HISTORY AND POLITICS
_History is philosophy teaching by examples._
BOLINGBROKE.
_The science of Politics is the one science that is deposited by the
stream of history, like grains of gold in the sand of a river._
ACTON.
Reared in the home of a political journalist, it was natural that Paul
Jones should be attracted to public affairs. He followed with lively
curiosity the progress of the two general elections of 1910, and from
that year was an interested observer of political events. As he grew
older his bent towards politics became more pronounced. A youth
familiar with Roman, mediaeval and modern history could not fail to be
fascinated by the political drama unfolding before his eyes. He
watched history in the making with the same eagerness that he read the
history of the past. The prevailing tone at Dulwich, as at most public
schools, is Conservative. Paul was a perfervid Liberal. In school and
out of school, not only did he not disguise, he gloried in his
advanced opinions. The extent of his political knowledge and the
ripeness of his views were astonishing in one so young.
From the moment he began to think for himself his sympathies flowed
out to the wage-earning classes. What he remembered and what he had
heard of his Puritan grandfather, William Jones, a grand specimen of
the Victorian artisan, who died in December, 1905, on the verge of 80,
deepened his regard for them. But his own broad and sympathetic nature
would have drawn him instinctively to their side. In his judgment it
was on and by the working-classes that the wheels of the world moved
forward. He had nothing but contempt for the sparrow-like frivolity of
fashionable Society, and was repelled from the middle classes by their
servitude to conventions, their prejudices social and political, and
their non-receptivity to ideas. He for his part must breathe an ampler
air. He was wont to speak disdainfully of the Victorian era, because,
in spite of all the advances it witnessed in the physical sciences and
of Britain's rapid growth in wealth between 1850 and 1890, it did so
little for social welfare.
For feudal magnates and the _nouveaux riches_ he had scant respect,
holding that both the aristocracy and the plutocracy had used their
political power for selfish ends. Old feudalism in some respects he
regarded as better than new Capital, for the landed aristocracy did at
least recognise some obligations to those under their sway, whereas
Capital was so concerned with its rights that it forgot altogether its
reciprocal duties. His view was that, under shelter of the
_laissez-faire_ system, with its false presumption that employers and
employed were on a parity in bargaining power, Capital had
scandalously evaded its obligations to Labour. He regarded the
conditions of life in some of our industrial districts as a grave
reproach to the nation. The lust for wealth and other unlovely aspects
of competitive commercialism were most repugnant to him. He knew that
Nature cares not a rap for equality and lavishes her gifts with a
strange caprice. But though there is inequality of natural gifts, he
thought it was the duty of the State to ensure equality of opportunity
to all its citizens. His ideal was a co-operative commonwealth, in
which the competitive spirit would be held in check by communal needs
and aims, and where every career would be opened freely to talent. In
one of his essays he deplores the fact that political economists had
fallen into the delusion of applying the laws that govern the
exchange of commodities without any variation to Labour, and leaving
out of account intangibles and imponderables like moral forces and
other expressions of the delicate and mysterious human spirit.
Political economy, he thought, would have to be recast and humanised.
"The economists," he said, "have entirely ignored the human factor."
Paul's conviction was that when the rule of enlightened democracy was
established wars would cease. "The peoples never want wars," he wrote;
"under a pure democracy wars would be impossible." Because of the
associations clustering around it the word "Imperialism" jarred on
him, but he took pride in the greatness of the free and liberal
British Empire, with its rule of law, its love of peace, its humane
ideals. He had the historical sense in highly developed degree. The
story of human progress stretched before the eye of his mind in a
series of vivid pictures. Surveying the immense and imposing fabric of
recorded events woven by the ceaseless loom of Time, he had an
unerring instinct for the shining figures, the salient characteristic,
the determining factor. Away from a library he could have written a
quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical
characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Caesar,
Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth,
Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and
Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther,
Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan
age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her
enigmatical personality, marvellous statecraft and capacity for
inspiring devotion, and of the brilliant galaxy of great men,
statesmen and sailors, poets and scholars, who enriched her reign with
so much glory. Another epoch he loved to study was that of the French
Revolution. I have already referred to his habit of annotating the
books he read. From notes he made on political books and from some of
his essays I have culled the following:
Man's tool-using power is simply a symbol of man's unique
reasoning gifts. Its connotations may be extended to mean the
entire intellect.
