pallid face; something melodramatic, something eager and in a great
hurry, something that went by like the sound of a trumpet, a figure of
vast enterprise in shining armour, with mailed fist. This was the symbol
upon which these young Germans were being concentrated. This was the
ideal that had gripped them. Something very modern and yet romantic,
something stupendously resolute. Going whither? At any rate, going
magnificently somewhere. That was the power of it. It _was_ going
somewhere. For good or bad it was an infinitely more attractive lead
than the cowardly and oppressive Tsardom that was failing to hold the
refractory minds of these young Russians, or the current edition of the
British imperial ideal, twangling its idiotic banjo and exhorting Peter
and his generation to “tax the foreigner” as a worthy end and aim in
life.
Oswald, with his eye on the dim, preoccupied audience about him,
recalled a talk that he and Peter had had with a young fellow-traveller
in the train between Hanover and Berlin. It had been a very typical
young German, glasses and all; and his clothes looked twice as hard as
Peter’s, and he sat up stiffly while Peter slouched on the seat. He
evidently wanted to air his English, while Peter had not the remotest
desire to air his German, and only betrayed a knowledge of German when
it was necessary to explain some English phrase the German didn’t quite
grasp. The German wanted to know whether Oswald and Peter had been in
Germany before, where they were going, what they thought of it, what
they were going to think of Berlin.
Responding to counter questions he said he had been twice to England. He
thought England was a great country. “Yes—but not systematic. No!”
“You mean undisciplined?”
Yes, it was perhaps undisciplined he meant.
Oswald said that as a foreigner he was most struck by the tremendous air
of order in north Germany. The Germans were orderly by nature. The
admission proved an attractive gambit.
The young German questioned Oswald’s view that the Germans were
naturally orderly. Hard necessity had made them so. They had had to
discipline themselves, they had been obliged to develop a
Kultur—encircled by enemies. Now their Kultur was becoming a second
nature. Every nation, he supposed, brought its present to mankind.
Germany’s was Order, System, the lesson of Obedience that would
constantly make her more powerful. The Germans were perforce a thorough
people. Thorough in all they did. Although they had come late into
modern industrialism they had already developed social and economic
organization far beyond that of any other people. Nicht wahr? Their work
was becoming necessary to the rest of mankind. In Russia, for example,
in Turkey, in Italy, in South America, it was more and more the German
who organized, developed, led. “Though we are fenced round,” he said,
“still—we break out.”
There was something familiar and yet novel in all this to Oswald. It was
like his first sensation upon reading Shakespeare in German. It was
something very familiar—in an unfamiliar idiom. Then he recognized it.
This was exactly his own Imperialism—Teutonized. The same assertion of
an educational mission....
“Everywhere we go,” said the young German, “our superior science, our
higher education, our better method prevails. Even in your India——”
He smiled and left that sentence unfinished.
“But your militarism, your sabre rule here at home; this Zabern
business; isn’t that a little incompatible with this idea of Germany as
a great civilizing influence permeating the world?”
“Not at all,” said the young German, with the readiness of a
word-perfect actor. “Behind our missionaries of order we must have ready
the good German sword.”
“But isn’t the argument of force apt to be a little—decivilizing?”
The young German did not think so. “When I was in England I said, there
are three things that these English do not properly understand to use,
they are the map or index, the school, and—the sword. Those three things
are the triangle of German life....”
That hung most in Oswald’s mind. He had gone on talking to the young
German for a long time about the differences of the British and the
German way. He had made Peter and the youngster compare their school and
college work, and what was far more striking, the difference in pressure
between the two systems. “You press too hard,” he said. “In Alsace you
have pressed too hard—in Posen.”
