towards the extension of the suffrage; I mean that, apart from all
questions of abstract justice, it is not the smallness or largeness of
the suffrage that is at present the difficulty of Democracy. It is not
the quantity of voters, but the quality of the thing they are voting
about. A certain alternative is put before them by the powerful houses
and the highest political class. Two roads are opened to them; but they
must go down one or the other. They cannot have what they choose, but
only which they choose. To follow the process in practice we may put it
thus. The Suffragettes--if one may judge by their frequent ringing
of his bell--want to do something to Mr. Asquith. I have no notion
what it is. Let us say (for the sake of argument) that they want to
paint him green. We will suppose that it is entirely for that simple
purpose that they are always seeking to have private interviews with
him; it seems as profitable as any other end that I can imagine to such
an interview. Now, it is possible that the Government of the day might
go in for a positive policy of painting Mr. Asquith green; might give
that reform a prominent place in their programme. Then the party in
opposition would adopt another policy, not a policy of leaving Mr.
Asquith alone (which would be considered dangerously revolutionary), but
some alternative course of action, as, for instance, painting him red.
Then both sides would fling themselves on the people, they would both
cry that the appeal was now to the Caesar of Democracy. A dark and
dramatic air of conflict and real crisis would arise on both sides;
arrows of satire would fly and swords of eloquence flame. The Greens
would say that Socialists and free lovers might well want to paint Mr.
Asquith red; they wanted to paint the whole town red. Socialists would
indignantly reply that Socialism was the reverse of disorder, and that
they only wanted to paint Mr. Asquith red so that he might resemble
the red pillar-boxes which typified State control. The Greens would
passionately deny the charge so often brought against them by the Reds;
they would deny that they wished Mr. Asquith green in order that he
might be invisible on the green benches of the Commons, as certain
terrified animals take the colour of their environment.
There would be fights in the street perhaps, and abundance of ribbons,
flags, and badges, of the two colours. One crowd would sing, “Keep the
Red Flag Flying,” and the other, “The Wearing of the Green.” But when
the last effort had been made and the last moment come, when two
crowds were waiting in the dark outside the public building to hear the
declaration of the poll, then both sides alike would say that it was now
for democracy to do exactly what it chose. England herself, lifting her
head in awful loneliness and liberty, must speak and pronounce judgment.
Yet this might not be exactly true. England herself, lifting her head in
awful loneliness and liberty, might really wish Mr. Asquith to be pale
blue. The democracy of England in the abstract, if it had been allowed
to make up a policy for itself, might have desired him to be black
with pink spots. It might even have liked him as he is now. But a huge
apparatus of wealth, power, and printed matter has made it practically
impossible for them to bring home these other proposals, even if they
would really prefer them. No candidates will stand in the spotted
interest; for candidates commonly have to produce money either from
their own pockets or the party's; and in such circles spots are not
worn. No man in the social position of a Cabinet Minister, perhaps,
will commit himself to the pale-blue theory of Mr. Asquith; therefore it
cannot be a Government measure, therefore it cannot pass.
Nearly all the great newspapers, both pompous and frivolous, will
declare dogmatically day after day, until every one half believes
it, that red and green are the only two colours in the paint-box. THE
OBSERVER will say: “No one who knows the solid framework of politics or
the emphatic first principles of an Imperial people can suppose for
a moment that there is any possible compromise to be made in such a
matter; we must either fulfil our manifest racial destiny and crown the
edifice of ages with the august figure of a Green Premier, or we must
abandon our heritage, break our promise to the Empire, fling ourselves
into final anarchy, and allow the flaming and demoniac image of a Red
Premier to hover over our dissolution and our doom.” The DAILY MAIL
would say: “There is no halfway house in this matter; it must be green
or red. We wish to see every honest Englishman one colour or the other.”
And then some funny man in the popular Press would star the sentence
with a pun, and say that the DAILY MAIL liked its readers to be green
and its paper to be read. But no one would even dare to whisper that
there is such a thing as yellow.