The savage using his language with joy like a child, gives us the
wealth of beautiful mythology about all natural objects.
It is wonderful to think that Julius Caesar's imperial system was
handed right down to the nineteenth century, until one not unlike
Caesar himself set his foot upon its neck in 1806. But long before
it fell the Holy Roman Empire had really ceased, in Voltaire's
words, to be holy, or Roman, or an empire.
Froude holds up to admiration the "serene calmness" of Tacitus,
and says he took no side. But I ask anyone who has read the
sarcastic remarks about Domitian and the Emperors in the
"Agricola" whether he thinks Tacitus took no side in writing
history.
Nothing can alter the fact that Mohammedanism has done a vast
amount of good. Compare Carlyle's appreciation of Mahomet with
Gibbon's acrimonious insinuations.
Much that is strange in human history is explained if we remember
that aristocracies in the West were political, while in the East
they were religious.
Hildebrand, who boldly declared that the Church compared to the
State was as the sun to the moon--the State only shining by light
borrowed from the greater orb--was now on the papal throne. His
giant intellect and tremendous personality had overawed Henry IV
into ignominious capitulation at Canossa. With Europe at his feet
Hildebrand cannot but have desired to assert his authority over
the island-State across the Channel. William the Conqueror and
Hildebrand were rarely-matched antagonists--the one determined to
set bounds to the Pope's scheme of world-domination; the Pope
equally determined to bend the stubborn Norman to his will. It
was the Conqueror who won.
The conception of the Norman Conquest has shifted from the
grotesque over-estimate of Thierry to the under-estimate of
Freeman and Maitland. To the moderns the Conquest is now little
more than a change of dynasty. A juster estimate would be that
the very change of dynasty gave the Conquest its vital
importance.... The effects were really immense. The Conquest
substituted for the degenerate race of Anglo-Saxon kings a virile
dynasty able to give to England what it needed--a vigorous
central administration--and brought the English people into the
stream of European civilisation.
It was the hope of Erasmus that Catholic forms could be blended
with the Greek spirit.
Luther's songs express the very soul of old Germany; above all,
the great hymn "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott."
Though the Reformation in freeing the mind of man from
ecclesiastical tyranny made eventually for political liberty, its
whole tendency in England for the time being was in favour of
absolute monarchy. Its first outcome here was to set up a secular
monarchy, supreme in Church and State, founded on the theory of
the divine right of kings, based on an aristocracy made loyal by
the instinct of self-interest.
Commerce and national wealth were at stake in the war between
England and Spain in the sixteenth century, and not merely,
perhaps not even mainly, religion.
Drake was a very great sailor, but he was undoubtedly a
buccaneer.
Many Ministers had been sent to the block for offences far less
rank than those of Charles I; nevertheless, his execution was
absolutely illegal and a fatal mistake in policy.
Few men experienced such hard treatment at the hands of fortune
as Cromwell. In every case, save the rule of the major-generals,
his constitutional experiments were wise, far-seeing and
well-conceived. It was the perverse conduct of those who
professed to be his followers that ruined all.
There has never been a shrewder king on a throne than Charles II.
In the popular view, James II will always be regarded as the
tyrannical despot, the subverter of the religious and political
institutions of England, while his brother, Charles II, will be
looked upon as a kindly and amiable gentleman, who oppressed no
one and treated everyone kindly. Yet in the view of the student
of history Charles becomes the tyrant and James an honest though
bigoted fool.
