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diff --git a/old/11554-8.txt b/old/11554-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e3034ae --- /dev/null +++ b/old/11554-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3256 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crimes of England, by G.K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Crimes of England + +Author: G.K. Chesterton + +Release Date: March 13, 2004 [EBook #11554] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Shimmin, Caitlin and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + +THE CRIMES OF +ENGLAND + +BY +GILBERT K. CHESTERTON + +MCMXVI + +1916 + + +_CONTENTS_ + + +CHAPTER I + +SOME WORDS TO PROFESSOR WHIRLWIND + +The German Professor, his need of Education +for Debate--Three Mistakes of German +Controversialists--The Multiplicity of +Excuses--Falsehood against Experience-- +Kultur preached by Unkultur--The Mistake +about Bernard Shaw--German Lack of +Welt-Politik--Where England is really +Wrong. + + +CHAPTER II + +THE PROTESTANT HERO + +Suitable Finale for the German Emperor--Frederick +II. and the Power of +Fear--German Influence in England since +Lather--Our German Kings and Allies-- +Triumph of Frederick the Great. + + +CHAPTER III + +THE ENIGMA OF WATERLOO + +How we helped Napoleon--The Revolution +and the Two Germanics--Religious +Resistance of Austria and Russia--Irreligious +Resistance of Prussia and England--Negative +Irreligion of England--its Idealism +in Snobbishness--Positive Irreligion of +Prussia; no Idealism in Anything--Allegory +and the French Revolution--The Dual +Personality of England; the Double Battle--Triumph +of Blucher. + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE COMING OF THE JANISSARIES + +The Sad Story of Lord Salisbury--Ireland +and Heligoland--The Young Men of +Ireland--The Dirty Work--The Use of +German Mercenaries--The Unholy Alliance--Triumph +of the German Mercenaries. + + +CHAPTER V + +THE LOST ENGLAND + +Truth about England and Ireland--Murder +and the Two Travellers--Real Defence +of England--The Lost Revolution--Story +of Cobbett and the Germans--Historical +Accuracy of Cobbett--Violence of the English +Language--Exaggerated Truths versus +Exaggerated Lies--Defeat of the People--Triumph +of the German Mercenaries. + + +CHAPTER VI + +HAMLET AND THE DANES + +Degeneration of Grimm's Fairy Tales--From +Tales of Terror to Tales of Terrorism--German +Mistake of being Deep--The +Germanisation of Shakespeare--Carlyle and +the Spoilt Child--The Test of Teutonism-- +Hell or Hans Andersen--Causes of English +Inaction--Barbarism and Splendid Isolation-- +The Peace of the Plutocrats--Hamlet +the Englishman--The Triumph of Bismarck. + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE MIDNIGHT OF EUROPE + +The Two Napoleons--Their Ultimate +Success--The Interlude of Sedan--The +Meaning of an Emperor--The Triumph of +Versailles--The True Innocence of England-- +Triumph of the Kaiser. + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE WRONG HORSE + +Lord Salisbury Again--The Influence of +1870--The Fairy Tale of Teutonism--The +Adoration of the Crescent--The Reign of +the Cynics--Last Words to Professor +Whirlwind. + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE AWAKENING OF ENGLAND + +The March of Montenegro--The Anti-Servile +State--The Prussian Preparation--The +Sleep of England--The Awakening of +England. + + +CHAPTER X + +THE BATTLE OF THE MARNE + +The Hour of Peril--The Human Deluge--The +English at the Marne. + + +THE CRIMES OF ENGLAND + + + +I--_Some Words to Professor Whirlwind_ + + +DEAR PROFESSOR WHIRLWIND, + +Your name in the original German is too much for me; and this is the +nearest I propose to get to it: but under the majestic image of pure +wind marching in a movement wholly circular I seem to see, as in a +vision, something of your mind. But the grand isolation of your thoughts +leads you to express them in such words as are gratifying to yourself, +and have an inconspicuous or even an unfortunate effect upon others. If +anything were really to be made of your moral campaign against the +English nation, it was clearly necessary that somebody, if it were only +an Englishman, should show you how to leave off professing philosophy +and begin to practise it. I have therefore sold myself into the Prussian +service, and in return for a cast-off suit of the Emperor's clothes (the +uniform of an English midshipman), a German hausfrau's recipe for poison +gas, two penny cigars, and twenty-five Iron Crosses, I have consented +to instruct you in the rudiments of international controversy. Of this +part of my task I have here little to say that is not covered by a +general adjuration to you to observe certain elementary rules. They are, +roughly speaking, as follows:-- + +First, stick to one excuse. Thus if a tradesman, with whom your social +relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers +in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in +Numismatics and are a Collector of Coins; and he may possibly believe +you. But if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being +overloaded with unwieldy copper discs, and were in the act of replacing +them by a silver sixpence of your own, this further explanation, so far +from increasing his confidence in your motives, will (strangely enough) +actually decrease it. And if you are so unwise as to be struck by yet +another brilliant idea, and tell him that the pennies were all bad +pennies, which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution +for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a +police prosecution himself. Now this is not in any way an exaggeration +of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may +ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the +_Lusitania_. With my own eyes I have seen the following explanations, +apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship +carrying soldiers from Canada; (ii) that if it wasn't, it was a +merchant-ship unlawfully carrying munitions for the soldiers in France; +(iii) that, as the passengers on the ship had been warned in an +advertisement, Germany was justified in blowing them to the moon; (iv) +that there were guns, and the ship had to be torpedoed because the +English captain was just going to fire them off; (v) that the English or +American authorities, by throwing the _Lusitania_ at the heads of the +German commanders, subjected them to an insupportable temptation; which +was apparently somehow demonstrated or intensified by the fact that the +ship came up to schedule time, there being some mysterious principle by +which having tea at tea-time justifies poisoning the tea; (vi) that the +ship was not sunk by the Germans at all but by the English, the English +captain having deliberately tried to drown himself and some thousand of +his own countrymen in order to cause an exchange of stiff notes between +Mr. Wilson and the Kaiser. If this interesting story be true, I can only +say that such frantic and suicidal devotion to the most remote interests +of his country almost earns the captain pardon for the crime. But do you +not see, my dear Professor, that the very richness and variety of your +inventive genius throws a doubt upon each explanation when considered in +itself? We who read you in England reach a condition of mind in which it +no longer very much matters what explanation you offer, or whether you +offer any at all. We are prepared to hear that you sank the _Lusitania_ +because the sea-born sons of England would live more happily as deep-sea +fishes, or that every person on board was coming home to be hanged. You +have explained yourself so completely, in this clear way, to the +Italians that they have declared war on you, and if you go on explaining +yourself so clearly to the Americans they may quite possibly do the +same. + +Second, when telling such lies as may seem necessary to your +international standing, do not tell the lies to the people who know the +truth. Do not tell the Eskimos that snow is bright green; nor tell the +negroes in Africa that the sun never shines in that Dark Continent. +Rather tell the Eskimos that the sun never shines in Africa; and then, +turning to the tropical Africans, see if they will believe that snow is +green. Similarly, the course indicated for you is to slander the +Russians to the English and the English to the Russians; and there are +hundreds of good old reliable slanders which can still be used against +both of them. There are probably still Russians who believe that every +English gentleman puts a rope round his wife's neck and sells her in +Smithfield. There are certainly still Englishmen who believe that every +Russian gentleman takes a rope to his wife's back and whips her every +day. But these stories, picturesque and useful as they are, have a limit +to their use like everything else; and the limit consists in the fact +that they are not _true_, and that there necessarily exists a group of +persons who know they are not true. It is so with matters of fact about +which you asseverate so positively to us, as if they were matters of +opinion. Scarborough might be a fortress; but it is not. I happen to +know it is not. Mr. Morel may deserve to be universally admired in +England; but he is not universally admired in England. Tell the Russians +that he is by all means; but do not tell us. We have seen him; we have +also seen Scarborough. You should think of this before you speak. + +Third, don't perpetually boast that you are cultured in language which +proves that you are not. You claim to thrust yourself upon everybody on +the ground that you are stuffed with wit and wisdom, and have enough for +the whole world. But people who have wit enough for the whole world, +have wit enough for a whole newspaper paragraph. And you can seldom get +through even a whole paragraph without being monotonous, or irrelevant, +or unintelligible, or self-contradictory, or broken-minded generally. If +you have something to teach us, teach it to us now. If you propose to +convert us after you have conquered us, why not convert us before you +have conquered us? As it is, we cannot believe what you say about your +superior education because of the way in which you say it. If an +Englishman says, "I don't make no mistakes in English, not me," we can +understand his remark; but we cannot endorse it. To say, "Je parler le +Frenche language, non demi," is comprehensible, but not convincing. And +when you say, as you did in a recent appeal to the Americans, that the +Germanic Powers have sacrificed a great deal of "red fluid" in defence +of their culture, we point out to you that cultured people do not employ +such a literary style. Or when you say that the Belgians were so +ignorant as to think they were being butchered when they weren't, we +only wonder whether _you_ are so ignorant as to think you are being +believed when you aren't. Thus, for instance, when you brag about +burning Venice to express your contempt for "tourists," we cannot think +much of the culture, as culture, which supposes St. Mark's to be a thing +for tourists instead of historians. This, however, would be the least +part of our unfavourable judgment. That judgment is complete when we +have read such a paragraph as this, prominently displayed in a paper in +which you specially spread yourself: "That the Italians have a perfect +knowledge of the fact that this city of antiquities and tourists is +subject, and rightly subject, to attack and bombardment, is proved by +the measures they took at the beginning of the war to remove some of +their greatest art treasures." Now culture may or may not include the +power to admire antiquities, and to restrain oneself from the pleasure +of breaking them like toys. But culture does, presumably, include the +power to think. For less laborious intellects than your own it is +generally sufficient to think once. But if you will think twice or +twenty times, it cannot but dawn on you that there is something wrong in +the reasoning by which the placing of diamonds in a safe proves that +they are "rightly subject" to a burglar. The incessant assertion of such +things can do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say +them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any +superior culture after all. The earnest friend now advising you cannot +but grieve at such incautious garrulity. If you confined yourself to +single words, uttered at intervals of about a month or so, no one could +possibly raise any rational objection, or subject them to any rational +criticism. In time you might come to use whole sentences without +revealing the real state of things. + +Through neglect of these maxims, my dear Professor, every one of your +attacks upon England has gone wide. In pure fact they have not touched +the spot, which the real critics of England know to be a very vulnerable +spot. We have a real critic of England in Mr. Bernard Shaw, whose name +you parade but apparently cannot spell; for in the paper to which I have +referred he is called Mr. Bernhard Shaw. Perhaps you think he and +Bernhardi are the same man. But if you quoted Mr. Bernard Shaw's +statement instead of misquoting his name, you would find that his +criticism of England is exactly the opposite of your own; and naturally, +for it is a rational criticism. He does not blame England for being +against Germany. He does most definitely blame England for not being +sufficiently firmly and emphatically on the side of Russia. He is not +such a fool as to accuse Sir Edward Grey of being a fiendish Machiavelli +plotting against Germany; he accuses him of being an amiable +aristocratic stick who failed to frighten the Junkers from their plan of +war. Now, it is not in the least a question of whether we happen to like +this quality or that: Mr. Shaw, I rather fancy, would dislike such +verbose compromise more than downright plotting. It is simply the fact +that Englishmen like Grey are open to Mr. Shaw's attack and are not open +to yours. It is not true that the English were sufficiently clearheaded +or self-controlled to conspire for the destruction of Germany. Any man +who knows England, any man who hates England as one hates a living +thing, will tell you it is not true. The English may be snobs, they may +be plutocrats, they may be hypocrites, but they are not, as a fact, +plotters; and I gravely doubt whether they could be if they wanted to. +The mass of the people are perfectly incapable of plotting at all, and +if the small ring of rich people who finance our politics were plotting +for anything, it was for peace at almost any price. Any Londoner who +knows the London streets and newspapers as he knows the Nelson column or +the Inner Circle, knows that there were men in the governing class and +in the Cabinet who were literally thirsting to defend Germany until +Germany, by her own act, became indefensible. If they said nothing in +support of the tearing up of the promise of peace to Belgium, it is +simply because there was nothing to be said. + +You were the first people to talk about World-Politics; and the first +people to disregard them altogether. Even your foreign policy is +domestic policy. It does not even apply to any people who are not +Germans; and of your wild guesses about some twenty other peoples, not +one has gone right even by accident. Your two or three shots at my own +not immaculate land have been such that you would have been much nearer +the truth if you had tried to invade England by crossing the Caucasus, +or to discover England among the South Sea Islands. With your first +delusion, that our courage was calculated and malignant when in truth +our very corruption was timid and confused, I have already dealt. The +case is the same with your second favourite phrase; that the British +army is mercenary. You learnt it in books and not in battlefields; and I +should like to be present at a scene in which you tried to bribe the +most miserable little loafer in Hammersmith as if he were a cynical +condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city. It is not the fact, +my dear sir. You have been misinformed. The British Army is not at this +moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army. It is a +volunteer army in the strict sense of the word; nor do I object to your +calling it an amateur army. There is no compulsion, and there is next to +no pay. It is at this moment drawn from every class of the community, +and there are very few classes which would not earn a little more money +in their ordinary trades. It numbers very nearly as many men as it would +if it were a conscript army; that is with the necessary margin of men +unable to serve or needed to serve otherwise. Ours is a country in which +that democratic spirit which is common to Christendom is rather +unusually sluggish and far below the surface. And the most genuine and +purely popular movement that we have had since the Chartists has been +the enlistment for this war. By all means say that such vague and +sentimental volunteering is valueless in war if you think so; or even +if you don't think so. By all means say that Germany is unconquerable +and that we cannot really kill you. But if you say that we do not really +want to kill you, you do us an injustice. You do indeed. + +I need not consider the yet crazier things that some of you have said; +as that the English intend to keep Calais and fight France as well as +Germany for the privilege of purchasing a frontier and the need to keep +a conscript army. That, also, is out of books, and pretty mouldy old +books at that. It was said, I suppose, to gain sympathy among the +French, and is therefore not my immediate business, as they are +eminently capable of looking after themselves. I merely drop one word in +passing, lest you waste your powerful intellect on such projects. The +English may some day forgive you; the French never will. You Teutons are +too light and fickle to understand the Latin seriousness. My only +concern is to point out that about England, at least, you are invariably +and miraculously wrong. + +Now speaking seriously, my dear Professor, it will not do. It could be +easy to fence with you for ever and parry every point you attempt to +make, until English people began to think there was nothing wrong with +England at all. But I refuse to play for safety in this way. There is a +very great deal that is really wrong with England, and it ought not to +be forgotten even in the full blaze of your marvellous mistakes. I +cannot have my countrymen tempted to those pleasures of intellectual +pride which are the result of comparing themselves with you. The deep +collapse and yawning chasm of your ineptitude leaves me upon a perilous +spiritual elevation. Your mistakes are matters of fact; but to enumerate +them does not exhaust the truth. For instance, the learned man who +rendered the phrase in an English advertisement "cut you dead" as "hack +you to death," was in error; but to say that many such advertisements +are vulgar is not an error. Again, it is true that the English poor are +harried and insecure, with insufficient instinct for armed revolt, +though you will be wrong if you say that they are occupied literally in +shooting the moon. It is true that the average Englishman is too much +attracted by aristocratic society; though you will be in error if you +quote dining with Duke Humphrey as an example of it. In more ways than +one you forget what is meant by idiom. + +I have therefore thought it advisable to provide you with a catalogue of +the real crimes of England; and I have selected them on a principle +which cannot fail to interest and please you. On many occasions we have +been very wrong indeed. We were very wrong indeed when we took part in +preventing Europe from putting a term to the impious piracies of +Frederick the Great. We were very wrong indeed when we allowed the +triumph over Napoleon to be soiled with the mire and blood of Blucher's +sullen savages. We were very wrong indeed when we allowed the peaceful +King of Denmark to be robbed in broad daylight by a brigand named +Bismarck; and when we allowed the Prussian swashbucklers to enslave and +silence the French provinces which they could neither govern nor +persuade. We were very wrong indeed when we flung to such hungry +adventurers a position so important as Heligoland. We were very wrong +indeed when we praised the soulless Prussian education and copied the +soulless Prussian laws. Knowing that you will mingle your tears with +mine over this record of English wrong-doing, I dedicate it to you, and +I remain, + +Yours reverently, + +G. K. CHESTERTON + + + +II--_The Protestant Hero_ + + +A question is current in our looser English journalism touching what +should be done with the German Emperor after a victory of the Allies. +Our more feminine advisers incline to the view that he should be shot. +This is to make a mistake about the very nature of hereditary monarchy. +Assuredly the Emperor William at his worst would be entitled to say to +his amiable Crown Prince what Charles II. said when his brother warned +him of the plots of assassins: "They will never kill me to make you +king." Others, of greater monstrosity of mind, have suggested that he +should be sent to St. Helena. So far as an estimate of his +historical importance goes, he might as well be sent to Mount Calvary. +What we have to deal with is an elderly, nervous, not unintelligent +person who happens to be a Hohenzollern; and who, to do him justice, +does think more of the Hohenzollerns as a sacred caste than of his own +particular place in it. In such families the old boast and motto of +hereditary kingship has a horrible and degenerate truth. The king never +dies; he only decays for ever. + +If it were a matter of the smallest importance what happened to the +Emperor William when once his house had been disarmed, I should satisfy +my fancy with another picture of his declining years; a conclusion that +would be peaceful, humane, harmonious, and forgiving. + +In various parts of the lanes and villages of South England the +pedestrian will come upon an old and quiet public-house, decorated with +a dark and faded portrait in a cocked hat and the singular inscription, +"The King of Prussia." These