can’t have things both ways. If we want to have beauty, that which
appeals not merely to the stomach and the epidermis (which is the
function of the greater part of industrialism), but to what lies
deeper within the human organism, the heart and the brain, we must
have conditions which permit and even foster the production of beauty.
The artist, unfortunately, no less than the rest of mankind, must eat
to live. Now, if we insist that we will pay the artist only for what
fascinates the popular uneducated instincts, he will either produce
beauty, remain unpaid and starve; or he will give us shoddy, and fare
sumptuously every day. My experience tells me this: An artist who is by
accident of independent means can, if he has talent, give the Public
what he, the artist, wants, and sooner or later the public will take
whatever he gives it, at his own valuation. But very few artists, _who
have no independent means_, have enough character to hold out until
they can sit on the Public’s head and pull the Public’s beard, to use
the old Sikh saying. How many times have I not heard over here――and
it’s very much the same over there――that a man must produce this or
that kind of work or else of course he can’t live. My advice――at all
events to young artists and writers――is: ‘Sooner than do that and have
someone sitting on _your_ head and pulling your beard all the time,
go out of business――there are other means of making a living, besides
faked or degraded art. Become a dentist and revenge yourself on the
Public’s teeth――even editors and picture dealers go to the dentist!’
The artist has got to make a stand against being exploited, and he has
got, also, to live the kind of life which will give him a chance to
see clearly, to feel truly, and to express beautifully. He, too, is a
trustee for the future of mankind. Money has one inestimable value――it
guarantees independence, the power of going your own way and giving out
the best that’s in you. But, generally speaking, we don’t stop there in
our desire for money; and I would say that any artist who doesn’t stop
there is not ‘playing the game,’ neither towards himself nor towards
mankind; he is not standing up for the faith that is in him, and the
future of civilisation.
And now what of the teacher? One of the discouraging truths of life is
the fact that a man cannot raise himself from the ground by the hair
of his own head. And if one took Democracy logically, one would have
to give up the idea of improvement. But things are not always what
they seem, as somebody once said; and fortunately, government ‘of the
people by the people for the people’ does not in practice prevent the
people from using those saving graces――Commonsense and Selection. In
fact, only by the use of those graces will democracy work at all. When
twelve men get together to serve on a jury, their commonsense makes
them select the least stupid among them to be their foreman. Each of
them, of course, feels that he is that least stupid man, but since a
man cannot vote for himself, he votes for the least dense among his
neighbours, and the foreman comes to life. The same principle applied
thoroughly enough throughout the social system produces government by
the best. And it is more vital to apply it _thoroughly_ in matters
of education than in other branches of human activity. But when we
have secured our best heads of education, we must trust them and give
them real power, for they are the hope――well nigh the only hope――of
our future. They alone, by the selection and instruction of their
subordinates and the curricula which they lay down, can do anything
substantial in the way of raising the standard of general taste,
conduct, and learning. They alone can give the starting push towards
greater dignity and simplicity; promote the love of proportion, and
the feeling for beauty. They alone can gradually instil into the body
politic the understanding that education is not a means towards
wealth as such, or learning as such, but towards the broader ends of
health and happiness. The first necessity for improvement in modern
life is that our teachers should have the wide view, and be provided
with the means and the curricula which make it possible to apply this
enlightenment to their pupils. Can we take too much trouble to secure
the best men as heads of education――that most responsible of all
positions in the modern State? The child is father to the man. We think
too much of politics and too little of education. We treat it almost
as cavalierly as the undergraduate treated the Master of Balliol.
“Yes,” he said, showing his people round the quadrangle, “that’s the
Master’s window;” then, picking up a pebble, he threw it against the
window pane. “And that,” he said, as a face appeared, “is the Master!”
Democracy has come, and on education Democracy hangs; the thread as yet
is slender.
It is a far cry to the third new factor: Exploitation of the air. We
were warned, by Sir Hiram Maxim about 1910 that a year or so of war
would do more for the conquest of the air than many years of peace. It
has. We hear of a man flying 260 miles in 90 minutes; of the Atlantic
being flown in 24 hours; of airships which will have a lifting capacity
of 300 tons; of air mail-routes all over the world. The time will
perhaps come when we shall live in the air, and come down to earth on
Sundays.
