concern, either public or private, that has been mended or bettered
by my advice.” So wrote Montaigne placidly in the great days of
disputation, when men counselled the doubtful with sword and gun,
reasoning in platoons, and correcting theological errors with the
all-powerful argument of arms. Few men were then guilty of intolerance,
and fewer still understood with Montaigne and Burton the irreclaimable
obstinacy of convictions. There reigned a profound confidence in
intellectual and physical coercion. It was the opinion of John Donne,
poet and pietist, that Satan was deeply indebted to the counsels of
Saint Ignatius Loyola, which is a higher claim for the intelligence of
that great churchman than Catholics have ever advanced. Milton, whose
ardent and compelling mind could not conceive of tolerance, failed to
comprehend that Puritanism was out of accord with the main currents of
English thought and temper. He not only assumed that his enemies were
in the wrong, says Sir Leslie Stephen, “but he often seemed to expect
that they would grant so obvious an assertion.”
This sounds modern. It even sounds American. We are so confident that
we are showing the way, we have been told so repeatedly that what
we show is the way, that we cannot understand the reluctance of our
neighbours to follow it. There is a curious game played by educators,
which consists in sending _questionnaires_ to some hundreds, or some
thousands, of school-children, and tabulating their replies for the
enlightenment of the adult public. The precise purport of this game
has never been defined; but its popularity impels us to envy the
leisure that educators seem to enjoy. A few years ago twelve hundred
and fourteen little Californians were asked if they made collections of
any kind, and if so, what did they collect? The answers were such as
might have been expected, with one exception. A small and innocently
ironic boy wrote that he collected “bits of advice.” His hoard was the
only one that piqued curiosity; but, as in the case of Isacke Bucke and
the quarrelsome couple of Plymouth, we were left to our own conjectures.
The fourth “Spiritual Work of Mercy” is “To comfort the sorrowful.”
How gentle and persuasive it sounds after its somewhat contentious
predecessors; how sure its appeal; how gracious and reanimating its
principle! The sorrowful are, after all, far in excess of the doubtful;
they do not have to be assailed; their sad faces are turned toward
us, their sad hearts beat responsively to ours. The eddying drifts of
counsel are loud with disputation; but the great tides of human emotion
ebb and flow in obedience to forces that work in silence.
“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,
Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”
Are Americans a Timid People?
As the hare is timid--no! They have made good their fighting record in
war. They have proved themselves over and over again to be tranquilly
courageous in moments of acute peril. They have faced “their duty and
their death” as composedly as Englishmen; and nobler comparison there
is none. The sinking of the Titanic offered but one opportunity out
of many for the display of a quality which is apt to be described in
superlatives; but which is, nevertheless, an inherent principle of
manhood. The protective instinct is strong in the native American. He
does not prate about the sacredness of human life, because he knows,
consciously or unconsciously, that the most sacred thing in life is the
will to surrender it unfalteringly.
Of what then are Americans afraid, and what form does their timidity
take? Mr. Harold Stearns puts the case coarsely and strongly when he
affirms that our moral code resolves itself into fear of what people
may say. With a profound and bitter distaste for things as they are,
he bids us beware lest we confuse “the reformistic tendencies of our
national life--Pollyanna optimism, prohibition, blue laws, clericalism,
home and foreign missions, exaggerated reverence for women, with
anything a civilized man can legitimately call moral idealism....
These manifestations are the fine flower of timidity, and fear, and
ignorance.”
Mr. Stearns is a robust writer. His antagonists, if he has any, need
never fear the sharp thrust of an understatement. He recognizes the
tyranny of opinion in the United States; but he does not do full
justice to its serio-comic aspects, to the part it plays in trivial
as well as in august affairs, to the nervousness of our regard, to
the absurdities of our subordination. There are successful newspapers
and periodicals whose editors and contributors walk a chalked path,
shunning facts, ignoring issues, avoiding the two things which spell
life for all of us--men and customs--and triumphantly presenting a
non-existent world to unobservant readers. Henry Adams said that the
magazine-made female has not a feature that would have been recognized
by Adam; but our first father’s experience, while intimate and
conclusive, was necessarily narrow. We have evolved a magazine-made
universe, unfamiliar to the eyes of the earth-dweller, and unrelated to
his soul.