inn signs probably commemorate the visit of +the Allies after 1815, though a great part of the English middle classes +may well have connected them with the time when Frederick II. was +earning his title of the Great, along with a number of other territorial +titles to which he had considerably less claim. Sincere and +simple-hearted Dissenting ministers would dismount before that sign (for +in those days Dissenters drank beer like Christians, and indeed +manufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour and the old +victory of him whom they called the Protestant Hero. We should be using +every word with literal exactitude if we said that he was really +something devilish like a hero. Whether he was a Protestant hero or not +can be decided best by those who have read the correspondence of a +writer calling himself Voltaire, who was quite shocked at Frederick's +utter lack of religion of any kind. But the little Dissenter drank his +beer in all innocence and rode on. And the great blasphemer of Potsdam +would have laughed had he known; it was a jest after his own heart. Such +was the jest he made when he called upon the emperors to come to +communion, and partake of the eucharistic body of Poland. Had he been +such a Bible reader as the Dissenter doubtless thought him, he might +haply have foreseen the vengeance of humanity upon his house. He might +have known what Poland was and was yet to be; he might have known that +he ate and drank to his damnation, discerning not the body of God. + +Whether the placing of the present German Emperor in charge of one of +these wayside public-houses would be a jest after _his_ own heart +possibly remains to be seen. But it would be much more melodious and +fitting an end than any of the sublime euthanasias which his enemies +provide for him. That old sign creaking above him as he sat on the bench +outside his home of exile would be a much more genuine memory of the +real greatness of his race than the modern and almost gimcrack stars and +garters that were pulled in Windsor Chapel. From modern knighthood has +departed all shadow of chivalry; how far we have travelled from it can +easily be tested by the mere suggestion that Sir Thomas Lipton, let us +say, should wear his lady's sleeve round his hat or should watch his +armour in the Chapel of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The giving and +receiving of the Garter among despots and diplomatists is now only part +of that sort of pottering mutual politeness which keeps the peace in an +insecure and insincere state of society. But that old blackened wooden +sign is at least and after all the sign of something; the sign of the +time when one solitary Hohenzollern did not only set fire to fields and +cities, but did truly set on fire the minds of men, even though it were +fire from hell. + +Everything was young once, even Frederick the Great. It was an +appropriate preface to the terrible epic of Prussia that it began with +an unnatural tragedy of the loss of youth. That blind and narrow savage +who was the boy's father had just sufficient difficulty in stamping out +every trace of decency in him, to show that some such traces must have +been there. If the younger and greater Frederick ever had a heart, it +was a broken heart; broken by the same blow that broke his flute. When +his only friend was executed before his eyes, there were two corpses to +be borne away; and one to be borne on a high war-horse through victory +after victory: but with a small bottle of poison in the pocket. It is +not irrelevant thus to pause upon the high and dark house of his +childhood. For the peculiar quality which marks out Prussian arms and +ambitions from all others of the kind consists in this wrinkled and +premature antiquity. There is something comparatively boyish about the +triumphs of all the other tyrants. There was something better than +ambition in the beauty and ardour of the young Napoleon. He was at +least a lover; and his first campaign was like a love-story. All that +was pagan in him worshipped the Republic as men worship a woman, and all +that was Catholic in him understood the paradox of Our Lady of +Victories. Henry VIII., a far less reputable person, was in his early +days a good knight of the later and more florid school of chivalry; we +might almost say that he was a fine old English gentleman so long as he +was young. Even Nero was loved in his first days: and there must have +been some cause to make that Christian maiden cast flowers on his +dishonourable grave. But the spirit of the great Hohenzollern smelt from +the first of the charnel. He came out to his first victory like one +broken by defeats; his strength was stripped to the bone and fearful as +a fleshless resurrection; for the worst of what could come had already +befallen him. The very construction of his kingship was built upon the +destruction of his manhood. He had known the final shame; his soul had +surrendered to force. He could not redress that wrong; he could only +repeat it and repay it. He could make the souls of his soldiers +surrender to his gibbet and his whipping-post; he could 'make the souls +of the nations surrender to his soldiers. He could only break men in as +he had been broken; while he could break in, he could never break out. +He could not slay in anger, nor even sin with simplicity. Thus he stands +alone among the conquerors of their kind; his madness was not due to a +mere misdirection of courage. Before the whisper of war had come to him +the foundations of his audacity had been laid in fear. + +Of the work he did in this world there need be no considerable debate. +It was romantic, if it be romantic that the dragon should swallow St. +George. He turned a small country into a great one: he made a new +diplomacy by the fulness and far-flung daring of his lies: he took away +from criminality all reproach of carelessness and incompleteness. He +achieved an amiable combination of thrift and theft. He undoubtedly gave +to stark plunder something of the solidity of property. He protected +whatever he stole as simpler men protect whatever they have earned or +inherited. He turned his hollow eyes with a sort of loathsome affection +upon the territories which had most reluctantly become his: at the end +of the Seven Years' War men knew as little how he was to be turned out +of Silesia as they knew why he had ever been allowed in it. In Poland, +like a devil in possession, he tore asunder the body he inhabited; but +it was long before any man dreamed that such disjected limbs could live +again. Nor were the effects of his break from Christian tradition +confined to Christendom; Macaulay's world-wide generalisation is very +true though very Macaulayese. But though, in a long view, he scattered +the seeds of war all over the world, his own last days were passed in a +long and comparatively prosperous peace; a peace which received and +perhaps deserved a certain praise: a peace with which many European +peoples were content. For though he did not understand justice, he could +understand moderation. He was the most genuine and the most wicked of +pacifists. He did not want any more wars. He had tortured and beggared +all his neighbours; but he bore them no malice for it. + +The immediate cause of that spirited disaster, the intervention of +England on behalf of the new Hohenzollern throne, was due, of course, +to the national policy of the first William Pitt. He was the kind of man +whose vanity and simplicity are too easily overwhelmed by the obvious. +He saw nothing in a European crisis except a war with France; and +nothing in a war with France except a repetition of the rather fruitless +glories of Agincourt and Malplaquet. He was of the Erastian Whigs, +sceptical but still healthy-minded, and neither good enough nor bad +enough to understand that even the war of that irreligious age was +ultimately a religious war. He had not a shade of irony in his whole +being; and beside Frederick, already as old as sin, he was like a rather +brilliant schoolboy. + +But the direct causes were not the only causes, nor the true ones. The +true causes were connected with the triumph of one of the two traditions +which had long been struggling in England. And it is pathetic to record +that the foreign tradition was then represented by two of the ablest men +of that age, Frederick of Prussia and Pitt; while what was really the +old English tradition was represented by two of the stupidest men that +mankind ever tolerated in any age, George III. and Lord Bute. Bute was +the figurehead of a group of Tories who set about fulfilling the fine if +fanciful scheme for a democratic monarchy sketched by Bolingbroke in +"The Patriot King." It was bent in all sincerity on bringing men's minds +back to what are called domestic affairs, affairs as domestic as George +III. It might have arrested the advancing corruption of Parliaments and +enclosure of country-sides, by turning men's minds from the foreign +glories of the great Whigs like Churchill and Chatham; and one of its +first acts was to terminate the alliance with Prussia. Unfortunately, +whatever was picturesque in the piracy of Potsdam was beyond the +imagination of Windsor. But whatever was prosaic in Potsdam was already +established at Windsor; the economy of cold mutton, the heavy-handed +taste in the arts, and the strange northern blend of boorishness with +etiquette. If Bolingbroke's ideas had been applied by a spirited person, +by a Stuart, for example, or even by Queen Elizabeth (who had real +spirit along with her extraordinary vulgarity), the national soul might +have broken free from its new northern chains. But it was the irony of +the situation that the King to whom Tories appealed as a refuge from +Germanism was himself a German. + +We have thus to refer the origins of the German influence in England +back to the beginning of the Hanoverian Succession; and thence back to +the quarrel between the King and the lawyers which had issue at Naseby; +and thence again to the angry exit of Henry VIII. from the mediaeval +council of Europe. It is easy to exaggerate the part played in the +matter by that great and human, though very pagan person, Martin Luther. +Henry VIII. was sincere in his hatred for the heresies of the German +monk, for in speculative opinions Henry was wholly Catholic; and the two +wrote against each other innumerable pages, largely consisting of terms +of abuse, which were pretty well deserved on both sides. But Luther was +not a Lutheran. He was a sign of the break-up of Catholicism; but he was +not a builder of Protestantism. The countries which became corporately +and democratically Protestant, Scotland, for instance, and Holland, +followed Calvin and not Luther. And Calvin was a Frenchman; an +unpleasant Frenchman, it is true, but one full of that French capacity +for creating official entities which can really act, and have a kind of +impersonal personality, such as the French Monarchy or the Terror. +Luther was an anarchist, and therefore a dreamer. He made that which is, +perhaps, in the long run, the fullest and most shining manifestation of +failure; he made a name. Calvin made an active, governing, persecuting +thing, called the Kirk. There is something expressive of him in the fact +that he called even his work of abstract theology "The Institutes." + +In England, however, there were elements of chaos more akin to Luther +than to Calvin. And we may thus explain many things which appear rather +puzzling in our history, notably the victory of Cromwell not only over +the English Royalists but over the Scotch Covenanters. It was the +victory of that more happy-go-lucky sort of Protestantism, which had in +it much of aristocracy but much also of liberty, over that logical +ambition of the Kirk which would have made Protestantism, if possible, +as constructive as Catholicism had been. It might be called the victory +of Individualist Puritanism over Socialist Puritanism. It was what +Milton meant when he said that the new presbyter was an exaggeration of +the old priest; it was his _office_ that acted, and acted very harshly. +The enemies of the Presbyterians were not without a meaning when they +called themselves Independents. To this day no one can understand +Scotland who does not realise that it retains much of its mediæval +sympathy with France, the French equality, the French pronunciation of +Latin, and, strange as it may sound, is in nothing so French as in its +Presbyterianism. + +In this loose and negative sense only it may be said that the great +modern mistakes of England can be traced to Luther. It is true only in +this, that both in Germany and England a Protestantism softer and less +abstract than Calvinism was found useful to the compromises of courtiers +and aristocrats; for every abstract creed does something for human +equality. Lutheranism in Germany rapidly became what it is to-day--a +religion of court chaplains. The reformed church in England became +something better; it became a profession for the younger sons of +squires. But these parallel tendencies, in all their strength and +weakness, reached, as it were, symbolic culmination when the mediæval +monarchy was extinguished, and the English squires gave to what was +little more than a German squire the damaged and diminished crown. + +It must be remembered that the Germanics were at that time used as a +sort of breeding-ground for princes. There is a strange process in +history by which things that decay turn into the very opposite of +themselves. Thus in England Puritanism began as the hardest of creeds, +but has ended as the softest; soft-hearted and not unfrequently +soft-headed. Of old the Puritan in war was certainly the Puritan at his +best; it was the Puritan in peace whom no Christian could be expected to +stand. Yet those Englishmen to-day who claim descent from the great +militarists of 1649 express the utmost horror of militarism. An +inversion of an opposite kind has taken place in Germany. Out of the +country that was once valued as providing a perpetual supply of kings +small enough to be stop-gaps, has come the modern menace of the one +great king who would swallow the kingdoms of the earth. But the old +German kingdoms preserved, and were encouraged to preserve, the good +things that go with small interests and strict boundaries, music, +etiquette, a dreamy philosophy, and so on. They were small enough to be +universal. Their outlook could afford to be in some degree broad and +many-sided. They had the impartiality of impotence. All this has been +utterly reversed, and we find ourselves at war with a Germany whose +powers are the widest and whose outlook is the narrowest in the world. + +It is true, of course, that the English squires put themselves over the +new German prince rather than under him. They put the crown on him as an +extinguisher. It was part of the plan that the new-comer, though royal, +should be almost rustic. Hanover must be one of England's possessions +and not England one of Hanover's. But the fact that the court became a +German court prepared the soil, so to speak; English politics were +already subconsciously committed to two centuries of the belittlement of +France and the gross exaggeration of Germany. The period can be +symbolically marked out by Carteret, proud of talking German at the +beginning of the period, and Lord Haldane, proud of talking German at +the end of it. Culture is already almost beginning to be spelt with a k. +But all such pacific and only slowly growing Teutonism was brought to a +crisis and a decision when the voice of Pitt called us, like a trumpet, +to the rescue of the Protestant Hero. + +Among all the monarchs of that faithless age, the nearest to a man was a +woman. Maria Theresa of Austria was a German of the more generous sort, +limited in a domestic rather than a national sense, firm in the ancient +faith at which all her own courtiers were sneering, and as brave as a +young lioness. Frederick hated her as he hated everything German and +everything good. He sets forth in his own memoirs, with that clearness +which adds something almost superhuman to the mysterious vileness of his +character, how he calculated on her youth, her inexperience and her lack +of friends as proof that she could be despoiled with safety. He invaded +Silesia in advance of his own declaration of war (as if he had run on +ahead to say it was coming) and this new anarchic trick, combined with +the corruptibility of nearly all the other courts, left him after the +two Silesian wars in possession of the stolen goods. But Maria Theresa +had refused to submit to the immorality of nine points of the law. By +appeals and concessions to France, Russia, and other powers, she +contrived to create something which, against the atheist innovator even +in that atheist age, stood up for an instant like a spectre of the +Crusades. Had that Crusade been universal and whole-hearted, the great +new precedent of mere force and fraud would have been broken; and the +whole appalling judgment which is fallen upon Christendom would have +passed us by. But the other Crusaders were only half in earnest for +Europe; Frederick was quite in earnest for Prussia; and he sought for +allies, by whose aid this weak revival of good might be stamped out, and +his adamantine impudence endure for ever. The allies he found were the +English. It is not pleasant for an Englishman to have to write the +words. + +This was the first act of the tragedy, and with it we may leave +Frederick, for we are done with the fellow though not with his work. It +is enough to add that if we call all his after actions satanic, it is +not a term of abuse, but of theology. He was a Tempter. He dragged the +other kings to "partake of the body of Poland," and learn the meaning of +the Black Mass. Poland lay prostrate before three giants in armour, and +her name passed into a synonym for failure. The Prussians, with their +fine magnanimity, gave lectures on the hereditary maladies of the man +they had murdered. They could not conceive of life in those limbs; and +the time was far off when they should be undeceived. In that day five +nations were to partake not of the body, but of the spirit of Poland; +and the trumpet of the resurrection of the peoples should be blown from +Warsaw to the western isles. + + + +III--_The Enigma of Waterloo_ + + +That great Englishman Charles Fox, who was as national as Nelson, went +to his death with the firm conviction that England had made Napoleon. He +did not mean, of course, that any other Italian gunner would have done +just as well; but he did mean that by forcing the French back on their +guns, as it were, we had made their chief gunner necessarily their chief +citizen. Had the French Republic been left alone, it would probably have +followed the example of most other ideal experiments; and praised peace +along with progress and equality. It would almost certainly have eyed +with the coldest suspicion any adventurer who appeared likely to +substitute his personality for the pure impersonality of the Sovereign +People; and would have considered it the very flower of republican +chastity to provide a Brutus for such a Caesar. But if it was +undesirable that equality should be threatened by a citizen, it was +intolerable that it should be simply forbidden by a foreigner. If +France could not put up with French soldiers she would very soon have to +put up with Austrian soldiers; and it would be absurd if, having decided +to rely on soldiering, she had hampered the best French soldier even on the +ground that he was not French. So that whether we regard Napoleon as a +hero rushing to the country's help, or a tyrant profiting by the +country's extremity, it is equally clear that those who made the war +made the war-lord; and those who tried to destroy the Republic were +those who created the Empire. So, at least, Fox argued against that much +less English prig who would have called him unpatriotic; and he threw +the blame upon Pitt's Government for having joined the anti-French +alliance, and so tipped up the scale in favour of a military France. But +whether he was right or no, he would have been the readiest to admit +that England was not the first to fly at the throat of the young +Republic. Something in Europe much vaster and vaguer had from the first +stirred against it. What was it then that first made war--and made +Napoleon? There is only one possible answer: the Germans. This is the +second act of our drama of the degradation of England to the level of +Germany. And it has this very important development; that Germany means +by this time _all_ the Germans, just as it does to-day. The savagery of +Prussia and the stupidity of Austria are now combined. Mercilessness and +muddleheadedness are met together; unrighteousness and unreasonableness +have kissed each other; and the tempter and the tempted are agreed. The +great and good Maria Theresa was already old. She had a son who was a +philosopher of the school of Frederick; also a daughter who was more +fortunate, for she was guillotined. It was natural, no doubt, that her +brother and relatives should disapprove of the incident; but it occurred +long after the whole Germanic power had been hurled against the new +Republic. Louis XVI. himself was still alive and nominally ruling when +the first pressure came from Prussia and Austria, demanding that the +trend of the French emancipation should be reversed. It is impossible to +deny, therefore, that what the united Germanics were resolved to destroy +was the reform and not even the Revolution. The part which Joseph of +Austria played in the matter is symbolic. For he was what is called an +enlightened despot, which is the worst kind of despot. He was as +irreligious as Frederick the Great, but not so disgusting or amusing. +The old and kindly Austrian family, of which Maria Theresa was the +affectionate mother, and Marie Antoinette the rather uneducated +daughter, was already superseded and summed up by a rather dried-up +young man self-schooled to a Prussian efficiency. The needle is already +veering northward. Prussia is already beginning to be the captain of the +Germanics "in shining armour." Austria is already becoming a loyal +_sekundant_. + +But there still remains one great