fun and of which educationalists make fusses. When I was in America
another newspaper produced a marvellous child of six who had the
intellect of a child of twelve. The only test given, and apparently one
on which the experiment turned, was that she could be made to understand
and even to employ the word 'annihilate.' When asked to say something
proving this, the happy infant offered the polished aphorism, 'When
common sense comes in, superstition is annihilated.' In reply to which,
by way of showing that I also am as intelligent as a child of twelve,
and there is no arrested development about me, I will say in the same
elegant diction, 'When psychological education comes in, common sense is
annihilated.' Everybody seems to be sitting round this child in an
adoring fashion. It did not seem to occur to anybody that we do not
particularly want even a child of twelve to talk about annihilating
superstition; that we do not want a child of six to talk like a child of
twelve, or a child of twelve to talk like a man of fifty, or even a man
of fifty to talk like a fool. And on the principle of hoping that a
little girl of six will have a massive and mature brain, there is every
reason for hoping that a little boy of six will grow a magnificent and
bushy beard.
Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American
cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce
psychoanalysis--that is, enforce confession without absolution. And I
confess I cannot connect this feature with the genuine democratic spirit
of the mass. I can only suggest, in concluding this chapter, two
possible causes rather peculiar to America, which may have made this
great democracy so unlike all other democracies, and in this so
manifestly hostile to the whole democratic idea.
The first historical cause is Puritanism; but not Puritanism merely in
the sense of Prohibitionism. The truth is that prohibitions might have
done far less harm as prohibitions, if a vague association had not
arisen, on some dark day of human unreason, between prohibition and
progress. And it was the progress that did the harm, not the
prohibition. Men can enjoy life under considerable limitations, if they
can be sure of their limited enjoyments; but under Progressive
Puritanism we can never be sure of anything. The curse of it is not
limitation; it is unlimited limitation. The evil is not in the
restriction; but in the fact that nothing can ever restrict the
restriction. The prohibitions are bound to progress point by point; more
and more human rights and pleasures must of necessity be taken away; for
it is of the nature of this futurism that the latest fad is the faith of
the future, and the most fantastic fad inevitably makes the pace. Thus
the worst thing in the seventeenth-century aberration was not so much
Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched for truth not by synthesis but
by subdivision. It not only broke religion into small pieces, but it was
bound to choose the smallest piece. There is in America, I believe, a
large religious body that has felt it right to separate itself from
Christendom because it cannot believe in the morality of wearing
buttons. I do not know how the schism arose; but it is easy to suppose,
for the sake of argument, that there had originally existed some Puritan
body which condemned the frivolity of ribbons though not of buttons. I
was going to say of badges but not buttons; but on reflection I cannot
bring myself to believe that any American, however insane, would object
to wearing badges. But the point is that as the holy spirit of
progressive prophesy rested on the first sect because it had invented a
new objection to ribbons, so that holy spirit would then pass from it to
the new sect who invented a further objection to buttons. And from them
it must inevitably pass to any rebel among them who shall choose to rise
and say that he disapproves of trousers because of the existence of
trouser-buttons. Each secession in turn must be right because it is
recent, and progress must progress by growing smaller and smaller. That
is the progressive theory, the legacy of seventeenth-century
sectarianism, the dogma implied in much modern politics, and the evident
enemy of democracy. Democracy is reproached with saying that the
majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always
right. Progressives are prophets; and fortunately not all the people are
prophets. Thus in the atmosphere of this slowly dying sectarianism
anybody who chooses to prophesy and prohibit can tyrannise over the
people. If he chooses to say that drinking is always wrong, or that
kissing is always wrong, or that wearing buttons is always wrong, people
are afraid to contradict him for fear they should be contradicting their
own great-grandchild. For their superstition is an inversion of the
ancestor-worship of China; and instead of vainly appealing to something
that is dead, they appeal to something that may never be born.
There is another cause of this strange servile disease in American
democracy. It is to be found in American feminism, and feminist America
is an entirely different thing from feminine America. I should say that
the overwhelming majority of American girls laugh at their female
politicians at least as much as the majority of American men despise
their male politicians. But though the aggressive feminists are a
minority, they are in this atmosphere which I have tried to analyse; the
atmosphere in which there is a sort of sanctity about the minority. And
it is this superstition of seriousness that constitutes the most solid
obstacle and exception to the general and almost conventional pressure
of public opinion. When a fad is frankly felt to be anti-national, as
was Abolitionism before the Civil War, or Pro-Germanism in the Great
War, or the suggestion of racial admixture in the South at all times,
then the fad meets far less mercy than anywhere else in the world; it is
snowed under and swept away. But when it does not thus directly
challenge patriotism or popular ideas, a curious halo of hopeful
solemnity surrounds it, merely because it is a fad, but above all if it
is a feminine fad. The earnest lady-reformer who really utters a warning
against the social evil of beer or buttons is seen to be walking clothed
in light, like a prophetess. Perhaps it is something of the holy aureole
which the East sees shining around an idiot.
