he did not call himself a Socialist, in spite
of his claim to possess "not only a faith in democracy, but a great
tenderness for revolution." The explanation is complicated, to say the
least. In the first place Chesterton does not want people to share, they
should give and take. In the second place, as a democrat (which nobody
else is) he has a vast respect (which nobody else has) for the working
classes. And
one thing I should affirm as certain, the whole
smell and sentiment and general ideal of Socialism
they detest and disdain. No part of the community
is so specially fixed in those forms and feelings
which are opposite to the tone of most Socialists;
the privacy of homes, the control of one's own
children, the minding of one's own business. I
look out of my back windows over the black stretch
of Battersea, and I believe I could make up a sort
of creed, a catalogue of maxims, which I am
certain are believed, and believed strongly, by
the overwhelming mass of men and women as far as
the eye can reach. For instance, that an
Englishman's house is his castle, and that awful
proprieties ought to regulate admission to it;
that marriage is a real bond, making jealousy and
marital revenge at the least highly pardonable;
that vegetarianism and all pitting of animal
against human rights is a silly fad; that on the
other hand to save money to give yourself a fine
funeral is not a silly fad, but a symbol of
ancestral self-respect; that when giving treats to
friends or children, one should give them what
they like, emphatically not what is good for them;
that there is nothing illogical in being furious
because Tommy has been coldly caned by a
schoolmistress and then throwing saucepans at him
yourself. All these things they believe; they are
the only people who do believe them; and they are
absolutely and eternally right. They are the
ancient sanities of humanity; the ten commandments
of man.
A week later, Mr. H. G. Wells, who at that time had not yet broken away
from organized Socialism, but was actually a member of the Executive
Committee of the Fabian Society, wrote a reply to the case against
Socialism which had been stated by Chesterton, and, a week earlier, by
Mr. Hilaire Belloc. He attempted to get Chesterton to look facts in the
face. He pointed out that as things are "I do not see how Belloc and
Chesterton can stand for anything but a strong State as against those
wild monsters of property, the strong, big, private owners." Suppose
that Chesterton isn't a Socialist, is he more on the side of the
Socialists or on that of the Free Trade Liberal capitalists and
landlords? "It isn't an adequate reply to say [of Socialism] that nobody
stood treat there, and that the simple, generous people like to beat
their own wives and children on occasion in a loving and intimate
manner, and that they won't endure the spirit of Sidney Webb."
A fortnight later, Chesterton replied. But, though many have engaged
with him in controversy, I doubt if anybody has ever pinned him down to
a fact or an argument. On this occasion, G.K.C. politely refused even to
refer to the vital point of the case of Mr. H. G. Wells. On the other
hand he wrote a very jolly article about beer and "tavern hospitality."
The argument marked time for two weeks more, when Mr. Belloc once again
entered the lists. The essence of his contribution is "I premise that
man, in order to be normally happy, tolerably happy, must own."
Collectivism will not let him own. The trouble about the present state
of society is that people do not own enough. The remedy proposed will be
worse than the disease. Then Mr. Bernard Shaw had a look in.
In the course of his lengthy article he gave "the Chesterbelloc"--"a
very amusing pantomime elephant"--several shrewd digs in the ribs. It
claimed, according to G.B.S., to be the Zeitgeist. "To which we reply,
bluntly, but conclusively, 'Gammon!'" The rest was mostly amiable
personalities. Mr. Shaw owned up to musical cravings, compared with
which the Chesterbelloc tendency to consume alcohol was as nothing. He
also jeered very pleasantly at Mr. Belloc's power to cause a stampede of
Chesterton's political and religious ideas. "For Belloc's sake
Chesterton says he believes literally in the Bible story of the
Resurrection. For Belloc's sake he says he is not a Socialist. On a
recent occasion I tried to drive him to swallow the Miracle of St.
Januarius for Belloc's sake; but at that he stuck. He pleaded his
belief in the Resurrection story. He pointed out very justly that I
believe in lots of things just as miraculous as the Miracle of St.
