BACK TO THE PRIMITIVE
Nor only is there nothing new under the sun, but in New York I find the
same views, opinions, and conclusions that I had heard to the point of
weariness even in Ekfrid. The transmission of news and the diffusion of
propagandas have reduced the world to the same mental level. For
instance: a friend placed his car at my disposal so that I could go
about the city comfortably and expeditiously. Being full of questions I
took my seat beside the chauffeur and invited information. He proved to
be a skilled mechanic who had left productive work to drive a car in the
city. He had been through the Spanish-American War, but had avoided the
Great War, being past the age limit of the earlier drafts. He had had
all he wanted of war. "War is simply a scheme by which the big men and
the profiteers put it over the plain people. The plain people get all
the knocks of war and pay the cost of it besides, while the big men get
all the glory and the crooks get the profits."
Nothing new about that. I have heard the same talk in Vancouver,
Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and even on farms. The plain people of one
country are like the plain people of any other country. They feel that
whoever won the war they did not win it. And they don't want any more of
it. What they want is to square accounts with the men who made profits
from the war, and then go through the rest of their lives without doing
anything in particular on which others can make a profit. They even seem
to think that they might live out their day on the profits that others
have accumulated--if they could only have justice properly administered.
Anyway, this business of working hard and letting others have a profit
on your work is something that belongs to the old, stupid days before
the war, when men were not awake to their rights and privileges.
This is really the philosophy of the Lotus-Eaters, and possibly it is a
natural reaction after the war.
Perhaps there is even a biological necessity for the aversion to
old-fashioned work that is apparent under all flags. Possibly we might
find analogies in nature that would cast a light on the subject. Let us
consider the case of the bees--which moralists persist in pointing to
for our emulation. Every bee-keeper knows that when a hive of bees takes
to robbing other hives its usefulness is ended. Robber bees, that have
once learned the ease and delight of plundering the accumulated stores
of other hives, will never go back to the drudgery of gathering their
food from the flowers. They will go on robbing until they are destroyed
in battle by hives that are able to protect themselves or until they
have starved in the midst of plenty because they refused to work. I do
not know whether Fabre or Maeterlinck has studied the degeneracy and
downfall of a hive of bees that has taken to robbing, but it would be
worth their while.
But people will protest at once that the Great War was not a war of
plunder. It was a war to fight back the nation that had started out to
plunder the world. Blind! Every nation engaged in the war plundered
itself even though it did not plunder others. All our reserves of
wealth, food materials, and resources were of necessity thrown into the
war and were as certainly destroyed or plundered as if we had been
overrun by the enemy. When the armistice was declared we should have
faced the future as nations that had been defeated rather than as
victors. Unless we do that without further delay the defeat of
civilization may be complete.
At this point my meditations were interrupted by my mild and
pleasant-voiced chauffeur. He glared back over my shoulder with a real
fighting face.
"What's the matter?" I asked in alarm.
"That driver back there gave me a look and I was giving him one back." I
admitted that he certainly was giving him a look.
"Some fellows think they own the streets," he grumbled. "That fellow
tried to edge me out of my place and when he found he couldn't do it he
was sore. A fellow like that makes me want to get back to the primitive
with him." He glared back once more, but the other driver had
disappeared in the traffic.
But his phrase stuck and it seems significant--"Get back to the
primitive."
I wonder if my chauffeur originated it--or is it a gem from some
propaganda that I will meet with when I resume my travels? Anyway, it is
most excellent good. Getting back to the primitive is about the most
natural thing that human beings do just now. For long and dark ages the
world was ruled by big biceps rather than by big brains--and everything
was primitive. And during the Great War we went back to the primitive
with scientific thoroughness. The ape and tiger were not only given a
new lease of life, but were trained and equipped for their work by the
best brains of the world. To the ferocity of the primitive we added the
magic of science--but it is doubtful if science has enough magic left to
recapture and cage the ape and tiger. The primitive man is proud of
himself and conscious of his power. Indeed, he even feels benevolent
toward a world that he feels competent to manage and control. And that
serene kindly, capable attitude is the most dangerous aspect of the
revolutionary mood of mankind. The anarchists and agitators we
understand to some extent and can deal with. They are a natural reaction
in a world of ruthless enterprise. But these placid, altruistic
world-wreckers raise goose-flesh on me. They give me a grue. During the
past thirty years I have met many anarchists and have not contended with
them, for they know the wrong side of every subject so exhaustively that
they can down any one in an argument. Though all of them talked
violently, most of them were too human to do anything reckless. I have
in mind at the present moment a tender-hearted anarchist whose whole
soul revolted against the injustice and cruelty of organized society.