difference between Austria and Prussia +which developed more and more as the energy of the young Napoleon was +driven like a wedge between them. The difference can be most shortly +stated by saying that Austria did, in some blundering and barbaric way, +care for Europe; but Prussia cared for nothing but Prussia. Austria is +not a nation; you cannot really find Austria on the map. But Austria is +a kind of Empire; a Holy Roman Empire that never came, an expanding and +contracting-dream. It does feel itself, in a vague patriarchal way, the +leader, not of a nation, but of nations. It is like some dying Emperor +of Rome in the decline; who should admit that the legions had been +withdrawn from Britain or from Parthia, but would feel it as +fundamentally natural that they should have been there, as in Sicily or +Southern Gaul. I would not assert that the aged Francis Joseph imagines +that he is Emperor of Scotland or of Denmark; but I should guess that he +retains some notion that if he did rule both the Scots and the Danes, it +would not be more incongruous than his ruling both the Hungarians and +the Poles. This cosmopolitanism of Austria has in it a kind of shadow of +responsibility for Christendom. And it was this that made the difference +between its proceedings and those of the purely selfish adventurer from +the north, the wild dog of Pomerania. + +It may be believed, as Fox himself came at last to believe, that +Napoleon in his latest years was really an enemy to freedom, in the +sense that he was an enemy to that very special and occidental form of +freedom which we call Nationalism. The resistance of the Spaniards, for +instance, was certainly a popular resistance. It had that peculiar, +belated, almost secretive strength with which war is made by the people. +It was quite easy for a conqueror to get into Spain; his great +difficulty was to get out again. It was one of the paradoxes of history +that he who had turned the mob into an army, in defence of its rights +against the princes, should at last have his army worn down, not by +princes but by mobs. It is equally certain that at the other end of +Europe, in burning Moscow and on the bridge of the Beresina, he had +found the common soul, even as he had found the common sky, his enemy. +But all this does not affect the first great lines of the quarrel, which +had begun before horsemen in Germanic uniform had waited vainly upon the +road to Varennes or had failed upon the miry slope up to the windmill of +Valmy. And that duel, on which depended all that our Europe has since +become, had great Russia and gallant Spain and our own glorious island +only as subordinates or seconds. That duel, first, last, and for ever, +was a duel between the Frenchman and the German; that is, between the +citizen and the barbarian. + +It is not necessary nowadays to defend the French Revolution, it is not +necessary to defend even Napoleon, its child and champion, from +criticisms in the style of Southey and Alison, which even at the time +had more of the atmosphere of Bath and Cheltenham than of Turcoing and +Talavera. The French Revolution was attacked because it was democratic +and defended because it was democratic; and Napoleon was not feared as +the last of the iron despots, but as the first of the iron democrats. +What France set out to prove France has proved; not that common men are +all angels, or all diplomatists, or all gentlemen (for these inane +aristocratic illusions were no part of the Jacobin theory), but that +common men can all be citizens and can all be soldiers; that common men +can fight and can rule. There is no need to confuse the question with +any of those escapades of a floundering modernism which have made +nonsense of this civic common-sense. Some Free Traders have seemed to +leave a man no country to fight for; some Free Lovers seem to leave a +man no household to rule. But these things have not established +themselves either in France or anywhere else. What has been established +is not Free Trade or Free Love, but Freedom; and it is nowhere so +patriotic or so domestic as in the country from which it came. The poor +men of France have not loved the land less because they have shared it. +Even the patricians are patriots; and if some honest Royalists or +aristocrats are still saying that democracy cannot organise and cannot +obey, they are none the less organised by it and obeying it, nobly +living or splendidly dead for it, along the line from Switzerland to the +sea. + +But for Austria, and even more for Russia, there was this to be said; +that the French Republican ideal was incomplete, and that they +possessed, in a corrupt but still positive and often popular sense, what +was needed to complete it. The Czar was not democratic, but he was +humanitarian. He was a Christian Pacifist; there is something of the +Tolstoyan in every Russian. It is not wholly fanciful to talk of the +White Czar: for Russia even destruction has a deathly softness as of +snow. Her ideas are often innocent and even childish; like the idea of +Peace. The phrase Holy Alliance was a beautiful truth for the Czar, +though only a blasphemous jest for his rascally allies, Metternich and +Castlereagh. Austria, though she had lately fallen to a somewhat +treasonable toying with heathens and heretics of Turkey and Prussia, +still retained something of the old Catholic comfort for the soul. +Priests still bore witness to that mighty mediaeval institution which +even its enemies concede to be a noble nightmare. All their hoary +political iniquities had not deprived them of that dignity. If they +darkened the sun in heaven, they clothed it with the strong colours of +sunrise in garment or gloriole; if they had given men stones for bread, +the stones were carved with kindly faces and fascinating tales. If +justice counted on their shameful gibbets hundreds of the innocent dead, +they could still say that for them death was more hopeful than life for +the heathen. If the new daylight discovered their vile tortures, there +had lingered in the darkness some dim memory that they were tortures of +Purgatory and not, like those which Parisian and Prussian diabolists +showed shameless in the sunshine, of naked hell. They claimed a truth +not yet disentangled from human nature; for indeed earth is not even +earth without heaven, as a landscape is not a landscape without the sky. +And in, a universe without God there is not room enough for a man. + +It may be held, therefore, that there must in any case have come a +conflict between the old world and the new; if only because the old are +often broad, while the young are always narrow. The Church had learnt, +not at the end but at the beginning of her centuries, that the funeral +of God is always a premature burial. If the bugles of Bonaparte raised +the living populace of the passing hour, she could blow that yet more +revolutionary trumpet that shall raise all the democracy of the dead. +But if we concede that collision was inevitable between the new Republic +on the one hand and Holy Russia and the Holy Roman Empire on the other, +there remain two great European forces which, in different attitudes and +from very different motives, determined the ultimate combination. +Neither of them had any tincture of Catholic mysticism. Neither of them +had any tincture of Jacobin idealism. Neither of them, therefore, had +any real moral reason for being in the war at all. The first was +England, and the second was Prussia. + +It is very arguable that England must, in any case, have fought to keep +her influence on the ports of the North Sea. It is quite equally +arguable that if she had been as heartily on the side of the French +Revolution as she was at last against it, she could have claimed the +same concessions from the other side. It is certain that England had no +necessary communion with the arms and tortures of the Continental +tyrannies, and that she stood at the parting of the ways. England was +indeed an aristocracy, but a liberal one; and the ideas growing in the +middle classes were those which had already made America, and were +remaking France. The fiercest Jacobins, such as Danton, were deep in the +liberal literature of England. The people had no religion to fight for, +as in Russia or La Vendée. The parson was no longer a priest, and had +long been a small squire. Already that one great blank in our land had +made snobbishness the only religion of South England; and turned rich +men into a mythology. The effect can be well summed up in that decorous +abbreviation by which our rustics speak of "Lady's Bedstraw," where they +once spoke of "Our Lady's Bedstraw." We have dropped the comparatively +democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. South England is +still, as it was called in the Middle Ages, a garden; but it is the kind +where grow the plants called "lords and ladies." + +We became more and more insular even about our continental conquests; we +stood upon our island as if on an anchored ship. We never thought of +Nelson at Naples, but only eternally at Trafalgar; and even that Spanish +name we managed to pronounce wrong. But even if we regard the first +attack upon Napoleon as a national necessity, the general trend remains +true. It only changes the tale from a tragedy of choice to a tragedy of +chance. And the tragedy was that, for a second time, we were at one with +the Germans. + +But if England had nothing to fight for but a compromise, Prussia had +nothing to fight for but a negation. She was and is, in the supreme +sense, the spirit that denies. It is as certain that she was fighting +against liberty in Napoleon as it is that she was fighting against +religion in Maria Theresa. What she was fighting for she would have +found it quite impossible to tell you. At the best, it was for Prussia; +if it was anything else, it was tyranny. She cringed to Napoleon when he +beat her, and only joined in the chase when braver people had beaten +him. She professed to restore the Bourbons, and tried to rob them while +she was restoring them. For her own hand she would have wrecked the +Restoration with the Revolution. Alone in all that agony of peoples, she +had not the star of one solitary ideal to light the night of her +nihilism. + +The French Revolution has a quality which all men feel; and which may be +called a sudden antiquity. Its classicalism was not altogether a cant. +When it had happened it seemed to have happened thousands of years ago. +It spoke in parables; in the hammering of spears and the awful cap of +Phrygia. To some it seemed to pass like a vision; and yet it seemed +eternal as a group of statuary. One almost thought of its most strenuous +figures as naked. It is always with a shock of comicality that we +remember that its date was so recent that umbrellas were fashionable +and top-hats beginning to be tried. And it is a curious fact, giving a +kind of completeness to this sense of the thing as something that +happened outside the world, that its first great act of arms and also +its last were both primarily symbols; and but for this visionary +character, were in a manner vain. It began with the taking of the old +and almost empty prison called the Bastille; and we always think of it +as the beginning of the Revolution, though the real Revolution did not +come till some time after. And it ended when Wellington and Blucher met +in 1815; and we always think of it as the end of Napoleon; though +Napoleon had really fallen before. And the popular imagery is right, as +it generally is in such things: for the mob is an artist, though not a +man of science. The riot of the 14th of July did not specially deliver +prisoners inside the Bastille, but it did deliver the prisoners outside. +Napoleon when he returned was indeed a _revenant_, that is, a ghost. But +Waterloo was all the more final in that it was a spectral resurrection +and a second death. And in this second case there were other elements +that were yet more strangely symbolic. That doubtful and double battle +before Waterloo was like the dual personality in a dream. It +corresponded curiously to the double mind of the Englishman. We connect +Quatre Bras with things romantically English to the verge of +sentimentalism, with Byron and "The Black Brunswicker." We naturally +sympathise with Wellington against Ney. We do not sympathise, and even +then we did not really sympathise, with Blucher against Napoleon. +Germany has complained that we passed over lightly the presence of +Prussians at the decisive action. And well we might. Even at the time +our sentiment was not solely jealousy, but very largely shame. +Wellington, the grimmest and even the most unamiable of Tories, with no +French sympathies and not enough human ones, has recorded his opinion of +his Prussian allies in terms of curt disgust. Peel, the primmest and +most snobbish Tory that ever praised "our gallant Allies" in a frigid +official speech, could not contain himself about the conduct of +Blucher's men. Our middle classes did well to adorn their parlours with +the picture of the "Meeting of Wellington and Blucher." They should +have hung up a companion piece of Pilate and Herod shaking hands. Then, +after that meeting amid the ashes of Hougomont, where they dreamed they +had trodden out the embers of all democracy, the Prussians rode on +before, doing after their kind. After them went that ironical aristocrat +out of embittered Ireland, with what thoughts we know; and Blucher, with +what thoughts we care not; and his soldiers entered Paris, and stole the +sword of Joan of Arc. + + + +IV--_The Coming of the Janissaries_ + + +The late Lord Salisbury, a sad and humorous man, made many public and +serious remarks that have been proved false and perilous, and many +private and frivolous remarks which were valuable and ought to be +immortal. He struck dead the stiff and false psychology of "social +reform," with its suggestion that the number of public-houses made +people drunk, by saying that there were a number of bedrooms at +Hatfield, but they never made him sleepy. Because of this it is possible +to forgive him for having talked about "living and dying nations": +though it is of such sayings that living nations die. In the same spirit +he included the nation of Ireland in the "Celtic fringe" upon the west +of England. It seems sufficient to remark that the fringe is +considerably broader than the garment. But the fearful satire of time +has very sufficiently avenged the Irish nation upon him, largely by the +instrumentality of another fragment of the British robe which he cast +away almost contemptuously in the North Sea. The name of it is +Heligoland; and he gave it to the Germans. + +The subsequent history of the two islands on either side of England has +been sufficiently ironical. If Lord Salisbury had foreseen exactly what +would happen to Heligoland, as well as to Ireland, he might well have +found no sleep at Hatfield in one bedroom or a hundred. In the eastern +isle he was strengthening a fortress that would one day be called upon +to destroy us. In the western isle he was weakening a fortress that +would one day be called upon to save us. In that day his trusted ally, +William Hohenzollern, was to batter our ships and boats from the Bight +of Heligoland; and in that day his old and once-imprisoned enemy, John +Redmond, was to rise in the hour of English jeopardy, and be thanked in +thunder for the free offer of the Irish sword. All that Robert Cecil +thought valueless has been our loss, and all that he thought feeble our +stay. Among those of his political class or creed who accepted and +welcomed the Irish leader's alliance, there were some who knew the real +past relations between England and Ireland, and some who first felt +them in that hour. All knew that England could no longer be a mere +mistress; many knew that she was now in some sense a suppliant. Some +knew that she deserved to be a suppliant. These were they who knew a +little of the thing called history; and if they thought at all of such +dead catchwords as the "Celtic fringe" for a description of Ireland, it +was to doubt whether we were worthy to kiss the hem of her garment. If +there be still any Englishman who thinks such language extravagant, this +chapter is written to enlighten him. + +In the last two chapters I have sketched in outline the way in which +England, partly by historical accident, but partly also by false +philosophy, was drawn into the orbit of Germany, the centre of whose +circle was already at Berlin. I need not recapitulate the causes at all +fully here. Luther was hardly a heresiarch for England, though a hobby +for Henry VIII. But the negative Germanism of the Reformation, its drag +towards the north, its quarantine against Latin culture, was in a sense +the beginning of the business. It is well represented in two facts; the +barbaric refusal of the new astronomical calendar merely because it was +invented by a Pope, and the singular decision to pronounce Latin as if +it were something else, making it not a dead language but a new +language. Later, the part played by particular royalties is complex and +accidental; "the furious German" came and passed; the much less +interesting Germans came and stayed. Their influence was negative but +not negligible; they kept England out of that current of European life +into which the Gallophil Stuarts might have carried her. Only one of the +Hanoverians was actively German; so German that he actually gloried in +the name of Briton, and spelt it wrong. Incidentally, he lost America. +It is notable that all those eminent among the real Britons, who spelt +it right, respected and would parley with the American Revolution, +however jingo or legitimist they were; the romantic conservative Burke, +the earth-devouring Imperialist Chatham, even, in reality, the jog-trot +Tory North. The intractability was in the Elector of Hanover more than +in the King of England; in the narrow and petty German prince who was +bored by Shakespeare and approximately inspired by Handel. What really +clinched the unlucky companionship of England and Germany was the first +and second alliance with Prussia; the first in which we prevented the +hardening tradition of Frederick the Great being broken up by the Seven +Years' War; the second in which we prevented it being broken up by the +French Revolution and Napoleon. In the first we helped Prussia to escape +like a young brigand; in the second we helped the brigand to adjudicate +as a respectable magistrate. Having aided his lawlessness, we defended +his legitimacy. We helped to give the Bourbon prince his crown, though +our allies the Prussians (in their cheery way) tried to pick a few +jewels out of it before he got it. Through the whole of that period, so +important in history, it must be said that we were to be reckoned on for +the support of unreformed laws and the rule of unwilling subjects. There +is, as it were, an ugly echo even to the name of Nelson in the name of +Naples. But whatever is to be said of the cause, the work which we did +in it, with steel and gold, was so able and strenuous that an Englishman +can still be proud of it. We never performed a greater task than that +in which we, in a sense, saved Germany, save that in which a hundred +years later, we have now, in a sense, to destroy her. History tends to +be a facade of faded picturesqueness for most of those who have not +specially studied it: a more or less monochrome background for the drama +of their own day. To these it may well seem that it matters little +whether we were on one side or the other in a fight in which all the +figures are antiquated; Bonaparte and Blucher are both in old cocked +hats; French kings and French regicides are both not only dead men but +dead foreigners; the whole is a tapestry as decorative and as arbitrary +as the Wars of the Roses. It was not so: we fought for something real +when we fought for the old world against the new. If we want to know +painfully and precisely what it was, we must open an old and sealed and +very awful door, on a scene which was called Ireland, but which then +might well have been called hell. + +Having chosen our part and made war upon the new world, we were soon +made to understand what such spiritual infanticide involved; and were +committed to a kind of Massacre of the Innocents. In Ireland the young +world was represented by young men, who shared the democratic dream of +the Continent, and were resolved to foil the plot of Pitt; who was +working a huge machine of corruption to its utmost to absorb Ireland +into the Anti-Jacobin scheme of England. There was present every +coincidence that could make the British rulers feel they were mere +abbots of misrule. The stiff and self-conscious figure of Pitt has +remained standing incongruously purse in hand; while his manlier rivals +were stretching out their hands for the sword, the only possible resort +of men who cannot be bought and refuse to be sold. A rebellion broke out +and was repressed; and the government that repressed it was ten times +more lawless than the rebellion. Fate for once seemed to pick out a +situation in plain black and white like an allegory; a tragedy of +appalling platitudes. The heroes were really heroes; and the villains +were nothing but villains. The common tangle of life, in which good men +do evil by mistake and bad men do good by accident, seemed suspended for +us as for a judgment. We had to do things that not only were vile, but +felt vile. We had to destroy men who not only were noble, but looked +noble. They were men like Wolfe Tone, a statesman in the grand style who +was not suffered to found a state; and Robert Emmet, lover of his land +and of a woman, in whose very appearance men saw something of the eagle +grace of the young Napoleon. But he was luckier than the young Napoleon; +for he has remained young. He was hanged; not before he had uttered one +of those phrases that are the hinges of history. He made an epitaph of +the refusal of an epitaph: and with a gesture has hung his tomb in +heaven like Mahomet's coffin. Against such Irishmen we could only +produce Castlereagh; one of the few men in human records who seem to +have been made famous solely that they might be infamous. He sold his +own country, he oppressed ours; for the