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diff --git a/27585-8.txt b/27585-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..68754f4 --- /dev/null +++ b/27585-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5826 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Hilaire Belloc, by C. Creighton Mandell and Edward Shanks + +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: Hilaire Belloc + The Man and His Work + +Author: C. Creighton Mandell + Edward Shanks + +Release Date: December 21, 2008 [EBook #27585] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HILAIRE BELLOC *** + + + + +Produced by David Clarke, Carla Foust and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + +Transcriber's note + + +Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer +errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other +inconsistencies are as in the original. + + + +HILAIRE BELLOC + + + + +WORKS BY HILAIRE BELLOC. + + + PARIS + MARIE ANTOINETTE + EMMANUEL BURDEN, MERCHANT + HILLS AND THE SEA + ON NOTHING + ON EVERYTHING + ON SOMETHING + FIRST AND LAST + THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER + A PICKED COMPANY + + + + +[Illustration: HILAIRE BELLOC] + + + + + HILAIRE BELLOC + + THE MAN AND HIS WORK + + BY + + C. CREIGHTON MANDELL + + and + + EDWARD SHANKS + + + WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY + + G. K. CHESTERTON + + + METHUEN & CO. LTD. + + 36 ESSEX STREET W.C. + + LONDON + + + + +_First Published in 1916_ + + + + + TO + H. L. HUTTON + OF MERCHANT TAYLORS' SCHOOL + + + + +INTRODUCTION + +BY + +G. K. CHESTERTON + + +When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us that +he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more uproarious +and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked into the +night; and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have +said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not merely _bons +mots,_ I have said all that can be said in the most serious aspect about +the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men +of my time. + +We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho restaurant; +his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist and French +Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, which are like +a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin. He was talking about +King John, who, he positively assured me, was _not_ (as was often +asserted) the best king that ever reigned in England. Still, there were +allowances to be made for him; I mean King John, not Belloc. "He had +been Regent," said Belloc with forbearance, "and in all the Middle Ages +there is no example of a successful Regent." I, for one, had not come +provided with any successful Regents with whom to counter this +generalization; and when I came to think of it, it was quite true. I +have noticed the same thing about many other sweeping remarks coming +from the same source. + +The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt for +three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the +South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most of us +were writing on the _Speaker_, edited by Mr. J. L. Hammond with an +independence of idealism to which I shall always think that we owe much +of the cleaner political criticism of to-day; and Belloc himself was +writing in it studies of what proved to be the most baffling irony. To +understand how his Latin mastery, especially of historic and foreign +things, made him a leader, it is necessary to appreciate something of +the peculiar position of that isolated group of "Pro-Boers." We were a +minority in a minority. Those who honestly disapproved of the Transvaal +adventure were few in England; but even of these few a great number, +probably the majority, opposed it for reasons not only different but +almost contrary to ours. Many were Pacifists, most were Cobdenites; the +wisest were healthy but hazy Liberals who rightly felt the tradition of +Gladstone to be a safer thing than the opportunism of the Liberal +Imperialist. But we might, in one very real sense, be more strictly +described as Pro-Boers. That is, we were much more insistent that the +Boers were right in fighting than that the English were wrong in +fighting. We disliked cosmopolitan peace almost as much as cosmopolitan +war; and it was hard to say whether we more despised those who praised +war for the gain of money, or those who blamed war for the loss of it. +Not a few men then young were already predisposed to this attitude; Mr. +F. Y. Eccles, a French scholar and critic of an authority perhaps too +fine for fame, was in possession of the whole classical case against +such piratical Prussianism; Mr. Hammond himself, with a careful +magnanimity, always attacked Imperialism as a false religion and not +merely as a conscious fraud; and I myself had my own hobby of the +romance of small things, including small commonwealths. But to all these +Belloc entered like a man armed, and as with a clang of iron. He brought +with him news from the fronts of history; that French arts could again +be rescued by French arms; that cynical Imperialism not only should be +fought, but could be fought and was being fought; that the street +fighting which was for me a fairytale of the future was for him a fact +of the past. There were many other uses of his genius, but I am speaking +of this first effect of it upon our instinctive and sometimes groping +ideals. What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for +reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door there +entered with him the smell of danger. + +There was in him another element of importance which clarified itself in +this crisis. It was no small part of the irony in the man that different +things strove against each other in him; and these not merely in the +common human sense of good against evil, but one good thing against +another. The unique attitude of the little group was summed up in him +supremely in this; that he did and does humanly and heartily love +England, not as a duty but as a pleasure and almost an indulgence; but +that he hated as heartily what England seemed trying to become. Out of +this appeared in his poetry a sort of fierce doubt or double-mindedness +which cannot exist in vague and homogeneous Englishmen; something that +occasionally amounted to a mixture of loving and loathing. It is marked, +for instance, in the fine break in the middle of the happy song of +_cameraderie_ called "To the Balliol Men Still in South Africa." + + "I have said it before, and I say it again, + There was treason done and a false word spoken, + And England under the dregs of men, + And bribes about and a treaty broken." + +It is supremely characteristic of the time that a weighty and +respectable weekly gravely offered to publish the poem if that central +verse was omitted. This conflict of emotions has an even higher +embodiment in that grand and mysterious poem called "The Leader," in +which the ghost of the nobler militarism passes by to rebuke the baser-- + + "And where had been the rout obscene + Was an army straight with pride, + A hundred thousand marching men, + Of squadrons twenty score, + And after them all the guns, the guns, + But She went on before." + +Since that small riot of ours he may be said without exaggeration to +have worked three revolutions: the first in all that was represented by +the _Eyewitness_, now the _New Witness_, the repudiation of both +Parliamentary parties for common and detailed corrupt practices; +second, the alarum against the huge and silent approach of the Servile +State, using Socialists and Anti-Socialists alike as its tools; and +third, his recent campaign of public education in military affairs. In +all these he played the part which he had played for our little party of +patriotic Pro-Boers. He was a man of action in abstract things. There +was supporting his audacity a great sobriety. It is in this sobriety, +and perhaps in this only, that he is essentially French; that he belongs +to the most individually prudent and the most collectively reckless of +peoples. There is indeed a part of him that is romantic and, in the +literal sense, erratic; but that is the English part. But the French +people take care of the pence that the pounds may be careless of +themselves. And Belloc is almost materialist in his details, that he may +be what most Englishmen would call mystical, not to say monstrous, in +his aim. In this he is quite in the tradition of the only country of +quite successful revolutions. Precisely because France wishes to do wild +things, the things must not be too wild. A wild Englishman like Blake or +Shelley is content with dreaming them. How Latin is this combination +between intellectual economy and energy can be seen by comparing Belloc +with his great forerunner Cobbett, who made war on the same Whiggish +wealth and secrecy and in defence of the same human dignity and +domesticity. But Cobbett, being solely English, was extravagant in his +language even about serious public things, and was wildly romantic even +when he was merely right. But with Belloc the style is often +restrained; it is the substance that is violent. There is many a +paragraph of accusation he has written which might almost be called dull +but for the dynamite of its meaning. + +It is probable that I have dealt too much with this phase of him, for it +is the one in which he appears to me as something different, and +therefore dramatic. I have not spoken of those glorious and fantastic +guide-books which are, as it were, the textbooks of a whole science of +Erratics. In these he is borne beyond the world with those poets whom +Keats conceived as supping at a celestial "Mermaid." But the "Mermaid" +was English--and so was Keats. And though Hilaire Belloc may have a +French name, I think that Peter Wanderwide is an Englishman. + +I have said nothing of the most real thing about Belloc, the religion, +because it is above this purpose, and nothing of the later attacks on +him by the chief Newspaper Trust, because they are much below it. There +are, of course, many other reasons for passing such matters over here, +including the argument of space; but there is also a small reason of my +own, which if not exactly a secret is at least a very natural ground of +silence. It is that I entertain a very intimate confidence that in a +very little time humanity will be saying, "Who was this So-and-So with +whom Belloc seems to have debated?" + + G. K. CHESTERTON + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + + I MR. BELLOC AND THE PUBLIC 1 + + II MR. BELLOC THE MAN 9 + + III PERSONALITY IN STYLE 16 + + IV THE POET 27 + + V THE STUDENT OF MILITARY AFFAIRS 35 + + VI MR. BELLOC AND THE WAR 50 + + VII MR. BELLOC THE PUBLICIST 59 + + VIII MR. BELLOC AND EUROPE 71 + + IX THE HISTORICAL WRITER 89 + + X MR. BELLOC AND ENGLAND 99 + + XI THE REFORMER 110 + + XII THE HUMOURIST 116 + + XIII THE TRAVELLER 126 + + XIV MR. BELLOC AND THE FUTURE 138 + + + + +We have to express our thanks to the following publishers for permission +to quote from those books by Mr. Belloc which are issued by +them:--Messrs. Constable & Co., Ltd., _The Old Road_ and _On Anything_; +Messrs. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., _The Historic Thames_; Messrs. Duckworth +& Co., _Esto Perpetua_, _Avril_, _Verses_, and _The Bad Child's Book of +Beasts_; Mr. T. N. Foulis, _The Servile State_; Mr. Eveleigh Nash, _The +Eyewitness_ and _Cautionary Tales for Children_; Messrs. Thomas Nelson & +Sons, _Danton_, _The Path to Rome_, _The Four Men_, and _A General +Sketch of the European War_; Messrs. C. Arthur Pearson, Ltd., _The Two +Maps of Europe_; Messrs. Williams & Norgate, Ltd., _The French +Revolution_. The frontispiece is reproduced from _T.P.'s Weekly_ by +courtesy of the editor, Mr. Holbrook Jackson. + + + + +HILAIRE BELLOC + +THE MAN AND HIS WORK + + + + +CHAPTER I + +MR. BELLOC AND THE PUBLIC + +A CASE FOR LEGISLATION _AD HOC_ + + +We stand upon the brink of a superb adventure. To rummage about in the +lumber-room of a bygone period: to wipe away the dust from +long-neglected annals: to burnish up old facts and fancies: to piece +together the life-story of some loved hero long dead: that is a work of +reverent thought to be undertaken in peace and seclusion. But to plunge +boldly into the study of a living personality: to strive to measure the +greatness of a man just entering the fullness of his powers: to attempt +to grasp the nature of that greatness: this is to go out along the road +of true adventure, the road which is hard to travel, the road which has +no end. + +Naturally we cannot hope in this little study to escape those +innumerable pitfalls into which contemporary criticism always stumbles. +It is impossible to-day to view Mr. Belloc and his work in that due +perspective so beloved of the don. No doubt we shall crash headlong into +the most shocking errors of judgement, exaggerating this feature and +belittling that in a way that will horrify the critic of a decade or two +hence. Mr. Belloc himself may turn and rend us: deny our premises: +scatter our syllogisms: pulverize our theories. + +This only makes our freedom the greater. Scientific analysis being +beyond attainment, we are tied down by no rules. When we have examined +Mr. Belloc's work and Mr. Belloc's personality, we are free to put +forward (provided we do not mind them being refuted) what theories we +choose. Nothing could be more alluring. + +In a book about Mr. Belloc the reader may have expected to make Mr. +Belloc's acquaintance on the first page. But Mr. Belloc is a difficult +man to meet. Even if you have a definite appointment with him (as you +have in this book) you cannot be certain that you will not be obliged to +wait. Every day of Mr. Belloc's life is so full of engagements that he +is inevitably late for some of them. But his courtesy is invariable: and +he will often make himself a little later by stopping to ring you up in +order to apologize for his lateness and to assure you that he will be +with you in a quarter of an hour. + +We may imagine him, then, hastening to meet us in one of those taxicabs +of which he is so bountiful a patron, and, in the interval, before we +make his personal acquaintance, try to recall what we already know of +him. + +At the present time Mr. Hilaire Belloc to his largest public is quite +simply and solely the war expert. To those people, thousands in number, +who have become acquainted with Mr. Belloc through the columns of _Land +and Water_, the _Illustrated Sunday Herald_, and other journals and +periodicals, or have swelled the audiences at his lectures in London and +the various provincial centres, his name promises escape from the +bewilderment engendered by an irritated Press and an approximation, at +least, to a clear conception of the progress of the war. Those who +realize, as Mr. Belloc himself points out somewhere, that there has +never been a great public occasion in regard to which it is more +necessary that men should have a sound judgment than it is in regard to +this war, gladly turn to him for guidance. His _General Sketch of the +European War_ is read by the educated man who finds himself hampered in +forming an opinion of the progress of events by an ignorance of military +science, while the mass of public opinion, which is less well-informed +and less able to distinguish between the essential and the +non-essential, finds in the series of articles, reprinted in book-form +under the title _The Two Maps_, a rock-basis of general principles on +which it may rest secure from the hurling waves of sensationalism, +ignorance, misrepresentation and foolishness which are striving +perpetually to engulf it. + +So intense and so widespread, indeed, is the vogue of Mr. Belloc to-day +as a writer on the war, that one is almost compelled into forgetfulness +of his earlier work and of the reputation he had established for himself +in many provinces of literature and thought before, in the eyes of the +world, he made this new province his own. The colossal monument of +unstinted public approbation, which records his work since the outbreak +of the great war, overshadows, as it were, the temples of less +magnitude, though of equally solid foundation and often of more precious +design, in which his former achievements in art and thought were +enshrined. + +That there existed, however, before the war, a large and increasing +public, which was gradually awakening to a realization of Mr. Belloc's +importance, there can be no question. + +There can be equally little question, that only a very small percentage +of his readers were in a position even to attempt an appreciation of Mr. +Belloc's full importance. + +This was due, chiefly, to the diversity of Mr. Belloc's writings. + +For example, many thinking men, who saw no reason why the common sense, +which served them so well in their business affairs, should be banished +from their consideration of matters political, felt themselves in +sympathy with his analysis and denunciation of the evils of our +parliamentary machinery, thoroughly enjoying the vigorous lucidity of +_The Party System_ and applauding the clear historical reasoning of _The +Servile State_. + +Other men, repelled, perhaps, by such logical grouping of cold facts, +but attracted by the satirical delights of _Emmanuel Burden_ or _Mr. +Clutterbuck_, of _Pongo and the Bull_ or _A Change in the Cabinet_, were +led to like conclusions, and came to consider themselves adherents of +Mr. Belloc's political views. + +Take another instance. Bloodless students of history, absorbing the past +for the sake of the past and not for the sake of the present, who knew +little of Mr. Belloc's attitude toward the politics of the day and +strongly disapproved of what little they did know, yet concerned +themselves with his historical method as applied in _Danton_, +_Robespierre_ or _Marie Antoinette_, and were mildly excited by _The +French Revolution_ into a discussion of what (to Mr. Belloc's horror) +they considered his _Weltanschauung_. + +There are but one or two examples of cases in which men of different +types came to a partial knowledge of Mr. Belloc and his work through +their sympathy with the views he expressed. But far beyond and above the +appeal which Mr. Belloc has made on occasion to the political and +historical sense of his readers is the appeal which he has made +consistently to their literary sense in _The Path to Rome_, in _The Four +Men_, in _Avril_, in _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_, in _Esto +Perpetua_--in his novels, his essays, his poems. If many have been +attracted by his views, how many more have been influenced by his +expression of them? + + "A man desiring to influence his fellowmen," says Mr. Belloc, in + _The French Revolution_, "has two co-related instruments at his + disposal.... These two instruments are his idea and his style. + However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or + cogently provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea, + he cannot persuade his fellowmen to it if he have not words that + express it. And he will persuade them more and more in proportion + as his words are well-chosen and in the right order, such order + being determined by the genius of the language from which they are + drawn." + +These words fitly emphasize the importance of style: and when a +distinction is drawn, as is done above, between the appeal which Mr. +Belloc has made to the political and historical sense of his readers and +the appeal he has made to their literary sense, it is, naturally, not +intended to suggest that an appeal to his readers' literary sense is in +any way lacking in Mr. Belloc's political and historical writings. The +appeal to our literary sense is as strong in _The Servile State_ or +_Danton_ as in _The Four Men_ or _Mr. Clutterbuck_. But in the one case, +in the case of the two last-named books, the appeal Mr. Belloc makes is +chiefly to our literary sense: in the other case, in the case of the two +first-named books, there is added to the appeal to our literary sense an +appeal to our political and historical sense. + +The nature of Mr. Belloc's own style is dealt with in a later chapter: +here it is merely asserted that, before the war, at any rate, Mr. +Belloc's style was accorded more general recognition than were his +ideas. Many who decried his matter extolled his manner. Many men of +talent, some men of genius, such as the late Rupert Brooke, regarded him +as a very great writer of English prose. Literary _dilettanti_ envied +him the refrains of his _ballades_. His essays, many of which were +manner without matter, were thoroughly popular. What he said might be +nonsense, but the way he said it was irresistible. + +Since the beginning of the war Mr. Belloc has had that to say which +everybody desired to hear. He has known how to say that which everybody +desired to hear in the way it might best be said. He has been in a +position to express ideas with which every one wished to become +familiar: he has known how to express those ideas so that they might be +readily grasped. And he has become famous. + +To those who were acquainted with but a part of his work before the war +Mr. Belloc's sudden leap into prominence as the most noteworthy writer +on military affairs in England must have come as somewhat of a shock. To +those whose knowledge of Mr. Belloc's writings was confined to _The Path +to Rome_ or the _Cautionary Tales_, who thought of him as essayist or +poet, this must have seemed a strange metamorphosis indeed. Even those +who were conversant with his study of the military aspects of the +Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to +military matters in various books could scarcely have been prepared for +such an avalanche of highly-specialized knowledge. For we are all prone +to the mistake of confusing a man with his books. + +With regard to some writers this error does not necessarily lead to very +evil results. There are some writers who express themselves as much in +one part of their work as in another. Take Mr. H. G. Wells as an +example. His writings, it is true, are varied in character, ranging from +phantasy to philosophy, from sociology to science. But through all his +writings there runs a thin thread which binds all of them together. +That thread is the personality of Mr. Wells finding expression. In such +a case as this personal knowledge of the man merely amplifies the idea +of him which we have been able to gather from his work. + +But with Mr. Belloc the case is different. Can any full idea of Mr. +Belloc, the man, be formed by reading his books? It is to be doubted. +Were you to consult a reader of Mr. Wells' phantasies and a reader of +Mr. Wells' sociological novels with regard to the ideas of the writer +they had gleaned, you would find that the mental pictures they had +painted had many characteristics in common. Were you to make the same +experiment with a reader of Mr. Belloc's political writings and, say, a +subscriber to the _Morning Post_, who knew him by his essays alone, the +pictures would be entirely dissimilar. + +And if it be admitted that this is so, the question arises: why is it +so? If, in the case of Mr. Wells, the writer is dimly visible through +the veil of his writings, why does Mr. Belloc remain hidden? This must +not be understood as meaning that Mr. Belloc's personality is not +expressed in his writings. To offer such an explanation would be merely +absurd. But it means that his personality is not expressed, as is that +of Mr. Wells, completely though cloudily, in any one book. To offer as a +reason that the one is subjective, the other objective is nonsense. +Every writer is necessarily both. + +There are two answers to the question: the one partially, the other +wholly true. To attempt to find the answer which is wholly true is one +of the reasons why this book was written. + +For the moment, however, let us be content with the answer which is +partially true. Let us accept the charge of a contemporary and friend of +Mr. Belloc who has long loomed large in the world of literature:-- + + "Mr. Hilaire Belloc + Is a case for legislation _ad hoc_: + He seems to think nobody minds + His books being all of different kinds." + +That is the charge. A plea of guilty and, at the same time, a defence +based on justification might be found in Mr. Belloc's words (which occur +at the end of one of his essays): "What a wonderful world it is and how +many things there are in it!" + +Thus might we bolster up the answer which is but partially true until +it seemed wholly true. We might make Mr. Belloc's diversity his +disguise. We might hoodwink the public. + +But that is a dangerous game. The public has a habit of finding out. Mr. +Belloc himself is always on the watch to expose impostors (especially +the Parliamentary kind) and he has described most graphically the fate +awaiting them:-- + + "For every time She shouted 'Fire!' + The people answered 'Little Liar!'" + +So let us view the matter squarely. + +The aim of this little study, if so ambitious a phrase may be used of +what is purely a piece of self-indulgence, is to present the public with +as complete an idea as possible of Mr. Belloc and his work. Up to the +present, the relations between Mr. Belloc and the public have been, to +say the least, peculiar. If we regard the public as a mass subject to +attack and the author as the attacker, we may say that, whereas most +contemporary authors have attacked at one spot only and used their +gradually increasing strength to drive on straight into the heart of the +mass, Mr. Belloc has attacked at various points. It is obvious, however, +that these various separate attacks, if they are to achieve their +object, which is the subjection of the mass, must be thoroughly +co-ordinated and have large reserve forces upon which to draw. + +Some slight outline of the nature of the various attacks on the public +made by Mr. Belloc has already been given. We stand amazed to-day by the +unqualified success which has attended the attack carried into effect by +his writings on the war. But if we are to form even an approximation to +a complete idea of Mr. Belloc, it is necessary to examine these various +attacks, not merely separately and in detail, but in their relation to +each other and as a co-ordinated plan. And before we can hope to measure +the strength of that plan, we must examine the mind which ordains its +co-ordination and the forces which render possible its execution: in +other words, the personality of Mr. Belloc. + +Any rigid distinction, then, drawn between Mr. Belloc's political, +historical and other writings is ultimately arbitrary. In the ensuing +pages of this book it will be seen how essentially interwoven and +interdependent are the various aspects of Mr. Belloc's work and how they +have developed, not the one out of the other, but alongside and in +co-relation with each other. For the sake of clearness, however, some +basis of classification must be adopted, and that of _subject_, though +rough and inadequate, will be understood, perhaps, most readily. + + * * * * * + +With a jerk a taxicab stops in the street outside. We hear the sound of +quick footsteps along the stone-flagged passage, with a rattle of the +handle the door swings wide open and Mr. Belloc is in the middle of the +room. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MR. BELLOC THE MAN + + +Short of stature, he yet dominates those in the room by virtue of the +force within him. So abundant is his vitality, that less forceful +natures receive from him an access of energy. This vigour appears, in +his person, in the massive breadth of his shoulders and the solidity of +his neck. With the exception of his marked breadth, he is +well-proportioned in build, though somewhat stout. His head is rather +Roman in shape, and his face, with its wide, calm brow, piercing eyes, +aquiline nose, straight mouth and square jaw, expresses a power of deep +reflection combined with a very lively interest in the things of the +moment, but, above all, tremendous determination. He holds himself +erect, with square shoulders; but the appearance of a stoop is given to +his figure by the habit, acquired by continual writing and public +speaking, of moving with his head thrust forward. + +In his movements, he is as rapid and decided as, in the giving of +instructions, he is clear and terse. In debate or argument his speech is +often loud and accompanied by vigorous and decided gestures; but in +conversation his manner is constrained and his voice quiet and clear +with a strong power of appeal which is enhanced by a slight French lisp. +At times he is violent in his language and movements, but he is never +restless or vague. In everything he says and does he is orderly. This +orderliness of speech and action is the outcome of an orderliness of +mind which is as complete as it is rare, and endows Mr. Belloc with a +power of detaching his attention from one subject and transferring it, +not partially but entirely, to another. As a result, whatever he is +doing, however small or however great the piece of work in hand, upon +that for the time being is his whole vigour concentrated. + +This almost unlimited, but, at the same time, thoroughly controlled and +well-directed energy, is Mr. Belloc's most prominent characteristic. He +is always busy, yet always with more to do than he can possibly +accomplish. He has never a moment to waste. As a consequence, he often +gives the impression of being brusque and domineering. His manner to +those he does not know is uninviting. This is because the meeting of +strangers to so busy a man can never be anything but an interruption, +signifying a loss of valuable time. He is anxious to bring you to your +point at once and to express his own opinion as shortly and plainly as +possible. The temperamentally nervous who meet him but casually find him +harsh and think him a bully. + +He is nothing of the sort. He is a man of acute perceptions and fine +feelings; and with those whom he knows well he is scrupulous to make due +allowance for temperamental peculiarities. When you have learnt to know +him well, when you have seen him in his rare moments of leisure and +repose, you realize how abundantly he is possessed of those qualities +which go to form what is called depth of character. His humour and +good-fellowship attract men to him: his power of understanding and +sympathy tie them to him. He is the very antithesis of a self-centred +man. His first question, when he meets you, is of yourself and your +doings; he never speaks of himself. He is always more interested in the +activities of others than in what he himself is doing. He is engrossed +in his work; but he is interested in it as in something outside himself, +not as in something which is a very vital part of himself. It is this +characteristic which leads one to consider the whole of his work up to +the present time as the expression of but a part of the man. Great and +valuable as is that work--it has been said of him that he has had more +influence on his generation than any other one man--Mr. Belloc's +personality inspires the belief that he is capable of yet greater +achievements. + +This belief is supported by the undeniable fact that Mr. Belloc is an +idealist. He has ideals both for individual and communal life. But +ideals to him are not, as to so many men, a delight of the imagination +or a means of consoling themselves for being obliged to live in the +world as it is. They are guides to conduct and inspirations to action: a +goal which is reached in the striving. + +Most of us go about this world imagining ourselves to be not as we are, +but as we should like ourselves to be. No man who is not wholly +unimaginative can escape this form of self-consciousness. Certainly no +man who has in him anything of the artist can escape it: less still a +man who is so much of an artist as Mr. Belloc. It has been remarked of +Mr. Belloc time and again that he would make an extraordinarily fine +revolutionary leader, and it is interesting to find in Mr. Belloc's work +a description of one of the greatest revolutionary leaders which might +in many respects be a description of Mr. Belloc himself. We refer to Mr. +Belloc's description of the appearance and character of Danton. Though +it would be absurd to suggest that Mr. Belloc has deliberately modelled +his life on that of Danton, yet the resemblance between Mr. Belloc's own +personality and the personality (as Mr. Belloc describes it) of Danton +is so striking, that we cannot avoid quoting the passage at considerable +length. It is interesting, too, to recall that this monograph, which is +obviously based on very careful and deep research, was written by Mr. +Belloc shortly after he came down from Oxford, and was the first work of +importance he published. Mr. Belloc describes Danton thus:-- + + He was tall and stout, with the forward bearing of the orator, full + of gesture and of animation. He carried a round French head upon + the thick neck of energy. His face was generous, ugly, and + determined. With wide eyes and calm brows, he yet had the quick + glance which betrays the habit of appealing to an audience.... In + his dress he had something of the negligence which goes with + extreme vivacity and with a constant interest in things outside + oneself; but it was invariably that of his rank. Indeed, to the + minor conventions Danton always bowed, because he was a man, and + because he was eminently sane. More than did the run of men at that + time, he understood that you cut down no tree by lopping at the + leaves, nor break up a society by throwing away a wig. The decent + self-respect which goes with conscious power was never absent from + his costume, though it often left his language in moments of + crisis, or even of irritation. I will not insist too much upon his + great character of energy, because it has been so over-emphasized + as to give a false impression of him. He was admirably sustained in + his action, and his political arguments were as direct as his + physical efforts were continuous, but the banal picture of fury + which is given you by so many writers is false. For fury is empty, + whereas Danton was full, and his energy was at first the force at + work upon a great mass of mind, and later its momentum. Save when + he had the direct purpose of convincing a crowd, his speech had no + violence, and even no metaphor; in the courts he was a close + reasoner, and one who put his points with ability and with + eloquence rather than with thunder. But in whatever he undertook, + vigour appeared as the taste of salt in a dish. He could not quite + hide this vigour: his convictions, his determination, his vision + all concentrate upon whatsoever thing he has in hand. He possessed + a singularly wide view of the Europe in which France stood. In this + he was like Mirabeau, and peculiarly unlike the men with whom + revolutionary government threw him into contact. He read and spoke + English, he was acquainted with Italian. He knew that the kings + were dilettanti, that the theory of the aristocracies was liberal. + He had no little sympathy with the philosophy which a leisurely + oligarchy had framed in England; it is one of the tragedies of the + Revolution that he desired to the last an alliance, or at least + peace, with this country. Where Robespierre was a maniac in foreign + policy, Danton was more than a sane--he was a just, and even a + diplomatic man. He was fond of wide reading, and his reading was of + the philosophers; it ranged from Rabelais to the physiocrats in his + own tongue, from Adam Smith to the _Essay on Civil Government_ in + that of strangers; and of the Encyclopædia he possessed all the + numbers steadily accumulated. When we consider the time, his + fortune, and the obvious personal interest in so small and + individual a collection, few shelves will be found more interesting + than those which Danton delighted to fill. In his politics he + desired above all actual, practical, and apparent reforms; changes + for the better expressed in material results. He differed from many + of his countrymen at that time, and from most of his political + countrymen now, in thus adopting the tangible. It was a part of + something in his character which was nearly allied to the stock of + the race, something which made him save and invest in land as does + the French peasant, and love, as the French peasant loves, good + government, order, security, and well-being. There is to be + discovered in all the fragments which remain to us of his + conversation before the bursting of the storm, and still more + clearly in his demand for a _centre_ when the invasion and the + rebellion threatened the Republic, a certain conviction that the + revolutionary thing rather than the revolutionary idea should be + produced: not an inspiring creed, but a goal to be reached, + sustained him. Like all active minds, his mission was rather to + realize than to plan, and his energies were determined upon seeing + the result of theories which he unconsciously admitted, but which + he was too impatient to analyse. His voice was loud even when his + expressions were subdued. He talked no man down, but he made many + opponents sound weak and piping after his utterance. It was of the + kind that fills great halls, and whose deep note suggests hard + phrases. There was with all this a carelessness as to what his + words might be made to mean when partially repeated by others, and + such carelessness has caused historians still more careless to lend + a false aspect of Bohemianism to his character. A Bohemian he was + not; he was a successful and an orderly man; but energy he had, and + if there are writers who cannot conceive of energy without chaos, + it is probably because in the studious leisure of vast endowments + they have never felt the former in themselves, nor have been + compelled to control the latter in their surroundings.... His + friends also he loved, and above all, from the bottom of his soul, + he loved France. His faults--and they were many--his vices (and a + severe critic would have discovered these also) flowed from two + sources: first, he was too little of an idealist, too much absorbed + in the immediate thing; secondly, he suffered from all the evil + effects that abundant energy may produce--the habit of oaths, the + rhetoric of sudden diatribes, violent and overstrained action, with + its subsequent demand for repose. + +This is neither the place nor the time to enter into details of Mr. +Belloc's life. Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember a few points in +his career when tracing the development of his work. The first important +point to remember is that Mr. Belloc, for a man who has achieved so +much, is still comparatively young. He was born at La Celle, St. Cloud, +near Paris, in 1870, the son of Louis Swanton Belloc, a French +barrister. His mother was English, the daughter of Joseph Parkes, a man +of some considerable importance in his own time, a politician of the +Reform Bill period, and the historian of the Chancery Bar. His book on +this subject is still considered the best authority. + +Mr. Belloc was educated at the Oratory School, Edgbaston. On leaving +school he served as a driver in the 8th Regiment of French Artillery. He +left the service for Balliol in 1892, and in the following year became a +Brackenbury History Scholar of that college and took First Class honours +in his final history schools in 1895. In the same year he published +_Verses and Sonnets_, which was followed in 1896 by _The Bad Child's +Book of Beasts_. This was followed the next year by _More Beasts for +Worse Children_. In 1898 _The Modern Traveller_ appeared, and in 1899 he +published his first work of outstanding importance--the study of +_Danton_. _Robespierre_ was published in 1901, and _The Path to Rome_ in +1902; _Emmanuel Burden_ was published in 1904, and _Esto Perpetua_ in +1906. By this time Mr. Belloc's literary reputation was so firmly +established that he was offered, and accepted, the post of chief +reviewer on the staff of the _Morning Post_. During the time he was +connected with this paper he not only attracted attention to it by his +own essays, but undoubtedly rendered it solid service by introducing to +its somewhat conservative columns a new group of writing men. It was in +1906, too, that Mr. Belloc was elected "Liberal member" for South +Salford. His independent mind was at variance with the "tone of the +House," and he distinguished himself by demanding an audit of the Secret +Party Funds, which he considered to be the chief source of political +corruption. At the next election in 1910 the Party Funds were not +forthcoming in his support, but he stood as an independent candidate and +was returned in the face of the caucus. On the occasion of the second +election of 1910, he refused to repeat his candidature, having declared, +in his last speech in the House, his opinion that a seat there under the +existing machine was valueless. In 1910 he resigned his appointment on +the _Morning Post_, and in 1911 became Head of the English Literature +Department at the East London College, a post he lost (for political +reasons) in 1913. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +PERSONALITY IN STYLE + + +In the foregoing chapters we have seen something of Mr. Belloc's career +and caught a glimpse of the man as he is to-day. But in common with +every other writer of note Mr. Belloc expresses his personality in his +writings. And the lighter the subject with which he is dealing, the more +he is writing, as it were, out of himself, the clearer is the picture we +get of him. If we turn, then, to his essays, collected from here and +there, on this and that, on everything and on nothing, we may see Mr. +Belloc reflected in the clear stream of his own writing: and in +proportion as the reflection is vivid or blurred we may rank him as a +stylist and writer of English prose. + +Style in prose or verse has never existed and cannot exist of itself +alone. Style is not the art of writing melodious words or the craft or +cunning of finding a way round the split infinitive. It is the ability +so to choose forms of expression as completely to convey to a reader all +the twists and turns and outlines of a character. + +It is not even necessarily confined to the handling of words: there is +nothing more characteristic in the style of Mr. H. G. Wells than the use +of the three dots ... which journalism has recently invented. There may +be style--that is, the expression of a temperament--in the position of a +dash or of a semicolon: Heaven knows, a modern German poet enters the +confessional when he uses marks of exclamation. + +Style, it must be repeated, is the exact and faithful representation of +a man's spirit in poetry or prose. The precise value of that spirit does +not matter for the moment. James Boswell, Dr. Johnson and Porteous, +Bishop of Chester, investigated the matter with some acumen and some +fruitfulness in one of their terrifying conversations: + + What I wanted to know [Boswell says] was, whether there was really + a peculiar style to every man whatever, as there is certainly a + peculiar hand-writing, a peculiar countenance, not widely different + in many, yet always enough to be distinctive: + + "--facies non omnibus una + nec diversa tamen"-- + + The Bishop thought not; and said, he supposed that many pieces in + Dodsley's collection of poems, though all very pretty, had nothing + appropriated in their style, and in that particular could not be at + all distinguished. JOHNSON. "Why, sir, I think every man whatever + has a peculiar style, which may be discerned by nice examination + and comparison with others: but a man must write a great deal to + make his style obviously discernible. As logicians say, this + appropriation of style is infinite _in potestate_, limited _in + actu_." + +It would appear at first sight sufficient, to confute Johnson, to refer +to the four hundred volumes of verse, which are published (so it is said +in the newspapers of this trade) in every year. But he overlooked only +one thing: namely the tendency of literary men to be insincere. It is +the habit of writing in phrases, very much like building up a picture +out of blocks that have on them already portions of a picture, which +comes between the spirit of the writer and its true expression in a +native style. + +Even this is no barrier to a sensitive ear. An experienced reporter once +told the present writer that he could distinguish, by internal evidence +alone, the authorship of almost every paragraph in the detestable +halfpenny newspaper to which he then contributed. + +Mr. Belloc, at least, has covered a sufficient quantity of pages to make +it easy, if Johnson's notion be correct, for any critic who honestly +undertakes the task, to discern the characteristics of his style. To +convey his impression thereof in a convincing way to the reader is not +so easy for the critic: and the wealth and breadth of his subject may +hamper him here. + +Before we begin an exposition of Mr. Belloc's style, an exposition which +is meant to be in the true sense a criticism and in the full sense an +appreciation, let us recapitulate the points we have already established +in our inquiry into the nature of style as an abstract quality, and let +us essay to add to them such points as may assist us in our difficult +task of estimating the worth of a very good style indeed. + +Style, we have said, results from the exact and accurate expression of a +temperament or a character--as you please, for it is true that the word +"temperament" is dangerous. We have also observed that, in viewing style +from this angle of sight, it does not matter to the inquiry whether the +character in question is desirable or hateful. That man has a style who +does sincerely and exactly express his true spirit in any medium, words +or music or little dots. Such a style has the worth of genuineness and, +to the curious in psychology, it has a certain positive value. A man who +achieves so much deserves almost the title of poet: he certainly is of a +kind rare in its appearances. + +But when we begin seriously to speak of excellence in prose, or verse, +we must add yet another test, to pass which a man must not only express +his spirit with sincerity, but must also have a strong and original +spirit. It will be our business now to search out, delimit and define, +not only Mr. Belloc's nicety and felicity of expression, but also the +value of the thing which he expresses. + +Enough will be said up and down this book and going about in the +chapters of it of that lucidity which is our author's peculiar merit and +the quality which most effectively permits him to play his part as a +spreader of ideas and of information. It is a French virtue, we are +told, and Mr. Belloc is of the French blood: it is the essence of the +Latin spirit, he tells us, and he has never wearied of praising the +glories of the race which carefully and logically made all fast and +secure about it with a chain of irrefragable reasoning. + +This lucidity, this patient passion for exactness, have added to what +might have been expected of Mr. Belloc's sincerity and unlimited +capacity for enthusiasm. In that admirable phrase of Buffon, too often +quoted and too little applied, the style is the man. This is a fine +writer, because he has the craft truly to represent a fine spirit in +words. + +It is a style which is strongly individual and which is on the whole +rather restful than provocative. The reader's mind reposes on the +security of these strongly moulded sentences, these solid paragraphs and +periods. It is a considered style in which word after word falls +admirably into its appointed place. It is not quite of the eighteenth +century, for it is stronger than that prose. It certainly has not the +undisciplined aspect of Elizabethan writing. It has the exactitude +without the occasional finickingness of the best French work, and it has +the breadth of English, but never falls into confusion, clumsiness or +extravagance. Mr. Belloc does not experience difficulties with his +relative pronouns or bog himself in a mess of parentheses. The habit of +exposition has taught him to disentangle his sentences and disengage his +qualifying clauses. + +It is pre-eminently and especially an instrument. It has been evolved by +a man whose passion it is to communicate his reflections, to make +himself understood. He has learnt the practice of good writing through +this desire and not by any sick languishing to construct beautiful +mosaics or melodious descriptions. + +The English are not a nation of prose-writers. Arnold reminded us often +enough that we lacked the balance, the sense of the centre, the facility +in the use of right reason; and Mr. Belloc has continued his arguments. +But Mr. Belloc has in his blood that touch of the Latin and in his mind +that sense of the centre, of a European life which corrects the English +waywardness. It is with no hesitation that we call him--subject to the +correction of time, wherefrom no critic is exempt--the best writer of +English prose since Dryden. + +Some one said once that were Shakespeare living now he would be writing +articles for the leader-page of the _Daily Mail_. As Shakespeare is not +living now, his place, of course, is filled by Mr. Charles Whibley. But +there is some sense in the apparently silly remark. The column of the +morning paper has, without doubt, provoked the creation of a new form +and has brought forth a renaissance of the essay. If Shakespeare would +not have written for the daily papers, Bacon unquestionably would have +done so. + +In a band of essayists who have been made or influenced by this +opportunity, Mr. G. K. Chesterton, Mr. G. S. Street, Mr. E. V. Lucas, +and a host of others, Mr. Hilaire Belloc is unchallengeably supreme. It +is stupid to suppose, as some still do, that art and literature are not +thus conditioned by the almost mechanical needs of the day. To protest +that our writers should not be influenced by the special features of the +newspaper would be to condemn Shakespeare for his conformity with the +needs of the apron-stage or Dickens for publishing his novels in parts. + +A mind of a character so actual as Mr. Belloc's is inevitably attracted +by such an opportunity. The discerning reader will find the crown and +best achievement of all his varied work in the seven volumes of essays +which he has published. + +These volumes contain no fewer than 256 separate and distinct essays. +(The essay _On the Traveller_ which was included in _On Anything_ +appears again, for some reason, as _The Old Things_ in _First and +Last_, and is not here counted twice.) One is reduced to jealousy of the +mere physical energy which could sit down so often to a new beginning: +the variety and power of the essays command our utmost admiration. + +Descriptions of travel and of country make up a great part of them: for +this is our author's own subject, if it be possible to select one from +the rest. But the rest of them range from the study of history and the +habits of the don, to the habits of the rich and the strange +advertisements that come, through the post, even to the least considered +of us. You can only take his own words, the central point of his +experience, a very comforting and happy philosophy: + + The world is not quite infinite--but it is astonishingly full. All + sorts of things happen in it. There are all sorts of men and + different ways of action and different goals to which life may be + directed. Why, in a little wood near home, not a hundred yards + long, there will soon burst, in the spring (I wish I were there!), + hundreds of thousands of leaves and no one leaf exactly like + another. At least, so the parish priest used to say, and though I + have never had the leisure to put the thing to the proof, I am + willing to believe that he was right, for he spoke with authority. + +That is the impression given by these essays, the impression of the +man's character. He seems to have a boundless curiosity, a range of +observation, which, if not infinite, is at least astonishingly full. He +does not write from the mere desire of covering paper, though sometimes +he flourishes in one's face almost insolently the necessity he is in of +setting down so many words as will fill a column in tomorrow's paper. +But this insolence is rendered harmless by the fertility of his +imagination and his inexhaustible invention. + +The patch of purple is not rare in his writings. He says in _The Path to +Rome_: + + ... But for my part, I think the best way of ending a book is to + rummage about among one's manuscripts till one has found a bit of + Fine Writing (no matter upon what subject), to lead up the last + paragraphs by no matter what violent shocks to the thing it deals + with, to introduce a row of asterisks, and then to paste on to the + paper below these the piece of Fine Writing one has found. + +This reads like a frank confession of the way in which the last page of +_Danton_ came to have its place. But who dare say that Mr. Belloc is not +justified of his Fine Writing? + +It does not come like the purple patches (or lumps) in Pater and the +"poetry" in the prose and verse of Mr. Masefield: as though the author +said to himself, "God bless my soul, this is getting dull. I must +positively do something and that at once." Mr. Belloc's fine writing +seems to spring from an almost physical zest in the use of words and +images, to be the result of a bodily exaltation, the symbol of an +enthusiastic mind and an energetic pen. No matter by what violent shocks +the author proceeds from Danton to Napoleon, that concluding passage, +ending with the shining and magniloquent phrase, "the most splendid of +human swords," is a glorious piece of writing. + +From time to time (and more frequently than the inexperienced would dare +to suppose) this zest in the world and its contents, in the normal and +insoluble problems of life, breaks into passages of sheer beauty. One +may be quoted from an essay called _The Absence of the Past_: + + There was a woman of charming vivacity, whose eyes were ever ready + for laughter, and whose tone of address of itself provoked the + noblest of replies. Many loved her: all admired. She passed (I will + suppose) by this street or by that; she sat at table in such and + such a house, Gainsborough painted her; and all that time ago there + were men who had the luck to meet her and to answer her laughter + with their own. And the house where she moved is there and the + street in which she walked, and the very furniture she used and + touched with her hands you may touch with your hands. You shall + come into the rooms that she inhabited, and there you shall see + her portrait, all light and movement and grace and beatitude. + + She is gone altogether, the voice will never return, the gestures + will never be seen again. She was under a law, she changed, she + suffered, she grew old, she died; and there was her place left + empty. The not living things remain; but what counted, what gave + rise to them, what made them all that they are, has pitifully + disappeared, and the greater, the infinitely greater, thing was + subject to a doom perpetually of change and at last of vanishing. + The dead surroundings are not subject to such a doom. Why? + +That passage is like a piece of music, like a movement in a sonata by +Beethoven. The chords, the volume of sound are gravely added to, till +that solemn close on a single note. It is emotion, perfectly rendered, +so grave, so sincere, so restrained as to be almost inimitable. And +alike in the music of the words and sentences and in the mood which they +convey it is unique in English. Not one of our authors has just that +frame of mind, just that method of expressing it. + +We do not know whether Mr. Belloc wrote down those two paragraphs in hot +haste or considered their periods with delicate cunning. In the end it +is all the same: it is a reasonable prose, it is the expression of a +thought which is common in the human mind. Consider in relation to it +that notorious piece of Pater, that reflection of the essential don upon +a picture which is possibly a copy and certainly not very pleasant to +look upon, the _Mona Lisa_. Pater builds up his words with as grave a +care, with as solemn an emotion, but how different is the result. Pater +sought for an effect of strangeness and cracked his prose in reaching at +it: his rhythm is false, his images are blurred. But Mr. Belloc, +translating into words a deep and tender mood, has had no care save +faithfully to render a thought so common and so hard to imprison in +language. His writing here rings true as a bell, it is as sweet and +normal as bread or wine. + +An even better example is the essay called _Mowing a Field_ which is +printed in _Hills and the Sea_. The centre of this essay (which has also +decorations in the way of anecdotes and reflections) is a true and +faithful account of the procedure to be observed in the mowing of a +field of grass. Here you can see a most extraordinary power of conveying +information in a pleasing manner. It would not be a bad thing to read +this essay first if one had the intention of engaging in such exercise, +for the instruction seems to be sound. Mr. Belloc touches hands very +easily with the old Teachers who wrote their precepts in rhyme: such +teachers, that is, as had good doctrine to teach, not such as the +sophisticated Vergil, whose very naïf _Georgics_ are said to lead to +agricultural depression wherever men follow the advice they contain. + +Take this passage from that delicate and noble essay: + + There is an art also in the sharpening of a scythe and it is worth + describing carefully. Your blade must be dry, and that is why you + will see men rubbing the scythe-blade with grass before they whet + it. Then also your rubber must be quite dry, and on this account it + is a good thing to lay it on your coat and keep it there during all + your day's mowing. The scythe you stand upright, with the blade + pointing away from you, and you put your left hand firmly on the + back of the blade, grasping it: then you pass the rubber first down + one side of the blade edge and then down the other, beginning near + the handle and going on to the point and working quickly and hard. + When you first do this you will, perhaps, cut your hand; but it is + only at first that such an accident will happen to you. + + To tell when the scythe is sharp enough this is the rule. First the + stone clangs and grinds against the iron harshly; then it rings + musically to one note; then, at last, it purrs as though the iron + and the stone were exactly suited. When you hear this, your scythe + is sharp enough; and I, when I heard it that June dawn, with + everything quite silent except the birds, let down the scythe and + bent myself to mow. + +That is a piece of prose which is at once practical and beautiful. It +is sound advice to a man who would mow a meadow, and the soundness of it +is in no way hurt by the last sentence, which delights the ear and which +need not be read by the truly earnest. + +It is a style which conveys emotion and it is also a style which can be +used perfectly to describe. We may refer, at least, as an example, to +the careful and exact account of the appearance and utility of the +Mediterranean lateen-sail which occurs at the beginning of _Esto +Perpetua_, a piece of writing which enchants the reader with its beauty +and its practical sense. + +Consider, too, that light and graceful composition of a different +character, equally perfect in beauty, the dialogue _On the Departure of +a Guest_, in the book called _On Nothing and Kindred Subjects_. Youth +leaves the house of his Host and apologizes for removing certain +property of his, which the Host may have thought, from its long +continuance in the house, to have been his very own: included in this +property are carelessness and the love of women. But, says Youth, he is +permitted to make a gift to his Host of some things, among them the +clout Ambition, the perfume Pride, Health, and a trinket which is the +Sense of Form and Colour (most delicate and lovely of gifts!) And, he +continues, "there is something else ... no less a thing than a promise +... signed and sealed, to give you back all I take and more in +Immortality!" Then occurs this passage which closes the piece: + + HOST. Oh! Youth. + + YOUTH (_still feeling_). Do not thank me! It is my Master you + should thank. (_Frowns._) Dear me! I hope I have not lost it! + (_Feels in his trouser pockets._) + + HOST (_loudly_). Lost it? + + YOUTH (_pettishly_). I did not say I had lost it! I said I hoped I + had not.... (_Feels in his great coat pocket, and pulls out an + envelope._) Ah! Here it is! (_His face clouds over._) No, that is + the message to Mrs. George, telling her the time has come to get a + wig ... (_Hopelessly_.) Do you know I am afraid I have lost it! I + am really very sorry--I cannot wait. (_He goes off._) + +That passage would appear to confute a quite common notion to the effect +that Mr. Belloc, who can and does write nearly everything else, does not +write a play because he cannot. It is not for the purpose of arguing +such a highly abstract point that we must call attention to the exact +way in which it conforms to the necessities of this kind of expression +without losing its character, its vividness, or its rhythm. + +It is admirably moulded in its expression of a feeling or a sensation, +and, in this way, Mr. Belloc's style comes very nearly as close to +perfection as can be expected of a human instrument. He renders his +moods, the fine shades of a transitory emotion, the solid convictions +that make up a man's life with spirit, with humour, with beauty, but, +above all, with _accuracy_. + +He builds up his sentences and paragraphs with the beauty and permanency +of the old barns that one may see in his own country. He does this +through his sincerity. He does not exaggerate an emotion to catch a +public for the space of half an hour: he does not, in the more subtle +way, affect a cynical or conventional disregard of the noble feelings +and fine motives which do exist in man. It has been his business with +patience and fidelity to seize, with skill to make enduring and +comprehensible in words, the things which do exist. + +His style is a weapon or an instrument like one of those primitive but +exquisitely adapted instruments which are the foundations of man's work +in the world. With his use of words, he knows how to expose the +technicalities of a battle or the transformations of the human heart. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE POET + + +So much for Mr. Belloc's most copious revelation of his personality. But +this is true--that the most personal expression of all for any man is in +verse: even though it be small in quantity and uneven in quality. It is +as though, here, in a more rarefied and more complex form of +composition--we will not say "more difficult"--some kind of effort or +struggle called out all of a man's characteristics in their intensest +shape. Such emotions as a man has to express will be, perhaps not more +perfectly, but at any rate more keenly, set out in verse. It gives you +his characteristics in a smaller space. This is true of nearly all +writers who have used both forms of expression. It applies--to quote +only a few--to Arnold, to Meredith, and to Mr. Hardy. + +Now we must admit at the outset that Mr. Belloc's verse does not satisfy +the reader, in the same sense that his prose satisfies. It is +fragmentary, unequal, very small in bulk, apparently the outcome of a +scanty leisure. But it is an ingredient in the mass of his writing that +cannot be dismissed without discussion. + +Mr. Belloc realizes to the full the position of poetry in life. He gives +it the importance of an element which builds up and broadens the +understanding and the spirit. He has written some, but not very much, +literary criticism; and, of a piece with the rest of thinking, he thinks +of poetry as a factor in, and a symptom of, the growth and maintenance +of the European mind. He would not understand the facile critics who +only yesterday dismissed this necessary element of literature as +something which the modern world has outgrown. + +But, curiously, he is a disappointing critic of Literature. His essays +in this regard are, like his essays on anything else, obviously in +touch with some substratum of connected thinking, a growth which springs +from a settled and confident attitude towards man and the world. But +they are, as it were, less in touch with it; they are more on the +surface, more accidental, less continuous. + +His little--very little--essays on the verse of the French Renaissance +are extremely unsatisfactory. His criticism of Ronsard's _Mignonne, +allons voir si la rose_ is a little masterpiece of delicate +discrimination: + + If it be asked why this should have become the most famous of + Ronsard's poems, no answer can be given save the "flavour of + language." It is the perfection of his tongue. Its rhythm reaches + the exact limit of change which a simple metre will tolerate: where + it saddens, a lengthy hesitation at the opening of the seventh line + introduces a new cadence, a lengthy lingering upon the last + syllables of the tenth, eleventh and twelfth closes a grave + complaint. So, also by an effect of quantities, the last six lines + rise out of melancholy into their proper character of appeal and + vivacity: an exhortation. + +This passage, which, as a demonstration of method, is not altogether +meaningless, even without the text beside it, shows the accuracy and +nicety of his criticism. And _Avril_ contains a number of similar +observations which are valuable in the extreme as aids to judgement and +pleasure. But the book has written all over it a confession, that this +is a department of writing which the author is content, comparatively, +to neglect. The essays are short and, again comparatively, they are +detached: they examine each poem by itself, not in its general aspect. +And it is, too, a singular example of book-making: there are more blank +pages, in proportion to its total bulk, than one could have believed +possible. + +The rare studies dealing with poetry which one finds among his general +essays also bear witness to his discrimination and determined judgement. +The essay on José-Maria de Hérédia in _First and Last_ is a remarkable +example of these, a remarkable analysis of a poet who is, if not +obscure, at least reticent and difficult to like, and in whom Mr. Belloc +sees the recapturer of "the secure tradition of an older time." And this +essay relates the spirit of a poet to the general conception of Europe +and its destiny. + +Such a relation is rare. Poetry seems to lie, to an extent, apart from +Mr. Belloc's definite and consistent view of life. He takes other +pleasures, beer, walking, singing and what not, with the utmost +seriousness: this he treats, at bottom, casually and disconnectedly. We +can just perceive how he links it up with his general conception of +life, but we can only just see it. The link is there, but he has never +strengthened it. + +And when we turn from his opinions on other men's poetry to his own +compositions, we find the same broad effect of casualness varied with +passages of singular achievement. His verse is very small in bulk: +between two and three thousand lines would cover as much of it as he has +yet published. Within this restricted space there are numerous +variations of type, but these, in verse, are so subtle and so fluid that +we are forbidden to attempt a rigid classification. + +What, then, is our impression on surveying this collection of poetry? It +includes a number of small amusing books for children, a volume called +_Verses_ and a few more verses scattered in the prose, most notably (as +being not yet collected) in _The Four Men_. The general impression is, +as we have said, one of confusion and lack of order: verse, the +revealing instrument, seems to be to Mr. Belloc a pastime for moments of +dispersion, and most of these poems seem to point to intervals of +refreshment, periods of a light use of the powers, rather than to the +seconds of intense feeling whereof verse, either at the time or later, +is the proper expression. + +It goes without saying that little enough of this verse is dull: it +nearly all has character, a distinct personal flavour in phrasing and +motive. Yet this flavour is best known to the public in its development +by the first of brilliant young men to be influenced by Mr. Belloc's +style, as apart from his ideas. We may pause a moment to examine this +point, for its own special interest and for the guide it will give us to +Mr. Belloc's poetry. + +Rupert Brooke has been called too often the disciple of Dr. Donne: no +critic, so far as we are aware, has called attention to his debt to Mr. +Belloc. This debt was neither complete nor immediately obvious, but it +existed. Brooke knew it, spoke of Mr. Belloc with admiration, +and quoted his poems with surprising memory. Some of these +were--necessarily--unpublished and may be apocryphal: they cannot be +repeated here. The resemblance between the styles of the two men was +most noticeable in Brooke's prose: his letters from America show a touch +in working and a point of view singularly close to those of Mr. Belloc. +But it is also to be discovered in his poetry. Put a few lines from +_Grantchester_ beside a few lines from one of Mr. Belloc's poems of +Oxford and you will realize how curiously the younger man was fascinated +by the older. We will quote the passages we have in mind. The first is +by Brooke: + + "In Grantchester, their skins are white, + They bathe by day, they bathe by night; + The women there do all they ought; + The men observe the Rules of Thought. + They love the Good; they worship Truth; + They laugh uproariously in youth." + +And the second is from Mr. Belloc's _Dedicatory Ode_: + + "Where on their banks of light they lie, + The happy hills of Heaven between, + The Gods that rule the morning sky + Are not more young, nor more serene.... + + ... We kept the Rabelaisian plan: + We dignified the dainty cloisters + With Natural Law, the Rights of Man, + Song, Stoicism, Wine and Oysters." + +There is a difference, for two men of different character are speaking: +but there is more than the accidental resemblance that comes from two +men making the same sort of joke. + +But Brooke was, in his own desire and in the estimation of others, first +a poet: and Mr. Belloc has written his verses, as it would seem, at +intervals. The common level of them is that of excellent workmanship, +the very best are simply glorious accidents. + +Now the common level, if we put away the books for children which will +be more conveniently dealt with in another chapter, is represented by +such poems as _The Birds_, _The Night_, _A Bivouac_, and a Song of which +we may quote one verse, as follows: + + "You wear the morning like your dress + And are with mastery crowned; + When as you walk your loveliness + Goes shining all around. + Upon your secret, smiling way + Such new contents were found, + The Dancing Loves made holiday + On that delightful ground." + +That is to say, these poems are of a certain grace and charm, neither +false nor exalted, pleasant indeed to say over, but without that +intensity of feeling which even in a small and light verse transfigures +the written words. The carols and Catholic poems are of this delightful +character, curiously one in feeling with such old folk-carols as are +still preserved. One of these compositions rises to a much higher plane +by a truly extraordinary felicity of phrase, one of those inspired +quaintnesses which move the reader so powerfully as the nakedest pathos +or the most ornate grandeur. We mean the poem _Courtesy_, where the poet +finds this grace in three pictures: + + "The third it was our Little Lord, + Whom all the Kings in arms adored; + He was so small you could not see + His large intent of Courtesy." + +These verses are certainly, as we have said, charming. They are really +mediaeval, for Mr. Belloc admires the spirit of that age from within, +which makes truth, not from without, which makes affectation. + +There is another class of poem which is jolly--it is the best term--to +read and better to sing. The _West Sussex Drinking Song_, a rather +obvious reminiscence of Still's famous song, is perhaps the best known +but by no means the best. (It is, however, an excellent guide to the +beers of West Sussex.) We would give this distinction to a song in _The +Four Men_, which begins: + + "On Sussex hills where I was bred, + When lanes in autumn rains are red, + When Arun tumbles in his bed + And busy great gusts go by; + When branch is bare in Burton Glen + And Bury Hill is a whitening, then + I drink strong ale with gentlemen; + Which nobody can deny, deny, + Deny, deny, deny, deny, + Which nobody can deny." + +We must speak here, however, since our space is limited, not of these +sporadic and inessential excellences, but of the isolated and admirable +accidents--for so they seem--which make Mr. Belloc truly a poet. + +One of these is the well-known, anthologized _The South Country_; +another is a passage in the mainly humorous poem called _Dedicatory Ode_ +which we have quoted in another connexion; two occur in _The Four Men_. +All of them deal with places and country, they are all by way of being +melancholy and express the quite human sadness that goes normally with +the joy in friends and in one's own home. + +Such a verse as this in praise of Sussex is inspired, sad and gracious: + + "But the men that live in the South Country + Are the kindest and most wise. + They get their laughter from the loud surf, + And the faith in their happy eyes + Comes surely from our Sister the Spring + When over the sea she flies; + The violets suddenly bloom at her feet, + She blesses us with surprise." + +The rhythm, apparently wavering, but in reality very exact, alone +reflects in this stanza the sadness which elsewhere in the poem is put +more directly. It is a delicate, ingenuous rhythm, suited most admirably +to (or rather, perhaps, dictating) the unstrained and easy words. + +The same mood, the same rhythm, are repeated in a poem in _The Four +Men_: + + "The trees that grow in my own country + Are the beech-tree and the yew; + Many stand together, + And some stand few. + In the month of May in my own country + All the woods are new." + +But the summit of these poems is reached in another composition in the +same book. He has set it cunningly in a description of the way in which +it was written, so as to be able to strew the approaches to it with +single lines and fragments which he could not use, but which were too +good to be lost. The poem itself runs like this: + + "He does not die that can bequeath + Some influence to the land he knows, + Or dares, persistent, interwreath + Love permanent with the wild hedgerows; + He does not die but still remains + Substantiate with his darling plains. + + The spring's superb adventure calls + His dust athwart the woods to flame; + His boundary river's secret falls + Perpetuate and repeat his name. + He rides his loud October sky: + He does not die. He does not die. + + The beeches know the accustomed head + Which loved them, and a peopled air + Beneath their benediction spread + Comforts the silence everywhere; + For native ghosts return and these + Perfect the mystery in the trees. + + So, therefore, though myself be crosst + The shuddering of that dreadful day + When friend and fire and home are lost + And even children drawn away-- + The passer-by shall hear me still, + A boy that sings on Duncton Hill." + +It is of a robuster sort than the other poems and in a way their climax +for it expresses the same emotion. It is indeed the final movement of +the book which treats in particular of the love of Sussex, but also of +the general emotion of the love of one's own country. There is +melancholy mixed with this feeling, as with all strong affections: with +it are associated the love of friends and the dread of parting from them +and regret for the accomplishment of such a thing. + +In these few poems, his best, Mr. Belloc seems to have expressed this +mood completely and so to have shown--we have said as it were by +accident--an abiding and fundamental mood. We have been constrained to +criticize his poetry much as he has criticized the poetry of others, +that is to say, sporadically and without continuity. But we have touched +here perhaps on a thing, the obscure existence of which also we +indicated, the secret root that shows his poetry to be a true and native +growth of the soil from which his other writings have sprung. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE STUDENT OF MILITARY AFFAIRS + + +Mr Belloc's most important writings on the war are to be found in _Land +and Water_, the _Illustrated Sunday Herald_, and _Pearson's Magazine_. +To these must be added his series of books of which only one has so far +appeared--_A General Sketch of the European War_. His series of articles +in _Pearson's Magazine_ has also been reprinted in book-form under the +title _The Two Maps_. + +Of these his writings in _Land and Water_ are, at the present time, the +most important. Since the earliest stages of the war Mr. Belloc has +contributed to _Land and Water_ a weekly article. What is the nature of +this article? In the first place, it is a commentary on the current +events of the campaign. Mr. Belloc himself, when challenged recently to +defend his work, said very modestly (as we think)--"My work ... is no +more than an attempt to give week by week, at what I am proud to say is +a very great expense of time and of energy, an explanation of what is +taking place. There are many men who could do the same thing. I happen +to have specialized upon military history and problems, and profess now, +with a complete set of maps, to be doing for others what their own +occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do." + +With part of this description we may heartily agree; with the rest we +must disagree. We agree with Mr. Belloc when he refers to his work as +being accomplished "at a very great expense of time and of energy." +There may be some who doubt the truth of this statement. There is +undoubtedly a large section of the public which, led astray by that +cynicism and that distrust of newspapers and journalists which a certain +section of our Press has engendered in the public, has come to regard +all newspaper reports on the war as unreliable and the writings of +so-called "experts" as mere vapourings, undertaken in the hope of +assisting the circulation of the paper in which they appear rather than +the circulation of the truth. If, then, any reader be inclined to +include Mr. Belloc in such a denunciation and to doubt that his weekly +commentary in _Land and Water_ is written as he says, "at a very great +expense of time and of energy," let him turn to one of Mr. Belloc's +articles, reprinted in _The Two Maps_, on "What to Believe in War News." + +In this article Mr. Belloc asks the question--"How is the plain man to +distinguish in the news of the war what is true from what is false, and +so arrive at a sound opinion?" His answer to this question is that "in +the first place, the basis of all sound opinion are the official +_communiqués_ read with the aid of a map." And to this he adds the +following explanation: + + When I say "the official communiqués" I do not mean those of the + British Government alone, nor even of the Allies alone, but of + _all_ the belligerents. You just read impartially the communiqués + of the Austro-Hungarian and of the German Governments together with + those of the British Government and its Allies, or you will + certainly miss the truth. By which statement I do not mean that + each Government is equally accurate, still less equally full in its + relation; but that, unless you compare all the statements of this + sort, you will have most imperfect evidence; just as you would have + very imperfect evidence in a court of law if you only listened to + the prosecution and refused to listen to the defence. + +Mr. Belloc then proceeds to show what characteristics all official +_communiqués_ have in common, and then to outline the peculiar +characteristics of the _communiqués_ of each belligerent. Although not +one unnecessary sentence is included, this short summary of his own +discoveries covers seven pages. The final sentence of the article is as +follows: "Nevertheless, unless you do follow fairly regularly the Press +of all the belligerent nations, you will obtain but an imperfect view of +the war as a whole." + +This comparison of the _communiqués_ of the belligerents, which is seen +in these pages to be no light task, naturally forms but a small part of +Mr. Belloc's work; so that further proof of his own statement, that his +work necessitates the expenditure of much time and energy, need hardly +be adduced. + +This slight insight into the nature of Mr. Belloc's work will also serve +to emphasize the point in which we disagree with Mr. Belloc's own +description of his work. If, let us say, a bank manager, who may be +regarded as a type of citizen of considerable intelligence and leisure, +were to adopt and faithfully to pursue the methods described in this +article, the methods which Mr. Belloc himself has found it necessary to +adopt, he would certainly find his leisure time swallowed up. In so far +as this alone were the case, we might agree with Mr. Belloc when he says +of himself--"I ... profess now ... to be doing for others what their own +occupations forbid them the time and opportunity to do." But our bank +manager, when he had accomplished the long process of sifting out the +only war news that is reliable (and he would be only able to accomplish +this much, be it noted, with the aid of Mr. Belloc) would still be +unable, in all probability, to grasp the full meaning and importance of +that news. To do that he would need what, in common with the majority of +Englishmen, he does not possess, and what it would take him years to +acquire, namely, a knowledge of military history and military science. + +We see then that Mr. Belloc, in his weekly commentary in _Land and +Water_, is doing for others not merely "what their own occupations +forbid them the time and opportunity to do," but _what they could not do +for themselves_, even had they the time and opportunity. + +To undertake this task he is peculiarly qualified. In his writings on +the war, indeed, Mr. Belloc appears as an expert, in the true sense of +that much abused word. He says of himself, in the paragraph already +quoted--"I happen to have specialized on military history and problems." +That is again too modest an estimation of the facts. He has done far +more than merely to specialize on military history; he has given +military history its true place in relation to other branches of +history. The study of history at the present time is specialized. We +subdivide its various aspects, classify facts and speak of +constitutional history, economic history, ecclesiastical history, +military history, and so forth. Now Mr. Belloc, in addition to his study +of all the branches of history, has not merely made a special study of +military history, but has realized and proved, more fully than any other +historian, of what tremendous importance is the study of military +history in its relation to those other branches of the study of history, +such as the constitutional and economic. "In writing of the military +aspect of any movement," he says, "it is impossible to deal with that +aspect save as a living part of the whole; so knit into national life is +the business of war." + +In those words, "so knit into national life is the business of war," Mr. +Belloc has finely expressed his conception of war as one of the +weightiest factors in human events. In accordance with this attitude Mr. +Belloc has shown us, what no other historian has ever made clear, that +the French Revolution, "more than any other modern period, turns upon, +and is explained by, its military history." In the preface to his short +thesis _The French Revolution_ there occurs this passage: + + The reader interested in that capital event should further seize + (and but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military + aspect; and this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the + first, that historians, even when they recognize the importance of + the military side of some past movement, are careless of the + military aspect, and think it sufficient to relate particular + victories and general actions. The military aspect of any period + does not consist in these, but in the campaigns of which actions, + however decisive, are but incidental parts. In other words, the + reader must seize the movement and design of armies if he is to + seize a military period, and these are not commonly given him. In + the second place, the historian, however much alive to the + importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of + a general position. He will make his story a story of war, or + again, a story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to + see how the two combine. + +In this short excerpt we catch a glimpse, not only of Mr. Belloc's +attitude towards military history, but also of his method in dealing +with it; and since this aspect of Mr. Belloc's work is of such capital +importance we may perhaps quote that passage which begins on page 142 of +_The French Revolution_ and is so illuminating in regard both to Mr. +Belloc's attitude and to his method: + + The Revolution would never have achieved its object; on the + contrary, it would have led to no less than a violent reaction + against those principles which were maturing before it broke out, + and which it carried to triumph, had not the armies of + revolutionary France proved successful in the field; but the + grasping of this mere historic fact, I mean the success of the + revolutionary armies, is unfortunately no simple matter. + + We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the + whole, successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know + that from that success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still + proceeding, modern society. But the nature, the cause and the + extent of the military success which alone made this possible, is + widely ignored and still more widely misunderstood. No other signal + military effort which achieved its object has in history ended in + military disaster--yet this was the case with the revolutionary + wars. After twenty years of advance, during which the ideas of the + Revolution were sown throughout Western civilization, and had time + to take root, the armies of the Revolution stumbled into the vast + trap or blunder of the Russian campaign; this was succeeded by the + decisive defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb + strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is + called the Hundred Days, only served to emphasize the completeness + of the apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed + by Napoleon's first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in + Waterloo and the ruin of the French army. When we consider the + spread of Grecian culture over the East by the parallel military + triumph of Alexander, or the conquest of Gaul by the Roman armies + under Cæsar, we are met by political phenomena and a political + success no more striking than the success of the Revolution. The + Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did Alexander or Cæsar, + and as surely compelled one of the great transformations of Europe. + But the fact that the great story can be read to a conclusion of + defeat disturbs the mind of the student. + + Again, that element fatal to all accurate study of military + history, the imputation of civilian virtues and motives, enters the + mind of the reader with fatal facility when he studies the + revolutionary wars. + + He is tempted to ascribe to the enthusiasm of the troops, nay, to + the political movement itself, a sort of miraculous power. He is + apt to use with regard to the revolutionary victories the word + "inevitable," which, if ever it applies to the reasoned, willing + and conscious action of men, certainly applies least of all to men + when they act as soldiers. + + There are three points which we must carefully bear in mind when we + consider the military history of the Revolution. + + First, that it succeeded: the Revolution, regarded as the political + motive of its armies, won. + + Secondly, that it succeeded through those military aptitudes and + conditions which happened to accompany, but by no means necessarily + accompanied, the strong convictions and the civic enthusiasm of the + time. + + Thirdly, that the element of chance, which every wise and prudent + reasoner will very largely admit into all military affairs, worked + in favour of the Revolution in the critical moments of the early + wars. + +The reader who could make closer acquaintance with this aspect of Mr. +Belloc's work, and it is an aspect, as has been said, of capital +importance, need only turn to the too few pages of _The French +Revolution_, where he will find ample evidence not only of Mr. Belloc's +understanding of the importance of military history, but of his vast +knowledge of military science; and the same may be said of those little +books Mr. Belloc has published from time to time on some of the +outstanding battles of the past, such as _Blenheim_, _Malplaquet_, +_Waterloo_, _Cressy_ and _Tourcoing_. + +It is apparent, then, that Mr. Belloc brings to a task which the mass of +the English public is quite incapable of undertaking for itself peculiar +advantages, in that he has combined with a long and careful study of +military history a thorough technical knowledge of military science. + +In addition to this major and essential qualification he possesses, as +the outcome of his pursuits and experience, other minor and subsidiary +though still very necessary qualifications. In this war, as in all wars +of the past, the lie of country and the fatigue of men are two of the +weightiest factors; and Mr. Belloc is enormously assisted in attempting +a nice appreciation of these factors by the knowledge acquired in the +long pursuit of his topographical tastes and by his practical experience +in the ranks of the French army. + +On this latter point too much insistence should not be laid, though to +ignore it entirely would be as foolish as to exaggerate its importance. +We may best assess its value, perhaps, by saying that Mr. Belloc has +been in possession for more than twenty years of certain definite +knowledge which the vast majority of Englishmen have only acquired in +the past year. More than twenty years ago he learnt the elementary rules +of military organization and the ordinary facts of army life which are +common knowledge in conscript countries. In England we have remained +ignorant of these facts. Many of us have learnt them for the first time +since August, 1914; many of us, though we have come to a consciousness +of them, will never learn them. In a passage in _A General Sketch of the +European War_, in which Mr. Belloc exposes "the fundamental contrast +between the modern German military temper and the age-long traditions of +the French service," though he brings into play much information that +he has doubtless acquired in more recent years, we can see shining +through, the memory of early experiences. + + This contrast [he says] appears in everything, from tactical + details to the largest strategical conception, and from things so + vague and general as the tone of military writings, to things so + particular as the instruction of the conscript in his barrack-room. + The German soldier is taught--or was--that victory was inevitable, + and would be as swift as it would be triumphant; the French soldier + was taught that he had before him a terrible and doubtful ordeal, + one that would be long, one in which he ran a fearful risk of + defeat, and one in which he might, even if victorious, have to wear + down his enemy by the exercise of a most burdensome tenacity. + +No useful purpose would be served by entering here into details of the +nature of Mr. Belloc's service in the French army. There occurs, +however, in _The Path to Rome_, a short passage which is too interesting +and too amusing not to quote. Arriving at Toul, Mr. Belloc is reminded +of the manoeuvres of 1891: + + For there were two divisions employed in that glorious and + fatiguing great game, and more than a gross of guns--to be accurate + 156--and of these one (the sixth piece of the tenth battery of the + eighth--I wonder where you all are now; I suppose I shall not see + you again, but you were the best companions in the world, my + friends) was driven by three drivers, of whom I was the middle one + and the worst, having on my livret the note "Conducteur médiocre." + +In _Hills and the Sea_ Mr. Belloc says: + + In the French Artillery it is a maxim ... that you should weight + your limber (and, therefore, your horses) with useful things alone; + and as gunners are useful only to fire guns, they are not carried, + save into action or when some great rapidity of movement is + desired.... But on the march we (meaning the French) send the + gunners forward, and not only the gunners, but a reserve of drivers + also. We send them forward an hour or two before the guns start; we + catch them up with the guns on the road; they file up to let us + pass, and commonly salute us by way of formality and ceremony. Then + they come into the town of the halt an hour or two after we have + reached it. + +But of far more vital interest is that vast fund of special knowledge +which Mr. Belloc has amassed in the indulgence of his tastes in travel +and topography. Of this knowledge the evidence to be found in Mr. +Belloc's writings is so voluminous and overwhelming that it is as +unnecessary as it is impossible to quote freely here. A detailed +examination of Mr. Belloc's books on travel will be found in another +chapter; if one point more than another needs emphasis here, it is that +Mr. Belloc primarily views all country over which he passes from a +military standpoint. To accompany Mr. Belloc on a motor run through some +part of his own county of Sussex suffices to convince one of this. +Whether tramping along causeways and sidepaths, or speeding over railway +lines, he cannot pass through any considerable stretch of country +without exercising his mind as to the possible advantages that might be +afforded opposing armies by this or that natural formation. It is fair +to say that this question, if we may call it such, has been uppermost in +Mr. Belloc's mind throughout every journey of an extent that he has +undertaken, whether in Southern, Western or Eastern Europe. It would be +false to imagine that the prime motive of all Mr. Belloc's journeys was +to view country purely from the military standpoint, but it is fair to +say that almost the first question Mr. Belloc asks himself when he +strikes a stretch of country with which he is unfamiliar, and the +question he repeatedly and continually asks himself as he traverses that +country, is--"How would the natural formation of this country aid or +hinder a modern army advancing or retreating through it?" That great +stretches of country, notably in France and Belgium, have been visited +by Mr. Belloc, moreover, with the definite object of viewing them from a +purely military standpoint, it is almost unnecessary to state; no reader +who will turn to the pages of _The French Revolution_ or of _Blenheim_ +or _Waterloo_, can fail to realize as much for himself. Common sense, +indeed, plays a great part in Mr. Belloc's study of history. He regards +it as virtually essential that a historian who would describe the action +of a great battle of the past should be in a position faithfully to +reconstruct the conditions under which that battle was fought. Mr. +Belloc himself has settled the vexed question of why the Prussians did +not charge at Valmy by visiting the battlefield under the conditions of +the battle and discovering that they could not have charged. + +Through the vast store of knowledge acquired in this way Mr. Belloc +enjoys an advantage in his treatment of the present war which cannot be +overestimated. In writing of the country in which the campaigns of +to-day are taking place he is not writing of country as he sees it on +the map. To him that country is not, as to the majority of Englishmen it +is, a conglomeration of patches, some heavily, some lightly shaded, of +larger and smaller dots, joined and intersected by an almost meaningless +maze of thin and thick lines. To him that country is hills and vales, +woods and fields, rivers and swamps, real things he has seen and among +which he has moved. As an example of this we may perhaps give his +description of the line of the Argonne which occurs on page 157 of _The +French Revolution_: + + The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from + the south northward, a good deal to the west of north. + + Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only + three hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side + is towards the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are + densely wooded, from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water + in them is bad, in many parts undrinkable; habitation with its + provision for armies and roads extremely rare. It is necessary to + insist upon all these details, because the greater part of civilian + readers find it difficult to understand how formidable an obstacle + so comparatively unimportant feature in the landscape may be to an + army upon the march. It was quite impossible for the guns, the + wagons, and therefore the food and the ammunition of the invading + army, to pass through the forest over the drenched clay land of + that wet autumn save where proper roads existed. These were only to + be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated the range. + + Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very + little choice in the crossing of these hills. + +We may compare with this extract a most remarkable description of +country given by Mr. Belloc in his article on "The Great Offensive" in +the issue of _Land and Water_ of October 2, 1915. Describing the chief +movement in Champagne, he points out that the French advanced on a front +of seventeen and a half miles from the village of Aubèrive to the market +town of Ville-sur-Tourbe. He continues: + + The first line of the enemy's defence in this region follows for + the most part a crest.... This ridge is not an even one, nor was + the whole of it occupied by the German works. In places it had been + seized by the French during their work last February, and has been + held ever since. Generally speaking, its summits nearly reach, or + just surpass, the 200 metre contour, above the sea, but the whole + of this country lies so high that such a height only means a matter + of 150 to 200 feet above the water levels of the little muddy + brooks that run in the folds of the land. It is a country of chalk, + but not of dry, turfy chalk, like those of the English Downs; + rather a chalk mixed with clay, which makes for bad going after + rain. It is the soil over which, further to the east, the battle of + Valmy was fought, an action largely determined by the impracticable + nature of the ground when wet. On the other hand, it is a soil that + dries quickly. The country as a whole is remarkably open. There are + no hedges, and the movement of troops is covered only by scattered, + not infrequent plantations of pine trees and larches, which grow to + no great height. From any one of the observation posts along the + seventeen miles of line one sees the landscape before one as a + whole. It is the very opposite of what is called "blind country." + On the east, to the right of the French positions, there runs along + the horizon the low, even-wooded ridge of the Argonne, which rises + immediately behind Ville-sur-Tourbe. Far to the east, from the + left, in clear weather one distinguishes the great mass of Rheims + Cathedral rising above the town. + +This tremendous advantage which he possesses is casually mentioned by +Mr. Belloc in his Introduction to _A General Sketch of the European +War_, where he says: + + It is even possible, where the writer has seen the ground over + which the battles have been fought (and much of it is familiar to + the author of this) so to describe such ground to the reader that + he will in some sort be able to see for himself the air and the + view in which the things were done: thus more than through any + other method will the things be made real to him. + +In co-relation with these particular and highly specialized +qualifications which Mr. Belloc possessed before the war, should be +reckoned perhaps two other qualifications of a more general character. +The first of these is the very long and thorough training which his +scholarship has necessitated in the dispassionate examination of +evidence. Through years of historical study he has learnt carefully to +sort out strong from weak evidence and to base his judgements only on +such evidence as may be regarded as thoroughly reliable. A cursory +glance through the pages of _Danton_ and a quite casual perusal of a few +of the foot-notes in that book will leave the reader with no doubts on +this point. In course of years this careful practice naturally develops +into a habit; and the value of this habit in approaching reports of +actions and statistics of prisoners or effectives may easily be grasped. + +The second of these two general qualifications with which we must credit +Mr. Belloc is the fact of his envisagement of the possibility of this +war. Europe, Mr. Belloc argues, reposes upon the foundations of +nationality. Internationalism, whether it be expressed in the financial +rings of Capitalism or the world-wide brotherhoods of Socialism, is only +made possible by a harmony of the wills of the great European nations. +Should a conflict of wills not merely exist but break out into +expression in war, internationalism, though outwardly so powerful, must +inevitably go by the board and the ancient foundations upon which +Europe rests stand poignantly revealed. Such a conflict of wills Mr. +Belloc has always seen to exist between Prussia and the rest of the +nations of Europe. His knowledge of their history and character led him +years ago to that idea of the Prussians which this war has shown to be +the true idea, and which we find expressed on every hand to-day with +remarkable sageness after the event. This view is that which recognizes +fully that the Prussian spirit, "the soul of Prussia in her +international relations," is expressed in what is called the +"Frederician Tradition," which Mr. Belloc has put into the following +terms: + + The King of Prussia shall do all that may seem to advantage the + kingdom of Prussia among the nations, notwithstanding any European + conventions or any traditions of Christendom, or even any of those + wider and more general conventions which govern the international + conduct of other Christian peoples. + +Mr. Belloc further explains this tradition by saying: + + For instance, if a convention of international morals has + arisen--as it did arise very strongly, and was kept until recent + times--that hostilities should not begin without a formal + declaration of war, the "Frederician Tradition" would go counter to + this, and would say: "If ultimately it would be to the advantage of + Prussia to attack without declaration of war, then this convention + may be neglected." + + Or, again, treaties solemnly ratified between two Governments are + generally regarded as binding. And certainly a nation that never + kept such a treaty would find itself in a position where it was + impossible to make any treaties at all. Still, if upon a vague + calculation of men's memories, the acuteness of the circumstance, + the advantage ultimately to follow, and so on, it be to the + advantage of Prussia to break such solemn treaty, then such a + treaty should be broken. + +To this he adds: + + This doctrine of the "Frederician Tradition" does not mean that the + Prussian statesmen wantonly do wrong, whether in acts of cruelty or + in acts of treason and bad faith. What it means is that, wherever + they are met by the dilemma, "Shall I do _this_, which is to the + advantage of my country but opposed to European and common morals, + or _that_, which is consonant with those morals but to the + disadvantage of my country?" they choose the former and not the + latter course. + +That this tradition not merely existed but was the paramount influence +in Prussian foreign politics Mr. Belloc had long realized, while, at the +same time, he had been very well aware of the fatuous illusions about +themselves under which the Prussians and a great portion of the +German-speaking peoples labour--illusions which necessarily led the +German national will into conflict with the will of the other European +nations. Proof of the fact that Mr. Belloc had long held this view of +Prussia may be found by any reader of his essays, while a passage which +occurs in _Marie Antoinette_ is especially illuminating: + + It is characteristic of the more deplorable forms of insurgence + against civilized morals that they originate either in a race + permanently alien to (though present in) the unity of the Roman + Empire, or in those barbaric provinces which were admitted to the + European scheme after the fall of Rome, and which for the most part + enjoyed but a brief and precarious vision of the Faith between + their tardy conversion and the schism of the sixteenth century. + Prussia was of this latter kind, and with Prussia Frederick. To-day + his successors and their advisers, when they attempt to justify the + man, are compelled still to ignore the European tradition of + honour. But this crime of his, the partition of Poland, the germ of + all that international distrust which has ended in the intolerable + armed strain of our time has another character added to it: a + character which attaches invariably to ill-doing when that + ill-doing is also uncivilized. It was a folly. The same folly + attached to it as has attached to every revolt against the historic + conscience of Europe: such blindnesses can only destroy; they + possess no permanent creative spirit, and the partition of Poland + has remained a peculiar and increasing curse to its promoters in + Prussia.... + + There is not in Christian history, though it abounds in coincidence + or design, a more striking example of sin suitably rewarded than + the menace which is presented to the Hohenzollerns to-day by the + Polish race. Not even their hereditary disease, which has reached + its climax in the present generation has proved so sure a + chastisement to the lineage of Frederick as have proved the + descendants of those whose country he destroyed. An economic + accident has scattered them throughout the dominions of the + Prussian dynasty; they are a source everywhere of increasing danger + and ill-will. They grow largely in representative power. They + compel the government to abominable barbarities which are already + arousing the mind of Europe. They will in the near future prove the + ruin of that family to which was originally due the partition of + Poland. + +To Mr. Belloc, then, holding this view of Prussia, it was obvious that +the conflict of wills between Prussia and the other nations would +inevitably grow so intense as some day to result in war. + +Briefly to recapitulate, we may say that Mr. Belloc, in his weekly +commentary in _Land and Water_, has undertaken and carried on since the +beginning of the war a task which the vast majority of the English +public is quite unable to undertake for itself. He was qualified to +undertake that task, and has been enabled to carry it on by the fact +that he has combined with a deep study of military history an exact +knowledge of military science; by the knowledge he has gained from +practical experience of army service; by the wide acquaintance he has +made with the vast stretches of country in the indulgence of his tastes +in travel and topography; by the long and thorough training he has +passed through in the dispassionate examination of evidence; and, +lastly, by the fact that he had long envisaged the possibility of this +war. + +With this brief summary we may usefully contrast Mr. Belloc's own +summary of his work already quoted in the early part of this chapter. In +this he says: "My work ... is no more than an attempt to give week by +week, at what I am proud to say is a very great expense of time and +energy, an explanation of what is taking place. There are many men who +could do the same thing. I happen to have specialized upon military +history and problems, and profess now, with a complete set of maps, to +be doing for others what their own occupations forbid them the time and +opportunity to do." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +MR. BELLOC AND THE WAR + + +Having contrasted these two summaries, we will leave the reader to form +his own estimate of the nature of Mr. Belloc's work and of the +qualifications he brings to it. There remains to be determined the +measure of success which has attended Mr. Belloc's "attempt to give an +explanation of what is taking place." "There are many men," he says, +"who could do the same thing." On this point we cannot argue with Mr. +Belloc. He may know them: we do not. What we do know is that there are +many men who are trying to do the same thing. In saying this we have no +wish to belittle either individuals or as a class those courageous +gentlemen, among whom the best-known, perhaps, are Colonel Repington and +Colonel Maude, who are striving, and striving honestly, we believe, to +provide the readers of various papers with an intelligent explanation of +the courses taken by the different campaigns. Nor do we regard them as +in any way imitators of Mr. Belloc. We merely assert that no single one +of them is achieving his object so nearly as Mr. Belloc is achieving +his. This should not be understood to mean that the course of events has +proved Mr. Belloc to be right more often than it has proved his +contemporaries to be right, though if it were possible to collate all +the necessary evidence, such a statement might conceivably be proved +correct. This assertion should be understood, rather, to mean that no +single commentary on the war, regularly contributed to any journal or +newspaper, displays those merits of dispassionate honesty, detailed +explanation and lucid exposition in so marked a degree as does Mr. +Belloc's weekly commentary in _Land and Water_. + +Were there any necessity to adduce proof of this it would be sufficient +to regard the great gulf fixed between the circulation of _Land and +Water_ and any other weekly journal of the same price. It is of greater +service, however, to realize how and why Mr. Belloc surpasses his +contemporaries than to waste space and time in proving what is already +an admitted fact. The two outstanding features of Mr. Belloc's work in +_Land and Water_--two of the most conspicuous features, indeed, as will +be seen in the course of this book, of all his work--are his fierce +sincerity and amazing lucidity. In this first characteristic we are +willing to believe that his respectable contemporaries equal though they +cannot surpass him. We will suppose, though we can find no signs of it, +that they equal him in that extraordinary combination of qualifications +acquired by study, travel and experience which he has been seen to +possess. Even then, all other things being supposed equal, they fall far +short of him in this quality of lucidity. + +This is not merely the gift of the journalist to state things plainly. +It is the gift of the Latin races which Mr. Belloc was given at his +birth: it is the furnace of thought in which Mr. Belloc has forged his +prose style into a finely-tempered instrument. + +Two of life's chief difficulties, it has often been said, are, first, to +think exactly, and, second, to give your thought exact expression. It is +the lot of the majority of men to know what they want to say but to be +unable to say it. Many men are shy of expressing their thoughts because +of the very present but indefinite feeling they have that their +thoughts, though real and sound in their minds, become in some +extraordinary way unreal and unsound when expressed. That this curious +transformation takes place we all know; newspaper reporters carry +incontestable evidence of it in their notebooks. Few public speakers, +indeed, realize how deeply in debt they are to reporters, who are +trained in the art of reproducing in their reports and conveying to the +public, not what the speaker said, but what he intended to say. And this +curious transformation of our thoughts in the process of expression from +reality to unreality, from sense to nonsense; this divergence between +thought and language; this disability under which we all labour, but +which so few of us overcome, which is so common among men as almost to +justify the jibe that "language was given to men to conceal their +thought," is due entirely, of course, to the insufficiency of our power +of expression. A speaker or writer is great in proportion as his power +of expression nears perfection. + +According as we are satisfied to read in print what a writer says, and +do not find it necessary to read between the lines what he intended to +say, we may regard him as possessed of lucidity of thought and lucidity +of style. + +Many of the ideas, emotions and actions to which Mr. Belloc has given +expression in his essays are so intimate a part of the collective +experience of man as to allow each one of us to see that he has +visualized and expressed them with exactness; and so to realize that he +possesses in his style a wonderful instrument. + +With the aid of that instrument it has been said he can expose the +technicalities of a battle or the transformations of the human heart. +How great is the power of that instrument is at no time so generally +susceptible to proof as when it is seen applied to facts as in the +writings of Mr. Belloc on the war, which it is proposed to examine in +this chapter. But before we enter upon our examination of the nature and +influence of those writings, it may be well to emphasize their +importance as an example of style. + +In his writings on the war, and more especially in his weekly chronicle +in _Land and Water_, Mr. Belloc is not expressing views or ideas of his +own; he is not writing in support of the thesis or argument; he is +stating facts. He is stating the facts of military science, which may be +found in a hundred books, side by side with the facts of the war, which +may be found in a thousand official _communiqués_; and he is stating +both sets of facts, so that the one set is explanatory of the other set, +and so that both may be easily understood. This Mr. Belloc is only able +to accomplish by virtue of his peculiar power of lucid expression. + +Not alone, then, in this particular, but supremely alone in this +particular, Mr. Belloc towers above other contemporary writers on the +war. He can explain as they can never explain: expound as they can never +expound: describe as they can never describe. His meaning stands clear +in print while theirs must be read between the lines. He makes himself +understood while we must make ourselves understand them. + +This is the supreme power that has carried all his other powers to +fruition. We do not think that "there are many men who could do the same +thing." + +That this great power, tremendous as it is, is afflicted by weaknesses +in practice is unfortunately true. These weaknesses arise mainly from +the clash of Mr. Belloc's overpowering honesty with the cynical attitude +towards newspapers in general which recent methods in journalism have +engendered in the public. There was a time in the history of journalism +when it was a crime to be wrong. For "wrong" modern journalism has +substituted "dull." In recent years competition among newspaper +proprietors and editors of newspapers has not been, as in times past, +for the most reliable news or the most trustworthy views on important +events, but for the latest news and the brightest "stories." The +reputation for a newspaper which has been looked upon as pre-eminently +desirable is not that it should be regarded by the public as +well-informed or as expressing a sound judgment, but as pithy and +interesting. The inevitable consequence of this tendency is that the +great mass of English daily newspapers have lost their former high place +in the estimation of the public as serious and necessary institutions, +and have descended to the level of an amusement. The only exceptions +that can be made from this sweeping condemnation are the _Daily +Telegraph_, the _Morning Post_, the _Manchester Guardian_, and the +_Westminster Gazette_. Of the rest, some are of a higher, some of a +lower type, but all are virtually forms of amusement and of distraction +rather than of learning and instruction. What differences exist between +them are differences of degree, not differences of kind. Some of them +may be compared to a good comedy; others to those musical plays which +are less plays than exercises in the production of plays; many rank no +higher than the picture palace. The most base of all, though they rank +as distractions, can scarcely be classed as amusements. They are patent +medicines. It has been well said that the _Daily Mail_ has achieved what +no other paper has ever achieved, in enabling some millions of the +English proletariat to be whisked from the breakfast to the office table +every day of the week and to forget in the process the discomfort they +undergo. + +Viewed from the other side, the existence of this state of affairs +argues a curious temper of mind in the public, which permitted and +assisted, even if it did not always quite approve of its continuance. +That is to say, English people bought and read the papers which were +pithy and interesting, but did not imagine that they were learned or +instructive, and when, by chance, they sought some statement on which +they could place reliance, they realized that it could not be found in +the newspapers. This strange development in the attitude of the public +towards newspapers in general, real as it is, is hard to follow and +difficult to define. It was due in great measure to the fact that the +public in ever-increasing numbers was gradually ceasing to regard as +real what the newspapers regarded as real. The chief realities for the +newspapers remained the various aspects of capitalism and party +politics, when to the public eye other things already appeared more +real. The whole effect of this development may best be summed up, +perhaps, in the expression, half of annoyance, half of resignation, so +usual on the lips of newspaper readers: "It says so in the paper, but +who knows how much to believe." + +Some such pass had been reached in the growing estrangement between the +public and the Press when the war broke out and the public was faced by +an event of overwhelming interest. The people of England woke to a +desire for the truth and clamoured for the newspapers to give it to +them. The newspapers were helpless. They had forgotten where truth was +to be found. So far as any of our modern newspaper men could remember it +was one of those antiquated encumbrances, such as wood-cuts and flat-bed +machines, which they had banished long ago. The only distinct impression +of it they retained was that it had been plainly labelled "not +interesting." So they met the emergency by buying a new set of type, +blacker and deeper than any they had used before, and introducing the +page headline. + +We have seen how, while the mass of the English Press was left fatuously +floundering before the spectacle of the greatest military event the +world has ever seen, Mr. Belloc set out quite simply to give the public +an account, week by week, of the progress of that event which was as +plain and as truthful as he could make it. That approximately a hundred +thousand persons are willing to pay sixpence a week to read this account +we already know. It is inevitable, however, that a considerable +percentage of Mr. Belloc's readers should approach his commentary in +_Land and Water_ in the same attitude of mind as they have for so long +approached the perusal of the daily newspaper. They will tend to speak +of Mr. Belloc's articles as "interesting" or "dull," forgetting that +criticism on these lines can rightly be directed only to the events of +which Mr. Belloc is writing. For it is not Mr. Belloc's object to make +the events of the war interesting to his readers. It does not even +remotely concern him whether those events are interesting or not. His +sole object is to give his readers as detailed an explanation of the +nature of those events and as clear an account of their progress as it +is possible for him to give. + +There is one other point in which Mr. Belloc's amazing lucidity is +afflicted by a peculiar weakness in practice. The method which he adopts +so extensively of explaining situations by means of diagrams is +undoubtedly very successful. It has, however, its limitations. So long +as the situation which he is concerned to describe is of a simple nature +it may be admirably expressed in diagrammatic form. When, however, the +situation itself is complex the diagram is also necessarily complex, +which results, in the text of his writing, in long strings of letters or +figures which lead to almost greater confusion than would the +enumeration of the objects they are intended to represent. This weakness +appears very plainly in a passage in _A General Sketch of the European +War_, in which Mr. Belloc describes how the Allied force in the +operative corner before Namur stood with relation to the two natural +obstacles of the rivers Sambre and Meuse and the fortified zone round +the point where they met. To illustrate the position of the Allied +force he draws a diagram which is excellently clear. In describing this +diagram, however, he falls into difficulties which may be seen very +plainly in the following extract in which he describes the French plan: + + Now, the French plan was as follows. They said to themselves: + "There will come against us an enemy acting along the arrows VWXYZ, + and this enemy will certainly be in superior force to our own. He + will perhaps be as much as fifty per cent. stronger than we are. + But he will suffer under these disadvantages: + + "The one part of his forces, V and W, will find it difficult to act + in co-operation with the other part of his forces, Y and Z, because + Y and Z (acting as they are on an outside circumference split by + the fortified zone SSS) will be separated, or only able to connect + in a long and roundabout way. The two lots, V and W, and Y and Z, + could only join hands by stretching round an awkward angle--that + is, by stretching round the bulge which SSS makes, SSS being the + ring of forts round Namur. Part of their forces (that along the + arrow X) will further be used up in trying to break down the + resistance of SSS. That will take a good deal of time. If our + horizontal line AB holds its own, naturally defended as it is, + against the attack from V and W, while our perpendicular line BC + holds its own still more firmly (relying on its much better natural + obstacle) against YZ, we shall have ample time to break the first + and worst shock of the enemy's attack, and to allow, once we have + concentrated that attack upon ourselves, the rest of our forces, + the masses of manoeuvre, or at any rate a sufficient portion of + them, to come up and give us a majority in _this_ part of the + field." + +Alongside these slight criticisms we may mention, perhaps, another +criticism which has been publicly levelled against Mr. Belloc's writings +on the military aspect of the present war. The issue of the _Daily Mail_ +of September 6, 1915, contained an article in which Mr. Belloc was +charged with grave errors of judgement. The gist of this article was +that Mr. Belloc had regarded an enemy offensive in the West in the +spring of 1915, as certain to take place, whereas, in point of fact, the +Germans made their great effort against the Russians in the East. This +was the chief charge brought against Mr. Belloc; and to it were added a +number of lesser charges of which the majority were perfectly just, +showing how in this place and in that Mr. Belloc had overrated one +factor or underrated another. + +With this criticism it is unnecessary to concern ourselves further than +to note the nature of Mr. Belloc's reply, which appeared in _Land and +Water_ on September 18, 1915: + + There is in such an indictment as this [he says] nothing to + challenge, because I would be the first, not only to admit its + truth, but, if necessary, to supplement the list very lengthily. To + write a weekly commentary upon a campaign of this magnitude--a + campaign the facts of which are concealed as they have been in no + war of the past--is not only an absorbing and very heavy task, but + also one in which much suggestion and conjecture are necessarily + doubtful or wrong, and to pursue it as I have done steadily and + unbrokenly for so many months has tried my powers to the utmost. + + But I confess that I am in no way ashamed of such occasional errors + in judgment and misinterpretations, for I think them quite + unavoidable. They will be discovered in every one of the many + current commentaries maintained upon the war throughout the Press + of Europe and even in the calculations of the General Staffs. Nay, + I will now add to the list spontaneously: In common with many + others, I thought that an invasion of Silesia was probable last + December. At the beginning of the war I believed that the French + operations in Lorraine would develop towards the north--an opinion + which will be found registered many months later in the official + records recently published. In the matter of numbers my early + estimates exaggerated the proportion of wounded to killed, while + only a few weeks ago I guessed for the number of German prisoners + in the West a number which subsequent official information conveyed + to me proved to be erroneous by between 17 and 18 per cent. I long + worked on the idea that the line from Ivangorod to Cholm was a + double line--a matter of some importance last July. I have since + found that it was single. The total reserve within and behind Paris + which decided the battle of the Marne was, I believe (though the + matter is not yet public), less large than I had suspected, and the + figures I gave would rather include the Sixth Army as well as the + Army of Paris. A few weeks ago I suggested that there was + difficulty in moving a great body of men rapidly across the Upper + Wierpz. Yet the movement, when it was made, might fairly be + described as rapid. At any rate, the aid lent to the Archduke came + more promptly than had seemed possible. I certainly thought, though + I did not say so in so many words, that the capture of the + bridgehead at Friedrichstadt would involve an immediate and + successful advance by the enemy upon Riga, and in this opinion, I + believe, no single authority, enemy or ally, differed. What has + caused the check to the enemy advance here for ten full days no one + in the West can tell, nor, for that matter, does any news from + Russia yet enlighten us. + +To this criticism of the writer in the _Daily Mail_ Mr. Belloc's reply +is so final and complete that any addition would be out of place. It is +very necessary, however, that we should devote careful consideration to +the facts which prompted the publication of this criticism; and this +will be done in the succeeding chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +MR. BELLOC THE PUBLICIST + + +So far as this article in the _Daily Mail_ was confined to an exposure +of Mr. Belloc's errors in judgement, it may be regarded as a piece of +legitimate and fair, if foolish, criticism. But the irrelevant jeering +which the article also contained, and, even more, the manner in which +the article was given publication (accompanied, as it was, by the +circulation of posters bearing the words "Belloc's Fables"), constituted +nothing short of a violent personal attack. To understand how such an +attack came to be made it is sufficient to possess an acquaintance with +the methods of Carmelite House or a knowledge of the personality of Lord +Northcliffe--a subject on which we could enlarge. It will better suit +the present purpose, however, to give Mr. Belloc's own explanation of +the reason why this attack was made upon him. In his "Reply to +Criticism," before proceeding to the part which has been quoted in the +foregoing chapter, he says: + + It has been the constant policy of this paper to avoid controversy + of any kind, both because the matters it deals with are best + examined as intellectual propositions and because the increasing + gravity of the time is ill-suited for domestic quarrel. I none the + less owe it to my readers to take some notice of the very violent + personal attack delivered by the Harmsworth Press some ten days ago + upon my work in this journal. I owe it to them because I should + otherwise appear to admit unanswered the depreciation of my work in + this paper, but, still more, because the incident would give the + general public a very false impression unless its cause were + exposed. I will deal with the matter as briefly as I can. It is not + a pleasant one, and I doubt whether the principal offender will + compel me to return to it. I must first explain to my readers the + occasion of so extraordinary an outburst on the part of the + proprietor of the _Daily Mail_. I have become, with many others, + convinced that a great combination of newspapers pretending to + speak with many voices, but really serving the private interests of + one man, is dangerous to the nation. It was breeding dissension + between various social classes at a moment when unity was more + necessary than ever; pretending to make and unmake Ministers; + weakening authority by calculated confusion, but, above all, + undermining public confidence and spreading panic in a methodical + way which has already made the opinion of London an extraordinary + contrast to that of the Armies, and gravely disturbing our Allies. + They could not understand the privilege accorded to this one + person. I, therefore to the best of my power, determined to attack + that privilege, and did so. I shall continue to do so. But such + action has nothing to do with this journal, in which I have + hitherto avoided all controversy. + +Now this matter, as Mr. Belloc rightly says, is not a pleasant one, and +we owe some apology both to Mr. Belloc and the public for returning to +it here. It forms, however, so noteworthy an example of that aspect of +Mr. Belloc and his work which it is proposed to examine in this chapter +that any consideration of that aspect without some mention of this +unpleasant affair would necessarily be incomplete. + +The attitude of mind expressed by Mr. Belloc in this explanation should +be carefully noted. In this he appears, not, as we have seen him in the +previous chapter, as the exponent of intellectual propositions, but as +the champion of an opinion of his own. He is here expressing and +upholding his particular view of the necessity, during the war, of unity +among social classes and of the strengthening of public confidence. This +view of his proceeds from two co-related causes; the first, his +conception of the nature of the war, and, second, his knowledge of the +part played in government by public opinion. + +These two causes must be examined separately. + +Mr. Belloc has made clear his conception of the nature of the war in the +following words: + + The two parties are really fighting for their lives; that in Europe + which is arrayed against the Germanic alliance would not care to + live if it should fail to maintain itself against the threat of + that alliance. It is for them life and death. On the other side, + the Germans having propounded this theory of theirs, or rather the + Prussians having propounded it for them, there is no rest possible + until they shall either have "made good" to our destruction, or + shall have been so crushed that a recurrence of the menace from + them will for the future be impossible.... The fight, in a word, is + not like a fight with a man who, if he beats you, may make you sign + away some property, or make you acknowledge some principle to which + you are already half-inclined; it is like a fight with a man who + says, "So long as I have life left in me, I will make it my + business to kill you." And fights of that kind can never reach a + term less absolute than the destruction of offensive power in one + side or the other. A peace not affirming complete victory in this + great struggle could, of its nature, be no more than a truce. + +The second cause, Mr. Belloc's knowledge of the important part played by +public opinion in government, he has expressed in the following terms:-- + + The importance of a sound public judgment upon the progress of the + war is not always clearly appreciated. It depends upon truths which + many men have forgotten, and upon certain political forces which, + in the ordinary rush and tumble of professional politics, are quite + forgotten. Let me recall those truths and those forces. + + The truths are these: that no Government can effectively exercise + its power save upon the basis of public opinion. A Government can + exercise its power over a conquered province in spite of public + opinion, but it cannot work, save for a short time and at an + enormous cost in friction, counter to the opinion of those with + whom it is concerned as citizens and supporters. By which I do not + mean that party politicians cannot act thus in peace, and upon + unimportant matters. I mean that no kind of Government has ever + been able to act thus in a crisis. + + It is also wise to keep the mass of people in ignorance of + disasters that may be immediately repaired, or of follies or even + vices in government which may be redressed before they become + dangerous. + + It is always absolutely wise to prevent the enemy in time of war + from learning things which would be an aid to him. That is the + reason why a strict censorship in time of war is not only useful, + but essentially and drastically necessary. But though public + opinion, even in time of peace, is only in part informed, and + though in time of war it may be very insufficiently informed, yet + upon it and with it you govern. Without it or against it in time of + war you cannot govern. + + Now if during the course of a great war men come quite to misjudge + its very nature, the task of the Government would be strained some + time or other in the future to breaking point. False news, too + readily credited, does not leave people merely insufficiently + informed, conscious of their ignorance, and merely grumbling + because they cannot learn more, it has the positive effect of + putting them into the wrong frame of mind, of making them support + what they should not support, and neglect what they should not + neglect. + +The view, then, which Mr. Belloc holds, and which these two factors +combine to form, is one of enormous importance. This view is the key to +all Mr. Belloc's writings on the political aspect of the war. He has +expressed it over and over again, but never in more solemn terms than in +the following passage. After showing the existence of the political +effect of the German advance to the borders of Russia, he points out how +necessary it is to control, by public authority and through our own +private wills, any corresponding political effect in England: + + If, here, the one territory of the three great Allies not invaded + [he says] any insanity of fear be permitted, or any still baser + motive of saving private fortune by an inconclusive peace, then the + political effect at which the enemy is aiming will indeed have been + achieved. These things are contagious. We must root out and destroy + the seed of that before it grows more formidable. If we do not, we + are deliberately risking disaster. But be very certain of this: + That if by whatever lack of judgment, or worse, an inconclusive + peace be arranged, this country alone of the great alliance will, + perhaps unsupported, be the target of future attack.... + +He then goes on to show how the enemy's great offensive through Poland +began in April, 1915, and throughout the summer failed and failed and +failed. He concludes: + + It is not enough to know these things as a proposition in + mathematics or as a problem in chess may be known. They must enter + into the consciousness of the nation; and this they will not do if + the opposite and false statement calculated to spread panic and to + destroy judgment be permitted to work its full evil unchecked by + public authority. + +These passages will suffice to show not only that Mr. Belloc works with +an object, but also the very important nature of that object. In his own +words, he works "for the instruction of public opinion." His whole +desire is to elucidate for the general public who have not the +advantages of his knowledge and pursuits, events which are both puzzling +and urgent. In his commentary in _Land and Water_ he deals with those +problems which belong of their nature to the military aspect of the war, +and we have seen how extraordinarily qualified he is to undertake that +task as well as with what marked success he has accomplished it. His +writings on the political aspect of the war are to be found chiefly in +the _Illustrated Sunday Herald_, while many articles which he has +contributed at various times to other journals and newspapers are of a +similar character. + +In so far as he is writing, as he is in these articles, on general +topics of the day for the public of the day, Mr. Belloc is a journalist. +In its former restricted meaning the word "journalist" expressed this. +To-day, however, we include under the designation of journalist all +those workers in the editorial departments of newspaper offices who, +though skilled in various ways, are not necessarily writers at all. In +referring, then, to Mr. Belloc as a journalist we are using the term in +its older and more restricted sense: in the sense in which the term was +employed when journalism was a profession and not a trade, when the +newspaper was not merely an instrument to further the ends of a +capitalist or syndicate, but a means of communicating to the public the +views of an individual or group of individuals, each of whom was +prepared to accept personal responsibility for the views he expressed. + +The journalist in this sense is a rare figure to-day: so rare, indeed, +that we have forgotten he is a journalist and invented a new name for +him. In the field of journalism as it is at the present time it is +possible to count on the fingers of one hand the number of men who write +constantly on general topics of the day and sign what they write, thus +accepting personal responsibility for the views they express and not +leaving that responsibility with the newspaper in which their views +appear. Every weekly or monthly journal as well as the greater number of +daily newspapers contain, it is true, signed articles. The leader-pages +of the halfpenny dailies make a feature nearly every day of one or more +signed articles. But these articles, in the main, deal only with +subjects on which the writer who signs his name is a specialist. They +are written by men who happen to possess special knowledge of some +subject which is of pronounced interest to the public owing to the +course of events at the moment. For instance, when the Germans were on +the point of entering Warsaw, articles dealing with various aspects of +the city, its history, character and buildings, appeared in nearly every +newspaper: and the better articles of this nature were written and +signed by men who possessed an intimate knowledge of the subject on +which they were writing. In the same way, all signed criticism, +literary, dramatic or musical, which appears in the columns of the +newspapers of to-day is, or professes to be, the work of specialists. +Many of the larger newspapers, indeed, pay retaining fees or salaries +and give staff appointments to such specialists. Thus, the _Daily +Telegraph_ has as its literary specialist Mr. W. L. Courtney, its +musical specialist Mr. Robin H. Legge, its business specialist Mr. H. E. +Morgan. + +It is the practice, then, of newspapers at the present time to make +personally responsible for the opinions they express those who write in +their columns on subjects which, though of great interest and +importance, can of their nature only concern certain classes of the +community. It should be noted, however, as perhaps the most curious +anomaly among the mass of anomalies which constitute modern journalism, +that the newspapers do not insist upon this personal responsibility of +the writer in their treatment of those matters which concern not one +class but every class of the community. What the newspaper insists upon, +on the ground, presumably, that it is right and natural, in the minor +affairs of life, it entirely ignores in the major matters of life. While +it insists, for example, that the writer who expresses an opinion in its +columns on the ludicrous inadequacy of the Promenade Concerts shall +accept personal responsibility for that opinion, it allows views and +opinions on such vital matters as the sovereignty of Parliament, the +invincibility of Capitalism and the immorality of Trades Unionism to be +expressed anonymously. + +This practice is now firmly established. These anonymous opinions are +the "opinions of the paper." But what does that phrase mean? A newspaper +itself, as a mere material object, is incapable of forming or holding an +opinion. Some person, or group of persons, must form and hold and be +ready to accept the responsibility for the expression of these "opinions +of the paper." And since the ultimate responsibility can fall on nobody +but the proprietor or proprietors of the papers, these anonymous +opinions must properly be regarded as the opinions of the capitalist or +syndicate owning the paper in which they appear. In other words, the +opinions anonymously expressed in the leading articles of the _Daily +News_ can only be the opinions of Messrs. Cadbury: of the _Daily +Telegraph_ of Lord Burnham or the Lawson family: in the _Manchester +Guardian_ of Mr. C. P. Scott and his fellow-proprietors: in the _Morning +Post_ of Lady Bathurst: in the _Daily Mail_ of Lord Northcliffe and the +Harmsworth family. + +Of this system of purveying to the public opinions which, by an absurd, +illogical and pernicious tradition, are supposed to be those of the +public, but which, in reality, are those either of a single capitalist +or syndicate, Mr. Belloc is not merely the avowed enemy but the most +active enemy. It was his persistently inimical attitude, ruthlessly +maintained, which evoked the angry personal attack made upon him by Lord +Northcliffe; and we have seen how Mr. Belloc explains, justifies and +maintains his attitude. In this we see his enmity avowed, but we do not +perhaps realize how practical and active is the expression he gives it. + +It has been said, indeed, just above, that of this system he is the most +active enemy; and, in truth, we can find no other to equal him in this +respect except such as are working in co-operation with, if not under +the leadership of, Mr. Belloc. We have seen how, in so far as he is +writing on general topics of the day for the public of the day (as he is +doing, for example, in his articles which are concerned with various +phases of the political aspect of the war in the _Illustrated Sunday +Herald_ and other journals and newspapers), Mr. Belloc is a journalist +in the older and more restricted sense of the term. It has been further +shown that the journalist in this sense is a rare figure to-day, it +being the practice of modern journalism to deal with general, as +distinct from special, topics of the day in the form of leading +articles, which, in reality, contain what can only logically be regarded +as the opinions of the proprietors of the newspapers in which they +appear. The journalist who writes what may be called signed leading +articles is so rare among us to-day that we have forgotten he is a +journalist and invented a new name for him. We call him a publicist. + +Among the writers of the day the number who rank as publicists is very +small. The names that occur to one are those of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, +Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Bernard Shaw, Mr. A. G. Gardiner, Mr. E. B. Osborn +and, possibly, Mr. Arnold Bennett. In addition there are a few +publicists who speak through organs which they personally control, such +as Mr. A. R. Orage, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. Cecil Chesterton. Mr. +Arnold Bennett, indeed, has only occupied the position of publicist +since he has been a regular contributor to the _Daily News_, and we can +only say that, high as Mr. Bennett stands in our estimation as a +novelist and writer, we fail to see any particular in which his views on +political and social matters of the day are of extraordinary importance +to the welfare of the community at large. In a word, it seems to us that +those articles of his which from time to time occupy so prominent a +position on the leader page of the _Daily News_ might appear as fitly in +the correspondence column. Mr. G. K. Chesterton has won for himself a +high place in contemporary letters, but it is more probable that that +place is due rather to the excellence and individuality of his writing +than to the originality of the opinions he holds. It may be said, +indeed, of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, as an exceedingly competent critic has +said of Mr. Shaw, that it is his manner of expressing his philosophy +rather than his philosophy itself that will be valued by posterity. And +as Mr. Shaw has expressed most of his views in his plays and prefaces +rather than in the columns of the newspapers (and this is said in full +remembrance of his manifold and copious letters to _The Times_), so Mr. +H. G. Wells has given us his philosophy in his novels and fantasies. His +appearances in the newspapers have been rare and invariably regrettable. +The two other gentlemen whose names are mentioned, Mr. E. B. Osborn and +Mr. A. G. Gardiner, should be classed, perhaps, rather with those other +three who are in control, more or less, of the papers in which their +writings appear, since both Mr. Osborn and Mr. Gardiner are definitely +attached, the one to the _Morning Post_ and the other to the _Daily News +and Leader_, of which, before the amalgamation, he was editor. This +being the case, it is to be assumed that these two gentlemen express and +sign their views in these papers because their views correspond to a +determining extent with those of the proprietors of the papers. This +must logically be the case with Mr. Gardiner. So far as Mr. Osborn is +concerned, he occupies on the _Morning Post_ the same position as was +occupied on that paper by Mr. Belloc and on the _Daily News_ in former +times by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. That is to say, he is an essayist of +such standing as to make a regular contribution from him of value to the +newspaper so long as the views and opinions he expresses in those essays +do not contrast too violently with the opinions expressed in the leading +articles. + +Of the other three gentlemen we have named, Mr. Orage, Mr. Cecil +Chesterton and Mr. Webb, it is difficult to speak as of individuals. +They are referred to more properly as the _New Age_, the _New Witness_, +and the _New Statesman_, and their respective personalities and +attitudes of mind are fitly expressed in the names of the organs through +which they speak. All three agree in finding the times out of joint and +desiring new and better conditions of life: they differ in the +standpoints from which they approach an analysis of present conditions +and in the solutions they propound. The _New Age_ is the most valuable +because it is the most thorough. Not only is its analysis of present +conditions the most acute and the most sound that we have to-day, but +the solutions it propounds to the problems it analyses are the most +fearless, the most thorough and the most idealistic. The _New Witness_ +is equally thorough but more immediate. The scope of its analysis is not +so wide. Although its views are based on principles similar to those of +the _New Age_, it is concerned more to influence the actions than the +thoughts of men. Its object is to bear testimony to the wrongs that are +being done to-day, the crimes that are committed every day against the +welfare of the community, and to cry aloud for the immediate righting of +those wrongs, the stern punishment of those crimes. Though these two +journals are aiming at the same object, the methods they adopt are in +almost direct contrast. Mr. Orage looks down from the height, not of +philosophic doubt, but of philosophic certainty (where he alone feels +happy) upon the petty house of party politics, and seeks, by the magic +music of his words and phrases, so to move and draw after him the sand +of human nature on which that house is built, that it may no longer +stand but fall and be banished utterly. Mr. Cecil Chesterton, on the +other hand, only happy in the rôle of the new David, gives fearless +battle to the modern Goliath, caring no whit if at times the struggle go +against him and he find himself hard pressed at the Old Bailey, but +gleefully and dauntlessly springing at his monstrous assailant, in the +hope that some day a lucky stone from his sling will find its mark. +Somewhere between these two extremes stands (or wavers) the _New +Statesman_, sometimes inclining more to the one, more to the other +method. It is concerned neither entirely with the thoughts nor entirely +with the actions of men, but with each in part. Its object is so to +influence the thoughts of men that they will find natural expression in +the clauses of beneficent Bills. + +These are the publicists. As individuals they are of value to the +community according to the value of the views they hold and express. As +a class they are of value to the community because the views they hold +and express, whether right or wrong, are _sincere_. In contrast with the +great body of the Capitalist Press that expresses anonymous opinions +which, whether sincere or not (and it can be proved that they are often +quite insincere), must still necessarily aim at the maintenance and +strengthening of present social and economic conditions, these men +express their own personal convictions as to what is wrong with the +world and how, as _they_ think, the world may be made a better place. + +It is this inestimable quality of sincerity which links Mr. Belloc with +the too small band of publicists of the day. It has been said of Mr. +Belloc that he is a "man of independent mind, and, where necessary, of +unpopular attitude ... his estimates, right or wrong, are his own ... he +carries a sword to grasp not an axe to grind." In the following chapters +a brief exposition of Mr. Belloc's views both of Europe and of England +will be given with a short summary of his translation of these views +into the language of practical reforms; and we shall then be able to +form some estimate of Mr. Belloc's particular value to the community. In +his articles both on the military and on the political aspect of the war +Mr. Belloc is working, as we have seen, "for the instruction of public +opinion." That this is to-day true, moreover, of Mr. Belloc's whole +attitude towards the public is not fully realized. Large numbers of +people have found in Mr. Belloc's war articles their only hope of sanity +in the midst of distressing and unintelligible events. In the general +course of modern life events move less rapidly, but are equally +important, and there, too, Mr. Belloc has attempted with almost +pathetic lucidity to explain. His true earnestness will not be rewarded, +his true purpose will not be attained, until the thoughtful public +realizes that it can find in Mr. Belloc's historical and political +writings at large the guide to the formation of opinion and the help to +sanity which it has already found in his explanations of the war. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +MR. BELLOC AND EUROPE + + +The beginning of Mr. Belloc's literary career was in history. He took a +first in the school of modern history at Oxford, and his first important +work was a study of the career of Danton. A study of Danton's career, be +it noted, and not a biography: for this book deals more with so much of +the French Revolution as is reflected in its subject's actions than with +its subject's actions in themselves. + +It is, then, as an historian that he begins and mainly as an historian +that he continues. His activities are varied, but all are related to a +conception of the world, its growth and destiny, which is founded on a +conception of universal history. He sees in man a political animal, +whose distinguishing function is not commerce or art, but politics. +History is the record of man exercising this distinguishing function. +Our own politics are based on the results of the exercise of this +function in the past, and cannot be properly understood without a +knowledge of the details of that exercise. To link up the argument: man +is a political animal and finds his expression in the work of politics; +he can only be fitted for that work by the study of history. Mr. Belloc, +then, regards this as the most important of all studies. + +A casual glance at his essays will reveal some sentences or other +testifying to the strength with which this opinion is rooted in his +mind. Take this from _First and Last_: + + Of those factors in civic action amenable to civic direction, + conscious and positively effective, there is nothing to compare + with the right teaching and the right reading of history. + +Or again from _On Anything_, regarding the matter from a somewhat +different point of view: + + History may be called the test of true philosophy, or it may be + called in a very modern and not very dignified metaphor the + object-lesson of political science, or it may be called the great + story whose interest is upon another plane from all other stories + because its irony, its tragedy and its moral are real, were acted + by real men, and were the manifestation of God. + +Wherever you turn over these pages, you are more likely than not to find +some such earnest and emphatic sentence: this opinion is essential to +Mr. Belloc's life and thought. With the practical and business-like +position of the first of these quotations it is our affair to deal in +this chapter: and the more spiritual and poetic view expressed in the +second will receive consideration in a later place. + +In this chapter it is our purpose to outline as briefly and as clearly +as possible Mr. Belloc's conception of the growth of Europe, from the +prehistoric men who knew how to make dew-pans which "are older than the +language or the religion, and the finding of water with a stick, and the +catching of that smooth animal the mole," to the outbreak of the present +war. From this we shall omit, to a large extent, the development of +England, which, as it is singular in Europe, is singular in Mr. Belloc's +scheme of things, and must be considered separately. + +We shall endeavour, as far as possible, to piece together from a great +number of books and writings on various subjects a continuous view of +European history, which we believe to be Mr. Belloc's view, but which he +has never, as yet, stated all together in one place. We shall draw our +material from such varied sources as _Esto Perpetua_, _The Old Road_, +_Paris_, _The Historic Thames_, and inevitably the essays: inevitably, +for all practical purposes, from all the books that Mr. Belloc has ever +written. At some future time, it is very seriously to be hoped, Mr. +Belloc will do this himself. It should be his _magnum opus_: "A General +Sketch of European Development," let us suppose. In the meanwhile, we +conceive that we shall serve a useful purpose if we make a consistent +scheme out of the hints, allusions and detached statements which occur +up and down in Mr. Belloc's books. For some such scheme, existing but +unformulated, is, beyond all doubt, the solid sub-structure of all his +thinking. + +In the essay _On History in Travel_, Mr. Belloc says: "It is true that +those who write good guide-books do put plenty of history into them, but +it is sporadic history, as it were; it is not continuous or organic, and +therefore it does not live." It is living, organic history that is +necessary, he would consider, to the proper understanding of present +problems and the proper furnishing of the human mind. He desires to see +and grasp the development of Europe as a symmetrical whole, not as a +conglomeration of unco-ordinated parts or a succession of unrelated +accidents. He believes that Europe has developed from prehistoric man by +way of the Roman Empire, the Christian religion, and the French +Revolution, in an orderly, organic manner. He believes, far more than +Freeman, in a real unity of history. + +And from this observation of continuous history he draws certain morals. +He sees, or believes that he sees, in Carthage a wealthy trading +plutocracy, ruling a population averse from arms: and he sees this +society falling to utter ruin before the Roman state, a polity of +peasant proprietors with a popular army. From that spectacle he draws +certain conclusions. He sees the Roman Empire and the way in which it +governed Europe, and from that huge organization and its mighty remains +he also draws certain lessons of wonder and reverence. From the decline +of the Empire, the growth of a slave, and economically enslaved, class, +the growth of a wealthy class, he again deduces something. All these +conclusions he applies constantly and unrelentingly to our own problems +and institutions: he cannot forbear from mentioning imperial Rome when +he comes to discuss our war in the Transvaal. He cannot forbear from +seeing the counterpart of the Peabody Yid in imperial Rome. All history +is to him a living and organic whole. And as individuals can judge in +present problems what they shall do only by reference to their own +experience and what they know of that of others, so also societies and +races. _There is no guide for them but recorded history._ This +accumulated experience, however, requires to be set out and interpreted. + +Mr. Belloc's view and conception of the history of Europe begins with +Rome. All the roads of his speculation start from that nodal point in +the story of man. Let us take a grotesque example: + + Do you not notice how the intimate mind of Europe is reflected in + cheese? For in the centre of Europe, and where Europe is most + active, I mean in Britain and in Gaul and in Northern Italy, and in + the valley of the Rhine--nay, to some extent in Spain (in her + Pyrenean valleys at least)--there flourishes a vast burgeoning of + cheese, infinite in variety, one in goodness. But as Europe fades + away under the African wound which Spain suffered or the Eastern + barbarism of the Elbe, what happens to cheese? It becomes very flat + and similar. You can quote six cheeses perhaps which the public + power of Christendom has founded outside the limits of its ancient + Empire--but not more than six. I will quote you 253 between the + Ebro and the Grampians, between Brindisi and the Irish channel. + + I do not write vainly. It is a profound thing. + +That passage illustrates admirably how Mr. Belloc's mind, playing on all +manner of subjects, remains true to certain fixed points. In two phrases +there he gives us our starting-point: "the public power of Christendom" +and "the limits of its ancient Empire." For Rome is to him the beginning +of Europe, and Christianity inherited what Rome had stored up in public +power, public order, and public intelligence. + +He sees in Rome the power which established a unity among the Western +races which lay already dormant in them. We can trace this idea very +clearly in _Esto Perpetua_, where he speaks repeatedly of the Berbers, +as having fallen easily under the power of Rome because they are "of our +own kind." We can trace it again inversely in _The Path to Rome_, in +such a passage as this: + + Here in Switzerland, for four marches, I touched a northern, + exterior and barbaric people; for though these mountains spoke a + distorted Latin tongue, and only after the first day began to give + me a Teutonic dialect, yet it was evident from the first that they + had about them neither the Latin order nor the Latin power to + create, but were contemplative and easily absorbed by a little + effort. + +It is in this order, this power to create, that Mr. Belloc sees the +greatness of Rome and the innate gifts of our Western race. And if one +objects that a certain power of order would seem to reside also in +Prussia, undoubtedly a Northern, exterior and barbaric country, Mr. +Belloc would reply that the power to create was lacking, the power to +make their order living and to inform it with a spirit. + +It is his opinion, we say, or rather one of the articles of his creed, +that Rome first beat and welded into unity the kindred peoples that +inhabit Western Europe. What name he gives to this Western race, if any, +he has not yet explained. Professor Müller and his contemporaries used +to talk about the Indo-Germanic race, and Professor Sergi came forward +with a more plausible Mediterranean race, and all sorts of people talk +with the utmost possible vagueness about the Celtic race, that +rubbish-heap of ethnological science or pretence. Whatever name he may +give to this race, or however ethnologically he may justify his +conception of it, Mr. Belloc believes that it exists and that Rome first +discovered it and gave it expression. + +Like all large and generalized conceptions, this idea of the Western +race is best explained in a contrast, and Mr. Belloc finds a sharp +example of such a contrast in the struggle between Rome and Carthage. He +sets it out in _Esto Perpetua_: + + It [the Phoenician attempt] failed for two reasons: the first was + the contrast between the Phoenician ideal and our own; the second + was the solidarity of the Western blood. + + The army which Hannibal led recognized the voice of a Carthaginian + genius, but it was not Carthaginian. It was not levied, it was + paid. Even those elements in it which were native to Carthage or + her colonies must receive a wage, must be "volunteer"; and + meanwhile the policy which directed the whole from the centre in + Africa was a trading policy. Rome "interfered with business"; on + this account alone the costly and unusual effort of removing her + was made. + + The Europeans undertook their defence in a very different spirit: + an abhorrence of this alien blood welded them together: the allied + and subjugated cities which had hated Rome had hated her as a + sister. + + The Italian confederation was true because it rested on other than + economic supports. The European passion for military glory survived + every disaster, and above all that wholly European thing, the + delight in meeting great odds, made our people strangely stronger + for defeat. + +It is in the European spirit, the spirit of "our people," that Mr. +Belloc finds the mission and the justification of Rome. It is on a +belief in the reality of this spirit that he founds his views of all +subsequent developments, of our own present and of our future. The work +of Rome has been minimized in common estimation by our extraordinary +habit of telescoping the centuries and viewing history, as we say, in a +perspective. There is no perspective in a right view of history: the +centuries do not diminish in length as they recede from our own day. The +perception of this very simple fact has not come to many of our +historians or to any of our politicians. It should be, indeed, the first +sentence in every school history-book, and the don should begin each +course of lectures with it. + +The reasons for the overlooking of so elementary a maxim are fairly +clear. Time simplifies. The later centuries are more full of detail, and +that detail is more confused: much of it, moreover, relates more +directly to the urgent detail of our own life than the similar events of +earlier times. But for a sound conception of the historical development +of the world, we must make an effort to overcome these delusive +influences: we must realize that from the accession of Augustus to, say, +the death of Julian the Apostate was as long a period of time as the +period from the accession of Queen Elizabeth to the death of Edward VII. +Only a false perspective has so telescoped these years together as to +make them seem a short and rapid period of decline, filled up with wars, +massacres and human misery. Gibbon has given the greatest weight of +authority to these errors and shown the Empire as a period of decay and +horror. + + Under the reign of these monsters [he says] the slavery of the + Romans was accompanied with two peculiar circumstances, the one + occasioned by their former liberty, the other by their extensive + conquests, which rendered their condition more wretched than that + of the victims of tyranny in any other age or country.[1] + +Even Mommsen closed his history of the Republic with the gloomy +assertion that Cæsar could only secure for the dying ancient world a +peaceful twilight. + +As a matter of fact, during the first four centuries, the Empire was the +most successful, satisfactory and enduring political institution which +the world has yet seen, and a recognition of this is essential +to the proper understanding of Mr. Belloc's theories. We should, as he +says, attempt "to stand in the shoes of the time and to see it as must +have seen it the barber of Marcus Aurelius or the stud-groom of +Sidonius' palace." + + We know what was coming [he continues],[2] the men of the time knew + it no more than we can know the future. We take at its own estimate + that violent self-criticism which accompanies vitality, and we are + content to see in these 400 years a process of mere decay. + + The picture thus impressed upon us is certainly false. There is + hardly a town whose physical history we can trace, that did not + expand, especially towards the close of that time. + + ... Our theory of political justice was partly formulated, partly + handed on, by those generations; our whole scheme of law, our + conceptions of human dignity and of right.... If a man will stand + back in the time of the Antonines and look around him and forward + to our own day, the consequence of the first four centuries will at + once appear. He will see the unceasing expansion of the paved + imperial ways. He will conceive those great Councils of the Church + which would meet indifferently in centres 1,500 miles apart, in the + extremity of Spain or on the Bosphorus: a sort of moving city whose + vast travel was not even noticed nor called a feat. He will be + appalled by the vigour of the Western mind between Augustus and + Julian when he finds that it could comprehend and influence and + treat as one vast State what is, even now, after so many centuries + of painful reconstruction, a mosaic of separate provinces. + +The reader has there a handy conspectus of Mr. Belloc's view on a period +he considers cardinal in the history of what he would call "our own +kind." This is one of the pillars of his conception of the world: what +the other pillars are will appear later in this chapter. + +In pursuing the story, he insists on minimizing the effect and extent of +the barbaric invasions. He does not indeed regard the auxiliary troops +of the Empire who set up kingdoms in the West as invaders at all. The +Wandering of the Peoples which assumes such a dreadful aspect in +Gibbon, is, to him, until after Charlemagne at least, certainly a sign +of decay and certainly an element of disorganization, but neither the +one nor the other to the extent which we are accustomed to believe. Here +we have a sign of a definite attitude towards historical fact, an +attitude which is open to question but which is still permissible. He +believes that the civilization of Rome endured for the main part, +particularly in Gaul, until the ninth century. In _The Eye-Witness_ he +states roundly that Charlemagne came of an old family of wealthy and +powerful Gallo-Roman nobles. In _Paris_, an earlier work, he declines to +estimate the exact amount of German blood in this ruler's veins.[3] + +In any case, he believes that the German auxiliaries partly replaced and +partly allied themselves with a rich, powerful and long-established +aristocracy; that they did in truth separate the State into fragments; +but that they touched very little the main social fabric, and only at +most hastened the elements of change. He perpetually insists on the +fewness of the invaders who settled, and he believes that the Western +race, welded almost into one people by the vast political action of +Rome, was, in bulk, but little affected by the Northern barbarians. + +Not until the ninth century will he admit anything approaching the death +of Roman influence in her Western provinces, except in Britain. Here, in +the ninth century, under the invasions of the Danes and the onslaughts +of the Arabs, civilization is in peril and the West suffers its most +serious wounds at the hands of the barbarians. And here already, the new +influence, the Roman Church, which began to show itself in the +coronation of Charlemagne, first takes up its inheritance of the +oecumenical power of the Empire. The ninth century saw the climax of +"the gradual despair of the civil power; the new dream of the Church +which meant to build a city of God on the shifting sands of the +invasions."[4] + +The new dream was but beginning to take on reality and the civil power +had in all fullness despaired. The old civilization, which had lasted so +long and changed so gradually, required to be refreshed by catastrophe: +even as some men believe of our own times. The catastrophe came, and, +through the struggle with the North and with Asia, the transformation +took place unseen in that lowest ebb of humanity. Europe had reached the +crest of one wave in the height of the Empire under the power of the +Roman government. It was to reach another in the thirteenth century +under the influence of the Roman Church. + +The most of Mr. Belloc's conception of the Middle Ages is to be found in +his book _Paris_, where it is really incidental though profoundly +important. We cannot too often insist upon this fact, that the brief and +insufficient historical sketch presented in this chapter is a piecing +together often of mere indications as well as of detached statements. +The reader will do well to bear in mind that in this exposition we are +laying before him to the best of our powers what we take to be the +definite scheme of events undoubtedly present in our author's mind, but +never as a whole expressed by him. It is frequently necessary to infer +from what he states, the precise curve of his thought: this skeleton of +history is deduced only from a few bones. + +In the book _Paris_, then, we find the best guide to his conception of +the Middle Ages. It is naturally in principle a work of topographical +and architectural purpose. But architecture is a guide to history. It +is the capital art of a happy society. (And, incidentally, an art that +is, in a definite and positive manner, dead in the present age.) Athens, +at her climax, built: and the grandeur of Rome has been preserved in +arches and aqueducts. For Mr. Belloc, the progress of the upward curve +from the ninth century to the thirteenth reaches its culmination in the +best of the Gothic. He sees in that structural time one of humanity's +periods of achievement, and he will not assent to the common theory of a +gradual upward curve from the Dark Ages to the Renaissance. + +The progress of the Middle Ages was a progress towards unity, less +successful but more spontaneous than that which was achieved under the +compelling hand of the Roman armies. Christianity, wounded and +threatened by the advance of the heathen, of a power opposed to them by +religion and by race, was shocked into feeling the existence of +Christendom. The Western spirit, which had rallied to the Republic +against Carthage, now gathered under the flag of the Church and +expressed itself in the Crusades. + +The levying of Europe for a common and a noble purpose began the process +which was continued by the intellectual stimulation of these wars. It +flowered briefly but exquisitely in the Gothic, in the foundation of the +universities and the teaching of philosophy, and in the establishment of +strong, well-ordered central governments in the feudal scheme. + +The merits of the Middle Ages, to Mr. Belloc, lie not only in their +artistic and philosophical achievements, but also and especially in +their security. He has the French, the Latin attachment to a vigorous +central power, and, of all political forms, he most fears and hates an +oligarchy. To others, to Dr. Johnson and to Goldsmith, for example, it +has seemed very clear that the interests of the poor lie with the king +against the rich. Mr. Belloc sees in the feudal system strongly +administered from a centre, with the villein secured in his holding and +the townsman controlled and protected by his guild, if not a perfect, at +least a solidly successful polity. He applauds therefore those ages in +which central justice was effective, the ages of Edward I in England and +St. Louis in France. + + But [he says] the mediaeval theory in the State and its effect on + architecture, suited as they were to our blood, and giving us, as + they did, the only language in which we have ever found an exact + expression of our instincts, ruled in security for a very little + while; it began--almost in the hour of its perfection--to decay; + St. Louis outlived it a little, kept it vigorous, perhaps, in his + own immediate surroundings, when it was already weakened in the + rest of Europe, and long before the thirteenth century was out the + system to which it has given its name was drying up at the + roots.[5] + +Why, then, was this crest of the curve so much less durable than that on +which the Empire rode safely through four ordered centuries? To that +there are many possible answers. Some might suppose that the binding +spiritual force of the Roman Church was weaker than the physical force +of the Roman army. Mr. Belloc suggests that the mediaeval system came +too suddenly into flower and had not enough strength to deal with new +problems. He offers also other reasons, such as these[6]: + + First, the astounding series of catastrophes ... especially in the + earlier part; secondly, its loss of creative power. As for the + first of these, the black death, the famines, the hundred years' + war, the free companies, the abasement of the church, the great + schism--these things were misfortunes to which our modern time can + find no parallel. They came suddenly upon Western Europe and + defiled it like a blight.... They have made the mediaeval idea + odious to every half-instructed man and have stamped even its + beauty with associations of evil. + +So for two hundred years the curve continued evilly downwards, and at +last, after a period of horror, rose in the lesser crest of the +Renaissance, a time more splendid than solid, more active than +beneficent. In this period occurred the Reformation, an event which Mr. +Belloc, a Catholic, frankly regards as evil. + +He thinks that it tore in two the still expanding body of Christendom. +But, with the exception of one province, it left to the See of Rome all +those Western countries which the Empire of Rome had governed. Britain +was torn away in the process, but the remainder of the Western races was +left, if not united, at least with a bond of unity. + +So the course of history went into the welter of religious wars which +gradually merge into dynastic wars and confuse the record of the +sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century. At the end of the last of +these divisions of time came the Revolution. + +This event is the third of the three pillars on which Mr. Belloc +supports his notion of Western history: the Roman Empire, the thirteenth +century, and the Revolution. He sees in it the principle result of the +Reformation, but an event which also undid and increasingly nullified +the effects of that schism. + +He regards the Reformation as having not only disturbed the unity of +Europe, but also having encouraged the growth of those wealthy and +selfish classes of whom he has a particular dread. He speaks--in his +_Marie Antoinette_, which becomes for some little distance here our +principal guide--of how "the attempt to force upon the French doctrines +convenient, in France as in England, to the wealthy merchants, the +intellectuals and the squires was met by popular risings." He believes +that to the Catholic tradition descended from the Roman Empire that idea +of the State which is always the salvation of the people as opposed to +the rich. The violent adhesion of France to the Church--only tempered by +some jealousy of Austria--saved the Faith for Europe: France thus became +the capital stronghold of the Western idea, whence it issued in renewed +force at the Revolution.[7] The Revolution itself was a drastic return +to the ideas of universality and equality which are essentially Roman. + +It has been Mr. Belloc's task and delight to reconcile the principles of +the Revolution with his own faith. He would show that the two were +opposed only by this intellectual accident or that political blunder: +that the dogmas of each are capable of being held by the same mind. And, +in the revival of religion in our own times, which "may be called, +according to the taste of the scholar, the Catholic reaction or the +Catholic renaissance," he sees not only the first and most beneficent +result of the principles of the Revolution, but also a sign that the +wounds then inflicted are beginning to be healed. + +His clearest and most connected exposition of these things is to be +found in the little book which is called _The French Revolution_, of +which the object, he says, is "to lay, if that be possible, an +explanation of it before the reader." + +He begins by making a detailed explanation of the democratic theory, +which is drawn from Rousseau's treatise _Le Contrat Social_. Let us +select one significant passage on the doctrine of equality: + + The doctrine of the equality of man is a transcendent doctrine: a + "dogma" as we call such doctrines in the field of transcendental + religion. It corresponds to no physical reality which we can grasp, + it is hardly to be adumbrated even by metaphors drawn from physical + objects. We may attempt to rationalize it by saying that what is + common to all men is not _more_ important but _infinitely more_ + important than the accidents by which men differ. + +On such a simple statement does he found his explanation of the greatest +event of the modern world, an upheaval and a remoulding which +astonishes us equally whether we consider how far it fell short of its +highest intentions or how much it actually accomplished. + +Now he proceeds from the obvious and historical fact of the quarrel +which actually took place between the Revolution and the Church, and +asks: "_Was there a necessary and fundamental quarrel between the +doctrines of the Revolution and those of the Catholic Church_?" And he +replies: + + It is impossible for the theologian, or even for the practical + ecclesiastical teacher, to put his finger upon a political doctrine + essential to the Revolution and to say, "This doctrine is opposed + to Catholic dogma or to Catholic morals." Conversely, it is + impossible for the Republican to put his finger upon a matter of + ecclesiastical discipline or religious dogma and to say, "This + Catholic point is at issue with my political theory of the State." + +So much for the negative argument which at that point in that book was +enough for Mr. Belloc's purpose. He proceeds to explain the material +accidents and causes which nullified this argument. But we must attempt +further to discover from the general trend of Mr. Belloc's character and +thought the positive grounds by which he reconciles these two principles +which have so far shown themselves divided in practice. + +The two things are of Latin, that is to say of Roman origin. The Church +is "the ghost of the Roman Empire sitting crowned and throned on the +grave thereof": it is a new manifestation (and a higher one) of the +political and social ideal which inspired the Roman people. Also the +French have inherited most of the Latin passion for reason, law and +order: under Napoleon they strove to make a new empire, and they carried +together a code of law and the idea of equality all over Europe. + +In both the Faith and the Revolution there are secure dogmas on which +the mind can rest. Fundamental unprovable things are established by +declaration, and fruitless argument about them is cut off at the roots. +In the clear certitude of such doctrines is a basis for action and for +civilization. + +The purpose and the scope of work of both these ideas was much the same. +Each proposed to establish a European community, in which the peoples of +kindred blood might rest together and develop their resources. The +Revolution might well have restored that unity of the Western race which +vanished with Rome and which the Reformation forbade the Church to +accomplish. + +That conception of Europe as an entity so far only conscious of itself, +as it were, by lucid intervals in a long delirium, is very dear to Mr. +Belloc. We have dwelt on it at the beginning of this chapter and must +return to it now, for, if one idea can be said to underlie all his +historical writings, this is that one idea. The notions which we have +described as the three pillars of his historical scheme are three +expressions of this vision, and the vision is of something transcendent, +like the dogmas on which his mind rests, something which is a reality, +but cannot be proved in words or seized by any merely physical metaphor. +He begins _Marie Antoinette_ with these words: "Europe, which carries +the fate of the whole world ..." + +This fundamental point in its three expressions is the point which Mr. +Belloc would have his public grasp before beginning to discuss the +problems which await it in the polling-booths and in the everyday +conversations which more weightily mould the fate of the world. He is a +propagandist historian, and his work has the liveliness given by an air +of eagerness to convince. + +His bias, the precise nature of his propaganda, are frankly exposed. He +would have the State and European society, especially the society of +England, revived by a return to the profession and the practice of his +own faith. In Prussia also historians compose their works with such a +definite and positive end in contemporary affairs. + +But between them and Mr. Belloc lies this great difference. He writes, +as we have said, candidly, in a partisan spirit, with the eagerness of a +man who wishes to convince. In the University of Berlin the +indoctrination of the student is pursued under the cloak of a baleful +and gloomy pedantry, laughably miscalled "the scientific method." The +propaganda of Frederick is not obvious and many are deceived. + +The Catholic historian lies in England under a grave suspicion. Lingard, +who wrote, after all, one of the best histories of the English nation, +certainly more readable than Freeman and less prejudiced than Froude, is +neither studied nor mentioned in our schools. Even poor Acton, whose +smug Whig bias is apparent to the stupidest, who nourished himself on +Lutheran learning, "mostly," as he says, pathetically "in octavo +volumes," is thought of darkly by the uninstructed as an emissary of the +Jesuits. But who can either suffer from or accuse the Catholic bias of +Mr. Belloc? + +He says to you frankly in every page: "I am a Catholic. I believe in the +Church of Rome. For these and these reasons, I am of opinion that the +Reformation was a disaster and that the Protestant peoples are still a +danger to Europe." Can you still complain of the propagandist turn of +such a man? As well complain of a professed theologian that he is +biassed as to the existence of God. He warns you amply that he has a +particular point of view, and he gives you every opportunity to make +allowance for it. When you have done so, you will find that his +narrative and interpretation are still astonishingly accurate and just. +And he has a corrective to bias in his vivid poetic love of the past, +which we shall analyse in the succeeding chapter. + +This also is made a reproach against him by scholars. It is true that in +his serious historical works, _Robespierre_, _Danton_, and _Marie +Antoinette_, he introduces more of romance than is commonly admitted by +serious writers. He is apt to give his descriptions something of the +positive and living character which we more usually expect in a novel. +The charge is made against him, under which Macaulay suffers justly and +Prescott, the American, with less reason, of having written historical +romances. Let us grant that it is not usual to give so much detail or so +much colour as that in which Mr. Belloc takes delight. + +Is his accuracy thereby spoilt? He insists on seeing all the events and +details of Cardinal de Rohan's interview with the pretended Queen of +France. But it does not of itself testify that Mr. Belloc cannot judge +whether this interview took place or interfered with his estimate of its +importance. We contend, very seriously and very gravely, that these +books will be found to show a singularly high level of accuracy and +justice. In the interpretation of facts bias will show: in Acton equally +with Froude. If it did not, if the historian were an instrument and +humanly null, what effect would either his narrative or his reading have +on the student? He could not convey to another mind even his +comprehension of the bare facts. Mr. Belloc invests his narrative with a +living interest, and how he does this and why it is the surest guarantee +of accuracy and impartiality, we shall endeavour to show in the +succeeding chapter. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: Professor Bury adds coyly in a footnote: "But there is +another side to this picture which may be seen by studying Mommsen's +volume on the provinces."] + +[Footnote 2: _Esto Perpetua._] + +[Footnote 3: These sentences may appear to indicate indecision in Mr. +Belloc's mind as to this point. He has now informed us that Charlemagne +did come of this Gallo-Roman family.] + +[Footnote 4: _Paris_, p. 93.] + +[Footnote 5: _Paris_, p. 226.] + +[Footnote 6: _Ib._, p. 227.] + +[Footnote 7: The Italian historian, Guglielmo Ferrero, of whom Mr. +Belloc, however, has no very high opinion, betrays some similar ideas in +writing of the importance of Gaul in the Empire.] + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE HISTORICAL WRITER + + +In an essay in _First and Last_, Mr. Belloc says: + + ... That earthwork is the earthwork where the British stood against + the charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding on their + bronze, the arms of Cæsar. Here the river was forded; here the + little men of the South went up in formation; here the barbarian + broke and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded, + through devious woodland paths, scattering in the pursuit; here + began the great history of England. + + Is it not an enormous business merely to stand in such a place? I + think so. + +There you have compactly and poignantly expressed a mood which is common +to all men who have any feeling for the past. It is a pathetic, almost a +tragic mood, a longing more pitiable than that of any fanatic for any +paradise, any lover for any woman, because it is quite impossible that +it should ever be satisfied. To see, to feel, to move among the +foundations of our generation--it is so natural a desire, and it is +quite hopeless. + +It is a desire which one might naturally suppose to be common among +historians, and to govern their thoughts: but you will not find it in +the academies. Only in the true historian, the student who, like +Herodotus, is also a poet and names the Muses, will you find its clear +expression. But it is and must be the mainspring of all good historical +writing, for this desire to know the concrete past is, in the end, the +only corrective to the propagandist bias, which is, as we have seen, the +right motive of useful research. Acton had it not, Froude perhaps a +little, Maitland, one might believe, to some extent,[8] Professor Bury, +Lord knows, neither that nor any other emotion comprehensible in man. To +the don, indeed, the absence of the past is one of the factors in his +fascinating, esoteric game: were some astounding document to appear that +should make the origin and constitution of the mediaeval manor as clear +as daylight, the problem would lose its interest, the agile don would +find it too easy for him. The equipment of the ideal historian consists +of the attributes of practical and poetic man, the desire to gain some +present benefit, to learn some urgent lesson, and the desire to perfect +the spirit by contemplation of the past. + +History, indeed, is the record of the actions of individual men, and +these men, like ourselves, had arms, legs and stomachs, and suffered the +workings of the same fears and passions that we suffer. To derive any +practical or spiritual benefit from the study of history, we must +understand, as far as possible, by analogy from our own experience, how +the events of which we read came about: we must see them as personal +events, originated by the actions, and influencing the lives of human +beings like ourselves. + +We have expressed sufficiently in the previous chapter an opinion on the +value of Mr. Belloc's historical conclusions: we must now examine more +closely the method by means of which he presents these conclusions and +its effect on the reader. + +His method, it goes without saying, is more lively. In the whole of the +_Cambridge Modern History_ (sixteen volumes of unbelievable dimensions) +you will not find one living character or one paragraph of exhilarating +prose.[9] Mr. Belloc's work, on the other hand, is full of both. But +this must not be taken, without further inquiry, to be an unqualified +merit. + +The lively writer is, by an ever-living commonplace, considered to be +inaccurate: the donnish historian may, by his plodding want of +imagination, give us only the strict facts. The lively writer, perhaps, +in the desire to round out a character of a man concerning whom little +is known or to perfect the rhythm of a paragraph, will consult his +convenient fancy rather than the difficult document. In academic +circles, it is rather a reproach to say that a man writes in an +interesting way: they remember Macaulay and would, if they could, forget +Gibbon. + +Mr. Belloc's writing, nevertheless, is not affected by the desire either +to impress or to startle his readers, any more than the writing of a +good poet springs from an aiming at effect: it is like all true +literature, in the first place, the outcome of a strong and personal +passion, the passion for the past. He says himself[10]: + + To study something of great age until one grows familiar with it + and almost to live in its time, is not merely to satisfy a + curiosity or to establish aimless truths: it is rather to fulfil a + function whose appetite has always rendered History a necessity. By + the recovery of the Past, stuff and being are added to us; our + lives which, lived in the present only, are a film or surface, take + on body--are lifted into one dimension more. The soul is fed.... + One may say that historical learning grants men glimpses of life + completed and a whole; and such a vision should be the chief solace + of whatever is mortal and cut off imperfectly from fulfilment. + +Such a passion, then, such a purely poetic, spiritual, impractical +passion is perhaps the cause of Mr. Belloc's note and career. It is the +passion of a poet. Assuredly actuated by such a feeling, he has +developed his practical and political opinions: the true poet is always +practical. + +It is also in result a materially useful passion. It allows us to see in +the deeds of Henry VIII's Parliament not the blind working of political +development, the impersonal and inevitable action of economic laws, but +the hot greed of a king and the astuteness of his supporters. + +Acton speaks of "the undying penalty which history has the power to +inflict on wrong."[11] But how are we to fix a stigma, unless we know +the man's motives? How can we know his motives without an estimate of +his character? How can either of these be known unless we visualize him +as he lived? + +Mr. Belloc has made his most conscious and determined effort at +visualization in a book which is not historical, but which falls more, +though not altogether, into the category of historical fiction. This is +the book which is called _The Eye-Witness_. + +It consists of twenty-seven sketches of historical incidents ranging +from the year 55 B.C. to the year A.D. 1906. It begins with Cæsar's +invasion of Britain, and goes by way of the disaster at Roncesvalles, +the Battle of Lewes, the execution of Charles I and the Battle of Valmy +to an election in England which was held on the issues of Tariff Reform, +Chinese Labour in the Transvaal and other topics. One might say--a +gloomy progress. + +It falls partly into the category of historical fiction because much of +it is sheerly created out of Mr. Belloc's own head. The interlocutors in +most of the sketches (where there are interlocutors), the individual who +is the eye-witness (when there is one), these are imaginary. Mr. Barr, +who was held up in a crowd by the execution of Marie Antoinette and +suffered annoyance, the apprentice who saw an earlier royal head cut +off, the Christian who was killed in the Arena by "a little, low-built, +broad-shouldered man from the Auvergne of the sort that can tame an +animal in a day, hard as wood, and perfectly unfeeling," these are +characters of fiction. + +But in the "stories" that make up the book there is no plot. There is +just a glimpse of a past life, sometimes, but not always, at a +significant moment. In one of Mr. Wells' stories there is a queer fable +of a crystal mysteriously in touch with a twin crystal on another +planet. Glancing into this, we get a glimpse of that different world. +Mr. Belloc's sketches are such crystals, suspended for a moment at a +time in centuries foreign to our own. + +He has endeavoured passionately to be accurate in these. A passage from +his preface will show how this adverb is justified: + + As to historical references, I must beg the indulgence of the + critic, but I believe I have not positively asserted an error, nor + failed to set down a considerable number of minute but entertaining + truths. + + Thus the 10th Legion (which I have called a regiment in _The Two + Soldiers_) _did_ sail under Cæsar for Britain from Boulogne, and + from no other port. There _was_ in those days a great land-locked + harbour from Pont-de-Briques right up to the Narrows, as the + readers of the _Gaule Romaine_ must know. The moon _was_ at her + last quarter (though presuming her not to be hidden by clouds is + but fancy). There _was_ a high hill just at the place where she + would have been setting that night--you may see it to-day. The + Roman soldiers _were_ recruited from the Teutonic and the Celtic + portions of Gaul; of the latter many _did_ know of that grotto + under Chartres which is among the chief historical interests of + Europe. The tide _was_, as I have said, on the flow at + midnight--and so forth. + +The temper of that is the temper of the man who was at the pains, when +writing his life of Robespierre, to look up the reports of the Paris +Observatory, so as to be able exactly to describe the weather in which +such and such a great scene was played that hugely affected the fortunes +of Europe. It is the temper, too, of a man with an immense historical +curiosity, who will not be satisfied with less than all of the past that +can reasonably be reconstructed. + +Mr. Belloc desires knowledge and experience of the past so earnestly +that he makes imaginary pictures of it, as it were to comfort himself. +Some men, in this way, when walking alone, make imaginary pictures of +their own futures, often to cheat the disappointments of a narrow life. +Too fervid political idealists make pictures of the world's future: you +think immediately of Morris and Bellamy and many another. Mr. Belloc is +not likely to give way to this temptation. + +But the strength and disinterestedness of this desire guarantee the +reader of the book against the aridity of the pictures of past +civilizations which we all know: such as descriptions of how "the +_poeta_ (or poet) entered the _domus_ (or house), kicked the _canis_ (or +dog) and summoned the _servus_ (or slave)." It will be at all events a +living picture: it will be, to the best of the author's power, an +accurate and impartial picture. It will translate characters, language +and things as nearly as possible into terms comprehensible in our own +times: but not so literally, or so extravagantly as to degenerate into +the _opera-bouffe_ of, for example, Mr. Shaw's _Cæsar and Cleopatra_. +There will also be no tushery. + +The method of description which Mr. Belloc employs in these sketches is +cool and transparent. The emotion of the writer, as regards the +particular events he is describing, is suppressed, though the feeling of +eagerness to realize the past leaps out everywhere. It is only by great +steadiness of the vision and the hand that Mr. Belloc can secure the +effects he here desires to convey. + +It is only by great care in writing that he can secure the easy, even +and real tone in which these glimpses of other centuries and other +societies can be presented. Should he err on one side, he is in the bogs +of tushery: on the other, he commits that fault of self-conscious, +over-daring modernization, of which Mr. Shaw has been so guilty. + +Let us take a passage from the illuminating picture, "The Pagans," which +describes a dinner in a Narbonese house in the fifth century: + + When it was already dark over the sea, they reclined together and + ate the feast, crowned with leaves in that old fashion which to + several of the younger men seemed an affectation of antique things, + but which all secretly enjoyed because such customs had about + them, as had the rare statues and the mosaics and the very pattern + of the lamps, a flavour of great established wealth and lineage. In + great established wealth and lineage lay all that was left of + strength to those old gods which still stood gazing upon the change + of the world. + + The songs that were sung and the chaunted invocations had nothing + in them but the memories of Rome; but the instruments and dancers + were tolerated by that one guest who should most have complained, + and whose expression and apparel and gorgeous ornament and a + certain security of station in his manner proved him the head of + the Christian priests from Helena. When the music had ceased and + the night deepened, they talked all together as though the world + had but one general opinion; they talked with great courtesy of + common things. But from the slaves' quarters came the unmistakable + sing-song of the Christian vine-yard dance and hymn, which the + labourers sung together with rhythmic beating of hands and + customary cries, and through that din arose from time to time the + loud bass of one especially chosen to respond. The master sent out + word to them in secret to conduct their festival less noisily and + with closed doors. Upon the couches round the table where the lords + reclined together, more than one, especially among the younger men, + looked anxiously at their host and at the Priest next to him, but + they saw nothing in their expressions but a continued courtesy; and + the talk still moved upon things common to them all, and still + avoided that deep dissension which it was now useless to raise + because it would so soon be gone. + + There came an hour when all but one ceased suddenly from wine; that + one, who still continued to drink as he saw fit, was the host. He + knew the reason of their abstention; he had heard the trumpet in + the harbour that told the hour and proclaimed the fast and vigil, + and he felt, as all did, that at last the figure and the presence + of which none would speak--the figure and the presence of the + Faith--had entered that room in spite of its dignity and its high + reserve. + + For some little time, now talking of those great poets who were a + glory to them all, and whose verse was quite removed from these + newer things, the old man still sipped his wine and looked round at + the others whose fast had thus begun. He looked at them with an + expression of severity in which there was some challenge, but which + was far too disdainful to be insolent, and as he so looked the + company gradually departed. + +We have quoted this passage at some length, because it is an almost +perfect example of Mr. Belloc's style in these sketches, and because it +touches on, is the visualization of, a cardinal point in his historical +theories. This point has been dwelt upon more fully in the preceding +chapter, and we cannot do more than mention it here. It expresses that +view of the gradual development and transformation of the Roman Empire +with which Mr. Belloc would replace the gloomy view of Gibbon and the +exaggerated horrors, to take a conspicuous but not now important +example, of Charles Kingsley's _Roman and Teuton_. He would represent it +as a period of wealth and order, full of menace, warning and change, but +no more prescient of utter disaster than our own time. + +The sketch is a visualization of a short passage in the essay _On +Historical Evidences_: + + You have the great Gallo-Roman noble family of Ferreolus running + down the centuries from the Decline of the Empire to the climax of + Charlemagne. Many of those names stand for some most powerful + individuality, yet all we have is a formula, a lineage, with + symbols and names in the place of living beings.... The men of that + time did not even think to tell us that there was such a thing as a + family tradition, nor did it seem important to them to establish + its Roman origin and its long succession in power. + +Mr. Belloc has endeavoured to see the reality of such a family, as he +believes, as that from which Charlemagne sprung. He fights, +paradoxically, for the unity of history against Freeman, who invented +that phrase and who yet thought that "Charles the Great" came from a +line of German savages. + +He has endeavoured passionately to realize this thing; it would be +pathetic, were not his desire so triumphantly gratified. Observe the +ease and sincerity of that long passage quoted above. One forcing of the +note, one moment's wish to show too great a scholarship or to emphasize +the antiquity of the scene, would have ruined the effect. It is full of +emotion, the most poignant, the regret for passing and irrevocable +things, but the author is detached and cool. He is all bent on the +fidelity of his picture. + +_The Girondin_ is very much a different matter and occupies a place in +Mr. Belloc's work difficult to discuss. It is frankly a novel, written +as novels are, to entertain, to edify and to perform the spiritual +functions of poetry and good literature. It is also unique in that it +contains a story of love, a motive largely absent from Mr. Belloc's +imaginative writing. + +In so far as it is an historical novel, we may expect to find in it, and +we do find in it, an accurate and living picture of one aspect of the +age in which it is set. It should not surprise us to find this an +unusual aspect; it is unusual. There are here none of the customary +decorations, no guillotine, no knitting women, no sea-green and +malignant Robespierre, no gently nurtured and heroic aristocrats. The +progress of the story does not touch even the fringes of Paris. The hero +is an inhabitant of the Gironde and not a member of the party which bore +that name. + +The action moves from a town in the Gironde to the frontiers. The hero +is killed by an accident with a gun-team soon after the Battle of Valmy. +That is the unfamiliar aspect of the hackneyed French Revolution with +which Mr. Belloc here chooses to deal: an aspect, we might even say, not +merely unfamiliar, but practically unknown to the English reader. + +The matter of raising the armies was a matter of prime importance to the +Republic, and involved a task which even we, in this country, with all +our recent experiences, can hardly comprehend. The officers had +deserted, the men were not all to be trusted, all told there were not +enough for the pressing necessities of the State. A corps of officers +had to be improvised from nowhere, recruits had to be taught to ride as +they went to meet the Prussians. Such were the beginnings of the army +that afterwards visited the Pyramids, Vienna, Berlin and Moscow. + +All this Mr. Belloc has shown with sufficient vividness in isolated +passages. Even those who have played no part in the raising of the new +armies of England, can gain from his descriptions something of what that +business must have been. But in this book he is not merely writing a +sketch to visualize the past, he is writing a real story with a number +of living characters and a sort of a plot. And in some way the story and +the historical matter weaken one another. They go and come by turns. The +whole book is an irregular succession of detached incidents. The witty +Boutroux is a sport of chance and dies, fitly enough, not in action, but +by a mishap. + +If we separate from the rest the incident of the girl Joyeuse, it is +extremely beautiful. Take by themselves the stratagems and the +conversations of Boutroux: they are extremely witty. Take by themselves +the military scenes: they are impressive. But these do not make the book +a whole or leave the impression that the author knew from chapter to +chapter what he was going to write next. + +Frankly, then, _The Girondin_ is a disappointment, but, perhaps, only +because it held such possibilities and because we had reason to +anticipate that Mr. Belloc would surprise us with these possibilities. +His great historical novel is yet to come. + +That he is qualified to write such a book, whether from the standpoint +of imaginative power or from that of historical knowledge, needs no +discussion here. Whether he can, should he choose, combine these +qualities, in an extended work, so perfectly that they do not clash, and +that neither transcends the other, is a question for the future to +decide. + +But his imaginative power serves him already in the study, and in the +writing of pure history. It is a guarantee, we have said, that the +reader will be preserved from barren, unco-ordinated details, which are +set down without any reference to human purpose. It is also a guarantee, +and this is most important, of as much impartiality as is possible to +man. For the imaginative man does not seek fantasy in these things: he +can make that for himself in other and more suitable places. Here the +plain facts are enough to feed his spirit and to make it rejoice. The +most fantastic theories that diversify the page of written history have +sprung from the minds of barren dons, who sit in studies unhindered by +any realization of the world, and in whose hands the facts are wooden +blocks to be piled up in any shape of the grotesque. Mr. Belloc, with a +desire to realize and to know the past, a poetic desire that quite +overcomes any propagandist bias or routine of thought, is sure of this +at least: that he will see the past centuries as clearly and as truly as +possible, and with a vision that steadily resolves economic developments +and political movements into the actions, and the results of the +actions, of human beings. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 8: But Maitland, of course, was human. He lived some part of +his life away from Cambridge.] + +[Footnote 9: We make this statement confidently without having read, and +not intending to read, the whole of the _Cambridge Modern History_.] + +[Footnote 10: _The Old Road_, p. 9.] + +[Footnote 11: _Inaugural Lectures: Lecture on Modern History_, p. 24.] + + + + +CHAPTER X + +MR. BELLOC AND ENGLAND + + +Mr. Belloc is a democrat. He is politically democratic in the sense in +which the French Revolution was democratic, and he is spiritually +democratic in the sense in which the Church of Rome is democratic. What +is common to all men is to him infinitely more important than the +accidents by which men differ. The same may be said of his view of the +nations of Europe. He does not view these great nations separately, but +in their relation one to another. That in its history which each nation +has in common with the other European nations is infinitely more +important than that which is peculiar to itself alone. + +Mr. Belloc said of Danton that he possessed a singularly wide view of +the Europe in which France stood. We may say that in Mr. Belloc's view +England juts out from Europe in a precarious position. England forms an +integral part of Europe, but her position to-day, owing mainly to the +accidents of her peculiar history, is as unique as it is perilous. + +There are two books written by Mr. Belloc which deal exclusively with +different aspects of the England of to-day. Of these, the first is _The +Servile State_, in which Mr. Belloc is writing to maintain and prove the +thesis that industrial society, as we know it, is tending towards the +re-establishment of slavery. In this work he is concerned with an +analysis of the economic system existing in England to-day, and with +sketching the course of development in which that system came into +being. In the other book, _The Party System_, in which Mr. Cecil +Chesterton collaborated, he is concerned with an analysis of our present +methods of government. + +With _The Party System_ and the views contained in it we shall deal in a +later chapter. Here we are concerned solely with Mr. Belloc's view of +the development of England and especially with that most startling and +original view which he expounds in _The Servile State_ as to the origin +of our present economic system. + +Whether in Mr. Belloc's view, or the view of any other historian, the +cardinal point in the history of England is that England was Britain +before it became England: though Mr. Belloc would probably add the +reminder that England was Britain for as long a period as from the time +of Henry VIII to the present day. England was once as much a province of +the Roman Empire as was France. This fact, of course, is commonly +recognized. Where Mr. Belloc differs from other historians, so far as +can be gathered by piecing together hints and allusions from his various +writings, is in emphasizing the fact that the successive hosts of +barbarian invaders were repeatedly brought under the influence of that +Christian civilization which had inherited the magnificent institutions +of the Empire. Thus the Angles and Saxons came under the influence of +St. Augustine and the later missionaries, who, as they became +ecclesiastics and Christianity was recognized as the national religion, +introduced pieces of Roman Law into the Witenagemot and preserved in the +Benedictine foundations the learning and experience of bygone centuries. +In the monastic institution of the sixth and seventh centuries Mr. +Belloc sees the power which re-created North and Western Europe. + + This institution [he says] did more work in Britain than in any + other province of the Empire. And it had far more to do. It found a + district utterly wrecked, perhaps half depopulated, and having lost + all but a vague memory of the old Roman order; it had to remake, if + it could, of all this part of a Europe. No other instrument was + fitted for the purpose. + + The chief difficulty of starting again the machine of civilization + when its parts have been distorted by a barbarian interlude, + whether external or internal in origin, is the accumulation of + capital. The next difficulty is the preservation of such capital in + the midst of continual petty feuds and raids, and the third is that + general continuity of effort, and that treasuring up of proved + experience, to which a barbaric time, succeeding upon the decline + of a civilization, is particularly unfitted. For the surmounting of + all these difficulties the monks of Western Europe were suited in a + high degree. Fixed wealth could be accumulated in the hands of + communities whose whole temptation was to gather, and who had no + opportunity for spending in waste. The religious atmosphere in + which they grew up forbade their spoliation, at least in the + internal wars of a Christian people, and each of the great + foundations provided a community of learning and treasuring up of + experience which single families, especially families of barbaric + chieftains, could never have achieved. They provided leisure for + literary effort, and a strict disciplinary rule enforcing regular, + continuous, and assiduous labour, and they provided these in a + society from which exact application of such a kind had all but + disappeared.[12] + +In this way the just heritage of "our own kind" was preserved for us. +The great monasteries suffered severely in the Danish invasions, "the +pagan storm which all but repeated in Britain the disaster of the Saxon +invasions, which all but overcame the mystic tenacity of Alfred and the +positive mission of the town of Paris"; but they re-arose and were again +exercising a strong civilizing influence "when civilization returned in +fullness with the Norman Conquest." + +The Conquest, in Mr. Belloc's view, is "almost as sharp a division in +the history of England as is the landing of St. Augustine ... though ... +the re-entry of England into European civilization in the seventh +century must count as a far greater and more decisive event than its +first experience of united and regular government under the Normans in +the eleventh." But it did not change the intimate philosophy of the +people: + + The Conquest found England Catholic, vaguely feudal, and, though in + rather an isolated way, thoroughly European. The Normans organized + that feudality, extirpated whatever was unorthodox or slack in the + machinery of the religious system, and let in the full light of + European civilization through a wide-open door, which had hitherto + been half-closed.[13] + +The organization of feudal government by the Normans brings us to a +consideration of the territorial system of England which can be traced +certainly from Saxon and conjecturally from Roman times. + +In making the study of history, as does Mr. Belloc, living and organic, +it is of capital importance to seize the fact that the fundamental +economic institution of pagan antiquity was slavery. Before the coming +of the Christian Era, and even after its advent, slavery was taken for +granted. Mr. Belloc says: + + In no matter what field of the European past we make our research, + we find, from two thousand years ago upwards one fundamental + institution whereupon the whole of society reposes; that + fundamental institution is Slavery.... Our European ancestry, those + men from whom we are descended and whose blood runs with little + admixture in our veins, took slavery for granted, made of it the + economic pivot upon which the production of wealth should turn, and + never doubted but that it was normal to all human society.[14] + +With the growth of the Church, however, the servile institution was for +a time dissolved. This dissolution was a sub-conscious effect of the +spread of Christianity and not the outcome of any direct attack of the +Church upon slavery: + + No dogma of the Church pronounced Slavery to be immoral, or the + sale and purchase of men to be a sin, or the imposition of + compulsory labour upon a Christian to be a contravention of any + human right. + +Mr. Belloc traces the disappearance of this fundamental institution +rather as follows. He says: + + The sale of Christians to Pagan masters was abhorrent to the later + empire of the Barbarian Invasions, not because slavery in itself + was condemned, but because it was a sort of treason to civilization + to force men away from Civilization to Barbarism.[15] + +The disappearance of slavery begins with the establishment as the +fundamental unit of production of those great landed estates which were +known to the Romans as _villae_ and were cultivated by slaves. In the +last years of the Empire it became more convenient in the decay of +communications and public power and more consonant with the social +spirit of the time, to make sure of the slave's produce by asking him +for no more than certain customary dues. In course of time this +arrangement became a sort of bargain, and by the ninth century, when +this process had been gradually at work for nearly three hundred years, +what we now call the Manorial system was fairly firmly established. By +the tenth century the system was crystallized and had become so natural +to men that the originally servile character of the folk working on the +land was forgotten. The labourer at the end of the Dark Ages was no +longer a slave but a serf. + +In the early Middle Ages, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, at the +time, that is, of the Crusades and the Norman Conquest, the serf is +already nearly a peasant. As the generations pass he becomes more and +more free in the eyes of the courts and of society. + +We see then that Saxon England, at the time the Conqueror landed, was +organized on the Manorial system. This arrangement, with its village +lords and their dependent serfs, was common to the whole of the West, +and could be found on the Rhine, in Gaul and even in Italy; but the +Manorial system in England differed from the Manorial system of Western +Europe in one fatally important particular. + + In Saxon England [says Mr. Belloc] there was no systematic + organization by which the local landowner definitely recognized a + feudal superior and through him the power of a Central + Government.... When William landed, the whole system of tenure was + in disorder in the sense that the local lord of the village was not + accustomed to the interference of the superior, and that no groups + of lords had come into existence by which the territorial system + could be bound in sheaves, as it were, and the whole of it attached + to one central point at the Royal Court. + + Such a system of groups _had_ arisen in Gaul, and to that + difference ultimately we owe the French territorial system of the + present day, but William the Norman's new subjects had no + comprehension of it.[16] + +The order introduced by William was not strong enough to endure in face +of the ancient customs of the populace and the lack of any bond between +scattered and locally independent units. A recrudescence of the early +independence of the landowners was felt in the reign of Henry II, while +under John it blazed out into successful revolt. Throughout the Middle +Ages we may see the village landlord gradually growing in independence +and usurping, as a class, the power of the Central Government. + +What the outcome of this state of affairs would have been had events +been allowed to develop without interruption, it is impossible to say. +Whether or not the peasant would have acquired freedom and wealth, at +the expense of the landlord; whether then a strong Central Government +would have arisen; whether property would have become more or less +equally distributed and the State have been composed of a mass of small +owners, all possessed of the means of production--these are things we +can only guess. What we do know, and what Mr. Belloc has made abundantly +clear, is that "with the close of the Middle Ages the societies of +Western Christendom, and England among the rest, were economically +free." In England the great mass of the populace was gradually becoming +more and more possessed of property; but at the same time there existed +a very considerable class of large landowners, who were not only wealthy +and powerful, but incapable of rigid control by the Crown. + +This, then, was the state of England when an immediate and overwhelming +change occurred. "Nothing like it," says Mr. Belloc, "has been known in +European history." An artificial revolution was brought about which +involved a transformation of a good quarter of the whole economic power +of the nation. If we are to understand Mr. Belloc's view of the England +of the present day, it is essential that we should grasp clearly his +view of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, for from this operation, he +says, "the whole economic future of England was to flow." + +Mr. Belloc analyses the effect of the Dissolution of the Monasteries +thus: + + All over England men who already held in virtually absolute + property from one-quarter to one-third of the soil and the ploughs + and the barns of a village, became possessed in a very few years of + a further great section of the means of production which turned the + scale wholly in their favour. They added to that third a new and + extra fifth. They became at a blow the owners of _half_ the + land![17] + +The effect of this increase in ownership was tremendous. The men of this +landowning class, says Mr. Belloc, "began to fill the universities, the +judiciary. The Crown less and less decided between great and small. More +and more the great could decide in their own favour." + +The process was in full swing before Henry died, and because Henry had +failed to keep the wealth of the monasteries in the hands of the Crown, +as he undoubtedly intended to do, there existed in England, by about a +century after his death, a Crown which, instead of disposing of revenues +far greater than that of any subject, was dominated by a wealthy class. +"By 1630-40 the economic revolution was finally accomplished and the new +economic reality thrusting itself upon the old traditions of England was +a powerful oligarchy of large owners overshadowing an impoverished and +dwindled monarchy." + +And this oligarchy, which was originally an oligarchy of birth as well +as wealth, but which rapidly became an oligarchy of wealth alone--Mr. +Belloc cites as an example the history of the family of Williams (alias +Cromwell)--not only so subjugated the power of the central government as +to reduce the king, after 1660, to the level of a salaried puppet, but +also, in course of time, ate up all the smaller owners until, by about +1700, "more than half of the English were dispossessed of capital and of +land. Not one man in two, even if you reckon the very small owners, +inhabited a house of which he was the secure possessor, or tilled land +from which he could not be turned off." + + Such a proportion [continues Mr. Belloc] may seem to us to-day a + wonderfully free arrangement, and certainly if nearly one-half of + our population were possessed of the means of production, we should + be in a very different situation from that in which we find + ourselves. But the point to seize is that, though the bad business + was very far from completion in or about 1700, yet by that date + England had already become capitalist. She had already permitted a + vast section of her population to become _proletarian_, and it is + this and _not_ the so-called "Industrial Revolution," a later + thing, which accounts for the terrible social conditions in which + we find ourselves to-day.