For the purposes of pure logic it is clearer to argue with silly
examples than with sensible ones: because silly examples are simple. But
I could give many grave and concrete cases of the kind of thing to which
I refer. In the later part of the Boer War both parties perpetually
insisted in every speech and pamphlet that annexation was inevitable and
that it was only a question whether Liberals or Tories should do it. It
was not inevitable in the least; it would have been perfectly easy to
make peace with the Boers as Christian nations commonly make peace with
their conquered enemies. Personally I think that it would have been
better for us in the most selfish sense, better for our pocket and
prestige, if we had never effected the annexation at all; but that is a
matter of opinion. What is plain is that it was not inevitable; it was
not, as was said, the only possible course; there were plenty of other
courses; there were plenty of other colours in the box. Again, in the
discussion about Socialism, it is repeatedly rubbed into the public mind
that we must choose between Socialism and some horrible thing that they
call Individualism. I don't know what it means, but it seems to mean
that anybody who happens to pull out a plum is to adopt the moral
philosophy of the young Horner--and say what a good boy he is for
helping himself.
It is calmly assumed that the only two possible types of society are a
Collectivist type of society and the present society that exists at this
moment and is rather like an animated muck-heap. It is quite unnecessary
to say that I should prefer Socialism to the present state of things. I
should prefer anarchism to the present state of things. But it is simply
not the fact that Collectivism is the only other scheme for a more equal
order. A Collectivist has a perfect right to think it the only sound
scheme; but it is not the only plausible or possible scheme. We might
have peasant proprietorship; we might have the compromise of Henry
George; we might have a number of tiny communes; we might have
co-operation; we might have Anarchist Communism; we might have a hundred
things. I am not saying that any of these are right, though I cannot
imagine that any of them could be worse than the present social
madhouse, with its top-heavy rich and its tortured poor; but I say that
it is an evidence of the stiff and narrow alternative offered to the
civic mind, that the civic mind is not, generally speaking, conscious of
these other possibilities. The civic mind is not free or alert enough
to feel how much it has the world before it. There are at least ten
solutions of the Education question, and no one knows which Englishmen
really want. For Englishmen are only allowed to vote about the two
which are at that moment offered by the Premier and the Leader of the
Opposition. There are ten solutions of the drink question; and no one
knows which the democracy wants; for the democracy is only allowed to
fight about one Licensing Bill at a time.
So that the situation comes to this: The democracy has a right to answer
questions, but it has no right to ask them. It is still the political
aristocracy that asks the questions. And we shall not be unreasonably
cynical if we suppose that the political aristocracy will always be
rather careful what questions it asks. And if the dangerous comfort and
self-flattery of modern England continues much longer there will be less
democratic value in an English election than in a Roman saturnalia of
slaves. For the powerful class will choose two courses of action, both
of them safe for itself, and then give the democracy the gratification
of taking one course or the other. The lord will take two things so much
alike that he would not mind choosing from them blindfold--and then
for a great jest he will allow the slaves to choose.
THE MAD OFFICIAL
Going mad is the slowest and dullest business in the world. I have very
nearly done it more than once in my boyhood, and so have nearly all
my friends, born under the general doom of mortals, but especially of
moderns; I mean the doom that makes a man come almost to the end of
thinking before he comes to the first chance of living.
But the process of going mad is dull, for the simple reason that a man
does not know that it is going on. Routine and literalism and a
certain dry-throated earnestness and mental thirst, these are the very
atmosphere of morbidity. If once the man could become conscious of his
madness, he would cease to be man. He studies certain texts in Daniel
or cryptograms in Shakespeare through monstrously magnifying spectacles,
which are on his nose night and day. If once he could take off the
spectacles he would smash them. He deduces all his fantasies about the
Sixth Seal or the Anglo-Saxon Race from one unexamined and invisible
first principle. If he could once see the first principle, he would see
that it is not there.