rest he mixed his metaphors, and +has saddled two separate and sensible nations with the horrible mixed +metaphor called the Union. Here there is no possible see-saw of +sympathies as there can be between Brutus and Caesar or between Cromwell +and Charles I.: there is simply nobody who supposes that Emmet was out +for worldly gain, or that Castlereagh was out for anything else. Even +the incidental resemblances between the two sides only served to sharpen +the contrast and the complete superiority of the nationalists. Thus, +Castlereagh and Lord Edward Fitzgerald were both aristocrats. But +Castlereagh was the corrupt gentleman at the Court, Fitzgerald the +generous gentleman upon the land; some portion of whose blood, along +with some portion of his spirit, descended to that great gentleman, +who--in the midst of the emetic immoralism of our modern politics--gave +back that land to the Irish peasantry. Thus again, all such +eighteenth-century aristocrats (like aristocrats almost anywhere) stood +apart from the popular mysticism and the shrines of the poor; they were +theoretically Protestants, but practically pagans. But Tone was the type +of pagan who refuses to persecute, like Gallio: Pitt was the type of +pagan who consents to persecute; and his place is with Pilate. He was an +intolerant indifferentist; ready to enfranchise the Papists, but more +ready to massacre them. Thus, once more, the two pagans, Tone and +Castlereagh, found a pagan end in suicide. But the circumstances were +such that any man, of any party, felt that Tone had died like Cato and +Castlereagh had died like Judas. + +The march of Pitt's policy went on; and the chasm between light and +darkness deepened. Order was restored; and wherever order spread, there +spread an anarchy more awful than the sun has ever looked on. Torture +came out of the crypts of the Inquisition and walked in the sunlight of +the streets and fields. A village vicar was slain with inconceivable +stripes, and his corpse set on fire with frightful jests about a roasted +priest. Rape became a mode of government. The violation of virgins +became a standing order of police. Stamped still with the same terrible +symbolism, the work of the English Government and the English settlers +seemed to resolve itself into animal atrocities against the wives and +daughters of a race distinguished for a rare and detached purity, and of +a religion which makes of innocence the Mother of God. In its bodily +aspects it became like a war of devils upon angels; as if England could +produce nothing but torturers, and Ireland nothing but martyrs. Such +was a part of the price paid by the Irish body and the English soul, for +the privilege of patching up a Prussian after the sabre-stroke of Jena. + +But Germany was not merely present in the spirit: Germany was present in +the flesh. Without any desire to underrate the exploits of the English +or the Orangemen, I can safely say that the finest touches were added by +soldiers trained in a tradition inherited from the horrors of the Thirty +Years' War, and of what the old ballad called "the cruel wars of High +Germanie." An Irishman I know, whose brother is a soldier, and who has +relatives in many distinguished posts of the British army, told me that +in his childhood the legend (or rather the truth) of '98 was so +frightfully alive that his own mother would not have the word "soldier" +spoken in her house. Wherever we thus find the tradition alive we find +that the hateful soldier means especially the German soldier. When the +Irish say, as some of them do say, that the German mercenary was worse +than the Orangemen, they say as much as human mouth can utter. Beyond +that there is nothing but the curse of God, which shall be uttered in +an unknown tongue. + +The practice of using German soldiers, and even whole German regiments, +in the make-up of the British army, came in with our German princes, and +reappeared on many important occasions in our eighteenth-century +history. They were probably among those who encamped triumphantly upon +Drumossie Moor, and also (which is a more gratifying thought) among +those who ran away with great rapidity at Prestonpans. When that very +typical German, George III., narrow, serious, of a stunted culture and +coarse in his very domesticity, quarrelled with all that was spirited, +not only in the democracy of America but in the aristocracy of England, +German troops were very fitted to be his ambassadors beyond the +Atlantic. With their well-drilled formations they followed Burgoyne in +that woodland march that failed at Saratoga; and with their wooden faces +beheld our downfall. Their presence had long had its effect in various +ways. In one way, curiously enough, their very militarism helped England +to be less military; and especially to be more mercantile. It began to +be felt, faintly of course and never consciously, that fighting was a +thing that foreigners had to do. It vaguely increased the prestige of +the Germans as the military people, to the disadvantage of the French, +whom it was the interest of our vanity to underrate. The mere mixture of +their uniforms with ours made a background of pageantry in which it +seemed more and more natural that English and German potentates should +salute each other like cousins, and, in a sense, live in each other's +countries. Thus in 1908 the German Emperor was already regarded as +something of a menace by the English politicians, and as nothing but a +madman by the English people. Yet it did not seem in any way disgusting +or dangerous that Edward VII. should appear upon occasion in a Prussian +uniform. Edward VII. was himself a friend to France, and worked for the +French Alliance. Yet his appearance in the red trousers of a French +soldier would have struck many people as funny; as funny as if he had +dressed up as a Chinaman. + +But the German hirelings or allies had another character which (by that +same strain of evil coincidence which we are tracing in this book) +encouraged all that was worst in the English conservatism and +inequality, while discouraging all that was best in it. It is true that +the ideal Englishman was too much of a squire; but it is just to add +that the ideal squire was a good squire. The best squire I know in +fiction is Duke Theseus in "The Midsummer Night's Dream," who is kind to +his people and proud of his dogs; and would be a perfect human being if +he were not just a little bit prone to be kind to both of them in the +same way. But such natural and even pagan good-nature is consonant with +the warm wet woods and comfortable clouds of South England; it never had +any place among the harsh and thrifty squires in the plains of East +Prussia, the land of the East Wind. They were peevish as well as proud, +and everything they created, but especially their army, was made +coherent by sheer brutality. Discipline was cruel enough in all the +eighteenth-century armies, created long after the decay of any faith or +hope that could hold men together. But the state that was first in +Germany was first in ferocity. Frederick the Great had to forbid his +English admirers to follow his regiments during the campaign, lest they +should discover that the most enlightened of kings had only excluded +torture from law to impose it without law. This influence, as we have +seen, left on Ireland a fearful mark which will never be effaced. +English rule in Ireland had been bad before; but in the broadening light +of the revolutionary century I doubt whether it could have continued as +bad, if we had not taken a side that forced us to flatter barbarian +tyranny in Europe. We should hardly have seen such a nightmare as the +Anglicising of Ireland if we had not already seen the Germanising of +England. But even in England it was not without its effects; and one of +its effects was to rouse a man who is, perhaps, the best English witness +to the effect on the England of that time of the Alliance with Germany. +With that man I shall deal in the chapter that follows. + + + +V--_The Lost England_ + + +Telling the truth about Ireland is not very pleasant to a patriotic +Englishman; but it is very patriotic. It is the truth and nothing but +the truth which I have but touched on in the last chapter. Several +times, and especially at the beginning of this war, we narrowly escaped +ruin because we neglected that truth, and would insist on treating our +crimes of the '98 and after as very distant; while in Irish feeling, and +in fact, they are very near. Repentance of this remote sort is not at +all appropriate to the case, and will not do. It may be a good thing to +forget and forgive; but it is altogether too easy a trick to forget and +be forgiven. + +The truth about Ireland is simply this: that the relations between +England and Ireland are the relations between two men who have to travel +together, one of whom tried to stab the other at the last stopping-place +or to poison the other at the last inn. Conversation may be courteous, +but it will be occasionally forced. The topic of attempted murder, its +examples in history and fiction, may be tactfully avoided in the +sallies; but it will be occasionally present in the thoughts. Silences, +not devoid of strain, will fall from time to time. The partially +murdered person may even think an assault unlikely to recur; but it is +asking too much, perhaps, to expect him to find it impossible to +imagine. And even if, as God grant, the predominant partner is really +sorry for his former manner of predominating, and proves it in some +unmistakable manner--as by saving the other from robbers at great +personal risk--the victim may still be unable to repress an abstract +psychological wonder about when his companion first began to feel like +that. Now this is not in the least an exaggerated parable of the +position of England towards Ireland, not only in '98, but far back from +the treason that broke the Treaty of Limerick and far onwards through +the Great Famine and after. The conduct of the English towards the Irish +after the Rebellion was quite simply the conduct of one man who traps +and binds another, and then calmly cuts him about with a knife. The +conduct during the Famine was quite simply the conduct of the first man +if he entertained the later moments of the second man, by remarking in a +chatty manner on the very hopeful chances of his bleeding to death. The +British Prime Minister publicly refused to stop the Famine by the use of +English ships. The British Prime Minister positively spread the Famine, +by making the half-starved populations of Ireland pay for the starved +ones. The common verdict of a coroner's jury upon some emaciated wretch +was "Wilful murder by Lord John Russell": and that verdict was not only +the verdict of Irish public opinion, but is the verdict of history. But +there were those in influential positions in England who were not +content with publicly approving the act, but publicly proclaimed the +motive. The _Times_, which had then a national authority and +respectability which gave its words a weight unknown in modern +journalism, openly exulted in the prospect of a Golden Age when the kind +of Irishman native to Ireland would be "as rare on the banks of the +Liffey as a red man on the banks of the Manhattan." It seems +sufficiently frantic that such a thing should have been said by one +European of another, or even of a Red Indian, if Red Indians had +occupied anything like the place of the Irish then and since; if there +were to be a Red Indian Lord Chief Justice and a Red Indian +Commander-in-Chief, if the Red Indian Party in Congress, containing +first-rate orators and fashionable novelists, could have turned +Presidents in and out; if half the best troops of the country were +trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital +written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the Chief +known as Pine in the Twilight, was the best living poet, or the Chief +Thin Red Fox, the ablest living dramatist. If that were realised, the +English critic probably would not say anything scornful of red men; +or certainly would be sorry he said it. But the extraordinary avowal +does mark what was most peculiar in the position. This has not been the +common case of misgovernment. It is not merely that the institutions we +set up were indefensible; though the curious mark of them is that they +were literally indefensible; from Wood's Halfpence to the Irish Church +Establishment. There can be no more excuse for the method used by Pitt +than for the method used by Pigott. But it differs further from +ordinary misrule in the vital matter of its object. The coercion was not +imposed that the people might live quietly, but that the people might +die quietly. And then we sit in an owlish innocence of our sin, and +debate whether the Irish might conceivably succeed in saving Ireland. +We, as a matter of fact, have not even failed to save Ireland. We have +simply failed to destroy her. + +It is not possible to reverse this judgment or to take away a single +count from it. Is there, then, anything whatever to be said for the +English in the matter? There is: though the English never by any chance +say it. Nor do the Irish say it; though it is in a sense a weakness as +well as a defence. One would think the Irish had reason to say anything +that can be said against the English ruling class, but they have not +said, indeed they have hardly discovered, one quite simple fact--that it +rules England. They are right in asking that the Irish should have a say +in the Irish government, but they are quite wrong in supposing that the +English have any particular say in English government. And I seriously +believe I am not deceived by any national bias, when I say that the +common Englishman would be quite incapable of the cruelties that were +committed in his name. But, most important of all, it is the historical +fact that there was another England, an England consisting of common +Englishmen, which not only certainly would have done better, but +actually did make some considerable attempt to do better. If anyone asks +for the evidence, the answer is that the evidence has been destroyed, or +at least deliberately boycotted: but can be found in the unfashionable +corners of literature; and, when found, is final. If anyone asks for the +great men of such a potential democratic England, the answer is that the +great men are labelled small men, or not labelled at all; have been +successfully belittled as the emancipation of which they dreamed has +dwindled. The greatest of them is now little more than a name; he is +criticised to be underrated and not to be understood; but he presented +all that alternative and more liberal Englishry; and was enormously +popular because he presented it. In taking him as the type of it we may +tell most shortly the whole of this forgotten tale. And, even when I +begin to tell it, I find myself in the presence of that ubiquitous evil +which is the subject of this book. It is a fact, and I think it is not a +coincidence, that in standing for a moment where this Englishman stood, +I again find myself confronted by the German soldier. + +The son of a small Surrey farmer, a respectable Tory and churchman, +ventured to plead against certain extraordinary cruelties being +inflicted on Englishmen whose hands were tied, by the whips of German +superiors; who were then parading in English fields their stiff foreign +uniforms and their sanguinary foreign discipline. In the countries from +which they came, of course, such torments were the one monotonous means +of driving men on to perish in the dead dynastic quarrels of the north; +but to poor Will Cobbett, in his provincial island, knowing little but +the low hills and hedges around the little church where he now lies +buried, the incident seemed odd--nay, unpleasing. He knew, of course, +that there was then flogging in the British army also; but the German +standard was notoriously severe in such things, and was something of an +acquired taste. Added to which he had all sorts of old grandmotherly +prejudices about Englishmen being punished by Englishmen, and notions of +that sort. He protested, not only in speech, but actually in print. He +was soon made to learn the perils of meddling in the high politics of +the High Dutch militarists. The fine feelings of the foreign mercenaries +were soothed by Cobbett being flung into Newgate for two years and +beggared by a fine of £1000. That small incident is a small transparent +picture of the Holy Alliance; of what was really meant by a country, +once half liberalised, taking up the cause of the foreign kings. This, +and not "The Meeting of Wellington and Blucher," should be engraved as +the great scene of the war. From this intemperate Fenians should learn +that the Teutonic mercenaries did not confine themselves solely to +torturing Irishmen. They were equally ready to torture Englishmen: for +mercenaries are mostly unprejudiced. To Cobbett's eye we were suffering +from allies exactly as we should suffer from invaders. Boney was a +bogey; but the German was a nightmare, a thing actually sitting on top +of us. In Ireland the Alliance meant the ruin of anything and +everything Irish, from the creed of St. Patrick to the mere colour +green. But in England also it meant the ruin of anything and everything +English, from the Habeas Corpus Act to Cobbett. + +After this affair of the scourging, he wielded his pen like a scourge +until he died. This terrible pamphleteer was one of those men who exist +to prove the distinction between a biography and a life. From his +biographies you will learn that he was a Radical who had once been a +Tory. From his life, if there were one, you would learn that he was +always a Radical because he was always a Tory. Few men changed less; it +was round him that the politicians like Pitt chopped and changed, like +fakirs dancing round a sacred rock. His secret is buried with him; it is +that he really cared about the English people. He was conservative +because he cared for their past, and liberal because he cared for their +future. But he was much more than this. He had two forms of moral +manhood very rare in our time: he was ready to uproot ancient successes, +and he was ready to defy oncoming doom. Burke said that few are the +partisans of a tyranny that has departed: he might have added that fewer +still are the critics of a tyranny that has remained. Burke certainly +was not one of them. While lashing himself into a lunacy against the +French Revolution, which only very incidentally destroyed the property +of the rich, he never criticised (to do him justice, perhaps never saw) +the English Revolution, which began with the sack of convents, and ended +with the fencing in of enclosures; a revolution which sweepingly and +systematically destroyed the property of the poor. While rhetorically +putting the Englishman in a castle, politically he would not allow him +on a common. Cobbett, a much more historical thinker, saw the beginning +of Capitalism in the Tudor pillage and deplored it; he saw the triumph +of Capitalism in the industrial cities and defied it. The paradox he was +maintaining really amounted to the assertion that Westminster Abbey is +rather more national than Welbeck Abbey. The same paradox would have led +him to maintain that a Warwickshire man had more reason to be proud of +Stratford-on-Avon than of Birmingham. He would no more have thought of +looking for England in Birmingham than of looking for Ireland in +Belfast. + +The prestige of Cobbett's excellent literary style has survived the +persecution of his equally excellent opinions. But that style also is +underrated through the loss of the real English tradition. More cautious +schools have missed the fact that the very genius of the English tongue +tends not only to vigour, but specially to violence. The Englishman of +the leading articles is calm, moderate, and restrained; but then the +Englishman of the leading articles is a Prussian. The mere English +consonants are full of Cobbett. Dr. Johnson was our great man of letters +when he said "stinks," not when he said "putrefaction." Take some common +phrase like "raining cats and dogs," and note not only the extravagance +of imagery (though that is very Shakespearean), but a jagged energy in +the very spelling. Say "chats" and "chiens" and it is not the same. +Perhaps the old national genius has survived the urban enslavement most +spiritedly in our comic songs, admired by all men of travel and +continental culture, by Mr. George Moore as by Mr. Belloc. One (to +which I am much attached) had a chorus-- + + "O wind from the South + Blow mud in the mouth + Of Jane, Jane, Jane." + +Note, again, not only the tremendous vision of clinging soils carried +skywards in the tornado, but also the suitability of the mere sounds. +Say "bone" and "bouche" for mud and mouth and it is not the same. +Cobbett was a wind from the South; and if he occasionally seemed to stop +his enemies' mouths with mud, it was the real soil of South England. + +And as his seemingly mad language is very literary, so his seemingly mad +meaning is very historical. Modern people do not understand him because +they do not understand the difference between exaggerating a truth and +exaggerating a lie. He did exaggerate, but what he knew, not what he did +not know. He only appears paradoxical because he upheld tradition +against fashion. A paradox is a fantastic thing that is said once: a +fashion is a more fantastic thing that is said a sufficient number of +times. I could give numberless examples in Cobbett's case, but I will +give only one. Anyone who finds himself full in the central path of +Cobbett's fury sometimes has something like a physical shock. No one who +has read "The History of the Reformation" will ever forget the passage +(I forget the precise words) in which he says the mere thought of such a +person as Cranmer makes the brain reel, and, for an instant, doubt the +goodness of God; but that peace and faith flow back into the soul when +we remember that he was burned alive. Now this is extravagant. It takes +the breath away; and it was meant to. But what I wish to point out is +that a much more extravagant view of Cranmer was, in Cobbett's day, the +accepted view of Cranmer; not