the soldiers as they went to battle. There is considerable ground, too,
for accepting the amusing traditional tale that even at the end of the
war the then President of the American Republic (mainly confined at
the time to the Western Continent), declared the first point for the
guidance of the Peace Conference must be an open discussion of the
covenant. And the first thing to happen when the war ended was the
closing of the door of the council room by the peacemakers, who,
naturally, were the very men with no other interest till that moment but
the full pursuit of war; yet nobody noticed the door was shut, though
nobody could hear what was going on inside the room. The faith in their
politicians held by the natives of the backyard communities into which
Europe was then divided--on the very eve, we see now, of the full
continental control of international man-power by consolidated
finance--was the measure of their annoyance when, too late, naturally,
the fact that the old shackles from which they had been promised freedom
were noticed to be riveted upon them several links tighter.
But it is not their faith, so happily youthful, which so reveals
their ingenious minds as their resultant annoyance. That resentment
illuminates the essential fact for us in studying their mentality as
social animals. They really did accept without question, with open and
receptive mouths and eyes shut, what was considered pleasing enough to
fortify them in the trials of warfare. They were, difficult though it
is for us to understand it, too vacant and generous to realize that the
"Objects of the War" were but figments nicely calculated to get them
busy. The figments--we must give credit to the leaders of the time-were
indeed not un-imaginatively conjured up. Those inducing visions worked.
They were accepted readily, and even with delight. It was sincerely
believed that the pleasing dreams were substantial, that those chromatic
vapours evoked by gifted statesmen were veritable promises of divine
favor for meritorious endurance.
From that we can the more easily go with understanding to a study of
the consequences of that attractive faith of undisciplined peoples so
difficult to grasp for modern students, who witness daily the admirable
submission of our own uniform herds to the divine ordinances of the
High Priests of the Sacred Entity the State. Why, we even learn that
the survivors of the not inconsiderable armies returned from the
battlefields of 1918 with the innocent conviction that the gentlemen of
England would keep a bond as faithfully as common soldiers! The hardest
tasks of the statesmen of those days arose out of such extraordinary
expectations, out of the ruinous supposition of the childish-minded
that the honoring of a bond, the fulfilment of a promise in return for
benefits received, is equally incumbent on everybody!
With that knowledge we begin to realise the difficulties of their
statesmen. A careful computation shows us that in England, where indeed
the lavish promises had been most picturesque, and where the tough idea
of personal liberty took longest to kill, it required just four years
of severe disciplinary measures and dry bread to reduce the masses
generally to a pale, obedient, and constructive spirit. At first they
would not work unless they wanted to, and then only at their own
price. They pointed, when answering their masters, to the fact that the
best-fed people never worked at all, and lived in the best houses.
They refused to cancel the official contracts made with them, even when
ordered to do so by the police. They behaved indeed, those ex-soldiers,
as though it had been _their_ war. Such a state of mind we in these days
really find impossible to elucidate. It is rather like trying to read
the spots on a giraffe. It is as inscrutable as the once general opinion
that the community has a right to decide upon its own affairs.
Today we have reached that point in the evolution of society when
uniformity is known to be more desirable, because more comfortable than
liberty; and uniformity is impossible without compulsion. A man with a
free and contentious mind is a danger to the community, for he destroys
its ease. He compels his fellows to active thought, if only to refute
him. This is a dissipation of energy, and a local weakening of the
structure of the State. It is historically true that a few men with
ranging and questioning minds have sometimes injected so strong an
original virus of thought that the community has been changed in form
and nature.
It was the mistake of the earlier nations to give little attention to
these troublesome and subversive fellows, who always thought more of the
truth than they did even of the inviolability of the High Priests of the
State. They preferred to die rather than surrender the out-dated rights
of man. Therefore they had to die. The rights of man cannot be allowed
to stand in the way of a nation's perfect uniformity. It was many
centuries before man realized that the only freedom worth having
is freedom from the necessity for individual thought. Perfectly
unembarrassed freedom, freedom in which the mind may be empty and
sunny, and assured happily of not the slightest interruption from any
unsanctioned unofficial idea, became possible to a community only after
the sanitary measures were devised which sufficed against unexpected
epidemics of speculative thinking.
This, we are sadly aware, took time; for the brightly-colored hopes sent
skyward so long ago as 1914, and the vistas discovered as a consequence
by young men whose eyes till then had been resting safely on the ground,
and the daring and lively questioning that was aroused by the incessant
nudging of sleeping minds, coincided, as it unluckily happened, with
the beginnings when the "Great War" ended, of mass-production and
international finance, so developing problems of government, the solving
of which could not be reconciled with any admission of individual
liberty and personal right. It was, therefore, the elimination of
the notion of justice and liberty from common opinion which occupied
statesmen from 1918 onwards.