Januarius; but when I remorselessly pressed the fact that he did not
believe that the blood of St. Januarius reliquefies miraculously every
year, the Credo stuck in his throat like Amen in Macbeth's. He had got
down at last to his irreducible minimum of dogmatic incredulity, and
could not, even with the mouth of the bottomless pit yawning before
Belloc, utter the saving lie."
By this time the discussion was definitely off Socialism. Chesterton
produced another article, _The Last of the Rationalists_, in reply to
Mr. Shaw, from which one gathered what one had been previously suspected
that "you [namely Mr. Shaw, but in practice both the opposition
controversialists] have confined yourselves to charming essays on our
two charming personalities." And there they stopped.
The year following this bout of personalities saw the publication of a
remarkably brilliant book by Chesterton, _George Bernard Shaw_, in
which, one might have expected, the case against the political creed
represented by G.B.S. might have been carried a trifle farther. Instead
of which it was not carried anything like so far. Chesterton jeered at
Mr. Shaw's vegetarianism, denied his democracy, but decided that on the
whole he was a good republican, "in the literal and Latin sense; he
cares more for the Public Thing than for any private thing." He ends the
chapter entitled "The Progressive" by saying the kindest things he ever
said about any body of Socialists.
I have in my time had my fling at the Fabian
Society, at the pedantry of schemes, the arrogance
of experts; nor do I regret it now. But when I
remember that other world against which it reared
its bourgeois banner of cleanliness and common
sense, I will not end this chapter without doing
it decent honour. Give me the drain pipes of the
Fabians rather than the panpipes of the later
poets; the drain pipes have a nicer smell.
The reader may have grasped by this time the fact that Chesterton's
objections to Socialism were based rather on his dislike of what the
working man calls "mucking people about" than on any economic grounds.
He made himself the sworn enemy of any Bill before Parliament which
contained any proposals to appoint inspectors. He took the line that the
sacredness of the home diminishes visibly with the entrance of the gas
collector, and disappears down the kitchen sink with the arrival of the
school attendance officer. In those of his writings which I have not
seen I have no doubt there are pleadings for the retention of the
cesspool, because it is the last moat left to the Englishman's house,
which is his castle. It is difficult to believe in the complete
sincerity of such an attitude. The inspector is the chief enemy of the
bad landlord and employer, he is a fruit of democracy. In the early days
of the factory system, when mercilessly long hours were worked by
children and women, when legislation had failed to ameliorate the
conditions of employment, because the employers were also the
magistrates, and would not enforce laws against themselves, the great
Reform Bill agitation, which so nearly caused a revolution in this
country, came to an end, having in 1832 achieved a partial success. But
the new House of Commons did not at once realize how partial it was, and
at first it regarded the interests of working men with something of the
intensity of the Liberal Government of 1906, which had not yet come to
appreciate the new and portentous Labour Party at its true worth. So in
1833 inspectors were appointed for the first time. This very brief
excursion into history is sufficient justification for refusing to take
seriously those who would have us believe that inspectors are
necessarily the enemies of the human race. Chesterton's theory that
middle-class Socialists are people who want to do things to the poor in
the direction of regimenting them finds an easy refutation. When, in
1910, the whole of England fell down before the eloquence of Mr. Lloyd
George, and consented to the Insurance Bill, the one body of people who
stood out and fought that Bill was that middle-class Socialist body, the
Fabian Society. It is sometimes desirable, for purposes of controversy,
to incarnate a theory or objection. Chesterton lumped together all his
views on the alleged intentions of the Socialists to interfere in the
natural and legitimate happinesses of the working class, and called this
curious composite Mr. Sidney Webb. So through many volumes Mr. Webb's
name is continually bobbing up, like an irrepressible Aunt Sally, and
having to be thwacked into a temporary disappearance. But this is only
done for literary effect. To heave a brick at a man is both simpler and
more amusing than to arraign a system or a creed. A reader enjoys the
feeling that his author is a clever dog who is making it devilishly
uncomfortable for his opponents. His appreciation would be considerably
less if the opponent in question was a mere theory. In point of fact,
Chesterton is probably a warm admirer of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb. When
they founded (in 1909) their National Committee for the Prevention of
Destitution, designed to educate the British public in the ideas of what
has been called Webbism, especially those contained in the Minority
Report of the Poor Law Commission, one of the first to join was G. K.