To compare the age of Cromwell with that of Charles II is to see
the Dorian and Lydian spirits respectively in their most
contrasted lights.
The difference between Richelieu and Mazarin is the difference
between the creator and the developer.
The political revolution of 1688 was contemporaneous with a
revolution in physics, shown by Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of the blood; with a revolution in astronomical
thought, shown by Newton's "Principia"; with a small revolution
in literature, shown by the rise of English prose; with a
revolution in popular feeling all over the world, as shown by the
riots against excessive taxation in France and the ejection of de
Witt in Holland. All the different threads of life seem to run
interwoven, and one cannot be disturbed without disturbing the
others.
The character of Frederick the Great was stained by many infamous
deeds; he was in many ways unscrupulous, yet he was never petty,
and he was devoted to his country. He was the greatest genius in
practical reforms and in the art of war that the eighteenth
century produced.
Frederick the Great has had a far stronger and better influence
on history than a selfish, callous person like Louis XIV.
Of all the benevolent despots there is only one, Frederick the
Great, to whom can be fitly applied what Johnson said of
Goldsmith: "Let not his faults be remembered: he was a very great
man."
Under a despotism the aristocracy loses all its powers, and,
except for the bureaucracy and "King's friends," there is no
privileged class unless the King is a weak man and under the
thumb of his court (e.g., contrast the France of Louis XIV with
that of Louis XV).
Carlyle in his "French Revolution" paints a wonderfully vivid
picture of the idle, voluptuous noblesse of the eighteenth
century: compare the views of de Tocqueville.
Carlyle in his grim account of the death-bed of Louis XV writes:
"We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's
death-bed." Paul's comment: "cf. the episode of the death of
Front-de-Boeuf in 'Ivanhoe.'"
Lord Chesterfield saw clearly the symptoms of the coming
Revolution in France. Only two other men in Europe foresaw that
immense event: Goldsmith and Arthur Young. Note Gibbon's
complacent attitude _in re_ France to illustrate the general lack
of vision on the subject.
Voltaire's summing up of the consequences of Turgot's fall may be
expressed in Sir Edward Grey's phrase: "Death, disaster and
damnation."
If Louis XVI had been wiser and more capable, would he have
averted the French Revolution? I think not. It is to be doubted
whether even a strong king, after so many years of tyranny which
had generated such hatred of the ancient regime, could have
checked the flow of forces making for the Revolution. Apart from
the effect of the old tyranny, new ideas of democracy were
arising. Witness the contemporary failure of a great benevolent
despot in Joseph II.
There was no idea of nationality in the foreign policy of the
younger Pitt.
Hilaire Belloc's description of the guillotining of the
Dantonists forms a picture among the most thrilling, enthralling
and agonising that I know.
Fox stands out as one of the most brilliant failures and one of
the most ineffective geniuses in history.
Before war broke out in 1870 the world believed in the military
superiority of France. Only that grim trio, Bismarck, Moltke and
Roon, knew the contrary.
William the First, grandfather of the present Kaiser, was an
absurdly overestimated character. He owed all his success to his
great Ministers.
Treitschke writes: "The territories drained by great rivers are
usually centres of civilisation.... Our Rhine remains the king of
all rivers, but what great thing has ever happened on the
Danube?" Paul's comment on this:
"I know of only three great events on the Danube. One, the
capture of Vienna by the Turks; two, the Battle of Blenheim;
three, the Battle of Ulm."
The Jews are a truly extraordinary race. Though they have for
centuries been persecuted, despised, outcast, so far from being
crushed by their sufferings, they seem actually to have been
toughened in fibre, and to-day they exercise a commanding
influence in the world.
England's geographical position does not fit her for the role of
a Continental Power. Her home is on the sea; her empire
world-wide.
Each race, each nation, has its own characteristics, its own
peculiar type of civilisation. Attempts to destroy these inherent
qualities have time and time again been baffled--as the examples
of the Jews, Poland and Alsace-Lorraine clearly demonstrate....