When this country was pronounced to be too democratic for liberty,
the epigram came as close to the truth as epigrams are ever permitted
to come. Democracies have been systematically praised because we
stand committed to democratic tenets, and have no desire to foul
our own roost. It is granted that equality, rather than freedom, is
their animating principle. It is granted also that they are sometimes
unfortunate in their representatives; that their legislative bodies
are neither intelligent nor disinterested, and that their public
service is apt to be distinguished for its incapacity. But with so
much vigour and proficiency manifested every day in private ventures,
we feel they can afford a fair share of departmental incompetence. The
tremendous reserves of will and manhood, the incredible insufficiency
of direction, which Mr. Wells remarked in democratic England when
confronted by an overwhelming crisis, were equally apparent in the
United States. It would seem as though a high average of individual
force and intelligence failed to offer material for leadership.
The English, however, unlike Americans, refuse to survey with unconcern
the spectacle of chaotic officialdom. They are a fault-finding people,
and have expressed their dissatisfaction since the days of King John
and the Magna Carta. They were no more encouraged to find fault than
were other European commonalties that kept silence, or spoke in
whispers. The Plantagenets were a high-handed race. The hot-tempered
Tudors resented any opinions their subjects might form. Elizabeth had
no more loyal servant than the unlucky John Stubbs, who lost his right
hand for the doubtful pleasure of writing the “Gaping Gulf.” Any other
woman would have been touched when the culprit, raising his hat with
his left hand which had been mercifully spared, cried aloud, “God
save the Queen!” Not so the great Elizabeth. Stubbs had expressed his
views upon her proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou, and it was no
business of his to have views, much less to give them utterance; while
his intimation that, at forty-six, she was unlikely to bear children
was the most unpardonable truth he could have spoken.
The Stuarts, with the exception of the second Charles, were as
resentful of candour as were the Tudors. “I hope,” said James the
First to his Commons, “that I shall hear no more about liberty of
speech.” The Hanoverians heartily disliked British frankness because
they heartily disliked their unruly British subjects. George the Third
had all Elizabeth’s irascibility without her power to indulge it. And
Victoria was not much behind either of them--witness her indignation at
the “Greville Memoirs,” “an insult to royalty,” and her regret that the
publishers were not open to prosecution.
It was no use. Nothing could keep the Englishman from speaking his
mind. With him it was not only “What is there that a man dare not
do?” but “What is there that a man dare not say?” Many a time he paid
more for the privilege than it was worth; but he handed it down to
his sons, who took care that it was not lost through disuse. When
Sorbière visited England in 1663, he was amazed to find the “common
people” discussing public affairs in taverns and inns, recalling the
glories as well as the discomforts of Cromwell’s day, and grumbling
over the taxes. “They do not forbear saying what they think of the
king himself.” In the “Memoirs” of the publisher, John Murray, there
is an amusing letter from the Persian envoy, Mirza Abul Hassan, dated
1824, and expressing his opinion of a government which permitted such
unrestrained liberty. Englishmen “do what they like, say what they
like, write what they like in their newspapers,” comments the Oriental
with bewildered but affectionate contempt. “How far do you think it
safe to go in defying your sovereign?” asked Madame de Pompadour of
John Wilkes, when that notorious plain-speaker had taken refuge in
Paris from his incensed king and exasperated creditors. “That, Madame,”
said the member from Aylesbury, “is what I am trying to find out.”
In our day the indifference of the British Government to what used
to be called “treasonable utterances” has in it a galling element of
contempt. Not that the utterances are invariably contemptible. Far
from it. Blighting truths as well as extravagant senilities may still
be heard in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. But the orators might be
addressing their audiences in classic Greek for any token the London
bobby gives of listening or comprehending. “Words are the daughters of
earth; deeds are the sons of Heaven.” The bobby has never heard this
grandiloquent definition; but he divides them as clearly in his own
mind into hot air and disorderly conduct, and he takes his measures
accordingly.