This slow and awful self-hypnotism of error is a process that can occur
not only with individuals, but also with whole societies. It is hard
to pick out and prove; that is why it is hard to cure. But this mental
degeneration may be brought to one test, which I truly believe to be a
real test. A nation is not going mad when it does extravagant things,
so long as it does them in an extravagant spirit. Crusaders not cutting
their beards till they found Jerusalem, Jacobins calling each other
Harmodius and Epaminondas when their names were Jacques and Jules, these
are wild things, but they were done in wild spirits at a wild moment.
But whenever we see things done wildly, but taken tamely, then the State
is growing insane. For instance, I have a gun license. For all I know,
this would logically allow me to fire off fifty-nine enormous field-guns
day and night in my back garden. I should not be surprised at a man
doing it; for it would be great fun. But I should be surprised at the
neighbours putting up with it, and regarding it as an ordinary thing
merely because it might happen to fulfill the letter of my license.
Or, again, I have a dog license; and I may have the right (for all I
know) to turn ten thousand wild dogs loose in Buckinghamshire. I should
not be surprised if the law were like that; because in modern England
there is practically no law to be surprised at. I should not be
surprised even at the man who did it; for a certain kind of man, if he
lived long under the English landlord system, might do anything. But I
should be surprised at the people who consented to stand it. I should,
in other words, think the world a little mad if the incident, were
received in silence.
Now things every bit as wild as this are being received in silence every
day. All strokes slip on the smoothness of a polished wall. All blows
fall soundless on the softness of a padded cell. For madness is a
passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of
the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli, as well as an unnatural
stimulation. There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here
and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from
glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in
silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs,
literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the body. These are peoples
that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions. When they
give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start
or stare at the monster they have brought forth. They have grown used
to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the
breath of their nostrils. These nations are really in danger of going
off their heads en masse; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility,
with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with
industrious lunatics. One of these countries is modern England.
Now here is an actual instance, a small case of how our social
conscience really works: tame in spirit, wild in result, blank in
realisation; a thing without the light of mind in it. I take this
paragraph from a daily paper:--“At Epping, yesterday, Thomas
Woolbourne, a Lambourne labourer, and his wife were summoned for
neglecting their five children. Dr. Alpin said he was invited by the
inspector of the N.S.P.C.C. to visit defendants' cottage. Both the
cottage and the children were dirty. The children looked exceedingly
well in health, but the conditions would be serious in case of illness.
Defendants were stated to be sober. The man was discharged. The woman,
who said she was hampered by the cottage having no water supply and
that she was ill, was sentenced to six weeks' imprisonment. The sentence
caused surprise, and the woman was removed crying, 'Lord save me!'”
I know no name for this but Chinese. It calls up the mental picture of
some archaic and changeless Eastern Court, in which men with dried faces
and stiff ceremonial costumes perform some atrocious cruelty to the
accompaniment of formal proverbs and sentences of which the very meaning
has been forgotten. In both cases the only thing in the whole farrago
that can be called real is the wrong. If we apply the lightest touch of
reason to the whole Epping prosecution it dissolves into nothing.
I here challenge any person in his five wits to tell me what that woman
was sent to prison for. Either it was for being poor, or it was for
being ill. Nobody could suggest, nobody will suggest, nobody, as a
matter of fact, did suggest, that she had committed any other crime.
The doctor was called in by a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. Was this woman guilty of cruelty to children? Not in the
least. Did the doctor say she was guilty of cruelty to children? Not in
the least. Was these any evidence even remotely bearing on the sin of
cruelty? Not a rap. The worse that the doctor could work himself up
to saying was that though the children were “exceedingly” well, the
conditions would be serious in case of illness. If the doctor will tell
me any conditions that would be comic in case of illness, I shall attach
more weight to his argument.