I confess that, mechanically marvellous as all this is, it interests
me chiefly as a prime instance of the way human beings prefer the
shadow of existence to its substance. Granted that we speed up
everything, that we annihilate space, that we increase the powers of
trade, leave no point of the earth unsurveyed, and are able to perform
air-stunts which people will pay five dollars apiece to see――how shall
we have furthered human health, happiness, and virtue, speaking in
the big sense of these words? It is an advantage, of course, to be
able to carry food to a starving community in some desert; to rescue
shipwrecked mariners; to have a letter from one’s wife four days
sooner than one could otherwise; and generally to save time in the
swopping of our commodities and the journeys we make. But how does
all this help human beings to inner contentment of spirit, and health
of body? Did the arrival of motor-cars, bicycles, telephones, trains,
and steamships do much for them in that line? Anything which serves to
stretch human capabilities to the utmost, would help human happiness,
if each new mechanical activity, each new human toy as it were, did not
so run away with our sense of proportion as to debauch our energies.
A man, for instance, takes to motoring, who used to ride or walk; it
becomes a passion with him, so that he now never rides or walks――and
his calves become flabby and his liver enlarged. A man puts a telephone
into his house to save time and trouble, and is straightway a slave
to the tinkle of its bell. The few human activities in themselves and
of themselves pure good are just eating, drinking, sleeping, and the
affections――in moderation; the inhaling of pure air, exercise in most
of its forms, and interesting creative work――in moderation; the study
and contemplation of the arts and Nature――in moderation; thinking of
others and not thinking of yourself――in moderation; doing kind acts and
thinking kind thoughts. All the rest seems to be what the prophet had
in mind when he said: ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!’ Ah! but the one
great activity――adventure and the craving for sensation! It is that
for which the human being really lives, and all his restless activity
is caused by the desire for it. True; yet adventure and sensation
without rhyme or reason lead to disharmony and disproportion. We may
take civilisation to the South Sea Islands, but it would be better
to leave the islanders naked and healthy than to improve them with
trousers and civilisation off the face of the earth. We may invent new
cocktails, but it would be better to stay dry. In mechanical matters I
am reactionary, for I cannot believe in inventions and machinery unless
they can be so controlled as to minister definitely to health and
happiness――and how difficult that is! In my own country the townsman
has become physically inferior to the countryman (speaking in the
large), and I infer from this that we British――at all events――are not
so in command of ourselves and our wonderful inventions and machines
that we are putting them to uses which are really beneficent. If we had
proper command of ourselves no doubt we could do this, but we haven’t;
and if you look about you in America, the same doubt may possibly
attack you.
But there is another side to the exploitation of the air which
does not as yet affect you in America as it does us in Europe――the
destructive side. Britain, for instance, is no longer an island. In
five or ten years it will, I think, be impossible to guarantee the
safety of Britain and Britain’s commerce, by sea-power; and those who
continue to pin faith to that formula will find themselves nearly as
much back-numbered as people who continued to prefer wooden ships to
iron, when the iron age came in. Armaments on land and sea will be
limited; not, I think, so much by a League of Nations, if it comes,
as by the commonsense of people who begin to observe that with the
development of the powers of destruction and of transport from the
air, land and sea armaments are becoming of little use. We may all
disarm completely, and yet――so long as there are flying-machines and
high explosives――remain almost as formidably destructive as ever.
So difficult to control, so infinite in its possibilities for evil
and so limited in its possibilities for good do I consider this
exploitation of the air that, personally, I would rejoice to see the
nations in solemn conclave agree this very minute to ban the use of
the air altogether, whether for trade, travel, or war; destroy every
flying-machine and every airship, and forbid their construction. That,
of course, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished.
Every day one reads in one’s paper that some country or other is to
take the lead in the air. What a wild-goose chase we are in for! I
verily believe mankind will come one day in their underground dwellings
to the annual practice of burning in effigy the Guy (whoever he was)
who first rose off the earth. After I had talked in this strain once
before, a young airman came up to me and said: “Have you been up?” I
shook my head. “You wait!” he said. When I do go up I shall take great
pains not to go up with that one.
We come now to the fourth great new factor――Bolshevism, and the social
unrest. But I am shy of saying anything about it, for my knowledge
and experience are insufficient. I will only offer one observation.