as a momentary image, but as an immovable +historical monument. Thousands of parsons and penmen dutifully set down +Cranmer among the saints and martyrs; and there are many respectable +people who would do so still. This is not an exaggerated truth, but an +established lie. Cranmer was not such a monstrosity of meanness as +Cobbett implies; but he was mean. But there is no question of his being +less saintly than the parsonages believed; he was not a saint at all; +and not very attractive even as a sinner. He was no more a martyr for +being burned than Crippen for being hanged. + +Cobbett was defeated because the English people was defeated. After the +frame-breaking riots, men, as men, were beaten: and machines, as +machines, had beaten them. Peterloo was as much the defeat of the +English as Waterloo was the defeat of the French. Ireland did not get +Home Rule because England did not get it. Cobbett would not forcibly +incorporate Ireland, least of all the corpse of Ireland. But before his +defeat Cobbett had an enormous following; his "Register" was what the +serial novels of Dickens were afterwards to be. Dickens, by the way, +inherited the same instinct for abrupt diction, and probably enjoyed +writing "gas and gaiters" more than any two other words in his works. +But Dickens was narrower than Cobbett, not by any fault of his own, but +because in the intervening epoch of the triumph of Scrooge and Gradgrind +the link with our Christian past had been lost, save in the single +matter of Christmas, which Dickens rescued romantically and by a +hair's-breadth escape. Cobbett was a yeoman; that is, a man free and +farming a small estate. By Dickens's time, yeomen seemed as antiquated +as bowmen. Cobbett was mediaeval; that is, he was in almost every way +the opposite of what that word means to-day. He was as egalitarian as +St. Francis, and as independent as Robin Hood. Like that other yeoman in +the ballad, he bore in hand a mighty bow; what some of his enemies would +have called a long bow. But though he sometimes overshot the mark of +truth, he never shot away from it, like Froude. His account of that +sixteenth century in which the mediaeval civilisation ended, is not more +and not less picturesque than Froude's: the difference is in the dull +detail of truth. That crisis was _not_ the foundling of a strong Tudor +monarchy, for the monarchy almost immediately perished; it _was_ the +founding of a strong class holding all the capital and land, for it +holds them to this day. Cobbett would have asked nothing better than to +bend his mediaeval bow to the cry of "St. George for Merry England," for +though he pointed to the other and uglier side of the Waterloo medal, +he was patriotic; and his premonitions were rather against Blucher than +Wellington. But if we take that old war-cry as his final word (and he +would have accepted it) we must note how every term in it points away +from what the modern plutocrats call either progress or empire. It +involves the invocation of saints, the most popular and the most +forbidden form of mediævalism. The modern Imperialist no more thinks of +St. George in England than he thinks of St. John in St. John's Wood. It +is nationalist in the narrowest sense; and no one knows the beauty and +simplicity of the Middle Ages who has not seen St. George's Cross +separate, as it was at Creçy or Flodden, and noticed how much finer a +flag it is than the Union Jack. And the word "merry" bears witness to an +England famous for its music and dancing before the coming of the +Puritans, the last traces of which have been stamped out by a social +discipline utterly un-English. Not for two years, but for ten decades +Cobbett has been in prison; and his enemy, the "efficient" foreigner, +has walked about in the sunlight, magnificent, and a model for men. I +do not think that even the Prussians ever boasted about "Merry Prussia." + + + +VI--_Hamlet and the Danes_ + + +In the one classic and perfect literary product that ever came out of +Germany--I do not mean "Faust," but Grimm's Fairy Tales--there is a +gorgeous story about a boy who went through a number of experiences +without learning how to shudder. In one of them, I remember, he was +sitting by the fireside and a pair of live legs fell down the chimney +and walked about the room by themselves. Afterwards the rest fell down +and joined up; but this was almost an anti-climax. Now that is very +charming, and full of the best German domesticity. It suggests truly +what wild adventures the traveller can find by stopping at home. But it +also illustrates in various ways how that great German influence on +England, which is the matter of these essays, began in good things and +gradually turned to bad. It began as a literary influence, in the lurid +tales of Hoffmann, the tale of "Sintram," and so on; the revisualising +of the dark background of forest behind our European cities. That old +German darkness was immeasurably livelier than the new German light. The +devils of Germany were much better than the angels. Look at the Teutonic +pictures of "The Three Huntsmen" and observe that while the wicked +huntsman is effective in his own way, the good huntsman is weak in every +way, a sort of sexless woman with a face like a teaspoon. But there is +more in these first forest tales, these homely horrors. In the earlier +stages they have exactly this salt of salvation, that the boy does _not_ +shudder. They are made fearful that he may be fearless, not that he may +fear. As long as that limit is kept, the barbaric dreamland is decent; +and though individuals like Coleridge and De Quincey mixed it with worse +things (such as opium), they kept that romantic rudiment upon the whole. +But the one disadvantage of a forest is that one may lose one's way in +it. And the one danger is not that we may meet devils, but that we may +worship them. In other words, the danger is one always associated, by +the instinct of folk-lore, with forests; it is _enchantment_, or the +fixed loss of oneself in some unnatural captivity or spiritual +servitude. And in the evolution of Germanism, from Hoffmann to +Hauptmann, we do see this growing tendency to take horror seriously, +which is diabolism. The German begins to have an eerie abstract sympathy +with the force and fear he describes, as distinct from their objective. +The German is no longer sympathising with the boy against the goblin, +but rather with the goblin against the boy. There goes with it, as +always goes with idolatry, a dehumanised seriousness; the men of the +forest are already building upon a mountain the empty throne of the +Superman. Now it is just at this point that I for one, and most men who +love truth as well as tales, begin to lose interest. I am all for "going +out into the world to seek my fortune," but I do not want to find +it--and find it is only being chained for ever among the frozen figures +of the Sieges Allees. I do not want to be an idolator, still less an +idol. I am all for going to fairyland, but I am also all for coming +back. That is, I will admire, but I will not be magnetised, either by +mysticism or militarism. I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist +German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if +there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it, if I knew what +it was. I like the Prussian's legs (in their beautiful boots) to fall +down the chimney and walk about my room. But when he procures a head and +begins to talk, I feel a little bored. The Germans cannot really be deep +because they will not consent to be superficial. They are bewitched by +art, and stare at it, and cannot see round it. They will not believe +that art is a light and slight thing--a feather, even if it be from an +angelic wing. Only the slime is at the bottom of a pool; the sky is on +the surface. We see this in that very typical process, the Germanising +of Shakespeare. I do not complain of the Germans forgetting that +Shakespeare was an Englishman. I complain of their forgetting that +Shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, +above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of +deity. That is what is the matter with the Germans; they cannot "ring +fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. The phrase of Hamlet about +"holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest +critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. But it really +means (or at least its author really thought) that art is nothing if not +artificial. Realists, like other barbarians, really _believe_ the +mirror; and therefore break the mirror. Also they leave out the phrase +"as 'twere," which must be read into every remark of Shakespeare, and +especially every remark of Hamlet. What I mean by believing the mirror, +and breaking it, can be recorded in one case I remember; in which a +realistic critic quoted German authorities to prove that Hamlet had a +particular psycho-pathological abnormality, which is admittedly nowhere +mentioned in the play. The critic was bewitched; he was thinking of +Hamlet as a real man, with a background behind him three dimensions +deep--which does not exist in a looking-glass. "The best in this kind +are but shadows." No German commentator has ever made an adequate note +on that. Nevertheless, Shakespeare was an Englishman; he was nowhere +more English than in his blunders; but he was nowhere more successful +than in the description of very English types of character. And if +anything is to be said about Hamlet, beyond what Shakespeare has said +about him, I should say that Hamlet was an Englishman too. He was as +much an Englishman as he was a gentleman, and he had the very grave +weaknesses of both characters. The chief English fault, especially in +the nineteenth century, has been lack of decision, not only lack of +decision in action, but lack of the equally essential decision in +thought--which some call dogma. And in the politics of the last century, +this English Hamlet, as we shall see, played a great part, or rather +refused to play it. + +There were, then, two elements in the German influence; a sort of pretty +playing with terror and a solemn recognition of terrorism. The first +pointed to elfland, and the second to--shall we say, Prussia. And by +that unconscious symbolism with which all this story develops, it was +soon to be dramatically tested, by a definite political query, whether +what we really respected was the Teutonic fantasy or the Teutonic fear. + +The Germanisation of England, its transition and turning-point, was well +typified by the genius of Carlyle. The original charm of Germany had +been the charm of the child. The Teutons were never so great as when +they were childish; in their religious art and popular imagery the +Christ-Child is really a child, though the Christ is hardly a man. The +self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the +unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but +merely a garden of children. All the first and best forest-spirit is +infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent fear. +Carlyle marks exactly the moment when the German child becomes the +spoilt child. The wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism +always turns to mere immoralism. The wilfulness is no longer liked, but +is actually obeyed. The fear becomes a philosophy. Panic hardens into +pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism. + +Carlyle, the most influential English writer of that time, marks all +this by the mental interval between his "French Revolution" and his +"Frederick the Great." In both he was Germanic. Carlyle was really as +sentimental as Goethe; and Goethe was really as sentimental as Werther. +Carlyle understood everything about the French Revolution, except that +it was a French revolution. He could not conceive that cold anger that +comes from a love of insulted truth. It seemed to him absurd that a man +should die, or do murder, for the First Proposition of Euclid; should +relish an egalitarian state like an equilateral triangle; or should +defend the Pons Asinorum as Codes defended the Tiber bridge. But anyone +who does not understand that does not understand the French +Revolution--nor, for that matter, the American Revolution. "We hold +these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. But +though Carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence +for anarchy. He admired elemental energy. The violence which repelled +most men from the Revolution was the one thing that attracted him to it. +While a Whig like Macaulay respected the Girondists but deplored the +Mountain, a Tory like Carlyle rather liked the Mountain and quite unduly +despised the Girondists. This appetite for formless force belongs, of +course, to the forests, to Germany. But when Carlyle got there, there +fell upon him a sort of spell which is his tragedy and the English +tragedy, and, in no small degree, the German tragedy too. The real +romance of the Teutons was largely a romance of the Southern Teutons, +with their castles, which are almost literally castles in the air, and +their river which is walled with vineyards and rhymes so naturally to +wine. But as Carlyle's was rootedly a romance of conquest, he had to +prove that the thing which conquered in Germany was really more poetical +than anything else in Germany. Now the thing that conquered in Germany +was about the most prosaic thing of which the world ever grew weary. +There is a great deal more poetry in Brixton than in Berlin. Stella said +that Swift could write charmingly about a broom-stick; and poor Carlyle +had to write romantically about a ramrod. Compare him with Heine, who +had also a detached taste in the mystical grotesques of Germany, but who +saw what was their enemy: and offered to nail up the Prussian eagle like +an old crow as a target for the archers of the Rhine. Its prosaic +essence is not proved by the fact that it did not produce poets: it is +proved by the more deadly fact that it did. The actual written poetry of +Frederick the Great, for instance, was not even German or barbaric, but +simply feeble--and French. Thus Carlyle became continually gloomier as +his fit of the blues deepened into Prussian blues; nor can there be any +wonder. His philosophy had brought out the result that the Prussian was +the first of Germans, and, therefore, the first of men. No wonder he +looked at the rest of us with little hope. + +But a stronger test was coming both for Carlyle and England. Prussia, +plodding, policing, as materialist as mud, went on solidifying and +strengthening after unconquered Russia and unconquered England had +rescued her where she lay prostrate under Napoleon. In this interval the +two most important events were the Polish national revival, with which +Russia was half inclined to be sympathetic, but Prussia was implacably +coercionist; and the positive refusal of the crown of a united Germany +by the King of Prussia, simply because it was constitutionally offered +by a free German Convention. Prussia did not want to lead the Germans: +she wanted to conquer the Germans. And she wanted to conquer other +people first. She had already found her brutal, if humorous, embodiment +in Bismarck; and he began with a scheme full of brutality and not +without humour. He took up, or rather pretended to take up, the claim of +the Prince of Augustenberg to duchies which were a quite lawful part of +the land of Denmark. In support of this small pretender he enlisted two +large things, the Germanic body called the Bund and the Austrian Empire. +It is possibly needless to say that after he had seized the disputed +provinces by pure Prussian violence, he kicked out the Prince of +Augustenberg, kicked out the German Bund, and finally kicked out the +Austrian Empire too, in the sudden campaign of Sadowa. He was a good +husband and a good father; he did not paint in water colours; and of +such is the Kingdom of Heaven. But the symbolic intensity of the +incident was this. The Danes expected protection from England; and if +there had been any sincerity in the ideal side of our Teutonism they +ought to have had it. They ought to have had it even by the pedantries +of the time, which already talked of Latin inferiority: and were never +weary of explaining that the country of Richelieu could not rule and the +country of Napoleon could not fight. But if it was necessary for +whosoever would be saved to be a Teuton, the Danes were more Teuton than +the Prussians. If it be a matter of vital importance to be descended +from Vikings, the Danes really were descended from Vikings, while the +Prussians were descended from mongrel Slavonic savages. If Protestantism +be progress, the Danes were Protestant; while they had attained quite +peculiar success and wealth in that small ownership and intensive +cultivation which is very commonly a boast of Catholic lands. They had +in a quite arresting degree what was claimed for the Germanics as +against Latin revolutionism: quiet freedom, quiet prosperity, a simple +love of fields and of the sea. But, moreover, by that coincidence which +dogs this drama, the English of that Victorian epoch had found their +freshest impression of the northern spirit of infancy and wonder in the +works of a Danish man of genius, whose stories and sketches were so +popular in England as almost to have become English. Good as Grimm's +Fairy Tales were, they had been collected and not created by the modern +German; they were a museum of things older than any nation, of the +dateless age of once-upon-a-time. When the English romantics wanted to +find the folk-tale spirit still alive, they found it in the small +country of one of those small kings, with whom the folk-tales are almost +comically crowded. There they found what we call an original writer, who +was nevertheless the image of the origins. They found a whole fairyland +in one head and under one nineteenth-century top hat. Those of the +English who were then children owe to Hans Andersen more than to any of +their own writers, that essential educational emotion which feels that +domesticity is not dull but rather fantastic; that sense of the +fairyland of furniture, and the travel and adventure of the farmyard. +His treatment of inanimate things as animate was not a cold and awkward +allegory: it was a true sense of a dumb divinity in things that are. +Through him a child did feel that the chair he sat on was something like +a wooden horse. Through him children and the happier kind of men did +feel themselves covered by a roof as by the folded wings of some vast +domestic fowl; and feel common doors like great mouths that opened to +utter welcome. In the story of "The Fir Tree" he transplanted to +England a living bush that can still blossom into candles. And in his +tale of "The Tin Soldier" he uttered the true defence of romantic +militarism against the prigs who would forbid it even as a toy for the +nursery. He suggested, in the true tradition of the folk-tales, that the +dignity of the fighter is not in his largeness but rather in his +smallness, in his stiff loyalty and heroic helplessness in the hands of +larger and lower things. These things, alas, were an allegory. When +Prussia, finding her crimes unpunished, afterwards carried them into +France as well as Denmark, Carlyle and his school made some effort to +justify their Germanism, by pitting what they called the piety and +simplicity of Germany against what they called the cynicism and ribaldry +of France. But nobody could possibly pretend that Bismarck was more +pious and simple than Hans Andersen; yet the Carlyleans looked on with +silence or approval while the innocent toy kingdom was broken like a +toy. Here again, it is enormously probable that England would have +struck upon the right side, if the English people had been the English +Government. Among other coincidences, the Danish princess who had +married the English heir was something very like a fairy princess to the +English crowd. The national poet had hailed her as a daughter of the +sea-kings; and she was, and indeed still is, the most popular royal +figure in England. But whatever our people may have been like, our +politicians were on the very tamest level of timidity and the fear of +force to which they have ever sunk. The Tin Soldier of the Danish army +and the paper boat of the Danish navy, as in the story, were swept away +down the great gutter, down that colossal _cloaca_ that leads to the +vast cesspool of Berlin. + +Why, as a fact, did not England interpose? There were a great many +reasons given, but I think they were all various inferences from one +reason; indirect results and sometimes quite illogical results, of what +we have called the Germanisation of England. First, the very insularity +on which we insisted was barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the +central senate of the nations. What we called our splendid isolation +became a rather ignominious sleeping-partnership with Prussia. Next, we +were largely trained in irresponsibility by our contemporary historians, +Freeman and Green, teaching us to be proud of a possible descent from +King Arthur's nameless enemies and not from King Arthur. King Arthur +might not be historical, but at least he was legendary. Hengist and +Horsa were not even legendary, for they left no legend. Anybody could +see what was obligatory on the representative of Arthur; he was bound to +be chivalrous, that is, to be European. But nobody could imagine what +was obligatory on the representative of Horsa, unless it were to be +horsy. That was perhaps the only part of the Anglo-Saxon programme that +the contemporary English really carried out. Then, in the very real +decline from Cobbett to Cobden (that is, from a broad to a narrow +manliness and good sense) there had grown up the cult of a very curious +kind of peace, to be spread all over the world not by pilgrims, but by +pedlars. Mystics from the beginning had made vows of peace--but they +added to them vows of poverty. Vows of poverty were not in the +Cobdenite's line. Then, again, there was the positive praise of Prussia, +to which steadily worsening case the Carlyleans were already committed. +But beyond these, there was something else, a spirit which had more +infected us as a whole. That spirit was the spirit of Hamlet. We gave +the grand name of "evolution" to a notion that things do themselves. Our +wealth, our insularity, our gradual loss of faith, had so dazed us that +the old Christian England haunted us like a ghost in whom we could not +quite believe. An aristocrat like Palmerston, loving freedom and hating +the upstart despotism, must have looked on at its cold brutality not +without that ugly question which Hamlet asked himself--am I a coward? + + It cannot be + But I am pigeon-livered and lack gall + To make oppression bitter; or 'ere this + I should have fatted all the region kites + With this slave's offal. + +We made dumb our anger and our honour; but it has not brought us peace. + + + +VII--_The Midnight of Europe_ + + +Among the minor crimes of England may be classed the shallow criticism +and easy abandonment of Napoleon III. The Victorian English had a very +bad habit of being influenced by words and at the same time pretending +to despise them. They would build their whole historical philosophy upon +two or three titles, and then refuse to get even the titles right. The +solid Victorian Englishman, with his whiskers and his Parliamentary +vote, was quite content to say that Louis Napoleon and William of +Prussia both became Emperors--by which he meant autocrats. His whiskers +would have bristled with rage and he would have stormed at you for +hair-splitting and "lingo," if you had answered that William was German +Emperor, while Napoleon was not French Emperor, but only Emperor of the +French. What could such mere order of the words matter? Yet the same +Victorian would have been even more indignant if he had been asked to +be satisfied with an Art Master, when he had advertised for a Master of +Arts. His irritation would have increased if the Art Master had promised +him a sea-piece and had brought him a piece of the sea; or if, during +the decoration of his house, the same aesthetic humourist had undertaken +to procure some Indian Red and had produced a Red Indian. + +The Englishman would not see that if there was only a verbal difference +between the French Emperor and the Emperor of the French, so, if it came +to that, it was a verbal difference between the Emperor and the +Republic, or even between a Parliament and no Parliament. For him an +Emperor meant merely despotism; he had not yet learned that a Parliament +may mean merely oligarchy. He did not know that the English people would +soon be made impotent, not by the disfranchising of their constituents, +but simply by the silencing of their members; and that the governing +class of England did not now depend upon rotten boroughs, but upon +rotten representatives. Therefore he did not understand Bonapartism. He +did not understand that French democracy became more democratic, not +less, when it turned all France into one constituency which elected one +member. He did not understand that many dragged down the Republic +because it was not republican, but purely senatorial. He was yet to +learn how quite corruptly senatorial a great representative assembly can +become. Yet in England to-day we hear "the decline of Parliament" talked +about and taken for granted by the best Parliamentarians--Mr. Balfour, +for instance--and we hear the one partly French and wholly Jacobin +historian of the French Revolution recommending for the English evil a +revival of the power of the Crown. It seems that so far from having left +Louis Napoleon far behind in the grey dust of the dead despotisms, it is +not at all improbable that our most extreme revolutionary developments +may end where Louis Napoleon began. + +In other words, the Victorian Englishman did not understand the words +"Emperor of the French." The type of title was deliberately chosen to +express the idea of an elective and popular origin; as against such a +phrase as "the German Emperor," which expresses an almost +transcendental tribal patriarchate, or such a phrase as "King of +Prussia," which suggests personal ownership of a whole territory. To +treat the _Coup d'état_ as unpardonable is to justify riot against +despotism, but forbid any riot against aristocracy. Yet the idea +expressed in "The Emperor of the French" is not dead, but rather risen +from the dead. It is the idea that while a government may pretend to be +a popular government, only a person can be really popular. Indeed, the +idea is still the crown of American democracy, as it was for a time the +crown of French democracy. The very powerful official who makes the +choice of that great people for peace or war, might very well be called, +not the President of the United States, but the President of the +Americans. In Italy we have seen the King and the mob prevail over the +conservatism of the Parliament, and in Russia the new popular policy +sacramentally symbolised by the Czar riding at the head of the new +armies. But in one place, at least, the actual form of words exists; and +the actual form of words has been splendidly justified. One man among +the sons of men has been permitted to fulfil a courtly formula with +awful and disastrous fidelity. Political and geographical ruin have +written one last royal title across the sky; the loss of palace and +capital and territory have but isolated and made evident the people that +has not been lost; not laws but the love of exiles, not soil but the +souls of men, still make certain that five true words shall yet be +written in the corrupt and fanciful chronicles of mankind: "The King of +the Belgians." + +It is a common phrase, recurring constantly in the real if rabid +eloquence of Victor Hugo, that Napoleon III. was a mere ape of Napoleon +I. That is, that he had, as the politician says, in "L'Aiglon," "le +petit chapeau, mais pas la tête"; that he was merely a bad imitation. +This is extravagantly exaggerative; and those who say it, moreover, +often miss the two or three points of resemblance which really exist in +the exaggeration. One resemblance there certainly was. In both Napoleons +it has been suggested that the glory was not so great as it seemed; but +in both it can be emphatically added that the eclipse was not so great +as it seemed either. Both succeeded at first and failed at last. But +both succeeded at last, even after the failure. If at this moment we owe +thanks to Napoleon Bonaparte for the armies of united France, we also +owe some thanks to Louis Bonaparte for the armies of united Italy. That +great movement to a freer and more chivalrous Europe which we call +to-day the Cause of the Allies, had its forerunners and first victories +before our time; and it not only won at Arcola, but also at Solferino. +Men who remembered Louis Napoleon when he mooned about the Blessington +_salon_, and was supposed to be almost mentally deficient, used to say +he deceived Europe twice; once when he made men think him an imbecile, +and once when he made them think him a statesman. But he deceived them a +third time; when he made them think he was dead; and had done nothing. + +In spite of the unbridled verse of Hugo and the even more unbridled +prose of Kinglake, Napoleon III. is really and solely discredited in +history because of the catastrophe of 1870. Hugo hurled any amount of +lightning on Louis Napoleon; but he threw very little light on him. Some +passages in the "Châtiments" are really caricatures carved in eternal +marble. They will always be valuable in reminding generations too vague +and soft, as were the Victorians, of the great truth that hatred is +beautiful, when it is hatred of the ugliness of the soul. But most of +them could have been written about Haman, or Heliogabalus, or King John, +or Queen Elizabeth, as much as about poor Louis Napoleon; they bear no +trace of any comprehension of his quite interesting aims, and his quite +comprehensible contempt for the fat-souled senatorial politicians. And +if a real revolutionist like Hugo did not do justice to the +revolutionary element in Cæsarism, it need hardly be said that a rather +Primrose League Tory like Tennyson did not. Kinglake's curiously acrid +insistence upon the _Coup d'état_ is, I fear, only an indulgence in one +of the least pleasing pleasures of our national pen and press, and one +which afterwards altogether ran away with us over the Dreyfus case. It +is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people's sins. +If this came easy to an Englishman like Kinglake, it came, of course, +still easier to a German like Queen Victoria's husband and even to +Queen Victoria herself, who was naturally influenced by him. But in so +far as the sensible masses of the English nation took any interest in +the matter, it is probable that they sympathised with Palmerston, who +was as popular as the Prince Consort was unpopular. The black mark +against Louis Napoleon's name until now, has simply been Sedan; and it +is our whole purpose to-day to turn Sedan into an interlude. If it is +not an interlude, it will be the end of the world. But we have sworn to +make an end of that ending: warring on until, if only by a purgatory of +the nations and the mountainous annihilation of men, the story of the +world ends well. + +There are, as it were, valleys of history quite close to us, but hidden +by the closer hills. One, as we have seen, is that fold in the soft +Surrey hills where Cobbett sleeps with his still-born English +Revolution. Another is under that height called The Spy of Italy, where +a new Napoleon brought back the golden eagles against the black eagles +of Austria. Yet that French adventure in support of the Italian +insurrection was very important; we are only beginning to understand +its importance. It was a defiance to the German Reaction and 1870 was a +sort of revenge for it, just as the Balkan victory was a defiance to the +German Reaction and 1914 was the attempted revenge for it. It is true +that the French liberation of Italy was incomplete, the problem of the +Papal States, for instance, being untouched by the Peace of Villafranca. +The volcanic but fruitful spirit of Italy had already produced that +wonderful, wandering, and almost omnipresent personality whose red shirt +was to be a walking flag: Garibaldi. And many English Liberals +sympathised with him and his extremists as against the peace. Palmerston +called it "the peace that passeth all understanding": but the profanity +of that hilarious old heathen was nearer the mark than he knew: there +were really present some of those deep things which he did not +understand. To quarrel with the Pope, but to compromise with him, was an +instinct with the Bonapartes; an instinct no Anglo-Saxon could be +expected to understand. They knew the truth; that Anti-Clericalism is +not a Protestant movement, but a Catholic mood. And after all the +English Liberals could not get their own Government to risk what the +French Government had risked; and Napoleon III. might well have retorted +on Palmerston, his rival in international Liberalism, that half a war +was better than no fighting. Swinburne called Villafranca "The Halt +before Rome," and expressed a rhythmic impatience for the time when the +world + + "Shall ring to the roar of the lion + Proclaiming Republican Rome." + +But he might have remembered, after all, that it was not the British +lion, that a British poet should have the right to say so imperiously, +"Let him roar again. Let him roar again." + +It is true that there was no clear call to England from Italy, as there +certainly was from Denmark. The great powers were not bound to help +Italy to become a nation, as they were bound to support the unquestioned +fact that Denmark was one. Indeed the great Italian patriot was to +experience both extremes of the English paradox, and, curiously enough, +in connection with both the two national and anti-German causes. For +Italy he gained the support of the English, but not the support of +England. Not a few of our countrymen followed the red shirt; but not in +the red coat. And when he came to England, not to plead the cause of +Italy but the cause of Denmark, the Italian found he was more popular +with the English than any Englishman. He made his way through a forest +of salutations, which would willingly have turned itself into a forest +of swords. But those who kept the sword kept it sheathed. For the ruling +class the valour of the Italian hero, like the beauty of the Danish +Princess, was a thing to be admired, that is enjoyed, like a novel--or a +newspaper. Palmerston was the very type of Pacifism, because he was the +very type of Jingoism. In spirit as restless as Garibaldi, he was in +practice as cautious as Cobden. England had the most prudent +aristocracy, but the most reckless democracy in the world. It was, and +is, the English contradiction, which has so much misrepresented us, +especially to the Irish. Our national captains were carpet knights; our +knights errant were among the dismounted rabble. When an Austrian +general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in +the London streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the +direct quixotry of Sir Lancelot or Sir Galahad. He had beaten women and +they beat him. They regarded themselves simply as avengers of ladies in +distress, breaking the bloody whip of a German bully; just as Cobbett +had sought to break it when it was wielded over the men of England. The +boorishness was in the Germanic or half-Germanic rulers who wore crosses +and spurs: the gallantry was in the gutter. English draymen had more +chivalry than Teuton aristocrats--or English ones. + +I have dwelt a little on this Italian experiment because it lights up +Louis Napoleon as what he really was before the eclipse, a +politician--perhaps an unscrupulous politician--but certainly a +democratic politician. A power seldom falls being wholly faultless; and +it is true that the Second Empire became contaminated with cosmopolitan +spies and swindlers, justly reviled by such democrats as Rochefort as +well as Hugo. But there was no French inefficiency that weighed a hair +in the balance compared with the huge and hostile efficiency of +Prussia; the tall machine that had struck down Denmark and Austria, and +now stood ready to strike again, extinguishing the lamp of the world. +There was a hitch before the hammer stroke, and Bismarck adjusted it, as +with his finger, by a forgery--for he had many minor accomplishments. +France fell: and what fell with her was freedom, and what reigned in her +stead only tyrants and the ancient terror. The crowning of the first +modern Kaiser in the very palace of the old French kings was an +allegory; like an allegory on those Versailles walls. For it was at once +the lifting of the old despotic diadem and its descent on the low brow +of a barbarian. Louis XI. had returned, and not Louis IX.; and Europe +was to know that sceptre on which there is no dove. + +The instant evidence that Europe was in the grip of the savage was as +simple as it was sinister. The invaders behaved with an innocent impiety +and bestiality that had never been known in those lands since Clovis was +signed with the cross. To the naked pride of the new men nations simply +were not. The struggling populations of two vast provinces were simply +carried away like slaves into captivity, as after the sacking of some +prehistoric town. France was fined for having pretended to be a nation; +and the fine was planned to ruin her forever. Under the pressure of such +impossible injustice France cried out to the Christian nations, one +after another, and by name. Her last cry ended in a stillness like that +which had encircled Denmark. + +One man answered; one who had quarrelled with the French and their +Emperor; but who knew it was not an emperor that had fallen. Garibaldi, +not always wise but to his end a hero, took his station, sword in hand, +under the darkening sky of Christendom, and shared the last fate of +France. A curious record remains, in which a German commander testifies +to the energy and effect of the last strokes of the wounded lion of +Aspromonte. But England went away sorrowful, for she had great +possessions. + + + +VIII--_The Wrong Horse_ + + +In another chapter I mentioned some of the late Lord Salisbury's remarks +with regret, but I trust with respect; for in certain matters he +deserved all the respect that can be given to him. His critics said that +he "thought aloud"; which is perhaps the noblest thing that can be said +of a man. He was jeered at for it by journalists and politicians who had +not the capacity to think or the courage to tell their thoughts. And he +had one yet finer quality which redeems a hundred lapses of anarchic +cynicism. He could change his mind upon the platform: he could repent in +public. He could not only think aloud; he could "think better" aloud. +And one of the turning-points of Europe had come in the hour when he +avowed his conversion from the un-Christian and un-European policy into +which his dexterous Oriental master, Disraeli, had dragged him; and +declared that England had "put her money on the wrong horse." When he +said it, he referred to the backing we gave to the Turk under a +fallacious fear of Russia. But I cannot but think that if he had lived +much longer, he would have come to feel the same disgust for his long +diplomatic support of the Turk's great ally in the North. He did not +live, as we have lived, to feel that horse run away with us, and rush on +through wilder and wilder places, until we knew that we were riding on +the nightmare. + +What was this thing to which we trusted? And how may we most quickly +explain its development from a dream to a nightmare, and the +hair's-breadth escape by which it did not hurl us to destruction, as it +seems to be hurling the Turk? It is a certain spirit; and we must not +ask for too logical a definition of it, for the people whom it possesses +disown logic; and the whole thing is not so much a theory as a confusion +of thought. Its widest and most elementary character is adumbrated in +the word Teutonism or Pan-Germanism; and with this (which was what +appeared to win in 1870) we had better begin. The nature of +Pan-Germanism may be allegorised and abbreviated somewhat thus: + +The horse asserts that all other creatures are morally bound to +sacrifice their interests to his, on the specific ground that he +possesses all noble and necessary qualities, and is an end in himself. +It is pointed out in answer that when climbing a tree the horse is less +graceful than the cat; that lovers and poets seldom urge the horse to +make a noise all night like the nightingale; that when submerged for +some long time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that +when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an +oyster. He is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed +horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is +more than pearls or oceans or all ascension or song. He reflects for a +few years on the subject of cats; and at last discovers in the cat "the +characteristic equine quality of caudality, or a tail"; so that cats +_are_ horses, and wave on every tree-top the tail which is the equine +banner. Nightingales are found to have legs, which explains their power +of song. Haddocks are vertebrates; and therefore are sea-horses. And +though the oyster outwardly presents dissimilarities which seem to +divide him from the horse, he is by the all-filling nature-might of the +same horse-moving energy sustained. + +Now this horse is intellectually the wrong horse. It is not perhaps +going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. For it is obviously +within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer, "But if a +haddock is a horse, why should I yield to you any more than you to me? +Why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that +climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you +because of your horsehood? If all our native faculties are the +accomplishments of a horse--why then you are only another horse without +any accomplishments." When thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings +up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and +pursues the nightingale, and that is how the war began. + +This apologue is not in the least more fantastic than the facts of the +Teutonic claim. The Germans do really say that Englishmen are only +Sea-Germans, as our haddocks were only sea-horses. They do really say +that the nightingales of Tuscany or the pearls of Hellas must somehow be +German birds or German jewels. They do maintain that the Italian +Renaissance was really the German Renaissance, pure Germans having +Italian names when they were painters, as cockneys sometimes have when +they are hair-dressers. They suggest that Jesus and the great Jews were +Teutonic. One Teutonist I read actually explained the fresh energy of +the French Revolution and the stale privileges of its German enemies by +saying that the Germanic soul awoke in France and attacked the Latin +influence in Germany. On the advantages of this method I need not dwell: +if you are annoyed at Jack Johnson knocking out an English +prize-fighter, you have only to say that it was the whiteness of the +black man that won and the blackness of the white man that was beaten. +But about the Italian Renaissance they are less general and will go into +detail. They will discover (in their researches into 'istry, as Mr. +Gandish said) that Michael Angelo's surname was Buonarotti; and they +will point out that the word "roth" is very like the word "rot." Which, +in one sense, is true enough. Most Englishmen will be content to say it +is all rot and pass on. It is all of a piece with the preposterous +Prussian history, which talks, for instance, about the "perfect +religious tolerance of the Goths"; which is like talking about the legal +impartiality of chicken-pox. He will decline to believe that the Jews +were Germans; though he may perhaps have met some Germans who were Jews. +But deeper than any such practical reply, lies the deep inconsistency of +the parable. It is simply this; that if Teutonism be used for +comprehension it cannot be used for conquest. If all intelligent peoples +are Germans, then Prussians are only the least intelligent Germans. If +the men of Flanders