PACE-MAKING IN POLITICS
I
Inside the Council, meanwhile, curious and uncomfortable things had been
happening. The King's talkativeness had steadily increased; no one could
reduce him to reason.
"He reminds me," said one of his ministers irritably, "of the
school-boy's story of the tea-kettle which discovered locomotion. Off
boiled the lid: 'Why!' cries the observant inventor, 'put that upon
wheels and it would go!' So he put it upon wheels and it went. He is
exactly like that tea-kettle on wheels, miraculously set going without
any inside reason to guide him! In my opinion before long there will
have to be a regency." He tapped his skull meaningly, but in the wrong
place: he should have tapped the back of it.
"What? Prince Max!" ejaculated his auditor; "I should hardly call that a
remedy!"
"Nothing can be worse," declared the other, "than things as they are!"
In that he made a mistake; they were going to be much worse. The King's
new mental activities were only just getting into their stride; and from
a very unexpected quarter he was about to receive aid.
At the Council board, where the King had now found voice, one alone sat
humorously interested and amused--the Minister of Fine Arts. He was not
an artist himself--had he been he would never have been allowed to
occupy that position; he was a Professor of History, Teller by name,
and more than any of his fellow-ministers he studied life. Nothing
interested him so much as the human machine; and to see this rather
humdrum monarch suddenly developing into a tea-kettle on wheels, as his
colleague had so happily phrased it, filled him with profound interest
and an underlying sympathy.
Dimly the King had become aware that somewhere in that body of adroit
shufflers who were supposed to minister to his constitutional needs the
confused cry of his conscience had evoked an echo. He saw under a high
bald forehead kindly eyes watching him; and it was a kindly voice
charged with considerateness which one day, over a matter in which time
pressed, begged for a further interview.
International exhibitions had become the vogue; and in putting on its
peace paint for the Jubilee, Jingalo had determined to maintain its
prestige among the nations by holding a conversazione of the Arts. In
matters of that sort his Majesty had no particular taste; but in an art
exhibition it was his duty to be interested. If need be he would open
it, and would say of art and of its relations to the national life
anything that the commissioners required of him. He would also lend any
pictures from the royal collection which did not leave too obvious a gap
upon the walls. All this was a mere matter of course; but the occasion
being important--one of the great events indeed of the Jubilee
festivities--it was expected of him that he should give a rather special
consideration to the final plans.
Though wearied by the circumlocutions of his Council which had lasted
throughout the morning, he named an hour, and at six o'clock received
his minister in private audience.
The Professor began to explain matters in the usual official tone, but
before long perceived that the attention paid to him was merely formal.
The King sat depressed, listless, and cold. This renewal of the official
routine found him mentally fagged out; it was evident that his thoughts
were elsewhere.
Making the matter as short as he could in decency, the Professor folded
his memoranda and returned them to his pocket.
Recalled to himself by the ensuing silence the King spoke--
"I really don't know enough about it to say anything," he murmured. "No
doubt you have arranged everything for the best." But still he remained
seated as though the interview were not ended, and the minister had
perforce to remain seated also.
"I fear that to-day we have wearied your Majesty," he said at last to
fill up the pause. "The Council is sometimes very trying."
The King lifted forlorn eyes in a sort of gratitude upon this, the least
troublesome of all his ministers. "You, at least," he answered, "have
not to reproach yourself, for I noticed that you did not speak."
"I was listening," answered the Professor; "I was much struck by your
Majesty's line of argument."
"You agreed?"
"I cannot separate myself from my colleagues," returned the minister
cautiously; "but I recognized the strength of your Majesty's case. On
its own premises, if well put, it becomes unanswerable."
"I hardly thought that I had put it well." The King's voice showed
despondency.
"To be perfectly frank, sir," said the Professor, tempering the amiable
twinkle of his gaze with a deferential movement of the head, "you did
not. The historical argument requires a knowledge of history."
"You remind me of another of my deficiencies, Professor."
"It is shared, your Majesty, by nearly the whole of the Cabinet. Very
few of us, sir, knew anything more of it than you; and those of us who
did were intent on concealing our knowledge."
"Very considerate, I am sure."
"Not at all, sir: our knowledge would have given strength to your
argument."
The King sat up a little at this confirmation of his suspicions. "Do you
mean, then, that my ministers make it a part of their duty to conceal
from me the truth?"