But I think there is another explanation, feminine rather than feminist,
and proceeding from normal women and not from abnormal idiots. It is
something that involves an old controversy, but one upon which I have
not, like so many politicians, changed my opinion. It concerns the
particular fashion in which women tend to regard, or rather to
disregard, the formal and legal rights of the citizen. In so far as this
is a bias, it is a bias in the directly opposite direction from that now
lightly alleged. There is a sort of underbred history going about,
according to which women in the past have always been in the position of
slaves. It is much more to the point to note that women have always been
in the position of despots. They have been despotic because they ruled
in an area where they had too much common sense to attempt to be
constitutional. You cannot grant a constitution to a nursery; nor can
babies assemble like barons and extort a Great Charter. Tommy cannot
plead a Habeas Corpus against going to bed; and an infant cannot be
tried by twelve other infants before he is put in the corner. And as
there can be no laws or liberties in a nursery, the extension of
feminism means that there shall be no more laws or liberties in a state
than there are in a nursery. The woman does not really regard men as
citizens but as children. She may, if she is a humanitarian, love all
mankind; but she does not respect it. Still less does she respect its
votes. Now a man must be very blind nowadays not to see that there is a
danger of a sort of amateur science or pseudo-science being made the
excuse for every trick of tyranny and interference. Anybody who is not
an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street;
but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down
the chimney or even under the bed. In other words, it is a danger of
turning the policeman into a sort of benevolent burglar. Against this
protests are already being made, and will increasingly be made, if men
retain any instinct of independence or dignity at all. But to complain
of the woman interfering in the home will always sound like complaining
of the oyster intruding into the oyster-shell. To object that she has
too much power over education will seem like objecting to a hen having
too much to do with eggs. She has already been given an almost
irresponsible power over a limited region in these things; and if that
power is made infinite it will be even more irresponsible. If she adds
to her own power in the family all these alien fads external to the
family, her power will not only be irresponsible but insane. She will be
something which may well be called a nightmare of the nursery; a mad
mother. But the point is that she will be mad about other nurseries as
well as her own, or possibly instead of her own. The results will be
interesting; but at least it is certain that under this softening
influence government of the people, by the people, for the people, will
most assuredly perish from the earth.
But there is always another possibility. Hints of it may be noted here
and there like muffled gongs of doom. The other day some people
preaching some low trick or other, for running away from the glory of
motherhood, were suddenly silenced in New York; by a voice of deep and
democratic volume. The prigs who potter about the great plains are
pygmies dancing round a sleeping giant. That which sleeps, so far as
they are concerned, is the huge power of human unanimity and intolerance
in the soul of America. At present the masses in the Middle West are
indifferent to such fancies or faintly attracted by them, as fashions of
culture from the great cities. But any day it may not be so; some
lunatic may cut across their economic rights or their strange and buried
religion; and then he will see something. He will find himself running
like a nigger who has wronged a white woman or a man who has set the
prairie on fire. He will see something which the politicians fan in its
sleep and flatter with the name of the people, which many reactionaries
have cursed with the name of the mob, but which in any case has had
under its feet the crowns of many kings. It was said that the voice of
the people is the voice of God; and this at least is certain, that it
can be the voice of God to the wicked. And the last antics of their
arrogance shall stiffen before something enormous, such as towers in the
last words that Job heard out of the whirlwind; and a voice they never
knew shall tell them that his name is Leviathan, and he is lord over all
the children of pride.
_The Extraordinary American_
When I was in America I had the feeling that it was far more foreign
than France or even than Ireland. And by foreign I mean fascinating
rather than repulsive. I mean that element of strangeness which marks
the frontier of any fairyland, or gives to the traveller himself the
almost eerie title of the stranger. And I saw there more clearly than in
countries counted as more remote from us, in race or religion, a paradox
that is one of the great truths of travel.