Chesterton.
The word Socialism covers a multitude of Socialists, some of whom are
not. The political faith of a man, therefore, must not be judged upon
his attitude towards Socialism, if we have anything more definite to go
upon. Chesterton overflows, so to speak, with predilections, such as
beer (in a political sense, of course), opposition to the Jingo, on the
one hand, and to middle-class faddery, such as vegetarianism, on the
other, and so on. Anybody might indulge in most of his views, in fact,
without incurring severe moral reprobation. But there is an exception
which, unfortunately, links Chesterton pretty firmly with the sweater,
and other undesirable lords of creation. He is an anti-suffragist.
In a little essay Chesterton once wrote on Tolstoy, he argued that the
thing that has driven men mad was logic, from the beginning of time,
whereas the thing that has kept them sane was mysticism. Tolstoy,
lacking mysticism, was at the mercy of his pitiless logic, which led
him to condemn things which are entirely natural and human. This
attitude, one feels (and it is only to be arrived at by feeling), is
absolutely right. We all start off with certain scarce expressible
feelings that certain things are fundamentally decent and permissible,
and that others are the reverse, just as we do not take our idea of
blackness and whiteness from a text-book. If anybody proposed that all
Scotsmen should be compelled to eat sago with every meal, the idea,
although novel to most of us, would be instantly dismissed, even, it is
probable, by those with sago interests, because it would be contrary to
our instinct of what is decent. In fact, we all believe in natural
rights, or at any rate we claim the enjoyment of some. Now natural
rights have no logical basis. The late Professor D. G. Ritchie very
brilliantly examined the theory of natural rights, and by means of much
subtle dissection and argument found that there were no natural rights;
law was the only basis of privilege. It is quite easy to be convinced by
the author's delightful dialectic, but the conviction is apt to vanish
suddenly in the presence of a dog being ill-treated.
Now on a basis of common decency--the basis of all democratic political
thought--the case for woman suffrage is irresistible. It is not decent
that the sweated woman worker should be denied what, in the opinion of
many competent judges, might be the instrument of her salvation. It is
not decent that women should share a disqualification with lunatics,
criminals, children, and no others of their own race. It is not decent
that the sex which knows most about babies should have no opportunity to
influence directly legislation dealing with babies. It is not decent
that a large, important and necessary section of humanity, with highly
gregarious instincts, should not be allowed to exercise the only
gregarious function which concerns the whole nation at once.
These propositions are fundamental; if a man or woman cannot accept
them, then he is at heart an "anti," even if he has constructed for
himself a quantity of reasons, religious, ethical, economic, political
or what not, why women should be allowed to vote. Every suffrage
argument is, or can be, based on decencies, not on emotion or
statistics.
Chesterton bases his case on decencies, but they are not the decencies
that matter. In _What's Wrong with the World_ he insists on the
indecency of allowing women to cease to be amateurs within the home, or
of allowing them to earn a living in a factory or office, or of
allowing them to share in the responsibility for taking the lives of
condemned murderers, or of allowing them to exercise the coercion which
is government, which is a sort of pyramid, with a gallows on top, the
ultimate resort of coercive power. And in these alleged indecencies (the
word is not altogether my own) lies Chesterton's whole case against
allowing any woman to vote. Into these propositions his whole case, as
expressed in _What's Wrong with the World_, is faithfully condensed.