"Some truths, sir," submitted the Professor, "may have undue weight
given to them, which it then becomes a councilor's duty to correct.
After all, history is only history; if at times we cannot break from it
we shall never get anywhere."
"Yet all to-day," protested the King, "history, precedent, and the
Constitution are the words that have been drummed into my ears, for all
the world as though I, and not you, were the preacher of subversive
doctrine."
"Your Majesty will remember that in this country we have had three
successful revolutions against the Constitution. In one the monarchy was
successful, in two the people."
"Is that said as a warning?"
"By no means, sir; merely to show that precedents lie on both sides like
dry bones in the wilderness. But it requires the power of a prophet to
call those dry bones to life. At present I see no prophet in Israel."
"Yet every member of the Government prophesies."
"I noticed, sir, that you did not. Never once did you pretend to know
what the future would bring forth: you only pointed to the past,
deducing therefrom your duty, as you conceived it, to the Constitution.
Conditionally that commanded my respect."
"Surely," said the King, "I am bound, whatever the conditions, to hold
sacred a trust which has been committed to me by inheritance."
The Professor bowed. "With your Majesty," he assented, "the hereditary
principle must naturally be strong: it is implanted in your blood. I
have no such impulse in mine. My father was born in a workhouse."
"That is very remarkable," said the King. "To have attained to your
present position, your life must have been full of interest and
adventure."
"Full of interest--yes. Adventure--no. Very plodding, very uneventful,
almost monotonous apart from mental happenings. Now and then an unsought
stroke of fortune. That is all."
"How did you ever get into the Cabinet?" inquired the King, in a tone
that betrayed a sort of puzzled respect.
"Merely to fill a gap in a ministry whose days were numbered. Then an
unexpected turn of the wheel kept us in power, and I remained. It was an
inglorious arrival, but I found I could be of use: a sort of connecting
line between incompatibles. I am not unpopular with my colleagues, and
left alone in my department, I go my own way."
"And what is your way?" inquired the King, still searching for guidance.
"I do nearly everything as my permanent officials tell me, recognizing
that while ministers come and go permanent officials remain and acquire
experience from both sides. On the other hand, I use my own discretion
in the hastening or suspension of the superannuation clause; I promote
by results and not by seniority. My department, in consequence, is the
most efficient in the whole Civil Service, and I have less work to do
than any other minister. Thus I am left with more leisure and energy to
devote to the consideration of policy, and affairs in general."
"And do you approve," inquired the King, "of the present policy?"
The minister paused. "I think the pace is about right," he said
reflectively.
"The pace?"
"Yes; government to-day, sir, is largely a matter of pace, the actual
measures do not so much matter. Modern democracy is making for something
of which we are all really--the governing classes I mean--profoundly
apprehensive: and the problem now is to let it come about without actual
catastrophe. When I used the word 'pace,' I had a certain graphic
illustration in my mind--an incident I once heard from the manager of a
railway--the recountal of which will show your Majesty what I mean.
"A passenger train, before arriving at the head of a long, evenly
graded declivity, had taken on three or four good trucks heavily laden.
Owing to some carelessness in the coupling these wagons became detached
on the very crest of the descent, and falling to the rear came almost to
a halt. Not quite: sluggishly at first they began to move, and gathering
impetus from sheer weight followed in the track of the proceeding train.
Halfway down the declivity, the engine-driver discovered his loss and
the danger that threatened him. Looking back, he saw in the distance the
wagons weighted by the labor of men's hands drawing nearer with a speed
that grew ever more formidable. His one chance, therefore, of avoiding a
catastrophe was to put on pace in the hope of arriving at more level
conditions before the impact took place. Yet he must still limit himself
to a speed which enabled the train to keep to the rails on a certain
sharp curve which lay ahead. That was the problem which the
engine-driver set himself to solve: up to a certain point the more pace
he could allow the greater his chance of safety, beyond that point a new
danger arising out of pace lay ahead of him."
The minister paused.
"What happened?" inquired the King.
"He negotiated the curve with success, and had got so far ahead that
when the wagons finally overtook him their impetus had been diminished
by the more level conditions of the road, and the impact was but slight.
Only the guard's van was smashed, and the guard himself rather badly
disabled."
