first, let us say, if I mentioned Michael Angelo? For the first moment,
perhaps, boredom: such as I feel when Americans ask me about
Stratford-on-Avon. But, supposing that just fear quieted, you would feel
what I and every one else can feel. It might be the sense of the majestic
hands of Man upon the locks of the last doors of life; large and terrible
hands, like those of that youth who poises the stone above Florence, and
looks out upon the circle of the hills. It might be that huge heave of
flank and chest and throat in "The Slave," which is like an earthquake
lifting a whole landscape; it might be that tremendous Madonna, whose
charity is more strong than death. Anyhow, your thoughts would be something
worthy of the man's terrible paganism and his more terrible Christianity.
Who but God could have graven Michael Angelo; who came so near to graving
the Mother of God?
German culture deals with the matter as follows:--"Michelangelo Buonarotti
(1475-1564).--(=Bernhard) ancestor of the family, lived in Florence about
1210. He had two sons, Berlinghieri and Buonarrota. By this name recurring
frequently in later generations, the family came to be called. It is a
German name, compounded of Bona (=Bohn) and Hrodo, Roto (=Rohde, Rothe)
Bona and Rotto are cited as Lombard names. Buonarotti is perhaps the old
Lombard Beonrad, corresponding to the word Bonroth. Corresponding names are
Mackrodt, Osterroth, Leonard." And so on, and so on, and so on. "In his
face he has always been well-coloured...the eyes might be called small
rather than large, of the colour of horn, but variable with 'flecks' of
yellow and blue. Hair and beard are black. These particulars are confirmed
by the portraits. First and foremost take the portrait of Bugiardini in
Museo Buonarotti. Here comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the iris,
especially in the right eye. The left may be described as almost wholly
blue." And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the Museo Civico at Pavia, is a
fresco likeness by an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is distinctly
recognisable on the face. Taking all these bodily characteristics into
consideration, it must be said from an anthropological point of view that
though originally of German family he was a hybrid between the North and
West brunette race."
Would you take the trouble to prove that Michael Angelo was an Italian that
this man takes to prove that he was a German? Of course not. The only
impression this man (who is a recognised Prussian historian) produces on
your mind or mine is that he does not care about Michael Angelo. For you,
being an Italian, are therefore something more than an Italian; and I being
an Englishman, something more than an Englishman. But this poor fellow
really cannot be anything more than a Prussian. He digs and digs to find
dead Prussians, in the catacombs of Rome or under the ruins of Troy. If he
can find one blue eye lying about somewhere, he is satisfied. He has no
philosophy. He has a hobby, which is collecting Germans. It would probably
be vain for you and me to point out that we could prove anything by the
sort of ingenuity which finds the German "rothe" in Buonarotti. We could
have great fun depriving Germany of all her geniuses in that style. We
could say that Moltke must have been an Italian, from the old Latin root
_mol_--indicating the sweetness of that general's disposition. We might say
Bismarck was a Frenchman, since his name begins with the popular theatrical
cry of "Bis!" We might say Goethe was an Englishman, because his name
begins with the popular sporting cry "Go!" But the ultimate difference
between us and the Prussian professor is simply that we are not mad.
The father of Frederick the Great, the founder of the more modern
Hohenzollerns, was mad. His madness consisted of stealing giants; like an
unscrupulous travelling showman. Any man much over six foot high, whether
he were called the Russian Giant or the Irish Giant or the Chinese Giant or
the Hottentot Giant, was in danger of being kidnapped and imprisoned in a
Prussian uniform. It is the same mean sort of madness that is working in
Prussian professors such as the one I have quoted. They can get no further
than the notion of stealing giants. I will not bore you now with all the
other giants they have tried to steal; it is enough to say that St. Paul,
Leonardo da Vinci, and Shakespeare himself are among the monstrosities
exhibited at Frederick-William fair--on grounds as good as those quoted
above. But I have put this particular case before you, as an artist rather
than an Italian, to show what I mean when I object to a "German future for
Europe." I object to something which believes very much in itself, and in
which I do not in the least believe. I object to something which is
conceited and small-minded; but which also has that kind of pertinacity
which always belongs to lunatics. It wants to be able to congratulate
itself on Michael Angelo; never to congratulate the world. It is the spirit
that can be seen in those who go bald trying to trace a genealogy; or go
bankrupt trying to make out a claim to some remote estate. The Prussian has
the inconsistency of the _parvenu_; he will labour to prove that he is
related to some gentleman of the Renaissance, even while he boasts of being
able to "buy him up." If the Italians were really great, why--they were
really Germans; and if they weren't really Germans, well then, they weren't
really great. It is an occupation for an old maid.
