"But, of course," said Charles Rann Kennedy, violently (he says most
things rather violently), "you understand that the war's most important
effect on literature was clearly evident long before the war began!"
I did not understand this statement, and said so. Thereupon the author
of _The Servant in the House_ and _The Terrible Meek_ said:
"We have so often been told that great events cast their shadows before,
that the tremendous truth of the phrase has ceased to impress us. The
war which began in August, 1914, exercised a tremendous influence over
the mind of the world in 1913, 1912, 1911, and 1910. The great wave of
religious thought which swept over Europe and America during those years
was caused by the approach of the war. The tremendous pacifist
movement--not the weak, bloodless pacifism of the poltroon, but the
heroic, flaming pacifism of the soldier-hearted convinced of sin--was a
protest against the menacing injustice of the war; it was the world's
shudder of dread.
"The literature of the first decade of the twentieth century was more
thoroughly and obviously influenced by the war than will be that of the
decade following. Think of that amazing quickening of the conscience of
the French nation, a quickening which found expression in the novels of
Rene Bazin, the immortal ballads of Francis Jammes, and in the work of
countless other writers! These people were preparing themselves and
their fellow-countrymen for the mighty ordeal which was before them.
"It is blasphemous to say that the war can only affect things that come
after it; to say that is to attempt to limit the powers of God. There
are, of course, some writers who can only feel the influence of a thing
after it has become evident; after they have carefully studied and
absorbed it. But there are others, the manikoi, the prophetic madmen,
who are swayed by what is to happen rather than by what has happened.
I'm one of them.
"The war held me in its spell long before the German troops crossed
Belgian soil. I wrote my _The Terrible Meek_ by direct inspiration from
heaven in Holy Week, 1912.
"I put that in," said Mr. Kennedy (who looks very much like Gilbert K.
Chesterton's _Man-alive_), suddenly breaking off the thread of his
discourse, "not only because I know that it is the absolute truth, but
because of the highly entertaining way in which it is bound to be
misinterpreted.
"New York's dramatic critics, the Lord Chamberlain of England, the
military authorities of Germany and Great Britain--all these people were
charmingly unanimous in finding _The Terrible Meek_ blasphemous,
villainous, poisonous. Even the New York MacDowell Club, after two
stormy debates, decided to omit all mention of _The Terrible Meek_ from
its bulletin. Perhaps this was not entirely because the play was
'sacrilegious'; the club may possibly have been influenced by the fact
that its author was a loud person with long hair, who told unpleasant
truths in reputable gatherings. And copies of the published book of the
play, which were accompanied by friendly letters from the author, were
refused by every monarch now at war in Europe!
"But in 1914 and 1915 _The Terrible Meek_ suddenly found, to its own
amazement, that it had become a respectable play! Its connection with
the present war became evident. It has been the subject of countless
leading articles; it has been read, and even acted, in thousands of
churches. On the occasion of the first production of the despised play
in New York City, my wife and I received a small pot of roses from a
girls' school which we sometimes visit. In due time this was planted by
the porch of our summer home in Connecticut. This year--three years only
after its planting--the rose-tree covers three-quarters of the big
porch, and last summer it bore thousands of blooms. Now these things are
a parable!
"No, the Lord does not have to wait until the beginnings of mighty wars
for them vitally to influence the literature of the world. Upon some of
us He places the burden of the coming horror years before.
"Although I am and always have been violently opposed to war, I cannot
help observing what this war has already commenced to do for literature.
It is killing Supermanism--and I purposely call it by that name to
distinguish it from the mere actual doctrine that Nietzsche may or may
not have taught. The damnable heresy, as it historically happened among
us, was already beginning to influence very badly most of our young
writers. Clever devilism caught the trick of it too easily. Now, heresy
is sin always and everywhere; and this heresy was a particularly black
and deadly kind of sin. It ate into the very heart of our life.
"And yet there was a reason, almost an excuse, for the power which the
Superman idea got over the minds of writers after Bernard Shaw's first
brilliant and engaging popularization of it. And the excuse is that
Supermanism, with its emphasis on strength and courage and life, was to
a great extent a healthy and almost inevitable reaction from the maudlin
milk-and-water sort of theology and morals that had been apologetically
handed out to us by weak-kneed religious teachers.