Well now, are these indecencies sincere or simulated? First, as regards
the amateur, Chesterton's case is that the amateur is necessary, in
order to counteract the influences of the specialist. Man is nowadays
the specialist. He is confined to making such things as the thousandth
part of a motor-car or producing the ten-thousandth part of a daily
newspaper. By being a specialist he is made narrow. Woman, with the
whole home on her hands, has a multiplicity of tasks. She is the
amateur, and as such she is free. If she is put into politics or
industry she becomes a specialist, and as such becomes a slave. This is
a pretty piece of reasoning, but it is absolutely hollow. There are few
women who do not gladly resign part at least of their sovereignty, if
they have the chance, to a maid-servant (who may be, and, in fact,
usually is an amateur, but is not free to try daring experiments) or to
such blatant specialists as cooks and nursemaids. Nobody is the least
bit shocked by the existence of specialist women. Indeed, it is a solemn
fact, that were it not for them Chesterton would be unable to procure a
single article of clothing. He would be driven to the fig-leaf, and
would stand a good chance of not getting even so much, now that so many
gardeners are women. We are terribly dependent upon the specialist
woman. That is why the amateur within the home is beginning to wonder
whether, on the whole, man _is_ so very much dependent upon her. She
comes to rely more and more upon the specialist women to help her feed,
clothe, and nurse her husband. She has so much done for her that she
comes to understand the remainder left to her far better. She becomes a
specialist herself, and feels kindly towards other specialists. Then she
demands a vote and meets Chesterton, who tells her to go and mind the
baby and be as free as she likes with the domestic apparatus for making
pastry, when her baby is in point of fact being brought up by other
women at a Montessori school to be much more intelligent and much more
of a specialist than she herself is ever likely to be, and when she
knows that her dyspeptic husband has an absolute loathing for the
amateurishness that expresses itself in dough.
Then there is the alleged wrongness of permitting women to work in
factories and offices. We are all probably prepared to admit that we
have been shocked at the commercial employment of women. But it has
probably occurred to few of us that the shock was due simply to their
commercial employment. It was due to their low wages and to the
beastliness of their employers. When they drew decent wages and their
employers were decent men we were not the least bit hurt. But when an
employer made use of the amateurishness of young girls to underpay them,
and then make deductions from their wages on various trivial pretexts,
and put them to work in overcrowded factories and offices, then we all
felt acutely that an indecency was being committed. The obvious
democratic remedy is the duckpond, but in our great cities none remain.
So one is sorrowfully brought round to the slower but surer expedient of
attacking and destroying the amateurishness of women at the point where
it is dangerous to them. Amateurishness has encircled women in the past
like the seven rivers of Hades. Every now and again a daring excursion
was made in order that the wisdom of those imprisoned within should be
added to our store. A good deal of aboriginal amateurishness has been
evaporating as the woman doctor has been taking the place of the
time-honoured amateur dispenser of brimstone and treacle, and even
horrider things. And will Chesterton maintain that it were better for us
all if certain women had remained amateurs and had not studied and
specialized so that, in time of need, they were enabled to tend the sick
and wounded at home, in Flanders and in France, and wherever the powers
of evil had been at work?
Lastly, is it decent that women should share the awful responsibility
which is attached to the ultimate control of the State, when the State
is compelled to use the gallows? If women vote, they are responsible for
whatever blood is shed by the State. Yes, but, Mr. Chesterton, aren't
they just as responsible for it in any case? Don't women help to pay the
hangman's wages with every ounce of tea or of sweets they buy? If
capital punishment is obscene, then we can do without it, and a woman's
vote will not make her a sharer in the evil. If capital punishment is
morally stimulating to the nation at large, there is no reason why women
should not be allowed to share in the stimulation. Now what has become
of Chesterton's decencies? It is indeed saddening that a man who never
misses an opportunity to proclaim himself a democrat should take his
stand on this matter beside Lord Curzon, and in opposition to the
instinctively and essentially democratic views proclaimed by such men as
Messrs. H. W. Nevinson and Philip Snowden.
In an article in The Illustrated London News on June 1st, 1912,
Chesterton showed whose side he was on with unusual distinctness. The
subject of the article was Earnestness; the moral, that it was a bad
quality, the property of Socialists and Anti-Socialists, and
Suffragists, and that apathy was best of all. It concluded:
Neither Socialists nor Suffragists will smash our
politics, I fear. The worst they can do is to put
a little more of the poison of earnestness into
the strong, unconscious sanity of our race, and
disturb that deep and just indifference on which
all things rest; the quiet of the mother or the
carelessness of the child.