"And what happened afterwards to the guard and the engine-driver?"
inquired his Majesty, much interested.
"The guard was pensioned for life: the engine-driver was promoted."
"And whose fault was it--the guard's?"
"Well, not exactly," replied the Professor; "the careless coupling was
done by others, but the guard had the right, which he had not chosen to
exercise, to refuse to accompany any train in which his van was not put
last--so as to embrace the whole combination. At least, he had the
technical right."
"I suppose he did not wish to give trouble," said the King meditatively.
"Very likely; for, of course, had he exercised his right the whole train
would have been delayed by the extra shunting."
"And he in consequence a less acceptable servant to his employers."
"No one could have blamed him."
"Not for excess of caution?" queried the King. "Did you not yourself
say that on those lines government would become impossible? You have
to run your railway system, it seems, with a certain risk of
accidents--otherwise you would never be up to time."
"That is so," said the Professor. "In every political crisis it is pace
more than principle that I find one has to consider. If it is solved in
such and such a way, our pace will be so and so, and the question--will
it take us safely over the curve? If it is solved in another way so that
the pace slackens, those wagons in the rear may be down upon us."
"And the guard, whose control, while the train makes its running, is but
nominal, is then the first to suffer!" He saw himself in the man's
place. "Poor glow-worm!" he cried, "he may change the green light in his
tail to red--or was it red to begin with? but it is no use! Those
proletarian forces descending upon him from the rear are quite blind in
their purpose: it is merely dead weight and impetus that send them
along." And then he pulled up abruptly, astonished to find that he was
talking in Max's manner. Was it so catching?
"Not wholly blind, sir," said the Professor; "believe me, they mean
well--mainly to themselves, no doubt: that is only human nature. Every
body in the community, whether energized or sluggish, has some weight
attached to it; and the more that bodies can agree to combine the
greater is their weight politically. One has to recognize that consensus
of opinion carries with it a certain moral as well as physical force.
Out of that springs the evolution of our governing system."
"Only I," said the King, "in the nature of things have always to stand
alone."
"Sir, you have all history!" said the Professor.
"Which, as you have reminded me, I do not know."
"May I inquire, sir, whether you have a real wish to know?"
"Why, naturally!" exclaimed the King. Whereupon the Professor, as though
laying aside something of his officialdom, took up an easier attitude
and addressed himself to the point.
"It would, I think, sir, be quite compatible with my duty to my
colleagues were I to send your Majesty a few volumes of constitutional
history with certain appropriate passages marked. It would interest me
very greatly to hear the argument developed on the lines you have
already laid down. The history I would venture to send is a thoroughly
reliable and standard authority, written by an eminent jurist to whose
words we later historians still bow. As I said, sir, _pace_ is to-day
the thing which really matters; beyond a given pace we, certainly, are
not able to go. Luckily for our present plans there is no source from
which any forcing of the pace seems probable. I do not think this or any
other ministry dare attempt it. Speaking for ourselves any increase of
the present pace would, I conceive, become a grave embarrassment. If,
therefore, your Majesty has been apprehensive of our adopting any
increase of speed, I think you may be reassured. After the
constitutional readjustment our pace is scarcely likely to grow
dangerous."
The Professor had managed to indicate that these were--if so it might be
allowed--his last words. The King rose.
"I shall be much obliged, Professor," said he, "if you will lend me the
books you have mentioned. When may I look for them?"
"Sir," said the Professor, in smooth matter-of-fact tones, "it so
happens that I have them with me in my carriage. I will have them
conveyed to your Majesty immediately."
And therewith he bowed over the King's hand and departed.
II
Left to himself the King stood considering for a while. He was pleased,
but puzzled. What had this man, wise and kindly, been telling him? What
advice were his words intended to convey? He was quite sure now that
this minister had come and talked to him for a purpose: and what he had
mainly talked about was "pace." It was "pace" that mattered. That was
all very well, but with pace he himself had nothing to do--except in a
negative sort of way. He, occupying the position of guard with brakes to
his hand but no steam-power, could only cause delay; he had no means,
and no object that he could see, for accelerating matters. Besides, had
not the Professor said that in his estimation the pace was about right?
