and ask what is the use of it I think I could tell you. You might
remember it when next some ordinary young workman is going to be hanged
by the neck on circumstantial evidence.
THE SENTIMENTAL SCOT
Of all the great nations of Christendom, the Scotch are by far the most
romantic. I have just enough Scotch experience and just enough Scotch
blood to know this in the only way in which a thing can really be known;
that is, when the outer world and the inner world are at one. I know it
is always said that the Scotch are practical, prosaic, and puritan; that
they have an eye to business. I like that phrase “an eye” to business.
Polyphemus had an eye for business; it was in the middle of his
forehead. It served him admirably for the only two duties which are
demanded in a modern financier and captain of industry: the two duties
of counting sheep and of eating men. But when that one eye was put out
he was done for. But the Scotch are not one-eyed practical men, though
their best friends must admit that they are occasionally business-like.
They are, quite fundamentally, romantic and sentimental, and this
is proved by the very economic argument that is used to prove their
harshness and hunger for the material. The mass of Scots have accepted
the industrial civilisation, with its factory chimneys and its famine
prices, with its steam and smoke and steel--and strikes. The mass
of the Irish have not accepted it. The mass of the Irish have clung to
agriculture with claws of iron; and have succeeded in keeping it. That
is because the Irish, though far inferior to the Scotch in art and
literature, are hugely superior to them in practical politics. You do
need to be very romantic to accept the industrial civilisation. It does
really require all the old Gaelic glamour to make men think that Glasgow
is a grand place. Yet the miracle is achieved; and while I was in
Glasgow I shared the illusion. I have never had the faintest illusion
about Leeds or Birmingham. The industrial dream suited the Scots. Here
was a really romantic vista, suited to a romantic people; a vision of
higher and higher chimneys taking hold upon the heavens, of fiercer
and fiercer fires in which adamant could evaporate like dew. Here were
taller and taller engines that began already to shriek and gesticulate
like giants. Here were thunderbolts of communication which already
flashed to and fro like thoughts. It was unreasonable to expect the
rapt, dreamy, romantic Scot to stand still in such a whirl of wizardry
to ask whether he, the ordinary Scot, would be any the richer.
He, the ordinary Scot, is very much the poorer. Glasgow is not a rich
city. It is a particularly poor city ruled by a few particularly rich
men. It is not, perhaps, quite so poor a city as Liverpool, London,
Manchester, Birmingham, or Bolton. It is vastly poorer than Rome, Rouen,
Munich, or Cologne. A certain civic vitality notable in Glasgow may,
perhaps, be due to the fact that the high poetic patriotism of the Scots
has there been reinforced by the cutting common sense and independence
of the Irish. In any case, I think there can be no doubt of the main
historical fact. The Scotch were tempted by the enormous but unequal
opportunities of industrialism, because the Scotch are romantic. The
Irish refused those enormous and unequal opportunities, because the
Irish are clear-sighted. They would not need very clear sight by this
time to see that in England and Scotland the temptation has been a
betrayal. The industrial system has failed.
I was coming the other day along a great valley road that strikes out of
the westland counties about Glasgow, more or less towards the east and
the widening of the Forth. It may, for all I know (I amused myself with
the fancy), be the way along which Wallace came with his crude army,
when he gave battle before Stirling Brig; and, in the midst of mediæval
diplomacies, made a new nation possible. Anyhow, the romantic quality of
Scotland rolled all about me, as much in the last reek of Glasgow as in
the first rain upon the hills. The tall factory chimneys seemed trying
to be taller than the mountain peaks; as if this landscape were full
(as its history has been full) of the very madness of ambition. The
wageslavery we live in is a wicked thing. But there is nothing in which
the Scotch are more piercing and poetical, I might say more perfect,
than in their Scotch wickedness. It is what makes the Master of
Ballantrae the most thrilling of all fictitious villains. It is what
makes the Master of Lovat the most thrilling of all historical villains.
It is poetry. It is an intensity which is on the edge of madness or
(what is worse) magic. Well, the Scotch have managed to apply something
of this fierce romanticism even to the lowest of all lordships and
serfdoms; the proletarian inequality of today. You do meet now and then,
in Scotland, the man you never meet anywhere else but in novels; I mean
the self-made man; the hard, insatiable man, merciless to himself as
well as to others. It is not “enterprise”; it is kleptomania. He is
quite mad, and a much more obvious public pest than any other kind of
kleptomaniac; but though he is a cheat, he is not an illusion. He does
exist; I have met quite two of him. Him alone among modern merchants
we do not weakly flatter when we call him a bandit. Something of the
irresponsibility of the true dark ages really clings about him. Our
scientific civilisation is not a civilisation; it is a smoke nuisance.
Like smoke it is choking us; like smoke it will pass away. Only of one
or two Scotsmen, in my experience, was it true that where there is smoke
there is fire.