We have never even begun to understand a people until we have found
something that we do not understand. So long as we find the character
easy to read, we are reading into it our own character. If when we see
an event we can promptly provide an explanation, we may be pretty
certain that we had ourselves prepared the explanation before we saw the
event. It follows from this that the best picture of a foreign people
can probably be found in a puzzle picture. If we can find an event of
which the meaning is really dark to us, it will probably throw some
light on the truth. I will therefore take from my American experiences
one isolated incident, which certainly could not have happened in any
other country I have ever clapped eyes on. I have really no notion of
what it meant. I have heard even from Americans about five different
conjectures about its meaning. But though I do not understand it, I do
sincerely believe that if I did understand it, I should understand
America.
It happened in the city of Oklahoma, which would require a book to
itself, even considered as a background. The State of Oklahoma is a
district in the south-west recently reclaimed from the Red Indian
territory. What many, quite incorrectly, imagine about all America is
really true of Oklahoma. It is proud of having no history. It is glowing
with the sense of having a great future--and nothing else. People are
just as likely to boast of an old building in Nashville as in Norwich;
people are just as proud of old families in Boston as in Bath. But in
Oklahoma the citizens do point out a colossal structure, arrogantly
affirming that it wasn't there last week. It was against the colours of
this crude stage scenery, as of a pantomime city of pasteboard, that the
fantastic figure appeared which still haunts me like a walking note of
interrogation. I was strolling down the main street of the city, and
looking in at a paper-stall vivid with the news of crime, when a
stranger addressed me; and asked me, quite politely but with a curious
air of having authority to put the question, what I was doing in that
city.
He was a lean brown man, having rather the look of a shabby tropical
traveller, with a grey moustache and a lively and alert eye. But the
most singular thing about him was that the front of his coat was covered
with a multitude of shining metallic emblems made in the shape of stars
and crescents. I was well accustomed by this time to Americans adorning
the lapels of their coats with little symbols of various societies; it
is a part of the American passion for the ritual of comradeship. There
is nothing that an American likes so much as to have a secret society
and to make no secret of it. But in this case, if I may put it so, the
rash of symbolism seemed to have broken out all over the man, in a
fashion that indicated that the fever was far advanced. Of this minor
mystery, however, his first few sentences offered a provisional
explanation. In answer to his question, touching my business in
Oklahoma, I replied with restraint that I was lecturing. To which he
replied without restraint, but rather with an expansive and radiant
pride, 'I also am lecturing. I am lecturing on astronomy.'
So far a certain wild rationality seemed to light up the affair. I knew
it was unusual, in my own country, for the Astronomer Royal to walk down
the Strand with his coat plastered all over with the Solar System.
Indeed, it was unusual for any English astronomical lecturer to
advertise the subject of his lectures in this fashion. But though it
would be unusual, it would not necessarily be unreasonable. In fact, I
think it might add to the colour and variety of life, if specialists did
adopt this sort of scientific heraldry. I should like to be able to
recognise an entomologist at sight by the decorative spiders and
cockroaches crawling all over his coat and waistcoat. I should like to
see a conchologist in a simple costume of shells. An osteopath, I
suppose, would be agreeably painted so as to resemble a skeleton, while
a botanist would enliven the street with the appearance of a
Jack-in-the-Green. So while I regarded the astronomical lecturer in the
astronomical coat as a figure distinguishable, by a high degree of
differentiation, from the artless astronomers of my island home (enough
their simple loveliness for me) I saw in him nothing illogical, but
rather an imaginative extreme of logic. And then came another turn of
the wheel of topsy-turvydom, and all the logic was scattered to the
wind.
Expanding his starry bosom and standing astraddle, with the air of one
who owned the street, the strange being continued, 'Yes, I am lecturing
on astronomy, anthropology, archaeology, palaeontology, embryology,
eschatology,' and so on in a thunderous roll of theoretical sciences
apparently beyond the scope of any single university, let alone any
single professor. Having thus introduced himself, however, he got to
business. He apologised with true American courtesy for having
questioned me at all, and excused it on the ground of his own exacting
responsibilities. I imagined him to mean the responsibility of
simultaneously occupying the chairs of all the faculties already
mentioned. But these apparently were trifles to him, and something far
more serious was clouding his brow.