“Perhaps we sometimes press—I do not know,” said the young German. “It
is the strength of our determination. We are impatient. We are a young
people.” For a time Oswald had talked of the methods of Germany in the
Cameroons and of Britain on the Gold Coast, where the German had been
growing cacao by the plantation system, turning the natives into slaves,
while the British, with an older experience and a longer view, had left
the land in native hands and built up a happy and loyal free cultivation
ten times as productive mile for mile as the German. It seemed to him to
be one good instance of his general conception of Germany as the land of
undue urgency. “Your Wissmann in East Africa was a great man—but
everywhere else you drive too violently. You antagonize.” North Germany
everywhere, he said, had the same effect upon him of a country, “going
hard.”
“Germany may be in too much of a hurry,” he repeated.
“We came into world-politics late,” said the young German, endorsing
Oswald’s idea from his own point of view. “We have much to overtake
yet.”...
The Germans had come into world-politics late. That was very true. They
were naïve yet. They could still feed their natural egotism on the story
of a world mission. The same enthusiasms that had taken Russia to the
Pacific—and to Grand Ducal land speculation in Manchuria—and the English
to the coolie slavery of the Rand, was taking these Germans now—whither?
Oswald did not ask what route to disillusionment Germany might choose.
But he believed that she would come to disillusionment. She was only a
little later in phase than her neighbours; that was all. In the end they
would see that that white-cloaked heroic figure in the automobile led
them to futility as surely as the skulking Tsar. Not that way must the
nations go....
Oswald saw no premonition of a world catastrophe in this German
youngster’s devotion to an ideal of militant aggression, nor in the
whole broad spectacle of straining preparation across which he and Peter
travelled that winter from Aix to Wirballen. He was as it were magically
blind. He could stand on the Hanover platform and mark the largeness of
the station, the broad spreading tracks, the endless sidings, the
tremendous transport preparations, that could have no significance in
the world but military intention, and still have no more to say than,
“These Germans give themselves elbow-room on their railways, Peter. I
suppose land is cheaper.” He could see nothing of the finger of fate
pointing straight out of all this large tidy preparedness at Peter and
their fellow-passengers and all the youth of the world. He thought
imperialistic monarchy was an old dead thing in Russia and in Britain
and in Germany alike.
In Berlin indeed in every photographer’s was the touched-up visage of
the Kaiser, looking heroic, and endless postcards of him and of his sons
and of the Kaiserin and little imperial grandchildren and the like; they
were as dull and dreary-looking as any royalties can be, and it was
inconceivable to Oswald that such figures could really rule the
imagination of a great people. He did not realize that all the tragedy
in the world might lie behind the words of that young German, “we came
into world-politics late,” behind the fact that the German imperialist
system was just a little less decayed, a little less humorous, a little
less indolent and disillusioned than either of its great parallels to
the east and west. He did not reflect that no system is harmless until
its hands are taken off the levers of power. He could still believe that
he lived in an immensely stable world, and that these vast forms of
kingdom and empire, with their sham reverences and unmeaning ceremonies
and obligations, their flags and militancy and their imaginative
senility, threatened nothing beyond the negative evil of uninspired
lives running to individual waste. That was the thing that concerned
him. He saw no collective fate hanging over all these intent young faces
in the Moscow Art Theatre, as over the strutting innocents of patriotic
Berlin; he had as yet no intimation of the gigantic disaster that was
now so close at hand, that was to torment and shatter the whole youth of
the world, that was to harvest the hope and energy of these bright
swathes of life....
He glanced at Peter, intent upon the stage.
Peter lay open to every impulse. That was Oswald’s supreme grievance
then against Tsars, Kings, and Churches. They had not been good enough
for Peter. That seemed grievance enough.
He did not imagine yet that they could murder the likes of Peter by the
hundred thousand, without a tremor.
He loved the fine lines of the boy’s profile, he marked his delicate
healthy complexion. Peter was like some wonderful new instrument in
perfect condition. And all these other youngsters, too, had something of
the same clean fire in them....
Was it all to be spent upon love-making and pleasure-seeking and play?
Was this exquisite hope and desire presently to be thrown aside, rusted
by base uses, corroded by self-indulgence, bent or broken? “The
generations running to waste—like rapids....”