Gradually the true social morality has been evolved--that one citizen
should be so like all other citizens that his only distinguishing
characteristic is his number; that the right ideal of citizenship, plain
for all to follow, and ensuring the stability of society, is to be
so loyal to the Holy State that an expression of a man's views in a
gathering of his fellows will rouse no more curiosity than a glass of
water. Obviously so desirable a similarity of mind and character, making
disputation impossible, and preventing all dislike of the ordinances of
the Sacred Entity, or Cabal of Inviolable Dispensers, a uniformity in
which war and peace become merely the national output of a vast machine
controlled by the Central Will, has been developed only through ages of
Press Suggestion, popular education with a bias that was designed but
was scarcely noticeable, the seizing and retaining of opportunities by
legislators whenever public opinion was sufficiently diverted, and
a development of chemical science and aeronautics which has been
encouraged by the enlightened directors of the major industries.
The war which began in 1914 showed quite clearly, for example, the value
of the Censorship. The instituting of this office was never questioned,
for it was based on man's first impulse of obedience to superiors when
faced by a sudden danger, caused by his fear of the unknown. More than
that, the English were in a lucky state of exaltation at the time, and
were ready to sacrifice everything to save from destruction what they
were told was the ancient, exquisite, and priceless civilization of
France. They did save it; but in the prolonged and costly process they
learned more than they had known before of that civilization, as well as
of their own; and so much of their fear of losing either was evaporated.
By that time, anyhow, criticism was useless, because the Censorship
then was empowered to deal even with a derisive cough when Authority
was solemnly giving orders. Once the office of the Censor was set in its
place unnoticed in a time of public nervousness and excitement, the rest
was easy, for it became possible to bring all criticism within a law
which was elastic enough to be extended even to those figments which
merely worked on the timidity of unbalanced minds.
It became unpatriotic to express a dislike for margarine, when butter
was prohibited. It was unpatriotic for a blind hunchback with heart
disease to protest that he was no soldier, if he were ordered to the
Front. For though the Censor, in the early period of that war, dealt
merely with news and opinions which might aid the enemy, yet, as the
value of adding to a nation's enemies became apparent to Authority, it
became necessary to turn into enemies of the State those who denounced
profiteers for turning blood into money, those who denounced generals
for wasting the lives of boys in purposeless actions, those who
spoke against the spending of the nation's resources to succor needy
contractors, and those who asked whether the war was to go on till all
were dead, or whether it might be stopped profitably at any time by
using a little common sense. Luckily for the welfare of the community,
this need for recognizing as enemies all, at home and abroad, who
differed from the decision of the Central Will, a need which was the
natural flower of that confidence which Authority acquired through
discovering the ease of control, put within the power of the Censor by
the time of the Peace Conference every possible form of protest, every
call for light, every cry of pain, every demand that such a "horrible
nonsense" as war should cease from human affairs, every plea for
compassion and generosity.
Thus the problem of perfect government was engendered and simplified.
It was at last possible to ensure, at least outwardly, a semblance
of uniformity. The rest was a matter of evolution, till today only a
particular enquiry will determine a man from a woman, though it may fail
to determine a fool from a man. All are alike, all agree with what is
officially announced by the Sacred Entity, and the nation is as loyal
and homogeneous, as contented, as stable and industrious, as a reef of
actinozoal plasm. Thus the Perfect State has been built like a rock. The
City of God has at last arisen; and in each of the uniform homes of
its neuters, or workers, there is to be found the Patriotic Symbol--a
portrait of a Sheep, enjoined by law to hang in a principal place, and
bearing the legend "God Bless this Loyal Face."
Here, however, we see at once that such a right condition of the
public mind could never have been acquired by a Censorship, by a mere
prohibition, that is, of individual thinking and acting. That
ensures merely a simulacrum of homogeneity. The appearance of general
acquiescence may exist, though not the real thing. It is easy to compel
men to do what they would not do freely if allowed an opportunity for
their reason to work. The problem was to prevent the working of reason.
Today, as we know, an order is issued by The Chosen, and is followed by
a campaign in the Press, and by revivals exhorted from the Pulpit. There
is no chance for the intrusion of reason.--No facts are ever issued for
reason to work upon, no questioning is ever allowed. The suggestions of
the Press and Pulpit prompt loyalty and obedience, and what might, in
early times, have been resented as ridiculous, becomes the mode; and
thus, if any rebels exist, it is but briefly, for they are denounced as
solitary and repugnant independents. A suggestion becomes public opinion
because the majority of people accept it without knowing there is reason
to question the suggestion; and the minority also accept it in the end
through weariness of an unpleasant and even dangerous distinction.
Yet not, observe, all the minority. It was the experience of our
forefathers that unsuspected centres of infection always remained, and
were not discovered till they had poisoned large areas of the country.