"We had too much of the 'gentle Jesus' of the Sunday-school. In our maze
of evil Protestantisms, we had lost sight of the real Son of God who is
Jesus Christ. We had lost the terrible and lovely doctrine of the wrath
of the Lamb.
"And so a great many writers turned to Supermanism with a shout of
relief. They were sick of milk and water, and this seemed to be strong
wine. But Supermanism is heresy, and it rapidly spread over the world,
most perniciously influencing all intellectual life.
"And there were so many things to help Supermanism! There was the
general acceptance of the doctrine of biological necessity as an
argument for war--Bernhardi actually used that phrase, I believe--the
idea that affairs of the spirit are determined exteriorly. There was the
acceptance of various extraordinary interpretations of Darwin's theory
of evolution! Every little man called himself a scientist, and took his
own little potterings-about very seriously. Everything had to be a
matter of observation, these little fellows said; they would believe
only what they saw. They didn't know that real scientists always begin
_a priori_, that real scientists always know the truth first and then
set about to prove it.
"Well, all these people helped the heresy of Supermanism along. But the
people who helped it along chiefly were the apologetic Christians, who
should have combated it with fire and sword. It was helped along by the
sort of Christian who calls himself 'liberal' and 'progressive,' the
sort of Christian who says, 'Of course, I'm not orthodox.' When any one
says that to me, I always answer him in the chaste little way which so
endears me to my day and generation: 'Hell, aren't you? I hope I am!'
"This sort of so-called Christian helps Supermanism in two ways. In the
first place, the 'progressive' Christians are great connoisseurs of
heresy, they simply love any new sort of blasphemous philosophy, whether
it comes from Germany or Upper Tooting. They love to try to assimilate
all the new mad and wicked ideas, and graft them on Christianity. I
suppose it's their idea of making the Lord Jesus Christ up to date and
attractive. They love to try to engrave pretty patterns on the Rock of
Ages. And Supermanism was to them a new and alluring pattern.
"Of course a Supermanism might be worked out on strictly Christian
lines, the Superman in that case being the Christ. But that is not the
way in which the theory has historically worked out. No! Mr. Superman as
we've actually known him in the world recently is the Beast that was
taken, and with him the false prophets that wrought miracles before him,
with which he had deceived them that had received the mark of the Beast
and them that had worshiped his image. And these, in the terrible
symbolism of St. John, you will remember, got fire and brimstone for
their pains! As now!
"Then there was your Christian Supermanism that tried to get up a weak
little imitation of the wrath of the Lamb. This was your bastard by
theatricality and popularity out of so-called muscular Christianity. Not
the virile 'muscular Christianity' of Charles Kingsley, mind you--a
power he won almost alone, by blood and tears; but the 'safe' thing of
the after generation, the 'all things to all men'--when success was well
assured. This is your baseball Christianity, the Christianity of the
'punch,' of the piled-up heap of dollars, of the commercially counted
'conversions' and the rest of the blasphemies! Christ deliver us from
it, if needs be, even by fire!
"Well, Supermanism cast its shadow over all forms of literary
expression. The big and the little mockers all fell under its
spell--they had their fling at Christianity in their novels, their
plays, their poems. In the novel Supermanism was evident not so much in
direct attacks on Christianity as in a brutal and pitiless realism.
Perhaps some of this hard realism was a natural reaction from the
eye-piping sentimentality of some of the Victorian writers. But most of
it was merely Supermanism in fiction--pessimism, egotism, fatalism,
cruelty.
"One thing to be said for the Christian Scientists, the Mental Healers,
the New Thought people generally, is that they did a real service
through all this bad time by refusing to recognize any such heresy as
biological determination as applied to things spiritual. They really did
teach man's freedom up there in the heavens where he properly belongs.
They refused to be bound by the earth, and all the appearances and the
exterior causes thereof. Their Superman, if they ever used the phrase,
was at least the Healer, the spirit spent for others, not for self.