He still thought in that phrase. The Niagara of Death so near to them
all now to which these rapids were heading, he still did not hear, did
not suspect its nearness....
And Joan——. From Peter his thoughts drifted to Joan. Joan apparently
could find nothing better to do in life than dance....
Suddenly Peter took a deep breath, sat back, and began to clap. The
whole house broke out into a pelting storm of approval.
“Ripping!” said Peter. “Oh! ripping.”
He turned his bright face to Oswald. “They do it so well,” he said,
smiling. “I had forgotten it was in Russian. I seemed to understand
every word.”
Oswald turned his eye again to _Hamlet_ in Gordon Craig’s fantastic
setting—which Moscow in her artistic profusion could produce when London
was too poor to do so.
§ 5
Very similar were the thoughts in Oswald’s mind three months later,
three months nearer the world catastrophe, as he sat in his summerhouse
after Joan had told him of her quarrel with Peter.
Her denunciation of Peter had had the curious effect upon him of making
him very anxious about her. So far as Peter went, what she had told him
had but confirmed and made definite what he had known by instinct since
the Christmas party. His mind was used now to the idea of Peter being
vicious. But he was very much shocked indeed at the discovery that Joan
was aware of Peter’s vices. That was a new jolt to his mind. In many
things Joan and Peter had changed his ideas enormously, but so far he
had retained not only his wardroom standards with regard to the morals
of a youth, but also his romantic ideals of feminine purity with regard
to a girl. He still thought of his own womenkind as of something
innocent, immaculate and untouchable, beings in a different world from
the girls who “didn’t mind a bit of fun” and the women one made love to
boldly.
But now he had to face the fact—Joan had forced it upon him—this new
feminine generation wasn’t divided in that obvious way. The clean had
knowledge, the bold were not outcast and apart. The new world of women
was as mixed as the world of men. He sat in his summerhouse thinking of
his Joan’s flushed face, her indignant eyes, her outspoken words.
“It was a _woman’s_ face,” he whispered....
And he was realizing too how much more urgent the ending of adolescence
was becoming with a girl than it could ever be with a boy. Peter might
tumble into a scrape or so and scramble out again, not very much the
worse for it, as he himself had done. But Joan, with all the temerity of
a youth, might be making experiments that were fatal. He had not been
watching her as he had watched Peter. Suddenly he woke up to this
realization of some decisive issue at hand. Why was she so whitely angry
with Peter? Why did she complain of having to “stand too much” from
Peter? Her abuse of his friends had the effect of a counter attack. Was
there some mischief afoot from which Peter restrained her? What men were
there about in Joan’s world?
There was something slimy and watchful about this fellow Huntley. Could
there be more in that affair than one liked to think?... Or was there
some one unknown in London or in Cambridge?
She and Peter were quarrelling about the Easter party. It would
apparently be impossible to have any Easter party this year, since both
wanted to bar out the other one’s friends. And anyhow there mustn’t be
any more of this Hetty Reinhart business at Pelham Ford. That must stop.
It ought never to have happened.... He would take Peter over to Dublin.
They could accept an invitation he had had from Graham Powys out beyond
Foxrock, and they could motor into Dublin and about the country, and
perhaps the Irish situation might touch the boy’s imagination....
Joan could go to her aunts at The Ingle-Nook....
Should he have a talk to Aunt Phyllis about the girl?
It was a pity that Aunt Phyllis always lost her breath and was shaken
like an aspen leaf with fine feeling whenever one came to any serious
discussion with her. If it wasn’t for that confounded shimmer in her
nerves and feelings, she would be a very wise and helpful woman....
§ 6
Oswald’s thoughts ranged far and wide that morning.
Now he would be thinking in the most general terms of life as he
conceived it, now he would be thinking with vivid intensity about some
word or phrase or gesture of Joan and Peter.
He was blind still to the thing that was now so close to all his world;
nevertheless a vague uneasiness about the trend of events was creeping
into his mind and mixing with his personal solicitudes. Many men felt
that same uneasiness in those feverish days—as if Death cast his shadow
upon them before he came visibly into their lives.
