One brief but tragic incident, which occurred within a century after the
European War, may be said to have sealed the fate of the First Men.
During this century the will for peace and sanity was already becoming a
serious factor in history. Save for a number of most untoward accidents,
to be recorded in due course, the party of peace might have dominated
Europe during its most dangerous period; and, through Europe, the world.
With either a little less bad luck or a fraction more of vision and
self-control at this critical time, there might never have occurred that
aeon of darkness, in which the First Men were presently to be submerged.
For had victory been gained before the general level of mentality had
seriously begun to decline, the attainment of the world state might have
been regarded, not as an end, but as the first step towards true
civilization. But this was not to be.
After the European War the defeated nation, formerly no less
militaristic than the others, now became the most pacific, and a
stronghold of enlightenment. Almost everywhere, indeed, there had
occurred a profound change of heart, but chiefly in Germany. The victors
on the other hand, in spite of their real craving to be human and
generous, and to found a new world, were led partly by their own
timidity, partly by their governors’ blind diplomacy, into all the vices
against which they believed themselves to have been crusading. After a
brief period in which they desperately affected amity for one another
they began to indulge once more in physical conflicts. Of these
conflicts, two must be observed.
The first outbreak, and the less disastrous for Europe, was a short and
grotesque struggle between France and Italy. Since the fall of ancient
Rome, the Italians had excelled more in art and literature than in
martial achievement. But the heroic liberation of Italy in the
nineteenth Christian century had made Italians peculiarly sensitive to
national prestige; and since among Western peoples national vigour was
measured in terms of military glory, the Italians were fired, by their
success against a rickety foreign domination, to vindicate themselves
more thoroughly against the charge of mediocrity in warfare. After the
European War, however, Italy passed through a phase of social disorder
and self-distrust. Subsequently a flamboyant but sincere national party
gained control of the State, and afforded the Italians a new
self-respect, based on reform of the social services, and on
militaristic policy. Trains became punctual, streets clean, morals
puritanical. Aviation records were won for Italy. The young, dressed up
and taught to play at soldiers with real fire-arms, were persuaded to
regard themselves as saviours of the nation, encouraged to shed blood,
and used to enforce the will of the Government. The whole movement was
engineered chiefly by a man whose genius in action combined with his
rhetoric and crudity of thought to make him a very successful dictator.
Almost miraculously he drilled the Italian nation into efficiency. At
the same time, with great emotional effect and incredible lack of humour
he trumpeted Italy’s self-importance, and her will to ‘expand’. And
since Italians were slow to learn the necessity of restricting their
population, ‘expansion’ was a real need.
Thus it came about that Italy, hungry for French territory in Africa,
jealous of French leadership of the Latin races, indignant at the
protection afforded to Italian ‘traitors’ in France, became increasingly
prone to quarrel with the most assertive of her late allies. It was a
frontier incident, a fancied ‘insult to the Italian flag’, which at last
caused an unauthorized raid upon French territory by a small party of
Italian militia. The raiders were captured, but French blood was shed.
The consequent demand for apology and reparation was calm, but subtly
offensive to Italian dignity. Italian patriots worked themselves into
short-sighted fury. The Dictator, far from daring to apologize, was
forced to require the release of the captive militia-men, and finally to
declare war. After a single sharp engagement the relentless armies of
France pressed into North Italy. Resistance, at first heroic, soon
became chaotic. In consternation the Italians woke from their dream of
military glory. The populace turned against the Dictator whom they
themselves had forced to declare war. In a theatrical but gallant
attempt to dominate the Roman mob, he failed, and was killed. The new
government made a hasty peace, ceding to France a frontier territory
which she had already annexed for ‘security’.
Thenceforth Italians were less concerned to outshine the glory of
Garibaldi than to emulate the greater glory of Dante, Giotto, and
Galileo.
France had now complete mastery of the continent of Europe; but having
much to lose, she behaved arrogantly and nervously. It was not long
before peace was once more disturbed.
Scarcely had the last veterans of the European War ceased from wearying
their juniors with reminiscence, when the long rivalry between France
and England culminated in a dispute between their respective Governments
over a case of sexual outrage said to have been committed by a French
African soldier upon an Englishwoman. In this quarrel, the British
Government happened to be definitely in the wrong, and was probably
confused by its own sexual repressions. The outrage had never been
committed. The facts which gave rise to the rumour were, that an idle
and neurotic Englishwoman in the south of France, craving the embrace of
a ‘cave man’, had seduced a Senegalese corporal in her own apartments.
When, later, he had shown signs of boredom, she took revenge by
declaring that he had attacked her indecently in the woods above the
town. This rumour was such that the English were all too prone to savour
and believe. At the same time, the magnates of the English Press could
not resist this opportunity of trading upon the public’s sexuality,
tribalism, and self-righteousness. There followed an epidemic of abuse,
and occasional violence, against French subjects in England; and thus
the party of fear and militarism in France was given the opportunity it
had long sought. For the real cause of this war was connected with air
power. France had persuaded the League of Nations (in one of its less
intelligent moments) to restrict the size of military aeroplanes in such
a manner that, while London lay within easy striking distance of the
French coast, Paris could only with difficulty be touched by England.