'I feel it to be my duty,' he said, 'to acquaint myself with any
stranger visiting this city; and it is an additional pleasure to welcome
here a member of the Upper Ten.' I assured him earnestly that I knew
nothing about the Upper Ten, except that I did not belong to them; I
felt, not without alarm, that the Upper Ten might be another secret
society. He waved my abnegation aside and continued, 'I have a great
responsibility in watching over this city. My friend the mayor and I
have a great responsibility.' And then an extraordinary thing happened.
Suddenly diving his hand into his breast-pocket, he flashed something
before my eyes like a hand-mirror; something which disappeared again
almost as soon as it appeared. In that flash I could only see that it
was some sort of polished metal plate, with some letters engraved on it
like a monogram. But the reward of a studious and virtuous life, which
has been spent chiefly in the reading of American detective stories,
shone forth for me in that hour of trial; I received at last the prize
of a profound scholarship in the matter of imaginary murders in
tenth-rate magazines. I remembered who it was who in the Yankee
detective yarn flashes before the eyes of Slim Jim or the Lone Hand
Crook a badge of metal sometimes called a shield. Assuming all the
desperate composure of Slim Jim himself, I replied, 'You mean you are
connected with the police authorities here, don't you? Well, if I commit
a murder here, I'll let you know.' Whereupon that astonishing man waved
a hand in deprecation, bowed in farewell with the grace of a dancing
master; and said, 'Oh, those are not things we expect from members of
the Upper Ten.'
Then that moving constellation moved away, disappearing in the dark
tides of humanity, as the vision passed away down the dark tides from
Sir Galahad and, starlike, mingled with the stars.
That is the problem I would put to all Americans, and to all who claim
to understand America. Who and what was that man? Was he an astronomer?
Was he a detective? Was he a wandering lunatic? If he was a lunatic who
thought he was an astronomer, why did he have a badge to prove he was a
detective? If he was a detective pretending to be an astronomer, why did
he tell a total stranger that he was a detective two minutes after
saying he was an astronomer? If he wished to watch over the city in a
quiet and unobtrusive fashion, why did he blazon himself all over with
all the stars of the sky, and profess to give public lectures on all the
subjects of the world? Every wise and well-conducted student of murder
stories is acquainted with the notion of a policeman in plain clothes.
But nobody could possibly say that this gentleman was in plain clothes.
Why not wear his uniform, if he was resolved to show every stranger in
the street his badge? Perhaps after all he had no uniform; for these
lands were but recently a wild frontier rudely ruled by vigilance
committees. Some Americans suggested to me that he was the Sheriff; the
regular hard-riding, free-shooting Sheriff of Bret Harte and my
boyhood's dreams. Others suggested that he was an agent of the Ku-Klux
Klan, that great nameless revolution of the revival of which there were
rumours at the time; and that the symbol he exhibited was theirs. But
whether he was a sheriff acting for the law, or a conspirator against
the law, or a lunatic entirely outside the law, I agree with the former
conjectures upon one point. I am perfectly certain he had something else
in his pocket besides a badge. And I am perfectly certain that under
certain circumstances he would have handled it instantly, and shot me
dead between the gay bookstall and the crowded trams. And that is the
last touch to the complexity; for though in that country it often seems
that the law is made by a lunatic, you never know when the lunatic may
not shoot you for keeping it. Only in the presence of that citizen of
Oklahoma I feel I am confronted with the fullness and depth of the
mystery of America. Because I understand nothing, I recognise the thing
that we call a nation; and I salute the flag.
But even in connection with this mysterious figure there is a moral
which affords another reason for mentioning him. Whether he was a
sheriff or an outlaw, there was certainly something about him that
suggested the adventurous violence of the old border life of America;
and whether he was connected with the police or no, there was certainly
violence enough in his environment to satisfy the most ardent policeman.
The posters in the paper-shop were placarded with the verdict in the
Hamon trial; a _cause célèbre_ which reached its crisis in Oklahoma
while I was there. Senator Hamon had been shot by a girl whom he had
wronged, and his widow demanded justice, or what might fairly be called
vengeance. There was very great excitement culminating in the girl's
acquittal. Nor did the Hamon case appear to be entirely exceptional in
that breezy borderland. The moment the town had received the news that
Clara Smith was free, newsboys rushed down the street shouting, 'Double
stabbing outrage near Oklahoma,' or 'Banker's throat cut on Main
Street,' or otherwise resuming their regular mode of life. It seemed as
much as to say, 'Do not imagine that our local energies are exhausted in
shooting a Senator,' or 'Come, now, the world is young, even if Clara
Smith is acquitted, and the enthusiasm of Oklahoma is not yet cold.'