[18] + +It is perhaps Mr. Belloc's most valuable contribution to the study of +modern English history that he has destroyed piecemeal that +unintelligent, unhistorical and false statement, found in innumerable +textbooks and taught so glibly in our schools and universities, that +"the horrors of the industrial system were a blind and necessary product +of material and impersonal forces"; and has shown us instead that: + + The vast growth of the proletariat, the concentration of ownership + into the hands of a few owners, and the exploitation by those + owners of the mass of the community, had no fatal or necessary + connection with the discovery of new and perpetually improving + methods of production. The evil proceeded in direct historical + sequence, proceeded patently and demonstrably, from the fact that + England, the seed plot of the industrial system, was _already_ + captured by a wealthy oligarchy _before_ the series of great + discoveries began.[19] + +We see then that the slave of the Roman villa, a being both economically +and politically unfree, developed throughout North-Western Europe, in +the course of the thousand years or more of the uninterrupted growth of +the Church, first into the serf and then into the peasant, a being both +economically and politically free: + + The three forms under which labour was exercised--the serf, secure + in his position, and burdened only with regular dues, which were + but a fraction of his produce; the freeholder, a man independent + save for money dues, which were more of a tax than a rent; the + Guild, in which well-divided capital worked co-operatively for + craft production, for transport and for commerce--all three between + them were making for a society which should be based upon the + principle of property. All, or most--the normal family--should own. + And on ownership the freedom of the State should repose.... Slavery + had gone and in its place had come that establishment of free + possession which seemed so normal to men, and so consonant to a + happy human life. No particular name was then found for it. To-day, + and now that it has disappeared, we must construct an awkward one, + and say that the Middle Ages had instinctively conceived and + brought into existence the Distributive State.[20] + +By the mishandling of an artificial economic revolution which was so +sudden as to be overwhelming, namely, the Dissolution of the +Monasteries, an England which was economically free, was turned into the +England we know to-day, "of which at least one-third is indigent, of +which nineteen-twentieths are dispossessed of capital and of land, and +of which the whole industry and national life is controlled upon its +economic side by a few chance directors of millions, a few masters of +unsocial and irresponsible monopolies." + +Thus Mr. Belloc traces the growth and development of our economic +conditions. In _The Servile State_ he goes further and shows what new +conditions are rapidly developing out of those now in existence. + +At the present time, we know, the economic freedom of +nineteen-twentieths of the English people has disappeared. Will their +political freedom also disappear? + +To this question Mr. Belloc's answer is as decided as it is startling. +He does not argue that the political freedom of the proletariat may +possibly disappear. He says that it has _already begun_ to disappear. + +The Capitalist State, he argues, in which all are free but in which the +means of production are in the hands of a few, grows unstable in +proportion as it grows perfect. The internal strains which render it +unstable are, first, the conflict between its social realities and its +moral and legal basis, and, second, the insecurity to which it condemns +free citizens; the fact, that is, that the few possessors can grant or +withhold livelihood from the many non-possessors. There are only three +solutions of this instability. These are, the distributive solution, the +collectivist solution, and the servile solution. Of these three stable +social arrangements the reformer, owing to the Christian traditions of +society, will not advocate the introduction of the servile state, which +Mr. Belloc defines as "that arrangement of society in which so +considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by +positive law to labour for the advantage of other families and +individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such +labour." If this arrangement be not advocated, there remain only the +distributive and the collectivist solutions. Collectivism being to a +certain extent a natural development of Capitalism and appealing both to +capitalist and proletarian, is apparently the easier solution. But, says +Mr. Belloc--and this is the kernel of his whole thesis--the Collectivist +theory _in action_ does not produce Collectivism, but something quite +different; namely, the Servile State. There is only one way, according +to Mr. Belloc's argument, in which Collectivism can be put into force, +and that is by confiscation. The reformer is not allowed to confiscate, +but he is allowed to do all he can to establish security and sufficiency +for the non-owners. In attaining this object he inevitably establishes +servile conditions. + +In the last chapter of this extraordinarily valuable book Mr. Belloc +points to various examples of servile legislation, either already to be +found on the Statute Book or in process of being put there. He is +convinced that the re-establishment of the servile status in industrial +society is already upon us; but records it as an impression, though no +more than an impression, that the Servile State, strong as the tide is +making for it in Prussia and in England to-day, will be modified, +checked, perhaps defeated in war, certainly halted in its attempt to +establish itself completely by the strong reaction which such free +societies as France and Ireland upon its flank will perpetually +exercise. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 12: _Historic Thames_, p. 91.] + +[Footnote 13: _Historic Thames_, p. 101.] + +[Footnote 14: _Servile State_, p. 31.] + +[Footnote 15: _Ib._, p. 41.] + +[Footnote 16: _Historic Thames_, p. 141.] + +[Footnote 17: _Servile State_, p. 64.] + +[Footnote 18: _Servile State_, p. 68.] + +[Footnote 19: _Ib._, p. 62.] + +[Footnote 20: _Servile State_, p. 49.] + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE REFORMER + + +It is impossible, unfortunately, in so brief a summary of Mr. Belloc's +views, even to suggest with what force of argument and wealth of example +he supports the thesis of _The Servile State_. What that thesis is it +may be well to state in full. Mr. Belloc says that _The Servile State_ +was written "to maintain and prove the following truth": + + That our free modern society in which the means of production are + owned by a few being necessarily in unstable equilibrium, it is + tending to reach a condition of stable equilibrium by the + establishment of compulsory labour legally enforcible upon those + who do not own the means of production for the advantage of those + who do. With this principle of compulsion applied against the + non-owners there must also come a difference in their status; and + in the eyes of society and of its positive law men will be divided + into two sets; the first economically free and politically free, + possessed of the means of production, and securely confirmed in + that possession; the second economically unfree and politically + unfree, but at first secured by their very lack of freedom in + certain necessaries of life and in a minimum of well-being beneath + which they shall not fall.[21] + +Now, the reader who has followed the brief summary of the preceding +chapter cannot fail to arrive at a consideration of apparently cardinal +importance. Even if he be convinced--as we are convinced--that the +servile state is actually upon us, he will yet feel that a people still +politically free will never allow what is to-day but a young growth to +attain its full stature. The English people, he will argue, hold their +own destiny in their own hand. We already possess all but manhood +suffrage; and, until that power is taken from us, which it could never +be without a fierce struggle, we possess a weapon with which any and +every attempt to re-introduce the servile status can successfully be +resisted. + +A man reasoning thus should ask himself two questions: first, does the +proletariat object to the re-introduction of the servile status, +provided it brings with it security and sufficiency? second, does the +enjoyment of a wide suffrage connote the power of self-government? + +These are questions which every intelligent man must be able to answer +for himself, and, if he answer them honestly, his answers, we think, +will agree with those Mr. Belloc has given. In _The Servile State_ he +affirms what we all know to be the fact, that the English proletariat of +to-day would not merely fail to reject the servile status, but would +welcome it. He puts the matter in this way: + + If you were to approach those millions of families now living at a + wage with the proposal for the contract of service for life, + guaranteeing them employment at what each regarded as his usual + full wage, how many would refuse? + + Such a contract would, of course, involve a loss of freedom; a life + contract of the kind is, to be accurate, no contract at all. It is + the negation of contract and the acceptation of status.[22] + +Every thinking man knows that the number to reject such a proposal would +be insignificant. + +If, then, the great mass of the English people, the majority, that is, +of the voters, is prepared to welcome rather than to reject the +re-introduction of slavery, the possession or non-possession of the +power to reject it appears immaterial. + +Let us suppose, however, an extreme case. Let us suppose an attempt to +reduce the wage-earners to slavery without guaranteeing them sufficiency +and security. There are many amiable maniacs who would be willing to +support such an attempt, though we cannot believe that their efforts +would be rewarded with success. They would be rewarded with revolution. + +This is a point upon which too great insistence cannot be laid. Such an +attempt, if it were ever made, would produce a revolution: it would not +be quashed in a General Election or by any other form of constitutional +procedure, because, as a fact, the English people have no constitutional +power. + +Ultimately, of course, the power of government can only rest with the +majority of the people, but in practice that power is often taken from +them. It has been taken from the English people. + +These, then, are the two great simple truths which underlie Mr. Belloc's +whole attitude towards the public affairs of the England of to-day: + +First, we are economically unfree. + +Second, we are politically unfree.[23] + +The causes of the existence of the first condition are analysed, as we +have seen, in _The Servile State_; the causes of the second are analysed +in _The Party System_. + +With the prime truths of this book every man possessing but the most +elementary knowledge of political science and constitutional history is +familiar. They were proved by Bagehot many years ago, and no observant +man of average intelligence can fail to realize them for himself to-day. +Briefly, they are these. The representative system existing in England, +which was meant to be an organ of democracy, is actually an engine of +oligarchy. "Instead of the executive being controlled by the +representative assembly, it controls it. Instead of the demands of the +people being expressed for them by their representatives, the matters +discussed by the representatives are settled, not by the people, not +even by themselves, but by the very body which it is the business of the +representative assembly to check and control." + +These truths are to-day common knowledge. We all know that the power of +government does not reside in practice with the people, but with some +body which remains for most of us undefined. It is the peculiar service +of the authors of _The Party System_ to have defined that body for us +and to have exposed its nature and composition. Bagehot referred to this +body as the Cabinet; in _The Party System_ it is shown that this body is +really composed of the members of the two Front Benches, which form "one +close oligarchical corporation, admission to which is only to be gained +by the consent of those who have already secured places therein." The +greater number, and by far the most important members, of this +corporation enter by right of relationship, and these family ties are +not confined to the separate sides of the House. They unite the +Ministerial with the Opposition Front Bench as closely as they unite +Ministers and ex-Ministers to each other. There is thus formed a +governing group which has attained absolute control over the procedure +of the House of Commons. It can settle how much time shall be given to +the discussion of any subject, and therefore, in effect, determine +whether any particular measure shall have a chance of passing into law. +It can also settle what subjects may be discussed and what may be said +on those subjects. Further, this group has at its disposal large funds +which are secretly subscribed and secretly disbursed, and, by the use of +these funds, as well as by other means, it is able to control elections +and decide to a considerable extent who shall be the representatives of +the people. + +Can this system be mended? Is any reform possible within the system +itself? As long ago as 1899, in the first important book he published, +Mr. Belloc wrote these words: + + ... the _Mandat Impératif_, the brutal and decisive weapon of the + democrats, the binding by an oath of all delegates, the mechanical + responsibility against which Burke had pleaded at Bristol, which + the American constitution vainly attempted to exclude in its + principal election, and which must in the near future be the method + of our final reforms. + +It is a striking example of the solidity of Mr. Belloc's opinions to +find him expressing, twelve years later, exactly the same views. He went +into Parliament in 1906 holding this view; he came out of Parliament in +1910 confirmed in it. In 1911, the only possible means of reforming our +Parliamentary system, so far as he can see, is this: + + It might be possible, by scattering and using a sufficient number + of trained workers, to extract from candidates definite pledges + during the electoral period.... The principal pledge which should + and could be extracted from candidates would be a pledge that they + would vote against the Government--whatever its composition--unless + there were carried through the House of Commons, within a set time, + those measures to which they stood pledged already in their + election addresses and on the platform. + +But, just as Mr. Belloc realizes that the power of government must +always rest ultimately with the majority of the people, so he realizes +that all final reforms are brought about by the will of the majority. +Consequently, the first need in the attempt to remedy any evil is +exposure. The political education of democracy is the first step towards +a reform. + + To tell a particular truth with regard to a particular piece of + corruption is, of course, dangerous in the extreme; the rash man + who might be tempted to employ this weapon would find himself + bankrupted or in prison, and probably both. But the general nature + of the unpleasant thing can be drilled into the public by books, + articles, and speeches. + +This is the whole secret of Mr. Belloc's actions as a reformer. His +whole object, as has already been said in another connection, is to +instruct public opinion. His views and opinions are to be found clearly +expressed in books, but he is not content merely to express his views as +intellectual propositions, he is supremely anxious to convince men of +the truth and justice of his views, and to inspire men to action. Just +as he regards history as the record of the actions of men like +ourselves, so he regards the evils of the present day as the result of +men's actions and men's apathy. His whole object is to check those +actions and uproot that apathy. + +It was with this object that he founded, in 1911, the weekly journal +called _The Eye-Witness_, the chief aim of which was to conduct a steady +and unflinching campaign against the evils of the Party System and of +Capitalism, and a notable feature of Mr. Belloc's editorship was that +the paper, during the time he was connected with it, reached and +maintained an extraordinarily high literary standard. It is a matter of +regret that Mr. Belloc, owing to a variety of circumstances, was +obliged, in the early part of 1912, to resign the position of editor of +the paper which he founded and which now, under the title of _The New +Witness_, is edited by Mr. Cecil Chesterton. + +There can be no doubt, however, that the campaign which Mr. Belloc then +initiated has achieved some measure of success. Although it is +impossible to point to any organized body of opinion which definitely +supports Mr. Belloc's views on economic and political reform, yet it is +undeniable that those views have taken root and are to-day far more +common than at the time either _The Party System_ was written, or _The +Eye-Witness_ founded. This has come about by a very simple process--a +process which Mr. Belloc himself has analysed. In the last pages of _The +Party System_ there occurs this passage: + + Truth has this particular quality about it (which the modern + defenders of falsehood seem to have forgotten), that when it has + been so much as suggested, it of its own self and by example tends + to turn that suggestion into a conviction. + + You say to some worthy provincial, "English Prime Ministers sell + peerages and places on the Front Bench." + + He is startled, and he disbelieves you; but when a few days + afterwards he reads in his newspaper of how some howling nonentity + has just been made a peer, or a member of the Government, the + incredible sentence he has heard recurs to him. When in the course + of the next twelve months five or six other nonentities have + enjoyed this sort of promotion (one of whom perhaps he may know + from other sources than the Press to be a wealthy man who uses his + wealth in bribery) his doubt grows into conviction. + + That is the way truth spreads.... + + The truth, when it is spoken for some useful purpose, must + necessarily seem obscure, extravagant, or merely false; for, were + it of common knowledge, it would not be worth expressing. And truth + being fact, and therefore hard, must irritate and wound; but it has + that power of growth and creation peculiar to itself which always + makes it worth the telling. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 21: _Servile State_, p. 3.] + +[Footnote 22: _Servile State_, p. 140.] + +[Footnote 23: The reader should take care to distinguish between the +phrase "politically unfree," as connoting the lack of constitutional +power, and the phrase "politically unfree," used by Mr. Belloc in _The +Servile State_ as connoting the lack of a free status in positive law, +and therefore the presence of servile conditions.] + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE HUMORIST + + +Humour is the instrument of the critic. If the psychological explanation +of laughter be, as some have supposed, the sight of "a teleological +being suddenly behaving in an ateleological manner," then the mere act +of laughter is in itself an act of comparison and of criticism. The true +castigator of morals has never striven to make his subjects appear +disgraceful, but to make them appear ridiculous. Except in the case of +positive crime, for example, murder or treason, the true instrument of +the censor is burlesque. It fails him only when his subject is +consciously and deliberately breaking a moral law: it is irresistible +when its target is a false moral law or convention of morals set up to +protect anti-social practices. Among these we may reckon bribery of +politicians, oppression of the poor, vulgar ostentation, the habit of +adultery and the writing of bad verse. Aristophanes, Molière, Byron, and +Dickens--these attempted to correct the social vices of their times by +laughter. + +But humorous literature is not wholly confined to such practical ends. +We may derive pleasure from reading literary criticism for its own sake +and not for the purpose of knowing what books to read: we also gain and +require a pure pleasure from that constant criticism of human things +which we call humour. It remains a function of criticism, as may be seen +from the simple fact that no man was ever a good critic of anything +under the sun who had not a sense of humour. It is a perpetual +commentary on life, a constant guide to sanity. And a good joke, like a +good poem, enlarges the boundaries of the spirit and puts us in touch +with infinity. But too much abstract disquisition on the subject of +humour is a frequent cause of the lack of it. + +Mr. Belloc's first essays in humour were not of the satirical or +purposeful sort: unless we consider an obscure volume called _Lambkin's +Remains_ to be of this nature. The author has kept in affection, it +would seem, only one of these compositions sufficiently to reprint it +out of a volume which can hardly now be obtained. Mr. Lambkin's poem, +written for the Newdigate Prize in 1893 on the prescribed theme for that +year, "The Benefits of the Electric Light," might fairly be considered a +warning to the examiners to set their subject with care. + +The first of his popular essays in amusement, the one by which--owing to +an accident of music--he is still best known, though anonymously, to a +large public, is _The Bad Child's Book of Beasts_. Successors in a +similar manner are _More Beasts for Worse Children_ (delightful title), +_A Moral Alphabet_, and _Cautionary Tales for Children_. These are +successful books for children, of a great popularity, and may be read +with considerable pleasure by elder persons. + +To define the particular quality which makes them good is more than a +little difficult. It is much easier to analyse and expose the virtues +of the most affecting poetry than to explain what moves us in the +mildest piece of humour. This is amply proved by the fact that +innumerable volumes exist on the origin of comedy and the cause of +laughter, and there are more to come: while, roughly speaking, even +philosophers are agreed as to the manner in which serious poetry touches +us. + +A great deal, too, of the appeal of these pieces is due to the +illustrations of B. T. B. which complement the text with an apt and +grotesque commentary. The pleasure given by the verse, perhaps, if one +may handle so delicate and trifling a thing, lies in a sort of +inconsequence and unexpectedness. Witness the poem on the Yak: + + Then tell your Papa where the Yak can be got, + And if he is awfully rich + He will buy you the creature-- + +(The reader now turns over the page.) + + Or else + he will _not_. + (I cannot be positive which.) + +Or it may reside in mere genial idiocy, as in _The Dodo_: + + The Dodo used to walk around + And take the sun and air. + The Sun yet warms his native ground-- + The Dodo is not there! + + The voice which used to squawk and squeak + Is now for ever dumb-- + Yet may you see his bones and beak + All in the Mu-se-um. + +This is the quality which chiefly inspires the _Cautionary Tales_, that +admirable series of biographies. "_Matilda, Who told Lies and was Burned +to Death_" is perhaps too well known to quote, but we may extract a +passage from "_Lord Lundy, who was too Freely Moved to Tears, and +thereby ruined his Political Career_": + + It happened to Lord Lundy then, + As happens to so many men: + Towards the age of twenty-six, + They shoved him into politics; + In which profession he commanded + The income that his rank demanded + In turn as Secretary for + India, the Colonies and War. + But very soon his friends began + To doubt if he were quite the man: + Thus, if a member rose to say + (As members do from day to day), + "Arising out of that reply...!" + Lord Lundy would begin to cry. + A hint at harmless little jobs + Would shake him with convulsive sobs, + While as for Revelations, these + Would simply bring him to his knees + And leave him whimpering like a child. + +This genial idiocy, this unexpectedness and inconsequence, are perhaps +the most characteristic qualities of his freest humour elsewhere. Take, +for example, the flavour of this singular remark from _The Four Men_. +Grizzlebeard is telling, according to his oath, in a most serious +fashion the story of his first love. He says: + + "I learnt ... that she had married a man whose fame had long been + familiar to me, a politician, a patriot, and a most capable + manufacturer.... Then strong, and at last (at such a price) mature, + I noted the hour and went towards the doors through which she had + entered perhaps an hour ago in the company of the man with whose + name she had mingled her own." + + _Myself._ "What did he manufacture?" + + _Grizzlebeard._ "Rectified lard; and so well, let me tell you, that + no one could compete with him." + +Let the reader explain, if he can, the comic effect of that startling +irrelevance; we cannot, but it is characteristic. + +It is some effect of dexterity with words, some happy spring of +inconsequence, which produces this particular kind of joke. A certain +exuberance in writing which plainly intoxicates the writer and carries +the reader with it, is at the bottom of humour of this sort. What is it +that causes us to smile at the following passage, a disquisition on the +aptitude of the word "surprising"? + + An elephant escapes from a circus and puts his head in at your + window while you are writing and thinking of a word. You look up. + You may be alarmed, you may be astonished, you may be moved to + sudden processes of thought; but one thing you will find about it, + and you will find out quite quickly, and it will dominate all your + other emotions of the time: the elephant's head will be surprising. + You are caught. Your soul says loudly to its Creator: "Oh, this is + something new!" + +One might suggest that psychological analysis with an example so absurd +provokes the sense of the comic, but it is not quite that. It is not +Heinesque irony, the concealment of an insult, nor Wilde's paradox, the +burlesque of a truth. It is merely comic: a humorous facility in the use +of words, though not barren as such things are apt to be, but quite +common and human. The philosophical rules of laughter do not explain it: +but it is funny. + +Something of the same attraction rests in a quite absurd essay, wherein +Mr. Belloc describes how he was waylaid by an inventor and, having +suffered the explanations of the man, retaliated with advice as to the +means to pursue to get the new machine adopted. The technical terms +invented for both parties to the dialogue are deliciously idiotic, a +sort of exalted abstract play with the dictionary of technology. + +In descriptions of persons we are on safer ground, and the reader, if he +still care, after all we have said, for such-like foolishness, may +explain these jokes by the incongruity of teleological beings acting in +an ateleological manner. We are determined to be content in picking out +passages that amuse us and in commenting on them but by no means +explaining them. + +Mr. Belloc himself has invented or recorded the distinction between +things that would be funny anyhow, and things that are funny because +they are true. Most of his jokes fall into the second category. The +German baron at Oxford, the gentleman who asked when and for what action +Lord Charles Beresford received his title, the poet who wrote a poem +containing the lines: + + Neither the nations of the East, nor the nations of the West, + Have thought the thing Napoleon thought was to their interest, + +all these people are admirably funny because they do, or very well +might, exist. In fact, most of Mr. Belloc's humour is observation, a +slow delicate savouring of human stupidity and pretence. + +The sporadic stories in his books are funny because, at least, we can +believe them to be true. Read this from _Esto Perpetua_: + + An old man, small, bent, and full of energy opened the door to + me.... "I was expecting you," he said. I remembered that the driver + had promised to warn him, and I was grateful. + + "I have prepared you a meal," he went on. Then, after a little + hesitation, "It is mutton: it is neither hot nor cold." ... He + brought me their very rough African wine and a loaf, and sat down + opposite me, looking at me fixedly under the candle. Then he said: + + "To-morrow you will see Timgad, which is the most wonderful town in + the world." + + "Certainly not to-night," I answered; to which he said, "No!" + + I took a bite of the food, and he at once continued rapidly: + "Timgad is a marvel. We call it 'the marvel.' I had thought of + calling this house 'Timgad the Marvel,' or, again, 'Timgad + the----'" + + "Is this sheep?" I said. + + "Certainly," he answered. "What else could it be but sheep?" + + "Good Lord!" I said, "it might be anything. There is no lack of + beasts on God's earth." I took another bite and found it horrible. + + "I desire you to tell me frankly," said I, "whether this is goat. + There are many Italians in Africa, and I shall not blame any man + for giving me goat's flesh. The Hebrew prophets ate it and the + Romans; only tell me the truth, for goat is bad for me." + + He said it was not goat. Indeed, I believed him, for it was of a + large and terrible sort, as though it had roamed the hills and + towered above all goats and sheep. I thought of lions, but + remembered that their value would forbid their being killed for the + table. I again attempted the meal, and he again began: + + "Timgad is a place----" + + At this moment a god inspired me, and I shouted, "Camel!" He did + not turn a hair. I put down my knife and fork, and pushed the plate + away. I said: + + "You are not to be blamed for giving me the food of the country, + but for passing it under another name." + + He was a good host and did not answer. He went out, and came back + with cheese. Then he said, as he put it down before me: + + "I do assure you it is sheep," and we discussed the point no more. + +That is an amusing episode and wholly characteristic. The humour of Mr. +Belloc's books, particularly of his books of travel, resides in a +quantity of such tales, not acutely and extravagantly funny, but all +amusing because they are all (apparently) true. + +With that more practical branch of humour, satire, the angle of view +shifts a little. The power of making laughter becomes here a weapon, and +its hostile purpose, as it were, sharpens the point. Mr. Belloc's satire +has a hardness and a precision lacking in the broad and general effects +of his quite irresponsible humour. + +All satire, as we have said, has a definite moral intent, whether it be +to restrain a corrupt politician or a bad poet, and this makes it +serious, sometimes painful, always, in failure, heavy and unpleasant. +The little book called _The Aftermath: or Caliban's Guide to Letters_ is +not altogether a success. One might believe that Mr. Belloc's disgust +with the tricks of journalism has killed, as never his disgust with the +tricks of government, his sense of joy in human pretence. These +sketches, by just a little, fail to give one a feeling of rejoicing in +the author's wit: they seem bitter, strained, and, while one appreciates +the justice of the serious charge, the humour which was to carry it off, +becomes from time to time heavy and lifeless. It is even a depressing +book: but this may be because the deepest rooted of our illusions, +deeper than the illusion about politics, is the illusion concerning the +cleverness of authors. + +The skit, written with Mr. G. K. Chesterton, on the proceedings of the +Tariff Reform Commission, is, on the other hand, one shout of laughter: +as though that singular inquiry could not raise bitterness or indeed any +emotion but delight in the breasts of true observers of humanity. It is +a pity it is no longer obtainable. + +The two or three satirical poems show a very definite and determined +purpose, a sort of ugly competent squaring of the fists, a fighting that +pleases by clean hard hitting. + +It must have been a great pleasure to Mr. Belloc to write: + + We also know the sacred height + Up on Tugela side, + Where the three hundred fought with Beit + And fair young Wernher died. + + * * * * * + + The little empty homes forlorn, + The ruined synagogues that mourn + In Frankfort and Berlin; + We knew them when the peace was torn-- + We of a nobler lineage born-- + And now by all the gods of scorn + We mean to rub them in. + +It must have been a great relief, too, to have planted such sound and +swinging blows on the enemy's person. The enemy is not appreciably +inconvenienced, but--Mr. Belloc has probably told himself--a few have +chuckled, and that begins it. + +In such a way we come naturally to the five satirical novels, obviously +an illustration of the passage in _The Party System_, where Mr. Belloc +advocates the annulling of political evils by laughing at them. It is +not our business here to analyse these compositions from the point of +view of considering the amount of political usefulness they may have +achieved. We must consider rather Mr. Belloc's fine, contented industry +in his satiric task, the persistence with which he builds up his +instrument of destruction. + +The method in these books is exclusively ironic. Never does the writer +overtly state that he seeks to drag down a system which he hates by +laughter. In _Emmanuel Burden_, that extraordinary book, the severity of +the method is extreme, almost overwhelming. The author supposes himself +to be writing a biography especially designed to uphold the principles +of "Cosmopolitan Finance--pitiless, destructive of all national ideals, +obscene, and eating out the heart of our European tradition": and he +preserves that pose consistently. + +Elsewhere, for example, in _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, the pretence is +less elaborate: winks and nudges to the reader are permitted, and the +whole effect is less careful and more human, less bitter and more +humorous. But the general tone is maintained throughout the five books, +discussing the same characters who appear and reappear, the Peabody Yid, +Mary Smith, the young and popular Prime Minister, "Methlinghamhurtht, +Clutterbuck that wath," and the excellent Mr. William Bailey, who had +the number 666 on his shirts, subscribed to anti-Semitic societies on +the Continent and cherished with a peculiar affection _The Jewish +Encyclopædia_. Such a preservation of tone is admirable, for it is a +subtly restrained acidity, requiring either intense and unremitting care +(which seems unlikely) or a special adjustment of temperament. It is +very Gaulish, it must have been modelled on Voltaire: but it is also +enlivened with flashes of irresponsibility that are the author's own. + +To have composed five such volumes as, taking them in order, _Emmanuel +Burden_, _Mr. Clutterbuck's Election_, _A Change in the Cabinet_, _Pongo +and the Bull_, and _The Green Overcoat_, is an achievement of a very +remarkable sort, the more remarkable that the interest of these stories +lies entirely in Mr. Belloc's peculiar views upon politics and finance. +Even Disraeli, who liked writing novels about politics, could not +restrain himself from love interests, romance, poetry, and what not +else: but Mr. Belloc, serious and intent, concentrates his energies with +malevolent smile on one object. + +In this consistent level of irony there are undoubtedly exalted patches +of more than merely verbal humour, such as, for example, Sir Charles +Repton's jolly speech at the Van Diemens meeting, in which he outlines +with enormous gusto the principles of procedure of modern finance. (It +will be remembered that an unfortunate accident had deprived Sir Charles +of his power of restraint and afflicted him with Veracititis.) + + "Well, there you are then [he says], a shilling, a miserable + shilling. Now just see what that shilling will do! + + "In the first place it'll give publicity and plenty of it. Breath + of public life, publicity! Breath o' finance too! We'll have that + railway marked in a dotted line on the maps: all the maps: school + maps: office maps. We'll have leaders on it and speeches on it. And + good hearty attacks on it. And th-e-n ..." He lowered his voice to + a very confidential wheedle--"the price'll begin to creep up--Oh + ... o ... oh! the _real_ price, my beloved fellow-shareholders, the + price at which one can really _sell_, the price at which one can + handle the _stuff_." + + He gave a great breath of satisfaction. "Now d'ye see? It'll go to + forty shillings right off, it ought to go to forty-five, it may go + to sixty!... And then," he said briskly, suddenly changing his + tone, "then, my hearties, you blasted well sell out: you unload ... + you dump 'em. Plenty more fools where your lot came from.... Most + of you'll lose on your first price: late comers least: a few o' + ye'll make if you bought under two pounds. Anyhow I shall.... + There! if that isn't finance, I don't know what is!" + +That is great, it is humour of a positively enormous variety, and pure +humour bursting and shining through the careful web of purposeful irony. + +Such is the tendency of Mr. Belloc in his most intent occupations, to be +suddenly overcome with a rush of something broad, human and jolly, in a +word, poetic. In these moments he abandons his theories and his +propaganda and sails off before the inspiration. By such passages, as +much as or more than by their constant flow of skilful jeering, these +books will last. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE TRAVELLER + + +In a verse which criticism, baffled but revengeful, will not easily let +die, it has been stated that "Mr. Hilaire Belloc Is a case for +legislation _ad hoc_. He seems to think nobody minds His books being all +of different kinds." They certainly do mind. They ask what an author +_is_. Mr. Bennett is a novelist, and so, one supposes, is Mr. Wells; Mr. +Shaw and Mr. Barker are dramatists; Mr. W. L. Courtney is a Critic, and +Mr. Noyes, they say, is a Poet. + +There is, after all, a certain justice in the query. A novelist may also +write a play or a sociological treatise: he remains a novelist and we +know him for what he is. What, then, is Mr. Belloc? If we examine his +works by a severely arithmetical test, we shall find that the greater +part of them is devoted to description of travel. You will find his +greatest earnestness, perhaps his greatest usefulness, in his history: +but his travel lies behind his history and informs it. It is the most +important of the materials out of which his history has been made. + +The clue, then, that we find in the preponderance among his writings of +books and essays drawn directly from experience of travel is neither +accidental nor meaningless. All this has been a _training_ to him, and +we should miss the most important factor not only in what he has done, +but also in what he may do, did we omit consideration of this. + +Travel, in the oldest of platitudes, is an education: and here we would +use this word in the widest possible sense as indicating the practical +education, which is a means to an end, a preparation for doing +something, and the spiritual education which is a preparation for being +something. In both these ways, travel is good and widens the mind: and +here, as in his history, we can distinguish the two motives. One is +practical and propagandist, the other poetic, the passion for knowing +and understanding. Travel, considered under these heads, gives the +observant mind a fund of comparison and information upon agricultural +economy, modes of religion, political forms, the growth of trade and the +movement of armies, and gives also to the receptive spirit a sense of +active and reciprocal contact with the earth which nourishes us and +which we inhabit. + +These moods and motives seem to be unhappily scarce in the life of this +age. Neither understandingly, like poets, nor unconsciously (or, at +least, dumbly), like peasants, are we aware of the places in which we +live. We make no pilgrimages to holy spots, nor have we wandering +students who mark out and acutely set down the distinctions between this +people and that. Facilities of travel have perhaps damped our desire to +hear news of other countries. They have not given us in exchange a store +of accurate information. Curiosity has died without being satisfied. +Both materially and spiritually, we and our society suffer for it: our +lives are not so large, we make more stupid and more universal blunders +in dealing with foreign nations. + +Of the spiritual incentive to travel, Mr. Belloc has put this +description into the mouth of a character in an essay: + + Look you, good people all, in your little passage through the + daylight, get to see as many hills and buildings and rivers, + fields, books, men, horses, ships and precious stones as you can + possibly manage. Or else stay in one village and marry in it and + die there. For one of these two fates is the best fate for every + man. Either to be what I have been, a wanderer with all the + bitterness of it, or to stay at home and to hear in one's garden + the voice of God. + +There you have the voice of Wandering Peter, who hoped to make himself +loved in Heaven by his tales of many countries. On the other hand, you +have Mr. Belloc's voice of deadly common sense adjuring this age, before +it is too late, to move about a little and see what the world really is, +and how one institution is at its best in one country and another in +another. + + Without any doubt whatsoever [he says] the one characteristic of + the towns is the lack of reality in the impressions of the many: + now we live in towns: and posterity will be astounded at us! It + isn't only that we get our impressions for the most part as + imaginary pictures called up by printers' ink--that would be bad + enough; but by some curious perversion of the modern mind, + printers' ink ends by actually preventing one from seeing things + that are there; and sometimes, when one says to another who has not + travelled, "Travel!" one wonders whether, after all, if he does + travel, he will see the things before his eyes? If he does, he will + find a new world; and there is more to be discovered in this + fashion to-day than ever there was. + +It is Mr. Belloc's habit, an arrogant and aggressive habit, not to be +drugged if he can avoid it with the repetition of phrases, but to +dissolve these things, when they are dissoluble, with the acid of facts. +He applies his method, as we have already seen, in history: in travel, +the precursor of history, he strives to be as truthful and as +clear-sighted. + +He wishes to report with accuracy--as a mediaeval traveller wished to +report--what he has seen in foreign lands. He looks about him with a +certain candour, a certain openness to impressions, which is only +equalled, we think, among his contemporaries by the whimsical and +capricious Mr. Hueffer: an artist whose interest lies wholly in +literature, and whose mania it is rather to write well than to arrest +the decay of our world. + +In the essay which we have quoted above, Mr. Belloc continues: + + The wise man, who really wants to see things as they are and to + understand them, does not say: "Here I am on the burning soil of + Africa." He says: "Here I am stuck in a snowdrift and the train + twelve hours late"--as it was (with me in it) near Sétif, in + January, 1905. He does not say as he looks on the peasant at his + plough outside Batna: "Observe yon Semite!" He says: "That man's + face is exactly like the face of a dark Sussex peasant, only a + little leaner." He does not say: "See these wild sons of the + desert! How they must hate the new artificial life around them!" + Contrariwise, he says: "See those four Mohammedans playing cards + with a French pack of cards and drinking liqueurs in the café! See! + they have ordered more liqueurs!" + +So Mr. Belloc would have us go about the world as much like little +children as possible in order to learn the elements of foreign politics. + +But travel is also, quite in the sense of the platitude, an education. +All that we can learn in books is made up of, or springs from, the +difference between the men living on the banks of this river, and the +men who live in the valleys of those hills. The man who understands the +distinctions of costumes, manners, methods and thought which thus exist, +is tolerably well equipped for dealing with such problems in his own +country: he has had a practical education which prepares him for life. + +Mr. Belloc goes about the world with a ready open mind, and stores up +observations on these matters. In an essay on a projected guide-book he +sets out some of them--how to pacify Arabs, how to frighten sheep-dogs, +how the people of Dax are the most horrible in all France, and so on. +It is a great pity that the book has never been written. + +All this is human knowledge, of which he is avid. It has been gained +from fellow wayfarers by the roadside and in inns. The persons he has +met and gravely noted on his travels are innumerable, and merely to read +of them is an edification. His landscapes are mostly peopled, and if not +a man, perhaps the ghost of an army moves among them, for he is strongly +of the belief that earth was made for humanity and is most lovable where +it has been handled and moulded by men, in the marking out of fields and +the damming of rivers, till it becomes a garden. + +His acquaintances of travel make a strange and entertaining gallery of +people. How admirable is the Arab who could not contain himself for +thinking of the way his fruit trees bore, and the tinner of pots who +improved his trade with song, and the American who said that the +Matterhorn was surprising. There is something restrained and credible in +Mr. Belloc's account of these curious beings. He seems to sit still and +savour their conversation: he hardly reports his own. + +He conveys to the reader a solid and real impression of the men he has +met, and it is one of the most delightful parts of his work. They go and +come through the essays like minor characters in a novel written with +prodigality of invention and genius. It is no exaggeration to say that +they are all interesting, persons one could wish to have met. They stand +out with the same clearness, the same reality, as the landscapes and +physical features that Mr. Belloc describes: they bear the same witness +to his curious gift for receiving an impression whole and clean, and +presenting it again with lucidity. + +This want of exaggeration we find again in the common-sense tone of his +descriptions. He makes no literary fuss about being in the open air: +perhaps because he did not discover the value of the atmosphere as a +stimulant for literature, but always naturally knew it as a proper +ingredient in life. He is no George Borrow. There is a reality in his +travels that may seem to some often far from poetical: dark shadows and +patches about food and its absence, and a despair when marching in the +rain which is anything but romantic. He is not self-conscious when +speaking of countries, and his boasting of miles covered and places seen +has always an essential modesty in it. He disdains no common-sense aid +to travel, neither the railway nor his meals; he seems to keep +excellently in touch with his boots and his appetite, and to those +kindred points his most surprising rhapsodies are true. + +Take as an illustration the end of his admirable and discerning judgment +upon the inns in the Pyrenees: + + In all Sobrarbe, there are but the inns of Bielsa and Torla (I mean + in all the upper valleys which I have described) that can be + approached without fear, and in Bielsa, as in Venasque and Torla, + the little place has but one. At Bielsa, it is near the bridge and + is kept by Pedro Pertos: I have not slept in it, but I believe it + to be clean and good. El Plan has a Posada called the Posada of the + Sun (del Sol), but it is not praised; nay, it is detested by those + who speak from experience. The inn that stands or stood at the + lower part of the Val d'Arazas is said to be good; that at Torla is + not so much an inn as an old chief's house or manor called that of + "Viu," for that is the name of the family that owns it. They treat + travellers very well. + + This is all that I know of the inns of the Pyrenees. + +That is practical writing, admirably done, and, as we should judge, +without having tested it, no less likely to be useful to the traveller +because it is a prose of literary flavour. On the other hand, the +personal avowal in the last sentence gives confidence. + +We must continue to look at Mr. Belloc's travels from what we loosely +call the practical point of view, and we arrive now at those books in +which travel is the means to the pursuit of a certain sort of study. +That is the study of history and, in particular, of military events, +which can properly be carried out only on the ground where these took +place. + +We have said that his travel is the material out of which his history is +made, and that, though a wide generalization, is to a great extent +strictly accurate. His notion of the Western race and its solidarity +derives its force not only from a careful and vigorous interpretation of +written records, but also from observation of that race to-day. You may +see in _Esto Perpetua_ how he verified and amplified his theory very +practically by a journey through Northern Africa. + +It is true also that his gifts of clear-headedness and lucidity which +make valuable his interpretations of written records make it easy for +him to read country, to grasp its present possibilities and the effects +which it must have had in the past. This steady gift of shrewd and apt +vision of the things which really are makes him a useful monitor in a +time when men usually deal in gratuitously spun theories. + +His eye for country is a symbol, as well as an example, of his best +talents. To him, it seems, a piece of ground, an English county, say, is +an orderly shape, not the jumble of ups and downs, fields, roads and +woods which appears to most. In a similar way an historical controversy +in his hands reveals its principal streams, its watershed, and the +character of its soil. + +At this point, just as we distinguished in his history the practical +from the poetic motive, we can see the blending of the two motives for +travel. Mr. Belloc's researches into history and pre-history do show +these motives inextricably mixed: in _The Old Road_ you cannot separate +the purpose of research from the purpose of this pleasure. + +In this book he gives us a few remarks on the origin of the prehistoric +track-way which ran from Winchester to Canterbury, an itinerary as exact +as research can make it, and a little discourse on the reasons why it +is both pious and pleasant to pursue such knowledge. + +Searching for Roman roads or the earlier track-ways and determining as +near as possible the exact sites of historical events is with him a +sport. The method pursued is that of rigid and scientific inquiry. +_Paris_ especially, _Marie Antoinette_ and _The Historic Thames_ in a +lesser degree, bear witness to this, which, in a don, we should call +minute and painstaking research, but which in our subject we guess to be +the gratification of a desire. + +In _The Old Road_ Mr. Belloc describes with severe accuracy but with an +astonishing gusto how, having read all that was printed about this track +and studied the best maps of the region through which it passes, he set +out to examine the ground itself, and thus to reach his final +conclusions. We have not space here to recount his methods at length or +to show, as he has shown, how this parish boundary is a guide here, +those trees there, that church a mile further on. It is but one example +out of many of his spirit and tastes in the numerous tasks of +identification which he has undertaken. + +And here is the proper place, perhaps, to disengage what we have called +the poetic motive of travel. He manifests a particular reverence for +these rests of antiquity which he has sought out. It is both in a +religious and in a poetic spirit that he considers The Road as a symbol +of humanity. He writes in a grave and ritual tone: + + Of these primal things [he says] the least obvious but the most + important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those + others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take + it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, + indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own + country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is + delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They + feel a meaning in it: it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it + explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has + arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is + the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest + and most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest + pioneers of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of + our necessities. It is older than building and than wells; before + we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; + they seek their food and their drinking-places and, as I believe, + their assemblies, by known ways which they have made. + +All travel is a pilgrimage, more or less exalted, and a Catholic with a +mind of Mr. Belloc's type makes the performance of such an act both a +religious ceremonial and a personal pleasure. He feels it to be no less +an act of religion because it is full of jolly human and coloured +experience. + +Out of this conception he has developed a new and personal form of the +Fantastic or Unbridled Book of Travels: much as Heine's form of the same +thing developed from a faint reflection of a half-remembered tradition +of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's praise of nature. It is odd to compare the +two, Mr. Belloc on pilgrimage for his religion of normality and good +fellowship, Heine walking in honour of the religion of wit. + +The comparison indeed is inevitable: for these men, each solid, sensible +and humorous, each availing himself of the same form of literature, each +standing apart from the windiness of such as George Borrow, are as alike +in method as they are distinct in spirit. The form, the method indeed, +are admirable for men of the type of these two who resemble one another +so much in general cast, in line of action, though so very little in +thought. + +It is a form, as it were, made for a man of various tastes and talents, +for the progress of his journey makes a frame-work suggesting and +holding together a multitude of discursions. An event of the day's march +can set him off on a train of entertaining or profitable reflection and +Mr. Belloc, in the earlier of the two books which are the subject of +this disquisition, will abruptly introduce an irrelevant story as he +explains, to while away the tedium of a dull road. And at the end of the +irrelevance, the purpose of travel restores him to the path and +preserves the unity of the book. + +_The Path to Rome_, though perhaps better known, is a younger and a less +mature book than _The Four Men_. It is brilliantly full of humour and +poetic description: it has even remarkable stretches of Fine Writing. +One could deduce from it without much difficulty the general trend of +Mr. Belloc's mind, for he has tumbled into it pell-mell all his first +thoughts and reflections. With the fixed basis of thought, on which we +have already so often insisted, he will think at all times and on all +things in the same general way. This gives his observations a uniform +character and a uniform interest. The pleasure in reading a book of this +sort is to see how his method of thinking will play upon the various +hares of subjects that he starts. + +This basis of thought in him is continuous: it has not changed, but it +has ripened, and it is more fully expressed. _The Path to Rome_ is the +book of a young man, vigorous, exuberant, extravagant, almost, as it +were, "showing off." The flavour is sharp and arresting. _The Four Men_, +which we believe to be the present climax of Mr. Belloc's literature, +is, Heaven knows, vigorous, exuberant and extravagant enough. But it is +also graver, deeper, more artful, more coherent. + +It is, in all its ramifications, a lyric, the expression of a single +idea or emotion, and that the love of one's own country. The cult of +Sussex, as it has been harshly and awkwardly called, makes a sort of +nucleus to Mr. Belloc's examination and impression of the world. If he +knows Western Europe tolerably well, he knows this one county perfectly, +and from it his explorations go out in concentric circles. He finds it, +as he found with The Road, a solemn, a ritual, and a pleasurable task to +praise his own home. + +We cannot here analyse this book in any detail, nor would its framework +bear so pedantic an insistence. The writer describes how, sitting in an +inn just within the Kentish borders of Sussex he determined to walk +across the county, admiring it by the way, and so to find his own home. +He is joined on the road by three companions, Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, +and the Poet. It would be stupid, the act of a Prussian professor, to +seek for allegories in these figures, who are described and moulded with +a quite human humour. The supernatural touch given to them in the last +pages of the book, the faint mystic flavour which clings to them from +the beginning and marks them as being just more than companions of +flesh, these things are indicated with so delicate a hand, so +reticently, that to analyse the method would be destruction--for the +writers at least. + +The book should be, by rights, described as "an extraordinary medley." +As a matter of fact, it is not. Mr. Belloc gives it, as sub-title, the +description "A Farrago," but we are not very clear what that means. It +contains all manner of stuff from an excellent drinking song, an +excellent marching song (which has now seen service), and a first-rate +song about religion to the story of St. Dunstan and the Devil and an +account of Mr. Justice Honeybubbe's Decision. But all this is strung +together with such a curious tact on the string of the journey across +Sussex that the miscellaneous materials make one coherent composition. + +The recurrent landscapes which mark the progress of that journey are +slight but exquisite. Take this one example, describing the gap of +Arundel, just below Amberley: + + ... The rain began to fall again out of heaven, but we had come to + such a height of land that the rain and the veils of it did but add + to the beauty of all we saw, and the sky and the earth together + were not like November, but like April, and filled us with wonder. + At this place the flat water-meadows, the same that are flooded + and turned to a lake in mid-winter, stretch out a sort of scene or + stage, whereupon can be planted the grandeur of the Downs, and one + looks athwart that flat from a high place upon the shoulder of + Rockham Mount to the broken land, the sand hills, and the pines, + the ridge of Egdean side, the uplifted heaths and commons which + flank the last of the hills all the way until one comes to the + Hampshire border, beyond which there is nothing. This is the + foreground of the gap of Arundel, a district of the Downs so made + than when one sees it one knows at once that here is a jewel for + which the whole County of Sussex was made and the ornament worthy + of so rare a setting. And beyond Arun, straight over the flat, + where the line against the sky is highest, the hills I saw were the + hills of home. + +These pages are full of sentences, graciously praising Sussex, in +themselves small and perfect poems, as for example the praises of Arun, +"which, when a man bathes in it, makes him forget everything that has +come upon him since his eighteenth year--or possibly his +twenty-seventh," and again, "Arun in his majesty, married to salt water, +and a king." + +We should be doing an injustice to _The Four Men_ did we give the +impression that it is nothing but a graceful and pleasant poem written +about Sussex. We have said that it is grave and deep and informed with +emotion. We will quote one passage, Grizzlebeard's farewell: + + There is nothing at all that remains: nor any house; nor any + castle, however strong; nor any love, however tender and sound; nor + any comradeship among men, however hardy. Nothing remains but the + things of which I will not speak, because we have spoken enough of + them already during these four days. But I who am old will give you + advice, which is this--to consider chiefly from now onward those + permanent things which are, as it were, the shores of this age and + the harbours of our glittering and pleasant but dangerous and + wholly changeful sea. + +Of such stuff is the basis of this book: on this basis, which is poetic, +a spiritual motive, the whole creation is raised, and the book is +destined to be more than an occasional account of travel or an amusing +but trivial display of wit and fancy. It is a poem, and a poem, as we +think, which will endure. + +It is, in truth, the poetic instinct which animates all his activities +and particularly his travel. The poetic instinct consists of two itches, +the first to comprehend fully in all dimensions the reality which we see +before us, the second to express it again in words, paint, clay or +music. This instinct in its pure and proper form has regard to no kind +of profit, either in money or esteem. It moves the poet to the doing of +these things for the sake only of doing them. + +But by a very wise dispensation it is also the mainspring of all +material usefulness in the world. We have sought to show, in this +chapter as in others, how you can find the poetic, the disinterested +motive, whenever you try to discover what gives their value to Mr. +Belloc's studies in actuality. Particularly this is so in the +accumulation of knowledge which he has acquired in his travels and in +the use he makes of it. It seems as though this passion to see and to +understand must sharpen his wits and his vision: it gives that life and +energy to his writings on this matter without which poetic composition +is worthless and journalism fails to convince. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +MR. BELLOC AND THE FUTURE + + +You cannot sum up Mr. Belloc in a phrase. It is the aim of the phrase to +select and emphasize; and if you attempt to select from Mr. Belloc's +work you are condemned to lose more than you gain. It is not possible to +seize upon any one aspect of his work as expressive of the whole man: to +appreciate him at all fully it is essential to take every department of +his writings into consideration. + +If we are to answer the question as to what Mr. Belloc is, we can only +reply with a string of names--poet and publicist, essayist and +economist, novelist and historian, satirist and traveller, a writer on +military affairs and a writer of children's verses. + +Such overwhelming diversity is in itself sufficient to mark out a man +from his fellows; but if this diversity is to have any lasting meaning, +if it is to be for us something more than the versatility of a practised +journalist, it must have a reason. + +The various aspects of Mr. Belloc's work are interwoven and +interdependent. They do not spring one out of another, but all from one +centre. We cannot take one group of his writings as a starting-point, +and trace the phases of a steady development. We can only compare the +whole of his work to a number of lines which are obviously converging. +If you take one of these lines, that is to say, one of his works or a +single department of his activities, you cannot deduce from its +direction the central point of his mind and nature. But if you take all +these lines you may deduce, as it were mathematically, that they must of +necessity intersect at a certain hypothetical point. This point, then, +is the centre of Mr. Belloc's mind, a centre which we know to exist, but +at which we can only arrive by hypothesis, because he has not yet +written any full expression of it. + +This point, the centre of all Mr. Belloc's published work, is to be +found, we believe, in the fact that he is an historian. History to him +is the greatest and most important of all studies. A knowledge of +history is essential to an understanding of life. Although only a small +part of his work is definitely historical in character, yet it is on +history that the whole of his work reposes. This is very apparent when +he is dealing with economic or political problems of the present day: it +is less marked, though still quite obvious, in his essays and books on +travel. It is in his poetry, and his children's verses that it appears +perhaps least. + +But it is the qualities which make him a poet and give him an +understanding of children, his catholicity, and his desire for simple, +primitive and enduring things which give him that consistent view of +history which we believe him to hold, and which we have attempted to +outline in the eighth and again in the tenth chapters of this book. We +endeavoured there to make clear what we believe to be Mr. Belloc's view +of the general course of European history, and, as we pointed out, we +found considerable difficulty in the fact that Mr. Belloc has never +written any connected exposition of this view. We were, indeed, deducing +the existence of a centre from the evidence of the converging lines. + +That such a centre exists in Mr. Belloc's mind we have no doubt +whatever. It is perfectly plain that he relates to some such considered +and consistent scheme of history any particular historical event or +contemporary problem which is brought under his notice. If at some +future date he should set out this scheme as fully and adequately as we +think it deserves, the resulting work would be of paramount value, both +as an historical treatise, and as a guide to the understanding of all +Mr. Belloc's other activities. + +What we believe Mr. Belloc's view of the mainspring and the course of +history to be we have outlined sufficiently, at least for the present +purpose. The reader is already familiar with his conception of the +European race, of the political greatness of Rome, of the importance of +the Middle Ages, and of the principles of the French Revolution. But +behind this material appearance, dictating its form and inspiring its +expression, there is something else--the point of character from which +he judges and co-relates in his mind, not only transitory, but also +eternal things. + +We might baldly express this point by saying that it is in the nature of +a reverence for tradition and authority: but such phrases are nets +which, while they do indeed capture the main tendency of ideas, allow +to escape the subtle reservations and qualifications wherein the life of +ideas truly resides. On such a point we can at best generalize: and this +generalization will most easily be made clear, perhaps, by a contrast. + +The point from which Mr. Belloc views the whole of life, the point about +him which it is of cardinal importance to seize, is the point where he +cuts across the stream of contemporary thought. All literature and all +art is conditioned by the social influences of the time. Mr. Belloc has +told us that the state of society which exists in England to-day, and +which he regards as rapidly nearing its close, is necessarily unstable, +and more properly to be regarded as a transitory phase lying between two +stable states of society. If we examine in its broadest outline the +literature which is contemporaneous with the general consolidation of +capitalism we find that it bears stamped upon it the mark of +interrogation. From Wilde to Mr. Wells is the age of the question mark. +In almost every writer of this period we find the same tendency of +thought: the endless questioning, the shattering of conventions, the +repeal of tradition, the denial of dogma. + +It is the literature of an age of discomfort. Mr. Wells does not so much +denounce as complain; life appears to ruin Mr. Galsworthy's digestion. +Mr. Masefield, that robust and versifying sailor, is as irritable as a +man with a bad cold. Our poets and our thinkers do not view the world +with a settled gaze either of appreciation or of contempt: they look at +it with the wild eye of a man who cannot imagine where he has put his +gloves. Their condemnations and suggestions are alike undignified, +whirling and flimsy. They pick up and throw down in the same space of +time every human institution: they are in a hurry to question everything +and they have not the patience to wait for an answer to anything. + +We would not appear to think lightly of our contemporaries. It was +necessary that they should arise to cleanse and garnish the world. They +are symptomatic of an age, an evil age that is passing. They have +cleared the ground for other men to build. If the world is not fuller +and richer for their work, it is at any rate cleaner and healthier. + +That their work is done, that the time is ripe for more solid things, +grows clearer every day. We are weary of our voyage of discovery and +wishful to arrive at the promised land. We are glutted with questions, +but hungry for answers. Theories are no longer our need; our desire is +for fact. The philosophy and art of to-day exhibit this tendency. In +literature especially the naturalist method has seen its day: and a +general return to the romantic, or better, the classical form, is +imminent. In a word, the tendency to establish as opposed to the +tendency to demolish is everywhere to be seen. + +By the very nature of his first principles Mr. Belloc is as much an ally +of this tendency as he is an enemy of the tendency which is now reaching +its term. His simplicity and catholicity give him a solid hold on +tradition, and he will attack, on _a priori_ grounds, nothing that is +already established in the tradition of man. He is by no means a friend +of reaction; but he can see nothing but peril and foolishness in Mr. +Wells' attempts to construct a new universe out of chaos between two +numbers of a half-crown review. Being, as he is, mystically impressed +with the transitoriness of individual man and the permanence of the +human race, he will not lightly condemn anything that has appeared +useful to many past generations, and he cannot accept the mere charge of +age as a damaging indictment against any human institution. + +It is not Mr. Belloc's aim to drive us towards "a world set free." He +does not visualize an ideal state which he would have the world attain. +His whole object is to solve our immediate problems, practically and +usefully, as they may best be solved; that is, by applying to the +present the teachings of the past. He leaves himself open to the +influences of his time: he does not attempt to force the men of his day +into a mould of his own creation. For example, he points to the +distributive state as the happiest political condition to be found in +the Christian era. He sees no safe solution of present problems which +does not involve a return to that state. But he does not indulge in the +foolish exercise of elaborating a ready-made scheme by which the +distributive state may be reinstituted. He is too much of an historian, +too practical a reformer, to be a lover of fantasy. + +In _Danton_, Mr. Belloc says: + + A man who is destined to represent at any moment the chief energies + of a nation, especially a man who will not only represent but lead, + must, by his nature, follow the national methods on his road to + power. + + His career must be nearly parallel (so to speak) with the direction + of the national energies, and must merge with their main current at + an imperceptible angle. It is the chief error of those who + deliberately plan success that they will not leave themselves + amenable to such influences, and it is the most frequent cause of + their failure. Thus such men as arrive at great heights of power + are most often observed to succeed by a kind of fatality, which is + nothing more than the course of natures vigorous and original, but, + at the same time, yielding unconsciously to an environment with + which they sympathize, or to which they were born. + +We believe that society to-day is searching for a fixed morality and a +dogmatic religion. We are seeking to establish once more conventions of +conduct by which we may be ruled: our anxiety is to submit to the +authority of eternal truths. + +It is on tradition and authority that the whole of Mr. Belloc's work is +based. He stands already on the heights society is striving to reach. +That his influence on the progress of society towards its goal will be +considerable we may fairly believe; the exact measure of that influence +only the future can determine. + + * * * * * + + Printed in Great Britain + by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London. + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's note + + +The following changes have been made to the text: + +Page 6: "blinds all of them" changed to "binds all of them". + +Page 13: "leisurely obligarchy" changed to leisurely oligarchy". + +Page 20: "crown and best achievment" changed to "crown and best +achievement". + +Page 56: "perusual of the daily newspaper" changed to "perusal of the +daily newspaper". + +Page 88 (in this version of the text): In footnote #1 "Mommesn's volume +on the provinces" changed to "Mommsen's volume on the provinces". + +Page 119: "freeest humour" changed to "freest humour". + +Page 119: "What did he manufactare" changed to "What did he +manufacture". + +"Page 129: "liqueurs in caf!é" changed to "liqueurs in the café!." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Hilaire Belloc, by +C. 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