Some bold fellow, here and there, had withstood all efforts at
intimidation, and in time made others as courageous as himself. A means
had to be found to eliminate the possibility of infection by original
minds, or clearly the Holy State could not consider itself safe. Here,
indeed, we see the hardest of the problems statesmen of the past had to
solve. From the mere negation of the Censorship, a positive advance
had to be made to the obliteration of original thought. This at first,
necessarily, was but tentative, and only the confidence gained through
successful experiment enabled governments at last to find where the real
trouble lay.
It was supposed, at first, that the destruction of subversive political
tracts and the persecution of radical views would be enough. Yet,
of course, it was learned that as fast as these were cropped, growth
elsewhere had become vigorous. The human intelligence is natively prone
to look towards new things. Then it was that, after a long suspicion
of the origin of ideals, great statesmen were led to an examination of
classic literature and a study of the arts. Then they saw, what they
might have known sooner, that in the very institutions supported by the
State, the Public Libraries and Art Galleries, were actually preserved
the potent ideals which demeaned that general opinion which the State
was laboring to establish.
The famous Day of Release was ordered. This was ordained to free mankind
from its heritage of the spirit. A test was made, and by that test any
book or picture or poem which could not be approved or understood by
native deacons of Solomon Island missions (who were imported for the
purpose) was at once extirpated. This checked a great deal of the
troublesome growth of the mind. Music, however, was strangely forgotten;
and it was proved that the great revolution which burst out in Europe
120 years after the "Great War" began in the emotion occasioned by the
continued playing of the compositions of one Beethoven, whose work is
now fortunately lost, and other music which remained in favor in spite
of the official insistence on the use of the steam saxophone for public
concerts. Men, wherever they dared, insisted on having the best. And
though the records were at length destroyed, the tenacious memories of
a few fanatics and cranks preserved much of the old music, and that
usually of the worst and most disloyal.
Here we see another step had to be taken by men in control of the State.
The memory of what was classical was kept though in an ever-fading
condition, and now and again some point of memory fructified to almost
its original suggestive beauty in the fortuitously abnormal brain of a
genius, and thus the state work of hygiene had to be done over again;
for curiously enough people everywhere rose like a tide, and moved
spontaneously towards these manifestations of liberty and beauty, and
away from their loyalty to the God-State. A method, therefore, had to be
discovered, first for obliterating what remained in the public memory
of what was magical and rebellious, and then for the elimination of any
possibility of original genius arising; and genius was, it was seen,
first and last, the cause of all the trouble.
The destruction of all great works of art was followed, fifty years
later, by the Period of Purging. All who were denounced for having
quoted forbidden poetry, or for humming forbidden music, were executed.
Such malefactors, who refused to forget, obviously could not be allowed
to live. This gave a long period of peace, in which the Sacred Entity,
the Unassailable Authority, took concrete form. Even so, the destruction
of the treasures of the past, and of all memory of them, did not prevent
the spontaneous appearance, now and then, of extraordinary men who, by
divination it would seem, perceived a flatness and monotony in society,
a sameness of common thought, and who laughed at the estimable uniform
flocks; often, indeed, stampeding them.
Now science had its turn. It was more than a century since the works of
Darwin and other philosophers had been burned. Young students who showed
an aptitude for science, and so were potentially dangerous, were taken
early within the Sacred Precincts, initiated into the mysteries of the
Priests, and were given work and safety under the shadow of the Entity.
They rarely went wrong; and when they did they went further or were
heard of no more.
These men of science were set the problem of finding a method of
sterilizing the unfit, that is, people who showed any decadent tendency
to originality. All the increase of population by that time was
occasioned under the direction of the High Priests, so that the Holy
State had not only the power of dealing death, but of bringing new life.
The new life, it is evident, had to be determined, as far as possible,
by a scientific specification of a perfect citizen; and in the course
of a century or two, through the destruction of intelligence wherever
it inadvertently appeared, through the selection of parents sufficiently
loyal and docile to accept marriage immediately when ordered by
officials, and by certain signs, such as lustiness, by which, at a
birth, the skilled Public Watchers who accompanied midwives were made
suspicious of the new-born as possible enemies of the State, at last
mankind arrived at its present perfection, content, and happiness, with
hardly an intellectual doubt or a sign of suspicious joy to mar the
whole serene horizon of the Holy State's exactitude.
Yet, we dare ask, had it not been for that little "War to End War"
of 1914-1918, so innocently named by our forefathers who had too much
liberty to know what they were talking about, would the possibility of
our present social tranquility have arisen? It is hardly likely. The
freedom we enjoy from all criticism, from all interruptions of mind and
spirit, an internal peace which is indeed never broken except by the
lethal germs of our modern wars that, in the due course of nature,
obliterate every week or so a few of our cities, was a lucky chance that
was seized upon by public-spirited legislators who had the prescience to
know its value.