In theory he would have torn down governments, burned cities, and
assassinated kings and plutocrats. On the platform and in the Red press
he was terrible.
But the poor man suffered from a handicap that rendered him futile. He
had a wife whom he loved and children whom he adored. If he did his duty
and hurled bombs at the oppressors, what would become of his family? He
could not do anything that might cause them distress or suffering. He
had given hostages to fortune. But if he had been a free man--The
conflict between his radical brain and his kindly heart furnished the
most tragic comedy that has ever come within my experience.
But these serene altruists, often well-read and thoughtful, are much
more dangerous than the most raving Reds. They are so sure of the
economic soundness of their views and so kindly in their intentions that
one almost feels ashamed to oppose them or laugh at them. They are not
parlor Bolshevists, but men who might be described as super-sane--men
who are too rational for a mad world.
My first experience with this class was on the Western prairies, just
before the Winnipeg strike. I was travelling on a branch railroad, and
not being willing to wait for an express train I found accommodation in
the caboose of a freight. Being thrown into the company of the conductor
and trainmen I cultivated their society and induced them to talk. What
amazed me was their satisfied certainty that the world was to be made
over at once without a struggle. Capital, the great robber of labor, was
to be eliminated. Government was to be taken over by the workers and all
profits would go to those who earned them. As to the management of
affairs--wasn't that all done already by hard-worked, under-paid clerks
while highly paid officials took all the credit? Take President Beatty,
of the C. P. R. What did he do but sit at a flat-topped desk in a
luxuriously appointed office and draw a big salary while others did the
work? They were not angry about it. They were merely ashamed that the
matter had not been settled long ago. It was all so simple.
In Edmonton I met with more of these men who were about to shatter
organized society and "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." One in
particular impressed me curiously. He had the appearance of a man
accustomed to hard labor who was taking a rest and meditating on world
problems. His aspect was dreamy but kindly. I found him in the office of
the Honorable Frank Oliver, and he was trying to induce that hardheaded
statesman of the old régime to publish in his paper a prospectus for the
new world. According to the new plan all the people from the farms of
Alberta were to move into the cities, where they could get proper
shelter when the big hotels and the homes of the rich would be taken
over by the men whose labor had built them and had made them possible. I
wish I had a copy of the document, but one phrase that stuck in my
memory will give a taste of its quality. The ingenuous dreamer proposed
a method of dealing with the crops needed to supply food that struck me
as unique. He proposed that when seeding-time came round, "joyous bands"
would go out from the cities and put in the crops. Having some
experience of the drudgery of farm work that phrase impressed me.
Similar bands would go out at harvest-time and garner the grain. Mr.
Oliver was so dazed that he didn't say a word. He passed over the
document and waited for my opinion. I had nothing to say. And yet
neither of us is without a certain command of language.
The cumulative effect of this contact with the new altruism was that,
when I started for home from Winnipeg, I reminded myself of the soul of
Stephen Leacock's Melpomenus Jones, which escaped from its earthly
tenement "like a hunted cat over the back-yard fence." I hoped devoutly
that my kindly friend of the prairie freight would not succeed
President Beatty at the flat-topped desk until we had been travelling
for at least twenty-four hours. If we got through the rocky district and
reached old Ontario, I could walk the rest of the way home.
Because of such experiences I am not unduly surprised at the kind of
talk I hear among the advanced and kindly thinkers of labor circles. I
hope to pick up a few more phrases as delightful as "joyous bands" and
"get back to the primitive."
Surely, oh, surely it is high time that some one turned light and
laughter on this muddle. Canada and the United States are alike in their
need of a solution for this problem. They have more important matters
pressing for attention than the question of who won the Great War. And,
in concluding this chapter, let me record the astounding fact that as
yet no one has assured me that the United States won the war.