In the United States, as in all countries which enjoy a representative
government, censure and praise run in familiar grooves. The party
which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity in the party which
is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but greed and animosity
in the party which is out. This antagonism is duly reflected by the
press; and the job of arriving at a correct conclusion is left to the
future historian. As an instance of the fashion in which history can
be sidetracked by politics, the reader is referred to the portraits
of Andrew Jackson as drawn by Mr. Beveridge in his “Life of John
Marshall,” and by Mr. Bowers in his “Party Battles of the Jackson
Period.”
The first lesson taught us by the Great War was that we got nowhere
in political leading-strings, and that none of our accustomed formulas
covered this strange upheaval. It was like trying to make a correct
survey of land which was being daily cracked by earthquakes. Our
national timidity entrenched itself behind a wilful disregard of facts.
It was content to view the conflict as a catastrophe for which nobody,
or everybody, was to blame. Our national intrepidity manifested itself
from the outset in a sense of human responsibility, in a bitter denial
of our right to ignorance or indifference. The timidity was not an
actual fear of getting hurt; the intrepidity was not insensitiveness to
danger. What tore our Nation asunder was the question of accepting or
evading a challenge which had--so we at first thought--only a spiritual
significance.
In one of Birmingham’s most genially nonsensical stories, “The Island
Mystery,” there is an American gentleman named Donovan. He is rich,
elderly, good-tempered, brave, kind and humorous; as blameless in his
private life as King Arthur, as corrupt politically and financially as
Tweed or Fiske; a buyer of men’s souls in the market-place, a gentle,
profound and invulnerable cynic. To him a young Irishman sets forth the
value of certain things well worth the surrender of life; but the old
American smiles away such a primitive mode of reckoning. The salient
article of his creed is that nothing should be paid for in blood that
can be bought for money; and that, as every man has his price, money,
if there is enough of it, will buy the world. He is never betrayed,
however, into a callous word, being mindful always of the phraseology
of the press and platform; and the reader is made to understand that
long acquaintance with such phraseology has brought him close to
believing his own pretences. “In the Middle West where I was raised,”
he observes mildly, “we don’t think guns and shooting the proper way of
settling national differences. We’ve advanced beyond those ideas. We’re
a civilized people, especially in the dry States, where university
education is common, and the influence of women permeates elections.
We’ve attained a nobler outlook upon life.” It reads like a humorous
illustration of Mr. Stearns’s unhumorous invectives.
Sociologists are wont to point to the American public as a remarkable
instance of the herd mind--a mind not to be utterly despised. It makes
for solidity, if not for enlightenment. It is the most economical way
of thinking; it saves trouble and it saves noise. So acute an observer
as Lord Chesterfield set store by it as unlikely to disturb the peace
of society; so practical a statesman as Sir Robert Walpole found it
the best substratum upon which to rear the fabric of constitutional
government. It is most satisfactory and most popular when void of all
sentiment save such as can be expressed by a carnation on Mother’s
Day, or by the social activities of an Old Home Week. Strong emotions
are as admittedly insubordinate as strong convictions. “A world full
of patriots,” sighs the peace-loving Honourable Bertrand Russell, “may
be a world full of strife.” This is true. A single patriot has been
known to breed strife in plenty. Who can measure the blood poured out
in the cause that Wallace led, the “sacred” human lives sacrificed at
his behest, the devastations that marked his victories and defeats?
And all that came of such regrettable disturbances were a gallows at
Smithfield, a name that shines like a star in the murk of history, and
a deathless impulse to freedom in the hearts of a brave people.
