The incident of the Suffragettes who chained themselves with iron
chains to the railings of Downing Street is a good ironical allegory of
most modern martyrdom. It generally consists of a man chaining himself
up and then complaining that he is not free. Some say that such larks
retard the cause of female suffrage, others say that such larks alone
can advance it; as a matter of fact, I do not believe that they have
the smallest effect one way or the other.
The modern notion of impressing the public by a mere demonstration of
unpopularity, by being thrown out of meetings or thrown into jail is
largely a mistake. It rests on a fallacy touching the true popular
value of martyrdom. People look at human history and see that it has
often happened that persecutions have not only advertised but even
advanced a persecuted creed, and given to its validity the public and
dreadful witness of dying men. The paradox was pictorially expressed in
Christian art, in which saints were shown brandishing as weapons the
very tools that had slain them. And because his martyrdom is thus a
power to the martyr, modern people think that any one who makes himself
slightly uncomfortable in public will immediately be uproariously
popular. This element of inadequate martyrdom is not true only of the
Suffragettes; it is true of many movements I respect and some that I
agree with. It was true, for instance, of the Passive Resisters, who
had pieces of their furniture sold up. The assumption is that if you
show your ordinary sincerity (or even your political ambition) by being
a nuisance to yourself as well as to other people, you will have the
strength of the great saints who passed through the fire. Any one who
can be hustled in a hall for five minutes, or put in a cell for five
days, has achieved what was meant by martyrdom, and has a halo in the
Christian art of the future. Miss Pankhurst will be represented holding
a policeman in each hand—the instruments of her martyrdom. The Passive
Resister will be shown symbolically carrying the teapot that was torn
from him by tyrannical auctioneers.
But there is a fallacy in this analogy of martyrdom. The truth is that
the special impressiveness which does come from being persecuted only
happens in the case of extreme persecution. For the fact that the
modern enthusiast will undergo some inconvenience for the creed he
holds only proves that he does hold it, which no one ever doubted. No
one doubts that the Nonconformist minister cares more for Nonconformity
than he does for his teapot. No one doubts that Miss Pankhurst wants a
vote more than she wants a quiet afternoon and an armchair. All our
ordinary intellectual opinions are worth a bit of a row: I remember
during the Boer War fighting an Imperialist clerk outside the Queen’s
Hall, and giving and receiving a bloody nose; but I did not think it
one of the incidents that produce the psychological effect of the Roman
amphitheatre or the stake at Smithfield. For in that impression there
is something more than the mere fact that a man is sincere enough to
give his time or his comfort. Pagans were not impressed by the torture
of Christians merely because it showed that they honestly held their
opinion; they knew that millions of people honestly held all sorts of
opinions. The point of such extreme martyrdom is much more subtle. It
is that it gives an appearance of a man having something quite
specially strong to back him up, of his drawing upon some power. And
this can only be proved when all his physical contentment is destroyed;
when all the current of his bodily being is reversed and turned to
pain. If a man is seen to be roaring with laughter all the time that he
is skinned alive, it would not be unreasonable to deduce that somewhere
in the recesses of his mind he had thought of a rather good joke.
Similarly, if men smiled and sang (as they did) while they were being
boiled or torn in pieces, the spectators felt the presence of something
more than mere mental honesty: they felt the presence of some new and
unintelligible kind of pleasure, which, presumably, came from
somewhere. It might be a strength of madness, or a lying spirit from
Hell; but it was something quite positive and extraordinary; as
positive as brandy and as extraordinary as conjuring. The Pagan said to
himself: “If Christianity makes a man happy while his legs are being
eaten by a lion, might it not make me happy while my legs are still
attached to me and walking down the street?” The Secularists
laboriously explain that martyrdoms do not prove a faith to be true, as
if anybody was ever such a fool as to suppose that they did. What they
did prove, or, rather, strongly suggest, was that something had entered
human psychology which was stronger than strong pain. If a young girl,
scourged and bleeding to death, saw nothing but a crown descending on
her from God, the first mental step was not that her philosophy was
correct, but that she was certainly feeding on something. But this
particular point of psychology does not arise at all in the modern
cases of mere public discomfort or inconvenience. The causes of Miss
Pankhurst’s cheerfulness require no mystical explanations. If she were
being burned alive as a witch, if she then looked up in unmixed rapture
and saw a ballot-box descending out of heaven, then I should say that
the incident, though not conclusive, was frightfully impressive. It
would not prove logically that she ought to have the vote, or that
anybody ought to have the vote. But it would prove this: that there
was, for some reason, a sacramental reality in the vote, that the soul
could take the vote and feed on it; that it was in itself a positive
and overpowering pleasure, capable of being pitted against positive and
overpowering pain.
I should advise modern agitators, therefore, to give up this particular
method: the method of making very big efforts to get a very small
punishment. It does not really go down at all; the punishment is too
small, and the efforts are too obvious. It has not any of the
effectiveness of the old savage martyrdom, because it does not leave
the victim absolutely alone with his cause, so that his cause alone can
support him. At the same time it has about it that element of the
pantomimic and the absurd, which was the cruellest part of the slaying
and the mocking of the real prophets. St. Peter was crucified upside
down as a huge inhuman joke; but his human seriousness survived the
inhuman joke, because, in whatever posture, he had died for his faith.
The modern martyr of the Pankhurst type courts the absurdity without
making the suffering strong enough to eclipse the absurdity. She is
like a St. Peter who should deliberately stand on his head for ten
seconds and then expect to be canonised for it.
Or, again, the matter might be put in this way. Modern martyrdoms fail
even as demonstrations, because they do not prove even that the martyrs
are completely serious. I think, as a fact, that the modern martyrs
generally are serious, perhaps a trifle too serious. But their
martyrdom does not prove it; and the public does not always believe it.
Undoubtedly, as a fact, Dr. Clifford is quite honourably indignant with
what he considers to be clericalism, but he does not prove it by having
his teapot sold; for a man might easily have his teapot sold as an
actress has her diamonds stolen—as a personal advertisement. As a
matter of fact, Miss Pankhurst is quite in earnest about votes for
women. But she does not prove it by being chucked out of meetings. A
person might be chucked out of meetings just as young men are chucked
out of music-halls—for fun. But no man has himself eaten by a lion as a
personal advertisement. No woman is broiled on a gridiron for fun. That
is where the testimony of St. Perpetua and St. Faith comes in.
Doubtless it is no fault of these enthusiasts that they are not
subjected to the old and searching penalties; very likely they would
pass through them as triumphantly as St. Agatha. I am simply advising
them upon a point of policy, things being as they are. And I say that
the average man is not impressed with their sacrifices simply because
they are not and cannot be more decisive than the sacrifices which the
average man himself would make for mere fun if he were drunk. Drunkards
would interrupt meetings and take the consequences. And as for selling
a teapot, it is an act, I imagine, in which any properly constituted
drunkard would take a positive pleasure. The advertisement is not good
enough; it does not tell. If I were really martyred for an opinion
(which is more improbable than words can say), it would certainly only
be for one or two of my most central and sacred opinions. I might,
perhaps, be shot for England, but certainly not for the British Empire.
I might conceivably die for political freedom, but I certainly wouldn’t
die for Free Trade. But as for kicking up the particular kind of shindy
that the Suffragettes are kicking up, I would as soon do it for my
shallowest opinion as for my deepest one. It never could be anything
worse than an inconvenience; it never could be anything better than a
spree. Hence the British public, and especially the working classes,
regard the whole demonstration with fundamental indifference; for,
while it is a demonstration that probably is adopted from the most
fanatical motives, it is a demonstration which might be adopted from
the most frivolous.