It will be long before the poison of the Party System is worked out
of the body politic. Some of its most indirect effects are the most
dangerous. One that is very dangerous just now is this: that for most
Englishmen the Party System falsifies history, and especially the
history of revolutions. It falsifies history because it simplifies
history. It paints everything either Blue or Buff in the style of its
own silly circus politics: while a real revolution has as many colours
as the sunrise--or the end of the world. And if we do not get rid of
this error we shall make very bad blunders about the real revolution
which seems to grow more and more probable, especially among the Irish.
And any human familiarity with history will teach a man this first of
all: that Party practically does not exist in a real revolution. It is a
game for quiet times.
If you take a boy who has been to one of those big private schools which
are falsely called the Public Schools, and another boy who has been to
one of those large public schools which are falsely called the Board
Schools, you will find some differences between the two, chiefly a
difference in the management of the voice. But you will find they
are both English in a special way, and that their education has been
essentially the same. They are ignorant on the same subjects. They have
never heard of the same plain facts. They have been taught the wrong
answer to the same confusing question. There is one fundamental element
in the attitude of the Eton master talking about “playing the game,”
and the elementary teacher training gutter-snipes to sing, “What is the
Meaning of Empire Day?” And the name of that element is “unhistoric.” It
knows nothing really about England, still less about Ireland or France,
and, least of all, of course, about anything like the French Revolution.