IN VINO DEMI-TASSE
[Illustration: Charles Hanson Towne and the Law.]
CHARLES HANSON TOWNE
The Young-Old Philosopher and I were sitting in one of the innumerable
restaurants in New York where the sanctity of the law is about as much
considered as a bicycle ride up Mt. Etna. At the next table--indeed, all
around us--rich red wine was being poured into little cups.
"The new motto of America should be '_In vino demi-tasse_,'" my friend
said, smiling. And I quite agreed with him. For it is being done
everywhere; in the most exalted circles, and in the lowest. Poor old
human nature, which an organized minority are so bent upon changing
overnight, cannot be altered; and, all the emphasis in a supposedly free
country having been placed upon not drinking, the prohibitionists are
wondering why so many of us care for liquid refreshment.
There is too much _verboten_ in America today. I can remember the time,
not so long ago, when no dinner-party was counted a success unless four
or five cocktails were served before we sat down at the table. But that
era passed. It was soon evident that such foolishness would lead to
grave disaster--if not to the grave; and the young business man who was
seen to consume even one glass of beer at luncheon was frowned upon,
catalogued as unsteady, even in the face of the fact that perhaps the
most efficient people in the world were automatic beer-drinkers.
As to drinking, in America we had other ideas. Big Business, which has
become such a potent factor among us, and more a part of our national
consciousness than Art and Letters ever will be, of its own volition
placed a ban upon immoderate drinking; and the sane among us--of whom
there were still many--gladly fell in line, and either went periodically
upon the water-wagon or took a nip only occasionally when the cares of
life weighed too heavily and insistently upon us.
Why, then, the Reformers? Why the Uplift Workers? Why the Extremists?
Not content with a great and wise people working out their own salvation
from within, they must step forth in solemn battalions, and make us pure
and holy--from without.
We resent them. There is no reason why an entire nation should be
indicted for the sins and failings of a few. It would be quite as
sensible to forbid connubial bliss because there are a handful of
libertines in the world.
The cry goes up, however, that the next generation will be so much
better because of our enforced good behavior now. I am afraid that I am
not enough of an altruist to care so definitely about the morals of
a race unborn. I feel that my children, looking over the files of our
newspapers, as they sip their light wine and beer, may smile and say,
"Poor grandpa! He had so little self-control that the Government had to
put the screws on him and his friends. Too bad! They must have been
a fast set in his day. And yet--he left us a pretty good heritage of
health and strength. We wonder if he was such an awful devil as history
makes out."
The truth is that nothing, in moderation, ever hurt anybody. That is why
the wise among us are against Prohibition and strongly for Temperance.
Normal men do not like to be coddled. If coddling is done, however,
they like to pick their coddlers. We don't like a lean and sour-visaged
Prohibitionist making a fuss over us, feeling our pulse, taking our
temperature, smoothing our brow. The whole trouble with the world today,
as a sane man views it, is that there has been altogether too much
coddling of the physically and mentally unfit.
We have become, through drifting, a nation of hypocrites. We make laws
so fast that the bewildered citizen cannot follow them. We add amendment
after amendment to our Constitution, and then laugh at what we have
done, the while we secretly rebel. We have few convictions, and we
refuse to face issues squarely and honestly. We pretend to be virtuous
before the rest of the world; but we are like the ostrich which hides
its head in the sands. We pretend that, just as the eugenists think of
the physical attributes of the coming generation, we consider the mental
attributes--and we turn around and raise a race of bootleggers. We
permit our enormous foreign population to see us at our legislative
work; and then we go proudly and sanctimoniously to restaurants and
allow Italian, German and French waiters to pour red wine into our
demi-tasses.
Oh, we are not in our cups--only in our half-cups. It would all be very
amusing were it not so terribly serious. For we are rapidly floating
toward trouble; and, hypocritically enough, we will not admit it. When
it is said, since the tragedy of Prohibition, that the reformers will
next snatch our cigars and cigarettes out of our mouths, we shrug our
shoulders, smile and pass on, saying, "Oh, no! _that_ would be going
_too_ far!"--in the face of what already has been accomplished in this
land of the spree and the home of the grave.
Yes, we have become grave indeed. For there can be no doubt that there
is a feeling of great unhappiness and unrest in America now. One hears
the most solid citizens saying, "I do not try to save any more; I
merely live from day to day, hoping against hope that things will right
themselves, and that the old order will somehow return."
Who gets a long-term lease nowadays? Those of us who are old enough to
remember the simplicity and peace of the golden 'Eighties and 'Nineties
are appalled at the nervous tension and complexities of this hour. We
are all catalogued and tagged, just as they are in that Prussia we
so recently and fervently despised; and we are hounded by income-tax
investigators, surrounded by a horde of spies who search our luggage,
pry into our kitchens to see if we are making home brew, raided in
restaurants--and laughed at by king-ridden and shackled Europeans.