Whatever philosophic cloak may be thrown over the shoulders of
Bolshevism, it is obviously――like every revolutionary movement of the
past――an aggregation of individual discontents, the sum of millions
of human moods of dissatisfaction with the existing state of things;
and whatever philosophic cloak we drape on the body of liberalism,
if by that name we may designate our present social and political
system――that system has clearly not yet justified its claim to the
word evolutionary, so long as the disproportion between the very rich
and the very poor continues (as hitherto it has) to grow. No system
can properly be called evolutionary which provokes against it the
rising of so formidable a revolutionary wave of discontent. One hears
that co-operation is now regarded as _vieux jeu_. If that be so, it
is because co-operation in its true sense of spontaneous friendliness
between man and man, has never been tried. Perhaps human nature in the
large can never rise to that ideal. But if it cannot, if industrialism
cannot achieve a change of heart, so that in effect employers would
rather their profits (beyond a quite moderate scale) were used for the
amelioration of the lot of those they employ, it looks to me uncommonly
like being the end of the present order of things, after an era of
class-struggle which will shake civilisation to its foundations. Being
myself an evolutionist, who fundamentally distrusts violence, and
admires the old Greek saying: “God is the helping of man by man,” I
yet hope it will not come to that; I yet believe we may succeed in
striking the balance, without civil wars. But I feel that (speaking
of Europe) it is touch and go. In America, in Canada, in Australia,
the conditions are different, the powers of expansion still large, the
individual hopefulness much greater. There is little analogy with the
state of things in Europe; but, whatever happens in Europe must have
its infectious influence in America. The wise man takes Time by the
forelock――and goes in front of events.
Let me turn away to the fifth great new factor: The impetus towards a
League of Nations.
This, to my thinking, so wholly advisable, would inspire more
hopefulness, if the condition of Europe was not so terribly confused,
and if the most salient characteristics of human nature were not
elasticity, bluntness of imagination, and shortness of memory. Those
of us who, while affirming the principle of the League, are afraid
of committing ourselves to what obviously cannot at the start be
a perfect piece of machinery, seem inclined to forget that if the
assembled Statesmen fail to _place in running order, now_, some
definite machinery for the consideration of international disputes,
the chance will certainly slip. We cannot reckon on more than a very
short time during which the horror of war will rule our thoughts and
actions. And during that short time it is essential that the League
should have had some tangible success in preventing war. Mankind puts
its faith in facts, not theories; in proven, and not in problematic,
success. One can imagine with what profound suspicion and contempt the
armed individualists of the Neolithic Age regarded the first organised
tribunal; with what surprise they found that it actually worked so well
that they felt justified in dropping their habit of taking the lives
and property of their neighbours first and thinking over it afterwards.
Not till the Tribunal of the League of Nations has had successes of
conciliation, visible to all, will the armed individualist nations of
to-day begin to rub their cynical and suspicious eyes, and to sprinkle
their armour with moth-powder. No one who, like myself, has recently
experienced the sensation of landing in America after having lived
in Europe throughout the war, can fail to realise the reluctance of
Americans to commit themselves, and the difficulty Americans have
in realising the need for doing so. But may I remind Americans that
during the first years of the war there was practically the same
general American reluctance to interfere in an old-world struggle;
and that in the end America found that it was not an old-world but
a world-struggle. It is entirely reasonable to dislike snatching
chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and to shun departure from
the letter of cherished tradition; but things do not stand still in
this world; storm centres shift; and live doctrine often becomes dead
dogma.
The League of Nations is but an incorporation of the co-operative
principle in world affairs. We have seen to what the lack of that
principle leads both in international and national life. Americans seem
almost unanimously in favour of a League of Nations, so long as it is
sufficiently airy――perhaps one might say ‘hot-airy’; but when it comes
to earth, many of them fear the risk. I would only say that no great
change ever comes about in the lives of men unless they take risks; no
progress can be made. As to the other objection taken to the League,
not only by Americans――that it won’t work, well we shall never know
the rights of that unless we try it. The two chief factors in avoiding
war are Publicity and Delay. If there is some better plan for bringing
these two factors into play than the machinery of a League of Nations,
I have yet to learn of it. The League which, I think, will come in
spite of all our hesitations, may very likely make claims larger than
its real powers; and there is, of course, danger in that; but there
is also wisdom and advantage, for the success of the League must
depend enormously on how far it succeeds in riveting the imaginations
of mankind in its first years. The League should therefore make bold
claims. After all, there is solidity and truth in this notion of a
Society of Nations. The world is really growing towards it beneath
all surface rivalries. We must admit it to be in the line of natural
development, unless we turn our back on all analogy. Don’t then let
us be ashamed of it, as if it were a piece of unpractical idealism.