But there are other kinds of fire; and better. The one great advantage
of this strange national temper is that, from the beginning of all
chronicles, it has provided resistance as well as cruelty. In Scotland
nearly everything has always been in revolt--especially loyalty.
If these people are capable of making Glasgow, they are also capable of
wrecking it; and the thought of my many good friends in that city makes
me really doubtful about which would figure in human memories as the
more huge calamity of the two. In Scotland there are many rich men so
weak as to call themselves strong. But there are not so many poor men
weak enough to believe them.
As I came out of Glasgow I saw men standing about the road. They had
little lanterns tied to the fronts of their caps, like the fairies
who used to dance in the old fairy pantomimes. They were not, however,
strictly speaking, fairies. They might have been called gnomes, since
they worked in the chasms of those purple and chaotic hills. They worked
in the mines from whence comes the fuel of our fires. Just at the moment
when I saw them, moreover, they were not dancing; nor were they working.
They were doing nothing. Which, in my opinion (and I trust yours), was
the finest thing they could do.
THE SECTARIAN OF SOCIETY
A fixed creed is absolutely indispensable to freedom. For while men are
and should be various, there must be some communication between them if
they are to get any pleasure out of their variety. And an intellectual
formula is the only thing that can create a communication that does not
depend on mere blood, class, or capricious sympathy. If we all start
with the agreement that the sun and moon exist, we can talk about our
different visions of them. The strong-eyed man can boast that he sees
the sun as a perfect circle. The shortsighted man may say (or if he is
an impressionist, boast) that he sees the moon as a silver blur. The
colour-blind man may rejoice in the fairy-trick which enables him to
live under a green sun and a blue moon. But if once it be held that
there is nothing but a silver blur in one man's eye or a bright circle
(like a monocle) in the other man's, then neither is free, for each is
shut up in the cell of a separate universe.
But, indeed, an even worse fate, practically considered, follows from
the denim of the original intellectual formula. Not only does the
individual become narrow, but he spreads narrowness across the world
like a cloud; he causes narrowness to increase and multiply like a weed.
For what happens is this: that all the shortsighted people come together
and build a city called Myopia, where they take short-sightedness for
granted and paint short-sighted pictures and pursue very short-sighted
policies. Meanwhile all the men who can stare at the sun get together on
Salisbury Plain and do nothing but stare at the sun; and all the men who
see a blue moon band themselves together and assert the blue moon, not
once in a blue moon, but incessantly. So that instead of a small and
varied group, you have enormous monotonous groups. Instead of the
liberty of dogma, you have the tyranny of taste.
Allegory apart, instances of what I mean will occur to every one;
perhaps the most obvious is Socialism. Socialism means the ownership
by the organ of government (whatever it is) of all things necessary to
production. If a man claims to be a Socialist in that sense he can be
any kind of man he likes in any other sense--a bookie, a Mahatma,
a man about town, an archbishop, a Margate nigger. Without recalling
at the moment clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities, it
is obvious that a clear-headed Socialist (that is, a Socialist with a
creed) can be a soldier, like Mr. Blatchford, or a Don, like Mr. Ball,
or a Bathchairman like Mr. Meeke, or a clergyman like Mr. Conrad Noel,
or an artistic tradesman like the late Mr. William Morris.
But some people call themselves Socialists, and will not be bound by
what they call a narrow dogma; they say that Socialism means far, far
more than this; all that is high, all that is free, all that is, etc.,
etc. Now mark their dreadful fate; for they become totally unfit to be
tradesmen, or soldiers, or clergymen, or any other stricken human thing,
but become a particular sort of person who is always the same. When once
it has been discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic
formula, it is also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one
particular kind of clothes, reading one particular kind of books,
hanging up one particular kind of pictures, and in the majority of cases
even eating one particular kind of food. For men must recognise each
other somehow. These men will not know each other by a principle, like
fellow citizens. They cannot know each other by a smell, like dogs. So
they have to fall back on general colouring; on the fact that a man of
their sort will have a wife in pale green and Walter Crane's “Triumph of
Labour” hanging in the hall.
There are, of course, many other instances; for modern society is almost
made up of these large monochrome patches. Thus I, for one, regret
the supersession of the old Puritan unity, founded on theology, but
embracing all types from Milton to the grocer, by that newer Puritan
unity which is founded rather on certain social habits, certain common
notions, both permissive and prohibitive, in connection with Particular
social pleasures.
Thus I, for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy)
it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a
thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical
genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of
Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous
varnish.