In remarkably similar words, the late Procurator of the Holy Synod of
the Russian Church, C. P. Pobedonostsev, condemned democracy in his
book, The Reflexions of a Russian Statesman, and praised _vis inertiae_
for its preservative effects. But the Russian had more consistency; he
did not merely condemn votes for women, but also votes for men; and not
only votes, but education, the jury system, the freedom of the Press,
religious freedom, and many other things.
Putting aside the question of woman suffrage, Chesterton's views on
democracy may be further illustrated by reference to the proceedings of
the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of
Commons, 1909, on Stage Plays (Censorship). He may speak for himself
here.
Mr. G. K. Chesterton is called in, and examined.
Question 6141 (_Chairman_). I understand that you
appear here to give evidence on behalf of the
average man?
G.K.C. Yes, that is so. I represent the audience,
in fact. I am neither a dramatist nor a dramatic
critic. I do not quite know why I am here, but if
anybody wants to know my views on the subject they
are these: I am for the censorship, but I am
against the present Censor. I am very strongly for
the censorship, and I am very strongly against the
present Censor. The whole question I think turns
on the old democratic objection to despotism. I am
an old-fashioned person and I retain the old
democratic objection to despotism. I would trust
12 ordinary men, but I cannot trust one ordinary
man.
6142. You prefer the jury to the judge?--Yes,
exactly; that is the very point. It seems to me
that if you have one ordinary man judging, it is
not his ordinariness that appears, but it is his
extraordinariness that appears. Take anybody you
like--George III for instance. I suppose that
George III was a pretty ordinary man in one sense.
People called him Farmer George. He was very like
a large number of other people, but when he was
alone in his position things appeared in him that
were not ordinary--that he was a German, and that
he was mad, and various other facts. Therefore, my
primary principle----
6143. He gloried in the name of Briton?--I know he
did. That is what showed him to be so thoroughly
German.
LORD NEWTON. He spelt it wrongly.
WITNESS. Therefore, speaking broadly, I would not
take George III's opinion, but I would take the
opinion of 12 George III's on any question.
The taking of the "evidence" took several hours, but it never yielded
anything more than this: The local jury is a better judge of what is
right and proper than a single Censor. Juries may differ in their
judgments; but why not? Is it not desirable that Hampstead and Highgate
should each have an opportunity of finding out independently what they
like? May they not compete in taste one against the other?
This introduction of the question of dramatic censorship invites a
slight digression. Chesterton has a decided regard for a dramatic
censorship. A book need not be censored, because it need not be
finished by its reader, but it may be difficult to get out of a theatre
in the course of a performance. And there are performances of plays,
written by "irresponsible modern philosophers," which, to Chesterton,
seem to deserve suppression. A suggestive French farce may be a dirty
joke, but it is at least a joke; but a play which raises the question Is
marriage a failure? and answers it in the affirmative, is a pernicious
philosophy. The answer to this last contention is that, in point of
strict fact, modern philosophers do not regard happy marriages as
failures, and opinion is divided on the others, which are generally the
subjects of their plays. But there is no doubt that a jury is better
qualified than a single Censor. A French jury decided that Madame Bovary
was not immoral. An English jury decided that a certain book by Zola was
immoral and sent the publisher to prison. Another English jury, for all
practical purposes, decided that Dorian Gray was not immoral, and so on.
The verdicts may be accepted. Twelve men, picked from an alphabetical
list, may not be judges of art, but they will not debase morality.
Chesterton's personal contribution to the political thought of his day
lies in his criticism of the humaneness of legislative proposals. A
thing that is human is commonly a very different matter from a thing
that is merely humanitarian. G.K.C. is hotly human and almost bitterly
anti-humanitarian.
The difference between the two is illustrated by the institution of the
gallows, which is human, but not humanitarian. In its essentials it
consists of a rope and a branch, which is precisely the apparatus that
an angry man might employ in order to rid himself of his captured enemy.