Three or four hundred years ago, in the sad silence that had followed the
comparative failure of the noble effort of the Middle Ages, there came upon
all Europe a storm out of the south. Its tumult is of many tongues; one can
hear in it the laughter of Rabelais, or, for that matter, the lyrics of
Shakespeare; but the dark heart of the storm was indeed more austral and
volcanic; a noise of thunderous wings and the name of Michael the
Archangel. And when it had shocked and purified the world and passed, a
Prussian professor found a feather fallen to earth; and proved (in several
volumes) that it could only have come from a Prussian Eagle. He had seen
one--in a cage.
Yours ------,
G.K. CHESTERTON.
* * * * *
My Dear ------
The facts before all Europeans to-day are so fundamental that I still find
it easier to talk about them to you as to an old friend, rather than put it
in the shape of a pamphlet. In my last letter I pointed out two facts
which are pivots. The first is that, to any really cultured person, Prussia
is second-rate. The second is that to almost any Prussian, Prussia is
really first-rate; and is prepared, quite literally, to police the rest of
the world.
For the first matter, the comparative inferiority of German culture cannot
be doubted by people like you. One of the German papers pathetically said
that, though the mangling of Malines and Rheims was very sad, it was a
comfort to think that yet nobler works of art would spring up wherever the
German culture had passed in triumph. From the point of view of humour, it
is really rather sad that they never will. The German Emperor's idea of a
Gothic cathedral is as provocative to the fancy as Mrs. Todgers' idea of a
wooden leg. But I think it perfectly probable that they really intended to
set up such beautiful buildings as they could. Having been blasphemous
enough to ruin such things, they might well be blasphemous enough to
replace them. Even if the Prussian attempt on Paris had not wholly
collapsed as it has, I doubt whether the Prussians would have destroyed
everything. I doubt whether they would even have destroyed the Venus de
Milo. More probably they would have put a pair of arms on it, designed by
some rising German artist--the Emperor or somebody. And the two arms thus
added would look at once like the arms of a woman at a wash-tub. The
destroyers of the tower of Rheims are quite capable of destroying the Tower
of Giotto. But they are equally capable of the greater crime of completing
it. And if they put on a spire, what a spire it would be! What an
extinguisher for that clear and almost transparent Christian candle! Have
you read some of the German explanations of Hamlet? Did I tell you that
Leonardo's hair must have been German hair, because so many of his
contemporaries said it was beautiful? This is what I call being
second-rate. All the German excitement about the colonies of England is
only a half understanding of what was once heroic and is now largely
caddish. The German Emperor's naval vision is a bad copy of Nelson, as
certainly as Frederick the Great's verses were a bad copy of Voltaire.
But the second point was even more important; that weak as the thing is
mentally it is strong materially; and will impose itself materially if we
permit it. The Prussians have failed in everything else; but they have not
failed in getting their subject thousands to do as they are told. They
cannot put up black and white towers in Florence; but they can really put
up black and white posts in Alsace. They have failed in diplomacy. I
suppose it might be called a failure in diplomacy to come into the fight
with two enemies extra and one ally the less. If the Germans, instead of
sending spies to study the Belgian soil, had sent spies to consider the
Belgian soul, they would have been saved hard work for a week or two. They
have failed in controversy. I suppose it might be called a failure in
controversy to say that England may be keeping her word for some wicked
purpose; while Germany may be breaking her word for some noble purpose. And
that is practically all that the Germans can manage to say. They say that
we are an insatiable, unscrupulous, piratical power; and this wild spirit
whirled us into the mad course of respecting a treaty we had signed. They
can find in us no treason except that we keep our treaties: failing to do
this I call failing in controversy. They have failed in popular persuasion.