As Treitschke puts it: "The idea of a world-State is odious. The
whole content of civilisation cannot be realised in a single
State. Every people has the right to believe that certain powers
of the Divine Reason display themselves in it at their highest."
Patriotism may indeed be but a larger form of selfishness, but it
is a larger form. It does involve devotion to others. As long as
men are men, it is so unlikely as almost to be impossible that
patriotism will ever be replaced by cosmopolitanism.
A great point in favour of the rule of democracy is its
character-building power.
It is customary in a certain class of society to abuse
trade-unionism. People talk of the tyranny of trade-unionism; it
would be as easy, perhaps more justifiable, to talk of the
tyranny of Capital. The trade union has its counterpart in what
are termed the "upper classes." For example, the British Medical
Association is nothing but a trade union under another name. The
trade union is an absolute necessity to the worker in modern
society.
_Laissez-faire_ has advantages up to a point; State control has
advantages up to a point. The most successful nation will be that
one which succeeds in making a judicious mixture of the two
systems.
The Englishman in his devil-may-care way does not trouble to
persecute or oppress; his tolerant spirit, aided by the splendid
devotion of a few great men, has, in the words of Seeley, built
up a glorious free Empire "in a fit of absence of mind."
You will never make the English people idealistic, but you will
never conquer them on that very account.
While the German talks and dreams of world-Empire, the Englishman
smiles, puts his pipe in his mouth and goes off to found it by
accident.
The modern system of diplomacy is as vile as anything can be.
Even in England it is the negation of popular government.
Man's duty to his neighbour ought to be observed as well as the
harsh and pitiless laws of trade and competition.
The social conditions of our industrial towns to-day are a
standing indictment of the _laissez-faire_ system.
The great warrior is no more important than the humble toiler.
Gladstone's finance was governed by the determination to spend as
little as possible. It does not seem to be so good as that of
Lloyd George, viz., to be prepared to spend a great deal provided
you are sure it is for the benefit of the people.
On a remark of Dr. Sarolea's _in re_ the alleged inherent
antagonism between Europe and America on the one side and Asia
and Africa on the other: "Absurd! If we are to be good Europeans
we must first of all be good world citizens. The Asiatic is as
much our brother as is the Belgian or the American."
It is not the case that England has checked Germany's Colonial
development. Germany has herself to blame--herself and destiny.
But I must say that Germany had to some extent right on her side
in the Morocco dispute.
The Germans ignore the fact that wherever we British go we throw
our ports open to the commerce of the world.
In the autumn of 1914 my son read General von Bernhardi's book,
"Germany and the Next War." In his notes on this book he drew
attention to Bernhardi's frequent self-contradictions and his false
philosophy. From these notes the following excerpts are taken:
Here Bernhardi flatly contradicts the biological argument he uses
earlier in the chapter. Biology knows nothing of States; it sees
only human beings.
Look at the intimate connection between Darwinism and the
political and economic views of the Individualist Radicals of the
mid-Victorian era.
Bernhardi assumes that mere material existence is always to be
man's destiny. But the perpetuation of existence beyond the
immediate present cannot be guided by the instinct of grabbing.
The modern theory is that good and bad as abstract considerations
do not exist, but that they are what experience shows to be best
for us in the end. The animal knows this subconsciously; man
consciously to a certain extent.
Emphatically No; mere brute force is not the law of the universe.
Bernhardi may as well talk of conquering the moon as of
conquering the U.S.A.
Man's true development consists above all in the negation of his
selfish elements for the good of humanity.
Bernhardi's proposition, "Only the State which strives after an
enlarged sphere of influence can create the conditions under
which mankind develops into the most splendid perfection," Paul
counters by asking: "How does this theory fit in with the case of
the Greeks, who, politically so weak, were yet intellectually so
great that to-day, after 2,000 years, their influence in Europe
is as great as ever? Which would you rather have been, tiny
Greece or vast Persia?"