Herbert Spencer, seeking in his old age for means whereby to increase
the happiness of mankind, invented a humanitarian apparatus for the
infliction of capital punishment. It consisted of a glorified
roundabout, on which the victim was laid for his last journey. As it
revolved, the blood-pressure on his head gradually increased (or
decreased, I forget which) until he fell asleep and died painlessly.
This is humanitarianism. The process is safe and sure (so long as the
machine did not stop suddenly), highly efficient, bloodless and
painless. But just because it is so humanitarian it offends one a great
deal more than the old-fashioned gallows. The only circumstance which
can justify violence is anger. The only circumstance which can justify
the taking of human life is anger. And anger may be expressed by a rope
or a knife-edge, but not by a roundabout or any other morbid invention
of a cold-blooded philosopher such as the electric chair, or the lethal
chamber. In the same way, if flogging is to continue as a punishment, it
must be inflicted by a man and not by a machine.
Now this distinction (made without prejudice as to Chesterton's views on
capital or corporal punishment) holds good through his whole criticism
of modern legislation. He believes that it is better that a man and his
family should starve in their own slum, than that they should be
moulded, by a cumbersome apparatus of laws and officials and inspectors,
into a tame, mildly prosperous and mildly healthy group of individuals,
whose opinions, occupations and homes should be provided for them. On
these lines he attacks whatever in his opinion will tend to put men into
a position where their souls will be less their own. He believes that
the man who has been costered by the Government into a mediocre state of
life will be less of a man than one who has been left unbothered by
officials, and has had to shift for himself.
Very largely, therefore, Chesterton's political faith is an up-to-date
variety of the tenets of the Self-Help School, which was own brother to
the Manchester School. And here we come to a curious contradiction, the
first of a series. For Chesterton loathes the Manchester School.
The contradiction comes of an inveterate nominalism. To G.K.C. all good
politics are summed up in the words Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. But
nobody, not even a Frenchman, can explain what they mean. Chesterton
used to believe that they mean Liberalism, being led astray by the sound
of the first word, but he soon realized his error. Let a man say "I
believe in Liberty" and only the vagueness of the statement preserves it
from the funniness of a Higher Thinker's affirmation, "I believe in
Beauty." A man has to _feel_ Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for they are
not in the nature of facts. And one suspects horribly that what
Chesterton really feels is merely the masculine liberty, equality and
fraternity of the public-house, where men meet together but never do
anything. For Chesterton has not yet asked us to do anything, he only
requests Parliament to refrain. He supports no political programme. He
is opposed to Party Government, which is government by the Government.
He is in favour of Home Rule, it may be inferred; and of making things
nasty for the Jews, it may be supposed. But he does not poach on the
leader-writers' preserves, and his political programme is left hazy.
His opposition to Liberal proposals brings him near the Tories. If the
Liberals continue in power for a few years longer, and Home Rule drops
out of the things opposed by Tories, the latter may well find Chesterton
among their doubtful assets. He will probably continue to call himself a
Liberal and a "child of the French Revolution," but that will be only
his fun. For the interesting abortions to which the French Revolution
gave birth--well, they are quite another story.
Chesterton is a warm supporter of the queerly mixed proposals that are
known as the "rights of small nationalities," and the smaller the
nationality, the more warmly he supports (so he would have us believe)
its demand for self-government. Big fleas have little fleas, alas, and
that is the difficulty he does not confront. For Home Rule carried to
its final sub-division is simply home rule; the independence of homes.
Political Home Rule is only assented to on general principles;
apparently on the ground that on the day when an Englishman's home
really does become his castle he will not, so to speak, mind much
whether he is an Englishman or an Irishman.
And here we may bid farewell to the politician who is Chesterton. His
politics are like his perverse definitions of the meaning of such words
as progress and reform. He is like a child who plays about with the
hands of a clock, and makes the surprising discovery that some clocks
may be made to tell a time that does not exist--with the small hand at
twelve and the large at six, for example. Also that if a clock goes
fast, it comes to register an hour behind the true time, and the other
way round. And so Chesterton goes on playing with the times, until at
last a horrid suspicion grips us. What if he cannot tell the time
himself?