Now this is the worst effect of modern worry. The mad doctor has
gone mad. He is literally and practically mad; and still he is quite
literally and practically a doctor. The only question is the old one,
Quis docebit ipsum doctorem? Now cruelty to children is an utterly
unnatural thing; instinctively accursed of earth and heaven. But neglect
of children is a natural thing; like neglect of any other duty, it is
a mere difference of degree that divides extending arms and legs in
calisthenics and extending them on the rack. It is a mere difference of
degree that separates any operation from any torture. The thumb-screw
can easily be called Manicure. Being pulled about by wild horses can
easily be called Massage. The modern problem is not so much what people
will endure as what they will not endure. But I fear I interrupt.... The
boiling oil is boiling; and the Tenth Mandarin is already reciting the
“Seventeen Serious Principles and the Fifty-three Virtues of the Sacred
Emperor.”
THE ENCHANTED MAN
When I arrived to see the performance of the Buckinghamshire Players,
who acted Miss Gertrude Robins's POT LUCK at Naphill a short time ago,
it is the distressing, if scarcely surprising, truth that I entered very
late. This would have mattered little, I hope, to any one, but that late
comers had to be forced into front seats. For a real popular English
audience always insists on crowding in the back part of the hall; and
(as I have found in many an election) will endure the most unendurable
taunts rather than come forward. The English are a modest people; that
is why they are entirely ruled and run by the few of them that happen to
be immodest. In theatrical affairs the fact is strangely notable; and in
most playhouses we find the bored people in front and the eager people
behind.
As far as the performance went I was quite the reverse of a bored
person; but I may have been a boring person, especially as I was thus
required to sit in the seats of the scornful. It will be a happy day in
the dramatic world when all ladies have to take off their hats and all
critics have to take off their heads. The people behind will have a
chance then. And as it happens, in this case, I had not so much taken
off my head as lost it. I had lost it on the road; on that strange
journey that was the cause of my coming in late. I have a troubled
recollection of having seen a very good play and made a very bad speech;
I have a cloudy recollection of talking to all sorts of nice people
afterwards, but talking to them jerkily and with half a head, as a man
talks when he has one eye on a clock.
And the truth is that I had one eye on an ancient and timeless clock,
hung uselessly in heaven; whose very name has passed into a figure
for such bemused folly. In the true sense of an ancient phrase, I
was moonstruck. A lunar landscape a scene of winter moonlight had
inexplicably got in between me and all other scenes. If any one had
asked me I could not have said what it was; I cannot say now. Nothing
had occurred to me; except the breakdown of a hired motor on the ridge
of a hill. It was not an adventure; it was a vision.
I had started in wintry twilight from my own door; and hired a small
car that found its way across the hills towards Naphill. But as
night blackened and frost brightened and hardened it I found the way
increasingly difficult; especially as the way was an incessant ascent.
Whenever we topped a road like a staircase it was only to turn into a
yet steeper road like a ladder.
At last, when I began to fancy that I was spirally climbing the Tower
of Babel in a dream, I was brought to fact by alarming noises, stoppage,
and the driver saying that “it couldn't be done.” I got out of the car
and suddenly forgot that I had ever been in it.
From the edge of that abrupt steep I saw something indescribable, which
I am now going to describe. When Mr. Joseph Chamberlain delivered his
great patriotic speech on the inferiority of England to the Dutch parts
of South Africa, he made use of the expression “the illimitable veldt.”
The word “veldt” is Dutch, and the word “illimitable” is Double Dutch.
But the meditative statesman probably meant that the new plains gave him
a sense of largeness and dreariness which he had never found in England.
Well, if he never found it in England it was because he never looked for
it in England. In England there is an illimitable number of illimitable
veldts. I saw six or seven separate eternities in cresting as many
different hills. One cannot find anything more infinite than a finite
horizon, free and lonely and innocent. The Dutch veldt may be a little
more desolate than Birmingham. But I am sure it is not so desolate as
that English hill was, almost within a cannon-shot of High Wycombe.