It is much more truly real than the state of things which has led to
the misery of these last four years. The soldiers who have fought and
suffered and known the horrors of war, desire it. The objections come
from those who have but watched them fight and suffer. Like every
other change in the life of mankind, and like every new development in
industry or art, the League needs faith. Let us have faith and give it
a good ‘send-off.’
I have left what I deem the greatest new factor till the
last――Anglo-American unity. Greater it is even than the impetus
towards a League of Nations, because without it the League of Nations
has surely not the chance of a lost dog.
I have been reading a Life of George Washington, which has filled me
with admiration of your stand against our Junkers of those days. And I
am familiar with the way we outraged the sentiment of both the North
and the South, in the days of your Civil War. No wonder your history
books were not precisely Anglophile, and that Americans grew up in a
traditional dislike of Great Britain! I am realist enough to know that
the past will not vanish like a ghost――just because we have fought side
by side in this war; and realist enough to recognise the other elements
which make for patches of hearty dislike between our peoples. But,
surveying the whole field, I believe there are links and influences
too strong for the disruptive forces; and I am sure that the first
duty of English and American citizens to-day is to be fair and open to
understanding about each other. If anyone will take down the map of the
world and study it, he will see at once how that world is ballasted by
the English-speaking countries; how, so long as they remain friends,
holding as they do the trade routes and the main material resources of
the world under their control, the world must needs sail on an even
keel. And if he will turn to the less visible chart of the world’s
mental qualities, he will find a certain reassuring identity of ideals
between the various English-speaking races, which form a sort of
guarantee of stable unity. Thirdly, in community of language we have a
factor promoting unity of ethics, potent as blood itself; for community
of language is ever unconsciously producing unity of traditions and
ideas. Americans and Britons, we are both, of course, very competitive
peoples, and I suppose consider our respective nations the chosen
people of the earth. That is a weakness which, though natural, is
extremely silly, and merely proves that we have not yet outgrown
provincialism. But competition is possible without reckless rivalry.
There was once a bootmaker who put over his shop: ‘Mens conscia
recti’ (‘A mind conscious of right’). He did quite well, till a rival
bootmaker came along, established himself opposite, and put over _his_
shop the words: ‘Men’s, Women’s, and Children’s conscia recti,’ and did
even better. The way nations try to cut each other’s commercial throats
is what makes the stars twinkle――that smile on the face of the heavens.
It has the even more ruinous effect of making bad blood in the veins of
the nations. Let us try playing the game of commerce like sportsmen,
and respect each other’s qualities and efforts. Sportsmanship has been
rather ridiculed of late, yet I dare make the assertion that she will
yet hold the field, both in your country and in mine; and if in our
countries――then in the world.
It is ignorance of each other, not knowledge, which has always made
us push each other off――the habit, you know, is almost endemic in
strangers, so that they do it even in their sleep. There were once two
travellers, a very large man and a very little man, strangers to each
other, whom fate condemned to share a bed at an inn. In his sleep the
big man stirred, and pushed the little man out on to the floor. The
little man got up in silence, climbed carefully over the big man who
was still asleep, got his back against the wall and his feet firmly
planted against the small of the big man’s back, gave a tremendous
revengeful push and――pushed the bed away from the wall and fell down
in between. Such is the unevenness of fate, and the result of taking
things too seriously. America and England must not push each other
out, even in their sleep, nor resent the unconscious shoves they give
each other, too violently. Since we have been comrades in this war we
have taken to speaking well of each other, even in public print. To
cease doing that now will show that we spoke nicely of each other only
because we were afraid of the consequences if we did not. Well, we both
have a sense of humour.
But not only self-preservation and the fear of ridicule guard our
friendship. We have, I hope, also the feeling that we stand, by
geographical and political accident, trustees for the health and
happiness of all mankind. The magnitude of this trust cannot be
exaggerated, and I would wish that every American and British boy and
girl could be brought up to reverence it――not to believe that they are
there to whip creation. We are here to _serve_ creation, that creation
may be ever better all over the earth, and life more humane, more just,
more free. The habit of being charitable to each other will grow if we
give it a little chance. If we English-speaking peoples bear with each
other’s foibles, help each other over the stiles we come on, and keep
the peace of the world, there is still hope that some day that world
may come to be God’s own.
Let us be just and tolerant; let us stand fast and stand together――for
light and liberty, for humanity and Peace!
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.
――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.
――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.