On Bernhardi's remark: "No excuse for revolutionary agitation in
Germany now exists."
No excuse? When the people have no power at all, and can at any
moment be led to the slaughter by a pack of Junkers--"all for the
good of the State"; in other words, to give the military caste
more wealth and dignity. In a few years Bernhardi will see
whether the people have any cause for revolution or not.
The Germany of philosophy, poetry and song will rescue the German
people from the abyss into which the War Lords have plunged them.
Germany was indeed unfortunate in entering the world as a great
Power so late. But she will not make any progress by perpetually
brandishing a sword before Europe.
I do think that Prussia's policy in the past was largely
determined by her geographical situation.
The Entente with France was the price we paid for Egypt. Germany
never entered our thoughts at all.
On Bernhardi's allusion to India, Paul wrote: "Curiously enough,
the very day I read this I heard in the House of Commons the
wonderful story of the gifts presented to the British Government
for war purposes by the Indian princes. Such a passionate
outburst of loyalty has never been equalled. This gratitude and
devotion we have won not by the rule of force, but by that of
justice and kindness."
In regard to Bernhardi's prediction that our self-governing Dominions
would separate from the British Empire:
Our policy toward them nobly justified. Now in our time of need
the Colonies have flown to our side.
God help civilisation when the Bernhardis set to work on it!
Strange that people so far apart as Bernhardi and we Socialists
should yet be at one on this question of checking selfish
individualism by measures of State Socialism.
A frequent visitor to the Lobby and Press Gallery of the House of
Commons, my son was known to many members of Parliament and political
journalists. Thanks to his free, affable manner, he was on terms of
cordial regard with several of the attendants and police-constables on
duty in and about the House of Commons. His last visit to the Press
Gallery was in May, 1916. He was stirred by the life and movement of
the House and enjoyed a good Parliamentary debate, but he had a
feeling that politicians were apt to mistake illusions for realities
and to think that words could take the place of deeds.
In the last three years of his life, though his democratic sympathies
never waned, some of his opinions underwent a change. He was
disappointed at the indifference of the masses of the people to their
own interests, at their low standard of taste, at the ease with which
they could be exploited by charlatans. I remember his telling me once,
in 1915, _apropos_ of the blatancy of some noisy patriots: "I now
realise for the first time what Dr. Johnson meant when he wrote,
'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.'" He disliked the
squalor of the political game and the glibness of tongue and tenuity
of thought of the mere politician. A generous-minded youth of high
ideals, he had not learnt to make allowances for political human
nature, or for the fact that the mass of mankind are necessarily
occupied with _petits soins_ and apt to be dulled by the mechanical
routine of their daily lives. Latterly he often told me that, after
all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened
autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a
succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the
rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used
to make him wring his hands. To lack of education he attributed the
tawdriness and vulgarity of popular taste. I thought my own political
and social views were advanced: to Paul I was little better than a
Whig with a veneration for Mr. Gladstone. He had a bold,
forward-looking mind, and was in favour of root-and-branch changes. He
was only 21 when he died, and his views on social and political
questions would doubtless have been modified in one direction or
another had he lived. But his passion for liberty of thought and
action and his deep sympathy with the unprivileged multitude would
have remained, for these things were inherent in his character. He
would have said with Ibsen: "I want to awaken the democracy to its
true task--of making all the people noblemen by freeing their wills
and purifying their minds."
Literature, athletics, music, politics did not exhaust the interests
of this strong and eager mind. He was a good chess-player, and
followed with lively curiosity the new developments in mechanics and
aviation. Very fond of dogs, between him and our little fox-terrier
there was a tie of deep affection. As indicative of the catholicity of
his tastes I may mention that, going over his papers after his death,
I discovered in the same drawer a manuscript appreciation of Wagner,
"Football Hints," memoranda on "Pascal and Descartes on Method," and
the outline of an essay on "The Norman Conquest and its Effects."