The herd mind is essentially and inevitably a timid mind. Mr. Sinclair
Lewis has analyzed it with relentless acumen in his amazing novel,
“Babbitt.” The worthy citizen who gives his name to the story has
reached middle age without any crying need to think for himself. His
church and his newspaper have supplied his religious and political
creeds. If there are any gaps left in his mind, they are filled up at
his business club, or at his “lodge,” that kindly institution designed
to give “the swaddled American husband” a chance to escape from home
one night in the week. Church, newspaper, club and lodge afford a
supply of ready-made phrases which pass muster for principles as well
as for conversation.
Yet stirring sluggishly in Babbitt’s blood are a spirit of revolt, a
regard for justice, and a love of freedom. He does not want to join the
Good Citizens’ League, and he refuses to be coerced into membership.
He does not like the word “Vigilante,” or the thing it represents.
His own sane instinct rejects the tyranny of the conservative rich
and of the anarchical poor. He dimly respects Seneca Doane and
Professor Brockbank when he sees them marching in the strikers’
parade. “Nothing in it for them, not a cent!” But his distaste for the
strikers themselves, for any body of men who obstruct the pleasant
ways of prosperity, remains unchanged. In the end--and it is an end
which comes quickly--he finds that the one thing unendurable to his
soul is isolation. Cut off from the thought currents of his group,
he is chilled, lonely, and beset by a vague uneasiness. He yields,
and he yields without a pang, glad to get back into the warm familiar
atmosphere of class complacency, of smugness, of “safety first”; glad
to sacrifice a wavering idealism and a purposeless independence for
the solid substance of smooth living and conformity to his neighbours’
point of view.
The curious thing about Mr. Lewis’s analysis is that back of the
contempt he strives to awaken in our souls is a suspicion that
Babbitt’s herd mind, the mind of many thousands of Americans, is, on
the whole, a safe mind for the country. It will not raise us to any
intellectual or spiritual heights, but neither will it plunge us into
ruin. It is not making trouble for itself, or for the rest of the
world. In its dull, imperfect way it represents the static forces of
society. Sudden and violent change is hostile to its spirit. It may
be trusted to create a certain measure of commercial prosperity, to
provide work for workers, and safety for securities. It is not without
regard for education, and it delights in practical science--the science
which speeds transit, or which collects, preserves and distributes
the noises of the world. It permits artists and authors to earn their
daily bread, which is as much as artists and authors have any business
to expect, and which is a very precious privilege. In revolutionary
Russia, the intelligentsia were the first to starve, an unpleasant
reminder of possibilities.
What Mr. Lewis implies is that, outside of the herd mind he is
considering, may be found understanding and a sense of fair play.
But this is an unwarranted assumption. The intelligence of the
country--and of the world--is a limited quantity; and fair play is
less characteristic of groups than of individuals. Katharine Fullerton
Gerould, in an immensely discontented paper entitled “The Land of the
Free,” presents the reverse of Mr. Lewis’s medal. She contends that,
as a people, we have “learned fear,” and that, while England has kept
the traditions of freedom (a point on which Mr. Chesterton vehemently
disagrees with her), we are content with its rhetoric. But she finds
us terrorized by labour as well as by capital, by reformers and
theorists as well as by the unbudging conservative. Fanatics, she says,
are no longer negligible. They have learned how to control votes by
organizing ignorance and hysteria. “In company with your most intimate
friends you may lift amused eyebrows over the Fundamentalists, over the
anti-cigarette organization, over the film censors, over the people
who wish to shape our foreign policy in the interests of Methodism,
over the people who wish to cut ‘The Merchant of Venice’ out of school
editions of Shakespeare. But it is only in company with your most
intimate friends that you can do this. If you do it in public, you are
going to be persecuted. You are sure, at the very least, to be called
‘un-American.’”