are as German as the men of Frankfort, we can only +say that in saving Belgium we are helping the Germans who are in the +right against the Germans who are in the wrong. Thus in Alsace the +conquerors are forced into the comic posture of annexing the people for +being German and then persecuting them for being French. The French +Teutons who built Rheims must surrender it to the South German Teutons +who have partly built Cologne; and these in turn surrender Cologne to +the North German Teutons, who never built anything, except the wooden +Aunt Sally of old Hindenburg. Every Teuton must fall on his face before +an inferior Teuton; until they all find, in the foul marshes towards the +Baltic, the very lowest of all possible Teutons, and worship him--and +find he is a Slav. So much for Pan-Germanism. + +But though Teutonism is indefinable, or at least is by the Teutons +undefined, it is not unreal. A vague but genuine soul does possess all +peoples who boast of Teutonism; and has possessed ourselves, in so far +as we have been touched by that folly. Not a race, but rather a +religion, the thing exists; and in 1870 its sun was at noon. We can most +briefly describe it under three heads. + +The victory of the German arms meant before Leipzic, and means now, the +overthrow of a certain idea. That idea is the idea of the Citizen. This +is true in a quite abstract and courteous sense; and is not meant as a +loose charge of oppression. Its truth is quite compatible with a view +that the Germans are better governed than the French. In many ways the +Germans are very well governed. But they might be governed ten thousand +times better than they are, or than anybody ever can be, and still be +as far as ever from governing. The idea of the Citizen is that his +individual human nature shall be constantly and creatively active in +_altering_ the State. The Germans are right in regarding the idea as +dangerously revolutionary. Every Citizen _is_ a revolution. That is, he +destroys, devours and adapts his environment to the extent of his own +thought and conscience. This is what separates the human social effort +from the non-human; the bee creates the honey-comb, but he does not +criticise it. The German ruler really does feed and train the German as +carefully as a gardener waters a flower. But if the flower suddenly +began to water the gardener, he would be much surprised. So in Germany +the people really are educated; but in France the people educates. The +French not only make up the State, but make the State; not only make it, +but remake it. In Germany the ruler is the artist, always painting the +happy German like a portrait; in France the Frenchman is the artist, +always painting and repainting France like a house. No state of social +good that does not mean the Citizen _choosing_ good, as well as getting +it, has the idea of the Citizen at all. To say the Germanies are +naturally at war with this idea is merely to respect them and take them +seriously: otherwise their war on the French Revolution would be only an +ignorant feud. It is this, to them, risky and fanciful notion of the +critical and creative Citizen, which in 1870 lay prostrate under United +Germany--under the undivided hoof. + +Nevertheless, when the German says he has or loves freedom, what he says +is not false. He means something; and what he means is the second +principle, which I may summarise as the Irresponsibility of Thought. +Within the iron framework of the fixed State, the German has not only +liberty but anarchy. Anything can be said although, or rather because, +nothing can be done. Philosophy is really free. But this practically +means only that the prisoner's cell has become the madman's cell: that +it is scrawled all over inside with stars and systems, so that it looks +like eternity. This is the contradiction remarked by Dr. Sarolea, in his +brilliant book, between the wildness of German theory and the tameness +of German practice. The Germans _sterilise_ thought, making it active +with a wild virginity; which can bear no fruit. + +But though there are so many mad theories, most of them have one root; +and depend upon one assumption. It matters little whether we call it, +with the German Socialists, "the Materialist Theory of History"; or, +with Bismarck, "blood and iron." It can be put most fairly thus: that +all _important_ events of history are biological, like a change of +pasture or the communism of a pack of wolves. Professors are still +tearing their hair in the effort to prove somehow that the Crusaders +were migrating for food like swallows; or that the French Revolutionists +were somehow only swarming like bees. This works in two ways often +accounted opposite; and explains both the German Socialist and the +Junker. For, first, it fits in with Teutonic Imperialism; making the +"blonde beasts" of Germania into lions whose nature it is to eat such +lambs as the French. The highest success of this notion in Europe is +marked by praise given to a race famous for its physical firmness and +fighting breed, but which has frankly pillaged and scarcely pretended +to rule; the Turk, whom some Tories called "the gentleman of Europe." +The Kaiser paused to adore the Crescent on his way to patronise the +Cross. It was corporately embodied when Greece attempted a solitary +adventure against Turkey and was quickly crushed. That English guns +helped to impose the mainly Germanic policy of the Concert upon Crete, +cannot be left out of mind while we are making appeals to Greece--or +considering the crimes of England. + +But the same principle serves to keep the internal politics of the +Germans quiet, and prevent Socialism being the practical hope or peril +it has been in so many other countries. It operates in two ways; first, +by a curious fallacy about "the time not being ripe"--as if _time_ could +ever be ripe. The same savage superstition from the forests had infected +Matthew Arnold pretty badly when he made a personality out of the +Zeitgeist--perhaps the only ghost that was ever entirely fabulous. It is +tricked by a biological parallel, by which the chicken always comes out +of the egg "at the right time." He does not; he comes out when he comes +out. The Marxian Socialist will not strike till the clock strikes; and +the clock is made in Germany, and never strikes. Moreover, the theory of +all history as a search for food makes the masses content with having +food and physic, but not freedom. The best working model in the matter +is the system of Compulsory Insurance; which was a total failure and +dead letter in France but has been, in the German sense, a great success +in Germany. It treats employed persons as a fixed, separate, and lower +caste, who must not themselves dispose of the margin of their small +wages. In 1911 it was introduced into England by Mr. Lloyd George, who +had studied its operations in Germany, and, by the Prussian prestige in +"social reform," was passed. + +These three tendencies cohere, or are cohering, in an institution which +is not without a great historical basis and not without great modern +conveniences. And as France was the standard-bearer of citizenship in +1798, Germany is the standard-bearer of this alternative solution in +1915. The institution which our fathers called Slavery fits in with, or +rather logically flows from, all the three spirits of which I have +spoken, and promises great advantages to each of them. It can give the +individual worker everything except the power to alter the State--that +is, his own status. Finality (or what certain eleutheromaniacs would +call hopelessness) of status is the soul of Slavery--and of Compulsory +Insurance. Then again, Germany gives the individual exactly the liberty +that has always been given to a slave--the liberty to think, the liberty +to dream, the liberty to rage; the liberty to indulge in any +intellectual hypotheses about the unalterable world and state--such as +have always been free to slaves, from the stoical maxims of Epictetus to +the skylarking fairy tales of Uncle Remus. And it has been truly urged +by all defenders of slavery that, if history has merely a material test, +the material condition of the subordinate under slavery tends to be good +rather than bad. When I once pointed out how precisely the "model +village" of a great employer reproduces the safety and seclusion of an +old slave estate, the employer thought it quite enough to answer +indignantly that he had provided baths, playing-grounds, a theatre, +etc., for his workers. He would probably have thought it odd to hear a +planter in South Carolina boast that he had provided banjos, hymn-books, +and places suitable for the cake-walk. Yet the planter must have +provided the banjos, for a slave cannot own property. And if this +Germanic sociology is indeed to prevail among us, I think some of the +broad-minded thinkers who concur in its prevalence owe something like an +apology to many gallant gentlemen whose graves lie where the last battle +was fought in the Wilderness; men who had the courage to fight for it, +the courage to die for it and, above all, the courage to call it by its +name. + +With the acceptance by England of the German Insurance Act, I bring this +sketch of the past relations of the two countries to an end. I have +written this book because I wish, once and for all, to be done with my +friend Professor Whirlwind of Prussia, who has long despaired of really +defending his own country, and has fallen back upon abusing mine. He has +dropped, amid general derision, his attempt to call a thing right when +even the Chancellor who did it called it wrong. But he has an idea that +if he can show that somebody from England somewhere did another wrong, +the two wrongs may make a right. Against the cry of the Roman Catholic +Poles the Prussian has never done, or even pretended to do, anything but +harden his heart; but he has (such are the lovable inconsistencies of +human nature) a warm corner in his heart for the Roman Catholic Irish. +He has not a word to say for himself about the campaign in Belgium, but +he still has many wise, reproachful words to utter about the campaign in +South Africa. I propose to take those words out of his mouth. I will +have nothing to do with the fatuous front-bench pretensions that our +governors always govern well, that our statesmen are never whitewashed +and never in need of whitewash. The only moral superiority I claim is +that of not defending the indefensible. I most earnestly urge my +countrymen not to hide behind thin official excuses, which the sister +kingdoms and the subject races can easily see through. We can confess +that our crimes have been as mountains, and still not be afraid of the +present comparison. There may be, in the eyes of some, a risk in +dwelling in this dark hour on our failures in the past: I believe +profoundly that the risk is all the other way. I believe that the most +deadly danger to our arms to-day lies in any whiff of that self-praise, +any flavour of that moral cowardice, any glimpse of that impudent and +ultimate impenitence, that may make one Boer or Scot or Welshman or +Irishman or Indian feel that he is only smoothing the path for a second +Prussia. I have passed the great part of my life in criticising and +condemning the existing rulers and institutions of my country: I think +it is infinitely the most patriotic thing that a man can do. I have no +illusions either about our past or our present. _I_ think our whole +history in Ireland has been a vulgar and ignorant hatred of the +crucifix, expressed by a crucifixion. I think the South African War was +a dirty work which we did under the whips of moneylenders. I think +Mitchelstown was a disgrace; I think Denshawi was a devilry. + +Yet there is one part of life and history in which I would assert the +absolute spotlessness of England. In one department we wear a robe of +white and a halo of innocence. Long and weary as may be the records of +our wickedness, in one direction we have done nothing but good. Whoever +we may have wronged, we have never wronged Germany. Again and again we +have dragged her from under the just vengeance of her enemies, from the +holy anger of Maria Teresa, from the impatient and contemptuous common +sense of Napoleon. We have kept a ring fence around the Germans while +they sacked Denmark and dismembered France. And if we had served our God +as we have served _their_ kings, there would not be to-day one remnant +of them in our path, either to slander or to slay us. + + + +IX--_The Awakening of England_ + + +In October 1912 silent and seemingly uninhabited crags and chasms in the +high western region of the Balkans echoed and re-echoed with a single +shot. It was fired by the hand of a king--real king, who sat listening +to his people in front of his own house (for it was hardly a palace), +and who, in consequence of his listening to the people, not unfrequently +imprisoned the politicians. It is said of him that his great respect for +Gladstone as the western advocate of Balkan freedom was slightly +shadowed by the fact that Gladstone did not succeed in effecting the +bodily capture of Jack the Ripper. This simple monarch knew that if a +malefactor were the terror of the mountain hamlets, his subjects would +expect him personally to take arms and pursue the ruffian; and if he +refused to do so, would very probably experiment with another king. And +the same primitive conception of a king being kept for some kind of +purpose, led them also to expect him to lead in a foreign campaign, and +it was with his own hand that he fired the first shot of the war which +brought down into the dust the ancient empire of the Grand Turk. + +His kingdom was little more than the black mountain after which it was +named: we commonly refer to it under its Italian translation of +Montenegro. It is worth while to pause for a moment upon his picturesque +and peculiar community, because it is perhaps the simplest working model +of all that stood in the path of the great Germanic social machine I +have described in the last chapter--stood in its path and was soon to be +very nearly destroyed by its onset. It was a branch of the Serbian stock +which had climbed into this almost inaccessible eyrie, and thence, for +many hundred years, had mocked at the predatory empire of the Turks. The +Serbians in their turn were but one branch of the peasant Slavs, +millions of whom are spread over Russia and subject on many sides to +empires with which they have less sympathy; and the Slavs again, in the +broad features which are important here, are not merely Slavonic but +simply European. But a particular picture is generally more pointed and +intelligible than tendencies which elsewhere are mingled with subtler +tendencies; and of this unmixed European simplicity Montenegro is an +excellent model. + +Moreover, the instance of one small Christian State will serve to +emphasise that this is not a quarrel between England and Germany, but +between Europe and Germany. It is my whole purpose in these pages not to +spare my own country where it is open to criticism; and I freely admit +that Montenegro, morally and politically speaking, is almost as much in +advance of England as it is of Germany. In Montenegro there are no +millionaires--and therefore next to no Socialists. As to why there are +no millionaires, it is a mystery, and best studied among the mysteries +of the Middle Ages. By some of the dark ingenuities of that age of +priestcraft a curious thing was discovered--that if you kill every +usurer, every forestaller, every adulterater, every user of false +weights, every fixer of false boundaries, every land-thief, every +water-thief, you afterwards discover by a strange indirect miracle, or +disconnected truth from heaven, that you have no millionaires. Without +dwelling further on this dark matter, we may say that this great gap in +the Montenegrin experience explains the other great gap--the lack of +Socialists. The Class-conscious Proletarian of All Lands is curiously +absent from this land. The reason (I have sometimes fancied) is that the +Proletarian is class-conscious, not because he is a Proletarian of All +Lands, but because he is a Proletarian with no lands. The poor people in +Montenegro have lands--not landlords. They have roots; for the peasant +is the root of the priest, the poet, and the warrior. And _this_, and +not a mere recrimination about acts of violence, is the ground of the +age-long Balkan bitterness against the Turkish conqueror. Montenegrins +are patriotic for Montenegro; but Turks are not patriotic for Turkey. +They never heard of it, in fact. They are Bedouins, as homeless as the +desert. The "wrong horse" of Lord Salisbury was an Arab steed, only +stabled in Byzantium. It is hard enough to rule vagabond people, like +the gypsies. To be ruled by them is impossible. + +Nevertheless what was called the nineteenth century, and named with a +sort of transcendental faith (as in a Pythagorean worship of number), +was wearing to its close with reaction everywhere, and the Turk, the +great type of reaction, stronger than ever in the saddle. The most +civilised of the Christian nations overshadowed by the Crescent dared to +attack it and was overwhelmed in a catastrophe that seemed as +unanswerable as Hittin. In England Gladstone and Gladstonism were dead; +and Mr. Kipling, a less mystical Carlyle, was expending a type of praise +upon the British Army which would have been even more appropriate to the +Prussian Army. The Prussian Army ruled Prussia; Prussia ruled Germany; +Germany ruled the Concert of Europe. She was planting everywhere the +appliances of that new servile machinery which was her secret; the +absolute identification of national subordination with business +employment; so that Krupp could count on Kaiser and Kaiser on Krupp. +Every other commercial traveller was pathetically proud of being both a +slave and a spy. The old and the new tyrants had taken hands. The "sack" +of the boss was as silent and fatal as the sack of the Bosphorus. And +the dream of the citizen was at an end. + +It was under a sky so leaden and on a road so strewn with bones that the +little mountain democracy with its patriarchal prince went out, first +and before all its friends, on the last and seemingly the most hopeless +of the rebellions against the Ottoman Empire. Only one of the omens +seemed other than disastrous; and even that was doubtful. For the +successful Mediterranean attack on Tripoli while proving the gallantry +of the Italians (if that ever needed proving) could be taken in two +ways, and was seen by many, and probably most, sincere liberals as a +mere extension of the Imperialist reaction of Bosnia and Paardeberg, and +not as the promise of newer things. Italy, it must be remembered, was +still supposed to be the partner of Prussia and the Hapsburgs. For days +that seemed like months the microscopic state seemed to be attempting +alone what the Crusades had failed to accomplish. And for days Europe +and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the +news of Turkish forts falling, Turkish cohorts collapsing, the +unconquerable Crescent going down in blood. The Serbians, the +Bulgarians, the Greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men +knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long +despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first Christian Emperor +was already standing over the city that is named after his name. + +For Germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide +of the world. It was as if the Rhine itself had returned from the ocean +and retired into the Alps. For a long time past every important +political process in Europe had been produced or permitted by Prussia. +She had pulled down ministers in France and arrested reforms in Russia. +Her ruler was acclaimed by Englishmen like Rhodes, and Americans like +Roosevelt, as the great prince of the age. One of the most famous and +brilliant of our journalists called him "the Lord Chief Justice of +Europe." He was the strongest man in Christendom; and he had confirmed +and consecrated the Crescent. And when he had consecrated it a few hill +tribes had risen and trampled it like mire. One or two other things +about the same time, less important in themselves, struck in the +Prussian's ear the same new note of warning and doubt. He sought to +obtain a small advantage on the north-west coast of Africa; and England +seemed to show a certain strange stiffness in insisting on its +abandonment. In the councils over Morocco, England agreed with France +with what did not seem altogether an accidental agreement. But we shall +not be wrong if we put the crucial point of the German surprise and +anger at the attack from the Balkans and the fall of Adrianople. Not +only did it menace the key of Asia and the whole Eastern dream of German +commerce; not only did it offer the picture of one army trained by +France and victorious, and another army trained by Germany and beaten. +There was more than the material victory of the Creusot over the Krupp +gun. It was also the victory of the peasant's field over the Krupp +factory. By this time there was in the North German brain an awful +inversion of all the legends and heroic lives that the human race has +loved. Prussia _hated_ romance. Chivalry was not a thing she neglected; +it was a thing that tormented her as any bully is tormented by an +unanswered challenge. That weird process was completed of which I have +spoken on an earlier page, whereby the soul of this strange people was +everywhere on the side of the dragon against the knight, of the giant +against the hero. Anything unexpected--the forlorn hopes, the +eleventh-hour inspirations, by which the weak can elude the strong, and +which take the hearts of happier men like trumpets--filled the Prussian +with a cold fury, as of a frustrated fate. The Prussian felt as a +Chicago pork butcher would feel if the pigs not only refused to pass +through his machine, but turned into romantic wild boars, raging and +rending, calling for the old hunting of princes and fit to be the crests +of kings. + +The Prussian saw these things and his mind was made up. He was silent; +but he laboured: laboured for three long years without intermission at +the making of a