I looked across a vast and voiceless valley straight at the moon, as if
at a round mirror. It may have been the blue moon of the proverb; for on
that freezing night the very moon seemed blue with cold. A deathly frost
fastened every branch and blade to its place. The sinking and softening
forests, powdered with a gray frost, fell away underneath me into an
abyss which seemed unfathomable. One fancied the world was soundless
only because it was bottomless: it seemed as if all songs and cries
had been swallowed in some unresisting stillness under the roots of the
hills. I could fancy that if I shouted there would be no echo; that if
I hurled huge stones there would be no noise of reply. A dumb devil had
bewitched the landscape: but that again does not express the best or
worst of it. All those hoary and frosted forests expressed something so
inhuman that it has no human name. A horror of unconsciousness lay on
them; that is the nearest phrase I know. It was as if one were looking
at the back of the world; and the world did not know it. I had taken the
universe in the rear. I was behind the scenes. I was eavesdropping upon
an unconscious creation.
I shall not express what the place expressed. I am not even sure that it
is a thing that ought to be expressed. There was something heathen about
its union of beauty and death; sorrow seemed to glitter, as it does in
some of the great pagan poems. I understood one of the thousand poetical
phrases of the populace, “a God-forsaken place.” Yet something was
present there; and I could not yet find the key to my fixed impression.
Then suddenly I remembered the right word. It was an enchanted place. It
had been put to sleep. In a flash I remembered all the fairy-tales about
princes turned to marble and princesses changed to snow. We were in a
land where none could strive or cry out; a white nightmare. The moon
looked at me across the valley like the enormous eye of a hypnotist; the
one white eye of the world.
There was never a better play than POT LUCK; for it tells a tale with a
point and a tale that might happen any day among English peasants. There
were never better actors than the local Buckinghamshire Players: for
they were acting their own life with just that rise into exaggeration
which is the transition from life to art. But all the time I was
mesmerised by the moon; I saw all these men and women as enchanted
things. The poacher shot pheasants; the policeman tracked pheasants; the
wife hid pheasants; they were all (especially the policeman) as true
as death. But there was something more true to death than true to life
about it all: the figures were frozen with a magic frost of sleep or
fear or custom such as does not cramp the movements of the poor men of
other lands. I looked at the poacher and the policeman and the gun; then
at the gun and the policeman and the poacher; and I could find no name
for the fancy that haunted and escaped me. The poacher believed in the
Game Laws as much as the policeman. The poacher's wife not only believed
in the Game Laws, but protected them as well as him. She got a promise
from her husband that he would never shoot another pheasant. Whether he
kept it I doubt; I fancy he sometimes shot a pheasant even after that.
But I am sure he never shot a policeman. For we live in an enchanted
land.
THE SUN WORSHIPPER
There is a shrewd warning to be given to all people who are in revolt.
And in the present state of things, I think all men are revolting in
that sense; except a few who are revolting in the other sense. But the
warning to Socialists and other revolutionaries is this: that as sure as
fate, if they use any argument which is atheist or materialistic, that
argument will always be turned against them at last by the tyrant and
the slave. To-day I saw one too common Socialist argument turned Tory,
so to speak, in a manner quite startling and insane. I mean that modern
doctrine, taught, I believe, by most followers of Karl Marx, which is
called the materialist theory of history. The theory is, roughly, this:
that all the important things in history are rooted in an economic
motive. In short, history is a science; a science of the search for
food.
Now I desire, in passing only, to point out that this is not merely
untrue, but actually the reverse of the truth. It is putting it too
feebly to say that the history of man is not only economic. Man would
not have any history if he were only economic. The need for food is
certainly universal, so universal that it is not even human. Cows
have an economic motive, and apparently (I dare not say what ethereal
delicacies may be in a cow) only an economic motive. The cow eats grass
anywhere and never eats anything else. In short, the cow does fulfill
the materialist theory of history: that is why the cow has no history.
“A History of Cows” would be one of the simplest and briefest of
standard works. But if some cows thought it wicked to eat long grass
and persecuted all who did so; if the cow with the crumpled horn were
worshipped by some cows and gored to death by others; if cows began to
have obvious moral preferences over and above a desire for grass, then
cows would begin to have a history. They would also begin to have a
highly unpleasant time, which is perhaps the same thing.