Oswald belonged to that minority of Englishmen who think systematically,
whose ideas join on. Most Englishmen, even those who belong to what we
call the educated classes, still do not think systematically at all; you
cannot understand England until you master that fact; their ideas are in
slovenly detached little heaps, they think in ready-made phrases, they
are honestly capable therefore of the most grotesque inconsistencies.
But Oswald had built up a sort of philosophy for himself, by which he
did try his problems and with which he fitted in such new ideas as came
to him. It was a very distinctive view of life he had; a number of
influences that are quite outside the general knowledge of English
people had been very powerful in shaping it. Biological science, for
example, played a quite disproportionate part in it. Like the countrymen
of Metchnikoff, most of the countrymen of Darwin and Huxley believe
firmly that biological science was invented by the devil and the Germans
to undermine the Established Church. But Oswald had been exceptional in
the chances that had turned his attention to these studies. And a writer
whose suggestions had played a large part in shaping his ideas about
education and social and political matters was J. J. Atkinson. He
thought Atkinson the most neglected of all those fine-minded Englishmen
England ignores. He thought Lang and Atkinson’s _Social Origins_ one of
the most illuminating books he had ever read since Winwood Reade’s
_Martyrdom of Man_. No doubt it will be amusing to many English readers
that Oswald should have mixed up theories of the origins and destinies
of mankind with his political views and his anxieties about Joan’s
behaviour and Peter’s dissipations but he did. It was the way of his
mind. He perceived a connexion between these things.
The view he had developed of human nature and human conditions was
saturated with the idea of the ancestral ape. In his instincts, he
thought, man was still largely the creature of the early Stone Age,
when, following Atkinson, he supposed that the human herd, sex linked,
squatted close under the dominion of its Old Man, and hated every
stranger. He did not at all accept the Aristotelian maxim that man is “a
political animal.” He was much more inclined to Schopenhauer’s
comparison of human society to a collection of hedgehogs driven together
for the sake of warmth. He thought of man as a being compelled by
circumstances of his own inadvertent creation to be a political animal
in spite of the intense passions and egotisms of his nature. Man he
judged to be a reluctant political animal. Man’s prehensile hand has
given him great possibilities of experiment, he is a restless and
curious being, knowledge increases in him and brings power with it. So
he jostles against his fellows. He becomes too powerful for his
instincts. The killing of man becomes constantly more easy for man. The
species must needs therefore become political and religious, tempering
its intense lusts and greeds and hostilities, if it is to save itself
from self-destruction. The individual man resists the process by force
and subterfuge and passivity at every step. Nevertheless necessity still
finds something in the nature of this fiercest of its creatures to work
upon. In the face of adult resistance necessity harks back to plastic
immaturity. Against the narrow and intense desires of the adult man,
against the secretive cunning and dispersiveness of our ape heredity,
struggle the youthful instincts of association. Individualism is after
all a by-path in the history of life. Every mammal begins by being
dependent and social; even the tiger comes out of a litter. The litter
is brotherhood. Every mother is a collectivist for her brood. A herd, a
tribe, a nation, is only a family that has delayed dispersal, stage by
stage, in the face of dangers. All our education is a prolongation and
elaboration of family association, forced upon us by the continually
growing danger of the continually growing destructiveness of our kind.
And necessity has laid hold of every device and formula that will impose
self-restraint and devotion upon the lonely savagery of man, that will
help man to escape race-suicide. In spite of ever more deadly and
far-reaching weapons, man still escapes destruction by man. Religion,
loyalty, patriotism, those strange and wonderfully interwoven nets of
superstition, fear, flattery, high reason and love, have subjugated this
struggling egotistical ape into larger and larger masses of
co-operation, achieved enormous temporary securities. But the ape is
still there, struggling subtly. Deep in every human individual is a
fierce scepticism of and resentment against the laws that bind him, and
the weaker newer instincts that would make him the servant of his fellow
man.