This state of affairs obviously could not last long. Britain was
agitating more and more insistently for the removal of the restriction.
On the other hand, there was an increasing demand for complete aerial
disarmament in Europe; and so strong was the party of sanity in France,
that the scheme would almost certainly have been accepted by the French
Government. On both counts, therefore, the militarists of France were
eager to strike while yet there was opportunity.
In an instant, the whole fruit of this effort for disarmament was
destroyed. That subtle difference of mentality which had ever made it
impossible for these two nations to understand one another, was suddenly
exaggerated by this provocative incident into an apparently insoluble
discord. England reverted to her conviction that all Frenchmen were
sensualists, while to France the English appeared, as often before, the
most offensive of hypocrites. In vain did the saner minds in each
country insist on the fundamental humanity of both. In vain did the
chastened Germans seek to mediate. In vain did the League, which by now
had very great prestige and authority, threaten both parties with
expulsion, even with chastisement. Rumour got about in Paris that
England, breaking all her international pledges, was now feverishly
building giant planes which would wreck France from Calais to
Marseilles. And indeed the rumour was not wholly a slander, for, when
the struggle began, the British air force was found to have a range of
intensive action far wider than was expected. Yet the actual outbreak of
war took England by surprise. While the London papers were selling out
upon the news that war was declared, enemy planes appeared over the
city. In a couple of hours a third of London was in ruins, and half her
population lay poisoned in the streets. One bomb, falling beside the
British Museum, turned the whole of Bloomsbury into a crater, wherein
fragments of mummies, statues, and manuscripts were mingled with the
contents of shops, and morsels of salesmen and the intelligentsia. Thus
in a moment was destroyed a large proportion of England’s most precious
relics and most fertile brains.
Then occurred one of those microscopic, yet supremely potent incidents
which sometimes mould the course of events for centuries. During the
bombardment a special meeting of the British Cabinet was held in a
cellar in Downing Street. The party in power at the time was
progressive, mildly pacifist, and timorously cosmopolitan. It had got
itself involved in the French quarrel quite unintentionally. At this
Cabinet meeting an idealistic member urged upon his colleagues the need
for a supreme gesture of heroism and generosity on the part of Britain.
Raising his voice with difficulty above the bark of English guns and the
volcanic crash of French bombs, he suggested sending by radio the
following message. ‘From the people of England to the people of France.
Catastrophe has fallen on us at your hands. In this hour of agony, all
hate and anger have left us. Our eyes are opened. No longer can we think
of ourselves as merely English, and you as merely French; all of us are,
before all else, civilized beings. Do not imagine that we are defeated,
and that this message is a cry for mercy. Our armament is intact, and
our resources still very great. Yet, because of the revelation which has
come to us today, we will not fight. No plane, no ship, no soldier of
Britain shall commit any further act of hostility. Do what you will. It
would be better even that a great people should be destroyed than that
the whole race should be thrown into turmoil. But you will not strike
again. As our own eyes have been opened by agony, yours now will be
opened by our act of brotherhood. The spirit of France and the spirit of
England differ. They differ deeply; but only as the eye differs from the
hand. Without you, we should be barbarians. And without us, even the
bright spirit of France would be but half expressed. For the spirit of
France lives again in our culture and in our very speech; and the spirit
of England is that which strikes from you your most distinctive
brilliance.’
At no earlier stage of man’s history could such a message have been
considered seriously by any government. Had it been suggested during the
previous war, its author would have been ridiculed, execrated, perhaps
even murdered. But since those days much had happened. Increased
communication, increased cultural intercourse, and a prolonged vigorous
campaign for cosmopolitanism, had changed the mentality of Europe. Even
so, when, after a brief discussion, the Government ordered this unique
message to be sent, its members were awed by their own act. As one of
them expressed it, they were uncertain whether it was the devil or the
deity that had possessed them, but possessed they certainly were.
That night the people of London (those who were left) experienced an
exaltation of spirit. Disorganization of the city’s life, overwhelming
physical suffering and compassion, the consciousness of an unprecedented
spiritual act in which each individual felt himself to have somehow
participated—these influences combined to produce, even in the bustle
and confusion of a wrecked metropolis, a certain restrained fervour, and
a deep peace of mind, wholly unfamiliar to Londoners.