All his efforts to secure delay would--he was already aware of it--fail
of their effect; ministerial resignation threatening, he would have to
give in. The alternative, the mad alternative that had for a moment
occurred to him--no, it would not do! The results might be too
tremendous, might lead even to revolution and a republic, and so he gave
the problem up. And then a pile of six large volumes "with Professor
Teller's humble duty" was brought in and set down before him; and John
of Jingalo sat down to read the marked passages.
It was a reading that for its completion extended over many days.
What first attracted his attention, however, was a chronological series
of plates, showing the map of Europe in all its political changes from
the tenth to the twentieth century. This was, in fact, a key to the
whole work, for as the author rightly pointed out in his opening
paragraph the history of Europe was inextricably bound up in the history
of Jingalo, and the one could not be properly studied without some
understanding of the other.
These maps of Europe he turned from century to century; and there, as he
marked their many variations, there always to be recognized was Jingalo
occupying its proud historical position--so often challenged, yet still
on the whole unchanged. It had found room to live and breathe, not by
its own strength, but by a careful adjustment of the political balance
between others, and a neutralization artfully and sometimes
treacherously contrived of greater forces than its own. It had for
neighbors two great military states and several smaller ones; and had at
some time or another been at war with nearly all of them.
Often--generally in fact--it had come out of those wars more vanquished
than victorious (though Jingalese school-books carefully concealed the
fact): it had lost, for proof, more territory than any other power in
the world except England, and yet, like England, cherished the curious
conviction that it had won all the really important battles and dictated
each peace upon its own terms. Having been wholesomely driven out of
France in the fifteenth century, it had captured and carried away with
it as trophy the order of the White Feather, with its proud motto, "J'y
suis, j'y reste." In the eighteenth century it had adopted by compulsion
from Germany an alteration in its law of regal inheritance, and had
marked its adhesion to the new formula by the institution of the order
of the Dachshund, with the obsequious motto, "Das ist mir ganz Wurst,"
popularly mistranslated by the wags of the day into, "That is the worst
for me." Beaten by the infidel in the Crusades it had joined thenceforth
to its regalia the holy crown of Jerusalem; and having thrown over the
Papacy at the time of the Reformation, had added to its armorial
bearings the Keys of St. Peter, and to its royal claims and titles the
Kingship of Rome. A frequent and murderous deposition of its kings had
but accentuated its devotion to the monarchic system: while its solemn
confirmation of each fresh breach of continuity had stood to reaffirm
its general belief in the hereditary principle, and in divine providence
as controlled by Act of Parliament. The only other country in the world
which had acted with such scrupulous inconsistency, unrepentant and
unashamed, was England. It was no wonder, therefore, that in their
history the two countries had much in common; and it must have been
through sheer inadvertence, in view of their rival claims to be the
constitutional pace-makers of Europe, that while they had often stood
badly in the way of each other's interests they had never yet fallen to
blows.
International politics, however, were not for the moment the King's
chief concern, and he turned back from the pages of Europe to study in
detail the constitutional history of his own country and the powers it
still reserved for its kings.
While he pursued these studies, many things new and strange presented
themselves to his gaze. There were, he discovered, powers of the Crown
still extant, though lapsing through gradual desuetude, of which he had
never dreamt, and as to the existence of which no one had made it his
duty to inform him. Some of them had been in regular practice less than
forty years ago; they were becoming obsolete merely because the advisers
of the Crown wished it. Just as the House of the Laity was now falling
more and more under the control of a Cabinet whose powers waxed as the
other's waned, so the King himself was in the hands of those whose
interests were to conceal from him the powers he possessed.
He came on a page where the right of royal initiative in Council had
been thoughtfully underlined by the Professor; and he discovered with
astonishment that a whole series of constitutional questions lay
altogether outside the competence of ministers to deal with until they
had been first formally submitted to the King himself. Under this
heading he found that no financial proposal touching on Crown lands, or
on grants to the royal family, could become a matter of ministerial
discussion without his consent first given; no proposal to alter the
royal line of succession or the oath taken by the King at his
coronation; no change of definition in the articles or creed of the
Established Church; no alienation of Church lands; no fresh institution
of any rank, title, order, or degree, nor the abolition thereof; no
alteration in the laws governing the right of the voteless to petition
the King against the acts of his ministers; no subsidy or treaty of war,
and no surrender, barter, or exchange to a foreign power of any part
whatsoever of the King's dominions; no appointment to a foreign embassy;
no elevation of a commoner to rank or title; no issue of royal patents;
no free pardons for criminals, and no change in the composition of
either of the two Houses of Parliament. All these things must be
formally submitted to the will of the Crown before being entered as
items of the ministerial policy.