And it is supremely so in the case of religion. As long as you have a
creed, which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to
believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures of
religious history, who can be appealed to by the creed and judged by it;
the saint, the hypocrite, the brawler, the weak brother. These people
do each other good; or they all join together to do the hypocrite good,
with heavy and repeated blows. But once break the bond of doctrine which
alone holds these people together and each will gravitate to his own
kind outside the group. The hypocrites will all get together and
call each other saints; the saints will get lost in a desert and call
themselves weak brethren; the weak brethren will get weaker and weaker
in a general atmosphere of imbecility; and the brawler will go off
looking for somebody else with whom to brawl.
This has very largely happened to modern English religion; I have been
in many churches, chapels, and halls where a confident pride in having
got beyond creeds was coupled with quite a paralysed incapacity to
get beyond catchwords. But wherever the falsity appears it comes from
neglect of the same truth: that men should agree on a principle, that
they may differ on everything else; that God gave men a law that they
might turn it into liberties.
There was hugely more sense in the old people who said that a wife
and husband ought to have the same religion than there is in all the
contemporary gushing about sister souls and kindred spirits and auras of
identical colour. As a matter of fact, the more the sexes are in violent
contrast the less likely they are to be in violent collision. The more
incompatible their tempers are the better. Obviously a wife's soul
cannot possibly be a sister soul. It is very seldom so much as a first
cousin. There are very few marriages of identical taste and temperament;
they are generally unhappy. But to have the same fundamental theory, to
think the same thing a virtue, whether you practise or neglect it, to
think the same thing a sin, whether you punish or pardon or laugh at
it, in the last extremity to call the same thing duty and the same thing
disgrace--this really is necessary to a tolerably happy marriage;
and it is much better represented by a common religion than it is by
affinities and auras. And what applies to the family applies to the
nation. A nation with a root religion will be tolerant. A nation with no
religion will be bigoted. Lastly, the worst effect of all is this:
that when men come together to profess a creed, they come courageously,
though it is to hide in catacombs and caves. But when they come together
in a clique they come sneakishly, eschewing all change or disagreement,
though it is to dine to a brass band in a big London hotel. For birds of
a feather flock together, but birds of the white feather most of all.
THE FOOL
For many years I had sought him, and at last I found him in a club. I
had been told that he was everywhere; but I had almost begun to think
that he was nowhere. I had been assured that there were millions of him;
but before my late discovery I inclined to think that there were none of
him. After my late discovery I am sure that there is one; and I incline
to think that there are several, say, a few hundreds; but unfortunately
most of them occupying important positions. When I say “him,” I mean the
entire idiot.
I have never been able to discover that “stupid public” of which so many
literary men complain. The people one actually meets in trains or at tea
parties seem to me quite bright and interesting; certainly quite enough
so to call for the full exertion of one's own wits. And even when I have
heard brilliant “conversationalists” conversing with other people, the
conversation had much more equality and give and take than this age of
intellectual snobs will admit. I have sometimes felt tired, like other
people; but rather tired with men's talk and variety than with their
stolidity or sameness; therefore it was that I sometimes longed to find
the refreshment of a single fool.
But it was denied me. Turn where I would I found this monotonous
brilliancy of the general intelligence, this ruthless, ceaseless sparkle
of humour and good sense. The “mostly fools” theory has been used in an
anti-democratic sense; but when I found at last my priceless ass, I
did not find him in what is commonly called the democracy; nor in the
aristocracy either. The man of the democracy generally talks quite
rationally, sometimes on the anti-democratic side, but always with an
idea of giving reasons for what he says and referring to the realities
of his experience. Nor is it the aristocracy that is stupid; at least,
not that section of the aristocracy which represents it in politics.
They are often cynical, especially about money, but even their
boredom tends to make them a little eager for any real information or
originality. If a man like Mr. Winston Churchill or Mr. Wyndham made up
his mind for any reason to attack Syndicalism he would find out what it
was first. Not so the man I found in the club.
He was very well dressed; he had a heavy but handsome face; his black
clothes suggested the City and his gray moustaches the Army; but the
whole suggested that he did not really belong to either, but was one
of those who dabble in shares and who play at soldiers. There was some
third element about him that was neither mercantile nor military. His
manners were a shade too gentlemanly to be quite those of a gentleman.
They involved an unction and over-emphasis of the club-man: then I
suddenly remembered feeling the same thing in some old actors or old
playgoers who had modelled themselves on actors. As I came in he said,
“If I was the Government,” and then put a cigar in his mouth which he
lit carefully with long intakes of breath. Then he took the cigar out
of his mouth again and said, “I'd give it 'em,” as if it were quite a
separate sentence. But even while his mouth was stopped with the cigar
his companion or interlocutor leaped to his feet and said with great
heartiness, snatching up a hat, “Well, I must be off. Tuesday!”. I
dislike these dark suspicions, but I certainly fancied I recognised the
sudden geniality with which one takes leave of a bore.
When, therefore, he removed the narcotic stopper from his mouth it was
to me that he addressed the belated epigram. “I'd give it 'em.”
