The badge on a Trade Unionist’s coat is a piece of poetry in the
genuine, lucid, and logical sense in which Milton defined poetry (and
he ought to know) when he said that it was simple, sensuous, and
passionate. It is simple, because many understand the word “badge,”
who might not even understand the word “recognition.” It is sensuous,
because it is visible and tangible; it is incarnate, as all the good
Gods have been; and it is passionate in this perfectly practical sense,
which the man with an eye to business may some day learn more thoroughly
than he likes, that there are men who will allow you to cross a word
out in a theoretical document, but who will not allow you to pull a big
button off their bodily clothing, merely because you have more money
than they have. Now I think it is this sensuousness, this passion, and,
above all, this simplicity that are most wanted in this promising revolt
of our time. For this simplicity is perhaps the only thing in which the
best type of recent revolutionists have failed. It has been our
sorrow lately to salute the sunset of one of the very few clean and
incorruptible careers in the most corruptible phase of Christendom. The
death of Quelch naturally turns one’s thoughts to those extreme Marxian
theorists, who, whatever we may hold about their philosophy, have
certainly held their honour like iron. And yet, even in this instant
of instinctive reverence, I cannot feel that they were poetical enough,
that is childish enough, to make a revolution. They had all the audacity
needed for speaking to the despot; but not the simplicity needed for
speaking to the democracy. They were always accused of being too bitter
against the capitalist. But it always seemed to me that they were (quite
unconsciously, of course) much too kind to him. They had a fatal habit
of using long words, even on occasions when he might with propriety have
been described in very short words. They called him a Capitalist when
almost anybody in Christendom would have called him a cad. And “cad”
is a word from the poetic vocabulary indicating rather a general and
powerful reaction of the emotions than a status that could be defined
in a work of economics. The capitalist, asleep in the sun, let such long
words crawl all over him, like so many long, soft, furry caterpillars.
Caterpillars cannot sting like wasps. And, in repeating that the old
Marxians have been, perhaps, the best and bravest men of our time, I say
also that they would have been better and braver still if they had never
used a scientific word, and never read anything but fairy tales.