military machine that should cut out of the world for +ever such romantic accident or random adventure; a machine that should +cure the human pigs for ever of any illusion that they had wings. That +he did so plot and prepare for an attack that should come from him, +anticipating and overwhelming any resistance, is now, even in the +documents he has himself published, a fact of common sense. Suppose a +man sells all his lands except a small yard containing a well; suppose +in the division of the effects of an old friend he particularly asks for +his razors; suppose when a corded trunk is sent him he sends back the +trunk, but keeps the cord. And then suppose we hear that a rival of his +has been lassoed with a rope, his throat then cut, apparently with a +razor, and his body hidden in a well, we do not call in Sherlock Holmes +to project a preliminary suspicion about the guilty party. In the +discussions held by the Prussian Government with Lord Haldane and Sir +Edward Grey we can now see quite as plainly the meaning of the things +that were granted and the things that were withheld, the things that +would have satisfied the Prussian plotter and the things that did not +satisfy him. The German Chancellor refused an English promise not to be +aggressive and asked instead for an English promise to be neutral. There +is no meaning in the distinction, except in the mind of an aggressor. +Germany proposed a pacific arrangement which forbade England to form a +fighting alliance with France, but permitted Germany to retain her old +fighting alliance with Austria. When the hour of war came she used +Austria, used the old fighting alliance and tried to use the new idea of +English neutrality. That is to say, she used the rope, the razor, and +the well. + +But it was either by accident or by individual diplomatic skill that +England at the end of the three years even had her own hands free to +help in frustrating the German plot. The mass of the English people had +no notion of such a plot; and indeed regarded the occasional suggestion +of it as absurd. Nor did even the people who knew best know very much +better. Thanks and even apologies are doubtless due to those who in the +deepest lull of our sleeping partnership with Prussia saw her not as a +partner but a potential enemy; such men as Mr. Blatchford, Mr. Bart +Kennedy, or the late Emil Reich. But there is a distinction to be made. +Few even of these, with the admirable and indeed almost magical +exception of Dr. Sarolea, saw Germany as she was; occupied mainly with +Europe and only incidentally with England; indeed, in the first stages, +not occupied with England at all. Even the Anti-Germans were too +insular. Even those who saw most of Germany's plan saw too much of +England's part in it. They saw it almost wholly as a commercial and +colonial quarrel; and saw its issue under the image of an invasion of +England, which is even now not very probable. This fear of Germany was +indeed a very German fear of Germany. This also conceived the English as +Sea-Germans. It conceived Germany as at war with something like +itself--practical, prosaic, capitalist, competitive Germany, prepared to +cut us up in battle as she cut us out in business. The time of our +larger vision was not yet, when we should realise that Germany was more +deeply at war with things quite unlike herself, things from which we +also had sadly strayed. Then we should remember what we were and see +whence we also had come; and far and high upon that mountain from which +the Crescent was cast down, behold what was everywhere the real enemy of +the Iron Cross--the peasant's cross, which is of wood. + +Even our very slight ripples of panic, therefore, were provincial, and +even shallow; and for the most part we were possessed and convinced of +peace. That peace was not a noble one. We had indeed reached one of the +lowest and flattest levels of all our undulating history; and it must be +admitted that the contemptuous calculation with which Germany counted on +our submission and abstention was not altogether unfounded, though it +was, thank God, unfulfilled. The full fruition of our alliances against +freedom had come. The meek acceptance of Kultur in our books and schools +had stiffened what was once a free country with a German formalism and a +German fear. By a queer irony, even the same popular writer who had +already warned us against the Prussians, had sought to preach among the +populace a very Prussian fatalism, pivoted upon the importance of the +charlatan Haeckel. The wrestle of the two great parties had long +slackened into an embrace. The fact was faintly denied, and a pretence +was still made that no pact: existed beyond a common patriotism. But the +pretence failed altogether; for it was evident that the leaders on +either side, so far from leading in divergent directions, were much +closer to each other than to their own followers. The power of these +leaders had enormously increased; but the distance between them had +diminished, or, rather, disappeared. It was said about 1800, in derision +of the Foxite rump, that the Whig Party came down to Parliament in a +four-wheeler. It might literally be said in 1900 that the Whig Party and +the Tory Party came to Parliament in a hansom cab. It was not a case of +two towers rising into different roofs or spires, but founded in the +same soil. It was rather the case of an arch, of which the +foundation-stones on either side might fancy they were two buildings; +but the stones nearest the keystone would know there was only one. This +"two-handed engine" still stood ready to strike, not, indeed, the other +part of itself, but anyone who ventured to deny that it was doing so. We +were ruled, as it were, by a Wonderland king and queen, who cut off our +heads, not for saying they quarrelled but for saying they didn't. The +libel law was now used, not to crush lies about private life, but to +crush truths about public life. Representation had become mere +misrepresentation; a maze of loopholes. This was mainly due to the +monstrous presence of certain secret moneys, on which alone many men +could win the ruinous elections of the age, and which were contributed +and distributed with less check or record than is tolerated in the +lowest trade or club. Only one or two people attacked these funds; +nobody defended them. Through them the great capitalists had the handle +of politics, as of everything else. The poor were struggling hopelessly +against rising prices; and their attempts at collective bargaining, by +the collective refusal of badly-paid work, were discussed in the press, +Liberal and Tory, as attacks upon the State. And so they were; upon the +Servile State. + +Such was the condition of England in 1914, when Prussia, now at last +armed to the teeth and secure of triumph, stood up before the world, and +solemnly, like one taking a sacrament, consecrated her campaign with a +crime. She entered by a forbidden door, one which she had herself +forbidden--marching upon France through neutralised Belgium, where every +step was on her broken word. Her neutralised neighbours resisted, as +indeed they, like ourselves, were pledged to do. Instantly the whole +invasion was lit up with a flame of moral lunacy, that turned the +watching nations white who had never known the Prussian. The statistics +of non-combatants killed and tortured by this time only stun the +imagination. But two friends of my own have been in villages sacked by +the Prussian march. One saw a tabernacle containing the Sacrament +patiently picked out in pattern by shot after shot. The other saw a +rocking-horse and the wooden toys in a nursery laboriously hacked to +pieces. Those two facts together will be enough to satisfy some of us of +the name of the Spirit that had passed. + +And then a strange thing happened. England, that had not in the modern +sense any army at all, was justified of all her children. Respected +institutions and reputations did indeed waver and collapse on many +sides: though the chief of the states replied worthily to a bribe from +the foreign bully, many other politicians were sufficiently wild and +weak, though doubtless patriotic in intention. One was set to restrain +the journalists, and had to be restrained himself, for being more +sensational than any of them. Another scolded the working-classes in the +style of an intoxicated temperance lecturer. But England was saved by a +forgotten thing--the English. Simple men with simple motives, the chief +one a hate of injustice which grows simpler the longer we stare at it, +came out of their dreary tenements and their tidy shops, their fields +and their suburbs and their factories and their rookeries, and asked for +the arms of men. In a throng that was at last three million men, the +islanders went forth from their island, as simply as the mountaineers +had gone forth from their mountain, with their faces to the dawn. + + + +X--_The Battle of the Marne_ + + +The impression produced by the first week of war was that the British +contingent had come just in time for the end of the world. Or rather, +for any sensitive and civilised man, touched by the modern doubt but by +the equally modern mysticism, that old theocratic vision fell far short +of the sickening terror of the time. For it was a day of judgment in +which upon the throne in heaven and above the cherubim, sat not God, but +another. + +The British had been posted at the extreme western end of the allied +line in the north. The other end rested on the secure city and fortress +of Namur; their end rested upon nothing. It is not wholly a sentimental +fancy to say that there was something forlorn in the position of that +loose end in a strange land, with only the sad fields of Northern France +between them and the sea. For it was really round that loose end that +the foe would probably fling the lasso of his charge; it was here that +death might soon be present upon every side. It must be remembered that +many critics, including many Englishmen, doubted whether a rust had not +eaten into this as into other parts of the national life, feared that +England had too long neglected both the ethic and the technique of war, +and would prove a weak link in the chain. The enemy was absolutely +certain that it was so. To these men, standing disconsolately amid the +hedgeless plains and poplars, came the news that Namur was gone, which +was to their captains one of the four corners of the earth. The two +armies had touched; and instantly the weaker took an electric shock +which told of electric energy, deep into deep Germany, battery behind +battery of abysmal force. In the instant it was discovered that the +enemy was more numerous than they had dreamed. He was actually more +numerous even than they discovered. Every oncoming horseman doubled as +in a drunkard's vision; and they were soon striving without speech in a +nightmare of numbers. Then all the allied forces at the front were +overthrown in the tragic battle of Mons; and began that black retreat, +in which so many of our young men knew war first and at its worst in +this terrible world; and so many never returned. + +In that blackness began to grow strange emotions, long unfamiliar to our +blood. Those six dark days are as full of legends as the six centuries +of the Dark Ages. Many of these may be exaggerated fancies, one was +certainly an avowed fiction, others are quite different from it and more +difficult to dissipate into the daylight. But one curious fact remains +about them if they were all lies, or even if they were all deliberate +works of art. Not one of them referred to those close, crowded, and +stirring three centuries which are nearest to us, and which alone are +covered in this sketch, the centuries during which the Teutonic +influence had expanded itself over our islands. Ghosts were there +perhaps, but they were the ghosts of forgotten ancestors. Nobody saw +Cromwell or even Wellington; nobody so much as thought about Cecil +Rhodes. Things were either seen or said among the British which linked +them up, in matters deeper than any alliance, with the French, who spoke +of Joan of Arc in heaven above the fated city; or the Russians who +dreamed of the Mother of God with her hand pointing to the west. They +were the visions or the inventions of a mediæval army; and a prose poet +was in line with many popular rumours when he told of ghostly archers +crying "Array, Array," as in that long-disbanded yeomanry in which I +have fancied Cobbett as carrying a bow. Other tales, true or only +symptomatic, told of one on a great white horse who was not the victor +of Blenheim or even the Black Prince, but a faint figure out of far-off +martyrologies--St. George. One soldier is asserted to have claimed to +identify the saint because he was "on every quid." On the coins, St. +George is a Roman soldier. + +But these fancies, if they were fancies, might well seem the last sickly +flickerings of an old-world order now finally wounded to the death. That +which was coming on, with the whole weight of a new world, was something +that had never been numbered among the Seven Champions of Christendom. +Now, in more doubtful and more hopeful days, it is almost impossible to +repicture what was, for those who understood, the gigantic finality of +the first German strides. It seemed as if the forces of the ancient +valour fell away to right and left; and there opened a grand, smooth +granite road right to the gate of Paris, down which the great Germania +moved like a tall, unanswerable sphinx, whose pride could destroy all +things and survive them. In her train moved, like moving mountains, +Cyclopean guns that had never been seen among men, before which walled +cities melted like wax, their mouths set insolently upwards as if +threatening to besiege the sun. Nor is it fantastic to speak so of the +new and abnormal armaments; for the soul of Germany was really expressed +in colossal wheels and cylinders; and her guns were more symbolic than +her flags. Then and now, and in every place and time, it is to be noted +that the German superiority has been in a certain thing and of a certain +kind. It is _not_ unity; it is not, in the moral sense, discipline. +Nothing can be more united in a moral sense than a French, British, or +Russian regiment. Nothing, for that matter, could be more united than a +Highland clan at Killiecrankie or a rush of religious fanatics in the +Soudan. What such engines, in such size and multiplicity, really meant +was this: they meant a type of life naturally intolerable to happier and +more healthy-minded men, conducted on a larger scale and consuming +larger populations than had ever been known before. They meant cities +growing larger than provinces, factories growing larger than cities; +they meant the empire of the slum. They meant a degree of detailed +repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born +would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat +his ploughshare into a sword. The nations of the earth were not to +surrender to the Kaiser; they were to surrender to Krupp, his master and +theirs; the French, the British, the Russians were to surrender to Krupp +as the Germans themselves, after a few swiftly broken strikes, had +already surrendered to Krupp. Through every cogwheel in that +incomparable machinery, through every link in that iron and unending +chain, ran the mastery and the skill of a certain kind of artist; an +artist whose hands are never idle through dreaming or drawn back in +disgust or lifted in wonder or in wrath; but sure and tireless in their +touch upon the thousand little things that make the invisible machinery +of life. That artist was there in triumph; but he had no name. The +ancient world called him the Slave. + +From this advancing machine of millions, the slighter array of the +Allies, and especially the British at their ultimate outpost, saved +themselves by a succession of hair's-breadth escapes and what must have +seemed to the soldiers the heartrending luck of a mouse before a cat. +Again and again Von Kluck's cavalry, supported by artillery and +infantry, clawed round the end of the British force, which eluded it as +by leaping back again and again. Sometimes the pursuer was, so to speak, +so much on top of his prey that it could not even give way to him; but +had to hit such blows as it could in the hope of checking him for the +instant needed for escape. Sometimes the oncoming wave was so close that +a small individual accident, the capture of one man, would mean the +washing out of a whole battalion. For day after day this living death +endured. And day after day a certain dark truth began to be revealed, +bit by bit, certainly to the incredulous wonder of the Prussians, quite +possibly to the surprise of the French, and quite as possibly to the +surprise of themselves; that there was something singular about the +British soldiers. That singular thing may be expressed in a variety of +ways; but it would be almost certainly expressed insufficiently by +anyone who had not had the moral courage to face the facts about his +country in the last decades before the war. It may perhaps be best +expressed by saying that some thousands of Englishmen were dead: and +that England was not. + +The fortress of Maubeuge had gaped, so to speak, offering a refuge for +the unresting and tormented retreat; the British Generals had refused it +and continued to fight a losing fight in the open for the sake of the +common plan. At night an enormous multitude of Germans had come +unexpectedly through the forest and caught a smaller body of the British +in Landrecies; failed to dislodge them and lost a whole battalion in +that battle of the darkness. At the extreme end of the line +Smith-Dorrien's division, who seemed to be nearly caught or cut off, had +fought with one gun against four, and so hammered the Germans that they +were forced to let go their hold; and the British were again free. When +the blowing up of a bridge announced that they had crossed the last +river, something other than that battered remnant was saved; it was the +honour of the thing by which we live. + +The driven and defeated line stood at last almost under the walls of +Paris; and the world waited for the doom of the city. The gates seemed +to stand open; and the Prussian was to ride into it for the third and +the last time: for the end of its long epic of liberty and equality was +come. And still the very able and very French individual on whom rested +the last hope of the seemingly hopeless Alliance stood unruffled as a +rock, in every angle of his sky-blue jacket and his bulldog figure. He +had called his bewildered soldiers back when they had broken the +invasion at Guise; he had silently digested the responsibility of +dragging on the retreat, as in despair, to the last desperate leagues +before the capital; and he stood and watched. And even as he watched the +whole huge invasion swerved. + +Out through Paris and out and around beyond Paris, other men in dim blue +coats swung out in long lines upon the plain, slowly folding upon Von +Kluck like blue wings. Von Kluck stood an instant; and then, flinging a +few secondary forces to delay the wing that was swinging round on him, +dashed across the Allies' line at a desperate angle, to smash it in the +centre as with a hammer. It was less desperate than it seemed; for he +counted, and might well count, on the moral and physical bankruptcy of +the British line and the end of the French line immediately in front of +him, which for six days and nights he had chased before him like autumn +leaves before a whirlwind. Not unlike autumn leaves, red-stained, +dust-hued, and tattered, they lay there as if swept into a corner. But +even as their conquerors wheeled eastwards, their bugles blew the +charge; and the English went forward through the wood that is called +Creçy, and stamped it with their seal for the second time, in the +highest moment of all the secular history of man. + +But it was not now the Creçy in which English and French knights had met +in a more coloured age, in a battle that was rather a tournament. It was +a league of all knights for the remains of all knighthood, of all +brotherhood in arms or in arts, against that which is and has been +radically unknightly and radically unbrotherly from the beginning. Much +was to happen after--murder and flaming folly and madness in earth and +sea and sky; but all men knew in their hearts that the third Prussian +thrust had failed, and Christendom was delivered once more. The empire +of blood and iron rolled slowly back towards the darkness of the +northern forests; and the great nations of the West went forward; where +side by side as after a long lover's quarrel, went the ensigns of St. +Denys and St. George. + + + +_NOTE ON THE WORD "ENGLISH"_ + + +_The words "England" and "English" as used here require a word of +explanation, if only to anticipate the ire of the inevitable Scot. To +begin with, the word "British" involves a similar awkwardness. I have +tried to use it in the one or two cases that referred to such things as +military glory and unity: though I am sure I have failed of full +consistency in so complex a matter. The difficulty is that this sense of +glory and unity, which should certainly cover the Scotch, should also +cover the Irish. And while it is fairly safe to call a Scotsman a North +Briton (despite the just protest of Stevenson), it is very unsafe indeed +to call an Irishman a West Briton. But there is a deeper difficulty. I +can assure the Scot that I say "England," not because I deny Scottish +nationality, but because I affirm it. And I can say, further, that I +could not here include Scots in the thesis, simply because I could not +include them in the condemnation. This book is a study, not of a disease +but rather of a weakness, which has only been predominant in the +predominant partner. It would not be true, for instance, to say either +of Ireland or Scotland that the populace lacked a religion; but I do +think that British policy as a whole has suffered from the English lack +of one, with its inevitable result of plutocracy and class contempt_. + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Crimes of England, by G.K. 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