_INSTITUTIONS AND CHARACTER_
As a rule, I call a spade a spade. When I mean _The Times_, I say
_The Times_, and I condemn the old-fashioned twaddle of talking
about "a morning contemporary." But to-day I depart from my rule
and content myself with saying that I lately read in an important
newspaper a letter dealing with Mr. Asquith's distinction between
"Prussian Militarism" and "German Democracy." For my own part,
I did not think that distinction very sound. The experience of
the last three years has led me to the conclusion that the German
democracy is to the full as bellicose as the military caste, and
that it has in no way dissociated itself from the abominable crimes
against decency and humanity which the military caste has committed.
I hold that the German people, as we know it to-day, is brutalized;
but when one thus frames an indictment against a whole nation, one
is bound to ask oneself what it is that has produced so calamitous
a result. How can a whole nation go wrong? Has any race a "double
dose of original sin"? I do not believe it. Human nature as it
leaves the Creator's hand is pretty much the same everywhere; and
when we see it deformed and degraded, we must look for the influence
which has been its bane. In dealing with individuals the enquiry is
comparatively simple, and the answer not far to seek. But when we
deal with nations we cannot, as a rule; point to a single figure,
or even a group of figures, and say, "He, or they, did the mischief."
We are forced to look wider and deeper, and we shall be well advised
if we learn from Burke to realize "the mastery of laws, institutions,
and government over the character and happiness of man." Let me
apply Burke's teaching to the case before us.
The writer of the letter which I am discussing has a whole-hearted
dislike of the Germans, and especially of the Prussians; charges
them with "cruelty, brutal arrogance, deceit, cunning, manners
and customs below those of savages"; includes in the indictment
professors, commercial men, and women; recites the hideous list
of crimes committed during the present war; and roundly says that,
however you label him, "the Prussian will always remain a beast."
I dispute none of these propositions. I believe them to be sadly
and bitterly true; but if I am to follow Burke's counsel, I must
enquire into the "laws, institutions, and government" which have
prevailed in Germany, and which have exercised so disastrous a
"mastery over the character and happiness of man." In this enquiry
it would be obvious to touch military ascendency, despotic monarchy,
representative institutions deprived of effective power, administration
made omnipotent, and bureaucratic interference with every detail of
human life. Sydney Smith's words about unreformed England apply
perfectly to modern Germany. "Of all ingenious instruments of despotism
I most commend a popular assembly where the majority are paid and
hired, and a few bold and able men, by their brave speeches, make
the people believe they are free."
But for our present purpose I must concentrate attention on another
institution which has had an even more direct and practical bearing
on the character of the German people--and this is the enforcement
of military service. This, like every other institution, must be
judged by its effects on the character of those who are subject
to it. The writer of the letter holds that "the only good thing
about the German nation" is the "national service through which
all men pass, and which makes soldiers of all not physically unfit,
and which inculcates patriotism, loyalty, obedience, courage,
discipline, duty." Now, these words, read in connexion with the
description of the German people quoted above, suggest a puzzling
problem. The Germans are cruel, brutally arrogant, deceitful, and
cunning, and "the Prussian will always remain a beast." Yet these
same people have all passed through a discipline "which inculcates
patriotism, loyalty, obedience, courage, discipline, duty." Doth a
fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Does
the same system make men patriotic and cruel, loyal and arrogant,
obedient and deceitful, courageous and cunning, dutiful and beastly?
Perhaps it does. I can conceive some of these pairs of qualities
united in a single character. A man might be a zealous patriot,
and yet horribly cruel; loyal to his Sovereign, but arrogant to
his inferiors; obedient to authority, yet deceitful among coequals;
courageous in danger, yet cunning in avoiding it; dutiful according
to his own standard of duty, and yet as "beastly" as the torturers
of Belgium. But a system which produces such a very chequered type
of character is scarcely to be commended.
Now, the writer might reply, "I only said that the military system
_inculcated_ certain virtues. I did not say that it ensured them."
Then it fails. If it has produced only the "vile German race" which
the writer so justly dislikes, unredeemed by any of the virtues
which it "inculcates," then it has nothing to say for itself. It
stands confessed as an unmixed evil.
It is right to expose a logical fallacy, but I am not fond of the
attempt to obscure by logic-chopping what is a writer's real meaning.
I will therefore say that, as far as I can make out, what this
particular writer really believes is that the German people, through
some innate and incurable frowardness of disposition, have turned
the inestimable blessings of compulsory soldiership to their own
moral undoing, and have made themselves wholly bad and beastly,
in spite of a beneficent institution which would have made them
good and even pleasant.
Here I take leave to differ, and to range myself on the side of
Burke. Great, indeed--nay, incalculable--is "the mastery of laws,
institutions, and government over the character and happiness of
man." The system is known by its fruits. We may think as badly as we
like of the Germans--as badly as they deserve--but we must remember
the "laws, institutions, and government" that have dominated their
national development. And this is not only a matter of just and
rational thinking, but is also a counsel of safety for ourselves. If,
as a result of this war, we allow our personal and social liberties
(rightly suspended for the moment) to be permanently abolished or
restricted; and, above all, if we bend our necks to the yoke of a
military despotism; we shall be inviting a profound degradation of
our national character. It would indeed be a tragical consummation
of our great fight for Freedom if, when it is over, the other nations
could point to us and say: "England has sunk to the moral level
of Germany."
