"Have a fill," I said, "it's John Cotton."
* * *
To-night I have been thinking about Simpson. He is really a kindly man;
in the golf-house he is voted a good fellow. Yet MacMurray tells me that
he is a very strict disciplinarian; he saw him give a boy six scuds with
the tawse one day for drawing a man's face on the inside cover of his
drawing book. I suppose that Simpson considers that he is an eminently
just man.
I think that the foundation of true justice is self-analysis. It is
mental laziness that is at the root of the militarism in our schools.
Simpson is as lazy mentally as the proverbial mother who cried: "See
what Willie's doing and tell him he musn't." I wonder what he would have
replied if the boy had said: "Why is it wrong to draw a man's face in a
drawing book?" Very likely he would have given him another six for
impertinence.
It is strange that our boasted democracy uses its power to set up
bullies. The law bullies the poor and gives them the cat if they
trespass; the police bully everyone who hasn't a clean collar; the
dominie bullies the young; and the School Board bullies the dominie.
Yet, in theory, the judge, the constable, the dominie, and the School
Board are the servants of democracy. Heaven protect us from the
bureaucratic Socialism of people like the Webbs! It is significant that
Germany, the country of the super-official is the country of the
super-bully.
Paradoxically, I, as a Socialist, believe that the one thing that will
save the people is individualism. No democracy can control a stupid
teacher or a stupid judge. If our universities produce teachers who
leather a boy for drawing a face, and judges who give boys the cat for
stealing tuppence ha'penny, then our universities are all wrong. Or
human nature is all wrong. If I admit the latter I must fall back on
pessimism. But I don't admit it. Our cruel teachers and magistrates are
good fellows in their clubs and homes; they are bad fellows in their
schools and courts because they have never come to think, to examine
themselves. In my Utopia self-examination will be the only examination
that will matter.
H. G. Wells in _The New Machiavelli_ talks of "Love and Fine Thinking"
as the salvation of the world. I like the phrase, but I prefer the word
Realisation. I want men like Simpson to realise that their arbitrary
rules are unjust and cowardly and inhuman.
* * *
I saw a good fight to-night. At four o'clock I noticed a general move
towards Murray's Corner, and I knew that blood was about to be shed.
Moreover I knew that Jim Steel was to tackle the new boy Welsh, for I
had seen Jim put his fist to his nose significantly in the afternoon.