They have had a very good opportunity. The British Empire does contain many
people who have been badly treated in various ways: the Irish, the Boers;
nay, the Americans themselves, whose national existence began with being
badly treated. With these the Prussians have done comparatively little; and
with Europeans of your sort nothing. They have never once really
sympathised with the feeling of a Switzer for Switzerland; the feeling of a
Norwegian for Norway; the feeling of a Tuscan for Tuscany. Even when
nations are neutral, Prussia can hardly bear them to be patriotic. Even
when they are courting every one else they can praise no one but
themselves. They fail in diplomacy, they fail in debate, they fail even in
demagogy. They have stupid plots, stupid explanations, and even stupid
apologies. But there is one thing they really do not fail in. They do not
fail in finding people stupid enough to carry them out.
Now, it is this question I would ask you to consider; you, as a good middle
type of the Latins, a Liberal but a Catholic, an artist but a soldier. The
danger to the whole civilisation of which Rome was the fountain lies in
this. That the more this strange Pruss people fail in all the other things,
the more they will fall back on this mere fact of a brutal obedience. They
will give orders; they have nothing else to give. I say that this is the
question for you; I do not say, I do not dream of saying, that the answer
is for me. It is for you to weigh the chance that their very failures in
the arts of peace will drive them back upon the arts of war. They could
not, and they did not, dupe your people in diplomacy. They did the most
undiplomatic thing that can be done; they concealed a breach of partnership
without even concealing the concealment. They instigated the intrigue in
Austria in such a way that Italy could honestly claim all the freedom of
past ignorance, combined with all the disillusionment of present knowledge.
They so ran the Triple Alliance that they had to admit your grievance, at
the very moment when they claimed your aid. The English are stupider and
less sensitive than you are; but even the English found the German
Chancellor's diplomacy not insinuating but simply insulting; I swear I
would be a better diplomatist myself. In the same way, there is no danger
of people like you being corrupted in controversy. There is no fear that
the professors who pullulate all over the Baltic Plain will overcome the
Latins in logic. Some of them even claim to be super-logical; and say they
are too big for syllogisms; generally having found even one syllogism too
big for them. If they complain either of your abstention from their cause
or your adhesion to any other, you have an unanswerable answer. You will
say, as you did say, that you did not break the Triple Alliance, even for
the sake of peace. It was they who broke it for the sake of war. You,
obviously, had as much right to be consulted about Servia as Austria had;
and on the mere chess-board of argument it is mate in one move. Nor are
they in the least fitted to make an appeal to the popular sentiment of your
people. The English, I dare say, and the French, have talked an amazing
amount of nonsense about you; but they understand a little better. They do
not write exactly like this, which is from the most public and accepted
Prussian political philosopher (Chamberlain). "Who can live in Italy
to-day and mix with its amiable and highly gifted inhabitants without
feeling with pain that here a great nation is lost, irredeemably lost,
because it lacks the inner driving power," etc., which has brought Von
Kluck so triumphantly through Paris. Even a half-educated Englishman, who
has heard of no Italian poet except Dante, knows that he was something more
than amiable. Even a positively illiterate Frenchman, who has heard of no
Italian warrior except Napoleon, knows that it was not in "inner driving
force" that the artilleryman in question was deficient. "Who can live in
Italy to-day?" Evidently the Prussian philosopher can't. His impressions
are taken from Italian operas; not from Italian streets; certainly not from
Italian fields. As a matter of fact such images of Italy as burn in the
memories of most open-minded Northerners who have been there, are of
exactly the other kind. I for one should be inclined to say, "Who can live
in Italy to-day without feeling that a woman feeding children, or a man
chopping wood, may almost touch him with fear with the fulness of their
humanity: so that he can almost smell blood, as one smells burning?"