V
_REVOLUTION--AND RATIONS_
"A revolution by due course of law." This, as we have seen, was
the Duke of Wellington's description of the Reform Act of 1832,
which transferred the government of England from the aristocracy
to the middle class. Though eventually accomplished by law, it
did not pass without bloodshed and conflagration; and timid people
satisfied themselves that not only the downfall of England, but
the end of the world, must be close at hand.
Twenty years passed, and nothing in particular happened. National
wealth increased, all established institutions seemed secure, and
people began to forget that they had passed through a revolution.
Then arose John Bright, reminding the working-men of the Midlands
that their fathers "had shaken the citadel of Privilege to its
base," and inciting them to give the tottering structure another
push. A second revolution seemed to be drawing near. Dickens put
on record, in chapter xxvi. of _Little Dorrit_, the alarms which
agitated respectable and reactionary circles. The one point, as
Dickens remarked, on which everyone agreed, was that the country
was in very imminent danger, and wanted all the preserving it could
get. Presently, but not till 1867, the second revolution arrived.
Some of the finest oratory ever heard in England was lavished on the
question whether the power, formerly exercised by the aristocracy
and more recently by the middle class, was to be extended to the
artisans. The great Lord Shaftesbury predicted "the destruction
of the Empire," and Bishop Wilberforce "did not see how we were
to escape fundamental changes in Church and State." "History,"
exclaimed Lowe, "may record other catastrophes as signal and as
disastrous, but none so wanton and so disgraceful." However, the
artisans made a singularly moderate use of their newly acquired
power; voted Conservative as often as they voted Liberal; and so
again belied the apprehensions of the alarmists.
When the workman of the town had been enfranchised, it was impossible
to keep his brother who worked on the land permanently in the position
of a serf or a cipher. So we began to agitate for the "County
Franchise"; and once again the cry of "Revolution" was heard--perhaps
in its most typical form from the lips of a Tory M.P., who, as
I said before, affirmed that the labourer was no fitter for the
suffrage than the beasts he tended. Even ten years later, Lord
Goschen, who was by nature distrustful of popular movements,
prognosticated that, if ever the Union with Ireland were lost, it
would be lost through the votes of the agricultural labourers. To
those who, like myself, were brought up in agricultural districts,
the notion that the labourer was a revolutionary seemed strangely
unreal; but it was a haunting obsession in the minds of clubmen
and town-dwellers.
So, in each succeeding decade, the next extension of constitutional
freedom has been acclaimed by its supporters as an instalment of
the millennium, and denounced by its opponents as the destruction
of social order. So it had been, time out of mind; and so it would
have been to the end had not the European war burst upon us, and
shaken us out of all our habitual concernments. Now "the oracles
are dumb." The voices, of lugubrious prophecy are silent. The Reform
Act which has become law this year is beyond doubt the greatest
revolution which has as yet been effected "by due course of law."
It has doubled the electorate; it has enfranchised the women; it
has practically established universal suffrage; it has placed all
property, as well as all policy, under the control of a class,
if only that class chooses to vote and act together. All these
effects of the Act (except one) are objects which I have desired
to see attained ever since I was a boy at Harrow, supporting the
present Bishop of Oxford and the late Lord Grey in the School Debating
Society; so it is not for me to express even the faintest apprehension
of evil results. But I am deliberately of opinion that the change
now effected in our electoral arrangements is of farther-reaching
significance than the substitution of a republic for a monarchy;
and the amazing part of the business is that no one has protested
at any stage of it. We were told at the beginning of the war that
there was to be no controversial legislation till it was over.
That engagement was broken; no one protested. A vitally important
transaction was removed from the purview of Parliament to a secret
conference; no one protested. If we suggested that the House of
Commons was morally and constitutionally dead, and that it ought
to renew its life by an appeal to the constituencies before it
enforced a revolution, we were told that it was impossible to hold
a General Election with the soldiers all out of the country; but
now it seems that this is to be the next step, and no one protests
against it.
But these may be dismissed as constitutional pedantries. So be
it. The Whigs, who made the Constitution, may be pardoned if they
have a sneaking regard for their handiwork. Much more astonishing
is the fact that no resistance was offered on behalf of wealth
and privilege by the classes who have most of both to lose. The
men of £100,000 a year--not numerous, according to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, but influential--have been as meekly acquiescent
as clerks or curates. Men who own half a county have smiled on
an Act which will destroy territorial domination. What is the
explanation? Was their silence due to patriotism or to fear? Did
they laudably decline the responsibility of opposing a Government
which is conducting a great war? Or did they, less laudably, shrink
from the prospect of appearing as the inveterate enemies of a social
and economic revolution which they saw to be inevitable? Let us
charitably incline to the former hypothesis.
But there is something about this, our most recent revolution,
which is even more astonishing than the absence of opposition and
panic. It is that no one, whether friend or foe, has paid the least
attention to the subject. In ordinary society it has been impossible
to turn the conversation that way. Any topic in the world--but
pre-eminently Rations,--seemed more vital and more pressing. "The
Reform Bill? What Bill is that? Tell me, do you find it very difficult
to get sugar?" "The Speaker's Conference? Haven't heard about it. I'm
sure James Lowther won't allow them to do anything very silly--but
I really cannot imagine how we are to get on without meat." Or
yet again: A triumphant Suffragist said to a Belgravian sister:
"So we've got the vote at last!" "What vote?" replied the sister.
"Surely we've had a vote for ever so long? I'm sure I have, though
I never used it."
When the real history of this wonderful war is written, methinks
the historian will reckon among its most amazing features the fact
that it so absorbed the mind of the nation as to make possible a
'silent revolution.'