"If you were to ask me what were the war's most conspicuous effects on
literature just at present, I would say conviction of sin, repentance
and turning to God. There can be no suggestion of Supermanism in our
literature now. We have rediscovered the Christian Virtues. If a man
writes something about blond-beasting through the world for his own
good, all we have to do is to stick up in front of his eyes a crucifix.
For the world has seen courage and self-abnegation of the kind that
Christ taught--it has seen men throw their lives away. The war has
shown the world that the man who will throw away his life is braver and
stronger and greater than the man who plunges forward to safety over the
lives of others. The world has learned that he who loses his life shall
gain it.
"The war has thrown a clear light upon Christianity, and now all the
little apologetic 'progressive' Christians see that the world had never
reacted against orthodox Christianity as such, but only against the
bowelless unbelief which masqueraded as Christianity. We have had so
many ministers who talked about Christ as they would have talked about
kippered herrings--even with less enthusiasm. But now any one who speaks
or writes about Christianity after this will have to know that he has to
do with something terribly real.
"Of course, during the war the only people who can write about it are
those who are in the red-hot period of youth. Young men of genius write
in times of stress. The war forces genius to flower prematurely--that is
how we got the noble sonnets of Rupert Brooke.
"And after the war will come to the making of literature the man who has
conquered pain and agony. And that is the real Superman, the Christian
Superman, the Superman who has always been the normal ideal of the
world. Carlyle's Superman was nearer the truth than was Nietzsche's, for
Carlyle's Superman idea was grounded in courage and sacrifice and love;
his Superman was some one worth fighting for and dying for. And the war
is showing us that this is the true Superman, if we want to save the
world for nobler ends.
"And the war, I believe, will do away with the tommy-rotten objection to
'message' in literature. Don't misunderstand me. Of course, we all
object to the stupid 'story with a purpose' in the Sunday-school sense
of that phrase. We don't want literature used as a sugar-coating around
the illuminating lesson that God loves little Willie because he fed the
dicky-birds and didn't say 'damn'! Yet we want literature to awake again
and be as always in the great days--a message. Literature must be a
direct message from the heart of the author to the heart of the world.
The _Prometheus Vinctus_ was such a message. So also the _Antigone_. All
Greek drama was.
"All the little literary and artistic cults are dead or dying. The idea
of literature as a thing distinct from life is dead. Writers can never
again think of themselves as a race separate from the rest of humanity.
All the artificial Bohemias have been destroyed, and can never again
exist; for now at last the new world is about to dawn. Christ is coming.
"And yet this war has made evident the importance of literature. It has
made words real again. It has shown that men cannot live forever on a
lie, written or spoken. God has come upon us like a thief in the night,
and He has judged by our words. Some of us He has turned to madness and
the vain babblings of heathendom. I am no wild chauvinist; though a man,
English-born, it gives me no joy to speak of Germans as Huns, and to
heap up hate and indignation against them. Nor in my wildest flights of
romanticism can I dream that an England yet possessing Lord Northcliffe
and the present Government can be all that God might call delightful.
Mr. Superman has invaded England right enough, that I sadly know; and
Prussianism is not all in Potsdam.
"Yet it is significant, in view of the Superman's birthplace, in view of
the fact that the German people have very largely accepted his doctrine
and ideal, that the men who stand for speech among them, in their public
manifestoes have been delivered over unto confusion and a lie. The
logician has been illogical, the literary artist rendered without form
and void. Their very craft has turned to impotence and self-destruction.
I repeat, this is no happiness to me. Rather, I think of the Germany I
have loved, and I weep for the pity of it all. I am no friend of kings
and kaisers and bankers and grocers and titled newspaper editors, that I
should make their bloodiness mine. But I cannot help but see the sign of
God written across the heavens in words of living fire.
"As I said in _The Terrible Meek_: 'There is great power in words. All
the things that ever get done in the world, good or bad, are done by
words.'
"What we'll have to rediscover is that literature, like life, begins
with the utterance of a word. And until people realize once again that a
word is no mere dead thing buried in a dictionary, but the actual,
awful, wonderful Life of God Himself, we shall neither have nor deserve
to have a literature!"
_THE MASQUE AND DEMOCRACY_