(3) Most people, on hearing the suggestion that it may come to corporal
punishment at last (as it did in every slave system I ever heard of,
including some that were generally kindly, and even successful), will
merely be struck with horror and incredulity, and feel that such a
barbarous revival is unthinkable in the modern atmosphere. How far it
will be, or need be, a revival of the actual images and methods of
ruder times I will discuss in a moment. But first, as another of the
converging lines tending to corporal punishment, consider this: that for
some reason or other the old full-blooded and masculine humanitarianism
in this matter has weakened and fallen silent; it has weakened and
fallen silent in a very curious manner, the precise reason for which I
do not altogether understand. I knew the average Liberal, the average
Nonconformist minister, the average Labour Member, the average
middle-class Socialist, were, with all their good qualities, very
deficient in what I consider a respect for the human soul. But I did
imagine that they had the ordinary modern respect for the human body.
The fact, however, is clear and incontrovertible. In spite of the horror
of all humane people, in spite of the hesitation even of our corrupt and
panic-stricken Parliament, measures can now be triumphantly passed for
spreading or increasing the use of physical torture, and for applying
it to the newest and vaguest categories of crime. Thirty or forty years
ago, nay, twenty years ago, when Mr. F. Hugh O’Donnell and others forced
a Liberal Government to drop the cat-o-nine-tails like a scorpion, we
could have counted on a mass of honest hatred of such things. We cannot
count on it now.
(4) But lastly, it is not necessary that in the factories of the future
the institution of physical punishment should actually remind people of
the jambok or the knout. It could easily be developed out of the many
forms of physical discipline which are already used by employers on the
excuses of education or hygiene. Already in some factories girls are
obliged to swim whether they like it or not, or do gymnastics whether
they like it or not. By a simple extension of hours or complication of
exercises a pair of Swedish clubs could easily be so used as to leave
their victim as exhausted as one who had come off the rack. I think it
extremely likely that they will be.