Meanwhile the undamaged North knew not whether to regard the
Government’s sudden pacificism as a piece of cowardice or as a superbly
courageous gesture. Very soon, however, they began to make a virtue of
necessity, and incline to the latter view. Paris itself was divided by
the message into a vocal party of triumph and a silent party of
bewilderment. But as the hours advanced, and the former urged a policy
of aggression, the latter found voice for the cry, ‘_Vive l’Angleterre,
vive l’humanité_’. And so strong by now was the will for cosmopolitanism
that the upshot would almost certainly have been a triumph of sanity,
had there not occurred in England an accident which tilted the whole
precarious course of events in the opposite direction.
The bombardment had occurred on a Friday night. On Saturday the
repercussions of England’s great message were echoing throughout the
nations. That evening, as a wet and foggy day was achieving its pallid
sunset, a French plane was seen over the western outskirts of London. It
gradually descended, and was regarded by onlookers as a messenger of
peace. Lower and lower it came. Something was seen to part from it and
fall. In a few seconds an immense explosion occurred in the
neighbourhood of a great school and a royal palace. There was hideous
destruction in the school. The palace escaped. But, chief disaster for
the cause of peace, a beautiful and extravagantly popular young princess
was caught by the explosion. Her body, obscenely mutilated, but still
recognizable to every student of the illustrated papers, was impaled
upon some high park-railings beside the main thoroughfare towards the
city. Immediately after the explosion the enemy plane crashed, burst
into flame, and was destroyed with its occupants.
A moment’s cool thinking would have convinced all onlookers that this
disaster was an accident, that the plane was a belated straggler in
distress, and no messenger of hate. But, confronted with the mangled
bodies of schoolboys, and harrowed by cries of agony and terror, the
populace was in no state for ratiocination. Moreover there was the
princess, an overwhelmingly potent sexual symbol and emblem of
tribalism, slaughtered and exposed before the eyes of her adorers.
The news was flashed over the country, and distorted of course in such a
manner as to admit no doubt that this act was the crowning devilry of
sexual fiends beyond the Channel. In an hour the mood of London was
changed, and the whole population of England succumbed to a paroxysm of
primitive hate far more extravagant than any that had occurred even in
the war against Germany. The British air force, all too well equipped
and prepared, was ordered to Paris.
Meanwhile in France the militaristic government had fallen, and the
party of peace was now in control. While the streets were still thronged
by its vociferous supporters, the first bomb fell. By Monday morning
Paris was obliterated. There followed a few days of strife between the
opposing armaments, and of butchery committed upon the civilian
populations. In spite of French gallantry, the superior organization,
mechanical efficiency, and more cautious courage of the British Air
Force soon made it impossible for a French plane to leave the ground.
But if France was broken, England was too crippled to pursue her
advantage. Every city of the two countries was completely disorganized.
Famine, riot, looting, and above all the rapidly accelerating and quite
uncontrollable spread of disease, disintegrated both States, and brought
war to a standstill.
Indeed, not only did hostilities cease, but also both nations were too
shattered even to continue hating one another. The energies of each were
for a while wholly occupied in trying to prevent complete annihilation
by famine and pestilence. In the work of reconstruction they had to
depend very largely on help from outside. The management of each country
was taken over, for the time, by the League of Nations.
It is significant to compare the mood of Europe at this time with that
which followed the European War. Formerly, though there had been a real
effort toward unity, hate and suspicion continued to find expression in
national policies. There was much wrangling about indemnities,
reparations, securities; and the division of the whole continent into
two hostile camps persisted, though by then it was purely artificial and
sentimental. But after the Anglo-French war, a very different mood
prevailed. There was no mention of reparations, no possibility of
seeking security by alliances. Patriotism simply faded out, for the
time, under the influence of extreme disaster. The two enemy peoples
cooperated with the League in the work of reconstructing not only each
one itself, but each one the other. This change of heart was due partly
to the temporary collapse of the whole national organization, partly to
the speedy dominance of each nation by pacifist and anti-nationalist
Labour, partly to the fact that the League was powerful enough to
inquire into and publish the whole story of the origins of the war, and
expose each combatant to itself and to the world in a sorry light.
We have now observed in some detail the incident which stands out in
man’s history as perhaps the most dramatic example of petty cause and
mighty effect. For consider. Through some miscalculation, or a mere
defect in his instruments, a French airman went astray, and came to
grief in London after the sending of the peace message. Had this not
happened, England and France would not have been wrecked. And, had the
war been nipped at the outset, as it almost was, the party of sanity
throughout the world would have been very greatly strengthened; the
precarious will to unity would have gained the conviction which it
lacked, would have dominated man not merely during the terrified
revulsion after each spasm of national strife, but as a permanent policy
based on mutual trust. Indeed so delicately balanced were man’s
primitive and developed impulses at this time, that, but for this
trivial accident, the movement which was started by England’s peace
message might have proceeded steadily and rapidly toward the unification
of the race. It might, that is, have attained its goal, before, instead
of after, the period of mental deterioration, which in fact resulted
from a long epidemic of wars. And so the first Dark Age might never have
occurred.