(From the _Amsterdamer Revue_, 1915.)
After many months of war, search for the cause thereof borders on the
academic. Comment on the physical facts of the situation does not come
within the scope of one who by disposition and training is concerned
with states of mind.
But as to the result: The period of surprise is over; the forces known;
the issue fully joined. It is now a case of “Pull devil, pull baker!”
and a question of the fibre of the combatants. For this reason it may
not be amiss to try to present to any whom it may concern as detached a
picture as one can of the real nature of that combatant who is called
the Englishman. Ignorance in Central Europe of his character tipped the
balance in favour of war, and speculation as to the future is useless
without right comprehension of his nature.
The Englishman is taken advisedly, because he represents four-fifths of
the population of the British Isles.
And first let it be said that there is no more unconsciously deceptive
person on the face of the globe. The Englishman does not know himself;
outside England he is but guessed at.
Racially the Englishman is so complex and so old a blend that no one can
say what he is. In character he is just as complex. Physically, there
are two main types: one inclining to length of limb, narrowness of face
and head (you will see nowhere such long and narrow heads as in our
islands), and bony jaws; the other approximating more to the ordinary
“John Bull.” The first type is gaining on the second. There is little or
no difference in the main character behind.
In attempting to understand the real nature of the Englishman, certain
salient facts must be borne in mind.
THE SEA.—To be surrounded generation after generation by the sea has
developed in him a suppressed idealism, a peculiar impermeability, a
turn for adventure, a faculty for wandering, and for being sufficient
unto himself in far and awkward surroundings.
THE CLIMATE.—Whoso weathers for centuries a climate that, though
healthy and never extreme, is, perhaps, the least reliable and one of
the wettest in the world, must needs grow in himself a counter-balance
of dry philosophy, a defiant humour, an enforced medium temperature of
soul. The Englishman is no more given to extremes than is his climate;
against its damp and perpetual changes he has become coated with a sort
of bluntness.
THE POLITICAL AGE OF HIS COUNTRY.—This is by far the oldest settled
Western Power, politically speaking. For eight hundred and fifty years
England has known no serious military disturbance from without; for
nearly two hundred she has known no serious political turmoil within.
This is partly the outcome of her isolation, partly the happy accident
of her political constitution, partly the result of the Englishman’s
habit of looking before he leaps, which comes, no doubt, from the
climate and the mixture of his blood. This political stability has been
a tremendous factor in the formation of English character, has given the
Englishman of all ranks a certain deep slow sense of form and order, an
engrained culture—if one may pirate the word—that makes no show, being
in the bones of the man, as it were.
The Great Preponderance for Several Generations of Town over
Country Life.—Taken in conjunction with centuries of political
stability, this is the main cause of a growing inarticulate humaneness,
of which—speaking generally—the Englishman appears to be rather
ashamed.
THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.—This potent element in the formation of the modern
Englishman, not only in the upper but of all classes, is something that
one rather despairs of making understood—in countries which have no
similar institution. But! Imagine one hundred thousand youths of the
wealthiest, healthiest, and most influential classes, passed, during
each generation, at the most impressionable age, into a sort of ethical
mould, emerging therefrom stamped to the core with the impress of a
uniform morality, uniform manners, uniform way of looking at life;
remembering always that these youths fill seven-eighths of the important
positions in the professional administration of their country and the
conduct of its commercial enterprise; remembering too, that, through
perpetual contact with every other class, their standard of morality and
way of looking at life filters down into the very toes of the land. This
great character-forming machine is remarkable for an
unself-consciousness which gives it enormous strength and elasticity.
Not inspired by the State, it inspires the State. The characteristics of
the philosophy it enjoins are mainly negative, and, for that, the
stronger. “Never show your feelings—to do so is not manly, and bores
your fellows. Don’t cry out when you’re hurt, making yourself a nuisance
to other people. Tell no tales about your companions and no lies about
yourself. Avoid all ‘swank,’ ‘side,’ ‘swagger,’ braggadocio of speech or
manner, on pain of being laughed at.” (This maxim is carried to such a
pitch that the Englishman, except in his Press, habitually understates
everything.) “Think little of money, and speak less of it. Play games
hard, and keep the rules of them, even when your blood is hot and you
are tempted to disregard them. In three words: PLAY THE GAME”—a little
phrase which may be taken as the characteristic understatement of the
modern Englishman’s creed of honour, in all classes. This great,
unconscious machine has great defects. It tends to the formation of
“caste”; it is a poor teacher of sheer learning; and, æsthetically, with
its universal suppression of all interesting and queer individual traits
of personality—it is almost horrid. Yet it imparts a remarkable
incorruptibility to English life; it conserves vitality, by suppressing
all extremes; and it implants everywhere a kind of unassuming stoicism
and respect for the rules of the great game—Life. Through its
unconscious example, and through its cult of games, it has vastly
influenced even the classes not directly under its control.