"My word!" cried the King, perceiving for the first time how
unconstitutionally that word had been set at naught. He could hardly
believe his senses. Here under his nose, all these weeks lèse majesté
had been rampantly disporting itself; and he knew nothing of it!
Possibly the Prime Minister knew nothing of it either; had not the
Professor said that many of his colleagues were as ignorant of
constitutional history as the sovereign himself? But some knew--some
must know! And the King, who but a few hours before had believed himself
the most helpless of emblems, a mere ornamental topknot to the
constitutional edifice, now found himself armed with weapons of
far-reaching precision that would enable him to carry war into the
enemy's country. Metaphorically he clapped his wings and crowed. Yes, it
was as though that weathercock, to which hitherto he had likened
himself, that toy of chance, swung this way and that upon a pivot with
no will of its own, had suddenly taken to itself life and wing and
power, and quitting its stake had descended into the arena with beak and
claw stiffened for the fray. That board of tormenting ministers was now
in his power--for a time at any rate.
In his excitement he got upon his feet and trotted about the room, and
pausing now and again he gazed ahead with a gloating eye on a whole
series of ministerial councils to come. For this monarch, you must
remember, had been departmentalized all his life, and to that extent
dehumanized; and it was only in a departmental way that he recognized
his opportunity. The power to strike which he now visualized came
through no intellectual enlargement, no opening up of moral vistas, but
only through the discovery that he had on his side a mass of red tape
the existence of which he had not previously suspected. In similar
trammels to those which had so long hampered and restricted his own
movements it was now possible for him to entangle the goings of his
ministers. A hundred and one things had been done which were not merely
out of order but--oh, blessed word!--unconstitutional; and in
consequence the poor dear man's mind was in a welter of delight. At last
he had a weapon to his hand whose reach and mechanism he could
manipulate. "Oh, dear me, yes!" he said to himself, and said it several
times.
When a character of childlike simplicity has got hold of a loaded gun,
it has a natural instinct to let it off. The actual direction, and what
the target is to be, are not so important as the delightful sense of
hearing the gun go off,--of proving by actual demonstration that it
really was a loaded and dangerous thing, capable of causing
consternation. John of Jingalo was simple, and when he got up from his
first solid reading of the Professor's volumes he felt that he was well
primed; and his instinct was to let himself go, to spread himself, to
attack his enemy with extended front so that they would not know where
to have him. Half-a-dozen small tags of red tape gave him a far greater
sense of resource and opportunity for aggression than any one good piece
of measurable length capable of being well wound and knotted. His
powers, such as they were, were largely imitative; and now for some
weeks the wordy Max had been coaching him. The Professor had supplied
him with the material, Max with the method for applying it; the
Professor had given him his head, Max had given him his tongue. Looking
forward to the exercise of his new-found powers he meant, in a word, to
be voluble; and when in later chapters he becomes yet more surprising,
let the reader remember that fortuitous crack at the back of his skull
through which the windows of his head were open and his brain-pan a
place of draughts wherein any winds of doctrine might blow. A word of
opposition, a mere gust of excitement, were now quite enough to set him
going, and once started he was very difficult to stop.
For much the same reason, having once started to prance up and down the
carpet--that carpet so variegated and Maxian in its pattern--he found it
very difficult to sit down again; and would not have done so had not the
measured striking of the clock upon the chimney-piece reminded him that
he was expecting a visit from Max. Then a curious change came over his
deportment; he stood considering, glancing from the telltale volumes
upon the table to the door through which he was presently expecting his
son to enter. Then with a secretive look and a shake of the head, "Oh,
dear me, no," he murmured very softly; and taking up the books he put
them away in a drawer and locked it, and, when presently Max came in,
said nothing of his new discovery, but sat docile and listened, while
the other drew out the shining length of his vocabulary, making words
sound like deeds.
Not for nothing was John of Jingalo the son of his father, not for
nothing a descendant of kings who so far as they consciously achieved
power had always held it possessively and exclusively, withholding the
key from their heirs. Post obits were not popular in that royal House of
Ganz-Wurst which for two hundred years had ruled over Jingalo.