Italians often look lazy; that is, they look as if they would not move; but
not as if they could not move, as many Germans do. But even though this
formula fitted the Italians, it seems scarcely calculated to please them.
For the Prussians, then, with the failure of their diplomacy, the failure
of their philosophy, we may also place the failure of their appeals to a
foreign people. The Prussian writer may continue his attempts to soothe
and charm you by telling you that you are irredeemably lost, and that all
great Italians must have been something else. But the method seems to me
ill adapted to popular propaganda; and I cannot but say that on this third
point of persuasion, the German attempt is not striking.
Now all this is important for this reason. If you consider it carefully
you will see why Europe must, at whatever cost, break Germany in battle:
and put an end to her military and material power to _do_ things. If we all
have to fight for it, if we all have to die for it, it must be done. If we
find allies in the dwarfs of Greenland or the giants of Patagonia, it must
be done. And the reason is that unless it is literally and materially done,
other things will be literally and materially done; and horrify the
heavens. They will be silly things; they will be benighted and limited and
laughable things; but they will be accomplished things. Nothing could be
more ridiculous, if that is all, than the moral position of the Prussian in
Poland; where a magnificent officer, making a vast parade of "ruling,"
tries to cheat poor peasants out of their fields (and gets cheated) and
then takes refuge in beating little boys for saying their prayers in their
native tongue. All who remember anything of dignity, of irony, in short of
Rome and reason, can see why an officer need not, should not, had better
not, and generally does not, beat little boys. But an officer _can_ beat
little boys: and a Prussian officer will go on doing it until you take away
the stick. Nothing could be more comic, if that is all, than the position
of Prussians in Alsace: which they declare to be purely German and admit to
be furiously French; so that they have to terrorise it by sabring anybody,
including cripples. Again, any of us can see why an officer need not,
should not, had better not, and generally does not, sabre a cripple. But an
officer _can_ sabre a cripple; and a Prussian officer will go on doing it
until you take away the sabre. It is this insane and rigid realism that
makes their case peculiar: like that of a Chinaman copying something, or a
half-witted servant taking a message. If they had the power to put black
and white posts round the grave of Virgil, or dig up Dante to see if he had
yellow hair, the mere _doing_ of it which for some of us would be the most
unlikely, would for them be the least unlikely thing. They do not hear the
laughter of the ages. If they had the power to treat the English or Italian
Premier quite literally as a traitor, and shoot him against a wall, they
are quite capable of turning such hysterical rhetoric into reality: and
scattering his brains before they had collected their own. They do not feel
atmospheres. They are all a little deaf; as they are all a little
short-sighted. They are annoyed when their enemies, after such experiences
as those of Belgium, accuse them of breaking their promises. And in one
sense they are right; for there are some sorts of promises they probably
would keep. If they have promised to respect a free country, or an old
friend, to observe a sworn partnership, or to spare a harmless population,
they will find such restrictions chilling and irksome. They will ask some
professor on what principle they are discarding it. But if they have
promised to shoot the cross off a church spire, or empty the inkpot into
somebody's beer, or bring home somebody's ears in their pocket for the
pleasure of their families, I think in these cases they would feel a sort
of a shadow of what civilised men feel in the fulfilment of a promise, as
distinct from the making of it. And, in consideration of such cases, I
cannot go the whole length of those severe critics who say that a Prussian
will never keep his promise.
Unfortunately, it is precisely this sort of actuality and fulfilment that
makes it urgent that Europe should put forth her whole energy to drag down
these antique demoniacs; these idiots filled with force as by fiends. They
_will_ do things, as a maniac will, until he cannot do them. To me it
seemed that some things could not be said and done. I thought a man would
have been ashamed to bribe a new enemy like England to betray an old enemy
like France. I thought a man would have been ashamed to punish the pure
self-defence of folk so offenceless as the Belgians. These hopes must go
from us, my friend. There is only one thing of which the Prussian would be
ashamed; and of that, we have sworn to God, he shall taste before the end.
* * * * *
My Dear ------