Such was Oswald’s conception of humanity. It marched with all his
experiences of Africa, where he had struggled to weave the net of law
and teaching against warrior, slave-trader, disease and greed. It
marched now with all the appearances of the time. So it was he saw men.
It seemed to him that the world that lay behind the mask of his soft,
sweet Hertfordshire valley, this modern world into which Joan and Peter
had just rushed off so passionately, was a world in which the old nets
of rule and convention which had maintained a sufficiency of peace and
order in Europe for many generations of civilization, were giving way
under the heavy stresses of a new time. Peoples were being brought too
closely together, too great a volume of suggestions poured into their
minds, criticism was vivid and destructive; the forms and rules that had
sufficed in a less crowded time were now insufficient to hold
imaginations and shape lives. Oswald could see no hope as yet of a new
net that would sweep together all that was bursting out of the old. His
own generation of the ’eighties and ’nineties, under a far less feverish
urgency, had made its attempt to patch new and more satisfactory network
into the rotting reticulum, but for the most part their patches had done
no more than afford a leverage for tearing. He had built his cosmogony
upon Darwin and Winwood Reade, his religion upon Cotter Morrison’s
_Service of Man_; he had interwoven with that a conception of the Empire
as a great civilizing service. That much had served him through the
trying years at the end of adolescence, had in spite of strong coarse
passions made his life on the whole a useful life. King, church, and all
the forms of the old order he had been willing to accept as a
picturesque and harmless paraphernalia upon these structural ideas to
which he clung. He had been quite uncritical of the schoolmaster. Now
with these studies of education that Joan and Peter had forced upon him,
he was beginning to realize how encumbering and obstructive the old
paraphernalia could be, how it let in indolence, stupidity, dishonesty,
and treachery to the making of any modern system. A world whose schools
are unreformed is an unreformed world. Only in the last year or so had
he begun to accept the fact that for some reason these dominant ideas of
his, this humanitarian religion which had served his purpose and held
his life and the lives of a generation of liberal-minded Englishmen
together, had no gripping power upon his wards. This failure perplexed
him profoundly. Had his Victorian teachers woven prematurely, or had
they used too much of the old material? Had they rather too manifestly
tried to make the best of two worlds—leaving the schools alone? Must
this breaking down of strands that was everywhere apparent, go still
further? And if so, how far would the breaking down have to go before
fresh nets could be woven?
If Oswald in his summerhouse in the spring of 1914 could see no
immediate catastrophe ahead, he could at least see that a vast
disintegrative process had begun in the body of European civilization.
This disintegration, he told himself, was a thing to go on by stages, to
be replaced by stages; it would give place to a new order, a better
order, “some-day”; everything just and good was going to happen
some-day, the liberation of India, the contentment of Ireland, economic
justice, political and military efficiency. It was all coming—always
coming and never arriving, that new and better state of affairs. What
did go on meanwhile was disintegration. The British mind hates crisis;
it abhors the word “Now.” It believes that you can cool water for ever
and that it will never freeze, that you can saw at a tree for ever and
that it will never fall, that there is always some sand left above in
the hour-glass. When the English Belshazzar sees the writing on the
wall, he welcomes the appearance of a new if rather sensational form of
publication, and he sits back to enjoy it at his leisure....
The nets were breaking, but they would never snap. That in effect was
Oswald’s idea in 1913. The bother, from his point of view, was that they
had let out Joan and Peter to futility.
There is a risk that the catastrophic events of 1914 may blind the
historian to the significance of the spinning straws of 1913. But
throughout Europe the sands were trickling before the avalanche fell.
The arson of the suffragettes, the bellicose antics of the Unionist
leaders in Ulster, General Gough’s Curragh mutiny, were all parts of the
same relaxation of bonds that launched the grey-clad hosts of Germany
into Belgium. Only the habits of an immense security could have blinded
Oswald to the scale and imminence of the disaster. The world had
outgrown its ideas and its will.