THE GOOSE-STEPPERS
In the year 1901 I was twenty-one years of age, and was ready to quit
Columbia. The great university had become to me nothing but a library
full of books, and some empty class-rooms in which to sit while reading
them. No longer was I lured by elaborate prospectuses, setting forth
lists of “courses”; I had tried forty of them, and knew that nine-tenths
of them were dull. The great institution was a hollow shell, a body
without a soul, a mass of brick and stone held together by red tape.
But before I went out into the world, I made one final test of the
place. I knew by this time exactly what I wanted to do in the world; I
wanted to create literature. I had an overwhelming impulse, so intense
that it had completely ruined me as a hack-writer; my “half-dime” novels
had become impossible to me, and the question of how I was to earn my
living was a serious one.
And here was a great university, devoted to the furthering of all the
liberal arts. This university had trained me to love and reverence the
great writers of the past; what was its attitude to the great writers of
the future? The university controlled and awarded a vast number of
scholarships and fellowships in all branches of learning; that is to
say, it offered support to young men while they equipped themselves to
understand and teach the writings of the past. But what about the
writings of the future? What aid would the university give to these? I
was planning to spend the summer writing a novel, and the idea occurred
to me: Would Columbia University accept a novel as a thesis or
dissertation, or as evidence of merit and of work accomplished, in
competition for any fellowship or endowment under its control?
I made this proposition to the proper authorities at Columbia, the heads
of the various departments of literature, and to the president’s office
as well; and I received one unanimous decision: there was no fellowship
or endowment under the control of the university which could be won by
any kind of creative writing, but only by “scholarship”—that is to say,
by writing about the work of other people!
I was not satisfied entirely. It occurred to me—maybe there was some
other university in this broad land of freedom which might have a more
liberal and intelligent policy than Columbia; so I set out on a campaign
to test out the question. I wrote to the authorities at Harvard, and at
Yale, and at Princeton, and Cornell, and Stanford, and the University of
Pennsylvania, and Chicago, and Wisconsin and California, and I know not
what others. I did not let up until I had made quite certain that among
all the hundreds of millions of dollars of endowment at the disposal of
the great American universities, there was not one dollar which could be
won by a piece of creative literature, nor one university president who
was interested in the possibility that there might be a man of genius
actually alive in America at the beginning of the twentieth century.
So I went out into the world to make my own way, and to fight for the
preservation of my own talent. I had given the academic authorities nine
years in which to do what they could to me, so I might fairly lay claim
to be a completely educated man. I look back now, and see myself as I
was, and I shudder—not merely for myself, but for all other products of
the educational machine. I think of the things I didn’t know, and of the
pains and perils to which my ignorance exposed me! I knew nothing
whatever about hygiene and health; everything of that sort I had to
learn by painful error. I knew nothing about women; I had met only three
or four beside my mother, and had no idea how to deal with them. I knew
as much about sex as was known to the ancient religious ascetics, but
nothing of modern discoveries or theories on the subject.
More significant yet, I knew nothing about modern literature in any
language; I had acquired a supreme and top-lofty contempt for it, and
was embarrassed when I happened to read “Sentimental Tommy,” and
discovered that someone had written a work of genius in my own time! I
knew nothing about modern history; so far as my mind was concerned, the
world had come to an end with the Franco-Prussian war, and nothing had
happened since. Of course, there was the daily paper, but I didn’t know
what this daily paper was, who made it, or what relation it had to me. I
knew that politics was rotten, but I didn’t know the cause of this
rottenness, nor had I any idea what to do about it. I knew nothing about
money, the life-blood of society, nor the part it plays in the life of
modern men. I knew nothing about business, except that I despised it,
and shrank in agony of spirit from contact with business people. All
that I knew about labor was a few tags of prejudice which I had picked
up from newspapers.
Most significant of all to me personally, I was unaware that the modern
revolutionary movement existed. I was all ready for it, but I was as
much alone in the world as Shelley a hundred years before me. I knew, of
course, that there had been Socialism in ancient times, for I had read
Plato, and been amused by his quaint suggestions for the reconstruction
of the world. Also I knew that there had been dreamers and cranks in
America who went off and tried to found Utopian commonwealths. It was
safe for me to be told about these experiments, because they had failed.
I had heard the names of Marx and Lassalle, and had a vague idea of them
as dreadful men, who met in the back rooms of beer-gardens, and
conspired, and made dynamite bombs, and practised free love. That they
had any relationship to my life, that they had anything to teach me,
that they had founded a movement which embraced all the future—of this I
was as ignorant as I was of the civilization of Dahomey, or the
topography of the far side of the moon.
I went out into the world, and learned about these matters, by most
painful experience; and then I looked back upon my education, and
understood many things which had previously been dark. One question I
asked myself: was all that deficiency accidental, or was it deliberate?
Was it merely the ignorance of those who taught me, or was there some
reason why they did not teach me all they knew? I have come to
understand that the latter is the case. Our educational system is not a
public service, but an instrument of special privilege; its purpose is
not to further the welfare of mankind, but merely to keep America
capitalist. To establish this thesis is the purpose of “The Goose-step.”
And first a few words as to the title. We spent some thirty billions of
treasure, and a hundred thousand young lives, to put down the German
autocracy; being told, and devoutly believing, that we were thereby
banishing from the earth a certain evil thing known as Kultur. It was
not merely a physical thing, the drilling of a whole population for the
aggrandizement of a military caste; it was a spiritual thing, a regimen
of autocratic dogmatism. The best expression of it upon which I have
come in my readings is that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Prussian
philosopher and apostle of Nationalism; I quote two sentences, from a
long discourse: “To compel men to a state of right, to put them under
the yoke of right by force, is not only the right but the sacred duty of
every man who has the knowledge and the power.... He is the master,
armed with compulsion and appointed by God.” I ask you to read those
sentences over, to bear them in mind as you follow chapter after chapter
of this book; see if I am not right in my contention that what we did,
when we thought we were banishing the Goose-step from the world, was to
bring it to our own land, and put ourselves under its sway—our thinking,
and, more dreadful yet, the teaching of our younger generation.