But as long as we speak of it as a cloudy conclusion, come to by an
anonymous club called Parliament, or a masked tribunal called the
Cabinet, we shall never get such a wrong righted. Somebody is officially
responsible for the unfairness; and that somebody ought to be hammered.
The other example, less important but more ludicrous, is the silly
boycott of Germans in England, extending even to German music. I do
not believe for a moment that the English people feel any such insane
fastidiousness. Are the English artists who practise the particularly
English art of water-colour to be forbidden to use Prussian blue? Are
all old ladies to shoot their Pomeranian dogs? But though England would
laugh at this, she will get the credit of it, and will continue: until
we ask who the actual persons are who feel sure that we should shudder
at a ballad of the Rhine. It is certain that we should find they
are capitalists. It is very probable that we should find they are
foreigners.
Some days ago the Official Council of the Independent Labour Party, or
the Independent Council of the Official Labour Party, or the Independent
and Official Council of the Labour Party (I have got quite nervous about
these names and distinctions; but they all seem to say the same thing)
began their manifesto by saying it would be difficult to assign the
degrees of responsibility which each nation had for the outbreak of the
war. Afterwards, a writer in the “Christian Commonwealth,” lamenting
war in the name of Labour, but in the language of my own romantic
middle-class, said that all the nations must share the responsibility
for this great calamity of war. Now exactly as long as we go on talking
like that we shall have war after war, and calamity after calamity,
until the crack of doom. It simply amounts to a promise of pardon to
any person who will start a quarrel. It is an amnesty for assassins. The
moment any man assaults any other man he makes all the other men as
bad as himself. He has only to stab, and to vanish in a fog of
forgetfulness. The real eagles of iron, the predatory Empires, will be
delighted with this doctrine. They will applaud the Labour Concert or
Committee, or whatever it is called. They will willingly take all the
crime, with only a quarter of the conscience: they will be as ready to
share the memory as they are to share the spoil. The Powers will divide
responsibility as calmly as they divided Poland.