One peculiarity of the genuine kind of enemy of the people is that his
slightest phrase is clamorous with all his sins. Pride, vain-glory, and
hypocrisy seem present in his very grammar; in his very verbs or adverbs
or prepositions, as well as in what he says, which is generally bad
enough. Thus I see that a Nonconformist pastor in Bromley has been
talking about the pathetic little presents of tobacco sent to the common
soldiers. This is how he talks about it. He is reported as having said,
“By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette business stopped.” How
one could write a volume on that sentence, a great thick volume called
“The Decline of the English Middle Class.” In taste, in style, in
philosophy, in feeling, in political project, the horrors of it are as
unfathomable as hell.
First, to begin with the trifle, note something slipshod and vague in
the mere verbiage, typical of those who prefer a catchword to a creed.
“This cigarette business” might mean anything. It might mean Messrs.
Salmon and Gluckstein’s business. But the pastor at Bromley will not
interfere with that, for the indignation of his school of thought, even
when it is sincere, always instinctively and unconsciously swerves
aside from anything that is rich and powerful like the partners in a big
business, and strikes instead something that is poor and nameless like
the soldiers in a trench. Nor does the expression make clear who “they”
are--whether the inhabitants of Britain or the inhabitants of Bromley,
or the inhabitants of this one crazy tabernacle in Bromley; nor is it
evident how it is going to be stopped or who is being asked to stop it.
All these things are trifles compared to the more terrible offences
of the phrase; but they are not without their social and historical
interest. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the wealthy
Puritan class, generally the class of the employers of labour, took a
line of argument which was narrow, but not nonsensical. They saw the
relation of rich and poor quite coldly as a contract, but they saw that
a contract holds both ways. The Puritans of the middle class, in short,
did in some sense start talking and thinking for themselves. They are
still talking. They have long ago left off thinking. They talk about the
loyalty of workmen to their employers, and God knows what rubbish; and
the first small certainty about the reverend gentleman whose sentence
I have quoted is that his brain stopped working as a clock stops, years
and years ago.
Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These people
are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient
training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why,
then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the
rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser;
and so he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe
that anyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyon
straddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like
that about a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette
business stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the whole
company of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of
the Chivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flaming
patience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped.
Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone to
that a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?
Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, which
rises into a sort of towering blasphemy. An enormous number of live
young men are being hurt by shells, hurt by bullets, hurt by fever
and hunger and horror of hope deferred; hurt by lance blades and sword
blades and bayonet blades breaking into the bloody house of life. But
Mr. Price (I think that’s his name) is still anxious that they should
not be hurt by cigarettes. That is the sort of maniacal isolation that
can be found in the deserts of Bromley. That cigarettes are bad for
the health is a very tenable opinion to which the minister is quite
entitled. If he happens to think that the youth of Bromley smoke too
many cigarettes, and that he has any influence in urging on them the
unhealthiness of the habit, I should not blame him if he gave sermons
or lectures about it (with magic-lantern slides), so long as it was in
Bromley and about Bromley. Cigarettes may be bad for the health: bombs
and bayonets and even barbed wire are not good for the health. I never
met a doctor who recommended any of them. But the trouble with this sort
of man is that he cannot adjust himself to the scale of things. He would
do very good service if he would go among the rich aristocratic ladies
and tell them not to take drugs in a chronic sense, as people take opium
in China. But he would be doing very bad service if he were to go among
the doctors and nurses on the field and tell them not to give drugs, as
they give morphia in a hospital. But it is the whole hypothesis of war,
it is its very nature and first principle, that the man in the trench
is almost as much a suffering and abnormal person as the man in the
hospital. Hit or unhit, conqueror or conquered, he is, by nature of the
case, having less pleasure than is proper and natural to a man.
Fourth (for I need not dwell here on the mere diabolical idiocy that can
regard beer or tobacco as in some way evil and unseemly in themselves),
there is the most important element in this strange outbreak; at least,
the most dangerous and the most important for us. There is that
main feature in the degradation of the old middle class: the utter
disappearance of its old appetite for liberty. Here there is no question
of whether the men are to smoke cigarettes, or the women choose to
send cigarettes, or even that the officers or doctors choose to allow
cigarettes. The thing is to cease, and we may note one of the most
recurrent ideas of the servile State: it is mentioned in the passive
mood. It must be stopped, and we must not even ask who has stopped it!