It is a bearable misfortune to be called un-American, because the
phrase still waits analysis. The only sure way to escape it is by
stepping warily--as in an egg-dance--among the complicated interests
sacred to democracies. The agile egg-dancer, aware that there is
nothing in the world so sensitive as a voter (Shelley’s coddled plant
was a hardy annual by comparison), discountenances plain speech on
any subject, as liable to awaken antagonism. There is no telling whom
it may hit, and there is no calculating the return blows. “To covet
the truth is a very distinguished passion,” observes Santayana. It
has burned in the bosom of man, but not in the corporate bosoms of
municipalities and legislative bodies. A world of vested interests is
not a world which welcomes the disruptive force of candour.
The plain-speaker may, for example, offend the Jews; and nothing can be
more manifestly unwise than to give umbrage to a people, thin-skinned,
powerful and clannish, who hold the purse-strings of the country. Look
what happened to Sargent’s fresco in the Boston Library, which angered
the Synagogue it inadequately represented. Or he may offend the Irish,
who control wards, and councils, and local elections; and who, being
always prompt to retaliate, are best kept in a good humour. Or he may
offend either the Methodists or the Roman Catholics, powerful factors
in politics, both of them, and capable of dealing knock-down blows. A
presidential election was once lost and won through an unpardonable
affront to Catholicism; and are we not now drinking soda-fountain
beverages in obedience to the mandates of religious bodies, of which
the Methodists are the most closely organized and aggressive?
It is well to consider these things, and the American press does very
soberly and seriously consider them. The Boston “Transcript” ventured,
it is true, to protest against the ruling of the Navy Department
which gave to Jewish seamen of the ancient faith three days’ leave
of absence, from the thirty-first of March, 1923, to the second of
April, with such “additional time” as was practicable, that they
might attend the rites of the Synagogue; while Gentile seamen of the
Christian faith enjoyed no such religious privileges. The newspapers
in general, however, discreetly avoided this issue. “Life” pointed out
with a chuckle that the people who disapproved of President Lowell’s
decision to exclude negroes from the Harvard Freshman dormitories “rose
up and slammed him”; while the people who approved were “less vocal.”
When Rear Admiral Sims said disconcertingly: “The Kentucky is not a
battleship at all. She is the worst crime in naval construction ever
perpetrated by the white race”; even those reviewers who admitted that
the Admiral knew a battleship when he saw one, were more ready to
soften his words than to uphold them.
The negro is a man and a brother. He is also a voter, and as such
merits consideration. There is no more popular appeal throughout the
length and breadth of the North than that of fairness to the coloured
citizen. Volumes have been written about his rights; but who save
President Roosevelt ever linked responsibilities with rights, duties
with deliverance? Who, at least, save President Roosevelt ever paused
in the midst of a scathing denunciation of the crime of lynching (a
stain on the Nation’s honour and a blight on the Nation’s rectitude)
to remind the black man that his part of the contract was to deliver
up the felon to justice, that his duty to his country, his race, and
his manhood was to refuse all sanctuary to crime? A few years ago an
acute negro policeman in Philadelphia recognized and trapped a negro
criminal. For this he received his full measure of commendation;
but he also received threatening letters from other negroes whose
simple conception of a policeman’s part was the giving of shelter and
protection to offenders of his own race.
The nastiest bit of hypocrisy ever put forward by wrong-doers was the
cant of the early slave-dealers about Christianity and the negroes’
souls. The slaves were Christianized by thousands, and took kindly to
their new creed; but their spiritual welfare was not a controlling
factor in the commerce which supplied the Southern States with labour.
That four fifths of the labourers were better off in America than
they would have been in Africa was a circumstance equally unfit to be
offered as a palliative by civilized men. The inherent injustice of
slavery lay too deep for vindication. But now that the great wrong has
been righted (and that three hundred thousand white men laid down
their lives in the righting is a fact which deserves to be remembered),
now that the American negroes are free, Christian, educated, and
privileged (like artists and authors) to earn their daily bread, they
cannot candidly regret that their remote ancestors had not been left
unmolested on the coast of Guinea. They have their grievances; but they
are the most fortunate of their race. The debt the white men owed them
has been paid. There is left a mutual dependence on the law, a mutual
obligation of self-imposed decency of behaviour from which not even
voters are exempt.