“What would you give them,” I asked, “the minimum wage?”
“I'd give them beans,” he said. “I'd shoot 'em down shoot 'em down,
every man Jack of them. I lost my best train yesterday, and here's
the whole country paralysed, and here's a handful of obstinate fellows
standing between the country and coal. I'd shoot 'em down!”
“That would surely be a little harsh,” I pleaded. “After all, they
are not under martial law, though I suppose two or three of them have
commissions in the Yeomanry.”
“Commissions in the Yeomanry!” he repeated, and his eyes and face, which
became startling and separate, like those of a boiled lobster, made me
feel sure that he had something of the kind himself.
“Besides,” I continued, “wouldn't it be quite enough to confiscate their
money?”
“Well, I'd send them all to penal servitude, anyhow,” he said, “and I'd
confiscate their funds as well.”
“The policy is daring and full of difficulty,” I replied, “but I do not
say that it is wholly outside the extreme rights of the republic. But
you must remember that though the facts of property have become
quite fantastic, yet the sentiment of property still exists. These
coal-owners, though they have not earned the mines, though they could
not work the mines, do quite honestly feel that they own the mines.
Hence your suggestion of shooting them down, or even of confiscating
their property, raises very--”
“What do you mean?” asked the man with the cigar, with a bullying eye.
“Who yer talking about?”
“I'm talking about what you were talking about,” I replied; “as you put
it so perfectly, about the handful of obstinate fellows who are standing
between the country and the coal. I mean the men who are selling their
own coal for fancy prices, and who, as long as they can get those
prices, care as little for national starvation as most merchant princes
and pirates have cared for the provinces that were wasted or the peoples
that were enslaved just before their ships came home. But though I am a
bit of a revolutionist myself, I cannot quite go with you in the extreme
violence you suggest. You say--”
“I say,” he cried, bursting through my speech with a really splendid
energy like that of some noble beast, “I say I'd take all these blasted
miners and--”
I had risen slowly to my feet, for I was profoundly moved; and I stood
staring at that mental monster.
“Oh,” I said, “so it is the miners who are all to be sent to penal
servitude, so that we may get more coal. It is the miners who are to be
shot dead, every man Jack of them; for if once they are all shot dead
they will start mining again...You must forgive me, sir; I know I seem
somewhat moved. The fact is, I have just found something. Something I
have been looking for for years.”
“Well,” he asked, with no unfriendly stare, “and what have you found?”
“No,” I answered, shaking my head sadly, “I do not think it would be
quite kind to tell you what I have found.”
He had a hundred virtues, including the capital virtue of good humour,
and we had no difficulty in changing the subject and forgetting the
disagreement. He talked about society, his town friends and his country
sports, and I discovered in the course of it that he was a county
magistrate, a Member of Parliament, and a director of several important
companies. He was also that other thing, which I did not tell him.
The moral is that a certain sort of person does exist, to whose glory
this article is dedicated. He is not the ordinary man. He is not the
miner, who is sharp enough to ask for the necessities of existence. He
is not the mine-owner, who is sharp enough to get a great deal more, by
selling his coal at the best possible moment. He is not the aristocratic
politician, who has a cynical but a fair sympathy with both economic
opportunities. But he is the man who appears in scores of public places
open to the upper middle class or (that less known but more powerful
section) the lower upper class. Men like this all over the country are
really saying whatever comes into their heads in their capacities of
justice of the peace, candidate for Parliament, Colonel of the Yeomanry,
old family doctor, Poor Law guardian, coroner, or above all, arbiter in
trade disputes. He suffers, in the literal sense, from softening of the
brain; he has softened it by always taking the view of everything most
comfortable for his country, his class, and his private personality.
He is a deadly public danger. But as I have given him his name at the
beginning of this article there is no need for me to repeat it at the
end.
THE CONSCRIPT AND THE CRISIS
Very few of us ever see the history of our own time happening. And
I think the best service a modern journalist can do to society is to
record as plainly as ever he can exactly what impression was produced on
his mind by anything he has actually seen and heard on the outskirts of
any modern problem or campaign. Though all he saw of a railway strike
was a flat meadow in Essex in which a train was becalmed for an hour or
two, he will probably throw more light on the strike by describing this
which he has seen than by describing the steely kings of commerce and
the bloody leaders of the mob whom he has never seen--nor any one
else either. If he comes a day too late for the battle of Waterloo (as
happened to a friend of my grandfather) he should still remember that a
true account of the day after Waterloo would be a most valuable thing to
have. Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being
murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in
the right way. Upon this principle I, who know nothing of diplomacy or
military arrangements, and have only held my breath like the rest of
the world while France and Germany were bargaining, will tell quite
truthfully of a small scene I saw, one of the thousand scenes that were,
so to speak, the anterooms of that inmost chamber of debate.